Planet of Giants by: Terrance Dicks

 

Planet of Giants was written by: Terrance Dicks, based on the story of the same name by Louis Marks.  It was the 151^st story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The publishers behind the Doctor Who novelizations left Planet of Giants as the final novelization for the First Doctor as they thought there was not engaging enough when the possibility of novelizing it came up before.  This is ironic as the televised serial was originally commissioned and filmed as four episodes before being edited down to three episodes before broadcast.  This novelization was written essentially to fill in one of the last remaining gaps in the novelizations in 1990, after Doctor Who had been cancelled and giving it to Terrance Dicks was the default.  Despite only working on four serials of the 1960s (all 1968-1969), Dicks had become the default for novelizing these stories and at this point in his career he is just going through the motions of adapting the television story to the page.  As Planet of Giants is a serial that remains entirely in the BBC’s archive, there is no real imagination from Dicks having to fill in potential gaps.  He did have access to the original four part scripts and there are a few minor scenes reinstated to the novelization that do help the flow of the story slightly more than the version seen on television.  Outside of this and adding the occasional name to flesh out a character, Planet of Giants is incredibly faithful to the televised script.

 

The stronger points of Louis Marks’ original script do come through, as it is Dicks novelizing he is true to the characterizations of the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan.  The First Doctor is especially warm under Dicks’ pen, despite being a Doctor he only wrote for in The Five Doctors and in that leaned on a fan perception of the character.  This is likely changed due to having access to the original scripts, and possibly copies of the original episodes at his disposal when novelizing this story.  He also does not resist the temptation to do an effective lead in to The Dalek Invasion of Earth which means the novel ends on a subtle cliffhanger.  There also isn’t a temptation of shying away from the environmental message of the original story, especially since the problems of pesticides hadn’t actually gotten better by the time Planet of Giants was published in 1990.

 

Overall, Planet of Giants has little to differentiate itself from the televised story and as such falls into many of the same trappings of being a bit of a slow story, despite a short page count.  The couple of reinsertions are nice, but the story is best in the early chapters where the TARDIS team are discovering their predicament.  Barbara is still secretive of being poisoned for no real reason and the back half is still quite a bit of a drag as the TARDIS team lack a lot of the conflicts necessary to work.  6/10.

Identity Crisis by: Brannon Braga from a story by: Timothy DeHaas and directed by: Winrich Kolbe

 

“Identity Crisis” is written by: Brannon Braga, from a story by: Timothy DeHaas, and is directed by: Winrich Kolbe.  It was produced under production code 192, was the 18^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 92^nd episode overall, and was broadcast on March 25, 1991.

After “Galaxy’s Child” was a failure for Geordi LaForge, it’s nice that “Identity Crisis” proves that he can carry an episode of the show on his own.  This is an episode playing on the idea of horrors coming from the past to catch up with the present, in this episode it is members of an away mission disappearing after five years have passed.  Much of the first act of the episode is establishing the relationship between Geordi and Lieutenant Commander Susanna Leijten, played by Maryann Plunkett.  Brannon Braga is credited with the final script for the episode, and he decides that what Geordi LaForge needs is to have a healthy relationship with a female coworker that is not rooted in romance.  This is a breath of fresh air after “Galaxy’s Child”, Susanna even confiding her own romantic troubles with Geordi in the way that friends do.  For any other main cast member on Star Trek: The Next Generation this would be a normal episode, but Geordi has this trouble of being stuck in the role of either romantic failure when he is given focus in an episode or being relegated to the guy that fixes the Enterprise.

 

Braga gives Geordi a life outside of his standard duties and breaks down those relationships to make a horror episode that under the surface is about losing one’s identity through an exterior, encroaching force.  The big twist is that the away team disappearing is mutating into alien life forms that took five years to gestate within their hosts.  As aliens the parasites are unthinking and uncaring, the infection is a natural part of their life cycle and there is no agency in whom they infect.  “Identity Crisis” has its roots in a different type of science fiction story, one of an illness from space.  This type of story was popularized in the 1950s and 1960s as humanity was first leaving the Earth’s atmosphere and the fear of bringing back a space born virus was very real.  One of the earliest pieces of televised science fiction, The Quatermass Experiment, dealt with this exact problem in a contemporary setting.  Star Trek has done similar premises before as far back as the original series with episodes like “The Naked Time” and “Miri”, the former being an early highlight of the show.

 

While Star Trek: The Next Generation has done space illness episodes before, “The Naked Time” was poorly remade into “The Naked Now”, “Identity Crisis” is unique in the fact that this is very much an episode made with the 1991 audience in mind.  Timothy DeHaas is credited as providing the initial story outline for “Identity Crisis”, though Braga rewrote to focus on Geordi as a character.  It wears its influences prominently on its sleeve: the general premise has its similarities to 1979’s Alien and 1982’s The Thing, though with less sexual imagery and less emphasis on paranoia.  Exploring a slow loss of humanity is clearly inspired by David Cronenberg’s film version of The Fly while the mutated Geordi being able to become invisible and being likened to a hunter has clear links to 1987’s Predator.  “Identity Crisis” is a grab bag of plot points and ideas from popular and cult science fiction and horror films from essentially the last decade.  It’s those aspects of the episode that indicate its origins from a science fiction fan and not a seasoned television writer, but between it being a solid science fiction premise and Brannon Braga’s rewrites there is genuinely effective body horror here.  Michael Westmore is responsible for the costume and makeup effects on the mutated Geordi LaForge, leaning into the color blue as an aesthetic choice is particularly interesting as it is a shade that looks particularly alien.  Westmore has been with Star Trek: The Next Generation since its beginning and his work is often quite fantastic, but “Identity Crisis” is an episode that visually creates a challenge.  It helps that director Winrich Kolbe shoots much of the mutated Geordi from either high or low angles, depending on where the mutation is.  The early stages lean particularly heavy into creating disfigurement, there is a moment where the fingers fuse together.  It’s especially horrific for an episode of syndicated network television that cannot show much blood and gore while getting the episode through standards and practices.

 

Overall, what makes “Identity Crisis” work so well is both being effective at telling a body horror story from a production perspective and giving a standard character focus to a character who only two episodes earlier was treated particularly poorly.  It’s clear that the cast is having a lot of fun with the material and getting to play a script structured like celebrated horror films from the time while the makeup team is pushing as far as they can.  This is not going to be lauded for breaking the mold for Star Trek: The Next Generation, but it is another in the category of very enjoyable episodes that define the standard for a good episode.  7/10.

Night Terrors by: Pamela Douglas and Jeri Taylor from a story by: Shari Goodhartz and directed by: Les Landau

 

“Night Terrors” is written by: Pamela Douglas and Jeri Taylor, from a story by: Shari Goodhartz, and is directed by: Les Landau.  It was produced under production code 191, was the 17^h episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 91^st episode overall, and was broadcast on March 18, 1991.

 

The quirks of the 26 episode season means sometimes there’s an episode of a show where because the episode count needs to be filled the premise is something just a little off.  “Night Terrors” is one such episode from the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation that decides what the show really needs is a haunted starship story in the middle of March.  There’s a lost art to episodes like this because looking at it it’s a fairly standard episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and network television.  Because the current streaming model of television does not allow for more than 10 episodes in a season if the show is lucky, typically now being limited to six to eight episodes, there is no reason to write a random episode where a starship is found with a dead crew and haunted by ghosts.  Okay, so it isn’t a case of real ghosts, the episode builds to the twist that the phenomenon is entirely natural and due to the binary star system, the Brattain (or possibly Brittain as is written on the model), the Enterprise, and a third unseen ship that has a psychic crew reaching out for help.  The reaching out for help is not working for this crew because humanity is not psychic, instead the psychic emissions are disrupting the sleep of both crews.  This has led the crew of the Brittain to massacre each other; the aftermath of the massacre is the opening of the episode which Les Landau shoots quite atmospherically.  It’s a dark opening for the episode and the lighting is intentionally kept low so the viewer can fill in the gaps of how awful the situation is.  The script after the pre-credits lingers on how empty the Brittain is and the morgue is a set used for multiple scenes in the episode as a constant reminder of the death even before the haunting begins.

 

The haunting itself is through sleep deprivation, the episode taking place over the course of at least a few days as the crew of the Enterprise fall asleep without entering REM.  This creates paranoia and anger even before hallucinations begin.  The best hallucination is Dr. Crusher’s: she sees the corpses under their shrouds sit up straight.  It’s small but Gates McFadden plays it perfectly, using her own logic and assumptions about the situation to bring Crusher back to reality.  There’s also a hallucination of Riker’s bed being full of snakes, which is quite funny for me because that is a recurring nightmare of mine which I am certain has no deeper meaning at all.  The paranoia among the crew fares slightly less well for “Night Terrors”, mainly because it is almost entirely rooted outside of the main cast.  The best scenes of paranoia are between Miles and Keiko O’Brien early in the episode, Miles becoming jealous and accusing his wife of infidelity which is a bit over the top considering both O’Briens are relatively minor characters, but they are characters we know and have spent time with this season.  The rest of the paranoid characters are day players, and they don’t really get the time necessary to get the audience to care about them, only serving a function in the plot.  The buildup to the reveal of what is causing the paranoia and subsequent resolution of the episode also leaves some to be desired.  Pamela Douglas and Jeri Taylor’s script simply lacks the dramatic tension and energy in the climax, it’s just the main cast figuring out that there is a third ship stopped, the psychic wavelength that Troi is tuned into coming from the ship, and using an influx of hydrogen to save both ships.  The final lines ordering Picard to go to sleep are good and witty, but the climax of the episode does just run out of steam.

 

Atypically for an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation is that “Night Terrors” is actually quite a good showcase for Deanna Troi.  Because of the focus on horror, Douglas and Taylor use Troi as one of two characters largely unaffected by the paranoia and hallucinations while awake, however, when she sleeps, she finds herself in dreams that are not her own.  Marina Sirtis is actually given material dealing with Troi’s empathic abilities.  She spends much of the episode while awake attempting to communicate with the one survivor of the Brittain, a Betazoid science officer.  In terms of material, it is not particularly deep, but this is a series that has often sidelined Troi and its other female characters as well as reducing them to their gender.  This episode is particularly good for Troi by making her be a counselor and active in the actual resolution (it’s Troi and Crusher who work out what is going on) and it’s clear Sirtis is enjoying the material.  Her best scene is saving Worf from a suicide attempt due to his lost Klingon honor, emotions being pushed to their limits from the lack of deep sleep.  It’s a scene that just kind of flies by and both Sirtis and Michael Dorn play it so well it ends up the best scene of the episode.  Even her dreamscape has Troi as an active participant, fitted into a flying harness and acting on a greenscreen in a genuinely good attempt at making an atmospheric dreamscape on a 1991 television budget.  The dream sequences could be paced better, but the attempt to do something surreal like a dreamscape is laudable and giving the material to Sirtis does take advantage of what she’s been doing with Troi even when the show hasn’t been serving her well.

 

Overall, “Night Terrors” has the potential for greatness that it never quite reaches due to a couple of the production decisions that keep the main cast as entirely rational and not really knowing how to structure the climax.  The episode excels at being a ghost story in the trappings of a science fiction television show and actually showcasing Star Trek: The Next Generation’s female characters without reducing them to their status as female characters.  7/10.

The Colony of Lies by: Colin Brake

 

There’s a part of me that believes The Colony of Lies only came about because Colin Brake realized that every time Doctor Who attempted a space western it utterly failed.  The Space Pirates is a mostly missing serial that couches itself in western imagery and tropes while dealing with mining.  The Colony of Lies boasts a cover of the Second Doctor overlooking a town from the Wild West, right in front of a crashed spaceship.  Westerns as a genre come out of America’s manifest destiny, an aspect of colonialism and imperialism creating the imperative of expansion across the country by force.  The history is an inherently bloody one, something the genre has been reckoning with since the 1970s.  The Colony of Lies proposes that humanity’s expansion into space is going to follow the same path of bloody conquest.  This is a novel where the title gives away the twist, the colony setting that does in fact take nostalgic inspiration from the western genre for its level of technology and aesthetic and as such is built on lies.  While the colonists’ story is that they were invaded, reality is that humanity are of course the invaders and displacers of the native population.

 

This twist is nestled; the aliens turn out to not actually be aliens but another group of humans who have been genetically engineered away from humanity.  It’s this secondary twist that undercuts Brake’s major themes examining imperialism.  It cuts out half of the imperialism from the text itself in favor of bioengineering ideas.  Perhaps this is something that was fitting for commentary in the early 2000s, there’s even an argument to be made that in the present.  This is a post-9/11 novel after all, and the bioengineering is for creating super soldiers just as in reality the United States is invading Iraq.  The way The Colony of Lies reads, however, is as if Brake pivoted when the world changed.  It’s certainly not the worst potential pivot, there is a story to be told there, but Brake does not give enough material nor enough characterization to the supporting characters to make it all.

 

Brake is one of the few novelists to characterize the Second Doctor particularly well.  This incarnation of the Doctor in the novel feels as if he is on the run with a unique morality.  The Enemy of the World feels particularly important for Brake’s characterization of the Doctor, throughout the novel he positions himself as the outsider who isn’t going to immediately side with one person.  That’s how Brake facilitates the nestled twist, the Doctor not committing to one side being necessarily good or bad.  This is also technically a novel featuring the Seventh Doctor, he and Ace appearing in the prologue and epilogue, but the best scene is this brief interaction between the Second and Seventh Doctors.  The Doctor is referred to as the Stranger giving the reader the idea that the Doctor has become something completely different by his seventh incarnation, while his second is too terrified to act for fear the Time Lords may finally catch up with him.  It does not stop him of course, but it does enough to make him terrified.  Brake is also quite good at exploring Jamie and Zoe as both highly insecure.  Jamie is particularly well served as there are scenes from his perspective where the reader really understands just how intelligent he is despite his leaps in logic.  He is insecure about if he ever will go back and is slightly horrified on how technology and weapons of war in particular will evolve.  Zoe is paralleled with him as the always logical one but equally insecure in expanding her horizons because this is forward in history for her, she is terrified at the threats the universe face (Brake references several Dalek stories in particular).

 

Overall, The Colony of Lies has fantastic commentary at its center, however Colin Brake’s prose is unable to focus on exactly one commentary to make.  Paralleling itself with Colony in Space, the ideas are there and they are fantastic, even if the secondary twist goes one step too far to weaken the entire story.  The regulars are characterized well even if the supporting characters are almost entirely bland, though the alien race is a cool concept if executed poorly.  It’s actually at its best when it is being a space western, proving that Doctor Who actually can do space westerns in the right circumstances.   6/10.

Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void by: Tim Lebbon

 

Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void is clearly meant to be the first part of a bigger story, however it was published the year after the Walt Disney Company bought Lucasfilm.  While it would take more time for the expanded universe to be declared non-canon and rebranded as Legends, Tim Lebbon’s Star Wars novel is presented as the first installment in what was clearly intended to be a larger multimedia project.  There was a comic book written by legendary writer John Ostrander and included in the published version is an additional short story also from Ostrander, however Dawn of the Jedi was clearly meant to be a larger multimedia project that never quite materialized.  In retrospect, it laid groundwork for a different multimedia event with The High Republic starting in 2021.  While there is a desire to separate what could have been from what is, Into the Void is a novel where the missing potential of a larger exploration is a detriment to the novel.  Tim Lebbon does tell a complete story in the novel, flashing back between two events in the life of Je’daii Ranger Lanoree Brock.  The first being her upbringing and induction into the Je’daii Order with her brother as well has his apparent death and the second her mission to find him before he can complete a sacred rite that would obliterate their planet, Tython.  The obvious conclusion is that the Je’daii Order will eventually become the Jedi Order, as the timeline in the front of the book places this over 25,000 years before the original film.

 

Where Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Light succeeds is in the worldbuilding of this early galaxy.  Lebbon establishes Tython, its system, and the galaxy at large in a far more primitive state than what would be expected.  The production design of the original trilogy (and to a lesser extent the prequels) established the technological advancement of the galaxy as a mix of old and new, while this novel skews towards the old.  There is space travel, however the novel itself does not actually leave the Tython system.  Aesthetically the novel shares more in common with high fantasy, the mysteries of the Force being treated like a magic system in the same vein as popular fantasy of the 2010s.  While the Je’daii are not treated as mages, the use of ranger in Lanoree’s title is important, there is a sense of learning one’s magical abilities in harnessing the force and the idea of it as a chosen talent, Dalien’s inability to access the force and jealousy of his sister is the driving factor of the novel’s conflict as much as disenchantment with Je’daii teachings.  In terms of weaponry, gone are lightsabers and in their place are specially forged swords.  There is still the sense of Lanoree as a guardian but the rigid morality of the Dark Side as something to be shunned as a Jedi is gone here.  Lebbon indicates that rift being created by the end of the novel, however the Je’daii are meant to each be balancing the light and the dark within themselves.

 

Tim Lebbon as a writer, however, is the root of this novel’s problems.  In terms of prose, Into the Light is a particularly dry novel, Lebbon’s style flipping back and forth between the present and past narratives without any real sense of growth from Lanoree as a character.  Perhaps this is a remnant of this being the first part of a planned trilogy, however, it actively makes the past and present narratives feel far more similar than they are.  This is a disadvantage to the premise of the novel as already 25,000 years before Star Wars as it muddles its own internal timeline quite a bit.  The actual plot of the novel is also taking a backseat to the worldbuilding.  The most interesting sections are those describing Lanoree’s training or the way she operates within the galaxy, while her actual mission to find her brother is fine.  Lebbon attempts pathos and there are moments where emotionally Lanoree’s response to the revelation her brother may be alive is moving, but they are particularly brief.  The plot is just one event leading to the next event without vague emotional resonance when the exploration of the world is not happening.

 

Overall, there is potential in Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void, but through a combination of being cut off before any sequels could even be outlined and Tim Lebbon’s own weak prose is at best mediocre.  Despite its short length, the thin plot is still dragged out quite a bit with admittedly particularly strong worldbuilding.  4/10.

Galaxy's Child by: Maurice Hurley from a story by: Thomas Kartozian and directed by: Winrich Kolbe

 

“Galaxy’s Child” is written by: Maurice Hurley, from a story by: Thomas Kartozian, and is directed by: Winrich Kolbe.  It was produced under production code 190, was the 16^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 90^th episode overall, and was broadcast on March 11, 1991.

 

To be generous to “Galaxy’s Child”, there is potential in telling a story about reassessing a character’s hero when they get the chance to meet.  People are complicated and it’s a universal experience.  The internet age has intensified this feeling with the rise of extreme parasocial relationships around every public figure (and several private figures).  An episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation exploring this should be an easy win.  “Galaxy’s Child” is a direct sequel to “Booby Trap” as Dr. Leah Brahms, played by Susan Gibney, comes aboard the Enterprise and Geordi La Forge, played by LeVar Burton, is madly smitten based on the hologram program he made of her in that previous episode.  This should be Geordi realizing that Dr. Brahms is her own person with her own life and deleting the hologram permanently at the end of “Booby Trap” was the right decision.  It is not.  The increasing conflict of Geordi being unable to come to terms with Dr. Brahms as a person and not this idealized partner for him.  “Galaxy’s Child” was written by Maurice Hurley, the previous showrunner of the show, who left at the end of the second season due to disagreements with the rest of production, even wishing to open a potential new season with an entirely new cast because he disliked the current production.  Brahms as a character is introduced insulting Geordi, rhetorically meant to let the audience know that this is not the hologram from the last season, but in practice places her as antagonist of the episode.  With this framing Geordi is the protagonist, his arc in the episode being complaining that while there is the occasional lip service to the fact that he never knew Dr. Brahms, by the end of the episode he is treated as if he has done nothing wrong and Brahms is given the blame for their conflict.

 

“Galaxy’s Child” is an episode dripping in misogyny.  Outside of Dr. Brahms’ introduction, her personality keeps the stone-cold demeanor at best, something that could work perfectly well if it treated her as a person and not the sole object of Geordi’s desires.  The script has her on the Enterprise to attempt to learn from Geordi’s improvements to her designs in “Booby Trap”, something that she continually disregards as wrong, often idiotic, and not willing to even look at the possibility they are improvements.  Brahms is also established as a married woman after a scene where Geordi lures her into a date on the false pretense of discussing the scope of the changes to the engine.  The script and direction from Winrich Kolbe frames this as a romantic date that Brahms is far too cold and wrong, using her marriage to shut Geordi down.  The episode builds to the point where Brahms discovers her hologram replica, and the episode frames her as being in the wrong for getting angry about it.  Maurice Hurley clearly does not understand that the hologram is a sex object, it is a fantasy using the skin, voice, and body of a woman for the pleasure of a male character who then wishes to use the real woman as object for his romantic and sexual desires.  The episode having the gall to frame Geordi in the right is the problem, the resolution is Geordi and Brahms working together to solve the B-plot which is a space eel latching onto the Enterprise.  That B-plot is not a bad B-plot, just unremarkable and never really intersecting with the sexist A-plot that’s the core of the episode.  For their part Gibney and Burton are trying with the episode, though there is a strain on both of their performances because the material is not there.  Burton’s actually great in the few moments Geordi is opposite Guinan who is the one person to even indicate that he may be in the wrong.

 

Overall, Maurice Hurley seems to be at the scene of the crime when Star Trek: The Next Generation produces its worst episodes.  “Galaxy’s Child” is a product of rape culture.  While no sexual assault or rape is depicted, the script is steeped in the idea that a man is owed a relationship and will not take no for an answer.  It blames the woman for not being nice and personable enough to a man who is continually overstepping personal and professional boundaries, adding further blame when the discovery of her body being used without consent as essentially a sex toy.  The only thing stopping this from being the absolute bottom of the barrel is having a perfectly fine B-plot and exactly one scene where Whoopi Goldberg tells the man no, he’s being delusional.  2/10.

Once in a Lifetime by: John Freeman with art by: Geoff Senior and lettering by: Stuart Bartlett

 

“Once in a Lifetime” is written by: John Freeman with art by: Geoff Senior and letters by: Stuart Bartlett.  It was released in The Incredible Hulk Presents issue 1 (October 1989) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: Nemesis of the Daleks by Panini Books.

 

The Incredible Hulk Presents was a Marvel UK exclusive magazine where the main feature of the strip was reprints from The Incredible Hulk, but each issue was bolstered with comics for G.I. Joe, Indiana Jones, and most relevant for my purposes Doctor Who.  This was published weekly, Doctor Who being allocated five pages per issue.  The last time a Doctor Who comic was weekly were the early days of Doctor Who Magazine, though for The Incredible Hulk Presents the team of writers and artists are on a rotation as to not burn out.  The book ran 12 issues in 1989, coinciding with the end of Doctor Who on television.

 

The few good things that can be said about the first strip, “Once in a Lifetime”, is that it is short and Geoff Senior’s art is quite good.  Senior excels at capturing emotion and a wacky tone that the strip is going for, as well as clearly having fun with some of the alien designs.  The actual story is simple but relies on the Doctor being outright villainous towards a journalist called Miff.  Miff is slightly annoying to the Doctor, so he sends him to a bar where association with the Doctor nearly gets him killed.  The Doctor then strands him ten years into the future where his newspaper is out of business.  That is everything that happens in “Once in a Lifetime”.  What makes this the weakest Seventh Doctor strip thus far is just how out of character the Doctor is, he’s a villain being portrayed as a hero.  John Freeman writes the script and like John Carnell’s “Follow That TARDIS!” the script suffers from not wanting to be Doctor Who.  While the tone is slapstick and aimed at children, it plays out as quite cruel when actually being read.

 

Overall, “Once in a Lifetime” is a terrible start to The Incredible Hulk Presents.  While a five page gag strip has potential, even as a Doctor Who story, the gags have to actually be funny and not just cruel.  The Doctor is the villain and that’s a problem when the perception of the Doctor is in the midst of shifting the character to examine his morality.  2/10.