The Original Series | the m0vie blog

Star Trek – Miri (Review)

Posted on May 12, 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.

It is amazing how Star Trek manages to deftly balance the absurd with the horrific, the bizarre with the terrifying and the camp with the truly haunting. It’s something that’s really unique to the first iteration of the show, that deft ability to go completely for broke, willing to look completely ridiculous without any hint of embarrassment or modesty. Any of the spin-offs would be too conservative and too dignified to attempt anything quite as insane as Miri, with the failure of episodes like Move Along Home demonstrating that it’s impossible to replicate the freedom and the enthusiasm of the original show.

As a result, Miri is a wonderfully weird hour of television, one which is – on just about any level – incredibly wacky. And yet, despite that truly “out there” approach, it’s also a strangely compelling and engaging example of Star Trek.

Feels like going home…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Adrian Spies, Balance of Terror, bbc, games, J. J. Abrams, James Blish, Janice Rand, kirk, Man Trap, McCoy, Miri, science fiction, spock, star trek, Star Trek Games, Star Trek Into Darkness, StarTrek, Television and Movies, video games, Whom Gods Destroy | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – Dagger of the Mind (Review)

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Darren

I knew we were due a nice Shakespearean title soon. And The Conscience of a King is just around the corner, to boot. Seriously though, I have to admit a massive fondness for these wonderfully lofty and high-minded episode titles. It’s something that links the original Star Trek and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine quite firmly, and was sadly never enthusiastically taken up by any of the other spin-offs. It’s a shame, because – regardless of the quality of the episodes in question – there’s something undeniably endearing about forty-five minutes of television given a pretentious name like For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky, The City on the Edge of Forever or Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night.

A scream…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Barack Obama, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bones (TV series), City on the Edge of Forever, Dagger of the Mind, J. J. Abrams, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Leonard Nimoy, Let He Who Is Without Sin..., Penal colony, Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods, spock, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, Tantalus, vulcan, Vulcans | 5 Comments »

Star Trek – Errand of Vengeance: The Edge of the Sword by Kevin Ryan (Review)

Posted on May 11, 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.

When you think about it, Star Trek finished its first season with its mythology reasonably well established. There were the Romulans, the Klingons and the Federation. (Oh, my!) We knew that Kirk had a brother on the colonies, who died in the season finalé. Vulcan was a hot desert planet. The Prime Directive existed, and we even got a taste of how Starfleet operated. However, these things all developed gradually over the course of the year, and early episodes couldn’t even seem to agree who exactly Kirk was working for.

The Federation was first mentioned in Arena and only fully named in A Taste of Armageddon. The Klingons were introduced in Errand of Mercy, with a cold war between the two galactic powers finally turning hot. Of course, it’s hard to write “finally” when they had only been introduced in this particular episode. So where were the Klingons during the show’s first year? How come we didn’t pick up any of the tension that must have been simmering?

Kevin Ryan’s Errand of Vengeance trilogy attempts to offer some context, suggesting that the Klingon threat had been brewing during the entire first season. It follows Jon Anderson, a new recruit to the ship’s security department, arriving just before the events of What Are Little Girls Made Of? Oh, and he’s a Klingon infiltrator.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Errand of Mercy, games, james t. kirk, kirk, Klingon, Klingon Empire, Private Little War, redemption, science fiction, spock, star trek, Star Trek Games, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, star wars, Starfleet, StarTrek, Where No Man Has Gone Before | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – What Are Little Girls Made Of? (Review)

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Darren

What Are Little Girls Made Of? is the first episode from a script written by Robert Bloch, perhaps best known as the author of Psycho. Interestingly, it wasn’t the first script Bloch wrote for the show. Apparently Bloch contributed Catspaw first, when the show asked him for a Halloween special, even though it wouldn’t be produced until the series’ second year. And, to be fair, you can sense that What Are Little Girls Made Of? is a bit more comfortable with the Star Trek conventions than Bloch’s other two episodes. An uncredited re-write from Gene Roddenberry probably helped.

With Bloch’s third script, Wolf in the Fold, serving as a loose adaptation of (or spiritual successor to) his celebrated short story Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper, What Are Little Girls Made Of? stands out among Bloch’s contributions to the show. It’s an iconic episode, one that has undoubtedly influenced the way that we remember Star Trek, serving as the source for all manner of Star Trek memes like Kirk overwhelming a hot android with his sexual charisma, and defeating a less physically attractive robot with a logic puzzle. It features some of the most iconic costuming of the original Star Trek show, and also serves as the root of the whole “what constitutes life?” philosophical strand that would find itself embodied by Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

It helps that, like so much of this first season of Star Trek, it is just good pulpy fun.

A cold reception…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Benedict Cumberbatch, Catspaw, chris pine, J. J. Abrams, james t. kirk, kirk, Man Trap, Mister Spock, Proportionality (mathematics), Robert Bloch, Sherry Jackson, spock, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: the next generation, Starfleet, StarTrek, What Are Little Girls Made Of?, Zachary Quinto | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – Romulans: Pawns of War by John Byrne (Review)

Posted on May 10, 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.

Where were the Klingons? That seems to be one of the most frequently asked questions when a modern writer re-visits the early part of the first season of Star Trek. It makes sense. The Klingons are the franchise’s flagship aliens, and their long-term relations with the Federation mark one of the show’s earliest examples of continuity. The Organian Peace Treaty from Errand of Mercy is mentioned once or twice, but it informs a lot of the appearances of the Klingons in the classic Star Trek, as the warriors are prevented from engaging in direct warfare with the Federation.

However, when first introduced in Errand of Mercy, towards the end of the first season, the Klingons have just declared war on the Federation. However, it seems like this has been expected for a long time. Kirk speaks of the Klingons like old enemies. Kor knows that captain of the Enterprise by name. There’s a sense of a pre-established history, which makes their appearance towards the tale-end of the season all the more perplexing. Apparently they have been there all along, even if we haven’t seen them before.

John Byrne’s Alien Spotlight issue might have been themed around the Romulans, and the collected edition might be Romulans: Pawns of War, but it seems more devoted to exploring what exactly the Klingons were up to behind the scenes between their appearances on Star Trek.

Cry havok, and let slip the dogs of war…!

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: Enterprise Incident, Federation, idw, IDW Publishing, John Byrne, Klingon, pawns of war, Romulan, romulans: pawns of war, Romulus and Remus, science fiction, Ship, star trek (comics), Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Online, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek, Tribble, Trouble With Tribbles | 6 Comments »

Star Trek – Balance of Terror (Review)

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Darren

I’ve talked about it about it quite a bit in my earlier reviews, so I won’t dwell on it too much here, but Star Trek got really good really quickly. Balance of Terror is only the ninth ever episode of Star Trek ever produced, but it stands as one of the finest entries in the original series, and perhaps even the franchise. It also represents the moment where the model of what Star Trek would be really sort of solidified. The first eight episodes had contained any number of classic Star Trek tropes.

The Cage and Charlie X gave us old and immeasurably powerful alien civilisations, while Where No Man Has Gone Before gave us a god-like being. The Man Trap gave us space monsters. Mudd’s Women gave us awkward gender politics. The Enemy Within created the whole “transporter malfunction” and “evil duplicate” subgenres. However, Balance of Terror is the first episode to suggest outer space might be more than the place where crazy stuff happens and our heroes bump into monsters or ancient civilisations. The universe might have its own politics, its own history, its own civilisations that will emerge, contrasted with mankind’s expansion into space.

The Klingons are undoubtedly the most recognisable and iconic of the classic Star Trek races, but the Romulans are the first of the franchise mainstays to appear, and Balance of Terror is the first episode to devote considerable effort to world-building the Star Trek universe.

The not-so-great bird of the galaxy…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Balance of Terror, CENTURION, Charlie X, Commander, games, kirk, Neutral Zone, Online, Praetor, Recreation, Remus, Roleplaying, Romulan, Romulus, Romulus and Remus, science fiction, Space Seed, spock, star trek, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Television and Movies, Uhura, United Federation of Planets, Where No Man Has Gone Before | 8 Comments »

Star Trek – My Enemy, My Ally by Diane Duane (Review)

Posted on May 9, 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.

1984 was a hell of a year of Star Trek tie-in novels. John M. Ford’s The Final Reflection was published in May 1984. It was followed by a tie-in adaptation of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, but the very next original novel would by My Enemy, My Ally by Diane Duane. Both novels feel like kindred spirits, really pushing the boundaries of what you could do with Star Trek tie-in novels.

In particular, both works devoted considerable time to developing some of the iconic and memorable aliens of Star Trek. Ford’s The Final Reflection extrapolated an entire Klingon culture, while Duane’s My Enemy, My Ally dared to imagine a complex Romulan Empire, so distinct and well-defined that it isn’t even known as Romulan (apparently the term outsiders use for the species), but Rihannsu.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Diane Duane, Final Reflection, gene roddenberry, John M. Ford, Klingon, Rihannsu, Romulan, spock, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek, vulcan | 16 Comments »

Star Trek – Charlie X (Review)

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Darren

It really is incredibly difficult to divorce Star Trek from the sixties. I know that this has become something of a (very obvious) theme in these daily reviews, but Charlie X is the kind of Star Trek episode that could only have been produced for television in the sixties. It isn’t necessarily the presence of a single factor, it’s more the package as a whole. While the general concept (“The Day Charlie Became God”, to quote Roddenberry’s succinct synopsis from his 1964 Star Trek Is… pitch) could easily be adapted for any of the spin-offs (and Hide & Q clearly plays on the same idea), the execution is so firmly anchored in the sixties that it’s very hard to separate and parse.

Part of it is the weird use of coloured lighting on the mostly grey Enterprise sets, something that Inside Star Trek suggests was down to the fact that NBC was owned at the time by RCA, a major manufacturer of colour television sets. Part of it is the somewhat confused sexuality that is a weird mix of liberated and outdated. Part of it is the fact that the show features an impromptu musical and dance number. The idea of Charlie X might be fairly simplistic, but the execution is very clearly and very distinctively Star Trek.

Screaming to the Evans…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Charlie, Charlie X, chris pine, D. C. Fontana, Enterprise Incident, games, gene roddenberry, Grace Lee Whitney, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard McCoy, NBC, pixar, RCA, science fiction, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Next Generation, Star Trek Original Series, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek, Television and Movies, Uhura, Video game, Way to Eden, zoe saldana | 3 Comments »

Star Trek 101: The Best of The Original Series

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness, we’re holding a month full of Star Trek related fun. We’re reviewing every episode of the show’s first season, from The Cage through to Operation — Annihilate!, one-per-day for all of May. We’re also looking at some of the various spin-offs, tie-ins and pop culture intersections, so there’s always something going on to do with Star Trek. Anyway, with the release of the new film, we thought it might be interesting to make some recommendations for fans of the new films who wanted to “dip their toes in the water” so to speak, offering a quick taste of the best that the classic 1960s original Star Trek has to offer those wanting to boldly go with Kirk, Spock and McCoy.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Amok Time, Cage, City on the Edge of Forever, Devil in the Dark, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Leonard Nimoy, spock, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Trouble With Tribbles | 4 Comments »

Star Trek – The Naked Time (Review)

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek is, by its nature, an inherently optimistic television show. I seem to keep mentioning that in these reviews, as the first season of the show subverts and plays with the notion of an idealised future. However, despite the suggestion that evil is necessary in The Enemy Within or the death of the last of a species in The Man Trap or the suggestion that man’s next evolutionary phase would be truly horrifying in Where No Man Has Gone Before, Star Trek is still a hopeful vision of a possible future. It’s a story about a world where mankind hasn’t wiped each other out and where we can go (relatively) peacefully among the stars. It’s a world without racism or classism. There is sexism in Star Trek, but I’ll give the producers the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s not intentional.

So The Naked Time feels a little weird, being – as it is – a story about the collapse of civilisation at the end of a world. Not our world, mind you, but there’s a very clear sense of social collapse mirrored in the literal collapse of planet Psi-2000.