Allegiance by: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler and directed by: Winrich Kolbe

 

“Allegiance” is written by: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler and is directed by: Winrich Kolbe.  It was produced under production code 166, was the 18^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 66^th episode overall, and was broadcast on March 26, 1990.

 

With any season of television that has 26 episodes there are going to be episodes that don’t really give you anything.  For Star Trek: The Next Generation that very often is scripts from Richard Manning and Hans Beimler.  Manning and Beimler’s written episodes are all over the place from incredibly strong like “Who Watches The Watchers” and one of the rewrites of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” but they also had their hands in “Shades of Grey”.  “Allegiance” is their final script for the show and it can best be described as unnecessary filler.  Now filler is not a bad thing, for the medium of television: it is necessary.  It’s the chance for the characters to be characters so they can develop outside of whatever overarching plot for those more serialized shows.  “Allegiance” doesn’t actually have anything to say about the characters.  The premise should be gold, Captain Picard is abducted by mysterious aliens and replaced with a doppelganger as the episode wants to build suspicion among the crew until the climax where Riker, Worf, Troi, and Crusher succeed in a mutiny before the real Picard is back.  This is the strongest material in the episode, it is the A-plot after all, but the script itself does not allow for the suspense to build because the pre-credits scene is Picard’s abduction.  This is an episode that should be building that tension about what’s happened to Picard because he is acting strange, but not in any sort of malicious way which is a fascinating examination of what the crew thinks of Picard.  Potentially the episode could have examined how Picard as a person is far too stiff and ordered for his own good, many of the “wrong” things fake Picard does include going on a date with Dr. Crusher and singing a drinking song with the crew.  The singing is explicitly joked about in the closing stinger of the episode as the most ridiculous aspect, but these scenes are of Patrick Stewart getting a chance to have a lot of fun in the role.  There is also a lot of secret keeping that provides the sinister aspect of the episode and the mutiny itself is fantastic, especially how sinister the rest of the cast play it.

 

While the A-plot is fine, flawed because the audience knows that Picard is a doppelganger and we lose tension, but the B-plot is just absolutely nothing.  It is following the abducted Picard with other, alien prisoners who slowly have to unravel the layers of their capture.  There are trials like food that one of the prisoners cannot eat and scenarios where they have to work together, but this is a type of story that at this point feels stock.  It’s a stock story that Manning and Beimler just write almost to fill the runtime so the episode can have something different to cut back to when the A-plot needs a cutaway.  There also really isn’t enough plot because the characters are clearly intelligent enough to realize they are in an experiment as is the big twist of the episode, but that could be fine if the characters are given the time to shine even if like in this episode they are non-recurring characters.  Manning and Beimler provide basic characters for the episode: there’s an alien that’s a warrior, a Starfleet cadet, and a pacifist.  These are all things that are perfectly okay for characters, but they are also skin deep which is a problem.  It all means that this big plotline in the episode is a complete afterthought, something that could be almost entirely cut without losing anything.  “Allegiance” would be better in practically every way if this were excised entirely.

 

Overall, “Allegiance” is one of those episodes that’s just going to be lost in the shuffle of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s third season.  It’s an example of one of those episodes that is by no means bad, it is just an hour of television that exists and is taking stock elements to put on screen to fill time.  Patrick Stewart in a double role is clearly having a good time to cut lose as the doppelganger of Picard and the rest of the regular cast each get a moment to shine but having a B-plot that does not actually do anything of note with the stock plot.  It’s mediocre.  5/10.

Ghost Light by: Marc Platt

 

Ghost Light was written by: Marc Platt, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 156^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The joke in Doctor Who fandom that isn’t entirely a joke is that Ghost Light is a story that’s too difficult to understand which is one of those little ideas that I don’t actually agree with.  As presented on television, Ghost Light is a serial Marc Platt is putting in full of subtext.  It’s a serial all about stagnation, Victorian society is presented as rigid and impossible to change as a parallel to the alien survey team inhabiting the house of Gabriel Chase insisting on cataloguing all life on Earth as a stationary definition of life.  Ace’s arc is also about change, letting go of her adolescent anger while holding onto that strong sense of justice which can be channeled into helping others (she is responsible for Control realizing her sense of self represented in the Victorian social order as an Eliza Doolittle type).  It’s there in the subtext of the television story, it just doesn’t come right out and explain what the plot is, realizing that the audience paying attention.  What is interesting is that because this is why Ghost Light works so well on television even if it is compressed into 75 minutes, novelizing the story should lessen that subtext because it makes it text.  That is not the case.  Marc Platt’s novelization of Ghost Light should also be hindered by taking the first episode and making it half the book, something that is not a problem because Platt knows exactly what he is doing when it comes to writing a book.  The prose itself does not feel like an adaptation of a script, but an original novel.

 

The key to making Ghost Light work is not reintegrating several of the deleted scenes, although that is something that is done, but it’s just how the character work happens.  If we take the script of everything that was filmed that still does not make up everything in the novelization.  The story is recontextualized from the opening: it opens with Ace burning down Gabriel Chase in the aftermath of the hate crime committed against her friend Manisha.  This in the original story is a twist, but placing it at the beginning creates an immediate sense of foreboding while the reader makes the connection between the opening and the setting of the story.  It adds this idea that the story itself is going to be cyclical, Ace at one point even being frightened that she may be in some sort of paradoxical time loop.  Ghost Light is about Ace at its core and it’s telling that she is the main focus of the novelization.  While Platt uses third person perspective and certainly does additions to different characters, it’s Ace that gets the most.  The Doctor is making this explicitly a test for her own development and she must face her own traumatic past so she can grow, evolve even.

 

The supporting characters are equally fleshed out, the most interesting addition is a brief flashback to the opera where the Reverend Matthews sees in their box Josiah Samuel Smith and Gwendoline, being startled by a phantasmal light and Smith’s insistence on staying in the shadows.  It’s this encounter that prompts Matthews to go to Gabriel Chase in the first place, he could have picked any follower of Darwin and Wallace after all.  Gwendoline is also a character presented in the novelization to somehow be further on the edge, Platt emphasizing how confused she is despite the performance under Smith’s influence.  It makes her initial spiral parallel the spirals of Mrs. Pritchard and Redvers Fenn-Cooper who are equally added.  The relationship between Gwendoline and her mother, like the television story is just in those final moments, but Platt deepens it so much by bringing parenthood as a theme to the forefront.  Light here is also presented as slightly more ethereal, Platt taking advantage of the fact that anything can be achieved in prose and not be limited by the special effects budget of a television show.

 

Overall, Ghost Light surprisingly deserves its title in novelization form.  It does feel like one light left on the stage after Gabriel Chase should have been abandoned long ago.  The satire of both the Victorian period and 1989 Britain (the stagnancy of government is a jab at the rule of Conservatism at the time) feels all the more pointed here while the characters just create the depth because Platt is more interested in writing a novel and not a novelization.  10/10.

Sins of the Father by: Ronald D. Moore and W. Reed Moran from a story by: Drew Deighan and directed by: Les Landau

 

“Sins of the Father” is written by: Ronald D. Moore and W. Reed Moran, from a story by: Drew Deighan and is directed by: Les Landau.  It was produced under production code 165, was the 17^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 65^th episode overall, and was broadcast on March 19, 1990.

 

It’s a miracle that Star Trek: The Next Generation is a series that can do several episodes focusing on the Klingons, their culture, and in the case of “Sins of the Father” their planet and get away with it without a hint of irony.  There is something almost magical about the ability of an episode of television to be able to put objectively silly images on screen, but bring together a cast and have them play it entirely straight.  The premise of “Sins of the Father” is Worf having to fight for the honor of himself, his deceased father who has been charged a traitor, and to his long lost brother Kurn, played by Tony Todd.  It’s also a direct sequel to “A Matter of Honor” directly having Kurn serve on the Enterprise as part of the cultural exchange between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, as Riker did in the previous episode.  The first act structurally of the episode is entirely devoted to that cultural exchange, this time with a lone Klingon not really integrating properly to human culture.  Klingon culture as presented by writers Ronald D. Moore and W. Reed Moran emphasizes that militaristic order and discipline over all else.  Sure there’s the objectively hilarious line about not killing someone at the supper table, but it is this obsessive discipline that causes conflict among the Enterprise crew.  It’s not enough conflict to fill an entire episode, but it is enough to get to the reveal that Kurn is Worf’s brother, done in private because Kurn isn’t implementing the discipline on his brother.  It’s essentially the B-plot of the episode that fully plays out before the rest of the episode making for a far more integrated story.

 

The A-plot is Worf and his own struggle to clear his father’s name, a man he never really knew, with evidence that he does not have nearly enough to actually do.  “Sins of the Father” is an episode that actually becomes a tragedy, mainly because Worf’s task in this episode is impossible.  There is exactly one piece of evidence in the example of a living witness who refuses to testify, revealing a far larger conspiracy that could have sparked a Klingon Civil War.  Moore and Moran leave the episode on this almost empty, dissatisfied note where Worf has made a choice that is best for himself and his brother, one of self-sacrifice and of humanity, one that is dishonorable but enough to save his brother.  This is explicitly framed as a human decision and not a Klingon one, but it is obviously the correct decision to make.  It expels Worf from Klingon society, a society that he never fully belonged to in the first place, and yet the episode ends with a sense that he is not the one turning his back in the slightest.  He still has his pride and his own personal honor, something that Michael Dorn does without saying a word.  Dorn also has impeccable chemistry with Tony Todd as Kurn, not so much of showing any brotherly love but this incredibly deep respect that only brothers can have.  The idea of love between the pair is something that would come had the episode not ended the way that it does, that is part of the tragedy of “Sins of the Father”.  These are brothers in a society that has left them inverse of one another.  Worf’s public face is one of dishonor but is internally is nothing but the peak of honor while Kurn is the inverse, his own conscience of denying his family is clearly a pain on his own honor though Klingon society sees him as a full member of society.  There is also this public power imbalance between Worf and Kurn, Kurn being a commander while Worf a lieutenant, that isn’t actually examined much by this episode.  This is an episode after all that swiftly gets against the chain of command, despite devoting time to having Picard serve in Worf’s defense after Kurn is wounded in a fight.  This is used more to further Picard and Worf’s dynamic of respect between commander and officer, Patrick Stewart and Dorn play it well of course, but it is one of those smaller elements of the episode.

 

The production design of “Sins of the Father” is of note at being the first on-screen appearance of the Klingon homeworld.  This is interpreted through the budget of a television episode, but the matte painting and model exteriors designed by Richard James are exquisite.  The architecture is particularly angular and the lighting design of the episode gives the episode these fascinating alien colors mixing red and green in a way that almost emulates certain uses of the two-strip Technicolor process.  The interior sets are also excellent, even if you can tell that they are a bit smaller in places than the script was expecting.  Les Landau directs the actors around them quite well, the final shots of the episode with Worf being cast out of society are particularly effective because of Landau’s direction.  The episode received an Emmy for Best Art Design which is a particularly notable contribution, but really it is the use of lighting that ties everything back together.  It really does mean the episode is going to stick in the mind of the viewer because the lighting despite a musical score that is just perfectly average.

 

Overall, “Sins of the Father” may be the strongest episode to focus on Worf yet, which is saying a lot because many of his episodes had been the stronger episodes of the first two seasons.  The layers it presents to Klingon culture drive the episode after a first act that tricks the audience that it is going to be a rather straightforward counterpart to “A Matter of Honor”, and the tone becomes far more serious than the relatively light first act.  Some of it cannot be adequately explored in a 45 minute television episode, but the script is tight with Ronald D. Moore once again bringing his stellar character writing while Tony Todd steals the show as Worf’s brother.  8/10.

The Awakening by: Eric Pringle

 

The Awakening was written by: Eric Pringle, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 95^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The Awakening is one of those stories that I always forget exists.  Nestled in the first half of Season 21, it’s essentially a rewrite of The Daemons despite Eric Pringle denying he had even seen or read Doctor Who and the Daemons.  It’s also the last in the long line of televised stories that terrorizes a member of Tegan Jovanka’s family for dramatic effect.  Pringle pitched the story as a four part serial and even began scripting it as one before script editor Eric Saward asked him to tighten it down to two episodes before production.  The novelization brings me to the conclusion that this is one Eric Saward decision that was the right move because Pringle ends up writing a novelization coming to 144 pages.  Certainly not the longest novelization published by Target Books, but is definitely longer than many of the novelizations of the time.  Pringle is adapting his own script for print and is an example of barely parting with a single word of the original story.  It means that the two episodes of the story, roughly 50 minutes of material, are expanded out far beyond their breaking point while Pringle pads the word count with attempts to add inner life to the characters that sadly amounts to them mostly being basic emotional descriptors.  This is made further odd by Pringle’s prose sometimes describing the action not in the terms of a novelist but in the terms of a film director meaning that the descriptions try to have the reader in the action as if they are the camera.  It becomes incredibly clunky to read, for instance when the first crack in the church wall appears the description is at length and feels like it is missing the music sting to indicate the audience seeing something the characters are not.  These drag the story out across the ten chapters of the book that are also structured around several scenes which is just adding to the pacing problems.  Yes, multiple scenes in a chapter is normal, but the way Pringle presents it feels like each scene is trying to end its own chapter.  The characters say the same dialogue in the script but so much of The Awakening feels sanded down and somehow thinner than the already fairly thin televised story.

 

Overall, the only conclusion is that the Peter Davison two-part stories really don’t service novelizations particularly well.  The Awakening is actually the strongest of the three but that does not actually say much, something that is a surprise since novelizations like The Edge of Destruction, The Rescue, and Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment all work quite well.  4/10.

Heritage by: Dale Smith

 

The space western is something that is largely foreign to Doctor Who, the most obvious example being the mostly missing The Space Pirates as part of the genre, though there is also an argument of Colony in Space taking on ideas of the western genre.  This should not be surprising, because Doctor Who relies on time travel as part of the central premise it is far easier that if it is going to homage the western genre it would just do a western: from The Gunfighters to “A Town Called Mercy” and arguably certain sequences of “The Impossible Astronaut”.  You can add science fiction elements to the western genre, but that does not make it a space western.  Heritage is an outlier in that trend, Dale Smith committing his to date only Doctor Who novel to being a space western in every sense of the genre.  The biggest influence on the structure of Heritage is the 1952 film High Noon from its plot taking place in real time (translated into each chapter slowly progressing August 6, 6048) and having the Doctor and Ace returning to the town of Heritage after a long absence while the town slowly rallies against them.  That is the interesting trick, placing the Doctor and Ace as the villains of the story in the eyes of the townsfolk, flipping the High Noon formula on its head so our perspective is from the outsiders.  Smith excels at painting Heritage as a desolate wasteland: it is both the planet and one of two settlements on the planet, a planet full of dust, heat, and a population holding deep and dark secrets.  The technology is likely there to make it a better place to live, but most of that has gone into cleaner robots called Fussies that do nothing more than make it a nuisance.  The inhabitants of the town aren’t just human however, in addition to the classic western sheriff called Sheriff there is a dolphin called Bernard who feels like Smith is attempting a Douglas Adams style joke.  Matching this atmosphere, the Doctor is portrayed throughout Heritage as morose, only made worse by the events of the novel.  This is not a grand plan to set part of the universe to rights, he and Ace are essentially stuck here and stuck in what seems to be a divergent timeline where both his television companions have met terrible fates, or perhaps will meet terrible fate.

 

Heritage is structured as four episodes and this is one aspect where it feels as if Smith has not thought through the structure.  The big halfway point twist is not actually treated as a cliffhanger despite being what the novel actually hangs upon to work.  There is also the slight issue of the point of view, the narration occasionally feeling as if the novel was originally told entirely from Ace’s perspective with little narrated asides that feel out of place, especially in one scene in which Ace is absent.  While it would be a perfectly respectable way to present the novel there is a sense that it was abandoned because Smith wanted scenes without Ace and let certain instances of that previous version slip through the cracks.  The first twist of Heritage that does work is the reveal that Melanie Bush is dead, she married a farmer named Ben Heyworth and was murdered somehow.  This is only the first twist as there is a child called Sweetness, depicted oddly on the cover in front of a mouth in the sand that has absolutely nothing to do with the novel (there is a cave with jagged rocks that it might be trying to depict but the Black Sheep covers really do suffer).  Mel’s death breaks Ace down, making her believe that the Doctor is just going to forget her when it becomes convenient and leave her to a potentially similar fate while for the Doctor’s part he has to investigate exactly what is happening.  There are several other deaths and instances of insanity among the townsfolk of Heritage, some that seem far too nice to the Doctor and Ace as a front to strike when they least expect it, also killing their own loved ones.  Everybody on Heritage is out for blood and when you eventually get to the climax, revealing exactly who Sweetness’ parents are and her connection to the murder of Melanie Bush, there is this sense of sad exhaustion.  It’s a good feeling, this would very easily rank as one of the strongest novels in the range if it were edited ever so slightly tighter and was more consistent in its narrative voice.

 

Overall, Heritage is clearly only a continuing part of what Mike Tucker laid down in Prime Time and what the Seventh Doctor Past Doctor Adventures novels has really been doing.  The twists are incredibly effective and the novel sets out to test the relationship between the Doctor and Ace in a very interesting way.  The cover is deceptive in terms of the tone that Dale Smith is going for and he clearly needed one more rewrite to make it perfect, but we have a great space western that understands the type of story that westerns excel at.  8/10.

The Offspring by: René Echevarria and directed by: Jonathan Frakes

 

“The Offspring” is written by: René Echevarria and is directed by: Jonathan Frakes.  It was produced under production code 164, was the 16^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 64^th episode overall, and was broadcast on March 12, 1990.

 

Saying something aged poorly is often a negative descriptor, and rightly so, for something problematic in a piece of media that is otherwise popular and still somehow culturally relevant.  Star Trek is no stranger to having this label, despite it often being progressive.  “The Offspring” is an interesting example of this because it is progressive but the language it uses is not quite there.  This is an episode about parenthood and furthering Data’s status as a person, but also with undercurrents of existing outside of the typical bounds of a social construct.  The premise is that Data has a child and I say a child because this child is given more agency than our own children are given.  The first act of the episode presents the child, named Lal, as a blank slate and importantly an adult child for Data so René Echevarria can further explore social constructs from the adult perspective.  “The Offspring” posits that social constructs are intentionally conflicting and confusing, Lal is given the agency to choose the identity that fits with her sense of self.  I say her because her gender is her choice.  She is initially presented as gender neuter, a term that is not inaccurate but in modern linguistics could be described as agender, an agender female.  This is portrayed by through the first act having Lal played by Leonard Crofoot before the choice is made and she is played for the rest of the episode by Hallie Todd.  The episode is clear that both Data and Lal only experience gender to fit into society, the forms they take are ones that they like and have some connection to, however Echevarria makes it explicit that if they so wished they could just change their appearance and identity on a whim.  There is a segment of Star Trek fandom that especially likes to make Data’s sense of gender a rigid cisgender male identity when it is not cisgender, arguably it is at the same time male and not bound as male.  The same is true for Lal.

 

“The Offspring” is an episode that is surprising in how well it fits in with Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future of humanity being past conflict, the central conflict of the episode is where Lal should go: if she should stay with Data on the Enterprise or she should be put on a Starfleet base.  This is actually the B-plot of the episode and Data has very little to do with this plot outside of advocating for his daughter to be treated in the same way as he is, as someone who deserves autonomy.  She is a person.  Picard, who has his own feelings to overcome since he has not quite examined that Data being a person means he can have children as any other crewmember can, is the one who advocates for Lal against Admiral Haftel, played by Nicolas Coster.  Haftel is the antagonistic force of the episode, but he is not a villain, he is just someone who has not yet encountered an android like Data and Lal and slowly overcomes his preconceptions of what they are.  The drama is still there, the concept of Data losing his daughter and Lal losing her father is great, especially surprising since this is Lal’s introduction and the episode ends in tragedy of Lal sadly dying of natural causes despite both Data and Admiral Haftel’s best efforts to save her.  Picard’s initial apprehension and then coming around almost immediately, the episode advocating a woman’s right to choose without writing an episode about a woman having a child.  It makes the issue a fascinating rhetorical trick, making it effective at getting around certain unconscious biases in the audience against the argument for women’s rights.  Putting it in the voice of men (or male presenting characters as Data is) means that the audience has to see the humanity in the argument and cannot let biases against women get in the way.

 

The rest of the episode is a more internal conflict.  Data has to be a good father and Lal has to discover who she is and what she wants to be.  Echevarria is intentional in looking at where Data has been and what Lal would need and could do to become more developed than her father.  She can use contractions, Data cannot (or at the very least does not in most episodes, the absolute continuity isn’t always so tight).  Data forms relationships but Lal is hinted at having a desire for romantic intimacy (and potentially sexual intimacy, however as this is a television episode from 1990 that is not explored being asexual and aromantic are conflated).  Brent Spiner while once again working with a script that on paper says Data does not show emotion, does nothing but show and experience those emotions.  It is a heartbreaking performance and Hallie Todd for her part is doing so much to keep that Data like cadence for Lal while making her sound more than just Data but a woman.  Lal is taken to Ten Forward, the Enterprise bar that was only named recently onscreen, and is put to work as a waitress so she can observe people.  Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan is this beautifully empathetic towards Lal, explaining human relationships though not wishing to overstep her bounds.  Lal kisses Riker unprompted because she is immediately smitten with him, something that is played off as a joke and not followed up on for Riker as Jonathan Frakes is directing the episode, but for Lal she has to learn the concepts of consent.  It’s nice to see a prototype of that conversation in an episode that does not entirely brush it off.  On the topic of direction, Frakes brings this fantastic energy to keep the camera moving throughout the episode.  There is a lot of very small touches that Frakes brings, having Riker not in the episode outside of that very brief cameo means he can focus on making the episode look particularly dynamic for a 1990 episode of television.  You can really see exactly why Frakes would continue to direct several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, episodes of future series, and films, he shows such promise as a director.

 

Overall, “The Offspring” has aged poorly in its language in places but not with what René Echevarria is doing with the script.  This is an episode that acknowledges how much of human society is just a social construct that could very easily be changed while also acknowledging some of the beauty in those constructs (mainly the way romance is portrayed).  It’s an examination once again of what it means to be a human being from a non-human perspective and clearly has commentary on the social ostracization of certain groups without naming those groups.  There is definitely commentary that I am missing in this review: Data being representative of neurodivergence in certain ways is also a perfectly valid and interesting reading of “The Offspring” that there just isn’t the time to get into here.  Despite one joke that has aged quite poorly, this is the second perfect episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in a row.  10/10.

Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars was written by: Terrence Dicks, based on Pyramids of Mars by: Robert Holmes and Lewis Greifer writing under the name Stephen Harris.  It was the 27^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Whenever I find myself reading a Terrance Dicks novel there’s an immediate sense of comfort.  Several of my own reviews have discussed just how easy going his style is.  It has been said Dicks is responsible for the literacy rates of generations of British schoolchildren.  Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars is an interesting example of his style leaning particularly hard into the pulp fiction roots of both his style and Philip Hinchcliffe’s time as producer on Doctor Who.  Pyramids of Mars is a story exemplifying this, it’s a take on reanimating Egyptian mummies with diversions, because this is science fiction, into taking inspiration from Chariot of the Gods.  It's the latter point that the fandom does have a tendency to ignore or simply write off as part of the pulp fiction roots of the show and the serial in general.  The idea of the Osirans, or as they are in Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars the Osirians, as a near all-powerful alien race that influenced human culture is at best a dodgy decision despite being in an excellent serial.  At worst it is playing into a very long history of conspiracies aimed at denigrating “non-Western” cultures, mainly non-white cultures.  These stereotypes feel more present in the novelization with Dicks leaning heavily into those specific origins.  There is an added prologue recounting the Egyptian myth of Set killing Osiris which is a particularly fun little addition, but it does add in the context of the gods as aliens and making it explicit science fiction.  It does at least introduce little kids to Egyptian mythology since that is clearly the target audience of the novelizations in general.

 

The real step down for Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars is that despite some additions, there’s also an epilogue of Sarah Jane discovering through newspaper clippings that the entire story was written off as just a tragic fire and mix-up, and being a fairly quick read, this is a story that just loses a little bit of its luster when it isn’t being performed.  It’s perfectly fine to read about Sutekh, but without Gabriel Woolf’s delivery Dicks doesn’t do nearly as much to communicate the character’s presence to the reader which is a shame.  He just relies on the dialogue from Holmes’ original script which of course is good dialogue, but this is clearly entering the period where Dicks is writing so many of these novelizations he cannot quite keep up with the demands.  It’s still fairly early in the run of novels sure but it’s also his sixth novel of the year and because it’s one that was only about a year old, there isn’t enough time to really allow for a lot of that creative license that Dicks would write in novelizations like Doctor Who and the Web of Fear or his first Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars, while translating the story well enough to the page, it does exacerbate some of the underlying problems with the nature of the story and a lack of creative license does mean that it is just the TV story a second time.  The lack of performances does mean the final episode being similar to Death to the Daleks is just more apparent, though the additions are nice.  8/10.

Fury from the Deep by: Victor Pemberton

 

Fury from the Deep was written by Victor Pemberton, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 111^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Writing reviews for any of the Target novelizations are always just that little bit difficult because they aren’t original stories.  Fury from the Deep is a bit of an odd one because it breaks largely with the Target format by being about 60 pages longer than what was the standard length.  This would be done in the future as a trial run for the New Adventures, but Victor Pemberton simply found himself unable to adapt his story in the standard length.  Pemberton avoids making any major cuts to the story but also having six episodes to work with of mounting dread and horror means that you really do want that extra space just to translate it well.  The horror does work in prose, Pemberton translating a lot of the underlying pulse as more of the foam and weed breaking through the pipes more often.  The scenes which do exist in clips are ramped up in terms of violence, rarely is it just the gas attacking.

 

The working title of the story was The Colony of Devils and Pemberton restores some of those implications in the novelization.  The weed is more explicit in its sentience and quest for world domination here from the start.  There are subtle additions to make it feel there from the very beginning and its invasion is contrasted with a harshness of the refinery.  The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria are shot early in the story with tranquilizers but in the novelization there is a direct mention of the people with the guns, something that on television feels somehow less harsh than it does here.  There is also a sense of a human touch Pemberton adds to the supporting characters.  Several are given first names but also expanded backstories from implying the Harris family are having a strained marriage from the refinery and Robson having a deceased wife which motivates his overwork.  Robson and Megan Jones are also treated harsher here, more often being referred to not by name but by title which adds to the atmosphere.

 

Overall, Fury from the Deep is one of the very best of the Target novelizations.  The pace reads more like an actual novel than a novelization which is always a plus and Pemberton’s additions are to make the book have better characters and a sense of mounting dread.  10/10.

Yesterday's Enterprise by: Ira Steven Behr, Richard Manning, Hans Beimler, and Ronald D. Moore, from a story by: Trent Christopher Ganino and Eric A. Stillwell, and directed by: David Carson

 

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” is written by: Ira Steven Behr, Richard Manning, Hans Beimler, and Ronald D. Moore, from a story by: Trent Christopher Ganino and Eric A. Stillwell, and is directed by: David Carson.  It was produced under production code 163, was the 15^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 63^rd episode overall, and was broadcast on February 19, 1990.

 

The best alternate universe stories in science fiction television work in one of two ways.  First, there is the evil alternate universe, pioneered by Star Trek in “Mirror, Mirror” where that evil is played to the extreme, and often to camp.  The second is the more dramatically interesting alternate universe, one played entirely straight where you can see the characters you love in different places because different choice have been made, these not being exclusive to the first decision.  The most famous of these in popular culture is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, but the I was first exposed to was the Doctor Who serial Inferno, a serial that sees the Doctor encounter counterparts of his colleagues and other characters in an authoritarian, militaristic setting with a dystopian tone that leads to the end of the world.  Despite Star Trek: The Next Generation having the option to go fully for the first type of alternate universe episode because the mirror universe exists, it goes largely for the second in its first proper alternate universe (or in this case alternate timeline) in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”.  It’s an episode that on a production standpoint, should not work.  On screen there are four writers credited with the script and two separate writers credited with the story, plus new showrunner Michael Piller taking a pass at the script at some point during the production.  With that many credits, more than the Writer’s Guild of America would usually allow, being given an exemption because of how much everybody involved contributed, it should fall apart from competing visions.  Television at its best, however, is intensely collaborative.  As a script, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” clicks, likely having everybody who has a pass adding something to create a new layer before it even goes before the camera where David Carson, fresh off the incredibly atmospheric “The Enemy” is in the director’s chair is adding his own atmospheric touch with the dynamic lighting does a lot to elevate the performances in the episode and the script.

 

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” is an apology to Denise Crosby, returned for a single episode as Tasha Yar as a rip in the space-time continuum bringing the Enterprise-C into contact with the Enterprise-D creates an alternate timeline.  The Federation is far more militaristic, Federation-Klingon relations broke down and peace was never reached, the war is not going well as resources are depleted, Worf never became part of Starfleet (and likely doesn’t exist), and Tasha Yar never died.  The only person on the Enterprise-D who knows something is wrong with this timeline is Guinan, and even she cannot put it together.  Structurally, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is a perfect episode of television: each scene serves multiple purposes in balancing the plot and the character drama, especially as it needs to establish the new personalities of the alternate timeline Enterprise crew viewers will know and the important members of the Enterprise-C (her captain, Rachel Garrett played by Tricia O’Neill, and her first officer Castillo, played by Christopher McDonald).  Visual shorthand of the lighting and the more striking versions of the costumes, even seeing Wesley Crusher in a Starfleet universe, create that initial link during the pre-credits sequence, but the script also is moving things to make the alternate timeline work.  Garrett and Castillo are parallels to Picard and Riker, all trying their best in the circumstances that sending back the Enterprise-C will be leading them to their deaths.  That is the dilemma and what makes it unique is how understated it is.  Whoopi Goldberg’s performance as Guinan is given the most focus the character has actually gotten so far, if this wasn’t an episode so focused on Yar it would be easily labeled a Guinan episode.  Guinan is the one piecing together and the moment she sees Yar for the first time Goldberg does so much with this one facial expression of such mixed emotions your heart breaks if you’ve been watching the show up to this point.  Guinan knows that Yar should be dead, she should not have a relationship with this woman and yet she does.  This moment comes full circle in the episode’s final shot between Guinan and Geordi La Forge: she asks to be told about Tasha Yar, who she was and how she had meaning.

 

Crosby is given her best material here as Tasha Yar.  There is a hinted romance between her and Castillo, though it reads as two people in very desperate situations finding comfort and companionship with each other.  The writers clearly understand the criticism of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation laid by Crosby of not needing to actually be there because Tasha is proactive throughout “Yesterday’s Enterprise”.  She is able to work out that correcting the timeline, if that is indeed what they are doing, but the way that she loses her cool is fascinating because she doesn’t.  She knows that there is a duty to send the Enterprise-C back and instead of lashing out, Yar makes the decision to go back with it to fight, almost to ensure the Klingons see the fighting against the Romulans as a truly honorable death.  It’s a meaning in her own death that she was denied by Star Trek: The Next Generation.  She gets one final scene with Captain Picard where you can just see on a very tired Patrick Stewart, giving Picard that war torn look, that he doesn’t want to let Yar go even if she is going to die anyway.  That decision to leave is what cements Yar’s character and almost retroactively makes her death in “Skin of Evil” worthwhile.  The episode could have chickened out and negotiated with Crosby to return full time to the series, but it doesn’t, Tasha Yar is still dead but this time she is going out on her own terms.  Because Crosby is being given her best material she is actually able to give a performance that feels fully rounded and not just a generic security guard stereotype that the character so often was reduced to, though to be fair everybody’s characterization in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was thin.

 

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” succeeds almost because while there is conflict and a moral dilemma that has the obvious solution reached, it actually doesn’t have any external conflict and somehow is written with Gene Roddenberry’s rules about future interpersonal conflict being followed.  It’s genuinely a miracle that it works because of just how many voices have a hand in how everything plays out, but it’s a tour de force for the cast as a whole.  The tone never winks to the camera that this is an alternate timeline, or treats it as something unnecessary because there is technically a status quo reset at the end even if Guinan remembers everything and wants to learn about Tasha Yar.  There is the perfect understanding of what a good piece of television is and does a lot visually instead of just letting everything work through dialogue of a script that is full of great dialogue.  Blocking is attentive, lighting is perfect, and by the time the episode ends you realize you’ve watched another episode that just elevates what Star Trek: The Next Generation is capable of doing when it is at its very best.  10/10.

Time Zero by: Justin Richards

 

The thesis of Time Zero comes in a chapter where the Doctor explains the concept of Schrodinger’s Cat, the thought experiment to explain uncertainty of matter existing in multiple states when unobserved.  It’s a thought experiment that is intentionally ridiculous in physics, something that Justin Richards is clearly understanding of because that chapter actually ends with a fairly good joke about it, but this is also a story where there are splinters of different universes making its way out through the multiverse because of the choices the characters make.  The title refers to the inciting incident of reality, a mythic zero point that even the chapter numbers of the book are counting backwards to.  This is before Event One, the start of the universe as established in Castrovalva.  Richards is proposing a book of massive proportions, fitting into Sabbath’s grand plan that dominates these latter Eighth Doctor Adventures novels.  Sabbath is here, when revealed it becomes incredibly obvious where he is hiding and yet there was enough to make me forget he could very easily be involved.  Richards brings the massive scale down to the personal level, this is an example of Doctor Who telling a story about having to fulfill history because the TARDIS team have been given information about their own futures.  This is a plot point that Steven Moffat would love, but Justin Richards isn’t using it for some grand plan, at least not on the surface, but for allowing for some particularly great character drama.  Fitz Kreiner is dead, he died in Siberia 1894 on an expedition with George Williamson, much of Fitz’s plot being the terribly sad plot of seeing the entire crew die while there is clear alien activity of some sort, interestingly connected to other books Richards has contributed here in a way that doesn’t seem overly continuity heavy.  Surprisingly it is the inciting incident of finding the diary in a bookshop is Richards most tense scene of the novel, because it is the precipice of choice.  The Doctor could choose not to open the book and seal Fitz’s fate, but he does so because he is just too curious.  He has to know, let the cat out of the box so to speak.

 

Anji Kapoor feels like it is time for her to leave the TARDIS at the beginning of Time Zero, another choice she is at the precipice of making.  She does leave for a time, it’s all part of the plan to try piecing together whatever happened in Siberia in 1894 and for her part she returns to her normal life.  It’s a life she cannot really return to, corporate office work is something that does not suit someone who has been time traveling.  The pace is far too slow and Anji no longer fits as just another face at the office, nobody really questioning a lot of what she has done.  It’s these early chapters that let Anji really shine as a character because Richards, continuing the idea of this book being a Schrodinger’s cat mystery, hints that Anji could still leave by the end of the novel.  There even is a potential replacement companion revealed in the final third of the novel who to me feels partially based on the potential replacement for Ace in Season 27, though she is introduced as working with Sabbath and as a twist.  Richards’ use of twists in Time Zero is actually odd, because it is all about ensuring that the proper universe, say the one where the cat is alive so to speak, comes to be, many of the twists are towards the logical explanations and not the science fiction possibilities.  It makes for a very different read but also creates a double edged sword because Richards does hand wave some of the events at the resolution in a way that feels like a reestablishment of the status quo.  This weakens quite a lot of what the novel was doing to further so many of the characters, but again that almost plays into the uncertainty that is at the heart of the book.  The ice TARDIS on the cover, for instance, and Fitz being dead and alive, are both things that get explanations but they are also intentionally vague explanations.  It’s a trick that for me shouldn’t work, and I’m not entirely sure if it actually does.

 

Overall, Time Zero is weird in being a type of Doctor Who story that would be very popular when the show was revived, especially during the 2010s.  Justin Richards makes it work by keeping a lot of the time breaking elements as simple as he can, even if it means the resolution finds itself just a little weaker than he can be.  The book is carried by centering the TARDIS team particularly more than previous books while pushing the overarching storyline of Sabbath forward.  It’s a very enjoyable time and there is a slight uniqueness in the format of the chapters that’s helping it standout and maintain the timey wimey tone.  7/10.

Some Thoughts on The Disaster Artist by: Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell

 

This isn’t going to be a review with a score.  Non-fiction certainly can be analyzed and scored in terms of prose and how well arguments are lad out or even the story is told, but Greg Sestero’s The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made is an incredibly personal memoir about a truly awful movie.  The Room is a 2003 drama (yes, drama, it as a comedy is a retcon) and passion project for Tommy Wiseau, a man who contains multitudes.  It is an incompetently made a, poorly scripted, and badly acted film that is notorious on the Internet.  It is also a film I saw for the first time earlier this month with some friends because I apparently don’t watch enough bad movies and this was the Citizen Kane of bad movies.  There isn’t any point to recount the plot of The Room, it has one that is conveyed through absolutely no consistencies and yet Wiseau somehow during filming tried to correct some of his own plot holes and inconsistencies.  The Disaster Artist is two narratives in parallel: Greg Sestero’s attempts to become an actor while becoming friends with Tommy Wiseau and the filming of The Room.  There is also a third narrative, a proposed life story for Tommy Wiseau, a man Sestero reinforces as incredibly guarded person who wants to be vulnerable but clearly doesn’t like his own history and is enamored entirely with America.  He is also rich.

 

The relationship between Sestero and Wiseau is a fascinating one, as this is a boon coming from Sestero’s perspective there is an inherent bias towards making himself look good but reading The Disaster Artist and watching The Room you get the sense that exaggerations are minor.  Wiseau’s proposed life, presented in the final chapters of the book, is filled with trauma and some basic explanations as to why he can possibly be the way that he is.  However, this does not excuse that Tommy Wiseau as presented by Greg Sestero is manipulative, arrogant, and clearly has his own baggage with women that implies misogyny.  He is a man who loves movies, especially very specific section of the American canon but seems to lack the creativity and understanding of what makes a movie.  There are several points where he decries “Mickey Mouse stuff” and presents himself as independent, even if his cinema influences are almost entirely studio pictures.  He is often cruel to his staff, even Sestero who he admits is a friend.  Relationships are often transactional, he puts himself first, and he will screw people over to get his way.

 

Sestero only starred in The Room because the money is good.  For his part, his story and drive to act is what drives many people to act.  He’s an example of a dime a dozen actor who goes eventually to Hollywood and just doesn’t make it.  It is his relationship to Tommy that makes his story interesting, otherwise he is just another hopeful who didn’t have the luck or connections to make it big.  Sestero knows this, he looks back at his roles as extras or the lead in Retro Puppet Master fondly.  His experiences on The Room and with Wiseau are rocky because Wiseau is a difficult person, but it is frustration and not hatred that is where the book ends.  Sestero still works with Wiseau to this day, he is self-aware of what he has done but he does ensure everyone else involved is portrayed fairly.  If The Disaster Artist had a villain? It is Tommy Wiseau and his pure artistic vision.  The memoir leaves you with two fascinating pictures of people and this feeling of that desire to fulfill the American Dream.  It’s both a how and a why something like The Room exists, and those answers are almost entirely far too normal for Hollywood.

A Matter of Perspective by: Ed Zuckerman and directed by: Cliff Bole

 

“A Matter of Perspective” is written by: Ed Zuckerman and is directed by: Cliff Bole.  It was produced under production code 162, was the 14^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 62^nd episode overall, and was broadcast on February 12, 1990.

 

In 1950, Akira Kurosawa released the film Rashomon, a film examining the concepts of truth, justice, human nature, and memory through four versions of the same story, contradictory, that all have their own versions of the truth through a perpetual rainstorm.  It is a film I have seen exactly once but greatly enjoyed, through the structure has been tributed several times in film and television, enough to have entered the pop culture osmosis.  There are good homages, but Star Trek: The Next Generation’s attempt at a Rashomon story, “A Matter of Perspective”, falls into the many pitfalls of a television series doing this type of story.  Rashomon partially works not because it is part of a trial, but it is explicitly post-trial, Kurosawa is critiquing systems of justice while “A Matter of Perspective” opens with a crime being committed (a space station exploding and killing Dr. Nel Apgar played by Mark Margolis) and the episode itself has more in common with original series episodes “The Menagerie” or “Court Martial”, Jonathan Frakes’ Riker being given the blame.  The episode becomes his trial, presided not by the Federation but by the justice system of Tanuga Four which is under the presumption of guilty until proven innocent.  The holodeck provides recreations of three testimonies and the end of the episode reveals that nobody actually committed the crime, the twist of the episode being that Apgar caused the explosion in an attempt to murder Riker.  Apgar believed his treachery, developing a radiation that he wished to sell to the Romulans, was discovered and wished to make the murder look like an accident.

 

Rashomon is a story that works in the more finite medium of film, unlike a series of television which is inherently ongoing, because part of the musings on human nature come from not knowing the four characters relaying their stories.  “A Matter of Perspective” is an episode of a television series in its third season, we already know that William Riker could not have committed a murder, he is a protagonist that the series has affirmed far too many times to be a good man with a strong sense of justice and fairness.  Picard is immediately on his side and does not believe it, the tension of the episode clearly wanting to come from the existential threat of Riker being extradited for a crime he did not commit.  Ed Zuckerman’s script, however, does not really support the tension.  Everyone knows that Riker did not commit the crime of which he is accused, his version of events is presented as the most accurate version.  You can tell he is enjoying these three versions of events, sticking vaguely to the Rashomon effect by not having any of them be entirely true, Riker’s cannot be because he doesn’t know how the crime is committed.  There’s also an accusation of rape that weirdly is taken as Riker actually did scare Apgar’s wife when shown his quarters, something that is depicted on-screen as remembered as at the very least a sexual assault.  This is an assault that didn’t actually happen, but the episode says that it is the truth in Manua Apgar’s mind, which is horrific when you think of the implications of the episode.  If Zuckerman is trying to say something feminist about how men don’t think about the power dynamics they can have over women, it is mangled in the execution.  It’s also sadly very possible that the rape subplot is here for the sole reason of being a reference to Rashomon.

 

Jonathan Frakes for his part is clearly having fun with the recreations as are Margolis, Gina Hecht, and Juliana Donald.  Tributes to Rashomon are particularly fun for actors because they’re able to play the same scene in completely different ways, though again framing the episode as an actual trial indicates Zuckerman doesn’t understand exactly how Rashomon works.  It is integral that Rashomon is set after the rape trial, not during.  Recounting the stories doesn’t actually change the fate of the characters in the retellings, it is instead philosophical musings upon them.  It isn’t the performances that are a problem, even the guest cast is full of great character actors doing their best with a script that clearly loves what it is tributing, even if it muddles a lot of the artistry it wants to apply.  There is also clearly something off with Cliff Bole’s direction in this episode.  Since the flashbacks make use of simulation the decision is made to shoot them while the cast watches on.  While there are points where this is technically impressive seeing two versions of the same character on-screen at once, it often leaves some of the sets to feel just a bit abstract and incomplete at points.  While the acting is giving it all, the different blocking and framing of the flashbacks just feels less than inspired to make the visual distinctions actually mean something so the emotion is mostly portrayed through performance.  It’s bringing down what at the very least would be a fun tribute to a classic film, even if Zuckerman doesn’t have anything to say about the nature of either memory or justice deeper than they are both flawed.

 

Overall, “A Matter of Perspective” is a messy episode that has some of its moments, but because everything it is doing is a tribute to a much better film, you get the sense that not everybody was on the same page when making it.  It’s not a bad episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation per say, it just lacks any sort of cohesive statement inside of its script and is almost entirely carried by the performances of both the main and supporting casts.  5/10.

Ozma of Oz by: L. Frank Baum

 

For a second time, L. Frank Baum gives one of his Oz books a ridiculously long title that will be shortened for this review: Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, Billina the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other good People Too Numerous to Mention Faithfully Recorded Herein shortened to the easy Ozma of Oz.  Baum is telling his readers who were perhaps sad with the absence of certain characters in The Marvelous Land of Oz while highlighting some of the new characters Dorothy meets in her second visit to Oz.  The title is also a bit out of place, while Ozma is in the book as a supporting character, it’s not really a book about who Ozma is.  She is there to rescue Dorothy from the captivity of the childish and narcissistic Princess Langwidere in the land of Ev, Oz’s neighboring country separated by the deadly deserts.  It does establish Dorothy and Ozma as quite good friends, both being kind hearted young girls who can’t stand to see people hurt.  The main plot of Ozma of Oz, and it is largely one plot preceded by smaller episodes leading to Dorothy’s capture after falling off a ship bound for Australia, is to save the Royal Family of Ev from the Nome King.  The Nome King is the first time in one of these books that Baum creates a central antagonist: he is a greedy rock creature who lives underground and turns people into ornaments.

 

This is the second Oz book to really be about restoring a monarchy, Baum as a writer clearly being interested in maintaining what he sees as the natural order of things.  There is at least a framework for what a ruler must be, Princess Langwidere as supporting protagonist isn’t evil but her vanity and disinterest makes her a bad ruler while Ozma rules by kindness.  The Royal Family of Ev, quite the large family consisting of the king, queen, and eight children, emphasize Baum’s ideas of a kind, loving family making for the best rule.  This isn’t particularly deep, the Royal Family exist for the plot resolution of discovering the purple ornaments.  Baum is interested in the natural order: Ozma and the Royal Family of Ev rule because it is their right, hinted at to be because of magical means as Oz and Ev are both described in Ozma of Oz as fairylands.  There is this sense that Baum believes the order of rulers is to actually serve their people as well: Langwidere and the Nome King are both poor to their people.  The Nome King’s evil nature is more towards the characters the reader is familiar with, but Langiwidere is cruel to the Wheelers, horrifying creatures with scary face masks and wheels for hands and feet, that are secretly just as scared and trying to survive.

 

What is particularly interesting about Baum’s ideas of a good ruler is that he clearly wants to reflect American democracy of the people being the source of power, but putting a democracy in fairyland would largely go against Baum’s aims at creating an American fairy tale.  Baum however is staunch in his need for order, Ozma of Oz features Dorothy insistent that the hen she travels with whose name is Bill, must be given a female name and is thus Billina.  The mechanical man Tik-Tok is also seen as lesser than the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman because he is what would fall under the definition of a robot despite being written as a person.  Baum stipulates that his thought processes and action are all mechanical, though the text has him act largely as a person and not an automaton.  It is an odd stipulation for an otherwise delightful and proper character, Tik-Tok being portrayed as nothing but a gentleman throughout towards Dorothy and Billina.  There is also the Hungry Tiger, a character made to defy his nature and unquenched desire to eat a fat baby, something his conscience could not allow, adding a weird layer to this idea of order.  Dorothy herself is a more fleshed out protagonist here, not motivated by a wish to go home and indeed only doing so when she sees Uncle Henry sad that she may have drowned on the way to Australia.  Oz is the endpoint of the novel, and not the place to escape from as was the case in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  This means Ozma of Oz can avoid the issues of The Marvelous Land of Oz following the same structure of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, instead it forms a more cohesive narrative even if getting to the resolution where our protagonists scare the Nome King takes far too much repetition of going through the palace to find the ornaments.

 

Overall, despite the oddity of Baum’s themes being present there is something freeing about Ozma of Oz.  Baum doesn’t have a stage show in mind while writing so he can take time to make the novel have a format, and by setting it in the land of Ev while it doesn’t further flesh out Oz, it does allow a different sort of logic to take place.  Dorothy is given more character traits to make her work slightly better as a protagonist for return appearances.  Having a different structure and just being a really fun little fairy tale gives hope that Baum won’t just be retreading the first book every time, shame about the weird politics of order.  9/10.