DVD, Stargate SG-1 S9 (Ethon)
Classic tale of underestimation and a further horrible proof that the influence of The Ori can ravage chaos across worlds already inflamed by the passion of hatred. A surprisingly powerful story considering it's all based around a forgettable, mundane, military planet divided into two warring factions. Tegalus was previously visited in Season 8's 'Icon,' and didn't make for much of an episode, but they redeem its creation, if not its blinkered, wrathful people, by using it as the base on which to build in another show of what the Priors' devastating ultimatum may mean to ordinary planets. It seems just a matter of time before a Prior will come to your world and so we're beginning to see how other worlds we've known are using or abusing this new development in the galaxy even if they aren't greatly a part of that galactic stage. Planetary politics have now become of interest to the servants of The Ori, whatever works to get the biggest return, the quickest way. So they unthinkingly upset the balance of power on Tegalus by giving one side, the Rand Protectorate, plans with which they can build a satellite weapon with the power to blast cities, and the other side, the Caledonian Federation, have no choice but to accept surrender, the choice being a mass migration through the Stargate, kicked off their own planet, or death. I never found out who the Ethon of the title was, either character or place, which is a bit of an oversight, but doesn't harm the episode or take away from its tale of woe.
The prejudices and hard line thinking of those in charge allows no room for diplomatic solutions, the Rand President Nadal quite willing to throw all honour aside (assuming he had any in the first place), by allowing Daniel Jackson and Kane, who'd brought the news to Earth in the first place, as well as blueprints on the satellite, to return for talks, only for them to be cast into prison, no interest in listening to the reality of what the Priors are, and how they could be defeated. The power of The Ori is the only concern for this man and, presumably, many of his people, who only care about the destruction or subjugation of their lifelong enemy. The futility of dealing with such blinkered minds is played out in full and doesn't end happily, with both death for the President at the hand of his military leader, Commander Pernaux, who is also gunned down for the deed, and a resumption of global hostilities that by what we hear afterwards, sounds like a reduction of both sides of the civilisation to rubble. It's a grim cautionary tale of where hatred leads and a warning that diplomacy can't always succeed. Daniel came close, getting through to Pernaux, but even his turning on the President after seeing the direction his dishonest actions and dishonourable conduct was taking their people, wasn't enough to avert an all-out war of destruction to the best of their capabilities.
Quite apart from the sorrowful conclusion to this state of affairs, is the shocking takedown of the Prometheus, the Earth ship caught in the crossfire of both the Priors' technology and the enmity of the people on the planet, as they're given no quarter and Commander Pendergast, a recurring character of several seasons, goes down with his ship in the fine tradition of a Captain and his sinking vessel. He was never really fleshed out as a character so it's not like it's a heartrending loss to the series and the characters that populate it, but it certainly adds a frisson to The Ori that even just a little meddling in some small, backwater planet can change the course of the series. The Prometheus was a stalwart, reliable addition to the ongoing improvement of our technology, so to lose it in such a heartless and unexpected fashion makes underlines much more the dangers of facing unknown alien technology. Its mission was never very well defined, its role more of a useful item to get the team out of trouble or to set up stories, and it was clearly meant to provide a bit more of a Trekky feel to the series once there was no more Trek on TV, or at least it came to fill that hole to some small extent. But it's not like we saw them beaming down to planets and doing the whole Trek-style Away missions, it was still run as a present-day military ship. Even so, it had been there as a recurring part of the series and its loss, as well as Pendergast's, is not something you'd normally expect.
That is the point - The Ori and their influences were meant to shake things up, and this they have done, and the episode deals blatantly with the religious jihad overtones encouraged by the Priors and their Book of Origin. We've seen what the fear of the Priors and wonder at their power can do, now we see that added to a generational war, and it's a no-win scenario for those involved. You feel the frustration of Daniel and the others, you see the treacherous manner in which the adherents, mainly the President, conduct their ways, and it just makes everything much worse. I knew Carter wasn't going to die on the Prometheus, but I was still concerned about what had happened to her, as we don't see her get off, so it was a relief when she hurries into the Caledonian HQ and it's no wonder they allowed time for Teal'c to express his own relief because we're all still reeling from the Prometheus being blown to pieces. That's where the underestimation came into it: our Earth ship with its Asgard tech is obviously going to be far superior to anything Rand could build with their level of tech, and so they fly in expecting an easy takeout of the satellite, the only real problem being how they can extricate Daniel from Rand custody, but in the end it was essential that he was there in that control room to speak sense, just as Carter was in the Caledonian one, and Mitchell and Teal'c in the air. For once they really are the true SG-1, going to planets and taking on the most difficult of missions. But success is relative and you can't always win, especially against murderous, unbridled hate, rekindled by violent religious fervour. Sobering.
***
Tuesday, 29 January 2019
Project Zero
DVD, The Champions (Project Zero)
Another undercover mission, another 'mad' scientist with plans of power, another member of the champions team discovered and held captive, another rescue mission… Project Zero could refer as much to the level of originality as to its ground zero nuclear inference, but it does show some signs of ingenuity along the way. The dog whistle method of communication for one, the sinisterly empty village on the outside of the underground research lab, for another, and Sharron getting to save the day all by herself for a change. I'm always surprised when the Nemesis agents go in undercover, or in a different guise, only to use their own names! Now I know Dr. Voss didn't have access to Wikipedia (and it wouldn't be too hard for Nemesis to create a false account even if he did!), but you'd think there'd be a 'Who's Who' of 1966 or 1967 on a shelf somewhere that would show that no record of a successful scientist, such as 'Richard Barrett,' exists. Voss and his many comrades (and it did seem to be a sizeable operation, though it could have been a ruse, just as using an annexe at the Ministry in Whitehall was designed to make everything seem genuine and government sanctioned), appeared to be pretty resourceful in tracking down available scientists, so you'd think even a good cover would have been unearthed as fake. But they were coming to the end of the project and perhaps cutting corners, and the whole scene with that unfortunate reporter being tortured makes a strong case for Richard's profession being real. Personally, I think it was slapping on thick glasses that got him into the club…
That torture scene, where a man is strapped to a chair and bombarded with excruciating sound waves, was extreme, showing just how wicked Voss and his gang are, and it is surprising that he actually dies in agony on screen, no sensitive cutting away or hiding the horror of the situation. And this is what the champions must head into. 'The Avengers' and 'The Prisoner' were the first thing that came to mind from the pre-credits scene of a terrified scientist (we know this because he's wearing a white coat), runs haphazardly through the silent village until bursting into the Post Office he begs to use the phone, but is confronted by a seemingly slow proprietor who he can't get through to, but who calmly closes the blind and shoots him with a silenced pistol. From this man's actions you could speculate that the village is, in fact, just an ordinary place, because otherwise why would he need to close the blind if anyone seeing the execution was in on the operation? And why use a silenced pistol? Maybe it was just a quiet day, or early in the morning, and the natural instinct to head to the PO for communication to the outside world was what the villains were counting on if anyone were to escape. Either that, or the Postmaster, as he's credited, really was slow and it wasn't an act, and he was being very careful, or maybe he just liked to do things for effect. And those actions were very effective, the first time, at least. He was fortunate in that he was captured by Sharron rather than being on the plane she blows up like Voss and others of his group.
One approach the episode makes is very effective: that of setting things up first with normal people and seeing how they react (i.e., dying), then later showing how the champions deal with the same trick. So Richard takes to the torture chair we saw a man die in at the start, and Sharron faces the Postmaster's gun. The great thing is how they use their skills to survive. Something that could have done with greater exploration was the slight theme of their abilities versus more traditional technological gadgetry, first proposed by Craig as he and Sharron follow Richard's acceptance into the secret project with the use of a listening bug concealed in a slide rule. Bugs and gadgets are always interesting in this series just from the perspective of the period, showing what technology was capable of at that point, but the answer is 'relatively little' so they don't use them much. The only real advantage would seem to be in making reports where Tremayne can't question how they heard something or got some piece of information. As Craig says, their natural methods are superior to bugs, and it appears to be borne out by Richard's ruler dropping out of his pocket and being trodden on by the air stewardess, losing them their connection. As we've seen so many times before, they have the ability to speak without anyone else hearing, but there must be a limit on how far this works as even from London to one of the Orkney Islands where the secret lab is situated, they don't even try it. We've also seen the ability to transmit a visual message from mind to mind, but they don't try that here, either.
It just so happens that this time Craig tries out a different method of communication while Richard is still in London: a dog whistle that ordinary human ears can't detect, but which can be heard by theirs. It's loud enough that Sharron grimaces in pain sitting next to Craig when he uses it in the car. Convenient plot device aside, it works out well when Tremayne lets them use the same entry point Richard used to infiltrate, when they lose track of him: posing as scientists in need of support and being just the discipline in which someone was needed. It means that when they arrive at their mysterious destination off Scotland (Scotland again!), Craig can let Richard know he's there, and Richard fashions a crude version of a whistle to respond, since he can't actually speak any words unapproved by Voss and his cronies or they'll blow his head off by activating the miniature explosives locked into a metal collar around his neck. For once it shows how their powers can have drawbacks, as there's nothing Richard can say, it would immediately draw attention to his Nemesis colleagues, so the dog whistle in this case proves useful, though even there it's only effective thanks to their superior hearing. You'd have thought this would have been against Richard during his torture, as being so sensitive (as I mentioned, Sharron's in pain just from the whistle trial), would surely make the already deadly sound pressure many times worse, but perhaps it works like Vulcan inner eyelids in 'Star Trek,' and their ears can close off damaging sound?
Dr. Voss has many of the usual flawed characteristics of those who follow the path of villainy, not least of which is a failure to kill his most dangerous opponents quickly and cleanly. Instead, he has to put the collar on Richard and forces him to lie to the other scientists that he's actually an undercover reporter who has been found out, something which they can believe, under the influence, as they are, of the plausible setup that this is a top secret government project. They all seem to be goodhearted British fellows (presumably the other nationalities had already made their contributions earlier in the development), as shown by their horrified reaction to the truth when Craig and Sharron show them 'illustrations' for ideas on the guidance system of the fission gun they've built (cover for a message about what's really going on - fortunate that no CCTV cameras were in use). Antrobus' first thought is that their work must be destroyed, a selfless, but common sense reaction when you consider how thrilled he was by the success of the experiment to fire a microscopic beam of accelerated electrons into the nuclear material, the device said to be the combination of a laser beam and an electron gun (though it looks like an oversized Phaser rifle from Trek when it fires!). The Manhattan Project is mentioned, the famous creation of the first atom bomb by the Americans, and which Wittering, one of the scientists, was said to be involved in. This new device, which the inventors believe is to be used in defence only, is considered the most important breakthrough in twenty years, but that must all be tossed aside to prevent it being used by an enemy.
Voss' motivations or plans are never made entirely clear to us, though he hints that he may either be working for the 'other superpower,' or that he has plans to sell his services to the highest bidder, or that he may just take out all the nuclear weapons, though something tells me he wouldn't be doing that for benevolent reasons. With the power to detonate nuclear warheads within three miles of the gun, wiping out nuclear stockpiles of the major powers wouldn't be out of the question, and perhaps he even had plans to become some kind of world dominator and hold the globe to ransom. His death by explosion doesn't seem so unwarranted in that light. Sharron gets to take the credit for foiling the plot and saving the whole island's skins by rigging the gun to explode on use, but it was a tense moment as Voss' plane speeds overhead for its sighting and bombing runs and there's nothing Richard and Craig can do to avoid destruction. It's fitting that Sharron gets the post-credits sequence alone at the beginning of the episode, though her turn at wine-tasting, accurately correcting the vintner's dating of the bottle, wasn't exactly one of the more impressive feats, as any good connoisseur could probably do the same.
It sets the tone for an episode that in small moments is good, but is lacking overall and not terribly engaging, as we've had several times in a row. It was another that was made roughly in the middle of production, but it feels derivative of other plots we've seen, with their secret labs and nuclear related issues. Obviously undercover operations is what they do, uniquely qualified as they are, although Richard doesn't have opportunity to use his abilities until he's been discovered at the lab when they overhear him talking dissension to another scientist, and, sensing someone's coming for him, he's too late to save himself from soldiers and metal cages that trap him in the corridor. I can only assume that every corridor had these hidden cages in case they needed to stop anyone moving around, and I suppose it was merely that they didn't have time to activate them when the scientists form a teargas-chucking mob and take down the soldiers later in the episode! As already discussed, Richard, though in some discomfort, isn't going to be put out even by the highest setting of Voss' torture device, operated with cruel gusto by his assistant, Miss Davies (I think - I don't remember hearing her name in the episode, but it must be her in the credits as she's the only main female guest), a gaunt-faced woman with steely cold eyes. One of my favourite moments is Richard's smug smile as he realises this is all they've got, baffling Voss' torture device on maximum setting.
Craig tries to speak to Richard when he first arrives, and once contact is made, he's able to do so in close proximity to his friend's ear so the microphone in the collar can't detect it, and he can read Richard's mouthed responses. The scientists are all on board when the truth is revealed and Craig hunts down the bug in their lab, though this didn't appear to be anything other than observation rather than being led to it. Craig and Richard join forces to whack a couple of guards, Craig's strength in evidence in the way he can flip one head over heels with just a twist of the arm, and it seemed rather unfair when they get out into the corridor and both take on one lone soldier! Sharron gets the best demonstration all to herself: when the Postmaster is about to take his silenced potshot she senses the danger and when he fires it's at fresh air, the phone left dangling from his point of view, then she barrels into him from the side and soon has him on the ground with a heel to the neck - I was wondering why they hadn't given her flat shoes in which to mount her escape and this is the reason! As powers go there weren't a lot of them, and the story's largely restricted to the underground lab which is already familiar from other episodes as it's the same square-tiled floor and arched corridors that had been used a few times before. Other sets are familiar, too, such as the rooms Richard's staying in at the Parthenon Club when he gets his visit from Mr. Forster, posing as internal security for the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the annexe for the meeting at the Ministry in Whitehall which I think was used in 'The Invisible Man.'
Tremayne is once again very sparingly seen and only at the beginning, where he briefs them on the disappearance of leading scientists of every nationality during the past year. He doesn't even get a return at the end, which is another conclusion that finishes the episode abruptly as Sharron appears at the lab to sound the all clear. This may be because there were just so many characters in the episode, reflected in the guest credits which run to an unprecedented two pages! A massive thirteen credits covers everyone who had a line, I believe: the scientists, Wittering, Antrobus (played by Peter Copley, more famous to me for playing Abbot Heribert almost thirty years later in 'Cadfael'), Grayson the chemist, Sloane, and Dr. Albert Travis, the man killed at the beginning. The Postmaster who killed him is there, Voss and his assistant, Miss Davies, Mr. Forster, the Chairman who interviews Richard for the role of Chief Research Officer for their computer development division, as well as the pilot of the plane at the end (which we actually see explode via the use of special effects), and even the Stewardess (played by Jill Curzon, a name I recognised, eventually remembering she was in the 'Dr. Who' film 'Daleks Invasion Earth: 2150 AD'). I assume Hedges was the guy tortured to death as there weren't any other speaking characters. I wonder if he was a Nemesis agent or a real reporter who'd made these newspaper stories believing them to be true? I think he was an agent as it's far more dramatic that he stuck to his cover story till death to make sure Richard's cover was believed, showing true bravery and commitment to the cause, and making it another of the moments that stand out.
The episode needed those moments, it didn't have the strongest of stories, or maybe it was just that the situation could have been more tense throughout when you take into the consideration what happens, with Richard's explosive collar, the bombing run at the end, the village with its sinister Post Office… The location filming looked good, both for the village and for the scene where Sharron has to sneak aboard the plane upon which the fission gun will be tested, which is a real plane in a field (even if the backdrop to the outside looks fake and painted when we see her enter the plane set from the inside). The plane set itself had been used a few times, and London as a location is seen a number of times, too. I don't quite know why this is another episode that just fails to succeed, but it may be down to a villain who wasn't as well drawn as others, nor were his associates. Maybe there were too many characters because I'd have liked to have seen more of the Postmaster, while Miss Davies is just portrayed as a bland, if intense, henchwoman. The champions work together closely, and there are the occasional tense moments, like Craig working to free Richard from the collar, but it didn't play up the unique elements of the village or location, which is why I don't have much to say about it, and it's a little forgettable.
**
Another undercover mission, another 'mad' scientist with plans of power, another member of the champions team discovered and held captive, another rescue mission… Project Zero could refer as much to the level of originality as to its ground zero nuclear inference, but it does show some signs of ingenuity along the way. The dog whistle method of communication for one, the sinisterly empty village on the outside of the underground research lab, for another, and Sharron getting to save the day all by herself for a change. I'm always surprised when the Nemesis agents go in undercover, or in a different guise, only to use their own names! Now I know Dr. Voss didn't have access to Wikipedia (and it wouldn't be too hard for Nemesis to create a false account even if he did!), but you'd think there'd be a 'Who's Who' of 1966 or 1967 on a shelf somewhere that would show that no record of a successful scientist, such as 'Richard Barrett,' exists. Voss and his many comrades (and it did seem to be a sizeable operation, though it could have been a ruse, just as using an annexe at the Ministry in Whitehall was designed to make everything seem genuine and government sanctioned), appeared to be pretty resourceful in tracking down available scientists, so you'd think even a good cover would have been unearthed as fake. But they were coming to the end of the project and perhaps cutting corners, and the whole scene with that unfortunate reporter being tortured makes a strong case for Richard's profession being real. Personally, I think it was slapping on thick glasses that got him into the club…
That torture scene, where a man is strapped to a chair and bombarded with excruciating sound waves, was extreme, showing just how wicked Voss and his gang are, and it is surprising that he actually dies in agony on screen, no sensitive cutting away or hiding the horror of the situation. And this is what the champions must head into. 'The Avengers' and 'The Prisoner' were the first thing that came to mind from the pre-credits scene of a terrified scientist (we know this because he's wearing a white coat), runs haphazardly through the silent village until bursting into the Post Office he begs to use the phone, but is confronted by a seemingly slow proprietor who he can't get through to, but who calmly closes the blind and shoots him with a silenced pistol. From this man's actions you could speculate that the village is, in fact, just an ordinary place, because otherwise why would he need to close the blind if anyone seeing the execution was in on the operation? And why use a silenced pistol? Maybe it was just a quiet day, or early in the morning, and the natural instinct to head to the PO for communication to the outside world was what the villains were counting on if anyone were to escape. Either that, or the Postmaster, as he's credited, really was slow and it wasn't an act, and he was being very careful, or maybe he just liked to do things for effect. And those actions were very effective, the first time, at least. He was fortunate in that he was captured by Sharron rather than being on the plane she blows up like Voss and others of his group.
One approach the episode makes is very effective: that of setting things up first with normal people and seeing how they react (i.e., dying), then later showing how the champions deal with the same trick. So Richard takes to the torture chair we saw a man die in at the start, and Sharron faces the Postmaster's gun. The great thing is how they use their skills to survive. Something that could have done with greater exploration was the slight theme of their abilities versus more traditional technological gadgetry, first proposed by Craig as he and Sharron follow Richard's acceptance into the secret project with the use of a listening bug concealed in a slide rule. Bugs and gadgets are always interesting in this series just from the perspective of the period, showing what technology was capable of at that point, but the answer is 'relatively little' so they don't use them much. The only real advantage would seem to be in making reports where Tremayne can't question how they heard something or got some piece of information. As Craig says, their natural methods are superior to bugs, and it appears to be borne out by Richard's ruler dropping out of his pocket and being trodden on by the air stewardess, losing them their connection. As we've seen so many times before, they have the ability to speak without anyone else hearing, but there must be a limit on how far this works as even from London to one of the Orkney Islands where the secret lab is situated, they don't even try it. We've also seen the ability to transmit a visual message from mind to mind, but they don't try that here, either.
It just so happens that this time Craig tries out a different method of communication while Richard is still in London: a dog whistle that ordinary human ears can't detect, but which can be heard by theirs. It's loud enough that Sharron grimaces in pain sitting next to Craig when he uses it in the car. Convenient plot device aside, it works out well when Tremayne lets them use the same entry point Richard used to infiltrate, when they lose track of him: posing as scientists in need of support and being just the discipline in which someone was needed. It means that when they arrive at their mysterious destination off Scotland (Scotland again!), Craig can let Richard know he's there, and Richard fashions a crude version of a whistle to respond, since he can't actually speak any words unapproved by Voss and his cronies or they'll blow his head off by activating the miniature explosives locked into a metal collar around his neck. For once it shows how their powers can have drawbacks, as there's nothing Richard can say, it would immediately draw attention to his Nemesis colleagues, so the dog whistle in this case proves useful, though even there it's only effective thanks to their superior hearing. You'd have thought this would have been against Richard during his torture, as being so sensitive (as I mentioned, Sharron's in pain just from the whistle trial), would surely make the already deadly sound pressure many times worse, but perhaps it works like Vulcan inner eyelids in 'Star Trek,' and their ears can close off damaging sound?
Dr. Voss has many of the usual flawed characteristics of those who follow the path of villainy, not least of which is a failure to kill his most dangerous opponents quickly and cleanly. Instead, he has to put the collar on Richard and forces him to lie to the other scientists that he's actually an undercover reporter who has been found out, something which they can believe, under the influence, as they are, of the plausible setup that this is a top secret government project. They all seem to be goodhearted British fellows (presumably the other nationalities had already made their contributions earlier in the development), as shown by their horrified reaction to the truth when Craig and Sharron show them 'illustrations' for ideas on the guidance system of the fission gun they've built (cover for a message about what's really going on - fortunate that no CCTV cameras were in use). Antrobus' first thought is that their work must be destroyed, a selfless, but common sense reaction when you consider how thrilled he was by the success of the experiment to fire a microscopic beam of accelerated electrons into the nuclear material, the device said to be the combination of a laser beam and an electron gun (though it looks like an oversized Phaser rifle from Trek when it fires!). The Manhattan Project is mentioned, the famous creation of the first atom bomb by the Americans, and which Wittering, one of the scientists, was said to be involved in. This new device, which the inventors believe is to be used in defence only, is considered the most important breakthrough in twenty years, but that must all be tossed aside to prevent it being used by an enemy.
Voss' motivations or plans are never made entirely clear to us, though he hints that he may either be working for the 'other superpower,' or that he has plans to sell his services to the highest bidder, or that he may just take out all the nuclear weapons, though something tells me he wouldn't be doing that for benevolent reasons. With the power to detonate nuclear warheads within three miles of the gun, wiping out nuclear stockpiles of the major powers wouldn't be out of the question, and perhaps he even had plans to become some kind of world dominator and hold the globe to ransom. His death by explosion doesn't seem so unwarranted in that light. Sharron gets to take the credit for foiling the plot and saving the whole island's skins by rigging the gun to explode on use, but it was a tense moment as Voss' plane speeds overhead for its sighting and bombing runs and there's nothing Richard and Craig can do to avoid destruction. It's fitting that Sharron gets the post-credits sequence alone at the beginning of the episode, though her turn at wine-tasting, accurately correcting the vintner's dating of the bottle, wasn't exactly one of the more impressive feats, as any good connoisseur could probably do the same.
It sets the tone for an episode that in small moments is good, but is lacking overall and not terribly engaging, as we've had several times in a row. It was another that was made roughly in the middle of production, but it feels derivative of other plots we've seen, with their secret labs and nuclear related issues. Obviously undercover operations is what they do, uniquely qualified as they are, although Richard doesn't have opportunity to use his abilities until he's been discovered at the lab when they overhear him talking dissension to another scientist, and, sensing someone's coming for him, he's too late to save himself from soldiers and metal cages that trap him in the corridor. I can only assume that every corridor had these hidden cages in case they needed to stop anyone moving around, and I suppose it was merely that they didn't have time to activate them when the scientists form a teargas-chucking mob and take down the soldiers later in the episode! As already discussed, Richard, though in some discomfort, isn't going to be put out even by the highest setting of Voss' torture device, operated with cruel gusto by his assistant, Miss Davies (I think - I don't remember hearing her name in the episode, but it must be her in the credits as she's the only main female guest), a gaunt-faced woman with steely cold eyes. One of my favourite moments is Richard's smug smile as he realises this is all they've got, baffling Voss' torture device on maximum setting.
Craig tries to speak to Richard when he first arrives, and once contact is made, he's able to do so in close proximity to his friend's ear so the microphone in the collar can't detect it, and he can read Richard's mouthed responses. The scientists are all on board when the truth is revealed and Craig hunts down the bug in their lab, though this didn't appear to be anything other than observation rather than being led to it. Craig and Richard join forces to whack a couple of guards, Craig's strength in evidence in the way he can flip one head over heels with just a twist of the arm, and it seemed rather unfair when they get out into the corridor and both take on one lone soldier! Sharron gets the best demonstration all to herself: when the Postmaster is about to take his silenced potshot she senses the danger and when he fires it's at fresh air, the phone left dangling from his point of view, then she barrels into him from the side and soon has him on the ground with a heel to the neck - I was wondering why they hadn't given her flat shoes in which to mount her escape and this is the reason! As powers go there weren't a lot of them, and the story's largely restricted to the underground lab which is already familiar from other episodes as it's the same square-tiled floor and arched corridors that had been used a few times before. Other sets are familiar, too, such as the rooms Richard's staying in at the Parthenon Club when he gets his visit from Mr. Forster, posing as internal security for the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the annexe for the meeting at the Ministry in Whitehall which I think was used in 'The Invisible Man.'
Tremayne is once again very sparingly seen and only at the beginning, where he briefs them on the disappearance of leading scientists of every nationality during the past year. He doesn't even get a return at the end, which is another conclusion that finishes the episode abruptly as Sharron appears at the lab to sound the all clear. This may be because there were just so many characters in the episode, reflected in the guest credits which run to an unprecedented two pages! A massive thirteen credits covers everyone who had a line, I believe: the scientists, Wittering, Antrobus (played by Peter Copley, more famous to me for playing Abbot Heribert almost thirty years later in 'Cadfael'), Grayson the chemist, Sloane, and Dr. Albert Travis, the man killed at the beginning. The Postmaster who killed him is there, Voss and his assistant, Miss Davies, Mr. Forster, the Chairman who interviews Richard for the role of Chief Research Officer for their computer development division, as well as the pilot of the plane at the end (which we actually see explode via the use of special effects), and even the Stewardess (played by Jill Curzon, a name I recognised, eventually remembering she was in the 'Dr. Who' film 'Daleks Invasion Earth: 2150 AD'). I assume Hedges was the guy tortured to death as there weren't any other speaking characters. I wonder if he was a Nemesis agent or a real reporter who'd made these newspaper stories believing them to be true? I think he was an agent as it's far more dramatic that he stuck to his cover story till death to make sure Richard's cover was believed, showing true bravery and commitment to the cause, and making it another of the moments that stand out.
The episode needed those moments, it didn't have the strongest of stories, or maybe it was just that the situation could have been more tense throughout when you take into the consideration what happens, with Richard's explosive collar, the bombing run at the end, the village with its sinister Post Office… The location filming looked good, both for the village and for the scene where Sharron has to sneak aboard the plane upon which the fission gun will be tested, which is a real plane in a field (even if the backdrop to the outside looks fake and painted when we see her enter the plane set from the inside). The plane set itself had been used a few times, and London as a location is seen a number of times, too. I don't quite know why this is another episode that just fails to succeed, but it may be down to a villain who wasn't as well drawn as others, nor were his associates. Maybe there were too many characters because I'd have liked to have seen more of the Postmaster, while Miss Davies is just portrayed as a bland, if intense, henchwoman. The champions work together closely, and there are the occasional tense moments, like Craig working to free Richard from the collar, but it didn't play up the unique elements of the village or location, which is why I don't have much to say about it, and it's a little forgettable.
**
Tuesday, 22 January 2019
Stronghold
DVD, Stargate SG-1 S9 (Stronghold)
It's looking like a whole string of very traditional 'SG-1' stories and I have to say, comfortingly familiar. This time it's the tried and tested Jaffa politics story, coupled with a personal thing for Mitchell to deal with: a friend who was also up for the classified role at the SGC that Mitchell got, is dying from shrapnel he sustained in saving Mitchell. These things can be a bit sentimental on the series, heavy on the piano music, a last scene as the friend slips away, but this time it has more impact than that, because Mitchell needs to go and help rescue Teal'c from Baal who's the one pulling the strings against the democratic process. He gets to bring his friend in on the whole shebang (though I was hoping he was going to be allowed a visit to the SGC since he was still mobile), using alien technology so he can relive some of Cameron's memories of this season. Not sure whether it was allowable for Mitchell to leave this sensitive piece of alien tech behind for him to use at leisure, but he did… It's one of those episodes that starts with 'Excerpts by…' a red flag for a clips episode, but fortunately it was only the sound of clips we hear as Ferguson experiences them, so it was fine. Not only are there fleeting references to recent events, but even Apophis and Teal'c's method for escaping his brainwashing is brought up, since it is rather pertinent.
It's a good episode for Teal'c as we so rarely get to see him as the cool warrior dude these days - sure, he's there backing up SG-1, but does he get to do the really heroic stuff, or remind us why he's such a great man to have around much any more? Mitchell's the action man, and the new guy, so he gets more attention, and a lot of Teal'c's story has been related to the ongoing politics on Takara. That hasn't stopped now that Gerak is gone, and it's so good to have Bra'tac back as a force on the series, another reason this feels so quintessentially 'Stargate.' It begins with a mystery, members of the council who were previously vehemently pro-democracy are now turning away from Bra'tac and Teal'c's proposals. It's a little unsubtle the way they bandy around the term 'brainwashing' and how they uncover it, but if Bra'tac can look in a fellow Jaffa's eyes and know what's been done to him, then I can go along with that. He is Bra'tac, after all, someone that's been in the series since Season 1, and always an enjoyable addition to any story. This time it's Teal'c that gets the wise words at the end as he answers Mitchell's question on how he held out against Baal's mind-altering device by telling him that knowing yourself is the greatest force against such things. There was a moment when I wondered if this really was going to be it for the old master as Teal'c holds a staff weapon to the man's face and looks as if he's about to shoot. I could imagine such a thing being done, even to a much-loved recurring character. But not on 'SG-1,' that's possible, but much rarer, thankfully, it doesn't tend to try for shock or edginess like too many TV series' now.
Peter DeLuise's direction was good, with the battle to take back Teal'c exciting and well shot, but it's also in the smaller touches - when Bra'tac's old friend on the council goes to see Ka'lel who's just betrayed their policy and goes all Jaffa women's lib in defence of her change of allegiance, the normally fairly fixed camera work becomes edgy and handheld so you know something's up instinctively just from that subtle change of presentation, something that many series' lose because shaky-cam is overused. Using it on occasion, when everything in the scene is calm, works very well. Not to say the camera was static in the battle, it was fluid and dramatic as Mitchell makes a headlong dash to get to the ring transporter before Baal's ship leaves with Teal'c aboard. His rashness, also demonstrated in a violent outburst when the doctor tells him his friend has no chance of survival and he smashes in the coffee machine, becomes a part of his personality he admits to his friend he's not proud of: that it was this very rashness that led his friend to be put in the position where he needed to save him and sustained a terminal injury, and it's a strong moment of personal reflection for Cameron. The characters have always been good on the series, that's repeatedly why it works even amid relatively derivative sci-fi ideas, but we don't always get such profound understanding or revelations about a character's psyche or makeup, so they're doing a good job with the new character and it shows that he can fit into the standard 'SG-1' mould as well as the ongoing Ori saga.
That saga is the genesis of Baal's latest plot: this one wants to control the council and take over the Jaffa, ostensibly to join forces against the Ori who he sees as a great threat, though perhaps a great opportunity would be a better choice of word. If there's a complaint about the episode it's that he's killed rather unimpressively in this tight little corridor and there's no mention of him again. I think they do know about the fact that there are clones of him, but even so, he was such a treacherous villain, even a clone of his deserves more respect than to be killed without an afterthought. That said, having him be the instigator of dissent and distrust in the new Jaffa regime made a lot of sense. It would've been good to explain how he came by a ship and all these followers, but the key thing is the very positive tone of the episode overall, the chance to have fair elections by the Jaffa wins through, topping the episode off with a happy ending, yet a bittersweet one as Mitchell reflects on not getting back from the mission in time to see his friend a last time before he died. It's another layer of character and is satisfying to see. It's a bit strange they couldn't get a symbiote for the guy as they did with Carter's Dad, or get in touch with the Asgard and have superior alien technology remove the shrapnel safely, but there has to be death, not everyone can get special treatment. There's a moral issue that could be explored if they went in for that sort of thing: why should alien tech be used only for select patients, surely everyone should benefit, but then how would the whole of society change if the truth was made public? This isn't 'Star Trek' so I don't expect such introspection, and for what it was, a poignant adventure that continues to develop the ongoing story, it was another good one.
***
It's looking like a whole string of very traditional 'SG-1' stories and I have to say, comfortingly familiar. This time it's the tried and tested Jaffa politics story, coupled with a personal thing for Mitchell to deal with: a friend who was also up for the classified role at the SGC that Mitchell got, is dying from shrapnel he sustained in saving Mitchell. These things can be a bit sentimental on the series, heavy on the piano music, a last scene as the friend slips away, but this time it has more impact than that, because Mitchell needs to go and help rescue Teal'c from Baal who's the one pulling the strings against the democratic process. He gets to bring his friend in on the whole shebang (though I was hoping he was going to be allowed a visit to the SGC since he was still mobile), using alien technology so he can relive some of Cameron's memories of this season. Not sure whether it was allowable for Mitchell to leave this sensitive piece of alien tech behind for him to use at leisure, but he did… It's one of those episodes that starts with 'Excerpts by…' a red flag for a clips episode, but fortunately it was only the sound of clips we hear as Ferguson experiences them, so it was fine. Not only are there fleeting references to recent events, but even Apophis and Teal'c's method for escaping his brainwashing is brought up, since it is rather pertinent.
It's a good episode for Teal'c as we so rarely get to see him as the cool warrior dude these days - sure, he's there backing up SG-1, but does he get to do the really heroic stuff, or remind us why he's such a great man to have around much any more? Mitchell's the action man, and the new guy, so he gets more attention, and a lot of Teal'c's story has been related to the ongoing politics on Takara. That hasn't stopped now that Gerak is gone, and it's so good to have Bra'tac back as a force on the series, another reason this feels so quintessentially 'Stargate.' It begins with a mystery, members of the council who were previously vehemently pro-democracy are now turning away from Bra'tac and Teal'c's proposals. It's a little unsubtle the way they bandy around the term 'brainwashing' and how they uncover it, but if Bra'tac can look in a fellow Jaffa's eyes and know what's been done to him, then I can go along with that. He is Bra'tac, after all, someone that's been in the series since Season 1, and always an enjoyable addition to any story. This time it's Teal'c that gets the wise words at the end as he answers Mitchell's question on how he held out against Baal's mind-altering device by telling him that knowing yourself is the greatest force against such things. There was a moment when I wondered if this really was going to be it for the old master as Teal'c holds a staff weapon to the man's face and looks as if he's about to shoot. I could imagine such a thing being done, even to a much-loved recurring character. But not on 'SG-1,' that's possible, but much rarer, thankfully, it doesn't tend to try for shock or edginess like too many TV series' now.
Peter DeLuise's direction was good, with the battle to take back Teal'c exciting and well shot, but it's also in the smaller touches - when Bra'tac's old friend on the council goes to see Ka'lel who's just betrayed their policy and goes all Jaffa women's lib in defence of her change of allegiance, the normally fairly fixed camera work becomes edgy and handheld so you know something's up instinctively just from that subtle change of presentation, something that many series' lose because shaky-cam is overused. Using it on occasion, when everything in the scene is calm, works very well. Not to say the camera was static in the battle, it was fluid and dramatic as Mitchell makes a headlong dash to get to the ring transporter before Baal's ship leaves with Teal'c aboard. His rashness, also demonstrated in a violent outburst when the doctor tells him his friend has no chance of survival and he smashes in the coffee machine, becomes a part of his personality he admits to his friend he's not proud of: that it was this very rashness that led his friend to be put in the position where he needed to save him and sustained a terminal injury, and it's a strong moment of personal reflection for Cameron. The characters have always been good on the series, that's repeatedly why it works even amid relatively derivative sci-fi ideas, but we don't always get such profound understanding or revelations about a character's psyche or makeup, so they're doing a good job with the new character and it shows that he can fit into the standard 'SG-1' mould as well as the ongoing Ori saga.
That saga is the genesis of Baal's latest plot: this one wants to control the council and take over the Jaffa, ostensibly to join forces against the Ori who he sees as a great threat, though perhaps a great opportunity would be a better choice of word. If there's a complaint about the episode it's that he's killed rather unimpressively in this tight little corridor and there's no mention of him again. I think they do know about the fact that there are clones of him, but even so, he was such a treacherous villain, even a clone of his deserves more respect than to be killed without an afterthought. That said, having him be the instigator of dissent and distrust in the new Jaffa regime made a lot of sense. It would've been good to explain how he came by a ship and all these followers, but the key thing is the very positive tone of the episode overall, the chance to have fair elections by the Jaffa wins through, topping the episode off with a happy ending, yet a bittersweet one as Mitchell reflects on not getting back from the mission in time to see his friend a last time before he died. It's another layer of character and is satisfying to see. It's a bit strange they couldn't get a symbiote for the guy as they did with Carter's Dad, or get in touch with the Asgard and have superior alien technology remove the shrapnel safely, but there has to be death, not everyone can get special treatment. There's a moral issue that could be explored if they went in for that sort of thing: why should alien tech be used only for select patients, surely everyone should benefit, but then how would the whole of society change if the truth was made public? This isn't 'Star Trek' so I don't expect such introspection, and for what it was, a poignant adventure that continues to develop the ongoing story, it was another good one.
***
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
GameCube, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2003) game
Hard to believe how long ago this game came out because it certainly doesn't feel like it. I'd wanted to return to it for over ten years, as back in the mid-to-late 2000s my cousin got her hands on a GameCube and I wanted to be able to help her when she got stuck except that I couldn't remember the details well enough. It turns out that the game being unmemorable wasn't entirely down to my failing brain: revisiting it confirmed my feelings of the time that it wasn't one of the best in the vaunted 'Zelda' canon for several reasons, and while playing it again was a good, solid experience, it wasn't the revelation 'Ocarina of Time' or 'Links's Awakening' brought to me. It marked a trend in Nintendo that, as far as I'm aware, has continued to this day, although with the Switch and 'Breath of The Wild,' the latest 'Zelda,' it seems they may have made a return to the glory days again. But 'Waker' was practically rushed out in comparison to the usual long wait for an instalment on a console, parts of it excised to be placed in the follow-up, 'Twilight Princess,' as I seem to recall, a couple of dungeons, to get that game off to a quicker release. So it didn't have that epic feel Nintendo often went for, of pouring everything into their works of art and only letting it out when it was good and ready.
Perception is important, and I perceive that they were reacting to, or being proactive about, the state of the console industry. They recognised that they couldn't just release updates of existing games with better graphics, it had to be unique (until the years after, when they were literally re-releasing existing games, 'Waker' one of them!), and so they shocked everyone by eschewing the realistic textures and approach of the N64 games, and went for a vibrantly expressive animation style that was unique at the time, even if cel-shading, as the technique was called, became an over-used visual gimmick for far too many games. By blowing up hero Link's head and making his eyes huge and emotive, they were trying to add a stronger connection between the player and the character they controlled, not purely for a closer bond, but also to be part of the gameplay. They weren't entirely successful in that, and it should have been played up significantly as a way to progress - I didn't understand the significance of the graphics until I was stuck, and upon scouring the manual for clues, realised Link actually provides hints himself by looking in the direction of things which are key to progressing, which is perhaps the most revolutionary addition to the series.
The game would have been fine if that was the only attempt to take it further away from what came before and towards a new experience, because in all essential ways it was the same 'Zelda,' and the major change, the game's far more trumpeted selling point, was its vast ocean travel, something which let the experience down substantially. As bracing as it was setting out into the high seas and knowing you could sail to the tiny specks on the horizon, it soon became a chore, and if the game had been the size of the map as a great landmass it would have been a huge space to explore. But sailing in a straight line from island A to island B was a far cry from the thrill of riding horseback over rolling hills and down dales, through woods, leaping streams, the ground falling away beneath your steed's hooves as you hoofed it around a mountain or circled a lake. No amount of sea monster attacks or changes in weather, the cycle of night and day, or the height of the swell could stop it from being a chore, and in fact attacks were just more inconvenience when they should have been a fun or challenging diversion. Searching out treasure was more of a diversion, a necessary deviation from the straight line sailing as you spot a twinkling sign on the surface of the water, or work out where the treasure maps are pointing you to, but mostly they were rupee rewards, the sense of completion more important than the actual contents.
The great oceans that had swamped and submerged what remained of Hyrule were largely barren, and while the same could be said of the wide open spaces and vast fields and passes of 'Twilight Princess,' even though that game wasn't better on the whole, horse-riding still trumps sailing. Further into the game when you have the power to jump to certain locations dotted around the map, it doesn't entirely solve the problem, but makes it less of an issue. It was supposed to give you a newfound feeling of freedom, but even using the Wind Waker baton itself wasn't the fun experience the ocarina gave as Link's previous musical instrument of choice. The ocarina was well suited to the Controller because of its similarity, both sitting comfortably in the player's hands, while the baton was a poor relation, the player just keeping time to a metronome - it struck me that it might have been an ideal Wii gimmick since with that you were waving a wand about. Again, having to stop everything and fiddle about with the baton every time you wanted to change the direction of the wind, complete with the music and unskippable animated sequence, meant that it was a chore rather than an empowerment.
On top of the interminable sailing and lack of solid landmarks to explore, one of the great facets of the series missing here, I felt that even in some of the detail it wasn't quite up to scratch: compared to Nintendo's usual high standards I found control to sometimes be relatively unintuitive. For example, you have to stand in exactly the right place to climb up onto a platform, and when jumping off a rocky outcrop to leap across to another you sometimes find yourself sliding down the near side instead of making that definite jump because it's not sheer enough, an irritant because it's vital if you're intending to leap into the air to glide using the Deku Leaf, and needing maximum height! Similarly, climbing up ladders at sea, or, most tiresome of all, climbing back into your boat, you have to be so precise instead of the game instinctively knowing what you're trying to do and compensating for your movement or position to a slight degree - very annoying when you're trying to get in the boat and instead find yourself talking to him instead! Another annoyance is that most dialogue or scripts can't be skipped or sped up, like opening the treasure chests, something you do countless times throughout the game and don't need to keep reading the message, or when you talk to the fish and he offers you the shooting game: the default is to agree so if you're hurriedly flicking through the responses you've seen too many times, you can accidentally find yourself agreeing to play when you just want to get away!
This is a sign of impatience, I know, but I'm sure in the past Nintendo were more aware of such minor details, they seemed attuned to every aspect of a player's experience, and in 'Ocarina' and other 'Zelda' games I'm sure you could press a button to make all the text appear at once instead of being forced to wait for it to play out at its own speed. It's only a small thing, but it suggests an attitude much larger that seems to be within the game, which is that of time-wasting. They knew they had a relatively short game for the series and they did so much to try and draw it out, something such a creative company didn't need to do before. You just look at the 'Mario' or 'Zelda' series' and see how big, inventive and well crafted they were and then you see how cynical it is to artificially prolong the length of a game by making you sail halfway across the world and then back again. It's the first 'Zelda' that doesn't feel fully polished to perfection (by Nintendo, the 'Oracle' games were another story), and knowing that a couple of dungeons were lifted to get the game finished quicker I can't escape the sense of artificial extension going on, less easy to disguise when sailing isn't much fun - there's never any threat from the weather, even in storms you don't get huge waves crashing about you, tidal waves, or anything to fight against beyond those annoying sea creatures, which could have injected tension and vital urgency to this area were it handled better.
Even worse, sometimes the game feels like it's laughing at you, such as when the merchant promises good things if you buy a certain amount in order to get a Silver Membership, then it's just a 'thank you,' or if you do it all again to get the Gold Membership, and the reward is a one-time refill of all your items, further proof the game is stringing itself out, something that epics like 'Ocarina' or 'Majora's Mask' didn't need to do (or at least not anywhere near as much). This is compounded by the usual troubles in the series: getting stuck. This is just a natural hazard of the games, not a criticism, as I wouldn't want things to be too easy and I always worked it out eventually, no matter how much trial and error it took. I got stuck for ages not knowing how to activate the Triforce Shard charts - there's a door for each of them with a symbol on the ground beneath and I tried playing the wind song, but it didn't seem to work so I must have been in the wrong position because after I got the Song of Passing (which changes day to night, and the reverse), that had filled up the last space for songs on the inventory screen - before, I'd been sailing around trying to find another song as I was convinced that's what I needed, going to half the islands in the game to reread the fish's clues, hoping to find something, until at Windfall he mentioned the dancing man and I happened to learn the Song of Passing off him and realised that wasn't the solution!
That's part of playing a game previously and thinking you know the solution based on fragmentary memories, or from looking at what you have or don't have in your inventory. It was the same with how to get aboard the Ghost Ship and I tried so many things to get on it when I didn't have what I needed to do so and only found out by accident when searching every island methodically. I went in with the mindset of trying to burn through the game at top speed because I didn't want to get bogged down and play it for months, but in the event, in those times when I did get stuck, the only way to work it out was a methodical search of every island until I found what was needed to progress, so I failed in my attempt to rush through at speed in the same way I'd approached 'Banjo-Kazooie,' 'Banjo-Tooie' and 'Donkey Kong 64' in recent years. I mention them for another reason, too: this was the closest to a platformer the 'Zelda' games had come. They were always action adventure games based around environmental exploration and solving puzzles in three dimensions, but because of the nature of this story being set on islands, it meant vertical movement was more common than horizontal, which means an adjustment towards the platforming genre.
Not that it's a bad thing, as I wish there were more good platformers out there, especially on the 'Cube, but it also meant this game suffered in comparison as you don't have the same physical control as in that genre, the control buttons being assigned to weapons and items rather than moves - it's amazing when you look back on how revolutionary the context sensitive movement pioneered in 'Ocarina' really was, allowing you to leap off sides, or hang, with the option to pull yourself back up or drop down, depending on what you wanted to do, but this time it just wasn't quite as well implemented. Something else that reminded me of 'Banjo-Kazooie' in particular were the warp cauldrons taken right out of that game: in dungeons you could find one or more of these large pots or cauldrons to jump into that would warp you to the next you'd found, so travel through the level was quicker if you were going back and forth, in and out of the dungeon, or coming back to it. The cartoon visuals and large, animal-like enemies also connected my mind with the former game, or even 'Super Mario 64' by the occasional sound effect, like the Indian sitar type of sound you hear when the Command Melody was broken, straight out of Mario's world.
The truth is I love 'Banjo-Kazooie,' it's one of my favourite games of all time, and possibly the game I've completed more than any other. I have to wonder if the warp cauldrons were a mere coincidence or whether they were a deliberate attempt to mine something from a Rare game since this was shortly after Rare and Nintendo cut their ties together. It would seem an unlikely stab, but it's possible. If other games may have influenced 'Waker,' it also played with its own series' history, and though the other inhabitants of Hyrule are not much in evidence (beyond the occasional Goron merchant, or the Deku Tree for example), visiting the Temple of Time and heading down into that room with the stained glass images of important characters from 'Ocarina' was a magical moment. Moments like that recaptured the essence of what makes the 'Zelda' series special, and while the timeline, history and canon seems to have been largely tossed around with abandon in what I hear since, and the games were only ever loosely connected in the first place, when you get that connection with the past it's truly special. I did feel the story was simplistic beyond the central premise of Hyrule sinking under ages of time and water, with Gannondorf showing up and Princess Zelda a pirate captain, and we never really get much resolution with any of this as if it wasn't fully thought through, or again, was rushed to completion.
The battle with Ganon at the end is the perfect example of why the game doesn't stay in the memory where 'Ocarina' and the others do - a fight with a marionette controlled by the evil villain, then a sword fight on top of a tower… I'm not saying anything could have competed with the ground-breaking (literally!), finale of 'Ocarina,' even 'Majora' was an easy final battle and a disappointment in comparison, but the story itself didn't seem that strong, something they bolstered in the next instalment. I didn't love 'Twilight' any more than this game, but for different reasons, and I certainly would like to play that through again now that I've been primed by 'Waker,' and perhaps even seek out 'Skyward Sword,' though I've been briefed that it's one of the worst 'Zelda' games ever made, apparently. I don't regret revisiting what is a well made adventure. It feels very much of its ilk, many of the puzzles are familiar, but how could you continue a game series without it becoming over-familiar? They tried to stretch it and make it new and different, and they had a tough pedigree to compete with from its own history, and Nintendo's policy at that time was to get out more and shorter games to appeal to the growing number of casual gamers that have since made the industry more lucrative than the film and music businesses together, so perhaps they were right in the direction they chose?
Just for the record, I played the game on the second file, having completed the game originally, back in the day. This means that you get to play as Link in his blue top and orange trousers, which isn't a big draw, I must admit, although the difficulty was supposedly a little tougher, though I never noticed. I'd always thought I'd come back and do that some day, and now I have, another in a long line of revisits and completions of old games that I've succeeded at in the last decade of writing reviews. It's good to go back, even though in my mind, this isn't an old game, this is just back around the corner, only a few years ago, it seems that short a time. Then you realise just how long ago it really was! A reminder how short life is, and how many games there are still to play and revisit.
***
Hard to believe how long ago this game came out because it certainly doesn't feel like it. I'd wanted to return to it for over ten years, as back in the mid-to-late 2000s my cousin got her hands on a GameCube and I wanted to be able to help her when she got stuck except that I couldn't remember the details well enough. It turns out that the game being unmemorable wasn't entirely down to my failing brain: revisiting it confirmed my feelings of the time that it wasn't one of the best in the vaunted 'Zelda' canon for several reasons, and while playing it again was a good, solid experience, it wasn't the revelation 'Ocarina of Time' or 'Links's Awakening' brought to me. It marked a trend in Nintendo that, as far as I'm aware, has continued to this day, although with the Switch and 'Breath of The Wild,' the latest 'Zelda,' it seems they may have made a return to the glory days again. But 'Waker' was practically rushed out in comparison to the usual long wait for an instalment on a console, parts of it excised to be placed in the follow-up, 'Twilight Princess,' as I seem to recall, a couple of dungeons, to get that game off to a quicker release. So it didn't have that epic feel Nintendo often went for, of pouring everything into their works of art and only letting it out when it was good and ready.
Perception is important, and I perceive that they were reacting to, or being proactive about, the state of the console industry. They recognised that they couldn't just release updates of existing games with better graphics, it had to be unique (until the years after, when they were literally re-releasing existing games, 'Waker' one of them!), and so they shocked everyone by eschewing the realistic textures and approach of the N64 games, and went for a vibrantly expressive animation style that was unique at the time, even if cel-shading, as the technique was called, became an over-used visual gimmick for far too many games. By blowing up hero Link's head and making his eyes huge and emotive, they were trying to add a stronger connection between the player and the character they controlled, not purely for a closer bond, but also to be part of the gameplay. They weren't entirely successful in that, and it should have been played up significantly as a way to progress - I didn't understand the significance of the graphics until I was stuck, and upon scouring the manual for clues, realised Link actually provides hints himself by looking in the direction of things which are key to progressing, which is perhaps the most revolutionary addition to the series.
The game would have been fine if that was the only attempt to take it further away from what came before and towards a new experience, because in all essential ways it was the same 'Zelda,' and the major change, the game's far more trumpeted selling point, was its vast ocean travel, something which let the experience down substantially. As bracing as it was setting out into the high seas and knowing you could sail to the tiny specks on the horizon, it soon became a chore, and if the game had been the size of the map as a great landmass it would have been a huge space to explore. But sailing in a straight line from island A to island B was a far cry from the thrill of riding horseback over rolling hills and down dales, through woods, leaping streams, the ground falling away beneath your steed's hooves as you hoofed it around a mountain or circled a lake. No amount of sea monster attacks or changes in weather, the cycle of night and day, or the height of the swell could stop it from being a chore, and in fact attacks were just more inconvenience when they should have been a fun or challenging diversion. Searching out treasure was more of a diversion, a necessary deviation from the straight line sailing as you spot a twinkling sign on the surface of the water, or work out where the treasure maps are pointing you to, but mostly they were rupee rewards, the sense of completion more important than the actual contents.
The great oceans that had swamped and submerged what remained of Hyrule were largely barren, and while the same could be said of the wide open spaces and vast fields and passes of 'Twilight Princess,' even though that game wasn't better on the whole, horse-riding still trumps sailing. Further into the game when you have the power to jump to certain locations dotted around the map, it doesn't entirely solve the problem, but makes it less of an issue. It was supposed to give you a newfound feeling of freedom, but even using the Wind Waker baton itself wasn't the fun experience the ocarina gave as Link's previous musical instrument of choice. The ocarina was well suited to the Controller because of its similarity, both sitting comfortably in the player's hands, while the baton was a poor relation, the player just keeping time to a metronome - it struck me that it might have been an ideal Wii gimmick since with that you were waving a wand about. Again, having to stop everything and fiddle about with the baton every time you wanted to change the direction of the wind, complete with the music and unskippable animated sequence, meant that it was a chore rather than an empowerment.
On top of the interminable sailing and lack of solid landmarks to explore, one of the great facets of the series missing here, I felt that even in some of the detail it wasn't quite up to scratch: compared to Nintendo's usual high standards I found control to sometimes be relatively unintuitive. For example, you have to stand in exactly the right place to climb up onto a platform, and when jumping off a rocky outcrop to leap across to another you sometimes find yourself sliding down the near side instead of making that definite jump because it's not sheer enough, an irritant because it's vital if you're intending to leap into the air to glide using the Deku Leaf, and needing maximum height! Similarly, climbing up ladders at sea, or, most tiresome of all, climbing back into your boat, you have to be so precise instead of the game instinctively knowing what you're trying to do and compensating for your movement or position to a slight degree - very annoying when you're trying to get in the boat and instead find yourself talking to him instead! Another annoyance is that most dialogue or scripts can't be skipped or sped up, like opening the treasure chests, something you do countless times throughout the game and don't need to keep reading the message, or when you talk to the fish and he offers you the shooting game: the default is to agree so if you're hurriedly flicking through the responses you've seen too many times, you can accidentally find yourself agreeing to play when you just want to get away!
This is a sign of impatience, I know, but I'm sure in the past Nintendo were more aware of such minor details, they seemed attuned to every aspect of a player's experience, and in 'Ocarina' and other 'Zelda' games I'm sure you could press a button to make all the text appear at once instead of being forced to wait for it to play out at its own speed. It's only a small thing, but it suggests an attitude much larger that seems to be within the game, which is that of time-wasting. They knew they had a relatively short game for the series and they did so much to try and draw it out, something such a creative company didn't need to do before. You just look at the 'Mario' or 'Zelda' series' and see how big, inventive and well crafted they were and then you see how cynical it is to artificially prolong the length of a game by making you sail halfway across the world and then back again. It's the first 'Zelda' that doesn't feel fully polished to perfection (by Nintendo, the 'Oracle' games were another story), and knowing that a couple of dungeons were lifted to get the game finished quicker I can't escape the sense of artificial extension going on, less easy to disguise when sailing isn't much fun - there's never any threat from the weather, even in storms you don't get huge waves crashing about you, tidal waves, or anything to fight against beyond those annoying sea creatures, which could have injected tension and vital urgency to this area were it handled better.
Even worse, sometimes the game feels like it's laughing at you, such as when the merchant promises good things if you buy a certain amount in order to get a Silver Membership, then it's just a 'thank you,' or if you do it all again to get the Gold Membership, and the reward is a one-time refill of all your items, further proof the game is stringing itself out, something that epics like 'Ocarina' or 'Majora's Mask' didn't need to do (or at least not anywhere near as much). This is compounded by the usual troubles in the series: getting stuck. This is just a natural hazard of the games, not a criticism, as I wouldn't want things to be too easy and I always worked it out eventually, no matter how much trial and error it took. I got stuck for ages not knowing how to activate the Triforce Shard charts - there's a door for each of them with a symbol on the ground beneath and I tried playing the wind song, but it didn't seem to work so I must have been in the wrong position because after I got the Song of Passing (which changes day to night, and the reverse), that had filled up the last space for songs on the inventory screen - before, I'd been sailing around trying to find another song as I was convinced that's what I needed, going to half the islands in the game to reread the fish's clues, hoping to find something, until at Windfall he mentioned the dancing man and I happened to learn the Song of Passing off him and realised that wasn't the solution!
That's part of playing a game previously and thinking you know the solution based on fragmentary memories, or from looking at what you have or don't have in your inventory. It was the same with how to get aboard the Ghost Ship and I tried so many things to get on it when I didn't have what I needed to do so and only found out by accident when searching every island methodically. I went in with the mindset of trying to burn through the game at top speed because I didn't want to get bogged down and play it for months, but in the event, in those times when I did get stuck, the only way to work it out was a methodical search of every island until I found what was needed to progress, so I failed in my attempt to rush through at speed in the same way I'd approached 'Banjo-Kazooie,' 'Banjo-Tooie' and 'Donkey Kong 64' in recent years. I mention them for another reason, too: this was the closest to a platformer the 'Zelda' games had come. They were always action adventure games based around environmental exploration and solving puzzles in three dimensions, but because of the nature of this story being set on islands, it meant vertical movement was more common than horizontal, which means an adjustment towards the platforming genre.
Not that it's a bad thing, as I wish there were more good platformers out there, especially on the 'Cube, but it also meant this game suffered in comparison as you don't have the same physical control as in that genre, the control buttons being assigned to weapons and items rather than moves - it's amazing when you look back on how revolutionary the context sensitive movement pioneered in 'Ocarina' really was, allowing you to leap off sides, or hang, with the option to pull yourself back up or drop down, depending on what you wanted to do, but this time it just wasn't quite as well implemented. Something else that reminded me of 'Banjo-Kazooie' in particular were the warp cauldrons taken right out of that game: in dungeons you could find one or more of these large pots or cauldrons to jump into that would warp you to the next you'd found, so travel through the level was quicker if you were going back and forth, in and out of the dungeon, or coming back to it. The cartoon visuals and large, animal-like enemies also connected my mind with the former game, or even 'Super Mario 64' by the occasional sound effect, like the Indian sitar type of sound you hear when the Command Melody was broken, straight out of Mario's world.
The truth is I love 'Banjo-Kazooie,' it's one of my favourite games of all time, and possibly the game I've completed more than any other. I have to wonder if the warp cauldrons were a mere coincidence or whether they were a deliberate attempt to mine something from a Rare game since this was shortly after Rare and Nintendo cut their ties together. It would seem an unlikely stab, but it's possible. If other games may have influenced 'Waker,' it also played with its own series' history, and though the other inhabitants of Hyrule are not much in evidence (beyond the occasional Goron merchant, or the Deku Tree for example), visiting the Temple of Time and heading down into that room with the stained glass images of important characters from 'Ocarina' was a magical moment. Moments like that recaptured the essence of what makes the 'Zelda' series special, and while the timeline, history and canon seems to have been largely tossed around with abandon in what I hear since, and the games were only ever loosely connected in the first place, when you get that connection with the past it's truly special. I did feel the story was simplistic beyond the central premise of Hyrule sinking under ages of time and water, with Gannondorf showing up and Princess Zelda a pirate captain, and we never really get much resolution with any of this as if it wasn't fully thought through, or again, was rushed to completion.
The battle with Ganon at the end is the perfect example of why the game doesn't stay in the memory where 'Ocarina' and the others do - a fight with a marionette controlled by the evil villain, then a sword fight on top of a tower… I'm not saying anything could have competed with the ground-breaking (literally!), finale of 'Ocarina,' even 'Majora' was an easy final battle and a disappointment in comparison, but the story itself didn't seem that strong, something they bolstered in the next instalment. I didn't love 'Twilight' any more than this game, but for different reasons, and I certainly would like to play that through again now that I've been primed by 'Waker,' and perhaps even seek out 'Skyward Sword,' though I've been briefed that it's one of the worst 'Zelda' games ever made, apparently. I don't regret revisiting what is a well made adventure. It feels very much of its ilk, many of the puzzles are familiar, but how could you continue a game series without it becoming over-familiar? They tried to stretch it and make it new and different, and they had a tough pedigree to compete with from its own history, and Nintendo's policy at that time was to get out more and shorter games to appeal to the growing number of casual gamers that have since made the industry more lucrative than the film and music businesses together, so perhaps they were right in the direction they chose?
Just for the record, I played the game on the second file, having completed the game originally, back in the day. This means that you get to play as Link in his blue top and orange trousers, which isn't a big draw, I must admit, although the difficulty was supposedly a little tougher, though I never noticed. I'd always thought I'd come back and do that some day, and now I have, another in a long line of revisits and completions of old games that I've succeeded at in the last decade of writing reviews. It's good to go back, even though in my mind, this isn't an old game, this is just back around the corner, only a few years ago, it seems that short a time. Then you realise just how long ago it really was! A reminder how short life is, and how many games there are still to play and revisit.
***
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For The Lamb's Cry
DVD, Discovery S1 (The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For The Lamb's Cry)
I don't want to sound ungrateful or spoiled, because I am glad to have new Trek episodes to watch, but so far I have to admit frankly that I remain unimpressed with this series. First seasons tend to be a bit slow going, but nowadays, especially with a halved production compared to the long seasons of old, you expect important stories, essential development much quicker. I suppose this is the price of complete serialisation, that individual episodes aren't necessarily about something and don't have much individual satisfaction. Perhaps I'm wrong to watch this series in the same way as I used to watch Trek, which is to say that rather than taking each episode one at a time to ponder and digest, I should be rushing through and taking it merely as an ongoing story in which separate instalments are unimportant, the development of the overarching narrative the only real issue of substance. But that isn't how I watch something, especially something new, and especially not something new and Trek. In consequence I've found it hard to grab onto anything as yet, and this episode continues that trend.
There are a couple of specific plots, an A-plot and a B-plot, if you like, which is a traditional form of Trek storytelling, so that's something to latch onto. It's just that when you leave aside the surface sheen and sparkle they aren't really telling compelling stories. It could easily be compared to something like a first season episode of 'DS9' or 'Voyager,' except you were going on a much longer journey, it was all a new experience for me, and they took the time to methodically explore the cast. So far we haven't done that on 'DSC,' with only Burnham being given the development. What about Tilly? Or Saru, Lorca, Landry (oh dear, whoops), Keyla or Stamets? I miss those days, which for the most part, 'Enterprise' is responsible for doing away with, although even there they did do some character episodes, but with a greater emphasis on three characters with the others supporting, while 'DSC' turns that up to thirteen, with one character worthy of exploration and all the others satellites to her experience. I can't decide if we're treading carefully in order to set up something great later in the season, and because of the reduced number of episodes in comparison to what I'm used to, there isn't time to focus on any one character except Burnham, or whether we're rushing through some expository setup and there won't be development, we won't get to know characters, especially as anyone can be expendable. I know I should accept the series for what it is, but that's just it, I don't know what it is.
While I like a few things about this episode, mainly that we see Burnham use her brain, and the person who goes in guns blazing and acts with violence and force is punished by death, it still feels insubstantial. I think it's because the story of an alien life form held captive for experiments would have been wrapped up in one episode in 'TNG' or 'Voyager' and we'd have learned something, but here it's just another stepping stone along a road where I don't know the destination. I like that its approach, led by Burnham, was science-based, as she is now a science officer, and it is a thoughtful story, plus there are slight signs of the hierarchy or sympathies between characters, such as Burnham knowing how to manipulate Saru in order to get her proof about the nonaggressive nature of 'Ripper,' this macrocosmic tardigrade creature that is mysteriously connected to the magic spores. But slight is the word, we really don't know much about anyone or anything on Discovery, and now we lose another character at the snap of a finger. Not that I liked or cared about Commander Landry, and it is effective in showing the dangers inherent in dealing with alien creatures. You could also say it's bold to cast someone 'known' only to off her so matter-of-factly, but I've never respected the killing of regular or recurring cast without good reason because it can become a stunt and I don't watch things like Trek to be on edge and wonder if this or that person is going to survive. Trek, in that way, is largely a 'safe' experience, something that rewards continual viewing, a feeling of family, of being part of a great adventure and a cool team of people.
It's early days, but I don't really like anyone yet, there is no sense of family or of cool people, just desperate ones that might turn to anything to get an edge in their beef with the Klingons. I'm sure the same could be said of those that tuned into 'DS9' for its first few episodes - many of the characters were bickering or unhappy in where they were, or just plain annoying, but I don't get the sense they're building this crew into a family, more like they're setting the seeds for mutiny against a misguided or dangerous leader: it's clear that Saru, though he takes his position as First Officer seriously, has some disdain for his Captain by the way he disparagingly says Burnham's methods will make her fit in just fine, clearly meant as an insult. I want scenes between Saru and Lorca discussing policy or whatever, seeing the running of a starship, but again, maybe there isn't time for that, and neither is that the tone the series is following - it's not exactly 'Lower Decks' (the 'TNG' episode, not the upcoming animated series I now need to qualify!), but we're with Burnham on the outside. We don't get those private conversations that her superiors are having - I don't mean we never see Lorca talking to his crew, because of course we do, as well as his superiors, but they've done a successful job of making Burnham seem like a pawn that is trying to find her own path, taking advantage of Lorca's offer of a place on his crew, while not approaching the tasks he sets her in a fawning way or to curry favour, but in a strict Starfleet and Vulcan manner of science and attention to detail, something Landry ignored to her peril.
This certainly gives the series a different feel to all other Trek, something that is necessary to differentiate it from what's come before and validate its existence, but I'm still waiting to be convinced that this direction is as good as, or better, than the standard starship exploration we've seen so often. In that case you'd run into the age-old problems of repetition, though that's not necessarily a bad thing - I've said before on many reviews that you can successfully reuse Trek stories if you base them around a different character archetype than that which had the focus before. For example, Saru is the 'unexplored alien culture' character, traditionally the one to comment on human behaviour, while Lorca is more like the authoritative Captain. I don't know enough about other characters to understand what archetype they are (the rebel; the genius, though that's probably Stamets; the failure to be redeemed, which could be Tilly, though she fits more into the 'young adult waiting to prove herself' model), and I don't see signs of the series getting into characters more than as chess pieces in a story to be moved around a board, largely dispassionately. The general reaction I have is detachment: like the rescue mission - we never see the crew interact with the survivors, the only bond a cheap emotional manipulation by piping the sound of crying children through the ship. Of all, the Vulcan-like Burnham is probably the one containing the most fire and potential within her. I like that she continues to act mainly from her Vulcan roots, rationally and thoughtfully, not an expert (as we saw when she got into a fight in the previous episode), but true to her upbringing, perhaps a parallel of the series itself, it shows signs of hewing true to Trek, it has promise, but it's vastly imperfect.
The B-story, the Klingon opera as it might be called, is so far not terribly surprising. I'm surprised only by the fact that I do have some sympathy for the outcast Voq, House of none, a much different role than I envisaged from the publicity images which were my introduction to him in the buildup to the series. I thought he was going to be a hard, cruel warrior, manipulating his fellow warriors, but in fact he seems more like a naive young adherent to a dead master, tricked by Kol into losing his family ship with its unique cloaking ability, only L'Rell (where's Hardy? Arf!), standing by him, and that in secret to save his life. Strange they should end up in the shell of their enemy's vessel, the Shenzhou. I wonder why Starfleet never retrieved the damaged ships they lost in that battle? Are they too busy to recover vital starships that may still contain useful items and sensitive information? I'm glad the spore drive has now been demonstrated because from the explanation in the previous episode I didn't quite perceive it. It does make a mockery of Trek history and technology if a ship can just zip anywhere in the blink of an eye, and so far it hasn't thrilled me with potential that could literally take it anywhere in the galaxy, maybe even beyond… But I now understand what it means, and it's still experimental, which means, as Lorca says, if they do go into battle they're on their own. You'd think Starfleet would be using Discovery in conjunction with a fleet, either to provide diversion or to panic the opposition, but they appear to allow Lorca latitude to get on with his own plans, aside from the rescue mission to Corvan II.
Ah, Corvan II… I so wanted to see a Corvan gilvos, about the only reference to that planet that I know, but it was not to be. I'm surprised Lorca didn't get one for his collection - was that a baby Horta in a glass case? I just wanted to shout 'get out the way' to him so I could see properly! And Kol is confirmed as being from House Kor, which I already knew from press releases, but it's good to see the name of a character that spanned 'TOS' and 'DS9' on screen again. It's still fun spotting the Trek references, but the series has to be more than an exercise in ticking off entries in the 'Star Trek Encyclopaedia,' it has to offer something deeper, and it's not yet doing that. I was pleased to see Michelle Yeoh's name back in the guest star credits for the last will and testament sent to Michael by Captain Georgiou, but I didn't have a strong attachment to the character so it didn't mean much to me. Nor did I see the significance of the antique telescope contained in the box which Burnham opens like Link reaching into a treasure chest in 'The Legend of Zelda'! I'd hoped we were going to see more flashbacks to Burnham's time on the Shenzhou, but again, expectations can cause disappointment. I could point out how pompous and pretentious the title of this episode was, except I always went in for long titles and 'DS9' in particular was known for some great ones. 'DSC' hasn't yet earned its right (especially with its maddening decision not to show the episode title at any point!), and the simplistic 'TNG' style would seem more appropriate to this level of story - something like 'The Monster' or 'The Tardigrade Trial' or 'The Rescue' perhaps, because the episode was about that level of basic.
I just don't like all this waiting around to a slow build because it doesn't have to be that way. 'DS9' didn't tread water when it was leading up to the Dominion War, it made sure almost every episode was compelling, and developed characters. 'Voyager' tended to focus on specific stories and did something really interesting within it. I shouldn't be comparing 'DSC' to my favourite TV series' of all time except that they're using the same universe and they've been developed standing on the shoulders of those giants, yet haven't learned much from them. Or maybe they learned the wrong lessons: maybe the time for ensemble casts is past according to the wishes of a young audience, in which case they aren't aiming this at me. Except they like to use the toys from the same toy box: the Klingons, the Klingon language, Phasers, all the technology. It's recognisable as Trek, but, and again I don't want to seem ungrateful, it's not good Trek. Yet. It needs time to find its feet, but in this modern world you don't get that time any more, you have to come out all guns blazing, and I don't mean in terms of action, but in terms of compelling characters and sci-fi stories that impress and make you think and speculate. Four episodes in and I'm still doing more squirming about this or that (the Klingons are cannibals now? They ate Georgiou's corpse!), the technology, the aesthetic, the choices, and I haven't had much to grip onto and take from it all. Except for Burnham and her place as a quintessential Trek character. The series is about her, so I hope she keeps living up to the ideals we want to see.
**
I don't want to sound ungrateful or spoiled, because I am glad to have new Trek episodes to watch, but so far I have to admit frankly that I remain unimpressed with this series. First seasons tend to be a bit slow going, but nowadays, especially with a halved production compared to the long seasons of old, you expect important stories, essential development much quicker. I suppose this is the price of complete serialisation, that individual episodes aren't necessarily about something and don't have much individual satisfaction. Perhaps I'm wrong to watch this series in the same way as I used to watch Trek, which is to say that rather than taking each episode one at a time to ponder and digest, I should be rushing through and taking it merely as an ongoing story in which separate instalments are unimportant, the development of the overarching narrative the only real issue of substance. But that isn't how I watch something, especially something new, and especially not something new and Trek. In consequence I've found it hard to grab onto anything as yet, and this episode continues that trend.
There are a couple of specific plots, an A-plot and a B-plot, if you like, which is a traditional form of Trek storytelling, so that's something to latch onto. It's just that when you leave aside the surface sheen and sparkle they aren't really telling compelling stories. It could easily be compared to something like a first season episode of 'DS9' or 'Voyager,' except you were going on a much longer journey, it was all a new experience for me, and they took the time to methodically explore the cast. So far we haven't done that on 'DSC,' with only Burnham being given the development. What about Tilly? Or Saru, Lorca, Landry (oh dear, whoops), Keyla or Stamets? I miss those days, which for the most part, 'Enterprise' is responsible for doing away with, although even there they did do some character episodes, but with a greater emphasis on three characters with the others supporting, while 'DSC' turns that up to thirteen, with one character worthy of exploration and all the others satellites to her experience. I can't decide if we're treading carefully in order to set up something great later in the season, and because of the reduced number of episodes in comparison to what I'm used to, there isn't time to focus on any one character except Burnham, or whether we're rushing through some expository setup and there won't be development, we won't get to know characters, especially as anyone can be expendable. I know I should accept the series for what it is, but that's just it, I don't know what it is.
While I like a few things about this episode, mainly that we see Burnham use her brain, and the person who goes in guns blazing and acts with violence and force is punished by death, it still feels insubstantial. I think it's because the story of an alien life form held captive for experiments would have been wrapped up in one episode in 'TNG' or 'Voyager' and we'd have learned something, but here it's just another stepping stone along a road where I don't know the destination. I like that its approach, led by Burnham, was science-based, as she is now a science officer, and it is a thoughtful story, plus there are slight signs of the hierarchy or sympathies between characters, such as Burnham knowing how to manipulate Saru in order to get her proof about the nonaggressive nature of 'Ripper,' this macrocosmic tardigrade creature that is mysteriously connected to the magic spores. But slight is the word, we really don't know much about anyone or anything on Discovery, and now we lose another character at the snap of a finger. Not that I liked or cared about Commander Landry, and it is effective in showing the dangers inherent in dealing with alien creatures. You could also say it's bold to cast someone 'known' only to off her so matter-of-factly, but I've never respected the killing of regular or recurring cast without good reason because it can become a stunt and I don't watch things like Trek to be on edge and wonder if this or that person is going to survive. Trek, in that way, is largely a 'safe' experience, something that rewards continual viewing, a feeling of family, of being part of a great adventure and a cool team of people.
It's early days, but I don't really like anyone yet, there is no sense of family or of cool people, just desperate ones that might turn to anything to get an edge in their beef with the Klingons. I'm sure the same could be said of those that tuned into 'DS9' for its first few episodes - many of the characters were bickering or unhappy in where they were, or just plain annoying, but I don't get the sense they're building this crew into a family, more like they're setting the seeds for mutiny against a misguided or dangerous leader: it's clear that Saru, though he takes his position as First Officer seriously, has some disdain for his Captain by the way he disparagingly says Burnham's methods will make her fit in just fine, clearly meant as an insult. I want scenes between Saru and Lorca discussing policy or whatever, seeing the running of a starship, but again, maybe there isn't time for that, and neither is that the tone the series is following - it's not exactly 'Lower Decks' (the 'TNG' episode, not the upcoming animated series I now need to qualify!), but we're with Burnham on the outside. We don't get those private conversations that her superiors are having - I don't mean we never see Lorca talking to his crew, because of course we do, as well as his superiors, but they've done a successful job of making Burnham seem like a pawn that is trying to find her own path, taking advantage of Lorca's offer of a place on his crew, while not approaching the tasks he sets her in a fawning way or to curry favour, but in a strict Starfleet and Vulcan manner of science and attention to detail, something Landry ignored to her peril.
This certainly gives the series a different feel to all other Trek, something that is necessary to differentiate it from what's come before and validate its existence, but I'm still waiting to be convinced that this direction is as good as, or better, than the standard starship exploration we've seen so often. In that case you'd run into the age-old problems of repetition, though that's not necessarily a bad thing - I've said before on many reviews that you can successfully reuse Trek stories if you base them around a different character archetype than that which had the focus before. For example, Saru is the 'unexplored alien culture' character, traditionally the one to comment on human behaviour, while Lorca is more like the authoritative Captain. I don't know enough about other characters to understand what archetype they are (the rebel; the genius, though that's probably Stamets; the failure to be redeemed, which could be Tilly, though she fits more into the 'young adult waiting to prove herself' model), and I don't see signs of the series getting into characters more than as chess pieces in a story to be moved around a board, largely dispassionately. The general reaction I have is detachment: like the rescue mission - we never see the crew interact with the survivors, the only bond a cheap emotional manipulation by piping the sound of crying children through the ship. Of all, the Vulcan-like Burnham is probably the one containing the most fire and potential within her. I like that she continues to act mainly from her Vulcan roots, rationally and thoughtfully, not an expert (as we saw when she got into a fight in the previous episode), but true to her upbringing, perhaps a parallel of the series itself, it shows signs of hewing true to Trek, it has promise, but it's vastly imperfect.
The B-story, the Klingon opera as it might be called, is so far not terribly surprising. I'm surprised only by the fact that I do have some sympathy for the outcast Voq, House of none, a much different role than I envisaged from the publicity images which were my introduction to him in the buildup to the series. I thought he was going to be a hard, cruel warrior, manipulating his fellow warriors, but in fact he seems more like a naive young adherent to a dead master, tricked by Kol into losing his family ship with its unique cloaking ability, only L'Rell (where's Hardy? Arf!), standing by him, and that in secret to save his life. Strange they should end up in the shell of their enemy's vessel, the Shenzhou. I wonder why Starfleet never retrieved the damaged ships they lost in that battle? Are they too busy to recover vital starships that may still contain useful items and sensitive information? I'm glad the spore drive has now been demonstrated because from the explanation in the previous episode I didn't quite perceive it. It does make a mockery of Trek history and technology if a ship can just zip anywhere in the blink of an eye, and so far it hasn't thrilled me with potential that could literally take it anywhere in the galaxy, maybe even beyond… But I now understand what it means, and it's still experimental, which means, as Lorca says, if they do go into battle they're on their own. You'd think Starfleet would be using Discovery in conjunction with a fleet, either to provide diversion or to panic the opposition, but they appear to allow Lorca latitude to get on with his own plans, aside from the rescue mission to Corvan II.
Ah, Corvan II… I so wanted to see a Corvan gilvos, about the only reference to that planet that I know, but it was not to be. I'm surprised Lorca didn't get one for his collection - was that a baby Horta in a glass case? I just wanted to shout 'get out the way' to him so I could see properly! And Kol is confirmed as being from House Kor, which I already knew from press releases, but it's good to see the name of a character that spanned 'TOS' and 'DS9' on screen again. It's still fun spotting the Trek references, but the series has to be more than an exercise in ticking off entries in the 'Star Trek Encyclopaedia,' it has to offer something deeper, and it's not yet doing that. I was pleased to see Michelle Yeoh's name back in the guest star credits for the last will and testament sent to Michael by Captain Georgiou, but I didn't have a strong attachment to the character so it didn't mean much to me. Nor did I see the significance of the antique telescope contained in the box which Burnham opens like Link reaching into a treasure chest in 'The Legend of Zelda'! I'd hoped we were going to see more flashbacks to Burnham's time on the Shenzhou, but again, expectations can cause disappointment. I could point out how pompous and pretentious the title of this episode was, except I always went in for long titles and 'DS9' in particular was known for some great ones. 'DSC' hasn't yet earned its right (especially with its maddening decision not to show the episode title at any point!), and the simplistic 'TNG' style would seem more appropriate to this level of story - something like 'The Monster' or 'The Tardigrade Trial' or 'The Rescue' perhaps, because the episode was about that level of basic.
I just don't like all this waiting around to a slow build because it doesn't have to be that way. 'DS9' didn't tread water when it was leading up to the Dominion War, it made sure almost every episode was compelling, and developed characters. 'Voyager' tended to focus on specific stories and did something really interesting within it. I shouldn't be comparing 'DSC' to my favourite TV series' of all time except that they're using the same universe and they've been developed standing on the shoulders of those giants, yet haven't learned much from them. Or maybe they learned the wrong lessons: maybe the time for ensemble casts is past according to the wishes of a young audience, in which case they aren't aiming this at me. Except they like to use the toys from the same toy box: the Klingons, the Klingon language, Phasers, all the technology. It's recognisable as Trek, but, and again I don't want to seem ungrateful, it's not good Trek. Yet. It needs time to find its feet, but in this modern world you don't get that time any more, you have to come out all guns blazing, and I don't mean in terms of action, but in terms of compelling characters and sci-fi stories that impress and make you think and speculate. Four episodes in and I'm still doing more squirming about this or that (the Klingons are cannibals now? They ate Georgiou's corpse!), the technology, the aesthetic, the choices, and I haven't had much to grip onto and take from it all. Except for Burnham and her place as a quintessential Trek character. The series is about her, so I hope she keeps living up to the ideals we want to see.
**
The Night People
DVD, The Champions (The Night People)
The series had done a voodoo episode, the 'invisible' man, suicide drugs, and even a ghost (plane), so this time they go to witchery for their backdrop of terror. Actually, in production order, 'The Night People' was filmed in the middle and 'Shadow of The Panther,' the voodoo episode, came towards the end, so this was their first dalliance with the supernatural, if you ignore 'The Beginning' and its secret society that gives them their powers in the first place, and you could say that that was couched in a scientific approach, as this lost civilisation upgraded their faculties by operating on them, not by waving a magic wand. So while the series has suggested things that are beyond the natural, it always turns out to be villainous enemies using superstition as a weapon, and is very much the case here. There is a character, Mrs. Trennick, who genuinely believes in the nasty stuff, calling herself a 'white witch,' as if messing with the occult is okay as long as you're doing it for benevolent or defensive reasons, but she's also shown to be the biggest victim, both of her deceiving husband and of her own wayward beliefs, causing herself untold terror when Sharron steps on her little self-image voodoo doll, and constantly being in a state of worry and concern over this puppet so that it seems to consume her constant attention. She's a sad figure, made only sadder by husband Douglas' devious plot to push up the price of uranium so he can make a bit of money on the international market, not caring that his stunt could increase the likelihood of nuclear war in the world!
Trennick is shown as a rather unpleasant and manipulative toff. If we'd got a sense he needed the money for the upkeep of Trennick House, or his long held estate was crumbling, we might have had some sympathy, but there's the suggestion he's a philanderer, since his secretary, Jane, who doubled Sharron as the false Miss Macready, is in the know, while his wife is kept in the dark and led to believe the activity and preparations around the house are all for a celebration of the witchy rites and ceremonies that are coming up (midsummer? We know the exact date Sharron arrived at The Kings Head by her entry in the guest book: 1 July 1967), expecting hundreds of adherents to the craft to turn up for a big shindig in the woods. I wonder if Douglas was actually into such nasty things before, as how did he meet his wife, and he talks of such things as 'our' rites as if he's taken part in them in the past. It could be that they're newly married and he only got Mrs. Trennick on board to use as a cover, but then presumably he's always been the owner of Trennick House, unless, like Sir Henry Baskerville in 'The House of The Baskervilles' he had recently inherited the place… There are plenty of questions surrounding him and his family, and whether witchery had been going on there, but then again, although the villagers have stories of the place, you still get poacher Dan Edgely doing his 'rounds' in the grounds, so again, the stories might have been circulated in order to keep people away from the real happenings.
The episode tries really hard to present a dark and creepy atmosphere right from the start, with a dark and stormy night, owls hooting, and a grim butler peering out of a Gothic castle-like window, but appearances can be deceiving. So can sounds, as they do make one successful stab at horror by using the cries of babies wailing or screaming in the sound mix, especially whenever an effigy is revealed, which was about the only effective creepiness that was achieved. The other appearance I found deceiving was that Sharron really was on leave in Cornwall (not in itself anything to wonder at: as one who spent many happy holidays in the county I can verify that it is a lovely place to stay), and she really was indulging a heretofore unmentioned hobby of exploring the architecture of old buildings. I automatically assumed it was all a front, and she'd been sent by Nemesis to investigate something suspicious, but I was wrong. Not that she shouldn't have such interests, although I imagine there aren't that many young women in their twenties who would spend the hols round old buildings, but Sharron has many skills and interests, so why not, and it's nice to see a little more insight into the character. The boys, on the other hand, go for a more traditional Caribbean holiday, staying in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados at carnival time. Sharron's brief message encourages them to drop everything and head on over to Cornwall, which says more about the close bond between the three. I'd still like to know about the japes they got up to that led to Craig burning his suit ("Charcoal grey," as Richard puts it!).
White cassocked, hooded monks seem to be a staple of horror for some bizarre reason ('Starsky & Hutch' did the same thing), I suppose because men that have set themselves apart from society live a curious lifestyle, but also there's something about the good and right being twisted into something sinister that makes it more frightening - seeing monks stalking through the woods or burning crosses is all part of the effort to make Trennick House a no-go area, but if you took this episode as evidence, then Cornwall is all witches and poachers! It's very much classic 'Dr. Who' with a poacher witnessing what he shouldn't and being hunted down by malevolent forces. Only these are of the flesh and blood kind, and again, we see the detrimental power fear can have as he dies of a heart attack on seeing the evil sights. If there was a theme, that would be it, but it's not a very strongly implemented one, and none of the champions are ever in fear, even if Craig does get a bit uptight worrying what's happened to Sharron. It's the usual thing, you know the drill: one of them investigates something, leaving some clue or message that something's amiss, so the others turn up and try and track their colleague down only to find they've been held captive, so they break them out, have a fight and foil the bad guys once again. Yes, the series is rather formulaic at times, but at least they continue their attempts to present a global outlook - that's probably why Richard and Craig are in Barbados, so that we don't think everything happens in England all the time.
Craig certainly gets around as he's afforded the exclusive honour of starring in the post-credits sequence which is clearly in London if the big red bus is anything to go by, then he's in Bridgetown, and then Cornwall. Okay, so the post-credits are generally meant to be another time and place, not directly connected to the main story. That's even more the case here because we see the return of a familiar place and at least one face because The Kings Head and the chubby darts player show up as the post-credits scene way back in 'The Survivors' when Sharron scores a bullseye. I didn't realise it had been so long ago, although in production terms that sequence would have been filmed at the time of this episode and held over for that other episode which was one of the last few to be filmed. I suppose they decided Sharron had a good chunk of the episode and Craig could do with a bit more exposure, but it would have made more sense for the darts scene to slot into this story, except for the fact she hadn't arrived at the inn yet so they'd have had to take away the climax of Dan reeling back in fear for a scene where Sharron calmly pops in to the pub. No, it wouldn't have worked. They must have been always on the lookout for opportunities to make good post-credits scenes, and week to week how many people were going to remember that this or that place looked the same as somewhere they'd been before?
The best moment must be when Craig and Richard show up at The Kings Head only for Porth, the proprietor, to show confusion at the name of Macready, then when they visit her room, a stranger is wearing her clothes, has the same hairstyle and the same name. That was a good scene, but it would have been even better if we'd seen Jane (or 'Miss Susan Macready' as she calls herself), from behind, and then she turns round ("I'm not Tommy…" - a 'Rugrats' reference of something that always stayed with me from that cartoon!). Their powers seemed a bit weak in general this time, and there wasn't anything that really made me perk up or be impressed. There's a long time before we even get to a superhuman ability even being used (aside from Craig foiling the would-be bank robber's plan outside a branch of Lloyds Bank by snatching his gun - when the voiceover talks of gifts bestowed on them I don't think it was referring to pickpocketing!), with Sharron's super-hearing warning her of the approach of a 'monk' creeping through the grass during her night-time visit of Trennick. Yet somehow, though she heard one, she didn't hear the three surround her and is totally taken unawares by these agents of evil, captured. I'm sure she could have fought the three of them, but maybe she realised it would be quicker to get to the root of the plot by going along as a captive?
As in a few episodes, Craig or Richard tell her to stay out of trouble when it comes to the final confrontation, but at least this time she follows her own instincts and discovers the printing press in the basement where Trennick's gang have put together a counterfeit government white paper to fool other countries like Russia of its intent to escalate nuclear weapon testing, and also leads to Mrs. Trennick learning the hard truth, both about her effigy doll's lack of power, and her husband's real intent. You almost feel sorry for her that she's not going to get her 'greatest night of witchcraft in a hundred years,' but not quite! Time to find a new profession, madam. The only concession to magic or witchery is that she senses Sharron has powers. Even Craig and Richard don't get to use these powers very much, relying more on the latter's knowledge of old buildings and the 'tie beam' that they use to transfer stresses, or some such technical detail Sharron had told him, his encyclopaedic recall proving useful when they couldn't contact her in Trennick House. Early on, Craig has a bad feeling about what Sharron said on the phone, which is why they go to Cornwall in the first place, then Richard's drawn to a guidebook on the shelf of Sharron's room and is later able to trace the indentations in it where she wrote out a postcard. Craig senses something beyond a door of the inn that makes him think Sharron had been there, and they find the dead Dan in a coffin.
After that Richard tries to call out to Sharron outside Trennick with their special communication, but can't get through or hear any response, apparently. He cracks some nuts with his hands, to Craig's chagrin that he can be so calm, but as he later says to Sharron, he never doubted she'd be alright. Craig hears the high voltage generator parked in the woods, though that might not have been special hearing, and when he trips up butler Hoad, Richard catches the tea tray he was carrying, a feat, if small-time and humorous, and then it's as simple as Craig leaping from the roof of Porth's van in order to take out two of the 'monks,' a short fight, and not a very exciting one. So the powers were lacklustre and not always internally consistent - we've seen them unable or unwilling to communicate before, and Craig suggests they can't hear through four foot thick stone walls, which suggests the communication they achieve is actually sound, though so quiet or on a different frequency to normal human hearing. Even so, if this was the case, how come they can't contact Sharron once they're inside? Too convoluted a solution to find the tie beam and send out morse code (assuming that's what it was), than to simply search the house for Sharron! A clever idea, and I suppose she could have been hidden in some secret compartment somewhere rather than one of the guest rooms. They also wonder why they aren't getting any alerts to Sharron being in 'a situation' and Richard suggests in the past it was only activated by immediate danger, so that at least seemed more consistent with what we'd seen.
Still, the consistency or otherwise of the use of powers was only one issue among a few questionable moments it's fun to spot: a big one is that there are no Cornish accents. Perhaps the poachers were supposed to be along those lines, but weren't, nor anyone else, not even Trennick or his wife, which fits my suggestion they weren't from around there, and Trennick inherited the place fairly recently. But in all their investigations they never once find a comedy Cornish accent of the kind heard in the great 'Doc Martin,' so that didn't help sell the location when they're usually so careful to include accents, not just appropriate decor and stock footage of locations. The backdrops used to represent external views when filming in the usual interior sets (the inn, the opulent house, complete with the staircase - didn't even try to disguise it this time! - the basement which Richard escaped from in 'The Fanatics'), were too painterly: the Barbados hotel window was too close to the camera, and when Richard's let out of Trennick, the door (which looks tiny, yet in exterior view he exits out of the main entrance), you can see a line down the painted backdrop outside and even where the screen meets the gravel drive's ground! The House's wooden sign looks like it's been put up at a moment's notice and wouldn't have stood up to any of that wind and storm, and the biggest mistake is Porth pretending not to know a Macready was staying at his inn, when he must have known Jane was waiting upstairs for the visit as a false Macready, making his efforts redundant and him much more suspicious! Dead Dan's eye seems to flutter in closeup (which might be why they pause the picture during the zoom into his face), and was the records office in the same town or was Craig zipping around Cornwall?
If you look closely at the guestbook, a few names above Sharron's is an 'Alphose' (misspelled) Capone, which must have been a deliberate joke that they probably thought viewers wouldn't notice, not realising that in fifty years we'd still be watching the episodes and pausing DVDs to read such things! Good use was made of exterior filming, always something to add reality to the familiar interiors, and there's a bit of the usual banter, mainly between Craig and Richard: "Uranium? To the Roman Empire?" Craig deliberately misconstrues from Richard's Cornish economic history lesson. It's also good to see David Lodge (Porth), and Terence Alexander (Trennick), both character actors that were in a lot of old films ('The Cockleshell Heroes' for the former, and 'The League of Gentlemen' for the latter, both films I like a lot). There aren't many exclusions from the cast list this time, although the telephone operator had a few lines and no credit, as did the chubby darts player at the inn, who had a conversation with Richard - he's effectively appeared in two episodes as he was in that post-credits sequence of 'The Survivors' I mentioned, though non-speaking. Dan, and fellow poacher George Whetlor (who looks like Gollum when Richard finds him crouched over a rabbit!), along with Hoad, get credited, and even the eccentric Clerk at the Cornwall Public Records Office gets his due (comically replacing his glasses off straight with one arm sticking out!). I wonder if Anne Sharp, who played Jane, the fake Macready, was also Alexandra Bastedo's stunt double or stand-in because she certainly had the same look.
On the whole this is another episode that didn't really make it. It tries to create a sinister atmosphere, but the various day for night sequences where you can see the sun shining down through the trees, just don't sell it (Sharron's makeup almost appeared to glow like something radioactive because of the filming technique), and the uneasy use of witchcraft to try and create a brooding, gloomy mood, didn't work, and certainly failed compared to 'Shadow of The Panther' and its creepy zombified assassins with cruelly curved swords stalking victims down hotel corridors. The investigative nature of the story means that for much of the time it's just one or more of the main cast visiting places and talking to people, trying to find a clue to what's going on: Trennick House, The Kings Head (no apostrophe on the sign, which is why I write it that way), the County Witchcraft Museum, the Cornwall Public Records Office… Craig's scene with the clerk was entertaining, but the humour also dissipated any slight tension that might have built up, and there was never any real sense of uneasiness, even when hooded varmints are hunting people down in the woods. It's eighteen minutes into the episode before much happens, Sharron first hearing an enemy's approach, but the momentum never gets going. Even Tremayne only shares the end scene of a semi-serious chat about expenses, then when they've gone he finds his souvenir effigy with a pin through its head - I'm not sure what they were saying! 'Nemesis agents stumble on a small-time operator' is the headline, and though it's good they foiled another plot, there wasn't any definite threat, Trennick's plan hardly foolproof, relying on the white paper being taken seriously by foreign powers.
**
The series had done a voodoo episode, the 'invisible' man, suicide drugs, and even a ghost (plane), so this time they go to witchery for their backdrop of terror. Actually, in production order, 'The Night People' was filmed in the middle and 'Shadow of The Panther,' the voodoo episode, came towards the end, so this was their first dalliance with the supernatural, if you ignore 'The Beginning' and its secret society that gives them their powers in the first place, and you could say that that was couched in a scientific approach, as this lost civilisation upgraded their faculties by operating on them, not by waving a magic wand. So while the series has suggested things that are beyond the natural, it always turns out to be villainous enemies using superstition as a weapon, and is very much the case here. There is a character, Mrs. Trennick, who genuinely believes in the nasty stuff, calling herself a 'white witch,' as if messing with the occult is okay as long as you're doing it for benevolent or defensive reasons, but she's also shown to be the biggest victim, both of her deceiving husband and of her own wayward beliefs, causing herself untold terror when Sharron steps on her little self-image voodoo doll, and constantly being in a state of worry and concern over this puppet so that it seems to consume her constant attention. She's a sad figure, made only sadder by husband Douglas' devious plot to push up the price of uranium so he can make a bit of money on the international market, not caring that his stunt could increase the likelihood of nuclear war in the world!
Trennick is shown as a rather unpleasant and manipulative toff. If we'd got a sense he needed the money for the upkeep of Trennick House, or his long held estate was crumbling, we might have had some sympathy, but there's the suggestion he's a philanderer, since his secretary, Jane, who doubled Sharron as the false Miss Macready, is in the know, while his wife is kept in the dark and led to believe the activity and preparations around the house are all for a celebration of the witchy rites and ceremonies that are coming up (midsummer? We know the exact date Sharron arrived at The Kings Head by her entry in the guest book: 1 July 1967), expecting hundreds of adherents to the craft to turn up for a big shindig in the woods. I wonder if Douglas was actually into such nasty things before, as how did he meet his wife, and he talks of such things as 'our' rites as if he's taken part in them in the past. It could be that they're newly married and he only got Mrs. Trennick on board to use as a cover, but then presumably he's always been the owner of Trennick House, unless, like Sir Henry Baskerville in 'The House of The Baskervilles' he had recently inherited the place… There are plenty of questions surrounding him and his family, and whether witchery had been going on there, but then again, although the villagers have stories of the place, you still get poacher Dan Edgely doing his 'rounds' in the grounds, so again, the stories might have been circulated in order to keep people away from the real happenings.
The episode tries really hard to present a dark and creepy atmosphere right from the start, with a dark and stormy night, owls hooting, and a grim butler peering out of a Gothic castle-like window, but appearances can be deceiving. So can sounds, as they do make one successful stab at horror by using the cries of babies wailing or screaming in the sound mix, especially whenever an effigy is revealed, which was about the only effective creepiness that was achieved. The other appearance I found deceiving was that Sharron really was on leave in Cornwall (not in itself anything to wonder at: as one who spent many happy holidays in the county I can verify that it is a lovely place to stay), and she really was indulging a heretofore unmentioned hobby of exploring the architecture of old buildings. I automatically assumed it was all a front, and she'd been sent by Nemesis to investigate something suspicious, but I was wrong. Not that she shouldn't have such interests, although I imagine there aren't that many young women in their twenties who would spend the hols round old buildings, but Sharron has many skills and interests, so why not, and it's nice to see a little more insight into the character. The boys, on the other hand, go for a more traditional Caribbean holiday, staying in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados at carnival time. Sharron's brief message encourages them to drop everything and head on over to Cornwall, which says more about the close bond between the three. I'd still like to know about the japes they got up to that led to Craig burning his suit ("Charcoal grey," as Richard puts it!).
White cassocked, hooded monks seem to be a staple of horror for some bizarre reason ('Starsky & Hutch' did the same thing), I suppose because men that have set themselves apart from society live a curious lifestyle, but also there's something about the good and right being twisted into something sinister that makes it more frightening - seeing monks stalking through the woods or burning crosses is all part of the effort to make Trennick House a no-go area, but if you took this episode as evidence, then Cornwall is all witches and poachers! It's very much classic 'Dr. Who' with a poacher witnessing what he shouldn't and being hunted down by malevolent forces. Only these are of the flesh and blood kind, and again, we see the detrimental power fear can have as he dies of a heart attack on seeing the evil sights. If there was a theme, that would be it, but it's not a very strongly implemented one, and none of the champions are ever in fear, even if Craig does get a bit uptight worrying what's happened to Sharron. It's the usual thing, you know the drill: one of them investigates something, leaving some clue or message that something's amiss, so the others turn up and try and track their colleague down only to find they've been held captive, so they break them out, have a fight and foil the bad guys once again. Yes, the series is rather formulaic at times, but at least they continue their attempts to present a global outlook - that's probably why Richard and Craig are in Barbados, so that we don't think everything happens in England all the time.
Craig certainly gets around as he's afforded the exclusive honour of starring in the post-credits sequence which is clearly in London if the big red bus is anything to go by, then he's in Bridgetown, and then Cornwall. Okay, so the post-credits are generally meant to be another time and place, not directly connected to the main story. That's even more the case here because we see the return of a familiar place and at least one face because The Kings Head and the chubby darts player show up as the post-credits scene way back in 'The Survivors' when Sharron scores a bullseye. I didn't realise it had been so long ago, although in production terms that sequence would have been filmed at the time of this episode and held over for that other episode which was one of the last few to be filmed. I suppose they decided Sharron had a good chunk of the episode and Craig could do with a bit more exposure, but it would have made more sense for the darts scene to slot into this story, except for the fact she hadn't arrived at the inn yet so they'd have had to take away the climax of Dan reeling back in fear for a scene where Sharron calmly pops in to the pub. No, it wouldn't have worked. They must have been always on the lookout for opportunities to make good post-credits scenes, and week to week how many people were going to remember that this or that place looked the same as somewhere they'd been before?
The best moment must be when Craig and Richard show up at The Kings Head only for Porth, the proprietor, to show confusion at the name of Macready, then when they visit her room, a stranger is wearing her clothes, has the same hairstyle and the same name. That was a good scene, but it would have been even better if we'd seen Jane (or 'Miss Susan Macready' as she calls herself), from behind, and then she turns round ("I'm not Tommy…" - a 'Rugrats' reference of something that always stayed with me from that cartoon!). Their powers seemed a bit weak in general this time, and there wasn't anything that really made me perk up or be impressed. There's a long time before we even get to a superhuman ability even being used (aside from Craig foiling the would-be bank robber's plan outside a branch of Lloyds Bank by snatching his gun - when the voiceover talks of gifts bestowed on them I don't think it was referring to pickpocketing!), with Sharron's super-hearing warning her of the approach of a 'monk' creeping through the grass during her night-time visit of Trennick. Yet somehow, though she heard one, she didn't hear the three surround her and is totally taken unawares by these agents of evil, captured. I'm sure she could have fought the three of them, but maybe she realised it would be quicker to get to the root of the plot by going along as a captive?
As in a few episodes, Craig or Richard tell her to stay out of trouble when it comes to the final confrontation, but at least this time she follows her own instincts and discovers the printing press in the basement where Trennick's gang have put together a counterfeit government white paper to fool other countries like Russia of its intent to escalate nuclear weapon testing, and also leads to Mrs. Trennick learning the hard truth, both about her effigy doll's lack of power, and her husband's real intent. You almost feel sorry for her that she's not going to get her 'greatest night of witchcraft in a hundred years,' but not quite! Time to find a new profession, madam. The only concession to magic or witchery is that she senses Sharron has powers. Even Craig and Richard don't get to use these powers very much, relying more on the latter's knowledge of old buildings and the 'tie beam' that they use to transfer stresses, or some such technical detail Sharron had told him, his encyclopaedic recall proving useful when they couldn't contact her in Trennick House. Early on, Craig has a bad feeling about what Sharron said on the phone, which is why they go to Cornwall in the first place, then Richard's drawn to a guidebook on the shelf of Sharron's room and is later able to trace the indentations in it where she wrote out a postcard. Craig senses something beyond a door of the inn that makes him think Sharron had been there, and they find the dead Dan in a coffin.
After that Richard tries to call out to Sharron outside Trennick with their special communication, but can't get through or hear any response, apparently. He cracks some nuts with his hands, to Craig's chagrin that he can be so calm, but as he later says to Sharron, he never doubted she'd be alright. Craig hears the high voltage generator parked in the woods, though that might not have been special hearing, and when he trips up butler Hoad, Richard catches the tea tray he was carrying, a feat, if small-time and humorous, and then it's as simple as Craig leaping from the roof of Porth's van in order to take out two of the 'monks,' a short fight, and not a very exciting one. So the powers were lacklustre and not always internally consistent - we've seen them unable or unwilling to communicate before, and Craig suggests they can't hear through four foot thick stone walls, which suggests the communication they achieve is actually sound, though so quiet or on a different frequency to normal human hearing. Even so, if this was the case, how come they can't contact Sharron once they're inside? Too convoluted a solution to find the tie beam and send out morse code (assuming that's what it was), than to simply search the house for Sharron! A clever idea, and I suppose she could have been hidden in some secret compartment somewhere rather than one of the guest rooms. They also wonder why they aren't getting any alerts to Sharron being in 'a situation' and Richard suggests in the past it was only activated by immediate danger, so that at least seemed more consistent with what we'd seen.
Still, the consistency or otherwise of the use of powers was only one issue among a few questionable moments it's fun to spot: a big one is that there are no Cornish accents. Perhaps the poachers were supposed to be along those lines, but weren't, nor anyone else, not even Trennick or his wife, which fits my suggestion they weren't from around there, and Trennick inherited the place fairly recently. But in all their investigations they never once find a comedy Cornish accent of the kind heard in the great 'Doc Martin,' so that didn't help sell the location when they're usually so careful to include accents, not just appropriate decor and stock footage of locations. The backdrops used to represent external views when filming in the usual interior sets (the inn, the opulent house, complete with the staircase - didn't even try to disguise it this time! - the basement which Richard escaped from in 'The Fanatics'), were too painterly: the Barbados hotel window was too close to the camera, and when Richard's let out of Trennick, the door (which looks tiny, yet in exterior view he exits out of the main entrance), you can see a line down the painted backdrop outside and even where the screen meets the gravel drive's ground! The House's wooden sign looks like it's been put up at a moment's notice and wouldn't have stood up to any of that wind and storm, and the biggest mistake is Porth pretending not to know a Macready was staying at his inn, when he must have known Jane was waiting upstairs for the visit as a false Macready, making his efforts redundant and him much more suspicious! Dead Dan's eye seems to flutter in closeup (which might be why they pause the picture during the zoom into his face), and was the records office in the same town or was Craig zipping around Cornwall?
If you look closely at the guestbook, a few names above Sharron's is an 'Alphose' (misspelled) Capone, which must have been a deliberate joke that they probably thought viewers wouldn't notice, not realising that in fifty years we'd still be watching the episodes and pausing DVDs to read such things! Good use was made of exterior filming, always something to add reality to the familiar interiors, and there's a bit of the usual banter, mainly between Craig and Richard: "Uranium? To the Roman Empire?" Craig deliberately misconstrues from Richard's Cornish economic history lesson. It's also good to see David Lodge (Porth), and Terence Alexander (Trennick), both character actors that were in a lot of old films ('The Cockleshell Heroes' for the former, and 'The League of Gentlemen' for the latter, both films I like a lot). There aren't many exclusions from the cast list this time, although the telephone operator had a few lines and no credit, as did the chubby darts player at the inn, who had a conversation with Richard - he's effectively appeared in two episodes as he was in that post-credits sequence of 'The Survivors' I mentioned, though non-speaking. Dan, and fellow poacher George Whetlor (who looks like Gollum when Richard finds him crouched over a rabbit!), along with Hoad, get credited, and even the eccentric Clerk at the Cornwall Public Records Office gets his due (comically replacing his glasses off straight with one arm sticking out!). I wonder if Anne Sharp, who played Jane, the fake Macready, was also Alexandra Bastedo's stunt double or stand-in because she certainly had the same look.
On the whole this is another episode that didn't really make it. It tries to create a sinister atmosphere, but the various day for night sequences where you can see the sun shining down through the trees, just don't sell it (Sharron's makeup almost appeared to glow like something radioactive because of the filming technique), and the uneasy use of witchcraft to try and create a brooding, gloomy mood, didn't work, and certainly failed compared to 'Shadow of The Panther' and its creepy zombified assassins with cruelly curved swords stalking victims down hotel corridors. The investigative nature of the story means that for much of the time it's just one or more of the main cast visiting places and talking to people, trying to find a clue to what's going on: Trennick House, The Kings Head (no apostrophe on the sign, which is why I write it that way), the County Witchcraft Museum, the Cornwall Public Records Office… Craig's scene with the clerk was entertaining, but the humour also dissipated any slight tension that might have built up, and there was never any real sense of uneasiness, even when hooded varmints are hunting people down in the woods. It's eighteen minutes into the episode before much happens, Sharron first hearing an enemy's approach, but the momentum never gets going. Even Tremayne only shares the end scene of a semi-serious chat about expenses, then when they've gone he finds his souvenir effigy with a pin through its head - I'm not sure what they were saying! 'Nemesis agents stumble on a small-time operator' is the headline, and though it's good they foiled another plot, there wasn't any definite threat, Trennick's plan hardly foolproof, relying on the white paper being taken seriously by foreign powers.
**
New Star Trek TV Series' - Romulan Dissolution, Cartoon & Section 31
New Star Trek TV Series' - Romulan Dissolution, Cartoon & Section 31
With the latest batch of Trek announcements we'd be forgiven for thinking we're living in the Nineties when Trek was at the height of productivity. Two more series' have been confirmed, but the more interesting news for me is the mention of the Picard series dealing with the aftermath of the destruction of Romulus, leading to the dissolution of the Star Empire. One of the (many) things that irritated me about 'Star Trek XI' was that, along with creating a whole other universe, it left a clanger of a development when we learned that Romulus was taken out by a supernova. I thought we'd never get the chance to see the fallout of such a major event in Trek history, especially annoying because that was about the only thing that happened in the original universe during the film, this single contribution to Trek's 24th Century a fascinating addition to canon. I'm not saying it's great that one of the big three or four races dating back to 'The Original Series' had its homeworld destroyed, but it certainly would throw up many questions and a shift in the power balance of the Alpha Quadrant like few things had. The Dominion War would be the previous most dramatic moment of future history, and the Romulans became allies through that major event, so relations between the two enemy states of Federation and Romulan had already taken big steps to becoming something quite different. How would the Klingons, already favoured Federation allies, react to this?
So many things to wonder about, and yet we were never going to get a chance to see the repercussions of the war, and now the aftermath of a homeworld's destruction, so the news that this will be addressed in the Picard series is great. Maybe we'll see the first Romulan in Starfleet? Maybe the Remans will have become more of a threat, though their homeworld is likely ruined as well. It's not like this one confirmation raises my anticipation level for the series in the same way as, say, they told us Worf was going to be in the cast, but it's a further tick box in the positive. There hasn't been much revealed about this series, not even a title, but so far, with Picard, a setting twenty years after 'Nemesis,' and now acknowledging canon from even the less well regarded entry of the franchise, it shows they are committed to the integrity of Trek history, which to any long-term viewer like me is of paramount importance.
The other news isn't quite so attractive, but it shows the dedication CBS seems to have to the brand they previously allowed to lie fallow for a decade and more on TV. None of the proposed new series' have excited me and I can't say that another animated series, more specifically aimed at children, nor a Section 31 series starring Michelle Yeoh, changes that. I understand their thinking of trying to draw youngsters in, in the same way 'Star Wars' has, they're thinking about their future profits and getting all ages involved for years to come. But Trek has never been Wars, by nature it isn't so much of a child-friendly entity, the best of it encouraging people to come up to its level, not to meet them at their level or on their terms. Unfortunately, Trek in this century has been very much dropping down in its expectations and aims, it could no longer be called the thinking man's sci-fi, it's taken a turn towards simpler stories and action, which were always part of it, but that had been slowly changing towards something unique. To become popular originally it just did what it did, and did it well, which drew in the audience, but now those in charge want more, a bigger piece of the pie, the kind of value the comics industry has developed with its big budget, but insubstantial general impression, leading to a courting of popularity by trying to appeal in a broader sense, watering itself down.
Can Trek survive in this mould? Will the Picard series redress a perceived imbalance? We'll only know in a few years, perhaps a decade beyond when the dust has settled, as we can look back on the golden era of the Nineties now, or the troubled times of the 2000s. We're still a way off the output of the Nineties when, for seven years, there were around fifty episodes every year. Shorter seasons of modern 'TV' means you'd have to have several series' running at the same time, and we're currently only at the stage of gearing up. There's still the possibility this could all be a flash in the pan, CBS All Access fails and they pull the plug (as we've seen on a few superhero shows that haven't necessarily lasted as long as traditional TV shows), but for anyone that remembers the fallow years it's a glut of interest if nothing else.
Section 31 has never been something I was desperate to see in the limelight. It's something that should stay in the shadows of half-known rumours and conflicting facts. It's all the fault of 'Enterprise' which brought back the 'DS9' creation, but made them a bit bland and somewhat stereotypical of undercover secret organisations. On 'DS9' I had some room for doubt over whether it really even existed or was something Sloan had invented, but then 'Enterprise' used them, and 'Into Darkness' included them, and while I've yet to learn of their influences in 'DSC' (Bryan Fuller said they were marble through the meat of Season 1), I wonder if they'll ever be used effectively. If they'd announced a series set in Sloan's era and William Sadler was back as one of the main cast, that would have been more intriguing, but Michelle Yeoh, from what I've seen of her character in 'DSC' (which isn't much as yet), never convinced me she worked well in the role. Not that I'd write the idea off, or Yeoh, but it's difficult to see how it could work in more than a one-off situation.
As things stand, although I'm intrigued by the amount of Trek productions planned, none of them, bar Picard, have me excited. Perhaps so many seem to be based around the 'TOS'/'DSC' era, whereas if they said they were going to bring back 'Enterprise' and most of the cast for a limited series, or create something set during the Romulan War shortly after that series, or a series set in the Enterprise-B or -C era, or something further into the future, or a series based around Worf… I'd be much more piqued - there are so many possibilities and the good thing is it doesn't look like stopping at the moment, so there's still room for things that would interest me beyond Picard. Of course it'll all interest me to some extent or the other, though I'm hoping the animations aren't going to be canon, just like the original 'The Animated Series' isn't, because then what they do in terms of comedy and other things doesn't matter to the greater whole. How much of all this I'll see is also in question as I had to wait about a year before 'DSC' came out on DVD, but I was just glad to get it!
Anticipation Rating:
another cartoon series: *
Section 31: **
Lower Decks: *
Picard: ****
Khan: **
Starfleet Academy: *
more Discovery: ***
With the latest batch of Trek announcements we'd be forgiven for thinking we're living in the Nineties when Trek was at the height of productivity. Two more series' have been confirmed, but the more interesting news for me is the mention of the Picard series dealing with the aftermath of the destruction of Romulus, leading to the dissolution of the Star Empire. One of the (many) things that irritated me about 'Star Trek XI' was that, along with creating a whole other universe, it left a clanger of a development when we learned that Romulus was taken out by a supernova. I thought we'd never get the chance to see the fallout of such a major event in Trek history, especially annoying because that was about the only thing that happened in the original universe during the film, this single contribution to Trek's 24th Century a fascinating addition to canon. I'm not saying it's great that one of the big three or four races dating back to 'The Original Series' had its homeworld destroyed, but it certainly would throw up many questions and a shift in the power balance of the Alpha Quadrant like few things had. The Dominion War would be the previous most dramatic moment of future history, and the Romulans became allies through that major event, so relations between the two enemy states of Federation and Romulan had already taken big steps to becoming something quite different. How would the Klingons, already favoured Federation allies, react to this?
So many things to wonder about, and yet we were never going to get a chance to see the repercussions of the war, and now the aftermath of a homeworld's destruction, so the news that this will be addressed in the Picard series is great. Maybe we'll see the first Romulan in Starfleet? Maybe the Remans will have become more of a threat, though their homeworld is likely ruined as well. It's not like this one confirmation raises my anticipation level for the series in the same way as, say, they told us Worf was going to be in the cast, but it's a further tick box in the positive. There hasn't been much revealed about this series, not even a title, but so far, with Picard, a setting twenty years after 'Nemesis,' and now acknowledging canon from even the less well regarded entry of the franchise, it shows they are committed to the integrity of Trek history, which to any long-term viewer like me is of paramount importance.
The other news isn't quite so attractive, but it shows the dedication CBS seems to have to the brand they previously allowed to lie fallow for a decade and more on TV. None of the proposed new series' have excited me and I can't say that another animated series, more specifically aimed at children, nor a Section 31 series starring Michelle Yeoh, changes that. I understand their thinking of trying to draw youngsters in, in the same way 'Star Wars' has, they're thinking about their future profits and getting all ages involved for years to come. But Trek has never been Wars, by nature it isn't so much of a child-friendly entity, the best of it encouraging people to come up to its level, not to meet them at their level or on their terms. Unfortunately, Trek in this century has been very much dropping down in its expectations and aims, it could no longer be called the thinking man's sci-fi, it's taken a turn towards simpler stories and action, which were always part of it, but that had been slowly changing towards something unique. To become popular originally it just did what it did, and did it well, which drew in the audience, but now those in charge want more, a bigger piece of the pie, the kind of value the comics industry has developed with its big budget, but insubstantial general impression, leading to a courting of popularity by trying to appeal in a broader sense, watering itself down.
Can Trek survive in this mould? Will the Picard series redress a perceived imbalance? We'll only know in a few years, perhaps a decade beyond when the dust has settled, as we can look back on the golden era of the Nineties now, or the troubled times of the 2000s. We're still a way off the output of the Nineties when, for seven years, there were around fifty episodes every year. Shorter seasons of modern 'TV' means you'd have to have several series' running at the same time, and we're currently only at the stage of gearing up. There's still the possibility this could all be a flash in the pan, CBS All Access fails and they pull the plug (as we've seen on a few superhero shows that haven't necessarily lasted as long as traditional TV shows), but for anyone that remembers the fallow years it's a glut of interest if nothing else.
Section 31 has never been something I was desperate to see in the limelight. It's something that should stay in the shadows of half-known rumours and conflicting facts. It's all the fault of 'Enterprise' which brought back the 'DS9' creation, but made them a bit bland and somewhat stereotypical of undercover secret organisations. On 'DS9' I had some room for doubt over whether it really even existed or was something Sloan had invented, but then 'Enterprise' used them, and 'Into Darkness' included them, and while I've yet to learn of their influences in 'DSC' (Bryan Fuller said they were marble through the meat of Season 1), I wonder if they'll ever be used effectively. If they'd announced a series set in Sloan's era and William Sadler was back as one of the main cast, that would have been more intriguing, but Michelle Yeoh, from what I've seen of her character in 'DSC' (which isn't much as yet), never convinced me she worked well in the role. Not that I'd write the idea off, or Yeoh, but it's difficult to see how it could work in more than a one-off situation.
As things stand, although I'm intrigued by the amount of Trek productions planned, none of them, bar Picard, have me excited. Perhaps so many seem to be based around the 'TOS'/'DSC' era, whereas if they said they were going to bring back 'Enterprise' and most of the cast for a limited series, or create something set during the Romulan War shortly after that series, or a series set in the Enterprise-B or -C era, or something further into the future, or a series based around Worf… I'd be much more piqued - there are so many possibilities and the good thing is it doesn't look like stopping at the moment, so there's still room for things that would interest me beyond Picard. Of course it'll all interest me to some extent or the other, though I'm hoping the animations aren't going to be canon, just like the original 'The Animated Series' isn't, because then what they do in terms of comedy and other things doesn't matter to the greater whole. How much of all this I'll see is also in question as I had to wait about a year before 'DSC' came out on DVD, but I was just glad to get it!
Anticipation Rating:
another cartoon series: *
Section 31: **
Lower Decks: *
Picard: ****
Khan: **
Starfleet Academy: *
more Discovery: ***
Tuesday, 15 January 2019
Ripple Effect
DVD, Stargate SG-1 S9 (Ripple Effect)
Classic 'Stargate,' just what the doctor ordered. And Janet Fraiser: just the Doctor that was ordered! Aside from the garbage multiverse theory which I always hate in sci-fi for its making of our own reality meaningless (a debate I'm happy to go on at length about), they managed to pull a fun and, if not overly inventive, entertaining story out of such a thing, creating some believability in events, and sympathy for the various SG-1s. It even answered a lot of the basic questions like 'how come SG-1 is the team to keep coming through from other realities when there should be just as much chance of strangers and other SG teams?' Answer: SG-1 is the most commonly found in dangerous situations - tenuous, considering each reality could, according to the garbage theory, be any combination or outcome conceivable, and even those we can't conceive, which is the whole point of the garbage theory. It's still suspension of disbelief time, but this is sci-fi, and it is 'SG-1,' not some deep sci-fi novel, which means complicated ideas narrowed down to populist terms. But they manage to get in plenty of boffin talk, or technobabble as they call it in the trade, which makes it feel even more 'of the series.' How could they avoid it with so many Samantha Carters on the base!
They were able to have some fun with the concept without straying too far from the ongoing arc of the Ori, and I wonder if these last couple of episodes, essentially filler, getting back to the old days of more episodic 'Stargate,' are treading water to allow time for whatever is the next move from the Ori or Baal, both of which are name-checked in case we'd forgotten them, but by the standards of the season, largely ignored, in favour of this bottle episode idea. It's funny that bottle episodes, taking place on just the standing sets of a series, can often generate some of the best story ideas, and while I'm not suggesting this is in any way an astonishing or clever execution of a familiar (some might say over-familiar), concept, that's what the series always did: derivative sci-fi. It sounds like I'm insulting the series ("Did he just insult me?"), but that's the level of my expectations for the series and what I've learned to enjoy, and for better or worse they should be dealing with stuff like this on top of ongoing stories, because that's what the series is made of. I can see that in today's TV world you wouldn't get episodes like this because the season would be stripped back to only the 'essentials' of an arc, but that's one reason I like long seasons because there are standalone stories that can play with the setup and characters and put them in interesting situations.
Or bring back a familiar face. I wish they'd kept Teryl Rothery's credit for the end as it would have had even more impact if we didn't know she was going to be on one of the teams that comes through the 'gate, but even so it was still a lovely moment. I have to admit that my recall on 'SG-1' lore fluctuates and I couldn't even remember if Jacob/Selmak was still alive in our universe or not, so I was half expecting to learn that SG-1 from our universe was one of the teams that had gone through (as their Daniel said, this could all be a trick), except that would have made things more complicated, something you probably don't want too much of in a forty-five minute episode of a genre series - that's the thing, they were playing to more than one audience by this stage, or that's my reading of it anyway. They'd created the Ori plot as backdrop to the season so new viewers could come onboard with the new character(s), and although there were still heavily interwoven arcs from previous seasons, the Ori have been by far the main focus. With episodes like this, or when Baal showed up again, it would mean more to longterm viewers, so this was a well-judged instalment, able to walk the border of both audiences, or at least that's how I took it, though I don't know the viewing figures or its reception. Whatever, it was just nice to see Dr. Fraiser again, even if she didn't play a substantial role (the main characters were in triplicate times triplicate times triplicate, etc, after all). It was also good to have an old face back in Martuf, which was a surprise as I didn't remember the actor's name - nor did I remember whether the character had died or not, it'd been so long!
That's one of the great things about a long-running series or franchise: having the opportunity to bring back a character we've not seen for years. It can be called a ratings stunt or scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I prefer to look on it as solidifying the reality (or 'realities' in this case), of a series, catching up with lives we'd known as if those lives had continued on beyond what we saw on the little window on the world we look through to see these episodes. We've seen doubles before (I really wanted Carter to say she was used to meeting herself, she's done it so many times), but this time having so many made it more fun. I guessed that at least one of the SG-1s would be 'bad,' or at least have different motivations and take matters into their own hands, but from General Landry's perspective he said it himself, he did sound callous not taking into account the level of need to send these people back. Granted, this is taking place in the here and now, not some future Trekky society that would need to debate whether they owe it to the greater multiverse (yuk!), or not, to make the return of the refugee teams the top priority, especially as it didn't seem particularly pressing, just some vague talk of needing to get their normal operations going to track down new tech and keep an eye on the Priors. But that had to be done to up the tension and force the black-uniformed SG-1 to take over Prometheus.
I guessed one of the teams would do something, but I didn't twig that it was their plan to get a ZPM from Atlantis in our galaxy right from the start (or is that the Pegasus galaxy? Our 'reality,' let's say), and it was they that started the jump into our reality. I liked the Trek Mirror Universe reference when Mitchell says they're not wearing beards so they can't be from the evil twin reality! I didn't get how they could travel to Atlantis in three weeks aboard Prometheus because I thought Atlantis was stranded, but I've only seen Season 1 of that and I can't remember how it ended so I'm sure it all makes sense if you're keeping track. It was also a fun sequence where their Mitchell puts on our Mitchell's clothes (I had already wondered why someone didn't do that, even if it was just for a practical joke), to get our SG-1 to escape the brig, but our SG-1 guesses the plan and outwits him. You could ask why their SG-1 didn't work out that our SG-1 would work out their plan and make a counter-plan, but it gets too complicated and no one has time to follow that degree of logic so I give them a pass on that! When they have all these fun touches and ironic comments, it adds up to a goodly entertaining episode - regulars like Walter, Lee, Lam and Siler, even an Asgard get involved, though he was called Kvasir, sadly not Thor. I guess Michael Shanks must have been unavailable. Hang on, there were tens of Shanks', what were they playing at? He was too busy playing himself to do a voiceover…? (At least Daniel gets a line saying he misses Thor!).
***
Classic 'Stargate,' just what the doctor ordered. And Janet Fraiser: just the Doctor that was ordered! Aside from the garbage multiverse theory which I always hate in sci-fi for its making of our own reality meaningless (a debate I'm happy to go on at length about), they managed to pull a fun and, if not overly inventive, entertaining story out of such a thing, creating some believability in events, and sympathy for the various SG-1s. It even answered a lot of the basic questions like 'how come SG-1 is the team to keep coming through from other realities when there should be just as much chance of strangers and other SG teams?' Answer: SG-1 is the most commonly found in dangerous situations - tenuous, considering each reality could, according to the garbage theory, be any combination or outcome conceivable, and even those we can't conceive, which is the whole point of the garbage theory. It's still suspension of disbelief time, but this is sci-fi, and it is 'SG-1,' not some deep sci-fi novel, which means complicated ideas narrowed down to populist terms. But they manage to get in plenty of boffin talk, or technobabble as they call it in the trade, which makes it feel even more 'of the series.' How could they avoid it with so many Samantha Carters on the base!
They were able to have some fun with the concept without straying too far from the ongoing arc of the Ori, and I wonder if these last couple of episodes, essentially filler, getting back to the old days of more episodic 'Stargate,' are treading water to allow time for whatever is the next move from the Ori or Baal, both of which are name-checked in case we'd forgotten them, but by the standards of the season, largely ignored, in favour of this bottle episode idea. It's funny that bottle episodes, taking place on just the standing sets of a series, can often generate some of the best story ideas, and while I'm not suggesting this is in any way an astonishing or clever execution of a familiar (some might say over-familiar), concept, that's what the series always did: derivative sci-fi. It sounds like I'm insulting the series ("Did he just insult me?"), but that's the level of my expectations for the series and what I've learned to enjoy, and for better or worse they should be dealing with stuff like this on top of ongoing stories, because that's what the series is made of. I can see that in today's TV world you wouldn't get episodes like this because the season would be stripped back to only the 'essentials' of an arc, but that's one reason I like long seasons because there are standalone stories that can play with the setup and characters and put them in interesting situations.
Or bring back a familiar face. I wish they'd kept Teryl Rothery's credit for the end as it would have had even more impact if we didn't know she was going to be on one of the teams that comes through the 'gate, but even so it was still a lovely moment. I have to admit that my recall on 'SG-1' lore fluctuates and I couldn't even remember if Jacob/Selmak was still alive in our universe or not, so I was half expecting to learn that SG-1 from our universe was one of the teams that had gone through (as their Daniel said, this could all be a trick), except that would have made things more complicated, something you probably don't want too much of in a forty-five minute episode of a genre series - that's the thing, they were playing to more than one audience by this stage, or that's my reading of it anyway. They'd created the Ori plot as backdrop to the season so new viewers could come onboard with the new character(s), and although there were still heavily interwoven arcs from previous seasons, the Ori have been by far the main focus. With episodes like this, or when Baal showed up again, it would mean more to longterm viewers, so this was a well-judged instalment, able to walk the border of both audiences, or at least that's how I took it, though I don't know the viewing figures or its reception. Whatever, it was just nice to see Dr. Fraiser again, even if she didn't play a substantial role (the main characters were in triplicate times triplicate times triplicate, etc, after all). It was also good to have an old face back in Martuf, which was a surprise as I didn't remember the actor's name - nor did I remember whether the character had died or not, it'd been so long!
That's one of the great things about a long-running series or franchise: having the opportunity to bring back a character we've not seen for years. It can be called a ratings stunt or scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I prefer to look on it as solidifying the reality (or 'realities' in this case), of a series, catching up with lives we'd known as if those lives had continued on beyond what we saw on the little window on the world we look through to see these episodes. We've seen doubles before (I really wanted Carter to say she was used to meeting herself, she's done it so many times), but this time having so many made it more fun. I guessed that at least one of the SG-1s would be 'bad,' or at least have different motivations and take matters into their own hands, but from General Landry's perspective he said it himself, he did sound callous not taking into account the level of need to send these people back. Granted, this is taking place in the here and now, not some future Trekky society that would need to debate whether they owe it to the greater multiverse (yuk!), or not, to make the return of the refugee teams the top priority, especially as it didn't seem particularly pressing, just some vague talk of needing to get their normal operations going to track down new tech and keep an eye on the Priors. But that had to be done to up the tension and force the black-uniformed SG-1 to take over Prometheus.
I guessed one of the teams would do something, but I didn't twig that it was their plan to get a ZPM from Atlantis in our galaxy right from the start (or is that the Pegasus galaxy? Our 'reality,' let's say), and it was they that started the jump into our reality. I liked the Trek Mirror Universe reference when Mitchell says they're not wearing beards so they can't be from the evil twin reality! I didn't get how they could travel to Atlantis in three weeks aboard Prometheus because I thought Atlantis was stranded, but I've only seen Season 1 of that and I can't remember how it ended so I'm sure it all makes sense if you're keeping track. It was also a fun sequence where their Mitchell puts on our Mitchell's clothes (I had already wondered why someone didn't do that, even if it was just for a practical joke), to get our SG-1 to escape the brig, but our SG-1 guesses the plan and outwits him. You could ask why their SG-1 didn't work out that our SG-1 would work out their plan and make a counter-plan, but it gets too complicated and no one has time to follow that degree of logic so I give them a pass on that! When they have all these fun touches and ironic comments, it adds up to a goodly entertaining episode - regulars like Walter, Lee, Lam and Siler, even an Asgard get involved, though he was called Kvasir, sadly not Thor. I guess Michael Shanks must have been unavailable. Hang on, there were tens of Shanks', what were they playing at? He was too busy playing himself to do a voiceover…? (At least Daniel gets a line saying he misses Thor!).
***
Get Me Out Of Here!
DVD, The Champions (Get Me Out Of Here!)
In all honesty not one of the memorable episodes of the series although it was produced squarely in the middle of the run so perhaps fatigue was creeping in? There aren't glaring problems, and in fact it's one of those episodes where the trio of agents are working closely together throughout and no one ever has to get captured and then rescued by their colleagues, unless you count the scene near the end when Sharron and her charge are caught by the police in a resistance member's house. But then the whole story is about rescuing a captured political prisoner, Professor Anna Maria Martes, leading figure in medical research, lured back to her home country of San Dios, an island west of Cuba, because she's about to make a scientific breakthrough of some kind and the leader, el jefe, wants to take advantage of her in his 'Year of Scientific Progress.' So it's like a subplot in an episode expanded to be the whole story. It sounds like it could be pretty exciting to break into a country, locate their target and expertly wrest her out of the control of her people, but in practice the majority of the episode is a waiting game. They wait and observe. They wait and formulate plans. They wait for the right time to put the next stage into operation. They wait… and the waiting grows tiresome.
At least the guest cast livens things up a bit with the great and ubiquitous figure of TV and film, Philip Madoc as Anna Maria's lazy, useless ex-husband, Angel, and the Commandante. The latter is good value for his complete change of face depending on who he's dealing with: around Anna Maria he relishes the power he has over her and enjoys being the man to break the news to her she's not going anywhere, almost like he's energised to act out a role, whereas when dealing with the lowly Angel, who has no part in his plans, he is bored and to the point, showing complete disinterest to the extent that the contrast is entertaining in itself. Sadly, for a man of Madoc's talents he's largely wasted (according to the DVD booklet he was unable to do a good Latin American accent and so was dubbed by one of the 'Thunderbirds' voice artists, which seems strange as he was known for his accents!), though he does get something of an arc to his character who doesn't appreciate the ex-wife he's lost, except where it concerns her money and the prestige he gets by association, showing him up as a shallow man. He goes from this to switching sides, though he's no noble hero, it's all self-interest on his part as he can see his position is finished in his own country so he may as well use the opportunity to take the exit to America, even if Anna Maria doesn't want him around. He's killed by one of the Commandante's men in a firefight after he's turned traitor to the regime, allowing time for Craig and Richard to come dashing in and beat up the enemy, with a deathbed moment for Anna Maria to see some good in her ex-husband.
In contrast to the selfish and blinkered Angel, her friend Henriques Cuevos is a man of honour and bravery, refusing to spill the beans about the secret room in his house where Anna Maria and Sharron are in hiding even when the Commandante threatens to burn down his house and all his possessions in order to get to them. A member of the resistance, he's cultivated a good cover as a doctor, but Angel reveals the existence of the hideout while still appearing to work for the enemy. I'm not sure when he actually decided to switch sides, perhaps it was all planned, or maybe it occurred to him once Anna Maria had been unearthed, but he makes up for any evil he's responsible for with his life. I have to say that Sharron wasn't up to much this time - she's supposed to be protecting Anna Maria, and while there's not a lot she could have done against a posse of armed men there's a general sense of helplessness on her part throughout the episode: she's the one driving the getaway car when she manages to crash into some rubble (proving that even with twenty-twenty vision you're not infallible), on the road to the coast, cracking the sump and lessening their chance of escape, and she spends most of the episode sitting around talking with either Craig or Richard while they do all the work and have all the 'fun,' about her only worthwhile moment being to lure Angel to a meeting with her, 'Karen Holmes for International.'
That may be one reason Sharron's awarded the sole limelight in the post-opening credits sequence where we're reminded who the champions are and what kind of abilities they have - she's in a train carriage when a thief reaches over to steal a woman's unattended purse when the lights in the carriage go out, Sharron shown to have natural night vision complete with green glow, able to see his groping hand approaching and switching the purse out for a cup of hot tea. I don't think we'd had this power used before, but then they don't tend to operate in pitch blackness, and it is a cool little sequence that showcases the ability well and also has amusement value. Usually, unless the scene plays directly into the main part of the episode, there's a distinct lack of connection with these showcase reminders, so much so that you wonder if they were written and filmed separately and inserted into whatever episode was warranted at the time, especially when you consider that some post-credits scenes were reused in other episodes, but in this case it was either very good symmetry or they wrote it specifically for this episode because the night vision is integral to the plot - Craig and Richard break into the police station, the Commandante's HQ, to rescue Anna Maria who is officially in 'protective custody' there, and break her out by smashing the generator and turning the lights off. It can't be a coincidence then that the night vision had been introduced, and we even return to the theme of sight when Sharron crashes the car, and at the end when Tremayne voices his usual scepticism and suspicion on how they pulled off this latest mission, but he's got to the point where he doesn't really want to know, he's just happy they're so successful and tells them to run away as if he accepts that's how it'll always be after being fobbed off with excessive eating of carrots as an explanation for their keen eyesight!
Most of the time in this episode their powers aren't played up, strangely, it's like they have them and we know it, so they don't feel the need to emphasise it like they usually do. There isn't much of the twinkly music that usually denotes supernatural senses and suchlike, often we're left to assume they were in a tougher situation than a normal person could deal with: for example, when Craig has to hide in the water cistern on the roof of the hotel where Anna Maria's initially being held, he must have had to hold his breath for a significant period as the guards, complete with Alsatian, search for him, but we don't see him burst up for air as if he could barely survive much longer, he climbs out calmly. The same can be said when Richard leads the guards on a wild goose chase so Craig can get in and speak to Anna Maria - it's not like he performs any astonishing acrobatics to escape the pursuing police, he just runs around a bit, eventually speeding off on a motorbike into the countryside until they give up the chase, but confiscate the abandoned 'cycle, leaving him with a ten kilometre walk back to town which he mentions, but we never see. The night vision means they don't have to do any fighting during the break-in at the station - while they do have to climb down the side of the building, any good climber could have done that so it doesn't qualify for exceptional in the champions' world.
They do kick the Professor's cell door in (though it wasn't possible to see if they were doing it together in the method they've come to use often, as we see it from the inner side), and when trying to escape the pursuit after Sharron's ruined the car, Craig ends up carrying Anna Maria because otherwise she's slowing them down. Again, unspoken evidence of their superior physical abilities, and in one sense the subtlety is good, but we're used to powers being pronounced and impressed upon us. Early on, when Craig first meets the Professor he uses his senses to, apparently, 'hear' the bug in her room. I wonder why they chose to do it that way when in the past if they're looking for something they usually show it as being a sense that guides them to what they need to find, but here they very definitely focus on his ear as if he's listening for it. His sixth sense doesn't warn him about the CCTV watching him, however (possibly because it wasn't switched on at first), and though the bug can be nullified by playing the radio next to it and speaking softly, it doesn't take long for the monitoring guard to get suspicious and turn on the TV where Craig is perfectly framed in conversation with Anna Maria. Once again it shows their powers to be fallible. At the end, Craig and Richard receive a warning from the fear Sharron's experiencing when she and the Professor are discovered in the hiding place, precipitating their abandonment of the dinghy they were preparing and making a beeline back to the fishing village to enter the fray and fight the authorities.
If their powers aren't used to the full in the episode there are much more pertinent blunders that don't help to sell the reality of the situation: Anna Maria picks up the note posted under her door by Craig, warning her to remain silent, yet she reads it aloud! And when Richard makes himself a target for the police outside they never once draw guns, and the police car in the road fails to block the fairly tight exit or even try to knock Richard off the bike as he roars towards them - they had plenty of time to see where he was going! I can only assume there was more than one route out of there, but even so it makes them look inept and incompetent. In the scene where Craig and Richard enter the police station, quite apart from the fact they do it by crashing through a large window that would surely have alerted everyone on that floor, it's quite light outside, yet inside, once the generator's sabotage has been accomplished the whole building is in complete darkness - what about the large windows we see on the outside? Finally, and this is just a fun little observation you really have to pay attention to spot: when Craig's climbing into the water tank the lid almost falls off the back and you can just about see hands grabbing it to stop it from falling!
There are very few of the usual questions over who was and wasn't credited at the end since most of the characters are included and the other speaking roles were filled by generic soldiers or police. Aside from the main roles of Anna Maria and Angel, the Commandante and Cuevos, we have the small role of 'Minister' credited, a large man that goes by the name of Carlos, the most interesting thing about him being that I believe they brought the actor back to play a villain in the final episode of the series. Josef was obviously the red-topped informer in Cuevos' village, but the roles of Police Captain and Detective aren't easy to pin down as there are several options for who's who. Norman Florence, who played the Police Captain, had previously been Cabello in 'The Iron Man,' but that doesn't help as I never worked out whose role that was in that episode. One of these roles must have been the man in the white suit, the Commandante's deputy, as he was more prominent than most of the soldiers, but whether he was the Captain or the Detective I can't decide. One prominent character was the guy who searches Anna Maria's room for Craig and questions her, so he's also a contender. The room itself was the usual set they'd used before with its long, shuttered windows. The roof of the hotel where Craig hides must be the same set as that from 'A Case of Lemmings' where Craig almost jumped to his death, though extended (although technically, this episode was made immediately before, so it originated here), and of course the regular appearance of the steep, cobbled hill with houses either side, returns as the fishing village where they escape to Cuevos.
It's a shame the episode doesn't really work that well because it's a pleasure when the three of them carry out missions so closely together and the idea is ripe for exciting pursuits and split second action to infiltrate and extract their target in a 'Mission: Impossible' vein. The way it was filmed, the locations used, with a lot of external shooting, also marks a point in its favour, and sells it as this foreign country rather than London or its environs where it was most likely filmed. It's just the execution that's at fault, with Sharron underused or made to look a little useless, and full advantage of the situation never taken. The muted use of powers didn't help, nor the underuse of Philip Madoc (most famous for being the German submarine Captain in 'Dad's Army' episode 'The Deadly Attachment,' often cited as the best of that series), who might have been better utilised as the Commandante, though I enjoyed that performance a lot. I wondered if Craig's comment where he doubts the regime will put their 'wonder woman' up against a wall was a reference to the superhero, but such references weren't common in those days so it's probably just a common turn of phrase. I suppose it's surprising that I haven't had much to say about Anna Maria herself, but she was more a plot device to put the heroes into action, and though she shows some fire we don't really learn about her research or motivations - a bit like Sharron, really, who is along because of her medical knowledge, something that has been important in other episodes but falls by the wayside here.
**
In all honesty not one of the memorable episodes of the series although it was produced squarely in the middle of the run so perhaps fatigue was creeping in? There aren't glaring problems, and in fact it's one of those episodes where the trio of agents are working closely together throughout and no one ever has to get captured and then rescued by their colleagues, unless you count the scene near the end when Sharron and her charge are caught by the police in a resistance member's house. But then the whole story is about rescuing a captured political prisoner, Professor Anna Maria Martes, leading figure in medical research, lured back to her home country of San Dios, an island west of Cuba, because she's about to make a scientific breakthrough of some kind and the leader, el jefe, wants to take advantage of her in his 'Year of Scientific Progress.' So it's like a subplot in an episode expanded to be the whole story. It sounds like it could be pretty exciting to break into a country, locate their target and expertly wrest her out of the control of her people, but in practice the majority of the episode is a waiting game. They wait and observe. They wait and formulate plans. They wait for the right time to put the next stage into operation. They wait… and the waiting grows tiresome.
At least the guest cast livens things up a bit with the great and ubiquitous figure of TV and film, Philip Madoc as Anna Maria's lazy, useless ex-husband, Angel, and the Commandante. The latter is good value for his complete change of face depending on who he's dealing with: around Anna Maria he relishes the power he has over her and enjoys being the man to break the news to her she's not going anywhere, almost like he's energised to act out a role, whereas when dealing with the lowly Angel, who has no part in his plans, he is bored and to the point, showing complete disinterest to the extent that the contrast is entertaining in itself. Sadly, for a man of Madoc's talents he's largely wasted (according to the DVD booklet he was unable to do a good Latin American accent and so was dubbed by one of the 'Thunderbirds' voice artists, which seems strange as he was known for his accents!), though he does get something of an arc to his character who doesn't appreciate the ex-wife he's lost, except where it concerns her money and the prestige he gets by association, showing him up as a shallow man. He goes from this to switching sides, though he's no noble hero, it's all self-interest on his part as he can see his position is finished in his own country so he may as well use the opportunity to take the exit to America, even if Anna Maria doesn't want him around. He's killed by one of the Commandante's men in a firefight after he's turned traitor to the regime, allowing time for Craig and Richard to come dashing in and beat up the enemy, with a deathbed moment for Anna Maria to see some good in her ex-husband.
In contrast to the selfish and blinkered Angel, her friend Henriques Cuevos is a man of honour and bravery, refusing to spill the beans about the secret room in his house where Anna Maria and Sharron are in hiding even when the Commandante threatens to burn down his house and all his possessions in order to get to them. A member of the resistance, he's cultivated a good cover as a doctor, but Angel reveals the existence of the hideout while still appearing to work for the enemy. I'm not sure when he actually decided to switch sides, perhaps it was all planned, or maybe it occurred to him once Anna Maria had been unearthed, but he makes up for any evil he's responsible for with his life. I have to say that Sharron wasn't up to much this time - she's supposed to be protecting Anna Maria, and while there's not a lot she could have done against a posse of armed men there's a general sense of helplessness on her part throughout the episode: she's the one driving the getaway car when she manages to crash into some rubble (proving that even with twenty-twenty vision you're not infallible), on the road to the coast, cracking the sump and lessening their chance of escape, and she spends most of the episode sitting around talking with either Craig or Richard while they do all the work and have all the 'fun,' about her only worthwhile moment being to lure Angel to a meeting with her, 'Karen Holmes for International.'
That may be one reason Sharron's awarded the sole limelight in the post-opening credits sequence where we're reminded who the champions are and what kind of abilities they have - she's in a train carriage when a thief reaches over to steal a woman's unattended purse when the lights in the carriage go out, Sharron shown to have natural night vision complete with green glow, able to see his groping hand approaching and switching the purse out for a cup of hot tea. I don't think we'd had this power used before, but then they don't tend to operate in pitch blackness, and it is a cool little sequence that showcases the ability well and also has amusement value. Usually, unless the scene plays directly into the main part of the episode, there's a distinct lack of connection with these showcase reminders, so much so that you wonder if they were written and filmed separately and inserted into whatever episode was warranted at the time, especially when you consider that some post-credits scenes were reused in other episodes, but in this case it was either very good symmetry or they wrote it specifically for this episode because the night vision is integral to the plot - Craig and Richard break into the police station, the Commandante's HQ, to rescue Anna Maria who is officially in 'protective custody' there, and break her out by smashing the generator and turning the lights off. It can't be a coincidence then that the night vision had been introduced, and we even return to the theme of sight when Sharron crashes the car, and at the end when Tremayne voices his usual scepticism and suspicion on how they pulled off this latest mission, but he's got to the point where he doesn't really want to know, he's just happy they're so successful and tells them to run away as if he accepts that's how it'll always be after being fobbed off with excessive eating of carrots as an explanation for their keen eyesight!
Most of the time in this episode their powers aren't played up, strangely, it's like they have them and we know it, so they don't feel the need to emphasise it like they usually do. There isn't much of the twinkly music that usually denotes supernatural senses and suchlike, often we're left to assume they were in a tougher situation than a normal person could deal with: for example, when Craig has to hide in the water cistern on the roof of the hotel where Anna Maria's initially being held, he must have had to hold his breath for a significant period as the guards, complete with Alsatian, search for him, but we don't see him burst up for air as if he could barely survive much longer, he climbs out calmly. The same can be said when Richard leads the guards on a wild goose chase so Craig can get in and speak to Anna Maria - it's not like he performs any astonishing acrobatics to escape the pursuing police, he just runs around a bit, eventually speeding off on a motorbike into the countryside until they give up the chase, but confiscate the abandoned 'cycle, leaving him with a ten kilometre walk back to town which he mentions, but we never see. The night vision means they don't have to do any fighting during the break-in at the station - while they do have to climb down the side of the building, any good climber could have done that so it doesn't qualify for exceptional in the champions' world.
They do kick the Professor's cell door in (though it wasn't possible to see if they were doing it together in the method they've come to use often, as we see it from the inner side), and when trying to escape the pursuit after Sharron's ruined the car, Craig ends up carrying Anna Maria because otherwise she's slowing them down. Again, unspoken evidence of their superior physical abilities, and in one sense the subtlety is good, but we're used to powers being pronounced and impressed upon us. Early on, when Craig first meets the Professor he uses his senses to, apparently, 'hear' the bug in her room. I wonder why they chose to do it that way when in the past if they're looking for something they usually show it as being a sense that guides them to what they need to find, but here they very definitely focus on his ear as if he's listening for it. His sixth sense doesn't warn him about the CCTV watching him, however (possibly because it wasn't switched on at first), and though the bug can be nullified by playing the radio next to it and speaking softly, it doesn't take long for the monitoring guard to get suspicious and turn on the TV where Craig is perfectly framed in conversation with Anna Maria. Once again it shows their powers to be fallible. At the end, Craig and Richard receive a warning from the fear Sharron's experiencing when she and the Professor are discovered in the hiding place, precipitating their abandonment of the dinghy they were preparing and making a beeline back to the fishing village to enter the fray and fight the authorities.
If their powers aren't used to the full in the episode there are much more pertinent blunders that don't help to sell the reality of the situation: Anna Maria picks up the note posted under her door by Craig, warning her to remain silent, yet she reads it aloud! And when Richard makes himself a target for the police outside they never once draw guns, and the police car in the road fails to block the fairly tight exit or even try to knock Richard off the bike as he roars towards them - they had plenty of time to see where he was going! I can only assume there was more than one route out of there, but even so it makes them look inept and incompetent. In the scene where Craig and Richard enter the police station, quite apart from the fact they do it by crashing through a large window that would surely have alerted everyone on that floor, it's quite light outside, yet inside, once the generator's sabotage has been accomplished the whole building is in complete darkness - what about the large windows we see on the outside? Finally, and this is just a fun little observation you really have to pay attention to spot: when Craig's climbing into the water tank the lid almost falls off the back and you can just about see hands grabbing it to stop it from falling!
There are very few of the usual questions over who was and wasn't credited at the end since most of the characters are included and the other speaking roles were filled by generic soldiers or police. Aside from the main roles of Anna Maria and Angel, the Commandante and Cuevos, we have the small role of 'Minister' credited, a large man that goes by the name of Carlos, the most interesting thing about him being that I believe they brought the actor back to play a villain in the final episode of the series. Josef was obviously the red-topped informer in Cuevos' village, but the roles of Police Captain and Detective aren't easy to pin down as there are several options for who's who. Norman Florence, who played the Police Captain, had previously been Cabello in 'The Iron Man,' but that doesn't help as I never worked out whose role that was in that episode. One of these roles must have been the man in the white suit, the Commandante's deputy, as he was more prominent than most of the soldiers, but whether he was the Captain or the Detective I can't decide. One prominent character was the guy who searches Anna Maria's room for Craig and questions her, so he's also a contender. The room itself was the usual set they'd used before with its long, shuttered windows. The roof of the hotel where Craig hides must be the same set as that from 'A Case of Lemmings' where Craig almost jumped to his death, though extended (although technically, this episode was made immediately before, so it originated here), and of course the regular appearance of the steep, cobbled hill with houses either side, returns as the fishing village where they escape to Cuevos.
It's a shame the episode doesn't really work that well because it's a pleasure when the three of them carry out missions so closely together and the idea is ripe for exciting pursuits and split second action to infiltrate and extract their target in a 'Mission: Impossible' vein. The way it was filmed, the locations used, with a lot of external shooting, also marks a point in its favour, and sells it as this foreign country rather than London or its environs where it was most likely filmed. It's just the execution that's at fault, with Sharron underused or made to look a little useless, and full advantage of the situation never taken. The muted use of powers didn't help, nor the underuse of Philip Madoc (most famous for being the German submarine Captain in 'Dad's Army' episode 'The Deadly Attachment,' often cited as the best of that series), who might have been better utilised as the Commandante, though I enjoyed that performance a lot. I wondered if Craig's comment where he doubts the regime will put their 'wonder woman' up against a wall was a reference to the superhero, but such references weren't common in those days so it's probably just a common turn of phrase. I suppose it's surprising that I haven't had much to say about Anna Maria herself, but she was more a plot device to put the heroes into action, and though she shows some fire we don't really learn about her research or motivations - a bit like Sharron, really, who is along because of her medical knowledge, something that has been important in other episodes but falls by the wayside here.
**
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