Blue Box by: Kate Orman

 

Blue Box does not refer to the TARDIS in its title, instead it is Kate Orman’s return to an idea she initially proposed to Virgin Publishing as The Pinocchio Virus, potentially tying into her novel SLEEPY.  It was always meant to be a story involving the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and a computer virus, based on the title eventually evolving into Blue Box’s Savant.  The connection to SLEEPY feels particularly strong in Blue Box, if only spiritually, with Savant being very much in the same vein of the artificial intelligences that exist and influence the living.  Savant’s influence is far more corrupting, it creates this extreme attachment to someone, driving them into a madness where Savant is the only real thing in existence.  Orman does present Savant as amoral rather than immoral: it is a creature created by the people of Epsilon Eridani that accidentally made its way to the Earth, this entire novel being an accidental plot.  The real villain of the novel is Sarah Swan, a computer hacker slowly manipulated by Savant into an attempt to take over the world in a series of increasingly manic episodes that in the end leave her a husk of a person.  It’s a particularly cruel ending for someone but Blue Box is in many ways a particularly cruel novel.  Orman is examining identity and humanity with Blue Box, using Doctor Who as the framework to do this.  Now, it’s important to note that this was a novel written and published in 2003, 23 years ago from the time this review is being written and that I am a cisgender man.  There are aspects of Blue Box that while I will not shy away from discussing them, I am not the final authority as to what they represent.

 

This is a novel that while undoubtedly a Doctor Who novel, takes a first-person approach to the narrative.  It’s presented like David Bishop’s Who Killed Kennedy? as cowritten between Orman and journalist Charles “Chick” Peters, who finds himself wrapped up in the Doctor and Peri’s world through Savant.  Chick is a man who is confident in his own identity, an identity that is not questioned by the narrative as this is his narrative.  This is different from Swan, or to a lesser extent Peri.  Swan while an incredibly compelling villain, really ticks because her identity is in question.  Her name isn’t even Swan, Chick giving the pretense of changing the names and certain relevant details even with the mythological references in the text of people turned to swans and losing their humanity.  It is Chick’s confidence in his identity as a man that solidifies the theme that identity is something personal, something that only he can really define and damn if the rest of the world does not accept it.  There’s the snag, this empowering message is presented in the twist that Chick is intersex, something that is treated by both Swan and Peri as something disgusting.  The disgust from Peri is explicitly because of the thought of first Chick finding her potentially attractive and second at the idea of sex that isn’t strictly heterosexual.  It’s Peri’s disgust where Orman’s argument becomes weak because the audience is primed to see Peri as good, she is the Doctor’s companion after all.  Presenting the intersex condition as a twist is also generally problematic.  While being intersex is not the same as a transgender identity, this type of twist does fall into what was (and arguably still is) a popular trope of the secret transgender person, usually for the basis of a punchline.  Chick is at the very least still a person.

 

The twist is also relegated to the last 30 pages of the novel, before that Blue Box is a thriller built around discovering what Savant is.  Orman however papers over ever so slightly the twist with the way that she characterizes the Doctor.  Now outside of the twist, it’s clear that Orman loves Colin Baker’s portrayal of the Sixth Doctor: here he is just as brash but always with intelligence and care.  The Doctor and Peri are fighting not in anger but as an old married couple, a relationship built on love.  Orman also puts the Doctor in Colin Baker’s suggested outfit of blacks with pops of color on the tie, almost as a treat.  In relation to the twist about Chick Peters, Orman indicates the Doctor does not so much fit within the gender binary either, though this is sadly a brief mention.  Chick’s identity as a man in the end is not in the question, Orman even subverting the at the time general view that sex with a non-cisgender person to be somehow wrong with a single line that Chick’s girlfriends had no problem with it.  To add support to Orman’s message of identity is the fact that Savant is villainous because it cannot have an identity.  Visually Savant almost represents a Y-chromosome, Orman using it to critique an almost fragile masculinity that grabs onto people despite being developed by a planet that in Lucifer Rising was the home planet of a multi-dimensional being lacking in the concept of gender.

 

Overall, for what would be Kate Orman’s last Doctor Who novel until 2023 with Big Finish Productions’ Audio Novel range Blue Box is actually an interesting if outdated look at identity through the lens of a techno-thriller.  There is love of the Doctor and Peri, even if Peri is sadly made in the model of both the time of publication and her time of the mid-1980s.  It’s real strength is the two villains, Orman excelling at creating that spiral.  Even with its problematic presentation (and the very real openness for a regressive reading as much as my own progressive read), Blue Box is still a Kate Orman novel and because it draws on ideas that had been with Orman since the mid-1990s it really does shine.  8/10.

Legacy by: Joe Menosky and directed by: Robert Scheerer

 

“Legacy” is written by: Joe Menosky and is directed by: Robert Scheerer.  It was produced under production code 180, was the 6^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 80^th episode overall, and was broadcast on October 29, 1990.

 

The first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation attempted and largely failed to discuss mature topics.  Tasha Yar’s backstory involved a planet of conflict run explicitly by “roaming rape gangs”, heavily hinting that she was a victim of such abuse.  Even if she wasn’t specifically assaulted, she was raised in a traumatic environment that would inform her upbringing and especially her personality.  Because the first season was largely written by a rotating group of writers, she was not a character explored particularly well.  When her backstory did come up it was often ancillary to the plot, sometimes even glossed over in a single line.  Denise Crosby did leave the show near the end of the first season, Yar’s death in “Skin of Evil” effectively ending any of that intrigue.  The third season brought Yar back in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, one of the best episodes of the show thus far and reflective on the underutilized potential of the character.  It should not be surprising that the fourth season would also continue these threads in an attempt to continue the renewed interest in Yar with “Legacy”.  Setting an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on Yar’s home planet to explore its ruthless and violent society without Tasha Yar being there is at its core an odd decision.  Yar can only be given more depth from either situations such as “Yesterday’s Enterprise” with an alternate timeline version, or by other character’s relationships to Yar.  There is the possibility of additional flashbacks to bring Yar back, however, “Legacy” does not do this instead the episode’s big supporting guest character is Yar’s sister Ishara, played by Beth Toussaint.

 

The production team not casting Crosby as Yar’s sister is a solid decision.  While Crosby certainly has the range to play her character’s sister, giving it to a different actress means a different interpretation to Turkana IV.  Writer Joe Menosky focuses the script on the desperation of the planet.  Things have changed, the “rape gangs” are a thing of the past as an attempt for Menosky to avoid handling the concept which even mentioned in passing did not work, but there are still factions at war for the planet and hostages from a Federation freighter in danger.  Ishara is markedly different from Tasha, she is the one who stayed behind and leads the crew to believe she regrets that decision.  The big twist of the episode is that Ishara is lying, all of the trust she’s built with the crew and especially with Data was just to continue the violence between the Coalition and the Alliance.  Brent Spiner as Data is really the episode’s standout character, Menosky clearly loving the idea of a relationship between Data and Yar established quite clumsily (to put it nicely) in “The Naked Now”.  Menosky writes Data as not feeling emotions but still having the capacity for friendship in a way that is particularly interesting.  Friendship comes not necessarily from emotions but from a continued familiarity with someone over a long period of time.  There is also the idea that Data is in fact experiencing emotions and feelings, he mentions absence when a friend is gone in the case of Tasha Yar.  This is emotion, Data’s grief is portrayed as real.  On her part, Ishara Yar knows how to manipulate that grief for her own ends.

 

The episode is also considerably kinder to the betrayal of the character, she is allowed to go by Picard despite her actively harming two crewmembers.  There is far more nuance here with the idea of Tasha Yar’s legacy and understanding a planet’s situation where intervention would likely be inherently violent.  Menosky does not say the Enterprise shouldn’t interfere, but it should at least acknowledge that these situations are complicated to untangle which is a nice little idea.  Where “Legacy” does fail, at least in part, is that Toussaint does not have nearly enough chemistry as Ishara Yar as she really needs for the episode.  She is not giving a bad performance, but she does not really have chemistry with Brent Spiner.  The episode positions them as potentially in a romance which inherently has odd implications considering the romance between Data and Tasha, even if largely on-screen, has been established as a defining part of Tasha Yar’s legacy.  Toussaint is more awkward, though when she leans into the freedom fighter aspects of the character there is more confidence in making the character work.

 

Overall, “Legacy” is good, but it’s an episode that is almost working despite the absence of Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar.  There almost isn’t enough of Tasha haunting the narrative for an episode like this to work, likely due to the failure of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation to really explore what Yar’s background was.  That and the main plot of the episode leans a bit too close into the generic which does not help with the lack of character relationships.  It does say something to the increased quality of the show, however, when this is a relatively weaker episode as it’s still a good hour of television.  7/10.

Remember Me by: Lee Sheldon and directed by: Cliff Bole

 

“Remember Me” is written by: Lee Sheldon and is directed by: Cliff Bole.  It was produced under production code 179, was the 5^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 79^th episode overall, and was broadcast on October 22, 1990.

 

“Remember Me” reads like a commentary on the difficulties women face in healthcare.  Healthcare, at the very least the American healthcare system, has a tendency to be incredibly paternalistic, reducing and ignoring their concerns to their detriment.  “Remember Me” is a slow decent into madness for Dr. Beverly Crusher as people on the Enterprise disappear and only she seems to notice it happening.  The rest of the crew are unaware and are slowly picked off one by one until she is left with Picard and then alone on a ghost ship.  Lee Sheldon’s script is clearly aware of the relationships between the characters, Crusher being given nothing but sympathy as the rest of the crew sees her condition worsening despite their incredulous attitude to her ramblings.  It’s clear that Sheldon is not intent on portraying the gaslighting of women, instead approaching the episode as examining what it’s like to be isolated and alone, lingering in the final act with Crusher on the Enterprise with nobody else.  As a plot, it should not work nearly as well as it does.  Sheldon forgoes the A-plot/B-plot structure in favor of near exclusively focusing on Dr. Crusher’s descent into madness, only cutting away once everyone is away so the audience can be filled in on what’s happening to Crusher through fairly well-structured technobabble and a reappearance of the Traveler.  Giving it a technobabble laden explanation does undercut some of the tone that “Remember Me” is going for, but it also has to be confined to an ongoing episode of television, fitting in more closely with an episode of The Twilight Zone for much of its runtime.

 

The strength of “Remember Me” rests entirely on the shoulders of Gates McFadden as Dr. Crusher.  Previous reviews have discussed Star Trek: The Next Generation’s tendency to underwrite its female characters, but that is not present here.  Crusher, having already been given quite a bit of good material in this recent run of episodes, gets an exterior life complete with old mentors and friends.  It’s integral to making the episode work that the first person to disappear is an old mentor of Crusher’s, an elderly doctor whom Crusher is immediately worried has been injured when he disappears.  Structurally starting with a guest star disappearing keeps the initial tone light, there are easy rationalizations as to how Dr. Quaice may have either gone back to Starbase without telling Crusher, even if the implication is that the crew thinks it’s all in Crusher’s mind.  McFadden’s performance throughout the episode is one of her best.  Clearly enjoying the material, McFadden keeps Crusher put together until just over halfway through the episode, making the switch when she realizes that Wesley is eventually going to disappear.  The disappearances of her friends and colleagues do affect her mental state, but it is her son that pushes her over the edge.  Crusher also does not have an tearful breakdown as you would expect from how Star Trek: The Next Generation has portrayed female characters.  It is emotional, but McFadden gets to play the part as more manic than anything else before pulling herself together to be alone and deduce what is happening.  Cliff Bole shoots these sequences particularly well, alternating between wide shots and close ups for juxtaposition of the loneliness with Crusher’s resolve to discover things.

 

The audience getting information outside of Crusher’s reality, for that’s essentially what this is a reality in a warp bubble that was slowly taking her away from reality, is perhaps where the episode is weakest.  This is not do to poor performances, focusing on Wesley is a particularly good note from Sheridan, with Wil Wheaton also getting good material, but because it runs in parallel with Crusher working things out the climax is repetitive.  It’s not fully committing to getting rid of a B-plot entirely as there is clearly a way to make this an exclusively Crusher focused episode.  It’s especially a shame since having a more concrete explanation in these scenes with the other characters does minimize some of the horror when Crusher is alone.  While the vortex phenomena are largely portrayed with smoke, wind, and glowing lights, Bole is quite good at making them feel in line with the loneliness.  The lighting is standard Enterprise set lighting but shifted ever so slightly so there can be an emphasis on long shadows and empty spaces.  The tension just does not sustain with the introduction of reality into the episode and it almost seems Sheridan did not trust the production to commit to focusing on just one character or the audience to follow what Crusher was deducing.

 

Overall, “Remember Me” succeeds at giving a female Star Trek: The Next Generation character a strong character piece.  It’s particularly satisfying to see after Gates McFadden in the first season of the show had voiced complaints and temporarily left for a year because her voice wasn’t being heard.  While the commentary on the female experience is likely unintentional, that does not mean it is any less powerful with what is on-screen.  The episode excels particularly at the horrors of loneliness and being unable to trust your closest friends.  8/10.

The Domino Effect by: David Bishop

 

David Bishop’s previous novels Who Killed Kennedy? and Amorality Tale were both examinations of the Third Doctor’s era, deconstructing the actions and motivations of UNIT and how the Third Doctor as a character works.  The Domino Effect is Bishop’s crack at an Eighth Doctor Adventure, continuing the arc dealing with alternate Earths and hints at the multiverse in a novel that can be kindly summarized as a standard alternate history story.  The premise is that a mysterious force has changed the history of the Earth by killing or indefinitely imprisoning those responsible for the development of computers which has created a knock on effect of a fascist British Empire ruled by racism and xenophobia as an extension of imperialism.  The big twist of the novel is once again that Sabbath is behind things, attempting to collapse the multiverse on a point, the novel ending with the reveal that the day isn’t actually saved and the multiverse is on the brink of collapse.  It’s a great last page cliffhanger and does create some forward motion for the series which has been struggling with actually going anywhere as Sabbath has been an antagonist for over 10 books, on and off, and only now is slowly moving into a point where an ending is coming.  There’s almost something there of Bishop not revealing much of the nature of this alternate history until interludes between the rather long chapters, chapters intentionally framed on a specific date, though the first being the murder of Charles Babbage among others does really give the game away.  This becomes an issue when the actual worldbuilding of the present does not actually do much to have computers or computing factor into the plot.  Alan Turing is reintroduced, in this timeline being prisoner in the Tower of London and often on the Doctor’s mind, but his actual contribution is for someone for Fitz to speak to in captivity.

 

Turing’s presence in the Doctor’s mind is an interesting reflection on The Touring Test and there’s this implication of the Doctor having extreme guilt, being motivated not to change history because there is no guarantee that this is actually a wrong timeline.  That and the Doctor is implied here to have had an attraction to Turing of some sort, not necessarily sexual but very likely romantic.  Several supporting characters in The Domino Effect actually infer the Doctor as bisexual which is one of the few interesting ideas here even if it isn’t explored.  The Domino Effect’s plot does not actually do much with the world not having computers, structurally it’s the Doctor, Anji, and Fitz being mistaken for terrorists in the aftermath of an explosion.  They are separated, Fitz captured, and the Doctor and Anji stuck to navigate a hostile Earth.  Anji is the worst served by this novel, the fascist state of Great Britain is racially segregated and Bishop basically has every supporting character denigrate her in some way.  It gets so bad to a point that the Doctor tells her not to be so on edge because not everyone asking where she’s from is interested in her race which is a dialogue exchange I could not believe I was reading in this book.  Bishop also just gives her nothing to work with, this is the third novel in a row where it is clear that she wishes to leave the TARDIS and is being strung along on adventures because of the alternate histories mean she cannot go home.  This is not entirely Bishop’s fault, but it is a plot motivation that has become repetitive and since he does not give her much more, not even examining the underlying racism and xenophobia on display instead just portraying it as a bad timeline, she falls flat.  Her best moments are when she is in conflict with the Doctor, building upon previous novels.  The Doctor is also odd as throughout he has these dizzy and fainting spells that while explained in the end, are indicative of just how repetitive the novel can be.  There is almost a lack of enough plot to get through the required page count.

 

Overall, The Domino Effect is a novel that at best is mediocre.  Things improve when Sabbath actually appears because Bishop can’t help but delight in writing a villain, and the Doctor’s guilt is at least something for the novel to explore.  There’s almost a sense that Fitz and Anji are supplementary to requirements, Fitz featuring basically as the MacGuffin.  Bishop also lacks any real examination of the setting, having the Doctor be cruel to how Anji is being treated and not really grappling with the need for violence against an oppressive state.  For a novel with quite the evocative cover, The Domino Effect is the second underwhelming Eighth Doctor Adventure in a row. 4/10.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Tears of the Nameless by: George Mann

 

George Mann wrote Tears of the Nameless at a time where he didn’t know whether or not he would live to see it through, something revealed in the acknowledgments at the end of the novel.  This adds a grave tone to the novel, retrospectively, as while The High Republic as an initiative was far from one author’s vision, Tears of the Nameless is very much about the Jedi in nothing but a precarious place.  The Nihil have the upper hand and while there have been several parties slowly advancing on their enemies, the High Republic and the Jedi have always felt on the backfoot and ready for a fall.  George Mann as a person is writing this novel through the idea that he might actually fall to a brain tumor.  The Nameless themselves can almost be read as some of Mann’s own fears of what could be killing him, even if Mann examines the fact that calling them Nameless paradoxically gives them a name within the book.  The acknowledgments don’t actually say whether or not the lesion is benign or a malignant tumor, though the implication is that it is benign as Mann describes partway through the writing process being able to add levity back into the book.

 

That retrospective tone means Tears of the Nameless becomes a book about hope returning, something great for the young adult audience that this is aimed at.  Mann, however, despite getting lighter in tone as the book goes on actually ends the novel with these bittersweet notes that work as the characters really haven’t won the day.  They have gained knowledge, some of that knowledge being contradictory and confusing when it pertains to certain characters, but knowledge nevertheless.  It brings this in line with the other books from Phase III of The High Republic as being often more personal stories for the characters outside of the larger Nihil and Nameless plots.  Impressive considering Mann likes to include a rather large cast of characters from Vernestra Rwoh to the crew of the Vessel with several added cameos.  It’s many of the returning characters that while not bringing the novel down, are perhaps the least explored here.  It isn’t so much as Mann not wishing to advance plot threads of pre-established characters, he doesn’t really introduce new characters here and a major supporting character was an integral part of Path of Deceit, but includes almost too many characters for them all to be established.

 

This is slightly odd as the book is split into two parts and the first half is the slower half.  It’s all perfectly serviceable setup and focused largely on connecting the reader with Padawan Amadeo Azzazzo, a character who has appeared in the publishing initiative but this is really his book over anyone else.  The actual plot builds to a secret mission with the intent of capturing one of the Nameless alive for study.  The buildup before this intended mission is revealed is slightly weaker than when we get onto the mission, this is where the characters become their most contemplative.  Doubt creeping into one’s convictions is the novel’s major theme.  Amadeo as a character is largely upbeat and caring protagonist even if his relationship with his master becomes fraught with worry and strain, but he is essentially the only one.  He is paralleled with Jedi Raeth Silas who is dealing with the loss of his master and thus his own doubts in the nature of the Jedi teachings.  While he has a new Master, one with whom he eventually can confide in and rely on.  The representation of doubt that springs to the forefront and ties Tears of the Nameless together is Azlin Rell, the fallen Jedi from Path of Deceit (among other books and audio dramas).  He’s essentially the representation of temptation and forbidden knowledge, almost more so than the Nihil and the Nameless as this novel is one that is reflective on the High Republic as an organization through its characters.  The doubt is also an interesting aspect as by the end there is this almost beautiful uncertainty as to the alignment of the Nameless, they are living creatures after all and there is a sense that they are not inherently evil.  Even for his sinister nature Azlin Rell is a fallen Jedi and not a Sith.  Mann is active in making the role of antagonist for Tears of the Nameless to be less clear cut than some other novels, just this once, to allow the characters to really grow.

 

Overall, reading Tears of the Nameless was actually quite the nice return to Star Wars: The High Republic even if it is slightly weaker than the last installment I read from George Mann.  When it works the best is when it is continuing individual characters as examination of the entire Jedi and High Republic as a setting as well as sewing specific seeds of doubt.  The second half of the novel in particular is an exhilarating ride after a first half where the buildup is just slightly overstuffed to really smooth out.  Mann is putting a lot of himself in the page in a way that you can tell even if you don’t read the acknowledgments at the end.  8/10.

Suddenly Human by: John Whelpley and Jeri Taylor from a story by: Ralph Phillips and directed by: Gabrielle Beaumont

 

“Suddenly Human” is written by: John Whelpley and Jeri Taylor, from a story by: Ralph Phillips, and is directed by: Gabrielle Beaumont.  It was produced under production code 176, was the 4^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 78^th episode overall, and was broadcast on October 15, 1990.

 

Star Trek: The Next Generation’s fourth season has thus far built itself around ideas of family and identity.  From “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II” and “Family” examining Picard’s assimilation into the Borg as something that rocks who he is fundamentally, to “Family” and “Brothers” exploring the strained family dynamics including atypical family relationships.  “Suddenly Human” is an episode that should fit right in with where the show is currently going.  The premise is the Enterprise finds a ship of four Talarian teenagers and one human.  The human is an orphan who was adopted by the Talarians and has grown up with their culture and customs, he no longer sees himself as a human being, has no connection to his remaining human family as his grandmother is an Admiral in Starfleet.  The conflict of the episode is whether or not Jono should stay with his Talarian father or be returned to his human family.  Now, where I will definitively give the episode credit is that it ends with Jono making the decision for himself and the implication is that the Enterprise crew are in the wrong for wishing to impose human culture and force that culture onto the child.  But to get to that point, this is one of those incredibly awkward scripts where it’s clear that the attempts are being made to handle difficult themes, taking inspiration from stories like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes.  Stories about people being raised outside of their own species has a long history, however, the different species is often coded to be from a different race or culture.  Burroughs was writing during periods of colonialism and that is a general angle that is left over in a piece like “Suddenly Human”.

 

The issues with this type of story is the coding of a white man’s burden to civilize a savage, lost white child.  Jono in many ways falls in this stereotype, much of “Suddenly Human” pairs Jono with Picard who is meant to act as a role model to the kid because the Talarians are a patriarchal and misogynistic society.  Jono won’t give women any sort of respect, only being loyal to a vessel’s captain so in this case it is Picard.  There is also the very odd decision to make the fact that Jono was adopted by the Talarian captain Endar, played by Sherman Howard, as a mid-episode twist.  The Enterprise crew is forcing the child into the box of a human being, arguably not seeing Jono’s personhood until the point at which he starts to assimilate into human society on the surface about halfway through the episode (that and he has traumatic flashbacks to the death of his parents).  The crew doesn’t see Talarians as people in a way that could be a commentary on how the liberally minded can still have biases towards outsiders who have cultures that have distasteful aspects, for instance the tendency to not see people of the Middle East as people due to similar misogyny and homophobia, however this isn’t evident by the text.  The text of the episode says that the crew is wrong in the end, Jono does get to chose to leave, but there isn’t any examination of Talarian culture, in many ways it’s similar to Klingon culture but is designated as having tensions with the Federation.  The ending gets to the right place in the end, but without actually examining much of the why these are the correct decisions, leaving the tropes just tropes without examination.

 

For his part, Chad Allen as Jono is a really compelling performance.  He takes on the alien customs and plays them without hesitation.  Jono feels like a teenager, which is interesting since adults often struggle with this kind of character.  Jono’s breakdown is particularly effective.  Plus the ending of the episode does work, even if it doesn’t quite make up for a lot of what the episode is doing.  The biggest problem with the episode, however, is actually an issue of intertextuality.  This is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where our main characters are often written as out of character.  Picard is the one who comes out the best, but even he has the issue of being saddled with a child to show he might be a good parent, something he isn’t interested in, and playing it as someone who hasn’t dealt with children reads as if the writers have forgotten Wesley exists.  The biggest offender of the episode is actually Worf as it’s forgotten that his own upbringing is quite similar to Jono, and he is written with a lack of empathy for the kid in the very few scenes they share.  These issues are clearly down to the fact that this is an episode written by three people who seem to be unfamiliar with Star Trek: The Next Generation, Jeri Taylor likely being the one to come out of it the best as she became a producer immediately after production for the two episodes before this (they were produced out of order).  Ralph Phillips is likely the root of the issues, he is given the story credit and a cursory glance indicates this is his only credit for both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek as a franchise, John Whelpley at least having some connection with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

 

Overall, “Suddenly Human” is not an episode without potential, but on screen there is clearly a sense of too many cooks in a single kitchen next door to the production of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The ideas are interesting and it is at the very least an episode with its heart in the right place in terms of examining aspects of a teenager’s identity, but the applicability is messy as the text brings up several ideas from adoption to cultural identity to even child abuse (the aspect most glossed over in the episode), while the main characters who are framed as wrong are sadly out of character.  Being out of character doesn’t actively ruin the episode, but it does mean that obvious parallels to characters are not made use of and the tropes at the heart of the episode are left unexamined.  It’s an episode that ultimately says very little, leaving ideas on the surface which weakens it greatly.  4/10.

The Emerald City of Oz by: L. Frank Baum

 

J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up would receive it’s American debut in 1905.  Its place in literature is an integral text in the understanding of adolescence and the need for children to grow up: at the end of the play Wendy Darling takes her brothers back home while the emotionally stunted Peter Pan stays behind in Neverland.  Peter Pan does not leave fairyland, he never grows up and when he returns again to take her back she refuses to go because being stuck in childhood means he forgets things left behind.  He is stuck.  The Emerald City of Oz, published in 1910 is a different take on leaving fairyland.  L. Frank Baum proposes that perhaps fairyland is a better place to be than the real world, that sometimes childlike logic and especially kindness can have a better outcome than the trials of adulthood and society.  The Emerald City of Oz, it is important to note, isn’t entirely taking on a child who refuses to grow up, but adults who have lost their inner child.  The inciting incident of The Emerald City of Oz is that Dorothy’s Uncle Henry has lapsed payments on the farmhouse, rebuilt after the cyclone in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Henry and Em don’t believe Dorothy actually went to Oz multiple times, were happy to entertain her stories since despite disappearing she always managed to turn up again safe and sound.  They are adults, adults don’t believe in lands of make believe where everybody gets along with everybody else and nobody actually has to do work that they don’t want to.  They get the grand tour of the country, encountering wonderous people from living bread, to living utensils, and of course cameos from the most famous of the Oz characters.

 

Going to the fairyland of Oz means that the grey characters of Kansas have to relearn exactly what it means to be a child.  It also means an escape from having to fend for themselves.  The farm being taken away because of bad crops and economic depression is explicitly stated in the book to be a problem of capitalism as a system.  Baum does not give faces to the members of the bank which is an important detail, dehumanizing something as grand as the system despite the adults initially denying the existence of fairyland as a utopia where everybody is provided for.  Baum also does not forget the bank taking the farm, when the Nome King invades Dorothy does propose everybody go back to the farm so Baum can make a point that a good society isn’t one where you abandon your fellow people in times of hardship.  Aunt Em and Uncle Henry maintain disbelief even while on the road throughout the Land of Oz, though Baum goes through lengths to show how this disbelief unravels slowly.  He keeps their reactions at this very adult distance of people who won’t deny the reality of their eyes, but still have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of seeing these fantastic things.  There is also a point that life should be lived doing things, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry do want to find some work in Oz even if it isn’t for money.  They cannot spend their days sitting around doing nothing, even traveling is doing something like building community with different peoples of Oz.  Also the Wizard of Oz can now do actual magic which is the closest thing to a character in Oz getting character development so far.

 

The different places and peoples of Oz is following the same structure as Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and The Road to Oz, becoming repetitive just before Baum gives Dorothy a slightly longer adventure being lost from the party.  Bunbury is a fun diversion, but the real parallel is Baum swapping adventures with the protagonists by following the Nome King, given the name Roquat the Red, allying himself with other creatures who are not deadly afraid of eggs.  General Guph is the Nome sent out to recruit allies, but rhetorically this gives The Emerald City of Oz this little edge of danger, a ticking clock that there is an invasion coming that the protagonists don’t actually know about until the final act.  It is a plot that also follows the structure of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and The Road to Oz, but in reverse.  There’s actually a lot of humor in this telling, however, as Guph often has to make these lofty promises to other armies of land and people under subjugation.  Baum positions the Nome King as an authoritarian once again despite some of the humor, he is wicked because he would take away the autonomy away from the Ozites.  Guph promises some of the allied armies with as many as 20,000 slaves which is particularly fascinating as Baum is an author who lambasted war in general, this book concluding without bloodshed but trickery.  This does contradict his views of the settler colonialism of the American west of course, but people are complicated and often hypocritical in his views.  There is implication that slavery is worse than death, something that likely would have been instilled in Baum in childhood growing up in the Union during the American Civil War.

 

Overall, The Emerald City of Oz is a return to form after The Road to Oz.  It is Baum’s attempt at replicating Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem”, to say goodbye and go out with a bang while actively being in conversation with what it means to go to fairyland and away from reality.  The Emerald City of Oz has several ideas around community building and making fairyland a place where people are allowed to live together, safely, free from the oppressive nature of selfish rule and by extension money.  It works best when it eschews the established formula, even if it does this by paralleling the formula between protagonists and antagonists.  Not quite the perfect return to form, but a very close to it.  8/10.