Revisiting Star Trek Continues...

[Phoenix219]

"Divided We Stand" - 2/5

Stardate 6202.1 - After an explosion on the bridge Kirk and McCoy finds themselves in the midst of the American Civil War on the eve of a battle.

On the surface this is a serviceable episode if you don't think too much about it. But if you really start thinking about it falls apart. From within TOS it harkens back to things done before. One is time travel back to an ancient period of Earth history, but also to ideas within the episodes "The Savage Curtain" and "Spectre Of The Gun."

At first we think it might be time travel--Kirk and McCoy seem to think so--but that's soon undermined by the reveal Kirk and McCoy are lying unconscious in Sickbay infected by some alien bio-mechanical virus. So Kirk and McCoy are dreaming, but the wild part is they're having the exact same dream at the exact same time--they're sharing a dream/hallucination resulting from their infection. The Civil War scenario ties in with Kirk's esteem for Abraham Lincoln as revealed in "The Savage Curtain" (and, yes, we get a glimpse of Lincoln in this episode). The "Spectre Of The Gun" similarity is that what Kirk and McCoy are experiencing isn't real, except to them--something not revealed in "Spectre Of The Gun" until the very end of the story.

The sequences dealing with the Enterprise crew trying to save Kirk and McCoy's lives before they succumb to their infection completely undermines whatever jeopardy Kirk and McCoy believe they're experiencing. You just can't buy into whatever they're experiencing because you just know they're going to get out of it. Whatever dramatic tension the story tries to generate never really materializes because you know almost from the get-go exactly what's going on.

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but once again this story is written like it's really for TNG rather than TOS. It's loaded with TNG style terminology and references to science ideas that just weren't on the radar in the 1960s. Nanotechnology as a concept was first brought forth in 1959, but the actual term "nanotechnology" would not exist until 1974, well after TOS had ended production. Even so the term and concept would not be brought widely into the public consciousness until 1986, a year before TNG began airing. It's not impossible a writer, more likely a science fiction writer, could have become aware of the concept of nanotechnology first proposed in 1959, but they wouldn't have been using that exact terminology simply because it wouldn't exist until 1974, and then known by only a few within the scientific community until 1986.

Why am I going on about this? Because if you want to seem authentic and make the audience think it's 1969 you don't introduce a concept and terminology that no one in the 1960s would have ever known or heard of. You just don't.

And once again the writers here want to tie into later Trek by spinning off from story elements from a VOY episode, referring to the old Earth Friendship science probes mentioned in VOY and the nanotech viruses also introduced in that episode.

Now this still could have worked if they had simply tried to use terminology more likely or familiar to the 1960s. Calling it a bio-mechanical virus could have sufficed. But the moment they start talking about nanotech you're thinking WTF.

Shatner excelled at giving rousing monologues--he pulled you in enough where you bought into it--but the one given here by Mignogna seems a bit much and somewhat too earnest. His speech is just too boyscout as he's delivering them. Somehow I think Shatner would have managed to make it sound more natural.

But the biggest flaw of this production is the lack of believable dramatic tension--there really isn't any because you know everything that's going on almost from the onset.

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This. I really like 90% of this episode, its actually one of my favorites - but the reveal of what is going on happens WAY too soon. It kills the mystery of the episode completely. I also think it MAY have been fanservice and trying to suggest something... Borg-y? Which is why they are in the same simulated dreamspace?

 

[Phoenix219]

"Still Treads The Shadow" - 2/5

Stardate 6563.4 - While studying deep space phenomena the Enterprise again encounters the starship Defiant...and a duplicate James Kirk.

Basically the Enterprise is studying a singularity when the previously encountered starship Defiant emerges from it. This time the ship is intact and appears fully operational including life support. It also has an occupant aboard. When they beam over to investigate the find a very old man in cryogenic suspension. After returning to the Enterprise the learn the old man is actually James T. Kirk.

It seems when the Enterprise retrieved Kirk previously during the events of “The Tholian Web” something about the unusual space they were in duplicated Kirk as well as the Defiant. And from the duplicate Kirk’s point of view the Enterprise left the area and left him behind marooned on the Defiant. Afterward the duplicate Kirk managed to restore the Defiant’s life support systems as well as gave all of the Defiant’s dead crew a “burial at sea” so to speak with the ship’s transporter. It also seems the Defiant was no longer in the strange Tholian space yet now it was trapped by a singularity. Duplicate Kirk also manages to create a form of intelligence within the ship’s computer that helps him repair the Defiant’s systems yet also keeps him company. Decades pass as the duplicate Kirk and the ship’s now self-aware AI seek to escape the singularity.

*Sigh* This episode is pretty much nothing but fan service. Sure it has moments, but overall it's just a retelling of TNG's sixth season episode "Second Chances" only here with two Kirks rather than two Will Rikers. They also pull from TOS' "The Deadly Years" as well as “Metamorphosis” and picking up on a dangling thread from "The Tholian Web." Indeed STC has an obvious habit of picking up on dangling threads from past TOS episodes rather than telling wholly original stories. "Pilgrim Of Eternity," "Lolani," "Fairest Of Them All," "The White Iris," "Divided We Stand," "Embracing The Winds" and " "Still Treads The Shadow" are all stories picking up on threads from TOS episodes. In fairness "Lolani" and "Come Not Between The Dragons" aren't picking up from specific episodes, but general ideas. Maybe that's why I think they feel the most authentic overall.

This story also feels laced with lines that feel lifted and rubber stamped from other episodes. That and it's rife with scientific jargon and technobabble you never would have heard in TOS. Indeed yet again it comes across as a TNG story in TOS clothing.

Chuck Huber tries too hard. He doesn't seem to have much in the way of nuance. While they make him look sorta like Deforest Kelley's McCoy I think I actually liked Larry Nemecek as McCoy better in terms of performance.

Candidly I don't really have much to say about this. Nothing about it feels original or genuinely engaging. It's a soup of stuff large and small pulled from other productions and stirred together resulting in a bowl of meh. And, of course, they have to introduce yet another (sorta) old flame of Kirk's.

I thought "The White Iris" was disappointing, but this might be even worse. It's not horrible, but it's really disappointing.

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Just like with Phase 2 / New Voyages, the first 3 episodes are probably the ones that I revisit the most, and the later ones I'm not sure I've watched since the first time. Embracing the Winds and Still Treads the Shadows have NOT be revisited. I don't remember the details, but I just remember Shadows just having some plot-related hole that just really really didn't make sense to me, something that was completely unexplained or techno-babbly that just killed the entire concept for me. With Dragons, I felt that the episode ended too early, and they just tacked on a whole preachy ending that really felt tacked on because the first great chunk of the episode was over too quickly.

 

[Bixby]

The entire notion of a Han Solo prequel was unnecessary, as the film proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.

YOU weren't the audience that Disney was trying to court for this film