Darren

Star Trek: Enterprise – Unexpected (Review)

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Darren

Next year, Star Trek is fifty years old. We have some special stuff planned for that, but – in the meantime – we’re reviewing all of Star Trek: Enterprise this year as something of a prequel to that anniversary. This January, we’re doing the first season. Check back daily for the latest review.

So, male pregnancy, eh?

Talk about a nipple slip…

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Filed under: Enterprise | Tagged: Brannon Braga, comedy, enterprise, gender politics, klingons, male pregnancy, Rick Berman, sexism, star trek: enterprise, t'pol, trip, unexpected | 15 Comments »

Star Trek (DC Comics, 1989) #49-50 – The Peacekeepers (Review)

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Darren

The first Star Trek pilot, The Cage, was produced in 1964. To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, this December we are reviewing the second season of the original Star Trek show. You can check out our first season reviews here. Check back daily for the latest review.

There is something quite disconcerting about Gary Seven.

Abducted from Earth at a young age by a race of mysterious aliens, Gary Seven was then returned to Earth in order to ensure that human history unfolds as expected. The unstated assumption is that “as expected” is a euphemism for “according to the wishes of his mysterious employers.” Using his advanced technology, Gary Seven manipulates the world around him. His technology allows him to cloud the minds of his enemies, and to materialise wherever he might wish. He tinkers with nuclear weapons, keeping his existence – and his objectives – a secret from the local people.

Everything comes apart…

It is interesting to wonder how Assignment: Earth might have developed had it successfully spun off from Star Trek. After all, a pilot does not exist to completely define a new television show; it exists to set up a framework through which interesting stories might be told. Would a weekly television show built around Gary Seven have explored these big questions? Or would it have been content to exist as an imitation of Mission: Impossible? As with ever road not taken, it is absolutely impossible to be sure where it might lead.

Still, Howard Weinstein’s The Peacekeepers teases out some of these interesting questions and queries. Even if it never really offers any answers, there is a lot to chew over.

A spectre…

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: assignment: earth, conspiracy, Gary Seven, klingons, morality, star trek, star trek vi: the undiscovered country, the undiscovered country, weapons of war | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – Season 2 (Review)

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Darren

The first season of Star Trek was quite remarkable. The cult television show opened with a reasonably solid run of episodes that gradually built momentum over the course of the season. The first season seemed to build towards a crescendo, climaxing with a run of episodes including all-time classics like A Taste of Armageddon, Space Seed, The Devil in the Dark, Errand of Mercy and The City on the Edge of Forever. Sure, Operation — Annihilate! ended the first season on a whimper rather than a bang, but the quality of the show only seemed to improve as the season went along.

In contrast, the second season was a bit more uneven. It probably contains as many truly classic hours of television, but the quality is a lot more variable on an episode-to-episode basis. The Apple leads in to Mirror, Mirror, which leads into The Deadly Years. Metamorphosis leads into Friday’s Child. The Immunity Syndrome and A Piece of the Action follow The Gamesters of Triskelion and Obsession. Watching the season blind is a roller-coaster, with episodes varying radically in quality from one week to the next. Some of the franchise’s best and worst episodes sit back-to-back here.

The second season of Star Trek can be incredibly hard to get a handle on. It is, in many respects, the season that defined a lot of what the franchise could and would become. Episodes like Amok Time and Journey to Babel really built up a universe around the Enterprise and her crew, expanding on late first season episodes like Arena or Errand of Mercy. The show also demonstrated incredible range, with the occult sensibilities of Catspaw and Wolf in the Fold existing alongside the broad comedy of I, Mudd and The Trouble With Tribbles.

However, the season also demonstrated some of the worst tendencies of sixties Star Trek. Episodes like Friday’s Child, A Private Little War and The Omega Glory engaged in precisely the sort of sabre-rattling jingoism against which Balance of Terror and Errand of Mercy had cautioned. The Changeling, By Any Other Name and Return to Tomorrow felt like generic science-fiction retreads. The show brutally (and casually) massacred red shirts in episodes like The Changeling, The Apple and Obsession.

This variable quality is a feature of episodic television. After all, different writers working on different stories featuring the same characters will inevitably produce a wide variety of results. Some writers “get” the show more than others, and some scripts are subject to more work and attention than others. Such is the nature of the industry, particularly when the production team is cranking out more two dozen hours of television in a year – under intense pressure, both in terms of time and money.

Nevertheless, it is quite difficult to distill the second season of Star Trek into a cohesive or singular whole. It is diverse and multifaceted, capable of being almost anything from one episode (or, perhaps, one moment) to the next. Perhaps that is the greatest legacy of this second season; demonstrating that there is very little Star Trek cannot be.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Gene L. Coon, gene roddenberry, john meredyth lucas, NBC, star trek, star trek: the original series, the original series, tos | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – Assignment: Earth (Review)

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Darren

Assignment: Earth was almost the last episode of Star Trek ever produced.

It was also possibly (although nowhere near “almost”) the pilot for a spin-off television show.

Seventh heaven?

At the last minute, following a very high-profile fan campaign, Star Trek was renewed for a third season.

Fans would have to wait decades to see an actual Star Trek finalé that reduced the main cast to guest stars.

“Wait, who just hijacked my show?”

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: art wallace, assignment, assignment: earth, cancellation, Gary Seven, gene roddenberry, NBC, robert lansing, sixties, spin-off, star trek, Television, terri garr, the original series, time travel, tos | 19 Comments »

Star Trek: Enterprise – Strange New World (Review)

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Darren

Strange New World is the first episode of Star Trek: Enterprise to come from a writing team other than Brannon Braga and Rick Berman. Berman and Braga would dominate the writing credits for the first season. Even when the final teleplay was credited to another writer or writing team, there was often a “story by” credit given to Berman and Braga. Braga himself has conceded that he essentially re-wrote all of the episodes of the first season.

Still, Strange New World is credited to the writing team of Mike Sussman and Phyllis Strong. Both had worked on Star Trek: Voyager before migrated to Star Trek: Enterprise along with André Bormanis. Sussman had pitched the story for Meld and worked on a number of solo stories and scripts before teaming with Strong on the seventh and final season of the show. The two would remain a writing team for the first two seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise, hitting their stride with some of the strongest episodes of the troubled second season.

Picture perfect…

Strange New World is an interesting début for the pair. On the hand, it is a story that celebrates the unique place of Star Trek: Enterprise in the Star Trek pantheon. It’s a story about how great it must be to set foot on an alien planet, and how wondrous it must be to breath air from outside our atmosphere. With its emphasis on shuttlepods and primitive transporters, it does remain relatively true to the prequel premise of Enterprise.

On the other hand, Strange New World is a very familiar Star Trek template. Indeed, it’s a very familiar first season template. It’s the episode where the crew of the ship are exposed to some strange outside force that makes them all act out of character. It’s something of a Star Trek standard. The original Star Trek had The Naked Time and Star Trek: The Next Generation had The Naked Now, while Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had both Babel and Dramatis Personae. In many ways, Strange New World feels like a familiar old story.

Strange yellow daisy fields forever…

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Filed under: Enterprise | Tagged: 9/11, Archer, Brannon Braga, david livingston, death, drugs, enterprise, Jonathan Archer, lsd, malcolm reed, mike sussman, opium, paranoia, phyllis strong, red shirts, reed, Rick Berman, star trek, star trek: enterprise, strange new world, t'pol, Television, Transporter, vulcan | 7 Comments »

Star Trek – Assignment: Eternity by Greg Cox (Review)

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Darren

Assignment: Eternity is pretty much exactly what you might expect from a sequel to Assignment: Earth written by Greg Cox. It is a functional story a number of nice clever continuity touches, but no real interest in playing with the big ideas suggested by the source material. Instead, it feels like an act of connecting various dots, stopping occasionally to wink at the audience, but never having anything particularly clever or insightful to say about its inspirations.

Like The Eugenics Wars or To Reign in Hell, the result is a competent piece of Star Trek continuity, albeit one that feels more than a little lifeless.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: assignment: earth, assignment: eternity, Gary Seven, Greg Cox, isis, star trek, star trek: the original series, the eugenics war, the turnabout intruder | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Enterprise – Fight or Flight (Review)

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Darren

Fight or Flight is reasonably solid as second episodes go. It’s very clear that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are making a conscious effort to avoid the mistakes of Star Trek: Voyager. There’s a sense that they are trying to give Star Trek: Enterprise its own unique mood and flavour. As such, Fight or Flight feels like a story that isn’t just tailor-made for Enterprise, but is tailor-made for early in the first season of the show. It isn’t a story that could be done by another spin-off, and it’s also not a story that could be done by Enterprise even a year later.

While Fight or Flight works on a conceptual level, the execution feels a little strange. While Broken Bow was a big and bombastic Star Trek pilot with its own feel and rhythm, Fight and Flight feels almost quaint. As a piece of television, it’s constructed in a very meticulous and very precise manner, one that seems suspiciously outdated for a show broadcast in late 2001.

Slugging it out…

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Filed under: Enterprise | Tagged: aliens, Brannon Braga, cliffhanger, enterprise, episodic, fight or flight, hoshi sato, paramount, Rick Berman, serialisation, stakes, star trek, star trek: enterprise, upn | 3 Comments »

Star Trek – The Omega Glory (Review)

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Darren

Gene Roddenberry is a controversial figure who casts a fairly large shadow. It is very hard to talk about Star Trek – particularly the classic Star Trek – without talking about Roddenberry’s influence and vision. Roddenberry was fond of myth-making when he was alive, of playing up his own contributions to Star Trek while marginalising or dismissing the other people who shaped or defined the franchise.

Roddenberry is a polarising figure among fans and critics, insiders and outsiders. To some, Roddenberry was the man who created Star Trek. While this doesn’t immunise him against criticism, it does provide a sense of context – whatever sins he may have committed and whatever faults he may have had must be offset against that. To others, Roddenberry was prone to exaggerate his accomplishments at the expense of people like David Gerrold or Gene L. Coon who shaped the franchise just as much as (if not more than) he did.

Flagging trouble ahead…

While those are two extremes, they are not the only possible views of Roddenberry. There are a broad range of opinions that might be offered, and not all of them are mutually exclusive. Ask a dozen people who know their Star Trek about Roddenberry, and are likely to come up with a dozen nuanced and defensible positions on the man and his legacy. Nobody seems entirely what to make of Roddenberry and his creative contributions to the franchise.

The Omega Glory is an interesting episode, one that invites as much debate as any of Roddenberry’s contributions to the franchise.

A strong constitution to make it through this one…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: A Private Little War, america, Cold War, episode, Federation, Gene L. Coon, gene roddenberry, imperialism, john meredyth lucas, old glory, pilot, Prime Directive, star trek, Television, the omega glory, vietnam, William Shatner | 6 Comments »

Star Trek: Enterprise – Broken Bow (Review)

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Darren

Broken Bow is probably the strongest pilot in the Star Trek canon, with Emissary and The Cage vying for second place.

That’s not saying a lot. Broken Bow is still a troubled production with some rather sizeable issues marring what is otherwise an ambitious début for a new Star Trek show. Watching, Broken Bow – as with watching most of the first few years of Star Trek: Enterprise (or just Enterprise) – it feels like the show is at war with itself. It wants to be something new and fresh and exciting, but it also wants to be an important part of this larger tapestry. And the episode has difficulty reconciling that.

New (old) frontier…

So we get new aliens like the Suliban, but a plot that revolves around the Klingons; we get an entirely new crew with a Vulcan science officer and Southern gentleman as the Captain’s best friend; we get a ship without most of the conveniences that we take for granted on Star Trek, but with substitutes and a resolution that relies on technological gimmickry; we get to explore an uncharted part of the Star Trek canon, but with the intrusion of the future to help make it feel a little more familiar.

From the first episode, Star Trek: Enterprise seems to exist as a show trapped between what it could have been and what it has to be. It’s a premise rich with potential, but which still feels a little too much like everything that came before.

Into the sunset…

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Filed under: Enterprise | Tagged: 9/11, Archer, broken bow, enterprise, george w. bush, Jonathan Archer, klingons, pilot, prequel, star trek, star trek: enterprise, suliban, t'pol, Television, Temporal Cold War, voyager, Vulcans | 14 Comments »

Star Trek – The Ultimate Computer (Review)

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Darren

The first Star Trek pilot, The Cage, was produced in 1964. To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, this December we are reviewing the second season of the original Star Trek show. You can check out our first season reviews here. Check back daily for the latest review.

The Ultimate Computer is the second classic produced by John Meredyth Lucas, following on from The Immunity Syndrome. (Although it is credited to him, Journey to Babel was actually overseen by Gene L. Coon.) Like The Immunity Syndrome before it, The Ultimate Computer is a bottle show, filmed on the show’s standing set. It features a relatively small guest cast, even trimming the number of extras appearing on the Enterprise sets.

It seems that these sorts of constraints and pressures brought out the best in Lucas. Lucas steps behind the camera on The Ultimate Computer, and helps to bring the show to life. Although he is using familiar sets, he often figures out ways to shoot them that feel original and fresh – no mean accomplishment two years into the show’s run. The guest cast that Lucas has assembled is superb – with William Marshall turning in one of the best one-shot guest appearances in the history of Star Trek.

Does not compute…

However, what is most notable about The Ultimate Computer is the funereal atmosphere that haunts the episode. There is a solemn and reflective tone to the episode, particularly during the early tests of the M-5 computer. The Enterprise is dark, abandoned, empty. Kirk is reflective. As with Bread and Circuses at the end of Gene L. Coon’ tenure, Spock offers McCoy an olive branch. In many respects, The Ultimate Computer seems to hark forward to the film series, with Kirk wondering how he might define himself if he is not a starship captain.

Appropriately enough for a series staring down the barrel at cancellation, The Ultimate Computer would have made for a pretty great finalé.