April | 2016 | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: Voyager – Remember (Review)

Posted on April 29, 2016 by Darren

This February and March (and a little bit of April), we’re taking a look at the 1995 to 1996 season of Star Trek, including Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Check back daily for the latest review.

Much like The Chute before it, Remember is very much an attempt to do classic archetypal Star Trek.

Remember is an allegorical piece of social commentary that is as firmly rooted in the nineties as the prison politics that underpinned The Chute. As the name implies, Remember is a story fascinated with the idea of memory and legacy. In particular, it reflects the idea of cultural memory as construct that is shared from person to person and passed down from generation to generation. Touching on themes of Holocaust denial, Remember is a very potent piece of science-fiction allegory, one that treats cultural memory as something to be cultivated and maintained.

Whose (geno)cide are you on?

Remember is a good illustration of what the production team is trying to do as Star Trek: Voyager enters its third season. After a disastrous (and exhausting) sophomore year, it seems like the writing staff have opted against trying to give the show its own unique voice. Instead, the plan seems to be to craft the most archetypal approach to the franchise imaginable. From this point onwards, it becomes increasingly rare for the show to do episodes unique to its setting and premise, instead telling stories that would work with most iterations of the franchise.

This approach has its limitations, of course. By the time that the second season of Star Trek: Enterprise rolls around, even the most die-hard fans have had their fill of broadly-drawn mass-produced factory-setting Star Trek. While this approach could be argued to be a waste of an interesting premise and the betrayal of the show’s original promise, Remember makes a convincing argument that an archetypal Star Trek allegory can still work on its own terms. Remember is a powerful and effective piece of commentary in the classic Star Trek tradition.

Burning guilt…

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: holocaust, lisa klink, living memory, memory, star trek, star trek: voyager, torres, Winrich Kolbe | 16 Comments »

Star Trek: Voyager – False Profits (Review)

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Darren

If ever there was an argument against the importance of continuity, False Profits would appear to be it.

The Price was not a good episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In fact, it was quite a bad episode of television. There is a credible argument to be made that The Price was the worst episode of the third season of The Next Generation. Another contender is Ménage à Troi, another third season episode of The Next Generation that coincidentally (or not) happens to feature the Ferengi. By all accounts, The Price is an episode of television that should be forgotten about, consigned to reference books and ill-considered classic television marathons.

“Now, I know fans don’t like the Ferengi episodes, but this is too much!”

Unfortunately, continuity intervenes. The climax of The Price ends with two Ferengi stranded in the Delta Quadrant after the Barzan wormhole collapses. In most stories, that would be the last time that those two characters appeared; they had served their dramatic purpose, demonstrating that the Barzan wormhole was effectively useless. However, once it became clear that Star Trek: Voyager was heading to the Delta Quadrant, that ending became a plot thread. It became a piece of continuity that could be employed by the production team, a storytelling opportunity.

That explains how False Profits came to be, a terrible sequel to a terrible episode that seems to exist purely to satisfy some dangling continuity.

Proxy war…

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: continuity, Ferengi, Joe Menosky, review, star trek: voyager, third world, voyager | 20 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Silent Storm

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Darren

The Silent Storm is an ironic title for this over-produced melodrama.

The Silent Storm is a story about an abusive marriage and an unlikely affair that blossoms on an abandoned Scottish island when a trouble young man is assigned to the care of a fire-and-brimstone minister and the minister’s housekeeper-slash-wife. Inevitably tension mount and passions flair as the three characters dance around each other, with nothing but the craggy cliffs and choral soundtrack to keep them company. For an empty island abandoned to the forces of modernity, there’s a pretty loud choir to keep our three primary characters company.

Let us prey…

There is an appeal to this sort of dour character study. Writer and director Corinna McFarlane has cast two great actors in the lead roles of her first narrative feature; Damien Lewis and Andrea Riseborough are perfectly suited to this depressive melodrama, as a couple trapped in a repressive and abusive marriage with simmering tensions. The problem is the McFarlane never pitches the film at the right level. For a harrowing story of abuse and violence, the film frequently trips into self-parody.

Part of the fault rests with Lewis and Riseborough, who turn their performances up to eleven to match the production around them. However, a lot of the blame falls to McFarlane, who is utterly unwilling to let any moment stand on its own without pushing the theme or the mood to breaking point. The result is a film that struggles to find the right tone and so occasionally feels like a postmodern ironic deconstruction of the genre into which it is trying to fit.

Passion project…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Andrea Riseborough, damien lewis, film, Movie, non-review review, review, the silent sea | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Voyager – The Swarm (Review)

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Darren

The Swarm helps to solidify the Jeri Taylor era, even as it is shuffled in among relics of Michael Piller’s tenure.

Much like The Chute before it, The Swarm has a great central premise built around the classic model of using the franchise to tell allegorical stories. The episode has a great hook and a great central performance, along with a strong sense of theme that makes it easier to relate to the whole thing. In The Chute, Kenneth Biller touched on issues of punishment and incarceration. In The Swarm, Mike Sussman tells a sweet story about caring for a loved one whose mental faculties are degrading. (This was a theme to which Sussman would return tangentially with Twilight.)

Talking to himself…

However, that strong central premise is also betrayed by several severe structural problems that hold the episode back from greatness. The Chute was a few rewrites away from greatness, its final act existing primarily to close out an hour of broadcasting rather than to tie together the preceding forty minutes of television. The Swarm grafts its emotionally compelling story of mental collapse onto a fairly generic “evil alien” narrative that somehow challenges to become the episode’s primary plot thread.

As with The Chute, there is a sense that The Swarm is codifying what will become standard practice for the series from this point forward. The biggest issue with The Swarm is the decision to undercut the episode’s emotional arc by having the series reset the EMH’s reset. In what arguably makes it the perfect example of the issues that will plague Star Trek: Voyager from here until Endgame, the show literally presses a reset button on a reset button. The Swarm is a meta-reset, if you will.

Purple haze…

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: Jeri Taylor, lewis zimmerman, Michael Piller, mike sussman, robert picardo, star trek, star trek: voyager, the swarm | 14 Comments »

Star Trek: Voyager – The Chute (Review)

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Darren

Season three begins. Kind of.

The Chute was the first episode produced for the third season. Basics, Part II and Flashback aired as the first two episodes of the season, but they had been produced towards the tail end of the second season and held back so that Star Trek: Voyager could launch its third season in early September. It was a smart strategy for the production team and UPN, but it did mean that there was a lot of holdover from the second season. Although the production team had wanted Basics, Part II to be the end of the Piller era, his ghost lingered on.

A breakout hit.

In some ways, the ghost of Michael Piller still haunts The Chute. The episode was produced after Piller’s departure, but writer Kenneth Biller credits the idea to the former executive producer and it feels very much in keeping with some of Piller’s pet fascinations and ideas. At the same time, The Chute does signal the beginning of the third season. It marks a point at which Voyager feels a lot more comfortable in its own skin, and where it feels like the writers have a clear grasp of what they want the show to be.

If the second season was a collection of misfiring experimental concepts and bold new directions, the third is markedly more conservative in its style and tone. The Chute is an episode of Voyager that is aiming squarely for an archetypal science-fiction allegory, and which manages to deliver on those terms. It is not necessarily ambitious or exceptional, but it manages to accomplish what it wants to do. What it wants to do is to be a very broadly-drawn (but recognisable) piece of Star Trek.

Dagger of the not-quite mind…

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: California, prison, star trek: voyager, the chute, voyager | 7 Comments »

Scannain Podcast #70

Posted on April 23, 2016 by Darren

Stanley Kubrick’s influence and outlook – the best of Richard Linklater – remakes of foreign language films – the success of Irish films in the United States – Director’s Fortnight at Cannes – a unique Irish top ten – new releases, inc. Louder than Bombs, Friend Request, Miles Ahead – other witty banter

Check out the podcast or click the link below!

Podcast hosted by Scannain. Podcasting via Podbean. Archives available here. Podcast features: Niall Murphy, Philip Bagnell, Jason Coyle and Darren Mooney.

Filed under: Podcasts! | Tagged: podcast, scannain | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Voyager – Flashback (Review)

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Darren

Flashback was largely advertised as Star Trek: Voyager‘s contribution to the thirtieth anniversary celebrations of the Star Trek franchise.

It featured guest appearances from three alumni of the original show. It was set during the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It featured Tuvok and Janeway dressing up in movie-era uniforms. It was publicised as “a very special episode.” It aired only three days after the thirtieth anniversary, while Star Trek: Deep Space Nine waited nearly two months to broadcast Trials and Tribble-ations. Anybody would be forgiven for looking at Flashback as the obligatory nostalgic celebratory adventure to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Star Trek franchise.

Hero shot.

Put simply, Flashback does not work in that context. Although it features Captain Hikaru Sulu, the episode doesn’t actually allow him to accomplish anything. As far as “secret histories” go, the episode turns out to be a bit of a cul de sac. More to the point, the continuity is a mess, both in broad franchise terms and specifically with regards to the feature film it heavily references. Although it is great to see Grace Lee Whitney and George Takei back, the script only allows them to interact with Tim Russ and (fleetingly) Kate Mulgrew.

In fact, it could convincingly be argued that Future’s End, Part I and Future’s End, Part II do a much better job of filling the “celebratory thirtieth anniversary story” slot than Flashback, despite the notable absence of any actual characters from the original show. Future’s End, Part I and Future’s End, Part II feel like a gigantic (and enjoyable) homage to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which is both hugely fun and also weirdly appropriate in a play-on-words sort of way. That is more in line with what fans were expecting for the anniversary: nostalgic fun.

Tim Russ was as excited as anyone to get a Tuvok episode.

In contrast, Flashback is something altogether stranger. Brannon Braga had been working on the story before it was suggested that Voyager should do a thirtieth anniversary episode, and Flashback plays more as a Brannon Braga script that ties into an anniversary more than an anniversary episode that happens to be written by Brannon Braga. Despite its high-profile guest cast, Flashback has more in common with Braga’s mind-bending scripts for Frame of Mind or Projections than with Trials and Tribble-ations.

Nevertheless, there is something fascinating about Flashback, because it allows Braga to use the springboard of the thirtieth anniversary to talk about memory.

The teacup that he shattered didn’t come together…

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: Brannon Braga, excelsior, flashback, nostalgia, star trek, star trek: voyager, voyager | 19 Comments »

Star Trek: Voyager – Basics, Part II (Review)

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Darren

With Basics, Part II, the second season comes to an end.

In both technical and spiritual terms, of course. The production team decided to retain the strategy that they had employed during the show’s first season, adding an additional filming block on to the end of the season in order to film a bunch of episodes that would be broadcast at the start of the third broadcast season. At the end of the first season, four episodes were produced and held back – Projections, Elogium, Twisted, and The 37’s. As such, four second season episodes were produced after Basics, Part I – Sacred Ground, False Profits, Flashback and Basics, Part II.

Picking over the bones.
An apt image for the third season premiere.

So, Basics, Part II marks the end of the show’s second production season. Even though it was the first episode of the third season to be broadcast, it was the last episode of the second season to be produced. It is very consciously designed to bring the curtain down on a particular era of the show. Basics, Part II marks the end of the line for various threads running through the first two seasons of Star Trek: Voyager. It is the last Kazon story, the last Seska story, the last Lon Suder story, the last Star Trek television script written by Michael Piller.

Basics, Part II seems written in the hope that it might end a troubled era for the show and for the larger franchise. While things undoubtedly got smoother, it remains highly debatable whether the franchise ever properly recovered.

Let sleeping eels lie…

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: basics, kazon, Michael Piller, star trek: voyager, voyager | 21 Comments »

Scannain Podcast #69

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Darren

2016 Cannes lineup – the “merits” of Zack Snyder – puns on the name “Po” – the appeal of Sing Street – whether the Coen Brothers and/or Spielberg are overrated – the Irish Film and Television Awards – crude innuendo – other witty banter

Check out the podcast or click the link below!

Podcasting via Podbean. Archives available here. Podcast features: Niall Murphy, Philip Bagnell, Jason Coyle and Darren Mooney.

Filed under: Podcasts! | Tagged: podcast | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 4 (Review)

Posted on April 20, 2016 by Darren

The fourth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is one of the best seasons of Star Trek ever produced.

The first three years of Deep Space Nine were relatively rocky, although not quite to the extent that accepted fandom wisdom would contend. Each of the first three seasons had strong episodes, with the second season in particular featuring a strong selection of episodes that clearly cemented the tone and mood of the series. Nevertheless, those three seasons were also remarkably uneven. This is entirely understandable; the production team were consciously pushing the boat out and it is to be expected that it might take a little while to steady the ship.

With the start of the fourth season, the ship has been steadied. After three years of experimenting and tinkering, the fourth season is all about application. It is about recognising the most successful aspects of what came before and compensating for what did not work. The four season is about refining and honing the best parts of those first three seasons and building a new show around it, right down to structuring The Way of the Warrior as a second pilot and featuring a new credits sequence.

Although Deep Space Nine would change quite a bit in the final three years of its run, the fourth season marks the point at which the series seems to have a firm sense of itself. Deep Space Nine has emerged from its chrysalis.