Oasis (2)

DVD, Enterprise S1 (Oasis) (2)

Remake! If you were going to remake a Trek story, 'Shadowplay' wouldn't be one of the first to come to mind. But perhaps they were right to do it - it's not a bad episode, in fact it's pretty good, but the important thing is it's not one of the Greats, so why not have another stab at it with different characters? You don't want to try and remake 'The Visitor' or 'The City On The Edge of Forever' or 'The Inner Light,' because, chances are, you'll only succeed in creating an inferior facsimile of the original and best, but some ideas are worth exploring again, and if 'Shadowplay' was a good idea then it was also one that could be improved. I've often said that Trek was ideally suited to remake its own episodes: for one thing it has lasted for so long that there can't be many story types that haven't been done before (look at all those telepathic violation plots they've used up!), and Trek is so good at creating characters of specific archetypes that you can do the same plot with different types of character. The same story told with the experienced Captain or First Officer at the centre can be very different with a Hoshi or Harry Kim. Odo is going to react differently than Neelix. Personality, character flaws or advantages, position, rank, experience… They all add up to something slightly different, and in fact I actually like to see a Trek story that is pretty much the same, but with a new angle of approach - witness the many great Holodeck malfunction episodes, or Transporter malfunctions, or, probably other malfunctions, too!

The score for this episode is that not only were they redoing an existing, well-known story (to me, anyway - I'm sure plenty of 'Enterprise' viewers either wouldn't remember 'Shadowplay' or, <gasp> never saw it in the first place! For shame!), they also brought back one of the principal players from the original, namely, Rene Auberjonois. Coming to this episode now, so soon after this wonderful actor died, one of the best contributors to Trek as a whole, on the same level as Leonard Nimoy or Brent Spiner, makes it a slightly sad experience because this was his final contribution to official Trek canon. As much as I'd have loved to see him bring his qualities to Trek again, which is the kind of thing you don't see in the franchise any more, not since action and mindlessness took the driving seat with the Kelvin Timeline films and 'DSC' (jury's still set to deliberate on 'Picard' - hurry it up with those DVDs, will you?). To have a main cast member show up on the fledgeling and latest Trek series at the time was a great coup and one reason why the previous week's 'Acquisition' was a draw. In that case they brought back Ethan Phillips from 'Voyager' (the closest equivalent to Quark, oddly, considering having Auberjonois was a bit like bringing Odo back - in a way I'm glad we never saw Odo again outside of the 'DS9' finale because he ended it so beautifully), so why not poach a 'DS9' cast member this time?

Auberjonois would go on to appear at multiple Trek conventions, be a part of the 'DS9' documentary (again, hurry it up with a UK DVD release, please!), and I believe he even leant his voice to the 'Star Trek Online' game, but this was where his connection with official Trek ended, and I'm glad that he had this small opportunity to be seen outside of the Odo mask (even if his first Trek role was as visible in 'Star Trek VI': the villainous Colonel West). He's certainly among my favourite actors and they must have been hoping his inclusion would excite 'DS9' lovers, as that sort of stunt casting probably wouldn't ripple out beyond Trek circles, but means a lot to us. But I did say 'small opportunity,' and that was so, because he doesn't have a lot to do in the episode, it's more about his character's daughter and her burgeoning realisation of life beyond the confines of her holographic-laden home. I think that people who came to Trek through 'Enterprise,' unaware of what came before, probably had the best of this episode. Not only was it a new story to them, but they wouldn't have known Auberjonois' importance, even if they noticed the 'And Rene Auberjonois' credit which denotes someone of higher standing than just any old guest star, and so would have been more surprised about this grizzled old man coming out from among the group of survivors to be revealed as one of only two real people aboard the derelict. Trek viewers would have instantly known he'd be important to the story, just as when you see a film where a big name actor is in a small role initially - reputation and the realities of the business can't help but give away the direction of the story.

I'm coming to it with much hindsight, of course, having seen the episode more than once, but I'm sure when I first watched it I knew Ezral would be integral somehow, even if I hadn't already got a sense of the plot from reading the 'Star Trek Magazine' preview! You can almost see Liana's story with Trip as a blind to distract from the weird stuff that may or may not be happening, since Ezral is kept to the rear of proceedings and doesn't stride forward to take his place until the very end when he admits the truth about what happened and his own sense of shame and responsibility for the accident. And it is sad to learn the reality of their situation, or should I say 'unreality.' Perhaps this guilt was what kept him from doing all he could to get his daughter home, living in the Nexus of a holographically generated community, empty and spare, while the occasional trader or scavenger looked over his ship for spare parts and he could have appeared and requested assistance. You'd think he'd be eager to escape after all the bad memories associated with the crash and loss of his wife and friends, but going home would have meant admitting his guilt of leaving his post at the critical moment and his engineer's brain enabled him to reconstruct the world as he saw fit, never thinking that his daughter wouldn't have the full life she could have had on their homeworld.

It's a sad story, primarily, though it's set up as a ghost story: not only do we have some creeping through an abandoned ship, but we have Travis along, he of campfire ghost stories fame, who seems a bit superstitious and open to the weird and unexplained of space. The downside is that the creepiness doesn't really get off the ground, they go down to the ship during daylight, Travis doesn't get a whole lot to do and we soon uncover the truth that it isn't abandoned. There was an attempt to backtrack to the weirdness again when they uncover the escape pod that has become a tomb for one member of the community while he yet lives in the ship, so things suggested far weirder circumstances than what we actually got. I wish there had been some stranger science fiction answer to proceedings as my favourite type of Trek story are the ones in which the reality of reality is in question. In this case it's simply down to holograms, and that's a bit hard to fathom when we're in the 22nd Century and such technology, if it even existed (and we'd already crossed that bridge with the Xyrillians in 'Unexpected'), would surely be restricted to very few races, and the most advanced at that. It rather flies in the face of established Trek continuity that Holodecks were pretty much brand new at the beginning of 'TNG' by the way those characters were so impressed with it. Would they have been so impressed if logs as far back as Captain Archer's time, two hundred years before, were telling tales of such wonders?

Trouble is, it's the same problem with Mr. Data being this revolutionary machine and yet in 'TOS' there are so many lifelike androids, robots or other denominations of artificial intelligence, many of which look more real than Data himself. Such things didn't used to bother me, and I'm sure in previous viewings of this episode I was quite happy to accept the Kantareans had such technological ability, but in this first season this is already the second time they'd encountered holo-technology and the point of this series was to get away from the storytelling crutches of the 24th Century Treks to do something more hands-on and 'real,' closer to today. But for me back in the day this was another episode, just like 'Acquisition' before it, that promised the good stuff of the former Treks wouldn't be abandoned in spite of the timeframe - in Season 2 they even did a Transporter accident episode (even if it was weakly resolved as being 'all a dream'!). So this was what I wanted to see, I didn't want there never to be some of the great episodes again. It's another issue to lay at the feet of 'DSC' because I had (have!), big problems with their use of holograms. There is a slight difference in that I feel the time period they're presenting was so established in 'TOS' and that deviating from it in the many ways it has means the original no longer has validity in the eyes of the makers. They refuse to follow the 'rules' that were implied and instead aim to please new, modern viewers with no investment in the reality of the Trek universe and history as a whole, by putting pretty effects above logic.

To see Starfleet using holo-tech is like making starships zip round under the cover of cloaking devices. Okay, I know the Defiant had one, but again, they came up with specific, plausible reasons for it that satisfied the longterm viewer and showed it up as the exception that proved the rule. The same couldn't be said of the tech in 'DSC,' and I'm not going to go off on this subject, I'm sure I've already written plenty about it in my reviews of those episodes, but my point is, seeing the rules abandoned, the continuity mucked about with like that, and then coming back to see 'Enterprise' planting seeds of precedence that 'DSC' has eagerly watered, fed and harvested to the max, it makes me slightly unhappy with the earlier series. I see now why 'Enterprise' was a failure. I don't personally see it as a failure myself, whereas I do see 'DSC' as exactly that, though they haven't even tried in a lot of cases. No, it worked for me and I really like it, but it didn't have one hundred percent confidence in itself. It needed to do Holodecks and Ferengi and use other strictly 24th Century material to try and claw back the viewers whom I believe were falling off by mid-season after a strong start. It suggests they'd have been better off doing yet another 'future' set series rather than filling in the gaps of history, which I was, and am, all for. If they can keep the continuity and reality going. Otherwise, concentrate on grappling hooks, Shuttlepods and being the weakest ship in the galaxy!

In reality I'm still in two minds about it because it does please me to see familiar story types, races and tech. I still want 24th Century stuff (awaiting 'Picard' DVDs tentatively…), because that was the best era, the biggest era, the most fleshed out and so the hardest to mess with (at least I hope…). But I'm also glad they made a stab at the 22nd Century, even if they weren't permitted to get into the good stuff fully (Romulans, The Romulan War, etc). Having said all that I have, I still rather like this episode, and not just because Auberjonois got to be involved with Trek again, continuing something in some small way, of what I loved, namely, 'DS9.' You could almost see this as a tribute to 'DS9' Season 2: you've got 'Shadowplay' supplying the majority of the story, but there are also hints of 'Paradise' - I know Ezral didn't wish to crash, but he did want to keep things as they were, much like Alixus, and the fact that it's about a ship crashing on a planet and the community making the best of it, growing their own food shows similarities. On top of that, their homeworld, Kantare, reminded me of Kentanna, the mythical home of the Skreeans in 'Sanctuary,' and even the Kantarean clothing looked like adult sizes of the kind of wardrobe Jake Sisko wore as a child, all body suits with flat colours! And couldn't they have come up with a more original name for the alien trader that first put them onto the ship than D'Marr? It's spelt differently than Damar of 'DS9,' true, but perhaps that too was a tribute?

Michael Westmore certainly did a terrific job on the one alien alien of the episode, with a kind of cracked egg look to his head, crossed with the weathering and density of white stone - he was really fascinating to look at and I'm always slightly sad that when such an incredible look is created for a species, it's for a one-off we'll never see again, because the craftsmanship deserved more screen time than that! It's happened many times on Trek and must have been in some way an annoyance for the makeup master. On the other hand I think he just enjoyed the opportunity to keep creating over and over again for so many years. But such a design deserves more exposure and I only wish that current Trek would reuse more of Westmore's ideas, except that's not how the creative industry works - they want to create new looks to express their own creativity, which is fair enough, I suppose, but we were spoiled by so many years of greatness that anything less just isn't good enough, a pitfall of the long-running franchise. The Kentareans were much simpler, light mottled side-foreheads like an inverse of Trill. How I wish Westmore had documented his rationale and design process for every alien he worked on. Sadly his book doesn't have anywhere near enough detail to satisfy, or even that much on Trek since it was only part of a long career. There must be records somewhere of all this decision-making, though?

If 'DS9' was a clear influence then there are some connections to 'Voyager,' too. I thought Trip's first meeting with the flighty Liana made her look just like Kes in her airponics bay. They both tended the plants, they were both slight and almost elfin, even down to the same sort of bob cut hairdo! The more obvious reference came when Trip asks what would happen if Liana got hurt, would her Father conjure up a holographic doctor? It appears extremely likely that the Kentareans were pretty advanced if they could create such lifelike, even solid, holograms. I had a question early on that though they say their homeworld is a year away, would that include the factor of Enterprise having a Warp 5 engine, especially when we know the ship crashed twenty-two years before - maybe it wouldn't be a year's travel for the NX-01. But by the end you realise they probably have a pretty fast engine themselves if they're technological enough to have holo-tech. On the other hand, I don't remember Trip raving about the speed their engines must be capable of, which he'd usually do, but he was preoccupied with T'Pol at the time - I thought her reference to the Xyrillians and the accidental impropriety he was involved in there was mentioned just because it's funny to keep reminding him, but of course there's the hologram connection to remind the audience of. It's good to have the continuity, and the same goes for T'Pol admitting she never gets frightened - makes sense since fear is an emotion and is one of the greatest to conquer, another reason Vulcans are great!

You notice the difference between Vulcan attitudes and human, too, when the first thing Trip does when they realise they aren't alone is to reach for his Phase Pistol, while T'Pol reaches for her Tricorder, curious and scientific. Talking of tech, Trip mentions the protein resequencer, which sounds very much like an early form of the Replicator. I wish that had been more obvious in the series and in 'DSC,' to differentiate such things as Food Slots and Chef's real cooking from the later technology of 'TNG' and beyond. And baseball seems to still be known at this time, by Trip at least, as he says D'Marr's information is correct by putting it as he's 'batting a thousand.' I assume that's a baseball term even though the sport had apparently died out in the 21st Century, not long before World War III (people were probably too worried to get invested!). It's possible that it became a figure of speech that continued to be used, or it may be that Trip is one of the few devotees who still remember the old sport from history, as we know in every Trek generation there were people that loved it. In terms of every Trek generation we're well served. Not only do we have Auberjonois who was from 'DS9' and a 'TOS' Trek film, we also have Rudolph Willrich as Kuulan, the 'leader' of the community. He'd previously played roles in both 'TNG' and 'DS9.' Even Tom Bergeron (D'Marr), went on to play a Coridanite in the final season of this series.

I wouldn't say this episode was an improvement on 'Shadowplay,' in fact, of the two I would put this as the lesser, but then the 'DS9' characters are my favourite and this doesn't really showcase any 'Enterprise' ones that well, despite it being nicely done. It's different in that instead of it being about an old man and his (holographic), granddaughter, it's about an old man and his (real), daughter, and although the circumstances are tragic, it's not as powerful as the reveal of the lonely old Rurigan at the end of 'Shadowplay.' It is something of a shame that Auberjonois didn't get to be the star of the show, Liana taking most of the scenes, but it's a lovely parallel that he originally played the role closest to Trip's in the original version, and now he returns to play the old man in this. I would have liked to have seen the Kentarean ship rise up from the planet, and I did suspect, as much as I liked the matte or CGI landscape, we weren't going to see the crew outdoors even when they approached the ship for the first time because it would be too expensive to create an external portion and they rarely did that (exceptions include 'Battle Lines,' 'Indiscretion' and 'The Ship,' all 'DS9'). Other than that, the effects were accomplished, particularly the vanishing of the Kentareans as Liana removes the data from the machine. It would have been nice to see Auberjonois in a larger role for the last time he ever appeared in Trek, but he's in good company there since even Leonard Nimoy bowed out with a small cameo in 'Star Trek Into Darkness,' and other Trek actors showed up in 'Enterprise' only to be in small roles, like Robert O'Reilly or Casey Biggs who played Damar (but not D'Marr), bringing us back round to the beginning again!

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