DVD, Stargate SG-1 S10 (The Quest)
Five virtues, five puzzles, and a band of questers searching for a legendary item? Yes, this is closer to the 'SG-1' that works, helped by having the team all together and forming a party of adventurers with Baal and Vala's daughter, Ori girl (first disguised as the old man of the village). It's still a bit daft with plot points such as Vala initiating the next stage of the quest by having a dream and rushing in to tell Daniel how to find out where they should go, although that in particular was later explained by the Orici sending this dream to her Mother to get SG-1 on their way because she can't get this thing, whatever it was called. For the most part it's a mix of Indiana Jones and the Mines of Moria from 'The Lord of The Rings,' and the budget was clearly spent on this elaborate cave system and all the extras in their favourite Medieval village set (including the female bar woman who I recognised as Tina Greer's ill-fated Mother from 'Smallville' Season 1's 'X-Ray,' having only watched that episode in the last year or so!). Sometimes it gets it dead right, as in the great sci-fi setup of a maze made out of a time distortion which they can see has trapped a bunch of people who are moving at an exponentially slower rate - I'm pleased to say I thought of the solution as soon as they lost Carter's Game Boy Advance to guide them: it was as simple as throwing sand into the air and where it doesn't fall you'd know the distortion was there. They used stones instead, but that was probably cheaper than showing all the fine particles of sand hovering in the air, so I'll let them off.
The old man turning out to be the Orici in disguise came as a surprise, but I just enjoyed them having some extra people along on the expedition, even if Baal was superfluous. He must have been very bored indeed to still be muttering to himself how he was going to get those servants who had run off leaving him in the trap for three days! I did wonder as soon as they mentioned a dragon guarding this item for which they search, that you can't say something like that and wimp out, so credit that they did at least try to do a passable dragon on a TV CGI budget. But it's clearly going to be a hologram like so much that was in the caves. I can guess a chunk of budget went on bringing that to life, too, though I'd have preferred to see a partially hidden puppet as that might have been more realistic, especially when I have visions of both 'The Lord of The Rings' and the awful 'Hobbit' films in my mind, which they can't compete with on the visuals front. It's one of those stories that would have been better just concentrating on the characters and a good idea - there was a day when that time distortion puzzle would have been the entirety of the episode, and that was enough, but now everything has to be bigger, fate of the galaxy stuff and all that. It's still reassuringly shaky in traditional TV terms, what with the people 'frozen' in time that you can see moving ever so slightly. I always wish they could just lock an image off and not rely on actors having to do pesky stuff such as breathing, which gives the illusion away!
It is good to have them all together working as a team, and it is good to have them messing about in a forest or underground caves as we've seen so often before. Maybe because it was a two-parter is why each virtue has to be worked out and I did respect Daniel for having the faith to walk through the blazing wall of fire. At the same time I'm not sure what it was all about - I know they're trying to locate this little red ball thing, but how it helps against The Ori, I didn't catch. And when the central conflict has faded into the background for me it's hard to really get excited about a series. It's typical Final Season Syndrome: a successful series lasts long enough to outlive its creative powers, not that 'Stargate' was ever one of the greats, but in these last few episodes there have been more misses than hits, and the characters haven't progressed. I don't know, I can't quite put my finger on why it's only partially working, a combination of things such as Vala stealing too much of the limelight, Mitchell not being able to fill the shoes O'Neill left behind (as much as he's a likeable guy), and the three originals just doing the same old, same old as if no time ever passes - I suppose to some degree that's what you want, to keep coming back to this world of SG-1, but the heart seems to have dropped out of it and no amount of effects or sets can rectify that.
**
Tuesday, 3 November 2020
Rogue Planet (2)
DVD, Enterprise S1 (Rogue Planet) (2)
Hardly one of the most original ideas to deal with hunters of sentient beings, since that had been done very well in previous Trek, most notably the Hirogen in 'Voyager' and The Hunters, who weren't known as anything else, in 'DS9,' chasing Tosk across the galaxy. If they were going to revive the concept then they needed to come up with a really good new way of looking at it. And they didn't. This swoops in as a late contender for worst episode of the season, taking the current top spot that 'Fusion' was sharing with 'Breaking The Ice' just last week. It's not bad, in the sense that it isn't broken like many episodes of 'DSC' are, but it is rather perfunctory, an amalgam of previous ideas that in themselves were worth exploring, but merely hang together in this story, making the individual parts more than the sum of their total: hunters hunting on a hunt! Mysterious, flighty woman that only Captain Archer sees! Planet floating untethered through the darkness of space! Perpetual night! All manner of beasties! Shapeshifters! That last one says it all, as the shapeshifters of 'DS9' created much fascination, and when you add to that their own planet of residence was also a rogue then you see where that idea came from. As I said, alien hunters have been done before, and seeing a mysterious woman that at first won't stop to be questioned was also an intriguing story point previously used (off the top of my head there was that episode with Sisko, 'Second Sight,' and probably others).
I always love the weird episodes where you're not quite sure what is reality, so this could have been one of those, but failed on that count, even though assisted by the production design that made such a realistic dense jungle set, and taken further by the extremely low light levels - it was so realistic you could barely see anything! That's a slight problem, because a sense of danger and threat was never conjured up, so there was also never any concern over anyone heading off into the foliage. My impression was of a pretty safe place without any serious dangers from the animal life, these butch hunting guys never concerned, and even when one is seriously injured the atmosphere within the episode never reached a tenth of what it should have been. I don't know why such an experienced Director as Allan Kroeker was unable to pull it off, he'd achieved great things in Trek's past, but he wasn't helped by the story being so weak. Maybe that's the wrong word, those individual parts could have been crafted into something great, but we don't get to know any of the crew better as a result of the events, and so they are merely scenes of treading water before we get to the reveals of what's going on. The series had proved how well it could pull off alien planets and an atmosphere of terror and horror in 'Strange New World,' a similar story of exploring an alien world, and the conflicts that arise upon it.
Everything here is played much too safe: at any time they can go back up to the ship, as we see happen the only moment a serious injury threatens someone's life. It's also a nondescript guest role that I didn't even pick up the name of, so we don't care if this guy lives or dies, there's no investment. If there's no real danger, not even from the anger of the hunters at Archer's differing views from their own on the subject of hunting, then what's to fear? This makes things bland, despite all the creeping around with vision-improving technology in pitch blackness. What they needed to do was to have Archer and his team trapped on this planet and their only source of protection is from these people they don't like and have no choice but to follow. We could see a moral dilemma as they're forced to witness sentient life being hunted down, but have no way of stopping them. Hoshi should have been at the forefront of the story, maybe her newfound confidence in being out on the front lines begins to crack and we see her wondering if she's only been fooling herself, only for her to realise by the end what courage really is: not the absence of fear, but persevering despite it. That's the kind of personal story this episode needed to make it work, but instead, after attending the first Landing Party, Hoshi disappears and it just humdrums along.
They could have gone the other way and made it a proper shore leave, with all the blokes getting together and joining the hunt for the experience, then that scene where they drink with the Eska might have had more of a place, but really there appeared to be little reason why Archer and his crew would want to tag along with these people once they found out what they were doing. Maybe the inference is that not all hunting is wrong, beyond the obvious of hunting intelligent life? It was a foolhardy move to try and communicate with the unknown Eska in the first place - I know Archer just loves to make friends with anyone he can and is desperate to meet new species and learn about them, but in this case you have this one ship on its own on the planet, they can't contact it, and yet they choose to go down and barge in on the camp site, possibly interrupting some private ritual or who knows what, almost getting themselves shot in the process! It was a daft course to take, and even if they were desperate to explore a rogue planet, they could have landed on the other side of it to ensure they don't get in the way of whoever was there already. Archer likes to be cautious and not tread on anybody's toes, so he felt he had to check if they minded, but even after that he could see they were very different and unlikely to find common ground so after seeking permission and learning none was needed they could have gone off to a different area.
So far the atmosphere was lacking, the character development was missing, and the logic was poor, and these add up to a not inconsiderable problem. We are halfway through the season, so it's possible fatigue was setting in, or ideas weren't coming as thick and fast as they thought would happen with a new era to explore, but there's also that romantic angle they take with the Captain. It didn't really work in 'Civilisation,' and it doesn't really work here either: Archer, tantalised by this woman that runs off like a faun in the flora and fauna, is teased by his hosts and even his crew is sceptical - T'Pol even insults him by suggesting he wants to run off after her because she's a woman, not because she's some strange mystery! I thought she knew him well enough by now. Getting to the realisation of where this image comes from took an age and they really failed in not just creating an atmosphere of fear on the planet, but one of wonder and mystery. I will say the ending goes some way to redress the balance, succeeding at being beautiful and touching when he meets the image for the last time. That could easily have come across as comical, ridiculous or repulsive when we see the true form of the Wraith as she morphs into a giant slug, but it was done so sensitively, and the way this ugly great thing moves so carefully and turns for one last look at Archer, it genuinely makes you sad, despite how it looks.
It is also a wise choice they made not to actually explain to the Eska what they'd done, closing the gap on the only advantage the hunters had on their prey by preventing their tech from being able to detect the emissions resulting from fear which the Wraith were trackable from. It is interference, but there's no Prime Directive here, and in any case the Eska are warp capable and interfering in another culture anyway, so it seems reasonable, like Kirk arming some races against the Klingons in 'TOS.' Maybe they shouldn't have shown up to the Eska campsite after their little plan went into action, but they had to check that it was actually working and the Eska soon leave. It was an odd way of operating they had, since they say they're only allowed to hunt on the planet for four days a year - if so then why is there only one ship there? You'd think, as they say how prized the chance is, that the place would be overrun. I'm not surprised how long Eska wait to hunt if only one ship's allowed each time! It wasn't thought out sufficiently, and again the ideas on their own could have developed into something worthwhile, but weren't allowed to flourish, nor did they particularly work together. Working together was another angle they could have gone, perhaps sabotaging the hunt once they knew what it was about, risking the goodwill of the Eska. But Reed's trip with them doesn't come to anything, it's all about holding onto the mystery of what's really going on, and it wasn't necessary to keep it hidden for so long since it wasn't that great a secret.
It's left to the creatures of the night world to carry the interest, but they're a variable collection of CGI critters, some of which work very well (the glowing millipede - Trip makes a good point about at least knowing when such bugs have crawled into your sleeping bag!), others are a victim of the time the series was made (the main target, the drayjin), and again, none of them seemed likely to pose a threat, in spite of more unpleasant ones being mentioned (bore worms that crawl into your ear to lay their eggs sound very close to Ceti Eels). T'Pol gives us a nice reference to Deneva, the planet where Kirk's brother lived (and died), or the planet of floating pancakes as I like to call it ('Operation– Annihilate!'), but any points of interest are thin on the ground. That's the problem, there isn't the richness I expect from Trek, and even 'Fusion,' for all its faults, succeeded on levels that this episode doesn't even attempt. This was the style of too many of Season 2's episodes and the reason the series was almost cut prematurely short before limping on to greater things. Like 'Fusion,' I never had any prior attachment to this episode since I missed its original broadcast and only came to it years later on DVD. But even taking that into account it's difficult to see how I could have thought well of it because it is a case of GNDN (Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing), which for Trek is hard to achieve when it's part of such a rich tapestry of ideas.
There are some small details worth thinking about: the technology was advanced a little, although you'd think the night vision eye sensors the Landing Party flips over one eye (a bit like the Dominion navigational eyepiece in 'DS9'), were pretty useful, and make you wonder why they never brought them along on their many expeditions to dark, abandoned ships floating in space - I'm pretty sure we never saw them again, perhaps because they don't look that good for the actors to wear? There's also a moment that Archer takes some kind of scan of the Wraith woman using his Communicator! Forgive me, but surely the only use of this device is communication, not to collect information, that would be a Tricorder… It's like pointing a Phaser at something and getting detailed readings on its makeup. Maybe in the 25th Century they might have combined all three devices into one handy essential, but this is the 22nd Century so it didn't make sense. Again, I don't remember any other episode before or after when someone used the Communicator like that. About the only character details of note come from Archer and Reed competing over who was the best Eagle Scout - clearly Reed, since he got two more badges than his Captain ever did! The episode needed an injection of more of that personal side to it to make it work, but we don't get that.
Travis' one contribution from where he's glued to his pilot's seat on the Bridge is that the images of Starfleet Captain's on the walls of Starfleet Command were a great inspiration to him and others, so even before the famous mission of the NX-01 there must have been Captains worthy of looking up to for their exploits, and we know Starfleet has been around a while, so that was a good impression, opening up even the past of this series, and fitting that Archer should be due his own portrait there. One other thing I took away from the episode was that argument that's been made by the 'DSC' production staff that you need to have bigger sets to be able to film modern, exciting, fast-paced scenes, a justification for why they altered the size of all the ships, including, horrendously, the original Enterprise NCC-1701. I hate that philosophy that bigger and shinier is better, overriding established Trek history so rampantly, from the Kelvin Timeline films onward into 'DSC' (and probably 'Picard,' too, though I sincerely hope not). Such ideas are shown to be flimsy by a scene in the situation room at the back of the Bridge on the NX-01 in this episode, where the main cast are gathered for a meeting, packed into this tight space, yet Kroeker injects plenty of movement as the camera roves around them in spite of the tightness of the space, and that was one of the more visually pleasing scenes.
Finally, they featured more familiar Trek faces returning in guest roles, this time all four of the guest cast had appeared previously! Keith Szarabajka as the main Eska, Damrus (he was Bajoran Teero in 'Repression' on 'Voyager,' as well as having an important role in 'The Dark Knight'), Stephanie Niznik, the Wraith woman (she was the Trill conn officer of the Enterprise-E in 'Insurrection'), who sadly died last year at the young age of fifty-two (and was very good here - if only she'd had more screen time), and I didn't realise this until going through the credits, both the other Eska were familiar names: Conor O'Farrell as Burzaan, memorably Dr. Carlson in 'Little Green Men' on 'DS9,' who'd later appear as a cult leader in Season 3 of 'Enterprise' ('Chosen Realm'), and Eric Pierpoint as Shiraht (not to be confused with Sharat from 'Armageddon Game' on 'DS9'!), even more prolific, both in past roles ('TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager'), and future (Section 31's Harris in four episodes of Season 4!). The Eska characters were completely unmemorable, which is probably why, even after seeing the names come up after the teaser, I forgot that these people were in it. On paper this should be a tour de force, but the writing didn't carry it off, though I do love the idea of Trek using only actors that had previously appeared, especially nowadays when you see almost no one from past Trek in current productions, partly due to location (filming it all, except 'Picard,' in Canada), and also to two decades having passed, so less of the 1990s actors would still be acting. Never mind, though this episode wasn't up to the quality of its guest cast, the next couple would be.
**
Hardly one of the most original ideas to deal with hunters of sentient beings, since that had been done very well in previous Trek, most notably the Hirogen in 'Voyager' and The Hunters, who weren't known as anything else, in 'DS9,' chasing Tosk across the galaxy. If they were going to revive the concept then they needed to come up with a really good new way of looking at it. And they didn't. This swoops in as a late contender for worst episode of the season, taking the current top spot that 'Fusion' was sharing with 'Breaking The Ice' just last week. It's not bad, in the sense that it isn't broken like many episodes of 'DSC' are, but it is rather perfunctory, an amalgam of previous ideas that in themselves were worth exploring, but merely hang together in this story, making the individual parts more than the sum of their total: hunters hunting on a hunt! Mysterious, flighty woman that only Captain Archer sees! Planet floating untethered through the darkness of space! Perpetual night! All manner of beasties! Shapeshifters! That last one says it all, as the shapeshifters of 'DS9' created much fascination, and when you add to that their own planet of residence was also a rogue then you see where that idea came from. As I said, alien hunters have been done before, and seeing a mysterious woman that at first won't stop to be questioned was also an intriguing story point previously used (off the top of my head there was that episode with Sisko, 'Second Sight,' and probably others).
I always love the weird episodes where you're not quite sure what is reality, so this could have been one of those, but failed on that count, even though assisted by the production design that made such a realistic dense jungle set, and taken further by the extremely low light levels - it was so realistic you could barely see anything! That's a slight problem, because a sense of danger and threat was never conjured up, so there was also never any concern over anyone heading off into the foliage. My impression was of a pretty safe place without any serious dangers from the animal life, these butch hunting guys never concerned, and even when one is seriously injured the atmosphere within the episode never reached a tenth of what it should have been. I don't know why such an experienced Director as Allan Kroeker was unable to pull it off, he'd achieved great things in Trek's past, but he wasn't helped by the story being so weak. Maybe that's the wrong word, those individual parts could have been crafted into something great, but we don't get to know any of the crew better as a result of the events, and so they are merely scenes of treading water before we get to the reveals of what's going on. The series had proved how well it could pull off alien planets and an atmosphere of terror and horror in 'Strange New World,' a similar story of exploring an alien world, and the conflicts that arise upon it.
Everything here is played much too safe: at any time they can go back up to the ship, as we see happen the only moment a serious injury threatens someone's life. It's also a nondescript guest role that I didn't even pick up the name of, so we don't care if this guy lives or dies, there's no investment. If there's no real danger, not even from the anger of the hunters at Archer's differing views from their own on the subject of hunting, then what's to fear? This makes things bland, despite all the creeping around with vision-improving technology in pitch blackness. What they needed to do was to have Archer and his team trapped on this planet and their only source of protection is from these people they don't like and have no choice but to follow. We could see a moral dilemma as they're forced to witness sentient life being hunted down, but have no way of stopping them. Hoshi should have been at the forefront of the story, maybe her newfound confidence in being out on the front lines begins to crack and we see her wondering if she's only been fooling herself, only for her to realise by the end what courage really is: not the absence of fear, but persevering despite it. That's the kind of personal story this episode needed to make it work, but instead, after attending the first Landing Party, Hoshi disappears and it just humdrums along.
They could have gone the other way and made it a proper shore leave, with all the blokes getting together and joining the hunt for the experience, then that scene where they drink with the Eska might have had more of a place, but really there appeared to be little reason why Archer and his crew would want to tag along with these people once they found out what they were doing. Maybe the inference is that not all hunting is wrong, beyond the obvious of hunting intelligent life? It was a foolhardy move to try and communicate with the unknown Eska in the first place - I know Archer just loves to make friends with anyone he can and is desperate to meet new species and learn about them, but in this case you have this one ship on its own on the planet, they can't contact it, and yet they choose to go down and barge in on the camp site, possibly interrupting some private ritual or who knows what, almost getting themselves shot in the process! It was a daft course to take, and even if they were desperate to explore a rogue planet, they could have landed on the other side of it to ensure they don't get in the way of whoever was there already. Archer likes to be cautious and not tread on anybody's toes, so he felt he had to check if they minded, but even after that he could see they were very different and unlikely to find common ground so after seeking permission and learning none was needed they could have gone off to a different area.
So far the atmosphere was lacking, the character development was missing, and the logic was poor, and these add up to a not inconsiderable problem. We are halfway through the season, so it's possible fatigue was setting in, or ideas weren't coming as thick and fast as they thought would happen with a new era to explore, but there's also that romantic angle they take with the Captain. It didn't really work in 'Civilisation,' and it doesn't really work here either: Archer, tantalised by this woman that runs off like a faun in the flora and fauna, is teased by his hosts and even his crew is sceptical - T'Pol even insults him by suggesting he wants to run off after her because she's a woman, not because she's some strange mystery! I thought she knew him well enough by now. Getting to the realisation of where this image comes from took an age and they really failed in not just creating an atmosphere of fear on the planet, but one of wonder and mystery. I will say the ending goes some way to redress the balance, succeeding at being beautiful and touching when he meets the image for the last time. That could easily have come across as comical, ridiculous or repulsive when we see the true form of the Wraith as she morphs into a giant slug, but it was done so sensitively, and the way this ugly great thing moves so carefully and turns for one last look at Archer, it genuinely makes you sad, despite how it looks.
It is also a wise choice they made not to actually explain to the Eska what they'd done, closing the gap on the only advantage the hunters had on their prey by preventing their tech from being able to detect the emissions resulting from fear which the Wraith were trackable from. It is interference, but there's no Prime Directive here, and in any case the Eska are warp capable and interfering in another culture anyway, so it seems reasonable, like Kirk arming some races against the Klingons in 'TOS.' Maybe they shouldn't have shown up to the Eska campsite after their little plan went into action, but they had to check that it was actually working and the Eska soon leave. It was an odd way of operating they had, since they say they're only allowed to hunt on the planet for four days a year - if so then why is there only one ship there? You'd think, as they say how prized the chance is, that the place would be overrun. I'm not surprised how long Eska wait to hunt if only one ship's allowed each time! It wasn't thought out sufficiently, and again the ideas on their own could have developed into something worthwhile, but weren't allowed to flourish, nor did they particularly work together. Working together was another angle they could have gone, perhaps sabotaging the hunt once they knew what it was about, risking the goodwill of the Eska. But Reed's trip with them doesn't come to anything, it's all about holding onto the mystery of what's really going on, and it wasn't necessary to keep it hidden for so long since it wasn't that great a secret.
It's left to the creatures of the night world to carry the interest, but they're a variable collection of CGI critters, some of which work very well (the glowing millipede - Trip makes a good point about at least knowing when such bugs have crawled into your sleeping bag!), others are a victim of the time the series was made (the main target, the drayjin), and again, none of them seemed likely to pose a threat, in spite of more unpleasant ones being mentioned (bore worms that crawl into your ear to lay their eggs sound very close to Ceti Eels). T'Pol gives us a nice reference to Deneva, the planet where Kirk's brother lived (and died), or the planet of floating pancakes as I like to call it ('Operation– Annihilate!'), but any points of interest are thin on the ground. That's the problem, there isn't the richness I expect from Trek, and even 'Fusion,' for all its faults, succeeded on levels that this episode doesn't even attempt. This was the style of too many of Season 2's episodes and the reason the series was almost cut prematurely short before limping on to greater things. Like 'Fusion,' I never had any prior attachment to this episode since I missed its original broadcast and only came to it years later on DVD. But even taking that into account it's difficult to see how I could have thought well of it because it is a case of GNDN (Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing), which for Trek is hard to achieve when it's part of such a rich tapestry of ideas.
There are some small details worth thinking about: the technology was advanced a little, although you'd think the night vision eye sensors the Landing Party flips over one eye (a bit like the Dominion navigational eyepiece in 'DS9'), were pretty useful, and make you wonder why they never brought them along on their many expeditions to dark, abandoned ships floating in space - I'm pretty sure we never saw them again, perhaps because they don't look that good for the actors to wear? There's also a moment that Archer takes some kind of scan of the Wraith woman using his Communicator! Forgive me, but surely the only use of this device is communication, not to collect information, that would be a Tricorder… It's like pointing a Phaser at something and getting detailed readings on its makeup. Maybe in the 25th Century they might have combined all three devices into one handy essential, but this is the 22nd Century so it didn't make sense. Again, I don't remember any other episode before or after when someone used the Communicator like that. About the only character details of note come from Archer and Reed competing over who was the best Eagle Scout - clearly Reed, since he got two more badges than his Captain ever did! The episode needed an injection of more of that personal side to it to make it work, but we don't get that.
Travis' one contribution from where he's glued to his pilot's seat on the Bridge is that the images of Starfleet Captain's on the walls of Starfleet Command were a great inspiration to him and others, so even before the famous mission of the NX-01 there must have been Captains worthy of looking up to for their exploits, and we know Starfleet has been around a while, so that was a good impression, opening up even the past of this series, and fitting that Archer should be due his own portrait there. One other thing I took away from the episode was that argument that's been made by the 'DSC' production staff that you need to have bigger sets to be able to film modern, exciting, fast-paced scenes, a justification for why they altered the size of all the ships, including, horrendously, the original Enterprise NCC-1701. I hate that philosophy that bigger and shinier is better, overriding established Trek history so rampantly, from the Kelvin Timeline films onward into 'DSC' (and probably 'Picard,' too, though I sincerely hope not). Such ideas are shown to be flimsy by a scene in the situation room at the back of the Bridge on the NX-01 in this episode, where the main cast are gathered for a meeting, packed into this tight space, yet Kroeker injects plenty of movement as the camera roves around them in spite of the tightness of the space, and that was one of the more visually pleasing scenes.
Finally, they featured more familiar Trek faces returning in guest roles, this time all four of the guest cast had appeared previously! Keith Szarabajka as the main Eska, Damrus (he was Bajoran Teero in 'Repression' on 'Voyager,' as well as having an important role in 'The Dark Knight'), Stephanie Niznik, the Wraith woman (she was the Trill conn officer of the Enterprise-E in 'Insurrection'), who sadly died last year at the young age of fifty-two (and was very good here - if only she'd had more screen time), and I didn't realise this until going through the credits, both the other Eska were familiar names: Conor O'Farrell as Burzaan, memorably Dr. Carlson in 'Little Green Men' on 'DS9,' who'd later appear as a cult leader in Season 3 of 'Enterprise' ('Chosen Realm'), and Eric Pierpoint as Shiraht (not to be confused with Sharat from 'Armageddon Game' on 'DS9'!), even more prolific, both in past roles ('TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager'), and future (Section 31's Harris in four episodes of Season 4!). The Eska characters were completely unmemorable, which is probably why, even after seeing the names come up after the teaser, I forgot that these people were in it. On paper this should be a tour de force, but the writing didn't carry it off, though I do love the idea of Trek using only actors that had previously appeared, especially nowadays when you see almost no one from past Trek in current productions, partly due to location (filming it all, except 'Picard,' in Canada), and also to two decades having passed, so less of the 1990s actors would still be acting. Never mind, though this episode wasn't up to the quality of its guest cast, the next couple would be.
**
Company of Thieves
DVD, Stargate SG-1 S10 (Company of Thieves)
Bit of a 'Star Wars' mashup, a messy, cluttered story that doesn't quite ring true for the characters in certain places, or Vala kicks things, or shoves in a crystal and it miraculously works, or the plot relies on a magical ring that can instantly make someone who's jabbed with it see the wearer as whomever they wish to be seen as. Oh, and it's back to the old hammy Goa'uld leaders in all but name when we're back with the Lucien Alliance. By the sounds of all that it was a terrible episode, and it wasn't that, but it was a bit broken. Commander Emerson of the Odyssey is shot dead by the henchman of a guy who's part of the Alliance, but wants to take over… You get the idea why it's so messy. Emerson's death was a surprise, but not that shocking, and that's where things start to go wonky: Carter's so affected by this and her treatment at the hand of Anatole or whatever his name was (Anatayo, I think), that she's pushed back into the cargo area with tears in her eyes, moved enough she can't even talk to Major Marks, the only other regular we know on Odyssey (so watch out, mate!). It just isn't in Carter's stoic manner to succumb to emotionality, at least we needed something more nasty to happen than a familiar face to be killed. The same goes for Teal'c who ends up captured by Natan, leader of the Luciens, and who has to endure torture until Mitchell, posing as Natan's good friend, can free him. When he eventually does, Teal'c's so affected by the time he's spent in that situation he goes wild, punching up the bad guys and almost taking out Mitchell in his uncontrolled frenzy of violence.
I don't expect this lack of control from either Carter or Teal'c, and nothing that happened was worthy of them being driven to that point, so it didn't work. Daniel's about the only character who stays himself (if you count Mitchell showing up in different guises using his magic ring on Natan or his alien underling). It seemed like it might be yet another Vala-intensive episode, but it's really for Mitchell to do most of the grunt work. Vala's the one with the contact who buys them a faulty ship that's rather undependable, decloaking when Teal'c's lying in watch of Natan's ship. It was inventive of her to save Carter by transporting out Anatayo rather than Sam since she wasn't sure of the system's certainty of working correctly, and beams him into space, where he oddly fires his weapon and should have spun off into the ether from the recoil, but instead falls towards the ship so we can see him better. That's how the whole episode was, not making sense and just patched together with gaffer tape and string. Of course the SG-1 team get it right and save each other, but surely it could have been done a little more realistically for the world they inhabit. Vala's contact was very 'Star Wars' and all this zipping about in ships and disguises, making up plans on the fly to rescue the princess (i.e.: Carter), didn't really work.
I've never liked the Lucien Alliance, one of the reasons being I can't remember why they exist or what their purpose is, other than to be bad guys. I think they were members of worlds left over from when the Goa'uld withdrew and were conquered, but they're a boring bunch that are about as deep as their former masters: I will have power and wealth and rule the galaxy. Yeah, whatever. At least The Ori have a motive, and a creepy one at that. Mind you, when they're around I'm often wishing we could have more traditional stories, so maybe the series can't win and it was time for it to wind up anyway? It's funny, I usually look forward to 'SG-1' much more than spinoff 'Atlantis,' but as this season has gone on it keeps reminding me of the poorer aspects of the parent series and I almost want to get back to the Pegasus Galaxy where it's more uncertain what could happen from week to week. I'm just not sure SG-1's characters are being used well enough. I suppose you can't really change the nature of the series and because of a number of good character moments and sci-fi stories it's easy to forget that it is merely derivative, so expectations need to be lowered.
**
Bit of a 'Star Wars' mashup, a messy, cluttered story that doesn't quite ring true for the characters in certain places, or Vala kicks things, or shoves in a crystal and it miraculously works, or the plot relies on a magical ring that can instantly make someone who's jabbed with it see the wearer as whomever they wish to be seen as. Oh, and it's back to the old hammy Goa'uld leaders in all but name when we're back with the Lucien Alliance. By the sounds of all that it was a terrible episode, and it wasn't that, but it was a bit broken. Commander Emerson of the Odyssey is shot dead by the henchman of a guy who's part of the Alliance, but wants to take over… You get the idea why it's so messy. Emerson's death was a surprise, but not that shocking, and that's where things start to go wonky: Carter's so affected by this and her treatment at the hand of Anatole or whatever his name was (Anatayo, I think), that she's pushed back into the cargo area with tears in her eyes, moved enough she can't even talk to Major Marks, the only other regular we know on Odyssey (so watch out, mate!). It just isn't in Carter's stoic manner to succumb to emotionality, at least we needed something more nasty to happen than a familiar face to be killed. The same goes for Teal'c who ends up captured by Natan, leader of the Luciens, and who has to endure torture until Mitchell, posing as Natan's good friend, can free him. When he eventually does, Teal'c's so affected by the time he's spent in that situation he goes wild, punching up the bad guys and almost taking out Mitchell in his uncontrolled frenzy of violence.
I don't expect this lack of control from either Carter or Teal'c, and nothing that happened was worthy of them being driven to that point, so it didn't work. Daniel's about the only character who stays himself (if you count Mitchell showing up in different guises using his magic ring on Natan or his alien underling). It seemed like it might be yet another Vala-intensive episode, but it's really for Mitchell to do most of the grunt work. Vala's the one with the contact who buys them a faulty ship that's rather undependable, decloaking when Teal'c's lying in watch of Natan's ship. It was inventive of her to save Carter by transporting out Anatayo rather than Sam since she wasn't sure of the system's certainty of working correctly, and beams him into space, where he oddly fires his weapon and should have spun off into the ether from the recoil, but instead falls towards the ship so we can see him better. That's how the whole episode was, not making sense and just patched together with gaffer tape and string. Of course the SG-1 team get it right and save each other, but surely it could have been done a little more realistically for the world they inhabit. Vala's contact was very 'Star Wars' and all this zipping about in ships and disguises, making up plans on the fly to rescue the princess (i.e.: Carter), didn't really work.
I've never liked the Lucien Alliance, one of the reasons being I can't remember why they exist or what their purpose is, other than to be bad guys. I think they were members of worlds left over from when the Goa'uld withdrew and were conquered, but they're a boring bunch that are about as deep as their former masters: I will have power and wealth and rule the galaxy. Yeah, whatever. At least The Ori have a motive, and a creepy one at that. Mind you, when they're around I'm often wishing we could have more traditional stories, so maybe the series can't win and it was time for it to wind up anyway? It's funny, I usually look forward to 'SG-1' much more than spinoff 'Atlantis,' but as this season has gone on it keeps reminding me of the poorer aspects of the parent series and I almost want to get back to the Pegasus Galaxy where it's more uncertain what could happen from week to week. I'm just not sure SG-1's characters are being used well enough. I suppose you can't really change the nature of the series and because of a number of good character moments and sci-fi stories it's easy to forget that it is merely derivative, so expectations need to be lowered.
**
The Survivor
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Survivor)
An amalgam of 'TOS' ideas, but they pleasingly come together to form something more than the monster story it first seemed as a shape-changing 'Vendorian' is let loose on the Enterprise, a Romulan spy to lure Kirk and crew into the Neutral Zone to give the Romulans the right to confiscate the starship. First thought was that this was 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?' since it's about a great man who went missing and how his fiance deals with it when he's found by the Enterprise. Nurse Chapel was the fiance in that episode, this time it's another crewmember, Anne, who has to learn to overcome her feelings to perform her duty, despite Carter Winston turning out to be an alien in disguise. There are also hints of 'The Man Trap,' since the creature changes depending on who it's dealing with, and even 'The Enterprise Incident' - this is almost an inverse as Kirk was a spy aboard a Romulan ship in that episode, trying to get their technology, and this time they plant a spy and try to get the Enterprise, so it's quite a good story, even featuring the Trek staple of not judging people on appearances as Anne comes to be drawn to this Vendorian who has the memories of her intended, despite its true form being a space octopus!
It has a much happier ending than those other episodes I mentioned as they go off together after 'Winston' has agreed to submit to incarceration and trial, while Kirk will speak for him since he saved the Enterprise by turning himself into a deflector when Scotty didn't have time to fix the defence system, and Anne requests to be his guard to talk with him of his future. I imagine the Vendorian became a piece of equipment rather than being the actual energy field (though we have seen Odo and other Changelings turn into gas or light, so it's possible), since he's already showed himself capable of becoming a 'table' as McCoy refers to the biobed in Sickbay. That was typical of the slight inconsistencies of 'TAS,' and to some extent 'TOS,' when things weren't quite as tied down and definitive as they became in later Trek. I thought there was another mistake when Kirk's on the Bridge and gives Sulu his orders, then M'Ress, though there was no sign of the Caitian and I supposed they'd got her confused with Lieutenant Arex who was on screen when Kirk said that. It could be explained that the Captain was still slightly dazed from being put to sleep by the Vendorian, but later we do see M'Ress for the first time on the series so I assume he was talking to her 'off camera.'
M'Ress was a good design, one of the non-human crewmembers that were possible due to the unlimited potential of animation, and voiced in feline manner by Majel Barrett, who also played Chapel in this episode as well as the computer (I enjoyed that it said "Working" and they used the Tri-screen again!). Barrett wasn't the only person playing multiple roles as Nichelle Nichols can be heard as Anne, perhaps why Uhura, though seen in the Bridge background, doesn't speak in this episode - they may have thought the voice too similar to the Lieutenant's. Nichols also played the voice of Security Kirk speaks to on the comm. Curiously, it sounded as if they got some other voice artists to perform Carter Winston and the Romulan we see commanding the Battlecruiser. Usually James Doohan performs the extra male voices, so maybe they felt they could branch out after getting Stanley Adams back for the previous episode to play his original character, Cyrano Jones? Either that or Doohan is even better at disguising his voice than I thought!
Winston looks very much like a 1970s man, all shaggy hair, thick sideburns and moustache, this rugged space adventurer, or foremost space trader as he's described, is apparently famous for his money, making fortunes in his profession, which shows that money and riches were still part of the Trek world and such things hadn't been ironed out yet. At least he was shown to be a philanthropist in a throwaway line that confirms Dr. McCoy did indeed have a daughter as was originally to have been revealed in 'The Way To Eden,' the space hippies episode from 'TOS' in Season 3. She went to school on Cerebus, McCoy says, and although that specific planet is never mentioned in Trek, Cerebus II is spoken of in 'TNG' ('Too Short A Season'). Just as interesting to me was that the Romulan Commander is dressed in green, which would become the race's signature colour in later Trek, and has hair in a definite 'V' shape over his forehead, again a potential inspiration for how they eventually appeared in 'TNG' onwards. He's sitting in exactly the same chair as Koloth was in the previous episode, and of course we see the Klingon-Romulan treaty must still be in operation as they're using the Klingon Battlecruisers they did since Season 3 of 'TOS.'
Probably for the same reason: that it was cheaper to reuse the design than create new ships. It's a bit easier to show more of the Enterprise that we didn't see before: the Engine Room appears pretty similar, though Sickbay now has a laboratory at one end and McCoy appears to have a separate office, too. Kirk's Quarters seemed bigger with a modern art geometric painting on the wall and a sofa to complement his desk and bed, with the familiar chain-link screen dividing the room, which was nice to see. And though it may seem a little daft for everything on the Bridge to be recorded so they can show Kirk he did give the order to enter the Neutral Zone, it was shown to be the case as far back as 'TOS' Season 1, 'Court Martial,' so it must be standard practice, at least at this time. And it features a title that was reused almost exactly in 'TNG,' though that was called 'The Survivors,' much like 'TNG's 'Brothers' and 'DSC's 'Brother.'
***
An amalgam of 'TOS' ideas, but they pleasingly come together to form something more than the monster story it first seemed as a shape-changing 'Vendorian' is let loose on the Enterprise, a Romulan spy to lure Kirk and crew into the Neutral Zone to give the Romulans the right to confiscate the starship. First thought was that this was 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?' since it's about a great man who went missing and how his fiance deals with it when he's found by the Enterprise. Nurse Chapel was the fiance in that episode, this time it's another crewmember, Anne, who has to learn to overcome her feelings to perform her duty, despite Carter Winston turning out to be an alien in disguise. There are also hints of 'The Man Trap,' since the creature changes depending on who it's dealing with, and even 'The Enterprise Incident' - this is almost an inverse as Kirk was a spy aboard a Romulan ship in that episode, trying to get their technology, and this time they plant a spy and try to get the Enterprise, so it's quite a good story, even featuring the Trek staple of not judging people on appearances as Anne comes to be drawn to this Vendorian who has the memories of her intended, despite its true form being a space octopus!
It has a much happier ending than those other episodes I mentioned as they go off together after 'Winston' has agreed to submit to incarceration and trial, while Kirk will speak for him since he saved the Enterprise by turning himself into a deflector when Scotty didn't have time to fix the defence system, and Anne requests to be his guard to talk with him of his future. I imagine the Vendorian became a piece of equipment rather than being the actual energy field (though we have seen Odo and other Changelings turn into gas or light, so it's possible), since he's already showed himself capable of becoming a 'table' as McCoy refers to the biobed in Sickbay. That was typical of the slight inconsistencies of 'TAS,' and to some extent 'TOS,' when things weren't quite as tied down and definitive as they became in later Trek. I thought there was another mistake when Kirk's on the Bridge and gives Sulu his orders, then M'Ress, though there was no sign of the Caitian and I supposed they'd got her confused with Lieutenant Arex who was on screen when Kirk said that. It could be explained that the Captain was still slightly dazed from being put to sleep by the Vendorian, but later we do see M'Ress for the first time on the series so I assume he was talking to her 'off camera.'
M'Ress was a good design, one of the non-human crewmembers that were possible due to the unlimited potential of animation, and voiced in feline manner by Majel Barrett, who also played Chapel in this episode as well as the computer (I enjoyed that it said "Working" and they used the Tri-screen again!). Barrett wasn't the only person playing multiple roles as Nichelle Nichols can be heard as Anne, perhaps why Uhura, though seen in the Bridge background, doesn't speak in this episode - they may have thought the voice too similar to the Lieutenant's. Nichols also played the voice of Security Kirk speaks to on the comm. Curiously, it sounded as if they got some other voice artists to perform Carter Winston and the Romulan we see commanding the Battlecruiser. Usually James Doohan performs the extra male voices, so maybe they felt they could branch out after getting Stanley Adams back for the previous episode to play his original character, Cyrano Jones? Either that or Doohan is even better at disguising his voice than I thought!
Winston looks very much like a 1970s man, all shaggy hair, thick sideburns and moustache, this rugged space adventurer, or foremost space trader as he's described, is apparently famous for his money, making fortunes in his profession, which shows that money and riches were still part of the Trek world and such things hadn't been ironed out yet. At least he was shown to be a philanthropist in a throwaway line that confirms Dr. McCoy did indeed have a daughter as was originally to have been revealed in 'The Way To Eden,' the space hippies episode from 'TOS' in Season 3. She went to school on Cerebus, McCoy says, and although that specific planet is never mentioned in Trek, Cerebus II is spoken of in 'TNG' ('Too Short A Season'). Just as interesting to me was that the Romulan Commander is dressed in green, which would become the race's signature colour in later Trek, and has hair in a definite 'V' shape over his forehead, again a potential inspiration for how they eventually appeared in 'TNG' onwards. He's sitting in exactly the same chair as Koloth was in the previous episode, and of course we see the Klingon-Romulan treaty must still be in operation as they're using the Klingon Battlecruisers they did since Season 3 of 'TOS.'
Probably for the same reason: that it was cheaper to reuse the design than create new ships. It's a bit easier to show more of the Enterprise that we didn't see before: the Engine Room appears pretty similar, though Sickbay now has a laboratory at one end and McCoy appears to have a separate office, too. Kirk's Quarters seemed bigger with a modern art geometric painting on the wall and a sofa to complement his desk and bed, with the familiar chain-link screen dividing the room, which was nice to see. And though it may seem a little daft for everything on the Bridge to be recorded so they can show Kirk he did give the order to enter the Neutral Zone, it was shown to be the case as far back as 'TOS' Season 1, 'Court Martial,' so it must be standard practice, at least at this time. And it features a title that was reused almost exactly in 'TNG,' though that was called 'The Survivors,' much like 'TNG's 'Brothers' and 'DSC's 'Brother.'
***
Fusion (2)
DVD, Enterprise S1 (Fusion) (2)
As if it wasn't enough for them to turn the Vulcans into conniving, volatile emotion bombs they had to add to their crimes against the race by doing this episode in which we meet an outcast group of logic-less specimens whom T'Pol becomes dangerously drawn to for being the perfect mix of both Vulcan and human attitudes to living with free emotion, her own private and secret fascination with such an indulgence. I remembered it as being a bit extreme, what with fat Vulcans, meat-eating Vulcans, emotionally open Vulcans and explicit bedroom scenes as T'Pol gets drawn in. What I got wasn't quite as bad as I remembered, but when I say remembered, it's only from the last time I went through the series on DVD as this was one of a tiny handful of episodes I didn't see on the first run. This means I have no nostalgic attachment, and like the best Vulcans can look at it in a cool, detached manner, not blighted by those pesky warm emotions. It's not as bad as I expected, the Vulcans, while extreme, are not numerous, and their excesses are still relatively restrained - let's just say they're not going to put ordinary Klingon or Ferengi behaviour to shame, it's just that they are open to new experiences and enjoy feeling feelings, tasting tastes, indoctrinating new blood… Okay, so Tolaris, the bad boy villain of the piece is the exception to the group. Or is he? We see so little of the other members that he might be representative, we just don't know.
It's not a great episode and is perhaps Berman and Braga's first foot wrong in the season since previous low point 'Breaking The Ice' wasn't credited to them. But it isn't the terrible, dull story I had in memory. Not that it's much better, but I've since seen much bad Trek in the form of 'Discovery' (first bash on it as late as the second paragraph - things must be improving!), so the many Trek-like details and attitudes that prevail in 'Enterprise' help me to see it for what it is: a somewhat derivative melding of a couple of Trek sub-genres, with a hopeful ending on the one hand, and an unresolved one on the other. The two story tropes I'm thinking of are the ones where a group of ambassadors come to cause trouble on the Enterprise/ DS9/ Voyager, and the 'fun' that ensues as their handlers (our characters), try to keep their appetites and moods in check without creating a serious diplomatic incident and/or lose their jobs (I think of Bashir, Worf and Neelix most commonly). The other one is when the ship or station plays host to a travelling group of telepaths who proceed to cause havoc with one or more of the crew to varying degrees of criminality or terror (see such examples as 'Violations,' 'Remember,' 'Random Thoughts' to name a few). Add them both together and you get, wait for it, a fusion of ideas. Ideas that don't necessarily go together, but a creative turmoil can work sometimes. It doesn't in this case, I'm not sure why, but it probably stems in large part from my aversion to Vulcans being wrongly portrayed.
That being said, neither Tolaris, nor Kov, nor Captain 'pass the chicken, please' Tavin are monstrously and heinously out of whack with Vulcan mores, at least from a human standpoint. Obviously compared with most Vulcans they are blazing a trail away from Surak at warp speed, though interestingly they beg to differ on that point, instead believing they're the ones who have interpreted Surak correctly and that what he really meant was they should integrate and master their emotions, not suppress them. I'm not familiar with the ancient texts so I can't say who's right on the matter, but I know what kind of Vulcans I like and the ones in 'Enterprise,' almost all of them, aren't it. T'Pol has grown on me over the years, though I still find her acerbity, icy barbs and losing control too easily to be a touch too over the top for my tastes, Tuvok fulfilling that perfect Vulcan poise and attitude that I require. T'Pol is the closest to a traditional Vulcan on the series and any deviation away from that ideal can be explained away, in her case, as fascination with humanity, and perhaps through this episode that interest is revealed as only a borderline acceptable step nearer an even more personal compelling toward emotions themselves. That's something T'Pol won't even admit to herself, I get the impression, so the cover of curiosity in humans just happened to fit with her subconscious quest to explore her own inner emotions.
This is all very 'modern' in the sense that Vulcans, most anyway, were well contented with the methods used to quell their unconquerable passions and weren't straining against the leash all the time, as those in this series seem to be - the ones most furiously defending Vulcan propriety and tradition, namely Soval, are the ones most volatile, barely able to keep their disgust, rage and horror in check as we see too often when the Ambassador shows his snooty face. He's not in this one, so doesn't get the chance to sneer his complete contempt for the lost brothers that have chosen a dangerous path away from their society, serenely sailing through space exploring themselves like some prototype 'TNG' crew. But Soval does have a part to play in the episode as he has relayed a message to Admiral Forrest to relay to Jonathan Archer to relay to Kov, the portly Vulcan with a Dad prob. That Soval agrees to this indicates that the outsiders aren't complete outcasts (unless Dad is extremely important), that was my own word for them, but I don't remember hearing they were banned, they simply chose to leave. There's an underlying indication that the veiled talk of Those Who Left is a reference to the Romulans, but whether that's an on the nose 'in-joke' about the ultimate reactants to Surak's message, or them coming to mind just a sign of Trekker knowledge in my brain, I'm not sure, because I can't remember if the Vulcans knew Romulans came from them when they were first seen in 'TOS.' I can't remember whether the Vulcan leader in Season 4, conspiring with the Romulans, was doing it for the sake of reunification or was himself of Romulan extraction.
So much is unspoken in Vulcan and Romulan history, or seldom recalled, especially to a non-native audience, but the lessons of history that the Romulans represent would be ideal to keep in mind when such groups leave the Vulcan way. That's the thing, though: you could take these Vulcans as a sign either way on whether it was right for Vulcans to follow Surak's teaching or not. The conventional wisdom is that this is what saved the race from annihilating each other, and I'd go along with that - it led to the formation of the Romulan Star Empire when dissenters left, a powerful and dangerous threat to the galaxy, but no longer on Vulcan. It prevented the Vulcans rampantly riding roughshod over other worlds, taking what they wished, leaving a trail of destruction behind them. It gave the foundations of the Federation a chance to build, since their influence far and wide, though careful and slow, was the pioneer for what humans would instigate and create in the Federation. Even in 'Enterprise' the Vulcans are shown to be cautious and appear to cultivate the galaxy, as opposed to other races such as the Klingons who only care about conquering and enslaving. At the same time the Romulans aren't inherently evil, just their extreme emotions that they share from Vulcan ancestry, are turned to war and eventually extreme isolation and distrust of the wider galaxy. But if we hadn't had the Romulans, their power in the Alpha Quadrant wouldn't have tipped the scales ever so slightly against the Dominion in the greatest war our part of space had ever seen since the Romulan/ Earth War that was still to come at this point in 'Enterprise' (and will be forever bemoaned as missing!).
Are the writers of this episode saying that traditional teachings are the right way to go, at least in the context of the Vulcans? I'm not one hundred percent certain that was the message because of the one thing that is introduced here: the mind meld. This would go on to be an integral part of Vulcan life, a unique ability to communicate with even the most non-humanoid of species and how many threats were countered over the years thanks to this communication? It's a great tool of drama in its own right, but it's more important what it achieved through being used by people such as Spock or Tuvok. Yet here it's seen as a violation, an illicit exploration of the inner world of the mind, drawing back the veils of restraint and control that define Vulcan behaviour. In this case it's weighted towards the evil because the mind T'Pol allows in is itself chaotic and dangerous. Rape is a hard and emotive word to use in such a case, not something to be bandied about loosely, and if we say that this is the case, then surely we have to allow Spock's forced meld on Valeris in 'Star Trek VI' is also an act of the same magnitude of mental anguish. I prefer to call it torture rather than rape, but again it could be classified differently in different circumstances. It doesn't sit well that Spock could be classed as a rapist, but he was certainly torturing the necessary information out of Valeris' unwilling mind. In Tolaris' case, however, there is clearly a selfish motive to his action, not to mention the charged imagery T'Pol experiences, albeit from her own subconscious, though again, perhaps Tolaris, knowing curiosity would compel her to sleep without first meditating, was using his wilder telepathic skills to interfere with her dreams, and his lack of knowledge about what happened was all an act?
I think we have to look on this 'first' mind meld as a different conception of what the meld later became for Vulcans, this encounter led by Tolaris' attraction and the lack of restraint he advocates. Ironically this shows that casting off inhibition and self-control actually enslaves because he no longer has power over his own passions leading him to unacceptable behaviour in public: he picks up his host, Captain Archer, when goaded, and flings him across the room in a rage when T'Pol is to be denied him, which ends the amicable alliance between the two ships most abruptly. Again, the difference is that between a finely honed mind of self-denial and control as opposed to one of indulgence and hedonism as seen here, and the consequences of which spread further into the series as the violent meld and its sudden breaking is later found to have caused T'Pol some kind of imbalance in her brain that threatens her life. This deviation from Surak's teachings, but also embracing it in a different way, shows how dangerous it can be to interpret things wrongly. Vulcan society in general hasn't got everything right in the way the rulers act, and they all seem to be less controlled than later Vulcans, which proves that banning such practices as the meld is equally as bad as misusing it because it was part of their culture and vital for such a telepathic race's wellbeing. This is all fascinating to think about, and it's only when you take the series as a whole, with all the changes coming in through Season 4 that began to smooth Vulcan society into what we know, that you understand what happened and what needed to happen to get Vulcan to be the way we remember in other Trek.
Again, I have to go back to what the intentions of the writers were? They show what became an essential tool for the Vulcans, the mind meld, in a negative light, and yet it comes from this group who are outsiders that have gone away from Surak. They claim not to have abandoned logic, yet they do abandon many of the traditions of their people, such as avoiding meat. It's complicated to read what's being presented here. Are they saying that traditional Vulcans should be more open-minded because otherwise they'll never discover the full teachings of Surak, which would include mind-melding as part of their life. At the same time are they saying the ones that abandoned tradition are wrong because they've misappropriated the meld and misused it? Its wrongful use leads to trouble for T'Pol in future, but they can't be saying that the meld itself is to blame, just how it was used. Though this main story of the episode is immense food for thought and thoroughly enjoyable to dissect, it's not that involving for most of its running time. I call it very modern because T'Pol is into trying out feelings and loosening control, and for one who has lived for so many decades it's surprising how easy she is to manipulate, either by Archer encouraging her to interact with the Vulcan crew or by Tolaris piquing her curiosity about dreams. He may not have known it stemmed as much from personal curiosity, a subversive interest in emotional freedom, but when he framed it as a scientific experiment he knew that would push her to try it, he stumbled upon the thing that would get her to the point he wanted her to reach.
In Trek produced this century we've seen practically all Vulcans in an emotional position, whether it be the ones from the Kelvin Timeline, especially Mr. Spock, that version of which had chosen to embrace his human and emotional side to the detriment of the character, to the unpleasant ones he comes up against that were clearly modelled on those of 'Enterprise,' to those seen in 'DSC,' which continue that model though it claims to be part of the Prime Universe which we know by then had changed towards the Vulcans we saw in 'TOS.' It's a pattern away from restraint, self-control and sticking to tradition that is very much of our time now where everyone is encouraged they can be or do whatever they want - that may be inspiring if applied to ambitions and achievements, personal, professional, physical, mental, but it also means that spirit of freedom extends to doing whatever you want in any sense, and in human behaviour that usually means indulgence, inertia and taking what you want in whatever form that means. Writers writing in that mindset are clearly not going to write traditional Vulcans or portray the fact that they differ in this way from 'human' ways as a positive, which is why we get such poor versions of the race as standard. Because now it's more important to let your feelings out so we have to apply that to the Vulcans, too. There's always been something of a bias against the pointy-eared chaps because in many ways, except the one of wholeness, balancing emotions with everything else, they are superior: strength, senses, mentally, they excel in all areas, which is why they presented a difficulty for the humanist universe of Trek where humans needed to be the best.
Tuvok was often being teased about his caution or whatever, or irritating those who wanted a bit more relaxation of the letter of the law, but he often had the last metaphorical laugh when he was frequently correct, and his methods, tied to scientific modes of calculation or exploration were proved to be in the right. And just as following rules and traditions has gradually become less popular for the mainstream, so has keeping yourself under control which brings us back to the way Vulcans are shown to behave in Trek from 'Enterprise' on, and so it's no surprise that T'Pol should be so easily manipulated by someone who has the Vulcan background but also holds the knowledge of what it's like to let go, tantalising her to the point where she agrees to get involved and proving once again that holding back on what desires point you toward is the way to stay safe, so there are moral messages here, even if you have to really give it some thought to get to them. And the writers show that, at least in the Vulcan case, they do need to hold back and not let loose because they have such strong emotions, as Archer finds out when he tries his own experiment and gets launched across the Ready Room (close quarters to take on a Vulcan within, but it probably narrowed everything to that point of burning anger by the space being so claustrophobic - the space in which you exist has some bearing on moods and feelings, for sure), much as when Kirk goaded Spock in 'This Side of Paradise' to achieve an end.
Apart from this exciting conclusion and for introducing the mind meld into continuity, this story isn't very attractive to me for the aforementioned reasons about T'Pol unprofessionally giving in to personal wishes. In contrast, the B-story featuring Trip making friends with the jolly Kov, the first overweight Vulcan we've ever been shown, I'm pretty sure, is on the face of it a light addition to bulk up the running time, but becomes the highlight of the episode. The episode works best when you forget that these people are Vulcans, especially Kov, who behaves and sounds nothing like one of his race would and I can fully understand why a traditional Vulcan Father would have called him a disgrace. He probably didn't expect Kov to refuse to speak to him forever after as a result, not understanding how far he'd gone in his life of ignoring the Vulcan way (he even considers rituals and ceremonies to be boring!). On 'DS9' we generally saw Vulcans who were atypical for the species and on 'Enterprise' that continued exponentially with virtually all Vulcans different to what we'd expect, though few quite as un-Vulcan as Trip's newfound friend. But as I say, when you put aside the Vulcan-ness, or lack of it, this turns into a strong story about unforgiveness, with Archer enlisting Trip to try and get him to speak to his Father, who's dying, and best of all, like traditional Trek, it ends on a happy note with Kov having done what was needed and feeling all the better for it.
It must have taken a lot for Kov's Dad to deign to contact his son through a human ship, laying bare the family problems to those considered inferior, but he'd probably already suffered much disgrace himself for his association with such a son and couldn't be much further embarrassed. We know how stiff Vulcans can be when the right and proper way is eschewed, as shown by the rigidity T'Pol displays in obeying the High Command and just accepting they can recall her, although I suspect they only granted her a stay of execution on her Enterprise posting to continue to hold it over Starfleet's head as a last resort, if no other string could be pulled. She doesn't wish disgrace to fall on her family and their society is very much about duty and not diverting from it. With good reason for the troubled past they had, but even pillars of the community such as Sarek were shown not to speak to family members who deviated, as in Spock. While 'DSC' has muddied the waters and turned Sarek into a Bad Dad, the family only held together by the Great Woman Amanda as she's become in that series, nothing further needed to be added to that story in relation to this. It was a precedent that this follows, family loyalty and cutting off those who would oppose the correct way, which is fully understandable for the set, specific society that Vulcans live in, keeping themselves clean from other races' 'worldly' ways, and something I much admire about them in terms of their intractability and unwillingness to compromise. Still, it was good to see Kov unbending and being accepted to some degree, even if he was still in the wrong.
T'Pol's story is much less resolved, troubled by the events, though there's no indication she regrets getting involved in Tolaris' ways, but then she doesn't know yet she's been 'infected' or injured by letting things slip in her dalliance with emotion. Trip says regret is one of the strongest emotions and he doesn't think Kov has experienced that yet, but I felt that might have been the wrong thing to say since his group was interested in experimenting with emotions and so that might have made him curious, but it was alright in the end, and even with T'Pol's disquiet, the episode concludes on some kind of positive note nonetheless, the music and atmosphere really making me think of 'Voyager' which had so many lovely endings to episodes. It wasn't quite the all-emotion Vulcan extremes that might be expected from the premise, but maybe that was apparent from the way the teaser ended with Archer surprised to find a Vulcan pleased to meet him rather than The Laughing Vulcan throwing back his head and guffawing as 'Star Trek V' opened, Sybok likely one of the adherents to this new way of thinking, though his beliefs became much more specific about finding a certain place in the galaxy. I can't help but think that had 'Enterprise' been full of traditional emotionless Vulcans, rather than the ones that are constantly riled just beneath the surface, this episode would have had a much greater impact, just as 'Star Trek V' did, and would have been a much better episode for it. But they made their Vulcans and we've had to put up with this portrayal in Trek ever since, sadly.
In visual terms the episode stands out with its beautiful rendition of both the Vulcan ship with Enterprise, the connecting tunnel almost like the two vessels holding hands, and the glowing blue nebula, which Archer had always wanted to see and which forms the backdrop for a joint mapping mission with these Vulcans, an excuse to stay in proximity long enough for the drama to happen. The nebula itself gives rise to the comforting reminder that books will survive to the 22nd Century (even though we'd already seen them well into the 24th), as Archer still has one he was given at eight years old - even at that age he saw himself becoming Admiral. Only a few more years to go, Captain! Misconceptions about humans and Vulcans each have about the other come to light in Trip's conversations with Kov, which was fun. I found it the height of irony that humans have this reputation for being barbarians through things like American Football which Kov thought was about attempting to kill the Quarterback, while Trip reassures him it's not a fight to the death, yet the more advanced Vulcans do have fights to the death surrounding their marriage rituals! Of course that doesn't get discussed because Kov has no interest in traditions, and also perhaps because it is such a private aspect of the culture they don't discuss with outsiders, a taboo so ingrained it might not even be broken by this group.
Late night at the Mess Hall was a nice scene, giving that insight into T'Pol as being separate from her human crew since she requires less sleep and probably values the chance for isolation outside of her Quarters. I'd recently been wondering how long she'd been on Earth for and we learn here she'd spent two years at the Vulcan Consulate on Earth, once venturing out disguised with a head scarf on to see what human recreation was like, yet another indication of her fascination for all things human and what they represent, and also telling that she almost never left the compound in her time there as it was against protocol. Her late night companion may have been a terror, but one good little thing comes out of Tolaris' appearance, and that was he mentions working in Shi'Kahr, which was the capital city of Vulcan later seen in Season 4, thus making a little bit of 'The Animated Series' canon, which I always appreciate since the animation itself isn't. When T'Pol follows Tolaris' instructions for a dream-filled night, I half expected the inhabitants of her dreams to start speaking for The Prophets so reminiscent were they of similar scenes in 'DS9,' though I'm pretty sure Rob Hedden had never directed Trek before. Someone that had been involved before was Robert Pine, seen here as Captain Tavin: he'd previously been in 'Voyager' ('The Chute'), but is more interesting for his connections, being the Father of Chris Pine, the alternate Captain Kirk of the Kelvin Timeline. Lastly of note is the attention to detail they even put in on episode titles: this was originally to be called 'Equilibrium,' perhaps a more apposite title, but it was realised that 'DS9' had already used that up so it was changed and to this day no two episodes of any series have ever been exactly the same. Good!
**
As if it wasn't enough for them to turn the Vulcans into conniving, volatile emotion bombs they had to add to their crimes against the race by doing this episode in which we meet an outcast group of logic-less specimens whom T'Pol becomes dangerously drawn to for being the perfect mix of both Vulcan and human attitudes to living with free emotion, her own private and secret fascination with such an indulgence. I remembered it as being a bit extreme, what with fat Vulcans, meat-eating Vulcans, emotionally open Vulcans and explicit bedroom scenes as T'Pol gets drawn in. What I got wasn't quite as bad as I remembered, but when I say remembered, it's only from the last time I went through the series on DVD as this was one of a tiny handful of episodes I didn't see on the first run. This means I have no nostalgic attachment, and like the best Vulcans can look at it in a cool, detached manner, not blighted by those pesky warm emotions. It's not as bad as I expected, the Vulcans, while extreme, are not numerous, and their excesses are still relatively restrained - let's just say they're not going to put ordinary Klingon or Ferengi behaviour to shame, it's just that they are open to new experiences and enjoy feeling feelings, tasting tastes, indoctrinating new blood… Okay, so Tolaris, the bad boy villain of the piece is the exception to the group. Or is he? We see so little of the other members that he might be representative, we just don't know.
It's not a great episode and is perhaps Berman and Braga's first foot wrong in the season since previous low point 'Breaking The Ice' wasn't credited to them. But it isn't the terrible, dull story I had in memory. Not that it's much better, but I've since seen much bad Trek in the form of 'Discovery' (first bash on it as late as the second paragraph - things must be improving!), so the many Trek-like details and attitudes that prevail in 'Enterprise' help me to see it for what it is: a somewhat derivative melding of a couple of Trek sub-genres, with a hopeful ending on the one hand, and an unresolved one on the other. The two story tropes I'm thinking of are the ones where a group of ambassadors come to cause trouble on the Enterprise/ DS9/ Voyager, and the 'fun' that ensues as their handlers (our characters), try to keep their appetites and moods in check without creating a serious diplomatic incident and/or lose their jobs (I think of Bashir, Worf and Neelix most commonly). The other one is when the ship or station plays host to a travelling group of telepaths who proceed to cause havoc with one or more of the crew to varying degrees of criminality or terror (see such examples as 'Violations,' 'Remember,' 'Random Thoughts' to name a few). Add them both together and you get, wait for it, a fusion of ideas. Ideas that don't necessarily go together, but a creative turmoil can work sometimes. It doesn't in this case, I'm not sure why, but it probably stems in large part from my aversion to Vulcans being wrongly portrayed.
That being said, neither Tolaris, nor Kov, nor Captain 'pass the chicken, please' Tavin are monstrously and heinously out of whack with Vulcan mores, at least from a human standpoint. Obviously compared with most Vulcans they are blazing a trail away from Surak at warp speed, though interestingly they beg to differ on that point, instead believing they're the ones who have interpreted Surak correctly and that what he really meant was they should integrate and master their emotions, not suppress them. I'm not familiar with the ancient texts so I can't say who's right on the matter, but I know what kind of Vulcans I like and the ones in 'Enterprise,' almost all of them, aren't it. T'Pol has grown on me over the years, though I still find her acerbity, icy barbs and losing control too easily to be a touch too over the top for my tastes, Tuvok fulfilling that perfect Vulcan poise and attitude that I require. T'Pol is the closest to a traditional Vulcan on the series and any deviation away from that ideal can be explained away, in her case, as fascination with humanity, and perhaps through this episode that interest is revealed as only a borderline acceptable step nearer an even more personal compelling toward emotions themselves. That's something T'Pol won't even admit to herself, I get the impression, so the cover of curiosity in humans just happened to fit with her subconscious quest to explore her own inner emotions.
This is all very 'modern' in the sense that Vulcans, most anyway, were well contented with the methods used to quell their unconquerable passions and weren't straining against the leash all the time, as those in this series seem to be - the ones most furiously defending Vulcan propriety and tradition, namely Soval, are the ones most volatile, barely able to keep their disgust, rage and horror in check as we see too often when the Ambassador shows his snooty face. He's not in this one, so doesn't get the chance to sneer his complete contempt for the lost brothers that have chosen a dangerous path away from their society, serenely sailing through space exploring themselves like some prototype 'TNG' crew. But Soval does have a part to play in the episode as he has relayed a message to Admiral Forrest to relay to Jonathan Archer to relay to Kov, the portly Vulcan with a Dad prob. That Soval agrees to this indicates that the outsiders aren't complete outcasts (unless Dad is extremely important), that was my own word for them, but I don't remember hearing they were banned, they simply chose to leave. There's an underlying indication that the veiled talk of Those Who Left is a reference to the Romulans, but whether that's an on the nose 'in-joke' about the ultimate reactants to Surak's message, or them coming to mind just a sign of Trekker knowledge in my brain, I'm not sure, because I can't remember if the Vulcans knew Romulans came from them when they were first seen in 'TOS.' I can't remember whether the Vulcan leader in Season 4, conspiring with the Romulans, was doing it for the sake of reunification or was himself of Romulan extraction.
So much is unspoken in Vulcan and Romulan history, or seldom recalled, especially to a non-native audience, but the lessons of history that the Romulans represent would be ideal to keep in mind when such groups leave the Vulcan way. That's the thing, though: you could take these Vulcans as a sign either way on whether it was right for Vulcans to follow Surak's teaching or not. The conventional wisdom is that this is what saved the race from annihilating each other, and I'd go along with that - it led to the formation of the Romulan Star Empire when dissenters left, a powerful and dangerous threat to the galaxy, but no longer on Vulcan. It prevented the Vulcans rampantly riding roughshod over other worlds, taking what they wished, leaving a trail of destruction behind them. It gave the foundations of the Federation a chance to build, since their influence far and wide, though careful and slow, was the pioneer for what humans would instigate and create in the Federation. Even in 'Enterprise' the Vulcans are shown to be cautious and appear to cultivate the galaxy, as opposed to other races such as the Klingons who only care about conquering and enslaving. At the same time the Romulans aren't inherently evil, just their extreme emotions that they share from Vulcan ancestry, are turned to war and eventually extreme isolation and distrust of the wider galaxy. But if we hadn't had the Romulans, their power in the Alpha Quadrant wouldn't have tipped the scales ever so slightly against the Dominion in the greatest war our part of space had ever seen since the Romulan/ Earth War that was still to come at this point in 'Enterprise' (and will be forever bemoaned as missing!).
Are the writers of this episode saying that traditional teachings are the right way to go, at least in the context of the Vulcans? I'm not one hundred percent certain that was the message because of the one thing that is introduced here: the mind meld. This would go on to be an integral part of Vulcan life, a unique ability to communicate with even the most non-humanoid of species and how many threats were countered over the years thanks to this communication? It's a great tool of drama in its own right, but it's more important what it achieved through being used by people such as Spock or Tuvok. Yet here it's seen as a violation, an illicit exploration of the inner world of the mind, drawing back the veils of restraint and control that define Vulcan behaviour. In this case it's weighted towards the evil because the mind T'Pol allows in is itself chaotic and dangerous. Rape is a hard and emotive word to use in such a case, not something to be bandied about loosely, and if we say that this is the case, then surely we have to allow Spock's forced meld on Valeris in 'Star Trek VI' is also an act of the same magnitude of mental anguish. I prefer to call it torture rather than rape, but again it could be classified differently in different circumstances. It doesn't sit well that Spock could be classed as a rapist, but he was certainly torturing the necessary information out of Valeris' unwilling mind. In Tolaris' case, however, there is clearly a selfish motive to his action, not to mention the charged imagery T'Pol experiences, albeit from her own subconscious, though again, perhaps Tolaris, knowing curiosity would compel her to sleep without first meditating, was using his wilder telepathic skills to interfere with her dreams, and his lack of knowledge about what happened was all an act?
I think we have to look on this 'first' mind meld as a different conception of what the meld later became for Vulcans, this encounter led by Tolaris' attraction and the lack of restraint he advocates. Ironically this shows that casting off inhibition and self-control actually enslaves because he no longer has power over his own passions leading him to unacceptable behaviour in public: he picks up his host, Captain Archer, when goaded, and flings him across the room in a rage when T'Pol is to be denied him, which ends the amicable alliance between the two ships most abruptly. Again, the difference is that between a finely honed mind of self-denial and control as opposed to one of indulgence and hedonism as seen here, and the consequences of which spread further into the series as the violent meld and its sudden breaking is later found to have caused T'Pol some kind of imbalance in her brain that threatens her life. This deviation from Surak's teachings, but also embracing it in a different way, shows how dangerous it can be to interpret things wrongly. Vulcan society in general hasn't got everything right in the way the rulers act, and they all seem to be less controlled than later Vulcans, which proves that banning such practices as the meld is equally as bad as misusing it because it was part of their culture and vital for such a telepathic race's wellbeing. This is all fascinating to think about, and it's only when you take the series as a whole, with all the changes coming in through Season 4 that began to smooth Vulcan society into what we know, that you understand what happened and what needed to happen to get Vulcan to be the way we remember in other Trek.
Again, I have to go back to what the intentions of the writers were? They show what became an essential tool for the Vulcans, the mind meld, in a negative light, and yet it comes from this group who are outsiders that have gone away from Surak. They claim not to have abandoned logic, yet they do abandon many of the traditions of their people, such as avoiding meat. It's complicated to read what's being presented here. Are they saying that traditional Vulcans should be more open-minded because otherwise they'll never discover the full teachings of Surak, which would include mind-melding as part of their life. At the same time are they saying the ones that abandoned tradition are wrong because they've misappropriated the meld and misused it? Its wrongful use leads to trouble for T'Pol in future, but they can't be saying that the meld itself is to blame, just how it was used. Though this main story of the episode is immense food for thought and thoroughly enjoyable to dissect, it's not that involving for most of its running time. I call it very modern because T'Pol is into trying out feelings and loosening control, and for one who has lived for so many decades it's surprising how easy she is to manipulate, either by Archer encouraging her to interact with the Vulcan crew or by Tolaris piquing her curiosity about dreams. He may not have known it stemmed as much from personal curiosity, a subversive interest in emotional freedom, but when he framed it as a scientific experiment he knew that would push her to try it, he stumbled upon the thing that would get her to the point he wanted her to reach.
In Trek produced this century we've seen practically all Vulcans in an emotional position, whether it be the ones from the Kelvin Timeline, especially Mr. Spock, that version of which had chosen to embrace his human and emotional side to the detriment of the character, to the unpleasant ones he comes up against that were clearly modelled on those of 'Enterprise,' to those seen in 'DSC,' which continue that model though it claims to be part of the Prime Universe which we know by then had changed towards the Vulcans we saw in 'TOS.' It's a pattern away from restraint, self-control and sticking to tradition that is very much of our time now where everyone is encouraged they can be or do whatever they want - that may be inspiring if applied to ambitions and achievements, personal, professional, physical, mental, but it also means that spirit of freedom extends to doing whatever you want in any sense, and in human behaviour that usually means indulgence, inertia and taking what you want in whatever form that means. Writers writing in that mindset are clearly not going to write traditional Vulcans or portray the fact that they differ in this way from 'human' ways as a positive, which is why we get such poor versions of the race as standard. Because now it's more important to let your feelings out so we have to apply that to the Vulcans, too. There's always been something of a bias against the pointy-eared chaps because in many ways, except the one of wholeness, balancing emotions with everything else, they are superior: strength, senses, mentally, they excel in all areas, which is why they presented a difficulty for the humanist universe of Trek where humans needed to be the best.
Tuvok was often being teased about his caution or whatever, or irritating those who wanted a bit more relaxation of the letter of the law, but he often had the last metaphorical laugh when he was frequently correct, and his methods, tied to scientific modes of calculation or exploration were proved to be in the right. And just as following rules and traditions has gradually become less popular for the mainstream, so has keeping yourself under control which brings us back to the way Vulcans are shown to behave in Trek from 'Enterprise' on, and so it's no surprise that T'Pol should be so easily manipulated by someone who has the Vulcan background but also holds the knowledge of what it's like to let go, tantalising her to the point where she agrees to get involved and proving once again that holding back on what desires point you toward is the way to stay safe, so there are moral messages here, even if you have to really give it some thought to get to them. And the writers show that, at least in the Vulcan case, they do need to hold back and not let loose because they have such strong emotions, as Archer finds out when he tries his own experiment and gets launched across the Ready Room (close quarters to take on a Vulcan within, but it probably narrowed everything to that point of burning anger by the space being so claustrophobic - the space in which you exist has some bearing on moods and feelings, for sure), much as when Kirk goaded Spock in 'This Side of Paradise' to achieve an end.
Apart from this exciting conclusion and for introducing the mind meld into continuity, this story isn't very attractive to me for the aforementioned reasons about T'Pol unprofessionally giving in to personal wishes. In contrast, the B-story featuring Trip making friends with the jolly Kov, the first overweight Vulcan we've ever been shown, I'm pretty sure, is on the face of it a light addition to bulk up the running time, but becomes the highlight of the episode. The episode works best when you forget that these people are Vulcans, especially Kov, who behaves and sounds nothing like one of his race would and I can fully understand why a traditional Vulcan Father would have called him a disgrace. He probably didn't expect Kov to refuse to speak to him forever after as a result, not understanding how far he'd gone in his life of ignoring the Vulcan way (he even considers rituals and ceremonies to be boring!). On 'DS9' we generally saw Vulcans who were atypical for the species and on 'Enterprise' that continued exponentially with virtually all Vulcans different to what we'd expect, though few quite as un-Vulcan as Trip's newfound friend. But as I say, when you put aside the Vulcan-ness, or lack of it, this turns into a strong story about unforgiveness, with Archer enlisting Trip to try and get him to speak to his Father, who's dying, and best of all, like traditional Trek, it ends on a happy note with Kov having done what was needed and feeling all the better for it.
It must have taken a lot for Kov's Dad to deign to contact his son through a human ship, laying bare the family problems to those considered inferior, but he'd probably already suffered much disgrace himself for his association with such a son and couldn't be much further embarrassed. We know how stiff Vulcans can be when the right and proper way is eschewed, as shown by the rigidity T'Pol displays in obeying the High Command and just accepting they can recall her, although I suspect they only granted her a stay of execution on her Enterprise posting to continue to hold it over Starfleet's head as a last resort, if no other string could be pulled. She doesn't wish disgrace to fall on her family and their society is very much about duty and not diverting from it. With good reason for the troubled past they had, but even pillars of the community such as Sarek were shown not to speak to family members who deviated, as in Spock. While 'DSC' has muddied the waters and turned Sarek into a Bad Dad, the family only held together by the Great Woman Amanda as she's become in that series, nothing further needed to be added to that story in relation to this. It was a precedent that this follows, family loyalty and cutting off those who would oppose the correct way, which is fully understandable for the set, specific society that Vulcans live in, keeping themselves clean from other races' 'worldly' ways, and something I much admire about them in terms of their intractability and unwillingness to compromise. Still, it was good to see Kov unbending and being accepted to some degree, even if he was still in the wrong.
T'Pol's story is much less resolved, troubled by the events, though there's no indication she regrets getting involved in Tolaris' ways, but then she doesn't know yet she's been 'infected' or injured by letting things slip in her dalliance with emotion. Trip says regret is one of the strongest emotions and he doesn't think Kov has experienced that yet, but I felt that might have been the wrong thing to say since his group was interested in experimenting with emotions and so that might have made him curious, but it was alright in the end, and even with T'Pol's disquiet, the episode concludes on some kind of positive note nonetheless, the music and atmosphere really making me think of 'Voyager' which had so many lovely endings to episodes. It wasn't quite the all-emotion Vulcan extremes that might be expected from the premise, but maybe that was apparent from the way the teaser ended with Archer surprised to find a Vulcan pleased to meet him rather than The Laughing Vulcan throwing back his head and guffawing as 'Star Trek V' opened, Sybok likely one of the adherents to this new way of thinking, though his beliefs became much more specific about finding a certain place in the galaxy. I can't help but think that had 'Enterprise' been full of traditional emotionless Vulcans, rather than the ones that are constantly riled just beneath the surface, this episode would have had a much greater impact, just as 'Star Trek V' did, and would have been a much better episode for it. But they made their Vulcans and we've had to put up with this portrayal in Trek ever since, sadly.
In visual terms the episode stands out with its beautiful rendition of both the Vulcan ship with Enterprise, the connecting tunnel almost like the two vessels holding hands, and the glowing blue nebula, which Archer had always wanted to see and which forms the backdrop for a joint mapping mission with these Vulcans, an excuse to stay in proximity long enough for the drama to happen. The nebula itself gives rise to the comforting reminder that books will survive to the 22nd Century (even though we'd already seen them well into the 24th), as Archer still has one he was given at eight years old - even at that age he saw himself becoming Admiral. Only a few more years to go, Captain! Misconceptions about humans and Vulcans each have about the other come to light in Trip's conversations with Kov, which was fun. I found it the height of irony that humans have this reputation for being barbarians through things like American Football which Kov thought was about attempting to kill the Quarterback, while Trip reassures him it's not a fight to the death, yet the more advanced Vulcans do have fights to the death surrounding their marriage rituals! Of course that doesn't get discussed because Kov has no interest in traditions, and also perhaps because it is such a private aspect of the culture they don't discuss with outsiders, a taboo so ingrained it might not even be broken by this group.
Late night at the Mess Hall was a nice scene, giving that insight into T'Pol as being separate from her human crew since she requires less sleep and probably values the chance for isolation outside of her Quarters. I'd recently been wondering how long she'd been on Earth for and we learn here she'd spent two years at the Vulcan Consulate on Earth, once venturing out disguised with a head scarf on to see what human recreation was like, yet another indication of her fascination for all things human and what they represent, and also telling that she almost never left the compound in her time there as it was against protocol. Her late night companion may have been a terror, but one good little thing comes out of Tolaris' appearance, and that was he mentions working in Shi'Kahr, which was the capital city of Vulcan later seen in Season 4, thus making a little bit of 'The Animated Series' canon, which I always appreciate since the animation itself isn't. When T'Pol follows Tolaris' instructions for a dream-filled night, I half expected the inhabitants of her dreams to start speaking for The Prophets so reminiscent were they of similar scenes in 'DS9,' though I'm pretty sure Rob Hedden had never directed Trek before. Someone that had been involved before was Robert Pine, seen here as Captain Tavin: he'd previously been in 'Voyager' ('The Chute'), but is more interesting for his connections, being the Father of Chris Pine, the alternate Captain Kirk of the Kelvin Timeline. Lastly of note is the attention to detail they even put in on episode titles: this was originally to be called 'Equilibrium,' perhaps a more apposite title, but it was realised that 'DS9' had already used that up so it was changed and to this day no two episodes of any series have ever been exactly the same. Good!
**
Memento Mori
DVD, Stargate SG-1 S10 (Memento Mori)
You have to accept 'Stargate' on its own terms, taking into account it's just made on a TV budget and it's often derivative science fiction drama that has to be mass produced with twenty-plus episodes a year. And they'd been doing it for almost ten years. So you don't go in expecting too much if you know what's good for you, it rarely has the depth of ideas, commentary and character of, yes, 'Star Trek.' Added to this, it's easy to begin an episode with a high concept and very much harder to pull off a reason for it later, beyond it being a tremendous hook to the channel surfer thinking to check out this series. And it was a brilliant start, Vala's a waitress and foils a hold-up by taking out both criminals like Jason Bourne. Can you justify it, though? There's also the fact that hardened sci-fi viewers have seen such ideas many times before so you're already running through the possible scenarios in your head: it's some kind of sting operation, Vala's at this restaurant because she's playing a role and now she's just upset that and lost her cover. Or it's all a dream/ hallucination/ simulation by aliens/ result of accident/ drugs or some other trick or technology. Or she's genuinely lost her memory, leaving you wondering why she's ended up here.
The latter option is the case here, and once the episode starts we jump back three weeks to Daniel taking Vala out for a fancy meal at a posh restaurant where she gets kidnapped by shady types who we later learn are members of the infamous Trust, this time either working with, or for, a Goa'uld who wants memories Vala has from her time playing host to another Goa'uld. Okay, it gets a little convoluted, but you can dismiss the plot and just enjoy the filmic running about as SG-1 try to track down their missing friend and colleague, while Trust members are also on her trail once she escapes them, and the local law enforcement since she's a witness to the attempted robbery - for all they know she could have been in with them since she's new on the scene. And it is filmic, with explosions as safe-houses are stormed and gunfire spraying around, Mitchell commandeering some guy's bike so he can go off speeding after Vala's kidnappers a second time when imposters from the Air Force come to take her into custody from the police, and even cars rolling over spectacularly. They didn't need to have Mitchell on a bike whizzing through traffic, they just add an inconvenient plot point of a police car blocking in the team's vehicle. The only point I would gripe about and that almost lessened the episode for me was that the team weren't integrated into the story well enough.
We do get Carter, Teal'c and Daniel joining the pursuit, but they're not as integral as they should be, especially amid a large gaggle of guest characters from Trust members, to the Goa'uld, the police and general citizens to take up so much of the screen time. And what I watch the series for is the team, which sadly has been less together than they used to be. It makes sense from a story perspective as they are all experts and important people in their own right that Mitchell specifically got back together last season, since they could easily be heading their own teams or their own projects rather than still be on this one single team, but that's a problem of the format coming into contact with how things work in real life: you don't usually get highly qualified, successful people just doing the same job for ten years, they'd be constantly moving up or on. It's the same problem with starship crews being together for years and years in Trek, because they would be promoted or reassigned, but for the sake of TV, characters can't change too much or it breaks the format. That's a good phrase because this is one of those episodes that does break format. It's not one of the off-planet episodes, it's one of the Earth stories. Maybe it doesn't exactly break format then, but revert to a sub-genre within the series' mythology, which it's done many times over the seasons.
Dealing with the Trust, rogue NID, or dodgy politicians has always been part of the purview, and I'm sure they'd even done similar stories before where a character loses their memory and ends up in a different situation. Or maybe it was one of the spinoffs. The question is really whether it could live up to the premise, and by the end I was pretty much won over. Not because of the gunplay and action, but thanks to the character shining through. Now and again through the episode you get a bit of heart to proceedings: Daniel explaining his reason for inviting Vala to dinner was to thank her for trying so hard to give up her former tendencies and fit in to Stargate Command; the diner owner's kindly words when instead of taking out his own problems on her when she can't pay for her meal and is about to walk out, he instead offers her a job and a place to stay with apparently no ulterior motive (Don Stark was another actor who'd had a couple of Trek roles, notably Nicky The Nose in 'First Contact'). Ultimately it's Daniel putting down the gun and trusting her not to shoot him, saying exactly the right things she needed to hear so she'd stop running and trust him, that's what sells the episode. Because you can have all the car chases, fights and bullets flying left, right and centre, but if you haven't got a meaningful character moment like that then it's all for nothing (as many films show).
It's not perfect, it's not quite a rip-roaring success, but especially after the previous story in which everything went wrong, to see an episode in which things come right by the end is a relief. It allows Claudia Black to play up for the camera all day long (though even being alien how does she not know what a date is, or what 'To Dad' really means?!), which is what she's good at, and when it's just her and Ben Browder's Mitchell together it could almost be lost 'Farscape,' so there's lots to enjoy. The subplot of this mysterious tablet the Goa'uld lady was searching for may or may not become important in subsequent episodes, but could just as easily sink into oblivion as simply motivation for the cause of Vala's problems here. The Trust I can take or leave, they've never been very well defined, much like other 'secret' organisations on the series over the years, with only Mayborn of interest, and he'd had his day, being a recurring character connected with O'Neill and so not necessary any more. Every episode doesn't need to add to the ongoing story and I like it when they do one-off sci-fi episodes, though this was clearly the writers' desire to play with a full-on action film in the real world and everything was geared towards that, including the odd cop-out like Teal'c left in a room to make the Trust captive talk and all he does is whisper something in his ear which we're not privy to - it's a cheat, basically, a writer's device to dodge a way out. A bit like Vala getting handed her uniform patches as a fully-fledged member of the team for… being captured? Hmm. And I'm sure they said it was Three Weeks Ago from the hold-up, and then it goes forward Two Weeks Later where we see it happen again… So it just slips through since it was polished, with occasional amusement, I just wish the characters were used a bit better in general.
***
You have to accept 'Stargate' on its own terms, taking into account it's just made on a TV budget and it's often derivative science fiction drama that has to be mass produced with twenty-plus episodes a year. And they'd been doing it for almost ten years. So you don't go in expecting too much if you know what's good for you, it rarely has the depth of ideas, commentary and character of, yes, 'Star Trek.' Added to this, it's easy to begin an episode with a high concept and very much harder to pull off a reason for it later, beyond it being a tremendous hook to the channel surfer thinking to check out this series. And it was a brilliant start, Vala's a waitress and foils a hold-up by taking out both criminals like Jason Bourne. Can you justify it, though? There's also the fact that hardened sci-fi viewers have seen such ideas many times before so you're already running through the possible scenarios in your head: it's some kind of sting operation, Vala's at this restaurant because she's playing a role and now she's just upset that and lost her cover. Or it's all a dream/ hallucination/ simulation by aliens/ result of accident/ drugs or some other trick or technology. Or she's genuinely lost her memory, leaving you wondering why she's ended up here.
The latter option is the case here, and once the episode starts we jump back three weeks to Daniel taking Vala out for a fancy meal at a posh restaurant where she gets kidnapped by shady types who we later learn are members of the infamous Trust, this time either working with, or for, a Goa'uld who wants memories Vala has from her time playing host to another Goa'uld. Okay, it gets a little convoluted, but you can dismiss the plot and just enjoy the filmic running about as SG-1 try to track down their missing friend and colleague, while Trust members are also on her trail once she escapes them, and the local law enforcement since she's a witness to the attempted robbery - for all they know she could have been in with them since she's new on the scene. And it is filmic, with explosions as safe-houses are stormed and gunfire spraying around, Mitchell commandeering some guy's bike so he can go off speeding after Vala's kidnappers a second time when imposters from the Air Force come to take her into custody from the police, and even cars rolling over spectacularly. They didn't need to have Mitchell on a bike whizzing through traffic, they just add an inconvenient plot point of a police car blocking in the team's vehicle. The only point I would gripe about and that almost lessened the episode for me was that the team weren't integrated into the story well enough.
We do get Carter, Teal'c and Daniel joining the pursuit, but they're not as integral as they should be, especially amid a large gaggle of guest characters from Trust members, to the Goa'uld, the police and general citizens to take up so much of the screen time. And what I watch the series for is the team, which sadly has been less together than they used to be. It makes sense from a story perspective as they are all experts and important people in their own right that Mitchell specifically got back together last season, since they could easily be heading their own teams or their own projects rather than still be on this one single team, but that's a problem of the format coming into contact with how things work in real life: you don't usually get highly qualified, successful people just doing the same job for ten years, they'd be constantly moving up or on. It's the same problem with starship crews being together for years and years in Trek, because they would be promoted or reassigned, but for the sake of TV, characters can't change too much or it breaks the format. That's a good phrase because this is one of those episodes that does break format. It's not one of the off-planet episodes, it's one of the Earth stories. Maybe it doesn't exactly break format then, but revert to a sub-genre within the series' mythology, which it's done many times over the seasons.
Dealing with the Trust, rogue NID, or dodgy politicians has always been part of the purview, and I'm sure they'd even done similar stories before where a character loses their memory and ends up in a different situation. Or maybe it was one of the spinoffs. The question is really whether it could live up to the premise, and by the end I was pretty much won over. Not because of the gunplay and action, but thanks to the character shining through. Now and again through the episode you get a bit of heart to proceedings: Daniel explaining his reason for inviting Vala to dinner was to thank her for trying so hard to give up her former tendencies and fit in to Stargate Command; the diner owner's kindly words when instead of taking out his own problems on her when she can't pay for her meal and is about to walk out, he instead offers her a job and a place to stay with apparently no ulterior motive (Don Stark was another actor who'd had a couple of Trek roles, notably Nicky The Nose in 'First Contact'). Ultimately it's Daniel putting down the gun and trusting her not to shoot him, saying exactly the right things she needed to hear so she'd stop running and trust him, that's what sells the episode. Because you can have all the car chases, fights and bullets flying left, right and centre, but if you haven't got a meaningful character moment like that then it's all for nothing (as many films show).
It's not perfect, it's not quite a rip-roaring success, but especially after the previous story in which everything went wrong, to see an episode in which things come right by the end is a relief. It allows Claudia Black to play up for the camera all day long (though even being alien how does she not know what a date is, or what 'To Dad' really means?!), which is what she's good at, and when it's just her and Ben Browder's Mitchell together it could almost be lost 'Farscape,' so there's lots to enjoy. The subplot of this mysterious tablet the Goa'uld lady was searching for may or may not become important in subsequent episodes, but could just as easily sink into oblivion as simply motivation for the cause of Vala's problems here. The Trust I can take or leave, they've never been very well defined, much like other 'secret' organisations on the series over the years, with only Mayborn of interest, and he'd had his day, being a recurring character connected with O'Neill and so not necessary any more. Every episode doesn't need to add to the ongoing story and I like it when they do one-off sci-fi episodes, though this was clearly the writers' desire to play with a full-on action film in the real world and everything was geared towards that, including the odd cop-out like Teal'c left in a room to make the Trust captive talk and all he does is whisper something in his ear which we're not privy to - it's a cheat, basically, a writer's device to dodge a way out. A bit like Vala getting handed her uniform patches as a fully-fledged member of the team for… being captured? Hmm. And I'm sure they said it was Three Weeks Ago from the hold-up, and then it goes forward Two Weeks Later where we see it happen again… So it just slips through since it was polished, with occasional amusement, I just wish the characters were used a bit better in general.
***
More Tribbles, More Troubles
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (More Tribbles, More Troubles)
One of the stories I was most looking forward to seeing, just like 'Yesteryear,' but I didn't realise it was next, I was just ready for more as opposed to waiting half a year between episodes! On the surface it's another lighthearted story, as you'd expect for a sequel to the comedic 'The Troubles With Tribbles' written by the same writer, and even more when it's part of a children's cartoon series. But if you stop to think about it beyond the bright colours that take things even further than 'TOS' did (pink Tribbles, orange Glommers and Klingons wearing purple uniforms!), it's more edgy than you'd expect and I'm sure there'd be people up in arms about this sort of thing now. There's genetic modifications: we learn the Klingons created this Glommer as a solution to the Tribble problem, an artificial predator to glom onto them and remove the troublesome little pests. We also learn these Tribbles have been modified so they don't reproduce. But mainly it's the fact that they're used as weapons, surely not ethical for Starfleet! It's all a good joke really, but people are much more sensitive in today's world so I can imagine it sticking out. For me it was another enjoyable story that had bonuses in the shape of the hardware we see. The advantage of animation is you have no limit to what can be shown so we get more ships than a handful of 'TOS' episodes when they were often forced to either avoid showing vessels since they couldn't match up to the expensive Enterprise model, or have them be so alien they could be represented as merely a glowing shape.
Not so here as we have a couple of robot grain ships that feature the same starship configuration of two warp nacelles and a deflector dish, yet attached to a large cargo hold for transportation of the needed grain. Then there's the trader's ship which looks a little like a shuttlecraft, but a bit sleeker. And the most impressive of all: a Klingon Battlecruiser in full pomp. It's such an impressive design and a thrill to see in animated form, and bearing down menacingly on its victims it strikes the right sense of power and threat. To top it all we have a returning character from 'TOS' as its Captain: Koloth, one of the three most memorable of the series who went on to join his fellow warriors in an episode of 'DS9' ('Blood Oath'), around twenty years later. While Kor and Kang both made more than one appearance in later Treks, Koloth (whom we see die in the 'DS9' episode), never got as much exposure as his brothers so it's nice that he had an outing on 'TAS.' Sadly, either the budget didn't stretch to getting actor William Campbell to voice his character or he was busy as it's clearly James Doohan performing the role, which he did for many of the aliens and guest characters. Intriguingly, they did appear to get Stanley Adams back to reprise his role as Cyrano Jones the dodgy trader who was responsible for causing all the Tribble trouble last time, so maybe they could only afford one guest, although he's not credited in the episode. But I'm pretty sure it is him as otherwise they'd have had Doohan do it.
Attention to detail and continuity is one of those things Trek used to do so well for its first forty years (not so much now!), and while 'TAS' was quickly determined as non-canonical compared with its live-action brethren for some of the things that didn't quite match up, it's still good to see them try to add to the ongoing story where they can (and of course if anything ever appears within live-action it becomes canon retroactively as has happened with some aspects of 'TAS'). Writer David Gerrold had invented Tribbles so it was fitting that it would be he who brought them back, but the episode is just as much a draw for its tense ship encounters, the Klingons having developed a new 'stasis field' weapon that can immobilise a starship, though as we see, Kirk has the tactical ability to probe for weaknesses and save his ship. I was wondering how the Tribbles would get into those metallic containers and eat the grain as was quite obvious would happen, so having them damaged in the battle and the grain spill loose into the Tribbles' path made sense. There was a good dose of humour in both dialogue and visuals with Kirk's exasperation or the Tribble he keeps pushing off his chair getting bigger each time. There are even a couple of times when the explanation Spock's just given is repeated in simpler language by other characters - this works as both a good joke with Spock slightly nettled that that's what he just said, while also having the benefit of making things clear for the child audience, signs of a good writer at work.
There are inconsistencies once again, both in story terms and visuals, the most pressing being that disabling a Federation starship would surely be classed as an act of war (though true to Starfleet form, Kirk orders weapons ready, but only to fire on the Klingons if they fire first), and also what happened to the Organian peace treaty backed up by their power so they were unable to use weapons against each other? It's been a while since I've seen all of 'TOS' so maybe in later episodes that wasn't followed through with on that series, but it was a slight niggle. The animation mistakes are curious: one shot has the viewscreen image of Koloth framed wrong so that he's actually on the Enterprise Bridge even while his chair is on the screen behind him - perhaps the holo-comms from 'Discovery' aren't as unprecedented for this era as we thought! Another shot of Cyrano Jones standing in front of the Turbolift door on the Bridge shows the red door with some missing part at its base as if it was damaged. Very odd, but I'm glad they haven't gone back and 'fixed' such anomalies as they add texture to the piece and show it in all its flawed glory. We're permitted to see more of the Enterprise herself including corridors, and most interestingly for me, the bottom of a Jefferies Tube in which a giant Tribble is wedged. Not sure on the biology of giant Tribbles exploding into a mountain of little ones, but that's why this is a cartoon and not to be taken too seriously!
I don't remember ever seeing aboard a Klingon ship in 'TOS' (unless the Romulan ship in Season 3 was actually a Klingon ship which they'd modified as they had some treaty around then so they could reuse the Klingon model), so it was a treat to see inside one of those. The Klingons themselves were also well drawn and that's the joy of the series: seeing familiar Trek morphed into line drawings and bold, flat colours. Cyrano Jones' likeness was also very accurate so it wins on all counts. Shame they never introduced the Glommer into later iterations of Trek, but there's still time - I'm imagining a CGI creature rather than the far simpler, and easier to produce fluff-ball that is a Tribble! At this stage of the series the pace is right and they don't appear to reuse too many shots. That's my main memories of the series as a child in the Nineties, that it was a bit boring because they kept using the same stock shots and it was dreadfully slow, but this is an example of the series doing its job well.
***
One of the stories I was most looking forward to seeing, just like 'Yesteryear,' but I didn't realise it was next, I was just ready for more as opposed to waiting half a year between episodes! On the surface it's another lighthearted story, as you'd expect for a sequel to the comedic 'The Troubles With Tribbles' written by the same writer, and even more when it's part of a children's cartoon series. But if you stop to think about it beyond the bright colours that take things even further than 'TOS' did (pink Tribbles, orange Glommers and Klingons wearing purple uniforms!), it's more edgy than you'd expect and I'm sure there'd be people up in arms about this sort of thing now. There's genetic modifications: we learn the Klingons created this Glommer as a solution to the Tribble problem, an artificial predator to glom onto them and remove the troublesome little pests. We also learn these Tribbles have been modified so they don't reproduce. But mainly it's the fact that they're used as weapons, surely not ethical for Starfleet! It's all a good joke really, but people are much more sensitive in today's world so I can imagine it sticking out. For me it was another enjoyable story that had bonuses in the shape of the hardware we see. The advantage of animation is you have no limit to what can be shown so we get more ships than a handful of 'TOS' episodes when they were often forced to either avoid showing vessels since they couldn't match up to the expensive Enterprise model, or have them be so alien they could be represented as merely a glowing shape.
Not so here as we have a couple of robot grain ships that feature the same starship configuration of two warp nacelles and a deflector dish, yet attached to a large cargo hold for transportation of the needed grain. Then there's the trader's ship which looks a little like a shuttlecraft, but a bit sleeker. And the most impressive of all: a Klingon Battlecruiser in full pomp. It's such an impressive design and a thrill to see in animated form, and bearing down menacingly on its victims it strikes the right sense of power and threat. To top it all we have a returning character from 'TOS' as its Captain: Koloth, one of the three most memorable of the series who went on to join his fellow warriors in an episode of 'DS9' ('Blood Oath'), around twenty years later. While Kor and Kang both made more than one appearance in later Treks, Koloth (whom we see die in the 'DS9' episode), never got as much exposure as his brothers so it's nice that he had an outing on 'TAS.' Sadly, either the budget didn't stretch to getting actor William Campbell to voice his character or he was busy as it's clearly James Doohan performing the role, which he did for many of the aliens and guest characters. Intriguingly, they did appear to get Stanley Adams back to reprise his role as Cyrano Jones the dodgy trader who was responsible for causing all the Tribble trouble last time, so maybe they could only afford one guest, although he's not credited in the episode. But I'm pretty sure it is him as otherwise they'd have had Doohan do it.
Attention to detail and continuity is one of those things Trek used to do so well for its first forty years (not so much now!), and while 'TAS' was quickly determined as non-canonical compared with its live-action brethren for some of the things that didn't quite match up, it's still good to see them try to add to the ongoing story where they can (and of course if anything ever appears within live-action it becomes canon retroactively as has happened with some aspects of 'TAS'). Writer David Gerrold had invented Tribbles so it was fitting that it would be he who brought them back, but the episode is just as much a draw for its tense ship encounters, the Klingons having developed a new 'stasis field' weapon that can immobilise a starship, though as we see, Kirk has the tactical ability to probe for weaknesses and save his ship. I was wondering how the Tribbles would get into those metallic containers and eat the grain as was quite obvious would happen, so having them damaged in the battle and the grain spill loose into the Tribbles' path made sense. There was a good dose of humour in both dialogue and visuals with Kirk's exasperation or the Tribble he keeps pushing off his chair getting bigger each time. There are even a couple of times when the explanation Spock's just given is repeated in simpler language by other characters - this works as both a good joke with Spock slightly nettled that that's what he just said, while also having the benefit of making things clear for the child audience, signs of a good writer at work.
There are inconsistencies once again, both in story terms and visuals, the most pressing being that disabling a Federation starship would surely be classed as an act of war (though true to Starfleet form, Kirk orders weapons ready, but only to fire on the Klingons if they fire first), and also what happened to the Organian peace treaty backed up by their power so they were unable to use weapons against each other? It's been a while since I've seen all of 'TOS' so maybe in later episodes that wasn't followed through with on that series, but it was a slight niggle. The animation mistakes are curious: one shot has the viewscreen image of Koloth framed wrong so that he's actually on the Enterprise Bridge even while his chair is on the screen behind him - perhaps the holo-comms from 'Discovery' aren't as unprecedented for this era as we thought! Another shot of Cyrano Jones standing in front of the Turbolift door on the Bridge shows the red door with some missing part at its base as if it was damaged. Very odd, but I'm glad they haven't gone back and 'fixed' such anomalies as they add texture to the piece and show it in all its flawed glory. We're permitted to see more of the Enterprise herself including corridors, and most interestingly for me, the bottom of a Jefferies Tube in which a giant Tribble is wedged. Not sure on the biology of giant Tribbles exploding into a mountain of little ones, but that's why this is a cartoon and not to be taken too seriously!
I don't remember ever seeing aboard a Klingon ship in 'TOS' (unless the Romulan ship in Season 3 was actually a Klingon ship which they'd modified as they had some treaty around then so they could reuse the Klingon model), so it was a treat to see inside one of those. The Klingons themselves were also well drawn and that's the joy of the series: seeing familiar Trek morphed into line drawings and bold, flat colours. Cyrano Jones' likeness was also very accurate so it wins on all counts. Shame they never introduced the Glommer into later iterations of Trek, but there's still time - I'm imagining a CGI creature rather than the far simpler, and easier to produce fluff-ball that is a Tribble! At this stage of the series the pace is right and they don't appear to reuse too many shots. That's my main memories of the series as a child in the Nineties, that it was a bit boring because they kept using the same stock shots and it was dreadfully slow, but this is an example of the series doing its job well.
***
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