DVD, Smallville S2 (Prodigal)
Brother versus brother, and when that comes to the Luthors you know things aren't going to go well. This was quite a confusing episode, not just for the financial goings-on, Lex' riches to rags to riches again (presumably), but also what it meant for the characters. And not just the Luthors, either! In my previous review I was saying how the trouble between Lana and Clark was bound to be resolved in the next few episodes, putting them back to square one again, but I didn't expect it to be at the start of the very next episode! I mean that was bizarre - Clark just turns up at the Talon hoping for a job? I know his pizza and rose gifts of reconciliation at the end of the last episode were an attempt to get back into Lana's good books, but she rejected them straight off, and yet she now gives him a job? It couldn't even have been that long since the rose is still in the metal bin right where she threw it. Maybe she just bounced out the right side of the bed this morning, full of forgiveness and ready for a fresh start. Or maybe she got hit on the head and only half remembers what happened in 'Rush.' It was nice of Chloe to give Clark a helping hand in the reference department, especially as working for the Torch is a kind of job. It's just sad that we never see Chloe, Pete and Clark actually doing work on it any more. Well, Chloe scenes are fairly often at the office in the school (another sad thing - that's about all we get of their school life at the moment), but we don't see them working together and uncovering investigations like we used to.
We're back to the new norm of Season 2 once again, where it's all about Lana and Clark or Lex and Clark, Pete and Chloe getting short shrift after their brief spell in the spotlight last time. At least Lionel makes an impression as there do seem to be a few episodes where he's not involved at all - no surprise that it's hard to integrate a multi-millionaire business mogul into a high school drama! At least his shenanigans were true to his character - not only has he regained his vision out of nowhere (and I was surprised it was Lucas Luthor who threw the pool ball, a scene I'd thought was Lex'), he's also playing his two sons against each other. I wasn't entirely sure where Lucas came from in terms of deciding now was the time to be unearthed. I know it was a power play by Lex to try and get leverage on his Father's company, and then ultimately we find out it was Lionel preempting him for a similar reason, to fight back against Lex' plot. But things like that gambling scene didn't make a lot of sense - did Lucas own the joint? Otherwise how could he have set up a camera in the golden lion bust or have an accomplice sending him intel on his opponent's cards? It didn't seem like he owned the place and it was odd how his assistant was discovered - what, he dropped something on the floor which alerted the bodyguard?
Lucas we'd heard of before just a few episodes prior so I suppose it was good to have him in the story, but why would Lex protect him, and how? In the end he's safely out of his Father's influence, but Lionel was looking after him in his own way, paying off his troubles over the years. He did seem to want some kind of connection to his Father so perhaps his life was becoming too shallow for him to stomach and had reached an age when he realised he needed more, but I just don't buy that he and Lex would end up trusting each other. Unless Lex could read him, seeing himself in the younger son and having empathy for how he feels in regards to their Father. It was complicated and I'm not sure the series could pull off something like that, it didn't come across quite right. I suppose we're supposed to be concerned that Lionel noticed the dripping hole of burnt metal from where Clark heat-visioned Lucas' hand when he thought the guy was going to shoot Lionel. But in later seasons we learn (I think), Lionel knew, or guessed Clark's secret, though that never made much sense to me. It's not relevant here anyway, but it adds further confusion to what we're supposed to be making of these events.
The episode does have some lovely moments - all the stuff with Lex being accepted into the Kent Farm as a houseguest, doing chores (I don't remember ever seeing animals in the barn and yet he's got to muck it out?), being grateful to Jonathan in particular, and the ultimate accolade of Mr. Kent complimenting him by saying he'd have made a great farmer (fascinating to see how different people react to life there - Ryan, for example got up and made everyone pancakes for breakfast). That was all terrific, but I felt they needed to eke this storyline out a bit. He's there in his fancy suit on the doorstep requesting asylum, then it's the next day and he's hard at work and then he's out again. Having Lex on the farm is the kind of great idea that should have been an arc in itself. Imagine him sitting round as they all read of an evening (that's what Mr. and Mrs. Kent were doing when he stopped by), the conversations, the mealtimes… It's too juicy to have let pass in the space of a few scenes, as good as they were. Similarly, the idea of a social experiment where one brother has everything and the other nothing was the kind of thing the episode should have delved deeper into, it had such potential.
That's probably why I wasn't quite as impressed with the episode as I used to be. It's still a good entry in the season and it has that superb sequence where we see Clark actually being faster than speeding bullets as he knocks the motorbike assassin off his bike, then proceeds to swat away each bullet in turn before they can take out Lucas in the alley behind the Talon (always a bad place to go!). If I'd been Lucas I think I'd have run back into the coffee shop, not taken off down a long dark alleyway when the guy chasing him is on a motorbike, but then he was young and you're probably not going to be thinking too clearly when an assassin with an automatic is bearing down on you. It gave new meaning to the phrase don't turn your back on someone, as Clark knows he has the smoking impacts of several bullets on the back of his jacket which he doesn't want Lucas to see - in parallel, Jonathan won't turn his back on Lex while he's staying on the farm, which is exactly what Martha said they couldn't do, but she, too, had a different meaning! The production value came to the screen - even though they only showed a little bit of that asian area of Edge City, it was effective. But could Lex really lose every single thing he owns (other than the little he could pack into his car), that doesn't seem possible? And does he own the Mansion again at the end, or not? There's no explanation of how Lionel can see again - he claims he's had his sight back for a few weeks, but who knows if he's telling the truth.
That was one of the big twists in the series I always found hard to believe and things were starting to unravel for me as this series being realistic enough for me to suspend disbelief for all the other weird things we were used to - it needed the grounding in people that it had to begin with in order to make everything else acceptable and when you have some major change like that it undermined reality (a bit like what happened with Sheriff Ethan - you can believe it's possible, but they needed to do more to sell it). I also don't think it helps that Lucas is as obnoxious and entitled as they come, because we needed to feel at least some kind of sympathy for him. I don't think he ever came back, if he did it didn't make an impact on me, but there was a strong angle of playing that abandoned child side of things, just as it's so sad when Lex looks over and sees the idyllic Kent family and wishes it were so for him in various episodes, but they didn't do enough to make Lucas a victim. What did Lex say to him to make him change his position and trick Lionel into revealing what really happened in his past? It must have been good for them to carry out the enactment of potential murder. I liked Lionel having enough conscience and attachment to Lex that he can't go through with killing him, even when forced to do so at gunpoint, but in the same scene we also see his true ruthlessness as he turns on the fallen Lucas and shoots him twice. It makes sense that Clark couldn't hold down the job at the Talon since he's always got to dash off and save someone, and I liked Lex' reassuring words about his own Father taking over the world, but Clark's will inherit the Earth, a sort of Biblical influence that mirrors Lionel's own reference to the Prodigal Son.
***
Tuesday, 26 October 2021
The Slaver Weapon
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Slaver Weapon)
Adapting an existing story for use in Trek can work, I'm sure. I can't think of examples off the top of my head, but there must be some that have had strong influences if not direct adaptation. But this one doesn't really work - whether that's because it was adapted by its own original author or not, I don't know, but Larry Niven turns his original story, 'The Soft Weapon' (as credited on the episode title screen), into one of the less interesting entries of 'TAS.' It has the distinction, dubious though it may be, of being one of, if not the only episode, not to feature the ship at all, and therefore not to feature the Bridge, but not only that, it doesn't even have Captain Kirk! There's no Bones or Scotty, and in one sense it does have the advantage of doing something different - it does have slight shades of 'The Galileo Seven' in that it's about Spock in command of a shuttlecraft, but this time he only has Sulu and Uhura for company. This trio is quite a rare grouping indeed, especially without Kirk along, but the novelty value alone isn't enough to make the story worthwhile.
We finally meet the Kzinti that I've heard so much about over the years. Actually, I haven't heard much about them, but the name was always intriguing and they recently joined the ranks of those few specific details from 'TAS' to become canon, thanks to a mention of them by Riker in 'Picard.' Sadly, we didn't get to see what a live-action series would have made of these strangely saber-toothed tiger-like species who prowl around on their hind legs like any normal humanoid, yet have much greater upper body mass. They don't seem to be the most intelligent of races to deal with, reminding me of the Ferengi in both their single-mindedness (in this case wanting to destroy the humans who humiliated them in four wars, rather than profit), their fearsome visages and the far lower social standing women have in their society, to the extent that they're simply dumb animals! I will say this for them: they certainly are colourful, wearing these purple spacesuits complete with goldfish bowl helmets, and travelling in a spacecraft that looks not unlike a dinner plate with a fried egg on top, and perhaps alien cutlery on the side. I got the sense that their 'specialist attribute,' as most Trek races have, was their culture being based around food. When Sulu said that the whole galaxy would be their dinner table if they had control of the weapon, that about summed up their motivation!
Except they also go big on revenge. We hear that they fought these four wars with humans quite a long time ago since the last one ended two hundred years ago, which would put it shortly after Earth's own World War III. I can't really see humans putting up much of a fight around that time of the mid-21st Century, unless the Vulcans did most of their fighting for them, since they'd only just discovered warp travel! Mind you, things like this are exactly why 'TAS' should never be considered canon because it doesn't always make a lot of sense. This particular group of Kzinti appear to be their world's version of the Impossible Missions Force from 'Mission: Impossible,' and they basically admit in different words that the secretary will disavow all knowledge of them if they're caught. They're pretending to act as pirates with a stolen police ship, since that's the only weapon they've been permitted in whatever treaty was made. It does smack of the Treaty of Versailles as they still haven't got over it all this time later and it was particularly harsh - so they can't have any weapons? How do they defend against invaders like the Klingons or Romulans?
Ignoring the silliness of the episode, the important central pillar of the story is the weapon of the title, a device that was held in a stasis box (complete with a bizarre Cyclops picture that they speculate may be what the Slavers looked like), for a billion years, apparently, since that's how long ago these Slavers were defeated at the cost of all life in the galaxy. They had been lording it over all life up till that point, but somehow they were overthrown, but they had enough time to ferret away some stasis boxes for future generations to discover. The Niven story doesn't appear to translate all that well into a less than thirty minute cartoon series, but not having read the original I don't know how much more sense it made. The weapon is pretty cartoony itself, with these various settings that have different effects, including a devastating Phaser blast that can cause what looks like a nuclear blast far in the distance. I'm sure a shapeshifting super-weapon is exactly the kind of idea that would have appealed to children, which is after all the target group for the series. Fortunately, one setting is an artificial intelligence which causes the Kzinti to blow themselves into tiny pieces and everything is happy ever after. Yes. So I'm not sure what the point of the story was, it was just a knockabout silly sci-fi adventure.
While Scotty doesn't appear, James Doohan continues to provide the lion's share of guest voices (or should that be the tiger's share?), as the leader of the Kzinti and at least one other. Other than that we're down to just Nimoy, Takei and Nichols doing their characters and it is good from that perspective that we're allowed so much time between them, including the occasional moment of levity such as Uhura balking at being considered stupid like the Kzinti females. She also gets shot at least three times so it's not the best time for her. At least she doesn't have the ignominy of her face being replaced by Captain Kirk's! That's what appeared to happen to Sulu whenever there was a profile shot of him, as if they were cheaping out by reusing existing shots of Kirk, except with the hair altered to black! Spock even apes his Captain by performing one of those double-footed kicks on the Kzinti, especially strange when you consider Vulcans are meant to be nonviolent and Spock himself usually prefers a nerve pinch. There was a reason for it: for one thing he couldn't leap at them and nerve pinch them all (or both, I forget how many there were), and then later he says something about them being shamed by being bested in battle by a Vulcan, which means they won't call for help, or something along those lines, but it didn't really make a lot of sense and is another reason why this seems to be based on non-Trek characters.
The technology provides some interest again, as aside from the green hairdryer that was this alien weapon, we see a completely different shuttlecraft to the usual ones (designated Copernicus and apparently number twelve in the Enterprise's complement), just like the previous episode. Then there's the scene with Spock recording his science log about the stasis box onto some mini recorder rather than the traditional Tricorder (even though he later uses one of those), and we hear the origin story of artificial gravity - they say a 'flying belt' was discovered in one of these mystery boxes which led to gravity being created for use on starships. Somehow that seems hard to believe, but I suppose it is the only explanation for how they developed the technology in all of Trek, even if, fortunately it's not the 'official' version of the story (because remember kids, 'TAS' is NOT canon!). I appreciate them trying to add to the universe even at this stage, but at the same time it doesn't necessarily ring true as usually such things are meant to be the product of hard work and superior intellect. Not that it wouldn't have been hard work to reverse engineer the belt, but it's better when we hear of specific people inventing the building blocks of future space exploration, like Zefram Cochrane and Emory Erickson.
I'm not saying this is a terrible episode (like 'The Magicks of Megas-Tu'), it just doesn't have the things about Trek that I like, or the things about a good story that I like. Good that they got another science fiction author involved to give the series some pedigree, as its parent series had had, but perhaps Niven should have come up with something entirely original instead of relying on previous work, and as much as I enjoy seeing a different mix of characters (in 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager' it was often fascinating to see a varied selection of characters to headline each episode, maybe a couple of characters we rarely saw paired together going off on a mission), 'TOS' and 'TAS' weren't an ensemble drama so they needed the big three to be involved to make the most of the stories, I feel. It's not like we really find out anything new about Sulu and Uhura here, which would have made it more worthwhile.
**
Adapting an existing story for use in Trek can work, I'm sure. I can't think of examples off the top of my head, but there must be some that have had strong influences if not direct adaptation. But this one doesn't really work - whether that's because it was adapted by its own original author or not, I don't know, but Larry Niven turns his original story, 'The Soft Weapon' (as credited on the episode title screen), into one of the less interesting entries of 'TAS.' It has the distinction, dubious though it may be, of being one of, if not the only episode, not to feature the ship at all, and therefore not to feature the Bridge, but not only that, it doesn't even have Captain Kirk! There's no Bones or Scotty, and in one sense it does have the advantage of doing something different - it does have slight shades of 'The Galileo Seven' in that it's about Spock in command of a shuttlecraft, but this time he only has Sulu and Uhura for company. This trio is quite a rare grouping indeed, especially without Kirk along, but the novelty value alone isn't enough to make the story worthwhile.
We finally meet the Kzinti that I've heard so much about over the years. Actually, I haven't heard much about them, but the name was always intriguing and they recently joined the ranks of those few specific details from 'TAS' to become canon, thanks to a mention of them by Riker in 'Picard.' Sadly, we didn't get to see what a live-action series would have made of these strangely saber-toothed tiger-like species who prowl around on their hind legs like any normal humanoid, yet have much greater upper body mass. They don't seem to be the most intelligent of races to deal with, reminding me of the Ferengi in both their single-mindedness (in this case wanting to destroy the humans who humiliated them in four wars, rather than profit), their fearsome visages and the far lower social standing women have in their society, to the extent that they're simply dumb animals! I will say this for them: they certainly are colourful, wearing these purple spacesuits complete with goldfish bowl helmets, and travelling in a spacecraft that looks not unlike a dinner plate with a fried egg on top, and perhaps alien cutlery on the side. I got the sense that their 'specialist attribute,' as most Trek races have, was their culture being based around food. When Sulu said that the whole galaxy would be their dinner table if they had control of the weapon, that about summed up their motivation!
Except they also go big on revenge. We hear that they fought these four wars with humans quite a long time ago since the last one ended two hundred years ago, which would put it shortly after Earth's own World War III. I can't really see humans putting up much of a fight around that time of the mid-21st Century, unless the Vulcans did most of their fighting for them, since they'd only just discovered warp travel! Mind you, things like this are exactly why 'TAS' should never be considered canon because it doesn't always make a lot of sense. This particular group of Kzinti appear to be their world's version of the Impossible Missions Force from 'Mission: Impossible,' and they basically admit in different words that the secretary will disavow all knowledge of them if they're caught. They're pretending to act as pirates with a stolen police ship, since that's the only weapon they've been permitted in whatever treaty was made. It does smack of the Treaty of Versailles as they still haven't got over it all this time later and it was particularly harsh - so they can't have any weapons? How do they defend against invaders like the Klingons or Romulans?
Ignoring the silliness of the episode, the important central pillar of the story is the weapon of the title, a device that was held in a stasis box (complete with a bizarre Cyclops picture that they speculate may be what the Slavers looked like), for a billion years, apparently, since that's how long ago these Slavers were defeated at the cost of all life in the galaxy. They had been lording it over all life up till that point, but somehow they were overthrown, but they had enough time to ferret away some stasis boxes for future generations to discover. The Niven story doesn't appear to translate all that well into a less than thirty minute cartoon series, but not having read the original I don't know how much more sense it made. The weapon is pretty cartoony itself, with these various settings that have different effects, including a devastating Phaser blast that can cause what looks like a nuclear blast far in the distance. I'm sure a shapeshifting super-weapon is exactly the kind of idea that would have appealed to children, which is after all the target group for the series. Fortunately, one setting is an artificial intelligence which causes the Kzinti to blow themselves into tiny pieces and everything is happy ever after. Yes. So I'm not sure what the point of the story was, it was just a knockabout silly sci-fi adventure.
While Scotty doesn't appear, James Doohan continues to provide the lion's share of guest voices (or should that be the tiger's share?), as the leader of the Kzinti and at least one other. Other than that we're down to just Nimoy, Takei and Nichols doing their characters and it is good from that perspective that we're allowed so much time between them, including the occasional moment of levity such as Uhura balking at being considered stupid like the Kzinti females. She also gets shot at least three times so it's not the best time for her. At least she doesn't have the ignominy of her face being replaced by Captain Kirk's! That's what appeared to happen to Sulu whenever there was a profile shot of him, as if they were cheaping out by reusing existing shots of Kirk, except with the hair altered to black! Spock even apes his Captain by performing one of those double-footed kicks on the Kzinti, especially strange when you consider Vulcans are meant to be nonviolent and Spock himself usually prefers a nerve pinch. There was a reason for it: for one thing he couldn't leap at them and nerve pinch them all (or both, I forget how many there were), and then later he says something about them being shamed by being bested in battle by a Vulcan, which means they won't call for help, or something along those lines, but it didn't really make a lot of sense and is another reason why this seems to be based on non-Trek characters.
The technology provides some interest again, as aside from the green hairdryer that was this alien weapon, we see a completely different shuttlecraft to the usual ones (designated Copernicus and apparently number twelve in the Enterprise's complement), just like the previous episode. Then there's the scene with Spock recording his science log about the stasis box onto some mini recorder rather than the traditional Tricorder (even though he later uses one of those), and we hear the origin story of artificial gravity - they say a 'flying belt' was discovered in one of these mystery boxes which led to gravity being created for use on starships. Somehow that seems hard to believe, but I suppose it is the only explanation for how they developed the technology in all of Trek, even if, fortunately it's not the 'official' version of the story (because remember kids, 'TAS' is NOT canon!). I appreciate them trying to add to the universe even at this stage, but at the same time it doesn't necessarily ring true as usually such things are meant to be the product of hard work and superior intellect. Not that it wouldn't have been hard work to reverse engineer the belt, but it's better when we hear of specific people inventing the building blocks of future space exploration, like Zefram Cochrane and Emory Erickson.
I'm not saying this is a terrible episode (like 'The Magicks of Megas-Tu'), it just doesn't have the things about Trek that I like, or the things about a good story that I like. Good that they got another science fiction author involved to give the series some pedigree, as its parent series had had, but perhaps Niven should have come up with something entirely original instead of relying on previous work, and as much as I enjoy seeing a different mix of characters (in 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager' it was often fascinating to see a varied selection of characters to headline each episode, maybe a couple of characters we rarely saw paired together going off on a mission), 'TOS' and 'TAS' weren't an ensemble drama so they needed the big three to be involved to make the most of the stories, I feel. It's not like we really find out anything new about Sulu and Uhura here, which would have made it more worthwhile.
**
Bugged Wheat
DVD, BUGS S2 (Bugged Wheat)
This is the one. The one that started it all for me: Saturday night thriller! I got myself into the mindset of what it must have been like to be introduced to this modern, action-packed spy-ride, with that opening in an indoor field of wheat, an attack by diving suit-wearing terrorists that ends with an explosion in the face of two security guards, then straight into those opening titles full of dramatic and unknown clips under the amazing theme music… I was totally excited by it all back then, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before and though it would be easy to say I never looked back and followed the series avidly every week, reality suggests otherwise - since it hadn't become part of my routine, I actually missed the following episode playing outside with friends, so perhaps it didn't have quite as much impact as I tend to think? And I have to say, as good as the episode is, it's not one of the best ones. Which is strange because it has many of the elements of the series that I like, the main one being Ed, Ros and Beckett are working together in close proximity as they break into various locations and use all kinds of devices to spy or hack, plus there's a major catastrophe they're trying to avert, so the stakes are high.
Perhaps this is the perfect episode to showcase the direction the series had gone in which didn't appeal to the mainstream audience as much - a lot of it is set at night, there's a fair amount of repetition, going into places and getting out of places. You have this science fiction edge to proceedings such as the security guards carrying these electrical discharge rifles, a sort of Taser, except it fires a bolt of energy which is far more sci-fi than reality. Then, if you weren't following along, you'd wonder what the significance of the final scene was, with a bald guy in half-moon specs being congratulated by a prison governor on making money for the prison of which he appears to be an inmate. It might be a little too baffling for the average viewer just wanting some light entertainment. On the other hand it has plenty of humour, the stars are stylish and always throwing themselves into things. The majority of the scenes being set at night may have added a certain surrealism to the presentation as they go from classy glassy building to building, full of the kind of ominous light shows that were used in 'Stealth' around the big grey ugly truck. There's definitely more of a sense of military thanks to all these rifle-toting guards, the darkness, the flashing lights and high security tech all over the place.
Maybe the darkness makes it too claustrophobic, because even though the team are mostly in close proximity to each other, they still seem separated quite a lot, communicating more by their headsets than in person. It also seems like there's less personality there, if I can say that - Ros is almost like a Barbie doll, all dressed up to the nines, but it doesn't quite fit with her previous image of this slightly scattily dressed genius. It's like she's suddenly got this gloss over her, which is good, but almost makes her less accessible as a character - or perhaps it was the way she was written, she doesn't seem to ever get in any way desperate, she's a little too cool and also doesn't get to be involved in the action as much, Ed and Beckett being the ones to infiltrate buildings, hide in decontamination bins or run around. Oddly, Ed is portrayed as the most human of the three this time in the sense that he tells both Ros and Beckett at different times to get out of there, when usually he's much more slapdash and relaxed about risks: when Ros is downloading the villains' database of information Ed urges her to get out, then later he says the same to Beckett when they're at PestiCorp. Beckett himself is very forward in the story, clearly being the leader, he seems to know all about viroids, these specialised micro-viruses that target plants and I really wanted a reference to The Hive there, that he'd encountered them on a mission somehow.
Beckett and Ed both have to confront their fears in the story - it had been well established that the former wasn't good with heights and so there's some good continuity there that addresses such fear when he has to leap onto a moving lorry to escape PestiCorp. Ed has the more worrying encounter as we learn he's afraid of creepy-crawlies, perhaps coming from his Australian heritage of so many bugs that can kill - it would have been nice to refer to his home country there as rationale. Not that I'm saying it's badly written, just that there are things you can't help see missing that would have made it better. Interestingly, this was the first script for the series written by the duo of Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, later to create 'Smallville,' a series I wouldn't say was one of the best, but which contained some terrific seasons (among a majority that were far from terrific!). At the time I first saw the series I didn't pay any attention to details like that, but on seeing it all again on DVD such things stuck out and added a whole new dimension! I'm sure Colin Brake, the Script Supervisor, would have gone over the whole story and adjusted it to make it more 'BUGS,' but it's fun to know that these creators (who also wrote the acclaimed 'Spider-Man 2'), contributed.
As is usually the case, Ed got to do the lion's share of the action, hanging from a lift, crawling through ventilation ducts, fighting Croll on the rooftop of PestiCorp… He also gets to use his brain when he thinks of the UV decontamination system as an ideal way to neutralise the viroid Croll and Pym plan to use to create a mass famine across Europe, then sell the miracle cure. Ed also ends up sliding into a 'Crystal Maze' dome that instead of featuring gold or silver tickets, is filled with angry insects buzzing about, causing him to panic until he can force his way out. In fact, the moment where he finds all the bottles that need to be destroyed, was like entering one of the puzzle rooms from that series: "Okay guys, I've got an empty room except for all these bottles. I've got to get them into the UV section…" Definitely one of the physical tasks. Actually, they should have done a 'Crystal Maze' special with the actors playing their characters - that would have been a sight to see. Sadly, the series had ended the previous year, 1995, and apparently the recording for that was early that year, probably when 'BUGS' was filming, too, so it could never have happened, but it's fun to speculate!
There are some familiar ideas being used again, such as climbing in a lift shaft ('A Sporting Chance'), a tiny camera in a lapel pin (like the poppy-cam in 'Out of The Hive'), and even the idea that Croll could use the one bottle that rolled away, to infect the bugs, and he explains it'll simply take longer for the viroid to multiply and spread (similar to the genetic virus in 'Assassins Inc' - "We can use the time to build cemeteries!"); be-masked thugs breaking into a facility to do with food crops ('Manna From Heaven'). The villains may not be the strongest, which could be why this doesn't feel like such a classic episode as some. Hugh Bonneville plays Pym in an early role - he's obviously gone on to worldwide acclaim in various things. Richard Cordery as Dr. Croll isn't quite as recognisable, I suspect, but he did have a fun role in an episode of 'Doc Martin' in recent years, which was very enjoyable to see. But they don't quite strike fear into the heart of the viewer, even though Pym and his sinister stutter worked well to make him memorable. It was a bit of a leap that he'd gone from this career-minded weather man at the Institute of Climatology to someone intent on making as much money from the world as possible, murdering his associate, Hawk, in cold blood, and he'd never had any criminal record! If you look at his biography that Ros pulled up, he had a successful and ever-improving career in his chosen profession so you wonder what caused him to become so nasty.
Croll, on the other hand just comes across as evil from the start. Ed basically kills him, because while you'd expect him to perform a smooth takedown in a few Tae Kwondo moves, while he does a nice kick to knock Croll's gun out of his hand, he then proceeds to manhandle the villain over the railing! Surely he could have knocked him out, and though it isn't technically Ed that kills him, as he does attempt to grab him before he falls, he also did put him in that position! Croll is quite an imposing figure, but the whole point of such fighting disciplines is that you use the opponent's own weight against them. Still, it's not as perplexing as the way Pym is killed. A security guard shoots the decon bin containing whatever it was (the serum?), and the electrical bolt reacts with the electronic lock in the lid, Pym stupidly tries to open it and then… the bin explodes. It didn't appear to have any reason to do that. At least Ros driving under the flatbed lorry full of oil drums could be said to have set off the explosion from the sparks as the roof tore off, but it's all in the tradition of the exploding car that blew up as it flew through the air in 'Out of The Hive,' so it's not out of character for things to arbitrarily explode. They may criticise Ros' driving, but she knows how to handle a car, as we saw, the bugs don't make her lose control and she comes up with that ingenious way to vent them at the expense of her poor car.
The look of the series is of course one of its strengths and with Ros in that red suit jacket, Beckett in his smart blue shirt and suit, only Ed is the odd one out with a blue-grey woollen jumper under his leather jacket. Ed and Beckett also get to wear the yellow coats of PestiCorp, so despite its blackness it was quite colourful at the same time - you also have the purple glow of the UV device, even if it was unnecessary to show a white smoke coming out of it, but that's typical TV convention so the audience understands the bottles were being affected. I liked the use of the flash grenade Ed throws so he and Beckett can escape, but why not simply take the guard's gun and hold him and Croll hostage? For that matter, why not call in the authorities if the danger is so great to the whole of Europe's crops - a famine that hasn't been seen in centuries? These are questions best left unasked. The team do come across almost more as vigilantes that work in the shadows of night, aliases, gadgets and no backup to the proper authorities, but it's usually a question of timing, action has to be taken now. It didn't seem entirely clear who had even hired them. Obviously it was the guy at the wheat field place, Greenville was the name I believe, though I got that from the end credits, so either they simply didn't explain who he was and why the team were working for him, or it was dropped in in one line, so if you miss it, it's gone.
It's always easy to poke holes, but that's part of the fun of it, and this episode has its share of inconsistencies. The lift, for instance - I liked that we saw a hatch in the floor through which Ed must have escaped, but there was no corresponding hatch on the underside! And it was also very strange for Ed to be in the air duct which leads right down into a crystal dome of flying bugs, yet he didn't seem to pass through an access hatch so the bugs could have flown out any time! And as for the guard who searches for Beckett (or Dr. Zygo as he's calling himself), in the decontamination room, it seemed obvious if there was anyone behind the shower curtains in each booth since there was only light beyond, while the end one, featuring the most ridiculous showing of shoes right on the edge that didn't look as if they were connected to anything, at least had a dark shape in the background from a hanging suit. It was clever how Beckett surprises the guard into shooting his futuristic gun at a mirror image, which then bounces off and hits the water overrunning onto the floor from all the taps and showers, but again, you'd think they'd train their guards that it's not safe to use electrical weapons in a wet environment! It's also a little too convenient that Croll doesn't get anyone to escort Beckett out as would be the usual form, especially in a secure establishment, but then Beckett couldn't have done what he needed to do. Oddly, security cameras are still being recorded onto little cassette tapes, Greenville gives them, though Ros does download onto a CD when visiting the Institute.
Was that a reuse of the STA observation room from the opening two-parter, as the glass pod the scientists observe the wheat from looked similar and was probably the same set? I did like the contrast of the golden wheat against the bright blue walls of the place (reminded me of 'Banjo-Kazooie'), as well as all that grating and people clomping about on it. Again, it's hard to believe Hawk would go in without his goggles on if he'd come in full diving gear, dangling at his front, but then they needed a lead to work on. Was Ros still tapping into The Hive's systems for the profile database? It seems likely since she asks Ed to plug in the modem, so obviously she needed to get a signal out, and we know that's how she's acquired sensitive data in the past… I couldn't help noticing Croll wears a bow-tie, just like Charlesworth, since in a later episode Beckett is suspicious of men in bow-ties. And it was fun to see a low-tech solution is sometimes best, as Ed demonstrates by shoving his fist into the bug jar when it opens with the diseased insects inside. Gizmo's, or whatever they call their home base, barely features and they don't even end there, with the standard joke at the end being on the rooftop of PestiCorp.
That was so they could cut to the next instalment of 'Prison Life with Jean-Daniel.' We meet the Prison Governor for the first time (as well as the Prison Guard), and learn that he had JD sewing mailbags at first, before he realised his genius at making money - the criminal invested in wheat futures, once again betting on his enemies in order to make lots of dough. When he says if he'd been the one to invest money he'd be calling his broker now, does that mean he was suggesting the Governor take the money himself, is that what he has to go off and do so urgently (I half expected him to say, 'There's something I have to do…' in preparation for the two-part finale!). If so, he's set up as a crooked official which JD is playing off and treats him like a child. Or was he really planning to have a gymnasium installed for the use of prison staff? This must be the most self-referential episode of the series with so many mentions of bugs, even though they're mainly talking about the natural kind rather than mechanical, it adds another side to the association, which is quite fun, and the music throughout with its electronic tones only adds to that insect-like atmosphere - good work.
***
This is the one. The one that started it all for me: Saturday night thriller! I got myself into the mindset of what it must have been like to be introduced to this modern, action-packed spy-ride, with that opening in an indoor field of wheat, an attack by diving suit-wearing terrorists that ends with an explosion in the face of two security guards, then straight into those opening titles full of dramatic and unknown clips under the amazing theme music… I was totally excited by it all back then, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before and though it would be easy to say I never looked back and followed the series avidly every week, reality suggests otherwise - since it hadn't become part of my routine, I actually missed the following episode playing outside with friends, so perhaps it didn't have quite as much impact as I tend to think? And I have to say, as good as the episode is, it's not one of the best ones. Which is strange because it has many of the elements of the series that I like, the main one being Ed, Ros and Beckett are working together in close proximity as they break into various locations and use all kinds of devices to spy or hack, plus there's a major catastrophe they're trying to avert, so the stakes are high.
Perhaps this is the perfect episode to showcase the direction the series had gone in which didn't appeal to the mainstream audience as much - a lot of it is set at night, there's a fair amount of repetition, going into places and getting out of places. You have this science fiction edge to proceedings such as the security guards carrying these electrical discharge rifles, a sort of Taser, except it fires a bolt of energy which is far more sci-fi than reality. Then, if you weren't following along, you'd wonder what the significance of the final scene was, with a bald guy in half-moon specs being congratulated by a prison governor on making money for the prison of which he appears to be an inmate. It might be a little too baffling for the average viewer just wanting some light entertainment. On the other hand it has plenty of humour, the stars are stylish and always throwing themselves into things. The majority of the scenes being set at night may have added a certain surrealism to the presentation as they go from classy glassy building to building, full of the kind of ominous light shows that were used in 'Stealth' around the big grey ugly truck. There's definitely more of a sense of military thanks to all these rifle-toting guards, the darkness, the flashing lights and high security tech all over the place.
Maybe the darkness makes it too claustrophobic, because even though the team are mostly in close proximity to each other, they still seem separated quite a lot, communicating more by their headsets than in person. It also seems like there's less personality there, if I can say that - Ros is almost like a Barbie doll, all dressed up to the nines, but it doesn't quite fit with her previous image of this slightly scattily dressed genius. It's like she's suddenly got this gloss over her, which is good, but almost makes her less accessible as a character - or perhaps it was the way she was written, she doesn't seem to ever get in any way desperate, she's a little too cool and also doesn't get to be involved in the action as much, Ed and Beckett being the ones to infiltrate buildings, hide in decontamination bins or run around. Oddly, Ed is portrayed as the most human of the three this time in the sense that he tells both Ros and Beckett at different times to get out of there, when usually he's much more slapdash and relaxed about risks: when Ros is downloading the villains' database of information Ed urges her to get out, then later he says the same to Beckett when they're at PestiCorp. Beckett himself is very forward in the story, clearly being the leader, he seems to know all about viroids, these specialised micro-viruses that target plants and I really wanted a reference to The Hive there, that he'd encountered them on a mission somehow.
Beckett and Ed both have to confront their fears in the story - it had been well established that the former wasn't good with heights and so there's some good continuity there that addresses such fear when he has to leap onto a moving lorry to escape PestiCorp. Ed has the more worrying encounter as we learn he's afraid of creepy-crawlies, perhaps coming from his Australian heritage of so many bugs that can kill - it would have been nice to refer to his home country there as rationale. Not that I'm saying it's badly written, just that there are things you can't help see missing that would have made it better. Interestingly, this was the first script for the series written by the duo of Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, later to create 'Smallville,' a series I wouldn't say was one of the best, but which contained some terrific seasons (among a majority that were far from terrific!). At the time I first saw the series I didn't pay any attention to details like that, but on seeing it all again on DVD such things stuck out and added a whole new dimension! I'm sure Colin Brake, the Script Supervisor, would have gone over the whole story and adjusted it to make it more 'BUGS,' but it's fun to know that these creators (who also wrote the acclaimed 'Spider-Man 2'), contributed.
As is usually the case, Ed got to do the lion's share of the action, hanging from a lift, crawling through ventilation ducts, fighting Croll on the rooftop of PestiCorp… He also gets to use his brain when he thinks of the UV decontamination system as an ideal way to neutralise the viroid Croll and Pym plan to use to create a mass famine across Europe, then sell the miracle cure. Ed also ends up sliding into a 'Crystal Maze' dome that instead of featuring gold or silver tickets, is filled with angry insects buzzing about, causing him to panic until he can force his way out. In fact, the moment where he finds all the bottles that need to be destroyed, was like entering one of the puzzle rooms from that series: "Okay guys, I've got an empty room except for all these bottles. I've got to get them into the UV section…" Definitely one of the physical tasks. Actually, they should have done a 'Crystal Maze' special with the actors playing their characters - that would have been a sight to see. Sadly, the series had ended the previous year, 1995, and apparently the recording for that was early that year, probably when 'BUGS' was filming, too, so it could never have happened, but it's fun to speculate!
There are some familiar ideas being used again, such as climbing in a lift shaft ('A Sporting Chance'), a tiny camera in a lapel pin (like the poppy-cam in 'Out of The Hive'), and even the idea that Croll could use the one bottle that rolled away, to infect the bugs, and he explains it'll simply take longer for the viroid to multiply and spread (similar to the genetic virus in 'Assassins Inc' - "We can use the time to build cemeteries!"); be-masked thugs breaking into a facility to do with food crops ('Manna From Heaven'). The villains may not be the strongest, which could be why this doesn't feel like such a classic episode as some. Hugh Bonneville plays Pym in an early role - he's obviously gone on to worldwide acclaim in various things. Richard Cordery as Dr. Croll isn't quite as recognisable, I suspect, but he did have a fun role in an episode of 'Doc Martin' in recent years, which was very enjoyable to see. But they don't quite strike fear into the heart of the viewer, even though Pym and his sinister stutter worked well to make him memorable. It was a bit of a leap that he'd gone from this career-minded weather man at the Institute of Climatology to someone intent on making as much money from the world as possible, murdering his associate, Hawk, in cold blood, and he'd never had any criminal record! If you look at his biography that Ros pulled up, he had a successful and ever-improving career in his chosen profession so you wonder what caused him to become so nasty.
Croll, on the other hand just comes across as evil from the start. Ed basically kills him, because while you'd expect him to perform a smooth takedown in a few Tae Kwondo moves, while he does a nice kick to knock Croll's gun out of his hand, he then proceeds to manhandle the villain over the railing! Surely he could have knocked him out, and though it isn't technically Ed that kills him, as he does attempt to grab him before he falls, he also did put him in that position! Croll is quite an imposing figure, but the whole point of such fighting disciplines is that you use the opponent's own weight against them. Still, it's not as perplexing as the way Pym is killed. A security guard shoots the decon bin containing whatever it was (the serum?), and the electrical bolt reacts with the electronic lock in the lid, Pym stupidly tries to open it and then… the bin explodes. It didn't appear to have any reason to do that. At least Ros driving under the flatbed lorry full of oil drums could be said to have set off the explosion from the sparks as the roof tore off, but it's all in the tradition of the exploding car that blew up as it flew through the air in 'Out of The Hive,' so it's not out of character for things to arbitrarily explode. They may criticise Ros' driving, but she knows how to handle a car, as we saw, the bugs don't make her lose control and she comes up with that ingenious way to vent them at the expense of her poor car.
The look of the series is of course one of its strengths and with Ros in that red suit jacket, Beckett in his smart blue shirt and suit, only Ed is the odd one out with a blue-grey woollen jumper under his leather jacket. Ed and Beckett also get to wear the yellow coats of PestiCorp, so despite its blackness it was quite colourful at the same time - you also have the purple glow of the UV device, even if it was unnecessary to show a white smoke coming out of it, but that's typical TV convention so the audience understands the bottles were being affected. I liked the use of the flash grenade Ed throws so he and Beckett can escape, but why not simply take the guard's gun and hold him and Croll hostage? For that matter, why not call in the authorities if the danger is so great to the whole of Europe's crops - a famine that hasn't been seen in centuries? These are questions best left unasked. The team do come across almost more as vigilantes that work in the shadows of night, aliases, gadgets and no backup to the proper authorities, but it's usually a question of timing, action has to be taken now. It didn't seem entirely clear who had even hired them. Obviously it was the guy at the wheat field place, Greenville was the name I believe, though I got that from the end credits, so either they simply didn't explain who he was and why the team were working for him, or it was dropped in in one line, so if you miss it, it's gone.
It's always easy to poke holes, but that's part of the fun of it, and this episode has its share of inconsistencies. The lift, for instance - I liked that we saw a hatch in the floor through which Ed must have escaped, but there was no corresponding hatch on the underside! And it was also very strange for Ed to be in the air duct which leads right down into a crystal dome of flying bugs, yet he didn't seem to pass through an access hatch so the bugs could have flown out any time! And as for the guard who searches for Beckett (or Dr. Zygo as he's calling himself), in the decontamination room, it seemed obvious if there was anyone behind the shower curtains in each booth since there was only light beyond, while the end one, featuring the most ridiculous showing of shoes right on the edge that didn't look as if they were connected to anything, at least had a dark shape in the background from a hanging suit. It was clever how Beckett surprises the guard into shooting his futuristic gun at a mirror image, which then bounces off and hits the water overrunning onto the floor from all the taps and showers, but again, you'd think they'd train their guards that it's not safe to use electrical weapons in a wet environment! It's also a little too convenient that Croll doesn't get anyone to escort Beckett out as would be the usual form, especially in a secure establishment, but then Beckett couldn't have done what he needed to do. Oddly, security cameras are still being recorded onto little cassette tapes, Greenville gives them, though Ros does download onto a CD when visiting the Institute.
Was that a reuse of the STA observation room from the opening two-parter, as the glass pod the scientists observe the wheat from looked similar and was probably the same set? I did like the contrast of the golden wheat against the bright blue walls of the place (reminded me of 'Banjo-Kazooie'), as well as all that grating and people clomping about on it. Again, it's hard to believe Hawk would go in without his goggles on if he'd come in full diving gear, dangling at his front, but then they needed a lead to work on. Was Ros still tapping into The Hive's systems for the profile database? It seems likely since she asks Ed to plug in the modem, so obviously she needed to get a signal out, and we know that's how she's acquired sensitive data in the past… I couldn't help noticing Croll wears a bow-tie, just like Charlesworth, since in a later episode Beckett is suspicious of men in bow-ties. And it was fun to see a low-tech solution is sometimes best, as Ed demonstrates by shoving his fist into the bug jar when it opens with the diseased insects inside. Gizmo's, or whatever they call their home base, barely features and they don't even end there, with the standard joke at the end being on the rooftop of PestiCorp.
That was so they could cut to the next instalment of 'Prison Life with Jean-Daniel.' We meet the Prison Governor for the first time (as well as the Prison Guard), and learn that he had JD sewing mailbags at first, before he realised his genius at making money - the criminal invested in wheat futures, once again betting on his enemies in order to make lots of dough. When he says if he'd been the one to invest money he'd be calling his broker now, does that mean he was suggesting the Governor take the money himself, is that what he has to go off and do so urgently (I half expected him to say, 'There's something I have to do…' in preparation for the two-part finale!). If so, he's set up as a crooked official which JD is playing off and treats him like a child. Or was he really planning to have a gymnasium installed for the use of prison staff? This must be the most self-referential episode of the series with so many mentions of bugs, even though they're mainly talking about the natural kind rather than mechanical, it adds another side to the association, which is quite fun, and the music throughout with its electronic tones only adds to that insect-like atmosphere - good work.
***
Tuesday, 19 October 2021
Rush
DVD, Smallville S2 (Rush)
The only 'rush' here is the speed at which I want to get away from the episode! Only today I was thinking how Season 2 wasn't as bad as I'd thought. Not that I thought it was bad on the whole, especially compared with the following seasons, but there seemed less to do with the Kawatche caves, less of the Clark/Lana/Chloe moaning than I'd remembered, and… oh, that's all turned around in this episode, big time! I suppose I should say that at least it righted one wrong about the majority of the season: that Chloe and Pete weren't given enough meaningful to do. I don't know about meaningful, but they were certainly given plenty to do in this episode, the downside is that none of it's very good. It's like a twisted alternate universe where instead of the trio of Clark, Chloe and Pete going around solving crimes and working out the latest meteor rock mystery, as in Season 1, instead they're intent on dangerous fun, risking their lives for the rush. It was like a continuation of 'Red,' another of the episodes that didn't rank highly in my estimation, and would go on to have a negative impact on the ending of the season, too: Clark's encounters with Red Kryptonite. Let's just stop and ask where did Pete get this little piece of red rock in the first place? The episode began with some good continuity where the caves are being misused as a teen party spot and Pete's worried about it and mentions Kyla, but then it falls apart with things like him having access to both red and green Kryptonite out of nowhere!
That's not the only flaw in the story (where did the blue car come from?), it's just a minor moment, and in an otherwise good episode you could gloss over it, but it's a fallback to unsympathetic, hard-faced Lana, whom we'd already seen at least once this season, and this flip-flopping between Nasty and Nice versions of her is one reason why the series went downhill so much, so fast, added to the circular narrative of Chloe and Lana competing for Clark or distrusting him. They know his character, he's not perfect, but he does so much to help others that they know why he does things even if it's not always clear how, so you'd think they would give him leeway and understanding. It becomes this issue of him not being able to tell them his secret to protect them, especially after this episode where Pete has shown once again what a bad idea it was to tell him, since he uses Clark's weaknesses against him - so because he wasn't one of those that had had a parasite in him (I got a very 'Stargate SG-1' impression from that side of the story, they looked very similar to the symbionts in that), which was causing Chloe and Pete to act like they were on drugs, Lana can't understand what was going on. Maybe he could have told her his secret then, but it would have been purely for selfish reasons, to impress, to get himself off the hook, but he's constantly being punished like this as the series progresses, and it's not about trust, as they claim, it's about prudence.
The caves obviously come to the fore in this one, another negative for me, but it gave Lex something new to investigate instead of the accident he was obsessed about from the pilot episode of the series, and I suppose his was the type of personality that needed obsessions. He had the money, so why not? I did like the example of just what kind of resources and sway he held in the world, that he sees a picture of this Professor Walden (or Dr. Walden as he was on the back of the book he'd written), thanks to Clark's research, and entices the expert to come to his beck and call. He at first tries money, which turns into the lure of these unique cave paintings, but I was fully expecting the doctor to refuse on his stated grounds of disgust and being a bighead that wasn't going to be pushed into anything by anyone, then when he tries to go on his trip to Chile he finds that he can't go through whatever strings Lex has pulled. But that never happened, his interest got the better of him before Lex had to pull any other cards out of his pocket. Rob LaBelle was good as this new recurring character (a veteran of several roles on 'Voyager'), although he turned into a tool that wasn't really that well used as I recall of the season finale.
The episode had the capability to be quite a strong one as we've seen people acting on their innermost instincts and risking their own lives and others against character, most notably in 'Nicodemus' of Season 1 where a very similar story occurred. This time it's narrowed down to just Chloe and Pete, but it's a little worrying that they needed to go back to the same story idea so soon - it would in fact become an easily derided trope of the series, people acting out of character due to whatever outside influence they'd experienced, and reminded me why the series stopped working, at least until the last couple of seasons by which time it had become something very different: the loss of the bond between characters, which mirrored the loss of a sense of community of real people. We'd just lost Sheriff Ethan in the previous episode which was about the last main recurring character to be booted off the series that they'd been part of since the first season, and that community feel was a big part of what made the series work. Instead they'd choose to go much further in the direction this episode took, which was heavily contrived and unbelievable (from a character standpoint and human behaviour, not the fantasy aspects which you have to accept), pushing drama into character friendships that instead of deepening them, put them into miserable conflict.
Clark behaves badly to people because he's under the red rock influence, and I'm sure some found that to be compelling, but to me it was just lazy writing, a bit like some of the Mirror Universe episodes of Trek, which could be fun in their way, but were not of value to the greater whole and now have ended up doing more harm to the franchise than good. It's also the fact that the episode ends in misery rather than the warm, hopeful outlook that so many stories achieved. It seemed designed more to inject concern into viewers so they'd come back to find out what would happen next, rather than the optimistic and upbeat feel that the series began with and successfully repeated so many times. I'm not saying it's not there at all - it was good to see Pete come and apologise to Clark and his parents, even though it wasn't his fault, and they reiterate that he's still part of the family. Honestly, I thought he was coming to announce he was leaving town because he's been in far more episodes than I remembered (I was under the impression he left quite close to the start of Season 2, but then he wasn't given the chance to make much impact in most episodes so it's no surprise I thought that), so I was glad he's not been written out yet. I also wondered if this was why he left, that he'd got some superpowers from the bug, as I know that's how the character ended up later, but no.
I'd like to know how the Kents sorted out their financial problems, as is so glibly stated in this episode! Jonathan is being especially draconian for some reason and telling Clark he has to stay in and do homework instead of going to study the caves or meet up for a rendezvous with Lana, although with Martha's urging he relents on the Lana side of things. Good to hear Principal Reynolds' name, even if they couldn't be bothered to show him. But the Kents were having money troubles, one main reason why Martha went to work for Lionel (who does not appear), and has since left his employ, so you'd think they'd actually be worse off, but somehow everything's fine again, with no explanation. You can't throw in big changes like that without reason or warning, it doesn't make sense! There are also problems with Clark apparently unable to either restrain Pete (who didn't appear to have any green meteor rock on him at the time - I don't think it had occurred to him to exploit Clark's weakness at that point), or keep up with him - I understand they were out in the middle of the road with a crowd watching, so he couldn't use his strength there, but how could Pete elude him, he can move much faster, and yet Pete runs off into the crowd and Clark doesn't know where he is! Senseless.
I did like the effects of Chloe falling backwards off the loft in the barn, Clark effortlessly catching her, and catching the car she and Pete were in was another good moment, but these representations of his powers can't gloss over the episode's shortcomings in both sense and tone. We've seen characters acting up before, too, and it's such a big change from their usual behaviour that it's hard to believe that someone like Clark, for example, doesn't immediately realise something's wrong. He seems to think Chloe's just annoyed with him for hooking up with Lana and yet she's being beyond weird for her character and he never suspects a thing. Did Lex suspect Clark had also been affected by the parasite in the cave since he was behaving so rudely and out of character? He did suggest they'd all been taking something and that should have been the angle Clark played on - he should have told everyone Pete spiked his drink or something and had given him something to make him lose his inhibitions, but that would be too sensible a cover and too easy to overturn the badly chosen dramatic angles they were going for, wouldn't it! It also felt like they wasted revealing Clark's powers to Chloe. I know she doesn't remember, conveniently, but it somehow cheapens when Clark does eventually tell his secret to certain people, it's not something to be taken lightly and this slightly undercuts the specialness of that. Also, it's not usual for meteor rock to have immediate impact on Clark, is it? Pete hits him with it and punches him to the ground, but shouldn't he have felt something before then as it was only in his fist, not a lead-lined box?
I would have to say this was the worst episode of the season so far, not because it had nothing good within, just from the myriad problems and the further beginnings of all the irritating angst and interpersonal issues between characters that would dog the series from now on until Lana finally left. It's such a shame, because she was such a nice person and lovely to be around, but it was also played overly melodramatic this time, Chloe going out of her way as the infected version, to dig in on Lana, and Lana herself being too childish and easily upset, unwilling to listen, all the usual things. Until Clark will find a way to get forgiven again in the next episode or a couple of episodes down the line, and then the whole process starts again. And that's not why I watch the series! At least it reminded me why it's not worth seeing the other seasons again, so I should be grateful for that as I have been enjoying it enough that I was contemplating going further.
**
The only 'rush' here is the speed at which I want to get away from the episode! Only today I was thinking how Season 2 wasn't as bad as I'd thought. Not that I thought it was bad on the whole, especially compared with the following seasons, but there seemed less to do with the Kawatche caves, less of the Clark/Lana/Chloe moaning than I'd remembered, and… oh, that's all turned around in this episode, big time! I suppose I should say that at least it righted one wrong about the majority of the season: that Chloe and Pete weren't given enough meaningful to do. I don't know about meaningful, but they were certainly given plenty to do in this episode, the downside is that none of it's very good. It's like a twisted alternate universe where instead of the trio of Clark, Chloe and Pete going around solving crimes and working out the latest meteor rock mystery, as in Season 1, instead they're intent on dangerous fun, risking their lives for the rush. It was like a continuation of 'Red,' another of the episodes that didn't rank highly in my estimation, and would go on to have a negative impact on the ending of the season, too: Clark's encounters with Red Kryptonite. Let's just stop and ask where did Pete get this little piece of red rock in the first place? The episode began with some good continuity where the caves are being misused as a teen party spot and Pete's worried about it and mentions Kyla, but then it falls apart with things like him having access to both red and green Kryptonite out of nowhere!
That's not the only flaw in the story (where did the blue car come from?), it's just a minor moment, and in an otherwise good episode you could gloss over it, but it's a fallback to unsympathetic, hard-faced Lana, whom we'd already seen at least once this season, and this flip-flopping between Nasty and Nice versions of her is one reason why the series went downhill so much, so fast, added to the circular narrative of Chloe and Lana competing for Clark or distrusting him. They know his character, he's not perfect, but he does so much to help others that they know why he does things even if it's not always clear how, so you'd think they would give him leeway and understanding. It becomes this issue of him not being able to tell them his secret to protect them, especially after this episode where Pete has shown once again what a bad idea it was to tell him, since he uses Clark's weaknesses against him - so because he wasn't one of those that had had a parasite in him (I got a very 'Stargate SG-1' impression from that side of the story, they looked very similar to the symbionts in that), which was causing Chloe and Pete to act like they were on drugs, Lana can't understand what was going on. Maybe he could have told her his secret then, but it would have been purely for selfish reasons, to impress, to get himself off the hook, but he's constantly being punished like this as the series progresses, and it's not about trust, as they claim, it's about prudence.
The caves obviously come to the fore in this one, another negative for me, but it gave Lex something new to investigate instead of the accident he was obsessed about from the pilot episode of the series, and I suppose his was the type of personality that needed obsessions. He had the money, so why not? I did like the example of just what kind of resources and sway he held in the world, that he sees a picture of this Professor Walden (or Dr. Walden as he was on the back of the book he'd written), thanks to Clark's research, and entices the expert to come to his beck and call. He at first tries money, which turns into the lure of these unique cave paintings, but I was fully expecting the doctor to refuse on his stated grounds of disgust and being a bighead that wasn't going to be pushed into anything by anyone, then when he tries to go on his trip to Chile he finds that he can't go through whatever strings Lex has pulled. But that never happened, his interest got the better of him before Lex had to pull any other cards out of his pocket. Rob LaBelle was good as this new recurring character (a veteran of several roles on 'Voyager'), although he turned into a tool that wasn't really that well used as I recall of the season finale.
The episode had the capability to be quite a strong one as we've seen people acting on their innermost instincts and risking their own lives and others against character, most notably in 'Nicodemus' of Season 1 where a very similar story occurred. This time it's narrowed down to just Chloe and Pete, but it's a little worrying that they needed to go back to the same story idea so soon - it would in fact become an easily derided trope of the series, people acting out of character due to whatever outside influence they'd experienced, and reminded me why the series stopped working, at least until the last couple of seasons by which time it had become something very different: the loss of the bond between characters, which mirrored the loss of a sense of community of real people. We'd just lost Sheriff Ethan in the previous episode which was about the last main recurring character to be booted off the series that they'd been part of since the first season, and that community feel was a big part of what made the series work. Instead they'd choose to go much further in the direction this episode took, which was heavily contrived and unbelievable (from a character standpoint and human behaviour, not the fantasy aspects which you have to accept), pushing drama into character friendships that instead of deepening them, put them into miserable conflict.
Clark behaves badly to people because he's under the red rock influence, and I'm sure some found that to be compelling, but to me it was just lazy writing, a bit like some of the Mirror Universe episodes of Trek, which could be fun in their way, but were not of value to the greater whole and now have ended up doing more harm to the franchise than good. It's also the fact that the episode ends in misery rather than the warm, hopeful outlook that so many stories achieved. It seemed designed more to inject concern into viewers so they'd come back to find out what would happen next, rather than the optimistic and upbeat feel that the series began with and successfully repeated so many times. I'm not saying it's not there at all - it was good to see Pete come and apologise to Clark and his parents, even though it wasn't his fault, and they reiterate that he's still part of the family. Honestly, I thought he was coming to announce he was leaving town because he's been in far more episodes than I remembered (I was under the impression he left quite close to the start of Season 2, but then he wasn't given the chance to make much impact in most episodes so it's no surprise I thought that), so I was glad he's not been written out yet. I also wondered if this was why he left, that he'd got some superpowers from the bug, as I know that's how the character ended up later, but no.
I'd like to know how the Kents sorted out their financial problems, as is so glibly stated in this episode! Jonathan is being especially draconian for some reason and telling Clark he has to stay in and do homework instead of going to study the caves or meet up for a rendezvous with Lana, although with Martha's urging he relents on the Lana side of things. Good to hear Principal Reynolds' name, even if they couldn't be bothered to show him. But the Kents were having money troubles, one main reason why Martha went to work for Lionel (who does not appear), and has since left his employ, so you'd think they'd actually be worse off, but somehow everything's fine again, with no explanation. You can't throw in big changes like that without reason or warning, it doesn't make sense! There are also problems with Clark apparently unable to either restrain Pete (who didn't appear to have any green meteor rock on him at the time - I don't think it had occurred to him to exploit Clark's weakness at that point), or keep up with him - I understand they were out in the middle of the road with a crowd watching, so he couldn't use his strength there, but how could Pete elude him, he can move much faster, and yet Pete runs off into the crowd and Clark doesn't know where he is! Senseless.
I did like the effects of Chloe falling backwards off the loft in the barn, Clark effortlessly catching her, and catching the car she and Pete were in was another good moment, but these representations of his powers can't gloss over the episode's shortcomings in both sense and tone. We've seen characters acting up before, too, and it's such a big change from their usual behaviour that it's hard to believe that someone like Clark, for example, doesn't immediately realise something's wrong. He seems to think Chloe's just annoyed with him for hooking up with Lana and yet she's being beyond weird for her character and he never suspects a thing. Did Lex suspect Clark had also been affected by the parasite in the cave since he was behaving so rudely and out of character? He did suggest they'd all been taking something and that should have been the angle Clark played on - he should have told everyone Pete spiked his drink or something and had given him something to make him lose his inhibitions, but that would be too sensible a cover and too easy to overturn the badly chosen dramatic angles they were going for, wouldn't it! It also felt like they wasted revealing Clark's powers to Chloe. I know she doesn't remember, conveniently, but it somehow cheapens when Clark does eventually tell his secret to certain people, it's not something to be taken lightly and this slightly undercuts the specialness of that. Also, it's not usual for meteor rock to have immediate impact on Clark, is it? Pete hits him with it and punches him to the ground, but shouldn't he have felt something before then as it was only in his fist, not a lead-lined box?
I would have to say this was the worst episode of the season so far, not because it had nothing good within, just from the myriad problems and the further beginnings of all the irritating angst and interpersonal issues between characters that would dog the series from now on until Lana finally left. It's such a shame, because she was such a nice person and lovely to be around, but it was also played overly melodramatic this time, Chloe going out of her way as the infected version, to dig in on Lana, and Lana herself being too childish and easily upset, unwilling to listen, all the usual things. Until Clark will find a way to get forgiven again in the next episode or a couple of episodes down the line, and then the whole process starts again. And that's not why I watch the series! At least it reminded me why it's not worth seeing the other seasons again, so I should be grateful for that as I have been enjoying it enough that I was contemplating going further.
**
The Ambergris Element
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Ambergris Element)
This was a bit of a special one for me. I don't know if it was the first one I saw as a child, or not, but it was certainly the one that stuck in my head, this idea of the characters being stuck in this other form of being: Kirk and Spock are trapped 'breathing' water when they're mutated by the underwater Aquans on planet Argo, and it was such an eye-opening idea. I probably also liked the fact they were zipping about underwater and going into deep, dark crevasses. Seeing it again now, all these years later, it's much more cartoonish, but then it had a good excuse: it was a cartoon! And actually it comes across as a lot more realistic in tone and style than the current generation of Trek which, while live-action, is so far into fantasy and melodrama that it doesn't have those essential ingredients any more that make it good Trek. Saying all that, I did find that this particular episode, while dealing with some interesting themes of xenophobia and working together with others who appear so different from you, also had a whiff of being against 'old' ideas, as if the fact that they were created long ago is reason enough for them to be abandoned: the Aquans have their 'ordinations' that can't be disobeyed, and which the older members of the race firmly adhere to, which is bad for our characters as it means they'll be stuck in amphibious form for the rest of their lives (when Kirk talks about not being able to command a starship from inside an aquarium, and he and Spock living in it for the rest of their lives, I thought how interesting that would have made the film series!).
The young Aquans are shown to be the 'openminded' ones, particularly the female, Reela (who I at first thought to be voiced by Nichelle Nichols, but eventually realised was Majel Barrett), quicker to go against the ordinations and help. It seemed a subtle attack on, for example, The Ten Commandments, as if rules for life that have been handed down over many generations need reevaluating simply because of the time that has passed. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on the writers' and assuming too much in their motives, because in this case the ordinations they follow aren't particularly rational (you can't capture a sur-snake), and so there was no reason why they should be followed. It also confuses the issue again when at the end they say they'll make new ordinations, and this time they won't break them, although it does sound a bit like reforming the basic laws of life to accommodate new ideas. From the Starfleet perspective I wondered if perhaps Kirk should have considered remaining a water-breather - yes, he could no longer go back to his old life, but the Aquans seemed to be a pre-warp civilisation and was it right to interfere with their culture just to save himself and Spock? I can't help but think Captain Picard would have been only too happy to think of them first and sacrifice his life so their laws weren't broken, living among them for the rest of his days (at least we'd have been spared 'Nemesis' and 'Picard' if that had happened!).
They do inject some urgency into the situation by making it about a similar planet to Argo, a Federation world that needs help by learning from the approach to seaquakes or whatever it was they were researching there (and I did appreciate the approach of scientific research, and that even after they've been attacked by a sur-snake, they go down to have a gander since they're naturally curious, something we rarely see in Trek any more), so there is that element of it being about more than Kirk and Spock's survival, too. One of the themes that is certainly true is that hardship induces savagery and violence as we've been only too aware from certain groups reacting violently in society when they believe they don't have what others do, so Spock had a relevant thing to say about our times. It's a shame the themes can't be explored further due to the handicap of much shorter running times, but again, they're more eloquent and relevant than anything in 'DSC' or 'Picard' which rely on super-heroics and fantasy to fill the time. Not to say this episode didn't have its share of the kind of cartoon adventure you'd expect, what with sea monsters and underwater cities, and a colourful green race that look like relatives of The Creature from the Black Lagoon - I wonder if they were related to Orions as almost the only other green humanoid race in Trek?
The episode begins from an interesting perspective for those interested in technical details and hardware, as we get a great shot of a shuttle leaving the Shuttlebay - not only that, but we see the bay from the point of view of the control tower which we never did see in 'TOS,' so that was terrific. It's not just any shuttle either, it's apparently an 'aquashuttle,' a vehicle designed to travel underwater as well as through space. I've always been a bit quizzical when it comes to shuttles and water, not because I don't think it possible Starfleet could build one to withstand the pressures of underwater travel, but quite the opposite: I don't see why a standard shuttlecraft couldn't submerge since they're designed for the rigours of space. I was one of the few that actually didn't mind it when the Enterprise descended into an ocean in 'Into Darkness' (about the only thing I didn't find fault with in that film!), but it wouldn't be until 'Voyager' and the Tom Paris episode 'Thirty Days,' that we'd eventually see a shuttle travel underwater, presumably because it was too difficult to do the effect until then (although the stranded Defiant in 'Starship Down' was originally supposed to be trapped underwater, I think, before they decided it would be too costly).
The aquashuttle is one of those things that seemed a natural result of having 'infinite' resources in a world where you can draw whatever tech you want, a superfluous show of variety rather than being forced to rely on uniformity as they did in the real world to save money, but which also adds more reality and consistency. So it's not that I didn't feel the aquashuttle was any good, just not necessary. Even more hard to accept is that Scotty searches on the surface of Argo's sea on what appears to be an Enterprise-branded motorboat! Why wouldn't they simply fly a shuttlecraft over the surface, surely it can hover? Things like this are what make 'TAS' a little bit harder to accept than it otherwise might have been as they couldn't resist changing or adding things unnecessarily. It was good to see Scotty in the Captain's Chair, left in command, as happened a number of times on 'TOS,' and the Scotsman was quite involved with the story, even though it was mainly a Kirk and Spock adventure. McCoy, too, gets plenty to do, though they must have been saving money since while Uhura and Sulu appear, neither have any lines. As I mentioned, Majel Barrett does the voice of Reela, and I think one or two other females. James Doohan makes a good quavering old man impression as the High Tribune Domar of the Aquans, and there's at least one other voice that I didn't recognise.
We see the personal forcefields in use again, a device that was easier, and therefore, presumably cheaper, to draw than the EVA suits we saw on 'TOS' - here we see that even in animation there are limits to the budget as they could just use existing drawings of characters and show a glow around them rather than going the whole hog with new images of the EVA suit, but you'd think they may as well have done that as they were sure to use it again, anyway! And lastly, a couple of nitpicks I noticed: McCoy says Kirk and Spock now have a second eyelid like that of a fish - you'd think he'd have mentioned the inner eyelid Vulcans have as that would have been relevant. And they make a big deal of needing the Aquans' help to retrieve the venom of a sur-snake in order to formulate a cure to the Captain and First Officer's predicament, but before that, when they were escaping just such a sea monster it gets crushed by falling rubble so why not simply return to that one and get the venom from it? The answer, I suppose, would either be that it was too time-consuming to excavate the head buried beneath all those rocks, or that it was dead and the venom needed to come directly from a live beast. But not a bad little story, visually pleasing, and as I say, one that made an impact on me growing up, so it was nice to revisit it today.
**
This was a bit of a special one for me. I don't know if it was the first one I saw as a child, or not, but it was certainly the one that stuck in my head, this idea of the characters being stuck in this other form of being: Kirk and Spock are trapped 'breathing' water when they're mutated by the underwater Aquans on planet Argo, and it was such an eye-opening idea. I probably also liked the fact they were zipping about underwater and going into deep, dark crevasses. Seeing it again now, all these years later, it's much more cartoonish, but then it had a good excuse: it was a cartoon! And actually it comes across as a lot more realistic in tone and style than the current generation of Trek which, while live-action, is so far into fantasy and melodrama that it doesn't have those essential ingredients any more that make it good Trek. Saying all that, I did find that this particular episode, while dealing with some interesting themes of xenophobia and working together with others who appear so different from you, also had a whiff of being against 'old' ideas, as if the fact that they were created long ago is reason enough for them to be abandoned: the Aquans have their 'ordinations' that can't be disobeyed, and which the older members of the race firmly adhere to, which is bad for our characters as it means they'll be stuck in amphibious form for the rest of their lives (when Kirk talks about not being able to command a starship from inside an aquarium, and he and Spock living in it for the rest of their lives, I thought how interesting that would have made the film series!).
The young Aquans are shown to be the 'openminded' ones, particularly the female, Reela (who I at first thought to be voiced by Nichelle Nichols, but eventually realised was Majel Barrett), quicker to go against the ordinations and help. It seemed a subtle attack on, for example, The Ten Commandments, as if rules for life that have been handed down over many generations need reevaluating simply because of the time that has passed. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on the writers' and assuming too much in their motives, because in this case the ordinations they follow aren't particularly rational (you can't capture a sur-snake), and so there was no reason why they should be followed. It also confuses the issue again when at the end they say they'll make new ordinations, and this time they won't break them, although it does sound a bit like reforming the basic laws of life to accommodate new ideas. From the Starfleet perspective I wondered if perhaps Kirk should have considered remaining a water-breather - yes, he could no longer go back to his old life, but the Aquans seemed to be a pre-warp civilisation and was it right to interfere with their culture just to save himself and Spock? I can't help but think Captain Picard would have been only too happy to think of them first and sacrifice his life so their laws weren't broken, living among them for the rest of his days (at least we'd have been spared 'Nemesis' and 'Picard' if that had happened!).
They do inject some urgency into the situation by making it about a similar planet to Argo, a Federation world that needs help by learning from the approach to seaquakes or whatever it was they were researching there (and I did appreciate the approach of scientific research, and that even after they've been attacked by a sur-snake, they go down to have a gander since they're naturally curious, something we rarely see in Trek any more), so there is that element of it being about more than Kirk and Spock's survival, too. One of the themes that is certainly true is that hardship induces savagery and violence as we've been only too aware from certain groups reacting violently in society when they believe they don't have what others do, so Spock had a relevant thing to say about our times. It's a shame the themes can't be explored further due to the handicap of much shorter running times, but again, they're more eloquent and relevant than anything in 'DSC' or 'Picard' which rely on super-heroics and fantasy to fill the time. Not to say this episode didn't have its share of the kind of cartoon adventure you'd expect, what with sea monsters and underwater cities, and a colourful green race that look like relatives of The Creature from the Black Lagoon - I wonder if they were related to Orions as almost the only other green humanoid race in Trek?
The episode begins from an interesting perspective for those interested in technical details and hardware, as we get a great shot of a shuttle leaving the Shuttlebay - not only that, but we see the bay from the point of view of the control tower which we never did see in 'TOS,' so that was terrific. It's not just any shuttle either, it's apparently an 'aquashuttle,' a vehicle designed to travel underwater as well as through space. I've always been a bit quizzical when it comes to shuttles and water, not because I don't think it possible Starfleet could build one to withstand the pressures of underwater travel, but quite the opposite: I don't see why a standard shuttlecraft couldn't submerge since they're designed for the rigours of space. I was one of the few that actually didn't mind it when the Enterprise descended into an ocean in 'Into Darkness' (about the only thing I didn't find fault with in that film!), but it wouldn't be until 'Voyager' and the Tom Paris episode 'Thirty Days,' that we'd eventually see a shuttle travel underwater, presumably because it was too difficult to do the effect until then (although the stranded Defiant in 'Starship Down' was originally supposed to be trapped underwater, I think, before they decided it would be too costly).
The aquashuttle is one of those things that seemed a natural result of having 'infinite' resources in a world where you can draw whatever tech you want, a superfluous show of variety rather than being forced to rely on uniformity as they did in the real world to save money, but which also adds more reality and consistency. So it's not that I didn't feel the aquashuttle was any good, just not necessary. Even more hard to accept is that Scotty searches on the surface of Argo's sea on what appears to be an Enterprise-branded motorboat! Why wouldn't they simply fly a shuttlecraft over the surface, surely it can hover? Things like this are what make 'TAS' a little bit harder to accept than it otherwise might have been as they couldn't resist changing or adding things unnecessarily. It was good to see Scotty in the Captain's Chair, left in command, as happened a number of times on 'TOS,' and the Scotsman was quite involved with the story, even though it was mainly a Kirk and Spock adventure. McCoy, too, gets plenty to do, though they must have been saving money since while Uhura and Sulu appear, neither have any lines. As I mentioned, Majel Barrett does the voice of Reela, and I think one or two other females. James Doohan makes a good quavering old man impression as the High Tribune Domar of the Aquans, and there's at least one other voice that I didn't recognise.
We see the personal forcefields in use again, a device that was easier, and therefore, presumably cheaper, to draw than the EVA suits we saw on 'TOS' - here we see that even in animation there are limits to the budget as they could just use existing drawings of characters and show a glow around them rather than going the whole hog with new images of the EVA suit, but you'd think they may as well have done that as they were sure to use it again, anyway! And lastly, a couple of nitpicks I noticed: McCoy says Kirk and Spock now have a second eyelid like that of a fish - you'd think he'd have mentioned the inner eyelid Vulcans have as that would have been relevant. And they make a big deal of needing the Aquans' help to retrieve the venom of a sur-snake in order to formulate a cure to the Captain and First Officer's predicament, but before that, when they were escaping just such a sea monster it gets crushed by falling rubble so why not simply return to that one and get the venom from it? The answer, I suppose, would either be that it was too time-consuming to excavate the head buried beneath all those rocks, or that it was dead and the venom needed to come directly from a live beast. But not a bad little story, visually pleasing, and as I say, one that made an impact on me growing up, so it was nice to revisit it today.
**
…Must Come Down
DVD, BUGS S2 (…Must Come Down)
Brrr… it ends so chillingly: "The killings come later." At the same time it's completely unambiguous, not that the series was known for subtlety and tact, it wasn't meant to be, but I had an impression that we didn't see Jean-Daniel until at least the third episode, if not later, and we were left to puzzle over whether this was Zito's plot or if there was really someone else behind it. There's no question in the ending as we see it, Zito is assassinated by a couple of bazooka-wielding henchmen whom he assumes have come to back him up, then we get the series' standard humorous final scene with the team relaxing in what must be said is a very stylish and attractive place, with gleaming metal and glass surfaces and that avant-garde colour scheme, and they share a joke at Ed's expense, but things take a creepy turn as they speculate on who was really behind it all. Then we cut to a prison cell, pan down to a bald head watching the same news report as they were, and it's Jean-Daniel, the villain they put away at the end of Season 1. I'm not saying I'd have it any other way, I just forgot the season set out its stall right away, even though it would take two-thirds of it to get going. It wouldn't have been a surprise to me at the time because this was the last chronological episode that I missed on original transmission before I knew about the series (not counting a couple of episodes I didn't see after this point), being introduced to it in the next episode, 'Bugged Wheat,' so when seeing it for the first time on DVD I already knew it was all going to be about JD.
I always liked that sense of foreboding, a mood wonderfully crafted by both the dialogue and the music that morphs from the usual tension-filled sequences to triumphal success, but then transforms into a warning portent, it just appealed so much to my young mind. I think it also touches on one of my favourite 'Star Trek' storytelling devices of not knowing reality, whether that be a simulation, alien interference or the unknown capacities of the human mind (something that would be touched on at the end of this season in Cyberax). Having this extra dimension to what plays out for the team as their usual adventures, but for us is a concerning, larger picture that they aren't aware of, gives us added fear for the lives of our heroes as they walk unconsciously towards a doom that appears to be intended for their destruction. It adds new life into the series concept, not just because there's an element of serialisation, it's more about the continuity and an overarching plot against them that we know will slowly be revealed, and instead of each story being completely self-contained, as Season 1 was, there's a greater sense of ongoing lives playing out.
They were already starting to play with the formula and the simple rules that had been laid out about the characters being archetypes and nothing more, and we can see that being further altered quite clearly in this episode. The biggest example is of introducing us to Amanda 'Mandy' Courtney, of GNC (Global News… something?), apparently a top reporter for that organisation on site in Kituma to report on events there. We're told she and Beckett almost married, and though we don't get any more detail than that, there's certainly some bitterness on her side as she deliberately attacks him personally, even while she rises above personal feelings to help this country that is at a crossroads between financial success or civil war at the hands of Vice President Chuku, anxious to assassinate President Haikudu (played by Anthony Chinn, who's been in so many things, including the kind of old ITC productions 'BUGS' was based on!). It's unclear what happened, but Beckett admits to having regrets, even if he may just be saying that to ameliorate a difficult woman whom he's dependent on for much more important success. We also see evidence of a closer friendship between Beckett and Ros here, Beckett being much more tactile with her when they're worried about Ed and demonstrating confidence in her genius abilities to sort out any technical problem. Ros remains quite detached, as befits her position and personality, she doesn't give anything away whether he's overstepped the mark or she's grateful for it, she remains very reserved, but then she has a lot on her mind.
It's just interesting to see these little changes in the characters when you know where the series goes in future, and yet it's also very true to what had previously been established, Ros is more guarded generally, she has this irony or sarcasm in her voice, not in a negative way, but frequently chastising towards untruthful clients, or in this case teasing towards Beckett. He, on the other hand, has always been of fiery disposition that has got him into trouble in his career, but is also something of an asset in his present line of work, and when you add that Ed is the go-to action man, always ready for any kind of challenge, you see why the trio compliment each other so perfectly, a deconstruction of the series' success. It's not always the case that they each have their sphere of expertise and are allowed to stay within that comfort zone, and it's when they have to cross into other team members' areas that things go up a level as we see them struggle or forced to adjust on the fly - Ros is pushed into some action when she tracks down the Starshield signal from where Zito had controlled it, but she's caught by him and held at gunpoint. It only takes a second's distraction for her to perform an impressive karate kick that knocks the weapon out of his hands and gives Beckett time to jump him. She gets off another kick before she's done, too. Ed, meanwhile has to contend with the technical side of working in space, and this is another strength of the episode.
It's no 'Gravity,' but for a mid-90s TV budget they did a great job of presenting a pretty realistic portrayal of what it's like to be in space - we see a fascinating air-inflated splint for Vornholt's injured leg, which I would assume is the real technology they'd use for an injury like that in such an environment. Then there's the adjustment to the physics of weightlessness when Ed finds he doesn't have the torque to be able to unscrew a bolt keeping the RX44 satellite firmly in shuttle Excalibur and has to be reminded to brace himself. The tool used and the EVA suit all look authentic and while there aren't the wild thrills shown in 'Gravity,' there's a real sense of danger from the reality of the situation, even down to Ed beginning to float off into space and Susan telling him to throw the wrench away from him so the reverse force will push him back towards the shuttle. The big downside is that, just as in part one, gravity is shown to be in operation inside the shuttle, which isn't realistic. In this series' case we can make the excuse that, because there's all kinds of futuristic technology, it must be that IASA has developed some kind of artificial gravity, as far-fetched as that is, so that's how I get around it in my own mind. In general science fiction it's easy to accept, but because this series appears to be in the real world that does jar a little.
Something else that isn't quite as effective was a return to a blast of air and debris as simulation for a proper explosion when two of Amanda's crew are killed by Chuku's bomb going off in the lift as it opens its doors. I wonder if they couldn't have reused the stock footage of the lift explosion from 'A Sporting Chance' as that was so much more effective? What works pretty well is the sense of dangerous tensions in Kituma as we hear about terrorist attacks all over the country. It's not necessary to show that, as for example they do use stock footage of a space shuttle, because we have that blast in the lift and the aftermath of Amanda dealing with the death of two friends, so the impression of unrest and strife in the land is achieved. There continue to be a high rate of explosions, although most of them are pretty small and come from Zito's adoption of a portable bazooka as his last-ditch attempts to take out the opposition - I love how Beckett leaps in front of Joy at GNC, even though it would make no difference if Zito had been able to fire, but it's an instinctual reaction for him to put himself on the line for others, one of the things we love about him, and indeed, all the team. But I do prefer it when that team gets to work together instead of singularly, even if they are in communication. Obviously Ed is well out of that for the episode, being up in space, but while Ros and Beckett do spend a lot of time together, when they're actually doing things it's largely alone. It's possible Ed's teaming with Vornholt, while Ros and Beckett were working together separately, was the inspiration for Alex Jordan being added to the group as that's exactly the kind of teamwork that went on in Season 3.
Working alone does give a sense of danger for the characters, especially with a bazooka-wielding enemy running around (you know he means business when he starts wearing orange overalls - JD would do the same later in the season!), although I'd have been more concerned about getting into my vehicle than being bugged, considering Zito's MO last episode was to blow up cars! Fortunately we lose neither the Jeep nor Ros' yellow sports car, both of which would service many more of the team's missions. I'm not sure why Zito upgraded to a bazooka, I suppose it was his weapon of last resort as he'd lost the handgun during the fracas with Ros and Beckett. It could also be a hint of JD's involvement since his main distinguishing feature was carrying a similar weapon, though Zito's is much more compact and practical. I wish it had been more of a shock to the characters when they find out Zito's still alive - I'm not quite sure how they could have done that more effectively as it was really only for our, the audience's benefit since we knew what they didn't, so there was no shock for us, but Ros greets the sight of him very coolly after what was quite an ingenious, if violently risky, way to fake death. It also has to be said that, while an ingenious solution of Beckett's to smash the fire alarm so the sprinklers activate, shorting out Zito's weapon, I'm not sure how realistic that moment was: the sprinklers don't come on in the room Beckett and the others are in, just in the outside section where Zito stands. Then again, that room was bare, whereas the other was filled with electrical equipment so maybe it was designed on the assumption any fire would come from there and since electrics and water don't mix, the surrounding rooms and corridors had sprinklers to prevent the spread of fire?
I'd like to know what was going on with this potential army of henchmen willing to kill one of their own! It becomes a very James Bond moment with these two shady individuals in identical overalls striding around with bazookas and shades and I can see they were trying to show the power of who or what was behind Zito, but that makes you wonder what happened to them later on when JD finally gets out of prison - he doesn't seem to have an army then… If they were just hired guns does that explain it? I also noticed some other writerly shortcutting, or perhaps a conflict between the page and the screen, when Ros tells Beckett about how to get the code to her that he hopes he captured from Amanda before the feed was lost: he's to load up the minidisc on the laptop, then choose the best frame and send it through the modem, but in reality all that happens is he puts the disk in and somehow the computer goes straight to the frame he needs. Again, there was supposed to be some tension over whether Beckett had got a good enough image of the barcode, and it's difficult to inject danger into technical moments like that, but I felt that needed something more to succeed.
Interestingly, we get a first for the series when the whole of the teaser is taken up with a 'Story update…' recapping the first episode. I'm not sure they did that again in subsequent two-parters. And did they film in the same area as 'Out of The Hive'? The communications establishment at Blade Point, as Ros describes it, looked just like the waterfront area we saw near The Hive building, and the inside stairwell at GNC looked exactly the same as that building, too, with a rounded outer section and small, square windows in a line. I do have a question about what was actually happening from JD's side of things, because the GNC report states that investors who'd invested in Kituma had made a killing, and later we find out JD makes his vast sum of money by betting on the team that put him away, in terms of making investments based on who they were helping, at least that's how I remember it. If so, was he really behind Zito? It wouldn't make sense for him to want Zito to beat the Gizmo's team if he was investing in Kituma, or did he get the idea for investing in the team's clients from this event? Or was it that he would have made even more money by siding with the corrupt Chuku as Zito was doing? It's unclear at this stage and I'm not sure it ever became entirely clear, but it's a point I need to keep in mind as the season pans out.
Zito worked quite well as villain of this big story to kick us off, even if he seems less sane (“Time to die-ee”), perhaps he feels his status is slipping away, and in conversation with Chuku his angry face, slicked back hair and quivering lip makes for a terrifying close-up. He’s served quite well and gets to play the team on their own terms with the gadgets and weapons at his disposal. It almost seems a shame it was ultimately his disposal! Though the dramatic death, presumably sliced by all those shards from the shattering glass sculpture was quite original. The second part of stories in anything often aren't as strong as the first and I'd say this is no exception. It is a little slower, though 'What Goes Up…' was constantly plunging us into the midst of action, so it would be difficult to keep that momentum going for the space of another episode, and less exciting with all the big ideas happening in the previous episode, other than Ed doing a space walk. Nonetheless, I do still enjoy it as I enjoy all 'BUGS' episodes, and the slower pace allows the drama to come through, even if there is a bit too much repetition (such as the phrase 'Kituma's hidden wealth' or the STA ground crew cheering each time communications comes back on after losing them!). I appreciate the continuing details and the sense of an existing world being built little bits at a time. There's also a fun additional draw for me as this marks what I believe is the only connection between 'BUGS' and Trek, with Stokes, the guy who was Amanda's boss at GNC, played by Fintan McKeown a few years before he played an Irish hologram in two episodes of 'Voyager.' Two of my all-time favourite series' inextricably linked!
***
Brrr… it ends so chillingly: "The killings come later." At the same time it's completely unambiguous, not that the series was known for subtlety and tact, it wasn't meant to be, but I had an impression that we didn't see Jean-Daniel until at least the third episode, if not later, and we were left to puzzle over whether this was Zito's plot or if there was really someone else behind it. There's no question in the ending as we see it, Zito is assassinated by a couple of bazooka-wielding henchmen whom he assumes have come to back him up, then we get the series' standard humorous final scene with the team relaxing in what must be said is a very stylish and attractive place, with gleaming metal and glass surfaces and that avant-garde colour scheme, and they share a joke at Ed's expense, but things take a creepy turn as they speculate on who was really behind it all. Then we cut to a prison cell, pan down to a bald head watching the same news report as they were, and it's Jean-Daniel, the villain they put away at the end of Season 1. I'm not saying I'd have it any other way, I just forgot the season set out its stall right away, even though it would take two-thirds of it to get going. It wouldn't have been a surprise to me at the time because this was the last chronological episode that I missed on original transmission before I knew about the series (not counting a couple of episodes I didn't see after this point), being introduced to it in the next episode, 'Bugged Wheat,' so when seeing it for the first time on DVD I already knew it was all going to be about JD.
I always liked that sense of foreboding, a mood wonderfully crafted by both the dialogue and the music that morphs from the usual tension-filled sequences to triumphal success, but then transforms into a warning portent, it just appealed so much to my young mind. I think it also touches on one of my favourite 'Star Trek' storytelling devices of not knowing reality, whether that be a simulation, alien interference or the unknown capacities of the human mind (something that would be touched on at the end of this season in Cyberax). Having this extra dimension to what plays out for the team as their usual adventures, but for us is a concerning, larger picture that they aren't aware of, gives us added fear for the lives of our heroes as they walk unconsciously towards a doom that appears to be intended for their destruction. It adds new life into the series concept, not just because there's an element of serialisation, it's more about the continuity and an overarching plot against them that we know will slowly be revealed, and instead of each story being completely self-contained, as Season 1 was, there's a greater sense of ongoing lives playing out.
They were already starting to play with the formula and the simple rules that had been laid out about the characters being archetypes and nothing more, and we can see that being further altered quite clearly in this episode. The biggest example is of introducing us to Amanda 'Mandy' Courtney, of GNC (Global News… something?), apparently a top reporter for that organisation on site in Kituma to report on events there. We're told she and Beckett almost married, and though we don't get any more detail than that, there's certainly some bitterness on her side as she deliberately attacks him personally, even while she rises above personal feelings to help this country that is at a crossroads between financial success or civil war at the hands of Vice President Chuku, anxious to assassinate President Haikudu (played by Anthony Chinn, who's been in so many things, including the kind of old ITC productions 'BUGS' was based on!). It's unclear what happened, but Beckett admits to having regrets, even if he may just be saying that to ameliorate a difficult woman whom he's dependent on for much more important success. We also see evidence of a closer friendship between Beckett and Ros here, Beckett being much more tactile with her when they're worried about Ed and demonstrating confidence in her genius abilities to sort out any technical problem. Ros remains quite detached, as befits her position and personality, she doesn't give anything away whether he's overstepped the mark or she's grateful for it, she remains very reserved, but then she has a lot on her mind.
It's just interesting to see these little changes in the characters when you know where the series goes in future, and yet it's also very true to what had previously been established, Ros is more guarded generally, she has this irony or sarcasm in her voice, not in a negative way, but frequently chastising towards untruthful clients, or in this case teasing towards Beckett. He, on the other hand, has always been of fiery disposition that has got him into trouble in his career, but is also something of an asset in his present line of work, and when you add that Ed is the go-to action man, always ready for any kind of challenge, you see why the trio compliment each other so perfectly, a deconstruction of the series' success. It's not always the case that they each have their sphere of expertise and are allowed to stay within that comfort zone, and it's when they have to cross into other team members' areas that things go up a level as we see them struggle or forced to adjust on the fly - Ros is pushed into some action when she tracks down the Starshield signal from where Zito had controlled it, but she's caught by him and held at gunpoint. It only takes a second's distraction for her to perform an impressive karate kick that knocks the weapon out of his hands and gives Beckett time to jump him. She gets off another kick before she's done, too. Ed, meanwhile has to contend with the technical side of working in space, and this is another strength of the episode.
It's no 'Gravity,' but for a mid-90s TV budget they did a great job of presenting a pretty realistic portrayal of what it's like to be in space - we see a fascinating air-inflated splint for Vornholt's injured leg, which I would assume is the real technology they'd use for an injury like that in such an environment. Then there's the adjustment to the physics of weightlessness when Ed finds he doesn't have the torque to be able to unscrew a bolt keeping the RX44 satellite firmly in shuttle Excalibur and has to be reminded to brace himself. The tool used and the EVA suit all look authentic and while there aren't the wild thrills shown in 'Gravity,' there's a real sense of danger from the reality of the situation, even down to Ed beginning to float off into space and Susan telling him to throw the wrench away from him so the reverse force will push him back towards the shuttle. The big downside is that, just as in part one, gravity is shown to be in operation inside the shuttle, which isn't realistic. In this series' case we can make the excuse that, because there's all kinds of futuristic technology, it must be that IASA has developed some kind of artificial gravity, as far-fetched as that is, so that's how I get around it in my own mind. In general science fiction it's easy to accept, but because this series appears to be in the real world that does jar a little.
Something else that isn't quite as effective was a return to a blast of air and debris as simulation for a proper explosion when two of Amanda's crew are killed by Chuku's bomb going off in the lift as it opens its doors. I wonder if they couldn't have reused the stock footage of the lift explosion from 'A Sporting Chance' as that was so much more effective? What works pretty well is the sense of dangerous tensions in Kituma as we hear about terrorist attacks all over the country. It's not necessary to show that, as for example they do use stock footage of a space shuttle, because we have that blast in the lift and the aftermath of Amanda dealing with the death of two friends, so the impression of unrest and strife in the land is achieved. There continue to be a high rate of explosions, although most of them are pretty small and come from Zito's adoption of a portable bazooka as his last-ditch attempts to take out the opposition - I love how Beckett leaps in front of Joy at GNC, even though it would make no difference if Zito had been able to fire, but it's an instinctual reaction for him to put himself on the line for others, one of the things we love about him, and indeed, all the team. But I do prefer it when that team gets to work together instead of singularly, even if they are in communication. Obviously Ed is well out of that for the episode, being up in space, but while Ros and Beckett do spend a lot of time together, when they're actually doing things it's largely alone. It's possible Ed's teaming with Vornholt, while Ros and Beckett were working together separately, was the inspiration for Alex Jordan being added to the group as that's exactly the kind of teamwork that went on in Season 3.
Working alone does give a sense of danger for the characters, especially with a bazooka-wielding enemy running around (you know he means business when he starts wearing orange overalls - JD would do the same later in the season!), although I'd have been more concerned about getting into my vehicle than being bugged, considering Zito's MO last episode was to blow up cars! Fortunately we lose neither the Jeep nor Ros' yellow sports car, both of which would service many more of the team's missions. I'm not sure why Zito upgraded to a bazooka, I suppose it was his weapon of last resort as he'd lost the handgun during the fracas with Ros and Beckett. It could also be a hint of JD's involvement since his main distinguishing feature was carrying a similar weapon, though Zito's is much more compact and practical. I wish it had been more of a shock to the characters when they find out Zito's still alive - I'm not quite sure how they could have done that more effectively as it was really only for our, the audience's benefit since we knew what they didn't, so there was no shock for us, but Ros greets the sight of him very coolly after what was quite an ingenious, if violently risky, way to fake death. It also has to be said that, while an ingenious solution of Beckett's to smash the fire alarm so the sprinklers activate, shorting out Zito's weapon, I'm not sure how realistic that moment was: the sprinklers don't come on in the room Beckett and the others are in, just in the outside section where Zito stands. Then again, that room was bare, whereas the other was filled with electrical equipment so maybe it was designed on the assumption any fire would come from there and since electrics and water don't mix, the surrounding rooms and corridors had sprinklers to prevent the spread of fire?
I'd like to know what was going on with this potential army of henchmen willing to kill one of their own! It becomes a very James Bond moment with these two shady individuals in identical overalls striding around with bazookas and shades and I can see they were trying to show the power of who or what was behind Zito, but that makes you wonder what happened to them later on when JD finally gets out of prison - he doesn't seem to have an army then… If they were just hired guns does that explain it? I also noticed some other writerly shortcutting, or perhaps a conflict between the page and the screen, when Ros tells Beckett about how to get the code to her that he hopes he captured from Amanda before the feed was lost: he's to load up the minidisc on the laptop, then choose the best frame and send it through the modem, but in reality all that happens is he puts the disk in and somehow the computer goes straight to the frame he needs. Again, there was supposed to be some tension over whether Beckett had got a good enough image of the barcode, and it's difficult to inject danger into technical moments like that, but I felt that needed something more to succeed.
Interestingly, we get a first for the series when the whole of the teaser is taken up with a 'Story update…' recapping the first episode. I'm not sure they did that again in subsequent two-parters. And did they film in the same area as 'Out of The Hive'? The communications establishment at Blade Point, as Ros describes it, looked just like the waterfront area we saw near The Hive building, and the inside stairwell at GNC looked exactly the same as that building, too, with a rounded outer section and small, square windows in a line. I do have a question about what was actually happening from JD's side of things, because the GNC report states that investors who'd invested in Kituma had made a killing, and later we find out JD makes his vast sum of money by betting on the team that put him away, in terms of making investments based on who they were helping, at least that's how I remember it. If so, was he really behind Zito? It wouldn't make sense for him to want Zito to beat the Gizmo's team if he was investing in Kituma, or did he get the idea for investing in the team's clients from this event? Or was it that he would have made even more money by siding with the corrupt Chuku as Zito was doing? It's unclear at this stage and I'm not sure it ever became entirely clear, but it's a point I need to keep in mind as the season pans out.
Zito worked quite well as villain of this big story to kick us off, even if he seems less sane (“Time to die-ee”), perhaps he feels his status is slipping away, and in conversation with Chuku his angry face, slicked back hair and quivering lip makes for a terrifying close-up. He’s served quite well and gets to play the team on their own terms with the gadgets and weapons at his disposal. It almost seems a shame it was ultimately his disposal! Though the dramatic death, presumably sliced by all those shards from the shattering glass sculpture was quite original. The second part of stories in anything often aren't as strong as the first and I'd say this is no exception. It is a little slower, though 'What Goes Up…' was constantly plunging us into the midst of action, so it would be difficult to keep that momentum going for the space of another episode, and less exciting with all the big ideas happening in the previous episode, other than Ed doing a space walk. Nonetheless, I do still enjoy it as I enjoy all 'BUGS' episodes, and the slower pace allows the drama to come through, even if there is a bit too much repetition (such as the phrase 'Kituma's hidden wealth' or the STA ground crew cheering each time communications comes back on after losing them!). I appreciate the continuing details and the sense of an existing world being built little bits at a time. There's also a fun additional draw for me as this marks what I believe is the only connection between 'BUGS' and Trek, with Stokes, the guy who was Amanda's boss at GNC, played by Fintan McKeown a few years before he played an Irish hologram in two episodes of 'Voyager.' Two of my all-time favourite series' inextricably linked!
***
Tuesday, 12 October 2021
The Time Trap
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Time Trap)
For most of this episode the story takes place in an alternate universe or 'a pocket in the garment of time' as it was eloquently expressed by one of those trapped within it, but for all the oddness in the standard characters from our time or universe, it's almost as if they were from an alternate reality of their own! The biggest standout is Commander Kor's return, but he looks nothing like the round-faced, grinning villain with pointy whiskers that we saw in 'TOS' ('Errand of Mercy'), which first introduced the Klingons. He actually looks a lot more like Kang, one of the big three from the series, so I wonder what their mindset was there - maybe they got mixed up? Either way, we don't even get John Colicos back to voice his character as they had with Roger C. Carmel and Harry Mudd, with what sounded to me like James Doohan performing the voice among others in the episode, and it didn't even sound the way Kor talked! It all begins with the Enterprise rashly exploring this Bermuda Triangle of space known as the Delta Triangle, in which ships have gone missing for years. At the same time a trio of Klingon vessels springs a surprise attack, but Kor's ship, the Klothos (later to become canon in 'Once More Unto The Breach' on 'DS9,' the character's final appearance in Trek), vanishes and Kirk takes the risk of heading straight for where it had been to verify a theory that apparently just occurred to him out of nowhere!
This reckless behaviour isn't the only odd thing about the moment as he commands Sulu to go to Warp 8 and head for where the Klingon ship was, yet it was close enough to fire on the Enterprise, so going to that speed would surely overshoot the spot by some considerable margin, wouldn't it? Kirk's decision-making isn't the only character flaw in the episode as Spock suddenly becomes jovial and friendly with the Klingons, not strange in itself since you realise he must be up to something when he goes over and warmly puts his hands on Kor and his aide's shoulders - I assumed he was planting some kind of listening bug to hear their plans, but we soon find out that he was doing something akin to a mind meld, his touch able to briefly read the Klingons' minds and learn their evil intentions! Now I know Vulcans are touch telepaths and their skills have never been fully explained, but this would seem to be a bit of a leap from what we'd seen before, where it was a fairly involved process of the fingers being placed on the face of the person whose mind was being joined. It's not like he even touches bare skin, so it was a bit of a liberty to make up this ability, even if it was lightly defined and he just got a sense of what they were thinking rather than actually sharing minds. It was a power too far, and one among many such inconsistencies I can imagine deciding Roddenberry on not wanting 'TAS' to be considered canon when all was said and done.
There's also the issue of the first ever starship to use warp drive: the USS Bonaventure. This would be quite an addition to canon and wouldn't necessarily conflict with 'TOS,' but of course we later saw the film 'First Contact' establish the Phoenix as the first Earth warp ship. Even if they actually meant the first proper starship that wouldn't work because the Franklin ('Star Trek Beyond's errant contribution to confusing the issue), and the Enterprise NX-01 look nothing like it, so unless the Bonaventure was a design that was then discarded, but decades later brought back as the basis for the Constitution-class, it doesn't make sense. It's also a USS, which means a Federation ship, and we know there were warp-capable vessels before that. It really has little impact on the story other than to reinforce the idea that ships have been going missing here for a very long time, centuries even. Of course, back then they didn't know when the Federation had been established or even exactly when the series was set, but as I say, maybe 'TAS' actually occurs in an alternate universe itself!
They make use of the voice cast with Nichelle Nichols getting to play at least a couple of other roles to Uhura (the Orion woman and the Caitian-like Megan, and possibly the Klingon woman?), while George Takei is Sulu, but also gets to be the other Klingon Captain, and James Doohan, as well as being Scotty and Kor, is the apparent leader of the Elysian (Alesian?), group that comprises one hundred and twenty-three races who have all been trapped and chose to create a new organisation of peace. That was a typically Trek idea and one that would be seen again in the similar 'Voyager' story, 'The Void,' in which the ship is trapped in a void and Captain Janeway starts a mini-Federation for protection and to mount an escape. So it's a good idea and portrayed well in this case, mainly from a visual standpoint as we get a great selection of familiar and new 'TOS' races: the aforementioned Orion (who, for some reason, amusingly goes around in her underwear the whole time!), a Tellarite, Vulcan, Andorian, even a Gorn and one of those green jellyfish head creatures (Philosian?), from 'The Infinite Vulcan.' One of their number even looks like it could be a Xindi Insectoid, which would be a fun retcon! The biggest question is over the main guy: is he a Romulan? He has the V-shaped haircut that suggests he would be, as well as a Roman toga uniform that could be meant to represent one from a different era (as they all live much longer in this pocket).
The real question is what his true name is - I don't mean any secret Romulan name they never tell outsiders (if 'Picard' is to be believed), but his standard monicker since I counted four different variations on how it was said, an example of what it's like recording lines separately as that means there isn't as much consistency in pronunciation! First I thought it was Sy-rius, then Zurius, then Zarius, and finally, Sarius! The man of a thousand names? I also found it interesting to note apparent humans who wore Starfleet-like outfits that could also have been meant as a uniform from the past (there's a woman with white top and blue trimmings who has a starburst badge). They could of course have been from other organisations than Starfleet, but I like the idea of attempting to fill in the design lineage, even if it was subsequently abandoned by 'TAS' not being considered officially part of the history - mind you, nowadays even when things are a part of the official history, in fact created the whole thing in the first place, it's discarded for a 'new visual aesthetic' because poor modern people can't take a Sixties cut of clothing (see the woes of 'DSC' where they completely upended the logical progression from 'The Cage' to Trek's second pilot and onto the main series).
The colour and variety of the aliens presented was the kind of thing it was difficult for the parent series to achieve, not that they never tried, with 'Journey To Babel' an excellent example of the menagerie of aliens that could be created on their budget, and this is very much in that spirit and makes the episode more entertaining than merely being about entrapment in some anomaly. The addition of the Klingons is equally promising, especially as in the end the Enterprise and the Klothos have to work together to achieve the escape. It didn't quite ring true that the other ships hadn't been able to accomplish something similar, especially as there were many more of them, but we can get around this nitpick by saying that Spock and his calculations were essential to the attempt (the great intelligence and computational power of Vulcans is something else that has been overlooked by current gen Trek in favour of showing emotion and beards! Will Vulcans ever again be given the respect they deserve?). Another alternative is that Sirius, or whatever his name was, or perhaps even that Orion girl, were actually ensuring the status quo and sabotaged previous escape attempts because they liked what had been created (much like Alixus did in 'Paradise' on 'DS9').
There's one other story point that doesn't make a lot of sense, which is Scotty saying the Dilithium crystals will run out in two days! If they'd added a line about the journey into the Delta Triangles having drained the crystals extensively then that would be okay, but it just comes out of nowhere. That's the problem with the series, it often is too cartoonish, though I suspect it's far more adult in its intelligence and story approach than the new animated series' that are being made and about which I've heard extremely questionable choices, but it shouldn't be a surprise after what they did with 'DSC' and 'Picard.' Once again I find myself warming to this series as a far better example of what Trek was and should be, very different from what it has become. It may not stack up compared to live action Treks, but side by side with versions that have gone so far from the history, continuity, design and moral content that drew people to it in the first place, it's a joy and one I'm glad to be getting back into after a year's break.
**
For most of this episode the story takes place in an alternate universe or 'a pocket in the garment of time' as it was eloquently expressed by one of those trapped within it, but for all the oddness in the standard characters from our time or universe, it's almost as if they were from an alternate reality of their own! The biggest standout is Commander Kor's return, but he looks nothing like the round-faced, grinning villain with pointy whiskers that we saw in 'TOS' ('Errand of Mercy'), which first introduced the Klingons. He actually looks a lot more like Kang, one of the big three from the series, so I wonder what their mindset was there - maybe they got mixed up? Either way, we don't even get John Colicos back to voice his character as they had with Roger C. Carmel and Harry Mudd, with what sounded to me like James Doohan performing the voice among others in the episode, and it didn't even sound the way Kor talked! It all begins with the Enterprise rashly exploring this Bermuda Triangle of space known as the Delta Triangle, in which ships have gone missing for years. At the same time a trio of Klingon vessels springs a surprise attack, but Kor's ship, the Klothos (later to become canon in 'Once More Unto The Breach' on 'DS9,' the character's final appearance in Trek), vanishes and Kirk takes the risk of heading straight for where it had been to verify a theory that apparently just occurred to him out of nowhere!
This reckless behaviour isn't the only odd thing about the moment as he commands Sulu to go to Warp 8 and head for where the Klingon ship was, yet it was close enough to fire on the Enterprise, so going to that speed would surely overshoot the spot by some considerable margin, wouldn't it? Kirk's decision-making isn't the only character flaw in the episode as Spock suddenly becomes jovial and friendly with the Klingons, not strange in itself since you realise he must be up to something when he goes over and warmly puts his hands on Kor and his aide's shoulders - I assumed he was planting some kind of listening bug to hear their plans, but we soon find out that he was doing something akin to a mind meld, his touch able to briefly read the Klingons' minds and learn their evil intentions! Now I know Vulcans are touch telepaths and their skills have never been fully explained, but this would seem to be a bit of a leap from what we'd seen before, where it was a fairly involved process of the fingers being placed on the face of the person whose mind was being joined. It's not like he even touches bare skin, so it was a bit of a liberty to make up this ability, even if it was lightly defined and he just got a sense of what they were thinking rather than actually sharing minds. It was a power too far, and one among many such inconsistencies I can imagine deciding Roddenberry on not wanting 'TAS' to be considered canon when all was said and done.
There's also the issue of the first ever starship to use warp drive: the USS Bonaventure. This would be quite an addition to canon and wouldn't necessarily conflict with 'TOS,' but of course we later saw the film 'First Contact' establish the Phoenix as the first Earth warp ship. Even if they actually meant the first proper starship that wouldn't work because the Franklin ('Star Trek Beyond's errant contribution to confusing the issue), and the Enterprise NX-01 look nothing like it, so unless the Bonaventure was a design that was then discarded, but decades later brought back as the basis for the Constitution-class, it doesn't make sense. It's also a USS, which means a Federation ship, and we know there were warp-capable vessels before that. It really has little impact on the story other than to reinforce the idea that ships have been going missing here for a very long time, centuries even. Of course, back then they didn't know when the Federation had been established or even exactly when the series was set, but as I say, maybe 'TAS' actually occurs in an alternate universe itself!
They make use of the voice cast with Nichelle Nichols getting to play at least a couple of other roles to Uhura (the Orion woman and the Caitian-like Megan, and possibly the Klingon woman?), while George Takei is Sulu, but also gets to be the other Klingon Captain, and James Doohan, as well as being Scotty and Kor, is the apparent leader of the Elysian (Alesian?), group that comprises one hundred and twenty-three races who have all been trapped and chose to create a new organisation of peace. That was a typically Trek idea and one that would be seen again in the similar 'Voyager' story, 'The Void,' in which the ship is trapped in a void and Captain Janeway starts a mini-Federation for protection and to mount an escape. So it's a good idea and portrayed well in this case, mainly from a visual standpoint as we get a great selection of familiar and new 'TOS' races: the aforementioned Orion (who, for some reason, amusingly goes around in her underwear the whole time!), a Tellarite, Vulcan, Andorian, even a Gorn and one of those green jellyfish head creatures (Philosian?), from 'The Infinite Vulcan.' One of their number even looks like it could be a Xindi Insectoid, which would be a fun retcon! The biggest question is over the main guy: is he a Romulan? He has the V-shaped haircut that suggests he would be, as well as a Roman toga uniform that could be meant to represent one from a different era (as they all live much longer in this pocket).
The real question is what his true name is - I don't mean any secret Romulan name they never tell outsiders (if 'Picard' is to be believed), but his standard monicker since I counted four different variations on how it was said, an example of what it's like recording lines separately as that means there isn't as much consistency in pronunciation! First I thought it was Sy-rius, then Zurius, then Zarius, and finally, Sarius! The man of a thousand names? I also found it interesting to note apparent humans who wore Starfleet-like outfits that could also have been meant as a uniform from the past (there's a woman with white top and blue trimmings who has a starburst badge). They could of course have been from other organisations than Starfleet, but I like the idea of attempting to fill in the design lineage, even if it was subsequently abandoned by 'TAS' not being considered officially part of the history - mind you, nowadays even when things are a part of the official history, in fact created the whole thing in the first place, it's discarded for a 'new visual aesthetic' because poor modern people can't take a Sixties cut of clothing (see the woes of 'DSC' where they completely upended the logical progression from 'The Cage' to Trek's second pilot and onto the main series).
The colour and variety of the aliens presented was the kind of thing it was difficult for the parent series to achieve, not that they never tried, with 'Journey To Babel' an excellent example of the menagerie of aliens that could be created on their budget, and this is very much in that spirit and makes the episode more entertaining than merely being about entrapment in some anomaly. The addition of the Klingons is equally promising, especially as in the end the Enterprise and the Klothos have to work together to achieve the escape. It didn't quite ring true that the other ships hadn't been able to accomplish something similar, especially as there were many more of them, but we can get around this nitpick by saying that Spock and his calculations were essential to the attempt (the great intelligence and computational power of Vulcans is something else that has been overlooked by current gen Trek in favour of showing emotion and beards! Will Vulcans ever again be given the respect they deserve?). Another alternative is that Sirius, or whatever his name was, or perhaps even that Orion girl, were actually ensuring the status quo and sabotaged previous escape attempts because they liked what had been created (much like Alixus did in 'Paradise' on 'DS9').
There's one other story point that doesn't make a lot of sense, which is Scotty saying the Dilithium crystals will run out in two days! If they'd added a line about the journey into the Delta Triangles having drained the crystals extensively then that would be okay, but it just comes out of nowhere. That's the problem with the series, it often is too cartoonish, though I suspect it's far more adult in its intelligence and story approach than the new animated series' that are being made and about which I've heard extremely questionable choices, but it shouldn't be a surprise after what they did with 'DSC' and 'Picard.' Once again I find myself warming to this series as a far better example of what Trek was and should be, very different from what it has become. It may not stack up compared to live action Treks, but side by side with versions that have gone so far from the history, continuity, design and moral content that drew people to it in the first place, it's a joy and one I'm glad to be getting back into after a year's break.
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