Starfleet Academy: Vox In Excelso

In the first episode of Starfleet Academy, one of the characters who most caught my attention was the Klingon Jay-Den Kraag. Luckily for me, I didn't have to wait long for an episode centered on him, "Vox In Excelso."

When word arrives at the Academy that a fleet of Klingon ships may have been lost, it's a deeply complex and personal tragedy for Jay-Den Kraag. He is estranged from his family, particularly a father who did not understand his interest in Starfleet. And the Klingons themselves stand at the brink of extinction, having lost their homeworld in the Burn. With the potential loss of many of the few remaining Klingons, and a sense of honor preventing them from seeking help, this may be the end of the once-strong people.

This episode marked the first time that the tone of Starfleet Academy didn't catch me off-guard and make me think, "oh, so maybe it's going to be like this?" That's because this was a classic Star Trek story formulation, presented in a mostly classic way. A crisis at large scale has especially personal stakes for one of the characters, who has to grapple with their own complicated feelings. (It seems no one in Starfleet comes from a healthy, stable family background.)

I won't pretend this was a best possible execution of that tried-and-true formula. Is it plausible that one cadet -- and only that cadet -- understands Klingons well enough to come up with the solution that's enacted at the end of this episode? Not really. Is Chancellor Ake's relationship with an old Klingon leader a convenient way to shoehorn in why any of this story would involve the Academy in any way? You bet. Pushing all these revelations through the Play-Doh Fun Factory of "debate class?" Pretty silly -- but this is Starfleet Academy.

I'll allow the writing contrivances, because this framework did allow for a number of great scenes. I appreciated the dynamic between Caleb and Jay-Den. In both life and fiction, it's expected that people with (supposedly) similar backgrounds should naturally be friends. But a real friendship develops from more than tropes. Caleb coming on strong about how much alike he and Jay-Den are created the perfect situation for Jay-Den to withdraw. The subtext was clear: I thought you saw me, not a version of yourself. And I also appreciated how the one cadet to actually swoop in and help was the character you probably least expected it to be, Darem Reymi. Maybe it's all the Heated Rivalry in the zeitgeist, but I found myself wondering if the show is trying to "ship" these two characters. But whether as friends or something more, I found Darem and Jay-Den to be a pairing I'd like to see more of.

And so what if the Chancellor Ake's scenes were a conceit to give Holly Hunter something to do. We have freaking Oscar winner Holly Hunter anchoring a Star Trek series! I love how she's taking the quirky behavior of Carol Kane of Strange New Worlds, embracing some part of it as "whatever a Lanthanite is," and making it her own. Specifically, what she's made is the captain who seems to be consistently having the most fun in the captain's chair since James T. Kirk.

Plus, Lura Thok might be emerging as the series' biggest not-so-secret weapon. We're already used to Thok as drill sergeant and so-serious-it's-funny comic relief. But here, actor Gina Yashere showed us another gear in a great scene with Jay-Den, recontextualizing his past as only another Klingon could and helping him find peace.

Overall, I thought this was a pretty good episode. I give it a B+. I hope that as the show inevitably focuses episodes on other characters, the results are at least as compelling.

Win Some, Lose Some

Pixar has been slowly branching out from movies into television mini-series on Disney+. I've blogged about their Inside Out spin-off, Dream Productions. But now I've watched a wholly original show, Win or Lose.

A middle school softball team is set to play in the big championship game at the end of the week. But it's going to be a big week for everyone: the young players dealing with problems at school, the parents trying to juggle their own lives with their kids', and even the umpire who will be calling the game.

I noted that Dream Productions felt like a Pixar movie that had simply been chopped into four pieces. But Win or Lose makes specific use of the television format. Each of the eight episodes centers on the perspective of one character. Some events replay in multiple episodes, with added context coming from the viewpoint shifts. The result is a surprisingly layered story with an accessible and potent message: everyone is out there, going through their stuff that you might know nothing about. 

Also different for Pixar is the relatively grounded nature of the story. Many of the characters' inner thoughts are realized in the form of a unique animation style that gets shuffled in with the "Pixar standard." But still, it's their inner thoughts. The story isn't taking place in a fanciful rendition of a teenager's mind, or a farflung post-apocaylptic future, or a world where you can attach balloons to your house to make it fly away. Win or Lose is unusually realistic for Pixar, which serves its realistic message well.

In different episodes, we see characters battle anxiety manifesting in many ways, using many tactics. One person seems to literally armor up to repel the negativity of others. Another character summons a professional alter ego, prepared for any situation. Still another refuels with likes from social media... and so on.

It's actually a sprawling cast of characters, played by a wide variety of comedians, voice-over artists, people you might know from any number of places. Will Forte is the "big name," but you might also know Josh Thomson, Rosa Salazar, Lil Rel Howery, Melissa Villaseñor, Scott Menville, Rhea Seehorn, or others. You need this many people to tell this many intersecting stories.

There's a lot to recommend about the show -- though I do have to acknowledge one place where cowardly interference by Disney compromised the Pixar team's original intentions. The Pickles are a co-ed softball team, and one of the characters was written as a trans girl. Disney reportedly asked Pixar to remove any specific mention of this. While you can still read between the lines and see the intention in the finished product, I feel like a more spelled-out portrayal would have been better. It's really kind of disappointing, though sadly not surprising, that in a show all about "not knowing what other people are going through," the trans story line gets compromised in this way.

But overall, I found Win or Lose to be a successful experiment for Pixar -- well-made generally, but especially well-crafted for the television medium. I give it a B+.

Star Trek Flashback: The Galileo Seven

One of the first things the original Star Trek locked in on early was the character of Spock, who always extolled the utility of logic in the counsel he gave to Captain Kirk. But what if Spock were to find himself in command? That was the tantalizing idea behind the episode "The Galileo Seven."

When the shuttlecraft Galileo goes missing inside a quasar, its disruptive effects threaten the search efforts. So does an insistent passenger, Commissioner Ferris, who sets a tight clock on the search before he will use his authority to order Enterprise to another mission. Meanwhile, the passengers of the Galileo try to survive on the planet where they've crashed. Can they repair the shuttle and lift off, or will they fall prey to the monstrous inhabitants? And will the more emotional crew members on the shuttle mutiny against the dispassionate orders of their leader, Mr. Spock?

Focus on the most successful elements of this episode, and it comes as perhaps the best of classic Star Trek to this point. It is, quite simply, a brilliant idea to put Spock in command. Let him put his money where his logical mouth is. Let's see how he reacts when logic fails to anticipate the reactions of illogical others. Let's force him to reconcile the Vulcan and human halves of his nature. Let's run him through the ringer and see how he acquits himself. And, most importantly, let Spock not always be right in his decisions.

To bring all this out in Spock, he must be surrounded by characters who are falling apart emotionally. But necessary though that is, I feel this is where the episode starts to show some weaknesses. The four potential "redshirts" of this episode -- Boma, Gaetano, Mears, and Latimer -- are all varying degrees of unrealistic. They have weird priorities for survival, a general disrespect for the chain of command in general that suggests they've never been on any mission before, and (in an instance or two) borderline bigoted attitudes.

But the drama unfolding aboard the Enterprise is even weirder. Commissioner Ferris is a naked plot device, offering absolutely nothing helpful and existing only to remind Captain Kirk of the ticking clock in the most annoying way possible. He needles Kirk about the hopelessness of the situation, delights in counting down the minutes left in the search, and generally fiddles (in the form of casually sipping coffee) as Rome burns (in the form of a missing crew facing certain death).

The most maddening thing, though, is that Ferris is 100%, indisputably right about one thing. The mission he wants Enterprise to get back to is delivering medical supplies to another ship that in turn will get them to a planet experiencing a global plague. He has a very good case he could be making to Kirk. Rather than constantly being a heel, he could be empathetic about the missing shuttlecraft while reminding the captain that literally millions of lives hang in the balance.

Though maybe it's for the best that Ferris doesn't bring any of this up... because if he did, Kirk's behavior in this episode would be highlighted as unconscionable. Even if you accept that there's no point in the Enterprise reaching the rendezvous point early (can Enterprise not just keep traveling toward wherever that ship is coming from?), there's no moral defense for leaving that ship hanging with a planet full of lives on the line. Kirk's orders to stretch the deadline by not calling back the search shuttles ahead of time, and to then depart at presumably snail-like "space normal speed," are childish at best, psychopathic at worst. I love that Kirk is a captain who stands up for his crew, but the script for this episode doesn't balance the scales in a way that makes Kirk's actions look noble.

The stagecraft of 1960s television is goofy but charming. Building props in two scales to suggest the giant size of the alien inhabitants is great fun. But the sense of danger is undermined by lumbering Frankenstein-like movement, and the lazy way that "weapons" are lobbed into frame by off-camera stage hands. One bit of 60s production that gets a major facelift, though, are the visual effects. In some episodes of the "remastered" Star Trek, the new effects artists go to great pains to depict something you might imagine was possible if unlimited time and money were available to the series at the time. Not this episode. The roiling quasar, upgraded shuttlebay, and the final flight of the Galileo -- all are well beyond any capabilities of the time. (But hey, they do look good!)

Other observations:

• I'm not sure why half these people would be put on a shuttle mission to survey a quasar, but it turns out to be good that an engineer and a doctor are there. (Maybe this should be Starfleet standard procedure.)

• There's a fun moment when Kirk has to go use the science station because Spock isn't there. But Kirk seems more like he's "listening" to the device that Spock traditionally looks into.

• Aboard the shuttle, you get a healthy dose of 60s TV lightning, with actors casting multiple, massive shadows on the wall behind them.

• Star Trek of this era definitely thinks that every alien planet has to have its own unusual soundscape. This planet sounds distractingly like a transporter in mid-cycle.

• It seems like being able to set phasers to stun would be a helpful way to balance Spock's desire to minimize balance with the need to show force to the aliens. But neither characters nor writers seem to remember that this capability was previously established.

• I believe this might be the first Star Trek episode to implement what would ultimately become a budget-saving common practice: scoring the episode with music from previous episodes. If not the first instance, then it's the first time I noticed it, because they're playing a lot of the "hits" that classic Star Trek fans can hum from memory.

• In the final scene, everyone has a laugh at Spock's expense. Like, a weirdly huge laugh. As in, it's a good thing Spock does suppress his emotions, because a whole room of people is just riotously, uncontrollably laughing at something he said that was not intended to be funny.

I love how Spock is used in this story. Many of the trappings of the story definitely hurt its execution. I give "The Galileo Seven" a B.

Enterprise Flashback: Storm Front, Part II

Fresh off the long Xindi arc of season three, you might be surprised that Star Trek: Enterprise decided almost immediately to wrap up another of its long, ongoing stories. But that's exactly what happened in "Storm Front, Part II."

Trapped in an alternate past, Archer and his team confront the alien Vosk. He claims he will restore history and take the Enterprise crew home to their own time... if they just leave him alone to complete a device that will turn the tide of the Temporal Cold War. But with unexpected help from the Suliban agent Silik, perhaps they can stop Vosk and reset time.

On the one hand, I don't find this episode to be a particularly satisfying wrap-up of the Temporal Cold War storyline. We've seen many gambits by many ill-defined factions before, and even when they're stopped, it's never been "the end." Nothing about this scenario implies things would be any different, aside from maybe (20-year old spoiler!) Silik's death. But then, Daniels apparently comes back from the dead (for the second time) to tell us "it's all over now," so how can we even take that to be real? How can you put a bow on a story that was always vague and malleable? But then, that's exactly the point. Nothing they could have done here would have been conclusive or satisfying -- so why not stop stretching the taffy and just declare in a Nazi-fighting two-parter episode that the series is done with this narrative boondoggle?

So, for the last time, let me stop trying to make sense of the Temporal Cold War episodes, and just enjoy what can be enjoyed. I like that no one ever seriously entertains Vosk's offer; you can't trust someone in a Nazi uniform. The action is off the charts, from a great aerial dogfight over the Manhattan skyline to a big ground assault on the villains' compound. Actor John Fleck must be thrilled that Silik's disguise abilities allow him to appear without makeup for a good chunk of this episode.

This is a fast-moving episode, but it still makes time for more dramatic moments. Travis and Trip both get to react to Archer being alive after all. (In a bit of fun subterfuge, Trip does twice, in fact.) We get a quintessential "Star Trek vision of the future" conversation between Archer and Alicia Travers. And while I wouldn't have pegged Silik as a character who deserves an "emotional death scene," he does get one -- and it plays well enough.

Other observations:

• Alternate history stories almost always posit "the one moment" where events diverged from reality. This episode does so too, telling us an assassination of Lenin in 1916 led to this timeline.

• Silik squeezing through a tiny air vent is one of those visual effects that doesn't really look right even when it probably looks as good as it could.

• The episode is essentially bookended with "archival footage." The teaser is a fake news reel about Hitler, while the wrap-up scene with Daniels takes place in a sort of dreamscape with all sorts of real-world footage and Star Trek clips playing on "TVs" in the background.

Despite some visual thrills, "Storm Front, Part II" is another nonsensical look at the Temporal Cold War. But at least it's the last one. I give it a B-.

Enterprise Flashback: Storm Front

Across the many incarnations of Star Trek, it was fairly common for the first episode of a new season to be the conclusion of a two-parter. It was quite rare for it to be the beginning of a two-parter, as was the case with Enterprise's "Storm Front."

Enterprise has been thrown back in time to Earth during World War II... but it's an alternate history where, with help from mysterious aliens, the Nazis have invaded the United States. Will Enterprise and Captain Archer each realize the other has also been transported through time, and reunite? Can the Nazis be stopped? What does all this have to do with the ongoing Temporal Cold War? What has happened to temporal agent Daniels? And what is the Suliban Silik doing here?

"Storm Front" was both a "part one of two" and a continuation of a cliffhanger. As I noted in my review of the season three finale, the writers didn't just wrap up the season-long Xindi story, they decided to play chicken with the network and challenge the show's possible cancellation by ending the season on a cliffhanger. While the gambit did work, I gotta say: I don't find the idea of this episode to be that compelling. Voyager very much got to "our heroes fight alien Nazis" first with their own two-part episode. (And, with decidedly less "alien" aliens, the original series encountered Nazis too!) If your cliffhanger is going to be just a quick tease like that, I feel you need to tease me with something I don't feel like I've seen before.

But in execution, there are some different elements here. The fact that this is no mere holodeck simulation raises the stakes. The Nosferatu-like appearance of these aliens, combined with their Nazi regalia, paints them as doubly-evil villains. And it's a hell of a thing seeing an image of the White House, one wing gutted, proudly advertising its allegiance to fascism.

(pauses; stares directly at camera)

On the other hand, Star Trek: Enterprise has been going back to the same well a lot when it comes to other aspects of this episode.. We just came off an entire season that featured cliché "villain moots" in almost every episode -- and now we get more between the aliens and the German Nazis. The completely nonsensical nature of the Temporal Cold War has escalated to the point where no story involving it can hold up under the slightest scrutiny. (Seriously, don't even bother asking why Silik is "good" all of a sudden.) This stuff is wearing thin.

So... just try and roll with the action, because (for the umpteenth time) that's what Enterprise does well. An aerial dogfight between a shuttlepod and airplanes is great fun (even if the CG renderings show their age a bit). Archer and gangsters team up against aliens and Nazis -- that's just gratifying on every level. Trip and Mayweather set their shuttle to blow up big when they're about to be captured.

And a few of the less action-oriented moments do land. Alicia Travers' experiences of living in Brooklyn under Nazi occupation don't conveniently omit the overt racism. The concept of an age-ravaged Daniels, subjected to all manner of temporal shenanigans, feels appropriately horrific. The reactions of Porthos to the apparent death, then return, of Archer pull on the heartstrings in just the right way.

Other observations: 

• I don't think we need to bring up again how Vulcans don't believe in time travel. T'Pol is on board at this point.

• Unlike the continuing story of season three, this episode ends with an explicit, on-screen "to be continued." The show is telling the audience that no, we won't be fighting Nazis for an entire season.

"Storm Front" is rather fun, but it also feels like well-traveled ground for Star Trek. I give it a B.

Starfleet Academy: Vitus Reflux

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy continues its first season -- and its exploration of tone -- with its third episode, "Vitus Reflux."

A prank war erupts between Starfleet Academy and the War College. As the Academy cadets struggle to respond, Lura Thok urges Chancellor Ake to shut down the shenanigans. But when it becomes clear other side is getting help from their faculty, she decides to embrace the situation as a teachable moment. Meanwhile, it's tryout time for the school's Calica team, and the competition for team captain gets heated between Darem and Genesis.

Star Trek is not above a fun, goofy lark of an episode. I could point to at least one from almost every series -- and Deep Space Nine in particular did one that feels somewhat similar to this one. But the big difference here is that Starfleet Academy is really making use of the fact that this is taking place at... well... it's right there in the name.

The whole tone of this episode -- yet another big shift from what we got in the first two episodes -- feels akin a college or high school "raunch comedy." Everything stays squarely away from an R rating, but we're otherwise getting the sort of frat house tomfoolery you expect from a Porky's, Animal House, what have you. (Lura Thok uses the exact word for what we're seeing: shenanigans.) This is a genre that no other Star Trek series before this could plausibly approach, because we've almost always been centered on trained, adult professionals. These are untrained, screwball college students -- and it's totally reasonable to expect them to act as such. So while I can imagine online complainers griping that this doesn't feel like Star Trek to them (and well... Google quickly, and I don't have to imagine) I think instead that this is effectively using the backdrop of Star Trek in a unique way.

I can do my best to hold all that firmly on one hand... and with the other, still not be totally in for what I'm watching: the oneupsmanship between Genesis and Darem, goofy mascot costumes, and a climax reminiscent of the popcorn stunt from Real Genius. This sort of cartoonish behavior was easier to go along with when it was happening on an actual cartoon -- Lower Decks or Prodigy. So yeah, I'm a little bit of a hypocrite claiming to be open to something different, but not fully embracing something different.

But there are aspects of the episode I'm more enthusiastic about. Having already clocked Bella Shepard as one of the stronger members of the young cast, I'm pleased to see Genesis take a larger role in this episode. And as different characters paired off for scenes throughout the episode, it was made clear that the characters on this show are quite well-envisioned; when they interact in different ways, there will be a lot of fruitful pairings for storytelling.

And yes, this is Star Trek, and people are learning lessons. Darem had a nice arc for this episode, learning to dial back his "Alpha" personality and making room for other leadership. (We in the audience also learned some of the background for why he is the way he is.) And while you maybe have to squint and tilt your head a bit as you look at it, Chancellor Ake jiu-jitsued a justification of all this pranking as a foundational moral about being in Starfleet.

One final note: I loved learning that Jett Reno and Lura Thok are a couple. More than that, a couple that is able to work together and make it work. Delightful.

I'd give "Vitus Reflux" a B-. But I do want to be clear that even though my marks for each episode have gradually ticked down, I don't feel myself waning on the show already. To me, it still seems very much like they're playing around, figuring out what works and what doesn't. I'm hopeful that we'll start seeing more of the former.

Star Trek Flashback: Shore Leave

With the drunken antics of "The Naked Time," Star Trek showed that it could incorporate lighter, more humorous elements. But that episode was focused on dramatic themes like Kirk's profound sense of duty and Spock's inner torment over being torn between two worlds. Shirtless Sulu with a fencing foil was wild... but seems more grounded in reality than Doctor McCoy seeing Alice and the White Rabbit out of Lewis Carroll. So in my eyes, Star Trek's first true comedic romp comes in "Shore Leave."

The crew of the Enterprise is desperately in need of a break, and the uninhabited planet they've just found seems like just the thing -- until members of the landing party begin seeing all manner of impossible things. From fictional characters to classic airplanes to wild animals, antique firearms and medieval clothing, and even Kirk's Starfleet Academy foe and flame. It seems whatever someone imagines on this planet somehow becomes real... and deadly.

This is Star Trek's first real comedic episode because no one seems to be taking it seriously at any point. McCoy sees life on a supposedly uninhabited planet, but doesn't seem appropriately alarmed. Sulu finds a gun that should not possibly be there, and his first instinct is to just pick it up and start firing it for fun. Kirk encounters a former school bully, and is more interested in fighting him that asking what the hell he's doing there.

They're all so slow on the uptake that even after all that, when Yeoman Barrows shows up with her uniform half torn off by an assailant, Kirk asks if she might be imagining things. Of course, if anyone was reacting to any of this in a realistic way, it would be a horror show, not a light romp. And so we get wild decision making like finding a dress in the middle of nowhere and deciding to put it on. We get McCoy dismissing something as a hallucination even when he knows the person he's with can also see it. 

It's a shame that script is so rough and disjointed, because the production values are sky high for the time. There's extensive filming on location -- at Africa USA and Vasquez Rocks. (Though Star Trek's most famous trip to the latter spot would come later in the season.) An actual lion is brought to the filming. (Also, reportedly, an elephant that wasn't filmed when the shooting day ran long.) And no, the White Rabbit costume that kicks everything off doesn't seem especially expensive-looking... but that may be because all the money had been spent on an armored, mounted knight.

Some aspects of the episode play well. Spock essentially tricking Kirk into going on shore leave is a fun exchange between the two. Kirk's pining for a lost love is an intriguing thing to learn about the character. The fistfight between Kirk and Finnegan is full of some pretty great stunt work (even if you can clearly see that stunt performers have replaced the actors). And if you'd been watching this at the time, in 1966? With all the characters coming and going from one episode to the next, you might have actually believed that Doctor McCoy gets killed halfway through the episode! 

Other aspects of the episode haven't aged well. The soundscape of the alien planet is a constant background drone that sounds distractingly like a transporter. Composer Gerald Fried's Irish jig for the character of Finnegan is a cringe-worthy cliche. (Though not the worst thing Star Trek ever did to Irish people.) Yeoman Barrows' strange interactions with Doctor McCoy reflect a decades-old thinking that a woman can go from being assaulted to feeling flirty in the span of a few minutes.

Other observations:

• When Yeoman Barrows tries to massage the kink out of Kirk's back, he mistakes her for Spock. She must have some serious finger strength.

• In the natural outdoor lighting of this episode, you can sometimes see the true green-like color of the famously "gold" uniforms.

• We seem to be back to "pre-shuttlecraft" thinking. In another crisis where a shuttle would be really handy, they apparently don't exist.

• Not only does the airplane footage clearly come from a different source, but it's not even the same kind of airplane in different shots.

• There is one unbroken camera take where you see the tiger in the same space as the actual actors. And you can also see the chain on the tiger's neck that of course is there.

• When Barrows changes out of the princess dress back into her ripped uniform, it's now ripped on the opposite side.

• Spock behaves in a weirdly suave manner with with McCoy's go-go dancers.

• This is one of many classic Star Trek episodes that ends with everyone on the bridge having a hearty laugh. Though it's not clear exactly what "joke" has been told to spark the laughter.

At some point, if you can make peace with the fact that no one in this episode is going to behave rationally, you can extract some small pleasures from it. Still, I'd say "Shore Leave" is a C+ at best.