DVD, Stargate Atlantis S3 (Misbegotten)
It was nice to see Stargate Command again in this episode with Weir still on Earth at the beginning of it, but I wonder if we'll continue to see the SGC across the season and series because surely they couldn't have kept those sets standing when the series had ended? I know they went on to make two TV films so maybe they kept them up with that in mind, but if we see the old Stargate again and Walter sitting at the computer then that's all to the good because it means 'Stargate SG-1' isn't dead. Something else that doesn't seem to be dead are the Asgard race. I thought this season was supposed to come after the end of 'SG-1,' as I mentioned in the previous review, but if so, how come Hermiod has no issues and gets a mention, as do the Asgard themselves when it was mentioned about them lending a ship or something? Does it mean the destruction of their planet hasn't happened yet or that there are other Asgard colonies around? I'd just like a little clarification!
Clarification is exactly what Weir's after this episode, too: clarification on her job security. Not from invading Wraith or Atlantis sinking again, but from the IOA as Wolsey carries out an investigation into whether she should be allowed to remain in charge. The episode as a whole held an uneasy tension in both the Weir and humanised Wraith plots. In the former we don't know if she's going to be replaced, and Wolsey even trades words with Colonel Caldwell who we know had designs on being head of Atlantis, but has settled into an easy truce. Was that just a test from Wolsey to see where Caldwell stands so he could give Weir a heads-up, or was it a genuine attempt at power play, if Caldwell will put in a bad word about Weir maybe he can be elevated to command? The way it ended, with Wolsey giving her the okay, willing to put in a good report to his organisation suggests he's on her side, but he's difficult to read, especially as I haven't seen later 'Stargate' episodes more than once, the time he's been most prominent in the franchise, so I can't remember if we trust him or not! I couldn't even get the reference to his previous time being off-world and how he almost died, so I'm far from a dyed-in-the-wool 'Gater!
The other side of the story is the more morally difficult one: on taking the Hive ship home, Sheppard and team have a quandary on their hands with the two hundred Wraith survivors who were humanised by the use of Beckett's gas, and Michael, who had the same treatment against his will. It doesn't look good for them that they couldn't trust Michael, who allied with them to save them and himself, and reward him for his allegiance, but they're extremely touchy about The Wraith finding Atlantis again and also going after Earth. They treat these Wraith as 'casualties of war,' who lose their memory and believe themselves victim to a deadly and infectious virus. Until some of them get some of their memories back, kill one of their own kind who similarly skipped a treatment to get his memory back, because they weren't ready to act yet, and then kill the team left behind, except for Beckett because he's in the main cast– I mean, he had knowledge of the backup security: a bomb that Michael disarms. I wish there had been a little more soul-searching about what they could do with these cut-off Wraith, rather like disconnected Borg drones in Trek - surely they're people too, even if they do want to kill humans, and even their own kind… and, er, eat each other… Okay, so they don't exactly make you warm to them, but that's their nature that needs to be changed, and is it right to just kill 'em all?
It was a tricky situation, but when it comes to Earth being at stake, for them it seems there's no option but a military one. It seems very harsh compared to the Trek way, but this isn't 'Star Trek,' they're contemporary people of our time who have faced many grave threats and they aren't going to be all nice and cosy with potential threats now. But I still wish there had been more than just Dr. Beckett's concerns aired over it because it does all seem a little pat. They could also have made these Wraith seem a lot less sympathetic if we'd seen them doing their dastardly things even to each other. I was most disappointed in Michael, however, because he knows he won't be accepted back by the 'true' Wraith. I'm sure he survived because he's an interesting character and they'll want to bring him in again, so maybe he'll be the leader of an off-shoot group of Wraith in future? It seemed obvious they were going to lose the Hive ship as it would make them too powerful to have control of something like that, but it was nice to see the Daedalus come rushing in to pick up the pieces and make the rescue anyway.
Not as thrilling as the season opener, but it still balanced tensions well and gave some of the other cast a bit more integration, with Teyla and Beckett both involved. Although Rodney wasn't quite as much in evidence he still spouted several lines that made me snort, and it's enjoyable to go back to these familiar characters and places. I'm not sure where they go with the story from here as they've dealt with Michael, there's no immediate Wraith threat heading for Atlantis, so perhaps they'll get back into episodic adventures, which is what the series traditionally does, following on from 'SG-1.' I'm ready to explore the characters more, and while I'd have loved it if Michael (and the actor that played him, Connor Trinneer), had stuck around longer, maybe even joined the cast, I can see why they wanted to make a clean break and leave things open at the same time. It's also nice to see more of Robert Picardo and I just wish he and Trinneer had shared scenes, even though their Trek characters were from different eras (maybe we'll get that somehow in one of the many current Trek spinoffs?).
***
Tuesday, 3 November 2020
Q&A
DVD, Short Treks (Q&A)
Watching some of these 'Short Treks' is like having a peek into some alternate universe which is both fascinating and irritating. Many people expressed a desire for a Captain Pike series after his impact in Season 2 of 'DSC,' and perhaps in part due to that response that's exactly what they'll be getting with 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' supposedly designed to fill the gap of traditional episodic Trek that has been missing from the slate of current productions which has bloomed from the origins of 'DSC.' In one sense it's exciting to know how many Trek series' are at some level of production or transmission (six at latest count: 'DSC' S3, 'Picard' S2, 'Lower Decks' S1, 'Section 31' S1, 'Prodigy' S1 and 'Strange New Worlds' S1!), with the potential for even more in the distance that we don't know about. I don't include 'Short Treks' in that list because it's more of a side-series, or sub-series as I recently dubbed it - a kind of potential 'sidequel' ground for experimentation. What we wouldn't have given for something like this back in the 90s and 2000s - imagine an episode about Chief O'Brien's first day as Professor at Starfleet Academy, post-'DS9.' Or one of Worf's encounters as Martok's Ambassador. Or how about Seven of Nine meeting her family back on Earth after 'Voyager' return home. The possibilities are truly endless.
Except that now they are endlessly frustrating, just as 'DSC' has been, a reminder of all that has been altered in Trek's DNA to squeeze it into a form that modern demographics would find palatable. Cue the way it feels like we're watching a close, but no cigar alternate universe like something out of 'Parallels.' Because I can imagine what it would have been like to see Spock on his first day aboard the USS Enterprise and how he and Number One might have interacted had they been trapped in a Turbolift shortly after he came aboard. And it's not quite this. The trouble with the modern iteration of Trek is that it's written by people that don't quite speak the patois that is the unique Trek language. It was like that from the beginning of 'DSC' when they first announced the characters and one of them was called Ash Tyler. Tyler? And this is set scant years after 'The Cage,' Trek's only touchstone into the 2250s, the decade previous to 'TOS.' So as a Trekker you automatically assume that that name has meaning because these people must know Trek, right? That's how Trek had always been written, especially in the 2000s when you had people like Mike Sussman and Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens on the writing staff. This new guy must be a relation of José Tyler from 'The Cage,' because it makes sense that they'd want to tie in an existing character since that's one of the things that makes Trek so great: it's interwoven tapestry of details and history.
Nope. There's no connection whatsoever, it's a common name, it doesn't matter, it's fine. Except as a Trekker you're left wondering why they specifically went for that name when it has Connotations. And there have been other oversights or lack of understanding in other parts of the unfolding Nu-Universe. Control, the terrible villain (in more ways than one!), of Season 2 'DSC' appeared to be deliberately set up with some connection to the Borg: it 'assimilates' organic beings with the use of nanoprobes, or what look suspiciously like them, even mottling the skin as they take over. The catchphrase was something like, 'Struggle is useless,' too close to 'Resistance is futile' to go unnoticed, and with all the time travel shenanigans (Time Suits, Time Crystals, Time Lollypops, Time Bananas, Time Unicorns… or whatever, like some bad 1950s sci-fi B-picture), many feared this could be the origins of the most fearsome race in Trek history. Fortunately in that case they were either just playing with us or once again completely misreading how Trek works and its visual vernacular. That was a relief, but it showed again that they don't know what they're playing with. And just as this episode reminds that most is inspired by the divisive, non-Prime Universe films that set the tone for Trek's dumbing down and desperate attempts at mainstreaming, with its music style, its visuals, its icky modern speak (and bad language that you don't expect from a classic character), a complete messing up of the era in which they so wanted to be set just so they could play with such characters, yet another little misunderstanding occurs with the title.
It's only a little thing and this shouldn't be taken as any serious breach in Trek etiquette, of course, but if you have a single letter 'Q' in a title it means it's a Q episode, as in the powerful being that caused so much trouble on 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager.' Sure, it's a small thing, unimportant to general viewers not versed in the ways of the Trek, but it's also yet another reminder that modern Trek exists in a weird space between being comfortable in what it is and expecting its audience to turn up (people like me would lap it up), and trying to appeal to the Marvel comics film generation that apparently want 'snappy' dialogue and contemporary mannerisms (but then those films are set in our current times, while Trek is a futuristic period piece). So anyway, in alphabetical order we had: 'Q2,' 'The Q and The Grey,' 'Q-Less,' 'QPid,' and 'Q Who?' Why should they stick to the rules of a previous regime? Why indeed, why not simply go into the future and do whatever (as it sounds like Season 3 of 'DSC' will do), 'unbound' from canon as they're so fond of being, as if canon is a burden to escape rather than an opportunity to exploit (funny when they're doing episodes like this!). The why is because that's how you keep Trek consistent, but if you don't care about consistency then you don't need to bother. But if you don't have consistency the fans that love what they see and want to dive deeper into this world, will be disappointed by the obvious cracks - I'm not talking about the episode title now, and I don't just mean the old Trekkers like me, but every new recruit that is impressed by the flashy modern stuff that is much about appearances and so much less about the mechanics on the inside.
Now it could be pointed out that this mini episode is exactly the kind of thing that refutes that argument: that they obviously do care about the past if they're willing to fill it in, and there is a certain amount of fascination in that, as I said at the top, that they are willing to go in this direction, and I think this would have come out before they announced a Pike series. It's funny: I've brought up Walter Koenig's early 2000s comments in Star Trek Magazine before, because he predicted that eventually they'd just remake 'TOS,' and yet they still haven't quite got to that point. I can see it happening with 'Strange New Worlds' where they slowly bring in each of the future main cast with a young Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, etc., and maybe that is indeed the end goal. If so, it's quite a different prospect from the complete reboot that the Kelvin films were, and yet at the same time it's more diabolical in a way, because it's a subtle alteration over many years to get to that same point. To me, the 23rd Century, at least the decade of 'TOS,' should have been left well alone unless they wanted to do the occasional visit and recreate it as it was in the 1960s, which is how Trek dealt with it before. Then, the onus was on creating content and making it great through the issue- and character-driven format that 'TNG' had amped up and 'DS9' and 'Voyager' had run with, while nostalgia for the past was a sweet treat worked in here and there, but they would never have walked over something as sacrosanct as 'TOS' for a permanent series just for the sake of winning ratings.
That's what it's all about, gaining traction in the streaming wars where existing brands are the currency with which to fight. On the face of it so much Trek being made is exciting and gives us much to look forward to, but when it's all just that little (or large), bit 'off,' and actually overwrites the past then, much like 'Star Wars,' it's actually taking away. That's the sad part - as Trekkers we want to see Trek do well, no doubt, we want more of it - absolutely - but if it's at the expense of altering the very base DNA of itself and losing its appeal to us then it would be better if there was no more and it had ended in 2005 and never resurfaced because at least then we'd still have dreams of what it might have been like if Trek came back to TV, those dreams that carried us through so many fallow years. Others are simply happy that any new Trek exists at all because there's always the chance it will better 'synch up' (Kurtzman's favourite expression), with old Trek as time goes on. But it's as simple as seeing the beloved Enterprise sets exploded into some bloated version with a ridiculous widescreen window covering one wall, a complete loss of the sense of what Trek was: a battleship or submarine travelling through the stars protecting its Federation assets, dealing with problems, exploring…
It's the details that matter, the details that make it what it is, no matter how small. No one expects every detail to match up and be correct, but the effort needs to be seen that they are trying as hard as they can instead of being smugly satisfied with beefing everything up for no good reason. Take the Turbolift in which most of this episode takes place - do they use the handles to set it in motion, the way they did on 'TOS,' which is supposed to be the SAME SHIP, don't forget? No, Number One presses a button like a modern day lift, yet the handles are there, they could have used them! So why have the detail if it's not even used? Then there's the ridiculous amount of space within the hull which houses the Turbolifts, a roller-coaster of rails and emptiness that makes a mockery of previous generations' designs. I know we never actually saw within the mechanisms in 'TOS,' but it was irrelevant and left up to our imaginations. And the few times we did see what a Turbolift shaft looked like in other Trek ('TNG's 'Disaster' or 'DS9's 'Crossfire,' for examples), they were solid shafts! These things are upsetting because rather than give us the original Enterprise, which we'd love to see with modern production values (not modern alterations - there's a huge difference!), and we'd love to see more of the ship that we never saw before and have things explained to us that never were before, instead, they lazily throw illogical design and needless busyness that runs against the simple, clean style that has characterised the universe in opposition to so much other sci-fi.
Look, I wasn't really bothered that they'd used 'Q' in the title and yet Q himself never showed up. I didn't expect him to, really (apart from with 'Picard' they haven't been quick to even bring back many guest actors, let alone major, recurring ones, perhaps partly because they don't even make Trek in the same country any more, it's mostly in Canada, so Canadian actors are more likely to be used for simple logistical reasons). It's simply that they don't seem to even realise what they're doing, once again taking so much from the most recent film series (which I hope rests in peace and isn't brought back to life), at the expense of 'true' Trek. You know, the stuff that constitutes 95% of Trek's running time, 700+ episodes and 10 films… I know it became unsuccessful and they want to make it BIG, but it's never going to be what they're competing against. It doesn't have the simplicity of 'Star Wars' and 'Dr. Who,' or the cartoonish comic book-ness of Marvel or DC, and WE DON'T WANT IT TO! If I sound dissatisfied then it's because I am. For much of the short running time I felt this was probably the best 'Short' I'd seen. There are some nice touches, mainly from Ethan Peck who I know actually studied Leonard Nimoy to ape his mannerisms and manner of speech. It made me smile when he first comes aboard and shouts out that he's reporting for doo-TEE in the same unbalanced way that Spock spoke in 'The Cage.' I'd much rather something like that gets through than the vast visual changes, but even then they're playing off 'strictly canon' ideas that are at odds with their loose approach to Trek!
If there was one thing we probably could have accepted it was for an unemotional Spock to appear pre-'Cage' because we know that Nimoy, the Writers, and Directors were all getting to know this alien and hadn't worked him out completely. Nimoy got tighter in his performance as the first season progressed, but the standard Spock of that time is unemotional if less rigid than in 'The Motion Picture.' But they chose to play up the 'mistake' because it is canon, but it's also more in tune with the modern obsession with feelings. But for what it is, I will give Peck applause for his generally very good version of Spock that is so much closer to Nimoy than Zachary Quinto's poor approximation whom the latter seemed to see as a blank slate for him to do whatever he wanted - the difference is, it was, because it's another universe, while this is supposed to be Prime. And yet, and now we come to it, Number One is so snarky and uncontrolled in both body language and voice. She was designed much more Vulcan-like than Spock was originally, so why do they take 'Cage' Spock, but reinvent Number One as so modern and 'sassy.' Wouldn't it have been so much more original for today's audiences to see a restrained and emotionless (not completely, but entirely in control of herself), woman? That annoys me because Number One, for the little we saw of her, was a really interesting character, just as Pike was, and yet both of them have had an attitude makeover that makes it hard to see the original intent shine through (plus, why does this Pike, who is supposed to be pre-'Cage' sport white hair?).
This all adds to the impression that we're seeing through a crack into an alternate universe where things are not as they were. I'd love to have seen Spock beam aboard the Enterprise and meet Number One for the first time (where did he beam from - as usual we don't get exterior views as if they hate space and showing starships!), I'd love to have seen them wandering the 'TOS' sets or getting stuck in the Turbolift having twisted the hand control to start it in motion. I'd love to see a viewscreen instead of a giant window, and the real, accepted, known proportions of the Bridge, in all its glory, because that would be real nostalgia. Or don't do it at all and stick to the far future where you can make up stuff to your heart's content. So many of modern Trek's failures would be lessened if they'd set everything in the 25th Century onwards. I still wouldn't have liked the contemporary, unrestrained speech and attitudes, I still would have baulked at the illogical plot developments and lack of alien cultural exploration, lack of fundamental detail, lack of beauty shots of ships and technology, but at least they wouldn't have been jack-booting all over the original, stomping its face in, in a way that even the Kelvin films didn't achieve. And don't get me wrong, the TV re-imaginings have been far closer to Trek than those films, but it's still a long way off from the comfort food of the 90s, the deep, textured universe I know so well.
I don't know, maybe, as happened with 'Enterprise,' they'll get closer to the spirit of Trek as time goes on, they'll slowly change things to fit, be that uniforms, ships, sets… but it's such a big, expensive job that it seems highly unlikely, if not impossible at this stage. And yet I still feel better about a series that stomps on 'TOS' so brazenly as this than I do about a Section 31 series starring a mass murderer who has no business fronting Trek at all and whom they completely failed to even come close to redeeming in 'DSC,' the only reason her addition had any hope of making sense. I would certainly watch 'Strange New Worlds,' but I wouldn't be too happy. This first episode of 'Short Treks' Season 2 that came out in 2019 is a sort of pilot, except that 'DSC' Season 2 was the real pilot, the experiment to see how viewers would respond, and they did so enthusiastically, generally more than for the existing characters of 'DSC' itself, which highlights a fundamental problem: we want to see traditional 'good' characters, not the teen angst variety, or superheroes that were forced on us with 'DSC.' We don't expect Number One to be donning a super-suit and flying through space blasting asteroids, we expect her to be running the ship efficiently, dealing with the crew, being a support to the Captain, all the things a good First Officer should be doing. I can't tell from this brief visit if that's how the series will be, and she did succeed in irritating even in that short a time when she suddenly starts singing and twirling round Spock. That just isn't the sort of thing you'd expect from a First Officer who wants the respect of a young Ensign just come aboard, it makes her look ditzy and silly.
They could have simply had an adult conversation, but the writers seem to think such things are boring! Have they not watched non-sci-fi dramas? What makes Trek so real is the counterpoint of realistic people that come up against extraordinary circumstances. If you start with wacky, unrealistic Starfleet officers then you're already veering off into fantasy territory as if sci-fi is just another comic book cartoon. If that's what the people want, then that's what they'll get, but that isn't what drew people like me to Trek - I love the formality of so much of it, and you can have fun within that. To strip away that professional sense of a real world military organisation (even if it isn't military, more of a scientific group), loses it its power and uniqueness. At least we finally get confirmation of her real name, Una (pronounced Oona), which had been kicking around for a while as a name for her in the novels, and I think was given in honour of Trek author Una McCormack, which can be seen on her Yeoman's clipboard PADD (a nice touch), and is later spoken by Spock. I don't know why she was so coy about her name, maybe she doesn't like it? One other point of interest is that we hear the Enterprise's computer voice and what a missed opportunity to use Majel Barrett's archive! I believe there was even an 'app' that put together all her vocals from the various Treks so it's not like they couldn't have had easy access, and that would have been a beautiful touch. Either that or get Rebecca Romijn herself to voice it, maybe say she was there for an overhaul of the computer and they chose her voice to represent it. That would have been fun, but I'm not sure they think that deeply about the details. Always the details.
In spite of the discomfiting aesthetics that really put me out of this 23rd Century setting, and the modern speech, it wasn't a bad little exploration, mainly thanks to Peck, and even while I dislike him bursting into laughter or smirking too much, he still captures much of the character (in fairness, Nimoy's Spock often had a slight wryness on his face, but if only they'd follow such nuance slavishly in all things instead of picking and choosing like they do, which would give us a sense that the direction of things was heading unequivocally canon-ward, and we're still missing the quizzical raising of an eyebrow that was his hallmark). I just wish this anti-Vulcan sentiment was portrayed onscreen as it used to be, with human characters often teasing or disliking such an attitude, but the Vulcans stoically ignoring all external pressures, instead of the sentiment being in the writing itself where it's like Vulcans don't really behave that unemotionally most of the time, they're cool guys just like us, yeah? No, they're different and they need to be different and they need to be accepted as different - Number One makes some point about the importance of diversity, but then she puts down his Vulcan control to a need to fit in, and it's completely the wrong attitude: in Trek there are different alien cultures, and this is what sometimes causes conflict because they aren't attuned to the ways of their shipmates and vice versa: A-L-I-E-N (see 'The Galileo Seven' on 'TOS' or 'Learning Curve' on 'Voyager' for perfect examples of both difference and integration!). I didn't appreciate that attempt at simplifying or dismissing Spock's Vulcan heritage here.
I knew there was going to be a lot to write about this one because far from being some unimportant little knockabout as most of the previous 'Short Treks' have been, this was actually a 'moment' in Trek history, a part of a key character's life changing. For all that I didn't feel much portentousness in his appearance on Enterprise. There was much to discuss and now it's done. It was an episode I knew less about than the first season and so I have more interest in seeing these. I don't expect to like any of them as such, since I like roughly two episodes out of these first thirty-four episodes in the third generation of Trek's existence, but I'm at least intrigued. Like 'The Escape Artist' I would say this is the most watchable, and 'best' if that's a word that can be used for things you don't much respect. At least they're only fifteen minutes rather than fifty, so there's less heartache than there would be. Maybe I'm a sucker for buying into all this modern stuff, which even though they claim is 'canon,' is 'Prime,' and 'synchs up,' clearly doesn't quite fit, even in the closest attempts. How I long for the halcyon says of 'Enterprise' Season 4 where little 'mistakes' from 'TOS,' such as the authority sending out Kirk's ship said to be 'UESPA' when they hadn't come up with Starfleet, or forgot they had, were retconned into cleverly being another organisation. Any creases in canon were being ironed out rather than ignored or misapplied. As ever, it's something to write about, so there's that plus point at least. But I would like to see some new Trek that I actively like, if not love. Impossible? I still await 'Picard'… Oh, and please, you don't need to do zany little animations on the title, just show it and be done, what is so wrong with taking Trek seriously?
**
Watching some of these 'Short Treks' is like having a peek into some alternate universe which is both fascinating and irritating. Many people expressed a desire for a Captain Pike series after his impact in Season 2 of 'DSC,' and perhaps in part due to that response that's exactly what they'll be getting with 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' supposedly designed to fill the gap of traditional episodic Trek that has been missing from the slate of current productions which has bloomed from the origins of 'DSC.' In one sense it's exciting to know how many Trek series' are at some level of production or transmission (six at latest count: 'DSC' S3, 'Picard' S2, 'Lower Decks' S1, 'Section 31' S1, 'Prodigy' S1 and 'Strange New Worlds' S1!), with the potential for even more in the distance that we don't know about. I don't include 'Short Treks' in that list because it's more of a side-series, or sub-series as I recently dubbed it - a kind of potential 'sidequel' ground for experimentation. What we wouldn't have given for something like this back in the 90s and 2000s - imagine an episode about Chief O'Brien's first day as Professor at Starfleet Academy, post-'DS9.' Or one of Worf's encounters as Martok's Ambassador. Or how about Seven of Nine meeting her family back on Earth after 'Voyager' return home. The possibilities are truly endless.
Except that now they are endlessly frustrating, just as 'DSC' has been, a reminder of all that has been altered in Trek's DNA to squeeze it into a form that modern demographics would find palatable. Cue the way it feels like we're watching a close, but no cigar alternate universe like something out of 'Parallels.' Because I can imagine what it would have been like to see Spock on his first day aboard the USS Enterprise and how he and Number One might have interacted had they been trapped in a Turbolift shortly after he came aboard. And it's not quite this. The trouble with the modern iteration of Trek is that it's written by people that don't quite speak the patois that is the unique Trek language. It was like that from the beginning of 'DSC' when they first announced the characters and one of them was called Ash Tyler. Tyler? And this is set scant years after 'The Cage,' Trek's only touchstone into the 2250s, the decade previous to 'TOS.' So as a Trekker you automatically assume that that name has meaning because these people must know Trek, right? That's how Trek had always been written, especially in the 2000s when you had people like Mike Sussman and Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens on the writing staff. This new guy must be a relation of José Tyler from 'The Cage,' because it makes sense that they'd want to tie in an existing character since that's one of the things that makes Trek so great: it's interwoven tapestry of details and history.
Nope. There's no connection whatsoever, it's a common name, it doesn't matter, it's fine. Except as a Trekker you're left wondering why they specifically went for that name when it has Connotations. And there have been other oversights or lack of understanding in other parts of the unfolding Nu-Universe. Control, the terrible villain (in more ways than one!), of Season 2 'DSC' appeared to be deliberately set up with some connection to the Borg: it 'assimilates' organic beings with the use of nanoprobes, or what look suspiciously like them, even mottling the skin as they take over. The catchphrase was something like, 'Struggle is useless,' too close to 'Resistance is futile' to go unnoticed, and with all the time travel shenanigans (Time Suits, Time Crystals, Time Lollypops, Time Bananas, Time Unicorns… or whatever, like some bad 1950s sci-fi B-picture), many feared this could be the origins of the most fearsome race in Trek history. Fortunately in that case they were either just playing with us or once again completely misreading how Trek works and its visual vernacular. That was a relief, but it showed again that they don't know what they're playing with. And just as this episode reminds that most is inspired by the divisive, non-Prime Universe films that set the tone for Trek's dumbing down and desperate attempts at mainstreaming, with its music style, its visuals, its icky modern speak (and bad language that you don't expect from a classic character), a complete messing up of the era in which they so wanted to be set just so they could play with such characters, yet another little misunderstanding occurs with the title.
It's only a little thing and this shouldn't be taken as any serious breach in Trek etiquette, of course, but if you have a single letter 'Q' in a title it means it's a Q episode, as in the powerful being that caused so much trouble on 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager.' Sure, it's a small thing, unimportant to general viewers not versed in the ways of the Trek, but it's also yet another reminder that modern Trek exists in a weird space between being comfortable in what it is and expecting its audience to turn up (people like me would lap it up), and trying to appeal to the Marvel comics film generation that apparently want 'snappy' dialogue and contemporary mannerisms (but then those films are set in our current times, while Trek is a futuristic period piece). So anyway, in alphabetical order we had: 'Q2,' 'The Q and The Grey,' 'Q-Less,' 'QPid,' and 'Q Who?' Why should they stick to the rules of a previous regime? Why indeed, why not simply go into the future and do whatever (as it sounds like Season 3 of 'DSC' will do), 'unbound' from canon as they're so fond of being, as if canon is a burden to escape rather than an opportunity to exploit (funny when they're doing episodes like this!). The why is because that's how you keep Trek consistent, but if you don't care about consistency then you don't need to bother. But if you don't have consistency the fans that love what they see and want to dive deeper into this world, will be disappointed by the obvious cracks - I'm not talking about the episode title now, and I don't just mean the old Trekkers like me, but every new recruit that is impressed by the flashy modern stuff that is much about appearances and so much less about the mechanics on the inside.
Now it could be pointed out that this mini episode is exactly the kind of thing that refutes that argument: that they obviously do care about the past if they're willing to fill it in, and there is a certain amount of fascination in that, as I said at the top, that they are willing to go in this direction, and I think this would have come out before they announced a Pike series. It's funny: I've brought up Walter Koenig's early 2000s comments in Star Trek Magazine before, because he predicted that eventually they'd just remake 'TOS,' and yet they still haven't quite got to that point. I can see it happening with 'Strange New Worlds' where they slowly bring in each of the future main cast with a young Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, etc., and maybe that is indeed the end goal. If so, it's quite a different prospect from the complete reboot that the Kelvin films were, and yet at the same time it's more diabolical in a way, because it's a subtle alteration over many years to get to that same point. To me, the 23rd Century, at least the decade of 'TOS,' should have been left well alone unless they wanted to do the occasional visit and recreate it as it was in the 1960s, which is how Trek dealt with it before. Then, the onus was on creating content and making it great through the issue- and character-driven format that 'TNG' had amped up and 'DS9' and 'Voyager' had run with, while nostalgia for the past was a sweet treat worked in here and there, but they would never have walked over something as sacrosanct as 'TOS' for a permanent series just for the sake of winning ratings.
That's what it's all about, gaining traction in the streaming wars where existing brands are the currency with which to fight. On the face of it so much Trek being made is exciting and gives us much to look forward to, but when it's all just that little (or large), bit 'off,' and actually overwrites the past then, much like 'Star Wars,' it's actually taking away. That's the sad part - as Trekkers we want to see Trek do well, no doubt, we want more of it - absolutely - but if it's at the expense of altering the very base DNA of itself and losing its appeal to us then it would be better if there was no more and it had ended in 2005 and never resurfaced because at least then we'd still have dreams of what it might have been like if Trek came back to TV, those dreams that carried us through so many fallow years. Others are simply happy that any new Trek exists at all because there's always the chance it will better 'synch up' (Kurtzman's favourite expression), with old Trek as time goes on. But it's as simple as seeing the beloved Enterprise sets exploded into some bloated version with a ridiculous widescreen window covering one wall, a complete loss of the sense of what Trek was: a battleship or submarine travelling through the stars protecting its Federation assets, dealing with problems, exploring…
It's the details that matter, the details that make it what it is, no matter how small. No one expects every detail to match up and be correct, but the effort needs to be seen that they are trying as hard as they can instead of being smugly satisfied with beefing everything up for no good reason. Take the Turbolift in which most of this episode takes place - do they use the handles to set it in motion, the way they did on 'TOS,' which is supposed to be the SAME SHIP, don't forget? No, Number One presses a button like a modern day lift, yet the handles are there, they could have used them! So why have the detail if it's not even used? Then there's the ridiculous amount of space within the hull which houses the Turbolifts, a roller-coaster of rails and emptiness that makes a mockery of previous generations' designs. I know we never actually saw within the mechanisms in 'TOS,' but it was irrelevant and left up to our imaginations. And the few times we did see what a Turbolift shaft looked like in other Trek ('TNG's 'Disaster' or 'DS9's 'Crossfire,' for examples), they were solid shafts! These things are upsetting because rather than give us the original Enterprise, which we'd love to see with modern production values (not modern alterations - there's a huge difference!), and we'd love to see more of the ship that we never saw before and have things explained to us that never were before, instead, they lazily throw illogical design and needless busyness that runs against the simple, clean style that has characterised the universe in opposition to so much other sci-fi.
Look, I wasn't really bothered that they'd used 'Q' in the title and yet Q himself never showed up. I didn't expect him to, really (apart from with 'Picard' they haven't been quick to even bring back many guest actors, let alone major, recurring ones, perhaps partly because they don't even make Trek in the same country any more, it's mostly in Canada, so Canadian actors are more likely to be used for simple logistical reasons). It's simply that they don't seem to even realise what they're doing, once again taking so much from the most recent film series (which I hope rests in peace and isn't brought back to life), at the expense of 'true' Trek. You know, the stuff that constitutes 95% of Trek's running time, 700+ episodes and 10 films… I know it became unsuccessful and they want to make it BIG, but it's never going to be what they're competing against. It doesn't have the simplicity of 'Star Wars' and 'Dr. Who,' or the cartoonish comic book-ness of Marvel or DC, and WE DON'T WANT IT TO! If I sound dissatisfied then it's because I am. For much of the short running time I felt this was probably the best 'Short' I'd seen. There are some nice touches, mainly from Ethan Peck who I know actually studied Leonard Nimoy to ape his mannerisms and manner of speech. It made me smile when he first comes aboard and shouts out that he's reporting for doo-TEE in the same unbalanced way that Spock spoke in 'The Cage.' I'd much rather something like that gets through than the vast visual changes, but even then they're playing off 'strictly canon' ideas that are at odds with their loose approach to Trek!
If there was one thing we probably could have accepted it was for an unemotional Spock to appear pre-'Cage' because we know that Nimoy, the Writers, and Directors were all getting to know this alien and hadn't worked him out completely. Nimoy got tighter in his performance as the first season progressed, but the standard Spock of that time is unemotional if less rigid than in 'The Motion Picture.' But they chose to play up the 'mistake' because it is canon, but it's also more in tune with the modern obsession with feelings. But for what it is, I will give Peck applause for his generally very good version of Spock that is so much closer to Nimoy than Zachary Quinto's poor approximation whom the latter seemed to see as a blank slate for him to do whatever he wanted - the difference is, it was, because it's another universe, while this is supposed to be Prime. And yet, and now we come to it, Number One is so snarky and uncontrolled in both body language and voice. She was designed much more Vulcan-like than Spock was originally, so why do they take 'Cage' Spock, but reinvent Number One as so modern and 'sassy.' Wouldn't it have been so much more original for today's audiences to see a restrained and emotionless (not completely, but entirely in control of herself), woman? That annoys me because Number One, for the little we saw of her, was a really interesting character, just as Pike was, and yet both of them have had an attitude makeover that makes it hard to see the original intent shine through (plus, why does this Pike, who is supposed to be pre-'Cage' sport white hair?).
This all adds to the impression that we're seeing through a crack into an alternate universe where things are not as they were. I'd love to have seen Spock beam aboard the Enterprise and meet Number One for the first time (where did he beam from - as usual we don't get exterior views as if they hate space and showing starships!), I'd love to have seen them wandering the 'TOS' sets or getting stuck in the Turbolift having twisted the hand control to start it in motion. I'd love to see a viewscreen instead of a giant window, and the real, accepted, known proportions of the Bridge, in all its glory, because that would be real nostalgia. Or don't do it at all and stick to the far future where you can make up stuff to your heart's content. So many of modern Trek's failures would be lessened if they'd set everything in the 25th Century onwards. I still wouldn't have liked the contemporary, unrestrained speech and attitudes, I still would have baulked at the illogical plot developments and lack of alien cultural exploration, lack of fundamental detail, lack of beauty shots of ships and technology, but at least they wouldn't have been jack-booting all over the original, stomping its face in, in a way that even the Kelvin films didn't achieve. And don't get me wrong, the TV re-imaginings have been far closer to Trek than those films, but it's still a long way off from the comfort food of the 90s, the deep, textured universe I know so well.
I don't know, maybe, as happened with 'Enterprise,' they'll get closer to the spirit of Trek as time goes on, they'll slowly change things to fit, be that uniforms, ships, sets… but it's such a big, expensive job that it seems highly unlikely, if not impossible at this stage. And yet I still feel better about a series that stomps on 'TOS' so brazenly as this than I do about a Section 31 series starring a mass murderer who has no business fronting Trek at all and whom they completely failed to even come close to redeeming in 'DSC,' the only reason her addition had any hope of making sense. I would certainly watch 'Strange New Worlds,' but I wouldn't be too happy. This first episode of 'Short Treks' Season 2 that came out in 2019 is a sort of pilot, except that 'DSC' Season 2 was the real pilot, the experiment to see how viewers would respond, and they did so enthusiastically, generally more than for the existing characters of 'DSC' itself, which highlights a fundamental problem: we want to see traditional 'good' characters, not the teen angst variety, or superheroes that were forced on us with 'DSC.' We don't expect Number One to be donning a super-suit and flying through space blasting asteroids, we expect her to be running the ship efficiently, dealing with the crew, being a support to the Captain, all the things a good First Officer should be doing. I can't tell from this brief visit if that's how the series will be, and she did succeed in irritating even in that short a time when she suddenly starts singing and twirling round Spock. That just isn't the sort of thing you'd expect from a First Officer who wants the respect of a young Ensign just come aboard, it makes her look ditzy and silly.
They could have simply had an adult conversation, but the writers seem to think such things are boring! Have they not watched non-sci-fi dramas? What makes Trek so real is the counterpoint of realistic people that come up against extraordinary circumstances. If you start with wacky, unrealistic Starfleet officers then you're already veering off into fantasy territory as if sci-fi is just another comic book cartoon. If that's what the people want, then that's what they'll get, but that isn't what drew people like me to Trek - I love the formality of so much of it, and you can have fun within that. To strip away that professional sense of a real world military organisation (even if it isn't military, more of a scientific group), loses it its power and uniqueness. At least we finally get confirmation of her real name, Una (pronounced Oona), which had been kicking around for a while as a name for her in the novels, and I think was given in honour of Trek author Una McCormack, which can be seen on her Yeoman's clipboard PADD (a nice touch), and is later spoken by Spock. I don't know why she was so coy about her name, maybe she doesn't like it? One other point of interest is that we hear the Enterprise's computer voice and what a missed opportunity to use Majel Barrett's archive! I believe there was even an 'app' that put together all her vocals from the various Treks so it's not like they couldn't have had easy access, and that would have been a beautiful touch. Either that or get Rebecca Romijn herself to voice it, maybe say she was there for an overhaul of the computer and they chose her voice to represent it. That would have been fun, but I'm not sure they think that deeply about the details. Always the details.
In spite of the discomfiting aesthetics that really put me out of this 23rd Century setting, and the modern speech, it wasn't a bad little exploration, mainly thanks to Peck, and even while I dislike him bursting into laughter or smirking too much, he still captures much of the character (in fairness, Nimoy's Spock often had a slight wryness on his face, but if only they'd follow such nuance slavishly in all things instead of picking and choosing like they do, which would give us a sense that the direction of things was heading unequivocally canon-ward, and we're still missing the quizzical raising of an eyebrow that was his hallmark). I just wish this anti-Vulcan sentiment was portrayed onscreen as it used to be, with human characters often teasing or disliking such an attitude, but the Vulcans stoically ignoring all external pressures, instead of the sentiment being in the writing itself where it's like Vulcans don't really behave that unemotionally most of the time, they're cool guys just like us, yeah? No, they're different and they need to be different and they need to be accepted as different - Number One makes some point about the importance of diversity, but then she puts down his Vulcan control to a need to fit in, and it's completely the wrong attitude: in Trek there are different alien cultures, and this is what sometimes causes conflict because they aren't attuned to the ways of their shipmates and vice versa: A-L-I-E-N (see 'The Galileo Seven' on 'TOS' or 'Learning Curve' on 'Voyager' for perfect examples of both difference and integration!). I didn't appreciate that attempt at simplifying or dismissing Spock's Vulcan heritage here.
I knew there was going to be a lot to write about this one because far from being some unimportant little knockabout as most of the previous 'Short Treks' have been, this was actually a 'moment' in Trek history, a part of a key character's life changing. For all that I didn't feel much portentousness in his appearance on Enterprise. There was much to discuss and now it's done. It was an episode I knew less about than the first season and so I have more interest in seeing these. I don't expect to like any of them as such, since I like roughly two episodes out of these first thirty-four episodes in the third generation of Trek's existence, but I'm at least intrigued. Like 'The Escape Artist' I would say this is the most watchable, and 'best' if that's a word that can be used for things you don't much respect. At least they're only fifteen minutes rather than fifty, so there's less heartache than there would be. Maybe I'm a sucker for buying into all this modern stuff, which even though they claim is 'canon,' is 'Prime,' and 'synchs up,' clearly doesn't quite fit, even in the closest attempts. How I long for the halcyon says of 'Enterprise' Season 4 where little 'mistakes' from 'TOS,' such as the authority sending out Kirk's ship said to be 'UESPA' when they hadn't come up with Starfleet, or forgot they had, were retconned into cleverly being another organisation. Any creases in canon were being ironed out rather than ignored or misapplied. As ever, it's something to write about, so there's that plus point at least. But I would like to see some new Trek that I actively like, if not love. Impossible? I still await 'Picard'… Oh, and please, you don't need to do zany little animations on the title, just show it and be done, what is so wrong with taking Trek seriously?
**
Two Days and Two Nights (2)
DVD, Enterprise S1 (Two Days and Two Nights) (2)
Risa doesn't exactly have a storied history in the Trek world, nor does it really fit with Starfleet's ethos of hard work, discipline, self-control and self-denial. It's really the opposite of all that! But just as the Vulcans, that most stoic and restrained of races, need to mate every seven years, Starfleet crews need to let their hair down occasionally, and I'm sure they'd argue that 'embracing' all cultures is what the organisation is all about… Perhaps because Risa is opposite in the extreme to the locations we witness most often in Trek it never really feels more than an excuse for the more questionable freedoms Gene Roddenberry envisaged for his vision of the future, that were at odds with the 'perfection of humanity' theme he wanted to portray. It only (so far), appeared in three episodes, across three series' (with 'Shore Leave' of 'TOS' as a similar 'pleasure planet' story and the Paxau Resort holoprogram as the entry for 'Voyager'), and I'd have to mark this as the best. 'Captain's Holiday' was an attempt to iron out the last remaining impression of stuffiness from Jean-Luc Picard, in answer to Patrick Stewart's wish for more action and to win the girl in the stereotypical swashbuckling heroics of old. He went there hoping to read quietly, just as Archer does here, and both found more than they bargained for, even if the derring-do of the NX-01's Captain remained entirely in his hotel room. The return to Risa in 'DS9' ('Let He Who Is Without Sin…'), tried to be something more, as was typical of that series, but turned into another attempt at removing stuffiness, this time from the honourable Worf who saw Risa for what it was, but eventually came around to it from Dax' outgoing, cosmopolitan nature winning him over.
What is it about 'Two Days and Two Nights' that makes this the definitive Risa story? It helps that there are multiple plots going on, this being one of the rare Trek episodes to feature an A, B, C and D storyline, which can be refreshing, though inevitably most of them are slighter than we'd usually expect. Unquestionably the A-story is that of the Captain who just wants a quiet time with his dog - the Starfleet attitudes of restraint and self-sacrifice come through strongly in him as he doesn't even feel it's fair for him to go when half the crew will have to remain aboard, despite 'winning' the holiday by drawing lots. T'Pol is very strict on his attendance as she knows it's important for the Captain to take a break, as any good First Officer would, so it makes both of them look very good. It's telling how much Riker's impishness has infected me when I assumed the gift she'd sent down for him was going to be one of those infamous Horga'hns visitors are supposed to display if they want special attention (in fact we never see one, other than Archer's door control being in the shape of the souvenir). But T'Pol doesn't have the mischievous nature of the Enterprise-D's First Officer and instead has given her Captain a copy of 'The Teachings of Surak,' a lovely looking hardbound book, presumably an English translation since the title is in that language. Once again it's so nice to see real books in Trek rather than Kindle iPADDs!
While, like Scotty in 'TOS,' Archer's desire is to catch up on some reading, which seems a little strange for one usually such an action man (though perhaps a year in command of a starship has left him tired of physical pursuits), the others generally want to take advantage of every aspect of Risan life. Trip and Malcolm make their intentions very clear and are suitably punished by humiliation for their hedonistic tendencies; Travis indulges in his love of rock climbing (a trait we'd revisit, one of the few things we really knew about the character); and Hoshi tries out her linguistic skills. The thing that works about this episode is that, much like 'Voyager,' or some of the other modern series' (I know we can't really call them that now, but they're more modern than 'TOS'), it was a pleasure simply to spend time with the characters and see them in another setting. We've come to like them across the course of the season, so it's enjoyable to see a more comfortably entertaining episode, especially one slotted in between two stories of serious action and danger. And if Risa isn't exactly one of the greatest creations, it's still good to have connections to the wider Trek universe - the Risans wear those same circular emblems on their foreheads and the verdant landscape with its beautiful azure oceans are a relaxing change from all the technological constructions and blackness of space.
One of the best stories of the episode is Mayweather's, and we don't really see any of it! Truthfully, it's not Travis' exploits that make it work, though I like that they gave him something, but Phlox. We see something new about Denobulans: they must hibernate for a few days every year and this little holiday happens to synch up with the Doctor's needs. Only for T'Pol to be forced to wake him when Travis reacts badly to a Risan painkiller. Several things I like about this: the logic is thought out as to why Travis had to come back to the ship, when really it was just so they could wake Phlox and show his madcap state - he wanted his own Doctor, which is a fair excuse. Then there's the woken Phlox who is hilarious as a confused, bumbling and irritable man ripped from necessary slumber, and whom T'Pol eventually believes was a mistake to awaken ("Set a course for Regulus: maximum warp!"). I don't recall them ever exploring this hibernation on the series again, but it was such a great, comic idea, and is funny without making the characters look foolish or incompetent (not going to mention any other series'). Another good idea was to bring back Ensign Cutler as the medical stand-in. I suppose she's been having some training from the doc and, like Tom Paris, is competent enough to deal with minor issues. It does raise the question of why there's no one else on Phlox' staff, as you'd think even a single nurse would be appropriate given the constant danger the ship enters into! The USS Voyager had the excuse that a number of their crew were killed in the pilot, but Starfleet looks a little slapdash here not to include more than one in the medical department.
I would also say that Cutler is underused here, in contrast to her previous roles, and the part could have been any guest character for what it was. At the same time I appreciate what they were doing, attempting to set up recurring characters as the other Treks had, and giving us a sense of continuity with the crew. Rostov is another returning face after his stint as a crewman caught in the web of goo ('Vox Sola'), and interestingly actor Joseph Wills costarred in 'Voyager' episode 'Muse' with Kellie Waymire, so that's a Trek reunion. It's so sad that their plans for Cutler never came to fruition from the actress' early death (plus a regular role on another TV series), as it would have improved the series to see familiar faces and would have given them a chance to build up the background a bit. At the same time, we have to admit that even some of the main cast of the series were poorly developed, so maybe recurring characters wouldn't have fared well either? We'll never know, but characters like Cutler, had they continued, might have led to a more ensemble sense and inspired writing to encourage that, improving all the characters and making the series more whole. There was some attempt to add characters when the MACOs came in for Season 3, but even they were left mostly as stunt men and women rather than fully formed people, an oversight of the series.
We see a bit of local colour thanks to Trip and Reed's foray into a lively bar, and in Hoshi's engagement with the natives (the older couple she speaks to at a restaurant looked vaguely reminiscent of series writers Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens, though they obviously weren't!). I always love it when they speak alien languages and show subtitles, it adds to the realism. We even get a little Denobulan when Phlox is rudely awakened, though no translation. There's only one Doctor and there's only one translator! I also liked that the lads were continuing their friendship from 'Shuttlepod One,' Reed so much more relaxed than he used to be. I feel like they should have used the opportunity of the bar to show some other recognisable alien species', say a Lurian sitting on a barstool, or something along those lines. That would have been a great cameo for Mark Allen Shepherd, the Morn costume being designed for him (and he'd already had appearances in both 'TNG' and 'Voyager,' so it should have been full house!). 'Captain's Holiday' marked one of the very rare occasions in which Andorians were seen in the 24th Century, and while it wouldn't have worked to show the blue-skins, maybe they could have gone with other exotic species'. But to put it into context, this was the end of a long first season so they probably didn't have the time or budget to play, especially if it was only going to be background atmosphere. The two muggers that mug the mugs looked familiar when we see them in their true, bat-like form (some kind of personal holo-projector as used by Georgiou in 'DSC' to impersonate other races, or a natural ability?), a little Reman, but it may be that the faces were reused in other episodes.
One possible reference is that Keyla, Archer's neighbour, was a Trill, since she has spots that ripple down her sides, though they are much fainter than other examples we've seen. It's academic, however, as she turns out to be a Tandaran operative, the people that kept Archer and Mayweather captive in a detention camp for Suliban in 'Detained.' I'd forgotten what her story was and just enjoyed seeing the lovely Dey Young again, yet another returning Trek face, and one who'd been in both 'TNG' and 'DS9.' It doesn't quite hold true that if they ever wanted to cast Mysterious Woman With Secret Background they went to her, but both Arissa, the character she played in 'A Simple Investigation,' and Keyla, here, weren't what they appeared and were in fact secret operatives. Hannah Bates in 'The Masterpiece Society' was just a scientist, but it could be said that after that episode she became someone with a 'secret,' or at least different, background when she requested asylum and left the planet she came from, so there is some connection between all three characters which is fun to note. Keyla seems to be just another tourist and Archer is happy to be hospitable to her without behaving like his Chief Engineer and Armoury Officer and throwing himself at her. Good job he remained gentlemanly, as just like the 'women' they entertained, Keyla isn't an innocent. Her little dog may be full of cute, furry rage, and maybe that's what Porthos didn't like, but it could also have been that Archer's dog sensed she was up to no good?
The switch from coy guest to interrogator with a creepy amount of knowledge on the Suliban was scary, and as if to prove he was superior to Trip and Reed once again (as if he needed to), Archer makes good on Reed's wish that he'd brought his scanner and aimed it at her, uncovering her true genetics as Tandaran. There was some good, if overly subtle continuity across this season. I do think they could have done with more overt Suliban and Temporal Cold War stories, but they mixed in a few plots that connected and we get another connection here to 'Detained' (as well as 'Acquisition' when Reed mentions the time Trip saved the ship in his underwear!), which was also an important factor in previous episode, 'Desert Crossing.' I suppose it was all an important reminder of the danger the Suliban posed, because, much like the Klingons, they'd pretty much been left behind as the Enterprise explored new worlds for much of the time. They'd be integral to the season finale so it was necessary to give the audience a reminder, only if they'd been a larger part of the season we wouldn't have needed to be reminded, so they definitely went a little too far towards the episodic than was suitable for the series' and season's main arc - perhaps they could have dropped a couple of the less successful stories, like 'Vox Sola,' 'Rogue Planet' and 'Fusion,' in exchange for a few more essential episodes? Not that they knew which would work well and which wouldn't, this is all with hindsight, of course.
Keyla's questions on where the Suliban came from and where they live, were pertinent, but more important is the issue of what their goal is. I'm not sure that was ever answered satisfactorily since the TCW was never entirely explained, another failing of the series. We know that the Suliban were really just willing tools selected by Future Guy, part of a faction of a war in the future which we may never learn about (and if we do, it's almost sure to be stupid, judging by the sorry comic book fantasy standards of modern Trek!), but the true motivations and purposes always remained cloudy. And that's really the same thing to be said for this episode. It's no great moral story, not a thrilling adventure, and it doesn't have a real resolution, it's just a chance for us to spend time with the characters. Keyla escapes after drugging Archer and we never find out the extent of Tandaran plans against the Suliban. Not that the Tandarans were a very interesting race, they were more like a substandard version of the fascistic Cardassians, and unlike that classic race didn't even look visually interesting, but it was quite something that they suddenly show up in the form of this operative who's there as a honey trap to bleed all the Suliban juice out of Archer, as it gives the galaxy an impression of interconnectedness instead of the Tandarans merely being another race of the week who we moved on from. They needed to play up things like that, but the series never really got going on semi-serialisation in the way that 'DS9' and parts of 'Voyager' did so well.
If there is no real resolution, I suppose there is at least a kind of ironic one where everyone's tightlipped about exactly what happened on their hols, discussing events only in generalities as they take the Shuttlepod back, and all for different reasons. The greatest irony is that only Hoshi, the one most intent on visiting the planet for cultural reasons and as a sort of working holiday to flex her linguistic muscles, had the most enjoyable time - Ravis, the guy who hooks up with her, didn't turn out to be a scoundrel or a crook. His facial design looked rather like a Napean (from 'Eye of The Beholder'), a race I'm always keen to see reappear, with that diamond-shaped extrusion on the forehead, though Ravis' was much shallower and his home planet was almost impossible to say so he couldn't have been one (unless that's what they call themselves in their own language). The cultural details were fascinating, such as the speed of their speech changing its meaning. It's also quite something that Risa lies as far out as humans have ever been before, although I did wonder about that, because we know the cargo ships have been striking out into space for decades, so Archer could have meant generally speaking.
One other reality of the production was its Director being the man who went to the planet on its last appearance in Trek, Michael Dorn. The Worf actor had directed Trek before with three episodes of 'DS9' (somewhat surprising he never did it on his home series, 'TNG'), and they were all great episodes. This happens to be another good one for 'Enterprise' which means every episode he directed worked. That can be put down to getting good scripts, but it seems to me that, like many Trek actors, Dorn's style worked well for the franchise and I wonder why he never did another one. Though he wasn't a flashy Director, he seemed to allow the story to breathe and even threw in the occasional shot that was different, such as Archer's blurry point of view after he's been scratched by Keyla's poisoned nail and sinks to the floor. The depiction of Risa itself looked somewhat artificial, perhaps the matte was CGI rather than a more realistic photo-real painting, but then that fits with Risa's artificial character, and the colours still looked gorgeous and inviting. Certainly the best Risa episode to date. Although deleted scenes can't be considered canon, the one on the DVD for this episode does at least fill in a plot detail that they paid for the trip with dilithium which the Risans were happy to accept.
***
Risa doesn't exactly have a storied history in the Trek world, nor does it really fit with Starfleet's ethos of hard work, discipline, self-control and self-denial. It's really the opposite of all that! But just as the Vulcans, that most stoic and restrained of races, need to mate every seven years, Starfleet crews need to let their hair down occasionally, and I'm sure they'd argue that 'embracing' all cultures is what the organisation is all about… Perhaps because Risa is opposite in the extreme to the locations we witness most often in Trek it never really feels more than an excuse for the more questionable freedoms Gene Roddenberry envisaged for his vision of the future, that were at odds with the 'perfection of humanity' theme he wanted to portray. It only (so far), appeared in three episodes, across three series' (with 'Shore Leave' of 'TOS' as a similar 'pleasure planet' story and the Paxau Resort holoprogram as the entry for 'Voyager'), and I'd have to mark this as the best. 'Captain's Holiday' was an attempt to iron out the last remaining impression of stuffiness from Jean-Luc Picard, in answer to Patrick Stewart's wish for more action and to win the girl in the stereotypical swashbuckling heroics of old. He went there hoping to read quietly, just as Archer does here, and both found more than they bargained for, even if the derring-do of the NX-01's Captain remained entirely in his hotel room. The return to Risa in 'DS9' ('Let He Who Is Without Sin…'), tried to be something more, as was typical of that series, but turned into another attempt at removing stuffiness, this time from the honourable Worf who saw Risa for what it was, but eventually came around to it from Dax' outgoing, cosmopolitan nature winning him over.
What is it about 'Two Days and Two Nights' that makes this the definitive Risa story? It helps that there are multiple plots going on, this being one of the rare Trek episodes to feature an A, B, C and D storyline, which can be refreshing, though inevitably most of them are slighter than we'd usually expect. Unquestionably the A-story is that of the Captain who just wants a quiet time with his dog - the Starfleet attitudes of restraint and self-sacrifice come through strongly in him as he doesn't even feel it's fair for him to go when half the crew will have to remain aboard, despite 'winning' the holiday by drawing lots. T'Pol is very strict on his attendance as she knows it's important for the Captain to take a break, as any good First Officer would, so it makes both of them look very good. It's telling how much Riker's impishness has infected me when I assumed the gift she'd sent down for him was going to be one of those infamous Horga'hns visitors are supposed to display if they want special attention (in fact we never see one, other than Archer's door control being in the shape of the souvenir). But T'Pol doesn't have the mischievous nature of the Enterprise-D's First Officer and instead has given her Captain a copy of 'The Teachings of Surak,' a lovely looking hardbound book, presumably an English translation since the title is in that language. Once again it's so nice to see real books in Trek rather than Kindle iPADDs!
While, like Scotty in 'TOS,' Archer's desire is to catch up on some reading, which seems a little strange for one usually such an action man (though perhaps a year in command of a starship has left him tired of physical pursuits), the others generally want to take advantage of every aspect of Risan life. Trip and Malcolm make their intentions very clear and are suitably punished by humiliation for their hedonistic tendencies; Travis indulges in his love of rock climbing (a trait we'd revisit, one of the few things we really knew about the character); and Hoshi tries out her linguistic skills. The thing that works about this episode is that, much like 'Voyager,' or some of the other modern series' (I know we can't really call them that now, but they're more modern than 'TOS'), it was a pleasure simply to spend time with the characters and see them in another setting. We've come to like them across the course of the season, so it's enjoyable to see a more comfortably entertaining episode, especially one slotted in between two stories of serious action and danger. And if Risa isn't exactly one of the greatest creations, it's still good to have connections to the wider Trek universe - the Risans wear those same circular emblems on their foreheads and the verdant landscape with its beautiful azure oceans are a relaxing change from all the technological constructions and blackness of space.
One of the best stories of the episode is Mayweather's, and we don't really see any of it! Truthfully, it's not Travis' exploits that make it work, though I like that they gave him something, but Phlox. We see something new about Denobulans: they must hibernate for a few days every year and this little holiday happens to synch up with the Doctor's needs. Only for T'Pol to be forced to wake him when Travis reacts badly to a Risan painkiller. Several things I like about this: the logic is thought out as to why Travis had to come back to the ship, when really it was just so they could wake Phlox and show his madcap state - he wanted his own Doctor, which is a fair excuse. Then there's the woken Phlox who is hilarious as a confused, bumbling and irritable man ripped from necessary slumber, and whom T'Pol eventually believes was a mistake to awaken ("Set a course for Regulus: maximum warp!"). I don't recall them ever exploring this hibernation on the series again, but it was such a great, comic idea, and is funny without making the characters look foolish or incompetent (not going to mention any other series'). Another good idea was to bring back Ensign Cutler as the medical stand-in. I suppose she's been having some training from the doc and, like Tom Paris, is competent enough to deal with minor issues. It does raise the question of why there's no one else on Phlox' staff, as you'd think even a single nurse would be appropriate given the constant danger the ship enters into! The USS Voyager had the excuse that a number of their crew were killed in the pilot, but Starfleet looks a little slapdash here not to include more than one in the medical department.
I would also say that Cutler is underused here, in contrast to her previous roles, and the part could have been any guest character for what it was. At the same time I appreciate what they were doing, attempting to set up recurring characters as the other Treks had, and giving us a sense of continuity with the crew. Rostov is another returning face after his stint as a crewman caught in the web of goo ('Vox Sola'), and interestingly actor Joseph Wills costarred in 'Voyager' episode 'Muse' with Kellie Waymire, so that's a Trek reunion. It's so sad that their plans for Cutler never came to fruition from the actress' early death (plus a regular role on another TV series), as it would have improved the series to see familiar faces and would have given them a chance to build up the background a bit. At the same time, we have to admit that even some of the main cast of the series were poorly developed, so maybe recurring characters wouldn't have fared well either? We'll never know, but characters like Cutler, had they continued, might have led to a more ensemble sense and inspired writing to encourage that, improving all the characters and making the series more whole. There was some attempt to add characters when the MACOs came in for Season 3, but even they were left mostly as stunt men and women rather than fully formed people, an oversight of the series.
We see a bit of local colour thanks to Trip and Reed's foray into a lively bar, and in Hoshi's engagement with the natives (the older couple she speaks to at a restaurant looked vaguely reminiscent of series writers Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens, though they obviously weren't!). I always love it when they speak alien languages and show subtitles, it adds to the realism. We even get a little Denobulan when Phlox is rudely awakened, though no translation. There's only one Doctor and there's only one translator! I also liked that the lads were continuing their friendship from 'Shuttlepod One,' Reed so much more relaxed than he used to be. I feel like they should have used the opportunity of the bar to show some other recognisable alien species', say a Lurian sitting on a barstool, or something along those lines. That would have been a great cameo for Mark Allen Shepherd, the Morn costume being designed for him (and he'd already had appearances in both 'TNG' and 'Voyager,' so it should have been full house!). 'Captain's Holiday' marked one of the very rare occasions in which Andorians were seen in the 24th Century, and while it wouldn't have worked to show the blue-skins, maybe they could have gone with other exotic species'. But to put it into context, this was the end of a long first season so they probably didn't have the time or budget to play, especially if it was only going to be background atmosphere. The two muggers that mug the mugs looked familiar when we see them in their true, bat-like form (some kind of personal holo-projector as used by Georgiou in 'DSC' to impersonate other races, or a natural ability?), a little Reman, but it may be that the faces were reused in other episodes.
One possible reference is that Keyla, Archer's neighbour, was a Trill, since she has spots that ripple down her sides, though they are much fainter than other examples we've seen. It's academic, however, as she turns out to be a Tandaran operative, the people that kept Archer and Mayweather captive in a detention camp for Suliban in 'Detained.' I'd forgotten what her story was and just enjoyed seeing the lovely Dey Young again, yet another returning Trek face, and one who'd been in both 'TNG' and 'DS9.' It doesn't quite hold true that if they ever wanted to cast Mysterious Woman With Secret Background they went to her, but both Arissa, the character she played in 'A Simple Investigation,' and Keyla, here, weren't what they appeared and were in fact secret operatives. Hannah Bates in 'The Masterpiece Society' was just a scientist, but it could be said that after that episode she became someone with a 'secret,' or at least different, background when she requested asylum and left the planet she came from, so there is some connection between all three characters which is fun to note. Keyla seems to be just another tourist and Archer is happy to be hospitable to her without behaving like his Chief Engineer and Armoury Officer and throwing himself at her. Good job he remained gentlemanly, as just like the 'women' they entertained, Keyla isn't an innocent. Her little dog may be full of cute, furry rage, and maybe that's what Porthos didn't like, but it could also have been that Archer's dog sensed she was up to no good?
The switch from coy guest to interrogator with a creepy amount of knowledge on the Suliban was scary, and as if to prove he was superior to Trip and Reed once again (as if he needed to), Archer makes good on Reed's wish that he'd brought his scanner and aimed it at her, uncovering her true genetics as Tandaran. There was some good, if overly subtle continuity across this season. I do think they could have done with more overt Suliban and Temporal Cold War stories, but they mixed in a few plots that connected and we get another connection here to 'Detained' (as well as 'Acquisition' when Reed mentions the time Trip saved the ship in his underwear!), which was also an important factor in previous episode, 'Desert Crossing.' I suppose it was all an important reminder of the danger the Suliban posed, because, much like the Klingons, they'd pretty much been left behind as the Enterprise explored new worlds for much of the time. They'd be integral to the season finale so it was necessary to give the audience a reminder, only if they'd been a larger part of the season we wouldn't have needed to be reminded, so they definitely went a little too far towards the episodic than was suitable for the series' and season's main arc - perhaps they could have dropped a couple of the less successful stories, like 'Vox Sola,' 'Rogue Planet' and 'Fusion,' in exchange for a few more essential episodes? Not that they knew which would work well and which wouldn't, this is all with hindsight, of course.
Keyla's questions on where the Suliban came from and where they live, were pertinent, but more important is the issue of what their goal is. I'm not sure that was ever answered satisfactorily since the TCW was never entirely explained, another failing of the series. We know that the Suliban were really just willing tools selected by Future Guy, part of a faction of a war in the future which we may never learn about (and if we do, it's almost sure to be stupid, judging by the sorry comic book fantasy standards of modern Trek!), but the true motivations and purposes always remained cloudy. And that's really the same thing to be said for this episode. It's no great moral story, not a thrilling adventure, and it doesn't have a real resolution, it's just a chance for us to spend time with the characters. Keyla escapes after drugging Archer and we never find out the extent of Tandaran plans against the Suliban. Not that the Tandarans were a very interesting race, they were more like a substandard version of the fascistic Cardassians, and unlike that classic race didn't even look visually interesting, but it was quite something that they suddenly show up in the form of this operative who's there as a honey trap to bleed all the Suliban juice out of Archer, as it gives the galaxy an impression of interconnectedness instead of the Tandarans merely being another race of the week who we moved on from. They needed to play up things like that, but the series never really got going on semi-serialisation in the way that 'DS9' and parts of 'Voyager' did so well.
If there is no real resolution, I suppose there is at least a kind of ironic one where everyone's tightlipped about exactly what happened on their hols, discussing events only in generalities as they take the Shuttlepod back, and all for different reasons. The greatest irony is that only Hoshi, the one most intent on visiting the planet for cultural reasons and as a sort of working holiday to flex her linguistic muscles, had the most enjoyable time - Ravis, the guy who hooks up with her, didn't turn out to be a scoundrel or a crook. His facial design looked rather like a Napean (from 'Eye of The Beholder'), a race I'm always keen to see reappear, with that diamond-shaped extrusion on the forehead, though Ravis' was much shallower and his home planet was almost impossible to say so he couldn't have been one (unless that's what they call themselves in their own language). The cultural details were fascinating, such as the speed of their speech changing its meaning. It's also quite something that Risa lies as far out as humans have ever been before, although I did wonder about that, because we know the cargo ships have been striking out into space for decades, so Archer could have meant generally speaking.
One other reality of the production was its Director being the man who went to the planet on its last appearance in Trek, Michael Dorn. The Worf actor had directed Trek before with three episodes of 'DS9' (somewhat surprising he never did it on his home series, 'TNG'), and they were all great episodes. This happens to be another good one for 'Enterprise' which means every episode he directed worked. That can be put down to getting good scripts, but it seems to me that, like many Trek actors, Dorn's style worked well for the franchise and I wonder why he never did another one. Though he wasn't a flashy Director, he seemed to allow the story to breathe and even threw in the occasional shot that was different, such as Archer's blurry point of view after he's been scratched by Keyla's poisoned nail and sinks to the floor. The depiction of Risa itself looked somewhat artificial, perhaps the matte was CGI rather than a more realistic photo-real painting, but then that fits with Risa's artificial character, and the colours still looked gorgeous and inviting. Certainly the best Risa episode to date. Although deleted scenes can't be considered canon, the one on the DVD for this episode does at least fill in a plot detail that they paid for the trip with dilithium which the Risans were happy to accept.
***
No Man's Land
DVD, Stargate Atlantis S3 (No Man's Land)
With 'Atlantis' still ongoing it doesn't feel like 'SG-1' is gone, and that was a pleasant realisation. There are still a couple of 'SG-1' films to come and now the prospect of anyone popping up in this series so it's a buoyant beginning to the new season, the first that stands alone, despite the potential for 'SG-1' crossover. I don't mean to keep going on about 'SG-1,' but it did make me happy that they included General Landry and a visit to the SGC for Weir as part of this opening story. I'd wondered how it would work now the parent series had gone, but with Landry there to provide moral support for Elizabeth and even the return of Wolsey to continue the continuity, the ties are as strong as ever. And these weren't just added for the thrill of it, Dr. Weir is called to account for her actions by the IOA. Wolsey may be sympathetic, but the others aren't. Weir knows she messed up, putting Earth in danger from Hive ships, but she's tough and she can take it, especially with Landry to back her, with his affecting words.
While there's a lot of warmth, there's also some plot confusion: how did they know The Wraith ships were going to call a halt just beyond the Pegasus Galaxy, an opportune time for both Daedalus under Caldwell and Orion under Loren to attack? For that matter, and the bigger question, why couldn't Weir bring the ZPM with her that would power the antarctic device to fend off an attack on Earth? Surely if she can travel through the 'gate herself she could bring it with her? I may be missing some wrinkle that's been explained before, like perhaps a ZPM can't go through a Stargate for some reason, but I needed them to remind me of it if there was one, and make one up if not. It's all very well using diversionary tactics with space battles galore and impressive visual effects, but the details need to be kept track of for the audience. And it was all very well, since the battle sequences were tense and exciting with missile blooms and terrific 'Matrix'-style drone squids ripping into the Hive, the furore of battle aboard ship caught also expertly in the furrowed brows, the sparking consoles and the fast, fluid dialogue as the teams all work together - it's more Trek than modern Trek is now, with no stinting on space visuals, ships battering each other without losing focus on the personal, the most important aspect of any screen battle.
With Robert Picardo back as Wolsey and Connor Trinneer returning as half-human Wraith Michael, it's almost a Trek episode in itself and I imagine they had intent in this three prong attack: Trek actors to bring in the Trekkers, 'SG-1' actors to get those 'gaters (or whatever they're called), to come back, and a thrilling opening for the mere viewers of 'Atlantis' itself. I'd say they succeeded and the only downside was that it was left 'To Be Continued…' I want it to continue now! And it could, since I have the DVDs sitting right next to me as I type. But I always do this weekly so I'm not going to change now, and it's encouraging that I'm in the position to look forward to coming back to the series again as quickly as possible, so it's doing its job! No one's forgotten, unless I'm forgetting them, pretty much everyone has something good to do. Okay, so Teyla is barely to be seen, but the boys all get good stuff and I'm sure she'll fare better as the season progresses.
It was very 'Star Wars,' partly for the special effects extravaganza, partly for other similarities, such as trying to escape from captivity aboard a huge enemy ship (at least they didn't end up in the rubbish compactor!), or Sheppard doing a Millennium Falcon and taking a ride on the outside of said vast ship. It was pleasing to see Michael assisting the good guys, Ronon and McKay do their bits, Zelenka does his, and Caldwell bravely takes his crew on a mission that looks like suicide. I like the way the characters act selflessly (though not needlessly - as McKay says, he'd rather use his last breath trying to get more oxygen if there's an option!), and come together in teamwork to find solutions. The deployment of the human-reverting genetic gas that changes Wraith back into their ancestral being (as far as I can remember), worked well, and the escalating threats and fast-paced drama that never lost sight of the characters and at the same time allowed moments of pause, such as the shots of ships hanging in space, plus humour that doesn't undercut the threat, made for a comfortingly balanced episode the way I like it and the way sci-fi should be done. Personal and global stakes, good effects and a hard-edged story all worked. One question: didn't all the Asgard die in the 'SG-1' finale, or were dying? If so, what effect does this have on Hermiod, the Daedalus' resident alien? I really hope they explore this and feel confident they will. Let's keep this quality going: 'Stargate' lives!
***
With 'Atlantis' still ongoing it doesn't feel like 'SG-1' is gone, and that was a pleasant realisation. There are still a couple of 'SG-1' films to come and now the prospect of anyone popping up in this series so it's a buoyant beginning to the new season, the first that stands alone, despite the potential for 'SG-1' crossover. I don't mean to keep going on about 'SG-1,' but it did make me happy that they included General Landry and a visit to the SGC for Weir as part of this opening story. I'd wondered how it would work now the parent series had gone, but with Landry there to provide moral support for Elizabeth and even the return of Wolsey to continue the continuity, the ties are as strong as ever. And these weren't just added for the thrill of it, Dr. Weir is called to account for her actions by the IOA. Wolsey may be sympathetic, but the others aren't. Weir knows she messed up, putting Earth in danger from Hive ships, but she's tough and she can take it, especially with Landry to back her, with his affecting words.
While there's a lot of warmth, there's also some plot confusion: how did they know The Wraith ships were going to call a halt just beyond the Pegasus Galaxy, an opportune time for both Daedalus under Caldwell and Orion under Loren to attack? For that matter, and the bigger question, why couldn't Weir bring the ZPM with her that would power the antarctic device to fend off an attack on Earth? Surely if she can travel through the 'gate herself she could bring it with her? I may be missing some wrinkle that's been explained before, like perhaps a ZPM can't go through a Stargate for some reason, but I needed them to remind me of it if there was one, and make one up if not. It's all very well using diversionary tactics with space battles galore and impressive visual effects, but the details need to be kept track of for the audience. And it was all very well, since the battle sequences were tense and exciting with missile blooms and terrific 'Matrix'-style drone squids ripping into the Hive, the furore of battle aboard ship caught also expertly in the furrowed brows, the sparking consoles and the fast, fluid dialogue as the teams all work together - it's more Trek than modern Trek is now, with no stinting on space visuals, ships battering each other without losing focus on the personal, the most important aspect of any screen battle.
With Robert Picardo back as Wolsey and Connor Trinneer returning as half-human Wraith Michael, it's almost a Trek episode in itself and I imagine they had intent in this three prong attack: Trek actors to bring in the Trekkers, 'SG-1' actors to get those 'gaters (or whatever they're called), to come back, and a thrilling opening for the mere viewers of 'Atlantis' itself. I'd say they succeeded and the only downside was that it was left 'To Be Continued…' I want it to continue now! And it could, since I have the DVDs sitting right next to me as I type. But I always do this weekly so I'm not going to change now, and it's encouraging that I'm in the position to look forward to coming back to the series again as quickly as possible, so it's doing its job! No one's forgotten, unless I'm forgetting them, pretty much everyone has something good to do. Okay, so Teyla is barely to be seen, but the boys all get good stuff and I'm sure she'll fare better as the season progresses.
It was very 'Star Wars,' partly for the special effects extravaganza, partly for other similarities, such as trying to escape from captivity aboard a huge enemy ship (at least they didn't end up in the rubbish compactor!), or Sheppard doing a Millennium Falcon and taking a ride on the outside of said vast ship. It was pleasing to see Michael assisting the good guys, Ronon and McKay do their bits, Zelenka does his, and Caldwell bravely takes his crew on a mission that looks like suicide. I like the way the characters act selflessly (though not needlessly - as McKay says, he'd rather use his last breath trying to get more oxygen if there's an option!), and come together in teamwork to find solutions. The deployment of the human-reverting genetic gas that changes Wraith back into their ancestral being (as far as I can remember), worked well, and the escalating threats and fast-paced drama that never lost sight of the characters and at the same time allowed moments of pause, such as the shots of ships hanging in space, plus humour that doesn't undercut the threat, made for a comfortingly balanced episode the way I like it and the way sci-fi should be done. Personal and global stakes, good effects and a hard-edged story all worked. One question: didn't all the Asgard die in the 'SG-1' finale, or were dying? If so, what effect does this have on Hermiod, the Daedalus' resident alien? I really hope they explore this and feel confident they will. Let's keep this quality going: 'Stargate' lives!
***
The Escape Artist
DVD, Short Treks (The Escape Artist)
I find myself once again in a strange position, not unlike Harry Mudd in his many escapades. Another little 'Short Trek' isn't going to change my mind on the style of modern Trek, the complete cartoonisation and juvenilisation, if those are words, and I never liked their version of Mudd who was so far off from the original as to be hard to see the character in there. At the same time this is possibly the best of a bad selection, of the first four in the spinoff sub-series released between Season 1 and 2 of 'DSC.' It doesn't have the background detail that promised to be useful for 'DSC' Season 2 as Saru's 'The Brightest Star' did, but then that proved to be unnecessary after all when the episode it set up was much better. They do throw in a lot of fun Trek references, but as with the series itself, this is as much meat on the bone as Trekkers are getting these days, much like the film series: it's small comfort to see the occasional Orion or Tellarite, hear of latinum and see another Federation starship we'd not seen before, if the whole tone of the production is so far from the serious, adult (in the true 'grown up' and grounded sense, not the nasty content variety), and… I don't know, 'noble' style of Trek past.
Just like 'DSC' it's all about snappy dialogue and cliched, contemporary speech full of jokey quips, even the aliens speaking in this loose, modern way. It's one of many things they chose to pursue in order to make Trek popular with non-Trekkers, and it's not good. Much like the age-old complaint I have with the visual style being not even close to 'TOS' in any way! As par for the series we barely get a single space shot, instead it relies on interior views, with even the Tellarite's small ship having a viewport at the front of his Bridge instead of a viewscreen. These things are unimportant to casual viewers, but it's a constant irritation to me. They seem to hate space, they barely show it - there's none of the standard establishing shots of ships hanging on that dark backdrop bejewelled with stars, and in this we get only one measly exterior shot of a ship (Mudd's). We don't ever see the Tellarite ship so they didn't have to design that, and the one, beautiful view of the USS Di Milo we're afforded is through a window. It looks gorgeous, even if it has more in common with the 24th Century than the vessels of 'TOS.' It's all so tragic to me that they were set in this time period that they clearly care nothing for and refused to bend to the established laws and lore of canon and established aesthetics. It's not something I'll ever get over, I'm afraid, messing up Trek continuity after forty years of solid growth of the universe.
I did like the Federation starship, despite my concerns, I just wish we could have seen it better, a gripe with both seasons of 'DSC.' It was a shame they just reused existing USS Discovery sets for its Transporter Room (or should that be Transporter Hall, it's so ridiculously oversized!), and the corridors, but at least seeing a different crew gave us a sense of a wider Starfleet beyond Discovery, something that appeared to be promised in the build-up to the series' debut, but which never came to fruition, sadly. I imagined we'd have multiple ships and crews that would pop in and out of stories and we'd get a better sense of an operational force, especially as they were at war in Season 1, which this followed, but no.
Rainn Wilson, the modern Mudd, starred but also directed this episode, perhaps a consolation for not being brought back in Season 2 (a relief for me). As I said, I didn't like his version and once again we hear that he's wanted for murders that were never a part of Mudd's character or we couldn't find him charming and likeable when he went up against Kirk. While it's possible someone could reform from such degraded behaviour, this Mudd's general demeanour was so unrepentant (which he did share with the original), that it's impossible to enjoy him as this bumbling, quick-talking con artist. Except the way he's written, we are supposed to find him incorrigible, but not the less likeable! It's a trait with the 'DSC' writers that murder just isn't a big deal for them, what with Mudd being treated as he was and the much worse Mirror Georgiou, a mass murderer lest we forget, even more accepted and played up in the series with hardly any sanction on her character! It's bizarre and so unrealistic that murderers could be seen as mere comic foils, but that's only one of many flaws in the writing and choice of direction. I noted this episode was written by Mike McMahan who has gone on to spearhead the animated spinoff 'Lower Decks,' so I imagine this is the kind of quality of writing we can expect from that series.
I don't know what it is about modern Trek that makes it so off from the way Trek should be. I suppose it can only be put down to the iron control Rick Berman held over the franchise that he made sure it was written in the Roddenberry style with a grounded, realistic approach to the future, and this has been sloughed off like an unwanted skin so modern writers can be as slack and loose and contemporary as they wish. It's why it never feels like Trek, but some other sci-fi, or worse, comic book adventure. And it's also the general lowering of standards in TV as a whole that means this conforms to the emphasis on crudity for 'laughs.' It is low brow and lowest common denominator stuff, and yet again it makes me sad to see the once proud legacy of Trek brought so low.
Even so, for what it was this short wasn't as bad as some of them. While I'm not keen on the re-imagining of existing races, I haven't hated the Tellarite look. I baulked at the baldness again, as if this is yet another race, like the Klingons that must lose its hair and look all so similar, but at the same time I liked the snout and the eyes, even if they weren't deep-set enough (I wanted to know what race the short female bounty hunter was as she looked familiar). The Orions were a darker shade of green, truer to the other versions we'd seen, and it wasn't a terrible story - it does at least fit with Harry's later penchant for producing lifelike androids. If it were me though, that would be one of the 'TOS' conventions I'd be trying to avoid, because we know from Data how hard it is to produce artificial life and how special he was (even if Mudd's are relatively shoddy - the arm coming off so easily in Tevrin Krit's hands). I know it was a big part of 'TOS' that there were all these androids so realistic as to be undetectable to human eyes, but it's a problematic part of canon. They chose to embrace it when maybe they could have found a way to explain it away or retcon such developments somehow, the way 'Enterprise' was able to do with bits and pieces here and there. But of course they're not going to make Trek more realistic with the current generation of creators which we've seen turn it far more comic book than even 'TOS.'
A Tellarite bounty hunter wasn't a new idea, Captain Archer had been caught by one and held for ransom in 'Enterprise' ('Bounty'), so they are at least tying into some of the culture a little better than the series has done sometimes. The only bit of alien culture we discover is that they have special cudgels that have meaning for them (even if they do look like stone age caveman clubs!). It's not much to hold onto (apart from physically!), but it's something. I suppose it could be argued that Mudd actually was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was framed for all these murders, the Federation misjudging him, but at the same time we'd seen him act in such a harsh and cavalier way when it came to life in his 'DSC' appearances. Again we can argue that he was using a time crystal (ugh!), and so he knew he could reset things in that, but still it remains hard to ever see Mudd as merely the roguish conman he was in 'TOS.' I did like the reveal that he was the female bounty hunter selling off android replicas of himself to unwary members of the fraternity, and the Breen-like translation of his language was fun. It was a good ruse, the kind of trick that, yes, I would expect from Harry, so in some ways, apart from the murder charges, he was closer to the original concept, even if he fails to have much in the way of the character's mannerisms and voice - necessary if you want me to believe this is the same guy.
Unfortunately, 'DSC,' and probably all the other spinoffs I've yet to see, care little about canon, continuity and the hard labour of keeping it all together, which is why I really have to see it all as just a spinoff universe, not the original 'Prime' variety which featured all of Trek from 'TOS' to 'Enterprise' across almost forty years. Until they change their tune and get back to the genuine article I can't look on any of these productions as anything other than filler designed for those that don't care about Trek or only care if it fits with their Marvel Universe-esque notions of modern sci-fi and character writing. Would they even have a Federation 'tax man' which Mudd claims took all his wealth? With Mudd you can always say he's lying or exaggerating so even things like that which don't have much resonance except in a contemporary sense, can be waived. But for sure these series' will date far more than 'TOS' and its ilk have done because they were made as period pieces and clearly none of this stuff is.
**
I find myself once again in a strange position, not unlike Harry Mudd in his many escapades. Another little 'Short Trek' isn't going to change my mind on the style of modern Trek, the complete cartoonisation and juvenilisation, if those are words, and I never liked their version of Mudd who was so far off from the original as to be hard to see the character in there. At the same time this is possibly the best of a bad selection, of the first four in the spinoff sub-series released between Season 1 and 2 of 'DSC.' It doesn't have the background detail that promised to be useful for 'DSC' Season 2 as Saru's 'The Brightest Star' did, but then that proved to be unnecessary after all when the episode it set up was much better. They do throw in a lot of fun Trek references, but as with the series itself, this is as much meat on the bone as Trekkers are getting these days, much like the film series: it's small comfort to see the occasional Orion or Tellarite, hear of latinum and see another Federation starship we'd not seen before, if the whole tone of the production is so far from the serious, adult (in the true 'grown up' and grounded sense, not the nasty content variety), and… I don't know, 'noble' style of Trek past.
Just like 'DSC' it's all about snappy dialogue and cliched, contemporary speech full of jokey quips, even the aliens speaking in this loose, modern way. It's one of many things they chose to pursue in order to make Trek popular with non-Trekkers, and it's not good. Much like the age-old complaint I have with the visual style being not even close to 'TOS' in any way! As par for the series we barely get a single space shot, instead it relies on interior views, with even the Tellarite's small ship having a viewport at the front of his Bridge instead of a viewscreen. These things are unimportant to casual viewers, but it's a constant irritation to me. They seem to hate space, they barely show it - there's none of the standard establishing shots of ships hanging on that dark backdrop bejewelled with stars, and in this we get only one measly exterior shot of a ship (Mudd's). We don't ever see the Tellarite ship so they didn't have to design that, and the one, beautiful view of the USS Di Milo we're afforded is through a window. It looks gorgeous, even if it has more in common with the 24th Century than the vessels of 'TOS.' It's all so tragic to me that they were set in this time period that they clearly care nothing for and refused to bend to the established laws and lore of canon and established aesthetics. It's not something I'll ever get over, I'm afraid, messing up Trek continuity after forty years of solid growth of the universe.
I did like the Federation starship, despite my concerns, I just wish we could have seen it better, a gripe with both seasons of 'DSC.' It was a shame they just reused existing USS Discovery sets for its Transporter Room (or should that be Transporter Hall, it's so ridiculously oversized!), and the corridors, but at least seeing a different crew gave us a sense of a wider Starfleet beyond Discovery, something that appeared to be promised in the build-up to the series' debut, but which never came to fruition, sadly. I imagined we'd have multiple ships and crews that would pop in and out of stories and we'd get a better sense of an operational force, especially as they were at war in Season 1, which this followed, but no.
Rainn Wilson, the modern Mudd, starred but also directed this episode, perhaps a consolation for not being brought back in Season 2 (a relief for me). As I said, I didn't like his version and once again we hear that he's wanted for murders that were never a part of Mudd's character or we couldn't find him charming and likeable when he went up against Kirk. While it's possible someone could reform from such degraded behaviour, this Mudd's general demeanour was so unrepentant (which he did share with the original), that it's impossible to enjoy him as this bumbling, quick-talking con artist. Except the way he's written, we are supposed to find him incorrigible, but not the less likeable! It's a trait with the 'DSC' writers that murder just isn't a big deal for them, what with Mudd being treated as he was and the much worse Mirror Georgiou, a mass murderer lest we forget, even more accepted and played up in the series with hardly any sanction on her character! It's bizarre and so unrealistic that murderers could be seen as mere comic foils, but that's only one of many flaws in the writing and choice of direction. I noted this episode was written by Mike McMahan who has gone on to spearhead the animated spinoff 'Lower Decks,' so I imagine this is the kind of quality of writing we can expect from that series.
I don't know what it is about modern Trek that makes it so off from the way Trek should be. I suppose it can only be put down to the iron control Rick Berman held over the franchise that he made sure it was written in the Roddenberry style with a grounded, realistic approach to the future, and this has been sloughed off like an unwanted skin so modern writers can be as slack and loose and contemporary as they wish. It's why it never feels like Trek, but some other sci-fi, or worse, comic book adventure. And it's also the general lowering of standards in TV as a whole that means this conforms to the emphasis on crudity for 'laughs.' It is low brow and lowest common denominator stuff, and yet again it makes me sad to see the once proud legacy of Trek brought so low.
Even so, for what it was this short wasn't as bad as some of them. While I'm not keen on the re-imagining of existing races, I haven't hated the Tellarite look. I baulked at the baldness again, as if this is yet another race, like the Klingons that must lose its hair and look all so similar, but at the same time I liked the snout and the eyes, even if they weren't deep-set enough (I wanted to know what race the short female bounty hunter was as she looked familiar). The Orions were a darker shade of green, truer to the other versions we'd seen, and it wasn't a terrible story - it does at least fit with Harry's later penchant for producing lifelike androids. If it were me though, that would be one of the 'TOS' conventions I'd be trying to avoid, because we know from Data how hard it is to produce artificial life and how special he was (even if Mudd's are relatively shoddy - the arm coming off so easily in Tevrin Krit's hands). I know it was a big part of 'TOS' that there were all these androids so realistic as to be undetectable to human eyes, but it's a problematic part of canon. They chose to embrace it when maybe they could have found a way to explain it away or retcon such developments somehow, the way 'Enterprise' was able to do with bits and pieces here and there. But of course they're not going to make Trek more realistic with the current generation of creators which we've seen turn it far more comic book than even 'TOS.'
A Tellarite bounty hunter wasn't a new idea, Captain Archer had been caught by one and held for ransom in 'Enterprise' ('Bounty'), so they are at least tying into some of the culture a little better than the series has done sometimes. The only bit of alien culture we discover is that they have special cudgels that have meaning for them (even if they do look like stone age caveman clubs!). It's not much to hold onto (apart from physically!), but it's something. I suppose it could be argued that Mudd actually was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was framed for all these murders, the Federation misjudging him, but at the same time we'd seen him act in such a harsh and cavalier way when it came to life in his 'DSC' appearances. Again we can argue that he was using a time crystal (ugh!), and so he knew he could reset things in that, but still it remains hard to ever see Mudd as merely the roguish conman he was in 'TOS.' I did like the reveal that he was the female bounty hunter selling off android replicas of himself to unwary members of the fraternity, and the Breen-like translation of his language was fun. It was a good ruse, the kind of trick that, yes, I would expect from Harry, so in some ways, apart from the murder charges, he was closer to the original concept, even if he fails to have much in the way of the character's mannerisms and voice - necessary if you want me to believe this is the same guy.
Unfortunately, 'DSC,' and probably all the other spinoffs I've yet to see, care little about canon, continuity and the hard labour of keeping it all together, which is why I really have to see it all as just a spinoff universe, not the original 'Prime' variety which featured all of Trek from 'TOS' to 'Enterprise' across almost forty years. Until they change their tune and get back to the genuine article I can't look on any of these productions as anything other than filler designed for those that don't care about Trek or only care if it fits with their Marvel Universe-esque notions of modern sci-fi and character writing. Would they even have a Federation 'tax man' which Mudd claims took all his wealth? With Mudd you can always say he's lying or exaggerating so even things like that which don't have much resonance except in a contemporary sense, can be waived. But for sure these series' will date far more than 'TOS' and its ilk have done because they were made as period pieces and clearly none of this stuff is.
**
Desert Crossing (2)
DVD, Enterprise S1 (Desert Crossing) (2)
I wish 'Enterprise' had embraced its semi-serialised nature more, because that perfect mix of ongoing stories in an episodic structure that 'DS9' benefited so much from, would have been a real advantage to the series. I say this because of episodes such as this one in which Archer's previous actions drive the story: Zobral, the forceful native who (apparently - it was never directly confirmed or discussed), cunningly reels in the good Captain believing the hype that he's not only an explorer, but a great warrior with a reputation for fairness and integrity, the ideal man to help with his planet's rebellion against a corrupt government. And it was all 'thanks' to the Suliban Archer and crew rescued back in 'Detained,' Zobral mentioning the detention camp Archer liberated and who have spread the good news about this champion of justice as they travelled (a bit like Janeway and crew developed a reputation ahead of them in their sojourn across the Delta Quadrant). It was the wrong end of the stick, wishful thinking on Zobral's part, but it was a good stick to grasp, and not entirely without merit since Archer did indeed rescue the captured Suliban and he really is a man of integrity, balanced, open and an all-round good guy. In fact this is another episode that shows him in all the positive light that you want to see a famous starship Captain given: he's all things - a good Captain, a good leader and a good friend, and though it could be said he isn't quite as firm as a Kirk or Picard might have been when such dubious hospitality was pressed upon them, he's also much more willing to engage and discover.
Archer's good actions in 'Detained,' helping the oppressed, ironically mean that had he not gotten involved they wouldn't have been drawn into the situation here (isn't there a Ferengi Rule of Acquisition about no good deed going unpunished?), but they aren't the only events to be directly referred to, as Zobral asks whether they never encountered anything that made them regret their pioneering exploits - we're reminded of 'Silent Enemy' in which they had to return to Earth to upgrade their weapons, except of course they successfully banded together in true Starfleet fashion and solved the problem before they arrived, another proud moment in the season. It adds so much to the reality of the series that events actually meant something and multiplied their experience - it could also be a foreshadowing of the coming return to Earth in disgrace that would come in season finale 'Shockwave,' just as this episode and the previous one were concerned with heading to Risa, a plan that would come to fruition in next story 'Two Days and Two Nights.' I just wish there had been more of that in the series, quite a different prospect from modern Trek and this series' own Season 3 in which everything has to be tied together with almost no room for manoeuvre (except for the occasional Wild West episode or trip to Talos IV!).
Something else this episode shares with modern Trek is the high production values of actually filming in some realistic locations. They didn't actually go to Morocco or wherever it was they filmed the 'DSC' pilot, 'The Vulcan Hello,' but they certainly shot for realism, something that always brings greater enjoyment to Trek rather than always staying in standing sets or set-based alien villages. 'Enterprise' was good at making sure it had location shooting and I think back to 'Strange New World' and 'Terra Nova' as among some of the best outdoor filming this season, though this one is also a contender as we see Archer and his good mate Trip struggle across the dunes of a real desert. The friendship between the pair was not really explored enough across the series, I always felt, but whenever they did give them something to do it was good for the characters. This time they have a manly game of alien lacrosse to show what they're made of, but while this was fun it serves more as a contrast between frivolous machismo and serious endurance and survival that sport often stands in for: the real manly test is when they're on the run from the authorities under a desert sun with only a couple of water packs to keep them going - it shows Archer's leadership qualities at the peak as he not only has to see to his own safety, but that of a quickly deteriorating Trip (probably didn't help that he'd played Geskana on a full stomach - it seems Torothan culture doesn't care about indigestion!).
The Chief Engineer is well at home around his engines (and we get some nice shots in Engineering - I always love when they place the camera at the far end of the Warp Core and point it back to show off the length and power of this Warp 5 starship, and then there was also that shot I don't remember ever seeing before, which had Trip leaning on one side of the platform at the operational console end as the camera moves into alignment at the other side of the platform), but he doesn't do well in heat. We've seen he can have a weaker mental attitude than his Captain and friend in the past - there's the story of how Archer saved his life when they were in zero-g, and wasn't there another story about saving him when they went diving together? And obviously the time when Trip was infected by the planet in 'Strange New World' and his mind was playing tricks, requiring Archer to talk him out of shooting T'Pol! It's not shameful that Trip should be shown to have problems coping with extremes, it's all part of the job, and though it doesn't make him look up to much it does allow Archer to demonstrate his own abilities and endurance, which is all to the good for a series where the impression can be that he's a bit soft compared to later Captains in the timeline. Episodes like these are good reminders that he was more than a starship Captain who was too easily pushed around and whose small ship often fared badly in battle.
I think also that it's a pleasure in the age of women being the rising stars of 'Discovery' to see a boys' day out with just the two of them going down to a planet (even if Archer does talk about an 'Away Mission' rather than a 'Landing Party'), at the invitation of the domineering Zobral (played by the great Clancy Brown, best known to me as The Kurgan in the original 'Highlander' film). Good casting makes a huge difference and getting someone from genre that hadn't been in Trek before was a great move. His stature and unique voice made him ideal as this leader of alien rebels/terrorists who are fighting against a society that promised equality for all after the casting off of the caste system, before reneging. He's not entirely trustworthy, as we find out, with the gift of, if not a silver tongue, then certainly a persuasive one, and who sees things very black and white. I was surprised that it was never mentioned that he probably put his own ship into disrepair just so the NX-01 would come along and rescue him and he could invite Archer to his planet, but although he admits that he heard about him from the Suliban Captain and wanted Archer to come and help his people with his powerful ship and battle strategies, we never hear that he forced the meeting in their path. Still, he's shown to be much less of a genial and generous host than he likes to pretend when, upon reaching Enterprise he claims their people aren't his responsibility!
Although T'Pol does raise her voice a few times in the episode, which I didn't like, preferring it when Vulcans retain their assured and calm demeanour, especially in the face of adversity, a trait I greatly admire, she also proves more than equal to the task of being in command in the Captain's absence: she finds the representative of the government in the bureaucratic Chancellor Trelit to be completely unsympathetic to the plight of her Captain and Chief Engineer, to the extent his bad humour and suspicious nature believes them to be assisting the rebels and there's little she can do in that avenue, but when Zobral shows up and proves unhelpful she quickly applies moral pressure to him, even getting him to come along on the rescue mission, which was impressive considering he was such a stubborn and singleminded individual! One thing I don't understand is why Mayweather wasn't piloting the Shuttlepod! He's supposed to be a great pilot and yet Reed fills the role. It could be put down to the fact that T'Pol was leading and with Zobral along there wasn't room for both Tactical Officer and pilot, but I don't recall seeing Travis at all (just as Phlox also goes unseen), which is a missing piece in this case as Travis should always be the go-to guy when it comes to tricky flying, even if Reed was necessary for a potential combat situation.
I quite like the fact that the episode doesn't require any B-plots, the closest they get being the few scenes with T'Pol in command on the Enterprise. It's not always necessary to have a secondary layer of story to cut to, although perhaps that's what was happening: Mayweather had caught some alien disease and Dr. Phlox was treating him, but we just never saw it! That would have made some sense, and they could have simply mentioned this was happening. At least Hoshi had a meaningful point to make when she asks T'Pol why the Vulcans chose Bozeman, Montana as the sight of first contact with the people of Earth. It's a good question, even if the answer is obvious: because it was the home town of film co-writer Brannon Braga, of course! Okay, so that's the real-world production reason, but T'Pol's answer is that this was where the first warp flight originated, but as Hoshi says, it could have been seen as a slight on the other world nations of the time. This is something that's never been explored, mainly because you'd have to tie down too much canon which is something the writers never liked to do in favour of leaving as much open for future writers as possible (even if the current crop tend to throw canon back in the faces of their forebears as if they can't be bothered with all that 'constraint'!). We don't really know what countries existed at the end of World War III and its best to leave that all a mystery, though if Trek goes on for about another thirty years (if it hasn't been run into the ground by the current administration's inability to make it properly!), canon will catch up with real life!
The point of this conversation is to show that Starfleet needs its own rules on how to operate in the unknown galaxy at large - you'd think they'd have already come up with some basic forms before sending out the Enterprise and they must have had other starships before it, even if they weren't as fast (the Franklin, for example, that little knot of canon conundrum from 'Star Trek Beyond' that did as much harm as good in adding texture to early Starfleet space exploration!), so you'd think some of these issues would have cropped up before. But be that as it may, this is another episode that hints at the coming of the Prime Directive, General Order One. I don't think it ever actually came into being during 'Enterprise' (that could have been one of the overarching themes of the series, along with the Temporal Cold War and the Founding of the Federation, if only the series had lasted a few more years), but Archer is certainly in agreement with T'Pol at the end when they discuss non-interference in alien wars, even if he makes the addendum that Zobral's cause seemed just. So it seems that although the principle of not getting involved was right in this case, he wasn't quite ready to ignore his own sense of justice given the right circumstances. In this case he was manipulated into a position where he could have had a decisive effect on the course of that planet's society, but it was in false expectations of his expertise and he wasn't going to drop his mission of exploration to fight someone else's war, no matter how just, in the same way he wasn't going to dedicate the next few years to finding a cure for the dominant race on Valakis in 'Dear Doctor.'
Although the Prime Directive, diplomacy and the sensitivities of galactic relations are only on the fringe of the episode in preference for a tale of survival (which reminded me of O'Brien and Bashir in 'Armageddon Game' - both on the run from authorities that want them dead, both hole up in a bunker, both feature one of them dying…), which the series tended to prefer, I'm glad that these issues are present. They could have done with being a little more present, perhaps cut to more discussion instead of so much time of Archer trying to keep Trip's mind active (I found it quite funny when he asks him to break down the warp engine and Trip, obsessed with his hunger, starts talking about the different parts of a chicken!), especially as it would have been enlightening to hear more about what the Vulcan High Command sets out as its own rules on dealing with planetary conflict, which T'Pol briefly mentions when she says Archer will have to create his own (governments and not starship Captains need to make the decision, she thinks). But even though the action is more important to the series than the ideas, it is presented with such high production values that it remains an attractive and engaging story with both the glaring light of day and the exciting exit from the blasted camp at night, fire all about as Archer and Trip make their escape into the desert. I don't think we'd seen the NX-01 desert gear before, but that looked really good, and we get another first for Trek: Archer says he found a new use for the stun setting of his Phase Pistol (lighting a fire), though sadly we never saw it happen.
Talking of Phasers, we see the Shuttlepod fire bolts instead of beams in the rescue mission, which always annoys me, more because although I know they can do both, in Trek made after this series (or during - 'Nemesis' did it, too), they always use bolts and not beams, and in the same way as I want my Vulcans to be measured and unemotional, this is another of my major bugbears of Trek made in the 21st Century! At least during 'Enterprise' they still mostly had beams, and they also had thought: the reason Archer knows where to go when they're in the desert is because he kept his survival training in mind - always have an awareness of your surroundings when flying into a location. He was a lot more careful and conscientious than Trip who never even thought about it and would have died if not for his Captain being there to guide him! It shows the difference between careful thought and planning as opposed to lazily just winging it which is how Starfleet officers are far too often portrayed in modern Trek. It's a real shame because the qualities of the characters are one of the great draws when so much recent Trek is merely superficial and doesn't give sufficient thought to such things, preferring magical fantasy solutions and contrivances instead of the less 'cool,' but more realistic nuts and bolts of training and improvement through both mental and physical training (leaving aside Ensign Tilly's jogging!). Another thing I like is the crew back on the ship running through their options for saving their crew-mates: they can't use the Transporter because they can't localise the bio-signs, they can't send a shuttle in the midst of an assault…
These things need to be addressed and not just left to imagination, and it is that attention to detail and the other positives I mentioned that once again remind why Trek is so good in the face of current Trek making me lose heart in the franchise's future. I always liked this episode - it has good music, good boy's own adventure, good location shooting, a good guest star and a good moral issue, all tidily jammed into the space of a single episode, touching upon events that had happened earlier and subtly hinting at things still to come in the last two episodes of what has been a strong first season that could claim to be the strongest Trek ever made. It doesn't matter to me that the aliens are very under-designed, almost not designed at all, you might say, with only a chin tattoo to mark them out as different. But the amount of difference between humans and aliens wasn't really that important and not every race they encounter has to be an elaborate forehead or head-piece. The important thing was creating a culture, something else that seems to be missing from modern Trek which isn't much concerned with the kind of details Trek always used to be concerned with. Exploring a culture, even for the space of one episode, and a race we'd never see again, adds richness and depth to the Trek landscape. If they'd concentrated on an elaborate alien design, but left out the cultural details then it would have come across as generic sci-fi, which is what Trek has become with 'DSC,' and I'm so thankful that I had this to go back to and examine, to remind myself why Trek worked in the past, and reassure me that perhaps one day we'll see the like again.
Points of interest: you can see lines down the dunes that appear to be tracks of some kind - since we only saw hover ships such as Zobral's shuttle this must be a production gaffe. Either that or the Torothans enjoy cycling or biking across the desert! I thought I recognised the chair of Chancellor Trelit, and according to Memory Alpha it was one of the Briefing Room chairs from 'Voyager'! Speaking of, Lt. Ayala himself, Tarik Ergin, was also apparently one of the Geskana players, which is fun to realise. It was a small guest cast (credited, anyway, Ergin was one of the uncredited), but Trelit actor Charles Dennis had also been Sunad in 'TNG' episode 'Transfigurations.'
***
I wish 'Enterprise' had embraced its semi-serialised nature more, because that perfect mix of ongoing stories in an episodic structure that 'DS9' benefited so much from, would have been a real advantage to the series. I say this because of episodes such as this one in which Archer's previous actions drive the story: Zobral, the forceful native who (apparently - it was never directly confirmed or discussed), cunningly reels in the good Captain believing the hype that he's not only an explorer, but a great warrior with a reputation for fairness and integrity, the ideal man to help with his planet's rebellion against a corrupt government. And it was all 'thanks' to the Suliban Archer and crew rescued back in 'Detained,' Zobral mentioning the detention camp Archer liberated and who have spread the good news about this champion of justice as they travelled (a bit like Janeway and crew developed a reputation ahead of them in their sojourn across the Delta Quadrant). It was the wrong end of the stick, wishful thinking on Zobral's part, but it was a good stick to grasp, and not entirely without merit since Archer did indeed rescue the captured Suliban and he really is a man of integrity, balanced, open and an all-round good guy. In fact this is another episode that shows him in all the positive light that you want to see a famous starship Captain given: he's all things - a good Captain, a good leader and a good friend, and though it could be said he isn't quite as firm as a Kirk or Picard might have been when such dubious hospitality was pressed upon them, he's also much more willing to engage and discover.
Archer's good actions in 'Detained,' helping the oppressed, ironically mean that had he not gotten involved they wouldn't have been drawn into the situation here (isn't there a Ferengi Rule of Acquisition about no good deed going unpunished?), but they aren't the only events to be directly referred to, as Zobral asks whether they never encountered anything that made them regret their pioneering exploits - we're reminded of 'Silent Enemy' in which they had to return to Earth to upgrade their weapons, except of course they successfully banded together in true Starfleet fashion and solved the problem before they arrived, another proud moment in the season. It adds so much to the reality of the series that events actually meant something and multiplied their experience - it could also be a foreshadowing of the coming return to Earth in disgrace that would come in season finale 'Shockwave,' just as this episode and the previous one were concerned with heading to Risa, a plan that would come to fruition in next story 'Two Days and Two Nights.' I just wish there had been more of that in the series, quite a different prospect from modern Trek and this series' own Season 3 in which everything has to be tied together with almost no room for manoeuvre (except for the occasional Wild West episode or trip to Talos IV!).
Something else this episode shares with modern Trek is the high production values of actually filming in some realistic locations. They didn't actually go to Morocco or wherever it was they filmed the 'DSC' pilot, 'The Vulcan Hello,' but they certainly shot for realism, something that always brings greater enjoyment to Trek rather than always staying in standing sets or set-based alien villages. 'Enterprise' was good at making sure it had location shooting and I think back to 'Strange New World' and 'Terra Nova' as among some of the best outdoor filming this season, though this one is also a contender as we see Archer and his good mate Trip struggle across the dunes of a real desert. The friendship between the pair was not really explored enough across the series, I always felt, but whenever they did give them something to do it was good for the characters. This time they have a manly game of alien lacrosse to show what they're made of, but while this was fun it serves more as a contrast between frivolous machismo and serious endurance and survival that sport often stands in for: the real manly test is when they're on the run from the authorities under a desert sun with only a couple of water packs to keep them going - it shows Archer's leadership qualities at the peak as he not only has to see to his own safety, but that of a quickly deteriorating Trip (probably didn't help that he'd played Geskana on a full stomach - it seems Torothan culture doesn't care about indigestion!).
The Chief Engineer is well at home around his engines (and we get some nice shots in Engineering - I always love when they place the camera at the far end of the Warp Core and point it back to show off the length and power of this Warp 5 starship, and then there was also that shot I don't remember ever seeing before, which had Trip leaning on one side of the platform at the operational console end as the camera moves into alignment at the other side of the platform), but he doesn't do well in heat. We've seen he can have a weaker mental attitude than his Captain and friend in the past - there's the story of how Archer saved his life when they were in zero-g, and wasn't there another story about saving him when they went diving together? And obviously the time when Trip was infected by the planet in 'Strange New World' and his mind was playing tricks, requiring Archer to talk him out of shooting T'Pol! It's not shameful that Trip should be shown to have problems coping with extremes, it's all part of the job, and though it doesn't make him look up to much it does allow Archer to demonstrate his own abilities and endurance, which is all to the good for a series where the impression can be that he's a bit soft compared to later Captains in the timeline. Episodes like these are good reminders that he was more than a starship Captain who was too easily pushed around and whose small ship often fared badly in battle.
I think also that it's a pleasure in the age of women being the rising stars of 'Discovery' to see a boys' day out with just the two of them going down to a planet (even if Archer does talk about an 'Away Mission' rather than a 'Landing Party'), at the invitation of the domineering Zobral (played by the great Clancy Brown, best known to me as The Kurgan in the original 'Highlander' film). Good casting makes a huge difference and getting someone from genre that hadn't been in Trek before was a great move. His stature and unique voice made him ideal as this leader of alien rebels/terrorists who are fighting against a society that promised equality for all after the casting off of the caste system, before reneging. He's not entirely trustworthy, as we find out, with the gift of, if not a silver tongue, then certainly a persuasive one, and who sees things very black and white. I was surprised that it was never mentioned that he probably put his own ship into disrepair just so the NX-01 would come along and rescue him and he could invite Archer to his planet, but although he admits that he heard about him from the Suliban Captain and wanted Archer to come and help his people with his powerful ship and battle strategies, we never hear that he forced the meeting in their path. Still, he's shown to be much less of a genial and generous host than he likes to pretend when, upon reaching Enterprise he claims their people aren't his responsibility!
Although T'Pol does raise her voice a few times in the episode, which I didn't like, preferring it when Vulcans retain their assured and calm demeanour, especially in the face of adversity, a trait I greatly admire, she also proves more than equal to the task of being in command in the Captain's absence: she finds the representative of the government in the bureaucratic Chancellor Trelit to be completely unsympathetic to the plight of her Captain and Chief Engineer, to the extent his bad humour and suspicious nature believes them to be assisting the rebels and there's little she can do in that avenue, but when Zobral shows up and proves unhelpful she quickly applies moral pressure to him, even getting him to come along on the rescue mission, which was impressive considering he was such a stubborn and singleminded individual! One thing I don't understand is why Mayweather wasn't piloting the Shuttlepod! He's supposed to be a great pilot and yet Reed fills the role. It could be put down to the fact that T'Pol was leading and with Zobral along there wasn't room for both Tactical Officer and pilot, but I don't recall seeing Travis at all (just as Phlox also goes unseen), which is a missing piece in this case as Travis should always be the go-to guy when it comes to tricky flying, even if Reed was necessary for a potential combat situation.
I quite like the fact that the episode doesn't require any B-plots, the closest they get being the few scenes with T'Pol in command on the Enterprise. It's not always necessary to have a secondary layer of story to cut to, although perhaps that's what was happening: Mayweather had caught some alien disease and Dr. Phlox was treating him, but we just never saw it! That would have made some sense, and they could have simply mentioned this was happening. At least Hoshi had a meaningful point to make when she asks T'Pol why the Vulcans chose Bozeman, Montana as the sight of first contact with the people of Earth. It's a good question, even if the answer is obvious: because it was the home town of film co-writer Brannon Braga, of course! Okay, so that's the real-world production reason, but T'Pol's answer is that this was where the first warp flight originated, but as Hoshi says, it could have been seen as a slight on the other world nations of the time. This is something that's never been explored, mainly because you'd have to tie down too much canon which is something the writers never liked to do in favour of leaving as much open for future writers as possible (even if the current crop tend to throw canon back in the faces of their forebears as if they can't be bothered with all that 'constraint'!). We don't really know what countries existed at the end of World War III and its best to leave that all a mystery, though if Trek goes on for about another thirty years (if it hasn't been run into the ground by the current administration's inability to make it properly!), canon will catch up with real life!
The point of this conversation is to show that Starfleet needs its own rules on how to operate in the unknown galaxy at large - you'd think they'd have already come up with some basic forms before sending out the Enterprise and they must have had other starships before it, even if they weren't as fast (the Franklin, for example, that little knot of canon conundrum from 'Star Trek Beyond' that did as much harm as good in adding texture to early Starfleet space exploration!), so you'd think some of these issues would have cropped up before. But be that as it may, this is another episode that hints at the coming of the Prime Directive, General Order One. I don't think it ever actually came into being during 'Enterprise' (that could have been one of the overarching themes of the series, along with the Temporal Cold War and the Founding of the Federation, if only the series had lasted a few more years), but Archer is certainly in agreement with T'Pol at the end when they discuss non-interference in alien wars, even if he makes the addendum that Zobral's cause seemed just. So it seems that although the principle of not getting involved was right in this case, he wasn't quite ready to ignore his own sense of justice given the right circumstances. In this case he was manipulated into a position where he could have had a decisive effect on the course of that planet's society, but it was in false expectations of his expertise and he wasn't going to drop his mission of exploration to fight someone else's war, no matter how just, in the same way he wasn't going to dedicate the next few years to finding a cure for the dominant race on Valakis in 'Dear Doctor.'
Although the Prime Directive, diplomacy and the sensitivities of galactic relations are only on the fringe of the episode in preference for a tale of survival (which reminded me of O'Brien and Bashir in 'Armageddon Game' - both on the run from authorities that want them dead, both hole up in a bunker, both feature one of them dying…), which the series tended to prefer, I'm glad that these issues are present. They could have done with being a little more present, perhaps cut to more discussion instead of so much time of Archer trying to keep Trip's mind active (I found it quite funny when he asks him to break down the warp engine and Trip, obsessed with his hunger, starts talking about the different parts of a chicken!), especially as it would have been enlightening to hear more about what the Vulcan High Command sets out as its own rules on dealing with planetary conflict, which T'Pol briefly mentions when she says Archer will have to create his own (governments and not starship Captains need to make the decision, she thinks). But even though the action is more important to the series than the ideas, it is presented with such high production values that it remains an attractive and engaging story with both the glaring light of day and the exciting exit from the blasted camp at night, fire all about as Archer and Trip make their escape into the desert. I don't think we'd seen the NX-01 desert gear before, but that looked really good, and we get another first for Trek: Archer says he found a new use for the stun setting of his Phase Pistol (lighting a fire), though sadly we never saw it happen.
Talking of Phasers, we see the Shuttlepod fire bolts instead of beams in the rescue mission, which always annoys me, more because although I know they can do both, in Trek made after this series (or during - 'Nemesis' did it, too), they always use bolts and not beams, and in the same way as I want my Vulcans to be measured and unemotional, this is another of my major bugbears of Trek made in the 21st Century! At least during 'Enterprise' they still mostly had beams, and they also had thought: the reason Archer knows where to go when they're in the desert is because he kept his survival training in mind - always have an awareness of your surroundings when flying into a location. He was a lot more careful and conscientious than Trip who never even thought about it and would have died if not for his Captain being there to guide him! It shows the difference between careful thought and planning as opposed to lazily just winging it which is how Starfleet officers are far too often portrayed in modern Trek. It's a real shame because the qualities of the characters are one of the great draws when so much recent Trek is merely superficial and doesn't give sufficient thought to such things, preferring magical fantasy solutions and contrivances instead of the less 'cool,' but more realistic nuts and bolts of training and improvement through both mental and physical training (leaving aside Ensign Tilly's jogging!). Another thing I like is the crew back on the ship running through their options for saving their crew-mates: they can't use the Transporter because they can't localise the bio-signs, they can't send a shuttle in the midst of an assault…
These things need to be addressed and not just left to imagination, and it is that attention to detail and the other positives I mentioned that once again remind why Trek is so good in the face of current Trek making me lose heart in the franchise's future. I always liked this episode - it has good music, good boy's own adventure, good location shooting, a good guest star and a good moral issue, all tidily jammed into the space of a single episode, touching upon events that had happened earlier and subtly hinting at things still to come in the last two episodes of what has been a strong first season that could claim to be the strongest Trek ever made. It doesn't matter to me that the aliens are very under-designed, almost not designed at all, you might say, with only a chin tattoo to mark them out as different. But the amount of difference between humans and aliens wasn't really that important and not every race they encounter has to be an elaborate forehead or head-piece. The important thing was creating a culture, something else that seems to be missing from modern Trek which isn't much concerned with the kind of details Trek always used to be concerned with. Exploring a culture, even for the space of one episode, and a race we'd never see again, adds richness and depth to the Trek landscape. If they'd concentrated on an elaborate alien design, but left out the cultural details then it would have come across as generic sci-fi, which is what Trek has become with 'DSC,' and I'm so thankful that I had this to go back to and examine, to remind myself why Trek worked in the past, and reassure me that perhaps one day we'll see the like again.
Points of interest: you can see lines down the dunes that appear to be tracks of some kind - since we only saw hover ships such as Zobral's shuttle this must be a production gaffe. Either that or the Torothans enjoy cycling or biking across the desert! I thought I recognised the chair of Chancellor Trelit, and according to Memory Alpha it was one of the Briefing Room chairs from 'Voyager'! Speaking of, Lt. Ayala himself, Tarik Ergin, was also apparently one of the Geskana players, which is fun to realise. It was a small guest cast (credited, anyway, Ergin was one of the uncredited), but Trelit actor Charles Dennis had also been Sunad in 'TNG' episode 'Transfigurations.'
***
Unending
DVD, Stargate SG-1 S10 (Unending)
Before I watched the episode I did wonder how they would conclude the series, a series that had entered the record books for longest-running single sci-fi production (held until 'Smallville' equalled its ten seasons a matter of four or five years later), and as I thought about it, it came to me: they had to go out with the team heading off on one more mission through the Stargate, because there was no way you could wrap up ten years of an ongoing adventure, no, a lifestyle for these characters, in the space of one single episode. Even if that episode had been a feature-length story as some series' have concluded, and they weren't going to get that. So I was very pleased that my 'ideal' came to fruition, and I was also pleased that Teal'c did not die as I was worried he might, since, as I've written before, all the other characters (bar the new ones), showed up on 'Stargate Universe,' even Jack O'Neill, so I thought they might have killed him off. There's still time - two more feature-length episodes, otherwise known as spinoff films, but that's for another day: today I focus only on the series finale.
Other than the main cast going through the 'gate at the end I had no preconceived ideas of what this episode could be about! Would they go all out and bring in the big faces from 'SG-1' past - the O'Neills, the Bra'tacs, the Dr. Lees, the Silers, the Hammonds, and anyone else I've forgotten, to remind us of the series' long and storied history of great characters? Or would it be some big 'Star Wars' finale, all battle scenes and last-minute attempts to save the galaxy from… well, from what? The Goa'uld, the Trust, The Ori… none of them were really a threat any more, were they? I thought The Ori had been wiped out and the others were small fry in comparison. It's not like they had Apophis to deal with, an ongoing personal bad guy that had been a thorn in their side from the beginning. Turns out I was wrong on all counts: they didn't waste a characterful series on some big battle (though they managed to get in some of that, too), and special effects at the expense of the heart of the series. And The Ori were still a threat. I don't know, maybe the story direction was chosen from the needs of the budget - they may not have been able to afford a ton of visual effects. If that's so then it's another example of creativity thriving on constraint, because this is the best episode of the season, even (just about), topping the series celebration that was '200.'
They chose to do a character piece. Strand the five main cast members together on a ship and then show them there across decades. It was a classic sci-fi tale, and I certainly hadn't expected something so classic. It had some elements I'd seen before, what doesn't? The super-duper new technology the Asgard donate as their final act of legacy before they commit mass suicide, was a little like the 'Voyager' finale in which the ship gets super-duper new tech from the future in which to survive an implacable enemy. There were also shades of the first episode proper of the 'modern' 'Battlestar Galactica' ('33'), in which the ship has to keep jumping away because every thirty-three minutes the implacable enemy appears and starts firing. It's also reminiscent of stories 'SG-1' has done, with characters trapped and growing old, and because of that plot point it really added to the poignancy that was already in the air. It was already in the air for me because this is a series I've enjoyed watching since either the very late 90s or the early 2000s, a series I saw occasionally before getting into with the middle seasons shown on a Sunday afternoon, then eventually starting to buy the season boxed-sets from 2008 onwards, and then watching in earnest for my reviews in 2009 to the present. So it's something that's been with me for many years, on and off, and while it's not my favourite universe with 'Star' in the title, it's a solid, enduring companion that I've gained a lot of enjoyment from.
It was an excellent idea to trap these characters together, away from the bustling busyness of Stargate Command or on a planet somewhere. Stuck on a ship so that you can focus entirely on the characters. Sure, it didn't make a lot of sense to get rid of the entire crew, dropping them off on a planet so they can 'gate home to safety when I'm sure they'd all much rather have remained there. Not the least because Carter could have done with more assistance instead of the whole problem being put in her lap. Not that you'd have any doubt that she could get them out of it if anyone could (bar Rodney McKay - if only he'd been there to help, except for the fact someone would have killed him before too long!), but in the end it's not just she who comes up with the solution. It would have been easier on the group's mental wellbeing if they'd had more people aboard, but then again maybe the food would have run out before they found a way to produce an infinite source. Not that this is one of those times when you want to look too closely at story logic because it's about the team's interactions as they first hopefully go about their business, killing time while Sam works away at solving the problem of a killer beam from an Ori ship about to cut through them so the only thing they could do was freeze time.
As more time passes it leads to decades of living in this forced environment - there was added sympathy with their situation, stuck in one place, living out their lives without the ability to live as they were meant to, because that's how this year has been for most people. And there's the heartbreaking observance that life is too short. I took it not just as that, but as a comment on the series itself - that even if they had decades of episodes it would never be enough, there would never be enough time to do everything they wanted to do with the series and characters. And as viewers we don't want it to end, but that's the natural course of everything. So it had ever more poignancy to it, and the age makeup worked pretty well, the sadness of loss when General Landry is the first to die from old age was palpable, and there's a loss of hope. Yet still Daniel reads as much of the Asgard archive as he can and Sam learns the cello. It was a great way to explore the characters one 'last' time, and of course it made sense that Teal'c would barely age since he's an alien with a much longer lifespan. That's why I felt this was heading towards his sacrifice to save the others and a relief when it didn't. I'm not sure about the mass suicide of the Asgard no matter how important it was for them not to let their enemies get hold of their technology, even if they were dying as a race, but it was a good setup for the story and lovely to have Thor back again, once again voiced by Michael Shanks (which they have fun with when Vala asks how you tell them apart and he says it's the voice!).
I don't know what all this amazingly advanced new tech will mean for the 'Stargate' universe, whether it impacted upon 'Stargate Atlantis' (I'll soon find out as Season 3 is my next stop), whether The Ori will be dealt with in the spinoff films, 'The Ark of Truth' or 'Continuum' (I'll watch those after 'Atlantis' so I've got some more 'SG-1' to anticipate), and whether we'll be seeing any of these people in the spinoff series' (I already know Carter and Jackson both show up in 'Universe,' along with O'Neill). But it makes sense that the series ended with a particularly strong and affecting sci-fi story and that there's just another planet for them to go off to at the end, as if it continues unending in our imagination, because unlike some series' ('DS9' and 'Voyager,' for example), which had very specific end points, this one is more like 'TNG' where it could go on however they saw fit. And who knows, with the rise of streaming service exclusives, maybe we'll see another 'Stargate' spinoff again some day featuring some of these characters. It's a good way to end without killing anyone off because as a viewer you can go on believing in the lives these people have and that they're still out there carrying out missions and saving the galaxy, and that's about as good an ending you could get.
***
Before I watched the episode I did wonder how they would conclude the series, a series that had entered the record books for longest-running single sci-fi production (held until 'Smallville' equalled its ten seasons a matter of four or five years later), and as I thought about it, it came to me: they had to go out with the team heading off on one more mission through the Stargate, because there was no way you could wrap up ten years of an ongoing adventure, no, a lifestyle for these characters, in the space of one single episode. Even if that episode had been a feature-length story as some series' have concluded, and they weren't going to get that. So I was very pleased that my 'ideal' came to fruition, and I was also pleased that Teal'c did not die as I was worried he might, since, as I've written before, all the other characters (bar the new ones), showed up on 'Stargate Universe,' even Jack O'Neill, so I thought they might have killed him off. There's still time - two more feature-length episodes, otherwise known as spinoff films, but that's for another day: today I focus only on the series finale.
Other than the main cast going through the 'gate at the end I had no preconceived ideas of what this episode could be about! Would they go all out and bring in the big faces from 'SG-1' past - the O'Neills, the Bra'tacs, the Dr. Lees, the Silers, the Hammonds, and anyone else I've forgotten, to remind us of the series' long and storied history of great characters? Or would it be some big 'Star Wars' finale, all battle scenes and last-minute attempts to save the galaxy from… well, from what? The Goa'uld, the Trust, The Ori… none of them were really a threat any more, were they? I thought The Ori had been wiped out and the others were small fry in comparison. It's not like they had Apophis to deal with, an ongoing personal bad guy that had been a thorn in their side from the beginning. Turns out I was wrong on all counts: they didn't waste a characterful series on some big battle (though they managed to get in some of that, too), and special effects at the expense of the heart of the series. And The Ori were still a threat. I don't know, maybe the story direction was chosen from the needs of the budget - they may not have been able to afford a ton of visual effects. If that's so then it's another example of creativity thriving on constraint, because this is the best episode of the season, even (just about), topping the series celebration that was '200.'
They chose to do a character piece. Strand the five main cast members together on a ship and then show them there across decades. It was a classic sci-fi tale, and I certainly hadn't expected something so classic. It had some elements I'd seen before, what doesn't? The super-duper new technology the Asgard donate as their final act of legacy before they commit mass suicide, was a little like the 'Voyager' finale in which the ship gets super-duper new tech from the future in which to survive an implacable enemy. There were also shades of the first episode proper of the 'modern' 'Battlestar Galactica' ('33'), in which the ship has to keep jumping away because every thirty-three minutes the implacable enemy appears and starts firing. It's also reminiscent of stories 'SG-1' has done, with characters trapped and growing old, and because of that plot point it really added to the poignancy that was already in the air. It was already in the air for me because this is a series I've enjoyed watching since either the very late 90s or the early 2000s, a series I saw occasionally before getting into with the middle seasons shown on a Sunday afternoon, then eventually starting to buy the season boxed-sets from 2008 onwards, and then watching in earnest for my reviews in 2009 to the present. So it's something that's been with me for many years, on and off, and while it's not my favourite universe with 'Star' in the title, it's a solid, enduring companion that I've gained a lot of enjoyment from.
It was an excellent idea to trap these characters together, away from the bustling busyness of Stargate Command or on a planet somewhere. Stuck on a ship so that you can focus entirely on the characters. Sure, it didn't make a lot of sense to get rid of the entire crew, dropping them off on a planet so they can 'gate home to safety when I'm sure they'd all much rather have remained there. Not the least because Carter could have done with more assistance instead of the whole problem being put in her lap. Not that you'd have any doubt that she could get them out of it if anyone could (bar Rodney McKay - if only he'd been there to help, except for the fact someone would have killed him before too long!), but in the end it's not just she who comes up with the solution. It would have been easier on the group's mental wellbeing if they'd had more people aboard, but then again maybe the food would have run out before they found a way to produce an infinite source. Not that this is one of those times when you want to look too closely at story logic because it's about the team's interactions as they first hopefully go about their business, killing time while Sam works away at solving the problem of a killer beam from an Ori ship about to cut through them so the only thing they could do was freeze time.
As more time passes it leads to decades of living in this forced environment - there was added sympathy with their situation, stuck in one place, living out their lives without the ability to live as they were meant to, because that's how this year has been for most people. And there's the heartbreaking observance that life is too short. I took it not just as that, but as a comment on the series itself - that even if they had decades of episodes it would never be enough, there would never be enough time to do everything they wanted to do with the series and characters. And as viewers we don't want it to end, but that's the natural course of everything. So it had ever more poignancy to it, and the age makeup worked pretty well, the sadness of loss when General Landry is the first to die from old age was palpable, and there's a loss of hope. Yet still Daniel reads as much of the Asgard archive as he can and Sam learns the cello. It was a great way to explore the characters one 'last' time, and of course it made sense that Teal'c would barely age since he's an alien with a much longer lifespan. That's why I felt this was heading towards his sacrifice to save the others and a relief when it didn't. I'm not sure about the mass suicide of the Asgard no matter how important it was for them not to let their enemies get hold of their technology, even if they were dying as a race, but it was a good setup for the story and lovely to have Thor back again, once again voiced by Michael Shanks (which they have fun with when Vala asks how you tell them apart and he says it's the voice!).
I don't know what all this amazingly advanced new tech will mean for the 'Stargate' universe, whether it impacted upon 'Stargate Atlantis' (I'll soon find out as Season 3 is my next stop), whether The Ori will be dealt with in the spinoff films, 'The Ark of Truth' or 'Continuum' (I'll watch those after 'Atlantis' so I've got some more 'SG-1' to anticipate), and whether we'll be seeing any of these people in the spinoff series' (I already know Carter and Jackson both show up in 'Universe,' along with O'Neill). But it makes sense that the series ended with a particularly strong and affecting sci-fi story and that there's just another planet for them to go off to at the end, as if it continues unending in our imagination, because unlike some series' ('DS9' and 'Voyager,' for example), which had very specific end points, this one is more like 'TNG' where it could go on however they saw fit. And who knows, with the rise of streaming service exclusives, maybe we'll see another 'Stargate' spinoff again some day featuring some of these characters. It's a good way to end without killing anyone off because as a viewer you can go on believing in the lives these people have and that they're still out there carrying out missions and saving the galaxy, and that's about as good an ending you could get.
***
Calypso
DVD, Short Treks (Calypso)
Extremely 'Dr. Who,' cringe-inducingly so, and that's such a shame. It's like the makers of modern Trek looked at what was popular in sci-fi in the last decade or so and thought, 'right, let's make it like that,' and I really don't like modern 'Who.' This one was entirely separate from 'DSC' continuity, which at least meant we didn't have to endure Ensign Tilly, and Burnham wasn't there to save the galaxy from itself. That's one good thing about this little story: as inconsequential and apparently pointless as it is, it does at least focus on the personal, rather than the galactic, scale. It's all about this guy called Craft, it's set almost a thousand years in the future, and I assume it's going to connect somehow to 'DSC' Season 3, since I think this guy is going to be in it. It was the 'Short Trek' that had the most positive feedback that I could see back when it came out between Seasons 1 and 2 of 'DSC,' and I was especially curious to see it due to it essentially being 'Celebrated Sci-Fi Author' Michael Chabon's audition for the post of show-runnner on 'Star Trek: Picard.' Whether that's genuinely the case or merely how it seemed, I don't know, he may have already been hired for the bigger job, but I'm sure if this hadn't gone down favourably they'd have found someone else.
I don't know how to extrapolate this tiny sliver of his work into how well 'Picard' will work (still having not seen that series since the DVD has yet to be released), but at least it wasn't plain bad like the first 'Short Trek' ('Runaway'), and its obnoxious combination of Tilly and her alien friend. Greedily, CBS refused to include this and the Mudd episodes on the 'DSC' Season 2 set, which would have made it a complete package, instead leaving it to 'Runaway' and 'The Brightest Star' to introduce DVD viewers to the… well, what can you call it? It's hardly a series, with a handful of sub-twenty minute episodes, but you can't really call it a miniseries either. A sub-series might be better as it can't be called the seventh Trek show (excluding 'Star Trek: The Animated Series,' though with the addition of new, modern animations maybe that has to be considered in the lineage now, even though it's not canon - things are so messed up now from the neat, tidy way everything used to be!). I wasn't sold on either of the previous episodes in this compilation sub-series, but they did have the advantage of being directly connected set-up for Season 2. I suppose this one gave us the concept of the USS Discovery's fate nine hundred and thirty years into the 23rd Century's future, which showed what would eventually happen to the canon-breaking (or at least canon-confusing), spore drive.
That's about the only thing we do get on what this means for wider 'DSC,' as it's a two-hander between a soldier of this future time and the AI of Discovery who rescues him, calling herself Zora. I don't know why we didn't get the usual computer voice, as that would have been a great twist for the voice artist who performs it to be able to speak normally instead of the more artificial cadence she normally has to have. Maybe they felt Julianne Grossman wasn't a good enough actress and only use her because of her computer-like vocal qualities, I don't know (I still wish the Shenzhou computer voice, Tasia Valenza, who performed that role across four episodes in the first season and was a 'TNG' guest star, could have been the fleet-wide standard!), and certainly the placing of the story suggests that anything that doesn't match up with 'DSC'-established continuity can be explained away by the passage of time and the computer tinkering with itself. At the same time we've seen that 'DSC' writers don't always even keep to their own established canon (let alone the deep history of Trek, one of the reasons it so often pushes me away), episode to episode, and there may be a case for that here, too…
Although the Discovery heads into this time period at the end of Season 2, the computer intelligence seen here implies it's been waiting at this location for the almost-one thousand years that it was abandoned. Now that could be a flaw in the computer's memory rather than the writers' inability to keep track of what they've previously said, or perhaps the crew programmed it to think it had been left for that long for some reason we don't know about. There are plenty of questions and solutions around that side of it. The same can be said for where all these door 'eyes' came from that appear to be above each opening on the ship so it can watch its guest and gives him a direction to talk to instead of just speaking to air. We've seen in Season 2 that the ship has countless tiny 'Star Wars' robot drones (ugh!), of various description so it would be easy for the ship to order them to construct such devices, which I don't remember ever seeing before in the series. The fact that it has Replicators that can instantly create uniforms, even though they didn't have that kind of technology in the time of 'TOS' (where they had a Quartermaster!), had already been established in Season 1 of 'DSC,' one of many irritating canon-breaks where you could see they so wanted this to have technology that was beyond even the 24th Century, even though they were 'stuck with' the 23rd Century setting. But I've gone on about the aesthetics and the failure of the exploration of this era many times in my reviews.
One outlandish tech that caused such controversy in Season 1 (so much so that they had Pike say he dislikes it, which is why it doesn't get used on the Enterprise), were the holograms, and actually they get used quite nicely here. Again, if there hadn't been any holo-controversy in the first place I wouldn't be complaining about it in this episode because the ship could have invented it if it had indeed been alone for a millennium, or other alien ships may have come into contact bringing such modern tech with them. So I didn't mind it so much in this setting and it was quite clever to see what I assume was an actual old film turned into a holographic, three-dimensional version of itself. Was that Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn? I wasn't sure and I didn't recognise the film, but that was good use of effects. I wasn't so keen on the actual Craft and Zora dance, not being invested in the characters after a mere few minutes, especially as it was typically melodramatic in the overly emotional tone of the characters, so out of kilter with Trek's rationality and sense of self control in general (as was!). Modern Trek is made for an entirely different audience than it was twenty or more years ago, one that embraces showing emotion all the time, having a dystopian future and generally not being professional, controlled and contained.
This wasn't going to change that, and is full of unearned sentimentality, but at the same time it's less unlikeable because these are two characters we don't know and it's a different setting. What I would say is that it doesn't bode well for 'DSC's extrapolation of 33rd Century humanity if they're like Craft, who is exactly the same as the 23rd Century characters, and whom I suspect will be exactly the same in the 24th Century, too - the big deal about Alex Kurtzman's 'menu' of Trek series' that he's bringing to fruition is that each is different in tone and style, possibly to make up for the fact that one Trek series used to be able to have a menu of different tones and styles within each season: they were called episodes! But because they 'can't' do episodic any more (except they apparently will be with the Pike and Spock spinoff, 'Strange New Worlds'), and each season has to be one, galactic story, this is the only option. And yet, beginning with 'DSC' (can't comment on 'Picard' or 'Lower Decks' as yet, both in the 24th Century), they seemed to go out of their way to make the era indistinguishable from any other - they were in the Kirk era, yet they wanted the tech of the Picard era, and not content with that, everything had to look more advanced even than that, so let's say the 25th Century-era as well!
Of course the people are all just like contemporary humans today rather than the stylised, more restrained versions or hierarchical militaristic types we saw in previous Trek eras. One of the great things about 'TNG' was that not only did it try to be different from 'TOS' by its setting, it also made the people different, and that continued through 'DS9' and 'Voyager.' Then they made 'Enterprise' in the 22nd Century just so they could have them be a bit more naturalistic and similar to 'people of today.' 'DSC' has continued that, but into another era that we already knew the look and feel of, but they've made all eras the same, losing Trek its impression of a realistic future history. When everything is the same and the limits are limitless then who cares when it's set? It doesn't matter, and then the characters don't matter and the situations they're in don't matter, and the whole construct falls apart. With this episode it looks like the 33rd Century is going to be treated just the same, and it makes me wonder: why bother? I should get back to 'Calypso,' however, as slight a tale as it is, and avoid the diversionary trips into raging against the lack of good leadership and sense that encompasses modern Trek. Perhaps there was no other way to have more Trek than this, but if so I'd have been happier without it, still dreaming about what it might have been like if Trek had come back…
At least with 'Short Treks' we get something the other series' refuse to do: just a simple little thing that helps to connect it to the Trek style of fifty years: showing the episode title! It's only a small detail, but a meaningful one to me. Although the episode is directed by an 'old hand' of 'DSC' it is very over-directed. I can't remember if this guy always spun the camera around like it was on a string, and was really into fancy moves and all that rather than concentrating on telling the story, but that's the approach he takes here. In one sense it can be forgiven because he's operating largely with one character on familiar sets, so there really isn't much story to grab hold of and maybe he felt it was necessary to stop viewers from being bored because younger ones can't cope unless there's visual tricks all the time? But Trek has done many good stories where one character is stuck in one location, ship or station - I think of 'Remember Me,' multiple episodes of 'DS9' where they had people wandering around the darkened Cardassian monstrosity, and the same with 'Voyager' ('Macrocosm' springs to mind). Even 'Enterprise' did it with 'Vanishing Point' and they were often an atypical series not being able to do the usual raft of Holodeck and Transporter malfunction episodes. Saying that, even 'TOS' had its episodes in that vein.
My point is, it is a Trek staple, and probably a staple of the genre, too. I'm not concerned that they weren't able to come up with something more engaging because I'm sure to a lot of people this was beautiful and touching. It's just that I don't find it to be so, because of the emotional manipulation to cover the inabilities of writers to come up with something worthwhile. Nothing against Chabon, but like the setting not suggesting 'DSC' Season 3 is going to be any more of an improvement on the failed Seasons 1 and 2, I don't see anything that makes me think he would be the ideal man to bring Jean-Luc Picard and the complex world of the end of the 24th Century back to life - especially as it was seemingly just a stepping stone for him to get his own creative endeavours made, when what we needed was someone like Manny Coto who had seen how 'Enterprise' had been handled, had come in humbly, but with aspirations to make it great, and did all in his power to do so. Actually, talking of which, is Mr. Coto available?
I would rank 'Calypso' just below 'The Brightest Star' since for all that episode's inconsistencies (why is Georgiou from years in the past wearing a 'modern' 'DSC' uniform?), it was at least part of the season, and while 'Short Treks' have the advantage of not needing to connect to anything, as an experimental ideas-based media, they also need to have a story that is more than paper-thin. I thought the angel tattoo on Craft's back might be connected to the Red Angel in some way, but then it's revealed it's actually a 'Cyclops Owl' from some planet (riiiiiiight, a Cyclops Owl, okay), so Mrs. Burnham didn't inspire him to get it after all. Probably for the best. I bought the DVD set of 'Short Treks' out of curiosity and a desire to support physical media, even though I suspected I was going to like the episodes as much as I had done the first two. For the sake of completeness they need to be watched, but I'm not going to go easy on them just because they're small.
**
Extremely 'Dr. Who,' cringe-inducingly so, and that's such a shame. It's like the makers of modern Trek looked at what was popular in sci-fi in the last decade or so and thought, 'right, let's make it like that,' and I really don't like modern 'Who.' This one was entirely separate from 'DSC' continuity, which at least meant we didn't have to endure Ensign Tilly, and Burnham wasn't there to save the galaxy from itself. That's one good thing about this little story: as inconsequential and apparently pointless as it is, it does at least focus on the personal, rather than the galactic, scale. It's all about this guy called Craft, it's set almost a thousand years in the future, and I assume it's going to connect somehow to 'DSC' Season 3, since I think this guy is going to be in it. It was the 'Short Trek' that had the most positive feedback that I could see back when it came out between Seasons 1 and 2 of 'DSC,' and I was especially curious to see it due to it essentially being 'Celebrated Sci-Fi Author' Michael Chabon's audition for the post of show-runnner on 'Star Trek: Picard.' Whether that's genuinely the case or merely how it seemed, I don't know, he may have already been hired for the bigger job, but I'm sure if this hadn't gone down favourably they'd have found someone else.
I don't know how to extrapolate this tiny sliver of his work into how well 'Picard' will work (still having not seen that series since the DVD has yet to be released), but at least it wasn't plain bad like the first 'Short Trek' ('Runaway'), and its obnoxious combination of Tilly and her alien friend. Greedily, CBS refused to include this and the Mudd episodes on the 'DSC' Season 2 set, which would have made it a complete package, instead leaving it to 'Runaway' and 'The Brightest Star' to introduce DVD viewers to the… well, what can you call it? It's hardly a series, with a handful of sub-twenty minute episodes, but you can't really call it a miniseries either. A sub-series might be better as it can't be called the seventh Trek show (excluding 'Star Trek: The Animated Series,' though with the addition of new, modern animations maybe that has to be considered in the lineage now, even though it's not canon - things are so messed up now from the neat, tidy way everything used to be!). I wasn't sold on either of the previous episodes in this compilation sub-series, but they did have the advantage of being directly connected set-up for Season 2. I suppose this one gave us the concept of the USS Discovery's fate nine hundred and thirty years into the 23rd Century's future, which showed what would eventually happen to the canon-breaking (or at least canon-confusing), spore drive.
That's about the only thing we do get on what this means for wider 'DSC,' as it's a two-hander between a soldier of this future time and the AI of Discovery who rescues him, calling herself Zora. I don't know why we didn't get the usual computer voice, as that would have been a great twist for the voice artist who performs it to be able to speak normally instead of the more artificial cadence she normally has to have. Maybe they felt Julianne Grossman wasn't a good enough actress and only use her because of her computer-like vocal qualities, I don't know (I still wish the Shenzhou computer voice, Tasia Valenza, who performed that role across four episodes in the first season and was a 'TNG' guest star, could have been the fleet-wide standard!), and certainly the placing of the story suggests that anything that doesn't match up with 'DSC'-established continuity can be explained away by the passage of time and the computer tinkering with itself. At the same time we've seen that 'DSC' writers don't always even keep to their own established canon (let alone the deep history of Trek, one of the reasons it so often pushes me away), episode to episode, and there may be a case for that here, too…
Although the Discovery heads into this time period at the end of Season 2, the computer intelligence seen here implies it's been waiting at this location for the almost-one thousand years that it was abandoned. Now that could be a flaw in the computer's memory rather than the writers' inability to keep track of what they've previously said, or perhaps the crew programmed it to think it had been left for that long for some reason we don't know about. There are plenty of questions and solutions around that side of it. The same can be said for where all these door 'eyes' came from that appear to be above each opening on the ship so it can watch its guest and gives him a direction to talk to instead of just speaking to air. We've seen in Season 2 that the ship has countless tiny 'Star Wars' robot drones (ugh!), of various description so it would be easy for the ship to order them to construct such devices, which I don't remember ever seeing before in the series. The fact that it has Replicators that can instantly create uniforms, even though they didn't have that kind of technology in the time of 'TOS' (where they had a Quartermaster!), had already been established in Season 1 of 'DSC,' one of many irritating canon-breaks where you could see they so wanted this to have technology that was beyond even the 24th Century, even though they were 'stuck with' the 23rd Century setting. But I've gone on about the aesthetics and the failure of the exploration of this era many times in my reviews.
One outlandish tech that caused such controversy in Season 1 (so much so that they had Pike say he dislikes it, which is why it doesn't get used on the Enterprise), were the holograms, and actually they get used quite nicely here. Again, if there hadn't been any holo-controversy in the first place I wouldn't be complaining about it in this episode because the ship could have invented it if it had indeed been alone for a millennium, or other alien ships may have come into contact bringing such modern tech with them. So I didn't mind it so much in this setting and it was quite clever to see what I assume was an actual old film turned into a holographic, three-dimensional version of itself. Was that Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn? I wasn't sure and I didn't recognise the film, but that was good use of effects. I wasn't so keen on the actual Craft and Zora dance, not being invested in the characters after a mere few minutes, especially as it was typically melodramatic in the overly emotional tone of the characters, so out of kilter with Trek's rationality and sense of self control in general (as was!). Modern Trek is made for an entirely different audience than it was twenty or more years ago, one that embraces showing emotion all the time, having a dystopian future and generally not being professional, controlled and contained.
This wasn't going to change that, and is full of unearned sentimentality, but at the same time it's less unlikeable because these are two characters we don't know and it's a different setting. What I would say is that it doesn't bode well for 'DSC's extrapolation of 33rd Century humanity if they're like Craft, who is exactly the same as the 23rd Century characters, and whom I suspect will be exactly the same in the 24th Century, too - the big deal about Alex Kurtzman's 'menu' of Trek series' that he's bringing to fruition is that each is different in tone and style, possibly to make up for the fact that one Trek series used to be able to have a menu of different tones and styles within each season: they were called episodes! But because they 'can't' do episodic any more (except they apparently will be with the Pike and Spock spinoff, 'Strange New Worlds'), and each season has to be one, galactic story, this is the only option. And yet, beginning with 'DSC' (can't comment on 'Picard' or 'Lower Decks' as yet, both in the 24th Century), they seemed to go out of their way to make the era indistinguishable from any other - they were in the Kirk era, yet they wanted the tech of the Picard era, and not content with that, everything had to look more advanced even than that, so let's say the 25th Century-era as well!
Of course the people are all just like contemporary humans today rather than the stylised, more restrained versions or hierarchical militaristic types we saw in previous Trek eras. One of the great things about 'TNG' was that not only did it try to be different from 'TOS' by its setting, it also made the people different, and that continued through 'DS9' and 'Voyager.' Then they made 'Enterprise' in the 22nd Century just so they could have them be a bit more naturalistic and similar to 'people of today.' 'DSC' has continued that, but into another era that we already knew the look and feel of, but they've made all eras the same, losing Trek its impression of a realistic future history. When everything is the same and the limits are limitless then who cares when it's set? It doesn't matter, and then the characters don't matter and the situations they're in don't matter, and the whole construct falls apart. With this episode it looks like the 33rd Century is going to be treated just the same, and it makes me wonder: why bother? I should get back to 'Calypso,' however, as slight a tale as it is, and avoid the diversionary trips into raging against the lack of good leadership and sense that encompasses modern Trek. Perhaps there was no other way to have more Trek than this, but if so I'd have been happier without it, still dreaming about what it might have been like if Trek had come back…
At least with 'Short Treks' we get something the other series' refuse to do: just a simple little thing that helps to connect it to the Trek style of fifty years: showing the episode title! It's only a small detail, but a meaningful one to me. Although the episode is directed by an 'old hand' of 'DSC' it is very over-directed. I can't remember if this guy always spun the camera around like it was on a string, and was really into fancy moves and all that rather than concentrating on telling the story, but that's the approach he takes here. In one sense it can be forgiven because he's operating largely with one character on familiar sets, so there really isn't much story to grab hold of and maybe he felt it was necessary to stop viewers from being bored because younger ones can't cope unless there's visual tricks all the time? But Trek has done many good stories where one character is stuck in one location, ship or station - I think of 'Remember Me,' multiple episodes of 'DS9' where they had people wandering around the darkened Cardassian monstrosity, and the same with 'Voyager' ('Macrocosm' springs to mind). Even 'Enterprise' did it with 'Vanishing Point' and they were often an atypical series not being able to do the usual raft of Holodeck and Transporter malfunction episodes. Saying that, even 'TOS' had its episodes in that vein.
My point is, it is a Trek staple, and probably a staple of the genre, too. I'm not concerned that they weren't able to come up with something more engaging because I'm sure to a lot of people this was beautiful and touching. It's just that I don't find it to be so, because of the emotional manipulation to cover the inabilities of writers to come up with something worthwhile. Nothing against Chabon, but like the setting not suggesting 'DSC' Season 3 is going to be any more of an improvement on the failed Seasons 1 and 2, I don't see anything that makes me think he would be the ideal man to bring Jean-Luc Picard and the complex world of the end of the 24th Century back to life - especially as it was seemingly just a stepping stone for him to get his own creative endeavours made, when what we needed was someone like Manny Coto who had seen how 'Enterprise' had been handled, had come in humbly, but with aspirations to make it great, and did all in his power to do so. Actually, talking of which, is Mr. Coto available?
I would rank 'Calypso' just below 'The Brightest Star' since for all that episode's inconsistencies (why is Georgiou from years in the past wearing a 'modern' 'DSC' uniform?), it was at least part of the season, and while 'Short Treks' have the advantage of not needing to connect to anything, as an experimental ideas-based media, they also need to have a story that is more than paper-thin. I thought the angel tattoo on Craft's back might be connected to the Red Angel in some way, but then it's revealed it's actually a 'Cyclops Owl' from some planet (riiiiiiight, a Cyclops Owl, okay), so Mrs. Burnham didn't inspire him to get it after all. Probably for the best. I bought the DVD set of 'Short Treks' out of curiosity and a desire to support physical media, even though I suspected I was going to like the episodes as much as I had done the first two. For the sake of completeness they need to be watched, but I'm not going to go easy on them just because they're small.
**
The Terratin Incident
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Terratin Incident)
It begins as a very technical story, but becomes quite fantastical - I imagine children would have been a touch bored by the first half of the episode with all its talky scenes on the ship, but then would have become interested when the crew begins to shrink, whereas the adult mind is more attuned to the discussions early on, then when it becomes a bit silly, makes it a less enticing prospect. At the same time it is somewhat entertaining to see the crew shrink and have to operate the controls with difficulty, but I would say it is one of the weaker stories. It turns out that this lost colony of humans is responsible, as the natural rays of the planet made them so small (no explanation of why they stopped shrinking), that the only way they could be saved was to transform the crew down to their size, although this doesn't make complete sense since Kirk was back to normal size when he first spoke to them on the viewscreen, so they could have simply sent a message, couldn't they?
I liked the idea of another 'Terra' colony (Terra Ten, which became Terratin), in line with 'Enterprise' and its Terra Nova, and there were some interesting 'facts' revealed about the ship itself. I imagine it was details such as these that Roddenberry disliked enough to wish the series to be considered non-canonical. For example we see that they keep sensitive lab animals in Sickbay (also in line with 'Enterprise' and Dr. Phlox' menagerie!), as Kirk wants to know how the radiation, or whatever it was, is affecting them. Then there's the news that Starfleet uniforms are made from the algae-based 'xenylon' (in contravention of 'Discovery' and its full-on replication, used to show off what effects we can do now at the expense of canon, since 'TOS'-era ships aren't supposed to have such tech then), and the Turbolift doors open thanks to an 'electric eye' which registers the presence of someone approaching, perhaps the most problematic reveal! They're set to become too small to make it work. There's even one shot of a member of a Landing Party who's seen to be wearing glasses, when surely all such ocular issues would be ironed out as easily as Sulu's broken leg with the micro-laser.
The best tech revelation comes with the Transporter being said to keep records of those that use it, so Kirk is returned to normal size when he's beamed back up to the ship after a rather foolhardy one-man mission to the planet's surface. The idea of Transporter records and restoration would become a common one in Trek, although it was probably already in mind from 'TOS' when such episodes as 'The Enemy Within' showed that people could be split and joined back together with its use (later to be so used in 'Voyager' when Neelix and Tuvok became Tuvix in the titular episode). Best line goes to Scotty who warns his Captan to be careful where he steps once he's back on the ship, as the crew's still tiny, ant-like in size! James Doohan continues to perform his multiple roles as Scotty and Arex (good views of the Navigator in this one - we see his three feet are more like paws. If only Saru on 'DSC' had been made a… well, whatever species Arex is - it would have been a great touch and they could still have invented all this lore about him since we know nothing about Arex), while also performing the voice of the colony's leader. Nichelle Nichols also gets a small extra role as 'Mess Officer Breel' speaking over the intercom.
The strange mix of technical details and wacky cartoon sci-fi doesn't really sit well. Not to say that it's bad, but they could do much better, as we've seen. Still, the beautiful animation style and shots of the ship and characters continue to make every episode at least watchable, and in this time of un-Trek-like Trek, it's a nice reminder when things made (relative) sense, and there was a devotion to continuity and internal reality that is missing from our modern era.
**
It begins as a very technical story, but becomes quite fantastical - I imagine children would have been a touch bored by the first half of the episode with all its talky scenes on the ship, but then would have become interested when the crew begins to shrink, whereas the adult mind is more attuned to the discussions early on, then when it becomes a bit silly, makes it a less enticing prospect. At the same time it is somewhat entertaining to see the crew shrink and have to operate the controls with difficulty, but I would say it is one of the weaker stories. It turns out that this lost colony of humans is responsible, as the natural rays of the planet made them so small (no explanation of why they stopped shrinking), that the only way they could be saved was to transform the crew down to their size, although this doesn't make complete sense since Kirk was back to normal size when he first spoke to them on the viewscreen, so they could have simply sent a message, couldn't they?
I liked the idea of another 'Terra' colony (Terra Ten, which became Terratin), in line with 'Enterprise' and its Terra Nova, and there were some interesting 'facts' revealed about the ship itself. I imagine it was details such as these that Roddenberry disliked enough to wish the series to be considered non-canonical. For example we see that they keep sensitive lab animals in Sickbay (also in line with 'Enterprise' and Dr. Phlox' menagerie!), as Kirk wants to know how the radiation, or whatever it was, is affecting them. Then there's the news that Starfleet uniforms are made from the algae-based 'xenylon' (in contravention of 'Discovery' and its full-on replication, used to show off what effects we can do now at the expense of canon, since 'TOS'-era ships aren't supposed to have such tech then), and the Turbolift doors open thanks to an 'electric eye' which registers the presence of someone approaching, perhaps the most problematic reveal! They're set to become too small to make it work. There's even one shot of a member of a Landing Party who's seen to be wearing glasses, when surely all such ocular issues would be ironed out as easily as Sulu's broken leg with the micro-laser.
The best tech revelation comes with the Transporter being said to keep records of those that use it, so Kirk is returned to normal size when he's beamed back up to the ship after a rather foolhardy one-man mission to the planet's surface. The idea of Transporter records and restoration would become a common one in Trek, although it was probably already in mind from 'TOS' when such episodes as 'The Enemy Within' showed that people could be split and joined back together with its use (later to be so used in 'Voyager' when Neelix and Tuvok became Tuvix in the titular episode). Best line goes to Scotty who warns his Captan to be careful where he steps once he's back on the ship, as the crew's still tiny, ant-like in size! James Doohan continues to perform his multiple roles as Scotty and Arex (good views of the Navigator in this one - we see his three feet are more like paws. If only Saru on 'DSC' had been made a… well, whatever species Arex is - it would have been a great touch and they could still have invented all this lore about him since we know nothing about Arex), while also performing the voice of the colony's leader. Nichelle Nichols also gets a small extra role as 'Mess Officer Breel' speaking over the intercom.
The strange mix of technical details and wacky cartoon sci-fi doesn't really sit well. Not to say that it's bad, but they could do much better, as we've seen. Still, the beautiful animation style and shots of the ship and characters continue to make every episode at least watchable, and in this time of un-Trek-like Trek, it's a nice reminder when things made (relative) sense, and there was a devotion to continuity and internal reality that is missing from our modern era.
**
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