Remembering Harold Ramis

Second City Television, or SCTV, as it came to be known, was, from the very beginning, a program that  demanded a certain level of dedication from its viewers.  It was a show that you had to really want to watch.  That was due mainly to the fact that watching SCTV, and this was back in the days before VCRs or other so-called "time-shifting" technology were in common usage, meant staying up until the wee hours of the morning.  This was especially true during the show's early years  when it was a syndicated half hour, before  it got picked up by NBC and expanded to ninety minutes. Back then, the show usually didn't even start until after two a.m. in the morning, at least that was the case with the station on which I initially encountered it.  (That station was Cleveland's WEWS [Channel 5], for those who care.  I grew up in Linesville, Pennsylvania, a small town in the northwestern corner of the Keystone State, right on the border with Ohio where we could pick up over the air TV stations from Erie, PA, as well as Ohio cities Youngstown and Cleveland.  If weather conditions were right we could also get a Channel 10 from across another border in Canada.  But, of course, this has little to do with the topic of today's post, so let's out of these parentheses and back to business, shall we?)

There were, of course, more than ample rewards to be had by SCTV's loyal followers for the herculean effort required merely to see the show.  SCTV was off-beat and quirky, intelligent, experimental, often hilarious, and utterly unlike anything on television at the time.  Produced  on an extremely limited budget, the show actually looked like the type of cheap local programming that might be produced by the kind of small, struggling independent station that SCTV pretended to be.  To me, this sort of gives the show a weird brand of authenticity which further served to endear the program to me.

The real key to SCTV's success, however, lie in its talented  ensemble of writer/performers that included John Candy, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy and Joe Flaherty.  Even among such a powerhouse assemblage of comedic talent, for me one person stood out.  I'm not just saying this because he died early last week and this is my somewhat delayed tribute, rather I'm pretty sure that I'm remembering events of almost four decades ago fairly accurately when I say that my favorite member of the original SCTV cast was none other than Harold Ramis.  I honestly can't quite pin down why that is, but something about him; his appearance, his personality, his unique comic delivery; made the man stand out.  Furthermore, although I really wasn't paying attention to such things at the time, as head writer Ramis was in a very large part responsible for imbuing SCTV with it unique comic voice.  I really did miss Ramis' presence on the show when he retreated from performing after the initial season, and although it would remain the best late night comedy show on TV, SCTV lost just a little of its magic when he left to pursue his destiny in the movies.

Most of the talk of Ramis since his death has focused on his achievements as a writer and director, and while those are indeed worthy of praise, I have, as you can see, chosen to focus on his much more limited role as a performer, which I feel is equally worthy of recognition yet has recieved little attention.  While Groundhog Day has been singled out as his greatest achievement in the former fields, and despite how good he was in his SCTV days, Harold Ramis' greatest achievement as an actor came in 1984, as Ghosterbusters' Egon Spengler.  This highly intelligent, somewhat nerdy, socially awkward character was perfectly suited to Ramis' personality and comic style.  No surprise there, of course, as Ramis co-wrote the screenplay.  Still, its hard to imagine any other performer who could have delivered a line like "I collect spores, molds and fungus" in such a way that it stands out as one of the film's funniest moments.  

While Harold Ramis' work behind the camera may indeed have overshadowed, and perhaps rightly so, his work on screen, now we are to be denied any more of either side of Ramis.  Still, we are left with our memories and a mostly excellent body of work, on camera and off.  (...and Meatballs, which despite Bill Murray's best efforts is barely watchable, but in light of the rest of his career, he can be forgiven for that one stinker.)

"You Have Missed This." Some Disjointed Thoughts on Sherlock's "The Empty Hearse"

What follows is less a review of the series three debut of Sherlock than a snapshot of my reactions upon watching the episode.  First off, I have to ask: Am I the only one who liked Watson's moustache?  Honestly, I think he should have kept it, no matter what Sherlock said.

"The Empty Hearse" is my favorite episode of the series yet.  In terms of characterization, it represents the show's high water mark.  We get to see new sides to both of the Holmes brothers and are introduced to a delightful new addition to the cast in the person of John's fiancee Mary.  I hope that the writers of Sherlock do better with the character than Conan Doyle did.  He just didn't seem to know what to do with her, and very quickly shunted her into the background, ultimately revealing that she had died during the time between "The Final Problem" and "The Adventure of the Empty House," when everyone thought Holmes was dead.  

It seems that being "dead" for a couple of years has made our Sherlock more human.  He still doesn't understand human nature and has problems empathasizing with others, but he at last seems to at least realize the importance of making the attempt.  The original stories didn't have a lot in the way of character development.  While Holmes is a  wonderfully realized character, he never grows or changes.  Throughout the stories of the Holmes canon he remains basically the same as when we and Watson first meet him in "A Study In Scarlet."  Sherlock's Sherlock, on the other hand, is evolving and I like him a lot more after seeing this episode.

I loved the interaction between the Holmes brothers, especially the scene where they attempt to one up each other at a game of "deductions."  I suspect that the somewhat more sympathetic portrayal of Mycroft this time out had quite a bit to do with the fact that Mark Gatiss, who plays the elder, smarter Holmes sibling, wrote the episode. 

I'm not sure what exactly the Empty Hearse, the group of Holmes fans and conspiracy theorists contributed to the episode, other than an attempt to justify a title that had nothing to do with the content of the episode, kind of like a Bob Dylan song.  The title is, of course, a play on "The Adventure of the Empty House," the story in which Holmes came back from self imposed exile.  This episode bore little resemblance to that story, other than having Holmes returning to London after a couple of years mopping up the remnants of Moriarty's criminal empire.  

I always have thought that Watson, in "The Empty House," accepted Holmes' resurrection perhaps a little too calmly.  John's reaction in "The Empty Hearse" rings a bit truer, if much more violent.

We shall most likely, I suspect, never be told the real story of just how Sherlock faked his suicide in "The Reichenbach Falls."  Even Sherlock's own account at the end of the episode is suspect.  That's fine, for as John says when Sherlock reappears, its not the how that's important, but the why and that is more than sufficiently explained.  Besides, I get the feeling that not even co-creators Stephen Moffatt and Mark Gatiss have a clue how such a convincing suicide could have been faked and decided to just sort of gloss over it.  Honestly, I don't mind since the rest of the episode was so well done. 

You know, I never thought that a Sherlock Holmes story would remind me of Grant Morrison's Animal Man, but the resolution of the terrorist bomb threat evoked comparisons in my mind to end of Morrison's Invasion crossover in Animal Man #6.  I won't say much more in order to avoid spoilers, except that both "The Empty Hearse" and Animal Man #6's "Birds of Prey" place their characters in similar jeopardy and resolve the danger in pretty much exactly the same manner.  

On the other hand, the scene where Sherlock meets Molly's new boyfriend evoked a more personal memory for me.  Molly's new man, as her friends quickly notice, closely resembles Sherlock, right down to the clothes.  Well,  during my final semester of college, several months after my relationship with my first girlfriend ended, I ran into her and her new boyfriend.  The encounter, though friendly, was awkward on several levels.  After all, she was with another man and I was exiting one of the school's two all female dormitories on a Sunday morning after having spent the night in the room of one of the residents.  Like Molly's friends, I was tactful enough not to mention it, but I could not help but notice how much this new man resembled me, right down to the way he was dressed.  In a strange way, that made me feel a little better about the break up.  Well, that and the fact that, as I said, I, too, was seeing someone else by that time.

It was a nice touch that the couple briefly appearing as Sherlock's parents were, in fact, the real life parents of Benedict Cumberbatch.  As far as I know, we never met any member of Holmes' family other than Mycroft in the original tales, and I don't think their parents were ever even mentioned.

Finally, the one moment in the episode that actually had me cheering was right at the end when Sherlock grabs the deerstalker cap, puts it on and goes out to meet the press and "be Sherlock Holmes."  

After this episode, I am looking forward more than ever to the remaining two episode of this series of Sherlock.  Moreover, I hope that this time we aren't kept waiting for another two years for the next batch.

Two TPBs of Note Coming From DC in May

This May will finally see the release of the far, far, far overdue collection of the first twelve issues of John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake's brilliant take on DC's original Ghostly Guardian as Spectre Volume 1: Crimes and Judgments (although it is listed among DC's solicitations for April).  If you're at all interested, here's a link to a post I wrote about this book when it was first announced back in August. If you missed this excellent series when it was being published some twenty years ago and have failed to snap it up from the  back issue bins in the ensuing two decades, now is the moment to make up for lost time and discover one of the best comics DC has ever produced, especially since I'm guessing that if this volume sells well enough, the company will have no choice but to do what they should have done way back in the 1990s and release the entire series in trade paperback.

Also due in May is Showcase Presents Super Friends Vol. 1, a 448 page trade paperback reprinting in black and white the first 34 issues (out of a run of 47 issues) of the somewhat belated (the comic debuted in 1976 while the TV show began airing in 1973) comic based on Hanna-Barbera's Super Friends Saturday morning cartoon series, which was, in turn, very loosely based on Justice League of America. 
While the stories in this volume are generally deemed to exist outside of mainstream DC continuity, that seems to have been something that was decided retroactively.  Unlike later TV tie-in comics, the late E. Nelson Bridwell approached the tales in this book as if they were, in fact, taking place in the DC Universe.  The stories contain numerous references to events and developments in other DC titles of the day.  This series did have a lasting effect on the DC Universe.  It is in these pages that many of the international super-heroes who would go on to comprise the membership of the Global Guardians are first introduced, many in the same issues that introduced the Wonder Twins into the comic a few months ahead of their TV debut.  The Guardians would go on to play a major role in Keith Giffen's Justice League tales, particularly in Justice League Europe.  Continuity concerns to the side, the main selling point of this volume is over 400 pages of fun, all-ages super-hero adventures written by Bridwell with art, for the most part, provided by the legendary Ramona Fradon.
By the way, note the cover of the Showcase Presents volume, which was originally commissioned for a tabloid sized Super Friends one-shot that preceded the ongoing series.  For the most part, its by Alex Toth.  However, you'll notice that the Superman head is by someone else (it looks like Curt Swan, if I'm not mistaken, which would make sense as he was the primary Superman artist at the time.)  DC  once again, as they had on Jack Kirby's Fourth World comics a few years earlier, felt the need to "fix" Superman's face to bring it in line with their other Superman titles.  That's somewhat odd, in this case especially.  After all, Toth had done the character designs for the cartoon so it was his version of Superman, and the other Justice Leaguers, that people were presumably buying the comic for.  Also, if I'm remembering correctly, they left the Superman faces inside the comic alone, so I'm not sure what the thinking was behind meddling with the Man of Steel's visage on the cover.

Star Trek: The Animated Series Episode 16--"The Jihad"

With the hindsight of four decades, you could choose to see "The Jihad," the final original episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series' first season, as a precursor of things to come in television drama.  It almost seems to a prototype of the season ending events that have become the norm over the ensuing years.  The episode does, if only in retrospect, seem to be reaching for the type grand epic spectacle that characterizes many modern series' season finales.  The stakes are much higher than in a typical episode and there are "guest stars" aplenty.  For the most part, however, the new characters are voiced by the series' regular cast, most notably James Doohan, who has no lines as his regular character Scotty but takes on two "guest star" roles, although occasional Trek writer David Gerrold lends his voice to one character.  Of course, if this were a season ender of a more recent Trek series, it would be a two parter with the viewers forced to wait until September for the predictable conclusion.

Kirk and Spock are summoned by a member of the Vedala, the oldest known space faring race in the galaxy, to a council of representatives of several alien races.  There is the reptilian Sord, worm-like multi-armed Em/3/Green  (the character voiced by Gerrold) and Lara, who looks mostly human except for her funky eyebrows.  Rounding out the group is Tchar, prince of the Skorr.  The Skorr are a race of bird people, one of whom was previously seen hanging out in front of the Guardian of Forever back in "Yesteryear."  

Tchar explains that a sacred relic of his people, the Soul of Alar, has been stolen.  The Soul is a glowing piece of Op-Art sculpture into which was transferred centuries past the brainwaves of the deceased prophet Alar, the religious leader who transformed the Skorr from a savage warrior race into the civilized people they are today.  While the theft of the artifact is, for the moment, being kept a secret, should it become known, Tchar reveals, the Skorr would launch a bloody jihad, a holy war, against the entire galaxy.  Thus the mission of this motley assemblage, should they choose to accept it, is  to journey to the "Mad Planet," a world of unstable geological and weather shifts, where the Soul is known to be stashed, and recover the relic.

Instantly transported by the Vedala to the "Mad Planet," our heroes immediatedly encounter all sorts of obstacles, including equipment failure and an erupting volcano, before finally reaching the citadel which houses the stolen sculpture.

The final obstacle they encounter is Tchar himself, who has been working against them fromt the beginning.  It is, in fact, Tchar who stole the Soul of Alar for the express purpose of starting a galaxy wide jihad, by which means he intended to restore his people to what he envisioned as their former warrior glory.   Needless to say, Tchar is defeated, the Soul of Alar returned to the Skorr, and holy war is averted.  Furthermore, the Vedala time travel Kirk and Spock back to the Enterprise a mere two minutes after they left as if none of this ever happened.

While "The Jihad" is atypical for a Star Trek episode, its story is hardly original.  It is, in fact, fairly representative of a typical "quest" story or even a more contemporary "caper"film.  A collection of archetypes; in this case the cowardly thief (Em/3/Green), the hunter/tracker (Lara) and the warrior prince (Tchar); are gathered together and sent off in pursuit of some McGuffin, with dire consequences portended to be in the offing should they fail.  That pretty much describes the plot of Lord of the Rings, doesn't it? To be honest, its been over three decades since I read the books, and I fell asleep while watching the first film and haven't even attempted to watch the others.

Even Tchar's reasons for his crime are heavily cliched and would show up later in Star Trek: The Next Generation as motivation for quite a few rogue Klingons.

If this  weren't a Saturday morning cartoon, its quite probable that the cowardly theif Em wouldn't have survived the adventure. What is surprising, given the time slot, is Lara's aggressive coming on to Kirk, offering the promise of making a few "green memories."  ("Wink Wink Nudge Nudge KnowwhatImean? KnowwhatImean?") Its an interesting reversal of the usual situation of Kirk seducing the alien space babe.  The good captain refuses on the basis that they need to concentrate  on their mission.  However, you've got to wonder if he might feel a little uncomfortable being pursued  so aggressively rather than being the pursuer.  The whole Lara/Kirk dynamic is really the only noteworthy aspect of an otherwise routine and by the numbers episode.  

As I noted above, "The Jihad" was the final original episode of the animated Trek's first season.  Six more originals were produced for the show's second season, and I do intend to review them.  However, I'm going to be sticking to my conceit of posting the reviews forty years to the day after their original airdate, so this is the last Star Trek: The Animated Series review for a about nine months.  NBC's 1974 Fall Saturday morning schedule, including the animated Star Trek's second season opener "The Pirates of Orion," debuted on September 7, 1974.

Star Trek: The Animated Series Episode 15--"The Eye of the Beholder"

In addition to their primary duties of exploration, scientific research and final frontier diplomacy, the crew of the USS Enterprise seemed to spent quite a bit of time functioning as an interstellar missing persons bureau, tracking down lost or missing starships and their crews.  This time out, Kirk and company are on the trail of a six member Federation scientific research team who have gone missing in the vicinity of the planet Latra VII. 
Beaming down to the planet, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy encounter a wide variety of environments and strangely familiar creatures and soon deduce that they have landed smack in the middle of some sort of interstellar zoo.  In short order the trio are captured by the keepers of the zoo, highly intelligent, telepathic creatures which resemble giant pink slugs, and taken to join the surviving missing researchers in the zoo's human exhibit. 
An attempt to escape leads to a Latran child being accidentally beamed aboard the Enterprise.  There, the youngster learns all about the Enterprise and the Federation.  Upon returning to the surface, he convinces his elders that the humans are an evolving intelligent species that does not belong in their zoo.  The Enterprise crew members and the rescued scientists are then sent on their way.
The writer of this episode, David P. Harmon, also contributed two episodes to the second season of the original series, "Obsession" and "A Piece of the Action," which, by the way, also begins with the Enterprise checking up on a missing starship.  In addition to his work on Star Trek, Harmon enjoyed a long and varied three decade long career as a television writer that spanned from from the medium's earliest days up to the 1980's.  He wrote in genres ranging from science fiction and cartoons to sitcoms to westerns and crime dramas. I find it amusing that the same man who wrote one of my favorite Trek episodes, "A Piece of the Action" is the same man who wrote the TV movies "Rescue from Gilligan's Island" and "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island", which,even by the admittedly low standards of Gilligan's Island, are fairly awful. 
The animated Star Trek took full advantage of the freedom allowed by animation to create exotic alien creatures and landscapes, expanding the universe of Trek by opening it up to include a variety of non-humanoid aliens.  Alongside the Phylosians of "The Infinite Vulcan" and the Vendorian from "The Survivor", the Latrans and their zoo complex are a prime example of this. 
However, Filmation's constraints of time and budget resulted in extremely limited animation, and the "action" in this episode seems exceptionally static even when compared to other episodes in the series.  Unfortunately, this has the effect this time of dragging down what is otherwise a clever and imaginative first contact tale and making it rather difficult to watch.

Star Trek: The Animated Series Episode 14--"The Slaver Weapon"

One of the strengths of the original Star Trek was its ability to attract established, big name science fiction authors to write episodes for the series. Richard Matheson, Norman Spinrad and Harlan Ellison each turned in one episode apiece, though Ellison, being Ellison, remains notoriously unhappy with his episode as filmed.  Theodore Sturgeon wrote two episodes, as well as, as I mentioned in an earlier post, a proposal for a third, ultimately unproduced, segment.  Psycho author (meaning that he wrote the book Psycho, as opposed to "psycho author," implying that he's nuts) Robert Bloch wrote three episodes, while Jerome Bixby leads the pack with four.  When the series was revived in animated form, this tradition continued, with Larry Niven writing "The Slaver Weapon," adapted from his own short story "The Soft Weapon."  From what I have gathered based on my research on the Internet, this episode is the only filmed adaptation of any of Niven's work.

The episode is also notable for being the first, and only, Star Trek episode since the original pilot "The Cage" not to feature Captain Kirk, nor is the starship Enterprise itself seen outside of the opening and closing credits sequences.  In casting the episode, Niven chose the closest analogs from the Trek crew to the characters in his original story.  Apparently, their  was no brash young starship captain among the dramatis personae of "The Soft Weapon."  Of course, it makes sense that the captain would remain behind on the ship while his officers handled what they probably originally believed to be a simple delivery.  Perhaps if this had been a live action episode, with its accompanying longer running time, there would have been some scenes checking in with Kirk and the Enterprise toward the beginning and end of the episode.
As it is, however, the story, which follows the plot of  "The Soft Weapon" pretty faithfully, focuses on Spock, Sulu and Uhura, manning the shuttle Copernicus, on a mission to transport a rare and valuable Slaver Stasis Box to Starbase 25.  Stasis Boxes are the only remnants of the Slaver Empire, which ruled the entire galaxy a billion years in the past until wiped out in a great war of revolt.  Stasis Boxes protect their contents from the ravages of time, even after a billion years, and the contents vary from box to box.  One such box contained a device that helped the Federation perfect artificial gravity for starships, while another contained an armed bomb that exploded on opening.  Thus, Stasis Boxes are considered extremely dangerous and unpredictable.

As the shuttle passes the Beta Lyrae system, the box begins to glow, indicating the presence nearby of another Stasis Box.  Diverting the shuttle to an ice covered world to investigate,  the three from the Enterprise soon find themselves prisoners of a trio of Kzinti, cat-like members of a warrior race that has fought, and lost, four wars with humanity in the past.  They used an empty Stasis Box to lure the shuttle in order to capture their Stasis Box, hoping to find within a weapon that will allow them to finally defeat the Federation.

Upon opening the box, the Kzinti discover a strange device with multiple settings, none of which are of any apparent use to them as they duplicate technology the Kzinti or the Federation already possess.  However, when they temporarily escape from the Kzinti, taking the Slaver device with them, Spock and Sulu stumble upon a hidden mystery setting that yields exactly the kind of weapon of mass destruction the Kzinti seek.  The pair are quickly recaptured and the Kzinti play around with the gadget and hit upon yet another hidden setting that produces a sort of talking hand-held computer.  The Kzinti ask the device how to get back to the weapon they saw earlier, but the computer, naturally suspicious of these unknown, and possibly enemy, aliens pestering it  with all these questions, directs the Kzinti to still another new setting.  This one causes the device to destroy itself and the Kzinti when they step outside their ship to test  it.
This episode suffers in some viewers eyes from yet another manifestation of director Hal Sutherland's color blindness.  The fierce, carnivorous warriors of the Kzinti are decked out in bright pink uniforms and fly around the galaxy in a pretty pink space ship.  Story editor Dorothy Fontana, in the behind the scenes featurette included on the DVD, says that she called Niven and apologized for this after the episode originally aired.  Personally, it really doesn't bother me.  This may be Star Trek, and the  episode may have been written by a Hugo and Nebula Award winning author of serious SF, but it is also a Saturday morning Filmation cartoon of the early 1970's, and odd,  often garish, color schemes were par for the course.  To me, the pink uniforms are part of the episode's appeal, giving it a sort of quirky, slightly off-kilter charm.
As for the story, Niven manages a nearly seamless  melding of the "Known Space" universe of his short stories and novels into the world of Star Trek.  The  result is one of the highlights of Trek's animated incarnation.   There are a few bumps.  Sulu states that the last war with the Kzinti occurred 200 years earlier.  While this doesn't directly contradict anything established before, or since for that matter, it does crowd the timeline a bit.  This would place the Kzinti wars sometime during the very earliest days of the Federation, at about the same time they also supposedly were fighting a war with the Romulans.  Of course, this really would only have been a problem if the Kzinti had become a lasting addition to Trek lore.  As it is,  other than a comic book story also written by Niven, this would be the last we hear of  these felinoid warriors.  Also, I can't help wondering how we know so much about the Slaver empire and its demise if the only remnants of their civilization are the ocassional  extremely rare Stasis Box.
Notwithstanding my nit-picky quibbles, "The Slaver Weapon" is an episode that manages to be  both good science fiction and good Star Trek, which aren't always necessarily the same thing.

Star Trek: The Animated Series Episode 13--"The Ambergris Element"

A series of devastating quakes have left the planet Argo totally covered in water.  The Enterprise journeys there to gather information that may help another Federation planet facing the same fate.  The landing party, consisting of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Lieutenant Clayton piloting the Aqua-Shuttle, are attacked by a giant sea monster called a sur-snake.  McCoy and Clayton escape back to the ship, but Kirk and Spock are dragged underwater in the Aqua-Shuttle by the sur-snake.

Days later, the two are found near the wreckage of the Aqua-shuttle.  They are uable to breathe, having been transformed in water breathers.   Kirk and Spock beam back down to the planet to find the people who did this to them.  Eventually, they discover an undersea race of intelligent beings who call themselves the Aquons.  The Aquons are suspicious of the outsiders, thinking them spies from their air breathing enemies, and refuse to help them reverse their mutations.  

Some of the younger Aquons defy the "ordainments" of the older Aquon Tribunes and lead the Enterprise officers to ancient ruins where they find old scrolls containing the cure for their condition.  With another massive quake about to hit the area of the Aquon city, Kirk, Spock and the young Aquons race against time to gather the venom of a sur-snake for the antidote.  

After Kirk and Spock are changed back to normal, Kirk uses the Enterprise's phasers to shift the epicenter of the coming quake away from the Aquon's city, saving their civilization.  In gratitude, the Aquons vow to allow the Federation access to the ancient knowledge in the old ruins. 

"The Ambergris Element," despite a somewhat ridiculous premise that stretches the suspension of disbelief almost to its limits, is actually surprisingly good episode.  Its basically a generation gap fable, a popular theme for the time the episode was produced, with the young Aquons finding the courage to challenge the preconceptions of the older generation and help the outsiders.  Of the five episodes, three for the original series and two for the animated revival, that Margaret Arman wrote for Star Trek, "The Ambergris Element" is, in my opinion, the best of the lot.

Star Trek: The Animated Series Episode 12--"The Time Trap"

The Enterprise's assignment this week is to investigate the mysterious area of space known as the Delta Triangle, where hundreds of ships have disappeared since ancient times.   What they find is a Klingon ship that attacks them before vanishing.  Pursuing their enemy, the Enterprise finds itself in pocket of time where all the disappeared ships across time have ended up.  Accepting their exile in this timeless limbo, the crews of these ships have formed a society they called Elysia.  Captain Kirk and the Klingon commander Kor, however, refuse to accept their entrapment and, despite the warnings of the Elysian council that escape is impossible, make plans to return home. Spock devices a plan of escape that involves the Klingons and the crew of the Enterprise working together to combine their two ship into one, giving them the power to escape the time pocket that a single ship lacks.  Of course, the Klingons, being Klingons, conspire to destroy the Enterprise as soon as the two ships have effected their escape.  Naturally,  of course, the two ships succeed in returning to normal space, and the Klingon treachery is detected and the destruction of the Enterprise averted at the last possible second.  

The Bermuda Triangle, the legendary area of the Atlantic Ocean where many ships and planes have supposedly mysteriously disappeared over the years, was, as I remember, a bit of an obsession in pop culture back in the seventies.  Speculation about the mysteries of the Triangle inspired countless fictional explanations in movies, TV episodes and comics.  "The Time Trap" is firmly routed in that  sub-genre of science fiction. The Delta Triangle is clearly an analog of the Bermuda Triangle.   Writer Joyce Perry weds that real world inspiration to an intriguing science fiction premise to create one of the better episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series.  

My favorite part of the episode are the scenes showing the ruling council of Elysia.   The council consists of a mix of representatives of the various races that we've seen both in past animated episodes and in the original live action series.  In addition to a human and a Klingon, I could recognize an Orion, a Vulcan (or perhaps a Romulan, its not quite which he is), a Gorn, an Andorian and a Tellarite, all races seen in the original show, as well as a Phylosian and a Vendorian, from the earlier animated episodes "The Infinite Vulcan" and "The Survivor" respectively.  The inclusion of what appears to be a Kzinti is a nice bit of foreshadowing, as those felinoid alien warriors wouldn't be formally introduced to viewers until "The Slaver Weapon" aired three weeks later.

The biggest flaw of the episode is that it lacks suspense.  There's really never any doubt that our heroes, and our villains, will escape Elysia and that the Enterprise will avoid being blown up.  It seems to me that this is mostly due to the episode's twenty-two minute run time.  There is a lot of story and a lot of high concepts to fit into those few minutes.  Perhaps if this had been a live action episode, and thus twice as long, these elements could have been developed more fully.  Nonetheless, "The Time Trap" is still a very good and entertaining half hour of Trek.  The allusions to the Bermuda Triangle mark it as very much a product of its time, yet it also has a certain timeless quality, lent to it perhaps by its futuristic setting, that allows it to hold up even forty years later.

Star Trek: The Animated Series Episode 11--"The Terratin Incident"

In some of my earlier posts on Star Trek: The Animated Series, I've compared my impressions upon re-watching the episode to my memories of it.  However, I can't do that here.  Until viewing it again this morning, I had absolutely no memory of this episode.  That's surprising considering that the writer of "The Terratin Incident," Paul Schneider, also authored two of the finest, and most memorable, episodes of Star Trek's first season, "Balance of Terror" and "The Squire of Gothos."  Its also somewhat surprising given some of the bizarre imagery in this episode.  Honestly, I just don't know how I could have forgotten images like the one of Kirk and the giant communicator that accompanies this post, or that of a cadre of redshirts struggling mightily to pull a relatively huge lever on the transporter console.

Because I'm running behind schedule on this post, I'll take the lazy blogger route and skip trying to summarize the episode in my own words and  simply quote the Wikipedia entry for the episode:

"...(W)hile observing a burnt-out supernova, the Federation starship Enterprise picks up a strange message transmitted in a two-hundred-year-old Earth code.

The signal is traced to a nearby planet. When the Enterprise enters orbit, it is hit by an energy beam that damages its dilithium crystals and makes the crew begin to shrink (and apparently their clothing has also shrunk, because they are organic). The cause is the inhabitants of a miniature city called Terratin. Terratin is a lost Earth colony; its inhabitants have mutated, because of the supernova's radiation and are now all microscopic size. Chief Medical Officer Dr. McCoy determines that the crew will continue to shrink beyond their ability to control the ship unless a cure is found.

Captain Kirk beams down to the surface and finds that the transporter can reverse their size. Kirk returns to the ship, but the crew are now microscopic. Meanwhile, the Terratins have beamed the bridge crew down to their city, where the crew learns the Terratins' fate. The crew are beamed back to the ship and return to normal size. However, the Terratins have been small for generations and cannot be restored to normal size. Their planet is in peril from massive volcanic activity, so the whole Terratin city is beamed aboard the Enterprise, and moved to another planet."

This is another episode that had me laughing out loud at several points, although in this case, I don't think that's quite the effect Schneider was going for. 

In the famous essay "Notes On Camp," Susan Sontag notes that:

"In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve"

Using that standard, I would classify "The Terratin Incident" as pure, glorious High Camp.  The basic premise of the episode is utterly ridiculous.  It almost seems as if it could have been lifted from one of those dreadful Gold Key Star Trek comics, although the execution is better than those comics would have done.  That said, the sight of the shrunken crew members trying to operate the ship's relatively huge controls made me chuckle several times and the deadly earnestness with which the cast deliver their lines only adds to the unintentional hilarity.

Finally, I just want to say that "The Terratin Incident" is a really great looking episode.  The burnt out supernova at the beginning of the episode and the city of Terratin itself are wonderfully rendered, and the erupting volcanos on the planet's surface are quite effectively depicted.  

Star Trek: The Animated Series Episode 10--"Mudd's Passion"

His name is Mudd...Harry Mudd

Given third season producer Fred Freiberger's stated objections to comedy in Star Trek, its no surprise that Harcourt Fenton "Harry" Mudd, essentially a comedic character, did not return during the show's third season.   On the other hand, according to Trek wiki Memory Alpha, there were plans for a third appearance by Mudd in an episode to be entitled "Deep Mudd" which were scrapped when Mudd's portrayer, actor Roger C. Carmel, was unavailable.  Nonetheless, had Trek continued beyond its third season, it is probably inevitable that the show's only recurring "villain" (although perhaps "pain in the tuchus" would be accurate) would return to plague Captain Kirk and his crew.  Mudd, after all, was part of Trek from almost the very beginning.   As revealed in The Star Trek Compendium, when NBC ordered a second pilot produced, Gene Roddenberry submitted three story proposals.  While the network rightly decided to greenlight "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the other outlines were for "The Omega Glory," which was ultimately produced for the second season, and "Mudd's Women," Harry Mudd's debut, which became the fourth episode, counting the two pilots, produced and the sixth to air. Thus, when the advent of the animated series granted the series, as Dorothy Fontana phrased it in the DVD's special features, the "fourth season" that they had once been denied, it almost went without saying that Harry Mudd's long delayed return would follow.
Returning along with Harry Mudd were Roger C. Carmel to provide the character's voice and Stephen Kandel, writer of Mudd's previous two appearances as well as the aborted "Deep Mudd."
As "Mudd's  Passion" begins, the Enterprise is on its way to the remote mining planet Motherlode, where their "old friend" Harry Mudd is attempting to sell a love potion to the miners there.  Kirk and Spock take Mudd into custody and throw him in the ship's brig until they can turn him over to Federation authorities for trial.  Along the way, the ship is diverted to investigate an enigmatic Class M planet orbiting a binary star. 
Meanwhile, Mudd cons nurse Christine Chapel using the love potion to help him steal the nurse's Starfleet I.D. which he uses to escape the brig and steal a shuttle.  Taking Christine hostage, Mudd descends to the seemingly uninhabited planet, which turns out to be inhabited by giant carnivorous rock-like creatures which attack Mudd and Christine.
Back on board ship, it turns out that, to the surprise of everyone, most especially Mudd, the darned love potion actually works.   Spock falls madly in love with Christine, while the rest of the crew begins acting oddly after the potion gets into the ship's air supply through a ventilation shaft.
Kirk and the love struck Vulcan beam down to the planet to recapture Mudd and rescue Christine.  Kirk distracts the giant rock creatures by feeding them the last of Mudd's love potion, allowing the foursome to escape back to the Enterprise. 
Once back on the ship, Mudd goes back to the brig, while the effects of the love potion prove only temporary, leaving those affected with symptoms resembling a hangover and the side effect of temporary hatred for the former object of their drug induced affections.   Oddly, Spock seems immune to this side effect, or at least able to do a better job of containing his anger than he did of hiding his amorous feelings for Chapel.
Once again, this episode proved better on rewatching than I'd originally remembered it.  There are actually a couple of lines in the script that made me laugh out loud.  Fred Freiberger would have hated it. 
One thing in the script that surprised me was Scotty's reference to feeling like he had a hangover even though he hadn't drank any Scotch.  Its certainly not the type of line you'd expect to hear in a typical Saturday morning cartoon.
Overall, "Mudd's Passion" is one of the better installments of the animated Star Trek and a fine vehicle for the return of everyone's favorite interstellar con man, Harcourt Fenton Mudd.

Star Trek: The Animated Series Episode 9--"Once Upon A Planet"

After half a season of contending with such menaces as sentient space clouds, fat pink tribbles, a Klingon super weapon, a shape shifting Romulan spy, a giant clone of Mr. Spock, and Satan himself, among others, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is ready for some R&R.  Thus, the ship heads back to the amusement planet first visited in the first season live action episode "Shore Leave." 
The planet, as you may remember from "Shore Leave," was constructed by an unnamed advanced alien race.  Overseen by the Keeper, a representative of that race, its underground super computer reads the thoughts of visitors to the planet and turns them into reality.
Things have changed, however, since the Enterprise last visited the planet.  The Keeper has died and the planet's computer has decided it is no longer content merely to serve others.  It begins attacking the Enterprise crew and kidnaps Uhura as a hostage.  The computer then begins to take control of the Enterprise so that the ship can carry it off the planet and out into the galaxy at large. Captain Kirk and Spock trick the computer into taking them into its subterranean inner sanctum.  Once there, Kirk, who's never met a computer that he couldn't talk into destroying itself, convinces the computer to abandon its wild scheme and go back to business as usual.  The computer releases the Enterprise and invites the crew to beam down for shore leave on the sole condition that someone stay and keep talking to it, a job for which Spock volunteers.
Of the Star Trek animated episodes that are direct sequels to earlier live action installments, "Once Upon A Planet" is the only one not to be written by the script writer of the original story.   (By the way, the episodes to which I refer are, in addition to "Once Upon A Planet," "More Tribbles, More Troubles" and "Mudd's Passion," which will be the subject of next week's post.  I do not include "Yesteryear," written by Dorothy Fontana, even though it prominently features the Guardian of Forever, as I do not consider th presence of that element enough to qualify the episode as a direct sequel to Harlan Ellison's "The City on the Edge of Forever." In both episodes, the Guardian is little more than a plot device and Fontana could just as easily have come up with an  entirely new method of time travel to get Spock where the story needed him to be.) According to the Trek wiki Memory Alpha, Theodore Sturgeon, the legendary science fiction author who wrote "Shore Leave," as well as the second season opener "Amok Time," actually did write a proposal for an episode with the working title "Shore Leave II" which was never produced.  However, Memory Alpha also seems to indicate that, while some unused ideas for live action episodes, notably David Gerrold's "More Tribbles, More Troubles" and "Bem," were eventually produced as animated segments, there is apparently no relationship between this episode's script, written by Chuck Menville and Len Jansen, and Sturgeon's unused treatment.  I've not been able to find any reason as to why Sturgeon's plot wasn't used or why he was not involved with this sequel to an episode he had written.

"Once Upon A Planet" is also notable for being the first segment of the Saturday morning cartoon version of Star Trek to be written by writers primarily known for writing Saturday morning cartoons.  From the late 1960's until Menville's death in 1992, Menville and Jansen would work together on a wide variety of properties for the two major producers of Saturday morning fare of the period, Filmation, producers of Star Trek, and Hanna-Barbera.  Their collaborative output includes, in addition to Trek, episodes of Speed Buggy, Hong Kong Phooey, and The Smurfs for Hanna-Barbera, as well as segments of Filmation's Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, The New Adventures of Batman, and Tarzan-Lord of the Jungle.  They also worked on some of Filmation's live action children's series, including Shazam!, Isis, and Ark II.  "Once Upon A Planet" is the first of two episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series that the pair would write.  Their other episode, the second season's "The Practical Joker," is most famous for its inclusion of scenes set in a holographic rec room on board the Enterprise which is considered to be the prototype for Star Trek: The Next Generation's holodeck.  To me, however, what sticks in my mind about that episode is the somewhat ridiculous sight of the Enterprise expelling a full sized inflatable replica of itself in order to confound the Romulans.  I shall have more to say on both of those points when I eventually get around to reviewing "The Practical Joker."

With the reappearance of the White Rabbit and Alice from "Shore Leave," it at first appears as if "Once Upon A Planet" is simply going to be yet another rehash of a classic original Trek episode, much like the earlier "More Tribbles, More Troubles."  However, the episode quickly heads off in a new direction as the amusement planet begins to pose a real threat to the Enterprise and its crew.  Unfortunately, the episode is marred by a rather weak ending.  Kirk's argument here is not as flawlessly logical as in his earlier verbal confrontations with rogue computers in "Return of the Archons," "The Ultimate Computer," and "The Changeling," and the computer's decision to suddenly just give up feels too abrupt and rather anti-climactic.
Once again, this episode demonstrates the advantages afforded by the animated format.  Whereas in "Shore Leave," all we saw of the supposedly advanced technology behind the shore leave planet was a little scope like device that seemed to be targeting the crew before their thoughts materialized, here we see flying robotic "nannies" that kidnap Ubura and take Spock into the computer's presence, as well as the vast computer complex itself.  Both of these would have been much more difficult, not to mention expensive, to realize in live action.
Overall, I'd place this episode somewhere around the middle of the pack among the episodes so far in regards to quality.  It's not bad, but it definitely could have been better.

Star Trek: The Animated Series Episode 8--"The Magicks of Megas-Tu"

The eighth episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, "The Magicks of Megas-Tu", begins as the starship Enterprise, on a scientific mission to the very center of the galaxy, is drawn into a vortex to another universe where the the physical laws of our dimension do not apply and what we would call magic rules.  There, on the planet called Megas-Tu, the crew encounter a race of beings with magical powers who had once visited Earth and walked among humanity as wizards and magicians.  The Megans greet the arrival of the humans with fear and suspicion, with the exception of the demonic looking Lucien, who was apparently known to humans during his time on Earth as Lucifer.  

Perhaps the Megans have reason to fear and hate humanity, as after settling in Salem, Massachussetts in the late 1600's they found themselves tried and executed as witches.  The survivors fled back to Megas-Tu and have lived in isolation ever since.

Despite Lucien's efforts to hide the Enterprise's presence from his fellow Megans, they are soon discovered after they begin attempting to harness the magical powers of this dimension in order to protect themselves.  The bridge crew soon finds themselves imprisoned in stockades in a recreation of 17th century Salem and forced to stand trial for the crimes of humanity against the Megans all those centuries ago.  

Speaking in defense of his human shipmates, Spock argues that the human race has advanced since the Megans last encountered them.  The Megan prosecutor, Asmodeus, agrees to release the Enterprise crew but sentences Lucien to exile in isolation forever for daring to aid the humans.  Kirk, realizing that this would be tantamount to a death sentence for Lucien, argues for compassion for Lucien.  Kirk's attempt to save Lucien leads to him using the magic power of this alternate dimension to battle Asmodeus.

The battle ends abruptly, and Asmodeus reveals that the Megans had been testing Kirk and his compassion for Lucien proved to them that the human had, as Kirk claimed, changed.  The Megans return the Enterprise to its own universe, and the ship proceeds on its mission.

In the DVD's special features, writer Larry Brody reveals that his initial concept involved the Enterprise meeting God.  Apparently Gene Roddenberry loved the concept, but Brody was eventually told that he couldn't use God, but that having the crew meet Satan was just fine. 

This was Brody's first work for Star Trek.  He would return to the Trek universe in the 1990's to write an episode of Voyager.  Its kind of too bad that he didn't do more Trek, for, as he demonstrates here, he has a good grasp of the show's concept and its characters.  

Upon rewatching this episode, I was surprised to find it much better than I'd remembered it.  In fact, I'd been prepared to begin this review by comparing it to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which I realize now is a totally unfair comparison. While both stories do concern the Enterprise passing through a cosmic barrier at the center of the galaxy to encounter beings of god like power, and who, in fact, have been mistaken for gods or other mythical beings, "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" differs from that later film in not being really, really bad.  "Magicks" is, actually, a very good Star Trek episode that embodies the hope for humanity and idealistic values that endeared the series to science fiction fans from its very first airing.   Furthermore, it manages to combine this philosophy with an intriguing mystery and an exciting story.  In fact, in my rewatching of the series, I'd have to say that this is my second favorite episode so far, after "Yesteryear."

Star Trek the Animated Series: Episode 7 "The Infinite Vulcan"

Using the original stars of Star Trek to voice their animated doppelgangers was quite an expensive proposition for the shows producers at Filmation Studios, thus they could not afford to bring everyone back.  Therefore, in a classic case of "last hired, first fired," Walter Koenig, who joined the show as Ensign Pavel Chekov in the second season, was not asked to return for the animated series.  However, even though they couldn't afford to hire him on as a member of the cast, it appears that Filmation could afford to engage Mr. Koenig to write an absolutely awful episode for the new series. 
Actually, the episode doesn't start off all that bad.  An Enterprise landing party beams down to the newly discovered planet Phylos and discover several intriguing mysteries.   They are soon confronted by the remains of the planet's population, a species of intelligent plants decimated by a disease brought to their planet by a human.  The Phylosians save Sulu's life after he is poisoned by one of the planet's less intelligent species of plant life, then take the landing party to meet their "master."
This is when things start to get ridiculous.  The landing party is attacked by shrieking purple dragon creatures which carry Spock away.  Then the "master",  a giant human who identifies himself as Dr. Stavos Keniclius 5, orders the landing party to return to the Enterprise.  Reluctantly, they reply, but only to prepare to return to the planet and rescue Spock.
A search of historical records reveals that  the "master"  is a clone of Dr. Stavos Keniclius, a renegade scientist who escaped Earth in the wake of the Eugenics Wars.   Since then, he and his giant clones have been searching for a "perfect specimen" to use in his plan to bring peace to the galaxy.
Now  things get really silly.  Returning to Phylos,  the Kirk, McCoy and Sulu find Spock near death, with his mind nearly gone.  Keniclius returns accompanied by a giant clone of Spock into which the original's mind has been transferred.   Keniclius' plan is to create an army of giant Spock clones to impose peace on the galaxy.  Fortunately, Kirk is able to convince the Spock clone that the galaxy has found peace in the time since Keniclius came to Phylos, and the clone uses a mind meld to return the original Spock's mind.  The landing party goes back to the Enterprise, leaving the giant clones to work on the problem of rebuilding the Phylosians society. 
If you think too much about this episode, which I wouldn't really advise, a couple of questions/problems present themselves.  Why, for example, are the clones of Keniclius and Spock apparently over 100 feet tall?  The episode never addresses this. Furthermore, how exactly does Keniclius plan to spread his giant Spock clones through the galaxy using the Phylosians space ships, which seem to be built for much smaller beings?  
One good thing about the episode is the design of the plant-like Phylosians and their ancient city.  These are prime examples of the advantages of the animated format in allowing the producers to create more exotic looking non-humanoid aliens than could be achieved in the original live action series. 
Other than that, however, "The Infinite Vulcan" fails on pretty much every level.  The episode starts with an utterly ridiculous premise, and executes  it poorly.
On the other hand, if the real purpose of this episode was to make people look back on "Spock's Brain," and think that, in retrospect, maybe that episode wasn't so bad after all, then it succeeds admirably.

TV News

First off, I'd like to thank Bronze Age Babies for posting about this.  If they hadn't, I'd have never known about it, at least not in time to write about it in advance. 

Tomorrow night at 8 p.m., the three part documentary Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle airs, as they say, on most PBS stations.   The film traces the history of the superhero genre from 1938 until the present.
You know, being a cynical sort, when I first learned of this show, my first thought was, "Oh, is it pledge drive time again?"  NPR just wrapped up their fall membership drive, and its obviously PBS' turn.   Superheroes seems like the kind of show you only see during pledge drives, and one obviously aimed at attracting new viewers, and thus new members.  All cynicism aside, let's hope the effort is a success, as I just couldn't live without Washington Week.
Actually, the subject matter of Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle isn't all that far afield for PBS.  Public broadcasting has always been geek friendly.  It was, after all, local public television stations who first aired Doctor Who and Monty Python's Flying Circus here in the States back in the 1970's.
Speaking of Dr. Who, I suppose you've heard by now about the nine missing episodes recently discovered at a TV relay station in Nigeria.   All are from the reign of Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor, which makes sense as that's where most of the missing episodes occur.  I've just recently discovered Doctor Who, but Troughton has quickly become one of my favorite Doctors (I think I'd rank him third, behind David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston, with Jon Pertwee and Peter Davison rounding out a top five list) and its a pity that only seven (six, until this discovery) of his twenty-one serials exist complete with no missing episodes, and many are missing in their entirety.
Of the two serials recovered or partially recovered ("The Enemy of the World" is now complete, while "The Web of Fear" is missing but one episode) the one that I most want to see is "The Enemy of the World."  This one sounds utterly awesome!  It features Patrick Troughton in a dual role, portraying not only, obviously, the Doctor, but the villain, Salamander (and isn't that a great name for a villain?) as well.
Check out this trailer to see for yourself what I'm talking about:

Star Trek the Animated Series: Episode 6 "The Survivor"

While patrolling the Neutral Zone separating Federation space from the Romulan Empire, the Enterprise rescues the sole occupant of a small space ship damaged by a meteor swarm.  To everyone's surprise, the rescued space traveler appears to be wealthy philanthropist Carter Winston, missing and presumed dead for the past five years.  

It just so happens that Winston's fiancee, Ann Nored, is a security officer aboard the Enterprise. Upon their reunion, Winston tells her that he has changed since crash landing on the planet Vendor five years ago, and that he can't marry her.  Just how much he's changed is soon revealed to the audience when he knocks out Captain Kirk and takes the captain's form.  Winston, as Kirk, then goes to the bridge and orders helmsman Sulu to plot a new course that will take the Enterprise through the Neutral Zone.

It turns out that the being the Enterprise has taken aboard isn't Carter Winston at all, but a Vendorian, a member of a race of deceitful, shape-shifting aliens shunned by all decent races of the Federation, who had cared for the real Winston after he crashed on Vendor.  An outcast among his own people, the Vendorian joined forces with the Romulans to lure the Enterprise into the Zone in violation of treaty so that the Romulans could capture her.   

After a confrontation with Winston's fiancee, Ann, the Vendorian realizes that he has assumed not only Winston's shape, but his feelings for her as well.  Having a change of heart, he saves the ship from Romulan attack by assuming the form of one of the ship's deflector shields.  After the Romulan ships depart, he turns himself in to Captain Kirk.  Although he will have to stand trial for his crimes, Kirk promises to put in a good word for him for ultimately saving the Enterprise.

This is the first episode of the animated Star Trek that was not written by someone previously associated with the live action series.  James Schmerer is a prolific and adaptable television writer and producer whose credits include westerns (High Chaparral), crime dramas (Mannix, The Rookies, The Streets of San Francisco), and medical dramas (Medical Center).  His science fiction/fantasy credentials include segments of Logan's Run, The Six Million Dollar Man, Isis, and Fantasy Island.   "The Survivor" is his only work for the Star Trek franchise, although he would get the opportunity to again write for William Shatner when he authored an episode of T.J. Hooker in 1985.

Carter Winston is given voice by Ted Knight, who is best remembered as pompous jackass Ted Baxter of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  He had previously worked for Filmation as narrator of their early cartoons based on DC super-heroes and continued in that role for Hanna-Barbera on Super Friends.  Despite the absence of Lt. Uhura from this episode, Nichele Nichols still has more than her share of lines as the voice of Winston's fiancee, Ann Nored.

The advantages of animation are on display in this episode in "Carter Winston's" native form.  The Vendorian is a truly alien looking alien that, in the pre-CGI era of the early 1970's, would have been impossible to create in any other visual medium except perhaps comics.

The story is hardly startingly original, with elements of it bearing strong resemblances to original series episodes "The Man Trap," in which a shape shifting alien resembles McCoy's former lover, and "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," where Nurse Christine Chapel's long lost fiancee turns out to be an android duplicate. Nonetheless, Schmerer takes these elements and weaves an entertaining story that honors the spirit of the original series. The only thing that bothers me a bit is the Vendorian becoming a deflector shield, as I thought the shields were some form of energy or forcefield, not matter.  Still, its a small quibble, and the script doesn't dwell on it too much, so it doesn't spoil an otherwise fine episode.

Star Trek The Animated Series: Episode 5 "More Tribbles, More Troubles"

In the DVD audio commentary for this episode, writer David Gerrold reveals that his proposal for a sequel to "The Trouble With The Tribbles" from the original Star Trek's second season was nixed by third season producer Fred Frieberger, who flatly declared that "Star Trek is not a comedy."  That statement is at once both true and utter bullshit.  While Trek overall is not a comedy series, some of its best and best loved episodes, including not only "The Trouble With Tribbles," but "A Piece of the Action" and "I, Mudd" as well, were essentially comedies, and even many of the most serious episodes had their humorous moments.  On the other hand, if "More Tribbles, More Troubles" was the "Tribbles" follow up that Gerrold was trying to interest Freiberger in, then the producer was right, if for the wrong reason, in rejecting it.
The episode opens as the Enterprise is headed back to Sherman's Planet, this time escorting two robot ships carrying the grain quintotriticale, obviously a new form of the original episode's quatrotriticale, to the colony's famine stricken population.  Along the way, they encounter a Klingon ship firing on a small Federation cargo vessel.  The Enterprise manages to rescue the cargo ship's pilot, who turns out to be troublemaking trader Cyrano Jones, but not before getting hit with a new Klingon superweapon, a stasis field ray that temporarily knocks out the ships engines and weapons.
Jones arrives on board the Enterprise carrying what he says are "safe" tribbles.  These ones do not reproduce at an accelerated rate like the ones seen in the original "The Trouble With Tribbles".  Instead, when fed, they grow to enormous proportions.  However, inside each giant tribble are hundreds of smaller tribbles, so the ship is shortly once again overrun with the furry nuisances.
The Klingons are after Jones for stealing the only prototype of their genetically engineered tribble predator, known as a glommer, and demand that Kirk turn the trader over to them.  Kirk refuses, but does give them the glommer. However, the creature ultimately proves ineffective against the giant tribbles after Kirk once again dumps all the tribbles on the Klingon ship..  Equally ineffective is the Klingons' stasis ray weapon, which uses up too much energy to be of much use in battle.
There are many problems with this episode.  The first is that there are two parallel stories being told and neither is given time to fully develop.  The plot concerning the new Klingon weapon ultimately goes nowhere while the Cyrano Jones/tribbles story line adds nothing new to the original episode.  In fact, from the tribbles overrunning the ship, to thousands of them once again falling on Kirk's head, to cleaning up the Enterprise by beaming the tribbles over to the Klingon ship, to ending with a bad tribble pun, its pretty much a beat for beat remake of the first "Tribbles."
The worse problem is that, for a supposed comedy, the episode just isn't funny.  This isn't entirely the fault of the script, as bad as that may be.  Even though Gerrold says in his commentary that at the recording the cast seemed happy to be back doing Star Trek again, it doesn't quite come across in the vocal performance.  The line readings throughout the series tend to be a bit flat, as if the cast had attended the Jack Webb School of Acting during the series' hiatus.  (On Dragnet, Webb discouraged his actors from learning their lines, preferring that they sound as if they were reading from cue cards, which, in fact, they were.) This certainly doesn't help to sell the humor, and these "jokes" need all the help they can get.
The tribble predator, the glommer, is just plain silly.  It looks more like something you'd see in a more typical Saturday morning cartoon than in Star Trek.  It even does that Scooby-Doo running in place thing at one point.
Stanley Adams returns to the role of Cyrano Jones for this episode.  Unfortunately, William Campbell did not return to the role of the Klingon captain, Koloth.  James Doohan takes over the role here, but he fails to capture the smarmy charm of Campbell's performance.
One other thing worth noting about this episode is that the tribbles are colored pink, not brown as they originally were.  This is apparently due to the fact that director Hal Sutherland was color blind.  This kind of works for the cute little tribbles, but when the Klingons end up wearing pink vests and a fierce race of warriors known as the Kzinti are flying around in pink ships, then it gets a little ridiculous. 
"More Tribbles, More Troubles" is a well intentioned effort to produce a follow-up to one of Trek's best and most beloved episodes, but nonetheless an effort that ultimately fails.

Star Trek The Animated Series: Episode 4: "The Lorelei Signal"

Investigating a series of mysterious disappearances of starships in an uncharted sector of space over the previous one hundred and fifty years, the Enterprise intercepts an odd sub-space radio signal that has a disturbing effect on the male members of the crew, who respond to it as a summons.   Following the signal to the second planet of the Taurean system, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and a redshirt named Carver (don't worry about him too much, this is Saturday morning kids' TV, after all, so he actually makes it through the episode alive) soon find themselves captured by the all female inhabitants of the planet.  Meanwhile, under the influence of a probe originating on the planet below, the men remaining on board the ship grow increasingly weak and lethargic.  Lt. Uhura steps away from the communications panel to assume command of the ship and lead an all female landing party to the planets surface to rescue Kirk and the others.
According to The Star Trek Compendium, NBC's advance publicity for the second season of the original Star Trek promised fans episodes focusing on secondary characters Sulu, Scotty, and Uhura.  I have no idea if such spotlights were ever considered, but the fact is that they never made it to air.  Uhura remains to this day the least developed of the core Trek cast.  She wasn't even granted a first name until J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek film.  Notwithstanding the three episodes where she got to sing, "The Lorelei Signal" is the  closest thing to the promised spotlight on Uhura that Star Trek ever gave us.
In the Wikipedia entry on this episode, it is stated that Nichelle Nichols considers "The Lorelei Signal" her favorite Star Trek episode.  That's certainly understandable, for while its not quite the Uhura spotlight she or fans of her character may have hoped for, it is one of the few episodes in which she got to do more than just sit at her station on the bridge repeating her signature line, "Hailing frequencies open, Captain."
In addition to this episode, writer Margaret Armen worked on three installments of the original series, "The Gamesters of Triskelion", "The Paradise Syndrome," and "The Cloud Minders," none of which are likely to appear on anybody's list of Trek's best episodes.  Its not that they're bad, per se, but that in a series capable of such excellence as "City on the Edge of Forever," "Journey to Babel," and "The Menagerie," and others, they're just a little bit disappointing.  "The Lorelei Signal" is actually rather mediocre, coming off more like a 1950's B-movie rather than an episode of Star Trek, and would ultimately be utterly forgettable without the Uhura sub-plot.

Don't Yield, Back Marvel's Agents of SHIELD

While thinking about the show after watching the premiere episode of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD on Tuesday night, I found an unusual question coming to mind:  Would my dad have liked this show?

While it is definitely a product of the twenty-first century, there's somewhat of a 1960's vibe to the show.  It evokes not only the old Jim Steranko Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD comics, but the original TV version of Mission: Impossible as well.  Mission: Impossible is a show that I remember my dad liking, thus inspiring the question in the previous paragraph.
Like Mission: Impossible, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD focuses on an elite, autonomous squad of agents, each with their own specialty, who take on the most dangerous and difficult assignments.  So far, with only one episode aired, these agents are more stereotypes or archetypes than fully rounded characters.  I expect they'll be developed further as the series progresses.  However, it does seem as if Agents of SHIELD is going to be primarily a plot driven series, with the emphasis on action and high tech gadgetry over characterization.  This is something else it has in common with Mission: Impossible, not to mention those old Steranko comics.
That's not necessarily a bad thing.  If the action is fast paced and exciting and the gadgetry impressive enough, a certain lack of attention to characterization can be forgiven up to a point.  The initial installment suffers a bit from being a pilot episode and having to set up the premise of the series and introduce the characters while also trying to squeeze in a story, the potential is indeed there for Agents of SHIELD to develop into one of TV's best action/adventure series.
One thing that Agents of SHIELD has that Mission: Impossible lacked, but that is a trademark of series creator Joss Whedon, is a sense of humor.  The most oft quoted one-liner of the pilot is Skye's twist on Spider-Man's famous catchphrase when she tells nascent super-hero Mike Peterson that "With great power comes...a whole bunch of weird crap that you are not prepared to deal with."  My favorite line, however, comes from Agent Ward.  While being debriefed by Director Maria Hill, he is asked what SHIELD stands for.  After he gives the correct answer, which, by the way is Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, Hill asks him what that means to him.  He replies that "...someone really wanted our name to spell out SHIELD."
So, to answer my own question from the beginning of this post, I think the answer is yes, my dad might just enjoy Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.   True, being set in the same universe as many of the Marvel super-hero films gives Agents of SHIELD  more of a fantasy/science fiction feel than a lot of spy dramas, such as Mission: Impossible.   However, I also remember my dad liking Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which was flat out science fiction, so I don't think those elements would bother him so much.
Oh, and just in case you care, I happen to like the show, too. 

A New Villain is Born "When Heroes Clash!!" in Avengers #158

I occasionally like to tie my ramblings about musty old comics to current events in the comic book world in order to give this site some illusion of relevance.  Thus it is that I have decided to write about Avengers #158 at this time.  To tell the truth, I really wasn't planning to write about this issue at all.  I have nothing good to say about it.  Nor, for that matter, do I have anything bad to say about it.  It is a wholly unremarkable, absolutely average comic book.  However, recent events have made this issue somewhat relevant as a character introduced in it will soon be playing a recurring role on the ABC TV series Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.  

I came across the issue in a quarter comics box at Half-Price Books a couple of months ago and picked it up because:

1. It's The Avengers.  Who doesn't love The Avengers?
2. It has a cover by Jack Kirby.
3. Said cover promises a throwdown between the Vision and his "brother" Wonder Man.
4. It was only a quarter.
5. It's written by Jim Shooter...er...well...did I mention it was only a quarter?

Obviously, I'm no fan of Shooter's writing, but this is no Secret Wars II.  It is, as I said above, a competently written and drawn (by Sal Buscema and Pablo Marcos) if somewhat unimpressive super-hero comic.
You've probably heard it said that it sometimes seems as if the Avengers spend more timing fighting amongst themselves than they do fighting super-villains.  Well, this issue is about evenly divided between the two, with six pages devoted to intra-team squabbling and seven to battling their newest foe, with four pages in between to introduce the villain. The story opens in the wake of another battle in Avengers mansion during which the team fought a magically animated statue of the Black Knight.  The Vision then proceeds to work himself into a jealous rage over the way Wonder Man and Scarlet Witch are talking to each other and proceeds to slap Simon around.  Their battle further damages the already wrecked mansion until Iron Man steps in an puts a stop to it.  At this point, the team's butler, Jarvis, walks and tells them that he just received a call for the team's help, but he told the caller that the Avengers were too busy beating each other up.
The call came from a scientific research community nestled in the Canadian Rockies, where a man named Frank Hall, who gained the power of control over gravity in an accident that occurred while he was trying to develop a teleportation beam, has taken over and cut the city off from the outside world.  Just as he dons for the first time his garish costume and rechristens himself Graviton, the Avengers finally arrive.  However, Graviton dispatches the heroes fairly quickly, then declares that nothing can now stop him from ruling the world.  Thus ends "When Heroes Clash!!", with the story to be continued in Avengers #159.
Now it has been reported that a character by the name of Dr. Franklin Hall will appear on a regular basis in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. beginning with the third episode.  It is apparently not known at this time whether the TV version of Hall will be calling himself Graviton or even have any super-powers.
If he doesn't at least have the gravity powers, I don't see the point of including the character in the show at all.  If Hall isn't going to resemble his comic book counterpart at least partially, then the producers might as well go ahead and create an original character with a different name.
I'll guess I'll just wait and see how they handle the character.  I'll most likely be watching the show which debuts tomorrow night on ABC.

Star Trek The Animated Series: Episode 3 "One Of Our Planets Is Missing"

"One Of Our Planets Is Missing" begins as a fairly standard giant space monster story, then takes a left turn about half-way through and becomes a somewhat unusual first contact  tale.
A vast cosmic cloud from outside the Milky Way galaxy has been sighted on the outer fringes of Federation space.  The Enterprise, which always seems to have the rotten luck of being the only starship in the vicinity when giant space clouds appear, is dispatched to investigate.  As the ship approaches the cloud, the crew witness it engulf and consume the outermost planet of the Pallas 14 system, then change course for Mantilles, a Federation colony with over 80 million inhabitants.
Intercepting the cloud, the Enterprise is drawn inside.  Spock deduces that the cloud is a living organism and that the ship is, essentially, inside its digestive system.  The science officer locates what he believes is the creature's brain, speculating that it may be intelligent.
With time running out, Kirk decides that the only way to save Mantilles is to destroy the cloud creature's brain.  As it turns out, however, the only way to have enough power to destroy the brain is by self-destructing the Enterprise.  Though hesitant to destroy an intelligent life form, he concludes that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one," and that the lives of the millions on the planet must take precedence.  Spock convinces the captain to allow him to make a last ditch effort to attempt to communicate with the creature.  Reaching out with his mind to touch the creature's thoughts, Spock shows the creature that the planet it is about to consume contains intelligent beings like itself.  The creature, not wanting to kill, stops its advance toward Mantilles at the last possible second.   Furthermore, Spock convinces the creature that since there are many such inhabited planets in this galaxy, if it truly does not wish to consume intelligent life it should head out of the galaxy and back to where it came from.

Marc Daniels, the writer of this episode, was another Trek veteran, though this was his first time writing an episode.  His previous service to Starfleet had been as director of fourteen episodes of the original series beginning with the first one aired, "The Man Trap," and including some of the series' finest episodes, such as "The Naked Time" and "Mirror, Mirror," as well as the generally acknowledged worst episode of the series, "Spock's Brain."  Bill Norton, in his article on the animated Star Trek for the fan magazine Trek (reprinted in The Best of Trek), chided this episode for its similarity to "The Doomsday Machine," which Daniels directed and which featured a giant planet eating thing, as well as "The Immunity Syndrome," where the Enterprise encounters a giant space amoeba.  For my part, I noticed more of a similarity to Star Trek The Motion Picture, in which Spock similarly attempts to mentally communicate with an alien intelligence at the heart of a vast space cloud that the Enterprise is within and which menaces an inhabited world.  Norton, of course, could not have noticed this, as his article was written prior to STTMP's release.
I like this episode, but it has some flaws.  The dialogue, especially early on, is a little too heavy on technobabble.  Its almost enough to confuse even a hard core Trekkie like myself and was certain to have baffled the young kids watching this on Saturday mornings back in the 70's.   Also, I find the rather tongue in cheek title of the episode to be somewhat inappropriate, leading the viewer to expect a more light hearted outing than that which follows.
One thing I really like about the episode, though, is the characterization of Captain Kirk.  He is faced with a difficult moral choice, and makes it decisively, acting like a true Starfleet captain.  While he has some qualms about destroying a possibly intelligent life form, he doesn't unnecessarily agonize over it, and quite rightly decides that the lives of the millions on the planet must take precedence. 

Overall, "One Of Our Planets Is Missing" is a pretty decent and entertaining episode of Star Trek that emphasizes the Enterprises primary mission to "...seek out new life..." and "...to boldly go where no man has gone before."