The Daily Drew

"Nothing Personal"

2012-02-23T08:00:00.007-05:00

Homicide: Life on the Street - Season Three

Airdate: April 21, 1995
Daniel Baldwin, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Isabella Hoffmann
Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor
And Ned Beatty
Created by Paul Attanasio
Teleplay by Bonnie Mark
Story by Tom Fontana & James Yoshimura
Directed by Tim Van Patten

Note the irony in the title: everything about this episode is personal. The reason why I like this show so much (whereas I have no interest whatsoever in any variety of "Law and Order") is because it focuses so much attention on the personal dramas of the characters. There's always some careful balancing to do. Some episodes focus largely on homicide investigations, a lot of episodes will contain both personal and professional stories, but this episode focuses almost entirely on personal stuff.

The most excruciating story involved Felton, whose life has been falling steadily apart all season. The other detectives have started to notice what bad shape he's in. At first, it looks like everything is going to be ok and his wife is going to come home with the kids "soon". But it all comes crashing down when she changed her mind again. Worst of all, Felton's personal drama causes him to lose some letters which (probably don't, but) could hold the key to cracking Crosetti's toughest open case, which is now putting Howard's legendary winning-streak in jeopardy.

There's also some stuff about Lewis, Munch, and Bayliss closing on their bar. At first, this seems like unambiguously good news (and it feels like it's been a long time coming), but there's far more bureaucratic bullshit for the self-described "three musketeers" to endure.

But the most interesting story to be found in this episode involves Giardello. Russert invites him along to have lunch with a female friend of hers. At first, this seems like just the thing to cheer him up after finally distributing Crosetti's open cases, especially when he seems to make a connection with Russert's friend. But when Russert relays to him that her friend isn't interested, Gee assumes the problem must be that he's too dark, and this sets him into a rage. This is another example of how thoughtfully this show approaches issues of race, and I very much appreciate that. But it also gives Gee a chance to be emotionally vulnerable, and that deepens the character quite nicely.

"I, Borg"

2012-02-22T13:00:00.007-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: May 11, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Written by René Echevarria
Directed by Robert Lederman

Television and film have a wonderful capacity to explore issues of morality, as does science fiction. That's why I've always considered it a shame that so much science fiction gets reduced to dumb space action. But "Star Trek" never shied away from difficult moral situations, at least on television. But when you're using a fictional story to make a point, it's all too easy to rig things in your favor. In fiction, doing the right thing leads reliably to the better result. Real life isn't always like that.

What I appreciate about this episode is that it does not make things easy for itself in any way. It presents a situation where Picard could use a single Borg to strike a blow against the entire collective. The issue is whether it is morally permissible to use a sentient being, even a Borg, in this way. The "right" answer is no, and that's the answer that Picard chooses, and the entire episode is constructed to justify that choice. The script not only has to convince us that it's the right choice, but it also has to plausibly get Picard from one side of the issue to the other. Picard passes on an opportunity to possibly destroy the Borg completely, which means that many more people will be destroyed by the Borg in the years ahead. Every time a Borg kills or assimilates someone after this point, we have to consider that Picard maybe could have prevented it.

As for whether Picard's decision is really the right one, that's something I've gone back and forth on in my own mind in the years since I first saw this episode. The only thing I'm prepared to say now with any confidence is that this decision should not have been made by Picard. This is another case where realism would ruin the episode, so forget it. Picard simply shouldn't have the authority to make this decision on his own, but the episode needs him to have that authority, so that's good enough for me.

Even more impressive to me than Picard's decision, which I'm not entirely sure I agree with, is the way in which he went about making it. Initially, he refused to see "Hugh" or to spend any time with him at all. He refused to acknowledge, even in his own mind, that this was anything other than a Borg drone. Guinan convinced that he couldn't use the Borg as a weapon unless he was prepared to face up to the implications. That means looking Hugh in the eye, so that Picard can see for himself who and what Hugh is. In a way, I think that's even more important than the actual choice. I can respect many perspectives on the ultimate issue, but I can't respect any perspective that doesn't take Hugh into account.

Anyway, this is a totally satisfying Borg story that isn't called "The Best of Both Worlds". There aren't a lot of those. The reason why this works, I think, is because it's a completely different sort of Borg episode. The "Star Trek" franchise will try to recapture the magic of "The Best of Both Worlds" many times, and it will never succeed. The Borg work best when they can be approached in a new and different way. There is no better example of that than this episode.

"All Through the House"

2012-02-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

Homicide: Life on the Street - Season Three

Airdate: December 16, 1994
Daniel Baldwin, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Isabella Hoffmann
Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor
And Ned Beatty
Created by Paul Attanasio
Written by Henry Bromell
Directed by Peter Medak

As the episode title should make pretty clear, the events of this episode occur on Christmas Eve. That makes it a "Christmas episode" pretty much by definition. Typically, Christmas episodes are upbeat and life-affirming. But this is a show about homicide detectives. There just aren't a lot of upbeat, life-affirming stories to be had. But after the non-stump grump-fest we had yesterday, I'm in the mood for something upbeat.

And in a sense, that's what we get. Bayliss spends the episode trying to convince someone, anyone, to play Hearts with him for money. He finally convinces Giardello to play, which encourages some others to join, and Bayliss ends up losing his shirt. That's upbeat. And Bolander brought in a tree to be decorated. Even Munch's dismal cynicism counts as upbeat, because it's so enjoyable, and because I suspect that deep down Munch means it all in a good-natured sort of way.

But there are still homicides to be investigated. Lt. Russert partners up with Lewis when a witness in an old case gets burned to death. Russert has to tell the woman's mother (played by Nancy Marchand) about the girl's grisly death, and she doesn't take it very well. Meanwhile, Munch gets stuck hanging out with the young son of a murdered Santa Claus, desperately hoping to avoid being the one who has to tell the boy that his dad won't be coming home.

That's the story that sticks out the most in my mind (although Nancy Marchand's powerful and unsettling performance is up there too). The kid is a wise-ass, and his interactions with Munch are just outstanding. These two make a fantastic pair. But as the episode unfolds, we get more and more uncomfortable right along with Munch, knowing that this boy's Christmas is about to be ruined in the worst way imaginable. There's a twist at the end that puts an entirely different spin on the whole thing. It's an implausible enough twist to qualify as a "Christmas miracle", but that doesn't both me at all. It's a wonderful, upbeat, life-affirming story for Christmas. I'll take that.

"Imaginary Friend"

2012-02-21T13:00:00.059-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: May 4, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Teleplay by Edithe Swensen and Brannon Braga
Story by Jean Louise Matthias & Ronald Wilkerson and Richard Fliegel
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont

I liked this episode much more than I expected to. There are a few things about the story, the characters, and the performances that annoy me. But I find a lot more to enjoy this latest time through the episode. For example, there's a great deal of enjoyment to be had in this episode by focusing on how hilariously wrong Counselor Troi is about everything. The advice she gives Clara and her father in this episode is good advice for a child holding on to an imaginary friend. But it's terrible advice for a girl being manipulated by a malevolent alien intelligence disguised as her imaginary friend. To be fair, Troi couldn't have known that, unless she somehow could have sensed the presence of a malevolent intelligence. Ahem. Well, I guess this is another one of those aliens that Troi can't sense. Rotten luck!

It's also interesting to notice that the alien pretending to be Clara's imaginary friend, Isabella, behaves in such a way as to fit comfortably within the "young adult" fiction trope of the "bad influence". It's almost like this script wants to have it both ways. The impressive thing is that it succeeds. This episode is about a girl being manipulated by a malevolent alien intelligence disguised as her imaginary friend, but it's also about a good little girl being led astray by a bad little girl. These are two entirely different stories, but this script is telling them both at the same time.

This episode also has some really interesting things to say about imaginary friends. I was surprised to learn that Guinan was only written into this script at the last minute when Whoopi Goldberg suddenly became available. That goodness she was. Her role in this story is to stick up for imaginary friends. She actually makes an argument for the usefulness of imaginary friends to adults, and that's a really, really interesting idea. The fact that it comes from Guinan gives it a weight it wouldn't have had from anyone else save Picard (for whom it would be out-of-character). An imaginary friend does not need to be real to have a genuine impact on a person's life.

But the episode is kind of annoying because the girls are kind of annoying. You get that with child actors, unfortunately. Acting isn't a particularly difficult thing to do, but it's particularly difficult to do it well. A lot of this episode rests on the those performances. They're not at all bad. In fact, they're very good. But they're not quite good enough to shoulder the heavy load that the script is putting on them. The worst performance comes from Jeff Allin as Clara's father. He manages to make Daniel Sutter a very unappealing and unsympathetic character, and I'm certain that wasn't the intention. On the other end of the scale, there's that glorious "oh shit!" moment when Troi suddenly sees Isabella for the first time.

"Happy to Be Here"

2012-02-21T08:00:00.006-05:00

Homicide: Life on the Street - Season Three

Airdate: November 18, 1994
Daniel Baldwin, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Isabella Hoffmann
Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor
And Ned Beatty
Created by Paul Attanasio
Teleplay by Julie Martin
Story by Tom Fontana & Julie Martin
Directed by Lee Bonner

Bayliss's relationship with Emma Zoole continues, and comes to an end, in this episode. I feel really sorry for the poor guy. He really loves Emma, but he just doesn't have it in him to stick with a relationship under the circumstances as they are. Emma isn't just fascinated with death, but she also has a pretty broad-minded approach to relationships. She tells her boyfriend about her relationship with Bayliss, and he gets angry and shoves her around somewhat. She tells Bayliss, and he goes into white knight mode and confronts the boyfriend. This is not what Emma wanted at all, so she breaks it off with Bayliss. He didn't really do anything wrong, except to get carried away with a whirlwind romance that he never should have gotten involved with.

But there are some consequences to this relationship that extend beyond the parameters of Bayliss's sex life. He starts neglecting his work and gets an angry talking to from Giardello. And Lewis is still pretty pissed at him, which threatens to tear apart the partnership between Lewis, Munch, and Bayliss. Oh, I haven't mentioned that before, I don't think, but the three of them are in the process of buying a bar together.Worst of all, Bayliss completely snaps on a convenience store clerk who refuses to let him slide on eleven cents. Bayliss pulls his weapon and commits armed robbery, stealing a six-pack of beer, some cookies, and some gum. Fortunately, Pembleton takes care of it for him.

Giardello is also dealing with a difficult situation, as a good friend of his was murdered. Sam Thorne was an independent, self-published journalist who was working on a story about Columbian cartels getting involved in the Baltimore drug trade.This leads Gee to take a much more active role in the investigation than he usually does, and although the killer is identified and arrested, it's not too satisfying. The killer is described by a friend as being in his own dream world, and willing to do basically whatever anyone tells him to do. He killed Thorne for $500 to buy a really nice mountain bike. Thorne's killing was a product of organized crime, but the actual killer was just some poor dumb bastard who didn't really understand what he was even doing.

The episode title is ironic. All of these stories add up to the fact that just about everyone is depressed for one reason or another. Felton's wife left him and took the kids, and he has no idea where they are. He calls every moving company in the city, every hotel and motel, trying to find her, but has no success at all. It's a very good episode, because all of these stories are very good, and the actors all make it work brilliantly. But it's not an easy episode to watch, or particularly enjoyable. It's just so bleak.

"The Perfect Mate"

2012-02-20T13:00:00.001-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: April 25, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Teleplay by Gary Perconte & Michael Piller
Story by René Echevarria and Gary Perconte
Directed by Cliff Bole

The theme of this episode is duty, one of the most complex and fascinating concepts in all of moral philosophy. This isn't a philosophy blog, so I don't want to get too deeply into this issue, but it is relevant to this episode. This is one of those occasions where I profoundly disagree with the moral viewpoint that the episode represents. But I want to be clear, my issue is not specifically with the choices that the characters make in the episode, but rather with how the writers contrived the situation to lead to a particular outcome.

Kamala, played by Famke Jannsen (with the complete lack of charisma I've come to expect from her), is the titular "perfect mate". She has the ability to sense whatever a man desires of her and to accommodate that desire. At first, she's able to change to suit the needs of any man in her vicinity, but soon she must "imprint" on one particular person. She's on board the Enterprise in order to be given as a "gift" to facilitate a peace treaty, in the hopes of ending centuries of bloodshed. She is aware of her purpose, and is a willing volunteer.

Picard and Riker are initially appalled, thinking of Kamala as a slave being given as property. Obviously, this offends their principles about the fundamental rights of all sentient beings. But they are mollified by the fact that she is a genuinely willing volunteer. And I certainly wouldn't suggest that her willingness is irrelevant to the moral status of this arrangement, I would suggest that it is not a completely satisfactory answer to Picard's concerns. A willing slave is still a slave, and it is slavery which offends us. Of course, I'm looking at this from the perspective of a highly paternalistic society with a long and shameful history of systematic sexual exploitation of women.

It would be too much to say that this episode defends the sexual exploitation of women generally, but it is a story about defending the sexual exploitation of this woman under these circumstances. That's a choice made by the writers. They easily could have told a story about Picard rescuing Kimala from sexual exploitation, and that story would have been a much better fit for this series. I'm willing to accept that Picard did the right thing by not interfering in this episode, but I don't have to like it. And I don't.

The big twist at the end of the episode is that Kimala does, in fact, imprint on Picard. This means that for the rest of her life, she is going to be the perfect woman for a man who values intelligent, self-possessed, independent women, but she'll married to a man who expects a slave. That is a profoundly tragic ending for Kimala. But by imprinting on Picard, she becomes the sort of woman who would be happy with a man like Picard, and she also "inherits" his sense of duty. She ends up submitting herself to an unsatisfying life with a man who, we can fairly expect, isn't anything like Picard.

But the more fundamental problem is that this character, Kimala, has no content except that which she receives from men. Every characteristic of her personality comes from the men around her. Sure, the script provides an interesting sci-fi reason for her to be a shallow male sex fantasy, but she's still a shallow male sex fantasy. That sort of thing doesn't belong in "Star Trek: The Next Generation".

"A Model Citizen"

2012-02-20T08:00:00.006-05:00

Homicide: Life on the Street - Season Three

Airdate: November 11, 1994
Daniel Baldwin, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Isabella Hoffmann
Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor
And Ned Beatty
Created by Paul Attanasio
Teleplay by Noel Behn
Story by Tom Fontana & Jorge Zamacona
Directed by John McNaughton

According to the order in which these episodes were originally broadcast, this was the fourth episode of Season Three. That means that the season opened with the three-part story about the "white gloves" killer and then proceeded directly to this episode. In a way, this makes sense, because this episode includes some important follow-up to that case, as Annabella Wilgis brings a civil suit against Penbleton, Russert, and the City of Baltimore for Pembleton's conduct during the interrogation. But there's a bigger problem. When this originally aired, no one had yet seen "Crosetti". So when Lewis tells Emma Zoole that Crosetti is dead, this would have been pretty big news for the viewers. I'm sorry to keep going on about the running order, especially since the DVDs have rectified the error, but it's utterly baffling to me.

So who is Emma Zoole? She is one of the most fascinating guest characters I've ever seen. The character is introduced as a potential love interest for Lewis. He spots her across the parking lot and is instantly smitten. She's an aspiring artist, but she works making models of crime scenes for the state's attorney's office. She's cute, sweet, funny, and engaging. Unfortunately, she's just not that into Lewis. Ok, that's a nice slice-of-life kind of story. But it doesn't stop there.

Bayliss also falls for her at first sight, but this time, she does feel that mysterious spark in return. Bayliss knows that Lewis has taken a shine to her, but he gets swept off his feet, and ends up taking her out. Ok, here's another good slice-of-life story. Two co-workers, two friends, two business partners, and they both like the same woman. There's some good drama to be had there as well, and once again, this is a story that shouldn't be difficult for anyone to relate to. But it's not over yet.

Emma Zoole, it turns out, is rather death-obsessed. After their date, she takes Bayliss back to her place for sex, and that's when we discover that she sleeps in a coffin. It's a specially made coffin designed to accommodate the presence of a guest, so to speak, but it's a coffin. And whitebread, straight-laced, by-the-book Bayliss is freaked the fuck out. But he doesn't let that stop him. Ok, this is not a slice-of-life story. At least, it isn't a slice of my life! I love the whole progression of this story. It manages to cover a lot of territory very quickly, but without feeling especially rushed or even particularly contrived (which is impressive, because it obviously is entirely contrived).

I'm reminded of "A Many Splendored Thing", the Season Two episode which included (among other things) Pembleton and Bayliss investigating a murder related to an S&M/fetish shop. There is nothing particularly judgmental about the way this episode portrays Zoole's unconventional interests. Bayliss, of course, isn't nearly so open-minded (but then, it isn't his mind that's making the decisions for him right now), but Zoole's predilections are presented non-judgmentally. That's one of the many, many things I really love about this show.

The 39 Steps (1935)

2012-02-18T11:00:00.004-05:00

Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim
Godfrey Tearle, Peggy Ashcroft, John Laurie
Screenplay by Charles Bennett
Dialogue by Ian Hay
Produced by Michael Balcon
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Arguably the peak of Alfred Hitchcock's career came in the 1950s, when he made some of his most popular, most successful, and most enduring films. What makes this period so important to Hitchcock's career is the fact that he really was at the very top of his game. A string of successful Hollywood films through the 1940s, beginning with Rebecca and including Notorious, eventually game him the same level of autonomy and creative control he had enjoyed in his British period in the 1930s. When you compare the films he made during each of these two periods, you can see quite a bit of similarities. For example, he made The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1934, only to remake it 22 years later.

That's the most overt link between these two periods, but there are others. The The 39 Steps is one of the most enduring films of his British period, and the similarities between it and North by Northwest are difficult to overlook. It would be too much to suggest that they are the same movie, but they have a great deal in common. They both involve an ordinary man who gets caught up in some political intrigue entirely through circumstance, is pursued by both police and foreign agents, and ultimately has to foil an espionage plot in order to clear his name. And, oh yes, there's a woman.

The main differences between these two periods are superficial. In the 1950s, Hitchcock had access to better film technology and much more money than he had in the 1930s. He also had access to some of the greatest Hollywood screen stars of all time. It shouldn't be surprising that his films from the 1950s have thoroughly overshadowed his films from the 1930s (especially given the rather parochial tastes of the American film-goer), but fans of his Hollywood heyday should seek out his earlier films like this one and The Lady Vanishes. They're much older and they look it, and they don't have those glamorous Hollywood stars, but otherwise they sit comfortably beside the greatest films of his long and illustrious career.

Robert Donat is clearly cut from the same cloth as Hitchcock's better-known American leading men. Like Cary Grant, he's capable of being sophisticated and dignified without losing that common touch, and it is precisely that quality that is on display in this film. He's an outstanding example of a Hitchcockian leading man, capable of charm, humor, romance, and action, just like Cary Grant in North by Northwest. His co-star, Madeleine Carroll, is similarly typical of Hitchcock's approach to his leading ladies. She's lovely, of course, but also headstrong and spirited. The arc of the two characters these actors play, Richard Hannay and Pamela, should also be familiar to Hitchcock fans. They are thrown together quite by accident, spend most of their time bickering with each other, and end up happily in love at the end of their ordeal together.

The story is also quite clever, and similarly typical of the director's major tropes. The title refers to the film's great MacGuffin. he title phrase is introduced, but not explained, early in the film. What it really means is only revealed at the very end, and by that point, it no longer really matters. The story is basically over already. Similarly, the top secret information that agents of an unidentified foreign power are attempting to smuggle out of England are given only the most cursory explanation. All of that stuff is just an excuse to get an ordinary man roped into an extraordinary situation, and that's Hitchcock all over.

The plot is also quite clever. The film opens in a music hall where we see the performance of Mr. Memory, a man who has memorized thousands of facts, and answers questions on demand in front of live audiences. Nothing about the opening act suggests that Mr. Memory's extraordinary talent is in any way relevant to the story, but the final reveals that it is. It's quite clever. Less so is the circumstances that throw Hannay and Pamela together. They meet briefly on a train fairly early in the film, where she gives him away to the police. Their second meeting later on is entirely coincidental, and that's a bit awkward, but only a bit. Once Donat and Carroll get their banter on, it just doesn't matter anymore.

This film is essential viewing for anyone who considers himself a Hitchcock fan.

"The Last of the Watermen"

2012-02-17T08:00:00.010-05:00

Homicide: Life on the Street - Season Three

Airdate: December 9, 1994
Daniel Baldwin, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Isabella Hoffmann
Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor
And Ned Beatty
Created by Paul Attanasio
Written by Henry Bromell & Tom Fontana
Directed by Richard Pearce

One of the things that I really love about this show is how unlike a TV show it is. Take a look at the teaser. Giardello dressed in (hilariously dated) street clothes walks into a laundromat, and Munch just happens to be there. This is one of those slice-of-life teasers which contributes nothing at all to the story, but reminds us that these characters are co-workers, not necessarily friends, and they have mundane, meaningless interactions like co-workers have. But this episode pulls one stunt that stands out because of just how much like a TV show it is.

Howard is feeling burned out, so she spontaneously takes a vacation, walking right off a crime scene leaving Felton behind. She decides to go home and visit her family, and while she's there, she gets roped into a murder investigation. And her family and friends are suspects. I'm not saying this is a bad story, because it isn't, but it's so
clearly a story. There hasn't been a homicide in this Baltimore suburb for six or seven years, but as soon as Kay Howard comes to visit...

Howard's family are "watermen". They catch oysters to make a living. It's a particular way of life, and it's under threat. The men blame government regulations and environmentalism, but their viewpoint is (realistically) parochial. They love what they do, and it's practically a part of who they are. They don't have any sense of perspective, and they're kicking and screaming against any kind of change. They're even blind to the dangers of over-fishing. And wouldn't you know it, it's the environmentalist who ends up getting killed. With an oyster knife. See what I mean? It's not a bad story, but it screams TV, and that's unusual for this show.

Back in Baltimore, Felton partners up with a reluctant Pembleton to solve the case Howard walked out on, and those two make a great team in an oil and water kind of way. This story definitely doesn't feel like a typical TV kind of story. The killer turns out to be a teenage boy who murdered his grandmother, cut out her tongue, and stuffed it in her mouth. Pembleton spends the episode obsessing about the tongue, convinced that it has some significance. When they find the kid, he confesses to the murder as soon as he's asked about it. No drama. As for the tongue? She talked too much. That's all.

The irony of all this is that in a more conventional show, I would complain that the murder was undermotivated and the confession came to easy, but that's actually the point.

"Cost of Living"

2012-02-16T13:00:00.009-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: April 20, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Written by Peter Allan Fields
Directed by Winrich Kolbe

When Royce and I sat down to watch this episode, we both had to sort of steel ourselves. We were aware that this episode featured Lwaxana Troi and Alexander Rozhenko. I like Lwaxana a lot more than Royce does, but she's annoying, and her episodes have been pretty hit-or-miss so far. As for Alexander... well, to the extent that he's a worthwhile character at all, it's only because he gives Worf an added dimension. There's something rather bold about centering an episode on two recurring characters, relegating the entire regular cast to supporting roles, and I want to be impressed with that. Unfortunately, it's these characters, and this script.

But there's another story here too, and it's a more traditional sci-fi kind of story. But it's very much in the background. The trailer doesn't so much as hint at the involvement of either Lwaxana or Alexander in this episode, but sets up the sci-fi story, which involves some weird space parasite that gets on board the Enterprise, causing a string of malfunctions that ultimately begins to threaten the ship. In the teaser, all we get is a brief look at something getting into the ship. At the very end of Act One, we see it again, but Act One otherwise has nothing at all to do with this story. It's entirely devoted to Lwaxana, who is on her way to marry some alien dignitary she's never even met, and Alexander, who continues to cause difficulties for Worf.

There are a couple of things that I like about this story. Although Lwaxana is especially annoying, she's also especially sympathetic. Her interactions with Alexander show a very different side of her, and it's a compassionate and nurturing side. She's easy to like when she's with Alexander. This episode also highlights one of the character's greatest vulnerabilities: her loneliness. Because of her loneliness, she's evidently prepared to sacrifice her happiness by marrying a man who is thoroughly ill-suited to her. The episode does a good job of burying this under layers of crap, but there's something quite touching about it if you stop and think it over. She must be very lonely indeed if she was even willing to consider marrying this guy. And its her friendship with Alexander that finally shows her how important it is to be true to herself.

That is absolutely the best I can do in defense of this episode, but frankly, it still doesn't get us very far. I find this episode to be extremely tedious and annoying. I suppose the sci-fi story is only in here to give the regulars something to do, no matter how minimal it is, but it really is minimal. It's a 100% technobabble story, and it doesn't even make much sense (apparently removing the parasites from the ship instantly causes the life support systems to stop failing).

"Crosetti"

2012-02-16T08:00:00.009-05:00

Homicide: Life on the Street - Season Three

Airdate: December 2, 1994
Daniel Baldwin, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Isabella Hoffmann
Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor
And Ned Beatty
Created by Paul Attanasio
Teleplay by James Yoshimura
Story by Tom Fontana & James Yoshimura
Directed by Whitney Ransick

What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable. Newspapers often speak of "personal sorrows" or of "incurable illness." These explanations are plausible. But one would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently. He is the guilty one. For that is enough to precipitate all the rancors and all the boredom still in suspension. -- Albert Camus, "An Absurd Reasoning"

The network futzed around with the running order again. I have no idea why. But this episode opens with a caption indicating that it happened in October. As with the first two seasons, the DVDs present us with the originally intended running order, so I haven't seen several episodes that anyone watching this in December 1994 would already have seen. I don't know if viewers would already have heard about Crosetti's suicide by this point. It would be a real shame if they had.

Crosetti was due back from his vacation three days ago. Lewis has been covering for his partner, but even he hasn't heard anything, and he's worried that Crosetti might be mad at him. But Bolander and Munch investigate a body pulled out of the Bay. It looks like a suicide, and it turns out to be Steve Crosetti. (He'd been in the water for about a week, so Jon Polito wasn't asked back to play the corpse.) Lewis can't accept that it's suicide, and that's the central conflict of the episode. There's no crime to solve. It's just a matter of getting Lewis to see the truth. Meanwhile, there are arrangements to be made as the unit comes to terms with the loss of their colleague.

The episode focuses a lot of attention on attitudes toward suicide, and this comes up in various ways. The most obvious, of course, is Lewis, who mentions that Crosetti himself (a practicing Catholic) considered suicide to be a sin. Captain Barnfather insists that Crosetti shouldn't get an honor guard at his funeral because it's a suicide. Giardello objects: he's a cop, he's dead, he gets an honor guard. But no, Barnfather refuses.

And then there's the fact that no one can identify a reason. He didn't leave a note, and no one who knew him was aware of anything in particular in his life that might have moved him to do this. But that's often how it happens. Even when a suicide is motivated by some kind of dramatic personal tragedy, as one might expect, the suicide may not actually occur until years later. And it can be set off by the most trivial thing.

I've mentioned once or twice on this blog that I have a tendency to get a bit weepy over TV shows. This episode hit me pretty hard. Throughout the episode, Pembleton refuses to attend the funeral service, and many of his colleagues are angry with him. But, we are meant to think, Pembleton is still bitter and resentful toward God, which we talked about yesterday. But as the procession passes the precinct house on the way to the cemetery, there's Frank Pembleton in his dress blues, giving Crosetti the honor guard he deserved. I really lost it at that point. And I'm even getting a little teary-eyed just writing about it. It was a beautiful moment.

I'll miss Steve Crosetti as I continue to watch this show. But I'm really going to miss Jon Polito. He put in some outstanding work in his thirteen episodes on this show. In an ensemble full of excellent actors, he was exceptional.

"The First Duty"

2012-02-15T13:00:00.007-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: March 30, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Written by Ronald D. Moore & Naren Shankar
Directed by Paul Lynch

This is a pretty unusual episode, but also a very good one. It's a Wesley episode, but that means something slightly different here than it did in "The Game" earlier this season. This isn't simply an episode where Wesley plays a crucial role in the solution. Wesley is the story, in a way, but the impressive thing is how well the story is developed. It doesn't hurt to have Ron Moore co-writing the script, as he seems to be someone who understands how to use Wesley effectively.

After a teaser which seems calculated to suggest that Wesley may be injured or dead, we quickly learn that he's basically fine. He was injured as a result of a collision in space. Nova Flight, an elite team and close-knit team of pilots including Wesley, suffered a catastrophic collision during a training flight, which resulted in the death of one of the pilots. In the course of the investigation into the accident, it quickly becomes clear that Wesley is involved in some sort of cover-up.

The audience gets clued in before everyone else. It's clear that Wesley is being pressured by Nova Flight leader Nicholas Locarno to conceal the truth and blame the accident on the dead pilot. But the cover story doesn't hold up in light of some unanticipated evidence. Dr. Crusher simply assumes that the evidence has been tampered with, because she thinks she's in an ordinary episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation". We've seen episodes before, in this series and the original series, where a trusted member of the crew is falsely accused of a crime based on circumstantial evidence which often turns out to have been fabricated.

The difficulty of this story lies in coming up with a mistake that Wesley can make which is serious enough to be a big deal, but not serious enough to fatally undermine the character. That's where Locarno comes in. The script needs someone to take the blame, not just from Star Fleet, but from the audience. All surviving members of the team share the responsibility, but Locarno is the most responsible, going so far as to manipulate the others, especially Wesley, into maintaining the cover-up.

In order to work, the script needs Wesley to do the right thing, but in this case, that means betraying his friends. Wesley has always been such a virtuous character, the only way it will be believable for him to behave badly is when he's caught between conflicting duties. It's Wesley's duty to his colleagues that trips him up, but as Picard reminds him, an officer's first duty is to the truth. Wesley takes this advice, even when it looks like they were going to basically get away with it. I'm tempted to argue that Wesley only told the truth because he knew Picard would expose him if he didn't. That interpretation is consistent with what we see, but it's out of step with the obvious point of the episode. In an episode about standing up for the truth, and given Wesley's well-earned reputation for honesty, I think it's only fair to give him full credit for coming forward, even I'd it seems like he may have had no choice.

Locarno is played by Robert Duncan McNeil, who will return as Tom Paris in "Star Trek: Voyager". Originally, the writers wanted to use Locarno for that show, but this would have meant paying royalties to the character's creator for every single episode. So it was decided to invent Tom Paris, a character almost exactly like Locarno, and played by the same actor. That's some serious bullshit.

"Extreme Unction"

2012-02-15T08:00:00.007-05:00

Homicide: Life on the Street - Season Three

Airdate: October 28, 1994
Daniel Baldwin, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Isabella Hofmann
Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor
And Ned Beatty
Created by Paul Attanasio
Teleplay by D. Keith Mano
Story by Tom Fontana & James Yoshimura
Directed by Keith Gordon

Is Tim Bayliss stupid? I never really thought so during the first two seasons, but he seems pretty stupid to me now. I've always thought of him as quite intelligent. He was introduced in the very first episode of the series as someone who wanted to solve crimes through intelligent detective work, making use of his brain. But lately, he seems just a bit dumb. It makes for a stronger contrast between him and Pembleton, of course, and that's handy. But it also makes Bayliss a less interesting character somehow.

The main thrust of this episode is the appearance of a woman claiming to be a witness. She says her name is Pamela Wilgis, and Pembleton is convinced she's full of shit until he learns that she knows about the gloves. That doesn't convince him that she's a bona fide witness, but it does lead him to suspect that she might be more involved than she's saying. A search of her apartment reveals white cotton gloves, so Pembleton goes into interrogation mode, and "Pamela" goes into a multiple personality routine. Is she legitimately crazy, or is this a ruse?

I've mentioned before how much I love interrogation scenes. I just love the fact that there's nothing to work with except actors and dialogue. There's a purity to it, and Andre Braugher never disappoints. This interrogation takes some fascinating and unpredictable turns. The old multiple personality thing is a staple of a certain kind of crime story, and it's usually sensationalistic and kind of dumb. That's not the case here. This isn't just a dramatic stunt, and there's more to it than just the multiple personality thing. This is used to create some conflict between Russert and Pembleton over the issue of interrogation techniques. There's no actual confrontation between them, as Giardello supports Pembleton and convinces Russert to give him room to work.

But then the whole thing gets sidetracked when Wilgis's attorney shows up, and within a matter of hours, Wilgis is on live TV with Matt Rhodes and her lawyer confessing to all of the murders, blaming it on her multiple personality disorder, and blaming that on some religiously-motivated abuse she suffered as a child. After three episodes spent chasing down this killer, the case is wrapped up completely by lawyer and a TV reporter. It's unsatisfying, and it's meant to be. Pembleton had the killer and was on his way of getting a confession, a prosecutable confession, but the whole thing was taken away from him.

And the whole thing triggers in Pembleton a crisis of faith, but a certain kind of crisis of faith that I've always really enjoyed in fiction. Pembleton is disturbed by the problem of evil: how could a benevolent, omnipotent god permit so much evil and suffering in the world? It's a question that theologians have battled fruitlessly for hundreds of years. Rather than concluding from the problem of evil that there is no god, Pembleton concludes that God is not benevolent. I find that fascinating precisely because it's so unusual. All of the standard philosophical arguments on the existence of god are only about existence. Some philosopher or theologian proposes a proof for the existence of God, and then other philosophers come along to poke holes in it. But these proofs never say anything about what God might be like if he does exist. And yet religious people are happy to make that leap of faith to believe not only that there is a god (a dubious proposition already), but against all evidence, that he loves us. Concluding that there is no god because the world sucks is reasonable, but hardly interesting. Concluding that god does exist, and he's responsible for the fact that the world sucks, and hating him for it? That's interesting.

"Cause and Effect"

2012-02-14T13:00:00.010-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: March 16, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Written by Brannon Braga
Directed by Jonathan Frakes

This is another of my favorite episodes. It's another time travel episode, after a fashion, but it manages to come up with an interesting new spin. The episode gets off to an outstanding start. The teaser opens with a shot of the ship's starboard warp nacelle exploding, and after a frantic scene of turbulence on the bridge, Picard gives the order to abandon ship moments before it explodes, killing all aboard. Yup. They're all dead. Everybody's dead, Dave.

After the opening titles, we're back, and no one is dead. There's no caption informing us that this is "12 Hours Earlier", or whatever, but it is, and we have to just pick that up along the way. I like that. So we get a fairly ordinary first act. It's pretty low key, with a couple of minor mysteries. But by the end of the act, we're back where we started. This time we see what happened. Another ship emerged out of a time distortion and collided with the nacelle, which caused the warp core breach which destroyed the ship. Again.

Act Two repeats the entire process, but somewhat differently, as characters begin to notice more and more that they feel like this has happened before. This recurring feeling of déjà vu is the single biggest clue, but it leads the crew to discover other oddities, in a way that is quite reminiscent of last season's "Clues". With Act Three, the characters figure out what's happening, and they have to figure out a way of communicating what they've learned forward into the next "cycle", in order to avert the destruction of the ship.

The resolution is the weakest part of the episode, but it's not a problem. It's largely a technobabble solution, which irritates me, and there's a bit of lucky guesswork involved. And, of course, time travel doesn't make sense. We just have to be willing to go along with some strangeness. For instance, in each repetition through the cycle, Dr. Crusher knocks over a glass of water on her bedside table, until she moves the glass, motivated by a premonition/memory that she will knock it over. In that instance, she still breaks the glass, but in different circumstances. This is presented to us as if it's significant, but I don't see how it could be. It's just a coincidence. It's also not clear how the characters can be stuck repeating the same events over and over, and yet time continues to pass "outside", so when the Enterprise finally escapes, it's a few weeks later than the characters think it ought to be. What? But all of these can be filed under "time travel doesn't make sense" and safely ignored in the interest of a good story. Which this certainly is.

Between the writer and director, they do a good job of preventing the repetition from getting annoying. Frakes shot some scenes with a multi-camera set-up, allowing him to edit the scenes differently from one iteration to the next. It sounds like a small thing, but it really makes a difference. And then there's a cameo at the end by Kelsey Grammer, a massive asshole in real life, apparently, but I'll always remember him fondly for Dr. Frasier Crane.

AMC Best Picture Showcase

2012-02-14T10:16:00.001-05:00

It's that time once again when I beg and plead with you to treat yourself to an unparalleled movie-going experience. It's time once again for the annual AMC Best Picture Showcase, a marathon viewing of all nine Best Picture nominees over two consecutive Saturdays (or, in select locations, in one 24-hour block). I just bought my tickets last night (at the theater, where it's cheaper), and I'm super excited about it, as always.

I know there's been a lot of grousing about this year's nominees, but I don't care about that. I haven't seen any of these movies before, and I'm looking forward to watching each one with an open mind and a generous heart. Over the last few years that I've been doing this, there have been several nominees that I didn't much care for, but there hasn't been a single one that wasn't worth seeing.

It's also nice that the people who attend the Showcase tend to be people who are pretty serious about movies. If you like to geek out talking film, you could pretty much approach a stranger at random and find an interesting conversation waiting to happen. But they're also people who won't disturb your viewing experience.

This Saturday is a great opportunity for anyone who might be interested, but is feeling daunted by the prospect of sitting in a movie theater all day. With only four movies on Saturday's schedule instead of the usual five, it's almost like Showcase, Jr.

The first time I went, I was hugely surprised by how much fun it was, and I've had just as much fun every year since (even the year I missed, when I recreated the showcase months later in my apartment). It's great fun, and you should really consider attending if you're available.

"Fits Like a Glove"

2012-02-14T08:00:00.010-05:00

Homicide: Life on the Street - Season Three

Airdate: October 21, 1994
Daniel Baldwin, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Isabella Hofmann
Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor
And Ned Beatty
Created by Paul Attanasio
Teleplay by Bonnie Mark
Story by Tom Fontana & Julie Martin
Directed by Ted Demme

This episode opens with a local TV news story reported by Matt Rhodes, played by Tony Todd. I may have mentioned before how much I really like Tony Todd, and fortunately for me, he's in practically everything. I've most often seen him either as scary (<b>Candyman</b>, "The X-Files") or tough ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"), but this role is a bit different for him. He's still got his imposing stature and that extraordinary voice, of course, but he's playing an ambitious local TV reporter, rather than a Klingon warrior or a supernatural serial killer.

Anyway, after the primary on the Goodrich case commits a serious error resulting in a loss of potentially crucial evidence, Pembleton takes over, just in time for another victim to surface, killed under similar circumstances. But this is "Homicide: Life on the Street", so we're as interested in the lives of the detectives as we are in the crimes they're investigating, and there's a hell of a lot going on. Lewis and Munch are trying to buy the bar across the street, and they convince Bayliss to join them as a silent partner (but come to regret it). Felton is having serious problems with his wife, who is acting crazy and putting Howard in the middle of it, while Felton is is secretly shacking up with Russert.

The religious theme continues from the previous episode. The second victim is also Good Samaritan material, was also dumped behind a church, naked but for white cotton gloves, but with no sign of sexual assault. The show continues to juggle harrowing crime with bizarre, oddball humor, and this episode gives us Frederick Fuchs, an aficionado of serial killers who brings to Pembleton's attention the fact that the similar murders have occurred in other cities. At the end of the episode, a third victim is found.

Of all of these stories, the one that most interests me is the one involving Felton's marriage and his affair with Russert. Marital infidelity is hardly a groundbreaking topic for primetime network drama, and neither is illicit office romance. But this story is presented with a complexity to it that you rarely see on TV. Usually, stories like this are kept pretty simple in order to give them a kind of universality. Everyone understands sexual desire, temptation, and the excitement of secrecy, but this show pursues this story with complications that make it simultaneously more realistic and harder to relate to. Felton's isn't just having marriage problems, but his wife seems distinctly unstable. And Felton doesn't help the situation by leaving Howard to try to deal with her. Meanwhile, his relationship with Russert is no less complicated. I like complicated drama, and it's something you just don't see enough of on network television.

"The Outcast"

2012-02-13T13:00:00.006-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: March 16, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Written by Jeri Taylor
Directed by Robert Scheerer

It's impossible for me to approach this episode except from a socio-political perspective. The episode clearly has an agenda, if you want to put it like that. Some people seem to think that this is a bad thing. The idea is that this show is "supposed to be" a pleasant bit of entertainment, not a vehicle for thinly veiled political arguments. I have little patience for this view. Indeed, I am contemptuous of it, and I suspect that it is often just a cover for people who don't like what this episode is saying, but know enough not to say so. Instead, they just say that politics generally has no place in a show like this. My view is that a TV show is a commentary on the culture that produced it whether it chooses to be or not, and that popular fiction has long been used as a forum for addressing issues of public oncern. Take Dickens, for example.

This episode presents us with a clear, obvious, and some might say heavy-handed allegory for homosexuality. Allegory is an extremely useful literary device, and this script has no difficulty getting its point across. The Jenii is an androgynous species, but not naturally so. They have abolished gender in their society, and consider cultures which have not to be primitive or less evolved. Some Jenii do consider themselves make or female, but they must keep this hidden for fear of persecution and a forced "cure". These gendered Jenii are considered deviants, perverts, and scandalously immoral, but the feelings they have are entirely natural, not chosen. The applicability of this situation to homosexuality is obvious.

But no one ever makes that connection explicitly. This episode is crying out for someone to point to the "historical" persecution of gays as a difficult lesson humanity learned when it was still young and foolish (i.e. 1992, when this aired). The failure to make this connection explicit is a problem. I think the studio should get the blame rather than the writer, director, or producers, but it's a problem that hasn't gone away. To this day, there has never been a homosexual character in the history of the franchise. It is as if homosexuality simply does not exist in the "Star Trek" universe. I can only speculate, but I believe this is because sci-fi appeals disproportionately to adolescent males, who are especially likely to be homophobic assholes. "Star Trek" has a history of taking brave and controversial moral stands. This episode disgraces that tradition with its cowardice, and the franchise has not corrected this error even twenty years later. Shame.

Judging the episode simply as entertainment isn't much help. It's not especially good, and it asks us to believe that Soren is more than the latest in a long line of conquests for Riker, but it doesn't earn that.

"Nearer My God to Thee"

2012-02-13T08:00:00.023-05:00

Homicide: Life on the Street - Season Three

Airdate: October 14, 1994
Daniel Baldwin, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Isabella Hofmann
Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Kyle Secor
And Ned Beatty
Created by Paul Attanasio
Teleplay by Jorge Zamacona
Story by Tom Fontana & Jorge Zamacona
Directed by Tim Hunter

When I wrote about the first two seasons of this show, I had seen those thirteen episodes before. I didn't remember much about them, because my memory is shit, but I was familiar with the episodes. Beginning here, I'm seeing these episodes for the first time, which doesn't happen often on this blog.

The first thing we have to talk about is cast changes. Jon Polito is out as Steve Crosetti. According to dialogue, Crosetti is on vacation, but it's a vacation from which he'll never return. I don't know why he was written out. Crosetti was a great character and Polito distinguished himself over the first two seasons as being among the best of an outstanding ensemble cast. I suspect he was fired because Polito was fat, bald, and ugly. As a fat, bald, and ugly man myself, this upsets me greatly.

This episode also introduces a new regular character, Lt. Megan Russert, the new shift commander (replacing the guy whose retirement we saw in Season Two). I believe that this character was added to bring in a bit more glamour and sex appeal ("eye candy", is what I'm trying to say), and frankly I think this cheapens an otherwise outstanding show, but such are the constraints of for-profit television. The script obliquely points this out in the teaser, as Lewis explains to Bolander how the networks insist on putting more sex in their programs, over the objections of writers and producers. That's just the way it is. The important thing is how the character is written and portrayed, not the cynical motivations of the network suits who insisted on more hotness.

Russert gets a very good introduction in a sort of baptism by fire. Before we've even seen her, we learn that she's only been in the position for a week, and she's now dealing with a "red ball", the murder and possible sexual assault of Baltimore's Samaritan of the Year, Katherine Goodrich. When Giardello tells her that he's been asked to assist due to Russert's inexperience and the high profile nature of the crime, she's gracious enough to be grateful for the assistance. So the first impression we get of her is that she's dedicated and professional. That's a good start.

Naturally, the script takes the opportunity to explore the office politics that come along with a new female Shift Commander. It's not surprising to learn that some of her male detectives believe she was only promoted because she's having sex with someone who has influence. This isn't true, and Howard gives us a brief recitation of her very impressive qualifications. All in all, it's a very good way of introducing a new character, and so far, she seems like a pretty promising new character. She's no Crosetti, though.

We've barely scratched the surface so far, but this episode is as packed with content as is typical for this series. But this murder investigation is going to take a few episodes to unfold, so we'll pick up the story tomorrow.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

2012-02-11T11:00:00.070-05:00

George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas
Gabriele Ferzetti and Ilsa Steppat
Screenplay by Richard Maibaum
Produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman
Directed by Peter Hunt

I can't help feeling sorry for George Lazenby. He's the forgotten Bond, only having done this one movie, and he's relegated to the status of afterthought, of interest mainly to completists. He's also generally considered a failure, and I think that's entirely unfair (but not entirely untrue). There's no reason why he couldn't have been a perfectly respectable Bond, but he never really had a chance. We take it for granted these days that Bond gets recast every few years, but Lazenby was the first to take over from someone else, and he was taking over from Sean Connery, the man who made Bond an icon. Naturally, there would be some audience resistance.

But Lazenby's misfortune goes beyond this. Judging from the previous five entries in the franchise, the three criteria for the actor playing Bond were, in descending order of importance, looking good in a tuxedo, being able to handle the action scenes, and having at least minimal acting ability. Lazenby meets all of those requirements. But this is the first Bond film where minimal acting ability wasn't enough. This film requires Bond to fall in love, get married, and grieve for his murdered bride. Lazenby does more acting in this one movie than Connery had been called upon to do in all of the previous movies combined, and he's not up to it.

The movie also could have done more to smooth over the transition. Other than a single line delivered directly to camera in the teaser, the movie is unambiguous that this is the same man. The movie goes to great lengths to make this clear (and yet some fans still imagine that "James Bond" is a code name passed from one agent to another). But it is never explained why Blofeld fails to recognize Bond, or (more crucially) why Bond wouldn't expect to be recognized.

The movie is also a bit more down-to-Earth than the most recent installments. Every once in a while, it seems, someone decides that the movies should be more like Fleming's books. This never goes well with audiences, who have little interest in Fleming's Bond. This movie relies far less on goofy gadgets, and also depicts Bond almost as if he was an actual person. Personally, I consider these to be very much in the film's favor. This is easily the best Bond movie since From Russia With Love largely because of this.

But it's not without its problems. The structure and pacing is just terrible, because the movie has to tell two very different stories that are only incidentally related to one another. If you consider the "primary" story to be the one about Bond stopping another one of Blofeld's mad schemes (and that's natural enough), you have to wait for ages for that story to even begin. And even when it does, it's a bit underwhelming, as Blofeld's scheme is evidently to have himself wrongfully declared to be some sort of Count. No, I don't know why. His scheme does get better. Somewhat. Eventually.

But the movie has some terrific action going on, once it gets going, including the first instance of what I consider one of the minor staples of the franchise: the ski chase. I don't know what makes chase scenes on skis so awesome, but they are really fucking awesome.

Contraception "Controversy"

2012-02-09T10:47:00.003-05:00

There are at least three ways of approaching the recent Obama Administration decision of contraception. We can look at it in terms of health care policy, in terms of women's issues, and in terms of religious freedom. The media is overwhelmingly focusing on the religious freedom angle, so I guess I should address that.

The position of the Catholic Church on the issue of contraception is indefensible and utterly obscene. This should go without saying, but sadly, it does not. By demonizing contraception, the Catholic Church has caused suffering and promoted death on a vast scale. This is the very opposite of morality. But religious freedom is important, and it means that the Catholic Church is quite free to push their dangerously misguided and deeply immoral views on their unfortunate dupes.

Fortunately, very few American Catholics have been duped, since something like 98% of Catholic women use birth control, having apparently decided that an organization as blatantly and unapologetically patriarchal as the Catholic Church is not the final word on morality after all.

But the real question is whether Catholic hospitals should be granted an exemption from provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which require employer-based health insurance plans to cover contraception without a co-pay. Religious organizations have been granted many exemptions to various laws. We all understand that employment discrimination is wrong, but religions are allowed to practice it anyway.

But sometimes religions get involved in non-religious activity. Catholic hospitals are owned and operated by the Catholic Church, but they're not churches. They're health care providers. They hire non-Catholics, and they treat non-Catholics. They should abide by the same rules and regulations which pertain to all such health care providers. They should provide health insurance to their employees which includes coverage for contraception, as required.

Obama made the right call, but he gave Catholic hospitals an additional year to comply. This is a perfect example of an Obama compromise: it annoys his allies without mollifying his enemies and completely undermines the principles upon which his overall policy is based. In other words, Obama concedes that Catholic hospitals are entitled to special privileges, but doesn't give them the special privileges they want. As an atheist and secularist, this upsets me.

But it's not just a religious issue. It's a women's issue, and women (including Catholic women) want access to birth control. Any individual women who are opposed to birth control are free to not use it, but it should be made available as broadly and as cheaply as possible. Right now, the Republican party is talking openly about their hatred of contraception, which they're usually quite reluctant to do. Contraception is a crucial weapon against patriarchy, which has always sought to enslave women through pregnancy. Santorum is refreshingly honest about this. Contraception permits women to have sex for pleasure, when they want, and with whom, and Santorum cannot abide this. This creates a big political opportunity for Obama and the Democrats, since contraception is so thoroughly non-controversial, except for a small minority of religious extremists.

As for health insurance policy, avoiding unplanned pregnancies saves money, which is one of the central aims of the PPACA. Securing the widespread availability of contraception is a good way to reduce unplanned pregnancies. That's a no-brainer.

In terms of morality, politics, and policy, Obama's decision is a clear winner. So why do the White House and quite a few Congressional Democrats sound so skittish about it?

"Ethics"

2012-02-09T08:00:00.001-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: March 2, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Teleplay by Ronald D. Moore
Story by Sara Charno & Stuart Charno
Directed by Chip Chalmers

I've gotten it into my head somehow that this episode is generally not well regarded, but I don't really know where I picked up that notion. I honestly don't recall how I felt about this episode when I was younger, but I quite like it now. It presents a simple inciting evident: Worf is hit by a big heavy barrel falling down in a cargo bay. As a result, his spinal column has been crushed, and he's going to be paralyzed forever. Damn. That's quite an inciting event. From there, the episode goes on to explore the consequences of this from a number of interesting angles.

The one most people tend to focus on is Worf, who quickly decides that it's time for him to commit suicide. This makes sense from a Klingon perspective, but a lot of the other characters don't much like the idea. He asks Riker to assist him, so that puts Riker in a quandary over what to do about it. Picard stops short of advising Riker to agree, but it's pretty clear that Picard isn't so startled by the idea as Riker. Clearly, Worf should have asked Picard to help him. It's actually a bit odd that he didn't, but it's better that way. For one thing, if he had asked for Picard's help, he'd be dead now.

Troi approaches it from a different perspective. Worf is the father of a motherless child. He can't just choose to make his son an orphan because he doesn't want to be paralyzed. What I like most about this angle is that it isn't a cultural argument. That was Picard's position, but Troi is more pragmatic than that. A father should not abandon his son, and Troi argues (not in so many words) that this is a moral principle which transcends culture. Worf's suicide will inflict a tremendous amount of harm on Alexander, both immediate and long-term, and Worf has no right to do that, notwithstanding the customs of his people.

And then there's the dangerously experimental procedure which could restore all of Worf's mobility. Wait, what? Yes, Dr. Crusher brings in a specialist, Dr. Toby Russell, to consult on Worf's condition, and she suggests a radical new treatment called the Reset Switch. Yeah, it's an obvious cop-out, and you can see it coming a mile away. That's not the worst of it, though. It's a high-risk procedure with a dubious chance of success and a considerable chance of killing the patient. In a sense, it's just a particular method of suicide, one which has an outside chance of making everything work out just fine. Of course, everything works out just fine. But the point of all this is the confrontation between Crusher and Russell over the issue of medical ethics, and that's all great. It's a shame that a cop-out like this is necessary, but Ron Moore deserves credit for making it work as well as he did.

I think this episode was considered controversial by many because it contains the idea that a disabled person has nothing left to live for. I understand the concern, because that couldn't be further from the truth, but I think the episode handles this as well as it possibly can. First of all, everyone tells Worf that he can have a full and productive life even if paralyzed. This isn't even a question, it's just something that everyone knows to be true, so that's good. Second of all, Worf does indeed decide not to kill himself. There are two problems though. First, as I said above, undertaking a dangerously experimental high-risk low-probability medical procedure is an awful lot like suicide. Second, Worf recovers completely. That's not something that happens a lot in real life.

But I don't think it's fair to hold this against the episode too much. Worf had to recover completely. He just had to. That's the way this show works. Yes, this series has done some envelope-pushing work with ongoing storylines, particularly with respect to Worf, but there's no way this episode could get away with permanently and radically changing Worf's role on the show. That just wasn't a possibility. Given that quite serious constraint, again, Moore deserves credit for how well this rather sensitive material was handled.

"Power Play"

2012-02-08T08:00:00.015-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: February 24, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Teleplay by René Balcor & Herbert J. Wright and Brannon Braga
Story by Paul Ruben and Maurice Hurley
Directed by David Livingston

This episode is big on action and suspense, and it doesn't take very long to get started. In the teaser, the Enterprise detects a mayday signal from a ship lost two centuries before coming from a moon covered by electromagnetic storms which interfere with transporters and sensors. But Troi senses life on the moon, so an away team is sent down in a shuttle. On the surface of the moon, Troi, Data, and O'Brien are possessed by disembodied entities, and they attempt to hijack the ship shortly after they return. Even with the knowledge of the officers (and O'Brien) under their control, the entities fail to gain control of the Enterprise, but they do make it to Ten Forward, where they take hostages and begin issuing demands.

In that paragraph, I've glossed over a great deal of action. From the moment where not-Data slams Riker across the bridge until the aliens reach Ten Forward is a tense sequence reminiscent of when Data hijacked the ship in "Brothers". It's not quite that good, but it's in the ballpark. The episode slows down quite a bit after that, but it never loses that tension, which is the episode's greatest strength. The script also tries to generate some drama out of not-O'Brien threatening Keiko and Molly, but I don't think this comes off as well as it could have. It's a nice idea, though.

Once the episode gets into explaining what's really going on, it gets a bit thin. There are two explanations. First, not-Troi explains that he (yeah, Troi is taken over by a man, evidently) is the captain of the USS Essex, the long lost ship the disappearance of which the Enterprise was investigating. Picard goes along with this for a time, but he's convinced this is a lie, because a Star Fleet captain would not behave this way. (Frankly, I think he's assuming too much. I think that being trapped for 200 hundred years as a disembodied consciousness on a piece-of-shit moon could result in vast and unpredictable changes in personality.) The real story is that the moon is a penal colony for the disembodied consciousnesses of alien criminals, who hijacked the Essex like they tried to hijack the Enterprise, but were unable to escape the planet's electromagnetic storms.

My only real complaint is that the ending seems a bit too easy. By technobabble alone, the aliens' plan is foiled when all of the other disembodied consciousnesses are beamed aboard and caught in a containment field. Realising they are beaten, the aliens relinquish their hold on Troi, Data, and O'Brien and go back to their piece-of-shit moon. It's a little too easy, but that's okay. Overall, this is still a pretty good episode. I've always liked it a lot, and I still do.

So this next comment shouldn't be taken as a criticism of the script. But I find it really peculiar that Data can be taken over by a disembodied consciousness in the same way that Troi and O'Brien can. That's really surprising to me. I think it's just a matter of convenience for the episode to overlook the fact that Data's brain is altogether different from a living, biological brain. I don't think this really makes much sense, but I'm willing to go along with it because Brent Spiner makes such a good villain.

One thing this episode really does bring home to me is that my dislike for Counselor Troi is absolutely not a dislike of Marina Sirtis. This is not at all a good episode for Troi, who is as usual just barely on the good side of useless, but it's a great episode for Sirtis, who suddenly gets to play a driven, motivated, dynamic, and above all competent character, and she makes the most of the opportunity.

"Conundrum"

2012-02-07T08:00:00.009-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: February 17, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Teleplay by Barry Schkolnick
Story by Paul Schiffer
Directed by Les Landau

This is another episode with a strong and straightforward premise. After the Enterprise is scanned by a mysterious alien probe, everyone on board loses their memories. They can still remember how to operate the ship, but no one remembers anything personal about anyone, nor does anyone remember what their mission is supposed to be. And there's a character we've never seen before. That's suspicious.

At first, it seems possible that this guy might be just the random ensign of the week, so to speak, but sharp-eyed viewers might have noticed he was wearing three pips on his uniform. Once La Forge gets limited access to personnel information from the computer, we learn that this is Commander Kieran MacDuff, Executive Officer, which puts him above Second Officer Will Riker in the chain of command. Ok, that clinches it.

Of course, no one else has any reason to suspect MacDuff of anything. I often complain about having to wait for the characters to work out something the audience already knows, but it works when it's used to generate suspense. That's exactly how it works here. Not only is the crew unaware that MacDuff is an intruder, there doesn't seem to be any way for them to discover this. And whatever he's up to, it can't be good.

As a kid, I enjoyed this episode for the story alone, but now I'm more interested in the characters. As we've discussed previously in reference to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel", the whole point of a memory loss episode is to explore how the characters are different from their usual selves, and in what ways they stay the same. There's clearly lots of humor potential here, and the script does not leave this unexploited. Worf assumes he's in charge, and he acts like a complete dick, while Riker and Ro get very friendly indeed when they forget how much they dislike one another.

At the risk of overstating the importance of this small point, I think Riker gets let off too easy in this episode. He pursues a sexual relationship with Ro even after he has reason to believe he's involved with Troi. He also seems to be quite happy to get involved with them both. That's not a result of memory loss. That's just Riker being Riker. Which is to say, promiscuous.

But that's a small thing, and it's more than made up for by Picard's heroic restraint. Not only is he clever enough to notice that every avenue he might use to confirm or disconfirm his orders is closed off to him, which is rather suspicious in itself, but he's willing to take a pretty big risk on a point of principle. I imagine that under those same circumstances, I would feel tremendous pressure to carry out my orders, because there was only flimsy evidence at best that the war with the Lysians was bogus. But Picard stood up for a principle. That's what I mean about the aspects of a character that don't change. Picard is a man of principle, even when he doesn't remember who he is.

And Riker's a whore.

"The Masterpiece Society"

2012-02-06T13:00:00.065-05:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Five

Airdate: February 10, 1992
Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner
Created by Gene Roddenberry
Teleplay by Adam Belanoff & Michael Piller
Story by James Kahn and Adam Belanoff
Directed by Winrich Kolbe

This episode is largely premise-driven. The idea is to present a society which has been engineered in every way. The people have all been genetically engineered in order to be optimized for the tasks they will need to perform. Their leader, Conor, has been "bred" to be a leader, and he's a very good one. The precise planning that has gone into this society means that disruptive influences (e.g., visitors) are shunned. But an unanticipated catastrophe approaches in the form of a stellar core fragment which will pass close by the planet, causing calamitous seismic disruptions. The Enterprise is ready to give assistance, of course, but will their help be as destructive as the core fragment after all?

With a premise like that, I think this ought to be a really good episode. The idea of a meticulously planned society is fascinating, and it raises a number of issues. A concept like that could be used to explore the limitations of scientific Utopianism, for example. Or to explore the old question of nature vs. nurture. A more political angle would be to consider the issue of individual rights as it pertains to a society that functions collectively or not at all. If this episode deals with any of these issues, it is in passing.

We are constantly told how crucial it is that the society remain free from external influences. Within minutes of the away team's arrival, we are told that the "balance" of the colony is already being effected. Really? After only a few minutes? I'm willing to be convinced of this, but the script never tries to convince me. We are just expected to accept, as the regular characters do, that this is the case. I just can't see by what mechanism the mere presence of strangers would upset the "balance" of the colony, or even what "balance" specifically means in that context.

The script doesn't squander the premise entirely, but the issues it chooses to examine are less interesting, in my opinion, than the ones I mentioned above, and they're dealt with rather heavy-handedly. I understand and appreciate that La Forge wouldn't look too kindly on a society which would never have allowed him to be born. This is a powerful moral objection to this society, and that's important. But when through a fluke of technobabble plotting La Forge's VISOR holds the key to saving the colony, La Forge wastes no time at all in pointing it out. I'm glad it was pointed out, but it should have been handled in another way. As it stands, it's kind of tacky and (as I said) heavy-handed. La Forge didn't need to be the one to make that point, and he didn't need to make it when and how he did.

I also think the script puts too much emphasis on the harm done to the colony. When some of the colonists decide they've had enough of their carefully ordered existence, Picard is almost regretful that he is forced to respect their human rights. At the end of the episode, Picard even speculates that the Enterprise may have done as much damage to the colony as the stellar core fragment would have if they hadn't intervened. That's absurd, and somebody really should have fuckin smacked him upside his head for saying something so insanely stupid as that. Especially since earlier in the episode, Picard was one of the only characters willing to voice skepticism about a genetically engineered society. It's one thing to mourn the end of a way of life, but no mere way of life is as important as actual lives. After preventing loss of life on a grand scale, Picard shouldn't bother eulogizing this rather troubling social order.

"The Seeds of Doom" - Part Six

2012-02-06T08:00:00.004-05:00

Doctor Who (1963) - Season Thirteen

Airdate: March 6, 1976
Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen
Written by Robert Banks Stewart
Produced by Philip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Douglas Camfield

As you can see, the Krynoid is now as big as (a model of a) very large house. It can control all plant life in the vicinity, it's ruthlessly lethal to humankind, and soon it will release more pods to spread rapidly over the whole of the planet. It also has Harrison Chase completely in its thrall, also working to kill the few remaining humans (plus the Doctor) trapped in the house. It's good that this is the last episode, because I don't see how things could get much worse.

If I know the Doctor, he's bound to come up with some ingeniously clever but appallingly dangerous plan to defeat the Krynoid. Without regard to the danger, he'll probably heroically risk his life to save the world via some combination of intellect and courage. Or possibly this episode aired in 1976 won't have spontaneously acquired a new ending since the last time I watched it, and we'll be stuck with the original ending, in which the Doctor does nothing at all and the Krynoid is defeated by Major Beresford calling in an air strike. I lack the vocabulary to explain just how disappointing this is to me.

Despite the fact that this story is wrong for this series in terms of tone and (especially) characterization, it's still a good story. Scorby and Chase are both wonderful characters, there's tremendous tension, and the special effects are actually quite credible for such an ambitious undertaking as a giant plant monster. For it all to end on such an arbitrary and unsatisfying note is a real shame.

Regardless, that brings us to the end of Season Thirteen. Despite some unevenness along the way, this is still one of the strongest seasons the series has seen thus far, where the Hinchcliffe/Holmes vision of the series reached full maturity. The series was also tremendously popular at this point. But in the world of "Doctor Who", the status never stays quo for very long. Season Fourteen will usher in a bunch of changes. But for millions of people who watched this show as it aired, and for millions more (like me) who watched it years later,Season Thirteen seems to be the narrow moment in time that has somehow come to represent the whole of the classic series.