For a few Treks more...
May. 31st, 2009 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAll this Star Trek rewatching has made me even more eager for June, because that's when we'll get the Multiverse stories posted each day. (Hopefully.) My own involves two other space shows, but I had a blast writing it. Aaaanyway, on to more TNG chatting. Which involves comedies, TNG at its most brazenly pacifist and on the other end of the scale the spying hour that introduces the Tal Shiar to the STverse.
Season 3 had two Q episodes; the dark Q-Who? that introduced the Borg, and Deja Q which is on the other end of the scale, one of the most popular comedy episodes which also probably spawned more Q-related fanfic than any other. If Q-Who? was Q at his most dangerous (dumping the Enterprise into Borg space just because Picard said no to him), Deja Q follows this up with Q at his most helpless, stripped of his powers, with pissed-off enemies in hot pursuit and reduced to begging for help. Well. In his Q fashion. The script by Richard Anus sparkles with razor sharp dialogue and doesn't make the mistake of only giving Q the good lines. Point in case:
Q: What do I have to do to convince you people? (That he's truly powerless and mortal.)
Worf: Die.
I think what makes a good comedy episode for me as opposed to a bad one is if I feel the characters would really act this way, that it's ic, not something the story forces them to do so it makes for a gag. The episode here gets mileage out of nobody believing Q initially, which makes complete sense based on what they know of his game-playing obsession and sense of humour; of Q's inability to cope with everyday things like hunger or sleep, not to mention the circumstance of not being the center of everyone's attention if he's in the room somewhere, which works given his personality and the whole all powerful being suddenly turned mortal premise; but it doesn't overdo it to the point of unbelievability. Picard might be assuming this is another twisted game at first, but he's keeping an open enough mind to consider Q might be telling the truth, trying to act keeping both possibilities in mind. Q might be lousy at being human, but he's not stupid, nor suddenly suffering amnesia, and the fact he can identify reasons for the problem of the week because of what he knows about the cosmos is a plot point. And when he meets Guinan again, the episode does not sell short the depth of the hositility it has established in the previous Q-Who, nor does it go for a cheap laugh. This is arguably the only time we see Guinan be genuinenly cold and downright vicious to someone. (One of the reasons whyalara_r's backstory for Guinan and Q, The Dance of the Chameleon and the Mirror, is one of my favourite ST fanfics around, because you get the sense of it working backwards from this scene and comes up with a backstory that will make you see it with yet another layer.) And lastly, Q's sort-of-selfless act that gets his powers restored is prepared within the story; and played as really hailing from various motives, the interaction with Data being but one of them, another being a genuine wish not to see Picard & Co. killed, but also an equally genuine loathing for the mortal state.
Darmok is the type of episode which makes cynical watchers get out their Duel or Orbit tapes in protest, the type of episode that made the SFX reviewer whose article on STXI I had the misfortune to read sneer that the ST franchise clearly needed Kirkian tetosterone back instead of all the waffling, frowning types in the Captain's chair after him, the kind of episode that makes a kind of genre fan go "damm hippies". TNG at its most unabashed optimistic, geeky and, if you like, preaching. And you know, much as I like my edgy sci fi most of the time, sometimes I need this. Like now. What happens in Darmok is that the problem of the week hails from linguistics; the aliens of the week communicate in a way that baffles the Universal Translator (which can translate the words in a literal way but makes no sense out of them). This could alll too easily lead to misunderstandings, hostilities and wars. Which is where the Captain of the other ship (played by Paul Winfield) has himself and Picard transported to the surface of the next planet, with his ship stopping the Enterprise crew from retrieving the two but otherwise not interfering. At first the audience assumes the same thing the Enterprise crew and Picard initially do, that this is some kind of challenge a la Kirk & the Gorn, though Picard refuses to fight. As it turns out, it's something else altogether, and both Picard on the surface and Troi and Data on the Enterprise figure out that the aliens communicate via metaphors (which is a problem if you're not familiar with the stories they draw their imagery from); the alien Captain risked and ultimately sacrificed his life to recreate one particular metaphor in order to achieve a communication breakthrough. There are two brief token action scenes (when a life form on the surface attacks the captain and Picard), but mostly the episode is all talk. Myths and linguistics. As I said, this is a love-or-hate it episode. If you hate it, you're bored. If you love it, you can quote the alien metaphors with the best of them. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra (shared danger, a communication breakthrough). Temba, his arms wide open (giving). Shaka, when the walls fell (misfortune). "We can stop wars if we can only learn to understand each other" is as blatant a message as it gets. (Along with the submessage that storytelling rocks; once Picard has deduced what the alien uses as the basis for his language, he responds with the myth of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.) Crucial to the episode's success with me is that the whole thing isn't presented as a case of "humans teach aliens how to be peaceful"; it's the alien captain who teaches, and who sacrifices himself for the communication breakthrough, and the human captain, Picard, who learns.
And you want to know the latest cool trivia about this episode? Orci & Kurtzman, the scriptwriters for ST XI, used the Darmok type of communication ("because TNG covers all life situations", quoth Orci) to explain their boss, JJ Abrams, to Trekkers: "Riker," they said, "Riker in Matters of Honor." Upon which I went: Guinan, in Rascals. Dax, in Trials and Tribble-ations! Quark, his latinum returned.
Speaking of Rascals. A season 6 episode and one I wouldn't recommend to TNG newbies. The charm depends on being familiar with the characters for a good long while, as this episode uses a premise beloved by many a crack fic, i.e. change some of the characters into children. Also, the use of the Ferengi is still utterly cringe-worthy and breaks the rule mentioned above, i.e. defying character belief. (I mean: so the Borg didn't manage to commandeer the Enterprise but a bunch of Ferengi pirates can...? Right.) On the other hand, the central gimmick with the kids is really pulled off with style. Also, the opening scene makes me feel stronger and stronger in my emerging theory that Jean-Luc Picard was one of the inspirations for Jed Bartlet. Does this sound familiar to you for an opening scene: several staff members are subjected to their valiant leader happily geeking out about some intellectual trivia, rolling their eyes in exasparated-but-fond fashion. Dialogue like this happens:
Picard: ..did you know that the source of the ruins of blah blah blah...
Guinan: *intervening in everyone's behalf* Captain, we've had four days of shore leave. All of which you spent in a cave.
Picard: *looking very happy about that, oblivious to her intention and pointing to the pottery shards he brought along* Guinan, these are seven hundred years old.
Guinan: So is my father.
Of the four child actors, I'd say the girl who plays young Guinan after the transporter accident does the greatest job, because it's really eerie how completely she doesn't imitate Whoopi Goldberg's performance but embodies Guinan. The boy who plays Picard - same kid who played his nephew Rene some seasons earlier - does a great job with Patrick Stewart's mannerism, too. The other two - young Ro and young Keiko O'Brien respectively - have far less material to go on, and aren't bad but not as impressive. Though young Keiko manages to say an exasperated "Miles!" in a tone which really is totally put-on wife. Incidentally, going from s3 and 4 eps to s6 eps makes me realize how O'Brien went from bit character who just had a line or two per episode as the transporter chief to someone who gets his own relationship scenes; his transfer to main regular on DS9 was imminent. Everyone's reactions to the kid-state are in character, too; Guinan (who hasn't been that young for centuries) sees it as a great chance to enjoy herself, Ro sees it as embarassing at first, and it reminds her of her miserable childhood, Keiko finds it awkward given the whole Molly and Miles situation, and Picard does his best to maintain his dignity but sees the inherent ridiculousness and isn't immune to the fact that, as Troi points out, if there is no way the situation could be reversed, he could fill the remaining teenage years until he qualifies for a Starfleet career again by pursuing the path not taken. (To wit, become an archaelogist.) All in all a fun episode, but not a must if you want to convert someone to TNG.
A Fistful of Datas, written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe (another future DS9 stalwart), is an example of one of those things everyone recalls vaguely about TNG - Brent Spiner in multiple roles. It's a holodeck episode, and like all holodeck (or in DS9's case holosuite) episodes derives its fun from playing with a genre well known to the viewer - in this case the Western - and putting the regular characters in roles within that genre. You can tell Wolfe enjoys himself with a Western the way he'll later enjoy himself with the Bond formula on DS9; as with Our Man Bashir, where there is no single Bond movie but the Bond formula in general that gets parodied/used, here we don't have one particular Western but the entire genre (with both traditional American and Sergio Leone style spaghetti Westerns used) spoofed/played with. Worf, rather obviously, gets to be the Sheriff (with son Alexander as his deputy); Troi gets to stretch her legs atypically as The Stranger With No Name (aka the Clint Eastwood type); and due to the holo accident of the week, Data is used as the template for more and more of everyone else, with Brent Spiner enjoying himself as craven no-good-son Eli Hollaender as much as tough-old-bastard Frank Hollander. Main holo plot aside, this episode is a neat example that by the time TNG has come into its sixth season, continuity was no longer something new but something expected. (The episode starts with Picard playing the flute he has aquired in The Inner Light, we get another quotation from Data's Ode to Spot and the cat herself, and Troi-counsels-Worf-and-Alexander is of course an ongoing later season red thread.) A good episode to relax with (and to judge everyone's Western accents on).
Face of the Enemy, on the other hand, is tense drama and in more than one way establishes templates later used on DS9. Let's start with the most obvious: back when the DS9 episode Second Skin was first broadcast, it was accused of being a blatant TNG rip-off because of the similar premise. (Kira wakes up finding herself looking like a Cardassian; Troi wakes up finding herself looking like a Romulan.) Actually, I don't think the episodes are that similar as far as the role of the main character is concerned - Deanna always knowns who she is, and she has no previous type of relationship with Romulans, whereas Cardassians are of course who Kira has been fighting against most of her life, and for half the episode she and the audience are challenged to wonder whether or not she really is one. But Face of the Enemy still is something later DS9 draws on; for starters, it introduces the Romulan secret service, the Tal Shiar. Secondly, an important plot element is the rivarly and distrust between military and secret service, which is something DS9 eps will use again and again, only with the Cardassians instead of the Romulans. Thirdly, the premise of putting a Starfleet officer in a morally ambiguous situation, courtesy of a professional spy, where she/he finds herself challenged to behave ruthlessly and do shady things while simultanously trying to also do the right thing - well, hello there, Dr. Bashir. Yes, this was in many ways a template.
It's also a tightly written spy story, wasting no time (it starts with Troi waking up, and immediately thrown into her undercover situation while having to figure out what the hell is going on when her only contact is being cryptic); with good guest characters - most of all Carolyn Semour as another fabulous female Romulan Commander (seriously, you can't go wrong with female Romulan Commanders on a Star Trek show), but also Navek (Troi's contact) and the Federation Ensign who deserted to the Romulans decades ago and now returns. Past established continuity is well used (i.e. Spock's dissident movement on Romulus, and Picard recognizing the returned deserter says the truth when he uses the phrase "cowboy diplomacy" which is the one Picard used towards Spock), and it's easy to see why Marina Sirtis says this was her favourite episode. Deanna Troi sometimes gets caricatured as having contributed nothing to TNG but to state "I sense..." and then say the glaringly obvious, and there are episodes like that, but it's hardly everything about her, and as opposed to certain other female telepaths in sci fi, she only got saddled with one "gets possessed by evil entity" story that I can recall. Still, the Troi-centric episodes usually tended to be focused on emotional dilemmas (for example, Losses, where she temporarily loses her psychic abilities and doesn't deal too well with that), whereas here she gets a spy thriller for an outing. And note: one that has her squaring off against another (sympathetic) female character, the Romulan Commander, without ever letting the two compete sexually or behave stupidly, and it's an episode directed by a woman, Gabrielle Beaumont. One happy day for the Bechdel test all around.
Season 3 had two Q episodes; the dark Q-Who? that introduced the Borg, and Deja Q which is on the other end of the scale, one of the most popular comedy episodes which also probably spawned more Q-related fanfic than any other. If Q-Who? was Q at his most dangerous (dumping the Enterprise into Borg space just because Picard said no to him), Deja Q follows this up with Q at his most helpless, stripped of his powers, with pissed-off enemies in hot pursuit and reduced to begging for help. Well. In his Q fashion. The script by Richard Anus sparkles with razor sharp dialogue and doesn't make the mistake of only giving Q the good lines. Point in case:
Q: What do I have to do to convince you people? (That he's truly powerless and mortal.)
Worf: Die.
I think what makes a good comedy episode for me as opposed to a bad one is if I feel the characters would really act this way, that it's ic, not something the story forces them to do so it makes for a gag. The episode here gets mileage out of nobody believing Q initially, which makes complete sense based on what they know of his game-playing obsession and sense of humour; of Q's inability to cope with everyday things like hunger or sleep, not to mention the circumstance of not being the center of everyone's attention if he's in the room somewhere, which works given his personality and the whole all powerful being suddenly turned mortal premise; but it doesn't overdo it to the point of unbelievability. Picard might be assuming this is another twisted game at first, but he's keeping an open enough mind to consider Q might be telling the truth, trying to act keeping both possibilities in mind. Q might be lousy at being human, but he's not stupid, nor suddenly suffering amnesia, and the fact he can identify reasons for the problem of the week because of what he knows about the cosmos is a plot point. And when he meets Guinan again, the episode does not sell short the depth of the hositility it has established in the previous Q-Who, nor does it go for a cheap laugh. This is arguably the only time we see Guinan be genuinenly cold and downright vicious to someone. (One of the reasons why
alara_r's backstory for Guinan and Q, The Dance of the Chameleon and the Mirror, is one of my favourite ST fanfics around, because you get the sense of it working backwards from this scene and comes up with a backstory that will make you see it with yet another layer.) And lastly, Q's sort-of-selfless act that gets his powers restored is prepared within the story; and played as really hailing from various motives, the interaction with Data being but one of them, another being a genuine wish not to see Picard & Co. killed, but also an equally genuine loathing for the mortal state. Darmok is the type of episode which makes cynical watchers get out their Duel or Orbit tapes in protest, the type of episode that made the SFX reviewer whose article on STXI I had the misfortune to read sneer that the ST franchise clearly needed Kirkian tetosterone back instead of all the waffling, frowning types in the Captain's chair after him, the kind of episode that makes a kind of genre fan go "damm hippies". TNG at its most unabashed optimistic, geeky and, if you like, preaching. And you know, much as I like my edgy sci fi most of the time, sometimes I need this. Like now. What happens in Darmok is that the problem of the week hails from linguistics; the aliens of the week communicate in a way that baffles the Universal Translator (which can translate the words in a literal way but makes no sense out of them). This could alll too easily lead to misunderstandings, hostilities and wars. Which is where the Captain of the other ship (played by Paul Winfield) has himself and Picard transported to the surface of the next planet, with his ship stopping the Enterprise crew from retrieving the two but otherwise not interfering. At first the audience assumes the same thing the Enterprise crew and Picard initially do, that this is some kind of challenge a la Kirk & the Gorn, though Picard refuses to fight. As it turns out, it's something else altogether, and both Picard on the surface and Troi and Data on the Enterprise figure out that the aliens communicate via metaphors (which is a problem if you're not familiar with the stories they draw their imagery from); the alien Captain risked and ultimately sacrificed his life to recreate one particular metaphor in order to achieve a communication breakthrough. There are two brief token action scenes (when a life form on the surface attacks the captain and Picard), but mostly the episode is all talk. Myths and linguistics. As I said, this is a love-or-hate it episode. If you hate it, you're bored. If you love it, you can quote the alien metaphors with the best of them. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra (shared danger, a communication breakthrough). Temba, his arms wide open (giving). Shaka, when the walls fell (misfortune). "We can stop wars if we can only learn to understand each other" is as blatant a message as it gets. (Along with the submessage that storytelling rocks; once Picard has deduced what the alien uses as the basis for his language, he responds with the myth of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.) Crucial to the episode's success with me is that the whole thing isn't presented as a case of "humans teach aliens how to be peaceful"; it's the alien captain who teaches, and who sacrifices himself for the communication breakthrough, and the human captain, Picard, who learns.
And you want to know the latest cool trivia about this episode? Orci & Kurtzman, the scriptwriters for ST XI, used the Darmok type of communication ("because TNG covers all life situations", quoth Orci) to explain their boss, JJ Abrams, to Trekkers: "Riker," they said, "Riker in Matters of Honor." Upon which I went: Guinan, in Rascals. Dax, in Trials and Tribble-ations! Quark, his latinum returned.
Speaking of Rascals. A season 6 episode and one I wouldn't recommend to TNG newbies. The charm depends on being familiar with the characters for a good long while, as this episode uses a premise beloved by many a crack fic, i.e. change some of the characters into children. Also, the use of the Ferengi is still utterly cringe-worthy and breaks the rule mentioned above, i.e. defying character belief. (I mean: so the Borg didn't manage to commandeer the Enterprise but a bunch of Ferengi pirates can...? Right.) On the other hand, the central gimmick with the kids is really pulled off with style. Also, the opening scene makes me feel stronger and stronger in my emerging theory that Jean-Luc Picard was one of the inspirations for Jed Bartlet. Does this sound familiar to you for an opening scene: several staff members are subjected to their valiant leader happily geeking out about some intellectual trivia, rolling their eyes in exasparated-but-fond fashion. Dialogue like this happens:
Picard: ..did you know that the source of the ruins of blah blah blah...
Guinan: *intervening in everyone's behalf* Captain, we've had four days of shore leave. All of which you spent in a cave.
Picard: *looking very happy about that, oblivious to her intention and pointing to the pottery shards he brought along* Guinan, these are seven hundred years old.
Guinan: So is my father.
Of the four child actors, I'd say the girl who plays young Guinan after the transporter accident does the greatest job, because it's really eerie how completely she doesn't imitate Whoopi Goldberg's performance but embodies Guinan. The boy who plays Picard - same kid who played his nephew Rene some seasons earlier - does a great job with Patrick Stewart's mannerism, too. The other two - young Ro and young Keiko O'Brien respectively - have far less material to go on, and aren't bad but not as impressive. Though young Keiko manages to say an exasperated "Miles!" in a tone which really is totally put-on wife. Incidentally, going from s3 and 4 eps to s6 eps makes me realize how O'Brien went from bit character who just had a line or two per episode as the transporter chief to someone who gets his own relationship scenes; his transfer to main regular on DS9 was imminent. Everyone's reactions to the kid-state are in character, too; Guinan (who hasn't been that young for centuries) sees it as a great chance to enjoy herself, Ro sees it as embarassing at first, and it reminds her of her miserable childhood, Keiko finds it awkward given the whole Molly and Miles situation, and Picard does his best to maintain his dignity but sees the inherent ridiculousness and isn't immune to the fact that, as Troi points out, if there is no way the situation could be reversed, he could fill the remaining teenage years until he qualifies for a Starfleet career again by pursuing the path not taken. (To wit, become an archaelogist.) All in all a fun episode, but not a must if you want to convert someone to TNG.
A Fistful of Datas, written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe (another future DS9 stalwart), is an example of one of those things everyone recalls vaguely about TNG - Brent Spiner in multiple roles. It's a holodeck episode, and like all holodeck (or in DS9's case holosuite) episodes derives its fun from playing with a genre well known to the viewer - in this case the Western - and putting the regular characters in roles within that genre. You can tell Wolfe enjoys himself with a Western the way he'll later enjoy himself with the Bond formula on DS9; as with Our Man Bashir, where there is no single Bond movie but the Bond formula in general that gets parodied/used, here we don't have one particular Western but the entire genre (with both traditional American and Sergio Leone style spaghetti Westerns used) spoofed/played with. Worf, rather obviously, gets to be the Sheriff (with son Alexander as his deputy); Troi gets to stretch her legs atypically as The Stranger With No Name (aka the Clint Eastwood type); and due to the holo accident of the week, Data is used as the template for more and more of everyone else, with Brent Spiner enjoying himself as craven no-good-son Eli Hollaender as much as tough-old-bastard Frank Hollander. Main holo plot aside, this episode is a neat example that by the time TNG has come into its sixth season, continuity was no longer something new but something expected. (The episode starts with Picard playing the flute he has aquired in The Inner Light, we get another quotation from Data's Ode to Spot and the cat herself, and Troi-counsels-Worf-and-Alexander is of course an ongoing later season red thread.) A good episode to relax with (and to judge everyone's Western accents on).
Face of the Enemy, on the other hand, is tense drama and in more than one way establishes templates later used on DS9. Let's start with the most obvious: back when the DS9 episode Second Skin was first broadcast, it was accused of being a blatant TNG rip-off because of the similar premise. (Kira wakes up finding herself looking like a Cardassian; Troi wakes up finding herself looking like a Romulan.) Actually, I don't think the episodes are that similar as far as the role of the main character is concerned - Deanna always knowns who she is, and she has no previous type of relationship with Romulans, whereas Cardassians are of course who Kira has been fighting against most of her life, and for half the episode she and the audience are challenged to wonder whether or not she really is one. But Face of the Enemy still is something later DS9 draws on; for starters, it introduces the Romulan secret service, the Tal Shiar. Secondly, an important plot element is the rivarly and distrust between military and secret service, which is something DS9 eps will use again and again, only with the Cardassians instead of the Romulans. Thirdly, the premise of putting a Starfleet officer in a morally ambiguous situation, courtesy of a professional spy, where she/he finds herself challenged to behave ruthlessly and do shady things while simultanously trying to also do the right thing - well, hello there, Dr. Bashir. Yes, this was in many ways a template.
It's also a tightly written spy story, wasting no time (it starts with Troi waking up, and immediately thrown into her undercover situation while having to figure out what the hell is going on when her only contact is being cryptic); with good guest characters - most of all Carolyn Semour as another fabulous female Romulan Commander (seriously, you can't go wrong with female Romulan Commanders on a Star Trek show), but also Navek (Troi's contact) and the Federation Ensign who deserted to the Romulans decades ago and now returns. Past established continuity is well used (i.e. Spock's dissident movement on Romulus, and Picard recognizing the returned deserter says the truth when he uses the phrase "cowboy diplomacy" which is the one Picard used towards Spock), and it's easy to see why Marina Sirtis says this was her favourite episode. Deanna Troi sometimes gets caricatured as having contributed nothing to TNG but to state "I sense..." and then say the glaringly obvious, and there are episodes like that, but it's hardly everything about her, and as opposed to certain other female telepaths in sci fi, she only got saddled with one "gets possessed by evil entity" story that I can recall. Still, the Troi-centric episodes usually tended to be focused on emotional dilemmas (for example, Losses, where she temporarily loses her psychic abilities and doesn't deal too well with that), whereas here she gets a spy thriller for an outing. And note: one that has her squaring off against another (sympathetic) female character, the Romulan Commander, without ever letting the two compete sexually or behave stupidly, and it's an episode directed by a woman, Gabrielle Beaumont. One happy day for the Bechdel test all around.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 08:55 pm (UTC)Hope you'll be tempted to watch more!
no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 07:21 pm (UTC)http://selenak.livejournal.com/29783.html
http://selenak.livejournal.com/30358.html
http://selenak.livejournal.com/30818.html
http://selenak.livejournal.com/41396.html
http://selenak.livejournal.com/46573.html
http://selenak.livejournal.com/46757.html
http://selenak.livejournal.com/48824.html
http://selenak.livejournal.com/49058.html#cutid1
http://selenak.livejournal.com/49154.html
I also wrote a couple of essays on particular Trekkish topics; the most important ones are grouped here.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-06 07:44 am (UTC)