DVD, Voyager S5 (Once Upon A Time)
A Challenge For Neelix. That's what it's all about and that's what it could have been called, but it's also about the thorny issue of what to tell children, and whether they're ready for the truth, as well as being a very personal reminder for Neelix about his tragic past. I sometimes come to episodes I've rated highly in the past with some trepidation, worried they won't hold up, whether modern Trek has so lessened my sense of wonder and attachment to that universe that I won't be as susceptible to its charms, especially when they're episodes I haven't watched in years. I'm glad to say this was every bit as strong a story as I'd previously thought, though I had very little specific memory, other than knowing it was about Naomi Wildman in the Holodeck, and it stands as the best episode of the season so far, what a relief! In an age when Trek references are thrown around with gay abandon, having all the emotional resonance of a damp log (in keeping with the Flotter theme), this shows how to really use backstory and characters' pasts in a way that pulls you in and invests the experience with great feelings of sympathy and care. That's down to the episode's choice to tell some of it from a child's point of view, something Naomi brought uniquely to this particular series. I could quibble over things like it not going far enough, and maybe they should have been really experimental and had the story completely from her perspective, but then we wouldn't have been able to explore the feelings of loss and grief that Neelix is forced to confront in this situation.
It is very much a Neelix story - the purpose of guest or recurring characters should be to bring something new out of our main cast, and as much fun as it is playing with new people, that is the reason for having main characters, we're seeing the series through their eyes and the more we learn about them, their inner, as well as outer selves, the more we are drawn in. It shows powerfully how accomplished Neelix was in dealing with children, that he is such a sweet-natured man, a quality that would endear him to little ones. Some people will snidely bring up how he was romantically entangled with what was essentially a very young child in the days when Kes was aboard, but in her lifespan, being two was basically in her twenties, so though in terms of time she was a baby to us, in her short span of expected life, plus physically and emotionally, in every way she was an adult. Still, among the best qualities of Neelix' attraction to her was also a deep-seated need to help the vulnerable, and looking back we can see that comes from the loss of his own family in the war between the Talaxians and the Haakonians, resulting in the terrible genocidal attack with the Metreon Cascade, something explored so effectively in Season 1's 'Jetrel.' The series largely ignored Neelix' tragic past ever since, other than confronting his loss again in the previous season's 'Mortal Coil' (where the image of Alixia originates), and in a series where he was one of the characters to become a little lost in the shuffle later on, it's a real joy to have him and his past so central to the story here.
Children had been part of the Trek universe, or I should say the Starfleet day-to-day, ever since the beginning of 'TNG,' though of course as early as 'Charlie X' on 'TOS' they'd dealt with young people, and continued that theme in the films with the cadets. But specifically children had been an incorporation of 'TNG' in the logic that families assigned to voyages of multiple years and little expectation of returning to Earth (or Ktaria VII, or wherever the crew called home), wouldn't want to be parted and were required for good mental wellbeing and morale. There are all kinds of arguments both ways whether it was too dangerous or foolhardy to take your whole family with you, kiddies and all, but the fact is that's what Roddenberry added to this era of his Trek saga. That continued with 'DS9,' though Jake and Nog were older children, and when Voyager was assigned to track down the Maquis ship containing Tuvok, they were only a small science vessel on a short mission, so there was no question of families there. In the event only one crew-member had such a strong wrench from their family, and that was Ensign Samantha Wildman, a recurring character mostly appearing in Season 2, separated from her husband on DS9 (a real shame they never introduced his character as a link for 'DS9' with its sister series, but they didn't seem to like much overlap between each other, sadly), and most importantly of all, pregnant with what would become Naomi.
In those early episodes the pregnancy and the baby became an important symbol of life carrying on regardless of circumstances. There was no talk of abortions or of making it easier on the Mother, or the fact it was so dangerous to introduce such a small life form onto a ship travelling into the unknown, and wouldn't it be better to end such a life before it could suffer. That's the attitude that might have been a part of the story now, as life has become so devalued and dehumanised. Quite the opposite, as Wildman's baby represented all their futures and in fact it was only strange that there weren't more born (with, as far as I can recall, only B'Elanna's last-minute birth of Miral in the closing moments of the series), especially when it was recognised they could potentially require replacements if this was indeed to be a generational ship that would take decades to return to Federation space. Once the baby had served its dramatic function, however, not to mention Samantha, there wasn't much call to bring them into the story again, and sadly they didn't return until 'Mortal Coil' when we see Neelix in his Godfather role for the first time. In real terms Naomi should only be about three or four by now, but in 'Once Upon A Time' she's more like an eight year old, for obvious reasons of practicality in a TV series: a three year old wouldn't have been able to act in the way Scarlett Pomers did, and the little mite they used before (Brooke Stephens), didn't have the same focus in the story, so to achieve what they wanted, they needed to recast.
Pomers was delightful - not precocious or annoying. Yes, she does come across a little like she's doing what she's told, but for a child actor she did very well and had the charm and grace required to pull it off. It wasn't the first time Trek had done such a thing, either, as young Alexander Rozhenko, aka Worf's son, had also had a sudden growth spurt from birth to appearances in the series. Fortunately in both cases alien DNA came to the rescue as they could easily say that Klingon or Ktarian children grow far quicker than human examples, and that was good enough! What makes this episode special is that 'Voyager' hadn't been shown from such a different perspective before, it had always been much more adult due to the position the crew were in of being completely alone, and a desire by the makers that this crew weren't going to be sitting around morosely feeling sorry about missing their families and instead embracing their circumstances and the joy of exploring strange new worlds that had never been seen by humans before, something Harry Kim reminds Neelix when he wishes Naomi hadn't had to be born on Voyager. And coming from Harry, who was so close to his parents and so young when he started, it's like a confirmation of those Starfleet values, and there is something of the self-sacrifice idea that comfort and security may need to be given up if Starfleet's knowledge is to be expanded, so it's all very true to the Trek ethos.
I felt there might be somewhat of a parallel with the contemporary times the series was made in when Neelix tells Naomi he had a real forest behind where he lived and he and his sisters used to go off and explore every day as opposed to her Holodeck one - this could have been meant as a comment on the rise of computer games back then and children beginning to spend so much time in fantasy worlds (or even watching Trek!), rather than playing out in the physical one, as the only forest Naomi has is the artificial one. But that isn't what the story is about, even if we see that that's exactly where Naomi runs in a crisis to escape her real world problems. But she's a lot more grown-up than most children her age, and like Neelix, she has a sweet nature, quick to respond in sympathy when he tells her about losing his own family instead of holding a grudge for the fact he lied to her. Children do tend to be more resilient, probably because they simply don't know any better, and Naomi above all has been through a lot in her short life when you think of the number of attacks and takeovers that have occurred. Actually, it does make you wonder how the Wildmans coped with things like the Borg or when the Hirogen took over the ship... That's the main reason we haven't heard much about them since the early seasons because it is difficult to work the plight of a child in every time, and how she might be traumatised by events that are daily life for a Starfleet officer, so it's probably best not to think about that too much!
One episode that sprang to mind was 'Cost of Living,' the one with Lwaxana Troi and Alexander playing in the Holodeck, but only really for the superficial connections of an adult and a child in a wacky holoprogram world with quirky characters. I quite liked that one (Lwaxana's always good for a laugh), but this episode is far superior. One thing I appreciated was the early setting up of Naomi's career path and social standing in the Voyager community. If she wasn't careful she could easily have been a spoilt brat with all these adults around to make a fuss of the only child aboard (though that would change eventually). The special friendship she would have with Seven of Nine in particular (unsurprisingly when you consider they have more in common than first impressions since Seven is practically a child herself being assimilated for much of her life), but also the Doctor and Janeway, and becoming the 'Captain's Assistant' were set up nicely here - as you'd expect from a child she's afraid of 'the Borg lady' and believes she could be assimilated into her collective. Of course she's a young child so she doesn't mean everything she says, and Neelix is quick to smooth over any silliness or concerns, but it was a terrific scene where Seven approaches and they have a little interaction, one moment where Pomers excels as you completely accept that Naomi would be frightened of someone so different - there were probably plenty of adults on the crew who were initially concerned about her, too, it's only natural! Terribly ironic that eventually Naomi would indeed become part of Seven's 'collective' as both pupil and friend, which adds even more joy to going back to this scene.
Naomi must have a privileged position on the ship as I'm sure if it had been the Enterprise or other Starfleet locations with children as standard, they wouldn't have access to either the Bridge or Holodeck, but because she's a special case, uniquely the only child aboard, she can (just about), reach the controls for the Holodeck (and is apparently intelligent enough to encode them so Neelix couldn't change the program to take out her friends Flotter and Trevis, and presumably to prevent him shutting the program down - another real world parallel to today when young children can be more technologically savvy than adults!), and there's no block from the computer when she heads to the Bridge. Either she's never attempted it before and they didn't see any reason to make sure the computer would refuse access to her, or they didn't even think of it. Either way, the important thing is she stumbles onto the news that the shuttle her Mother was on has crashed, the worst possible way to learn such crushing tidings. It reminded me of a story told by one Trek character about how they stumbled into an operating theatre and witnessed things a child shouldn't have - was it Bashir, I can't remember? No, it was Harry as he's reminded of it in 'The Thaw,' but it's a real shock, and the worst is that Neelix hadn't told her the truth. That was a truly fascinating part of the story, an inexperienced adult (in that he's never had children himself), has to make the decision about how much or what, to tell of a child in his care's parent.
It was a tough call and I think he was right to protect her, but it's also an organic process that is changing all the time: how much they know, how much might be speculated on. It came to the point where Neelix should have broken it gently that her Mother had crashed and they knew no more than that, and Janeway was insistent that he tell her. That was also a fascinating consideration: how much is Janeway responsible, and therefore has the decision, over this child's position. Because in a sense it isn't for authority to decide how children should be raised, other than basic standards of care and health, but it should have been up to Neelix to decide what was right in the absence of Samantha. And yet at the same time Janeway is the ultimate authority of this ecosystem and so she is responsible in that respect. What I loved is that she didn't do what I was, for some reason, expecting, and bark at Neelix (her bark's worse than her bite - actually it's probably the other way around for her!), ordering him to tell the child. Instead she pulls him into her Ready Room for a personal chat. And it's not the kind of personal chat her crew must sometimes dread where she talks very quietly, but with steel in her voice. It was a different kind of chat where she genuinely tries to help with empathy and care, sitting Neelix down and having the discernment to realise what's going on with him, especially after he's blown up in her face, she doesn't respond with equal ire, but listens and pays attention, reacting in the right way. It was beautiful to see, and when you think last season it was mostly confrontations with Seven in there, maybe that's the experience I was expecting!
The success of the episode is in it's skipping between the adult and child's worlds, seen most deftly in the screen conversation with Samantha - at first she's very reassuring and comforting to her daughter, then when she's talking to Neelix she switches to a more realistic attitude. Even the few scenes based on the Flyer were well done, whether it be Paris recording a goodbye to B'Elanna, or Tuvok reassuring the Ensign that no matter what happens to them Naomi will be in good hands on Voyager. It's so touching when we're recalled to the fact that he's been away from his children for four years and yet still has faith that they are 'prospering,' talking about his daughter: "I conveyed my values to her before leaving and I have confidence in the integrity of those around her." His Vulcanness is very reassuring (something so lacking in modern Trek), and so true to the race, as is his equable acceptance of their situation, the writers cleverly turning it around when Paris says he prefers 'live long and prosper' out of those Vulcan sayings! It's a comfortable knowledge and understanding of the Trek world and its races, as well as the specifics of each character's position at this point in their lives and history - Tuvok prefers to write his farewells rather than put himself through the emotional and public display of recording a personal message onscreen. I'm not sure they should have moved Samantha, though, if she has internal bleeding couldn't they have got the computer to record from a different camera?
If I'm nitpicking I'd also point to the idea of triangulating the distress call - to do that they'd surely need more than one point of connection, and I don't think they had shuttles out looking then, did they? Maybe they had multiple probes in different locations? Leaving aside the evolutionary propaganda the Doctor teaches poor Naomi, since that's just the usual Trek worldview unfortunately, there's really very little to find fault with - perhaps certain parts of 'The Adventures of Flotter' holoprogram were a little too extreme for young children: the Ogre of Fire burns up the forest in its entirety, leaving blackened remains? And the Holodeck characters don't seem entirely family friendly unless you consider Flotter's suggestion of drowning Neelix for interfering, or even more explicitly, Trevis' of hanging him from one of his branches, acceptable! Okay, so maybe Trevis didn't literally mean a hanging, maybe he just meant hanging him up out of harm's way so he couldn't interfere, but it did seem excessive in an amusing way (makes me think of the awful Holodeck character 'Badgey' in 'Lower Decks,' which I most certainly did not like!), and it was certainly a new dimension for scary bedtimes stories!
What I did love, however unlikely, was the legacy of this Flotter program - apparently most people in Starfleet have enjoyed it in their childhood (although, not sure that fits in for some since the Holodeck was new when it was on the Enterprise-D, everyone was impressed then, like it was brand new, and yet Janeway played it as a child...). You wouldn't think one specific holoprogram would be around so long for multiple generations to enjoy, and maybe they should have played with that as an internal joke about Trek being a long-running franchise (but this isn't 'Lower Decks,' they tended not to break the fourth wall like that). It must have been Samantha's own program since Flotter remembers her as a child, which made a nice sense of continuity that you could revisit childhood programs and they'd still know you. Although that means Samantha hasn't played the program with her own daughter, which you'd think she would have done... I'm just surprised they never sold Flotter dolls as part of the Trek merchandising empire! Or those Phaser drills. Have we ever seen that before? You'd think they'd simply use hand Phasers, but perhaps the nature of the rock meant it would require a long exposure to the beam and these were designed for a longer, slower release of energy, specifically targeted that a human arm wouldn't be able to keep up as precisely or for as long.
Not every single character is used excellently, Chakotay doesn't get much, Torres barely appears, despite being the usual go-to in an emergency, nor do we see her worry over Tom, but then it wasn't their episode and that side of the story could have been a whole episode in itself. The series has more variety when it focuses on certain characters in different episodes, one reason this era of Trek works so incredibly well. They keep saying how in modern Trek each series has its own tone and style, but in this era they were able to play with whatever style they wanted from week to week because they weren't forced down a specific route by complete serialisation. It's not that I really want to bash modern Trek, it's largely an uninteresting thing to me now, but I do like to call attention to what made Trek great, and this episode has those qualities in abundance: a personal story, emotional storytelling without the characters becoming overly emotional - other than Neelix' outburst at the Captain it all plays out on his face, all that he's going through internally, and you can read it there, you don't need to see him blubbering on someone's shoulder. Likewise, the trapped shuttle crew are stoic and ready to accept death if that's what they must do. It helped they had a Vulcan with them, and if Neelix had been the one there his feelings might have got the better of him, but he's taken a lot of example from his Starfleet brethren over the years and they remain professional and able to deal with whatever happens, and that's what makes it inspiring: seeing Neelix go through these difficult times and come out the other side.
It helped that it was a happy ending, perhaps for more 'drama' they could have killed off Samantha (she'd only appear in one more episode anyway, sadly, and in fact her daughter would go on to appear more than she did in total!), and that would have been a very modern way to handle it, but instead we have both the anguish and the joy, wrapped up in one big present of an episode. I could add to my list of minor complaints that it was a shame they just reused the set of the forest in the Holodeck as Neelix's nightmare when he's trying to escape the Metreon Cascade, but it can be justified by the fact he'd recently been in the Holodeck so it was highly plausible that it would be incorporated into the dream. There aren't really any serious complaints, this definitely stands as a high point in the series, one of the great Neelix episodes which would tend to be thin on the ground in the latter half of the series. It's not merely the character stuff that works, it's everything: the design of Flotter, Trevis, and their idyllic fairytale Forest of Forever land full of bright colours (even when the Ogre's destroyed the place the sky is this beautiful sunset awash with colour), is simply beautiful and provides the necessary contrast with so much of the episode taking place in the dark, whether it be the Bridge shrouded in darkness or the night time views of Naomi's Quarters. A real pleasure, and an episode I'd recommend even to those that have no interest in Trek, as it's a great family story that has resonance outside of whatever other interests the series brings.
****
Friday, 4 November 2022
Stargate: Continuum
DVD, Stargate: Continuum (2008) film
This is it, folks. The final mission of SG-1, all back together, plus others, versus the might of the old System Lords. Sort of. Critiquing this second and final film in the 'SG-1' straight-to-DVD spinoff series feels almost impolite since it is the cap on ten years and one other film (not including the original theatrical release that started it all), and is the true successor to the 'Stargate' lore - while 'Ark of Truth' was more of a feature-length conclusion to Season 10, this definitely succeeded in tying all of the series together, going back into its past to provide something of what was missing in the previous film. At the same time I can understand why it wasn't successful enough to warrant further DVD releases. I have no idea what the plan was, whether they only ever expected to make two films or whether they were hoping it would be popular with the mainstream, but judging from the fact there were no more (despite the fact another spinoff series would be shortly forthcoming at that time, while the first spinoff was drawing to a close), suggests it wasn't viable as a business model to continue 'SG-1' adventures. What I would say is that it was an improvement over 'Truth': it's one more mission, there aren't any plots that need tying up, other than the fact Baal is still at large, and they could really go to town. In consequence it does come across as having those missing elements I noticed from 'Truth,' namely less focus on action and more on character and ideas.
Time travel and alternate dimensions - that's classic sci-fi. Bringing everyone back (well, almost - Bra'tac was still an absence felt), that's what you should spend your budget on. But, and I admit I'm being pedantic here, or greedy, or contrary, I found myself wishing we could have one more mission that was more conventional in the sense that we got all four of the team, plus O'Neill, working together, being together, perhaps even reminiscing, reminding us why we love them. In the same way people complained about the multiple endings in 'The Lord of The Rings' and I loved it, I wanted that. I wanted to see them all sat round at the end, maybe hanging out at Jack's fishing pond as we've seen before. Even the sight of the lockers' names lined up together would have been a more appropriate last shot than the photo of Mitchell with his Grandfather (?), which made the final impression more about the latecomer of the last two seasons than the original team. But it is being churlish and nit-picky, I did like seeing these characters again. And yet... I wasn't entirely sure what the timeline was - I think it's supposed to be in parallel with 'Atlantis' Season 5 and yet no mention of Carter having recently returned from being boss there or indication of what their lives are now. Maybe I wasn't listening carefully enough, but I didn't catch what they're all doing at the beginning, though it does make sense they'd be rounded up to see Baal's extraction/execution.
Did Mitchell hang around in the past for ten years since I thought Carter said they could only get as close as 1929, and the Achilles, the ship carrying the Stargate from Africa to America was boarded and sunk by Baal in 1939? If so, then he'd have something in common with Teal'c, who also spent many years waiting for time to catch up in the final episode of the series. But there's only so much time, even in a feature-length production. My big nitpick was how the 'gate could have been activated in the first place when it's in a crate in the hull of a ship with no means of power? I understood Baal, and later the alternate Teal'c, were able to power up a 'gate with that handy portable DHD (smacked a bit of magic tech, though...), but that wasn't there when Baal first used it to get through! And I felt Christopher Judge should really have gone back to his bald look since he was effectively playing the bad guy again as First Prime. He didn't strictly need to for the story to work because it is an alternate timeline, but at the same time it would have placed the character more squarely in that mould. I hope it wasn't simply a vanity issue, like Judge didn't want to have the shaved head look because he'd moved on from it? These are minor things indeed in the face of having Daniel, Sam, Teal'c, Jack, Cam, Vala, Landry, Hammond, all those baddies (hey, Yu! and Camulus, Nirrti, Cronus, Apophis), to compliment Baal, not to mention President Hayes, and even minor roles like Major Davis, Siler, Walter...
It really delved into the series' history when a lot of that (other than Baal as the last surviving System Lord), had been left behind in the final few seasons as it tried to reinvent itself to some degree. That's what made it a more enjoyable film, but also that they did something interesting. But I wanted Jack along for the ride when we mostly get alternate Jack, and then he's gone. I was starting to feel the real horror and isolation and sadness of Carter, Jackson and Mitchell being held prisoner in their own country, yet in another timeline. Forbidden from contacting each other they're given new lives that they live for a year. You really start to feel for their existence, as lonely and separate as could be in this completely other world that is yet still torturously close to what they left behind, and they can't even talk to each other, just try to live a new life. For me, that was the most fascinating part of the film and one I wished had been explored more. I so wanted Daniel to meet this world's version of himself, the only one of the three to be alive, but when he does call him, he's rejected as a crank or a mocker, this Daniel has been so long on the fringe of society he doesn't even believe anyone would sympathise with his ideas. We don't even hear the conversation and yet you can tell from our Jackson's side how it's playing out. Mitchell is still feeling the tug of a past that no longer exists and Carter is trying to keep on going, but there wasn't enough of that for my liking.
Sure, we've seen similar tales where they've been in other realities, or had to persuade other versions of themselves to help them escape or reset the timeline or whatever, but with an episode being half the length of the time you have in one of these they could have spent more on that. But the needs of a production that has to hit certain points means even with more space there's still too little time to fully explore ideas. While I'm stating dissatisfaction I can also point out the lower standards from the series in terms of more gore and swearing, as if that brings more to the table. It doesn't. There's also another big gaffe I should point out regarding alternate Teal'c: he comes to trust the trio far too easily. Daniel 'gives him their word' that the Jaffa will be free again if Teal'c helps them. Why would he trust them? He's been working for Apophis and now Baal, there was no good reason for him to believe what they said and to come around to their point of view so easily. But it uses the series' lore very well, not just in bringing back so many faces, but also in remembering where and how many Stargates are on Earth, the Ancients' chair that fended off the weapon on our Earth, even little details like transporting the 'gate to America, which fills in a little more history, or Daniel mentioning Jack's son's death (not the best idea in this case, especially when they knew this was an alternate timeline so things weren't necessarily going to be as they knew them to be), prompting his anger when they needed an ally.
I think more than anything that's what I was missing in this particular adventure: more of the camaraderie. I wanted to see alternate Jack, Landry and Hammond trust these people that know a version of them so well, and come to support them. I know that may sound a little hypocritical when I've just been complaining about how Teal'c was too quick to assist them, but he was on the baddies' side and these were fellow humans so it would have made more sense. I would have loved it to be some kind of crossover with the Atlantis team, too, if that were possible, because obviously the humans at least would still be on Earth, so Sheppard and McKay could have joined in. But again, it's pure greed just wanting more of the things you like, and to be fair we'd get cameos from a few characters from both 'SG-1' and 'Atlantis' in 'Universe,' but perhaps a third film, if it'd happened might have been a massive crossover. And you have to be true to your story - it doesn't make something better just to chuck people in for the sake of it, and that's why I was quite impressed with how many people they did get back in their roles, long gone from the series itself (like the System Lords all lined up like that, or Apophis, back from the 'dead' yet again).
I must admit, I did wonder if both Teal'c and Jackson would make it out alive, despite the fact that there was time travel involved, mainly because Teal'c wouldn't show up again (unless he comes back one last time in 'Atlantis' which I don't know for sure yet, but seems unlikely since they gave him a good, round sendoff there), and I have the impression Daniel's only in some training videos on 'Universe.' But once Carter got killed on Baal's time travel platform I realised things were safe and of course there was no need for any of them to die since they were repairing the timeline! Which does have the advantage of making the story 'all a dream,' when perhaps more grounding would have been preferred as the final ever story proper. When viewed on its own I can't imagine it would make a great deal of sense for someone who'd never seen any 'Stargate' before, but if you know the characters it was good enough to stand as a reasonable adventure. It didn't have enough inherent qualities that I'd be quick to fling it on again, unlike some episodes, but I would easily concede it has the superiority over its immediate predecessor. So there was progress made, and perhaps if it had gone to more films they might have kept improving, but as it is it remains a nice ending to the series, without being an ending, and more like another episode, though one that didn't have as much power as 'Unending,' the series finale, which, while not being a masterpiece, was a fine, fine story and use of the characters. I miss there being a title sequence, but you can't do the one from the series without it seeming a bit cheap, but something more than the names coming up would have been preferable. If this is the last of 'SG-1' (and you never know in today's nostalgia-obsessed world), it could have been a lot worse, and I'm glad I had this little extra time with those people I'd spent so much time with over the last twenty years.
**
This is it, folks. The final mission of SG-1, all back together, plus others, versus the might of the old System Lords. Sort of. Critiquing this second and final film in the 'SG-1' straight-to-DVD spinoff series feels almost impolite since it is the cap on ten years and one other film (not including the original theatrical release that started it all), and is the true successor to the 'Stargate' lore - while 'Ark of Truth' was more of a feature-length conclusion to Season 10, this definitely succeeded in tying all of the series together, going back into its past to provide something of what was missing in the previous film. At the same time I can understand why it wasn't successful enough to warrant further DVD releases. I have no idea what the plan was, whether they only ever expected to make two films or whether they were hoping it would be popular with the mainstream, but judging from the fact there were no more (despite the fact another spinoff series would be shortly forthcoming at that time, while the first spinoff was drawing to a close), suggests it wasn't viable as a business model to continue 'SG-1' adventures. What I would say is that it was an improvement over 'Truth': it's one more mission, there aren't any plots that need tying up, other than the fact Baal is still at large, and they could really go to town. In consequence it does come across as having those missing elements I noticed from 'Truth,' namely less focus on action and more on character and ideas.
Time travel and alternate dimensions - that's classic sci-fi. Bringing everyone back (well, almost - Bra'tac was still an absence felt), that's what you should spend your budget on. But, and I admit I'm being pedantic here, or greedy, or contrary, I found myself wishing we could have one more mission that was more conventional in the sense that we got all four of the team, plus O'Neill, working together, being together, perhaps even reminiscing, reminding us why we love them. In the same way people complained about the multiple endings in 'The Lord of The Rings' and I loved it, I wanted that. I wanted to see them all sat round at the end, maybe hanging out at Jack's fishing pond as we've seen before. Even the sight of the lockers' names lined up together would have been a more appropriate last shot than the photo of Mitchell with his Grandfather (?), which made the final impression more about the latecomer of the last two seasons than the original team. But it is being churlish and nit-picky, I did like seeing these characters again. And yet... I wasn't entirely sure what the timeline was - I think it's supposed to be in parallel with 'Atlantis' Season 5 and yet no mention of Carter having recently returned from being boss there or indication of what their lives are now. Maybe I wasn't listening carefully enough, but I didn't catch what they're all doing at the beginning, though it does make sense they'd be rounded up to see Baal's extraction/execution.
Did Mitchell hang around in the past for ten years since I thought Carter said they could only get as close as 1929, and the Achilles, the ship carrying the Stargate from Africa to America was boarded and sunk by Baal in 1939? If so, then he'd have something in common with Teal'c, who also spent many years waiting for time to catch up in the final episode of the series. But there's only so much time, even in a feature-length production. My big nitpick was how the 'gate could have been activated in the first place when it's in a crate in the hull of a ship with no means of power? I understood Baal, and later the alternate Teal'c, were able to power up a 'gate with that handy portable DHD (smacked a bit of magic tech, though...), but that wasn't there when Baal first used it to get through! And I felt Christopher Judge should really have gone back to his bald look since he was effectively playing the bad guy again as First Prime. He didn't strictly need to for the story to work because it is an alternate timeline, but at the same time it would have placed the character more squarely in that mould. I hope it wasn't simply a vanity issue, like Judge didn't want to have the shaved head look because he'd moved on from it? These are minor things indeed in the face of having Daniel, Sam, Teal'c, Jack, Cam, Vala, Landry, Hammond, all those baddies (hey, Yu! and Camulus, Nirrti, Cronus, Apophis), to compliment Baal, not to mention President Hayes, and even minor roles like Major Davis, Siler, Walter...
It really delved into the series' history when a lot of that (other than Baal as the last surviving System Lord), had been left behind in the final few seasons as it tried to reinvent itself to some degree. That's what made it a more enjoyable film, but also that they did something interesting. But I wanted Jack along for the ride when we mostly get alternate Jack, and then he's gone. I was starting to feel the real horror and isolation and sadness of Carter, Jackson and Mitchell being held prisoner in their own country, yet in another timeline. Forbidden from contacting each other they're given new lives that they live for a year. You really start to feel for their existence, as lonely and separate as could be in this completely other world that is yet still torturously close to what they left behind, and they can't even talk to each other, just try to live a new life. For me, that was the most fascinating part of the film and one I wished had been explored more. I so wanted Daniel to meet this world's version of himself, the only one of the three to be alive, but when he does call him, he's rejected as a crank or a mocker, this Daniel has been so long on the fringe of society he doesn't even believe anyone would sympathise with his ideas. We don't even hear the conversation and yet you can tell from our Jackson's side how it's playing out. Mitchell is still feeling the tug of a past that no longer exists and Carter is trying to keep on going, but there wasn't enough of that for my liking.
Sure, we've seen similar tales where they've been in other realities, or had to persuade other versions of themselves to help them escape or reset the timeline or whatever, but with an episode being half the length of the time you have in one of these they could have spent more on that. But the needs of a production that has to hit certain points means even with more space there's still too little time to fully explore ideas. While I'm stating dissatisfaction I can also point out the lower standards from the series in terms of more gore and swearing, as if that brings more to the table. It doesn't. There's also another big gaffe I should point out regarding alternate Teal'c: he comes to trust the trio far too easily. Daniel 'gives him their word' that the Jaffa will be free again if Teal'c helps them. Why would he trust them? He's been working for Apophis and now Baal, there was no good reason for him to believe what they said and to come around to their point of view so easily. But it uses the series' lore very well, not just in bringing back so many faces, but also in remembering where and how many Stargates are on Earth, the Ancients' chair that fended off the weapon on our Earth, even little details like transporting the 'gate to America, which fills in a little more history, or Daniel mentioning Jack's son's death (not the best idea in this case, especially when they knew this was an alternate timeline so things weren't necessarily going to be as they knew them to be), prompting his anger when they needed an ally.
I think more than anything that's what I was missing in this particular adventure: more of the camaraderie. I wanted to see alternate Jack, Landry and Hammond trust these people that know a version of them so well, and come to support them. I know that may sound a little hypocritical when I've just been complaining about how Teal'c was too quick to assist them, but he was on the baddies' side and these were fellow humans so it would have made more sense. I would have loved it to be some kind of crossover with the Atlantis team, too, if that were possible, because obviously the humans at least would still be on Earth, so Sheppard and McKay could have joined in. But again, it's pure greed just wanting more of the things you like, and to be fair we'd get cameos from a few characters from both 'SG-1' and 'Atlantis' in 'Universe,' but perhaps a third film, if it'd happened might have been a massive crossover. And you have to be true to your story - it doesn't make something better just to chuck people in for the sake of it, and that's why I was quite impressed with how many people they did get back in their roles, long gone from the series itself (like the System Lords all lined up like that, or Apophis, back from the 'dead' yet again).
I must admit, I did wonder if both Teal'c and Jackson would make it out alive, despite the fact that there was time travel involved, mainly because Teal'c wouldn't show up again (unless he comes back one last time in 'Atlantis' which I don't know for sure yet, but seems unlikely since they gave him a good, round sendoff there), and I have the impression Daniel's only in some training videos on 'Universe.' But once Carter got killed on Baal's time travel platform I realised things were safe and of course there was no need for any of them to die since they were repairing the timeline! Which does have the advantage of making the story 'all a dream,' when perhaps more grounding would have been preferred as the final ever story proper. When viewed on its own I can't imagine it would make a great deal of sense for someone who'd never seen any 'Stargate' before, but if you know the characters it was good enough to stand as a reasonable adventure. It didn't have enough inherent qualities that I'd be quick to fling it on again, unlike some episodes, but I would easily concede it has the superiority over its immediate predecessor. So there was progress made, and perhaps if it had gone to more films they might have kept improving, but as it is it remains a nice ending to the series, without being an ending, and more like another episode, though one that didn't have as much power as 'Unending,' the series finale, which, while not being a masterpiece, was a fine, fine story and use of the characters. I miss there being a title sequence, but you can't do the one from the series without it seeming a bit cheap, but something more than the names coming up would have been preferable. If this is the last of 'SG-1' (and you never know in today's nostalgia-obsessed world), it could have been a lot worse, and I'm glad I had this little extra time with those people I'd spent so much time with over the last twenty years.
**
Tuesday, 25 October 2022
The Shrine
DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (The Shrine)
'Absolute Clarity' would have been a better title, in honour of the touching story Wolsey told about his Alzheimers-stricken Father, as 'The Shrine' gave it a completely different impression. You could say the whole episode was a waste of time, as other than Rodney admitting where he stands to our Dr. Keller, nothing of importance happens. Except that it is important because it shows how close this little band has grown - I can't imagine them putting themselves at such risk so Rodney could have one day of normal brain function back in Season 1. Ronon wasn't even known then and it was his knowledge that enabled them to find this 'shrine' that can somehow temporarily heal loss of brain function, but here they're willing to do whatever is necessary to see that their friend gets a moment to say his goodbyes. He doesn't take it in the way they intended, however, considering it a kind of torture when he'd been living in this increasingly muffled shadow world of inability to process or remember things, and now suddenly they bring him to and tell him he's not cured, he's going to die. I quite liked that he was horrified by the whole situation as that really is the McKay we know, he's not just going to sit down and have a last meal and talk of old times before dropping dead!
There was a short moment at the beginning when I really wondered if they might kill him off... until I remembered he appears in an episode of the next series, 'Universe,' and they wouldn't be stupid enough to kill off the best character on the series. What it does do is gives David Hewlett a chance to stretch, and instead of merely alternating between complaining and arrogantly solving the latest problem, he shows the mental degeneration of someone losing their mind, and it is affecting. Once I realised he wasn't going to die it could have become a mere nuts and bolts 'adventure' of getting him to this location (typically, the planet upon which this special place rests is occupied by a large Wraith force), before pulling off a handy solution and then he's cured. I actually really liked the way they dealt with it - they could have pushed things up a notch and had Wraith bearing down on their position, Ronon and Teyla having to hold them off while Keller performs her precarious operation, but it would have taken away from the already dramatic premise. I thought I was watching 'ER' at one point when Keller's opening up part of his skull, except they don't usually have creepy alien parasites burrowing out of a man's wound, which was a bit much, though as I said, a logical development and a way to complement Keller's battlefield surgery!
What works most about the episode is the closeness you sense between these friends and it really came across as classic 'Stargate': there's even a moment when we see the four (McKay, Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla), walk towards the 'gate like SG-1 used to do, though sadly there was no shot of them all going through together like we always saw as the final shot of the opening titles on 'SG-1,' which would have been even better. But it was a great concept to have a 'gate trapped underwater by a melted glacier, so they're all perched atop the 'gate itself (a nice shot pulling back to reveal water all around), and sending in MALPs, and that feeling of a small team's camaraderie... it all took me back. Wolsey has more sympathetic play again, either in the humour or in the story I mentioned, and really we haven't actually seen the old Wolsey, he's been extremely accommodating, which may have lost something of his abrasive character. It doesn't help that I'm also currently watching 'Voyager' so I'm seeing Robert Picardo as the genial later seasons Doctor in that series, and while he is different here, maybe he's playing it a bit too friendly so far and perhaps we need to see him exert his authority a bit more, make himself less cuddly, just as Carter didn't get on with Ronon right away, or Teal'c didn't get on with Ronon right away, or... well just about anyone doesn't get on with Ronon right away...
But I loved how devoted Ronon was to his friend, and despite their differences that's what they've become - McKay is so different to all of them (I'd have liked a scene with Zelenka where he bests him in some small way and is embarrassed about it, and maybe Rodney notices, but you can't have everything), and to see him reduced so much to dependence and loss of all his intellect and ability it reminded me of 'Riddles' an episode of 'Voyager' where Tuvok loses his mind and becomes childlike, although that was a bit more touching as Trek tended to be. But they certainly got the friendships right as they each try to come to terms with McKay's deteriorating condition, and we see recordings of different points in his illness, and then his sister comes into it, too. I can't help feeling such a large creature would have done more physical damage to his brain if it was crawling around in there, and from the graphic I thought it'd be much spindlier and easier to accept as something that would only have light contact with the brain, but as a whole the story was on the right side of quality for the series, though I can imagine it being difficult to watch in later years if you know anyone who suffers from losing mental control.
***
'Absolute Clarity' would have been a better title, in honour of the touching story Wolsey told about his Alzheimers-stricken Father, as 'The Shrine' gave it a completely different impression. You could say the whole episode was a waste of time, as other than Rodney admitting where he stands to our Dr. Keller, nothing of importance happens. Except that it is important because it shows how close this little band has grown - I can't imagine them putting themselves at such risk so Rodney could have one day of normal brain function back in Season 1. Ronon wasn't even known then and it was his knowledge that enabled them to find this 'shrine' that can somehow temporarily heal loss of brain function, but here they're willing to do whatever is necessary to see that their friend gets a moment to say his goodbyes. He doesn't take it in the way they intended, however, considering it a kind of torture when he'd been living in this increasingly muffled shadow world of inability to process or remember things, and now suddenly they bring him to and tell him he's not cured, he's going to die. I quite liked that he was horrified by the whole situation as that really is the McKay we know, he's not just going to sit down and have a last meal and talk of old times before dropping dead!
There was a short moment at the beginning when I really wondered if they might kill him off... until I remembered he appears in an episode of the next series, 'Universe,' and they wouldn't be stupid enough to kill off the best character on the series. What it does do is gives David Hewlett a chance to stretch, and instead of merely alternating between complaining and arrogantly solving the latest problem, he shows the mental degeneration of someone losing their mind, and it is affecting. Once I realised he wasn't going to die it could have become a mere nuts and bolts 'adventure' of getting him to this location (typically, the planet upon which this special place rests is occupied by a large Wraith force), before pulling off a handy solution and then he's cured. I actually really liked the way they dealt with it - they could have pushed things up a notch and had Wraith bearing down on their position, Ronon and Teyla having to hold them off while Keller performs her precarious operation, but it would have taken away from the already dramatic premise. I thought I was watching 'ER' at one point when Keller's opening up part of his skull, except they don't usually have creepy alien parasites burrowing out of a man's wound, which was a bit much, though as I said, a logical development and a way to complement Keller's battlefield surgery!
What works most about the episode is the closeness you sense between these friends and it really came across as classic 'Stargate': there's even a moment when we see the four (McKay, Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla), walk towards the 'gate like SG-1 used to do, though sadly there was no shot of them all going through together like we always saw as the final shot of the opening titles on 'SG-1,' which would have been even better. But it was a great concept to have a 'gate trapped underwater by a melted glacier, so they're all perched atop the 'gate itself (a nice shot pulling back to reveal water all around), and sending in MALPs, and that feeling of a small team's camaraderie... it all took me back. Wolsey has more sympathetic play again, either in the humour or in the story I mentioned, and really we haven't actually seen the old Wolsey, he's been extremely accommodating, which may have lost something of his abrasive character. It doesn't help that I'm also currently watching 'Voyager' so I'm seeing Robert Picardo as the genial later seasons Doctor in that series, and while he is different here, maybe he's playing it a bit too friendly so far and perhaps we need to see him exert his authority a bit more, make himself less cuddly, just as Carter didn't get on with Ronon right away, or Teal'c didn't get on with Ronon right away, or... well just about anyone doesn't get on with Ronon right away...
But I loved how devoted Ronon was to his friend, and despite their differences that's what they've become - McKay is so different to all of them (I'd have liked a scene with Zelenka where he bests him in some small way and is embarrassed about it, and maybe Rodney notices, but you can't have everything), and to see him reduced so much to dependence and loss of all his intellect and ability it reminded me of 'Riddles' an episode of 'Voyager' where Tuvok loses his mind and becomes childlike, although that was a bit more touching as Trek tended to be. But they certainly got the friendships right as they each try to come to terms with McKay's deteriorating condition, and we see recordings of different points in his illness, and then his sister comes into it, too. I can't help feeling such a large creature would have done more physical damage to his brain if it was crawling around in there, and from the graphic I thought it'd be much spindlier and easier to accept as something that would only have light contact with the brain, but as a whole the story was on the right side of quality for the series, though I can imagine it being difficult to watch in later years if you know anyone who suffers from losing mental control.
***
Ghost In The Machine
DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Ghost In The Machine)
This would have had so much more weight to it if they'd brought back Torri Higginson as Dr. Weir. Instead, we have 'Fran' back from the previous season, the Replicator Rodney built because of some reason I can't remember (it wasn't one of the more memorable episodes, though apparently I like it, and a big part of that was because they brought back Weir in a surprise ending), the template for this body now used by Weir's consciousness as a host in a convoluted way of bringing the character back and then getting rid of her for good this time. Except that a person floating in space, especially a Replicator, is hardly a sign of permanent deletion (as evidenced by Lore from 'TNG,' who came back and is apparently due to return again in 'Picard'). It gives you hope that we might get one last appearance from Weir (maybe give her Higginson's face again?), before the season and series ends forever. On the other hand maybe this was it, perhaps they couldn't get Higginson back this time, unlike last season when they did? It's a real shame, although I can see there'd be more confusion over whether this really was Elizabeth, and yet she's lied to her former friends when she said she didn't think the others of this splinter group of Replicators would be able to track her down.
It was a good mystery, although my initial belief was that the ghost of the title, this power surge that takes over a Jumper when they're on their way home, would turn out to be some kind of alien intelligence. Then when Weir communicates by text on the computer screen back at base it took an entirely new direction to what I expected, and in some ways a welcome one. I was hoping this would somehow bring her back into the fold... that is until Rodney gave her a synthesised voice that didn't sound like the actress who played her, and if they couldn't get Torri to record a few audio lines it was unlikely she'd be making a bodily appearance, though I still held out hope that it might be a last nice surprise. Instead things turn out quite differently. First it's thanks to the hardline response of Wolsey, whom we see call the bluff of these Replicators that are about to drown the city, a side we haven't seen of him before, and then Ronon, who never for a moment trusts these beings and keeps his scowl on them all the time as they work to create human bodies as a permanent solution for their goal to ascend into the higher dimension or whatever it was that 'SG-1' introduced.
When Rodney says at the end that it shows whether this really had been Weir, I wasn't quite sure how to read that. I would assume he meant it proves it was her because she appears to sacrifice herself to get all the Replicators out of their hair by going along with Atlantis' plan to send them into space, rather than the planet they think they're going to where they'll ostensibly be given the chance to build the bodies (apparently it's quite easy, just takes a lot of time!). She had to go through first in order to convince her brethren that it was safe and not a trick to deceive them, with one of the group communicating with her and she giving them the all clear, then they follow her out and find themselves trapped in space. So yes, I suppose it must have been Weir as that's what she'd do. I can also see why, in the absence of Higginson, they chose to use Fran, since she'd been a positive example of a Replicator, though that could still have been a trick to play with our expectations. It's been an odd time with both Weir and Beckett having died (and I thought Chorison sounded a bit like Carson, so was half expecting a twist there of some kind!), then coming back, so I didn't quite know how to take it and you are wondering all the way through if she's genuine or not, and I suppose the story works from that perspective. And at least it had some bearing on things when initially I thought it was going to be a completely separate episode, like last time, without many ramifications. That could have been fine as it's nice to go off on an adventure, but if this is the final ever part Weir had to play in the series then that's a sad resolution. I'm still waiting to see if Ford's tiny popup cameo at the start of the season foreshadowed his return, and obviously we've already had Beckett, so who else is left?
**
This would have had so much more weight to it if they'd brought back Torri Higginson as Dr. Weir. Instead, we have 'Fran' back from the previous season, the Replicator Rodney built because of some reason I can't remember (it wasn't one of the more memorable episodes, though apparently I like it, and a big part of that was because they brought back Weir in a surprise ending), the template for this body now used by Weir's consciousness as a host in a convoluted way of bringing the character back and then getting rid of her for good this time. Except that a person floating in space, especially a Replicator, is hardly a sign of permanent deletion (as evidenced by Lore from 'TNG,' who came back and is apparently due to return again in 'Picard'). It gives you hope that we might get one last appearance from Weir (maybe give her Higginson's face again?), before the season and series ends forever. On the other hand maybe this was it, perhaps they couldn't get Higginson back this time, unlike last season when they did? It's a real shame, although I can see there'd be more confusion over whether this really was Elizabeth, and yet she's lied to her former friends when she said she didn't think the others of this splinter group of Replicators would be able to track her down.
It was a good mystery, although my initial belief was that the ghost of the title, this power surge that takes over a Jumper when they're on their way home, would turn out to be some kind of alien intelligence. Then when Weir communicates by text on the computer screen back at base it took an entirely new direction to what I expected, and in some ways a welcome one. I was hoping this would somehow bring her back into the fold... that is until Rodney gave her a synthesised voice that didn't sound like the actress who played her, and if they couldn't get Torri to record a few audio lines it was unlikely she'd be making a bodily appearance, though I still held out hope that it might be a last nice surprise. Instead things turn out quite differently. First it's thanks to the hardline response of Wolsey, whom we see call the bluff of these Replicators that are about to drown the city, a side we haven't seen of him before, and then Ronon, who never for a moment trusts these beings and keeps his scowl on them all the time as they work to create human bodies as a permanent solution for their goal to ascend into the higher dimension or whatever it was that 'SG-1' introduced.
When Rodney says at the end that it shows whether this really had been Weir, I wasn't quite sure how to read that. I would assume he meant it proves it was her because she appears to sacrifice herself to get all the Replicators out of their hair by going along with Atlantis' plan to send them into space, rather than the planet they think they're going to where they'll ostensibly be given the chance to build the bodies (apparently it's quite easy, just takes a lot of time!). She had to go through first in order to convince her brethren that it was safe and not a trick to deceive them, with one of the group communicating with her and she giving them the all clear, then they follow her out and find themselves trapped in space. So yes, I suppose it must have been Weir as that's what she'd do. I can also see why, in the absence of Higginson, they chose to use Fran, since she'd been a positive example of a Replicator, though that could still have been a trick to play with our expectations. It's been an odd time with both Weir and Beckett having died (and I thought Chorison sounded a bit like Carson, so was half expecting a twist there of some kind!), then coming back, so I didn't quite know how to take it and you are wondering all the way through if she's genuine or not, and I suppose the story works from that perspective. And at least it had some bearing on things when initially I thought it was going to be a completely separate episode, like last time, without many ramifications. That could have been fine as it's nice to go off on an adventure, but if this is the final ever part Weir had to play in the series then that's a sad resolution. I'm still waiting to see if Ford's tiny popup cameo at the start of the season foreshadowed his return, and obviously we've already had Beckett, so who else is left?
**
In The Flesh
DVD, Voyager S5 (In The Flesh)
In an age when so many old Trek characters are being brought back, from Q to Jellico, it's easy to forget that these used to be used sparingly in old Trek, especially in 'Voyager' since its location made it trickier to bring in existing Alpha Quadrant people and races. One character that won't be coming back, since the great Ray Walston is no longer with us, is Groundskeeper Boothby (how did he never get a Playmates action figure, complete with pruning tools and apron?), the man who is said to have made many of the best Captains what they became, including Picard (both of which garner mention in this episode). Out of the myriad and memorable characters over the years Boothby was a one off. Literally, as he only appeared in the one 'TNG' episode, the great 'The First Duty,' and he wasn't young then, so it was a major surprise when this series got Walston to reprise the role one last time (although, as it turned out, he'd be reprising it again later in the season, though not in the way you'd think from how this episode ends!). The crusty old man with a twinkle in his eye, or a flash if you got him angry, was about as far as you could get from Species 8472, this utterly alien race from beyond space as we know it, that had caused even the Borg to seek assistance from Janeway as they were being annihilated in combat with these creatures, and whose mission statement was to purge our galaxy of all life! In this, choosing Boothby as their spokesthing was a masterstroke, and illustrative of the kind of radical choice Trek could make at any time.
Instead of starting this episode with a light scene on the Bridge, then seeing how our crew reacts to a Federation signal on long-range sensors, then cutting to opening titles, having a conference to decide how best to approach this mysterious station, and finally getting to the Away Team down on 'the planet,' we jump right in, and that's a great way to create a mystery, because we all knew Voyager was so far from Earth, in the natural sense, it was unlikely they were going to get back home (unless they came up with a last-minute solution that literally threw them right onto the front porch, but there's no need to go into that now!). They had already been back to Earth, even as early as Season 2 when Harry Kim woke up in his Quarters in San Francisco, or the whole crew made it back to the homeworld, the catch being it was 1996, so going back to Earth on its own wasn't enough to be revolutionary. What was revolutionary was that an alien race should wish to recreate Starfleet Headquarters, complete with Golden Gate Bridge and all the main landmarks, as part of a training mission to infiltrate the real HQ. Is it likely 8472 would create even one of these hubs in just the spot where Voyager happened to come along? No, the odds are infinitesimal, even if what they said about creating them all over the galaxy was true (they might even have been exaggerating on that count anyway). But that doesn't matter, it's enough that it happened.
What I like about all this is how alien the approach is. They fully immerse themselves in human culture, reading replicated books, living as humans, even down to talking like them. It's the best way to go about making such a story, because as we saw in Season 3 and 4, 8472 are one of the more alien aliens in that they're huge, don't conform to the bipedal norms, and everything about them is in opposition to our perspective, from organic technology to unreasoning rage at the disturbance of their realm. Unless they had chosen to take on human form so fully it would have been difficult to understand them at all. They were one of those races of pure menace, maybe even seen as pure evil, but as Trek has always done, they found a way to show another side to them, one that was workable and sympathetic, not uncompromising evil that can only be opposed. Some would say that this wasn't always a good thing because sometimes a villain is a villain through and through with no remorse, but I think the Trek idea is that not all of a race are the same. The Borg perhaps were the closest and they became quite cuddly on occasion, this series often accused of making them far too easy to stand up to, which is very true, and we saw examples of Cardassians, previously the torturers living in a dystopian police state, the Jem'Hadar, so dedicated to their masters they'd kill themselves in service, and the Founders, Changelings so bitter they'd annihilate populations just out of spite, and yet all of these races had their positive individuals and groups.
I suppose it was inevitable that Species 8472 weren't going to be considered merely terrible monsters intent on the destruction of all life, and this serves as a nice cap to their few appearances previously, though I believe this was the final episode in which they featured, though the story suggests a sequel. I think we have to take it that when 'Boothby' returned to his race in Fluidic Space they took his advice on board to a degree, that our galaxy didn't pose a threat to them, but rather than have dialogue they decided to retreat to their own realm it must have been enough to know they weren't likely to be attacked and so didn't need to put any more thought into this strange reality that had interfered with theirs. It shouldn't have been quite as simple as that when you think that it was actually the Borg who disturbed the hornet's nest, probing into areas they shouldn't have done, and any other race could just as well have come to that level of technology where they peered into the abyss of another reality, so Janeway's assurances that the Federation would do no harm to them shouldn't have assuaged their concerns over other races. But there is only limited running time, and while this may well have made a great two-part story, or even something that could have carried over to a number of episodes threaded through the season, the series had pretty much discarded its earlier attempts to create arcs, probably acting in opposition to 'DS9' and its ever more complex unfolding narrative.
In consequence, we never got a sequel, we don't know for sure what happened with 8472, we just know that it appears Janeway's diplomatic efforts were successful. It's a good and positive outcome, thwarting a potential takeover of Starfleet from the inside (with echoes of 'Homefront' and 'Paradise Lost' from 'DS9,' the last time Starfleet HQ had been visited, I believe), and choosing to reason with and deescalate rather than keep pushing. It's a fine line and Janeway trod it very well. She wants to talk, but she's also not going to back down, and 8472 aren't going to back down either, so she begins to see, or sense on an instinct, that these people don't want to fight, but feel forced into it and she takes the first risk by standing down the Borg weapons that had proven effective against 8472 previously. You'd think 8472 would have been researching such things if they can go to the trouble of a spot-on recreation of a location tens of thousands of lightyears away, and had developed a countermeasure. And it does look a little off that one little ship can stand against an entire station - being so paranoid, or cautious, knowing how much this spatial reality is against them, you'd think they'd arm any facility to the teeth, and would have countless ships around. Or if they went the opposite way and wanted a low profile, how could Voyager stumble upon them, and wouldn't they have developed a cloak, or something? But you just have to take the situation at face value because that's how it needs to be for the story to work.
One thing that's harder to accept is when Janeway says they hadn't been in contact with the Federation in four years, but last season they'd managed to send the EMH onto a Starfleet ship and then they made direct contact through the Hirogen array and received various letters and communiques, didn't they? That would seem to be a major oversight in the writing, unless we take it that Janeway wanted to play up their isolation instead of mentioning these few instances. Still, the idea that 8472 can be so easily reasoned with is a little too pat. I understand this is supposed to be the Federation ideal, and that without cooperation on the side of the enemy those ideals can't stand, which is why the Borg and 8472, in their first appearance, were so fearsome: because they weren't an enemy that could be talked to, reasoned with, explained or understood, that was the whole point, and what do you do when you're ideals of peace and discussion have no reciprocation? Seven even tells Janeway it's time to resist Starfleet philosophy, and yet Janeway is proved right. I can see the intention, but it was a little too easy for her to get through to Boothby. Yes, there is some opposition from Admiral Bullock, who represents distrust and aggression, but Valerie Archer, whom Chakotay shared an intimate moment with, has been won over (we're supposed to think it was more from reading human books than Chakotay's attentions, I think!), and Boothby is the boss anyway and overrides Bullock's qualms.
For a race that were so violent and have clearly gone to the trouble of making such an accurate recreation, you'd think they'd be much more subtle and cunning, but they don't come across at all like the Changelings who just wanted to foment paranoia and disrupt a settled planet and Quadrant, they seem almost childlike in their lack of guile. And they claim they only want to observe and report back, but can we trust them on what they say? I just didn't feel there was enough time to know one way or the other on their character, they needed to show they were trustworthy more than was accomplished in this brief span. That's probably why they chose to jump straight into the story instead of going through the usual procedural part. As well as creating a great mystery they needed as much time as they could get to go into our crew understanding what was happening, reacting, then trying to calm the situation. All that said, it's not a bad episode, even if some things ring a little false - such as Archer's talk of how humans created art, music, literature, etc, and making it sound as if humans were the sole creators of such artistic expression! This is one area where 8472's childlikeness would fit in nicely as, if they'd only encountered Voyager and the Borg (and the Hirogen), you can see out of those, only humans would have those modes of expression. I wish that had been played up, that these aliens are so different to us they see things in a much more simplistic way, and that level of complexity to the story, if all angles followed that premise, would have made it a touch more impressive.
It's a bit like the revelation that Trelane in 'The Squire of Gothos,' for all his power, is actually a mere child. I'm not saying that should have been the answer, just that 8472 could have been shown to be much more innocent and unaware than we'd thought them, and it would make more sense that they were so easily turned from their mission by Janeway, and even that they then had no further interest in our galaxy. It's a theory (which I've just come up with!), that could work, that they are in fact adolescents in terms of development, for all their use of adult human bodies, and I quite like that idea. But even if not, I felt their setup could have had some holes in it rather than being so perfect. Maybe they say the wrong things or have some strange beliefs about what humans do, or why. But I suppose they were very well informed if they could recreate entire books. That was one area where I didn't have a problem: it's not explained how they came by such detailed knowledge (could Fluidic Space open up close to Earth - it's surprising that suggestion never even came up that Voyager could get home, and they could always have said the ship wouldn't withstand the journey inside as a blocker to that solution), but it's suggested they may have got the Borg's database. Janeway also says they're the only Starfleet ship in the Quadrant, which would prove to be untrue at the end of the season, so there could well have been other ships that had been swept in by the Caretaker and 8472 found one of them.
I liked that the whole reason Voyager stumbled upon them was that the recreation was so realistic they were actually sending out a Starfleet signal, another example of the simple thinking of this race, lacking the nuances of life in this galaxy. It was also refreshing that Chakotay was the one leading the story, as his easygoing, friendly attitude fitted in nicely with the 'humans' he encountered, though I think his last big episode was 'Unforgettable,' another story in which there's a romantic side to it. Not that this episode was romantic, but there was certainly something going on with Archer. She comes to trust him which causes her to speak up on the humans' side. The only thing is that Janeway, as you'd expect being the Captain, rather takes over the story once Chakotay's been captured. That was good, the night suddenly turning to day, though the various 'Starfleet' personnel stalking him didn't have the creepiness and dread you'd want from that situation. Indeed, I would say the creep factor should have been turned up quite a few notches to provide greater contrast when 8472 acquiesce to Janeway's open arms. The concept these huge creatures are stuffed into human-sized bodies, was terrific, and quite chilling when they have to keep injecting themselves to avoid reverting to their natural form, but the episode was much more concerned with getting to a mutual understanding than with the potential body horror, but then it wasn't written by Brannon Braga!
The casting throws up all kinds of fascinating connections. I'm assuming the Zach Galligan who portrayed David Gentry is the same guy who was in 'Gremlins' (not that I like that film, but reading old Starlogs recently I came across the name a few times so it stayed in my mind), which, if so, would be perfect symmetry for this episode since Gentry is a sort of Gremlin in reverse, or even Gizmo since he has a 'monster' inside him (they really shouldn't have fed Gentry after midnight!). But it doesn't end there because we also have Tucker Smallwood as Bullock, his only appearance on 'Voyager,' but who'd go on to play a member of the Xindi race in 'Enterprise' - it hit me when they were all sat round the Briefing Room table and he was getting angry that it's very similar to the Xindi Council arguing over... what to do about the humans! See, it's almost the same story, though the Xindi were definitely only interested in destroying a perceived threat from the humans... And finally, Kate Vernon played Archer and would go on to be a recurring character in the 'Battlestar Galactica' remake. I don't think she was one of the Cylons (yet another race distrustful of humanity and seeing the only option being to wipe them out!), it's been a while since I saw it, but the character definitely concealed a lot. I can imagine Galligan was hired because of the connection, but obviously the others were merely chance since this was made before those other productions, but it's fascinating to see how all these things came together!
An added attraction at the time the episode was made was the chance to see Starfleet Headquarters again. Obviously 'DS9' was still in production (and we do see images of HQ after its attack by the Breen), but they never went back to film in the grounds that had been established for the Academy and other sites, and here we see more than we'd ever seen before, with only the aforementioned 'DS9' two-parter coming close (we also see Chakotay use a much more easily concealed Type 1 Phaser, the kind that can be hidden in the palm). I so wish they'd continued to use the site in current Treks - they could incorporate Vasquez Rocks, but not this? It was also a treat to see so many Alpha Quadrant aliens on 'Voyager,' so far from that familiar world, although you can tell things aren't quite right from the fact 8472's uniforms are out of date, following the Voyager style rather than the by now well-established 'First Contact' look. It's also interesting to see several Ferengi in Starfleet as it would seem unlikely that many would have followed Nog into the Academy when he'd been part of Starfleet for only a few short years (bumped up to field commission during the Dominion War), so it suggests either 8472 are well out of date, or they weren't able to get as accurate a picture as it seemed. There was another reference to enjoy, too, as Seven mentions the dark blot on Trek's optimistic vision, World War III (though now they could just change it so it never happened judging by what they did to the Eugenics Wars - silly people!).
While Janeway seemed to forget the contact they'd had with Starfleet, Harry Kim has also blocked out his encounter with the Taresians in 'Favourite Son' when he says he's always wondered what it's like to date an alien. I don't blame him for forgetting (though he'd find out again later this season that it's not a good idea...). Interesting that Chakotay refuses alcohol, preferring water as he always likes to stay in control - hasn't he heard of Synthehol, which is supposed to give all the 'fun' of alcohol, with the ability to pull away from any level of feelings of intoxication whenever it's required? Or was he just being more cautious than ever in that particular situation? The idea of there being an imposter on Voyager would have been a great addition to the season, but they quickly quash that, losing all possible paranoia and drama in the process, though it was a great scene where Janeway reminisces about the Academy with Chakotay until he realises she's testing him. I never twigged for a moment as she was so natural in how she drew the conversation around. It's fortunate Chakotay's quicker on the uptake than I am! I also felt there was something to be mined in the brief mention of faith Janeway and Seven throw in at the end of a conversation, except it wasn't developed. And then we don't even get to know what 8472 call themselves (the Undine, according to non-canon sources, which was a good name that could have worked). They were so immersed in being human (something which could have been used against them?), that I can understand why they weren't 'themselves,' but at the same time it's sad that nothing was done with the potential of furthering the storyline. And I had the sense that this episode, as good as it was, could have been a classic with just a little more exploration and focus on certain parts ideas.
***
In an age when so many old Trek characters are being brought back, from Q to Jellico, it's easy to forget that these used to be used sparingly in old Trek, especially in 'Voyager' since its location made it trickier to bring in existing Alpha Quadrant people and races. One character that won't be coming back, since the great Ray Walston is no longer with us, is Groundskeeper Boothby (how did he never get a Playmates action figure, complete with pruning tools and apron?), the man who is said to have made many of the best Captains what they became, including Picard (both of which garner mention in this episode). Out of the myriad and memorable characters over the years Boothby was a one off. Literally, as he only appeared in the one 'TNG' episode, the great 'The First Duty,' and he wasn't young then, so it was a major surprise when this series got Walston to reprise the role one last time (although, as it turned out, he'd be reprising it again later in the season, though not in the way you'd think from how this episode ends!). The crusty old man with a twinkle in his eye, or a flash if you got him angry, was about as far as you could get from Species 8472, this utterly alien race from beyond space as we know it, that had caused even the Borg to seek assistance from Janeway as they were being annihilated in combat with these creatures, and whose mission statement was to purge our galaxy of all life! In this, choosing Boothby as their spokesthing was a masterstroke, and illustrative of the kind of radical choice Trek could make at any time.
Instead of starting this episode with a light scene on the Bridge, then seeing how our crew reacts to a Federation signal on long-range sensors, then cutting to opening titles, having a conference to decide how best to approach this mysterious station, and finally getting to the Away Team down on 'the planet,' we jump right in, and that's a great way to create a mystery, because we all knew Voyager was so far from Earth, in the natural sense, it was unlikely they were going to get back home (unless they came up with a last-minute solution that literally threw them right onto the front porch, but there's no need to go into that now!). They had already been back to Earth, even as early as Season 2 when Harry Kim woke up in his Quarters in San Francisco, or the whole crew made it back to the homeworld, the catch being it was 1996, so going back to Earth on its own wasn't enough to be revolutionary. What was revolutionary was that an alien race should wish to recreate Starfleet Headquarters, complete with Golden Gate Bridge and all the main landmarks, as part of a training mission to infiltrate the real HQ. Is it likely 8472 would create even one of these hubs in just the spot where Voyager happened to come along? No, the odds are infinitesimal, even if what they said about creating them all over the galaxy was true (they might even have been exaggerating on that count anyway). But that doesn't matter, it's enough that it happened.
What I like about all this is how alien the approach is. They fully immerse themselves in human culture, reading replicated books, living as humans, even down to talking like them. It's the best way to go about making such a story, because as we saw in Season 3 and 4, 8472 are one of the more alien aliens in that they're huge, don't conform to the bipedal norms, and everything about them is in opposition to our perspective, from organic technology to unreasoning rage at the disturbance of their realm. Unless they had chosen to take on human form so fully it would have been difficult to understand them at all. They were one of those races of pure menace, maybe even seen as pure evil, but as Trek has always done, they found a way to show another side to them, one that was workable and sympathetic, not uncompromising evil that can only be opposed. Some would say that this wasn't always a good thing because sometimes a villain is a villain through and through with no remorse, but I think the Trek idea is that not all of a race are the same. The Borg perhaps were the closest and they became quite cuddly on occasion, this series often accused of making them far too easy to stand up to, which is very true, and we saw examples of Cardassians, previously the torturers living in a dystopian police state, the Jem'Hadar, so dedicated to their masters they'd kill themselves in service, and the Founders, Changelings so bitter they'd annihilate populations just out of spite, and yet all of these races had their positive individuals and groups.
I suppose it was inevitable that Species 8472 weren't going to be considered merely terrible monsters intent on the destruction of all life, and this serves as a nice cap to their few appearances previously, though I believe this was the final episode in which they featured, though the story suggests a sequel. I think we have to take it that when 'Boothby' returned to his race in Fluidic Space they took his advice on board to a degree, that our galaxy didn't pose a threat to them, but rather than have dialogue they decided to retreat to their own realm it must have been enough to know they weren't likely to be attacked and so didn't need to put any more thought into this strange reality that had interfered with theirs. It shouldn't have been quite as simple as that when you think that it was actually the Borg who disturbed the hornet's nest, probing into areas they shouldn't have done, and any other race could just as well have come to that level of technology where they peered into the abyss of another reality, so Janeway's assurances that the Federation would do no harm to them shouldn't have assuaged their concerns over other races. But there is only limited running time, and while this may well have made a great two-part story, or even something that could have carried over to a number of episodes threaded through the season, the series had pretty much discarded its earlier attempts to create arcs, probably acting in opposition to 'DS9' and its ever more complex unfolding narrative.
In consequence, we never got a sequel, we don't know for sure what happened with 8472, we just know that it appears Janeway's diplomatic efforts were successful. It's a good and positive outcome, thwarting a potential takeover of Starfleet from the inside (with echoes of 'Homefront' and 'Paradise Lost' from 'DS9,' the last time Starfleet HQ had been visited, I believe), and choosing to reason with and deescalate rather than keep pushing. It's a fine line and Janeway trod it very well. She wants to talk, but she's also not going to back down, and 8472 aren't going to back down either, so she begins to see, or sense on an instinct, that these people don't want to fight, but feel forced into it and she takes the first risk by standing down the Borg weapons that had proven effective against 8472 previously. You'd think 8472 would have been researching such things if they can go to the trouble of a spot-on recreation of a location tens of thousands of lightyears away, and had developed a countermeasure. And it does look a little off that one little ship can stand against an entire station - being so paranoid, or cautious, knowing how much this spatial reality is against them, you'd think they'd arm any facility to the teeth, and would have countless ships around. Or if they went the opposite way and wanted a low profile, how could Voyager stumble upon them, and wouldn't they have developed a cloak, or something? But you just have to take the situation at face value because that's how it needs to be for the story to work.
One thing that's harder to accept is when Janeway says they hadn't been in contact with the Federation in four years, but last season they'd managed to send the EMH onto a Starfleet ship and then they made direct contact through the Hirogen array and received various letters and communiques, didn't they? That would seem to be a major oversight in the writing, unless we take it that Janeway wanted to play up their isolation instead of mentioning these few instances. Still, the idea that 8472 can be so easily reasoned with is a little too pat. I understand this is supposed to be the Federation ideal, and that without cooperation on the side of the enemy those ideals can't stand, which is why the Borg and 8472, in their first appearance, were so fearsome: because they weren't an enemy that could be talked to, reasoned with, explained or understood, that was the whole point, and what do you do when you're ideals of peace and discussion have no reciprocation? Seven even tells Janeway it's time to resist Starfleet philosophy, and yet Janeway is proved right. I can see the intention, but it was a little too easy for her to get through to Boothby. Yes, there is some opposition from Admiral Bullock, who represents distrust and aggression, but Valerie Archer, whom Chakotay shared an intimate moment with, has been won over (we're supposed to think it was more from reading human books than Chakotay's attentions, I think!), and Boothby is the boss anyway and overrides Bullock's qualms.
For a race that were so violent and have clearly gone to the trouble of making such an accurate recreation, you'd think they'd be much more subtle and cunning, but they don't come across at all like the Changelings who just wanted to foment paranoia and disrupt a settled planet and Quadrant, they seem almost childlike in their lack of guile. And they claim they only want to observe and report back, but can we trust them on what they say? I just didn't feel there was enough time to know one way or the other on their character, they needed to show they were trustworthy more than was accomplished in this brief span. That's probably why they chose to jump straight into the story instead of going through the usual procedural part. As well as creating a great mystery they needed as much time as they could get to go into our crew understanding what was happening, reacting, then trying to calm the situation. All that said, it's not a bad episode, even if some things ring a little false - such as Archer's talk of how humans created art, music, literature, etc, and making it sound as if humans were the sole creators of such artistic expression! This is one area where 8472's childlikeness would fit in nicely as, if they'd only encountered Voyager and the Borg (and the Hirogen), you can see out of those, only humans would have those modes of expression. I wish that had been played up, that these aliens are so different to us they see things in a much more simplistic way, and that level of complexity to the story, if all angles followed that premise, would have made it a touch more impressive.
It's a bit like the revelation that Trelane in 'The Squire of Gothos,' for all his power, is actually a mere child. I'm not saying that should have been the answer, just that 8472 could have been shown to be much more innocent and unaware than we'd thought them, and it would make more sense that they were so easily turned from their mission by Janeway, and even that they then had no further interest in our galaxy. It's a theory (which I've just come up with!), that could work, that they are in fact adolescents in terms of development, for all their use of adult human bodies, and I quite like that idea. But even if not, I felt their setup could have had some holes in it rather than being so perfect. Maybe they say the wrong things or have some strange beliefs about what humans do, or why. But I suppose they were very well informed if they could recreate entire books. That was one area where I didn't have a problem: it's not explained how they came by such detailed knowledge (could Fluidic Space open up close to Earth - it's surprising that suggestion never even came up that Voyager could get home, and they could always have said the ship wouldn't withstand the journey inside as a blocker to that solution), but it's suggested they may have got the Borg's database. Janeway also says they're the only Starfleet ship in the Quadrant, which would prove to be untrue at the end of the season, so there could well have been other ships that had been swept in by the Caretaker and 8472 found one of them.
I liked that the whole reason Voyager stumbled upon them was that the recreation was so realistic they were actually sending out a Starfleet signal, another example of the simple thinking of this race, lacking the nuances of life in this galaxy. It was also refreshing that Chakotay was the one leading the story, as his easygoing, friendly attitude fitted in nicely with the 'humans' he encountered, though I think his last big episode was 'Unforgettable,' another story in which there's a romantic side to it. Not that this episode was romantic, but there was certainly something going on with Archer. She comes to trust him which causes her to speak up on the humans' side. The only thing is that Janeway, as you'd expect being the Captain, rather takes over the story once Chakotay's been captured. That was good, the night suddenly turning to day, though the various 'Starfleet' personnel stalking him didn't have the creepiness and dread you'd want from that situation. Indeed, I would say the creep factor should have been turned up quite a few notches to provide greater contrast when 8472 acquiesce to Janeway's open arms. The concept these huge creatures are stuffed into human-sized bodies, was terrific, and quite chilling when they have to keep injecting themselves to avoid reverting to their natural form, but the episode was much more concerned with getting to a mutual understanding than with the potential body horror, but then it wasn't written by Brannon Braga!
The casting throws up all kinds of fascinating connections. I'm assuming the Zach Galligan who portrayed David Gentry is the same guy who was in 'Gremlins' (not that I like that film, but reading old Starlogs recently I came across the name a few times so it stayed in my mind), which, if so, would be perfect symmetry for this episode since Gentry is a sort of Gremlin in reverse, or even Gizmo since he has a 'monster' inside him (they really shouldn't have fed Gentry after midnight!). But it doesn't end there because we also have Tucker Smallwood as Bullock, his only appearance on 'Voyager,' but who'd go on to play a member of the Xindi race in 'Enterprise' - it hit me when they were all sat round the Briefing Room table and he was getting angry that it's very similar to the Xindi Council arguing over... what to do about the humans! See, it's almost the same story, though the Xindi were definitely only interested in destroying a perceived threat from the humans... And finally, Kate Vernon played Archer and would go on to be a recurring character in the 'Battlestar Galactica' remake. I don't think she was one of the Cylons (yet another race distrustful of humanity and seeing the only option being to wipe them out!), it's been a while since I saw it, but the character definitely concealed a lot. I can imagine Galligan was hired because of the connection, but obviously the others were merely chance since this was made before those other productions, but it's fascinating to see how all these things came together!
An added attraction at the time the episode was made was the chance to see Starfleet Headquarters again. Obviously 'DS9' was still in production (and we do see images of HQ after its attack by the Breen), but they never went back to film in the grounds that had been established for the Academy and other sites, and here we see more than we'd ever seen before, with only the aforementioned 'DS9' two-parter coming close (we also see Chakotay use a much more easily concealed Type 1 Phaser, the kind that can be hidden in the palm). I so wish they'd continued to use the site in current Treks - they could incorporate Vasquez Rocks, but not this? It was also a treat to see so many Alpha Quadrant aliens on 'Voyager,' so far from that familiar world, although you can tell things aren't quite right from the fact 8472's uniforms are out of date, following the Voyager style rather than the by now well-established 'First Contact' look. It's also interesting to see several Ferengi in Starfleet as it would seem unlikely that many would have followed Nog into the Academy when he'd been part of Starfleet for only a few short years (bumped up to field commission during the Dominion War), so it suggests either 8472 are well out of date, or they weren't able to get as accurate a picture as it seemed. There was another reference to enjoy, too, as Seven mentions the dark blot on Trek's optimistic vision, World War III (though now they could just change it so it never happened judging by what they did to the Eugenics Wars - silly people!).
While Janeway seemed to forget the contact they'd had with Starfleet, Harry Kim has also blocked out his encounter with the Taresians in 'Favourite Son' when he says he's always wondered what it's like to date an alien. I don't blame him for forgetting (though he'd find out again later this season that it's not a good idea...). Interesting that Chakotay refuses alcohol, preferring water as he always likes to stay in control - hasn't he heard of Synthehol, which is supposed to give all the 'fun' of alcohol, with the ability to pull away from any level of feelings of intoxication whenever it's required? Or was he just being more cautious than ever in that particular situation? The idea of there being an imposter on Voyager would have been a great addition to the season, but they quickly quash that, losing all possible paranoia and drama in the process, though it was a great scene where Janeway reminisces about the Academy with Chakotay until he realises she's testing him. I never twigged for a moment as she was so natural in how she drew the conversation around. It's fortunate Chakotay's quicker on the uptake than I am! I also felt there was something to be mined in the brief mention of faith Janeway and Seven throw in at the end of a conversation, except it wasn't developed. And then we don't even get to know what 8472 call themselves (the Undine, according to non-canon sources, which was a good name that could have worked). They were so immersed in being human (something which could have been used against them?), that I can understand why they weren't 'themselves,' but at the same time it's sad that nothing was done with the potential of furthering the storyline. And I had the sense that this episode, as good as it was, could have been a classic with just a little more exploration and focus on certain parts ideas.
***
Thursday, 13 October 2022
The Daedalus Variations
DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (The Daedalus Variations)
A somewhat inconsequential adventure that would appear to have no bearing on anything. That's not a bad thing in itself, I enjoy a good sci-fi tale and not everything has to connect to an ongoing story or even the core mythology, but having said that it was much more like the kind of story you'd do in a first season when you haven't got the characters completely down pat - you send them off on a mission together where things go awry and see how they react. The four people on this mission are Sheppard, McKay, Ronon and Teyla, and other than Rodney they're all fairly redundant. It's true they have some shooting to do and then have to take out some boarders attacking the ship they're on, but it's McKay who's the only one that can really extricate them from their predicament. So it's much more like an early episode where he has to solve one problem after another and the others glance askance at each other before telling him there's no time. There isn't much more to it than that, truth be told. It's not like we learn anything new about anyone or a new bond is formed between people that didn't know each other so well. I'd also say that it took them an inordinate amount of time to even posit the theory this Daedalus might be from an alternate universe and I was on that quite early - if you're waiting for the writers to catch up to what the audience already suspects then that doesn't bode well for a story.
They already knew before boarding that their Daedalus was safely in the Milky Way, and as so often happens in the 'Stargate' franchise, I'm tentatively expecting a new spin on a sci-fi tale, only to find it's back to the basics with little variation. Sometimes they come up with good stuff, but in this case it was a simple A-to-B journey, albeit with the expected escalation of their problems to cause Rodney more pain. I always love a dark, abandoned ship and there was a good sense of mystery to begin with - is it going to be an alien experiment gone wrong, an invasion of something nasty, or some other twist I hadn't thought of? But the mystery and the creepiness doesn't last long before we're flipping into alternate universe after alternate universe, though obviously there's not a lot of variation as it's not like they leave the ship, so it's just a slightly different issue in each jump: no planet, aliens attacking Atlantis, too close to a star... Sheppard gets to pay himself compliments when they run across the reality with the Borg drone aliens (perfect fodder for Ronon to grapple with), on the way back and F-302s save them from the alien craft's assault, and there's a reminder this is Teyla's first mission back for real, but other than that there's not a lot going on. Wolsey and Keller don't even appear, so it's left up to the B team of Lorne and Zelenka to ponder what's happened to their team, though they don't seem too concerned about it. I'd have thought Lorne would have got Wolsey down there right away.
I will give them credit for the CGI, both the battle scenes as little alien fighters duck and weave under the belly of the Daedalus looked lovely, and the red sun wasn't bad either. It's not a bad episode, either, perfectly inoffensive and gives us a chance to see our characters doing what they do again, but equally it's not doing anything they haven't done before, and probably better. It's a little like they squandered the possibilities which, like the alternate universes, are diminishing with each passing episode so that you want there to be more meaningful scenes for these characters instead of merely solving a technical problem or fending off an attack. Character has always been at the heart of 'Stargate' and if they forget that then they're failing to use their greatest asset. It's one of those that would work fine if you're unused to science fiction, but when you're well versed in the concepts simply repeating one isn't enough to make it truly worthwhile. Perhaps it was a budget-saving episode? If so, the writing needed sharpness. (Though I did enjoy seeing a sign on the supply boxes saying, 'Do Not Ring Transport,' in case we forgot that's the term they always used to use).
**
A somewhat inconsequential adventure that would appear to have no bearing on anything. That's not a bad thing in itself, I enjoy a good sci-fi tale and not everything has to connect to an ongoing story or even the core mythology, but having said that it was much more like the kind of story you'd do in a first season when you haven't got the characters completely down pat - you send them off on a mission together where things go awry and see how they react. The four people on this mission are Sheppard, McKay, Ronon and Teyla, and other than Rodney they're all fairly redundant. It's true they have some shooting to do and then have to take out some boarders attacking the ship they're on, but it's McKay who's the only one that can really extricate them from their predicament. So it's much more like an early episode where he has to solve one problem after another and the others glance askance at each other before telling him there's no time. There isn't much more to it than that, truth be told. It's not like we learn anything new about anyone or a new bond is formed between people that didn't know each other so well. I'd also say that it took them an inordinate amount of time to even posit the theory this Daedalus might be from an alternate universe and I was on that quite early - if you're waiting for the writers to catch up to what the audience already suspects then that doesn't bode well for a story.
They already knew before boarding that their Daedalus was safely in the Milky Way, and as so often happens in the 'Stargate' franchise, I'm tentatively expecting a new spin on a sci-fi tale, only to find it's back to the basics with little variation. Sometimes they come up with good stuff, but in this case it was a simple A-to-B journey, albeit with the expected escalation of their problems to cause Rodney more pain. I always love a dark, abandoned ship and there was a good sense of mystery to begin with - is it going to be an alien experiment gone wrong, an invasion of something nasty, or some other twist I hadn't thought of? But the mystery and the creepiness doesn't last long before we're flipping into alternate universe after alternate universe, though obviously there's not a lot of variation as it's not like they leave the ship, so it's just a slightly different issue in each jump: no planet, aliens attacking Atlantis, too close to a star... Sheppard gets to pay himself compliments when they run across the reality with the Borg drone aliens (perfect fodder for Ronon to grapple with), on the way back and F-302s save them from the alien craft's assault, and there's a reminder this is Teyla's first mission back for real, but other than that there's not a lot going on. Wolsey and Keller don't even appear, so it's left up to the B team of Lorne and Zelenka to ponder what's happened to their team, though they don't seem too concerned about it. I'd have thought Lorne would have got Wolsey down there right away.
I will give them credit for the CGI, both the battle scenes as little alien fighters duck and weave under the belly of the Daedalus looked lovely, and the red sun wasn't bad either. It's not a bad episode, either, perfectly inoffensive and gives us a chance to see our characters doing what they do again, but equally it's not doing anything they haven't done before, and probably better. It's a little like they squandered the possibilities which, like the alternate universes, are diminishing with each passing episode so that you want there to be more meaningful scenes for these characters instead of merely solving a technical problem or fending off an attack. Character has always been at the heart of 'Stargate' and if they forget that then they're failing to use their greatest asset. It's one of those that would work fine if you're unused to science fiction, but when you're well versed in the concepts simply repeating one isn't enough to make it truly worthwhile. Perhaps it was a budget-saving episode? If so, the writing needed sharpness. (Though I did enjoy seeing a sign on the supply boxes saying, 'Do Not Ring Transport,' in case we forgot that's the term they always used to use).
**
Friday, 7 October 2022
Broken Ties
DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Broken Ties)
Not too sure about this one. I was a little confused about certain things, like why Ronon went mad and cut off the Wraith's hand, then fought Tyre, his ex-Satedan, ex-buddy. And was Tyre always part of the plan, that he'd try and get into this Wraith's good graces? I missed how Lorne and the others were set free and I assumed Ronon had actually been too strong to succumb to the Wraith's brainwashing and drug addiction, and yet he did fight Tyre and he did have to be brought back stunned, and he did have to be held in restraints until the cold turkey process had succeeded. I felt the episode was quite easy to guess in its progression, specifically with Tyre. I really didn't like all that Satedan matey stuff, a follow-on to the episode in the previous season where Ronon met up with his old friends and they turned out to be Wraith worshippers, so I wasn't thrilled to meet up with Tyre again. It was a bit too easy for him to capture Ronon, though he did know him well and was desperate, making him more cunning I suppose. But the fact he was going to die somehow, and probably ultimately sacrificing himself for all that he'd done wrong, wasn't hard to speculate. And obviously when he's there telling them where to lay charges on the Wraith's base and then he ends up holding the detonator, of course he was going to go out in a blaze of glory - for one thing he probably didn't fancy facing a recovered Ronon in the near future!
The episode didn't surprise in other ways, either, with my belief they're mellowing Wolsey so that he can surprise the team by being adamant on some point at some time and making them all shocked at his reversion to the old Wolsey. At the moment they're going out of their way to portray him as much more sensitive, open to suggestion, with a sympathetic side (he misses his dog; he relaxes by wearing a suit and tie!), and the comedy (he doesn't know how to open the briefing room door; he gets left holding the baby - literally), so I can only assume they're priming him to stab his team in the back by not backing them up or coming down like a ton of bricks when they least expect it - that is, after all, how to do something dramatic. I just felt they were laying it on a bit strong. The other plot is about Teyla and whether she's ready to commit to being back on Sheppard's team despite having a baby to contend with and look after. She has the advantage of a stay-at-home Dad for the child, at least, but she feels the maternal instinct strongly. She can't have it both ways and just show up for duty when it suits, Sheppard was very right, but she eventually realises her professionalism and Kanaan reassures her that it'll be okay. It was something that needed to be addressed, and it was somewhat interesting, but the sum of the episode didn't really match expectations.
There were other problems in the episode aside from the confused direction in how the story was told - like redundant scenes where characters talk about how they're going to find Ronon, they don't know, and then Lorne arrives to tell them they know where he is. And The Wraith look really weak now when Tyre can just show up and take a couple of the grunts out with a few sword swipes, or Sheppard can hold them off with a couple of hand guns (where did he get those - wouldn't they have removed all the equipment before putting them in the cells?). It's not that it wasn't stylishly put together, the fights and battles were fine, and it wasn't that the characters were ill-used, there was simply some undefined something that was missing in a small way and I don't feel I've yet settled into this season, even though I went almost straight from Season 4 to this without my usual annual break to review something else. So I don't know, I'm glad Teyla will be back properly and that Ronon will, too. I'm glad Wolsey hasn't proven to be the prize turkey everyone thought he would be (yet). But I'm yet to like the stories they've done so far to any great extent (even if the season opener was pretty good, it was more about settling the previous season's story). I expect a big part of it is that my favourite character Rodney is far from essential for this particular plot and there wasn't a great sense of travel, they just appear in various places and then they're back on Atlantis, and sometimes you need an impression of different places being far away. I'm not even quite sure what the motivation of that Wraith was to capture Ronon and torture him into servitude - to attack Atlantis? In which case wouldn't he have pulled all the information out of Ronon as soon as he could to test his loyalty? And Ronon didn't want his captured friends killed, which made me think he was only playing along...
**
Not too sure about this one. I was a little confused about certain things, like why Ronon went mad and cut off the Wraith's hand, then fought Tyre, his ex-Satedan, ex-buddy. And was Tyre always part of the plan, that he'd try and get into this Wraith's good graces? I missed how Lorne and the others were set free and I assumed Ronon had actually been too strong to succumb to the Wraith's brainwashing and drug addiction, and yet he did fight Tyre and he did have to be brought back stunned, and he did have to be held in restraints until the cold turkey process had succeeded. I felt the episode was quite easy to guess in its progression, specifically with Tyre. I really didn't like all that Satedan matey stuff, a follow-on to the episode in the previous season where Ronon met up with his old friends and they turned out to be Wraith worshippers, so I wasn't thrilled to meet up with Tyre again. It was a bit too easy for him to capture Ronon, though he did know him well and was desperate, making him more cunning I suppose. But the fact he was going to die somehow, and probably ultimately sacrificing himself for all that he'd done wrong, wasn't hard to speculate. And obviously when he's there telling them where to lay charges on the Wraith's base and then he ends up holding the detonator, of course he was going to go out in a blaze of glory - for one thing he probably didn't fancy facing a recovered Ronon in the near future!
The episode didn't surprise in other ways, either, with my belief they're mellowing Wolsey so that he can surprise the team by being adamant on some point at some time and making them all shocked at his reversion to the old Wolsey. At the moment they're going out of their way to portray him as much more sensitive, open to suggestion, with a sympathetic side (he misses his dog; he relaxes by wearing a suit and tie!), and the comedy (he doesn't know how to open the briefing room door; he gets left holding the baby - literally), so I can only assume they're priming him to stab his team in the back by not backing them up or coming down like a ton of bricks when they least expect it - that is, after all, how to do something dramatic. I just felt they were laying it on a bit strong. The other plot is about Teyla and whether she's ready to commit to being back on Sheppard's team despite having a baby to contend with and look after. She has the advantage of a stay-at-home Dad for the child, at least, but she feels the maternal instinct strongly. She can't have it both ways and just show up for duty when it suits, Sheppard was very right, but she eventually realises her professionalism and Kanaan reassures her that it'll be okay. It was something that needed to be addressed, and it was somewhat interesting, but the sum of the episode didn't really match expectations.
There were other problems in the episode aside from the confused direction in how the story was told - like redundant scenes where characters talk about how they're going to find Ronon, they don't know, and then Lorne arrives to tell them they know where he is. And The Wraith look really weak now when Tyre can just show up and take a couple of the grunts out with a few sword swipes, or Sheppard can hold them off with a couple of hand guns (where did he get those - wouldn't they have removed all the equipment before putting them in the cells?). It's not that it wasn't stylishly put together, the fights and battles were fine, and it wasn't that the characters were ill-used, there was simply some undefined something that was missing in a small way and I don't feel I've yet settled into this season, even though I went almost straight from Season 4 to this without my usual annual break to review something else. So I don't know, I'm glad Teyla will be back properly and that Ronon will, too. I'm glad Wolsey hasn't proven to be the prize turkey everyone thought he would be (yet). But I'm yet to like the stories they've done so far to any great extent (even if the season opener was pretty good, it was more about settling the previous season's story). I expect a big part of it is that my favourite character Rodney is far from essential for this particular plot and there wasn't a great sense of travel, they just appear in various places and then they're back on Atlantis, and sometimes you need an impression of different places being far away. I'm not even quite sure what the motivation of that Wraith was to capture Ronon and torture him into servitude - to attack Atlantis? In which case wouldn't he have pulled all the information out of Ronon as soon as he could to test his loyalty? And Ronon didn't want his captured friends killed, which made me think he was only playing along...
**
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)