DVD, Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) film
Tom Cruise has had the opportunity of a lifetime with this film series: to portray a character across twenty-two years of his career in the cinema, with more to come. He started in the Brosnan era of James Bond, outlasting that, continued and reinvented during the Daniel Craig era, soon to outlast that, too, and seen off the Matt Damon Jason Bourne era. How many actors can say they've pulled off such a feat with still more will to continue the role? I wish that we could see more of the Ethan Hunt behind the heroic persona, the man that is ageing yet still continues to battle villainy with every ounce of physical effort he can muster (which is a considerable amount, to be sure). I want too much, I know, but I do wish there was a little of the 'Star Trek II' spirit in the writing - in that film characters reflected on mortality and the changes to life which made things ever more poignant. It's not like they never made any more films and did their hero stuff after that, but it placed them in a vulnerable position. I'm of two minds with this train of thought because my favourite 'Mission: Impossible' is number two when Ethan was the unstoppable action hero, never fazed, reacting deftly and ethically, while never looking like he could fail, his daring legendary, his stamina inexhaustible. But that was almost twenty years ago and he was a comparatively young man then. With III they started something which addressed that, took him out of the field and into training up a younger generation, both for the sake of believability I suspect, and in preparation for when Cruise would be too old to keep it up.
Thing is, he's kept it up, and the relatively dark days of 'M:I4' where Jeremy Renner was groomed to be his successor as the action man of the franchise are long consigned to history, the final indignity for that character being his sidelining in 'M:I5' and now complete absence from 'M:I6,' something I was not concerned about in the least. Nothing against Renner, I wish him well, but I was never impressed with him in either the Bourne or 'M:I' series and if there are to be recurring characters alongside Hunt then they need to have something more than mild likeability. It's fortunate that for the majority of such roles they have worked. As I've mentioned in reviews of the other films I'm not sold on Simon Pegg's Benjamin Dunn, he was only added for comic relief, something that Luther Stickell was more than capable of, as well as the latter's prime position as computer expert ('Everest man'), which Benji usurped making Luther pretty much obsolete except as a mouthpiece to fill people in on the strong and silent Ethan who is quite private in many ways, playing his cards close. The good news is that Benji is much less silly in this film, the bad is that Luther is still largely unnecessary for the story, but the other good news is that he does get some key moments, the main one being his conversation with Ilsa about Hunt's wife Julia, filling her in on the plot to 'M:I3' in touching terms, as well as getting assistance from Julia herself in the field.
Michelle Monaghan's inclusion, even in a fairly minor way, was essential to the missing exploration of Hunt's ageing because her introduction in 'M:I3' was a bold attempt to add depth to the action hero that was the charismatic, but facade, face of Ethan and if she had been excluded for two films in a row it would have made them far more about the action set-pieces, which is mainly what they are about - of course they aren't about examining the human condition and what it's like to get old and lose the former abilities due to the natural process that can be postponed, but not avoided. As someone in their thirties I'm going to be looking for that kind of thing in films, just as when you're young you're looking for the vicarious excitement of taking part in sky-top chases and motorbike speeding, hand-to-hand combat and dealing justice to injustice. But at least Julia adds something to Ethan's real life beyond all the fancy stunts, which is why her scenes add much more weight to plot and scenario, these two of which are really only there to garnish action. Sometimes there's more tension from something personal, however, than any number of nuclear bomb threats, and it came from Julia's presence. When Luther intimates that Hunt and his wife are no longer married, but doesn't actually say the words I was remembering that every film ends in triumph and happiness and was expecting this to follow the pattern. That is until we meet Julia out in a field hospital where she can live out her best life doing what she was made for, the cost being marriage to Ethan. If there was any hope of reunification it's dashed by her having married some doctor and that was a shame.
I saw it as a clear message from the writer that they were admitting defeat: Julia was added in to create complication on a personal level for Ethan. She was his Kryptonite, the secret that could defeat him if used against him, and Ethan isn't Superman any more (even if he does face off against one in Henry Cavill!). In 'M:I4' they solved it by showing she was still there, he couldn't see her, was trapped away from her, but it wasn't the end. With 'M:I5' they avoided the question, making it a surprisingly nonconformist entry in the genre when the action hero and action heroine don't pair up as they do in practically every other action film, and if you didn't know the history you'd probably think it strange for such a traditional film that follows most conventions of the genre, to take a different, refreshing approach. It seems they've at last managed to free themselves of the 'burden' of the Julia albatross hanging round Ethan's neck like the payload from the helicopter, only so they can go back to the typical younger woman who's in the same business so has less chance of being used against him. Hello? Surely she'll be just as much of a liability, if not more so since she has the same job of being an agent for the security service and is going into the line of fire against the villains as much as Hunt. So it doesn't solve the problem in that regard, it just means an 'ordinary' woman such as Julia, who doesn't have the training to take care of herself as an agent could, can have a normal life instead of being trapped. It's a bit of a tragedy: they could have kept the complication and found ways to deal with it to enhance creativity, but they go the easy option and oust her.
I'm not saying I'd like Hunt to retire and sail off into the sunset because without him the series wouldn't be anywhere near as much a draw, but they could find ways to have him move higher up the organisation while still being out in the field - Hunley, Alec Baldwin's IMF boss, managed it (and was killed for his trouble - who will they get next after Jon Voight, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Fishburne, Tom Wilkinson and Baldwin?). The first three films had a sense of progression: the first turned the expected on its head, the second went for style more than anything, the third dialled back and went in an entirely different, real world, grounded direction… and then the series became a little bland in comparison. See, one of the things I loved about them was how different in tone and style each one was, different directors, a new IMF team, but with just enough to provide continuity between them with Luther or the visual trademarks like the outstretched limbs (we had hanging from ropes, hanging in the air repulsed by magnetic force, and last time floating underwater - this time it's skydiving). From 'M:I4' onwards, once JJ Abrams' Bad Robot took over (with 'M:I3'), the films 'calmed down' into something that looked and felt quite samey each time because that's what BR do. With this fourth film in the Abrams cycle they went a step even further from the series' initial unique and varied approach by using the same Writer and Director, Christopher McQuarrie in succession. They'd found the winning formula that would make the most cash and weren't going to allow for experimentation or risk any more, sadly. Much like 'Casino Royale' and 'Quantum of Solace,' this is pretty close to being part two of a duology with some of the same characters and unfinished business moving towards resolution.
I say moving towards resolution because Solomon Lane, the villain from 'M:I5' is broken out of custody (who had him, I'm not sure? Was it the Americans, the English, the French, the Swedes?), and ends the film right back in custody (definitely the English that time, sent to them by the Americans… I think…), but still very much alive. Ilsa Faust, Ethan's semi-assistant in that film is back to learn that he's married, then that he isn't any more, and that's as far as it goes. So I wouldn't be surprised if both these characters come back in 'M:I7,' because if you don't die you've got a reasonable chance. Indeed, Lane is the only villain not to die in the series (Phelps, Ambrose, Davian and that completely forgettable guy in 'M:I4' all bought it big time), and Ilsa did so want to kill him… But as for Julia, I think not. It was a gladdening addition to have a part of it this time when they could so easily have written her out with a line or even just intimated that Hunt is never going to talk about her again, but they take the time for her and the film in consequence is the longest so far at two hours, twenty-one minutes, and never boring! Seeing her in Hunt's nightmare at the beginning was a lovely touch - I knew she was going to be in the film and suspected it would be more than one scene at the end because otherwise she wouldn't have had such a credit, and you can't go more than one film without mentioning someone's secret wife and hold onto credibility. But the guilt of Ethan over changing her life so radically and his nemesis, Lane, being the one to voice it in his head immediately made this film something that was respecting what had come before rather than desperately trying to appeal to new viewers because it's become almost a serial with Julia the main linchpin, and Lane the latter one.
Though that opening wasn't bad (despite the nicked 'Terminator 2' horror explosion), the film didn't have me on board with that. It would have needed a mind-blowing action scene such as the likes of 'M:I2' threw me into to settle me in, and instead I saw more incompetence as Ethan and his 'team' (only two people with him?), manage to lose the deadly plutonium in a bungled exchange. And it really is Ethan's fault because he pulls the same trick as in 'M:I5' when, to save an assassination target's life, he fired to wound before the assassin could kill. This time it's his buddy Luther who's the hostage, but what happened to Hunt's pinpoint accuracy, that old 'how many bullets do you have?' question, followed by 'enough' ('M:I3'). He has to blast out a few shots, taking down Luther (in bulletproof vest), as well as the hostage-taker. I didn't think Luther would be killed off, for one thing they tend not to go that direction unless the character isn't truly important to the audience (Hunley). If they'd had him mumble something about failing eyesight and gone that route through the film, as daring as it would be for an action star to admit to such things, it would have added a new and satisfying uncertainty into the mix. Although, as I said, I liked Hunt best when he was practically perfect and you always knew he would have the answer, find the best solution, save the people and do it ethically, too, the series certainly responded to Bourne's introduction of more physical consequences and so we see him limp for a bit, not quite make a jump comfortably, or have to make more than one attempt at something, like sliding down the rope under the helicopter.
With 'M:I4' they went the humorous route, upping Benji's role to costar and having Hunt forced to look ridiculous on too many occasions as he fails or falters, usually due to technology on the blink, losing the cool image he had. This was probably due to Cruise trying to get the audience on board after his famous public embarrassment, and having us laugh at the character seemed an equitable way to do that. It apparently worked, as these films have remained successful (as has Cruise), and he doesn't need to do this stuff any more if he doesn't want to, but seems to love doing the stunts and getting the rush. Throughout the changes in approach to the character, and I was personally pleased that the silliness was successively toned down with each new instalment, the core of who Ethan was remained the same: an ethical hero. At the point in the film when it seemed like he'd become just like any Bond spy, running in with some nasty people to achieve his goal and forced to personally execute a poor policeman only doing his job, to save himself, I was about to be very disappointed. Then it ends with him back in the meeting and it was all a dream! Well, an envisioning of how the White Widow's gang would operate. I'm always expecting the twists, that's one of the problems with a series like this: how to surprise people that are expecting surprises without turning it into some Russian literature level of convolution. It certainly succeeded on that front at least twice. First with that imagining of the ambush and again with the double/triple twist later on. It was at that point just after the imagined ambush that the film finally had me on board because you're automatically wondering how Ethan is going to get round this obstacle.
I think that's what makes the series work: it's all about the physical, mental and personal obstacles that Hunt has to work around, with, or through, and the joy is seeing how he uses his own skills and those of his team, their gadgets and their faith in him that pulls everything together. Otherwise he may as well be James Bond: go in, shoot the bad guys dead and save the day the short, brutal and relatively simple way. But no, he doesn't like to kill and only does so when he has no other choice, such as when, after kidnapping Solomon Lane, they stumble upon a humble policewoman and he takes down four thugs who are about to kill her. I did wish he could have found another alternative, whether saying something that would have got them to spare her, or incapacitating them rather than shooting to kill, as he always looks cooler when he succeeds against impossible odds (it's not 'Mission: Difficult' as Anthony Hopkins once suggested), or even another opportunity to show that age meant he was slightly less effective. But he generally does a brilliant job of thinking on his feet and coming up with a way in split seconds. Veteran viewers of the series would see some things coming a mile off, such as the tricking of the doctor that had built the plutonium weapons and was lying in a hospital bed watching the TV's report that his bombs had detonated. But I suppose we were supposed to see through that one as it would be a strange film if the bombs had done their business so early on and it was a lovely callback to the very first scene of the first film where they fool someone in the same way, then knock down the set.
That was a little silly, but then this is an action film in a long-running series so of course they're going to do some silly things like dramatically knocking over the set and smugly explaining everything that had just happened, to the intended victim! I can allow them some small victories as things don't go according to plan most of the time. The downside of writing a review after watching a film only once is that you're as busy keeping up with the plot, the names of people, places and organisations and who's doing what and why, where and when, that it's easy to get boggled. The upside is that it's the most honest immediate appraisal of whether a film works or not, reaction without time for preconceptions. And I really didn't have much in the way of those because I hadn't followed the interest generation of its media. Having fallen away from cinema attendance as somewhere overpriced that I just don't like having to go to, I never seriously considered seeing this film in its natural habitat. That's quite a thing to admit because for a while this was one of my favourite film series', without reservation, then it became one of my favourites with slight reservation, then I could no longer say it was one of my favourites, until it has become something I take for granted: I'll see it eventually on DVD, I'll add it to the collection for the sake of completeness, not whether I really like it and are likely to watch it again and again in years to come.
The last time I failed to attend one of them was 'M:I3,' and that was only because I couldn't drum up support and didn't feel like going alone. With 'M:I4' and 'M:I5' I liked them, but neither made me glad I saw them on the big screen, and since it had become an almost inevitable occurrence with any film-going experience I didn't feel any compulsion for this one, and I was probably right, because while it keeps to a certain quality, it doesn't push the format far enough to justify its existence and does continue the feeling of conformity begin in 'M:I4.' I did enjoy it, as I said, it won me over within a reasonable span of time and it kept the attention, had some tension, and while the helicopter stuff at the end was merely reasonably entertaining, I would say as a whole it does some things better than the previous film. But I'd probably still place it fifth in the order of merit: 2, 1, 3, 5, 6, 4. The things it got right were not spending unnecessary time laughing at the characters, taking a more serious tone. The weapon was a genuine threat rather than a vague 'rabbit's foot,' even if the motivation was the same as the baddie in 'M:I4' (to destroy the world and start again, that old plan). The villain was fine, I felt Lane was more interesting this time, despite being a bag of meat to be pushed around most of the time, his insanity taking hold ever more as he decides to stay with the second bomb, and his ragged appearance and few, but enjoyable words, making him much more interesting. My only true preconception was that Henry Cavill's Walker was one of the villains, so I assume that was announced as I got it from somewhere as if he was set to be the main villain and expected him to be unmasked. It dealt with the Julia question. Benji and Luther were about equal in screen time. London was definitely better presented than in 'M:I5,' especially when Ethan does his old man's parkour above the city.
They managed to throw in some unique elements such as Ethan having to protect the villain (and I loved that Lane took so long before finally speaking, never reacting in surprise when Hunt pulls the hood off), the long-time joke of Benji getting to don the face mask was carried off twice and was never overstated in its completion of a running joke. In fact, Benji was not a joke. It is somewhat strange in this day and age to see a big mainstream action film mainly starring three old men as the heroes, but it was good fun, and though Ethan's acrobatics are somewhat less smooth and he sometimes needs help (like the fake John Lark alias only being taken down by him, Walker and Ilsa combined - less heroic, but more realistic), he's still fitter than most people half his age. He gets to do the usual running, the usual motorbiking, the fighting, the shooting, the climbing (I do wonder in what stunt he injured himself as that was one thing I did hear about the film), and there's a surprising lack of dependence on gadgetry - I increasingly see the use of more analogue technology in these recent films, like the vinyl record player in 'M:I5' and the stopwatch or wire clippers in this one, so I wonder if Cruise's own preferences are coming out as you'd expect them to use only ever more sleeker tech, the more it takes over ordinary lives. But perhaps tech is now so common and everyday that it's hard to come up with things that impress? In that regard the one thing that stood out was the face mapper. Sadly, we didn't get to see the face mask printer (even there, 3D printers have become a normalised piece of kit when, back in 2006 and the debut of the mask printer in 'M:I3,' such things were still science fiction!), but a scanner that maps a face so minutely and transfers it to a printable file was a bit more to be seen of that familiar tech, though I'm surprised they don't really come up with dazzlingly inventive devices or ways to use them.
Not that they didn't use tech, it's just ordinary stuff like cameras, laptops and drones, not allowing themselves to run wild. Maybe that was the right direction to go as things were fast approaching the futuristic sci-fi with the screens that could project a false view of a corridor in three dimensions ('M:I4'), and that sort of thing, and this film, as well as the previous, seemed a bit more grounded, which in turn makes the stakes seem higher. No one gets bruised, a few moments of staggering is enough to see off a pesky motorbike crash, but that's how action fare works. You're not going to get Rambo-style self surgery or the heroes in hospital beds (although once everything was done, that's where Ethan ends up, so maybe I was wrong and it was just a case of battling through the pain until you have the luxury of relaxing time for medical attention?), otherwise the missions would have to take place over months! If I'm going to nitpick it would be much more about story logic than conventions: the biggest issue was why Walker needed to have a trigger for the bombs when they were already on a countdown? That's the point of a countdown, they go off automatically when the clock… counts… down… Unless it was an emergency trigger in case the clocks froze or failed in some way. The authorities ignoring major accidents or protocol is another: the police bike that waves the convoy on to the backup route could at least have checked to see if the driver of the overturned lorry required first aid before speeding off! And why weren't Ethan and the team accosted at the medical camp? They had no ID, no medical outfits and they just wander around, sometimes running, without ever being asked for an explanation, and there were definitely soldiers there so security should have been alerted, not to mention no one hearing Benji smashing padlocks off cases in a tent!
You have to embrace the plot holes in these things, because if you don't how can you enjoy it? They should be ironed out, there should be thought put into stories instead of disguised with speed and distraction, but then again it's possible that any queries had an answer, they might have thought it through - all they needed to do was a line of dialogue (the police rider saying an ambulance was on the way, for example), or a sound or cut (an ambulance siren, or shot of it on the way!), and problems can be solved: a little thought goes a long way. On the whole it seemed pretty well designed, the characters were pretty well integrated, with no annoying ones, the locations were nice, though I could have sometimes done with a better sense of place as we go from capital city to capital city, and while they look different, the close buildings could sometimes make locations blend together. I think it was St. Paul's Cathedral that Ethan runs through during a funeral, but it would have been nice to have a better sense of it, like breaking into the CIA in the first film, or the Vatican in the third. This was a little too fast from place to place. That said, I didn't feel the editing was too fast paced. Back when 'Quantum of Solace' came out it seemed that if the trend continued we'd be having films with every scene of one or two-second cuts, but that hasn't been the case, thankfully. One area that fell down was once again not pumping out the classic theme music enough during action sequences, and the score was very much influenced by Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. Not necessarily a bad thing, and I was glad Michael Giacchino wasn't back for yet another in the series, but I'd have liked more bombastic 'M:I' music, personally.
There were plenty of connections and references to other films in the series, but they tended to be either subtle that could be interpreted as such, or could just be a fact of doing the same kind of things - for example, the 'pull up, pull up: terrain, terrain' warning from the helicopter brought to mind the plane approaching the mountain in 'M:I2,' and it was probably meant to, but equally it could have been there because that's what happens when a flying vehicle is approaching terrain! There are a lot of motorbikes, and didn't Ethan come off one in just the same way in 'M:I5'? Again, could be a callback, or could just be a coincidence. Fighting the villain to the sound of drums at the end? 'M:I2.' Those things weren't as important as using key elements from previous films as essential in telling the story, and for someone like me that loves any of the continuity they allow (and it's not at the forefront because they want to appeal to anyone that hasn't seen them, too), it was beautiful because it feels like these are real people living in a world that is continuing, even though it's fictional. That's one reason why I still like to see these films come out every few years (and they seem to have upped the schedule dramatically, perhaps to take advantage of Cruise before he really can't jump off buildings and the like, and also because Paramount isn't doing too well and needs as many successes as it can pump out to ensure its survival, it seems!), and a few years ago I was just glad of things like this continuing, whether I loved the instalments or not.
I'm still somewhat of this mind when it comes to some things, but not of others. 'Star Wars' I'd be quite happy if they never made another film again because I feel it's so bland as to have lost what made it special. The same for Paramount's 'Star Trek' films - if they can't make Trek right, then why make it at all? The advantage with 'Mission: Impossible' is that it's always been nothing more than an action film franchise - I'm still surprised they haven't set up a modern TV show, however, because like Trek, it's one of those brands that has a format that can still work, though there have been plenty of spy dramas over the years, Paramount split in two and no longer does TV shows, and the point of 'M:I' is more about huge spectacle in the films, not complex character arcs. My point is that 'Mission' doesn't need to try and be 'better' than it was, it just recycles the same adventure-type stunts and threats. The difference used to be in how that was presented, as I keep saying about the first three films. With the films after, and to some extent, thanks to Julia, including the third film in that stable, they've become, not stale, or even predictable, but set in their ways. This could change if a radically different director was given the chance, but that's less likely as long as Cruise and McQuarrie like working together because they've found a partnership that works for them. I'd love it if they got someone like John Woo again, but even going back to old aesthetics isn't necessarily the answer - they've already changed patterns in one small way: if you look at Hunt's hair, it alternates long and short with each film, until this one, which suggests they weren't going to follow every trope they'd chosen before, or that Cruise doesn't feel it suits the age of the character now, perhaps.
That's just a minor thing, and I really only mention it jokingly, but at the same time it is like they've become set in one exact style, one that the current audience expects. They don't want to do anything too drastic, they want to keep Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames. They'll probably keep Rebecca Ferguson, so even the team isn't changing as much as it used to. The risk averse Hollywood knows to make a sure thing is impossible, but once you stumble upon a formula that works, you stick to it. This means that I continue to be only mildly interested in the product because it's remaking the same thing I already own, and unless they do make real changes to the characters (and I don't mean killing them off), the series could die out. That hasn't happened with some things, like the Marvel films, but it has to eventually. Nothing lasts forever, and it's an achievement for Cruise and the rest that 'M:I' continues to be a recognisable brand for current and past generations of filmgoers. Do you keep doing what you do, the same way, hope people stay pleased, or do you come up with something radical? In 'M:I3' there was a moment when I thought they might actually kill off Ethan Hunt. It came close, not that I wanted it, but it would have shaken things to the core. I still don't want people killed off, but I'd also like them to link into not just these recent films, but the older ones, too. If I had requests for the future it would be to bring back Niah from 'M:I2,' as she was a great, selfless character. Just because Thandie Newton turned down 'M:I3' (and how different the whole series could have become if she'd been the wife), doesn't mean she's still uninterested…
Although technology is commonplace now, it still preys on the mind as we think about the coming changes to life that seem inevitable: robots, genetics, hybrids, proper sci-fi societal stuff, and 'Mission' could be well placed to trade in these concerns and questions. Again, I'm not expecting the series to suddenly become a mirror of society or explore deep themes, but there's nothing to stop them from going down that road to some degree. I'm always looking for a series to stretch its concept without breaking it, which is how I felt about the first three films. I'm still glad Hunt is a character that endures, I'm still glad Luther is his man even now (the closest we get to admitting age is when Benji asks why he has to play Lane, and Luther compares his filled out frame with Benji's body type with a look), and that echoes of films I love are still being planned - I think I heard they're making two more back to back, but I could be wrong. But what I'd really prefer is to have another film I really love rather than one I merely enjoy. I'm fully prepared to admit that this is unlikely and a daunting challenge because I've grown older over the course of the franchise and they still want to appeal to younger viewers, especially when someone like me isn't supporting it meaningfully by cinema attendance. But if they want to get me to attend then they will need to advance in some way, and to their credit they did so in this one by dealing with Julia, so it is possible. We'll see. Until then, I have to say this is enjoyable enough, but not quite what I would deem a properly good film, despite coming closer to that ideal.
**
Tuesday, 25 June 2019
Epiphany
DVD, Stargate Atlantis S2 (Epiphany)
Now this began terrifically as a slight blunder from McKay lands Sheppard on the other side of a time dilation field that means he experiences time much, much faster than the others. The urgency and anxiety over every precious second being wasted made for a tense and thrillingly cool sci-fi concept that is always a big draw - it reminded me of a lot of things, from the much later Christopher Nolan film, 'Interstellar,' in which a similar time discrepancy for people in different places happens, to much earlier with the top tier 'TNG' episode 'The Inner Light' in which Captain Picard lives out an entire lifetime among the doomed people he encounters. This wasn't up to those standards as it does lose its way in the middle, but I felt it was saved at the end. Joe Flanigan (Sheppard), was credited as co-creator of the story, so it makes sense he'd think of a story he'd like to do as some of the cast of 'SG-1' used to do on occasion, so it's nice to see that tradition translated into this series. It ties into The Ancients and Wraith without actually featuring either of them, as the portal through which Sheppard is pulled takes him into a separate realm, a safe haven from Wraith menace, but also a one-way trip for the people that enter: a sort of Purgatory where people go to meditate on Ascension so they can eventually do it and go where The Ancients went (and Daniel Jackson).
After the initial excitement and the fascination of the team's efforts to understand what happened (and they do seem to panic quite a bit, which isn't encouraging!), with Rodney taking the lead again as science whizz hero, things do drop off a bit. I was glad they didn't go the whole hog and have Sheppard live out his life, as we've seen that, even in 'Stargate' (O'Neill definitely aged into an old man in one early episode), and there would have had to be some kind of time travel solution to sort it out, but you could say it's a slight cop-out since the people do their ascending and somehow have the power to let Sheppard and the (eventual), team of rescuers to go back through the doorway. It turns into a mild romance as Sheppard is enthralled by a woman in the village, one of perhaps many that have special powers, hers being that she can see into the future or beyond where she is physically, too, just as the little girl had a power to heal wounds. It was hard to buy these people had never ascended just because they hadn't conquered the invisible beast that roamed outside their village, and Sheppard gave them the courage to do it. It was a bit hokey. Mind you, the whole situation is a bit strange, and I wasn't sure if Sheppard's reservations of their lives, which he called not living, was a comment on monastic life or religious observances that he clearly feels is an unfulfilling way to spend time when you could be doing things in the flesh, but I'm sure it could be read many ways if you were looking for meanings. Either way, the people get what they wanted and he stays in the physical for now.
The beast seemed ripped right out of another 'TNG' episode, another classic, 'Darmok,' in which Captain Picard (him again), is forced to learn to communicate with and understand an alien Captain to overcome this deadly foe. Even down to the creature's phasing in and out of sight, though both could have been inspired by 'Predator,' and who knows where that film got the idea from. But that's not all, the Dalrok, a creature that a Bajoran village in the 'DS9' episode 'The Storyteller,' conjure up out of their fears and have to be brought together to fight, also seems to be a big inspiration as we see the villagers overcome the fear to put behind them the last little thing that was keeping them from ascending. But wouldn't different people be reaching this state at different times? Was anyone left behind? What if someone else stumbled through the door and was the only one to try and make a life in this now abandoned village - was that part of The Ancients' plan? There are lots of questions about the logic of it, and there's also the unthinking non-ethics of Sheppard's friends that wish to rescue him and are fine with interfering in the village in any way they see fit to get their man back, even expecting to get a ZPM out of it, which Atlantis is always on the lookout for, and with no discussion of what any of this might mean to the people inside! Trek this is not, definitely modern day humans that are quite happy to stumble into whatever might be of use to them.
That's not entirely fair as they have done their bit to help people over the years, but in the 'Stargate' world they don't seem to have anything approaching a Prime Directive and haven't yet learned the lesson that says they would surely need it rather than always going in with guns blazing, taking sides, or whatever. McKay gets a sort of talking to about not interfering with the ZPM (which I assumed was going to turn out to be in the creature, some kind of physical form of the power source to stop just such interference), and halfheartedly agrees to leave it be. I still don't know what the creature was, whether it was something the people had brought on themselves, which makes you wonder how it came into being, or a device left behind by The Ancients. The whole idea, apart from escaping The Wraith, seemed a bad one, trapping a load of people in this place so they can sit around most of the time and somehow come to the next level of being, by their own efforts? What if one among them was a bad apple and decided to take over and lord it over the others? What if some Wraith entered through the door and massacred the people? I get the sense that these thoughts weren't explored in the writing, something you see often with the series as they bang out factory-made sci-fi, much in the same way as Trek did, except in general that had better writers and aimed higher.
At least it shows that Sheppard's friends care about him, and it's fun to see the warriors, Ronon and Teyla, getting tossed around by this beast they have no hope of defeating - maybe courage following fear was the answer, as they appeared unafraid. Obviously Sheppard isn't going to ascend to be with woman of the week, and she's not going back with him, so from that perspective it does seem a little pointless, and I'd have preferred the rising tension of the time dilation side of things more than finding some space hippies and hanging out with them for a few months, but it looked nice, all outdoors (even if they do keep reusing the same cave and village sets, I suspect), and just scrapes into that category of being above average. It doesn't go where you think it will, with McKay battling to save someone from one of his own mistakes, or the story to have fun playing around with time, nor does it really go anywhere strongly with Sheppard, but I still liked it and the series is regularly succeeding now more than it was, for me.
***
Now this began terrifically as a slight blunder from McKay lands Sheppard on the other side of a time dilation field that means he experiences time much, much faster than the others. The urgency and anxiety over every precious second being wasted made for a tense and thrillingly cool sci-fi concept that is always a big draw - it reminded me of a lot of things, from the much later Christopher Nolan film, 'Interstellar,' in which a similar time discrepancy for people in different places happens, to much earlier with the top tier 'TNG' episode 'The Inner Light' in which Captain Picard lives out an entire lifetime among the doomed people he encounters. This wasn't up to those standards as it does lose its way in the middle, but I felt it was saved at the end. Joe Flanigan (Sheppard), was credited as co-creator of the story, so it makes sense he'd think of a story he'd like to do as some of the cast of 'SG-1' used to do on occasion, so it's nice to see that tradition translated into this series. It ties into The Ancients and Wraith without actually featuring either of them, as the portal through which Sheppard is pulled takes him into a separate realm, a safe haven from Wraith menace, but also a one-way trip for the people that enter: a sort of Purgatory where people go to meditate on Ascension so they can eventually do it and go where The Ancients went (and Daniel Jackson).
After the initial excitement and the fascination of the team's efforts to understand what happened (and they do seem to panic quite a bit, which isn't encouraging!), with Rodney taking the lead again as science whizz hero, things do drop off a bit. I was glad they didn't go the whole hog and have Sheppard live out his life, as we've seen that, even in 'Stargate' (O'Neill definitely aged into an old man in one early episode), and there would have had to be some kind of time travel solution to sort it out, but you could say it's a slight cop-out since the people do their ascending and somehow have the power to let Sheppard and the (eventual), team of rescuers to go back through the doorway. It turns into a mild romance as Sheppard is enthralled by a woman in the village, one of perhaps many that have special powers, hers being that she can see into the future or beyond where she is physically, too, just as the little girl had a power to heal wounds. It was hard to buy these people had never ascended just because they hadn't conquered the invisible beast that roamed outside their village, and Sheppard gave them the courage to do it. It was a bit hokey. Mind you, the whole situation is a bit strange, and I wasn't sure if Sheppard's reservations of their lives, which he called not living, was a comment on monastic life or religious observances that he clearly feels is an unfulfilling way to spend time when you could be doing things in the flesh, but I'm sure it could be read many ways if you were looking for meanings. Either way, the people get what they wanted and he stays in the physical for now.
The beast seemed ripped right out of another 'TNG' episode, another classic, 'Darmok,' in which Captain Picard (him again), is forced to learn to communicate with and understand an alien Captain to overcome this deadly foe. Even down to the creature's phasing in and out of sight, though both could have been inspired by 'Predator,' and who knows where that film got the idea from. But that's not all, the Dalrok, a creature that a Bajoran village in the 'DS9' episode 'The Storyteller,' conjure up out of their fears and have to be brought together to fight, also seems to be a big inspiration as we see the villagers overcome the fear to put behind them the last little thing that was keeping them from ascending. But wouldn't different people be reaching this state at different times? Was anyone left behind? What if someone else stumbled through the door and was the only one to try and make a life in this now abandoned village - was that part of The Ancients' plan? There are lots of questions about the logic of it, and there's also the unthinking non-ethics of Sheppard's friends that wish to rescue him and are fine with interfering in the village in any way they see fit to get their man back, even expecting to get a ZPM out of it, which Atlantis is always on the lookout for, and with no discussion of what any of this might mean to the people inside! Trek this is not, definitely modern day humans that are quite happy to stumble into whatever might be of use to them.
That's not entirely fair as they have done their bit to help people over the years, but in the 'Stargate' world they don't seem to have anything approaching a Prime Directive and haven't yet learned the lesson that says they would surely need it rather than always going in with guns blazing, taking sides, or whatever. McKay gets a sort of talking to about not interfering with the ZPM (which I assumed was going to turn out to be in the creature, some kind of physical form of the power source to stop just such interference), and halfheartedly agrees to leave it be. I still don't know what the creature was, whether it was something the people had brought on themselves, which makes you wonder how it came into being, or a device left behind by The Ancients. The whole idea, apart from escaping The Wraith, seemed a bad one, trapping a load of people in this place so they can sit around most of the time and somehow come to the next level of being, by their own efforts? What if one among them was a bad apple and decided to take over and lord it over the others? What if some Wraith entered through the door and massacred the people? I get the sense that these thoughts weren't explored in the writing, something you see often with the series as they bang out factory-made sci-fi, much in the same way as Trek did, except in general that had better writers and aimed higher.
At least it shows that Sheppard's friends care about him, and it's fun to see the warriors, Ronon and Teyla, getting tossed around by this beast they have no hope of defeating - maybe courage following fear was the answer, as they appeared unafraid. Obviously Sheppard isn't going to ascend to be with woman of the week, and she's not going back with him, so from that perspective it does seem a little pointless, and I'd have preferred the rising tension of the time dilation side of things more than finding some space hippies and hanging out with them for a few months, but it looked nice, all outdoors (even if they do keep reusing the same cave and village sets, I suspect), and just scrapes into that category of being above average. It doesn't go where you think it will, with McKay battling to save someone from one of his own mistakes, or the story to have fun playing around with time, nor does it really go anywhere strongly with Sheppard, but I still liked it and the series is regularly succeeding now more than it was, for me.
***
Unforgettable
DVD, Star Trek: Voyager S4 (Unforgettable)
Forgettable - one of the easiest single word reviews I could write, because that's exactly what this is. It may sound harsh, but it isn't only 'Discovery' I call out if it errs, and for 'Voyager,' no matter how much I like it, there can be no exception. The trouble stems from it being all about a guest character that we're asked to care about even though we know she's not going to be around beyond this story. Not to say it's impossible to pull off an amazingly complex and compelling character in the space of one forty-five minute episode, because it it's been done enough times on Trek to prove that it can work. I don't know the statistics on how many episodes focused on a guest character worked as opposed to how many didn't, but the general rule is that an outside character should only be brought in to make a difference to one of the people we come back to the series to see week to week and the very nature of this particular story meant that it couldn't. Chakotay isn't going to be sitting absentmindedly picking at a bowl of ice cream in memory of his lost love because the gimmick is that this woman we've never met, supposedly aboard Voyager but a month ago, is of a race with natural pheromones, and technical wizardry, to ensure they always wipe all memory and record of themselves: an isolationist species that don't want contact with the outside galaxy. From one perspective it's a clever idea because we are in exactly the same boat as Chakotay and everyone else in that she means nothing to us and we're expecting some twist, whether it's a plot to take over the ship or a devious means to some other advantage only Voyager can provide.
We see Kellin as blankly as Chakotay does, so that end of the story works. The twist is that there is no twist, and as twists go it's not very twisty. It's the old saying about the story potential for Trek being infinite, yet within that infinity of possible combinations of plot and character how many are going to be good or great? This is one that is plain old average, and not even Trek average, but average as in the majority of most TV that's out there, which is a low insult. Not that it has no value or watchability at all, but very little. It hinges on how attached we come to Kellin, this woman that we're in the same boat with Chakotay about - if you remove the possibility of a twist because she's telling the truth, a unique proposition, granted, then there isn't much to take from it. We don't learn anything about Voyager's First Officer, that's the real crime, it's nothing to do with whether the trope of a mysterious woman wreathed in mystery coming to the ship works, or not, because it's been done in virtually (and probably), every Trek series, some better than others - I think of Sisko's mystery woman in 'Second Sight,' or Odo's in 'A Simple Investigation.' You could say Rajiin in the episode of that name was the 'Enterprise' variety, and no doubt there are many others ('Transfigurations' on 'TNG' swaps the gender mix). You have to like or be drawn to the mystery character, and you have to feel for our regular character's position, something that the episode achieves mildly at the end when the situation reverses and Chakotay is the one trying to convince Kellin of the something they shared (though there's no rhyme or reason why he was unable to persuade her in the same way she was him - maybe that's saying something itself?).
The episode doesn't go anywhere, it has a number of scenes with Chakotay and/or someone else, Kellin, Kim (I can't think of anyone else beginning with 'K'), making a speech about, or discussing, love, but does it ever go anywhere? It's all very loose and concerns feelings and emotions, yet isn't written very deeply or to shine a light on some 'universal human truth,' making it the very definition of an average episode, the kind that goes nowhere, does nothing. It's not really a flaw that a tragic ending is inevitable because sometimes the inevitability of tragedy that we see coming along can have that sweet sorrow, so the resolution can't be blamed. No, it keeps coming back to the fact that nothing really happens and it's like the ultimate filler, with the ultimate reset to cap it all - the biggest reset this side of time travel, and at least you usually get some poignancy with that like in 'Time and Again' where the adventure we saw play out doesn't happen, or the disintegrated copy of the Voyager crew is sadly unable to reach the real Voyager before it's too late and our crew never know what happened. I just wish it hadn't been one of the few Chakotay episodes that had to be the low point of the season - you'd think from the odds that Seven of Nine would get the clunker since she had so many, but it may be she was easier to write for. It may also be that this was actually a script written for another sci-fi series and adapted to fit 'Voyager,' and the writers may have been desperate for something to fill a slot at this late juncture of the season and taken it on thinking it would turn out well, that's how it feels to me.
Saying that, there are other Trek ideas in there that had been explored before - I think of Aldea from 'TNG' Season 1's 'When The Bough Breaks,' a similar planetary culture that hid itself from outsiders. I thought of Data's manufactured daughter, Lal, with the end of 'The Offspring' (well, not quite the end), where she says she will feel emotions for both of them - I thought Chakotay was going to say something along those lines. It didn't even do something obvious (to a Trekker, anyway), like that to add something, and if Chakotay had been renowned for being put through the ringer, this would have been one of the 'torture Chakotay' episodes like 'DS9' with its 'torture O'Brien' seasonal offerings. But it was a one-off like many a 'Voyager,' trapped as they were on an almost endless journey home, meeting new species on a regular basis and having less time to explore existing cultures that made 'DS9,' and less so 'TNG,' so attractive. The race, the Ramurans, had potential, but any angle like that beyond the touchy-feely thing was largely ignored, and there was some clearly ethical ground to break with these people: why would they need the 'tracers,' these members of their race sent out like bounty hunters to track down escapees from their world, unless their world was less than perfect? Out of the three Ramurans we meet, two of them wanted out and had their memories altered so they would come back!
How is that acceptable to Janeway? She's told there's a stowaway aboard and just allowed Kellin to basically brainwash her quarry and take him back! Shouldn't she be asking if he wants to go back? He might be returning to a slave's life on an evil planet, but there's no exploration of the culture of this secretive race, or the ethical questions they pose with their ability to cloud memory and alter records. I didn't get any sense of horror or fascination about the race, it was more asking is this trick or true? Their vital signs don't register, they apparently have ships that can fire while cloaked (that's how Voyager first gets caught up in it as two ships are invisibly firing at each other!), and another downside is that they look very Ocampan in design - one of the weaker aliens this season, it must be said, because obviously they were trying to keep Kellin as human-looking as possible so we could more easily believe Chakotay falling for her. And while they apparently allowed Kellin to do what she would with her prisoner on the first visit, they also allow the tracer that comes for her to go on his way eventually. He's put a virus in the computer to wipe out all record of his people and I didn't see any opposition or concern about this. It was all brushed under the carpet and Janeway just accepts it as if to be rid of the whole sorry mess! What about ship's logs? I can buy that these aliens could wipe out all reference to themselves, but that would mean unexplainable gaps in records and logs which would surely force Voyager's crew to investigate, much like in 'Clues' on 'TNG' where there's a gap and they don't know why (or was it 'Conundrum,' I always get those two mixed up!).
There's certainly much potential to be played with when it comes to memory and the ability to alter it, and this episode would have been a lot better if it had kept away from romance, traditionally Trek's area of failure, and stuck with the hard science fiction concepts. As a character, the tracer himself, Curneth, was more interesting than Kellin, what with his gadgets and his strange assurance in what he was doing as right. There are questions such as whether the natural pheromones block their own species, too, as a society with no collective or individual long term memory would be of great worth as a concept to explore. The closest we get to that is the end with Chakotay writing out his recollections pen to paper as the only effective means of being sure to keep it from vanishing. That in itself is very interesting as it could be seen as a comment (certainly nowadays), on our heavily digital society where people's words, photos and records have all become intangible 1s and 0s, no longer inhabiting the physical world and open to viruses or malicious attack. That small moment opened my mind to wondering more than the entire episode and I found myself thinking I'd almost rather watch an episode of 'Discovery' than this, which tells me how dull it really was!
I really feel sorry for Andrew Robinson, the actor most famous for playing Garak on 'DS9,' having directed this episode. It was his third and final directing assignment in Trek and it wasn't fair - he'd been fortunate with the first, it being a Worf and Dax story, 'Looking For Par-Mach In All The Wrong Places,' and 'Blood Fever' on 'Voyager' had plenty to get your teeth into, but it was the writing that failed on this one - perhaps he got pulled into the underwhelming nature of it all, too, as early on there were flashes of a unique style in the POV from the biobed looking up at Janeway, the Doctor and Chakotay, and then the episode just dragged everybody down (not saying the actors weren't fine, because they were, but there just wasn't anything lasting and tangible for Chakotay to take from it). Sad that Robinson never got another chance, though I don't know if it was due to his falling out with the experience through this one (unlikely, since he claimed at the time that he really enjoyed making it, according to Memory Alpha), or the Producers not being happy with the end result, which is also something I don't know.
Now what was I writing about?
**
Forgettable - one of the easiest single word reviews I could write, because that's exactly what this is. It may sound harsh, but it isn't only 'Discovery' I call out if it errs, and for 'Voyager,' no matter how much I like it, there can be no exception. The trouble stems from it being all about a guest character that we're asked to care about even though we know she's not going to be around beyond this story. Not to say it's impossible to pull off an amazingly complex and compelling character in the space of one forty-five minute episode, because it it's been done enough times on Trek to prove that it can work. I don't know the statistics on how many episodes focused on a guest character worked as opposed to how many didn't, but the general rule is that an outside character should only be brought in to make a difference to one of the people we come back to the series to see week to week and the very nature of this particular story meant that it couldn't. Chakotay isn't going to be sitting absentmindedly picking at a bowl of ice cream in memory of his lost love because the gimmick is that this woman we've never met, supposedly aboard Voyager but a month ago, is of a race with natural pheromones, and technical wizardry, to ensure they always wipe all memory and record of themselves: an isolationist species that don't want contact with the outside galaxy. From one perspective it's a clever idea because we are in exactly the same boat as Chakotay and everyone else in that she means nothing to us and we're expecting some twist, whether it's a plot to take over the ship or a devious means to some other advantage only Voyager can provide.
We see Kellin as blankly as Chakotay does, so that end of the story works. The twist is that there is no twist, and as twists go it's not very twisty. It's the old saying about the story potential for Trek being infinite, yet within that infinity of possible combinations of plot and character how many are going to be good or great? This is one that is plain old average, and not even Trek average, but average as in the majority of most TV that's out there, which is a low insult. Not that it has no value or watchability at all, but very little. It hinges on how attached we come to Kellin, this woman that we're in the same boat with Chakotay about - if you remove the possibility of a twist because she's telling the truth, a unique proposition, granted, then there isn't much to take from it. We don't learn anything about Voyager's First Officer, that's the real crime, it's nothing to do with whether the trope of a mysterious woman wreathed in mystery coming to the ship works, or not, because it's been done in virtually (and probably), every Trek series, some better than others - I think of Sisko's mystery woman in 'Second Sight,' or Odo's in 'A Simple Investigation.' You could say Rajiin in the episode of that name was the 'Enterprise' variety, and no doubt there are many others ('Transfigurations' on 'TNG' swaps the gender mix). You have to like or be drawn to the mystery character, and you have to feel for our regular character's position, something that the episode achieves mildly at the end when the situation reverses and Chakotay is the one trying to convince Kellin of the something they shared (though there's no rhyme or reason why he was unable to persuade her in the same way she was him - maybe that's saying something itself?).
The episode doesn't go anywhere, it has a number of scenes with Chakotay and/or someone else, Kellin, Kim (I can't think of anyone else beginning with 'K'), making a speech about, or discussing, love, but does it ever go anywhere? It's all very loose and concerns feelings and emotions, yet isn't written very deeply or to shine a light on some 'universal human truth,' making it the very definition of an average episode, the kind that goes nowhere, does nothing. It's not really a flaw that a tragic ending is inevitable because sometimes the inevitability of tragedy that we see coming along can have that sweet sorrow, so the resolution can't be blamed. No, it keeps coming back to the fact that nothing really happens and it's like the ultimate filler, with the ultimate reset to cap it all - the biggest reset this side of time travel, and at least you usually get some poignancy with that like in 'Time and Again' where the adventure we saw play out doesn't happen, or the disintegrated copy of the Voyager crew is sadly unable to reach the real Voyager before it's too late and our crew never know what happened. I just wish it hadn't been one of the few Chakotay episodes that had to be the low point of the season - you'd think from the odds that Seven of Nine would get the clunker since she had so many, but it may be she was easier to write for. It may also be that this was actually a script written for another sci-fi series and adapted to fit 'Voyager,' and the writers may have been desperate for something to fill a slot at this late juncture of the season and taken it on thinking it would turn out well, that's how it feels to me.
Saying that, there are other Trek ideas in there that had been explored before - I think of Aldea from 'TNG' Season 1's 'When The Bough Breaks,' a similar planetary culture that hid itself from outsiders. I thought of Data's manufactured daughter, Lal, with the end of 'The Offspring' (well, not quite the end), where she says she will feel emotions for both of them - I thought Chakotay was going to say something along those lines. It didn't even do something obvious (to a Trekker, anyway), like that to add something, and if Chakotay had been renowned for being put through the ringer, this would have been one of the 'torture Chakotay' episodes like 'DS9' with its 'torture O'Brien' seasonal offerings. But it was a one-off like many a 'Voyager,' trapped as they were on an almost endless journey home, meeting new species on a regular basis and having less time to explore existing cultures that made 'DS9,' and less so 'TNG,' so attractive. The race, the Ramurans, had potential, but any angle like that beyond the touchy-feely thing was largely ignored, and there was some clearly ethical ground to break with these people: why would they need the 'tracers,' these members of their race sent out like bounty hunters to track down escapees from their world, unless their world was less than perfect? Out of the three Ramurans we meet, two of them wanted out and had their memories altered so they would come back!
How is that acceptable to Janeway? She's told there's a stowaway aboard and just allowed Kellin to basically brainwash her quarry and take him back! Shouldn't she be asking if he wants to go back? He might be returning to a slave's life on an evil planet, but there's no exploration of the culture of this secretive race, or the ethical questions they pose with their ability to cloud memory and alter records. I didn't get any sense of horror or fascination about the race, it was more asking is this trick or true? Their vital signs don't register, they apparently have ships that can fire while cloaked (that's how Voyager first gets caught up in it as two ships are invisibly firing at each other!), and another downside is that they look very Ocampan in design - one of the weaker aliens this season, it must be said, because obviously they were trying to keep Kellin as human-looking as possible so we could more easily believe Chakotay falling for her. And while they apparently allowed Kellin to do what she would with her prisoner on the first visit, they also allow the tracer that comes for her to go on his way eventually. He's put a virus in the computer to wipe out all record of his people and I didn't see any opposition or concern about this. It was all brushed under the carpet and Janeway just accepts it as if to be rid of the whole sorry mess! What about ship's logs? I can buy that these aliens could wipe out all reference to themselves, but that would mean unexplainable gaps in records and logs which would surely force Voyager's crew to investigate, much like in 'Clues' on 'TNG' where there's a gap and they don't know why (or was it 'Conundrum,' I always get those two mixed up!).
There's certainly much potential to be played with when it comes to memory and the ability to alter it, and this episode would have been a lot better if it had kept away from romance, traditionally Trek's area of failure, and stuck with the hard science fiction concepts. As a character, the tracer himself, Curneth, was more interesting than Kellin, what with his gadgets and his strange assurance in what he was doing as right. There are questions such as whether the natural pheromones block their own species, too, as a society with no collective or individual long term memory would be of great worth as a concept to explore. The closest we get to that is the end with Chakotay writing out his recollections pen to paper as the only effective means of being sure to keep it from vanishing. That in itself is very interesting as it could be seen as a comment (certainly nowadays), on our heavily digital society where people's words, photos and records have all become intangible 1s and 0s, no longer inhabiting the physical world and open to viruses or malicious attack. That small moment opened my mind to wondering more than the entire episode and I found myself thinking I'd almost rather watch an episode of 'Discovery' than this, which tells me how dull it really was!
I really feel sorry for Andrew Robinson, the actor most famous for playing Garak on 'DS9,' having directed this episode. It was his third and final directing assignment in Trek and it wasn't fair - he'd been fortunate with the first, it being a Worf and Dax story, 'Looking For Par-Mach In All The Wrong Places,' and 'Blood Fever' on 'Voyager' had plenty to get your teeth into, but it was the writing that failed on this one - perhaps he got pulled into the underwhelming nature of it all, too, as early on there were flashes of a unique style in the POV from the biobed looking up at Janeway, the Doctor and Chakotay, and then the episode just dragged everybody down (not saying the actors weren't fine, because they were, but there just wasn't anything lasting and tangible for Chakotay to take from it). Sad that Robinson never got another chance, though I don't know if it was due to his falling out with the experience through this one (unlikely, since he claimed at the time that he really enjoyed making it, according to Memory Alpha), or the Producers not being happy with the end result, which is also something I don't know.
Now what was I writing about?
**
Tuesday, 18 June 2019
The Hive
DVD, Stargate Atlantis S2 (The Hive)
'You know Ford, I wouldn't be surprised if we run into him again,' says Sheppard at the end, after the Hive ship on which the rogue member of Atlantis was last seen aboard is utterly destroyed. I hope we do, because Ford has become a lot more compelling this season and all they had to do was shoot him full of drugs! Another character shot full of drugs is Dr. McKay, and it was a joy to see him forced into solving a problem through brawn rather than his usual brains, as he's a stone cold coward at the best of times, so for him to resort to physical violence to take out the two goons left to guard him and the 'gate dialling crystals was pretty brave. I like also that the downside of this super serum was once again shown, if we didn't already have the warped Ford as evidence, as it proves that this wonder enzyme is not something they can rely on in their fight against The Wraith - it would be too dramatically easy to shoot everyone full of this stuff every time they pop off to a new world in case they need the superior strength, speed and aggression, but what they don't need is the paranoia, unbalanced reasoning and fatal self-confidence that makes them act as if they're intoxicated. It has its limits, as even dosed-up Ford succumbs to Wraith in numbers. We also see the consequences of taking the enzyme if dosage is not kept up: the cold turkey kills Kanayo, Ford's willing accomplice and almost incapacitates the others, while also putting Rodney's survival at extreme risk, with only his stubbornness and Dr. Beckett's care to bring him through.
As ever with 'Stargate,' the story is a little too conveniently tied up: all Sheppard needs to do is plant the seeds of distrust in the Hive Queen's mind, then start shooting at the opposing Hive ship during the battle when Daedalus comes to the rescue, and they're fooled into taking each other out, but at the same time the dissension and unstable alliances that we now know abound within the patches of Wraith dominion are the ideal cracks to escape through and to widen as a tool to take them down. I didn't at first guess that the girl among the prisoners that Sheppard rescues was a plant, but I did wonder if she was actually a Wraith in disguise, after my initial thoughts that she looked like she was in similar uniform to that which The Ancients wore in 'Aurora,' so I was waiting for the twist, only it wasn't quite what I expected. Turns out Wraith don't need to wear disguises, they just get their acolytes, so-called Wraith-worshippers, to do the deed. This was the only thing that didn't ring true to what we've seen of Wraith so far, because you never get the impression they can control their ravenous hunger and desire to feed on other species long enough for them to gain followers. They're like Satanists, worshipping the very thing that wants to destroy them, which is both a pitiable horror and a note of uncertainty in our dealings with other races as now we won't know if they've allied themselves to these people-devourers. Sheppard had enough wisdom to see through Neera's advances and avoided giving away that he was from Earth, the same Earth that should be cut off from this galaxy after the 'destruction' of Atlantis.
Not that it would have mattered too greatly, as all Wraith involved in this little adventure are wiped out, along with Ford's loyal accomplice, and Neera was either going to be wiped out or would be forced to leave as I couldn't see them introducing some other woman into the mix just to make Weir jealous! I did like how concerned she was and how happy when the Stargate dials in and Sheppard appears with his team safe and sound, and I'm really liking the team dynamic that's come to some kind of fruition in the last few episodes. Add the recurring characters like Zelenka, Major Long and Colonel Caldwell, who's only too pleased to drop everything and zip back unscheduled to assist in the hunt for the team, and it's a pretty good group we have developed. Maybe Ronon and Teyla should have shown more withdrawal from the enzyme, but what's a little staggering among friends, the important detail was that Sheppard rescued them and got them away, and we know the enzyme's a no-no. There were a couple of points that set me wondering, though: where does the IDC from each person come from? Is it a code they input into the DHD of a Stargate, is it a unique radio frequency, is it that the 'gate itself can detect life signs and read identity? That last one's unlikely, but I just questioned it because otherwise where did McKay's ID come from, assuming he didn't have his equipment with him when he hurried from Ford's camp in a far from stable state of mind? The other thing is, why wouldn't they record every 'gate address that dials in, in case they need to redial it? They must not have that capability since McKay's confused mind can't recall the address, preventing a return to Ford's planet for more enzyme.
Other than such minor queries I can say it was another good, solid episode that showed the team in a good light, had enough humour (the knives that everyone carries when Sheppard's trying to come up with a way to escape the cell), but not too much, as well as pretty space and ship scenes, and a sense of development - this was no idle adventure without a result at the end: now we know about weaknesses in the structure of Wraith society, as well as what it's like to be Ford and the kind of mental picture he has. It was especially good at showing the self-delusions that he keeps having in his 'far superior' abilities, always blaming his mistakes on someone else and finding bizarre rationalisations for everything that doesn't go as it should, when it's obvious that he's not acting soberly. Really glad we didn't get a definitive death for him as I thought we would, and with Sheppard's last words it seems almost a given that he'll be back in some other form to add spice to the series. I imagine they'd bring him back at the end of the season rather than save him for later seasons, and I still see him as marked for death, but with the change in character, if they could somehow keep him like that and also reintegrate him into Atlantis, that could be great - Sheppard's authority seems to have some effect on the Hive ship, so maybe he's not past saving?
***
'You know Ford, I wouldn't be surprised if we run into him again,' says Sheppard at the end, after the Hive ship on which the rogue member of Atlantis was last seen aboard is utterly destroyed. I hope we do, because Ford has become a lot more compelling this season and all they had to do was shoot him full of drugs! Another character shot full of drugs is Dr. McKay, and it was a joy to see him forced into solving a problem through brawn rather than his usual brains, as he's a stone cold coward at the best of times, so for him to resort to physical violence to take out the two goons left to guard him and the 'gate dialling crystals was pretty brave. I like also that the downside of this super serum was once again shown, if we didn't already have the warped Ford as evidence, as it proves that this wonder enzyme is not something they can rely on in their fight against The Wraith - it would be too dramatically easy to shoot everyone full of this stuff every time they pop off to a new world in case they need the superior strength, speed and aggression, but what they don't need is the paranoia, unbalanced reasoning and fatal self-confidence that makes them act as if they're intoxicated. It has its limits, as even dosed-up Ford succumbs to Wraith in numbers. We also see the consequences of taking the enzyme if dosage is not kept up: the cold turkey kills Kanayo, Ford's willing accomplice and almost incapacitates the others, while also putting Rodney's survival at extreme risk, with only his stubbornness and Dr. Beckett's care to bring him through.
As ever with 'Stargate,' the story is a little too conveniently tied up: all Sheppard needs to do is plant the seeds of distrust in the Hive Queen's mind, then start shooting at the opposing Hive ship during the battle when Daedalus comes to the rescue, and they're fooled into taking each other out, but at the same time the dissension and unstable alliances that we now know abound within the patches of Wraith dominion are the ideal cracks to escape through and to widen as a tool to take them down. I didn't at first guess that the girl among the prisoners that Sheppard rescues was a plant, but I did wonder if she was actually a Wraith in disguise, after my initial thoughts that she looked like she was in similar uniform to that which The Ancients wore in 'Aurora,' so I was waiting for the twist, only it wasn't quite what I expected. Turns out Wraith don't need to wear disguises, they just get their acolytes, so-called Wraith-worshippers, to do the deed. This was the only thing that didn't ring true to what we've seen of Wraith so far, because you never get the impression they can control their ravenous hunger and desire to feed on other species long enough for them to gain followers. They're like Satanists, worshipping the very thing that wants to destroy them, which is both a pitiable horror and a note of uncertainty in our dealings with other races as now we won't know if they've allied themselves to these people-devourers. Sheppard had enough wisdom to see through Neera's advances and avoided giving away that he was from Earth, the same Earth that should be cut off from this galaxy after the 'destruction' of Atlantis.
Not that it would have mattered too greatly, as all Wraith involved in this little adventure are wiped out, along with Ford's loyal accomplice, and Neera was either going to be wiped out or would be forced to leave as I couldn't see them introducing some other woman into the mix just to make Weir jealous! I did like how concerned she was and how happy when the Stargate dials in and Sheppard appears with his team safe and sound, and I'm really liking the team dynamic that's come to some kind of fruition in the last few episodes. Add the recurring characters like Zelenka, Major Long and Colonel Caldwell, who's only too pleased to drop everything and zip back unscheduled to assist in the hunt for the team, and it's a pretty good group we have developed. Maybe Ronon and Teyla should have shown more withdrawal from the enzyme, but what's a little staggering among friends, the important detail was that Sheppard rescued them and got them away, and we know the enzyme's a no-no. There were a couple of points that set me wondering, though: where does the IDC from each person come from? Is it a code they input into the DHD of a Stargate, is it a unique radio frequency, is it that the 'gate itself can detect life signs and read identity? That last one's unlikely, but I just questioned it because otherwise where did McKay's ID come from, assuming he didn't have his equipment with him when he hurried from Ford's camp in a far from stable state of mind? The other thing is, why wouldn't they record every 'gate address that dials in, in case they need to redial it? They must not have that capability since McKay's confused mind can't recall the address, preventing a return to Ford's planet for more enzyme.
Other than such minor queries I can say it was another good, solid episode that showed the team in a good light, had enough humour (the knives that everyone carries when Sheppard's trying to come up with a way to escape the cell), but not too much, as well as pretty space and ship scenes, and a sense of development - this was no idle adventure without a result at the end: now we know about weaknesses in the structure of Wraith society, as well as what it's like to be Ford and the kind of mental picture he has. It was especially good at showing the self-delusions that he keeps having in his 'far superior' abilities, always blaming his mistakes on someone else and finding bizarre rationalisations for everything that doesn't go as it should, when it's obvious that he's not acting soberly. Really glad we didn't get a definitive death for him as I thought we would, and with Sheppard's last words it seems almost a given that he'll be back in some other form to add spice to the series. I imagine they'd bring him back at the end of the season rather than save him for later seasons, and I still see him as marked for death, but with the change in character, if they could somehow keep him like that and also reintegrate him into Atlantis, that could be great - Sheppard's authority seems to have some effect on the Hive ship, so maybe he's not past saving?
***
The Omega Directive
DVD, Star Trek: Voyager S4 (The Omega Directive)
Oh look, it's another Seven of Nine episode, what a surprise! The ex-Borg drone really did take over the series, but this season you still get episodes for the other cast members on a relatively balanced scale, and they also remain part of the story - take Chakotay, for example. This isn't an episode about him or where he greatly features, but it's far from the later seasons' usage which seemed to mainly be him sitting on the Bridge with nothing much to say. Like the previous episode he gets to be the First Officer, gallantly carrying out his Captain's orders despite the classified nature of the mission keeping him out of the loop, something which he's successful about changing Janeway's mind on (not something that occurred very often, it has to be said!), to allow the senior staff into her lonely sphere. Kim and Tuvok are also very much present in the story: though it doesn't quite extend to being a B-plot, Harry's speculation on the nature of the mystery and then his dissatisfaction over Seven's draconian command style lead him into conversation with the Vulcan. The one who doesn't show her face much, and like the previous episode you'd expect the Chief Engineer to be at the heart of this mission, is B'Elanna Torres. This was at the time when Roxann Dawson was at her most pregnant and couldn't do much, the only explanation for why her character wasn't the lead as it seems like a very B'Elanna story. I wonder if originally it had been written as a vehicle for her and was modified to suit Seven when Dawson was less available?
The Engineer would ordinarily be the one coming up with the technological solution and perhaps the Omega particle was something the Klingons had learned to revere for its great power. It does ring truer for Seven, and it may well be that it never was meant as a B'Elanna story at all, but you can see she is now taking roles and stories that should have been for others' expertise. Kim even says in the episode that she's probably the most intelligent human alive, so why does she need the rest of them? She's taken a lot of the Captain's attention this season, now she's taking a mission that the Engineer should be doing and even shows her command skills that might be said to take away from the other authority characters like Chakotay and Tuvok, not to mention the Doctor's discovery of being a real boy as he passes on his knowledge to her on a regular basis. Paris should have been watching his back that she didn't start piloting the ship, and Neelix if she was becoming interested in cookery! But despite all that it is another episode that explores a different aspect of Seven's growing maturity, and Borg culture if that isn't an oxymoron: the Omega particle is considered the highest form of perfection by them and Seven is drawn to it as a result. The most essential moment is when she acquiesces to Janeway's orders instead of doing what she wants, what she feels she needs to do, which is to harness the power of this particle instead of destroying it, acknowledging Janeway's assertion that if it went wrong it would take out half the Quadrant.
When you consider the extremes of behaviour she's exhibited, both in trying to conform to her new home and the stern confines of the Captain, and doing her own thing in direct contravention to her rules and protocols, standing down and not proceeding as she wished was a great leap forward for her. It was something necessary for the character because if she'd pushed things once again she would surely have put things backward a long way and Janeway would have had no choice but to confine her again, and who knows how long it would take for trust to be reestablished? This time she actually goes through the correct channels, requesting Chakotay to allow her to proceed with her plan to save Omega rather than destroy it. He won't sanction it, but agrees to take the request to the Captain, and although Seven doesn't get what she wanted in the end, which may suggest to her it would be better to have gone her own way, she's also done that before and knows that will have consequences and she won't be able to live in this miniature society if she doesn't follow the command hierarchy. She's learning. I wonder if Chakotay's becoming a soft touch as this is the second crewmember in a row who's persuaded him - in 'Vis à Vis' Tom creates a convincing argument why he should be allowed to work on Steth's ship, and likewise, Seven's plan impresses Chakotay enough for him to put in a word with the Captain! It shows him being a good First Officer again. Add to that the signs of his close friendship with Janeway when he calls her his closest friend and is able to talk her out of the strict protocols of the Omega directive, and it's a good one for him - he gets the crew doing their jobs when they don't know what it's all about, but also speaks up for them to the Captain which is exactly what a good Number One does and what we didn't see enough of later.
It's very rare for a mission to be so highly classified that it's for the Captain's eyes only and she can't discuss it with the crew, which creates a mystery that is genuinely mysterious, so far from the kind of writing designed to pull you along from episode to episode in the serialised 'Discovery.' Here we're getting a sense of the lower decks working away, and it's much more believably written than that series: firstly, in Kim and Tuvok's modifying of a torpedo (again, why wasn't Torres in charge of this?), and again when Seven is given her own team and has them work in her own coldly efficient style, even down to Borg designations! There should have bee pushback from the crew on this, like when Data was given command and encountered prejudice, only Kim exhibiting distaste. Harry's excitement at the possibilities of this secret mission show something that hasn't been common on the series this season, but used to come up here and there: the belief they might be close to finding a way home. Harry jumps to the conclusion that Janeway's found a way to create a wormhole and she can't tell the crew because she doesn't want to get their hopes up (so Tuvok logically advises him not to do so!). It's most likely the thoughts of home have been magnified by the recent contact with Starfleet that enabled them to announce their survival to their families and Starfleet, so this is an organic way to show that rekindled hope and was ideally presented by the generally optimistic, if green, Ensign Kim without being an irritating chatterbox like Cadet (now Ensign), Sylvia Tilly on 'DSC'!
Janeway's position is once again shown to be unique as ordinarily a Captain would have the option to report back to Starfleet Command about Omega, but she doesn't have that, as Chakotay says. He bravely suggests she isn't always a reasonable woman, something it's almost insubordinate to say to your Captain, but it's true, she isn't always stable and correct, and her deep friendship with Chakotay has been a stabilising influence on more than one occasion. This time she sees he's right and even says to her senior staff in the briefing that Starfleet didn't have their predicament in mind when they drafted the directive. I'm not sure that's entirely true, because although Voyager is the furthest ship out there, the nature of starship missions is that they tend to be out on the final frontier beyond all backup and without easy recourse to their superiors and that's why Starfleet Captains have to be the best. At first, Janeway does have backup in the form of Seven of Nine, whose Borg knowledge means she is as informed as Starfleet Captains that had been assimilated, but that isn't enough - it makes you wonder if Seven knows about things like Section 31. Omega would seem to be both one of the greatest threats to the Federation that 31 would want to eliminate, but also the greatest potential asset and you can bet they know all about it! It would be fascinating to see this directive carried out in the Alpha Quadrant to see if 31 swooped in and got involved…
Opening the strict rules of the directive up to bending because she has no alternative but to admit the truth to Seven, probably made it easier for Janeway to break it open entirely and share with her most trusted crewmen (though again, B'Elanna absence at the briefing is most strange), and the details make for a fascinating tale, all about some 23rd Century scientist, Ketteract, over a hundred years ago (why couldn't they have worked that into 'DSC' instead of making up something entirely new and disconnected like the spore drive?). The Omega particle is capable of incredible forms of power and energy, but it was also incredibly dangerous - we get to see the research centre from that period that looks very much like the Starbases in the 'TOS' films (and 'DS9'), and we hear that the area in which the experiment went wrong has been affected ever since. It's thought by most people that a stable warp field being impossible to create there is a naturally occurring phenomenon, but it was the result of the experiment and the reason Starfleet takes such extreme measures against Omega: if it happened on a larger scale it would mean warp travel in the galaxy would be impossible, effectively returning space travel to the early years of slow, multi-year journeys. It's as big a revelation as in the 'TNG' episode 'Force of Nature' when it was discovered that warp was having a deleterious effect on space and a warp limit was imposed (subsequently superceded by ships like Voyager and the Enterprise-E whose nacelles were slanted as that seemingly was part of the solution, though I'm not sure it's actually canon, more best guess speculation to a shortsighted writing problem).
We're used to the 'DSC' writers throwing in as many Trek references as possible, but in the old days of 'Voyager' it was far less common as they concentrated on creating good stories more than linking to old ones! But it was wonderful when Janeway's talking about understanding how Einstein must have felt on the eve of the atomic bomb, or Dr. Marcus with the Genesis device, both of whom have appeared in Trek - Einstein was only a holographic recreation, but Marcus was the scientist responsible for the terraforming device turned super-weapon Khan wanted to use to kill Kirk, as well as a much more ignominious appearance in Trek's worst film to date, 'Star Trek Into Darkness.' There's the same level of concern over this as there was around the Genesis device, with Janeway warning that the ship will have less than ten seconds to warp out of there if anything goes wrong, and of course, thanks to the aliens (who never got a name), it was necessary. I didn't quite understand what was happening because we see them kick out something behind them, then zip into warp to escape, but the colourful field left behind didn't destroy the alien ships. I think this escape was separate from the threatened event Janeway was talking about, but the episode doesn't reach the heights it could have. I wanted something akin to the amazing moment in 'Generations' (the best Trek film), when the Enterprise warps out of harm's way as the shockwave takes out that system.
The Prime Directive is mentioned, but I'm not sure it would really apply in this case since these are space-faring aliens, probably even warp capable, though that wasn't entirely made clear. Janeway states that it is rescinded for the duration of the mission, showing how gravely Omega is viewed. It's surprising more races hadn't discovered it and tried to synthesise it as it could be viewed as a parallel to the arms race on Earth with every small country wanting its own nuclear weapons to ensure its seat at the high table of global negotiations. Analogies didn't really work, which is one reason this episode is successful enough to be enjoyable, but feels as if it wasn't pushed to its possible limits. It takes another direction when encountering Omega was for Seven a profound and personal experience, leaving the episode on the note of at least some kind of acknowledgment towards the spiritual, something highly rare in Trek - Janeway finds Seven in the Da Vinci holoprogram (she says she deactivated the master, which was a shame as it would have been good to get his wisdom on her impressions, but either way it was lovely to visit that place again), amid all these religious iconography, contemplating the meaning of it all. She says that previously she'd considered mythologies used to explain moments of 'clarity' as she puts it, to be dismissed as trivial and concedes that she may have been wrong. It's very vague and universal, but sometimes you think even if Trek recognises something beyond, it's at least on the right track, as opposed to the militant scientism atheist viewers would prefer, which doesn't reflect the majority of the population of the world's views.
Doing this with the most hardline scientific characters is also refreshing and brings to mind the discussion the command staff had on 'DS9' one time about faith, with Worf and Kira coming down on one side while O'Brien was on the other. I wouldn't want them to be going into this stuff regularly, especially as Trek isn't about that, but it's good to see faith and belief recognised in the franchise, far from the apparent desire of Roddenberry to flatten all such things in the future, which I'm not certain he really wanted to do, but is often stated as fact by people with that agenda. There isn't much going on between Seven and Chakotay, and when you consider they ended up together it's even more apparent that there was nothing there, but this time Seven at least finds something to connect with, calling him a spiritual man and a number of times he's been the refuge for those on the ship that aren't satisfied by the physical explanations they're supposed to be, and need something more. The stakes are more than Seven's peace of mind, as evidenced by the alien's horror that they've come to disrupt and destroy the life's work that he believes his people's future depends upon. What he doesn't realise is the risks his people are running and Janeway won't gamble with half the Quadrant to satisfy curiosity, saying the final frontier has some boundaries that shouldn't be crossed and that fear is sometimes to be respected - that's a good lesson for scientists who sometimes come across as needing to explore something no matter the consequence because it must be learned: a quest for knowledge at all costs is morally repugnant.
As I said, the themes of the episode, whether the parallels for experimentation at any cost, the analogy with nuclear power (also explored well in 'the episode' as I always used to call it, Season 1's 'Time and Again'), or the difference between theory and belief, with Omega postulated to have been used at the creation of the universe (again, notice they say creation, as if there were a Creator, more than an impersonal force of coming into being), were none of them taken far enough for my liking. It's just about enough that this is a great mystery with the Captain acting alone to begin with and the crew required to blindly follow orders, only the mysterious Omega sign a clue. It was great to see Seven unshackled and given much leeway for her work due to the extreme importance of it, the fate of the Quadrant potentially hanging on what she did, and she responds by backing down for once to allow Janeway to do what is necessary. There are even minor delights such as Tuvok and Kim playing Kal-toh, the mention of Marcus and even Ensign Wildman (though we sadly don't see her, though the Wildman name was to take on new meaning next season), and the Science Lab once again used, this time for the torpedo modification. Jeff Austin who played the alien had also been in 'DS9' as a Bolian ('The Adversary'). The Doctor, Paris, Neelix and especially Torres are very much underused, but because Kim, Tuvok and Chakotay support the story so well it doesn't take anything away and I like the mix of characters in this season. It's true that Seven was given much more than her share, but the others weren't being written out yet, so it feels like a fairer balance than later.
***
Oh look, it's another Seven of Nine episode, what a surprise! The ex-Borg drone really did take over the series, but this season you still get episodes for the other cast members on a relatively balanced scale, and they also remain part of the story - take Chakotay, for example. This isn't an episode about him or where he greatly features, but it's far from the later seasons' usage which seemed to mainly be him sitting on the Bridge with nothing much to say. Like the previous episode he gets to be the First Officer, gallantly carrying out his Captain's orders despite the classified nature of the mission keeping him out of the loop, something which he's successful about changing Janeway's mind on (not something that occurred very often, it has to be said!), to allow the senior staff into her lonely sphere. Kim and Tuvok are also very much present in the story: though it doesn't quite extend to being a B-plot, Harry's speculation on the nature of the mystery and then his dissatisfaction over Seven's draconian command style lead him into conversation with the Vulcan. The one who doesn't show her face much, and like the previous episode you'd expect the Chief Engineer to be at the heart of this mission, is B'Elanna Torres. This was at the time when Roxann Dawson was at her most pregnant and couldn't do much, the only explanation for why her character wasn't the lead as it seems like a very B'Elanna story. I wonder if originally it had been written as a vehicle for her and was modified to suit Seven when Dawson was less available?
The Engineer would ordinarily be the one coming up with the technological solution and perhaps the Omega particle was something the Klingons had learned to revere for its great power. It does ring truer for Seven, and it may well be that it never was meant as a B'Elanna story at all, but you can see she is now taking roles and stories that should have been for others' expertise. Kim even says in the episode that she's probably the most intelligent human alive, so why does she need the rest of them? She's taken a lot of the Captain's attention this season, now she's taking a mission that the Engineer should be doing and even shows her command skills that might be said to take away from the other authority characters like Chakotay and Tuvok, not to mention the Doctor's discovery of being a real boy as he passes on his knowledge to her on a regular basis. Paris should have been watching his back that she didn't start piloting the ship, and Neelix if she was becoming interested in cookery! But despite all that it is another episode that explores a different aspect of Seven's growing maturity, and Borg culture if that isn't an oxymoron: the Omega particle is considered the highest form of perfection by them and Seven is drawn to it as a result. The most essential moment is when she acquiesces to Janeway's orders instead of doing what she wants, what she feels she needs to do, which is to harness the power of this particle instead of destroying it, acknowledging Janeway's assertion that if it went wrong it would take out half the Quadrant.
When you consider the extremes of behaviour she's exhibited, both in trying to conform to her new home and the stern confines of the Captain, and doing her own thing in direct contravention to her rules and protocols, standing down and not proceeding as she wished was a great leap forward for her. It was something necessary for the character because if she'd pushed things once again she would surely have put things backward a long way and Janeway would have had no choice but to confine her again, and who knows how long it would take for trust to be reestablished? This time she actually goes through the correct channels, requesting Chakotay to allow her to proceed with her plan to save Omega rather than destroy it. He won't sanction it, but agrees to take the request to the Captain, and although Seven doesn't get what she wanted in the end, which may suggest to her it would be better to have gone her own way, she's also done that before and knows that will have consequences and she won't be able to live in this miniature society if she doesn't follow the command hierarchy. She's learning. I wonder if Chakotay's becoming a soft touch as this is the second crewmember in a row who's persuaded him - in 'Vis à Vis' Tom creates a convincing argument why he should be allowed to work on Steth's ship, and likewise, Seven's plan impresses Chakotay enough for him to put in a word with the Captain! It shows him being a good First Officer again. Add to that the signs of his close friendship with Janeway when he calls her his closest friend and is able to talk her out of the strict protocols of the Omega directive, and it's a good one for him - he gets the crew doing their jobs when they don't know what it's all about, but also speaks up for them to the Captain which is exactly what a good Number One does and what we didn't see enough of later.
It's very rare for a mission to be so highly classified that it's for the Captain's eyes only and she can't discuss it with the crew, which creates a mystery that is genuinely mysterious, so far from the kind of writing designed to pull you along from episode to episode in the serialised 'Discovery.' Here we're getting a sense of the lower decks working away, and it's much more believably written than that series: firstly, in Kim and Tuvok's modifying of a torpedo (again, why wasn't Torres in charge of this?), and again when Seven is given her own team and has them work in her own coldly efficient style, even down to Borg designations! There should have bee pushback from the crew on this, like when Data was given command and encountered prejudice, only Kim exhibiting distaste. Harry's excitement at the possibilities of this secret mission show something that hasn't been common on the series this season, but used to come up here and there: the belief they might be close to finding a way home. Harry jumps to the conclusion that Janeway's found a way to create a wormhole and she can't tell the crew because she doesn't want to get their hopes up (so Tuvok logically advises him not to do so!). It's most likely the thoughts of home have been magnified by the recent contact with Starfleet that enabled them to announce their survival to their families and Starfleet, so this is an organic way to show that rekindled hope and was ideally presented by the generally optimistic, if green, Ensign Kim without being an irritating chatterbox like Cadet (now Ensign), Sylvia Tilly on 'DSC'!
Janeway's position is once again shown to be unique as ordinarily a Captain would have the option to report back to Starfleet Command about Omega, but she doesn't have that, as Chakotay says. He bravely suggests she isn't always a reasonable woman, something it's almost insubordinate to say to your Captain, but it's true, she isn't always stable and correct, and her deep friendship with Chakotay has been a stabilising influence on more than one occasion. This time she sees he's right and even says to her senior staff in the briefing that Starfleet didn't have their predicament in mind when they drafted the directive. I'm not sure that's entirely true, because although Voyager is the furthest ship out there, the nature of starship missions is that they tend to be out on the final frontier beyond all backup and without easy recourse to their superiors and that's why Starfleet Captains have to be the best. At first, Janeway does have backup in the form of Seven of Nine, whose Borg knowledge means she is as informed as Starfleet Captains that had been assimilated, but that isn't enough - it makes you wonder if Seven knows about things like Section 31. Omega would seem to be both one of the greatest threats to the Federation that 31 would want to eliminate, but also the greatest potential asset and you can bet they know all about it! It would be fascinating to see this directive carried out in the Alpha Quadrant to see if 31 swooped in and got involved…
Opening the strict rules of the directive up to bending because she has no alternative but to admit the truth to Seven, probably made it easier for Janeway to break it open entirely and share with her most trusted crewmen (though again, B'Elanna absence at the briefing is most strange), and the details make for a fascinating tale, all about some 23rd Century scientist, Ketteract, over a hundred years ago (why couldn't they have worked that into 'DSC' instead of making up something entirely new and disconnected like the spore drive?). The Omega particle is capable of incredible forms of power and energy, but it was also incredibly dangerous - we get to see the research centre from that period that looks very much like the Starbases in the 'TOS' films (and 'DS9'), and we hear that the area in which the experiment went wrong has been affected ever since. It's thought by most people that a stable warp field being impossible to create there is a naturally occurring phenomenon, but it was the result of the experiment and the reason Starfleet takes such extreme measures against Omega: if it happened on a larger scale it would mean warp travel in the galaxy would be impossible, effectively returning space travel to the early years of slow, multi-year journeys. It's as big a revelation as in the 'TNG' episode 'Force of Nature' when it was discovered that warp was having a deleterious effect on space and a warp limit was imposed (subsequently superceded by ships like Voyager and the Enterprise-E whose nacelles were slanted as that seemingly was part of the solution, though I'm not sure it's actually canon, more best guess speculation to a shortsighted writing problem).
We're used to the 'DSC' writers throwing in as many Trek references as possible, but in the old days of 'Voyager' it was far less common as they concentrated on creating good stories more than linking to old ones! But it was wonderful when Janeway's talking about understanding how Einstein must have felt on the eve of the atomic bomb, or Dr. Marcus with the Genesis device, both of whom have appeared in Trek - Einstein was only a holographic recreation, but Marcus was the scientist responsible for the terraforming device turned super-weapon Khan wanted to use to kill Kirk, as well as a much more ignominious appearance in Trek's worst film to date, 'Star Trek Into Darkness.' There's the same level of concern over this as there was around the Genesis device, with Janeway warning that the ship will have less than ten seconds to warp out of there if anything goes wrong, and of course, thanks to the aliens (who never got a name), it was necessary. I didn't quite understand what was happening because we see them kick out something behind them, then zip into warp to escape, but the colourful field left behind didn't destroy the alien ships. I think this escape was separate from the threatened event Janeway was talking about, but the episode doesn't reach the heights it could have. I wanted something akin to the amazing moment in 'Generations' (the best Trek film), when the Enterprise warps out of harm's way as the shockwave takes out that system.
The Prime Directive is mentioned, but I'm not sure it would really apply in this case since these are space-faring aliens, probably even warp capable, though that wasn't entirely made clear. Janeway states that it is rescinded for the duration of the mission, showing how gravely Omega is viewed. It's surprising more races hadn't discovered it and tried to synthesise it as it could be viewed as a parallel to the arms race on Earth with every small country wanting its own nuclear weapons to ensure its seat at the high table of global negotiations. Analogies didn't really work, which is one reason this episode is successful enough to be enjoyable, but feels as if it wasn't pushed to its possible limits. It takes another direction when encountering Omega was for Seven a profound and personal experience, leaving the episode on the note of at least some kind of acknowledgment towards the spiritual, something highly rare in Trek - Janeway finds Seven in the Da Vinci holoprogram (she says she deactivated the master, which was a shame as it would have been good to get his wisdom on her impressions, but either way it was lovely to visit that place again), amid all these religious iconography, contemplating the meaning of it all. She says that previously she'd considered mythologies used to explain moments of 'clarity' as she puts it, to be dismissed as trivial and concedes that she may have been wrong. It's very vague and universal, but sometimes you think even if Trek recognises something beyond, it's at least on the right track, as opposed to the militant scientism atheist viewers would prefer, which doesn't reflect the majority of the population of the world's views.
Doing this with the most hardline scientific characters is also refreshing and brings to mind the discussion the command staff had on 'DS9' one time about faith, with Worf and Kira coming down on one side while O'Brien was on the other. I wouldn't want them to be going into this stuff regularly, especially as Trek isn't about that, but it's good to see faith and belief recognised in the franchise, far from the apparent desire of Roddenberry to flatten all such things in the future, which I'm not certain he really wanted to do, but is often stated as fact by people with that agenda. There isn't much going on between Seven and Chakotay, and when you consider they ended up together it's even more apparent that there was nothing there, but this time Seven at least finds something to connect with, calling him a spiritual man and a number of times he's been the refuge for those on the ship that aren't satisfied by the physical explanations they're supposed to be, and need something more. The stakes are more than Seven's peace of mind, as evidenced by the alien's horror that they've come to disrupt and destroy the life's work that he believes his people's future depends upon. What he doesn't realise is the risks his people are running and Janeway won't gamble with half the Quadrant to satisfy curiosity, saying the final frontier has some boundaries that shouldn't be crossed and that fear is sometimes to be respected - that's a good lesson for scientists who sometimes come across as needing to explore something no matter the consequence because it must be learned: a quest for knowledge at all costs is morally repugnant.
As I said, the themes of the episode, whether the parallels for experimentation at any cost, the analogy with nuclear power (also explored well in 'the episode' as I always used to call it, Season 1's 'Time and Again'), or the difference between theory and belief, with Omega postulated to have been used at the creation of the universe (again, notice they say creation, as if there were a Creator, more than an impersonal force of coming into being), were none of them taken far enough for my liking. It's just about enough that this is a great mystery with the Captain acting alone to begin with and the crew required to blindly follow orders, only the mysterious Omega sign a clue. It was great to see Seven unshackled and given much leeway for her work due to the extreme importance of it, the fate of the Quadrant potentially hanging on what she did, and she responds by backing down for once to allow Janeway to do what is necessary. There are even minor delights such as Tuvok and Kim playing Kal-toh, the mention of Marcus and even Ensign Wildman (though we sadly don't see her, though the Wildman name was to take on new meaning next season), and the Science Lab once again used, this time for the torpedo modification. Jeff Austin who played the alien had also been in 'DS9' as a Bolian ('The Adversary'). The Doctor, Paris, Neelix and especially Torres are very much underused, but because Kim, Tuvok and Chakotay support the story so well it doesn't take anything away and I like the mix of characters in this season. It's true that Seven was given much more than her share, but the others weren't being written out yet, so it feels like a fairer balance than later.
***
Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg
Wii, Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg (2003), game
I like that it's so bright and happy, with jaunty, if repetitive and a little inane tunes, and colourful, if unimaginative worlds, that while not straying from the standard platformer themed locations used for their inspiration are chunky and fine to manoeuvre around within. And it is a lot about manoeuvring since you're nothing without an egg to roll in front of you as both shield and weapon, so much that if you turn too fast or go too near an edge you can lose it - worse, it can sometimes pull you down with it. The criticism I would level at the game is the same for most platformers: camera and control. Neither are terrible, nor are they really accomplished, a fair summation of the entire experience - getting stuck on a wall when you're trying to run through a gap, or the egg not being sticky enough so you don't always grip immediately and fully, and especially the camera adjusting itself independent of your control, are all annoyances. Importantly though, I did want to come back, the red Emblems attractive enough and challenging in acquisition, much like Mario's Stars or Shines, or Banjo's Jiggies, so I did have the desire to catch 'em all, if not the patience to get the last couple or so, which I assume are awarded for collecting all coins and finding all egg types. I wasn't too clear on how you were supposed to unlock the many eggs on the collection screen, whether it had to be on a run when you didn't die, or whether it was cumulative until Game Over and the last of your lives. The Game Over screen, very old-school, was really just an irritant forcing you to go through all the menus again until you get to the point where you can restart, although it also lost you any coins you'd collected, too. It wasn't a bad system, however, as it encouraged the collection of lives on later levels to avoid having to hit switches or clear rooms to progress again, and some incentive to be more careful when so many games make lives largely redundant.
The story doesn't bear consideration, but it's the gameplay that matters and this was suitably addictive. Though the levels had a certain amount of linearity to them, they were well designed in that the quest for each Emblem placed you in a different part of it, and eventually you had to know your way around the whole place for the search of the eight chickens in each, so my early impressions (inane music, gloomy opening level where you keep dying and returning to the start because it's difficult to see and know what's dangerous), were proved unfair with the dawning of morning. I'm still not sure if it was best to start out each level with the whole place dark, but once things lighten up it's good. It's really not a game designed to impress in the scale or breadth of the levels or their challenges, and they were largely repetitive, but enjoyable enough. Favourites were probably the Pirates Island and Dino Mountain areas as the opening level is conventionally basic and the later ones typically trickier to traverse with easy instant deaths over the side - one thing that annoyed me was it being so easy to die, though it adds peril to proceedings and ups the tension, it frequently took time to learn the game's flaunting of convention in that regard: you can't fall into water, sand or lava, though you can run atop an egg if you have the right hat which is found in a specific egg. Trouble is, you're very constrained by egg-top running, not allowing you to jump, except backwards, meaning if you want to get somewhere above you're forced to stand looking away from it and then jump. In all, the controls weren't the most intuitive or fair, I felt. Having to roll an egg or use it to jump was both the unique feature of the game and its downfall. Once you get used to it you can barrel around at top speed and turn on a sixpence, but there wasn't much in the way of progression to learn control, nor to understand the attributes of the eggs' items or creatures - you had to wait until exiting a level before being able to look up the corresponding information.
It wasn't a good enough game for me to want to go back and locate all the missing coins and eggs, it was enough for me to fill in all the visible Emblems on each level select, but it's good that if you really loved the experience you had the option to do more, such as improving your rating in time and fight experimentation. There's also the multiplayer Battle mode I didn't have the opportunity to try out and the Game Boy Advance linkup that I didn't have any success with, perhaps because I never found the mini-game eggs that would have made it possible. Again, I don't have the patience to go back through and unearth the missing eggs, but it's nice to have that option. With the GameCube so poorly served with the genre that had its peak on N64 (at least four good to great games, possibly more), this is one of the rare examples, along with 'Super Mario Sunshine' and… not much else. Perhaps the genre was going out of fashion even then, but there were the occasional attempts such as the 'Pac Man World' series, the only one of which I played I found to be distinctly average to poor, so this was, if not a nice surprise because I expected it to be reasonably playable, one that lived up to its Sega namesake, and indeed had hallmarks of the company at this time, such as the vocals on the theme that reminded me of their 'F-Zero GX' entry on 'Cube, and also Rare's N64 race-'em-up, 'Diddy Kong Racing,' both colourful, jaunty games.
At the same time you can see the Nintendo influence - rolling the egg over the purple shadow muck to clear it up is straight out of 'Sunshine,' and Dark Raven, the game's villain, wears the same kind of fancy coat Gannondorf wore in 'The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker,' not to mention to defeat him you have to grab his dark energy, or whatever it is, and turning it to light you roll it right back! I also found myself over-thinking things a bit: in the Circus level I tried to get higher and higher to take the golden egg to the top, forgetting all I needed to do was pump it up to hatch it, but the difficulties made me forget - trying to throw an egg onto rails where it keeps dropping into oblivion, or jumping on a rail with an egg when I needed to roll and jump, or attempting to race a rolling egg to catch it at the other end and then it doesn't stick to you, but rolls right past, was the height of frustration, and such things came across as pernickety instead of embracing and empowering the player. Consequently, it was nowhere near getting a fourth star as the gameplay was pretty basic all told, with few of the characters and sense of place that you'd find in the likes of Banjo's worlds, and a lack of experimentation and variety, definitely leaning to an older school idea of the genre rather than fully using the resources of the console and taking it further, but as one of the few options worth considering in the genre on the GameCube I would recommend it. I have no idea if the Wii fared better (especially as you could play 'Cube titles on it, which is exactly how I played it), but I highly doubt it, so I'm glad I took the time to investigate this.
***
I like that it's so bright and happy, with jaunty, if repetitive and a little inane tunes, and colourful, if unimaginative worlds, that while not straying from the standard platformer themed locations used for their inspiration are chunky and fine to manoeuvre around within. And it is a lot about manoeuvring since you're nothing without an egg to roll in front of you as both shield and weapon, so much that if you turn too fast or go too near an edge you can lose it - worse, it can sometimes pull you down with it. The criticism I would level at the game is the same for most platformers: camera and control. Neither are terrible, nor are they really accomplished, a fair summation of the entire experience - getting stuck on a wall when you're trying to run through a gap, or the egg not being sticky enough so you don't always grip immediately and fully, and especially the camera adjusting itself independent of your control, are all annoyances. Importantly though, I did want to come back, the red Emblems attractive enough and challenging in acquisition, much like Mario's Stars or Shines, or Banjo's Jiggies, so I did have the desire to catch 'em all, if not the patience to get the last couple or so, which I assume are awarded for collecting all coins and finding all egg types. I wasn't too clear on how you were supposed to unlock the many eggs on the collection screen, whether it had to be on a run when you didn't die, or whether it was cumulative until Game Over and the last of your lives. The Game Over screen, very old-school, was really just an irritant forcing you to go through all the menus again until you get to the point where you can restart, although it also lost you any coins you'd collected, too. It wasn't a bad system, however, as it encouraged the collection of lives on later levels to avoid having to hit switches or clear rooms to progress again, and some incentive to be more careful when so many games make lives largely redundant.
The story doesn't bear consideration, but it's the gameplay that matters and this was suitably addictive. Though the levels had a certain amount of linearity to them, they were well designed in that the quest for each Emblem placed you in a different part of it, and eventually you had to know your way around the whole place for the search of the eight chickens in each, so my early impressions (inane music, gloomy opening level where you keep dying and returning to the start because it's difficult to see and know what's dangerous), were proved unfair with the dawning of morning. I'm still not sure if it was best to start out each level with the whole place dark, but once things lighten up it's good. It's really not a game designed to impress in the scale or breadth of the levels or their challenges, and they were largely repetitive, but enjoyable enough. Favourites were probably the Pirates Island and Dino Mountain areas as the opening level is conventionally basic and the later ones typically trickier to traverse with easy instant deaths over the side - one thing that annoyed me was it being so easy to die, though it adds peril to proceedings and ups the tension, it frequently took time to learn the game's flaunting of convention in that regard: you can't fall into water, sand or lava, though you can run atop an egg if you have the right hat which is found in a specific egg. Trouble is, you're very constrained by egg-top running, not allowing you to jump, except backwards, meaning if you want to get somewhere above you're forced to stand looking away from it and then jump. In all, the controls weren't the most intuitive or fair, I felt. Having to roll an egg or use it to jump was both the unique feature of the game and its downfall. Once you get used to it you can barrel around at top speed and turn on a sixpence, but there wasn't much in the way of progression to learn control, nor to understand the attributes of the eggs' items or creatures - you had to wait until exiting a level before being able to look up the corresponding information.
It wasn't a good enough game for me to want to go back and locate all the missing coins and eggs, it was enough for me to fill in all the visible Emblems on each level select, but it's good that if you really loved the experience you had the option to do more, such as improving your rating in time and fight experimentation. There's also the multiplayer Battle mode I didn't have the opportunity to try out and the Game Boy Advance linkup that I didn't have any success with, perhaps because I never found the mini-game eggs that would have made it possible. Again, I don't have the patience to go back through and unearth the missing eggs, but it's nice to have that option. With the GameCube so poorly served with the genre that had its peak on N64 (at least four good to great games, possibly more), this is one of the rare examples, along with 'Super Mario Sunshine' and… not much else. Perhaps the genre was going out of fashion even then, but there were the occasional attempts such as the 'Pac Man World' series, the only one of which I played I found to be distinctly average to poor, so this was, if not a nice surprise because I expected it to be reasonably playable, one that lived up to its Sega namesake, and indeed had hallmarks of the company at this time, such as the vocals on the theme that reminded me of their 'F-Zero GX' entry on 'Cube, and also Rare's N64 race-'em-up, 'Diddy Kong Racing,' both colourful, jaunty games.
At the same time you can see the Nintendo influence - rolling the egg over the purple shadow muck to clear it up is straight out of 'Sunshine,' and Dark Raven, the game's villain, wears the same kind of fancy coat Gannondorf wore in 'The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker,' not to mention to defeat him you have to grab his dark energy, or whatever it is, and turning it to light you roll it right back! I also found myself over-thinking things a bit: in the Circus level I tried to get higher and higher to take the golden egg to the top, forgetting all I needed to do was pump it up to hatch it, but the difficulties made me forget - trying to throw an egg onto rails where it keeps dropping into oblivion, or jumping on a rail with an egg when I needed to roll and jump, or attempting to race a rolling egg to catch it at the other end and then it doesn't stick to you, but rolls right past, was the height of frustration, and such things came across as pernickety instead of embracing and empowering the player. Consequently, it was nowhere near getting a fourth star as the gameplay was pretty basic all told, with few of the characters and sense of place that you'd find in the likes of Banjo's worlds, and a lack of experimentation and variety, definitely leaning to an older school idea of the genre rather than fully using the resources of the console and taking it further, but as one of the few options worth considering in the genre on the GameCube I would recommend it. I have no idea if the Wii fared better (especially as you could play 'Cube titles on it, which is exactly how I played it), but I highly doubt it, so I'm glad I took the time to investigate this.
***
Tuesday, 4 June 2019
The Lost Boys
DVD, Stargate Atlantis S2 (The Lost Boys)
Could they have turned a corner with these latest two episodes? The previous one was good and this one also does well, mainly because it operates in the old team style with Sheppard, Teyla, McKay and Ronon all off-world on a mission together to pick up some intel. Their bantering and chatting doesn't always ring true, but here they really are a good little unit and fun to watch. The episode gets better when we find out the fate of Ford, last seen voluntarily being swept up in a dart's ray to escape Sheppard. He's still as unbalanced as before, but now he's even more dangerous because he has delusions to leading his own band of followers against The Wraith. But first, to achieve his ultimate goal of taking on a guerilla mission to destroy a Hive ship, he needs the expertise of McKay to fix a dart and the piloting skill of Sheppard to get them there, which is why he kidnaps the team and makes them take the enzyme which has addled his brain, but given him greater speed and strength. It's a good concept, putting Sheppard at odds once again with his former subordinate and leading to some outfoxing of each other: it was obvious to me that Sheppard should go along with Ford's plan so he could scoop them all up and fly home, but Ford was ahead of him with that one, too, holding McKay hostage after lulling Sheppard into thinking he secretly has a desire to return home to Earth!
Ford and his band of lost boys aren't uninteresting: you have the science guy who McKay ends up helping and we learn a little more about Wraith politics from him (essentially he believes them to be territorial and fighting amongst themselves more and more), while Teyla and Ronon both discover the benefits of the enzyme, becoming even faster and energetic fighters than they already were, but also more aggressive. It does seem to lessen the mind's care for others as they show when they get into a fight over a piece of lettuce! Also, Ford remains as deluded as ever, thinking his plans are gold while they're obviously poor - when they go to grab some C4 from a Genii outpost a man is killed where it was unnecessary, and when Ford's plan aboard the Hive ship goes wrong he immediately blames Sheppard and never takes any advice from anyone. He's no military mastermind and the drug can't improve that aspect of them, so Sheppard is the only one to remain clearheaded as he was kept off the enzyme so he could witness what it did for the others and eventually report it to Weir. Ford wants to be mates and for them to trust him on one hand, yet also threatens lives if they go against him, so he's still acting the benevolent tyrant and failing to see the change to his personality it has wrought.
After watching another substandard episode of 'Star Trek: Discovery' this was a breath of fresh air - maybe it didn't end in the space of one episode and get satisfyingly wrapped up (and I suspect it can only end with Ford's death, though I'd be happier he was still out there causing mischief to The Wraith), but it did succeed in setting up a premise, following on from previous setup, and exploring it well, while giving us an enjoyable group of characters to hang out with, which is much more than can be said of 'DSC,' and something I really needed! I don't know how things will play out, perhaps it will lose its momentum in the second part, Ford will probably have a last-minute redemption, saving Sheppard and dying in the process, but both character moments and the action here were well worked in with Ronon especially becoming a whirlwind of Wraith death in the assault on the ship. Maybe it would have made more sense for Teyla and Ronon to have chosen a moment and taken on the Ford gang back at their base, but then we wouldn't have had the intriguing visit to this Hive ship where a Hive Queen (as the end credits has it), is about to do something nasty to Sheppard. If the team work as tightly together in part two it could be a trio of quality episodes in a row.
***
Could they have turned a corner with these latest two episodes? The previous one was good and this one also does well, mainly because it operates in the old team style with Sheppard, Teyla, McKay and Ronon all off-world on a mission together to pick up some intel. Their bantering and chatting doesn't always ring true, but here they really are a good little unit and fun to watch. The episode gets better when we find out the fate of Ford, last seen voluntarily being swept up in a dart's ray to escape Sheppard. He's still as unbalanced as before, but now he's even more dangerous because he has delusions to leading his own band of followers against The Wraith. But first, to achieve his ultimate goal of taking on a guerilla mission to destroy a Hive ship, he needs the expertise of McKay to fix a dart and the piloting skill of Sheppard to get them there, which is why he kidnaps the team and makes them take the enzyme which has addled his brain, but given him greater speed and strength. It's a good concept, putting Sheppard at odds once again with his former subordinate and leading to some outfoxing of each other: it was obvious to me that Sheppard should go along with Ford's plan so he could scoop them all up and fly home, but Ford was ahead of him with that one, too, holding McKay hostage after lulling Sheppard into thinking he secretly has a desire to return home to Earth!
Ford and his band of lost boys aren't uninteresting: you have the science guy who McKay ends up helping and we learn a little more about Wraith politics from him (essentially he believes them to be territorial and fighting amongst themselves more and more), while Teyla and Ronon both discover the benefits of the enzyme, becoming even faster and energetic fighters than they already were, but also more aggressive. It does seem to lessen the mind's care for others as they show when they get into a fight over a piece of lettuce! Also, Ford remains as deluded as ever, thinking his plans are gold while they're obviously poor - when they go to grab some C4 from a Genii outpost a man is killed where it was unnecessary, and when Ford's plan aboard the Hive ship goes wrong he immediately blames Sheppard and never takes any advice from anyone. He's no military mastermind and the drug can't improve that aspect of them, so Sheppard is the only one to remain clearheaded as he was kept off the enzyme so he could witness what it did for the others and eventually report it to Weir. Ford wants to be mates and for them to trust him on one hand, yet also threatens lives if they go against him, so he's still acting the benevolent tyrant and failing to see the change to his personality it has wrought.
After watching another substandard episode of 'Star Trek: Discovery' this was a breath of fresh air - maybe it didn't end in the space of one episode and get satisfyingly wrapped up (and I suspect it can only end with Ford's death, though I'd be happier he was still out there causing mischief to The Wraith), but it did succeed in setting up a premise, following on from previous setup, and exploring it well, while giving us an enjoyable group of characters to hang out with, which is much more than can be said of 'DSC,' and something I really needed! I don't know how things will play out, perhaps it will lose its momentum in the second part, Ford will probably have a last-minute redemption, saving Sheppard and dying in the process, but both character moments and the action here were well worked in with Ronon especially becoming a whirlwind of Wraith death in the assault on the ship. Maybe it would have made more sense for Teyla and Ronon to have chosen a moment and taken on the Ford gang back at their base, but then we wouldn't have had the intriguing visit to this Hive ship where a Hive Queen (as the end credits has it), is about to do something nasty to Sheppard. If the team work as tightly together in part two it could be a trio of quality episodes in a row.
***
Will You Take My Hand?
DVD, Star Trek: Discovery S1 (Will You Take My Hand?)
Honestly, I don't know where to begin. I'm very sorry to have lived to see what has become of 'Star Trek' in these last few years. It means so much to me and to see it abused and pulled apart to suit the tastes of those that wouldn't care for it otherwise is more than disheartening, it's positively cruel. Waiting so long for it to return to its TV roots has ultimately proved futile, for although the appetite may have grown, I have also become more discerning. At one time I'd have happily accepted anything Trek that claimed to be in the original universe, at one time there wasn't even that distinction to be made, it was just 'Star Trek.' But the modern films changed that, and they did more harm to Trek than I even realised at the time, for they set the precedents, tone and style that 'DSC' has chosen to run with. I was always going to be interested in a series, even if they made it in what has become known as the Kelvin Timeline, those three JJ Abrams films that were all the new Trek additions that I had for so many years - I wouldn't have been happy that it was in a universe I didn't care for, where the events had no real connection to what had come before, that rich, rich history that made Trek so appealing, so real, so deep, but I would have watched and tried to enjoy it for being more of what I like. But it wouldn't have been the same as the so-called 'Prime' universe where things actually matter. 'DSC' promised something that possibility couldn't. Except that it may as well have been in that alternate universe for all the true Trek I found within its highly stylised halls, and that is far more damaging than doing a complete reboot and ignoring the hallowed canon that makes this history tick.
They were intent on throwing in as many references to aliens, planets and history as they could, this final episode featuring a glut of such comfort crumbs, but nothing can save a poorly written, melodramatically acted, illogically thought out mess as this was. I had some tiny hope that they'd somehow pull the season out of the mire that it had sunk into, to redeem all the poor decisions and worse writing, the bad characterisations and the illogic, but it only rammed home forcefully the complete lack this series has demonstrated repeatedly. There's no need to hold back now - although I have been harsh in my criticisms and vocal in my disappointment over the course of these reviews I've tried to temper it with at least some level of understanding that this is a serial and some things may not become clear until the every end. But the conclusion was as poor, if not poorer than all the other decision-making and 'story' telling throughout the season. If something is well written, engaging and impresses then you can get past much of the canon issues, much of the arbitrary changes made for no reason other than because they want to put their own imprint on this highly thought out and structured universe. It's like they rampaged in, tore around the family home grabbing pieces here, knocking over bookshelves there and collapsing in the middle of the room with their whirlwind of chaos strewn around them, satisfied they'd caused a stir.
My point is that nothing in the series really impressed beyond the knowledge of canon that showed if they chose to they could recognise it, which makes the bizarre choices and awful writing even more bewildering. If there had been no mention of other races, Captains, ships or any other aspect of Trek history it would have made sense because from the writing and plotting it seemed as if these makers were making something else entirely. Again, if the stories had been compelling, if I hadn't forgiven the choices they made I might at least have found great drama and inspiring, uplifting character work. But there never was that, they relied on stupid, unthinking idiocy to win the day. This Klingon war idea wasn't bad in and of itself - it could have been a great excuse for some thrilling battles in the 23rd Century, but there was so much opportunity they threw away. I really don't know what they were trying to achieve, other than make Trek appeal to the lowest common denominator of comic book filmgoers! It's not like they packed in thrilling action sequences to impress visually like the Kelvin films. They had plenty of what would be called character moments, but they fell flat, and I don't know whether that's the fault of the acting, the Directors not knowing Trek (as if 'Nemesis' Director Stuart Baird had been recalled from enforced retirement to take the reins!), or the poorly thought out writing that was skewed heavily towards contemporary speech and ideals. More than likely a combination of all three and other issues such as the behind the scenes problems that were rocking things right from the start.
The big end-all is how they can finish the war. Did we see Klingons and humans meeting together and finding common ground? Were there signs of peaceful cooperation or understanding? Nope, but then they were already hamstrung by the fact that we know in ten years there's a cold war between these combatants. If, and this is what I have to believe, this war was the cited event in history that had been referred to in 'TOS' that was supposed to be part of the series then it was hugely disappointing and misguided - I don't think there ever was mention of it, and yet things like that were talked up as fact. There was literally no point to this serial because there isn't going to be peace, just an end to the unremitting hostility. It was as far divorced from existing history, both in terms of everything about the Klingons that we know, as to be utterly perplexing in the choice of it. It seemed like a ripe ground for exciting CGI battles and the kind of tense war drama only 'DS9' was able to pull off before. It neither gave us that nor anything else of consequence - if it had all been action, then it would be easy to slate it for being mindless, but the mindlessness was far more evident in the failure to carry a story. Countless times there are questions left hanging about this course of action a character took, or this piece of dialogue, and the trick with this kind of drama is that it keeps you hanging on because there's the inherent promise that it will all make sense by the end, when in reality they were just covering lazy writing with a wait and see attitude that never came to fruition.
I've been re-watching 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' during my first viewing of 'DSC' and they could have taught the writers a thing or ten about exploring concepts and making good stories, because those characters actually were written well. The mysteries were there, but most episodes had a certain amount of satisfaction to them and the characters were believable and fascinating. 'DSC' was running on fumes where shock value was more important then telling a good story and the hanging mysteries were there to keep speculation up. It's designed as a 'water-cooler' series that is supposed to become talked about and eagerly anticipated, and that isn't where Trek's, or really, any narrative's strength lies. It's a kind of fobbing off, avoidance of responsibilities to the audience, that can only be undone by creating a high-level ongoing story that is clever and intelligent and deftly weaves its parts together. The writers of this series didn't have that skill and were about as deft as the Klingon surgeon chopping up Voq! 'Terminator: TSSC' reminded me that it is possible for me to enjoy this form of storytelling, so it's not me that's the problem, and even granted they had more episodes, the whole idea of shorter seasons was supposed to curtail the filler material so that only the cream was left to rise to the top.
I saw no evidence for that model by watching 'DSC.' If anything it quickly became generic fantasy TV whose every move alienated me, a dedicated Trek viewer: can salt remain salty if it loses its saltiness? More than ever I feel that this is Trek with the Trekness bled out so as not to bore people, but ironically Trek didn't become popular by trying to be something else. For a long time it was really counter culture, doing its own thing, and that's what bought it so many dedicated followers that were willing to go from series to series, year after year. It ploughed its own furrow, but in this century it has largely been a follower of trends and has tried to fit in. Perhaps this is more to do with a wider issue about studios and franchise owners becoming the behemoths and the quest for more viewers and more money has leapt up to a new level. I'm not going to go into that here, but it's enough to say that so many things have become more generic in order to appeal more widely instead of being their own thing. It's all about the brands and eyes on, and less about honing and crafting a universe. It's all very sad and distressing, but perhaps it was inevitable? Even more sad is that the more I listen to podcasts about this series, the more disappointed I feel: I've learned that series creator Bryan Fuller wanted the uniforms to be closer to the correct ones that we know exist at this time, but the studio didn't, which is strange considering the desire to set a series in this period seems to be all about cashing in on the variable success of the Kelvin films and their 'TOS' re-imagining that got Trek above the parapet and into younger viewers' consciousness again.
It's like they really wanted to do this specific era for the recognition, then back-pedalled away from it when that meant trying to fit into a series from the 1960s. If they were relishing being in this particular period they'd be taking advantage of period specific tech to show how it differs from later stuff, but they're not interested in the world they've inherited, they're lazy, don't care about this being a historical drama set in the future, only in quick fixes, sheen and mystery drama to keep the audience guessing, losing so much reality. So they stole from all eras, failing to realise that the very thing that made this era worth exploring were its limitations. So we had the Holodeck that was there for no other reason than one quick gag. And that holo-communicator 'DS9' pioneered and quickly dropped during its fifth season, we'll have that cuz it looks cool. And those pesky little details like intra-ship beaming supposedly being dangerous and rarely used, well we'll do that cuz it looks cool. Scant regard was paid to the limits of the time, it looked entirely different, the attitudes were different - everything about it was off! They chose to be highly selective about what they recognised as canon, carefully adding in deep level references from non canon novels and 'The Animated Series,' while distancing themselves from the hallmarks of the era. They were far from discerning in this regard, only serving to further alienate me. I've probably said it before, but production memory can be an advantage and a disadvantage: in the times when Trek was sometimes feeling tired, new blood can inject vitality, but the flaw is that they haven't the surfeit of specific experience to know which paths end up in blind alleys so mistakes recur.
What else? Oh yes, Cliff Eidelmann, the composer of the terrific score for 'Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country' was originally hired to do the theme and music for the first episode. How cool? Nick Meyer was hired as part of the writing staff. How cool? Tony Todd to have a recurring role? Michael Dorn asked to play his ancestor? No Mudd in Fuller's version? Too many 'what ifs.' Again, if the series had been strong in and of itself I wouldn't be questioning what might have been, but it was just so constantly illogical and poorly thought out. To get back to this episode, the war ends with L'Rell making a speech to her Klingon brethren on Qo'noS, suggesting she be their leader. Rightly (and thankfully), she's laughed at. We know that even in the 24th Century a female isn't allowed to lead her House, another forgotten piece of canon that defines Klingon attitudes and behaviour. Anyway, she then threatens her brethren with the Starfleet bomb that is whizzing around in the underground lava tunnels of the planet (how small Qo'noS is made to seem - it only has seven chimneys on the whole planet through which this drone bomb can be dropped?), suggesting she'll destroy the planet if they don't end the war. Wow! Did they really think she'd blow up her own planet? What was her motivation for wanting the war to end so keenly? She's been a prisoner on Discovery for a number of episodes, and in this one she gets mercilessly kicked around her cell by Mirror Georgiou and all she wants is peace?
She seems to still be a follower of T'Kuvma and he was all about distrusting the 'other' and a full-on hatred of the Federation, so how can she still be a follower of his ways and yet go so far to try and end the war? It doesn't make any sense, and she was one of the good characters of the season. We never did get the promised deep exploration of Klingons and their culture, but she at least made the Klingon scenes watchable and it seemed as if her goodness and shrewdness were going to be integral to finding some kind of understanding, yet that isn't what happened! It's really bizarre. It's the same way I felt about Captain Lorca being killed off, except then I thought there was a chance we hadn't seen the last of him and that it was a ruse he'd devised to escape, and he'd pop up again by the end. Nope! That really was the writers' endgame for him. I will say that the series' content was nowhere near as offensive as I was expecting from the fuss they were making before it was released. They occasionally pushed the boat out on bad taste, again for shock value and nothing more, like naughty schoolboys, but what I found more unpalatable were the majority of the characters, and if not them then the talent behind it: I was surprised how after taking to Burnham initially I found myself being less and less impressed by her and I think they really lost her arc as well as everyone else's.
Tilly I never liked and she was just as irritating in this episode as before. Ho, ho, she's forced (by none other than Clint Howard), to take drugs, how funny. Why did Georgiou want her on the Landing Party (at least they got one piece of terminology of the time correct), other than because she reminded her of Mirror Tilly and reminds us of the level of stupidity of the series by calling her 'Killy'? Mirror Georgiou was about the worst thing of these last few episodes so it makes no surprise to me that she's going to get her own series! That's the level that these people think at, and Michelle Yeoh was one of the major disappointments of the series. Even as the true Georgiou I felt she was stilted and not very realistic, but flashing her dark eyes and tossing her head about as the very caricature of an evil villain took away any credibility whatsoever. She was a truly awful addition to these last episodes and even when the writers came up with an interesting concept, namely having her in command, they failed on all counts to explore it. The story boils down to Georgiou chucking a bomb into the volcanoes of Qo'noS because Starfleet have decided they need to be that genocidal to win the war. We're still, confusingly, in a later time since they returned to our universe months later. I always assumed we were going to go back in time since the Klingons had taken over almost everything. Nope. The time jump isn't even mentioned again.
Georgiou was awful - she could barely pose as the good and famous Captain for minutes before riling up the crew and being in every way an objectionable character. Burnham gets so emotionally compromised (whatever happened to her Vulcan training - that slipped by the wayside almost from the beginning of the season, and was the most interesting thing about her!), she tries to trap the Captain and uncover her to the Bridge crew. Which is again bizarre! She's still not got the idea of following orders and so often she just does whatever her flaring temper dictates. She couldn't be less Vulcan and just as Tyler was a poor approximation of a Klingon, so she is of a Vulcan. Mind you, with this awful version of Sarek that is so open and emotional himself, or utterly stilted and unconvincing in the extreme, maybe that explains it: she thinks his behaviour is Vulcan! Really, that last scene on Earth (umbrellas? How much more unrealistic and contemporary can you be, not to mention the ugly, overpopulated future Paris they show, crammed with buildings - Trek always showed us that space and the environment were the future of Earth, but this looks much more like the hated Kelvin films' depiction of 'Star Wars' skyscrapers dominating everywhere). And when Sarek is eager to get back to Vulcan. Oh so many problems with oh so many things in this episode and this series, it almost makes me hold my head in my hands and certainly has dropped my anticipation of the Picard series. They've demonstrated they don't know how to do Trek right and I believe them!
I'd forgotten Clint Howard was to be in an episode, the only actor to have been in a Trek from the previous regime as he was in 'TOS' as a child, playing Balok, and showed up in both 'DS9' and 'Enterprise' as other characters. Here he plays a green Orion drug dealer. This whole sequence on Qo'noS was a mistake from beginning to end and made no sense to me: that the Klingons even allow embassies of other races on their xenophobic homeworld was the height of idiocy, but that the Orions would even have an embassy at all… Maybe that was the intended point: the Klingons like having Orion slave girls, so they allow this equivalent of an embassy which is really just a dump of drugs and the gutter pursuits. I couldn't help laughing when Burnham talked of seeing this place as a home, even though these people are different to us: tattoo parlours and exotic dancers, shady street vendors selling rare animals for consumption, and drugs all around! Her idea of home is severely twisted and was a clear and obvious failure on the part of the writers that have no clue what they're actually doing! For seconds I thought it might be interesting to see Orions again, since they'd really only been done in 'Enterprise' (aside from a couple in 'TOS'), but then none of it made sense. They were a very pale and pasty variation as if they were slightly embarrassed to be showing green people, and as with so much, many of them just looked like ordinary people, like the vendors, as if colour correction was off in a contemporary crime drama!
I thought Stamets couldn't jump any more after his experiences? I must have missed something, probably because it had been a few weeks since I last saw an episode due to the series not making me desperate to get back to it, because he spore jumps them to Qo'noS where it seems anyone can come and go as they please. How were they not detected? Was that something to do with where they jumped to? It's hard to care when they don't really place much stock in story logic - whatever goes, man, that seems to be the approach. At least it wasn't as simple as L'Rell giving a speech with the sweeping music rising as she's finally accepted, but if they didn't do it there they did do it with Burnham at the very end. Was it supposed to be Starfleet Headquarters? She gives some tired, trite speech about our values as if that makes everything alright and everyone's happy ever after. I mean Sarek even admits to going along with the plan to destroy Qo'noS, but it's all swept under the carpet. The map with all those Klingon symbols covering the galaxy, what happened to that? There's literally no regard for how Klingons, or even people in the real world, act - look at 'DS9,' they did a whole season where the Klingons made a tentative peace after all out war, but many parts of their newly formed empire refused to give up colonies, it didn't all end pat and easy. Not that we really know what happened as they don't see fit to show us so much of what goes on!
What was that tiny fleet of Klingon ships supposed to be doing? Were they heading for Earth, I didn't get it? And then after L'Rell's threat to destroy Qo'noS they just peel off and head back home? The hotheaded Klingons? Who seem more like animals in this series than ever before? Where is your logic, where is your sense? Nothing was intelligently mapped out and I hope Fuller was distraught at what they made of the setup he gave them because I can't imagine he'd have sanctioned anything quite as ridiculous as what they did. And it's all 'worthwhile' because of Burnham's little speech at the end. It seems like she's the guiding light of Starfleet, as if no one else like Georgiou (the real one), with wisdom and experience exists to counter anything stupid! It's not like Burnham is very sensible, either, she's often overly emotional and not the character we first met. Oh, but that's the point they're supposed to change, right? What changed, except negative things? Okay, so she wanted to die back then and then found a place, a false place I should add, on Lorca's staff. There's just so much to unburden myself of now that it's all over that I can't even get it all out there. There was no remedy for it all at the end, no explanation of why things don't look right, which they said would happen by end of season, but then you have to take what's said in the light of people selling you something so they're going to say whatever they can to get people onboard.
Tilly's constantly flippant dialogue, that also extended to Georgiou and Burnham, really annoys, just further cementing how modern this feels, so very far from being the period piece, the formal world that Trek portrays. Everything is just so wrong about this series and as much as I wanted to like it and was at one time excited for it, it has disappointed on just about every level. That they were unable to conclude the story in a satisfying way that made sense shouldn't have been a surprise, and I suppose it wasn't. They don't even keep to their own internal logic: Tilly eating a Gormagander which is supposed to be so rare. Granted, it's never really confirmed that's what it was, it could have been a more common space whale species and Tyler was having a joke with her, but it was not in keeping with the seriousness of that episode's suggestion of rarity. Molor is mentioned, some kind of cult whose temples are over the site of the volcano, but it's all so sloppily plotted - Tyler saunters over to chat to them. That's the other thing: the Klingons wouldn't be allowing humans on their world! And if they met them they'd be beating them to within an inch of their lives! Nothing makes sense. Other references chucked in are Georgiou talking about wiping out the Betazoids and Mintaka III in the Mirror Universe, the Ceti eels frying in a pan, Nausicaans mentioned, a Trill getting a tattoo, Georgiou saying they're not here for 'bread and circuses,' a 'TOS' episode title… That's about the level of intelligence going on, that she references a title so you can go 'ooh, ooh, I know that one!' and it's so pitiful and poorly thought out. And what did Saru do to deserve the Medal of Honour?!
It was like that from day one, though, from the moment they walked around to create a Starfleet delta symbol in the sand, to the moment Burnham began a war by somehow accidentally killing the Torchbearer, to being blamed for it all, to… oh, it's too much to go back over, I just can't believe I felt relieved when I watched the first episode and felt it was Trekky enough. Trek generally has a troubled first season, so it's not like I'm giving up on the series and will refuse to buy and watch the next season (especially as I've heard one or two positive things about the writer's room settling down and Captain Pike being commended), but my anticipation has dropped drastically over the last few months and not even Patrick Stewart gives me faith to believe Trek from here on out won't always be a painful experience, a depressing, angry and distressing experience. Like 'Star Wars,' like 'Dr. Who,' like Middle-earth, I can no longer say I love Trek without any caveats. It's been that way since 2009, but they were only two hour films and now the canon has been more substantially eaten into, its success proving that this is what the world wants now and so we'll probably get many more episodes, whether it be 'DSC,' 'Star Trek: Picard,' Georgiou's 'Section 31,' some dumbed down (or grossed up), cartoons, and whatever else they have in mind to pervert and flaunt the diseased Trek name. A bit strong? Maybe, but coming off the back of this episode that's how I feel. It was to be an experience writing reviews about new Trek on an episodic basis, but it was far from the experience I was expecting. What else to say but the biggest thumbs down!
There is one more thing to comment on: the grand appearance of the Enterprise NCC-1701. It had already been spoiled for me, but I hadn't had a good look at the ship, I just knew it was coming. Far from the white swan gliding into view it was a strange metallic grey as if even the classic, iconic images of 'TOS' must be altered now. It was meant to be a final hurrah for those that had breathlessly been pulled delightedly along by the series and were fully enjoying it. Oh wow, now there's the classic Enterprise, whoopee! For me it was like one final kick in the teeth to say this ain't your Trek, man. Because it was spoiled I didn't have to get over it, so that was good, and it may be that they do it justice next season and that I can't see it properly so maybe it did look more 'TOS' than it seemed. But once again it's that desire to keep you on the hook, come back for more because there's something else here, only for it all to fall apart like a house of cards. I have little real belief they can recreate the Enterprise when they've shown such disregard for the period and almost everything about it, but I'll try to keep an open mind. It didn't work doing that for Season 1 so maybe I'm just a sucker. I'll even re-watch Season 1 again because I need to see it in quicker succession to see if it makes any difference, but I doubt it. They highjacked the 'TOS' music for the end credits, just as they did with the Kelvin films: I wonder if they can rub off some of the same 'TOS' spirit, drama and wonder that that music conveys? Just don't ask me for an answer.
**
Honestly, I don't know where to begin. I'm very sorry to have lived to see what has become of 'Star Trek' in these last few years. It means so much to me and to see it abused and pulled apart to suit the tastes of those that wouldn't care for it otherwise is more than disheartening, it's positively cruel. Waiting so long for it to return to its TV roots has ultimately proved futile, for although the appetite may have grown, I have also become more discerning. At one time I'd have happily accepted anything Trek that claimed to be in the original universe, at one time there wasn't even that distinction to be made, it was just 'Star Trek.' But the modern films changed that, and they did more harm to Trek than I even realised at the time, for they set the precedents, tone and style that 'DSC' has chosen to run with. I was always going to be interested in a series, even if they made it in what has become known as the Kelvin Timeline, those three JJ Abrams films that were all the new Trek additions that I had for so many years - I wouldn't have been happy that it was in a universe I didn't care for, where the events had no real connection to what had come before, that rich, rich history that made Trek so appealing, so real, so deep, but I would have watched and tried to enjoy it for being more of what I like. But it wouldn't have been the same as the so-called 'Prime' universe where things actually matter. 'DSC' promised something that possibility couldn't. Except that it may as well have been in that alternate universe for all the true Trek I found within its highly stylised halls, and that is far more damaging than doing a complete reboot and ignoring the hallowed canon that makes this history tick.
They were intent on throwing in as many references to aliens, planets and history as they could, this final episode featuring a glut of such comfort crumbs, but nothing can save a poorly written, melodramatically acted, illogically thought out mess as this was. I had some tiny hope that they'd somehow pull the season out of the mire that it had sunk into, to redeem all the poor decisions and worse writing, the bad characterisations and the illogic, but it only rammed home forcefully the complete lack this series has demonstrated repeatedly. There's no need to hold back now - although I have been harsh in my criticisms and vocal in my disappointment over the course of these reviews I've tried to temper it with at least some level of understanding that this is a serial and some things may not become clear until the every end. But the conclusion was as poor, if not poorer than all the other decision-making and 'story' telling throughout the season. If something is well written, engaging and impresses then you can get past much of the canon issues, much of the arbitrary changes made for no reason other than because they want to put their own imprint on this highly thought out and structured universe. It's like they rampaged in, tore around the family home grabbing pieces here, knocking over bookshelves there and collapsing in the middle of the room with their whirlwind of chaos strewn around them, satisfied they'd caused a stir.
My point is that nothing in the series really impressed beyond the knowledge of canon that showed if they chose to they could recognise it, which makes the bizarre choices and awful writing even more bewildering. If there had been no mention of other races, Captains, ships or any other aspect of Trek history it would have made sense because from the writing and plotting it seemed as if these makers were making something else entirely. Again, if the stories had been compelling, if I hadn't forgiven the choices they made I might at least have found great drama and inspiring, uplifting character work. But there never was that, they relied on stupid, unthinking idiocy to win the day. This Klingon war idea wasn't bad in and of itself - it could have been a great excuse for some thrilling battles in the 23rd Century, but there was so much opportunity they threw away. I really don't know what they were trying to achieve, other than make Trek appeal to the lowest common denominator of comic book filmgoers! It's not like they packed in thrilling action sequences to impress visually like the Kelvin films. They had plenty of what would be called character moments, but they fell flat, and I don't know whether that's the fault of the acting, the Directors not knowing Trek (as if 'Nemesis' Director Stuart Baird had been recalled from enforced retirement to take the reins!), or the poorly thought out writing that was skewed heavily towards contemporary speech and ideals. More than likely a combination of all three and other issues such as the behind the scenes problems that were rocking things right from the start.
The big end-all is how they can finish the war. Did we see Klingons and humans meeting together and finding common ground? Were there signs of peaceful cooperation or understanding? Nope, but then they were already hamstrung by the fact that we know in ten years there's a cold war between these combatants. If, and this is what I have to believe, this war was the cited event in history that had been referred to in 'TOS' that was supposed to be part of the series then it was hugely disappointing and misguided - I don't think there ever was mention of it, and yet things like that were talked up as fact. There was literally no point to this serial because there isn't going to be peace, just an end to the unremitting hostility. It was as far divorced from existing history, both in terms of everything about the Klingons that we know, as to be utterly perplexing in the choice of it. It seemed like a ripe ground for exciting CGI battles and the kind of tense war drama only 'DS9' was able to pull off before. It neither gave us that nor anything else of consequence - if it had all been action, then it would be easy to slate it for being mindless, but the mindlessness was far more evident in the failure to carry a story. Countless times there are questions left hanging about this course of action a character took, or this piece of dialogue, and the trick with this kind of drama is that it keeps you hanging on because there's the inherent promise that it will all make sense by the end, when in reality they were just covering lazy writing with a wait and see attitude that never came to fruition.
I've been re-watching 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' during my first viewing of 'DSC' and they could have taught the writers a thing or ten about exploring concepts and making good stories, because those characters actually were written well. The mysteries were there, but most episodes had a certain amount of satisfaction to them and the characters were believable and fascinating. 'DSC' was running on fumes where shock value was more important then telling a good story and the hanging mysteries were there to keep speculation up. It's designed as a 'water-cooler' series that is supposed to become talked about and eagerly anticipated, and that isn't where Trek's, or really, any narrative's strength lies. It's a kind of fobbing off, avoidance of responsibilities to the audience, that can only be undone by creating a high-level ongoing story that is clever and intelligent and deftly weaves its parts together. The writers of this series didn't have that skill and were about as deft as the Klingon surgeon chopping up Voq! 'Terminator: TSSC' reminded me that it is possible for me to enjoy this form of storytelling, so it's not me that's the problem, and even granted they had more episodes, the whole idea of shorter seasons was supposed to curtail the filler material so that only the cream was left to rise to the top.
I saw no evidence for that model by watching 'DSC.' If anything it quickly became generic fantasy TV whose every move alienated me, a dedicated Trek viewer: can salt remain salty if it loses its saltiness? More than ever I feel that this is Trek with the Trekness bled out so as not to bore people, but ironically Trek didn't become popular by trying to be something else. For a long time it was really counter culture, doing its own thing, and that's what bought it so many dedicated followers that were willing to go from series to series, year after year. It ploughed its own furrow, but in this century it has largely been a follower of trends and has tried to fit in. Perhaps this is more to do with a wider issue about studios and franchise owners becoming the behemoths and the quest for more viewers and more money has leapt up to a new level. I'm not going to go into that here, but it's enough to say that so many things have become more generic in order to appeal more widely instead of being their own thing. It's all about the brands and eyes on, and less about honing and crafting a universe. It's all very sad and distressing, but perhaps it was inevitable? Even more sad is that the more I listen to podcasts about this series, the more disappointed I feel: I've learned that series creator Bryan Fuller wanted the uniforms to be closer to the correct ones that we know exist at this time, but the studio didn't, which is strange considering the desire to set a series in this period seems to be all about cashing in on the variable success of the Kelvin films and their 'TOS' re-imagining that got Trek above the parapet and into younger viewers' consciousness again.
It's like they really wanted to do this specific era for the recognition, then back-pedalled away from it when that meant trying to fit into a series from the 1960s. If they were relishing being in this particular period they'd be taking advantage of period specific tech to show how it differs from later stuff, but they're not interested in the world they've inherited, they're lazy, don't care about this being a historical drama set in the future, only in quick fixes, sheen and mystery drama to keep the audience guessing, losing so much reality. So they stole from all eras, failing to realise that the very thing that made this era worth exploring were its limitations. So we had the Holodeck that was there for no other reason than one quick gag. And that holo-communicator 'DS9' pioneered and quickly dropped during its fifth season, we'll have that cuz it looks cool. And those pesky little details like intra-ship beaming supposedly being dangerous and rarely used, well we'll do that cuz it looks cool. Scant regard was paid to the limits of the time, it looked entirely different, the attitudes were different - everything about it was off! They chose to be highly selective about what they recognised as canon, carefully adding in deep level references from non canon novels and 'The Animated Series,' while distancing themselves from the hallmarks of the era. They were far from discerning in this regard, only serving to further alienate me. I've probably said it before, but production memory can be an advantage and a disadvantage: in the times when Trek was sometimes feeling tired, new blood can inject vitality, but the flaw is that they haven't the surfeit of specific experience to know which paths end up in blind alleys so mistakes recur.
What else? Oh yes, Cliff Eidelmann, the composer of the terrific score for 'Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country' was originally hired to do the theme and music for the first episode. How cool? Nick Meyer was hired as part of the writing staff. How cool? Tony Todd to have a recurring role? Michael Dorn asked to play his ancestor? No Mudd in Fuller's version? Too many 'what ifs.' Again, if the series had been strong in and of itself I wouldn't be questioning what might have been, but it was just so constantly illogical and poorly thought out. To get back to this episode, the war ends with L'Rell making a speech to her Klingon brethren on Qo'noS, suggesting she be their leader. Rightly (and thankfully), she's laughed at. We know that even in the 24th Century a female isn't allowed to lead her House, another forgotten piece of canon that defines Klingon attitudes and behaviour. Anyway, she then threatens her brethren with the Starfleet bomb that is whizzing around in the underground lava tunnels of the planet (how small Qo'noS is made to seem - it only has seven chimneys on the whole planet through which this drone bomb can be dropped?), suggesting she'll destroy the planet if they don't end the war. Wow! Did they really think she'd blow up her own planet? What was her motivation for wanting the war to end so keenly? She's been a prisoner on Discovery for a number of episodes, and in this one she gets mercilessly kicked around her cell by Mirror Georgiou and all she wants is peace?
She seems to still be a follower of T'Kuvma and he was all about distrusting the 'other' and a full-on hatred of the Federation, so how can she still be a follower of his ways and yet go so far to try and end the war? It doesn't make any sense, and she was one of the good characters of the season. We never did get the promised deep exploration of Klingons and their culture, but she at least made the Klingon scenes watchable and it seemed as if her goodness and shrewdness were going to be integral to finding some kind of understanding, yet that isn't what happened! It's really bizarre. It's the same way I felt about Captain Lorca being killed off, except then I thought there was a chance we hadn't seen the last of him and that it was a ruse he'd devised to escape, and he'd pop up again by the end. Nope! That really was the writers' endgame for him. I will say that the series' content was nowhere near as offensive as I was expecting from the fuss they were making before it was released. They occasionally pushed the boat out on bad taste, again for shock value and nothing more, like naughty schoolboys, but what I found more unpalatable were the majority of the characters, and if not them then the talent behind it: I was surprised how after taking to Burnham initially I found myself being less and less impressed by her and I think they really lost her arc as well as everyone else's.
Tilly I never liked and she was just as irritating in this episode as before. Ho, ho, she's forced (by none other than Clint Howard), to take drugs, how funny. Why did Georgiou want her on the Landing Party (at least they got one piece of terminology of the time correct), other than because she reminded her of Mirror Tilly and reminds us of the level of stupidity of the series by calling her 'Killy'? Mirror Georgiou was about the worst thing of these last few episodes so it makes no surprise to me that she's going to get her own series! That's the level that these people think at, and Michelle Yeoh was one of the major disappointments of the series. Even as the true Georgiou I felt she was stilted and not very realistic, but flashing her dark eyes and tossing her head about as the very caricature of an evil villain took away any credibility whatsoever. She was a truly awful addition to these last episodes and even when the writers came up with an interesting concept, namely having her in command, they failed on all counts to explore it. The story boils down to Georgiou chucking a bomb into the volcanoes of Qo'noS because Starfleet have decided they need to be that genocidal to win the war. We're still, confusingly, in a later time since they returned to our universe months later. I always assumed we were going to go back in time since the Klingons had taken over almost everything. Nope. The time jump isn't even mentioned again.
Georgiou was awful - she could barely pose as the good and famous Captain for minutes before riling up the crew and being in every way an objectionable character. Burnham gets so emotionally compromised (whatever happened to her Vulcan training - that slipped by the wayside almost from the beginning of the season, and was the most interesting thing about her!), she tries to trap the Captain and uncover her to the Bridge crew. Which is again bizarre! She's still not got the idea of following orders and so often she just does whatever her flaring temper dictates. She couldn't be less Vulcan and just as Tyler was a poor approximation of a Klingon, so she is of a Vulcan. Mind you, with this awful version of Sarek that is so open and emotional himself, or utterly stilted and unconvincing in the extreme, maybe that explains it: she thinks his behaviour is Vulcan! Really, that last scene on Earth (umbrellas? How much more unrealistic and contemporary can you be, not to mention the ugly, overpopulated future Paris they show, crammed with buildings - Trek always showed us that space and the environment were the future of Earth, but this looks much more like the hated Kelvin films' depiction of 'Star Wars' skyscrapers dominating everywhere). And when Sarek is eager to get back to Vulcan. Oh so many problems with oh so many things in this episode and this series, it almost makes me hold my head in my hands and certainly has dropped my anticipation of the Picard series. They've demonstrated they don't know how to do Trek right and I believe them!
I'd forgotten Clint Howard was to be in an episode, the only actor to have been in a Trek from the previous regime as he was in 'TOS' as a child, playing Balok, and showed up in both 'DS9' and 'Enterprise' as other characters. Here he plays a green Orion drug dealer. This whole sequence on Qo'noS was a mistake from beginning to end and made no sense to me: that the Klingons even allow embassies of other races on their xenophobic homeworld was the height of idiocy, but that the Orions would even have an embassy at all… Maybe that was the intended point: the Klingons like having Orion slave girls, so they allow this equivalent of an embassy which is really just a dump of drugs and the gutter pursuits. I couldn't help laughing when Burnham talked of seeing this place as a home, even though these people are different to us: tattoo parlours and exotic dancers, shady street vendors selling rare animals for consumption, and drugs all around! Her idea of home is severely twisted and was a clear and obvious failure on the part of the writers that have no clue what they're actually doing! For seconds I thought it might be interesting to see Orions again, since they'd really only been done in 'Enterprise' (aside from a couple in 'TOS'), but then none of it made sense. They were a very pale and pasty variation as if they were slightly embarrassed to be showing green people, and as with so much, many of them just looked like ordinary people, like the vendors, as if colour correction was off in a contemporary crime drama!
I thought Stamets couldn't jump any more after his experiences? I must have missed something, probably because it had been a few weeks since I last saw an episode due to the series not making me desperate to get back to it, because he spore jumps them to Qo'noS where it seems anyone can come and go as they please. How were they not detected? Was that something to do with where they jumped to? It's hard to care when they don't really place much stock in story logic - whatever goes, man, that seems to be the approach. At least it wasn't as simple as L'Rell giving a speech with the sweeping music rising as she's finally accepted, but if they didn't do it there they did do it with Burnham at the very end. Was it supposed to be Starfleet Headquarters? She gives some tired, trite speech about our values as if that makes everything alright and everyone's happy ever after. I mean Sarek even admits to going along with the plan to destroy Qo'noS, but it's all swept under the carpet. The map with all those Klingon symbols covering the galaxy, what happened to that? There's literally no regard for how Klingons, or even people in the real world, act - look at 'DS9,' they did a whole season where the Klingons made a tentative peace after all out war, but many parts of their newly formed empire refused to give up colonies, it didn't all end pat and easy. Not that we really know what happened as they don't see fit to show us so much of what goes on!
What was that tiny fleet of Klingon ships supposed to be doing? Were they heading for Earth, I didn't get it? And then after L'Rell's threat to destroy Qo'noS they just peel off and head back home? The hotheaded Klingons? Who seem more like animals in this series than ever before? Where is your logic, where is your sense? Nothing was intelligently mapped out and I hope Fuller was distraught at what they made of the setup he gave them because I can't imagine he'd have sanctioned anything quite as ridiculous as what they did. And it's all 'worthwhile' because of Burnham's little speech at the end. It seems like she's the guiding light of Starfleet, as if no one else like Georgiou (the real one), with wisdom and experience exists to counter anything stupid! It's not like Burnham is very sensible, either, she's often overly emotional and not the character we first met. Oh, but that's the point they're supposed to change, right? What changed, except negative things? Okay, so she wanted to die back then and then found a place, a false place I should add, on Lorca's staff. There's just so much to unburden myself of now that it's all over that I can't even get it all out there. There was no remedy for it all at the end, no explanation of why things don't look right, which they said would happen by end of season, but then you have to take what's said in the light of people selling you something so they're going to say whatever they can to get people onboard.
Tilly's constantly flippant dialogue, that also extended to Georgiou and Burnham, really annoys, just further cementing how modern this feels, so very far from being the period piece, the formal world that Trek portrays. Everything is just so wrong about this series and as much as I wanted to like it and was at one time excited for it, it has disappointed on just about every level. That they were unable to conclude the story in a satisfying way that made sense shouldn't have been a surprise, and I suppose it wasn't. They don't even keep to their own internal logic: Tilly eating a Gormagander which is supposed to be so rare. Granted, it's never really confirmed that's what it was, it could have been a more common space whale species and Tyler was having a joke with her, but it was not in keeping with the seriousness of that episode's suggestion of rarity. Molor is mentioned, some kind of cult whose temples are over the site of the volcano, but it's all so sloppily plotted - Tyler saunters over to chat to them. That's the other thing: the Klingons wouldn't be allowing humans on their world! And if they met them they'd be beating them to within an inch of their lives! Nothing makes sense. Other references chucked in are Georgiou talking about wiping out the Betazoids and Mintaka III in the Mirror Universe, the Ceti eels frying in a pan, Nausicaans mentioned, a Trill getting a tattoo, Georgiou saying they're not here for 'bread and circuses,' a 'TOS' episode title… That's about the level of intelligence going on, that she references a title so you can go 'ooh, ooh, I know that one!' and it's so pitiful and poorly thought out. And what did Saru do to deserve the Medal of Honour?!
It was like that from day one, though, from the moment they walked around to create a Starfleet delta symbol in the sand, to the moment Burnham began a war by somehow accidentally killing the Torchbearer, to being blamed for it all, to… oh, it's too much to go back over, I just can't believe I felt relieved when I watched the first episode and felt it was Trekky enough. Trek generally has a troubled first season, so it's not like I'm giving up on the series and will refuse to buy and watch the next season (especially as I've heard one or two positive things about the writer's room settling down and Captain Pike being commended), but my anticipation has dropped drastically over the last few months and not even Patrick Stewart gives me faith to believe Trek from here on out won't always be a painful experience, a depressing, angry and distressing experience. Like 'Star Wars,' like 'Dr. Who,' like Middle-earth, I can no longer say I love Trek without any caveats. It's been that way since 2009, but they were only two hour films and now the canon has been more substantially eaten into, its success proving that this is what the world wants now and so we'll probably get many more episodes, whether it be 'DSC,' 'Star Trek: Picard,' Georgiou's 'Section 31,' some dumbed down (or grossed up), cartoons, and whatever else they have in mind to pervert and flaunt the diseased Trek name. A bit strong? Maybe, but coming off the back of this episode that's how I feel. It was to be an experience writing reviews about new Trek on an episodic basis, but it was far from the experience I was expecting. What else to say but the biggest thumbs down!
There is one more thing to comment on: the grand appearance of the Enterprise NCC-1701. It had already been spoiled for me, but I hadn't had a good look at the ship, I just knew it was coming. Far from the white swan gliding into view it was a strange metallic grey as if even the classic, iconic images of 'TOS' must be altered now. It was meant to be a final hurrah for those that had breathlessly been pulled delightedly along by the series and were fully enjoying it. Oh wow, now there's the classic Enterprise, whoopee! For me it was like one final kick in the teeth to say this ain't your Trek, man. Because it was spoiled I didn't have to get over it, so that was good, and it may be that they do it justice next season and that I can't see it properly so maybe it did look more 'TOS' than it seemed. But once again it's that desire to keep you on the hook, come back for more because there's something else here, only for it all to fall apart like a house of cards. I have little real belief they can recreate the Enterprise when they've shown such disregard for the period and almost everything about it, but I'll try to keep an open mind. It didn't work doing that for Season 1 so maybe I'm just a sucker. I'll even re-watch Season 1 again because I need to see it in quicker succession to see if it makes any difference, but I doubt it. They highjacked the 'TOS' music for the end credits, just as they did with the Kelvin films: I wonder if they can rub off some of the same 'TOS' spirit, drama and wonder that that music conveys? Just don't ask me for an answer.
**
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)