tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20521399085401311482024-03-18T06:32:31.665-07:00Jacob Licklider: ReviewsJacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.comBlogger910125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-41127802486933945162024-03-18T06:30:00.000-07:002024-03-18T06:30:22.552-07:00Drift by: Simon A. Forward<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE__t-5AxhUN200jToPUzEewPA398906fO4Hypv5qUkBwD4UaXXfgj0B2TgF7bKMF6VSeBH4Gs_bT6ZUtN3PSnPo84SNIqxtaGxsqOiuF1KPFRkNEc6FpuTW_On4eA_a_a5J1CWIzp1bGR8rpNmAhk9VJ_-tqJB9I4jEb3qnOQXZ7fXhPil2GbE3aI_iUs/s1200/Drift.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="747" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE__t-5AxhUN200jToPUzEewPA398906fO4Hypv5qUkBwD4UaXXfgj0B2TgF7bKMF6VSeBH4Gs_bT6ZUtN3PSnPo84SNIqxtaGxsqOiuF1KPFRkNEc6FpuTW_On4eA_a_a5J1CWIzp1bGR8rpNmAhk9VJ_-tqJB9I4jEb3qnOQXZ7fXhPil2GbE3aI_iUs/s320/Drift.jpg" width="199" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Simon A. Forward’s debut novel <i>Drift</i> is a <i>Doctor
Who</i> novel that has left me utterly confused as to how I feel about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Forward is a writer I was at least familiar
with due to his Big Finish contributions with <i>The Sandman</i> which I have a
soft spot for and <i>Dreamtime</i> which is one of the weaker entries in the
Big Finish catalogue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Drift</i> as a
novel is quite dense, it uses the full 288 page count afforded to the BBC Books
line of novels and the size of the font is quite small meaning a larger word
count.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The cover is one of the examples
of Black Sheep’s better designs, the TARDIS in a snowy landscape is somehow
quite evocative in its simplicity and once you begin reading <i>Drift</i> you begin
to understand exactly why that cover works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The harsh New England winter is the aspect of <i>Drift</i> that works to
its fullest extent, Forward manages to portray the weather as ever consuming
and ever advancing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The snow is
disorienting and Forward sets it up as the main threat of the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plus, there’s the general isolation of the
setting of a snowstorm that manages to work, however a good idea for a villain does
not make a particularly good novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is a premise that should work, snowy settings work throughout the work of H.P.
Lovecraft and especially in John Carpenter’s <i>The Thing</i>, both pieces of
media that it is clear Forward is inspired by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The revelations about the blizzards indicate it is some sort of a being from
outside of the normal dimension, again a great idea for a novel and with the
correct writer it could really have worked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Simon A. Forward as a writer feels often as if he is trying to hard to
make this feel like a piece of <i>Doctor Who</i> fiction that he experienced
when he was a child.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Drift</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> like many of the
Past Doctor Adventures uses the TARDIS team of the Fourth Doctor and Leela,
with Forward taking the time to pepper in several references to <i>The Face of
Evil</i> and <i>The Robots of Death</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is essentially to establish where in the Fourth Doctor’s timeline
the novel is supposed to take place over doing anything to advance the
characters of the Fourth Doctor and Leela.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Leela as a character comes out of <i>Drift</i> better than the Doctor,
Forward setting certain scenes from her perspective where he is able to engage
in essentially a writing exercise for how to write for a character like
Leela.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The noble savage hunter archetype
is how Forward writes the character, reflective on the events of <i>The Face of
Evil</i> especially since this is a novel where the threat is something bigger
than her comprehension.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She also gets
the usual fish out of water interactions with the supporting cast, largely a
crew of Americans written to be over the top in their Americanness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Doctor on the other hand is one of those
characters that is honestly difficult to get completely right, Tom Baker as an
actor is like Patrick Troughton who is difficult to capture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Troughton largely due to elusiveness, Baker
due to the unpredictability of the character even from the era that Forward is
writing from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Forward just grasps on
eccentricity and goes to the way Robert Banks Stewart wrote the character for <i>The
Seeds of Doom</i> in terms of harshness and tries melding them, but that doesn’t
quite work since <i>The Seeds of Doom</i> works because the eccentricity is
especially dialed down into seriousness from the outset because of the
threat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Forward uses this as a mesh here
and that just doesn’t mesh nicely.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, <i>Drift</i> has some nice ideas and Forward
is promising as a novelist, whenever he is describing the setting and actually
dealing with the extradimensional threat it is interesting but
underutilized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a novel that just
never comes together by making some of its characters over the top in a way to
make them one-dimensional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-37888129382111844812024-03-16T10:22:00.000-07:002024-03-16T10:22:12.067-07:00The Lights of Zetar by: Jeremy Tarcher and Shari Lewis and directed by: Herb Kenwith<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpef9KVLgOxp8Q9pNs9_bbknVAVo9C7ITW6MsWSvwxzGQAP4Rq7gp9FrsBWRUBupD-iX0iJwOxZv0CK-jwf6H8Ah12qQoK5CilLmTRTiofg37eNf_biAEMvX8pQN9Uo4VAlE34G1CtO7VwcH9Mt_vfScV1V67vx2oSLudj8ilgE9QUUjUL3fM6aAZOU56k/s1099/The%20Lights%20of%20Zetar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="809" data-original-width="1099" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpef9KVLgOxp8Q9pNs9_bbknVAVo9C7ITW6MsWSvwxzGQAP4Rq7gp9FrsBWRUBupD-iX0iJwOxZv0CK-jwf6H8Ah12qQoK5CilLmTRTiofg37eNf_biAEMvX8pQN9Uo4VAlE34G1CtO7VwcH9Mt_vfScV1V67vx2oSLudj8ilgE9QUUjUL3fM6aAZOU56k/s320/The%20Lights%20of%20Zetar.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“The Lights of Zetar” is written by: Jeremy Tarcher
and Shari Lewis and is directed by: Herb Kenwith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filmed under production code 73, was
the 18<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i> Season 3, the 73<sup>rd</sup> episode
of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on January 31, 1969.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It’s incredibly strange that this episode of <i>Star
Trek</i> has essentially the burning of the Library of Alexandria on a much
larger scale as both a central event and basically a footnote. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Okay <i>Star Trek</i> takes place in the
future and it’s clear that the knowledge has also been backed up in other
places and the episode ends with the resolution to rebuild but casually
including the destruction of a planet sized library in “The Lights of Zetar”
perhaps encapsulates why the episode has me quite split.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The destruction of a planet is a narrative
event that should be given some weight and seeing it as a footnote indicates
writers Jeremy Tarcher and Shari Lewis both haven’t fully examined the
implications of their script.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Especially
apparent is the fact that the planet doesn’t appear on-screen and is largely a background
detail of the destination the <i>Enterprise</i> is enroute to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The episode’s plot is literally about
mysterious lights that chase the <i>Enterprise</i> and begin affecting young
Lt. Mira Romaine, played by Jan Shutan, assigned to Memory Alpha, the library
planet of the Federation destroyed at some point during the episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of the runtime is dedicated to running
away from the lights and slowly discovering what they are, the fact that they
are alive is only revealed in the back third and the first mention of Zetar is
in the last ten minutes of the episode.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Writer Shari Lewis is more well known for her work as
a children’s entertainer, creating the puppet Lamb Chop, Tarcher being her
husband, and you can tell neither of them are actually writers for narrative
television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The Lights of Zetar” is an
episode whose pace is incredibly slow, even for the standards of 1960s
television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is helpful for the
initial setup of the episode where Tarcher and Lewis build up the character of
Romaine and her budding romance with Scotty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not only does this allow Shutan the chance to establish herself as the
character, it also immediately gets the audience on her side since we already
know and like Scotty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For his part,
James Doohan is also aiding by being the standout performance of the episode,
having a lot of meat in the script by playing lovestruck and intensifying his
Scottish accent to match.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doohan is also
quite strong when the material lacks in the episode’s second act: once Romaine
is in sickbay there is this extended conflict with McCoy about Romaine being
uncooperative for no particular reason, but Doohan and DeForest Kelley are playing
it quite well as the writing are keeping Romaine as a character squarely in the
framework of a female character in the 1960s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The construction of the episode largely falls apart here, Tarcher and
Lewis neglecting to establish a proper structure for an A-plot and a B-plot, so
the episode is just one extended plot that is attempting to sustain momentum
but almost immediately becomes sluggish.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The plot is also one that ends in an anti-climax,
after discovering the lights are the survivors of the planet Zetar in the form
of energy and need a host the thrust becomes just to destroy them because they
want Romaine’s body and she rightly doesn’t wish to give them up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Romaine is thrown into a pressure chamber,
the pressure is increased, and the lights are destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s another example of things in the episode
just kind of happening without any real connective tissue or motivation to the
characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s also clear that the
director of this episode, Herb Kenwith, is trying to make something interesting
in the material.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of the episode is
shot from angles rarely used on <i>Star Trek</i>, the captain’s chair and
navigation panels being shot head on is certainly a choice, and there is an
almost cinematic zoom into Romaine’s eye at multiple points in the episode that
goes further to add to the atmosphere than anything the script is doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first act of the episode is also the most
successful because it’s where our characters get some particularly nice
character moments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>George Takei and
Walter Koenig get a nice little back and forth as Sulu and Chekov, Majel
Barrett as Nurse Chapel gets a good one-liner, and Nichelle Nichols is always wonderful
as Uhura, but this doesn’t save the episode.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, “The Lights of Zetar” has a good idea to
explore but due to being from entertainers and not scriptwriters the episode
becomes largely unfocused.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of the
episode’s problems are due to the writers not knowing how to structure an hour
long episode of television and not providing much interest in terms of what the
episode could be doing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s just
another in an increasingly large line of middling episodes of <i>Star Trek</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-70054122566782010112024-03-14T07:14:00.000-07:002024-03-14T07:14:49.411-07:00The ABC Murders by: Agatha Christie<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3FhtJLgertGv0hqPaWOL3xb_y84hHGg3HziEA8x07Q97DDpyHvO-9L0n8ahqpWKwn6SLi7kyyU3Uo5tlAqlRAdOn6rv3807swmSC9Sw32z6-p1sZvxQh4HssgSeLVPIzZ2VHn5lnEgF-8er9OSL-oWZPhE6fAoUds2oIqDtVQbnCeFKgwdVF6Mob9v84p/s1000/ABC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="663" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3FhtJLgertGv0hqPaWOL3xb_y84hHGg3HziEA8x07Q97DDpyHvO-9L0n8ahqpWKwn6SLi7kyyU3Uo5tlAqlRAdOn6rv3807swmSC9Sw32z6-p1sZvxQh4HssgSeLVPIzZ2VHn5lnEgF-8er9OSL-oWZPhE6fAoUds2oIqDtVQbnCeFKgwdVF6Mob9v84p/s320/ABC.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“The Final Problem” is the short story written to end
Sherlock Holmes before bringing him back when Arthur Conan Doyle’s fans
demanded it, introducing the world to Professor James Moriarty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christies are
authors with very different styles, but Christie owes her early success with
the Hercule Poirot novels by following the Holmes/Watson format Conan Doyle established
throughout the Sherlock Holmes stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As such, while reading <i>The ABC Murders</i> I could not help but find
interesting was how this novel felt as if it was following in the footsteps of “The
Final Problem” being one last story in the previous model of storytelling to
move the character of Poirot largely away from the specific Holmesian dynamic
between Poirot and Hastings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While Hastings
would appear in two further novels (<i>Dumb Witness</i> and <i>Curtain</i>), <i>The
ABC Murders </i>feels like Christie writing one last hurrah for the
format.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is narrated once again by
Hastings with several diversions to other characters “reconstructed” based on
recollections given to Hastings, and Hastings has a role to play in the resolution
of discovering the murderer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is
also a character built up throughout the novel to essentially be a Moriarty
figure of someone who could potentially beat Poirot, communicating through a
series of notes announcing the murders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is where the comparisons to “The Final Problem” essentially end, outside of the
novel opening with a sequence of Poirot and Hastings reminiscing while
discussing gray hairs and hair dye giving me the initial impression that
perhaps Christie intended this book to be set quite late in the detective’s career.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The ABC Murders</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
actually feels more in line with a thriller instead of a typical murder
mystery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The killer is a serial killer
with a fixation on killing people with alliterative names going through the
alphabet from ‘A’, going so far as to choosing victims from places also beginning
with the corresponding letter of the alphabet, while leaving an ABC railway
guide at the scene of the crime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
are classic serial killer notes sent to Poirot, the first of which being the
inciting incident and initially dismissed by Hastings and Inspector Japp as
practical jokes until a murder happens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Christie’s prose is masterful at lulling the reader into the false sense
of security despite murder being in the title, thinking that maybe it is just a
false letter and the murders are going to be something completely
different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The way the chapters are broken
down in this novel assist in building the tension, they’re quite short which
makes the reader feel as if things are always moving while the characters aren’t
actually making any real progress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
makes <i>The ABC Murders</i> work is the bafflement of the characters, Poirot
included, and the working with Scotland Yard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Several police officers fulfill the role in the trope common in detective
fiction of the bumbler, but never for comedic effect by Christie, generally
adding to the tension.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since this is a
murder mystery, I won’t spoil the ending, but it is kind of a shame that this
one has only been adapted a handful of times because it’s one of those twists
Christie understands how to execute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
on the level of <i>And Then There Were None</i>, <i>The Murder of Roger Ackroyd</i>,
and <i>Murder on the Orient Express</i> in terms of how it works so well as a
twist.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, while <i>The ABC Murders</i> moves away from
traditional detective fiction into thriller, this allows Agatha Christie to
really dig deep and make this a mystery that stands out above many of her
others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a classic which works
because the genre is flexible and Christie is showing maturity as a writer, making
her own strides with the genre all within the period where she will be writing
some of the novels she is most well known for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The best statement of its quality is that I initially wasn’t intending
to review it but found that by the 1/3 point I had to get my thoughts on
exactly what was being done here in comparison to other pieces of detective fiction
and the growth of Hercule Poirot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>10/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-15063422000943847802024-03-10T07:26:00.000-07:002024-03-10T07:26:16.176-07:00Star Wars: The Last Command by: Timothy Zahn<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaDMQWeR3nPDS0tWqkpYgjQvhVXVksr_AZ0-j6m3g3E420yEGu_MqdLq-0P9o_E6HxEMbnu_wfmNUDIWQ5aGTNIfZebdL99pOuc5Db9RjieIiGwr3kS_isfDfspO891wfJ6KbAgUrD42EcbKtc99BzqrE9m0UPYU3R-c1WNuWev6XkUbvgWQ114r0tuByG/s1119/Last%20Command%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1119" data-original-width="755" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaDMQWeR3nPDS0tWqkpYgjQvhVXVksr_AZ0-j6m3g3E420yEGu_MqdLq-0P9o_E6HxEMbnu_wfmNUDIWQ5aGTNIfZebdL99pOuc5Db9RjieIiGwr3kS_isfDfspO891wfJ6KbAgUrD42EcbKtc99BzqrE9m0UPYU3R-c1WNuWev6XkUbvgWQ114r0tuByG/s320/Last%20Command%201.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It’s quite interesting that the Thrawn trilogy from
Timothy Zahn in its initial novel <i>Heir to the Empire</i> was intent on
moving the story forward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The novel had
to say this is the continuation of <i>Star Wars</i> and not just a rehash of
the original trilogy, however with <i>Dark Force Rising</i> and <i>The Last
Command</i> Zahn does an interesting trick of taking on the structure of the
original trilogy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The Last Command</i>
ends this Thrawn trilogy with the obvious parallels to <i>Return of the Jedi</i>
as the great evil is defeated and the New Republic is victorious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, Zahn performs a magic trick with
this writing: it is already clear that the character of Grand Admiral Thrawn
has the potential to be a great villain and is more than the Emperor actually
was in the original trilogy so this is a book whose resolution is quite different
from <i>Return of the Jedi</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While
Zahn does make an antagonist switch sides, something that had been hinted at
throughout the trilogy instead of Vader’s last-minute turn back to the light, the
actual destruction of Thrawn is something that is incredibly sudden and from
quite a different sort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thrawn spends
much of the book in this state of almost gleeful gloating at being able to outsmart
the New Republic at every turn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The actual
mistake that Thrawn had made is one that was made two books ago, something that
Zahn has been telegraphing to the audience from the very beginning though never
in a way that compromises the point of the story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thrawn’s place in the narrative is
particularly interesting as while the last novel was careful to keep him
off-page, <i>The Last Command</i> is more interested in showing him about the
same amount as <i>Heir to the Empire</i> as the Empire itself succeeds, though
he does not become the central villain of the piece.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The mad clone of Joruus C’baoth is the central antagonist
of the novel, being primarily motivated by a wish to see Leia’s twins as his
own apprentice and to see Mara Jade kill Luke Skywalker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Behind the scenes Zahn originally intended
the character to be a clone of Obi-Wan Kenobi and <i>The Last Command</i> is
where you see much of that come to the surface, especially as there are
sequences where Luke and Mara Jade are paralleled as characters, Luke in
several ways becoming the master to Mara’s apprentice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a relationship that is perhaps the best
part of the novel as it is a very different master/apprentice relationship to those
seen in the original trilogy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is
this sense that Luke actually respects Mara’s autonomy and life experiences in
a way that in the original trilogy Yoda did not towards Luke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This does add to Mara’s internal conflict of
not particularly wishing to kill Luke, but having clear orders and a clear
level of mistrust amongst the New Republic once her past as the Emperor’s Hand
is revealed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The continual narration of “You
must kill Luke Skywalker” which infiltrates Mara’s mind whenever Zahn writes
from her perspective is one of those repetitions of the novel that is almost
too repetitive, even when it comes around during the climax of the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>C’baoth’s madness is portrayed well but sadly
as a villain the more interesting aspect of the character are Mara and Luke’s
reactions and defeat of him instead of anything he has become himself,
something that may not have been the case had he been the clone of Obi-Wan as
originally planned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The added tension
with the building of a new clone army and the potential reignition of the Clone
Wars, something that would obviously be a mystery to readers at this point, is
still fascinating.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ICoFw7Brg3diKqawCQn04WQ4EhyphenhyphenXE_PawBtKhazoO2147d6TQbz17iIqebVaN8Xy7MMhziRODiAquAElgK6Ono1Gw50UWm49FEmqLCuGw1-uBFiEAGL7ZQyIBEnCzY-Fcxbrg7NoFEota_ERmkIcLYQN-tB3RcwCv8vyntUYDDsqOGHuv6HATcc02rD4/s1000/Last%20Command%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="611" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ICoFw7Brg3diKqawCQn04WQ4EhyphenhyphenXE_PawBtKhazoO2147d6TQbz17iIqebVaN8Xy7MMhziRODiAquAElgK6Ono1Gw50UWm49FEmqLCuGw1-uBFiEAGL7ZQyIBEnCzY-Fcxbrg7NoFEota_ERmkIcLYQN-tB3RcwCv8vyntUYDDsqOGHuv6HATcc02rD4/s320/Last%20Command%202.jpg" width="196" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The political aspects of the novel is something that
Zahn also excels at, largely because it allows a continuation of seeing Leia as
a leader while Han Solo is almost put in the backseat for the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The set piece of her apartments being broken
into by Empire spies allows Zahn to show a more riveting side to his writing as
it comes after several revelations and builds to this extended sequence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It ties in quite nicely in terms of themes to
the ending of the smuggler plotlines of the novel, something that sees an
alliance between the Rebellion and more of the galaxy’s smuggling rings which
feels as a statement from Zahn about the necessity of the Republic to move on
and be better, to give the smugglers a chance at something better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zahn’s commentary with the New Republic is
largely on the cyclical nature of oppression, though through quite a particularly
limited view of authoritarian oppression of people painted with a large
brush.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is no takedown of systemic
oppression in its intricacies and instead is interested in the systemic overview
as is often the case with these types of stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has the double effect of having more depth
than the systems of the Empire of the original trilogy but being trapped in the
storytelling conventions of 1990s pulp tie in science fiction which isn’t so
much a problem as a quirk in the nature of the thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, <i>The Last Command</i> manages to show that
Timothy Zahn clearly understands the structure of presenting a trilogy of
stories while managing to make a sequel trilogy to one of the most influential
science fiction films of all time, while still remaining in the remit of that
original trilogy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously this is not
going to be a story where the main characters are going to die but Zahn is
fascinating at finding ways to move these characters forward and ending with a
particularly interesting subversion of expectations that if executed in a filmed
sequel trilogy would perhaps have fanboys in shambles that would last for
years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The Last Command</i> is a
great book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-75240972663894205992024-03-09T06:00:00.000-08:002024-03-09T06:00:55.327-08:00That Which Survives by: John Meredyth Lucas from a story by: Michael Richards and directed by: Herb Wallerstein<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgER3zA6UlEnHxLfZLep_Zis-3X1ZUnGSkQFXaXnFu0FzprkPK3bA2eGqE_w1Xz6_GPmsLkWdz1oYbt5ycUQwOtlGWlOlAeuOWqBnbRWjia3Xf7Bu-FP3_5m8Ffmtpvgka6t0jSpDLjJ29kvOi3pZBYpivoFSysL7tSKXSqWVPd3X3o0Fq3TdIfS4z9TMmc/s900/That%20Which%20Survives.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="677" data-original-width="900" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgER3zA6UlEnHxLfZLep_Zis-3X1ZUnGSkQFXaXnFu0FzprkPK3bA2eGqE_w1Xz6_GPmsLkWdz1oYbt5ycUQwOtlGWlOlAeuOWqBnbRWjia3Xf7Bu-FP3_5m8Ffmtpvgka6t0jSpDLjJ29kvOi3pZBYpivoFSysL7tSKXSqWVPd3X3o0Fq3TdIfS4z9TMmc/s320/That%20Which%20Survives.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“That Which Survives” is written by: John Meredyth
Lucas, from a story by Michael Richards, a pseudonym for D.C. Fontana, and is directed
by: Herb Wallerstein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filmed
under production code 69, was the 17<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i>
Season 3, the 72<sup>nd</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on
January 24, 1969.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It’s telling that even with D.C. Fontana leaving <i>Star
Trek</i> during production of the third season with two stories being left
behind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“That Which Survives” would eventually
be written by John Meredyth Lucas, but it’s one where the ideas are clearly Fontana’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an episode that pairs down the cast and
is clearly written with the budgetary constraints, likely from Lucas’
contributions to the script, but there is still Fontana’s general sense of
exploring a post-apocalyptic situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An
empty planet is nothing new for <i>Star Trek</i> that has a mysterious woman
stalking Kirk, Sulu, and the episode’s redshirt is classic fare for the show and
that is added to by the B-plot of the episode having the <i>Enterprise</i>
catapulted across space so Spock and Scotty have to pilot it back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a B-plot clearly so the A-plot feels
stranded and that Kirk and company can be properly cut off and the episode can
have the tension of the elements, even if the planet is portrayed essentially
by recycled elements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Throughout the
episode Lee Meriwether appears as Losira, a woman capable of disintegrating cells
and in actuality is a computer program meant to protect the planet’s station as
a disease has killed the rest of the population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the episode’s big twist and it’s
executed pretty well, all things considered as the sets don’t entirely suggest
an inhabited planet and are probably reusing elements but the ideas are there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>John Meredyth Lucas as a writer, however,
makes the script itself come across as pretty standard stuff all things
considered, but Meriwether plays her role despite Lucas not giving her much
characterization outside of being mysterious and an object for director Herb
Wallerstein to aim his camera at.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
is pretty standard stuff for the third season of <i>Star Trek</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What’s particularly nice about “That Which Survives” outside
of the general atmosphere and Fontana’s clear ideas about looking at quite
literally the remnants of civilization, is that this is an episode where George
Takei actually gets to shine as Sulu.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The last time Sulu really was allowed in the spotlight was “The Naked
Time” and that was back in the first season.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yes, some of this is explained by Takei being double booked during the
second season, but just allowing Takei to give a performance in this episode is
wonderful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest of the supporting
cast is also honestly a highlight with a return of Booker Bradshaw as Dr. M’Benga
for a brief appearance and Naomi Pollack as Lt. Rahda adds some attempted
diversity to the bridge (though Pollack is white playing Indian).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lucas’ script for the B-plot also allows much
of it to really come around to Spock, Uhura, and Scotty with much of the
dialogue so this becomes another episode where the supporting cast is actually
given something to do which is sadly a rarity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are aspects of the script that feels a bit out of character at
least in terms of Kirk and Spock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kirk
can be explained away by the pressure putting the character in a mode where his
first priority is survival, but Spock is characterized by Lucas as particularly
dissociated from the rest of the crew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nimoy
plays it well because it’s Leonard Nimoy, but it’s kind of a shame.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, “That Which Survives” is one of those episodes
that has a lot of potential, it is coming from D.C. Fontana and whenever Fontana’s
ideas are allowed to really shine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ideas
are quite good but the execution and John Meredyth Lucas bringing his best to
the script on what was likely short notice does lead the episode to be quite
bland overall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s got its moments but
really you can tell that the show needs Fontana to shine at its best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s also just so average that there is
little more I can say about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-86429054945032891012024-03-02T10:31:00.000-08:002024-03-02T10:31:33.580-08:00The Mark of Gideon by: George F. Slavin and Stanley Adams and directed by: Jud Taylor<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7NbIJm81f7z6r3pZPg5SikDC_hMzVfA_zf9GUClJEWH8iNmH4FAIVPXTpgDuEiSUe5YFmc6CbVPmHVsosVCgPikXWqIJXund84C239F_KUR7qUhhzIzYwznZkL9c4V8rbElOxb0NkL28LrcOHnsh_gWrjNV7sPNeovlYbWT-Ik50SuZzqwX0zBjb-DH2R/s944/Mark%20of%20Gideon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="713" data-original-width="944" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7NbIJm81f7z6r3pZPg5SikDC_hMzVfA_zf9GUClJEWH8iNmH4FAIVPXTpgDuEiSUe5YFmc6CbVPmHVsosVCgPikXWqIJXund84C239F_KUR7qUhhzIzYwznZkL9c4V8rbElOxb0NkL28LrcOHnsh_gWrjNV7sPNeovlYbWT-Ik50SuZzqwX0zBjb-DH2R/s320/Mark%20of%20Gideon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“The Mark of Gideon” is written by: George F. Slavin
and Stanley Adams and is directed by: Jud Taylor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filmed under production code 72, was
the 16<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i> Season 3, the 71<sup>st</sup> episode
of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on January 17, 1969.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sometimes there’s an episode of <i>Star Trek</i> that
you’re not quite sure what to make of, something that the third season has made
me say to myself more than once.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The
Mark of Gideon” is another one of those episodes with an explicit message that
doesn’t quite read nicely in 2024, largely because George F. Slavin and Stanley
Adams have written a script about overpopulation while writing in a more conservative
1960s framework.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is also hampered
by the messaging only really finding its way into the story in the third act
while the first two acts of the story are setting up the mystery of what has
happened to Captain Kirk and the B-plot of Spock and company being unable to
actually beam onto the planet Gideon without disobeying Federation
commands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The central premise that is
revealed in the episode’s twist is that Gideon as a planet is extremely
overpopulated due to an implied lifestyle without consequences of illness nor
death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The council in charge of Gideon has
made the decision that the only way to stop this problem is to offer voluntary
infection with a deadly illness, acquiring the virus over the course of the episode
due to Kirk passing it on to a woman he is isolated with on a recreation of the
<i>Enterprise</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This virus is something
that Kirk just so happens to be a carrier of so his blood is used to infect
this woman, Odana played by Sharon Acker, because of course she and Kirk fall
in love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Slavin and Adams seem to have
no interest in questioning the ethics of this situation, the <i>Enterprise</i>
crew leave and Kirk seems happy to see Odana go back to her people to let them
die in the end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This type of population
control is also one that could be easily read as advocating for a form of eugenics,
Slavin and Adams clearly not examining fully the social aspects of which groups
of people would be incentivized to take their own lives on a planet where there
is apparently no privacy or personal space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There’s a heavy implication of a lack of personal property as well adding
to this element.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The trouble here is largely coming from the depiction of
this society, we simply don’t see it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The closest thing we see are crowd shots on the screens of the false <i>Enterprise</i>,
implied to be people looking in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now
this is clearly due to the budget cuts this third season of <i>Star Trek</i>
faced, the entire episode was filmed in studio after all and the number of
guest actors brought in was heavily reduced to usually one or two compared to
previous seasons which could have at least four or five on average.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This could be why the episode shifts focus
from exploring an alien society in its own environment to exploring through two
representatives: Odana seducing Kirk while he is basically being lied to and Ambassador
Hodin, played by David Hurst, lying to the <i>Enterprise </i>crew to stop them
from beaming down to Gideon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>William
Shatner’s performance as Kirk is also an interesting aspect of the
episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s this idea that Captain
Kirk as a character is incredibly sexual and it seems that Slavin and Adams
have bought into that notion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While
there is a clear sex symbol aspect to the character and often episodes do write
romances with Kirk and a weekly female character, “The Mark of Gideon” includes
a romance that is severely underwritten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Kirk is portrayed as almost distracted from the mystery surrounding him
by Odana’s presence, something that honestly feels out of character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of Kirk’s character has the main thrust
being the fact the <i>Enterprise</i> is his top priority, she is his ship and his
partner, all done through the subtext of why while there are casual
relationships they can only remain casual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Leonard Nimoy as Spock is attempting his best with the material in the
B-plot as well, a plot that is stronger than Kirk’s due to the fact that there
is material there, enough to potentially sustain a complete episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It gives Spock a moment to be active and
disobey the Federation, while not wishing to bring down McCoy with him that
becomes the episode’s shining moments.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
Overall, “The Mark of Gideon” is an episode that like its title doesn’t
actually make a lot of sense when you think about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There isn’t really a mark outside of this
bruise on Kirk’s arm and the allegorical nature of the episode falls apart
quite easily into some very dangerous areas because the writers clearly didn’t
think it through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scenes with Spock
largely work while Kirk comes out of the episode quite mischaracterized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It just left me kind of baffled with what it
was trying to accomplish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-14816864424576679202024-02-24T11:05:00.000-08:002024-02-24T11:05:23.676-08:00Let That Be Your Last Battlefield by: Oliver Crawford from a story by: Lee Cronin and directed by: Jud Taylor<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTc1dXEd5W7sHhj1uJL2pCSoiQMWO9uMvQRDX5m-ODA75dItOdFIqXpG3kQlp2rq-aN7Tc4Me2IxkcrT8aq8snBeKd35bsmTuPSGxfADTWvJEhKSKPhEZo_CkC3k2OIaXAcZiPvzopHI-xYhOzm8B789d-beNI1ohIo2wZmeqDM3RNiAJqm0a-5CF5zaWG/s1023/Let%20that%20be%20your%20last%20Battlefield.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1023" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTc1dXEd5W7sHhj1uJL2pCSoiQMWO9uMvQRDX5m-ODA75dItOdFIqXpG3kQlp2rq-aN7Tc4Me2IxkcrT8aq8snBeKd35bsmTuPSGxfADTWvJEhKSKPhEZo_CkC3k2OIaXAcZiPvzopHI-xYhOzm8B789d-beNI1ohIo2wZmeqDM3RNiAJqm0a-5CF5zaWG/s320/Let%20that%20be%20your%20last%20Battlefield.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” is written by: Oliver
Crawford, from a story by: Lee Cronin, a pseudonym for Gene L. Coon, and is directed
by: Jud Taylor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filmed under
production code 70, was the 15<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i> Season 3,
the 70<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on January 10,
1969.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Star Trek</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> has
always been touted as an incredibly progressive show pushing for equality and breaking
ground in terms of casting and messaging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is the 70<sup>th</sup> review for the show that has honestly shown
that the record of this was largely hit or miss: the casting was largely diverse
but the roles for the female characters especially are limited, same with
racial minorities while LGBT representation is entirely down to coding (though
this is largely down to it being a show from the 1960s).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of this is down to the scope of the
writers working on <i>Star Trek</i> through this era, much like television at
the time the perspective is a white and male one, though <i>Star Trek</i> did
advocate for female scriptwriters such as D.C. Fontana and several gay and
bisexual writers were also featured (including ones breaking into scriptwriting)
including Theodore Sturgeon and David Gerrold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” is <i>Star Trek</i>’s most explicit
episode thus far to be a treatise on the topic of racism in the United States
through the lens of racism among two members of an alien species.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is important when looking at this episode
to remain aware of the fact that it the script is coming from Oliver Crawford
from an outline by Gene L. Coon, both white men living in the 1960s while this
review is coming from the perspective of a white man living in 2024.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This inherently leads to an incredibly
limited scope in terms of what the nature of racism and white supremacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” is not interested
in examining the systemic nature of bigotry in America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While it has been a politically active show
and this is a very politically charged episode, its racial analysis is limited
to the surface level of explicit, public facing bigoted opinions and people who
could be seen starting fires in bedsheets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While not to discount the fact that this sort of bigotry and acts of
bigoted violence still exists especially in the public zeitgeist, at the time
of this episode’s production it had only been four years since the passing of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, three since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It genuinely seemed like progress was being
made.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There is dialogue in “Let That Be Your Last
Battlefield” that reflects that, specifically calling out the slow march of
progress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The aliens feature bisected
pigmentation, the discrimination coming from which side is the ink black side
and which is chalk white.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lokai, played
by Lou Antonio, has been on the run for 50,000 years for inciting essentially a
slave revolt while being hunted by Commissioner Bele, played by Frank Gorshin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Crawford’s script is explicit in lampooning
the basis of racism: it is bigotry based on arbitrary appearance that makes no
meaningful difference in terms of what a person is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It however slightly drops the ball by placing
the <i>Enterprise</i> crew in a situation where they are not interfering in the
conflict of this pair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the
motivation for Kirk and company is initially noble, they are already on a
mission to help decontaminate a planet and Bele taking over the ship to bring
Lokai to some sense of “justice” for starting a revolt thus endangering the
population of a planet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This portion of
the episode plays out like a thriller and is perhaps the best of what the
episode has to offer, Jud Taylor’s direction is especially effective when Kirk puts
the <i>Enterprise</i> into a self-destruct sequence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s incredibly tense and largely allows the
Federation to be dreamt up as post-racial, keeping the absurdity of bigotry at
the center of the episode quite well, though being heavy handed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second half of the episode falters slightly
in the conclusion: the <i>Enterprise</i> is forced to Cheron to find it
destroyed and Bele and Lokai are set on the planet to fight with our heroes
unable to stop them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Now the problem with this is largely because Crawford,
most likely from Coon’s original outline, in highlighting the ridiculous nature
of bigotry is also subtly placing some of the blame for society’s lack of
change on the oppressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not an
explicit aspect of the text, largely coming across as two well-meaning white writers
not quite understanding the complexities of systemic racism and what actually is
needed to dismantle those systems, but Lokai as a character is placed on the
same moral level in the conclusion as Bele.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Lokai’s violence against Bele is largely defensive, attempts to get
humans on his side and outright attacking and being on edge because he has been
pursued by someone who does not even acknowledge his rights as a person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lou Antonio’s performance is perhaps too
overshadowed as Lokai by the immense presence of Frank Gorshin (who don’t get
me wrong is utterly fantastic in the episode), but Antonio largely makes the character
utterly sympathetic and acting out of terror while Gorshin’s Bele is acting out
of hate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Outside of this the episode is brilliant,
and the striking imagery of the burning planet at the climax is particularly
effective, but that accidental message is ever so slightly holding back the
episode.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” is an
episode with an incredibly evocative title and is perhaps the most bold attempt
at political commentary in <i>Star Trek</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is hampered by the white lens of the episode, but the ideas of
showing the absurdity of bigotry in a dramatic setting is something quite bold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a ray of light in what has been such a
rocky season, even if as an episode in its premise there already are these
problematic aspects that were problematic in 1969 and are problematic now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-28766805574842226552024-02-18T09:38:00.000-08:002024-02-18T09:38:56.562-08:00Star Wars: Dark Force Rising by: Timothy Zahn<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3OK_hTUMBsJXe8Dqhx77o2Uxz1Hp7Q7bP0mT7QaolUfUPo45826OFJAN9fqD0rcpKJBK0qw5H4MzwssraNFTEVWiMbUrFnbM1hoJF083O2Ul7LxwA_o7vO0_l5HFas0J9LLQ55R0Cc348HiFx2Fcgs2GB5Qy8eog0w-K2CHH5eOkViEMxj1fNP1xU90kv/s275/Dark%20Force%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="183" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3OK_hTUMBsJXe8Dqhx77o2Uxz1Hp7Q7bP0mT7QaolUfUPo45826OFJAN9fqD0rcpKJBK0qw5H4MzwssraNFTEVWiMbUrFnbM1hoJF083O2Ul7LxwA_o7vO0_l5HFas0J9LLQ55R0Cc348HiFx2Fcgs2GB5Qy8eog0w-K2CHH5eOkViEMxj1fNP1xU90kv/s1600/Dark%20Force%202.jpg" width="183" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Let’s talk about the original <i>Star Wars</i> trilogy
and its format.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Star Wars</i> is one
of the easiest examples of the three act structures: the first film is complete
rising action while having its own three act structure within itself, <i>Return
of the Jedi</i> is the big extended climax lifting the characters from the darkest
point into success, and <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> is the big second act
with the major twist reveals and ending with the characters at their lowest
point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Timothy Zahn was
commissioned for his <i>Star Wars</i> trilogy, <i>Heir to the Empire</i> felt structurally
similar to <i>Star Wars</i>, which isn’t a bad thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While there was an ending clearly with a sequel
in mind there was also the sense that there could have at one point been an
off-ramp while the immediate sequel, <i>Dark Force Rising</i>, follows the
structure of <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> almost to the letter including the
final twist leading to a particularly harrowing final moment for the characters
to reflect on where the New Republic could possibly be going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Heir to the Empire</i> as a novel was
quite concerned with the nitty gritty of the politics of the New Republic while
Luke Skywalker’s journey was a general uncertainty over reestablishing the Jedi
Order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Dark Force Rising</i> sees
Zahn put his focus inward on the characters as the general Republic is now
aware of the greater extent Grand Admiral Thrawn poses to the galaxy and Luke
has become more of an independent figure in proceedings.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Luke’s story arc in particular is one of two halves: for
much of the first half he is paired with Lando Calrissian in basically a
smuggler’s plot trying to find evidence as to who in the New Republic is a
traitor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This particular pairing of
characters really shows Zahn’s mastery of who these characters are because the
original trilogy rarely had Luke and Lando interact, and the brief interactions
they did share were in group sequences in both <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>
and <i>Return of the Jedi</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zahn
writes Luke with this respect for Lando’s attitude towards life and the
universe that is separate from his relationship with Han Solo, who in essence
is from the same character archetype as Lando.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It takes talent since a lesser writer would just attempt to graft the Han/Lando
relationship onto Lando and Luke, something that Zahn does replicate when Lando
and Han share scenes and a subplot after Luke goes on his larger plot for the
bulk of the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest of Luke’s
plot is in large part reuniting with Mara Jade who has been struggling with her
preconceived notions of the Empire and being generally used by others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What becomes especially interesting is that <i>Dark
Force Rising</i> as a title is double meaning, it is in one aspect a reference
to Thrawn’s forces rising, but there is also a legendary fleet of 200
Dreadnaught class cruisers called the Dark Force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fleet itself is one of those McGuffins
that leads to the last lines of the novel being incredibly foreboding for what
is to come, ending after a climax but a climax that also ends without total
resolution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoWcXIHB-D_fdO-8vQZ6jeohuWa_wLg9f_wg9nhUaBr2vucUsZB21wZ9G5u-2ydbWEyLjqezoZTqv-f4uk0Hisy1ZSA6vx1zwKsNdDHTJPNvsd0ar8cdYrDdpkXh0paoRQNCt16VUOBDQRwqFFmGxL7k_gJUISCkIp0Pl39d4l3URH3tb5WpoJPBa0qeRk/s1000/Dark%20Force%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="610" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoWcXIHB-D_fdO-8vQZ6jeohuWa_wLg9f_wg9nhUaBr2vucUsZB21wZ9G5u-2ydbWEyLjqezoZTqv-f4uk0Hisy1ZSA6vx1zwKsNdDHTJPNvsd0ar8cdYrDdpkXh0paoRQNCt16VUOBDQRwqFFmGxL7k_gJUISCkIp0Pl39d4l3URH3tb5WpoJPBa0qeRk/s320/Dark%20Force%201.jpg" width="195" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The other major plotline of the novel involves an
extension of Leia’s plotline from <i>Heir to the Empire</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zahn is clearly interested in exploring Leia’s
political nature, continuing the idea that she could represent a Lady Vader and
successor to her father.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luke is the one
always afraid of falling to the Dark Side of the Force, and with good reason he
is sent to an insane Jedi in this novel, but Leia’s plotline has her actively
working for a group that the Empire had both repressed and kept under a form of
codependency in the Noghri.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Noghri
were a part of <i>Heir to the Empire</i>, but here Zahn explores their culture particularly
well as Leia uses much of the charm and cunning to convince them of the righteousness
of the New Republic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While it’s a
plotline that takes over, it does have a slight problem in recapping the events
of <i>Heir to the Empire</i>, but outside of that it also ends up being one of
the most compelling plotlines of the trilogy thus far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s also interesting that <i>Dark Force
Rising</i> actually doesn’t have Thrawn appear as often as he did in <i>Heir to
the Empire</i>, something that isn’t a problem, Zahn’s novel is compelling
without his presence since when off-page there is also a sense of menace when
he does appear.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, <i>Dark Force Rising</i> is definitely the
middle leg of a trilogy for better and for worse, the ending being mostly satisfactory
but also ending on a wham line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zahn has
developed his prose and sense of the world (Chewbacca’s dialogue isn’t just
written out in bracketed English for example), and the character pairings are a
particular delight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, however, in
places feels like a book that could improve or be made worse by the quality of
the conclusion to the trilogy which for me ends up slightly holding it back
from being stronger than the first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>8/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-75297772678235297992024-02-17T07:24:00.000-08:002024-02-17T07:24:04.876-08:00Whom Gods Destroy by: Lee Erwin, from a story by: Lee Erwin and Jerry Sohl, and directed by: Herb Wallerstein<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimJCzvTeExf2rEKTNtIDWif25df9lPpFE6HmjfSCM9Q8eLB47srdRonjQwESaC-sWBvZ_fQuWkExhqLQ4-UohFUXSejO6C7qP6lsV9uOa1Hg2VKT7PGenRPVk-IHxCmuxgc7JQxt8gox2IUxvNfhyo1gKADkoBA_fZUAccWFT85QGn2Xf_3LaSTo0t-PjW/s916/Whom%20Gods%20Destroy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="916" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimJCzvTeExf2rEKTNtIDWif25df9lPpFE6HmjfSCM9Q8eLB47srdRonjQwESaC-sWBvZ_fQuWkExhqLQ4-UohFUXSejO6C7qP6lsV9uOa1Hg2VKT7PGenRPVk-IHxCmuxgc7JQxt8gox2IUxvNfhyo1gKADkoBA_fZUAccWFT85QGn2Xf_3LaSTo0t-PjW/s320/Whom%20Gods%20Destroy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Whom Gods Destroy” is written by: Lee Erwin, from a
story by: Lee Erwin and Jerry Sohl, and is directed by: Herb Wallerstein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filmed under production code 71, was
the 14<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i> Season 3, the 69<sup>th</sup> episode
of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on January 3, 1969.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Maybe it’s just because Season 3 of <i>Star Trek</i>
having had such a recent run of bad episodes, maybe it’s just the over the top campy
quality of “Whom Gods Destroy”, or maybe I’m just insane, but there is a lot of
enjoyment to be had with this episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There really shouldn’t be: the episode is a grab bag of already
established <i>Star Trek</i> tropes, far more than the series’ general tendencies
to reuse ideas of godlike aliens and planets that are carbon copies of Earth as
an excuse to break out historical costumes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The plot has largely the same setup of “Dagger of the Mind” with the
general commentary on mental illness, the isolated location being reminiscent
of the setting of “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, the shapeshifting aspect of
“The Man Trap”, and having sequences of two Kirks where one is incredibly over
the top allowing William Shatner to go full William Shatner a la “The Enemy
Within”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of the set pieces are
actually reused and redressed from “Dagger of the Mind” while the costumes of
the institution’s patients outside of our major villain are sourced from “The Menagerie”
and “Journey to Babel”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s six individual
episodes that “Whom Gods Destroy is aping material from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite the mixing of several tropes and
ideas from previous episodes of <i>Star Trek</i>, something that while limiting
wouldn’t necessarily make a failure of an episode, “Whom Gods Destroy” has the
biggest issue of sustaining its second and third act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The premise is that the insane Captain Garth,
played by Steve Ihnat, has taken over the only Federation facility for the criminally
insane, has learned how to shapeshift and rewrite his own biology, and wants to
conquer the galaxy using the <i>Enterprise</i> as Kirk and Spock are delivering
a medicine that will assist in rehabilitation of brain tissue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trouble comes with the fact that Kirk,
Spock, and Scotty have anticipated potential trouble by establishing a code phrase
before Kirk or Spock could be beamed up, so Garth has to use his cunning and
madness to discover it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The discovering the code phrase is sadly not enough to
really sustain the full hour-long plot, and feels on some level the script
attempting to hold back from going full camp insanity with the patients running
loose on the <i>Enterprise</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ihnat’s
performance knows exactly what sort of material he is having and there are
points where it’s clear in between takes when Shatner has to play the shapeshifted
Garth as Kirk there is this eternal battle to one-up each other in who can be
the most expressive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sets, despite
being colorful and Herb Wallerstein’s dynamic direction, feel like they are
limiting the actors and these performances need to be unleashed fully on the <i>Enterprise</i>
sets and to Scotty and McCoy (who is sadly all too small of a role this week).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite not sustaining the fifty minutes,
this can’t help but be an episode that I have at least some fun with and that’s
probably due to the rather odd tone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is an episode that doesn’t feel like any tone <i>Star Trek</i> has
taken before, instead taking more cues from the 1966 <i>Batman </i>series: the
patients feel like Silver Age escapees from the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally
Insane, Herb Wallerstein loves some creative angles (though not many Dutch
angles), and Batgirl herself, Yvonne Craig, has a pretty scene chewing guest
role in this episode.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, while “Whom Gods Destroy” isn’t a
particularly good episode, it feels in many ways like a glimmering light of entertainment
in the third season of <i>Star Trek</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s largely a piece that makes no sense logically and has things happen
because without them happening, the plot wouldn’t allow Kirk and Spock to
succeed, but the camp elements just make it a lot of actual fun to watch which
has been missing this season especially.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s like taking all of the <i>Star Trek </i>tropes and putting them
into a blender and then setting that on fire for utter insanity for a bad time
but a pretty fun time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5/10.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-79968447366252445582024-02-11T10:31:00.000-08:002024-02-11T10:31:23.849-08:00Profits of Doom! by: Mike Collins with pencils by: John Ridgway, inks by: Tim Perkins, and letters by: Annie Halfacree<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi10VjLut9WyVTv83c3IXMjR_O_iDgQl2S84IPB_t6x-fW9LbCxhrVw3laEUk0U9l5-jDoHZQrjbWMseiOQMj_HEXjCJPqqepMasCp9aOJj3qroWJ947fgXWTn79IS5zf-oA3jf4wvX_3_kh9n8cWv8FH26zzZ68UZvqVYeZSHD-GWwL0M2zET9ZOTO7Vf9/s400/Profits%20of%20Doom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="301" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi10VjLut9WyVTv83c3IXMjR_O_iDgQl2S84IPB_t6x-fW9LbCxhrVw3laEUk0U9l5-jDoHZQrjbWMseiOQMj_HEXjCJPqqepMasCp9aOJj3qroWJ947fgXWTn79IS5zf-oA3jf4wvX_3_kh9n8cWv8FH26zzZ68UZvqVYeZSHD-GWwL0M2zET9ZOTO7Vf9/s320/Profits%20of%20Doom.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Profits of Doom!</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> is</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> written by Mike
Collins with pencils by John Ridgway, inks by Tim Perkins, and lettering by
Annie Halfacree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was released in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who Magazine</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> issues 120-122 (December 1986-February 1987)
</span>and is reprinted in its original form in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who: The World Shapers </i>by Panini Books.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The last <i>Doctor Who
Magazine</i> review I wrote, eightish months ago, introduced legendary comic writer
Grant Morrison to the strip for the first of their three stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Profits of Doom!</i> is the first
contribution of Mike Collins to the strip, this time in capacity of writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Collins has most recently contributed to the
strip as artist in 2019 and has several runs as primary artist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Profits of Doom!</i> feels like an
important milestone for the strip, mainly because after this point there are
only two more Sixth Doctor stories which would take the strip through the
autumn of 1987 when Sylvester McCoy would premiere in the role of the Doctor
and become the primary Doctor of the strip well into the 1990s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Profits of Doom!</i> feels far more in
line with where Andrew Cartmel would begin taking the show and the Virgin New
Adventures line of novels would continue, setting three issues of the strip in
the cold, harsh, emptiness of space in a society where capitalism has run rampant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now it is especially weird seeing the Sixth
Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher really interacting with this particular setting
since the televised show has just gone through an era far less concerned with
this overt type of storytelling.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Profits of Doom!</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> is a story where the villains are capitalist slugs
who prioritize profits over all else, invading a spaceship where a woman is awoken
from suspended animation only for maintenance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Collins keeps the number of characters down, Kara being our primary
guest character for the story and a single woman being sent to Arcadia for
unknown purposes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Collins directly links
the capitalism of the Profiteers of Ephete (the slugs are from a planet that’s
a tax haven) equally with colonialism of expansion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kara’s ship is the <i>Mayflower </i>which is
a clear symbol of colonialism, the big twist being that there is an immortal
villain who wishes to convert the planet Arcadia into a capitalist hellscape
complete with slaves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That immortal
villain is called Seth and is sadly where the story drops the ball, he’s an uninteresting
immortal and built up as if this is a foe the Doctor has faced before under
many aliases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem comes in the
fact that he’s essentially just a man on a screen who really only serves to be
a big bad because the comic strip kind of needed some central villain to
defeat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a shame because the
interactions between the Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher, especially in the first
part of the story are excellent, perhaps the best the characters have been
characterized and John Ridgway’s pencils work really well with Tim Perkins on
inks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Overall, <i>Profits of
Doom!</i> was honestly a big surprise since many of the issues with the <i>Doctor
Who Magazine </i>strip are overcome here as the characters are well
characterized and the plot is simple enough to fill the short page count while
providing some fairly biting commentary on the state of the world in late
1986.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s just a shame about that weak villain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-17667381180190876552024-02-10T11:24:00.000-08:002024-02-10T11:24:32.965-08:00Elaan of Troyius written and directed by: John Meredyth Lucas<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsH6p6LUDvqHK87ITQeFSQEYO6oEx7uvpu7EjgSRH6neO1W3Zdg81vgusX6pc0T_jXgK2K-NFicMKGYkQs3beX8fdEK08e9Vg-DGwoJy-Vy6Vz2U9GBT2poqE2UjkiviSI0LIuo18fVC7CEyyevXbBKK-9YkLPxAm4hYrCUrR5QYuzBFAyj72n67eSKHNs/s1440/Elaan%20of%20Troyius.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsH6p6LUDvqHK87ITQeFSQEYO6oEx7uvpu7EjgSRH6neO1W3Zdg81vgusX6pc0T_jXgK2K-NFicMKGYkQs3beX8fdEK08e9Vg-DGwoJy-Vy6Vz2U9GBT2poqE2UjkiviSI0LIuo18fVC7CEyyevXbBKK-9YkLPxAm4hYrCUrR5QYuzBFAyj72n67eSKHNs/s320/Elaan%20of%20Troyius.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Elaan of Troyius” is written and directed by: John
Meredyth Lucas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filmed under
production code 57, was the 13<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i> Season 3,
the 68<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on December 20,
1968.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This episode of <i>Star Trek</i> at least in terms of
the title is riffing on the mythological figure of Helen of Troy, and that
should be the first clue that this is going to be an episode stuck completely in
the trappings of the 1960s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>John Meredyth
Lucas had written for the show before this point with “The Changeling” and “Patterns
of Force” as well as directing “The Ultimate Computer” and “The <i>Enterprise</i>
Incident” so he clearly understands how <i>Star Trek </i>works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Elaan of Troyius” sees Lucas responsible for
both the script and direction, and there is a world where this is a winning
combination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lucas as a director is
actually quite dynamic and his script is confined to <i>Enterprise </i>sets as
many episodes this season are, but because of his style visually the episode
looks interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lucas knows how to
pace an episode of <i>Star Trek</i> so it doesn’t drag like other episodes this
season in particular have struggled with pacing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The makeup of the aliens in the episode is
also something that has some retro camp appeal in execution, outside of the title
character being potentially in brownface in makeup that feels like a stylized
Ancient Egyptian Pharoah costume which feels quite insensitive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is also an episode where William Shatner
is clearly having a ball with the material, getting to be largely more prideful
in his role of Captain Kirk which is a lot of fun to watch, even when Kirk gets
brainwashed by the beautiful Elaan due to magic tears which are used to seduce
him.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This is where the big troubles of “Elaan of Troyius”
really show their head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As mentioned
above the title is a clear reference to Helen of Troy, the character of Elaan
being forced into a marriage she doesn’t want paralleling the abduction of
Helen by Paris in myth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is an
academic history to paint Helen as at fault for the Trojan War which looking at
the mythological sources is an incorrect reading, she was kidnapped after all and
forced into a relationship while already being married and in <i>The Odyssey</i>
it is shown that Helen is still happily married to Menelaus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s clear that Lucas wishes to have the
audience make the parallel between Helen of Troy and Elaan being sent as bride
in a political marriage between Elas and Troyius who are on the brink of war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lucas is attempting to characterize Elaan as
being dissatisfied with the situation and being treated in an insulting way
within the largely warrior like culture of her people, but the characterization
also is drawing on another character, that of Katherina from William
Shakespeare’s <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Indeed, much of “Elaan of Troyius” draws its plot and conflict as equally
from Shakespeare’s play as the 1960s perception of the Epic Cycle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> is a highly
problematic play, the central comedy is quite literally how a woman is tamed by
a suitor while her sister is allowed a more traditional Shakespearean romance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The play would have been in the public consciousness
at the time of this episode’s production: Cole Porter’s <i>Kiss Me, Kate</i> and
its film adaptation were over a decade old at this point allowing some
reinterpretation of the play while the episode was roughly a year after Franco
Zeffirelli’s straight film adaptation of the Shakespeare play starring Richard
Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>France
Nuyen’s portrayal of Elaan in this episode while being inspired by a Pharoah is
also clearly modeled partially after Elizabeth Taylor’s portrayal of Katharina
and her 1963 portrayal of Cleopatra.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Much of Elaan’s character arc is becoming tamed in the same was as
Katharina in <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>, however she is heightened to be
immediately a royal brat that characters come into conflict with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lucas is clearly attempting to engage with
the text of <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> by giving his shrew some sense of
actual power, but he also is directing this episode through a particularly male
lens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are not through Elaan’s point
of view, we are in Kirk and Ambassador Petri’s, played by Jay Robinson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elaan is treated as a femme fatale by the
halfway point of the episode, something we are seeing now as a sexual partner
for Kirk and the tension comes from Kirk’s violation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a Klingon B-plot in this episode that
feels largely there for action that doesn’t actually work, it’s almost an afterthought
to add some conflict and worldbuilding.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, “Elaan of Troyius” is clearly an attempt to
reevaluate William Shakespeare’s <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> through a <i>Star
Trek</i> lens and that’s probably why it doesn’t work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Star Trek</i> often drops the ball when it
comes to portraying women and this is an episode whose text explicitly portrays
the ideal woman as soft and demure following the gender dynamics of Shakespeare’s
play and eventually casting Kirk in the role of Petruchio (Kirk slaps Elaan at
one point in retaliation in the episode).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>John Meredyth Lucas as a writer easily could have done more work to make
this premise work, but it’s stuck in the trappings of its time and those
attitudes stopping it from being a good episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-14400825066646854652024-02-03T08:49:00.000-08:002024-02-03T08:49:14.430-08:00The Empath by: Joyce Muskat and directed by: John Erman<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2wQpOi61iSe-gyCMeUiXNtQF10kR94DmENCDdGNLHJ9VRybSZJk3-_c6OyrI37GU9301e4PnCQ3KczLARR3X9Tcjw_rvk8C61JWs2daU8mvlIlkmvYhhcDZPQYJZdYa2BrGkXJiWepIkNVKU7YXFLvTjFUrY2G1AfI29OznthgAhATZ2QP07Hnw7AFuOy/s1024/The%20Empath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1024" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2wQpOi61iSe-gyCMeUiXNtQF10kR94DmENCDdGNLHJ9VRybSZJk3-_c6OyrI37GU9301e4PnCQ3KczLARR3X9Tcjw_rvk8C61JWs2daU8mvlIlkmvYhhcDZPQYJZdYa2BrGkXJiWepIkNVKU7YXFLvTjFUrY2G1AfI29OznthgAhATZ2QP07Hnw7AFuOy/s320/The%20Empath.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“The Empath” is written by: Joyce Muskat and is
directed by: John Erman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filmed
under production code 63, was the 12<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i>
Season 3, the 67<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on
December 6, 1968.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sometimes there are just stories that baffle their
audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The Empath” is one of those
stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another of the episodes of <i>Star
Trek</i> from a fan submission, Joyce Muskat would only sell this single
episode to television, and sadly you can see why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The premise of this episode is essentially a <i>Star
Trek</i> by numbers: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a planet that is on
the verge of going nova, there is a pair of powerful telepathic aliens that
capture our heroes, there is a very pretty lady present who is sadly mute, and
the next hour is our characters attempting to escape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What strikes me the most about “The Empath”
is how much of the premise is recycled from “The Menagerie”, specifically the flashback
sequences in particular.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not
helped by the similarities of the Vians, the episode’s aliens, having a visual
design and performances from Alan Bergmann and Willard Sage far too similar to
the performance of the Talosans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their
plan is revealed to be different: while they do keep samples in glass tubes though
in taxidermy here, the woman they are keeping is undergoing a test to see if
the Vians have the moral right to save her people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The woman is named by McCoy as Gem, something adopted by
the other characters, and is responsible for the title of the episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gem, played by Kathryn Hays, is a mute
empath, able to take the injuries and pain of others upon herself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gem is a bit of a problem character for the
episode, Hays’ performance is expressive in its muteness, however, Muskat’s script
has this issue of not really allowing Gem as a character to have her own
agency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a character who can only
be characterized through her actions, and much of those actions are performed
as weak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hays does a good job of expressing
the emotion of the situation, but the script undercuts this by then having
excess dialogue from the other characters explaining them, thus making any agency
the character have lose some of its weight.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The episode is also directed by John Erman, his only
directorial effort for <i>Star Trek</i>, and the way that it looks is
interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since it’s largely set at
the core of a planet, Erman directs this in stark, empty, black sets, with some
scenery giving much of the episode a stage-like aspect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surprisingly, this would be an incredibly
effective piece of direction and set design, if the script was intentional in
building on heightened emotions and literal giving of one’s pain and suffering
to others in a great sacrifice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The strength
of the script is not there, the central figure is not characterized nearly strongly
enough to allow these interesting ideas and genuine attempts to add something
to the episode from the production team to become interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is also simply a script that feels
padded in what it is attempting to accomplish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are scenes set on the <i>Enterprise</i> that interrupt the action
at one point that would usually be the basis of a B-plot, but instead they
honestly serve little purpose outside of informing the audience of the danger
that was already established at the top of the episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Add to that Erman’s particular style of making
some of the scenes take longer in attempts to wring the emotion out of the cast,
and the episode greatly suffers from some genuinely awful pacing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a moment where Kirk is going to give
himself up to the Vians and the camera lingers between them, silently to allow
William Shatner to go ham, but the going ham lasts thirty seconds while not
really giving Shatner the direction of where his emotion is supposed to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The emotion from Shatner peaks early and for
once I cannot believe that it was Shatner overacting or not caring, it’s clear
that there isn’t the proper direction to communicate in silence anything beneath
the surface of emotions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, “The Empath” is a mess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is an episode where the more I think
about it, the more it feels disjointed and unable to explore the ideas it sets
out to in an interesting way or in a way to really bring forward a central
thesis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bright spots, largely when
our three main characters are able to interact and the interesting choices designed
to heighten emotions, have the trouble of being done better elsewhere or are
just attempts to bring out ideas the script is clearly lacking in design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s clearly a low point and makes it the
third week in a row of just a poor episode with once again so much wasted
potential which seems to be the tragedy of Season 3 of <i>Star Trek</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-17547486350685992622024-01-31T06:22:00.000-08:002024-01-31T06:22:16.155-08:00Hope by: Mark Clapham<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWD2Tf9qwguOl_efi6-7dNigEHRz2_cnbxZSHHP8qT_yfBxqF0nk9btN3AN27CPyRARFR1b9rnlo6jVqwZFOBGu1SXm5cr2Zz6XcxrW0jRbTEQdDSRMwKD_Onc0Qimcl52sN6qDqDHq2i9M2zMZY5s7CdT1CpdhNngFMK-nLTYl6Z0iZXL1WwP6h618sLh/s1280/hope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="808" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWD2Tf9qwguOl_efi6-7dNigEHRz2_cnbxZSHHP8qT_yfBxqF0nk9btN3AN27CPyRARFR1b9rnlo6jVqwZFOBGu1SXm5cr2Zz6XcxrW0jRbTEQdDSRMwKD_Onc0Qimcl52sN6qDqDHq2i9M2zMZY5s7CdT1CpdhNngFMK-nLTYl6Z0iZXL1WwP6h618sLh/s320/hope.jpg" width="202" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Eighth Doctor Adventures have generally struggled
when it comes to characterizing its female companions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sam Jones as initial companion was by far the
weakest of the bunch, largely having her characterization be shallowly defined
as activist and sassy as her character traits in an attempt to replicate the
success of Bernice Summerfield.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
immediate successor Compassion fared better by at least having a defined character
and interesting concept for a companion, a woman from the future becoming a
sentient TARDIS, but again there was inconsistencies in characterization and
underutilization until her last run of appearances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The current female companion, Anji Kapoor, by
comparison is a back to basics model of companion who doesn’t really want to travel
with the Doctor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her introduction, <i>Escape
Velocity</i>, was something of a mission statement for the character was that
her boyfriend Dave was the one who was really companion material, but he was
murdered so Anji took his place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now
here I am several books later and a year since I last read a <i>Doctor Who</i>
book with the enigma that is Mark Clapham’s <i>Hope</i>, the book that feels
like it’s meant to be Anji’s book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a
character she has been served well in previous books but with installments in
the lead-up to this like <i>The Adventuress of Henrietta Street</i> being very
much the Doctor’s book and even further back <i>Revolution Man </i>being largely
Fitz’s book, Anji needs one that essentially defines who the character will be
and what she needs to go on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It becomes especially
interesting because that’s not how the book actually begins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hope</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> begins with Mark
Clapham deciding to push the Doctor and company to the end of the universe in a
setup that Russell T. Davies would draw on for “Utopia”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The setting is literally called Hope and it
is clear from the off that the hope is false.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is an organized militia in the city of Hope, the leader of the
city is Silver another time traveler of a sort with a mechanical exoskeleton and
electronic memory, and the TARDIS falls into the sea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of <i>Hope </i>owes itself to film noir
as it does cyberpunk, blending the two genres wonderfully with the Doctor being
put in his own desperate situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is one of those points where the Doctor’s own need for control becomes a
problem for himself, agreeing to help Silver in exchange for retrieval of the
TARDIS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While not made explicit in the text,
Silver is a Cyberman, converted at some point in Earth’s future while retaining
aspects of his humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this point
in the future, humanity has already evolved so seeing three figures that look
all too human, and for one of them have found themselves closer to humanity then
ever before, they are the outsiders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Silver as a character also fits largely into the mythic trickster category
of fiction: offering people exchanges for what they think they want, always with
a price and twist on the original deal, and this is the man the Doctor must
make a deal with to see himself, Fitz, and Anji survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Doctor and Fitz’s plot to hunt a killer
is one of those perfectly good plots, Clapham’s prose is quite compelling and
it allows a lot of worldbuilding of the setting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it were just this plot, you’d have a
fairly solid <i>Doctor Who</i> novel, but Anji is what elevates it above into something
at the very least more interesting.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Anji Kapoor didn’t really want to travel the universe,
that was Dave’s wish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like happens with
many of the Doctor’s companions along with the wonder of the universe there are
also the dangers and trauma, especially present around this period of the
Doctor’s life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Mad Dogs and Englishmen</i>
may have proven a respite, but <i>Hope</i> sees Anji’s mind preoccupied with
thoughts of Dave from the first page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is a story where there honestly isn’t much for the Doctor’s
companions to do, so Anji has plenty of time to herself and time to speak with Silver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clapham sets up this interplay of predation
between the two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silver is far too
charming and has far too many resources at his disposal, and Anji has been
thinking about Dave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silver wants an
escape, not a way to steal the TARDIS, but a way for Anji to give him the
knowledge to build one of his own. Silver’s backstory is framed as a pulp
adventure hero’s backstory and that pulpy charm allows him the perfect route
under Anji’s skin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite in her heart
knowing that Dave is gone and never coming back, time travel does not allow for
resurrection at least in the usual framework of <i>Doctor Who</i>, Anji’s
temptation to have a Dave II cloned and brought into existence is the
unsettling aspect of <i>Hope</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
the hope that gets the woman through, and is something that has already
shattered when the idea first arises, elevating Clapham’s novel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, <i>Hope</i> is a great novel to come back to the
Eighth Doctor, Fitz, and Anji after my stint away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While not particularly strong in certain
areas, the Doctor’s plot is actually quite weak in places and a bit too
standard, it philosophically embodies a lot of what the Eighth Doctor Adventures
are going for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also gets to the roots
of what the Cybermen and their relationship to humanity actually is without
using the word Cyberman anywhere in the prose, but best of all, it’s the showcase
for Anji Kapoor that she perhaps needed to lay her baggage behind her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-89294748079612487822024-01-27T16:43:00.000-08:002024-01-27T16:43:03.120-08:00Wink of an Eye by: Arthur Heinemann from a story by: Lee Cronin and directed by: Jud Taylor<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-Jb1HdJ3gFSlXRx6sglZXKk2ceIP_KeUG78mCLryr9CI4yW-IL69UFa9iI3nE_xKyBgeVfBZh-YSV7NLBaoH32jTUL3_umjv9L3YEkSl0_n0kpmzU4IpfSW-Z14OB41qoeRNuamSvOXka5nC9XJA3ixpJ-okyQF58o2gRvO6agmYwY0KvOgUKuw0huss/s1024/Wink%20of%20an%20Eye.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1024" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-Jb1HdJ3gFSlXRx6sglZXKk2ceIP_KeUG78mCLryr9CI4yW-IL69UFa9iI3nE_xKyBgeVfBZh-YSV7NLBaoH32jTUL3_umjv9L3YEkSl0_n0kpmzU4IpfSW-Z14OB41qoeRNuamSvOXka5nC9XJA3ixpJ-okyQF58o2gRvO6agmYwY0KvOgUKuw0huss/s320/Wink%20of%20an%20Eye.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Wink of an Eye” is written by: Arthur Heinemann, from
a story by: Lee Cronin a pseudonym for Gene L. Coon, and is directed by: Jud
Taylor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filmed under production
code 68, was the 11<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i> Season 3, the 66<sup>th</sup>
episode of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on November 29, 1968.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">By this point in the third season of <i>Star Trek</i>
both Gene L. Coon and D.C. Fontana had moved on, despite both having story ideas
that would be put into production under the pen of other writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Wink of an Eye” is the first of these
scripts, originally pitched by Coon and the story idea is credited to Coon’s
pseudonym Lee Cronin while Arthur Heinemann is responsible for actually writing
the script, and as such much of Coon’s general punchy and fantastical style
feels sucked right out of the episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The premise is a pretty great one: the Scalosians are a people on the
brink of total extinction and have found existence in a state of hyperacceleration
and they have decided Captain Kirk must become their king, dragging him into
their world for the episode from which he must use his cunning to escape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The clear ideas from Coon are ones of
examining Kirk’s duty as captain of the <i>Enterprise</i> which is an
undercurrent of the entire episode, however Arthur Heinemann who actually
writes the episode leaves it as undercurrent in subtext.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Wink of an Eye” is an episode that must be
built around the performance of William Shatner as Captain Kirk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest of the crew are reduced to minor roles
and it is clear that Heinemann has little interest in writing them, only having
Spock get a larger role later in the episode to save Kirk’s life and repair the
<i>Enterprise</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shatner’s performance
further sinks the episode, he seems bored with the material.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kirk as a character has always been one
romantic and Shatner attempting to be bored with the female Scalosian Deela,
played by Kathie Browne, just doesn’t work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The characterization of the Scalosians who are largely
the other characters we spend time with is just not there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The designs of the costumes are interesting
enough to look at, partially inspired by the idea of being out of time with odd
designs and these light, faded colors that while campy are effective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The internal politics of the characters
suffer largely from not being there, Heinemann as a writer doesn’t seem to have
the chops to really make even the regular characters shine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance the dialogue between Spock and McCoy
is a sequence where they feel out of character, mainly because it’s functional
dialogue and not really character dialogue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What’s stopping “Wink of an Eye” from being a total loss, however, outside
of the interesting ideas is actually Jud Taylor’s direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Wink of an Eye” is an example of a bottle
episode, there is only one set at the beginning that was constructed specifically
for the episode and the action takes place on the <i>Enterprise</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For bottle episodes to work the direction
often has to be interesting, and Taylor decides to make use not only of Dutch
angles to indicate scenes in hyper acceleration but also physically tilting the
camera while shooting which adds to the surreal nature of the episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If this was a script that went down a fully
surrealist route it would have been a much better episode.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, “Wink of an Eye” is an episode of <i>Star
Trek</i> with a lot of potential, something that seems to be a recurring issue
for the third season.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an episode
whose quality hinges on the script and the performance of William Shatner and neither
are up to snuff in terms of what the episode needs to be doing leaving just a
bland experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-77587995288490200992024-01-27T08:37:00.000-08:002024-01-27T08:37:44.190-08:00Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by: Timothy Zahn<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHfYPtS8sOlMRfaYv4iPmuNaNjYyKNYU2TWchW0V9EIl5SXB8fuN5YOykADcWfoXUX-H262jpXsUcDboJDBZw5YPqS6Xjcsw3oAG3mSuXknI7JDQ5xIxPNr7DR0fynffhvhqu3-8OHPvwfwoaxavpp6eI2x1qewwQB60fXjs8XMwLtWekzr1TaQZwqpwcu/s1200/Heir%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="820" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHfYPtS8sOlMRfaYv4iPmuNaNjYyKNYU2TWchW0V9EIl5SXB8fuN5YOykADcWfoXUX-H262jpXsUcDboJDBZw5YPqS6Xjcsw3oAG3mSuXknI7JDQ5xIxPNr7DR0fynffhvhqu3-8OHPvwfwoaxavpp6eI2x1qewwQB60fXjs8XMwLtWekzr1TaQZwqpwcu/s320/Heir%201.jpg" width="219" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When beginning the book exchange that brought me to
read <i>Star Wars</i> novels with my good friend Joey, there was one trilogy
that I knew he would have me read at some point would be Timothy Zahn’s <i>Thrawn
Trilogy</i>, the trilogy that begun the series of <i>Star Wars</i> expanded
universe novels and comics proper after Alan Dean Foster’s <i>Splinter of the
Mind’s Eye</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Heir to the Empire</i>
is the first sequel to be published after the original trilogy, though eight
years later with Timothy Zahn being essentially given free reign to tell what he
thought would be the next step in the <i>Star Wars</i> saga.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is fascinating about this novel is that it
is largely structured like a film that could easily slot into the original trilogy,
elevating it in the minds of <i>Star Wars</i> fans to status of the official
continuation of the series when George Lucas didn’t really have much input in
what Zahn was allowed to write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Return
of the Jedi</i> ends with the Emperor and Darth Vader dead, the latter redeemed
in the eyes of our protagonist, and the galaxy presumably at peace with the
heavy implication being that the Empire is just going to crumble and the Rebellion
is going to take over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Timothy Zahn realizes
that that is clearly not what would happen, Luke Skywalker may be a legendary
hero but he’s a hero who created a power vacuum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While it’s clear the Rebellion and the
burgeoning New Republic is expanding at the beginning of <i>Heir to the Empire</i>,
it's also clear there are others vying for the position of Emperor replacement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Grand Admiral Thrawn is the main villain of the book and
the trilogy, and Timothy Zahn uses his introduction to really sell what the
book is going to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much like the
introduction of Vader in <i>Star Wars</i>, Thrawn’s introduction is what essentially
opens <i>Heir to the Empire</i> and Zahn takes the inspirations of Lucas from
various fascist regimes and pushes them further.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thrawn sets himself apart from the villains
who came before by being an incredibly charismatic villain, one to propose and plan
Xanatos Gambits, being one step ahead of our heroes all while not ever actually
meeting them yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zahn gives Thrawn’s perspective
through the point of view of those under him, continuing the ideas of tempting
Luke to the Dark Side using the insane clone of a “Dark Jedi” which doesn’t
come to fruition, as well as tempting and training the unborn children of Leia
and Han.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is this utterly
terrifying monologue about how one can know a people through their art that is
perhaps Thrawn’s defining moment as a villain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Much of <i>Heir of the Empire</i> is setup for the rest of the trilogy,
but it is actually really good setup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Zahn’s writing style is very pulp fiction from the 1990s meaning that it
is breezy and fits right in with the pulp origins of <i>Star Wars</i> as a
franchise, especially with the way that Zahn takes the main characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zahn attempts to give Luke more depth and
intrigue in the challenges he has to face as restoring the Jedi Order in stark
contrast to the original trilogy’s more surface level characterization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Leia also gets her own subplot with Chewbacca
and his family though Zahn sadly doesn’t get creative with how he presents
Wookiee dialogue, just using brackets to indicate a different language.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIOCLsbjIRMeiKSYOkz_6XAfyqEMorqMNn-F5cBK455H5EaXJJBeTsKCLwVi6YxrJhC5-qmU_MLutzThBLBhqlYYpVYIYlGXgU-Rt4_LKA5F7hWWAAkIySp80kBWiGj51RQqJrZSqNwMP3vjPIVV4mfp6Uvi0u6ZEpCbfCpCSHHy__fTgGvT1caqkQAZzj/s2339/Heir%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2339" data-original-width="1518" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIOCLsbjIRMeiKSYOkz_6XAfyqEMorqMNn-F5cBK455H5EaXJJBeTsKCLwVi6YxrJhC5-qmU_MLutzThBLBhqlYYpVYIYlGXgU-Rt4_LKA5F7hWWAAkIySp80kBWiGj51RQqJrZSqNwMP3vjPIVV4mfp6Uvi0u6ZEpCbfCpCSHHy__fTgGvT1caqkQAZzj/s320/Heir%202.jpg" width="208" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There is one large misstep in the novel, and that’s
perhaps how much coincidence brings our characters back together after
splitting up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This wouldn’t be a problem
if it happened once, but it happens essentially every time the characters need
to meet up again it happens because of coincidence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Han and Lando just happen upon the group that
has Luke captured being the one that really took me out of the book, but Zahn
does soften that slightly by having Luke escape on his own accord.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s also an alien species that suppresses
the Force used to capture Luke which feels like such a 1990s pulp idea that I
don’t quite know what to make of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
a novel Zahn also has to establish new characters and the clear standout
outside of Thrawn is Mara Jade, a character I know is significant but I don’t
know why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the whole Jedi/Sith
dynamic hasn’t been established by Lucas yet, Mara Jade is revealed to have
been an apprentice of the Emperor who by the end of the novel is clearly on the
early path of a redemption arc, while Zahn makes her resentment of Luke feel
real.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, <i>Heir to the Empire</i> while not quite
reaching the heights of the original trilogy did for me, a certainly difficult
bar to clear, takes <i>Star Wars</i> from what it was doing in the 1980s and
allows it to move forward and examine some of what was underdeveloped
on-screen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not a perfect book but the
trilogy is certainly more inviting now, supported by a fascinating villain that
I just need more of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8/10.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-16136291902735933332024-01-24T20:22:00.000-08:002024-01-24T20:22:19.846-08:00The House in the Cerulean Sea by: T.J. Klune<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7XO2ylh_JvYw-bC4qg2_GOzqI2GQv3JXbLQU2TS7cuYLYRGP0nmyTn-bEgHIeSDID-GGj-jUfee0cbJ8HYAaSrLNvuCpEAvbT8AA8EOjmh8sO7zUC-2eAkQpJQ83KI_yIqL7Nx22ovjpAKgVwzKM-NdFpK22wVmcQVl4DvkwFHXzGYq1DYsqtfDvtNhAs/s1000/House%20Cerulean.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="641" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7XO2ylh_JvYw-bC4qg2_GOzqI2GQv3JXbLQU2TS7cuYLYRGP0nmyTn-bEgHIeSDID-GGj-jUfee0cbJ8HYAaSrLNvuCpEAvbT8AA8EOjmh8sO7zUC-2eAkQpJQ83KI_yIqL7Nx22ovjpAKgVwzKM-NdFpK22wVmcQVl4DvkwFHXzGYq1DYsqtfDvtNhAs/s320/House%20Cerulean.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>My first exposure to T.J. Klune was </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Under the
Whispering Door</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> which I adored, so I thought going to one of his earlier
works would get me a sense of his larger bibliography.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The House in the Cerulean Sea</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> is the
book that catapulted Klune to public popularity and what can often happen with
authors is that their earlier works do not hit nearly as hard as what occurs
when they improve their craft.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
House in the Cerulean Sea</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> is a book that sadly didn’t hit nearly as hard as
</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Under the Whispering Door</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> as well as just being slightly marred in
controversy due to Klune’s influences.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Klune
was influenced by Canadian residential schools for indigenous people and the
atrocities committed at these schools.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Now the issue with this is largely that not only is Klune a cis-white
American implementing an allegory he knows very little about, clearly not having
sensitivity readers.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The setting of the
novel is in an orphanage that has been reopened by a caring older gentleman caring
for dangerous magical creatures, revealed in the third act of the novel to be a
magical creature himself.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The book’s
general thesis is that these types of institutions would be okay if it were indigenous
people were in charge, which is a contradiction within itself.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">They would not exist if indigenous people are
in charge.</span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If this were the only problematic element of the novel,
perhaps it could be looked past in pursuit of an interesting story of someone
finding non-traditional love and connection, but the protagonist also has to
connect and find himself humanizing a group of people he was largely detached
too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A cherry on top of this is also the
text outright stating that change doesn’t happen unless people want it enough which
is just a horrific idea and could only come from someone in a privileged
position that doesn’t understand change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Klune’s writing style throughout the novel is also far less refined than
what would become his writing style in <i>Under the Whispering Door</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The protagonist of the novel is Linus Baker
who has a life that’s far too boring working as a case worker assessing the
care homes of supernatural children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
loves his job but is complacent in his own life and far too detached to properly
see his charges as people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His way of
speaking is also incredibly old fashioned with British idioms like “my dear boy”
coming up throughout the novel quite a bit and honestly they feel forced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where Klune does excel is actually writing
the perspective of several children, clearly setting out to write something
that captures a childlike whimsy and magic of growing up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s also an undercurrent of romance is good
and the emotional resolution for Linus Baker realizing that he actually does
want more from life, but so much of that is marred.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, <i>The House in the Cerulean Sea</i> is one
of those books that while you read it, it feels like enjoyable popcorn reading
material, but then you think about it and realize some of the really problematic
elements just baked into the text and can’t help but become uncomfortable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I waited a day before attempting a review
because while reading it I had fun but now I feel quite cold once I realized
what the inspirations were and because of that the entire lens through which I
viewed the novel changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I honestly
expected better of Klune for making a better book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-48150756209409361952024-01-20T09:30:00.000-08:002024-01-20T09:30:00.635-08:00Plato's Stepchildren by: Meyer Dolinsky and directed by: David Alexander<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKQN8o722AhvCfO-NyoBmdzJL-moikRvv-XvqOViMQeQgpL6kEIp4ar5ykTAdMjg7OMypF563JEY49QTaNXVYkFlRgxt9IWFltjdpfTFthXLGHggJtUNVy3VvdcuY3_E7fpkf5a4rbE29Hc8xAwj58wyXobW13A4xQ8h6dV61OlA3TWkkCN3XnCqvZjDtQ/s2048/Platos%20Stepchildren.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1540" data-original-width="2048" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKQN8o722AhvCfO-NyoBmdzJL-moikRvv-XvqOViMQeQgpL6kEIp4ar5ykTAdMjg7OMypF563JEY49QTaNXVYkFlRgxt9IWFltjdpfTFthXLGHggJtUNVy3VvdcuY3_E7fpkf5a4rbE29Hc8xAwj58wyXobW13A4xQ8h6dV61OlA3TWkkCN3XnCqvZjDtQ/s320/Platos%20Stepchildren.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Plato’s Stepchildren” is written by: Meyer Dolinsky
and is directed by: David Alexander.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
was filmed under production code 67, was the 10<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star
Trek</i> Season 3, the 65<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was
broadcast on November 22, 1968.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Plato’s Stepchildren” is one of those episodes of <i>Star
Trek</i> that is among the most famous for one event: this is the one where
Kirk and Uhura kiss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mythologized as the
first interracial kiss on television, although that is a much debated event in television
history with a quick glance on Wikipedia including interracial kisses in
previous episodes of <i>Star Trek</i>, a kiss on <i>The Ed Sullivan Show</i>, <i>Sea
Hunt</i>, <i>Adventures in Paradise</i>, <i>I Spy</i>, and <i>Movin’ With Nancy</i>
as earlier examples, “Plato’s Stepchildren” doesn’t actually have much going
for it beyond the kiss, and even the kiss is a bit of a mess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This should not underplay the importance of
an interracial kiss specifically between a white man and a black woman
especially for 1968 even with the problems with the kiss and the sequence it is
a part of. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The premise of the episode is
another race of godlike aliens this time with psychic powers and a love of
Greek philosopher Plato hold the <i>Enterprise</i> in the orbit of their planet
because their leader is injured and dying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to help and in repayment the
leader Parmen, played by Liam Sullivan, captures them, wishes to make McCoy one
of them, and keep Kirk and Spock for entertainment, expanding that to Uhura and
Nurse Chapel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the biggest issues
with this episode is that the premise is one that we have seen before done to
death at this point in <i>Star Trek</i> and author Meyer Dolinsky doesn’t
actually do anything with the premise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Usually when we do godlike aliens what can make or break the episode is
actually the setting and society being explored, but Dolinsky doesn’t do
anything with the setting or philosophies of Plato outside of glib mentions of
philosopher kings and the aesthetic of a pop cultural ancient Greece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The episode is also largely limited by being
shot on studio sets that look far too closely to studio sets: the walls lack
windows and there isn’t even an attempt to suggest an outside world while
director David Alexander makes this seem far too flat.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The climax of the episode is where “Plato’s
Stepchildren” falls down in what it’s trying to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Parmen and company force Kirk, Spock, Uhura,
and Chapel to perform, dominating their minds with their psychic powers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Spock is forced to sing, everyone prances
around, and then we get to the kisses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chapel
kisses Spock and Majel Barrett gets an admittedly nice character moment of
professing her love for Spock in what has been one of the few undercurrents for
her character, and Uhura kisses Kirk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nichelle
Nichols gets a small confession of respect and admiration to Kirk before her
kiss and Nichols performs it well, but the fact that the kiss is non-consensual
adds the layer of discomfort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Props should
still be given to Nichols and Shatner for according to their recollections
forcing the kiss to be kept in, but it’s actually what happens after that stops
any goodwill that the episode was building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Kirk and Spock are forced to pick up instruments of torture including a
whip and a heated poker and threaten Uhura and Chapel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This scene feels genuinely out of place,
while Platonians have been callous and detached throughout the episode, this
type of cruelty doesn’t feel in line with their tastes of amusement or really
anywhere in the philosophy of Plato.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yes, the idea is that Plato’s philosophies are being warped by his
stepchildren, but there isn’t any examination of that philosophy before this
moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, the episode isn’t actually
all bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>William Shatner gets a great
line about the Federation being a place where “shape, size, or color makes no
difference” and Dolinsky includes the main character to not have psychic powers
be Alexander, a dwarf played by Michael Dunn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Alexander is still a minority character in a 1960s television show, but
he is allowed his own desires and rejects the society he is a part of the join
the Federation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gets a happy ending
and Dunn’s performance genuinely seems like he is being given a deeper
characterization and respect from the rest of the cast and crew.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, “Plato’s Stepchildren” is an episode that
honestly feels like a first draft, at least in terms of the way its ideas are
implemented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s basically an outline
of an average episode of <i>Star Trek</i> implemented with added torture bringing
down the genuine attempt at progressive ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While not an episode that has nothing to enjoy about it, it just doesn’t
do enough with its premise and adds to the problem because of the shock value
conflict at the climax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The performances
are at least interesting to watch and there is some attempt at
characterization, but this is an episode remembered for one thing, and then
forgotten about because of how uninteresting it actually is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-42267996620503135502024-01-19T10:37:00.000-08:002024-01-19T10:37:40.134-08:00Star Wars: The High Republic: The Fallen Star by: Claudia Gray<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6JD3SmIOzDnpLzsH3b8mlcgsRfiqbsEsSyLk7M5bJgh0XoKLWLfj4g0JA8LqjvDyLQRaga-pQGHgYjzrcZrZ5GbSfdi2EyWc_SW78AKwMV-ZZdrVHYhM0dxFe4zo9JEZ8ssD_rJtMPh3KzU0AOJbWlljcRgNeIj5eiHkZDck_aRIPSveYhK75edd1jtUa/s1000/Fallen%20Star.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="658" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6JD3SmIOzDnpLzsH3b8mlcgsRfiqbsEsSyLk7M5bJgh0XoKLWLfj4g0JA8LqjvDyLQRaga-pQGHgYjzrcZrZ5GbSfdi2EyWc_SW78AKwMV-ZZdrVHYhM0dxFe4zo9JEZ8ssD_rJtMPh3KzU0AOJbWlljcRgNeIj5eiHkZDck_aRIPSveYhK75edd1jtUa/s320/Fallen%20Star.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Fallen Star</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
is essentially the finale to the first phase of the <i>Star Wars: The High
Republic</i> publishing initiative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
such, it’s a novel that is stuffed to the brim with characters and storylines
all wrapped around a central event of a Nihil plan to strike the Republic where
it is going to hurt the most.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somehow this
novel has felt the most <i>Star Wars</i> of any of <i>The High Republic </i>novels
that I have read, juggling a multi-threaded plot and characters, as well as
bringing together plots from different authors writing in different media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Light of the Jedi</i> is responsible for
beginning this initiative and in my estimation struggled to juggle its plotlines,
but Claudia Gray is responsible for making <i>The Fallen Star</i> work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again, all of the plotlines are wrapped
around the destruction of a space station, Starlight Beacon, and the efforts to
mitigate the disaster as it is literally split in half.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gray’s largest success in this novel is
managing to keep the characters engaging as well as important to the plot,
while running in parallel with Cavan Scott’s comic finale (which I have not
read).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each character is given their
distinct goal and characterization, the Jedi largely furthering the themes of <i>The
High Republic</i>’s examination of what it means to be a Jedi.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Elzar Mann is a Jedi who throughout the books that I
have read has had this incredibly interesting relationship with the Force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a largely creative relationship that has
had his own touches with the Dark Side of the Force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gray’s take on Mann’s perspective is both
creative but heavily introspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
of the musings of the novel is the relationship with other Jedi as well as the
general principles against forming romantic relationships, something unavoidable
with adolescence and overlooked by the order until they become attached.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The Fallen Star</i> wants to examine the
loss of the state of the universe with the threat of the Nihil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mann is put under another Jedi, Orla Jareni,
essentially to monitor his attraction to the Dark Side and the most effective scenes
in this book involve the two and Jareni’s fate on Starlight Beacon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jareni is killed by creatures that
essentially petrify and dehydrate her, creating a further danger in the novel other
than the Nihil threat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Nihil plan is
also fascinating as this is the first novel where despite all odds, the Nihil
essentially lose in the end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Marchion Ro
is the primary antagonist of the novel and his particular brand of villainy is
an example of the Xanatos Gambit, being one step ahead of the protagonists and
Ro’s own allies until the very end when while his plans succeed there is enough
of a wrench to throw them off balance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is a book that ends with a mirror to the destruction in <i>Light of
the Jedi</i>, the destruction of Starlight Beacon ends in far less death and destruction
than there should have been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gray is
careful not to ignore the destruction that does occur, a decent amount of the
resolution is devoted to it, but the Nihil are hurt as well in the
process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They lose some of their
operatives in a “noble” sacrifice and Nan who appears here after <i>Into the Dark</i>
and <i>Out of the Shadows</i> spends much of the book questioning the Nihil.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, <i>The Fallen Star</i> is the strongest <i>Star
Wars</i> novel that I have actually read yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While not a major part of my review, Claudia Gray’s writing style is something
that genuinely makes the world more accessible with others (there is a major
Wookiee character and Geode returns and while both have no dialogue their personalities
and communication with other characters is a feat in and of itself).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The arc feels like it’s an ending and a very satisfying
ending at that. 8/10.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-15077320481056368802024-01-17T08:30:00.000-08:002024-01-17T08:30:33.019-08:00The Sun Eater: Empire of Silence by: Christopher Ruoccio<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix0ApjliEH57_z5Za7Uz07_XuhYESg06f47fwcOBX80cDtW4OxLH8phaBJWbCy-FEF7zD3r3Dtvv5saHNmGaVqSdOEnw9W4nSz8gFi0ACcxgOy4w8Fw6VxC6RFovZlpTMfBbO8U4Mb5wIrnwgyl7X6P53IQGsfeJl0kJYrjp9BSOo5VEYnlXmWjz0CYCMy/s1000/Empire%20of%20Silence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="661" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix0ApjliEH57_z5Za7Uz07_XuhYESg06f47fwcOBX80cDtW4OxLH8phaBJWbCy-FEF7zD3r3Dtvv5saHNmGaVqSdOEnw9W4nSz8gFi0ACcxgOy4w8Fw6VxC6RFovZlpTMfBbO8U4Mb5wIrnwgyl7X6P53IQGsfeJl0kJYrjp9BSOo5VEYnlXmWjz0CYCMy/s320/Empire%20of%20Silence.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I would love to say that <i>Empire of Silence </i>was
a book that I just gravitated towards, but no once again this is another of those
books that I took a chance on based on the recommendations of YouTube.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are several booktubers over the years
who have sung the praises of Christopher Ruocchio’s first installment in <i>The
Sun Eater</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a text, it is quite
large, Ruocchio wearing his many influences on his sleeves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Empire of Silence</i> is presented as the
first volume of the memoirs of Hadrian Marlowe, initially an heir to a throne
and in the text clearly meant to go onto some sort of greatness that this volume
does not actually explain what that greatness is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s explained in the title as eating a sun, but
Hadrian as narrator is coming from the perspective of the reader being familiar
to exactly who he was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ruocchio’s gamble
with <i>Empire of Silence</i> is explicitly making this a first volume, it was
published traditionally and it’s one of those novels that ends at a point where
it is clearly one small part in a bigger story (though this case will clearly be
a much, much bigger story).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a
novel that reaches a stopping point but honestly manages to straddle the line
of being clearly the first part of an epic and telling a complete story, heck
it almost tells multiple stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brandon
Sanderson has described writing installments of <i>The Stormlight Archive</i>
as writing a trilogy and presenting it at one book; that’s what reading <i>Empire
of Silence</i> feels like, experiencing a trilogy of stories about the developing
life of Hadrian Marlowe and his road to hell.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">While there is no certainty that <i>The Sun Eater</i> is
going to turn out with Hadrian as a villain, <i>Empire of Silence</i> is full
of Hadrian’s personal struggle with morality in a monarchist, imperialist, intergalactic
system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hadrian begins the novel in a
position of great privilege, and Ruocchio’s plot follows a structure of seeing
him essentially having his own wants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those
wants are initially in line with his privileged position, wishing to be
declared the heir of his father, but his father is a ruthless tyrant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While Hadrian’s father and brother both view
him as soft and weak, Hadrian is still clearly the product of privilege.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is evident when what spurs him to change
is not some genuine sense of morality, but because he was slighted by his
family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hadrian acts out and blusters on
his own, something that gets him severely injured and his estimations in his
father’s eyes plummeted to the worst.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His wish to become essentially a scholar instead of a priest as his
father predestines is not really for a love of knowledge but to go against his
father.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gets this incredibly rude
awakening when he is injured by people on the streets, his first real
interaction outside of the aristocracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yet, his rejection of the aristocracy and secret plans to become a
scholar, plans that in the second act of the novel (or second leg of the
trilogy if you wish to view it like that) go wrong and put Hadrian among the
lower classes for a number of years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Throughout these sequences the reader gets this true sense that Hadrian
as a person is still the aristocrat, still blinded by his own privilege stripped
from him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ruocchio manages to fully
encapsulate a selfish protagonist and links that selfishness clearly with his
previous high class at the top of his mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is a middle segment of the novel that is essentially a tribute to
films like <i>Gladiator</i> and <i>Spartacus</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Tempering the selfish aspects of Hadrian as a
character is a genuine thirsting for knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are multiple romantic relationships included in the novel and they
highlight these aspects, Hadrian while suffering romantic loss throughout the
novel, these losses deconstruct the selfishness, especially the first which is
with a woman who falls ill and dies because she doesn’t have the eugenicist
genetics of the aristocracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the
romance that feels the closest to a traditional and genuine romance, Hadrian
isn’t really using her but her death is used to further blindside Hadrian to
the injustices in the universe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Humanity
has been at war with the alien Cielcin, a hermaphrodite race whose individuals
use “it” pronouns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the Earth is a planet
of the distant path and humanity has built through a new religious order that
is largely believed to be false, the Cielcin essentially provide a scapegoat
for the enemy that imperialist empires like the Earth empire needs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are not actually a major element until the
final third of the novel when Hadrian actually takes an interest with their
language and culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This leads to the
ending of the novel as a completely tragic affair which feels as if Ruocchio
needed to really show Hadrian the horrors of imperialism and empire; that is
without the possibility of rationalizing that horror through his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a Cielcin prisoner whose perspective
is what doesn’t so much as break a life of pro-human propaganda but allow
Hadrian to question it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, <i>Empire of Silence</i> is an incredibly
interesting blend of science fiction and fantasy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This review honestly feels as if I’m only
scratching the surface of what Christopher Ruocchio is doing with his novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hadrian Marlowe is the central figure of the
novel that clearly deserves the amount of time this review dedicated to him,
but the novel’s worldbuilding is equally vivid and an exploration of the imperialist
system that can create a person like Hadrian Marlowe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s so much in this tome that it feels as
if I’ve only scratched the surface of what Ruocchio can do as an author.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>9/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-36930411260308542952024-01-13T11:09:00.000-08:002024-01-13T11:09:09.300-08:00The Tholian Web by: Judy Burns and Chet Richards and directed by: Herb Wallerstein<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWALJFDAlOwypwMjIPEFq9TGmq8Mkl-WpdniGkBu0O4jjXLMZhalOH4SUX8Goh7sBcGhVGBG5PMa5tf2ecmv4oTx4mZjwizvhIS2TcTLI7INDkAaUqB0NC7a66m-Vbn_yMkzFOfTq329MEf7H7BUDIss7RgDZe5pM7BMhrAQAxj8aMql1Pe_mZRfwWTrvZ/s694/Tholian%20Web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="530" data-original-width="694" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWALJFDAlOwypwMjIPEFq9TGmq8Mkl-WpdniGkBu0O4jjXLMZhalOH4SUX8Goh7sBcGhVGBG5PMa5tf2ecmv4oTx4mZjwizvhIS2TcTLI7INDkAaUqB0NC7a66m-Vbn_yMkzFOfTq329MEf7H7BUDIss7RgDZe5pM7BMhrAQAxj8aMql1Pe_mZRfwWTrvZ/s320/Tholian%20Web.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“The Tholian Web” is written by: Judy Burns and Chet
Richards and is directed by: Herb Wallerstein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was filmed under production code 64, was the 9<sup>th</sup> episode
of <i>Star Trek</i> Season 3, the 64<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i>,
and was broadcast on November 15, 1968.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These reviews of <i>Star Trek</i> have been largely positive
in terms of analyzing the performance of William Shatner as Captain Kirk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The Tholian Web”, however, is an interesting
episode because it is perhaps the first episode of the series where Kirk is not
the main character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The premise is that
the <i>USS Defiant</i>, sister ship to the <i>Enterprise</i>, has drifted into
a portion of space and needs to be rescued by Kirk and company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something has caused the ship to phase in
between universes and Captain Kirk becomes trapped on the <i>Defiant</i> with
the rest of the <i>Enterprise</i> crew infected with a virus causing insanity and
paranoia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kirk being trapped means that he
gets little focus in the episode, giving Spock and McCoy their first real
chance to fully lead the show and it’s that aspect of the episode that really
pushes it among some of the best for the series.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As an episode, we are once again confined to
the two ships, redressing <i>Enterprise</i> sets for the <i>Defiant</i> and turning
down the lights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Herb Wallerstein is
responsible for directing the episode and his direction is incredibly tense,
largely focusing on enhancing the actors’ performances through tighter shots
and the many dialogue scenes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
illness plotline adds to the threat of the Tholians, a group of aliens who
control this area of space and are trapping the <i>Enterprise</i> in a literal
web.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their portrayal is fascinating,
they are reasonable and give the <i>Enterprise</i> time before they continue
their attacks so the chance is there to leave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Obviously, Spock won’t leave without rescuing Kirk so the <i>Enterprise</i>
is damaged in the attacks while the web is weaved around the ship as a
countdown to being fully trapped.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Judy Burns and Chet Richards contribute their only
episode to the series, another of the episodes written by fans who sold scripts
to the series and despite the multiple plotlines, “The Tholian Web” is one of
those episodes that juggle them particularly well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley are the
pair that have the most to do and give the best performances, much of the real
drama of the episode coming from the clash in personalities of Spock and
McCoy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This also goes to show why Kirk
as a character works as a mediator between the pair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Spock’s logic means he is quick to retaliate
against the Tholians because it would buy them more time to get Kirk, trapping
them in the web to begin with, while McCoy is more concerned with the fact that
the crew is becoming ill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps the
best moment of the episode for the pair are their reactions to Kirk’s final
wishes, recorded and shown in the event of his death, Kirk showing that he
understands both men and trusts them implicitly to captain the ship on in its
mission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s also setting “The
Tholian Web” apart is that Burns and Richards have also written this as a
science fiction ghost story: using the different dimensions allows apparitions
of Kirk as a ghost like figure throughout the episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, not immediately affected
by the illness, sees the apparition and gets some wonderful moments of believing
herself mad as the episode adds these haunted house aspects to enrich the
script.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>James Doohan and Walter Koenig
also get particular moments to shine, Doohan in the resolution where the cure
to the illness does involve drinking alcohol and Koenig’s initial breakdown being
a particularly physical performance from the young actor.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, “The Tholian Web” is quite surprising in how
well it stacks up, showing that even under the great stressful conditions and
reduced budget of the third season <i>Star Trek</i> can do brilliant looks into
the characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a particular shame
that it took this long to do an episode largely without Kirk, though Shatner
still has his moments, allowing the rest of the cast some of their best moments
in the series.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Burns and Richards’ only
contribution to the series is honestly fantastic and a contender for the best
of the season and top 10 of the series overall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>9/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-37367686202482586872024-01-06T12:25:00.000-08:002024-01-06T12:25:26.696-08:00For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky by: Hendrik Vollaerts and directed by: Tony Leader<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgNwwKKh6IB2HIKfrMRJeP6fsUTpYoh7o9g-vn_nQYxt2mLo6CRwLgnz89sdBnQnufvbCDni8Wrd60A1rSj_kKARqFooL7wQ7rRe07t-tY1CJHHpEjXqTY60kXlKLMnyHzNltuX3vIIIOAuGf3QZRaAHoYBMBsqsigKdjXciQIXnMB4LZWpWGET495EFQ8/s1200/For%20the%20World%20is%20Hollow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="909" data-original-width="1200" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgNwwKKh6IB2HIKfrMRJeP6fsUTpYoh7o9g-vn_nQYxt2mLo6CRwLgnz89sdBnQnufvbCDni8Wrd60A1rSj_kKARqFooL7wQ7rRe07t-tY1CJHHpEjXqTY60kXlKLMnyHzNltuX3vIIIOAuGf3QZRaAHoYBMBsqsigKdjXciQIXnMB4LZWpWGET495EFQ8/s320/For%20the%20World%20is%20Hollow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” is
written by: Hendrik Vollaerts and is directed by: Tony Leader.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filmed under production code 65, was
the 8<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i> Season 3, the 63<sup>rd</sup> episode
of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on November 8, 1968.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sometimes you get an episode of <i>Star Trek</i> where
the title is exactly what the episode is going to be about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched
the Sky” is an episode that is literally about a hollow asteroid spaceship with
people living inside it as their own world run by an oracle (another <i>Star
Trek</i> staple of a mad computer holding these people under its own
authoritarian regime).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The asteroid
spaceship is an early example of a space ark in science fiction, something that
was actually quite a popular idea in this particular era of sci-fi, <i>Doctor
Who</i> had done one two years prior and authors like Robert Heinlein were
using the idea as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now what is interesting
about space ark stories are generally the insular societies they create and the
ability to explore said society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sadly,
it seems author Hendrik Vollaerts is not interested in doing this, the society
really only has two members who get any time, a nameless old man with a single
scene before he dies played by Jon Lormer and a priestess to the oracle, Natira
played by Kate Woodville.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The actual
plot of this episode is honestly the same structure and plot beats of “The
Paradise Syndrome” with a senior member of the <i>Enterprise </i>trio falling
in love with one of the natives in this society while the other two deal with
the rogue asteroid situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, the
asteroid and society are in the same setting so there is much less of the
characters being split up, but it’s the same story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While “The Paradise Syndrome” had its own set
of problems in portraying the society as Native Americans, “For the World Is
Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” has the almost opposite problem of just not
strongly characterizing the society nor the supercomputer running
everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Natira as a character has
the basic romance plot for <i>Star Trek</i> at this time and Kate Woodville’s
performance is sadly quite wooden as well, though she does end the episode
alive and ready to meet her lover in a year’s time when the asteroid finds its
way to its new planet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The B-plot of stopping the asteroid is given to Kirk
and Spock, who are also charged with unraveling the mystery of this society
while McCoy is the one given the romantic A-plot of the episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy are as
always fun to watch, but the B-plot is actually quite thin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because this is a story about the <i>Enterprise</i>
crew, it’s in the pre-credits that the reveal of the asteroid as housing a
society is given as inciting incident instead of being a realization from someone
inside the society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The old man
character is meant to be the person the title refers to, having climbed the
mountains (really an elevator) to the surface and seen the outer space, but he
gets one scene before dying so the viewer already knows the twist of this society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reveal of oracle as computer could also
have served as a potential twist, albeit a predictable one, but Vollaerts
reveals that almost immediately when explaining who Natira is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This leaves the romance A-plot as really the
only thing pushing “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” forward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now DeForest Kelley actually gives an
incredibly strong performance, elevating some of the weaker romantic material
with this added idea that Bones has contracted an incurable disease that will
kill him in a year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This added subplot,
especially in the early portions of the episode, is genuinely an amazing idea
for the episode to explore and it’s clear that Kelley is grasping it with both
hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is this flash of anger at
Nurse Chapel allowing Majel Barrett some nice moments and this secrecy towards
Spock who finds out when Kirk has to explain why the computer’s power is
affecting McCoy harder then the pair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
kind of a shame that <i>Star Trek</i> isn’t interested in really maintaining
continuity between episodes because it could also be the basis for a nice
little multi-episode story arc of McCoy finding a cure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because this is a wholly episodic show, it
means that the plot is solved in the climax with the alien society that built
the asteroid ship actually had found a cure to this illness so everything is
wrapped up almost too nicely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s also
a plotline that is almost dropped in the final act until this reveal, which is
a shame because it provides fascinating motivation for McCoy’s character.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched
the Sky” suffers from largely being a rehash of a story that the series literally
did just a few weeks ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The more
unique ideas in the episode sadly don’t have enough time to really come to
fruition while much of the enjoyment is coming from the sheer talent and
charisma of the main trio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an
episode whose most interesting attribute is its title, something that honestly
would be more well suited outside of the format of <i>Star Trek</i>, taking out
much of its potential because of adherence to the format and characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-34263230194298657632024-01-03T07:51:00.000-08:002024-01-03T07:51:05.042-08:00Tales from Alagaesia Volume 1: The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm by: Christopher and Angela Paolini<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAe0XSBBPa0Y7zpSQLyiMD2WXpXbUMx2Qk_c93PSyNJZwZaJ-P-zds8Cx7__O29iwke0wzLJY-155rf1EKZP_DmsyLy5IgBgEzrGj0E1P-Spjx8-FOya54HUl6ziNRPQOiAyOZZuC6em34gvs6V5OcuoxHmr3MMu45Ea8je2k3UbsI49LN-TVj2dUufG5F/s1000/91IQCisu36L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="706" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAe0XSBBPa0Y7zpSQLyiMD2WXpXbUMx2Qk_c93PSyNJZwZaJ-P-zds8Cx7__O29iwke0wzLJY-155rf1EKZP_DmsyLy5IgBgEzrGj0E1P-Spjx8-FOya54HUl6ziNRPQOiAyOZZuC6em34gvs6V5OcuoxHmr3MMu45Ea8je2k3UbsI49LN-TVj2dUufG5F/s320/91IQCisu36L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="226" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
is a book that I honestly wasn’t going to read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i>The Inheritance Cycle</i> was a series that held some nostalgic
value, reading the first two books as a kid and revisiting the entire cycle in
2022 made me realize just how little of the series I liked, largely staying at
an average rating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christopher Paolini
has written more and found fans in both fantasy and science fiction, returning to
the world after seven years away with essentially two short stories, a framing
story, and fractions of a novel presented as a short story from his sister
Angela Paolini.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The afterword from Paolini
is interesting as the original idea became the third story “The Worm of
Kulkaras”, the first coming next, and the second being an opportunity given to
Angela just to fill out what could be reasonably published, and still the published
hardcover is almost pocket sized, is under 300 pages, and is formatted so there
are less words on the page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The frame
story is the point of view of Eragon as he is shown or told three separate stories
about other characters and cultures approximately a year after the events of <i>Inheritance</i>
finished the story.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Eragon’s perspective has clearly grown since Paolini
wrote <i>Inheritance</i>, certainly since writing <i>Eragon</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The boy has grown up into a confident, wise adult
existing in a challenge that he must overcome, one that he is honestly not
quite suited for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eragon’s character archetype
fits the epic hero since so much of <i>The Inheritance Cycle</i> drew on the
monomyth and <i>Star Wars</i>’ interpretation specifically, so his fate at the
end of <i>Inheritance</i> while fitting the monomyth means Paolini has to
develop him for what comes next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paolini
makes it clear that there is more for the character to do even if it’s quite clear
he will not be the protagonist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
interlude sequences are, however, where <i>The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm</i>
really fall apart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bookends that
open and close the book are great and clearly have a story to tell, but the
connecting tissue of the in between segments feel almost entirely like an afterthought,
just there because there needed to be something there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Between the stories there are also these
small time jumps that feel as if there are details completely absent that would
have been present had this been a full-length novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s also kind of a problem, but kind of the
point with Angela Paolini’s “On the Nature of Stars”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an interesting little short story, but
also one that’s clearly meant to be read on its own and within the context of
the character Angela, it’s dealing with truth, magic, and science after all,
but it’s also perhaps the weakest of the three short stories because it doesn’t
actually have much to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a short
story that thinks it’s being largely clever about saying nothing, though it’s
at least well written, even if it isn’t Paolini.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“A Fork in the Road” actually showed a lot of promise
as a short story as well, being actually written by Christopher Paolini.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“A Fork in the Road” is largely interested in
showing some of the world after the tyranny of Galbatorix, something that
Paolini actually excels at.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is still
evil in the world, not a central authoritarian evil, but almost normal,
everyday nastiness of people from the simple bullying of a child to the adult
extortion of others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a simple
story, one that has a twist as to who the central character is (it’s Murtagh
which is incredibly obvious in hindsight), but the simplicity is something that
Paolini almost needed to show that he could do interesting things with the
world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because it is the opening story,
it’s the first thing that the reader has to immerse themselves back into this
world so the simplicity actually works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It allows the closing story, “The Worm of Kulkaras” to work even better
as an exploration of Urgal culture and history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Urgals were clearly the stand-in for Tolkien’s orcs throughout <i>The
Inheritance Cycle</i> and it wasn’t until the final installment <i>Inheritance</i>
where they actually were given a fully deeper purpose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This short story expands that and honestly
allows Paolini to flex his more bardic side, as this is a story told through
the mouth of a bard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a tale of
slaying an evil dragon that feasts on Urgals, the titular worm, though shifts nicely
into a tale about knowing when to retreat and accept ones own limits without
feeling as if you are giving up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thematically
it is also relevant to Eragon’s own task of healing the dragons in the Eldunari
and the hatching of a new generation of dragons, the book ending with Eragon
being informed of the first dragon hatching.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, <i>The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm</i>
shows that Christopher Paolini’s growth as an author is something that has
continued since 2011’s <i>Inheritance</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The two stories he pens are genuinely great, although the struggle with
the interludes and the middle story being more baffling than anything hold this
one back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a fifth installment
in the series set after <i>Inheritance</i> released in 2023, something that I
am definitely now checking out because it’s clear that Paolini’s growth will
transfer to novel writing, but <i>The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm</i> is
still a bit rocky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is at least a
quick and easy read with enough charm to push it slightly above mediocrity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>6/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-55462654206759327832024-01-02T06:27:00.000-08:002024-01-02T06:27:59.160-08:00Star Wars: The High Republic: Out of the Shadows by: Justina Ireland<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixWplmCtoj4fzrwSuiCBdoLt74pgAM0Z-QOuPD2Uit5nX6__VMVdmHIMEpFcLmIYQvg9yGt2nuGQAGcu8L6vGKapuZSPts9CCZm8bDnEgcPYxOSiqFVYO2A_MGT4G5LSt3FVdt9pCggHGF1KAnQA4vyQ0nEHiSg9BwQJoVM1evwQTBE1IucBIuxyllMITL/s1501/Out%20of%20the%20Shadows.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1501" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixWplmCtoj4fzrwSuiCBdoLt74pgAM0Z-QOuPD2Uit5nX6__VMVdmHIMEpFcLmIYQvg9yGt2nuGQAGcu8L6vGKapuZSPts9CCZm8bDnEgcPYxOSiqFVYO2A_MGT4G5LSt3FVdt9pCggHGF1KAnQA4vyQ0nEHiSg9BwQJoVM1evwQTBE1IucBIuxyllMITL/s320/Out%20of%20the%20Shadows.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Perhaps it is because it is young adult, but <i>Out of
the Shadows</i> continues to be an installment in <i>Star Wars: The High
Republic</i> which just grabs me and keeps me interested more than the adult
books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe it is because this line of books
in general has simpler stories that don’t attempt to overcomplicate things,
perhaps it is because these feel the most easy to someone who isn’t really a
part of the <i>Star Wars </i>fandom, or maybe they’re just that good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Out of the Shadows</i> is essentially the
follow up to <i>Into the Dark</i>, though from a different author.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Justina Ireland writes this one, her first book
for the franchise but far from her first novel, and while the characters and
plot threads Claudia Gray introduced are here and contribute to the plot, they
take more of a backseat. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is quite
nice to see Reath from the perspective of other characters who call out his
suspicious actions near the climax dealing with the Nihil threat of the novel,
largely how Ireland follows up on <i>Into the Dark </i>with the Nihil moving into
the open and no longer being an isolated threat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nan is the one of the other major characters
from <i>Into the Dark</i> to reappear and have a major role in the novel,
Ireland being clearly interested in exploring the Nihil and their inner
workings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ireland doesn’t actually talk
down to the younger audience, there’s a lot of internal bickering and
bureaucracy as well as espionage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their
technology is quite advanced and dangerous, and the structured nature of their
society allows for Nan to have this innate desire to be seen and succeed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is an interesting idea of advancement in
Nihil society that is driving Nan and the reader can tell it’s going to be
self-destructive, she ends the book in a very different place than she started
with a completely different faction as intergalactic tensions are largely
heating up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ireland’s protagonists for <i>Out of the Shadows </i>are
pilot Sylvestri “Syl” Yarrow and Jedi Knight Vernestra “Vern” Rwoh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This pair are essentially the alternating
point of view characters for the entire novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Syl is an interesting character since her journey is essentially a mafia
story dealing with a mafia family that are not the Hutts and slowly falling in love
with someone in a lovely piece of LGBT representation from a young adult novel
published by Disney that couldn’t easily be removed for certain international
editions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She has a dead mother who may
actually be alive, a scholarly streak, and is a pretty fun character to follow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vern on the other hand is perhaps the standout
star of the novel, at least for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like
Reath in <i>Into the Dark</i>, Vern is a character with some uniqueness to her,
mainly because she is only 16 and is already a Jedi Knight, leading to a fascinating
internal monologue of being an outsider from her peers who are all still
Padawans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s perhaps a bit too cocky
as a Jedi for her own good, but there is the clear talent there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps my favorite portion in the novel is
this moment where Vern and Reath duel each other as a way to relieve stress and
learn from each other, because these characters really do shine together in
such an interesting way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s especially
apparent since the middle of the novel does suffer from largely dragging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The plot threads converge pretty easily and by
the end everything comes out, but it does feel as if Ireland has gone through several
drafts and the editing process on the novel was a little rough on the novel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, <i>Out of the Shadows</i> continues what has
been a pretty solid streak of <i>Star Wars </i>novels for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The High Republic continues to be the period
of the franchise that is allowing the most interesting creative opportunities,
and several authors being in charge means that each installment has this nice
risk and reward quality to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Justina
Ireland is also great when it comes to character work and worldbuilding, allowing
it to overcome some of the major issues that the plot of the novel had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a book that is such a fun and breezy read
that I can’t help but enjoy it even if there are problems to be
acknowledged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>7/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-32590222822325983322023-12-30T06:49:00.000-08:002023-12-30T06:49:23.754-08:00Day of the Dove by: Jerome Bixby and directed by: Marvin Chomsky<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvv8qoBn7ZFOk1XAU13gRtG2uClCCvYiDrhKoYIzwQ9ZZQ96fKhEKlm8LtrRe2oMm_HGROKk0pdoveBDtbzSZg9iLGa3Gp8Du8Nf8TNYSBsL3nHqvGgt1fglOTg3pq77gjyxub1y4P4rXHpIPnGDijWw5Omib5XtM37dwgbRIbxQIiECLSXRD0jXHyBQ9-/s1024/Day%20of%20the%20Dove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1024" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvv8qoBn7ZFOk1XAU13gRtG2uClCCvYiDrhKoYIzwQ9ZZQ96fKhEKlm8LtrRe2oMm_HGROKk0pdoveBDtbzSZg9iLGa3Gp8Du8Nf8TNYSBsL3nHqvGgt1fglOTg3pq77gjyxub1y4P4rXHpIPnGDijWw5Omib5XtM37dwgbRIbxQIiECLSXRD0jXHyBQ9-/s320/Day%20of%20the%20Dove.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Day of the Dove” is written by: Jerome Bixby and is
directed by: Marvin Chomsky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was
filmed under production code 66, was the 7<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i>
Season 3, the 62<sup>nd</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on
November 1, 1968.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As <i>Star Trek</i>’s third season is well underway, it’s
been quite interesting to note the shift in quality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While there have been largely two episodes that
I would call bad with “Spock’s Brain” and “And the Children Shall Lead”, there
have also been three episodes that have been downright good and interesting, something
that genuinely was not expected from the show at this point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Largely this is because as the third season
progresses, the production team for the show as a whole will shift into largely
new writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Day of the Dove” is one of
the few episodes from a returning writer, and a returning writer who had
written one of the best episodes of the previous season.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jerome Bixby returns to the series for his third
episode and like “Mirror, Mirror”, “Day of the Dove” is interested in exploring
the darker aspects of the main cast by putting them in a situation made to test
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is another episode with a
godlike alien in control of our main characters, putting them up against the
Klingons in a situation where the <i>Enterprise</i> itself is under siege and
the goal is to completely overtake our heroes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The high pressure of the situation also brings an interesting aspect of
unreality: ordinary items are transformed into medieval weapons as well as the
phasers following suit, the power is slowly being drained, and the crew are
being dragged into insanity with the dark, unconscious thoughts being brought
to the surface.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is already the
hatred of the Klingons as enemies of the Federation, but as the episode
progresses this becomes towards other members of the crew including outright
bigotry.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Day of the Dove” can be applauded for not shying away
from attempting to show bigotry and portray the human characters at their
individually lowest: seeing the crew attack each other is always going to feel off
and once a female Klingon prisoner, Mara played by Susan Howard, is captured she
is seen being assaulted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now this assault
is difficult to watch and while not particularly portrayed well, it’s still an
assault done for shock value showing how the usually good characters have gone
bad and Mara doesn’t get nearly as much agency, it adds to the madness and
uniqueness of the episode which is essentially mashing “The Naked Time” and “Arena”
together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bixby’s script is odd, however,
in the way that it ramps up tension and insanity among the crew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The early scenes of the episode actually take
place on a planet with the<i> Enterprise</i> crew and the Klingons each receiving
a distress call and a Federation settlement being disintegrated along with a
Klingon ship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This should be enough to
hang the episode’s plot on, but the tensions immediately rise with the insanity
of Chekov having an imaginary brother that is portrayed on-screen with hilarity
because William Shatner’s performance as Kirk can do nothing but go over the top
for these moments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shatner’s over the
top performance is something the entire episode builds to, the climax sees Kirk
and the Klingon commander Kang, played by Michael Ansara, throw down their weapons
and laugh with each other so the godlike alien just goes away, the resolution being
the final shot of the episode.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Jerome Bixby is clearly interested in writing a Cold
War allegory, the Klingons since “Errand of Mercy” are a stand in for the
Soviet Union and “Day of the Dove” is another aspect interested in exploring if
the Cold War went hot. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are themes <i>Star
Trek</i> have tackled before and certainly will tackle again whenever the
Klingons appear, but this being an episode that ends with the Klingons and
humans shaking hands means for an interesting view from Bixby of how the war
may progress, both sides coming together in aid for the greater good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The greater good for this one is sadly a
godlike alien entity of energy that’s causing the tensions in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bixby doesn’t really capitalize on this aspect
in any real way, just focusing on the damage the entity causes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Day of the Dove” also redesigns the Klingons,
for the worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While before this they
were already portrayed by white men in yellowface with specific orientalist
features, “Day of the Dove” becomes incredibly difficult to watch because the
redesign darkens the makeup to brownface, with black paint being used for the actors’
hands, at least for the male Klingons while the females are largely left in the
yellowface tones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While Michael Ansara as
Kang and Susan Howard as Mara aren’t putting on accents, and indeed are still
ruthless villains, the racism makes “Day of the Dove” all the more difficult to
watch, especially since half the guest cast are Klingons and in the makeup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Marvin Chomsky’s direction is also insistent
on framing the Klingons front and center so they are on-screen far more than
you might expect (though Chomsky has improved since “And the Children Shall
Lead”).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, “Day of the Dove” just nearly gets by on how
ridiculous the premise and execution of the idea are instead of being
particularly good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again this is a
third season episode whose best moments are in the regular supporting cast,
both Nichelle Nichols and James Doohan have moments and Walter Koenig’s insanity
with Chekov’s non-existent dead brother is something that has to be seen to be
believed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ideas that author Jerome
Bixby sets down, however, are quite half-baked and part of that may be because
of Gene L. Coon had completely left the show at this point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is compounded with the Klingon designs
being at their most bigoted, it undercuts an episode that really wants to be
anti-racist and is already not thinking through those themes to their fullest
extent leading to a very mixed experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>5/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2052139908540131148.post-58713221655360981572023-12-23T09:45:00.000-08:002023-12-23T09:46:26.499-08:00Spectre of the Gun by: Lee Cronin and directed by: Vincent McEveety<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzBjmFCazAo2ysEcDZxL2vWSsluCu3ePCzQXt9hqX_NBj2FLE3uPBgJBJqbULgbP6fAyVMT70d9emf9-fFAoSo4o40jfrMWeWHSukledW0NjfGGOelvY3aOIOjRS8y1HOVRC2Ha0Vpg40kWnM2-vKTrPvuzgIS8PznwmBoXyPCZFhMYfhmsR9kDK424a8s/s718/Spectre%20of%20the%20Gun.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="718" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzBjmFCazAo2ysEcDZxL2vWSsluCu3ePCzQXt9hqX_NBj2FLE3uPBgJBJqbULgbP6fAyVMT70d9emf9-fFAoSo4o40jfrMWeWHSukledW0NjfGGOelvY3aOIOjRS8y1HOVRC2Ha0Vpg40kWnM2-vKTrPvuzgIS8PznwmBoXyPCZFhMYfhmsR9kDK424a8s/s320/Spectre%20of%20the%20Gun.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“Spectre of the Gun” is written by: Lee Cronin, a
pseudonym for Gene L. Coon and is directed by: Vincent McEveety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was filmed under production code 56, was
the 6<sup>th</sup> episode of <i>Star Trek</i> Season 3, the 61<sup>st</sup> episode
of <i>Star Trek</i>, and was broadcast on October 25, 1968.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">If I had a nickel for every 1960s science fiction
series whose third season had an episode focused on a pastiche of a gunfight at
the O.K. Corral, I would have two nickels which is not a lot, but it’s weird that
it happened twice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes “Spectre of the
Gun” is Gene L. Coon’s last full script for <i>Star Trek</i>, under the
pseudonym Lee Cronin, and with his last script he decides to do a pastiche of a
western.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the television western has
a very long history, its roots of course being in the many, many western films
of the period, but by the 1960s the film western was largely a foreign concept
as it transitioned to the spaghetti westerns pioneered by Sergio Leone and
other Italian filmmakers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doing a
pastiche of the genre is honestly not something that one would expect <i>Star
Trek </i>to do, but Gene L. Coon had an idea for a script involving aliens
transporting the crew to a version of the Earth’s past as a trial for opening relations
with the Melkotians, yet another race of seemingly god like aliens who are able
to create these psychic landscapes to inhabit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s essentially running on a similar theme to “Arena”, even down to the
general message of anti-violence and humanity’s potential to overcome the violence
revealed at the last minute of the episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is also another episode where a regular character, this time Walter
Koenig’s Chekov, is killed and this holds the key to the fact that it’s a
psychic projection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Where the episode shines is actually in its production
design, something essentially forced by the decreased budget of the third
season.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Coon clearly hoped to have this
episode shot at least partially on a suitable location, but because of the budget
the script is confined to studio sets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
of this, none of the built sets are complete buildings, instead largely facades
while the interiors can be seen without walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is a clock which is floating in midair which is essentially our
countdown to the gunfight, the bar is there but there’s this constant red
background.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The red background may be intended
to represent the Arizona sunset, but it’s another piece of theatricality in the
episode because all of this is clearly a sham.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That aspect of the episode is fascinating to watch, especially added to
with the guest cast largely giving performances that feel uninterested in actually
giving a performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It almost reflects
the tired nature of the Western in ways that I’m certain production did not
intend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>James Doohan and De Forrest
Kelley are the standouts from the main cast here as well, largely giving in to the
historical setting and theatrical nature of the episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scotty gets to have fun trying good old bourbon
from the period while McCoy attempts to reason with Doc Holliday to create
tranquilizers to save themselves, both very fun scenes to watch.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The direction of the episode is the last by Vincent
McEveety, a stalwart director and this time the direction is no less
interesting because of the slashed budget.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because of the half-finished sets and the studio bound nature of the
episode, McEveety continues his use of interesting and rather odd shots
throughout the episode to keep things visually interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously, the big problem with “Spectre of
the Gun” is that it’s an episode where there is very little new ground to cover
for <i>Star Trek</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is almost a
hint at the end with Kirk and Spock musing about the fact that Kirk still had
violent urges and was willing to kill the Earp’s, even though the climax
involves Spock mindmelding with the crew to fully commit to the setting being
false and the bullets being not real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
a shame that it came right at the end because it feels like a logical aspect of
Kirk’s character to follow up on, though because this is the last script by Coon
I fear it will be forgotten in the largely episodic nature of the show.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Overall, despite several elements of “Spectre of the
Gun” going over old ground for <i>Star Trek</i>, the old ground is actually
traveled quite well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gene L. Coon is still
a wonderful script writer who knows how to inject interest in a script and clearly
is delighting in the historical setting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Vincent McEveety is also having a lot of fun with injecting a surreal
theatricality into the unfinished sets and the regular budget cuts of the
series.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s really holding this one back
is a supporting cast that isn’t interested in connecting with the material
seriously, potentially because of how bloated the Western genre had become,
potentially because <i>Star Trek</i> was having the reputation of an overbudget
show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The potential energy is there, but
the lack of it becoming kinetic brings the episode down to a simple hour of fun
and not one of the great’s it could have been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>7/10.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jacob Lickliderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06974416775799076342noreply@blogger.com0