We'll Always Have Paris by: Deborah Dean Davis and Hannah Louise Shearer and directed by: Robert Becker

 

“We’ll Always Have Paris” is written by: Deborah Dean Davis and Hannah Louise Shearer and is directed by: Robert Becker.  It was produced under production code 124, was the 24^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on May 2, 1988.

 

Casablanca is one of the best films ever made: endlessly quotable, unrelentingly anti-fascist, and one of the best films ever made.  “We’ll Always Have Paris” is a late episode from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation that desperately wants to be a riff on Casablanca, but in space with Jean-Luc Picard in the role of Rick.  Star Trek does a riff of a classic film/story is honestly something I wasn’t particularly expecting because it feels more akin to what Doctor Who was doing from 1975-1977, and “We’ll Always Have Paris” is an episode that suffers greatly because it doesn’t seem to understand why Casablanca works and how to do a riff.  The central character conflict of the episode is Picard reuniting with Jenice Manheim, now wife to a pioneering doctor working on time experiments causing distortions.  The script adds in a bunch of quotes from Casablanca but really the only thing properly riffing on the film is the central love triangle.  Now the love triangle that is central to Casablanca is so compelling because it is in the backdrop of first Paris in the early days of Nazi occupation and then the rest of the film proper in Nazi occupied Casablanca, both legs of the triangle are explicit anti-fascists fighting the Nazis in their own way, and both sell the relationship to the central female character who actively makes the choice to be with one of them.  This choice is made twice, plus the tension is coming from the active threat of the Nazis and the fact that the film is being made during World War II.

 

“We’ll Always Have Paris” has absolutely none of that, Picard is actually put into the role of Ilsa Lund, he’s the one who left Jenice in Paris to go off and be captain of the Enterprise.  As a conflict it would actually be really well done, were this the original run of Star Trek because that was a series that very much setup the idea that people working on a starship couldn’t have a family.  Star Trek: The Next Generation has a mother and son in the main cast and has often focused on the fact that there are families living on the Enterprise full time.  There also isn’t a war or really any conflict that is pulling the pair apart.  Paul Manheim isn’t a freedom fighter and wasn’t even in the picture when Picard and Jenice were in Paris, so it doesn’t read like Casablanca’s a woman discovering the love of her life alive and rushing to be with him, just a basic relationship not really working out.  Manehim is a scientist, and writers Debroah Dean Davis and Hannah Louise Shearer clearly want to have this entire love triangle play out with passion and romance, but they don’t have a script to back it up.  Patrick Stewart is the one holding it together because he’s Patrick Stewart, he’s dealing with absolutely no direction or substantive material but he is the one selling the relationship, especially when paired with Michelle Phillips who lacks chemistry with Stewart.

 

Now, this was made in 1988 and was written just before the beginning of the Writer’s Guild of America Strike, leaving the script unfinished and you can really tell on-screen.  The drama is not there, the script was apparently written in five days and finished during production, though it’s vague as to who finished it.  It’s very possible that the people finishing the script were scabs, non-union writers breaking the strike which is objectively wrong.  It does not bode well for essentially the next year of the show, this episode aired two months into the strike estimating a two-month lag time between production and broadcast (fairly standard for a television series).  The strike will affect the show until the end of the second season, a season shortened by four episodes and pushed back two months from the typical starting month of September.  I fully believe the strike is responsible for the rest of the episode’s conflict being time disturbances to be solved, a plot that is equally underbaked.  There’s an experiment that ran out of control and really the only scene of note is the resolution which has Data solve the problem but briefly becoming three Data’s which allows Brent Spiner a genuinely great scene.

 

Overall, “We’ll Always Have Paris” is one of those episodes that’s fine when you end up watching it but then you think about it and realize that there is absolutely little of substance.  This is an episode that Patrick Stewart is carrying on his back, the script just is incomplete but there’s an episode order, a strike going on, and there’s absolutely nothing that people can actually do.  Just as things felt as if Star Trek: The Next Generation was clicking into place here comes another hurdle to overcome.  4/10.

The World Shapers by: Grant Morrison with pencils by: John Ridgway, inks by: Tim Perkins, and letters by: Richard Starkings

 

“The World Shapers” is written by: Grant Morrison with pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins, and lettering by Richard Starkings.  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 127-129 (July-September 1987) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: The World Shapers by Panini Books.

 

When I looked at the first of three Doctor Who Magazine comic stories by Grant Morrison, “Changes”, I had only read All-Star Superman.  Since then I have dived into their run on Batman (I’m about 1/3 of the way through that) and their run on Action Comics (2/3 of the way through that) and they have rapidly become one of my favorite writers.  At the core of their work is this complete sense of humanism and improvement of the human race, they’re perfect for writing both Superman and Batman as characters (and I’d adore to see what they’d do with Wonder Woman).  “The World Shapers” is Morrison executing a perfect Doctor Who story over 24 pages packed to the brim with ideas on how the universe works, how Time Lords work, what a noble sacrifice can actually look like, and almost unintentionally where the Doctor is going once he regenerates.  On the last point, Morrison obviously had no idea where the Doctor was going nor how Sylvester McCoy would play the role, they were likely writing this before McCoy was even cast and probably didn’t know that this was going to be the last Sixth Doctor strip when it was commissioned.  Yet, this is a strip that provides this perfect, almost melancholy ending for what the universe is doing.  The ending of the strip is not actually the fairly iconic death of Second Doctor companion Jamie McCrimmon, but actually the Doctor leaving in anger because the Time Lords refuse to stop the Cybermen as they wished to the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks.  The Cybermen are fated to become the universe’s salvation, ascending to beings of pure thought and benevolence.

 

This idea is transhumanism taken to its logical conclusion: taking humanity to a point where they can exist in their purest form.  It’s a philosophy at the center of all Morrison’s writing and is executed here fascinatingly with this rather dark idea that the Time Lords are wrong for sacrificing so many lives to see this play out.  The Cybermen are dangerous, The Invasion is directly referenced and the Time Lords’ continual interference with Jamie’s memories clearly put the framing as wrong even if the transhumanist idea at the center of the story is something that is an ultimate good.  The Time Lords are revealed to fit into this transhumanist idea, when a Time Lord reaches the end of their regeneration cycle their bodies decay, an idea that would eventually make it into the television story “The Name of the Doctor”.  It also serves the narrative purpose of seeding the idea of transhumanism into “The World Shapers” before the titular world shaper element even enters the picture.  The entire first issue is laying down exactly what this plot is going to be and how Morrison is reflecting on much of the mythic history that Steve Parkhouse had laid out in his entire run, specifically “The Tides of Time” and “Voyager”.

 

The actual idea of a world shaper or worldshaper depending on how master letterer Richard Starkings is writing it out, it’s what has gone wrong and begun to shape the Voord of Marinus into the early Cybermen.  Marinus is explicitly Planet 14 which Morrison implies will become Mondas and eventually made its way to the Earth.  The idea “the Voord becoming Cybermen” sounds ridiculous, especially for 1987 when nobody would have seen The Keys of Marinus since original broadcast, though the novelization was released in 1980 and reprinted in 1986 (though wouldn’t release on VHS until 1999).  Jamie’s actual appearance is used as a natural extension of The Two Doctors, Morrison going full in on Jamie traveling with a Second Doctor working for the Time Lords, but left in Scotland for 40 years and thought of mad by having his memories of traveling with the Doctor returned to him.  Seeing the Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher returns nobility to the man and it is genuinely tragic.  This entire story is a tragedy around the Time Lord’s attempt to allow something good in the long game.

 

Overall, “The World Shapers” is without a doubt the perfect parallel to “Voyager” and the perfect end to the Sixth Doctor’s time in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.  It is at its heart Grant Morrison, through and through, and that’s why the entire story works so damn well.  Whatever follows this is going to be tough to really judge, especially since it will be a year before the Doctor’s character meets the trajectory laid down here.  10/10.

Skin of Evil by: Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer, from a story by: Joseph Stefano, and directed by: Joseph L. Scanlan

 

“Skin of Evil” is written by: Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer, from a story by: Joseph Stefano, and is directed by: Joseph L. Scanlan.  It was produced under production code 122, was the 23^nd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on April 25, 1988.

 

I knew this was coming.  When I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, I had mentioned to my father since he had watched the series on original broadcast growing up.  The first words out of his mouth were “Has Tasha Yar died yet?”.  The episode I had just watched was “Encounter at Farpoint”.  So, obviously, not.  Knowing this little fact essentially going into Star Trek: The Next Generation and the fact that it is something that is happening at some point during the first season made me feel that each episode could be her last.  “Skin of Evil” is when it happens, very early in the episode where she is killed, almost unceremoniously by an oil-like creature that had been holding hostage counselor Troi.  The death of Tasha Yar is particularly odd in this episode because it then becomes the most interesting aspect of the plot.  It becomes the distraction and stakes the crew have to fight against, the potential that other members of the crew are going to die.  The crowning achievement of the episode, however, is actually the memorial service held for Yar at the end of the episode.  It has some of the best material Star Trek: The Next Generation has had to offer, mainly because it is completely focused on character.  Brent Spiner, Michael Dorn, and Patrick Stewart are particularly effective in remembering the Enterprise security chief who has been defined by a traumatic past that the writers never really wished to earnestly explore.  Crosby somehow gets her best material in getting to say goodbye via prerecorded hologram, it isn’t entirely perfect because a lot of the relationships between Yar and the crew were generally ignored.

 

The characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation haven’t actually established their interpersonal relationships outside of the barest of bare bones, mainly hinting at relationships between Picard and Crusher and Riker and Troi.  There’s also a friendly mentor/mentee relationship between Wesley and Geordi.  “Skin of Evil” actually opens with a dialogue between Worf and Yar, clearly making an attempt for the audience to connect with her before her death but it’s also some of the deepest characterization Star Trek: The Next Generation has had to offer.  It actually is a major step in indicating these characters have lives outside of their jobs: Yar is participating in a martial arts tournament on the ship and Worf is betting that she is going to win.  It’s simple but effective at actually selling that these people are more than just reluctant coworkers.  The shame is that it’s her last episode, though again this isn’t to blame Crosby: her decision to leave was clearly leaving a very troubled production that clearly didn’t deserve her.

 

The rest of “Skin of Evil” is about an alien that is written as a petulant child, killing Yar to try feeling something for its actions.  The design of Armus is particularly effective despite being a rather cheap effect.  You can tell it’s a black plastic costume (one that behind the scenes clearly struggled with repairing through production), but the way that Joseph L. Scanlan shoots it in camera with actual oil really sells it.  There are camera tricks used to trick the audience to see Armus rising from the oil without actually using any optical effects.  Armus himself is also left alive at the end of the episode, the crew generally not taking revenge for the death of Yar.  Marina Sirtis as Troi who is stuck in the position of damsel gets the more interesting performance in the immediate aftermath of Yar’s death, she doesn’t see it happen but emotionally feels it, selling exactly who she is to the audience quite well.  “Skin of Evil” does struggle slightly, there actually isn’t a whole lot of plot and without Yar’s death there really wouldn’t be particularly interesting.  It doesn’t actually have a whole lot to say and just is a fairly standard episode elevated into something because of the killing of a main cast member.

 

Overall, “Skin of Evil” in many ways feels like a turning point for Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The way Yar dies is very quick and played partially for shock value, but the episode then dedicates plenty of time to actually show the aftermath of her death, subsequently giving the character more characterization than any other appearance.  The plot itself still has a lot of the problems other episodes of the show has: an underdeveloped plot and when not dealing with Yar’s death the characters don’t really work.  It’s actually one of the stronger episodes of the show and one I could easily see myself rewatching just for the actors clicking so well with the material.  7/10.

Symbiosis by: Robert Lewin, Richard Manning, and Hans Beimler, from a story by: Robert Lewin, and directed by: Win Phelps

 

“Symbiosis” is written by: Robert Lewin, Richard Manning, and Hans Beimler, from a story by: Robert Lewin, and is directed by: Win Phelps.  It was produced under production code 123, was the 22^nd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on April 18, 1988.

 

The 1970s and 1980s public service announcement sits in this weird nostalgic bubble in the minds of the generations before mine.  Generally, they were large campaigns, the more classic campaigns being anti-drug campaigns, so much so that television series at the time would dedicate an episode to being public service announcements.  Usually they would be built up as ‘very special episodes’ and in the era of streaming services they have essentially died off.  The anti-drug PSAs were usually a regular cast member or special guest star becoming addicted to a drug and having to overcome addiction through the written lens of an older generation which doesn’t really understand how addiction actually works.  Star Trek: The Next Generation starting in 1987 is right in that sweet spot when every show was doing these types of episodes so it shouldn’t be a surprise that near the end of the first season there’s a great big say no to drugs PSA in the form of “Symbiosis”.

 

“Symbiosis” is an episode that attempts to hide the fact that it’s an anti-drug PSA behind the symbiotic relationship between the Brekkans and Ornarans as one of the Brekkans simply helping the Ornarans overcome a centuries long plague.  It’s presented as a mystery for Picard and Crusher to actually solve, the plague seems to lack a cause or solution.  That’s obvious because it is an addiction and the pre-credits sequence actually plays its hand by having the Ornarans appear high so the audience definitely knows what is going on from the very beginning.  When the drug plot is actually revealed there is a sequence where the plot is in fact stopped dead to have the big moment, nearly breaking the fourth wall, to explore why drugs are bad.  It’s essentially a speech between Tasha Yar and Wesley Crusher, inserted into the episode by Maurice Hurley and not writers Robert Lewin, Richard Manning, and Hans Beimler, and it doesn’t work.  Hurley clearly doesn’t understand why people take drugs, addiction is down to people just being at their lowest which is certainly one overly simplified explanation.  It’s also written as if teenager Wesley Crusher had never even heard of drugs as a concept, making me wonder exactly how young the writers think the character is supposed to be.

 

The first half unravelling the mystery, even if it’s a poor mystery is at the very least an interesting story to unravel.  The entire idea is to buildup to the reveal but Gates McFadden and Patrick Stewart are great while there’s a guest appearance from Merritt Butrick which is also particularly fun.  Really it’s the back half of the episode that excels at being more than a simple public service announcement.  The Prime Directive had been explored poorly in earlier episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, mainly the truly awful “Justice”, but in “Symbiosis” the conclusion being Picard’s inaction to leave the two species to their fate actually makes sense.  The Brekkans and the Ornarans have created this relationship and society where the Ornarans are hopelessly addicted and the Brekkans’ entire society is responsible for feeding that addiction, is something that when offered an out they won’t take.  The condition for Picard to actually help the pair with the Enterprise’s advanced technology is to stop the exploitation.  Now this does have the slight knock on effect of reading as if the Ornarans are morally responsible for their addiction which is a pure reflection on the cultural views on drug addicts in the 1980s.  This is tempered somewhat by the fact that the withdrawal symptoms are established as not something the Ornarans will die from, unlike actual withdrawal from addiction in reality.  Putting that aside, the ending is actually quite powerful for Picard to actively take a stand because sometimes it feels as if help is not meant to be given freely.  That help would just be the Enterprise contributing to the subjugation and control of a people through the sale of narcotics.  The ending is nearly played for as chilling as it is supposed to be, director Win Phelps doesn’t seem to be able to properly frame things and it’s clear as this is the only episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation he is put in charge of.

 

Overall, despite being the first real time Star Trek: The Next Generation is doing a ‘very special episode’ “Symbiosis” is actually one of the stronger installments in the season.  While its tactics are quite literally just say no to drugs, there is enough here in the performances and the ending in particular to at least make it a more memorable watch than much of this particular season.  It’s nothing special and there is still a fair bit of messy elements, Maurice Hurley’s influence is particularly unsubtle to the episode’s detriment, but it’s actually an enjoyable enough watch.  6/10.

The Gift by: Jamie Delano with pencils by: John Ridgway, inks by: Tim Perkins, and letters by: Richard Starkings

 

“The Gift” is written by Jamie Delano with pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins, and lettering by Richard Starkings.  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 123-126 (March-June 1987) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: The World Shapers by Panini Books.

 

There is a famous panel of Frobisher the penguin loudly singing in a silly hat while threatening a crouching man with a rifle and never in a million years did I believe that image would have come from Jamie Delano but here we are.  “The Gift” is the second and final strip Delano would provide to Doctor Who Magazine, published in the spring of 1987 once again while Colin Baker had already left the role but still featuring the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher.  This is Delano doing outright comedy: Frobisher is bored while the Doctor and Peri are on a holiday and demands to be taken to a party.  The Doctor has several invitations but they choose the birthday party of the Lorduke of Zazz to attend, Zazz being a planet obsessed with early 20^th century Earth.  This means that John Ridgway and Tim Perkins get to have a lot of fun drawing the main characters (bar Frobisher who according to The Holy Terror likes to mesomorph a black and white pair of pants that nobody can really see) in period dress.  The backgrounds are particularly great as Ridgway really gets to flex a lot of the city stuff before eventually the plot takes a diversion to the planet’s moon.  It’s a gorgeous moon complete with crazy robots and mad science.

 

Because the Lorduke of Zazz has an evil scientist brother in exile, of course the Doctor accidentally falls for the evil brother’s plan to bring a gift of self-replicating robots which wreak havoc.  This is eventually why Frobisher is brandishing the gun against the scientist is because he basically has to be held at gunpoint.  Now Delano does leave Peri a bit in the lurch, mainly she is there to complain about how annoying the party is but Delano does actually capture a decent amount of what the Doctor and Peri’s banter would become with further developments to the characters.  Delano also loves just creating a bunch of science fiction sounding names which are particularly fun even if the Lorduke is particularly outrageous.  The entire plotting of “The Gift” is outrageous, Delano is smart enough to fill four issues so there’s actually a sense of things moving forward and the cliffhangers being particularly exciting.  There’s also an addition of pre-credits pages like a more traditional, full 25 page comic book, something that while the strip doesn’t ever transition to, does eventually become more modern in terms of comics.  It’s clear editorial knew that the Sixth Doctor was on his way out and were trying to fill out the pages before the Seventh Doctor made his debut in the autumn.

 

Overall, “The Gift” could easily have ended up as a simple bit of fun stretched to bursting, but because it’s Jamie Delano writing there’s this sense of snappy dialogue and immediate wit.  Outside of the panel of Frobisher with the gun there are other Frobisher panels that genuinely deserve to be among those memed and remembered panels.  It’s a great little yarn that is slowly winding down the Sixth Doctor’s time on the strip.  8/10.

Short Trips edited by: Stephen Cole

 

Under Virgin Publishing, the series of Decalog short story collections were quite successful so when BBC Books took charge of the Doctor Who line of books, editor Nuala Buffini commissioned Traveller in Time, which would be an anthology featuring all eight Doctors in some historical setting.  Stephen Cole was commissioned to contribute a short story but before his writer’s block could be overcome he became the editor of the Doctor Who merchandise line of books, cassettes, and VHS tapes.  I’d say he never actually contributed a story to Short Trips, the collection that Traveller in Time became, but that isn’t strictly true.  He contributed three under the pseudonyms Tara Samms and Paul Grice (and possibly a fourth under the name Sam Lester) clearly to round out the collection.  Short Trips is a collection of stories of variable length from authors old and new, mainly authors who contributed to the Virgin Books and in a way is a time capsule of where Doctor Who was in 1998.  The Eighth Doctor Adventures had eight installments, same with the Past Doctor Adventures line, but adding a third line of short stories allowed again potential new writers and new styles of stories to be explored.  It would sadly be limited to three entries before being taken up by Big Finish Productions, but still.

 

The collection opens with “Model Train Set”, Jonathan Blum’s first solo Doctor Who story and one of the bookends with the Eighth Doctor.  It’s a solo character piece about the Doctor playing with his model train set, built over the course of several lifetimes.  Blum likes stories that end particularly hopefully and this is no exception, it’s all about who the Eighth Doctor is, but that’s really all there is.  It’s more of a study in who this Doctor is, separated from the general line of novels occurring at the same time.  In many ways it feels like the starting point for the Big Finish audio adventures.  6/10.

 

The first appearance of Iris Wildthyme is next in “Old Flames” which is also Paul Magrs’ first piece of Doctor Who fiction in general.  It’s certainly got more to it than “Model Train Set”, playing off what was considered the Doctor/companion dynamic with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.  What’s interesting is that Iris in creation is very much meant to be a one-off character, a foil and flirtatious force for the Doctor.  It’s the most different Iris has ever really been, because she won’t really crystallize into the character that her fans will entirely know until The Scarlet Empress, she’s almost treated like a joke.  Okay, she is still very much a comedic character today, but the one-off nature really does shine through.  The short story itself is this eighteenth century style affair complete with ball, romance, betrayals, and the Doctor being a true bohemian.  7/10.

 

“War Crimes” says trans rights, but sadly it is also a story by Simon Bucher-Jones so ultimately it is saying nothing.  There is the hint of an interesting idea, but like “Model Train Set” this is a short character portrait with the evolution of a creature being a parallel to the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe stuck right near the end of The War Games.  It’s fine, honestly kind of bland and has the usual Simon Bucher-Jones thinking he’s actually saying something with dense prose.  5/10.

 

Another author writing under a pseudonym comes next, but this isn’t Stephen Cole but Rebecca Levene writing as Evan Pritchard, Levene clearly tributing her love of the pure historical.  Set in Judea under the Roman occupation, instead of doing a comedy historical a la The Romans, it’s very much Levene’s attempt to reconcile The Aztecs for a second time.  Though, instead of Barabara being the one in the position not to change history, it is actually Ian which narratively is an interesting choice.  In construction Ian and Barbara as characters represent the future and the past, respectively.  They are a science and history teacher for a reason, so giving Ian this story is honestly a weird idea.  It actually works because Ian as a character cares about the people he finds himself with while the Doctor and Susan are oddly delighted at the weird conflict around the setting, Israel and Palestine as a conflict is outright mentioned as something for the future that is a little bit odd in places.  It’s a solid enough tribute really, but that’s all it is, a tribute act.  7/10.

 

Mike Tucker and Robert Perry are usually a really great writing partnership, there’s a reason they are responsible for many of the Seventh Doctor novels in the Past Doctor Adventures line, but “Stop the Pigeon” is a weird one.  It’s a short story that feels far more suited to an actual novel, and goes against the premise of these being all historical stories, being set in the far future of Earth while dealing with a space probe that is an intelligent pigeon.  Tucker and Perry present the story through the viewpoint of Joe Dakin who is a really uninteresting protagonist; attempting to be an everyman he is just kind of annoying and unsuited for the mess of a story that includes aliens, the Master for some reason.  It’s clear that Tucker is not done with the Master as a character after this, the ideas are good in the story.  The pigeon is an interesting idea and personality but there isn’t nearly enough time to really explore any of the ideas the short story proposes.  4/10.

 

And from one story with the Master, to a superior story with the Master.  “Freedom” is Steve Lyons attempt at examining the Third Doctor’s general relationship with his exile on Earth, set with the Master being in charge of a corporation just to taunt the Doctor’s general exile.  There are also time experiments and the entire thing is meant to be the tantalizing glimpse of freedom that the Doctor is clearly never going to get.  The climax hinges on the Doctor being tempted to fall down basically a path that would make him just as bad as the Master.  It certainly helps that there is a handle on the Master as a character and where they are at the point where this story is set, after The Daemons specifically, making it harsher that the Doctor has had glimpses of freedom although freedom on a very short leash.  7/10.

 

And now begins Stephen Cole’s first of multiple stories in the anthology, “Glass”, this rather short adventure examining a young woman terrified by seeing evil in glass.  Despite being a story with the Fourth Doctor and Romana, this is incredibly short and sweet and atypical.  Cole isn’t playing the story for comedy, he is doing an effective psychological examination of a young woman needing to be freed from a monster largely representing anxieties of sex.  It’s short, but oh so engaging.  8/10.

 

The second of Stephen Cole’s stories is another short and sweet character piece.  “Mondas Passing” is about Ben and Polly after the Doctor in 1986, when the events of The Tenth Planet are going on around them.  It excels at having the pair have moved on despite being integrally linked by their travels with the Doctor always laying heavy.  It’s also only 5 pages long so it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but Ben is especially well served in the end.  8/10.

 

Sam Lester may also be a pseudonym for Stephen Cole, but there isn’t evidence either way.  “There Are Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden” is a short story about the First Doctor and Dodo that does absolutely nothing.  After a streak of solid character pieces, Lester clearly doesn’t really understand how to even characterize Dodo, something that only Daniel O’Mahony knew how to do  at this point in his controversial The Man in the Velvet Mask, and David Bishop in Who Killed Kennedy?.  This is a short story that seems to want to be a First Doctor/Dodo story in earnest but doesn’t actually have much of a story to tell.  Despite being short it also just drags with amateur prose and no real sense of anything going on.  5/10.

 

It's surprising to me that Matthew Jones came over to write an installment for Short Trips, but then “Mother’s Little Helper” is another little character piece from the perspective of an unnamed protagonist that has more interesting things to say than half of this book’s installments.  It’s a Second Doctor story set post-The War Games because the BBC Books were slowly going all in on the Season 6B idea, with the Doctor having to essentially make a choice to sacrifice a boy which has the ability to take away pain.  The obvious central idea is that we have to live with out pain, though will find ourselves surrounded with people who can dull the pain and make life worth living.  8/10.

 

“The Parliament of Rats” by Daniel O’Mahony is the short story that really blows the rest of the Short Trips collection right out of the water.  It’s the only Fifth Doctor story in the collection and it’s clear that O’Mahony understands really how to deconstruct who this version of the Doctor actually is.  He is travelling with Nyssa post Time-Flight and the weight of the universe weighs quite heavily on him.  This is through a story that is metafictionally aware that it is a short story so leads to a particularly surreal adventure.  The characterization is wonderfully done, really making the Fifth Doctor feel like an old man who is slowly becoming tired with the universe as he faces an Eldritch horror.  It hits exactly the right boxes for me.  9/10.

 

Stephen Cole decides that he needs to do a story about authoritarianism.  It’s uncomfortably bad because this is the third story he’s written to fill pages.  3/10.

 

“Wish You Were Here” is a story that wants to deconstruct the abusive and sexist aspects of the early Sixth Doctor’s characters, those being the reasons that in the fandom at large in 1998.  It’s from the perspective of an alien agent called Janis who the Doctor charms in a way that is basically the opposite of the brash nature of the Sixth Doctor.  Guy Clapperton is having a lot of fun in writing the Sixth Doctor who comes across as lively.  8/10.

 

Mike Tucker and Robert Perry had another shot at a Seventh Doctor short story and made it a charming little piece following up on the trauma Kathleen Dudman underwent in The Curse of Fenric, the use of the playing card is a bit silly though.  7/10.

 

Short Trips ends with Paul Leonard essentially writing a novelette.  It’s a 50 page Eighth Doctor and Sam story called “The People’s Temple”.  Like “The Last Day”, “The People’s Temple” is a short story tributing The Aztecs for Sam Jones.  Sam as a character at this point is in an especially messy place, she’s one that Leonard excelled at writing in Genocide and that level of detail is done here.  Leonard likes to play around with the mysticism surrounding Stonehenge and Sam attempts to cause a slave uprising.  Again Leonard is generally tributing The Aztecs in particular because that is seen as the don’t change history story in Doctor Who’s history.  It does struggle with the ending, something Leonard generally does, but the Eighth Doctor and Sam are great, the supporting characters feel like actual characters and it has room to breathe.  7/10.

 

Overall, Short Trips is honestly a mixed bag.  It excels the most when it is focusing on smaller character pieces, but it’s clear that at this point a lot of the BBC Books hadn’t quite worked out their in house style and you get writers excelling by doing things that worked in the Virgin Publishing line that the BBC Books would actively avoid.  6.6/10.

The Arsenal of Freedom by: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler, from a story by: Maurice Hurley and Robert Lewin, and directed by: Les Landau

 “The Arsenal of Freedom” is written by: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler, from a story by: Maurice Hurley and Robert Lewin, and is directed by: Les Landau.  It was produced under production code 121, was the 21^st episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on April 11, 1988.

 

“The Arsenal of Freedom” is an episode about how covert weapons dealing are bad, how weapons seem to just stay there and always present a danger, and how somebody saw the chemistry between Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden and decided to drop some hints that will only ever stay hints.  Also LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge gets to be in command of the Etnerprise, really giving Burton some meat to dig into even if it doesn’t quite work in terms of examining his character.  Geordi as a character hadn’t really been established as unsure in command, with the current chief Engineer played by Vyto Ruginis being a foil to question his command.  Ruginis’ performance is one of the big aspects of the episode that doesn’t work, it’s doing the original series Star Trek thing of introducing a character for a single episode to be a foil except instead of it being someone from Starfleet, it is just a different crew member who logically should trust Geordi’s general judgment.  Also “The Arsenal of Freedom” contrives a way to separate the saucer from the rest of the Enterprise which feels like a money saving measure to reuse footage from “Encounter at Farpoint” and pad the episode just a little bit.  There’s something to do there, especially since I know that Geordi eventually becomes the chief engineer, but really the episode doesn’t do anything with it.  It’s an episode with four people credited between story and teleplay, and you can tell that there are is this push and pull of ideas throughout.

 

The setup of the episode is a Douglas Adams scenario from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy played entirely straight, the Enterprise coming across a planet while searching for a missing ship that had an economy based on selling weapons.  There is a recording automatically broadcast to give them a sales pitch and eventually train the weapons on them, the away team eventually being confronted with a hologram of a friend of Riker’s to try and find the weapons to demonstrate.  Picard and Dr. Crusher get involved, Crusher is injured by a weapon so there can be simmering sexual tension and some further backstory for Crusher.  McFadden actually gets a chance to shine even when restricted to being heavily injured and having to guide Picard through healing her.  The plot also decides that the hologram program be destroyed by deciding to buy weapons because of reasons, in terms of logic despite clearly wanting to comment on America’s sale of weapons to the Middle East at the time but not actually making a coherent comment outside of it being generally bad.  The initial away team section of the plot is also dragged out with it taking so long for Riker to realize that the man they find is a generated construct of his friend, though it does lead to a hilarious line about the starship lollipop (it’s a good ship).

 

Les Landau’s direction is also clearly an issue through the episode.  While not an incompetent director, Landau is clearly struggling with the general set layout of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The alien planet is represented by an attempt at a vast jungle set, though one not really disguising the studio setting with the same blue backdrop that many of the other alien planets have used.  The same can be said about Dennis McCarthy’s score, at points I’m sure it’s just quoting Holst’s Mars, Bringer of War instead of doing anything original near what the episode is attempting to make the climax of the episode.

 

Overall, “The Arsenal of Freedom” struggles because it clearly wants to say something but ends up becoming shallow because of a weaker script and an inability to really commit to any of its choices.  There is the potential there, Burton, Stewart, and McFadden are great, Jonathan Frakes gets that really funny one-liner, and Michael Dorn and Denise Crosby are there.  The guest cast is hit or miss a bit, but the episode just meanders from plot point to plot point before running out of time for a satisfying conclusion.  It’s a subpar episode as Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season limps towards its conclusion.  4/10