Tuesday, 16 November 2021

The Jihad

DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Jihad)

This is one of the least Trekky stories of the series so far, in fact I'd go so far as to say if JJ Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and their ilk had chosen an episode upon which to base the modern generation of films and TV shows, this could have been the one they picked! We're far from the rigours of Starfleet protocol, off on an alien planet, we have two handpicked characters, Kirk and Spock, selected to go on a mythical quest with a gang of bizarre aliens, they experience all kinds of physical adventure and there's even a twist: one of their number is intent on sabotaging the mission! It couldn't be much closer to 'DSC' or the Kelvin Timeline films, except that this is a geologically unstable planet upon which they make their quest, complete with volcanoes and lava floes (see 'Into Darkness'), even ending with a fight in zero gravity (see 'Beyond'). There doesn't seem to be much connection to Trek, other than one of the group, Sord, potentially being a Gorn, but you notice they introduce each of the members of this expedition and give some information on them, but when they get to Sord another character interrupts so we never get to hear anything about him! It's fun to think he is a Gorn, but a shame we couldn't have had some private ribbing between this lizard-like alien and our Captain Kirk, about the time he faced a Captain of that race.

It's not like they don't have characters interacting, Lara, this 'hunter' with special tracking senses, gets quite a few scenes with Kirk - she's this Calamity Jane-type tough woman who always says what's on her mind and gets quite suggestive with the Captain. Apparently she's also human but from another planet, but again, we don't go deeply into each of these new characters or races. Still, it is somewhat entertaining in a typical Saturday morning adventure cartoon style, in the sense that it's a lot of weird and wonderful people and action, though there isn't a lot else. We have this birdlike prince, Char of the Skor, whose race is threatening a holy war against the known galaxy (I suppose they're letting the unknown parts off this time!), unless they can retrieve the mystical item that is at the heart of the mission: the 'soul' of Aylar, a religious leader who set the warrior race on the right track and civilised them, and they in turn immortalised him by recording his brain patterns before his death and embedding it in a sculpture, which has been stolen. Not sure what the point of recording his brain was, unless it's like one of those computers that the Enterprise regularly encountered on 'TOS' and which was some kind of oracle that led the people (and which Kirk often came in and destroyed to free the people!). We're not privy to any information about this artefact, it's purely plot motivation.

On they go, each having been chosen for their specific skills (for example, the green insect creature calling itself 'M3 Green,' a bit of a cowardy-custard, is there in the event they need to pick a lock…), and also so that when they realise one of them must be a quisling and a traitor, we can wonder about all of them. Because Kirk and Spock are almost the only regular characters in the episode - Scotty's there to beam them down in the Transporter Room at the beginning, and Sulu's there in the same place to greet them when they return, 'two minutes later' (some time shenanigans that were never explained!), but there's no sign of McCoy or Uhura at all, and Scotty and Sulu get about one or two lines each. I don't think we even saw the Bridge! Of course James Doohan gets plenty to do anyway as he does guest voices, this time Char, and possibly Sord, though I wasn't a hundred percent certain on that one. The leader of the mission, the white tiger woman (garishly suited up in pink!), who set them off on their journey (I didn't catch a name), may have been voiced by Nichelle Nichols, but I wasn't sure about that, and M3 and Lara both were guest voices, which is surprising as you'd expect Majel Barrett and Doohan to have been used there.

I don't know why this powerful race, the Vedalla, the oldest spacefaring race Kirk knows of, don't carry out the mission themselves since they set it up - tiger lady just gives them the information and charges them to sort it out! It's fun to see such wacky and wild alien designs, but it's another aspect of the story that makes it feel a lot less Trekky than usual. Plus we get yet another land based vehicle, although this time the open-topped tank car isn't Starfleet in origin. Is it from the Vedalla? The colours and brightness of it all, and charging around on a so-called 'mad' planet (complete with those purple flying dragons again, which must be at least the third time they've been used!), makes for entertainment, as does Kirk and Spock wrestling with the double-crossing Char at the end in zero-g (Kirk asks when Spock last did null gravity training, to which his First Officer responds, 'last week, with you,' as if he's forgotten!). But there really isn't much to take away from the episode, other than Lara's indecent suggestion they make some 'green memories' in case they're about to die on that planet. I suppose there are some parallels with other Trek races in that some of the Skor were fed up with the peaceful direction their race had gone and wanted to get back to warrior ways - we've seen the Klingons go wild on 'DS9' after a long peace with their old enemies, the Federation, and of course there's the split of the Vulcans, a faction leaving the planet in disgust at the ways of Surak to become Romulans, so even in this episode it's possible to find Trek precedent.

It's just that colourful characters in both visual senses and personality aren't enough to carry an episode on their own, and concentrating on simple adventure as an end in itself is fine for other cartoon series, but from Trek I expect more than that. It makes me wonder if the new series, 'Star Trek: Prodigy' will be like this with its wacky alien characters and childish target audience, just another outpouring of Trek content for the sake of it, and a further diluting of the brand. Saying that, the amount of Trek out there now has already diluted it to a great extent, but then 'DSC' did that for itself when it staked out its territory as a Trek that is going to ignore or redefine the parameters of what makes Trek, Trek. For all the flaws in 'TAS' it still feels like genuine Trek, based on the same principles and world that was built in 'TOS' and further expanded in the following spinoffs, so as much as I can easily criticise it, it's generally a more satisfying experience than any of the new stuff being pumped out a dime a dozen by CBS.

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