Star Trek 572: The Fight

572. The Fight

FORMULA: Night Terrors + Emissary + Twisted

WHY WE LIKE IT: Kid Chaos. Staccato Prophetspeak.

WHY WE DON'T: What the hell is going on?

REVIEW: Though The Fight has a pretty good SF idea behind it, that of aliens having to rewrite Chakotay's brain so that he can understand their message, but its storytelling is such a confused mess, nothing can be made of this idea. Sure, there are a couple of neat things, like Kid Chaos' appearance and the way the aliens edit words together from elsewhere in the show, but when the big revelation is a massive amount of technobabble, it's hard to make the story very engaging.

The episode also means to explore Chakotay's past. He's a character that's criminally ignored, and when he gets attention, this is how it turns out. Sad. The idea that his grandfather was a crazy old man who had hallucinations/visions, and that he is also genetically predisposed to the same is intriguing, but his "greatest fear" - of going mad like him - seems out of character. It might have served to explain why he showed no interest in the ways of his people back in the early days, but the older, wiser Chakotay of the show has embraced those ways, dared to unlock his "madness" in vision quests, and has hallucinated before (it's a Voyager trope) without any incident or mention of this.

The interest in boxing is new as well. Not improbable, as he's used his fists before, but Boothby's appearance as a boxing coach is a little suspect. Yes, yes, we love Ray Walston too, but wouldn't the Academy have its own hand-to-hand combat instructors? Plus, very recently, in In the Flesh, Chakotay said he'd never met the man! Anyway, the holodeck sequence treats Chakotay has if he never had any lessons and must hear Boothby's advice for the first time. But that's the least of The Fight's timeline problems. More egregious is the way the episode starts in medias res for no discernible reason other than create the usual Voyager teaser that makes the viewer ask "what the heck is going on here?" rather than "what happens next?". The entire episode goes on to recall just how we got there, including things Chakotay wasn't a party to, and totally deflating the investigative aspect of the story. When Janeway connects the dots and realizes aliens are trying to communicate with Chakotay, we already know this.

And as far as metaphors for communicating go, boxing isn't a very good one. It's certainly no "baseball as linear time" allegory. Sure, Chakotay is fighting his own fears, and therein lies the symbolism, but that confuses the issue tremendously. The surreal dream sequences are only that: surreal. Some clever transpositions of Voyager's or Chakotay's situations, but not truly relevant. It may look better than a floating Deanna Troi shouting "Who are you?", but it's less instructive. I'm not even sure what the other characters' motivations are, never mind the chaotic space aliens. They spend all their time convincing Chakotay to risk insanity by contacting the aliens, and then reject his solution when he brings it to the Bridge or in the Doctor's case, wake him up at the worst time. If the question is "what's going on?", the answer is "who cares?".

LESSON: Don't fight it.

REWATCHABILITY - Low: There are good ideas here, yearning to be free. That they never materialize makes this episode very frustrating indeed.

The Day Canada Died (Happy Canada Day!)

ALPHA FLIGHT #12, Marvel Comics, July 1984
Back in the 80s, you couldn't throw a dart at a comic book store without hitting one of John Byrne's rags. He was as ubiquitous as Mark Waid or Grant Morrison were in the 90s and 00s. During his run on Uncanny X-Men, Byrne co-created Alpha Flight, Canada's premiere superteam (well... its only superteam, really), and would later go on to write and draw them in their own series.

#12 was the first issue I ever bought, and it hooked me enough that I tracked down the rest soon enough. It hooked me principally because they were Canadians, I'm pretty sure, cuz re-reading the issue now, I really don't agree with its politics. I don't think it was conscious on Byrne's part of anything, but his Alpha Flight isn't a well-trained group like the Avengers or a family like the Fantastic Four. It's a loose collection of entities Ottawa has put together, but who don't really like each other. If you wanna read that as a metaphor for the provinces, be my guest.

Byrne's take on Quebec separatism/sovereignism is particularly dubious. The only two French Canadians (the Beaubier twins) are the least likely to win role model awards: Northstar is a jerk of the highest order who has ties to the Quebec Liberation Front (increasing their membership by some 20%, I'm sure), and Aurora is one of the skankiest superheroes ever, wanting to have superspeed sex with Sasquatch instead of answering an emergency call. Plus, it's hinted that they have an "unnatural" brother-sister relationship. Eep!

Then there's the rather bold statement about the team's leader, Guardian:
Likening him to Captain America is fine, but "a unifying force in a country torn by internal bickering"? First, it makes us sound like a former Soviet state. Second, if your goal is to unify Canada, wrapping yourself in the maple leaf isn't the way to do it. Just ask Quebec. Can't really expect Byrne to actually research all this though, not when there are more pressing issues to deal with like the word "botonist" making an un-proofread appearance on page 18.

The plot is a revenge play starring Jerry Jaxon, Guardian's former business partner who had his life destroyed when Mac "Guardian" Hudson stole the technology which would later become the Guardian suit rather than see it used for military ends. Jaxon lost everything. So now he's back to destroy Alpha Flight, Guardian's pet project. He uses all the other Canadian superhumans he can find, and steals the Box robot which he mentally controls to enact his plan.

After the Alphans fight amongst themselves, they fight Jaxon's "Omega Flight" (it's a double-sized issue, so twice the fighting!). The most interesting bit (though Aurora getting a nipple clawed off by Wild Child may be a close second) comes when Smart Alec, a guy with enhanced perception and IQ thanks to a big, dorky helmet, steals Shaman's medicine bag and looks into it. I don't think you're supposed to do that.
"...as the last dwindling spark of his sanity flickers out, for an instant, Smart Alec knows why." Hey, that's pretty cool, right? And you didn't see a lot of photocopier tricks back then. (Alpha Flight actually has a history of photocopying tricks.)

Oh yeah, and the cover says "And one shall surely die!" So who is it? Aurora bleeding out from her ripped nip?
Nope. Snowbird turning into a bag of bones when she leaves Canada? Neither. Northstar of terminal assholeism? Not yet. Puck from Sasquatch sitting on him? No. Jaxon gets who he really wants to get. Guardian bites it. After a fight with Box-Jaxon, Mac fries the bad guy's brain (harsh!), but his suit is severely damaged in the explosion. He has only 10 seconds before a power pack explodes. Cool use of the comic book panel here:
But then, Mac's milfy wife (and Wolverine crush) Heather walks in, having escaped from Jaxon's robot secretary. He's distracted. BOOM!!!
Now look at what's left of Mac Hudson and tell me he could really return to life in Alpha Flight #89. I didn't think so. Never call 'em dead until you see a body. Well, that's the body. And it's pretty frickin' obvious Guardian isn't coming back from the dead.

Star Trek 571: Course: Oblivion

571. Course: Oblivion

FORMULA: Demon + Twisted + Whispers

WHY WE LIKE IT: The tragic alternate crew.

WHY WE DON'T: The horror show make-up effects.

REVIEW: [Spoiler!] This episode isn't about Voyager at all, it's about the "silver blood" duplicates spawned in Demon. Somehow (and this is a big somehow), they also duplicated the ship - a WORKING ship with anti-matter and computers with the same information as Voyager's, including the Doctor's matrix - forgot they were duplicates, got over that "can't breathe oxygen" problem and took to the stars. Destination: Earth.

Crazy premise aside, we have a very interesting experiment going on here. Essentially, the story's starting point is a sort of "what if". What if the last 19 episodes never occurred because Voyager took a different route? The way it's crafted, any onscreen differences can be attributed to some length of time having gone by (which would be perfectly valid on such a long trip), and the new ETA corresponds neatly with the end of the series. They actually do a good job of keeping the illusion going until 18 minutes in when B'Elanna dies. That's when you know something is either out of joint or else there's a reset button coming.

Let's examine the differences, shall we? Tom and B'Elanna are getting married. Have they perhaps gotten more time together, enough to get their relationship farther? Take out the months lost in One and Thirty Days, and you might achieve that (though she must still have isolated herself as in Extreme Risk, since her trauma occurred prior to Demon). They have a new enhanced warp drive, which makes them seem more clever than the real crew (perhaps the mimetic ship can do tricks a real one can't), but no Delta Flyer. Likewise, Tom hasn't been bumped down to ensign. It is odd, no matter how enhanced the new drive is, that this ship would be ahead of Voyager though, since it couldn't have experienced the long jumps in Hope and Fear, Night, Timeless and Dark Frontier.

Of course, once we know they're the Demon crew, their lives take on a tragic bent. These are likeable characters, actually a little happier than the real one, and not only are they not allowed to live, but they aren't even allowed to be remembered. The ending is as dark as they come for Voyager. Sadly, the drama is undercut by the truly ugly body horror make-up of the dying crew. It's ugly and actually muffles the actors' performances. Every character has a different reaction to finding out the truth, though we only explore a few. Tom's existentialism, partly stems from having lost B'Elanna, while Harry is simpler and remains loyal to who he "is". Janeway is - surprise! - unreasonable and seems not to have thought any of this through. I know she isn't the real deal, but as with Year of Hell, she's an alternate Janeway that still corresponds to what the real Janeway would do. Can't get away from it.

LESSON: I think therefore I am, even if I'm really not.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: Though the premise asks questions that it doesn't really answer, this is nonetheless a strong "alternate universe"-type episode that doesn't go for the cheap "evil mirror/dark future" trope. It'll also be interesting to compare this wedding with Tom and B'Elanna's real one.

5 Things to Like About OMAC

If you haven't gotten a copy of the OMAC: One Man Army Corps Omnibus, you really, really should. Its only real flaw is that it got interrupted mid-swing. Here are some (only some!) of my favorite moments in the book:

1. My body is rejecting the bullets!Yes, there's a medical reason why OMAC is bulletproof. Puts all other justifications for super-powers, EVER, to shame.

2. Nomenclature with OMAC
Animal? Vegetable? Mineral? All three?!? Here again, Kirby deals in pure comics. Screw realism. There can't possibly be a scientific explanation for visuals like this. And later, the monster "fission[s] like a hydrogen bomb!!!" so yeah, we're far off the Safari Cards.

3. The bad guys are ruthless
OMAC survives THIS, among other dangers! The first rule of OMAC: Everything! Must! Be! Extreme!!!

4. Super-Court!
Criminals in "the World That's Coming" don't just go to court, they go to Super-Court, at the very summit of Mount Everest. Everything! Must! Be! Extreme!!!

5. One army. One punch.
It only takes one.

Star Trek 570: The Disease

570. The Disease

FORMULA: The Perfect Mate + Retrospect + A Matter of Honor

WHY WE LIKE IT: Harry shows some balls.

WHY WE DON'T: Janeway's attitude again.

REVIEW: It's the one where Harry gets VD. Actually, that's a bit mean of me. The metaphor here is that love is essentially a disease, and the love bond is amplified in the story with some kind of sexually-transmitted chemical element. Things are made more complicated by this being a case of forbidden love, Harry breaking the rules to be with this girl (who's a right hottie, I agree). It's actually good to see Harry get off-spec, if you will, and show that he's more than just about duty and doing what he's told.

Of course, the way the conflict is engineered strains credulity (as per aforementioned Voyager laziness). We have this truly xenophobic race, the Varro, allowing themselves to be convinced to accept help from Voyager. Throughout, Janeway is desperate to help these people who do not want her help. Why? At some point, she mentions an off-chance that they might share some technology or be (short-term, surely!) allies. Her contention that they are spiritual cousins and that Voyager might become a generational ship has little weight considering that it can't have much more than 30 years to go, what with all its recent jumps. The Varro's xenophobia is really only to make Harry's affair more problematic.

Janeway's reaction to it is disproportionate in any case (even Chakotay says so). The Starfleet regulation requiring you to get permission from both your CO and CMO before engaging in relations with an alien makes sense (diplomatically and medically), but would have more weight if it had ever been referenced before. Sure, Kirk was probably his own CO, but did he get a lot of permissions from Bones? Did Picard and Sisko require their officers to conform to this as well? Even so, Janeway's attitude leaves a lot to be desired, and in fact, she pushes Harry to violate orders even more. Her warmer demeanor at the end of the episode manages to get the same points across without turning her into a fascist we can no longer agree with. Why can't she be more like that? The scene does reveal, perhaps, why Harry is stuck as an ensign over the course of the entire series: She sees him as her best and youngest son, and so, always as a child. Has she stalled his career with her motherly ways?

Harry's girlfriend Tal is appropriately exotic, with an odd accent (I don't know if it's part of Musetta Vander's native South African accent) and striking looks. Unfortunately, Charles Rocket is as white bread as they come, killing any real sense of the Varro's alienness. Tal is also part of a group of separatists aboard the generational ship, an interesting enough subplot that leads to some really cool effects sequences at the end. If she had such a wanderlust, I wonder why she never considered following Harry to Earth?

LESSON: Alien sex may require more than your basic condom.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium: There have been lots of Star Trek romances where a character has been willing to jeopardize his or her career, but this is probably the most sensible and credible one. Shame about the Iron Maiden's reaction.

This Week in Geek (23-29/06/08)

Buys

Nothing to see here. Move along. Leave the wallet alone.

"Accomplishments"

Books: I was hungry for some quality short stories, and I hadn't read a Julian Barnes book in a while (used to be my favorite contemporary writer) and so I picked up The Lemon Table, a collection of 11 stories about the bitterness of growing old. I wasn't disappointed. What struck me is how good Barnes is at crafting different "voices", and he never pulls the same stylistic trick twice. If I had to name a favorite, I guess it would be Hygiene, in which a regular visit to the out-of-town hooker is met with disappointment, but if you're a fan of Barnes' more postmodern work, like Flaubert's Parrot, check out Knowing French, which is written as correspondence to the author.

Comics: Finished the OMAC Omnibus, and while I knew it would end in an unresolved fashion, it still shocked me how the series was canceled so summarily. Still, it was good while it lasted, and I often found myself giggling at the sheer extremity of it all. It's comics with a capital !. I'll be paying proper homage to it tomorrow.

DVDs: Flipped All the President's Men, the classic 1974 film about Woodward & Bernstein's journalistic investigation of Watergate. It's quite a feat when you can make a compelling film about people with typewriters, and the movie succeeds mostly on the strength of the paranoid cinematography and the extremely authentic performances from Redford and Hoffman. Redford also provides a nicely detailed commentary track (he was producer as well), and an extra disc has documentary features on the film, the history, and what it meant to journalism as a whole. Only Jason Robard's vintage interview with Dinah Shore is fluff.

RPGs: Played rather than GMed this week, trotting out my usual character, an outside-the-box thinker/clown that is no doubt the terror of all the GMs out there. The Romepunk scenario had its high points, though my PC just can't thrive in anything that includes a lot of combat. Horse thieving, however, was right down my alley.

GTA4 completion: 68.5%. Addiction Level: High on Your Own Supply. (Story complete.)

Someone Else's Post of the Week
For post of the week, I'm going to point yo Caleb's always excellent Every Day Is Like Wednesday for a discussion on the racism implicit in Mark Millar's work, specifically in Wanted (coming to a theater near you!). His observations sparked an interesting debate in the comments section as well.

Star Trek 569: Dark Frontier

569. Dark Frontier

FORMULA: The Raven + First Contact + Infinite Regress

WHY WE LIKE IT: New Borg ships.

WHY WE DON'T: Continuity snafus. The new Queen.

REVIEW: The Borg Queen is back and with her, the promise of more Borg action. You know how we cleared Borg space in Scorpion? Well, Borg space ahead, kids. They really shouldn't have trusted a species who uses transwarp conduits to get everywhere in the galaxy. Janeway's reaction, however, is pretty arrogant. She gets greedy after winning a fight with a lowly probe and imagines a plan to steal a transwarp coil from the heart of a Borg Sphere. DESPITE the one Borg expert aboard telling her it's too dangerous.

And if the Borg Queen wasn't out to make a deal with Seven, they'd all have been assimilated. Yes, the Borg Queen returns, with Susanna Thompson (whom you may remember as Lenara Khan) in the role. Though she tries to approximate Alice Krige signature performance here and there, she never quite manages it. Her Queen is cold and boring, robotic even. And her plan doesn't make any more sense than Janeway's. We're not supposed to believe that she ALLOWED Seven to be cut off from the Collective in order to gain an insight into humanity that the Borg could then use to assimilate Earth. First, I'm not sure how Seven's insight would actually be an advantage when all you're gonna do is drop a ton of nanoprobes in the atmosphere and wait for people to get infected. Second, the Queen seems to consider Seven unique, and yet, there have been de-assimilated Borg before: Hugh and his gang, Locutus, and as we'll learn later, plenty of others. If the Collective is trying to create a new Queen who understands individuality, or if Seven is being groomed as a female version of Locutus, it's not expressly said here. Instead, we have a very convenient laxity on the Borg's part that allows Seven to remain Seven, the ship to rescue her, etc.

Against all this are flashbacks to when Seven was little Annika Hansen and her parents were filming a nature documentary starring the Borg. These sequences are problematic. On the one hand, we have the heavily rerun Q Who that shows us humanity's first encounter with the Borg. On the other, Generations had Guinan and her people escaping the Borg some 60 or 70 years earlier. So ok, the Hansens' were investigating rumors and had heard of the Borg. They do seem to know too much (as much as has EVER been revealed in Trek up to now), however, and if this much was at least rumored, then Picard appears to be quite a chump in TNG. While their investigation makes for interesting viewing, they are as irresponsible as Janeway, especially with a child aboard. On Voyager, that child is Naomi Wildman, which Seven associates with her younger self. Another Janeway tactical error: Trusting in the Hansens' methods to save her from the Borg. We're talking about methods that 1) didn't save them in the end and 2) were assimilated years ago by the Borg. No secrets there.

But that kind of faulty story logic is part and parcel of Voyager by now. I believe we're now heading into that era of the show that formed my rather negative opinion about it. The fifth season is definitely the turning point. Lazy scripts uplifted by beautiful effects, focus on only a few "cool" characters, an unreasonable Janeway, episodes that hardly star the crew at all, and playing fast and loose with established continuity (just like a comic book company!). So to distract us from the story's "logic", we get handed plenty of effects. New Borg structures abound: the Borg Lump, the Borg Diamond, the Borg City. Satisfying explosions, the Queen's usual brand of body-building, plenty of pretty graphics. It's all a bit video gamey to have won the Emmy that year over other Voyager nominations like Timeless and Thirty Days.

The climax is something of a battle for Seven's soul (already won by Voyager before Janeway walks into the room), and turns the whole Borg-Humanity conflict into a custody battle. From now on, when we see the Queen, she's Seven's adopted mom trying to get her back from Janeway, her "bio-mom". Or vice-versa, I'm not clear on the metaphor. What I AM clear on is that this weakens the Borg even further as an opponent race. I'm also not keen on their new lighting scheme, a stark, sickly green that eats up all the detail on screen. And as for Voyager, not only does it make its escape, it gets to use the transwarp coil to shave off another 15 years from its journey. This season has had how many big leaps now? 2 in Night, 10 more in Timeless... Definitely going to make any future appearance by the Hirogen or Malon suspect.

LESSON: Not to try to figure out how many crew members are still on the ship. This episode puts it back up to 144 (if I count the Doctor).

REWATCHABILITY - Medium: You can't dress up a pig and make me dance with it. Again, perfectly watchable, but falls short because it's more concerned with looking cool than making sense.