The Force Awakens Some Complex Reactions to Star Wars

Star Wars review, so, locking S-Foils in attack position...

I know that the bulk of these posts have been about Star Trek. Sure, I've thrown in some BvS:DoJ, and some D&D, and some photoshop fun. But I wanted to talk about the thing that everyone is talking about and that's Star Wars. Does the internet need another opinion about Star Wars? For the record, no, it does not. However, this review is not really for you. It's for me.  I'm writing this because I need to process what I saw. Because it stirred a very complex reaction in me, and I am very conflicted about it.

Star Wars is not a thing that I take lightly. Like many of my generation, it was part of my formation as a human being. The original film blew apart my limited concepts of how the world worked. At the age of five, I was not able to process a good guy dying. It messed with my myopic concept of religion, seeing a world where Christianity didn't even exist, and everybody was surprisingly okay with that.* It began my love affair with the fantastic. Parents aside, I'm trying to remember anything that I loved before Star Wars and I'm not sure that I can. I am simply not capable of being objective when it comes this subject matter.

Such is the nature of love.

The prequels just crushed me. I came to understand that not only did Lucas not really understand or respect the legacy of his own creation, but also that as a fan, I was now entirely irrelevant. The EU frustrated me. I bought terrible books, suffered through awful games, watched horrible films and television, all because it bore the brand. There are gems of course — the Thrawn Trilogy, Tartakovsky's Clone Wars, Knights of the Old Republic — but it was an abusive relationship between Star Wars and this particular fan.

So, when Disney announced Abrams was announced, I was skeptical. I find him an uneven filmmaker. I dropped Lost after the first season. Alias and Fringe were hit or miss for me, though I preferred the latter. I thought Mission Impossible 3 was interesting, Super-8 was a colossal mess. I'm sure I'll get into this in another post down the line, but I have an absolute love-hate with his Trek films. But could he do it? Maybe. One consistent thread about his work is that his films look fantastic, and the action sequences are well done. He at least had a big-budget science fiction franchise reboot in his filmography.

I tried to avoid as much of the media surrounding the film as I could. I never watched the trailers beyond the first teaser.  Han and Chewie hit me like a ton of bricks, and the shadow of the Phantom Menace loomed over the franchise. And through social media, a few crumbs leaked in. Starkiller base. Fan theories of Luke Skywalker being the man behind the mask. Han professing that things were true, all of it. I went into The Force Awakens with the intent of having as pure of a moviegoing experience as possible. The truth is, I went into The Force Awakens with my arms crossed and daring JJ Abrams to make me love Star Wars again.

Snape kills Dumbledore #starwarsspoilers

The film is fun, but far from perfect. It's gorgeous, but leans too heavily on the imagery of the past. It is a fantastic mix-tape of just the good parts of Star Wars, but isn't really anything new. Kylo Ren is far more interesting and complex than any Star Wars villain we have yet to see. The cross arcs of Ren and Rey embracing their destiny is great thing to behold. Fin and Poe are fantastic. The search for Skywalker is a wonderful macguffin.

Much like his Star Trek films, Abrams is far more interested in painting with broad strokes than getting into the minutia of the mythology. This is where my if-only-they-had-done-blank fanboy nerdism gets in the way of me being able to let go of the past and embrace the film wholly. Fin should have gotten slaughtered in his lightsaber duel with Kylo Ren. It undercut him as both a villain and the importance of the Force and its wielders in the universe. Rey discovered her powers far too easily. And the parallels between the Artoo's stolen data tapes and BB-8's map to the first Jedi Temple, and the Death Star and Starkiller Base were too much. The last one was my biggest disappointment. It felt both calculated and lazy. It hammered the nail in the coffin of this as a remake of A New Hope. There are many, many other parallels, too many to go into here. Are these just fanboy nits or fundamental flaws in the film? Well, to be honest, they're both, which is why I'm having such a hard time reconciling my feelings about the movie.

The Force Awakens cannot be judged on its own merits. Because if taken on its own merits, it's a fun, if derivative, action movie. However, movies, particularly this one, do not exist in a vacuum. This is not just a sequel in a decades-spanning, multi-gazillion-dollar franchise, but a both a celebration of and an apology for its predecessors. Did I recognize that the Tie fighter chase of the Millennium Falcon was a blatant ripoff of the asteroid chase in Empire? Of course I did. Did I love it anyway? Of course I did. Did I recognize that blowing up Coruscant and other unnamed planets was a metaphorical eradication of prequels? Of course I did.

This isn't a black and white situation. I should be raging against it. I should be fawning over it. It's lazy and terrible, and glorious and wonderful. I should look it as an action-space-fantasy, yet it has a connection to the core of who I am that I cannot just dismiss it as the big-budget, mega-studio blockbuster popcorn fun it is. I wish it were that simple. It's not.

To say that The Force Awakens is a soft-reboot of the franchise, or a remake of A New Hope, dismisses what it has accomplished for me. This film is the emotional equivalent of a grand romantic gesture. And while some have cynically seen this as the calculated ploy it is, it has simply given me hope that I can love Star Wars again.

Star Wars began as a love letter to the cheesy sci-fi serial films of Lucas' youth. And what the Force Awakens is Abrams' love letter to the films of his youth, which happens to be Star Wars. The circle is now complete. The learner has become the master.

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*As a five-year-old, I was not well versed in comparative theology. 

In D&Defense of 4th Edition

For those about to dice, we salute you. 

Among the things I do is play Dungeons & Dragons. Telling stories is a thing I enjoy, and collaborative storytelling with good friends and snacks is a win-win. I play 4th Edition rules in one game as a player and another as the dungeon master.  D&D was instrumental in me wanting to be a writer. Not because it was a well thought out and polished game, but because getting together with my friends and fantasizing about dragons and undead was escapist fun. It's a system that has evolved and changed over time, through forty years of play testing and adjustment.

I grew up on AD&D and remember not liking 2nd Edition, though I don't think I could remember why. I missed 3rd and 3.5 entirely, having tried the latter once. It took me hours to make a character and was bored before we ever started to adventure. A friend and game designer fell in love with a new 4th Edition system. After a 15-year hiatus, I picked my dice again and rolled for initiative when the lizard men attacked. And it was awesome. It combined the group story I loved with a fun combat board game. I was hooked. Again.

Since, I have come to learn that 4th Edition was very divisive. Much of the following came from conversations last summer at ComicCon, while Wizards of the Coast rolled out the new edition with play tests from their newly released Starter Kit. Having bought the Starter Kit and read the rules, I was dubious. With play tests happening at Nerd Prom, I was looking forward to see the new ruleset in action. I was, in the end, not compelled to purchase the new system.

Balance of the Forth

Some of the arguments against 4th Edition, I understand. Like, combat can be slow. Okay, fair enough. 4E does have a learning curve for new players and the combat can run long, especially the first few encounters as you learn the system, and get to understand your character's powers. But it's a fantastic tactical tabletop game. It forces the players to work together against the creatures on the board. But the speed of combat is a solvable issue with a few house rules.*

Another argument I understand is the rules for combat require miniatures, and therefore more money shilled out to the publishers. Again, fair point. It's Wizards forcing us to buy supplements to play their game. Welcome to the 21st century. However, having never used miniatures as a kid, I actually found it helped with visualizing combat, and made it more visceral. Thought it's considerably less fun, a fellow gamer pointed that the game still be played using coins or dice in lieu of miniatures if you don't want to spend money.

Other arguments, I just have to scratch my head at. Like, it's too much like an MMO, and catering too much to the World of Warcraft crowd. To which, I say, so? See the aforementioned fantastic-tactical-tabletop-game comment. And it's not like assigning rogues as dps, clerics as heals, and fighters as tanks isn't an intuitive leap for players.

The balanced classes make it too much of a level playing field and it doesn't matter what class you choose. To which I say, what? Seriously, what? An addendum to that complaint, the mechanics get in the way of the role-playing. I wholly disagree. A level playing field keeps you from wondering if one race or class is so much better than the other and lets you play the type of character you want instead of second guessing your choices. In the old game, wizards were useless-to-terrible at lower levels, and all other classes were the opposite.

The rules for 4E were presented very mechanics heavy, assuming that players wouldn't need a lot of handholding to know how to role play. The new edition does the opposite. It gives the players tools to develop flavor text, and hides the more complicated mechanics of the game in semantics (more on that below).

In the three core rulebooks for 4E, the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual, there were a number of complaints that revolved around changes and omissions. Gnomes and Half-Orcs weren't listed as playable races in the initial edition of the Player's Handbook. Instead they got Dragonborn and Tieflings. Outrage! But in the appendix of the Monster Manual, there were stats for making the Gnomes, Half-Orcs and a number of other humanoid monsters into playable characters.

Seriously, though. Dragonborn are dumb. 

Druids, Monks and Bards weren't playable classes. Instead they got Warlords, a new class who directs others on the battlefield. Again, outrage! But it was only a matter of time before those classic classes were introduced in later editions. To include everything in the first edition of the Players Handbook would have been overwhelming to new players, and, as a player of old, I appreciated the inclusion of new races and classes.

In the end, 4th Edition's biggest crime was being different. Too different from previous editions for existing players. The mythology, of a world emerging from a dark age after the empires of the Dragonborn and the Tieflings fell, was not well received. Probably because they were in the Player's Handbook and Gnomes were not. As DMs can create whatever world they want, I find this a hollow complaint. Breaking attacks into classes of at-wills, encounter powers, and daily powers (small, medium, and large) was too far removed from editions past.

Revenge of the Fifth

5th Edition was the system that was to 'fix' all that. And according to their marketing, the designers looked at all of the editions of D&D and chose the 'best' of each edition. Wizard spell books are unnecessarily complicated, just the way they used to be. Fighters have nothing to do in a fight other than swinging their sword, just the way it used to be. Rogues are slightly better balanced, being able to do more damage. But it looks like as the game progresses, Wizards are still ridiculously overpowered just the way it used to be. The combat in the play test at ComicCon was both horribly unbalanced and, worst of all, boring. All the while the DM was spitting vitriol about 4E and how this was 'much better.'

However, the new edition also does an excellent job of hiding some of the more complicated concepts with simple semantics. Minor actions in 4E become bonus actions for classes that need them. The four types of defenses in 4E (Armor Class, Reflex, Fortitude, and Will) is streamlined to one. Kind of. Defenses Fortitude and Will are hidden as saving throws for various creature attacks and spells. Reflex are is rolled into Armor Class, just the way it used to be. Not eliminated, hidden in semantics.

And the rules are presented so that miniatures are optional as a grand return to the Theater of the Mind. But the play test at ComicCon used maps and miniatures to help provide some context to the combat. So, improvement? Or more semantic shenanigans?

There are some nice things about the new edition. The concept of Inspiration is straight up stealing the Benny system from Savage Worlds, which is a system I like a lot. So that I approve of. I've tinkered with it as a reward and it works well for players.

The character background elements are interesting, too. And to their credit, the structure of ideals, bonds, and flaws is nice. However, at the end of the day, it's just a framework for flavor text. Both of those elements I may incorporate in future games, but that doesn't mean I need to buy any of their new product to use them.

As a kid I gravitated to the storytelling aspects of the game, in hindsight, possibly because the combat aspects of the game were so broken and boring. The new system attempts to be like D&D of old, and, for good or ill, it is.

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*Now, for those looking for a faster 4th Edition game here are a few quick suggestions. Pick the person with the highest initiative and then go clockwise in order, so they know who's next. Group like monsters by initiative and rolling all their attacks and damage at once Give players a +1 bonus if they're ready on their turn. Instigate a 'shot clock' and if they fail, they can only use at-wills. 

Are Sharknado and Downton Abbey the same thing? Surprisingly, yes.

Skarknado and Downton, two halves of the same whole. Much like this shark is about to be.

Let's start this off by saying that I’ll acknowledge this is a preposterous premise. And, in fairness, I think I need to give a little context for how I came to this conclusion. I began this exercise while my wife was binge-watching Season 5 of Downton Abbey. I’d watched the previous seasons with her, but I wasn’t getting into this one. So, I posed the question to social media, "what's the opposite of Downton Abbey?” An innocent enough question with no agenda, right? As people started chiming in with suggestions, I started finding reasons why they were somehow connected, however tenuously, either directly or thematically with Downton.

No, Duck Dynasty wasn't the opposite of Downton Abbey because it dealt with a wealthy family resisting the social change of a new century. Major League Baseball was too similar because it was both slow-moving and featured lots of rich people (far richer than I, anyway). Weeds has a brunette, whose romantic endeavors caused complications for her family unit. This is what I was doing. It was harmless fun. Then, Sharknado screenwriter, Thunder Levin, threw down the gauntlet and I accepted his challenge. 

I'm going to show that not only can we draw connections between Sharknado and Downton Abbey, but at their core, they're the same thing. Both are somewhat cultural anomalies. Both know exactly what they are. Both are about keeping family together, while navigating extraordinary circumstances. Lord Grantham and Fin Shepard are mirror images of each other. Likewise, Lady Mary and Nova are the same person. Lady Crawley is April. The forthcoming social change in the 20th century is the non-sensical storm of swirling, angry sharks. 

Still dubious, old chap? Let’s do this.

"Yes, let's, old chap." — Lord Grantham

First, look at the familial patriarchs of the two series, Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, and Fin Shepard, ex-surfing champion and restauranteur. Both are men whose glory days are well past them. Lord Grantham has seen war as an officer in the British Army. He was decorated for his efforts and returned home to run his familial estate and the community that surrounds it. His life is, by comparison, rather tedious. Lord Grantham’s only responsibility is to make sure that Downton doesn’t go broke, and he’s kind of failing at it.

Fin, meanwhile, is a sports hero, whose celebrity is known only to a niche group. He now ekes out a meager living running a dive bar in Santa Monica. His life has fallen into a rut and he has no idea what to do about it. Fin is a bit lost, aimless. His life has become routine as he doles out beers and burgers to a handful of regulars. He needs something more in his life, and when the shark hits the fan, he finally has something to bring focus to his world.

By their own standards, both men are ‘just getting by.’ As both series begin these men have stagnated in their development, and are preoccupied by the needs of their families. Crawley is looking to secure the future of his estate. Both men have similar flaws. Both men are obsessed with responsibility. With no male heirs, Lord Grantham must do his best to ensure his family’s security by making sure his daughters marry well. Fin, meanwhile, despite being told numerous times that his ex-wife is not his responsibility anymore, responds to danger with an instinctual need to ensure the safety of his family. His only driving force in the first Sharknado is to get his family to a safe place.

It’s arguable that Fin’s flaw is he has no flaws. He’s constantly being referred to as ‘too good.’ The truth is, Fin doesn’t listen to anyone around him. He’s stubborn, selfish, and so desperate to reclaim his ‘hero’ status that he’ll do anything to get it. He doesn’t listen when Nova and Baz suggest safer courses of action throughout the first film, he doesn’t listen to his wife when she tells him she’s not his responsibility any more, and he doesn’t listen to science when it comes to exploding sharknados with bombs thrown from a helicopter. Sure, Lord Grantham is painted with more subtle strokes, but his flaws are eerily similar. He’s very hard to dissuade once he’s set his mind on something, and recognizes that his responsibilities extend far beyond his immediate family. As leaders, both men know that if they show signs of cracking, everyone around them will crumble and succumb to chaos.

"I'm sorry, I don't really care for sharks." — Lady Mary

Sharknado doesn’t quite have the depth of regular characters that Downton Abbey does, but there are significant overlaps. Lady Mary and Nova are both strong characters who are unsatisfied with their lives. Both seek romance in the wrong places. Both characters are restless. Both are conflicted, completely at odds with their base needs. While Nova struggles between seeking affection from and willingness to do anything for the series patriarch, Fin, Lady Mary is torn between rebellion against and devotion to both her father and her duty. Also, both ultimately come to the conclusion that they have to concede their own needs to serve the greater good. Nova steps aside so that Fin can reconnect with his true love, April, and Mary accepts her duty and recognizes that her initially loveless marriage to Matthew will save her home and community. Plus, Nova hates sharks almost as much as Lady Mary hates her sister, Edith. 

As for Lady Cora, the Countess of Grantham, and Fin’s ex and future wife, April, we have matriarchs with a unique, and somewhat anomalous characteristic as an identifier. Lady Cora is an American living among English nobility, and April has a robot-hand that’s also a secretly a chainsaw. Am I saying being an Amercian is equal to a robot-chainsaw hand? At the risk of editorializing, I am. This makes them curiosities in their respective worlds. As characters, however, both are just kind of there. Both are without any real needs or desires beyond family, and are completely defined by their relationships to others. They seem there more to serve plot than character. If either April or Lady Grantham were to die, neither series would really suffer from their loss. I’ll also point out that April does also share a very important characteristic with the wizened Lady Violet in that they represent the past. Meaning, Fin and Lord Grantham will do anything to please them.

Nobility, thy name is April.

As for their cultural significance, the fact that Downton Abbey, a melodramatic soap opera delivered with critical levels of British stiff-upper-lipped-ness, has reached pop-culture status is kind of a miracle. It’s a BBC show shown on PBS. Two things many Americans may not have heard of. Considering the first season arc revolved around the drama of whether Lady Mary would end up indescribably wealthy or just incredibly wealthy, it’s amazing it appealed to anyone who wasn’t of noble birth themselves. The fact that I watch it, having grown up on a steady diet of Spielberg films and 80s cartoons, says something to its appeal. It’s also absolutely not afraid of wholly embracing its overly-melodramatic soap opera roots for shock value (Matthew’s motorcar death in Series Three) or stunt casting for ratings (George Clooney in the Downton Abbey Christmas Special). And if there’s one thing that Sharknado can do well, it’s over-the-toppedness shock and stunt casting.  

Likewise, Sharknado is a glorious fluke. In a world of Mansquitos, and Sharktopuses, and Mega-Piranhas, there was no real reason to predict that Sharknado would have the cultural impact it has received. It caught the pop-subconsciousness and has yet to let go. It wasn’t any more special or absurd than any of the other Asylum projects at the time, but it took hold in a way that has yet to be replicated. But not for a lack of trying. Since then, they’ve been trying to recreate or force the phenomena again. My dear, Lavalantula, you can’t force virality, you can only hope to reap the benefits from it. 

Ah, you say, but there are zero sharks in Downton Abbey, so shut up. And as much as I think we’d all like to see sharks fall on Downton, I don’t think we’re ever going to get it, sadly. (But we can all quietly hope for Sharknado 4: I Said, Good Day, Sir!)

In the films, sharknados tear through the landscape without logic or reason. The first film made some effort to somewhat justify sharks in a storm. The later films, not so much. They are entropy incarnate, taking the form of weather anomalies and bitey sharks destroying everything in their path. Just like the slow chaos that threatens to eat at everything around Downton. This may seem like a thin argument, but, everything that Downton represents is tradition. History. Nobility. A man’s place at the head of his house, and a woman’s role in society. All of these things are challenged throughout the series. New thinking, new technologies, new social norms, indeed, a new Century, are all set to upset the status quo and force the inhabitants of Downton to adapt (or not) to their new conditions. Consider the pace at which Downton moves, and the challenges come at the house for all intents and purposes at machine gun — nay, tornado — speed. 

In the end, Lord Grantham, like Fin Shepard, just does his best to weather the storm with his family in tact. That universal understanding connects us all. 

76. A Wolf In the Fold

Subtlety, thy name is Star Trek

76. 'A Wolf in the Fold,' The Original Series, Season 2, Episode 14

I had almost no memory of 'A Wolf In The Fold' when I started watching it. This episode doesn't hit my list of my personal favorites from the Original series and it hasn't risen up though the ranks of pop culture consciousness in the way that, say, one with the Gorn or the Tholian Web have. So, I was able to come into this episode with relatively fresh eyes. And what we see here is the TOS taking a stab at psychological thriller with a scifi twist. Pun intended.

On an alien pleasure planet, Argelia, where Scotty is accused of murdering women. He's literally caught red-handed with a dead body in one hand and a bloody knife in the other. He has no memory of the crime, and professes his innocence. We have here a haunting coming from the mind of the man who wrote Psycho, Robert Bloch. If that is a pedigree for exploring psychological horror, I don't know what is.

As Scotty maintains his innocence despite ridiculous evidence to the contrary, the true murderer reveals itself to be an energy being that hops from host-to-host killing women and feeding off their fear to sustain itself. Scotty was just its latest vessel on the planet at it hacked it's way through the populous. It revealed itself to be an entity that has traveled from system to system, and took credit for countless murders, and had even visited earth in the past, and that's pretty much where this passable mystery to just third-act nonsense.

You see, I've been doing my best to review the Original Series for what it is, but that's not always easy. This episode had great potential. It had a great setup, flamboyant guest stars, an interesting (and edgy for the time) alien culture that mixed hedonism with mysticism. My issue here isn't with any of the usual low-hanging-fruit complaints about the series — the stylized acting, or the limitations of the budget, or the undercurrent of blatant sexism that permeates the 60s — but the inclusion of Jack the Ripper.

Seriously, every Argelian looked as if they stepped right out of a victorian-era magician's poster.

When the alien entity reveals itself as Jack the Ripper, it lost me. It's weirdly out of place, and seems only to exist to give the audience some kind of context for the entity. But it misses the mark. It's forced. And when the entity leaves its host and takes control of the Enterprise, it goes from weird to worse. A being that lives on terror and fear takes over one of the greatest military weapons ever built by human hands. But what should be terrifying comes across as silly. McCoy gets the crew so doped up to keep them from feeling fear and feeding the entity they sway and giggle at their stations. At that point, I'm just waiting it for 'A Wolf in the Fold' to end.

This is supposed to be about Scotty, but it's not. For an episode focused on the chief engineer, all we really learn about the character is that he can creepily leer at women, and doesn't really give a fig about local customs. We learn that Kirk is fiercely loyal to his crew. We learn that Spock has some weird opinions on the emotions of women. We learn that McCoy has a metric f-ton of drugs aboard the Enterprise, and is not afraid to use them.

"Hey, man, an alien murder thing has, like, control of the ship? Like, groovy, man." — Sulu

Now, I feel like I've just been bashing the Original Series in my last few reviews on this list* and I want to acknowledge that that's not really my intent. They just haven't connected with me.  I have great respect of the Original Series, its creators, its vision, its legacy, and the fictional world it created. The character dynamics of Kirk, Spock and McCoy are among the strongest, and smartest in the history of not just television, but all of storytelling.

But for this adventure, what's the message here? Trust each other? Kirk's always right? Scotty objectifies women? I'm not sure. For me, 'A Wolf in the Fold' lacks a strong central theme that elevates other classic episodes above the limitations of the show.

There are adventures of The Original Crew I love with all my heart. This just wasn't one of them.

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Next up, Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, faces her past in 'The Raven.'

*A reminder, that this isn't my list, but io9's Top 100 Episodes of Star Trek of All Time.

77. Our Man Bashir

"Bashir, Julian Bashir." — Bashir, Julian Bashir

#77, Our Man Bashir, Deep Space Nine, Season 4, Episode 9

Star Trek likes playing with genres. From horror, to whodunnits, to courtroom dramas, to slapstick, to war films. The show(s) thrives when it tries something new. TOS took on gangster films. TNG took on Sherlock Holmes and the Old West. Voyager took on 1940s serials. Each one is a deconstruction of the genre, and putting a Star-Trek-y twist on it. At least, they're a break from the usual Federation fair.  Even when the results are mixed, they're usually interesting when Trek breaks itself out of its norm and allows the actors and creators to stretch their legs a bit and play. In Our Man Bashir, we take a look at the spy genre from the 60s with the title character taking on a jet-setting-super-agent based on a certain franchise known for gadgets, femme-fatals, double-crosses, and world domination.

Julian Bashir likes to play James Bond, a registered trademark of MGM, and we get to go along for the ride. The episode examines the tropes of the Bond films and plays with them. 'Our Man Bashir' is far more interested in character than plot. It's more interested in fun than logic. The technobabble surrounding the transporter accident that trapped the crew in his spy-fantasy isn't important. It's background noise. An excuse to make Sisko a villain of epic proportions. To give O'Brien a falcon-based eyepatch. Kira is a Russian double-agent. Dax is the missing geologist. Worf gets to wear a tux and play cards. It's also an excuse to add genuine stakes to what is essentially Bashir playing a spy-themed adventure game.

Each of the crew trapped in the holodeck are an abstraction of their real personalities and true to their nature, yet there's also an inversion of that. Worf is the bodyguard; the gatekeeper for Dr. Noah, but uses subtlety instead of brute force to subdue Bashir and Garrak. Kira, as the Russian Agent, is the foreigner, but she's seductive and silly instead of her usual serious no-nonsenseness. Dax, as Dr. Honey Bear, is the beautiful scientist, yet unsure of her own sexuality and identity. O'Brien's Falcon is the no-nonsense fixit man, but uses violence to get what he wants. And Sisko is the charismatic leader who likes to give epic, epic speeches, yet cast in the role of the villain. The contrasts are played intentionally over the top, and the results are fun to watch.

"Don't let the glasses and the up hairdo fool you. I'm crazy sexy." — Dr. Honey Bear

Also in that abstraction, we look at Julian, and who he wants to be. His alter-ego allows him to play the hero. From his first appearance, Julian has had this desire to be a hero. He's a romantic, coming to Deep Space Nine to be a pioneer on the edge of Federation space. He's super-intelligent, and too smart for his own good. Throughout his holosuit adventures with Miles, they're constantly playing heroes. World War 2 pilots, viking warriors, soldiers art the Alamo. He's constantly playing out his heroic fantasies. Here he goes against a madman with global ambitions.

Dr. Noah's plan is simple. Activate volcanos around the world with lasers to flood the earth somehow and start civilation anew with a few hand-chosen scientists, artists and mercenaries to build a new human race on Mt. Everest. Did I say simple? Because I meant bugfuck crazy, but not necessarily any crazier than any other Bond villain's plan.  Does Avery Brooks as Dr. Noah enjoy cutting loose and giving a devious villain monolog? You bet he does, folks. Every word he utters is forced out with an excited breath, as if he can't wait to say the next line in his diabolical speech.

Because of the circumstances of the transporter accident that left the physical patters of the crew trapped in the holosuite, if he ends the game, they die. If he leaves the game they die. If a character with a crew member's pattern gets killed, their pattern gets erased.

We get the impression that Julian has played this adventure multiple times. Garrak, who joins Bashir on the adventure, mentions that he's been in the holosuite non-stop since the program arrived. Bashir knows the characters, the plot. Even the outcome. He tells Garrak that the game is rigged so that either Anastasia (Kira) or Dr. Bear (Dax) will die, and he will hook up with the other one. Garrak mentions that Dr. Bashir has been playing for hours, so I can only extrapolate that he's played through several times, trying different techniques to get to the finale. He glides through the steps of the game with ease, careful to change his play through only to make sure everyone lives.

O'Brien get to be a meaney. Get it? Puns are a requirement in Bond-parodies.

Garrak is an interesting companion on Bashir's adventure. We're reminded that Garrak has been the very thing that Bashir wants to be, an intelligence agent. Except Garrak is the real deal. He's infiltrated strongholds. Stolen information from the enemy. Tortured prisoners. Killed without remorse for his country. And he's constantly pointing out the inaccuracy and the lunacy of how espionage is portrayed in Bashir's fantasy. Bashir knows it's silly, and not realistic, he just doesn't care. This is his way to blow off steam and the turn the drama of the Dominion War off for a moment and enjoy himself.

And while Garrak provides kind of anti-Jimminy-Cricket advice to Bashir on how real spies in the real world work, Bashir knows how this fantasy-world works and what's expected of him. The Bond films (and spy television shows) of the era are very much of their time, over-the-top male fantasies with high-tech gadgets and women with both revealing clothing and loose morals. They've evolved into bombastic action films throwing realism out the window in favor of bravado, machismo, and sensationalism.*

More often than not, Star Trek is better at being clever, than funny. And this episode is both a clever look at the spy-genre and ends with a clever twist on it. In order to extend the game long enough for the crew to be rescued — beamed from the holosuite to the Defiant —he presses the big, red doomsday button. He saves the day by letting Dr. Noah destroy the world.

Which is not a thing they taught Garrak about being a spy.

--

Next up, Scotty is accused of murder in 'A Wolf in the Fold.'

*While I loved the Bond films as a kid, they have not aged well. But that's a discussion for another blog.

78. Remember Me

'I know what I'm saying is crazy. You have to believe me, Jean-Luc; this is my 'very-serious' face." — Dr. Crusher

 Remember Me, The Next Generation, Season 4, Episode 5

I kind of feel like the Top 100 List is punishing me. Last episode, I plowed through 'I, Mudd' with great difficulty. This time, we get an episode of TNG that just didn't work for me. It's not terrible, but for me it falls in the category, of 'why is this in the list, again?' It's a Beverly-Crusher-centric episode, and that's not always a good thing. In 'Remember Me,' Dr. Crusher is trapped in a reality that's collapsing in on her, eliminating everything and everyone around her.

It starts off with a strange occurrence. Dr. Crusher starts to notice that members of the crew go missing. First, it's just an old friend of Dr. Crusher, seemingly wiped from existence. All record of his presence on the Enterprise is gone. Everyone's memory has been altered and Dr. Crusher has trouble convincing everyone that something is wrong. Others start to go missing, until the Enterprise is staffed with a skeleton crew. And Dr. Crusher fights to convince everyone that what they're experiencing is incorrect. That she's not crazy. That something is very, very wrong on the Enterprise-D.  

Space-Calgon is a very dangerous, and should not be tampered with. 

Let's talk about about Dr. Beverly Crusher. Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise. Commander in rank. Former head of Starfleet Medical. Widow. Mother. Friend and potential love interest of Jean-Luc Picard. She's supposed to be a strong female character, but more often than not she's relegated to exposition and caretaker. Which means, more often than not, Dr. Crusher doesn't have that much to do other than wave her tricorder and speak nonsense. Unlike McCoy in the Original Series, she's not integral to the show, as demonstrated by her replacement, Dr. Pulaski, in season two. Pulaski, though her service aboard the Enterprise was brief, shook things up, constantly challenged the status quo, and showed more character development in one season than Crusher did in six.

Earlier in the series, Crusher had a will-they-won't-they thing happening with Picard, but other than that, she didn't have that well-developed of a character. She didn't really have a hook, so to speak, like the other doctors in the series. McCoy was the country doctor. Bashir was naive, inexperienced and a bit arrogant. Voyager's EMH was an artificial intelligence looking to expand his existence beyond his original programming. Phlox was an alien outsider and constant optimist. Crusher was Wesley's mom, and not much else going on. Everything about her was seemingly defined by someone else. I can't really put that on the actor, Gates McFadden. She does the best she can with the cards she's dealt.

For Dr. Crusher to carry the episode, she needed to have been a more substantial as a character, and, sadly, she's not. And we're midway through in the series, and she's still defined by her relationships with her captain and her son. We need a reason to care for her more than she's part of the ensemble.

Then there's a shift in this episode when it changes focus from Dr. Crusher to her son Wesley. In that moment, it changes from being about character to being about technobabble. And that's pretty much when 'Remember Me' loses me.

'Wait a minute! Geordie look at this! According to my calculations —which I can totally do in my head — if we can reconfigure the antimatter in the warp-matrix, and re-route auxiliary power to the starboard nacelle, we can bypass main power, and re-channel it through the main defector dish. Then once we use inverted tachyons to generate a stable graviton field, we should be able to have just enough power to do a site-to-site transport and get everyone into the final act of this episode and get my mom back. Also, EPS conduits, and jefferies tubes, or something. I can do this by speaking excitedly and pushing about three buttons on this panel. It probably won't blow up the ship at all." — Wesley Crusher

Wesley is super-duper-special with warp technology and science stuff, or so they tell us. When, it's revealed that Dr. Crusher was caught in an accident from Wesley's warp experiment, my reaction was a hearty 'whatever.' Her passing thoughts at the time of the accident create a reality around her that starts to fall apart as time goes on. I bet she's glad wasn't thinking of giant, killer, mutant spiders when the accident happened. I bet it would have made a much more exciting episode, but what the heck do I know.

The last act is chockfull of warp-speak and metaphysical pseudoscience about thought affecting reality. We even get callback to Season One with an alien who proclaimed Wesley's super-specialness. The problem is that the purpose of Wesley's experiment is vague, and the accidental disappearance of Dr. Crusher is never explained in a way that really connects.* The solution to the mystery presented feels like a cheat. Because it's not one that the audience can solve by piecing together the clues presented, the resolution felt to me like a big, fat 'uh-if-you-say-so.'

When reunited, Wesley falls asleep mid-hug.

Over the course of the series, Dr. Crusher does branch out a bit. When Wil Wheaton left the show, and Dr. Crusher was without Wesley to worry about, we learn that she's interested in command, a playwright and director, a capable leader, and one hell of a tap dancer. Dr. Crusher moves from being a protective mother and eventually evolves into the stalwart moral compass of the Enterprise.

But in this instance, she's still just Wesley's mom.

--

Next up, another doctor steps into the holosuite role of a suave, sixties, super-spy in 'Our Man Bashir.' 

* Okay, it tracks logically, I guess — if you want to get technical about the technobabble — but it comes from a place of plot not emotion, and therefore no one really cares. 

79. I, Mudd

"We meet again, Kirk. Remember me? I'm the comic relief!" — Harry F'n. Mudd

I, Mudd, The Original Series, Season 2, Episode 8

Much like my review of ‘The Enemy Within,’ I’m really going to attempt to look at this episode through the lens of when it was made, what its intent is, and what they’re trying to say with it. But I’m not sure how successful I'm going to be with that. Because, damn, this episode it completely effing nuts. For the record, that's nuts not in a way that I enjoyed.

Much like the androids who sought to overthrow the galaxy, I just can’t process this episode. I just… I just can’t. It hurts my robot brain. What I find frustrating about that is, the premise of this episode is damned terrifying. The concept of unstoppable, immortal robots who seek to supplement humanity as a step towards galactic conquest is a threat as large as any crew in Star Trek has faced. The cold open involves an android taking control of the Enterprise and delivering the crew to his home planet. He does this having infiltrated the crew, passed as human for weeks, and rigged the ship to blow itself to bits if the crew interfered with its plan. But when the ship arrives as its destination, the crew is beamed down to face hundreds of thousands of the androids.

"You. Know. I. Am. Dane. Jer. Us. Be. Hold. My. Ro. Bot. Guts." — Evil Android Norman

And one Harcourt Fenton Mudd.

And his space-handlebar mustache.

From there the adventure takes a turn for the absurd as Mudd, the ne'er-do-well space swindler that the crew had faced before. Mudd's a fan-favorite, but I don't get him. The characterization and appearance is over-the-top, scenery-chewing, wtf-is-happening and oddly out of place in the Star Trek universe. All he does for me is heighten the stylized nature of the show. While Mudd's appearance should provide a counterbalance to the dangerous nature of the threat, all it does is work to undermine it. The second Mudd appears on screen, all real danger gets thrown out the window. Kirk goes from concern to amused. The situation degenerates quickly from oh-shit-we're-all-going-to-die to oh-for-the-love-of...

Mudd prances around declaring himself Emperor, and even has a robot version of his cartoonish shrew ex-wife he can boss around, who's played with subtlety worthy of the Flintstones. The robots try to please their new human masters by provideing them with their heart's desires. Scotty gets a workshop. Checkov gets vomen to manhandle. McCoy gets an advanced medical bay. Uhura is tempted by immortal beauty in a way that is not in the slightest way horribly sexist.*

Everyone is given what they want except Kirk, who just wants to boss people around. And denied of that, he decides to ruin everyone else's fun. Kirk is really only happy when Kirk's in charge. I'm kidding, of course. Not even Kirk is that shallow. Shatner maybe, but not Kirk. The Captain sees the android planet for what it is, a prison. A nice prison, and one with very nice toys, but still a prison. Kirk knows he can't take on the androids head-on, so they devise another plan. One that does not compute.

Not in the slightest.

They defeat the machines with silliness. Bonkers, Laugh-in-style nonsense is how they define humanity for the robots in hopes that it'll overload the androids logic circuits. It’s a completely bananas plan. And it goes on forever. Like, way beyond what could be expected for either the androids or the audience to stand. The crew speak contradictions, dance to no music, profess love and hate at the same time and confuse the androids (and me) into submission. Seriously, this could not —not — end fast enough.

"You can danze iv you vant to. You can leave your friendz behind!" — Ensign Checkov

Now's the part of the review where I say something nice about the episode. All I can really think of is that it's over and I never have to watch it again. It's too harsh to say I hated this episode, but, lord, I did not enjoy it.

Yet, this episode is inarguably iconic. So much so that the premise that robots can be defeated by paradoxes and illogic has permeated everything from Futurama** and Portal 2.*** It's now a much-used trope of science fiction. Even if someone has never seen Star Trek, they probably know about this episode. If they don't, they probably know. That. Ro. Bots. Talk. Like. This.†

So, who am I to argue with history?

--

Up next, Beverly Crusher is at the center of a mystery in Remember Me.

--

*I lied, it is. 

** In all fairness, there’s not much in science fiction that Futurama hasn’t hit upon, but the point is, this episode is preposterously famous.

*** Portal 2 a thing that I love, btw. 

† But, meh, so does Shatner. 

80. The Wounded

The Wounded, The Next Generation, Season 4, Episode 12

'The Wounded' marks the first appearance of the Cardassians, a race that would become a huge part of the Trek mythology. I think back on how far the Klingons have come since their first appearance in 'Errand of Mercy' and look at the depiction of the Cardassians from their introduction to their final appearance, and am surprised how fully formed they were from 'The Wounded.' Aside from the aesthetics of their uniforms, they're pretty much the same here as they are when Ben Sisko takes command of Deep Space Nine a few years later. It doesn't hurt that Marc Alaimo is playing the lead Cardassian here, as he would go on to play one of the most prominent villains in Trek's history.*

Though this was the first and last appearance of these bitchin' Cardassian helmet-things.

The Cardassians are presented as an empire with enough military might to threaten Starfleet. A smaller empire than the Klingons and Romulans, perhaps, but they're the best and worst of those two races. As smart as Romulans, as merciless as Klingons, but without the honor that keeps the latter in check. They are reptilian in appearance, calculating, cruel, and brutal. They will enslave an entire planet and justify their actions because they need to preserve their Empire. In short, they are everything the Federation to are not. But the Federation isn't what it used to be.

With their fleet decimated by the Borg attack, what we have is a Federation about to enter into a conflict they may not win. The war with the Cardassians had raged long enough for Picard to tell a war story from his time aboard his previous command, the Stargazer.**

Picard is ordered to keep the peace at all costs, and has to make some hard choices. He has to hunt down one of Starfleet's own, as Captain Ben Maxwell has gone rogue and attacked Cardassian targets. This could lead the Federation back into war with a ruthless enemy. As a show of good faith, Picard takes on a Cardassian delegation, who are constantly trying to get Picard to compromise Maxwell and let them blow him and his ship to smithereens.

If nothing else, this episode has a lot of sitting and talking. 

To do that, he enlists the help of one of his crew who served with Maxwell during the war, Miles Edward O'Brien. And it turns out this petty officer is far more interesting than a guy that pushes buttons in the transporter room. O'Brien was Maxwell's tactical officer during the Cardassian War, which make this 'simple enlisted man' more complex than he'd been so far. He turns our to be clever, and resourceful.

As O'Brien is not an officer, so I can only infer that his time as a Tactical Officer aboard the Rutledge was a war-time field-commission. It also makes his position on the Enterprise a bit strange. Transporter Chief seems like a demotion from Tactical. Perhaps O'Brien sought the honor of serving on the flagship. Perhaps he needed an assignment that was less intense than Tactical, even if that assignment was on a ship in constant danger. Miles is not shy about his feelings about the Cardassians. He's not a fan. He's seen the horrors of war, and he holds the Cardassians responsible for the man he had to become to survive it. We also see the consequences of families aboard the Enterprise as O'Brien tries to process his experiences with his new wife, Keiko.

But Miles knows Maxwell, and he uses every trick up his sleeve to help Picard bring a peaceful end to Maxwell's one-man war against the Cardassians. As Picard and crew attempt to figure it out, the Cardassian representative, Gul Macet, is constantly angling for the means to end Maxwell. Assuring Picard that the only way to attain peace is through Maxwell's end.

And to do that? Endless, endless meetings. 

Maxwell is presented as a contemporary of Picard's, perhaps his equal. Maxwell is smart, determined, and pulls off some tactical maneuvers that sets him up as a formidable opponent. He commands the USS Rutledge, a ship as advanced as the Enterprise. More importantly, Maxwell is a believer. He's a man on a self-appointed mission to expose the Cardassians as the duplicitous snakes they are. He suspects that the Cardassians are using the ceasefire as an excuse to rebuild their navy for a new assault. Maxwell blows up a science station because he believes the Cardassians are using it to spy on the Federation. He assaults a Cardassian civilian freighter because he thinks the Cardassians are secretly using them to resupply their war efforts.

Picard has to stop Maxwell, and there appears to be no easy way out of it. What makes Picard's job that much harder is that Maxwell is right. Maxwell is a man who has suffered loss. Perhaps he's one a mission to avenge the death of his wife during the war. Perhaps he's attempting suicide via death-by-cop. Perhaps he is doing exactly what he says he is, exposing the Cardassians. The truth turns out to be a mix of all of these things, and it makes Maxwell a fascinating antagonist.

Picard has to choose between doing what's right, and serving the greater good and keeping the peace. He can't even entertain Maxwell's suggestions to investigate the Cardassians supply ships because if Picard has proof, he'll have no option but to drag the Federation back into a costly war.  It's a hard choice, and arguable if he made the right one.

--

Next up, it's Kirk vs. Robots and dudes with handlebar mustaches I, Mudd.



*Note, I haaaaate Marc Alaimo's Gul Dukat with a fiery passion, but not in the way that the creators of Deep Space Nine intended. For more on why he's terrible, please check out my review of #88 on the countdown.

**If I have complaints about the episode they're mostly inconsequential. The timeline suggests that the Federation and the Cardassians have been at war up until a year ago, but it's never mentioned in the first two seasons. As Picard tells his Stargazer story, it implies the war has been going on for quite quite a while. Other than the forehead makeup, the Cardassians themselves look terrible, and went through a much needed uniform upgrade before their next appearance. 

What This Is and What I'm Doing

When io9 posted their list of the Top 100 Episodes of Star Trek as voted on by fans, I took it as an excuse to rewatch me some Trek and to pontificate about it. I've just finished the first 20 on the list, and I'd like to take a moment to reflect. As a reminder, this is not my list. And though I love Star Trek, it is not sacred to me. There are some episodes that I just didn't connect with. Some that have been entertaining but flawed. And some that I've loved.

I'm making a few assumptions with this blog. I'm assuming, dear readers, that you've seen the episodes in question. I haven't been doing extensive recaps of the episodes, and haven't really dived into extensive descriptions of the characters and their general motivations. If you would like to see more of that, please reach out to me and let me know.

Here's the list of episodes that I've reviewed so far:

#100 Bride of Chaotica — A brilliantly madcap episode that pits Voyager against black and white serial villains.

#99 Day of the Dove — Kirk vs. the most bad ass of all bad asses, Kang.

#98 Paradise — Ben Sisko faces off against a cult leader on an alien world.

#97 Borderland, Cold Station 12 & The Augments — The Enterprise stretches an adventure that is a love-letter to Wrath of Khan a little too thin over three episodes.

#96 Lineage — A great character study of B'Elanna and Tom, if you care about either of those people.

#95 The Most Toys — Data is abducted into slavery by a crazy person.

#94 Disaster — Deanna Troi is placed in charge of the Enterprise. Hilarity ensues.

#93 Future's End — A time travel Voyager tale that couldn't end fast enough for me.

#92 The Magnificent Ferengi — A Quark comedy romp that's more entertaining than it sounds.

#91 The Killing Game — The Voyager crew fights Nazis, for some reason that eludes me.

#90 The Booby Trap — Geordi falls for a holodeck physicist, and that's his fantasy? Really?

#89 The Court Martial — Kirk is the manliest man ever to be put on trial for dereliction of duty.

#88 Favor the Bold & Sacrifice of Angels — A two-part microcosm of the best and worst that Deep Space Nine has to offer.

#87 Deja Q — Q returns to annoy the crew of the Enterprise to great effect.

#86 Memorial — The Voyager crew develops PTSD from an alien war they never participated in.

#85 Little Green Men — Quark, Rom and Nog get blasted back in time to 1947 Roswell, New Mexico and hilarity does not ensue. It tries, really hard though.

#84 Parallels — Worf bounces from reality to reality in a mystery that's solved in the episode's title.

#83 Timeless — Harry and Chakotay travel back in time to prevent the destruction of Voyager. I'm not convinced this is the best course of action.

#82 Conundrum — The crew of the Enterprise-D get their minds erased and thrown into a war they have no memory of.

#81 The Enemy Within — Where we get two Kirks for the price of one thanks to a transporter accident.

As we look towards the next twenty, I'm excited about some of the episodes on the list. Thanks for reading, and let's watch some Trek.

#81, The Enemy Within, Star Trek, The Original Series, Season 1, Episode 5

"I'm not a bad guy, really." — Dark Kirk

I recently got into a Facebook argument with a friend who only acknowledges the greatness of the Original Series, and feels that everything else that follows is terrible. At least, unworthy. He and I vastly disagree on this, obviously. While, I greatly respect The Original Series and the legacy it created, as I've stated before, it's not my Trek. So, if you're a fan of The Original Series (and only The Original Series), I'm going to apologize in advance for the next few reviews of the adventures of Kirk, Spock and McCoy on the Top 100 list. 'The Enemy Within,' 'I, Mudd,' 'A Piece of the Action,' these episodes are not for me. They're everything that I find off-putting about TOS, however...

However...

However, I'm going to do my best to appreciate them for what they are, the era in which they aired, and the spirit in which they're presented. I'm willing to give 'The Enemy Within' a lot of latitude because as Episode 5 of a decades-spanning franchise, the show is still figuring out what it is. Sulu and Scotty get a lot of air-time. There are a couple of firsts here, it's on this episode that Nimoy created the Vulcan nerve pinch (though an episode shot later aired earlier). We get out first look at Kirk's wrap-around captain's tunic. When a bunch of crew are trapped on a freezing planet and the transporter is inoperable, the obvious solution would be to use shuttlecraft, except they hadn't been established in the show yet.

For example, after this episode, they decided against making the Space-Unicorn-Terrier a re-occuring character. 

So, let's try a compliment sandwich, shall we? I'll say something nice, I'll say something less-than-nice, and then I'll say something nice again. Let's see how that works out.

'The Enemy Within' has a fantastic premise and had amazing potential. And the vibe of the episode is far more Twilight Zone that Star Trek. And coming from scifi legend and Twilight Zone alum, Richard Matheson, this is wholly appropriate. The episode is dark, brooding, and explores not just the darker side of Kirk, but the darker side of mankind as a whole. It asks the question of what happens when we strip away our humanity, and looks at what's left. A transporter accident creates two Kirks. One, slowly losing himself in self-doubt and fear, the other, the baser animal nature of humanity. We look at a man split into two extremes, and seeing what happens when a man's psyche is metaphorically and physically thrown off balance.

Matheson keeps the division between the Kirks from being as simplistic as 'Good' and 'Evil.' They go out of their way to point out that these aspects of personality are necessary for the whole. Dark Kirk is primal, driven by desire and self-interest. Kirk-Lite spirals from being the man he once was into a man who's incapable of making a decision.

Unfortunaltely, the different aspects of Kirk that are presented, the Compassionate and Indecisive Kirk-Lite and the RAGE, RAGE and OMG-SOMEHOW-YET-EVEN-MORE-RAGE Dark Kirk are played to such extremes the results come across as more comical than poignant. Now, let's call this for what it is, it's a television show trying to communicate a story point. But even so, it's really hard for me to watch Shartner sneer and snarl his way around the Enterprise as Dark Kirk. I don't think I'm going out on a limb in saying that Shatner is not the most well-respected thespian ever to grace the small screen. But in 'The Enemy Within,' his depiction of Dark Kirk as over the top, even for him. The choices of guyliner, general sweatiness of Dark Kirk, over-dramatic music, and the lighting doesn't help the subtlety of the situation, either.

"I'm acting! I am! Acting! I'm ACTING!" - Dark Kirk

Kirk-Lite wanders around the ship, waiting for others to act, and slowly loses his ability to command the Enterprise. Kirk-Lite is far less defined than Dark Kirk. Dark Kirk's first acts are to demand booze and force himself upon Yeoman Rand. Kirk-Lite's actions are more business as usual, but he increasingly becomes incapable of commanding his ship. Where Dark Kirk's actions are clearly aggressive, the aspects of this Kirk's personality are far more vague. I have little doubt that this is unintentional, a deliberate contrast between hard and soft. But we never get a sense of that the traits Kirk-Lite are any kind of benefit. All we get is that Kirk-Lite is incomplete.

"I have no strong opinion. Whatever is fine. What do you think?" — Kirk-Lite

I'm inferring here that the darker nature of humanity is not only necessary, but vital in order to be a whole human being. I'm not sure I'm okay with that. I think I'd be more amenable to the episode if the attributes of compassion and empathy were presented in any kind of positive light. But they're not, really. Compassion here is equated with weakness. I fundamentally disagree with the overall idea that the only way to be whole is to be equal part aggressive asshole. It's quite the mixed message for a show that looks to an idealized society where humanity has evolved to a nigh-utopian state. More than the low-grade production values, more than Spock's sole function as the Exposition Officer, more than the horrible treatment of Rand, this message is this reason that I can't really connect to this episode.

Also, the alien-dog-thing looks just damned ridiculous.

Like all great Star Trek, 'The Enemy Within' asks big questions. I'm just not sure I like the answer they came up with.

--

Next up, Picard does what he does best, negotiating treaties in 'The Wounded.'

#82, Conundrum, The Next Generation, Season Five, Episode 14

"Wait. What's happening? I have zero idea." — Jean-Luc Picard

I'm of two minds of this episode.

On the one hand, hot damn, 'Conundrum' is just great. I mentioned in the previous post about taking the familiar and putting them in an unfamiliar surrounding, and in this episode we get an inversion of that motif. We take the familiar setting and put new characters in it. Well, not really new, per se. We still have Worf, Riker, Picard and Data, but their memories have been erased. They have no idea who they are, or what their purpose was. Just a bunch of people on a giant space ship, wearing snazzy uniforms, and wondering whiskey tango foxtrot is going on.

Too often we've seen mystery set up on Star Trek where we the viewing audience is a step or twelve ahead of the crew (for example, 'Parallels'), but here, we're just as clueless as the crew themselves. As the crew realizes none of them know who they are, there's an unfamiliar face on the bridge of the Enterprise. Commander MacDuff, the ship's First Officer. Whuuuuuuuuuut? And it's on like Ferengi Kong.  We know that something is horribly wrong, but the characters do not. MacDuff is a metaphorical bomb and we're just waiting to for him to go off. As he manipulates the crew, thwarting their attempts to get to truth, we're just waiting for the payoff.

The clues are well paced as the crew pieces together what's going on, with bread crumbs of information doled out in tiny chunks. The Enterprise is supposedly on a secret mission to take out an enemy base to end a bloody war. The enemy has a new secret weapon, which explains the memory loss. The Enterprise burns through the enemy lines, they grossly overpower their supposed mortal enemy.

There are some great character moments as the crew figure out who they are. What we have here are the characters stripped down to their cores. Riker is pure swagger. Ro is impulsive, looking to make her own rules. Deanna states the obvious. Beverly is there, I guess. Data tries to figure out who and what he is. Worf is pure warrior. Picard is wisdom incarnate. The Captain has some great verbal explorations of the moral dilemma of his mission. When they encounter their enemy, they discover  they're no match to them, he doubts the moral certainty of the conflict.

The episode is not without fun. Data and Geordie wonder if Data is unique or part of a ship's standard equipment, which is a fascinating concept. Ro and Riker put aside their usual animosity and replace it with amorousness.* And Worf thinks he's captain for a good chunk of the first act and no one bothers to stop him.

When everyone realizes that no one has their memories, Worf decides he's captain, because why not. With no one with any information to contradict him, he takes charge. His instincts tell him that they've been attacked and he starts ordering the rest of the crew to get the ship battle-ready. Picard shows patience and diplomacy as the young Klingon takes over his ship, and immediately slides into the role of the experienced advisor. It's great to see the contrast between the characters. Worf's single-mindedness and Picard's big picture view. It's the difference between inexperience and experience.  Worf's mea culpa to Picard is great when he discovers that he's the junior-most bridge officer.

"One day, I'll be Captain of my own ship, I swear. Computer, activate crowdfunding." — 'Captain' Worf. 

As they make it to their destination, the mystery is revealed, the MacDuff has been manipulating the Enterprise into destroying the base of his species' enemies, ending their war using the Enterprise's vastly superior firepower. Picard can't reconcile what he's been ordered to do and decides to talk to their 'enemy' rather than blow the shit out of their space station. When MacDuff forces his the issue, the crew stops him from murdering thousands using the Enterprise as his weapon. MacDuff shows his true colors, and those colors are alien and gross.

Apparently MacDuff belonged to the same species of  aliens as the ones from 'They Live.'

On the other hand, holy crap, the alien plot is just damned nonsensical. If they can take down the crew of the Enterprise in one shot, why not replace all of them with their own people? Why just the one guy? Why put your agent as the first officer and not the captain? The aliens that take over the ship, the Satarrans, are supposedly a hundred years behind the Enterprise in technology, but can reprogram Data and the ship's computer? The structure of the mystery is well done, but the reveal is a huge let down. and the episode begins with Troi beating Data a chess, a thing that no one ever would find plausible. However, I'm willing to give it a lot of latitude because the rest of the episode is so strong.

What's the verdict? In my opinion — and it's the official opinion of this blog — the strengths of 'Conundrum' far outweigh its weaknesses. So, in the end, 'Conundrum' is great. Flawed, but great.

--

Next up, we get two Kirks for the price of one within 'The Enemy Within.'

--

*They get it on, is what I'm saying. 

#83, Timeless, Voyager, Season 5, Episode 6

An episode so time-travely they borrow Doctor Who's time vortex. 

In this episode of Voyager we get a glimpse of an alternate future, where an aged Harry Kim and Chakotay travel fifteen years back in time to undo a mistake that cost the crew of Voyager their lives. They're gruffer and grayer than we know them. They've turned their backs on the Federation, committed treason, stolen a ship and a piece of rare Borg tech, and are racing against the clock to send a message back in time to save their crew. Also, they have Captain Geordi LaForge, commanding the Galaxy Class starship Challenger, on their tail.

Harry and Chakotay have a confederate in this. Chakotay's girlfriend, Tessa, who's perfectly willing to die to help Chakotay. She faces death at the hands of the Challenger's torpedoes with a kind of blasé attitude that makes on wonder what kind of effed up relationship she has with Chakotay. Throughout Trek in it's many incarnations, there's this kind of detached calm when things are blowing up around people. Seriously, next time you watch an episode look for the 'I'm-just-doing-my-job' attitude that comes from extras and guest-stars in the show. It's kind of eerie. Tessa goes about her business as if changing time and exploding are perfectly normal.

The best moment in 'Timeless' comes at the beginning, when Voyager crashes into a planet and gets engulfed by a glacier. For a show (and series) where a lot of space action happens off screen to save money (i.e. holding on Tom Paris, for example, when he announces, "The enemy is exploding. It's spectacular! I wish you could see this!"), it's nice to see a big moment in the show. The crash looks great, and the special effects hold up well lo these many years later. The image of Chakotay and Harry, decked out in space parkas finding the englaciered Voyager is well done, and immediately sets up a the mystery. And like every mystery in the post-Seven-of-Nine era of Voyager, it's solved by Borg-technobabble. Considering how effing magic the Borg's technology is, it's astounding they haven't conquered the galaxy yet. More on that later when we get to more Borgy Voyager adventures later in this countdown.

'Let it go. Let it go.' — Elsa Janeway

Also, it's nice to see that Geordi gets a promotion to Captain in the future. It's always a treat for me when the series cross over with one another, even if it's for a glorified cameo. Although, for whatever reason, it looks like Geordi is commanding his ship from his ready room. I'm going to guess that reason is budgetary. It's a nice reminder that Voyager, despite it's premise of being lost thousands of lightyears away from home is still part of the larger fabric of Trek mythology. I've never been a fan of the extended universe for Trek. I've read a few of the novels — don't judge, I went through massive withdrawals when TNG went of the air — and find them lacking. None of the video games have ever caught my attention. So, it's fun to get to see where the next generation Enterprise crew land in the future, and fill in some of the gaps between the end of the series and 'All Good Things.' It carries massive good will to Voyager for me, and fills in the connective tissue of the universe.

"Though you might be tempted, don't read Star Trek novels." — Captain LaForge of the U.S.S. Reading Rainbow

Now, if there's one thing that Voyager, as a show, can do, it's ignore the crap out of temporal paradoxes. I'd love to see a quantitative analysis if the show, breaking down the number of episodes that deal with mucking with time as a concept. We've seen two in this list alone just from Voyager. A quick look at the list, and we've got another 15 or so that deal with time travel, or alternate timelines in some capacity, not counting any Temporal Cold War shenanigans from Enterprise. And in this episode, logic gets shoved right out an airlock as Harry and Chakotay race against the clock to save Voyager in the past. When they succeed in sending their message back in time, they erase the timeline that enabled them to save Voyager. Janeway even shrugs off the paradox with an "Eh, fuck it. Time paradoxes. What you gonna do?" I'm paraphrasing the captain, of course, but that's the gist of how 'Timeless' ends.

Then, we have a message from elder Harry Kim from an alternate future addressing his former self, and letting him know what his hubris might have cost the crew. Time logic problems aside, I wish the moment had had more gravitas. Part of the problem with putting our heroes outside their norm is that we don't get to see these new incarnations of the crew fully fleshed out. As elder Harry Kim, actor Garret Wang growls his way through the episode and I never got the sense that he was playing the truth of his situation. There are hints of PTSD and survivor's guilt, but the episode also has to shove in space battles and slip-stream-drive-technobabble, too. This truncates the character moments, and making me wish we had more time with this reality.

If there's a reoccurring theme in the episodes that I've seen on this list, it seems to be taking our characters out of their normal roles and throwing them in a situation, environment or timeline they find wholly out of the norm for a crew of a starship/space station. We've seen it in 'Parallels,' 'Little Green Men,' 'Bride of Chaotica,' 'The Killing Game,' and 'Future's End.' I'm making an observation, here, not a judgement, but that's almost a third of the episodes on the list so far. I can see the appeal from a creative standpoint. It shakes things up both for the audience and the writers and performers.  I'm going to keep an eye on this trend as the countdown continues, but for now, I'm just going to welcome 'Timeless' to that list.

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Next up, the crew of the Enterprise-D face a 'Conundrum.'