DVD, Stargate SG-1 S9 (Camelot)
It's got to end looking dismal for the goodies, but I wasn't even sure what I was seeing this time - were the Earth ships all destroyed by The Ori super ships? We see Carter looking on shocked and powerless from her position at the edge of the Supergate, and Vala doing the same from onboard one of The Ori vessels, but there's no indication of whether the Odyssey or the Korolev, or even the Asgard ship, survived, which might suggest that time itself may have to be undone to set things right again. It wouldn't be the first time. It certainly had its moments, this long awaited confrontation in space between the forces of The Ori and the allies arrayed against them. I liked how even the Lucian Alliance were brought in on the action, because nothing messes up your plans for galactic domination like a bigger fish jumping into the pond and swallowing up everything. It was a bit Han Solo the way their ships come zipping in from 'above' (if there were orientation in space), and Teal'c was the typically forceful personality to bring them. Even so, it was only a small fleet, with, I think three ships from Earth, one captained by Colonel Chekov for the Russians, and Colonel Emerson in charge of the other. One Asgard ship with Kvasir in control, and a small handful of Tok'Ra and free Jaffa ships, but pitiful when you consider it was for the fate of the galaxy. They shouldn't have spent so much time waiting to dial the Supergate out as that was the obvious solution to prevent The Ori forces pouring in, but they waited for Daniel and Mitchell to find the necessary weapon of Merlin rather than dialling.
I preferred the planet story where SG-1 begin visiting a 'Medieval' village led by Meurik, John Noble himself - who better to be the leader of a Medieval village than the Steward of Gondor himself? Actually not many could be worse and I'm only glad he didn't start trying to burn himself on a pyre in crazed madness. It was quite 'The Lord of The Rings' in tone (and people die in slow motion in the later battle), and I knew that mud had to be so muddy for a reason: Mitchell gets properly muddied in his fight with the black knight security program guarding Merlin's library. I couldn't help feel that if it was as easy to enter Merlin's sealed library as putting a key in the lock, they'd have done so long ago, but Noble's character says they know what the black knight is like, suggesting in his lifetime some have been foolish enough to trespass (though it couldn't have been for quite some time considering the size of the cobwebs down there!). It was cleverly designed to send the knight out to kill in the village rather than the actual trespasser, turning all the people against anyone that dared enter this forbidden area. I also really liked the way both intelligence and skill was required to nullify the threat and solve the puzzle: Daniel has to get it right or Mitchell's in trouble and the whole sequence was very well put together, even down to the irony that Valencia, the girl who helps them, gets all the credit since she pulled the sword in the stone out of the stone, while Mitchell lies tired and covered in fresh mud on the ground! I didn't even much mind the boneheaded solution of shooting the control crystals to stop the knight, something more McNeill than Jackson in kind!
It also felt good to hear Emerson say the Russians would pick up Mitchell and Jackson on their way to the Supergate as it gives a great sense of the new situation where the Russians now have their own ship and are itching to get in on the action. It'll be very interesting to see what happens with that as I could imagine the Russians and Americans butting heads over other planets at some point! That is, assuming they survived, though I think there's a very good chance for the Russian Colonel considering he had two main cast members aboard with him - always a wise move on a series like this… While it's good that Vala has made it safely back to our galaxy ready to join the cast properly next season (or so I believe), it's not good for anyone else as the onslaught has been unstoppable. In a way, it's quite a downbeat season finale as they go - at least they had the luxury of knowing they were coming back for one last season, I assume they did anyway, or it probably wouldn't have ended on a cliffhanger and would have been more like Season 8's finale which wrapped things up effectively, allowing them to start something fresh this season.
I'd say it was a fairly successful season, introducing many new aspects, but also reverting back to more tried and tested 'SG-1' stories that we expect, and while I could have wished sometimes that some of the characters had been allowed more personal development (Teal'c and Carter in particular), their personal lives aren't going to be as much of a focus when the fate of our galaxy hangs in the balance. I can't remember if I ever mentioned the new title sequence, but I didn't like the CGI Stargate, and felt the real thing was so much better, but I did love the rippling transparency effects across the rest of the sequence. The series probably never looked better than this season, as you'd expect, and there have been plenty of familiar faces cropping up over the course of it, so no complaints with the new direction and I do wonder what they'll do both in their final season and in connecting with 'Atlantis' which I look forward to getting back to.
**
Tuesday, 12 March 2019
Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad
DVD, Discovery S1 (Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad)
I suppose this is the first actual sci-fi story the series has attempted, and also the first relatively standalone episode, too. Like 'DS9' it connects to what is going on 'outside' of the episode, with characters or the general arc of the season there, but it's what is going on here that is of immediate consequence. In that regard it was, with the possible exception of the opening episode, the one to feel most Trekky so far, which is a point in its favour. On the downside, any time they use Harry Mudd negates the positives so it was both step forward and step backward, but I can't deny that it was much more like a familiar Trek outing than has been demonstrated so far. That's largely due to it being more than familiar: it's a story that was done way back in 'TNG,' right down to the short time loop always ending in the destruction of the ship! If you're going to steal, steal from the best, isn't that the rule? And 'Cause and Effect' is certainly one of the best time travel stories Trek has done in its many stabs at this peculiarly fascinating sub-genre in the Trek oeuvre. It doesn't pull it off as effectively, of course, but I suspect viewers new to Trek's storytelling would have been impressed with it no end, though as an inferior copy of the earlier title it's water under the bridge for veteran Trekkers. As ever with time travel there are always little nitpicks (or big nitpicks, depending on your point of view), but I came away from the episode feeling like I had actually watched a Trek episode from beginning to end, something that had resolution and completeness, which is not the experience I've had on the series to this point, and for that it was a refreshing change.
However… It had to come: my issues with it. I don't have issues with the story, but the problem is that if you don't care for the characters on a series then it doesn't matter how good a story or ingenious a plot device, you aren't going to really like it, and that's how I felt. It didn't upset me (well, not much), but I don't care if these people die in whatever manner Mudd sees fit to inflict upon them, because I haven't bonded with them as I did with the other series' crews. It's still early days and it sounds like Season 2's trying to redress the balance of Trekkiness that has been missing, but it's the people, and the age group demographic that is definitely skewed to the teens, which serves to put me off from embracing things, as much as the canon ignorance (or blatant disregard), that's been evident throughout. I don't like them using Harry, the actor doesn't have the size of both personality and girth that marked out the conman as worthy of a second visit to the Enterprise in 'TOS,' and at this stage of his life he just comes across as a cruel murderer, which I never saw in him before. Perhaps his enforced time with Stella 'cures' him of this depth of depravity so that by the time he was encountered by Kirk's crew he'd reformed into 'merely' a conniving, if charming, boor rather than a merciless killer. I'm hoping this will be the last we see of him as that would be a fine way to leave the character for 'TOS,' having achieved the return of a famous character with a 'DSC' makeover, but temperate doesn't strike me as the way of this series or its writers, so I expect any good feeling at the end to be undone by another appearance at some point.
My faith in the writers is clearly very low, but I will give them the satisfaction of admitting they did get a key part of his character right: when he was talking about his loss of Stella and how that was his motivation, I was thinking how wrong that was compared with the man we later knew whose greatest punishment was eventually to be trapped on a planet with innumerable android replicas of his fussy, scolding wife, forever to be at the mercy of her wagging finger, furrowed brow and shrieking voice! So where, I wondered, did this young 'love' come from, and the baser instincts of revenge for wrongs committed that it apparently engendered. The truth is that Harry's a sham, and what he says isn't to be trusted, and I had an inkling of that, so it was a fitting end that Stella and her heretofore unseen Father show up (eccentrically attired in a way that synchs with the manner of dress later Mudd would enjoy), at the end to reclaim the escapee, making it very much in the vein of a 'TOS' ending - all that was left was for Lorca and the others to sit around on the Bridge bursting into laughter at Saru's inability to understand a joke the Captain had made, and it would have almost fit perfectly! Not that I can imagine Lorca encouraging levity on his Bridge, nor do the crew seem the kind that would spontaneously break out in group expression of amusement (the minor characters still remain but faces with barely a name between them), but I felt the actual ending where Burnham reflects on something positive to close out the final scene, was as true of later, 24th Century Trek that had a feel-good outro of some kind to leave you optimistic and happy.
What kept the episode down was, as I said, an inability to so far really bond with the characters, in the same way that Burnham finds herself apparently accepted as part of the crew, but isn't yet comfortable with the social side of it. It could be argued, on a smaller scale, that as people complained the Maquis in 'Voyager' too quickly integrated, then her acceptance as more than just The Mutineer Michael Burnham hasn't been properly explored and she's gotten through things a little too easily thanks to Lorca's hand over things, quite differently to how her integration looked like it would proceed in the first couple of episodes aboard Discovery. That's where things become a bit sci-fi soap opera, and I half believed I was watching 'Smallville' when that pumping music signified the party she reluctantly attends. It's a statement, the kind of music and attitudes that are on display, and where we used to see an older demographic of high-minded classical music to show that the things that most likely stood the test of time down through the centuries were the purist forms of entertainment, they've specifically chosen to aim younger for their audience and make them feel at home. It's all feeling very 'Battlestar Galactica' reboot to me in both its soldierly impression and its off-duty touches. If the party was weirdly contemporary (and uncomfortably alike to a similar scene in 'Star Trek XI'), they then make the connection that the old, balding villain of the piece is the one to force classical music into the ears of the crew he's torturing, so we've gone full circle from the high-minded pursuits being considered unsuitable for our characters, to actively portraying it with negative connotations, an inverse snobbishness and inability to connect to nobler emotion!
That's an incredibly modern approach for Trek to take, and while every Trek is a product of its time, it managed to also exist outside of it and be real as a future era by the choices it made to hold onto the classier things. They do throw in a little ballroom dancing between Stamets and Burnham, but it's more of an off the wall moment than the seriously fun, letting the hair down, guzzling what we assume is alcohol, mood of the party. Burnham and Tyler's deepening friendship comes into things significantly, and while we've seen such things before, it serves ever more to remind me that Trek is aimed at the teenagers, just as most TV shows and films are, and that I'm increasingly distant from such an age group and its mores, especially in the world today. So it's another aspect that pushes me further out of the picture when Trek was more multi-generational in previous series' and I grew up with an understanding of the need for all these periods in a person's life. So it's strange to find myself in a time when I'm more interested in seeing those middle-aged characters that tended to populate Trek, than the younger ones, something that has set Trek apart in this century as opposed to the approach and style seen in 20th Century produced Trek, beginning with 'Enterprise,' moving to the younger versions of famous characters in the Kelvin Timeline films, and now to 'Discovery.' It suggests that while I may find the occasional episode or scene to my taste or requirements, I'm not going to find what used to appeal to me, even though the ages have inverted - when I was young it didn't occur to me the demographic or age of characters, only that they were older than me and were uniquely qualified to do what they did. It's certainly a strange place to be in, in life when you see what you most enjoy alter so perceptibly.
I digress from the episode, however. If I was to point out the vagaries of time travel then I might suggest that Mudd's 'time crystal' sounded more like something out of 'Dr. Who' than the serious business of Trek, but then 'magic' or a non-consistent approach to storytelling and internal logic, the desire to show off flashy effects work rather than explore ideas intellectually, a much more visceral approach which is more likely to attract the young audience for which this is primarily aimed, would encourage all manner of 'magic' solutions. It's the tone and style, and the presentation of them that decide how easy it is to suspend disbelief, which is why I could accept much of what older Trek ran with, and one reason I have a hard time buying superhero films these days, or most genre fare for that matter. It's made for the mentally lazy generation of the short attention span, and a world of options that mean even the most expensive proposition can be cast off at a moment's notice should it not be deemed a success in the marketplace, and I'm not going to go into railing on social media, mobile phones and all manner of the changes to our social structure that have been affected by instant expression, but I do wonder if Trek even has a place in today's world when there is no censorship, pretty much, and only in terms of what is against the flow and the norm do people censor each other rather than bodies making decisions of content for TV or film, or whatever, where Trek's ability was to address issues hidden within a sci-fi veneer. I can't help but go off at these tangents, such is the thoughts this series brings me to, quite apart from its own intentions, but through comparison and contrast with the giants whose shoulders it lounges atop.
I might also say that Stamets' concern over no more people dying so that he reveals the key component missing from Mudd's gambit, was missing the point of the time loop. As long as he kept Mudd on the merry-go-round no one died because everything could be reset, but if he allowed his own emotional attrition to form his judgement, as he did, that meant those people would stay dead because Mudd would get what he wanted. But Stamets was under a lot of stress and for all his callousness and lack of social grace, a directness borne out of who knows where, he was affected, just as he was already affected by the tardigrade DNA that was part of him, a good use of a piece of previous plotting, for a change, to place him outside of the time loop. I wonder if he's eventually going to become one of those giant pig amoebas, or something? While I'm hovering in the vicinity of issues with the episode I could also bring up the ridiculousness of postponing a mission in wartime to make an effort to save what was essentially a space whale. It's nice to see a space-borne creature, another element of Trek's back catalogue that you'd expect to crop up (just like time travel), for the Trek name to truly bear its fruit, although I wonder if they were throwing in as many traditional Trek elements into this one episode so they could get back to Klingon-bashing in the next. It was ludicrous that they'd have to save something like that during a war, albeit they weren't in immediate peril. At the same time, it's only ludicrous because of the statements of the series to be so much more militaristic - it would fit into 'Voyager,' for example, though there might be more thoughtful discussion of whether they really could fulfil such a directive over a current mission.
You don't get those scenes of the Captain gathering his crew together to work things through, one reason why the 23rd Century seems particularly of interest to those in charge of Trek this century - lest we forget, even Kirk used to have briefings with the command staff around a desk, so it's wrong to suggest 'TOS' was all fistfights and Phaser battles! I suppose there's a cursory nod to such input when Burnham and Tyler are repeatedly summoned to the Bridge in the loops when the Gormagander is discovered, but Lorca is a man of action, not a man of talk. I will say this for him, he didn't show fear in Mudd's offbeat, but dangerous presence, but he's a hard man. He admirably (considering his real status under the pretence he's carrying off), goes about his job of being a Starfleet Captain, even if he deals with the necessary diversion in the most offhand way, having no interest - again, that could be strange since he's amassed such a collection in his menagerie stash which we visit once again, complete with that intriguing Gorn skeleton hanging in its alcove like the Salt Vampire in Trelane's castle on Gothos. They were quite light on references this time, perhaps feeling that Harry Mudd was enough to cover that side of Trek connections they like to play. But I did wonder if the environmental suit he first uses to come aboard was of Andorian design, perhaps a visual clue that those blue skins were going to be featuring soon (I do hope so). At first I thought the helmet was horned, but then the blueness and the impression of antennae arose in my mind…
Another, less obvious influence upon the episode may have been the being known as Q on 'TNG' (and others). Mudd, on leaving Lorca on the Bridge says: "Adieu, mon Capitan!" Just the sort of thing Q used to say to Picard, and I'm sure it was intentional - they've been very careful to throw in these many references wherever possible in what I can only assume is designed to placate the older viewers like me who get it. Well I did, so thank you for that. Now can you just make things a bit more Trek-like in tone as this episode proved was possible by the working together of the crew to solve a problem? I'd still much rather it was a new character rather than Harry, perhaps an associate of Mudd's rather than the man himself, allowing plenty of mentions of the rotund con artiste, just as 'Star Trek Into Darkness' would have been easier to swallow in at least that one aspect if it was a follower of Khan rather than Khan himself. But that's the thing, now that the barriers have been broken down, and they no longer expect to keep the visual continuity clean and consistent, extending also to anyone being allowed to play a previously seen character rather than keeping to the idea that the actor was the character, they don't fail to take the opportunity to get more publicity by playing with the toys that couldn't be played with before for fear of upending the sandbox. That's something major (as seen so potently with Sarek). I don't know why they didn't do 'spinoffs' of characters, or, say, make Tyler a relation of Jose Tyler as was my first leap of logic when the character was announced. But they don't believe in subtlety, it's a different generation, as we saw with the party scene, and so many other scenes in this season.
I even found it mildly disconcerting that the episode doesn't have a teaser, but a few short scenes of recap to remind us of important details, then goes straight into the opening credits. And it remains galling when the Enterprise's fanfare is appropriated for this 'other' ship. And I still find it more than mildly disconcerting that they abandoned the conceit of always showing the episode title, and it means that having such an interesting combination as this one does, is almost a waste not to show it on screen. No doubt if you view it on a streaming service then you pick the episode from its title and thus get it that way, but they could have included it with no trouble or issue. It's tradition, and Trek has always (used to always), be very traditional, that's one of the reasons it's survived so long: by becoming a tradition and leading the pack. These days (these last ten years), it's been a follower, a trend-aper not a setter. It's really only once the dust has settled that you can judge a series objectively. I'm not going to give up, I'll keep watching. Of course I will, how else can I applaud or condemn the latest entry in my favourite franchise? Commenting on it is a way to get it out of the system. I don't see myself accepting it, or even really enjoying it this season, but like Burnham I live in hope that a few episodes and films can't fully strip. I've always said that whatever 'thing' is revived, be it film or TV, if it goes on long enough, will revert back towards it centre point and become more recognisable over time. Look at 'Enterprise' Season 4, that was well worth waiting for. By the time we get a fourth season of 'DSC' maybe I'll be on board for that, too.
**
I suppose this is the first actual sci-fi story the series has attempted, and also the first relatively standalone episode, too. Like 'DS9' it connects to what is going on 'outside' of the episode, with characters or the general arc of the season there, but it's what is going on here that is of immediate consequence. In that regard it was, with the possible exception of the opening episode, the one to feel most Trekky so far, which is a point in its favour. On the downside, any time they use Harry Mudd negates the positives so it was both step forward and step backward, but I can't deny that it was much more like a familiar Trek outing than has been demonstrated so far. That's largely due to it being more than familiar: it's a story that was done way back in 'TNG,' right down to the short time loop always ending in the destruction of the ship! If you're going to steal, steal from the best, isn't that the rule? And 'Cause and Effect' is certainly one of the best time travel stories Trek has done in its many stabs at this peculiarly fascinating sub-genre in the Trek oeuvre. It doesn't pull it off as effectively, of course, but I suspect viewers new to Trek's storytelling would have been impressed with it no end, though as an inferior copy of the earlier title it's water under the bridge for veteran Trekkers. As ever with time travel there are always little nitpicks (or big nitpicks, depending on your point of view), but I came away from the episode feeling like I had actually watched a Trek episode from beginning to end, something that had resolution and completeness, which is not the experience I've had on the series to this point, and for that it was a refreshing change.
However… It had to come: my issues with it. I don't have issues with the story, but the problem is that if you don't care for the characters on a series then it doesn't matter how good a story or ingenious a plot device, you aren't going to really like it, and that's how I felt. It didn't upset me (well, not much), but I don't care if these people die in whatever manner Mudd sees fit to inflict upon them, because I haven't bonded with them as I did with the other series' crews. It's still early days and it sounds like Season 2's trying to redress the balance of Trekkiness that has been missing, but it's the people, and the age group demographic that is definitely skewed to the teens, which serves to put me off from embracing things, as much as the canon ignorance (or blatant disregard), that's been evident throughout. I don't like them using Harry, the actor doesn't have the size of both personality and girth that marked out the conman as worthy of a second visit to the Enterprise in 'TOS,' and at this stage of his life he just comes across as a cruel murderer, which I never saw in him before. Perhaps his enforced time with Stella 'cures' him of this depth of depravity so that by the time he was encountered by Kirk's crew he'd reformed into 'merely' a conniving, if charming, boor rather than a merciless killer. I'm hoping this will be the last we see of him as that would be a fine way to leave the character for 'TOS,' having achieved the return of a famous character with a 'DSC' makeover, but temperate doesn't strike me as the way of this series or its writers, so I expect any good feeling at the end to be undone by another appearance at some point.
My faith in the writers is clearly very low, but I will give them the satisfaction of admitting they did get a key part of his character right: when he was talking about his loss of Stella and how that was his motivation, I was thinking how wrong that was compared with the man we later knew whose greatest punishment was eventually to be trapped on a planet with innumerable android replicas of his fussy, scolding wife, forever to be at the mercy of her wagging finger, furrowed brow and shrieking voice! So where, I wondered, did this young 'love' come from, and the baser instincts of revenge for wrongs committed that it apparently engendered. The truth is that Harry's a sham, and what he says isn't to be trusted, and I had an inkling of that, so it was a fitting end that Stella and her heretofore unseen Father show up (eccentrically attired in a way that synchs with the manner of dress later Mudd would enjoy), at the end to reclaim the escapee, making it very much in the vein of a 'TOS' ending - all that was left was for Lorca and the others to sit around on the Bridge bursting into laughter at Saru's inability to understand a joke the Captain had made, and it would have almost fit perfectly! Not that I can imagine Lorca encouraging levity on his Bridge, nor do the crew seem the kind that would spontaneously break out in group expression of amusement (the minor characters still remain but faces with barely a name between them), but I felt the actual ending where Burnham reflects on something positive to close out the final scene, was as true of later, 24th Century Trek that had a feel-good outro of some kind to leave you optimistic and happy.
What kept the episode down was, as I said, an inability to so far really bond with the characters, in the same way that Burnham finds herself apparently accepted as part of the crew, but isn't yet comfortable with the social side of it. It could be argued, on a smaller scale, that as people complained the Maquis in 'Voyager' too quickly integrated, then her acceptance as more than just The Mutineer Michael Burnham hasn't been properly explored and she's gotten through things a little too easily thanks to Lorca's hand over things, quite differently to how her integration looked like it would proceed in the first couple of episodes aboard Discovery. That's where things become a bit sci-fi soap opera, and I half believed I was watching 'Smallville' when that pumping music signified the party she reluctantly attends. It's a statement, the kind of music and attitudes that are on display, and where we used to see an older demographic of high-minded classical music to show that the things that most likely stood the test of time down through the centuries were the purist forms of entertainment, they've specifically chosen to aim younger for their audience and make them feel at home. It's all feeling very 'Battlestar Galactica' reboot to me in both its soldierly impression and its off-duty touches. If the party was weirdly contemporary (and uncomfortably alike to a similar scene in 'Star Trek XI'), they then make the connection that the old, balding villain of the piece is the one to force classical music into the ears of the crew he's torturing, so we've gone full circle from the high-minded pursuits being considered unsuitable for our characters, to actively portraying it with negative connotations, an inverse snobbishness and inability to connect to nobler emotion!
That's an incredibly modern approach for Trek to take, and while every Trek is a product of its time, it managed to also exist outside of it and be real as a future era by the choices it made to hold onto the classier things. They do throw in a little ballroom dancing between Stamets and Burnham, but it's more of an off the wall moment than the seriously fun, letting the hair down, guzzling what we assume is alcohol, mood of the party. Burnham and Tyler's deepening friendship comes into things significantly, and while we've seen such things before, it serves ever more to remind me that Trek is aimed at the teenagers, just as most TV shows and films are, and that I'm increasingly distant from such an age group and its mores, especially in the world today. So it's another aspect that pushes me further out of the picture when Trek was more multi-generational in previous series' and I grew up with an understanding of the need for all these periods in a person's life. So it's strange to find myself in a time when I'm more interested in seeing those middle-aged characters that tended to populate Trek, than the younger ones, something that has set Trek apart in this century as opposed to the approach and style seen in 20th Century produced Trek, beginning with 'Enterprise,' moving to the younger versions of famous characters in the Kelvin Timeline films, and now to 'Discovery.' It suggests that while I may find the occasional episode or scene to my taste or requirements, I'm not going to find what used to appeal to me, even though the ages have inverted - when I was young it didn't occur to me the demographic or age of characters, only that they were older than me and were uniquely qualified to do what they did. It's certainly a strange place to be in, in life when you see what you most enjoy alter so perceptibly.
I digress from the episode, however. If I was to point out the vagaries of time travel then I might suggest that Mudd's 'time crystal' sounded more like something out of 'Dr. Who' than the serious business of Trek, but then 'magic' or a non-consistent approach to storytelling and internal logic, the desire to show off flashy effects work rather than explore ideas intellectually, a much more visceral approach which is more likely to attract the young audience for which this is primarily aimed, would encourage all manner of 'magic' solutions. It's the tone and style, and the presentation of them that decide how easy it is to suspend disbelief, which is why I could accept much of what older Trek ran with, and one reason I have a hard time buying superhero films these days, or most genre fare for that matter. It's made for the mentally lazy generation of the short attention span, and a world of options that mean even the most expensive proposition can be cast off at a moment's notice should it not be deemed a success in the marketplace, and I'm not going to go into railing on social media, mobile phones and all manner of the changes to our social structure that have been affected by instant expression, but I do wonder if Trek even has a place in today's world when there is no censorship, pretty much, and only in terms of what is against the flow and the norm do people censor each other rather than bodies making decisions of content for TV or film, or whatever, where Trek's ability was to address issues hidden within a sci-fi veneer. I can't help but go off at these tangents, such is the thoughts this series brings me to, quite apart from its own intentions, but through comparison and contrast with the giants whose shoulders it lounges atop.
I might also say that Stamets' concern over no more people dying so that he reveals the key component missing from Mudd's gambit, was missing the point of the time loop. As long as he kept Mudd on the merry-go-round no one died because everything could be reset, but if he allowed his own emotional attrition to form his judgement, as he did, that meant those people would stay dead because Mudd would get what he wanted. But Stamets was under a lot of stress and for all his callousness and lack of social grace, a directness borne out of who knows where, he was affected, just as he was already affected by the tardigrade DNA that was part of him, a good use of a piece of previous plotting, for a change, to place him outside of the time loop. I wonder if he's eventually going to become one of those giant pig amoebas, or something? While I'm hovering in the vicinity of issues with the episode I could also bring up the ridiculousness of postponing a mission in wartime to make an effort to save what was essentially a space whale. It's nice to see a space-borne creature, another element of Trek's back catalogue that you'd expect to crop up (just like time travel), for the Trek name to truly bear its fruit, although I wonder if they were throwing in as many traditional Trek elements into this one episode so they could get back to Klingon-bashing in the next. It was ludicrous that they'd have to save something like that during a war, albeit they weren't in immediate peril. At the same time, it's only ludicrous because of the statements of the series to be so much more militaristic - it would fit into 'Voyager,' for example, though there might be more thoughtful discussion of whether they really could fulfil such a directive over a current mission.
You don't get those scenes of the Captain gathering his crew together to work things through, one reason why the 23rd Century seems particularly of interest to those in charge of Trek this century - lest we forget, even Kirk used to have briefings with the command staff around a desk, so it's wrong to suggest 'TOS' was all fistfights and Phaser battles! I suppose there's a cursory nod to such input when Burnham and Tyler are repeatedly summoned to the Bridge in the loops when the Gormagander is discovered, but Lorca is a man of action, not a man of talk. I will say this for him, he didn't show fear in Mudd's offbeat, but dangerous presence, but he's a hard man. He admirably (considering his real status under the pretence he's carrying off), goes about his job of being a Starfleet Captain, even if he deals with the necessary diversion in the most offhand way, having no interest - again, that could be strange since he's amassed such a collection in his menagerie stash which we visit once again, complete with that intriguing Gorn skeleton hanging in its alcove like the Salt Vampire in Trelane's castle on Gothos. They were quite light on references this time, perhaps feeling that Harry Mudd was enough to cover that side of Trek connections they like to play. But I did wonder if the environmental suit he first uses to come aboard was of Andorian design, perhaps a visual clue that those blue skins were going to be featuring soon (I do hope so). At first I thought the helmet was horned, but then the blueness and the impression of antennae arose in my mind…
Another, less obvious influence upon the episode may have been the being known as Q on 'TNG' (and others). Mudd, on leaving Lorca on the Bridge says: "Adieu, mon Capitan!" Just the sort of thing Q used to say to Picard, and I'm sure it was intentional - they've been very careful to throw in these many references wherever possible in what I can only assume is designed to placate the older viewers like me who get it. Well I did, so thank you for that. Now can you just make things a bit more Trek-like in tone as this episode proved was possible by the working together of the crew to solve a problem? I'd still much rather it was a new character rather than Harry, perhaps an associate of Mudd's rather than the man himself, allowing plenty of mentions of the rotund con artiste, just as 'Star Trek Into Darkness' would have been easier to swallow in at least that one aspect if it was a follower of Khan rather than Khan himself. But that's the thing, now that the barriers have been broken down, and they no longer expect to keep the visual continuity clean and consistent, extending also to anyone being allowed to play a previously seen character rather than keeping to the idea that the actor was the character, they don't fail to take the opportunity to get more publicity by playing with the toys that couldn't be played with before for fear of upending the sandbox. That's something major (as seen so potently with Sarek). I don't know why they didn't do 'spinoffs' of characters, or, say, make Tyler a relation of Jose Tyler as was my first leap of logic when the character was announced. But they don't believe in subtlety, it's a different generation, as we saw with the party scene, and so many other scenes in this season.
I even found it mildly disconcerting that the episode doesn't have a teaser, but a few short scenes of recap to remind us of important details, then goes straight into the opening credits. And it remains galling when the Enterprise's fanfare is appropriated for this 'other' ship. And I still find it more than mildly disconcerting that they abandoned the conceit of always showing the episode title, and it means that having such an interesting combination as this one does, is almost a waste not to show it on screen. No doubt if you view it on a streaming service then you pick the episode from its title and thus get it that way, but they could have included it with no trouble or issue. It's tradition, and Trek has always (used to always), be very traditional, that's one of the reasons it's survived so long: by becoming a tradition and leading the pack. These days (these last ten years), it's been a follower, a trend-aper not a setter. It's really only once the dust has settled that you can judge a series objectively. I'm not going to give up, I'll keep watching. Of course I will, how else can I applaud or condemn the latest entry in my favourite franchise? Commenting on it is a way to get it out of the system. I don't see myself accepting it, or even really enjoying it this season, but like Burnham I live in hope that a few episodes and films can't fully strip. I've always said that whatever 'thing' is revived, be it film or TV, if it goes on long enough, will revert back towards it centre point and become more recognisable over time. Look at 'Enterprise' Season 4, that was well worth waiting for. By the time we get a fourth season of 'DSC' maybe I'll be on board for that, too.
**
Tuesday, 5 March 2019
Crusade
DVD, Stargate SG-1 S9 (Crusade)
Very different to how I expected this episode to play out, and for a while I wasn't sure if it was working for me, but it went to some interesting places and was quite accomplished as a forewarning before what should be a spectacular season finale. I really thought, despite its position as penultimate story of the season, that this was going to be some kind of comedic body-swap story from the way it opened: Vala's back, she's pregnant, and… Siler and everyone else at SGC don't seem surprised to see her wandering the halls. That is until you realise that the communication stones so beloved of 'Stargate Universe' are working their magic again and Vala found a way to switch consciousness with Jackson, which makes it pretty funny to begin with as we see him prancing around like a woman. Things become a whole lot more serious and a different direction, there's no Daniel trying to behave like Vala on her side of the stones, and much of the episode is her telling the tale of what happened to her after she was sucked through the Stargate or whatever device it was that zipped her into The Ori galaxy way back near the beginning of the season.
It's not surprising that she should have landed on her feet, becoming known as the lady that fell from the sky and picked up by a crippled follower of The Ori, Tomin, who nurses her back to health and then marries her. So she's got a fairly comfortable situation going as she tries to find a way back, or to communicate with our galaxy, while at the same time being 'blessed' with the equivalent of a virgin birth (if she weren't already a promiscuous type), rather than a pregnancy from her new husband. Whether it was marital bliss or the concern for her situation, she does seem to take to her new role, right up until the nasty village leader brands her a dangerous evil and chains her up in the monument we saw people burn to death upon at the beginning of the season. Michael Ironside (he's in everything), plays Seevis (he almost always plays bad guys), the village leader and man to lay judgement down on her, but things are more complicated than we first suspect. The episode impressed me with Seevis' reveal as not only a staunch member of the resistance, but its leader! It was so easy to believe the cover Seevis had cultivated for himself as this villainous, surly brute, just because of the casting of the role, and I never once questioned it. They really got me when he approaches Vala at the cliff edge where we can see the many starships being built for the followers of The Ori in readiness to strike at our galaxy through force of numbers.
It takes on a disturbing hue as not only is the episode titled 'Crusade,' but that is how The Ori are portraying their evil mission, to convert or die. Although this is all couched in Medieval style of dress, speech and attitude, it still struck me more than ever that they're making a commentary on Islamic extremism, covering themselves by hiding it in what could be seen as 'Christian' overtones of monks and priors and these little European-like villages. That way they can get away with doing such things, it seems. However The Ori are read into, that they are the gravest threat to life in our galaxy is indisputable, and no amount of healing or rhetoric can hide that. At the same time the series is playing with the notion of King Arthur and Camelot, notions quite opposed to the Islamic extremism in our contemporary world, and while I doubt they were going for Arthur and his knights being the British mythological answer to the cries of terrorism, nor the English as the brave defenders of liberty in the world, you can't help but get some of that and it's refreshing that it's not American mythology - except that the nation is too young to have its own mythology, the closest being the Wild West. I'm sure fascinating essays could be written into all this, but I'm just here to judge this episode, and I think it worked well. It shows Vala as doing more than her usual selfish ambitions dictate, and while she performs in order to survive, she also bites her tongue, bides her time, and is surprisingly sensitive and sensible.
Her brave facing of three days without food and water is a testament to there being more than just a space pirate in her makeup, and whether it was survival or not, she never gave up her friend. She jumps right back into the old Vala's ways by lying most convincingly to her husband when he comes to kill Seevis and the other woman, destroying the all-important communications device in the process. Rather than her husband being conveniently killed in the expected sabotage attempt by the resistance that would have taken out all the willing followers that were to leave on the ships, he lives still thinking she's important to the Priors' plans, and giving her a way back to our galaxy as she's decided to go with him. And for all she knows she is important, thanks to this mysterious pregnancy: so good when she asks SG-1 for examples they've ever heard of this happening and Teal'c mentions Darth Vader! - 'Revenge of The Sith' would have been in cinemas around this time, I believe, so it was a timely reference, and great fun!
There's almost as much interest coming from the political machinations of our old 'friend' the Russian General, who basically gives Landry the ultimatum that the Stargate must be returned to Russian hands. It's a great reminder that the current 'gate the SGC uses isn't even their own, and with the real world politics the way they are you really can imagine that the Chinese would back the Russians to run their own programme of operations, with the US condescendingly invited to join as guests, of course! It was a major blow to everything that such a thing came at such a tense moment just before everything's about to go up, but as ever with the Russians it's not as simple as that, Landry able to fathom that what they really want is something else: the 304, as it turns out - they want to be able to boldly go into space, like their American allies, I suppose. It was a real wrench to go into something like this because the consequences could have been enormous! A part of me wishes this had been drawn out a little more as it was certainly a worthy plot development for the series and something I'd never even considered before. But it was typical of the series that it's sorted out quite simply before the end of the episode, not that it takes away from the story in this particular instalment, because this remains a good one thanks to the twists and turns and the gravity of what goes on.
***
Very different to how I expected this episode to play out, and for a while I wasn't sure if it was working for me, but it went to some interesting places and was quite accomplished as a forewarning before what should be a spectacular season finale. I really thought, despite its position as penultimate story of the season, that this was going to be some kind of comedic body-swap story from the way it opened: Vala's back, she's pregnant, and… Siler and everyone else at SGC don't seem surprised to see her wandering the halls. That is until you realise that the communication stones so beloved of 'Stargate Universe' are working their magic again and Vala found a way to switch consciousness with Jackson, which makes it pretty funny to begin with as we see him prancing around like a woman. Things become a whole lot more serious and a different direction, there's no Daniel trying to behave like Vala on her side of the stones, and much of the episode is her telling the tale of what happened to her after she was sucked through the Stargate or whatever device it was that zipped her into The Ori galaxy way back near the beginning of the season.
It's not surprising that she should have landed on her feet, becoming known as the lady that fell from the sky and picked up by a crippled follower of The Ori, Tomin, who nurses her back to health and then marries her. So she's got a fairly comfortable situation going as she tries to find a way back, or to communicate with our galaxy, while at the same time being 'blessed' with the equivalent of a virgin birth (if she weren't already a promiscuous type), rather than a pregnancy from her new husband. Whether it was marital bliss or the concern for her situation, she does seem to take to her new role, right up until the nasty village leader brands her a dangerous evil and chains her up in the monument we saw people burn to death upon at the beginning of the season. Michael Ironside (he's in everything), plays Seevis (he almost always plays bad guys), the village leader and man to lay judgement down on her, but things are more complicated than we first suspect. The episode impressed me with Seevis' reveal as not only a staunch member of the resistance, but its leader! It was so easy to believe the cover Seevis had cultivated for himself as this villainous, surly brute, just because of the casting of the role, and I never once questioned it. They really got me when he approaches Vala at the cliff edge where we can see the many starships being built for the followers of The Ori in readiness to strike at our galaxy through force of numbers.
It takes on a disturbing hue as not only is the episode titled 'Crusade,' but that is how The Ori are portraying their evil mission, to convert or die. Although this is all couched in Medieval style of dress, speech and attitude, it still struck me more than ever that they're making a commentary on Islamic extremism, covering themselves by hiding it in what could be seen as 'Christian' overtones of monks and priors and these little European-like villages. That way they can get away with doing such things, it seems. However The Ori are read into, that they are the gravest threat to life in our galaxy is indisputable, and no amount of healing or rhetoric can hide that. At the same time the series is playing with the notion of King Arthur and Camelot, notions quite opposed to the Islamic extremism in our contemporary world, and while I doubt they were going for Arthur and his knights being the British mythological answer to the cries of terrorism, nor the English as the brave defenders of liberty in the world, you can't help but get some of that and it's refreshing that it's not American mythology - except that the nation is too young to have its own mythology, the closest being the Wild West. I'm sure fascinating essays could be written into all this, but I'm just here to judge this episode, and I think it worked well. It shows Vala as doing more than her usual selfish ambitions dictate, and while she performs in order to survive, she also bites her tongue, bides her time, and is surprisingly sensitive and sensible.
Her brave facing of three days without food and water is a testament to there being more than just a space pirate in her makeup, and whether it was survival or not, she never gave up her friend. She jumps right back into the old Vala's ways by lying most convincingly to her husband when he comes to kill Seevis and the other woman, destroying the all-important communications device in the process. Rather than her husband being conveniently killed in the expected sabotage attempt by the resistance that would have taken out all the willing followers that were to leave on the ships, he lives still thinking she's important to the Priors' plans, and giving her a way back to our galaxy as she's decided to go with him. And for all she knows she is important, thanks to this mysterious pregnancy: so good when she asks SG-1 for examples they've ever heard of this happening and Teal'c mentions Darth Vader! - 'Revenge of The Sith' would have been in cinemas around this time, I believe, so it was a timely reference, and great fun!
There's almost as much interest coming from the political machinations of our old 'friend' the Russian General, who basically gives Landry the ultimatum that the Stargate must be returned to Russian hands. It's a great reminder that the current 'gate the SGC uses isn't even their own, and with the real world politics the way they are you really can imagine that the Chinese would back the Russians to run their own programme of operations, with the US condescendingly invited to join as guests, of course! It was a major blow to everything that such a thing came at such a tense moment just before everything's about to go up, but as ever with the Russians it's not as simple as that, Landry able to fathom that what they really want is something else: the 304, as it turns out - they want to be able to boldly go into space, like their American allies, I suppose. It was a real wrench to go into something like this because the consequences could have been enormous! A part of me wishes this had been drawn out a little more as it was certainly a worthy plot development for the series and something I'd never even considered before. But it was typical of the series that it's sorted out quite simply before the end of the episode, not that it takes away from the story in this particular instalment, because this remains a good one thanks to the twists and turns and the gravity of what goes on.
***
Lethe
DVD, Discovery S1 (Lethe)
Watching this series makes me feel like an oyster, shifting uncomfortably in my seat trying to adjust the discomfiting grit in my gullet. Will it ever coalesce into a pearl? How I want to like it! But I'm increasingly aware that this may as well have been the Kelvin-verse TV series that at one time looked to be the only future of my favourite franchise, for all the care they pay to canon. They want to play in the 'cowboy diplomacy' time period that the 23rd Century came to represent, while at the same time they obviously want the 'TNG' era's technology and complexity - it creates an uneven tone that pulls in both directions and neither sits in the camp of exploring what this moment in history was all about when the Constitution-class ships were out expanding the Federation's knowledge, nor that of an expanded galaxy full of political ramifications and the delights of more advanced devices. Such as the Holodeck. Now I'm sure there are workarounds that could be used to explain how Discovery can have a holographic simulation in which Lorca and his newly appointed Security Chief (remind me what happened to the last one?), try some target practice against lifelike Klingon soldiers. Maybe the simulation is a very basic one and we're just seeing what they see, but in reality they were just hooked up to a device that was allowing their mind to experience it what wasn't actually a fully three-dimensional construct? But it appears on the face of it to be the same kind of Holodeck, right down to the yellow grid pattern when the holographic facade is stripped away, and which was new tech in 'TNG'!
How can you place your series a century before such developments and then throw them away on a training sim that had no bearing on the story and only served to show the bond between Lorca and his fellow escapee, Ash Tyler, from Klingon captivity? If they were more creative they'd have found a way to get that across through some other period specific training - maybe they could have gone rock climbing together, I don't know? It shows a clear disregard for the intentions of Trek's previous creators to make a cohesive and believable historical universe, and instead opts for the approach taken by JJ Abrams and gang, which was to have whatever gimmicks they wanted to impress a modern audience, regardless of whether it fit. It's lazy writing and sorely disappointing for those of us who actually care about the fidelity of this future chronology. And there's no need for it. The Holodeck wasn't the only large grit that was difficult to swallow: Cornwell must be the most unprofessional Admiral in history - not only does she drop everything to run after her friend, Captain Lorca, to meet him personally, but she condescends to drop the chain of command and chat as old mates. Then she spends the night with him, and we learn she used to be a doctor or psychologist of some kind. I wonder if she stopped practicing because she was forced to on account of having extracurricular relations with patients? It's all pretty bad, and Lorca would only have needed to report her actions to a higher authority to discredit her, except that he should have got busted as well.
When you think of Captain Janeway and how professional she was with her First Officer, despite having good reason to suppose she might never return to face any kind of music, and that she could have done with a close companion in her position, we see how different a time we're living in when writers are doing such crazy things at the drop of a hat. Casual and unprofessional, not inspiring or uplifting. But then that's the approach taken by this series: just as they want the tech from future eras, but not the attitudes, they want the Trek name, but not its morals or tone. It's a Trek series for our current age, that's for sure! Which means that it constantly rankles to watch it with the eyes of someone who sees it as (and which the creators claim is), a part of something greater than itself, namely the 'Star Trek' universe. There were possibilities for a truly great story here, with a couple of Klingon Houses said to be disgruntled with Kol's leadership and willing to do anything to undermine him, even stooping to peace overtures with the Federation. Then there's the whole Vulcan side of things, with a group of 'logic extremists' attempting to take out Sarek on his way to meet with these Klingons. And of course the flashbacks to Burnham's refusal into the Vulcan Expeditionary Force.
That last one had never been heard of before, but that's okay, we are supposed to be learning new things, so that's good. And it was nice to finally meet Amanda Grayson, Sarek's human wife and Mother of Spock whom was set to play an integral role in the season when it was under Bryan Fuller's direction. I'm not so sure she'll still figure as prominently, but there was nothing I could fault her appearance for, thankfully - she behaved as you'd expect from the brief times we had with her in 'TOS' and the films, speaking up for the human side of things and being encouraging to her ward, Michael. And all that was nicely done, pleasant, fitting uniforms and a graceful, beautiful setting, the Vulcan gongs and IDICs reminding us that for some reason, while the makers of this series love to do as they will, especially with visual canon, they sometimes wish to adhere to established continuity and cultural styles, even down to the 'musical notes' characters of Vulcan written language. It only serves to make other choices more head-scratching. Imagine if they'd put the same amount of concern into the Starfleet and Klingon look? This could have been a great series with the money they were throwing around (even if, like all Trek before it, they're not above reusing sets to amortise the budget, this time the holo-simulation of the Klingon prison the excuse), but they needed some old voices to keep things shipshape across the board and it suffers without the steady hands of the Okudas, Doug Drexler, Larry Nemecek…
Even the Vulcan portrayal still hews to the emotional more than I care for. Not since Tuvok have we seen a 'proper' Vulcan, emotionless, stoic and cool. 'Enterprise' botched the whole thing and set a precedent for everything since, but this is supposed to be just ten years before 'TOS' when the few Vulcans we saw were very Vulcan - even Spock, 'only' half Vulcan was so very Vulcan most of the time. James Frain chooses to speak as if he's in constant discomfort, his facial features betraying every little emotional change like he's in a palsy of indecision. I will grant that he's not at his best in this episode, suffering, near to death, and in those scenes when he displays anger, irritation or frustration at Burnham's presence in his mind, I buy it, it's fine, but these uncharacteristic moments would have had so much impact if we'd seen him play Sarek as Sarek had always been played before: I think of the incredible performance of Mark Lenard in 'TNG' when we see him coping with a condition of old age, losing his strong control and mask-like impassivity to a roiling of emotions. This Sarek is only a few notches below that on a good day! Even when we see scenes of what he did the day of Burnham's rejection to the VEF, he can't portray the Vulcan way, he has to emote and it's distressing to see. Sarek was such a cool character and they've really failed to bring him off successfully. They don't even have the excuse they used on 'Enterprise' that it's a hundred years before the Vulcans we know in 'TOS' so they might be different (ignoring the two century lifespans of the race in the process!), because as has been trumpeted for their USP, this series is but ten years before 'TOS'!
I did wonder if the title referred to a 'TOS' character, a woman who was a mental patient in 'Dagger of The Mind,' and how were they going to work this lady in? I also had the faintest of hopes they were going to bring in some Letheans, one of my favourite of the minor races - I didn't really think that, but it would have been fun! In reality it's a reference from Greek Mythology, so they're trying to be literary and intelligent, they just come across as guttersnipes rolling around down there while glancing into a bookshop's window and seeing something notable that bears repeating. I can't express how low an opinion I'm continually feeling for this series, because even if it had been averagely written, but had adhered to the precepts and the reality of past Trek, had carried the torch, then I would find something commendable in it. But while this episode was marginally more palatable than the previous one, it's still more frustrating and irritating and disappointing more than anything else, and far from making me hopeful about all the other Trek projects coming down the pipeline I keep getting a deep sinking feeling as if that which I enjoy most is no longer wanted or respected or desired in today's world.
What did I actually like or enjoy amidst all the chaotic wrenching of my insides? As I said, I appreciated the detail and integrity of the Vulcan culture - while the shuttle that Sarek uses to go to Cancri IV was disappointing in that it didn't have that beautiful ring ship quality seen by their vessels in 'Enterprise,' this is a century later so they would look different, and there was the impression of the ring design within that. Cadet Tilly was less annoying and actually had some positive scenes, and even Stamets was in a good mood for a change, enthused and upbeat. We have what I believe is the first mention of the Constitution-class Enterprise, as well as Sarek's son, Spock. I'm not sure, but 'Yridia' would probably be home to the Yridians (which were known even in 'Enterprise' as they had one appearance). The food slots looked like those on 'TOS.' And I love it whenever Burnham acts Vulcan. Vulcans bombing or being renegades is an established thing and a surprisingly common one in Trek history as there logic can sometimes lead them up the garden path, so that makes sense, although ironically I'd have to agree with the failed assassin to some degree when he claims Vulcans are superior to human, because they just are, and I sometimes wonder if it's human writers' way of subconsciously getting back some of that ground by making Vulcans out to be so petty or whatever negative emotional response they can fashion! There were probably other planets that were mentioned, but I really couldn't concentrate on the unfolding of the universe when so many things were upsetting me. It's like Admiral Cornwell said about Lorca, he's not the man she knew - that's how I'm feeling about this series, it's not the Trek I knew, as much as I try to accept it into the fold.
**
Watching this series makes me feel like an oyster, shifting uncomfortably in my seat trying to adjust the discomfiting grit in my gullet. Will it ever coalesce into a pearl? How I want to like it! But I'm increasingly aware that this may as well have been the Kelvin-verse TV series that at one time looked to be the only future of my favourite franchise, for all the care they pay to canon. They want to play in the 'cowboy diplomacy' time period that the 23rd Century came to represent, while at the same time they obviously want the 'TNG' era's technology and complexity - it creates an uneven tone that pulls in both directions and neither sits in the camp of exploring what this moment in history was all about when the Constitution-class ships were out expanding the Federation's knowledge, nor that of an expanded galaxy full of political ramifications and the delights of more advanced devices. Such as the Holodeck. Now I'm sure there are workarounds that could be used to explain how Discovery can have a holographic simulation in which Lorca and his newly appointed Security Chief (remind me what happened to the last one?), try some target practice against lifelike Klingon soldiers. Maybe the simulation is a very basic one and we're just seeing what they see, but in reality they were just hooked up to a device that was allowing their mind to experience it what wasn't actually a fully three-dimensional construct? But it appears on the face of it to be the same kind of Holodeck, right down to the yellow grid pattern when the holographic facade is stripped away, and which was new tech in 'TNG'!
How can you place your series a century before such developments and then throw them away on a training sim that had no bearing on the story and only served to show the bond between Lorca and his fellow escapee, Ash Tyler, from Klingon captivity? If they were more creative they'd have found a way to get that across through some other period specific training - maybe they could have gone rock climbing together, I don't know? It shows a clear disregard for the intentions of Trek's previous creators to make a cohesive and believable historical universe, and instead opts for the approach taken by JJ Abrams and gang, which was to have whatever gimmicks they wanted to impress a modern audience, regardless of whether it fit. It's lazy writing and sorely disappointing for those of us who actually care about the fidelity of this future chronology. And there's no need for it. The Holodeck wasn't the only large grit that was difficult to swallow: Cornwell must be the most unprofessional Admiral in history - not only does she drop everything to run after her friend, Captain Lorca, to meet him personally, but she condescends to drop the chain of command and chat as old mates. Then she spends the night with him, and we learn she used to be a doctor or psychologist of some kind. I wonder if she stopped practicing because she was forced to on account of having extracurricular relations with patients? It's all pretty bad, and Lorca would only have needed to report her actions to a higher authority to discredit her, except that he should have got busted as well.
When you think of Captain Janeway and how professional she was with her First Officer, despite having good reason to suppose she might never return to face any kind of music, and that she could have done with a close companion in her position, we see how different a time we're living in when writers are doing such crazy things at the drop of a hat. Casual and unprofessional, not inspiring or uplifting. But then that's the approach taken by this series: just as they want the tech from future eras, but not the attitudes, they want the Trek name, but not its morals or tone. It's a Trek series for our current age, that's for sure! Which means that it constantly rankles to watch it with the eyes of someone who sees it as (and which the creators claim is), a part of something greater than itself, namely the 'Star Trek' universe. There were possibilities for a truly great story here, with a couple of Klingon Houses said to be disgruntled with Kol's leadership and willing to do anything to undermine him, even stooping to peace overtures with the Federation. Then there's the whole Vulcan side of things, with a group of 'logic extremists' attempting to take out Sarek on his way to meet with these Klingons. And of course the flashbacks to Burnham's refusal into the Vulcan Expeditionary Force.
That last one had never been heard of before, but that's okay, we are supposed to be learning new things, so that's good. And it was nice to finally meet Amanda Grayson, Sarek's human wife and Mother of Spock whom was set to play an integral role in the season when it was under Bryan Fuller's direction. I'm not so sure she'll still figure as prominently, but there was nothing I could fault her appearance for, thankfully - she behaved as you'd expect from the brief times we had with her in 'TOS' and the films, speaking up for the human side of things and being encouraging to her ward, Michael. And all that was nicely done, pleasant, fitting uniforms and a graceful, beautiful setting, the Vulcan gongs and IDICs reminding us that for some reason, while the makers of this series love to do as they will, especially with visual canon, they sometimes wish to adhere to established continuity and cultural styles, even down to the 'musical notes' characters of Vulcan written language. It only serves to make other choices more head-scratching. Imagine if they'd put the same amount of concern into the Starfleet and Klingon look? This could have been a great series with the money they were throwing around (even if, like all Trek before it, they're not above reusing sets to amortise the budget, this time the holo-simulation of the Klingon prison the excuse), but they needed some old voices to keep things shipshape across the board and it suffers without the steady hands of the Okudas, Doug Drexler, Larry Nemecek…
Even the Vulcan portrayal still hews to the emotional more than I care for. Not since Tuvok have we seen a 'proper' Vulcan, emotionless, stoic and cool. 'Enterprise' botched the whole thing and set a precedent for everything since, but this is supposed to be just ten years before 'TOS' when the few Vulcans we saw were very Vulcan - even Spock, 'only' half Vulcan was so very Vulcan most of the time. James Frain chooses to speak as if he's in constant discomfort, his facial features betraying every little emotional change like he's in a palsy of indecision. I will grant that he's not at his best in this episode, suffering, near to death, and in those scenes when he displays anger, irritation or frustration at Burnham's presence in his mind, I buy it, it's fine, but these uncharacteristic moments would have had so much impact if we'd seen him play Sarek as Sarek had always been played before: I think of the incredible performance of Mark Lenard in 'TNG' when we see him coping with a condition of old age, losing his strong control and mask-like impassivity to a roiling of emotions. This Sarek is only a few notches below that on a good day! Even when we see scenes of what he did the day of Burnham's rejection to the VEF, he can't portray the Vulcan way, he has to emote and it's distressing to see. Sarek was such a cool character and they've really failed to bring him off successfully. They don't even have the excuse they used on 'Enterprise' that it's a hundred years before the Vulcans we know in 'TOS' so they might be different (ignoring the two century lifespans of the race in the process!), because as has been trumpeted for their USP, this series is but ten years before 'TOS'!
I did wonder if the title referred to a 'TOS' character, a woman who was a mental patient in 'Dagger of The Mind,' and how were they going to work this lady in? I also had the faintest of hopes they were going to bring in some Letheans, one of my favourite of the minor races - I didn't really think that, but it would have been fun! In reality it's a reference from Greek Mythology, so they're trying to be literary and intelligent, they just come across as guttersnipes rolling around down there while glancing into a bookshop's window and seeing something notable that bears repeating. I can't express how low an opinion I'm continually feeling for this series, because even if it had been averagely written, but had adhered to the precepts and the reality of past Trek, had carried the torch, then I would find something commendable in it. But while this episode was marginally more palatable than the previous one, it's still more frustrating and irritating and disappointing more than anything else, and far from making me hopeful about all the other Trek projects coming down the pipeline I keep getting a deep sinking feeling as if that which I enjoy most is no longer wanted or respected or desired in today's world.
What did I actually like or enjoy amidst all the chaotic wrenching of my insides? As I said, I appreciated the detail and integrity of the Vulcan culture - while the shuttle that Sarek uses to go to Cancri IV was disappointing in that it didn't have that beautiful ring ship quality seen by their vessels in 'Enterprise,' this is a century later so they would look different, and there was the impression of the ring design within that. Cadet Tilly was less annoying and actually had some positive scenes, and even Stamets was in a good mood for a change, enthused and upbeat. We have what I believe is the first mention of the Constitution-class Enterprise, as well as Sarek's son, Spock. I'm not sure, but 'Yridia' would probably be home to the Yridians (which were known even in 'Enterprise' as they had one appearance). The food slots looked like those on 'TOS.' And I love it whenever Burnham acts Vulcan. Vulcans bombing or being renegades is an established thing and a surprisingly common one in Trek history as there logic can sometimes lead them up the garden path, so that makes sense, although ironically I'd have to agree with the failed assassin to some degree when he claims Vulcans are superior to human, because they just are, and I sometimes wonder if it's human writers' way of subconsciously getting back some of that ground by making Vulcans out to be so petty or whatever negative emotional response they can fashion! There were probably other planets that were mentioned, but I really couldn't concentrate on the unfolding of the universe when so many things were upsetting me. It's like Admiral Cornwell said about Lorca, he's not the man she knew - that's how I'm feeling about this series, it's not the Trek I knew, as much as I try to accept it into the fold.
**
The Final Countdown
DVD, The Champions (The Final Countdown) (2)
They did love Nazi villains on this series ('The Survivors,' 'The Search,' 'The Mission'), as well as last minute defusing of atomic bombs ('Happening,' 'The Dark Island,' and probably others I've forgotten!), but then you have to remember when the series was made: the late 1960s was well within living memory of both the Second World War and its devastating atomic conclusion, not to mention a tension of living under the Cold War between East and West, the latent threat of nuclear attack wiping out half the world at any moment. It's not surprising that there were so many films and TV series' that dealt with that public worry head-on in a fantasy setting, a sort of catharsis to make it less real perhaps. The psychology of choice of villains at different periods of TV history would make an essay in itself, but Air Marshal Von Splitz and his gang weren't the best thought out examples - after twenty-five years in a Russian prison he's finally been released, is tailed by the intelligence services and then promptly disappears. He was of the Luftwaffe High Command, head of The Special Operations and, we discover, has knowledge of a last ditch attempt to turn the tide of the war by dropping an atomic bomb in a V4 rocket, the payload of which was lost when the Heinkel plane carrying it had to be abandoned by the German air crew when it was shot down by a Royal Airforce Spitfire. It didn't go off so now he wants it back so he can win the last battle of the war!
You can tell that there was a thought that Nazi forces were still at large in the new Germany just waiting for the right time to strike, with Von Splitz' associate, Dr. Neimann saying the explosion will act as a signal to their compatriots to rise up. It plays on the idea that not every soldier loyal to the Nazis was routed out and put on trial, and I suppose from their hindsight of both World Wars it seemed highly possible that Germany could rise a third time to strike back at the world, but it shows that simple hindsight isn't always the best pointer for what will happen - many other factors would have had to be considered, not just the events of the Wars. But it was an easy sell to a Sixties TV audience and it gives our champions an evil to face. And the Marshal is an evil man, as are his stone-faced henchmen and Herr Doktor in the half-moon specs. You can imagine him being the type to carry out experiments at concentration camps, and the men have a dangerous atmosphere around them as if violence is only a single word of command away. They're the typical Nazi soldier: cruel, cold and belligerent. We see the contrast between them and other Germans that had moved on after the war, with Flight Lieutenant Wolf Eisen, in charge of the mission to drop that bomb, and his navigator, Gerhardt Schultz, both seeming normal. The first has a daughter and is still active in the service, and shows courage in his demands to know what's going on from his kidnappers, while the second is a genial host at Unterberg Farm in Weltzbach, a town near Frankfurt.
When Von Splitz decides Eisen knows too much, he orders him dealt with, and similarly, when they've got all the information they can coax out of Schultz that the bomb must have fallen into a lake near Helmstadt, playing on his goodwill, saying they're from the government tasked with finding the bomb before the casing corrodes, people's lives at risk, they promptly and mercilessly shoot him in his own house, his wife has time to see it and scream in terror before she, too, is murdered in cold blood! They don't stint on the violence in this particular episode, as they'd done a few times before on the series - the shot of the failed experimental superhuman from 'The Experiment,' writhing in agony when he's shot in camera, springs to mind. Craig is tied to a chair and punched in the face, slapped in the face and chopped on the back of the neck by either Kruger or Heiden, and it's all right there, the camera fairly close in so you see every jolt and snap of his head. In that case it doesn't make quite as much impact because he just bounces back up like rubber, his superior endurance allowing him to mock his brutal captor whose knuckles feel the wear more than Craig's face! There's also a right royal rumble in the staircase room (again! - as soon as I saw how it was laid out with all those tables covered in sheets, I knew there was going to be a big fight), with Craig and Richard taking on the Marshal and all his men rather effectively.
There was plenty of action, but also a fair amount of detective work, and while I could have wished for more Sharron in the episode, and more of the trio working in the same vicinity, we do get that by the end and it's good to see them all off adding to the data they need to work out what's going on. As Craig sums up so deadpan after Tremayne's opening briefing, they don't know where Von Splitz is, they think he might have a secret, but they don't know what it is, and it's all rather bemusing. That changes once it becomes known that an atomic bomb is the object of the villain's intentions. The locales are once again more than just England, although Sharron and Richard do pay a visit there to meet Tom Brooks, the pilot who originally shot down the plane carrying the bomb, and which he realises through that action he effectively won the war singlehanded! The main place of action is Germany as the Air Marshal's gang track down the bomb, eventually finding it underwater in what was excellent use of stock footage. Indeed, the use of stock was rather accomplished as I sometimes found myself wondering what had been filmed for the series and what was already existing footage they'd retrieved. The biggest source of this was the murder attempt of Eisen, left unconscious in a car, then rolled down a hill. Just as in the opening to 'Mission: Impossible 2' when the pilot of a plane comes to just in time to see a closeup view of an onrushing mountain, Eisen awakes to the horror of flying over a cliff, the car smashing and rolling. The way the scenes of the car being sent on its way are cut with the actual flinging of a car over the edge after it had raced down this steep hill, genuinely made me wonder if they'd filmed it themselves, and I couldn't tell if it was a scale model or a real car the way it had been shot, though the DVD booklet gave away its origins as reuse from 'The Baron.'
If I'd seen that series then no doubt it would have taken away from this episode to realise they'd only reused it, but it was new to me and it looked very dramatic and intense! The lake seen in this episode appeared suspiciously similar to that in 'The Survivors,' so it wasn't surprising to learn that the former episode had actually been the previous episode shot and that, again according to the handy DVD booklet, they had combined location shooting on both episodes. So it really was the same lake, although I thought some of the scenes on the shore looked as if they'd been created in an elaborate 'greens' set (in other words, getting all the plants and trees in to make it look like a natural environment), with all this fake smoke to create atmosphere, but which only served to make it look like a smoke machine had belched out, or someone had lit a massive cigar nearby that had filled the area! The underwater filming of the bomb and divers around it was also something that looked very specific, though it didn't fit quite right with what they were saying about having to free it, as the scene shows a diver cutting into the casing or welding something to it rather than setting it free from anything.
As well as getting back to a slightly more international feel, another thing that improves the episode is the way Tremayne is integrated with the unfolding events, coordinating his agents and other parties via the telephone at his desk, in his best telephone voice. Sometimes you do get the impression of a one-sided conversation and that he had to do the script without someone responding, but he does it so well and it's just good to have the old guy involved when in too many episodes he's had only one scene of briefing or a humorous tag at the end of a story. It was a real wasted opportunity not to have him in on the action more often as they did in a handful of episodes, his presence always adds to scenes. Strangely, the frequent time in an episode when he puzzles over some piece of good fortune his agents have had, or some unexplained discrepancy in time or reasonable expectations, comes in the middle of the episode: he quizzes Richard on how he was able to get the required information about the bomb out of the dying Eisen, who'd been found and was lying in a hospital bed wrapped up in bandages. All the other people that had tried to get the vital knowledge out of him hadn't been able to, but somehow Richard had, and– oh, they've gone… It was both funny and useful as a reminder that Tremayne, though he may have called a truce after 'The Interrogation' and seemed more open to letting his agents have their little 'games' without questioning them, still held suspicions on how they could achieve the seemingly impossible at worst, improbable at best, feats they carry out on a regular basis!
That Eisen is said to have died shortly after telling Richard the necessary information only puts an added tension on the danger of Von Splitz' plan - men have died to stop this. And it looks like more might do so, including our champions who have only twenty-five minutes in which to defuse this sensitive old bomb that Dr. Neimann has set to go off. I'm not sure the plan had that much merit: it seems to be as simple as setting the bomb off as a signal to Nazi forces still waiting to seize power, but I'm not sure what blowing up and irradiating a section of the country would do! Shock the nation and the world, I'm sure, but I have to wonder if Von Splitz was really just another insane man intent on revenge. He may have planned it all out meticulously in the years of his internment, but thinking about this one thing may have made his mind crack, especially as he seems to be living out an impossible fantasy, aided by his men who similarly have been unable to let the loss of the war go and move on with their lives. If Von Splitz' plan shows a lack of imagination I have multiple examples of the episode itself being full of odd details or mistakes as if Von Splitz had written it himself: maybe it was all a dream he was having in prison?
Look at Schultz' dead wife on the floor and you can see she's lying on some kind of blanket or rug arranged perfectly for her head, yet we didn't see her fall so neatly and certainly the murderers didn't give her any arrangement. In real terms it would have been to give the actress some comfort for her head to lie on. I've often pointed out the painted look of the backdrops they use to represent the great outdoors from internal sets, but the one you see through the narrow door at the Unterberg farm was very good… Until the villains all troop out and cast their shadows on it as they pass, somewhat shattering the illusion of distant hills! Then there's the post credits sequence which features a snowy landscape where children find a small unexploded missile just underneath the surface of the snow! Which means it would have just been lying on the ground… Tremayne himself does an impression of Super Mario, saying that "…As far as the intelligence service was-a concerned…" It was obviously Anthony Nicholls stumbling slightly in his memory of what he was saying, and it's only a small slip, but preserved for posterity forever. Another slip was actually my hearing as I thought his secretary, speaking on the intercom, said: "Yes, dear," and "Right, dear," but it was actually 'sir' said in a slightly heavy accent! The back projection used for some of the car scenes were definitely at fault: you can see a bright greenery to the grass and plants behind Craig as he drives to Frankfurt, but when we see the external view there are the remains of snow about, and it's gloomy.
There's also the moment when the Air Marshal returns to his large country house with Craig as prisoner (what, you mean one of the champions got captured?), and when they enter into the staircase room through the main doors you can see a backdrop for the outside with its blue sky, but above the door, just under the arch, you can see the set only goes so far and from the low camera angle a sliver of 'sky' can be seen! Also, when Craig and Richard make their finely synchronised leap through the glass windows into the room where Neimann is priming the bomb, you can see it's a couple of stunt men before it cuts to the actual actors fighting inside. And the episode ends with Richard tasting some of the syrup in the grease gun, offering it to his fellow champions, who all lick their finger - I wouldn't be doing that out of a grease gun that had just been emptied of a full cartridge of grease! Another thing is that it seems like most of the villains in the series prefer exactly the same wallpaper and room layout in their houses, but I guess that's just Sixties conformist design (nothing to do with them being the same sets, oh no!).
Something the episode gets right is including opportunities for the champions' abilities and powers to be used in the story, making them essential to the success of different stages of the mission, whereas in a few recent episodes they may as well just have been ordinary agents or spies, with no special advantage about them. As ever, the post credits scene is a good place to start as Richard is shovelling snow like a madman in his efforts to extricate a Land Rover from the deep snow. It's not that he seems particularly super when he notices the child banging (typical), the newly found missile against something, but he must have been some distance away, so to recognise what this unlikely item was, then cover the ground so quickly and hurl the explosive so far away, is a good demonstration of reaction time, speed and visual acuity - plus I love that we see him protect the child, huddled on the ground, while in-camera behind them the explosion erupts spectacularly! They probably filmed the sequence at the same time as the episode because you can see snow on the ground at other times during the story, too. It's a fun scene with all these children having great enjoyment of the snow, though I assume it was dubbed later as the voices don't sound quite right. I'm not sure whether the next power was Richard reading Eisen's lips or it was his sensitive hearing that could pick up the inaudible whispers of the dying patient, but it worked either way.
Richard has another loss of control while driving, which we've seen before, because of the sudden impression of Craig's pain as he's beaten while tied to a chair. It's not clear if Sharron senses it too, since he tells her they're really working Craig over, when more often it tended to be she that felt others' pain. Fortunately, Craig can take all the beatings the Marshal's man can administer, and once he's been left alone, presumed unconscious, he quickly gets up off the floor and crushes the chair he's attached to against the wall until it falls apart, then proceeds to snap the ropes keeping his hands behind his back. Earlier, Craig had been able to use his sensitivities in the investigation, running a finger over the notebook from which Von Splitz' man stole Schultz' address, and able to read the slight indentations left behind like Braille. Richard and Craig talk to each other in their special way when the former comes to rescue the latter - one interesting and more humorous use of this power comes when Sharron joins Richard and upon asking if he found Craig, Craig's disembodied voice replies: "He found me," butting in from a distance, though the line reading was a bit off because he emphasises the 'He,' when that's what Sharron asked! The fight in the staircase room when the two men take on all of the Marshal's gang, was well choreographed, but it's noteworthy for a couple of signature moves: firstly, Craig and Richard do their combined kicking in of the door to the room, and during the fight Craig seems to move with lightning speed across the room to grab one of the men who's taking up position with a gun on the stairs, then does the usual head over heels throw to chuck him over the bannister and onto a table.
I suppose the daring leap through glass windows could also be counted among their abilities, though any spy worth their syrup would do the same, unless it's Sharron - they keep her out of harm's way again and even instruct her to get out of the blast radius because they're not sure if they can prevent the detonation, though she refuses and chooses to stay to whatever end. Sir Charles Dyson is the man from Aldermaston who's an expert with such devices (it was fun to hear of somewhere not far from where I live), and gets on the phone to talk them through the defusing process, but with phone lines unreliable they end up having to rely on Craig's knowledge. It's great to hear something else about his life, that he had an uncle in a bomb disposal unit during the war (best line of the episode goes to Richard: "You should have brought him with you"), and they sometimes used a magnet to stop the timing mechanism on bombs, or if that was unavailable, liquid sugar, hence pumping the device with syrup. As a famous starship engineer once said, 'the more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to gum up the works,' or something to that effect! It's a happy ending, and fortunate the champions managed to prevent the blast since they had two more episodes still to fulfil on their contracts.
A lot of characters show up in this episode and there's a whole raft of speaking roles that don't get credited, surprisingly. At the top of the list would probably be Sir Charles, the bomb expert, since he has important input, even if he was cut off before he could do much. There's also the female doctor looking after Eisen, Detective Schneider who was with Eisen when Richard visited, and a German cyclist Craig asks for directions to the farm. Schultz' wife does little more than a dramatic scream, but at least she's on screen - Tremayne's secretary and the phone operator were both speaking roles only. And though the two main henchmen of Von Splitz were named as Kruger and Heiden, there was at least one more who had a visible role, pushing the car containing Eisen off on its merry way. Interestingly, the actor who played Neimann was called Wolf Frees, so maybe they got the idea for Eisen's first name from him? As I said, it's nice to have Tremayne remain a part of the story throughout, and this time, although there's no tag scene in his office, the defusing of the bomb was enough to round the episode out as it wasn't a quick scene unlike so many episodes that concluded so abruptly. We get to see some nice views of his office again, especially the far corner near the window when he walks under the window behind his desk to pour a drink, as well as the screen on the other side of the world map being used to show black and white film footage again during the briefing. Scenes of Von Splitz were cleverly mixed in with what appeared real filming from the time to give his historical role reality. It was also nice to see Craig and Richard using the office into the evening as you can see by the dark sky through the blinds.
Why not give this three stars, then? I still don't think it's really a good episode, in spite of strong moments of action, well integrated powers and more Tremayne, plus the greater impression of other countries than just Britain. I felt it could have been a lot better, as 'The Survivors' was, but we don't really get a good sense of a plan from Von Splitz and he doesn't seem like a man of rationality, nor an interestingly irrational one. He was a bit of a boring villain, if truth be told, his men doing all the dirty work while he just proudly strutted around, and neither was Dr. Neimann explored enough to make us feel great disgust for him. The characterisations were pretty light and if it hadn't been for the mostly silent presence of the henchmen I don't think the group's threat would have been very strong. With them there was a sense of brutality just itching to do something to someone. They could have used Anna, Eisen's daughter, better, but she didn't have much to do. The story was getting there, and certainly a change for the better compared with the last few episodes: one of the better not so good ones is how I'd sum it all up. I can't believe there's only two to go!
**
They did love Nazi villains on this series ('The Survivors,' 'The Search,' 'The Mission'), as well as last minute defusing of atomic bombs ('Happening,' 'The Dark Island,' and probably others I've forgotten!), but then you have to remember when the series was made: the late 1960s was well within living memory of both the Second World War and its devastating atomic conclusion, not to mention a tension of living under the Cold War between East and West, the latent threat of nuclear attack wiping out half the world at any moment. It's not surprising that there were so many films and TV series' that dealt with that public worry head-on in a fantasy setting, a sort of catharsis to make it less real perhaps. The psychology of choice of villains at different periods of TV history would make an essay in itself, but Air Marshal Von Splitz and his gang weren't the best thought out examples - after twenty-five years in a Russian prison he's finally been released, is tailed by the intelligence services and then promptly disappears. He was of the Luftwaffe High Command, head of The Special Operations and, we discover, has knowledge of a last ditch attempt to turn the tide of the war by dropping an atomic bomb in a V4 rocket, the payload of which was lost when the Heinkel plane carrying it had to be abandoned by the German air crew when it was shot down by a Royal Airforce Spitfire. It didn't go off so now he wants it back so he can win the last battle of the war!
You can tell that there was a thought that Nazi forces were still at large in the new Germany just waiting for the right time to strike, with Von Splitz' associate, Dr. Neimann saying the explosion will act as a signal to their compatriots to rise up. It plays on the idea that not every soldier loyal to the Nazis was routed out and put on trial, and I suppose from their hindsight of both World Wars it seemed highly possible that Germany could rise a third time to strike back at the world, but it shows that simple hindsight isn't always the best pointer for what will happen - many other factors would have had to be considered, not just the events of the Wars. But it was an easy sell to a Sixties TV audience and it gives our champions an evil to face. And the Marshal is an evil man, as are his stone-faced henchmen and Herr Doktor in the half-moon specs. You can imagine him being the type to carry out experiments at concentration camps, and the men have a dangerous atmosphere around them as if violence is only a single word of command away. They're the typical Nazi soldier: cruel, cold and belligerent. We see the contrast between them and other Germans that had moved on after the war, with Flight Lieutenant Wolf Eisen, in charge of the mission to drop that bomb, and his navigator, Gerhardt Schultz, both seeming normal. The first has a daughter and is still active in the service, and shows courage in his demands to know what's going on from his kidnappers, while the second is a genial host at Unterberg Farm in Weltzbach, a town near Frankfurt.
When Von Splitz decides Eisen knows too much, he orders him dealt with, and similarly, when they've got all the information they can coax out of Schultz that the bomb must have fallen into a lake near Helmstadt, playing on his goodwill, saying they're from the government tasked with finding the bomb before the casing corrodes, people's lives at risk, they promptly and mercilessly shoot him in his own house, his wife has time to see it and scream in terror before she, too, is murdered in cold blood! They don't stint on the violence in this particular episode, as they'd done a few times before on the series - the shot of the failed experimental superhuman from 'The Experiment,' writhing in agony when he's shot in camera, springs to mind. Craig is tied to a chair and punched in the face, slapped in the face and chopped on the back of the neck by either Kruger or Heiden, and it's all right there, the camera fairly close in so you see every jolt and snap of his head. In that case it doesn't make quite as much impact because he just bounces back up like rubber, his superior endurance allowing him to mock his brutal captor whose knuckles feel the wear more than Craig's face! There's also a right royal rumble in the staircase room (again! - as soon as I saw how it was laid out with all those tables covered in sheets, I knew there was going to be a big fight), with Craig and Richard taking on the Marshal and all his men rather effectively.
There was plenty of action, but also a fair amount of detective work, and while I could have wished for more Sharron in the episode, and more of the trio working in the same vicinity, we do get that by the end and it's good to see them all off adding to the data they need to work out what's going on. As Craig sums up so deadpan after Tremayne's opening briefing, they don't know where Von Splitz is, they think he might have a secret, but they don't know what it is, and it's all rather bemusing. That changes once it becomes known that an atomic bomb is the object of the villain's intentions. The locales are once again more than just England, although Sharron and Richard do pay a visit there to meet Tom Brooks, the pilot who originally shot down the plane carrying the bomb, and which he realises through that action he effectively won the war singlehanded! The main place of action is Germany as the Air Marshal's gang track down the bomb, eventually finding it underwater in what was excellent use of stock footage. Indeed, the use of stock was rather accomplished as I sometimes found myself wondering what had been filmed for the series and what was already existing footage they'd retrieved. The biggest source of this was the murder attempt of Eisen, left unconscious in a car, then rolled down a hill. Just as in the opening to 'Mission: Impossible 2' when the pilot of a plane comes to just in time to see a closeup view of an onrushing mountain, Eisen awakes to the horror of flying over a cliff, the car smashing and rolling. The way the scenes of the car being sent on its way are cut with the actual flinging of a car over the edge after it had raced down this steep hill, genuinely made me wonder if they'd filmed it themselves, and I couldn't tell if it was a scale model or a real car the way it had been shot, though the DVD booklet gave away its origins as reuse from 'The Baron.'
If I'd seen that series then no doubt it would have taken away from this episode to realise they'd only reused it, but it was new to me and it looked very dramatic and intense! The lake seen in this episode appeared suspiciously similar to that in 'The Survivors,' so it wasn't surprising to learn that the former episode had actually been the previous episode shot and that, again according to the handy DVD booklet, they had combined location shooting on both episodes. So it really was the same lake, although I thought some of the scenes on the shore looked as if they'd been created in an elaborate 'greens' set (in other words, getting all the plants and trees in to make it look like a natural environment), with all this fake smoke to create atmosphere, but which only served to make it look like a smoke machine had belched out, or someone had lit a massive cigar nearby that had filled the area! The underwater filming of the bomb and divers around it was also something that looked very specific, though it didn't fit quite right with what they were saying about having to free it, as the scene shows a diver cutting into the casing or welding something to it rather than setting it free from anything.
As well as getting back to a slightly more international feel, another thing that improves the episode is the way Tremayne is integrated with the unfolding events, coordinating his agents and other parties via the telephone at his desk, in his best telephone voice. Sometimes you do get the impression of a one-sided conversation and that he had to do the script without someone responding, but he does it so well and it's just good to have the old guy involved when in too many episodes he's had only one scene of briefing or a humorous tag at the end of a story. It was a real wasted opportunity not to have him in on the action more often as they did in a handful of episodes, his presence always adds to scenes. Strangely, the frequent time in an episode when he puzzles over some piece of good fortune his agents have had, or some unexplained discrepancy in time or reasonable expectations, comes in the middle of the episode: he quizzes Richard on how he was able to get the required information about the bomb out of the dying Eisen, who'd been found and was lying in a hospital bed wrapped up in bandages. All the other people that had tried to get the vital knowledge out of him hadn't been able to, but somehow Richard had, and– oh, they've gone… It was both funny and useful as a reminder that Tremayne, though he may have called a truce after 'The Interrogation' and seemed more open to letting his agents have their little 'games' without questioning them, still held suspicions on how they could achieve the seemingly impossible at worst, improbable at best, feats they carry out on a regular basis!
That Eisen is said to have died shortly after telling Richard the necessary information only puts an added tension on the danger of Von Splitz' plan - men have died to stop this. And it looks like more might do so, including our champions who have only twenty-five minutes in which to defuse this sensitive old bomb that Dr. Neimann has set to go off. I'm not sure the plan had that much merit: it seems to be as simple as setting the bomb off as a signal to Nazi forces still waiting to seize power, but I'm not sure what blowing up and irradiating a section of the country would do! Shock the nation and the world, I'm sure, but I have to wonder if Von Splitz was really just another insane man intent on revenge. He may have planned it all out meticulously in the years of his internment, but thinking about this one thing may have made his mind crack, especially as he seems to be living out an impossible fantasy, aided by his men who similarly have been unable to let the loss of the war go and move on with their lives. If Von Splitz' plan shows a lack of imagination I have multiple examples of the episode itself being full of odd details or mistakes as if Von Splitz had written it himself: maybe it was all a dream he was having in prison?
Look at Schultz' dead wife on the floor and you can see she's lying on some kind of blanket or rug arranged perfectly for her head, yet we didn't see her fall so neatly and certainly the murderers didn't give her any arrangement. In real terms it would have been to give the actress some comfort for her head to lie on. I've often pointed out the painted look of the backdrops they use to represent the great outdoors from internal sets, but the one you see through the narrow door at the Unterberg farm was very good… Until the villains all troop out and cast their shadows on it as they pass, somewhat shattering the illusion of distant hills! Then there's the post credits sequence which features a snowy landscape where children find a small unexploded missile just underneath the surface of the snow! Which means it would have just been lying on the ground… Tremayne himself does an impression of Super Mario, saying that "…As far as the intelligence service was-a concerned…" It was obviously Anthony Nicholls stumbling slightly in his memory of what he was saying, and it's only a small slip, but preserved for posterity forever. Another slip was actually my hearing as I thought his secretary, speaking on the intercom, said: "Yes, dear," and "Right, dear," but it was actually 'sir' said in a slightly heavy accent! The back projection used for some of the car scenes were definitely at fault: you can see a bright greenery to the grass and plants behind Craig as he drives to Frankfurt, but when we see the external view there are the remains of snow about, and it's gloomy.
There's also the moment when the Air Marshal returns to his large country house with Craig as prisoner (what, you mean one of the champions got captured?), and when they enter into the staircase room through the main doors you can see a backdrop for the outside with its blue sky, but above the door, just under the arch, you can see the set only goes so far and from the low camera angle a sliver of 'sky' can be seen! Also, when Craig and Richard make their finely synchronised leap through the glass windows into the room where Neimann is priming the bomb, you can see it's a couple of stunt men before it cuts to the actual actors fighting inside. And the episode ends with Richard tasting some of the syrup in the grease gun, offering it to his fellow champions, who all lick their finger - I wouldn't be doing that out of a grease gun that had just been emptied of a full cartridge of grease! Another thing is that it seems like most of the villains in the series prefer exactly the same wallpaper and room layout in their houses, but I guess that's just Sixties conformist design (nothing to do with them being the same sets, oh no!).
Something the episode gets right is including opportunities for the champions' abilities and powers to be used in the story, making them essential to the success of different stages of the mission, whereas in a few recent episodes they may as well just have been ordinary agents or spies, with no special advantage about them. As ever, the post credits scene is a good place to start as Richard is shovelling snow like a madman in his efforts to extricate a Land Rover from the deep snow. It's not that he seems particularly super when he notices the child banging (typical), the newly found missile against something, but he must have been some distance away, so to recognise what this unlikely item was, then cover the ground so quickly and hurl the explosive so far away, is a good demonstration of reaction time, speed and visual acuity - plus I love that we see him protect the child, huddled on the ground, while in-camera behind them the explosion erupts spectacularly! They probably filmed the sequence at the same time as the episode because you can see snow on the ground at other times during the story, too. It's a fun scene with all these children having great enjoyment of the snow, though I assume it was dubbed later as the voices don't sound quite right. I'm not sure whether the next power was Richard reading Eisen's lips or it was his sensitive hearing that could pick up the inaudible whispers of the dying patient, but it worked either way.
Richard has another loss of control while driving, which we've seen before, because of the sudden impression of Craig's pain as he's beaten while tied to a chair. It's not clear if Sharron senses it too, since he tells her they're really working Craig over, when more often it tended to be she that felt others' pain. Fortunately, Craig can take all the beatings the Marshal's man can administer, and once he's been left alone, presumed unconscious, he quickly gets up off the floor and crushes the chair he's attached to against the wall until it falls apart, then proceeds to snap the ropes keeping his hands behind his back. Earlier, Craig had been able to use his sensitivities in the investigation, running a finger over the notebook from which Von Splitz' man stole Schultz' address, and able to read the slight indentations left behind like Braille. Richard and Craig talk to each other in their special way when the former comes to rescue the latter - one interesting and more humorous use of this power comes when Sharron joins Richard and upon asking if he found Craig, Craig's disembodied voice replies: "He found me," butting in from a distance, though the line reading was a bit off because he emphasises the 'He,' when that's what Sharron asked! The fight in the staircase room when the two men take on all of the Marshal's gang, was well choreographed, but it's noteworthy for a couple of signature moves: firstly, Craig and Richard do their combined kicking in of the door to the room, and during the fight Craig seems to move with lightning speed across the room to grab one of the men who's taking up position with a gun on the stairs, then does the usual head over heels throw to chuck him over the bannister and onto a table.
I suppose the daring leap through glass windows could also be counted among their abilities, though any spy worth their syrup would do the same, unless it's Sharron - they keep her out of harm's way again and even instruct her to get out of the blast radius because they're not sure if they can prevent the detonation, though she refuses and chooses to stay to whatever end. Sir Charles Dyson is the man from Aldermaston who's an expert with such devices (it was fun to hear of somewhere not far from where I live), and gets on the phone to talk them through the defusing process, but with phone lines unreliable they end up having to rely on Craig's knowledge. It's great to hear something else about his life, that he had an uncle in a bomb disposal unit during the war (best line of the episode goes to Richard: "You should have brought him with you"), and they sometimes used a magnet to stop the timing mechanism on bombs, or if that was unavailable, liquid sugar, hence pumping the device with syrup. As a famous starship engineer once said, 'the more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to gum up the works,' or something to that effect! It's a happy ending, and fortunate the champions managed to prevent the blast since they had two more episodes still to fulfil on their contracts.
A lot of characters show up in this episode and there's a whole raft of speaking roles that don't get credited, surprisingly. At the top of the list would probably be Sir Charles, the bomb expert, since he has important input, even if he was cut off before he could do much. There's also the female doctor looking after Eisen, Detective Schneider who was with Eisen when Richard visited, and a German cyclist Craig asks for directions to the farm. Schultz' wife does little more than a dramatic scream, but at least she's on screen - Tremayne's secretary and the phone operator were both speaking roles only. And though the two main henchmen of Von Splitz were named as Kruger and Heiden, there was at least one more who had a visible role, pushing the car containing Eisen off on its merry way. Interestingly, the actor who played Neimann was called Wolf Frees, so maybe they got the idea for Eisen's first name from him? As I said, it's nice to have Tremayne remain a part of the story throughout, and this time, although there's no tag scene in his office, the defusing of the bomb was enough to round the episode out as it wasn't a quick scene unlike so many episodes that concluded so abruptly. We get to see some nice views of his office again, especially the far corner near the window when he walks under the window behind his desk to pour a drink, as well as the screen on the other side of the world map being used to show black and white film footage again during the briefing. Scenes of Von Splitz were cleverly mixed in with what appeared real filming from the time to give his historical role reality. It was also nice to see Craig and Richard using the office into the evening as you can see by the dark sky through the blinds.
Why not give this three stars, then? I still don't think it's really a good episode, in spite of strong moments of action, well integrated powers and more Tremayne, plus the greater impression of other countries than just Britain. I felt it could have been a lot better, as 'The Survivors' was, but we don't really get a good sense of a plan from Von Splitz and he doesn't seem like a man of rationality, nor an interestingly irrational one. He was a bit of a boring villain, if truth be told, his men doing all the dirty work while he just proudly strutted around, and neither was Dr. Neimann explored enough to make us feel great disgust for him. The characterisations were pretty light and if it hadn't been for the mostly silent presence of the henchmen I don't think the group's threat would have been very strong. With them there was a sense of brutality just itching to do something to someone. They could have used Anna, Eisen's daughter, better, but she didn't have much to do. The story was getting there, and certainly a change for the better compared with the last few episodes: one of the better not so good ones is how I'd sum it all up. I can't believe there's only two to go!
**
Conquests of The Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood
DOSBox, Conquests of The Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood (1991) game
I can't believe I never found this before, but I downloaded loads of games off Abandonia years ago and went through it recently looking for something deep, but accessible, and this point-and-click adventure was ideal in both respects. It has attractive, painterly graphics, very good sound effects and suitable music, as well as a welcoming interface, easy to use, with a varied story including little mini-games to add to the immersion in this world (first person archery, ingenious point-and-click 2D fighting with a quarterstaff and the enjoyable, and properly antique (as in centuries, if not millennia old), board game, Nine Men's Morris). There's a depth to the gameplay with a score that can decrease as well as increase as you make decisions and approach your tasks, which makes you feel like you have an effect on the world, plus you get disguises to collect and store in your home cave that gives you something to return to for other options, rather than just having one persona and one set of clothing or items as in most games of this kind. It's well judged so as not to annoy, allowing the player to adjust the speed of the game to suit instead of waiting for Robin Hood to wander across the screens at his own pace, plus an excellent map that gives you the option to jump to key locations or take the scenic route.
Quite the pleasant surprise, I must say, and if I'd played it back in the day I'd probably rank it up there with 'Monkey Island' and others of that ilk. Even through today's eyes it's more than merely functional, working software, it's downright enjoyable and my only caveat would be that the humour is sometimes a little rude, but otherwise it has a fine and funny air with a good story and a strong sense of you and your Merry Men's band of brotherhood and friendship. For example, at the end of each day when the latest task has been accomplished you automatically gather with your men to discuss and muse upon the developments that have happened, before starting each new morning back in your cave where it's up to you where to go next for a clue on how to progress. Sometimes there'll be someone waiting outside to give a hint, other times it's up to Robin to visit the various haunts, and only in very few cases did I find myself wandering bemused in the woods. When you first meet Marion or when you have to catch a wood pixie, or times when you have to encounter and hide from the Sheriff of Nottingham's men, these were the only times when I found out what to do by accident, and everything else is logical and well laid out. Although I could get stuck on occasion, it was never for days on end, there was always a little something to do to put me back on track, yet it was certainly fulfilling when the puzzles were solved.
It really had the best of all worlds: nicely animated characters and environments, not too much pointing and clicking necessary, no laborious tasks designed to cynically extend the game's lifespan - if anything, that's one of its greatest strengths with the high score and number of outlaws available at the end an incentive to play through again to improve your stats. I'm not sure if the amount of ransom money to be raised could be increased, I think that was just there to serve the story. It may be that players might just cheat a little and use earlier saves when anything doesn't go as well as they wish - for example, a couple of times each of your men give you a possible plan in which to do something and each has different levels of success in terms of men lost and points earned, but even then there are little asides that encourage exploration and discovery to improve your score, such as talking to everyone at the town fair - if you do so you find beggars you can donate money to and this is another thing that will boost your score. It really was very well written and inventive (even the woman that wrote it gives herself a cameo, which was amusing as she accidentally takes away some of your points before giving them back, just to mess with you!), from beginning to end.
I think accessibility is a gold standard of gaming, especially in older games from the last century when production values were lower and often it was about making rock hard gaming experiences that you'd have to master to get the most out of. Point-and-click adventures were a different prospect in general because it wasn't about quick reactions (though they help in the well integrated arcade sections of this game), but lateral thinking and experimentation without falling into trial and error. Judging that accurately is tough, but here it was expertly handled. The action games spice things up and the environments keep the game varied in spite of its forest setting and I can only imagine what a boon it was not to have to walk through every screen to get to places and have to go through all that disk-swapping back in the day! Even the ending where everyone gets full justice under the return of the King is a lovely finale to cap off the adventure, and very satisfying to see the goodies and baddies awarded their just deserts. About the only way it could have been improved is if I'd played it twenty to twenty-five years ago and was coming back to it with nostalgic eyes, as I'm sure it would have been one of my favourite games had I played it on the Amiga. A real little gem of a surprise find in my DOSBox folder as I never really go in expecting much. For the record, my final tally was 22 Outlaws left alive and a score of 5950 out of 7325, so as I mentioned, it even has that ingenious replayability of making better choices to encourage another run through!
***
I can't believe I never found this before, but I downloaded loads of games off Abandonia years ago and went through it recently looking for something deep, but accessible, and this point-and-click adventure was ideal in both respects. It has attractive, painterly graphics, very good sound effects and suitable music, as well as a welcoming interface, easy to use, with a varied story including little mini-games to add to the immersion in this world (first person archery, ingenious point-and-click 2D fighting with a quarterstaff and the enjoyable, and properly antique (as in centuries, if not millennia old), board game, Nine Men's Morris). There's a depth to the gameplay with a score that can decrease as well as increase as you make decisions and approach your tasks, which makes you feel like you have an effect on the world, plus you get disguises to collect and store in your home cave that gives you something to return to for other options, rather than just having one persona and one set of clothing or items as in most games of this kind. It's well judged so as not to annoy, allowing the player to adjust the speed of the game to suit instead of waiting for Robin Hood to wander across the screens at his own pace, plus an excellent map that gives you the option to jump to key locations or take the scenic route.
Quite the pleasant surprise, I must say, and if I'd played it back in the day I'd probably rank it up there with 'Monkey Island' and others of that ilk. Even through today's eyes it's more than merely functional, working software, it's downright enjoyable and my only caveat would be that the humour is sometimes a little rude, but otherwise it has a fine and funny air with a good story and a strong sense of you and your Merry Men's band of brotherhood and friendship. For example, at the end of each day when the latest task has been accomplished you automatically gather with your men to discuss and muse upon the developments that have happened, before starting each new morning back in your cave where it's up to you where to go next for a clue on how to progress. Sometimes there'll be someone waiting outside to give a hint, other times it's up to Robin to visit the various haunts, and only in very few cases did I find myself wandering bemused in the woods. When you first meet Marion or when you have to catch a wood pixie, or times when you have to encounter and hide from the Sheriff of Nottingham's men, these were the only times when I found out what to do by accident, and everything else is logical and well laid out. Although I could get stuck on occasion, it was never for days on end, there was always a little something to do to put me back on track, yet it was certainly fulfilling when the puzzles were solved.
It really had the best of all worlds: nicely animated characters and environments, not too much pointing and clicking necessary, no laborious tasks designed to cynically extend the game's lifespan - if anything, that's one of its greatest strengths with the high score and number of outlaws available at the end an incentive to play through again to improve your stats. I'm not sure if the amount of ransom money to be raised could be increased, I think that was just there to serve the story. It may be that players might just cheat a little and use earlier saves when anything doesn't go as well as they wish - for example, a couple of times each of your men give you a possible plan in which to do something and each has different levels of success in terms of men lost and points earned, but even then there are little asides that encourage exploration and discovery to improve your score, such as talking to everyone at the town fair - if you do so you find beggars you can donate money to and this is another thing that will boost your score. It really was very well written and inventive (even the woman that wrote it gives herself a cameo, which was amusing as she accidentally takes away some of your points before giving them back, just to mess with you!), from beginning to end.
I think accessibility is a gold standard of gaming, especially in older games from the last century when production values were lower and often it was about making rock hard gaming experiences that you'd have to master to get the most out of. Point-and-click adventures were a different prospect in general because it wasn't about quick reactions (though they help in the well integrated arcade sections of this game), but lateral thinking and experimentation without falling into trial and error. Judging that accurately is tough, but here it was expertly handled. The action games spice things up and the environments keep the game varied in spite of its forest setting and I can only imagine what a boon it was not to have to walk through every screen to get to places and have to go through all that disk-swapping back in the day! Even the ending where everyone gets full justice under the return of the King is a lovely finale to cap off the adventure, and very satisfying to see the goodies and baddies awarded their just deserts. About the only way it could have been improved is if I'd played it twenty to twenty-five years ago and was coming back to it with nostalgic eyes, as I'm sure it would have been one of my favourite games had I played it on the Amiga. A real little gem of a surprise find in my DOSBox folder as I never really go in expecting much. For the record, my final tally was 22 Outlaws left alive and a score of 5950 out of 7325, so as I mentioned, it even has that ingenious replayability of making better choices to encourage another run through!
***
Tuesday, 26 February 2019
Arthur's Mantle
DVD, Stargate SG-1 S9 (Arthur's Mantle)
What I want to know is what happened to Tony Todd? The end of the story comes so swiftly that we're left hanging - the guy couldn't stay in his devastated village, his people had all been massacred, so where was he going to go? What was he going to do? It's a bit of a big plot thread to leave so completely bereft of explanation, and unless the next episode shows him at the SGC it's going to annoy me! That's the thing with serialisation: you're never sure if something was left hanging to increase anticipation for the next episode, or was an oversight in the narrative. It was good to see the Sodan and their leader again, even if the B-story (or was it the A-story, I'm not sure on that count), conveniently allowed Colonel Mitchell to assist Teal'c so usefully. It's an invisible people story, one that's been done before, even on 'SG-1,' and was probably best exampled in 'TNG' with 'The Next Phase.' It's the same thing here: a couple of members of the team or crew find themselves out of phase with our dimension and have to deal with a threat that is on that same plane of existence to help their team-/crew-mates. It's not as groundbreaking or even impressive effects-wise as that old 'TNG' corker, but like most recycled Trek stories 'SG-1' likes to use, they do a fine job of translating it to their own style and characters. It's more about Carter and Mitchell's irritation with Dr. Lee, rising even more when he accidentally puts Daniel in the cloak, too, by his boffin meddling (with a fun 'Honey, I Shrunk The Kids' reference!).
The premise is that Carter's found an Ancient device that belonged to Merlin - he was an Ancient that worked on a weapon to defeat The Ori because the other Ancients couldn't be bothered with worrying about them, so he hid it in another dimension. It's taken a long time for the King Arthur mythology that opened the season in its first couple of episodes to return, they really haven't explored it, so if nothing else it begins to bring the season full circle, even if, like Mitchell being invisible just when Teal'c could use some help against an enemy that can turn invisible, it's all very convenient that they find it at this stage. For The Ori are playing dirty, or dirtier, anyway - they turned Volnek into a ravening, crazy man who killed all his people mercilessly and had become no better than a beast. It all goes a bit 'Predator' with Teal'c stalking through the forest like a black Schwarzenegger, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this was their chief influence for the planet-side story. It doesn't entirely work - although the Sodan are supposed to be the warriors of warriors, and their culling by only one of their altered brethren should send a chill up the spine, there isn't a lot of atmosphere there, you don't get a foreboding atmosphere that this violently insane monster is going to appear (or not appear, since he's invisible), at any moment to slaughter Stargate personnel, and there isn't really an attempt to put Teal'c in jeopardy so he really needs Mitchell - it's more like the Colonel shows up and Teal'c sees the logic of letting him lure Volnek into the tripwire of some claymores because he can't be injured.
Whenever out of phase stories occur, doesn't matter the series, there's always a major logic flaw that it's difficult to overlook and makes absolutely no sense: in other words, if they can't interact with anything, they can't touch, eat, drink, etc, then why can they stand on solid ground? Why don't they sink right through the Earth or whatever planet they're on, or even worse, float around? What forces have sway over them, because if they're in some other dimension why would gravity keep them to the floor, and why would the ground even be the same? Obviously you have to ignore that side of things and they don't even address it, even in the few moments of approaching technobabble when either Carter or Lee begin to explain something and it's quickly cut through by someone else because it's not really relevant, they just have to deal with the consequences rather than explore or understand the scientific theories behind the wonders, unlike with Trek where they would positively enjoy spouting their jargon and going all the way down the rabbit hole. Either way works, and at least they do show that some of the characters understand it, but like Mitchell, the audience doesn't necessarily need to, so it's fine.
It's sad to think we won't get any more Sodan stories as they were a fine addition to the series, unless they opt to allow Tony Todd to hang around at the SGC, or even better, join SG-1, which would be even better, but that's never going to happen. I fully expect not to hear anything more about him. With only a couple of episodes left in which to deal with The Ori threat, assuming they don't keep them for the final season, which they may well do, I wonder how they're going to stymie the evil plot of this 'unstoppable' enemy, though my money would be on the newly discovered weapon of Merlin… I just hope the team gets to work together, because although it's good to see Carter trying to assist Dr. Jackson from the other dimension with how the device works, and the same can be said for Mitchell's attempt to help Teal'c on the Sodan's world, it's generally better when they're all working on the same problem together. I will say that once again they managed to give the episode the feel of older seasons where they'd encounter some sci-fi staple device and have a knockabout trying to get out of the fix they were in. Like Trek, they'd got to the point where they could cite several episodes (like the crystal skull or Anubis' cloak), where similar events occurred before. Close to being a satisfying story, but the wrap-up's too quick and the device wasn't fully explored because they're saving it for more episodes, I suspect. One fun little thing was seeing Doug Wert as the leader of the SG team that accompanies Teal'c on the Sodan mission - he played Wesley Crusher's Dad, Jack, on 'TNG'!
**
What I want to know is what happened to Tony Todd? The end of the story comes so swiftly that we're left hanging - the guy couldn't stay in his devastated village, his people had all been massacred, so where was he going to go? What was he going to do? It's a bit of a big plot thread to leave so completely bereft of explanation, and unless the next episode shows him at the SGC it's going to annoy me! That's the thing with serialisation: you're never sure if something was left hanging to increase anticipation for the next episode, or was an oversight in the narrative. It was good to see the Sodan and their leader again, even if the B-story (or was it the A-story, I'm not sure on that count), conveniently allowed Colonel Mitchell to assist Teal'c so usefully. It's an invisible people story, one that's been done before, even on 'SG-1,' and was probably best exampled in 'TNG' with 'The Next Phase.' It's the same thing here: a couple of members of the team or crew find themselves out of phase with our dimension and have to deal with a threat that is on that same plane of existence to help their team-/crew-mates. It's not as groundbreaking or even impressive effects-wise as that old 'TNG' corker, but like most recycled Trek stories 'SG-1' likes to use, they do a fine job of translating it to their own style and characters. It's more about Carter and Mitchell's irritation with Dr. Lee, rising even more when he accidentally puts Daniel in the cloak, too, by his boffin meddling (with a fun 'Honey, I Shrunk The Kids' reference!).
The premise is that Carter's found an Ancient device that belonged to Merlin - he was an Ancient that worked on a weapon to defeat The Ori because the other Ancients couldn't be bothered with worrying about them, so he hid it in another dimension. It's taken a long time for the King Arthur mythology that opened the season in its first couple of episodes to return, they really haven't explored it, so if nothing else it begins to bring the season full circle, even if, like Mitchell being invisible just when Teal'c could use some help against an enemy that can turn invisible, it's all very convenient that they find it at this stage. For The Ori are playing dirty, or dirtier, anyway - they turned Volnek into a ravening, crazy man who killed all his people mercilessly and had become no better than a beast. It all goes a bit 'Predator' with Teal'c stalking through the forest like a black Schwarzenegger, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this was their chief influence for the planet-side story. It doesn't entirely work - although the Sodan are supposed to be the warriors of warriors, and their culling by only one of their altered brethren should send a chill up the spine, there isn't a lot of atmosphere there, you don't get a foreboding atmosphere that this violently insane monster is going to appear (or not appear, since he's invisible), at any moment to slaughter Stargate personnel, and there isn't really an attempt to put Teal'c in jeopardy so he really needs Mitchell - it's more like the Colonel shows up and Teal'c sees the logic of letting him lure Volnek into the tripwire of some claymores because he can't be injured.
Whenever out of phase stories occur, doesn't matter the series, there's always a major logic flaw that it's difficult to overlook and makes absolutely no sense: in other words, if they can't interact with anything, they can't touch, eat, drink, etc, then why can they stand on solid ground? Why don't they sink right through the Earth or whatever planet they're on, or even worse, float around? What forces have sway over them, because if they're in some other dimension why would gravity keep them to the floor, and why would the ground even be the same? Obviously you have to ignore that side of things and they don't even address it, even in the few moments of approaching technobabble when either Carter or Lee begin to explain something and it's quickly cut through by someone else because it's not really relevant, they just have to deal with the consequences rather than explore or understand the scientific theories behind the wonders, unlike with Trek where they would positively enjoy spouting their jargon and going all the way down the rabbit hole. Either way works, and at least they do show that some of the characters understand it, but like Mitchell, the audience doesn't necessarily need to, so it's fine.
It's sad to think we won't get any more Sodan stories as they were a fine addition to the series, unless they opt to allow Tony Todd to hang around at the SGC, or even better, join SG-1, which would be even better, but that's never going to happen. I fully expect not to hear anything more about him. With only a couple of episodes left in which to deal with The Ori threat, assuming they don't keep them for the final season, which they may well do, I wonder how they're going to stymie the evil plot of this 'unstoppable' enemy, though my money would be on the newly discovered weapon of Merlin… I just hope the team gets to work together, because although it's good to see Carter trying to assist Dr. Jackson from the other dimension with how the device works, and the same can be said for Mitchell's attempt to help Teal'c on the Sodan's world, it's generally better when they're all working on the same problem together. I will say that once again they managed to give the episode the feel of older seasons where they'd encounter some sci-fi staple device and have a knockabout trying to get out of the fix they were in. Like Trek, they'd got to the point where they could cite several episodes (like the crystal skull or Anubis' cloak), where similar events occurred before. Close to being a satisfying story, but the wrap-up's too quick and the device wasn't fully explored because they're saving it for more episodes, I suspect. One fun little thing was seeing Doug Wert as the leader of the SG team that accompanies Teal'c on the Sodan mission - he played Wesley Crusher's Dad, Jack, on 'TNG'!
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