"Mudd's Women"
Season One, Episode Six
Stardate: 1329.8
"Take it. It's not a cheat. It's a miracle for some man who can appreciate it and who needs it."
--Harry Mudd
*While I am pretty much a walking Star Trek Encyclopedia on my own, I do not have absolute knowledge of Star Trek. So note that I use the real Star Trek Encyclopedia, written by Michael and Denise Okuda, and Memory Alpha for supplemental information regarding behind-the-scenes info and trivia.
Synopsis
The Enterprise is in pursuit of an unidentified, unregistered class-J cargo ship. The ship refuses to answer any hails and eventually becomes caught in an asteroid field. The ship is severely damaged, forcing the Enterprise to extend its shields around the ship to protect it. The Enterprise's engines burn out and the other ship is destroyed, but not before they rescue a man, who introduces himself as Captain Leo Walsh, and three of his cargo, extremely beautiful women named Eve, Ruth, and Magda. The women are so beautiful that the men on the starship are transfixed and hypnotized by them, save Mr. Spock, due to his Vulcan ability to suppress his emotions, and Captain Kirk, whose one true love is the Enterprise. Walsh was en route to planet Ophiucus III to deliver the three women to the miners there as brides. Kirk arrests Walsh and tries him in a hearing. The computer, which can act as an infallible polygraph machine, reveals that Walsh is not the man's real name. Leo Walsh was the captain of the starship who suddenly passed away en route to the planet. The man in the trial is none other than Harcourt Fenton Mudd, a smuggler and all-around nefarious man. Kirk charges him with galaxy travel without a flight plan or identification beam, failure to answer a starship's signal, thus affecting a menace to navigation, and operation of a vessel without a master's license (his license had been suspended due to his illegal activity). Kirk confines him to quarters, but the ship is in dire straits, their lithium crystal circuits having burnt out in the rescue of Mudd and his women. There is a nearby lithium mining operation on planet Rigel XII, so the Enterprise sets a course there.
Before they arrive, Mudd has Eve, who is increasingly becoming fed up with Mudd's entire mail-order bride operation, swipe Captain Kirk's communicator. He contacts Ben Childress, the head miner, and offers his women, and himself with all charges dropped, in exchange for the lithium crystals, but in the process of getting the communicator, all three women start to revert to their natural state. The three hyper-beautiful women are actually physically unattractive, but are being made artificially beautiful by an illegal drug called the Venus drug. Childress accepts Mudd's offer and insists that he will accept no other payment for the lithium crystals. If Kirk wants to save the ship, he must give Childress what he wants. Kirk eventually, and reluctantly, relents. However, on the planet's surface which is ravaged by electrical dust storms, Eve finds herself caught in one of the storms. Kirk and Childress attempt to find her. Kirk beams back to the Enterprise to try to use the ship's sensors, but Childress, being more familiar with the planet, finds Eve and takes her to his quarters for safety. Exhausted after the search, he lays down and falls asleep. He wakes up to find Eve cooking breakfast, and not long after Kirk and Mudd find Childress and Eve. Eve reveals her natural state to Childress, who is upset at Mudd's fraud. Upset at Childress' and the other miners' fixation on physical beauty, she takes what she thinks is the drug and becomes beautiful again, only for Kirk to reveal that she didn't take the drug at all. She took a piece of colored gelatin. It was her confidence in herself that made her beautiful. Satisfied, Childress allows the women to remain but Kirk takes Mudd back to his ship to be turned over to the authorities.
Themes:
While Star Trek was heavily known for pushing the boundaries of television, especially as regards racism (such as having a prominent black woman on the bridge, and even having television's first interracial kiss), it wasn't very good regarding its sexism. There was a lot of what could be considered sexism in The Original Series (and there were some questionable things in The Next Generation, too, which also happens to be my favorite of all the Trek shows). In this case, we have Harry Mudd, who is essentially a space pimp, and three "space hookers", selling their bodies (in this case, for six lithium crystals). So unfortunately while this episode has evidently been very well received, it had a pretty terrible message to it. Even knowing that Childress and the other miners were only interested in the women for their looks, they still chose to remain on barren Rigel XII rather than pursue a life more fitting elsewhere (either looking for better husbands or pursuing a life in some other field).
Also unfortunately (as related by Memory Alpha, quoting These Are the Voyages: Season One, written by Marc Cushman, et al) is that Gene Roddenberry apparently had urges to see his sexual fantasies portrayed on screen. He had to be talked out of them by the other people involved with the show. Shatner even relates that he felt the fact that "Mudd's Women" got made at all was a minor miracle.
Grade: D-
Reason for grade: The episode is at least watchable. I never felt bored during the show, and we got a good glimpse of how some of the formal ship travel is done, including how hearings are conducted aboard ship. However, the poor message of the episode really brings the grade down.
"Mudd's Women"
Directed by: Harvey Hart
Written by: Stephen Kandel
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
Also starring:
George Takei as Sulu
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott
Roger C. Carmel as Harcourt Fenton Mudd (aka Captain Leo Francis Walsh)
Karen Steele as Eve McHuron
Maggie Thrett as Ruth Bonaventure (last name not mentioned in episode)
Susan Denberg as Magda Kovacs (last name not mentioned in episode)
Jim Goodwin as Lieutenant John Farrell
Gene Dynarski as Ben Childress
John Kowal as Herm Gossett
Seamon Glass as Benton
Eddie Paskey as Connors
Trivia:
-In this episode, and the second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the crystals that power the ship are called lithium crystals. In all future episodes, the crystals are called dilithium crystals. There are six crystals needed to power the ship. The change was suggested by some of the writers, since lithium is a known substance with known properties. Creating a new substance, dilithium, could grant the crystals extraordinary properties that make warp travel possible in Star Trek.
-In this episode, we learn that Vulcan internal organs have a different arrangement than humans. The Vulcan heart is roughly located where the human spleen is.
-Scotty states that the weight of the Enterprise is almost a million gross tons.
-Gene Dynarski, who plays Ben Childress, would later play Commander Quinteros in the TNG episode "11001001"
-This episode was the second of Farrell's three appearances, the first being in "The Enemy Within," and the next being in "Miri".
We also get glimpses of the following planets:
1) Ophiucus III -- A Class-M planet that was the destination of Harry Mudd's cargo of three beautiful women for settlers on the planet.
2) Rigel XII -- A barren Class-M planet with constant magnetic dust storms. There was a lithium mining operation there, with Ben Childress, Herm Gossett, and Benton as the only miners.
"What Are Little Girls Made Of?"
Season One, Episode Seven
Stardate: 2712.4
"In android form, a human being can have practical immortality. Can you see what I'm offering mankind?"
--Dr. Roger Korby
Synopsis
The Enterprise is investigating planet Exo-III, where Dr. Roger Korby and his expedition were presumed lost, his last message having arrived five years earlier. During their investigation, they receive a message from none other than Dr. Korby, who has apparently been kept alive by discovering an underground catacomb. He insists Kirk beam down alone, but as Nurse Christine Chapel is his fiance, he requests her presence, as well, once he learns that Nurse Chapel is aboard the ship. Doctor Korby is late for his meeting with Kirk and Chapel on the planet, so Kirk requests two security officers beam down, just in case. Kirk and Chapel meet Dr. Brown, one of Dr. Korby's assistants, but the two security officers are soon killed by Ruk, an android created by The Old Ones, the inhabitants of the planet long ago. The Old Ones created androids that turned out to be too perfect. When The Old Ones threatened the existence of the androids, the androids wiped them out. Now Ruk and Andrea are the only two androids left, and have been assisting Dr. Korby. Doctor Korby has been unfortunately vague about the reason he called Kirk down, and in an altercation in which Kirk has to try and stun Dr. Brown, Brown is has a gaping wound with wires and electrical circuitry -- Dr. Brown was an android. Doctor Korby soon reveals the reason he called Kirk down. He has been studying the androids and has discovered a way to make androids of his own. His gift to humanity will be android bodies that we can transfer human consciousnesses into -- android bodies that can never die. Despite Ruk and Andrea being emotionless, Dr. Korby believes that the human consciousness can be completely transferred, the human soul remaining intact.
Doctor Korby soon creates an android version of Kirk, but fearing that the android will attempt to take over the ship, Kirk implants the android with a suggestion in which he will snap at Spock and use a racial slur, which is out of character for the captain and should send Spock a message that all is not well. On the planet, Kirk manages to convince Ruk to turn on Dr. Korby, and Korby is forced to disintegrate Ruk. Kirk and Chapel manage to evade Dr. Korby, but Korby gets his arm caught in a closing door -- his wound reveals that Dr. Korby, himself, is an android. Doctor Korby's human body died five years ago, and Korby transferred his consciousness into his android duplicate. He insists he is still the real Dr. Korby, but he is unable to display any uniquely human qualities. Andrea disintegrates the android Kirk when he turns down her romantic advance, thinking him to be the human Captain Kirk. Finally, when Andrea surprises Dr. Korby by coming on to him with a romantic appeal, Dr. Korby, realizing the fatal flaw in his utopian vision, turns the phaser on himself and Andrea. Spock arrives on the planet with a security detail, but the threat is over. Kirk informs Spock that Dr. Korby was never there.
Themes:
The theme of this episode is one of the most common in science fiction stories, that of transhumanism -- can human consciousnesses be transferred into an imperishable android body, and the human person remain intact. If Dr. Korby transferred his consciousness into an android body, is that really Dr. Korby who is walking around as an android, or just an android who thinks himself to be Dr. Korby. Kirk seems to believe that this is not possible, and the episode seems to lean in that direction. You can transfer a human mind into an android, but everything that makes a human human will be lost in the process, so one's identity cannot be preserved in the transference.
Another theme in this episode is how an open environment is necessary for a civilization to thrive. As Dr. Brown mentions (referencing a lecture Nurse Chapel attended from Dr. Korby), freedom of movement and choice formed the human spirit. When the inhabitants of Exo III were forced to move underground, they went from being a free culture to a mechanistic one.
Grade: B
Not a bad episode, but not exactly groundbreaking, either. The twist of Dr. Korby being an android is one that seems a pretty obvious way to go.
"What Are Little Girls Made Of?"
Directed by: James Goldstone
Written by: Robert Bloch
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
Also starring:
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
Majel Barrett as Christine Chapel
Michael Strong as Doctor Roger Korby
Sherry Jackson as Andrea
Ted Cassidy as Ruk
Harry Basch as Doctor Brown
Vince Deadrick as Matthews
Bud Albright as Rayburn
Trivia:
-This episode started the trend of redshirt deaths, beginning with Matthews and then with Rayburn.
-This episode is one of only three that DeForest Kelley was not in, the other two being "Errand of Mercy" and "The Menagerie, Part II".
-We learn in this episode that Nurse Chapel gave up a job in bioresearch to join Starfleet.
-We also learn that Captain Kirk has an older brother named George Samuel Kirk. Jim is the only one who calls him Sam.
We also get a glimpse of the follow planet:
1) Exo III -- A barely habitable planet where a technologically sophisticated civilization once lived. Its sun had been fading steadily for a half million years, forcing the inhabitants of the planet underground. Its gravity is 1.1 of earth, its atmosphere was within safety limits, and its temperature got as low as 100 degrees below zero.
2) Midos V -- A planet lined with raw materials, where a small colony was located. Doctor Korby wanted the Enterprise to take him and the androids to Midos V to continue his research.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Sunday, May 27, 2018
Star Trek review: "The Naked Time" and "The Enemy Within"
"The Naked Time"
Season One, Episode Four
Stardate 1704.2
"Space still contains infinite unknowns."
--Commander Spock
*While I am pretty much a walking Star Trek Encyclopedia on my own, I do not have absolute knowledge of Star Trek. So note that I use the real Star Trek Encyclopedia, written by Michael and Denise Okuda, and Memory Alpha for supplemental information regarding behind-the-scenes info and trivia.
Synopsis
Planet Psi 2000's orbit is decaying, leading to the planet disintegrating. The Enterprise has been dispatched to pick up the science crew that was stationed there before the planet is gone. However, all is not well. Spock and Joe Tormolen beam down to investigate, finding the science crew and all the equipment frozen. That's not the most bizarre thing: the engineer is frozen as if he didn't care what was happening around him. A lieutenant has been strangled, and a crewman was taking a shower fully-clothed. Tormolen winds up accidentally infected by a mysterious substance, and then Spock and he are beamed back up to the ship. Although they were decontaminated and looked over by Dr. McCoy, nothing out of the ordinary was discovered. Kirk wants to investigate the decomposition of the planet closer, so he takes the ship in to a tighter orbit, with the order that Scotty must get the ship underway at a moment's notice. However, Tormolen soon starts acting strangely. In the mess hall, he acts rudely toward Lts. Sulu and Riley, and then threatens them with a knife. Tormolen turns the knife on himself, and Sulu and Riley try to prevent him from stabbing himself. In the scuffle, Tormolen ends up with a knife wound to his abdomen, and Sulu and Riley have been infected by the virus that Tormolen brought back to the ship. Tormolen is taken to Sickbay where McCoy operates on him. Despite the fact that his injuries were not severe, Tormolen dies. McCoy surmises that Tormolen died because he simply didn't want to live. Sulu and Riley soon start acting strangely, with Sulu believing himself to be a Musketeer and chasing crew members with a fencing foil, and Riley taking over engineering, locking Scotty out. Sulu is eventually overpowered and taken to Sickbay where McCoy finally discovers what is causing the strange behavior. The water on Psi 2000 had mutated and was now acting like alcohol, lowering the inhibitions of all infected. With that knowledge, McCoy synthesizes an antidote. Scotty manages to break back into engineering and Riley is overpowered, but he had turned the engines completely off. With just eight minutes left until the planet disintegrates with the ship, they don't have the 30 minutes necessary to restart the engines. Only one thing is left: they must use an experimental mix ratio that accounts for time and antimatter in order to jumpstart the engines. The jumpstart is successful, but due to the temporal nature of the mix, the ship is propelled three days into the past. With three days to live over, the Enterprise moves on to its next assignment.
Themes:
The main theme in this episode is about emotion vs. logic (which is a popular theme among The Original Series, since Spock embodies logic, McCoy embodies emotion, and Kirk is the balance between the two). Even Spock, who is coldly logical, becomes infected by the virus. His emotions start pushing themselves to the surface and he cries at the prospect of knowing that he could never love Nurse Chapel in the way she needs him to after she confesses that she is in love with him (though also under the influence of the virus at the time). Logic is a necessary balance to emotion because under the emotional influence of the virus, no one wanted to get any work done and no one was interested in saving the ship.
Grade: A-
This is a really good episode, and it never really feels like it slows down at all. It's probably one of TOS' best episodes, although it inspired one of TNG's worst episodes. I gave this an A- because really, Tormolen must have skipped the day at Starfleet Academy in which his instructor told him not to take his gloves off in a potentially contaminated area. Lo and behold, when Tormolen took off his glove to scratch his nose (and who would make EVA suits without a neck seal, anyway?), he ended up becoming infected with the virus that nearly destroyed the ship (and he also ended up dying). And even afterward, when Spock said not to expose himself to anything, Tormolen didn't tell Spock what just happened to him. Even after they beam up, he tries to step off the transporter pad before the contamination. Spock has to hold him back.
But there are a number of good elements. The scene where Spock breaks down emotionally was great, and very well acted by Nimoy. Riley's crooning over the loudspeaker to make an already tense situation even worse was a nice touch.
"The Naked Time"
Directed by: Marc Daniels
Written by: John D.F. Black
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
Also starring:
George Takei as Sulu
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott
Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand
Majel Barrett as Christine Chapel
Stewart Moss as Joe Tormolen
Bruce Hyde as Lieutenant Kevin Thomas Riley
Frank Da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent
Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Ryan
Trivia:
-This episode was originally going to be the first of a two-part episode, in which the Enterprise is thrown back in time to 20th century Earth.. The second part eventually became an independent story, "Tomorrow is Yesterday."
-The first regular episode of The Next Generation, "The Naked Now", is a sequel of sorts to this episode.
-This episode was Nurse Chapel's first appearance.
-Tormolen and Riley were being considered as series regulars during this episode. Instead, Tormolen died in this episode and Riley would make just one more appearance, in the episode "Conscience of the King."
-This was the first episode to establish that the Enterprise is propelled by a combination of matter with anti-matter that results in a controlled explosion.
-This was the first episode where the tricorder was used.
-This was the first episode in which we see how decontamination works. The transporter has a device which decontaminates the crew while they stay standing on the transporter pad. In Star Trek: Enterprise, we learn that decontamination in the 22nd century is done by sitting in an isolated room and rubbing gel on your body. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, we learn that the transporter has a decontamination protocol built in to the transportation process, itself, that removes harmful microbes from a person's body before rematerializing them.
-This is the only episode in which the three primary female characters (Uhura, Rand, and Chapel) appear together. The next time they all appear together is in the first feature film.
-This is the first episode in which we see Sulu as navigator, working at the conn. We also learn he has botany and fencing among his interests.
-We also learn that the Enterprise has a bowling alley in this episode.
-We get Scotty's first utterance of his recurring phrase "I canna change the law of physics."
We also get our first glimpse of the following planet:
1) Psi 2000 -- a desolate planet that is disintegrating. Spock does inform us that Psi 2000 was remarkably similar to Earth before its sun went dark. A Federation science station was stationed here, but all crew members on the station died after contracting a mysterious virus. The water on Psi 2000 mutated and created that virus. The Psi 2000 virus works like the AIDS virus. The AIDS virus doesn't kill a person outright, it lowers the effectiveness of the host's immune system, causing the host to be more susceptible to other illnesses. In this case, the Psi 2000 virus acts like alcohol, causing the host to lose inhibitions and engage in hazardous behavior. The virus is spread through perspiration and contact.
"The Enemy Within"
Season One, Episode Five
Stardate 1672.1
"He's like an animal. A thoughtless, brutal animal. And yet it's me."
--Captain Kirk
Synopsis
On a survey mission to planet Alfa 177, Geological Technician Fisher takes a spill down a hill. He scratches up his hand and gets a yellow magnetic ore on his clothes. Kirk orders him to teleport up and see Dr. McCoy. A few minutes later, Kirk also beams up. However, unbeknownst to him, Scotty, or Transporter Technician Wilson, a duplicate of Kirk materializes on the transporter pad. Kirk has been split into two opposite halves: a positive, good half, and a negative, bad half. The negative Kirk roughs up McCoy and orders him to give him some Saurian brandy, before breaking into Yeoman Rand's quarters and sexually assaulting her. Scotty calls Kirk's good half and Spock to the transporter room. He had beamed an animal up from the surface that was split into two halves: a docile half and a ferocious half. Scotty takes the transporter off-line until it can be repaired, leaving four crewmen, including Lieutenant Sulu, stranded on the planet's surface in increasingly frigid temperatures. Rand reports Negative Kirk's attack to McCoy, who calls Positive Kirk and Spock down to Sickbay to listen to her testimony, and that of a witness, Geological Technician Fisher. Rand had scratched Negative Kirk in the scuffle, but Positive Kirk shows her that he has no scratches. However, her testimony confirms Spock's fear: Kirk, also, has been duplicated. Spock and Kirk search for the duplicate Kirk and ultimately subdue him, taking him to Sickbay. The situation is even worse, in that the duplication process weakened both Kirks: it physically weakened the Negative Kirk, who is now dying, and due to Positive Kirk missing his more negative aspects, he finds himself increasingly unable to make command decisions. The two must be reunited. If one dies, the other will, too. Later Scott discovers what is wrong with the transporter and attempts to fix it, sending both animals through the transporter in an attempt to reverse the process. The animal's halves are reunited but unfortunately the animal doesn't survive the recombining. McCoy insists on doing an autopsy on the animal before Kirk makes an attempt, but Spock argues that the animal was terrified and didn't understand what was happening to it. Kirk's higher intelligence will help him survive the recombining. With time running out for the crewmen on the planet, Kirk and his duplicate undergo the recombining, which is successful. Scott beams the other crewmen aboard before they freeze to death.
Themes:
There are two main themes in this episode, though the first is explored much more deeply than the second. The first theme is the internal struggle between good and evil. We all have good and we all have evil within us that are warring. The negative aspects of Kirk's personality are what enable him to make command decisions, but his positive aspects such as compassion and reason, temper his negative side so that he can channel those negative aspects into positive actions.
The second theme is a problem in philosophy of mind: namely, which Kirk that materializes is the real Kirk? Did Kirk actually die during the transport and two duplicates arise? Or is the first Kirk the real Kirk, albeit missing essential aspects of his personality, and the second a mere duplicate, a different being altogether than the first? (This is, of course, ignoring the more fundamental issue of whether or not anyone actually survives a transport, or if the person dies and the person who materializes elsewhere is a duplicate.) The episode seems to take the stance that the first Kirk is the "real" one, and the second is a duplicate. The second one even realizes that the recombining will result in his death, which makes him unwilling to go through the process.
Grade: A-
Another good story, though this one does drag a bit due to its length. I gave this one an A- because like the last one, there's a pretty glaring plothole, despite how good the episode is. Why is there only one way to retrieve the landing party? Is there only one transporter room on the whole ship? That doesn't seem likely. At the very least, no explanation is given as to why another transporter room couldn't be used. Also, we know that the ship has shuttlecraft, as seen later in the show. By this point in the series that wouldn't have been an issue, but as we know the ship does have shuttles, why couldn't the landing party be rescued? It just seems inexplicable why there couldn't be an alternate method of rescuing a stranded landing party in an emergency situation in case the transporter breaks down. Although, according to the Memory Alpha page (see the second bullet point under the "story and production" heading), Matheson's original script didn't have the B-story because he thinks B-stories slow down the main story. The subplot was added in staff re-writes.
"The Enemy Within"
Directed by: Leo Penn
Written by: Richard Matheson
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
Also starring:
George Takei as Sulu
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott
Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand
Edward Madden as Geological Technician Fisher
Garland Thompson as Transporter Technician Wilson
Jim Goodwin as Lieutenant John Farrell
Eddie Paskey as Connors
Trivia:
-Uhura did not appear in this episode, but she can be heard over the loudspeaker.
-This episode marks the first use of Spock's Vulcan nerve pinch (sometimes referred to as the Vulcan neck pinch, such as in the movie Spaceballs). The original script called for Spock to knock Negative Kirk out over the head. Leonard Nimoy objected to this and improvized the Vulcan nerve pinch, which the director liked.
-This episode also marks the first use of McCoy's phrase "He's dead, Jim." This phrase would be uttered again in different iterations throughout the show.
-We also see the first instance of Saurian brandy on the show. Saurian brandy was stored in distinctive amber bottles with curved necks. It was enjoyed in four other episodes of TOS, one episode of TNG, and two episodes of DS9.
We also get our first glimpse at the following planet:
Alfa 177 -- A Class-M planet that gets very cold at night, with temperatures dropping down to 120 degrees below zero. The landing party that was stranded there survived by using blankets, huddling together for warmth, and using their phasers to heat rocks. There is a yellow, metallic ore that exists there. There was also an animal that was with them, a canine creature with a horn. It wasn't mentioned whether or not the animal was indigenous to the planet, but I can't see any other reason the animal would have joined the landing party.
Season One, Episode Four
Stardate 1704.2
"Space still contains infinite unknowns."
--Commander Spock
*While I am pretty much a walking Star Trek Encyclopedia on my own, I do not have absolute knowledge of Star Trek. So note that I use the real Star Trek Encyclopedia, written by Michael and Denise Okuda, and Memory Alpha for supplemental information regarding behind-the-scenes info and trivia.
Synopsis
Planet Psi 2000's orbit is decaying, leading to the planet disintegrating. The Enterprise has been dispatched to pick up the science crew that was stationed there before the planet is gone. However, all is not well. Spock and Joe Tormolen beam down to investigate, finding the science crew and all the equipment frozen. That's not the most bizarre thing: the engineer is frozen as if he didn't care what was happening around him. A lieutenant has been strangled, and a crewman was taking a shower fully-clothed. Tormolen winds up accidentally infected by a mysterious substance, and then Spock and he are beamed back up to the ship. Although they were decontaminated and looked over by Dr. McCoy, nothing out of the ordinary was discovered. Kirk wants to investigate the decomposition of the planet closer, so he takes the ship in to a tighter orbit, with the order that Scotty must get the ship underway at a moment's notice. However, Tormolen soon starts acting strangely. In the mess hall, he acts rudely toward Lts. Sulu and Riley, and then threatens them with a knife. Tormolen turns the knife on himself, and Sulu and Riley try to prevent him from stabbing himself. In the scuffle, Tormolen ends up with a knife wound to his abdomen, and Sulu and Riley have been infected by the virus that Tormolen brought back to the ship. Tormolen is taken to Sickbay where McCoy operates on him. Despite the fact that his injuries were not severe, Tormolen dies. McCoy surmises that Tormolen died because he simply didn't want to live. Sulu and Riley soon start acting strangely, with Sulu believing himself to be a Musketeer and chasing crew members with a fencing foil, and Riley taking over engineering, locking Scotty out. Sulu is eventually overpowered and taken to Sickbay where McCoy finally discovers what is causing the strange behavior. The water on Psi 2000 had mutated and was now acting like alcohol, lowering the inhibitions of all infected. With that knowledge, McCoy synthesizes an antidote. Scotty manages to break back into engineering and Riley is overpowered, but he had turned the engines completely off. With just eight minutes left until the planet disintegrates with the ship, they don't have the 30 minutes necessary to restart the engines. Only one thing is left: they must use an experimental mix ratio that accounts for time and antimatter in order to jumpstart the engines. The jumpstart is successful, but due to the temporal nature of the mix, the ship is propelled three days into the past. With three days to live over, the Enterprise moves on to its next assignment.
Themes:
The main theme in this episode is about emotion vs. logic (which is a popular theme among The Original Series, since Spock embodies logic, McCoy embodies emotion, and Kirk is the balance between the two). Even Spock, who is coldly logical, becomes infected by the virus. His emotions start pushing themselves to the surface and he cries at the prospect of knowing that he could never love Nurse Chapel in the way she needs him to after she confesses that she is in love with him (though also under the influence of the virus at the time). Logic is a necessary balance to emotion because under the emotional influence of the virus, no one wanted to get any work done and no one was interested in saving the ship.
Grade: A-
This is a really good episode, and it never really feels like it slows down at all. It's probably one of TOS' best episodes, although it inspired one of TNG's worst episodes. I gave this an A- because really, Tormolen must have skipped the day at Starfleet Academy in which his instructor told him not to take his gloves off in a potentially contaminated area. Lo and behold, when Tormolen took off his glove to scratch his nose (and who would make EVA suits without a neck seal, anyway?), he ended up becoming infected with the virus that nearly destroyed the ship (and he also ended up dying). And even afterward, when Spock said not to expose himself to anything, Tormolen didn't tell Spock what just happened to him. Even after they beam up, he tries to step off the transporter pad before the contamination. Spock has to hold him back.
But there are a number of good elements. The scene where Spock breaks down emotionally was great, and very well acted by Nimoy. Riley's crooning over the loudspeaker to make an already tense situation even worse was a nice touch.
"The Naked Time"
Directed by: Marc Daniels
Written by: John D.F. Black
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
Also starring:
George Takei as Sulu
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott
Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand
Majel Barrett as Christine Chapel
Stewart Moss as Joe Tormolen
Bruce Hyde as Lieutenant Kevin Thomas Riley
Frank Da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent
Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Ryan
Trivia:
-This episode was originally going to be the first of a two-part episode, in which the Enterprise is thrown back in time to 20th century Earth.. The second part eventually became an independent story, "Tomorrow is Yesterday."
-The first regular episode of The Next Generation, "The Naked Now", is a sequel of sorts to this episode.
-This episode was Nurse Chapel's first appearance.
-Tormolen and Riley were being considered as series regulars during this episode. Instead, Tormolen died in this episode and Riley would make just one more appearance, in the episode "Conscience of the King."
-This was the first episode to establish that the Enterprise is propelled by a combination of matter with anti-matter that results in a controlled explosion.
-This was the first episode where the tricorder was used.
-This was the first episode in which we see how decontamination works. The transporter has a device which decontaminates the crew while they stay standing on the transporter pad. In Star Trek: Enterprise, we learn that decontamination in the 22nd century is done by sitting in an isolated room and rubbing gel on your body. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, we learn that the transporter has a decontamination protocol built in to the transportation process, itself, that removes harmful microbes from a person's body before rematerializing them.
-This is the only episode in which the three primary female characters (Uhura, Rand, and Chapel) appear together. The next time they all appear together is in the first feature film.
-This is the first episode in which we see Sulu as navigator, working at the conn. We also learn he has botany and fencing among his interests.
-We also learn that the Enterprise has a bowling alley in this episode.
-We get Scotty's first utterance of his recurring phrase "I canna change the law of physics."
We also get our first glimpse of the following planet:
1) Psi 2000 -- a desolate planet that is disintegrating. Spock does inform us that Psi 2000 was remarkably similar to Earth before its sun went dark. A Federation science station was stationed here, but all crew members on the station died after contracting a mysterious virus. The water on Psi 2000 mutated and created that virus. The Psi 2000 virus works like the AIDS virus. The AIDS virus doesn't kill a person outright, it lowers the effectiveness of the host's immune system, causing the host to be more susceptible to other illnesses. In this case, the Psi 2000 virus acts like alcohol, causing the host to lose inhibitions and engage in hazardous behavior. The virus is spread through perspiration and contact.
"The Enemy Within"
Season One, Episode Five
Stardate 1672.1
"He's like an animal. A thoughtless, brutal animal. And yet it's me."
--Captain Kirk
Synopsis
On a survey mission to planet Alfa 177, Geological Technician Fisher takes a spill down a hill. He scratches up his hand and gets a yellow magnetic ore on his clothes. Kirk orders him to teleport up and see Dr. McCoy. A few minutes later, Kirk also beams up. However, unbeknownst to him, Scotty, or Transporter Technician Wilson, a duplicate of Kirk materializes on the transporter pad. Kirk has been split into two opposite halves: a positive, good half, and a negative, bad half. The negative Kirk roughs up McCoy and orders him to give him some Saurian brandy, before breaking into Yeoman Rand's quarters and sexually assaulting her. Scotty calls Kirk's good half and Spock to the transporter room. He had beamed an animal up from the surface that was split into two halves: a docile half and a ferocious half. Scotty takes the transporter off-line until it can be repaired, leaving four crewmen, including Lieutenant Sulu, stranded on the planet's surface in increasingly frigid temperatures. Rand reports Negative Kirk's attack to McCoy, who calls Positive Kirk and Spock down to Sickbay to listen to her testimony, and that of a witness, Geological Technician Fisher. Rand had scratched Negative Kirk in the scuffle, but Positive Kirk shows her that he has no scratches. However, her testimony confirms Spock's fear: Kirk, also, has been duplicated. Spock and Kirk search for the duplicate Kirk and ultimately subdue him, taking him to Sickbay. The situation is even worse, in that the duplication process weakened both Kirks: it physically weakened the Negative Kirk, who is now dying, and due to Positive Kirk missing his more negative aspects, he finds himself increasingly unable to make command decisions. The two must be reunited. If one dies, the other will, too. Later Scott discovers what is wrong with the transporter and attempts to fix it, sending both animals through the transporter in an attempt to reverse the process. The animal's halves are reunited but unfortunately the animal doesn't survive the recombining. McCoy insists on doing an autopsy on the animal before Kirk makes an attempt, but Spock argues that the animal was terrified and didn't understand what was happening to it. Kirk's higher intelligence will help him survive the recombining. With time running out for the crewmen on the planet, Kirk and his duplicate undergo the recombining, which is successful. Scott beams the other crewmen aboard before they freeze to death.
Themes:
There are two main themes in this episode, though the first is explored much more deeply than the second. The first theme is the internal struggle between good and evil. We all have good and we all have evil within us that are warring. The negative aspects of Kirk's personality are what enable him to make command decisions, but his positive aspects such as compassion and reason, temper his negative side so that he can channel those negative aspects into positive actions.
The second theme is a problem in philosophy of mind: namely, which Kirk that materializes is the real Kirk? Did Kirk actually die during the transport and two duplicates arise? Or is the first Kirk the real Kirk, albeit missing essential aspects of his personality, and the second a mere duplicate, a different being altogether than the first? (This is, of course, ignoring the more fundamental issue of whether or not anyone actually survives a transport, or if the person dies and the person who materializes elsewhere is a duplicate.) The episode seems to take the stance that the first Kirk is the "real" one, and the second is a duplicate. The second one even realizes that the recombining will result in his death, which makes him unwilling to go through the process.
Grade: A-
Another good story, though this one does drag a bit due to its length. I gave this one an A- because like the last one, there's a pretty glaring plothole, despite how good the episode is. Why is there only one way to retrieve the landing party? Is there only one transporter room on the whole ship? That doesn't seem likely. At the very least, no explanation is given as to why another transporter room couldn't be used. Also, we know that the ship has shuttlecraft, as seen later in the show. By this point in the series that wouldn't have been an issue, but as we know the ship does have shuttles, why couldn't the landing party be rescued? It just seems inexplicable why there couldn't be an alternate method of rescuing a stranded landing party in an emergency situation in case the transporter breaks down. Although, according to the Memory Alpha page (see the second bullet point under the "story and production" heading), Matheson's original script didn't have the B-story because he thinks B-stories slow down the main story. The subplot was added in staff re-writes.
"The Enemy Within"
Directed by: Leo Penn
Written by: Richard Matheson
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
Also starring:
George Takei as Sulu
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott
Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand
Edward Madden as Geological Technician Fisher
Garland Thompson as Transporter Technician Wilson
Jim Goodwin as Lieutenant John Farrell
Eddie Paskey as Connors
Trivia:
-Uhura did not appear in this episode, but she can be heard over the loudspeaker.
-This episode marks the first use of Spock's Vulcan nerve pinch (sometimes referred to as the Vulcan neck pinch, such as in the movie Spaceballs). The original script called for Spock to knock Negative Kirk out over the head. Leonard Nimoy objected to this and improvized the Vulcan nerve pinch, which the director liked.
-This episode also marks the first use of McCoy's phrase "He's dead, Jim." This phrase would be uttered again in different iterations throughout the show.
-We also see the first instance of Saurian brandy on the show. Saurian brandy was stored in distinctive amber bottles with curved necks. It was enjoyed in four other episodes of TOS, one episode of TNG, and two episodes of DS9.
We also get our first glimpse at the following planet:
Alfa 177 -- A Class-M planet that gets very cold at night, with temperatures dropping down to 120 degrees below zero. The landing party that was stranded there survived by using blankets, huddling together for warmth, and using their phasers to heat rocks. There is a yellow, metallic ore that exists there. There was also an animal that was with them, a canine creature with a horn. It wasn't mentioned whether or not the animal was indigenous to the planet, but I can't see any other reason the animal would have joined the landing party.
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Movie Review: Deadpool 2
Disclaimer: This review will contain spoilers. Don't read it unless you've already watched the movie or unless you don't care about being spoiled. I like to analyze movies, and I can't really do that unless I spoil the movie. You have been warned.
Still disclaimer: Again, I'm serious. This review will spoil some major plot points from the movie. Unless you don't care about spoilers, don't read this until you've seen the movie.
Deadpool has been successfully superheroing for a couple of years now, slaughtering a number of human traffickers. However, on his and his girlfriend, Vanessa's, anniversary, one of his targets he failed to kill shows up and kills Vanessa. After killing the target in revenge, Deadpool tries to blow himself up in despair over his girlfriend's death. His body is blown into pieces but he survives, found by Colossus. Recovering at the X-Mansion, he starts training to become part of the team, but he winds up in prison. In this prison, he befriends a young, plus-sized mutant named Firefist. It turns out that a sequence of events will lead Firefist to become a murderous mutant in the future who will kill the wife and child of Cable. Cable comes to the present from the future with a mission of killing Firefist before he becomes a villain, leading Deadpool to try and talk Firefist out of it before Cable gets his hands on him.
This is a very fun film, like the first one. Like the first film, it is also not suitable for kids. There is far less sexual content in this one. You do get a glimpse of Juggernaut's CGI backside and jokes about Deadpool's tiny but growing back genitalia after he is ripped in half by Juggernaut. Also, several references to Deadpool's pansexuality are made.
But harsh profanities abound, and the violence is still extreme. There is still loads of humor (and most of it lands, while some of it is a bit forced), and it is surprisingly a more emotional outing. The first film was Deadpool's origin story. Now that we know Deadpool and the rules of the universe he lives in (including all the fourth-wall breaking), the writers can do something more with the character. And they have done so. There are surprising turns in the story, such as the murder of Vanessa which serves at the catalyst for the events that spur the plot along. Even more surprising is that most of the X-Force teammates that Deadpool recruits die almost immediately after beginning their mission, leaving Deadpool, Domino, Cable, and Firefist as the only surviving members of X-Force.
And coming off of Avengers: Infinity War playing supervillain Thanos, Josh Brolin plays Cable to perfection here (and has signed a four-film deal to portray the character).
Themes:
The main theme running through this film is one of family (which, of course, is pretty much an overdone theme in movies and television). Deadpool and Cable share a motivation to stop the bad guys -- people they care about are murdered. Deadpool realizes that Firefist has been abused by the people raising him in the orphanage, so Firefist really is not a bad guy. He just had a difficult past. So Deadpool takes it upon himself to try and talk Firefist out of committing his first murder, which will lead to others, because he believes he can get through to him (which, of course, is the old "nature vs. nurture" theme).
Grade: A
Again, this was a very fun movie, if you can overlook the language and excessive violence. I couldn't give it an A+ because of the language and violence being so gratuitous. But it is definitely a well-made movie, well-acted, very funny and even successfully emotional when it needs to be.
Deadpool 2
(Cameo spoilers below)
Directed by: David Leitch
Written by: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds
Starring:
Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool
Morena Baccarin as Vanessa
Josh Brolin as Cable
Julian Dennison as Russell Collins/Firefist
Zazie Beetz as Domino
T.J. Miller as Weasel
Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead
Jack Kesy as Black Tom Cassidy
Ryan Reynolds as the voice of Juggernaut
Stefan Kapicic as the voice of Colossus
Leslie Uggams as Blind Al
Karan Soni as Dopinder
Terry Crews as Bedlam
Lewis Tan as Shatterstar
Bill Skarsgard as Zeitgeist
Rob Delaney as Peter
Brad Pitt as Vanisher (in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo)
James McAvoy as Professor X (cameo)
Nicholas Hoult as Beast (cameo)
Evan Peters as Quicksilver (cameo)
Tye Sheridan as Cyclops (cameo)
Alexandra Shipp as Storm (cameo)
Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler (cameo)
Hugh Jackman as Wolverine (archival footage)
Alan Tudyk and Matt Damon as "rednecks" (cameo)
Still disclaimer: Again, I'm serious. This review will spoil some major plot points from the movie. Unless you don't care about spoilers, don't read this until you've seen the movie.
This is a very fun film, like the first one. Like the first film, it is also not suitable for kids. There is far less sexual content in this one. You do get a glimpse of Juggernaut's CGI backside and jokes about Deadpool's tiny but growing back genitalia after he is ripped in half by Juggernaut. Also, several references to Deadpool's pansexuality are made.
But harsh profanities abound, and the violence is still extreme. There is still loads of humor (and most of it lands, while some of it is a bit forced), and it is surprisingly a more emotional outing. The first film was Deadpool's origin story. Now that we know Deadpool and the rules of the universe he lives in (including all the fourth-wall breaking), the writers can do something more with the character. And they have done so. There are surprising turns in the story, such as the murder of Vanessa which serves at the catalyst for the events that spur the plot along. Even more surprising is that most of the X-Force teammates that Deadpool recruits die almost immediately after beginning their mission, leaving Deadpool, Domino, Cable, and Firefist as the only surviving members of X-Force.
And coming off of Avengers: Infinity War playing supervillain Thanos, Josh Brolin plays Cable to perfection here (and has signed a four-film deal to portray the character).
Themes:
The main theme running through this film is one of family (which, of course, is pretty much an overdone theme in movies and television). Deadpool and Cable share a motivation to stop the bad guys -- people they care about are murdered. Deadpool realizes that Firefist has been abused by the people raising him in the orphanage, so Firefist really is not a bad guy. He just had a difficult past. So Deadpool takes it upon himself to try and talk Firefist out of committing his first murder, which will lead to others, because he believes he can get through to him (which, of course, is the old "nature vs. nurture" theme).
Grade: A
Again, this was a very fun movie, if you can overlook the language and excessive violence. I couldn't give it an A+ because of the language and violence being so gratuitous. But it is definitely a well-made movie, well-acted, very funny and even successfully emotional when it needs to be.
Deadpool 2
(Cameo spoilers below)
Directed by: David Leitch
Written by: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds
Starring:
Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool
Morena Baccarin as Vanessa
Josh Brolin as Cable
Julian Dennison as Russell Collins/Firefist
Zazie Beetz as Domino
T.J. Miller as Weasel
Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead
Jack Kesy as Black Tom Cassidy
Ryan Reynolds as the voice of Juggernaut
Stefan Kapicic as the voice of Colossus
Leslie Uggams as Blind Al
Karan Soni as Dopinder
Terry Crews as Bedlam
Lewis Tan as Shatterstar
Bill Skarsgard as Zeitgeist
Rob Delaney as Peter
Brad Pitt as Vanisher (in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo)
James McAvoy as Professor X (cameo)
Nicholas Hoult as Beast (cameo)
Evan Peters as Quicksilver (cameo)
Tye Sheridan as Cyclops (cameo)
Alexandra Shipp as Storm (cameo)
Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler (cameo)
Hugh Jackman as Wolverine (archival footage)
Alan Tudyk and Matt Damon as "rednecks" (cameo)
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Star Trek Review: "Charlie X" & "Where No Man Has Gone Before"
"Charlie X"
Season One, Episode Two
Stardate 1533.6
"He's a boy in a man's body, trying to be an adult with the adolescence in him getting in the way."
--James Kirk
*While I am pretty much a walking Star Trek Encyclopedia on my own, I do not have absolute knowledge of Star Trek. So note that I use the real Star Trek Encyclopedia, written by Michael and Denise Okuda, and Memory Alpha for supplemental information regarding behind-the-scenes info and trivia.
Synopsis
A 17-year-old boy, Charles Evans, is transferred to the Enterprise from the U.S.S. Antares. Charlie was the lone survivor of a transport crash on the planet Thasus in 2252, only three years old at the time. He was raised by the Thasians, thought to be only a legend by Starfleet. The Enterprise is transporting Charlie to the Alpha V settlement, on which his closest living relatives reside. En route, Charlie tells Dr. McCoy that he survived on the food in the supply stores but once that ran out, began to eat whatever he could find growing on the planet. He learned to talk by interacting with the ship's memory banks. Unfortunately Charlie has trouble fitting in with the crew of the Enterprise, which is only compounded when it is soon revealed that the Thasians gave Charlie extraordinary mental powers, which Charlie used to destroy the Antares and all 20 crew members aboard the ship, make several of the Enterprise crew disappear, and wreak havoc in other ways when he felt threatened. He took over the Enterprise when Kirk tried to stop him so that they wouldn't deviate from their voyage to Alpha V. Kirk eventually realizes that Charlie's powers have a limit and concocts a plan to sedate Charlie while distracting him by turning on every system on the ship. In the middle of his plan, however, the Thasians show up, apologize for Charlie's misbehavior, and set everything on the Enterprise back to how it was before Charlie showed up. Unfortunately, they were unable to restore the Antares. Despite Charlie wishing to remain with the crew and be taken home, the Thasians ultimately took him back to Thasus with them, realizing that his powers would always pose a danger to humanity -- either he would destroy them all, or they would be forced to kill Charlie to prevent human extinction.
Themes
This episode is basically a teenage melodrama set in space. Charlie is a boy who grew up isolated from his own people, in the company of a non-corporeal race who couldn't teach him how to be human (he couldn't touch them, they can't love, etc.). Charlie was rescued by the Antares and transferred to the Enterprise, but his not having had the benefit of growing up in society and watching others interact with each other put him at an extreme disadvantage when it came to interacting with the crews of both ships. Having the extraordinary mental powers granted him by the Thasians only made matters worse, and alienated him all the more.
Grade: B
Reason for grade: This one was another one that kind of drags, for the most part. They really take a lot of time showing us how alienated Charlie is from other humans, and they wait until the last 12 minutes of the episode before Charlie finally takes over the ship. This is a good concept for the episode, but the main issue I have with most episodes of the original series is that they're just too long. They're roughly eight minutes longer than the later Star Trek series', due to not having as many commercials, but even then they feel really long. I tend to enjoy The Animated Series more, and I've been thinking that episodes of the original series would likely be better if it was a half-hour show, rather than an hour long.
"Charlie X"
Directed by: Lawrence Dobkin
Written by: D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
Also starring:
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand
Robert Walker, Jr. as Charles Evans
Charles J. Stewart as Captain Ramart
Dallas Mitchell as Tom Nellis
Patricia McNulty as Yeoman Tina Lawton
Beau Vandenecker as Sam (Sam's last name is unofficially Ellis, from a non-canonical novelization)
Trivia (if of no interest to you, skip down to the next episode):
1) We learn that the Enterprise has a crew complement of 428 people.
2) We learn here that Spock plays the Vulcan lute, as well as Uhura's ability to sing.
3) We first see Kirk and Spock engage in a game of three-dimensional chess.
4) Gene Roddenberry does the voice of the galley chef, his only on-screen role in the entire franchise.
We also get our first glimpse of the following planets:
1) Alpha V -- nothing is revealed about this planet other than the fact there is a Federation settlement there, where Charlie Evans' closest living relatives resided.
2) Thasus -- A planet where Charlie Evans grew up and home to the Thasians, a non-corporeal species with extraordinary mental powers. They had evolved beyond their need for physical bodies, existing as pure mental energy. The Thasians were thought to be a legend by the Federation, until Spock realized that Charlie couldn't have survived so long on Thasus without help from the natives. The Thasians also showed up to help put everything back to how it was before Charlie's arrival.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before"
Season One, Episode Three
Stardate: 1312.4
"Man cannot survive if a race of true espers is born."
--Gary Mitchell
Synopsis
The Enterprise has traveled to the edge of the galaxy, on a mission to explore what lies beyond. Before they reach the edge, they discover a recorder from an older vessel, the S.S. Valiant, which tried to cross the barrier at the edge of the galaxy but turned back before they could breach it completely. The ship was destroyed when the captain activated the self-destruct for mysterious reasons. As the Enterprise attempts to cross the barrier, a sequence of events occurs that mirrors the events recorded from the Valiant. Two crewmembers, Dr. Elizabeth Dehner and Kirk's friend, Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, are zapped by some kind of electrical force, and the ship is damaged beyond their ability to repair. They must turn back before completely breaching the forcefield. They can only fly at impulse, meaning that the closest starbase is years away. They soon discover that they don't have that kind of time to wait, as Commander Mitchell, who has a high ESP rating, starts to become superhuman, able to control material things with his mind. As his power grows, Kirk and Spock recognize the danger he is to the ship and to the universe, at large. They are approaching a planet that could have the supplies necessary to repair the ship's warp engines, but if they are unsuccessful they wouldn't have enough power to leave the planet's orbit. Spock convinces Kirk to give it a try by giving him an ultimatum: either Kirk needs to kill Mitchell now or take the ship into orbit of Delta Vega and maroon Gary Mitchell there. Unwilling to kill his friend, Kirk takes the ship to the planet. Kirk and Spock manage to render Mitchell unconscious and force him down to the planet. The crew successfully repair the ship's engines, but Mitchell has grown too powerful for the crew to contain. Everyone except for Kirk returns to the ship and Kirk leaves to track down Mitchell. He discovers that Dehner, also, has developed superhuman abilities. Mitchell is seducing her with power but Kirk convinces her to help him stop Mitchell. With the help of Dr. Dehner, Kirk is able to kill Gary Mitchell. Unfortunately, Dehner, too, dies in the attempt. Once Kirk is safely back aboard the Enterprise, Kirk records that Dehner and Mitchell gave their lives in the performance of their duties.
Themes:
The major theme of this episode is one that has been done repeatedly in literature: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Mitchell was a good Starfleet officer, but when he got zapped by the barrier at the edge of the galaxy, as his power grew his desire to rule a planet grew, as well. In the end, Kirk had to stop him, otherwise because he was still human and had his human frailties to contend with, there would be no end to the malevolence that Gary Mitchell would cause to the universe.
There is also a theme of rationality ruling over the emotions, a personal favorite theme of mine. Mitchell was Kirk's friend. Kirk didn't want to kill or maroon his friend, even scolding Spock for not being able to feel anything about Mitchell and his plight. In the end, however, Kirk knew that Spock was right, and he had to maroon, and ultimately kill, Mitchell on the planet below.
Grade: A-
Reason for grade: This was a worthy second pilot for Star Trek. It was an interesting episode, even if the theme had been done often before. As most Star Trek episodes do, it tended to slow down a bit in the middle. I really think Star Trek would have been better as a half-hour show (but then again, the hour format allowed the later shows to be an hour long, so I'm not really complaining).
"Where No One Has Gone Before"
Directed by: James Goldstone
Written by: Samuel A. Peeples
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
Also starring:
George Takei as Sulu
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott
Paul Fix as Doctor Mark Piper
Gary Lockwood as Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell
Sally Kellerman as Doctor Elizabeth Dehner
Paul Carr as Lieutenant Lee Kelso
Lloyd Hanes as Lieutenant Alden
Andrea Dromm as Yeoman Smith
Eddie Paskey as Mr. Leslie
Trivia:
-"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the second pilot episode for Star Trek, and the episode that convinced NBC to buy Star Trek as a weekly series. The only crew member to return from the original pilot was Spock. Even though this was the pilot for the new Star Trek show, it was aired as the third episode of the series.
-This episode saw the first usage of the tractor beam and of red alert.
-We learn that Spock has humans in his ancestry.
-This is Mr. Scott's first appearance. Neither McCoy nor Uhura appear in this episode.
-As mentioned, Dr. McCoy is not in this episode. Another doctor, Doctor Mark Piper, is the chief medical officer of the Enterprise, marking at least two doctors the Enterprise had before McCoy, Doctor Piper and Doctor Boyce from the first pilot. This also marks something of a continuity error, since McCoy was in the two episodes prior to this one (which, of course, was unintentional due to the order of episodes that were aired versus the order they were actually filmed in).
-Crewman Darnell was the first crewmember killed in Star Trek, if we go by airdate order. However, if we go by production order, then Lieutenant Kelso has the dubious distinction of being the first crewman killed in Star Trek. Mitchell and Dehner also died in this episode.
-We learn that there's an energy barrier at the edge of our galaxy. The Enterprise suffers heavy damage and is forced to turn around in this episode. However, in Star Trek V, the Enterprise-A manages to pass completely through the barrier, even in a compromised state. Presumably what Kirk and crew learned in this episode was put to good use in getting the ship through the barrier in the fifth feature film.
-Sulu was a physicist in this episode instead of being assigned to the conn, as he is in future episodes.
-It is established in this episode that Vulcans don't feel emotions like humans do. In later episodes, this is clarified that Vulcans do have emotions, they just go through a ritual known as the Kolinahr to suppress them.
-This is the first appearance of the phaser rifle.
-There is another continuity error. When Mitchell creates a gravestone for Captain Kirk, it lists his name as James R. Kirk. However, later his middle name was established as Tiberius.
We also get our first glimpse of the following planets:
1) Aldebaran -- A star system on which a Starfleet colony has been established. Doctor Dehner joined the Enterprise crew from this colony.
2) Deneb IV -- A class-M planet. The star Deneb is part of the constellation Cygnus (the swan) visible from Earth.
3) Canopus planet -- A planet where Phineas Tarbolde wrote "The Nightingale Woman," considered one of the most passionate love sonnets written in the past two centuries. The star Canopus, also known as Alpha Carinae, is a red supergiant visible from Earth.
4) Delta Vega -- A class-M planet, slightly smaller than Earth. It is completely uninhabited and desolate, rich in crystalline minerals. It is the planet Kirk attempted to maroon Gary Mitchell on, eventually forcing him to kill Commander Mitchell. It is the final resting place of Mitchell and Dehner, and possibly Lieutenant Kelso (it was not revealed if he was buried there or taken back to the ship).
5) Dimorus -- A planet Kirk and Mitchell once visited before their time on the Enterprise. This planet has an indigenous rodent which can shoot poison darts. Mitchell saved Kirk's life by blocking one, almost dying as a result.
Season One, Episode Two
Stardate 1533.6
"He's a boy in a man's body, trying to be an adult with the adolescence in him getting in the way."
--James Kirk
*While I am pretty much a walking Star Trek Encyclopedia on my own, I do not have absolute knowledge of Star Trek. So note that I use the real Star Trek Encyclopedia, written by Michael and Denise Okuda, and Memory Alpha for supplemental information regarding behind-the-scenes info and trivia.
Synopsis
A 17-year-old boy, Charles Evans, is transferred to the Enterprise from the U.S.S. Antares. Charlie was the lone survivor of a transport crash on the planet Thasus in 2252, only three years old at the time. He was raised by the Thasians, thought to be only a legend by Starfleet. The Enterprise is transporting Charlie to the Alpha V settlement, on which his closest living relatives reside. En route, Charlie tells Dr. McCoy that he survived on the food in the supply stores but once that ran out, began to eat whatever he could find growing on the planet. He learned to talk by interacting with the ship's memory banks. Unfortunately Charlie has trouble fitting in with the crew of the Enterprise, which is only compounded when it is soon revealed that the Thasians gave Charlie extraordinary mental powers, which Charlie used to destroy the Antares and all 20 crew members aboard the ship, make several of the Enterprise crew disappear, and wreak havoc in other ways when he felt threatened. He took over the Enterprise when Kirk tried to stop him so that they wouldn't deviate from their voyage to Alpha V. Kirk eventually realizes that Charlie's powers have a limit and concocts a plan to sedate Charlie while distracting him by turning on every system on the ship. In the middle of his plan, however, the Thasians show up, apologize for Charlie's misbehavior, and set everything on the Enterprise back to how it was before Charlie showed up. Unfortunately, they were unable to restore the Antares. Despite Charlie wishing to remain with the crew and be taken home, the Thasians ultimately took him back to Thasus with them, realizing that his powers would always pose a danger to humanity -- either he would destroy them all, or they would be forced to kill Charlie to prevent human extinction.
Themes
This episode is basically a teenage melodrama set in space. Charlie is a boy who grew up isolated from his own people, in the company of a non-corporeal race who couldn't teach him how to be human (he couldn't touch them, they can't love, etc.). Charlie was rescued by the Antares and transferred to the Enterprise, but his not having had the benefit of growing up in society and watching others interact with each other put him at an extreme disadvantage when it came to interacting with the crews of both ships. Having the extraordinary mental powers granted him by the Thasians only made matters worse, and alienated him all the more.
Grade: B
Reason for grade: This one was another one that kind of drags, for the most part. They really take a lot of time showing us how alienated Charlie is from other humans, and they wait until the last 12 minutes of the episode before Charlie finally takes over the ship. This is a good concept for the episode, but the main issue I have with most episodes of the original series is that they're just too long. They're roughly eight minutes longer than the later Star Trek series', due to not having as many commercials, but even then they feel really long. I tend to enjoy The Animated Series more, and I've been thinking that episodes of the original series would likely be better if it was a half-hour show, rather than an hour long.
"Charlie X"
Directed by: Lawrence Dobkin
Written by: D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
Also starring:
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand
Robert Walker, Jr. as Charles Evans
Charles J. Stewart as Captain Ramart
Dallas Mitchell as Tom Nellis
Patricia McNulty as Yeoman Tina Lawton
Beau Vandenecker as Sam (Sam's last name is unofficially Ellis, from a non-canonical novelization)
Trivia (if of no interest to you, skip down to the next episode):
1) We learn that the Enterprise has a crew complement of 428 people.
2) We learn here that Spock plays the Vulcan lute, as well as Uhura's ability to sing.
3) We first see Kirk and Spock engage in a game of three-dimensional chess.
4) Gene Roddenberry does the voice of the galley chef, his only on-screen role in the entire franchise.
We also get our first glimpse of the following planets:
1) Alpha V -- nothing is revealed about this planet other than the fact there is a Federation settlement there, where Charlie Evans' closest living relatives resided.
2) Thasus -- A planet where Charlie Evans grew up and home to the Thasians, a non-corporeal species with extraordinary mental powers. They had evolved beyond their need for physical bodies, existing as pure mental energy. The Thasians were thought to be a legend by the Federation, until Spock realized that Charlie couldn't have survived so long on Thasus without help from the natives. The Thasians also showed up to help put everything back to how it was before Charlie's arrival.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before"
Season One, Episode Three
Stardate: 1312.4
"Man cannot survive if a race of true espers is born."
--Gary Mitchell
Synopsis
The Enterprise has traveled to the edge of the galaxy, on a mission to explore what lies beyond. Before they reach the edge, they discover a recorder from an older vessel, the S.S. Valiant, which tried to cross the barrier at the edge of the galaxy but turned back before they could breach it completely. The ship was destroyed when the captain activated the self-destruct for mysterious reasons. As the Enterprise attempts to cross the barrier, a sequence of events occurs that mirrors the events recorded from the Valiant. Two crewmembers, Dr. Elizabeth Dehner and Kirk's friend, Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, are zapped by some kind of electrical force, and the ship is damaged beyond their ability to repair. They must turn back before completely breaching the forcefield. They can only fly at impulse, meaning that the closest starbase is years away. They soon discover that they don't have that kind of time to wait, as Commander Mitchell, who has a high ESP rating, starts to become superhuman, able to control material things with his mind. As his power grows, Kirk and Spock recognize the danger he is to the ship and to the universe, at large. They are approaching a planet that could have the supplies necessary to repair the ship's warp engines, but if they are unsuccessful they wouldn't have enough power to leave the planet's orbit. Spock convinces Kirk to give it a try by giving him an ultimatum: either Kirk needs to kill Mitchell now or take the ship into orbit of Delta Vega and maroon Gary Mitchell there. Unwilling to kill his friend, Kirk takes the ship to the planet. Kirk and Spock manage to render Mitchell unconscious and force him down to the planet. The crew successfully repair the ship's engines, but Mitchell has grown too powerful for the crew to contain. Everyone except for Kirk returns to the ship and Kirk leaves to track down Mitchell. He discovers that Dehner, also, has developed superhuman abilities. Mitchell is seducing her with power but Kirk convinces her to help him stop Mitchell. With the help of Dr. Dehner, Kirk is able to kill Gary Mitchell. Unfortunately, Dehner, too, dies in the attempt. Once Kirk is safely back aboard the Enterprise, Kirk records that Dehner and Mitchell gave their lives in the performance of their duties.
Themes:
The major theme of this episode is one that has been done repeatedly in literature: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Mitchell was a good Starfleet officer, but when he got zapped by the barrier at the edge of the galaxy, as his power grew his desire to rule a planet grew, as well. In the end, Kirk had to stop him, otherwise because he was still human and had his human frailties to contend with, there would be no end to the malevolence that Gary Mitchell would cause to the universe.
There is also a theme of rationality ruling over the emotions, a personal favorite theme of mine. Mitchell was Kirk's friend. Kirk didn't want to kill or maroon his friend, even scolding Spock for not being able to feel anything about Mitchell and his plight. In the end, however, Kirk knew that Spock was right, and he had to maroon, and ultimately kill, Mitchell on the planet below.
Grade: A-
Reason for grade: This was a worthy second pilot for Star Trek. It was an interesting episode, even if the theme had been done often before. As most Star Trek episodes do, it tended to slow down a bit in the middle. I really think Star Trek would have been better as a half-hour show (but then again, the hour format allowed the later shows to be an hour long, so I'm not really complaining).
"Where No One Has Gone Before"
Directed by: James Goldstone
Written by: Samuel A. Peeples
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
Also starring:
George Takei as Sulu
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott
Paul Fix as Doctor Mark Piper
Gary Lockwood as Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell
Sally Kellerman as Doctor Elizabeth Dehner
Paul Carr as Lieutenant Lee Kelso
Lloyd Hanes as Lieutenant Alden
Andrea Dromm as Yeoman Smith
Eddie Paskey as Mr. Leslie
Trivia:
-"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the second pilot episode for Star Trek, and the episode that convinced NBC to buy Star Trek as a weekly series. The only crew member to return from the original pilot was Spock. Even though this was the pilot for the new Star Trek show, it was aired as the third episode of the series.
-This episode saw the first usage of the tractor beam and of red alert.
-We learn that Spock has humans in his ancestry.
-This is Mr. Scott's first appearance. Neither McCoy nor Uhura appear in this episode.
-As mentioned, Dr. McCoy is not in this episode. Another doctor, Doctor Mark Piper, is the chief medical officer of the Enterprise, marking at least two doctors the Enterprise had before McCoy, Doctor Piper and Doctor Boyce from the first pilot. This also marks something of a continuity error, since McCoy was in the two episodes prior to this one (which, of course, was unintentional due to the order of episodes that were aired versus the order they were actually filmed in).
-Crewman Darnell was the first crewmember killed in Star Trek, if we go by airdate order. However, if we go by production order, then Lieutenant Kelso has the dubious distinction of being the first crewman killed in Star Trek. Mitchell and Dehner also died in this episode.
-We learn that there's an energy barrier at the edge of our galaxy. The Enterprise suffers heavy damage and is forced to turn around in this episode. However, in Star Trek V, the Enterprise-A manages to pass completely through the barrier, even in a compromised state. Presumably what Kirk and crew learned in this episode was put to good use in getting the ship through the barrier in the fifth feature film.
-Sulu was a physicist in this episode instead of being assigned to the conn, as he is in future episodes.
-It is established in this episode that Vulcans don't feel emotions like humans do. In later episodes, this is clarified that Vulcans do have emotions, they just go through a ritual known as the Kolinahr to suppress them.
-This is the first appearance of the phaser rifle.
-There is another continuity error. When Mitchell creates a gravestone for Captain Kirk, it lists his name as James R. Kirk. However, later his middle name was established as Tiberius.
We also get our first glimpse of the following planets:
1) Aldebaran -- A star system on which a Starfleet colony has been established. Doctor Dehner joined the Enterprise crew from this colony.
2) Deneb IV -- A class-M planet. The star Deneb is part of the constellation Cygnus (the swan) visible from Earth.
3) Canopus planet -- A planet where Phineas Tarbolde wrote "The Nightingale Woman," considered one of the most passionate love sonnets written in the past two centuries. The star Canopus, also known as Alpha Carinae, is a red supergiant visible from Earth.
4) Delta Vega -- A class-M planet, slightly smaller than Earth. It is completely uninhabited and desolate, rich in crystalline minerals. It is the planet Kirk attempted to maroon Gary Mitchell on, eventually forcing him to kill Commander Mitchell. It is the final resting place of Mitchell and Dehner, and possibly Lieutenant Kelso (it was not revealed if he was buried there or taken back to the ship).
5) Dimorus -- A planet Kirk and Mitchell once visited before their time on the Enterprise. This planet has an indigenous rodent which can shoot poison darts. Mitchell saved Kirk's life by blocking one, almost dying as a result.
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Star Trek Review: "The Cage" & "The Man Trap"
"The Cage"
First pilot
No stardate given
"There's a way out of any cage, and I'll find it."
--Christopher Pike
*While I am pretty much a walking Star Trek Encyclopedia on my own, I do not have absolute knowledge of Star Trek. So note that I use the real Star Trek Encyclopedia, written by Michael and Denise Okuda, and Memory Alpha for supplemental information regarding behind-the-scenes info and trivia.
Synopsis
While investigating the crash landing of a science vessel, the U.S.S. Enterprise enters orbit of Talos IV, home of the Talosian race. Captain Pike is soon captured by the illusion-creating Talosians and held in a giant cage. While his crew attempts to break in and rescue him, Pike is put through a number of illusions reminiscent of his recent missions, and even one in which he has a wife back on Earth. The one constant through all of these illusions is Vina, the sole survivor of the science vessel that crash landed on the planet. Pike soon learns that the Talosians want Pike to fall in love with Vina and remain on the planet, in any illusion he wants, in order to populate the planet with humans since their own race is dying off. When Pike refuses to play along, two other women, Number One and Yeoman Colt, are taken from the ship and are offered as a choice to be Eve to his Adam. Pike manages to outwit the Talosians and escape the cage to the surface, only to be informed that this is where the Talosians wanted him all along. Number One sets a phaser to overload as the Talosians are downloading information on humanity from the ship's computers. All of this causes the Talosians to realize that humans hate captivity enough to die to avoid it, making them too dangerous to be kept on Talos IV. They are released, but Vina reveals that she can't go with them because while the Talosians saved her life from the crash, she is severely disfigured because having never seen a human, they didn't know how to restore her appearance. Pike agrees to leave Vina on the planet, where the Talosians will restore her illusion of beauty and will allow her to live out her life in comfort.
Themes
The studio rejected this pilot because there wasn't enough action. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. Star Trek has established its show as one that, while it can be good with action, is more about the commentary it makes and its examination of the human condition. So the lack of action is not a mark against the show, even if the studio didn't think it would make them money. "The Cage," even though it was written and filmed over 50 years ago, still holds up today, I think. Rewatching it now it still seems as fresh as it did back then, and it didn't leave me bored at all.
The main theme running through this episode is how one lives life. Captain Pike is finding himself worn out by the rigors of commanding a starship. He considers retiring from Starfleet and going home, or finding some less hectic job. His doctor tells him that one can either live life or avoid it and wither away. Through the many illusions that the Talosians give Pike, he realizes, as he's standing on Earth and looking out toward Mojave, a wife setting up a picnic with his horse, Tango, nearby, that a life of quietness isn't for him. Retiring at home instead of exploring the galaxy would be, for him, to turn away from life and start dying.
Of course, another theme of the episode is captivity and the lengths one will go to to avoid it. Captain Pike could have taken the easy way out and decided to live a life of comfort with Vina, sparing the crew of the Enterprise. However, Pike knew that as idyllic as it was, it was still only an illusion. Preferring real life to fantasy, he never let his guard down and he continued to look for a weakness in the Talosians' telepathic powers.
Grade: A-
Reason for grade: A good episode, a valiant attempt at a first pilot for a show in a genre that was still pretty new (before Star Trek, Lost in Space was the only hour-long science fiction show with a recurring cast). The episode keeps you engaged, even though it's short on action, and the episode never really feels like a solution to a problem was cheap.
"The Cage"
Directed by: Robert Butler
Written by: Gene Roddenberry
Starring:
Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike
Leonard Nimoy as Mister Spock
M. Leigh Hudec (aka Majel Barrett) as Number One
John Hoyt as Dr. Phillip Boyce
Peter Duryea as Jose Tyler
Laurel Goodwin as Yeoman J.M. Colt
Also starring:
Susan Oliver as Vina
Clegg Hoyt as Transporter Chief Pitcairn
Meg Wyllie as The Keeper
Malachi Throne as The Keeper's voice
Georgia Schmidt as 1st Talosian
Robert C. Johnson as 1st Talosian's voice
(Robert C. Johnson would go on to gain fame as the tape-recorded assignment voice in Mission: Impossible)
Items of note (if of no interest to you, skip down to the next episode):
"The Cage" was the very first pilot for Star Trek. The powers-that-be at CBS rejected the pilot but were happy with the concept of Star Trek. So they gave Star Trek a rare second chance at a pilot, as long as they made some changes. They wanted to "get rid of the guy with the ears" (i.e. Spock), and they weren't happy about Majel Barrett, either. Gene Roddenberry insisted on keeping Spock with his Vulcan ears, since an integrated crew was important to his vision of the future, and he replaced Majel Barrett with Nichelle Nichols. He promised he would get Barrett a role on the show again, and he followed through with that promise. Majel Barrett has had a few different roles throughout Star Trek's history, including Nurse Christine Chapel in the original series, Lwaxana Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the computer voice from The Next Generation on. Additionally, Jeffrey Hunter's wife convinced him that science fiction was beneath him, so he chose not to return and reprise his role as Captain Pike for the second Star Trek pilot. Instead of recasting Pike, the producers of Star Trek cast a new captain, James T. Kirk, for the new iteration of Star Trek.
Additionally, instead of wiping "The Cage" from the annals of Star Trek history, it is still considered to be canon with the show. Spock returned to the Enterprise under the new captain, and there was a sequel two-part episode called "The Menagerie," which was a sequel of sorts to "The Cage" and incorporated footage from it in the episode (but more on that when we get there).
"The Cage" also first established some Star Trek tropes:
1) We first hear the classification "Class-M Planet" (Class-M stands for Mutara Class, which means the planet is a small, rocky world which has an oxygen and nitrogen atmosphere similar to Earth's and is capable of supporting organic life).
2) We first see the rank of yeoman. Star Trek was heavily influenced by Earth's Navy. What a yeoman does is never explicitly explained in Star Trek, but in the Navy a yeoman is a petty officer in charge of supplies. It can be assumed a yeoman in Star Trek is similar. The rank of yeoman was discontinued by the time of the 24th century.
3) Another trope is the naming of teams who beam down to planets as the landing party. By the time of the 24th century, landing parties and boarding parties were collectively known as away teams.
4) Another thing we learn is that Captain Pike was born in Mojave in California (which is incidentally not too far from where I live).
5) Spock smiles in this episode when he and Pike find some musical flowers. It had not yet been established that Vulcans are trained to suppress their emotions, so this was a canonistic change that occurred during a later episode.
6) The transporter is first used in this episode. The technology was in its infancy, though, so the screen had to be freeze-framed in order to beam someone on or off. Eventually the technology would advance to the point where a person could be beamed into and out of a busy location.
We also get our first glimpse at a few planets:
1) The Orion homeworld -- It's not clear what world the Orions call home. Orion is a constellation near Taurus which contains the stars Rigel and Betelgeuse. But their homeworld isn't named. It is established, however, that Orions have green skin, they are traders, and they keep their women as slaves.
2) Rigel VII -- This planet is presumably near the Orion homeworld as Rigel is one of the stars in the Orion constellation. Not much is revealed about that planet, other than it seems to be equivalent to Earth's medieval period. This was the planet of a conflict in 2254 the Enterprise, under command of Pike, participated in which three crew members, including Pike's yeoman, were killed.
3) Vega -- Nothing is revealed about this planet, other than there is a Federation colony there. Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra (the harp) as seen from Earth. That is its likely location.
4) Talos IV -- A barren world inhabited by a race called the Talosians. The Talosians were driven underground after their race was almost made extinct by nuclear war. The Talosians mainly developed their mental abilities to the detriment of other aspects of life, such as engineering, so their devices ceased being able to function and they didn't know how to repair them. The Talosians have been searching the galaxy for two people to repopulate Talos IV. When a science vessel, the S.S. Columbia, crashed there in 2236, leaving Vina as its only survivor and yet on the brink of death, the Talosians saved her life albeit inadvertently disfiguring her as they didn't know what a human was supposed to look like. The Talosians read her mind and discovered that Captain Pike fit her description of what an ideal man was like, so the Talosians lured the Enterprise to Talos IV and kidnapped Pike, in an attempt to get him to procreate with Vina. After this encounter, the Federation established General Order 7, making a visit to Talos IV punishable by death, the only death penalty that the Federation gives.
"The Man Trap"
Season One, Episode One
Stardate 1513.1
"But it's a mystery. And I don't like mysteries. They give me a bellyache. And I've got a beauty right now."
--James Kirk
Synopsis
The Enterprise pays a visit to planet M-113 to check up on Professor Robert Crater and his wife, Nancy, whom Dr. McCoy was once romantically involved with. They don't want a checkup but are in dire need of salt, their supply being critically low. When they encounter Nancy, she appears as three different women to the landing party -- Nancy having not aged a day to McCoy, Nancy as she would appear now to Kirk, and a woman that Crewman Darnell left behind on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet. Crewman Darnell dies unexpectedly, a piece of borgia plant, a mildly toxic plant, is found in his mouth but inexplicable red rings are found on his face. Dr. McCoy can't account for why Darnell is dead but later discovers it wasn't the plant at all -- all of the salt was evacuated from his body, killing him instantly. Remembering that the Craters were looking for salt and figuring there must be a connection, McCoy and Kirk return to M-113 with two other crewmen, Green and Sturgeon. Both crewmen end up dying the same way, but only Sturgeon is discovered. Nancy disguises herself as Crewman Green and allows herself to be transported up to the ship with Kirk and McCoy. While Nancy roams the starship looking for salt (killing one more crewman, Barnhart, as she does), it is discovered that Nancy Crater is not who she appears to be. The real Nancy Crater died over a year ago. This creature is one that can assume any form and is responsible for the deaths of the four crewman. The salt vampire ends up turning on Robert Crater, killing him, and almost kills Captain Kirk by draining him of his salt, but Doctor McCoy kills the salt vampire in time.
Themes
The theme in this episode deals with a creature that is the last of its kind. It is an intelligent, self-aware creature, so killing it unjustly would be an act of murder. Of course, killing the creature is justified by the fact that it is threatening the crew of the Enterprise, but the moral dilemma is complicated by the realization that this salt vampire requires salt in order to survive. It is not a premeditated attack on the ship, just a creature doing what it must to survive.
Grade: B-
It's a good story to open the series with. It's a good, compelling mystery, but when the creature disguises itself as Crewman Green and starts wandering around the starship looking for salt, the episode really starts to drag. Plus, Yeoman Rand and Lieutenant Sulu start to wonder about "Crewman Green" because he is acting funny and not talking to anyone, when it was able to convince Kirk and McCoy that it really is Nancy Crater. So this seemed like a pretty big plot hole to me, although it didn't really go anywhere (despite Green's bizarre behavior, neither Rand nor Sulu think to inform the captain or the doctor).
"The Man Trap"
Directed by: Marc Daniels
Written by: George Clayton Johnson
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
George Takei as Hikaru Sulu
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
Also starring:
Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand
Jeanne Bal as Nancy Crater
Alfred Ryder as Robert Crater
Bruce Watson as Crewman Green
Michael Zaslow as Crewman Darnell
Sharon Gimpel as M-113 creature
Items of note:
"The Man Trap" was not the second pilot for Star Trek, but it was the first aired episode. I'll be going through these episodes in the order they aired.
In this episode, we learn of "the one who got away" for Leonard McCoy. He and Nancy Crater were romantically involved.
This episode established the following Star Trek tropes:
1) This is the first episode which contained narration over the opening credits. "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange, new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before." When Star Trek: The Next Generation started airing on television, it contained a similar narration, with two updates: "five-year mission" was changed to "continuing mission," to reflect the fact that the flagship of the Federation in the 24th century was not only commissioned for a five-year mission as the first Enterprise was, and "where no man has gone before" was updated to the more politically correct "where no one has gone before."
2) The usage of the captain's log. For Star Trek: The Next Generation, the captain's log really felt like a tool for Captain Picard to keep track of his adventures on the Enterprise. However, in the original series, it really feels more like a way to narrate the story and incorporate elements that the crew couldn't possibly know but the writer wants the audience to know, in case they couldn't pick it up by the hints and clues dropped in the episode, itself. That was especially prevalent in this episode. Also, when Captain Kirk wants to add an entry with the same stardate, he says "captain's log, additional entry." Captain Picard used a slightly different wording, "captain's log, supplemental."
3) Sulu uses a blessing, "may the great bird of the galaxy bless your planet." I don't believe this phrase is ever used again on any of the shows, but it was used, slightly differently, in Peter David's series of novels, Star Trek: New Frontier. In the novels, it wasn't a blessing; it was a curse, which was accentuated by the fact that the "great bird of the galaxy" was a real bird that would incubate inside a planet and then break the planet apart when it hatched (this was before a similar thing happened in Doctor Who). The phrase in New Frontier was "may the great bird of the galaxy roost on your planet." "The great bird of the galaxy" was also the nickname Robert Justman, associate producer on Star Trek, gave to Gene Roddenberry.
4) We learn that Uhura speaks Swahili. We also later learn that Uhura's name is the Swahili word for "freedom." Where Uhura was born is never mentioned, but considering these facts we can surmise that Uhura was born, or at least has ancestry in, East Africa.
5) Crewman Darnell has the dubious distinction of being the first person killed in Star Trek (the series and the franchise), although four people actually die in this episode -- Crewmen Darnell, Green, Sturgeon, and Barnhart, ironically none of these men wearing a red shirt.
The follow planets were shown or mentioned:
1) Wrigley's Pleasure Planet -- Nothing is revealed about this planet other than its existence and possible name (or nickname). Crewman Darnell saw the M-113 creature as a woman he left behind on this planet.
2) Vulcan -- The Vulcans are one of the most prominent races in Star Trek. As such,we will learn quite a lot about this planet (and even go there). We learn in this episode that Vulcan has no moon in orbit around it.
3) Corinth IV -- Nothing is revealed about this planet, other than there is a Starfleet facility located there.
4) M-113 -- a desertlike and nearly barren planet, the former home to a long-dead civilization. It is now inhabited by archaeologist Robert Crater and the M-113 salt vampire, though now after the events of "The Man Trap," it is left uninhabited. It is also home to the borgia plant, which is a mildly toxic plant described as Carbon Group III vegetation.
First pilot
No stardate given
"There's a way out of any cage, and I'll find it."
--Christopher Pike
*While I am pretty much a walking Star Trek Encyclopedia on my own, I do not have absolute knowledge of Star Trek. So note that I use the real Star Trek Encyclopedia, written by Michael and Denise Okuda, and Memory Alpha for supplemental information regarding behind-the-scenes info and trivia.
Synopsis
While investigating the crash landing of a science vessel, the U.S.S. Enterprise enters orbit of Talos IV, home of the Talosian race. Captain Pike is soon captured by the illusion-creating Talosians and held in a giant cage. While his crew attempts to break in and rescue him, Pike is put through a number of illusions reminiscent of his recent missions, and even one in which he has a wife back on Earth. The one constant through all of these illusions is Vina, the sole survivor of the science vessel that crash landed on the planet. Pike soon learns that the Talosians want Pike to fall in love with Vina and remain on the planet, in any illusion he wants, in order to populate the planet with humans since their own race is dying off. When Pike refuses to play along, two other women, Number One and Yeoman Colt, are taken from the ship and are offered as a choice to be Eve to his Adam. Pike manages to outwit the Talosians and escape the cage to the surface, only to be informed that this is where the Talosians wanted him all along. Number One sets a phaser to overload as the Talosians are downloading information on humanity from the ship's computers. All of this causes the Talosians to realize that humans hate captivity enough to die to avoid it, making them too dangerous to be kept on Talos IV. They are released, but Vina reveals that she can't go with them because while the Talosians saved her life from the crash, she is severely disfigured because having never seen a human, they didn't know how to restore her appearance. Pike agrees to leave Vina on the planet, where the Talosians will restore her illusion of beauty and will allow her to live out her life in comfort.
Themes
The studio rejected this pilot because there wasn't enough action. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. Star Trek has established its show as one that, while it can be good with action, is more about the commentary it makes and its examination of the human condition. So the lack of action is not a mark against the show, even if the studio didn't think it would make them money. "The Cage," even though it was written and filmed over 50 years ago, still holds up today, I think. Rewatching it now it still seems as fresh as it did back then, and it didn't leave me bored at all.
The main theme running through this episode is how one lives life. Captain Pike is finding himself worn out by the rigors of commanding a starship. He considers retiring from Starfleet and going home, or finding some less hectic job. His doctor tells him that one can either live life or avoid it and wither away. Through the many illusions that the Talosians give Pike, he realizes, as he's standing on Earth and looking out toward Mojave, a wife setting up a picnic with his horse, Tango, nearby, that a life of quietness isn't for him. Retiring at home instead of exploring the galaxy would be, for him, to turn away from life and start dying.
Of course, another theme of the episode is captivity and the lengths one will go to to avoid it. Captain Pike could have taken the easy way out and decided to live a life of comfort with Vina, sparing the crew of the Enterprise. However, Pike knew that as idyllic as it was, it was still only an illusion. Preferring real life to fantasy, he never let his guard down and he continued to look for a weakness in the Talosians' telepathic powers.
Grade: A-
Reason for grade: A good episode, a valiant attempt at a first pilot for a show in a genre that was still pretty new (before Star Trek, Lost in Space was the only hour-long science fiction show with a recurring cast). The episode keeps you engaged, even though it's short on action, and the episode never really feels like a solution to a problem was cheap.
"The Cage"
Directed by: Robert Butler
Written by: Gene Roddenberry
Starring:
Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike
Leonard Nimoy as Mister Spock
M. Leigh Hudec (aka Majel Barrett) as Number One
John Hoyt as Dr. Phillip Boyce
Peter Duryea as Jose Tyler
Laurel Goodwin as Yeoman J.M. Colt
Also starring:
Susan Oliver as Vina
Clegg Hoyt as Transporter Chief Pitcairn
Meg Wyllie as The Keeper
Malachi Throne as The Keeper's voice
Georgia Schmidt as 1st Talosian
Robert C. Johnson as 1st Talosian's voice
(Robert C. Johnson would go on to gain fame as the tape-recorded assignment voice in Mission: Impossible)
Items of note (if of no interest to you, skip down to the next episode):
"The Cage" was the very first pilot for Star Trek. The powers-that-be at CBS rejected the pilot but were happy with the concept of Star Trek. So they gave Star Trek a rare second chance at a pilot, as long as they made some changes. They wanted to "get rid of the guy with the ears" (i.e. Spock), and they weren't happy about Majel Barrett, either. Gene Roddenberry insisted on keeping Spock with his Vulcan ears, since an integrated crew was important to his vision of the future, and he replaced Majel Barrett with Nichelle Nichols. He promised he would get Barrett a role on the show again, and he followed through with that promise. Majel Barrett has had a few different roles throughout Star Trek's history, including Nurse Christine Chapel in the original series, Lwaxana Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the computer voice from The Next Generation on. Additionally, Jeffrey Hunter's wife convinced him that science fiction was beneath him, so he chose not to return and reprise his role as Captain Pike for the second Star Trek pilot. Instead of recasting Pike, the producers of Star Trek cast a new captain, James T. Kirk, for the new iteration of Star Trek.
Additionally, instead of wiping "The Cage" from the annals of Star Trek history, it is still considered to be canon with the show. Spock returned to the Enterprise under the new captain, and there was a sequel two-part episode called "The Menagerie," which was a sequel of sorts to "The Cage" and incorporated footage from it in the episode (but more on that when we get there).
"The Cage" also first established some Star Trek tropes:
1) We first hear the classification "Class-M Planet" (Class-M stands for Mutara Class, which means the planet is a small, rocky world which has an oxygen and nitrogen atmosphere similar to Earth's and is capable of supporting organic life).
2) We first see the rank of yeoman. Star Trek was heavily influenced by Earth's Navy. What a yeoman does is never explicitly explained in Star Trek, but in the Navy a yeoman is a petty officer in charge of supplies. It can be assumed a yeoman in Star Trek is similar. The rank of yeoman was discontinued by the time of the 24th century.
3) Another trope is the naming of teams who beam down to planets as the landing party. By the time of the 24th century, landing parties and boarding parties were collectively known as away teams.
4) Another thing we learn is that Captain Pike was born in Mojave in California (which is incidentally not too far from where I live).
5) Spock smiles in this episode when he and Pike find some musical flowers. It had not yet been established that Vulcans are trained to suppress their emotions, so this was a canonistic change that occurred during a later episode.
6) The transporter is first used in this episode. The technology was in its infancy, though, so the screen had to be freeze-framed in order to beam someone on or off. Eventually the technology would advance to the point where a person could be beamed into and out of a busy location.
We also get our first glimpse at a few planets:
1) The Orion homeworld -- It's not clear what world the Orions call home. Orion is a constellation near Taurus which contains the stars Rigel and Betelgeuse. But their homeworld isn't named. It is established, however, that Orions have green skin, they are traders, and they keep their women as slaves.
2) Rigel VII -- This planet is presumably near the Orion homeworld as Rigel is one of the stars in the Orion constellation. Not much is revealed about that planet, other than it seems to be equivalent to Earth's medieval period. This was the planet of a conflict in 2254 the Enterprise, under command of Pike, participated in which three crew members, including Pike's yeoman, were killed.
3) Vega -- Nothing is revealed about this planet, other than there is a Federation colony there. Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra (the harp) as seen from Earth. That is its likely location.
4) Talos IV -- A barren world inhabited by a race called the Talosians. The Talosians were driven underground after their race was almost made extinct by nuclear war. The Talosians mainly developed their mental abilities to the detriment of other aspects of life, such as engineering, so their devices ceased being able to function and they didn't know how to repair them. The Talosians have been searching the galaxy for two people to repopulate Talos IV. When a science vessel, the S.S. Columbia, crashed there in 2236, leaving Vina as its only survivor and yet on the brink of death, the Talosians saved her life albeit inadvertently disfiguring her as they didn't know what a human was supposed to look like. The Talosians read her mind and discovered that Captain Pike fit her description of what an ideal man was like, so the Talosians lured the Enterprise to Talos IV and kidnapped Pike, in an attempt to get him to procreate with Vina. After this encounter, the Federation established General Order 7, making a visit to Talos IV punishable by death, the only death penalty that the Federation gives.
"The Man Trap"
Season One, Episode One
Stardate 1513.1
"But it's a mystery. And I don't like mysteries. They give me a bellyache. And I've got a beauty right now."
--James Kirk
Synopsis
The Enterprise pays a visit to planet M-113 to check up on Professor Robert Crater and his wife, Nancy, whom Dr. McCoy was once romantically involved with. They don't want a checkup but are in dire need of salt, their supply being critically low. When they encounter Nancy, she appears as three different women to the landing party -- Nancy having not aged a day to McCoy, Nancy as she would appear now to Kirk, and a woman that Crewman Darnell left behind on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet. Crewman Darnell dies unexpectedly, a piece of borgia plant, a mildly toxic plant, is found in his mouth but inexplicable red rings are found on his face. Dr. McCoy can't account for why Darnell is dead but later discovers it wasn't the plant at all -- all of the salt was evacuated from his body, killing him instantly. Remembering that the Craters were looking for salt and figuring there must be a connection, McCoy and Kirk return to M-113 with two other crewmen, Green and Sturgeon. Both crewmen end up dying the same way, but only Sturgeon is discovered. Nancy disguises herself as Crewman Green and allows herself to be transported up to the ship with Kirk and McCoy. While Nancy roams the starship looking for salt (killing one more crewman, Barnhart, as she does), it is discovered that Nancy Crater is not who she appears to be. The real Nancy Crater died over a year ago. This creature is one that can assume any form and is responsible for the deaths of the four crewman. The salt vampire ends up turning on Robert Crater, killing him, and almost kills Captain Kirk by draining him of his salt, but Doctor McCoy kills the salt vampire in time.
Themes
The theme in this episode deals with a creature that is the last of its kind. It is an intelligent, self-aware creature, so killing it unjustly would be an act of murder. Of course, killing the creature is justified by the fact that it is threatening the crew of the Enterprise, but the moral dilemma is complicated by the realization that this salt vampire requires salt in order to survive. It is not a premeditated attack on the ship, just a creature doing what it must to survive.
Grade: B-
It's a good story to open the series with. It's a good, compelling mystery, but when the creature disguises itself as Crewman Green and starts wandering around the starship looking for salt, the episode really starts to drag. Plus, Yeoman Rand and Lieutenant Sulu start to wonder about "Crewman Green" because he is acting funny and not talking to anyone, when it was able to convince Kirk and McCoy that it really is Nancy Crater. So this seemed like a pretty big plot hole to me, although it didn't really go anywhere (despite Green's bizarre behavior, neither Rand nor Sulu think to inform the captain or the doctor).
"The Man Trap"
Directed by: Marc Daniels
Written by: George Clayton Johnson
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
George Takei as Hikaru Sulu
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
Also starring:
Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand
Jeanne Bal as Nancy Crater
Alfred Ryder as Robert Crater
Bruce Watson as Crewman Green
Michael Zaslow as Crewman Darnell
Sharon Gimpel as M-113 creature
Items of note:
"The Man Trap" was not the second pilot for Star Trek, but it was the first aired episode. I'll be going through these episodes in the order they aired.
In this episode, we learn of "the one who got away" for Leonard McCoy. He and Nancy Crater were romantically involved.
This episode established the following Star Trek tropes:
1) This is the first episode which contained narration over the opening credits. "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange, new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before." When Star Trek: The Next Generation started airing on television, it contained a similar narration, with two updates: "five-year mission" was changed to "continuing mission," to reflect the fact that the flagship of the Federation in the 24th century was not only commissioned for a five-year mission as the first Enterprise was, and "where no man has gone before" was updated to the more politically correct "where no one has gone before."
2) The usage of the captain's log. For Star Trek: The Next Generation, the captain's log really felt like a tool for Captain Picard to keep track of his adventures on the Enterprise. However, in the original series, it really feels more like a way to narrate the story and incorporate elements that the crew couldn't possibly know but the writer wants the audience to know, in case they couldn't pick it up by the hints and clues dropped in the episode, itself. That was especially prevalent in this episode. Also, when Captain Kirk wants to add an entry with the same stardate, he says "captain's log, additional entry." Captain Picard used a slightly different wording, "captain's log, supplemental."
3) Sulu uses a blessing, "may the great bird of the galaxy bless your planet." I don't believe this phrase is ever used again on any of the shows, but it was used, slightly differently, in Peter David's series of novels, Star Trek: New Frontier. In the novels, it wasn't a blessing; it was a curse, which was accentuated by the fact that the "great bird of the galaxy" was a real bird that would incubate inside a planet and then break the planet apart when it hatched (this was before a similar thing happened in Doctor Who). The phrase in New Frontier was "may the great bird of the galaxy roost on your planet." "The great bird of the galaxy" was also the nickname Robert Justman, associate producer on Star Trek, gave to Gene Roddenberry.
4) We learn that Uhura speaks Swahili. We also later learn that Uhura's name is the Swahili word for "freedom." Where Uhura was born is never mentioned, but considering these facts we can surmise that Uhura was born, or at least has ancestry in, East Africa.
5) Crewman Darnell has the dubious distinction of being the first person killed in Star Trek (the series and the franchise), although four people actually die in this episode -- Crewmen Darnell, Green, Sturgeon, and Barnhart, ironically none of these men wearing a red shirt.
The follow planets were shown or mentioned:
1) Wrigley's Pleasure Planet -- Nothing is revealed about this planet other than its existence and possible name (or nickname). Crewman Darnell saw the M-113 creature as a woman he left behind on this planet.
2) Vulcan -- The Vulcans are one of the most prominent races in Star Trek. As such,we will learn quite a lot about this planet (and even go there). We learn in this episode that Vulcan has no moon in orbit around it.
3) Corinth IV -- Nothing is revealed about this planet, other than there is a Starfleet facility located there.
4) M-113 -- a desertlike and nearly barren planet, the former home to a long-dead civilization. It is now inhabited by archaeologist Robert Crater and the M-113 salt vampire, though now after the events of "The Man Trap," it is left uninhabited. It is also home to the borgia plant, which is a mildly toxic plant described as Carbon Group III vegetation.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Movie Review: Rampage
Disclaimer: This review will contain spoilers. Don't read it unless you've already watched the movie or unless you don't care about being spoiled. I like to analyze movies, and I can't really do that unless I spoil the movie. You have been warned.
A company called Energyne has been performing unethical experiments on animals in a space station. These experiments have involved gene manipulation, in which a rat has grown to many times its original size and is wreaking havoc on the space station. The lone occupant of the station, Dr. Kerry Atkins, retrieves the experiment and heads back to earth. However, the escape pod disintegrates on re-entry, killing the scientist but dropping three canisters to earth. One is consumed by a crocodile, a wolf is exposed to another one, and a third victim, a rare albino gorilla named George, is exposed to a canister. Primatologist and former US Army Special Forces soldier, Davis Okoye, has befriended George. However, George has started growing, just like the wolf and crocodile, and soon all three are rampaging through the streets of Chicago.
I was flabbergasted when I first saw the trailer to this movie. I was actually able to guess that it was Rampage before the title came up, mainly because Rampage is a game I played on NES as a kid. I was floored that they would attempt to make a movie based on this simple game about giant monsters who rampage through a city and compete to eat the most civilians and crush the most vehicles. But I guess since Battleship was made into a movie, why not Rampage?
The game did have a story, although it wasn't much, but this movie doesn't follow the story of the game. In the game, the monsters were former humans who were all transformed by different methods (in the film, government agent Harvey Russell makes a joke about "internet nerds" calling the wolf Ralph, which is a nod to the game in which the wolf was originally a human named Ralph). In the movie, the monsters were all originally animals who grew to massive sizes based on the gene manipulation canisters. Of course, movies based on video games have sort of a checkered history. There hasn't really been a "good" movie based on a video game, although I'm one of the few people who actually likes the Super Mario Bros. movie (and I'll likely review it at some point).
I usually like to read reviews of movies after I see them, to see what the critics think. I hardly ever agree with the critics, and this is no exception. The critics seemed to have generally disliked this movie, which just shows that I'm never going to understand what critics are trying to get out of movies like this. No, this movie is not going to be the next Citizen Kane. But it was actually a surprisingly good kaiju monster movie. No, it didn't break any new ground in the genre, but the special effects are quite excellent and very believable (even though I knew a jump scare was coming, one jump scare with the giant wolf actually caused me to jump out of my seat). And the movie surprisingly gets to the action really fast. It doesn't really meander much with the story. Additionally, one of the most common criticisms of Kong: Skull Island I read was their two-dimensional people. There was no character development, or even really no identifiable personality in the characters in that movie (save John C. Reilly's character -- but come on, it's John C. Reilly). This movie did give a backstory to some of the characters, so that they weren't exactly two-dimensional. But the critics don't seem to care that a movie at least tries in this regard.
This was definitely a movie I enjoyed, and I would say should probably be regarded as one of the better video game movies. There are definitely worse kaiju movies (I'm looking at you, Godzilla 1998), and even though the plot is forgettable, the action scenes are very well done, and the CGI monsters are believable.
Themes
There really aren't many themes, to speak of. There's Davis and George's relationship, of course, and the fact that they anthropomorphized George. George is basically an ape that acts as a human, including playing practical jokes, and flipping the bird to Davis. So George was kind of over-the-top in how gorillas really act.
I'm not a fan of wrestling, but Dwayne Johnson (formerly "The Rock") has actually turned out to be a pretty good actor, although he's been typecast as the "action hero" type. However, one thing really stuck out at me. The main human villain of the movie, Claire Wyden, shot Davis in an attempt to stop him from giving a serum to George that would stop his aggression, leaving him for dead. Later on top of a building with George climbing and wreaking havoc, it is revealed (surprise!) that Davis didn't actually die from his wounds. Wyden holds Davis and his associate, Kate Caldwell, at gunpoint, saying that she is glad that Davis is alive so that they can distract George while she makes her escape. Then Caldwell says she is "feeding the monster to the gorilla", puts a serum in Wyden's bag, and then pushes her toward George so that George can eat her. A particularly gruesome death, which one might say was earned because of how evil she was and due to her actions in the movie. However, at the point she was not an imminent threat. In fact, she said that she was going to leave them alive so that they could act as a distraction for the gorilla. This means that Caldwell killing Wyden was not in self-defense; it was a revenge killing, all while dehumanizing her by calling her a "monster." This does not strike me as a heroic act. It strikes me as an act of murder, even though one might also call it poetic justice. Perhaps I'm mistaken on this point, and someone can set me straight on it.
Grade: B+
A fitting grade for a B-movie. Like I said, it wasn't great. There are better kaiju movies, but there are also worse ones. This was a surprisingly good monster movie, well acted, good CGI, good action. All-around, it's just a good popcorn flick that really doesn't try to be anything more than it is. And that's good enough for me. Not every movie I see has to be a thinker.
Rampage
Directed by: Brad Peyton
Written by: Ryan Engle, Carlton Cuse, Ryan J. Condal, and Adam Sztykiel
Starring:
Dwayne Johnson as Davis Okoye
Naomie Harris as Dr. Kate Caldwell
Malin Akerman as Claire Wyden
Jake Lacy as Brett Wyden
Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Harvey Russell
Marley Shelton as Dr. Kerry Atkins
Joe Manganiello as Burke
Demetrius Grosse as Colonel Blake
Jason Liles as motion capture for George
I was flabbergasted when I first saw the trailer to this movie. I was actually able to guess that it was Rampage before the title came up, mainly because Rampage is a game I played on NES as a kid. I was floored that they would attempt to make a movie based on this simple game about giant monsters who rampage through a city and compete to eat the most civilians and crush the most vehicles. But I guess since Battleship was made into a movie, why not Rampage?
The game did have a story, although it wasn't much, but this movie doesn't follow the story of the game. In the game, the monsters were former humans who were all transformed by different methods (in the film, government agent Harvey Russell makes a joke about "internet nerds" calling the wolf Ralph, which is a nod to the game in which the wolf was originally a human named Ralph). In the movie, the monsters were all originally animals who grew to massive sizes based on the gene manipulation canisters. Of course, movies based on video games have sort of a checkered history. There hasn't really been a "good" movie based on a video game, although I'm one of the few people who actually likes the Super Mario Bros. movie (and I'll likely review it at some point).
I usually like to read reviews of movies after I see them, to see what the critics think. I hardly ever agree with the critics, and this is no exception. The critics seemed to have generally disliked this movie, which just shows that I'm never going to understand what critics are trying to get out of movies like this. No, this movie is not going to be the next Citizen Kane. But it was actually a surprisingly good kaiju monster movie. No, it didn't break any new ground in the genre, but the special effects are quite excellent and very believable (even though I knew a jump scare was coming, one jump scare with the giant wolf actually caused me to jump out of my seat). And the movie surprisingly gets to the action really fast. It doesn't really meander much with the story. Additionally, one of the most common criticisms of Kong: Skull Island I read was their two-dimensional people. There was no character development, or even really no identifiable personality in the characters in that movie (save John C. Reilly's character -- but come on, it's John C. Reilly). This movie did give a backstory to some of the characters, so that they weren't exactly two-dimensional. But the critics don't seem to care that a movie at least tries in this regard.
This was definitely a movie I enjoyed, and I would say should probably be regarded as one of the better video game movies. There are definitely worse kaiju movies (I'm looking at you, Godzilla 1998), and even though the plot is forgettable, the action scenes are very well done, and the CGI monsters are believable.
Themes
There really aren't many themes, to speak of. There's Davis and George's relationship, of course, and the fact that they anthropomorphized George. George is basically an ape that acts as a human, including playing practical jokes, and flipping the bird to Davis. So George was kind of over-the-top in how gorillas really act.
I'm not a fan of wrestling, but Dwayne Johnson (formerly "The Rock") has actually turned out to be a pretty good actor, although he's been typecast as the "action hero" type. However, one thing really stuck out at me. The main human villain of the movie, Claire Wyden, shot Davis in an attempt to stop him from giving a serum to George that would stop his aggression, leaving him for dead. Later on top of a building with George climbing and wreaking havoc, it is revealed (surprise!) that Davis didn't actually die from his wounds. Wyden holds Davis and his associate, Kate Caldwell, at gunpoint, saying that she is glad that Davis is alive so that they can distract George while she makes her escape. Then Caldwell says she is "feeding the monster to the gorilla", puts a serum in Wyden's bag, and then pushes her toward George so that George can eat her. A particularly gruesome death, which one might say was earned because of how evil she was and due to her actions in the movie. However, at the point she was not an imminent threat. In fact, she said that she was going to leave them alive so that they could act as a distraction for the gorilla. This means that Caldwell killing Wyden was not in self-defense; it was a revenge killing, all while dehumanizing her by calling her a "monster." This does not strike me as a heroic act. It strikes me as an act of murder, even though one might also call it poetic justice. Perhaps I'm mistaken on this point, and someone can set me straight on it.
Grade: B+
A fitting grade for a B-movie. Like I said, it wasn't great. There are better kaiju movies, but there are also worse ones. This was a surprisingly good monster movie, well acted, good CGI, good action. All-around, it's just a good popcorn flick that really doesn't try to be anything more than it is. And that's good enough for me. Not every movie I see has to be a thinker.
Rampage
Directed by: Brad Peyton
Written by: Ryan Engle, Carlton Cuse, Ryan J. Condal, and Adam Sztykiel
Starring:
Dwayne Johnson as Davis Okoye
Naomie Harris as Dr. Kate Caldwell
Malin Akerman as Claire Wyden
Jake Lacy as Brett Wyden
Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Harvey Russell
Marley Shelton as Dr. Kerry Atkins
Joe Manganiello as Burke
Demetrius Grosse as Colonel Blake
Jason Liles as motion capture for George
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Movie Review: A Quiet Place
Disclaimer: This review will contain spoilers. Don't read it unless you've already watched the movie or unless you don't care about being spoiled. I like to analyze movies, and I can't really do that unless I spoil the movie. You have been warned.
An asteroid has crashed to earth, bringing with it blind alien creatures who hunt by sound. The slightest sound you make can attract one of them, unless there is a louder sound nearby. This film follows the Abbott family (whose names, I believe, were never stated in the film but were indicated in the credits) as they struggle to survive in this new world, having to live as quietly as possible so as not to attract these monsters. Most of the people in town have been killed by the creatures, but the Abbotts have had an advantage in that since Regan, the daughter, is deaf, they know how to communicate without talking through sign language.
The trailer didn't reveal what the monsters looked like, but you did get a few glimpses in the movie. The first thing I thought was that they looked a lot like the Cloverfield monster (when I told the friend who attended the movie with me, he concurred that that was his thought, too).
The movie is quite good. It's a horror film, but not in the same vein as many horror movies are today. There were only four or five jump scares (relying on jump scares is lazy writing, so I'm glad there were so few). I'm not a person who can do horror films, but this is more a suspense thriller, which is a genre of horror I can handle.
As good as the movie is, it is not a perfect film. There were situations that were definitely contrived to add danger to the movie. Two that I can recall (and they might be the only two examples):
First, there is a nail on the staircase where Evelyn walks up and down. In one scene in which she is being hunted by a monster, she runs down the staircase, not knowing the nail is there, and she steps down right on it, dropping a glass jar. This, of course, would be incredibly painful, but she can't make any noise or she'll let the creature know where she is. The reason this scene is contrived is because prior in the movie she was pulling a bag made of what looked like cashmere up the staircase. It got caught on the nail, and she kept yanking on it to try and free it, eventually ripping the bag. Nothing comes of this scene (no monster attack, and she doesn't notice the nail); it is purely to let us know the nail is there and set up the later scene where she steps on the nail. Now, there was no rush in this scene. She wasn't being hunted, she was just casually pulling it up. Once the bag was caught, she should have stopped yanking (since she had to avoid making noise), walk down the staircase and see what the bag was caught on. This, of course, would have shown her the nail and she could have done something about it.
Second, there is a scene in which the kids are being hunted and they fall into a grain silo. They start to sink under the grain, nearly suffocating, until they are able to climb onto a metal door to prevent them from sinking. This is all well and good, except that the monster finds them and jumps inside, flipping the metal door over and trapping them underneath. The kids should have sank down into the grain, but they didn't.
Themes
This is a movie about family, and the great lengths a family will go to to watch out for each other and protect each other, including sacrificing themselves to save a loved one. This is a theme that is not properly expressed in fiction today, especially when it comes to a nuclear family (a mom and dad having kids naturally) and in treating the father as heroic rather than a buffoon. Lee doesn't just protect his kids, he helps them survive, including showing why they should go on, trying to live a relatively normal life even in this new, dangerous world.
This also includes forgiveness. Regan, who is played by a real-life deaf actress, blames herself for the death of her youngest brother, Beau, and thinks that her father blames her, too. She goes throughout the movie thinking that her dad hates her for it, and in a moment when Lee has to sacrifice himself for his children, he signs to her that he loves her and has always loved her, showing her that he has never blamed her for Beau's death.
Bishop Barron, and several of my friends, have pointing out the pro-life themes in this movie (Bishop Barron goes further and finds numerous religious themes in the film, including with their name "Abbott" and the way this new world forces them live essentially monastically). I'm always hesitant to call a movie "pro-life" when I don't know the political leanings of the writers or producers, especially since pro-choice people can find reasons why the pro-life themes really aren't pro-life. But in this movie, Evelyn becomes pregnant. One might wonder why anyone would become pregnant in this new dangerous world, but the Abbotts are not letting this world change their determination to live life to the fullest. Rather than leaving the baby to die somewhere because raising a baby is too dangerous, they take steps to find a way to limit the amount of sound that the monsters could potentially hear.
Grade: A
Reason for grade: As I said, this is a very good movie. It's sucks you in right from the beginning and doesn't really let up the suspense, except for brief moments of time (in a reversal, the music is used in this horror film to indicate when we're safe, and the music goes away to indicate when danger is near). It also has excellent pro-family (and possibly pro-life) themes. The only thing really keeping me from giving the film an A+ is the contrived scenes I mentioned at the beginning. If Evelyn had slowed down and found what the bag was caught on, she could have done something about the nail. And the kids should have suffocated when the door was overturned on top of the in the grain silo. Since these examples would have affected the survivability of the scenarios, they affected the grade I gave the film.
A Quiet Place
Directed by: John Krasinski
Written by: Bryan Woods and Scott Beck
Starring:
John Krasinski as Lee Abbott
Emily Blunt as Evelyn Abbott
Millicent Simmonds as Regan Abbott
Noah Jupe as Marcus Abbott
Cade Woodward as Beau Abbott
The trailer didn't reveal what the monsters looked like, but you did get a few glimpses in the movie. The first thing I thought was that they looked a lot like the Cloverfield monster (when I told the friend who attended the movie with me, he concurred that that was his thought, too).
The movie is quite good. It's a horror film, but not in the same vein as many horror movies are today. There were only four or five jump scares (relying on jump scares is lazy writing, so I'm glad there were so few). I'm not a person who can do horror films, but this is more a suspense thriller, which is a genre of horror I can handle.
As good as the movie is, it is not a perfect film. There were situations that were definitely contrived to add danger to the movie. Two that I can recall (and they might be the only two examples):
First, there is a nail on the staircase where Evelyn walks up and down. In one scene in which she is being hunted by a monster, she runs down the staircase, not knowing the nail is there, and she steps down right on it, dropping a glass jar. This, of course, would be incredibly painful, but she can't make any noise or she'll let the creature know where she is. The reason this scene is contrived is because prior in the movie she was pulling a bag made of what looked like cashmere up the staircase. It got caught on the nail, and she kept yanking on it to try and free it, eventually ripping the bag. Nothing comes of this scene (no monster attack, and she doesn't notice the nail); it is purely to let us know the nail is there and set up the later scene where she steps on the nail. Now, there was no rush in this scene. She wasn't being hunted, she was just casually pulling it up. Once the bag was caught, she should have stopped yanking (since she had to avoid making noise), walk down the staircase and see what the bag was caught on. This, of course, would have shown her the nail and she could have done something about it.
Second, there is a scene in which the kids are being hunted and they fall into a grain silo. They start to sink under the grain, nearly suffocating, until they are able to climb onto a metal door to prevent them from sinking. This is all well and good, except that the monster finds them and jumps inside, flipping the metal door over and trapping them underneath. The kids should have sank down into the grain, but they didn't.
Themes
This is a movie about family, and the great lengths a family will go to to watch out for each other and protect each other, including sacrificing themselves to save a loved one. This is a theme that is not properly expressed in fiction today, especially when it comes to a nuclear family (a mom and dad having kids naturally) and in treating the father as heroic rather than a buffoon. Lee doesn't just protect his kids, he helps them survive, including showing why they should go on, trying to live a relatively normal life even in this new, dangerous world.
This also includes forgiveness. Regan, who is played by a real-life deaf actress, blames herself for the death of her youngest brother, Beau, and thinks that her father blames her, too. She goes throughout the movie thinking that her dad hates her for it, and in a moment when Lee has to sacrifice himself for his children, he signs to her that he loves her and has always loved her, showing her that he has never blamed her for Beau's death.
Bishop Barron, and several of my friends, have pointing out the pro-life themes in this movie (Bishop Barron goes further and finds numerous religious themes in the film, including with their name "Abbott" and the way this new world forces them live essentially monastically). I'm always hesitant to call a movie "pro-life" when I don't know the political leanings of the writers or producers, especially since pro-choice people can find reasons why the pro-life themes really aren't pro-life. But in this movie, Evelyn becomes pregnant. One might wonder why anyone would become pregnant in this new dangerous world, but the Abbotts are not letting this world change their determination to live life to the fullest. Rather than leaving the baby to die somewhere because raising a baby is too dangerous, they take steps to find a way to limit the amount of sound that the monsters could potentially hear.
Grade: A
Reason for grade: As I said, this is a very good movie. It's sucks you in right from the beginning and doesn't really let up the suspense, except for brief moments of time (in a reversal, the music is used in this horror film to indicate when we're safe, and the music goes away to indicate when danger is near). It also has excellent pro-family (and possibly pro-life) themes. The only thing really keeping me from giving the film an A+ is the contrived scenes I mentioned at the beginning. If Evelyn had slowed down and found what the bag was caught on, she could have done something about the nail. And the kids should have suffocated when the door was overturned on top of the in the grain silo. Since these examples would have affected the survivability of the scenarios, they affected the grade I gave the film.
A Quiet Place
Directed by: John Krasinski
Written by: Bryan Woods and Scott Beck
Starring:
John Krasinski as Lee Abbott
Emily Blunt as Evelyn Abbott
Millicent Simmonds as Regan Abbott
Noah Jupe as Marcus Abbott
Cade Woodward as Beau Abbott
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