Elementary Dear Data by: Briana Alan Lane and directed by: Rob Bowman

 

“Elementary, Dear Data” is written by: Briana Alan Lane and is directed by: Rob Bowman.  It was produced under production code 129, was the 3^rd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2, the 29^th episode overall, and was broadcast on December 5, 1988.

 

Once again Star Trek: The Next Generation immediately becomes more interesting when it decides to take an episode to explore its characters it turns into something great.  “Elementary, Dear Data” is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche set aboard the holodeck, essentially following up on the ideas from “The Big Goodbye” while pushing forward both Data and Dr. Pulaski as characters.  It’s honestly a little odd that this is from a completely new writer as it was one of the first five put into production after the 1988 Writer’s Guild of America strike.  Briana Alan Lane is a woman who wears a lot of hats and was writing for other television series at the time, yet it seems “Elementary, Dear Data” is her only contribution to Star Trek.  Now this is clearly an episode made on a budget, using the holodeck and the setting of Victorian London means that the show could reuse sets from previous productions and the standing Enterprise sets.  This is one of those episodes of the show that just looks amazing because of that, the sets despite being in a studio setting, are shot by director Rob Bowman so incredibly well that the immersion doesn’t even break when characters bring back the arch back into the Enterprise proper.  It, logically, shouldn’t work as a shot because the arch is a perfect example of late-1980s science fiction set dressing.  Bowman is clearly Star Trek: The Next Generation’s strongest director, his direction was one of the few things about “The Child” that actually works, same with pretty much every episode he directed from the first season being elevated because of it.  As an episode, the lighting and shadows in particular are done incredibly well.

 

The plot itself is one of the first times that Star Trek: The Next Generation actually allows an episode to develop the stakes, yet keeps things escalating to the point of questioning what it means to be alive.  The episode opens with the general premise of Data and Geordi taking the roles of Holmes and Watson on the holodeck, the first aspect of conflict in the episode not coming because Data knows all the conclusions.  They put themselves into a version of “A Scandal in Bohemia” and Data unmasks the villain before the plot even begins, and then has to be told by Geordi why that doesn’t work.  It’s some of the best character work that the show has actually done thus far, by virtue of being actual character work.  The immediate next escalation is to try to create a new Sherlock Holmes story based on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but that doesn’t work because it just does an amalgamation of several other stories, mainly “The Speckled Band” and “The Red-Headed League”, so he immediately solves it, again not having fun.  Lane then brings in Dr. Pulaski as a character, still refusing to acknowledge Data’s humanity, to escalate the bet into creating a scenario on the holodeck of a mystery and villain that could beat Data.  This is all within the first 20 minutes of the episode, so the back 25 minutes are playing that out between unraveling a mystery that begins with first Pulaski being kidnapped and then a completely unrelated murder because the program of Dr. Moriarty has gained sentience.  The plot eventually does have to rope in Picard into the conclusion as there is a minor background plot involving a rendezvous, mainly to have some larger stakes for the Enterprise in general.

 

Interesting for Pulaski as a character, it’s not Data who ever proves his humanity, it’s Moriarty as a character that gives Pulaski pause.  Fascinating because while Moriarty doesn’t have the uncanny valley makeup of Data as an android, he is a fictional character who gains consciousness and humanity.  Moriarty as a character is one created in terms of the Sherlock Holmes canon to kill off Holmes, pop culture generally growing the character into some great adversary and mental genius when he really isn’t.  Daniel Davis plays Moriarty with far more depth and logic than really anything Conan Doyle wrote, and he’s slowly learning through the episode, and the performance is really what sells the way Pulaski eventually respects him.  Diana Muldaur has been given quite a lot of material to work with and it really does elevate the episode.  Plus Brent Spiner as Data is really getting to shine and develop who he is, it really feels like Data is slowly growing to understand what it means to be human and alive.  Spiner’s chemistry with LeVar Burton is also just incredible to watch.  Burton genuinely makes a great Watson, adding in that human element that so many Holmes adaptations emphasize with the character to contrast Holmes as an outsider.  Yes, it’s usually going too far to make Holmes as a character completely alien and emotionless, but because it is Data it works.

 

Overall, “Elementary, Dear Data” is honestly the first perfect episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  This is one of those episodes that has a vision and accomplishes that vision wonderfully.  It works both as a Holmes pastiche and example of what Star Trek can actually do in the 1980s, it takes the time to explore the characters, craft an actual story, give us something completely satisfying.  It’s just a shame Lane didn’t come back to write anything else.  10/10.

Where Silence Has Lease by: Jack B. Sowards and directed by: Winrich Kolbe

 

“Where Silence Has Lease” is written by: Jack B. Sowards and is directed by: Winrich Kolbe.  It was produced under production code 128, was the 2^nd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2, the 28^th episode overall, and was broadcast on November 28, 1988.

 

“The Child” being a repurposed idea/script from the 1970s meant that the second episode of the season would actually be the first original script, being afforded some time to be written.  Jack B. Sowards was tapped for the episode, previously having co-written Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which in my estimation is one of the best pieces of Star Trek out there.  “Where Silence Has Lease” is the result and it’s almost the complete opposite of what I would expect from someone who wrote that film.  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan works because of how atypical it was for Star Trek up to that point.  “Where Silence Has Lease” is a completely typical episode of the original Star Trek series in almost every way.  It’s essentially got a classic redshirt, an alien with godlike powers, a resolution that ends completely peacefully, and contemplative attempts at exploring humanity.  Add in Gene Roddenberry’s general dislike of conflict in a future setting and that’s really all that you have here for an episode.  This makes it a particularly difficult episode to talk about, because there isn’t actually a whole lot to discuss.  The Enterprise finds a space anomaly, a Romulan ship, the Enterprise’s sister ship the USS Yamato, and eventually a godlike entity called Nagilum.  Now, the best sequence of the episode is actually the work aboard the USS Yamato after Riker and Worf are the ones sent over to investigate.

 

The investigation into the Yamato allows director Winrich Kolbe to have a lot of fun creating a version of unreality and Jonathan Frakes and Michael Dorn both get to have a lot of fun, almost overacting with the weirdness of two bridges on the ship.  Riker and Worf are paired early on in a holodeck sequence giving a little bit towards Klingon culture, plus when the weirdness begins Worf goes into a question of a Klingon legend not wanting to push forward into the blackness.  It's incredibly effective and one of the few genuinely great things in this episode that desperately needs them.  The godlike entity of the episode is Nagilum, represented by a creepy looking face suspended in space using what I believe are computer effects that really don’t integrate particularly well.  Earl Boen plays the character and he is certainly fine, Sowards’ script being clearly interested with exploring the philosophy of understanding that comes with a higher dimensional being understanding the workings of our dimension.  It’s a perfectly fine premise, but this is an episode that if I had to posit a guest, didn’t get many drafts or revisions to really put together whatever it was trying to do.  It was the second episode produced post-strike after all: Sowards mischaracterizes Data intentionally so Picard can realize that it isn’t him, Troi is also in the scene for some reason but she just kind of stands there.  It also does a standard redshirt sequence, wants to kill more humans to understand what death is, yet Sowards doesn’t explore the implications of that at all.

 

Overall, “Where Silence Has Lease” is the definition of a completely fine episode.  It’s really just a collection of Star Trek tropes put together into a narrative that doesn’t actually end up saying or doing anything of note.  It’s perfectly serviceable.  5/10.

The Child by: Jaron Summers, Jon Povill, and Maurice Hurley and directed by: Rob Bowman

 

“The Child” is written by: Jaron Summers, Jon Povill, and Maurice Hurley and is directed by: Rob Bowman.  It was produced under production code 127, was the 1^st episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2, the 27^th episode overall, and was broadcast on November 21, 1988.

 

Last week, when I looked at “The Neutral Zone” I discussed the 1988 Writer’s Guild of America strike which ran from March 7 to August 7 of that year, the longest strike in the history of the WGA.  It remains an important piece of labor action in the filmmaking industry, giving writers a better residual payment scheme for the repeats of programs.  As with any labor action, disruption is the part of the point and where the bargaining power comes from for the ordinary people against the ruling class, and the strike disrupted the start of the 1988 television season, pushing back the usual September start until late-October and early-November.  Star Trek: The Next Generation wouldn’t actually begin broadcast until the end of November.  The second season was also given a reduced episode order from 26, cut down to 22.  With the strike ending August 7, production on the second season would have had to begin immediately to make the deadline to broadcast.  The November 21 broadcast date means that there had to be four episodes completed before the show could take a break for the Christmas holidays, those four weeks of broadcast also giving time for more episodes to be both written and shot.  And there’s the trick, the plan for the first four episodes was proposed on August 11, less than a week after the strike ended, with the first episode going into filming in late September, giving approximately a month to come up with a script for the episode.  “The Child” is the result, and it’s not an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, it’s an episode of Star Trek: Phase II, the television series in development in the mid-1970s before Paramount Pictures shifted the franchise into a series of feature films.  Maurice Hurley is credited as one of three writers on the episode, doing the final rewrites on the script of Jaron Summers and Jon Povill.

 

Hurley’s claimed contributions to the episode are taking the dialogue and reassigning it to the characters of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and writing two small subplots to explain why Dr. Crusher has left the series after Gates McFadden was fired for speaking out about a lot of the sexism in the series (and claims that Hurley was sexually harassing McFadden, which is very possible considering Hurley left after this season and McFadden returned) and to who her replacement Dr. Katherine Pulaski, played by Diana Muldaur, is.  Hurley also was tasked with introducing the new character of Guinan, a bartender played by Whoopi Goldberg added to the series because Goldberg wanted a part with inspiration of Nichelle Nichols as Uhura.  Hurley in actuality did a total rewrite of the original concept, a concept that I am not going to say doesn’t have potential, however “The Child” has the premise of Deanna Troi, the only female character left as part of the main cast of the show (Muldaur and Goldberg aren’t credited in the opening), is forcibly impregnated by an alien entity, goes through a full pregnancy in approximately two days, give birth, and raise the child (named Ian) until it turns out it’s causing radiation on the Enterprise (they are transporting some virus samples that grow as well as radiation) so he just returns to being an energy being.  What I can give to the premise is that at the very least, it gives much of the decision of giving birth to Troi, despite the fact that she is vaguely shamed by Riker who is a jealous lover.

 

Marina Sirtis is trying, she actually has some characterization of Troi as having mothering instincts, but outside of giving birth she doesn’t actually get any focus on raising Ian.  Never mind any attempt to explore the fact Troi as a character was raped, forced to carry the pregnancy to term, give birth, and raise the baby as it’s mother; framing this as something that doesn’t affect Troi at all.  Physically, in universe, Troi has not been harmed, and the script doesn’t do anything with the mental effects.  Sirtis just doesn’t seem to have the acting chops to pull off any of her scenes opposite Ian who is already a child actor on a show and franchise that is notorious for bad child actors.  Deanna Troi is raped and it’s totally fine, great.  Instead, it’s the men who get all the focus in the plot: the focus is on Picard and Riker, especially Riker who is turned into a complete asshole because someone potentially stole his woman.  Okay, it isn’t phrased that way, but that’s how the script has Jonathan Frakes play it, Rob Bowman is directing and he’s too busy making the episode at the very least visually slick.  It’s all because the Enterprise is transporting viruses as the B-plot which is a B-plot that is just kind of there.  The only other element of this episode that at least shows potential is Diana Muldaur as Pulaski, mainly because she walks into the episode a fully formed character ready to have conflict with everybody else: Pulaski doesn’t see Data as a person, completely upstages Patrick Stewart as Picard, and has a character arc of softening her attitude clearly setup.

 

Overall, “The Child” is an episode that is the perfect encapsulation of what went wrong with Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season and what seems to be wrong with the second season.  It’s currently the second worst episode of the show and makes it clear that Maurice Hurley as a writer is just plain sexist, he’s the one who wrote the script and went on record saying he didn’t read the original Star Trek: Phase II pitch.  This is another episode among some of the most regressive the franchise has done, the only light spot is that the decision to carry Ian to term is fully given to Troi and accepted (an abortion would be on the table).  1/10.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Path of Deceit by: Tessa Gratton and Justina Ireland

 

Has it really been a year since I last had a Star Wars book exchange? Yes.  Okay, so there was a book exchange in between this and my last one, but that wasn’t for a book, but now I’m jumping back into The High Republic with Path of Deceit, the beginning of the second phase of the publishing initiative and a novel cowritten by Justina Ireland and Tessa Gratton, a writing team that would eventually keep publishing together outside of Star Wars as a franchise.  Gratton and Ireland are a great team in terms of cowriting a novel together, their styles throughout Path of Deceit combine incredibly well to make a novel where it’s difficult to tell what’s Gratton and what’s Ireland, even though I have already read a book from Ireland in this series.  Path of Deceit, despite being very much in the young adult series of novels, feels just as much a mission statement for what the second phase of The High Republic is going to be as Light of the Jedi was despite my issues with the latter.  This second phase is a prequel to the first, looking into the origins of the conflict, a la the prequel trilogy.  Writing prequels are generally difficult: the audience already knows where the story is going and where the characters are going to end up, the first phase of The High Republic working because it is so far removed from the rest of Star Wars it can avoid these traps.  This second phase has a needle to thread, it has to satisfactorily set up the first phase of The High Republic after the fact without becoming too predictable.

 

Path of Deceit does a great job of setting up the seeds of the conflict for this second phase that is clearly going to evolve into the Nihil conflict of the first phase.  After this first installment there is already a character poised to take a role down the path to become the leader of the Nihil: Marda Ro starts the novel as pessimistic in the ways the galaxy uses the Force as part of the Path of the Open Hand, a group of missionaries with a fascinating relationship to the Force.  The idea from them is that the Force is something to be observed and not touched, creating a fascinating ideological divide that by the end of the novel Marda has been betrayed by the Mother in charge of the Path of the Open Hand, yet still finds herself committed to the cause.  The Path ends the novel by becoming an outright militant force bent on expansion, but Marda has this uncertainty.  Early in the novel she meets Jedi Padawan Kevmo Zink, who immediately flirts and tries to impress her by using the Force.  It’s this immediate clash of ideologies that horrifies Marda to her very core, it’s genuinely the best scene in the book and sets up exactly what the conflict is going to be.  Gratton and Ireland get the reader to understand exactly what is going through Marda’s mind by framing this basic act as a careless violation of something sentient, an oddly heavy theme to explore in a novel aimed at children, but nevertheless one that is great.

 

Much of the novel’s plot also assists in this exploration of views of the Force by feeling quite episodic.  Yes there is an overarching plot, but where Path of Deceit excels is honestly in one of its episode when a flood happens and the cast of characters have to stop what they’re doing to make sure that people are safe and make it through.  Thematically it also very much represents the mental state everyone is in at this point, but because it is a natural disaster it makes a difference from having to fight classic science fiction villain archetypes.  It helps define the Jedi Order of this time as well, Kevmo’s character being often too brash for his own good, he’s very much still the student with the potential to become the master.  Where the novel leaves him, however, is genuinely a tragic fall because he feels like there was a time where he could have been the major protagonist for the second phase’s young adult line of novels.  That may have been a bit too similar to what the first phase was doing so Gratton and Ireland likely made the right call, but the ending of the novel just brims with a lot of tragedy.

 

Overall, Path of Deceit is a far stronger start for the second phase of Star Wars’ The High Republic initiative.  It excels because it is focused on exploring different views of the Force to create its conflict, becoming slightly less interesting when it becomes clear who the central villain of the book actually is.  Gratton and Ireland have a novel intentionally paralleling both The Phantom Menace (and starting a fall from grace far better than the prequels) and what the first phase was doing without outright repeating the plots.  8/10.

The Neutral Zone by: Maurice Hurley from a story by: Deborah McIntyre and Mona Clee and directed by: James L. Conway

 

“The Neutral Zone” is written by: Maurice Hurley, from a story by: Deborah McIntyre and Mona Clee, and is directed by: James L. Conway.  It was produced under production code 126, was the 26^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on May 16, 1988.

 

“Conspiracy” felt like a season finale for Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season, it called back to a previous episode and felt like there was a setup for future potential stories to be told.  “The Neutral Zone” is the actual season finale, and in some ways it also feels like it was written to be an ending for the season.  It’s one of the episodes written by Maurice Hurley who essentially took over the position of showrunner near the end of the first season and would stay on until the end of the second, though that does not mean the chaotic behind the scenes situation wouldn’t really iron itself out until the third season saw a stable production team.  Now, I have not seen anything past this episode, “The Neutral Zone” is an episode that feels like it wants to be a mission statement for where the show is going.  The entire episode is building to this idea, like “Conspiracy” that there is something out there, something able to destroy both Federation and Romulan outposts.  There isn’t any indication as to what that something actually is, so much of the episode is the buildup to the reveal that the Romulans are not responsible for the destruction of the outposts.  The Romulans only appear in the final ten minutes of the episode which is perfectly fine, were this the first part of a two-part finale, but this is both the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and was made in 1988 when the Writer’s Guild of America was on strike.  It’s likely that there were some answers or even a second episode intended to finish the story and launch the show out of its first season and into its second.  The strike likely meant that they had to fill whatever they could at this point to meet the 26-episode order, but still that leaves “The Neutral Zone” as an episode that just kind of stops.  There is buildup but no conflict, climax, or resolution; there is an attempt at making it about Picard’s diplomacy but the episode ends with establishing the problem.  It’s an inciting incident.

 

Because this is an episode that is entirely an inciting incident, the actual appeal has to be with the B-plot, the plot that has more time, care, and conflict imbued into it than what the episode is named for.  The plot is that before discovering the outposts being destroyed, the Enterprise comes across a space capsule containing three people from the late 20^th century in cryogenic stasis.  The episode sets this trio, a businessman, housewife, and musician, up as representative of late 20^th century culture and values to clash against Gene Roddenberry’s vision of an enlightened future.  Now the culture of the future is explicitly socialist, arguably closer to communism, but a television series produced in the United States of America is never actually going to say that.  Instead, the episode emphasizes that the status quo is post-money, Ralph the businessman is characterized as being only concerned with how his assets are doing in an almost cartoony way, but this is Reagan era America so it’s at the very least a swing to try and go against what was the dominant culture of consumerism of the time.  The trio is clearly meant to look at different aspects of the culture shock between the capitalism in which the show was being produced in, and the socialist/communist ideal that should be the goal of humanity as proposed by the show.  Claire, the housewife, is the one the most affected by the future and the strongest character arc because it’s one that ends particularly uncertain.  All three had gone into cryostasis with deadly diseases that are cured upon their thawing with the advanced science, but Claire is the one to really examine the fact that everyone she knew and loved is dead.  Much of her arc is coming to terms with that fact and taking the first steps to crafting an identity for herself.  Now it's not perfect and it’s painfully basic, but it’s executed well enough despite director James L. Conway really struggling to frame any shot this episode as interesting.  Conway’s direction goes for a lot of wider shots and doesn’t quite give his actors the direction they need, which at least by now isn’t as detrimental to a main cast that has gotten comfortable with their roles, but it holds the episode back.

 

Overall, despite the major issue of being literally an inciting incident and not even the first half of a story “The Neutral Zone” is at the very least saved by the B-plot actually trying to make explicit parallel to what path humanity is on and the path humanity would need to take to thrive in the future.  It’s fine, tarnished by the Writer’s Guild of America strike which as always is one of the few avenues for collective action, but does mean that nobody on staff really understood how to compensate for the crunch time (not for the first time).  6/10.

 

Star Trek: The Next Generation ended its first season with “The Neutral Zone” allowing for the first time to take a look at the worst and best episodes of this season/show which I’m willing to put money on not the worst list not changing too much and the best changing a lot:

 

Top 5 Worst Episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation…So Far:

1.     5. Too Short a Season
4. Home Soil
3. Justice
2. Angel One
1. Code of Honor

Top 5 Best Episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation…So Far:

5. Conspiracy
4. Where No One Has Gone Before
3. The Big Goodbye
2. Heart of Glory
1. Datalore

Doctor Who and the State of Decay by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the State of Decay was written by Terrance Dicks, based on his story State of Decay.  It was the 66^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Reading Doctor Who and the State of Decay is honestly a bit of a trip but it really shouldn’t have been.  State of Decay on television while in the back half of the hardline science fiction Season 18 overseen by John Nathan-Turner and Christopher H. Bidmead, Terrance Dicks had actually had the story in his back pocket for a number of years.  Originally it was to be the opening serial to Season 15, but the BBC was adapting Dracula and did not want a second vampire story to conflict, so it was replaced with Horror of Fang Rock.  When reading Doctor Who and the State of Decay it becomes apparent that Terrance Dicks is adapting almost a combination of versions of his story because this is a novelization that feels tonally unlike everything that Season 18 was.  This is honestly for the best, it means that Doctor Who and the State of Decay feels like a classic adventure.  Dicks clearly was a fan of Dracula because almost all of the vampire tropes that are associated with Dracula adaptations, especially the Universal and Hammer adaptations, are here and played up.  They were there during the original serial but largely pushed to the background with the serious tone and rather bleak direction.

 

This is a novelization that really wants everything to be fun: it’s a fantasy adventure where the Doctor and Romana are trading banter so delightfully throughout.  Dicks is sure to maintain that relationship between the Doctor and Romana as two very close friends where the Doctor is clearly the inferior.  It’s Romana who puts a lot of things together and has to roll her eyes when the Doctor eventually catches up to where she was several paragraphs ago.  Adding Adric to that dynamic makes this one of his stronger stories in terms of characterization, especially in the novelization where Dicks clearly frames it that when he betrays the Doctor and Romana, the reader is supposed to hate him.  Adric is treated very much like the young teenager that he is, and it works so well in prose because Dicks adds just enough to make you understand where Adric was coming from and not put Matthew Waterhouse’s performance at the feet of directors who often struggled in giving him proper direction.  With the lightness in tone it makes the sequences when the Three Who Rule go full vampire feel like a Hammer film version of gothic horror, you can imagine in your head the color of Hammer blood which is particularly fun.  It means when Aukon is summoning his servants it feels far more grand than it did on television and everything just slots in quite nicely.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the State of Decay is a novelization that works because it doesn’t try to emulate the tone of the television story, letting what Terrance Dicks clearly intended for the serial to really shine through.  It’s a quick little novelization with a lot of fun behind it.  8/10.

Doctor Who and the Mutants by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Mutants was written by Terrance Dicks, based on The Mutants by Bob Baker and Dave Martin.  It was the 35^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The Mutants is largely regarded as the weakest of Jon Pertwee’s serials and while I am certainly not it’s biggest fan, after reading Doctor Who and the Mutants I am genuinely wondering if it is this novelization that has weakened the original serial’s reputation.  This is largely because Doctor Who and the Mutants is quite a weak book, despite its evocative cover and Terrance Dicks attempting to add some depth to Solos as a planet (it’s more lush than the quarries and caves seen on television).  Dicks as an author is known for having a breezy pace to his prose and that should be present in a novelization written and published in 1977, yet Doctor Who and the Mutants is one that just drags.  Now this could be because Dicks is adapting a six episode script, but at this point he had done other six episode scripts including ones from eras he had no contribution to and The Mutants was right in the middle of his time as script editor.  Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s television script is largely an allegory against apartheid South Africa, something that translates to the novel but what is largely lacking is Christopher Barry’s direction.  Despite much of the serial being set in quarries and on futuristic sets, it is a serial with visual appeal, a similar decrease in quality happening when Barry Letts adapted his own script into Doctor Who and the Daemons.  There’s a lot in The Mutants that feels psychedelic, especially in the back half with the resolution after the twist that the mutations are just part of the natural life cycle of Solos as a planet.

 

Visually Terrance Dicks doesn’t actually render the sequences with any particular vision or passion, it just becomes a thing that happens.  There are issues transferring over from the original serial, the Doctor and Jo’s involvement comes from the Time Lords using them to deliver a package to an individual on the planet Solos.  This is someone they don’t know and the package will only open for them, having long sequences of the Doctor just handing people the package throughout the first episode and then there are random experiments the Doctor is roped into to open the package that honestly goes nowhere.  It works even less in the novel without the performance of Jon Pertwee to at least make it charming which for whatever reason Dicks just cannot recapture.  He recaptures it well in his other novelizations, even in many of those that came before like Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Mutants while not adapting one of the best serials from the Jon Pertwee era, struggles to even make what worked on television work in prose.  At least much of the social commentary remains intact.  4/10.

Conspiracy by: Tracy Torme from a story by: Robert Sabaroff and directed by: Cliff Bole

 

“Conspiracy” is written by: Tracy Torme, from a story by Robert Sabaroff, and is directed by: Cliff Bole.  It was produced under production code 125, was the 25^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on May 9, 1988.

 

The resolution to “Conspiracy” is one of those images that feels like it should be iconic because it’s an utterly over the top sequence where a minor recurring character, Remmick from “Coming of Age” having been taken over by a parasitic, insectoid alien has his head melt a la Raiders of the Lost Ark and the parasite burst out of his chest.  It’s a sequence that is beautiful in terms of special effects and honestly pushes the envelope for what could be shown on television in the late 1980s (only about five months after Doctor Who aired Dragonfire which had an equally disturbing effects sequence of someone melting).  It’s probably the best piece of effects work that Star Trek: The Next Generation has done so far, and apparently it was entirely done in the editing of the episode.  Now this does mean that many of the effects in the rest of the episode are at best subpar, though some of that is Cliff Bole’s blocking of scenes especially with some of the older members of the episode’s cast.  The actual plot that gets to this point also has its roots in “Coming of Age”, mainly what was infiltrating Starfleet and the Federation, essentially making “Conspiracy” the first attempt at wrapping up a story arc for Star Trek deliberately.  It’s a bit odd that this isn’t actually the finale of the season, but then again this is still the late-1980s and story arcs like this are usually reserved for soap operas.  This is also an episode that ends with the tease that more is coming, a beacon has been sent out into the uncharted regions of space and that something is coming.  Now, I am aware that the parasites in this episode do not actually appear again, however I do wonder if this means there is going to be a multi-season arc to bring these ideas to the front.

 

Tracy Torme is responsible for writing “Conspiracy”, having previously devised and scripted “The Big Goodbye” and it’s clear Torme is a young writer who knows what he is doing.  So much of the episode is this tense exploration that there could be a mole on the Enterprise and within Starfleet.  Picard is setup in this episode to be on alert for something, the Enterprise receiving a message for his eyes only and fairly quickly within the episode’s second act are the parasites attempted to be used on the crew.  The opening act sees Picard interrogated by a friend with trivia on his memory to confirm his identity.  There’s some lovely character moments for Picard examining his history with Dr. Crusher and her dead husband, that deeper history being hinted at and a relationship between Picard and Crusher being under the surface that’s never quite explored.  Patrick Stewart is clearly engaged as Picard here, almost to a degree we hadn’t actually seen before this point because Picard gets to investigate.  When the conspiracy is eventually revealed as to who has been taken over by the parasites a completely tense dinner sequence occurs.   This dinner sequence is actually the best shot sequence of the episode, maggots being served as food is a particularly chilling image and Stewart plays it near perfectly.  The idea then that Riker has been taken over, though a bluff setup between him and Crusher that Picard cannot no about so as not to reveal it to the aliens.  Jonathan Frakes can really play evil and any episode that is going to give the cast some meat to play around with is going to be better than over half of what this season has done.

 

What’s holding “Conspiracy” back is twofold.  As previously mentioned, Cliff Bole’s direction has some odd framing.  This is an episode where there are several action sequences where characters like Riker have to fight older characters and they are shot at wide angles with stunt doubles.  Bole really should have setup shots to perhaps get close to the impact on Riker and not actually seeing the older characters throwing punches.  The other problem is that despite attempting for a story arc, there isn’t actually a whole lot of effect or really getting use out of the replacement, parasite aspect.  This is an episode that really would have benefitted from a recurring character being taken over who wasn’t a secondary antagonist in their only appearance.  Perhaps this episode could have actually been the episode where Tasha Yar died and left the show, it would have given Denise Crosby something to actually do with the character.   It doesn’t take too much away from the episode, only holding it back from being more effective than it already was.

 

Overall, “Conspiracy” is another of a handful of episodes from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation to really feel like it was meant for the 1980s and is pushing the series forward to be something successful.  While it isn’t the strongest episode of the season, if Tracy Torme’s style was taken forward as the modus operandi of production, asking questions about the morality of Starfleet properly and not being afraid to go dark in places.  It’s genuinely a solid piece of television that executes a minor, two episode story arc really well for its conclusion.  7/10.

Doctor Who and the Web of Fear by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Web of Fear was written by Terrance Dicks, based on The Web of Fear by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln.  It was the 24^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Terrance Dicks in novelizing Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen he largely wrote it to include Buddhist philosophy closer to actual beliefs than what made it on-screen in Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln’s scripts, as well as being able to generally improve the pace and depth of the story.  It very much showed that Dicks could novelize a story that he had no involvement with on television, something that would eventually cement him as the main novelist for the range through much of the 1970s and 1980s.  His second commission for a story he had nothing to do with was Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster early in 1976, but it was a no brainer that after Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen Dicks would be brought back to novelize The Web of Fear into Doctor Who and the Web of Fear.  Now, this is another one of those novelizations that only would have had the scripts to work off, until 2013 most of the serial was missing apart from the first episode and this was even before the audit of the archive to see what survived.  Now the tricky part about talking about Doctor Who and the Web of Fear is that adding depth was something Dicks set out to do with Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen because it was a serial that desperately needed it, but The Web of Fear on almost every level is a stronger serial.  Dicks very easily could have gotten the scripts into prose format and called it a day much like he would do with later novelizations mostly due to overwork, and 1976 was very much a busy year for Dicks, between Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster and this Dicks had done Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen and Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks.

 

Instead of phoning it in, Dicks actually approaches Doctor Who and the Web of Fear with the intent on making it work as a book, using the pacing of a film almost as a blueprint for the way things are paced.  The depth added here isn’t the same kind of depth as Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, outside of renaming the rather unfortunate Jewish stereotype in the first episode to be less so.  Some of the events in the first half of the story are rearranged to flow better into one another, the misunderstanding between Victoria and the Travers’ in particular is softened and from Victoria’s perspective so the audience knows just how nervous she has been in particular, and the Doctor actually has a part to play in the adaptation of the second episode.  This is the second novelization that Target had done that was adapting a story where a regular was missing from an episode, the first being Gerry Davis’ adaptation of Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet which was only hastily rewritten to accommodate William Hartnell’s illness. Dicks adds an in depth sequence of the Doctor meeting and coming to trust Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, complete with the omniscient narrator reflecting on how this will grow and what will become UNIT will become a bigger part of the Doctor’s life.  The novelization even ends with the suggestion being made off-handedly to form a sort of military organization to deal with alien threats.

 

Dicks as a novelist is also desperately having to compensate for the fact that he cannot emulate Douglas Camfield’s direction onto the page.  This isn’t without trying, Dicks is using the scripts after all and the first chapter is a great little horror story adapting the early scenes of the Yeti coming to life, and then that quickly spiraling out of control.  It wasn’t necessary to add the pieces on how long it took for the invasion to actually come in full force and brief touching on Travers being suspected in it, but it was very much appreciated.  Dicks knows when to compress and when to expand because he cannot emulate Camfield’s style in prose, he’s writing very much for the action and not the horror.  Dicks doesn’t really excel at horror, but the tension is there and the mystery while still probably the weakest aspect is there.  The exasperation of the story still comes through with how the characters behave.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Web of Fear is an excellent novel, it would have been at least enjoyable if Terrance Dicks had phoned it in, but he doesn’t.  There aren’t really plot additions, but Dicks actually had the time and care to look at how he could translate the story from the screen to the page while capturing why this was one that stuck in people’s minds for so long even when it turned out to be nearly entirely missing.  9/10.

Ten Little Aliens by: Stephen Cole

 

Ten Little Aliens is a strange little book. The title is taken from the original title of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and in the 2013 introduction Stephen Cole wrote for the reprint, it’s made quite explicit that at the forefront of his mind was Christie’s general body of work.  That, combining it with Starship Troopers, and adding the gimmick of an extensive Choose Your Own Adventure section in the middle.  That’s three very different things that Stephen Cole is pulling from for what Ten Little Aliens is trying to do, this is a novel that is an identity crisis wrapped up in about 300 pages.  It’s also a novel featuring the First Doctor, Ben, and Polly set between The Smugglers and The Tenth Planet because Stephen Cole rightly wanted to use a TARDIS team that hadn’t been used in novel format before.  Tonally Ten Little Aliens is weird, although the novel is taking its name from one of the most famous murder mysteries of all time it only vaguely resembles a murder mystery that Agatha Christie would have written: there are already ten bodies, specifically of terrorists, and they start disappearing one by one.  Sure, Christie wrote stories where the murder has already happened and there has to be a reason to solve it, but And Then There Were None isn’t one of those.  And Then There Were None is one of Christie’s focused on class and British imperialism through the lens of ten well off British people who have all gotten away with murder and are picked off one by one as the veneer of well-bred British respectability is eroded away.  It’s a masterpiece.

 

Ten Little Aliens aesthetically resembles Starship Troopers, though it’s far closer to the Heinlein novel than Paul Verhoeven’s satirical adaptation.  The supporting cast is entirely space troopers who are all introduced early in the book literally through little character blurbs that tell the reader the stock soldier that they represent.  Cole doesn’t take any time in this book to explore the military mind or what the expansion of military force throughout the galaxy means.  He’s just drawing on the aesthetics of Starship Troopers because they are cool and they have worked for Doctor Who in the past, while the stock characters are just that, stock characters.  They don’t actively matter in the long run and could have been an interesting foil to the aspects of the Earth Empire to actually use an Agatha Christie style commentary at the very least, if Cole wasn’t able to go down the Verhoeven route.  Because it’s aesthetics of the military mind and expansion of empire it feels like Cole tacitly agreeing more with Heinlein over Verhoeven.  The Schirr rebels called the Ten-Strong are an interesting idea and indicate Cole almost had plans to go through Verhoeven over Heinlein, they believe themselves to be physically perfect though to human eyes they are grotesque and disgusting (Cole playing on some honestly ableist tropes throughout Ten Little Aliens in a lot of ways that I think are meant to make the reader uncomfortable but again Cole very much is a writer who likes his aesthetic references over examining them).

 

The biggest gimmick of the book is the Choose Your Own Adventure segment is actually the gimmick that is the most interesting: it’s presented as a neural net and its where you get glimmers that the stock characters have a little more than the stock they are given and you get insights into Ben and Polly.  Polly is a character Cole really wants to explore but sadly he reduces Ben to a stock Cockney sailor character.  Part of me gets why, this is 2002 and the only stories to really feature Ben and Polly that were readily available were The War Machines and in incomplete form The Tenth Planet (with the surviving episodes of The Underwater Menace and The Moonbase on VHS compilations while The Faceless Ones would not be released for a year).  Cole does characterize the Doctor well and gets the dynamic between the First Doctor specifically to Ben and Polly, though again that dynamic had the most material and it does reflect the two stories closest to completion.  Polly is a character who while occasionally reduced to a screamer does get to be more proactive than Ben who feels in a lot of ways dead weight.  It is nice to have this as an example of this TARDIS team, some of it does form the basis for what Big Finish Productions would develop years later with Anneke Wills on board.

 

Overall, Ten Little Aliens is certainly a novel with potential and Cole has definitely experienced everything that the novel goes out of its way to reference.  The biggest problem is that there are several gimmicks at the heart of the novel that are generally making it difficult to really flesh out, Cole needing to focus on one exact thing to really bring the novel to work.  Cole can be a great storyteller, but here he doesn’t seem to have the guiding hand to make this anything more than average.  5/10.