StarTrek | the m0vie blog

Star Trek – The Menagerie, Part II (Review)

Posted on May 17, 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 will admit that I am sceptical of Gene Roddenberry as a writer. There’s no denying that Roddenberry was a fantastic ideas man. After all, his concepts and characters have stood the test of time. Without Roddenberry, there would be none of the Star Trek that we all love so dearly. As such, I feel a little guilty when I criticise his writing, or when I argue that his influence on the early years of Star Trek: The Next Generation held the show back from greatness. (I’d suggest that it was only when Roddenberry’s involvement was minimised, and the writers were allowed to add shading to his futuristic utopia that The Next Generation truly came into its own.)

Still, Roddenberry was always an excellent salesman, and his script for The Menagerie brings out that quality in abundance. The Menagerie is effectively an excuse for why the show ran out of original scripts half-way through its first year, and Roddenberry might not make the most convincing argument, but he still makes it compelling.

Watching Star Trek on Star Trek…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Benedict Cumberbatch, Cage, Chris Pike, Christopher Pike, gene roddenberry, james t. kirk, kirk, List of Star Trek races, Menagerie, Pike, Roddenberry, spock, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek | 4 Comments »

Star Trek – Burning Dreams by Margaret Wander Bonanno (Review)

Posted on May 17, 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.

It’s amazing just how iconic and influential the character of Christopher Pike is, despite the fact that he only appeared as a guest character in a two-part episode of the first season of Star Trek. Of course, he was the lead character of a pilot that was filmed in 1964, but not aired until almost a quarter of a century later, but it still seems strange that the character should hold such sway over Star Trek fandom. Perhaps it’s a sign of how preoccupied fans are with trivia and minutiae. Maybe it’s a sign of how skilfully Star Trek cultivates holes in its own mythology (in this case Pike’s time as captain) for the fans to fill. It might even be the lingering sense of tragedy surrounding the “captain who never was”, played by an actor who died at the young age of 42.

Whatever the reason, it feels appropriate that Pike was one of the characters celebrated and included in the franchise’s 40th anniversary celebrations, and the character is well served by the decision to task Margaret Wander Bonanno with writing “the definitive Pike novel.”

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Burning Dreams, Cage, Christopher Pike, Federation Council, Final Reflection, Klingon, Margaret Wander Bonanno, Pike, san francisco, spock, star trek, Star Trek canon, Star Trek Into Darkness, StarTrek, Vina | 1 Comment »

Star Trek – The Menagerie, Part I (Review)

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Darren

Ah, clip shows. The bane of modern television. Okay, I’m being a bit harsh. After all, home media is a relatively recent invention. Up until the past couple of decades, it seemed that most people would only catch their television shows on… well, television. The audience was generally thought to be somewhat transient, the realities of scheduling and life making it highly unlikely that everybody would see everything. Indeed, most fans of old television shows found themselves at the mercy of fickle network schedules. Particularly for long-running shows, it was reasonable to assume that a significant portion of your audience might not be intimately familiar with the show.

Of course, the emergence of DVD box sets and on-line streaming have radically changed the way that television operates. Most obviously, there has been a massive a swing towards serialisation in the past few years, overlapping with the expansion of home media. While it’s tough to imagine a show like The Wire or Game of Thrones working in the early nineties, the fact that people can record and download and own their television shows means that producers can get away with assuming that everybody has seen everything.

What I’m getting at here is that there was a time when clip shows were an understandable, maybe even desirable, part of the network television landscape. They could bring new viewers up to speed, or allow old viewers to celebrate the favourite parts of the show that they would otherwise never see again. Indeed, The Menagerie, the only two-part episode of the classic Star Trek, has a better excuse than most. The clip sections of this adventure are taken from the 1964 pilot, The Cage. Not only was this footage two years old when The Menagerie was broadcast, it had also never been aired.

Spock the difference…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Benedict Cumberbatch, Cage, Chris Pike, Christopher Pike, Court Martial, Fleet Captain, J. J. Abrams, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Menagerie, spock, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek, USS Enterprise | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – Court Martial (Review)

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Darren

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.

Running rings around the prosecution…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Ben Finney, Benedict Cumberbatch, Charlie X, Court Martial, D. C. Fontana, Elisha Cook Jr, Fontana, games, Gene L. Coon, J. J. Abrams, james t. kirk, kirk, red alert, science fiction, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, StarTrek, Television and Movies, Television program, Where No Man Has Gone Before, William Shatner | 5 Comments »

Star Trek – The Galileo Seven (Review)

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Darren

It’s amazing to think that only now, almost half-way through the first year of Star Trek, the show is doing a Spock-centric episode. Spock is an iconic and instantly recognisable part of Star Trek lore, to the point that Leonard Nimoy’s version of the character served as the link between the classic series and JJ Abrams’ 2009 reboot of the franchise. The character appeared in The Cage, the very first episode of Star Trek ever produced. He is perhaps even more iconic than James T. Kirk himself.

So it feels slightly weird, then, that The Galileo Seven should serve as the first episode of the series completely devoted to Spock as a character, pushing Jim firmly to the background as we get a look at Spock’s first command experience.

Talk about carrying dead weight…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Doctor McCoy, Galileo Seven, gorn, J. J. Abrams, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Leonard Nimoy, McCoy, Mister Spock, Naked Time, paramount pictures, spock, star trek, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek, vulcan | 7 Comments »

Star Trek 103: The Best of Deep Space Nine

Posted on May 14, 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. Today, we’re making recommendations from the second of the 24th century spin-offs, and the first to broadcast concurrently with another Star Trek project, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: 24th century, Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, Cage, Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges, Jake Sisko, Man Trap, Nana Visitor, Next Generation, Our Man Bashir, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek | Leave a comment »

Star Trek 102: The Best of The Next Generation

Posted on May 13, 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. Today, we’re making recommendations from the first of the 24th century spin-offs, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: best of both worlds, borg, Brent Spiner, Cage, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Lower Decks, McCoy, Offspring, spock, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Next Generation, StarTrek | 3 Comments »

Star Trek – Miri (Review)

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Darren

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…

Continue reading →

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…

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 – 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.