Miri

DVD, Star Trek S1 (Miri)

It may have been the first episode of Trek I ever saw, or it may not, but whatever the case, it certainly remains in the memory as my first exposure to this otherworldly, terrifying, exciting, inventive space saga, if it can be called that when this particular episode barely takes place in space. My memory was of seeing that grup run crazed out of nowhere to grab the tricycle, its mottled skin burnt and shrivelled, a scary, wild face with a shock of hair to complete the effect, madly desperate to take its forlorn prize, a tragic, terrible creature. It's more shocking and sad when you see it as a pitiful creature, an adult's body scarred, 'distorted' as Spock calls it, but with the mind of a child, an extreme of rage and fear, looking like Odo when he can't regenerate. I probably only recognised the basic horror of a scary-looking figure charging out of the blue, because I believe we went out in the dark afterwards to see what would become my secondary school, on its open evening, and all the way I was eyeing the dark corners either side of the path down through the estate for any sign of an attack by such a fiend! I also remembered them being in a laboratory, so it's nice in a way, during this fiftieth year (of the series, not me!), to come full circle and revisit the place I began. I've seen it other times since, naturally, although I hadn't seen as much of 'TOS' as the later series' so each episode has a freshness to it that isn't always the case with the more familiar series' that I've gravitated to more.

This could be the first proper Kirk/Spock/McCoy story, as they are the rare trio who beam down, along with three redshirts, two of which are (rather ineffective and muted), security, and the other is Yeoman Rand in one of the final appearances for her on the series (though her short shrift sacking would be redeemed later when she came back for cameos in several of the films and a lovely guest role on 'Voyager' for the 30th Anniversary - still hard to believe that's twenty years ago now, and we're almost as far removed from that time as that time was from 'TOS' in the sixties!). It's a good inclusion for her character as she gets to emote, has further development with Kirk, and provides a linchpin of confusion for the motivation of Miri, whose jealousy over 'Jim's' comforting reassurance of the stricken Yeoman drives her to split to the other camp and inform on her new friends and helpers, or more specifically, 'The Captain.' It's a story all about the pain and sadness of growing up, symbolised by the plague that affects all who reach puberty and makes them ugly, with skin blemishes and wild behaviour - kind of like teenagers… It's about the loss of innocence and that freedom of childhood that can never be regained, and it provides a unique challenge to young Kirk, for once made to feel old, despite his youth.

Even unruly children can't parry his razor wit and persuasive arguing, and though it at first seems his words fall on foolish ears, the onlies succumb to his urgency and zealousness, even if they don't truly understand their plight. It just so happens that the Enterprise has arrived a few short weeks or months before the food will run out, the episode doing a good job of ticking time bombs: the food shortage means the onlies are destined for destruction, but there's the more immediate effect of the plague on Kirk and his Landing Party, not to mention the likelihood that our main guest character, the endearing, eager to please Miri, could become a madwoman at any time. There's tension from any half open door or dark alley, as any moment a grup might appear to shock and scare, so these multiple angles of unsettling potential events builds a strong gantry of drama in which the group are trapped, unable to return to the ship for fear of contamination. I think the idea could have been taken a stage or two further, as the grups are basically zombies, and if we could have had more interference from them it would only have increased Kirk and co's peril. But it remains a more thoughtful story of science and psychology with fascinating examinations of their characters.

Kirk uses his natural charm to reassure the frightened Miri that these grups are here to help, though she knows they're doomed. It's a great introduction to the plague when he's won her trust, holds her chin up and she recoils at the blemish on his wrist, knowing what it means. In that respect it has the elements of a horror film: dark, rundown buildings full of broken down imagery such as dolls and toys covered in dust; monsters that can appear at any moment; creepy children with malevolent intentions; and a small group trapped amidst it all and slowly degenerating. But these aren't just run of the mill participants, they're Starfleet officers (even though I believe Starfleet has yet to be mentioned - this time Kirk references 'Space Central' who will send teachers and advisors to the planet), and they keep it together to solve the problem. Again, the potential isn't fully realised, with Spock taking more of a back seat when you can imagine he would have been the main character if it had been one of the spinoffs, since he was the only one unaffected by the disease, and was able to keep his temper in check when Kirk and McCoy are going off the rails. At the same time he's not a cold, calculating machine, taking time to banter with McCoy about the antique microscope they find, and reminding Jim that, as a carrier he also can't return to the ship, and he does want to. This could be down to William Shatner being the star, as it's really his vehicle with various impassioned speeches or reassurances to an audience of Miri, Rand or the onlies. I didn't get a strong sense of their helplessness - apart from the Communicators being stolen, they always seemed in control and I wasn't sure the passage of time was effectively marked since they're there for a few days.

It would have been good to see them having to access more survival skills, hunting for food and water, the security men needing to keep their wits about them as night draws in, that kind of thing. But I suppose it wasn't really that sort of episode. Perhaps if the onlies had been able to steal the Phasers too, it might have made their predicament more apparent. It's more of an inconvenience that they can't contact the ship to verify the data input on the 'personal computer' that was beamed down, which makes it seem a rather ineffective machine. And you'd think the Tricorder would be able to process this data and even send or receive such from the ship, but that's putting modern eyes on a series that's fifty years old in a time in history when the pace of change has increased exponentially. In a way it's astonishing that the series is watchable at all considering it's based so heavily on technology and extrapolating the future, but it just shows how imagination can do a lot more than scientific progress in presenting a believable future, and they were especially prescient in much of Trek, one reason it has lasted all these decades. Another is, despite all the technological trappings, it's about good people solving problems, problems that still exist to this day because humanity doesn't change, no matter how many advances are made: people are always going to be people, there will always be emotive issues and motivations, so Trek will never grow old as long as it follows this path.

It's one reason I feel some of the films, particularly the Kelvin Timeline entries, will date much more, because of their reliance on special effects and action sequences, rather than speaking to the soul and mind. Here, we see our characters put through a trying time, and the most they do is snap at each other, they never leave their humanity (or Vulcanity), behind. McCoy bravely injects himself with the potential antidote that could be deadly poison for all they know, without the ability to confirm via the Enterprise computer, and his gamble pays off. Kirk risks life and limb to save the children, and Spock proves invaluable in helping to narrow down the cure. It could be a stage play, as so much of the episode takes place on one set, and it's much more about the psychology of dealing with children, working under stress and keeping it al together, than violence and excitement. There's some of that, with Kirk getting beaten down by the swarm of children, directed in a most creepy way by the choice to hold on a little girl watching the attack, smiling as her friends draw blood from the poor Captain. No doubt he could have fought his way out, but he wasn't going to hurt the children, despite being quite rough with the skinny boy a couple of times, pushing him against the wall or flinging him off the table! It seems like another point where Spock would have been useful, even if it was just to give them nerve pinches, although I suppose that would have frightened them away when Kirk was attempting to engage with them to make them understand their peril.

Perhaps it wasn't advisable for Kirk to turn on the charm for Miri, but he had more to worry about than one girl's potential jealousy, he wanted her to feel safe and keep her close by as she was a key to solving the mystery of what happened on this planet. He keeps her busy with little tasks, partly to occupy her mind, and also so she doesn't hear the results of their speculations - I think he felt pity for her and what had happened there, after all she's so horribly afraid when they find her, she almost needs counselling before she'll calm down (another good use of Rand's presence, as comforter). Rand is wistful when she speaks of eternal childhood with endless play, but the environment they live in is squalid and without the discipline and direction of the adult mind, there is no society. It's not really touched on, but by the fact that the children are open to violence, having witnessed plenty of it from the grups (and despite being three hundred years old, their perpetual childhood means they still have young, fresh memories), it's very possible they could have murdered, at times, or severely injured, either each other or the grups that attacked. They flee at the mere sight of a grup, and they're described as mice, scurrying into holes, but that doesn't mean they never fought, and that nasty side to their existence is hinted at.

Something that's never mentioned is the potential for this world to be part of the 'parallel Earths' theory that Roddenberry put forward as explanation for the fact that so many of the planets visited were humanlike. It postulated that they were at a similar development as Earth, but at various stages, which gave us the gangster planet, the Nazi planet, or the Roman planet. In truth it was a budget-saving method, but it worked and gave us some memorable episodes, and this could be the first of that sub-genre. They do express amazement at a planet that appears identical to Earth, even down to the continents, so perhaps the theory hadn't reached wide acceptance through Starfleet then, though they say that the age of the buildings is equivalent to 1960. It seems to be a rare occurrence since they're out where no colonies are and no vessels have been, genuinely fulfilling their mission brief of going where no man has gone before. Out there the children have developed unique lingo: they are onlies because they're the only ones left. The grups were grownups. They make a fooly, or play a joke or game, and they remember the beforetimes when the grups went mad. It really is a tragic tale, a society that experimented with life prolongation, but though they succeeded, allowing their children centuries of existence, they all died from the resulting plague, and their children had no guidance. It's a warning to those who want perpetual existence, perhaps saying that a childlike state isn't the best experience that could be had.

I'm surprised they didn't really go into the success of the experiment, because it did prolong life, ultimately. You'd think they'd have people studying what was done to see if it could be replicated as it worked for the children, but that isn't the point of the episode. It ends a little limply with the ship heading off having arranged for adults to come and help, but we don't know how long it will be for them to get there and who knows what the children will get up to until then! It seems like Kirk's glad to wash his hands of the situation, because I don't recall anyone saying that a team had been left behind, Kirk just says something about them surviving successfully for three hundred years! Then there's a limp joke about him not dating older women and it's over. Some episodes have a powerful ending, others go the jokey route, and it doesn't seem to matter whether the tone of the episode suits it or not. It was sad to suddenly realise in the moments when Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Rand were together, that only one of those actors was still living, as two of them had died relatively recently, the last time I watched this it was only Deforest Kelley who had gone. But that's the reality of life: these people don't have any life-prolongation, so many of the actors from this time are dying and it gives the episode an added layer to its examination of eternal childhood.

One fascinating aside to having so many child actors in an episode is that some of them grew up to be on other Treks: both Phil Morris and Iona Morris would appear on later series', both Shatner and Roddenberry's daughters were among them, and Kim Darby who was Miri, went on to greater fame starring opposite John Wayne in the original 'True Grit.' Ed McCready is credited as 'a boy creature,' but there might be some mistake as there's an actor of that name credited for various other 'TOS' episodes, including the previous one, 'Dagger of The Mind,' which as far as I recall didn't have any children in it, so either there's a spelling mistake or the same rules  of only having one actor with a specific name don't apply for children. The Morris' have the distinction of being a handful of actors that played Trek characters in both the 20th and 21st Centuries, quite an accolade when you consider it's shared with Leonard Nimoy, the 'TNG' cast and the only other one that jumps to mind is Jack Donner, although you could also include the 'Voyager' cast who straddled the Millennium, and some of their recurring characters. It's still a select group, even more so for those appearing in 'TOS.'

With the focus on the triumvirate on the planet (plus Rand), there isn't much call for the ship's crew, which is why we don't see Scotty, Sulu or Uhura - in fact, her role at Communications is oddly taken by Lieutenant Farrell from 'Mudd's Women' and 'The Enemy Within' in his last appearance. A strange choice, but it's always nice to see the internal consistency of the crew played up a little to remind us that it isn't a ship of five or so people. I wonder if 'Star Trek V' was referencing this episode when it had a crazy cat woman leap on Kirk's back, as the grup does exactly that. It may have been just the shorthand for madness, the only effective way for a female assailant to make any impact on a male victim, long before martial arts and fitness was a possibility. Kirk does actually rip his shirt, but not in any fight: he pulls apart his sleeves dramatically to reveal the lurid blue signs of the plague. We also see his collar unzipped, but I wasn't sure if he did that on purpose for ventilation or not. It's one of the few times you can clearly see the zip on the uniform.

I have to say that I like this episode, it does a good job of creating a story that deals with childhood and the threat to adults it could mean. It sees things from both angles and gives Kirk a problem to deal with. Spock could certainly said to be underused, in his Captain's shadow, but it's good to see the three main characters divorced from the ship and all its amenities, while Rand is still being used well. It will always be remembered by me as the one with the scary guy rushing out, but there's much more to it than that. After all, how many things from childhood do we still like as we age out of them? Trek had the ability to appeal across the ages for different reasons, and somehow that's a fitting reminder to take from an episode about the frightening transition out of childhood.

***

Starfox Adventures

GameCube, Starfox Adventures (2002) game

Rare were one of the best developers of games in the N64 days, second only to Nintendo, partly because they took inspiration from the company and tended to replicate the top games in their own style. So Nintendo would release 'Mario Kart 64' and Rare would release 'Diddy Kong Racing,' a less pure game, but much larger and more varied. Nintendo created 'Super Mario 64' and Rare had their own three-dimensional platform game, 'Banjo-Kazooie.' The one biggie they didn't draw from was 'The Legend of Zelda' series, and 'Starfox Adventures,' or 'Dinosaur Planet' as it was known during its N64 days, looked set to complete the collection. Only, troubles abounded, the game was delayed, it was eventually shunted over to GameCube development, and finally, Nintendo firmly requested Rare dispense with their own characters and turn it into a Starfox branded game. Reading back in 'NGC Magazine' it appears that Nintendo's farming out of their favoured franchises was something that began in this era, so it was a taste of things to come, albeit in this case a game that had been an original title. I wonder if it was a rush to try and increase productivity of Nintendo's mascots, or whether they felt the game wasn't going to be up to the usual standards and wanted to add a USP to help boost the initial period of 'Cube uptake. Either way, Rare's quality seemed to have dropped in the N64's later years, with titles such as 'Banjo-Tooie' failing to live up to the heady heights of their innocent youth. Which makes this game both a curio and a landmark for its position as Rare's final release on a Nintendo home console.

Having cut my teeth on shoot-em-ups such as 'Afterburner' on the Commodore 64, and 'Xenon II' on the Amiga, I felt I'd experienced as much of the genre as I needed to, and wasn't much into it, and so I never bothered to pick up 'Lylat Wars 64,' the previous Starfox game, and didn't have a connection with those characters. That, combined with a less than stellar review in 'NGC,' and the impression that Rare titles were no longer the must-have games of yore, led me to bypass 'Starfox.' Only in recent years as I've gone back and played through a number of old 'Cube titles with the advantage of cheap, online prices and availability, did I become intrigued enough to give it a go. And since the last two Christmases I've had a Rare platform game to entertain me, I selected 'Starfox' as this Christmas' game of choice. Initial impressions were that it was very much a 'tribute' to 'Zelda,' but without the special ingredient that tends to make that series zing. In comparison, 'Starfox' was rather flat and small, especially when you look at what the 'Cube became capable of, with the vast landscapes of later titles such as 'Twilight Princess' and 'Gun.' In that regard it betrayed its N64 origins, and wasn't helped by flying sections that were clearly bolted-on gameplay in order to fit the Starfox style into the pre-existing design.

The game wasn't doing anything new, and to me, felt like a mishmash of various other games: 'Jet Force Gemini' for its third-person perspective and on-rails shooting sections; 'Donkey Kong' for its ridiculous number of items to collect; the later 'Metroid Prime' for the environment shifting puzzle mechanics (Chozo sounds close to Krazoa, though you could say 'Prime' stole from this since both developments were around the same time, though this came out first); obviously 'Zelda' for its Fire and Water Temples, with the Krazoa Palace even carrying similar music to the Temple of Time. And yet it did attempt to incorporate new ideas: beginning the game you're plunged straight into a boss battle, if one where you can't fail, so there's no slow tutorial to ease you in gently. The biggest addition to the formula was having a sidekick to give a new layer to proceedings. Of course games with sidekicks stretch back to the Amiga days ('Bubble and Squeak,' for example), and Prince Tricky wasn't the most useful element in your arsenal. There were puzzles which required his assistance, but for the most part he wasn't particularly necessary and more often than not he'd get in your way (I never did work out the purpose of playing ball, aside from changing his colour), but it did at least show advances in artificial intelligence. It also took away the feel of being in some deep place away from anything friendly, battling singlehandedly. And he could have been better integrated. Perhaps it would have become a chore to have to think about how to get him across obstacles or up into high places, so the game just magically brings him wherever he needs to be, but such thought could have added to the puzzle elements.

Fox has rather a lot of things to keep track of and carry, and in much the same way as 'Banjo-Tooie' the breadth of items felt more like a blind to make you think a lot was going on. 'Zelda' always excelled at giving you a new tool to play with, unlocking new areas and ways to progress, giving you a sudden burst of freedom. But with the new additions to your staff's powers, Tricky's abilities, or a collectable to rack up, it was much more simplistic and more like picking up a key to unlock the next door or hole, the sense of freedom wasn't very apparent. And yet, the game was pretty attractive, with some beautiful and varied landscapes, even if they were the typical snowy wastes, forest areas, and ancient ruins that we expect from games. But that's not really the game's fault: these are real world connections, and our world only has so many different styles of environment, and new, invented landscapes never impress as much as those based on the natural landscape. So the moon-like areas of Moon Mountain Pass were different, but I much preferred the beauty of the sandy bay of Cape Claw, or the autumnal forest near Lightfoot Village, golden leaves dropping around you. The music, too, was mostly quite nice, and as you'd expect, the package was professionally designed - I liked the use of alien language at the start where you don't understand what's being said initially, although some voices grated, especially when you couldn't skip them (such as the whiny shopkeeper!). Unlike the N64, you could see far into the distance where a flame might be burning or a creature flying, a true realisation of the enhancement the 'Cube enabled.

Unfortunately, as with so many games, the environment wasn't interactive enough, and while you would whack trees with your staff and lever up boulders to release the Scarab bugs that acted as currency (why didn't the shopkeeper take a step out of his front door and simply gather up as many bugs as he wanted? - it's a standard trope of games, that the currency is freely available all over and merely takes the effort of collection), things were pretty rigid. The same could be said for the combat system, a case of hammering the A Button until an enemy was defeated, with little tactical detail or variety. It was nice to see footprints in the snow and that sort of thing, though these were already standard effects, and it would have been nice to see that you had an impact on the game world, and weren't merely passing through it to your next objective. One way in which the game improved on 'Zelda' was never allowing you to be stuck: you could always contact Slippy to provide a clue as to what you needed to do next (although sometimes they were a little too vague), and Peppy to show you where you should be on the world map. This meant idle wandering, and the threat of boredom setting in was kept to a minimum. Unfortunately it was still possible to get stuck for periods because of the inconsistency of the game: like Link, Fox could only jump by running off the edge of cliffs or platforms, but sometimes the game wouldn't let him, automatically forcing him to grip the edge and pull himself back up, or when you were expecting to grab the edge, plummeting you into an abyss.

There were also ridiculous things such as the moon area where I got stuck: all you had to do was place rocks in steam holes, but because there were two different types of hole, one of which allowed you to place a rock, the other which didn't, I tried one, and assumed that wasn't the solution because it wasn't the correct type of hole! So I was wandering around trying all kinds of things until I accidentally stumbled on the realisation that the obvious was the correct way to go, it just needed to be the precisely correct hole. There were the occasional moments like this, where, admittedly, it was my own stupidity rather than difficult puzzles, but it only furthered my impression of an inconsistent game world. The various temples were fine, even if the whole point of it all was rather convoluted (get a SpellStone so you can unlock something which will take you to a Test to win a Krazoa spirit…), but while the tasks weren't mostly that taxing, some could be, and the frustration levels certainly were at times: my toughest task was the Test of Fear where it was a cunningly simple experiment in concentration. You had to keep a variably moving slider in the green section, while all around you on the screen, dinosaurs were attacking and the camera was swinging wildly. It was so tough to deal with your natural responses and the way a game has taught you to react via the controller, that in the end I just had to cover up the screen in order to pass it (cheating, really), but it wasn't that which was the real problem: it should have been called the Test of Patience because every time you failed (a lot), it sent you right back to the entrance so you had to go through all the rooms again.

Although it was a trial, the idea was a glimpse of true genius, the kind of thing at one time, that Rare pulled off regularly, so it's sad to say that moments of being impressed were, yes, rare. At the same time, I did enjoy the experience, it was a nice place to visit, the puzzles kept my brain active over the festive period, and sometimes I was looking forward to getting back to it. For these reasons, and despite its general lack of invention, and for failing when looked at as the last Rare game for Nintendo, I enjoyed it more than I didn't, and welcomed the chance to play a new game in that genre. The ending, with Andross, the villain of the Starfox universe, felt rather contrived, another example of a different game being injected into 'Dinosaur Planet,' one of an alternate style not entirely in keeping, making it feel even more of a mashup of genres. I can't see myself playing through it again in future (unlike 'Zelda' where 'Link's Awakening' and 'Ocarina of Time' held multiple replay value, and I really want to play others in that series again), but while it was there, it was a functional, beautiful and fairly engaging experience. It made me long for a 'Banjo-Kazooie' or a 'Donkey Kong' on the 'Cube to see how they would have used the power to create big and bright 3D worlds.

***

Dagger of The Mind

DVD, Star Trek S1 (Dagger of The Mind)

Something's not right, here, and it's nothing to do with a so-called lunatic loose on the Enterprise: Kirk beams down with a blueshirt crew-woman to meet a mad professor who's requested that as few people as possible visit, on a planet where they must travel underground, become captives and Spock comes down at the end to help. Haven't we seen this one before somewhere? Oh yes, the previous episode, 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?' had an almost exactly identical plot, except this time there's no Ruk to provide the menace - that comes from something much more innocuous and commonplace: a simple light in the ceiling. Dr. Adams is more monstrous than the great android creation because he seems such a genial host, fully cooperative of the potentially embarrassing investigation Kirk is apparently duty-bound to mount, open, courteous, ready to please and smooth over any awkwardness (like leaving the room so Kirk can speak in confidence with Spock), accepting of the need for regulations, but not enforcing them when it's his turn (allowing Kirk to keep his Phaser), indulgent to the social faux-pas that any good host would be, especially one with his reputation for benevolence and social improvement that he's implemented across the penal system, which Kirk describes to a sceptical McCoy as being more resort than prison. The crooked heart of Adams is only revealed at his choosing, taking advantage of Kirk's arguably foolhardy testing of the neural neutraliser on himself, without any backup except for his accomplice, Dr. Noel.

It could be suggested that he was like Dr. Korby, who had ambitious plans for a new society free from disease and death, but wasn't afraid to deal with any opponents to that dream, only Adams' goal appears to be less benevolent even than that. I'm not entirely sure what his ultimate purpose was, whether he simply enjoyed experimenting on his patients and testing his unethical theories of brainwashing, or if he had a wider plan, a threat to wider galactic society. He seemed perfectly happy to be left alone in his own private asylum where everyone was at his mercy, a kind of personal kingdom where his word was not only law, but became every other person's desire, too, as shown by the vacant inmates and staff. An insidious individual, full of the charm that would facilitate his work to continue without interruption from the outside. But how long would he have been satisfied with this walled garden before wanting to use his device in a wider context against society's ills? It shows that this future society, unlike the far more utopian 24th Century, still has its feet firmly in the past, even if attitudes have moved on significantly from the time it was made: McCoy represents this point of view best, uncomfortable at the incarceration of humans at all, apparently regardless of their crimes. It is his care of the 'mad' Dr. Simon Van Gelder which puts enough doubt in Kirk's mind that he brings it upon himself to carry out an investigation, even though Adams has such a good reputation, Kirk has visited other similar facilities before, and the Doctor urges him to come down, if only for the sake of a social contact which he rarely receives.

I can't imagine McCoy being sidelined for the girl of the week in the way he is, later in the series, nor Spock for that matter, who are both left aboard while Kirk goes down with one of McCoy's colleagues, a bit of a setup by the Doc, since Dr. Helen Noel and he shared a friendly moment at a Science Lab Christmas party, which momentarily shakes the usually stalwart Captain, not wanting additional complications in a situation that is far from clear at the outset. At least, I think it was a setup in response to and perhaps to make up for their friction earlier, but we never get a conclusion to Noel's story - once she's carried out her task of crawling though air conditioning ducts (something you wouldn't usually associate with Trek, except in the more manageable Jefferies Tubes of starships), where Kirk sends her on the off chance it might lead to the power supply, and shutting down the colony's shield, we don't see her again, nor is she even mentioned. Was that done with the purpose of leaving Kirk's (at least partially), artificial attachment to her unresolved so she could be brought back? We're still at a stage in the series where the main cast were undefined, with no Chapel or Rand, or even Scotty and Sulu, appearing in this episode. I get the impression that if Uhura hadn't had such a visually prominent role on the Bridge, she'd be in a lot less episodes, too. So it seems that any Tom, Dick or Helen can be created to serve the story if need be, and it certainly gives the episode more depth than if it had been someone we already knew, as it puts Kirk under a different kind of pressure than we've seen before.

Of course, ordinarily he can handle it, being the professional he is: he's the type of Captain who will show up in any department, whether that's the Science Lab Christmas party, or the Transporter Room during a routine cargo transfer procedure (you'd think a Chief would know to contact a penal colony before trying to beam something in, so they can let their shield down, but this may illustrate how rare it is in this society to encounter such institutions). And you can see his crew respect him more for such care and attention - they don't see it as the boss coming down from on high to interfere with their jobs, but as a respected leader offering his presence, validation or assistance, another side of his greatness as a Captain that is a delight to see. But you also see this episode has an effect on him, unspoken, but as in a few episodes recently, Kirk is left to close out the episode with his own facial expression, which I could describe as resolved, but troubled, and you could take from it that his unbecoming conduct to Dr. Noel under the influence of Adams' suggestion, haunts him - not to any degree that would affect his decision-making or ability to lead, but it would have been fascinating to see how he dealt with her in future encounters, had she returned. For such a disciplined man you sense a certain shame would be appropriate, that a man like Adams was able to best him, and despite the man's death, has left an imprint upon his subconscious that can't be erased: in other words, though he didn't necessarily love Noel, he's been made to think he does. And perhaps there was something there anyway, so it's a personal truth forced to the surface in an uncomfortable way. This is all a reading of the episode, not something in dialogue, but it comes from the acting and the way it finishes out.

Dr. Noel wasn't a bad character, although she does promote some friction, perhaps allowing her feminine pride to be affected by Kirk's aloof command professionalism, so she's pretty argumentative with him, in support of Adams' work and methods, Kirk hitting back when she gets angsty about him not taking her advice, by saying jovially that one of the privileges of a starship Captain is to be able to ask advice and not take it. Adams enjoys the discourse of sparring conversation as if it's much-missed social banter rather than the concerns of official investigators of his facility, so it proves a very interesting few scenes between the three that shows some quality writing skill. Adams is a great character, especially when you know he's the villain, but the episode does take a turn into more simple climes after he's been unmasked as the evil genius type that he is, forcing Kirk to endure his neural neutraliser on a higher, far more painful setting than the Captain had bargained for and implanting love for Noel into his mind. It might have been a more complex episode if this had had an effect on Kirk that forced him to try harder to save them for Noel's sake, perhaps if his life had been almost forfeited for hers because of this false belief of his adoration for her. Instead, it's just an inconvenience they both have to help him fight, mainly served by splitting up to effect an escape plan separately, and as I noted, not having a resolution: if she could have come to the Bridge and Kirk had been fully professional with her (as he would be with Marlena Moreau in 'Mirror, Mirror'), rather than simply ignoring it, it would have given some closure.

When Kirk visits her quarters at the facility, during their stay there, she seems to assume he's there with amorous intentions, that his concerns are a pretext for a nightly visit, but in fact he genuinely wants her input while she comes across as quick to judge and much less of a professional. She still has her moments, clearly a knowledgeable young lady, and capable of acting in physical situations, getting in some action when she's sneaking into the power supply area, moving like a trained espionage agent and not above fighting back when the security forces arrive, even kicking her assailant onto the high voltage machinery, electrocuting the unfortunate. While this more visceral action side to the episode adds some pace and direct danger to proceedings, I much preferred the implied sinisterness of the place, the tension losing much of its intensity when things become more straightforward. The neutraliser made a big impression on me when I first saw this as a child, though, and I remember thinking that looking at that spinning light too much might actually affect me, giving the episode an even darker hue, if seeing the heroic Captain being tortured in a chair wasn't enough. We even had a couple of light fittings in the ceiling of the dining room that seemed similar to me! Adams' death is suitably, poetically just, punched by Kirk he's left in the neutraliser booth - when the power gets turned back on he's forced to endure the mind emptying, alone until death, without even a torturer for company, as Kirk puts it, which sounds like just about the worst death imaginable!

Something else that made the episode stand out to my child's mind was Dr. Van Gelder, whose wild eyes and out of control physicality, straining at every sinew to be able to tell them who he was and what was happening at the colony, was an incredible performance, and remains a standout feature of the episode, Morgan Woodward so powerful, especially as he's wracked with pain, his mind crushing the thoughts he's been forbidden from expressing. Contrasted by the worried McCoy and the calm, curious Spock, his episodes have even greater intensity. When he first surreptitiously emerges from the crate, dressed in the blue, kimono-like utility suit we later see is standard uniform at the colony, he looks like a mad martial artist, an impression only heightened by his karate chops to the unsuspecting Transporter technician who made the elementary mistake of turning his back on an unopened, recently transported container, a real no-no, and the suspecting, but dozy redshirt who joins the Bridge (making Kirk and McCoy jump), only to turn his back on the Turbolift door, the only means of entry for an escaped mental patient roaming wild across the ship! Even before Van Gelder took him out I was thinking how ineffective such a stance would be on a potential threat, but lest we assume all members of the crew are as unobservant, one guy sees Van Gelder and alerts the Bridge because he's now wearing the red technician uniform of Engineering staff, as if we never see anyone like that in the corridors! What if he was just a Transporter tech on his way to his quarters?

Overzealousness and dereliction of duty aside, the episode throws up some, shall we say, fascinating skills for one particular crewmember: Mr. Spock gets the chance to showcase both a Nerve Pinch and a Mind Meld in the course of his interactions with Dr. Van Gelder. The nerve pinch had been previously established, but is well used on the Bridge to take down the Doctor who demands asylum at 'gunpoint' (as Kirk puts it, though Phaserpoint would be more accurate), threatening to destroy the ship's 'control panel' if he's refused. As if the ship had only one control panel! I assume he meant the Helm and Navigation stations since he was aiming in that general direction, towards Kirk, but nevertheless it was a good double team between Captain and First Officer, Spock a distraction, Kirk getting a high kick in to the Phaser-toting hand, and Spock smoothly completing the manoeuvre - Spock's certainly the ideal man 'in a pinch'! The meld isn't just one hand slapped on a face, but an intricate movement with both hands all around the prone Van Gelder's face, and Spock doesn't speak for the man, channeling his patient's thoughts, but frees up his chained thoughts, allowing him to speak without the surges of pain that wrecked every attempt to communicate the danger Kirk was walking into.

I guess the melds humans witnessed or experienced in 'Enterprise' were the exception and were never discussed, since McCoy's unaware of the procedure and Spock says it is a personal custom of the Vulcan people (a bit like the Klingons' head ridge history, which, according to Worf, they don't discuss with outsiders!). It made sense in that series that mind melds were frowned upon and considered something only a fringe element would perform, although even that was changed by the fourth season where it began to be accepted again - considering the length of a Vulcan generation, it's believable that it would have remained a private and little used practice, as we're still in a time period where Vulcans from that era are alive (as witnessed in 'Amok Time' where the ancient T'Pau is carried in, the young version of which we met in 'Enterprise'). One thing I didn't buy, was Spock's explanation for his people not needing penal colonies, nor committing violence, because they disposed of emotion, and where there is no emotion there's no motive for such acts. He says it almost with a touch of pride to McCoy, which might explain the slight exaggeration, in that Vulcans haven't disposed of emotion, but merely hold it tightly in check within themselves, and sometimes violence could be deemed a logical act (as the unbalanced Chu'lak of 'Field of Fire' put into practice - although, perhaps not the most logical example), so motive would indeed remain. I chalk this up to Spock's feeling of superiority for Vulcan culture, and the need to reassert it at every opportunity, especially in the face of McCoy!

I was surprised they cut away from the meld rather than focusing heavily on it and trying to enhance the feel of mysticism and strangeness, but I do love the two-handed effort, and the posturing and movement around the face of Van Gelder, while he looks much more relaxed and lucid for the first time in the episode. Viewers must have wondered if there was any end to the wonders of Mr. Spock, and one of the great things about having an unknown, unexplained alien as part of a TV series is just that: exploring the unique qualities and alien culture, both mental and physical of someone quite different to the majority of those around him, an angle that would be played on every succeeding TV series (and one of the things about the Kelvin Timeline that sets it apart from everything else, among other things, is that their version of Spock mostly rejects his heritage, and becomes a lot more human, and thus, a lot less interesting than the ever compelling real Mr. Spock). The danger is that every week a new 'power' could be revealed, only for it to be forgotten in subsequent episodes, but they kept a fairly tight rein on the character (once they'd established it, with Nimoy's input), that he would be almost completely unemotional (though even in this episode he displays a half-smile at Kirk at the end), and they didn't continually make up cool stuff for him to perform, partly for the danger of him becoming a comic book superhero with the resulting disconnect with reality, and also, most likely, so that star William Shatner didn't lose all the limelight to the emerging star of Leonard Nimoy - that they worked as a team here was a big step in that direction.

One of the things Kirk became famous for was his womanising ways, and I suspect it began with early episodes like these, where we actually see him carrying Helen back to his quarters in his arms, and kissing her several times. In reality this was at first a mental picture of Helen's imagining, her preferred outcome of the Christmas party, and then secondly, an implanted behaviour in Kirk's mind by Dr. Adams, and in fact, all other times he was a perfect gentleman, intent only on solving the mystery, uncovering anything untoward and getting back to the ship. It's unfair that his true reputation of being such an exceptional Captain has been overridden by other, less accurate concerns, though it's as much to do with the film series' embracing of this stereotype of Kirk, than the impression of viewers before them, further solidified by the Kelvin Timeline version of the Captain as even more of a Jack-the-Lad, and (like the interpretation of Spock), only harming the integrity of the character. One thing that is reassuring about the episode is that Christmas is still celebrated, a nice touch in what would become an increasingly secular humanist worldview for Trek - we'd already had Thanksgiving celebrated in 'Charlie X,' so it's good to have a bit of festival continuity on the series (even if they're actually talking about a past Christmas, whether that means recent or a previous year is unclear).

The episode's design deserves mention, as everything has a detail and quality, from the planet with more detail than usual, to a matte painting off the colony's surface (apparently a reuse of the cracking station from 'Where No Man Has Gone Before,' but I can forgive that as it was a cracking painting!), where we see Kirk and Noel beam down to, and the spare, but artistic decoration of Adams' rooms, and especially the bold uniform patch, much more illustrative than we've seen on other designations, aside from the Enterprise's own, with its white hand holding a dove between thumb and forefinger, a golden sun behind. It adds immeasurably to the colony's reality and atmosphere. Maybe not everything deserves credit, as the cargo containers beamed down to the colony featured rather rudimentary hand drawn labels! Something that was interesting about the crate containing Van Gelder is that it has a destination of Eurasia, NE written on it, and we hear of the Central Bureau of Penology, Stockholm, a very rare reference to Earth on 'TOS' - Noel even states that the beam neutralising has been experimented with on Earth. Other novelties are having Spock and Uhura both using earpieces at the same time and in the same shot (I'd assumed they shared the same one, although that might not have been hygienic); Kirk recording his log direct to a Tricorder while sitting in the Captain's Chair; and of course, not so much a novelty, but Mr. Leslie is faithfully at his station on the Bridge again (which has started to get creakier as the wood's settled!).

It was also quite novel for McCoy to cause some friction with the Captain - granted, it wouldn't be in the future, but the Doc's not really got under anyone's skin consistently yet, so to have him say he's required to record any doubts in his Medical Log, which will require Kirk to respond in his, was quite a moment. There are lots of these unsettling times for Kirk in the episode, whether it be that, or the redshirt popping up on the Bridge, seeing Noel in the Transporter Room, or the sudden drop of the Turbolift at the Tantalus colony, he's often off-balance, but as usual, deals admirably with it all, even when pushed to greater extremes by the neutraliser. It was definitely a case of him having a bad day! So when he puts a brave face on it all at the end, for the benefit of his friends, Spock and McCoy, you see the whole experience affected him deeply. Ironically, this is one episode where a lighthearted joke at the end would have been beneficial, since it does conclude on an uncertain, slightly sombre note. At least the team worked, Spock and McCoy (not yet at the height of their antagonistic interchanges), unlocking the details from Van Gelder, while Kirk walks into the danger below. Perhaps Kirk and Noel didn't make the greatest team, despite her ultimately performing well, but you know that while his closest friends work for his benefit he won't be in danger for too long.

***

The Star Trek Encyclopedia (2016)

The Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide To The Future, Revised and Expanded Edition by Michael & Denise Okuda (2016) book

In this age of iPads and internet wikis I never expected to see an update to what was always the most useful and fascinating reference book on the fictional world of 'Star Trek,' especially after so much time had passed since the previous edition in 1999, so it was with great joy I made my first ever pre-order on Amazon. Demand must have been underestimated as it was due mid-October, but didn't arrive until early December! The price for such a weighty tome (indeed, the delivery man noted it was a heavy one), was not too bad, as I got it for £65, but that was with £30 off, using vouchers I'd won at work, so I actually paid almost the same price as the previous edition! My history with the book stretches back to the mid-nineties when I was given the original 1994 version as a present, as I needed to keep track of all that was going on in Trek-land, although it was pretty basic, only reaching as far as the end of 'DS9' Season 1 - they didn't even have the last season of 'TNG,' and it was all in black and white! So although a fun thing to dip into, with the vastly increasing universe and over fifty episodes a year throughout that decade, it soon became essentially obsolete, except for reference to 'TOS.' Yet I loved it, and so, many years later, once I got into online purchasing, I upgraded to the then latest version, which was the third edition, containing full colour pages and good for almost up to the end of 'DS9' and most of 'Voyager.'

This book was even more heavily utilised by me, mainly for keeping track of the data as I watched and re-watched the episodes from every series with the levelling of the viewing playing field through the release of every episode on DVD, at affordable prices (as opposed to expensive and inferior videotapes), but it still was far from ideal, with the updated part not included in the main body of text, instead a separate section at the back, presumably the only way they could justify a rerelease at a reasonable price in a reasonable timeframe, but still a big failure of intuitiveness, and of course missing the end of 'Voyager,' the last 'TNG' film, and the entirety of 'Enterprise.' Still, with all my episode reviews I found it a useful tool and constant companion, and with the fifth TV series widely considered a failure, and the first to be prematurely cancelled, things looked bleak for Trek's future, so there was no way a book like this was going to be updated with data for a TV series and film people didn't care about. Until now. For the 50th Anniversary a special effort was made for this fourth edition, and a high quality, definitive product has been produced, fixing all that was wrong with previous versions, and restoring faith in the future of the franchise.

Because for a while there it looked as if 'Star Trek' was either going to be 'dead, Jim,' or 'life, but not as we know it,' thanks to the way off-base Abramsverse films that practically divided the viewing community. But this book shows that the true timeline, the protected continuity that means so much to some of us, and is the reason we want books of this nature, lives on: the films were given an official monicker of the 'Kelvin Timeline' and integrated into the body of the encyclopaedia, meaning that rather than being an escape from what had gone before ("This is not your Father's 'Star Trek'," as the tagline for the first film alienatingly went), an avoidance of Trek's history and culture, it has been assimilated as neatly as any Borg drone could do, and rather than erasing the past, it's merely one little offshoot, to be seen for what it is, not the future of a dead franchise, stripping it of most of what made it attractive before. We also have a new series, 'Star Trek: Discovery,' set in the 'Prime' timeline, to come, which will further explore the history and time period of past Treks, and if that makes a reader uncomfortable spending that amount of money on something that is essentially incomplete, I take solace from that incompleteness because it means we'll have more new Trek to enjoy, and also that 'my' Treks were pretty much of the previous century, and I would contend that, generally, all Trek made in this century has been vastly inferior, which means I have a book covering all the Trek that's really important to me, in its entirety.

For the sake of roundedness, I would have preferred it if 'Star Trek Beyond' had been included, especially if it turns out to be the final Kelvin Timeline instalment, and for its connections to 'Enterprise' and pre-Federation starship development history. It shows that there's still a huge lack of cooperation between CBS and Paramount in their support of the property, with Paramount unwilling or unable to provide details of 'Beyond' in time for inclusion, in spite of the film coming out in the summer - if the Okudas had been given special access we'd have had the impression of a desire for these films to be accepted by the wider Trek community, and it would have done a lot to build bridges, but they continue to be rivals and so the comprehensiveness of this edition suffers. It's ironic that we've waited all these years when new Trek wasn't being produced, and now that it's about to come back to us we get an almost definitive volume - maybe the publishers need the promise of new content in order to sell the old, with projects like this? The only data point (aside from the Franklin, and more information on the MACOs), missing would be Spock's death, so you can imagine him living on forever in the alternate timeline, which in a way, might have been better, just as we'll always imagine part of Kirk living on in the Nexus.

I've talked round it for long enough, now it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty: having established the need or desire for a book of this kind, does it live up to the previous versions to become the ultimate version? Absolutely! The type size is smaller than before so more has been squeezed in (we now get a photo for every episode), and still it comes in two heavy volumes, so there's no sense that this was a halfhearted update to prey on the weak-minded and open-walleted, but a sincere attempt to provide the complete experience missing from earlier editions. It's hard to explain how wonderful it is to have all of Trek under one banner, presented in one continuous form, even if you do have to flick through two volumes, but there's even a positive in that regard since you can now have two pages open at one time, making it even more useful for cross-referencing! Almost as important as the data contained within are the aesthetics of the piece, and they don't disappoint: solid, hardback covers housed in a thick card sleeve with the two most defining starships of the franchise adorning one to each volume's cover, which are matte with gloss patterns - here's an example of the attention to detail: at first I just saw patterns, then I realised they're the shape and style of isolinear chips, spreading out into an abstract design. Inside is a clean, white page layout throughout, full colour, the alphabet clearly divided by a helpful colour bar at the top of each page for ease of use, plus many illustrations and appendices for perusal.

Unfortunately for me, the books, even without their slipcase, are a little too tall to fit on the shelf next to my other Trek reference books, but I knew that before ordering, and they'd do just as well laid out on a coffee table for all to see, and for ease of browsing, but the release isn't perfect, as you'd probably expect for such a vast project. The first challenge I had was removing the books from their case, and when I finally did succeed in prising them free I found it was because the rear of the first volume, had become attached by glue at the top to the inside of the case, proof if it were needed of a hurried construction and further suggestion that demand was higher than anticipated. Even on my first few flicks through the pages I noticed occasional spelling mistakes. But these are teething problems and there's a certain pride in owning the first, uncorrected edition of such a prestige release, so it didn't bother me or lessen my appreciation for the effort that the Okudas, Trek's historical experts, had put into this impressive work. The gorgeous pages of starships in the appendices (and even some in the main body), were so good they made me wish for more variety in display of angles, but there isn't the room for something like that, it would have to be its own book to cover every ship from every angle! The cast list is fairly comprehensive, and it's good to have a list of every episode and season, but for me, it's as much about the little trivia notes added in italics below many of the entries that give insight into the production or connection of so much in the Trek Universe, that makes this such an enjoyable read.

I felt the Kelvin Timeline received an unbalanced degree of inclusion and exposure image-wise compared with its relatively minuscule four hours of contribution, as if they were attempting to appeal to people that got into Trek through those films, except that such people are unlikely to be buying these kinds of books unless they've also developed a wider and much deeper appreciation for what came before! At least it's all congregated together now, when there was a time that it seemed as if old Trek had been buried by this new, faster, sleeker, less intelligent version, so it just proves my theory that everything swings back to its centre point eventually, no matter how different it tries to be in attempting to make a new statement: it's a visual acceptance of the KT into the full Trek community, which in itself says that old Trek wasn't dead, it was merely sleeping, and as we march towards the new Prime timeline series of 'DSC,' and the KT films may have finished their run, balance has been restored to the, er… Force… In this day and age it might seem like a pointless waste of space to own something like this, but my use of previous editions told me it was a necessary and worthwhile purchase, and I expect it to be useful for years to come in my review writing, especially when it comes to matching 'DSC' up with what's previously been established. Now we just need an update to 'The Star Trek Chronology,' the Okudas other excellent Trek reference work, and a 'Star Trek: Enterprise Companion,' please…

*****

Moebius Part 2

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S8 (Moebius Part 2)

Now I know why the ending to 'Threads,' a couple of episodes ago felt like the end of the season: it was! The events of these last two episodes essentially don't happen in the true timeline because those from the alternate timeline went back and fixed it. Like a lot of time travel episodes it starts to get a little confusing, and I'm just glad they didn't follow the currently ubiquitous reading of time travel as every action splitting off into another alternate reality as this would be impossible to follow. Although… is this the timeline we'd watched for eight seasons? It's a slim reading upon which to base existence itself, but now there is at least one fish in Jack's pond, and there never was before. I wanted someone to own up to having secretly dropped some coy carp in there when no one was looking, but it works well enough as a gentle chuckle upon which to end the season, and possibly the series. I have no idea if they knew they'd be returning, or whether it was confirmed later, after production had ended, but either way I think this was O'Neill's last episode as a series regular. As for me, this is as far into the series as I ever saw, since the episodes stopped being shown on Channel 4 back in the day, so here on out is a completely new adventure, notwithstanding I can't help but have picked up on details here and there over the years, or even that I'm watching 'Stargate Universe.' But if this is the last time we get to see the original SG-1 team working their magic, then it's a good way for it to bow out.

Or is it? I mean, I like the episode, it's a good, fun slice of entertainment, as usual not to be taken too seriously, with lots to enjoy, but the characters aren't really the characters, but skewed, eccentric versions, and I'd probably rather see the actual team on one last adventure. But still, it is fun to see the excellent actors plying their wares: Amanda Tapping deserves especial praise for her wonderful comic timing, and the quirks and grimaces of her whole body language, as does Michael Shanks, though he's not quite so pronounced as her. Richard Dean Anderson pretty much plays the same guy, which is fine, and what you'd expect from O'Neill really, and finally, Teal'c gets to be part of proceedings at last (complete with skull cap so he doesn't have to shave his painstakingly grown hair!),  when they visit Chulak and try to enlist his aid. I felt they missed an opportunity for something a little deeper here, where they could have shown what eight additional years as First Prime of Apophis might have done to his soul - I would imagine him to be a much embittered, crushed shell of the Teal'c we know, driven inward to become tortured and full of hatred for all the suffering he's seen and become callous to. This is where the writing doesn't always measure up to its potential, and I expect Christopher Judge could have come up with a unique angle if he'd had more input to the story of this one, but it's still good to see him back in the role, although I don't buy he'd have stayed First Prime all that time: either he'd have cracked and mounted a rebellion, or he'd have weakened, and been killed and replaced.

What's really great about this episode are the little nods (or big ones, really), to the series' past, most notably in bringing back Kowalski (or Kawalsky according to his uniform, so maybe I was spelling it wrong all this time!), killed right near the beginning of Season 1. It's the kind of touch that really makes a difference, and it's only a shame he got killed off again instead of living to fight another day - I'd love to have seen that Kawalsky become part of the team in the real timeline, but that wouldn't have been possible, unless the changes in the timeline that gave O'Neill's pond fish, also meant Kawalsky survived, and that would be too big a leap! It's good to see him part of the gang, if only for a short time. We also get a cameo from Apophis himself, complete with a beard (so it must be an alternate timeline!), and what looks like an approximation of the cell in which the team was held captive during the pilot episode, where Teal'c frees them. I'd have loved to have seen the big guy sneaking through the halls carrying all their bags, guns and gear, without being seen, so he could drop it off at the cell - why didn't he let them out when he delivered their stuff? Surely blowing the door open to escape would have alerted every enemy in the vicinity?

We see why The Ancients made their time travel ship that shape: it's just the right size to go through a Stargate! Good thinking, there. The effects of flying over trees or escaping enemy vessels all looks good and the episode in general is a fun ride, but it does lose some of its momentum towards the end when they're fiddling about with the cloaking ability and chattering sci-fi technobabble as if to make up time. It means the end of the episode is rather truncated with the ZPM safe and sound, no apparent changes to the timeline, and a repeat of the fishing pond scene. General Hammond is still in it (in the alternate timeline, as is McKay), there's a little speculation about what their 'real' lives might be like, but this lightly glosses over the themes of substance, but it does so in such an upbeat, happy, innocent way that the series has about it, that you don't mind too much. After watching a lot of 'SGU' I much prefer this original, less 'realistic' version of the franchise to the bickering and handheld cameras all the time of its second spinoff. But what did the episode title mean, I didn't get it? Season 8 hasn't been bad, not particularly impressing, but proving a pleasant jaunt into the world of our friends, and I've generally enjoyed it more than I did originally, now that I watch it in context of seeing every episode before it, and in order. It will be interesting to see how the series changes with new additions next season, as well as 'Atlantis' which I'll have to alternate with. Here's to eight years of fun times: thanks a lot 'Stargate SG-1'!

***

WWF No Mercy

N64, WWF No Mercy (2002) game

My connection to wrestling goes back, in a small way, to Junior School where I distinctly remember the squat, podgy action figures people would bring in, and a friend of mine used to give me his 'swaps' of WWF cards (which I still have to this day!). Seeing those intriguing images of red-faced crazy characters freeze-framed in some act of violent exertion was a window upon a world completely alien to me, and a place I wouldn't visit for years. My contemporaries showed me what it might be like, one particular lad would often perform such wrestling moves on a younger one after Sunday service (the younger never knew when to give up and walk away, getting more and more frustrated and furious!). But it was a good while later, at a New Year's Eve party, that I had my first taste of what it must be to actually experience the pain and power of being a professional wrestler: 'WCW Vs. NWO: Revenge' was the first wrestling game I ever played, and back then I still assumed, as you would, that it was based on reality, so it was with great shock, but a compelling freedom that I took to what must also have been the first ever four-player fighting game I ever played. The graphics were inferior to this game, and the animation would have been a little less varied, but it was a mind-blowing experience and, more to the point, fantastic fun. So I was very pleased when I was able to borrow it, and my Father and I had many happy hours of Royal Rumbles, Tag Teams, etc.

From there I caught the occasional match when Channel 5 used to show WCW on Friday evenings, then the odd Sunday afternoon edition of WWF which was on Channel 4, and I was surprised that the moves of the game were played out just so in real life. Eventually, I don't know at what point, I realised or was told, that, like Father Christmas, these bulky athletes were actually actors and it was all carefully staged entertainment rather than 'serious' sport. My Grandad, I was told, greatly enjoyed watching the wrestling back in the day, so I suppose I had a genetic predisposition to enjoy it, despite never having much interest in sport generally. Yet 'WCW Vs. NWO' was such a freeing experience, and so intuitive that I was soon to buy my own game, having recently bought an N64: early 2001 I got a secondhand copy of 'WWF Wrestlemania 2000' and many more hours of enjoyment were added, mainly with my Father. As well as being one of the most immediate and satisfying gaming experiences, it was also one of the most divisive and upsetting of any game or genre I've ever played - perhaps only shooting games come close in terms of their personal offence quotient, and with those you usually have more targets and certainly a wider playing arena so you can avoid another player, should you have aggrieved, or become aggrieved, with them. Nowhere to run in the squared circle of the wrestling ring, and many arguments resulted from the unfairness of a ring out when a truce had been called, for example, treachery replicated from wrestling's own narrative, and thus in the spirit of the game!

It could get so bad that it was eventually a game we rarely brought out, preferring to stick to safer competitive fare such as 'Mario Kart' and 'Snowboard Kids,' or even 'GoldenEye,' 'The World Is Not Enough' and 'Perfect Dark,' yet it still holds some of the greatest multiplayer moments I've experienced, and few things can be bettered than four humans in the ring. 'WWF 2000' was a significant improvement on the earlier game, which in itself was either the second or third wrestling game from the same developers - a development in graphics, structure and scope had steadily been achieved through the N64's lifetime, and 'WWF No Mercy' was the final, and pinnacle, in the series, building on the simple control interface which cunningly held a large variety of sometimes context-sensitive moves (none of this awkward, memory-intensive combo stuff that often put me off fighting games), and adding in some new animation, modes and an improved sheen to the visuals. I never played 'No Mercy' back then as I suppose I'd had my fill of the genre and I suspected it would be merely more of the same. Wrestling appeared to become more exclusive in those latter years, not really shown on terrestrial TV any more, and I was never moved to purchase one of the GameCube's many wrestling titles as they didn't tend to rate well in reviews, so my interest and knowledge waned.

But then I switched over to digital TV a few short years ago and found that one of the many channels, Challenge, screened something called TNA Impact Wrestling every week. So I started watching regularly, and while, over the years I've become aware of the cyclical nature of the stories, and rarely been overly impressed, in spite of coming to an appreciation of the reality of wrestling (it is real, in that they are real athletes performing real stunts, with real risk and real skill involved, even if the results are predetermined), it's been a nice part of the routine of life to turn the brain off for a couple of hours on a Sunday night before the start of the week. Having gone back through the catalogue of N64 games that I never owned and begun to bid on eBay for those that held any interest, it was inevitable that this game would eventually cross my radar, which is why I bought it, remembering its high review score in N64 Magazine, and the pedigree of its own past. I vaguely remembered there being some issue about it when it was new, something to do with losing data or it was missing something important (like the absent item in 'Space Station Silicon Valley'), another reason I never picked it up at the time. But I've not come across any issues with it, except for the game's partial counter-intuitiveness.

I'm referring to the belts you can win: I played through each belt and was surprised to find that on winning it I had only completed a small percentage. So I played through again, picking the same wrestler as before and found I could then defend that belt for a slightly different route to the end. But then, in spite of winning every match, I came to the end and, though my completion percentage had increased, it was still well under fifty percent! So what was going on? I played through yet again to make sure I had completed every match correctly, and it took me a while to realise, despite reading the message at the end, that you need to complete ALL the paths to the end, that this meant I'd have to lose some matches, win others differently, and generally plug away again and again through the same scenarios to increase my percentage! It seemed like a good way to increase the game's lifespan until I felt I'd hit a wall and tried every different combination of winning and losing I could find and still only reached 94%. Originally I'd planned to get 100% on every belt, but that experience with the Hardcore belt just brought home to me the repetitiveness of the game, and as much as I enjoyed it, I couldn't play through the same matches continually: like the sport itself, it was too confining, too cyclical for me to stay interested.

If the game had been a little better designed in the interface of the menu, allowing me to see which Chapters I'd won or lost, to hover over each stage and work out where I could go from there, I would have felt more encouraged to play on, but the single player experience had always been very much secondary to the group anarchy which always remained the main draw, so I ultimately had to abandon the game before I'd got the full satisfaction out of it. It's partly my fault for not persevering, after all, it's an old game, and old games tend to have aspects of their design that could be improved. But when it comes to the actual gameplay it was as good, if not better, than ever, that's the annoyance: I'd much rather have had a fully featured career mode to battle through over hours and hours than the more open-ended attack on each belt, and that's what's missing as compared with 'WWF 2000.' Don't misunderstand, this is clearly the better game, featuring new and better animation (I love that weight now plays a part - the biggest wrestlers are sometimes too much of a struggle to lift!), along with improvements in what's been before (the better grip you now have on weapons allows you to do a lot more without fear you'll drop it, as well as the ability to recreate the feel of a match where you can go round the outside of the ring and fling weapons into it, ready to cause maximum damage as your opponent lies stunned), and enhancements in size and scope (you can run out the back to the car park, bar and other locations!).

There's also a good size of roster, with many of the old favourites still available (as you'd expect since the game was released only a year or two after the previous one), as well as some new ones - I picked Tazz as my Hardcore champion simply because I'd come to know him as the commentator in TNA. It's been more fun watching TNA over the years because of the recognition I had of many of the wrestlers they featured (the Hardys, Hulk Hogan, Al Snow, D'Lo Brown, Scott Steiner, Sting, Devon Dudley, to name a few), and it's fun to see the symbiosis the game and reality have had, with Earl Hebner very familiar to me now as one of the referees -  he's in the game, but I wouldn't have known who he was back when it first came out. There's even a whole new game type to enjoy in the Ladder Match, a kind of reverse Cage Match where you have to place a stepladder and knock your opponent into submission enough so that you have time to climb to the top and grab the winning briefcase. The character models remain pleasingly ropey in places, but it's part of the charm for me that you sometimes see someone's head through the body of another, or shoulders that look like they've been stuck on like Action Man's plastic appendages. The faces are definitely more detailed, and the movement is very realistic, which is what matters most, and while having more areas to explore beyond the ring is little more than a gimmick it does take the gaming experience closer to the TV equivalent.

It's just that nagging irritation that the main body of the game, winning the belts, is too much of a technical exercise for its stubborn insistence on repetition without the slightest hint on how you're supposed to get a different outcome. It becomes trial and boring error. It also annoyed me that the game allows a match to proceed even if you've passed the point of being able to win - for example, if you missed the instruction that you're supposed to draw blood before pinning, you'll fail to win and the computer will let it happen. It does encourage you to stay focused and concentrate on the text you see between matches, and it's more realistic in that the computer isn't providing you, the professional wrestler, with handholding, you need to take it seriously, like a job. But it is still a bit frustrating! There's also a little lowering of the tone in the banter and promos between matches. Maybe this is closer to what the actual thing was like, but I didn't appreciate some of that.

So as much as I acknowledge this as the definitive wrestling title, and I would have given it four stars (for the memory of amazing multiplayer matches in its genetic ancestry, as I reflect my original enjoyment in the score, as much as what it means to me now), I have to knock off one for the unfairness in its trial and error approach to challenge. I haven't even mentioned such things as the Create-A-Wrestler mode which every game of this type has as standard, because although I spent hours crafting characters on '2000,' I didn't have the patience to get into it here. The shop where you can spend hard-earned dollars to unlock wrestlers, moves, costumes and weapons, is a nice idea, but the game has to encourage you to play for the enjoyment first, the bonus items second. With recent news that Challenge will be dropping Impact Wrestling in 2017, it seems my association with the sport is about to go on another hiatus, but who knows, maybe in the next few years I'll get a Nintendo Switch and play a fantastic new grappling title that ignites my interest all over again, and the legacy of vast fun these old N64 titles left will return me to the ring like a retired wrestler that feels the pull of the limelight once more?

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What Are Little Girls Made Of?

DVD, Star Trek S1 (What Are Little Girls Made Of?)

Sugar and spice, and all things nice? Or copper and wire and all things dire… It's actually a rather deep psychological question that the title is propounding, amid all the classic science fiction tropes of the first half of the 20th Century that are crammed in: androids, mad professors, Frankenstein's monster turning on its creator, the transfer of consciousness, and of course, large computers that bleep and blork as colourful knobs are operated! Why is it that such a derivative episode is certainly one of, possibly even the, favourite of mine? I think it's partly to do with the subject matter, but also the style is more similar to the later Trek spinoffs than a traditional 'TOS' episode, concentrating on a couple of characters and learning details about them, seeing them go through a difficult experience and how they deal with it, in the context of a sci-fi idea. There are still some of the emerging familiar patterns of this series, such as Kirk talking a 'computer' into going against its programming, or confusing a female enemy with romance, and the clever tactics that show he's always switched on to whatever situation he's in, quick-witted and on the ball. It is a shame we don't get more of the regular cast, with McCoy, Scotty, Sulu and Rand completely absent, while Spock and Uhura feature only in the minority, but what it does allow is for Nurse Christine Chapel to costar with Kirk in the limelight.

I was very surprised to see in the closing credits that this wasn't a Gene Roddenberry-scripted episode, since I was pretty sure it was, considering the attention given to Majel Barrett's heretofore unexplored character. At this stage of the series only Kirk and Spock were credited as stars of the show, the rest were merely recurring characters, which is why we see several (such as Riley), pop up in more than one episode - Chapel could have been just such a figure, appearing in a smattering of episodes, had she not been played by Roddenberry's girlfriend. It gave the writers a broader canvas to play with, knowing they could bring back this or that crewmember, and I like that impression of a larger ship, instead of focusing down on seven or eight with the rest being nonspeaking background, or one-off guest roles. But anyway, Chapel gets an episode devoted to her and her backstory, which wouldn't be the case for most characters further into the series, making this more special. The impression is that she joined a starship crew in the hopes it would take her to Exo III at some point, the planet where Dr. Roger Korby, the man she'd been engaged to, was carrying out investigations into the ruins of an ancient civilisation. It would seem a slim reason for signing on, why not just charter a vessel to seek him out? Maybe she was in two minds about Korby? Then again, it's said she gave up a career in bio-research to do it, so perhaps she had a strong inclination to find him.

She's obviously excited to see him, especially as he's been considered lost after two previous expeditions failed to locate him on the planet - there's a nice moment of female camaraderie when Uhura gives her friend a hug as she passes, heading off to the planet where her fiance is waiting. It adds a little colour to the characters and makes them more real, instead of Uhura merely stating that hailing frequencies are open, or Chapel quietly assisting McCoy in Sickbay, another side to the series that sadly fizzled out as it became set in its formula. Some things in this regard were a positive, with Spock gradually becoming more and more Vulcan (though even this late in the season he's almost smiling when he and Kirk share a lighthearted moment at the end), but it was more often the case that the tropes we associate with the series became rules of thumb, which, while making it easy for the uninitiated to follow, and helped lead to its place in popular culture, perhaps made it too simplistic. Take the redshirts, for example. We'd seen them die before (just not wearing red), but it hadn't yet become a joke that if you wore red you weren't coming back, so the deaths of Matthews (implied he was pushed into the chasm by Ruk, though we don't see it), and Rayburn (strangled by Ruk, which we do see), are more of a shock - Korby claims it was against orders, but why would Ruk do that when he was programmed to obey? This only adds to Brown's callousness when he appears to show no concern about the 'accident' and pleasantly urges Kirk to come and meet Korby.

The horror of the episode is another very effective asset to its storytelling. There are the instinctual fears of dark, claustrophobic caverns, a maze of darkness (or they would be if not for the colourful lights illuminating the walls of these underground tunnels, making them more beautiful formations than eerie pits - they were still trying to get as much colour onscreen as possible), the body horror, and, most effectively of all, a giant spider. Ruk isn't actually a spider, but he displays the characteristics that we often feel revulsion towards: a large mass, yet all angles, and moves suddenly, without warning with a cunning deftness and frightening speed, especially for one so large. This visual expression of an intelligence, perhaps a predatory attitude, is further enhanced by his aural abilities to mimic, or I should say duplicate, the voices of anyone he chooses. At first, this is only a creepy display of his superior abilities as an android, then it becomes a diabolical method to prevent the Enterprise from becoming concerned about their Captain's wellbeing, and later we see it used in an attempt to lure Kirk from hiding as he's stalked. Kirk isn't fooled, he has a good memory and isn't about to forget Ruk's performance, but unfortunately even the gallant Captain can't outperform the android strength in such an enclosed environment (we'd see him tackle an opposing, more physically powerful enemy later in the season, but he had wide open spaces and natural resources to exploit in 'Arena' - I wonder what it would have been like if he'd been up against Ruk in that environment, since the android has terrific speed, unlike the Gorn), a stalactite proves ineffective as a weapon.

Ruk has powerful 'RAM,' as evidenced by the way he rams Kirk up against the wall like a doll, but he needed more memory. Fortunately for Kirk, he was able to joggle the memory he did have and recall the terrible truth of the fate of The Old Ones, Ruk's creators, and the race whose ruined civilisation Korby was exploiting. Ruk had been tending the machinery of his former masters for so many centuries even his android brain had lost track, but Kirk's logic problem forces out his old personality, the equation of existence/survival = cancel all other programming. And so Ruk turns on Korby, and is destroyed. It's amazing, but Ruk is yet another iconic 'alien' creation in a whole production line of them. Few episodes have passed which don't feature something that has the image or the concept of something memorable in the extreme, with great design and aesthetics. I don't think we ever see Ruk with his hood up, which would have been cool, but that vast robe and huge sleeves only emphasise his bulk and menace. Although he mainly speaks in the voices of others when he does speak, he finally reveals his deep voice when Kirk speaks to him alone, adding to the sense of a creation from an ancient time. It's rather convenient that all the androids get killed off rather than surviving to provide a problem for Kirk's superiors of what to do with them (maybe Ruk could have been stranded on the planet and returned in one of the films?), Brown shot by Kirk; Ruk by Korby; duplicate Kirk by Andrea; and Korby and Andrea in Korby's suicide.

If Ruk was the stick in this new utopia Korby plans for, then Andrea was the carrot: Kirk's amorous reputation may have begun with such scenes as the one where he kisses Andrea for real, teaching her the difference between the robotic, programmed response she's experienced before, and the 'real' experience, confusing her. Korby claims she doesn't have emotions and is just a thing, but she certainly seems fearful, worried, maybe guilty that Kirk is taking her away from Korby's will. It's no surprise that Chapel looks so sceptical when introduced to Andrea - he hasn't tried to get in touch for five years and now she drops in on him to find he's built his own female, and it looks nothing like her! I'm surprised they didn't take the opportunity to have two Chapels, the jealousy and resentment could have been played to even greater degrees and we might have been even more uncertain of the role Korby's female android played for him - he makes it sound like she was a mere tool, an experiment with which to prove his theories, but he pretty much just keeps digging himself into a pit with Christine, claiming she has no meaning for him, only does what he tells her, then showing what sort of instruction he might give: kiss Captain Kirk, as if to illustrate the very fears Chapel has!

If Dr. Korby shows a lot of weakness and lack of thought in his interactions and plans, Kirk is the opposite. He's always on the alert, planning ahead like a space Jason Bourne. He sees a chink in Korby's armour when he commands Ruk not to hurt Chapel, and suggests Ruk should also obey her orders. Later, when the duplication procedure is running its course, just before the mental pathways are about to be copied into the android version he thinks hard of an out of character racial epithet about Spock as an indication to his First Officer that something's wrong, correctly assuming Korby will use his alternate Kirk to control the Enterprise. What was Korby's ultimate goal? To transfer human consciousnesses into his android bodies. But what was his immediate goal? Did he plan to convert the whole Enterprise crew, then use the ship to spread his benevolent immortality across the galaxy, or did he have more work to do and only wanted the ship to leave? If that were so he'd have had his Kirk take the ship away with the message that Chapel would be staying behind, rather than having Kirk return to be shot by Andrea for refusing to kiss her. I wondered why previous expeditions hadn't found Korby, but it may be that he was ready to be found at this point. He believes he can transfer a person's soul into a machine, something that continue to be a question of science fiction to this day, though I'm not quite sure how he was able to create a replacement body for himself while critically injured, so maybe he'd already prepared one?

While we've seen increasing percentage of a person's body capable of being replaced by artificial parts, the revulsion towards complete mechanisation is still there. We accept people that have had an arm or a leg replaced, but could we accept someone that's had their head replaced or their heart? And at what stage does keeping someone alive with artificial means change from treatment to torture? It is these questions and more that are provoked by this episode, although it tends to side on the negative: perhaps the best moment is when Korby protests that he is still human, that he hasn't changed, but can only respond in mechanical language about tests and transmitting data, not the personal, emotional language a human would use, and you see him struggling, unable to accept what seems to be true, yet also unable to be human. He's a forceful personality, a charismatic genius, but he's allowed his personal dream of "a practical heaven, a new paradise," to overtake compassion and reason. He refuses to accept the inevitability of life and death, intent on prolonging a life, but an artificial one. Conversely, it could also be seen from another point of view: people with locked in syndrome are still human, even though they can't operate their bodies, so if they were given control, perhaps remotely of an artificial body, controlled by their own mental impulses, wouldn't that improve their lives? It's not quite the same as transferring consciousness to somewhere else, but it's probably the closest we could come in real science.

The horror element of 'TOS' has always been there from the first pilot, where bulbous-headed, unspeaking aliens watch and control, but the body horror of this episode isn't quite so common. We get our first sense of foreboding when Kirk and Chapel beam down and Korby isn't there to meet them. Kirk's uneasy enough to order two security men to beam down after them as he descends into the ominous unknown. This uneasiness is increased by Brown's unnatural manner, and the knowledge he imparts of the civilisation Korby has unearthed, where freedom was replaced by a mechanistic culture deep underground (another Morlock-like community, from 'The Time Machine'). The first real shock is a one-two punch: Kirk shoots Brown (handily keeping a Type 2 Phaser attached to his belt under his shirt), who collapses with wiring spilling from his gut like entrails, and at the same moment, the huge figure of Ruk dashes through the door, lifting Kirk bodily and easily, to slam him against the wall, like Jaws fighting James Bond. The horror continues later, in the revelation of Korby's own situation, Kirk trapping his opponent's hand in the door, revealing the damaged circuitry beneath the skin covering, repulsing poor Chapel.

It's really more poor William Shatner, though, as he has to be strapped naked to a revolving turntable in the creation of his double: it's an ingenious visual metaphor for the duplication, as we see the machinery whir faster and faster blurring the two individuals into one. The old-fashioned sci-fi computer they operate could have been distracting, but the obvious speed and power of the machine, and the diabolical simplicity of creating another version of Kirk cancels out all other concerns. In a way, this sequence is the most horrific, as we see a blank, corpselike, crudely humanoid shape, an unfinished, mummified, organic lump of matter, placed on the opposite side of the turntable to be made into Kirk's image. The thought that a duplicate of a person could be made is terrible enough, but one subjugated to Korby's will, with the memories and seeming personality of the original is even worse, as is seeing it formed from such gross and impersonal substance. You wonder if Korby has a room of mannikin-like synthetic flesh lumps and you see how far off the deep end he's gone. There's a kind of cruelty in his demonstration of his success to Chapel by having what she assumes is Kirk come to dinner with her. It's a kind of Turing test in the flesh, to test her loyalty, which is found to be true as she asks Kirk not to make her choose between Korby and her duty. That was a quite a moment when you didn't see it coming!

In the end, Kirk's conclusion is that Dr. Roger Korby was never there, a poignant and sad conclusion for a brilliant mind. It would have been a much more effective ending if the episode had closed out there where the full force of the episode hangs for a moment, as we've seen in a couple of episodes recently, but they had to get a lighter moment in at the very end, with Kirk and Spock joking about the halfbreed insult the Captain programmed into his double, joking that he'll come up with something better next time he's in that situation (being duplicated was actually something he would experience several times again, so he shouldn't have joked about it!). I can see they don't want every episode to end on a sombre note, but it felt more suitable for this episode, especially as we hadn't seen much of the ship or Spock, so there was no need for 'conclusion' to that part of the story, apart perhaps to show Kirk and Spock were as tight as ever with no hard feelings.

Although the episode is very successful in its depiction of androids and exploring the possibilities of them, it's also a good story for Kirk and Chapel. We learn not only about Chapel's history and motive for joining the Enterprise, but we also hear of Kirk's brother, George Samuel Kirk, whom only he calls 'Sam.' It was really only an aside to prove the android had Kirk's memories, but Sam would be important at the end of the season. There are a few other details of note, not least Mr. Leslie managing to make his appearance: on the Bridge at his usual station to the left of the Command Chair; the laser pistol from 'The Cage' gets another outing, used by Korby's creations - this might even have been deliberate, since he travelled to the planet years previously when that weapon may have been more common than the contemporary Phasers, added to which the image they have of Korby in the Enterprise computer is wearing the old style of uniform, an excellent detail. It's also good to have a little mention of the Orions - Korby's study of their ruins was important work. There are also some odd little moments, such as Kirk appearing to have a selection of flyers for other planets which he fetches for Korby from his quarters on the Enterprise; we see Ruk slightly bump his head when he turns towards the low door in the caverns while hunting Kirk; Kirk mispronounces his man Rayburn's name as Rayborn one time; and the camera's shadow passes over his face when it follow him into a Turbolift. Minor issues, but fun trivia to spot.

In the time of the episode there was a lot of nervousness about the replacement of body parts (the Cybermen were created in response to such advances in medical technology), so it's easy to see where the bias would lie. It's interesting to see later series' such as 'TNG,' where the ideas were advanced: Data is the obvious counter to Korby's wrong. Artificial, but created to become human - while he could also chill with his abilities similar to Ruk of enhanced speed, strength and the perfect mimicking of human voices, he did a lot more for showing androids in a positive light. On the other hand, the Borg were the ultimate combination of mechanical and organic components, desiring, like Korby to force everyone into their 'utopia' of immortality in the hunt for perfection through assimilation. Korby might have got on quite well with them. We also see many other episodes that may have sprung in part from this: 'The Schizoid Man' deals directly with Korby's ideal - another mad professor is able to transfer his consciousness into Data; and on 'Voyager' there was 'Prototype,' where two factions of robots were at war, having finished off their creators first, many years before; and the EMH's creator, Dr. Zimmerman, similarly surrounds himself with his own artificial creations in 'Lifeline,' though they were holograms. The seeds of artificiality versus reality have flourished in later Treks, and is one aspect of the franchise I've always thoroughly enjoyed and found fascinating to think about. And you could say it all began here.

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