Star Trek Saturdays #21

It’s time for Star Trek Saturdays #21!!!

This week’s episode is “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” and it’s a wonderful time-travel episode that embodies the best of 1960s contemporary drama.

Our story opens at an Air Force base in Omaha, Nebraska in 1969. An airman detects something on radar that his commanding officer believes is an enemy aircraft right over the base; the strangest part is how the signal just appeared out of nowhere. The C.O. orders someone to go up there and take a look and we see an F-104 fighter jet take off. We then cut to the Enterprise flying through the sky.

After the opening, we hear Kirk, in his Captain’s Log, explain what happened:

“Captain’s Log, Stardate 3113.2, subjective time: We were en route to Starbase 9 for resupply when a black star of high gravitational attraction began to drag us toward it. It required all warp power in reverse to pull us away from the star but like snapping a rubber band, the breakaway sent us plunging through space, out of control to stop here, wherever we are.“

The ship is hurt bad, running solely on impulse power. Scotty reports that warp engines are offline and that he is holding the ship in orbit over Earth. Kirk asks Uhura to contact Starfleet Control to tell them how close the black star is to Starbase 9.

She replies that there is nothing on all standard Starfleet channels but she is getting something on another frequency…which turns out to be a radio broadcast talking about the first manned moon shot being scheduled to take place on Wednesday. Kirk recalls that that happened in the late 1960s and Spock realizes where and when they are, having been thrown back in time from the force of their escape from the black star.

Uhura then picks up an air-to-ground transmission which is the aircraft persueing them–named Bluejay 4 and piloted by Cap. John Christopher (Roger Perry)–telling the base that he is zeroing in on the UFO that is the Enterprise. He pursues them up into the clouds. Overhearing the order by the base to either shoot the UFO or disable it, Spock theorizes that the ship could be armed with nuclear warheads, which would be disastrous to the ship in its current condition.

Kirk orders Scotty to lock onto the aircraft with a tractor beam and, when that starts breaking about, tells the transporter room to beam Christopher aboard. He greets him personally, revealing his name but nothing else, stating that all will be revealed in time. But what does Christopher find out about himself, and how will the Enterprise get back home?

(Captain Christopher)

The surprising thing about this episode is that it feels so much like a regular drama of the time, while still feeling like Trek. It’s a remarkable act of imitation and everyone pulls it off well. Perry, a veteran TV actor, feels and looks like the typical hero, but he also brings an interesting perspective. From the beginning, everyone we’ve met within the world of the show is innately familiar with Starfleet and, by reputation or otherwise, the Enterprise. But Christopher isn’t, and watching a man who embodies the best America had in the 1960s (the hippie-free 1960s imagined by most TV of the time) grapple with all these astonishing things is rather interesting and compelling to see.

The regular cast gets on this wavelength too.  Shatner brings Kirk wonderfully into this scenario, Nimoy gets some wonderful comedy for Spock out of a problem with Kirk’s computer and Kelley has some nice little bits for McCoy. They bring D.C Fontana’s tense, clever script to life and, combined with some terrific, crisp direction by Michael O’Harlihy, they make this an episode worth watching. Recommended.

Thanks to Memory Alpha, the official Star Trek wiki for the pics and episode information, as well as Amazon Instant for hosting the show. We’ll see you next Saturday and until then, live long and prosper.

 

 

Star Trek Into Darkness Review

As I think I’ve said previously, I thoroughly enjoyed J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek reboot, which was not only a good action movie all by itself, but took great steps to explain why it didn’t disregard the past half-century of Trek lore. In part, if it wasn’t for that film, I wouldn’t have been interested in getting into Trek as a whole.

With that in mind, I can confidently say that, knowing more about Trek–particularly the original series–I can confidently say that this is still a nice exploration on what a younger TOS crew would be like, as well as a rather good and enjoyable action film. Terrific acting, gorgeous visuals, and a overall strong story help make this movie work and bring back some of the social commentary that a lot of people thought was missing from the last film.

So, here’s the story: after violating the Prime Directive–the First Rule of Starfleet which states that  personnel are not to interfere with the natural development of a civilization for any reason–in order to save Spock (Zachary Quinto), who attempted to stop an active volcano from exploding to save a primitive civilization (which also violates the Directive, as someone points out later), Kirk (Chris Pine) is called back to Earth and stripped of his command, with the Enterprise being given back to Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) with Kirk as his first officer and Spock reassigned to the U.S.S. Bradbury. Meanwhile in London, the mysterious John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) offers to save the dying child of a grieving couple (Noel Clarke and Nazneen Contractor) if the husband, who works in a Starfleet archive facility, does something for him. What he tells him to do and what that sets off brings to mind a crazy conspiracy involving Klingons, top-secret weaponry and a conspiracy stretching deep within Starfleet.

A whole lot goes down in this movie, which probably explains why its a little over 2 hours long. Unlike the first film, this one is steeped in Trek lore, as screenwriters Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof give us Klingons, some iconic visuals, and even Tribbles along with some subtext that heavily points at the Iraq War and drone strikes (Alyssa Rosenberg explores this in much better detail than I could, but beware: spoilers) in a way that makes this feel a little bit smarter than the average blockbuster and even smarter than the last film, which is what a Trek movie should do.

The screenplay, by and large, gets it all right, although there are some character choices made that had me and my more knowledgeable Trekkie friend I saw this with going “Huh?” But hey, at the end of the day, you should be grateful that Orci & Kurtzman remembered that they can write well when not working under Michael Bay and that Lindelof didn’t had some lame reveal like he kept doing to Lost over and over again.

Abrams’ direction is as bombastic as ever and incredibly visually exciting–the action scenes are not only coherent, which is something 90% of action movies don’t know how to do, but well-staged–but there are some bits that are a little confusing. And yes, Abrams’ love of the lens flare is particularly irksome here, especially given how shiny and bright all the stuff we see here IS already.

The cast is uniformly great. Pine embodies the best aspects of Shatner while bringing his own to this headstrong Kirk, Quinto has upped everything about Spock this time around and is better than ever, Karl Urban is hilarious and awesome as McCoy, Zoe Saldana actually gives Uhura depth (and they even gave her the microphone earpiece this time!), Simon Pegg’s Scotty is funnier and cleverer…I could go on. But the real star here is Cumberbatch as Harrison. He owns every single second of screentime he has. He’s a remarkably compelling presence and gives such huge dramatic weight both to Harrison and his true nature, as well as how he plays off the rest of the cast. This film, along with the Julian Assange movie he’s going to be in this fall, his role as Smaug in the next Hobbit film, and the return of Sherlock to television screens this year should make 2013 his breakout year.

So overall, this is a great addition to Trek, a great film in its own right and a wonderful way to kick off summer movie season (read that last bit as: I still haven’t seen Iron Man 3). Check it out. It’s worth it.

P.S. One thing that’s always bugged me about this Trek alternate universe: we’ve gotten so LITTLE of it. I mean, honestly, we’ve got the 2 films, the tie-in novelizations, the recent video game (which apparently is garbage) an ongoing comic and…that’s it. Isn’t that weird? I mean, as my friend and I talked about, there were toys, games, dolls, books and all sorts of stuff for all the TV shows. Why aren’t we getting that now? I mean, what the heck, Paramount? I know this is due to Bad Robot saying they wanted this way but…c’mon.

Here’s What Happened

So, you’re probably wondering why there’s been no updates here for a while. Well, it’s the end of the semester and, as happens, things started ramping up. Only this semester was harder than most, so things REALLY ramped up and I…started freaking out. Really bad. Like no-to-little sleep type freakouts.

I’ve calmed down, but now I’m in the middle of exams, and things are still crazy. BUT I still wish to blog, so I’ll be writing next week’s posts ahead of time, and hopefully they will publish as scheduled.

All right, back to studying!

Supernatural–The Complete First Season (Review)

Television networks are a strange thing in every country. In some countries, there’s only a handful of stations and most of the popular ones are funded directly or indirectly by the government ( See Canada and England for examples). Here in America, our “Big Four” networks are owned by huge media conglomerates while our government-funded station (PBS) is confined to, a breakout hit here or there, largely a niche audience.

And then there’s the “Fifth Network”: an independent network that sets itself up on local stations to compete with the “Big Four” and then usually doesn’t succeed, outside of one or two big hits. That used to be both the WB (which gave us Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville) and UPN (which had Star Trek: Voyager and Everybody Hates Chris), but now that’s the CW, the network formed when those other two merged a few years ago. It consistently trends toward the bottom ratings-wise, but it has its moments of victory.

I bring all this up to emphasize that Supernatural, the long-running horror procedural show currently in its eighth season on the CW, because of the fact that it doesn’t have as much money as a show on one of the other networks, really can’t be judged the same way. Of course, you can still judge it aesthetically, but the fact that it doesn’t have a huge budget like, say, Lost, must be acknowledged.

So how is it as a show? Well, having just finished the complete first season on Netflix, I’d say..well, pretty good. It’s not a groundbreaking show, but it’s entertaining.

Here’s the plot: Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) is a senior at Stanford, preparing to apply to law school and living with his wonderful girlfriend Jessica. On Halloween, someone breaks into their house. Sam grapples with the intruder, only to discover it’s his older brother Dean (Jensen Ackles), who he hasn’t spoken to in years. “Dad’s on a hunting trip,” Dean says, “and he hasn’t been home in a few days.” Although a little reluctant, Sam eventually agrees to help Dean track their dad down, but only for the weekend, as he has a law school interview on Monday.

So what sort of hunting trip is it? Well, after they get away from Jessica, Dean plays Sam a voicemail from their dad, John (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), which contains audio of a woman saying, “I can never go home.” If that sounds creepy to you, then you’ve figured out that this woman’s voice is, in fact, the voice of a ghost, and what the Winchesters “hunt” are paranormal forces–ghosts, demons, and what have you.

Why? Well, as we see in a flashback at the beginning of the first episode, when Dean was four years old and Sam six months, at the family home in Lawrence, Kansas, their mother was pinned to the ceiling and burned alive by a mysterious shadowy figure. Because of that, John quit his job and devoted his life–and the boys’–to destroying the paranormal, with the end goal of tracking down the creature who murdered his wife and killing it.

For the most part, the first season is a procedural: Sam and Dean roll into a town somewhere in America, using coordinates and clues from John’s journal,  to fight a monster, kill it, and save any people they meet along the way, then ride out in their sweet 1967 Chevy Impala.

Yeah, that’s a pretty sweet ride. There’s also a lot of classic rock on the soundtrack, which really is unlike a lot of TV.

Anyway, with a premise like that, two observations come to mind: 1. The first is that this is a show that could have easily aired decades ago, in the age of Night Gallery or The Outer Limits or Starsky & Hutch…and that’s a good thing. It’s the sort of “on the road” show that TV period doesn’t have much anymore in the age of serialized drama. Granted, this has elements of serialization, too, but for the most part, it’s a throwback show.

Observation No. 2: With basically no supporting cast, the two leads of a show like this have to have good chemistry and they do in spades. Ackles and Padalecki actually LOOK like siblings and they behave like them too, constantly sniping or bickering with each other in the middle of some crazy event. For example, in the episode “Hell House,” while investigating a string of deaths connected to a supposedly haunted house in Texas, Dean starts a prank war with Sam that carries on throughout the episode; before the big fight at the end, Dean has to tear a beer bottle that Sam put superglue on off of his hand. To give another example, in the finale, when breaking into an apartment building dressed as firemen, Dean remarks, “Always wanted to be a fireman when I grew up.” “You never told me that!” Sam exclaims.

Little moments like those and the warm bond Ackles and Padalecki have really reinforces that they could be brothers. But they each have strong characteristics of their own: Sam is the earnest hero who actually has more darkness than he’d like to admit, while Dean acts the part of the charismatic funnyman but really has a strong sense of compassion underneath it all.

Really, the only recurring character besides the brothers in this season is their dad, John. To my knowledge, I haven’t really seen Morgan in anything, but he’s a hardworking character actor and he has talent, something that pays off well in his multiple appearances, which happen more and more frequently as events go on. Morgan plays John with the intensity of a man haunted by death and with one true desire: to take revenge for everything he’s lost. It could come off cheesy in the wrong hands, but Morgan plays it close to the chest and very well at that.

The show was created by Eric Kripke, who left after five seasons to, among other things, helm the highly-rated but highly-hated NBC series Revolution.  Rather than end after his departure, however, because Ackles and Padalecki were under contract still, the show kept going and is now in its eighth season, will be getting a ninth and possibly a tenth, which means that this, the last surviving show from the WB (the show ran there for its first season, then moved to the CW), will potentially be around for as long as Smallville. But because Kripke is no longer there, my friend who introduced me to the show only considers the first five seasons “canonical”–he refers to the show now as Supernatural: The Search For More Money–and I’m sure there’s some portion of the fandom that thinks that too.

But I digress. While on the whole, I prefer the show’s largely anthology-based format, I do enjoy when it delves into serialization, because the anthology format can get a little stale at times. Also, some episodes have a slower pace than others. And the special effects–again, this is a show that originated on a “Fifth Network,” so it doesn’t have too much money–are a bit silly at times. But for the most part, the atmosphere and tone of the show offsets these things and usually makes it work to its advantage.

So, in the end, is Supernatural groundbreaking television? No, but it’s not bad either. Honestly, it’s just entertaining and fun. It’s really the first time I’ve ever enjoyed–and more importantly, never been bored by–this sort of lower-budget genre series that proliferates on the CW as well as places like SyFy; I find myself entertained by every episode. So I’ll keep watching and let you know if it gets any better from here.

Django Unchained–Home Video Review

After The Avengers, Django Unchained was my favorite film of 2012.  A big-budget Western, set in the pre-Civil War South, about a freed slave shooting white criminals dead as a bounty hunter, directed by the genius who brought us Pulp Fiction? Come on, who WOULDN’T be up for that?

I saw this movie the day after Christmas; it was the first Quentin Tarantino movie I’d ever seen in theatres and I was simply blown away. I actually really like Westerns, and Tarantino’s postmodern sensibilities and dynamic scriptwriting reinforced what I like about the genre: yes, every Western is written according to a formula, but it’s a formula that works, and Tarantino puts in enough twists and turns to make it his own.

So when preorders for the 2-disc Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack went up on Amazon, how could I resist?

It arrived last week, I watched it with some people on Saturday and it was great. For one thing, watching it with other people reinforced for me that Tarantino draws you into his movies not just with the random outbursts of violence, but also his dialogue, characters and plotting.

And what a plot we have here: In 1858 in Texas, two slavers and their convoy of five slaves are stopped by the colorful Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Woltz, in an amazing performance that won him a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar) who asks which of the slaves can help him identify three wanted criminals/former plantation hands he is chasing. When Django (Jamie Foxx) says he can identify them, Schultz “buys” him–by shooting one of the slavers and the horse of one of the others; it’s OK, they’re both criminals–and they locate the other criminals. Upon learning that Django wants to free his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) who was taken from him when they were sold separately, Schultz resolves to help him and trains him in the ways of bounty hunting. Come spring, they head for the debauched plantation of Candyland and its owner, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio, who is the creepiest he’ll probably ever be) and Samuel L. Jackson (who is a revelation) as the head house slave Steven.

The Blu-Ray, in all its 1080p glory, is gorgeous and looks remarkable on a HDTV. The bigger the screen, the better it looks; Tarantino is a guy who makes movies for the movie screen and this is evidence. I haven’t watched the special features yet, but I cannot wait to.

Interestingly, 2012 was also the 20th anniversary of Tarantino’s first film, Reservoir Dogs, and the 15th of what many consider his breakthrough, Pulp Fiction. Because of that, and because of this movie, all of Tarantino’s movies were transferred onto Blu-Ray with his supervision and blessing. I got Pulp Fiction for $4 on Blu-Ray that way and I can’t wait to see what else I can pick up.

But Django, as I said, is a brilliant movie. You don’t have to like or even have seen a Western in order to get what Tarantino is doing here. The bottom line is, one of America’s greatest filmmakers has made what might be his best movie yet. Check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

Star Trek Saturdays #20

It’s time for Star Trek Saturdays #20!!!

This week’s episode is “The Alternative Factor” and while it drags in quite a few places, it’s still an enjoyable episode.

We open with the Enterprise completing a routine survey of an uninhabited planet when suddenly, the ship is thrown into chaos. Everything is shaken up and all within sensor range seems, as Spock records later, on the verge of “winking out” of existence. After things come back to normal, the instruments detect a life form on the surface of the planet. Kirk, instantly suspicious, beams down with Spock and a security team to the planet’s surface, where they encounter a strange man (Robert Brown) who screams at them hysterically about how “We can still stop him!” and then falls off of a rock.

Returning to the Enterprise with him, Kirk learns that the strange phenomenon they experienced earlier nearly completely drained the ship’s dilithium crystals. Even worse, Starfleet contacts them with a Code Factor 1 message, signalling the possibility of invasion. An unnamed commodore appears on screen–incidentally, this is the first time someone from Starfleet communicates with the crew in real time–and informs him that the phenomenon was felt at the exact same time in all quadrants of the galaxy and behind. Kirk requests help, but the commodore denies it, saying he is withdrawing all Starfleet ships within 100 parsecs of their position. “So we’re bait,” Kirk concludes somewhat bitterly.

Kirk then heads to sickbay, where the man–who is called Lazarus–is recovering. He tells Kirk that he has been pursuing a “thing”–not a man, but a monster–across the cosmos for destroying his entire civilization. Kirk then beams Lazarus and himself down to the planet, where Spock informs him that there is no other creature present on the planet. Kirk grabs Lazarus and demands the truth. Suddenly, Lazarus begins spasming and the strange phenomenon occurs again.

Later, Kirk is informed by McCoy that a cut on Lazarus’ head, visible when he came in, has disappeared. But after finding Lazarus, who has escaped sickbay and spasmed again, with the cut still visibly there, Kirk doubts McCoy. But just who is Lazarus, and why does he keep spasming at the same time the phenomenon occurs? And what of this mysterious “thing” he’s been pursuing?

This episode does have its moments, but they’re undone by some rather odd scripting. Gerd Oswald returns again as director and does much better work here than in “The Conscience of The King,” in part because he’s called to do some really cool visual effects. As realized by the effects team, we get some neat 2001-esque stuff, such as a nebula-like thing that’s superimposed over the screen every time the phenomenon occurs to a very trippy image of two men fighting in a space that looks like a photographic negative.

Such nifty effects–which are made even cooler in the remastered version, where that still is taken from–and a very neat sense of pacing helps make up for the relative crumminess of Don Ingalls’ script. As my roommate pointed out, the big discovery about Lazarus comes about not through fact, but through pure conjecture between Kirk and Spock. To his credit, Oswald frames this conjecture with some nice gravitas and mounting close-up shots of the two men going back and forth, but it’s still conjecture.

Brown does a fine job as Lazarus, even if that job is mostly screaming and hysteria. He’s good at it and, later on, when the full truth about Lazarus is revealed, he handles things with gusto. According to Memory Alpha, John Drew Barrymore (yes, that one) was originally supposed to be Lazarus, but he simply didn’t show up to filming. Maybe, as Ed Harris groused in his recap of this episode for The Agony Booth, “he read the script.” Anyway, this resulted in Brown hurriedly being cast, then dragged on set, as well as a grievance filed against Barrymore by the production crew that cost him work for six months. One wonders what Barrymore would have done in this part, but Brown does just fine.

For some strange reason, Sulu and Scotty don’t appear in this episode.  Even more puzzling, a key bit of action occurs in Engineering, but it happens on a new set, rather than the one we’ve seen previously. Like I said, some odd choices are made, and Ingalls’ script has some rather crummy beats, but Oswald and the actors keep things better than they should be. So I’d still recommend this.

Thanks to Memory Alpha, the official Star Trek wiki for the pics and episode information, as well as Amazon Instant for hosting the show. We’ll see you next Saturday and until then, live long and prosper.

Why I Love Superman

So yesterday was the 75th anniversary of Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics #1. In celebration, Brian Cronin over at Comics Should Be Good polled, tabulated and ranked the 75 greatest Superman stories of all time. It’s a great list and got me thinking just why I love this character more than any other superhero.

But first, some backstory. I wasn’t always an active Superman fan. I was aware of the character from an early age, as I think most are. One of my earliest memories is watching the 1940s cartoon where he fights a giant ape at the circus. I remember enjoying the ’90s cartoon and Lois and Clark enormously as a kid. And I’m proud to say I own an original copy of Superman #80, the climax of the “The Death of Superman” storyline. As a matter of fact, the very first trade paperback I ever bought was The Return of Superman, which contains that issue.

But it wasn’t until I got serious about comic collecting in high school that I realized it. My pile of trade paperbacks had gotten so large that I knew some stuff needed to be moved or else risk destroying my shelf.

I looked and noticed I had about six or seven Superman trades. “Huh,” I thought to myself. “I guess this means I’m a Superman fan.” Not too long after that, I watched the first Christopher Reeve film and fireworks went off in my head. Now here, I thought, is a superhero!

When DC rebooted their whole universe in 2011, I was ecstatic. At last, I had a chance to get in on the Man of Steel from the ground up. I’ve bought every issue of the new Superman and Action Comics that’s come out and I love them.

Superman was also the focus of some of my earliest published writing. Long before I started this humble blog, I wrote two pieces for the world’s biggest Superman fansite, the Superman Homepage. It was a wonderful learning experience and I love the community on that site (my user name is TomCon, fyi).

So happy birthday, Superman. You’ve been an inspiration to legions and hopefully will be for the next 75 years and more. I cannot wait for your new film and I’ll keep finding more to read watch and learn about you. Thanks for doing the right thing because it’s the right thing every time.

Y’know, I never have sat down and watched Smallville…