Strange New World (ENT)

In the first season of Enterprise, there's a spirit of "everything old is new again" that pervades the storytelling. Everything Kirk's crew did without even thinking - using the transporter, making first contact, exploring new planets - Archer's crew finds to be a thrilling, and daunting, adventure.

"Strange New World" has a lot of fun with this concept, starting with the "Lower Decks" style opening in the mess hall with several random crewmen and none of our intrepid heroes, discovering that the Enterprise has arrived on a new planet only when they see it out the window.

The writers had a lot of possibilities for what our heroes might find on their first M-Class planet, and I have to applaud their decision to make it ... nothing at all, except some mind-altering drugs.

The episode really did keep me guessing. And if this were any later than the third episode, I wouldn't have bought for a second that T'Pol could be conspiring against the crew. But it's so early in the show, and she's been so openly antagonistic, that it's not a hard sell she might be hiding something on behalf of Vulcan high command.

Between the tricky camera work and the use of light and shadow in the caves and windstorm, the episode made me want to believe there was a lifeform on the planet, even once it became pretty clear the away team was going crazy.

Furthermore, I even bought Trip's freakout, because buried beneath the effect of the drug was the very real fear every member of that crew must be dealing with. I think a lot of "crew goes crazy" episodes on Star Trek don't work because the crazy version of the character is so shallow. But Trip's paranoia is so obviously rooted in the character's real misgivings about the mission (and about T'Pol) that it played out as compelling drama. The crew of Enterprise may have been a bunch of pretty people, but they could also act.

Crewman Elizabeth Cutler is introduced here, to nice effect. The show's willingness to build an ensemble beyond the leads shows that the lessons of past shows are not entirely forgotten. Another good touch is the use of the Hoshi and the Vulcan language to get them out of the climactic showdown. Finding ways to keep a communications officer relevant is a bit of a balancing act, so it's nice to see the creativity.

The camping scenes, the ghost stories, the absurd conceit of bringing your dog on an away mission so he can get some fresh air all worked. The beginning of the series is also an important time to let your characters play a little, get the audience comfortable with them.

I liked this episode a lot. It didn't blow me a way with a great sci-fi concept or stunning effects, but it did entertain me and ingratiate its characters to me. It was good to see Archer work with first Phlox, than Reed, and than Hoshi to craft a solution to his crew's dilemma - the whole ensemble was used to good effect.

Random observations:

- I do believe Archer's lie about a "silicon-based lifeform" was a shout out.

- Cutler's appearances are a bit sad, also, to those of us who followed the show when it was on, as actress Kellie Waymire died unexpectedly in 2003, during the third season of Enterprise.

- Next week is (hopefully) double DS9, to get us back on track and finally make up for my missed Tuesday on Christmas. If we had done double DS9 last week, it would have perfectly lined up with the 20th anniversary of DS9's premier. Too bad I didn't know about that until just now.

The Cloud (VOY)

       Most Star Trek episodes (post-TOS) have an A plot and a B plot – usually the A plot is something that the crew has to face, like a space anomaly or a race of aliens, and the B plot is something a particular character to contend with. In other words, the A plots consist of external conflict, while the B plots are all about internal conflict. Every so often, though, the internal, character-based conflict takes center stage, and the space anomaly feels like an afterthought. This is the case with “The Cloud”, and it turns it into a nice slice-of-life look at how everyone is handling being stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

Just a stroll.

      We open with a Captain’s log, and a wonderful sequence wherein we see the isolation Captain Janeway feels from her crew. Paris and Kim respond awkwardly to her attempts to make small talk, and when she comes to Engineering to “check in”, B’Elanna insists on treating the visit like a surprise inspection. Only Neelix seems willing to talk to her on a person-to-person level, and she’s annoyed with him for trying to talk her into giving up her beloved coffee – power is tight, and replicator use has to be strictly rationed.

      I love Janeway’s caffeine addiction, by the way. It fits her into the stereotype of the all-business business woman, but somehow it connects her to our age and our culture and makes her feel more human anyway. In this case, it also makes for one of the more quotable Voyager lines when she orders the ship into a mysterious Nebula which seems to have the particles Voyager needs to solve its power problems and get back the use of the replicators.

      The Nebula behaves strangely and turns out to be a living creature, which makes up the episode’s largely uninspired A plot. But how Voyager deals with the Nebula-creature takes up maybe 15 minutes of the episode total, and the rest is occupied by Janeway’s struggle to find a new way to relate to her crew, with a handful of scenes that seem a bit disconnected but lay the groundwork for future plotlines.

       In one such scene, Neelix and Kes argue about the value of exploration – Neelix thinks it’s crazy to risk your life and the life of your crew just to see what’s out there, and Kes thinks it’s crazy not to. It sort of reminds me of the famous “Root Beer” scene between Garak and Quark – two aliens giving their perspectives on the Federation. Later Neelix tries to abandon ship and Janeway talks him out of it.

Chakotay's medicine bundle.

       By far the most interesting diversion is Chakotay’s attempt to share his religion with the Captain. First off, Chakotay is to my knowledge the first Starfleet officer to observe any sort of spiritual practice or acknowledge a belief in a higher power at all (yes, tell me all about the Bajorans, but the ones we see in Starfleet, like Ro Laren and Sit Jaxa, are not the most devout of the bunch.)

       Chakotay doesn’t identify with any real life tribe (probably for fear of screwing up their research and offending said tribe) and I have no idea what his animal guide belief is based on, but it’s interesting the Janeway and B’Elanna don’t seem to regard it as a religion, even though that’s clearly what it is. They seem to consider it more of a meditation practice, like Yoga, and Chakotay himself is unphazed by this.

In the final vignette, Paris shows Kim the Holodeck program he’s written simulating a pool hall in Marseille where he used to spend a lot of time. This scene feels jarringly disconnected from everything in the episode, but the payoff comes in the final scene when Janeway joins them in the Pool hall and proceeds to hustle Tom. She ends her Captain’s log, saying that the distance between Captain and crew is important, but out here it might be necessary to relax these restrictions.

It’s an interesting choice – it took Picard seven years to join his senior staff for a game of poker. The message we’re getting is that this is a Captain who’s going to get much more attached to her crew. Perhaps it’s fitting for our first female Captain to be a little more nurturing, but I think it will behoove us to remember another stereotype – the female bear is much scarier than the male if you get between her and her cubs. Janeway will get her crew home, and she might have to break some rules Picard would never break in the process.

Solids.

Random Observations: 

 The camera work in the opening scene in Engineering really captures Janeway's sense of isolation. It's a very long shot for a Star Trek episode, and must have been tough to film, but it gives a beautiful effect.

 

The dialogue in the brief Neelix/Kes scene is really nice. My favorite bit is Kes's line:

"If I were Captain, I'd open every crack in the universe and peek inside, just like Captain Janeway does."

As I've said before, she embodies the spirit of Starfleet more than anyone else in the crew.

At one point, Chakotay says the ship only has 38 photon torpedos. You better believe we’re starting a photon torpedo count.

B’Elanna suggest the idea of giving the Doctor access to his own program – some serious foreshadowing, as she later does just that, and many plot hooks are created.

Speaking of the Doctor, the lack of respect with which the crew treats him is disgusting (Janeway muting him in the middle of a staff meeting, etc.) I guess if you’ve grown up with holograms that seem like real people it’s easy to compartmentalize and not treat a Hologram like a person, but by now they must be starting to realize he’s more than a sophisticated tricorder.

This train of thought raises some unfortunate implications with Tom’s treatment of holographic women.

Fatalities: 0

Shuttlecraft lost: 0

Torpedos remaining: 37

Mudd's Women (TOS)

Last night my father and I rang in the New Year with the widely-panned 1998 Lost in Space movie. It was, all told, a lot worse than I remembered, which I guess comes from the fact that this time I wasn't 10.

One of the big problems with the attempt to reboot Lost In Space was that when you think about the show, when you think about the cultural touchstones it spawned, you think of the evil, cowardly ham Dr. Smith, the boy wonder Will Robinson, and the robot. Maybe the daring space ranger Major West and maybe the intrepid Captain Robinson.

But the womenfolk in the original show were an underwhelming lot. Maureen Robinson was a highly stereotypical 50s housewife, Judy was a love interest and a damsel in distress and Penny ... well, Penny was also there.

So the reboot had to more or less invent characterizations, meaningful roles, and acceptable 90s niches for the women of the cast, which makes it feel like a completely different show. I think it was the right choice, but it was a big hurdle.

What does all this have to do with Star Trek? Only this: Of all the ways in which 60s sci-fi ages badly, none is so hard to overcome as the casual sexism of the era. This is my experience with Heinlein's otherwise masterful Stranger in a Strange Land, too. What do women do in space? The same thing they do down on Earth: cook, clean, look pretty, and let the men work.

I cringe when I see it on Lost In Space, but when I see it on Star Trek, my home, the idealized future I choose to buy into on a weekly basis, it pains me. And that's how I feel about Mudd's Women. It's a sexist mess.

Of course, it's also the debut of one of the most celebrated peripheral players of the Original Series: Harcourt Fenton Mudd. And he's actually a pretty good, compelling character. Star Trek is not Star Wars, and it's never gotten a handle on the criminal element or the civilian spacefarer. Star Trek stories tend to be clashes of governments. What Joe the Plumber does in the 24th Century is just not in our purview. Episodes like TNG's "The Outrageous Okona" try to give us a Trek Han Solo and miss the mark.

But somehow Mudd works. He's funny without being grating and he's scheming without being villainous  He's a foil for Kirk's sense of law and order, which is an important quality in a Captain and one that can sometimes get lost up against Kirk's more well-known penchant for daring, risky maneuvers. But he doesn't suffer fools in his crew or on his ship, if he can help it.

The Enterprise ends up with Mudd as an unplanned passenger when they rescue him from his exploding ship (which he did not have a license to fly). He has a "cargo" of three beautiful women in tow (dressed more or less like Vanna White) and they have an almost hypnotic affect on the crew. The women, Mudd claims, are wives for space settlers and Mudd is basically their pimp.

There aren't really any twists after that. The Enterprise is running low on lithium crystals. (it seems like it ought to be dilithium, but this time, lithium. Just go with it.) They find a lithium mine in range, with three miners working in it. Mudd manages to contact the miners ahead of time, and when Kirk and crew arrive the miners won't exchange the dilithium for anything but the women.

This is sort of a lot like buying and selling people, but that point is never really addressed in the episode. Instead, the big Star Trek conceit is something called the Venus drug, which makes women more beautiful. See, these space bimbos aren't really beautiful at all. They're uggos! And Mudd is deceiving the innocent miners with drugs. I mean, yes, they're still smart, brave women, still skilled at cooking and cleaning, and not actually that bad looking, but they're NOT IMPOSSIBLY GORGEOUS and Mudd almost tricked these miners into marrying them. Isn't he evil?

The drug works kind of like make-up, actually. And I guess it also does their hair?

This is a case where the slight that the show is trying to sell us is so laughably dwarfed by the sexism the show ignores that it's all pretty dumb. Who cares if these women are taking drugs that makes them look prettier? Shouldn't we care that their only aspiration in life is to live on a desolate rock in space cooking and cleaning for skeezy space miners? (Where, of course, the Enterprise leaves them at the end, happily ever after.) And that's not even to mention the part where Kirk gives Eve a placebo and it works just like the Venus drug because it was self-confidence all along that made them pretty, apparently.

I liked Mudd. But that's about all there was to like here, for me. I'm not entirely sure what the show was swinging for, but I do think it missed. I'm looking forward to the other Mudd appearance, which, if I recall correctly, has less sexism but still some, and also robots.

Random Observations:

- Vanna White comments aside, the costume designers on TOS do nice work here.

- The women of the crew are barely in this episode, which is a shame because they provide a nice counterbalance as women with careers who aren't just in space to find husbands. Apparently a scene where Mudd tries to talk Uhura into taking the drug landed on the cutting room floor.

- For that matter, the crew is barely in this episode. There are several scenes that are just guest stars including a pretty long sequence between Eve and the miner. I think the episode suffers from the regulars being so badly sidelined.

- Because I took Christmas off, our schedule is sort of messed up; this ought to have been a Deep Space Nine week. Expect a double Tuesday or an extra mid-week review at some point to get us back on track.

Where No One Has Gone Before (TNG)

 In case I haven’t made this clear already, I don’t hate Wesley Crusher. When I was first introduced to him, I actually really liked him – I think he’s definitely the wish-fulfillment character for young Trekkies who are too eager to be grown-ups, and I definitely found myself in that category while TNG was still airing. This time around, I found him annoying in “The Naked Now”, but tolerable the rest of the time, and in “Where No One Has Gone Before” I once again find myself rooting for the guy.

Wesley doesn’t actually save the ship in this episode. He tries to, but Commander Riker does the sensible thing and doesn’t listen to him. Wesley, in Main Engineering working on a school project, is an outsider in the world of Important People like engineering genius Kosinski, and as such no one notices him. But this allows him to notice Kosinski’s mild-mannered assistant, who, like Wesley, is more than he appears.

And that’s at the heart of this episode. The scenes where we see the crew’s fantasies and fears becoming reality are fun and exciting and give the special effects team a chance to show off, but this is ground TOS has tread many times, and TNG doesn’t make more than a token effort to retread it. Instead, it focuses on the enigmatic alien who brought them out so far, and his relationship with the overlooked and misunderstood Wesley.

Just your run-of-the-mill translucent goat man.

We don’t learn much about the Traveler, in this episode or the other two in which he appears. But he is not Q. He can’t snap his fingers and reset everything, and he can’t travel the universe without a ship to take him. He also doesn’t care about Important People – while Kosinski insists on speaking only to the Captain, being offended by being put in Riker and Troi’s hands, the Traveler happily converses with Wesley. And later he tells Captain Picard that Wesley has the potential to be the next phase of human evolution, essentially, and needs to be nurtured in this.

I am sure the Wesley detractors hate this scene, especially given the not-so-secret fact that Wesley is Gene Rodenberry’s author insert character. But Picard’s decision to make Wesley Acting Ensign really only makes sense in light of that conversation But Picard’s decision to make Wesley Acting Ensign really only makes sense in light of that conversation.

Wait, a minute - this isn't waste extraction!

The rest of the episode’s plot, especially the second act, is lackluster, but not cringe-inducing. Picard’s admonishing the crew to control their thoughts is amusing, but there’s no payoff – everything from that point on goes a little too perfectly. The climax fails to build much tension, and not enough time is spent establishing the danger of people’s thoughts running wild – other episodes do this concept much better.             

Most of the character moments in this episode are light-hearted and happen as a result of the thoughts-become-reality premise – a notable exception being Tasha’s poorly-executed flashback to the rape planet. The opening scene of Riker being (it turns out justifiably) nervous about Kazinski toying with the engines helps set up the Picard/ Riker dynamic in a nice way.        

I didn’t hate this episode. But I didn’t like it all that much either. The Wesley/ Traveler plot worked a lot better than anything else that was going on, and the early scenes with Kazinki give us a nice sense of Riker as a character, but the writer’s at this point really have a lot to learn about pacing, action, and structuring a plot to give emotional tension.

Stray Observations:

Kazinski (Stanley Kamel) does an excellent job as the arrogant genius who gets cut down to size, though I would have loved to see a bit more of his downfall.

It’s weird that he doesn’t wear a combadge.

Troi is especially useless in this episode. She basically tells Riker that Kazinski is a dick, which everyone already knows.

Worf remembering his pet Targ totally contradicts the Worf backstory we get later.

Tasha/Geordi shiptease? That didn’t go anywhere.

Scale calculations are all over the place. At one point someone says we’ve only charted 11% of the Galaxy, as opposed to roughly half by the time Voyager comes around. Also Data says it would only take 300 years at Warp Nine to get home from another galaxy – I don’t think that jives with Voyager’s 75 year figure, but I could be wrong.

Geordi is still not Chief Engineer – now it’s someone called “Mr. Argyle” (a sly TOS reference?) but he’s introduced as “one of our chief Engineers.”

The scenes with the minor crewmen ballet dancing and playing in a string quartet are precious.

The remastered visuals are actually quite stunning.

The Phage (VOY)

            Voyager is an adventure show. It toys with the more cerebral preoccupations of TNG, but ultimately, it’s about swashbuckling and having a good time, and not caring if your villains come off a bit cheesy. In this way, I think it’s telling that they chose the fourth episode to introduce the Vidians, a villain whose major preoccupation is stealing people’s internal organs.

            Note that Spock’s Brain is often considered the worst episode of the Original Star Trek, so internal-organ-snatching shenanigans are not something with proven popularity. But “The Phage” manages to be quite an enjoyable hour of television, balancing character development and tension, even if at times some of the plot details come across a bit contrived.

Neelix learns the hard way why you don't split the party.

            We open with the Voyager experiencing the first of many resource shortages – in this case, dilithium reserves are extremely low. With Neelix’s help, though, the crew has found an asteroid rich in the mineral. Determined to prove his usefulness to the Captain, the Talaxian Jack-of-All-Trades beams down with the survey team, and is promptly shot when he wonders off on his own.

            It turns out whoever shot him beamed his lungs out of his body. To make matters worse, the asteroid has no dilithium at all, it was all a ruse by the organ snatchers, who escape on their own ship with Voyager in hot pursuit. The Doctor manages to rig up some holographic lungs for Neelix, but the means he can’t leave sickbay or move from his bed at all.

            The rest of the episode is split between a kind of silly sci-fi chase where Voyager follows the ship into a giant asteroid filled with fun-house mirrors (not the most effective tension—building device) and scenes in sickbay, where both Neelix and the Doctor try to adapt to their new situations. Neelix has to confront the possibility of never leaving the biobed, and the Doctor has to confront the reality that he is not just a short term replacement anymore, and Kes is trying to help both of them come to terms with these facts. These scenes are well-written and show a lot of promise for the characters.

They get so much creepier once they start stealing faces.

            Janeways plot stays pretty cheesy and silly until she finally captures the two aliens, called Vidians, and tries to get Neelix’s lungs back. Unfortunately, the lungs were urgently needed and have already been implanted in one of the aliens. It turns out the Vidian race has struggled for thousands of years with an untreatable illness called The Phage, which causes systematic organ failure. To survive, they take organs from other species.

            Ultimately, the Vidians agree to use their superior biotech to give Neelix one of Kes’s lungs, since they’re used to modifying organs for safer transplant. Janeway warns them that if any of their people try to take organs from Voyager again, there will be hell to pay, but oddly enough lets them go on their way. As she points out, though, she hardly has a choice –  there are no authorities to turn them over to, and they can’t sit in Voyager’s brig indefinitely, so it’s ether kill them or let them go, and she’s not about to go around executing people. But this is a dilemma that isn’t going to go away.

Random Observations:

Kes is the first member of the crew to see the Doctor as a person with needs, and that includes the Doctor. Kes’s naiveté is a flaw, but it also seems to lead to her seeing things everyone else overlooks. And through her patronage, the Doc is starting to question his own identity.

There is a Neelix/Paris/Kes love triangle, and as these things go I think it’s kind of fun.

Voyager being much smaller than the Enterprise opens up new opportunities for action sequences, as the asteroid chase demonstrates.

This is the first we see of Neelix’s culinary obsession (though we hear about it before.)

The Vidian make-up is wonderfully ugly. Visually, it does a lot towards making their rather stretched premise believable.

On that note, wouldn’t a culture as advanced as the Vidians have figured out how to grow replacement organs by now? We’re almost there now.

I find it a little hard to swallow that this early in the series Janeway is already risking the whole ship for Neelix. He’s just joined their crew, and hasn’t even proven himself particularly useful yet. Tuvok might have something to say about the needs of the many…

The Vidian facility is obviously the same corridor as the Power Plant in “Time and Again”. It’s too distinctive to keep reusing.

Vidian: According to my readings, you are not here.

Doctor: Believe me, I wish I weren’t.

Minor Character Watch: Seska is now in Engineering Yellow, as she will be from now on.

Shuttles lost: 0

Fatalities: 0