Leonard McCoy | the m0vie blog

Star Trek – Dagger of the Mind (Review)

Posted on May 11, 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.

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…

Continue reading →

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 – 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…

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

How logical…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Digital Extremes, games, J. J. Abrams, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Man Trap, Naked Time, Next Generation, PlayStation 3, science fiction, spock, star trek, Star Trek Game, Star Trek Games, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Sulu, Television and Movies, Trek, Video game | 1 Comment »

Star Trek – The Man Trap (Review)

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Darren

It really is amazing how busy the Star Trek universe is. Or, well, how busy it was at one point. Although there are plenty of alien civilisations scattered across the vast gulf space, numerous empires vying for power and glory, the first season of Star Trek seems fixated on the notion that the universe is packed with the relics and ruins of long-dead civilisations. The Man Trap is just one example, as Kirk and his crew investigate an archaeological dig on the planet M-113, decorated with “the ruins of an ancient and long-dead civilisation.” Of course, the civilisation isn’t quite dead, but there’s a definite funereal atmosphere about The Man Trap.

That somewhat grim atmosphere makes the show’s fixation on long-dead worlds somewhat fascinating, given how the series is primarily about mankind’s optimistic future. However, it creates a sense – palpable throughout the first year of Star Trek – that the human race is a relatively new arrival on the scene, but emerging following the collapse and decay of countless ancient civilisations. It’s an old universe, but it’s a new dawn.

Suckers!

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Arsenal of Freedom, Benedict Cumberbatch, chris pine, Conscience of the King, doctor, Enemy Within, enterprise, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Man Trap, McCoy, Redshirt (character), spock, star trek, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, star trek: enterprise, star trek: the original series, Trek, Uhura, Where No Man Has Gone Before, Zachary Quinto | 2 Comments »

Star Trek – Mudd’s Women (Review)

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Darren

I think it’s fair to say that Star Trek had some gender issues. I say that as a fan of the show, and as a person with an immense fondness for the ensemble. It’s tempting to write off those sexist moments and decisions as attitudes that were socially acceptable at the time. After all, the sixties are almost half a lifetime away at this point. However, that doesn’t account for the fact that many of the same gender issues plagued Star Trek: The Next Generation in the late eighties, which lost two of its three female leads in its first season, and opened its second year by subjecting the remaining female lead to The Child.

Even disregarding that, though, there comes a point where even the time when a work was produced can’t excuse certain attitudes or approaches. Star Trek doesn’t feature too many strong female characters, relegating recurring female characters like Uhura and Janice Rand to the background. This is dodgy enough, but the show’s problems with gender become a lot more obvious when a show throws sexuality into focus. Mudd’s Women is such a show. It famously introduced one of the few recurring non-crewmember characters, and it plays into the “Star Trek as space western” theme, but it is also very sexist. Very, very sexist.

Mudd-ying the waters…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Alice Eve, Benedict Cumberbatch, games, gene roddenberry, Harry Mudd, Janice Rand, kirk, Klingon, Leonard McCoy, List of Star Trek characters, List of Star Trek characters (G–M), Mudd, Roddenberry, science fiction, Space Combat, star trek, Star Trek Games, Star Trek Next Generation, Television and Movies, video games, Where No Man Has Gone Before | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – The Corbomite Manoeuvre (Review)

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Darren

Again, The Corbomite Manoeuvre is one of those early episodes of Star Trek that was shuffled around in the broadcast order. Not that there’s too much internal continuity to mess up or anything like that, but it is particularly noticeable when episodes at the start of a television show get shuffled around. The writers are establishing characters and concepts, so it feels strange to watch the first episode written with McCoy after we’ve already seen him established as the ship’s doctor.

(The first episode aired, The Man Trap, centres around McCoy, which makes it strange when the ship suddenly has a different Chief Medical Officer in the Where No Man Has Gone Before.)

Fortunately though, The Corbomite Manoeuvre is the last time that this really becomes a concern, as Star Trek seems to iron out all the difficulties and the nuances on a new television show. Effectively the first regular episode of the show produced after two pilots, a large part of the charm of The Corbomite Manoeuvre is really watching it all come together.

What a dummy…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Bailey, Corbomite Maneuver, games, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Lieutenant, Man Trap, Namco Bandai Games, spock, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, Starfleet, StarTrek, uhuru, Where No Man Has Gone Before | 7 Comments »

Star Trek – Where No Man Has Gone Before (Review)

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Darren

In a way, there’s a very clear divide between The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before. It’s clearer than the strange new actor sitting in the middle of the Bridge or the fact that Spock is suddenly a lot less casual. In a way, each is perfectly positioned in popular consciousness. The Cage was produced in late 1964, but wouldn’t be shown on television until 1988, after spending years touring the fan circuit. It remains a strange bit of Star Trek history, sitting simultaneously outside any of the five television shows, and simultaneously a completely inexorable part of the franchise’s evolution. It’s where it all began, but not where the first Star Trek began.

In contrast, Where No Man Has Gone Before feels more like the pilot episode of Star Trek. Sure, the fashion changes a bit in the episodes to come, the entire cast has yet to be assembled, but this is recognisably the same ship and the same show as The Corbomite Manoeuvre or The Man Trap. It’s more than the actors filling roles, the consistent characterisation of Spock or the fact that it actually aired on television in September 1966. This is what the next three years of Star Trek will be like. It’s an aesthetic or an approach to storytelling that is markedly different to the way that The Cage tackled many of the same themes and ideas.

While The Cage laid down many of the philosophical underpinnings of the broader Star Trek universe – including the classic show – it is also a lot less physical and visceral than the classic Star Trek. Indeed, The Cage featured the Captain of the Enterprise reasoning with an advanced bunch of god-like aliens, appealing to human virtues. The action sequences felt a bit extraneous. In contrast, Where No Man Has Gone Before sees the Captain of the Enterprise punching a god-like being repeatedly in the face while hitting on the same themes.

I think that’s perhaps the most dynamic difference between not only The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before, but between Star Trek and its spin-offs.

All the old familiar faces…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Cage, Chess, Christopher Pike, games, James R. Kirk, james t. kirk, kirk, Kobayashi Maru, Leonard McCoy, Mitchell, Paul Fix, Pike, Recreation, Samuel Peeples, spock, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, Sulu, USS Enterprise, Video game, Where No Man Has Gone Before, William Shatner | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – The Cage (Review)

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Darren

The Cage is fascinating. Looking at it now, it holds up phenomenally well a s apiece of sixties science-fiction. However, it feels like we’re watching a prototype of Star Trek. In many respects, The Cage feels like a rough sketch that captures some essentials, but is missing out on the finer details. Spock is there! But he smiles! The set design looks the same, but the characters are different. Some of the cast fill the same roles, but some are dramatically different. Watching The Cage, you can see a lot of the philosophy that Gene Roddenberry would bring to Star Trek, but it’s very difficult to imagine an on-going series spinning out of this adventure, let alone one that managed to become as iconic or influential as Star Trek would ever be.

Still, it’s pretty solid viewing. It’s entertaining on its own terms, but it’s also informative in the context of the series. It’s more like dry run or a test drive of the concept.