DVD, Smallville S2 (Prodigal)
Brother versus brother, and when that comes to the Luthors you know things aren't going to go well. This was quite a confusing episode, not just for the financial goings-on, Lex' riches to rags to riches again (presumably), but also what it meant for the characters. And not just the Luthors, either! In my previous review I was saying how the trouble between Lana and Clark was bound to be resolved in the next few episodes, putting them back to square one again, but I didn't expect it to be at the start of the very next episode! I mean that was bizarre - Clark just turns up at the Talon hoping for a job? I know his pizza and rose gifts of reconciliation at the end of the last episode were an attempt to get back into Lana's good books, but she rejected them straight off, and yet she now gives him a job? It couldn't even have been that long since the rose is still in the metal bin right where she threw it. Maybe she just bounced out the right side of the bed this morning, full of forgiveness and ready for a fresh start. Or maybe she got hit on the head and only half remembers what happened in 'Rush.' It was nice of Chloe to give Clark a helping hand in the reference department, especially as working for the Torch is a kind of job. It's just sad that we never see Chloe, Pete and Clark actually doing work on it any more. Well, Chloe scenes are fairly often at the office in the school (another sad thing - that's about all we get of their school life at the moment), but we don't see them working together and uncovering investigations like we used to.
We're back to the new norm of Season 2 once again, where it's all about Lana and Clark or Lex and Clark, Pete and Chloe getting short shrift after their brief spell in the spotlight last time. At least Lionel makes an impression as there do seem to be a few episodes where he's not involved at all - no surprise that it's hard to integrate a multi-millionaire business mogul into a high school drama! At least his shenanigans were true to his character - not only has he regained his vision out of nowhere (and I was surprised it was Lucas Luthor who threw the pool ball, a scene I'd thought was Lex'), he's also playing his two sons against each other. I wasn't entirely sure where Lucas came from in terms of deciding now was the time to be unearthed. I know it was a power play by Lex to try and get leverage on his Father's company, and then ultimately we find out it was Lionel preempting him for a similar reason, to fight back against Lex' plot. But things like that gambling scene didn't make a lot of sense - did Lucas own the joint? Otherwise how could he have set up a camera in the golden lion bust or have an accomplice sending him intel on his opponent's cards? It didn't seem like he owned the place and it was odd how his assistant was discovered - what, he dropped something on the floor which alerted the bodyguard?
Lucas we'd heard of before just a few episodes prior so I suppose it was good to have him in the story, but why would Lex protect him, and how? In the end he's safely out of his Father's influence, but Lionel was looking after him in his own way, paying off his troubles over the years. He did seem to want some kind of connection to his Father so perhaps his life was becoming too shallow for him to stomach and had reached an age when he realised he needed more, but I just don't buy that he and Lex would end up trusting each other. Unless Lex could read him, seeing himself in the younger son and having empathy for how he feels in regards to their Father. It was complicated and I'm not sure the series could pull off something like that, it didn't come across quite right. I suppose we're supposed to be concerned that Lionel noticed the dripping hole of burnt metal from where Clark heat-visioned Lucas' hand when he thought the guy was going to shoot Lionel. But in later seasons we learn (I think), Lionel knew, or guessed Clark's secret, though that never made much sense to me. It's not relevant here anyway, but it adds further confusion to what we're supposed to be making of these events.
The episode does have some lovely moments - all the stuff with Lex being accepted into the Kent Farm as a houseguest, doing chores (I don't remember ever seeing animals in the barn and yet he's got to muck it out?), being grateful to Jonathan in particular, and the ultimate accolade of Mr. Kent complimenting him by saying he'd have made a great farmer (fascinating to see how different people react to life there - Ryan, for example got up and made everyone pancakes for breakfast). That was all terrific, but I felt they needed to eke this storyline out a bit. He's there in his fancy suit on the doorstep requesting asylum, then it's the next day and he's hard at work and then he's out again. Having Lex on the farm is the kind of great idea that should have been an arc in itself. Imagine him sitting round as they all read of an evening (that's what Mr. and Mrs. Kent were doing when he stopped by), the conversations, the mealtimes… It's too juicy to have let pass in the space of a few scenes, as good as they were. Similarly, the idea of a social experiment where one brother has everything and the other nothing was the kind of thing the episode should have delved deeper into, it had such potential.
That's probably why I wasn't quite as impressed with the episode as I used to be. It's still a good entry in the season and it has that superb sequence where we see Clark actually being faster than speeding bullets as he knocks the motorbike assassin off his bike, then proceeds to swat away each bullet in turn before they can take out Lucas in the alley behind the Talon (always a bad place to go!). If I'd been Lucas I think I'd have run back into the coffee shop, not taken off down a long dark alleyway when the guy chasing him is on a motorbike, but then he was young and you're probably not going to be thinking too clearly when an assassin with an automatic is bearing down on you. It gave new meaning to the phrase don't turn your back on someone, as Clark knows he has the smoking impacts of several bullets on the back of his jacket which he doesn't want Lucas to see - in parallel, Jonathan won't turn his back on Lex while he's staying on the farm, which is exactly what Martha said they couldn't do, but she, too, had a different meaning! The production value came to the screen - even though they only showed a little bit of that asian area of Edge City, it was effective. But could Lex really lose every single thing he owns (other than the little he could pack into his car), that doesn't seem possible? And does he own the Mansion again at the end, or not? There's no explanation of how Lionel can see again - he claims he's had his sight back for a few weeks, but who knows if he's telling the truth.
That was one of the big twists in the series I always found hard to believe and things were starting to unravel for me as this series being realistic enough for me to suspend disbelief for all the other weird things we were used to - it needed the grounding in people that it had to begin with in order to make everything else acceptable and when you have some major change like that it undermined reality (a bit like what happened with Sheriff Ethan - you can believe it's possible, but they needed to do more to sell it). I also don't think it helps that Lucas is as obnoxious and entitled as they come, because we needed to feel at least some kind of sympathy for him. I don't think he ever came back, if he did it didn't make an impact on me, but there was a strong angle of playing that abandoned child side of things, just as it's so sad when Lex looks over and sees the idyllic Kent family and wishes it were so for him in various episodes, but they didn't do enough to make Lucas a victim. What did Lex say to him to make him change his position and trick Lionel into revealing what really happened in his past? It must have been good for them to carry out the enactment of potential murder. I liked Lionel having enough conscience and attachment to Lex that he can't go through with killing him, even when forced to do so at gunpoint, but in the same scene we also see his true ruthlessness as he turns on the fallen Lucas and shoots him twice. It makes sense that Clark couldn't hold down the job at the Talon since he's always got to dash off and save someone, and I liked Lex' reassuring words about his own Father taking over the world, but Clark's will inherit the Earth, a sort of Biblical influence that mirrors Lionel's own reference to the Prodigal Son.
***
Tuesday, 26 October 2021
The Slaver Weapon
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Slaver Weapon)
Adapting an existing story for use in Trek can work, I'm sure. I can't think of examples off the top of my head, but there must be some that have had strong influences if not direct adaptation. But this one doesn't really work - whether that's because it was adapted by its own original author or not, I don't know, but Larry Niven turns his original story, 'The Soft Weapon' (as credited on the episode title screen), into one of the less interesting entries of 'TAS.' It has the distinction, dubious though it may be, of being one of, if not the only episode, not to feature the ship at all, and therefore not to feature the Bridge, but not only that, it doesn't even have Captain Kirk! There's no Bones or Scotty, and in one sense it does have the advantage of doing something different - it does have slight shades of 'The Galileo Seven' in that it's about Spock in command of a shuttlecraft, but this time he only has Sulu and Uhura for company. This trio is quite a rare grouping indeed, especially without Kirk along, but the novelty value alone isn't enough to make the story worthwhile.
We finally meet the Kzinti that I've heard so much about over the years. Actually, I haven't heard much about them, but the name was always intriguing and they recently joined the ranks of those few specific details from 'TAS' to become canon, thanks to a mention of them by Riker in 'Picard.' Sadly, we didn't get to see what a live-action series would have made of these strangely saber-toothed tiger-like species who prowl around on their hind legs like any normal humanoid, yet have much greater upper body mass. They don't seem to be the most intelligent of races to deal with, reminding me of the Ferengi in both their single-mindedness (in this case wanting to destroy the humans who humiliated them in four wars, rather than profit), their fearsome visages and the far lower social standing women have in their society, to the extent that they're simply dumb animals! I will say this for them: they certainly are colourful, wearing these purple spacesuits complete with goldfish bowl helmets, and travelling in a spacecraft that looks not unlike a dinner plate with a fried egg on top, and perhaps alien cutlery on the side. I got the sense that their 'specialist attribute,' as most Trek races have, was their culture being based around food. When Sulu said that the whole galaxy would be their dinner table if they had control of the weapon, that about summed up their motivation!
Except they also go big on revenge. We hear that they fought these four wars with humans quite a long time ago since the last one ended two hundred years ago, which would put it shortly after Earth's own World War III. I can't really see humans putting up much of a fight around that time of the mid-21st Century, unless the Vulcans did most of their fighting for them, since they'd only just discovered warp travel! Mind you, things like this are exactly why 'TAS' should never be considered canon because it doesn't always make a lot of sense. This particular group of Kzinti appear to be their world's version of the Impossible Missions Force from 'Mission: Impossible,' and they basically admit in different words that the secretary will disavow all knowledge of them if they're caught. They're pretending to act as pirates with a stolen police ship, since that's the only weapon they've been permitted in whatever treaty was made. It does smack of the Treaty of Versailles as they still haven't got over it all this time later and it was particularly harsh - so they can't have any weapons? How do they defend against invaders like the Klingons or Romulans?
Ignoring the silliness of the episode, the important central pillar of the story is the weapon of the title, a device that was held in a stasis box (complete with a bizarre Cyclops picture that they speculate may be what the Slavers looked like), for a billion years, apparently, since that's how long ago these Slavers were defeated at the cost of all life in the galaxy. They had been lording it over all life up till that point, but somehow they were overthrown, but they had enough time to ferret away some stasis boxes for future generations to discover. The Niven story doesn't appear to translate all that well into a less than thirty minute cartoon series, but not having read the original I don't know how much more sense it made. The weapon is pretty cartoony itself, with these various settings that have different effects, including a devastating Phaser blast that can cause what looks like a nuclear blast far in the distance. I'm sure a shapeshifting super-weapon is exactly the kind of idea that would have appealed to children, which is after all the target group for the series. Fortunately, one setting is an artificial intelligence which causes the Kzinti to blow themselves into tiny pieces and everything is happy ever after. Yes. So I'm not sure what the point of the story was, it was just a knockabout silly sci-fi adventure.
While Scotty doesn't appear, James Doohan continues to provide the lion's share of guest voices (or should that be the tiger's share?), as the leader of the Kzinti and at least one other. Other than that we're down to just Nimoy, Takei and Nichols doing their characters and it is good from that perspective that we're allowed so much time between them, including the occasional moment of levity such as Uhura balking at being considered stupid like the Kzinti females. She also gets shot at least three times so it's not the best time for her. At least she doesn't have the ignominy of her face being replaced by Captain Kirk's! That's what appeared to happen to Sulu whenever there was a profile shot of him, as if they were cheaping out by reusing existing shots of Kirk, except with the hair altered to black! Spock even apes his Captain by performing one of those double-footed kicks on the Kzinti, especially strange when you consider Vulcans are meant to be nonviolent and Spock himself usually prefers a nerve pinch. There was a reason for it: for one thing he couldn't leap at them and nerve pinch them all (or both, I forget how many there were), and then later he says something about them being shamed by being bested in battle by a Vulcan, which means they won't call for help, or something along those lines, but it didn't really make a lot of sense and is another reason why this seems to be based on non-Trek characters.
The technology provides some interest again, as aside from the green hairdryer that was this alien weapon, we see a completely different shuttlecraft to the usual ones (designated Copernicus and apparently number twelve in the Enterprise's complement), just like the previous episode. Then there's the scene with Spock recording his science log about the stasis box onto some mini recorder rather than the traditional Tricorder (even though he later uses one of those), and we hear the origin story of artificial gravity - they say a 'flying belt' was discovered in one of these mystery boxes which led to gravity being created for use on starships. Somehow that seems hard to believe, but I suppose it is the only explanation for how they developed the technology in all of Trek, even if, fortunately it's not the 'official' version of the story (because remember kids, 'TAS' is NOT canon!). I appreciate them trying to add to the universe even at this stage, but at the same time it doesn't necessarily ring true as usually such things are meant to be the product of hard work and superior intellect. Not that it wouldn't have been hard work to reverse engineer the belt, but it's better when we hear of specific people inventing the building blocks of future space exploration, like Zefram Cochrane and Emory Erickson.
I'm not saying this is a terrible episode (like 'The Magicks of Megas-Tu'), it just doesn't have the things about Trek that I like, or the things about a good story that I like. Good that they got another science fiction author involved to give the series some pedigree, as its parent series had had, but perhaps Niven should have come up with something entirely original instead of relying on previous work, and as much as I enjoy seeing a different mix of characters (in 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager' it was often fascinating to see a varied selection of characters to headline each episode, maybe a couple of characters we rarely saw paired together going off on a mission), 'TOS' and 'TAS' weren't an ensemble drama so they needed the big three to be involved to make the most of the stories, I feel. It's not like we really find out anything new about Sulu and Uhura here, which would have made it more worthwhile.
**
Adapting an existing story for use in Trek can work, I'm sure. I can't think of examples off the top of my head, but there must be some that have had strong influences if not direct adaptation. But this one doesn't really work - whether that's because it was adapted by its own original author or not, I don't know, but Larry Niven turns his original story, 'The Soft Weapon' (as credited on the episode title screen), into one of the less interesting entries of 'TAS.' It has the distinction, dubious though it may be, of being one of, if not the only episode, not to feature the ship at all, and therefore not to feature the Bridge, but not only that, it doesn't even have Captain Kirk! There's no Bones or Scotty, and in one sense it does have the advantage of doing something different - it does have slight shades of 'The Galileo Seven' in that it's about Spock in command of a shuttlecraft, but this time he only has Sulu and Uhura for company. This trio is quite a rare grouping indeed, especially without Kirk along, but the novelty value alone isn't enough to make the story worthwhile.
We finally meet the Kzinti that I've heard so much about over the years. Actually, I haven't heard much about them, but the name was always intriguing and they recently joined the ranks of those few specific details from 'TAS' to become canon, thanks to a mention of them by Riker in 'Picard.' Sadly, we didn't get to see what a live-action series would have made of these strangely saber-toothed tiger-like species who prowl around on their hind legs like any normal humanoid, yet have much greater upper body mass. They don't seem to be the most intelligent of races to deal with, reminding me of the Ferengi in both their single-mindedness (in this case wanting to destroy the humans who humiliated them in four wars, rather than profit), their fearsome visages and the far lower social standing women have in their society, to the extent that they're simply dumb animals! I will say this for them: they certainly are colourful, wearing these purple spacesuits complete with goldfish bowl helmets, and travelling in a spacecraft that looks not unlike a dinner plate with a fried egg on top, and perhaps alien cutlery on the side. I got the sense that their 'specialist attribute,' as most Trek races have, was their culture being based around food. When Sulu said that the whole galaxy would be their dinner table if they had control of the weapon, that about summed up their motivation!
Except they also go big on revenge. We hear that they fought these four wars with humans quite a long time ago since the last one ended two hundred years ago, which would put it shortly after Earth's own World War III. I can't really see humans putting up much of a fight around that time of the mid-21st Century, unless the Vulcans did most of their fighting for them, since they'd only just discovered warp travel! Mind you, things like this are exactly why 'TAS' should never be considered canon because it doesn't always make a lot of sense. This particular group of Kzinti appear to be their world's version of the Impossible Missions Force from 'Mission: Impossible,' and they basically admit in different words that the secretary will disavow all knowledge of them if they're caught. They're pretending to act as pirates with a stolen police ship, since that's the only weapon they've been permitted in whatever treaty was made. It does smack of the Treaty of Versailles as they still haven't got over it all this time later and it was particularly harsh - so they can't have any weapons? How do they defend against invaders like the Klingons or Romulans?
Ignoring the silliness of the episode, the important central pillar of the story is the weapon of the title, a device that was held in a stasis box (complete with a bizarre Cyclops picture that they speculate may be what the Slavers looked like), for a billion years, apparently, since that's how long ago these Slavers were defeated at the cost of all life in the galaxy. They had been lording it over all life up till that point, but somehow they were overthrown, but they had enough time to ferret away some stasis boxes for future generations to discover. The Niven story doesn't appear to translate all that well into a less than thirty minute cartoon series, but not having read the original I don't know how much more sense it made. The weapon is pretty cartoony itself, with these various settings that have different effects, including a devastating Phaser blast that can cause what looks like a nuclear blast far in the distance. I'm sure a shapeshifting super-weapon is exactly the kind of idea that would have appealed to children, which is after all the target group for the series. Fortunately, one setting is an artificial intelligence which causes the Kzinti to blow themselves into tiny pieces and everything is happy ever after. Yes. So I'm not sure what the point of the story was, it was just a knockabout silly sci-fi adventure.
While Scotty doesn't appear, James Doohan continues to provide the lion's share of guest voices (or should that be the tiger's share?), as the leader of the Kzinti and at least one other. Other than that we're down to just Nimoy, Takei and Nichols doing their characters and it is good from that perspective that we're allowed so much time between them, including the occasional moment of levity such as Uhura balking at being considered stupid like the Kzinti females. She also gets shot at least three times so it's not the best time for her. At least she doesn't have the ignominy of her face being replaced by Captain Kirk's! That's what appeared to happen to Sulu whenever there was a profile shot of him, as if they were cheaping out by reusing existing shots of Kirk, except with the hair altered to black! Spock even apes his Captain by performing one of those double-footed kicks on the Kzinti, especially strange when you consider Vulcans are meant to be nonviolent and Spock himself usually prefers a nerve pinch. There was a reason for it: for one thing he couldn't leap at them and nerve pinch them all (or both, I forget how many there were), and then later he says something about them being shamed by being bested in battle by a Vulcan, which means they won't call for help, or something along those lines, but it didn't really make a lot of sense and is another reason why this seems to be based on non-Trek characters.
The technology provides some interest again, as aside from the green hairdryer that was this alien weapon, we see a completely different shuttlecraft to the usual ones (designated Copernicus and apparently number twelve in the Enterprise's complement), just like the previous episode. Then there's the scene with Spock recording his science log about the stasis box onto some mini recorder rather than the traditional Tricorder (even though he later uses one of those), and we hear the origin story of artificial gravity - they say a 'flying belt' was discovered in one of these mystery boxes which led to gravity being created for use on starships. Somehow that seems hard to believe, but I suppose it is the only explanation for how they developed the technology in all of Trek, even if, fortunately it's not the 'official' version of the story (because remember kids, 'TAS' is NOT canon!). I appreciate them trying to add to the universe even at this stage, but at the same time it doesn't necessarily ring true as usually such things are meant to be the product of hard work and superior intellect. Not that it wouldn't have been hard work to reverse engineer the belt, but it's better when we hear of specific people inventing the building blocks of future space exploration, like Zefram Cochrane and Emory Erickson.
I'm not saying this is a terrible episode (like 'The Magicks of Megas-Tu'), it just doesn't have the things about Trek that I like, or the things about a good story that I like. Good that they got another science fiction author involved to give the series some pedigree, as its parent series had had, but perhaps Niven should have come up with something entirely original instead of relying on previous work, and as much as I enjoy seeing a different mix of characters (in 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager' it was often fascinating to see a varied selection of characters to headline each episode, maybe a couple of characters we rarely saw paired together going off on a mission), 'TOS' and 'TAS' weren't an ensemble drama so they needed the big three to be involved to make the most of the stories, I feel. It's not like we really find out anything new about Sulu and Uhura here, which would have made it more worthwhile.
**
Bugged Wheat
DVD, BUGS S2 (Bugged Wheat)
This is the one. The one that started it all for me: Saturday night thriller! I got myself into the mindset of what it must have been like to be introduced to this modern, action-packed spy-ride, with that opening in an indoor field of wheat, an attack by diving suit-wearing terrorists that ends with an explosion in the face of two security guards, then straight into those opening titles full of dramatic and unknown clips under the amazing theme music… I was totally excited by it all back then, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before and though it would be easy to say I never looked back and followed the series avidly every week, reality suggests otherwise - since it hadn't become part of my routine, I actually missed the following episode playing outside with friends, so perhaps it didn't have quite as much impact as I tend to think? And I have to say, as good as the episode is, it's not one of the best ones. Which is strange because it has many of the elements of the series that I like, the main one being Ed, Ros and Beckett are working together in close proximity as they break into various locations and use all kinds of devices to spy or hack, plus there's a major catastrophe they're trying to avert, so the stakes are high.
Perhaps this is the perfect episode to showcase the direction the series had gone in which didn't appeal to the mainstream audience as much - a lot of it is set at night, there's a fair amount of repetition, going into places and getting out of places. You have this science fiction edge to proceedings such as the security guards carrying these electrical discharge rifles, a sort of Taser, except it fires a bolt of energy which is far more sci-fi than reality. Then, if you weren't following along, you'd wonder what the significance of the final scene was, with a bald guy in half-moon specs being congratulated by a prison governor on making money for the prison of which he appears to be an inmate. It might be a little too baffling for the average viewer just wanting some light entertainment. On the other hand it has plenty of humour, the stars are stylish and always throwing themselves into things. The majority of the scenes being set at night may have added a certain surrealism to the presentation as they go from classy glassy building to building, full of the kind of ominous light shows that were used in 'Stealth' around the big grey ugly truck. There's definitely more of a sense of military thanks to all these rifle-toting guards, the darkness, the flashing lights and high security tech all over the place.
Maybe the darkness makes it too claustrophobic, because even though the team are mostly in close proximity to each other, they still seem separated quite a lot, communicating more by their headsets than in person. It also seems like there's less personality there, if I can say that - Ros is almost like a Barbie doll, all dressed up to the nines, but it doesn't quite fit with her previous image of this slightly scattily dressed genius. It's like she's suddenly got this gloss over her, which is good, but almost makes her less accessible as a character - or perhaps it was the way she was written, she doesn't seem to ever get in any way desperate, she's a little too cool and also doesn't get to be involved in the action as much, Ed and Beckett being the ones to infiltrate buildings, hide in decontamination bins or run around. Oddly, Ed is portrayed as the most human of the three this time in the sense that he tells both Ros and Beckett at different times to get out of there, when usually he's much more slapdash and relaxed about risks: when Ros is downloading the villains' database of information Ed urges her to get out, then later he says the same to Beckett when they're at PestiCorp. Beckett himself is very forward in the story, clearly being the leader, he seems to know all about viroids, these specialised micro-viruses that target plants and I really wanted a reference to The Hive there, that he'd encountered them on a mission somehow.
Beckett and Ed both have to confront their fears in the story - it had been well established that the former wasn't good with heights and so there's some good continuity there that addresses such fear when he has to leap onto a moving lorry to escape PestiCorp. Ed has the more worrying encounter as we learn he's afraid of creepy-crawlies, perhaps coming from his Australian heritage of so many bugs that can kill - it would have been nice to refer to his home country there as rationale. Not that I'm saying it's badly written, just that there are things you can't help see missing that would have made it better. Interestingly, this was the first script for the series written by the duo of Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, later to create 'Smallville,' a series I wouldn't say was one of the best, but which contained some terrific seasons (among a majority that were far from terrific!). At the time I first saw the series I didn't pay any attention to details like that, but on seeing it all again on DVD such things stuck out and added a whole new dimension! I'm sure Colin Brake, the Script Supervisor, would have gone over the whole story and adjusted it to make it more 'BUGS,' but it's fun to know that these creators (who also wrote the acclaimed 'Spider-Man 2'), contributed.
As is usually the case, Ed got to do the lion's share of the action, hanging from a lift, crawling through ventilation ducts, fighting Croll on the rooftop of PestiCorp… He also gets to use his brain when he thinks of the UV decontamination system as an ideal way to neutralise the viroid Croll and Pym plan to use to create a mass famine across Europe, then sell the miracle cure. Ed also ends up sliding into a 'Crystal Maze' dome that instead of featuring gold or silver tickets, is filled with angry insects buzzing about, causing him to panic until he can force his way out. In fact, the moment where he finds all the bottles that need to be destroyed, was like entering one of the puzzle rooms from that series: "Okay guys, I've got an empty room except for all these bottles. I've got to get them into the UV section…" Definitely one of the physical tasks. Actually, they should have done a 'Crystal Maze' special with the actors playing their characters - that would have been a sight to see. Sadly, the series had ended the previous year, 1995, and apparently the recording for that was early that year, probably when 'BUGS' was filming, too, so it could never have happened, but it's fun to speculate!
There are some familiar ideas being used again, such as climbing in a lift shaft ('A Sporting Chance'), a tiny camera in a lapel pin (like the poppy-cam in 'Out of The Hive'), and even the idea that Croll could use the one bottle that rolled away, to infect the bugs, and he explains it'll simply take longer for the viroid to multiply and spread (similar to the genetic virus in 'Assassins Inc' - "We can use the time to build cemeteries!"); be-masked thugs breaking into a facility to do with food crops ('Manna From Heaven'). The villains may not be the strongest, which could be why this doesn't feel like such a classic episode as some. Hugh Bonneville plays Pym in an early role - he's obviously gone on to worldwide acclaim in various things. Richard Cordery as Dr. Croll isn't quite as recognisable, I suspect, but he did have a fun role in an episode of 'Doc Martin' in recent years, which was very enjoyable to see. But they don't quite strike fear into the heart of the viewer, even though Pym and his sinister stutter worked well to make him memorable. It was a bit of a leap that he'd gone from this career-minded weather man at the Institute of Climatology to someone intent on making as much money from the world as possible, murdering his associate, Hawk, in cold blood, and he'd never had any criminal record! If you look at his biography that Ros pulled up, he had a successful and ever-improving career in his chosen profession so you wonder what caused him to become so nasty.
Croll, on the other hand just comes across as evil from the start. Ed basically kills him, because while you'd expect him to perform a smooth takedown in a few Tae Kwondo moves, while he does a nice kick to knock Croll's gun out of his hand, he then proceeds to manhandle the villain over the railing! Surely he could have knocked him out, and though it isn't technically Ed that kills him, as he does attempt to grab him before he falls, he also did put him in that position! Croll is quite an imposing figure, but the whole point of such fighting disciplines is that you use the opponent's own weight against them. Still, it's not as perplexing as the way Pym is killed. A security guard shoots the decon bin containing whatever it was (the serum?), and the electrical bolt reacts with the electronic lock in the lid, Pym stupidly tries to open it and then… the bin explodes. It didn't appear to have any reason to do that. At least Ros driving under the flatbed lorry full of oil drums could be said to have set off the explosion from the sparks as the roof tore off, but it's all in the tradition of the exploding car that blew up as it flew through the air in 'Out of The Hive,' so it's not out of character for things to arbitrarily explode. They may criticise Ros' driving, but she knows how to handle a car, as we saw, the bugs don't make her lose control and she comes up with that ingenious way to vent them at the expense of her poor car.
The look of the series is of course one of its strengths and with Ros in that red suit jacket, Beckett in his smart blue shirt and suit, only Ed is the odd one out with a blue-grey woollen jumper under his leather jacket. Ed and Beckett also get to wear the yellow coats of PestiCorp, so despite its blackness it was quite colourful at the same time - you also have the purple glow of the UV device, even if it was unnecessary to show a white smoke coming out of it, but that's typical TV convention so the audience understands the bottles were being affected. I liked the use of the flash grenade Ed throws so he and Beckett can escape, but why not simply take the guard's gun and hold him and Croll hostage? For that matter, why not call in the authorities if the danger is so great to the whole of Europe's crops - a famine that hasn't been seen in centuries? These are questions best left unasked. The team do come across almost more as vigilantes that work in the shadows of night, aliases, gadgets and no backup to the proper authorities, but it's usually a question of timing, action has to be taken now. It didn't seem entirely clear who had even hired them. Obviously it was the guy at the wheat field place, Greenville was the name I believe, though I got that from the end credits, so either they simply didn't explain who he was and why the team were working for him, or it was dropped in in one line, so if you miss it, it's gone.
It's always easy to poke holes, but that's part of the fun of it, and this episode has its share of inconsistencies. The lift, for instance - I liked that we saw a hatch in the floor through which Ed must have escaped, but there was no corresponding hatch on the underside! And it was also very strange for Ed to be in the air duct which leads right down into a crystal dome of flying bugs, yet he didn't seem to pass through an access hatch so the bugs could have flown out any time! And as for the guard who searches for Beckett (or Dr. Zygo as he's calling himself), in the decontamination room, it seemed obvious if there was anyone behind the shower curtains in each booth since there was only light beyond, while the end one, featuring the most ridiculous showing of shoes right on the edge that didn't look as if they were connected to anything, at least had a dark shape in the background from a hanging suit. It was clever how Beckett surprises the guard into shooting his futuristic gun at a mirror image, which then bounces off and hits the water overrunning onto the floor from all the taps and showers, but again, you'd think they'd train their guards that it's not safe to use electrical weapons in a wet environment! It's also a little too convenient that Croll doesn't get anyone to escort Beckett out as would be the usual form, especially in a secure establishment, but then Beckett couldn't have done what he needed to do. Oddly, security cameras are still being recorded onto little cassette tapes, Greenville gives them, though Ros does download onto a CD when visiting the Institute.
Was that a reuse of the STA observation room from the opening two-parter, as the glass pod the scientists observe the wheat from looked similar and was probably the same set? I did like the contrast of the golden wheat against the bright blue walls of the place (reminded me of 'Banjo-Kazooie'), as well as all that grating and people clomping about on it. Again, it's hard to believe Hawk would go in without his goggles on if he'd come in full diving gear, dangling at his front, but then they needed a lead to work on. Was Ros still tapping into The Hive's systems for the profile database? It seems likely since she asks Ed to plug in the modem, so obviously she needed to get a signal out, and we know that's how she's acquired sensitive data in the past… I couldn't help noticing Croll wears a bow-tie, just like Charlesworth, since in a later episode Beckett is suspicious of men in bow-ties. And it was fun to see a low-tech solution is sometimes best, as Ed demonstrates by shoving his fist into the bug jar when it opens with the diseased insects inside. Gizmo's, or whatever they call their home base, barely features and they don't even end there, with the standard joke at the end being on the rooftop of PestiCorp.
That was so they could cut to the next instalment of 'Prison Life with Jean-Daniel.' We meet the Prison Governor for the first time (as well as the Prison Guard), and learn that he had JD sewing mailbags at first, before he realised his genius at making money - the criminal invested in wheat futures, once again betting on his enemies in order to make lots of dough. When he says if he'd been the one to invest money he'd be calling his broker now, does that mean he was suggesting the Governor take the money himself, is that what he has to go off and do so urgently (I half expected him to say, 'There's something I have to do…' in preparation for the two-part finale!). If so, he's set up as a crooked official which JD is playing off and treats him like a child. Or was he really planning to have a gymnasium installed for the use of prison staff? This must be the most self-referential episode of the series with so many mentions of bugs, even though they're mainly talking about the natural kind rather than mechanical, it adds another side to the association, which is quite fun, and the music throughout with its electronic tones only adds to that insect-like atmosphere - good work.
***
This is the one. The one that started it all for me: Saturday night thriller! I got myself into the mindset of what it must have been like to be introduced to this modern, action-packed spy-ride, with that opening in an indoor field of wheat, an attack by diving suit-wearing terrorists that ends with an explosion in the face of two security guards, then straight into those opening titles full of dramatic and unknown clips under the amazing theme music… I was totally excited by it all back then, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before and though it would be easy to say I never looked back and followed the series avidly every week, reality suggests otherwise - since it hadn't become part of my routine, I actually missed the following episode playing outside with friends, so perhaps it didn't have quite as much impact as I tend to think? And I have to say, as good as the episode is, it's not one of the best ones. Which is strange because it has many of the elements of the series that I like, the main one being Ed, Ros and Beckett are working together in close proximity as they break into various locations and use all kinds of devices to spy or hack, plus there's a major catastrophe they're trying to avert, so the stakes are high.
Perhaps this is the perfect episode to showcase the direction the series had gone in which didn't appeal to the mainstream audience as much - a lot of it is set at night, there's a fair amount of repetition, going into places and getting out of places. You have this science fiction edge to proceedings such as the security guards carrying these electrical discharge rifles, a sort of Taser, except it fires a bolt of energy which is far more sci-fi than reality. Then, if you weren't following along, you'd wonder what the significance of the final scene was, with a bald guy in half-moon specs being congratulated by a prison governor on making money for the prison of which he appears to be an inmate. It might be a little too baffling for the average viewer just wanting some light entertainment. On the other hand it has plenty of humour, the stars are stylish and always throwing themselves into things. The majority of the scenes being set at night may have added a certain surrealism to the presentation as they go from classy glassy building to building, full of the kind of ominous light shows that were used in 'Stealth' around the big grey ugly truck. There's definitely more of a sense of military thanks to all these rifle-toting guards, the darkness, the flashing lights and high security tech all over the place.
Maybe the darkness makes it too claustrophobic, because even though the team are mostly in close proximity to each other, they still seem separated quite a lot, communicating more by their headsets than in person. It also seems like there's less personality there, if I can say that - Ros is almost like a Barbie doll, all dressed up to the nines, but it doesn't quite fit with her previous image of this slightly scattily dressed genius. It's like she's suddenly got this gloss over her, which is good, but almost makes her less accessible as a character - or perhaps it was the way she was written, she doesn't seem to ever get in any way desperate, she's a little too cool and also doesn't get to be involved in the action as much, Ed and Beckett being the ones to infiltrate buildings, hide in decontamination bins or run around. Oddly, Ed is portrayed as the most human of the three this time in the sense that he tells both Ros and Beckett at different times to get out of there, when usually he's much more slapdash and relaxed about risks: when Ros is downloading the villains' database of information Ed urges her to get out, then later he says the same to Beckett when they're at PestiCorp. Beckett himself is very forward in the story, clearly being the leader, he seems to know all about viroids, these specialised micro-viruses that target plants and I really wanted a reference to The Hive there, that he'd encountered them on a mission somehow.
Beckett and Ed both have to confront their fears in the story - it had been well established that the former wasn't good with heights and so there's some good continuity there that addresses such fear when he has to leap onto a moving lorry to escape PestiCorp. Ed has the more worrying encounter as we learn he's afraid of creepy-crawlies, perhaps coming from his Australian heritage of so many bugs that can kill - it would have been nice to refer to his home country there as rationale. Not that I'm saying it's badly written, just that there are things you can't help see missing that would have made it better. Interestingly, this was the first script for the series written by the duo of Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, later to create 'Smallville,' a series I wouldn't say was one of the best, but which contained some terrific seasons (among a majority that were far from terrific!). At the time I first saw the series I didn't pay any attention to details like that, but on seeing it all again on DVD such things stuck out and added a whole new dimension! I'm sure Colin Brake, the Script Supervisor, would have gone over the whole story and adjusted it to make it more 'BUGS,' but it's fun to know that these creators (who also wrote the acclaimed 'Spider-Man 2'), contributed.
As is usually the case, Ed got to do the lion's share of the action, hanging from a lift, crawling through ventilation ducts, fighting Croll on the rooftop of PestiCorp… He also gets to use his brain when he thinks of the UV decontamination system as an ideal way to neutralise the viroid Croll and Pym plan to use to create a mass famine across Europe, then sell the miracle cure. Ed also ends up sliding into a 'Crystal Maze' dome that instead of featuring gold or silver tickets, is filled with angry insects buzzing about, causing him to panic until he can force his way out. In fact, the moment where he finds all the bottles that need to be destroyed, was like entering one of the puzzle rooms from that series: "Okay guys, I've got an empty room except for all these bottles. I've got to get them into the UV section…" Definitely one of the physical tasks. Actually, they should have done a 'Crystal Maze' special with the actors playing their characters - that would have been a sight to see. Sadly, the series had ended the previous year, 1995, and apparently the recording for that was early that year, probably when 'BUGS' was filming, too, so it could never have happened, but it's fun to speculate!
There are some familiar ideas being used again, such as climbing in a lift shaft ('A Sporting Chance'), a tiny camera in a lapel pin (like the poppy-cam in 'Out of The Hive'), and even the idea that Croll could use the one bottle that rolled away, to infect the bugs, and he explains it'll simply take longer for the viroid to multiply and spread (similar to the genetic virus in 'Assassins Inc' - "We can use the time to build cemeteries!"); be-masked thugs breaking into a facility to do with food crops ('Manna From Heaven'). The villains may not be the strongest, which could be why this doesn't feel like such a classic episode as some. Hugh Bonneville plays Pym in an early role - he's obviously gone on to worldwide acclaim in various things. Richard Cordery as Dr. Croll isn't quite as recognisable, I suspect, but he did have a fun role in an episode of 'Doc Martin' in recent years, which was very enjoyable to see. But they don't quite strike fear into the heart of the viewer, even though Pym and his sinister stutter worked well to make him memorable. It was a bit of a leap that he'd gone from this career-minded weather man at the Institute of Climatology to someone intent on making as much money from the world as possible, murdering his associate, Hawk, in cold blood, and he'd never had any criminal record! If you look at his biography that Ros pulled up, he had a successful and ever-improving career in his chosen profession so you wonder what caused him to become so nasty.
Croll, on the other hand just comes across as evil from the start. Ed basically kills him, because while you'd expect him to perform a smooth takedown in a few Tae Kwondo moves, while he does a nice kick to knock Croll's gun out of his hand, he then proceeds to manhandle the villain over the railing! Surely he could have knocked him out, and though it isn't technically Ed that kills him, as he does attempt to grab him before he falls, he also did put him in that position! Croll is quite an imposing figure, but the whole point of such fighting disciplines is that you use the opponent's own weight against them. Still, it's not as perplexing as the way Pym is killed. A security guard shoots the decon bin containing whatever it was (the serum?), and the electrical bolt reacts with the electronic lock in the lid, Pym stupidly tries to open it and then… the bin explodes. It didn't appear to have any reason to do that. At least Ros driving under the flatbed lorry full of oil drums could be said to have set off the explosion from the sparks as the roof tore off, but it's all in the tradition of the exploding car that blew up as it flew through the air in 'Out of The Hive,' so it's not out of character for things to arbitrarily explode. They may criticise Ros' driving, but she knows how to handle a car, as we saw, the bugs don't make her lose control and she comes up with that ingenious way to vent them at the expense of her poor car.
The look of the series is of course one of its strengths and with Ros in that red suit jacket, Beckett in his smart blue shirt and suit, only Ed is the odd one out with a blue-grey woollen jumper under his leather jacket. Ed and Beckett also get to wear the yellow coats of PestiCorp, so despite its blackness it was quite colourful at the same time - you also have the purple glow of the UV device, even if it was unnecessary to show a white smoke coming out of it, but that's typical TV convention so the audience understands the bottles were being affected. I liked the use of the flash grenade Ed throws so he and Beckett can escape, but why not simply take the guard's gun and hold him and Croll hostage? For that matter, why not call in the authorities if the danger is so great to the whole of Europe's crops - a famine that hasn't been seen in centuries? These are questions best left unasked. The team do come across almost more as vigilantes that work in the shadows of night, aliases, gadgets and no backup to the proper authorities, but it's usually a question of timing, action has to be taken now. It didn't seem entirely clear who had even hired them. Obviously it was the guy at the wheat field place, Greenville was the name I believe, though I got that from the end credits, so either they simply didn't explain who he was and why the team were working for him, or it was dropped in in one line, so if you miss it, it's gone.
It's always easy to poke holes, but that's part of the fun of it, and this episode has its share of inconsistencies. The lift, for instance - I liked that we saw a hatch in the floor through which Ed must have escaped, but there was no corresponding hatch on the underside! And it was also very strange for Ed to be in the air duct which leads right down into a crystal dome of flying bugs, yet he didn't seem to pass through an access hatch so the bugs could have flown out any time! And as for the guard who searches for Beckett (or Dr. Zygo as he's calling himself), in the decontamination room, it seemed obvious if there was anyone behind the shower curtains in each booth since there was only light beyond, while the end one, featuring the most ridiculous showing of shoes right on the edge that didn't look as if they were connected to anything, at least had a dark shape in the background from a hanging suit. It was clever how Beckett surprises the guard into shooting his futuristic gun at a mirror image, which then bounces off and hits the water overrunning onto the floor from all the taps and showers, but again, you'd think they'd train their guards that it's not safe to use electrical weapons in a wet environment! It's also a little too convenient that Croll doesn't get anyone to escort Beckett out as would be the usual form, especially in a secure establishment, but then Beckett couldn't have done what he needed to do. Oddly, security cameras are still being recorded onto little cassette tapes, Greenville gives them, though Ros does download onto a CD when visiting the Institute.
Was that a reuse of the STA observation room from the opening two-parter, as the glass pod the scientists observe the wheat from looked similar and was probably the same set? I did like the contrast of the golden wheat against the bright blue walls of the place (reminded me of 'Banjo-Kazooie'), as well as all that grating and people clomping about on it. Again, it's hard to believe Hawk would go in without his goggles on if he'd come in full diving gear, dangling at his front, but then they needed a lead to work on. Was Ros still tapping into The Hive's systems for the profile database? It seems likely since she asks Ed to plug in the modem, so obviously she needed to get a signal out, and we know that's how she's acquired sensitive data in the past… I couldn't help noticing Croll wears a bow-tie, just like Charlesworth, since in a later episode Beckett is suspicious of men in bow-ties. And it was fun to see a low-tech solution is sometimes best, as Ed demonstrates by shoving his fist into the bug jar when it opens with the diseased insects inside. Gizmo's, or whatever they call their home base, barely features and they don't even end there, with the standard joke at the end being on the rooftop of PestiCorp.
That was so they could cut to the next instalment of 'Prison Life with Jean-Daniel.' We meet the Prison Governor for the first time (as well as the Prison Guard), and learn that he had JD sewing mailbags at first, before he realised his genius at making money - the criminal invested in wheat futures, once again betting on his enemies in order to make lots of dough. When he says if he'd been the one to invest money he'd be calling his broker now, does that mean he was suggesting the Governor take the money himself, is that what he has to go off and do so urgently (I half expected him to say, 'There's something I have to do…' in preparation for the two-part finale!). If so, he's set up as a crooked official which JD is playing off and treats him like a child. Or was he really planning to have a gymnasium installed for the use of prison staff? This must be the most self-referential episode of the series with so many mentions of bugs, even though they're mainly talking about the natural kind rather than mechanical, it adds another side to the association, which is quite fun, and the music throughout with its electronic tones only adds to that insect-like atmosphere - good work.
***
Tuesday, 19 October 2021
Rush
DVD, Smallville S2 (Rush)
The only 'rush' here is the speed at which I want to get away from the episode! Only today I was thinking how Season 2 wasn't as bad as I'd thought. Not that I thought it was bad on the whole, especially compared with the following seasons, but there seemed less to do with the Kawatche caves, less of the Clark/Lana/Chloe moaning than I'd remembered, and… oh, that's all turned around in this episode, big time! I suppose I should say that at least it righted one wrong about the majority of the season: that Chloe and Pete weren't given enough meaningful to do. I don't know about meaningful, but they were certainly given plenty to do in this episode, the downside is that none of it's very good. It's like a twisted alternate universe where instead of the trio of Clark, Chloe and Pete going around solving crimes and working out the latest meteor rock mystery, as in Season 1, instead they're intent on dangerous fun, risking their lives for the rush. It was like a continuation of 'Red,' another of the episodes that didn't rank highly in my estimation, and would go on to have a negative impact on the ending of the season, too: Clark's encounters with Red Kryptonite. Let's just stop and ask where did Pete get this little piece of red rock in the first place? The episode began with some good continuity where the caves are being misused as a teen party spot and Pete's worried about it and mentions Kyla, but then it falls apart with things like him having access to both red and green Kryptonite out of nowhere!
That's not the only flaw in the story (where did the blue car come from?), it's just a minor moment, and in an otherwise good episode you could gloss over it, but it's a fallback to unsympathetic, hard-faced Lana, whom we'd already seen at least once this season, and this flip-flopping between Nasty and Nice versions of her is one reason why the series went downhill so much, so fast, added to the circular narrative of Chloe and Lana competing for Clark or distrusting him. They know his character, he's not perfect, but he does so much to help others that they know why he does things even if it's not always clear how, so you'd think they would give him leeway and understanding. It becomes this issue of him not being able to tell them his secret to protect them, especially after this episode where Pete has shown once again what a bad idea it was to tell him, since he uses Clark's weaknesses against him - so because he wasn't one of those that had had a parasite in him (I got a very 'Stargate SG-1' impression from that side of the story, they looked very similar to the symbionts in that), which was causing Chloe and Pete to act like they were on drugs, Lana can't understand what was going on. Maybe he could have told her his secret then, but it would have been purely for selfish reasons, to impress, to get himself off the hook, but he's constantly being punished like this as the series progresses, and it's not about trust, as they claim, it's about prudence.
The caves obviously come to the fore in this one, another negative for me, but it gave Lex something new to investigate instead of the accident he was obsessed about from the pilot episode of the series, and I suppose his was the type of personality that needed obsessions. He had the money, so why not? I did like the example of just what kind of resources and sway he held in the world, that he sees a picture of this Professor Walden (or Dr. Walden as he was on the back of the book he'd written), thanks to Clark's research, and entices the expert to come to his beck and call. He at first tries money, which turns into the lure of these unique cave paintings, but I was fully expecting the doctor to refuse on his stated grounds of disgust and being a bighead that wasn't going to be pushed into anything by anyone, then when he tries to go on his trip to Chile he finds that he can't go through whatever strings Lex has pulled. But that never happened, his interest got the better of him before Lex had to pull any other cards out of his pocket. Rob LaBelle was good as this new recurring character (a veteran of several roles on 'Voyager'), although he turned into a tool that wasn't really that well used as I recall of the season finale.
The episode had the capability to be quite a strong one as we've seen people acting on their innermost instincts and risking their own lives and others against character, most notably in 'Nicodemus' of Season 1 where a very similar story occurred. This time it's narrowed down to just Chloe and Pete, but it's a little worrying that they needed to go back to the same story idea so soon - it would in fact become an easily derided trope of the series, people acting out of character due to whatever outside influence they'd experienced, and reminded me why the series stopped working, at least until the last couple of seasons by which time it had become something very different: the loss of the bond between characters, which mirrored the loss of a sense of community of real people. We'd just lost Sheriff Ethan in the previous episode which was about the last main recurring character to be booted off the series that they'd been part of since the first season, and that community feel was a big part of what made the series work. Instead they'd choose to go much further in the direction this episode took, which was heavily contrived and unbelievable (from a character standpoint and human behaviour, not the fantasy aspects which you have to accept), pushing drama into character friendships that instead of deepening them, put them into miserable conflict.
Clark behaves badly to people because he's under the red rock influence, and I'm sure some found that to be compelling, but to me it was just lazy writing, a bit like some of the Mirror Universe episodes of Trek, which could be fun in their way, but were not of value to the greater whole and now have ended up doing more harm to the franchise than good. It's also the fact that the episode ends in misery rather than the warm, hopeful outlook that so many stories achieved. It seemed designed more to inject concern into viewers so they'd come back to find out what would happen next, rather than the optimistic and upbeat feel that the series began with and successfully repeated so many times. I'm not saying it's not there at all - it was good to see Pete come and apologise to Clark and his parents, even though it wasn't his fault, and they reiterate that he's still part of the family. Honestly, I thought he was coming to announce he was leaving town because he's been in far more episodes than I remembered (I was under the impression he left quite close to the start of Season 2, but then he wasn't given the chance to make much impact in most episodes so it's no surprise I thought that), so I was glad he's not been written out yet. I also wondered if this was why he left, that he'd got some superpowers from the bug, as I know that's how the character ended up later, but no.
I'd like to know how the Kents sorted out their financial problems, as is so glibly stated in this episode! Jonathan is being especially draconian for some reason and telling Clark he has to stay in and do homework instead of going to study the caves or meet up for a rendezvous with Lana, although with Martha's urging he relents on the Lana side of things. Good to hear Principal Reynolds' name, even if they couldn't be bothered to show him. But the Kents were having money troubles, one main reason why Martha went to work for Lionel (who does not appear), and has since left his employ, so you'd think they'd actually be worse off, but somehow everything's fine again, with no explanation. You can't throw in big changes like that without reason or warning, it doesn't make sense! There are also problems with Clark apparently unable to either restrain Pete (who didn't appear to have any green meteor rock on him at the time - I don't think it had occurred to him to exploit Clark's weakness at that point), or keep up with him - I understand they were out in the middle of the road with a crowd watching, so he couldn't use his strength there, but how could Pete elude him, he can move much faster, and yet Pete runs off into the crowd and Clark doesn't know where he is! Senseless.
I did like the effects of Chloe falling backwards off the loft in the barn, Clark effortlessly catching her, and catching the car she and Pete were in was another good moment, but these representations of his powers can't gloss over the episode's shortcomings in both sense and tone. We've seen characters acting up before, too, and it's such a big change from their usual behaviour that it's hard to believe that someone like Clark, for example, doesn't immediately realise something's wrong. He seems to think Chloe's just annoyed with him for hooking up with Lana and yet she's being beyond weird for her character and he never suspects a thing. Did Lex suspect Clark had also been affected by the parasite in the cave since he was behaving so rudely and out of character? He did suggest they'd all been taking something and that should have been the angle Clark played on - he should have told everyone Pete spiked his drink or something and had given him something to make him lose his inhibitions, but that would be too sensible a cover and too easy to overturn the badly chosen dramatic angles they were going for, wouldn't it! It also felt like they wasted revealing Clark's powers to Chloe. I know she doesn't remember, conveniently, but it somehow cheapens when Clark does eventually tell his secret to certain people, it's not something to be taken lightly and this slightly undercuts the specialness of that. Also, it's not usual for meteor rock to have immediate impact on Clark, is it? Pete hits him with it and punches him to the ground, but shouldn't he have felt something before then as it was only in his fist, not a lead-lined box?
I would have to say this was the worst episode of the season so far, not because it had nothing good within, just from the myriad problems and the further beginnings of all the irritating angst and interpersonal issues between characters that would dog the series from now on until Lana finally left. It's such a shame, because she was such a nice person and lovely to be around, but it was also played overly melodramatic this time, Chloe going out of her way as the infected version, to dig in on Lana, and Lana herself being too childish and easily upset, unwilling to listen, all the usual things. Until Clark will find a way to get forgiven again in the next episode or a couple of episodes down the line, and then the whole process starts again. And that's not why I watch the series! At least it reminded me why it's not worth seeing the other seasons again, so I should be grateful for that as I have been enjoying it enough that I was contemplating going further.
**
The only 'rush' here is the speed at which I want to get away from the episode! Only today I was thinking how Season 2 wasn't as bad as I'd thought. Not that I thought it was bad on the whole, especially compared with the following seasons, but there seemed less to do with the Kawatche caves, less of the Clark/Lana/Chloe moaning than I'd remembered, and… oh, that's all turned around in this episode, big time! I suppose I should say that at least it righted one wrong about the majority of the season: that Chloe and Pete weren't given enough meaningful to do. I don't know about meaningful, but they were certainly given plenty to do in this episode, the downside is that none of it's very good. It's like a twisted alternate universe where instead of the trio of Clark, Chloe and Pete going around solving crimes and working out the latest meteor rock mystery, as in Season 1, instead they're intent on dangerous fun, risking their lives for the rush. It was like a continuation of 'Red,' another of the episodes that didn't rank highly in my estimation, and would go on to have a negative impact on the ending of the season, too: Clark's encounters with Red Kryptonite. Let's just stop and ask where did Pete get this little piece of red rock in the first place? The episode began with some good continuity where the caves are being misused as a teen party spot and Pete's worried about it and mentions Kyla, but then it falls apart with things like him having access to both red and green Kryptonite out of nowhere!
That's not the only flaw in the story (where did the blue car come from?), it's just a minor moment, and in an otherwise good episode you could gloss over it, but it's a fallback to unsympathetic, hard-faced Lana, whom we'd already seen at least once this season, and this flip-flopping between Nasty and Nice versions of her is one reason why the series went downhill so much, so fast, added to the circular narrative of Chloe and Lana competing for Clark or distrusting him. They know his character, he's not perfect, but he does so much to help others that they know why he does things even if it's not always clear how, so you'd think they would give him leeway and understanding. It becomes this issue of him not being able to tell them his secret to protect them, especially after this episode where Pete has shown once again what a bad idea it was to tell him, since he uses Clark's weaknesses against him - so because he wasn't one of those that had had a parasite in him (I got a very 'Stargate SG-1' impression from that side of the story, they looked very similar to the symbionts in that), which was causing Chloe and Pete to act like they were on drugs, Lana can't understand what was going on. Maybe he could have told her his secret then, but it would have been purely for selfish reasons, to impress, to get himself off the hook, but he's constantly being punished like this as the series progresses, and it's not about trust, as they claim, it's about prudence.
The caves obviously come to the fore in this one, another negative for me, but it gave Lex something new to investigate instead of the accident he was obsessed about from the pilot episode of the series, and I suppose his was the type of personality that needed obsessions. He had the money, so why not? I did like the example of just what kind of resources and sway he held in the world, that he sees a picture of this Professor Walden (or Dr. Walden as he was on the back of the book he'd written), thanks to Clark's research, and entices the expert to come to his beck and call. He at first tries money, which turns into the lure of these unique cave paintings, but I was fully expecting the doctor to refuse on his stated grounds of disgust and being a bighead that wasn't going to be pushed into anything by anyone, then when he tries to go on his trip to Chile he finds that he can't go through whatever strings Lex has pulled. But that never happened, his interest got the better of him before Lex had to pull any other cards out of his pocket. Rob LaBelle was good as this new recurring character (a veteran of several roles on 'Voyager'), although he turned into a tool that wasn't really that well used as I recall of the season finale.
The episode had the capability to be quite a strong one as we've seen people acting on their innermost instincts and risking their own lives and others against character, most notably in 'Nicodemus' of Season 1 where a very similar story occurred. This time it's narrowed down to just Chloe and Pete, but it's a little worrying that they needed to go back to the same story idea so soon - it would in fact become an easily derided trope of the series, people acting out of character due to whatever outside influence they'd experienced, and reminded me why the series stopped working, at least until the last couple of seasons by which time it had become something very different: the loss of the bond between characters, which mirrored the loss of a sense of community of real people. We'd just lost Sheriff Ethan in the previous episode which was about the last main recurring character to be booted off the series that they'd been part of since the first season, and that community feel was a big part of what made the series work. Instead they'd choose to go much further in the direction this episode took, which was heavily contrived and unbelievable (from a character standpoint and human behaviour, not the fantasy aspects which you have to accept), pushing drama into character friendships that instead of deepening them, put them into miserable conflict.
Clark behaves badly to people because he's under the red rock influence, and I'm sure some found that to be compelling, but to me it was just lazy writing, a bit like some of the Mirror Universe episodes of Trek, which could be fun in their way, but were not of value to the greater whole and now have ended up doing more harm to the franchise than good. It's also the fact that the episode ends in misery rather than the warm, hopeful outlook that so many stories achieved. It seemed designed more to inject concern into viewers so they'd come back to find out what would happen next, rather than the optimistic and upbeat feel that the series began with and successfully repeated so many times. I'm not saying it's not there at all - it was good to see Pete come and apologise to Clark and his parents, even though it wasn't his fault, and they reiterate that he's still part of the family. Honestly, I thought he was coming to announce he was leaving town because he's been in far more episodes than I remembered (I was under the impression he left quite close to the start of Season 2, but then he wasn't given the chance to make much impact in most episodes so it's no surprise I thought that), so I was glad he's not been written out yet. I also wondered if this was why he left, that he'd got some superpowers from the bug, as I know that's how the character ended up later, but no.
I'd like to know how the Kents sorted out their financial problems, as is so glibly stated in this episode! Jonathan is being especially draconian for some reason and telling Clark he has to stay in and do homework instead of going to study the caves or meet up for a rendezvous with Lana, although with Martha's urging he relents on the Lana side of things. Good to hear Principal Reynolds' name, even if they couldn't be bothered to show him. But the Kents were having money troubles, one main reason why Martha went to work for Lionel (who does not appear), and has since left his employ, so you'd think they'd actually be worse off, but somehow everything's fine again, with no explanation. You can't throw in big changes like that without reason or warning, it doesn't make sense! There are also problems with Clark apparently unable to either restrain Pete (who didn't appear to have any green meteor rock on him at the time - I don't think it had occurred to him to exploit Clark's weakness at that point), or keep up with him - I understand they were out in the middle of the road with a crowd watching, so he couldn't use his strength there, but how could Pete elude him, he can move much faster, and yet Pete runs off into the crowd and Clark doesn't know where he is! Senseless.
I did like the effects of Chloe falling backwards off the loft in the barn, Clark effortlessly catching her, and catching the car she and Pete were in was another good moment, but these representations of his powers can't gloss over the episode's shortcomings in both sense and tone. We've seen characters acting up before, too, and it's such a big change from their usual behaviour that it's hard to believe that someone like Clark, for example, doesn't immediately realise something's wrong. He seems to think Chloe's just annoyed with him for hooking up with Lana and yet she's being beyond weird for her character and he never suspects a thing. Did Lex suspect Clark had also been affected by the parasite in the cave since he was behaving so rudely and out of character? He did suggest they'd all been taking something and that should have been the angle Clark played on - he should have told everyone Pete spiked his drink or something and had given him something to make him lose his inhibitions, but that would be too sensible a cover and too easy to overturn the badly chosen dramatic angles they were going for, wouldn't it! It also felt like they wasted revealing Clark's powers to Chloe. I know she doesn't remember, conveniently, but it somehow cheapens when Clark does eventually tell his secret to certain people, it's not something to be taken lightly and this slightly undercuts the specialness of that. Also, it's not usual for meteor rock to have immediate impact on Clark, is it? Pete hits him with it and punches him to the ground, but shouldn't he have felt something before then as it was only in his fist, not a lead-lined box?
I would have to say this was the worst episode of the season so far, not because it had nothing good within, just from the myriad problems and the further beginnings of all the irritating angst and interpersonal issues between characters that would dog the series from now on until Lana finally left. It's such a shame, because she was such a nice person and lovely to be around, but it was also played overly melodramatic this time, Chloe going out of her way as the infected version, to dig in on Lana, and Lana herself being too childish and easily upset, unwilling to listen, all the usual things. Until Clark will find a way to get forgiven again in the next episode or a couple of episodes down the line, and then the whole process starts again. And that's not why I watch the series! At least it reminded me why it's not worth seeing the other seasons again, so I should be grateful for that as I have been enjoying it enough that I was contemplating going further.
**
The Ambergris Element
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Ambergris Element)
This was a bit of a special one for me. I don't know if it was the first one I saw as a child, or not, but it was certainly the one that stuck in my head, this idea of the characters being stuck in this other form of being: Kirk and Spock are trapped 'breathing' water when they're mutated by the underwater Aquans on planet Argo, and it was such an eye-opening idea. I probably also liked the fact they were zipping about underwater and going into deep, dark crevasses. Seeing it again now, all these years later, it's much more cartoonish, but then it had a good excuse: it was a cartoon! And actually it comes across as a lot more realistic in tone and style than the current generation of Trek which, while live-action, is so far into fantasy and melodrama that it doesn't have those essential ingredients any more that make it good Trek. Saying all that, I did find that this particular episode, while dealing with some interesting themes of xenophobia and working together with others who appear so different from you, also had a whiff of being against 'old' ideas, as if the fact that they were created long ago is reason enough for them to be abandoned: the Aquans have their 'ordinations' that can't be disobeyed, and which the older members of the race firmly adhere to, which is bad for our characters as it means they'll be stuck in amphibious form for the rest of their lives (when Kirk talks about not being able to command a starship from inside an aquarium, and he and Spock living in it for the rest of their lives, I thought how interesting that would have made the film series!).
The young Aquans are shown to be the 'openminded' ones, particularly the female, Reela (who I at first thought to be voiced by Nichelle Nichols, but eventually realised was Majel Barrett), quicker to go against the ordinations and help. It seemed a subtle attack on, for example, The Ten Commandments, as if rules for life that have been handed down over many generations need reevaluating simply because of the time that has passed. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on the writers' and assuming too much in their motives, because in this case the ordinations they follow aren't particularly rational (you can't capture a sur-snake), and so there was no reason why they should be followed. It also confuses the issue again when at the end they say they'll make new ordinations, and this time they won't break them, although it does sound a bit like reforming the basic laws of life to accommodate new ideas. From the Starfleet perspective I wondered if perhaps Kirk should have considered remaining a water-breather - yes, he could no longer go back to his old life, but the Aquans seemed to be a pre-warp civilisation and was it right to interfere with their culture just to save himself and Spock? I can't help but think Captain Picard would have been only too happy to think of them first and sacrifice his life so their laws weren't broken, living among them for the rest of his days (at least we'd have been spared 'Nemesis' and 'Picard' if that had happened!).
They do inject some urgency into the situation by making it about a similar planet to Argo, a Federation world that needs help by learning from the approach to seaquakes or whatever it was they were researching there (and I did appreciate the approach of scientific research, and that even after they've been attacked by a sur-snake, they go down to have a gander since they're naturally curious, something we rarely see in Trek any more), so there is that element of it being about more than Kirk and Spock's survival, too. One of the themes that is certainly true is that hardship induces savagery and violence as we've been only too aware from certain groups reacting violently in society when they believe they don't have what others do, so Spock had a relevant thing to say about our times. It's a shame the themes can't be explored further due to the handicap of much shorter running times, but again, they're more eloquent and relevant than anything in 'DSC' or 'Picard' which rely on super-heroics and fantasy to fill the time. Not to say this episode didn't have its share of the kind of cartoon adventure you'd expect, what with sea monsters and underwater cities, and a colourful green race that look like relatives of The Creature from the Black Lagoon - I wonder if they were related to Orions as almost the only other green humanoid race in Trek?
The episode begins from an interesting perspective for those interested in technical details and hardware, as we get a great shot of a shuttle leaving the Shuttlebay - not only that, but we see the bay from the point of view of the control tower which we never did see in 'TOS,' so that was terrific. It's not just any shuttle either, it's apparently an 'aquashuttle,' a vehicle designed to travel underwater as well as through space. I've always been a bit quizzical when it comes to shuttles and water, not because I don't think it possible Starfleet could build one to withstand the pressures of underwater travel, but quite the opposite: I don't see why a standard shuttlecraft couldn't submerge since they're designed for the rigours of space. I was one of the few that actually didn't mind it when the Enterprise descended into an ocean in 'Into Darkness' (about the only thing I didn't find fault with in that film!), but it wouldn't be until 'Voyager' and the Tom Paris episode 'Thirty Days,' that we'd eventually see a shuttle travel underwater, presumably because it was too difficult to do the effect until then (although the stranded Defiant in 'Starship Down' was originally supposed to be trapped underwater, I think, before they decided it would be too costly).
The aquashuttle is one of those things that seemed a natural result of having 'infinite' resources in a world where you can draw whatever tech you want, a superfluous show of variety rather than being forced to rely on uniformity as they did in the real world to save money, but which also adds more reality and consistency. So it's not that I didn't feel the aquashuttle was any good, just not necessary. Even more hard to accept is that Scotty searches on the surface of Argo's sea on what appears to be an Enterprise-branded motorboat! Why wouldn't they simply fly a shuttlecraft over the surface, surely it can hover? Things like this are what make 'TAS' a little bit harder to accept than it otherwise might have been as they couldn't resist changing or adding things unnecessarily. It was good to see Scotty in the Captain's Chair, left in command, as happened a number of times on 'TOS,' and the Scotsman was quite involved with the story, even though it was mainly a Kirk and Spock adventure. McCoy, too, gets plenty to do, though they must have been saving money since while Uhura and Sulu appear, neither have any lines. As I mentioned, Majel Barrett does the voice of Reela, and I think one or two other females. James Doohan makes a good quavering old man impression as the High Tribune Domar of the Aquans, and there's at least one other voice that I didn't recognise.
We see the personal forcefields in use again, a device that was easier, and therefore, presumably cheaper, to draw than the EVA suits we saw on 'TOS' - here we see that even in animation there are limits to the budget as they could just use existing drawings of characters and show a glow around them rather than going the whole hog with new images of the EVA suit, but you'd think they may as well have done that as they were sure to use it again, anyway! And lastly, a couple of nitpicks I noticed: McCoy says Kirk and Spock now have a second eyelid like that of a fish - you'd think he'd have mentioned the inner eyelid Vulcans have as that would have been relevant. And they make a big deal of needing the Aquans' help to retrieve the venom of a sur-snake in order to formulate a cure to the Captain and First Officer's predicament, but before that, when they were escaping just such a sea monster it gets crushed by falling rubble so why not simply return to that one and get the venom from it? The answer, I suppose, would either be that it was too time-consuming to excavate the head buried beneath all those rocks, or that it was dead and the venom needed to come directly from a live beast. But not a bad little story, visually pleasing, and as I say, one that made an impact on me growing up, so it was nice to revisit it today.
**
This was a bit of a special one for me. I don't know if it was the first one I saw as a child, or not, but it was certainly the one that stuck in my head, this idea of the characters being stuck in this other form of being: Kirk and Spock are trapped 'breathing' water when they're mutated by the underwater Aquans on planet Argo, and it was such an eye-opening idea. I probably also liked the fact they were zipping about underwater and going into deep, dark crevasses. Seeing it again now, all these years later, it's much more cartoonish, but then it had a good excuse: it was a cartoon! And actually it comes across as a lot more realistic in tone and style than the current generation of Trek which, while live-action, is so far into fantasy and melodrama that it doesn't have those essential ingredients any more that make it good Trek. Saying all that, I did find that this particular episode, while dealing with some interesting themes of xenophobia and working together with others who appear so different from you, also had a whiff of being against 'old' ideas, as if the fact that they were created long ago is reason enough for them to be abandoned: the Aquans have their 'ordinations' that can't be disobeyed, and which the older members of the race firmly adhere to, which is bad for our characters as it means they'll be stuck in amphibious form for the rest of their lives (when Kirk talks about not being able to command a starship from inside an aquarium, and he and Spock living in it for the rest of their lives, I thought how interesting that would have made the film series!).
The young Aquans are shown to be the 'openminded' ones, particularly the female, Reela (who I at first thought to be voiced by Nichelle Nichols, but eventually realised was Majel Barrett), quicker to go against the ordinations and help. It seemed a subtle attack on, for example, The Ten Commandments, as if rules for life that have been handed down over many generations need reevaluating simply because of the time that has passed. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on the writers' and assuming too much in their motives, because in this case the ordinations they follow aren't particularly rational (you can't capture a sur-snake), and so there was no reason why they should be followed. It also confuses the issue again when at the end they say they'll make new ordinations, and this time they won't break them, although it does sound a bit like reforming the basic laws of life to accommodate new ideas. From the Starfleet perspective I wondered if perhaps Kirk should have considered remaining a water-breather - yes, he could no longer go back to his old life, but the Aquans seemed to be a pre-warp civilisation and was it right to interfere with their culture just to save himself and Spock? I can't help but think Captain Picard would have been only too happy to think of them first and sacrifice his life so their laws weren't broken, living among them for the rest of his days (at least we'd have been spared 'Nemesis' and 'Picard' if that had happened!).
They do inject some urgency into the situation by making it about a similar planet to Argo, a Federation world that needs help by learning from the approach to seaquakes or whatever it was they were researching there (and I did appreciate the approach of scientific research, and that even after they've been attacked by a sur-snake, they go down to have a gander since they're naturally curious, something we rarely see in Trek any more), so there is that element of it being about more than Kirk and Spock's survival, too. One of the themes that is certainly true is that hardship induces savagery and violence as we've been only too aware from certain groups reacting violently in society when they believe they don't have what others do, so Spock had a relevant thing to say about our times. It's a shame the themes can't be explored further due to the handicap of much shorter running times, but again, they're more eloquent and relevant than anything in 'DSC' or 'Picard' which rely on super-heroics and fantasy to fill the time. Not to say this episode didn't have its share of the kind of cartoon adventure you'd expect, what with sea monsters and underwater cities, and a colourful green race that look like relatives of The Creature from the Black Lagoon - I wonder if they were related to Orions as almost the only other green humanoid race in Trek?
The episode begins from an interesting perspective for those interested in technical details and hardware, as we get a great shot of a shuttle leaving the Shuttlebay - not only that, but we see the bay from the point of view of the control tower which we never did see in 'TOS,' so that was terrific. It's not just any shuttle either, it's apparently an 'aquashuttle,' a vehicle designed to travel underwater as well as through space. I've always been a bit quizzical when it comes to shuttles and water, not because I don't think it possible Starfleet could build one to withstand the pressures of underwater travel, but quite the opposite: I don't see why a standard shuttlecraft couldn't submerge since they're designed for the rigours of space. I was one of the few that actually didn't mind it when the Enterprise descended into an ocean in 'Into Darkness' (about the only thing I didn't find fault with in that film!), but it wouldn't be until 'Voyager' and the Tom Paris episode 'Thirty Days,' that we'd eventually see a shuttle travel underwater, presumably because it was too difficult to do the effect until then (although the stranded Defiant in 'Starship Down' was originally supposed to be trapped underwater, I think, before they decided it would be too costly).
The aquashuttle is one of those things that seemed a natural result of having 'infinite' resources in a world where you can draw whatever tech you want, a superfluous show of variety rather than being forced to rely on uniformity as they did in the real world to save money, but which also adds more reality and consistency. So it's not that I didn't feel the aquashuttle was any good, just not necessary. Even more hard to accept is that Scotty searches on the surface of Argo's sea on what appears to be an Enterprise-branded motorboat! Why wouldn't they simply fly a shuttlecraft over the surface, surely it can hover? Things like this are what make 'TAS' a little bit harder to accept than it otherwise might have been as they couldn't resist changing or adding things unnecessarily. It was good to see Scotty in the Captain's Chair, left in command, as happened a number of times on 'TOS,' and the Scotsman was quite involved with the story, even though it was mainly a Kirk and Spock adventure. McCoy, too, gets plenty to do, though they must have been saving money since while Uhura and Sulu appear, neither have any lines. As I mentioned, Majel Barrett does the voice of Reela, and I think one or two other females. James Doohan makes a good quavering old man impression as the High Tribune Domar of the Aquans, and there's at least one other voice that I didn't recognise.
We see the personal forcefields in use again, a device that was easier, and therefore, presumably cheaper, to draw than the EVA suits we saw on 'TOS' - here we see that even in animation there are limits to the budget as they could just use existing drawings of characters and show a glow around them rather than going the whole hog with new images of the EVA suit, but you'd think they may as well have done that as they were sure to use it again, anyway! And lastly, a couple of nitpicks I noticed: McCoy says Kirk and Spock now have a second eyelid like that of a fish - you'd think he'd have mentioned the inner eyelid Vulcans have as that would have been relevant. And they make a big deal of needing the Aquans' help to retrieve the venom of a sur-snake in order to formulate a cure to the Captain and First Officer's predicament, but before that, when they were escaping just such a sea monster it gets crushed by falling rubble so why not simply return to that one and get the venom from it? The answer, I suppose, would either be that it was too time-consuming to excavate the head buried beneath all those rocks, or that it was dead and the venom needed to come directly from a live beast. But not a bad little story, visually pleasing, and as I say, one that made an impact on me growing up, so it was nice to revisit it today.
**
…Must Come Down
DVD, BUGS S2 (…Must Come Down)
Brrr… it ends so chillingly: "The killings come later." At the same time it's completely unambiguous, not that the series was known for subtlety and tact, it wasn't meant to be, but I had an impression that we didn't see Jean-Daniel until at least the third episode, if not later, and we were left to puzzle over whether this was Zito's plot or if there was really someone else behind it. There's no question in the ending as we see it, Zito is assassinated by a couple of bazooka-wielding henchmen whom he assumes have come to back him up, then we get the series' standard humorous final scene with the team relaxing in what must be said is a very stylish and attractive place, with gleaming metal and glass surfaces and that avant-garde colour scheme, and they share a joke at Ed's expense, but things take a creepy turn as they speculate on who was really behind it all. Then we cut to a prison cell, pan down to a bald head watching the same news report as they were, and it's Jean-Daniel, the villain they put away at the end of Season 1. I'm not saying I'd have it any other way, I just forgot the season set out its stall right away, even though it would take two-thirds of it to get going. It wouldn't have been a surprise to me at the time because this was the last chronological episode that I missed on original transmission before I knew about the series (not counting a couple of episodes I didn't see after this point), being introduced to it in the next episode, 'Bugged Wheat,' so when seeing it for the first time on DVD I already knew it was all going to be about JD.
I always liked that sense of foreboding, a mood wonderfully crafted by both the dialogue and the music that morphs from the usual tension-filled sequences to triumphal success, but then transforms into a warning portent, it just appealed so much to my young mind. I think it also touches on one of my favourite 'Star Trek' storytelling devices of not knowing reality, whether that be a simulation, alien interference or the unknown capacities of the human mind (something that would be touched on at the end of this season in Cyberax). Having this extra dimension to what plays out for the team as their usual adventures, but for us is a concerning, larger picture that they aren't aware of, gives us added fear for the lives of our heroes as they walk unconsciously towards a doom that appears to be intended for their destruction. It adds new life into the series concept, not just because there's an element of serialisation, it's more about the continuity and an overarching plot against them that we know will slowly be revealed, and instead of each story being completely self-contained, as Season 1 was, there's a greater sense of ongoing lives playing out.
They were already starting to play with the formula and the simple rules that had been laid out about the characters being archetypes and nothing more, and we can see that being further altered quite clearly in this episode. The biggest example is of introducing us to Amanda 'Mandy' Courtney, of GNC (Global News… something?), apparently a top reporter for that organisation on site in Kituma to report on events there. We're told she and Beckett almost married, and though we don't get any more detail than that, there's certainly some bitterness on her side as she deliberately attacks him personally, even while she rises above personal feelings to help this country that is at a crossroads between financial success or civil war at the hands of Vice President Chuku, anxious to assassinate President Haikudu (played by Anthony Chinn, who's been in so many things, including the kind of old ITC productions 'BUGS' was based on!). It's unclear what happened, but Beckett admits to having regrets, even if he may just be saying that to ameliorate a difficult woman whom he's dependent on for much more important success. We also see evidence of a closer friendship between Beckett and Ros here, Beckett being much more tactile with her when they're worried about Ed and demonstrating confidence in her genius abilities to sort out any technical problem. Ros remains quite detached, as befits her position and personality, she doesn't give anything away whether he's overstepped the mark or she's grateful for it, she remains very reserved, but then she has a lot on her mind.
It's just interesting to see these little changes in the characters when you know where the series goes in future, and yet it's also very true to what had previously been established, Ros is more guarded generally, she has this irony or sarcasm in her voice, not in a negative way, but frequently chastising towards untruthful clients, or in this case teasing towards Beckett. He, on the other hand, has always been of fiery disposition that has got him into trouble in his career, but is also something of an asset in his present line of work, and when you add that Ed is the go-to action man, always ready for any kind of challenge, you see why the trio compliment each other so perfectly, a deconstruction of the series' success. It's not always the case that they each have their sphere of expertise and are allowed to stay within that comfort zone, and it's when they have to cross into other team members' areas that things go up a level as we see them struggle or forced to adjust on the fly - Ros is pushed into some action when she tracks down the Starshield signal from where Zito had controlled it, but she's caught by him and held at gunpoint. It only takes a second's distraction for her to perform an impressive karate kick that knocks the weapon out of his hands and gives Beckett time to jump him. She gets off another kick before she's done, too. Ed, meanwhile has to contend with the technical side of working in space, and this is another strength of the episode.
It's no 'Gravity,' but for a mid-90s TV budget they did a great job of presenting a pretty realistic portrayal of what it's like to be in space - we see a fascinating air-inflated splint for Vornholt's injured leg, which I would assume is the real technology they'd use for an injury like that in such an environment. Then there's the adjustment to the physics of weightlessness when Ed finds he doesn't have the torque to be able to unscrew a bolt keeping the RX44 satellite firmly in shuttle Excalibur and has to be reminded to brace himself. The tool used and the EVA suit all look authentic and while there aren't the wild thrills shown in 'Gravity,' there's a real sense of danger from the reality of the situation, even down to Ed beginning to float off into space and Susan telling him to throw the wrench away from him so the reverse force will push him back towards the shuttle. The big downside is that, just as in part one, gravity is shown to be in operation inside the shuttle, which isn't realistic. In this series' case we can make the excuse that, because there's all kinds of futuristic technology, it must be that IASA has developed some kind of artificial gravity, as far-fetched as that is, so that's how I get around it in my own mind. In general science fiction it's easy to accept, but because this series appears to be in the real world that does jar a little.
Something else that isn't quite as effective was a return to a blast of air and debris as simulation for a proper explosion when two of Amanda's crew are killed by Chuku's bomb going off in the lift as it opens its doors. I wonder if they couldn't have reused the stock footage of the lift explosion from 'A Sporting Chance' as that was so much more effective? What works pretty well is the sense of dangerous tensions in Kituma as we hear about terrorist attacks all over the country. It's not necessary to show that, as for example they do use stock footage of a space shuttle, because we have that blast in the lift and the aftermath of Amanda dealing with the death of two friends, so the impression of unrest and strife in the land is achieved. There continue to be a high rate of explosions, although most of them are pretty small and come from Zito's adoption of a portable bazooka as his last-ditch attempts to take out the opposition - I love how Beckett leaps in front of Joy at GNC, even though it would make no difference if Zito had been able to fire, but it's an instinctual reaction for him to put himself on the line for others, one of the things we love about him, and indeed, all the team. But I do prefer it when that team gets to work together instead of singularly, even if they are in communication. Obviously Ed is well out of that for the episode, being up in space, but while Ros and Beckett do spend a lot of time together, when they're actually doing things it's largely alone. It's possible Ed's teaming with Vornholt, while Ros and Beckett were working together separately, was the inspiration for Alex Jordan being added to the group as that's exactly the kind of teamwork that went on in Season 3.
Working alone does give a sense of danger for the characters, especially with a bazooka-wielding enemy running around (you know he means business when he starts wearing orange overalls - JD would do the same later in the season!), although I'd have been more concerned about getting into my vehicle than being bugged, considering Zito's MO last episode was to blow up cars! Fortunately we lose neither the Jeep nor Ros' yellow sports car, both of which would service many more of the team's missions. I'm not sure why Zito upgraded to a bazooka, I suppose it was his weapon of last resort as he'd lost the handgun during the fracas with Ros and Beckett. It could also be a hint of JD's involvement since his main distinguishing feature was carrying a similar weapon, though Zito's is much more compact and practical. I wish it had been more of a shock to the characters when they find out Zito's still alive - I'm not quite sure how they could have done that more effectively as it was really only for our, the audience's benefit since we knew what they didn't, so there was no shock for us, but Ros greets the sight of him very coolly after what was quite an ingenious, if violently risky, way to fake death. It also has to be said that, while an ingenious solution of Beckett's to smash the fire alarm so the sprinklers activate, shorting out Zito's weapon, I'm not sure how realistic that moment was: the sprinklers don't come on in the room Beckett and the others are in, just in the outside section where Zito stands. Then again, that room was bare, whereas the other was filled with electrical equipment so maybe it was designed on the assumption any fire would come from there and since electrics and water don't mix, the surrounding rooms and corridors had sprinklers to prevent the spread of fire?
I'd like to know what was going on with this potential army of henchmen willing to kill one of their own! It becomes a very James Bond moment with these two shady individuals in identical overalls striding around with bazookas and shades and I can see they were trying to show the power of who or what was behind Zito, but that makes you wonder what happened to them later on when JD finally gets out of prison - he doesn't seem to have an army then… If they were just hired guns does that explain it? I also noticed some other writerly shortcutting, or perhaps a conflict between the page and the screen, when Ros tells Beckett about how to get the code to her that he hopes he captured from Amanda before the feed was lost: he's to load up the minidisc on the laptop, then choose the best frame and send it through the modem, but in reality all that happens is he puts the disk in and somehow the computer goes straight to the frame he needs. Again, there was supposed to be some tension over whether Beckett had got a good enough image of the barcode, and it's difficult to inject danger into technical moments like that, but I felt that needed something more to succeed.
Interestingly, we get a first for the series when the whole of the teaser is taken up with a 'Story update…' recapping the first episode. I'm not sure they did that again in subsequent two-parters. And did they film in the same area as 'Out of The Hive'? The communications establishment at Blade Point, as Ros describes it, looked just like the waterfront area we saw near The Hive building, and the inside stairwell at GNC looked exactly the same as that building, too, with a rounded outer section and small, square windows in a line. I do have a question about what was actually happening from JD's side of things, because the GNC report states that investors who'd invested in Kituma had made a killing, and later we find out JD makes his vast sum of money by betting on the team that put him away, in terms of making investments based on who they were helping, at least that's how I remember it. If so, was he really behind Zito? It wouldn't make sense for him to want Zito to beat the Gizmo's team if he was investing in Kituma, or did he get the idea for investing in the team's clients from this event? Or was it that he would have made even more money by siding with the corrupt Chuku as Zito was doing? It's unclear at this stage and I'm not sure it ever became entirely clear, but it's a point I need to keep in mind as the season pans out.
Zito worked quite well as villain of this big story to kick us off, even if he seems less sane (“Time to die-ee”), perhaps he feels his status is slipping away, and in conversation with Chuku his angry face, slicked back hair and quivering lip makes for a terrifying close-up. He’s served quite well and gets to play the team on their own terms with the gadgets and weapons at his disposal. It almost seems a shame it was ultimately his disposal! Though the dramatic death, presumably sliced by all those shards from the shattering glass sculpture was quite original. The second part of stories in anything often aren't as strong as the first and I'd say this is no exception. It is a little slower, though 'What Goes Up…' was constantly plunging us into the midst of action, so it would be difficult to keep that momentum going for the space of another episode, and less exciting with all the big ideas happening in the previous episode, other than Ed doing a space walk. Nonetheless, I do still enjoy it as I enjoy all 'BUGS' episodes, and the slower pace allows the drama to come through, even if there is a bit too much repetition (such as the phrase 'Kituma's hidden wealth' or the STA ground crew cheering each time communications comes back on after losing them!). I appreciate the continuing details and the sense of an existing world being built little bits at a time. There's also a fun additional draw for me as this marks what I believe is the only connection between 'BUGS' and Trek, with Stokes, the guy who was Amanda's boss at GNC, played by Fintan McKeown a few years before he played an Irish hologram in two episodes of 'Voyager.' Two of my all-time favourite series' inextricably linked!
***
Brrr… it ends so chillingly: "The killings come later." At the same time it's completely unambiguous, not that the series was known for subtlety and tact, it wasn't meant to be, but I had an impression that we didn't see Jean-Daniel until at least the third episode, if not later, and we were left to puzzle over whether this was Zito's plot or if there was really someone else behind it. There's no question in the ending as we see it, Zito is assassinated by a couple of bazooka-wielding henchmen whom he assumes have come to back him up, then we get the series' standard humorous final scene with the team relaxing in what must be said is a very stylish and attractive place, with gleaming metal and glass surfaces and that avant-garde colour scheme, and they share a joke at Ed's expense, but things take a creepy turn as they speculate on who was really behind it all. Then we cut to a prison cell, pan down to a bald head watching the same news report as they were, and it's Jean-Daniel, the villain they put away at the end of Season 1. I'm not saying I'd have it any other way, I just forgot the season set out its stall right away, even though it would take two-thirds of it to get going. It wouldn't have been a surprise to me at the time because this was the last chronological episode that I missed on original transmission before I knew about the series (not counting a couple of episodes I didn't see after this point), being introduced to it in the next episode, 'Bugged Wheat,' so when seeing it for the first time on DVD I already knew it was all going to be about JD.
I always liked that sense of foreboding, a mood wonderfully crafted by both the dialogue and the music that morphs from the usual tension-filled sequences to triumphal success, but then transforms into a warning portent, it just appealed so much to my young mind. I think it also touches on one of my favourite 'Star Trek' storytelling devices of not knowing reality, whether that be a simulation, alien interference or the unknown capacities of the human mind (something that would be touched on at the end of this season in Cyberax). Having this extra dimension to what plays out for the team as their usual adventures, but for us is a concerning, larger picture that they aren't aware of, gives us added fear for the lives of our heroes as they walk unconsciously towards a doom that appears to be intended for their destruction. It adds new life into the series concept, not just because there's an element of serialisation, it's more about the continuity and an overarching plot against them that we know will slowly be revealed, and instead of each story being completely self-contained, as Season 1 was, there's a greater sense of ongoing lives playing out.
They were already starting to play with the formula and the simple rules that had been laid out about the characters being archetypes and nothing more, and we can see that being further altered quite clearly in this episode. The biggest example is of introducing us to Amanda 'Mandy' Courtney, of GNC (Global News… something?), apparently a top reporter for that organisation on site in Kituma to report on events there. We're told she and Beckett almost married, and though we don't get any more detail than that, there's certainly some bitterness on her side as she deliberately attacks him personally, even while she rises above personal feelings to help this country that is at a crossroads between financial success or civil war at the hands of Vice President Chuku, anxious to assassinate President Haikudu (played by Anthony Chinn, who's been in so many things, including the kind of old ITC productions 'BUGS' was based on!). It's unclear what happened, but Beckett admits to having regrets, even if he may just be saying that to ameliorate a difficult woman whom he's dependent on for much more important success. We also see evidence of a closer friendship between Beckett and Ros here, Beckett being much more tactile with her when they're worried about Ed and demonstrating confidence in her genius abilities to sort out any technical problem. Ros remains quite detached, as befits her position and personality, she doesn't give anything away whether he's overstepped the mark or she's grateful for it, she remains very reserved, but then she has a lot on her mind.
It's just interesting to see these little changes in the characters when you know where the series goes in future, and yet it's also very true to what had previously been established, Ros is more guarded generally, she has this irony or sarcasm in her voice, not in a negative way, but frequently chastising towards untruthful clients, or in this case teasing towards Beckett. He, on the other hand, has always been of fiery disposition that has got him into trouble in his career, but is also something of an asset in his present line of work, and when you add that Ed is the go-to action man, always ready for any kind of challenge, you see why the trio compliment each other so perfectly, a deconstruction of the series' success. It's not always the case that they each have their sphere of expertise and are allowed to stay within that comfort zone, and it's when they have to cross into other team members' areas that things go up a level as we see them struggle or forced to adjust on the fly - Ros is pushed into some action when she tracks down the Starshield signal from where Zito had controlled it, but she's caught by him and held at gunpoint. It only takes a second's distraction for her to perform an impressive karate kick that knocks the weapon out of his hands and gives Beckett time to jump him. She gets off another kick before she's done, too. Ed, meanwhile has to contend with the technical side of working in space, and this is another strength of the episode.
It's no 'Gravity,' but for a mid-90s TV budget they did a great job of presenting a pretty realistic portrayal of what it's like to be in space - we see a fascinating air-inflated splint for Vornholt's injured leg, which I would assume is the real technology they'd use for an injury like that in such an environment. Then there's the adjustment to the physics of weightlessness when Ed finds he doesn't have the torque to be able to unscrew a bolt keeping the RX44 satellite firmly in shuttle Excalibur and has to be reminded to brace himself. The tool used and the EVA suit all look authentic and while there aren't the wild thrills shown in 'Gravity,' there's a real sense of danger from the reality of the situation, even down to Ed beginning to float off into space and Susan telling him to throw the wrench away from him so the reverse force will push him back towards the shuttle. The big downside is that, just as in part one, gravity is shown to be in operation inside the shuttle, which isn't realistic. In this series' case we can make the excuse that, because there's all kinds of futuristic technology, it must be that IASA has developed some kind of artificial gravity, as far-fetched as that is, so that's how I get around it in my own mind. In general science fiction it's easy to accept, but because this series appears to be in the real world that does jar a little.
Something else that isn't quite as effective was a return to a blast of air and debris as simulation for a proper explosion when two of Amanda's crew are killed by Chuku's bomb going off in the lift as it opens its doors. I wonder if they couldn't have reused the stock footage of the lift explosion from 'A Sporting Chance' as that was so much more effective? What works pretty well is the sense of dangerous tensions in Kituma as we hear about terrorist attacks all over the country. It's not necessary to show that, as for example they do use stock footage of a space shuttle, because we have that blast in the lift and the aftermath of Amanda dealing with the death of two friends, so the impression of unrest and strife in the land is achieved. There continue to be a high rate of explosions, although most of them are pretty small and come from Zito's adoption of a portable bazooka as his last-ditch attempts to take out the opposition - I love how Beckett leaps in front of Joy at GNC, even though it would make no difference if Zito had been able to fire, but it's an instinctual reaction for him to put himself on the line for others, one of the things we love about him, and indeed, all the team. But I do prefer it when that team gets to work together instead of singularly, even if they are in communication. Obviously Ed is well out of that for the episode, being up in space, but while Ros and Beckett do spend a lot of time together, when they're actually doing things it's largely alone. It's possible Ed's teaming with Vornholt, while Ros and Beckett were working together separately, was the inspiration for Alex Jordan being added to the group as that's exactly the kind of teamwork that went on in Season 3.
Working alone does give a sense of danger for the characters, especially with a bazooka-wielding enemy running around (you know he means business when he starts wearing orange overalls - JD would do the same later in the season!), although I'd have been more concerned about getting into my vehicle than being bugged, considering Zito's MO last episode was to blow up cars! Fortunately we lose neither the Jeep nor Ros' yellow sports car, both of which would service many more of the team's missions. I'm not sure why Zito upgraded to a bazooka, I suppose it was his weapon of last resort as he'd lost the handgun during the fracas with Ros and Beckett. It could also be a hint of JD's involvement since his main distinguishing feature was carrying a similar weapon, though Zito's is much more compact and practical. I wish it had been more of a shock to the characters when they find out Zito's still alive - I'm not quite sure how they could have done that more effectively as it was really only for our, the audience's benefit since we knew what they didn't, so there was no shock for us, but Ros greets the sight of him very coolly after what was quite an ingenious, if violently risky, way to fake death. It also has to be said that, while an ingenious solution of Beckett's to smash the fire alarm so the sprinklers activate, shorting out Zito's weapon, I'm not sure how realistic that moment was: the sprinklers don't come on in the room Beckett and the others are in, just in the outside section where Zito stands. Then again, that room was bare, whereas the other was filled with electrical equipment so maybe it was designed on the assumption any fire would come from there and since electrics and water don't mix, the surrounding rooms and corridors had sprinklers to prevent the spread of fire?
I'd like to know what was going on with this potential army of henchmen willing to kill one of their own! It becomes a very James Bond moment with these two shady individuals in identical overalls striding around with bazookas and shades and I can see they were trying to show the power of who or what was behind Zito, but that makes you wonder what happened to them later on when JD finally gets out of prison - he doesn't seem to have an army then… If they were just hired guns does that explain it? I also noticed some other writerly shortcutting, or perhaps a conflict between the page and the screen, when Ros tells Beckett about how to get the code to her that he hopes he captured from Amanda before the feed was lost: he's to load up the minidisc on the laptop, then choose the best frame and send it through the modem, but in reality all that happens is he puts the disk in and somehow the computer goes straight to the frame he needs. Again, there was supposed to be some tension over whether Beckett had got a good enough image of the barcode, and it's difficult to inject danger into technical moments like that, but I felt that needed something more to succeed.
Interestingly, we get a first for the series when the whole of the teaser is taken up with a 'Story update…' recapping the first episode. I'm not sure they did that again in subsequent two-parters. And did they film in the same area as 'Out of The Hive'? The communications establishment at Blade Point, as Ros describes it, looked just like the waterfront area we saw near The Hive building, and the inside stairwell at GNC looked exactly the same as that building, too, with a rounded outer section and small, square windows in a line. I do have a question about what was actually happening from JD's side of things, because the GNC report states that investors who'd invested in Kituma had made a killing, and later we find out JD makes his vast sum of money by betting on the team that put him away, in terms of making investments based on who they were helping, at least that's how I remember it. If so, was he really behind Zito? It wouldn't make sense for him to want Zito to beat the Gizmo's team if he was investing in Kituma, or did he get the idea for investing in the team's clients from this event? Or was it that he would have made even more money by siding with the corrupt Chuku as Zito was doing? It's unclear at this stage and I'm not sure it ever became entirely clear, but it's a point I need to keep in mind as the season pans out.
Zito worked quite well as villain of this big story to kick us off, even if he seems less sane (“Time to die-ee”), perhaps he feels his status is slipping away, and in conversation with Chuku his angry face, slicked back hair and quivering lip makes for a terrifying close-up. He’s served quite well and gets to play the team on their own terms with the gadgets and weapons at his disposal. It almost seems a shame it was ultimately his disposal! Though the dramatic death, presumably sliced by all those shards from the shattering glass sculpture was quite original. The second part of stories in anything often aren't as strong as the first and I'd say this is no exception. It is a little slower, though 'What Goes Up…' was constantly plunging us into the midst of action, so it would be difficult to keep that momentum going for the space of another episode, and less exciting with all the big ideas happening in the previous episode, other than Ed doing a space walk. Nonetheless, I do still enjoy it as I enjoy all 'BUGS' episodes, and the slower pace allows the drama to come through, even if there is a bit too much repetition (such as the phrase 'Kituma's hidden wealth' or the STA ground crew cheering each time communications comes back on after losing them!). I appreciate the continuing details and the sense of an existing world being built little bits at a time. There's also a fun additional draw for me as this marks what I believe is the only connection between 'BUGS' and Trek, with Stokes, the guy who was Amanda's boss at GNC, played by Fintan McKeown a few years before he played an Irish hologram in two episodes of 'Voyager.' Two of my all-time favourite series' inextricably linked!
***
Tuesday, 12 October 2021
The Time Trap
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Time Trap)
For most of this episode the story takes place in an alternate universe or 'a pocket in the garment of time' as it was eloquently expressed by one of those trapped within it, but for all the oddness in the standard characters from our time or universe, it's almost as if they were from an alternate reality of their own! The biggest standout is Commander Kor's return, but he looks nothing like the round-faced, grinning villain with pointy whiskers that we saw in 'TOS' ('Errand of Mercy'), which first introduced the Klingons. He actually looks a lot more like Kang, one of the big three from the series, so I wonder what their mindset was there - maybe they got mixed up? Either way, we don't even get John Colicos back to voice his character as they had with Roger C. Carmel and Harry Mudd, with what sounded to me like James Doohan performing the voice among others in the episode, and it didn't even sound the way Kor talked! It all begins with the Enterprise rashly exploring this Bermuda Triangle of space known as the Delta Triangle, in which ships have gone missing for years. At the same time a trio of Klingon vessels springs a surprise attack, but Kor's ship, the Klothos (later to become canon in 'Once More Unto The Breach' on 'DS9,' the character's final appearance in Trek), vanishes and Kirk takes the risk of heading straight for where it had been to verify a theory that apparently just occurred to him out of nowhere!
This reckless behaviour isn't the only odd thing about the moment as he commands Sulu to go to Warp 8 and head for where the Klingon ship was, yet it was close enough to fire on the Enterprise, so going to that speed would surely overshoot the spot by some considerable margin, wouldn't it? Kirk's decision-making isn't the only character flaw in the episode as Spock suddenly becomes jovial and friendly with the Klingons, not strange in itself since you realise he must be up to something when he goes over and warmly puts his hands on Kor and his aide's shoulders - I assumed he was planting some kind of listening bug to hear their plans, but we soon find out that he was doing something akin to a mind meld, his touch able to briefly read the Klingons' minds and learn their evil intentions! Now I know Vulcans are touch telepaths and their skills have never been fully explained, but this would seem to be a bit of a leap from what we'd seen before, where it was a fairly involved process of the fingers being placed on the face of the person whose mind was being joined. It's not like he even touches bare skin, so it was a bit of a liberty to make up this ability, even if it was lightly defined and he just got a sense of what they were thinking rather than actually sharing minds. It was a power too far, and one among many such inconsistencies I can imagine deciding Roddenberry on not wanting 'TAS' to be considered canon when all was said and done.
There's also the issue of the first ever starship to use warp drive: the USS Bonaventure. This would be quite an addition to canon and wouldn't necessarily conflict with 'TOS,' but of course we later saw the film 'First Contact' establish the Phoenix as the first Earth warp ship. Even if they actually meant the first proper starship that wouldn't work because the Franklin ('Star Trek Beyond's errant contribution to confusing the issue), and the Enterprise NX-01 look nothing like it, so unless the Bonaventure was a design that was then discarded, but decades later brought back as the basis for the Constitution-class, it doesn't make sense. It's also a USS, which means a Federation ship, and we know there were warp-capable vessels before that. It really has little impact on the story other than to reinforce the idea that ships have been going missing here for a very long time, centuries even. Of course, back then they didn't know when the Federation had been established or even exactly when the series was set, but as I say, maybe 'TAS' actually occurs in an alternate universe itself!
They make use of the voice cast with Nichelle Nichols getting to play at least a couple of other roles to Uhura (the Orion woman and the Caitian-like Megan, and possibly the Klingon woman?), while George Takei is Sulu, but also gets to be the other Klingon Captain, and James Doohan, as well as being Scotty and Kor, is the apparent leader of the Elysian (Alesian?), group that comprises one hundred and twenty-three races who have all been trapped and chose to create a new organisation of peace. That was a typically Trek idea and one that would be seen again in the similar 'Voyager' story, 'The Void,' in which the ship is trapped in a void and Captain Janeway starts a mini-Federation for protection and to mount an escape. So it's a good idea and portrayed well in this case, mainly from a visual standpoint as we get a great selection of familiar and new 'TOS' races: the aforementioned Orion (who, for some reason, amusingly goes around in her underwear the whole time!), a Tellarite, Vulcan, Andorian, even a Gorn and one of those green jellyfish head creatures (Philosian?), from 'The Infinite Vulcan.' One of their number even looks like it could be a Xindi Insectoid, which would be a fun retcon! The biggest question is over the main guy: is he a Romulan? He has the V-shaped haircut that suggests he would be, as well as a Roman toga uniform that could be meant to represent one from a different era (as they all live much longer in this pocket).
The real question is what his true name is - I don't mean any secret Romulan name they never tell outsiders (if 'Picard' is to be believed), but his standard monicker since I counted four different variations on how it was said, an example of what it's like recording lines separately as that means there isn't as much consistency in pronunciation! First I thought it was Sy-rius, then Zurius, then Zarius, and finally, Sarius! The man of a thousand names? I also found it interesting to note apparent humans who wore Starfleet-like outfits that could also have been meant as a uniform from the past (there's a woman with white top and blue trimmings who has a starburst badge). They could of course have been from other organisations than Starfleet, but I like the idea of attempting to fill in the design lineage, even if it was subsequently abandoned by 'TAS' not being considered officially part of the history - mind you, nowadays even when things are a part of the official history, in fact created the whole thing in the first place, it's discarded for a 'new visual aesthetic' because poor modern people can't take a Sixties cut of clothing (see the woes of 'DSC' where they completely upended the logical progression from 'The Cage' to Trek's second pilot and onto the main series).
The colour and variety of the aliens presented was the kind of thing it was difficult for the parent series to achieve, not that they never tried, with 'Journey To Babel' an excellent example of the menagerie of aliens that could be created on their budget, and this is very much in that spirit and makes the episode more entertaining than merely being about entrapment in some anomaly. The addition of the Klingons is equally promising, especially as in the end the Enterprise and the Klothos have to work together to achieve the escape. It didn't quite ring true that the other ships hadn't been able to accomplish something similar, especially as there were many more of them, but we can get around this nitpick by saying that Spock and his calculations were essential to the attempt (the great intelligence and computational power of Vulcans is something else that has been overlooked by current gen Trek in favour of showing emotion and beards! Will Vulcans ever again be given the respect they deserve?). Another alternative is that Sirius, or whatever his name was, or perhaps even that Orion girl, were actually ensuring the status quo and sabotaged previous escape attempts because they liked what had been created (much like Alixus did in 'Paradise' on 'DS9').
There's one other story point that doesn't make a lot of sense, which is Scotty saying the Dilithium crystals will run out in two days! If they'd added a line about the journey into the Delta Triangles having drained the crystals extensively then that would be okay, but it just comes out of nowhere. That's the problem with the series, it often is too cartoonish, though I suspect it's far more adult in its intelligence and story approach than the new animated series' that are being made and about which I've heard extremely questionable choices, but it shouldn't be a surprise after what they did with 'DSC' and 'Picard.' Once again I find myself warming to this series as a far better example of what Trek was and should be, very different from what it has become. It may not stack up compared to live action Treks, but side by side with versions that have gone so far from the history, continuity, design and moral content that drew people to it in the first place, it's a joy and one I'm glad to be getting back into after a year's break.
**
For most of this episode the story takes place in an alternate universe or 'a pocket in the garment of time' as it was eloquently expressed by one of those trapped within it, but for all the oddness in the standard characters from our time or universe, it's almost as if they were from an alternate reality of their own! The biggest standout is Commander Kor's return, but he looks nothing like the round-faced, grinning villain with pointy whiskers that we saw in 'TOS' ('Errand of Mercy'), which first introduced the Klingons. He actually looks a lot more like Kang, one of the big three from the series, so I wonder what their mindset was there - maybe they got mixed up? Either way, we don't even get John Colicos back to voice his character as they had with Roger C. Carmel and Harry Mudd, with what sounded to me like James Doohan performing the voice among others in the episode, and it didn't even sound the way Kor talked! It all begins with the Enterprise rashly exploring this Bermuda Triangle of space known as the Delta Triangle, in which ships have gone missing for years. At the same time a trio of Klingon vessels springs a surprise attack, but Kor's ship, the Klothos (later to become canon in 'Once More Unto The Breach' on 'DS9,' the character's final appearance in Trek), vanishes and Kirk takes the risk of heading straight for where it had been to verify a theory that apparently just occurred to him out of nowhere!
This reckless behaviour isn't the only odd thing about the moment as he commands Sulu to go to Warp 8 and head for where the Klingon ship was, yet it was close enough to fire on the Enterprise, so going to that speed would surely overshoot the spot by some considerable margin, wouldn't it? Kirk's decision-making isn't the only character flaw in the episode as Spock suddenly becomes jovial and friendly with the Klingons, not strange in itself since you realise he must be up to something when he goes over and warmly puts his hands on Kor and his aide's shoulders - I assumed he was planting some kind of listening bug to hear their plans, but we soon find out that he was doing something akin to a mind meld, his touch able to briefly read the Klingons' minds and learn their evil intentions! Now I know Vulcans are touch telepaths and their skills have never been fully explained, but this would seem to be a bit of a leap from what we'd seen before, where it was a fairly involved process of the fingers being placed on the face of the person whose mind was being joined. It's not like he even touches bare skin, so it was a bit of a liberty to make up this ability, even if it was lightly defined and he just got a sense of what they were thinking rather than actually sharing minds. It was a power too far, and one among many such inconsistencies I can imagine deciding Roddenberry on not wanting 'TAS' to be considered canon when all was said and done.
There's also the issue of the first ever starship to use warp drive: the USS Bonaventure. This would be quite an addition to canon and wouldn't necessarily conflict with 'TOS,' but of course we later saw the film 'First Contact' establish the Phoenix as the first Earth warp ship. Even if they actually meant the first proper starship that wouldn't work because the Franklin ('Star Trek Beyond's errant contribution to confusing the issue), and the Enterprise NX-01 look nothing like it, so unless the Bonaventure was a design that was then discarded, but decades later brought back as the basis for the Constitution-class, it doesn't make sense. It's also a USS, which means a Federation ship, and we know there were warp-capable vessels before that. It really has little impact on the story other than to reinforce the idea that ships have been going missing here for a very long time, centuries even. Of course, back then they didn't know when the Federation had been established or even exactly when the series was set, but as I say, maybe 'TAS' actually occurs in an alternate universe itself!
They make use of the voice cast with Nichelle Nichols getting to play at least a couple of other roles to Uhura (the Orion woman and the Caitian-like Megan, and possibly the Klingon woman?), while George Takei is Sulu, but also gets to be the other Klingon Captain, and James Doohan, as well as being Scotty and Kor, is the apparent leader of the Elysian (Alesian?), group that comprises one hundred and twenty-three races who have all been trapped and chose to create a new organisation of peace. That was a typically Trek idea and one that would be seen again in the similar 'Voyager' story, 'The Void,' in which the ship is trapped in a void and Captain Janeway starts a mini-Federation for protection and to mount an escape. So it's a good idea and portrayed well in this case, mainly from a visual standpoint as we get a great selection of familiar and new 'TOS' races: the aforementioned Orion (who, for some reason, amusingly goes around in her underwear the whole time!), a Tellarite, Vulcan, Andorian, even a Gorn and one of those green jellyfish head creatures (Philosian?), from 'The Infinite Vulcan.' One of their number even looks like it could be a Xindi Insectoid, which would be a fun retcon! The biggest question is over the main guy: is he a Romulan? He has the V-shaped haircut that suggests he would be, as well as a Roman toga uniform that could be meant to represent one from a different era (as they all live much longer in this pocket).
The real question is what his true name is - I don't mean any secret Romulan name they never tell outsiders (if 'Picard' is to be believed), but his standard monicker since I counted four different variations on how it was said, an example of what it's like recording lines separately as that means there isn't as much consistency in pronunciation! First I thought it was Sy-rius, then Zurius, then Zarius, and finally, Sarius! The man of a thousand names? I also found it interesting to note apparent humans who wore Starfleet-like outfits that could also have been meant as a uniform from the past (there's a woman with white top and blue trimmings who has a starburst badge). They could of course have been from other organisations than Starfleet, but I like the idea of attempting to fill in the design lineage, even if it was subsequently abandoned by 'TAS' not being considered officially part of the history - mind you, nowadays even when things are a part of the official history, in fact created the whole thing in the first place, it's discarded for a 'new visual aesthetic' because poor modern people can't take a Sixties cut of clothing (see the woes of 'DSC' where they completely upended the logical progression from 'The Cage' to Trek's second pilot and onto the main series).
The colour and variety of the aliens presented was the kind of thing it was difficult for the parent series to achieve, not that they never tried, with 'Journey To Babel' an excellent example of the menagerie of aliens that could be created on their budget, and this is very much in that spirit and makes the episode more entertaining than merely being about entrapment in some anomaly. The addition of the Klingons is equally promising, especially as in the end the Enterprise and the Klothos have to work together to achieve the escape. It didn't quite ring true that the other ships hadn't been able to accomplish something similar, especially as there were many more of them, but we can get around this nitpick by saying that Spock and his calculations were essential to the attempt (the great intelligence and computational power of Vulcans is something else that has been overlooked by current gen Trek in favour of showing emotion and beards! Will Vulcans ever again be given the respect they deserve?). Another alternative is that Sirius, or whatever his name was, or perhaps even that Orion girl, were actually ensuring the status quo and sabotaged previous escape attempts because they liked what had been created (much like Alixus did in 'Paradise' on 'DS9').
There's one other story point that doesn't make a lot of sense, which is Scotty saying the Dilithium crystals will run out in two days! If they'd added a line about the journey into the Delta Triangles having drained the crystals extensively then that would be okay, but it just comes out of nowhere. That's the problem with the series, it often is too cartoonish, though I suspect it's far more adult in its intelligence and story approach than the new animated series' that are being made and about which I've heard extremely questionable choices, but it shouldn't be a surprise after what they did with 'DSC' and 'Picard.' Once again I find myself warming to this series as a far better example of what Trek was and should be, very different from what it has become. It may not stack up compared to live action Treks, but side by side with versions that have gone so far from the history, continuity, design and moral content that drew people to it in the first place, it's a joy and one I'm glad to be getting back into after a year's break.
**
What Goes Up…
DVD, BUGS S2 (What Goes Up…)
Ah, Season 2, the year I came to 'BUGS' and for many reasons my favourite of the four. Right away you can tell they're going in all guns blazing, Ed, Ros and Beckett look sharper and more stylish than ever, they're involved with something far bigger than a simple call-in from a blighted business, no less than a country's fate and fortune are on the line and you can't go bigger than an adventure in space itself! Leaving aside the trappings for the moment the thing that stood out for me is how many times people get trapped in rooms and the number of explosions ripping through the episode - we get two deaths by dangerous ignition key, or at least apparent ones, as we'll discuss later, the second is much more dramatic than a person being blown up in their own car; a variety of other blasts, and not only that, they're all proper bangs, none of these wind fans and debris that seemed to be the method used for the attack on Gizmo's in the previous episode and season ender, 'Pulse.' Let's just rewind to people being trapped in rooms, as this sets the tone for the story: Ed is inside the shuttle simulator when a fire breaks out within and the door mechanism fails to respond. It's fortunate that electronics genius Ros is on hand to dash to the rescue and blow the door from its hinges. The next time it happens it's Beckett stuck in the fuel cell testing module where scientist McNair locks him in and turns on the depressurisation, sucking the air out, Ros forced to go against her usual methods and try brute force with a whacking great wrench to shatter the door. Whacking is the right word!
It's a good job Ros was there in both cases, but in case we get the impression the guys are useless, she's not available for Lock-In Part III: this time it's Beckett again, tricked into entering a cubbyhole in the basement at STA, the Space Technology Agency thanks to the double-dealing of on-site tech expert Zito, who zaps him with a taser, the first of many this season. Zito obviously doesn't know every inch of the place because once Beckett has recovered enough to be able to stand up again (and I did like that the shock had an effect on him instead of him waking up and being right as rain), he finds a utility exit in the floor. I don't know why there were so many moments of people being trapped, and I suppose we can add to that tally Ed being caught in the cargo hold of the shuttle during launch when he needs to pull out a sabotaged fuel cell before the heat causes it to explode, but I quite like the repetition - it probably had something to do with this being the first ever two-part story of the series so there had to be a few blind alleys to keep the momentum going before the story was wrapped up. Effectively you have to juggle the characters and keep them in the air for the running time instead of following the standard formula of reaching the required goal of foiling the villain's plans by the end of the episode.
It being a two-parter almost certainly enabled them to put more money on the screen since they could reuse the sets and actors, amortising the cost of such a bold idea across two segments instead of one, enabling them to pull off the kind of ambition you'd not associate with the series after seeing Season 1 where each story was self-contained and the worst there was to worry about was a guy or gal with a gun. If you look at it realistically it's probably totally silly that Ed could go through some astronaut training as a cover to track down a saboteur within the programme and then find himself as the only other possible candidate for a mission into space, but they do at least hit it home that he's done countless simulations and training to the extent he feels it's not necessary for his true mission. Was Zito deliberately trying to tire him out and discourage him with the amount of training sessions so he'd be less likely to track down the villain, because if so he shot himself in the foot by making Ed qualified! Let's also not forget that he's always been shown to have a natural aptitude for anything that involves flying or reaction-based activities, as he proves once again by smashing the record for the shuttle arm-deployment simulation. I so wanted him to reprise his line from the first episode, 'Out of The Hive,' about how they say videogames aren't any good for you!
This mission to space could be seen as the statement of intent for the season since it is a big idea to take on, while also creeping into the realms of science fiction in some ways. It has that visual impression of so much happening at night that would go on to be common, whereas Season 1 was generally much lighter and brighter. The colour comes, as before, from the wardrobe of the main cast, Ros in a chic yellow suit and large earrings that feature someone's face on them, Beckett in his smart jacket and purple shirt. Ed isn't seen out of his blue trainee uniform or red space suit, but it all conspires to make the series look stylish and smart. We get the usual 'BUGS' buildings of glass and metal, the fast-paced action and dangers out of nowhere, not to mention a glimpse of the new, red-walled Gizmos, complete with its bowl of jellybeans for added colour. I'd love to know why they changed that set, which I don't believe was ever actually referred to as Gizmos - did they decide to change locations after Jean-Daniel tracked them down for a visit with Mr. Bazooka? The look of the place isn't yet established, but it would become the HQ that I knew so well, even if it did only last for this season. There's just as much playful camaraderie between the three leads as there ever was, including little hints of their lives, such as Beckett reluctantly admitting he knows about Kituma, the country which is dependent on the success of the RX44 sub-terrestrial geological survey satellite launch, and Ros chips in that he knows someone out there in a teasing tone which we don't learn the significance of until part two.
The series is also able to shock as before, such as when a minibus full of shuttle crew explodes all of a sudden, in the midst of a quite different altercation between Ed and Susan Vornholt, his fellow astronaut to be. Actually it sounds like she's got more experience than most as she talks about going up into space previously so I'm not sure why she seemed to be among the trainees. She's a typical hard case who Ed's charm eventually wins over - his flirtatiousness is in evidence again as one of his traits, though he keeps things businesslike with Vornholt, I noticed, as would make sense for someone whose life is interdependent with his own. All the characters have plenty of challenges to take on, whether it's Ros climbing a very tall transmitter (which is nicely referred to as an automated auxiliary Hive listening post, a great way to reference Beckett's former employer), Beckett and his run in with Zito (who uses a gun when his captive has escaped which amps the threat up from mere tasering), and Ed going into space - the weightlessness was brilliantly enacted, though there is a major flaw at the end of the episode when the Starshield satellite fires on their shuttle and suddenly they're walking around the cockpit as if it's normal gravity. It was especially jarring because they'd achieved the zero gravity effect so well earlier in the episode.
Now that I think about it, it might have been better if Ros and Beckett's roles had been switched as that would have been three for three if she'd been locked in a room as her friends had been. Then that would have been much more of a challenge if Beckett was the one to climb the tower since we know he has a fear of heights, and it would have been a nice connection for him to be at a Hive facility, too. Not that it matters overall, it's still a great episode and Zito is a terrific villain, all shining round glasses and evil smirk. They keep us in the dark for some time over who is setting up these sabotage attempts, but you can tell it's a man's hand, which removes Vornholt from suspicion even though she's acting hostilely towards Ed. That gives her an arc as she ends up positive towards him, so it works fine, but perhaps they should have used a gloved hand so we had no clue to the gender of the villain. And as every great villain should, Zito has his prepared escape route, dashing into the air vents from his secret hideaway down in the bowels of the building. I have to assume he had that fireproof suit down there somewhere and must have changed into it before jumping in his car, I can't imagine he puts it on every day just in case he needs to 'die' to take people off his tail!
Ros and Beckett really should have stuck around instead of driving right off. I suppose they wanted to get back to find out how Ed was doing in space, but couldn't they have alerted the fire service that there was a burning wreck on the street with a body inside? For that matter it makes you wonder why Zito didn't simply jump out of his moving car since his pursuers lose sight of him for part of the chase when they take a shortcut, but then he didn't know they were going to do that and probably planned to execute the car explosion whatever happened. Of course if they had bothered to put the fire out they'd have found him alive and well, or later, that the body was gone. It must also be some special suit to be able to not only withstand the extreme heat of the fire, but also protect against the initial explosion! Of course you're not meant to think about it that much, it's just a shocking and brilliant twist that you think, as Ros and Beckett do, whoever he was working for has taken his revenge as with McNair. And the episode is excellent at creating an impression of bigger things going on behind the scenes, even if that's apparently undercut by Zito surviving, so maybe he's the main man after all. The music, this time credited to both Gavin and Simon Greenaway, is superbly portentous and moody as it would be for the season, one of things that I love about it.
The guest characters are also pretty good, although Colonel Stone, boss of the STA, is one of those that isn't quite convincing. His liaison with the Kituman government, Joy, is fine and believable, but Zito is the meatiest role by far, although McNair was quite fun - he's a typical scientist, getting into his discussion with Ros, a fellow enthusiast and leaving Beckett behind, but it's also the fact that you can tell he's about ready to bolt at any moment. It fitted in perfectly with his impractical nature that the way he chooses to try and kill Ros is to drop a box of tools on her head, a stunt that was expertly carried off as whoever doubled Ros (probably Nrinder Dhudwar), really does have to leap out of the way at the last second as a bunch of heavy tools fall from on high! Terrific stuff, and probably the most impressive moment of the episode simply from the fact you can see it was done for real, whereas Zito's exit from the flaming car was great, but you know there was no one in it when the explosion went off. McNair's death by car bomb was one of those unexpected shocker moments as it happens when Ros is pursuing him and you assume it's going to be a chase, then Kaboom! I wonder when the explosive device was planted, or was that always the plan for McNair once he'd finalised the fuel cell? Most likely.
It makes a change for Ed to go up in a helicopter and not be the pilot, but he does so in this episode as one of the astronaut crew being transported to a plane to Guyana, the location of the launch control for Shuttle Excalibur. Usefully, Ros sends him off with a long range transceiver, something that comes in very useful when the launch needs to be aborted. Thanks to Zito, Ed and Vornholt can't contact Mission Control, but Ed is able to at least do something about the dodgy fuel cell before it ends the mission prematurely - it reminded me of the first episode in which Ros gave him a tracker. He's learned to be a bit more appreciative of Ros' gadgets these days although he has to scoff at the idea that its range is long enough to reach space. Ros just sees it as a field test and as usual, she's right. So much of the space stuff comes across realistically, it's not a comic book version. While I mentioned the flaw of gravity at the end, for the most part the reality of going into space is portrayed right down to technical details such as there being no way for sound to travel in the vacuum of space so we see, but don't hear, the explosion of the fuel cell (which handily fits perfectly into the waste ejection chute!), and the production design of every aspect is very well realised.
Perhaps it would have been a better cliffhanger if we'd ended on Zito nonchalantly stepping out of his fiery vehicle and pulling off the hood to reveal he's fine, but maybe more danger in space for Ed and Vornholt was necessary? The Starshield part of the story is the only bit that rings a bit false, this mothballed defence system that's just adjacent to the main control room at STA. The satellite had been launched at some time, clearly, but Stone doesn't want to talk about it. At the same time, it does add further menace amid the already potent air of things going on beyond what our team knows about, and the creepiness is furthered by Beckett saying that whoever's behind all this, they're not going to give up now, setting up part two for a continuation of the story, but one that would also continue on across the season if we take it that this was part of Jean-Daniel's handiwork. One of the joys of the series is that it does have its own internal world, and with the references (like Ros managing to keep up with the launch remotely and Beckett saying even The Hive had never been able to crack all STA's codes - not sure why they had to be out of the loop, though, since their man is on the shuttle!), in this episode that helps tie it to what came before. But there's also the little touches of things that have happened before, such as Beckett leaping into Ros' car and shouting: "Drive," just like he did when they first met, which I assume was a deliberate reference back to that, especially happening in the first episode of the season. Being trapped in a place where the oxygen is dropping, as Beckett is, also repeated Ros' position in 'Manna From Heaven,' and while it's easy to say they're just redoing old ideas, I like the return to previous adventures, even if it was unintentional.
****
Ah, Season 2, the year I came to 'BUGS' and for many reasons my favourite of the four. Right away you can tell they're going in all guns blazing, Ed, Ros and Beckett look sharper and more stylish than ever, they're involved with something far bigger than a simple call-in from a blighted business, no less than a country's fate and fortune are on the line and you can't go bigger than an adventure in space itself! Leaving aside the trappings for the moment the thing that stood out for me is how many times people get trapped in rooms and the number of explosions ripping through the episode - we get two deaths by dangerous ignition key, or at least apparent ones, as we'll discuss later, the second is much more dramatic than a person being blown up in their own car; a variety of other blasts, and not only that, they're all proper bangs, none of these wind fans and debris that seemed to be the method used for the attack on Gizmo's in the previous episode and season ender, 'Pulse.' Let's just rewind to people being trapped in rooms, as this sets the tone for the story: Ed is inside the shuttle simulator when a fire breaks out within and the door mechanism fails to respond. It's fortunate that electronics genius Ros is on hand to dash to the rescue and blow the door from its hinges. The next time it happens it's Beckett stuck in the fuel cell testing module where scientist McNair locks him in and turns on the depressurisation, sucking the air out, Ros forced to go against her usual methods and try brute force with a whacking great wrench to shatter the door. Whacking is the right word!
It's a good job Ros was there in both cases, but in case we get the impression the guys are useless, she's not available for Lock-In Part III: this time it's Beckett again, tricked into entering a cubbyhole in the basement at STA, the Space Technology Agency thanks to the double-dealing of on-site tech expert Zito, who zaps him with a taser, the first of many this season. Zito obviously doesn't know every inch of the place because once Beckett has recovered enough to be able to stand up again (and I did like that the shock had an effect on him instead of him waking up and being right as rain), he finds a utility exit in the floor. I don't know why there were so many moments of people being trapped, and I suppose we can add to that tally Ed being caught in the cargo hold of the shuttle during launch when he needs to pull out a sabotaged fuel cell before the heat causes it to explode, but I quite like the repetition - it probably had something to do with this being the first ever two-part story of the series so there had to be a few blind alleys to keep the momentum going before the story was wrapped up. Effectively you have to juggle the characters and keep them in the air for the running time instead of following the standard formula of reaching the required goal of foiling the villain's plans by the end of the episode.
It being a two-parter almost certainly enabled them to put more money on the screen since they could reuse the sets and actors, amortising the cost of such a bold idea across two segments instead of one, enabling them to pull off the kind of ambition you'd not associate with the series after seeing Season 1 where each story was self-contained and the worst there was to worry about was a guy or gal with a gun. If you look at it realistically it's probably totally silly that Ed could go through some astronaut training as a cover to track down a saboteur within the programme and then find himself as the only other possible candidate for a mission into space, but they do at least hit it home that he's done countless simulations and training to the extent he feels it's not necessary for his true mission. Was Zito deliberately trying to tire him out and discourage him with the amount of training sessions so he'd be less likely to track down the villain, because if so he shot himself in the foot by making Ed qualified! Let's also not forget that he's always been shown to have a natural aptitude for anything that involves flying or reaction-based activities, as he proves once again by smashing the record for the shuttle arm-deployment simulation. I so wanted him to reprise his line from the first episode, 'Out of The Hive,' about how they say videogames aren't any good for you!
This mission to space could be seen as the statement of intent for the season since it is a big idea to take on, while also creeping into the realms of science fiction in some ways. It has that visual impression of so much happening at night that would go on to be common, whereas Season 1 was generally much lighter and brighter. The colour comes, as before, from the wardrobe of the main cast, Ros in a chic yellow suit and large earrings that feature someone's face on them, Beckett in his smart jacket and purple shirt. Ed isn't seen out of his blue trainee uniform or red space suit, but it all conspires to make the series look stylish and smart. We get the usual 'BUGS' buildings of glass and metal, the fast-paced action and dangers out of nowhere, not to mention a glimpse of the new, red-walled Gizmos, complete with its bowl of jellybeans for added colour. I'd love to know why they changed that set, which I don't believe was ever actually referred to as Gizmos - did they decide to change locations after Jean-Daniel tracked them down for a visit with Mr. Bazooka? The look of the place isn't yet established, but it would become the HQ that I knew so well, even if it did only last for this season. There's just as much playful camaraderie between the three leads as there ever was, including little hints of their lives, such as Beckett reluctantly admitting he knows about Kituma, the country which is dependent on the success of the RX44 sub-terrestrial geological survey satellite launch, and Ros chips in that he knows someone out there in a teasing tone which we don't learn the significance of until part two.
The series is also able to shock as before, such as when a minibus full of shuttle crew explodes all of a sudden, in the midst of a quite different altercation between Ed and Susan Vornholt, his fellow astronaut to be. Actually it sounds like she's got more experience than most as she talks about going up into space previously so I'm not sure why she seemed to be among the trainees. She's a typical hard case who Ed's charm eventually wins over - his flirtatiousness is in evidence again as one of his traits, though he keeps things businesslike with Vornholt, I noticed, as would make sense for someone whose life is interdependent with his own. All the characters have plenty of challenges to take on, whether it's Ros climbing a very tall transmitter (which is nicely referred to as an automated auxiliary Hive listening post, a great way to reference Beckett's former employer), Beckett and his run in with Zito (who uses a gun when his captive has escaped which amps the threat up from mere tasering), and Ed going into space - the weightlessness was brilliantly enacted, though there is a major flaw at the end of the episode when the Starshield satellite fires on their shuttle and suddenly they're walking around the cockpit as if it's normal gravity. It was especially jarring because they'd achieved the zero gravity effect so well earlier in the episode.
Now that I think about it, it might have been better if Ros and Beckett's roles had been switched as that would have been three for three if she'd been locked in a room as her friends had been. Then that would have been much more of a challenge if Beckett was the one to climb the tower since we know he has a fear of heights, and it would have been a nice connection for him to be at a Hive facility, too. Not that it matters overall, it's still a great episode and Zito is a terrific villain, all shining round glasses and evil smirk. They keep us in the dark for some time over who is setting up these sabotage attempts, but you can tell it's a man's hand, which removes Vornholt from suspicion even though she's acting hostilely towards Ed. That gives her an arc as she ends up positive towards him, so it works fine, but perhaps they should have used a gloved hand so we had no clue to the gender of the villain. And as every great villain should, Zito has his prepared escape route, dashing into the air vents from his secret hideaway down in the bowels of the building. I have to assume he had that fireproof suit down there somewhere and must have changed into it before jumping in his car, I can't imagine he puts it on every day just in case he needs to 'die' to take people off his tail!
Ros and Beckett really should have stuck around instead of driving right off. I suppose they wanted to get back to find out how Ed was doing in space, but couldn't they have alerted the fire service that there was a burning wreck on the street with a body inside? For that matter it makes you wonder why Zito didn't simply jump out of his moving car since his pursuers lose sight of him for part of the chase when they take a shortcut, but then he didn't know they were going to do that and probably planned to execute the car explosion whatever happened. Of course if they had bothered to put the fire out they'd have found him alive and well, or later, that the body was gone. It must also be some special suit to be able to not only withstand the extreme heat of the fire, but also protect against the initial explosion! Of course you're not meant to think about it that much, it's just a shocking and brilliant twist that you think, as Ros and Beckett do, whoever he was working for has taken his revenge as with McNair. And the episode is excellent at creating an impression of bigger things going on behind the scenes, even if that's apparently undercut by Zito surviving, so maybe he's the main man after all. The music, this time credited to both Gavin and Simon Greenaway, is superbly portentous and moody as it would be for the season, one of things that I love about it.
The guest characters are also pretty good, although Colonel Stone, boss of the STA, is one of those that isn't quite convincing. His liaison with the Kituman government, Joy, is fine and believable, but Zito is the meatiest role by far, although McNair was quite fun - he's a typical scientist, getting into his discussion with Ros, a fellow enthusiast and leaving Beckett behind, but it's also the fact that you can tell he's about ready to bolt at any moment. It fitted in perfectly with his impractical nature that the way he chooses to try and kill Ros is to drop a box of tools on her head, a stunt that was expertly carried off as whoever doubled Ros (probably Nrinder Dhudwar), really does have to leap out of the way at the last second as a bunch of heavy tools fall from on high! Terrific stuff, and probably the most impressive moment of the episode simply from the fact you can see it was done for real, whereas Zito's exit from the flaming car was great, but you know there was no one in it when the explosion went off. McNair's death by car bomb was one of those unexpected shocker moments as it happens when Ros is pursuing him and you assume it's going to be a chase, then Kaboom! I wonder when the explosive device was planted, or was that always the plan for McNair once he'd finalised the fuel cell? Most likely.
It makes a change for Ed to go up in a helicopter and not be the pilot, but he does so in this episode as one of the astronaut crew being transported to a plane to Guyana, the location of the launch control for Shuttle Excalibur. Usefully, Ros sends him off with a long range transceiver, something that comes in very useful when the launch needs to be aborted. Thanks to Zito, Ed and Vornholt can't contact Mission Control, but Ed is able to at least do something about the dodgy fuel cell before it ends the mission prematurely - it reminded me of the first episode in which Ros gave him a tracker. He's learned to be a bit more appreciative of Ros' gadgets these days although he has to scoff at the idea that its range is long enough to reach space. Ros just sees it as a field test and as usual, she's right. So much of the space stuff comes across realistically, it's not a comic book version. While I mentioned the flaw of gravity at the end, for the most part the reality of going into space is portrayed right down to technical details such as there being no way for sound to travel in the vacuum of space so we see, but don't hear, the explosion of the fuel cell (which handily fits perfectly into the waste ejection chute!), and the production design of every aspect is very well realised.
Perhaps it would have been a better cliffhanger if we'd ended on Zito nonchalantly stepping out of his fiery vehicle and pulling off the hood to reveal he's fine, but maybe more danger in space for Ed and Vornholt was necessary? The Starshield part of the story is the only bit that rings a bit false, this mothballed defence system that's just adjacent to the main control room at STA. The satellite had been launched at some time, clearly, but Stone doesn't want to talk about it. At the same time, it does add further menace amid the already potent air of things going on beyond what our team knows about, and the creepiness is furthered by Beckett saying that whoever's behind all this, they're not going to give up now, setting up part two for a continuation of the story, but one that would also continue on across the season if we take it that this was part of Jean-Daniel's handiwork. One of the joys of the series is that it does have its own internal world, and with the references (like Ros managing to keep up with the launch remotely and Beckett saying even The Hive had never been able to crack all STA's codes - not sure why they had to be out of the loop, though, since their man is on the shuttle!), in this episode that helps tie it to what came before. But there's also the little touches of things that have happened before, such as Beckett leaping into Ros' car and shouting: "Drive," just like he did when they first met, which I assume was a deliberate reference back to that, especially happening in the first episode of the season. Being trapped in a place where the oxygen is dropping, as Beckett is, also repeated Ros' position in 'Manna From Heaven,' and while it's easy to say they're just redoing old ideas, I like the return to previous adventures, even if it was unintentional.
****
Tuesday, 5 October 2021
Suspect
DVD, Smallville S2 (Suspect)
Inventive, I'll say that for the manner in which another recurring character is written out of the series - it's like they hate being landed with so many familiar faces that make up the community of Smallville that they feel they must dispatch them one by one! We lost Principal Kwan, and there was Dr. Hamilton, and of course Aunt Nell. Whitney, if you want to count him, Ryan, maybe others I've forgotten. At the same time, going against the grain, they also bring back a recurring character from Season 1, Dominic Santori, which is nice continuity. It also means there's a fourth suspect in this potential murder mystery, although it becomes only attempted murder since Lionel pulls through. And that in spite of taking two large calibre bullet wounds to the torso, then falling one storey to crash through a glass table in the most spectacular fashion. You can't accuse the series of not thinking big, at least in this case! It's not an episode that relies on special effects, it's much more attuned to the knowledge regular viewers have of the people that make up the town. It's only a shame that Mike the barman hadn't been previously established as he was suspicious right from the off. It just goes to show, if there's one lesson to be learnt from this story: don't drink and drive! Not even a little bit, because if Jonathan hadn't gone to the Wild Coyote for his half, he wouldn't have been in that situation in the first place.
I doubt very much I'd have guessed the identity of the attacker until late in the episode except it was 'spoiled' by listening to a podcast ('Always Hold On To Smallville' - recommended), which reminded me of what was going to happen. I'd seen it a couple of times before so it wasn't like it was brand new, but it had been well over a decade since I last went through the season. Knowing the identity in advance I did notice a couple of clues as the story unspooled: that the barman had 'connections,' which Clark reveals or speculates on when he and Pete go to the bar, and that a couple of people are said to be old school friends of Jonathan which makes a previously unknown connection. It's just such a shame that it should be someone like that who was trusted by Jonathan and the community, but was simply 'strapped for cash.' There's another lesson there: either look after your finances, or don't get involved with money men that promise good things, it never works out. I did like that Pete is with Clark so much as they go investigating, and really it only needed Chloe to tag along to make it just like the old 'Scooby gang' style of stories they used to do in Season 1 before things became more complicated by Chloe's issues with Clark, or Pete's inside knowledge of his abilities. It's such a shame we couldn't have had the trio as I'm sure Pete could have covered for his buddy, distracting Chloe if Clark needed to 'find' something, but as it is she's hardly in the episode at all.
Lana gets a little more to do, and I appreciated that they both brought in Henry Small, her Father, as someone in a position to help Mr. Kent from a legal perspective, and also that we learn something about him, another person whom the talons of Lionel got fixed upon, though for different reasons than the murderer. As it should be the characters mostly revolve around Clark in this story and he is proactive in his involvement even though it's a very adults-only narrative since it's all about the law and nothing to do with school students or secret meteor rock powers. In that sense it's a cut above the average episode, playing on the series' continuity, but also crafting a well directed (by Kenneth Biller), drama that had that noir-ish feel - you just needed voiceovers from a visiting detective to make it complete, although I must say I found the thunder crashes to be a little over-loud and intrusive to the dialogue. Maybe dial that back a bit next time! But the multiple versions of the same event worked really well and all were plausible (except for Jonathan or, really, Lex), plus it gave them the chance to show off their favourite stunt for the episode as Lionel tips over the balcony in the Mansion to topple to the glass table below, multiple times - they really got a lot of play out of that one, but it did deserve it, even if you can sort of tell it's not John Glover in the bit where the stunt man is actually collapsing through the table.
It wasn't the only memorable stunt, however, as Clark gets to save Pete when what looks like his friend's brand new car is pushed off the road to slam into a field (fortunately an empty one with no trees around the edge!). They had a fortunate escape with that one, but the danger isn't over as someone aboard the massive lorry takes a potshot at the car, which promptly explodes, but not before Clark has time to smash the door off and rip Pete out of there, protecting his friend from the ensuing blast of hot metal and flame. I don't think that was meant to be the guy who shot Lionel, more likely someone he hired, but I suppose it could have been. It's just I can't imagine him doing that. The saga of LexCorp apparently comes to an end, a short-lived life lesson from Lionel that his son should never oppose him, as he somehow bought out the company meaning Lex is back to square one. There's some familiar, if pointed, commentary on the making of a bad person between Clark and Lex, and thinking you can trust someone you've known so long. Obviously we're referring to the future that was only imaginary at this point before the series became much more cartoonish in future seasons, and it's better for it to remain that way as we think of these two people being nemeses as adults.
Martha and Jonathan get heartfelt scenes about loyalty and he opens up about his flaws and faults most strongly, Martha responding even more to him for his honesty and vulnerability, so it was good for everyone, and I liked how it tied into previous episodes such as Lionel's watch he gave her being so integral. In the end it's a fairly straightforward kind of story with the main draw being the style it was shot in and the good use of almost everyone, and for the fact it feels like a turning point, but I'm not sure it would hold up quite as well on repeated viewings simply knowing what's going on, even if it is nicely done and well acted. It's still hard to believe Sheriff Ethan would stoop so low… whoops, I finally gave it away, I couldn't keep it in any longer! But he was always such a sympathetic guy just doing his job. Sure, there was the fact he represented the authorities that Clark was always being hid from (and how come they didn't seem worried when they had police all over the house - they might easily have checked out the storm cellar!), but he was, or he seemed, a good, honest type, much like Jonathan. Was he a secret gambler and got himself into debt? Was it a painful divorce? Who knows, but if he'd trusted his friends in the community he might have found help and then he wouldn't have got into that mess with Lionel in the first place, so there's another lesson, I'm sure. This was a strong example of the series when it was good and we've had a successful run of episodes in this middle of the season patch, but how much longer can it go on?
***
Inventive, I'll say that for the manner in which another recurring character is written out of the series - it's like they hate being landed with so many familiar faces that make up the community of Smallville that they feel they must dispatch them one by one! We lost Principal Kwan, and there was Dr. Hamilton, and of course Aunt Nell. Whitney, if you want to count him, Ryan, maybe others I've forgotten. At the same time, going against the grain, they also bring back a recurring character from Season 1, Dominic Santori, which is nice continuity. It also means there's a fourth suspect in this potential murder mystery, although it becomes only attempted murder since Lionel pulls through. And that in spite of taking two large calibre bullet wounds to the torso, then falling one storey to crash through a glass table in the most spectacular fashion. You can't accuse the series of not thinking big, at least in this case! It's not an episode that relies on special effects, it's much more attuned to the knowledge regular viewers have of the people that make up the town. It's only a shame that Mike the barman hadn't been previously established as he was suspicious right from the off. It just goes to show, if there's one lesson to be learnt from this story: don't drink and drive! Not even a little bit, because if Jonathan hadn't gone to the Wild Coyote for his half, he wouldn't have been in that situation in the first place.
I doubt very much I'd have guessed the identity of the attacker until late in the episode except it was 'spoiled' by listening to a podcast ('Always Hold On To Smallville' - recommended), which reminded me of what was going to happen. I'd seen it a couple of times before so it wasn't like it was brand new, but it had been well over a decade since I last went through the season. Knowing the identity in advance I did notice a couple of clues as the story unspooled: that the barman had 'connections,' which Clark reveals or speculates on when he and Pete go to the bar, and that a couple of people are said to be old school friends of Jonathan which makes a previously unknown connection. It's just such a shame that it should be someone like that who was trusted by Jonathan and the community, but was simply 'strapped for cash.' There's another lesson there: either look after your finances, or don't get involved with money men that promise good things, it never works out. I did like that Pete is with Clark so much as they go investigating, and really it only needed Chloe to tag along to make it just like the old 'Scooby gang' style of stories they used to do in Season 1 before things became more complicated by Chloe's issues with Clark, or Pete's inside knowledge of his abilities. It's such a shame we couldn't have had the trio as I'm sure Pete could have covered for his buddy, distracting Chloe if Clark needed to 'find' something, but as it is she's hardly in the episode at all.
Lana gets a little more to do, and I appreciated that they both brought in Henry Small, her Father, as someone in a position to help Mr. Kent from a legal perspective, and also that we learn something about him, another person whom the talons of Lionel got fixed upon, though for different reasons than the murderer. As it should be the characters mostly revolve around Clark in this story and he is proactive in his involvement even though it's a very adults-only narrative since it's all about the law and nothing to do with school students or secret meteor rock powers. In that sense it's a cut above the average episode, playing on the series' continuity, but also crafting a well directed (by Kenneth Biller), drama that had that noir-ish feel - you just needed voiceovers from a visiting detective to make it complete, although I must say I found the thunder crashes to be a little over-loud and intrusive to the dialogue. Maybe dial that back a bit next time! But the multiple versions of the same event worked really well and all were plausible (except for Jonathan or, really, Lex), plus it gave them the chance to show off their favourite stunt for the episode as Lionel tips over the balcony in the Mansion to topple to the glass table below, multiple times - they really got a lot of play out of that one, but it did deserve it, even if you can sort of tell it's not John Glover in the bit where the stunt man is actually collapsing through the table.
It wasn't the only memorable stunt, however, as Clark gets to save Pete when what looks like his friend's brand new car is pushed off the road to slam into a field (fortunately an empty one with no trees around the edge!). They had a fortunate escape with that one, but the danger isn't over as someone aboard the massive lorry takes a potshot at the car, which promptly explodes, but not before Clark has time to smash the door off and rip Pete out of there, protecting his friend from the ensuing blast of hot metal and flame. I don't think that was meant to be the guy who shot Lionel, more likely someone he hired, but I suppose it could have been. It's just I can't imagine him doing that. The saga of LexCorp apparently comes to an end, a short-lived life lesson from Lionel that his son should never oppose him, as he somehow bought out the company meaning Lex is back to square one. There's some familiar, if pointed, commentary on the making of a bad person between Clark and Lex, and thinking you can trust someone you've known so long. Obviously we're referring to the future that was only imaginary at this point before the series became much more cartoonish in future seasons, and it's better for it to remain that way as we think of these two people being nemeses as adults.
Martha and Jonathan get heartfelt scenes about loyalty and he opens up about his flaws and faults most strongly, Martha responding even more to him for his honesty and vulnerability, so it was good for everyone, and I liked how it tied into previous episodes such as Lionel's watch he gave her being so integral. In the end it's a fairly straightforward kind of story with the main draw being the style it was shot in and the good use of almost everyone, and for the fact it feels like a turning point, but I'm not sure it would hold up quite as well on repeated viewings simply knowing what's going on, even if it is nicely done and well acted. It's still hard to believe Sheriff Ethan would stoop so low… whoops, I finally gave it away, I couldn't keep it in any longer! But he was always such a sympathetic guy just doing his job. Sure, there was the fact he represented the authorities that Clark was always being hid from (and how come they didn't seem worried when they had police all over the house - they might easily have checked out the storm cellar!), but he was, or he seemed, a good, honest type, much like Jonathan. Was he a secret gambler and got himself into debt? Was it a painful divorce? Who knows, but if he'd trusted his friends in the community he might have found help and then he wouldn't have got into that mess with Lionel in the first place, so there's another lesson, I'm sure. This was a strong example of the series when it was good and we've had a successful run of episodes in this middle of the season patch, but how much longer can it go on?
***
Et In Arcadia Ego, Part 2
DVD, Star Trek: Picard S1 (Et In Arcadia Ego, Part 2)
How good it is to reach the end, but not for the reasons of finishing out an enjoyable return to the 24th Century era of Trek, merely a relief to conclude what has been an unhappy journey towards a difficult realisation: Trek is not now made for those that loved it. It's not a new understanding for me, I came to that conclusion with 'DSC' (let's just hope the season justifies all the poor choices… oh, nope, it didn't… let's just hope the next season improves and… oh, nope, it didn't, but maybe the ending will justify… no, nope, it didn't <sigh>), but 'Picard' is set in 'my' era, the one I grew up on and loved best. It suggested more hope because of those involved, and the lessons learned from 'DSC,' there being a much closer visual connection to what came before than the night and day jar between 'DSC' and other 23rd Century productions, but the same problems were evident in 'Picard' that had scuppered 'DSC.' The desperation of serialisation. The lack of creative freedom by forcing yourself down a set path instead of having the ability to explore different aspects of the galaxy, races, cultures, attitudes. There was very little exploration on offer here - where old Trek could do hard-hitting drama one week, lighthearted comedy the next, perhaps a Western, a heist, a story about technology, and all merged into this positive future where the history and the details formed something far greater than the individual parts on a regular basis. With the new Treks they're trapped in one story per season, be that galaxy-ending threats or… well, galaxy-ending threats… and best not mention the awful Klingon war…
The characters are contemporary, not of the future but of the now. They deliberately focus on the damaged, the anti-authority, the loose cannons on the outskirts of the Federation. One of the best moments of this episode and a recurring theme for me, was seeing Captain Riker warp into play leading the charge with an entire fleet of sleek Starfleet vessels, wearing the uniform, being a Starfleet officer. Because that's what Trek is! Sure, you can do some little offshoot tale about an old man rounding up a gang of misfits to track some android girl down and save her, but is that really the story we want to see? I know I don't. I'd much rather have 'just another crew on just another ship,' as some people complain. I'd like to see where the politics of this period are, beyond little mentions that some of the Federation worlds threatened to secede if the Romulans were helped out of their jam. Who leads the Klingons, how have the Ferengi changed after Grand Nagus Rom, and what are the current threats to the Federation in this time? We see a very small portion of a vast world in this series, it's always the seedy, downtrodden, broken, miserable side, and why would you choose to focus on that when you can explore wonders and have adventure and solve the galaxy's problems? That's what Trek is. I've long distilled Trek into a single sentence (and have probably included it in previous reviews!): an anthology of stage plays, often interconnected, about good people solving problems. So much for exploring Romulan culture and the ramifications of the destruction of the homeworld, there was about as much depth as 'DSC' had with the Klingons!
The very slight and occasional appearance of Starfleet officers or glimpses of Starfleet life (aside from miserable, cynical, foul-mouthed and terrible Clancy, whom I'm glad didn't appear in this episode), were the moments I tended to enjoy the most through the season, and it was almost like seeing Trek through a crack in the door, just little tastes of life, either fourteen years ago or 'now.' It doesn't make much sense that Riker would show up. They dropped in the hint during 'Nepenthe' that he was ready for the call up and could be activated any time, but in reality he's almost as old as Picard, he has a family and a life away from the service, and as much as I'd have loved to see a Captain Riker series, it appears that time has passed. Would they really recall someone like that and get him to lead an armada? Do they not have two decades or more of experienced and established Captains? And a Captain and his ship don't just meet and warp off, they have to get to know each other, learn each other's ways, it's not like taking a pleasure cruise! It sounds like I'm taking apart one of the things I liked about the episode, but that's because I can also acknowledge that, like most of what happens in this fantasy series, it doesn't make very much sense. But it's so lovely to see Will back in uniform, not only that, but to see the current uniform again as well as whatever the latest class of ship is. I'd have to agree with an online poster who described it as a 'cut and paste fleet,' as if they saved time on design by featuring only one type of vessel where in the past we've seen many.
Viewscreens! I love that we're back to viewscreens again after the 3D holographic debacle of 'DSC.' At the same time I still can't get past the insistence on aping the Kelvin films from another reality where all ships have a gigantic forward window through which the action takes place and upon which a viewscreen is superimposed. Had it been for one or two ships or a single Trek era I could buy it, but they've homogenised the look of 23rd and 24th Centuries, one of many things that has damaged Trek as a credible future history. It's less problematic with these new futuristic ships that we've never seen before, but it's still jarring when it's a design trope carried through since 2009, much like casual modern day speech and excessive swearing. Another poster hit the nail on the head when they wrote: 'The need to use profanity in any context, especially heated conversation, belies an inability to fully express yourself using other words, and possibly a deficiency in emotional regulation,' and I'd have to agree. Even in this last episode they casually throw in a couple of extreme words just for the sake of it. It doesn't have any impact in the way Clancy's aggressive examples did, other than a feeling of disgust that such language is portrayed as ordinary conversation for these people in a world that used to be seen as a moral and good one. Sure, there were sometimes swearwords used, but never the most extreme and usually in moments of agitation, not to say I accepted it in old Trek any more than here, and obviously it's all a product of loosening censorship and a philosophy of self-expression regardless of the offence caused or the degraded attitudes on display being acceptable, but it's one of those big things that has altered the very DNA of Trek's clean, wholesome image.
Atrocious language is only one small complaint I've had against the new regime and if there was no bad language at all it wouldn't change the fundamental problems with the story: the need to focus on a galaxy-ending crisis at the expense of personal exploration, which lest we forget, was revealed as the ultimate journey for humanity. It's why each race used to be portrayed in a very set way with specific characteristics, because they were representing different aspects of ourselves and it was fascinating to see how these were dealt with or how they played off each other - different cultures, different attitudes, true diversity. There isn't one culture explored in 'Picard' unless you count synthetic life, but 'explored' is a very loose term for what they did with these people. Are we supposed to root for Soji who seems to be at the very centre of the building of this beacon tower that will somehow, we don't know how, transmit a message to the synthetic creatures beyond our galaxy who will come and rescue their own kind from those pesky organics, whom, before we forget, wouldn't exist at all without them! Forget V'Ger coming home to seek its creator, these synths are more like moody teens who no one understands and have gone to live on a commune and got involved in dark forces. By the look of those cliched tentacled monsters writhing on the other side of the portal, they looked more like something that was going to come and feed on our galaxy, synth and organic life alike!
Or were they just the vanguard of attack forces who would have come through and ripped the Romulan and Starfleet ships apart before the true beings arrived and calmly offered assistance to the synths on the planet? The angry roiling mass certainly wasn't portrayed in any way as something that could be reasoned with and be understood and come to an understanding, which is the standard Trek resolution, or used to be. In this instance everything rides on whether Picard can persuade Soji to make the right choice. I'm not sure he was very persuasive myself, he basically said that Starfleet haven't fired on the planet and they aren't going to. Honestly I didn't really buy Soji's defection in the first place as she's gone along with this group who saved her and then she decides to put the whole galaxy at risk. It was poorly plotted, juvenile writing, much like the Marvel Universe - indeed I thought that's what I was watching as this devastating extragalactic threat prepares to come down and raze our worlds and I can imagine Thor, Iron Man and Hulk leaping around bashing them as they come. It's that level of intelligence displayed in this series. The beacon itself, this self-replicating structure that builds itself was typical of modern Trek, too. Rather than see the synths actually build it for themselves, it just pops up out of nowhere and nothing, but then these synths possess Magical Technology that operates on imagination.
You have to wonder if those in charge of the series ever watched Trek, and if they did, did they like anything in it? Not by the evidence of what they do when they're in control: Trek was about striving to achieve, it was about using your abilities and improving yourself, not technology that does everything for you. Sure, Transporters can save you travelling long distances and Replicators solve your food, drink and clothing needs, but once these basic needs are met you are then free to explore and get the most out of life. That's why they had doctors, scientists, engineers and these characters inspired people in the real world. Now none of that is necessary, you simply have a handheld device that fixes any problem by the power of thinking about it! We never need another engineer again. And if it can fix things, then why not build things too? Simply wave your hand and a new ship can be built to the specs in your imagination! And they said tech post-'Voyager' would be too magical to be believable. Hah! The argument in response will always be that famous quote about any sufficiently advanced technology seeming like magic to less developed people, but that doesn't account for the drama-ruining potential of such devices. It's true that in Trek you can do anything. Literally anything. But to make it have consequences and reality is what gives it a purpose for the story. I've said it before, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. I don't want to see magic wand devices that fix everything (why couldn't they fix Saga with that?), just as I don't want to see droids all over the place that patch up ships or, even more ludicrously, tidy up overturned chairs as in 'DSC' after the Tyler/Culber fight.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the whole story is that the Romulans were right. Those evil, fascistic, obscene villains were correct, the synths almost did destroy our galaxy by letting in untold horrors. Which makes me wonder, if these beings are so powerful why wouldn't they make their own gateway now that they know they were summoned? To them it would most likely seem that enemies of their own kind had prevented the portal from opening and so they'd know where to go next, wouldn't they? But that doesn't help the story to be wrapped up so such questions aren't even raised! I know the message is supposed to be that if you give someone a choice they'll hopefully make the right one, but it was a bit of a gamble to hang the fate of an entire galaxy on. I know we're supposed to see that as optimistic, but that everything hinged on one cybernetic girl's whims was a risk that Picard shouldn't have been taking. And even if he could convince Soji she's not the leader of the gang, or is synth society not a democracy, everyone does as they wish? In which case, and either way, it's entirely possible that others in that community would be pro keeping the beacon on. I wish it had been done so Soji was the only one who could operate it because of her physically identical nature to Sutra as that would have made more sense for her to be the key to everything. Sutra gets summarily taken out of the picture by Dr. Soong possessing a handy device that completely immobilises her with a single button press. Do the other synths know that he has this power over them? I would think that would make them just as wary of him as any other organic, even if he plans to become one of them by taking the mind transfer route into the spare body.
I don't know what to think of the synths. Perhaps they were just children ultimately and that's why we don't really get a sense of them as a society or culture because they just went along with whatever any leader decided. A major failed opportunity to explore what it means to be artificial and yet also sentient. Perhaps we'll explore that in future thanks to the major, major development at the end. Yes, I'm talking about altering a classic character, totally and irrevocably in the most misguided and fantastical move modern Trek has made: Picard becomes an android. I can see that there's some kind of poetic parallel being played out, that rather than Data becoming human, Picard ends up becoming an android, and they probably thought what a masterstroke, but to me it's a betrayal of one of the best-loved characters of Trek. What happened to all that in 'Generations' about mortality defining us, blah, blah, blah. And I know Picard didn't get the choice, they saved him by transferring his consciousness into the android body, but going along with the magical tech theme, this is about the limit. I know it was done in 'TNG,' Dr. Ira Graves successfully implanted his consciousness into Data, but if it had been a success it would have altered the very nature of life, and as much as the tech in Trek has done that, it's never been done quite to that level. Now it means that there's an imbalance in society, because why should one man be given the choice to live on in a synthetic body, what about all the other cases - what if Icheb could have had that option? Or Jadzia Dax, or any number of others?
Unless… they're just humouring Picard: 'yes, we gave you a new android body which ages at the same rate as the old one and has no greater strength or any other advantages (really Soong just fixed his brain issue!)What they've done is create a dangerous new precedent, unthinkingly. Very much a case of not thinking whether it should be done because they were too busy seeing if it could be. Trek has always been quite opposed to this direction, too, as we've seen in how the Federation views genetic enhancement, which was banned. To top it all off, not only do they give Jean-Luc a new body, they give him a wrinkled old one that looks identical to his real one (which by the way, did they give that some kind of funeral service or burial, what happened to the real Picard?), and just to please the old man they've made sure he's only going to live as long as he would have anyway and he doesn't have any 'super-powers' as they describe it so stupidly. This is truly comic book territory. Would Picard not have preferred to have a whole other lifetime, to go back to a young, fresh, vigorous body? It seems a waste otherwise. This smacks of pure marketing, that they didn't really want to change Picard because then he wouldn't be Picard, but they had to find a way around the illness he had. There are many ways he could have been cured or perhaps had some kind of improvement given to him so that he could live with the condition for much longer, but to introduce it only for him to be saved by becoming an android was a bizarre idea. Almost as bizarre as turning a productive member of the Voyager crew, a fan favourite, into a hard-bitten, hard-drinking, hardhearted revenge seeker, but more on Seven in a bit…
This could have been a way to write Patrick Stewart out of the series, and perhaps that was the morbid idea behind it: that if Stewart didn't live long enough to fulfil his commitment they could just have the character transfer his consciousness into a different body, thus another actor would take over? It only just occurred to me, but that sounds like the kind of business decision CBS would have made! There's also the fact they probably wanted people to tune in each week expecting this to be the last time we'll ever get to see Stewart playing his most famous role, only for the surprise at the end that, ta-da!, he's okay really! What about poor Dr. Soong? He seemed more than willing to give up the android body meant for himself, and he was a character who was never really given any sense of being a person. It's just a role created so Brent Spiner can be there without all the Data makeup. And oh, we'll get onto Data, yes indeed. If Picard becoming an android wasn't a big enough slap in the face, especially if you were willing, hoping and expecting Data's neurons to be reassembled and given the new body, they kill him off permanently. He'd already been killed in 'Nemesis,' something that most people seem to think was a terrible idea, and which I share, but we learn that because of a single neuron saved from B4 who had part of Data's mind, he's been somehow reconstituted and is hanging around in some kind of simulation, waiting to die properly.
I must admit, I was about to give the episode the lowest mark of the season with one star, but I had to add the extra star just for Data's appearance. I don't mean his physical appearance because he looks a bit wonky, just like the uniform he's wearing that shows zips and displays a lack of understanding on how Trek uniforms used to be: the only time they showed how they were done up was by mistake, like on 'TOS' occasionally. Data was wonky in the same way that the episode was wonky, which was in the same way that the season was wonky, which was in the same way as modern Trek is wonky. But even in spite of all that wonkiness, it was still beautiful to see and hear Commander Data, and get a discussion of Picard's last moments with him in 'Nemesis,' something you'd never have thought possible. He looked a lot better in the light when the door had opened than in the gloom of that darkened room, but the voice was there, the mannerisms and it just makes me sad that we have to give up this character that they could have brought back. It's not like it would undo such a great ending for the character in 'Nemesis' because it wasn't great, and let's be honest, even then they were planning to bring him back, that's why B4 existed! Perhaps they didn't mean to suggest Data might be the consciousness that ended up in the synth body, but if not that was a massive misstep because it's more cruel than his original death to give hope and then euthanise the last remains of him just because he wanted to die (read: so they didn't have to do more expensive CGI). Think what contributions he could still have made if he'd been given another chance, and it's not like they couldn't have whipped up another body, given time. Also a shame he didn't age into looking like old Noonien Soong when we see him die!
Jurati, whose murdering tendencies seem to have been completely forgotten, appears to be an expert on Maddox' work, able to finish what he started, so why not start churning out bodies for everyone? She's just as irritating as ever, chattering and gibbering away - throwing in a reference to the Picard Manoeuvre as a potential tactic in their confrontation with the Romulan fleet was extremely clunky and out of place (even more so for the very modern way of saying 'that's a thing'), only there as a fun reference (which it was), but so jarring because Picard then has to explain why it wouldn't be appropriate. Once again it shows we're dealing with people that don't get Trek, whether it be the characters themselves, or the writers who write them. Is it supposed to be endearing and a 'clever' way to interject a reference, because it was at the wrong time. And what was going on with that fleet anyway? And why aren't the Emergency Holograms in evidence at all? Did they say they'd been shut down or there wasn't enough power, because I didn't catch it, and you'd hope the EMH would be there to support Picard, an elderly and ill man? Likewise, the Emergency Navigator could have been flying instead of relying on Picard's rusty piloting skills! And as for Oh… Oh dear. The ex-Commodore in charge of the Romulans must have become soft from working inside Starfleet all those years - why would she tell her ships to ignore La Sirena, I know it's not much of a threat, but it would be typical Romulan efficiency to destroy the vessel, not ignore it as she commands her fleet! It made no sense, neither did the confrontation with Starfleet! But I did like the shoulder pads that recalled 'TNG' Romulan uniforms.
We might complain that Trek is too 'Star Wars' if they'd had a space battle, which they did to a small extent by blasting the defence flowers (how silly that sounds!), which really is 'Star Wars' thanks to all those tiny dogfighters that Trek never used to do, but is yet another influence co-opted from the more successful Star franchise. But these Romulans have lost almost everything for losing so much of their Empire's space (we assume), Oh has been infiltrating Starfleet for decades in order to be ready for this apocalyptic final battle at the end of time, like something out of Revelation, and all she does is stand on the Bridge of her ship and look a little blank. I understand that there's a fleet of the latest, greatest Starfleet vessels between her and the planet, but you'd think she'd fight tooth and nail, giving everything to this desperate struggle that would decide the fate of her entire race if she fails. Instead, she's comfortable waiting for Picard to have a chat with Soji about why it's really not a good idea to let the big scary man in. I know she's half-Vulcan which means she should be logical and more open to reason than her brethren (it was never even explored that she may have experienced bigotry for her Vulcan half and that it seems very unlikely her people would give her command of what must be their entire fleet through prejudice, but then these things only come up in specific ways in new Trek), but I didn't buy that she'd stand by and allow all this to take place after a lifetime of dedicated preparation. And it would have been a chance for a major battle like we used to see in 'DS9,' one that was genuinely justified.
Again, I think it's supposed to be a sign of the 'optimism' that was promised that they don't fight, but it was all a little pat and easy, Riker goes off after smiling broadly, Picard's okay… except he's not, and you'd think he'd want one of his best friends and former colleagues with him if he knew he was about to die instead of saying he had it in hand now. Think how Riker would have felt if he'd later learned Jean-Luc had died just after he left! And again, I defer to a poster online who wrote about Picard becoming an android: '…He was going to die soon, so now he’s been given another chance. For what, exactly?' It's true, why shouldn't he have died, other than for the fact that his image needs to make CBS more money! Someone else said: 'I was just more confused by the fact that the Romulans were actually right all along, but were still being portrayed as the enemy for some reason.' It's true, they were right, and the fact they were prevented from doing what was necessary almost spelt the end of everything. And again, the counter-argument would be that because of them it forced the synths to go into hiding and want to call on the evil forces to protect them, but I'm not sure that wouldn't have happened anyway. I get the attack on Mars Utopia Planitia was headed by the Jhat Vash in order to make the synths out to be evil, but I'm still not sure on that plot point and how it could have been taken like that. The ban is overturned anyway, in a little throwaway at the end, not for any good reason, just because it's the end. Would the Federation be that quick to cancel such a thing? Mind you, they were quick to institute it, so who knows?
It's not the Federation or Starfleet we knew, which adds further fuel to the fire of this seeming much more dystopian than ever before, even the height of the Dominion War when we saw characters do unsavoury things. Perhaps some of Sisko's actions actually began such un-Starfleet sentiments as ends justifying means and all that, and I love him, he's possibly my favourite Captain of all. Moral ambiguity is a problem though, it's crept into the franchise over time and Jean-Luc Picard was once the benchmark of honesty and integrity, but we've seen even him make plenty of questionable decisions and undiplomatic displays in this series. I put it down to age and the degenerative brain abnormality (which we're still not allowed to call Irumodic Syndrome or we'd have to pay the writers of 'All Good Things…' I reckon!), but that's another dissatisfaction with the series and the deconstruction of what made Trek so hopeful and captivating. There was even a slip of the tongue by Picard when he trots out that Data wanted to be human despite humanity's violence, corruption and wilful ignorance. Erm, hang on, that's not the humanity portrayed in any of the old Treks. That, more than anything else in the episode exposed the true attitudes of the writers, that they don't understand the fundamental bedrock position of Trek on such things. I'm not one that treats Trek as a religion and believes one day things will be like this (except in Heaven), but I like the positive attitudes of the series, and though I blanch at the humanism it also has parallels with some goodness and rightness.
Even though this was almost an hour long, I didn't feel the characters got their dues, much like in a Trek film. So Jurati's position as a murderer is never touched on, Raffi doesn't really have much to do, nor does Rios, whose plot to save the day by hiding a bomb in a football, didn't work at all. I didn't like the sunset scene with Seven and Rios kicking back and boozing together like old chums - this was the only moment Seven voices any kind of regret about the fact she can't help murdering people that deserve it, like it's a habit or something! It was such a paltry throwaway attempt at reconciling what she's done in this series that rather than make her more sympathetic it made her seem even harder and more lost. At the start of the episode she and Elnor discuss how the XBs have nowhere to go, no place to call home, but in the past the impression was that once they'd been freed from the Collective they could be rehabilitated as Seven was. Except in this continuity rather than Seven becoming less Borgified, losing some of her implants, etc, she became even more Borged up for no good reason! It was a terrible misstep to do what they did to her, taking a character of hope that had come so far and plunging her into the murderous mire. In this episode she kills Narissa by pushing her over the edge of the Borg Cube, like the Emperor being thrown down the shaft in the Death Star, and that's what it feels like, except weak and limp compared to that and without the complexity that was at work in the original 'Star Wars' trilogy.
Seven has become a horrifying character and it made me wonder what happened to her Voyager family, that was home to her? Did she quarrel with them all and refuse to have anything to do with them? That's the inference if she claims she has no place or family. It's truly disgusting what they did with her and it makes me hope they don't bring back any more classic characters if they're only planning to deconstruct and tear them apart rather than pay homage to an amazing legacy that they could never hope to come close to. Rather, this generation has tarnished Trek, almost beyond repair. They altered Seven in new and disturbing ways that were never in evidence in 'Voyager,' twisting a beloved character into any shape they feel like. I will give them one moment that worked for a character, and that was when Elnor goes to Raffi for comfort after Picard's 'died' - she's a kind of Mother figure and he was brought up by Mother figures so it was very fitting that he went to her, especially as he's little more than a child developmentally. I wasn't as keen on the earlier scene of Raffi, Rios and Elnor sitting round a campfire outside La Sirena telling stories. The whole Romulan myth side of the plot never worked and was just another element ripped from other franchises. Marvel, 'Star Wars,' 'The Lord of The Rings,' these are the influences now, and rather than Trek ploughing its own furrow it constantly tries to appeal by aping other things, except doing it badly. It's pitiful to see a once-proud name that led the way, meekly following and trying to compete with the 'big boys' of gore and other so-called 'adult' content which is more accurately described as coming from juvenile minds.
At least this time we didn't see the eyeball being removed, perhaps in reaction to the horror expressed at Icheb's treatment earlier. We just hear the squishy sounds as Jurati borrows Saga's eye to break Picard out, though I have to question whether that would work - wouldn't the system recognise a 'dead' eye compared to a live one? There's talk of the synths being manipulated by Sutra into an emotional jolt so they'd make the decision she wanted, but do they all have emotions? Are emotion chips ten a penny now? If humans can pop their minds into a machine body, then why not, I suppose… But there's no exploration of synthetic emotion or anything really - they're also supposed to be super strong as Data demonstrated, so that would mean organics would have no chance against the speed and reflexes in a fight, which made it ludicrous that Elnor and the others try to take them on even with the element of surprise! Narek being revealed as a Jhat Vash 'washout' in his words, at least gives him more context, but you'd think such a super-secret organisation would have killed anyone that failed. There's a moment of actual sibling affection between he and Narissa when they meet on the Cube, but it was too little, too late to make her any more real than a 2D villainess that we'd ever care about and she's right back into cliche territory when she fights Seven while throwing out terrible corny quips like it's an old James Bond film. There are no real consequences, the Romulans entering Federation space should be an act of war, the beacon's switched off as easy as that, nothing's said about the murders committed by characters, the ban on synths is lifted, but who's to say they might not do it again?
At one point Raffi asks what's happening and Rios replies 'nothing that makes any sense.' That was an excellent way to sum up the episode and season. It's amazing how each of the three seasons of current gen Trek I've watched have been just about equally bad, but for different reasons. I suppose 'Picard' has had the closest feel of Trek out of them all (despite being the first season since 'Enterprise' Season 3 not to feature a single Klingon - the photo of Worf doesn't count!), but it's still only a very pale imitation. He has some good things to say here, such as to be alive is a responsibility, not just a right (which sounds like they ripped off the famous Spider-Man line and thought they could get away with it!), but nothing is really dug down into, they can't afford to because they're trying to make Trek something it's not. The truth is, modern Trek was radically redesigned by JJ Abrams to be a twisted and distorted version of its former self that would appeal to a new generation that want action more than thought, a kind of false, forced diversity that isn't the true diversity of representing every point of view that is reasonable, one that has shown its poor morals in the way characters act, speak and think, not to mention the tearing down of authority and anything deemed patriarchal, such as Jean-Luc himself who became practically emasculated with this series. It's shown people who are damaged as the standard 'heroes' we are to follow, while avoiding true heroic types and it hasn't even given the characters it presents the kind of exploration and development they need to be rounded, interesting people.
The more I've thought about the series, the less I've liked it. I defer to an online poster again who described it as: 'All plot with little or nothing interesting (thematically) underlying it all. In other words, the stories are about a series of events that ultimately don’t mean much to me — the stories don’t show me anything interesting or meaningful about what it’s like to live life, i.e. the human condition or anything interesting about the world/universe.' I couldn't agree more, and because of that I've made the decision that this will be the last review I make of the current generation of Trek. It's become a chore which I don't look forward to, because as much of a relief as it is to get my thoughts out and provide a record of what is happening, or has happened to Trek in the context of the whole franchise, it also depresses, disgusts and disinterests. While they keep releasing the various productions on disc I'll keep buying because physical media's days are numbered, but I don't find myself being concerned any more that I'm going to miss out because I simply don't like what Trek has become. Maybe one day I'll get back to writing about what is still coming out, but for now I've had enough of analysing this thing with the name 'Star Trek,' but which is only bad Trek, with nothing more for me.
**
How good it is to reach the end, but not for the reasons of finishing out an enjoyable return to the 24th Century era of Trek, merely a relief to conclude what has been an unhappy journey towards a difficult realisation: Trek is not now made for those that loved it. It's not a new understanding for me, I came to that conclusion with 'DSC' (let's just hope the season justifies all the poor choices… oh, nope, it didn't… let's just hope the next season improves and… oh, nope, it didn't, but maybe the ending will justify… no, nope, it didn't <sigh>), but 'Picard' is set in 'my' era, the one I grew up on and loved best. It suggested more hope because of those involved, and the lessons learned from 'DSC,' there being a much closer visual connection to what came before than the night and day jar between 'DSC' and other 23rd Century productions, but the same problems were evident in 'Picard' that had scuppered 'DSC.' The desperation of serialisation. The lack of creative freedom by forcing yourself down a set path instead of having the ability to explore different aspects of the galaxy, races, cultures, attitudes. There was very little exploration on offer here - where old Trek could do hard-hitting drama one week, lighthearted comedy the next, perhaps a Western, a heist, a story about technology, and all merged into this positive future where the history and the details formed something far greater than the individual parts on a regular basis. With the new Treks they're trapped in one story per season, be that galaxy-ending threats or… well, galaxy-ending threats… and best not mention the awful Klingon war…
The characters are contemporary, not of the future but of the now. They deliberately focus on the damaged, the anti-authority, the loose cannons on the outskirts of the Federation. One of the best moments of this episode and a recurring theme for me, was seeing Captain Riker warp into play leading the charge with an entire fleet of sleek Starfleet vessels, wearing the uniform, being a Starfleet officer. Because that's what Trek is! Sure, you can do some little offshoot tale about an old man rounding up a gang of misfits to track some android girl down and save her, but is that really the story we want to see? I know I don't. I'd much rather have 'just another crew on just another ship,' as some people complain. I'd like to see where the politics of this period are, beyond little mentions that some of the Federation worlds threatened to secede if the Romulans were helped out of their jam. Who leads the Klingons, how have the Ferengi changed after Grand Nagus Rom, and what are the current threats to the Federation in this time? We see a very small portion of a vast world in this series, it's always the seedy, downtrodden, broken, miserable side, and why would you choose to focus on that when you can explore wonders and have adventure and solve the galaxy's problems? That's what Trek is. I've long distilled Trek into a single sentence (and have probably included it in previous reviews!): an anthology of stage plays, often interconnected, about good people solving problems. So much for exploring Romulan culture and the ramifications of the destruction of the homeworld, there was about as much depth as 'DSC' had with the Klingons!
The very slight and occasional appearance of Starfleet officers or glimpses of Starfleet life (aside from miserable, cynical, foul-mouthed and terrible Clancy, whom I'm glad didn't appear in this episode), were the moments I tended to enjoy the most through the season, and it was almost like seeing Trek through a crack in the door, just little tastes of life, either fourteen years ago or 'now.' It doesn't make much sense that Riker would show up. They dropped in the hint during 'Nepenthe' that he was ready for the call up and could be activated any time, but in reality he's almost as old as Picard, he has a family and a life away from the service, and as much as I'd have loved to see a Captain Riker series, it appears that time has passed. Would they really recall someone like that and get him to lead an armada? Do they not have two decades or more of experienced and established Captains? And a Captain and his ship don't just meet and warp off, they have to get to know each other, learn each other's ways, it's not like taking a pleasure cruise! It sounds like I'm taking apart one of the things I liked about the episode, but that's because I can also acknowledge that, like most of what happens in this fantasy series, it doesn't make very much sense. But it's so lovely to see Will back in uniform, not only that, but to see the current uniform again as well as whatever the latest class of ship is. I'd have to agree with an online poster who described it as a 'cut and paste fleet,' as if they saved time on design by featuring only one type of vessel where in the past we've seen many.
Viewscreens! I love that we're back to viewscreens again after the 3D holographic debacle of 'DSC.' At the same time I still can't get past the insistence on aping the Kelvin films from another reality where all ships have a gigantic forward window through which the action takes place and upon which a viewscreen is superimposed. Had it been for one or two ships or a single Trek era I could buy it, but they've homogenised the look of 23rd and 24th Centuries, one of many things that has damaged Trek as a credible future history. It's less problematic with these new futuristic ships that we've never seen before, but it's still jarring when it's a design trope carried through since 2009, much like casual modern day speech and excessive swearing. Another poster hit the nail on the head when they wrote: 'The need to use profanity in any context, especially heated conversation, belies an inability to fully express yourself using other words, and possibly a deficiency in emotional regulation,' and I'd have to agree. Even in this last episode they casually throw in a couple of extreme words just for the sake of it. It doesn't have any impact in the way Clancy's aggressive examples did, other than a feeling of disgust that such language is portrayed as ordinary conversation for these people in a world that used to be seen as a moral and good one. Sure, there were sometimes swearwords used, but never the most extreme and usually in moments of agitation, not to say I accepted it in old Trek any more than here, and obviously it's all a product of loosening censorship and a philosophy of self-expression regardless of the offence caused or the degraded attitudes on display being acceptable, but it's one of those big things that has altered the very DNA of Trek's clean, wholesome image.
Atrocious language is only one small complaint I've had against the new regime and if there was no bad language at all it wouldn't change the fundamental problems with the story: the need to focus on a galaxy-ending crisis at the expense of personal exploration, which lest we forget, was revealed as the ultimate journey for humanity. It's why each race used to be portrayed in a very set way with specific characteristics, because they were representing different aspects of ourselves and it was fascinating to see how these were dealt with or how they played off each other - different cultures, different attitudes, true diversity. There isn't one culture explored in 'Picard' unless you count synthetic life, but 'explored' is a very loose term for what they did with these people. Are we supposed to root for Soji who seems to be at the very centre of the building of this beacon tower that will somehow, we don't know how, transmit a message to the synthetic creatures beyond our galaxy who will come and rescue their own kind from those pesky organics, whom, before we forget, wouldn't exist at all without them! Forget V'Ger coming home to seek its creator, these synths are more like moody teens who no one understands and have gone to live on a commune and got involved in dark forces. By the look of those cliched tentacled monsters writhing on the other side of the portal, they looked more like something that was going to come and feed on our galaxy, synth and organic life alike!
Or were they just the vanguard of attack forces who would have come through and ripped the Romulan and Starfleet ships apart before the true beings arrived and calmly offered assistance to the synths on the planet? The angry roiling mass certainly wasn't portrayed in any way as something that could be reasoned with and be understood and come to an understanding, which is the standard Trek resolution, or used to be. In this instance everything rides on whether Picard can persuade Soji to make the right choice. I'm not sure he was very persuasive myself, he basically said that Starfleet haven't fired on the planet and they aren't going to. Honestly I didn't really buy Soji's defection in the first place as she's gone along with this group who saved her and then she decides to put the whole galaxy at risk. It was poorly plotted, juvenile writing, much like the Marvel Universe - indeed I thought that's what I was watching as this devastating extragalactic threat prepares to come down and raze our worlds and I can imagine Thor, Iron Man and Hulk leaping around bashing them as they come. It's that level of intelligence displayed in this series. The beacon itself, this self-replicating structure that builds itself was typical of modern Trek, too. Rather than see the synths actually build it for themselves, it just pops up out of nowhere and nothing, but then these synths possess Magical Technology that operates on imagination.
You have to wonder if those in charge of the series ever watched Trek, and if they did, did they like anything in it? Not by the evidence of what they do when they're in control: Trek was about striving to achieve, it was about using your abilities and improving yourself, not technology that does everything for you. Sure, Transporters can save you travelling long distances and Replicators solve your food, drink and clothing needs, but once these basic needs are met you are then free to explore and get the most out of life. That's why they had doctors, scientists, engineers and these characters inspired people in the real world. Now none of that is necessary, you simply have a handheld device that fixes any problem by the power of thinking about it! We never need another engineer again. And if it can fix things, then why not build things too? Simply wave your hand and a new ship can be built to the specs in your imagination! And they said tech post-'Voyager' would be too magical to be believable. Hah! The argument in response will always be that famous quote about any sufficiently advanced technology seeming like magic to less developed people, but that doesn't account for the drama-ruining potential of such devices. It's true that in Trek you can do anything. Literally anything. But to make it have consequences and reality is what gives it a purpose for the story. I've said it before, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. I don't want to see magic wand devices that fix everything (why couldn't they fix Saga with that?), just as I don't want to see droids all over the place that patch up ships or, even more ludicrously, tidy up overturned chairs as in 'DSC' after the Tyler/Culber fight.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the whole story is that the Romulans were right. Those evil, fascistic, obscene villains were correct, the synths almost did destroy our galaxy by letting in untold horrors. Which makes me wonder, if these beings are so powerful why wouldn't they make their own gateway now that they know they were summoned? To them it would most likely seem that enemies of their own kind had prevented the portal from opening and so they'd know where to go next, wouldn't they? But that doesn't help the story to be wrapped up so such questions aren't even raised! I know the message is supposed to be that if you give someone a choice they'll hopefully make the right one, but it was a bit of a gamble to hang the fate of an entire galaxy on. I know we're supposed to see that as optimistic, but that everything hinged on one cybernetic girl's whims was a risk that Picard shouldn't have been taking. And even if he could convince Soji she's not the leader of the gang, or is synth society not a democracy, everyone does as they wish? In which case, and either way, it's entirely possible that others in that community would be pro keeping the beacon on. I wish it had been done so Soji was the only one who could operate it because of her physically identical nature to Sutra as that would have made more sense for her to be the key to everything. Sutra gets summarily taken out of the picture by Dr. Soong possessing a handy device that completely immobilises her with a single button press. Do the other synths know that he has this power over them? I would think that would make them just as wary of him as any other organic, even if he plans to become one of them by taking the mind transfer route into the spare body.
I don't know what to think of the synths. Perhaps they were just children ultimately and that's why we don't really get a sense of them as a society or culture because they just went along with whatever any leader decided. A major failed opportunity to explore what it means to be artificial and yet also sentient. Perhaps we'll explore that in future thanks to the major, major development at the end. Yes, I'm talking about altering a classic character, totally and irrevocably in the most misguided and fantastical move modern Trek has made: Picard becomes an android. I can see that there's some kind of poetic parallel being played out, that rather than Data becoming human, Picard ends up becoming an android, and they probably thought what a masterstroke, but to me it's a betrayal of one of the best-loved characters of Trek. What happened to all that in 'Generations' about mortality defining us, blah, blah, blah. And I know Picard didn't get the choice, they saved him by transferring his consciousness into the android body, but going along with the magical tech theme, this is about the limit. I know it was done in 'TNG,' Dr. Ira Graves successfully implanted his consciousness into Data, but if it had been a success it would have altered the very nature of life, and as much as the tech in Trek has done that, it's never been done quite to that level. Now it means that there's an imbalance in society, because why should one man be given the choice to live on in a synthetic body, what about all the other cases - what if Icheb could have had that option? Or Jadzia Dax, or any number of others?
Unless… they're just humouring Picard: 'yes, we gave you a new android body which ages at the same rate as the old one and has no greater strength or any other advantages (really Soong just fixed his brain issue!)What they've done is create a dangerous new precedent, unthinkingly. Very much a case of not thinking whether it should be done because they were too busy seeing if it could be. Trek has always been quite opposed to this direction, too, as we've seen in how the Federation views genetic enhancement, which was banned. To top it all off, not only do they give Jean-Luc a new body, they give him a wrinkled old one that looks identical to his real one (which by the way, did they give that some kind of funeral service or burial, what happened to the real Picard?), and just to please the old man they've made sure he's only going to live as long as he would have anyway and he doesn't have any 'super-powers' as they describe it so stupidly. This is truly comic book territory. Would Picard not have preferred to have a whole other lifetime, to go back to a young, fresh, vigorous body? It seems a waste otherwise. This smacks of pure marketing, that they didn't really want to change Picard because then he wouldn't be Picard, but they had to find a way around the illness he had. There are many ways he could have been cured or perhaps had some kind of improvement given to him so that he could live with the condition for much longer, but to introduce it only for him to be saved by becoming an android was a bizarre idea. Almost as bizarre as turning a productive member of the Voyager crew, a fan favourite, into a hard-bitten, hard-drinking, hardhearted revenge seeker, but more on Seven in a bit…
This could have been a way to write Patrick Stewart out of the series, and perhaps that was the morbid idea behind it: that if Stewart didn't live long enough to fulfil his commitment they could just have the character transfer his consciousness into a different body, thus another actor would take over? It only just occurred to me, but that sounds like the kind of business decision CBS would have made! There's also the fact they probably wanted people to tune in each week expecting this to be the last time we'll ever get to see Stewart playing his most famous role, only for the surprise at the end that, ta-da!, he's okay really! What about poor Dr. Soong? He seemed more than willing to give up the android body meant for himself, and he was a character who was never really given any sense of being a person. It's just a role created so Brent Spiner can be there without all the Data makeup. And oh, we'll get onto Data, yes indeed. If Picard becoming an android wasn't a big enough slap in the face, especially if you were willing, hoping and expecting Data's neurons to be reassembled and given the new body, they kill him off permanently. He'd already been killed in 'Nemesis,' something that most people seem to think was a terrible idea, and which I share, but we learn that because of a single neuron saved from B4 who had part of Data's mind, he's been somehow reconstituted and is hanging around in some kind of simulation, waiting to die properly.
I must admit, I was about to give the episode the lowest mark of the season with one star, but I had to add the extra star just for Data's appearance. I don't mean his physical appearance because he looks a bit wonky, just like the uniform he's wearing that shows zips and displays a lack of understanding on how Trek uniforms used to be: the only time they showed how they were done up was by mistake, like on 'TOS' occasionally. Data was wonky in the same way that the episode was wonky, which was in the same way that the season was wonky, which was in the same way as modern Trek is wonky. But even in spite of all that wonkiness, it was still beautiful to see and hear Commander Data, and get a discussion of Picard's last moments with him in 'Nemesis,' something you'd never have thought possible. He looked a lot better in the light when the door had opened than in the gloom of that darkened room, but the voice was there, the mannerisms and it just makes me sad that we have to give up this character that they could have brought back. It's not like it would undo such a great ending for the character in 'Nemesis' because it wasn't great, and let's be honest, even then they were planning to bring him back, that's why B4 existed! Perhaps they didn't mean to suggest Data might be the consciousness that ended up in the synth body, but if not that was a massive misstep because it's more cruel than his original death to give hope and then euthanise the last remains of him just because he wanted to die (read: so they didn't have to do more expensive CGI). Think what contributions he could still have made if he'd been given another chance, and it's not like they couldn't have whipped up another body, given time. Also a shame he didn't age into looking like old Noonien Soong when we see him die!
Jurati, whose murdering tendencies seem to have been completely forgotten, appears to be an expert on Maddox' work, able to finish what he started, so why not start churning out bodies for everyone? She's just as irritating as ever, chattering and gibbering away - throwing in a reference to the Picard Manoeuvre as a potential tactic in their confrontation with the Romulan fleet was extremely clunky and out of place (even more so for the very modern way of saying 'that's a thing'), only there as a fun reference (which it was), but so jarring because Picard then has to explain why it wouldn't be appropriate. Once again it shows we're dealing with people that don't get Trek, whether it be the characters themselves, or the writers who write them. Is it supposed to be endearing and a 'clever' way to interject a reference, because it was at the wrong time. And what was going on with that fleet anyway? And why aren't the Emergency Holograms in evidence at all? Did they say they'd been shut down or there wasn't enough power, because I didn't catch it, and you'd hope the EMH would be there to support Picard, an elderly and ill man? Likewise, the Emergency Navigator could have been flying instead of relying on Picard's rusty piloting skills! And as for Oh… Oh dear. The ex-Commodore in charge of the Romulans must have become soft from working inside Starfleet all those years - why would she tell her ships to ignore La Sirena, I know it's not much of a threat, but it would be typical Romulan efficiency to destroy the vessel, not ignore it as she commands her fleet! It made no sense, neither did the confrontation with Starfleet! But I did like the shoulder pads that recalled 'TNG' Romulan uniforms.
We might complain that Trek is too 'Star Wars' if they'd had a space battle, which they did to a small extent by blasting the defence flowers (how silly that sounds!), which really is 'Star Wars' thanks to all those tiny dogfighters that Trek never used to do, but is yet another influence co-opted from the more successful Star franchise. But these Romulans have lost almost everything for losing so much of their Empire's space (we assume), Oh has been infiltrating Starfleet for decades in order to be ready for this apocalyptic final battle at the end of time, like something out of Revelation, and all she does is stand on the Bridge of her ship and look a little blank. I understand that there's a fleet of the latest, greatest Starfleet vessels between her and the planet, but you'd think she'd fight tooth and nail, giving everything to this desperate struggle that would decide the fate of her entire race if she fails. Instead, she's comfortable waiting for Picard to have a chat with Soji about why it's really not a good idea to let the big scary man in. I know she's half-Vulcan which means she should be logical and more open to reason than her brethren (it was never even explored that she may have experienced bigotry for her Vulcan half and that it seems very unlikely her people would give her command of what must be their entire fleet through prejudice, but then these things only come up in specific ways in new Trek), but I didn't buy that she'd stand by and allow all this to take place after a lifetime of dedicated preparation. And it would have been a chance for a major battle like we used to see in 'DS9,' one that was genuinely justified.
Again, I think it's supposed to be a sign of the 'optimism' that was promised that they don't fight, but it was all a little pat and easy, Riker goes off after smiling broadly, Picard's okay… except he's not, and you'd think he'd want one of his best friends and former colleagues with him if he knew he was about to die instead of saying he had it in hand now. Think how Riker would have felt if he'd later learned Jean-Luc had died just after he left! And again, I defer to a poster online who wrote about Picard becoming an android: '…He was going to die soon, so now he’s been given another chance. For what, exactly?' It's true, why shouldn't he have died, other than for the fact that his image needs to make CBS more money! Someone else said: 'I was just more confused by the fact that the Romulans were actually right all along, but were still being portrayed as the enemy for some reason.' It's true, they were right, and the fact they were prevented from doing what was necessary almost spelt the end of everything. And again, the counter-argument would be that because of them it forced the synths to go into hiding and want to call on the evil forces to protect them, but I'm not sure that wouldn't have happened anyway. I get the attack on Mars Utopia Planitia was headed by the Jhat Vash in order to make the synths out to be evil, but I'm still not sure on that plot point and how it could have been taken like that. The ban is overturned anyway, in a little throwaway at the end, not for any good reason, just because it's the end. Would the Federation be that quick to cancel such a thing? Mind you, they were quick to institute it, so who knows?
It's not the Federation or Starfleet we knew, which adds further fuel to the fire of this seeming much more dystopian than ever before, even the height of the Dominion War when we saw characters do unsavoury things. Perhaps some of Sisko's actions actually began such un-Starfleet sentiments as ends justifying means and all that, and I love him, he's possibly my favourite Captain of all. Moral ambiguity is a problem though, it's crept into the franchise over time and Jean-Luc Picard was once the benchmark of honesty and integrity, but we've seen even him make plenty of questionable decisions and undiplomatic displays in this series. I put it down to age and the degenerative brain abnormality (which we're still not allowed to call Irumodic Syndrome or we'd have to pay the writers of 'All Good Things…' I reckon!), but that's another dissatisfaction with the series and the deconstruction of what made Trek so hopeful and captivating. There was even a slip of the tongue by Picard when he trots out that Data wanted to be human despite humanity's violence, corruption and wilful ignorance. Erm, hang on, that's not the humanity portrayed in any of the old Treks. That, more than anything else in the episode exposed the true attitudes of the writers, that they don't understand the fundamental bedrock position of Trek on such things. I'm not one that treats Trek as a religion and believes one day things will be like this (except in Heaven), but I like the positive attitudes of the series, and though I blanch at the humanism it also has parallels with some goodness and rightness.
Even though this was almost an hour long, I didn't feel the characters got their dues, much like in a Trek film. So Jurati's position as a murderer is never touched on, Raffi doesn't really have much to do, nor does Rios, whose plot to save the day by hiding a bomb in a football, didn't work at all. I didn't like the sunset scene with Seven and Rios kicking back and boozing together like old chums - this was the only moment Seven voices any kind of regret about the fact she can't help murdering people that deserve it, like it's a habit or something! It was such a paltry throwaway attempt at reconciling what she's done in this series that rather than make her more sympathetic it made her seem even harder and more lost. At the start of the episode she and Elnor discuss how the XBs have nowhere to go, no place to call home, but in the past the impression was that once they'd been freed from the Collective they could be rehabilitated as Seven was. Except in this continuity rather than Seven becoming less Borgified, losing some of her implants, etc, she became even more Borged up for no good reason! It was a terrible misstep to do what they did to her, taking a character of hope that had come so far and plunging her into the murderous mire. In this episode she kills Narissa by pushing her over the edge of the Borg Cube, like the Emperor being thrown down the shaft in the Death Star, and that's what it feels like, except weak and limp compared to that and without the complexity that was at work in the original 'Star Wars' trilogy.
Seven has become a horrifying character and it made me wonder what happened to her Voyager family, that was home to her? Did she quarrel with them all and refuse to have anything to do with them? That's the inference if she claims she has no place or family. It's truly disgusting what they did with her and it makes me hope they don't bring back any more classic characters if they're only planning to deconstruct and tear them apart rather than pay homage to an amazing legacy that they could never hope to come close to. Rather, this generation has tarnished Trek, almost beyond repair. They altered Seven in new and disturbing ways that were never in evidence in 'Voyager,' twisting a beloved character into any shape they feel like. I will give them one moment that worked for a character, and that was when Elnor goes to Raffi for comfort after Picard's 'died' - she's a kind of Mother figure and he was brought up by Mother figures so it was very fitting that he went to her, especially as he's little more than a child developmentally. I wasn't as keen on the earlier scene of Raffi, Rios and Elnor sitting round a campfire outside La Sirena telling stories. The whole Romulan myth side of the plot never worked and was just another element ripped from other franchises. Marvel, 'Star Wars,' 'The Lord of The Rings,' these are the influences now, and rather than Trek ploughing its own furrow it constantly tries to appeal by aping other things, except doing it badly. It's pitiful to see a once-proud name that led the way, meekly following and trying to compete with the 'big boys' of gore and other so-called 'adult' content which is more accurately described as coming from juvenile minds.
At least this time we didn't see the eyeball being removed, perhaps in reaction to the horror expressed at Icheb's treatment earlier. We just hear the squishy sounds as Jurati borrows Saga's eye to break Picard out, though I have to question whether that would work - wouldn't the system recognise a 'dead' eye compared to a live one? There's talk of the synths being manipulated by Sutra into an emotional jolt so they'd make the decision she wanted, but do they all have emotions? Are emotion chips ten a penny now? If humans can pop their minds into a machine body, then why not, I suppose… But there's no exploration of synthetic emotion or anything really - they're also supposed to be super strong as Data demonstrated, so that would mean organics would have no chance against the speed and reflexes in a fight, which made it ludicrous that Elnor and the others try to take them on even with the element of surprise! Narek being revealed as a Jhat Vash 'washout' in his words, at least gives him more context, but you'd think such a super-secret organisation would have killed anyone that failed. There's a moment of actual sibling affection between he and Narissa when they meet on the Cube, but it was too little, too late to make her any more real than a 2D villainess that we'd ever care about and she's right back into cliche territory when she fights Seven while throwing out terrible corny quips like it's an old James Bond film. There are no real consequences, the Romulans entering Federation space should be an act of war, the beacon's switched off as easy as that, nothing's said about the murders committed by characters, the ban on synths is lifted, but who's to say they might not do it again?
At one point Raffi asks what's happening and Rios replies 'nothing that makes any sense.' That was an excellent way to sum up the episode and season. It's amazing how each of the three seasons of current gen Trek I've watched have been just about equally bad, but for different reasons. I suppose 'Picard' has had the closest feel of Trek out of them all (despite being the first season since 'Enterprise' Season 3 not to feature a single Klingon - the photo of Worf doesn't count!), but it's still only a very pale imitation. He has some good things to say here, such as to be alive is a responsibility, not just a right (which sounds like they ripped off the famous Spider-Man line and thought they could get away with it!), but nothing is really dug down into, they can't afford to because they're trying to make Trek something it's not. The truth is, modern Trek was radically redesigned by JJ Abrams to be a twisted and distorted version of its former self that would appeal to a new generation that want action more than thought, a kind of false, forced diversity that isn't the true diversity of representing every point of view that is reasonable, one that has shown its poor morals in the way characters act, speak and think, not to mention the tearing down of authority and anything deemed patriarchal, such as Jean-Luc himself who became practically emasculated with this series. It's shown people who are damaged as the standard 'heroes' we are to follow, while avoiding true heroic types and it hasn't even given the characters it presents the kind of exploration and development they need to be rounded, interesting people.
The more I've thought about the series, the less I've liked it. I defer to an online poster again who described it as: 'All plot with little or nothing interesting (thematically) underlying it all. In other words, the stories are about a series of events that ultimately don’t mean much to me — the stories don’t show me anything interesting or meaningful about what it’s like to live life, i.e. the human condition or anything interesting about the world/universe.' I couldn't agree more, and because of that I've made the decision that this will be the last review I make of the current generation of Trek. It's become a chore which I don't look forward to, because as much of a relief as it is to get my thoughts out and provide a record of what is happening, or has happened to Trek in the context of the whole franchise, it also depresses, disgusts and disinterests. While they keep releasing the various productions on disc I'll keep buying because physical media's days are numbered, but I don't find myself being concerned any more that I'm going to miss out because I simply don't like what Trek has become. Maybe one day I'll get back to writing about what is still coming out, but for now I've had enough of analysing this thing with the name 'Star Trek,' but which is only bad Trek, with nothing more for me.
**
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