The Game

DVD, Starsky & Hutch S4 (The Game) (2)

You could be forgiven for thinking this is the first episode of the season for all the reintroduction of the familiar elements of the series that it presents: we have Huggy Bear back, and not only that, but the return of The Pits, first introduced last season in 'The Collector,' an important location for the series, perhaps in its own way, as much as Police HQ, since the unofficial lines of inquiry can often hinge around Huggy. There's also Hutch's place, Hutch's car, and of course Starsky's Torino (though that had been in 'Discomania'). And on top of that we get reference back to all the trouble Hutch has with his mobile mode of choice to the extent that Merl The Earl makes his third (and I think, final), appearance, having clocked up two previous episodes. So we feel like the series has come home again, and the quick-fire, mile a minute repartee of old between S&H further enhances this impression. From these opening two episodes Season 4 already feels more open and loose than the previous season. They also do what they know works, having S&H separate and going up against each other or the bad guy, a style of episode they would even go so far as to use for the final ever episode (some might say controversially). Starsky versus Hutch (quite apart from being an actual episode title from this season), is a concept that could have been the sole premise, their game of hide and seek across the city over a free weekend a bracing and invigorating idea that might have made this a classic had they concentrated on it exclusively.

Instead, it gets watered down a little bit, first with the twist that Hutch has been poisoned with botulism by eating clam chowder soup at room temperature out of an infected tin from the Ryland's Soup Company, a rare example of a slobby nature usually associated with Starsky - Starsk throws the empty tin into the back of Hutch's car as an example of his attitude (Hutch warns him it's not a garbage dump and he retorts "Could'a' fooled me"), though when it comes to their cars this casual attitude is usually reversed, with Starsky treating his Torino with great care, while Hutch more casual, but this is more to do with the fact that vehicles aren't high on Hutch's priorities while for Starsky it's his pride and joy. But the point is that Hutch's life is on the line and he's not going to take any message left by his partner as anything other than a trick to reel him in, since they have two week's wages wagered! I like the twist, but again, this could have been enough to sustain the episode, easily, but a third plot is chucked into the mix with nasty criminal Ray Pardee on the loose, the cause of all the reevaluation between S&H which leads them to their wager: Hutch's old banger cuts out just as Pardee (with his apparent sixth sense for police proximity, except when there's a closed door between them as when Hutch bursts into his hovel near the end and sends him flying!), makes a run for it with his reluctant girl, Gina. Starsky's dissatisfaction with the state of affairs leads him to suggest Hutch should be happy in future riding shotgun in the Torino, while Hutch naturally takes the credit for being the brains of the operation with Starsky the 'not inconsiderable' brawn.

They have the weekend off so why not stake some money on a game of hide and seek with specific rules so as to make it fair: Hutch agrees to remain in the city limits, contact someone they both know every two hours, and sleep somewhere they both know, and the contest will last from 8am Saturday to 8am Monday. It's a great idea and I wish it had been fully explored, with Starsky using all his wiles to try and track his errant buddy, while Hutch evades him by the skin of his teeth, split second escapes and, no doubt, slapstick humour abounding, but instead they don't go that route, sadly. It is fun to see Hutch use his resources to fool Starsky by wearing disguises, a total of four: a guy on the run who goes to Ernie Silvers for a place to stay, an old tramp selling pencils, a down-and-out with cap and glasses in a mission (I thought he was going to be the one playing the mouth organ since we hear that first, then pan across to where he's pretending to be dozing on the organ-player's shoulder), and a surgeon in scrubs when sneaking into the hospital to see if Starsky really is in danger of his life. My favourite was the old tramp, with Starsky already too worried about Hutch's life to be concentrating on little details. It says something about Hutch's confidence in his own acting abilities (despite the nervousness on a real set in 'Murder On Stage 17'!), that he would toy with Starsky so blatantly, but David Soul really does a good  job in his various guises. As the guy on the run from S&H he changes his whole body language, mannerisms and speech to fool Silvers.

I always think Ernie has been in it before because he's so natural and such great fun as this lowdown rat that talks big in front of criminals, doing down S&H, very funny when he eventually realises it's Hutch he's been harbouring and talking so freely to, offering drugs, insulting S&H! But in reality I must be just remembering this episode, although there have been plenty of Ernies S&H have had run-ins with over the course of the series. If only Starsky had paid a little attention to an old man he might have solved the problem (then they could have cured Hutch and got on with tracking down Pardee), but one little aside that comes out of the tramp scene is Huggy's compassion. He tells Starsky not to bother the old man, then buys one of his Golden Eagles pencils. Makes you think what a nice guy Hug is, probably because he's in tune with the streets and knows what it's like for the folks out there, as does Starsky, but he was too distracted. As great as it is to have the Bear back, it's strange that a lot of scenes that potentially would have been his were taken by his new waitress, Anita (not Rita). Was she being set up to be a recurring character, or was it just a special role for a known face at the time since Liz Torres gets a 'Special Guest Star' credit? She's fine, and I suppose it wouldn't have worked if Huggy had been the one Starsky performed his trick in front of as he wouldn't have sold it, would have smelt something fishy, plus if Ernie had spoken to him he'd have immediately got in contact with Starsky, so Anita served her purpose. I don't remember her being in it again, so it'll be interesting to see if she is.

I must admit, despite having seen the episode several times I completely forgot the holdup at The Pits was a setup by Starsky and his police pals, Simmons and Babcock. I was thinking that it wasn't very wise for Starsky to stand up and, even carefully, confront the balaclava man training a gun on him, but as soon as the other guy came running in saying he was a cop I realised it was a ruse, and a very good one at that. Starsky's day couldn't have got much worse if he really had encountered a mugger and been shot for it, what with his weekend plans being ruined by news of the botulism, the realisation that Hutch is infected, and Pardee still on the loose after a failed attempt to stop him! You can see how much S&H care about each other, both in Starsky's horror at the possibility of the soup Hutch ate giving him fatal food poisoning, and the shock Hutch has when Ernie lets him know about Starsky's shooting - he stays in character, but he's immediately softened and though he's suspicious of his friend, expecting all kinds of tricks and tactics to wheedle him out into the open, he has to know for sure. The reality is that if Starsky is frequenting all the places they both know and making a nuisance of himself round the city, you can imagine that he would be in greater risk of being shot or potentially poking his nose in somewhere he's not wanted, so it's a plausible outcome, and Starsky knows it - maybe he's got just as much of the brains after all, just as Hutch has just as much of the brawn.

Hutch doesn't use his brain as much once he's suffering from the bacterium, though, taking on the job of finding Pardee when he should have phoned up Captain Dobey for assistance, but maybe he was pridefully imagining taking in the crim while still evading his partner for the ultimate way to rub Starsky's face in it. But Pardee is no game, and while Hutch successfully corners him, the food poisoning gets the better of him much to Pardee's delight. As well as failing to take advantage of the hide and seek idea as much as they could have, Pardee's subplot is also not handled as well as it could have been. It's ironic that if Pardee's window hadn't stuck and he'd had that extra second to get out, he'd have soon left Hutch clean behind. What is also rather ironic is that Starsky speeds to the rescue followed by pandas with full flashing lights and sirens screaming, but Pardee doesn't hear them until they're almost running him over! For someone so attuned to the police and self-survival it's hard to accept that he suddenly failed to notice three cars approaching and stands there shocked as the Torino heads straight for him, not even loosing a bullet at Starsky. So the conclusion was all too easy, and as ever, I'd have liked an end scene that had at least something to do with the episode or its theme - just mention that Hutch paid up because Starsky did technically find him and he conceded that he won, or an argument where Starsky refuses to take advantage and won't take the money.

Instead we have another odd, unrelated end scene in which Hutch tries to teach Starsky about meditation and free association until his friend realises he put a special Buddy Holly album into the oven instead of the pizza he was holding in his other hand. It's amusing, undoubtedly, and fulfils the usual criteria of leaving the audience with a positive feeling and a smile, but it is odd and it's not like they've never done a final scene that is connected to the episode or that has a note of poignancy or conclusion to the story. I wonder if Starsky's memory of hiding from his Father in a 'closet' on his eighth birthday was a serious thing as that would have been interesting to hear about! There was a kind of reference to their history during the episode, but only in the most vague way: Hutch claims he's been carrying Starsky since day one. I know, I'm reaching, but even the tiniest mention of day one, which was a real moment in their lives, presumably when they first met, is worth noting. I also liked the carefree way the episode begins with a shot outside a sunny Police HQ with music that says all is well today, and what with the talk of the weekend it's quite a summery, relaxing atmosphere, at least to begin the episode. That's one of the things I love about the series, that it feels like it's always sunny and bright and S&H have the freedom of the city, like it's their playground, only they don't play, they have to deal with some nasty stuff, but they so often do it with good humour, enjoying their lives, jobs and company, so we do, too.

Saying that, I would suggest this is more in line with the negative view of the city that some episodes present, even though it's not a seedy, nasty story, we tend to see rubbish-strewn streets, ugly little apartments almost empty except for mess and the bare bones of life, most obviously in Pardee's hovel where Hutch finds him. In contrast, Gina's house is quite nice, and I wonder if it was somewhere they rented or she owned - you can see a lot of decor that makes it seem quite homely. In particular you can see a photo on the wall when Hutch enters and when he leaves with Gina he brushes against it so it hangs askew. They must have had a maid or cleaner of some kind, because when Gina returns to phone through a message for Starsky we see the picture is back to hanging straight! I thought Gina was quite a good character - this terrified woman that wants to escape the violent and dangerous Pardee, but is too frightened to do so. It appears he was going to leave her behind originally, but whether that meant she was a goner, or she would be left in place as a base for him to return to if needed, I don't know. It was a good scene when Starsky enters the house and immediately grabs her, pulling her around the room, common courtesy suspended in the light of the threat from Pardee. He's professional as he checks out the rooms with gun drawn, but doesn't let up on Gina. We've seen it before that when one of their partners are in trouble, all lightness of touch disappears and they become like professional robots doing everything possible, following their training, but with acute accuracy and haste.

Gina was played by Suzanne Charney who had previously portrayed Ginger way back in Season 1's 'Death Notice' (there are several characters named Ginger in the series, so it must have been a popular name back then!). As I mentioned earlier, the only other returning face is Raymond Allen as Merl The Earl, but though it's credited as the same actor who played the role in both 'Jo-Jo' and 'Bloodbath' I always think it's a different actor, since he does look different - checking back on the DVDs, it's simply that he had a beard then, and now it's just a moustache which changes a face quite a lot. He was always a good character and I enjoy it when they enhance the world by bringing back a known face, especially played by the same actor, but Merl didn't have as good a scene this time. One of the pop culture references comes from him when he says for money he'd work on Ben Hur's chariot, as Starsky questions him working on Hutch's beat up old motor. Other references include Hutch reading aloud from 'Anthony and Cleopatra,' he sarcastically says he's Bugs Bunny when Ernie asks his name, and of course he owns a rare autographed Buddy Holly album (only eight in the country). The brown, tiled lab where Starsky speaks to the doctor had been seen before, first in 'The Plague,' I believe. Hutch's illness recalled his drug dependence in 'The Fix,' and Pardee laughing over him as he slumped with blurred vision was like 'A Coffin For Starsky' where another villain laughs over the prone, paralysed form of Starsky. And we find out that The Pits' address is 1348, 6th Street, when Anita rings for an ambulance.

Going in the right direction, but the episodes still weren't quite getting there. That's how I feel about this enjoyable, but not entirely satisfying instalment. It showcases the banter (but only to an extent, since S&H are separated for much of the time), features both Huggy and Dobey (but only in minor roles), and brings back more of the favourite aspects of the series, from locations to vehicles. It could have done with more action, perhaps, or played up the friendship connection between S&H through their mutual concern, and the bad guy, though a fearsome looking meanie, could have done much worse to make us fear for Hutch's life. But the supporting cast aren't bad, and although there isn't much in the way of quirky characters, it's quite a fun episode, even with the peril - Ernie and Merl fit that category for sure, but the only other one is Anita, and she has to carry some emotional weight with the cruel, but necessary trick Starsky plays on her to sell his injuries. I didn't quite buy she'd have been as upset as she was, considering she only just met S&H, but maybe she's more tenderhearted than her rough exterior suggests?

**

Hot Zone

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S1 (Hot Zone)

Definite filler material, we have here. It's a bottle episode, but without even the advantage of exploring one or more of the characters or learning about them, we know that none of the main cast are going to be damaged, and only guest characters are in any danger because they're not valuable to the series, so there's not a lot of drama to be had. It's one of those quarantine stories where various groups are trapped in different parts of the starship, space station, or in this case, city, while the boffins work with furrowed brow and little hope, to resolve the situation. A little tension was injected through the ever-present pull of authority between civilian and military forces, with Weir's orders countermanded to her face by Sheppard who believes he knows better, resulting in more trouble that would have been avoided had the chain of command been respected. The moment when Sergeant Bates is ordered to open the door where Sheppard and Teyla are sealed, so the Major can leave to track down a potentially infected perpetrator, shows that a little drama doesn't go amiss, even though it is but a brief frisson of conflict. Bates is put into a difficult position, but has no choice except to obey his military superior's orders, and you can tell Weir is not only outraged at her command being undermined, but on a personal level that Sheppard would do this. It's the only real flash of interest in a fairly mundane and unsurprising tale, so important that they come back to it in the last scene where Weir pulls him up about it.

Most of the episode is people reacting to minor escalations: at first it's just the possibility of a virus, then it's a probability. It might not have been the best choice of McKay to bring his whole team into the heart of the outbreak, an Ancients' lab, and it proves that they all become infected. Then one of them refuses to listen to reason or orders, and tries to escape, infecting others in the Mess Hall, before the city itself goes into automatic lockdown. I believe 'DS9' did this story best in 'Civil Defence' when the station believes it's under attack from slave revolt, but the escalation in this one doesn't really work and never do you feel there's a whole lot of danger. Yes, we see people go into shock from terrible hallucinations, their brains haemorrhaging in a last terror, but it's no surprise when Rodney survives - it's his ATA (Ancient Technology Activation), gene therapy treatment to activate his Ancient gene that has saved him, but such therapy hasn't worked for others so there's supposed to still be some threat from this nano-virus, an attack of microscopic robots designed to kill humans, but if a main cast member can fight it off there's even less tension than there was before. I'm not suggesting they should have killed someone (though I was wondering if they might go there with Ford since my theory has always been he's for the chop eventually), but there must have been some way to make the idea work.

As it is this may be the weakest episode of the series so far, and something about it made me wish I was watching 'Stargate Universe' where things did tend to take on a harder edge and the vast cast made death more of a possibility. One thing they did do pretty well was give the appearance that there are a lot of people on Atlantis - obviously we have familiar faces such as Bates and Dr. Zelenka fleshing out the otherwise unknown guest cast (Dr. Biro looked like a typical eccentric, quirky expert as we've seen so many times on 'SG-1,' so I wouldn't be surprised to see her pop up again), and there were large groups of people in the control room, Mess, or making up McKay's and Beckett's teams. Sheppard gets to be hero, setting off a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere so the EMP will knock out the little blighters, but Teyla's relegated to showing him who's boss in the stick fighting department, and attempting to reassure the unprofessionally scared denizens of the Mess. It was quite wild when they all start to go hallucination-crazy, but it didn't make sense that they then stopped and were calmly awaiting the result of Sheppard's bombing attempt! Other than that there wasn't much to complain about, it was just a bit of a wasted opportunity, probably a money-saver at the back end of the season, but not taking full advantage of the opportunity to explore the cast and get to know them better. The only truly ominous note is that they surmise this virus wasn't created by The Wraith, nor was likely to be from The Ancients, so who made it and are they still around…?

**

Discomania

DVD, Starsky & Hutch S4 (Discomania) (2)

I tend to remember Season 4 as the daftest year of the series, full of silliness and almost entering into a parody of its characters and past, but then I also thought of Season 3 as very serious and hard-edged and found it much more balanced on reviewing it, so it remains to be seen whether my appraisal will alter on this watch-through. When I think of Season 4, one episode stands out: 'Dandruff,' where Starsky and Hutch put on phoney accents and theatrical performances to go undercover at a hair and beauty salon. But this episode with its extreme Seventies style and overriding disco theme (dancing in suits!), is probably as much evidence of the wackiness of both the series and the period it was made, without being quite as parodic as the former, it might just be the most evocative of that period in the entire series with its exaggerated emphasis on the disco dancing, almost to the exclusion of a story. It's very indulgent towards the dancing scenes as if they're putting down a marker that this series is hip, cool and happening, all you veggies out there! It's episodes like this that you can see must have inspired the ridiculous parody film of 2004 - the dance-off in that was pretty silly and over the top, but Starsky really does get down and boogie like crazy in this episode, and while it's not as in your face as the film, you have to admit that the series did get a little zany at times.

I imagine disco fever was the in thing at the time, so they were probably just following a trend for what the youth were into back then, and I can see why they might begin a season with such a shallow story and concentrate on young people having a good time to set out the series' stall. At the same time, S&H are starting to look less youth and more creeping towards middle-age by this point (maybe Hutch's moustache didn't help!), and they must be in their early thirties, while most of the disco crowd appear to be in their twenties. Not to say they stick out like sore thumbs, but it's a farfetched idea that two men like that could infiltrate a disco hall to root out a serial killer. It makes for plenty of fish out of water fun, and they blend in pretty well despite, but you can almost imagine the lonely Judith mentioning how old they are as she does to Tony! Fortunately, the pair have plenty of energy left yet and the will to get into their parts, but the police operation doesn't come across as very efficient. It's one thing to send a couple of detectives down to Fever, the disco hotspot, but S&H don't even realise they have a liaison there who's already undercover (she says it's her first time to them, but she may have been joking since we see her at the first night where Tony's picking up another victim, and he says he saw her there the other night). If the primary reason is to make S&H look stupid and give us a laugh, it worked, but you'd think they'd know who else was on the case!

You could almost feel sorry for Tony, the wronged or damaged serial kidnapper and killer, even though we see him leave a dead woman in an abandoned area at the beginning, because he seems so full of the disco love, and yet is ineptly zoning in on the wrong potential dance partners, rejection only furthering his ire. That is until he brushes off poor Judith, who pragmatically refers to his age and her 'chubbiness' as reasons they might as well hook up - actually he doesn't even brush her off, but completely ignores her! You have to wonder if these people are really in the best place for them - I'm sure there must have been other social hangouts for Judith to go to if she didn't feel comfortable being on her own. Then again, if she's a disco fan, why not, it's just a shame she didn't have confidence in herself to dance alone as we see some of the other young ladies doing. She's certainly got confidence in approaching people! Tony on the other hand, isn't really looking for a fun evening out, but is playing some twisted hunting game. I didn't quite catch his muted backstory, but it he'd had a wife or a girlfriend who had jilted him or had died. He might even have killed her, I'm not sure, but now he wants to take young ladies back to his opulent house, dance with them in his personal dance-floor, then fill them full of drugs and dump them off dead somewhere.

Marty, a pickpocket, sets back S&H's investigation when they mistake him for the killer (who leaves a little ankle bracelet with the name of his departed sweetheart, Sharon, as a calling card), since he just happened to rip off Tony at the wrong moment. The tension of the likeable Sergeant Lizzie Thorpe, third class, being in danger from this warped crazy, is well served by the blind of Marty, and the shot of her walking to her car, the camera just following her legs as if a visual warning that she's soon destined to get an ankle bracelet like the others (and reminded me of 'The Las Vegas Strangler,' another episode where lone women go to their cars and get attacked, seen only from the legs down). Lizzie was a credit to the force, managing her fear and shock, and attempting to talk to Tony, to build up a connection and reassure him that it's okay to lose someone, as long as you don't lose yourself. There's some real horror in the episode from Tony forcing one of his captives to dance (Michelle?), snapping at her and slapping, making her jig around like a puppet forced to perform, and I don't know which was more terrible, that or the slow dance Lizzie has to endure, drugged up as she is, unable to do anything but flop around in the arms of her captor as he drags her around his dance floor.

If there's a moral to the story (besides not to leave your beverage unattended in public - that's how he manages to drug Lizzie, while she's off pounding the floor with Marty), I would say it's that money can't buy happiness, since Tony shows himself to be quite a flash Harry - he's introduced talking on a phone as he drives his Mercedes, then he's waving cash around to the waitresses, offering to pay the prize if his intended target and he don't win the dance competition, and owning a lavish property with a three car garage, head of some car business, I think. So if he'd wanted, he could have been a sugar daddy and drawn in a crowd of admirers, but he was too caught up in grief and revenge on womankind to use his wealth like that, and had real personality problems, despite his seemingly naive charm. Any man that has his own disco floor in the basement has to be pretty flush! Shame S&H didn't happen to look over at the large glass window into the basement which Lizzie could see them from. I know it's only supposed to be a representation so we know she knows they've come looking for her, and to increase the drama when they leave with no leads, but if she could see them so well…

It sounds like Tony had a hard life, being brought up in Brooklyn and his Dad giving him tough advice about staying alive (was that a deliberate disco reference?), and it's a shame we don't get his backstory filled in a bit more instead of hinted at, to make him a little more rounded, as a good villain is assisted by a detailed history and motives, not so we can identify with him, but to show he's not just a monster but an ordinary human, which is more chilling than the 'other.' It's amazing how quickly he picks out Lizzie as his next victim, but then the story required a personal target for S&H to be responsible for and raise the stakes beyond strangers we don't know. Tony wasn't exactly the greatest challenge for S&H, which is why he had to threaten their colleague, and he doesn't put up any fight when they come for him, showing that it was only women he had any spirit to cause violence to.

The old checklist of familiar tropes of the series is as much in evidence as always, starting with the prevalence of caricatures, or slightly wacky, off-centre people S&H encounter. The first is Harding, the police guy who fills them in on the case, with his dishevelled appearance and odd introduction that 'somebody said' Dobey 'was here,' as if he wouldn't be in his own office! Even the Captain calls him out on that. Judith is the other odd person, with her large glasses, frizzy hair and unabashed directness, and the same lines used on multiple people she meets. Starsky always attracts the eccentric ones, but then she approaches Hutch, too! The DJ, with his penchant for calling the dancers veggies, and finding what Hutch says about the decline and fall of the Western world, 'heavy,' would also fit that category. I think that's pretty much it on that count, unless you include Tony, who was most definitely peculiar, but you expect the bad guys to be like that.

There was a sort of running joke introduced, but it didn't run very far, and was one of those that, like the backstory of Tony, seemed to be a forgotten part of an earlier version of the script, perhaps, but it provided a fun reintroduction to S&H: Starsky's reading a book called 'Intimidation: Controlling People For Love and Money,' but his tactics of getting up close to people and fixing them with a powerful, unblinking gaze is rather undermined by his breath (something about him eating tostados - a Mexican deep-fried tortilla!), not to mention Dobey isn't going to be intimidated by anyone. It's typical of Starsky that he'd make such mistakes, and of course, Hutch is there to tease him with some of the best lines, like questioning if the theoretical waiter Starsky would use these techniques on has also read the book, and "You know, fourteen ninety-five would buy an awful lot of mints." But the book is soon forgotten, perhaps correctly, considering the seriousness of the subject matter (though it doesn't stop them from enjoying their undercover roles as much as possible), and it would have been interesting to see Starsky's quest for dominance continue, like when he meets Lizzie or anyone else in the episode. For that matter, this sort of scene sounds like the perfect setup for Huggy to be included, and I could have imagined him being the DJ, either undercover or just happening to be doing a job for a second cousin or something like that.

If we didn't know it already, the Pinky (or Perky, I can never remember which it is), on S&H's desk is revealed to be an actual piggy bank, since Marty, during his time at the station, picks it up and shakes it, while Starsky tells him to put it down as he leaves. Hutch pulls off his old trick of distracting Starsky so he can go and introduce himself to Lizzie (Starsky having to pay the waitress for their drinks), and there are tons of references: Starsky reassures the weight-conscious Judith that Rubens and 'those cats' never painted skinny chicks; Merlin, a guess from the 'MER' Lizzie was able to scratch into her seat to clue them onto the Mercedes - Hutch suggests 'Merl,' and I wonder if he was thinking of Merl The Earl? Marty asks if it's 'Scrabble' with all their attempts to work out what it stands for. Starsky calls him a Travolta clone (even though he's the one wearing the white suit), and I'm sure 'Saturday Night Fever' would have been at the forefront of the minds of people watching the episode. Lizzie says she expected S&H to be 'Abbott and Costello Go Disco,' and there are a few disco songs playing throughout. I wonder if they had to get the rights to use them, as that's what usually happens - the 'Voyager' episode, 'Life Signs' has one piece of music used on the VHS version and a different one on the later DVD copy, and the main reason I believe the sci-fi series '7 Days' has never been released is because it has so many songs in it, difficult for the rights issues. Which makes me wonder if they replaced any of the songs in this episode? Probably not, but you never know.

It's amusing when the 'Macho Man' song is being played and Adrian Zmed is introduced, because he's like a junior version of S&H, and would later go on to costar in William Shatner's 'TJ Hooker' cop series in the Eighties -a series I first saw in the same slot as 'S&H' in the early 2000s when I was at college and they showed these on weekday mornings. Ironically, I think 'S&H' has aged better. I originally found 'Hooker' to be more exciting and interesting, then 'S&H' seemed slower and less flashy in contrast when I came to that, but now 'Hooker' seems a bit empty, only action, while 'S&H' has a lot more depth, humour and character in general. But it was fun to have Zmed in the series. The only cast member from a previous 'S&H' was Michelle (Paula Sills was Suzette in Season 2's 'Vampire'). The wasteland Tony dumps his first victim in looked a bit like the Old Zoo from various episodes, but it's difficult to tell for sure. I wonder if Arthur Marks, the Director, was any relation of Gareth Marks, the central villain in one of my other favourite series', 'BUGS'? With all the dancing I was sure the usual blonde background artists would be used again, and there were some, but it's hard to know if it's the same couple who had been in all the other disco or dancing episodes previously. And finally, the running joke of Dobey always eating, is back again in the end scene which has very little to do with the episode: S&H make a fool out of him, teaching him the 'salsa samba' and opening the office door so his staff can see, after he's dismissed the disco craze, saying the routines are just a ripoff from the Forties, and they wouldn't have it if his generation hadn't had big bands and dance halls.

The ending could have done with a last scene with Lizzie back in uniform or shown to be alright, rather than a lighthearted laugh at Dobey's expense, but that was almost always the way: they avoided the viewer going away with too much to think about, and they'd rather have them come out of it with a spring in their step, no matter how depressing the nature of the crimes and the criminals, so they come back next week for more, rather than create a reassuring or thought-provoking finale, and also so that they could go into the upbeat theme music, which would otherwise seem out of place. At least we get a mention of the Captain's wife, Edith, even if she hadn't been seen (or probably heard of!), since Season 1's 'Captain Dobey, You're Dead!' Apparently she's been on his back about taking her dancing, but the ballrooms are closing up.

As a return to the series, this episode does a reasonable job, but you can see how they could have written themes or jokes through it better, fleshed out some of the guest characters, and put the series on the map, but in reality they weren't going to change the format at this stage of the series' life, and what they did do, focusing on the disco club scene of the Seventies, you can see why, but it also makes the episode seem sparse, even with all the energetic enjoyment many of the background extras displayed, and it certainly wasn't boring in the way some of Season 3 could be. The theme music was a new variation (they'd changed it for every season, so why not keep up the tradition?), but the opening credits montage, though edited differently (such as several smaller clips played together in a block) were pretty much the same clips as last season. But it's nice to be back in a more innocent, fun age again.

**

The Defiant One

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S1 (The Defiant One)

Not quite the episode I thought it was going to be, it was nonetheless fairly entertaining, and a vehicle for McKay to show his growing bravery in the field, alongside Major Sheppard. The pair carry the episode with the other cast members (including 'BUGS' actor Joseph May, back as Sergeant Markham, part of the rescue team), are much reduced bit parts this time. When I first saw the Atlantean satellite the team were seeking I assumed (from the title), that it was going to be a creepy creep around an abandoned space facility, the dark shadows hiding a fearsome creature that even Wraith were afraid of, since they discovered a Wraith distress call. In the event, it turned out to be a less imposing Wraith left alone in a crash on a deserted desert planet, whom for all he knew was the last of his race. They could have turned it into a 'Pitch Black' story with the race to secure a safe place during the dazzling daylight hours before the frozen waste of night descended, but again, it was merely a confrontation in bright day between Sheppard and the Wraith who had taken up residence in their Jumper.

Not that it was a bad episode, there are some shivery moments of uncertain exploration in the dark of a crashed vessel with strange noises from the atmosphere or air pressure, but the Wraith never seemed that scary for an abandoned sole survivor who had been forced to feast on his own brethren to stay alive - not sure why he had to, since they discover a store of bodies, but never mind… Time is spent setting up the other two characters on the expedition, Abrams and Gall, but both prove expendable, Gall taking a rather extreme method of escaping Rodney's indecisive chattering: shooting his own Wraith-ageing body (the oldish makeup wasn't the most convincing). I didn't think he should have done that as McKay was about to leave him anyway, he had a gun for emergency protection, and he didn't actually know he was beyond saving, he just felt that way. Perhaps the effects of being fed on can be reversed, and as a scientist he should have tried to stay alive for the research they could get from him back at Atlantis, even apart from the possibility of reversing, or at least halting, the process.

In a more well-plotted series with better drawn characters, we might have got to a point where Gall's suicide was a necessary and heroic sacrifice, but it didn't seem essential, which is a problem for the dramatic truth of the story and takes away from the power such a moment might have had for shock, horror and noble self-sacrifice. On the positive, McKay does get to show he's capable of helping Sheppard and distracts the Wraith long enough for Ford to send a killing shot from orbit as they approach in a second Jumper. It was all well and good that Weir sent a ship from intuition before she knew for certain a rescue was required, but I'd have thought it would have made sense to send backup as soon as they knew they were going into something dangerous, not wait for them to scout it out, report back or not, and then send assistance! It seemed to be an artificial way to heighten the tension. I also felt that it was a bit pointless leaving behind a ship (was that a 'Star Trek IV' reference when Sheppard notes to remember where they parked, before cloaking the Jumper? Plus McKay asks if he thinks he's Captain Kirk at another juncture when Sheppard's reporting the Wraith is on his ship!), going to the trouble of cloaking it, then allowing footprints in the sand to lead right up to the entrance! The Wraith wasn't stupid and was easily able to track it down by following their prints.

The thing with the little buzzy glowing flies, or whatever life form they were, I thought was going to turn into their salvation - perhaps the insects would react defensively to having several of their number squashed by the irritated Wraith, come back in greater numbers and sting him to death. But it was really just a diversion, and a larger life sign for Ford to lock onto, so it definitely wasn't taking inspiration from 'Pitch Black.' It was interesting to see Sheppard's tactics to distract or divert the Wraith, but ultimately the story felt a little pointless, not really teaching us more about the characters, not presenting much drama, a perfectly amiable, inoffensive jaunt that goes nowhere and does nothing. You're bound to get a few like that when you do a season of twenty-plus episodes, and I'd much rather have a few of these than total serialisation where there's much less opportunity to just spend time with the characters. I suppose it made sense for them to strip it down to Sheppard, McKay and a couple of inconsequential characters so that the two main cast members had to rely on each other more, rather than having Ford, Weir, Teyla, Beckett or any of the fleshed-out personnel there to provide greater backup, but it would have been nice to see more of the other cast members and would have given more weight to any potential deaths.

**

Star Trek: Discovery - New Klingons & Mudd

Star Trek: Discovery - New Klingons & Mudd

With the developments, recent and varied, it seemed time to stick my oar in once again and see how my anticipation is shaping up for this decade-plus awaited series, especially as the news has mainly been negatively skewed, from my perspective. First big deal was a leaked behind the scenes photo which appeared to show a group of Klingons (a herd? A stampede? A swarm? I was not aware twelve Klingons constitutes a swarm…), from an extra who was part of the production. It's not been confirmed or denied, as far as I know, simply ignored, but the key thing here was that they didn't even look much like Klingons! They had pointy ears, were completely bald, and looked more like Orcs than members of the great warrior race of Qo'noS. They were wearing some kind of spiky battle armour and while we don't know for certain they were actually what this person said they were, from the early months of production it had been stated, worryingly, that established Trek aliens were going to have a makeover to 'update' them. If this were a simple case of adding texture and detail (think the Kelvin Timeline uniform shirts with their Starfleet chevron pattern), then it would be an obvious development for the greater scrutiny of High Definition viewing. If that means altering the races so they only bear a passing resemblance to their namesakes it's something entirely different.

It's not like this hasn't happened before (obviously the whole Klingons gaining foreheads in 'The Motion Picture,' or Romulans the same in 'TNG'), with 'Enterprise' leading the way in terms of updating the look of much-loved races. That series did it right nine times out of ten: just think of the wonderful improvements made to the Andorians, the Tholians, and expanding the Orions to include the males, that showed just what a modern budget could achieve (I personally wasn't quite as keen on the Tellarites as I prefer the faces from 'TOS' where the eyes were so deeply sunken they couldn't be seen, and the fact they had trotters rather than fingers). These updates were adaptations of existing designs, smoothed out, given extra personality and generally improved without altering the overall formula, but if these aliens seen in the picture were indeed Klingons they've done far more than a simple brush up and paint job! If they came up with an in-universe explanation I could certainly get on board with the new look, and my hope is that if they do turn out to be genuine Klingons there will be some kind of a twist - they're from another time or have been awoken from hibernation. Or maybe a long-forgotten branch of Klingon DNA, perhaps a result of cross-pollination with the legendary Hur'q - that would be exciting!

If the warning sign of the potential diversion from canon that this represents was putting me on Yellow Alert, there was another, official announcement that took me up to Red: they proudly trotted out the news of the casting of a character from 'TOS' who will be making a comeback. I'm not talking about Sarek here, I already mentioned that he'd be a reasonable addition given the time frame and his ambassadorial duties. No, it was Harry Mudd, intergalactic conman of the space-lanes. Now, Roger C. Carmel did a great job of imbuing this vast rogue with personality and providing Kirk and crew with an adversary that tested their morals and patience in equal measure. But once again, to recast such a role that was entirely made up of Carmel's performance and was far from being a bland, forgettable character, is to say that any can be recast, lazily regurgitating old characters to take advantage of name recognition and branding. There are so many characters that could be brought back to great acclaim, and not just from the 'TOS' era: how about Wesley Crusher, who, as a Traveller, can appear in any time and space; or Q, for the same reason; or Guinan, since she was alive at that time? What about the Dax host of the time? My point is there is so much more to the Trek universe than the small corner of 'TOS,' and I get that they've chosen that niche as the place to launch a new series, but Harry Mudd isn't even one of the 'TOS' characters I'd first think about bringing back. Or even the second, third, fourth, etc.

I was in half a mind that it could be an April Fool, but the release date was a day earlier on the 31st March, so I don't know what to think! And it was the way they seemed so keen to get it out there as if to point to the series not being what you thought it was going to be: as in a serious attempt to bring Trek back, but going more for the parody style of the Kelvin Timeline films. A couple of other little oddities are that the main character, not the Captain, but First Officer, will be named Michael Burnham. Except it's a she, and Michael isn't a female name, so that's a bit weird unless it's short for Michaela! It's not that big a deal to have the main lead not be a Captain, as Commander Sisko proved on 'DS9' - he took three seasons to attain the rank we traditionally associate with the main role, so it gives them somewhere to go. I was actually expecting her to be an even lower rank than First Officer, but this reveal suggests we won't be getting a 'Lower Decks' style of storytelling which some wondered about, and hoped for. I'm in two minds, as you are limited in what you can show or do with exclusively lower-ranked officers, but at the same time that episode was a great one in a weaker season of 'TNG.' They've probably made the right decision there and with the various ranks, even up to Admiral and Ambassador that we're going to see, there could be a nice broad spectrum of command and experience on the series.

The other little thing was Michael Dorn mentioning he had been in talks to make an appearance, but that they didn't work out. This would have been brilliant, even if he wasn't playing Worf, as he already had a character in the 23rd Century (Colonel Worf, Worf's Grandfather who, as a lawyer, defended Kirk and McCoy at the Klingon trial in 'Star Trek VI'), and every Trek series has had a character from a previous series to kickstart the next, even the Kelvin Timeline films - and not just a character, but one played by the actor who originated the role. For 'Enterprise' they even pushed the boat out to get James Cromwell back as Zefram Cochrane, which was impressive, so I wait to see what a bigger modern budget could do for us… With all this stuff trundling out I was beginning to feel my anticipation wane, and was about to reduce my rating to **, but the truth is I'm still intrigued, there's still so much to be revealed and hope springs eternal that this series will genuinely continue the historical saga and add to the canon, not ignore or detract from it.

Anticipation Rating: ***

Dune

DOSBox, Dune (1992) game

'Dune II: The Battle For Arrakis' was, and remains, one of my favourite games of all time, up there along with 'The Settlers,' 'UFO: Enemy Unknown' and 'Age of Empires' I and II. The fact that it was a sequel naturally intrigued me, and for many years I was curious to play the original, knowing only that it was similar to the sequel, but with added RPG elements to, ahem, 'spice' up proceedings, shall we say? Of course the 'Dune' series wasn't merely a computer game, but originated with Frank Herbert's science fiction opus of the mid-20th Century, which itself had spawned a film version, but to me it will always be associated with Harvesters mining the orange spice Melange, and the various Houses battling for supremacy on the desert world of Arrakis. First thoughts were that the familiar style of 'Dune II' characters and locales was in evidence, if a little more stylised, but although I was impressed with the visuals of this early nineties game, I soon found myself dealing with the laborious game mechanics where everything had to be done in specific ways, clicking this or that, waiting for a troop to get here, there were no shortcuts, and no amount of beautiful pixellated renditions of people and places could disguise the fact that it was far less accessible than its lauded sequel.

Perhaps I wasn't taking into account that these games pretty much invented the Real-Time Strategy genre, so it should be expected the first attempt would be cumbersome and labour-intensive, with lots of things to get to grips with. In that respect it mirrored your character, Paul Atreides', own experiences, arriving to be confronted with prophecies and plans for him, then thrown right into it. Alright, so the graphical detail helped assuage the impression of hard work, especially when you start travelling around by good old Ornithopter, an item I well remembered from my 'Dune II' days, with the desert ground speeding beneath your wings in a three-dimensional representation that must have been rather impressive at the time. The well-animated screens would soon grow tiresome - seeing the Orni lift off or land lost its novelty quite quickly considering the number of times you had to do it. Fortunately the travel could be skipped so you arrive at your destination without trawling through the wasteland, though the Orni takeoff, or the later harnessing of Sandworms, could not - they must have spent some time on the excellent animation, however, so I didn't feel too irritated, and indeed, you need to sit back and accept a slower, more guided gaming experience than later generations of games would relax.

Except that, although it could be slow, you soon find yourself under pressure, having to fly around to be in a radius sufficient to communicate with your Fremen troops, and far from the experience being linear you're pretty much left to make your own mistakes. Fly too near the enemy Harkonnen space and you'll get shot down with the accompanying graphic death, fast-forwarding through your body's decomposing to dust and bone to rot on the planet's surface; lose too many troops; fail to send Emperor Shaddam IV his demanded shipment of spice and his Saudaukar warriors will finish you off. From one perspective this freedom only adds to the tension of the game and the reality of your position, reality hitting home even harder due to the allowance of a mere two save logs, meaning you can't save every few minutes and jump back to an earlier file if you get to a point of no return. Twice that was very close to forcing me to restart from the very beginning (an era where games were far less forgiving, and rewards had to be earned!). When Chani was captured during her stay with troops, curing them from a mystery illness, I had already taken out most of the Harkonnen Fortresses so was unable to use Espionage to track down which remaining one she was held within, nor could I hope to attack the remaining few since they were heavily armed and my men's motivation had dropped so much with her kidnap.

It was handy, then, that I had a log to go back a good few days, which enabled me to take alternative action, pulling back so an easier fort would be the one to hold her. But it was a close run thing. The same happened towards the very end as I didn't realise the goal was to capture all the Fortresses and I assumed there were many more I had yet to discover, but no way to find them with Espionage failing from all the furthest caves (sietches), I'd liberated or located and no other way to unearth more. The Globe screen with its results of both House Atreides and House Harkonnen didn't appear to have any bearing since its data indicated a massive enemy presence on the planet, spice mining going up, despite me only being able to locate a few final forts. I had enough spice for about one more good shipment to the Emperor (a requirement for the game to continue - he might give a day or so's grace, but eventually you'd die if you didn't fulfil his demands), when I just happened to take the last fort without realising it was such, and on returning to my home palace to find out how much longer I had until the next shipment was due, Duncan Idaho, my trusty business manager, said I had 255 days left! I thought it was a glitch, but I'd take it at this point! But no, the requirement had been met and the last assault was all that was needed for completion, to my relief. As you can see, to lose the ability to complete the game so close to the end would have been a sore trial.

It would have been useful to have been able to automate tasks so that I didn't personally have to sort out everything - after all, I'm supposed to have loyal servants and subjects! Idaho could have been instructed to send the Emperor what he asked for on demand, or 50% more, or whatever I chose, rather than having to make sure I could track back to the palace within the day it was due, to avoid the Emperor's wrath (not having read the book, I don't know if he was an established character or a contemporary addition: the Gulf War and Saddam were at the forefront of consciousness in the early nineties when this was released, and here we have an evil Emperor Shaddam on a desert planet…). But then that would defeat the object, which was to present a world in which to keep the tasks running to accomplishment, you had to be visible and make contact, juggling the various responsibilities entrusted to you. Plus, it would have stripped out a chunk of the game! 'Dune II' would be such a vast enhancement of the concepts in this game as to be virtually separate, but it was nice to see familiar terms from the later game appear: windfarms, Fremen, spice, the Saudaukar, not to mention the Houses or the Emperor, things that I spent so long with in the 1990s.

I was also pleased to see a proper ending, with a little time given over to a proper conclusion, rather than a 'The End' sign coming up when the Harkonnen palace had been stormed (unlike 'Armorines,' the game I played prior to this!), with all the main characters converging on the palace to have it out with Baron Harkonnen, the making of Paul as the new Emperor and faithful Chani, Empress, then showing each main character in all their beautiful artwork as a sendoff, like the end of an old film, taking you back to each person - I love it when a game puts that kind of detail in. They even had 'Dune II' planned since it ends with a message saying it was coming soon! Yes, the toiling between sietches, the slow improvement of Paul's powers (getting to ride a Sandworm, communicating across greater distances, rallying the Fremen, and eventually getting the ecology of the planet off to a good start), and the gradual advancement of troops and expansion of the map, all dragged the game out, and I was really going to be hard on the game when it came to review time, but as I went on I found I was enjoying it, having mastered the various tasks, finding improvements that eased the pain (the main one being the ability to contact troops anywhere on the planet), and the constant visual appeal, whether that were the map view, the 3D travel or the pearlescent visions which served as communication for Paul (why he couldn't contact Idaho in return, I don't know!).

The music was also good, and the characters were an interesting bunch. There was humour, such as the situation of two female characters becoming jealous over you, and the gradual additions to your forces were inspiring. The story element wasn't quite as big a deal as I thought, with the occasional quest or clue to be interpreted, usually as simple as taking someone somewhere - it was certainly no 'Monkey Island,' but it worked and as an old game it was certainly a good one. That they improved the mechanics and design so much with the sequel shows how far the concept could go. I've never played 'Dune 2000,' but I'd be interested to see where that went with that one, and whether further improvements were the order. One thing's for sure: it gave me the wish to delve deeper into the 'Dune' mythos: to revisit 'Dune II' again, even though I played it through to death, winning with all three Houses back in the day; to read the books; maybe even see the film again (which I wasn't keen on upon viewing it a few years ago). It certainly wasn't a waste of time as it first appeared, but a worthwhile exploration of the precursor to a gaming classic which held a satisfying challenge and an interesting history. There's even the replay value of trying to win the game in a shorter number of days (I took 137!), which could potentially draw me back in future.

***

The Return of The Archons

DVD, Star Trek S1 (The Return of The Archons)

The title conjures up images of legend and history since the word 'archon' originates as a title of the nine magistrates of Ancient Athens, so it is fitting that in this context it means the crew or people of the USS Archon, a ship that went missing one hundred years before the episode, dating it to 2167, only a few short years after the Enterprise NX-01 soared the skies of space - it would have been wonderful if we could have seen it in 'Enterprise,' except for the fact that it's a Federation starship, coming after the founding of that organisation, so NX-01 couldn't have met it other than through time travel, or unless the series had lasted at least ten seasons (or skipped a few years into the future), but it's always exciting to hear of the earliest days of starship exploration so it's disappointing that the episode never goes into detail on this lost ship - we don't know who captained her, what class of vessel she was or any other facts apart from the mysterious loss. Not that it proves detrimental to the episode, but it would have made it even better.

We have another one that begins 'hot' - we're right in the midst of the action, with Sulu and O'Neil on the run from we know not what: sinister hooded stalkers, coming for them. It's an introduction that creates tension and grabs you from the off and it's good to see Sulu in a different role from his standard Helm position, even if he fades into the background for the rest of the episode. One thing I couldn't help but realise was how much the story appears to be a judgement on Christianity in particular: generally, though 'TOS' was heavily science based, it didn't have the extreme humanism of 'TNG' and beyond, with attitudes that were more in keeping with a time of greater acceptance for Christian points of view - you only have to look at certain episodes of the series, such as 'Who Mourns For Adonais?' or 'Bread and Circuses' to name two of the more famous examples, to see that God was a part of Starfleet life (why else have a Chapel aboard, as seen in 'Balance of Terror'?). Gene Roddenberry may have had slightly different views at this time than he took on later, as evidenced by the impression he gave of Earth and humanity, even in this episode, compared with a far more idealised version in 'TNG' specifically, which shows his outlook altered over the years. He may even have been under pressure from the studio above not to be too judgemental of 'religious' views, and also the makeup of the audience would have been more attuned to those views back then than the majority now, I would suspect.

This episode proves that Roddenberry didn't completely hold back on his strong views against faith as there are too many specifically selected words and terminology to ignore the intent was to comment on faith, but the episode can be read in more than one way. Firstly, yes, we have 'the body,' the description of those in it as expressing vacant contentment as if their personality and ability to reason and think had been drained away, and Landru, this culture's representation of a man, made god through his philosophy of peace and tranquility for all. It's all rather chilling and paints a shocking picture of those 'caught up' in this lifestyle that has sucked all the life out of them so that Kirk calls their society soulless, without spirit, like a machine. The Borg have echoes of these sentiments, and it's a compelling fear that is expertly examined in much of Trek, the giving yourself over to something that 'absorbs' you totally, subsumes you into it. The Borg were equally as ripe a culture to explore the ultimate loss of individuality, merging 'into the unity of the good' as Landru's followers expressly call it here. But I would argue that what both the Borg and this episode are actually warning of, are cults, whether of personality or of organisation, and the creepiness of it all is as much the familiar phrases and the people who look just like ordinary humans, which means they look like us, and the horror is of seeing us portrayed as calm and vacant one moment and violent in the extreme, the next.

Cults often pick and mix which bits and pieces they choose to accept from Biblical text, so there's enough truth in what they say to ensnare the unwary and those looking for something more in life, and this is exactly what has happened to this culture. But far from being a man-made religion, making up its rules to reach God, rather than accepting God's free offer, their own pride of needing to achieve or accomplish in order to reach some 'thing' higher than themselves, this is, it could be said, even worse, as it's not even a human mind that has organised this society, but a machine. A computer is found to be behind it all (something that would become a running theme in primitive, idol-worshiping cultures of 'TOS' we'd see again and again), but not in some devious scheme to corrupt the populace or to ensure its own survival, but from a programmed sense of what is right and wrong, what is best for the people. The original Landru must have been a charismatic leader to bring the inhabitants of that planet away from the many wars they'd experienced, to a peaceful world. Hmm, what does that remind you of? The name Surak ring any bells? More on that later…

If we look on the plight of these people as being caught up in a cult it is much more palatable and seems less like a hard dig at Christianity, because a cult would make such things as 'the body' seem sinister rather than a group of people following God's Word. In the Bible the body was an analogy for the church to make it easier to understand that there are different parts of the whole and each have different roles and skills. In the Landru cult it merely means a frightening cloud that must be allowed to take over the mind to enable Landru's strict governance to be perpetuated. Spock describes it as a computer when the Lawgivers respond to Kirk's defiance to follow the will of Landru, and they basically can't compute this reaction. But, just like the Borg, they learn and adapt, and once they've had time to 'commune' with Landru, they return to threaten death if Kirk fails to comply, in the same way that a Phaser can take out one or two drones initially, but the Borg always adapt their shielding, the weapons eventually proving useless against them. It doesn't stop the use of terminology like 'blessed be the body' and 'communion,' or 'you heard the word and disobeyed' from gaining negative connotations in the context of the story, not to mention the scary Lawgivers wear robes to resemble monks, which doesn't help dispel the impression of attacking faith as a mindless loss of reason, and the empty words of joy and bland happiness, as if the affected are drugged up.

At the same time there is evidence for the right-thinking approach the Bible advocates, of testing and seeing, not just blindly following. Marplon (according to the credits, or Marphon according to the latest 'Star Trek Encyclopedia,' take your pick!), the good guy who saves Kirk and Spock from being absorbed (although it must have been a temporary condition since both McCoy and Sulu are back to normal by the end, probably because of Landru's destruction), is an excellent case for the positive image of faith: he has long believed in the return of the Archons, in other words that, as the prophecy said, more of the same kind will come to set them free, in the same way that other leaders and Jesus was prophesied to come to set free. It's also interesting that the resistance cells were arranged into threes, and Marplon describes himself as one of the triad, which could be a reflection on the Trinity. And whether Kirk and company like it or not, they do seem to be the fulfilment of prophecy. Admittedly, this side of the story isn't fully explored in much detail, just as the history of the USS Archon is left to our imaginations, but the subtext is there, and that's what makes the episode so fascinating to me: if they were genuinely presenting a case for faith as being a flaw, rather than faith in the wrong thing being flawed, they wouldn't have had Marplon talk of prophecy or maybe even have shown anyone objecting to the overruling flow of the people at the risk of their own lives.

If the message of the episode isn't fully obvious from the writing and execution, the same can be said for other aspects of the universe that was continuing to be created as there are several inconsistencies of both the large and small variety. In the small category we have Kirk call McCoy 'Doc,' which just sounds painfully out of step with the series as we know it. As far back as 'The Enemy Within' Kirk had addressed his Chief Medical Officer as Bones, but it hadn't become that regular as he tended to call him 'the Doctor' or 'McCoy' most of the time, which is why this flurry of 'Docs' is so strange to our ears. One thing's for sure: the writers had certainly not got all their Docs in a row yet… I also found it to be a little strange that Kirk keeps referring to all his officers as Mister. So we have Mr. Leslie, and Mr. O'Neil, Mr. Lindstrom and Mr. Galloway, rather than referring to them by rank. I also felt that one of them stood out much more than the others and was clearly a role designed to be more than a background redshirt - I can't remember which one it was, but he certainly seemed to come into the foreground whenever he was in a scene, as if he was a character that might recur in future. I expect William Shatner made a point of saying Mr. Leslie's name (the second episode in a row when he's woken the stunned Leslie), since he'd suggested the name as a tribute to his daughter!

There are a couple of big details that would later be ironed out or outright changed, and these are the attitude of Earth as paradise, and Spock as a spiritual being. I wouldn't be surprised if this story was the basis for the Vulcan history of Surak overcoming the Vulcans' warlike existence and setting them on a path to peace forevermore, except rather than building a computer to oversee his people and continue/enforce his ways, Surak, being Vulcan, continued on, his katra passed down through the generations so his knowledge and wisdom wouldn't be lost (unless you live in the Kelvin Timeline, in which case it looked like all the Vulcan relics and containers of katras were lost, though who knows, maybe Sarek and the other elders were able to 'download' some into their brains in time, but I'm pretty sure we'll never know what happened since those films don't go into detail and are about to become redundant thanks to 'Discovery' rediscovering the Prime Universe). Yet Spock displays lack of empathy with the people here, calling their Red Hour carousing and vandalising totally illogical! You'd think he'd see the parallels with his own culture and appreciate the need for constraint except for set times, after all, these people don't have Vulcan strength and discipline to restrain their violent emotions, and it could be said the Pon Farr is much like this, except more personal. Perhaps that was why Spock expressed such disapproval, since Pon Farr and other aspects of his heritage had yet to be revealed and they're a secretive race (something their brethren, the Romulans, also never relinquished).

The same could be said for his attitude to the soul, since he doesn't seem to like the idea of such things, preferring the provable, when later he would learn for himself the value and reality of spirit and soul. But he was still relatively young at this time, his brush with death happening decades later so perhaps at this time he was into pure science as his doctrine of choice and hadn't yet learned to be more flexible, either with his human side or his Vulcan beliefs. Another historical point to note is his and Kirk's discussion at the end of the episode about Earth never having got to a place of peace and security as this world was, to which Kirk jokes they were lucky. This apparently flies in the face of Roddenberry's philosophy of the perfection of humanity and the paradise of Earth, which in 'TNG' is prevalent and the driving force of his tenure in charge. Again, it's a question of time, both real world with Gene's ideas and ideals changing, and in the Trek universe: in another century things had evidently become much better. Not to say that Earth is a war-torn horror, since Kirk is clearly being lighthearted about it, and it's more about the sentiment that rough times provide growth, while settled, comfortable times are more prone to producing laziness and settling for less. So I'm sure Earth was a great place at that time, but it hadn't risen to the heights of the 24th Century (even if that century did have the spectre of attack surround it on several occasions, like the Borg or the Breen).

Spock's behaviour is another part of the episode which shows the full character still hadn't been hammered out yet: when the Lawgivers come, he and Kirk surprise them, but rather than perform a nerve pinch to knock out his target, Spock chooses to belt the guy in the chops in a most un-Vulcan-like way, especially odd considering Nimoy himself had suggested a more economical attack much earlier in the season, so why revert to physical violence? It's not like they did it without thinking either, as they have Kirk comment on it, saying something like 'isn't that a bit old-fashioned?' Maybe it was a story thread that was abandoned, because I could easily imagine some rationale being that Spock was reverting to the modes of his ancestors because of some signal that Landru was giving out, or this was an effect from the sonic pulse that knocked him and the others out. It's even more noticeable because later he actually does perform a nerve pinch! There's also the impression he conducted a mind meld on McCoy, as we enter a scene with him probing the Doctor's mind, his fingers on his face in classic mind meld style, but he can't do anything. He actually looks more Vulcan in this episode than any other, I would say, since the cloak he wears (if you ignore the trousers and shoes), is very much like the robe in 'The Motion Picture.'

There's something much more unsettling about the people of this planet because of their attire: they wear Victorian or 19th Century garb, and it looks likely this is another parallel Earth society, the buildings all look period architecture as do the manners and bearing. The difference is that they're more advanced than they seem, as evidenced by a hidden piece of technology, the lighting panel Reger has hidden away - I thought they did an excellent job of presenting this advanced piece of technology, a flat panel that simply provides light, something that in the sixties would have been amazing, but which is easily possible now with smaller lighting elements and better batteries. Technology plays a big part in the story, from the revelation of another Tricorder function (it has the capability to block scanning beams, although in this case they were too strong), to the seeming specificity of Phasers (we see Kirk order a wide beam stun to knock out the approaching zombielike townsfolk; it's a blue beam, where later, when he and Spock blast a chunk of the wall to reveal Landru's true form, the beams are red as if to signify a more powerful setting, which I really like!). I also found the use of the Transporter to create tension a great idea: Sulu requests emergency beam-out, but O'Neil runs away as the Lawgivers approach. Unfortunately, Sulu gets affected, whereas it would have been a better lesson to stand your ground and you'll be safe, instead of running and being absorbed as O'Neil did - come to think of it, Sulu's story never went anywhere, he could have been a danger on the ship, but it's not explored. It also showed they can't beam up a moving target.

The biggest technical triumph was in Kirk launching a thousand logic problems by talking a computer to death, and not for the last time! It would become his stock in trade whenever a culture was being hoodwinked by a machine with delusions of godhood. You'd think Spock would be the one to use logic to defeat a computerised foe, but then he might be a little too close to the subject matter, as Kirk says he'd make a very good computer at the end. The hole they blew through a wall to reveal Landru looked suspiciously like the Guardian of Forever, and I wonder if it was actually cut out and later used as that august creation as it seems more likely that a cash-strapped production would keep hold of every piece of set they could for reuse, rather than it being a huge coincidence when the episodes were only a few weeks apart. Mind you, that's not the only reuse, as much of the story's elements have similarities to 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?' You have the ancient machinery being used to keep a world in order (like that of the Old Ones that Korby uses to make his androids), tall hooded enemies that carry out their master's will (like Ruk), Kirk talking a machine around (as he did to Ruk), and underground rooms and chambers, and I was even waiting for him to place a strong thought in his mind as he was absorbed so that he was able to fight it (as he did with the android copy of himself), except he was saved from the device this time. The only thing missing is a love interest for the Captain, but he does get kissed - during the Red Hour a woman flings herself on his face!

As the former is probably my favourite episode, it's no surprise that I like this one, too. It has pretty much everything, including more of an ensemble feel (in a small way), with Sulu having his moment and Scotty getting to command the ship and sit in The Chair, even if he was powerless to prevent the heat beams from pulling the Enterprise down towards the planet - we're told that if the ship went to warp, or even impulse, the shields would fail, although I wasn't clear on whether this was because all available power was appropriated to keep shields up, or movement itself would have made the ship more vulnerable, but either way it's good to see Scotty on the Bridge and running the place, even if he's no substitute for Kirk, who is obviously one of a kind since no one from the Archon was able to defeat Landru, and Kirk's even the last to succumb to the debilitating sonic wave that incapacitates his Landing Party. We even get the Prime Directive discussed, with Spock bringing it up, though Kirk gets around it by saying it only refers to a living, growing culture, and does this one look like that? Yes, it was fast and loose, but it was the era of cowboy diplomacy, and it fit the mood, as did the somewhat Wild West clothing Kirk and crew wore as they moseyed down the streets. All they needed were six-shooters and cowboy hats and the picture would have been complete! Tamar, played by Jon Lormer, the guy who gets killed by hollow tube blast, had been in Trek before as the illusory main survivor in 'The Cage,' though he went uncredited in that one. And the colourful Hall of Audiences I think was used again in 'I, Mudd,' as it's quite distinctive.

At least this time they didn't disrupt an entire planet, then move on without any assistance for the populace, or the promise that a ship would drop by at some point as had been the case before: no, this time Lindstrom and a team of specialists stay behind to help sort out the mess. Kirk wasn't going to hang around for that, was he? It's not his forte, he's better at tearing down false gods and dictators, then on to the next one. His skill in 'the body' of Starfleet was clear. The ominous terminology and the shocking changes in the people we see help to make this a good episode - it really is horrifying to see them switch from genteel and tranquil to thugs, screaming and wild, a festival of abandon and terror. It's a concept that has been done in sci-fi a lot as we seem to have a fascination with letting loose and allowing our inner emotions to have full control, a whirlpool of rage, desire, hatred, euphoria and all the extremes, rather than the necessary curbing of those flesh-based impulses. Freedom, as some would call it, anarchy, but in reality slavery to themselves, unable to be in control to the detriment of themselves and those around them. One thing Kirk got very wrong was in his insistence that freedom is never a gift and has to be earned, which is certainly contradicting Biblical teaching, which is that God gives us freedom by grace, it can't be earned. The Captain needs to go back and check his scriptures…

***

Tomorrow Is Yesterday

DVD, Star Trek S1 (Tomorrow Is Yesterday)

The template for the atypical, and for the time travel, episodes of Trek. It could be credited with the template for comical, except for the facts we'd already had 'Shore Leave' and 'The Squire of Gothos.' Yet the stakes are much lower in the immediate sense than the mystery of the Amusement Park Planet, with the sinister turn, or the foppish, but deadly Squire Trelane, which added an edge to the farce of those. Here, the position is awkward, though not grim. They talk of being trapped in time, with nowhere, least of all the Earth to go - if they don't want to risk contaminating the timeline by allowing Captain Christopher (no, not Christopher Pike, Captain John Christopher), to return to his wife and children, even less can they afford four hundred and thirty crewmen to descend on an unsuspecting homeworld (couldn't they have gone to Vulcan?). It made me think of 'First Contact' where the Enterprise-E is evacuated with orders to find a quiet place and make new lives for themselves, except Picard is confident they won't alter the correct stream of events. The worst that can happen is that they live on in the 20th Century, but live they would, rather than being killed by rampaging Medieval Knights or a petulant alien child. So we can excuse a little of the levity with which this situation is greeted, Kirk in particular finding it a great wheeze to see the shocked expression of Christopher at being beamed aboard, seeing this large space-going vessel and hearing such a cock and bull story as future humans, time travel, and aliens.

He never believed in little green men (he must have been too young when Quark, Rom and Nog crashed at Roswell in 1947!), something agreed by Spock, and even Kirk mentions he's a 'little green man' when captured by base security. It's funny to think that only twenty years previous, Ferengi had visited, but as Kirk leaves open to interpretation (and gap-filling), aliens weren't known of in this time, or at least not publicly, leaving the door open for such things as the Roswell incident to be confirmed or denied depending on history. Not, I'm sure, that the writers thought much about the future believability of this series. They'd have had to be fools to think that this particular one would outlast the majority, and still, fifty years later, would be beloved by so many and watched even then. I expect they'd have wondered at the lack of development and speed of advancement in the world, since with the evidence at hand they would probably have assumed the space program would have advanced greatly, with citizens trips to the Moon, manned missions beyond it, and so on, which never happened. So to think we'd still be enjoying our space kicks by watching this old relic… well, they'd probably have been both delighted and dismayed had they not lived into future decades. They got one thing right, though: the contemporary military computers, bulky reel to reel models, would be museum fodder, not just by Kirk's time, but by our present day!

Kirk enjoys his sojourn into the past, even though it was only the second experience of time travel (after 'The Naked Time'), and the first to a specific period on Earth, the beginning of many more such adventures throughout Trek lore. One of the interesting choices (besides having them go to the contemporary time of the series' production, something that every series would do in one form or another), was to have a cold start with no cast from the series, completely set on Earth, with only the glimpse of the Enterprise sailing majestically through the clouds to give us the clue that this was, indeed, 'Star Trek.' We open with the sight of jets taxiing from an airfield in search of a 'UFO,' and it's quite a change from the usual opening (later inspiring such diverse fare as '11:59' from 'Voyager' and 'Carpenter Street' from 'Enterprise,' among others), which continues as we get a Captain's Log, post credits, that explains what's happened, and we see the aftermath of their interaction with a black star and its 'breakaway' that sent them hurtling through time. It's one of the least scientific aspects of Trek (the 'fi' much more ascendant than the 'sci' in this particular episode), but the slingshot effect is just one of those trademarks that we accept as being a genuine route to travelling through time so we can enjoy the speculative possibilities of such an adventure without worrying about how exactly that would work (in the same category as Superman spinning the globe in reverse to somehow turn back time, which was even more ridiculous!).

Kirk tends to go back and forth, at first enjoying the situation and the chance to show off his ship to an ancestor, but also understanding the gravity of the situation, the necessity of retrieving the photographs Christopher took of the Enterprise which could be in sufficient detail to alter the timeline, long before the tiresome notion of infinite timelines which split off with every decision, thus making one set timeline a falsity, but also destroying any sort of attraction to real historical events and cheapening all existence into the bargain - especially when we've seen Trek develop a detailed future history through five decades, taking it for granted that the one we see is The Timeline, which must be preserved or else changes will occur, much more dramatic than an 'anything goes' mentality of the kind comic books continuity embraces to its detriment. Spock isn't exactly playing by the temporal rulebook, himself, as both times when a past human sees him, he makes no attempt to hide himself, not backward in coming forward, boldly striding into the limelight as if proud to show off his alien nature! Naturally this creates amusement, but it's not what you'd expect from Starfleet officers taking the time stream seriously, especially a Vulcan! It's a bit like 'Who Watches The Watchers' where they tried to keep too much knowledge from an unfortunate visitor. 'The Neutral Zone' is another episode that may have taken inspiration from this, as we have 20th Century humans waking up and having to deal with this wondrous, impossible starship and crew that they could never have imagined (assuming they never watched Trek back in the day!).

It's played for laughs, especially the airman that finds Kirk and Sulu in the records room and gets beamed up for his trouble. Couldn't they have held him in the Transporter beam until they were ready to go, then it would have merely looked like he saw the intruders vanish before his eyes and he'd be unable to account for the extra hours he missed? The same could have been done to Christopher so they didn't need to have him come aboard at all, or they might even have beamed him directly from the wreckage of his fighter plane (the tractor beam must be rougher on ships than we thought if it rips apart this plane!), to the ground and he'd have been none the wiser, the timeline uncorrupted. It could be that Transporters of this era weren't as reliable, but the main reason against it is that it would have denied us the experience of guests on the Enterprise from another time, and you don't want to avoid drama, you want to bring it on and deal with it. Even if, in this case, they dealt with it in a supremely odd way. They travel further back in time because of their speed (or something), and beam both Christopher and the airman into their own bodies! Which somehow makes them forget because they're sent back to a time before they came aboard… I'm having a little trouble understanding that, or how you can beam someone into an earlier version of themselves, but I can't deny the effect looked good and was an elegant solution compared with what I thought was going to be McCoy wiping their short term memories.

One effect that wasn't looking so good was the Enterprise in the sky. Some shots were fine, with it sailing through the cloudscape, but one in particular where it bounces up and down from cloud to cloud on a horizontal plane (like the bikes in old Commodore 64 game, 'Kikstart,' or the original 'Excitebike' from Nintendo), looked appallingly laughable. It wasn't much better when we see the ship hanging there rocking up and down! It's sad to see the limits of their model work at this time because it could have been a perfect showcase for the ship, so rare was it to see it in anything other than the darkness of space. No doubt the Remastered version took full advantage, but that was the way things were at the time. Yet I can't help but think they could have done something slightly more in tune with the series and how we've seen the ship, easily the most embarrassing effects of the model so far. The crew inside were subjected to several bouts of being flung around - the first scenes aboard her even start with Uhura and Leslie lying on the deck and having to be helped up by the Captain and First Officer (anyone looking for some evidence of gentleness and care from Spock towards Uhura, to in some way support the Kelvin Timeline's insistence on their romantic attachment, would be surprised to see how roughly he pulls her up and pushes her around like a piece of meat!).

A notable addition to the crew lineup is Mr. Kyle, the Transporter Chief who was in a number of episodes and regarded well enough that they brought him back for 'Star Trek II.' The protocols for having unexpected visitors aboard ship either aren't followed or are very strange: the poor, shocked airman that finds himself in the Transporter Room confronted by a guy with a bowl cut, pointy ears and makeup above the eyes is left to stand stunned - we see him hanging around the Transporter Room later, with Kyle the only occupant. Being a genial sort he asks what food the guy would like and from the food slots in the rear of the room punches in an order for chicken soup. Shouldn't he be taken under guard to some quarters, or the brig? At least give the dazed fellow a chair to sit in after his shock! Mind you, Captain Christopher isn't treated much better with Spock openly declaring to all and sundry that he never made any relevant contribution to history so it doesn't matter if he never returns! Even Tuvok was more sensitive than that, and he was a full Vulcan - he didn't let on to the Romulan who was only a few decades in the past that he was going to die (in 'Eye of The Needle'), but Spock is completely uncaring for either the guy or the timeline! It turns around later when he gets the good news he's going to have a boy who'll be integral to the future space programme (something to do with Saturn, but he'd better hurry up as he must be getting on a bit by now!). Spock wasn't at his best - he really felt the need to call up Kirk while he was greeting Christopher in the Transporter Room, and ask if they should turn off the tractor beam now the jet's been dismantled by it? He's the First Officer! He does redeem himself somewhat when he sneaks round behind Christopher during the mission on the base, nerve-pinching him successfully.

I did like the fact they talk of a manned moon shot, since this was made in 1966, three years before such a thing actually happened, but it must have been in the air that NASA was approaching such an objective. There are also some great facts let loose over the course of the episode, such as the Enterprise being one of only twelve of its kind in the fleet (and they make contact with 'Starfleet Control' in the final scene). I can't remember how many starships were on the chart in 'Court Martial,' but even if there were more than twelve we can assume they weren't all Constitution-class (I don't think the class has even been mentioned yet). Kirk also claims his authority comes from the United Earth Space Probe Agency, something touched on in the last episodes of 'Enterprise' where it was obviously a pre-Federation organisation in the same way Starfleet was. The Communicator has a special emergency signal which can be interpreted as a request for beam out, and without Kirk's Communicator they can't beam him aboard or even locate him (presumably because he's among so many humans). We get to see the black belt upon which it rests, separately for the first time when Kirk and Sulu hand them over to the airman (they look so much better and more expensive than the previous brown ones). It also seems pretty clear the Enterprise has but one Transporter Room, since Kirk orders a guard posted outside of it in case Christopher tries to escape. And once again, Spock usurps Uhura's earpiece for his own use. Maybe everyone has one?

The humour isn't too silly, whether it's Kirk's slightly comical fight against three airmen that find him, but I like the relish with which he goes into it and the resolve on his face as he closes the door in a way that says no one's going through there, giving Sulu time to beam away. His lighthearted reaction to be being caught and interrogated doesn't go too far, he's never arrogant, knowing how important this situation is, but also knowing he has the power just out of range to escape. Though he must have been speaking generally when he responds to the officer's threat to lock him up for two hundred years, saying that that would be about right (if he was going to be living into the 22nd Century!). But things are a little bizarre when they throw in the computer talking in a kittenish female voice on the Enterprise, ostensibly altered by a race dominated by women that they'd stopped at for repairs, whom had replaced the monotone with personality. The episode was going for a lighter tone, but it was just so odd, especially as that could have been the idea for a whole episode in itself, and had the impression of being something from an earlier draft of the script that had been left in, but not developed. Once again we see a clip from a future episode: this time it's Spock being hit by the spores from 'This Side of Paradise,' but they were showing these things out of production order, so maybe that episode had already been seen?

***