Is Star Trek: Voyager terrible?  Absolutely not.

Is Star Trek: Voyager fantastic?  Whoa there, buddy.  Let’s not get crazy here.

This is often the position taken by Star Trek fans when it comes to the much maligned show Voyager.  It will have its defenders and detractors, but for the most part the show will fall somewhere in the middle.  After all, the Star Trek lights were turned off on Enterprise‘s watch, not Voyager‘s.  Heck, Kate Mulgrew’s Captain Janeway even got a cameo in the Next Generation cast film Star Trek: Nemesis.  Actually, being involved in that movie is probably not something to brag about.

But for those who dislike Voyager, what exactly is their argument?  Liam MacLeoud of DenofGeek.com, you want to take this one:

Voyager [a novel premise which would allow the writers more freedom than Rodenberry's original limiting vision of a utopian Star Trek universe] was given every gift that the Star Trek universe had to offer and it mishandled every one of them.  Stranding the crew in the Delta Quadrant? Brilliant. Doing it by having the Captain protect a species with a lifespan shorter than my dog (oh the Ocampa)? Less so. Integrating Maquis freedom fighters into a Starfleet crew? Brilliant. Making them completely identical to the rest of the crew? Rubbish. Worse still, the show held the principles of the Federation – and by extension Rodenberry – as some kind of religious dogma, unwavering and immutable. The captain always had to be right, the prime directive could not be breached for any reason.

Exhibit A: The Doctor

Consistent scene-stealer Robert Picardo‘s Doctor is one of my all-time favorite Star Trek characters.  In those episodes where he’s barely featured, he typically manages to fire off some memorable one-liners, and in his showcase episodes, which seemed to become more abundant as the show progressed, he displayed a range far removed from mere comedic relief.  For evidence, see: Season 3 episode Real Life in which the Doctor creates a holographic family to initial comedic effect before a tragic event occurs in the last act. Present from the pilot to the series finale, the Doctor evolves from a comedic presence with a knack for acerbic one-liners to a quintessential-Star Trek character striving to understand the nature of humanity and coping with/exceeding his own limitations.  Plus, even he does eventually recognize the va-va-va-voom in Seven of Nine’s walk.

Exhibit B: Seven of Nine

Jeri Ryan?  She’s kind of pretty.  This much is known.

Just look at her.  It’s hard to miss, what with her costumes on the show almost exclusively consisting of the tightest bodysuits this side of Catwoman.  In fact, Seven of Nine more resembles a comic book character than a normal human being with her exaggerated bust, thin hips, and predilection for skin-tight everything.  She was basically Data with boobs, and wore skin-hugging outfits so tight you assumed her Bog technology somehow guarded her from a need to actually breathe.

Jeri Ryan?  She’s kind of funny.  This much is not as well known.

Damn if Jeri Ryan doesn’t have impeccable comedic timing.  She joined a show full of somewhat bland characters and made them interesting by virtue of getting to act alongside her.  Poor Harry Kim’s even seems at least vaguely interesting when placed into a storyline with her.

Not too long after she came into the show it shifted into being the Seven of Nine and Doctor show featuring the not-quite-interesting-enough Voyager players.  They wisely paired their most dynamic characters, Seven of Nine and The Doctor, together in a teacher-student relationship and re-purposed the slight Father-Son relationship between Picard and Data from TNG into a mother-daughter relationship for Janeway and Seven.  By framing the relationship in this manner, it provided the often relatively formless Janeway with the central compelling, conflict-filled relationship she so sorely lacked.  This als added new dimensions to The Doctor, and provided the writers with a new Big Bad (i.e., The Borg) for the remainder of the show’s run.  This, in general, gave the show more form and direction.

Once Seven of Nine came along, most of these people-not including the Doctor-took a backseat. Heck, the blonde girl up top was even written out of the show.

Of course, Jeri Ryan give-ith but she also take-ith away.  With so many episodes devoted to the Doctor and Seven of Nine this meant less screen time for everyone else.  Plus, purists might argue that due to Seven of Nine’s prominence the show’s endless Borg-centric storylines ultimately overexposed and defanged arguably the greatest new villain of the post-Original Series Star Trek universe.  On top of that, it can be seen as a weakness of the show that given an entire new section of space to explore the unique alien threats the shows writers came up with were so bland and unmemorable so as to necessitate an infusion of something which originated elsewhere, specifically the Borg from TNG.

The endless Borg-story-lines did eventually run stale, as even when the actual Borg were not around Seven’s nanoprobes sure seemed to be the solution to or cause of way too many problems.  The show did also fail to introduce any unique threat of its own the way TNG and DSN had done with the Borg and Dominion, respectively, and Enterprise did with the Xindi afterward.  However, before the Borg storylines ran stale I found them rather entertaining.  TNG had established the Borg as originating from a different region of space which then established Voyager as having inadvertently landed behind enemy lines.  This afforded the show the opportunity to incorporate a known villain but from a new angle so as to at least initially feel unique.

To some degree, Seven of Nine was a continuation of an idea first introduced in the season 5 Next Generation episode “I, Borg”

Similarly, the entire notion of Seven of Nine, i.e., a Borg drone emancipated from the collective, is re-used from TNG.  However, largely due to its preference for stand-a-lone storytelling there was considerable dramatic potential from that set-up which was never explored TNG.  It may not be entirely original, but in Seven of Nine Voyager explored this set-up to its full potential.

I believe this gets at the divide on Voyager: the argument between what it could have been and what it was. In short, what it could have been?  Something a lot like Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica.  What it was?  An average, sometimes-good, sometimes-awful, Star Trek show.

I can intellectualize why I kinda like Voyager, and although I like DSN better The Doctor and Seven are in my top 5 modern Star Trek characters of all time meaning I like them more than almost anyone from the superior shows.   However, I cannot deny that my enjoyment might be because it was the first and only Star Trek show I watched completely first-run from start to finish.  Catching DSN through syndication in my market was a real challenge, and I barely remembered TNG beyond a handful of classic storylines.  It was not until well after Voyager was off the air that I caught up with DSN on Netflix and only recently caught up with Enterprise, also thanks to Netflix.  It is only in looking back at Voyager with more to compare it to that I recognize it was an inferior show which I still like.  At the time I first watched Voyager was on, I knew I still liked the TNG crew better, but I also know I was incredibly excited when Robert Picardo showed up in a small cameo in Star Trek: First Contact.

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It goes without saying that I love the BBC cultural institution that is Doctor Who. I went to London to see then-lead actor David Tennant acting with Patrick Stewart in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet. This night combined my love of Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Shakespeare into one perfect experience. I reached my program over the head of a small child to get it signed by both actors (which I did). The kid was British. He could come back another night. Beginning its original run in 1963 and ending in 1989, it presents the travels of an alien entity, a 700-900 (the show used to be rather vague about his age) Timelord from the planet Gallifrey, known as the Doctor. He travels through time and space in a spaceship, called a TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space), shaped like a police phone box that is “bigger on the inside”. Since the main character is an alien, he is able to “regenerate” whenever he is fatally injured (or the actor get tired of playing him), turning into a completely different individual—same memories and basic sense of right and wrong but a different personality and appearance.

When the series was revived in 2005, I knew the basic premise of the series. The monsters and aliens that had been such a staple of the original were now created with digital assistance, as opposed to having to dig through garbage dumps in order to find the needed material to create whatever creature was required that week. The revival was brilliantly conceived, and the Doctor was fantastically played by Christopher Eccleston. I thought the series was so good; in fact, I decided my mom had to watch it. She loved Christopher Eccleston and thought the show was completely addictive. She watched it on DVD in marathon style. However, I have a rather sick sense of humor. I knew my mother was getting very attached to Christopher Eccleston, and I elected not to tell her that he would regenerate at the end of the first series. I decided not to explain to her that regeneration was even a possibility of which she had to be aware. No, I just watched her as she watched Eccleston’s final episode. The ending arrived, Christopher Eccleston became David Tennant, and the credits rolled.

My mom stared at the screen for a moment, stared back at me, and finally asked, “Where did he go?”

“Well,” I said in a fumbling manner, “he died and he regenerated. He’s gonna be played by David Tennant now. But Tennant’s really good.” (I’d already watched Tennant’s second season. My interest in the show was launched, because I’d seen him on the box and thought he was so good looking that I had to watch.)

I tried to explain to her the significance of regeneration to the world of Doctor Who, how the original actor to play the Doctor (William Hartnell) became too ill in 1966 to continue playing the role so the writers decided that regeneration was the best way for both the character and the show to continue. I told her how this concept had kept the show from ever becoming too familiar, as it was constantly reinventing the look and disposition of its central character. But, as far as she was concerned, an actor she had liked had caught fire, disappeared, and been replaced by someone who, according to her, “looked like a turtle.”

David Tennant: Right. I’m sorry but I must but in. Your mom said what? That I “look like a turtle.” What? In what possibly way does that makes sense?
Juli: Hi, David. I know, I know. I was pretty confused by it, too.  Although good to know I can somehow summon you by simply suggesting you look like a turtle.

After my long and detailed explanation, all she could do was look at me and say, “But I liked him.”

I kind of understood her distress. Christopher Eccleston had been the main character, the Doctor on Doctor Who. It just did not compute that he was fair game – a potential casualty statistic on his own show. I had had a similar feeling when I was six years old and watched Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. Even with the minimal knowledge of Star Trek  that my six year old brain held, I knew what was happening felt unexpected and inconceivable. Spock was a main character. He was not expendable to the story. I didn’t think in terms of plot or order as a child, but I knew main characters didn’t die. It just wasn’t done. The idea that he would survive until the end of the movie was a given. To see him die just seemed…wrong somehow. For someone unfamiliar with Doctor Who, seeing Christopher Eccleston “die” had to evoke a similar feeling.

I got her to stick with the program, and she ended up loving David Tennant. For three full seasons and a season four specials, he brought a wonderful sense of both fun and pathos to the Doctor. He was thinner than Eccleston with the wide, expressive eyes of an anime character and always seemed more vulnerable and emotionally devastated when he was unable to right the world in a way that satisfied him. He was who I ended up thinking of as “my” Doctor. So, when the time came that he decided to step down from the role and regenerate into Matt Smith, I had a certain bit of wariness towards him. Mom took her usual stance of “I’ll just never watch again.” But, we both gave him a chance, and he is brilliant. He’s younger and more alien than Tennant, but wonderfully quirky. You cannot help but like him. The show remains clever and frightening and wonderfully realized in every way, with the dialogue just as sharp. I know eventually Matt Smith will regenerate into someone else, and I know that I will probably greet this with the same level of wariness that I greeted Smith’s first appearance, but I’m really not all that worried. I’ll still always love Doctor Who and I look forward to whatever the show has in store for me.

Below, are all of the regeneration scenes of from Doctor Who. Please note, there is not one that goes from Doctor Eight into Doctor Nine, because that was never filmed.

What do you think?  Should I have given my mom some warning before showing her Eccleston’s regeneration into Tennant?  Do you have a funny story about the first time you saw a regeneration on Doctor Who, or even a death of a main character in any kind of film or show?  Let me know in the comments section.

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Every now and again, pop-culture moments should be examined, discussed, and debated.  For this important purpose, We Minored in Film presents this semi-regular (aka whenever we find the time to pull ourselves away from crazy busy schedules) segment known as We Debate.  Below this point – there be spoilers.  Caution to all who enter.  

The history of television is littered with shows whose series finales notoriously failed to deliver closure (see: The Sopranos), originality (see: Seinfeld‘s clip-show finale), or wildly drew into question the reliability of what we thought we knew (see: Battlestar Galactica, Roseanne, St. Elsewhere).  As Damon Lindelof can tell you from the reaction to the Lost finale, such endings, or non-endings, can forever flavor the popular memory of what might have otherwise been a beloved show.  However, for every notorious failure to know how to end a story there are also those shows whose endings, while possibly brilliant, seemed to uproot and discard the show’s very premise or saw fit to kill most if not all of the characters. What follows is a conversation between Kelly and I about five less-known series finales that seem designed to infuriate the viewer rather than enrapture.  Below this point – there be spoilers.  Caution to all who enter.

1)      “Not Fade Away” (Angel)

Julianne: Starring everyone’s favorite, gypsy-cursed vampire with a soul, Angel revolves around the attempts of a 250-year old vampire to atone for the many human lives he took prior to being cursed with a soul and thus a conscious.  Though never quite as well-respected as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show from which it was spun off, Angel was the male-point-of-view alternative to Buffy and produced some astounding hours of television in its five years on the air.  I may now regard its’ devastatingly sad, though oddly triumphant series finale as equally astounding, but at the time it aired I was yelling at the screen.

Kelly: Just to play devil’s advocate since I know your answer, but why, Juli, were you yelling at the screen?

Julianne:  Angel = Pinocchio.  All he wants to do is become a real human.  End story?  Make him human.  This is not rocket science.  The first season ended on the cliffhanger that at some point if Angel proved worthy he would be made human again. This might indicate to the typical viewer that this might happen in- oh, I don’t know- the series finale. Yeah, not so much.  Not only did this not happen, but the finale ends before (again let me say, BEFORE) an epic battle against a massive army of demons and an angry-looking dragon is set to commence.  The show’s final season already killed off two if its four human characters, and the finale succeeds in killing off the other two (okay, technically Gunn is still alive, but dialogue indicates he has minutes to live).  For our supernatural characters (Spike, Angel, Illyria), the entire cast will be nothing but greasy, bloody splotches on the pavement, or maybe they will triumph against insurmountable odds. We simply do not know, because WE DON’T GET TO SEE IT! The battle is about to start, and the credits roll. As much as I love this now, I was furious when I watched this in 2004. All I could think was, “I’ve spent five years of my life watching this show, and the ending I get is NO ending? I’m gonna yell at my TV for a while now.”

Kelly: A logical reaction, I think.  The backstory to the finale, at least as told by show writer David Fury, is that the WB Network typically waited until the last minute to renew the show for each season of its run.  With the fifth season doing well in the ratings, show creator Joss Whedon felt comfortable in requesting an early renewal from the network.  Silly, Joss.  Put on the spot, the WB cancelled the show but with sufficient lead time to plan a proper finale.  Whedon and Fury have claimed the series finale differs very little from what they were going to do when they were confident a sixth season was guaranteed.  So, those who read the finale featuring one last heroic stand against the man as an embodiment of standing up to the network may be off base.

“Wait a minute. So, this is not a metaphor for something.  They just killed me for the heck of it?”

Julianne: So what you’re telling me is that the F-you nature of this finale comes straight from Joss Whedon? Lovely.

Kelly: Yes.  Heartbreak. . .100%, unfiltered Whedon. As you might recall, after I first viewed this episode via DVD I immediately sought you out while you were at work in the hopes that you might comfort me by lying and saying there were in fact more episodes.

Julianne: Alas, I could not. Remember, I had at least warned you about the finale whereas I had to watch it cold.

Kelly: That’s right.  In response to the ending, did you also wander out into the city streets seeking the arms of those who might comfort you. Wait.   That kind of makes you sound like a prostitute.

Julianne: [hangs her head in shame] Those were dark, surprisingly lucrative times. Please note, dear readers, I am kidding.

Kelly: Please note, I’m not sure she’s kidding. [Julianne smack Kelly in the back of the head] Never mind. She’s kidding. The finale is somewhat similar to Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s in that it ends on an ambiguous, what’s going to happen next note.  The difference here being that Buffy ends with our lead character having finally attained her dream of being able to do whatever she wants with her life, thus making the uncertainty triumphant.  Angel ends more existentially, arguing that it does not so much matter who wins the fight between good and evil but that good continues fighting.  It is a finale worthy of academic analysis.  However, upon first viewing it is an incredibly frustrating watch.  Angel’s penultimate line is that he desires to “slay the dragon”, and boy howdy do you want to see how that fight goes.

Julianne: And speaking of brooding, guilt-ridden vampires seeking redemption. . .

2)      “Last Knight” Forever Knight

Julianne: Think of Forever Knight as a kind of Angel-prototype, a Canadian series centered on a vampire named Nick Knight, working as a night shift police detective and hoping to find redemption for his past killings and become human again. (Sound familiar?) Like Angel, it had a clear end point. In fact, it had the same endpoint, and like Angel, it ultimately dismisses that ending as “too upbeat.” The show wanted to make certain any fans watching the finale would need to go on suicide watch.  The show’s final season had already killed off three of the show’s five regular cast member and introduced three new vampires only to kill them off as well.  In memorium, the fallen three:

Dead

Dead

Lasted longer than the other two but still ultimately dead

But it turns out, this was just a warm-up to the finale. First, Nick’s new partner (you know, the one that replaced one of those original dead characters), is killed in a shootout. Then, Nick and his human girlfriend, Natalie, decide to consummate their relationship. Instead of only having to endure post-coital awkward small talk over breakfast and providing her with cab fare while avoiding eye contact, he loses control and drains her to the point of death.

This went so much worse than I thought it would.

La Croix, the vampire who “turned” Nick and the villain of the show, arrives and taunts him about the mess he has made of his life. Nick begs La Croix to stake him (with the most beautifully carved, ornately created stake ever seen), and put him out of his misery.

You can’t really see it here, but trust me, the stake is gorgeous. There must be a backstory on this stake. I wish we’d gotten the backstory.

The final shot implies La Croix does just that, though not necessarily with as much glee as you might have expected. So, the series ends with the deaths of the entire cast, except for the villain, and Nick’s quest for redemption? Yeah, that brought nothing but the deaths of everyone he loved and his own eventual destruction. So what message does the show give to those who want to redeem themselves? Stay a terrible human being. Trying to be a better person only brings misfortune to everyone, including you. Kelly, I know you haven’t seen all of this, but I did show you the ending. Why do we keep going back to these vampires that hurt us?

Kelly: Because we can change them, and eventually be changed by them, and drained of our blood so that they might request their “frenemy” euthanize them over our quickly decaying corpse.

Julianne: Yes, but with this next vampire it will be different because I’m special.  He only bites me because he loves me, y’know.   But back to Forever Knight. What are your thoughts on this ending?

Kelly: It’s both surprising and not surprising. The show had previously established that if there were such a thing as vampire school (and a high school in which most everyone is a vampire doesn’t count – sorry Vampire Diaries) Nick clearly skipped class the day they learned how to feed on humans and/or attempt to turn humans into vampires without killing them.  This was not the first loved one he had attempted to turn and killed through incompetence.  The show decided this, however, would be his last.

Nick killing the earlier love of his life through not realizing that at some point during fang-enhanced making out her pulse stopped. “There’s no way this will come back and haunt me later.”

Julianne: I marathoned this show, but I think I would have been horrified if I’d been watching it over the course of three years.

Kelly: Other shows have certainly ended by implying the death of their entire cast (see: Black Adder, Angel, to a lesser degree).  However, why imply when you can simply show, and thus you have the soul-crushing “Everybody dies!” finale of Forever Knight.

3)      “Mirror Image” Quantum Leap

Julianne: This episode wasn’t meant to be a series finale, but it feels so much like an ending to the series that it’s difficult to fathom the show coming back from it. Quantum Leap gave us Samuel Beckett, the singing, dancing, guitar and piano playing, medical doctor, quantum physicist who travels back in time, leaping into people’s lives, changing whatever sent their lives on an unfortunate path, and leaping out again. The problem was all Sam wanted to do was get back into his own body in his own time, and he couldn’t control when and where he traveled  Each episode opened with Sam trying to figure who he was (often by looking into a mirror and seeing the person into who he’d leapt).  In the series finale, Sam finds himself in a limbo-type bar run by a bartender who may or may not be God, with his own reflection looking back at him from a mirror.

Sorry about the whole traveling forever in time thing. What? Oh, no, you’re not getting out of it.

Yep, soul thoroughly crushed. Thanks so much!

So, after five seasons of hearing that Sam just wants to be done with time travelling and be back at home with this wife, family, and friends, the audience is left with the knowledge that Sam probably had a heart attack and died while trapped in the body of a fifteen year old. Thanks for watching, folks.

Kelly: Very few shows have as clearly stated an endpoint as Quantum Leap.  The saga sell, i.e., opening credits, ended with the narrator informing the audience, “Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.”  With the other shows on our list, you’d have to actually watch entire episodes to pick up where they might be going with it.  Not QL.  It’s right there in the first minute of every episode.  Granted, Sam did leap into the teenage version of himself back on his childhood farm in the third season premiere.  I guess that was the fine print in his quantum leaping contract.  He was not specific enough.  So, God leapt him into himself as a teenager and that qualifies as his leap home.

The finale hurts slightly less when you read about the plans they had for a sixth season, which would have seen wisecracking sidekick Al (Dean Stockwell) become a leaper searching for the awol Sam.  They were also going to start leaping into the future whereas the show had previously only leapt Sam into the past.  Given the level of neon the show thought was going to be a fixture in our near future, I don’t completely trust that the show’s futuristic episodes would have been anything other than hilariously awkward.

Julianne: I know we both really like this finale, but we can also agree it’s a pretty dark end to the show.

Kelly: It’s similar to Angel in a way in that Sam seems to be presented with a choice in the end.  Angel chooses to no longer pursue becoming human, and Sam chooses the selfless route in performing one final leap to put right the greatest wrong to have ever occurred to his best friend, Al.  However, it is not made entirely clear that Sam has basically agreed to spin-off into a weird Touched By An Angel existence until bluntly stated white text on a black screen stabs your soul and tells the saga sell to suck it – Sam ain’t ever leaping home.  You hear me?  Never!

4)      “These are the Voyages. . . ” Enterprise

Julianne: Enterprise presented the early days of Starfleet Academy– you know, before Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were involved (aka before the Star Trek universe was interesting). Usually Trekkers spend their times debating whether Enterprise or Voyager is the weaker installment in the franchise (see Kelly’s previous blog post), but I think the last season of Enterprise works especially well. The series had an episode that functioned as a series finale. Unfortunately, this episode featured entirely too much of  the show’s actual cast.  So, they decided that the real finale should focus on Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Troi (Marina Sirtis) (with no explanation as to why they seem to be twenty years older that they should be at this point in time) from the Next Generation, who use the holodeck to observe the final days of the original starship named Enterprise.  They do this because Riker is looking for inspiration to help him solve a moral quandry facing him at this point in his career.

“I’ve got no explanation for our freakishly prematurely aged forms. We’re still just in our 30s, right?”

What we get to see of the actual cast of the show Enterprise is fleetingly little (not even an obligatory Jolene Blalock bare midriff shot), but we do see one of the show’s best characters, Trip, killed off seemingly only because the show realized it had yet to kill off any of its primary cast members.  The whole scenario seems to imply the characters themselves are not interesting enough to carry their own series finale.

Kelly: Kind of implies?! It flat out states that. It would have been like if the Angel series finale had featured Buffy and her scooby gang showing up and pulling focus away from Angel and his gang.  Moreover, for those willing to accept one last story centered around the Next Generation crew…

Julianne: Since Nemesis has left them so much good will amongst fans…

Kelly: We are presented with a story line in which the presence of Captain Picard is teased, but never shown. Clearly, Patrick Stewart had better things to do. It is a “F-you” finale for Enterprise, but it might be easier to swallow as a finale to the Star Trek television and film universe as reintroduced with Next Generation and continued through Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise.  The animated series Justice League Unlimited almost did something similar with the finale to its second season, in which a penultimate episode functioned as the real conclusion of the season’s story and a epilogue chapter closed the book on a universe larger than just the individual show.  In that example, their epilogue was the conclusion to the story of the entire DC Animated Universe, which started with Batman: The Animated Adventures in 1992 and thus was going to conclude with a story solely about Batman.  However, the show was then renewed for a third season at the last second.

Julianne: Speaking of shows which received last-second reprieves…

5)      “Victoria’s Secret” (Due South)

Julianne: At this point, we are kind of cheating.  ”Victoria’s Secret” was only meant to serve as the series finale, but the show was afforded an additional episode on the season on the way to a four season run due to a last minute reprieve.  So, we are discussing it here as an honorable mention.  

Due South is a good-natured, buddy-cop show centering on Benton Fraser, a Canadian Mountie living in Chicago and Ray, the cynical, Police Officer with whom he partners. Its principle character, Mountie Benton Fraser (Paul Gross), is exceedingly polite, nauseatingly honest, and emotionally reserved to the extreme. In this season one finale, a woman (played by Melina Kanakaredes)  with whom Fraser had once loved but turned into the authorities for robbery is out of jail and ingratiates herself into Fraser’s life.

I look so trustworthy, right?

In the second half of the finale, it is revealed that Victoria is back because she both loves Fraser and wants to frame him as an accomplice in the robbery she committed, ruining his life and forcing him to leave town with her.  At the episode’s conclusion, Fraser catches up with Victoria as she’s about to escape on a train. He pulls a gun on her, an act in and of itself out of character for the normally non-gun carrying Fraser.  She defies his demands that she stop, instead begging him to instead come with her.  Surprisingly, he does decide to go with her,  his love for her having corrupted his prior strict adherence to the law, but just as he is about to grab her hand to be lifted into the slow-moving train his partner Ray arrives and thinks Victoria has a gun so he shoots at her but misses and instead hits Fraser in the back. As Fraser lies, bleeding out on the train platform, he sees the recurring spirit of his late father, seemingly beckoning him into the afterlife.  Cut to white and end episode…and series?

“Aren’t you glad I came to rescue you?”

Granted, since the show was picked up for another season, Fraser does recover, but Victoria is never seen again, apparently too busy in Providence doing providency things in a providency way [yeah, we've never seen Providence].  Think about the ending this would have been for a feel-good, buddy cop TV series. The noble central character tries to leave with the woman who ruined his life (and shot his dog, by the way), abandoning his principles, but is shot in the back by his best friend and dies.

Kelly: Suck it, Lethal Weapon, and your non-Mel Gibson killing sequels!  Due South was going to go there.

Julianne: This would have been an incredibly soul-crushing end to a series whose tone fluctuated between light-hearted comic fare and sentimental drama.

Kelly: We love this show. Alas,we shall never know enough people to whom we can tell of this episode’s brilliance. If you’ve read our “about us” (which, by the way, “thank you”), you’ll know the idea for this blog came from wanting to have more people to tell about this episode.

Julianne: So true. This episode is perfect. Alas, it is so perfect, the rest of episodes kind of pale by comparison.

Kelly: Looking at you seasons 3 & 4 (and, if we’re honest, parts of season 2)!

Julianne: I think we’re now slightly discouraging people from watching this show. It’s good. It really is.

Kelly: Agreed.  The tragic thing to me with this finale is that earlier in the season it had been established that maybe Fraser’s emotional reservation and blindness to the seemingly endless number of women throwing themselves at him was due to his prior emotional trauma with Victoria.  Then, she returns into his life, with the magical ability to have Sarah McLachlin songs begin playing whenever she appears, and he experiences his absolute “best case scenario” – they catch up, hang out, she admits to still being angry, she forgives him, and they make sweet, slow-motion, pan to the window love.  As you described above, this all comes crashing down in quick succession – dog shot, she’s framed him, his friend Ray is implicated, he’s arrested by his co-workers who can’t prove he didn’t do the crime.  It’s absolutely brutal.  But with him ending by  rejecting a return to his previous seemingly-fun-but-truly-sad life and attempting to runaway with her only to be shot in the back by his only friend other than his dog?

This was a Canadian television show, co-produced during its first season with CBS in America.  Canadians are notoriously nice, always a fun source of humor on the show.  But Forever Knight was Canadian, and we saw how that went down.  They were going to end Due South by ripping out our hearts.  Maybe Canadians are secretly ruthless.

Julianne: What more is there to say?

Kelly: Can we just go watch “Victoria’s Secret” now?

Julianne: Is that why you have the DVD in your hand?  Shouldn’t we address how Angel has been continued as a comic book, or acknowledge the possibility of us being too critical since most of these were shows who’s f-you finales happened in response to unexpected cancellations?  But, you’re right.  That DVD just looks too good.

[Julianne and Kelly both abruptly sign off. Where are they headed? Due South, of course.]

So what do you think, guys? Have I left out any other finales that commit particularly egregious offences? Did you even remember these shows existed? Leave us a comment and let us know.

With it comes to television characters, parting is such sweet sorrow; however, it is a sorrow preferable to a return which yields crushingly disappointing results. Often times a returning television character is simply unable to re-capture their original appeal while also somewhat retrospectively weakening the considerable impact of their original departure.  Yet, sometimes a character’s creative heights are not reached until after they return from death.  So, which characters from the genres of science fiction and fantasy should have stayed away, and which benefited from a return engagement?

Spoiler Warning: Not surprisingly for an article concerning characters who came back after an apparent death, there will spoilers a plenty below.

1)        Angel (David Boreanaz)

• Show: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Original Exit: Buffy runs him through with a sword and sends him to hell to save the world, even though he had just become good again and had no idea what was happening.  Angel would later claim he told Buffy to do with it, with his eyes, but that’s a no good dirty lie.  Season 2, Ep. 22 (“Becoming Pt. 2″)
• Return (Actual Return, Not Just Dreams): He literally drops from the sky into his old mansion, falling in the room and on the exact spot Buffy previously ran a sword through his chest. Season 3, Ep. 3 (“Faith, Hope, and Trick”)

Angel’s death is truly devastating, but it is a devastating moment because of its effect on Buffy.  As for Angel, even after turning evil there really wasn’t that much to him.  He was either worried about protecting Buffy or planning his torture of Buffy, depending on his good/evil status at the time.  It was only upon his rather sudden return to the show post-death when he gradually gained a new identity as the repentant vampire attempting to make up for past sins, and even developed a slight sense of humor (e.g., fans may fondly remember his deadpan of “I’m a funny guy” from the episode “Earshot”).

Once he got onto his own self-titled spin-off show, across five seasons he morphed into a far more fully realized person who barely resembled but immensely improved upon the character we once knew.  I like to retrospectively rationalize the disconnect as him always trying to look cool to impress Buffy when he was on Buffy but feeling free to be his true big ole nerd with old fogey tendencies self on Angel.

Verdict: Glad You’re Back

2)        Spike (James Marsters)

• Shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel
• Original Exit: He wears a magical talisman which destroys both the bad guy and his huge army as well as Spike himself.  Season 7, Ep. 22 (“Chosen”)
• Return: The magical talisman he used actually preserved his soul, meaning he survives as a ghost but is bound to the talisman’s physical location.  Season 5, Ep. 1 (“Conviction”)  He stops being a ghost after opening a package which contained within it a magical spell.  Season 5, Ep. 8 (“Destiny”)

Spike was originally meant to have died during the second season, his first on Buffy.  However, he was spared, and would suffer through the indignity of vampire impotence and fall  in love with Buffy before seeking out a soul so as to earn her love.  Completing his journey from villain to hero, Spike ended his time on Buffy by sacrificing himself to save the world.   How do you bring a character back from that?  Make him a ghost, and add him to the cast of the spin-off, Angel.  While this did cheapen his self-sacrificing exit, his presence on Angel re-kindled his always fantastically entertaining frenemy relationship with Angel, and allowed Spike to ponder an existence not defined by Buffy for the first time in a long time.  The show eventually went a long way toward arguing that perhaps Spike was a hero more worthy of our affection than Angel.

Plus,  the show Angel desperately needed Spike to replace the now-comatose Cordelia as the one person on the show willing to speak the truth no matter what.  Whereas others would kowtow to Angel’s commands, Spike would be the one to laugh derisively and observe, “Are you all insane?”  Personally, I wish we had five more seasons of Angel and Spike bickering like an old married couple.

Verdict: Glad You’re Back

3)        Klaus (Joseph Morgan)

• Show: Vampire Diaries
• Original Exit: A stake designed specifically for his breed of vampire ends up in his chest  Season 3, Ep. 22 (“The Departed”)
• Return: Through the help of a crafty witch, he worked a partial Freaky Friday workaround in which Klaus was not home at the time his body was staked.  The spell is reversed easily enough, returning him to his now healed original body.  Season 4, Ep. 1 (“Growing Pains”)

As the most recent example on this list, this one is too early to tell.  The argument against Klaus is that he has stalled the show’s progress, a considerable feat considering Vampire Diaries practically sets world-records for the rate at which it plows through story lines.  However, with them unwilling to kill Klaus a show which used to introduce escalating villains, each one more dangerous than the predecessor, has written itself into a corner.  Plus, due to the character’s popularity and the show’s rather public intentions to spin him off onto his own show with his brother and sister he can be depicted as a villain but not so villainous as to lose our sympathies, which is not necessarily always a bad thing.  The one time they did kill him it lasted for mere minutes.

Verdict: Jury’s Out

4)        Russell Edgington (Denis O’Hare)

• Show: True Blood
• Original Exit: Placed at the bottom of a pit at the site of a future parking garage, he is immobilized as wet cement is poured on top of him.  Season 3, Ep. 12 (“Evil is Going On”)
• Return: A jackhammer cuts through cement easily enough.  Season 5, Ep. 2 (“Authority Always Wins”)

From the moment Russell slipped into his southern, genteel voice and beckoned, “Now time for the weather. [pause] Tiffany,” on live television there was nowhere to go but down for him.  That’s because before that line he had just ripped out a newscasters spine on live television and delivered a standard evil villain speech.  What followed was a rather aimless Russell defeated far too easily, although in true bemused bad-ass fashion he nonchalantly pledged to return.  However, bringing him back as the secondary villain of the fifth season well after his primary conflict with Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) had passed robbed him of his immediacy and had the smack of a show searching for its past mojo.  While the character enjoyed a rather enjoyable new romance during the season, nothing ever matched the moment he threw it over to Tiffany for the weather.

Verdict: Better Off Dead (Well, Better Left as a Cement Block)

5)        Cole (Julian McMahon)

• Show: Charmed
• Original Exit: A half-demon versus the three Charmed sisters.  He never had a chance.  Season 4, Ep. 20 (“Long Live the Queen”)
• Return: He defeated his jailor in a demon wasteland and declined moving on to heaven, instead returning to help the sisters.  Season 4, Ep. 22 (“Which Way Now?”)

The following is from WeMinoredInFilm writer Julianne:

I insisted Cole from WB’s other hit supernatural show (you know, the one without the critical adoration and witty, genre-skewering dialogue, the not-Buffy, the Vampire Slayer), Charmed, be included in this discussion.  Half-demon Cole’s romance with demon-killing witch Phoebe was basically a rip-off of the vampire-slayer romance of Buffy and Angel. However, the two seasons in which Cole was a series regular were the most interesting, compelling seasons the series had (faint praise, I know).  When he became the ultimate evil in the fourth season, the sisters were forced to slay him. It was a fantastic, perfect, tragic end to the character. He was a man destroyed by his own good intentions—an individual our heroes were unable to save. When he died, viewers were saddened by his departure. Until he was resurrected and squandered any affection anyone watching had for him by sitting around pouting and whining until he was killed in a far less climactic fashion.

Verdict: Better Off Dead 

6)        Rose Tyler (Billie Piper)

• Show: Doctor Who
• Original Exit: Trapped in a parallel world, and officially declared dead in her original world.  Season 2, Ep. 13 (“Doomsday”)
• Return (Beyond Cameos): She builds a device which allows her to cross worlds. Season 4, Ep. 11 (“Turn Left”)  In a cameo, she returns as an earlier version of herself from the time in her life just before she met The Doctor. “The End of Time, Part II.”

Rose’s original departure was appropriately soul-crushing, complimented by a go-for-break performance by Billie Piper, smeared makeup be damned, and the unfinished declaration of romantic love from the Doctor heard the world round.  The build-up to her return two seasons later was as good as I ever seen, with her popping up in surprise cameos on the periphery of the action throughout the entire season.  However, then she returned around the same time as every past-full and recurring cast member from the modern show and its spinoffs to that point.  There’s simply not enough screen time for so many characters.  There are some amazing moments, such as the conclusion of “Turn Left” when The Doctor receives Rose’s warning phrase “Bad Wolf”, but this time around something seemed a bit off.

By the end, Rose departs again from the same point she originally did – the beaches of Bad Wolf Bay.  She even gets a nice parting gift, a half-human clone of the Doctor who just committed mass murder.  Really second guessing how nice that gift is, actually.  Perhaps it was all worth it just so David Tennant’s Doctor could no longer mutter Rose’s name before trailing off and staring into the distance as an indication of his immense sadness.  However, it has somewhat tarnished the memory of Rose Tyler, even though her subsequent surprise cameo in David Tennant’s final episode was rather effective.

Verdict: Better Off Dead (I Think – I Go Back and Forth On This One)

7)        Gabriel ‘Sylar’ Gray (Zachary Quinto)

• Show: Heroes
• Original Exit: Run through with a sword.  Season 1, Ep. 23 (“How to Stop an Exploding Man”)
• Return: An ill-defined shadow corporation finds and heals Sylar through multiple surgeries with the intent of using him for their ill-defined purposes.  He immediately kills his handler and goes rogue.  Cue our lack of surprise in 4,3,2,1. Season 2, Ep. 3 (“Kindred”)

Zachary Quinto, nobody’s favorite Spock, and his eyebrows terrified the nation as the serial killer of super heroes during the premiere season of Heroes.  He would absorb the powers of each hero he killed, with the explanation for how exactly he did so varying depending on when you asked the question.  However, when we finally got his back story it amounted to little more than serious mommy issues, and an ambivalent view on the do or do not of destroying the world.  He is ultimately defeated though not necessarily killed in the first season’s climactic battle, with Hiro and the flying Petrellis emerging as the victors.

This might be the moment at which the show, which had built its popularity partially on its unpredictability and willingness to kill anyone at any moment, lost its nerve.  They kept it open for Sylar to come back, but appeared to have no idea what to do with him when he was brought back.  His character trajectory from that point forward mostly played as “He’s a hero! He’s a villain!”, rinse, repeat, and as a result he lost all credibility.  It’s not hard to see why they brought Sylar back, but the character had basically run its course in that first season.

Verdict: Better Off Dead, regardless of the popularity of the character at the time

8)        Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby)

• Show: Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Original Exit: A fatal psychokinetic strike from an oil pit monster named Armus.  Season 1, Ep. 22 (“Skin of Evil”)
• Return: In an alternate dimension where Armus never killed or even met Tasha. Season 3, Ep. 15 (“Yesterday’s Enterprise”)  She would also later return as Sela, a Romulan clone of Tasha (Season 4, Ep. 26, “Redemption”), and again as the real Tasha in the time-traveling series finale (Season 7, Ep. 25, “All Good Things…”).

A classic example of a character brought back to give her a proper farewell, Tasha’s original death was abrupt and relatively pointless, with the abruptness knowingly played  for dramatic effect.  However, the episode was as poorly received as you can get, with any explanation that she was killed because Denise Crosby wanted off the show not enough to appease disgruntled fans.  Soon thereafter, Crosby was happy to come back.  So, they crafted a story in which an alternate dimension version of Tasha would choose to possibly die a hero to put the universe back in balance rather than suffer an abrupt, meaningless death.  It was among the finer episodes the show ever produced, and effectively cancelled the bad taste left over from Tasha’s original death.  She would return to diminished results in a later storyline involving a Romulan clone of Tasha.

Verdict: Glad You’re Back (not necessarily that business with the clone though)

9)        Kes (Jennifer Lien)

• Show: Star Trek: Voyager
• Original Exit: Evolves into a status of a higher being, no longer tied to the corporeal world. Season 4, Ep. 2 (“Gift”)
• Return: Inexplicably corporeal again with her mental powers out of control, a visibly older and incredibly angry Kes forces her way onto Voyager and destroys the ship only to then get stuck in a time loop centered around preventing the destruction of the ship.  Season 6, Ep. 23 (“Fury”)

Imagine if the actress who played the character Kes, Jennifer Lien, had said all the polite things at the time her character was written off of the show, but was secretly seething with anger and composing Jeri Ryan death threats.  Then imagine if over two years later she forced her way onto the set one day, unprovoked and unannounced, and proceeded to turn over catering tables, pick up several cast members and throw them into walls, and take a flamethrower to the sets.  That’s roughly how the exit and return of her character plays out on the show.

Her departure from the show was definitely rushed, but she gets a sit-down goodbye with both her primary love interest (Neelix) and mother figure (Captain Janeway).  She even gets a surprisingly touching gracenote when she departs by giving the ship the gift of having 10 years removed from their journey back to Earth, even if the scientific explanation for how she does so has yet to be revealed.  There is little to no hint of anger or ambivalence.  Then she returns, with little explanation for why she’s no longer a glorified space angel, and vows a poorly conceived vengeance upon Captain Janeway.  Although it reaches a peaceful resolution and kind-of happy ending for Kes, it feels wholly unnecessary and somewhat cheapens her original exit.

Verdict: Better Off As a Space Angel

10)        Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver)

• Show: Supernatural
• Original Exit: Fatal gunshot wound,  Season 7, Episode 10 (“Death’s Door”)
• Return: Bobby stuck around as a ghost and has been helping the main characters solve cases for weeks.  Sam and Dean just took nine weeks to be able to see him. Season 7, Episode 19 (“Of Grave Importance”)

We used to joke around here, “Geeze, when is Supernatural going to kill off Bobby already?”  Because that’s what characters not named Sam or Dean do on that show-they die and die for good.  Bobby was pushing his luck by surviving into the seventh season.  So, to the surprise of none he was killed, but to the surprise of some it was a giant misdirection.  Ala Misha Collins’ Castiel from the prior season, it turns out Bobby has been watching the boys from afar (as a ghost, opposed to Castiel’s angel), and the boys eventually figure it out.

The problem was they did too good of a job of killing him before that.  Bobby was granted a showcase episode in which a grim reaper showed him scenes from throughout his life while his mortal body lied dying in a hospital bed.  The episode ends with his final decision on the matter of whether or not to move on or stay behind left unresolved, although not-so-subtle hints in subsequent episodes made it clear he had become a ghost.  It was an incredibly moving episode, and served as good of a goodbye as you could get.  So, having him back as a ghost losing touch with his humanity was all a bit anti-climactic.

Verdict: Better Off Dead

11)        Tessa Noel (Alexandra Vandernoot)

• Show: Highlander: The Series
• Original Exit: After being taken hostage by a foe of Duncan, her immortal boyfriend and the titular Highlander, Tessa is saved only to then be shot and killed as part of a run-of-the-mill mugging.  Season 2, Episode 4 (“The Darkness”)
• Return: As a surgically enhanced look-a-like meant to fool Duncan.  Season 2, Episode 21 (“Counterfeit: Part 1″)  A Tessa in an alternate reality in which Duncan was never born thus meaning Tessa was never mugged and killed that night. Season 6, Episodes 12 (“To Be”).

Tessa’s original death was effectively stunning, serving as reminder to Duncan that unlike immortals normal people can get shot and taken from you in the blink of an eye.  However, she never really returns, once with the same actress playing a character made to look like Tessa and the other time as an alternate Tessa in a It’s a Wonderful Life  plot in which she never had the misfortune of meeting Duncan.  Both occasions allow Duncan, and the audience, to confront their unresolved feelings about Tessa without cheapening the impact of her death.

Verdict: Glad You’re Back (But Maybe Just Because You Never Really Came Back)

12)        Kara ‘Starbuck’ Thrace (Katee Sackhoff)

• Show: Battlestar Galactica
• Original Exit: Flying head-on into a storm, instead of pulling up before the atmosphere destroys her ship Kara is surrounded by white light and appears serenely calm before the ship explodes.  Fantasy/flashback sequences from earlier in the episode hint that she has accepted a mission to a higher calling.  Season 3, Episode 17 (“Maelstrom”)
• Return: She and her ship, both completely intact, drop into the middle of a battle. Season 3, Episode 20 (“Crossroads, Pt. 2″)

Katee Sackhoff went out with an incredible episode more accurately titled ”For Your Consideration” due to the quality of her performance.  In the episode, her character achieves some sense of inner peace meaning when she dies she finally appears truly happy, a state of being rarely achieved by poor, beleaguered Kara Thrace.  When she returns and optimistically claims to have seen Earth and knows how to get there, your jaw could be forgiven for dropping.

However, from that point forward it is a long series of debates over whether or not she is the real Kara Thrace which lead to Kara appearing slightly insane and dangerously neurotic to those around her.  The result is a character who doesn’t feel quite the same anymore, perhaps intentionally.  Then again, it is only after Kara’s return that the episode “Someone to Watch Over Me” occurs, which features her conversing with the ghost of her father without realizing it is the ghost of her father.  It is among the finest story lines ever conceived for the character (apparently, I”m not alone in thinking that), and would not have occurred had she remained dead.

Verdict: Glad You’re Back

Honorable Mentions:

Faith – Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel  For the record, I’m glad she came back, and think her two-parter during the first season of Angel is among that show’s most important episodes.  Technically, she never dies but instead falls into a coma, but if I discussed Rose Tyler I can reference Faith.

Lex – Smallville  For the record, it is hard to have an opinion here since it was so inevitable that the show would eventually bring back Lex Luthor.  You can’t kill Lex Luthor for good before Clark Kent has even become Superman.

What do you think?  Disagree?  Agree?  Annoyed with all of the spoilers and now want to see me dead?  Well, let’s stop short of the dead part of the equation, and then we can talk.  Let me know in the comments section.  Also, did you notice that 6 of the 12 discussed characters are vampires?  Yeah, we did, but that not until after this thing had been written.

To check on the streaming availability of any of the discussed shows, I suggest using canistream.it, a site designed to allow you to search the online libraries of Amazon Instant Video, Hulu, and Netflix, among others, at the same time.

At the 1 minute and 36 second point of the new Star Trek: Into Darkness trailer there is a genuinely out-of-nowhere 1 second shot of new cast member Alice Eve standing in what appears to be a shuttle and wearing nothing but a rather Victoria’s Secret-esque black bra and panties.

The film?  Looks pretty good, even if this trailer plays like a collection of scenes we’ve already seen done elsewhere (as argued here). Alice Eve, um, looks good in what amounts to a two-piece bikini (I get tired just looking at her abs), but why is this in there?

The British-born Eve is playing Dr. Carol Marcus, a character who in the continuity of the original films had an off-screen romantic relationship with James T. Kirk which produced a son Kirk knew nothing about until his son was a young man.   This is a crucial element to the plot of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and the presence of Marcus in the new movie has definitely been seen as giant, flashing-neon-light-sign hint that the villain in this film might turn out to be Khan.  Beyond that, I know I hadn’t given Eve a second thought.  Now, I am suddenly reminded that she is that one girl from She’s Out of My League, in which the premise of the film is entirely predicated on how almost preternaturally attractive she is.  So, oh yeah, she is most likely Captain Kirk’s love interest in the new movie.

Does the film really need to show Alice Eve in her underwear? Short answer, probably not, long answer, let’s wait until we see it in the context of the film [5/17 Update: I've seen the movie now.  The scene with her in her underwear is incredibly brief but entirely pointless.  Even one of the film's screenwriters agrees].  Is this gratuitous partial nudity incredibly out of character for Star Trek?  Well, not really.

The Original Series (1966-1969)

Star Trek has always been about boldly going where no one, man or woman, has gone before, and seeking out new life and new civilizations.  However, for the Original Series that mission statement might as well as have included the following addendum: to seek out new races of hot females with whom James T. Kirk can have sex or at least enjoy a solid make-out session.  Below is just a sampling of his conquests:

Kirk was probably no more a man-whore than Sam Beckett on Quantum Leap, who similarly locked lips with many a female co-star.  It is the natural by-product of an episodic show with a central male character who is both a lover and a fighter – he’s going to have a ton of love interests. The difference here is that the original Star Trek was made during the orgy-tastic heights of the sexual revolution.  As such, in addition to the many Kirk-on-hot-woman make-outs you also see a not-small amount of skin, especially for late 1960s television.

I don’t even have to go very far for an example.  The show’s original, William Shatner-less pilot, “The Cage”,  featured what amounted to a green-skinned Geisha girl dancing seductively for nearly two minutes:

The pilot was cut-up and aired as the first season’s 11th and 12th episodes (“The Menagerie 1 & 2″), but a truncated version of the seduction dance made it in.  So, not surprisingly after such an introduction the show was not reluctant to show some female skin.

You had your somewhat-to-very scantily clad aliens:

And your scantily clad versions of the main characters from the mirror (read as: evil) universe:

Ordinary female crew members from the ship, when not depicted in their mirror universe incarnation, could be fully clothed in ill-fitting polyester uniforms or suffer the “well, I guess I’m not sitting down at all today” indignity of wearing the shortest skirts imaginable:

And it wasn’t just the women.  Shatner was shirtless – a lot.  Here he is enjoying shirtless buddies time with Leonard Nimoy:

And the classic episode “The Naked Time” forever gave us this indelible image of a deranged, shirtless George Takei displaying what we mean when we say “a dancer’s body”:

Plus, in the “Charlie X” episode this happened.  It was awkward:

Homoerotic tickle fights? Starfleet is cool with it.

Trek Fact: After the original series was canceled but before The Motion Picture was made, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry co-wrote and produced a sexploitation film chock full of nudity in 1971.

The Original/Next Generation Cast Films (1979, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2002)

All six of the original cast films are family friendly, PG-rated fare that carry over almost none of the original TV show’s fondness for attractive women wearing remarkably little.  Perhaps this was a sign of the times or a reflection of the original cast being a full decade older by the time they made their first film together.  Heck, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture you see almost as much of Deforest Kelley’s chest hair as you do Persis Khambatta‘s (aka the bald woman’s) legs.

The most skin any of the films show is probably Ricardo Montalban’s impressively chiseled physique as Khan in Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan:

KHAN!!!!!  You look…fabulous!

The Next Generation cast films may have upped the ante in terms of violence and language, earning First Contact and Nemesis PG-13 ratings, but there is nothing overtly sexual in any of them other than a subtle love triangle between the Borg Queen, Data, and Picard in First Contact.

The Next Generation (1987-1994)

The Next Generation premiered in a post-AIDs world, and its depiction of sexuality reflects that.  In the place of the more swashbuckling Captain Kirk is Patrick Stewart’s Captain Picard, a man more likely to sit in his ready room and enjoy a good cup of Earle Gray tea than court an attractive female alien while on an away mission.  Our characters, in general, are far more chaste and quicker to reject hedonism.

But, wait a minute, what about this?

Tasha Yar from “The Naked Now”, an episode inspired by the original series classic “The Naked Time”

Granted, it was difficult to shake old habits. The show’s second episode, “The Naked Now”, has the crew behaving like horny drunkards as the result of a ship-wide infection.  So, of course our tough as nails female Head of Security strips to a bare midriff ensemble she uses to seduce Data, an android whose explanation of his “fully functional” android penis has been the source of immense humor among Star Trek fans.  However, even here the implication is these characters would only behave in such a manner if inebriated against their will.

Plus, the show did not completely eschew the miniskirts for the female crew members from the Original Series. Throughout the run of the show, Marina Sirtis’ Counselor Troi had a rotating series of costumes, most of which distinguished her from the rest of the crew and their standard Starfleet uniforms.  However, early on they tried out a modern update of the infamous Original Series miniskirts, but the end result made her look like she was some sort of  Starfleet cheer-leader:

Counselor Troi the Cheerleader, Sensing Exactly the Opposite Thing of the Truth Since 1987

But, for the most part The Next Generation reflected the original cast films in that we were supposed to be in a time which has moved beyond the objectification of women.  The most you would get would be form-fitting outfits that were presented as ideal for utility as opposed to enhancing attractiveness.

Scientists in the late 80s thought that you would not lose any weight if you worked out wearing anything other than spandex.

Beth Toussaint as Ishara Yar from the season 4 episode “Legacy.” In the episode, this outfit is no big deal, not even acknowledged in fact.  Photo credit: wikipedia.org

Deep Space Nine (1993-1999)

To paraphrase Marty McFly, Deep Space Nine was pretty heavy.  After spending the customary-for-a-Star-Trek-show first two seasons figuring everything out, it grew into a heavily serialized WWII parable with the Federation, Klingons, and eventually Romulans the Allied Forces and the Cardassians, Dominion, and Breen as the Axis Powers.  There simply was not a whole lot of time for romantic relationships, and when they did they tended not to waste time in presenting male or females in skimpy clothing for no good reason.

If there was an episode set on the pleasure planet Risa then you might see some women in somewhat standard bikinis, as with Chase Masterson below:

Heck, even when they did Mirror Universe episodes in which Kira’s evil, sexually aggressive and usually lesbian counterpart was bringing her milkshake to the yard she was typically covered head to toe in leather.  If we were on the Holodeck, the characters might be allowed to loosen up, but still not shown in anything especially egregious as seen below:

Voyager (1995-2001)

This is where it both did and did not change.  Female characters had been wearing form-fitting outfits since Deanna Troi on Next Generation.  So, technically Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine, who joined Voyager in the fourth season and was almost always covered head to toe, was no different.  Yet before her the women looked like women whereas she typically looked like a comic book heroine, about which Jeri Ryan herself as even joked:

Eventually, possibly because Jeri Ryan kept fainting from the effects of the hidden corset (at least I assume she did), they granted her a new, slightly less hip-hugging costume.

The odd juxtaposition for a character whose costume meant to bring a video game or comic book heroine body-type to life is that Seven of Nine was just as chaste, if not more so, than everyone else.  Seven of Nine was assimilated into the Borg while still a 6-year-old girl and freed from the collective once an adult woman.  As such, she is basically constantly learning how to be an adult human (or, more accurately, refusing to learn).  Sexuality is considerably low on her checklist of things to learn.

The show mostly played the disconnect between her obvious attractiveness and lack of knowledge or interest in anything sexual for humor.  The best examples come in the episodes “Revulsion” and “Someone to Watch Over Me.”  In the former she notices a male crew member flirting with her and responds bluntly, and in the latter she has a “My Fair Lady”-esque lesson from the ship Doctor on how to date.  The below clip comes from “Revulsion” and features about as bluntly and clinically-stated an invitation for sex (“copulation”) as you’ll ever hear [the funny starts at the 1:20 mark]:

And in “Someone to Watch Over Me,” we get to see her on an actual date.  Here, you can see that she is trying…and failing every step of the way:

They did have her pose nude once, but it was presented for humor.  Plus, it was a holodeck version of her.  Ultimately, she may have rocked a mean unitard, but her character’s actual romantic life from the entirety of her time on the show is best summed up here:

Photo credit: startrek.com

What the Jeri Ryan experience taught the Star Trek writers and producers was just how sexy Star Trek could look without ever actually being sexy. Put Jeri Ryan into a skin-tight leotard with a hidden corset underneath, but don’t write her any differently than a normal character.  In fact, Seven of Nine is a rather standard Star Trek stock character type – the outsider (e.g., Vulcan, android, ex-Borg) struggling to understand humanity.  So, they decided to try it again with their next spin-off.

Enterprise (2001-2005)

With Enterprise, they took the Jeri Ryan experiment and multiplied it by 2.  They found their own Jeri Ryan in Jolene Blalock as the Vulcan T’Pol, and reached into sci-fi past to find a male heartthrob to play Captain Archer – Scott Bakula, prior man-whore for Quantum Leap.  They then devised of a method to consistently strip the characters, not just T’Pol and Archer mind you, down to their underwear and have them think nothing of it.  Basically, characters took partially nude group water-less showers together, and would often have to rub each other down with some sort of oil.   And you thought they were shameless with Jeri Ryan’s costume, didn’t you?

In the logic of the show, characters on away missions would have to go through a decontamination process before rejoining the crew.  This meant stripping to their underwear and entering a small room together for a set period of time.  It sure looked sexual, but to the actual characters it was the most mundane thing imaginable.  It may in reality be a ratings-starved show pandering to viewers, but in the reality of the show it was a logical precautionary method with which the characters had long since been accustomed.  You’d be right to guess that T’Pol was featured in such scenes quite often, with the below being of the more wholesome variety even though it involves two girls, a guy, and a dog:

Seven of Nine – Former borg with an emotionless veneer that belies an on-going effort to become more human-like, fondness for form-fitting unitards, and played by an extremely attractive actress.

T’Pol – A Vulcan, a race who suppresses their emotions, who ultimately begins exploring human emotions, fond of wearing form-fitting unitards, and played by an extremely attractive actress more willing to show more skin than the last one.

Yeah, it was obvious what they were up to.  However, T’Pol proved to be one of the most compelling characters on the show, and her romantic relationship with the human Trip (Connor Trenier) is among the best attempts at a such relationship in the TNG/DSN/Voyager/Enterprise era.  Plus, there was a sexual element to their relationship that was more honest than it was exploitative, although they probably showed just a little bit more of Blalock than they really needed to for the story.  You can see a hint of it toward the end of the below trailer:

It wasn’t all Blalock, though.  As a prequel to all Star Trek that had come before, they were able to re-introduce the O’Rion Slave Girls:

And they had a lot of fun hiding Bakula’s shirt and watching him look for it:

They even did an homage to the Original Series’ Mirror universe with “In a Mirror Darkly 1 & 2” from the final season, which featured the cast wearing replica Original Series uniforms and acting on replica Original Series sets.  This allowed them to shamelessly show off Jolene Blalock’s abs just as the Original Series had done with Nichelle Nichols in “Mirror, Mirror”:

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek (2009)

But that was all before J.J. Abrams’ take on the Star Trek story.  He can do whatever he wants, and Alice Eve is not the first actress he has stripped down to her underwear lest we forget Rachel Nichols’ O’rion girl Gaila from the first Star Trek:

So, with Alice Eve they appear to again trying the sexy look without being sexy thing.  She’s half-naked, sure, but she’s also wearing a facial expression that says, “Don’t tell me you have something against nudity!”  It may be jarring, but Star Trek started out with a dancing Geisha girl and in its recent history they are not above taking advantage of the appeal of the female (or male) form.  This may or may not be a good thing, but it’s nothing new.

What do you think?  Did you not even notice Alice Eve and her underwear in the trailer until now?  Are there other examples you’re surprised I didn’t point out?

For a comedic analysis of sexuality in the Star Trek shows with a more in-depth focus upon a select few individual episodes, look here.

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• Star Trek: Now With Half Naked Chicks (optimuscook.wordpress.com)
• Beam me up hottie! Alice Eve strips off to her bra and pants in new Star Trek trailer (mirror.co.uk)

UPDATE: 5/19/2013-The movie is out now.  Head here to check out our spoiler-free review.

UPDATE: 5/2/2013 – The massive ship piloted by Cumberbatch in the trailer has a name.  That name?  The U.S.S. Vengeance.  I guess the U.S.S. Wrath and U.S.S. Retribution were taken, and the U.S.S. Khan was too on the nose.

Here is the part where I say stuff and you wait for it to end so you can get to watching the video.  Well, I think that about covers it then.  Here is the final theatrical trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness:

From the 1 minute, 15 second mark, what the hell is this?

Good Enterprise on left, the Big, Bad Evil Enterprise on right

Tor.com is arguing the giant black ship, which Benedict Cumberbatch captains in the trailer, looks an awful lot like the Enterprise E, i.e., the version of the Enterprise used by the Next Generation crew in the films Star Trek: First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis.  This doesn’t necessarily mean it is the Enterprise E, but the design similarities suggest it could be an Enterprise from the Mirror Universe.  I don’t know about all that.  Frankly, I’ve always thought the various star ships in Star Trek look pretty similar – saucer-shaped primary hull connected to a narrow or fat body supported by two elongated jet propulsion-esque parts called warp nacelles.  That describes more than just the Enterprise in the Star Trek universe.   However, there is a definite similarity here which is likely intentional.  It creates an effective, almost comedic juxtaposition in how out-gunned Kirk & company are going to be in their fight against not-Khan-but-probably-is-Khan.

The last time we saw Khan in the Star Trek universe (in Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan) he was on the deck of the Enterprise USS Reliant, a Federation starship he had commandeered in his plot for revenge against Kirk.  Cumberbatch’s villain in the new movie happens to have a ship which looks an awful lot like a Federation starship, albeit a hybrid one.  Doesn’t mean he will turn out to be Khan, of course.  Just something I thought I’d point out.

At the 1 minute, 56 second mark of the trailer Simon Pegg’s Scotty indicates the Enterprise might be destroyed or made unusable, likely as a result of Cumberbatch’s “You call that a ship?  Now, this, this is a ship!” battle advantage.  If such a thing does come to pass, it won’t be the first time the Enterprise has been destroyed in one of the movies or tv shows.  Below is not a list of every single version of the various starships to be called Enterprise in Star Trek, but instead a list of those which we have actually seen destroyed in battle:

NCC-1701

The ship survived a bald woman (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and a bare-chested Ricardo Montalban (Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan) but could not make it past Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock).

NCC-1701-C

Oh, Enterprise C, we hardly knew ya.  You showed up in the Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” in which you, too, were destroyed in battle with the Klingons.

NCC-1701-D

We followed you through seven seasons of Next Generation and waited patiently during the speech-y Star Trek: Generations only to see you destroyed in battle with the Klingons. As the Simpsons version of Captain Kirk once said in a parody of Star Trek, “[exasperated sigh] Again with the Klingons?”

So, the Klingons have been behind every destruction of the Enterprise in the Star Trek universe, and the Enterprise appears likely to perish in the new film. You know what this means? Cumberbatch’s character in Into Darkness must be a Klingon.  Granted, he does not look like a traditional Klingon, but that hasn’t stopped Star Trek before:

Original Series version of Klingons

Next Generation and all spin-offs’ version of Klingons. This is Worf. He is not a merry man.

Okay.  I am only kind of joking, but I may actually be right.  As I was writing this article Hollywood.com published a very thorough argument that Cumberbatch’s character in the new movie is either a Klingon or aligned with the Klingons, who we see in the trailer as the anonymous foot soldiers wearing the shiny helmets. Check it out here.  The following is my summation of their argument:

1. In the original continuity, Klingons naturally look like Worf, pictured above.  However, in response to human genetic testing they uncovered and interpreted as a threat they began experimenting with splicing Klingon and human DNA to produce deep-cover agents who could infiltrate Starfleet.  The experiments, although initially successful, morphed into a virus which affected the entire Klingon community.  By the time of the Original Series, most if not all Klingons looked human.  This negated the intent to place deep cover agents as there is no element of disguise when all Klingons look human.  At some point between the Original Series and Star Trek: The Motion Picture the Klingons were able to reverse the effect.

2. What if in the new J.J. Abrams continuity the Klingons genetic experiments were successful but did not produce a virus?  What if the John Harrison character played by Cumberbatch is actually a Klingon in deep cover in Starfleet?  The trailer indicates Harrison might be working in alliance with the Klingons, but what if he is actually one of them?

If you consider the Abrams films tied to the continuity of the TV shows and prior films then actions from the show Enterprise negate this. However, if you consider the Abrams films free to do whatever they want this is certainly a possibility.  We have not actually seen what the Klingons in this new universe look like, and they already heavily altered the appearance of the Romulans in the first Star Trek.

When will we absolutely find out for sure?  On 5/17/2013 when Star Trek Into Darkness is released in the USA,  with a mixture of earlier and later release dates for other regions of the world.

Theorize with us in the comments.

Editorial Note: 4/23/2013-The above article originally stated that in Wrath of Khan the ship commandeered by Khan is the Enteprise.  A commentator responded to the article to point out that Khan actually captains the USS Reliant.  In response, the offending text has been corrected.  We hang our heads in shame, and kindly hand in our Star Trek fan badge and phaser.

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Star Trek: Into Darkness News: An Earlier Release Date, Early Reviews & A Look at the Klingons (weminoredinfilm.com)

It’s been a long four years since the original J.J. Abram’s Star Trek.  Abrams destroyed the planet of Vulcan, gave Spock a girlfriend, and called a gang of space pirates Romulans when they clearly were not Romulans as we had come to know them.  Trek fandom may never forget, but after four years … who am I kidding they’ll never forgive.  However, we are now that much closer to the next round of “how dare you, J.J. Abrams” plot developments.  As such, the Paramount press machine is in overdrive, so much so that we have fallen way behind.  Here is the latest run-down:

Release Date a Day Earlier Now.  Adjust Your Schedules Accordingly.

In a move totally and absolutely unrelated in any way whatsoever to the record-setting opening weekend of Iron Man 3, Paramount has decided to release Star Trek: Into Darkness a full day earlier in the United States, moving from Friday, May 17 to Thursday, May 16.  Previously, the film was to feature preview IMAX screenings in select US cities on Wednesday, May 15 before giving way to the standard midnight screenings of Thursday night/technically Friday morning.  Now, they’ve decided to simply treat the largely sold-out May 15 screenings as the sneak preview and just open wide on Thursday with showings available throughout the entire day.  The official explanation points to the excellent ticket sales of the sneak preview screenings.  Anyway who is cynical enough to think the studio is desperate to pad their opening weekend numbers so as not to look horribly inferior after the moneystorm Marvel and Disney just brewed with Iron Man 3 clearly have no idea what they’re talking about.

Then again, Paramount Pictures was actually the contracted distributor during Marvel Studios’ independent studio days, with the iconic Paramount mountain logo among the first images viewers of the original Iron Man films see during the opening credits. According to finance.yahoo.com, when Disney bought Marvel in 2010 they inherited that distribution contract, which expires with Iron Man 3.  Disney gave Paramount a lot of money to go away so that Disney could do all of the marketing.  However, as part of this deal Paramount stands to make 9% of Iron Man 3‘s worldwide gross if the film exceeds $1 billion in worldwide box office, which will happen at its current pace.  So, it is in Paramount’s best interest for Iron Man 3 to continue performing well.  However, their access to that sweet Marvel money is cut off meaning they really need their legacy franchise Star Trek to do well.  Plus, it would be nice to be able to look over at Iron Man and show off their new-old boyfriend in Star Trek and laugh, “Fine.  Good.  I’m glad we broke up.  Look how much money my new spouse makes!”

So, we were talking about Star Trek…right.  Sorry.  On the upside, the movie comes out a full day earlier in the US now.  Yay! On the downside, that sarcastic golf clap you might faintly hear from across the pond is coming from those in the UK and various other European countries who are still getting the movie a bit earlier than us, starting with the May 9 opening in the UK.

The Reviews Are…Not Bad

There have been press previews of the movie at this point, and many early reviews have made their way online.  ScreenRant.com has a good run-down of the most notable early reviews, and their summation of the reviews goes as follows:

“Star Trek Into Darkness isn’t a franchise game-changer along the lines of The Empire Strikes Back or The Dark Knight, but it offers as much – if not more – entertainment value than J.J. Abrams’ 2009 reboot.  The sequel blends earnest nostalgia for classic Trek lore with innovation and plot/character development, but not always in well-balanced portions.  This is an enjoyable viewing experience for older and younger Trekkies, as well as those who just love a good action-packed sci-fi blockbuster.” – ScreenRant.com

Our First Look at The Klingons

As part of the promotion for the film, there have been a series of viral videos featuring Benedict Cumberbatch’s villainous John Harrison character taking on each member of the crew one video at a time, starting with Kirk.  Or, as I like to call it, Dr. John Harrison’s Growl-A-Long Blog.  Below is the one where he calls out Zoe Saldana’s Uhura for having come to know the forbidden touch of a Vulcan named Spock:

I want John Harrison to leave my voicemail message on my phone.  Just have him say the most polite things possible, but do it in his big scary voice.  Anyway, if you blink you miss it, but there does appear to be our first look at the Klingons as they will appear in the film.  Here it is, courtesy of comicbookmovie.com by way of screencrush.com [look away right now if you want not to be contaminated by the malicious entity known as the spoiler]:

I…don’t know what to say.  My initial reaction was that it obviously can’t be a Klingon because, well, that’s not how the Klingons have ever looked.  In fact, this looks more like a cousin of the alien from Enemy Mine:

Except we don’t have Hamlet translated in their language…yet. Get on that, people.

However, upon closer inspection it does appear to have some of the traditional markings of a Klingon with the forehead ridges, which are simply far, far less pronounced than from The Next Generation forward.  In fact, it seems like a cross between the “they’re basically just normal humans” approach of the Original Series and “look with the big heads” approach of Next Generation and its spin-offs.  I am actually glad to have seen this before the film because I feel I will need to adjust but will have become used to it by the time it pops up during the movie.  That is, of course, if this random alien, who is seen standing in front of Klingons wearing helmets, is in fact a Klingon.  We don’t know that for sure…although it most probably is.

Where are my manners?  I bet he no more cares for me calling him Klingon than I would care to be called “Hu-man.”  If only I knew his name.  Eh.  Klingon is good for now.

The Tao of Scotty

Here is a profile of Scotty as played brilliantly by Simon Pegg:

ScienceFiction.com has a good run-down of the various other videos which have surfaced lately.

Is the anticipation for Star Trek killing you?  Or have you reached the “I want to stop hearing about it now” point?  If so, boy did we miscalculate our planned Star Trek coverage to roll out next week to coincide with the new film.  Either way, take to the comments and let your thoughts be known.

Let’s face the facts. Lists of  the best episodes of television, movies, novels, Broadway musicals, burgers and fries- you name it- are completely subjective and irrelevant. Favorites, especially pop-culture favorites, are in constant states of fluctuation. Depending on the time of day or the mood one is in, a list of favorites may alter entirely. However, lists are fun and they do, at least for that particular moment, allow you to really decide, once and for…well, the time it takes you to create the list, what your favorites really are.

For those immune to Star Trek’s charms (and I understand that mindset, believe me), the original series must seem irredeemably hokey, hammily acted, and egregiously self-righteous. Centered around a crew of ethnically diverse space explorers (with one humanoid alien for good measure) and their attempts to explore the galaxy and…”boldly go” and all that, the series may seem hard to tolerate to the outside observer. Fans of the series, who treat it as some sort of sacred text and discuss it as though it’s Shakespeare or Chekhov (I know there’s a character named Chekhov on the show. That’s not who I’m talking about. Stick with me here), can stimulate resentment towards the series through no fault of its own. Sometimes, there’s nothing worse than sci-fi fans, and I say this as a sci-fi fan myself. We can be obnoxious and hideously socially inept.

However, that doesn’t mean the original Stark Trek series isn’t an incredibly smart, strong, if short-lived (it ran for three seasons, from 1966-1969), science fiction program. There are individuals who take it as a source of pride they have no familiarity with the Star Trek, which is unfortunate. The series is incredibly charming and remains incredibly well done for the time in which it was filmed.

If you have no interest in trying out a few episodes of Star Trek, there’s probably very little I can do to persuade you otherwise. However, with Star Trek: Into Darkness already out in the UK and opening in the US this week now’s as good a time as any to check out the original series.  I have compiled a list of ten episodes, ordered from my least favorite to “drop whatever it is you’re doing and see it now”, which are as good a place as any to start. You may as well watch it and see what has inspired so much obnoxiously obsessive devotion.

(Minimal spoilers present, though major spoilers are kept under wraps. Read at your own risk.)

10) All Our Yesterdays (Season 3)

There are those who would tell you to avoid the series’ problematic third season like a brutal, deadly plague that kills you slowly (and probably with boils and blinding torment), and there are very few episodes I can cite to contradict that viewpoint. However, the series penultimate episode emerges as one bright spot in a flawed, flawed, oh so flawed season.

Basically, the episode revolves around the Enterprise’s most popular trio, Captain Kirk, Vulcan science officer Spock, and ship doctor Leonard McCoy arriving on a planet, stepping through a portal, and being thrust back in time. Kirk’s medieval adventure is pretty subpar, but Spock’s and McCoy’s plot, which finds them in prehistoric times and Spock in love with Zarabeth, a young woman trapped there (who, despite the harsh snow, is scantily clad, for reasons I don’t fully understand), works beautifully. Because they are in prehistoric times, Spock’s emotional reserve begins to break down and he finds himself more prone to anger and romantically drawn to the Zarabeth.

The episode is not perfect. As I said, the plot line involving Captain Kirk and one of the worst female actors the show ever cast is pretty dull, but the plot with Spock and McCoy is pretty great. Of course, all three Enterprise crew members reunite and leave the planet before a supernova wipes it out and, of course, Spock reverts to his more familiar, emotionless, default setting, but an emotional Spock is always an interesting Spock. It’s nice to know that even as the series was uttering its final death rattles, it was still capable of producing thoughtful and lovely television moments.

Check out a trailer below:

9) Trouble with Tribbles (Season 2)

Humor is a notoriously mixed bag in the Star Trek universe. You may stumble across episodes featuring Harry Mudd as you peruse the original series’ back catalogue, for instance. I advise you to ignore these and move on quickly. However, feel free to stop and give “The Trouble with Tribbles” a shot. There is nothing even remotely high stakes going on in the episode. It mainly involves small, furry, purring balls of simulated fur animals that take the whole ”be fruitful and multiply” thing waaay too seriously (yeah, there’s a plot involving poisoning a food supply and a Klingon secret agent, but that feels so perfunctory it barely warrants mentioning). It’s a pretty light episode, but the cast is more than game and acquaint themselves well with the comic material. I’ve probably watched this episode more than any other episode in the series. It’s a delightful hour of television.

Check out a trailer below:

8) Immunity Syndrome (Season 2)

This is an episode I rarely hear anyone discuss when best of Star Trek comes up in conversation. That’s a shame, because it’s awesome. Any episode that features the trio that is Spock, Kirk, and McCoy is already halfway to being great. Trios are difficult to pull off, and the original series created a likable, interesting, dynamic between these three characters. You have McCoy, who for a doctor seemed really unable to emotionally detach and really prone to angry outbursts, Spock, who was almost always emotionally detached and rarely prone to angry outbursts, and Kirk, the captain at the lead trying to establish a balance between the two. Conflicts frequently rose between the three that felt natural and interesting, but through their interactions it became obvious why Kirk would rely on them and need their friendships. They were the emotional extremes he needed to balance. McCoy was all emotion, Spock was all logic. Kirk’s job was to find a balance between the two, because somewhere between their two extremes existed the most successful leadership approach. The three of them complemented each other beautifully. This episode places a fair amount of its focus on their interactions and relationship, as well as the way in which they really do function as friends, regardless how often McCoy looks as though he really just wants to murder Spock on the spot.

Add in an energy-devouring alien amoeba presence and the scale tips into pure “fantastic” territory. It’s an exciting, cleverly constructed episode, complete with some nice character moments between the three central characters.

Check out a trailer below:

7) Doomsday Machine (Season 2)

This is another fantastically tense episode. A crazed commander, who has lost his entire crew to a planet-devouring alien and appears to be suffering severe emotional trauma as a result, takes control of the Enterprise and sends it plunging headlong towards a seemingly unkillable, alien, planet-eating machine (Don’t you hate it when that happens?).

The interesting aspect of the episode is the manner in which it goes out of its way to present Commander Matt Dekker as someone who has clearly taken leave of his senses (or they have taken leave of him. Either way), but not a villain. He’s traumatized and distraught, because his entire crew has been wiped out, but as an audience, we understand his trauma and feel a mixture of sympathy for his loss (after all, it’s hard to imagine Kirk taking the loss of his crew any better) and frustration because he cannot see the potential consequences of the cat-and-mouse game in which he engages. In the end, he loses his life to the creature, but he manages to give Kirk and the Enterprise the necessary knowledge to stop it. It’s a nice idea that the episode him allows to, unintentionally, die a heroic death and a smart, tense episode with terrific pacing.

Check out a trailer below:

6) Balance of Terror (Season 1)

Basically functioning as a WW II submarine movie in space, “Balance of Terror” introduced us to the Romulans (think of Vulcans, only with emotions), one of the series most interesting villains. It also deals with the paranoid, destructive nature of prejudice, as it is discovered that Romulans look astonishingly like Vulcans. An Enterprise crew member begins to feel Spock may be concealing knowledge from the rest of the ship. Yet, it’s also pretty optimistic about the nature of prejudice in the future, since he seems to be the only crew member who suspects Spock of such a thing (an interesting assumption for a series set in an era of civil rights demonstrations and violent race riots). The episode also gives us a tense, battle of wills between between Kirk and the Romulan commander, who rightfully points out that under different circumstances, he could have been Kirk’s ally. The episode creates an interesting dynamic between two individuals, forced to engage in a battle when they would just as soon avoid conflict. It’s a smart, tense episode, with a villain far more complicated than one would expect from a 1960s sci-fi television series.

Check out a trailer below:

5) Devil in the Dark (Season 1)

Another episode in which all is not as it seems. An alien is wiping out workers on a mining colony, and the Enterprise crew is called in to destroy it, but who’s the real villain on the colony? Is it the alien or the out-for-vengeance miners?

One of the major themes of Star Trek was the concept of seeing new places and encountering new life forms (even if, as it does here, the new life form looks like an ugly carpet), and this episode conveys both the wonder of finding/understanding new life, as well as the potential for terror that can accompany such a discovery. There are some moments that border on the ridiculous (Spock’s mindmeld with what is clearly a shoddily produced stuffed animal, while shouting “PAIN” is pretty unintentionally hilarious, but full credit to Leonard Nimoy for really working hard to sell it.), but the episode’s twist on the nature of monsters in the dark, as well as the optimistic endinge, makes it a lovely episode.

Check out a trailer below:

4) Amok Time (Season 2)

For all the talk about Spock being an alien, the series provided very little proof of what made him so different. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I know he’s got the pointed ears, the unflappable demeanor, the Vulcan mind meld, and the nerve pinch, but he seems, at least mostly, human. “Amok Time” reminds the viewer that there is more to Spock’s alien nature than meet the eye, and that lack of knowledge can make him both unpredictable and frightening. When he begins to unleash flashes of anger and aggressively demanding to be dropped off on his home planet, Vulcan, it’s cool and exciting, because it’s such a shift from the more familiar, typical Spock. What’s going on with Spock is tipped pretty quickly, but I went into the episode ignorant and that may be the best way to view it, so I’ll set specifics aside during this list. I’ll simply state that this episode gives one of the few glimpses into the workings of planet Vulcan, as well as a moment between Kirk and Spock at the episode’s conclusion that never fails to make me smile.

Check out a trailer below:

 3) Space Seed (Season 1)

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Star Trek can probably yell “KHAN” with mocking gusto. To many, it is the embodiment of everything that is so effortlessly mockable about William Shatner’s performance in the Star Trek universe. Well, you won’t find that iconic yell here, but you will meet the infamous Khan for the first time. He’s found, along with several other genetically enhanced individuals, on a drifting ship. Kirk, impressed with Khan’s mental prowess, completely lowers his guard and grants him an extreme amount of access to knowledge about the present and the Enterprise, and Khan uses that knowledge to take over the ship.

It’s nice for the series to introduce an adversary that is more than capable of matching wits with Kirk. There’s a point in which Kirk is only saved because a crew member who finds herself drawn to Khan still feels enough loyalty towards Kirk to help him out of a deadly situation. If not for her, he’s definitely dead. Ricardo Montalban, as the series most famous villain (though that is more connected to Wrath of Khan, far and away the best of the Star Trek movies, than this episode) makes for an appealingly icy, intelligent villain. If you’ve seen Wrath of Khan (and even casual fans usually have), this episode will add an extra layer to that film’s conflict and provide you with a sharp, effective backstory.

Check out a trailer below:

2) This Side of Paradise (Season 1)

So, there are spores that keep people young forever and turn them into laid back, emotionally content beings. Well, the Enterprise crew will put a stop to that, won’t they? I’m only kidding. I’m sure there are reasons to justify leaving the immortality-granting pods behind. It’s just…I don’t know exactly what those reasons are.

The real reason I like this episode comes down to the relationship between Kirk and Spock. When Spock becomes infected with the spores, and finally seems peaceful and well-adjusted (for a change), Kirk takes it upon himself to “fix” him by making him the frustrated, conflicted, outsider he once was. Spock should probably just say, “don’t do me any favors,” but it’s to the show’s credit that Kirk’s plan to wipe out Spock’s emotional serenity seems as acceptable as it does. Kirk doesn’t approve of anything taking away a person’s choice, and the spores are, at the very least, doing that, even if the lack of choice seems a happier alternative to the free will Kirk offers. It’s an odd, more complicated episode that you would expect, because the episode itself questions whether or not everyone infected is really better off cured, especially Spock, who spends so much of the series as a frustrated outsider. Granted, the spore-shooting flowers look spectacularly fake, but who cares when the character drama is this strong?

Check out a trailer below:

 1) City on the Edge of Forever (Season 1)

 (There will be spoilers below)

One of the assumptions of Star Trek is that the Enterprise crew will save the day. Granted a few “red shirts” we know nothing about and care for even less may fall during the battle, but everything will eventually be put right, and we as viewers will end the episode feeling comforted that all has been rectified. “City on the Edge of Forever” takes that idea and turns it on its ear.

After McCoy is infected with a powerful drug and runs into the 1930s era United States (There’s a bit more to the “how” of this than I’m giving you here, but it’s complicated and should probably just be seen, rather than explained.), and Spock and Kirk must journey after him. They arrive a few days before he will appear (wibbly wobbly, timey wimey), so must simply bide their time, wait for him to arrive, and try to get him back to the ship. However, while they are there, Kirk meets and falls in love with Edith Keeler (Kirk fell in love a lot on this show. He saw more action that most Studio 54 attendees.), a optimistic young woman, passionate about social causes and willing to give every down-on-his-luck individual a chance at earning his/her keep.

He then finds out that McCoy, when he arrives in the 1930s, will change history, saving Edith when she should have died, and leaving the world irrevocably altered. The answer is clear: Edith has to die.

Public perception of William Shatner’s acting on Star Trek is frequently based upon hammy line readings and strange, awkward, unnaturally placed pauses. There are certainly episodes in which those tendencies are, if slightly exaggerated for comedic effect in parody form, definitely present. Here, though, he’s fantastic. Playing both the lovesick romantic, and the devastated  wounded captain at the episode’s conclusion, he reminds the viewer how compelling he could be when he committed to the material. At the episode’s end, all he can say is, “let’s get the Hell out of here,” a rare moment of profanity in 1960s television. Granted, he’s over her loss by the next episode and she’s never mentioned again, but it’s still a strong, beautiful hour of television.

Check out a trailer below:

Star Trek is available to stream through Netflix and Amazon (free to prime members), and Hulu, as well as to purchase on DVD and Blu-ray.

So, what do you think? Are you fans of these episodes? Are there others you think should be on the list? Did I make any mistakes in my plot synopsis (and if you caught them, what is wrong with you? You should really go outside, see the world, or even read a book.)? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

There are film scenes that we love, and there are scenes that we loathe (or hate).  As such, we like to celebrate the good ones and shame the bad ones.  Today, it’s time to talk about a bad one.  This is the scene from Star Trek: Generations that causes us to involuntarily exclaim ”I LOATHE That Scene!” whenever it is brought up in conversation, and that’s only if we’re being nice.  

THE FILM: Star Trek: Generations  (1994)

THE PLOT: Like a thousand Star Trek fan fiction novels come to life, this is the one where Captain Kirk (William Shatner) from the original series meets Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) from The Next Generation.  The device by which this comes to be is a ribbon of space energy known as the Nexus.  It is a periodic anomaly that destroys everything in its path while also absorbing people and through rather shaky science (as in a non-existent explanation) preserves their bodies and surrounds them with whatever they might regard as their own personal heaven.  As such, those within the Nexus live in a sort of magical fantasy land where the world responds to their innermost desires.  Not surprisingly, people ripped from the Nexus take it about as well as Buffy took being freed from a literal heaven at the beginning of season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Captain Kirk is one such person trapped in the Nexus.  Eventually, Captain Picard gets caught in it as well, albeit nearly 100 years later.  For Captain Kirk, it happens while he is aboard the maiden voyage of the Enterprise-B; for Captain Picard, it happens when a former Nexus resident attempts to manipulate the path of the Nexus to place himself in the eye of the storm thus assuring re-absorption even if it means the destruction of planets or the Enterprise-D.  So, Picard and Kirk meet inside the Nexus and have a fist fight the moment Picard asks for a cup of Earl Gray tea, with Kirk yelling out in-between his fists of fury, “The…captain…of the…Enterprise…does…not…drink…tea!”

Photo credit: icanhascheezburger.com

Or something like that.  That last bit might have been something from a a very anti-Picard fan fiction novel.

Alongside the film’s more ponderous sci-fi musings over mortality and the mcguffin that is the Nexus is the culmination of the show’s 7 season journey to make Commander Data (Brent Spiner) into a real boy.  He’s an android who wants to become more human, and luckily his creator left behind an emotion chip he might be able to use to experience real human emotions.

The emotion chip had a complicated history on the show, but the movie mostly ignored all of that.

He gets the emotion chip and he can laugh, even uncontrollably so, and cower in fear at the first sign of danger.  Welcome to humanity, Data, you big wimp!

(FOR EVERYTHING BELOW: SPOILERS AHEAD.  READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)

THE CONTEXT OF THE SCENE:

Kirk just went bye-bye, permanently as far as the audience knows, and the film has jumped nearly 100 years into the future straight to a H.M.S. Pinafore-style boat.  What the deuce!  The first time we see the Next Generation crew they are all wearing 1800s nautical outfits?  Duh.  They’re on the holodeck.  Why?  They are undergoing a particularly cruel promotion ceremony for the Klingon, Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn), wherein he has to walk a literal plank which contains dangling above it a hat which represents his new title: Lieutenant Commander.  Worf meets this indignity with victory, claiming his hat and growling fiercely at all observers, only to have Riker accidentally pull the plank out from under him.  Now, we’re left wondering if Klingons can swim while the crew watches on laughing just a little bit too hard, as if they all secretly hate Worf and hope he drowns.  Well, not quite that far.  Worf adapts to his new aquatic surroundings fairly well, admirably falling short of swearing death upon the foolish Riker.

Laughter is had by all, except for Data who possibly speaks for the audience in questioning why it’s so funny.  Beverly Crusher, in explaining the joke to him, clearly chooses her words poorly because Data pushes her into the water as well, attempting to join in the frivolity.  He then gets scolded.

THE SCENE:

WHY I LOATHE IT:

The tone.  As fellow WeMinoredInFilm writer Julianne has repeatedly argued in conversation with me about this scene, the way Geordi tells him “Not funny!” has the tone of an owner scolding their pet dog.  “That’s a bad, Data.  Bad!”  You half expect him to roll up a newspaper and swat Data over the nose with it.  Come to think of it, if he had done so Data would have likely done the same to him instantly, believing it to simply be a funny joke he fails to understand what will being an emotionless android and all (wah-wah).  I actually want to see that now.

Moreover, it is not entirely clearly why Dr. Beverly Crusher being pushed into water is so bad.  Granted, if I were in her position I’d be perturbed.  In fact, as a child who was a rather poor swimmer being pushed into a body of water was terrifying, and it did happen at family pool parties on occasion.  Plus, Dr. Crusher isn’t wearing a bathing suit or anything (except inside the minds of particularly randy Next Generation fans) and her hair and make-up are likely not fake-ocean-water ready.  However, it is a bit jarring how instantly everyone gives Data “You bastard!  How dare you!” stares.  He’s Data.  This kind of thing happens all the time, one guesses.  Dr. Crusher was probably the third person he’d pushed off the boat, with a couple of nameless crew members awaiting rescue from the boat’s other side.  Wouldn’t there, at this point, be a knowing laugh, “That’s our Data,”-like reactions before Geordi takes him aside and asks him whether or not he’d like to have been pushed over the side of the boat as a way of using logic to point out his faux pax?

Instead we get “not funny.”  Honestly, the scene is probably only as bothersome to me as it is because of the way Levar Burton says, “Not funny.”  I now imagine him popping up throughout the rest of the Next Generation movies and admonishing Data for any of his comic relief bits with a rather harsh reading of the phrase, “Not funny.”

So, Data rejoicing at the deaths of the Klingons in Generations?

What say you, Geordi? “Not funny.”

Data playing with “Mister Tricorder” in Generations?

What say you, Geordi? “Not funny.”

Data switching off his emotion chip to turn into a stone-cold killer much to Picard’s admiration in First Contact?

What say you, Geordi? “Not funny.”

Data playing with that little kid in Insurrection because everyone should find an hour a day to play?

Actually, I’d be with Geordi there with a hearty, “Not funny.”

This would be especially poignant if yelled by Geordi as he is being taken hostage while a cowering Data does nothing but, well, cower in Generations.

Actually, he’s okay with that one:

There are two different versions of J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness.  There is what the film actually is – a competently made summer movie blockbuster with eye-popping special effects, mostly cliched plot developments with a welcome twist or two the internet thankfully failed to spoil, and almost un-ending action.  There is, however, what the film isn’t which is to say this is not a Star Trek film.

Or, at least, this is not what Star Trek films used to be.  Granted, the special effects are far superior and the cast, for the most part, an equal match to the original.  However, there are no real philosophical discussions being engaged with in this film.  We aren’t navigating a new technology which literally remake planets (Star Trek II and III), searching for God (Star Trek V), pondering the nature of mortality (Star Trek Generations, Insurrection), or attempting to save an endangered species (Star Trek IV).  We are instead barreling forward from action set piece to set piece and being told a story which basically inverts a familiar one told by Gene Rodenberry and company many years ago.  The problem, then, is figuring out how to judge Star Trek Into Darkness for what it is and attempting to best ignore what it is not.

*SPECIFIC SPOILERS BELOW INCLUDE A DISCUSSION OF THE BASIC PLOT & A GENERAL REACTION TO THE FILM.  NO TWISTS ARE SPOILED.*

The film opens with an incredibly engaging pre-title card sequence involving Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) being chased by an alien planet’s indigenous people while Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto) attempts to use science to minimize the threat posed by an erupting local volcano.  Kirk refuses to leave Spock behind when the mission turns south, and his rescue efforts portends big things, both both plot-wise and thematically.

After this re-introduction to our core characters, we get to the real plot of the film which involves a terrorist named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) who is enacting multiple attacks upon Starfleet for unknown reasons.  In response, Captain Kirk and the Enterprise are sent after Harrison by Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller).  This places a crew of scientific explorers on a military operation, which at least two characters are willing to point out while everyone else falls in line.  However, due to the film’s relentless pacing this and future revelations are not quite granted as much time to sink in as they could have, although one assumes that is by design as the crew is quickly thrown into a constant state of reaction with precious little time for analysis.

Joining the crew on the mission is a new science officer played by Alice Eve.  As has been much-discussed, you do see her in her underwear, but if you blink you’ll probably miss it.

It is at this point where the plot twists, some regrettably predictable and some not, creep in.  As such, I will offer no further discussion of the actual plot as we will soon be offering a follow-up column to this one devoted to a spoiler-filled discussion of the film.

The plot mostly serves to merely connect one big-budget action set-piece to the next.  In that way, it is more than sufficient.  The story still invariably centers around Kirk and Spock, as they are truly given all of the heavy lifting, acting-wise, in the film.  Quinto, in particular, truly shines, even if some his story developments threaten to upset those who think Spock should only behave in a certain way.

There is at least a clear attempt on hand to give almost all of the primary crew members something new and interesting to do. Uhura’s (Zoe Saldana) relationship with Spock is dealt with more, serving both as a source of humor and unexpected insight and pathos.  Scotty (Simon Pegg) becomes integral to the plot, and Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) each enjoy new roles on the ship.  It is unfortunate, then, that Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban), a character so central to the Kirk/Spock/McCoy trio at the heart of the original Star Trek show, is mostly used to poke humor at the public perception of McCoy (i.e., that he mostly speaks in metaphors).  Urban is entertaining, as always, although he was given better material in Abrams’ original Star Trek.

Erica Bana as Nero from 2009′s Star Trek. Nero was basically a new version of the infamous Khan from the Original Series and Wrath of Khan, except here he was a Romulan who yelled a lot.

Speaking of which, Abrams’ original Star Trek had a famously undercooked villain.  Benedict Cumberbatch, who as others have argued features a name which appears to have emerged from a J.K. Rowling character name generator, emerges as a far more memorable villain than Nero.  His infamously deep tenor is used to chilling effect, and he also turns out to be a far more physically imposing presence than expected.  The role might prove slightly underwritten, as if (as originally argued by Film School Rejects) “ticking recognizable boxes is a valid substitute for earned emotion,” but Cumberbatch does get one dramatic monologue which he handles with the grace expected of such a stage-tested actor.  It is a definite improvement upon Bana’s work as Nero in the original.

Cumberbatch as Harrison from Star Trek Into Darkness. He occasionally dramatically overprounces words to unintended comedic effect, but it is an otherwise stellar performance in a slightly underwritten role.

The aforementioned action set-pieces are legion, though not uniformly engaging.  The film relies upon one too many tickling clock sequences (e.g., it’s going to blow in 5,4,3,2…), and somewhat blatantly lifts ideas from both Godfather III and Star Wars, with a recreation of the Millenium Falcon’s race through the Death Star in Return of the Jedi being the most egregious.  Though derivative, the scenes are well done.  They just pose the potential to disrupt the flow of the narrative for those who might be taken out of a story when they see the copying and pasting at play.  However, some of the action in this film is truly and masterfully stunning, with the crash landing of a ship (as highlighted by the film’s marketing campaign) being the standout moment (and actually aided, if just somewhat, by 3D).  There are more than enough edge-of-your-seat moments to keep audiences engaged and excited.

Abrams’ directing is, for the most part, on par if maybe a bit less emotionally engaging than that of his original Star Trek.  There are some slight pacing issues, as the film seems to suffer somewhat when it has to stop periodically for expository sequences.  The editing, at times, is a bit dodgy, but not enough to be distracting.  The lens flare, on the other hand, is horribly distracting.  For those who don’t know, a lens flare is, as described by the LA Times, the intentional flooding of the “camera frame with light to deliberately wash out or obscure imagery on-screen.”  The effect of a lens flare is seen below:

A signature Abrams’ lens flare from 2009′s Star Trek.

A lens flare moment from Star Trek Into Darkness.

The lens flare is Abrams’ signature cinematic touch – the thing that lets you know it is an Abrams film.  In explaining his usage of lens flare in Star Trek, Abrams argued (as quoted by io9.com) “I love the idea that the future was so bright it couldn’t be contained in the frame.”  He has not backed down from this with Into Darkness, in fact doubling his efforts it would seem.  Like anything else, the hope is the eye will adjust to the effect.  However, through 3D glasses the lens flare often seems to jump out at you, jarring the viewer even during quiet conversation scenes.  Even without 3D, the lens flare undercuts several dramatic scenes, particularly during Alice Eve’s big dramatic speech in the film.  There she is, acting her heart out, and there’s a big blue line cutting across the bottom of the screen for no apparent reason.  You want to yell out to the non-existent projectionist, “Focus!” until you realize the projectionist is Abrams, and it looks exactly as he designed.

So, what is this film?  An enjoyable action film with slight pacing issues, overused lens flare, and a decent story which has a nice twist or two with perhaps slightly too much reliance upon nostalgia.  So, what isn’t this film?  It’s not particularly fun.  There is some humor, with your own personal comedic predilections dictating how much of its works and how much of it doesn’t.  However, the sense of discovery from Abrams’ initial Star Trek is mostly absent.  Others are now arguing (TIME) whether or not Into Darkness is simply too dark, another example of a franchise caught chasing Christopher Nolan’s cinematic coattails.

Of course, on the other end of the spectrum is something like Data (Brent Spiner) playing with a little kid in Star Trek: Insurrection which is the type of plot probably best left behind.

Again, there is the version of this movie that is an imperfect but completely enjoyable action film. Then there is the version of the film that fails to aspire to be anything more than that.  This speaks to audience expectations more than anything else.  For what the film actually is, it is worth seeing.  For what the film isn’t, though, well, there are ten prior movies and five different TV shows for that.

Four years ago, Abrams stepped in to save the Star Trek franchise from its creative doldrums, drawing a clear line in the sand between what came before and what he was going to do.  Franchise canon is simply an idea generator he goes to for potential stories.  He will do whatever he dang well pleases with it because this is his story now – not Gene Rodenberry’s.  Now, we finally have the sequel, and with him on his way out to take over the Star Wars series we should thank him for reviving the franchise.  However, the man who famously doesn’t really like Star Trek and loves Star Wars is probably headed where he belongs.  After Into Darkness, it seems likely long-time Trek fans may not miss him.  As for those whose introduction to the franchise has been through him, well, it’s not a guarantee he won’t somehow find time to direct a sequel.  And a thousand Trekkies just punched the air in frustration.

See It – Stream It – Skip It

See It (although the 3D is not necessary)

That’s Good: Fantastic performances from all involved, both new (Weller, Cumberbatch) and old (Quinto, Cho); truly impressive special effects; action set-pieces are mostly thrilling; composer Michael Giacchino’s musical score is not as memorable as those by prior Star Trek composers Jerry Goldsmith (The Motion Picture and various sequels) and James Horner (Wrath of Khan), but it is rather effective

That’s Bad: Derivative action set-pieces; obstructive use of lens flare undercuts key dramatic moments; mines the past for story ideas it fails to equal or improve upon; poor editing during some action scenes; does not aspire to be anything more than a simple blockbuster action film (only a bad thing if you expect more than that from Star Trek)

Can I Go Now?: Michael Giacchino has composed the score for all of Abrams films as well as his tv shows Felicity, Alias, and Lost.  However, he will not be composing Abrams’ Star Wars film.  Why?  Because John Williams wants to do it, and who says no to John Williams.  Also, where else have you heard Giacchino’s name?  When he won the Oscar for Best Original Score for ripping our hearts out with the wordless opening montage of Pixar’s Up.

What do you think?  Let us know in the comments.

Related articles

• Star Trek Into Darkness: Review (cinefantastiqueonline.com)
• Review: Star Trek Into Darkness (lebeauleblog.com)

Damnit Jim, you sunk my battleship!

Last year, at this time Universal’s Battleship, the film adaptation of the Hasbro board game, opened to a colossal thud with an opening weekend gross of $25.5 million for a film whose budget was reportedly north of $200 million.  Unwilling to acknowledge that perhaps making Battleship into a film, a rather poor one at that, was a painfully stupid idea, the film’s director Peter Berg consistently blamed Marvel’s The Avengers for sinking his film.  He argued (to MTV News) that having been released domestically three weeks after Marvel’s box office phenomenon the audience was too busy seeing The Avengers for the fifth time to give his movie a chance.

Yeah, Peter Berg. The Avengers is why your movie bombed so hard. Sidebar: Please don’t make Rihanna shoot me with that gun for mocking you.

Maybe J.J. Abrams should start preparing his argument against Iron Man 3 (and maybe also to a far lesser degree The Great Gatsby).  Abrams’ new Star Trek: Into Darkness, made on a budget of $190 million and released two weeks after Marvel’s latest box office phenomenon Iron Man 3, is by no means the colossal failure that was Battleship.  After all, it managed a weekend gross of $70.6 million with Iron Man 3 and Great Gatsby behind it with $35.2 million and $23.4 million respectively.  So, it, in fact, earned double the amount of the next closest film.  It’s when you compare it to the previous Star Trek (2009) film, though, that the Scooby-Doo ruh-roh moment comes in (all figures are domestic, unless otherwise indicated, and come from the fantastic box office news site boxofficemojo.com):

The Star Trek: Into Darkness numbers are these:

• Opening Weekend Gross: $70.6 million
• First Four-Day Gross (adding in Wednesday previews and Thursday): $84.1 million

As a point of comparison, the Star Trek numbers are these:

• Opening Weekend Gross: $75.2 million
• First Four-Day Gross: $86.7 million

So, Into Darkness failed to live up to Paramount’s lofty projection of an opening weekend gross of $100.  Check out our discussion of Paramount’s complicated relationship to Iron Man 3 for why the studio really needs Into Darkness to do well.  Worse than that, Into Darkness didn’t even equal the initial output of Star Trek, even if it only failed to do so by a couple million here or there.

Here’s the thing, though – it’s actually worse than that.  Remember, Star Trek came out in 2009, the same years as James Cameron’s 3D extravaganza Avatar.

Because of Avatar 3D film and IMAX theaters (and their related inflation of ticket prices) have exploded (although 3D ticket sales are now on the decline).

So, the box office figures above are actual numbers.  What happens if we adjust the figures for Into Darkness to reflect 2009 ticket prices thus negating the benefit its’ overall gross received from inflated 3D/IMAX prices?  Or forget about the money entirely and look at total number of tickets sold to see how many people actually saw the film?

The Adjusted Star Trek: Into Darkness numbers are these:

• Opening Weekend Gross in 2009 Numbers: $66.6 million (vs. $75.2 million for Star Trek)
• Opening Weekend # of Tickets Sold: 8.8 million (vs. 10.1 million tickets sold on Star Trek’s opening weekend)

So, now we know around how disappointed we should be with the box office – which is to say probably a bit more than we might have guessed when looking at the actual numbers.  The big question is why this happened.  There are various factors to consider.

Quality wise, Star Trek Into Darkness is scoring fairly similar reviews, not as good but not bad, to those of its predecessor.  Into Darkness currently has an 87% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 73 (out of 100) on Metacritic, whereas Star Trek’s sits at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes  and 83 (out of 100) on Metacritic score (in our review of the Into Darkness we argue it may not quite feel like the Star Trek of old, but the film is an undeniably engaging action film perfectly suitable for the summer movie blockbuster season).  Moreover, the word of mouth for Into Darkness looks to be strong as the exit-polling performed by industry standard-bearer CinemaScore indicates those who viewed the film opening night gave it, on an average, an A (on a A-F grade scale).

So, to those Trek fans that passionately dislike Abrams’ approach to the material and view the box office as validating their less than stellar opinion of the new movie I would say that the metrics we have to actually gauge how much the general audience actually likes the film does not bear out that argument.  There is much more of an argument to be had over whether or not Abrams and Paramount’s unrelenting decision to hide the real (rather marketable) identity of the villain in all promotional material was a real mistake.

The real box office culprits might simply have been time and competition.  For fans, the 4-year delay between films might have turned from “they are totally making a sequel” to “geeze, why aren’t they making a sequel?” to “seriously, what the hell!” to “holy crap, I only care about comic book movies now!”  Abrams and his screenwriters have indicated the delay was largely due to their need to wait and find the right story (SPOILER: A snarky Trek fan could argue all they really did was watch two of the Original Series cast films and combine them together and call it good.  It took fours years to come up with that?).  At one point, Into Darkness was scheduled for a June 2012 release before Paramount delayed it 11 months to give Abrams more time and capitalize upon perceived weak competition.  However, Iron Man 3 wasn’t supposed to do as good as it is nor was Great Gatsby, which was originally supposed to have been released this past Christmas.

Star Trek, on the other hand, had far smoother sailing on its opening weekend in which its’ only real competition was the mediocre (quality and box-office wise) X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was in its second week of release at the time.

First of all, why is Wolverine the only one allowed to look ahead? What is it on the ground the others are so intensely staring at? Also, all we need to know about this film is that the upcoming Wolverine pretends this one does not exist.

While Into Darkness failed to equal or best the domestic take of Star Trek’s opening weekend, it is outperforming it in worldwide box office.  According to boxofficemojo.com:

“On average, Into Darkness tripled the last movie’s debut across its 34 new [foreign] markets. Still, including last weekend’s territories its only trending up 80 percent over its predecessor, which earned a terrible $128 million in 2009. To date, Into Darkness has grossed $80.5 million overseas.”

And, on the plus side, even after adjusting for ticket price inflation Into Darkness’ domestic gross after four days of release is still nearly $30 million more than Star Trek: Nemesis made in 13 weeks of release ($84.1 million vs $58.4 million).  This is by no means a bomb.  This is the harder to talk about category of not a hit, not a bomb but  instead a slightly under-performing sequel.  Plus, it is at least outpacing 2009′s Star Trek worldwide, which is an arena not always kind to Star Trek films in the past.  It’s just not doing as well domestically as some would have hoped, and by some I mean everyone at Paramount.

What say you?  Let us know in the comments.

Related articles

• Star Trek Into Darkness Fails To Impress At Box Office (contactmusic.com)

Klingons, a tribble, the worst kept secret of the summer, and Alice Eve in her underwear for no real reason.  There is all of that and more in J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness.  I reviewed it and deemed it a perfectly enjoyable summer movie blockbuster.  However, the internet appears to be rounding up its cyber mob to shame Abrams into submission.  Has Abrams delivered us yet another Star Trek film destined to entertain the masses while angering the trekkers?  If so, do we care?

We saw Star Trek Into Darkness together and recently found the time to sit down to debate all of the above questions and venture off into multiple other directions as part of We Minored in Film’s semi-regular feature called We Debate:

 *SET YOUR PHASERS TO SPOILERS.  TRANSLATION=BELOW THIS POINT BE LOTS OF SPOILERS.*

Before we begin proper, we must give this movie the appropriate William Shatner salute. Altogether now, raise your chin to the sky and shout with your mighty lungs (and those of you at home can feel free to join in): “KHAAAAAN!”

Kelly: That’s going to make more sense in a couple of minutes.  Actually, if that didn’t make sense to you already have you even seen Star Trek Into Darkness or Wrath of Khan.  If not, why on Earth are you reading this?

Julianne: Shame on you, reader!

Kelly: Let’s start by establishing our level of Trek fandom as that seems to have quite a huge influence on how people are reacting to this film.

For some of us, it is difficult to acknowledge how many people have only come to know Star Trek because of the 2009 film directed by Abrams.

Julianne: J.J. Abrams original Star Trek in 2009 kick-started my fandom.  I did not grow up with Star Trek beyond seeing Wrath of Khan when I was a kid.  However, in the 4 years since Abrams’ first Star Trek I have seen every episode of The Original Series, Next Generation, and Enterprise and every single film.  My only blind spots are Deep Space Nine and Voyager, although with the latter I have seen all of the Doctor’s best episodes.  I have now been to a Star Trek convention, and may or may not own a tribble.

Kelly: I grew up on the Original Series cast films and The Next Generation.   I have seen every film, and almost every episode of every TV show (with my favorite show being Deep Space Nine).  I prefer Picard to Kirk, but I got rather verklempt in 1994 when Kirk died in Generations.  So, I have far more mileage on this than you, but I am something closer to a casual fan as I have never felt the urge to go to a convention or dress up in costume (it’s cool if you do; just not my thing).

Julianne: It would seem as if the only place to start is with addressing the Benedict Cumberbatch-shaped elephant in the room.  The secret they really sucked at hiding is now out – he’s not a Klingon.  He’s not Gary Mitchell.  He’s not even John Harrison.  He’s here, he’s out, he’s proud, he’s Khan.

Kelly: There’s two things here – there’s the part where we talk about whether or not we liked Khan in the film and the part where we talk about whether or not they should have done something new or different.

Julianne: I have no problem with Khan being in the movie.  I think Benedict Cumberbatch is perfectly good in the movie.  He is nowhere near as campy as Ricardo Montalban.  He is a far icier and calculating villain with a seriously physically intimidating presence.  Maybe it’s because I am new to the fandom, but I don’t have a problem with them using such an iconic villain and tweaking the story as they saw fit.  After all, if Shakespeare can be adjusted to a contemporary audience, so can Star Trek.

Kelly: Not to go all Jeff Goldblum on you, but just because they can doesn’t mean they should.  Why do Wrath of Khan if you can’t improve upon it and have years and years of other canonical material from which to choose?  As for Cumberbatch, I am in the very small minority of people who did not 100% love Benedict Cumberbatch in this movie.

Are we allowed to even suggest that Cumberbatch may not have been 100% brilliant in this film? The answer is apparently no.

Julianne: And just as Jon Stewart demanded an apology from JJ Abrams for admitting on The Daily Show to his not caring for Star Trek, I feel as if I should now demand an apology from you.

Kelly: You’ll get nothing from me!

Julianne: How dare you quote Richard Benjamin from Love at First Bite at me to get out of this one!

Kelly: You caught on to that, did you?  I didn’t dislike Cumberbatch.  However, there were times where I found myself actively fighting the instinct to find fault in his performance, and the only reason I was resisting was because I so love him on Sherlock.  At times, I thought some of his lines were so over-pronounced as to sound unintentionally comedic.

Juliannne: You bite your tongue.  I thought Cumberbatch was flawless.  I don’t think that everyone who is embracing him is doing so just out blind, slavish, Cumberbitchian loyalty to Sherlock.  Also, you really want to talk about potential hammy acting for the guy playing the role originated by Ricardo Montalban?

Kelly: Well, you see…that’s where this all falls apart on me.  I was intentionally avoiding comparing him to Montalban because as recent re-viewing of Wrath of Khan revealed his is a far more over-the-top performance than I ever realized.

Julianne: There is not a piece of scenery that does not have his teeth in it.  Oh, were the prop men mad. That being said, I think Wrath of Khan is still the best of the Star Trek films.  However, to say Montalban is not campy is kidding yourself.

Let not the poofy-necked coats sway you – these two versions of Khan are surprisingly dissimilar.

Kelly: I, in no way, dispute anything you have said.  I simply dared and instantly regretted to find even the slightest fault in Cumberbatch’s work as Khan.  However, I would argue it’s not actually fair to compare Cumberbatch to Montalban from Wrath of Khan.  Abrams and his screenwriters re-used Wrath of Khan’s evil villain hell bent upon revenge motif for 2009’s Star Trek with the villain played by Eric Bana.  What we have with Into Darkness is new.  This is different than even the  Khan’s from the Star Trek original series episode “Space Seed.” This is not the “from hell’s heart I stab at thee” version of Khan we popularly think of.

Julianne: I agree.

Kelly: Instead, they make Khan sympathetic and try to trick us into believing for a while that the main villain is actually Robocop himself Peter Weller as Admiral Marcus.  So, they gave us something a bit different until they got to the end and decided to lift a whole scene from Wrath of Khan, just with the Spoke-Kirk roles reversed.  If you have no connection to Wrath of Khan, this sequence of the film with Kirk dying from radiation poisoning while Spock watches from the other side of protective glass is probably fairly effective, even if Quinto’s screaming of “Khaaaan!’ is a bit wobbly.  However, because I’ve been living with that scene from Wrath of Khan for my entire life I couldn’t help but be taken out of the story.

Julianne: I understand the idea of it pulling you out of the story.  I didn’t necessarily have a problem with it, because I thought it worked so well in the film. For me, it was an incredibly effective scene– one of my favorites in the movie. Zachary Quinto is the perfect Spock, and he’s brilliant here, absolutely brilliant.

Kelly: Oh yeah, I agree. He’s great. What definitely worked well in the film, for the most part, was the obvious effort to give every significant member of the Enterprise crew something to do dramatically.  The original series and their films pretty much cared about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy and anything beyond those three was an afterthought.  However, here McCoy ultimately gets downgraded a bit in exchange for the crew members like Sulu and Chekov getting screen time.

I mean, seriously, how can you not like Simon Pegg?

Julianne: Initially when it seemed like Scotty was going to be gone for the bulk of the film, I was about to mutiny., attacking the screen in a blind rage.

Kelly: Of course, it’s a big misdirection because, although Scotty is not on the Enterprise for most of the film, he ends up being one of the film’s main sources of humor and ultimately helps save the day.  Plus, his mute R2D2-like alien friend was back, which I loved.

Julianne: I think you have to work hard to not find Simon Pegg funny.

Kelly: Speaking of funny, was I the only one who thought that perhaps Sulu was going to go mad with power during his brief stretch as acting captain of the Enterprise when Kirk and Spock were off to the Klingon planet.  I half-expected Kirk to find Sulu had begun executing crew members who refused to acknowledge him as captain.

Julianne: As soon as the credits started rolling, he killed Kirk right then and there.

Kelly: Yeah, that “captain has a nice ring to it” line was a far deadlier foreshadowing than we would have predicted.  Speaking of which, the death of Kirk aka “He’s dead?  No worries. We have a tribble for that.”  Did you in any way for one second think he was dead for good?

Julianne: Oh, no. However, I think that’s a pretty common reaction when watching a main character of any kind being killed off in a film or tv show.  I would argue that even Wrath of Khan ends with a pretty obvious guarantee that Spock is coming back.

Kelly: That begs the question, though, of why kill Kirk in the first place.  There’s no real suspense.  They were just doing it to complete an emotional arc for Spock as well as re-create an inverted Wrath of Khan ending.  However, ultimately it is an action which has no consequences.  For Spock to come back in the original films, we first had to wait the requisite length between sequels and then an entire film – a very long and unfortunate film –

Julianne: So, you prefer this approach, because your tone would indicate otherwise.

Kelly: It’s not that I necessarily wanted to see Star Trek The Search for Kirk.  It’s more that Into Darkness does the Wrath of Khan thing without any apparent consequences.  Khan survives.  Kirk dies.  Comes back.  Magic blood.

There’s something awfully familiar about this.

Julianne: As opposed to revival by magic planet in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock?

Kelly: But at least there for Spock to come back another character ultimately ended up dying.  Granted, I in no way mourned for Kirk’s son and his not-quite-William-Katt hair.

Julianne: His death really seemed like an act of mercy for the audience.

Kelly: However, at least there was some sort of consequence there.  It’s not that the death scene between Kirk and Spock is done poorly.  It’s just that why go there if you’re not going to completely commit to it.

Julianne: I would argue the main reason is going there it gives Zachary Quinto something interesting to do.  It drives home the nature of their relationship.  Kirk’s death is almost the MaGuffin for Spock to reveal his human side. For me, that’s what really makes it work. An angy, emotional Spock is the best kind of Spock.

Kelly: I say this as someone who very much so appreciated Quinto’s acting during Kirk’s death scene, but is it bit odd that when Spock lost his entire planet and mother in 2009’s Star Trek he became emotionally compromised and lost his temper  only after Kirk’s prodding, but here he completely loses it right away?

Julianne: I would actually argue “no”, and here’s why: Vulcan sucks and he was creeped out by his mother’s old age make-up.

Don’t cry for me, Spock…well, you could have cried for me a little bit.

In all seriousness, I would actually argue that most of that first film is setting up the idea he’s emotionally compromised and desperate not to show it, because his father’s there. However, from pretty much the moment he was emotionally compromised in Star Trek to the moment Kirk dies he has been suppressing his emotions, as he admits to Uhura and Kirk before they meet the Klingons.  So, in a way Kirk’s death is the thing that finally pushes him over the edge, the provrebial straw if you will.

Kelly: I did enjoy his fight with Khan after Kirk’s “death,” and was particularly delighted when his much vaunted move – the universally renowned Vulcan death grip – was but a mere annoyance to Khan.  Spock’s “I may not have thought this through” reaction was priceless.

Julianne: I imagine he must have thought, “Vulcan never told me that wouldn’t work.  Curse you, Vulcan!  You, too, New Vulcan, and your cryptic other Spock. You’re better off gone, after all.”

Kelly: Now, let’s talk about the true secret they actually managed to keep – they rolled Leonord Nimoy out of whatever hyperbolic chamber Walter Bishop put him in to show up for a cameo as the Spock from the original timeline.  His scene was rather funny, with his “now, you know I can’t talk about this, but that Khan is just no good and never will be.” Which then segues into, ”RUN! Get out now. Why are you all still standing there?”  Although, I thought it might have somewhat undercut the action a little to have an old guard from the original films pop up to remind Quinto’s Spock and the audience to not trust Khan.  Maybe old Spock would have had an opinion on the new look for the Klingons.

Julianne:  Trekkers would say they were wasted in this film.  I would say their helmets make them look like Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and that I was fine with them being there for only the briefest of scenes, but I speak as someone who has never particularly cared for the Klingons..

Kelly: They do feel underused here.  They show up, their leader takes off his shiny helmet, he makes the not so nice-nice with Uhura, and then he , his men, and 3 or 4 ships get completely and utterly decimated by the one-man army that is Khan..

Julianne: Doesn’t that build up Khan, though?  That’s kind of the point of that entire sequence – a race of warriors with the odds stacked against them, and Khan laughs at them as he crushes them beneath his boot.

Kelly: That’s absolutely the point.  It’s just for those who don’t know the Klingons and are being introduced to them for the first time they must seem like real push-overs.  The bigger problem is that the film is consistently building to a Starfleet-Klingon war, and seems set-up nicely for an ending which will hint at that in a sequel.  Instead, that is a thread left dangling for whoever takes over the franchise from J. J. Abrams.

We will be defeated rather easily, but we will take our humiliation with honor.

Julianne: Maybe they can join up with that primitive group from the beginning of the film who end up worshiping the Enterprise like it’s a god.

Kelly: Before Abrams, that primitive group would get an entire episode full of prime directive speeches.

Julianne: I don’t miss those.

Kelly: They  do tend to run a bit tiresome.

Julianne: We still get those, but they are now interrupted by screams of “Ah!” and running, and flying spears ,and volcanoes, and basically a lot of background distractions.

Kelly: They can still philosophize, just in-between panting for air.

Julianne: Philosophy.  You hear that a lot from classic Trek fans.  To me, there are two things Trek fans who don’t like Abrams’ approach to the material argue: that Abrams actively rejects Gene Rodenberry’s rose-colored view of a utopian future celebrating human harmony, and that Abrams fails to offer any real subtext or commentary on contemporary society.

To that, I ask if these are bad things.  Abrams’s view of the Star Trek world is a definitely more cynical in the same way that Doctor Who is both the most optimistic and cynical show of all time.  Good wins, bad loses, faith in humanity remains, etc..  However, no matter what point you go to in human history  or where you travel in the universe, the same basic character flaws (greed and anger, dozens others) drive the characters and make the world go ’round.  Abrams operates in the same area with his films, which is a view to which I respond. I like a more cynical view of human interactions, be it past, present, or future.

Kelly: Abrams, even if he may not even know the name of the show or have ever seen a single episode, is doing the Deep Space Nine version of Star Trek.

Julianne: Which is the version which occurred after Gene was dead, dead, dead.  Those social commentary episodes Trekkers love to talk about– hippies are strange, Native American rights are good, racism is bad episodes–yeah, those are crap.

Kelly: It is the aspect of classic Trek which has possibly aged worse than the special effects and costumes.

Julianne: Let’s not forget Next Gen’s attempt to comment on gay rights.

Kelly: The idea, then, is that one version of Star Trek had something to say, whereas Abrams version does not.

Julianne: However, when it had something to say, frequently it embarrassed itself.

Kelly: There is an undeniably regrettable quaintness to some of Star Trek’s vaunted bravery.  However, I must admit that in some cases I find it admirable.  Yes, looking for God in Star Trek V did not work out well for anyone, but there is still an interesting idea about the intersection of science and religion.

Do we fans wear rose-colored (or in this case rainbow-colored) glasses which prevent us from seeing the truth about prior Star Trek films?

Julianne: What about saving the whales in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which I like, by the way?

Kelly:  The whale-sized maguffin.

Julianne: I always kind of wondered why the whales didn’t tell the aliens at the end, “They just brought us here.  We’ve been extinct for centuries.  Don’t buy their treachery, especially whatever the pointy-eared is selling.  He tried to swim with us, the bastard. Take them down.”  One could also wonder why the aliens didn’t ask, “Are there more than two of you?  What happens if one of you coughs on the other, because then we’re back to where we started?”

Kelly:  The point, however, is that I actually do somewhat admire the often failed attempts of the Star Trek films to provide some sort of commentary.  To be fair, Into Darkness is trying to make a commentary about a post 9/11 mentality in which the true enemy comes from within.  However, I think the film is too devoted to setting up action set pieces to delve into that.

Julianne: It’s most effective commentary is on that of the character of Captain Kirk.  He ignores and disregards rules, and is told by Admiral Pike that he is simply coasting on dumb luck and behaves as if he’s a god-like captain.  Then in the form of Admiral Marcus and Khan he is confronted by not one but two individuals who view themselves as either god-like or, at the very least, above the rules.  Both represent extremes of what he could become.  This is an interesting layer that Wrath of Khan doesn’t really have. This is a world in which the lesser of two evils must be chosen, and no answer seems right and noble. The Enterprise crew is a crew of noble ideals surrounded by  corrupt mercenaries.

Kelly: Hey, do we remember when Kirk was demoted at the beginning of this movie?  As in, losing the title of Captain and the Enterprise?  Because that really didn’t last very long.

Julianne: Yeah, but a lot goes down pretty quickly.  Plus, he’s the expendable pawn in Admiral Marcus’ plan.  So, it makes sense to give back the Enterprise to him if your ultimate plan is to erase any trail of Khan and the crew you like least.

Kelly: Speaking of Robo Admiral, he was kind of awesome in this movie.  Granted, it’s not really explained why his daughter has a British accent. However, do we really care when she’s in her underwear in a scene that even screenwriter Damn Lindelof admitted was completely gratuitous nudity.  To be fair, it is an incredibly brief scene.

So, Kirk peeks on her while she is changing clothes. Is it possible that Kirk has a long line of Starfleet HR complaints from female crew members who have also been “caught changing” by Kirk?

Julianne: People like to conveniently forget how incredibly sexualized women have been in the Star Trek universe.

Kelly: So, is this a good movie?

Julianne: It’s incredibly fun.  I enjoyed pretty much every frame of it, lens flares and all.  I don’t have a problem calling it good.  It’s a great action movie.  I think there is more to it than meets the eye.  It’ll definitely hold up more than last summer’s The Avengers, which I think if you go back and watch, really has a pretty dull beginning, a fantastic middle, and a blah finale with a cop-out ending.

Kelly: You’ll have to give me a moment.  I’m still adjusting my eyes to the memories of the lens flares, which are tolerable until you remember that by Abrams’ own admission they’re largely pointless.

Julianne: They make me think of old 70s sci-fi films.

Kelly: I wish I were similarly blessed because all it reminds me of is how pointless it is.  But I asked if this was a good movie for a reason.  Because this is undeniably a good action movie.  Is it a good Star Trek movie, though?  Well, to answer that you have to remember that not all Star Trek movies are actually good.

Julianne: Many of them are not.  Let’s be honest, the ones that are really, really good – that list just includes Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, Undiscovered Country, and First Contact, right? I think Into Darkness is a good Star Trek film. It’s just different from the Star Trek films of our youths.

Kelly: I would add in Generations, and Insurrection is not bad.

Julianne: And everyone involved with Insurrection thanks you for your unwarranted kindness to them just now.  On the other end, I think you have to actively work to dislike Into Darkness, and I know there are plenty of internet nit-pickers who live for that kind of thing.  To me, though, this film’s qualities are so unassailably strong that if you dislike it ,the fault lies mostly in you and not in the film.

Kelly: I didn’t dislike it, I didn’t love it.  I can objectively look at it and appreciate a well-made action film.  However, I was never quite engaged with it emotionally.  In fact, the emotions I felt during Kirk’s death scene had nothing to do with what was on-screen but of the memories it evoked of Spock’s death scene from Wrath of Khan, which is an unearned emotional response predicated upon mimicking that for which some are nostalgic.  However, some of the action is undeniably astounding, and I didn’t really have a bad time with it.  I just didn’t like it nearly as much as you.

What say all of you?  Disappointed in us for not mentioning the Deep Space Nine “Section 31″ reference, or our failure to discuss the action scenes in any detail whatsoever?  Fuming over our willingness to poke fun at the goofy Star Trek whale movie?  Or wondering why we had no real response to the film’s incorrect implication that the Klingon planet Kronos is just a hop and a skip away from Earth?  Or did you actually laugh at our jokes?  Let us know in the comments.

Related articles

• Review: Star Trek Into Darkness – Attempting to Appreciate The Darkness and Ignore the Star Trek (weminoredinfilm.com)
• STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS Spoiler Review! (badassdigest.com)
• J.J. Abrams Created an Alternate Scene to Preserve the Secret of ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ (slashfilm.com)
• Star Trek: Into Darkness (living24fps.wordpress.com)

Well, that got out of hand pretty fast.  Yesterday, Devin Faraci at BadAssDigest.com published a report claiming to have the inside scoop on who might script the next Star Trek movie (more on that in a minute).  In that same report, Faraci openly wondered why it was that he was still hearing rumors that J.J. Abrams was contemplating quitting his gig as director of Star Wars: Episode 7 due to production disputes with Disney.  Here it is:

“Speaking of losing jobs… why is it that I keep hearing tons of rumors that JJ Abrams is on the verge of dropping out of Star Wars? This has been something I’ve heard for a while now, and from multiple insiders. I know that he didn’t want to shoot the movie in England and was overruled, but that happened a while ago. This weekend at Comic Con I continued to hear these whispers. No director for Trek 3 has been found yet – might Abrams end up coming back after all, leaving Star Wars to someone else? I’m expecting Star Wars news out of the German Star Wars Celebration at the end of the month – if there is some sort of announcement of a title or casting and Abrams isn’t there, start wondering.”

Faraci is a 10 year veteran of web writing who has on occasion gotten the inside scoop on stories.  In this instance, he was not citing any specific source or claiming to break news.  Instead, it seemed more like a stream-of-consciousness musing.  Unfortunately, as far as the internet was concerned this amounted to yelling “Han shot first!” into a room full of Star Wars fans.  The story got picked up and spread as genuine news so fast that LucasFilm actually had to issue a statement, albeit a rather brief one (from DenofGeek.com):

“There is no truth to the rumour.  JJ is having a great time working on the script and is looking forward to going into production next year.”

They also followed up the statement with, “So cut it out you bunch of nerds or else we’ll stick Vader on you, and not that wimpy, Padme-loving Hayden Christensen version. We mean the real one…the good one!”

Yet there are still those who aren’t buying it.  Why?  Abrams admitted in an interview that he was not too keen on relocating his family (wife, 3 kids) to London, England for the planned 6 month shoot, but that was part of the deal before he took the gig.  Why?  LucasFilm’s new boss Kathleen Kennedy had already negotiated to at least partially film in London, the exact reason being tradition (all six prior films shot at least partially in the London) or budget (cheaper to film there than in California) or a combination of the two or an honest admission that we actually have no idea because they haven’t said.  It was reported last month that the exact location for Episode 7′s filming is to be Pinewood Shepperton Studios, beginning in early 2014.

However, way back in January The Hollywood Reporter indicated that Abrams actually initially turned down the job as director, with the mandated move to London being partially responsible.  He’s apparently barely ever had to film outside of Los Angeles let alone the entire state of California meaning his family, including teenage children, have never been uprooted before.  Directing Star Wars may be his lifelong dream come true, but it’s not his kids dream come true to leave all their friends behind for 6 months.  In that same THR story, it was revealed that Abrams initially only joined the project as a consultant.  They talked him to transitioning from that to being the director, but Kennedy acknowledged that due to the trepidation over the move as well as time commitments to Star Trek and various Bad Robot-produced TV projects it was still possible Abrams could revert back to simply being a consultant at some point.

Other than that, there is a “it’s been quiet…maybe a little too quiet” mindset taking shape.  When the film was announced, there was quite a bit of news coming out about cast (Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford back in reduced roles) and screenplay (being written by Toy Story 3 scribe Michael Arndt).  However, ever since Abrams was hired as director this past January there has been a Darth Vader-like death grip placed on news.

General-Audience: But, Lord Vader-Abrams, all I wanted to do was start a rumor about Jonathan Rhys Meyers being considered for a lead role in Star Wars 7.
Vader-Abrams: I find your lack of faith in my process disturbing!

This is in keeping with Abrams’ prior films, which he is notoriously secretive about (arguably to a fault, e.g., the decision to hide the obvious with Star Trek Into Darkness).  However, now that everybody has the thought of Abrams contemplating leaving in their head that secrecy suddenly looks more like a tell-tale sign of a troubled production.

Plus, there is the matter of Star Trek.  Into Darkness slightly under-performed at the box office this Summer, for reasons argued elsewhere on this site, but it ended up with a combined worldwide gross of $448.6 million on a budget of $190 million which meets the “did it double its production budget? If yes, it made a profit” rule of success.  That should be enough to get a sequel made, and one of the film’s producers, Bryan Burk, told Digital Spy that Paramount would like to have a sequel out in time for the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series in 2016.  That would mean it would need to go into production in 2015, which is exactly the time that Star Wars: Episode 7 is supposed to come out.  New Spock, Zachary Quinto, made splashes last week when he proclaimed the new Star Trek would go into production next year with Abrams back as director.  That seemed to align with earlier interviews from cast and crew indicating Abrams’s involvement with Star Wars did not necessarily mean he was out as director for a third Star Trek film.  However, the timeline was way off, and the story quickly refuted by Into Darkness co-writer/producer Robert Orci.  

I do believe that Abrams goes home everyday, walks in the door and drops to his knees to dramatically yell “They’re tearing me apart!” Marlon Brando style.

Abrams doing both a new Star Wars and Star Trek next year will not happen, even if he pulls a Spielberg (who directed E.T. at the same time he Executive Produced/un-officially directed Poltergeist).  If he finishes Star Wars 7 on schedule, Abrams could maybe do a new Star Trek in 2015 for a 2016 release.  However, that would likely overlap with the post-production of Episode 7 and definitely the promotion of it.  Moreover, both Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy have indicated they would absolutely push Episode 7 back if the story wasn’t ready in time meaning we should not be viewing its Summer 2015 window as a Doctor Who-like fixed point in time which cannot be changed.

The most likely option is that LucasFilms should be believed – Abrams is committed to doing the best Star Wars 7 possible (or simply can’t resist the opportunity to blind the world with endless lens flares keyed off of bright lightsabers).  If Paramount wants a new Star Trek soon they will probably move on from Abrams, whose production company, Bad Robot, will still be involved though.  It’s possible they could promote someone from within the Bad Robot ranks to be the new director.  Speaking of which, the part of Faraci’s report receiving less attention is the news that the third Star Trek film will likely have new screenwriters.  Into Darkness screenwriters Robert Orci and and Alex Kurtzman are reportedly returning as producers, but Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz will take over as writers.  Who are they?  They are the credited writers of the first Thor movie and X-Men: First Class, and have worked with Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzman in the past as writer/producers on Fringe.

With all of this speculation there is one definite answer to a question posed by most cynics, “Is there any chance, regardless of director drama, that they just choose to abandon this whole proposed new trilogy and finally let Star Wars and, by extension my childhood, die?”  The answer to that is a resounding no.  Episode 7 is still happening; Disney paid George Lucas way too much for LucasFilms for it not to happen.  Whether or not it should is, well, an entirely different issue.

Sometimes, you just can’t keep a dead TV show down because eventually it’ll just seem easier and more agreeable to a network executive’s ear to simply revive an old TV show instead of make a new one.  For example, ever since Lost ended (and even before it) networks have been chasing that Lost viewership with high-concept shows which tank horribly.  Wouldn’t they love if it they could just revive Lost?  Well, that’s not happening anytime soon.  However, the CW is currently enjoying surprising success with its revived version of Who’s Line Is It, Anyway?, and the AMC’s revived murder-mystery-drama-everyone-loves-to-hate The Killing just finished its third season.

But what does it mean for a show to be revived?  Let’s go with the definition offered up over at tvtropes.org:

The Revival differs from other forms of remake and adaptation in that it remains (more or less) in continuity with its predecessor. The show may differ in some substantial ways, particularly with regards to casting, but it is nonetheless a continuation of the original series, rather than a second attempt at visiting the same material.  Revived show exists within the same continuity of its predecessor thus inviting potentially unwanted negative comparisons to what came before.

So, in practice we’re talking about Star Trek and Doctor Who, not Family Guy or Futurama (which were canceled and uncanceled, coming back as basically the same show) and not Battlestar Galactica (which is a re-make/re-imagination, not a revival).

The following is a list of 5 revivals we liked, and 10 we barely even knew about until now.  For each category, they are listed in reverse chronological order (most recent to oldest).  Only scripted shows, live-action or animation, were considered for this list.

5 TV Revivals We Liked

1) Arrested Development (Revived in 2013)

• Original Run: 3 seasons, 53 episodes on Fox (2003-2006)
• Revived Run: 1 season, 15 episodes on Netflix (2013)

From the time Arrested Development was canceled to the time that it was revived by Netflix, the internet was mostly comprised of porn and Arrested Development fans creating funny .gifs and convincing arguments for why the show should come back.  Ever since the show came back, the universal love and adulation for its original 3 seasons has turned into an internet still comprised of porn and people talking about Arrested Development except now those fans are debating if the new, revived Netflix season has ruined the show by being, at best, just okay and not brilliant.

Part of the deal to bring it back was that the actors were all too busy to work as a full-time ensemble cast at the same time anymore, but they could work on it part time.  So, creator Mitchell Hurwitz created a season story structure dictated by the actor’s availability resulting in a series of episodes focused primarily upon each individual characters journey from 2006 to the present.  The brilliance of the season is that given its circumstances it actually works at all and makes sense, but also how much it rewards repeat viewing, i.e., the entire season is like the sitcom version of Rashomon with a series of events depicted from differing viewpoints.  Some of the GOB (Will Arnett), Buster (Tony Hale), and George Michael (Michael Cera) episodes are arguably among the best the show has ever done.

2) Teen Titans (Revived as Teen Titans Go! in 2013)

• Original Run: 5 seasons, 65 episodes on Cartoon Network (2003-2006)
• Revived Run: 1 season, 26 episodes on Cartoon Network; already renewed for a 2nd season (2013)

For 5 seasons, the D.C. comic book heroes Cyborg, Raven, Robin, Starfire, and Beast Boy battled supervillains (e.g., Deathstroke), saved the world, and eased American audiences into accepting Japanese anime-influenced animation in their superhero shows on Teen Titans.  They looked like this:

Then they came back in 2012 and looked like this and were suddenly incredibly immature and far more child-like:

What the smurf!  For one thing, Raven (the one with blue hood) no longer appears to have legs (they’re still there – we just don’t see them).  What the hell happened?  Well, the show was initially revived as a series of animated shorts (less than 1 minute long) called the New Teen Titans, and aired in 2012 during commercial breaks for Cartoon Network’s other D.C. comic book-based shows Green Lantern and Young Justice.  The original show had its definite comic moments, but was just as often deadly serious, with the heroes facing supervillains weekly.  The new show recognizes that all happened in the past, but is now more interested in Adult Swim-style absurdist humor focused upon the mundane realities of the 5 heroes co-habitating together, such as settling who does laundry that week.  In this version, which has now morphed into a full-on series called Teen Titans Go! with 11-minute episodes, characters are likely to die one week and return the next with no explanation.  It’s unceasingly bright color palette and almost obnoxiously comedic tone has been off-putting for long-time fans of the original Teen Titans.  However, the uniquely quirky humor is oddly rewarding when you stick with it.  You might even find yourself involuntarily mimicking Robin’s infectiously exaggerated call to arms, “Teen Titans…Go!”

3) Upstairs, Downstairs (Revived in 2010)

• Original Run: 5 seasons, 68 episodes on ITV (1971-1975)
• Revived Run: 2 seasons, 9 episodes on BBC1 (2010-2012)

A show centered upon an early 20th century British estate with storylines split between the poor servants and the impossibly rich masters?  Well, that’s like catnip to American anglophiles (as well as to actual British audiences), as illustrated by the inescapable cultural force that is the unabashedly soapy Downton Abbey.  However, Downton didn’t just emerge from a creative vacuum.  In fact, it actually owes a great debt to various prior British TV shows, most specifically the 1970s series Upstairs, Downstairs which detailed the lives of the rich masters (who lived upstairs) of 165 Eaton Place and their poor servants (who lived downstairs) from the years 1901 to 1930.  Show co-creator Jean Marsh also performed on the show as Rose Buck, one of the leading poor servant characters.  When it was revived in for 3 special episodes in 2010 (the same year Downton premiered), Jean Marsh returned as Rose Buck with the storyline centered on the new owners of 165 Eaton Place six years after the events of the original series.  Marsh only appeared in cameos during the second (and now last) season, and the show suffered due to her absence.  However, while never quite equaling the soapy glory of Downton, this new Upstairs was arguably better than critics and audiences gave it credit.

4) Doctor Who (Revived in 2005)

• Original Run:  26 seasons, 694 episodes on BBC (1963-1989)
• Revived Run:  7 seasons,104 episodes on BBC1 (2005-present)

The brilliance of the 2005 revival of Doctor Who is just how much it both honors the continuity established in the preceding 26 years of television (and 1 horrible, horrible TV movie) while remaining utterly and totally accessible to new audiences.  In fact, even though the first Doctor of the modern era, Christopher Eccleston, was the 9th person to play the role for many fans he is still the first Doctor they ever saw and/or the furthest back in the show’s history they’ve gone.  When classic-era companion Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen) showed up in the second season, it was a treat for long-time fans, but for modern fans it simply served a thematic purpose of establishing that the Doctor has traveled with many people in the past, not always ending on the best terms, thus foreshadowing his forthcoming separation from modern companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) at season’s end.   Plus, it hooked both old and new viewers by creating a new backstory in which during the gap between the 1996 TV movie and the 2005 revival the Doctor had engaged in some kind of mysterious war between his arch enemy, the Daleks, and his people, the Time Lords.  The results of the war traumatized him, and created a mystery for both old and new alike: what the hell happened, exactly, during that war?  That is a question so primed for drama the show is still answering it to this day in its forthcoming 50th anniversary special later this year.

5) Star Trek (Revived as Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987)

• Original Run: 3 seasons, 80 episodes on NBC (1966-1969)
• Revived Run:  7 seasons, 178 episodes in Syndication (1987-1994) plus 3 spin-offs which ran a combined 446 episodes

Star Trek fans can debate all they want about which was the better series or the better captain (usually a Kirk vs. Picard kind of deal), but none of it would have been possible without the success of the revived version of the show in 1987: Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Then again, The Next Generation followed 4 feature-length films which starred the original cast meaning it had way more going for it than most TV show revivals thus explaining partially how it became arguably the most successful revival in TV show history.  It did not actually start out well.  The revived version of the show was set over 80 years in the future from the original show, and starred an entirely new cast with only rare appearances from classic cast members like DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, or Leonard Nemoy.  The name of the ship, U.S.S. Enterprise, was the same, but it was a later model.  Creator Gene Roddenberry had become so obsessed with utopian ideals since the time of the original show he would not allow the basic building blocks of quality drama on the revival, fighting any story impulse to introduce friction or conflict between crew members.  The conflict was to come from their interactions with outside entities…and boy did it suck.  Then the Borg happened, the strict utopian rules were relaxed allowing for better storytelling, and the popularity shot through the roof, leading to 3 films centered on The Next Generation crew and 3 spin-off shows which combined to produce over 400 episodes of television.

10 TV Revivals We Didn’t Even Know About

1) Get Smart (Revived in 1995)

• Original Run:  5 seasons, 138 episodes on NBC (1965-1969) and CBS (1969-1970)
• Revived Run: 1 season, 7 episodes on Fox (1995)

Get Smart just keeps coming back…for some reason.  The original show was a fun spoof of spy genre conventions, sort of a Austin Powers before Austin Powers was a thing, created by Mel Brooks and starring the venerable Don Adams as the buffoonish lead character Maxwell Smart.  NBC canceled it after 4 seasons, but CBS uncanceled it that same year to play for a fifth (and last) season.  Then there was the follow-up film The Nude Bomb in 1980, and made-for-TV movie Get Smart, Again! in 1989, both of which starred Adams as Smart.  Based upon the success of the Get Smart, Again! TV movie, Fox commissioned 7 episodes of a revived series focusing on Smart as the boss to his similarly hopeless spy son played by Andy Dick.  It came and went very fast, most likely providing Dick with a salary he wasted almost entirely on cocaine as he would do on his next project, Newsradio.  They at least knew the revived Get Smart wasn’t going to last, ending the 7th episode with the implication that Maxwell Smart has accidentally set-off an atomic bomb which will explode and kill everyone in the cast (plus countless millions in the vicinity).  This is a rather grisly demised ignored when Warner Bros. attempted to turn the Get Smart property into a film franchise centered around Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart in 2008.

2) Burke’s Law (Revived in 1994)

• Original Run: 3 seasons, 81 episodes on ABC (1963-1965)
• Revived Run: 2 seasons, 27 episodes on CBS (1994-1995)

What if Donald Trump was also the captain of his own division of the police force?  Well, that was kind of the original Burke’s Law from the early 1960s.  Gene Berry starred as Amos Burke, who was a millionaire chauffeured around in his gorgeous Rolls-Royce.  Oh, yeah, he also solved crimes because in addition to being a millionaire he was also the chief of the homicide division of the Los Angeles police department.  In the final season, the whole police department angle was dropped as Burke suddenly became a secret agent (the show was even re-titled Amos Burke, Secret Agent), but he still drove his Rolls-Royce around.  Really, that car was the main character.  Uber-TV-producer Aaron Spelling revived the show, using the old Burke’s Law title, in 1994, completely and utterly dropping the secret agent angle.  This time around around, Burke (Berry reprised the role) was a detective solving crimes with his son (Peter Barton).  It was apparently even campier than the original, and mostly existed to feature cameos from other old 1960s TV show stars.

3) WKRP in Cincinnati (Revived as The New WKRP in Cincinnati in 1991)

• Original Run: 4 seasons, 90 episodes on CBS (1978-1982)
• Revived Run: 2 seasons, 47 episodes in Syndication (1991-1993)

WKRP in Cincinnati was a workplace comedy set at a struggling Ohio radio station staffed by appropriately eccentric personalities.  However, it’s mostly known as the show in which Howard Hesseman’s hippy, burnt-out DJ Dr. Johnny Fever ranted about social issues or appeared stoned while introducing rock songs, and the remarkably chesty Loni Anderson would try her best to look dignified in an endless supply of remarkably tight sweaters.  When it was revived in 1991, three of the original cast members returned (Less Nessman, Herb Tarlek, Arthur Carlson) while Hesseman and Anderson guest starred in a couple of episodes.  The rest of the cast was filled out with newbies like pre-Forrest Gump Mykelti Williamson and pre-crazy-town-bonkers Tawny Kitaen.  It actually managed to perform well for 2 seasons in syndication, but obviously not well enough.

4) The Monkees (Revived as The New Monkees in 1987)

• Original Run: 2 seasons, 58 episodes on NBC (1966-1968)
• Revived Run: 1 season, 13 episodes in Syndication (1987)

What the deuce!  The original Monkees were, of course, the manufactured, TV version of The Beatles, and eventually they began to believe they were a real band and a crap-ton of drama went down.  Well, much as N*Sync was just another manufactured boy band from the same guy who made The Backstreet Boys, there was an attempt in the mid-1980s on the part of the one of the original Monkees producers to replicated the Monkees success with a new band, album, and TV show.  An album of synthy rock was recorded, and the syndicated show revolved around the New Monkees exploring their ginormous mansion.  No, seriously, that was pretty much the show.  Before sitcom-length versions of Spinal Tap trying to find their way from backstage to the actual stage enter your head, I should clarify that the mansion was so huge their kitchen was an actual functioning diner with waitress.  So, there’s that.  The original Monkees, who had nothing to do with the new show/band, sued and settled out of court.  The New Monkeys album bombed, and the show shut down production after only 13 of the original intended 26 episodes had been filmed.  Everyone now seems to pretend this is something that never happened.  Technically, this sounds more like a remake than a revival, but tvtropes considers it a revival.

5) Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Revived as The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1985)

• Original Run: 10 seasons, 361 episodes on CBS (1955-1960; 1962-1964) and NBC (1960-1962; 1964-1965)
• Revived Run: 4 seasons, 76 episodes on NBC (1985-1986) and USA (1987-1989)

It would not have been an incorrect response to watch The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the late 1980s and wonder, “Wait, isn’t Alfred Hitchcock dead?”   He, in fact, died in 1980.  However, NBC revived his classic anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents for a TV movie.  The original show famously featured a title card involving Hitchock, a silhouette of Hitchock’s form in profile, and the music from “Funeral March for a Marionette.”  The rotund director would introduce each episode as well as provide a closing thought, much as Rod Serling would do just a couple of years down the road on The Twilight Zone.  The revived TV movie re-used a script from the original show, and colorized archival footage of Hitchock’s opening introduction.  It was so popular they turned it into a revived version of the show for an entire season, and then USA produced it for 3 additional seasons.  To be clear, the actual episodes were new, sometimes recreating or tweaking scripts from the original show and other times using entirely original storylines.  The introductions, though, were just colorized versions of something a then recently-dead man had done 20-30 years prior.  One could argue this sounds more like a remake than a revival, but anthology shows don’t really have established continuities to honor outside of who hosts.  By maintaining Hitchock as the host, it qualifies as a revival.

6) Leave it to Beaver (Revived as The New Leave it to Beaver in 1985)

• Original Run: 6 seasons, 234 episodes on CBS & ABC (1957-1963)
• Revived Run: 4 seasons, 105 episodes on Disney Channel & TBS (1984-1989)

After you’ve spent 234 episodes with a TV family, you can’t help but be curious as to what happens to them later in life.  So, June, Wally, and Theodore “The Beaver” Cleaver all returned to the airwaves in the 1983 CBS TV movie Still the Beaver in which we learned that Ward Cleaver had died in 1997 thus widowing wife June and the titular “Beaver” was now a divorced father of two forced to move back in with his mom.  Plus, Wally was doing well for himself, married with a daughter, but he still only lived next door to his mom.  It was all kind of depressing, especially for a sitcom, but audiences ate it up.  Plus, this coincided with the cable TV boom of the 1980s meaning there were suddenly new networks desperate for new material with already built-in audiences.  CBS stopped at the TV movie, but the Disney Channel swooped in to turn it into a new series called The New Leave it to Beaver.  When Disney dropped it TBS picked it up, with the show running for a total of 4 seasons between the two networks.  However, unlike the original show The New Leave it to Beaver has largely been forgotten even though it ran for over 100 episodes.  Why? Complicated business matters have kept it out of syndication since the early 1990s and prevented it from ever being released on DVD.

7) What’s Happening! (Revived as What’s Happening Now! in 1985)

• Original Run: 3 season, 65 episodes on ABC (1976-1979)
• Revived Run: 3 seasons, 66 episodes in Syndication (1985-1988)

For audiences who ever wondered what had become of Rerun (Fred Berry) and the gang from What’s Happening!, the 1980s gave the answer with the perfectly titled What’s Happening Now!  The answer was that Rerun, Dwayne (Haywood Nelson), and Raj (Ernest Thomas) were still cracking wise while now struggling even more to make ends meet.   Of course, as he had done during the original show Fred Berry accurately deduced that he was the main attraction and demanded more money.  So, they fired his ass after the first season, ultimately attempting to replace him with a couple of new characters in the third season, one of whom was played by a young Martin Lawrence.  Subsequently, the two shows were typically sold in one piece in syndication meaning those who only viewed the What’s Happening! gang via syndicated re-runs throughout the 1990s may not have realized there were technically two different shows separated by 6 years.

8) Maverick (Revived as Bret Maverick in 1981)

• Original Run: 5 seasons, 124 episodes on ABC (1957-1962)
• Revived Run: 1 season, 18 episodes on NBC (1981-1982)

James Garner quit the role of Bret Maverick, a traveling gambler always on the lookout for a good con in the American Old West, in 1960 after 3 seasons.  ABC managed to crank out 2 more seasons centered around various cousins of Bret’s, most famously Roger Moore is Beau Maverick (before he also quit the show).  Garner later returned to TV in the 1970s on The Rockford Files, which Maverick creator Roy Huggins specifically created for Garner to play a modern, non-Western version of Bret Maverick as a private investigator.  Heck, they even re-used entire scripts from Maverick, just updating them.  While The Rockford Files was still on the air, enjoying great success, Garner appeared in the TV movie Maverick in 1978, which introduced yet another younger cousin of Maverick’s who was meant to anchor his own TV show.  The resulting show, Young Maverick, bombed in just 8 episodes in 1979.  After The Rockford Files ended in 1980, Garner jumped straight to Bret Maverick, which saw his famous character settled down in Arizona as a ranch owner and part-owner of a saloon.  The show performed reasonably well, but by having Maverick settle down the adventurous nature of the original show had been sacrificed.  It just wasn’t as much fun.  So, NBC canceled it after 1 season.  Garner did return one more time, though, in the 1994 movie starring Mel Gibson.

9) One Step Beyond (Revived as The Next Step Beyond in 1978)

• Original Run: 3 seasons, 97 episodes on ABC (1959-1961)
• Revived Run: 1 season, 12 episodes on NBC (1978)

Twilight Zone and Outer Limits.  Those are the biggies when it comes to supernatural anthology shows, and both have been revived multiple times.  However, they weren’t the only anthology shows of their era.  The same year that The Twilight Zone premiered was also the premiere year for One Step Beyond, which was like a darker version of Twilight Zone that still ended up looking like a cheap knock-off.  The spooky host was there, this time John Newland, but he was a poor, poor substitute for the generally badass, fun-to-imitate Rod Serling.  The plots were centered on paranormal activity, but lacked most of the social commentary of Twilight and its big twist conclusions were often laughable by comparisons.  However, if the Twilight Zone weren’t around doing the same thing so much better One Step Beyond would probably be looked upon a lot more charitably.  Newland returned to host a revived version on NBC in 1978, but it failed to make it past 1 season and is a largely forgotten spec in TV history.

10) The Avengers (Revived as The New Avengers in 1976)

• Original Run: 6 seasons, 161 episodes on ITV (1961-1969)
• Revived Run: 2 seasons, 26 episodes on ITV (1976-1977)

Due to the awful film adaptation starring Uma Thurman/Ralph Reinnes and the obvious name confusion between it and a certain billion-dollar Marvel franchise, it’s a bit difficult to gauge the legacy of The Avengers, i.e., whether or not it is fondly regarded in retrospect.  However, it’s far easier to deduce how much the revived version from 1976-1977 is best left forgotten.  The original Avengers starred Patrick Macnee as John Sneed, a crime-fighting spy who started out as an assistant before becoming lead star in the second season and working alongside a rotating supply of attractive female assistants (starting to sound like Doctor Who).  Sneed returned for the revival, joined by two new partners played by Gareth Hunt and Joanna Lumley.  The original The Avengers had become so parodic and insane it lost all connection to reality by the end (in a good way).  The revival attempted to play things a bit more serious, a decision which did not win them many new fans but angered many of the old.  The revival even had to seek out funds from Canadian backers to finish out its 26 episode order.

Other recent TV show revivals include Dallas, 90210, and Melrose Place.

This is a follow-up article to a prior list detailing 30 shows which were canceled and then uncanceled.  You can view that list here.

What do you think?  Any TV show revivals you liked that are not listed here?  Let us know in the comments.

Twenty years ago this past January, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered to the confusion of most Star Trek fans.  There was no multi-year mission to explore space and encounter new civilizations nor was there a ship decorated with a disturbing love of earth tones. Instead, there was a formerly Cardassian space station occupied by a Federation commander (Avery Brooks as Commander Sisko) who didn’t want to be there, and staffed by a combination of Federation misfits and Bajoran natives who didn’t want the Federation there (in other word, it was all an allegory for the Bosnian War, with the Federation = U.N., Bajorans = Bosnians).  This sure as hell didn’t feel like like The Next Generation.

What developed over the ensuing 7 seasons and 176 episodes was an increasingly complex and captivating exploration of the Star Trek universe, finally  freed from Gene Roddenberry’s overly idealistic shackles.  In fact, DS9′s multi-faceted exploration of terrorism makes it appear all the more topical in a post-9/11 world.  To me, it is the height of accomplishment among all Star Trek shows.

There are flaws, of course.  The writers reverted to “magic wand” solutions to conflicts one too many times (a problem which followed DS9 writer/producer Ronald D. Moore to Battlestar Galactica), and Avery Brooks’ at times overly theatrical performance and bizarre line readings derails many a fine episode. Granted, Stark Trek‘s very foundation is built upon bizarre-but-endearing acting (looking at you William “Captain Kirk” Shatner), but in Brooks’ case he quite frequently came off as what medical experts might call “bat shit insane” or, if w’ere nicer, just embarrassingly over-the-top.

Sisko and his crazy eyes

However, it is the most rewarding of all Star Trek viewing experiences, and also the most addictive with its heavily serialized storytelling.   It is also the Star Trek show for which I have the hardest time selecting 10 best episodes, partially due to the heavy serialization and also just because I love so many of them.  So, let’s just say here are 10 amazing episodes of Deep Space Nine, and if you ask me again tomorrow I could probably name at least 5 more others worthy of inclusion in a Top 10:

(SPOILERS EXIST BELOW. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL.)

10) “The Quickening” (Season 4, Episode 23)

A.K.A.: The one where Dr. Bashir and Jadzia Dax encounter a people stricken with a genetically engineered disease known as the Blight.   Bashir attempts to discover a cure, staying behind by himself to do so when Dax has to leave.

• Dr. Bashir: “There is no cure, but I was so arrogant I thought I could find it in a week!”
• Dax: “Maybe you were arrogant, but it’s even more arrogant to think there is no cure just because you couldn’t find it.”

The plot has a couple of nice twists and an interesting reflection on the medical ethics surrounding euthanasia, but it mostly appears to be your basic Star Trek “delivering new technology/modern medicine/enlightenment to a disadvantaged people reluctance to accept aid” story.  However, this episode, as was DS9‘s way, refuses to wrap everything up in a tidy bow, instead delivering a righteously bitter ending and fascinating character exploration of Dr. Bashir and his arrogance.  The actions of the episode utterly humble him, forcing him to realize how cruel it is to deliver false hope to a people long since accustomed to a hopeless existence.  Ellen Wheeler’s performance as Ekoria, the native person who refuses to give up hope even after Bashir has, is deserving of considerable praise.

Check out a Trailer Below:

9) “The Sound of Her Voice” (Season 6, Episode 25)

A.K.A.: The one where the crew interacts remotely with an unseen Captain whose escape pod has crashed on a remote planet following the destruction of her ship.  They plot her rescue while becoming increasingly attached to her as she offers each of them helpful advice.  Plus, there is a fantastically enjoyable B-plot involving Quark attempting to manipulate Odo’s new romance with Kira for his financial gain, and any episode containing a Quark/Odo plot is worth your time.

Thankfully, DS9 never had a counselor around to offer gems like, “I sense great anger in you,” until its final season, and even then they avoided Deana Troi-level uselessness.  However, in “Sound of Her Voice” from near the end of the sixth season we see just how much the crew could benefit from having someone to talk to.  By that point, they were living in war day to day, normalizing the constant loss of friend and co-worker for how else do you cope?  When they find themselves forced to consistently communicate with an insightful woman on a distant planet until they can rescue her, it not only allows the characters to open up in a way they otherwise couldn’t (similar to how the songs in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Once More with Feeling” function) it also provides them with something around which they can rally.  The ending is devastating, but it feels earned.

Check out a Trailer Below:

8) “Nor the Battle to the Strong” (Season 5, Episode 4)

A.K.A.: The one where Jake Sisko discovers the thin line between courage and cowardice when he accompanies Dr. Bashir behind battle lines to offer medical aid to a Federation outpost under siege by the Klingons.

For whatever reason, Stark Trek tends to just assume its characters are courageous and heroic.  The fact that a character might simply run headlong away from danger never seems like a possibility.  What “Nor the Battle to the Strong” does brilliantly is make no assumptions of heroism, and give us a hero who is a coward.  The focus is on Jake, Captain Sisko’s son and aspiring writer.  He is not a soldier nor is he even a member of Starfleet; by his chosen profession, he is an outsider.  When thrust into his first real combat experience he folds, consistently doing whatever it takes to stay alive with no thought to the well-being of others (even Dr. Bashir).  Through his ability as a writer, he is able to articulate the truth of his actions, as everyone had been so eager to assume he had performed in a manner befitting the son of a Starfleet captain.  However, we might identify more with Jake’s need for self-preservation than Captain Sisko’s badass heroism than we care to admit.

Check out a Trailer Below:

7) “Visitor” (Season 4, Episode 3)

A.K.A.: Jake Sisko copes with the grief of losing his father by devoting most of the remainder of his life to discovering a way to bring him back.

For a show which was so concerned with the on-going conflicts between warring factions, DS9 often dealt with themes of loss and grief.  There is perhaps no finer example of this type of episode than “Visitor.”  In real life, when a loved one dies we might spend the rest of our days wondering if we made them proud, or if there was anything more we could have done.  Now, imagine if that person you lost was caught in a weird sci-fi time loop where they show up wherever you are every couple of years but only stay for a minute or less before jumping ahead in time again.  That…would be torture, and that’s exactly what happens to Jake Sisko, played in young age as usual by Cirroc Lofton and in the older age scenes by Tony Todd (yep, Candyman’s Tony Todd).  Sisko’s continual pleading with his son throughout the years to move on with his life is particularly devastating since we know how impossible a request it is.  The concluding scene has moved many to tears.

Check out the Final Scene Below:

6) “It’s Only a Paper Moon” (Season 7, Episode 10) 

A.K.A.: They one where they did The Best Years of Our Lives with Nog (Aron Eisenberg) and the self-aware holographic lounge singer Vic Fontaine after Nog lost his leg in battle in a prior episode. Think of its as Deep Space Nine: Post Traumatic-Stress Disorder but with a lounge singer.

Remember when Picard was made a Borg on The Next Generation, killed a bunch of people (including Sisko’s wife, as it turns out), was rescued and made human again, and then the next week he went home to his brother’s wine vineyard to have a good cry about it?  Well, the “good cry” part of that equation is what “It’s Only a Paper Moon” is for Nog.  He returns to the crew with a new bionic leg, but a psychosomatic need to walk with a cane and desire to avoid all contact with anyone.   What follows is a character study of post-traumatic stress disorder dropped into the middle of the show’s final and most war-heavy season.  There are no larger plots being advanced.  Nope, it’s just them pausing to reflect on the mental toil incurred by one of its most endearing characters.  The notion of a Star Trek character becoming addicted to the fantasy world of the holosuite had been done before on Next Generation, but having it be a wounded soldier attempting to overcome PTSD and depression made it far more profound.  Roddenberry’s vision for futuristic medicine was such that all maladies could be solved, but “Paper Moon” reminds the Star Trek universe that not even advanced science has an instant cure for well-earned emotional trauma.

Check out a Trailer Below:

5) “Things Past” (Season 5, Episode 8) 

A.K.A.? The one where Odo, Garak, Sisko, and Dax appear to somehow quantum leap back in time and into the bodies of four rebellious Bajorans on Deep Space Nine when it was occupied by the Cardassians.  We learn that Odo, assumed to be the ultimate outsider above it all, has blood on his hands just like everyone else.

Deep Space Nine was always known to have been occupied by the Cardassians with enslaved Bajorans toiling away in work camps prior to Bajoran rebellions and the Federation’s intervention.   This meant that for several of the characters (like Odo and Kira) their home, Deep Space Nine, had once been their prison.  This is an area so ripe for dramatic potential the show’s writers threw out multiple flashback (or interactive flashback) episodes.  Among these, “Things Past” just happens to be my favorite.  These episodes tended to function to reveal how new information concerning Kira and/or Odo from their past would inform their present.  In “Things Past,” we are walked through an interesting mystery, and get to see the show’s primary sets redressed to indicate what hell the place used to be for the Bajorans.  The episode’s recurring bit involving Odo’s literal blood-covered hands is regrettably heavy-handed, but  this is a fantastic showcase for Renee Auberjonois’ acting as Odo. The final scene between Odo and Nana Visitor’s Kira?  Gut-wrenching.

Check out a Trailer Below:

4) “Rocks and Shoals” (Season 6, Episode 2)

A.K.A.: The one where we feel sympathy for our enemies, the Jem’Hadar, and Kira and Odo are cruelly reminded of how easily you can empower injustice by taking the path of least resistance.

DS9′s sixth season opens with a six-episode arc so stellar I wish I could just include it all on here as one single episode, but “Rocks and Shoals” from that arc might be the best.  During this portion of the show, Sisko is plotting to re-take Deep Space Nine after the Federation was forced to abandon it to the Cardassians and Dominion in the season five finale.  However, the Bajorans had to remain behind, officially taking no side in the war as per Sisko’s wishes.  In “Rocks and Shoals,” Sisko and crew get stranded on a planet also featuring stranded Dominion members (a single vorta and his cadre of Jem’Hadar soldiers, whose behavior-controlling nutritional supplement is running out).  On Deep Space Nine, Kira and Odo realize just how gradually they’ve become accomplices to the Dominion attrocities by doing nothing to stop them because that was the most convenient option.  By the end, you come to better understand the Jem’Hadar and admire their nobility while pitying their geneticially engineered inability to question the way things are.

Check out a Trailer Below:

3) “In the Pale Moonlight” (Season 6, Episode 19)

A.K.A.: The one where Captain Sisko seeks the Cardassian spy Garak’s help in recruiting the Romulans to the Federation’s side in the war against the Dominion.

This one might has well bear the subtitle “moral grey area.”  By the end of the episode which Sisko himself is narrating, he has lied, cheated, and even become an accessory to multiple murders.  He has sacrificed his principles for a greater cause, but successfully turned the tide of war in his side’s favor.  However, the show neither villifies nor vindicates Sisko for his actions.  He ends by proclaiming how he thinks he can still live with himself after everything he’s done, and the audience is left to judge whether or not they feel the same.  Be warned, though, as a Sisko-heavy episode that means there are plenty of over-the-top moments for Brooks, and there is one one deeply, deeply unfortunate and very unintentionally funny reading of the line, “It’s a faaaaake!” from a Romulan.

Check out a Trailer Below:

2) “In Purgatory’s Shadow”/”By Inferno’s Light” (Season 5, Episodes 14/15)

A.K.A.: The one where Worf and Garak are imprisoned by the Dominion only to discover that Klingon General Martok and Dr. Bashir are also prisoners, meaning the Bashir we had seen for the prior 4 weeks was a changeling impostor.

Ah, Garak.  He was the show’s man of mystery, a Cardassian spy not allowed to return home for unknown reasons and thus stranded on Deep Space Nine to work as a tailor.  Andrew Robinson’s masterful acting turned him into the show’s secret MVP, and this two-parter from the fifth season starts with Garak attempting to flee the station to respond to a coded distress signal.  What follows is a series of huge revelations of just how many people had been imprisoned by the Dominion and replaced with impostors, including our very own Dr. Bashir (which is a cooler twist the less you think about it).  Unlike some other episodes on this list, there are not necessarily any great universal themes being explored in interesting new ways here.  Instead, there is a healthy dose of political intrigue, a thrilling prison escape, equipped with Garak having to hide in the crawl space of a wall despite his claustraphobia, and generally well-done epic action scenes. Sometimes, DS9 could just be a thrill-ride of surprising plot twists and well-executed character revelations, and “In Purgatory’s Shadow”/”By Inferno’s Light” features them doing that at their best.

Check out a trailer below:

1) “Trials and Tribble-ations” (Season 5, Episode 6)

Which one is it? The one where the DS9 crew is spliced into the classic Original Series episode “The Trouble with Tribbles” in a time-travel plot that sees the crew charged with stopping a Tribble-shaped bomb from going off.

For the 30th anniversary of Star Trek in 1996, both DS9 and Voyager did homage episodes, with the latter involving a guest turn from George Takei as Captain Sulu.  However, DS9 pulled off Star Trek fantasy camp by using Forrest Gump/Back to the Future 2-style trickery to have its characters interact with Original Series characters.  Honestly, this isn’t really the best DS9 episode, but for any Star Trek fan it is undoubtedly the most essential.  Come on –  you get to see the DS9 cast wear the old 1960s uniforms, walk through recreations of the old sets, and even appear as if they are interacting with Original Series-era Kirk.  Nerdgasm achieved.  In fact, this episode adds an extra layer of tension to the “The Trouble With Tribbles” from the Original Series, whose ending can now be viewed while knowing just how dang close Kirk came to getting blown up by a Tribble.

Check out a DVD Extra Featuring the Cast Discussing the Episode:

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is available to stream through Netflix, Amazon (free to Prime members), and Hulu.

Those Are Mine, Here Are Some Others:

• Star Trek 103: The Best of Deep Space Nine (the m0vieblog.com)
• Top 10 Greatest Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Episodes (toplessrobots.com)
• Top 10 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Episodes (denofgeek.com)
• The Best DS9 Episodes You’ve Overlooked (st-minutia.com)
• My Top 10 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Episodes (hugocalvin.com)
• My Top 10 Favorite Episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (cityoffilms.com)

Check Out Our Other Top 10 Lists for Stark Trek TV Shows:

• Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series
• Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation
  
• Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: Voyager

So, what do you think, guys? Are you a fan of our picks, or are there other episodes you think should have made the cut? Let us know in the comments!

Star Trek: Voyager premiered on the now-defunct UPN 18 years ago this past January.  It was a show of several firsts for Star Trek, the first to feature a female captain (Kate Mulgrew’s Catherine Janeway) and the first to air on a major network (as opposed to in first-run syndication) since the Original Series in the 1960s.  Its premise was promising – drop a Federation ship on the other side of the galaxy, force them to integrate their crew with a faction of ex-Federation rebels, and watch the compromises they must make on their 75-year journey home in an uncharted area of space with no Federation back-up.  However, in the face of its own challenging premise it blinked, never fully committing to the potential for conflict or morally compromised characters and instead offering lots of fluff (why so many time travel and holodeck episodes?).  Perhaps as a result, most of the characters were painfully dull (the less said about Harry Kim the better).  So, those characters who were genuinely captivating – Robert Picardo’s Doctor, Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine, and, to a lesser extent, Ethan Phillips’ Neelix – got all the best storylines.

As such, one could arguably do a list of Top 10 episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and just populate it exclusively with Doctor/Seven of Nine-centric episodes.  However, that would do a disservice to an ensemble cast show which ran for 7 seasons and 172 episodes.  Regardless of who the story was about, Voyager quite often managed to deliver freakishly entertaining hours of television.  They had a real knack for two-parters, particularly season cliffhangers, and seemed on occasion to suddenly remember the promise of their own premise.  Plus, yes, the Doctor and Seven of Nine were awesome.  Here are 10 amazing episodes of Voyager:

(SPOILERS AHEAD, FUN A-HOY)

10) “Deadlock” (Season 2, Episode 21) 

A.K.A.: The one where a nebula accident creates two separate Voyager ships and crews which overlap one another with only enough antimatter fuel to support one ship and crew.

Every now and again, Voyager would just go all in on an episode, devising a conceit which allowed the writers to do whatever the hell they wanted because they knew it would all be re-set at the end.  Here, the notion of there being two separate Voyagers allows them to kill off major characters (bye-bye, Harry Kim) because they’ve got a spare (damn, Harry should have just stayed dead) as well as reach a conclusion in which the bad guys kind of win but only against one of the sets of heroes.  However, that they were able to do so, have a scene in which Janeway talks to another Janeway, and work in a killer surprise ending without seeming like a big ole mess is quite the impressive accomplishment.

Check out a Trailer Below:

9) “Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy” (Season 6, Episode 4)

A.K.A.: The one where the Doctor’s new habit of daydreaming is misinterpreted by a covertly observing alien race resulting in a potential skirmish that only can be solved by the Doctor behaving as he normally only does in fantasy, i.e., the hero of the day.

To some degree, this one is a bit derivative of an earlier episode involving Barclay on The Next Generation, but here the potential of the premise of others being clued in on a fellow character’s outsized fantasies is maximized to its immense comedic potential.   Seriously, how can you not love an episode of Voyager where the ending has the Doctor staring down a bad guy from the bridge of the ship while Janeway feeds him his lines Cyrano-style?  However, it must be pointed out that the potato head-shaped bad guys?  Totally ripped off from Doctor Who‘s Sontarans.

Check out a Trailer Below:

 8) “Latent Image” (Season 5, Episode 11)

A.K.A.: The one where the Doctor investigates why a portion of his memory has been blocked only to discover an ethical dilemma from this past.

Present from the pilot to the series finale, the Doctor evolved from a comedic presence with a knack for acerbic one-liners to a quintessential-Star Trek character striving to understand the nature of humanity and coping with/exceeding his own limitations.  ”Latent Image” is almost exclusively focused upon the Doctor overcoming the limitations of his programming, as he was never designed for the near-constant operation on Voyager.  So, when he suffers the equivalent of psychotic break the discussion emerges as to whether or not he even has the right to be granted the time to work it all out or if he still, at the end of the day, is just a computer program to be modified according to the needs of the actual living creatures on board.  The final scene involving the Doctor’s breakthrough is among Picardo’s finest acting on the show.

Check out a Trailer Below:

7) “Someone to Watch Over Me” (Season 5, Episode 22) 

A.K.A.: The one where the Doctor and Tom Paris do the Pygmalion/My Fair Lady/Pretty Woman/She’s All That thing with Seven of Nine, and the Doctor teaches her how to date while gradually and unwittngly falling in love with her.

The odd juxtaposition for a character whose costume meant to bring a video game or comic book heroine body-type to life is that Seven of Nine was just as chaste, if not more so, than everyone else.  Seven of Nine was assimilated into the Borg while still a 6-year-old girl and freed from the collective once an adult woman.  As such, she is basically constantly learning how to be an adult human (or, more accurately, refusing to learn).  ”Someone to Watch Over Me” is her first introduction to the process of human dating, and while the results are predictably funny (she practically breaks the arm of her date) the element of the Doctor falling in love with her is surprisingly sweet.  The B-plot involves Neelix acting as a diplomat to a visiting foreign minister played to great comedic effect as a bit of, well, a total dick by Kids in the Hall‘s Scott Thompson.

Check out a Trailer Below:

6) “Equinox Parts 1 & 2″ (Season 5, Episode 26; Season 6, Episode 1)

A.K.A.: The one where Voyager encounters another Federation starship who are also stranded in that region of space but have not held to Federation ideals the way Janeway and company have.

In science fiction, whenever you are the last of your kind or stranded on your own the sudden appearance of the too-good-to-be-true friend is usually never a good thing (see: the Time Lords on modern Doctor Who, the Founders to Odo on Deep Space Nine, the Reliant on Battlestar Galactica, or even the Kryptons in this summer’s Man of Steel).  Usually, this sudden mysterious other is simply used by writers as a dramatic foil to highlight just how easily our heroes could have become the bad guy.

Thus is the function of the crew of the USS Equinox to Voyager: the “there but for the grace of Captain Janeway go us” people.  However, it is an incredibly well done story featuring a surprisingly sinister turn from the Doctor, as the Equinox’s Doctor removes his ethical parameters and has him ruthlessly experiment on Seven of Nine.  In some way, this is Voyager’s answer to the Deep Space Nine episode “In the Pale Moonlight” in which the hero abandons once cherished principles for the greater good.  That one ends with the audience left to make their own judgement, but in the form of Janeway in “Equinox” the answer is clearly that once we abandon our ideals where do we stop?

Check out a Trailer Below:

5) “Blink of an Eye” (Season 6, Episode 12)

And, yes, that is Daniel Dae Kim from the new Hawaii Five-0

A.K.A.: The one where Voyager becomes trapped in orbit of a planet featuring a strange space-time differential whereby living beings on the planet live through years in what to Voyager passes as mere minutes.

Remember how cool it was in one of the classic The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episode when an entire civilization of microscopic people grow on Lisa’s discarded tooth and come to worship her as their god?  Well, the Twilight Zone had done the same story years earlier with “The Little Men,”and “Blink of an Eye” is Voyager‘s take on the tale just minus the whole one party being physically larger than the other element.  In fact, it is kind of your standard “starship inadvertently violates the Prime Directive; oops, our bad” Star Trek story.  However, it is immensely enjoyable, and even features an interesting discussion of religion versus science.  It speaks to a people’s drive for accomplishment often being dictated by having something to reach for, in this case literally – they want to get to Voyager which to them is the mysterious object they’ve observed from their planet’s surface since the beginning of time.  

Check out a Trailer Below:

4) “One” (Season 4, Episode 25)

A.K.A.: The one where the crew is placed in stasis for an extended period of time while the ship navigates through a toxic region of space, but Seven of Nine and the Doctor (and eventually just Seven of Nine) are left awake/running to keep the proverbial lights on until the crew can be awakened.

This is Seven of Nine’s great “be careful what you wish for” episode.  She would seemingly be more comfortable isolated by herself with minimal interactions with others, given an important but routine task upon which to focus her efforts.  However, what proceeds is her gradual mental deterioration and realization that she, in fact, may be just a wee bit traumatized from her whole “I’ve been part of the Borg collective since I was 6-years-old” thing.  Who would have guessed, right?  As with prior Star Trek episodes featuring a character who is far from a reliable narrator, there are some rather enjoyable fake-out moments here, and arguably Jeri Ryan’s most dynamic performance.

Check out a Trailer Below:

3) “Scorpion, Part 1 & 2″ (Season 3, Episode 26; Season 4, Episode 1)

A.K.A.: The one where the show re-sets itself by introducing the Borg and Seven of Nine, with Janeway forced to make a series of ethically dubious decisions.

For 3 seasons, there was always the question hanging over Voyager‘s head, “What the hell are they going to do once they reach Borg space?” They, after all, were in the Deltra Quadrant, the Next Generation-established home of the Borg.  However, the answer Voyager provided to the question was so surprising in its willing to morally compromise Captain Janeway.  As it turns out, the Borg is actually getting their shiny metal asses handed back to them by a new alien named Species 8472.  That’s funny – Voyager happens to have a way to beat them as well as a need to be able to pass through Borg space cleanly.  What to do, what to do.  In Janeway’s case, she makes a deal with the devil, i.e., the Borg, and runs like hell at the time of their inevitable betrayal.  In so doing, she violates Federation ideals and sentences 8472 to death.  To make herself feel better about that, though, she rescues Seven of Nine from the collective, who really, really, really did not want nor ask for her help.  But, hey, that’s just the kind of gal Janeway is.

Check out the Final Scene Below:

2) “Hope and Fear” (Season 4, Episodes 26)

A.K.A.: The one where the latest person with a too-good-to-be-true promises of a quicker way back to Earth is really plotting to exact a Borg-related revenge.

There are those Star Trek fans with the right amount of vast legal knowledge and free time to compose a legal case both for and against court marashalling Captain Janeway for her violation of Federation law while in the Deltra Quadrant. However, that is a judgement which would await her on Earth.  While still in the ass crack of the galaxy, she was usually heading one direction, leaving any of the consequences of her actions in the region behind her.  ”Hope and Fear” puts a face on the consequences in the form of Arturis, as played by Ray Wise (a.ka., the devil from Reaper).

He initially appears as just the latest in too good to be true plot devices which promise the crew a quicker return to Earth.  The big reveal is that Arturis holds Janeway directly responsible for the Borg having assimilated his people, since that would not have occurred had Janeway allowed species 8472 to defeat the Borg.  He functions to force Janeway to accept her responsibility in the scenario while also concluding Seven of Nine’s season long arc of finally coming to realize she does not actually want to be re-integrated with the Borg again.

Check out a Behind the Scenes Look at the Making of the Episode:

1) “Year of Hell, Part 1 & 2″ (Season 4, Episodes 8/9)

A.K.A.: The one where a time-manipulating warlord named Annorax uses his time-warping weapon to restore his people’s lost empire and resurrect his dead wife and Voyager gets caught in the cross-fire, victims to the whims of seemingly random time shifts during a year-long standoff that brings them to the brink of destruction.

It seems fitting that Voyager’s best episode would be the one that ultimately lacks the courage of its convictions by hitting the giant magic re-set button at the end to erase all of its events from history.  However, like “Deadlock” from before you know where it is heading because at a certain point so many people have died you remember that you’d never heard anything about the show killing off most of its cast halfway through its run.  The ride to the end, though, is positively thrilling with absolutely nothing held back.  We get to see what Janeway is like when all the chips are down, and she is an admirable, Benjamin Sisko-caliber badass as it turns out (which we already knew from “Deadlock,” but this is that times 10).  She has multiple fantastic character moments with Tuvok and Neelix, but even the villain, Annorax, gets some layers via ethical discussion-heavy interactions with Chakotay and Tom.

“One Year I’d Like to Forget”:

Honorable Mentions (The Ones Just Outside the Top 10):

• “Scientific Method” (Season 4, Episode 7) – Where a race of aliens are performing experiments upon the Voyager crew as if they were lab animals, but nobody knows it other than Seven of Nine and the Doctor.
• “30 Days” (Season 5, Episode 10) – Where Tom Paris writes a letter to his father explaining how he ended up being confined to the brig for 30 days and demoted all the way down to a mere cadet as the result of a series of increasingly bad choices.

Those Are Mine, Here Are Some Others:

• 10 Best Star Trek Voyager Episodes Ever (furiousrobots.com)
• The Top Ten Episodes of Star Trek: Voyager (wlswarts.blogspot.com)
• The Top Ten Star Trek: Voyager Episodes Everyone Should See (popsophia.blogspot.com)

Check Out Our Prior Top 10 Lists for Other Stark Trek TV Shows:

• Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series
• Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation
  
• Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

So, what do you think, guys? Are you a fan of our picks, or are there other episodes you think should have made the cut? Let us know in the comments!

It is a strange feeling to be a fan of a film or television franchise which appears to no longer care about you.  A lot of longtime Star Trek fans have felt this way about director J.J. Abram’s revival of the franchise, which began with 2009′s Star Trek and then continued with this year’s Star Trek Into Darkness.  As BBC Radio film critic Mark Kermode has argued, it’s like Abrams decided to eliminate the speechiness of Star Trek by having the characters engage in their ethical debates while running for their lives.  Abrams has been astonishingly honest about his lack of Star Trek fandom, and intention to approach the material as an outsider attempting to discover how to pull it from the clutches of the trekkies and deliver it an easier to swallow form for the masses.

It’s tough for some to admit, but there are plenty of Star Trek fans whose first Kirk and Spock were not played by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

 Financially speaking, the strategy paid off for him and Paramount Studios when 2009′s Star Trek ended up as the highest grossing domestic film in franchise history, even after adjusting for ticket price inflation.  It may have backfired this summer with Into Darkness, which did okay-but-not-great domestic business, finishing 2nd in franchise history behind the ’09 Star Trek and 4th behind Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home after inflation adjustments.  People (or at least their new 3D theaters) overseas seemed to love it though, making it the highest foreign grossing (and, as a result, highest worldwide grossing) film in franchise history.  It’s final total of $452 million worldwide on a $190 million budget is the kind of business which will likely mandate a sequel (with a rumored 2016 release window), even if in one half of the world the film is thought of as a failure.

However, Paramount may have a bigger problem on their hand with domestic fan disenchantment than they realize.  At last week’s big Star Trek Las Vegas convention, Jordan Huffman over at ScreenCrush.com moderated a panel in which the end target was for all fans in attendance to reach a consensus opinion on the rankings for each Star Trek film in terms of quality.  Which film ended up being voted as the worst Star Trek film of all time – this being a franchise which famously has arguably more poorer films than good ones?  Star Trek Into Darkness!

Here’s the full list: 

1. ‘Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’
2. ‘Star Trek: First Contact’
3. ‘Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country’
4. ‘Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home’
5. ‘Star Trek III: The Search For Spock’
6. ‘Star Trek’
7. ‘Galaxy Quest’ [as a Star Trek re-affirmation parody, it is thought of by some as an honorary Star Trek film]
8. ‘Star Trek: Generations’
9. ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’
10. ‘Star Trek: Nemesis’
11. ‘Star Trek: Insurrection’
12. ‘Star Trek: The Final Frontier’
13. ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’

Holy smurf!  These kind of things are obviously horribly subjective and fun to quibble over which film belongs where.  Personally, I would have The Search for Spock and Nemesis even lower and, as a result, Generations and Insurrection just a bit higher.  But what does it say to Paramount to see that a room packed full of North America’s biggest and most passionate Star Trek fans deemed Into Darkness the worst Star Trek film of all time?

Ask some of those fans how stoked they were when this shot popped up in the trailer of Into Darkness, and they might just lie and say they were never excited for Star Trek Abrams Part 2.

Of course, even though these lists are subjective I can objectively say that those fans are wrong.  There is no way Into Darkness should be thought of the worst Star Trek film ever put to (digital) celluloid when, at the very least, this is a franchise which has crapfests like The Final Frontier and Nemesis on its resume.  This is certainly damning with faint praise, but Into Darkness may be far too derivative of Wrath of Khan for its own good and overly reliant upon its non-stop action to distract from its nonsensical plot twists but it is not that bad.

Moreover, as much as this kind of thing can be quantified Into Darkness is among the best reviewed films in the franchise, its current 87% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes falling behind only Star Trek (95%), First Contact (92%), and Wrath of Khan (90%).

At 21% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Final Frontier is officially the worst reviewed film in franchise history. That actually seems about right.

As Abrams has received heaps and heaps of praise for his mainstreaming of Star Trek with trek-averse reviewers and filmgoers admiring his ability to make the once byzantine seem accessible there has been a growing chant of, “But what about us?” from those longtime fans who fail to connect with this new angle on the material.  Of course, some of those voting against Into Darkness could have also been people who only jumped on the Star Trek train after the ’09 film, and failed to connect with the obvious fan-bating homages to Wrath of Khan in the latest film.  Plus, there is an obvious response bias whereby whichever film is the most recent will illicit the most passionate response for feeling fresher in the minds thus drawing upon rawer emotions among those voting.  So, ultimately, this may be a non-story.

However, there is no arguing that Into Darkness underperformed at the box office in North America, with the explanations for why ranging from taking too long at 4 years to arrive since the last film and adopting a secretive marketing campaign that annoyed more than it enticed.  Is it possible that Paramount has also alienated some of its fans in North America who no longer feel engaged with by Abrams’ version of Star Trek?  If so, with Into Darkness turning Star Trek into a truly solid worldwide performer for the first time in its box office history do fans who’ve already given Paramount so much of their money not being happy really matter?

Recent rumors peg Into Darkness screenwriters Alexander Kurtzman and Roberto Orci as returning for the still-not-officially-announced sequel, and although Abrams will likely be too busy with Star Wars to direct his production company, Bad Robot, will still be involved.  So, those fans in Vegas are certainly a passionate lot, screaming, “Into Darkness sucked harder than anything Star Trek has ever done before!” at the top of their lungs.  However, all current indications are that, for Paramount, it’s going to be business as usual.

And, seriously, I wasn’t too crazy about Into Darkness, but it was not the worst Star Trek film ever.  Not even close.

In 2009, the Science Channel premiered the documentary Trek Nation from Eugene Roddenberry, the son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.  The two big bullet point takeaways from the film at the time of its premiere seemed to be how funny it was that Gene Roddenberry’s own son grew up disliking Star Trek, and how hero-crushing it was to discover that Roddenberry might have been a bit of an adulterous man-whore.  For anyone who didn’t get a chance to see it, though, it recently went up for Instant Streaming on Netflix.  It is the type of documentary where you’ll occasionally have to watch Eugene watching Star Trek while a voice-over from Eugene informs us how he only now realizes the greatness that is Star Trek.  However, there are some interesting tidbits revealed across Trek Nation‘s nearly 90 minute running length.

Here are 8 of them:

1. Gene Roddenberry Had an Interesting Life…Even Before Star Trek

Trek Nation doesn’t spend much if any time explaining where Gene Roddenberry got the idea for Star Trek or how long he’d been working in the television industry prior to that.  However, it does offer some interesting background biography for Roddenberry’s life prior to his work as a writer.  In 1941, he joined the Air Force to serve in World War II, and flew in 89 missions before the end of the war.  After that, he worked as a pilot for Pan American Airways, suffering a horrific crash in the Syrian desert in 1947, of which he was only 1 of 11 total survivors.  In 1949, he moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a police offer for 7 years, though his true passion was writing which he pursued on a freelance basis by submitting spec scripts to various police shows.  He most notably got a script accepted by the show Have Gun, Will Travel, and quit the police force to pursue writing and producing for television full time.

 2. Gene Roddenberry Was a Regular Don Draper — The Adulterous Husband Part

For all of its high-minded philosophizing, it is sometimes surprising to see just how much female skin was on dispaly in Star Trek: The Original Series.  One could assume it was just a by-product of being a show of its era, i.e., the sexual revolution.  However, maybe it also had a bit to do with Rodenberry’s clear love for the female form because it turns out that he was quite the womanizer.  He married Eileen-Anita Rexroat in 1942, but by the time Star Trek came around in the mid 1960s he had begun an affair with actress Majel Barrett.  In fact, he cast her in a prominent role in the original pilot, though backed down when the network demanded that such a prominent role not be given to a woman (or at least not to his girlfriend).  When Gene finally divorced his first wife in 1969 he and Majel married, after Star Trek had been canceled.

However, that wedding band on his finger was but a mere annoyance.  Family friend Christopher Knopf tells Eugene that Gene bragged about messing around on Majel within 7 days of marrying her.  Another family friend, Hilda Rolfe relates similar stories of Gene slipping away from parties he co-attended with Majel to boldly go to bed with a random girl he’d cornered outside of Majel’s view.  Majel apparently knew about it and the stories don’t seem to shock Eugene, though Trek Nation never has a moment in which Majel discusses the subject directly and openly.  Not mentioned in the documentary are the allegations that Roddenberry had an affair with Nichelle Nichols prior to casting her on Star Trek and well before his marriage to Majel in 1969.

3. Martin Luther King, Jr. Convinced Nichelle Nichols Not to Quit the Original Series

Just because Nichelle Nichols was an African American woman in a major role on television in 1966 when that kind of thing didn’t happen didn’t mean she was doing her dream job.  In fact, she informed Roddenberry she was going to quit after the first season to re-pursue her true love, i.e., musical theater.  Then she met Martin Luther King, Jr., who proclaimed himself a Star Trek fan and that it was one of the only shows he and his wife allowed their children to watch.  When Nichols told him she was quitting, he laid the smack down in the most bad-ass, eloquent, Martin Luther King, Jr. way possible, telling her, ”You can’t do that.  Don’t you understand that for the first time we are seen as we should be seen.  You don’t have a black role; you have an equal role.”  So, when MLK tells you not to quit you don’t quit.

4. Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana Was a Regular Peggy Olsen — The Trailblazing Female in a Male-Dominated World Part

Gene Roddenberry’s production secretary Dorothy Fontana was the first person to read his original 12-page treatment for Star Trek in 1964 because he thought so highly of her he valued her opinion.  By the time 1966 came around, she had briefly quit as his production secretary, insisting that she get a chance to actually write for the show even thought it was a time when not a lot of women wrote for television shows.  Roddenberry didn’t want to lose her, and apparently had no problem with using a female writer.  So, he gave her a script which was in need of a re-write, and that turned into the first season episode “This Side of Paradise,” which we have argued elsewhere is the 2nd best Original Series episode ever.  Fontana claims that if the Network or other writers were uncomfortable with her around as a female writer she never heard or felt it due to Roddenberry’s influence.  However, her credited name D.C. Fontana did seem designed to make it less obvious the episode had been written by a female.  Plus, the documentary fails to cover this, but she ended up a credited writer for 8 Original Series episodes, three of which were written under the male pseudonyms Michael Richards or J. Michael Bingham.

5. The Fans Organized a Letter-Writing Campaign to Save the Original Series from Being Canceled After the Second Season

This is a pretty well-known story but not often as told from the point of view of a fan who was an active participant.  NBC was going to cancel Star Trek after its second season, which came to the attention of superfan Bjo Trimble upon a visit to the set.  So, she organized a letter-writing campaign dubbed “Save Star Trek,” designed to inundate the network with so many letters of support for the show that they wouldn’t dare cancel it.  In her recollection of the events, the first group of letters they mailed was approximately 20,000 strong.  It worked – they renewed it for a third season.  Trimble’s effort earned her a role in fandom history as the mother of the “save our show” letter-writing campaign to networks, and the Star Trek people were so grateful they gave her an uncredited cameo in the background of a scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture over a decade later.  So, basically, you think you’re a fan?  Trimble is such a huge fan she has her own Wikipedia page.  Advantage?  Trimble.

6. Gene Roddenberry Was Present But Not Engaged with the Third Season of the Original Series

The show did get a third season, but it was moved to a 10 P.M. Friday night timeslot, i.e., a time and night most shows would fail in at the time.  Roddenberry viewed this as an obvious attempt on NBC’s part to placate the fans who wrote the letters (they were getting a third season) while completely killing the show (in addition to the horrible timeslot, the budgets were slashed by 10%).  So, Roddenberry all but quit what had been his baby, maintaining the title of Executive Producer while in reality the show was being handled by other people.  Eugene says Gene kept an office at the studio, would check in every now and then, but was the boss in title only.

7. The Writers of Next Generation Found it Almost Impossible to Work with Roddenberry

Next Generation/Deep Space Nine/Battlestar Galactica writer/producer Ronald D. Moore: “I think on some level Gene Roddenberry had been told so many times that he was a visionary of the future that he started to believe that and took on this mantle of, ‘I’m responsible to you the audience to project to you this vision of the future.”

Next Generation was envisioned as taking place in a Utopian 24th century future with no hunger, greed, need for possessions…and holy shit was it borrrrrrrring (at least at first).  Seriously, at times those early seasons of Next Generation are so boring they might as well be dubbed the Star Trek: C-Span years.  Roddenberry was adamant that there was to be no conflict between the core characters, with all conflict to originate from external sources.  So, those great arguments Spock and Kirk (or McCoy) used to have were off-limits on the new show, much to the serious chagrin to the new writers and Original Series holdovers like D.C. Fontana.   As a result, many of the writers (like Fontana) simply quit, thinking Roddenberry a man who had taken leave of his senses, completely forgetting the fundamental importance of conflict to drama.

When Roddenberry died in 1991 his successor, Executive Producer Rick Berman, initially attempted to ensure the show stayed true to Roddenberry’s vision of a conflict-free future.  Eventually, though, the writers forced Berman to cave in.  He symbolically placed a red blindfold over the eyes of a bust of Roddenberry’s face on his desk to indicate as much.  The same bust would probably have needed to also be gagged by the time the spin-off Deep Space Nine rolled out two years later.

8. Wesley Crushed Was Modeled After How Roddenberry Was as a Young Teenager

Wesley Crusher was the annoying Next Generation character who was far too often the solution to all storyline problems – no worries, genius boy Wesley is on the case!  As such, he was and arguably still remains the most hated of all Star Trek characters, even with his portrayer, Wil Wheaton, rising to geek fame over the past decade with work on The Guild, Eureka, and Big Bang Theory.  However, you know who really liked Wesley?  Gene Roddenberry, and one would hope so since he did create the character after all.  In fact, Wesley was apparently modeled after Roddenberry as a young kid.  

Trek Nation gets the general sense of Roddenberry correct – a deeply flawed man with an incredibly visionary approach to science fiction that endures to this day and has changed many lives for the btter.  However, there are plenty of details which go unmentioned, e.g., he has 2 daughters from his first marriage, wrote and produced the sexploitation film Pretty Maids All in a Row in 1971,  or underexplained, e.g., the Next Generation writers situation was so bad D.C. Fontana actually filed a Writers Guild grievance against Roddenberry.  Moreover, the feature length Star Trek films are barely mentioned, presumably because the focus is on Roddenberry and contrary to popular belief once you get beyond Star Trek: The Motion Picture Gene had nothing to do with any of the films other than getting an Executive Producer credit, percentage of profits, and ability to make script notes the real guys in charge mostly ignored.  Plus, there are always the rumors of his habitual drug usage throughout the 1980s.  Then again, if that was all true of my dad, and I was making a documentary about him I’d probably prefer not to go into too much detail about all of it, too.

Have you seen Trek Nation?  Like it?  Don’t like it?  Any other Roddenberry-related tidbits I missed?  Comments section…engage!

To make most Star Trek fans squirm you need only plaintively sing, in your best impression of latter-era Rod Stewart at his worst, “It’s been a looong roaaad [pause] getting from there to here.”  That, of course, is the opening line of “Where My Heart Will Take Me,” the Dianne Warren-penned tune that served as the theme song for Star Trek: Enterprise.  When the show was still on the air, fans hated the song with so much passion that they even started multiple petitions to get it off the show, presumably to be replaced by a more traditional Jerry Goldsmith-like orchestral score.  Beyond that, fans had other reasons to turn on Enterprise.  The premise (i.e., a prequel to the Original Series) seemed iffy, the cast charisma-free, and it had the misfortune to premiere mere weeks after 9/11, a time when a Star Trek Utopian future seemed offensively naive.  As such, when Enterprise ended its 97 episode run after 4 seasons it was regarded as a failure – the show that killed Star Trek.

Yes, the theme song was horrible, there wasn’t a whole lot of comedy to go around, Jolene Blalock was objectified even more than Jeri Ryan had been on Voyager, and it had a bad habit of simply re-purposing previous plots used on The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager.  However, Enterprise receives far more disrespect than it deserves.  When viewed now, it’s apparent just how much the show’s narrative experiments with serialized storytelling in its incredibly ambitious third and fourth seasons exceeds even that attempted by the more notoriously serialized Deep Space Nine. Plus, as the show progressed many of the characters grew into fascinating portraits of people in transition, particularly the central triumvirate of Captain Archer (Scott Bakula, who did eventually manage to stop merely playing it as Sam Beckett in space), T’Pol (Jolene Blalock), and Trip (Connor Trennier). 

Here 10 amazing episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise:

(SPOILERS AHEAD, FUN A-HOY)

10) “Damage” (Season 3, Episode 19)

A.K.A.: The one where Enterprise is badly damaged, needs a new warp coil to get to secret rendez-vous coordinates to help turn the tide in the Xindi war, and along comes the innocent, genial Illyrians and their warp coil, which they foolishly refuse to give over since they need it to get home.

Through years of Gene Roddenberry idealism shining through his characters, there is a certain set of expectations as to how Star Trek characters will behave in most scenarios.  That’s why it’s so interesting when that doesn’t happen.  In a different context, the plot of “Damages” (our heroes need something, an alien ship needs something, let’s compromise) would be pretty standard Star Trek.  However, this happens smack-dab in the middle of war, and the fate of Earth hangs in the balance.  So, much as he hates himself for doing it Archer just straight up steals the warp coil from the Illyrians even though he knows it means they won’t be able to return home for 3 years.  For Captains Kirk and Picard to go out into space and rather imperialistically tell other people and races how things should be Captain Archer had to do stuff like this and react to the way things were while pledging to someday make up for it.

Check out a Trailer Below:

9) “Twilight” (Season 3, Episode 8)

A.K.A.: The one where Archer gets Memento-style memory loss (i.e., he can’t form any long-term memories), and we jump a decade into the future to see what would happen during the war with the Xindi if the bad guys won.

Ah, yes, the giant magic re-set button ending Star Trek episode where we get a fascinating character study via a time-jump to an alternate future which will be erased when the episode ends by returning everything to its default setting.  However, “Twilight” uses this trope rather effectively, examining T’Pol and Archer’s relationship (loyal friends? more than that?) in a plot in which she feels obligated to him since he suffered a debilitating brain injury while saving her life.  Plus, we get to see just how important it is that the heroes defeat the Xindi because in this alternate future humanity has been reduced to a mere 6,000 colonists.  Bakula plays his memory loss moments exceptionally well, such as a meeting where he informs Trip and T’Pol of an idea he had for a ship improvement only to learn he had told them before and the improvement had already been implemented.

Check out the Final Scene Below:

8) “Home” (Season 4, Episode 3)

A.K.A.: The one where our heroes saved the Earth the prior season, and all they got for their efforts was sneering, dickish Vulcans, xenophobic humans who don’t like Phlox being on Earth, and an emotionally traumatized Captain Archer.

This is in some ways an anti-Star Trek episode – mass ignorance and misguided cultural tradition are not solved in a neat speech in the last act because the world is still evolving into the Roddenberry version of it.  Phlox realizes he is no longer welcome on Earth due to massive post-Xindi xenophobia, and T’Pol’s non-traditional (Vulcan/human) romance with Trip is completely destroyed by her mother on the planet Vulcan who forces her to complete an arranged marriage.  Elsewhere, we discover just how emotionally scarred and changed Archer is as a result of the escalating conflicts of the prior seasons.  He is a hero (dude saved everyone on Earth) who doesn’t feel like one.  Even if Archer’s storyline receives a slightly too nicely wrapped up conclusion (with a seriously out-of-character turn from a Vulcan) it is still an interesting post-war character study.

Check out a Trailer Below:

7) “Impulse” (Season 3, Episode 5) 

A.K.A.: The one where the crew encounters a stranded Vulcan ship full of zombie-like, rage-fueled Vulcans who have succumb to a mysterious ailment which begins affecting T’Pol.

Vulcan zombies!  What, you need more?

Okay, they’re not really zombies, but that’s basically how the infected Vulcans behave in this episode (though the fast-moving zombie, not slow and steady).  It makes for an incredibly thrilling episode with plenty of creepy -by Star Trek standards at least – imagery.  This is Enterprise‘s horror movie episode, right down to a double fake-out ending.  There is one slight catch: this is the same basic plot of the Deep Space Nine episode “Empok Nor”: away team boards a ship/station it believes to be unoccupied, discover they are wrong, and then the member of the away team who is the same race as their attackers becomes infected just as their attackers were and may or may not become a threat to our heroes.  However, when a rehash looks as good “Impulse” who are we to complain?

Check out a Trailer Below:

6) “The Forge”/”Awakening”/”Kir’Shara” (Season 4, Episodes 7-9)

A.K.A.: The one where the bombing of Earth’s embassy on Vulcan triggers an investigation by Archer and T’Pol who discover that, basically, Vulcans are some serious war-mongering a-holes.

Some will never forgive Enterprise for what it did to the Vulcans, i.e., depicting them as something less than paragons of virtue.  Among them, apparently, was the new show-runner for season 4 Mann Coto, who designed this three-parter as a way of re-establishing the Vulcans as not a race of bastards but instead a people who had temporarily departed from their ideals due to corruption by an outside force.  For those who were actually okay with how the Vulcans had been depicted, this bit of ret-conning might be a bit annoying.  However, the fourth season was about establishing and drawing the connections for how the Federation was finally founded, and for that to happen the Vulcans had to first get their house in order.  So, a previously antagonistic presence like Vulcan Ambassador Soval is made a hero here, as are many other Vulcans who begin noticing just how bad-shit crazy the story’s main villain, High Commander V’Las, appears to be.  However, its plot of terrorist bombings of embassies, and an oppressed faction of Vulcans on the run in the desert makes for a freakishly engaging three-part political thriller with a fantastic performance from Blalock.

Check Out a Trailer Below:

5) “The Expanse” (Season 2, Episode 26)

A.K.A.: The one where the second season concluded with the show evoking 9/11 by having an unknown enemy attack Earth out of nowhere, killing many (including Trip’s sister) and sending the ship on a, “This means war!” mission into dangerous space while they are unknowingly stalked by Klingons.

In Star Trek films, Earth can be placed in peril (Star Trek IV and Star Trek: First Contact), but in the TV shows that’s generally a no-no.  That’s what made it so stunning when Enterprise‘s second season finale began with a weaponized space probe entering Earth’s atmosphere and firing on North and South America before self-destructing.  This attack would be later explained and contextualized in the third season it helped set up, but “The Expanse” is largely about getting to watch our characters react to what they would think of as an unimaginable tragedy (this is basically their 9/11 episode).  It reveals fascinating new depths and demands upon loyalty (T’Pol resigns from the Vulcan High Command to join Enterprise full time). On top of that, there are some incredibly well-executed space battle scenes between the Enterprise and pursuing Klingon ships.  

Check Out a Trailer Below:

4) “Carbon Creek” (Season 2, Episode 2)

A.K.A.: The one where T’Pol tells the story about the time her great-grandmother spent some time with two other Vulcans (all three of whom concealed the pointy portions of their ears to appear human) in small-town Pennyslvania in 1957 after their ship crashed and they awaited rescue.

To break from the doldrums of space exploration (seriously, it gets boring) and switch things up, Enterprise had not the holodeck nor Q to lean on.  Instead, they used time travel and flashbacks, at their best at that with “Carbon Creek.”  Its set-up is astonishingly simple:  over dinner, T’Pol tells Trip and Archer a story about an ancestor of her’s, ala Janeway in the Voyager episode “11:59.”  What follows is a delightfully quiet character study of three Vulcans forced to integrate with humanity at a time, i.e., the 1950s, when doing so was not easy.  As a post-9/11 show that happened to be set prior to an idealized future, Enterprise was largely about the challenge of coming to accept the mysterious other, both from the alien and human point of view.  ”Carbon Creek” addresses this is in a beautifully quiet way, showing us three dryly funny (one of them loves American television) Vulcans struggling with their need to help their new human friends at the risk of exposing themselves and thus risking their lives.  Plus, fans of unreliable narrator tropes will delight in the ambiguous ending.

Check out a Trailer Below:

3) “Similitude” (Season 3, Episode 10) 

A.K.A.: The one where after an accident threatens Trip’s life Doctor Phlox basically says, “I know – we’ll grow a fast-aging clone with a lifespan of two-weeks, and use his organs once he’s reached the real Trip’s current age.”  However, the clone has all of Trip’s memories, and even briefly becomes a member of the crew when Trip’s engineering expertise is require.

Brutal. That’s the best way to describe “Similitude.”  It is so beautifully sci-fi, featuring a premise by which the show explores the unanticipated ethical dilemmas delivered unto us by advances in medical science (I read it as mostly a stem cell debate allegory).  When Phlox devises of his way of saving Trip’s life, he never stops to ponder how much it would feel like murder when it came time to harvest the clone’s organs.  The way the rest of the crew also comes to this realization is beautifully done, aided in large party by Connor Trenier’s fantastic performance as Sim, the Trip clone.  However, it refuses to give into any soapbox speechifying while instead focusing on the noble sacrifice made by a selfless hero when faced with an impossible moral dilemma.  It also uses the plot to finally advance the Trip-T’Pol romance, giving her a wonderful character moment where she admits her feelings for Trip to Sim.  This is among the easiest of Enterprise episodes to simply watch without having seen any prior episodes (same goes for “Carbon Creek”).

Check out a Trailer Below:

2) “The Andorian Incident” (Season 1, Episode 7)

A.K.A.: The one where the crew visits a Vulcan monastery only to discover it is in the process of being taken over by the Andorians, who surprisingly are 100% correct in their suspicion that the a-hole Vulcans have violated a treaty by using the monastery as a secret military outpost.

From a strict storytelling perspective, Vulcans are an incredibly boring alien race, regardless of how beloved they are due to Leonard Nimoy’s Spock (who was, rather tellingly, half-human).  They are only ever made captivating by having their logic-driven worldview counter-balanced by the more emotional humans they encounter.  Minus that interaction, Vulcans are a race crucially bereft of narrative conflict (even when their backstory has them constantly suppressing their emotions to achieve their calm demeanor).

The controversial position Enterprise took was that, basically, Vulcans aren’t perfect (or at least didn’t used to be).  In fact, they could be right bastards.  The first major indication of this new direction came in “The Andorian Incident,” which sort of plays out like a bank robbery plot where the good guys walk into a bank, notice everyone is acting weird, and when they try to leave a thug appears out of nowhere at the door to reveal that in fact the banks is in the middle of being robbed.  Except here the bank is a Vulcan monastery and the thugs are the blue-skinned, antennae-spouting Andorians, an Original Series alien made only slightly less goofy here due to the formidable acting of Jeffrey Combs as Shran, the Andorian in charge.  The resulting episode is a fun hostage scenario equipped with clever scheming on the parts of the heroes and the sneaking suspicion that the bad guys may in fact be the good guys.  The ending implicates the Vulcans and sets up a series-long conflict between Vulcan and Andorian while also establishing Enterprise as a show in which, for better or worse, what you thought you knew about Star Trek could not necessarily be trusted.   

Check out a Trailer Below:

1) “Zero Hour” (Season 3, Episode 24)

A.K.A.: The one where the long and convoluted season-long story arch surrounding the war with the Xindi reaches an epic conclusion, and the viewer is completely blown away … until the horrible, horrible, horrible last second cliffhanger.

This is my Return of the King for Best Picture pick – the award given to the last in a line of installments that on its own individually is not the best but taken as a whole is deserving of immense applause.  So, no, “Zero Hour” is not really the best Star Trek: Enterprise episode nor is it my favorite.  However, it is the third season finale thus concluding the season-long conflict with the Xindi, and while they arguably never became as interesting a villain as the Borg or Dominion they were still the tool by which the writers put the heroes backs up against the wall.  So, “Zero Hour” is our heroes finally landing the knock-out punch, with some thrilling action and plenty of fist pump in the air moments.  It is the culmination of an entire season of story and character work and benefits by association, even if on its own merits it might actually be a bit weaker than some prior episodes.  However, that’s Enterprise for you – good, but always with an asterisk behind it.

Check out a Trailer Below:

Honorable Mentions (The Ones Just Outside the Top 10):

• “Cease Fire” (Season 2, Episode 15) – Where T’Pol and Archer are caught in the middle when arranging a meeting between the Andorians and Vulcans.
• “Stratagem” (Season 3, Episode 14) – Where Archer attempts to fool a member of the Xindi council into helping him through a rather elaborately staged con.

Those Are Mine, Here Are Some Others:

• Top Star Trek: Enterprise Episodes (denofgeek.com)
• The Five Best Star Trek: Enterprise Episodes of All Time (techrepublic.com)
• My Top 10 Favorite Episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise (cityoffilms.com)

Check Out Our Prior Top 10 Lists for Other Stark Trek TV Shows:

• Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series
• Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation
  
• Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
• Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: Voyager

So, what do you think, guys? Are you a fan of our picks, or are there other episodes you think should have made the cut? Let us know in the comments!

Around these parts, we are kind of high on Star Trek: Enterprise at the moment.  After writing about my picks for the top 10 Enterprise episodes, I have been binge re-watching the show.  Meanwhile, fellow WeMinoredInFilm writer Julianne is currently at DragonCon in Atlanta, Georgia where she informs me she met Dominic Keating, Malcolm from Enterprise.  He even remembered her name when he saw her the next day.  The next day!  So, it is of special interest to us that according to multiple websites (PopMatters, AICN, io9) the newly released blu-ray season sets for Enterprise reveal some fascinating behind the scenes details about the differences between what the show’s creators wanted to do and what the studio made them do.

Let’s set the table first.  Enterprise, of course, is the Star Trek prequel series which aired for 4 seasons on the now defunct UPN from 2001-2005.  It is often mocked or merely thought poorly of by fans due to its overly convoluted over-arching time travel plot (i.e., the temporal cold war), horrendous theme song (a re-purposed, re-recorded version of the Dianne Warren-penned, Rod Stewart-sung “Faith of the Heart” from Patch Adams), overly obvious objectification of voluptuous cast member Jolene Blalock, lack of dynamic central characters, and a series finale which basically apologized for the whole show.  However, around here we are staunch Enterprise-defenders, especially of the third and fourth seasons.  After all, that schmaltzy theme song is easily skippable via the fast-forward button.  The second season blu-ray set features a 78-minute roundtable discussion with series co-creator Brannon Braga and all 7 series regulars.  Plus, there are three additional features, each of them a half-hour in length, which features the writers and stars discussing the second season as well as the show in general.

Surprise, surprise, they mostly blame the network (UPN) and studio (Paramount) for everything that went wrong.  Plus, it’s made fairly obvious that their experience together on Enterprise fractured the working relationship between show co-creators and long-time Star Trek producers Brannon Braga and Rick Berman.  It should be noted that no one from UPN and Paramount are present in any of the features to defend themselves, and Berman is only present in two of the half-hour specials meaning he’s also not always around to defend himself either.  But as mostly one-sided stories go there are some interesting revelations here, among the most intriguing being:

It’s not you, Voyager, it’s us; we needed to go on “a break” after being with you for 7 years….well, maybe you’re partially responsible.

• Berman originally wanted to keep Star Trek off the air after Voyager for a couple of years before starting a new show.  Paramount disagreed and would move on without him if he didn’t step in line.  The argument for Star Trek having been better served at the time by taking a break from television for a couple of years is a seemingly common one among fans now.  Scott Bakula supports the argument during the roundtable discussion..

Would you have been cool with an entire season like the season 2 episode “First Flight”?

• Remember the season 2 episode “First Flight” in which we see the background of how Captain Archer came to be the captain of the Enterprise?  In the initial pitch, that’s what Berman and Braga wanted to occupy the entire storyline of an Earth-bound first season focused on watching our future captain and crew members build toward making the scientific advances necessary for the Enterprise to even exist while the Vulcans fought to limit their progress.
• Berman and Braga fired most of the entire writing staff after the first season.
• The writers wanted to expand the show’s horizons and not just do standard Star Trek stories.  They were itching to kill characters off to heighten dramatic stakes and do serialized stories.  However, the studio vehemently disagreed.  They wanted Enterprise to basically be more of the same, and actually operate under a studio mandate that all episodes reach a narrative conclusion that could allow the next week’s episode to be viewed with no difficulty if having missed the prior episode.

Scott Bakula says fans still ask him what the heck was going on with that temporal cold war storyline.

• With that in mind, rather bizarrely the most serialized element of the first two seasons, the temporal cold war storyline, was actually a studio mandate.  Why?  It was a way of both doing a straight-ahead prequel and not a prequel.  Simply building toward the creation of the Federation and establishing how the bridge from Archer to Kirk was built made studio executives nervous.  The cold war storyline was a way of presenting a considerable risk that everything that had happened in the prior Star Trek shows could potentially be undone by an over-arching, time-altering storyline.  However, all involved parties on the creative side seem to agree that the storyline got away from them.
• UPN experienced heavy turnover in its executive ranks in-between Enterprise’s first and second seasons, and the new bosses had some incredibly bizarre requests.  The most headline-grabbing request is that one such executive suggested that the Enterprise take a new boy band on ship every week, and that boy band would perform a song.

Random boy band example: 98 Degrees. So, would they have been themselves, or made up in some alien make-up? How would this have even worked?

• According to Braga, Viacom CEO Jonathan Dolgen, the corporate overlord of Paramount and UPN, loosened the storyline restrictions on the show, allowing them “to shake things up” in-between seasons 2 and 3.  This was done presumably because Dolgen was a huge Star Trek fan unhappy with Enterprise not as a business venture but as a fan of the intellectual property.
• The basic Xindi storyline begun in the season 2 finale “The Expanse”  was conceived of by Berman and Braga on their own without the assistance of the show’s writers.

Ira Steven Behr.

• Deep Space Nine head writer/producer and just general badass Ira Steven Behr was invited to the production offices as a way of secretly offering him a senior level position on the show.  Instead, Behr proceeded to verbally shit on the show in a way Braga had never heard nor experienced.  One imagines Behr holding out a microphone in front of him and dropping it to the ground as a visual exclamation of how much he just owned Braga to the extent that there was no response possible thus no need for a microphone.

We could have had Shran calling Archer “pink-skin” on a weekly basis if a fifth season had happened.

• Jeffrey Comb’s Andorian Commander Shran was going to made a series regular in the fifth season.
• Fan dissatisfaction was such that people began hate-watching the show (a phenomenon the writers/actors would have been fine seeing more of because it would have meant higher ratings), and one fan even sent a cardboard box full of trash to the production office with a note which rather simply explained how this (trash) is what they had turned Star Trek into.

You can read about even more revelations, such as which episodes Braga, Bakula, and others liked the most and which ones they’d rather forget over at AintItCoolNews.

It is impressive that previously fan convention-specific revelations such as those listed above have made their way to officially released Blu-Ray release.  Paramount is clearly cool with airing its dirty laundry, and Braga is refreshingly willing to burn bridges, probably because the network he bashes, UPN, is long since gone now.  In one of the features, he even voices his hope that Enterprise could some day return.  Based upon what they say, the sudden transition from episodic to fiercely serialized storytelling from the first two seasons to the final two seasons of Enterprise makes a whole lot more sense now.

I have to admit, though, that much as I do like that season 2 episode “The First Flight” the concept of an entire Earth-bound season of Star Trek is not something I would have particularly cared to see.  The question with doing a Star Trek prequel is how far back to you go?  Some might have been cool with them just doing a straight-up sequel series to the beloved film Star Trek: First Contact.  However, while Star Trek definitely needed something different after Voyager an Earth-bound season might have been too big a departure.  Starfleet was always good for an Earth-bound episode or two set in San Francisco in the prior shows; not an entire season of TV.  I can see why the studio execs shot the idea down, and frankly I’m glad they did, much as co-creator Braga now disagrees.

What do you think?  Would you have liked to have seen an Earth-bound season?  If so, why?  Any other revelations catch your fancy?  Let us know in the comments section.