Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: The Chute

VOY "The Chute"

"It's all here in my manifesto!" - Zio

Our first stop aboard the good ship Voyager is an almost subversively unusual one: a parade of unpleasantness in the form of a grimy prison drama with an SF twist. Harry Kim and Tom Paris are unjustly convicted of a terrorist bombing and left to rot in a hellish prison, where the only point of interest is a central chute that deposits new prisoners and occasional food shipments. There are two SF elements: an implant in the brain of all prisoners called the Clamp that stokes aggression and paranoia, and the twist of the episode, that the prison that is understood to be underground is in fact a space station.

While it almost goes without saying that "The Chute" should be no one's idea of comfort Trek, there is something admirable in what it's trying to do. So often in SF TV, the characters will get imprisoned and of course always escape. Here, the episode chooses to present such a situation as unvarnished as it can, depicting an atmosphere of nihilistic claustrophobia. The stakes are further raised with the Clamp, a device (literal device and plot device) that genuinely starts to drive Harry and Tom crazy, and to turn them against each other. They swing from desperate solidarity with homoerotic undertones to being victimized by the Clamp into instinctive fear and paranoia.

The only prisoner in a seeming state of equilibrium with the Clamp is Zio, played effectively by guest star Don McManus. In a standout sequence, Zio monologues with deranged but calm conviction about his "manifesto", essentially a self-help text to cope with the Clamp. As he finishes his speech, the chute forms a makeshift halo over the head of this prison philosopher. Audacious.

From time to time, the action cuts back to Captain Kathryn Janeway and the Voyager crew figuring out how to get Harry and Tom out of prison. Really, every time we see Voyager it's just a relief to break up the bleak prison scenes.

Disorienting and non-sugarcoated, but at the same time unpleasant viewing. 6/10.

Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Charlie X

ST "Charlie X"

"Charlie X" was the second Star Trek episode ever to air (though the eighth produced), and it is an early example of a familiar type of Trek story: the godlike being episode. The titular Charlie is an outwardly average teenage human, but who mysteriously survived on a desolate planet for years - to dispel the mystery, the near-omnipotent powers given to him by the local non-corporeal life-forms helped. So the hook of the episode is, what if a raging hormonal teenager, and one who grew up in near-isolation at that, had great power?

The potential of the premise is undermined by Charlie himself. There's nothing appealing about his (intentionally) awkward screen presence; he has no particular redeeming qualities as a person or as a villain worth watching. Charlie's mood swings over an unrequited first crush prove to be uncomfortable to watch. In one typically cliched moment, he makes a female crew member rapidly age, so she can scream for her lost youth. (And in one atypically horrifying moment, he relieves a crew member of her face.) The ending is tonally confused; it's unclear whether it's going for relief, tragedy, or horror.

What does distinguish "Charlie X" is that it's essentially a hang-out episode. Everyone's shown during leisure time. With Spock backing on his Vulcan lyre, Uhura sings of his "devil ears and devil eyes". This irreverent, impromptu musical revue feels like something that would go on a solo Nichelle Nichols tie-in novelty album. Characters are seen to play three-dimensional chess and solitaire, practice martial arts, and generally socialize.

Stray observations:
- This is early in the series, so it's not Starfleet but UESPA, the United Earth Space Probe Agency.
- The show predicts synthetic meat.
- The finale, where a mischievous godlike being is called home by his "parents", will be repeated in "The Squire of Gothos". Here, the Thasian who takes Charlie looks like something out of The Haunted Mansion.
- The Thasian also declaims in a deep voice, "Everything is as it was". The Guardian of Forever will later say the same thing in the same tone of voice in "The City on the Edge of Forever".

An episode called "Charlie X" would do well to portray a more compelling Charlie X. 3/10.

Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Light and Shadows

DIS "Light and Shadows"

"We're always in a fight for the future." - Captain Christopher Pike

The Randomizer brings me to Discovery for the first time, and against all odds, the first appearance of Spock in this rewatch comes when the half-human, half-Vulcan icon is played by Ethan Peck. This episode's setup, and indeed that of the first half of the season, is another Search for Spock. Foster sister and series lead Michael Burnham finally finds him in this episode, as an addled Spock is fought over by his parents, Starfleet, and Section 31. This half of the installment isn't as compelling to me as the other half, which is one of those science-heavy SF scenarios that Discovery is accustomed to churning out at this point.

It revolves around a massive time distortion field generated by multiple time rifts, and as Ensign Sylvia Tilly points out, it's cool to put "time" in front of most anything. What differentiates Discovery technobabble from, say, Voyager technobabble is that in the more contemporary show, the problem-solving feels, well, more contemporary. Characters tend to discuss brain-expanding crises like a modern think tank would, with an emphasis on slightly more relatable concepts and soundbites. As Paul Stamets says, "Trust the math".

This story involves Captain Pike (played with easygoing authority and quiet charisma by Anson Mount) and Section 31 Specialist Ash Tyler piloting a shuttle into the temporal anomaly. The probe Discovery had sent in has uncannily technologically evolved for 500 years, now a timorous beastie resembling a mix between those squid robots from The Matrix and a Doctor Octopus product. This is a breezily trippy SF concept that the episode efficiently gets some thrills from, and on a micro level it also recalls the V'Ger space probe's evolution in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Shifting gears back to the Burnham/Spock story, it tends to inelegantly lurch around in this episode. There's a whole to-do about getting Spock to Section 31 custody only for Burnham to break him out a few minutes later. It's very busy storytelling, and quite opaque on top of that. On the plus side, it leads to a fun fight out of nowhere between Burnham and Mirror Georgiou.

And then Burnham deciphers the meaning of the numbers the raving Spock has been repeating: coordinates for Talos 4. This is a bit of a punch-the-air moment for big Star Trek fans, as that's the planet from the first Trek episode ever made, "The Cage". It represents where it all began.

Stray observations:
- The time distortion field is described as a four-dimensional problem, and we just came from a two-dimensional problem last time on the Randomizer, in TNG's "The Loss".
- At one point we see an exterior view of the turbolift system on Discovery. It's like seeing the superstructure of an indoor roller coaster.

A solid Discovery plot is paired with a Burnham/Spock story I'm not a huge fan of in this particular installment. I would rate the former a 7 and the latter a 5 so let's average out at 6/10.

Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: The Loss

TNG "The Loss"

Back to TNG, and we skip ahead three seasons. The difference between where the show is in "The Loss" and where it was in the pilot is clear. The show has calmed down. The aesthetic is more locked down and frankly more beige. In a way, the tone has traded campiness for dignity. These changes are what secured the show's success, but the evidence of only "The Loss" is that of a show on autopilot. Come up with a technical threat, and tie it in with character stuff for one of the regulars (Deanna Troi in this case), and spend as little money as possible.

The technical threat is a pretty esoteric SF concept: two-dimensional sentient beings unwittingly trapping the Enterprise in their wake. And as the Enterprise reckons with an almost literal abstraction, a cosmic anomaly robs Deanna of her empathic abilities. At one point, the parallel between plots is made explicit: Deanna fears that without her powers, she feels as two-dimensional as the new life-forms.

I said earlier that the tone of TNG on display here is that of restraint. Still, Deanna is having a total emotional meltdown over losing her abilities, snapping particularly at Beverly Crusher. The drama of the episode comes from Deanna trying and very much failing to adjust to life without sensing emotions, with the teleplay making a connection between her situation and disability. (Of course, by episode's end, she gets the powers back.)

At one point Deanna resigns as Counselor. This leads to some halfway-there character material. For instance, it's sage bartender Guinan who finally gets Deanna to see that she can still read emotions in others like non-empaths do, which is exactly the logical thing to show Deanna. But the teleplay characterizes that phenomenon as a "human instinct". While there's truth to that, it seems to me that for a trained, elite psychiatrist, there's much more to it than only "instinct". What about picking up on social cues? Micro-expressions? Tone of voice? Reading between the lines of what patients say? And most of all, regular human empathy? What did Deanna learn at the Academy if she's lost without her Betazoid abilities?

The cosmic side of the episode is weighed down by technobabble, which will likely prove a common theme in a lot of TV Trek coming up on the Randomizer. "The Loss" feels like the result of a cheap "Build a TNG episode" kit, given a bottle show budget. 3/10.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Old Friends Not Forgotten Review

We open on a familiar green Lucasfilm Ltd. logo, which transitions into a burst of even more familiar John Williams fanfare as The Clone Wars logo zooms away against a starfield. Just like The Clone Wars all began, with a few episodes pinned together for feature length, its last four-episode arc is being framed as another movie.

And that statement of intent is matched by the show itself. Everything feels bigger, from the hero moments to the emotions to Kevin Kiner's music. Seeing Obi-Wan Kenobi, the 501st legion, and Ahsoka Tano each get their big action moments, the cumulative effect is that this feels like a victory lap for the show.

After some classic clones on droids action, the episode brings wayward Jedi Ahsoka briefly back into the lives of her beloved older brother figure Anakin and uncle figure Obi-Wan. Old nemesis Maul is on Mandalore, and Ahsoka and her Mandalorian ally Bo-Katan Kryze request help from the Republic to end his reign of terror. The emotional centerpiece of the episode is the scene where Ahsoka sees that Rex and his 501st have colored their helmets in tribute to her, their former commander. The irony  is clear: the noble clones choose to poignantly honor their Jedi sister-in-arms, when most of them will painfully soon have their free will taken away by Order 66 and be forced to kill their Jedi colleagues.

I mentioned before that Ahsoka gets a big hero moment, and it's a tribute to Jedi idealism. She ignites her lightsabers and rampages through Shadow Collective Mandalorians, but only incapacitating them and tending to target their jetpacks. To quote Snoke, she "has the spirit of a true Jedi".

Canon Connections:
- A couple Star Wars Rebels tie-ins: in the newsreel segment, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance from Caleb Dume, the future Kanan Jarrus, with his master Depa Billaba. And Ursa Wren, mother of Sabine, helps to defend Mandalore.
- Obi-Wan heroically saves the life of his friend Commander Cody, who during Order 66 will try to kill Obi-Wan.
- Kiner pulls out the Star Wars theme, the Rebel fanfare, and the Force theme to great effect.

A compelling and cinematically-scaled episode that begins to draw the curtain on this show. 9/10.

Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Horizon

ENT "Horizon"

The Randomized Rewatch spits out its first Enterprise episode! Not my favorite Trek series, and a rare Travis Mayweather-focused episode at that, exploring the backstory of one of Star Trek's blandest regular characters. So call me pleasantly surprised when I report that "Horizon" is a pretty lovely little episode.

The episode gets off to an underwhelming start. One of my pet peeves in TV is the lame duck teaser, or the teaser that gives the viewer nothing to work with, no special motivation to come back after the opening titles. "Horizon"'s teaser features Travis getting a call to come to the Bridge because Admiral Forrest just called. That's it.

Riveting stuff.

My theory is that at this point in Trek history, the mandate was to make the teasers as short as possible. But that's no excuse.

Anyways, this episode sees Travis reunite with his mother and brother, and reckon with the sad news of his father's death. The whole family are space freighters, in contrast to the infinitely more resourceful Starfleet. This actually brings up something like class issues, but that's not a main focus of the episode.

There's a touching scene where Captain Archer consoles Travis on his father's passing, and it's nicely and sensitively done, with a warm score from Mark McKenzie. Same goes for Trip's notably thoughtful gesture of giving Travis pictures Trip's taken of him over the past two seasons to show Travis' mom. See, I'm used to Enterprise characters behaving like incompetent reprobates, so this is all a nice change of pace.

Continuing with that theme, there's also a pretty delightful subplot where Trip programs a film festival of Frankenstein movies, consisting of the 1931 original, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. (I've seen all four of those movies.) T'Pol's bemused reaction followed by her insightful reading of Frankenstein's themes reflects well on her.

The main jeopardy of the episode comes from Travis' family's ship being attacked by space pirates, but there's also an Enterprise-bound subplot where they observe a planet that's been superheated by an unusual orbit and thus seeing widespread volcanic activity. This is little more than a footnote in the episode, so I won't get into the fascinating history of volcanic Prime Directive scenarios in Star Trek. I'll save that for if the Randomizer lands on the TNG episode "Pen Pals".

Speaking of TNG, which the Randomizer last sent me to, "Horizon" gets real cute talking forward to that show. Travis wonders aloud if future Starfleet ships will carry families onboard, and Malcolm jokes that if that's the case, they'll also need a psychiatrist aboard.

A warm-hearted outing that's part of the way to a hang-out episode. 7/10.

Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Encounter at Farpoint

TNG "Encounter at Farpoint"

After a ten-year cryosleep, this blog has awakened. The first order of business? Dipping a toe into a randomized rewatch of Star Trek on TV. "Dipping a toe" is the operative phrase, because this is not meant to hit every episode of every series; it's just a fun mechanism to get a sampling of Trek on telly. The totally scientific method a random episode is arrived at? Hitting Random Page on the Star Trek wiki, Memory Alpha, until running into an episode link. And while it might've been more befitting for the first entry returned to be something obscure, the fates dealt a heavy hitter: "Encounter at Farpoint", the pilot of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the 1987 return of Star Trek to the small screen after nearly twenty years away.

It's funny to see a TNG episode infused with the colorful energy of the original series. Specifically, zonked out concepts involving super-advanced life forms and a fair amount of histrionic acting. On the advanced life form side, John de Lancie ably struts around and chews the scenery as Q, and the space jellyfish evoke a sense of wonder. And on the histrionic acting side, guest star Michael Bell as the wonderfully titled Groppler Zorn gives a very big, constantly exasperated performance that's kind of fun to watch. Not to be outdone, series regular Denise Crosby delivers an epic rant evangelizing the Federation. As Deanna Troi, Marina Sirtis is given empathic dialogue that relies exclusively on repetition. To paraphrase, "Pain... Great pain. Joy... Such joy."

Jean-Luc Picard himself has a mixed showcase here. He does have moments of eloquent gravitas and endearment. But he also has a stiff and awkward rapport with Riker (everything is noticeably more militaristic than it would be later in the show), and let it not be forgotten that he takes command of the Enterprise, and during the first incident on his first day surrenders the ship.

Other character notes: William Riker is amused by everything around him. At this point, the Klingon Worf is there to casually represent how yesterday's enemy can be tomorrow's friend, but he has no clear function on the bridge. He's basically a functionary, and indeed in this episode he sits in both Geordi and Data's seats as ship operations demand it. Leonard McCoy's cameo is pretty great, very touching for a fan.

Director Corey Allen's most impressive touches come in the mock-trial scenes, particularly the dynamic way he films Q's crane-operated judge's chair. But certain story elements need a second draft. Particularly when Picard leaves the bridge to have a personal conversation with Beverly Crusher, at a crucial point in the story when Doctor Crusher was just preparing to beam planetside to tend to wounded people who are presently BEING SHELLED.

A baggy pilot with mixed results, caught between charm and mediocrity. 6/10.