Overdue Star Trek review: Whom Gods Destroy

Kirk and Spock are held captive on a penal colony planet when the inmates take over the asylum. Adding to the drama is the main inmate is a shape-shifter.

This episode has two problems, one minor, one major. The minor problem is the show did this plot already. Serious? They have the entire galaxy to explore, not to mention countless allegory plots about the human condition, and they were running out of ideas by the third season?

The major problem is everything the writers knew about mental illness was learned from watching "Arsenic and Old Lace." The difference is Star Trek had the decency to play mental illness as a drama instead of "Arsenic" which played mental illness as a laugh-riot!

I'm talking about the whole delusions of grandeur trope. Shorthand for mental illness in pre-70s was to put a Napolean hat on someone. Instant crazy! "Arsenic" did this by making a character think he was Theodore Roosevelt, "Whom Gods Destroy" did it by making Garth think he was Lord commander of the universe.

The other disturbing thing was the other inmates passing time by doing wheelbarrow races. It's as if the writers were thinking that the insane extras had to do something, hmm, what do the mentally ill do, yeah! they do wheelbarrow races! This of course comes off as awful, insensitive and really amateurish.

We really don't portray mental illness like this anymore.

This is a pity, if the writers had done actual research, a real story about real mental illness could have been made. The viewers could have actually learned something. Star Trek classic took on the Vietnam war, it could have taken on mental illness.

Some good points. I never tire of two William Shatners wrestling each other. Star Trek 6 would steal this 25 years later for a hilarious moment.  Yvonne Craig was beautiful and sexy and back in the 60s always got saddled with the girlfriend-of-the-week roles, though she deserved better. On the other hand what's not to like about her as an Orion slave girl? And speaking of Orion slave girls, the episode used a bunch of formerly introduced alien races; this might have been a cost-saving maneuver, but it perhaps unintentionally brought some uniformity to the ST universe.

One technical point: The Star Trek classic reruns shown now are the special-effects enhanced episodes where, for the most part, all the model starships have been replaced by CGI ships. That being said, the scene where the Enterprise is firing photon torpedoes at the Klingon ship should be awesome. It's not. It's only slightly better than the original effect. Further, they missed an opportunity to CGI the scenes where Garth is shapeshifting instead of leaving in the cheesy '60s effect. Speaking of Star Trek VI, the shapeshifter in that film changed form while talking, how cool is that?

Appreciation: "City on the Edge of Forever"

Just caught this Star Trek gem on one of the antenna stations. I had't seen it in years, and I knew it was good (probably the best episode of any Star Trek ever), I just forgot how nearly perfect it is.

Economy of words: There is not an ounce of fat in this episode. Every line, every scene moves the story forward. They don't waste  a second. Watch the sequence where Spock sees a guy working with intricate tools, he cracks a safe and steals them, Edith Keeler confronts Kirk and Spock about the theft. This all happens in the space of two minutes.

McCoy's recovery scene: We learn more about McCoy in this tiny, well-written exchange with Keeler than we will in the whole series. He's not just a cranky Spock antagonist. He's realizing he's somehow on earth in 1930 and instead of freaking out, he sees it as another day working for Starfleet.  When Keeler sympathetically says, "We've all drank from the wrong bottle at one point." He just laughs at the analogy. "Not like the bottle I drank from." Then he offers to help out. The viewer imagines he's going to make the best of things by practicing medicine just in a  different time.

McCoy's back alley scene: What a great monologue, "people sewn like garments!" He's mad, but he's right. In the future, we won't be sewing people like garments, and it's barbaric to him even in his demented state.

Kirk/Spock interplay: "Sometimes I expect too much of you." Spock has a genius intellect yet Kirk is still able to play him. This answers the question, if Spock is so smart, why isn't he the captain? Because Kirk knows all the angles you'd never read in a book (previously this was done with Kirk routinely beating Spock in chess).

Heartbreaking ending: It's all wrapped up in a minute, there's no epilogue to explain everything, there's no moment where they're back on the bridge for a laugh/freeze frame. Just heartbreak.

It's like a two hour episode packed into 60 minutes. If it were made today the story would have been spread out over the whole season. Not too crazy an idea. Think about Kirk telling the Red Shirts (who *don't* die!) to follow him into the time portal if they think he'd been gone too long. Imagine what those subplots could be had they listened to him.

My only question is why they didn't use the Guardian of Forever again? They used different means to time travel, it might have been better if they stuck with this one.

Harlan Ellison wrote a book about the making of this episode, and it includes the original script. It also recounts some shady maneuvering from Shatner and Roddenberry. If you can find it get it.

Great stuff

50-year overdue review: Star Trek: What Little Girls Are Made Of

This episode was on one of the antenna channels tonight, and boy does it hold up.

It has the ingredients of the best episodes of the old show:

Introduce a scientific concept.

Debate the wisdom/dangers of the scientific concept.

And the icing on the cake: a cool fistfight/spaceship battle, and scantily-clad alien women.

This is what set Star Trek apart from other shows on back then. It was written by and for smart people.

Let's look at the scientific concept: They're talking about artificial intelligence 30 years before the term was even coined! Bonanza never did that!

And the only Star Trek film to discuss theoretical science was "Wrath of Khan" with the Genesis device.

Scientific concept, debate wisdom of scientific concept, cool spaceship battle, Kirstie Alley at her hottest. And not so coincidentally, it's still the best film.

Another thing interesting about this episode was the introduction of Nurse Chapel.

Some backstory. It gets a little complicated: Gene Roddenberry wanted to give his girlfriend, Majel Barrett, a job.

Oh, wait, that wasn't complicated at all.

The story was Nurse Chapel joined Starfleet to hopefully find her one-time lover Roger Korby who went missing.

They find him, but he turns out to be a robot, so the search continues.


Only it didn't. Her whole backstory was forgotten. They set up a starting point which could have lead to two or three episodes and they totally dropped it. The only thing she had to do after this was have a crush on Spock.

And if she weren't superfluous enough, in the first film, she's a doctor. So the ship has two doctors.

One final point to go over: Holy crap, that jumpsuit on Sherry Jackson!

Blasphemy: How "The Wrath of Khan's" centerpiece showdown could have been better

I don't have to tell the Trekkies among us that the scene where Khan ambushes Kirk in "Wrath of Khan" is the most exciting, suspenseful and hands-down the best sequence in any "Star Trek" film even to this day.

Every "Star Trek" film since then has tried to insert a mid-film showdown similar to the Khan sequence. And it's never as good.

They even tried to remake the whole film with Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan.

I remember sitting in the theater on opening night. As the sequence unfolded I was dumbstruck. "The Enterprise is done! Kirk's going to beam over and Khan's going to kill him! And then he'll blow up the Enterprise just for laughs!" My mind was racing all over the possibilities, I had no idea how Kirk would get out of this.

We've seen this a million times. There's always a bad guy holding a gun over James Bond, and you think, "ehh, he'll throw sand in his eyes, he'll kick him in the shin, the love-interest will shoot the villain from behind." I've never thought James Bond was ever in real peril.

But this was the first time the villain was pointing a gun (or phasers) at a hobbled hero and I thought, "Crap! The movie is over!"

But then ... Kirk calls up the Reliant's command code, and orders the Reliant to lower its shields. The imperious Khan is suddenly stunned and clueless, and the audience gets this amazing release when The Enterprise starts firing on the now-defenseless Reliant (the audience opening night was cheering!)

(not to mention that for everyone in the audience, this sequence  more than made up for the dull, listless "Star Trek: The Motion Picture").

Brilliant!

But could the sequence have been better?

Yes, and it would have been easy and made more sense.

While delaying Khan, Kirk asks Saavik for the command code for the Reliant. Saavik is confused, "Command code?"

Kirk then explains to her (and the audience) that every Starfleet ship has a command code "to keep an enemy from doing what we're about to attempt."

Oh, OK, that makes sense. Even in 1982, we had computer passwords to prevent hacking, so this wasn't an especially new concept. It had really never been introduced in the TV series.

But, why was this concept introduced as the sequence is progressing? It would have been super easy, and more enjoyable if the concept was explained at the beginning of the film.

Think about it, in the beginning, while Enterprise was in space dock, the Starfleet air traffic controller could have easily said, "Should I use your command code to steer you out of dry dock?" and Saavik would have said, "No thank you, I don't like handing over control of the comm," then the film would continue where Kirk looks shocked and Bones offers him a sedative.

And the audience would have enjoyed the scene, not realizing they were being set up for the big action sequence an hour later. And when the sequence unfolds, there would be no need for exposition.

Think of the CAT ekto-skeleton in "Aliens." James Cameron didn't introduce that thing at the end of the movie when Ripley needed it to defeat the Alien, he introduced it at the beginning, and turned it into a red herring by convincing the audience that the CAT's only purpose was to show that Ripley was a badass in front of a male chauvinist. It worked for me, and everyone else in the audience. Meanwhile, we learned it existed and how it worked early on.

What do you think?

Star Trek Again

Just as "Star Trek: The Next Generation" broke ground for syndicated television, and "Star Trek: Voyager" was the flagship of the new UPN network, it was announced a new Trek would be the big draw for CBS All Access. (Kind of like Netflix or Hulu but with CBS reruns).

My friends who know of my fondness for Trek asked if I were excited.

No, I'm not.

I know the Internet was invented so Star Trek geeks could debate who is the better captain, Kirk or Picard, and a gazillion gigabytes of data on the Internet are about Star Trek. But, if you can just put up with a few kilobytes more, here's why:

I never recovered from the disappointment that was "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
I had come late to the party, watching the reruns of TOS throughout the '70s. What a great show. It blended science fiction and adventure, and it was written by smart people for smart people. So imagine my excitement when I heard there would be a new Trek. It would be a whole new crew, but us Trekkies were open-minded.

My big moment of disappointment came about the second or third episode. A new alien species was establishing itself. A Ferengi showed up on the viewscreen of the bridge of the Enterprise. And Whorf, feeling threatened, points his phaser at the viewscreen.

Let me repeat that: Whorf, feeling threatened, points his phaser at the viewscreen.

Two things went through my mind: The writers are imbeciles...or ...hey wait a minute ... the writers think the viewers are imbeciles.

Either way at that point, the show had to win me back, and it never did, nor did any of the following series.

TNG in fact got worse:

The psychic never told the audience anything it didn't already know.
Someone had to explain the plot to Wesley every week.
Every time Whorf got in a fight he got his ass kicked
Ryker was just redundant, Picard would say, "Warp factor 1," and Ryker would just repeat him. He was supposed to be the guy who went planet-side to keep the captain safe. This never happened.

On and on, by the third time Picard surrendered I kind of gave up.

Oh and the "something went horribly wrong in the Holodeck!" schtick I think they did every episode.

Deep Space 9's Tribble episode did something TNG was never able to do, have an actually funny episode. DS9 had its own mythology based on TNG's, but not really about TOS's idea of exploration and science. I lost interest pretty quickly.

I gave Voyager about a season. The point of the ship being lost gave it an excuse to ignore the prime directive to whose slavish devotion made TNG so boring. Once again, a concept they gave up immediately. They always followed the prime directive .. the path to most boringness.

I gave up on Voyager after Capt. Janeway gave a race of aliens who had killed her crew and stole their organs a stern scolding to never do that again. (Jerri Ryan pumped a lot of life in that show though).

I didn't see enough episodes of Enterprise to give a fair review, but that it only lasted 4 seasons might tell you something.

So, I might give it a chance when it premiers for free on CBS in 2017, but after 50 years of disappointment, I'm not sure I'd give it more than that.

Lost Trek Lore

If you can find it, try to get Bill Planer’s “Lost Voyages of Star Trek.” It includes synopses of Star Trek scripts that were never filmed.

In the mid-70s, Paramount was going to start a “fourth television network” and its flagship show was to be “Star Trek: Phase II.” The adventures of the Enterprise’s second five-year journey.

Scripts were commissioned, the actors were going to reprise their roles, except for Leonard Nimoy.

New characters were drawn up: Decker, a headstrong, young first officer; Ilya, a psychic, and onetime lover of Decker’s, and Xon, a vulcan who, unlike Spock, actually enjoyed working on a ship with humans and wanted to be more like them. (These three characters might sound familiar.)

Then something big happened: Star Wars. 

Paramount executives who had spent every morning climbing over a new pile of mail from Star Trek fans begging for a Star Trek movie started asking themselves: Do we own any properties that have spaceships in them?

Plans for the fourth network and Phase II were scrapped. (Barry Diller, the Paramount executive spearheading this concept, would take it to Fox. You might have heard of this.)

Roddenberry was ordered: Make us a movie.

Then came an astonishing series of bad decisions, one understandable, the rest bewildering.

Bad decision one: Choosing the director. This is the understandable bad decision. We’re talking Robert Wise. “West Side Story,” “The Sound of Music,” Blockbusters both. But most important to Roddenberry: “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Possibly the most cerebral science fiction drama up to that time, and probably to this day. (Call me what you must, 2001 a Space Odyssey was a pretentious overlong boring indulge-o-fest)

Rodddenberry didn’t want spaceships blowing each other up, he wanted a movie just like “The Day the Earth Stood Still”: men in military uniforms sitting around discussing what to do about the alien threat ... if it is a threat.

The problem is, after Star Wars, no one else wanted that. We wanted fast ships and explosions. Instead we got long long talky meetings, and interminable inspections of the outer hull of the Enterprise

Now the baffling decisions: Roddenberry went to the stack of scripts written for Phase II and found “In Thy Image,” a story about an Earth space probe that becomes self-aware and returns to meet its makers. 

Two problems with this script. A) it had been done before as an episode of Star Trek, B) the concept really doesn’t lend itself to a big budget motion picture experience. There are no villains! Now after “Wrath of Khan” I can’t argue that going back to the source material is a bad idea, but Khan was a sequel, building on the original. And if you’re going to spend $20 million (then a lot of money for a movie) to remake an episode of Star Trek, do “The Doomsday Machine” That episode just begs for the big-screen treatment. (Check out the CGI-improved version, you’ll see I’m right).

Baffling decision 2: “Let’s shave Persis Khambatta’s head!” 

Baffling decision 3: Upon finding out the revived Star Trek would be a movie, Leonard Nimoy was suddenly interested. At this point, Roddenberry thought, wow, I can keep Decker and Ilia, but I’ll have to kill off Xon. 

Kill off Xon? 

Roddenberry somehow was thinking that not only were the Star Trek Phase II episodes filmed, they were aired, and the fans would want an explanation on why Xon wasn’t in the movie.

How else to explain his role in the film as the quickly introduced, quickly dispatched Vulcan, making a movie that was a half hour too long even longer?

The film was released, became a hit, but was quickly nicknamed Star Trek: The Motionless Picture. 

So, Roddenbery went into exile and Paramount would never release another Star Trek film without phasers being fired and things blowing up.

When Roddenberry returned from exile, they let him produce an ambitious little TV program called Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Once again, he raided the box o’ scripts from Phase II. Only wherever it said Kirk, he crossed it out and wrote Picard. Decker became Riker; Ilia became Troi, and Xon became Data.

This man was the master of recycling.

As  pointed out in a Cracked article, Roddenberry’s talents were somewhat overrated in favor of people who worked for him. Cracked cites Gene Coon, but I would add DC Fontana and David Gerrold to the mix. When they left Next Generation things quickly went to crap. Interesting thought-provoking scripts were replaced with tropes that were moldy in the ‘60s. Evil twins, unambiguously-good good guys. A captain who surrendered seemingly every episode, the psychic who provided no insight that wasn’t always obvious, the boy genius for whom every episode had to stop in its tracks so someone could explain the plot to him, and a Klingon who got knocked on his ass in every fight.

Star Trek: Phase II could have been the best Star Trek series of them all. Roddenberry was always somehow Star Trek’s greatest champion and worst enemy.

Web film review "Star Trek: Of Gods and Men

Back in the 70s, Star Trek fan fiction was spread around by mimeograph sheets (ask your grandparents). Now, the fans make $100,000 semi-pro movies with actual cast members, all funded by internet donations. It's crazy! And often very good.

I inadvertently stumbled upon the fan film "Gods and Men," and after a clunky beginning, it got better. It's an alternate timeline story, the type of which we've seen before, and it has the dream mash-up of (spoiler) Charlie X and Gary Mitchell beating each other up! A fan's dream come true. It also features the destruction of Vulcan two years before the rebooted Star Trek film did it.

Trek veterans Walter Keonig, Nichelle Nichols, Garrett Wang, Alan Ruck, Grace Lee Whitney, Tim Russ (and a few red shirt-types) all reprise their roles. Charlie X and Gary Mitchell are played by character actors who both do exceptional jobs.

In the alternate timeline, Chekov is leading rebels in a takeover of the Enterprise now led by an evil Starfleet. It's Mirror Mirror, mixed with Space Seed, Wrath of Khan, and a bunch of other episodes. At the end there's a colossal spaceship battle which is awfully cool. Definitely a fan fantasy.

The drawbacks: The aforementioned clunky beginning. Clunky dialogue, clunky acting, clunky setup. (stick with it though). We need a 20 year moratorium on time travel, and the phrase "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Both have been way overused. (That being said, it was good to see the Time Guardian again). Also a major character has an unexplained change of heart which shifts everything.

I thought Charlie X had been retconned to be a member of the Q continuity. No difference, but Roddenberry did have a frequent reliance on god-like omnipotent characters.

The web pages of the creators say they're trying to make a pilot, I say CBS should pick it up, and make Alan Ruck the captain.

Film review: Iron Man 3

A problem with writing superhero stories is sometimes, they're just too powerful. This is why they invented kryptonite. In most of the Star Trek films (and some episodes) the ship is somewhat disabled. (They make a joke of this in Star Trek: VI, where the ship is ordered to a destination the crew wants to delay, and to their dismay, the ship works fine.) And this is why through most of Iron Man 3, Tony Stark's Iron Man getup is only semi-functional. And not only that, but Tony Stark himself is suffering from crippling anxiety attacks. Part of me is thinking these are arbitrary hurdles, the other part thinks, well, you have to do it or the hero is just too powerful to be interesting.

He also spends a lot of time out of the gear, at one point when he and Don Cheadle are invading a villain's lair, it looks like a buddy cop movie.

That being said, it's a great summer movie, full of excitement and action. It might start off a little too slow for me. I kind of expected a James Bond-type thriller cold opening, so I was a little disappointed at that. I will say there's a jaw-dropping second act twist which should earn Ben Kingsley an Oscar. It won't, but it's worth it to see his performance.

Once again with the Marvel movies, there's a "cookie" surprise at the tail end of the credits. It was cute, but not worth sitting through the thousands of names in the credits.

A film geek note: If you read a review, this won't be a spoiler, but a nerd whom the hero dismisses at the beginning of the film, returns years later to be a villain. The Incredibles did the same thing.

More actresses who deserved better

In an earlier post I wrote about TV actresses who got the thankless job of being the girlfriend of Little Joe, Capt. Kirk, Dr. Richard Kimble, and after a quick courtship and sometimes marriage, get killed by rustlers/Klingons/whatever.

Here's some more, but as we moved into the 70s the actresses sometimes got better parts later on.

France Nguyen (above) was one of Capt. Kirk's girlfriends who didn't get killed, but some 20 years later played a doctor on St. Elsewhere. My point is, whereas most Capt. Kirk girlfriend types continued to play girlfriends and secretaries, a few got roles as professionals. It took 20 years, but it happened.

Bonnie Bedelia, all in one episode of Bonanza, met Little Joe, fell in love with him, married him, then was killed by rustlers (I think). She would later get the thankless roles as wife of Bruce Willis/Harrison Ford. Whereas most of Harrison Ford's movie wives were hostages, Bedelia actually had a strong role in "Presumed Innocent." She was Willis' hostage wife in Die Hard and Die Hard 2.

She got rave reviews as Shirley Muldowney in "Heart Like a Wheel," which makes the hostage wife roles more tragic. She did play a precinct commander on "The District."

Anne Archer was the thankless wife in "Fatal Attraction," and one of Harrison Ford's hostage wives in "Patriot Games."

Meg Foster was a perpetual guest star through the 70s-90s. She had a strong role in Sam Pekinpah's "The Osterman Weekend," and was half of "Cagney & Lacey" for a few episodes before getting booted from the show for whatever reason. Once again, an actress who deserved better.

Actresses who deserved better

Spending my formative years watching entirely too much TV from the 1960s, I've been fascinated with that small pool of actresses who got that thankless job of being the hero's great love interest for one episode before getting killed by either rustlers, klingons, or an incurable disease...then...never being mentioned again!

Susan Oliver, Mariette Hartley, Diane Baker, France Nguyen. All beautiful, talented actresses, most with Broadway credentials, and all in this rotation to be Jim West's or Jim Kirk's or Little Joe's girlfriend. This pool of talent was so small, some of these actresses would show up two or three times in the same series playing different characters each time.

The tragedy is, they were always the girlfriend, when most could have been the lead in her own show. With the exception of Honey West, I don't think there were any shows with a female lead.  A woman as the lead doctor/lawyer/police detective/spaceship captain wouldn't happen until the 70s. (the 90s in the case of spaceship captain).

Anyway, this is a good site to go to for pictures of and comments on these actresses of the 60s and 70s. Search for "Yum"

Movie review: Some long overdue notes on Star Trek

Some first impressions as the closing credits are running on my DVD player.

I like the red shirt guy when they sky dived and his parachute sucked him into the big fiery drill thing. He was even wearing red. It was a funny joke, the characters and audience all knew he wouldn’t last long.

Isn’t Winona Ryder (Spock’s mom) younger than the guy who played Spock?

Why did she jump into the dying planet?.....her son and husband were with her, it’s not like she was abandoning them on the planet.

I liked the Kobayashi Maru scene, especially compared to how they did it in Wrath of Khan. Uhura says the same opening line, but this time totally bored.

Putting the scorpion thing in Pike was too much stolen from Khan. 

umm..why did the interior of the Romulan ship look like an exploding volcano? Even when it *wasn’t* in battle.

Is Eric Bana awful in *everything?* I only saw him in The Hulk where he was equally uninteresting.

Time paradoxes always make my head spin, the whole explanation of the plot made no sense to me. I have to watch it again now.

When the giant drill thing was attacking earth, weren’t there other ships there to cut the line holding the drill?

And the giant drill thing hanging from a spaceship was kind of silly.

Why would Spock maroon Kirk on a planet with man-eating dinosaurs?

The ending: Ummm..if you shoot a black hole at an enemy ship, it’s best to take off right away and not hang around to see how it works out and risk getting sucked in.

I liked the whole starting over the whole timeline thing. I like to think this means Star Trek: Next Generation will never have happened.

Old Trekkies know Capt. Pike wasn’t confined to a wheelchair til much later. And Kirk didn’t even hear about it until months after it happened.

I never thought I’d say this but: Too much Leonard Nimoy!

There was a scene in the original series where Kirk had to  piss off Spock to get him to beat him up, so that was borrowed, also.

Lots of dialogue allusions to ST II, III and VI, so that was cool

Also, an allusion to ST: TMP, where the operator of the transporter sat behind protective glass to protect him from the radiation. They forgot about this for all the movies until this one.

Good use of rest of crew (sulu, scotty, chekov, especially Scotty and Uhura), most films, heck most episodes had no idea what to do with these extra characters).

What was Tyler Perry doing there?

In conclusion, despite all the petty gripes, I did enjoy it, especially the first half. It just got sillier as it went on and the climax was more confusing than exciting. I really don’t mind the changes from canon, after 40 years of clutter it could use a good reboot. The big problem was it started off as a “not your grandfather’s Star Trek,” but still relied on kitschy plot tropes. (earth in danger, Enterprise is nearest ship, phaser gets knocked away in two different fight scenes, transporter, communications become dysfunctional when convenient for plot.)