Star Trek | the m0vie blog

Star Trek (Gold Key) #56 – No Time Like the Past (Review)

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness this month, we’ll be running through the first season of the classic Star Trek all this month. Check back daily to get ready to boldly go. It’s only logical.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

It’s remarkable to think that Star Trek was kept alive in the decade between the airing of The Turnabout Intruder and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The most popular television show to air in the 1968 and 1969 season was Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, a show that was apparently lucky to receive two “best of” DVD collections in the early part of the last decade, collecting a grand total of eight of the 140 episodes. Given that Star Trek didn’t even rank among the twenty highest rated shows of that broadcast season, it’s incredible that the show endured for so long.

To be fair, there is a lot of material which fills the gap between the last episode of the live action television show and the first feature film. There was Star Trek: The Animated Series, perhaps the most high-profile release. There were a few novels, even if the tie-in line wouldn’t necessarily take off until the eighties. And there were the comic books, produced by Gold Key, notable as perhaps the largest publisher of non-superhero comics in the seventies.

These comics weren’t classics. It’s hard to argue that they are essential additions to the mythos, or that anybody would miss anything be ignoring them entirely. However, there’s a weird pulpy sci-fi charm to these stories that makes them interesting, even when you would wonder whether the artist or writer had actually watched any episodes of the show they were apparently adapting.

Trippy!

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: Best of Star Trek, Earth, J. J. Abrams, Key, kirk, Len Wein, Scotty, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Starfleet, Turnabout Intruder | 2 Comments »

Star Trek – Operation — Annihilate!

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Darren

How do you follow The City on the Edge of Forever? The previous episode is one of the best-loved episodes of Star Trek ever produced, one of the great science-fiction television episodes of the sixties, and one of the best science-fiction romances ever written. It’s a gigantic and massively influential piece of television, one of the cornerstones of Star Trek and perhaps the best indicator of just how thoughtful and how genuine the franchise can be when it tries. So, what’s next? Where do we go from here? What is the next shot after that last scene of Kirk abandoning the Guardian of Forever on a desolate rock?

It’s always interesting to compare the first season of Star Trek to the first year of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The former can be counted among the very best of the show’s thirty televised seasons, while the latter can be counted among the worst. However, they do have something in common. They both probably should have ended an episode early, with The City on the Edge of Forever and Conspiracy serving as effective caps on each show’s first season, leaving the audience a chance to digest what they had seen.

Unfortunately, neither show ended on anything that could be measured among the strongest show of a given year. The Neutral Zone ended the first season of The Next Generation with a moralising whimper. While Operation — Annihilate! is quite entertaining on its own terms, it doesn’t rank among the best of the season. Still, it’s a solid pulpy science-fiction tale, which might not be the worst thing.

Man of action!

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Benedict Cumberbatch, City on the Edge of Forever, france, gene roddenberry, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Lysergic acid diethylamide, Mark Kurlansky, Mexico, Mexico City, Operation: Annihilate!, paris, Peter Hitchens, Poland, Pont-Saint-Esprit, Return of the Archons, Royal Navy, Social Sciences, spock, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: the next generation, star wars, Starfleet, United States, Vietnam War | 2 Comments »

Star Trek – Crucible: McCoy – Provenance of Shadows by David R. George III (Review)

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

The classic Star Trek was not really a character-driven show. Of course, everybody recognises Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but the show seldom took the time to really dig into their history or origins. We’d occasionally find out that Kirk had some overlap with the villain of the week. He had served on a starship that had been the victim of a vampire space cloud, or lived on a colony during a brutal massacre. These details added up to something, along with the occasional reference to (and eventual death of) his brother Sam.

Spock got a bit more development, probably due to the fact that he was an alien. After all, developing Spock meant developing an entire exotic alien species, and offered some insight into how Vulcans must live. We’d also get occasional factoids or tidbits (Vulcans can mind meld, they have inner eyes, they had a schism millennia ago) that help to give a concrete picture of the where the character came from and where he might like to go.

McCoy, on the other hand, was a bit of a blank slate. Everybody knows McCoy. He’s the irritable surgeon on the ship, prone to insulting Spock and complaining about the fact that he’s flying through space in a ship filled with mechanical doo-hickeys. However, we never really get a sense of McCoy’s past. We never learn much about his family on-screen, except when the writers wanted a bit of dramatic fodder in the penultimate movie featuring the original cast, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. But we don’t talk about that.

So David R. George III’s Crucible: McCoy – Provenance of Shadows is an interesting book. Not only because it is a book completely devoted to the least-developed of the iconic leading trio, but also because this relatively under-developed character also gets one of the longest Star Trek tie-in books ever written. And without too much focus on his past.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Atlanta, DeForest Kelley, DeForestKelley, gene roddenberry, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard McCoy, McCoy, Roddenberry, spock, Star Trek Original Series, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek, Way to Eden | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – The City on the Edge of Forever (Review)

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Darren

The City on the Edge of Forever stands as both on of the most troubled episodes of Star Trek ever produced, and one of the most brilliant. It’s a powerful science-fiction romance, cleverly constructed and smoothly executed. Everything in the episode seems to working smoothly, which seems all the more improbable given the difficulties occurring behind the scenes. Harlan Ellison’s teleplay differs significantly from the finished product, but it’s very hard to argue that the televised episode isn’t among the finest Star Trek stories ever produced.

The hole in things…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: City on the Edge of Forever, Edge of Forever, Edith Keeler, Ellison, Gene L. Coon, gene roddenberry, Harlan Ellison, kirk, List of Star Trek characters (G–M), Nazi Germany, Roddenberry, spock, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: the original series, StarTrek | 9 Comments »

Star Trek – The City on the Edge of Forever by Harlan Ellison/Cordwainer Bird (Review)

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

The City on the Edge of Forever had a troubled history, not that you’d know it based on what appeared on screen. Like quite a few classic Star Trek episodes (The Enemy Within, The Doomsday Machine, Amok Time), it was developed from a script written by a giant of science-fiction. Harlan Ellison is a respected author with a considerable reputation. However, the version of The City on the Edge of Forever which eventually made it to screen at the end of the show’s first season is radically different from the version Ellison original wrote. “It’s not the vision I had,” Ellison quotes at the start of the paperback edition of his original screenplay, released in 1996.

The book is a fantastic read, and well worth a look for anybody with any interest in Star Trek or Ellison, or even good science-fiction or the craft of television writing. Reading the various drafts, there’s no denying that it is a phenomenal script, as good as the script that eventually went into production. At the same time, it’s also quite clear that it would not have made for as classic a Star Trek episode.

Into the vortex…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Amok Time, City on the Edge of Forever, Doomsday Machine, Edith Keeler, Ellison, gene roddenberry, Harlan Ellison, Jean Lisette Aroeste, Jerome Bixby, kirk, Leonard McCoy, List of Star Trek characters (G–M), Man Trap, Roddenberry, star trek, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, United States | 7 Comments »

Star Trek – Errand of Mercy (Review)

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Darren

Ah, Klingons. It feels strange to think that we’re almost at the end of the show’s first year and that we’re only meeting the franchise’s most famous aliens now. More than that, in the original version of the show, their distinctive model space ships didn’t appear until the third season, in Elaan of Troyius, the same episode where their iconic imperial crest appeared. They wouldn’t get their bumpy foreheads for over a decade, until Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And a lot of what we’d take for granted about Klingon culture would only be established in the tie-in novel The Final Reflection and later in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Still, Errand of Mercy welcomes the Klingons to the franchise, and offers a demonstration of why the aliens had such staying power. It’s also a rather wonderful Cold War analogy, feeling like something of a companion piece to Gene L. Coon’s A Taste of Armageddon.

I bet a lot of people were surprised that they could Klingon to their reputation as Star Trek’s top alien for so long…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: A Taste of Armageddon, Errand of Mercy, Federation, James Blish, John Colicos, john f kennedy, kirk, Klingon, Peace, Peace Corps, Romulan, Rudyard Kipling, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, StarTrek, Trek, United States | 6 Comments »

Star Trek – The Final Reflection by John M. Ford (Review)

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

The Final Reflection was written in 1984. Development on Star Trek: The Next Generation would only be announced in 1986. Sure, there were a bunch of successful movies being produced, but these only amounted to a couple of hours of Star Trek once every few years. And, even then, the movies were aimed at a much broader audience, without the same development and continuity that a television show could offer. Not that Star Trek ever really had that tight a sense of continuity, of course, but it must have seemed unlikely that things could ever go back to the way they had been. Certainly, in 1984, nobody could have anticipated the eighteen-straight years of Star Trek running from Encounter at Farpoint to These Are the Voyages.

As a result, fans had to look to other avenues to expand and develop the rich Star Trek universe. The novels were one such avenue, although they developed slowly. Mission to Horatius had been published while the show was on the air, but it was very clearly aimed at a younger audience. Spock Must Die! would be published in 1970. However, the spin-off fiction developed relatively slowly. Star Trek had yet to become a massive franchise with tie-in multimedia commercial opportunities.

Perhaps because the Star Trek novels had not quite turned into a massive franchising opportunity, and they weren’t under the same level of publicity or scrutiny that they would be in the years to come, writer John M. Ford was able to do something quietly revolutionary with his first Star Trek novel, The Final Reflection. He was able to venture away from our core cast of iconic characters and instead develop the Klingon Empire.

More than that, though, he was able to paint the Klingons as the good guys.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Delta ray, Encounter at Farpoint, Federation, Final Reflection, Janice Rand, John M. Ford, kirk, Klingon, Romulan, spock, star trek, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek vi: the undiscovered country, star trek: deep space nine, Vulcans | 3 Comments »

Star Trek – The Devil in the Dark (Review)

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Darren

There are any number of ways to “get into” Star Trek, to jump on board the cult phenomenon. Despite decades of continuity, a lot of the franchise is accessible on its own terms, and it’s easy enough to come across a list of recommended classic episodes for a neophyte to sample. There are over seven hundred hours of Star Trek, so there’s something for everybody. And it’s perfectly possible to tailor a recommendation to the new viewer’s preferences.

Want proof that Star Trek can do credible drama? Stick on The City on the Edge of Forever. Fascinated by Spock? Try Amok Time. Want to watch William Shatner take on another leading character with a similar amount of gravitas? Give Space Seed a go. Want some high-concept sci-fi android stuff? Maybe What Are Little Girls Made Of? is right up your street. Want a contemporary commentary on the Vietnam War? Watch A Private Little War.

However, if you asked me to recommend an example of the franchise’s philosophy and its humanist values, executed with a superb level of craftsmanship, The Devil in the Dark is really the only choice. There’s a reason that Arthur C. Clarke considers it to be the most memorable episode of Star Trek ever produced.

Spock would have to have a heart of stone not be affected by this…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: A Private Little War, Devil in the Dark, Earth, Environmental Movement, Gene L. Coon, Janos Prohaska, kirk, Liberalism, Man Trap, Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, Private Little War, Rights of Nature, Roderick Nash, spock, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, StarTrek, William Shatner | 4 Comments »

Star Trek – Spock Must Die! by James Blish (Review)

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

Spock Must Die! is notable for being one of the first Star Trek novels published. Indeed, it is the first original novel published by Bantham Books. (For trivia hounds, the young adult original novel Mission to Horatius was actually published during the show’s run.) It’s written by James Blish, the British author responsible for those Star Trek episode novelisations I have been sporadically quoting over the past month or so. Blish was a published science-fiction author before he worked with Star Trek. Reading Spock Must Die!, you can definitely sense the writer’s fondness for high concepts and metaphysical quandaries.

Indeed, one of the defining attributes of Spock Must Die! is that Blish seems more preoccupied with the logic and implications of the show’s pseudo-science (and his own elements building on that) than he is with the characters themselves. It’s not necessarily a fatal flaw, but Spock Must Die! is more interesting and intriguing as a curiosity than as an expansion or examination of the Star Trek franchise.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: chris pine, Errand of Mercy, imax, J. J. Abrams, James Blish, James Doohan, james t. kirk, John Harrison, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Organian, spock, Spock Must Die, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – This Side of Paradise (Review)

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek always had a curious relationship with the hippie movement in the late sixties. On a surface level, you’d assume that the series would have a great deal of empathy for the idealistic and pacifist movement. After all, the show embraced counter-culture in a fairly significant way, offering none-too-subtle criticisms of American foreign policy in episodes like A Taste of Armageddon, and harbouring some very serious concerns about authority in adventures like Dagger of the Mind. What was The Naked Time but an embrace of fin de siècle anxiety mere months before “the summer of love”? After all, the nineteenth century European fin de siècle period had produced Der Wandervogel, considered one of the predecessors to the hippie movement.

And yet the show never seemed entirely comfortable with the youth movement. This would be much more obvious third season’s dire The Way to Eden, but the show’s sense of unease is quite palpable here, as Kirk finds himself trying to deal with a crew that have sampled some mind-altering vegetation and are now embracing free love.