833. On the Passing of Christopher Lee

I delayed this tribute a little because I suspected there'd be a flood of them.  Sure enough there was.  And of course Christopher Lee deserves it.  The funny thing is a lot of what he's known for today skims only the surface of his life, the recent past, what one wonders he himself might have considered all that important in his experiences.  But this is what many of us have to work with.

And that means two roles, Saruman and Count Dooku.  Peter Jackson's greatest accomplishment in his Lord of the Rings trilogy was in the casting.  In truth given such a ridiculous bounty and a relatively thankless villain's role contrasted against Ian McKellen, Lee was almost easy to lose in the shuffle.  Then George Lucas came along and added him to the Star Wars prequels beginning with Attack of the Clones, in which he becomes the embodiment of Sith potency.  I've long championed these films and many a head has been scratched in trying to figure out why.  One of the reasons is Christopher Lee.  Having been introduced to him, in effect, through a relatively disappointing role, I found his Dooku a revelation.  During his discussion with the captive Obi-Wan Kenobi, Dooku dispenses with his apparent innocence in such a casual manner, the mark of a truly confident actor, and of course it's the acting that fans most complain about in these films, yet there's Lee commanding the scene so effortlessly, setting the stage for Ian McDiarmid's best work as Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith, and it's here that perhaps the whole story Lucas has attempted to convey should be understood: Anakin Skywalker's fall is about frustrated youth, the extravagance of inexperience, everything we're denied so happily in the fallen world of the original trilogy with its very casual interpretation of heroism, the very thing Dooku shatters so elegantly...

The last time we see Lee in epic mode is in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.  It's more of a cameo than anything, but the remarkable thing is that Saruman is reclaimed from the abyss in an instant, summoned for a moment of great heroism, the complete opposite of everything we'd seen previously from him.  It is very much like a fond farewell, not so much to the character but to the actor.  I realized as I was watching what a cherished moment this was set up to be, and it is undeniably the best sequence in the movie, perhaps the true justification of Jackson's return to Middle-Earth.

All of which is to say, farewell Christopher Lee.  You accomplished many things in your life.  One of them was to imprint yourself into our memories, in a way that will only continue to unfold.  As they say, the road goes ever on and on...

832. The Top 50 TV Shows from the 2014-2015 Season

As reported in the June 8-21 edition of TV Guide, here are the top-rated (using a combination of live and delayed viewing) TV shows from the 2014-2015 season, with commentary.

1. The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
Eighth season.
This is one of those popular things that's surprisingly unpopular on the Internet, mostly because the Internet is inevitably the home of people who "don't feel adequately represented" in the sitcom's depiction of geek culture.  I've longed self-identified myself with geek culture, and I've loved Big Bang Theory from the start.  Besides, it's one of the rare things I love that's also extremely popular.

2. NFL Sunday Night Football (NBC)

3. NCIS (CBS)
Twelfth season.
Officially survived the loss of Ziva.

4. The Walking Dead (AMC)
Fifth season.
Officially the geek alternative to The Big Bang Theory, by the way.  I maintain that it hasn't been worth watching since the death of Shane.  But at least Darryl is still around.

5. NCIS: New Orleans (CBS)
First season.
This counts as vindication for Star Trek: Enterprise, by the way.  Officially did not kill the career of Scott Bakula.

6. Empire (Fox)
First season.
I count this as a victory in the career of Terrence Howard first and foremost.

7. NFL Thursday Night Football (CBS/NFL Network)

8. Scorpion (CBS)
First season.
I think this technically counts as the procedural version of The Big Bang Theory.

9. Blue Bloods (CBS)
Fifth season.
I've enjoyed this series in the past.  No real idea what it's been up to lately.

10. The Blacklist (NBC)
Second season.
James Spader in this particular version of creepy procedural.

11. How to Get Away with Murder (ABC)
First season.
Shonda Rhymes with her newest and currently most successful series.

12. Dancing with the Stars (ABC)
Nineteenth and twentieth seasons.
They just keep finding people who want to be famous who previously had other such opportunities not strictly related to dancing... 

13. Madam Secretary (CBS)
First season.
Political shows are periodically successful.  This is one of those.

14. Criminal Minds (CBS)
Tenth season.
Another show I've watched in the past.

15. The Voice (NBC)
16. The Voice (NBC)
Seventh and eighth seasons.
The series that single-handedly...made Adam Levine more mainstream than he already was.  Moves like Jagger!

17. Modern Family (ABC)
Sixth season.
Unlike Big Bang Theory hasn't proven particularly durable.

18. NFL Monday Night Football (ESPN)
Football is big business.  As if you didn't know.

19. Person of Interest (CBS)
Fourth season.
I haven't been able to watch a lot of TV lately.  This is the series I most regret losing track of.

20. Downton Abbey (PBS)
Fifth season.
Proof that success in television these days is absolutely not restricted to the networks or premium cable.

21. Scandal (ABC)
Fourth season.
The second of three Shonda Rhymes blockbusters.

22. NCIS: Los Angeles (CBS)
Sixth season.
Ladies love cool James.

23. 60 Minutes (CBS)
Forty-seventh season.

24. Hawaii Five-O (CBS)
Fifth season.
The last time I caught it, I didn't see Scott Caan.  They can't take him away!

25. Castle (ABC)
Seventh season.
Something-something Nathan Fillion.

26. The Good Wife (CBS)
Sixth season.
At a certain point, doesn't the premise become entirely cancelled out?

27. Two and a Half Men (CBS)
Twelfth season.
So long and thanks for all the laughs.

28. The Mentalist (CBS)
Seventh season.
After the big reveal of Red John induced complete apathy, it was inevitable to learn this series was in fact about to be done.

29. Mom (CBS)
Second season.
Counts as the most successful new sitcom of the past two seasons.

30. American Idol (Fox)
Fourteenth season.
As if no one saw coming that the producers succeeded in killing its impact.  And so it's soon to be gone.  Finally.

31. Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Eleventh season.
They just killed off McDreamy.  But it'll take more than that the finish off the leader of the Shonda Rhymes brand.

32. Survivor (CBS)
Twenty-ninth and thirtieth seasons.
Long-time fan of this, so I can't complain.  And I was happy with one (Mike) of the two most recent winners, so can't complain.

33. The Odd Couple (CBS)
First season.
Some people hate remakes.  Some people have no concept that the whole history of mankind is littered with remakes.  This one is pretty good.

34. Elementary (CBS)
Third season.
Haven't watched it in a while but support it in general.  Because, Lucy Liu.

35. CSI (CBS)
Fifteenth season.
Just announced as finally being put to pasture.

36. CSI: Cyber (CBS)
First season.
But don't worry, this will still be around.

37. Chicago Fire (NBC)
Third season.
Inexplicably the lead in a whole franchise.

38. American Idol (Fox)
The fact that they kept up two nights all that time is kind of the reason...

39. Stalker (CBS)
First season.
Was actually cancelled.  They cancelled Maggie Q???

40. Chicago P.D. (NBC)
Second season.
The second in the Chicago franchise.  Inexplicably does not feature CM Punk at all.

41. Law & Order: SVU (NBC)
Sixteenth season.
Listen, I'm happy this is the one that ended up lasting.  But even I wonder why it still exists.

42. Mike & Molly (CBS)
Fifth season.
The fact that Melissa McCarthy is so popular at the box office but nonexistent in a TV series she's been doing simultaneously...Mike & Molly, you're doing something horribly wrong.  How is it that you still haven't figured that out???

43. The Bachelor (ABC)
Nineteenth season.
Women like to watch.

44. Gotham (Fox)
First season.
The most successful of a generous helping of superhero TV series.

45. Game of Thrones (HBO)
Fifth season.
Hey, this is the season that features Alexander Siddig, right?  I might actually have to care about this series for a change...

46. 2 Broke Girls (CBS)
Fourth season.
I love this show's snark.

47. The Middle (ABC)
Sixth season.
I don't think it can be stressed enough how unfortunate it is that someone actually thought a sanitized version of Malcolm in the Middle was a good idea.

48. black-ish (ABC)
First season.
I hope this series is decent.

49. Once Upon a Time (ABC)
Fourth season.
So, bringing in Frozen did not make it a ratings juggernaut after all...

50. The Goldbergs (ABC)
Second season.
If you love the '80s...

It's worth noting that the series I most want to catch up with at some point is the CW's The Flash, which is a TV show I never thought could possibly happen, not only a second attempt for DC's scarlet speedster (after a similarly genius but short-lived version from a quarter-century earlier), but one that acknowledges that earlier series, does superheroes directly and without apologies, and shamelessly evokes familiar comic book material.

And Yahoo! just helped Community conclude a six season run, and that was a pleasure to see unfold among those expanded outlets that are also incredibly popular these days.

What did you watch?

831. If Harry Shearer really is done...

If Harry Shearer really is done with The Simpsons I can think of two things that might or should happen as a result.  Here they are:

1) Don't recast the characters he helped make iconic.  I mean seriously, the voice cast on The Simpsons is as iconic as anything else about the show, and it's been the same since the very beginning.  You could do mimics, or change the voices of all Shearer's character entirely...The better, the best option is to retire those characters.  The Simpsons is known for its sprawling cast.  It hasn't added many new characters in years, and even if it doesn't now, it could easily survive a trimming.  Part of the reason so many fans think, have thought for years that the show has been stale, stagnant, is that nothing has changed for years.  Every time something does change, it comes off as a publicity stunt.  Think of this as an opportunity to prove everyone wrong, once and for all.  I mean, South Park survived losing Chef (even though he was probably the best thing about it).  Shearer doesn't even voice any of the main characters.  And The Simpsons already survived losing its best voice actor, Phil Hartman, and retired his characters, right?  If worst come to worst, simply bring on Kelsey Grammer full-time.  That would be a challenge.  But it could also be the Sylar-ing of Sideshow Bob.  I think I could live with that, though.

2) This is a sign that The Simpsons is finally winding down.  Finally losing one of the iconic voice actors, after incredibly keeping all of them for twenty-six seasons, is already historic.  But if they've lost one, chances are becoming better that they will lose more.  And as I've already suggested, The Simpsons is nothing if not its voice cast plus everything else.  Emphasis on voice cast.  The show will end.  I'm not saying this because I'm gleeful about the prospect.  But it is inevitable.  And now we have a better idea of how it will happen.  And it seems pretty obvious now, doesn't it?

830. I was right but I wasn't right about these Star Trek episodes...

I've been committed to writing what I should probably start referring to as recommendations rather than outright reviews of every Star Trek episode for a few years now.  I happen to be a fan of the whole franchise, so I consider myself to be in a unique position to be fair to every series.  Part of the reason I've undertaken this task is because far too often Star Trek fans wear their biases on their sleeves.  If they hate a series, or particularly loved one, they can't even pretend to be objective.  And that's what I try to be.

I'm calling them recommendations rather than reviews because really, I can't be bothered to do the whole review thing.  This is too big a task to do such a tedious thing for every episode.  I don't want to analyze the whole story, scene for scene, but rather talk about what did or didn't work in it.  And because I'm approaching this as a guide to the whole franchise, I like to be inclusive of the whole franchise, with references to various series as points for comparison, as well as discussing the relative merits of an episode for the series in which it airs.

All that being said, recommendation over review provides me with an additional opportunity, because it's just as likely that anyone who watches any TV-related thing these days will binge.  This is not a new phenomenon, but it's an increasingly popular one.  So anyone watching any Star Trek at all will probably not cherry-pick but rather view en masse, episode after episode, seasons and indeed series at a time.  And they won't be consulting whatever I think along the way.  The point, then, is to give them perspective.  A recommendation helps put the episode in context, a review thinks the whole thing is a matter of life and death.

And really, it isn't.  Two episodes I've covered I actually had the chance to watch with fresh eyes recently, and the results were something different from what I recorded in my recommendations.  This is worth talking about for a number of reasons.  Opinions change.  That's something I think we all forget.  But when we put something down in words, we begin to think they take on permanence.  How silly of us.  The version of you that hated something yesterday might very well give way to a version of who that will love it tomorrow, not because the thing itself changed but because you began to think differently of it.  When I first heard U2's "Beautiful Day," it was accompanied by the music video, and Bono was trying especially hard to be a rock god in it.  I hated it.  I thought Bono was beyond obnoxious, and it created a giant rift between me and the Irish band.  I thought I'd stick by that opinion forever.  But soon enough, I came around, and actually, U2 became once and for all one of my favorite rock bands ever.  And I even love "Beautiful Day."  (No, I haven't revisited the music video.)

Two episodes from the original Star Trek series' second season, "Catspaw" and "I, Mudd," are what I'm really here to talk about.  "Catspaw" has the distinction of being one of the rare episodes I offered no basis at all for recommendation, while "I, Mudd" I wrote mostly about Harry Mudd and not much about the rest of the episode around him.  Here are some additional thoughts on both of them, although I won't be changing my previously established thoughts, which can be found here and here respectively.

"Catspaw," I originally argued, was a bad Halloween episode, specifically created for that holiday and as such easy to completely disregard.  The thing is, it's another in a long line of episodes throughout the franchise involving beings with unusual abilities messing around with Starfleet officers, and in some ways a unique one in that there are two such beings who can be played against each other.  Besides a Q episode or two, this never happens.  These were beings that uniformly had to be bested at the very end of the episode, and certainly never outsmarted.  In that sense, "Catspaw" has a good reason to watch.  But it's also somewhat completely ludicrous in concept, the very essence of why some fans will always say "Spock's Brain" or "Threshold" should be summarily dismissed (ask a Star Trek fan about those two).

"I, Mudd," meanwhile, does in fact have a lot to say about Harry Mudd, and while I gave it a generous recommendation, it eventually degenerates in full practice into a ludicrous display every bit the equal of if not worse than "Catspaw."  In order to defeat a civilization of artificial beings, Kirk persuades his crew to perform, essentially, experimental theater.  It becomes quite absurd.  In fact, anyone still looking for some reason to explain why the whole series had to fight an uphill battle to become a lasting phenomenon need look no further than "I, Mudd" for an explanation.  It's incredibly hard to take seriously.  And why did I, in that original recommendation?  Because I focused on the best element, which is Harry Mudd, another atypical element for the series that in that sense pushed it to something with a less limited appeal than was typical (i.e. Kirk and friends sit around bemused or in peril for an hour in general sci-fi mayhem), being a guy who stood his ground rather than backed down, being as much hero as villain (sort of, most of all in this appearance, anyway), having a killer mustache.

But on the whole, "Catspaw" is still as easy to dismiss as I originally did, and "I, Mudd" deserves less applause than I originally gave it.  Is there more to say about both than I did, and have?  Of course.  Tomorrow I might have more things to say about both of them, and really, no one will be interested.  People will either have seen what I've had to say and be interested, or they won't.  The point is, I've provided a point of reference.  What other people do with my thoughts is now in their hands, not mine.  And really, those people are just as likely to think something completely different than to agree with me.  That's another reason to write about an episode on the level of a recommendation rather than a review, because a recommendation is more capable of being objective than a review, which by definition is subjective, no matter how hard a critic might try to make it sound otherwise.  I personally tend to hate reviews, because most critics are painfully subjective, and they don't seem to realize or care.

So when I get to say an episode is generally terrible, it's easy to explain why, and when I get to explain how an episode that's generally regarded as terrible isn't, I get to talk about the things I like about it, that reflect well on the series, the franchise, storytelling in general...The thing is, when I say I like Star Trek, I'm recommending it as a storytelling vehicle, because I love good storytelling.  The best way to incur my wrath?  Fail at that.  Because at that point, I no longer see the point of the thing.

A to Z 2015 - Reflections

As some of you may have caught, I nearly didn't participate in A to Z this year because my mother died at the end of March.  In fact, the original material I did pursue at the start of the month was abandoned because I'm still trying to deal with her death, and sometimes it's a lot harder than other times.  Everyone dies.  But the awareness of death is a personal matter you can absolutely not estimate ahead of time.  She started dying, technically, in the fall of 2010, when she was first diagnosed with cancer, and there have been many rough patches along the way, including last April, which was the start of the traumatic end process...

I ended up switching topics to Star Trek, and that was hugely appropriate.  Even though she didn't become one of those die hard fans who typify interest in the franchise, my mother was one of its original viewers, and every time I popped in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, she'd cry when Spock dies.  (Except the last time.  But at that point, most of her was changing.  I clung and still do to the lasting remnants of who and what she had been throughout her life.)  In a very real sense, I owe my interest in Star Trek to her.

This being May the Fourth, however, I'm not going to continue talking about Star Trek, but rather switch topics once again.  Hey, why not?  Star Wars was a dominant feature of my childhood.  I grew up with four siblings, and Star Wars was one of the few things that united all of us.  We watched the original trilogy all the time.  It got to the point where my mother would literally fall asleep every single time we watched it, and we joked that she did see the whole thing, but only cumulatively speaking.  In hindsight it's probably clear that she was never quite as enthusiastic about Star Wars as we were.

But in her last year, my dad and I still got her to watch most of the movies all over again, and she was perfectly fine with that.  Star Wars had become a constant for her.

I've posted this video before, from How I Met Your Mother, how when Ted tries to understand how Stella has never seen Star Wars before, he and Marshall absolutely cannot understand it.  (For me, it's still baffling, and I absolutely mean it, that there was such a tremendous backlash to the prequels.  But people like what's spontaneous, a discovery.)  Here's the video again:

(It also baffles me that people hated How I Met Your Mother's ending.  But that's a topic for another day.)

Different people have different experiences.  This is sometimes extremely hard to appreciate, and very people are willing to admit this.  When we're forced to confront our differences, we also discover how different we really are.  But sometimes the differences are not as great as we think they are.

Taking part in A to Z for another year, no matter the circumstances and however much my experience was affected by those circumstances, or how little other people know Star Trek compared to me...this was actually the best experience I've had with it to date.  In past years I didn't really understand how it was supposed to work.  I don't mean in relation to others, but for me.  The moment I let go of my own expectations, I started to have fun.  I couldn't ask for better than that.

828. I love you, Robert Downey Jr., but...

In an interview he gave during the promotion for Avengers: Age of Ultron, Robert Downey Jr. brought up how he generally doesn't care for independent filmmaking.  Read about it here.

Now, I may be misconstruing the guy, but...really?  Indy filmmaking saved your career, buddy.  It was buzz from movies like 2003's The Singing Detective, 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and for me personally appearances in 2007's Lucky You and Charlie Bartlett where I began to like him at all.  This was all post-scandal/rehab/Robert-Downey-Jr.-is-dead-to-Hollywood! material.  I know he came up from the '80s, but I have never seen an '80s Robert Downey Jr. movie.  There are people now who probably aren't particularly aware that he's ever been known for anything but Iron Man.

And don't get me wrong: I'm absolutely glad that the guy had this remarkable comeback.  He's the best thing (aside from Tom Hiddleston and Samuel L. Jackson) about the Avengers movies, and easily the reason they became so big in the first place.  Tony Stark, in the hands of Robert Downey Jr., is absolutely the second coming of Jack Sparrow.  Because of Iron Man, he's gotten to make other successful films, too (Tropic Thunder, the Sherlock Holmes series, Due Date).

It just seems that he's started to let it go to his head.  It's natural.  Any sustained success, for anyone, usually leads to this.  It's the way to world works.  But it's also disappointing, because when you looked up the definition of "humble," just a few years ago, you would have seen this guy's face next to it.  He took it in stride, seemed completely grateful at this unlikely turn of events.  And I'm not saying he needed to feel grateful or that he should feel humble, but...seriously dude, some of your best movies were low-budget, little-seen flicks.  I don't know if he had miserable experiences making those movies, but for me it's hard to imagine Robert Downey Jr. without movies like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Charlie Bartlett in his credits.  I'd watch The Soloist a thousand times before caring about whether or not his latest movie was easy to make, had a huge budget, and made hundreds of millions.

Does this diminish his credibility?  Yeah.  That's what I'm saying.  Certainly you can't expect everyone to like the craft of what they do.  And this is a guy who has spent most of his life making movies.  But it also seems like he's saying, now, that it's only worth it if, yes, it's easy to make, has a big budget, and makes hundreds of millions of dollars.  Thereby diminishing a large portion of his legacy in roles other than those spent in tin suits.

But the thing is, it doesn't really matter what Robert Downey Jr. thinks.  It's his job to make movies.  What happens to those movies once he's made them is no longer in his hands.  (This begins to relate to a discussion that has unfolded elsewhere, but I won't get much more into that here.)  So maybe whatever he's saying in press statements now doesn't matter after all.  He's also had people chuckling recently because of how suavely he handled walking away from a different interview that wanted to touch on a different aspect of his past entirely.  Whatever.  Let's talk Iron Man!  And move on...

A to Z 2015: Star Trek Episodes "Zero Hour"

"Zero Hour"
Star Trek: Enterprise

Bam!  Remember Quantum Leap, in which a dude keeps leaping into other people's lives, and at the end of the episode, once he and/or they have learned whatever it is they were supposed to learn, he leaps once again (always trying to get home!)?

(It's just too bad that Quantum Leap is otherwise completely irrelevant to Enterprise.  Except for "Detained," which guest stars the great Dean Stockwell.)

What I'm getting around to here (eventually!) is how "Zero Hour" ends.  It dumps Captain Archer from the frying pan into the fire.  This is the end of the season-long Xindi arc.  He seems to have triumphed spectacularly, bravely, and given his life in the process.  But the episode continues!  He finds himself surrounded by Nazis.  Some of them being alien Nazis!

And really, that would have been a completely awesome model for the series, having season-long arcs, and at the very end, tossing everyone into another big adventure to be explored next season (James Bond will return in Card Sharks on a Plane!).

Except the series ended after one additional season, and that final season had a gazillion mini-arcs, none of which helped elucidate whatever happened to Porthos.  The Alien Nazis turned out to be part of the abrupt end to the Temporal Cold War arc, one of Enterprise's many controversial elements (Did Hoshi just swear in Klingon???).  I've struggled with "Storm Front" for years.  I think it's both extremely clever and somewhat grossly disappointing.  But sometimes I err on the side of extremely clever, for reasons that if I went into them now you would butcher me like electronic cattle.

(It's a thing.)

And yes, Tim got married to Zola, and Joe officiated at the wedding, which was held at sea, and they were all the time criticizing each other's taste in movies.  You see, Joe has this unfortunate predilection for professional wrestling, and in a meta twist he likes this particular movie fictional wrestler Terry Stevens starred in called The Last Stand (based, as it sounds, on General Custer's ridiculous mustache), and Tim did say he admired Joe's taste, and Zola did groan, and Ted did hold the blue french horn again, and Robin was the mother, but the replacement mother.  And the villagers rejoiced!

(Terry Stevens and The Last Stand "exist" insofar as I did not just make that up for the purposes of reminding everyone about something they were eager to forget about, so much so that they forgot about it before it even began.  And now the groans grow louder...)

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

A to Z 2015: Star Trek Episodes "Year of Hell"

"Year of Hell, Parts 1 and 2"
Star Trek: Voyager

Hey, you remember Battlestar Galactica, right?  Not the original version, which was more or less a blatant knockoff of Star Wars (this time with more Lorne Greene!), but the reboot, which was more or less a blatant knockoff of..."Year of Hell" (this time with more Edward James Olmos!).

Ha!  Just kidding.  But seriously, the early episodes of Battlestar Galactica (as opposed to the later episodes, which were much more about revealing secret Cylons [no one suspects the Cylon invasion!]) were all about humanity's desperate bid to survive against incredible odds, real grim and gritty presented with grim and grit (and sexy, sexy Cylons).  And genre fans loved it.  Battlestar Galactica was, in short, the latest in a long series of genre programming that was, basically, Not Star Trek.

By 1994, just when everyone thought Star Trek was going to finally become cool, Star Trek's own fans began turning on it.  In effect, Star Trek, which was already massively uncool to the general population, became uncool to its own fans.  These deserters started seeing how genre programming was being done by other people, and began to consider Star Trek outdated.  Does it matter that after Next Generation left the air, this left Deep Space Nine, which did make a conscious effort to switch things up?  Not at all, silly person asking questions to someone typing without the ability to hear you and thus must conjure your existence into being!  You see, Deep Space Nine was seen as a ripoff of Babylon 5.  Mostly because, y'know...they both...had...space stations.  And stuff.

Emphasis on "and stuff."

So when Voyager rolled around and pretended to change things up even further but really rebooted back to what Next Generation and the original series had been doing all along, the fans rolled their eyes further into their head, causing a massive migraine that did not dissipate until Star Trek Into Darkness.

Ha ha!

Basically, Voyager pulled an evil trick.  It pretended it was going to be all grim and gritty, but then, quite evilly, made Captain Janeway able to make peace with a bunch of Federation dissenters and make one big happy crew...stranded decades from home, a lifetime away at first estimate.  What to do, what to do???

"Year of Hell" was the two-part episode that had a look at what it would have been like for a true worst-case scenario to occur (unlike the episode "Worst Case Scenario," which merely had a look at what would have happened if those pesky Federation dissenters, the Maquis, had decided they hated Janeway's hairdo as much as everyone else).  Gradually, everything went wrong.  The ship fell to pieces.  The crew splintered.  Janeway ran out of coffee.  Tuvok went blind and thus could no longer...(never mind about that!).

Basically, substituting Seven for Number Six (imagine that!), "Year of Hell" is exactly what Battlestar Galactica would be (for a handful of episodes, as well as the perpetual grumpiness of Adama) years later.

We're right back at the start!  Yay!

A to Z 2015: Star Trek Episodes "The Xindi"

"The Xindi"
Star Trek: Enterprise

In the third season premiere of Enterprise, the Xindi arc officially kicks off.  Technically it began with the second season finale, "The Expanse," in which the horrific terrorist attack on Earth occurs and Archer is asked to undertake the dangerous mission to thwart, if possible, any follow-up.

At the time, I read a bad review of this episode because it seemed like Star Trek, instead of seizing the opportunity to do something bold and new (relatively speaking, for a season billed as one complete arc; although Deep Space Nine more or less featured the Dominion War throughout its final two seasons, there were many episodes therein that did not feature material related to the conflict) the show felt like it was going in a ho-hum direction as Archer and Trip negotiate with an alien who doesn't feel significant enough for such an important occasion.

(Yeah; by this point it was painfully clear that everyone was ready to give Star Trek a good, long rest, if there was going to be a grand revival at all.  Fortunately there turned out to be one.)

But here we are all the same, and by the time we get our first look at the Xindi, in the episode called "The Xindi," we do in fact dive directly in, meeting the ruling Council, all the key players including the scientist Degra, later to be heavily featured (especially in one of the season's best, "Stratagem").  And by the way, we see these guys first and last thing this episode, and at this point they're nowhere near interacting with Archer directly.  Which does happen to be a bold departure for Star Trek.

These are the five Xindi species: the Reptilians (lead villains), Insectoids (back-up villains), Arboreals (first of the sympathetic ones), Primates (Degra is one of these), and Aquatics (along with the Insectoids, one of two completely CGI species within the bunch).  There had been six species, but the Avians became extinct in the cataclysmic events that led to the attack on Earth...

The episode also features the debut of the MACOs (Military Assault Command Operation), who are a detachment of soldiers meant to support Archer's mission (presumably limiting the possibility of redshirt syndrome, although some MACO do in fact die during the season).  Among the actors playing these guys are Daniel Dae Kim (later to be featured on Lost) and Steven Culp (who at the time was making a career of being the MVP of recurring character actors, being featured in such capacity on The West Wing and, most significantly, JAG).

A to Z 2015: Star Trek Episodes "Wolf in the Fold"

"Wolf in the Fold"
Star Trek (the original series)

Much like "The Savage Curtain" was very nearly a Lincoln episode, "Wolf in the Fold" is pretty much a Jack the Ripper episode.

It's also a Scotty episode.  By the second season, the original series began making a more concerted effort to focus on the supporting characters who would become well-known as part of the core group of the series (early in the first season, Nurse Chapel and Yeoman Rand were arguably more important than any of them, but then receded as the series progressed, and their significance in the films reflects that).  This was of course Chekov's debut season, and he quickly stood out, even though he was an extremely odd choice for the reason his character was introduced at all.

(I mean, think about it: this mop-topped younger character was clearly meant to capitalize on the Beatles/Monkees...and yet Chekov wasn't British, he was Russian.  You may, ah, remember, remember something called the Cold War?  Which was still going on at the time?  I think Chekov was really a passive-aggressive compromise in a show where Kirk was supposed to be the heartthrob.  The producers want to introduce another one, but how to reconcile this competition with the series lead?  Give him the wildly popular hairstyle.  But yeah, make him Russian.  Huge bonus points for looking past the present, as with the inclusion of Uhura, surely a mark in the show's ethnic profile, but still...Another reason, I think, that Star Trek had such a hard time finding respect.  And you probably never even thought about that until now!)

Early in the second season they tried pushing Scotty as the would-be rescuer of damsels in distress, so he'd have something to do other than being a miracle-worker (isn't that enough???), so to then create an entire episode that casts him in the role of the quintessential threat against said damsels (hey, go back and read that parenthetical digression, on the off chance that you tend to ignore such things; although, catch-22, if you didn't read that one you won't be reading this one, now will you?) just goes to prove how little the producers tried to make sense of such efforts.

Which makes the fact that fans came to embrace Scotty, Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura to the levels they did, that there has been constant debate on how much of a jerk William Shatner is, strikes me as really quite startling.  Because other than their regular appearances, these guys were clearly never near as important as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Feel free to debate this.  (You will be wrong.)

A to Z 2015: Star Trek Episodes "Virtuoso"

"Virtuoso"
Star Trek: Voyager

Admittedly, The Doctor could get a little full of himself.  Most amusingly, this was demonstrated in "Author, Author" when the crew rewrote his holonovel Photons Be Free! to paint him in the worst light after the original version had everyone else look bad (the rest of the episode takes things more seriously, rest assured, but this is one of those instances where the old joke, "It hurts when I do this"/"Then stop doing it!" is once again hilarious).

"Virtuoso" is another such experience.  The nature of this medical emergency is an alien civilization that has never heard singing before.  The Doctor sings for them, they fall in love, he thinks it's a brilliant idea to leave Voyager behind and pursue this exciting new career, and of course he ends up proved absolutely wrong.

Not one of the best Doctor episodes, but certainly captures the character in a nutshell.

A to Z 2015: Star Trek Episodes "Unexpected"

"Unexpected"
Star Trek: Enterprise

A dude becomes pregnant.  Honestly, I think doing an episode like this so early in the series made it hard for some people to like Enterprise above and beyond any other reason you may have heard or had.

But the thing is, it's not just some random dude, it's "Trip" Tucker, and it's exactly this kind of experience that helped define him, ultimately, as one of the best characters in the whole Star Trek franchise.  Because of his accent, Trip was sometimes pegged as the McCoy stand-in, a country outsider looking in as the wonders of the universe came pouring in.  And yet, Trip was always more of a Kirk.  With a crucial difference.  Whereas Kirk routinely let experiences roll off his back (with a few exceptions, and probably an era that ended with Spock's death) and led the way with a smirk, Trip tended to stumble his way forward, undaunted but routinely inconvenienced.  He couldn't help but let things get to him.

The biggest impact on his life was when Trip's sister died at the start of the Xindi arc.  It ended up defining him for at least a season, trying to get over it.  Remember in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country when Kirk admits that Klingons weren't just his enemy by default anymore, but personally so after the murder of his son David?  Trip existed in this mode from the start.  He was Enterprise's emotional anchor.

So yeah, when the final episode ("These Are the Voyages...") comes around and spends most of its time exploring his impact, I tend to overlook things like how much time Riker and Troi got, because it's not a Riker and Troi episode, it's a Trip episode.  The final episode of the series, dedicated to Trip, not Captain Archer.  I think that says something right there.

A to Z 2015 - Star Trek Episodes "Through the Looking Glass"

"Through the Looking Glass"
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Remember "Mirror, Mirror," the episode from the original series where Kirk had a transporter accident and ended up in an alternate reality where Spock, however improbably, proves to be even more awesome with the simple addition of a goatee?

Well, Deep Space Nine returned to that alternate reality, repeatedly.  First it was with "Crossover," in which Bashir and Kira discover how badly things turned out for humans after Mirror Spock took Kirk's advice and tried to course-correct the Terran Empire.  Mirror Sisko, apparently, was something of a scoundrel.  And then he died.

"Through the Looking Glass" is the second in this series of episodes (to be followed by "Shattered Mirror," "Resurrection," and "The Emperor's New Cloak"), but as it turns out, it's a great deal more than that.

You see, whereas Mirror Sisko is now unavailable, there's another Sisko over there.  In the first episode of the series, we quickly learned Sisko's backstory, which involves the famous Battle of Wolf 359 (the Borg crisis as depicted in Next Generation's "The Best of Both Worlds") and how he loses his wife Jennifer, taking away from him his wife and from his son Jake, a mother.  Except now, Sisko is brought to the Mirror Universe (that's what it's commonly called) and meets Mirror Jennifer.

It's a startling moment.  Remember Next Generation's "Yesterday's Enterprise," in which we discover an alternate reality where Tasha Yar (a series regular from the first season) is very much still alive, which later leads to Sela, the Romulan daughter of Yar, and they're all played by the same actress (Denise Crosby)?  It's the kind of continuity that seems completely impossible, but is one of the neater things Star Trek has managed to accomplish over the years (the best example will always be Leonard Nimoy popping up in two J.J. Abrams movies).  Felecia M. Bell has far less pedigree than Denise Crosby or Leonard Nimoy, but she played Jennifer in the Deep Space Nine  pilot ("Emissary") and then returns for an expanded performance in "Looking Glass" (and then encore in "Shattered Glass").

The result is amazing.  Not so much for anything Bell herself does.  For Sisko, it's a part of the whole rebuilding process he'd been experiencing (this is one of the many examples of everything the third season did right by Sisko).

It's a defining moment for the series and arguably an unheralded one for the whole franchise.

A to Z 2015: Star Trek Episodes "The Savage Curtain"

"The Savage Curtain"
Star Trek (the original series)

If things had gone differently, "Savage Curtain" would be known for featuring Abraham Lincoln, and pretty much only that.  There's a lot of mileage to be had from Lincoln, and the original series had a habit of using every possible story template as a springboard for Kirk's adventures.

But things went as they did, and Lincoln was overshadowed by a couple of dudes named Surak and Kahless.

Who are those dudes, you ask (you Star Trek neophyte, you!)?  They were both founders of the way famous Star Trek alien civilizations tend to behave: Surak instituted Vulcan logic, Kahless laid the foundations of Klingon honor.  Kahless made an appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation ("Rightful Heir"), or at least his clone did, and his chosen weapon, the first bat'leth, was fought over in Deep Space Nine ("The Sword of Kahless").  Surak's teachings were reawakened in Enterprise ("The Forge"/"Awakening"/"Kir'Shara").

So "Savage Curtain" is known for introducing these fine dudes.

A to Z 2015: Star Trek Episodes "Rascals"

"Rascals"
Star Trek: The Next Generation

I swear I didn't select episodes based on how bad they made Next Generation look, but "Rascals" is easily one of the most ridiculous episodes of the whole franchise.  I mean, it makes "Spock's Brain" looks like "City on the Edge of Forever."

The basic premise has Picard, Guinan, Keiko O'Brien, and Ensign Ro de-aged to childhood because of a transporter accident.  Seriously.

This doesn't even account for the wildly disparate adult ages they represent, certainly Picard and Guinan.  (Maybe this doesn't matter given the premise.  But still.)  There's some mild amusement to the proceedings, including Riker pretending Kid Picard is his son when the inevitable additional crisis occurs (it only figures that the Ferengi are involved, I guess), but, I mean, seriously?

And, actually, this is also the final Next Generation episode I'll be writing about this month.  Early in the month I also included "The Dauphin," which was a decent Wesley Crusher episode from the second season.  Not as good as, say "The Game," but then, it had far less Ashley Judd in it.  I also featured "Genesis," which featured the far more awesome physical alteration of the crew being devolved into various ancestral states.  Fish Troi cannot be topped.  Except by Lemur Picard...

(Okay, okay.  Cake Troi obviously tops Fish Troi.  Bonus points if you can tell me about the episode in which Cake Troi appears.  And what kind of frosting she sports!)

A to Z 2015: Star Trek Episodes "The Quality of Life"

"The Quality of Life"
Star Trek: The Next Generation

In which the robot apocalypse begins with tools that become sentient.  Tools, folks, tools!  This is why comparing Data to a toaster in "The Measure of a Man" was actually chilling.  Chilling!  Do you know where your toaster is???  You've seen the meme involving cows and the surprising number of deaths they cause.  I'm just saying, know where your toaster is...

A to Z 2015 - Star Trek Episodes "Past Tense"

"Past Tense, Parts 1 and 2"
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Hey, so remember "The City on the Edge of Forever," the episode routinely listed as the best of the original and any other series in Star Trek lore?  Well, "Past Tense" is better.

Yeah.  I just said that.  "City on the Edge of Forever" is one of those experiences, and there are many, many such experiences in and out of Star Trek and throughout history, that maybe has been greatly exaggerated over time.  When you boil it down, the story is basically this: Kirk stumbles upon a gateway that can be used for time travel; McCoy, who has just accidentally overdosed on his own medication, uses this gateway to randomly screw up history; Kirk and Spock conveniently are sent by the gateway to the exact time and location they need to prevent McCoy from actually going through with it; the victim in all this is some woman who actually proves the lie in the Star Trek assumption that a perfect future, or idealism in general, is generally a good thing.  Kind of screwy, and I won't go much further into that.

So now that I have enraged all geeks everywhere, let me make my feeble defense of "Past Tense."

This is another time travel episode that deals with social issues, leaving members of the crew stranded in a situation where they end up living like bums (except for Dax, because she's pretty).  Except these particular bums are also about to make history, as long as one of them manages to live long enough.  Except he doesn't.  So Sisko has to make the difficult decision to replace the guy.  Which is a pretty risky move.

But it's perhaps Star Trek in a nutshell better and more nuanced than "City on the Edge of Forever."  There's very little artifice involved.  There's a crazy bum involved, too, and he's a lot of fun to watch, and he doesn't care too much about offending people.  (Call me crazy, but people who aren't afraid of offending people are so much easier to understand.  At least they're being honest.)

Plus it's just one of the many third season stories from Deep Space Nine that helped prove how awesome Sisko is.  Seriously, it's like the writers suddenly woke up and realized they had an infinite amount of ways to demonstrate how awesome he is, and they spent the whole season doing exactly that.  It's my favorite-ever season of Star Trek.  Late in it, he gets promoted to captain (finally!), but not before spending some quality father-son time solar sailing, which is another all-time favorite episode ("Explorers") of this or any other series.

"Past Tense" is one of those Star Trek stories that clearly evokes an earlier one, and is perhaps the better for it.  But I've angered enough geeks already.  I'll stop here.

A to Z 2015 - Star Trek Episodes "Oasis"

"Oasis"
Star Trek: Enterprise

Enterprise had a remarkable wealth of appearances from past series, not just from the usual pool of guest stars that had already made multiple appearances (I'm looking at you, Vaughn Armstrong and Jeffrey Combs), but a number of actors who had been series regulars.

"Oasis" features one such appearance.  The story itself was considered fairly derivative of past episodes, one of which featured the very actor who makes a return engagement for the occasion: Rene Auberjonois.

You may remember the name from the man behind the rubber mask of Odo from Deep Space Nine.  The holographic community his character has created for himself in "Oasis" is similar to an experience Odo had in Deep Space Nine's "Shadowplay."

Other past regulars who showed up in roles other than the ones they had previous played included Ethan Philips (who was Neelix in Voyager, now a Ferengi in "Acquisition") and Brent Spiner (who was Data in Next Generation, now an ancestor of the android's creator in a trilogy of episodes beginning with "Borderland").

***

And because I a big fan of a band named Oasis:

A to Z 2015 - Star Trek Episodes "Night Terrors"

"Night Terrors"
Star Trek: The Next Generation

Those who read me prattling on about Star Trek online might sometimes get the impression that I basically, unconditionally, like all of it.  This is not true.  There are episodes I find interminable.  "Night Terrors" is one of them.

"Where arrrrrre youuuuuuu?"

That's the extent of Troi's piercing investigation as she attempts to find out what happened to another Betazoid that's left him in a coma.  It's a repeated dream sequence that's utterly baffling as to how anyone at all thought they had good writing, good footage, and even in the case of the mostly blameless Marina Sirtis, good acting involved in any of it.

Hey, fans of Marina Sirtis, sometimes you nail bad material (it's possible) and sometimes you don't.  This one episode seems absolutely determined to bring the series back to the point in the first season where Riker is shouting over an immense precipice: "Aaaaanybodddddy???"

"Night Terrors," mind you, comes from the fourth season of Next Generation.  Fans generally agree that the series found its stride in a hurry at the commencement of its third season (the one that ended with "The Best of Both Worlds," or in other words when we all found out how awesome the Borg were), so to find an episode so poorly executed a season later just goes to prove, even when there's a good thing going there's always the chance that something will go horribly wrong.

It's a rare story featuring Troi in all her Betazoid significance.  It was far more common to leave all the Betazoid-ness to her mother, Lwaxana, who even in the seventh season and well into Deep Space Nine had plenty of interesting ways of displaying how horrifying (in a good way) Betazoids can be.

This is not to say "Night Terrors" suffers because of Troi, but that the writers let her down.  Significantly.  She was one of those aliens who were also half-human, like Spock, which was always an odd way to explore a species (or perhaps a reflection of how Americans like to view themselves, culturally blended and maybe not always that adjusted about it).  Because she was half-human, Troi's depiction of what a Betazoid is typically like was compromised.  She could only sense emotions, rather than exhibit full telepathic abilities like the rest of the family on her mother's side.

Granted, there's a better version of this same episode in the final season, "Eye of the Beholder."  But Troi would not truly be awesome until Star Trek: First Contact, in which she makes a hilarious drunk.  Go figure.  I think a writer who knew that in advance would have had a lot more interesting things to do with her.  I mean, it's not as if it was any big secret that she had mommy issues...

A to Z 2015 - Star Trek Episodes "Minefield"

"Minefield"
Star Trek: Enterprise

Being a prequel, Enterprise was expected to explore territory fans would have previously known about.  The era depicted in the series was best known, or perhaps only known, for the Romulan War, a conflict previously referenced in the original series episode "Balance of Terror," where it was established that until that point no human, much less Vulcan, had ever seen a Romulan.  Which would necessarily make any depiction of this period, involving Romulans, somewhat problematic.

Enterprise initially solved this dilemma in "Minefield," which does in fact feature the eponymous threat, a problem that becomes another spotlight of Malcolm Reed's penchant for pessimism when he becomes pinned by a mine to the hull of the ship.  Captain Archer does his best to reassure Reed, but it's a tough sell.

In the first season, there's an even more vivid example of Reed's tendencies as he and Trip are left stranded in space.  "Shuttlepod One" was considered one of Enterprise's early highlights.  It should be noted that Reed wasn't alone in his apprehensions.  Hoshi Sato was similarly skittish.  Everyone's nerves were tested to the extreme in the third season, naturally, as they embarked on a mission to prevent the Xindi from destroying Earth.  Trip tended to take most of these experiences in stride.  He was also one of the few human males to end up pregnant ("Unexpected"), although even he, or his clone, was reluctant to follow Archer's wishes in "Similitude."  ("This is a screwed-up situation," are his exact words.)

In the fourth season, Enterprise revisited the Romulans in a three-part episode ("Babel One," "United," and "The Aenar") that demonstrates both military and infiltration tactics as part of their activities during this period.  There had been speculation that the fifth season, which never happened, would have involved events more closely related to the Romulan War itself, and there was a movie trilogy developed, unrelated to Enterprise, that would have done the same.  The 2009 movie that was released did involve Romulans, but this is likely a coincidence, much as the fact that the last Star Trek movie before it, Nemesis, featured them too.