Blue

DVD, Smallville S7 (Blue)

"Join me, and together we can rule…" is basically what Zor-El says to Clark. What is it about these megalomaniacs that they want to share power? And is the Kryptonian culture sexist so that he does't think to team up with his own daughter, Kara, or was it because he didn't think he could properly bring her round to trust him. Maybe it was the evil thrill of tarnishing the 'purity' of his hated brother's son that inspired him to Baddie Choice #101 of offering to share power. Maybe he needs a subordinate to tell what to do: someone who'll be there to see how great he is (and ultimately stab him in the back and topple him from power as always happens). Who knows how the mind of ultimate ambition and domination works. His offer to Clark is such a cliche, but it was far from the only one in this waste of space, that does and says nothing in it's 40-plus minutes, except for one major plot development (I'll get to it), the only moment which elicited any reaction to what was happening. And don't forget, this is an episode in which Clark actually meets his Mum!

He meets his Mum, but it has all the involvement of him seeing Lana or Lex or Chloe again - there's pretty much nothing going on there, and a major loss of drama. I get that it's not technically his real Mum, since she died, but it's some kind of 'replicant' as Lara calls Zor-El, and I assume they both are, but to Clark she's real. But will these writers script us a good meeting scene? Nope. It didn't matter what happened with Lara and Zor-El anyway because the Super Reset Button is pushed as hard as possible before the end, leading to the pair vanishing in a puff of blue smoke as if they'd never been. At least we were spared them dragging it out into a multi-episode arc, but then we'd have had some development, surely? The only time that story meant anything to me was when they use Green Arrow's penthouse as their (inefficient), hideout, a nod back to last season when episodes were actually pretty good.

This time it's Jimmy that gets the boot, though Lex and Lionel are hardly in it. No, this is the Lois and… and… that Editor guy's show. Now what was his name? I will say that his identity was well played out in the episodes he's been in, so that you're never quite sure if you've heard his name or not, or why he should be in charge of the Planet at such a relatively young age, but we do get resolution to that mystery at last: he's a Luthor. No, I never guessed that for one minute, and half expected some kind of Perry White-related reveal, even though we'd already seen Perry back in Season 3. Not just any Luthor though, he's the deceased Julian Luthor! Now that could put a bit of a damper on older episodes if you were to watch them again as we've seen Lex go through a lot of anguish about his brother's untimely death, but it's a good surprise and very well done. Even when Lex and he are clearly in cahoots and we find out that he put him in the position at the Planet, it was completely unexpected that he was actually his brother. And just after we found out his alias of Grant Gabriel.

What's not so hot is the awful, mushy soap plot about whether Editor Guy, (or Gabriel, or Julian), and Lois are a couple or not. I really could not care less and it's a completely dull and pointless road to travel. And that they're now keeping it a secret means nothing to me. It's hardly in the same ballpark as the real identity of the Green Arrow. Or even in the same state… That's my subtle way of crossing over to one of the other scenes that closes out the episode: after being attacked by Zor-El in the Fortress Kara vanishes (for no apparent reason), and wakes up in Detroit with no memory of who she is. [Sound of party poppers and blowers!] Yes, that's a great idea isn't it, let's see how many fantastic stories we can get out of that. We've already had her run off and leave Clark; go off for fun; and now she's left him by accident. How many ways are there to get her out of Smallville/Metropolis?

The Fortress, as good a set as it is, continues to make little coherence. Now it has the ability to darken the sun somehow, and Zor-El's plan is… what? Wait for all life to die out? That could take a while. Then he… what? Takes over the desolate remains… to do… what? These villains really need to work out their long term strategies in detail. All he thinks about is repopulating Earth with Lara and being a new Adam and Eve. Every single super villain thinks they can don a black Neo 'Matrix' coat, throw around the ones they love and take over a planet, but once all the fun's out the way, what then? He obviously wasn't leader material, and I can see why Jor-El is considered such a good guy by the Kryptonians (that are positively crawling out of the crystal work these days). Compared to his bro, he must have been saintly. So anyway, the Fortress has all kinds of powers that can be used on a whim, it seems, but what I wanted to know was how all these people went to and fro to get to it? How did Clark and Lara return to the Kent farm when he's first chucked the crystal in? I can't really see Lara dashing along at superspeed in that frilly white dress, but sometimes people seem to just appear there, or somewhere else as happened to Kara, without rhyme or reason.

The real point of the episode, as far as the title was concerned, was the blue ring that robs Clark of his powers. There's not even a hint of the potential of this plot device, probably because it's been done before. Chloe gets one line about Clark maybe seeing it as an advantage, but he's gone way past ever really wanting to be human and powerless again so it's not explored. At all. It could have been worse: I was half expecting that soldier guy from Season 3 to come back, the one who shot meteor freaks with blue Kryptonite bullets, at least I think that's what he did. So as far as I remembered, the blue variety had been covered before, yet Clark seems surprised when he loses his abilities. Maybe all the events that have happened since have confused him - with Kryptonite in practically all the colours of the rainbow, I'm not surprised.

Little tidbits came out that kept my interest level up even while the story had no substance: I liked the mention of Aunt Nell again; it was good to have Lionel's character spelled out as still being considered to be the 'vessel' of Jor-El, which explains why he continues to help Clark; and the fateful warning of Jor-El has been done many times before, so it's nothing new for him to promise some doom for the disobedience of using the blue crystal, (Clark affected by his 'human' emotions. But Kryptonians are hardly Vulcans in the emotional states themselves…). How Jor-El carries out all his threats is a mystery, even Zor-El notes he's nothing but a disembodied voice, but we'll find out about the doom soon, I'm sure. I didn't really mean that this episode is a waste of space, it's more like a vacuum where there should be solid matter to chew on. And the biggest vacuum is space.

**

North Star

DVD, Enterprise S3 (North Star)

The first of the season to have nothing whatsoever to do with the Xindi, just a mission taken on out of curiosity, which shows that Archer wasn't so bound up with the mission to save Earth that he couldn't stop by and find out how humans could be living a Wild West lifestyle in the Expanse. The question isn't really how they got there as much as how they live, because this is pretty much a remake of the 'Voyager' story 'The 37's,' only not as deep. Not that that episode was particularly deep, but it was such a similar tale: humans from Earth were abducted by aliens, taken to a planet to be used as slaves, then the human's ancestors rose up to defeat them, basically. Except that one had more character to it, and tied directly into that series' arc, emotively suggesting a new home to settle in. The (quick) draw here is the quirk that these people were taken from the Wild West era and still live that way, though it was three hundred years ago that they first came there. How come they never progressed, even after defeating their oppressors?

The episode attempts to bring about one of Trek's great morality plays, but it's very heavy-handed and doesn't say anything new - guess what, slavery is still bad, folks. I suppose the angle this time is a view of what people can become, between the nasty bullying type of Deputy Bennings, and the more thoughtful minority in MacReady and Bethany. Mac is in control as Sheriff, but chooses most of the time to turn a blind eye to the way the 'Skags' are treated because it's the law he was brought up with, even though he feels it's a little harsh sometimes. If it had been all about the steady persuading of him to take action and deal with people like Bennings in making big changes it would have worked better than the firefight of Archer and the Maco's, blasting in and shooting the bad guys up, then leaving, with everything alright again. It smacks of the simplicity of some of the 'TOS' stories, even though he promises a ship will come back for them eventually. Even that was ripe for exploration, because some would want to stay with the old ways and the life they new despite an offer of a trip back to the almost mythical planet of their origin.

That's not to even mention the Skagarans who have no chance to explain their history, and are merely downtrodden victims, paying the price for their ancestor's cruelty. So many issues, and so little exploration of them. When I first saw this, I was impressed by the look of it all, the high production values, the phaser battle (including the excellent phaser rifle sniper scope that Maco girl uses, the one with no name who usually gets to do some good stunts), though now even that looks somehow sluggish, and Archer's fight in the barn unnecessary. It's the old thing of battering the enemy until you beat them and the real issues are just skirted over at the very end as Archer tells Bethany that things are beginning to change.

It would have been a good idea to go back there and find out how much really did change, after they'd sorted the Xindi out, but Archer's decisions mirrors his mission against the Xindi in the way he takes on the wayward humans: show them you're the stronger (after a little bit of an attempt at mild diplomacy to anyone who'll listen), and then strike in anger, wipe off your hands and feel satisfied with a job well done. It may be the problem of the series and of the era they represent, and if we're being strictly fair it should be pointed out that humans are supposed to be much more in that way than the 24th Century humans we know so well. So it's an accurate representation of humanity's nearly, but not-quite-there progression. Coming after all those 24th Century series' it may have been a bad idea to go back to a simpler time, because it does become less engaging and thought-provoking than we learned to expect. All this from watching a cowboy episode! I never realised this would all come out as I thought about this episode, but there you go.

As a Western it's not bad. As I said, it looks great (I have the feeling this was the first, or one of the first episodes to be shot entirely digitally), but you could have been confused by the teaser which had absolutely no sci-fi element or recognisable Trek characters or situation at all - even the 'Skag' they hang looked human to me, and it wasn't the best way to start an episode. I should applaud them for coming out with the necessary Western that most Trek series' do, even though they were hampered by the Expanse, but it highlights the fact that any ordinary 'Enterprise' episode could easily have been achieved if they felt like it, since the Expanse is just that: an expanse which hasn't been explored. Maybe it was because it came right after 'Twilight' that I took against it a little, but it was the Captain and T'Pol out of uniform again and almost a time travel episode in that they visit a lifestyle from Earth's past. I don't know, I think it was too derivative, I didn't like all the characters much, and as usual some of the crew just aren't used. We don't learn anything new about anybody and the message isn't even allegorical, it's just simple and in your face.

It was fun to see Glenn Morshower looking much older, who'd been in Trek as far back as 'TNG,' as the Sheriff, but there wasn't a whole lot of character to the episode beyond him, and there were a few points that didn't make a lot of sense: the townspeople are remarkably trusting to strangers wandering through; trading a mouth organ and a gun for a horse seemed unbalanced; and there were things that looked like they were going to come to something and didn't - most clearly seen in T'Pol's part. She appears to be unsure with the horse which was ripe for comedy potential, but also makes her look a whole lot less cooler - if you take Mr. Spock's affinity for animals as a Vulcan trait, considering they can mind meld with them. Oh, but I'm forgetting, mind melding was an outlawed practice, but it's another example of the eroding of Vulcan qualities. I was also expecting her to reach up and nerve-pinch the cowboy holding her captive, but instead there's a comic moment where Reed stuns her, and then him! I suppose it was the novelty of the 'Enterprise' cast in a Western that I enjoyed first time round, and now I'm watching the series with hindsight this one sticks out as a bit of a failure in all but the glossiness stakes.

**

Silence

DVD, Starsky & Hutch S1 (Silence)

Once in a while it's nice to be pleasantly surprised by an episode previously thought of as weak, and that happened for me with this one - there's enough in it that I considered I'd judged it too harshly, and it's actually one of the better productions of the season. It has the usual S&H buddy banter, it has a good running joke that is actually funny, it even has a villain with charisma and presence for a change, but plenty of episodes have these ingredients. What makes this better than an average story is that it begins well, with big guy Larry, crying, much to Hutch's embarrassment; it has a good shootout in a vacated cinema at the end; and there's also a funny tag scene, which is actually amusing instead of being silly or groan-worthy. It's not brilliant or incisive storytelling, it gets a little boring in the middle when they're looking for Larry, but on the whole it's not a bad instalment of the first season.

I wondered if it was going to court controversy by having a real priest as a crook, but it avoids that when we realise he's an imposter who's done away with the real Father Jonathan Ignatius, and poses as him in order to perform his robberies. There must have been an easier cover to develop, and it was a long game Marty was playing, since to develop trust between the regulars of the Dismas halfway house must have taken time. So how long had he been posing as the benevolent priest? We know his plans are coming to an end because more priests of his order are being sent and will recognise him, but if it was any length of time why did they not notice the Father had changed his habits? His craggy face, lined with deceit as it turns out, had a lot of character to it, and the way he's introduced, storming into the police station to claim his associate back gave him immediate personality, something that a lot of villains this season haven't achieved, and though he was no match for S&H in the end, he gave them a fight.

The shootout in the cinema worked well, creating both a mood of fun (S&H draw his fire by leaping up from behind the rows of seats and shouting at him before ducking back again), and danger, as they each divert him from the other, rolling over the seats. I will say that the cinema looked suspiciously clean and bright with the lights on, and it's probably nitpicking, but after the audience had fled I felt it should look in some state of disarray, which pointed to the scenes in the dark, patronised cinema, and the empty scene, being shot well apart from each other. But their acrobatics looked good, and this was something else the episode had going for it: S&H shown in a good light. It was well shot, and it isn't always - we even get a rare in-car view as they chase the thief's vehicle, and when they leap out of the Torino and dash past the camera it's a moment full of energy and excitement. It's let down a little by the subsequent shot of the enemy car careering round the corner to try and mow them down, as the stunt doubles are clearly visible, even Hutch's, who as I've mentioned before, usually blended in well.

The best shot was one later picked up and used in the credits of subsequent seasons, and which makes S&H look totally cool, summing up the partnership with no words: Hutch, gun drawn, walks alongside Starsky driving the Torino with the door open down a dark street like something out of a cowboy film. I could never remember which episode it came from so I was pleased to see it here. I like the rest of the scene, too, where Hutch splits off down an alley and finds the abandoned car they'd been chasing and signals to Starsky who then speeds the Torino round the bend and screeches to a halt, kicking up a cloud of dust! They are at their best as funny, endearing, tough cops out to do what's right, yet finding time to admit to hunger pangs, and it's one of the better uses of the two characters this season.

The running joke of the week is centred on food, and more precisely Starsky's lack of it. While Hutch is on a forty hour fast, taking only water, his partner in stopping crime keeps settling down to a super-fat meal that he's continually called away from. What's worse, most of the time it's food he's paid for! Dobey's issue with food comes up again, as it should with that subject matter, and the funniest moment is when Starsky's shooed away to get on with his investigation while a dinner so good he could marry it sits uneaten… until the Captain settles down to stuff his face, Starsky walks back in and Dobey tells him to get lost, shouting with mouth full of Starsky's food. The look of hurt on his face is priceless! It doesn't end there, because he also has to pass up a fast food frenzy at a drive-in diner, and gets Chinese all over his face when the fellow they're supposed to be watching bumps into him as he carries a good meal. The only surprise is that the episode eschews the easy one-last-time expectation of Starsky's food being whipped away, for a just as amusing scene where Larry shows the cops his kittens that have been named after them, leading to arguing over who's who until Hutch names the one who widdles or poops on him, Starsky. It is actually funny!

The reason they went for that is because it tied up the story better rather than being completely unrelated as some have been. The episode starts with Larry Horvath, a deaf-mute, being arrested for petty shoplifting. Seeing the big guy snivelling is both funny and a sympathetic moment, but even though he was child-like, I didn't get S&H's guilt at taking him to task, magnified when Evil Fake Father Ignatius comes a-calling, because he knew it was wrong and should have been punished, regardless of his situation. But it shows once again that S&H are very tender-hearted and see things in perspective. Not for them the by-the-book approach, machine-like and strict. They can be moved, and affected, which is how they can survive with all the bad stuff they have to see in their line of work.

Larry was a really well written character, all coming from the performance of the actor, who exudes playful, loveable naughtiness and generosity like some over-sized child. I wonder if the actor was actually deaf, because he did such a good job in the role. R.C. Turner, his best friend, wasn't bad, but I felt they missed a good dramatic opportunity by having him get over his distrust of cops and officials so easily. The way he's acting when he comes in with Ignatius, he looks like he'd as soon hit S&H than help them, so when I heard they were going to his print shop, I thought there was going to be trouble. If they'd made it so that he comes round to the idea of trusting them through necessity and then finds them honourable men it would have been stronger drama, but it may be expecting too much of the series.

It fell into the positive category through S&H helping Larry and R.C., and the kind of locations seen - jewellery offices and business premises, a normal cinema showing a Western (they still had ushers then! But what was the film called, it wasn't named in the end credits?), wide city streets and church property and the mood is upbeat. Marty's righthand man wasn't much of a character, not really having any purpose other than to be there so he'd tell him his plans and we'd know he was a rotten apple, but I felt like he was another of those actors that may have been in it before, or after. There are actually few characters in the story, the eccentric ones being narrowed down to Larry (but in a good way), Jessie, the tea lady at the halfway house (who responds to Starsky's polite flirting, much to his dismay), and an unnamed, unknown guy they find polishing Starsky's car bonnet at one point! It probably needed the polish after Hutch climbed over it during the episode - Starsky complains about it, but then he does the same thing later!

There are plenty of pop references to spot this time: a Humphrey Bogart impression from Starsky ('Bogey'), S&H called Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, a mention of Pat O'Brien, which from the context I imagine was a cowboy film actor, and the return of Starsky being compared to Paul Muni (as in 'Lady Blue'). An unintentional link to another episode was the red-rimmed balaclava Marty (I think it was Marty), used in the break-in, which was also seen in 'Terror On The Docks.' The old cop guarding that place really didn't seem to have survived to be so old by experience - he has the wit to call for backup, but then goes in alone and gets blown away! Did he have a death wish? You can't always believe what people say: Starsky claims to have torn his jeans when he 'went down' after narrowly avoiding the oncoming car, but if you watch carefully he never actually falls over! I also noticed that parts of the episode were in need of minor restoration: from the scene in Dobey's office in the middle of the episode, some scenes look a bit washed out as if they had suffered some fading.

I can't fault the episode, and it has a rare use of a minority at its heart, good opposition, some well written moments (Larry stumbling through the people on the pavement as he hurries along, tears in his eyes is one that comes to mind), and played S&H up to their full potential. It doesn't work on every level, for instance it doesn't have much in the way of dramatic tension, except perhaps when you know Marty's going off to kill Larry, and there's no Huggy, but it's a better episode than I previously gave it credit for, even squeezing in some 'aaah' moments with little kittens. Good.

***

Preemptive Strike

DVD, TNG S7 (Preemptive Strike)

The finale of 'Enterprise' often gets flak for choosing to focus on something other than itself, and though this episode isn't the finale, it's the last regular one of 'TNG.' I have to wonder if the cast felt badly at being sidelined for a story focused almost exclusively on a minor recurring character? I can see why they would do this, continuing the Maquis setup that had begun earlier in the season and with 'DS9,' but it would have had more impact had the border wars become much bigger an element of the succeeding series'. In a way it was a sacrifice for 'TNG' to be using up their penultimate episode for the good of 'Voyager,' and I wonder what aspect of the series might have been considered for this slot if they had chosen to think more about the ending of their own show. It may be that the actors were tired after a long season, and the writers were scrabbling around for ideas in the home straight and perhaps nobody minded, but in my mind this seems as controversial an episode as any other.

I think knowing the content of the episode makes it a marginally better viewing experience than when I first saw it, and it does have sensitive character moments for Ro, it just totally becomes her story when I want to see the Enterprise crew interacting. There is the feature-length finale to come, and that's probably good enough, and it's not like we don't see life aboard the D at all, just not enough of it. 'DS9' chose to run with the Maquis storyline much more than 'Voyager,' only to be expected since the latter series was far out of that region of space, but even on 'DS9' the Maquis took a backseat to the spreading fear of the Dominion in the season to follow 'TNG,' so we never got any payoff to Ro's betrayal. She came like a whirlwind, a character not quite like any before her, cropped up occasionally, and then returned to make an exit in the same manner as she'd entered. She had changed, Picard had changed her, and made her realise she could do something with her life, trust people and believe in something, so for her the Maquis came long at just the right time. You could see she still had issues with the Cardassians over such things as the cruel death of her Father, and it's a missing piece not to see her come to terms with herself as Kira did. She leaves as a still broken person, but broken in a different way to how she'd been. Picard inspired her, but not in the way he'd hoped.

To begin with, she returns to the ship from Starfleet, radiant with gratefulness at all Picard has done for her, so it shows how big a deal it was for her and how much the Maquis' fight meant to her, when she turns to their cause, and the trust of an old man showed her something more homely and personable than the proud discipline she'd learned to accept in Starfleet. Macias was the best character in it, making the other Maquis members look very bland and without personality - even their clothing was almost nondescript and dull, which all may have contributed to the Maquis never totally catching on as a force. I'm not sure if the writers ever knew if we were supposed to be rooting for the rebels or siding with Starfleet, and no doubt hoped 'Voyager' would address the issues in depth. Instead it was left to 'DS9' to cover them, and that was more of a personal conflict between Sisko and an equally treacherous crewmember. I thought I recognised Kalita, so it was a nice surprise to find she was the same character and actor in 'Defiant', the next Maquis episode on 'DS9'.

When I first saw Macias I thought he had a Chakotay tattoo on his forehead in the dim light, until he explained it was a scar, so no connection to the Commander after all (though according to 'The TNG Companion' he's the respected Commander who left Starfleet for the Maquis, which is a great link). It was good to hear the Maquis name on 'TNG,' and a mention of 'DS9' helping to tie the series' together. Even Admiral Nechayev has what must be her only completely civil appearance ever, though I hope Beverly gave Jean-Luc permission to borrow the sacred tea set! Gul Evek completes the set of expected Maquis connections, but the problem with the episode, beyond that it leaves people on a down, is that Picard and Riker are betrayed and there's no room for the optimistic viewpoint the series had been founded upon. Patrick Stewart directs his last 'Star Trek' and it isn't bad, though neither does it show great flair. He was hampered by the sets, with the Maquis village being so enclosed and an obvious reuse of the Indian village from a few episodes back. The same with the internal of the Maquis raider, which was the same blocky configuration as Rasmussen's timeship from 'A Matter of Time'.

As usual I have trouble with Picard and Riker going undercover (though fun to see the Commander as a Bajoran), especially among humans in an area where the Enterprise is known, because who wouldn't recognise the famous Captain and First Officer of the flagship? I was also a little muddled about the Maquis claim that Cardassians were supplying biogenic weapons to their colonists, because Picard says that all ships that go into the area are searched. But on the Cardassian side they must be searched by Cardassian ships, who would let these weapons through, so how was it possible to stop them coming in from the Cardassian side?

Though something of a disappointment that Ro Laren should own the episode, and the sets didn't quite measure up, and the Maquis plotting was a bit vague, Michelle Forbes gave a good performance, having taken the brash, sarcastic Ensign quite a way, showing that Picard's faith in her (and others, such as Guinan who really needed to be here!), was not misplaced, except in terms of her doing what was in her heart, not her career path. We needed to know what became of her, and in that line lies only frustration. She was perfect for a guest shot on 'DS9,' but it had to be left for a non-canon novel to show her meeting Kira. Maybe it was in the spirit of the series that they chose to have no build-up to the end of it, as much of 'TNG' was all about the single stories, and in the character's eyes their stories weren't really coming to an end any more than their lives were, and the next episode would be the first time a Trek series had ever been given the luxury of concluding itself so it was unknown territory and who could know what to expect?

**

Twilight

DVD, Enterprise S3 (Twilight)

Let's see, T'Pol gets promoted to Captain, Trip gets promoted to Captain, Reed… gets a Mirror Universe-style cool beard (and gets promoted to Captain), and Travis… Travis gets killed before he can utter a single line. Now if I didn't know better I'd think this was a cruel running joke in the vein of Harry Kim and his unfortunate choices of romance, but it would be ridiculous to have the joke that a main cast member (on a main cast member's salary) should almost never get anything to say or do, and get killed at every opportunity! Which means it was an oversight by the writers. Which means they didn't care enough about Travis Mayweather as a character. To be fair, Hoshi gets about the same quotient of airtime (apart from the recent 'Exile'), so it's not like they were being mean to Travis. But really, you'd think they'd find a way to include him in such an outside the box episode. It once again glaringly points to the fact that on this series people had their defined roles and rarely moved beyond them, which may have been why it was a relatively short-lived branch of the 'Star Trek' mythos.

This particular leaf of the branch (to extend the analogy), has a great deal to do with the wider tree of Trek, taking as it does, a great staple of the genre and the series' and working it surprisingly into the season of the arc rather than its more likely place in the midst of other standalone stories. It's a tribute to the writers that they thought up a way to get out beyond the bounds of the season's plot, while not leaving it behind entirely. It actually is one of the closest and most robust reminders of the delicacy of their quest, thanks to the ramming home of the implications of the Xindi and their genocidal plans by showing the Earth's destruction and the aftermath of the last vestiges of humanity's attempt at survival. Yet it also feels like something fan-written, which never touches the issues as strongly as a 'genuine' episode of other Trek series', like 'The Inner Light' or 'The Visitor'.

Though never fair to compare 'Enterprise' episodes with ones from the golden years of the early-to-mid-to-late-90s, there has always been an aura of classic around this story, and watching it again I confess I felt the same way as when I saw the original broadcast. That is, a vague, ever so slightly nagging sense of disappointment. By the series and the season's standards it's undeniably a good episode, and has mystery, action and intrigue along with many pleasing references from Trek continuity, yet it also remains a grab bag, an assortment of set pieces rather than a rounded story. There are many things I like about it, and many that work, but for me it never reaches the almost-intangible status of Classic that I had expectations for, and falling under the same problems the series has always had: that of character development, keeping to established lore, and doing something new.

It comes closest to doing something new, I'll give it that, but is it even possible to do a truly new episode of Trek? It's very difficult to do one completely unlike any before it, hence the comparisons mentioned earlier. For the series it's quite different to their usual style, but that's absolutely a good thing and enabled them to bring in familiarity that had been lost to a certain extent by their mission to the Expanse. So it's a novel way of bringing Soval back to the series, and surprising Admiral Forrest wasn't utilised in the same way, or Shran, though they both are mentioned. Watching it again after having seen the finale of the series it strikes me that that followed a similar path to this postulation. Shran's a general, T'Pol and Archer are closer than they used to be, a main character has died, and there's a sense of time having passed and what Starfleet and Earth had been was changed. Obviously in 'These Are The Voyages…' Earth hadn't been destroyed, so the timelines differed, but the impression of the ongoing nature of their lives was similar.

The story can't be faulted for its action, but maybe it was at the expense of something deeper? Maybe the unfolded and unfolding lives of the characters in this new universe where humans are an endangered species weren't explored enough? And the NX-01 gets boarded yet again. But it's still a tense moment, even though the Xindi weapons still sound a bit weak. There's a good fight in Archer's quarters in which his figure of Zefram Cochrane gets good use, and the Xindi-Reptilians continue to be dangerous, tough opponents that stalk with purpose the halls of humanity to eradicate their bitter foe. They aren't the Borg, but if only a little more work had been done they might have been spoken of in the same sentence. A race that would never be spoken of even on the same page, would be the Yridians, the famed information brokers of 'TNG' and 'DS9', and I wouldn't have expected to ever see one on 'Enterprise', yet there he stands! Not that I'd given it much thought: "I know what this series needs - more Yridians!" I always love it when they bring in a 'future' race, and it never bothers me in the way it does some people, because unless we've had confirmed date of first contact, who knows when it happened? And even then there are plenty of opportunities to run into aliens of unknown race and origin, as happened with the Ferengi.

They didn't appear to have made any changes to the Yridian design at all, which is fair enough, since they didn't change the Vulcans, Romulans, Ferengi, Klingons, Nausicaans or Borg either. It seems they only wanted to redesign aliens that hadn't been done properly since 'TOS', such as Tellarites, Gorn, Tholians, Orions or Andorians, which again, is fair enough, but an observation worth pointing out. The makeup as a whole… well, I'm not sure. I have to give them leeway for old-age makeup because it was only a decade into the future, but I sometimes wish a bit more had been done. It's relatively simple to do very old age: less hair, more wrinkles and people bending over, creaking about. But a decade older isn't easy to predict. Trip and Reed should have had different hairstyles and maybe less of their hair. They both seemed to talk a bit slower as if they were unsure of how to act ten years older. So it was a little disconcerting. Archer didn't really act any older because he didn't feel it, and the grey hair was all he needed to sell it, T'Pol untouched by a mere ten years, but I did like the work done on Phlox to make his skin mottled and hair longer.

If the makeup effects were mostly strong, the computer effects were stronger, with some good little battle scenes, and best of all, actual battle damage to the NX-01. The explosion of the Xindi ship being thumped into its twin while attached to the Enterprise didn't have enough weight, but that's an age-old problem, and there were some dynamic swooping shots that almost brought to mind the great ship battles of 'DS9'. Almost… I loved seeing new Starfleet ships, such as the Intrepid with it's different hull configuration, though I wasn't sure how after Earth, Starfleet and all starship plans had been destroyed, that the ship-building program could continue unabated. The destruction of Earth was very good for a TV budget, starting the episode with a literal bang, and showing us what we were unlikely ever to see in the true timeline. I wonder if this was an episode watched by JJ Abrams' team for inspiration because it's all about a race wanting to annihilate another race in revenge for future grief caused, the homeworld is taken out by a special weapon and the remaining members of that race are a scattered people. Nero, Vulcans, etc?

It always gets on my nerves, but I'll say it again: I despise the way Vulcans are portrayed on 'Enterprise'. This time, although T'Pol is generally the best of a bad bunch, she shows pain and anguish when the bulkhead falls on her leg, and later, she and Soval have their usual slightly emotional, yet mildly restrained chat in which they just about get angry or disappointed or defensive, then pull it back like a yo-yo! Granted, Vulcans experience pain, but Tuvok used to grit his teeth, his emotional control of more import to him than acknowledging the pain, and in fact it probably helped him focus. Niggling, I know, but 'Enterprise' has a lot to answer for as a precedent for the new, emotion-loving style of Vulcans in 21st Century Treks.

Other little things to notice and enjoy are the 'Star Trek II' references: Ceti Alpha V, the last human colony is the same location Khan was dumped on; the Mutara sector is presumably where the Mutara Nebula is, and there's the old-fashioned piping Archer on board when he visits. T'Pol worked really well as a Captain in uniform and they should have kept her in it; this is one of the only times, and maybe the first, where we see the crawlways of the NX-01 when Archer and T'Pol have to get to the bridge while the Turbolifts are down. I suppose it's one of those miraculous Starfleet technology anomalies that a ship can lose its entire bridge (a spectacular sequence, though I wanted to see the inside, like in 'Nemesis' - and there's not often you can say that film did something better than anything else in Trek!), yet the monitors still work on the rest of the ship.

I'm not sure if 'The Matrix Revolutions' had come out, but 'Reloaded' would have by the time this episode was scored, and there's some music towards the end of the episode that is remarkably reminiscent of the 'approaching Zion'-type music of those films, so I wonder if it was an inspiration or complete coincidence since films and episode would have been out in the same year. Robbie Duncan McNeill probably pulls off one of his best efforts on the series as Director, and we even get to see what every Trek series has to do at some point (sometimes more than once!): destroy the main ship. It has to happen, and it happened good. The only thing is that Archer dying rather than being cured loses the episode any of its potential tension because no matter what had happened history would have righted itself. Archer would have died eventually, whether naturally or not. Phlox has a more dramatic death than him, but the real problem lies in there being nothing to be learned from the episode for the characters. They never knew what happened, there's not even a deft sleight of mind (as happened to Kes in 'Time and Again' when events don't occur as she'd foreseen and her mind is put at rest). So it's a nothing ending, and though it does have moments where you care about the characters and feel something other than excitement (rare on this series), it's nothing more than a view into a potential future that will not now come about. I liked it a lot, but it didn't hit enough highs to make it a classic.

***

Wrath

DVD, Smallville S7 (Wrath)

How can something start so well, then come crashing down so hard? I guess that's a metaphor for the entire series, but, just as Lana and Clark complete another circuit of the trust/betrayal spiral in this episode, I have also said all that before and don't need to repeat what went wrong. Instead, let me just say how satisfying the opening montage is, with Lana and Clark flying along on horseback, going like the clappers over picture-book landscapes, having a good time and reminding us of all those riding scenes of long ago. It was so good I didn't even mind the fact the stunt doubles were so obviously not the actors! A good start then, and a high concept story: Lana gains Clark's powers. It didn't quite follow the path I expected, in that Clark retained his abilities, while Lana had them simultaneously, rather than the repeat of the Season 1 story 'Leech' that worked so well, where Clark becomes normal. They'd already played with that angle, and it's for Chloe to give us a nod back to that encounter with Eric Summers (ironically her former boyfriend Jimmy's brother in real life!). So it was good that they were doing something new with it, but I didn't even consider the possibilities for Lana with all her shady spying on Lex, so that was out of the blue for me.

We've seen Lana go bad countless times. We've even seen her with superpowers, whether she was a witch or a vampire (both awful episodes), so I didn't expect them to go down that route again. But she soon turns into her own kind of monster, bullying the boss of the Daily Planet (still ridiculously young and I can never remember his name, if we've even been told it - but why is he deleting the sensitive information from the hard drive Lana gave him about Lex' project, and more importantly, why is the PowerBook or MacBook name covered on his computer, yet they can show the Apple logo?), kicking Lois through a stained glass window, and later beating up and threatening to kill Lex - she even boots Clark in the face in perhaps the only excellent stunt sequence of the episode. She turns into a completely different person, but then, rightfully, she reminds Clark, and us, that the sweet, innocent version we used to know apparently never existed. I don't believe that for a moment as she was always so tenderhearted and wanting to help people, giving me even more ammunition to suggest the real Lana died and this is a clone. It's only in the latter seasons that she was turned into someone who could become a Luthor and then retain that darkness of character around her. Not that the characterisations have come on in those recent seasons, they just morph into a different personality.

Take Lionel for example. First he's the core evil that's going to turn Lex bad, then he becomes someone Clark and family trust, then he's back to being untrustworthy, and at the minute he's someone who chats to Martha on the phone (nice touch), and who Clark feels comfortable coming to tell him that Lana's now powered up! It never makes sense to me what they've done with him, they haven't even played the thing where he could be using his friendship with Martha to influence the government. Mainly because Martha's not in it any more, but anyway, I can still never be happy with Lionel knowing everything about Clark, any more than Lex. Lex, we learn, knows all about Lana keeping tabs on him, so that storyline came to nothing, with even the subplot of Chloe thrilled at Lana's care for the meteor-infected going out the window when she finds out it was all a front for Lana's spying. There's even a tense conversation in which Chloe warns Lana that if she ever does anything to harm Clark she's not going to stand for it.

That about summed things up for me: it's the return of the misery endings in which episodes conclude with various characters falling out, threatening or keeping deadly secrets from each other. If I was any of them I wouldn't trust anyone else! If that wasn't enough to go out depressed, the story never plays with the myriad possibilities Lana's newfound strength and abilities promised. She merely uses them to attack Lex, whereas it would have been infinitely more interesting to see her have to adjust to these powers in her daily life. Ah, but I'm forgetting that by this stage of the series she doesn't have a normal daily life to counterpoint the strangeness, and hasn't done for a long time. That's why they needed to keep hold of the reality of Smallville and Metropolis, so quickly eroded away into a tangibly fantastical setting, losing its power. All this and icky soap stuff between Lois and Daily Planet Editor Man, who appear only for that purpose, and things don't look good.

As much as I was expecting a solid, if unremarkable retelling of the kinds of stories that have been done before, and better, on the series, I was disappointed that Lana's powers became only an extra means of doing things to Lex. She wasn't even subtle about it: rip off the safe door, push people up against walls, etc. If only she'd kept it to herself this could have been an ongoing story in which Clark's so happy to have an equal in his girlfriend that he overlooks the secret one-woman missions she pulls off. That's what could have happened, but I suppose they felt that would be too close to the Kara arc, where Clark was coping with her powers, which fortunately didn't complicate matters in this episode. Even though I didn't get what I hoped for, there were little things that I did appreciate: obviously references back to times when Clark's powers were transferred was delightful, and the thing with the last slimy, black remains of Dr. Milton Fine's ship was most intriguing. Will Fine make a return as a proper Brainiac or will it be one of those things where the black blob goes from person to person as the need arises? And the aforementioned effects shot of Lana and Clark having a short fight was pretty good, too.

As has often been the case there are two many projects and secrets going on. It's always Project This or Project That with Lex, and now we hear of Project Psion to do with the Fine gloop. There's also the Isis Foundation again, Lana's supposed charity for meteorite sufferers, so I can only hope these, at least, won't feature any more. The writers throw in references to St. Paul or Sampson and Delilah, or other well-known historical references, as well as trying to create themes of betrayal and trust and how far is too far to do what you see is right. Should Clark have killed Lex long ago? So many ideas and questions, yet so little development of any of them, so it remains a bubbling cauldron, full of strong light and sound and smell, but sadly nothing that is edible or edifying. It's a jumble, and of that good episodes are not made. Plus, animal lovers might have been dismayed when Clark and Lana appear to be heading for shelter when the storm kicks in, leaving their horses exposed! Or that Lana is returned to 'normal' if you can call it that, before the end. A mess, with glimpses of greatness within it.

**

The Shipment

DVD, Enterprise S3 (The Shipment)

"All Xindi are not your enemy," is the theme of this episode, but apart from that it's a pretty pointless exercise - they don't find out where the weapon is, may have delayed it a little, but that's all. This was probably designed to give us much more of a traditional Trek feel to the season. So much of it has been about sci-fi action rather than allegory or character, so it must have seemed like a good idea to have Archer settle down on a Xindi world for a while, learn to trust one of the race, and discover that he had no knowledge of the probe that killed so many on Earth, or the full-scale version that will be used for complete destruction in future. Throw in Major Hayes, and have a subplot in which Trip and Phlox work together to analyse the Xindi firearm left behind in a previous attack, and what's not to like?

I'm all for having Hayes back, and I'm glad they tracked him down and pulled him out of whatever cupboard he'd been hiding in for the last few episodes, but really it could have been any of the MACOs, and there was no reason for it being the Major at all. It didn't add to the burgeoning feud between Reed and Hayes in any way, and actually the two were in accordance against Archer at one moment. Neither did it give the Captain a deeper connection to his MACO leader, as he was too busy kidnapping/making friends with Gralik Durr, the Xindi-Arboreal. As for the subplot of the weapons testing, it was perfectly fine, in a round about way - they learn the guns have organic components. But that's about all they learn before Trip activates the self-destruct and has to do a Chekov-like sprint to the Transporter, to beam it off ("I ken do it, I ken do it!").

The setting of a verdant forest world (of Endor, I want to say), is a nice change of visual pace, the costumes and makeup are as good as ever. I think the problem is that there just is so little depth. John Cothran Jr. (who had previously played Klingons on 'TNG' and 'DS9'), was a reasonably well-defined character, his performance making him deeper than the writing. And his abode, with its tree-like feel, wooden furniture and sparse, but homely design, was a good example of a different culture. But we never got to know that culture beyond the job that he did there, which keeps the Xindi as, if not faceless, to a degree personality-less enemies who remain undefined as people. That may work to sustain their credibility as uncompromising enemies of Earth, but it makes it harder to care about them as individuals or races, beyond the interest in their history - we learn about a sixth race, the Xindi-Avians which died out during a vast planetary war between the species, that ultimately destroyed their homeworld.

My feeling was that there were plenty of pieces to play with in this story, but it went lightly over meanings and quandaries. Archer shows some trepidation at destroying the compound once he knows the workers had nothing to do with the weapon, and once Gralik agrees to help there's no reason to blow it up anyway. But that's about as far as the moral minefield of a Captain's decisions goes. If Michael Piller had been part of the writing team I'm sure he'd have been telling them to go deeper, and not churn out a mass production Trek series that could be so much fuller and meatier, even as it kept its slick sheen intact. Because it looks as tasty as ever. The Xindi-Arboreals, despite bringing to mind 'Planet of The Apes,' was an achievement. Though the actors inside the makeup, whether Arboreal or Reptilian, looked uncomfortable walking around, as long as they were standing, they looked great. The CGI had its usual problems depicting figures, even at a distance, with Archer creeping up on the Xindi ship, or the Arboreals seen lumbering about inside their facility, but in establishing shots the sets looked good, as did the NX-01 hiding behind a moon.

It did seem bizarre that such a facility would be so lacking in security. They don't detect the Enterprise, they don't have guards, unless you count the robotic Seekers (I almost thought I was watching 'The Arsenal of Freedom' from 'TNG' in that scene!), and they never even pick up on items beaming to and fro, or communication between ship and planet. You'd think with such an important business in so dangerous an Expanse, that they would have very strong security! I loved having kemacite be a part of it - best known for being the material that sends Quark, Rom and Nog back in time in 'Little Green Men,' though it may have been something entirely different as its pronounced kemocite here.

I wasn't against learning more about the Xindi and their history, and I was definitely interested in seeing Degra outside of the council chambers, vehement in his belief that Earth is such a deadly enemy, and I really wanted to get to know some Xindi characters and find out that not all of them support the war effort against humanity. I just needed more than what was on offer here: reasons for meeting Gralik, for having Hayes part of the team, and as I always say, greater involvement from the characters - Travis is actually promoted to having one line, instead of looking meaningfully at his console or whoever is speaking on the bridge. He almost blurted it out in joy before it was taken away from him! I like that the previous episode influenced what happened in this one, (though it was very odd to hear Archer saying 'Star Trek: Enterprise' in the recap - both the title and him saying it), but I felt like, apart from meeting a sympathetic and unexpected ally, it was treading water, trying to appear exciting without being so. And Bakula doesn't always convince when he plays angry - in this one he was almost spitting at Gralik! Even the title lacked any imagination. Another instalment that doesn't live up to the season's promise.

**