{"id":3109,"date":"2022-08-02T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3109"},"modified":"2023-03-06T11:10:48","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T11:10:48","slug":"trekaday-038","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/08\/02\/trekaday-038\/","title":{"rendered":"Trekaday 038: Darmok, Ensign Ro, Silicon Avatar, Disaster, The Game, Unification, A Matter of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

TNG S05E02 Darmok<\/strong> (\"4). I remember this one very clearly. Or rather, I remember two things about it \u2013 how good Paul Winfield is and how the big reveal doesn\u2019t make any sense. This ought to be a fascinating dissection of how people from different cultures will struggle to communicate and I\u2019ve got a whole podcast<\/a> which grew out of the observation that idioms from other countries are frequently bafflingly opaque. So the idea that the Universal Translator can tell you what the Children of Tama are saying<\/em> and still leave you none the wiser about what they mean<\/em> is fascinating. And it\u2019s also really fun that it\u2019s the aliens with the bumpy foreheads who are forcing the issue, not the always-knows-best Federation.<\/p>\n

The trouble is that the notion of a people who only<\/em> communicate with metaphors is bogus, because you can\u2019t understand the metaphors without having been told the story in language which didn\u2019t require prior knowledge of the metaphor. Or to put it another way \u2013 how do Tamarian children learn the language? Let alone how do they use this language to express laws or build spaceships? They also seem to have a very limited vocabulary with the same dozen or so images recycled and repeated with little variation. Another example of an element of Star Trek<\/strong> lore which is fatally flawed will come up in Voyager<\/strong>: Kes\u2019s people reproduced sexually but each couple only has a single child. Evidently, if this were true, the population would halve with each generation, so this is obvious bobbins. The question is \u2013 does it matter? I remember finally watching Blade Runner<\/em> for the first time and being dismayed when replicants stuck their hands into liquid nitrogen with no ill-effects, meaning that the Voight-Kampff test was irrelevant since a simple skin sample would tell you whether you were dealing with a human or not. But that doesn\u2019t erase everything else that\u2019s good about Ridley Scott\u2019s film and my appreciation for it has grown as I\u2019ve rewatched it, trying to quieten that part of my brain which wants to rigorously examine everything its watching and pounce on any inconsistencies.<\/p>\n

Here are some other things in Star Trek<\/strong> that don\u2019t make any real sense when you stop to think about them: warp drives, transporters, phasers, sub-space communication and half-human-half-Vulcans. But those things are all needed to make stories happen, so we wave some technobabble in their direction and get on with the adventure. They\u2019re easy to ignore, and when episodes go out of their way to explain apparent anomalies, like why all aliens look humanoid or why Kirk\u2019s Klingons don\u2019t have bumpy foreheads, then I often wish they hadn\u2019t bothered. So, if the Tamarians\u2019 mode of speech was a quirky detail in an episode which was really about something else, then this flaw would be easy to overlook. But the entire 45 minutes is laser-focused on how they use language and little else (to the point where I was sure that Troi\u2019s example of how difficult it is to learn another language was from this episode, until I saw it in Season 3\u2019s The Ensigns of Command<\/em>).<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s a boy to do? Well, clearly this ain\u2019t perfect, but if you can just persuade your brain to ignore this gaping plot hole, then there\u2019s an awful lot to admire and enjoy here, from the gorgeous location work, to \u2013 as noted \u2013 the excellent Paul Winfield, to Picard\u2019s snazzy new jacket which will inform the look of the next Star Fleet uniforms but one, to just how beguilingly odd it all is. It\u2019s nice to see a really unfamiliar, unfathomable, alien culture and to see our people struggle to get to grips with it. But where was Marc Okrand when a real linguist was needed?<\/p>\n

TNG S05E03 Ensign Ro<\/strong> (\"4.5). The domesticity of the Enterprise<\/em> continues to increase, as we join the captain having what\u2019s left of his hair cut by ship\u2019s barber Mr Mott. Also increasing is the number of significant political forces in the galaxy. The Cardassians having been introduced last year, now we meet the Bajorans and another seed for Deep Space Nine<\/strong> is sown. The Bajorans are introduced not as survivors rebuilding their society but as terrorist insurrectionists. Just as Spock\u2019s people were initially called \u201cVulcanians\u201d, here Bajorans are sometimes referred to as Bajora. To aid his mission to neutralise a Bajoran terrorist leader, Picard is sent a new officer, a loose cannon Bajoran named Ro Laren, played by the luminous Michelle Forbes. And \u2013 whisper it so the Great Bird doesn\u2019t hear you \u2013 she causes conflict among the crew. Not only that, the genteel TNG <\/strong>universe of trade agreements, pompous ambassadors and erudite scientists is turning out to contain grubbier, messier corners full of compromises, injustices and enmities. We still root for the Federation, but it\u2019s much harder here to see their perspective as the only reasonable one. As well as a satisfyingly complicated plot full of double-dealing and half-truths, this is a remarkably layered portrayal of a clash of cultures and one person\u2019s ethical choices. It feels like the show which found its feet in Season 3 has just jumped up another notch. Ro takes off her tunic to wrap a small child and her com-badge jumps instantaneously to her undershirt.<\/p>\n

TNG S05E04 Silicon Avatar <\/strong>(\"4). \u201cWe\u2019ve seen this before, we know what it is.\u201d Another episode which asks quite a lot of the audience\u2019s ability to recall details of earlier adventures, especially in this case as we are being asked to recall events some of which we didn\u2019t witness, only heard about, and that was back in Season 1. Watching these in the 1990s I remember being baffled about whether this was a return match or not. This time around, I know it\u2019s coming (and I\u2019ve been making copious notes on each episode, and watching one a day not one a week) and I still feel a little like I\u2019m playing catch-up. Maybe it\u2019s my age. The early nineties visual effects aren\u2019t quite up to the cataclysmic task but the wind machine budget was evidently extensive, and it\u2019s rather shocking to see Riker\u2019s intended next bedfellow fall victim to the onslaught of devastating pixels. As the inhabitants of the planet below are fleeing for their lives, panic-stricken and terrified, Troi sits quietly by Picard\u2019s side, sensing nothing.<\/p>\n

The plot goes to a lot of trouble to trap our people underground and then has them rescued almost immediately, which gives me a sense of unease. Also experiencing unease is Kila Marr, played by Ellen Geer, who suspects that the Star Fleet officer who looks an awful lot like the villainous Lore is the reason why there were any survivors at all this time round. Her conflict with Data is the main meat of this episode and it\u2019s decent stuff, but nothing we haven\u2019t seen before, although the conversation she is able to have with her late son, via Data\u2019s memory banks is rather touching. Likewise the debate about whether to try and kill the entity or converse with it is well-handled, but hardly new, going back all the way to Devil in the Dark<\/em>. The bleak ending does feel new, however \u2013 not just the fact that the entity is destroyed against Picard’s humanitarian wishes, but that Data is unable to give Marr the closure she so desperately wants. Suddenly, the universe is a colder, darker, more complicated place and that\u2019s exciting. This one crept up to a four in the closing moments.<\/p>\n

TNG S05E05 Disaster <\/strong>(\"3.5). Uh-oh. Moppets. I admire the show\u2019s dedication to revising the bad ideas of early episodes and it\u2019s extraordinary success record in rehabilitating them, but I\u2019ve never found the Picard-doesn\u2019t-like-kids plot line to be either interesting or convincing and having him \u2013 of all the shopworn clich\u00e9s \u2013 trapped with three of them in a lift is a pretty unpromising way to start a story. Still, could be worse, we could be watching the crew rehearse Gilbert and Sullivan. Ah. Oh. With the ship crippled, Troi, Ro, O\u2019Brien and a nameless ensign are the only ones on the bridge which means Troi is the senior officer. Her empathic powers are, as ever, useless. In keeping with the dark theme of this season, the indefatigable Enterprise <\/em>is shown here as a crippled shell, as much a danger to its inhabitants as a source of life let alone power. So this is basically as disaster movie in space \u2013 hey! That explains the name \u2013 which is a peculiar thing for a long-running series to attempt since disaster movies work by establishing a core group of characters and then keeping you guessing about who will live and who will die, whereas here we know they aren\u2019t going to kill off any of the moppets, pregnant Keiko, doughty O\u2019Brien or any of the regular cast. Maybe that\u2019s why Ro Laren is there? Although she\u2019s in pretty much the safest part of the whole ship. A bad idea for an episode then, but within those constraints, this works surprisingly well, with the unusual arrangement of our regular characters providing some interesting wrinkles, and it\u2019s a pleasure to see some actual character growth from Troi, as well as seeing Worf attempting to deliver Keiko\u2019s baby with the aid of an instructional YouTube video.<\/p>\n

TNG S05E06 The Game<\/strong> (\"2). I suppose this is some half-assed metaphor for drug addiction (where\u2019s Tasha Yar to give us a rousing speech when we need her?) or possibly Brannon Braga is in Grumpy Old Man mode and just wants you damned kids to stop watching MTV and go and play outside. Either way, this is a slender story which makes our people look dumb for no very good payoff and features the unwelcome return of Wesley Crusher. Rather than reinventing him as a maturing Star Fleet cadet, the narrative simply slots him back into the clich\u00e9s which made him such a drag in the first place (another example of this-is-the-story-we-do-with-this-character). But compared to some of the complete failures of Season 1, the world is now so lived-in and the cast so comfortable with their characters that I still find a \u201cfloor\u201d of two stars which these episodes can\u2019t go below, no matter how ill-conceived or poorly executed they might be. And there are some nice touches in the filming, like the low angle shot of Riker, Crusher and Troi past the prone Data. Ashley Judd is back as Ensign Lefler (her appearances here and in Darmok<\/em> were among her very first professional acting jobs). And Wesley\u2019s cadet\u2019s uniform prefigures the coloured-shoulders-and-black-everything-else look of the first half of DS9<\/strong> (and all of Voyager<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

TNG S05E07 Unification I <\/strong>(\"4). Or, \u201cThe One With Spock In It\u201d. A franchise which has different episodes called The Emissary <\/em>and Emissary<\/em> \u2013 one of which is the pilot for a whole new series! \u2013 is bad enough. But one of the (various) reasons I find it hard to keep Star Trek<\/strong> stories straight is that even a landmark episode like this one is given such a bland title. Along with Unification<\/em>, we also have episodes called Reunion<\/em>, Unity<\/em>, United<\/em> and Parturition<\/em>, most of which are unrelated, not to mention Redemption<\/em>, Fascination<\/em>, Resurrection<\/em>, Inquisition<\/em>, Acquisition <\/em>and Rules of Acquisition <\/em>and I could go on. Two of the films are called Generations <\/em>and Insurrection<\/em> for chrissakes.<\/p>\n

Anyway\u2026 Early on Roddenberry had been neurotic about including elements of The Original Series<\/strong> to the point where he almost forbade Sarek from speaking his son\u2019s name. But by the time this was being written, he was very ill (this episode opens with a dedication to him, as he had died only a few weeks before it was transmitted) and Great Bird Jr Rick Berman was more relaxed about nods to the past. Leonard Nimoy had been approached before, but he understood the value of his scarcity ($1m according to rumour). Now, with Star Trek VI <\/em>due out soon, suddenly there was a commercial purpose to his gracing the upstart TV show with his noble presence. And there was no way this writing team was going to drop the ball once his participation was agreed.<\/p>\n

Spock\u2019s name is spoken often, and Nimoy\u2019s absence is ably covered by the presence of Mark Lenard as Sarek, who is as good as ever. It\u2019s a deeply moving portrait of a great man laid low by degeneration and disease. Spock appears to be up to no good, but we know that the franchise wouldn\u2019t betray its first son like that, so the question is what is he really doing and why? Sarek slips away off-screen and Mark Lenard died only a few years after this episode aired. This is the third two-part story in TNG <\/strong>(not counting Farpoint<\/em>) and the first to occur other than across a season-break as well as the first to announce itself as part one (or just \u201cI\u201d on-screen).<\/p>\n

And compared to the plodding and prosaic Redemption<\/em>, this is both more entertaining and feels more significant, stretching tendrils into the past (including a few references to the movie which wouldn\u2019t hit theatres for a few more weeks) as well as developing a new future for the political factions in the Star Trek<\/strong> universe. Mention is made of Gowron but he doesn\u2019t appear. Maybe Robert O\u2019Reilly was unavailable? And like Redemption<\/em> this builds to a dramatic close-up of a returning actor. So, this is really all just set-up and no pay-off, but it\u2019s pretty faultlessly done.<\/p>\n

TNG S05E08 Unification II <\/strong>(\"5). Picking up where I<\/em> left off, this immediately brings Spock and Picard face-to-face and has them go from trading insults to sharing grief in moments. It\u2019s electric seeing the two most iconic characters (and the two best actors) in the franchise sharing the screen, and Spock\u2019s purpose is complicated, noble and epoch-defining. He wants to reunite the Vulcan and Romulan societies (just as he brokered, or will have brokered after Star Trek VI <\/em>comes out, the alliance between the Federation and the Klingons). His quiet devotion to a better future is very touching, and his famous scene with Data gives us a unique insight into both characters.<\/p>\n

Riker\u2019s strand in which he\u2019s tracking down the nefarious forces operating in the shadows also brings us to a more alien environment than we\u2019re used to \u2013 more like Star Wars<\/em> than Star Trek<\/strong>. Riker\u2019s enthusiasm for jazz even becomes a plot point. And then, just when you thought this couldn\u2019t get any better, Denise Crosby appears and fucks everything up. Five years of TNG<\/strong> history, combined with almost a quarter-century of wider Star Trek <\/strong>history and it all comes together not to wallow in nostalgia or pointless fan-service (maybe Data\u2019s neck-pinch but I\u2019ll give them that) but to tell a brand new story.<\/p>\n

The climax is pretty perfect as well. With our people on the Enterprise<\/em> and on Romulus facing impossible odds, they all rise to the occasion. The victory may not be hard-won but it is an immensely satisfying end to a magnificent pair of episodes.<\/p>\n

TNG S05E09 A Matter of Time <\/strong>(\"3.5). It was meant to be Robin Williams. TNG <\/strong>by this stage was attracting a wide array of acting talent, not just Whoopi Goldberg but Jean Simmons, Bebe Neuwirth, James Cromwell and more had spent time on board the Enterprise-D <\/em>and the part of Berlinghoff Rasmussen was written with Williams in mind. I don\u2019t know how serious Williams was about taking part, but he ended up doing Hook<\/em> instead, and Max Headroom actor Matt Frewer was the one who tried to pass himself off as a time-travelling historian. What\u2019s neat about this plot line is that in the universe of the show, he could be telling the truth, so this isn\u2019t one of those comic-book-cover plots (fond of them as I am) where you just know from the start that the conclusion of the episode is going to have to undermine the premise. And I don\u2019t know that it would have worked with Williams, whose style would risk swamping the show. Frewer is decent, but his conman comes across a little like a Poundshop Q with less good magic tricks. What\u2019s new in the mixture is the slyly satirical portrait of a crazed fan who constantly plagues the crew with his asinine questions. Troi\u2019s empathic abilities are just as useless a lie-detector as usual. \u201cAt what point does time travel become a tool for historians?\u201d asks Riker who hasn\u2019t seen TAS S01E02<\/em> recently. Picard cheerfully retaining Rasmussen 200 years adrift is a little weird for a man who hours earlier stood up for not meddling with the flow of time unless the circumstances were truly exceptional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TNG S05E02 Darmok (). I remember this one very clearly. Or rather, I remember two things about it \u2013 how good Paul Winfield is and how the big reveal doesn\u2019t make any sense. This ought to be a fascinating dissection of how people from different cultures will struggle to communicate and I\u2019ve got a whole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[19,79,535,528],"class_list":["post-3109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-reviews","tag-star-trek","tag-tng","tag-trekaday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-O9","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3109"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3187,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109\/revisions\/3187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}