Stranger in a Strange Land

Where I Discuss The Alternative Factor

2014-12-30T22:48:00.000-08:00

It's been a year since I last posted my thoughts on an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, which means I've pretty much made a hash of one of my New Year'sResolutions for 2014. I suppose I can only resolve to do better in 2015. Anyway, without further ado, here are my thoughts on The Alternative Factor.

I was first exposed to the story of Lazarus and "anti-Lazarus" more than thirty years ago when I read James Blish's adapation of the teleplay in Star Trek 10 (by the way, the cover of the book, which depicts a battle between the Enterprise and a Klingon battlecruiser, is completely misleading – no such scene is portrayed in any of the stories contained between its covers).

I thought the story was interesting, even compelling.

The cover of Star Trek 10 – no such battle is portrayed in any of the stories in this book - needless to say, I was taken in by the cover and snapped up the book and ended up being quite the disappointed grade-schooler

Viewing the actual episode just highlights one of the main problems with the story – the crew of the Enterprise are merely spectators to the story of Lazarus and anti-Lazarus, which goes a little something like this: Lazarus has been driven mad by the discovery that an anti-Lazarus exists in a parallel antimatter universe, and, despite the fact that Lazarus and anti-Lazarus can only come into non-cataclysmic-causing contact in a "corridor" connecting their respective universes (Lazarus on anti-Lazarus contact outside of this "corridor" would result in the destruction of both universes), Lazarus is intent on cornering anti-Lazarus outside of this "corrider" and coming to grips with him.

Because he's insane and that's what insane people do.

Lazarus...or possibly anti-Lazarus...either way, one of them, looking rather unhinged

The problem with the episode (I'm referring to the problem of Kirk and his crew being immaterial to the story, not to the rather unsatisfactory motivation of the villain) didn't really register when I read the novelization because the characterizations of Lazarus and anti-Lazarus were interesting enough to captivate me – when I read James Blish's adaptation, I imagined anti-Lazarus, the real hero in this story (Kirk is relegated to being his sidekick in The Alternative Factor), someone who is willing to consign himself to being trapped for eternity battling Lazarus in the "corridor" joining their respective universes so as to save both their universes, as being a tragic yet heroic figure with Lazarus being a malignant enigma.

Unfortunately, Robert Brown, the actor who portrayed both Lazarus and anti-Lazarus, wasn't really up to the task of essentially carrying the episode. As the calm and rational anti-Lazarus, his performance is barely adequate. As the unhinged Lazarus, his portrayal is limited to mad scenery chewing rants and frequent dizzy spells which usually end with him falling from great heights onto very rocky surfaces and somehow managing to avoid turning into strawberry jam from the impact.

Lazarus about to fall, something which happens with alarming, giggle-inducing frequency in The Alternative Factor

The frequency of Lazarus's episodes of vertigo and his being seemingly impervious to blunt force trauma results in many parts of The Alternative Factor being unintentionally hilarious.

Unfortunately, the hilarity of the bad bits aren't enough to catapult The Alternative Factor into the category of being So Bad It's Good.

It's merely bad.

My Random Thoughts on Errand of Mercy

2013-12-30T13:40:00.001-08:00

It's already December 2013 and this will probably be my first and last post of the year. I won't go into detail explaining why I haven't written at all this year but suffice it to say that real life suddenly intruded at the end of 2012 and during much of 2013.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Now, onto Errand of Mercy.

My opinion of Errand of Mercy has evolved over the years.

Initially, I loved this episode. It was the episode that introduced the Klingons to Star Trek fans and they're here, as they were initially conceptualized, in all their greasy cruelty and sneakiness. No politically correct, retconned, Samurai warriors/Sioux braves in alien makeup these, the Klingons in Errand of Mercy are a far cry from what they eventually evolved into in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

However, what caused my opinion of this episode to change is that, once again, we are subjected to yet another Star Trek: The Original Series episode which employs a Deus ex machina, this time in the form of the highly evolved Organians, to tie together all the narrative threads at the finale. The role of the Organians as objective observers of and commentators on the behavior of the Federation and the Klingon Empire is about as subtle as a sledge hammer; from the point of view of exposition, was it really necessary to have a Greek, or in this case Organian, chorus point out that in its propensity to view war as an option that it doesn't necessarily shy away from, the Federation isn't all that different from the Klingon Empire, especially since Spock, who usually fills the role of the "outsider looking in" in the regular cast of Star Trek: TheOriginal Series, points this out himself at the very beginning of the episode?

Curious how often you Humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.

From a narrative standpoint, the interference of the Organians also provides the Klingons with the opportunity to give their side of the story explaining how relations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire had deteriorated to the point where war seemed to be inevitable, a juxtaposition of viewpoints which is solely needed given that the story, up until the exposure of the Organians, had been told entirely from the Federation's point of view.

Kirk and Spock, incarcerated in a highly unusual prison: The exit is in the background – so what function is served by the bars in the foreground?

There's a lot to like about Errand of Mercy; the Klingons are an interesting addition to the rogues gallery of Star Trek villains, the story of Kirk and Spock's guerilla war campaign against the Klingon occupation of Organia is compelling and the frustration felt by Kirk and Kor, his Klingon counterpart, at the sheeplike apathy of the Organians living under the cruel yoke of Klingon rule provides some humor while further illustrating that the Federation and the Klingons are not as different as they would like to believe but the reliance on Deus ex machina as a narrative device just strikes me as being unsatisfactory not to mention lazy. And it's not as if the writers are unaware of the effect the Organians have on the narrative. Kirk himself comments, at the episode's conclusion:

Oh, no, no, no, Mr. Spock, we didn't beat the odds; we didn't have a chance. The Organians raided the game.

This almost smacks of apologia for the way the episode plays out; not with a bang, but with a rather disappointing whimper, especially given the potential of the Klingons to serve as a catalyst for that narrative bang. Had the ultimate goal of this episode been to knock the Federation down a peg from its position as the paragon of virtue in the Star Trek universe by pointing out the similarities in its policies and those of the Klingon Empire (and, via allegory, convey the same message about the Western and Eastern blocs circa 1967), a less clunky narrative device than the overused Deus ex machina would have been preferred by this viewer.

My (Random) Thoughts on Star Trek: The Devil in the Dark

2012-08-31T09:07:00.001-07:00

I first began posting articles on Star Trek: The Original Series back in August 2010, starting with the second pilot episode, Where No Man Has Gone Before. I originally posted them on my web-site, but in April 2011, it occurred to me that a more appropriate vehicle for my writing would be a blog and this is where I have continued to expound on Star Trek while also transferring over my old articles from my web-site.

Thus, the rather muddled order in which my commentary on Star Trek is presented here.

Given that the last Star Trek article I posted was on The Galileo Seven, you may be excused if you expected my next article in the series to be on The Squire of Gothos. Such is not the case; my article on The Squire of Gothos was the first of my discussions on Star Trek that I posted to this blog and it can be found here.

If you're interested in what I have to say about The Devil in the Dark, just keep on reading.

A hideous monster strikes from the darkness, viciously murdering its victims and leaving behind nothing but badly charred remains. The Enterprise crew arrives at Janus VI, the mining colony terrorized by these attacks, and discovers that the monster feels the same way about the human miners as they do about it; it turns out that the miners have been unknowingly murdering the monster's kindred and what seemed at first to be a series of unprovoked attacks motivated by cruelty and evil was actually part of a desperate campaign of guerilla warfare intended to drive the colonial genociders from the planet's surface.

By then, the monster, a silicon-based life-form which calls itself a Horta, has been badly wounded by phaser fire from Kirk and Spock and is weak to the point that it is now easy prey for the vengeful miners, who somehow manage to overpower, while armed only with sticks and other makeshift clubs, a supposedly elite and armed-to-the-teeth security detail from the Enterprise which stands between them and bloody (?) revenge.

The miners are stopped from beating (!) the Horta to death when Kirk yells out desperately in rebuttal to the miners's statement that the creature has killed fifty of their own that it was only answering in kind for the murder of thousands of its own kind.

A few carefully chosen words from Kirk and a would-be lynch mob turns remorseful...and their priorities shift from vengeance to avarice

At which point, the miners recognize that it was all a big misunderstanding and form a deal with the Horta in which it, and the thousands like it which will soon hatch from the eggs that the miners had been destroying, will help the miners dig for the rich deposits of pergium, gold, platinum, etc. for which Janus VI is famous and everyone lives happily ever after.

I know The Devil in the Dark is a perennial favorite amongst fans of Star Trek: The Original Series but I found it to be perplexing on at least two levels.

If you take the story at face value, the rapid about face in the collective mood of the miners when the rationale behind the Horta's attacks is revealed to them is too unbelievable to take seriously. These miners aren't real people; they're icons of a human race that is capable of more compassion and objective reasonsing than human beings today..because human beings now would have brushed aside Kirk's and Spock's arguments in defense of the Horta and attempted quite gamely to beat the silicon-based creature to death.

The story is also unbelievable when one considers the deal brokered between the (accidentally) genocidal colonists and the Horta – the Horta get to help the colonists get rich by plundering Janus VI's natural resources...and in return, the "inoffensive" Horta get to keep living. It's sort of a bizarre allegory of colonialism where the natives cut short their uprising and decide to accept their lot in life to serve their "betters".

And somehow, we're supposed to buy into the fact that this is a good thing.

The colonial overseer of Janus VI gleefully reports the profits reeped in no small part due to the efforts of the now pacified native population – all the Horta ask for in return for their toil is that they get to keep living

Score one for the good guys.

Where I Discuss Star Trek: The Galileo Seven

2012-07-25T06:54:00.001-07:00

This article was first posted on September 27, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

The Galileo Seven is an odd episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It's basically a disaster movie. With Spock in the role of the plucky hero who leads everyone to safety. His turn as leader is hindered by the fact that for some unfathomable reason, he has lost all of the emotional sensitivity that he exhibited in the previous episodes. Not only has he lost his emotional sensitivity, he has turned into a Forrest Gump of emotional sensitivity, unintentionally alienating everyone around him. It doesn't help that everyone around him, with the exception of Scotty, seems to have collectively taken leave of their senses.

For most of The Galileo Seven, we are presented with Spock making what are basically very sound, rational decisions given the situation the eponymous seven Enterprise crewmembers are in, and everyone else, with the exception of Scotty, who spends most of this episode with his head under the hood of the stricken shuttlecraft Galileo, objecting to the choices that he makes, mainly, it seems, out of spite. It's as if being stranded on Taurus II has resulted in everyone binning themselves into one of two categories: Persons principally driven by their id or persons principally driven by their ego...with almost everyone almost gleefully giving themselves over to their id.

Irrationality abounds in this episode. Not only that, but it's trumpeted as something to be proud of, something that makes us human.

Following this strange logic, the residents of the local asylum would be the ideal exemplars of all that is human. I would argue the contrary, that what makes us human is our rationality or at least our capacity for such. In which case Mr. Spock would appear to be the most human of all the characters in this episode. How deliciously ironic that someone who constantly struggles to suppress his humanity turns out to be the most human of them all. A foreshadowing of Kirk's eulogy at the end of The Wrath of Khan?

Or maybe I'm reading too deeply into an episode which is, at the end of the day, basically a disaster movie.

Star Trek: Shore Leave

2012-07-24T22:30:00.001-07:00

This article was first posted on September 15, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

Kirk complains of a sore back and when someone starts giving him an unsolicited back rub, he assumes it's Spock, rather than the scrumptious Yeomen Tonia Barrows, that's giving him relief from his aches and pains.

Kirk confounds Yeomen Barrows's handiwork with Spock's

McCoy sees a giant rabbit, gets "killed" by a medieval knight on horseback and then shows up, alive and well, arm-in-arm with bunnies of a different sort.

McCoy in a heaven of sorts after "dying"

Then there's the sub-plot of how a strange force field emanating from the seemingly idyllic planet that the Enterprise is orbiting is draining its engines; this sub-plot is rather abruptly dropped by episode's end and not satisfactorily concluded.

I'm not saying that Theodore Sturgeon, the writer responsible for Shore Leave, was on drugs when he put pen to paper, but it sure would explain a lot.

And am I the only one who caught on to the fact that every member of the crew that walked on the bridge at the conclusion of the episode got laid? Knowing Kirk, he definitely got it on with the simulacrum of Ruth, the girl from his past. McCoy and Barrows presumably did something to explain the smiles on their faces. And you can't tell me that the swashbuckling Mr. Sulu didn't do anything with the simulacra of the cabaret girls he ended up arm-in-arm with in the final scene on the planet's surface?

Everyone is all smiles after their shore leave

Or am I reading too much in what may be just a bunch of goofy smiles?

Star Trek: Balance of Terror

2012-07-23T07:57:00.001-07:00

This article was first posted on September 13, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

Balance of Terror is like a Chipotle burrito: Sinfully yummy...but so stuffed with ingredients that it's close to bursting open like Kane after his run-in with the facehugger. Not only is Balance of Terror a thinly disguised WWIIU-boat versus destroyer yarn, it's also a cautionary tale about racism. If that weren't enough, there's also a message thrown in about the futility of war: War is bad, mkay?

Romulan Bird-of-Prey, the 23^rd century's answer to the U-boat

As in many of the early Star Trek episodes, we're treated to the spectacle of Spock using logic to justify kicking some ass; in this case, he points out that showing weakness in the face of Romulan aggression will only result in interstellar war. Thus, to avoid war, the Enterprise crew must pursue and destroy the Romulan Bird of Prey that has encroached upon Federation space.

Logic dictates, captain, that we open up a can of whoop-ass on the Romulans

After his turn as Mr. Sensitivity in The Conscience of the King, Spock reverts to type as the coldly logical Vulcan, cutting the bigoted Stiles short during his clumsy (and roundabout) attempt at an apology for his earlier racism by pointing out that Spock saving his life was dictated entirely by Stiles's value to the Enterprise's crew as a highly trained navigator. Or maybe Spock being short with Stiles had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with him being peeved by the latter's bigotry.

My (Random) Thoughts on The Avengers

2012-07-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

While waiting for the crowds to die down before going to see The Dark Knight Rises, I thought this would be a good time to discuss this summer's first superhero blockbuster: Joss Whedon's The Avengers.

While I am a fan of Firefly, I am not a fan of Joss Whedon due to what I see as his tendency to try a little bit too hard to make the dialogue he writes witty and amusing. So, despite all the positive press that it has received, it was with some trepidation that I went to see The Avengers.

The Avengers, assembled

I'm glad to say that I was proven wrong; the dialogue in The Avengers was witty and amusing but it didn't come off as being forced. The Avengers had just the right mix of action and humor and every one of the ensemble cast got a chance to shine, even the two relatively normal members of The Avengers, Black Widow and Hawkeye. And in a bit of film-making legerdemain, Joss Whedon managed to use all the resources at his disposal, namely the above mentioned action and humor blended with some good pacing, to distract the audience (or at least this viewer) from the film's 143 minute length and a major plot-hole. At the movie's end, I walked out of the theater surprised at how long it had been and I wasn't even aware of the plot-hole until someone else pointed it out to me.

Hawkeye and Black Widow, normal people with freakish skill sets

The plot-hole in question is the unexplained transition of the Hulk from out-of-control rage monster to in-control rage monster. This is a pretty big plot-hole since out-of-control Hulk ends up being as much a danger to the other Avengers as the film's villain, Loki, and wreaks considerable havoc on board S.H.I.E.L.D.'s flying aircraft carrier halfway through the film while in-control Hulk plays an important role in foiling Loki's attempt at conquering the world. One gets the feeling that a pivotal scene ended up on the cutting room floor, perhaps to prevent the film from being overlong.

Out-of-control Hulk smashes expensive government property

In-control Hulk smashes extraterrestrial invader

The absence of any explanation of this change in the Hulk's character is all the more suprising considering an embarrassingly clumsy and completely unnecessary bit of exposition which occurs early in the film when Loki appears at a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. Dr. Selvig, the mentor of Thor's love interest in the filmbearing his name, upon seeing Loki, blurts out, "Loki – brother of Thor!", presumably for the benefit of anyone who hasn't seen Kenneth Branagh's contribution to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What's particularly puzzling is that throughout the film, Thor, through his words and actions, repeatedly explains his relationship to Loki, rendering this clunky bit of dialogue moot. It's so bad that I suspect it may have been thrown in there as some kind of joke, especially considering that Joss Whedon is very adept at exposition, the one exception that comes to mind being the first few minutes of Firefly's The Train Job.

Loki, brother of Thor

Plotholes and clumsy exposition aside, my only real quibble about The Avengers is the question it raises of what will the Avengers do next? The villain for the next film to feature this superpowered team was revealed after the credits, so we know who the Avengers will be battling next. However, what villainy will the individual heroes attempt to foil in their own films? After all, Iron Man 3 is currently in production and sequels to Captain America and Thor are reported to be in the works. After having stopped an attempted invasion of Earth by extraterrestrials, battling more "mundane" threats such as Russian arms dealers or other miscreants seeking monetary gain would seem a bit beneath them.

Black Widow, moments away from taking down some Russian arms dealers – it's difficult to imagine her going back to her day job after having helped thwart an extraterrestrial invasion

Where I Discuss Anna Karenina

2012-07-21T10:32:00.001-07:00

This article was first posted on September 12, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

Somehow, director Clarence Brown managed to stuff the essence of Leo Tolstoy's 900 page novel into this 95 minute movie. What is surprising is that the film doesn't feel rushed at all except during the transition when the eponymous heroine of Anna Karenina suddenly reverses herself and declares her love for Count Vronsky. Had a few more scenes (and minutes) been spent on this transition, the film would have been perfect.

Besides Anna's rather jarring admission to Vronsky, the only other complaint I have about the film is its rather sentimental ending, with the camera lingering on a photograph of the MILFalicious Greta Garbo as Anna Karenina, while Vronsky and Yashvin discuss Anna's death at the business end of a train and how it might have been (or might not have been) averted had Vronsky just been less of a cad.

As I mentioned before, there's a lot in this film. Not only is the basic structure of the story as told in the novel sumptuously brought to the screen, but the hypocrisy inherent in how society judges lapses in morality differently depending on the sex of the offender is given significant screen time; Vronsky, whom the film portrays as being the instigator of his doomed affair with Anna, barely suffers at all as a result of their adulterous liaison; the affair and its consequences end up being nothing more than minor speed bumps in the path his life happens to be taking. Anna, in contrast, has her life irrevocably ruined. I'd like to say that much has changed since the 1870's, when the novel was written, but that'd be naive of me.

Particularly bizarre and almost discomfiting to this viewer were the over-the-top displays of physical love shared by Anna and her adolescent son, Sergei; at the film's conclusion, I half expected Sergei to pluck out his eyes after Anna took her own life. What made these displays even more strange were that Anna seemed to show more passion in the kisses she lavished on her son than to the ones she bestowed upon Vronsky.

Ick.

Also worthy of mention is BasilRathbone's rather creepy portrayal of Anna's husband, Alexei Karenin; barely showing any emotion and husbanding his movements to the extreme, he reminded this viewer of an ambush predator lying in wait for its prey. This impression was given even more weight due to Basil Rathbone's uncanny resemblance to a praying mantis. However, instead of literally seizing Anna and biting her head off, BasilRathbone's Karenin only bit off her head spiritually.

Castiglione Discusses Star Trek: The Conscience of the King

2012-07-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

This article was first posted on September 8, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

More police procedural than science fiction, The Conscience of the King also presents another side to the brash Captain Kirk, a side which was explored (albeit under extraordinary conditions) in The Enemy Within. Here, we're presented with Captain Kirk as Hamlet, indecisive and hesitant, when confronted with the fact that a mass-murderer from his past is not dead as was thought but alive and on the Enterprise. Maybe the fact that he has developed feelings for the mass-murderer's pretty, young daughter, Lenore, has something to do with his reluctance to act on the evidence that he has gathered? Or maybe the captain realizes that human memory is fallible and if one is to accuse a man of having ordered the executions of over 4,000 men, women and children, one had better be certain that he has the right man.

Eugenics-inspired mass-murderer? Or itinerant stage actor? Or both? After 20 years, it's difficult to be certain...

The Conscience of the King is one of the better of the early episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, due in no small part to the development of Captain Kirk's character as well as the relationship between Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy. Also of particular interest in this episode are:

Mr. Spock's concern for Lt. Kevin Riley's emotional well-being when the latter is "demoted" back to engineering and
The 33-year old Captain Kirk's obviously carnal interest in the 19-year old Lenore.

The 33-year old James. T. Kirk tongue fences with the 19-year old Lenore

The first point is interesting since the logical Vulcan in Mr. Spock shouldn't even have considered the possibility of Lt. Riley being upset at his transfer as being significant; I guess his human half isn't quite as suppressed as Mr.Spock would like to believe. The second point is interesting because of how it illustrates a point I've brought up before: Science fiction tends to reflect the mores of the era in which it was written. Now, I wasn't alive back in the 60's but I'm guessing a man in his 30's pursuing a 19-year old girl as aggressively as Kirk was pursuing Lenore wasn't considered inappropriate back then; if this episode were written nowadays, I would speculate that the screen-writers would opt to age Lenore a few years in order to minimize the ick factor or have Kirk limit his interactions with her to the occasional avuncular pat on the head followed by a lollipop or an ice-cream cone.

Star Trek: The Menagerie

2012-07-19T21:14:00.001-07:00

This article was first posted on September 7, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

The Menagerie gives us a tantalizing glimpse of what Star Trek might have been, had the first pilot, The Cage, been accepted by NBC; instead of the brash James T. Kirk, the Enterprise is commanded by an intense, almost grim (and definitely humorless) Christopher Pike, the first officer is a woman, Mr. Spock is still the science officer but is embarrassingly (by Vulcan standards) emotional and the ship's doctor is one half country doctor a la Leonard McCoy and one half Mentat. Had The Cage been given the green-light, Star Trek, as we know it, would have been quite different.

Christopher Pike displaying a very un-Kirk-like mien

As a means of showcasing the story of Captain Pike and his crew, The Menagerie adequately performs the task at hand. As an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series in its own right, it doesn't quite gel; most of the dialogue is exposition leading up to yet another segment of the story of Captain Pike's encounter with the Talosians and too much of the story jury-rigged around The Cage doesn't make any sense: Why were the Talosians willing to help Christopher Pike given the outcome of their first encounter with the captain? Why did Mr. Spock have to do what he did when the Talosians, who were evidently able to project their illusions as far as Starbase 11, could have, by their own machinations, brought Christopher Pike to Talos IV? Why did Christopher Pike keep signaling "No" in response to Spock's actions but then reverse himself when the Enterprise finally settled into orbit around Talos IV? All these problems in The Menagerie betray its origins as nothing more than a vehicle for presenting the footage filmed for The Cage.

Who watches the watchers? The crew of the USS Enterprise from The Menagerie watches the crew of the USS Enterprise from The Cage. Meanwhile, the Talosians (off-screen) are watching everyone. And we, the audience, are watching them all

On a positive note, The Menagerie further develops Mr. Spock's character as well as his relationship with Dr. McCoy; we are treated to Mr. Spock braving the death penalty so that his former commander can live out his days unfettered by his broken body and it is Dr. McCoy who vigorously defends Mr. Spock when Captain Kirk voices doubts about his honesty concerning recent events.

Star Trek: The Carbomite Maneuver

2012-06-28T07:44:00.001-07:00

This article was first posted on September 3, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

The Enterprise's crew encounters the flagship of the "First Federation" that is crewed by an alien being, Balok, who falls prey to possibly the worst bluff in the history of bad bluffs. To escape certain death, Captain Kirk claims that the Enteprise has incorporated into it something called Carbomite, which he describes as being both a material and a device which guarantees mutually assured destruction should anyone attack them.

Huh?

Just what is this supposed to mean?

And just how did this bluff work on anyone possessing more than two neurons to rub together?

It's a good thing that Harry Mudd wasn't along for this voyage of the USS Enterprise, otherwise, he probably would have introduced the people of the "FirstFederation" to poker and cleaned those suckers out and touched off an interstellar incident.

The Carbomite Maneuver is noteworthy for something else besides Captain Kirk saving the day through the use of a bluff so unbelievably that it might as well be classified as a deus ex machina. For one thing, it's one of the few episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series where the Enterprise's crew actually venture off to where no man has gone before.

It also posits that an alien civilization that is advanced enough to be capable of space-flight must also be capable of understanding and appreciating the Enterprise's mission of peace.

In light of the Enterprise crew's later run-ins with the Romulans and Klingons, not to mention the Gorn, this seems like a pretty naive position to take.

Star Trek: Dagger of the Mind

2012-05-31T21:03:00.000-07:00

This article was first posted on September 1, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

I have a problem with this episode. Just what motive did Dr. Adams have for doing what he did? Was it megalomania? Was he trying to make a better world (or universe, in this case)? Was it hubris? Was he convinced that he had arrived at the method of rehabilitating criminal minds? Was he just bat-shit crazy? We, the viewers, aren't given an inkling of what motivated him to build the neural neutralizer and begin turning it on whoever happened to draw his ire.

Dr. Adams, villain of the week. What's his motivation for the evil acts he perpetrates in this episode? Did his parents not buy him a puppy to love and to hold when he was a boy? Is he just bat-shit crazy? Inquiring minds want to know!

This is probably one of the weaker of the early Star Trek: The Original Series episodes. The villain is nothing more than a two-dimensional caricature, doing evil simply for the sake of being evil. Its one saving grace is Marianna Hill, who plays the ridiculously beautiful Dr. Helen Noel, whom Dr. McCoy mischievously assigns as Kirk's assistant, knowing the two had "met" at a Christmas party. Even the stoic Mr. Spock seems to check her out when he and Kirk meet up with her in the Enterprise's transporterroom.

Dr. Helen Noel, eye candy of the week

I can't say that I blame him.

Alien: The Director's Cut

2012-04-03T18:54:00.002-07:00

This article was first posted on August 30, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

I have mixed feelings about Alien: TheDirector's Cut. On one hand, the insertion of never before seen footage provides us with a perspective on the life cycle of the Alien different from the Alien as social insect analogue used in Aliens. On the other hand, the insertion of the footage interferes with the taut pacing of the original, especially when one considers when in the sequence of events leading up to the film's climax Ripley discovers the Alien's nest in the Nostromo; the atmosphere is one of urgency after Ripley finds Parker's and Lambert's mutilated bodies and subsequently initiates the Nostromo's self-destruct sequence and it is during her almost frenzied rush to the Nostromo's lifeboat/shuttle that she discovers the nest and spends valuable minutes that she can ill afford to lose (given the self-destruct mechanism's ten minute timer) exploring the nest and euthanizing, for lack of a better word, Dallas and Brett, who she finds cocooned and slowly metamorphosing into Alien eggs. Had she found the nest prior to initiating the Nostromo's self-destruct sequence, the inclusion of this scene may have worked. In its present place, it detracts from the urgency of Ripley's plight.

Be that as it may, details of the Alien life cycle presented in this scene give us a tantalizing glimpse of what may have been had this footage not been excised in the original theatrical release. The first sequel, Aliens, would have certainly been different, since there wouldn't have been an Alien queen to act as Ripley's foil. Speaking of Aliens, the more I've watched Alien (either the original theatrical release or the director's cut), the more dissatisfied I've grown with its sequel. My primary gripe is on differences in the way the Alien was portrayed in the two films; in the first film, the Alien is an ambush predator that establishes a perch from which it slowly and stealthily approaches its victims before seizing them and dragging them to its lair where they can be cocooned; in the second film, the ambush predator is no more and we are treated to the Alien as a target amongst many in a shooting gallery, which, to be fair, is probably consistent with the vision of the Alien as social insect presented in the film.

Frankly, I prefer the vision of the Alien presented in the original film. To quote the android, Ash: [The Alien is a] perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. [It is] a survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

This vision of the Alien didn't survive the transition from the original film to the sequel and, frankly, I think it's a pity.

Where I Discuss Serenity

2012-04-02T20:13:00.000-07:00

This article was first posted on August 29, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

I wasn't a big fan of Serenity when I first saw it, and I'm afraid I'm still not a fan. Watching Serenity (the Firefly pilot) and Serenity (the Firefly movie) back to back merely served to highlight all the gripes I had about Serenity (the Firefly movie). The television pilot (and series) featured an ensemble cast and while the movie started off that way, it eventually turned into Buffy the Vampire Slayer (or, in this case, River the Reaver Slayer) and a bunch of people who she magnanimously puts up with. It didn't help that Malcolm Reynolds, the only other strong character in the movie, seemed to have undergone a complete personality shift somewhere in between Objectsin Space (the last episode in the series) and Serenity (the Firefly movie). In fact, I found Mal's personality shift so jarring that I almost felt I wasn't watching the original Firefly cast but their Mirror Universe counterparts.

I could have forgiven the inconsistencies in Mal's characterization in the movie as opposed to the series (after all, a bit of time was supposed to have passed and people do change) but I really found the resolution of River's story arc to be really difficult to stomach. I may be in the minority here but I find the concept of omnipotent and omniscient heroes to be, well, boring. During the series, while it was obvious that River had some unique and powerful abilities, the fact that she was off in la-la land half the time prevented her from being too obtrusive. Once she was "cured" of her psychological ailments, she became...boring. And obtrusive. And speaking of how she was "cured", it was simply too neat and tidy: River sees a holographic recording of Ms. Exposition describe how an entire planetful of people just decided to lay down and die, how the Reavers came to be and after witnessing the bloody climax of the recording (Ms. Exposition getting raped and eaten alive by a Reaver), River purges her demons by vomiting against a nearby wall after which she declares: "I'm alright...I'm alright". Huh? What? This was most unsatisfying considering everything that she and Simon went through during the course of Firefly's fourteen episodes.

Yeah, we get it. She's cured. And a total badass now

Personally, I think the movie would have been much more satisfying had River died; if she had simply closed the blast doors, tossed Simon's medical kit through the doors before they closed and then gotten killed by the Reavers, the movie would have been much better. We would have been spared the rather difficult to swallow scenes of her wading through the Reavers and piling their corpses up like cordwood and River sacrificing herself to save her brother and the others would have been very poignant, on par with Spock sacrificing himself to save the Enterprise and her crew in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Her dying to save her brother would also have lent thematic symmetry to their story arc. And more important of all, we would have been spared the exchange between River and Mal at the film's end where we realize that she can essentially do everything that everyone on the crew can (and probably do a better job of it) which leaves us with the question of what purpose they serve now.

Spock saves the Enterprise and its crew in a selfless act of heroism

Of course, having River die in Serenity probably would not have sat well with many Firefly fans, especially since almost a third of the original cast ended up getting killed off in the film. River dying probably would have resulted in grief-stricken Firefly fans converging upon JossWhedon's home with torches and pitchforks in hand and bloody vengeance in their hearts. However, I find nothing wrong with the idea of the hero dying in a story. I thought the Star Trek moviefranchise would have been much better had Spock stayed dead in the aftermath of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (if anything, it could have opened up some interesting story-lines about how Kirk and the rest of the crew dealt with their grief and eventually got on with their lives) and I thought Lethal Weapon 2 would have been a much better movie had Riggs died in Murtaugh's arms. There's nothing wrong with the hero dying, either in the act of saving the lives of others or avenging a loved one.

If anything, it's heroic.

Star Trek: Miri

2012-03-31T22:44:00.002-07:00

This article was first posted on August 24, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

If science fiction captures the concerns and fears prevalent in the era in which it was written, I can only come to the conclusion that people in the mid-60's were scared shitless of children.

In Miri, they are everywhere. And these aren't just normal children.

Think children raised by wolves are bad? Think again. Children raised by children are even scarier. At least, I assume that's how people felt in the 60's. Or at least that's what the writers felt. I can only assume that they were parents.

Frankly, if children were anything like how they were portrayed in Miri, I'd be scared of children, too. The children in Miri are not just obnoxiously disobedient, they even have a penchant for violence and murder.

What's that?

The children didn't kill anyone in this episode?

Apparently, denial isn't just a riverin Egypt. You can't tell me that they learned that bonking someone on the head with an object with some heft to it (like, say, a hammer) is an efficacious means of depriving them of life just by reading it in a book. For one thing, I doubt those little savages could read. No, rest assured, they learned all that through experience.

300 years of murderous experience.

Bonk bonk on the head! Bonk bonk! Bonk bonk! The head being bonked is Kirk's

Besides the interesting views on children that must have been held by this episode's writers, Miri is notable for being the first of the "another Earth" episodes. However, this angle isn't used to its full potential and it really wouldn't make any difference to the story if it were expunged. Also of interest is the continuing evolution of the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate; Spock and McCoy go at it like an old married couple but I'm not sure if their catty exchanges really count since McCoy was going mad due to the effects of an alien plague. Spock continues to display emotion and a dry sense of humor. And Janice Rand reveals to Kirk that she's been trying to get him to check out her gams for quite some time. I bet she's embarrassed she let that slip out. I guess the take-home lesson of all this is, if you're going to contract a killer virus that makes you go mad and causes you to reveal your embarrassing secret longings, avoid hanging around people about whom you have those embarrassing secret longings.

Yeoman Rand finally gets Kirk to notice her, although not under the best of circumstances

Star Trek: What Are Little Girls Made Of?

2012-02-19T21:30:00.000-08:00

This article was first posted on August 18, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

Star Trek: The Original Series begins to hit its stride with What Are Little Girls Made Of? Here are almost all the elements of what became synonymous with Star Trek: Plenty of action and Kirk being willing to jump into bed with just about anyone or anything in order to save the Enterprise, all wrapped up in a thought provoking science-fiction wrapper. The only thing missing is the spirited bickering between Spock and McCoy; for some reason, McCoy is completely absent in this episode.

Phaser fight! What more could you ask for in a Star Trek episode?

Unfortunately, What Are Little GirlsMade Of? also features something that was over-used in Star Trek: The Original Series: Kirk using rather simplistic logic to discombobulate supposedly sophisticated artificial intelligences. One has to wonder if the original programmers of all these computerized villains that Kirk dealt with during Star Trek's three seasons ever passed Computer Science 101; when Kirk started pushing their buttons, the artificial intelligences that the Enterprise's crew encountered usually ended up revealing themselves to be just about as sophisticated as Joseph Weizenbaum's Eliza.

What are little girls made of? I'd certainly like to know since I'd like to make me some of this! I'm referring, of course, to the naughty looking brunette with the barely there outfit, not the Lurch look-alike with the shaved head

What's particularly annoying in this episode are the contradictions inherent in what ultimately causes Roger Korby, Nurse Chapel's fiance and the episode's villain, to immolate himself and his delicious little fembot assistant, Andrea, at phaser-point; Kirk manages to manipulate Andrea and Ruk, Korby's hulking brute of an android bodyguard, into acting in emotional, almost human, ways and he even points this out to Korby to refute the latter's claim that an android society would be free of human foibles and the mayhem that often accompanies them. However, Korby's stated reason for killing himself and Andrea is that neither of them is human, Andrea because she is simply an android (albeit an incredibly sexy one) and himself because the human Korby died a long time ago, leaving behind a robotic copy that ostensibly carries his soul. Given that what triggers Korby's act of murder-suicide is Andrea throwing herself at him offering him her love (a decidedly human act), it's difficult to understand his reasoning.

But maybe that's the point.

After all, murder-suicide is hardly the act of a rational man and maybe Roger Korby's irrational reasoning was intentional.

Maybe.

Kirk prepares to open up a can of whoopass on a homocidal android using a...giant stone dildo?!?! How the hell did this make it past the censors?

Star Trek: Mudd's Women

2012-01-31T21:56:00.000-08:00

This article was first posted on August 17, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

Like The Enemy Within, Mudd's Women reflects the mores of the era in which it was written. In this case, the mores in question deal with the characteristics of the ideal wife; apparently, back in the 1960's, the ideal wife was someone who looked as if they could have been cast from the same mold as Marilyn Monroe or Mamie Van Doren with the ability to cook and sew being desirable perks.

I'm not making this up!

Besides the rather quaint image of the perfect wife presented by this episode, it seems that not only have values come full circle (or come many circles) from the 1960's to the 23rd century, but the business of providing of mail order brides to wealthy and desperately lonely men seems to be alive and well in the world of Star Trek. Women are bought and sold or, in this case, traded for dilithium crystals, and no one seems to bat an eye. Kirk seems more upset that the owners of the dilithium crystals are striking a hard bargain rather than the fact that what they're bargaining for is the right to marry the eponymous Mudd's women.

"Harry" Mudd, 23^rd century matchmaker...or 23^rd century human trafficker

As with many of the earlier episodes, Spock, displays a scandalous (for a Vulcan) amount of emotion, smirking mischievously as he observes the effect that Mudd's women have on the Enterprise's crew; because of the Venus Drug that the women have ingested, every male member of the Enterprise crew ends up being so hypnotized by their ass-ets that they practically need to be hosed down with cold water to break the spell the women have on them.

Mudd's women showing off their assets

Star Trek: The Enemy Within

2011-12-04T08:24:00.001-08:00

This article was first posted on August 9, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

Science fiction tends to reflect the times in which it was written; since science fiction is the exploration of the human condition in the face of advances in science and since the technological bogeyman that is foremost in everyone's minds changes from era to era, this is not surprising.

However, science fiction is still fiction and like all fiction, it will reflect the mores that were current in the era in which it was written.

A case in point is The Enemy Within.

In my discussion of The Naked Time, I mentioned that Kirk, while suffering from an affliction that brought deep-seated emotions and desires to the surface, revealed his frustrated desire for Yeoman Janice Rand. In The Enemy Within, this desire explodes to the surface in the form of Kirk's evil half, which is separated from his good half by a transporter malfunction.

Being evil, Kirk's evil half raids Dr.McCoy's liquor cabinet, swaggers through the Enterprise's corridors while drinking Saurian brandy straight from the bottle and overacting shamelessly and then winds up in Janice Rand's quarters where he attempts to force himself on her.

Kirk's evil half gets liquored up after helping himself to McCoy's booze stash

Later, Yeoman Rand gives a tearful account of the evil Kirk's assault on her virtue to the good Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy; as an aside, she mentions she had not wanted to say anything about the attack since she had not wanted to get Kirk into any trouble.

Obviously, society's attitude toward sexual assault have changed considerably since the late 60's.

This point is hammered home by Mr.Spock's rather insensitive comment to Yeoman Rand at the episode's conclusion in which he states that she no doubt found that the evil Kirk had some interesting qualities.

His comment (delivered with a facial expression that can only be described as a leering smirk) almost makes his earlier statement to Kirk, "If I seem insensitive to what you're going through Captain, understand it's the way I am", seem almost prescient.

As in many of the earlier Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, characters not of the Kirk-Spock-McCoy Triumvirate seem to get quite a bit of screen time. Yeoman Rand plays a key role in this episode. Lieutenant Sulu also figures prominently in this episode. As leader of the landing party that is stranded on Alpha 177 by the transporter malfunction, Mr. Sulu manages to maintain his composure and sense of humor despite temperatures (and the landing party's chances of survival) dropping with each passing second.

Castiglione Discusses Immortals

2011-12-03T20:20:00.001-08:00

I hadn't planned on watching Immortals. I'd seen the trailer and thought the film looked goofy. But a spur of the moment decision to go to the movies late at night resulted in having to make the decision to see either Jack and Jill or Immortals and I wasn't in the mood to see a film where the humor appeared to revolve around how ridiculous Adam Sandler looks dressed as a woman.

Unfortunately, Immortals was as goofy as presaged by its trailer. Fortunately, much of its goofiness began to surface in the latter half of the film so I was, at least, initially entertained. Unfortunately, the goofiness, when it began to appear, was so goofy that it probably disproportionately affected my opinion of the film.

Immortals recounts the story of Theseus (Henry Cavill), as he attempts to prevent Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), the Heraklion King of Crete, from freeing the Titans, who are imprisoned in Mount Tartarus, and using them to destroy the gods. In order to accomplish his apocalyptic mission, Hyperion needs the Epirius Bow, a magical weapon that allows its wielder to do things which are normally only possible when playing a video game on cheat mode.

Theseus is aided by the beautiful virgin oracle Phaedra (Freida Pinto) who really doesn't do a whole lot in the film except drop some misleading hints as to what will ultimately happen, save Theseus's life by going mother bird on him and regurgitating water into his parched mouth and get naked (courtesy of a body double).

Phaedra before she gets (sort of) naked

Theseus's battle with the Minotaur doesn't really play a prominent role in Immortals, which is strange considering that this battle is what Theseus is famous for. Frankly, I was just glad that it was included at all. However, it was only a fairly abbreviated action sequence and the labyrinth in which it took place wasn't really labyrinthy enough, being easily navigable by Theseus via the simple expedient of cutting himself and leaving a trail of his own blood. To make matters worse, Theseus's discovery of the Epirius Bow, the weapon crucial to Hyperion's plan to unleash the Titans, just before he was ambushed by the Minotaur, overshadowed the following battle and its resolution. I did, however, like that the Minotaur was only referred to as "The Beast" in Immortals although I'm at a loss to articulate why.

Theseus battles the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. In Immortals, the Minotaur is just some dude in a funky hat that a dom might wear

The Greek gods are portrayed as being very young and good looking while the Titans are portrayed as a bunch of hyperactive savages with really bad skin. Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods, is nowhere to be seen. I suppose the presence of a god who was crippled and considered grotesque would have been inconsistent with Immortals's portrayal of the Greek dieties as a bunch of teenaged Aryans.

Hera, wife of Zeus (Luke Evans), is also notably absent in Immortals. I guess it would have been awkward having to explain that she was not only Zeus's wife, but also his sister. The family connection between the gods and the Titans (Zeus and Hera were the children of the Titans Cronus and Rhea) isn't even mentioned, thus saving the audience from whatever convoluted explanation that the screenwriters would have had to come up with to explain why the gods and the Titans don't seem to share any sort of family resemblance at all.

The Titans, progenitors of the gods. The family resemblance is very well concealed

Frankly, I'm not sure if the portrayal of the gods as a bunch of beautiful young people worked. They just seemed to lack the gravitas that I would associate with gods and this contributed to the film's goofiness whenever they appeared. Their costumes only exacerbated this problem. In her short, gold skirt, Athena (Isabel Lucas) looked more like a cheerleader than the goddess of wisdom and war. Athena is also the virgin patron of Athens. Frankly, in Immortals, she didn't look very virginal at all. If anything, she looked deliciously unvirginal.

Athena, goddess of war and wisdom and virgin patron of Athens

And whoever thought Ares (DanielSharman), the god of war, would look totally bad ass in what can only be described as a sword hat or Stegosaurus helmet was, to put it mildly, sadly mistaken.

Ares, god of war, sporting the sword hat

The mighty Stegosaurus, possible inspiration of Ares's choice of headwear

In addition to the goofiness of Immortals's portrayal of the Greek gods, what began to grate on me was just the fact that the film required you to turn your brain off in order to take it seriously.

Zeus's explanation for why the gods must not take an active role in the battle between Hyperion and Theseus (Man has faith in us so we must have faith in man) is one of those phrases that sounds pithy and erudite at first but upon deeper reflection is revealed to have as much depth as something you'd find in a fortune cookie.

Zeus's insistence on the gods following a sort of Olympian Prime Directive in regards to the affairs of man seems all the more strange given that one of these men (Hyperion) is trying to kill the gods. It's also a little bit ironic that had the gods answered Hyperion's prayers to save his family, he wouldn't have developed a total hard-on for them, and the whole crisis depicted in Immortals would've been averted.

There's also the question of why Zeus didn't immediately use the anti-Titan self-destruct device in Mount Tartarus to kill the Titans after they were freed. I had assumed that triggering the device would've killed the gods who were present in the mountain but when Zeus finally activated it, he was able to ascend to Mount Olympus, leaving the Titans to die and leaving me wondering why he couldn't have activated it immediately after the Titans were freed and, thus, prevent the bloody slaughter of half the gods of the Greek pantheon. Of course, that would've meant that we, the audience, wouldn't have gotten to see the kick-ass slow-motion battle scene depicting said bloody slaughter.

Speaking of battle scenes, one of the biggest head-scratchers in the movie was just what Hyperion was trying to accomplish having his numerically superior Cretan army attack the numerically inferior Athenian army through a little hole that he had blown in the wall separating them using the Epirius Bow. Why not make more holes or make a really big hole instead of having your forces attack through a narrow passageway that could be blocked and defended by a few dozen men?

Way to use your numerical superiority to maximum advantage, Hyperion!

Just how did this guy get to be king, anyway?

Frankly, watching the seemingly endless hordes of the CGI animated Cretan army go pouring into this tiny hole and realizing that this was probably intended to be epic made me titter.

And the scene where Theseus exhorts the Athenian army to find its courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds (the Athenians would have probably not needed the pep talk had they known that Hyperion would've been so sporting as to attack them through a narrow bottleneck of his own making), which looked painfully goofy in the trailer, was even more goofy in the film, since only an abbreviated version of Theseus channeling Henry V was shown in the previews.

To top it all off, in addition to being a goofy, albeit good-looking, movie, Immortals has the dubious distinction of being possibly the most sadistic, non-torture porn movie to have been released in quite some time. There's enough torture in Immortals to give a neo-con a boner (and possibly some ideas on what to add to the list of allowable enhanced interrogationtechniques) and a lot of people seem to get speared through the head in the film's battle scenes.

This seems to happen a lot in Immortals

Star Trek: The Naked Time

2011-11-10T19:54:00.001-08:00

This article was first posted on August 7, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

The Naked Time is basically a disaster movie (or, in this case, a disaster TV show) set in space: The Enterprise crew gets infected by an affliction that makes them obsessively rub their hands like Lady MacBeth on a bender and brings their innermost desires and emotions to the surface, resulting in things going very pear-shaped when Lt. Kevin Riley gets it in his head to turn off the ship's engines while the Enterprise is in close orbit over a planet in the midst of its death throes; according to Scotty, it will take 30 minutes to bring the engines back on line but the Enterprise doesn't have 30 minutes before it hits the dying planet's atmosphere and burns to a cinder.

Oh, what to do?!?!

The most entertaining part of this episode is seeing the effects of the affliction on the various Enterprise crewmen: Nurse Chapel throws herself at Mr. Spock, Lt.Riley turns into a bizarre caricature of an Irishman, Captain Kirk, in a monologue that almost qualifies as being creepy, bemoans the fact that the two women in his life, the Enterprise and Yeoman Rand, are out of his reach (the Enterprise because it's an inanimate object and not a "flesh woman" and Yeoman Rand because of the impropriety of such a relationship; as an aside, I find it interesting that Captain Kirk, who has a reputation amongst Star Trek fans as being something of a walking hormone, knew that pursuing a relationship with a subordinate just wasn't done; however, Spock in the 2009 reboot film, seems to have had no compunctions about being in a relationship with his student, Uhura; shame on you, Mr. Spock! Shame shame shame!), Spock weeps over having had to hide his emotions his entire life and how his mother must have suffered living in a society where showing emotions was considered to be in bad taste and Mr. Sulu decides to take off his shirt, grease up his torso and run through the corridors of the Enterprise with a sword and terrorize its crew, apparently in the belief that they're the Cardinal's guards from The Three Musketeers.

Clearly, Mr. Sulu has issues.

Yeoman Rand takes the helm at one point in this episode, showing that she is capable of much more than the secretarial duties she usually fulfills in the show. She is also highlighted as one of the objects of Captain Kirk's desires, tantalizingly close but, in the end, separated from the Captain by what is effectively an insurmountable gulf.

Parts of this episode that made me chuckle were Mr. Spock doing some calculations, apparently with the aid of a 23rd century slide rule of all things, Riley and Sulu attempting to prevent another crewman's suicide while half a dozen able-bodied Starfleet officers just sort of sit there and stare dumbly instead of doing anything to help, Kirk literally slapping the afflicted Spock into sobriety, Lt. Riley rewarding the Enterprise crew with a double helping of ice-cream after he has gained control of the ship and then admonishing Lt. Uhura (by depriving her of her ice-cream ration) for attempting to prevent him from singing "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen" just "one more time" over the ship's intercom and Kirk getting his shirt ripped, not in a fight, but by Dr. McCoy administering the antidote for the affliction.

Mr. Spock gets an honorable mention for the bit of wry humor he displays in this episode; after Vulcan nervepinching the berserk Mr. Sulu into unconsciousness, he orders two crewmen to "take d'Artagnan to sick-bay."

Where I Discuss The Dead

2011-10-31T21:07:00.000-07:00

You can't seem to escape from The Dead. Not only are zombies currently in vogue, in movies and other media, but almost every zombie movie I can think of off the top of my head uses the words “The” and “Dead” in its title. Hmmm...let's see, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Land of the Dead, The Walking Dead (this one is a television series, not a movie), and, of course, The Dead.

The list goes on.

The only movies that appear to escape this naming convention are the 28 Days Later films.

When I was a kid, we lived in fear of a nuclear holocaust. It appears that even though the zombie movie lurched its way into the mainstream back in the 60's with the release of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, the fear of a zombie apocalypse appears to have struck a chord with this generation. Maybe it's because we're currently in danger of becoming metaphorical zombies due to the plethora of ADHD inducing media and devices to which we are constantly subjected these days. Maybe I'm reading too much into this current spike in the public's interest in zombies.

But I was discussing the Ford Brothers's The Dead.

The Dead is a fairly conventional zombie movie. Two protagonists, US Navy lieutenant Brian Murphy (Rob Freeman) and Sergeant Daniel Dembele (Prince David Osei), a soldier in some unspecified West African country, are both trying to reconnect with their families. A movie with such a storyline may have been fodder for the Lifetime TV network were it not for the fact that what lies between both men and their loved ones is a horde of flesh eating zombies that can only be stopped by shooting them in the head, crushing their heads, chopping off their heads or bifurcating their heads.

I'd rate The Dead as being somewhere between meh and good. Its problem is that, with the exception of its African setting, it doesn't really bring anything new to the zombie movie genre. We've seen all this before. We have zombies and people who are trying to avoid being eaten by the zombies. We have the customary bits of social commentary that always seem to find their way into a zombie movie script; in The Dead, Daniel berates Murphy about the insanity of American foreign policy (you send soldiers to kill us and doctors to heal us, Daniel says incredulously) and waxes philosophic with another African soldier about how the zombie plague came to be (perhaps it's Mother Nature trying to restore the balance that the human race has upset on the planet). The final scene in the film could have been cribbed from the “true ending” of 28 Days Later (that is, before test audiences saw it, couldn't handle it, and forced Danny Boyle to do a reshoot).

What's frustrating is that there were a number of opportunities throughout The Dead for it to differentiate itself from its predecessors or at least crank up the tension, which tended to wax and wane to an almost frustrating degree, resulting in a movie-going experience in which some genuinely tense moments were separated by scenes which were so pedestrian as to invoke a sentiment almost akin to clinical detachment.

To list some of these squandered opportunities off the top of my head:

The zombies in The Dead were of the slow-moving, shuffling variety. Such zombies are a threat under two circumstances: When they approach their intended victims under cover, either of darkness or of the local terrain, or when their victims begin to succumb to fatigue, since human beings need to rest, while zombies do not. While there were plenty of scenes in The Dead when zombies came lurching out of the darkness or the bush, the inexorable fatigue that the protagonists would have felt in their sleep-deprived states, and to which they would have been in terror of succumbing, was, for the most part, glossed over.
There is a scene in The Dead which involves a baby being left in the care of one of the protagonists. This scene was pretty pointless since the protagonist's dilemma is conveniently solved when a truck full of refugees arrives to take charge of the infant immediately after the scene in which he is left with the baby. Frankly, I was expecting the film to take a big detour from the conventional path it had been following and turn into some exciting new hybrid of a zombie movie and the Lone Wolf and Cub films. But no, the protagonist gets the baby in one scene and in the next, is absolved of his responsibility for caring for the baby. Deus ex machina sucks in the 23^rd century and it sucks in zombie movies.

In addition to the detours missed on The Dead's meandering way down the path blazed by the zombie movies that came before it, there was a moment in the film that invoked some genuine head scratching on my part and another which not only precipitated some more head scratching but some serious thought as to whether the scene was intended to be one of those scenes in movies intended to bludgeon you over the head with some sort of “heavy” message.

The purely head-scratching moment came about when, in one scene, Murphy insists against turning on the headlights of the truck in which he and Dembele are traveling for fear of attracting zombies but then, in the scene immediately following it, argues that they should make a campfire, citing their need to cook and eat something. Given this sudden reversal on Murphy's part and that they could have easily delayed making a cooking fire for the few hours it would have taken for the sun to rise after which the fire would have had less of a chance of attracting any zombies, I was left wondering if there was meant to be a scene (or scenes) between these two which had wound up on the cutting room floor.

The head-scratcher which may or may not have been meant to deliver a message was when Murphy took to the trees in order to safely get some sleep since the zombies in The Dead are not able to climb. This begs the question why the people in the unnamed African country in which the film is set didn't just seek sanctuary in the rocky crags that Murphy crossed rather than seeking it in the open desert beyond the crags where the zombies could get to them. While watching Murphy climb a tree and set up a nest in which to sleep, in light of the scene in which it is postulated that the zombie plague is a correction that Mother Earth is unleashing upon mankind, I was left wondering whether we, the audience, were meant to interpret Murphy's ascent into the arboreal home of man's simian ancestors as a devolution of sorts, something akin to the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where the apes discover the monolith (and tools/weapons), only in reverse.

If this wasn't the intent of this scene, I suppose you could just add it to the list of missed opportunities.

Star Trek: Charlie X

2011-09-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

This article was first posted on August 7, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

The Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate begins to take shape in Charlie X, the second episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, and we see the seed of the bickering that will characterize the relationship between the coldly logical Spock and the emotional humanist McCoy. We see more of Uhura and Yeoman Rand, who also had quite a bit of screen time in The Man Trap. I get the impression that in these early episodes, the writers were experimenting with what to do with the characters so a lot of the people who were relegated to the background in later episodes seem to get quite a bit of screen time while others, who later became emblematic of Star Trek: The Original Series, are scarcely to be seen; for example, Lieutenant Commander Montgomery "Scotty"Scott is noticeably absent in both Charlie X and The Man Trap.

Once again, I get the impression that Uhura is flirting with Mr. Spock, or at least teasing him flirtatiously, in this episode, as she accompanies him in song as he plays his harp. Speaking of Mr. Spock, again he shows emotion in this episode, smiling rather pleasantly as he strums along to Uhura's vocals.

Mr. Spock with a very noticeable smile on his face as he jams with Uhura – and no, he isn't possessed by anything in this episode, except maybe by a muse

There are some aspects of this episode that made me chuckle: When Charlie Evans is handed off to the Enterprise's crew, he is informed by the Antares's captain that the Enterprise is like a city in space, with a crew of almost 400. Apparently, cities in the 23rd century are a lot smaller than the ones we have now. And when teaching Charlie Judo, Kirk, for some odd reason (well, maybe not so odd, given Kirk's predilection for showing off his pecs at the least provocation), decides to go shirtless, while Charlie wears a gi jacket; anyone who's done Judo will tell you that there's a world of difference between throwing a person who's wearing a gi jacket and someone who's not; the latter task is significantly harder! Captain Kirk cheats at Judo!

Kirk teaches Charlie Evans Judo...and feels compelled to show a lot of skin while doing so

Unfortunately, the story of Charlie X is rather uninspired; it's almost the same story as Where No Man Has Gone Before but instead of a fully grown man gaining god-like powers and getting drunk on his new-found abilities, we have a teenager, insecure and bewildered in his new environment on board the Enterprise after ostensibly spending the first 17 years of his life alone, running amuck with god-like powers that were gifted to him by the race of beings native to the planet on which he had been marooned. His only kryptonite seems to be someone (like, say, Kirk) giving him a stern talking to in a command voice but eventually, he learns to shrug off the effects of this devastating weapon. How will the Enterprise's crew deal with this diabolical adversary (for what could be more dangerous than a desperately horny teenager with god-like powers)? Kirk ended Gary Mitchell's rampage (with a little bit of Dr. Dehner's help in the form of lightning bolts) in Where No Man Has Gone Before by blasting a rock with a phaser rifle, causing the rock to fall and crush his deranged friend. How will he deal with Charlie X?

The episode's conclusion is unsatisfying; the race of beings who had given Charlie his powers come to the rescue of the Enterprise's crew and take him off their hands and reverse the effects of his rampage save for the destruction of the Antares and its crew.

Even in the 23rd century, deus ex machina is a cop out.

Apollo 18 (or in Space No One Can Hear You Snore)

2011-09-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

Apollo 18 isn't quite as bad as the title of this article makes it out to be and that's part of its problem; it's not good enough to be good and it's not bad enough to be unintentionally good so it ends up being somewhat meh.

Before I go on, I feel obligated to warn readers that my discussion of Apollo 18 will contain spoilers.

So consider yourself warned.

Apollo 18 is a film in the mockumentary found footage style made famous by The Blair Witch Project and this results in a major inconsistency given that the premise of the film is that it purportedly documents the last manned mission to the moon and that no one survived this last mission; this begs the question as to how the footage being shown in Apollo 18 was exactly found since at the film's conclusion said footage is either in the abandoned Apollo lunar module on the moon's surface or mixed up somewhere in the tangled wreckage of the Apollo command/service module and the Soviet LK lander in orbit around the moon.

The Apollo command/service module in lunar orbit

Aside from the contradiction borne of its premise, Director Gonzalo López-Gallego's Apollo 18 suffers from the fact that screen-writer Brian Miller shows his hand wayyy too early, revealing to the audience almost immediately after the crew of the lunar module (“Nate” Walker and “Ben” Anderson, played by Lloyd Owen and Warren Christie, respectively) lands on the moon that the cause of all the mysterious happenings in the film are due to spider-like aliens disguised as moon rocks. In doing so, he missed a great opportunity to throw a couple of red herrings at the audience in the form of the cold war paranoia that was ostensibly the raison d'etre behind the mission of the Apollo 18. After all, shortly after their arrival on the moon and during the course of their top secret Department of Defense mission to deploy detectors designed to provide early warning of Soviet ICBM launches, Walker and Anderson stumble upon tracks which lead them to a Soviet lunar module.

The Soviet LK (Lunny Korabl - “lunar ship”) lander

The strange goings-on which follow, which include the US flag planted at their own landing site being tampered with and their lunar module being sabotaged, could have been attributed to a Soviet cosmonaut acting either on his own initiative or with official sanction, especially considering that the Soviet LK lander portrayed in the film, instead of being the cramped one-man spacecraft that it was in reality, looks big enough to accommodate at least two cosmonauts, something which Walker and Anderson fret about briefly after they discover the body of one cosmonaut before being assured by Houston that the Soviets sent only one man.

Schematic of the Soviet LK lander – you don't have to know how to read Cyrillic to see that this was strictly a spacecraft meant for one and noticeably less roomy than the Soviet lander portrayed in Apollo 18

Instead, we're shown “found footage” fairly early in the film which shows a moon rock moving around in the background and the only mystery in the film is what these moon rock spiders have against national flags since, during the course of the film, they not only mess with the US flag but there's evidence to suggest that they did some violence to the Soviet flag that was planted by the crewman of the LK lander. In addition to abusing flags regardless of the political systems they represent, these moon rock spiders also have the endearing habit of burrowing into human beings and turning them into batshit crazy pod people before ultimately killing them.

As you can probably tell, I was pretty disappointed by Apollo 18, especially since I really wanted to like this film. When I was a kid, I was very much into the US space program, and I'm probably dating myself by mentioning this, but when I was in this phase, the Space Shuttle had not yet made it into orbit, so for me, the US space program meant the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft and Skylab, so when I found out about Apollo 18, I was pretty psyched.

The Apollo lunar module – one of the spacecraft that epitomized the US space program for me when I was growing up

My disappointment was rendered more acute because the film's shortcomings could have easily been remedied with some minor script doctoring. Given the credible performances of Lloyd Owen and Warren Christie (Ryan Robbins doesn't get to do much as command module pilot John Grey but he certainly acquits himself well given what he had to work with) and its great special effects, Apollo 18 could have been a good movie if only more attention had been paid to the script.

But I guess you could say that about every film cursed with mediocrity.

Where I Discuss Star Trek: The Man Trap

2011-09-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

This article was first posted on August 6, 2010. It is presented in its entirety with some minor changes.

The Man Trap is a typical "space monster" episode with a twist; the "monster" in question can assume any form it wishes, usually conforming to the semblance of someone from its intended victim's past, and along with the salt it requires for its nourishment, it also needs love.

Space monsters need love, too

I have mixed feelings about this episode. The creature's need for love and the fact that it's the last of its kind makes it something more than just a two-dimensional threat to the crew and also gives its death some poignancy. Professor Crater's pathetic love for the creature even though it killed his beloved wife and then took on her form (with his knowledge) also gives this episode a touch of pathos. However, the way this episode was structured felt "wrong" to me; the fact that there is something odd about "Nancy Crater" is immediately revealed to the audience and Professor Crater's clumsy and brusque attempts to get the Enterprise crew to leave posthaste (albeit after leaving behind a sizable ration of salt tablets) and leave him to his own private fantasy clues the viewer in on the fact that:

"Nancy Crater" is not who she seems to be, and
Professor Crater is in on "her" subterfuge.

This, in my opinion, robs the episode of much potential suspense and mystery. What's the point of having a homicidal shape-shifting creature on the loose if you don't, at least, make an attempt to pull one over on the viewing audience? Isn't that the obvious thing to do? Or am I speaking with the benefit of more than forty years of evolution in the art of story-telling via the media of television and film behind me?

The Man Trap marks the first appearances of Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy and Lieutenant Nyota Uhura. Dr. McCoy, as played by DeForest Kelley, certainly has more screen presence that Dr. Piper from Where No Man Has Gone Before but in The Man Trap his role as an emotional foil to the coldly logical Mr. Spock is yet to be established.

This episode's portrayal of Lieutenant Uhura is particularly interesting in light of Nichelle Nichols's reported dissatisfaction with her role in the original series due to its lack of "significance" and Uhura's (as played by Zoe Saldana) romantic relationship with Mr. Spock in the 2009 reboot of the Star Trek franchise. For one thing, in the first scene in which Uhura is present, she's not at her usual post at the Enterprise's communications console; she's actually at the navigator's station! In this one episode, Uhura demonstrates more breadth in her abilities as a Starfleet officer than she did in the first six Star Trek movies! Uhura then jokes to Mr. Spock about being bored with her duties as the Enterprise's communications officer, and then, if I'm not mistaken, proceeds to shamelessly flirt with the dispassionate Vulcan! Speaking of dispassionate Vulcans, although much less emotional than he was in Where No Man Has Gone Before, Mr. Spock barely seems to be able to control his emotions when he is notified of a crewman's death and then is subsequently confronted by Uhura for what she believes to be (if only she knew!) his cold-blooded reaction (or non-reaction) to the tragic news. The Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate is obviously to take a while to gel into the form that Star Trek: The Original Series fans are familiar with.

Remembering 9/11/2001

2011-09-11T00:05:00.000-07:00

I still remember where I was on September 11, 2001 when I found out about the attacks. Before going to work, I had checked in on a gaming related discussion forum that I used to frequent and saw some thread titles referring to the attacks in the off-topic section but I assumed the discussion was about some new game. Something, however, made me check Yahoo! News before finally heading out the door and I saw that whatever was being discussed in the forum wasn't a game at all.

Most of my day at work was spent glued to a television set in one of the company conference rooms feeling sick to my stomach as the death toll mounted while my mind reeled as I tried to make sense of something which really made no sense at all. After all, what sane human being decides to just go murder a whole bunch of innocent people just to make a point?

How do you wrap your head around that?

The sick feeling I experienced when I thought about how many people had perished in the attacks slowly developed into something akin to depression when I realized that the course of history down which the USA and the rest of the world had been meandering had basically taken a big detour down crazy street and there was going to be a shitstorm the likes of which people of my generation had never seen and a lot more innocent people were probably going to die or at least have their lives turned completely upside down as a consequence of these attacks.

Those innocents are as much victims of the 9/11 attacks as those who died on that day, the course of their lives, like ours, forever changed by that detour taken by history.

There will certainly be more anniversaries of the 9/11 attacks in the future but they probably won't carry as much weight as this one.

More time will have passed so memories of that day won't be as vivid.

And other events claiming priority in our memories will probably come to pass.

Those of us who are young enough to have been shaped by the attacks and their aftershocks will eventually grow old and die.

But history will go on in the way it does.

That is, until another such event makes it take yet another detour down crazy street.

I guess what ultimately matters is that we don't crash during these detours and that we get back on track as soon as possible.