Star Trek Flashback: Dagger of the Mind

Prison systems are a ripe subject for science fiction. On the one hand, it doesn't take much of a turn of the dial on reality to concoct some horrific allegorical scenario. On the other hand, a desire for some humane, technological solution can lead to fanciful wishing for another way. At some intersection of both these approaches sits the classic Star Trek episode "Dagger of the Mind."

When an escapee from the Tantalus Penal Colony stows away on Enterprise, it creates an emergency aboard the ship. But once he's captured and is revealed to be a doctor, not a prisoner, questions ensue. Kirk beams down to investigate the cutting edge mental reprogramming treatment being used by the head of the colony, Dr. Adams. And soon, he may become the next victim.

To watch this episode, you may first have to silence your juvenile reaction to the repeated use of words like "penal" and "penology." (Or maybe you're just naturally more mature.) Once I did that, I found myself not quite sure of the message this episode conveys.

To be sure, Dr. Adams is presented as a terrible villain, using his device to erase memories and program thoughts as he hides beneath a smiling facade. To me, he reads rather like a #MeToo perpetrator. Kirk initially defends him (despite never having met him), citing his reputation as evidence he couldn't possibly be doing anything wrong. Adams just can't help himself; even as an investigation closes on him, he offends again. And he never argues about the good he's doing, or the greater good that might come of it. He just meddles with minds because he can. The problem in my comparison is that you want a fictional villain to have more of a motive than "it makes him feel powerful." We never get that about Dr. Adams. Nor do we get any sense that he had good intentions in the beginning before going astray. In fact, the story seems to presume there can be no good intentions here.

In the end, when the victimized Dr. Van Gelder is put in charge of the colony, his first act is to destroy the mental reprogramming device that caused all this trouble. And while mental reprogramming against someone's will does seem like a form of torture (that's what A Clockwork Orange was all about), the episode doesn't engage at all with the potential voluntary uses. You can stop well short of "make it so someone can't say their own name without feeling blinding pain," and still have plenty of room to debate where the ethical line might be between applications like "sincere efforts at self-help," "curing someone of an addiction," or just "remembering to take the garbage out every Monday night." Sure, I suppose a one-hour episode of 1960s television probably isn't the venue to get into all of that. (And yet it kind of is, when it makes room for a Spock/McCoy debate about emotion leading to violence.) I guess at the bottom of it all, I'm bothered that a sci-fi show that's thrilling its audience with the wonders of faster-than-light travel and teleportation feels there's a technology with no noble applications.

So, maybe it's best not to dig that deeply, and stay closer to the surface level. In that sense, it's an interesting episode for McCoy -- who can just tell something is off even if he can't put his finger on what. (But also, he's all about messing with Kirk, assigning to the landing party someone he seems to know has a history with the captain.) It's a big episode for Spock, who performs the series' first mind meld -- though the technique hasn't quite settled into what it would eventually look like. And it's a big episode for Kirk, who is... for reasons?... able to resist the effects of the evil mind machine to some extent. (Maybe it just takes several sessions?)

Other observations:

• These early episodes highlight the differences between the original series and The Next Generation. The vibe is much more militaristic here, with barked orders, talk of what's required in log entries, and loads of background actors filling implied positions on a cramped-feeling ship. 

• Kirk had a fling at a Christmas party with someone named Dr. Noel? A bit on the nose, isn't it?

• It's dumb for the security guard on the bridge to stand with his back to the turbolift door. Sure enough, when Dr. Van Gelder bursts onto the bridge, he gets the jump on the guard.

• The music certainly wants the audience to be suspicious long before Kirk is, serving arch stings whenever someone in the colony flatly recites something they've been programmed to say.

I feel like "Dagger of the Mind" takes too long to spring its trap, especially when the audience knows something is wrong. That and a muddled message make it a weaker installment in my book. I give it a C+.

Lace Up These Boots

This week's contribution to the pop culture zeitgeist is the final season of Stranger Things. (Most of it, anyway.) But I must honor this blog's tradition and write about Netflix's buzzy show from one or two cycles ago: Boots.

Set in the 1990s, Boots centers on young Cameron Cope. When his friend Ray enlists in the Marines, Cameron joins him -- even though both are aware that Cameron being gay would end his military career before it even begins, if people knew. Over the course of eight episodes, the two endure boot camp, each confronting their own inner demons as they meet a colorful cast of recruits and drill instructors.

Boots is based on the memoir by the real life Cope (Greg Cope White), The Pink Marine. But without having read that book, my assumption is that it's merely a touchstone for TV show and not a road map. For one thing, Cope White's actual enlistment took place in 1979, a time even more hostile to a closeted gay recruit. For another, Boots may be centered on his story, but it's far from fixated.

I started the series wondering if this boot camp show would be too gay to attract a wider audience, and quickly found myself wondering if the show would actually be too much of a boot camp cliche to retain my attention. But this is a smart show, well aware of the existence of Full Metal Jacket. It knows that it's audience knows all the tropes it might depict -- but it has eight episodes (rather than half a movie). That's plenty of time to develop other characters and make us care about them.

That's exactly what Boots does, and exactly why it works. We get to know two feuding brothers who've enlisted together, a criminal grasping at military service to avoid prison, a young man struggling to compartmentalize his feelings about family back home, a live wire oddball who might just be crazy, and many more. And that's just among the recruits. We also spend time with Cope's mother back home as she struggles to understand why her son has enlisted, with the drill instructors and their lives outside training, and with the captain of the base who must navigate the pressure of being one of the few women in such a position.

Very deftly, Boots manages to show, not tell, that being gay in a military that's institutionally hostile to that is just one struggle -- not the only struggle a person might have. And it doesn't minimize that as it showcases other problems. The show also manages to balance comedy and drama well, with plenty of charming and silly moments to juxtapose against the very serious topics it also touches upon.

The effective cast includes star Miles Heizer as Cope, Ana Ayora as Captain Fajardo, Liam Oh as Ray McAffey, Cedrick Cooper as Staff Sergeant McKinnon, and Vera Farmiga as Barbara Cope. And Max Parker seemed to get a brief bump online for his portrayal of Sergeant Sullivan. (Might he be "the next big thing?" Stay tuned.)

Boots was surely named for its setting at boot camp -- and by the end of the eight-episodes, we're done with that. Will we get a second, less-fittingly titled season? Hard to say. There is talk. The show felt like a satisfyingly contained one-off to me... but the final minutes of the last episode certainly tee up a possible first duty assignment for some of the characters. But if eight episodes of Boots is all there ever is, it's well worth watching. I give the show a B+.

Star Trek Flashback: Miri

The imagination of the Star Trek writers far exceeded what a 1960s television budget could put in front of the camera, and so various cheats were used to help stretch the budget. One of the more ridiculous the show ever employed was in the episode "Miri."

The Enterprise explores a planet where only children have survived a horrific plague that wiped out the adult population. With the landing party themselves now infected, and no access to the Enterprise after the game-playing children stole their communicators, only a few days remain to discover a cure.

I left out of my little recap any mention of how this episode opens: when the Enterprise finds this alien world, they discover it to be an exact copy of Earth, right down to the continental formations. I omitted this because it ends up having absolutely no bearing on the plot. Nor is any attempt at an explanation ever offered. That's because surely such a provocative story element wasn't actually part of the original idea; instead, it was wedged in at the end to justify how the entire episode could be shot on the standing city sets of the studio lot -- without altering the building appearances, scattered props, or English writing.

It's nearly impossible to ignore the fact that this episode casually discards the most interesting aspect of the story. Yet ignore it I must to get on with the rest of the review. But before that, I will at least acknowledge that, having stuck this "devil's bargain" to be able to film on existing sets, "Miri" absolutely makes the most of those sets. We get sweeping overhead shots of the outdoors, the interiors of multiple buildings... generally, a massive scope to this mission that very few Star Trek episodes could really touch until the "volume" technology of modern day allowed sets to incorporate CG directly on the filming stage.

What we get is the first genuinely strong showing for the character of Dr. McCoy. Not only is he able to cure this alien plague and save the day, he tosses off the sort of trademark quips along the way that we'd come to know him for. (When tasked with making a vaccine, he tells Kirk: "Is that all captain? We have five days you know.") McCoy is also ultimately willing to test that vaccine on himself when it appears someone will have to be the guinea pig. Plus, his verbal jousting with Spock feels genuinely playful in this episode -- not as harsh as the "this is actually racist, right?" tone that sneaks into some other episodes.

Unfortunately, the rest of the episode now stands as a rather uncomfortable artifact of its time. If this episode were made today, you'd hope that Kirk would attempt to gently-but-firmly shut down Miri's adolescent crush on him, rather than smile creepily at her and call her pretty. (Her reaction to being "spurned" could still lead to Miri's double-cross, as the story demands.) If made today, you certainly wouldn't see Yeoman Rand breaking down about how the legs she's desperately been trying to get Kirk to notice are now marred with plague marks.

Maybe the modern version would take a little more time to explore the question of how the "Onlies" of this planet could live 300 years and still behave as they do -- is the child brain truly incapable of any "grown-up" thinking? (On this planet, at least?) And maybe we could button up some of the plot holes. Why does Yeoman Rand go on this mission? (It's not like she goes whenever the captain does.) Why does her abduction by the Onlies take place off-screen? Why does the Enterprise not try to do anything after not hearing from their landing party for days?

Other observations:

• Today, we take for granted that the core original crew was Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov. But there are other minor characters repeating too -- like Farrell, who has inexplicably moved from the helm in a previous episode to the communications station in this one. If that guy had popped, maybe today we'd know "Jim Goodwin" as well as we know "George Takei."

• This is a major episode for musical score. Several themes make a first appearance that would get tracked in for all sorts of later episodes and situations.

• Michael J. Pollard, who plays Jahn, is one of the most familiar-looking "that guy"s you'll find in Star Trek. His list of credits is a mile long, but I know him best from his appearance in Bill Murray's Scrooged.

• Classic Star Trek has a tendency to ratchet up the jeopardy with a bit too much hyperbole. Here, it's mentioned that the children on the planet -- who have lived for centuries -- are going to run out of food in a few months. As if the plague that will eventually kill them all isn't enough.

• Spock's musing that McCoy may have created a "beaker full of death" gives us a great band name.

• In a reminder of just how many details about Star Trek weren't set in place from the beginning, Kirk says at the end of the episode that he has contacted "Space Central" -- what presumably became "Starfleet Command," once all the trappings of the universe were locked in place.

Because this is an early milestone episode for McCoy, there are elements of this episode I truly like. But with so much of the rest of it evoking an eye roll or a cringe, I think "Miri" caps out at a C+. 

Enterprise Flashback: Azati Prime

Amid season three of Star Trek: Enterprise, it's been many episodes since our heroes learned the location of the Xindi weapon. Now they have finally arrived there, in the appropriately titled "Azari Prime."

Captain Archer plans to take a commandeered Xindi shuttle to infiltrate a construction facility and destroy the Xindi weapon -- despite a warning from time traveler Daniels. When Archer is captured, he must convince the Xindi that the true threat is the race of sphere builders. But factions are splintering in the Xindi council, and the reptilians are about to launch an attack on Enterprise.

We're now deep enough in Enterprise's season three story arc that no recap of an episode can make any sense without some added context -- which is ironic, as this episode begins Netflix-style, with no "previously on" package to orient the audience. Another interesting dichotomy here is that this presents as one of the most action-oriented episodes in a while... but then a very Star Trek ideal of pursuing a diplomatic solution emerges mid-episode.

Before we get there, though, we have to deal with a really obstinate and annoying Archer. He's bound and determined to fly a suicide mission to punish himself for recent, morally questionable decisions -- despite multiple characters telling him he's the least expendable member of the ship's crew. There's a saying that goes something like, "I can't be making decisions that are that bad, because no one has showed up from the future to stop me." Well here, someone shows up from the future to stop Archer, and he goes through with his bad plan anyway.

Daniels probably knew this? (Let's say he did.) And so he's uncharacteristically helpful, actually giving Archer physical proof of this whole time travel thing... which ultimately opens up that diplomatic option when it's found by Degra and other sympathetic Xindi. This is not only a nice re-introduction of Star Trek ideals of diplomacy into what's been a rather Star Wars-like story, but it hopefully means we won't see many more of the repetitive "exposition delivered by way of bickering villains" scenes we've been getting all season long (including in the first half of this episode).

That said, if Star Trek is going to be more action-oriented, this episode is a great example of how to do it. The final act, in which reptilian Xindi attack the Enterprise, is very well done. We see huge explosions on the sets, tons of debris and damage, and a classic "man on fire" stunt. In space, we see a large whole ripped in the ship, with victims steaming out into the void. Good pacing and amazing visual effects for the time are put to work for this serialized story that doesn't have to reset at the end. Enterprise takes a beating. 

But we do get a few quieter character moments along the way as well. Archer makes sure his dog will be cared for and says goodbye to his crew. An emotional T'Pol grieves for his loss, and has to be pushed by Trip to take charge. T'Pol also then walks right up to the brink of sacrificing herself too, before the action begins. If the show had built more close relationships to leverage than just among the trio of Archer, Trip, and T'Pol, there might be even more emotion to these scenes... but the episode does at least use what it can.

Other observations:

• I like that the episode makes time to show us that you don't just get into a strange craft and fly it; you have to work out the controls first.

• More effective visual effects are used to show the Xindi shuttle diving under the ocean surface and finding the submerged base.

• Archer has a particularly tailored taunt for the reptilian Xindi: that on his world, a comet destroyed the dinosaurs.

I do like the Star Trek-themed turn toward diplomacy that this episode represents in the Xindi story arc. But also, this episode plays so much like a conventional two-part cliffhanger (ending with the ship in specific jeopardy) that it's hard not to compare it to past, great Star Trek two-parters. Overall, I give "Azati Prime" a B.

Synchronized Codenames

One of the most successful board games of the past decade is Codenames, the word association game by Vlaada Chvátil. It has kept hobby gamers entertained while spreading well beyond that market. It's a party game that takes almost any number of players. And it's spawned many follow-ups, both official Codenames games and games inspired by it, each with some twist on the original to help it stand out.

Alibis is one of these. Players cooperate as investigators trying to identify the culprit responsible for a crime. Mug shots of the suspects are arrayed in the center of the table, and a word card is dealt onto each one. Then each player is dealt two cards with numbers indicating two of those suspects. Each player's job is to write down a one word clue that connects the two words on their suspects.

Once everyone is ready, clues are revealed and players use a dry erase board to indicate which two suspects/words they think each of their fellow players is pointing to. By process of elimination, ONE suspect will have no clue -- the actual perpetrator of the crime. To tally up a round, you remove chips from a pool of score tokens: 1 token for each player who had any number of fellow players guess their two words correctly, plus 3 tokens for each player who successfully identifies the perpetrator. Your goal is to try to empty this pool of tokens (or come as close as you can) over the course of three rounds.

Codenames was such a runaway hit, it might be heresy to claim it had any "problems" in the design that needed to be "solved." And yet, my gamer group has long since moved on from it, for reasons more than just "new games coming along" to crowd it off the table. In no particular order:

• Because of the two team format, it doesn't do a good job accommodating an odd number of players.

• The game comes with a timer because it really does need one, and yet it feels cruel to actually use it. Coming up with good clues is hard, and everyone just kind of has to sit there and wait while you do it. But if you actually limit the time, clue givers can easily come up with nothing at all.

• Since only two players can give clues at a time, you sometimes get tired of playing the game as a group before everyone who might want to give clues gets a chance to do so.

• Loud voices on the clue guessing side can drive that process to the exclusion of others on a team.

Alibis addresses all of that. Making the game fully cooperative allows everyone to be active at the same time -- and in particular, lets them come up with clues at the same time. Not only does everyone get to participate in clue giving, but you don't feel the time spent doing that as keenly when everyone is doing it at once. Even if one or two players do take longer to concoct their clues, they're helping your team (because you're all one team), and you're more comfortable waiting for that.

On the guessing side, everyone must make their own decisions in secret, so no one can quarterback that part of the game. And the pressure to be right is reduced, since the most you can score is 1 point no matter how many people guess a clue right. The big scoring comes in guessing the culprit, which you can occasionally find your way to even if you don't pair all the right words with the right players along the way.

Alibis takes 2 to 6 players -- and while it's best with more, it works fine at any number (including odd numbers). To set up the suspects and words in a round, you simply double the number of players and add one (the one ultimately becoming the perpetrator). Plus, the game follows in a long line of "chase the best score possible" co-op games (like Hanabi, Just One, or The Mind) where coming this close spurs you to want to play again.

I will confess that Alibis hasn't caught fire in my group the way Codenames once did. Still, it's super fast to set up and explain, so I expect it will make appearances on game nights with larger groups in the coming months. I give Alibis a B+. It manages to be new and a bit nostalgic at the same time, and scratches an itch I didn't know I had. 

Star Trek Flashback: What Are Little Girls Made Of?

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been picking up odds and ends from the original Star Trek series, expanding on one-off elements in its semi-serialized format. One such element was Nurse Chapel's fiance, Dr. Roger Korby: a complication for Chapel and Spock's SNW relationship, but a back story originally introduced in the TOS episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"

The Enterprise arrives at Exo III in search of Dr. Roger Korby, the "Pasteur of archaeological medicine," whose expedition to the planet has been out of contact for five years. They find Korby, who has made a mysterious discovery he wants to share only with Captain Kirk... though his plans change upon learning his fiance, Christine Chapel, is also aboard the Enterprise. As Korby plots a secret foisting of his discovery upon the Federation, Chapel may be the only one who can make him reconsider.

Strange New Worlds had to acknowledge this original series episode somehow; how is it that Chapel had a fiance she didn't see for five years? Still, it's fascinating how such as siloed idea -- an almost tangential part of this episode -- became such a significant element on the prequel series. This episode only scratches the surface on Chapel's emotions; it's really about adventure and suspense with android brutes, bombshells, and doppelgangers.

In the way of many Star Trek episodes, there is a moral to this story, almost slipped in at the end like a pill in a dog treat. Obsession can blind someone and make them behave so strangely that they aren't even themselves anymore. (The android conceit of this story makes that quite literal.) But I'd say that's not what the episode is really remembered for by Star Trek fans. Maybe its the imposing Ruk, played with icy menace by the bass-voiced Ted Cassidy. Maybe it's Kirk's huge stride toward becoming the lothario we all know, as he literally romances his way out of trouble by kissing doubt into the android Andrea. Maybe its the unceremonious deaths of two redshirts who, for the first time, are literally wearing red shirts? Maybe it's the uncomfortably phallic stalactite Kirk tries to use as a weapon.

In any case, it seems clear that the more action-adventure elements are leading the charge in this story. And while I don't mind that in principle, I'm surprised on this re-watch to see just how often classic Star Trek was already recycling plot elements this early in its run. This is the second time that the Enterprise has dealt with a clone of Kirk. It's the second time a member of the medical staff has had compromised judgment because of a significant person from their past. Don't get me wrong; I think this episode is better than "The Man Trap" (if not as good as "The Enemy Within"), but it's weird that barely half a dozen episodes into the series, I can already find two prior episodes to compare a "new" one to.

Other observations:

• We head into the credits off of ridiculous crash zooms on the shocked faces of Our Heroes -- very much a style of the time this episode was made.

• For how fast and cheap so much of Star Trek was made, I am rather impressed by the underground cave set. There's more to it than I'd ever expect (and they cleverly film it to look like even more).

• ...but they took the money this week from the sound department, it seems. At many points through the episode, sliding doors don't make the expected Star Trek sounds. 

• The communicator is a prop that takes a beating. At two different points in the episode, Kirk's communicator (ostensibly the same one) is shown flipping open and locking in position like the cell phones it would inspire, and later with the screen bent backwards because the hinge has given out.

• The character of Andrea is definitely here to titillate. But the episode does hang a lantern on that, with Chapel calling her a "mechanical geisha." (And I guess they show is equal opportunity, showing not one but two naked Kirks strapped to a table elsewhere in the episode.)

• I noted earlier that this is the second episode in close proximity to serve us two Kirks. Also repeated is the reversing of a closeup to make the eye lines match. There, the scratches on "negative Kirk"'s face gave it away. Here, it's the green-crossed-over-blue outfit that Kirk has been made to wear; a closeup shows the colors on the opposite shoulders.

I suggested earlier that this episode falls between two earlier ones for me, and here I'll make that official: I give "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" a B-.

Enterprise Flashback: Hatchery

Enterprise has been on its way to the Xindi weapon build site for a few episodes now. But with several more episodes in season three to fill, another diversion is needed. And so we get "Hatchery."

Enterprise encounters a drifting Reptilian Xindi ship with a dead crew. But a hatchery is intact with dozens of young Xindi about to be born. Perhaps if the Enterprise can rescue them, it will help send the message that humans aren't savage threats? But Archer is irrationally consumed with this goal, influenced by an encounter in the nursery -- and soon, there's talk of mutiny. A conflict between the Starfleet crew and the MACO forces seems inevitable.

There's a particular kind of episode that most Star Trek series seem to do some variation on at some point. The captain isn't acting like themself, and the crew finds that potential mutiny is on the table. Usually, these episodes land in season one of a given Star Trek, at a time when people are still learning about the captain and no one is ready to state definitively that they're behaving strangely. But Enterprise has been effectively giving us a new captain in season three, in the form of a new, darker Archer who will go as far as he needs to to stop the Xindi. So this is as good a place as any to tell a story like this. The MACO angle is a good one to explore as well. The childish bickering between Reed and Major Hayes has been a snooze, but having effectively two crews on one ship is a ripe environment for a mutiny story.

But the recipe doesn't turn out as well as the ingredients. Archer's behavior is too extreme, relieving and confining his bridge officers left and right. The Archer of season three has been so extreme that his behavior must now be even more extreme to seem odd. Part of telling a 9/11 allegory, it seems, is to include a George W. Bush character, and since this was written mere years after 9/11 -- basically, in the immediate aftermath -- the prevailing perspective on W. is that he's "The Decider," the guy who makes decisions and then stands by them no matter how much evidence to change course is presented later. That's how they've been writing Archer in season three, and the writers seem to think they're making a heroic, wartime hero out of him in doing so.

OK, uh.... that was kind of a digression there. Bottom line: it's too easy for the audience to guess that Archer has been influenced by Xindi goo in this episode.

The ticking clock of reaching the Xindi weapon hangs over this side quest in an uncomfortably prominent way. For that matter, it's hard to imagine how they ever found this downed Xindi ship in the first place -- Enterprise should have been warping by too fast to even notice it. (And if it had been sending a distress signal, surely there would have been more concern expressed early on about another Xindi ship showing up at some point.)

The actual mutiny isn't enough of a conflict, either. All season, we've been told how much better the MACOs are supposed to be in battle situations. But they make a monumentally poor showing for themselves in not being able to hold the ship against adversaries they've actually trained with -- they should know their every move.

Other observations:

• Spacesuit costumes aren't cheap, but they still go to the trouble of giving the MACOs a distinctive one that doesn't look like the Starfleet versions.

• A dying-then-dead infant Reptilian Xindi is rendered first in CG, then becomes an interesting prop that John Billingsley has to sell.

• The characters are starting to be less hesitant to use the transporter.

"Hatchery" falls somewhat short of its interesting premise. Or perhaps it's just the familiarity of the mutiny premise that makes this take on it less compelling. Either way, I give the episode a B-.