Why I like Enterprise's much-maligned Xindi story

The Xindi story line of Enterprise is a surprisingly nuanced response to 9/11 and subsequent events, tackling such questions as, is it okay to respond out of vengeance, or only self defense? Are there some moral absolutes that can’t be broken, even to save millions of lives? In war, how do we weigh the lives of the enemy against our own? How good does intelligence have to be to justify killing, or even starting a war? Is killing to prevent possible, even probable future killing defensible? Who decides, the military, the politicians, the citizens? How do people who have seen and done terrible things in the line of duty move on with their lives? And it’s not preachy or facile – it really digs into the grey areas.

A Star Trek Morality Primer

What are the lessons Star Trek teaches us? Does Star Trek have a clear moral compass? Is it consistent, or does it evolve over time? Did you really expect me to have the answers? Of course not.

Instead, I offer these series-by-series nuggets:

TOS:  Do the right thing. However, the right thing will change from week to week, depending on who wrote the script.

TAS: The universe is confusing. Just go with it. Nothing lasts longer than 24 minutes anyway.

TNG: If you do the right thing, all will be well, because those are the rules.

DS9: Out here on the frontier, the rules are fungible. Do the best you can. Mostly just try not to start a war or a religion. But if you do, you’d better prevail. At both.

VOY: One for all and all for getting home.

ENT: Doing the right thing will generally get you absolutely nowhere, but pay it lip service from time to time because your series has an inferiority complex.

DSC: Doing the right thing will seriously mess you up, because streaming TV is dark 'n gritty.

PIC (speculative): The rules are back, but in a more neutral color palette.

Before I go, I'd like to take a moment to recognize that, at times, Star Trek really does deliver some profound insights with intelligence and subtlety. And sometimes, it's more like this:

Slingshot around the sun: International Star Trek Convention 1975

Let's travel back in time to 1975, to the other NYC Star Trek con that happened that year. This one was at the Americana Hotel, not that you'd know from the program, the cover of which is pictured above. (You can see the program from the competing con here.) Apparently, there was a schism among the con runners that resulted in two separate events. Of course, I knew nothing about it at the time, being just 13 and all. I was just happy to have more Star Trek. But you can read about it here.

Anyway, this program is notable for a comic that was apparently trying to emulate the underground comics of the day by being vaguely psychedelic and pretty incoherent. The title, Star Truckin', was obviously a reference to Robert Crumb's Keep on Truckin'. Beyond that, I can't tell you what the fuck is going on.

There are also the usual publicity stills, plus the names of everyone involved (but weirdly, no dates or any other useful historical information). Guests included Shatner, Doohan, and Koenig, as well as Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison. You could certainly do a lot worse.

Mexican Jewelry Trek

While reading up on vintage Mexican jewelry, as one does, I encountered the work of Sigi Pineda and was struck by one particular form he uses again and again, which strongly suggests the iconic Starfleet insignia. Pineda’s work, dating to the mid-1950s, was designed first. These are some examples of his jewelry, which could easily adorn a Starfleet uniform, and wall hangings, which would look at home on any Starfleet admiral’s office wall.

It’s generally believed that William Ware Theiss, Star Trek’s original costume designer, derived the insignia from the red chevron of the NASA logo, designed in 1959, but it’s impossible to ignore the similarity to Pineda’s work. Was Theiss aware of these sleek, midcentury-modern designs? Maybe they had just entered the general gestalt, or perhaps it’s all just an uncanny coincidence. Theiss is gone, and we’ll never know.

Slingshot around the sun: Star Trek Convention 1975, New York

When I was a wee Trekkie, I was lucky enough to attend seven New York Star Trek conventions from 1974 to 1977. Sadly, I didn't save the program from the very first one, but I did save the rest. I've been meaning to digitize them for ages, but it never rose to the top of my to-do list -- until now. It just took a nudge from my orthopedic surgeon (i.e. I'm laid up after foot surgery).

This is the program from the con held Feb. 14-17 at New York's Commodore Hotel, called (drumroll please) ... Star Trek Convention. Yup. Just what it says on the tin. Guests included Gene Roddenberry, William Shatner, George Takei, Isaac Asimov, David Gerrold, and more.

This program (like all the others from back in the day) is packed with publicity stills and behind-the-scenes candids. Back in those prehistoric, pre-internet times, these were like gold and made the programs treasured souvenirs. Also of interest to fandom historians (if such exist): listings of zines and fan clubs. There's also a recap of the previous year's con from superfan Joan Winston. Enjoy!

A word about Michael

Now that I've had time to poke around the responses to the Disco S2 finale, I want to respond to one line of criticism I've seen. There are some who feel the finale does Michael a disservice, since her existence, and Discovery’s, are made secret. I think that's an unfairly selective reading, given the accumulated weight of events and the way her story plays out:

•  Her achievements are recognized and celebrated by everyone who has personally experienced them.
• She turns out to have been the moving force of the entire, season-long story arc --  the person through whose agency every other event occurs. 
• Michael is accompanied into the future by people who willingly sacrifice their 23rd-century lives out of personal loyalty to her.
• Michael's relationships consistently humanize the story for us, and...
• Michael's relationships are two-way streets. 

That last point is very important, and relates to another criticism I've seen: that Michael's role fulfills the trope of the female black character who carries the emotional burdens of others. But Michael gets as good as she gives; others carry burdens that make it possible for her to grow and achieve. Unlike those who feel that Spock and Pike steal the show from Michael, I find that, to a large degree, they carry a lot of water for her. Michael pieces Spock back together, but he does exactly the same for her. And, while Pike's sojourn on Discovery helps him come to terms with his past (sitting out the Klingon war) and his future (his TOS destiny), it is through his insistent belief in the message of the Red Angel that Michael fulfills her destiny. It's Michael in whom he's been placing his faith all along, a fact that comes as no surprise by the time it's made explicit, because we've watched him come to know her and believe in her week by week. 

By the time we get to the end of the season, Michael, having confronted her sense of abandonment and despair and grappled with the reappearance of a dead parent, has overcome a Hamlet-like funk (which I suppose makes Spock Ophelia) and is ready to take center stage and bring the story to its heroic conclusion. She can do that because the people around her have supported her along the way. It's too big a stretch to say that, from a narrative point of view, Michael is being denied the recognition or the centrality due the hero. Her erasure and that of Discovery are necessitated by a convoluted story half a century in the making, and were inevitable from the start.

Where Michael's story is weakest in S2 is in her failure to connect with the series' regular characters, especially Tyler and Tilly, with both of whom she's supposed to have a special bond. That, I do attribute to the presence of Spock and Pike. They're the ones with whom Michael forges the deepest bonds this season. I'm not saying it was a bad choice to bring them into this story. They lift Discovery out of the weird, negative place Lorca left it (both the ship and the show). They take away the bad aftertaste of dysfunction and mistrust. But their presence comes at a price, and other characters pay it. That, too, is down to Michael's central role. It's an ensemble cast, but Michael is its heart, and everyone needs time with her. 

My sense is that the writers manage one exception, Saru, whose episode early in the season, as sketchy as it is, sets up an interesting dynamic for him going forward. Tyler doesn't fare as well; I have no idea what his journey has been about this season, other than working for the wrong guys, hanging around in the background a lot, and not really dealing with the massive shit he remains saddled with from S1. Tilly seems to have landed in comic-relief land as everyone's goofy, brilliant kid sister; her relationship with Michael advances not at all.

S2 has other problems, too. As in S1, we're given an intriguing antagonist, Control, who could have represented a deep, philosophical problem -- something about the moral danger of an unwitting act of creation, maybe? -- but...doesn't. Meanwhile, the deep, philosophical problem left over from S1, in the person of Mirror Georgiou (Do we all embody the potential for good and evil, or is there some inherently different nature in each? Can evil be redeemed? What role does forgiveness play, if any?), fades into frustrating ambiguity and cliched fetishwear.

I think from the outset, Disco intended to move its central characters out of TOS continuity; there’s no other explanation for the big canon issues raised by the spore drive tech from day one. But in the meantime, Disco juices the TOS time frame with a more inclusive, enlightened group of characters who should have been there from the start. I have my doubts about the leap to the future -- I can live without Voyager redux -- but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I think what the show needs more than anything else is to avoid bringing on any more major, single-season characters, so the regulars finally get a chance to take and hold center stage. All of them.

The Circle of Trek

First, the news: An animated Star Trek series is coming to Nickelodeon. Cool!

And now, a long, seemingly pointless story. The dots will be connected by the end. Promise.

A couple of days ago, I stumbled across this MeTV list of forgotten, mostly short-lived 1970s sci fi shows. To me, it was like unearthing buried treasure. That’s my TV generation, and I do dearly love me some cheesy sci fi. In this glorious age of YouTube, most of this stuff is readily available, so I randomly picked one to watch: a live-action Saturday-morning kids’ show from Filmation called Ark II. It's about some young scientists and a talking chimp (no, really), all of whom have biblical names (even the chimp), driving a futuristic RV called -- surprise! -- Ark II around a post-apocalyptic Paramount Ranch…ummm, I mean, Earth…to bring salvation…ummm, I mean, science…to a humanity that has reverted to primitive, ignorant lawlessness. It was reeeeally something. Like much of the TV of its day, it's a bizarre combination of entertaining ideas, social commentary, cheesy writing, bad acting, cheap production values, and some choices that do not hold up well after 40 years (like guest star Jonathan Harris (aka Dr. Smith) doing a dreadful Irish accent as the adult leader of a group of vagrant boys, many black, who call him...I kid you not...Master Fagin).

So anyway, my friend Chris (god bless Chris, he’s into pop-culture nostalgia even more than I am) comments that he thinks the futuristic RV was made for the George Peppard sci fi movie Damnation Alley, to which I respond, "Apparently not," because by then I’d watched the behind-the-scenes Ark II documentary made for the DVD release (NB: I have no life), where I learned that they actually built the vehicle for this series (and that it kept falling apart and was nearly undrivable).

So then – stay with me – my friend Cory pipes in with, “Wasn't there an RV-themed SF movie with John Saxon and Lurch? Was it Planet Earth with the Dinks?”

Now THIS is where it really starts to get interesting, because all kinds of bells go off in my head.

Cory is correct. Not only that: Planet Earth was a Gene Roddenberry TV movie/series pilot, a reworking of an earlier pilot he did, Genesis II. Both were set on post-apocalyptic Earth and dealt with the decline and rebirth of civilization. This is how Wikipedia describes Genesis II: “The film, which opens with the line, ‘My name is Dylan Hunt. My story begins the day on which I died,’ is the story of a 20th-century man thrown forward in time to a post-apocalyptic future, by an accident in suspended animation.” And Planet Earth "was the second attempt by Roddenberry to create a weekly series set on a post-apocalyptic future Earth. The previous pilot was Genesis II, and it featured many of the concepts and characters later redeveloped and mostly recast in Planet Earth.”

I have to rewatch to see if there was a futuristic RV in either or both. It’s been decades since I’ve seen them. In fact, I think the only time I’ve ever seen Planet Earth in its entirety was in a screening at a Star Trek convention sometime in the mid-1970s, when I was about 13 or 14. Everything about the experience weirded me out. Not only had Gene Roddenberry made something other than Star Trek (somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that that was possible), but he’d made this thing about a bleak future where women oppressed men by keeping them drugged, which, I suppose, in hindsight, was meant to be some kind of feminist statement made via relatable role reversal, but to me back then just seemed ultra-creepy and misogynistic. At least, that’s my recollection some 40 years later. (Seems like my memory is pretty good. From Wikipedia: “The pilot focused on gender relations from an early 1970s perspective. Dylan Hunt, confronted with a post-apocalyptic matriarchal society, muses, ‘Women's lib? Or women's lib gone mad?’”) Be that as it may, it was pure Roddenberry, moralizing on a contemporary issue in the context of a futuristic sci fi setting.

Anyhow, it certainly seems likely that Roddenberry’s two pilots inspired the kid-friendly, dumbed-down, talking-chimp-inclusive, morality-play-of-the-week Ark II. After all, it’s not like post-apocalyptic sci fi was common on TV. And the dates line up: Genesis II was 1973, Planet Earth was 1974, and Ark II was 1976. The similarities in the heavy-handed biblical titles between Genesis II and Ark II are surely not coincidental, either. And of course, the influence of Star Trek itself is apparent, in everything from the costume design to the cast diversity (a white man, an Asian woman, a Latino teen, and, of course, a chimp) to the thinly veiled social commentary. To seal the deal, Filmation, which produced Ark II, also produced Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1974).

Which brings me back to where I started: the announcement of a new Star Trek animated series, to be produced by CBS’ Eye Animation Productions, Secret Hideout, and of course -- Roddenberry Entertainment.

So what's it going to be like? Here’s a description from Indiewire: “The series will feature CG animation and follow the adventures of a group of lawless teens who discover a derelict Starfleet ship. Faced with such temptation, these young rebels will use the ship and along the way, learn life lessons and search for meaning and salvation.”

So basically, Ark II with a spaceship instead of a futuristic RV? (Cue music: “It's the circle of life,
And it moves us all…”)

And...hang on...didn't Discovery just get thrown into the distant future? Will there be some Federation-style civilization rebuilding? Hmm...

See, I told you I’d connect the dots.

Compare the opening of Planet Earth:

to the very similar opening of Ark II:

both cousins to the traditional Star Trek opening we know so well (here from TAS), about finding new civilizations rather than rebuilding an old one:

Disco Sliders and other post-S2 thoughts

It’s impossible to talk about the Disco finale without starting at the end, given the seismic shift involved. No matter what you think of the idea of jumping the show 1,000 years into the future, you have to admit, it’s the gutsiest move any Trek series has ever made. That’s one very big series reset button. So what will it mean? This calls for some of my unique, bold, mostly incorrect speculation.

Since Discovery has the technology and the know-how to do both time and multiverse travel, and since Control seems to have been destroyed, could the series be heading toward a Sliders-type scenario, with our heroes leaping around different time lines and universes trying to find their way home? They can’t actually make it, of course, because if they did, the whole retcon that wipes Discovery and her crew out of Federation history would be undone.

But here’s a thought: They could turn up in the Kelvin timeline, which has far less established continuity and is freer to play fast and loose with the characters’ back stories. This would be a great way to resurrect Kelvin, which at the moment seems to be destined for the scrap heap. It would be cool if Kelvin Spock has never had a sister, and Michael has to start a new relationship with a brother who never knew her. (I think this actually works, timeline-wise. According to Memory Alpha, the Kelvin timeline diverges in 2233; Spock was born in 2230, so the divergence occurs before Michael would have come into his life.)

Meanwhile, the question that’s been bothering me: Why did Discovery have to time travel once Georgiou had (suspiciously easily) destroyed Leland/Control? Sure, maybe they just couldn’t be certain whether the AI still existed in some form somewhere else; when the stakes are end-of-all-sentient-life big, it does seem better safe than sorry. But what if the whole thing was something Georgiou had set up from the start, because she wanted to get the hell out of Dodge into some other time zone, where there might be less nanny-state Federation thwarting her designs on galactic domination? A great story line next season would be the crew of the Discovery discovering (it’s what they do) that Georgiou intentionally set Control on its destructive path in the first place. (Do not take your eye off Philippa Georgiou. Can we all try to remember that she is not your edgy, snarky, leather-clad favorite aunt, but an evil super-genius from an evil mirror universe? Why has everyone gone all warm and fuzzy about the woman for whom Kelpian ganglia were snack food?)

I guess this is where I try to evaluate the season as a whole. But that’s really hard to do, because it somehow managed to succeed wildly in the same moments when it was also being kinda disappointing. Some character and relationship arcs were just crazy good, the kinds that your brain instantly files under “things I will mentally replay whenever I’m having a sleepless night, on a long flight, or am otherwise bored and incapacitated.” Others were left to languish or were treated haphazardly.

Michael/Spock shot to number one with a bullet on my list of all-time favorite Star Trek relationship stories. It wasn’t perfect – there were moments when they ran inexplicably hot and cold for reasons that can only be described as, “because the script said so” – but when it was working, it was riveting. Sonequa Martin-Green and Ethan Peck played the friction so well, so uncomfortably, that the emotional resolution felt like a physical relief. (Case in point, that moment in “Perpetual Infinity” when Spock gets Michael to live in the present and play 3D chess: “The board is yours, Michael.” Melt.) I absolutely love how much of the T’Pol dynamic they brought to Spock – how deep and scary a Vulcan in mental distress can be, and how difficult the struggle to come back must be.

Captain Pike’s story is another high point. It was an absolutely brilliant idea to show us the crew of Discovery through his outsider’s eyes and, at the same time, to let us watch him become one of them. Pike could have easily been an irritating, goody-goody Boy Scout, but the writing and Anson Mount’s portrayal made his fundamental decency and honor not just believable, but profound. And for a lifelong Trek fan, closing the circle on his storyline, with him reconnecting with Vina and then witnessing his own future, was worth the price of admission alone.

It was also a joy to watch Saru develop into a confident leader. Yeah, the story of how all that came about was kinda wonky, but Doug Jones played the hell out of it, winning me over by the sheer magnetic force of his total commitment to the character.  Nice doesn’t have to be meek. I love that.

I’m also crazy about minor characters who are so appealing that I start building a whole mental picture that’s mostly me filling in copious blanks, sure, but with just enough onscreen meat to put on those bones. These are often some of the most fun characters to think about because there’s not enough to disprove what I want to believe. Detmer and Owo, I’m looking at you. Also Kat Cornwell, whom I love so much that she could be the subject of a whole separate post. (Yeah, I know she’s not exactly a minor character, but she’s more blanks than fill-ins.)

But then there’s a whole range of bobbles and total misses:
• Georgiou lurking about, being oddly one of the team despite her obvious ulterior motives (see my speculation above), her actions and acceptance by others being basically utterly inexplicable.
• Ash/Michael just fizzled. We’re meant to see continued interest there throughout the season, but with so little onscreen time and development, it became unconvincing. It started looking more and more like a legacy S1 relationship that the writers now and then had to acknowledge with a quick will-they-won’t-they scene. L’Rell, too. What a waste of a truly excellent Klingon.
• Tilly devolving into a caricature of an insecure adolescent whose babbling and lack of professionalism is mysteriously tolerated, and who seems to now play the role of the weird kid sister everyone is fond of in the way one is fond of…well, weird kid sisters. I started out thinking she was very Bashir-like, but instead of growing into her role, she seems to be going the other way. I’m starting to wonder if she isn’t more intended to be an answer to the absurdly perfect Wesley Crusher (later TNG retcon notwithstanding). But if so, they seem to have leaned too hard in the other direction. Mind you, my Tilly love is hard to kill, so I fully hope and expect for her to come roaring back in S3.
• Culber and Stamets, whose relationship disintegrates unconvincingly and then is reconstituted even more unconvincingly.
• Jet Reno, whose promise of dry humor in times of crisis never fully pays off, and who winds up bringing just one trick to the party: “Hey look! It’s Tig Notaro!”
• The whole Airiam thing, which wasn’t awful, but which could have been so much better if her character development hadn’t been smushed into the one episode where they also killed her off.
• Sarek and Amanda. Seemed like they had a big role to play – but it turned out to be just a well done, affective, but not very germane farewell scene.

As to the season’s story line: It was entertaining, but I can’t help thinking, if you’re going all out to do a continuing story line in a season that’s much shorter than conventional American TV, shouldn’t making it tight, suspenseful, and well paced be a huge goal?  And yet too often, we got hand-waving or blind alleys. One of my biggest complaints was Control itself. This Big Bad kind of fizzled. By the end, it was just an enemy fleet led by a guy whom Michelle Yeoh could beat in a cool fight sequence, which made the whole escaping-to-the-distant-future thing seem a lot less pressing.

I could go on: the dropping of the entire Klingon empire from the story; the sketchy interference in Kaminar; the spore drive that we must not used except when the script calls for it; the reduction of the entire mycelial network to a plot device to torture Culber. I was really hoping that some of the plot wonkiness of season 1, which I figured had mostly to do with behind-the-scenes show-runner drama, would have been ironed out. But then, from what I read, there was still more behind-the-scenes show-runner drama in S2. Even so, the overall result was more satisfying than S1. (Nope, I am not letting go of the seemingly careful development of Lorca as a complex character, only to reduce him to the cartoon villain. Cannot get past that.)

There was more than enough to love in S2 to make me come down on the side of yay, but I can’t help wishing for that one mind-blowingly perfect season of new-golden-age-of-television Star Trek perfection, and this wasn’t it. I’m also not quite reconciled to the fact that Disco keeps making me say goodbye to characters I’ve fallen in love with (dear god in heaven, please create a spinoff with Pike, Spock, and Number One!) and story lines that don’t quite feel complete.

Thus begins the looooooong hiatus.

Disco Daystrom

With the Disco S2 finale just days away, I'm thinking about a Star Trek episode that aired just over 51 years ago.

I've seen a lot of speculation that Disco's Control might be the Borg origin story – but I never see mentioned the TOS episode that this story line resembles even more: “The Ultimate Computer.” That’s the one where the experimental M-5 computer is tested on the Enterprise, only to go berzerk and kill people in self defense. Sounds familiar, right? (This is one of those classic episodes where it turns out Kirk can defeat the crazy AI by talking to it, a dramatic choice that doesn’t really fit with the more action-packed, contemporary approach.)

When you get right down to it, the Control story line in Disco owes as much to “The Ultimate Computer” as Star Trek: The Motion Picture did to “The Changeling.” No doubt many current fans and critics don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of TOS – but some surely do. Yet now, instead of generating the kind of criticism for unoriginality that the movie did, Disco's obvious parallels to a TOS episode don’t even come up. I guess the passage of time and all the additional Star Trek that’s been created in the interim have made the reworked story seem more like an homage than a rip-off. TOS episodes are no longer individual stories so much as progenitors of entire genres.

But anyway, at Disco’s point in the Star Trek timeline, Doctor Richard Daystrom, creator of M-5 and namesake of the Daystrom Institute (which, the Memory Alpha wiki informs me, is actually mentioned in the Disco episode “Choose Your Pain,” so it already exists), is somewhere between his duotronic breakthrough and the rollout of M-5. He is undoubtedly considered one of the Federation’s preeminent AI experts. Right about now, he’s probably in the process of developing the technology to program an AI with human engrams (unfortunately, as it turns out, his own, which tend toward instability and paranoia – hence the M-5 debacle).

So as we head into the S2 finale, I’m hoping for, at the very least, a significant Daystrom mention, if not an actual appearance. That would be a very cool piece of canon continuity.

OTOH, it's damn near impossible to explain Spock’s failure to mention Control when M-5 comes along. So either this will just remain a big canon continuity problem (and hey, what would any extensive sci fi franchise be without big canon continuity problems?), or it’s another clue that there is a huge reset coming, with events of this season entirely erased from the timeline, probably as a result of Discovery's imminent trip to the future (which I speculated about in my previous post). We’ll find out soon enough!

I can't let any discussion of "The Ultimate Computer" go by without mentioning one of the most touching Kirk/Spock moments in all of TOS, and here it is.

Such Sweet Reset?

Ten things about Such Sweet Sorrow. Spoilers ahead.

1. If this is a setup to fling Discovery into the future long-term (after getting Spock off the ship -- maybe he’s on that unexploded photon torpedo that’s going to hit the Enterprise?), will this be some kind of time-travel reset button that wipes Discovery out of the past, fixing all continuity problems regarding the spore drive, knowledge of the mirror universe, and Michael herself? OK, I think I like this. Also I think I've had enough of falling in love with single-season characters, and stranding Discovery in the future could be a way to stop doing that. (Oh, who'm I kidding?)

2. Why does bringing the sphere knowledge into the future make it safe from Control? Presumably an AI that can inhabit anything/anyone is immortal. Can’t it just wait until it catches up with Discovery in the future?

3. It feels like Disco does a hurry-up-and-wait thing a lot, where there’s a giant danger -- no time to lose, Leland is right behind us! -- but somehow plenty of time for touching character scenes.

4. I love that eyes-up thing they did. Twice.

5. The Michael/Sarek/Amanda scene: I cried. I’m not ashamed.

6. If this is it for Ash/Michael, they're going out with a whimper, not a bang. That spark hasn't been burning very bright all season.

7. Where did the Enterprise come from, anyway? And how did it get there with this giant Section 31 fleet in the way?

8. If you need to distract from a dodgy plot framework on which you've hung some gloriously shmaltzy character scenes, you could do a lot worse than have Sonequa Martin-Green and Anson Mount doing the distracting.

9. I really, really need more Number One. And more Pike. Basically, I need a whole series on the pre-Kirk Enterprise.

10. I’m not getting that ENT tie-in I’ve been dreaming of, am I?

ADDING: Bonus 11. On second thought, Discovery isn't staying in the future. Or at least, its crew isn't. I can believe that one person -- Spock -- somehow gets off the train just as it's pulling out of the station, or gets returned through the wormhole, or whatever. But this can't possibly be the end for Hugh and Paul...can it? That it's Michael and Ash's last goodbye I can believe. That relationship had "ill-fated" stamped all over it right from the start. But Hugh and Paul? Not bloody likely. While their relationship is peripheral to the main story, it's central to Disco's vision of IDIC. I can't believe they'd just let it fizzle. Unless Discovery's trip to Tomorrowland is not permanent, but not brief, either -- like, a season or two? The writers wouldn't make us wait that long for a Hugh/Paul reconciliation...would they?

The Red Angel Wrinkle

In my last post, after expounding on how the Red Angel was probably Michael, what with her archangel name and all, I said, "Maybe Michael is more red herring than Red Angel?" And...yup. It was!

So I'm stopped at a red light, thinking about the Red Angel (which seems appropriate, I guess), who turns out to be Michael's long-lost parent, a scientist who got lost in time because of a science experiment, and it hit me -- the probable inspiration for the left turn this story just took: A Wrinkle in Time. Sullen, troubled Michael (Meg) and cranky, troubled Spock (Charles Wallace) set off on a crazy adventure to find the absent parent. There's even a dangerous Big Brother A.I. called Control (in Wrinkle, CENTRAL Central Intelligence and/or IT) controlling stuff and eventually destroying all sentient life if it can just get the right software upgrade. (ADDING: I suppose that makes Pike Calvin.)

Will the rest play out along these lines? Was Michael's mother lost and/or captive, as Meg's father was, or has she actually been controlling events? Will Michael have to save Spock as Meg does Charles Wallace? Will the message be about the importance of love and individuality over complacence and conformity? Fair warning: Whenever I come up with a brilliant literary basis for my speculation, I'm generally wrong. But still...I mean, think about it. Especially, Spock is Charles Wallace. He so is.

On the whole, not my favorite episode. Mostly, I was confused. Why did they have to trap the Red Angel? What exactly is Control up to and what is its relationship to the Red Angel? If they thought the Red Angel was future Michael, then wouldn't she know that they were planning to use her as bait, because she was there? But maybe that's exactly what Spock realizes -- that he has to stop anyone else from saving her, so that she would know he's going to do that, so she has to come back and save herself. (Don't you just love time travel stories?) Hopefully, some of those answers are coming, but I would have liked to have a clearer idea of the point of the trap they were setting.

Also, am I supposed to be warming up to Georgiou now? I interpreted her flirting with Stamets and Culber as an attempt to make them jealous and get them interested in each other again, which is...nice? I think? I really don't know how to feel about this, what with her eating Kelpians and all.

Also also, Burnham being all pissed off at Ash for being in Section 31 seems kind of harsh, given that he probably doesn't have a whole lot of options as a part-Klingon sort-of murderer.

One last thing: They need to stop this nonsense of all Tilly's scenes being about her inappropriate nervous babbling. It's not funny anymore, and they're just reducing her to a running gag. I will not stand for that. Just stop.

Oh wait, no, there was one other thing: Trembling lips and soulful singing at Airiam's funeral. Sob.

Post-Daedalus Project (SPOILERS!)

So far this season on It Started With Trek…my blogging ambitions have flagged miserably. But after “Project Daedalus,” the motivation is strong. Because holy shit, that was so good but so upsetting.

Poor Airiam. We hardly knew ya. And I mean that quite literally. As much as I liked this episode, it commits a sin that really, really bugs me – painting a character’s backstory in broad strokes immediately before killing them. This would have been so much better if her story had been revealed gradually throughout the season. But oh well, I still cried. Once again, proof that Jonathan Frakes is better behind the camera than in front of it. (But am I the only one who thinks Sonequa Martin-Green's stage-fighting always seems fake?)

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk Red Angel. I imagine everyone has a theory. Mostly, I’ve avoided them, but I have run across the most obvious: that the Red Angel is Michael herself, presumably from one possible future. And TBH, it’s hard not to go with this one, because:

a. Michael is the protagonist, so it makes sense for the Big Thing to be All About Her.
b. The Red Angel is clearly stalking Michael’s ship.
c. Spock says it’s human.
d. It seems to be benevolent. But mostly…

Archangel Michael Defeating Satan, by Guido Reni, 1636

e. The name. Michael. Y’know, the archangel? In the Old Testament, Daniel (Spock) has a vision of Michael (Michael), which he alone can see. It's an apocalyptic vision, and it leaves him very shaken up. Something about him battling something terrible in the End Time. Like maybe when all life in the galaxy is going to be wiped out? And in Revelation, Michael fights Satan (evil Georgiou?). I can’t be the only one who’s noticed this.
f. It’s mentioned that Michael Burnham "died" in the bombing of the Vulcan Learning Center by the Logic Extremists (OMG Logic Extremists! More on them later). So she’s been resurrected. Did I mention that the big battle led by the Archangel Michael involves resurrection?

NB: I’m always amazed by how many sci fi writers crib their stories from the Bible.

But with all that said…maybe Michael is more red herring than Red Angel? (HAHAHAHAHA. See what I did there?) Maybe Spock is the Angel. He says the angel is human, and he is acting awfully emotional and human at this point. Maybe future-human-identifying-Spock is trying to warn now-Spock that he mustn’t go down that path because it will lead to the apocalypse. The upshot is going to be that Spock must reject his human half and live as a Vulcan to save everything, resulting in the Vulcan-identifying Spock we see in TOS. And that’s why he never talks about his sister, Michael – because it was his childish love and worship of his big sister that led him down the human path, and it’s too painful for Vulcan-identifying Spock to think about her.

I feel compelled at this point to mention Sybok. I mean, Sybok had visions. Sybok rejected logic. Sybok wanted to make Vulcans more…well, human. OK, granted, I really have no idea how this would fit in with Sybok as we meet him in ST V (or as I like to call it, The Movie That Shall Not Be Named). But there’s too much religious mumbo-jumbo about Sybok to dismiss his relevance to the religious mumbo-jumbo here. Does it seem likely that Sybok is explicitly part of this story? Not really. But he sure is a flashing neon question mark in the background.

But anyway, the Michael = Red Angel theory does seem to have the most going for it. If I were a betting Trekkie, that’s where my money would be. And certainly, whoever the Red Angel is, they are trying to make sure Discovery achieves certain specific things. The kinds of things that will keep a time line chugging along as it should.

Hey...maybe the Red Angel is Crewman Daniels?

Back to the Logic Extremists. Who are they? What are they? Why are they?  A reactionary backlash against the Syrannites, of course! I mean, I really, really hope so. Firstly, because it makes so much sense. The Syrannites of ENT were all about reintroducing ethics, mysticism, and spirituality into the Vulcan way of life. The cold, pragmatic logic-extremist Vulcan admiral Parr is such a throwback to the Vulcans of ENT. And secondly, because this would be the perfect way to bring T’Pol (and dare I say, possibly even Trip?) into Disco.  PLEASE MAKE THIS HAPPEN!

One more thing: I need to resurrect a season 1 theory here. When it was revealed that the Section 31 HQ is a former penal colony, the alarm bells in my head were deafeningly loud: “Dagger of the Mind” was set in a penal colony for the criminally insane. Pike says that Section 31 is going to torture Spock at this location with some infernal device (sorry, I don’t have time to find the exact quote). In the TOS episode “Dagger of the Mind,” a “neural neutraliser,” supposedly a therapeutic device, is used to manipulate, read, and wipe minds. The thing is, in season 1, I was already seeing echos of “Dagger of the Mind.” I’ll just quote myself here and let you draw your own conclusions:

“Disco gave us an episode named "Lethe," which dealt a lot with Admiral Cornwell, prompting fans to speculate that she might somehow become the Lethe who was a character in the TOS episode "Dagger of the Mind" -- a woman on a penal colony for the criminally insane who describes her former self, before treatment with the neural neutralizer, as malignant and hateful. Seeing Emperor Georgiou snatched by Burnham and brought along for the ride to the Prime Universe, I speculated, mostly facetiously, that she, not Cornwell, seems more likely to become Lethe. Certainly, the words malignant and hateful describe MU Georgiou pretty well.
And then something hit me -- something I somehow had never noticed in my four-plus decades as a TOS fan.
The penal colony in "Dagger of the Mind" is on Tantalus V. The Mirror Universe device used by Kirk to destroy his enemies in "Mirror Mirror" is the Tantalus Field.
Tantalus is a figure from ancient Greek mythology -- he invited the gods to a feast and cooked up the body of his own son to feed them. ("Here, have my ganglia. You deserve a treat.")  This offended the gods, causing Zeus to hang him forever above a stream for which he eternally thirsted, but of which he could never drink.
Also from ancient Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the rivers of the underworld across which the dead were ferried by Charon. Emperor Georgiou's palace-ship is the ISS Charon.
That's a whole lot of coincidence going on right there, unless it's not. Could Emperor Georgiou actually become Lethe, and somehow her Tantalus V experience find its way back to the MU in the form of Kirk's Tantalus Field?
Crazy, right?”

Other random stuff:

1. While it makes no sense that Tilly would have gotten as far as she has without a bit more self control, I love her outbursts. When Admiral Cornwell appears on the bridge, and Tilly takes it as an opportunity to vent her anxieties and make it known that she is NOT a rule-breaker…I just want to give her a squeeze. (Tilly reminds me so much of one of my own kids.)

2. When Cornwell reassures Pike that he’s what’s good about the Federation, that he’s what they need to preserve, it’s endearing because it’s so rare to see the Man In Control look that insecure. In that moment, you can see him “let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding,” as the fanfic would say. He needed that reassurance from a powerful woman. So refreshing.

3. The fact that they have the Stamets/Culber relationship on the back burner in such a tense, unresolved state makes me so sad every time I see Stamets. Like, how does he keep showing up for work?

4. Cannot end without taking a moment to react to the “Previously on Star Trek” opening of “If Memory Serves.” SQUEEEEEEEEE. Sometime in the mid-1970s, having only just learned that the original pilot had been turned into the two-episode “Menagerie,” teenage Me sat in a NYC hotel meeting room with a bunch of other colossal nerds for a screening of “The Cage,” which had almost never been seen before by the public. Last week, I got just that excited about it ALL OVER AGAIN.

Phrack and Phreud

I posted this on Tumblr a long time ago; reposting here for posterity.
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When I first binged 2 ½ seasons of MFMM, I was really interested in the tension between conventional and flipped gender roles, and how that combination makes for something that feels, on the one hand, daring and unconventional, and on the other hand, romantic and comfortably familiar.  [I wrote about it here.] As the series moved toward resolving, or at least advancing, the Phryne/Jack relationship, maintaining that balance was one of the biggest challenges. I think overall, they did a good job, but with some missteps. The biggest, as far as I’m concerned, is doing the Daddy Fisher story arc alongside the development of the Phrack.  It was impossible to at least consider the implication that Phryne’s ability/desire to enter a serious romantic relationship was contingent upon the resolution of her issues with her father.  If there was any doubt as to whether this was reading too much into the situation, or whether this was intentional on the part of the writers, that doubt was erased at the end of Death at the Grand, in the waltz scene, when Phryne explicitly invokes her parents’ troubled relationship as Jack woos her in a dance.

[Well this got really long. I’ll put the rest under a link for dashboard neatness.]

 As so often happens with Strong Female Characters, Phryne is something of a contradiction: a bold, unconventional creature shaped by grand, sweeping, historic forces like war, poverty, and class – and also a vulnerable, damaged creature shaped by intimate, domestic, familial forces like family tragedy and her parents’ troubled relationship. The Baron story line straddles both, with its implications about money, class, and war, as well as family relationships – and it all comes to a head in the finale. The problem I have with this particular arc is that, at some point, it veers hard right into some seriously dodgy psychological territory. By associating Phryne’s relationship to her father with her relationship to Jack, there’s this whole batty psychoanalytic Freudian/Jungian subtext, especially given the time period. I know this will sound to many like some far-out theory, but it’s really in your face, in the story. For example, as many have pointed out, the big Jack-Phryne kiss takes place right in front of Phryne’s father – as Phryne is literally about to RETURN HER FATHER TO HER MOTHER. Sheesh.

It’s like they were using the chapter on the Electra Complex in the Neo-Freudian Pocket Handbook to Female Sexuality [no, that’s not a real thing, I made it up to make a point] to write this whole arc. From an admittedly random website on the topic: “According to Freud, girls, realizing that they have no penis, develop Penis Envy for the power that the penis provides. Seeing that their fathers have one but their mothers do not, girls turn their sexual attentions away from the mother and towards the father, competing with the mother for his affection….It is also believed that an inability to resolve these issues could result in a woman who sets out to dominate men, with their actions dependent on their self-esteem levels. Those with high self-esteem will assume unusually seductive roles, while those with lower self-esteem become overly submissive to men.”  Is this how I want to see Phryne – as someone who is assertive and sexually aggressive because of an unresolved Electra complex and penis envy? HELL NO. Yet the Baron story arc requires me to go there, because frankly, it’s more or less spelled out that way. Phryne, an established strong, sexually assertive female, goes all to pieces when Daddy shows up; refers repeatedly to her parents’ unhealthy relationship as a problem in her own life; is painted as being more like her father than she’d care to admit; must resolve her issues with her father in part because of her obligations to her mother from afar; resents what she perceives as her mother’s weakness; cautions Jack about “waltzing” with a thinly veiled allusion to her multiple sexual partners, then to her mother’s loss of “all reason” when “waltzed – hell, the fandom calls her father BARON COCKBLOCK.

 As further evidence that the writers are not only veering into daddy-issue territory, but actually do have Freud on the brain, I offer the appearance of Death and Hysteria in this season and the way it deals with psychoanalysis of the period. The episode certainly seems very progressive in its handling of female sexuality in a repressive society. But on a theoretical level, you have to wonder if the doctor is anything other than a true Freudian. Freud postulated that the clitoral orgasm was an immature, masculine phase, and the vaginal orgasm [the existence of which was and remains unsupported by clinical evidence] was the superior kind.  The Percussor is a therapeutic device designed to help sexually frustrated women, but, as the doctor says, it proved to be of limited use – “symptomatic relief, at best.” Clearly, the good doctor believes that a clitoral orgasm doesn’t suffice to address underlying issues. In fact, on rewatching, I note that Mac actually mentions Freud in the discussion in the morgue, when Jack says the Chinese brothel “made a lasting impression.” Mac replies,“Mr. Freud would be terribly interested in that.” To be fair, one forgets today that Freud’s willingness to deal with female sexuality as a valid issue in mental health was highly enlightened for the time. But at any rate, my point is, Freud and psychoanalysis are intentional themes this season, not accidental ones. That’s my argument and I’m stickin’ to it.

So I don’t doubt for a moment that the writers, so aware of all these issues, are framing Phryne herself by them – a kind of psychological period authenticity, I suppose. And even if they’re just toying with me, and this is all a kind of winking, highbrow game of Spot the Historical Context for English majors and other hyper-analytic types like me, it’s not what I want for the character or the series. So big points off from me for the way the Baron’s arc boxes Phryne into an old-fashioned, un-feminist sexuality. I was truly surprised and disappointed that they went that route. I suspect it was just a misguided attempt to be cleverly highbrow behind all the fun and games – and mind you, I loved all the fun and games. Which brings me to my next point.

 Fortunately, we, the audience, get to decide what really matters to us. In the end, Phryne will never just submit to being a Freudian type. She’s a character so powerful, she beats back her own subtext. Penis envy? She’ll get a dildo and move on. As a character, she is way too big and bold to collapse under the weight of one questionable story line. She, like we, would flip Freud the bird in a heartbeat. And Jack? You know that, rather than pulling Phryne into the narrow, conventional world in which he’s been trapped until meeting her, he’s going to break loose and grab the brass ring she’s holding out to him. The one saving grace of the Baron’s story line is that, at its end, it’s not Phryne following Jack. It’s Jack following Phryne. That twist lets us kiss the Baron goodbye and welcome back the Phryne we want. 

Which brings me back to one final point about tension between traditional and nontraditional gender roles.

 On the one hand, the endless, slow-burn sexual tension between Phryne and Jack is built on the notion that Jack has to make the first move. Clearly, Phryne is waiting for him – uncharacteristically so. Whatever the reasons – his recent divorce, mixed signals from her, their working relationship, his need to accept her unconventional lifestyle, etc. – Jack is cast in the traditional masculine role of initiator. And what a traditional masculine figure he is. He’s masculine perfection. He just nails everything our culture sets up as irresistible virile manhood: classic manly attire, deep voice, taciturn manner, athleticism, chivalry. He’s a machine designed to make women swoon – and we do.  When he goes to kiss Phryne, even that is viscerally masculine: he pulls her to him, he holds her face.  [Nathan Page seems to have been born to play this role, because when he does those things, they’re just pitch perfect. It’s so sexy it hurts.]

 In a conventional love story, that would be the happily-ever-after moment. That the woman wants this – and ONLY this – would have been a foregone conclusion. But when Phryne tells Jack to come after her – flip. Just as he takes the initiative and makes the move, she comes back with a competing need. [Let’s leave out the inconvenient fact that this competing need is her father. I’m just blowing that a big, wet raspberry.]  Her agency is not undermined by romance. She is the inviter, not the invited. And we all know that Jack knows that, and he’s okay with it. Which is, after all, the gorgeous fantasy here. Classically handsome, smokin’ sexy man is just fine playing on the level playing field.

 Are there troubling aspects to this fantasy? Yeah. Some of the very things that make the uber-masculine male so appealing  in fiction are things that, in real life, would make him insufferable. And the fact that, had Phryne been the initiator, the whole thing would have been less swoon-inducing, is also something I’d rather not dwell on. On the other hand, seeing Jack as the one left behind, watching Phryne fly off into the sunset – that’s a pretty sweet role reversal. So in the end, I’m going to consider Jack Robinson an only slightly guilty pleasure, and I’ll leave it to the psychoanalysts to consider why guilt makes the pleasure that much sweeter.

On Disco season 2 so far and other Trek news

Four episodes into season 2 of Discovery, and I haven't updated this blog once yet. Bad me.

Basically, I like a lot about it. I really like that they're letting the crew feel like a crew; bringing Pike in to facilitate that was not a bad idea. I like Anson Mount in the role. I continue to love all these characters, and I especially like the way the story keeps them off balance so much of the time. I like the way their personal stories and the larger story arc are intertwined and feed off each other. But I'm not so sure that the mysterious Red Angel thread is strong enough to carry the season. It feels very MacGuffin-y. Worse, it feels like it's edging toward something I hated about TNG: A plot that is barely more than a premise, which provides a pretense for characters to do what they're known for doing (Picard calls a meeting to discuss; Data is superhuman but endearingly innocent; Troi feels feelings; etc.), and the audience is beaten over the head with the Message. How much more unfortunate if that kind of thing were to be dragged out over a whole season. So let's hope the Red Angels get a whole lot more development and are more meaningfully explored.

OK, to be fair, Disco is nowhere near that TNG extreme. But I think An Obol for Charon comes closest. The plot unfolds mostly by being discussed, with too many talky, unearned emotional moments; much of the dialogue tries to be witty but falls flat. I love big character moments as much as anyone, but not when they’re shoehorned in by hitting pause mid-crisis to discuss feelings. It all feels uncomfortably like TNG's telling-not-showing writing style. That said, I loved the universal translator snafu. And the way the Saru subplot echoes the larger (and classic Trek) theme about overcoming fear and not seeing everything alien as a threat. Doug Jones and Sonequa Martin-Green manage to  spin some gold from a lot of really straw dialogue, but sadly, the Stamets-Tilly-Reno scenes do not work, and the humor bombs.

Let's see, what else? I don't have the energy to go into that whole primitive-religion-is-really-just-mythologizing-science story, other than to say that, if you're going to tread that well-trodden path, you really should dress it up with some better scenery. I'm very intrigued by the betwixt-and-between state of Tyler's relationship status, and who doesn't like a problematic baby now and then?

I have big reservations about Bad Georgiou. The existence of Section 31 has always been problematic, but this, presumably, is its genesis. I always assumed the Section 31 we see in the TNG era evolved from something that was originally well intentioned but misguided, something that started down a slippery slope and eventually ended up in a very bad place. But if they started with Bad Georgiou from the get-go, then the Federation is both stupid (they really think she's going to stay on the side that hired her?) and evil. And that would be a whole different show. (Not to mention that just seeing her reminds me how pissed off I was that Lorca turned out to be a cartoon villain all along, but I suppose I just need to let that go).

In other Trek news:

I missed the story a month ago that the 4th Kelvin movie is dead. I am sad. I like those movies. Just as they get to the part where the characters come together into a tight, boldly going unit, they pull the plug. Feh. But OTOH, if it means I can stop worrying about a Tarantino Star Trek, that’s some consolation.

 While I did catch the news about the Picard and animated spinoffs, I also missed the news about the Bad Georgiou one. As I said above, I have serious reservations about her character within the ST universe. I guess they’re trying to segment the audience and give them targeted versions of the franchise, a la Marvel: Picard for the TNG crowd, the animated series for their kids (and grandkids), and dark-n-edgy Bad Georgiou for the all-important  millennial demographic (that’s my theory, anyway -- why else do a villain-centered show?). The tentpole for the time being, I suppose, is still Discovery.  Sure, there would be a ton of fannish overlap, as always with these massive franchises, but they’re not going to crank up multiple series simultaneously without painting some bright lines between them, because that’s what mainstream entertainment factories do. All of this within the crazy-ass context of the All Access business model (which, I read somewhere, may owe whatever success it’s had so far more to football than Star Trek). Seems insanely ambitious.

It’s hard not to worry that they’re going to wind up sacrificing one really good series for a bunch of mediocre ones. Even though I have my reservations about Disco, it has the potential to take Star Trek storytelling where it hasn’t gone before (ha! see what I did there?) -- to a more nuanced, thought-provoking, dramatically satisfying place. Hope springs eternal.