Better Than I Remembered

TNG Season 2
We're currently making our way through season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I never liked season 2.  I have always disliked Dr. Pulaski, and for some reason, she dominates my memories of the whole season.  I think I was bothered by the way she treated Lt. Data, but I realize now that there is another reason: I'm weirdly loyal to Dr. Crusher (as I seem to be generally to all redheads).

I'm also a Cancer.

Now that I'm watching it all again, though, I think I misjudged the second season.  There are a lot of good episodes, and a lot of important stuff happens.  We learn a lot more about Worf, we learn a lot more about Data, and Picard is pursued by those twin terrors that continue to haunt him for the rest of the series: The Borg, and Lwaxana Troi.

Which is worse?  They're both unwelcome touch.

Mostly, though, I'm just so glad to be watching TNG.  Unlike the original series, which is all about one megalomaniac actor captain saving the day in increasingly improbable and sleazy ways, this show is about the whole bridge crew.  It's an ensemble cast, and it's much closer to the ideal of the Federation than its predecessor.  (On the other hand, you should hear Marina Sirtis tell "the costume story".)

And during all of this, we see in the news that Patrick Stewart is returning to TV as Jean-Luc Picard!  I could not be more excited to see what stories they have to tell about Picard years after the Enterprise.  He has long been a template of leadership to me, and as others have said before me, he's the captain we need today.

Although the exhibit that inspired this whole project closed earlier this year, our trek continues.  Engage!

Side-Trek: The Movies

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

My understanding was that the odd numbered movies were the bad ones. I’ve heard this common nerd knowledge repeated many a time among my circle of friends. So I had low expectations for this movie.

I was pleasantly surprised.

That beard is actually attached to his chest.

Now, first, I’ll confess that someone who watches Star Trek: The Motion Picture without first sitting through Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Animated Series might not be so favorably disposed. I spent the last year plus watching every single one of those 105 episodes, so the high production values of ST: tMP blew me away. Classy neutral Federation uniforms? Check. Wildly attractive slightly alien woman to fuel the wet dreams of the predominantly male fan base? Check. Lots of long, loving, lingering shots of the docked Enterprise? Check. This movie cemented the precedents for many Star Trek movie traditions that persist even now.

Shatner toned down the worst of his overacting tendencies, and there’s no love interest for him in this movie. His plot line centers around his drawn out pissing match with the Enterprise’s new commander and candidate for the Herrenrasse, Captain Decker. (Every Federation commander we’ve encountered to date looks like a 1950’s football captain, even in the cartoon.)

Rand-om cameo.

The plot of the movie is solid, even if littered with “alien” sex appeal vehicle Lt. Ilia in a long sleeved bathrobe so short, a stiff breeze aboard the Enterprise would’ve made this movie unsuitable for anyone under the age of 17.

Favorite moments: Bones, called out of retirement, showing up to the Enterprise in a deep V with a beard that any PNW hipster could wear with pride - AND - Janice Rand making a cameo in the early part of the movie! I didn’t forget you, Yeoman Janice. Welcome to the future. I s’pose the basketweave fez hairdo is no longer popular in the Federation twenty years later.


Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

This movie had the largest opening weekend to date when it was released in 1982. In general, people seemed to like it better than ST:tMP, though to my eyes they seem equally good movies.

I do appreciate that this movie deals heavily with Kirk coming to grips with his own aging. Early on, Kirk gets a pair of eye glasses from Bones as a birthday gift, along with a bottle of Romulan ale that I’m certain is blue raspberry Kool-Aid. For a laugh, check out Kirk’s interior decorating scheme:

The prime directive meets the second amendment.

This movie does have its genuinely scary moments. When Chekov and his expendable pal happen upon Khan (played by Ricardo Montablan, reprising his role from the Star Trek: The Original Series) and his fellow augments, there’s a skin-crawling scene in which space brain parasites burrow into their ears and make them into plot-enabling double agents for Khan, whose pectoral muscles are reportedly real, but seriously, where are his nipples? In his armpits?

Nipples were considered genetic imperfections.

This movie introduces Kirk’s ex-lover, a scientist named Carol Marcus, and his son, a hothead named David who looks and acts a lot like his dad. And then there’s Saavik, a Vulcan Federation cadet with a lot to prove, played by a pre-Cheers Kirstie Alley. There’s a lot going on.

The thing I find so frustrating about this movie is how flawed and boring Khan is. He is genetically engineered to be the perfect enemy, and yet he’s so annoyingly and predictably stupid in his revenge fixation. Plus, Ricardo Montablan is the only person in the movie who can out-overact Shatner. I’ve been saying “It is very cold in spaaaace” for weeks now.

The movie ends with a truly moving bromance goodbye for Kirk and Spock. It’s worth a watch, if you’re on the fence, but bring the popcorn.


Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

This one is poorly written, much too long, and travels the spectrum between boring and shabby. I think a fan edit is in order.

Oh, my.

Broad strokes: Spock put his spirit into McCoy’s body before he died, so the crew has to find Spock’s body and bring it on to Vulcan where his brain swap can be undone. Along the way Kirk’s son gets murdered, because we can’t have a hot young son of Kirk running around the Federation and competing with Shatner for babes.

Don’t even get me started on Christopher Lloyd’s bumbling and caricaturish Klingon villain.

Bright spots: First on-screen Targ! Sulu, Uhura, Scott and Chekov all get to shine as they steal the Enterprise for Mission: Save Spock. And we get to see Sulu’s sweet-ass leather cape!

Sidenote: Vulcan sex is super boring and seems to comprise of lightly touching each other’s fingers. We finally get to see a young Spock en flagrante and that’s it?


Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

If you’re looking for a Star Trek movie with the original cast that’s a fun, widely accessible scifi flick, here’s a great choice. This film, like Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, was directed by Leonard Nimoy. A hulking probe shows up at Earth and starts broadcasting humpback whalesong. The problem? All the Earth whales died centuries ago.

So of course Kirk and Spock logically derive that they need to go back in time and pick up some whales. So they slingshot around the sun to achieve this. Spock just rustles up the math on how to do it in his head, ‘cause Spock.

The entertainment value comes from seeing The Original Series crew playing around in 1986. Watching Chekov ask a cop in San Francisco for directions to the “nuclear wessels” is just good fun. And then there’s Kirk and Spock trying out 20th century cursing. Double dumb ass on you.

Contractually obligated romance at its best.

There’s a love interest for Kirk in this movie: a marine biologist named Dr. Gillian Taylor who’s 21 years younger than Kirk, and it shows. Turns out the part was initially promised to Eddie Murphy, a fan of the franchise whose star was rising. But there were concerns on both sides of that arrangement: Murphy wanted to play an alien, not a marine biology professor, and the Star Trek muckety mucks worried that Murphy would expose their franchise to ridicule. Thankfully, Shatner solved the problem by insisting that Kirk must have a love interest in this movie, since Kirk had suffered under a three-movie dry-spell. Enter Catherine Hicks’s 80’stastic lady mullet.

Kirk had lots of demands for this movie, beyond onscreen lust targets. He also demanded a bigger paycheck ($2.5 million) and the privilege of directing the next movie. I’m sure there’s a little “if Nimoy can do it, I can do it better” at work there. The frenemy status between Shatner and Nimoy deserves its own blog post.

I’m sure I won’t shatter anyone’s expectations when I say that the captain and crew of the Enterprise save the day, and alter the future by bringing some whales back with them. Huzzah, cue credits.

(But seriously, those whales most assuredly died after traveling 300 years into the future. The ocean salinity in 2286 is different, and oceans in which humpback whales have been long absent probably have an insufficient food chain. I give those whales a few weeks to live in 2286, tops.)

New Year, New Trek

We Finished Something!
We finally finished the final season of the original Star Trek.  The last season was better than the first two, on average, but still not great.  In particular, the final episode was a real stinker.  But let's not dwell on that.

Ancient Roman planet, Nazi planet, Chicago gangster planet,
Native American planet, and cowboy planet weren't enough.
Now there's Abe Lincoln planet, too.

There were actually several good episodes in season three: The Enterprise Incident, The Cloud Minders, and the poetically named Is There in Truth No Beauty? were all pretty decent.  If the whole show had been that good, it would have been much easier to watch.

But on New Year's Day 2018, we finished the first section of our trek, albeit a few months behind schedule.  That leads us to the next phase: Star Trek the Animated Series.

Trek In Toontown
Until we read about it in a museum, we had no idea there had ever been an animated series.  It is not generally considered Trek canon, but bits of the stories there have been referenced elsewhere in canon.  And I am so glad we made it part of our journey.

Prices and participation may vary.  Chekov not included.

We are already half-way through with the animated stuff.  It goes really quickly.  For one, the episodes are only half an hour.  For another, there are only 22 episodes in total.  The whole animated series takes about half as long as one season of the original series.

But that's only scratching the surface.

It turns out that, although the animated series is also hit-and-miss, it has a higher hit ratio than the original series.  And since it's kid-friendly, we don't have to keep cringing at the hyper-sexual captain.  All of the characters are voiced by the original cast members.  But my favorite part (and I'm not sure why this should be so) is that Shatner really tones done the overacting.  No weird cadence, no dramatic volume shifts, he just reads his lines.  It makes Kirk look like a much more reasonable and competent leader.

For some reason, Pavel Chekov isn't on the show, although there has been one episode so far written by Walter Koenig.  It's about Spock becoming a giant clone of himself in the service of an immortal monster.  More about that later.

Instead of Chekov, we get a tripedal alien named Arex.  He looks kind of like a really tall cousin of E.T., with three arms and three legs.  There's also a creepy cat-lady on the bridge, who is voiced by Majel Barrett and purrs a lot after her lines.

What?  The giant Spock thing?  Okay.  You've stuck with me this long, so here you go.

Giant Spock, looking menacingly at regular-sized everybody.

The giant Spock thing was bad.  It was nonsense.  And in the end (spoiler!) he stays a giant and telepathically transfers a copy of his mind back into his original tiny body, so now there are two Spocks.  And one is a giant, who is also effectively immortal.

It was so bad it was good.

Isn't It Ironic?
As bad as I felt the original series was, I really didn't get much ironic enjoyment out of it.  I kind of hated most of it.  But this... is different somehow.

I find that at worst, some episodes are a tad boring.  But some are actually pretty good, such as Yesteryear, in which Spock goes back in time to complete a time loop and prevent himself from dying as a boy.  It's hands-down better than anything on the original series.

And then... then there are episodes like The Magicks of Megas-Tu.

Satan.  On Star Trek.  In Space.

I will try to summarize to give you the full effect of the thing in one sentence.  The Enterprise goes to a place where magic is real, Spock draws a pentagram on the floor, Kirk has a magic fight with a pilgrim, and they rescue Satan from actual Salem witches, and their new friend Satan who is still actually Satan is always shirtless and ripped.

It's so bad, and I LOVE it.

Are you ready for some gifs?

This episode is just 24 minutes of stuff that beggars belief.

The Magicks of Megas-Tu: Gif-pocalypse

Aren't you glad this is a thing that exists?