Incursion - Part 2

 DVD, Stargate Universe S1 (Incursion - Part 2)

It is annoying, but you knew it was coming: no resolution, a cliffhanger ending, the characters stuck in that state of uncertainty on the brink of success or failure, who knows who's dead, who's about to be killed, who will survive... Maybe that's why I wasn't so keen on this the first time round, but perhaps with hindsight (and certainly this is more appealing than the ending of Season 2 since that will never get a conclusion!), knowing what's coming in general for some of the characters, I felt the tension of this ending, the buildup as things are set in motion, actions, choices, plans and counter-plans, and I was, if not exactly swept up in it all, at least carried along and drawn in. Kiva proves to be a hard bargainer, and though she finally caves on the suggestion to swap four captives for four on each side, she is also still smarting from Young's attempt at a dishonourable solution to the problem which got one of his men killed. To be precise it wasn't that one of his men got killed, it's that he was executed in retaliation for Young trying to spring an attack when he offers a show of good faith with medical supplies, and also it wasn't something that went wrong with the plan, it was the growing issue of the ship itself losing power every so often which spooked Kiva before the attack could take place. In the end she still wants her people back so they agree to a new truce, this time through Camille acting as go-between, but she's no match for the hardbitten Kiva who lumps in the dead body of the man she executed as one of the four in the hostage exchange, showing her tough negotiating style and that she can't be swerved from her goal of taking the ship.

Camille was a bit out of her depth, looking quite small and ineffectual in the face of such tactics, unable to say anything against this logical show of power. On the positive side it does lead to our people realising Eli and Chloe must be somewhere else in the ship, and as was inevitable the moment they got lost and became a sort of 'third party,' some serious stuff lies with them, or I should say, with Eli, since Chloe's barely conscious. At least they had something worthwhile to do instead of as in part one when it was just an excuse for them to be together. There's a nice scene where Eli realises she knows he likes her, talking about how he's a great friend and that it isn't a consolation prize, and it cleared things up a bit and made it better instead of this young lad moping after this girl all the time. There was a similarly nice piece of character work between Greer and Scott when the former expresses absolute conviction in Colonel Young's judgement and authority, that he'll give the word to go in and sort the enemy out at the right time, because obviously that's what Greer always wants to do, that's what he's been hardened for. Scott, however shows doubt in his formerly untouchable commanding officer's judgement, a sign that Young has crossed one too many lines recently. It was also nice as a sign that Greer and Scott aren't at enmity with each other after the one wholeheartedly supported Young's torture of Telford, while the other was about ready to defy orders and stop it.

It's a good one for them because they're tasked with the mission that must be accomplished to preserve all their lives, Stargate personnel and Lucian Alliance alike, when they have to do an EVA on the hull of the ship to activate something or other (it doesn't really matter, it's the action itself that counts), having to stride nightmarishly slowly with the aid of their EVA suits magnetically sealing them to the deck. And of course they're trapped out there when things go wrong and the blast from a pulsar that they can no longer take winks the episode out. That was a terrific final shot, too, close on Young's face, standing before his soldiers who have been rounded up and are about to be mown down - he almost looks up the heavens as if to question what brought him to this point, the power going out once more to signify the final blast has come, fading the episode itself to black! If it was good for Greer and Scott, it's also a good one for Telford, at least in some ways. He's proved his triple agent status beyond doubt now when he protects TJ and the others as much as his influence will allow, communicates secretly with the 'enemy' and finally shoots his 'leader' when she discovers him returning control to his original allies. I say in some ways because she also shoots him, it's a draw in the draw, both seriously injured and I have the feeling he doesn't make it for Season 2, other than perhaps a guest star for a death scene, maybe not even that - I don't remember well enough if he survives, but it didn't look good.

Notably, they didn't rely on any 'SG-1' main cast appearances in the finale, as if to show that the series can exist on its own two feet (even though that was proved not to be the case, frustratingly, when it was cancelled at the end of Season 2), and at first I wasn't keen on that - I always want more of those originals, just as when they bring the old actors back in Trek (which has happened a lot in recent years). But I came to see that it was fair as they are their own series, a statement of intent, no matter how successful the end result would prove to be. For me, I've certainly come to really like this group, we've got to the point where we know them (even if I still don't always recall everyone's name since there are so many - Brody's presence was enough to make him a good character in this one, and Young gets a sharp word from that female scientist, too!), and they know each other so there's meaning there. Perhaps exemplified in that scene where Scott offers Camille a flak jacket for her exchange with Kiva and she refuses based on needing to show trust in the opposition, and he admits Young knew she wouldn't take it, but he wanted to try anyway. It says plenty about all three of those characters and I like that. It hasn't always been that well written across the first season, we've had a lot of lows, a lot of miseries, but, and I don't know if it was because characters like Lieutenant James, whom I like, but can also be quite emotional, took a backseat in this episode, we've seen some growth and development, not always for the best (in Young's case, for example), but generally a more cohesive unit has developed over time. They eventually realised they had to do more than just concentrate on one aspect, like Water or Air, etc, even if in some ways that simplicity was a strong point early on. But now they've got some consistency going and it's for them to build on that into Season 2.

***

One Small Step

 DVD, Voyager S6 (One Small Step)

One small step up in my affections, that's how I came to view this story. Whether it was so much mediocre Trek recently (Season 3 of 'Lower Decks' hasn't lived up to the promise of Season 2), or going in with low expectations, I really warmed to this one. It's very much classic Trek, people solving a problem while at the same time connecting to the past, and a character learning something about humanity in general, and perhaps themselves. The key to its goodness is its warmth, and the most immediate parallel that came to mind, as it always does in this category of pleasant, joyful storytelling, was 'Star Trek IV.' Not one of my favourites, but it has that joy to it, that warm feeling you get when seeing these characters interact, it really is as simple as that. It's a Seven of Nine story, and we hadn't been inundated with her so far this season, but even more, she has nice little scenes with most of the other characters and learns a little piece of the puzzle that is being human from each of them: the Doctor reminds her to pause on her Away Mission and appreciate the moment; she argues over logic with Tuvok who patiently explains that Starfleet is about exploration in spite of risk; Chakotay's enthusiasm for the subject matter adds a new dimension to his character; and Janeway, though basically ordering her to volunteer, also makes a precursor of the speech Captain Archer would make about sending out probes if it was merely research data Starfleet wanted, that it's firsthand experience that matters.

Funny that Archer should have said very close to the same thing since this is one small step along the road (and it's a long road, don't forget!), to 'Enterprise,' another entry for the 'Star Trek Chronology' if it had made it into a reprint post-1996 when the last (to date), publishing took place. When the episode was made it was over thirty years to the 2032 date of the flashback scenes of astronaut John Kelly and his Ares IV mission to Mars. They should have known from experience with 'TOS,' which was still as visible in the late-90s as it ever had been over thirty years after first transmission, that 'Voyager' was just as likely to be remembered in such a timeframe, and perhaps they also should have learned from Trek's experience of predicting events only a few decades hence, that our timeline would quickly enough catch up to Trek 'reality' and these episodes would still be watched at that time. No doubt they knew it might not make believable viewing by then (though in fairness the glimpses we get of actual technology are brief, it's more about the feasibility of travel to Mars), and perhaps if we'd not had the resurgence of a third era (either 2009 onwards or 2017 on, depending upon point of view), it would've made no difference if Trek was largely forgotten - who knows, maybe Trek will truly have dropped off the radar (or should that be lidar?), by the 2030s since we're still almost a decade away from 2032, and judging by how the property has been run into the ground with its middling-at-best TV shows and films of recent years that has made plenty of long-term fanatics (such as myself), question whether Trek has any value any more, it could still happen. But I suspect 'Voyager' will still be watched and enjoyed (and I hope by me), and really it's not about trying to be accurate in predicting the future, it's about the time it was made.

That's why it greatly annoyed me to hear that 'Strange New Worlds' had actively changed the timeline of the Eugenics Wars to try and make it fit with our own history (rather than blending it into then-current events of the Nineties as we used to look at it), because Trek history and its fidelity and consistency is one of its greatest appeals and helped to make it what it was. It doesn't look very likely we'll be sending a manned mission to Mars by 2032, though not impossible, and it was really about continuing a tradition for supporting NASA and the real space programme that Trek had always had an affinity for - I won't go into a list of all the connections between the two, but the reality of space travel and keeping things grounded to what the future might hold had always been important. That is until the comic book film approach was applied from 'Star Trek XI' onwards and those same aesthetics and styles were used to create the modern era, much to my disappointment and disgust, and why so much of Trek has degenerated into galaxy-ending disaster and superheroes going around saving everything. One reason I went into this with low expectations were thoughts of 'The Royale' in my head, one of, if not the most boring episodes of 'TNG,' similarly dealing with early manned missions into space beyond the time they were made. As interesting as it can be to give us data points of how the Trek future came to pass, it's whether it's fitted into a good story that matters more. Much like '11:59' which was low-key, but had good character work.

'One Small Step' was an example of doing that well, and though I'd thought of it as a dull episode, I really didn't miss the adventure and excitement that some other stories pack in. I realised that it was about Seven's awakening to the importance of history, and as Janeway said (or was it Chakotay?), by what they were doing they were becoming part of history. Not that they weren't already - from 'DSC' we know the Voyager series has a long line of ships in the same vein as the legendary Enterprise (even if it is caused more by recognition that the younger audience of streaming favoured that most out of the older series', which isn't really the best basis for in-universe notoriety!), as far into the future as the 32nd Century. But what they mean is they're part of the history that's going back to the origins of Trek, those first steps into space exploration in person. I wonder why they chose to actually show parts of Kelly's experiences? They could just as easily have had them all be logs played on a screen of which we saw some examples. I suppose that would have made us, as viewers, more removed from Kelly, and since we don't have that life of appreciating him as a hero in the young minds of some of the characters, we wouldn't have the same reaction, so it does make sense that we should be privileged to witness some of those events firsthand (such as realising there must be other races other than humanity when he sees a chunk of hull plating go past his module, though he died with that knowledge all to himself, never fully knowing the vast possibilities out there and making his death even more poignant).

They brought Phil Morris in for the key role of Kelly, and this only added a greater sense of tying in to past history since his Trek credits, though few, had stretched from a child in 'TOS' (being the son of 'Mission: Impossible' lead Greg Morris he was used along with several other children of actors), to one of the original films in the Eighties, to a couple of aliens in 'DS9,' so it was fitting he should play this role, and sadly has been the last entry in his Trek contribution since then, though he's still active and could certainly return (if he hasn't already). One thing that spoke volumes about the way they did things in this era was how Kelly's decomposing corpse was never fully shown - the most we see is a uniformed arm and a bit of hand. By not showing his face it demonstrated proper respect for this man, and though we see Seven glance at him we only see him in the flashbacks and recordings so he remains alive to us (reminding me to some extent of Captain Cusack in 'The Sound of Her Voice' on 'DS9'). It also gave him presence in the present day, there's a sense that Seven is walking around a tomb, not in a creepy way to try and generate discomfort or fear, but she seems to present a respectful manner, and though it's never discussed as a tomb, they're far too excited to be discovering this place, the whole shooting and way it was done felt very right and proper, something I can't imagine in the madcap world of 'Lower Decks,' for example. It was serious and sensitive, and so when we have a final scene that shows him the greatest of respect with a memorial service on the Bridge, Kelly's body shot out into space in the traditional torpedo casing, it can only evoke Spock's funeral in 'Star Trek II' and was actually quite touching (though it left me wondering if they had the tube on the Bridge did they then beam it to the launcher as it appears to be ejected from the ship rather than being beamed out).

The honour they afford to this space pioneer is what gives the episode its solid base, and how much enthusiasm there is to try and track down the module provides that necessary motivation for the story, epitomised by Chakotay's reckless actions that show how much it meant to him personally. What they're doing when they fire Kelly into space is really no different than his current fate trapped in this graviton ellipse that's preserved the Ares IV for three hundred years, but it's the act that is important, giving him a proper sendoff, and that whole scene was lovingly put together, whether it was the majority of the senior staff in dress uniforms, or Seven quietly telling Kelly who won the World Series (even if I instantly guessed that would happen the moment he mentioned wishing he'd known as he slips into death - in similar vein, when I was young I used to worry I might die before the Treks I loved ended!), and even sparing a shot of Chakotay and the Doctor standing attentive at his side in Sickbay to show they're part of it even if not present in the room, it was very movingly done and capped the episode beautifully. It wouldn't have fit with the mood of how the episode closed out, but there really needed to be a scene somewhere in which Janeway gave Chakotay a dressing down for almost losing the Delta Flyer and getting he and his team killed when he deliberately defied her order to get out of the ellipse as fast as possible - he instead continues trying to pull the Ares out with them and Seven is entirely disgusted with him. Her scenes with Chakotay were my favourite, in this instance she's practically insubordinate in her sarcastic or scathing tone that he may have condemned them to death, while he, weak in his bed, tries to ascertain what's going on.

Even with this scene it was so 'right' - that's the best way I can describe it. It's this rightness that is so lacking in the vast majority of modern Trek: although Chakotay was so eager to see the inside of the Ares, his disobedience means he never sees the 'promised land' as it were, having to leave the honour to someone that doesn't care about the history and importance of it all. That was punishment enough for someone who'd been enthused by it from a young age, and yet he's not bitter, he doesn't lose his temper with the more inexperienced Seven, just accepts the situation he's in, even finishing with a running joke of making a bad joke to defuse the tension, calling back to Seven's attempt earlier in the episode when she'd reverted to her old ways and started making modifications to the ship without authorisation because authority, in the form of B'Elanna, wouldn't consider them (causing malfunctions to abound as a consequence!). Her interactions throughout were well written and charming, because we've seen her come so far and yet she can still have that Borg drone edge of argumentativeness, she hasn't solved all her issues entirely, as well rounded as she's become. The only downside is that, as with so many times when she's taken the role another character might have had, without her in the series this could probably have been B'Elanna's story. You can imagine her being just as dismissive of such history (even sharing that heritage in the same way Seven does), and such old technology, or maybe learning to appreciate how advanced it was for its time, certainly the engineering side would have made complete sense (though she is the one on Voyager who comes up with the plan to get power from a component of the Ares, so even where there are complaints the characters overall were well integrated).

Having some crew-members trapped somewhere and the others having to work out how to save them is one of those things that makes Trek what it is, another reason it appealed to me more on this viewing. Character, too, is very important, and this was very far from being an effects spectacular where they deal with aliens of the week, it's a unique story in that they're taking on an anomaly, there's no villain (another connection with 'Star Trek IV'), it's a natural phenomena that fits perfectly with the Starfleet ethos. I loved that Tuvok reacted to Seven's assertion that logically they shouldn't go after this thing because it was too much of a risk by explaining they don't know what may be discovered through exploration. It was only a small scene, but Seven comes across so often as the closest to a Vulcan woman as you can get (more-so than T'Pol who shouldn't have been showing as much emotion as she did), and I always wish there were more scenes between herself and Tuvok. Chakotay can often be left behind in a story since he's not the Captain and can become almost a placeholder while she and the crew have all the 'fun,' but in this case he's a very active part. You can't call it a Chakotay episode because he's sidelined by his injury, and it becomes a Seven story primarily, but he is key. From the start I was a touch disappointed when we have the door chiming in his Quarters and there's no one there because I always enjoy the creepy episodes, and this wasn't that at all, perhaps one reason I didn't really warm to it on my last viewing as it set me up to think it would be a certain kind of story it wasn't.

One other reminder of what I so liked about Trek was its attitude to the past and to history, which isn't always reflected in today's world. One example is that we see Chakotay reading a hefty old hardbound book in his Quarters (apparently at two in the morning, so it must have been a real page-turner - he also sits in his uniform showing how comfortable they are that he doesn't feel the need to change out of it!). It's probably more likely nowadays that someone would be reading on the equivalent of a PADD, but it's great to see a real book being used as it ties these characters into the past, just as Kirk or Picard had real books on their shelves, or that Jean-Luc explained to Data the power of a tactile connection with something as when he felt the surface of the Phoenix in 'First Contact.' Trek postulated that we wouldn't forget the importance of such things and I wonder if we are now? Do we see real books in modern Trek, other than a garish 'modern-looking' printing of 'Alice in Wonderland' in 'DSC'? It's only a small detail yet it says so much and is another appealing aspect of Trek made then. Talking of history, Buck Bokai, a famous baseball player of the then-future mentioned in 'TNG' as far back as Season 1 and seen in 'DS9' (recreated by aliens, of course), as far back as Season 1, gets another reference from John Kelly which shows the kind of intricate detail they could get in on occasion - modern Treks have become rife with references as if to cover the other inconsistencies with the tone and style of their predecessors, but in this case they probably just seized on anything that Kelly might have known about that had been previously established. Funnily enough there was a bit of a mess-up with Bokai's record as the year he did it is apparently wrong, according to the entry in 'The Star Trek Encyclopedia'!

Janeway mentions the Shroud of Kahless which was another fun connection to 'DS9' since this was the clue that started Dahar Master Kor on his quest for the famed Sword of Kahless. And Chakotay says after being injured it was like going ten rounds with an Andorian, referring both to his penchant for boxing, but also the superior physical strength of that species (though you can usually take it as read that aliens are likely to be much stronger than humans!). Unless Chakotay was actually referring to Ushann, the Andorian duel with ice knives seen in 'Enterprise,' though I imagine their temperament would mean they'd just as happily take on alien forms of combat. There's even a rare Biblical reference as Kelly talks about Jonah, even if it was inaccurate as he goes with the popular myth that it was a whale rather than merely a big fish as the Bible describes it! Still, it was yet another little reminder of the connection Trek had to our culture that has been more and more eroded - I can't imagine them making any direct Biblical references in today's Trek, though there are undoubtedly examples of language and sayings they don't necessarily even know come from that source. What else do I like? The reality of the flashback scenes - most of the time Kelly's strapped in his chair, but we do also see him float around briefly, and to reinforce the idea they didn't have artificial gravity in those days Seven has to wear magnetic boots (or I should say activate the magnetic boots since they come as standard in EVA suits), with the same sound effect as the hull-walking scene on the Enterprise-E in 'First Contact.'

Even my wish to see more of the beautiful imagery of Voyager on the ellipse's tail, its golden glow throwing a beautiful light on the hull, was granted, and though the episode isn't full of action and spectacle they sold the situation of the Flyer very well, both in when Chakotay makes his gambit to keep hold of the Ares, and when Voyager is finally able to grab onto the Flyer to pull it out. In every respect the episode worked, and while I still wouldn't rate it a classic, as a simple little tale it's a good solid example that makes use of its characters. It may be the start of Seven of Nine overkill, I don't remember, but the brilliance of Jeri Ryan's skill is shown in full. Again, like the story, it's not a tour de force for her, she's merely doing those things that endear the character and fit in so perfectly with what had been established, but she does it with absolute aplomb that makes her a joy to watch. It's still so hard to reconcile the messed-up version from 'Picard' with such a terrific character and I try not to go on about it in every single review, but it's just so stunning the quality seen here and so absent in the later series I can't help but be even more impressed by the one in this series and disgusted by the lost opportunity of bringing back such an amazing character. I loved that her Borg knowledge saved their lives again as she knows how to avoid the Ares' fate when the ellipse is drawn to Voyager, I loved that she's at the stage where she makes the best of it even when she doesn't want to do something, and she was simply delightful, making jokes, admitting a very personal secret that she'd wanted to be a ballerina as a child, considering her own expertise essential to the mission's success, even if her heart wasn't in it, and then finding some heart to put into it - she could have beamed out anything, some technology or something that might be useful to the ship, instead of a dead body that has no use, but that act shows she came to understand a respect for human life and human death and what Kelly's achievement represented. I didn't even realise it was directed by Robert Picardo! Sterling job, sir.

***

Incursion - Part 1

 DVD, Stargate Universe S1 (Incursion - Part 1)

Strong start, no question of that, but it does tail off a bit afterwards and I almost wish it had been one long finale instead of being broken down into two parts, though I suppose it's a good sign that I really want to see what happens next! I'm certainly not finding it dull at this point and I have to credit them with consistently closing out the season with a string of good episodes. I didn't quite warm to this one on original viewing, but now I found it exciting and a continuation of the dramatic qualities the series has achieved compared to the more patchy majority of the season. I'd forgotten Carter and O'Neill were involved (with a very tiny cameo from Dr. Jackson explaining the Lucian Alliance in a video Eli plays, though we don't really see or hear much of it - still, it's nice to have him, and really it's only Teal'c that's missing to make this a proper SG-1 reunion, of a sort!), and especially the horrible situation she's put in as Commander of whatever ship it was (they really should have made that clear, I like those kind of details), having to leave a couple of F-302s behind to save her ship when the naquadriah planet the Alliance used to connect to Destiny blows up. It made me think of that 'TNG' episode where either Crusher or Troi has to send 'Geordi' to his death (albeit in a simulation), to demonstrate the needs of the ship can sometimes outweigh individuals, as tough as it is condemning personnel to death, it can be essential and they know what they signed up for, though it doesn't make it any easier to see.

There were some difficult, hard decisions to be made early on, not least when Young refuses to return air to the compartment Telford's been locked in, while both Camille and Scott are getting frantic that he's dying. As I said in the last review, Young is capable of some very unheroic courses of action on occasion, but he doesn't really want Telford (and by extension, Rush, whose body it is), to die. I did think the brush with death should have severed the connection sending Telford back to his own body, but apparently not, Rush just goes into some kind of seizure himself on the Alliance's pyramid base, and it's only when being pushed through the 'gate to Destiny that the connection is cut at last. Not sure why, other than story, but I suppose we can give it the benefit of the doubt since the communication stones can be affected even by dropping out of FTL. There's a thrilling sequence where the Alliance charge aboard and Young's plan to vent the atmosphere again has to be aborted since Telford, or what he thinks is Rush, is brought along (and he certainly owes him a chance at life after leaving him to die earlier in the season!). I liked that they recreated the circumstances of the pilot where people were flung willy-nilly through the Stargate instead of stepping neatly in, and this time even dead bodies and rubble follow them through as their base explodes behind them (not sure why that guy was just standing in the steam jet screaming his head off when his natural reaction should have been to leap out of the way!).

Things settle down to a bit of a stalemate after that, interspersed with scenes of Eli and Chloe who, against orders to stay in Quarters, go on the run, end up in some lift that shoots them off somewhere into the ship they'd never been, and Chloe's losing blood from a gunshot wound. That side of the story was the least interesting, as much fun as it might have been for Eli to be the knight in shining armour, caring for his injured friend, even carrying her when she can't walk, though you can tell he wishes it were happening under better circumstances. Elsewhere the team all work together, Telford, now back in his body, not revealing himself to be a double agent (or should that be triple - they thought he was working for them, but he was actually for the Alliance, but now he's come around to Young's way of thinking... so that would have made him a quadruple agent if he then switched back to the Alliance... I think...). Instead he leads a small group of the enemy into a trap, but they come up against a break in the shield that fries a guy (again, he just stands there screaming as his hand disintegrates when the natural reaction would be to pull back!), so has to return to his 'master' (or mistress, technically), even while the ship itself is experiencing problems caused by neither of the factions. Could it be those aliens have found a way to catch up? Anyway, Camille does her part, pretending she's the real boss and trying to negotiate for hostages, Rush is stunned when Young agrees something must be done, and there's generally good use of the characters, down to Greer backing Young when Scott tries to free Telford in the torture scene, and best of all, Brody knowing the Colonel's wish to return oxygen to the room simply by hearing his name. I liked the subtlety there, that he was straining against every fibre, but trusted Young to know when to order the reverse of atmosphere.

We find out Mike Dopud's character is called Lieutenant Varo, Kiva's second-in-command, with TJ as prisoner ordered to heal him, though she's only a field medic and once again is put in an impossible position where people assume she can cure anything when she's not even a fully qualified doctor. I always wonder why they don't they get someone in via comms stones (as they had done before), but in this case it was the enemy so they don't have access. Still, our people do and you'd have thought they might have swelled their fighting numbers by swapping a few of the fitter civilian bodies for more highly trained soldiers from home, but then I suppose there is the issue that they'd have to get consent for those people's bodies to be put in the line of fire, and even with such experts in control there's no guarantee of survival on the battlefield. It could also be the case that there are only a few stones so it might not have made an appreciable difference, but the notion came to me in the midst of the fracas. The Alliance did make our Stargate military look a bit poor when they have all the preparation, they're on what is now home ground, and have what you'd perceive as every advantage, yet the Alliance I suppose are desperadoes who have nothing to return to and they had excellent intel from Telford, including the technology that can unlock Ancient doors - how they had this isn't explained, but again, story reasons.

The furore of the battle and the eventual tension of the stalemate were well played, and though it was good to see O'Neill again when Young briefly returns to Earth to report, and I assume seek some advice (though I still feel aggrieved that it's the Pentagon rather than the SGC we always go back to, as if it was too much trouble to recreate the old sets), he was entirely unhelpful, just telling him to get back to the ship and retake it. Gee, thanks General, a big help there! (I wish he had gone with him and taken charge, but then that would be taking away from our series' lead, so I suppose it'd be a bit of a no-no, like Kirk taking the Bridge of the Enterprise-B when Captain Harriman's floundering around). But seriously, Young does a good job amid changing circumstances even if it's really Telford that saves his ex-girlfriend (and her baby)'s life when he points out the futility of Kiva killing her, especially as she's a medic. But Young changes tactics on the fly, uses Camille well and is resolute in his ultimate goal to save all the hostages and retake the ship, and whether he's accurate or not, you totally believe him, and that's what you need in a leader. Roll on Part 2!

***

Flashback

 

Amiga 1500, Flashback (1992) game

This was the one, my main reason for wanting to get the 1500 down from the loft after all these years: I really wanted to play one of my favourite games of all time, and certainly the best 2D platformer I ever played (and there were a lot of those on the system, and on every system in those days!). The question was whether it would still hold up as a great experience... My memories were fairly vague, I remembered the first level set in the jungle very well, not least because I'd had a brief go on the DOSBox version in recent years (though it's not a game to be played via keyboard and I could never get my USB joypad to work correctly), and I had memories of the next two levels, the underground city and the Death Tower gameshow, but otherwise nothing except for the lizard aliens that slop along the ceiling and drop down on you in the last levels. I have to admit to experiencing a sudden wave of nostalgia rushing over me when I first made it to Level 2, that first area with the turbine up above, probably because I was stuck there for a while on original play, not realising, much like escaping the pit in 'The Dark Knight Rises,' you had to let go of all inhibitions and take a risk by getting up on the first platform and running towards the higher one without pressing anything else, meaning that if it was within reach your man, Conrad, would automatically launch himself at it and pull himself up, but if it wasn't you'd plunge to your death as you couldn't survive a drop of two levels.

On this run, though I played it through on both Normal and Expert (having completed it only on Easy back in the day), there were very few moments I encountered serious obstacles, the puzzles being generally logical and the issue usually being about skill and agility: there was one I couldn't progress beyond, during the first part of the alien world, Level 6, you come to a room with a man standing behind a door, a switch on a platform above, and a trapdoor, plus another door barring you from another switch below - on switching the upper switch it only opens the trapdoor, not the second door to open the switch to open the door to the man! I thought it must be something to do with the previous screen where you have three pressure sensors, one to open a door, one to switch a fire off, and one to close the door. To proceed through that particular puzzle you only have to place a stone on the door-opening sensor which negates the door closing sensor, and you can leave the upper fire sensor to the mechanical mouse that's running back and forth and keeping it activated. I thought maybe you had to leave something on all the sensors in order to affect the door in the next screen, but no combination made any difference and in the end I stumbled over the solution by mistake when I was letting out some frustration by firing my gun off and happened to hit the offending door, which then opened. It was a real oddity as no other door in the game opened that way, but otherwise the puzzles were fair and I could see why I'd loved the game so much when I was younger: it was one of the few I'd been able to see the end of.

Accessibility is one of its charms, but it's also that it had a good story - they really went to town on the manual which included a whole magazine-style section before you even got to the instructions and controls, etc, so you could read up on this world you were entering, adding to the immersion - game manuals were more commonly included as part of the overall gaming experience in those days, and this was one of the best, with a terrifically evocative image on the cover of a man's eyes open with fear or wonder, and a great logo. Now I can see the story has a lot of influences from other sources, such as the plot of 'Total Recall,' which is similarly about missing memories and going off to another planet to escape the authorities, but also 'V' and its human-disguised lizard aliens (not that I've seen the latter), and 'The Running Man' (another death gameshow). I had it in mind that 'Blade Runner' may also have been an influence, but having played the game not so much other than perhaps in tone (but there's no rain-streaked night streets lit with neon!). Still, the story is well presented with attractive cutscenes and good music, and not just at the beginning and end of levels, there are scenes that activate during certain actions, also, and the cinematic nature of the story helped immeasurably to draw the player in.

The major selling point is much simpler than any of these bells and whistles, however: rotoscoping. Just as I believe the same makers had pioneered such rotoscoped animation to make the character movement look realistic in the original 'Prince of Persia,' they used the same technique to craft the most fluid animation and realistic body movement I'd ever seen. Conrad himself isn't that detailed, but that simple colouring of blue jeans, white trainers, leather jacket and white t-shirt underneath were used to such great contrast with the detailed, colourful backgrounds that there is a very real impression that this is a piece of art. In fact I would go so far as to say a design style for a computer game is indeed art - I would happily have a screenshot from this game up on the wall, it's a thing of beauty. And that's without the movement! When you take into account Conrad's believable running, jumping, shooting, rolling, it's a pleasure to play merely to see him move. The controls are superb, too, with the ability to smoothly transition from one action to another with ease, and in fact a big part of succeeding in the game is how well you learn to grasp the controls, the precision and timing important, especially on the hardest difficulty when enemies are tougher and occasionally more numerous. But it's the precision that impresses me, and it's not that you have to be perfect in judgement, jumping at exactly the right time or falling to your death, it's not one of those pixel-perfect games, but it is pixel perfection.

Your standard step measures the time in which you have to change to another action, so if your goal is to run and leap across a chasm, you set yourself running and then within that final step you activate the jump, so it's a very intuitive system, and once you understand the 'measurements' of a screen, how far you'll roll or jump, it becomes second nature, and in fact is essential when it comes to later opponents, such as the lizard aliens whom you have to roll to avoid their jelly-splodge form until they stand vertical and you can shoot them: it's part of the struggle that you need to find an area wide enough to allow you to roll backwards and forwards to be able to take them on. My favourite animation was when you run straight into a wall and Conrad shoulder barges into it to stop himself, but I also liked the quick turn which you can use if you're running and want to change direction, and the slightly comedic way he pulls himself out of a run if you're heading towards a drop and you pull back, flailing his arms to regain balance. But every movement is beautiful to watch, and it's also the detail of the game that makes it sing: your gun when fired ejects a tiny cartridge for every bullet, which bounces on the floor, or the sound of your footfalls as you walk or run, it's simply exquisite sound and visual design.

One strange thing about the game is that it doesn't rely on music most of the time. When you enter a new area or succeed at a puzzle you might get a little piece of suitable accompaniment, but generally the music, which I've always liked a lot, only kicks in during cutscenes, which gives them more power when compared to the almost silence in which you play the game. But that also emphasises the sound effects and makes you feel more alone in your quest. You're not entirely alone, you do occasionally meet people you can talk to, most commonly in the underground city of New Washington, which makes up Level 2, and is the largest of the game to the extent that you really do need the map the travel guide gives you. It's made up of four districts: Asia, America, Africa and Europa, and you take the subway between them. This was another part of the game that made it stand out among so many lesser platformers: it would have been one of the earliest games I'd played where you could interact with the environment more than merely getting from A to B, shooting or fighting enemies. In this level you visit various places, talk to people and take on jobs to get credits to pay for identity papers to get you out of there! It's not like you have choice over what you do, so it wasn't anywhere near as open as 'The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening,' the Game Boy game that introduced me to the concept of interaction and using items. But at the time it still felt like a great freedom above other games of the genre.

Collecting and using items was also a significant part of the game. You only have one weapon, your gun which never runs out of bullets and is but a double-tap of the fire button away (an innovative use of the one-button Joystick - it could be a little cumbersome on occasions when you had to select something from your inventory using the keyboard, but this was the only part of the game lacking in finesse and was a necessity based on the limitations of a Joystick), and you'd also carry credits and most importantly, your personal shield, without which you'd die the instant anything hit you. The shield added another layer of tactical play to proceedings as you had to keep an eye on how many hits you could take (four at full capacity), and sometimes it was necessary to backtrack to a Generator which would recharge it. Handily, there were also SAVE consoles placed in the levels which would store your progress to that point until the game was turned off. Another helpful aspect was that each level had a password, so unlike many examples of the genre of that time you could start at the beginning of whichever level you'd reached instead of being required to play the entire game in one sitting! This, and the multiple difficulty options probably betrayed its console origins, and I never played a game like it on the Amiga, it was certainly unique to me.

The environments were mostly varied, though after the vast difference between the opening three levels in both look and style, the others did become a little more samey as if the creative outburst had bloomed and then played itself out a little bit before the end. Not to say levels four to seven weren't varied, but the Earth streets and the prison which follow were both similar in featuring sandy-coloured walls, and the last two levels are both set on the purple and pink alien world, complete with its alien soundscape, and were just one big level split into two. By that time you're dealing with these lizards and descending into the lair of the alien brain, and I'm glad it wasn't required to complete the whole thing in one go as, especially on the Expert setting, I had to replay parts of that over and over: even getting past the seventh lizard man in Level 6 took many attempts as you were limited in movement unless you could get to the highest platform from which you could take him on, nowhere else on that screen having enough room to roll! It was the kind of game I felt sad to have finished, as evidenced by the fact I was very keen to replay it on Expert once Normal mode was conquered, and as I'd only ever finished it on Easy originally I was pleased to have finally beaten it in its entirety all these years later. For me it still stands up as a terrific game that blends cinematic storytelling with intricate actions and visuals and careful use of sound. I've since experienced far more freedom and impressive design in size and scope in such 3D platformers as 'Banjo-Kazooie,' but I certainly had an attachment to my character to the extent that at the end, when he's resigned to drifting in space for who knows how long, I felt genuine sadness for him.

*****

Subversion

 DVD, Stargate Universe S1 (Subversion)

Mixed feelings on this one. It has all the drama and style of some kind of Jason Bourne film, it's got appearances by General O'Neill and Dr. Jackson, not to mention the pair of them in the same room (which counts for a lot), and it's got high stakes. But then it's also one of the more brutal episodes (also very Bourne), with torture, beatings and hands-on murder and leaves a bit of a nasty impression that they're glorying in it just a little. You can believe Greer would eagerly beat Telford to a pulp, he's barely being restrained, but it's a bit much that O'Neill would sanction torture even in aid of someone else's life. It's undoubtedly well written, you can see how the soapiness of earlier in the season has led to us believing Colonel Young would go to the extent of killing Telford if he refuses to give up the secret location the Lucian Alliance have taken Rush to, and against the expectations I feared that it would be picking up those soapy strands to further them it now makes clear they were there for a reason. It helps that since originally seeing this a few years ago I've caught up with all other 'Stargate' and have seen all there is to see of the Alliance. Not that I was ever favourably impressed by them, but they aren't the complete nonentities they appeared when I was still in the dark on first viewing. It seems to me that the best course of action would be to sever the connection, bringing Rush back, saving his life, but also casting off Telford to be with his adopted own.

Trouble is they don't know what's coming, knowledge really is power - they want to deal with the Alliance and prevent them being the threat they've become, not forgetting it was they whom attacked Icarus Base at the beginning of the season and set up this whole problem of our people being stranded on Destiny (as helpfully reminded by the opening recap). Now they want to connect to Destiny and Rush must help them, or else. If they whipped him out of there they'd at least stop Destiny from being a target - according to Telford the Alliance wants Destiny, but it's not clear why they'd want a ship that's out in the middle of nowhere in the Universe, it's not like they could use it! That does suggest there's a want of logic in the main premise. But otherwise it is a relief to find Telford really was a villain, that the reason his experiences were being left behind in others he swapped with on the communication stones had justification (Alliance technology, though wasn't that when they thought he was being brainwashed, so why did it happen now we don't think he was - unless he really was and they simply did a better job than we imagined since he's gone over to them completely?), and that we can get onboard with Young, whom, let's not forget has sometimes been a little morally compromised based on what's happened to him and the pressures of his unique command. He may be a good guy overall, but he's pulled off some pretty terrible things, the kind of stuff 'Stargate' good guys would never do!

Scott and Greer are like representations of the two extremes of his nature, one a conscience that is uneasy about certain things he does, the other with no holds barred and willing to do anything, cause any pain. I have to assume that was the intention so I salute the writing that got me to that point - were they inspired by things such as the Kirk/Spock/McCoy trio or was it just a general understanding of how a character can be shown in those around them? Mike Dopud makes it as one of the few to have appeared in all three 'Stargate' series' as he'd already been other characters in both 'SG-1' and 'Atlantis.' I don't remember well enough if he's playing the same character as in 'SG-1' (definitely different in 'Atlantis' as he was a runner like Ronon), but he's suitably menacing (there was some good characterisation such as scientist Olan who clearly is in awe of Rush for the work he's achieved, and who, by the slip of Rush's tongue, is strangled to death for not being up to par!), and it's fun he's in the same episode to feature O'Neill and Jackson, who have also both been in the two previous series', too. I liked all the mystery, Rush running around losing his escort (though it was a pretty big fail that he was caught so easily - he basically just threw himself into the lion's den and must have known they would have ways of verifying if Telford had been compromised!), and Jackson tailing him (though it doesn't quite seem in his remit to be doing surveillance work instead of working on scientific research or whatever... I won't argue with it, we got Jackson back!).

It's not the same as having all four of the original 'SG-1' cast back together, but sadly that would never happen (to date, but I'm guessing at least Richard Dean Anderson would be too old now, sniff). Perhaps if 'Universe' hadn't been so prematurely cancelled that would have been a possibility eventually, but you always have to remember with these things that it's not about what came before, primarily it's about the new characters and their series, as much as we'd love to see SG-1 continuing to work together. As it is Young does a good (if questionable), job, not fully trusting Rush, not trusting Telford, but with good reasons, and not giving in to pressure from the civilians who just want to know what is going on. They'll know soon enough, oh how they'll know! And I have to admit it was nice to see an Alkesh flying again, if nothing else. But in truth there was plenty else. I didn't remember Telford's nature so maybe he'll still turn out to have been turned and his real mind is not for the Alliance. Either way he's constantly been set up as the thorn in their side so an ignominious end isn't unlikely. And they even allow time for a brief moment to ponder whether TJ's baby will have much of a life on Destiny, bringing to mind Naomi Wildman on 'Voyager' where the same situation of there being many people glad to be there for her was a mitigating factor compared with a normal life. It wasn't all brutality and bitterness.

***

Aunt Arctic Adventure

 

Amiga 1500, Aunt Arctic Adventure (1988) game

Triple A? In title, yes, but not in content. The thing about this game is that you think it's playful, maybe it even likes you, has a sense of humour to poke and prod you a bit: "Hey, I'm fun," it seems to say, but it disguises a heart closer to the malicious than the inviting. It is basic, both in premise and audiovisual departments, but to its credit it's not about absolutely pin-sharp, pixel-perfect jumping, it's more of a maze you have to navigate in your search for bananas (very 'Donkey Kong'). Compared to most 2D platformers it at first appears quite generous: you can fall from any height without injury (your Charlie the chimp character seems to have the weight of a spider!), you're awarded an extra life every thousand points, and these can be earned through collecting those requisite bananas, or bonus treasure chests, or even by killing enemies, but don't take too many risks and lose a life in the quest for points as that nullifies the point of the points in the first point! Even if you die, so what? It lets you start at the beginning of whichever level you've reached - what could be fairer than that, especially in the era of no passwords, no saves and expectations of rock hard gaming skill in players dedicated enough to see the end? The only real cost is time: it must be completed in one go, which for me was about a four-and-a-half hour commitment. It doesn't sound all that much, but when you think how many hours were spent preparing for the final attempt, it adds up. Still, with all these benefits it shouldn't be too tough to complete. Should it?

You start to feel a little bit had when you get to Level 26 which is set in pitch darkness, the only visible 'landmarks' being the pole you slide in on, the musical note to switch the music on, and a single, solitary banana (assuming you go the right way). You have to travel left and right until you somehow blindly find your way to the exit pole, but it's a moment that shakes you. 'What if they do this to me again, but worse,' hovers in the back of your mind. But that's soon forgotten with the arty visuals of the next couple of levels where everything is in silhouette and it looks so dramatically different. Not to say the graphics are gorgeous in this game, far from it, but they are neat, tidy and functional. Precise, sparse and colourful could be another description and the simplicity and sharpness makes them stand out, as well as the variety of the various visual themes which can run for a few levels. Looks aren't that important, however. It's the moment the true cruelty behind the game's brain hits you between the eyes: Level 35. If you miss one little banana earlier in the level, which is easy enough to do (it's like they planned it that way - horrors!), and take that leap of faith down into the pit to get what you assume is the last one which should vanish away the arrow blocks surrounding the exit, they don't disappear like normal. You missed one. And now you're stuck in that pit. And there's no way to die and restart at the beginning of the level. It took me a good three hours to get there after having trained up on previous attempts (getting to Levels 15, then 33 before I ran out of time).

The only options are 'P' to Pause, or 'Q' to Quit. There's no way to execute yourself, extricate your chimp from any trap back to the start of the level, and it's a real kick in the face from a game you'd thought was pretty fair. It's a reminder that games of the 80s were not designed to be beaten easily. The only 'easily' about this one is that it's easily the most malicious game I've played in a long while! Still, I buckled up and knuckled down for another three hours, scoured the level and made absolutely sure I'd got every last fruity pickup there was. Relief. But it was to be short-lived. Two levels later a similar thing happened - this time I've got all the 'nanas, am happily bouncing down to the exit pole... but I didn't look closely and right next to it there's another pit, one you need to avoid or you'll be stuck down there. AARRGGH! I've made the same mistake again: stuck in a pit there's no way out of, forced to discard hours of progress and begin back at the very beginning yet again. Truly cruel. It's fair to say that ever after this I was in a heightened state of tension. That bit at the end of Level 35 was the worst, simply because even being pretty certain I'd collected all the other bananas, throwing away the last few hours of careful, skilful progress is terrible. At least with Level 37 there was a banana on the arrow blocks which you could leave as the last pickup and be certain to get on the right side of the wall to drop down to the exit. I was seriously on my guard for the last thirteen levels, certain there'd be other game-ending traps and while on the previous attempt (I set aside a whole day to complete it), confidently believing I'd be done in half that time, I was caught out, this final time I was warily less sure of myself in the face of such danger.

As it turned out, while there were tough levels to come (another pitch black one, though this time you were dodging daggers and jumping pits, and they generously allowed you to see these adversities, as well as your character; then there was the one with all the keys and doors which could have been a real trial, but wasn't so bad after all), there was nothing at the fiendish levels of torture of those previous two traps, for which I was greatly relieved! In fact the final level, Level 50, was also one of the easiest - you could collect the bananas and treasures or not, as you chose, since it had no bearing on anything other than score: all you had to do is time it right to drop down when the villainous Big Borus, Ringleader of this circus, and foul kidnapper of your good Aunt, is moving away from the passage you have to go down to reach her. Then it's a brief shot of the three of you (Charlie, Aunt, and Charlie's friend, Penguin Pete), and it's all over. No doubt the real games-players would say you've not really completed the game properly unless you did it without any continues, surviving solely on the (admittedly generous), lives you could accrue with careful play, but while I deign to believe I could have done this, it would have cost more days of dedication and there are other games to get to. For me it was enough that I finished the game at all (on the first of two difficulty levels). High scoring was never much of a draw for me, perhaps because I never really had anyone to compete against and I was sufficiently proud in this case that I got into the 30s before I lost my last life (don't remember the level number, but it was one of those with daggers flying in from both directions about three different heights - I had around thirty lives which I just couldn't help but lose over and over).

There was one other semi-cruel level worth noting, just to remind how craftily unfair the game could be: Level 47 has only one banana to collect and it's right below the pole you slide in on. Your natural inclination is to grab it as you had to in every level before that, but if you do you can't get out of the level because the arrow blocks marking the exit form a staircase that disappears when the banana is collected! Fortunately, though they were cruel enough to play this one final trick on you, they do at least allow you to die, there being spikes on part of the floor you need to leap over. Otherwise there'd have been no way to restart and avoid the banana and it would have been one more start from the beginning. So they weren't utterly ruthless, just mostly. Looking back with the rose-tinted glasses of success and relief I do find that I quite enjoyed it overall. I came to know those early levels very well and never felt bored by having to do them just because they were nicely varied in length and skill. While the controls were limited by a Joystick with one button you still had some abilities to learn: leaping over moving enemies at the right time (though not pixel-perfect you still had to be reasonably accurate with the larger ones), punching at the right distance (easy to lose a life if you're too close when you make the attack), and jumping between ropes or poles. One required skill was to be able to leap between poles so you could progress upward, an action very tiring on the hands as you had to go from side or diagonal movement to upward on the stick, otherwise you start to slide down. Ropes were much easier as you could climb up and down with impunity, but those poles could only be climbed by leaps.

There was some variety in the enemies you faced, but it was much more about the environment than fighting, even though I liked the tactical aspect of the chance to gain points, and thus lives, by risking attacking enemies (the little skittering bugs or spiders of which would march in predetermined directions, allowing you the opportunity to run up behind and whack them, but if you failed to realise where their route ended they might suddenly turn on you on the way back), but which could cost a life in the attempt. Timing was very important. Sometimes there'd be hidden routes, such as the first time you meet Borus and he runs away - if you follow him you come to a wall and if you jump at the wall you find an easy way out of that level, otherwise it's lots of climbing and jumping to achieve the same result, so it did encourage exploration. You can even skip the first four levels if you lower yourself to use one of the four names of the makers of the game, though that means you don't get to put your name in the high score table, a price not worth gaining the fifteen-to-twenty minutes you'd save! In keeping with the impression of harshness there was no temporary invincibility endowed upon you to ease you back into a level when you begin at the start or in a triangle (if you touch these you restart there - another tactical side as some might not be in the place you'd want to go back to). Sometimes you'd die, reappear at one of these places and then die again immediately because an enemy was passing! Unfair, to say the least. That's why you feel the game ultimately does hate you, or at least it has its funny moods until you get near the end and it starts to acquiesce and go easier on you since you got that far.

There are many ways it could have been made fairer: what about carrying keys across from other levels, how about showing your key tally (you just have to try and keep in mind how many you've picked up), or, just as important, how many bananas you have left to pick up in a level to open the exit? But the game doesn't condescend to give any assistance like that, adding to the impression that it's a very unkind taskmaster, even while it'll occasionally throw in a fun level where you merely have to drop down and collect bananas in the air. Though basic in looks and sounds this somehow added to its charm, or perhaps is its charm? The precise visuals are accompanied by precise sounds, such as the patter of your tiny feet on the occasional wooden surface, or the sought-after ring of a banana or treasure being collected. It's a shame the music supersedes the sound effects if you run through a musical note, as while I quite liked most of the tracks, I'd prefer to have heard the sounds as well. Among the limited options at the opening screen you can choose to disable the music, but then you might miss a new track (there were only five of them reused throughout, excluding the main theme and high score table), and you can choose '1' or '2' difficulty levels. There's also the option for two-players though I never had the chance to try that out (your penguin friend collects fish, as is only fitting). I can see players from the time getting many hours of play from this, as once you've beaten the fifty levels you may well want to try it on the harder difficulty, or do it two-player, or simply get the biggest score possible. For me, completion was enough, and as a game that I played briefly as a child and never got anywhere with it is with great satisfaction I can now, all these years later, say that I completed it! In complete honesty I couldn't say this game was that good, but it deserves its extra star for being a challenge, and one that was doable.

***

The Kristal

 Amiga 1500, The Kristal (1989) game

One of those many titles I was never able to complete as a child. I've since come to believe that any game I dedicate sufficient time and effort to, with the addition of an adult brain, I can conquer. This was the first game that made me doubt such a belief. It's just too vague and unfair. You have to ask exactly the right question at exactly the right time, if you miss something there's no going back. You can die at any moment without warning, simply by walking towards an area you've never been before. Not only can I see why I never completed it back in the day, I gave up on it in the present, something I hate to do and very rarely happens. But I was fed up with wandering around not knowing what to do to the point where it was either refer to a walkthrough or pack it in. I thought I'd just read one bit and that would hopefully jog me along and I could work out the rest for myself, but no. I realised I'd probably need to follow the entire thing and this was the point I had to call it quits, because that's not playing a game. If you need someone to lead you then you may as well go and play something else. Over the years I've had many frustrations (often in 'Zelda' games where I finally got to the point where I had to get a solution to a problem or puzzle otherwise I was never going to get any further), but I'm generally well versed enough now that I can work out the kind of solution its going to be from the kind of problem it is. But in this case the margin for error was far too wide, so I abandoned the game.

Taken outside of its utter frustration I quite liked it, on the whole. It looks nice, with a point-and-click adventure style of presentation, except it's all controlled by the Joystick. There isn't much sound or music, being a product of the late 80s, but it was otherwise rather accessible. It combines an interface of chatting to characters and finding items that may be of use, to space travel on your ship (a literal pirate ship with sails, cannons, etc!), to side-on sword-fighting to build up your stats. It's colourful, in characters as well as in visuals, and it has a voiceover from the great Patrick Moore who was in no way averse to getting involved in state-of-the-art popular culture (he was also the face of the Games Master in that TV show of the 90s). Just the fact there's a chunk of digitised speech in the opening was impressive for its time, but there's also an exciting sense of being able to travel to other planets and have that kind of freedom that had otherwise only been dreamed of. So I can see why I kept hold of it all these years. And why I was happy to finally go back to it now the Amiga 1500 is out of the loft and kicking up steam again. The frustrations, however, come early: it doesn't recognise the second disk drive so there's a lot of disk-swapping (four game disks and one save disk). The sword-fights are arduous and take a while to get the hang of. There's no way to gauge progress, being what appears to be nonlinear in nature: you can visit any of the planets, but several of them kill you instantly. Others feature a succession of sword-fights and the finding of a treasure.

There are really only two places you can actually visit properly and converse with the inhabitants, but this interaction is so frustrating - so many things you say are fobbed off (ask anything about where they're going and they say they go with the flow; ask about something and they'll question what 'it' is or 'that,' there isn't a good sense of a conversation). It just seems to be a mental dead end where you have to get the exact question that will unlock something in them - like Gloop, for example, I just happened to ask the right question so I got an invitation to the Kring's palace, but otherwise you'd be wandering for hours not knowing what to do or where to go. Worse, they refuse to repeat themselves, so if you've forgotten what was said it's no good going back later and asking again! In the days of text adventures where the imagination was all, this would have stood out as a bold new direction for gaming and I can imagine how revolutionary it would seem. But I suspect the game is a lot shallower and shorter than it at first seems, based on keeping you guessing rather than engaging you in the story and action which is extremely off-putting, even to a retrogamer of many years such as myself. Text-based games were before even my time, the only one I ever remember playing was 'The Hobbit' on the Commodore 64 and even then I could barely get out of the Hobbit hole. Text just leaves things too open, too much a case of repetitive trial and error, and while no doubt plenty of people enjoyed the literary challenge, someone raised on largely 90s games onwards isn't sufficiently excited to be drawn in.

It's good that you can save your progress, but even in that regard it's very basic: you only have one file per disk so there's no way to save multiple points and go back to earlier saves (unless you have multiple save disks), so there's a good chance you'll end up having to start at the beginning again if you miss something, not very satisfying when you've already beefed up your character's attributes through fighting or collecting/buying items to enhance your abilities. It comes across as pernickety and restrictive which doesn't fit the overriding comedic tone. Games tended not to be taken seriously in those days and I'm all for comedy, but then adding in instant death makes you feel the game is laughing at you rather than being something for you to laugh at! I may sound whiny and weak, no doubt every gaming generation thinks the succeeding ones are weedy and ineffectual for having so many developments that make games easier as time goes on, but a game is there to win you over, not push you away, and with this one I found myself really unhappy playing it. When you do master swordsmanship and win your first duel it does of course give you a sense of achievement, but it also doesn't seem to add anything to the game - it increases your stats when you win, but what good does that do?

Obviously I'm writing from the perspective of someone that hasn't finished the game, something I wouldn't normally do, but it's a game that has loomed long in the memory, and when I've gone back and conquered so many old games from the Amiga over recent years, coming to one I couldn't crack has been a sore experience. As I've said, it looks very nice for its age, colourful, detailed backgrounds, fun character design (Hoota, Gloop, and a host of varied people), and a good impression of a unique universe. It seems to promise so much only to take it away at a moment's notice. I thought I had the patience, the endurance to take on most games, but this one beat me into submission, and not in a challenging way, in a frustrating way that discouraged and resigned me to non-completion simply because it wasn't fun. Will I go back and have another go? I'm undecided, but there are so many other good Amiga games to revisit (not to mention those of so many other systems), there's no particular urgency to keep going with this, even on a rainy day.

*

Dragon's Teeth

 DVD, Voyager S6 (Dragon's Teeth)

The real crime of the Vaadwaur was that they were never brought back. Designed as a new recurring threat I really don't know why this idea was abandoned as they were good villains. Maybe it was felt they were too derivative of an existing race: I noticed a lot of parallels with the Cardassians with their slicked back dark hair, angular, bony faces and thick, ridged necks, not to mention the characteristics of their race, being ruthless and militaristic with a long history of subjugating others. Perhaps the writers felt they couldn't do anything that hadn't already been done better with that well-established Trek race? The annoying thing is it's left very much on an ominous note that these people are going to be cropping up again, and would have been a great warning to those who dismiss history as irrelevant, not to mention one of those occasions when curiosity killed the cat and Starfleet's mandate to seek out new life was chillingly turned around on them. It was Seven of Nine's fault in the first place for activating Gedrin, against Starfleet protocol which she apparently hasn't bothered to brush up on, though you can say in that regard Janeway was to blame since she should have ensured all crew-members were up to speed on such matters before selecting them for an Away Mission! And while Seven takes the rap in the episode, reiterated at the end when she shows appropriate contrition for taking matters into her own hands, it was surprising Janeway herself didn't take any of the responsibility upon herself since she agreed with Gedrin's wish to awaken the other Vaadwaur. She could just as easily have dismissed his wishes and taken him to some other planet to start a new life.

That wouldn't have worked out too well for him, he was clearly a man out of time, though it is rather weakly presented by showing minor confusion about how to operate Harry's station when contacting the satellite (a piece of tech that has, incredibly, survived all the forces arrayed against its creators for almost a millennium, when you'd think the enemies of the Vaadwaur would have destroyed every last trace of their technology, if not commandeered it for their own - maybe it had some kind of stealth mode that meant it was able to evade enemies in its vicinity?). Any alien coming aboard Voyager would likely share the same uncertainty since Federation symbols and computer layouts aren't likely to correspond with that of other races or groups. But Gedrin was also of a race that was hated for its past conquests, so he wouldn't have been able to fit in anywhere local. We see the first hints of a ruthless character when he talks in a rather heartless way about his dead wife, and one thing the episode does well is in that gradual turning up the heat on who these people are and what they're capable of. The most effective scene in this regard was little Naomi Wildman's cameo which was very well shot to put us right in the unhappy child's face as she's turned away from her friend Neelix, unable to articulate just what's wrong with the Vaadwaur children, but knowing instinctively from her childish perspective that she doesn't like them: they're arrogant and cruel, something Naomi isn't used to, and that whole scene was one of the most realistic uses of a child in Trek.

Neelix is the ideal person to be ridiculed by callous minds (as he was in real life by some viewers), because we can see his deficiencies on the surface in so much of the series, but he's also a very kind and gentle man, just the sort of person who could have his good graces be used against him, the weakness of such noble attitudes, but one that can be increased as he's pushed. He wasn't always like that, he used to be much more a manipulator of kindness himself, but his real nature had been allowed to come to the fore. The fact that he looks different also makes it easy to laugh at him, but he can laugh at himself. The point of the whole exchange is to unsettle us about the Vaadwaur, but it's not until we meet a couple more of Gedrin's people, Gaul and Morin, that we slowly come to see these negative intuitions sliding into focus. The latter is brisk and easy to get on with, the former is the most Cardassian of them all, very sharp-faced with a martial bearing, insistent on what he wants without straying openly from the bounds of diplomacy. Another great scene is when he and Janeway clash over whether his ships will have Photon Torpedoes, the Captain adamantly holding her ground - it's a great episode for her. She gets to be the inspiring Captain and remind us once again why she's in command, robustly holding her own, even getting her hair mussed in the battle (though it's not quite the same as when the bun used to unfasten and begin to thrown down strands onto her face in the old days!).

I continue to be pleasantly surprised that Season 6 hasn't yet become the Janeway/Seven/Doctor show, continuing to feature the cast very nicely - Neelix is well used as part of the deductive investigation into the mysterious history of the Vaadwaur, Chakotay is very visible, as is Tuvok. No one stands out as the 'main character' of the episode, it's about the ship and crew coming up against these two implacable foes, the newly awakened, treacherous Vaadwaur, and their age-old enemies, the Turei. The designs of both, while reminiscent of other species, were very well implemented and the clash of their fleets, though small by 'DS9' standards is one of the closest we'd get to a proper space battle, Voyager letting rip Phaser blasts while the pursuing enemies, first the Turei, then the Vaadwaur, go at them like mosquitoes, draining their shields. There were some inconsistencies, however: I first thought things weren't quite right when these piddling little alien ships force Voyager to flee for its life. At first there seemed to be only one and Voyager's gone up against far worse odds than that, but suddenly there's three or more and it makes a little more sense. Still, those ships didn't seem all that powerful, yet Voyager has to scarper to a radiation-heavy atmosphere to get out of their attack. If the Turei ships were so tough Voyager couldn't stand and fight, why couldn't they take entering such an atmosphere? Equally, they were already shown to have advanced shield knowledge by the fact they could drop Voyager out of the 'underspace' corridors by shooting them with a particular beam, so these things added up to confusion and inconsistency for me.

Then there's the fact the Vaadwaur ships, no matter how powerful they were nine hundred years ago, are somehow still a danger. It's repeatedly said that their technology isn't advanced enough to realise their threat to return the area to their dominion, but they can still cause Voyager severe problems so that Janeway has to use their own technology, the satellite, against them, and ally with the unfriendly Turei. And did the Turei know the Voyager crew had brought these 'dragon's teeth' back to life, because if so I imagine they'd be hunting them down with a vengeance (though they had some blame in the matter for forcing Voyager down to the planet), if they weren't busy going after the Vaadwaur! There were so many opportunities inherent in this storyline for ongoing drama, but it was seemingly all thrown away. We're left to assume the Vaadwaur ships that did make it into the subspace corridors were never able to build up their forces sufficiently to pose a threat. Clearly the Turei know their history, so they must have put every effort into extermination of the species. But what if there had been an ever-present temptation for Voyager to use those tunnels to get closer to home? They already shaved off two hundred lightyears, so it could have made a huge difference, maybe the writers even had it in mind as a potential route back to the Alpha Quadrant had it been decided to bring the ship home before the end (and in fact they did exactly that in the end, except they were the Borg equivalent).

It could have been explained that in the nine centuries since the Vaadwaur ruled the roost, those tunnels could have been altered by the passage of time so as to render their detailed mental knowledge irrelevant, and that's the solution to why they never reappeared in my mind. Still, there was yet more to jar with the story logic for me: Gedrin, though he's not presented as a villain as such, merely that he carries the same cultural ruthlessness as the rest of his people, and while he speaks against Gaul's plan to turn on the very crew that had helped them, becomes a bizarre ally of Voyager by going down to risk his life to make sure they can contact the satellite again allowing the Turei to pinpoint their enemies' locations. I never saw anything that would justify such a base treachery to his own kind, and as much as it suits the story and enables it to wrap up neatly in the allotted time, I did feel it was a disservice in the earlier part of the episode that we didn't get some kind of gradual change in Gedrin's point of view, as if being around these more principled people and with the knowledge of so much time having passed, or even the death of his wife changing his perspective, he'd find some logical reasoning to reach that point of sacrificing his life for Voyager. It didn't make sense in the context of the story, and even makes Tuvok look a bit lax in his duty - he was ordered to go with Gedrin and when the former refuses to leave and urges him to go as the roof is unstable, he just takes off. Now you can cite logic, and that there was nothing further he could do, but they didn't have a strong reason to trust Gedrin, he could just as well have been planning some mischief to assist his people.

Finally, when it comes to inconsistency, I have to mention the disappointing omission of Blue Alert, the rarely used condition, in the same style as Red Alert or Yellow Alert, that signifies landing on a planet. They used to make a fuss about the ship landing, but in this case they just drop down without any preamble or any suggestion of danger in the process. I know they were under attack at the time, but that, more than any other moment, should have meant Janeway stuck rigidly to protocol, that's what it's there for: to guide and keep on track. Something that has been consistent, this season in particular, is how many people have sat in the Captain's Chair other than the Captain! First we had Harry Kim in charge of the night shift, then it was the Doctor as the ECH, and now Gedrin just wanders over when he's on the Bridge and takes a little rest! I was expecting Janeway or Chakotay to say something, either as a humorous aside or to highlight that this is an alien ship to him and he doesn't understand Starfleet has strict protocols, etc, but it passed without comment. We get a reminder there are no Betazoids aboard (not since Lon Suder was killed way back at the beginning of Season 3), when Janeway, suspicious of the Vaadwaur's intentions confides to Chakotay how much she'd give for someone of that species, which also infers there are no other empathic races on board. Even without them Janeway is shrewd in her dealings with both Vaadwaur and Turei, and though I did feel the relaxed atmosphere of the early part of the episode where little concern was shown about these mysterious tunnels that sucked them in, undermined what should have been a steadily growing tension up to the reveal of the nature of this new race, in general it was a strong episode for the Captain.

The good old cave set is revamped once again to provide a different look for the underground bunker which housed the stasis pods containing the Vaadwaur in suspended animation, this time with a hard, concrete floor, or equivalent, and much debris around and blocking the upper floor. While a Trek connoisseur would recognise those indelible marks of 'Planet Hell' as it was known within the production, it was well disguised yet again (though amazing that even a nine hundred year old race used those big blue barrels beloved of that era of Trek!). The historical side of the episode should have been played up more - it put the Borg in perspective that they were a race recognised by the Vaadwaur (although it always annoys me when Seven is called a Borg and no one ever points out that was her former identity, but now she's human - she may carry the physical 'scars' of her former life, but she's no more a Borg now than Jean-Luc Picard!). The Devore Imperium get another mention (I think Seven called them both Devor and Devor-ee!), they seem to be one of the few races to be so, strange when you consider they were only in one episode. And I can't reiterate enough how pleased I was to see Janeway not being naive in her dealings. She's helpful, but firm in her decisions, exactly how you want to see a Captain act (take note Captain Pike!), she can see what an advantage the Vaadwaur might have if they were to prove treacherous and she's not going to let them get one over on her. So it's a rather good examination of the importance of history (even if these people weren't just part of history, they were actually from that time!), and not dismissing old tales as outdated and unimportant, since Neelix' research into his own people's folktales is the basis from which Seven works and redresses some of the damage she did. It should have been a big blot on Voyager's reputation in the Quadrant, but they got off easy.

My complaint, and what prevents the episode from reaching classic status, is that it is a little too lacking in building tension. You can see the structural work being built, letting us in on the Vaadwaur's way of thinking and their characteristics as a people, but there's never a time when they're wholeheartedly trusted (like, say, the Trabe in 'Alliances'), and we the audience are in on their plans to take over Voyager so there's never much mystery, while certain scenes like Naomi's would have been ideal for generating an impression of mounting horror. Equally the way in which it ends doesn't do enough to apportion blame, Seven taking it all and supposedly learning a lesson, but it wasn't part of the episode, it was just thrown in at the end. Not that I'd have wanted it to be yet another Seven episode, but if you're going to do that you need to build to that point. It had it's good qualities and is a rip-roaring adventure but I can see it being even better in the right hands, and perhaps if they'd gone with their original plan to make it a big feature-length story in the style of 'Dark Frontier' it may have better lived up to the concept. A couple of 'TNG' guests return as the two main Vaadwaur: Robert Knepper, Gaul, had been Wyatt Miller, Deanna Troi's betrothed from way back in Season 1 ('Haven'), which was quite a memorable role so I'm surprised I didn't recognise him through the makeup, though he had the same intensity in both roles. And Jeff Allin was Gedrin and played a less memorable role as Clara Sutter's Father, Daniel, in 'Imaginary Friend,' so it was fun to realise who those guest stars were.

***

Pain

 DVD, Stargate Universe S1 (Pain)

Highly conventional, highly traditional, very 'Stargate.' It didn't begin very well, but it soon turns into that age-old staple of this universe (and many other sci-fi series'), the hallucination epidemic/people being affected by bugs. It happened to Teal'c in 'SG-1' and I think Sheppard in 'Atlantis' (the being hijacked by a bug), but this time it's less about the bug, or in this case, bugs, and more about the effect of their venom on those affected, and the fact there are multiple people acting on these visions they experience as either positive or negative. It's so sad to see Chloe fully understanding her situation and yet begging to be allowed more time with her phantom Father - they bring back the guy who played the senator... hey, I've suddenly realised who he is! Christopher McDonald played a memorable character in a memorable episode of 'TNG': 'Yesterday's Enterprise' - he was Lieutenant Richard Castillo, the guy who Tasha Yar becomes great friends with. I can't believe I never made that connection before or recognised the face, although it was about twenty years before this episode so no wonder I didn't exactly recognise him in the role. But still, that's a fun revelation to suddenly come out of rewatching an episode! Anyway, back to the episode at hand: they bring back Chloe's Dad in hallucinated form, as well as a brief return of Greer's unpleasant Father, that's the advantage of playing with people's minds, anything can happen and anyone could reappear.

There's not really anything more to it than that. Sure, they're using the stories and arcs that have developed along the way to affect the infected, but it's a pretty simple case of characters going through strange, bizarre, frightening or heartbreaking situations and eventually those at the top realising what's happening. And then trying to stop anything too major going down. There wasn't really a lot of actual pain in the story, not until Camille is stabbed by a crazed Dr. Rush with what looked like a screwdriver (he sees her and Greer as those lanky aliens that kidnapped him previously - I didn't expect to see them again!), but it's more emotional and psychological pain in general rather than physical. The scary thing is it's all to easy for them to drift off into these dreams, whether it be Lieutenant James' jealousy over Matthew Scott choosing Chloe over her and thinking she's killed him in a fit of rage, or Scott's own encounter with his young son; Chloe desperate not to lose this time with her Father despite knowing he's fake, to Greer's paranoia creating another takeover of the ship masterminded by Camille and Rush; while Volker gets claustrophobic and Rush thinks the aliens are coming for him...

You can't really say anyone learns anything or it moves the story on, other than creating yet more tension where it already existed (Greer's guilty whenever he sees Camille; Eli can't approach Chloe because he told Scott where she was so it's his fault she couldn't see her Father for longer), and it really ends on a bit of a downer. I would still give it the benefit of the doubt, it's well shot and bizarre enough that it keeps you wondering, though not so much what's behind it (whether it were these alien ticks picked up on a recent planetary visit, some space radiation, or anything else that might spring into mind, literally), that doesn't really matter, it's just what they're going to do to cause chaos and how it's going to be resolved. But we've had a good run of episodes that have got into a rhythm of being quite engaging. I was just thinking during this episode that the series doesn't have much of anything to do with its parent series', and then this one turns out to be one of the more typical stories, just told with these characters as opposed to the old ones. It won't win any awards for originality, nor does it achieve any real development, but as a story on its own it stands with the other good ones.

***