Star Trek Continues, Episode 4 - "The White Iris"

I have been a Star Trek fan nearly as long as I have been alive. I remember watching the show as some of the earliest memories of my life. My parents sat me down in front of the TV to distract me while they would cook dinner when I was about 3. The "distraction" was a colorful and energetic show called Star Trek back in the late 1970s in reruns. I have been a devoted, loving fan ever since. I have attended countless conventions, movie premiers, etc. I have thousands of dollars in merchandise. Star Trek is such a big part of what I am.

With that said...

These productions are an absolute joy to watch. They are created lovingly by people who obviously have tremendous passion for the original material. They are not without flaw, but neither was the original show itself, and perhaps that is part of what makes them feel so authentic to me.

This latest episode was just as good as the previous three from this team. Everything about them brings back such wonderful memories of the original show. Like another poster mentioned much earlier in this thread, there were scenes that certainly brought a tear to my eyes. There are few things these days on TV or in the movies that impact me that way. I think to see Kirk's soul bared and vulnerable like that, particularly where he is my lifelong hero, was powerful. Vic M. Does a nice job of capturing Kirk. Hell, even his hair is damn near perfect!

For everyone from Star Trek Continues, Phase 2, and all of the other fan productions that pour their hearts and souls into these wonderful films, I thank you! I am glad that I am apparently the type of fan who can just enjoy these type of productions without having that joy stripped away by possessing too keen an eye for detail or too high a level of expectation. To me, this truly brings me back to those early childhood days of watching Star Trek in syndication and loving the adventures and stories featuring my favorite heroes and ship.

You guys who produce these films are so fortunate. As fans, you are TRULY living the dream! What an amazing and unique opportunity it must be to achieve a dream like that. Walking the halls of the Enterprise, embodying the classic characters, and having that work be available to be enjoyed by others is such a great gift. I think there are many of us who would give almost anything just for an hour in your shoes! I hope you all continue to have success and enjoyment from your projects. I certainly appreciate the fact that we can share in that joy with each viewing.

Best,

Mike

 

Well said Vger23! My sentiments exactly.

 

You KNOW it, dawg!!

 

As I understand it, all it takes is a certain number of flags to trigger the removal. Sure, there's a drop-down menu to choose a reason for the flag, but that doesn't provide for any real explanation.

And as with any modern social media, there is always the possibility of gang-flagging, or competitors doing it just to make trouble.

Thank goodness CBS wasn't the reason.

 

Re: Star Trek Continues: White Iris

See you see this is where I think Trek fans screw up these days. You accept what is and don't try to fight for anything. Why not fight CBS or get CBS to put on a new show? There are so many affiliate networks these days that if CBS wants to continue to be the cop show, reality show network then perhaps we could get it on a networks that works like syfy. (forget about who owns what at this point it doesn't matter). It would not surprise me the least that CBS was behind the fourth episode getting pulled from youtube because they do NOT want Trek's popularity. They'll take your money yes, but that doesn't mean they take fans seriously and I think we need to give the network reasons to do so. They would rather continue to put out shows like, "How to win a million dollars by being a d-bag" rather than allowing star trek back on TV. I think that fans own Trek and that is why fans have made quality work like STC, and phase 2,and it's fans that need to tell cbs this. Instead of accepting what is let's go that step further, forget about all style and no substance JJ Abrams Star Trek, and embrace change.

 

^ Nope.

 

Re: Star Trek Continues: White Iris

Except we know they did not pull the episode. And YouTube has been told to reinstate the episode.

 

Re: Star Trek Continues: White Iris

In a word, no.

 

Wonder when it will be back? All I'm seeing is the foreign dubbed version (which didn't get pulled as far as I can see!), the blooper reel and the highlights reel!

 

You can still watch it on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/128304406 (47:54) .

 

Never been able to watch anything on Vimeo on my ancient Powerbook! Will have to wait to see if it will indeed be back up on YouTube!

 

Yeah. Unfortunately, Vimeo doesn't perform (even nearly) as well as YouTube on older machines, and as someone mentioned upthread, for streaming to televisions, YouTube is generally an option and Vimeo often isn't.

 

I don't doubt you, but I can report that Vimeo works just fine on Apple TV.

 

Vimeo does indeed work great on Apple TVs. I personally prefer it to You Tube.

 

I supported their recent Kickstarter, and I'm glad I did.

I enjoyed this episode, a lot. Vic is wonderful as Kirk, as always, and I continue to be astonished at how well the Star Trek Continues folks capture the look and feel of the original. This episode was especially notable in that respect, for finding so many actresses who looked a lot like the originals and for recreating sets as disparate as Miramanee's tent and Edith's street.

I was amused at the way Spock dived into Kirk's head at one point, without either "my mind to your mind" or a by-your-leave. Yeah, after melding with the guy -- and saving his ass in several different ways -- with mind melds in "Spectre of the Gun," "The Paradise Syndrome," "Requiem for Methuselah," and "Turnabout Intruder," it probably IS true that the path into Kirk's mind is a well-worn one for Spock at this point. And he probably doesn't stand much on ceremony. I'd expect a little more asking permission, though, if only with a raised eyebrow from Spock and a nod from Kirk. (True, he didn't ask permission in "Requiem for Methuselah," but for one thing, he was goaded into that by McCoy, and for another thing, I always thought his actions at the end of that episode were a bit out of character, since Spock is usually portrayed as being scrupulously ethical.)

I especially enjoyed Kirk's interaction with his nameless daughter, near the end; it actually choked me up. Good job there.

With fan-made productions, I usually give it the "And the Children Shall Lead" test -- Is this episode better than "And the Children Shall Lead"? If so, it's a worthy addition to TOS. Admittedly, that's not a very high bar ... but I WANT to love these productions.

So yeah, it's a lovely episode in many ways, and I think they did a great job with it. I do have some problems with it, though, and most of those problems stem from the script.

Vic writes the stories and/or the scripts for most of these. I appreciate the fact that he's pouring absolutely ENORMOUS amounts of time and energy into these productions, so I understand that he wants to tell his stories. Certainly if anyone has earned the right to do Star Trek the way HE wants to do it, Vic has. And yet, I think the already great Star Trek Continues episodes could be even better with better scripts.

The central premise of this episode is that Kirk feels a lot of guilt about the deaths of so many of the women he's loved, to the point of his breaking down when the combination of a concussion and an experimental drug shake him up.

Kirk suffers an enormous amount of psychological trauma in Season 1 of TOS alone, and by the time we get to the post-Season 3 era where STC takes place, he's accumulated truly staggering amounts of psychological trauma. (I'm a licensed psychologist in the real world, so this is the sort of thing I can speak to, not that I think it takes any kind of training or expertise to speak to this issue, given how MUCH we've seen happen to Kirk over the course of those 79 episodes.) So yeah, Kirk IS overdue for a breakdown. I've been assuming that huge strides have been made in the treatment for psychological trauma by the 23rd century, or Kirk would have broken down before this.

What I don't really buy is the combination of the women in his past and guilt. I could buy the combination of the women in Kirk's past and despair or loneliness or feeling like he's some sort of Typhoid Mary in love -- fall in love with me and be instantly marked for death.

Or I could buy the combination of guilt and the deaths of all the crew who've perished under his command during the several years of the mission that have passed so far. Or guilt and Kirk's being unable to save his brother Sam from the parasites on Deneva. Admittedly, guilt -- like most emotions -- isn't always rational, but Kirk's feeling guilt about the women in his life just didn't work for me.

The resolution of the problem also didn't work for me. Kirk spends two minutes talking to each woman, and now he's all better? That felt rushed to me. I thought they could have spent a bit less time on the setting up of the problem and a bit more on the solving of it.

I thought that Kirk should have been relieved of command long before he was. Either McCoy or Spock -- or both -- should have realized that when the captain hallucinates on the Bridge, the time for him to be relieved has come. (People sometimes tell me that I expect laymen to have more psychological knowledge than the average person actually has, but 1) Both Spock and McCoy are far more knowledgeable about this sort of thing than the average person, and 2) Hallucinating on the Bridge is a pretty serious symptom; I think it doesn't take any special knowledge to realize that this is a sign of a serious problem.)

Having McKennah save the day by saying that it was KIRK who needed closure felt kinda obvious and trite to me. I mean, it's nice to have another female character in TOS, and it's nice to see the ship's counselor have something actually useful to contribute. The part of me that's a licensed psychologist wants to love this. But if you're going to make SPOCK wrong, it should be about something a little less obvious. "Vic's fiancée wanted a chance to save the day" is an understandable motive, but I wanted an in-universe reason, as well.

I also spent a lot of time wondering why Spock didn't just meld with Kirk and root around in his mind looking for the password. We know that he can find information that the recipient of the meld, himself, has trouble accessing from the meld in "Dagger of the Mind." Heck, we even know that he can find information that the recipient doesn't want him to find, from the meld with Valeris in TUC, so it should be possible for Spock to retrieve the information, even though Kirk has "forgotten" it. And even if they wanted for that not to be possible, I was surprised that Spock didn't even suggest it.

I was glad that Spock apologized for having changed Kirk's memory without his permission in "Requiem for Methuselah." I thought it was a little odd, though, that Kirk didn't seem at all angry or concerned about it, acting like "Yeah, you changed my memory without my permission, but what's a little mind-altering between friends?" I mean, yeah, these guys are close, so I believe that Kirk would be willing to forgive Spock, but I'd think he'd be a little sterner or angrier about it first. That part seemed a bit rushed.

I was willing to overlook the use of the holodeck, even thought there IS no holodeck in TOS and even though it's portrayed as being cool new technology in the first episode of TNG. For one thing, there is a holodeck in TAS; for another thing, I think a fan-made production should get a lot of latitude on sets, and using the holodeck allowed them to recreate just a snippet of the original sets, rather than having to recreate the whole expensive thing.

I didn't like Spock's saying "Captain on the Bridge" at the end of the episode. They never said that in any of the 79 episodes, though the main reason why I object is because it makes TOS seem more militaristic than it should. Nick Meyer added the "Captain on the Bridge" thing to a few of the movies, because he wasn't a Star Trek fan and understood it as "the Navy in space," so he added some militaristic touches that were deliberately left out of TOS. But not only was "Captain on the Bridge" never said in episodes of TOS, it was also NOT said in the movies helmed by either Roddenberry or Nimoy, the people who had enough experience with TOS to know where the military line should be drawn.

(The writer's bible for the original series included this set of questions and answers. (Material in italics is quoted directly from the guide.)

Speaking of the starship U. S. S. Enterprise, is it a completely military arrangement?
Semi-military but without being heavily authoritarian. For example, we will not be aware of "officers" and "enlisted men" categories. And we will avoid saluting and other annoying medieval leftovers. On the other hand, we do keep a flavor of Naval usage and terminology to help encourage believability and identification by the audience. After all, our own Navy today still retains remnants of Nelson and Drake.)


All in all, it was a fun episode and a worthy addition to TOS. I do wish, though, that Vic would get some help with the scripts. Robert J. Sawyer had a cameo in this one, and he's about as real of a science fiction writer as I can think of -- maybe he'd be willing to write you a script. Dave Galanter just published a wonderful TOS novel; maybe he'd be willing to help out. Strong as STC is, I think it'd be even stronger with someone in the Dorothy Fontana role, someone who could polish the scripts and make sure they fit TOS.

 

^^^I note that the credits for "The White Iris" indicate that the Script Consultants were John D. F. Black, Mary Black, and Marc Cushman--and James Kervin was the Story Editor.

 

Cool. That's good to know.

 

John D. F. Black is still alive? Wow. I'm glad to hear that.

 

I'd be very interested to know what exactly constituted "Script Consultant" work on this film from the Blacks and Cushman.

 

For some reason White Iris won't show up on my Vimeo app.