Sunday, August 29, 2010
Star Trek TNG - The Last Outpost
Originally aired: October 19th 1987
Ah, the Ferengi. I remember hearing years later that the Ferengi were intended to be a big villain for this show, but here at their first appearance that plan must have fallen apart straight away.
But it starts well. They introduce the mysterious alien ship well, and the bridge crew cast all play it well talking about the Ferengi. That breaks down a little bit when Data starts an “As you know...” exposition line. Who talks like that? People don’t talk to each other about stuff they already know for the sake of filling in the audience. They try to sell us here on the Ferengi being roughly as advanced as the Federation. So far, I’m willing to accept that. The rest of the teaser works well with the Enterprise mysteriously being incapacitated by the mysterious unknown technology of the Ferengi.
As the Enterprise sits there in trouble, freaking out about how their ship has been neutralised by the enemy, it occurs to me that they are missing an obvious alternative. I decide to wait and see how long it takes them to realise they’ve missed something. They start off on a tangent about history instead which confuses me - that dialog started as a conversation about what little they know about the enemy and ended up as a talk about the colours of national flags on Earth. I really wonder why in the middle of a Red Alert, Picard would allow the conversation get off topic like that. I suppose there’s not much he can do until the crew he’s sent to Engineering report back on fixing the problem I guess. Though he gets a bit snippy when he drags Data back on topic, despite Data pointing out that Picard himself started talking about flags.
They do come up with a plan, though they’re still missing the obvious alternative. The plan sounds quite plausible actually though. Once character does use the phrase “point three hundred milliseconds” though. What the fuck is that? Is .300 the same as .3? For shame Star Trek writers. Either learn how numbers actually work, or make up a unit so I can just write what you make these people say off as technobabble.
Anyway, they try their plan and surprise, surprise it does not work. The ship sits there, not having moved an inch. Picard actually swears in French at this. Someone starts reading through every bit of info the ship’s computer has. Everyone freaks out that the Ferengi can do this, except for Troi who finally spots what the others have been missing. It’s been 7 minutes. Not bad - assuming everything’s been in real time. And there’s not been anything to suggest it’s not. I thought it would take them longer to realise that maybe it’s the unexplored alien planet their orbiting that’s messing the ship up rather than the Ferengi. Picard calls for the first of many, many ready room scenes. They come out of it deciding to surrender to the Ferengi. Wuss.
But the Ferengi assume he’s asking for their surrender as they're in the same situation as the Enterprise. Picard gets them to show themselves on the viewer and we see the Ferengi make up for the first time. Hmm. It hasn’t changed at all really since it’s first appearance. They return to the conference room, and Riker has to hustle some children out of there before the Captain arrives.They were just playing around, but in an off limits area. Which adjoins the bridge. What the fuck? How did two kids, less than 10 years old each get into the conference room?
Anyway, long story short, the planet is an outpost of a long extinct incredibly powerful empire, and that’s pretty much the last interesting thing in the episode. The Enterprise works with the Ferengi to resolve the situation and people from both ships beam down to the planet. The rest is a rather dull plot where the two away teams get into a bit of a struggle on the planet. The Ferengi use some crappy energy whips - I honestly have no idea who the hell those were a good idea, but the way the Ferengi are shown here makes it hard for me to believe they're as advanced as the Federation. And it’s here that the idea of Ferengi as a Big Bad really falls apart. They’re just plain ridiculous as they appear here. A completely botched execution that never really gets fixed until Deep Space Nine develops the Ferengi race into something actually worth spending time watching. So it’s no surprise that they abandoned this approach and used the Romulans and the Borg as villains instead. About the only thing worth mentioning about the Ferengi was that Armin Shimmerman appears here playing a Ferengi for the first time. Perhaps he’s a relative of Quarks.
The plot gets resolved when Riker convinces a representative of the extinct empire that humans are civilised and he releases their ship and decides he wants to learn more about their philosophy. He releases the Ferengi as well, and then goes back to sleep until another visitor arrives, and the Enterprise retrieves whatever McGuiffin the Ferengi had stolen and leaves. Again, I see what they’re trying to do here - show that humanity has grown even further than they had in Kirk’s era, but it just falls a little flat as Riker gets to act all superior and condescending to toward the Ferengi.
It’s not until Star Trek starts to show us humanity’s weakness and dark side that it really becomes compelling to watch, and the first time Next Generation tries that is up next in Where No One Has Gone Before.
Wow - that was rather a long post. They won't all be this long - I get the feeling I'll only have this much to say on the episodes I don't like. :)
Declare - Tim Powers
I’ve been a fan of Tim Powers’ books for a while now so when I saw Declare going cheap a little while back I snapped it up. But I couldn't get into it. I was puzzled. I first read The Anubis Gates - a story involving magical time travel to London in the year 1810 and pre-destination paradoxes and I was hooked.
I followed that up with the Fault Lines series: Last Call (mystical card games and the competition to become the spiritual king of the American west), Expiration Date (the ghost of Edison possesses a young boy and flees from those who would consume him in a bid for immortality) and Earthquake Weather which ties both the previous books together. I liked these quite a bit too. And last was Three Days To Never involving mystical time travel, Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein. Which was pretty awesome.
So I was understandably confused when I had such a hard time getting into Declare. It’s about a retired spy, recalled to active duty decades after World War II, during the 60s and the Cold War. It jumps between his exploits in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1941 and his return to duty in 1963. And it’s interesting but it just didn’t grab me.
Until I read the news over the last week. The death of an MI6 employee in London got me thinking about the Great Game a lot more. And the more I thought about espionage, the more interested I got into going back to the novel. And when I pushed ahead just a little more, the novel hooked me.
Powers’ usual use of the occult in his stories finally showed itself as the mysterious Operation Declare is hinted at involving Djinn, a mysterious force on top of Mount Ararat and an attempt to counter the Soviet’s move to control that force. And I can’t wait to find out what happens next. I’m only 200 pages into it and there’s a long way to go, but I’m relieved my faith in Powers books is restored, and newly interested also in next year’s Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides, which is loosely based on one of Powers older novels.
I followed that up with the Fault Lines series: Last Call (mystical card games and the competition to become the spiritual king of the American west), Expiration Date (the ghost of Edison possesses a young boy and flees from those who would consume him in a bid for immortality) and Earthquake Weather which ties both the previous books together. I liked these quite a bit too. And last was Three Days To Never involving mystical time travel, Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein. Which was pretty awesome.
So I was understandably confused when I had such a hard time getting into Declare. It’s about a retired spy, recalled to active duty decades after World War II, during the 60s and the Cold War. It jumps between his exploits in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1941 and his return to duty in 1963. And it’s interesting but it just didn’t grab me.
Until I read the news over the last week. The death of an MI6 employee in London got me thinking about the Great Game a lot more. And the more I thought about espionage, the more interested I got into going back to the novel. And when I pushed ahead just a little more, the novel hooked me.
Powers’ usual use of the occult in his stories finally showed itself as the mysterious Operation Declare is hinted at involving Djinn, a mysterious force on top of Mount Ararat and an attempt to counter the Soviet’s move to control that force. And I can’t wait to find out what happens next. I’m only 200 pages into it and there’s a long way to go, but I’m relieved my faith in Powers books is restored, and newly interested also in next year’s Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides, which is loosely based on one of Powers older novels.
I'm sure it won't take me long to finish the book now that I'm caught up in it again and I'll post about it again then.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Star Trek TNG - Code of Honor
Originally aired: October 12th, 1987
At first I hated this episode. It seemed so old fashioned. A guy from a primitive culture turns up on the Enterprise and acts all stunned at how progressive they are for having a female security chief. He says that where he comes from, women are only good for owning land while the men rule the land. I was already bored and thinking about skipping the episode.
It redeems itself a little though when it becomes clear that he's manipulating Picard by holding back on a vaccine for a disease that's killing millions in order to force Tasha Yar to fight his wife to the death so that he will inherit all her land and money.
Picard acts like it's a sticky dilemma, as he cannot interfere with their internal affairs because of the Prime Directive. Jesus, Picard - is it still an internal affair when they kidnap one of your bridge officers and force her to fight to the death? Just grow a pair and beam Yar and all the vaccine you need off the planet. I would have thought the illegal kidnapping of Yar would give you the justification you need.
But it turns out he's ready to manipulate them too - he orders Yar to kill the chieftain's wife, at which point they beam her aboard and resuscitate her. Shame some nameless mook gets killed from the poison on the weapons during the fight. Hope you sleep well with his death on your conscience Picard, since this whole fight was completely unnecessary.
Even though the chief's wife is not dead, apparently being dead for a little while is enough under their code of laws to end her marriage. I guess they take "till death do us part" very seriously. The chief is seriously freaked out by her being revived from the dead too. What the hell? They have their own transporters, but they've never seen someone revived after dying before? Who wrote this crap?
Long story short, the chief ends up as husband number 2 to the wife he tried to cheat, as she marries another man as number 1 and that guy gets all the land and cash. Picard, having handled all of this remarkably badly if you ask me, takes the vaccine and heads off.
I can see what they were trying to do with this episode but it just didn't work. The actors aren't comfortable enough with the characters yet to pull it off and the writers don't know what they're doing - in fact, I suspect it was a script recycled from the aborted attempt to revive the original Star Trek. It seems like it would have fitted that better. About the only thing Picard does well in this episode is treat Wesley as another person for once rather than as an annoying child, when he doesn't freak out at seeing him man a bridge console and promises him another chance in future. If I didn't know this show get's better before very much longer, I'd give up.
As it is, I'll take a break from Trek for a while. This show does not lend itself to watching in large chunks.
At first I hated this episode. It seemed so old fashioned. A guy from a primitive culture turns up on the Enterprise and acts all stunned at how progressive they are for having a female security chief. He says that where he comes from, women are only good for owning land while the men rule the land. I was already bored and thinking about skipping the episode.
It redeems itself a little though when it becomes clear that he's manipulating Picard by holding back on a vaccine for a disease that's killing millions in order to force Tasha Yar to fight his wife to the death so that he will inherit all her land and money.
Picard acts like it's a sticky dilemma, as he cannot interfere with their internal affairs because of the Prime Directive. Jesus, Picard - is it still an internal affair when they kidnap one of your bridge officers and force her to fight to the death? Just grow a pair and beam Yar and all the vaccine you need off the planet. I would have thought the illegal kidnapping of Yar would give you the justification you need.
But it turns out he's ready to manipulate them too - he orders Yar to kill the chieftain's wife, at which point they beam her aboard and resuscitate her. Shame some nameless mook gets killed from the poison on the weapons during the fight. Hope you sleep well with his death on your conscience Picard, since this whole fight was completely unnecessary.
Even though the chief's wife is not dead, apparently being dead for a little while is enough under their code of laws to end her marriage. I guess they take "till death do us part" very seriously. The chief is seriously freaked out by her being revived from the dead too. What the hell? They have their own transporters, but they've never seen someone revived after dying before? Who wrote this crap?
Long story short, the chief ends up as husband number 2 to the wife he tried to cheat, as she marries another man as number 1 and that guy gets all the land and cash. Picard, having handled all of this remarkably badly if you ask me, takes the vaccine and heads off.
I can see what they were trying to do with this episode but it just didn't work. The actors aren't comfortable enough with the characters yet to pull it off and the writers don't know what they're doing - in fact, I suspect it was a script recycled from the aborted attempt to revive the original Star Trek. It seems like it would have fitted that better. About the only thing Picard does well in this episode is treat Wesley as another person for once rather than as an annoying child, when he doesn't freak out at seeing him man a bridge console and promises him another chance in future. If I didn't know this show get's better before very much longer, I'd give up.
As it is, I'll take a break from Trek for a while. This show does not lend itself to watching in large chunks.
Star Trek TNG - The Naked Now
Originally aired: October 5th, 1987
Damn, this episode veers wildly all over the map from good to bad and back again over and over. Right out of the gate after the pilot and the show goes straight for a homage to an Original Series episode. Not too bad an idea, but the show should really be trying to find it’s own voice before taking time out to acknowledge what came before.
I won’t talk about the plot of this episode much - it’s pretty unremarkable. The crew gets infected with something that makes them act extremely intoxicated. The doctor claims it’s a variation on the Original Series infection, but the crew doesn’t quite act like Kirk’s crew did back then. Where’s the crazy Japanese man running through the corridors of the ship with a sword?
Damn, this episode veers wildly all over the map from good to bad and back again over and over. Right out of the gate after the pilot and the show goes straight for a homage to an Original Series episode. Not too bad an idea, but the show should really be trying to find it’s own voice before taking time out to acknowledge what came before.
I won’t talk about the plot of this episode much - it’s pretty unremarkable. The crew gets infected with something that makes them act extremely intoxicated. The doctor claims it’s a variation on the Original Series infection, but the crew doesn’t quite act like Kirk’s crew did back then. Where’s the crazy Japanese man running through the corridors of the ship with a sword?
Instead we get a the security chief acting slutty. Well, at least they did something with the character before they got stuck realising that she and Worf occupied the same dramatic role on the ship and had to get rid of her. Well, that and Denise Crosby posed for Playboy so they fired her.
After that, the only really notable thing about this episode is the arrival of Wesley Crusher, wonderboy. He takes over Engineering and we’re supposed to believe no-one on the ship can take back control of the ship from a teenage child? Fuck that. This marks the first of many times lazy writers on this show write shitty stories for Wil Wheaton’s character because they don’t really know what teenage kids are like or how to write for one. Conveniently, the ship is in mortal danger from a chunk of a sun about to go nova being ejected right at the ship. Excuse me Star Trek writers? Morbo wants a word.
 |
| SUNS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! |
Anyway, Doc Crusher finds a cure, Data fixes the computer and everything ends happily ever after. Another dodgy episode, but the pilot and the homage to Old Trek are out of the way. Surely the show is ready to find it’s own voice. For the sake of my continued watching - and my sanity - I hope it does.
Next up - Code of Honor.
Star Trek: TNG - Encounter at Farpoint
First aired: September 28, 1987
Wow. Is this episode really 23 years old? Fuck me - I remember watching this when it first aired on RTE. I think that RTE was a few years behind the US so this would have aired here sometime in 1990 I think. I remember watching this as a kid - about 13 years old. This is probably the first time I watched this since that broadcast.
And it has not aged well.
Almost no-one on screen at any point bar Patrick Stewart seems to know how to act. They’re all playing the characters for the very first time and they don’t know who they are yet. These days, people tend to give new TV shows a few episodes to see if they’re any good. For this shows sake I hope it was the same in the late 80s.
Everyone just waffles about a bit introducing the shows concepts to the viewer, but all I managed to learn is that the uniforms don’t really fit and Riker doesn’t know his left from his right. Seriously - check it out. The computer tells him the holodeck is on his right and he turns left. And somehow, through the magic of TV he finds the holodeck anyway. Maybe left and right mean something different in the future.
To cut a long story short (too late), Q finally shows up and something interesting happens. Man, I think even as a 13 year old who couldn’t get enough sci-fi I would have stopped watching after this one episode if Q and Picard hadn’t been so good in every scene they shared.
It’s pretty much safe to skip over most of what happens in this episode. The crew of the Enterprise fuck about not really knowing what’s going on and all the head of Farpoint station chews the scenery. Michael Bell plays Zorn, the manager of the station and it’s a little weird seeing him in this. The voice of several of the Smurfs and the voice of Raziel from the Legacy of Kain games playing an overly worried manager, overacting as hard as he can. Wonderful stuff.
It all comes to a head when Q puts the pressure on and Troi proclaims she senses some stuff so obvious, the blind guy has already seen it. Picard puts it all together at the last minute, and as if he needed more convincing that he’s cracked the mystery, Q starts urging to kill the alien in such a sudden out-of-nowhere manner that if Picard hadn’t already guessed that the alien wasn’t hostile, he’d certainly know it now. Way to go, all knowing Q. It all ends happily enough, despite the slightly shaky start and the Enterprise heads off to more adventures in deep space.
Not the best start. I’ll keep re-watching this, but if Season 1 is this bad for much longer I don’t think I can take going through it again.
Next up - The Naked Now, where everyone on the ship gets wasted.
Wow. Is this episode really 23 years old? Fuck me - I remember watching this when it first aired on RTE. I think that RTE was a few years behind the US so this would have aired here sometime in 1990 I think. I remember watching this as a kid - about 13 years old. This is probably the first time I watched this since that broadcast.
And it has not aged well.
Almost no-one on screen at any point bar Patrick Stewart seems to know how to act. They’re all playing the characters for the very first time and they don’t know who they are yet. These days, people tend to give new TV shows a few episodes to see if they’re any good. For this shows sake I hope it was the same in the late 80s.
Everyone just waffles about a bit introducing the shows concepts to the viewer, but all I managed to learn is that the uniforms don’t really fit and Riker doesn’t know his left from his right. Seriously - check it out. The computer tells him the holodeck is on his right and he turns left. And somehow, through the magic of TV he finds the holodeck anyway. Maybe left and right mean something different in the future.
To cut a long story short (too late), Q finally shows up and something interesting happens. Man, I think even as a 13 year old who couldn’t get enough sci-fi I would have stopped watching after this one episode if Q and Picard hadn’t been so good in every scene they shared.
It’s pretty much safe to skip over most of what happens in this episode. The crew of the Enterprise fuck about not really knowing what’s going on and all the head of Farpoint station chews the scenery. Michael Bell plays Zorn, the manager of the station and it’s a little weird seeing him in this. The voice of several of the Smurfs and the voice of Raziel from the Legacy of Kain games playing an overly worried manager, overacting as hard as he can. Wonderful stuff.
It all comes to a head when Q puts the pressure on and Troi proclaims she senses some stuff so obvious, the blind guy has already seen it. Picard puts it all together at the last minute, and as if he needed more convincing that he’s cracked the mystery, Q starts urging to kill the alien in such a sudden out-of-nowhere manner that if Picard hadn’t already guessed that the alien wasn’t hostile, he’d certainly know it now. Way to go, all knowing Q. It all ends happily enough, despite the slightly shaky start and the Enterprise heads off to more adventures in deep space.
Not the best start. I’ll keep re-watching this, but if Season 1 is this bad for much longer I don’t think I can take going through it again.
Next up - The Naked Now, where everyone on the ship gets wasted.
Everything Old is New Again
I thought I’d give this blogging thing another go. It’s a little old fashioned in today’s modern world of Tweets and Facebook status updates, but with those tools for keeping in touch with people these days I can feel free to use this to just blather on about whatever I want to talk about confident that anyone who just wants to keep in touch a little can just check my Tweets or Facebook and just ignore this.
So don’t expect much about me, or my life to turn up here. I’ll just be talking about stuff like books, games, movies or TV shows really. Though I guess there might be the occasional post about thoughts that occur to me if I feel they might be interesting.
So without further ado, onto some actual posts. I’ll be starting with the wave of nostalgia that prompted me to go back and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation with some thoughts on each episode I bother to watch. I had thought about doing this when I recently watched Star Trek Original Series all the way through for the first time, but I never got around to it. So Next Gen - which I haven’t watched in years - will have to do.
It won’t be non stop Star Trek - I doubt I want to - or even could - watch it all in one go. I’ll move on to other stuff before long and come back to Trek next time I’m nostalgic.
So first up: Star Trek: TNG - Encounter at Farpoint
So don’t expect much about me, or my life to turn up here. I’ll just be talking about stuff like books, games, movies or TV shows really. Though I guess there might be the occasional post about thoughts that occur to me if I feel they might be interesting.
So without further ado, onto some actual posts. I’ll be starting with the wave of nostalgia that prompted me to go back and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation with some thoughts on each episode I bother to watch. I had thought about doing this when I recently watched Star Trek Original Series all the way through for the first time, but I never got around to it. So Next Gen - which I haven’t watched in years - will have to do.
It won’t be non stop Star Trek - I doubt I want to - or even could - watch it all in one go. I’ll move on to other stuff before long and come back to Trek next time I’m nostalgic.
So first up: Star Trek: TNG - Encounter at Farpoint
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