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Star Trek – Journey to Babel (Review)

Posted on December 19, 2014 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.

Journey to Babel is pretty influential, as episodes of Star Trek go. It is an episode that really cements idea of the Federation that came to be at the heart of the franchise, suggesting that the organisation really is a diverse intergalactic alliance of diverse alien species, rather than a union between Earth and Vulcan. More than that, the episode suggests that the individual members of the Federation might not exist in perfect harmony with one another, but may each operate with their own agenda and motivations.

However, what is really remarkable about Journey to Babel is how much of this unfolds in the background. All this world-building and -embellishing is very much a secondary concern for writer D.C. Fontana. Despite its scale and its scope, Journey to Babel is a decidedly personal story about a family in crisis. It works remarkably well, offering viewers a bit more insight into Spock as a character and where he came from.

Party on, Gav…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Amanda, amanda grayson, andorians, Babel, characters, continuity, coridan, D. C. Fontana, diplomacy, diplomats, family, Federation, Fontana, kirk, orion pirates, orion syndicate, Sarek, spock, star trek, star trek: the original series, tellarites, the original series, tos, world-building | 10 Comments »

Star Trek – Court Martial (Review)

Posted on May 15, 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’s hard not to be impressed by the sheer versatility of Star Trek as a format. For a show about exploring the universe, the creators have really managed to incorporate just about any and all genres of television story. Over the franchise’s 700-episode history, there’s been a wealth of quirky episodes that explore types of stories that one might consider quite surreal for a show about a ship travelling to the stars. A court room episode might not be the most radical of these shifts, but Court Martial is still fascinating as an evolution of Star Trek as a concept, broadening the kind of stories that could be told within a Star Trek framework. After all, the fact that there’s a whole subgenre of Star Trek involving court room drama is probably rooted in this first-season adventure.

While its influence is absolutely massive, Court Martial is still a problematic episode. Despite demonstrating what writers could really do within the context of the show, Court Martial suffers because it’s really not that good.