And seemingly learned nothing about love-em-and-leave-ems from The White Iris. I mean, STC seemed to be an apologia or revisionist TOS but this love interest didn't stray far from TOS of yore. I guess the most you can say about it is it may not have actually been consummated.
Well, we know Kirk is still into quickie romances in Star Trek IV, so he couldn't change too much. But it seems to me The White Iris was mainly about guilt over the four women whose deaths he felt responsible for.
Last standalone story for this series before the big roundup, how did this one fare? Big kudos once again to Matt Bucy (this might get tiring eventually J), texture-wise the colours were rich as per usual, and as for the black-and-white world of the Hyalini it was pleasing to see the palette of greys leaned more towards 1950s/60s Hitchcock-Wells with warm and cool greys of all sorts, rather than 1960s Network style which had starker blacks. I wasn’t a fan of the women’s hairstyles this time out. I understand the hair department might want to stretch their wings a bit, but instead of being a continuation of the usual style, each one just seemed to call attention to itself: ‘’Look at us! We’re not 1960’s beehives anymore!’’ More of a distraction than anything else. It seems for this episode at least the STC crew had a party of some sort and flooded their corridors with extras during the walking scenes to good effect, but less so later on during the Sekara confrontation in engineering where they had about 4-5 redshirts apart from Scotty who completely disappear from sight when she threatens to damage the pod (most glaring was the redshirt sitting next to the entrance in one scene and gone the next). It would have been nice had Anne Lockhart and John Delancie come up with a more alien-seeming physical display of affection towards each other, much like Jane Wyatt and Mark Lenard did with their fingers-crossing gesture in TOS. I’ve been critical towards Vic Mignona as a director in the last few years, but for this one he had a pretty solid sense of composition and mostly a firm grasp on his actors…except for the really, really over the top despair bit by Anne Lockhart at 45:24… Scriptwise, I give STC credit for tackling their most controversial subject yet, and both DeLancie and Kirk chew the scenery with lengthy monologues that wouldn’t be out of place with classic Trek. Kudos to Kipleigh Brown the writer (and I assume with input from John Delancie and Vic Mignona). However, ‘’What Ships Are For’’ suffers from the same problems at the plot stage as all previous episodes, characters behave in very uncharacteristic manners and the story moves in a very ‘’plot point A to B to C’’ but is missing the natural story progression a character-driven show like Star Trek requires. Firstly, it is very difficult to take this story seriously when even the characters themselves do not. We know from seeing the finished episode that Hyalinus is plague-infested and the population faces imminent starvation. Yet the governing council judges it unimportant to reveal it to Starfleet, the Starfleet Admiral cares not to even collect all the mission facts, and seems a lot more concerned with internal fleet problems than competently briefing the officers under his watch when he speaks with Kirk. When Kirk and his officers meet Galisti and Thaius they have plenty of time for useless banter (which admittedly serves more to set up what happens later), and they go ‘’Oh gee!! We forgot to mention the worldwide disease plaguing our population’’ when reminded of it by Sakara’s presence. Kirk’s attention should be on his mission, especially after he gets informed of diseases, starvation, and even witnesses an attempted suicide…but he forgets all about that because he has a bit of skirt-chasing to do… They bring Sakara aboard the Enterprise to cure her infection (which apparently is done easily), but Kirk seems in no hurry to heal what may be thousands of sick and/or dying Hyalini…heck, they even leave orbit without making sure of their mission success. Apparently no one really worries about extreme reactions on Hyalini, such as possible riots, freak-out reactions akin to Sakara’s when they can again see colour…or even that some were willing to commit public suicide such as Tomiat, who is again with the planetary council at the end as if nothing had happened. A recurring problem is that none of the familiar Star Trek characters behave in a recognizable manner. Sulu who was always portrayed in TOS as a responsible, mature and efficient officer is suddenly morphed into this sort of botany dork at inopportune times in full view of his Captain. Apart from nerve pinching Tomiat, Spock is treated as the butt of undeserved jokes (usually good-natured ribbing against Spock is reserved at episode’s ends to bring to a close a lesson of some sort. Here Spock is frankly insulted by McKennah for no fathomable reason and he just takes it when in the past he sparred easily with McCoy. Kirk forgets all of his professional manners and becomes horndog Jim, forgetting the plight of starving and sick people (in the Menagerie and A Taste of Armageddon kirk could put aside his early flirtations to perform his duty- this time apparently not). When Tomiat puts a weapon to his head Kirk would usually be the first to talk him down, but this time he stays silent…Even worse, after mentioning how the Abician shuttles look ‘’barely spaceworthy’’ and travelled for a long time between both warring asteroids, he lets them limp away for another long trip back…The real Kirk would have brought the shuttles aboard instead of risking possible death. Finally McKennah who is still an interesting screen character but is totally misused: there really was ZERO reason for her AND McCoy to be on the bridge at the beginning when Kirk is being mission briefed, let alone for a non-officer (I’m assuming) to interrupt an Admiral. I get it, she is one of STC’s better actors, but as has been pointed out, in this episode specifically she completely throws off the kirk-Spock-McCoy balance. When Kirk consults with Mckennah about how the hyalinians may react to certain events, well how would SHE know? She is most likely a specialist in psychology for Starfleet races, she would have no frame of reference to the manners and habits of alien races she has never before encountered (it would be akin to asking an early 20th century american psychologist who has never travelled to Asia or Africa to speculate on their reactions). GRADE: Fair
From STC's FB page: Congrats to STC for being nominated! I just reserved a couple of tickets. It's going to be a long drive from Escondido but worth it if I can meet the cast. I don't think there'll be many more opportunities, and the price is right.