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.