Journey To Babel

DVD, Star Trek S2 (Journey To Babel)

I believe this was the first time I'd seen this episode. First impression was that it was lavish - a squad of redshirts providing an honour guard for arriving dignitaries from Vulcan. We actually get to see into the shuttle bay! And we see them come right from the shuttle to the corridor. I do love that sequence!

The teaser is brilliant, when Spock answers Kirk that these are his parents! The rest of the episode can't quite live up to such an immense opening, but it's still a cut above most episodes, with so many important pieces being laid down in Trek lore. We get blue-skinned Andorians, Tellarites, there's gold-skinned midgets, even a purple woman in the background! We get to see an operation, green blood, Klingons mentioned, Romulans mentioned, the first Orion male seen (and probably only one until 'Enterprise'), albeit disguised as a varlet Andorian.

The only let-down is that we don't get to see the Orion ship. Continuity is kept up again with a short visit to planet Vulcan, and of course, the most important part is Sarek and Amanda's debut. Oddly, among all these exciting developments it was one obscure Vulcan word that gave me most cause to ponder: tal-shaya, the ancient art of execution. I wondered if the later Romulan Tal'Shiar secret service got it's name from this...

Mark Lenard is different enough from the Romulan Commander of S1 to be a different character, successfully furthering Vulcan heritage, which is no small thing after Nimoy's well-crafted portrayal against which all Vulcans were destined to be compared. There's even some sadness as Amanda relates how Spock was teased by other Vulcan children for being half-human, and humour at the Sehlat thing. McCoy gets to have the last word and provides one of the most amusing tags for the series.

The make-up was extraordinary, and makes you think all that stuff about them not having the time or money to do elaborate prosthetics was rubbish - here they create several races, the Andorians in particular looking a picture of alienness. The Tellarites too, which I thought looked a bit basic in pictures were very well done.

The downside was the missing people - Scotty and Sulu, but you can't have everything. I wonder if Takei was off making his John Wayne film at this time since he's been missing for several episodes in a row.

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