Summer Hiatus

Looking back on this blog, it looks like Nathan and I only managed one post between us for the entire month of June.  It seems like a good idea to retroactively call this a summer hiatus. We've had a lot of IRL stuff going on and have gotten a little burned out on the Trek blogging.

Our goal of five years was never feasible, so it's no big deal to delay meeting it. We may sneak a post on here here and there over the summer, but we'll be back full strength with weekly updates in September.

Balance of Terror (TOS)

Rather than get on a vicious cycle of trying to catch up and failing, I'm just jumping in with this TOS review. DS9 next week, and then hopefully so on to get back on track.

I’m not an expert, but I’m given to understand the concept of a writer’s room wasn’t around in 1967, at least not in its current form. Original Series episodes were often pitched by outside writers and then “Star Trek”-ized by Gene Roddenberry after the fact. One result of this is that the tone of the episodes varies wildly.

I’ve started to expect by bi-weekly TOS outings to be fun goofy numbers, and all of a sudden, the show delivers Balance of Terror, a dramatic Cold War piece that holds up surprisingly well.

This marks the first appearance of the Romulans (actually prior to the more iconic Klingons, interestingly) and the key pieces are all there: evolutionary offshoot of the Vulcans, ancient Rome-inspired social structure and temperament, and, of course, spying and subterfuge, as encapsulated by their cloaking device.

In the later shows, the cloaking device is an unfair and inconvenient (why is the Federation the only major power without access to it?), yet surprisingly accepted device. By TNG there are so many technical workarounds you start to wonder why anyone bothers turning the damn things on.

But in it’s first appearance, the cloaking device is downright terrifying. The Bird of Prey, unseen annihilator of Federation outposts, could be anywhere at any time. As a game of cat and mouse on the Neutral Zone plays out between the two ships, a much more insidious game plays out on the Enterprise, as a navigator with a chip on his shoulder becomes convinced Spock is a Romulan spy, and Kirk and McCoy but heads about the wisdom of risking war to go after the ship.

I don’t know how to articulate what I loved about this episode, but it was compelling. I was on the edge of my seat even before the introduction in the third act of Mark Leonard’s Romulan captain, a man of honor on a dishonorable mission. The script plays out on the two ships separately, with no communication between them until the last moments of the episode.

One of Star Trek’s problems can be how the universe seems to revolve around the central ship of a given franchise, so it’s impressive here how the Romulan ship becomes a setting of its own, equal to the Enterprise in narrative weight as well as tactical prowess.

Balance of Terror was evidently a rip-off of a submarine movie, but I don’t care. It’s a beautiful piece of television that hits all the right beats and emotional touchstones.

Random Observations:

-- Also there was a wedding. It’s a really interesting way to start and end the episode, though it strays a little too close to phony heartstring tugging. The couple doesn’t really interact with the rest of the plot organically enough for my tastes.

-- Mark Leonard is great here as the Romulan captain, and its easy to see why they brought him back for his more famous role as Spock's father.

Learning Curve (VOY)

This is the way the season ends - not with a bang, but a... bottle show? It is true that "Learning Curve" is the final installment of Voyager's first season. And while not terrible, it doesn't exactly leave me clamoring for more. First off, it's a Tuvok episode. On a show with a lot of relatively bland characters, Tuvok takes the blandness to an entirely new level. This would be very well and good if the episode focused on some flaw in Tuvok that he had to work to overcome and, well, it sort of does, but the change feels incredibly forced and artificial. Tuvok doesn't really grow as a character, nor does he ever feel particularly vulnerable or easy to relate to. It doesn't help that the bland guest stars aren't so bland that they don't upstage Tuvok, either.

Let's back up a little. Remember the Maquis? We haven't really mentioned them since "State of Flux", but it turns out Seska isn't the only one who was having some trouble fitting in. Dolby, a bland white guy with a troubled past, Gerron, a surly Bajoran, Henley, a woman (seriously, that's all the characterization she gets) and Chell, a fat Bolian (is there any other kind?) are all having problems adjusting, so Janeway assigns Tuvok to give them a crash course in Starfleet discipline. It's frustrating to me that the white guy is the only one who gets any character development at all, as if the other three don't need personalities because they have the fact that they're aliens or women to make them identifiable.

The offending cheese.

The "cadets" are rude, insubordinate, obstinate, and proud. Tuvok is rigid, compassionless, and kind of a jerk until Neelix advises him to lighten up. Meanwhile, something has infected Voyager's bioneural circuitry, causing systems failures all over the ship. B'Elanna enlists the help of the Doctor, who can't find the source of the problem until Tuvok realizes its... cheese? I guess Neelix wanted to make cheese and the alien bacterial spores infected the gel packs? It seems odd to me that the writers, faced with an A-plot that feels like more of a B-plot, would write an B-plot that literally involved Voyager being endangered by cheese.

In order to solve the cheese-induced gel pack problem, Voyager has to turn the engines up super hot to kill the bacteria. Unfortunately, life-support goes out and this threatens to kill everyone on the ship. Even more unfortunately, everyone forgot to tell Tuvok and his cadets this, so they get trapped in an irradiated cargo bay and almost killed. But they work together to escape, and suddenly some how this makes everyone's problems go away. Or maybe not. It's hard to say because we never see Dolby, Henley, or Gerron again. (Chell apparently appears in one other episode.)

Okay, I lied at the beginning of my post. This actually was a terrible episode. The only redeeming factor of the entire forty-five minutes is that it contained the line "get the cheese to sickbay." That's it.

Random Observations:

Chakotay would probably be less bland if he punched people more often.

Gel Pack count: 45 (doubt we'll use that one again.)

Shouldn't the Starfleet dress code have an exception for the Bajoran earrings? They're a religious thing. But I guess we've never seen a Starfleet officer sporting a head scarf or a yarmulke either.

The Doctor talking to the Gel Pack was pretty funny. So was overheated Kes's death glare.

Chell is also featured in the Elite Force video game.

Kes gives the Doctor her "Are you fucking kidding me?" stare.

"11001001" TNG

While not the most creatively titled TNG offering, "11001001" proved a much more enjoyable episode than I remembered or expected. The first half gives us an excellent glimpse of the Enterprise crew getting some R & R, and the second half is a decently exciting little Picard and Riker adventure. I love the level of tension and excitement the episode generates without ever resorting to violence.

The Enterprise has put in for repairs, including an upgrade of the computer systems, so the crew takes some time to relax. Worf and Tasha challenge the outpost security staff to a friendly ball game. Beverly confers with a colleague stationed here. Geordi tries to teach Data to paint. And Riker can't find anyone to hang out with, so he goes to the holodeck for some trombone practice.

Wesley, for his part, is content to watch the computer upgrades, which are being performed by the enigmatic Binars, a race who have so thoroughly integrated with their home planet's master computer that they communicate almost telepathically. They're cute, weird, and sci-fi-y, and of course they betray the good guys, trapping Riker and Jean-Luc in the Holodeck and tricking everyone else into evacuating so they can steal the ship.

They need the Enterprise's main computer, it turns out, to save their world, which has completely shut down because of a solar flare. When Picard and Riker figure this out and save the Binar homeworld, there seem to be surprisingly few repercussions for the brazen theft of a Federation flagship, but that's just a typical TNG plot hole, and you really can't let those bother you too much.

Minuet, the holographic woman the Binars programmed to mesmerize Riker, is an interesting bit of foreshadowing in terms of what the holodeck will become on TNG and Voyager (as well as DS9 with Vic Fontaine, but that comes much later.) Her incredible realism is impressive to Riker and Picard, but much more in line with characters like Moriarty and the EMH than the Dixon Hill characters in "The Big Goodbye".

I don't consider this a "Holodeck episode". It involves a holodeck, but the writers resisted the temptation to use it as an excuse to play dress-up and avoid coming up with an original plot.

Random Observations:

Classic Worf - "If winning is not important, than why keep score?"

For once Wesley doesn't save the ship - in fact, he inadvertently helps the Binars steal it.

Data's remorse about letting himself get caught up in leisure activities is a nice exploration of the essential Data conflict - his goal of becoming human does not completely jive with the goal of being the most efficient officer.

I think Doctor Crusher's babling about medical nanites may be foreshadowing an upcoming episode.

Riker is not actually that good at playing the Trombone.

Jetrel (VOY)

Double TNG Next Week!

This week, Voyager takes a dark turn. Neelix has always had echoes of the sad clown, but now we discover the tragedy at the heart of his character - his entire family was killed in what was basically Hiroshima, and he was among the first to witness the devastation first-hand. "Jetrel" brings Neelix face to face with the scientist who invented the weapon.

It feels more like a Deep Space Nine story, with Jetrel telling lies upon lies to mask his true intentions, and perhaps the Deep Space Nine writing staff could have handled it better. As it is, the writing lacks the depth it needs to fully explore its premise. It asks some interesting questions that have been percolating in science fiction since the deployment of the A-Bombs - what is the moral responsibility of scientists? Is a blast that kills millions justifiable if it ends a war that would have killed billions? But it doesn't take full advantage of science fiction's ability to explore these questions divorced from their real world contexts.

While it largely fails as an exploration of morality, technology, and war, the piece succeeds as a
character piece for Neelix, revealing his tragic past and really bringing the character's essential conflicts into focus. While Kes has thrown herself wholeheartedly into life on Voyager, Neelix has always held the crew at arms length, ready to strike out on his own at the first sign of trouble. But his reluctance to form a family bond makes total sense from someone who lost his entire family, and his joviality is more believable as a facade he forces on himself to protect his psyche from the terrible darkness of the things he's seen than it is as just sheer optimism.

Ethan Phillips, Jennifer Lien, and Star Trek Veteran James Sloyan all really pull their acting weight, which sort of rescues the episode from the mediocre writing that plagues its more dramatic sequences. I can definitely see that the writers struggled with how best to tell this story. I just don't think they ended up with something totally cohesive. The ending in particular seems like it was thrown in for the sake of having a twist, and puts forth a lot of questions it doesn't even try to answer (using Voyager's transporter's to resurrect an entire dead colony surely must violate the Prime Directive somehow.)

Ultimately, this episode is about survivor guilt - its about Neelix forgiving himself for not dying with his family. The final scene, where he forgives Jetrel, doesn't feel earned at all, because the dramatic scenes haven't done the work of bringing him to that point. It definitely puts me in mind of Deep Space Nine's "Duet", but it doesn't achieve anywhere near the nuance of that episode.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on a first season episode from what is generally considered a weaker series. But mediocre episodes always bother me most when I can see the potential in them, and this may have been the most potential-full Voyager plot to date. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't nearly as good as it might have been.

Random Observations:

The pool scene at the beginning was a nice way of keeping us in the world and quickly reestablishing Neelix - light-hearted, but shrewd.

Nice to keep reminding us of Kes's abbreviated lifespan - conveniently timed with how long a Star Trek show runs. I wonder what their plans were for the character?

Janeway's ready to take a big detour for Neelix's sake. We're never getting home at this rate.

James Sloyer is no stranger to doing heavy drama in heavier make-up. He previously played Odo's "father" Mora Pel on DS9 and K'mpec on TNG's "Firstborn".

Bonus post - seven-year-old Nathan's favorite characters

I didn't have time to write a post while I was home with my family this weekend - but did find these. Enjoy!

Breaking the Ice (ENT)

Breaking the Ice is a paradox of an episode of Star Trek. It answers questions like "How groundbreaking can an episode be without actually being interesting?" and "How can an episode where characters leave the ship on a dangerous and special-effects filled mission still feel like a bottle show?"

The episode is groundbreaking and envelope-pushing in that it really plays with Enterprise's conceit, bridging the gap between today's NASA and Kirk's Starfleet. The whole runner with the grade school class back on Earth is very NASA and something we would never see on other shows (although starting on Next Generation they have the kids right on board.) And theoretically its also a way to get the audience to learn a little more about day to day life on Enterprise.

But in practice, it doesn't work at all. The scene is way too long for starters. It straight-up feels like padding. It has actual poop jokes in it, and it turns out jokes about poop jokes are not as many sophistication levels above poop jokes as they think they are. It features the actors basically playing their characters being bad actors as they awkwardly interact with the camera, which is also not as fun as it sounds (they're maybe too good at it.) And as for the actual answers, they are the epitome of show, not tell. We don't want to watch the bridge crew yakking at us for that long when the ship's under attack, much less when the stakes are nonexistent.

And that's the problem with the whole boring episode. Besides the children (who, by the way, we never get to see, even though an adorable child could maybe have saved this episode), here are the other three subplots:

- Vulcans like to watch us and be condescending ... but everything is exactly as it seems.

- T'Pol is having second thoughts about her arranged marriage we never heard about before and accidentally confides in Trip.

- There is a comet.

I honestly have no idea what was going on with that comet. I guess, it was really big? And it maybe had some kind of rare mineral inside it. Not, like, one they needed to fix the ship, just one that was shiny. Reed and Mayweather land on the comet for some reason and then basically just goof off, build snowmen, and blow something up for some reason. And the Vulcan story kept seeming like it was going somewhere, but it really wasn't. There were just Vulcans, really just the one, looking over Archer's shoulder, being creepy. Don't they have better things to do, seriously?

Only the T'Pol plot really held any interest for me, and that only the faintest bit. Maybe it's not the best idea to put the emotional weight of the episode on the shoulders of a character that doesn't express emotion? It doesn't really make your boring episode less boring.

To go back to my initial observation, this show tries to bridge the gap between present and future, and in doing so reveals a fatal flaw in Enterprise. Space travel is fundamentally less interesting and less awesome now than it is in the 23rd Century. To go backwards was to impose all kinds of limits on one's storytelling at a time when the franchise needed to be exploring strange new worlds to survive.

Star Trek has progressed through wormholes, time warps, and nebulas that turn thought into reality. Why would viewers find a really big comet interesting? Why should this tension exist between Enterprise fulfilling it's potential as a show and being accurate to its conceit, and Enterprise actually being good?

This might be why the show starts to lean so heavily on time travel as a crutch -- it's a way to deliver something new to viewers, despite that the premise only allows for the old and the outdated.

Either way, Breaking the Ice is a swing and a miss. And a miss and a miss and a miss. It's rare and mesmerizing to see a show attempt four different subplots in an episode and succeed at none of them.

Random Observations:

- Nope, I'm done. Nothing more to say about this train wreck.

Faces (VOY)

I have seen this episode more times than any other episode of Voyager. I wrote a paper on it for my Feminism in Theatre class in college, and later adapted that paper into a panel which I ran at Connecticon last year. Both of these focused on B'Elanna's racial identity and her expression of gender, looking at the Klingon/Human split as a metaphor for the masculine and feminine aspects of her personality, and also delving into racial stereotypes of Latino women (its easy to forgt B'Elanna's human half is named Torres and from South America.) As fascinating as that discussion was, I don't really feel like rehashing it. I'd like to look more at the craft of this episode, and how despite an absurdly cheesy premise it still manages to shine as one of the gems of the first season.

This is basically only the second B'Elanna episode we've had -possibly third, if we count her sub-plot in Prime Factors, which at least that gave her some good characterization. But the point is we don't know her that well, which makes splitting her in two kind of a risky proposition. This isn't "The Enemy Within" - neither B'Elanna is evil, and in fact the episode is really about B'Elanna being forced to confront the fact that while she may not like her Klingon heritage, it is a part of her she can't deny. But turning a character's internal conflict into an external one is very difficult to do without a certain amount of ham-fistedness.

The use of the Vidians is a really smart way of making the whole concept easier to swallow. The fact that they can essentially clone B'Elanna but can't, you know, grow themselves some organs instead of stealing them from people seems a little off, but other than that the idea of Klingons being resistant to the phage creates a perfect justification for Sulan making the split and also fits perfectly with what we know of Klingons from previous Trek episodes. The Vidians are also interesting characters, and Sulan's scenes with B'Elanna give us more insight into why they do what they do than we got in "The Phage". Finally, it means the episode can do a cool, sci-fi concept, and develop an under-developed character, and develop a recurring villain all in one episode without it feeling crowded, which is quite impressive.

Sulan grafting Durst's face onto his own is the creepiest moment on the show so far. Partially this is because of the inherent creepiness of face-stealing, but part of it is definitely the fact that Sulan genuinely thinks this will make it easier for B'Elanna to trust him. This just shows how warped and bizarre Vidian culture has become. When Sulan says that Durst's organs will save dozens, there's almost a reverence in his voice, like he actually buys this "greater good" idea. The Vidians are extremely evil, but they are also extremely pitiable.

Back to B'Elanna - we learn about her childhood here, and I think that scene is worth looking at. The story she tells Paris here will be told in greater detail in "Lineage", with flashbacks, but its all laid out in the first season, and will inform B'Elanna's character as we go along. Even though each show has had a character of mixed human and alien heritage, B'Elanna is kind of a backwards approach. Spock had occasional flashes of conflict, but ultimately had chosen to embrace his Vulcan side. Deanna Troi lives a well-balanced life, leaning more towards her Betazoid side. Worf struggles to be more Klingon. But B'Elanna has grown up hating her Klingon side, for reasons both political and personal. She blames her Klingon side for her fighting spirit and her uncontrollable temper, but really her temper comes from her self-loathing and inability to find peace with her own identity. It's a struggle that will keep coming around, and it makes her one of the most compelling characters on the show.

Random Observations:

Love the little Neelix/ Tuvok scene at the beginning. Those two are too much fun.

Durst becomes our first real casualty since the pilot.

Minor Character Watch: Lt. Ayala's name is mentioned for the first time in this episode.

The Doctor has some of that amazing Starfleet Plastic Surgery in his programming.

The lies that the Vidian guards tell when they take someone to Organ Harvesting are hilarious. "Where are you taking me?" "A shower and a hot meal."

It's a little weird that Voyager doesn't even try to rescue the other prisoners. Like, even the Talaxian who helped them.

This is the beginning of the Tom/B'Elanna ship.

Tom does that thing that men/ white people like to do in discussions of gender/ race where they compare some negative experience they've had with the other person's experience of oppression even though its totally unrelated, and it really gets on my nerves. It feels like he's belittling her experience by comparing it to his bad haircuts.

Angel One (TNG)

I will say I was pleasantly surprised by "Angel One", but this is mostly because the expectations I went into it with were exceptionally low. I had very little memory of the first time I saw this, but a glance at the plot synopsis was all I needed to think "First season TNG trying to meaningfully engage with issues of gender. This should be terrible."

And it's not actually that terrible. In fact, I would say my major complaint is that they didn't engage with their premise enough, and that they let a cliched subplot about a mysterious space virus take up way too much space in the episode. The actually main plot of "Angel One" mostly suffered because the writer's were unwilling to pursue its most interesting aspects.

The womanizer has become the womanizee.

What the episode dances with, but never quite succeeds at, is flipping traditional gender roles in order to emphasize just how ridiculous and awful the ways that women are still treated in our society are. Several good decisions were made in this regard - having the women dressed in sensible outfits and the men in lacy, revealing ones is a good choice, if a little heavy-handed, it at least gets the point across. And Beatta's crass objectification of Commander Riker is extremely well done, especially the way Riker starts out into it and then quickly gets extremely uncomfortable.

Some missed opportunities: I would really have liked it if one of the women had expressed a similar interest in Data. Data could have responded with his usual child-like confusion and it would have given a great opportunity for the away team to talk about objectification, consent, etc. Additionally, the fact the Beatta doesn't really take men seriously could have been a great chance to showcase Tasha and Troi, and aside from Picard's decision to have Troi address the planet, that was basically overlooked.

The crashed freighter survivor's spearheading Angel One's Men's movement is a decent plot hook, but the episode takes way to long to set it up. The first two acts create a lot of false tension, between the virus on the ship, the vague threat of the Romulans, and Beatta being unwilling to hand over the survivors, and then the last two acts suddenly feel like they're trying to cram a whole bunch of stuff in.  Basically the pacing is awful, and the faux dramatic subplot is unnecessary. And then the resolution, Riker gives a speech and saves the revolutionaries from being executed  but their sentence is commuted to exile, doesn't really feel like it resolves anything.

"Ooh - real leather. Aw yeah."

That being said, the subplot does have its moments. Especially Geordi being in command gives him more to do than he's had all season, and he handles the responsibility relatively well. Plus him sitting down in the Captain's chair and saying "Make it so" to Worf is kind of amazing.

Random Observations:

All the stuff about the Romulan ships gathering at the Neutral Zone does serve to help set up some plots in the rest of the season.

The guest casting in this episode is fantastic. Beatta does a beautiful job of casual, entitled misandry, and her Manservant Trent is hilariously feminized. Also, all the men are so short!

The writers clearly have not yet worked out that Worf grew up on Earth.

Wesley's skiing outfit is ridiculous.

All in all, Riker gives a pretty good Picard Speech.

Charlie X (TOS)

It occurs to me that at least 3 of the 5 Star Trek series have a "teenager gets Godlike powers" story. Next Generations "True Q" sees a teenage girl with the powers of the Q Continuum, while Voyager's "Q2" gives us Q himself's son (played not too shabbily by John DeLancie's son). And, of course, the omnipotent teenager episode that started it all, "Charlie X."

Stories about a teenager with Godlike powers are different than stories about grownups getting them ("Where No Man Has Gone Before," "Hide and Q," "The Nth Degree") because they're so scary. Most of us remember being teenagers, or know a teenager. How much power would you be willing to put in their hands? What would they do with it if they had it?

Well, for starters, they'd probably do something to do with sex, as every one of the teenagers in these stories does -- Amanda Rogers tries to use her powers to seduce Riker, Q2 Q-flashes Seven's clothes away, and young Charlie Evans, well, he really has a thing for poor Yeoman Rand, whose main purpose on the show seems to be being a damsel in distress, despite constantly trying to just do her duty and maintain professionalism.

It's a lot to swallow that this kid survived all on his own and, although the kid is a good actor, he's not particularly believable as someone who should essentially be a feral child (think Molly in "Time's Orphan"). This isn't really split hole given the ending, but it's a little odd that the Enterprise crew so readily buys it.

Captain Kirk up against a force that is his physical superior but mental inferior is already a tired theme only 10ish episodes into the show. We've seen Kirk face off with Gary Mitchell, his drunk Lieutenant in "The Naked Time," and his animalistic doppleganger. I think it's safe to say we get it: Kirk always wins. If he can't beat something up, he will outsmart it. And the weakness Kirk exploits here -- that Charlie can only influence a certain number of things at a time with his power -- feels like a very weak twist, a contrived achilles heal. As cliched as it would have been, I'd much rather have seen Kirk talk down the boy.

And then the ending is pretty disturbing. After all, Charlie is not an evil villain, he's a mixed up kid. And though going back to the people that raised him isn't a fate worse than death, he certainly doesn't make it look like very much fun. I think the moral is that if you mess around with dark powers, you might face dark consequences, but it doesn't quite land.

But the part of this episode that sticks out in memory and covers for any multitude of sins is the rec room. Nichelle Nichols gets to show off her jazz training and flirt with Spock, showing off an impishness that I very much hope Zoe Saldana will fold into her portrayal if the character. And the song, well, the song is something else. If you tuned in for the 60s camp this week, Charlie X did not disappoint!

Random Observations:

- I'm tired of bottle shows! Some of my fondest TOS memories involve facing off with Klingons and Romulans and exploring alien civilizations. So far we've seen a lot of amazingly ship-based adventures.

- Robert Walker Jr.'s portrayal of Charlie really is solid, mixing creepy and innocent in an off-kilter way that really keeps you guessing.

- Charlie's habit of disappearing people, and then not knowing exactly where they went, combined with him being a human raised by superpowered aliens, really does evoke a certain 1961 superhit novel. Stranger in a Strange Land, any one?

- Kirk as reluctant father figure is an idea with unrealized potential in this script. But, great territory for the movies to tread later, I suppose.

Cathexis (VOY)

Sometimes I feel like we're just kind of running through a checklist of overdone Star Trek plots, with a few truly original gems in the middle, and it makes me wonder why I love these shows so much. But then I realize that sitcoms and procedural reuse lots to exactly the same degree, and what it's about, when faced with an episode that seems totally unoriginal, is the characters. "Cathexis" gives us some fun interactions, and manages to put a little bit of a twist ending on the whole "brain-posessing alien" plot that makes the whole thing a little less predictable. The result is an episode that, while no one would call it strong, at least keeps us feeling like we're not wasting our time with the show.

In the teaser, Tuvok returns to the ship with a comatose Chakotay. Apparently they were attacked, and some kind of energy weapon was used to knock him out. The Doctor thinks he can restore Chakotay if he can find the weapon that did this, so they head for the nebula where the attack took place.

Unfortunately, Tuvok and Chakotay brought a stowaway along, an alien being that can possess crew members for short spans of time, and it seems determined to keep them from reaching the nebula. The crew battles the alien's sabotage, as well as the paranoia of knowing it could be in anyone at any time, until it is skillfully revealed that the consciousness possessing everyone isn't evil or alien - its Chakotay, and the actual alien has been possessing Tuvok all along.

The twist works, we see it coming but its not too obvious, and the climax is pretty exciting, but the episode on the whole doesn't offer a lot in the way of characterization or explanation of any deeper part of humanity. The idea of the alien making the crew turn against each other is cool, but not explored in enough detail, and other episodes have taken that tactic far more effectively. The most novel and interesting part is Chakotay's disembodiment, and how it interacts with his religious beliefs, but the show is too scared to delve particularly deeply into that part of his character, so it remains a tantalizing possibility.

There are some lovely moments between B'Elanna and Chakotay in this episode, even though Chakotay is unconscious for them, we get a great sense of how much she cares for him as a friend and mentor. The other relationship that really gets built up here is Janeway and the Doctor, as she makes the decision to entrust him with Voyager's command codes, showing a kind of trust that seems abrupt for someone she just weeks ago was still thinking of as hardware.

Random Observations:

The teaser scene with Janeway's Gothic Holonovel has no connection to the plot even thematically (I guess there is kind of a ghost theme in Gothic novels, but its a weak connection.) It seems like an attempt to feminize Janeway but it doesn't really work.

Kes's telepathy becomes relevant again, but the Tuvok alien is smart enough to shut her down before she can be helpful.

Tuvok is a pretty good choice for an alien to possess - its much easier to impersonate someone who shows very little emotion. It's sad that even Janeway can't tell her best friend is possessed until its too late.

They ejected the warp core, but we didn't see them have to go through the process of reinstalling it.

If phasers with wide beam dispersal are a thing, why don't they ever use them again?

Minor Character Watch: Lt. Durst plays a major role in one other episode, coming up very soon.

Vortex (DS9)

So we took a week off, unannounced. Sorry about that. But we are back now, with a Deep Space Nine recap: Vortex.

Throughout its early seasons, Deep Space Nine drops hints about two things: Odo's origins and the Dominion, the sinister force that intimidates the peoples of the Gamma Quadrant. Those two long plays, along with Bajoran politics, are the first hints of the unprecedentedly serial nature of this show.

Vortex is the first episode to delve into Odo's origins, and although it turns out to be an elaborate bait and switch it still manages to lay an impressive groundwork. On the one hand, we learn about shapeshifters as a children's story, as part of the mythology of the Gamma Quadrant. On the other hand, we see how deeply the mere possibility of learning about his past can effect Odo; how drastically it can shake his normally steadfast moral compass.

This tension will really define Odo to some: some of his best episodes will put his devotion to his adoptive family against his curiosity about (and eventually loyalty to) his birth parents, as it were. This episode lays the groundwork.

A desperate criminal who happens to have a shape shifting key chain and a knack for running cons realizes Odo's weakness. And he plays him like a drum.

That's an interesting angle on and of itself, and a strong thing for a show in its early stages to do: take the strengths we've just learned to love about our characters and twist them into weaknesses. But vortex had another trick up its sleeve, twisting Crodan back to hero again in the eleventh hour, and showing us that there might just be the odd thing Odo values over law and order.

"Vortex" doesn't really have a B-plot, opting instead to pad the plot with a Quark-centric first half featuring some generic extralegality and a new race doggedly dedicated to their twins, which I obviously found somewhat touching.

And there's a place to pad the episode with sandbox stuff -- cat and mouse Quark and Odo stuff that gives us the "business as usual" of their relationship. But this episode's strongest stuff is Cronan and Odo and testing the limits of our favorite incorruptible lawman -- first with temptation, and then with compassion. And we end the episode with a much stronger, more complex Odo than we ever knew we had.

No observations this week, I've said my piece above. Pictures hopefully to come.

Datalore (TNG)

            I said before (I think) that one of TNG’s failings was its inability to give Picard a strong arch-nemesis, a recurring antagonist we could really hate – Sisko had Dukat, Janeway had Seska, even Captain Kirk had Khan and to a lesser extent Harry Mudd. Picard has Q, but he quickly becomes more absurd than sinister, and then there’s a whole host of ineffective attempts at menacing –Sela, Tomilek, and Daimon Bok all come to mind, but we’ll get to all of them in good time. The point I want to make now is that TNG does have good recurring villains – just not for Picard himself. Lore is a great foil for Data, and when he shows up it means a well-paced action plot with enough depth to make us remember we’ve watching Science Fiction.

            Lore is Data’s evil twin – a prototype built by his creator, Dr. Soong. We still don’t know the whole truth of why Soong decided to start over with a “less perfect” creation. If we believe Lore’s story, then his emotions were too real, and he made the colonists uncomfortable. But its also possible that his murderous, psychopathic tendencies had already begun to display themselves and Soong shut him down out of fear. If we believe this version of events, then its likely he left out the emotions when he built Data because it was the only way he could be sure of leaving out the Machiaviellian level of ambition or the sense of superiority.

            It’s interesting that while he has emotion, what Lore lacks is empathy. He sees himself as an

Alas, Poor Data.

“upgrade” of humanity, and he doesn’t see any reason to keep the earlier version around. Lore is all of our fears about artificial intelligence personified. Brent Spiner isn’t afraid to ham in up in his dual role, but in spite of all the scenery chewing he still brings a believability to Lore that makes him all the creepier. Or perhaps the creepiness comes from seeing what Data, who we’ve already come to see as the most incorruptible member of the crew, could be capable of with just a slightly different outlook. Data and Lore are both detached, but in completely different ways.

            The structure of the episode is excellent. The teaser reminds us of Data, who he is and what he might want badly enough to betray his comrades. The scene on the planet sets up a mystery and a creepy tone. We meet Lore, gradually realize he’s untrustworthy, and once he replaced Data the plot steamrollers on to a climax. The philosophical discussions between the two are just enough substance, but they don’t bog down the episode enough to break the tension. It all flows so organically that even the over hashed “no one trusts Wesley but he’s actually right” plotline doesn’t feel as contrived as it usually does.

Ah, Motherhood.

            Wesley is fine in this episode. He’s annoying, but just in a kind of generalized way, and the fact that he saves the ship by realizing something that’s obvious to the audience rather than coming up with some techno-miracle makes his self-righteousness a little more palatable. Dr. Crusher doesn’t do a whole lot in this episode, but her interactions with Data are cute and she’s trying to be good mom and a good officer and that’s awkward given what’s going on. On the whole, I like how the ensemble is used effectively here without taking the focus off of Data and his struggle.

            I don’t know if the writers beamed Lore into space because they wanted to use him again, but it’s a great way to kill off a villain without actually killing him off. And the great thing about Lore is they didn’t have to wonder if they’d be able to get the actor back or not.

Random Observations:

There is a lot of unintentional innuendo here, but my favorite is Riker’s “Does he have all your parts?”

Troi does not appear, again. This time no excuse is given.

It’s interesting to think that Data’s “flaws” might actually be measures intentionally implemented to keep him from being evil.

 

And now I want to play Starfox.

The Crystaline entity looks great, given the constraints of 1988 CGI. It does kind of make me think I’m playing an old video game or watching Babylon 5, though.

Minor Character Watch: Chief Engineer Argyle is back. I totally didn’t remember that he was in more than one episode.

The Andorian Incident (ENT)

Once upon a time, there was a cheesy 60s sci-fi show. It was a remarkable cheesy 60s scifi show that captured an uncommon number of hearts and somehow, miraculously and often by the skin of its teeth, outlived it's 1960s roots and became one of the longest running single franchises in television history, probably. But before that, it was a 60s sci-fi show. It employed the tropes of the genre -- swashbuckling white male heroes, sexy alien babes, "in space" versions of things that shouldn't have been in space.

Then, 20ish years later, the maker of that cheesy show got a chance to make a new, modern, savvy late 80s version of that show, and he made some changes. He made the ship bigger, the social issues more sweeping. The hero aged like the creator had, from a brainier Buck Rogers to a bald, British, older man who traded in raw testosterone for tempered wisdom and cultural sensitivity.

This new show was going to be something else. It was going to be a shinier, more polished future. It was not going to be so silly. And so, although all of the other people working on the show were excited about bringing back their favorite aliens, planets, and plots, the man made some decrees. He said that certain aliens were too cheesy, too silly, too 60s to return, no matter how much the fans might have liked them.

And that's why Tellarites, Orion Slave Girls, Tholians, and, especially, Andorians were never on TNG, DS9, or Voyager. (Yes, super geeks, I know there are technically exceptions like the holographic Andorians that appear in "The Offspring (TNG)".)

Many years later, when that man had died and his followers were dreaming up the fifth incarnation of the show, they felt they had gone as far forward as they could. The Federation of the 1990s had become small. There were no quadrants left to explore (except the Beta Quadrant, and let's face it, nobody knows what's going on with that).  But there was a tempting stretch of unexplored time. No, not the time between TOS and TNG, the movies had covered the highlights there and the uniforms of that era were exceptionally silly looking anyway. It was the time between now and then. If James T. Kirk was the pioneer Picard revered, who was the pioneer Kirk looked to as a mentor?

And so, Enterprise was made. And the creators, looking through the 40 years of loose threads and once-explored planets, realized that this new show was the chance they'd been waiting for to finally defy Gene's ban on "the silly races."

Enterprise is defined, for me, by a number of threads. Overuse of time travel plots. Misguided attempts to be cool and/or sexy. Showing the lost firsts of all our favorite stock Trek threads. But my favorite one, and the one that's frankly the most interesting in the context of my own rediscovery of The Original Series as I write this blog, is the reclamation of the silly parts of TOS, and the attempts to remake them in the image of the 00s version of cool.

Enter the Andorians, led by Shran, played by Jeffrey Combs, one of the most versatile Star Trek guest actors there is. Their introduction here, crashing the peaceful meditation of a Vulcan monastery, is inspired. It instantly sets them up as the anti-Vulcans, totally driven by passion and emotion. Weren't the Klingons already the anti-Vulcans? Maybe, but Klingons on Enterprise are big, dumb brutes. Anyway, why should galactic politics stay the same for two centuries? It's nice to see a shiny new (old) bad guy on Enterprise.

The problem is, of course, that the Andorians are not very intimidating in this first appearance. Their sheer brutality could be scary, but they feel too much like petulant children -- the condescending way the Vulcans treat them (even while imprisoned by them), combined with, for instance, Shran's violent destruction of the communicators. They're cool-looking aliens, but the most intriguing thing about them is not the race themselves, but the political triangle they set up with the Vulcans and Earth. (Ok, credit where credit is due, "pinkskins" as an epithet is pretty hilarious, too.)

As for the episode itself, it's a throwback to TOS in more ways than one, putting more or less the whole plot in the hands of Enterprise's version of Kirk, Spock and Bones: Archer, T'Pol, and Trip. A runner about Vulcans finding humans smelly totally fails to land, mainly on account of not being funny. The big reveal at the end of the episode is so painfully obvious that it barely counts as a twist. I knew exactly what they were going to find and where they were going to find it, although, to be fair, Archer did surprise me with his "stick it to our allies" reaction to finding a secret listening post under the monastery.

I'm sure this is going to come back to bite him in the butt, but I also imagine his kindness to the Andorians is going to come back in a good way. So I'm eager to see the ramifications of the obvious serial threads the episode set up. I'm eager to see T'Pol torn between her people and her new family (whom she is way too slowly warming to, in my opinion).

This episode, though? Kind of an uninspiring prison break episode filled with Vulcans. Ever wonder why the vast majority of time when we see Vulcans on the show they're fish out of water in an environment full of humans? It's because the more Vulcans you have together, the more boring they are. Characters without visible emotions are by definition boring -- it's not their fault. It takes a heck of an actor to make a fullblooded Vulcan both a consistent character and a compelling one, in particular when they have mostly Vulcans to play against. And that goes double for Vulcan monks, I should think.

And the plotholes, oh the plotholes! Does Enterprise's transporter do only "beam down" and not "beam up"? Because that's a really easy solution. Or, why, exactly, when they suspect something to be amiss at the monastery, do they all decide to act like insensitive oafs and then tackle a wall, rather than like, beaming back up and making a plan? What about the Vulcans in the listening center? They can't send, like a distress signal to help out the poor monks? They don't ever need to leave to go on supply runs or anything? Is the only entrance or exit through the monastery? For that matter, which came first? Are the Vulcans so irreverent toward their own religion that they built a listening post under their sacred monastery? Or is the monastery just a front for the listening post, a total religious sham?

As for the rest of the ensemble, left behind on the ship, they don't do a whole lot. I did like how Linda Park let a subtle annoyance at Reed's being in command slip into some of her line deliveries.

This has been a bit of a ramble so I'll sum up: This episode sets up stuff I'm excited about and introduces a race I like a lot, although at this point I'm honestly not sure why. The episode itself is ok, but it's really predictable and it has way too many Vulcans.

Random Observations:

- This entire review belongs in Random Observations. Sorry about that.

- I worry that I'm too hard on Enterprise sometimes. It definitely has to earn my love more than the other shows do. If there are Enterprise fans reading who want to tell me how wrong I am, you are welcome in the comments. We'll be civil together.

- How many episodes is the plot going to be driven by Archer deciding something would be cool and then refusing to give it up no matter how many objections T'Pol raises?

- Trip tries a little too hard with the wise cracks a lot of the time.

- Jeffrey Combs', by the way, famous roles are Weyoun and Brunt on Deep Space Nine, neither of whom has shown up yet on the blog.

Heroes and Demons (VOY)

            It’s actually incredibly cool that immediately on the heels of TNG’s first foray into the “Holodeck episode” we get to see what Voyager has learned from seven years of trial and error. “Heroes and Demons” isn’t a great episode, but it’s more than watchable – great humor and character acting from Robert Picardo help sell one of our cheesiest plots to date. It helps that the Doctor actually learns something about himself from his time on the holodeck.

            The plot, in brief – B’Elanna and Janeway take a sample of some weird “photonic matter” from a nebula, because apparently it will “boost power converter efficiency.” Captain Janeway wants Harry to help B’Elanna harvest the stuff, but he’s in the holodeck, and won’t answer his calls. Then it turns out he’s not on the ship. And the Holodeck won’t turn off. So Chakotay and Tuvok go to investigate, and soon find themselves also vanished. Not wanting to risk any more crew members, Janeway sends the Doctor, who should be immune to being converted into energy since he’s already mostly energy, on his first away mission.

            Our destination this week is a holonovel based on the epic poem “Beowulf.” Unlike Dixon Hill, this is a real (if conveniently public domain) story, and the writers have some fun with that in the script. Unferth, for example, who in the original story challenges Beowulf to a duel to prove he is man enough to face Grendel, does the same to our heroes. The script also plays with the idea of the Holonovel as an interactive story that would actually be programmed, able to improvise but with obvious limitations. The characters greet each new “player” in much the same way, as if anyone entering the holodeck is essentially Beowulf. It feels much more like an interactive character screen in a video game, where it says “What is your name?” and the default is Beowulf, but you can enter something else if you want to.

            The cheesy fantasy-movie costumes and speech patterns, as well as the shoe-horned-in romance, all add to the feeling that we’re getting the 24^th-century Hollywood version of Beowulf. If all this episode was was Tuvok and Chakotay or Janeway wandering through this low budget sword-and-sorcery flick trying to find Harry, it would be a funny, if unmemorable episode. But adding in the photonic alien as the source of the malfunction (as opposed to “The Big Goodbye” and its totally unexplained malfunction) helps a lot. And what helps even more is that this plotline is used to force the doctor to recognize how far he has evolved beyond a simple program.

            The thing is, it’s not just his indestructibility that makes the Doctor ideally suited for this mission. While Chakotay and Tuvok talk past the Holodeck characters and treat them like they’re not real, the Doctor, himself a hologram, interacts with them as people and treats them with respect. This draws into focus how many of the crew still treat the Doctor, as a tool rather than a comrade. And ultimately, the Doctor rescues Kim, Chakotay, and Tuvok not by slaying “Grendel” but by communicating with him, which helps tie everything together thematically.

            “The crew accidentally captures a lifeform” isn’t an original plot, but it works well enough as a macguffin to drive the rest of the episode. I really admire the writing staff’s ability so far to know when something needs to be an ensemble piece and when it can put all the heavy-lifting on one actor, and while this is really The Doctor’s show, almost everyone is used effectively. Janeway, B’Elanna and Tom work well as his mission control team, and Kes, as always, is his moral support. Chakotay and Tuvok, in the one scene before they get captured, continue to have a really nice, developing relationship. Neelix doesn’t show up, which is fine as he’s really not needed.

Random Observations:

Vulcans apparently have no monsters or demons in their mythology. I find this hard to believe.

Janeway’s version of how holodecks work conflicts with Wesley’s brief explanation in “Encounter at Farpoint”, but I think its more consistent with Deep Space Nine and later TNG, especially “Ship in a Bottle.”

Again we see the effect of Janeway having moved into command from Engineering. She knows her ship better than Jean-Luc knows his, at least from a tech standpoint.

I’ll say it once more, Holodeck safeties should really be hardwired.

The effects in the Grendel scenes look really spectacular, and not cheesy at all. Well, aside from the Doc’s arm getting vaporized.

The Doctor chooses a name (Albert Schweitzer), but then decides it’s not for him.

Harry Kim Death Count: 2