klingons | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: Phase II (1978) – Kitumba, Parts I & II (Review)

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Darren

This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.

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

Sins of the Father represented Star Trek‘s first venture to the Klingon home world, and the franchise’s first truly in-depth exploration of Klingon culture and values. Of course, there was precedent for this. John Ford’s rather wonderful novel, The Final Reflection, offered a glimpse into Klingon heritage and tradition in 1984. However, it’s interesting to think that we may have been offered an on-screen exploration of the Klingon Empire much earlier, had the planned Star Trek: Phase II ever gone to air.

Written by John Meredyth Lucas, a veteran of the classic Star Trek show, Kitumba would have aired as a two-part adventure in the first season of the aborted Star Trek: Phase II series. Not only were thirteen episodes plotted and outlined, most were also scripted – allowing a glimpse at what might have been. An early look at the workings of Klingon culture, Kitumba is obviously radically different from the version of Klingon society that developed and evolved on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

However, it remains a fascinating look at what might have been.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Cold War, John Ford, john meredyth lucas, kirk, klingons, phase 2, sins of the father, star trek, star trek: phase 2, star trek: phase II | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Sins of the Father (Review)

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Darren

Sins of the Father is another watershed moment for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek as a whole. It’s really the first time that the franchise has invested in proper long-form world-building, rather than treating continuity as something that occasionally built up by sheer narrative momentum. It’s an episode that ends on an ambiguous note, suggesting more to come. It’s also an episode that nails down a lot of Klingon culture and tradition.

In a way, it’s the logical conclusion of a narrative style that has been building since The Enemy and The Defector earlier in the season; creating a sense that The Next Generation isn’t just the story of the crazy adventures that or crew have week in and week out, but a window into a much larger fictional universe. There’s a sense that the adventures of the Enterprise are set against a much larger and vaster universe, and Sins of the Father really gives us a glimpse at that.

It broadens the scope of The Next Generation, in terms of subject matter and also in terms of narrative possibilities.

Picard gets his Palpatine on…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: duras, khitomer, Klingon Empire, klingons, kronos, qo'nos, romulans, ron moore, ronald d. moore, ronald moore, sins of the father, star trek, star trek: the next generation | 1 Comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Last Generation (Review)

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Darren

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

The Last Generation, a five-issue miniseries written by Andrew Steven Harris and illustrated by the wonderful Gordon Purcell, feels like a companion piece to Harris’ Alien Spotlight: Borg issue. Both are essentially stories about the morality of using time travel to re-write history, and both can be read as a reflection on Star Trek continuity as a whole.

Published from November 2008 through to March 2009, The Last Generation feels like something of a preemptive rebuttal to JJ Abrams’ May 2009 reboot of Star Trek. Much like Alien Spotlight: Borg before it, it feels like a conscious attempt to vindicate and validate the franchise from the era of Star Trek: The Next Generation onwards.

Given the fact that the “reboot-in-all-but-name” back-to-Kirk nature of Abrams’ film was openly discussed well ahead of the release, it’s hard not to read The Last Generation and Alien Spotlight: Borg as protests against the decision to set the clock back on the franchise and start with Kirk yet again.

A shot in the dark…

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Filed under: Comics, The Next Generation | Tagged: Federation, khitomer, klingons, star trek, star trek: the next generation, war, Yesterday's Enterprise | 1 Comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Yesterday’s Enterprise (Review)

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Darren

Yesterday’s Enterprise is one of the best-loved pieces of Star Trek ever produced. Its inclusion is a given in absolutely any “best of” poll being run for Star Trek: The Next Generation or even the franchise as a whole. A rather thoughtful piece of high-concept science-fiction exploring the importance of the right people in the right time, Yesterday’s Enterprise is proof that The Next Generation has truly come of age. After two years of wandering in the wilderness, the show has finally found its feet.

Of course, the production of Yesterday’s Enterprise was quite traumatic. The story and script went through multiple iterations between the original pitch and the version presented on the screen. The episode was written by pretty much the entire writing staff over the Thanksgiving weekend, racing against the clock to get it finished. Due to scheduling issues with Denise Crosby and Whoopi Goldberg, it was filmed in late December instead of early January.

As with so much of the third season, there’s a sense that the episode was held together by chewing gum and rubber bands. However, also like most of the third season, that sense only comes from those delving into the behind-the-scenes stories. Looking at the episode itself, this was a show on the top of its game.

The battle bridge…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: alternate reality, Denise Crosby, enterprise, Federation, Ira Steven Behr, klingons, natasha yar, romulans, ronald d. moore, star trek, star trek: the next generation, Tasha Yar, war, Yar, Yesterday's Enterprise | 12 Comments »

Star Trek: The Newspaper Strips – Beware the Omnimind! (aka Restructuring is Futile) (Review)

Posted on January 17, 2014 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.

As brilliant as the Borg were when they were introduced in Q Who?, they were hardly the most original of constructs. The cybernetic aliens went on to become one of the most iconic and recognisable pieces of Star Trek lore, featuring in the most popular Star Trek: The Next Generation feature film and all the subsequent spin-offs, but it’s tempting to give the Borg a bit more credit than they’re due.

After all, cybernetic organisms were hardly cutting edge in 1989. In fact, this wasn’t even the first time that Star Trek had told this kind of story. In late 1981, the Star Trek news paper strip that had begun as a companion piece to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, featured a similar adversary for Kirk’s Enterprise.

Resistance is futile!

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Filed under: Comics, Star Trek | Tagged: beware the omnimind, borg, comic books, Comics, idw, kirk, klingons, omnimind, Q Who, restructuring is futile, star, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, star trek: the newspaper strips, star trek: the next generation, Trek | Leave a comment »

Star Trek Sequelitis – Who We Want to See

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Darren

Never afraid to jump on the bandwagon, we were so impressed by the movie that we’ve seen, we thought we’d write a list of the aliens and creatures that we want or don’t want to see in the proposed sequel. Part of me really hopes that JJ Abrams continues to breath originality back into the series, but there are also a lot of very cool aliens out there in the big Star trek universe. Here are a few of the many, many characters and species we can see being considered for an appearance.