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.
**
Tuesday, 26 October 2021
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