"The White Iris" - 2/5
Stardate: Unknown - While on a diplomatic mission Kirk is seriously injured. He recovers, but soon finds himself haunted by apparitions from the past.
Okay, I foresee a lot of disagreement on this one. It's a story designed to pull on the emotions, but I'm calling it as I see it.
There is zero chance TOS would have ever done a story like this particularly about Kirk. This story is pure indulgence, pure fanfic to tell a TNG like story set within TOS. They're treating Kirk like Picard. Indeed with the fan service callouts to later productions and using TNG style technobabble as well as everyday jargon more common to decades long after TOS had ceased production this doesn't feel at all like a TOS story. People in the 1960s didn't use phrases like "needing closure."
Also a BIG logic flaw in this story is Kirk's supposed regret and guilt over losing a possible girlfriend aboard the Farragut. Excuse me, but we clearly understood Kirk's regrets over the Farragut in "Obsession" and by the end of that episode he had come to terms with it. No need to bring yet another old flame into the mix. So I call bullshit on this element of this story.
I also feel the writing is really off here as the characters don't seem like themselves and I mean that beyond the fact they're being played by different actors.
I don't have a lot to say about this episode because, while decently performed, I find it so disappointing. It doesn't feel like a TOS story. It feels like a TNG story but with the TOS characters. It doesn't feel or sound like something that could have been written in 1969. This is a contemporary mindset that says Kirk is broken and needs to be fixed. That isn't a mindset a writer for TOS in 1969 would have had. TOS would never have revisited three previous and disparate storylines like this story tries to do. Furthermore can you imagine them trying to get Joan Collins (Edith Keeler), Louise Sorel (Rayna) and Sabrina Scharf (Miramanee) back all at the same time for the same story? It never would have happened.
This doesn't feel remotely like it's 1969 again. After three reasonable previous outings STC falls on its face with this one.
The performances make it somewhat tolerable, but this comes across much more like a mediocre story published by Pocket Books.
This one might be the episode where the costume department and set design/construction worked overtime, and should get many flowers. I am assuming also that its script was written months before active production actually began, since Mignona and others needed to cast the women and Colin Baker's role as best as possible (I don't think I am mistaken here that Mignona would save the contact addresses of actors from the many cons he would also attend, since one of the supporting players was a Yellow Ranger and a former Doctor Who)
As usual, visually the episode was as rich in colour and sumptuously-lit as all the others (kudos to Matt Bucy the dp)
If I activate my fanboy program in my head, I did enjoy revisiting instances from episodes I enjoyed in the past, like Edith Keeler on that fateful New York city street, and that passing mention of the Farragut devastation from OBSESSION. Also, since I do have one adult child but life circumstances happened that I could not have others (a deep regret), the subplot involving the little girl and Kirk's deeply buried feelings towards children really got me in the feelings...
Turning OFF my fanboy switch...I agree with what was said, the STC group decided to apply a post-TNG view of serialized storytelling and viewed Kirk's frequent-but-not-constant dalliances during OG Trek as a problem he had with relationships, rather than a function of 60s episodic television by multiple writers on the staff.
While we can say that James Bond had countless ONS, this is not a problem but rather a result of the person he needs to be as an effective government-trained assassin. During the Daniel Craig period, it was more than ridiculous to see the producers try to domesticate Bond as good "marriage material".
However if the STC people think Kirk has a problem, then so do the Fonz, Jack Tripper, and many other lead characters who kept meeting and changing partners almost every episode.
As Warped 9 mentioned, adding Nakia as a love lost from the Farragut was unnecessary, since she was not mentioned whatsoever during OBSESSION. I think they chose this character because the actress would only do the role if she could wear a Starfleet uniform (why not keep the character as an Enterprise crewman and have her die from a mission that was not part of the filmed ones...Is it heresy to even suggest an adventure not sanctioned by the Great Bird?)
That's all for now!!