JennyOndioline

It seemed a more humorous affectation than just going "*fist bump* B5 solidarity." Also, it's legal in 37 states!

Anyway, great Leonard Nimoy write-up, I almost teared up again.

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last.fm | discogs

Trollheart

Ok. I guess I'll have to return this ring! Not legal here in Ireland yet, but it's moving in that direction. We have a referendum in a few months.

Thanks by the way: I wanted as I said to do something personal, not just carbon-copy what every major daily and news channel was writing; put down my memories of him and relate it more fully to Trek than any outside interests. I think it came out okay in the end.

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Trollheart

As much as we’ve laughed at some of what I consider to be the poorer episodes in the franchise (plenty more to come!) the bulk of the episodes were really good, and a lot of them were actually great. This would of course have to be the case, otherwise even the original series would not have survived, and Star Trek as a whole contains some of the very best science-fiction, and indeed drama, writing, on television. Some episodes of course stand out head and shoulders above others, and these will be the ones I’ll be looking at here in this section. The times when the writing was spot-on, the acting perfect; plots that moved on or developed an overarching storyline or else stood alone but stood out from the crowd in so doing. The times when you would look at the series and say, yeah, this is what it’s all about. The times you would be proud to be a fan, and wonder what would come next. The times when the series rewarded its viewers and justified its presence on the air. In other words, the times they completely


Title: The best of both worlds, part one
Series: TNG
Season: Three
Writer(s): Michael Piller
Main character(s): Picard, Riker
Plot: The feared enemy the Enterprise briefly encountered in the previous season’s “Q Who”, the relentless Borg, find their way to the Alpha Sector and begin destroying planets as they harvest lifeforms to assimilate. When the Federation opposes them, they assimilate Captain Picard and make him their tactical leader.

Forever the very best episode of TNG --- perhaps of all the series --- this episode reintroduced us to the Borg, a synthetic, robotic lifeform who all operate as one, like a beehive. They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be bargained with, they cannot be defeated. Their ships are huge floating computers in the shape of massive cubes, and they begin to regenerate as soon as they take damage, as the Borg drones set about repairing their vessel. “The best of both worlds” is a two part episode, one of only a handful in TNG, but I prefer the first part as it builds up the tension; at first, we don’t know quite what’s happening on the colony that has been attacked, although this is a mystery that is quickly solved. Then there's the rivalry between Riker and Shelby, who plans to replace him after he has taken command of the new ship he has been offered, but he refuses the promotion.

We also get our first proper look at the inside of a Borg cube, near the end, and learn a little more about them when we see a Borg baby already hooked up to a computer. But our biggest shock is of course the assimilation of Picard, which ends the episode, and the season, as “Locutus of Borg” orders the Enterprise to surrender and escort them to Earth, Riker preparing to fire on the Borg cube.

Rating (could there be any other?):

Title: Devil in the dark
Series: TOS
Season: One
Writer(s): Gene L. Coon
Main character(s): Kirk, Spock
Plot: Something is killing miners on Janus VI and the Enterprise is sent there to investigate. It turns out to be a creature who can burrow through solid rock, but there is a twist in the tale.

There’s so much I love about this episode. One of the first eco-friendly episodes, it takes the whole idea of a ruthless, savage attack and turns it completely on its head. From the title, we’re led to believe that what is on this planet is a horrible, deadly beast that wants to kill, but what we end up with is a mother fiercely protecting her young, and when unable to and they die, avenging them. Spock comes into his own here, the only one capable or open-minded enough to realise that the Horta may not be simply blindly killing, and he initiates a Vulcan mind meld with it --- I believe this is only the second time the telepathic communication is used --- to divine its intentions, eventually creating the framework for a peaceful and profitable coexistence between the miners and the aliens. Even the name of the planet is well chosen --- Janus being the two-faced god of the Romans, and this episode certainly having two sides to its story. The central theme, that we need not always judge a book by its cover and should seek violence only as a last resort, was one that Star Trek in its many incarnations returned to time and again.

Rating:

Title: Living witness
Series: VOY
Season: Four
Writer(s): Brannon Braga, Bryan Fuller and Joe Menosky
Main character(s): The Doctor
Plot: An alien museum in the future hosts an exhibition about Voyager, but it has all its facts terribly skewed. When the Doctor’s program is found and rerun, he sets the record straight but causes controversy as he challenges long-held beliefs.

As ever in this series, it’s an episode with the Doctor or Seven (occasionally both) that proves how good Voyager could be when they really tried. This episode truly stands out, even if its main premise is somewhat hijacked from Babylon 5’s “The deconstruction of falling stars”. Robert Picardo puts in as ever a flawless performance and proves that, like or even sometimes superceding Data, a non-human lifeform can often by more human than an actual one. Although he is only, in this episode, a backup copy of a hologrammatic simulation of a real man, he is still worried about the consequences revealing the actual truth about Voyager and the part the peoples of this planet played in its story will cause, and even at one point accepts he may be tried as a war criminal rather than bring this evidence to light.

Rating:

Title: The Visitor
Series: DS9
Season: Four
Writer(s): Michael Taylor
Main character(s): Jake Sisko
Plot: A young girl, a student who is considering a career in writing, arrives to speak to the reclusive writer, Jake Sisko, who is now quite old. When asked why he only write the one novel, Jake relates the tale of how his father died in a freak accident, or so they had thought. In fact, Sisko was trapped in an alternate dimension and Jake has spent the next few decades trying to bring him back. At the end, he realises he must die in order to save his father. The current timeline is erased when Sisko, on Jake’s advice, manages to avoid the discharge that “killed” him originally. It’s a beautiful little episode, based on a feeling of “what if” and showing the depth of love between the bioy and his son. Tony Todd shines in the role of elder Jake. Given all the Dominion stuff going on from season 4 onward, this is a quiet, personal but extremely poignant and powerful episode that shows why DS9 was regarded as the most mature and creative of the entire franchise.

Rating:

Title: Darmok
Series: TNG
Season: Five
Writer(s): Joe Menosky, Phillip LaZebnik
Main character(s): Picard
Plot: When the Enterprise encounters a race with whom communication appears to be impossible, Picard is transported to a nearby planet by the captain of the alien vessel, and they try to figure each other out, while also teaming up against a savage alien monster that plagues the planet.

An incredible example of how words are not always necessary for communication, somewhat similar in tone to season two's "Loud as a whisper". With gestures, hints and examples Picard learns enough of the language of his adversary to realise that he is not after all being challenged to single combat, but to stand with the alien captain against the monster on the planet. His attempts to understand what is going on, and the denouement, when he eventually returns to the ship and is able to converse with the aliens, are worth watching the episode for alone. A great character piece for Stewart, and the alien captain, played by Paul Winfield, does brilliantly as he tries to explain his language to the annoying human who insists on misinterpreting everything.

Rating:

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Name: Risa
Alignment: Neutral, but a member of the Federation
Home to: Risian culture
Capital city: Nuvia
Orbital star: Epsilon Ceti B

If Ferenginar is a place you wouldn’t maroon your worst enemy, Risa is where the in-crowd go. Officially the holiday planet, it is able to boast controlled weather, which means that there are no nasty surprises waiting for you and you can be guaranteed a good holiday. Risa is also one of the most beautiful planets in the galaxy, having such features as Suraya Bay, where the villas are actually built into the cliffs that overlook the lake, Galartha, a rock face that changes pitch and handholds as you climb, subterranean gardens and Temtibi Lagoon, where it never rains thanks to the weather control.

If casual sex is more your thing though, you’ll go a long way before you find inhabitants as sexually permissive and adventurous as the Risians, who are always ready to make a newcomer feel welcome. Weapons are not allowed on the planet at all, so it’s also a very safe and law-abiding place. Surprisingly enough, Risa was not always the paradise it is today. Originally it could have rivalled the Ferengi homeworld for rain and high winds, and had little to recommend it. But through the employment of a sophisticated weather control system the Risians terraformed the planet and made it into the hot tourist resort it has become known as. Also interesting is the history behind Risa’s transformation, which mirrors the tale of Bugsy Siegal’s creation out of the desert of Las Vegas as the mecca of gambling.

A man named Arlo Leyven, on the run from the authorities, crashed on Risa and immediately saw its potential. He decided to make it the premier tourist spot in the galaxy, and borrowed heavily from the shady Orion Syndicate to finance the building of and use of the weather system that would turn Risa into a paradise and make him a very rich man in the process. He was however assassinated some time later and the planet itself was devastated by the Borg attack on the Alpha Quadrant. It has since been rebuilt and remains one of the most popular destinations in the galaxy for tourists.

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Bulldog

I watched this episode with this girl I was going out with once. She cried at the end of it, and she hated Star Trek before that. Enough said, really. Absolutely classic episode, definitely one of the most moving and thought-provoking works of fiction I've ever come across.

So far as me and Trek go, I'm no hardcore fan, but I do love Next Gen and DS9. Voyager dropped the ball a bit, but had moments which were as good as anything in TNG or Deep Space (Living Witness, which I see you also wrote about, is probably my favourite episode of it). Apart from the Final Frontier, First Contact, Nemesis, the god-awful Into Darkness and the last two thirds of Insurrection, I really like the movies too.

Great-looking journal this...another one of yours I'm gonna need to play catch-up with

Trollheart

Although in general we at The Couch Potato do not tend to concern ourselves overmuch with music, it is perhaps appropriate to look into the various themes and soundtracks that have attended the franchise over the decades, from the very first, original theme by Alexander Courage to the current updated ones for the reboot movies. Therefore I wish now to present to you

At the bottom end of the scale, a theme not too well known --- indeed, a series not that well known either --- but which has a certain charm that appeals to me. It's basically just the original series's theme slightly altered, but I rather like it. So in at

we have

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Name: Jake Sisko
Race: Human
Born: Earth
Assignment: Deep Space 9
Marital status: Single
Family: Captain Benjamin (Father), Jennifer (Mother, deceased), Joseph (Grandfather), Kasidy Yates (Stepmother)
Important episodes: A man alone, The Nagus, Babel, The Jem’Hadar, Civil defense, Explorers, Homefront, Paradise lost, Shattered mirror, Rapture, The Reckoning, Nor the battle to the strong, Call to arms, A time to stand, Sacrifice of angels, Behind the lines, Valiant, The Visitor, Tears of the Prophets, Shadows and symbols.

Quite young when he is uprooted from his home and transplanted to the space station Deep Space 9 with his father, Jakes moans about the inconvenience but soon realises he is in a spot envied by other kids his age, as the wormhole is discovered and he has a front row seat. Even so, Jake is a young boy and he does the things young boys do, ie get into trouble. Most of this is thanks to, or at least with the complicity and encouragement of Nog, Ferengi son of Rom, Quark’s cousin. The captain does not approve of the association, believing the Ferengi to be a bad influence on his son, but despite that --- or probably because of it --- the friendship thrives. Jake is with his father taking a break in the Gamma Quadrant when they encounter the first Vorta and soon after the Jem’Hadar. Jake and Nog manage to alert the station by flying the runabout back to friendly space.

Jake soon decides he does not wish to follow in his father’s footsteps; much more quickly than Wesley Crusher in TNG he comes to realise that a career in Starfleet, although expected of him and basically mapped out for him, is not the path he wishes to tread. Instead he turns his energies towards writing, cataloguing the events that occur at the station and later the unfolding of the Dominion War. Although she dies when he is eleven, Jake gets to meet his mother when she visits from the alternate universe and kidnaps him in order to force Captain Sisko to pursue her there and then help build a replica of the Defiant. Although he finds he has no stomach for fighting, he elects to remain behind when Deep Space 9 falls to the Dominion, in order to report the news of developments and, clandestinely, to help organise a resistance against the station’s occupying force.

In later life Jake became a famous writer, but he only ever wrote one novel. This occurred, however, in an alternate timeline that was destroyed when he managed to prevent his father dying, so whether it really happened or not is unknown.

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Vulcans

Class: Humanoid, pacifists
Home planet: Vulcan
Feature in: TOS, VOY, ENT
Values: Logic, calculating thought, peace, serenity, clear thinking, non-violence
Vulcans of note: Sarek, Surak, Spock, Tuvok, T’Pel, T’Pau

The polar opposite of the Klingons, Vulcans prefer the cold logic of the mathematic equation to the hot blood of the warrior, and are much happier in meditative contemplation than searching for worlds to conquer. Contrary to public belief, they do have emotions but have learned over the millennia to control them to such a degree that it often seems as if they do not have them. It is rare indeed to see a Vulcan smile, laugh, cry or get angry. They consider such “base displays of emotion” to be beneath them, distasteful and embarrassing, and in fact see them as illogical, the very antithesis to the core beliefs on which their society is founded. Vulcans share a common ancestry with the Romulans; both were part of the one race, but whereas one offshoot decided to pursue logic and rational thinking, and expunge emotion as far as possible from their world, the Romulans retained their warlike tendencies and split off from the mother race, making the planets Romulus and Remus their home worlds. Though they are essentially Vulcans, Romulans are shunned by Vulcans as they remind them of the path their entire race was heading down, and are an uncomfortable reminder of how all Vulcans could have ended up, were they not saved by the great thinker Surak and the freedom of logic.

However, because they refuse to show emotion Vulcans are looked on as cold and arrogant. Well, they kind of are: Vulcans don’t think they’re better than anyone else, they know they are. It is pure logic, as far as they see it. If they can resist being prodded, jabbed, angered, goaded where another race --- any race --- would lose its cool, then that makes them better. They’re certainly more intelligent, having devoted so much time to studying philosophy, arts, science and of course mathematics, and they’re not shy about showing it. In fact, Vulcans don’t show off: they simply do what they do and if others think that’s showing off then it means literally nothing to them. Their quiet, unruffled nature of course makes them perfectly suited to be mediators, ambassadors, negotiators. Vulcans however are almost totally pacifist; they abhor violence and even though they possess great physical strength will seldom ever use it. They do have a way of incapacitating an enemy without hurting them, something called a nerve pinch. This causes the subject to drop down unconscious, though for how long is unclear.

Vulcans were the first alien race humanity encountered, shortly after conducting their first warp speed test flight, and therefore the destinies of both races has always been tightly interwoven. Even so, few Vulcans have served in Starfleet, as the idea of military service is seen by the vast majority as a waste of a superior mind. Spock’s father, Sarek, always disagreed with his son’s decision to join Starfleet, and it was a source of bitterness (inasmuch as there can be bitterness between people who control their emotions so rigidy) and distance between them up until Spock’s rebirth after giving his life to save the USS Enterprise. Vulcans seldom intermarry, but Sarek fell in love with a human woman, and married her. This then made Spock half-human, and therefore something of an outcast in his society growing up. Having human heritage did however give Spock a unique insight into humans, and helped him to work better with these emotional creatures.

Despite their logic --- or perhaps because of it --- Vulcans are very spiritual and believe in the resurrection of the body, as well as certain gods. They attend to their mysticism and worship with the same stoic, unemotional dedication they apply to learning, or studying. Women seem to have equal standing in their society, probably because it is after all illogical to differentiate between the sexes, and as Spock points out to his captain at one juncture, they have no egos to bruise. Because emotion colours speech, all Vulcans speak in a calm, unhurried tone and seldom betray any expression beyond perhaps the raising of an eyebrow.

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Trollheart

#1: Spock tells his wife and her lover to fuck off. In traditional Vulcan style, of course!
Spock returns to his home planet to fight for his mate, being in the throes of Pon Far, the Vulcan mating cycle which induces in him a blood fury. He is told by his wife, T'Pring

that there is a challenger for her heart and he must fight for her. He prepares to engage in combat with Stonn, his rival.

But T'Pring is clever; she can choose her champion and she does not choose Stonn, but Captain Kirk, who then has to fight his first officer.

and believing that he has actually killed Kirk, Spock returns to the Enterprise, leaving his scheming wife with the result she wanted. Before he goes though he pwns them both:


"Flawlessly logical", he compliments T'Pring, when she has explained her plan,that "if you won, you would not want me, and so you would leave, but Stonn would still be here. If your captain won, he would not want me and so he would leave, and there would still be Stonn." She inclines her head at the perceived compliment, but I personally believe that Spock was actually insulting her, telling her that she was unable to see beyond logic, as he has sometime managed, and more, has used logic to furnish her with the outcome she wanted.

He then turns to Stonn and says, "She is yours. You may find, after a time, that wanting and having are not the same thing."

ZING! Fuck you, Stonn! You can have the bitch! I am OUT of here! Laters bitches!
Luckily, when he gets back to the ship he finds Kirk is not dead, and loses control of his emotions for a moment. Ah, bless!

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Counsellor Deanna Troi, played by Marina Sirtis

With a new ship, a new series and a new way to look at things, TNG created the position of Ship’s Counsellor, a role that had never existed before. Basically part therapist, part almost nanny to the ship’s crew, it is Deanna Troi’s job to ensure the mental well-being of those who serve aboard NCC-1701D, and most crew members would schedule or have scheduled for them regular sessions. She is also very good with children, as she has to be, with the Enterprise carrying families into space. She is part Betazoid, a race of telepathic humanoids, and her telepathy gives her a unique advantage in her field, as she can sense when people are worried, not telling the truth, hiding something etc. She is however more than just a shrink, carrying the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and a bridge officer. Her talents are too precious to waste and so Picard makes use of them whenever he can. It’s always useful, for instance, to know if the ship facing off against you is actually going to risk opening hostilities, or if the captain is bluffing.

Troi goes down to the surface on away missions more than other female officers; again, she could be vital in any situation, as we see in the pilot episode when she detects the creature at Farpoint and its loneliness. She has been romantically involved with Commander Riker, though this seems to be in the past now. Nevertheless, when they are alone she often refers to him as “Imzadi”, or beloved, and it sometimes seems as if they have unfinished business. In the event though she falls for Worf, helping him to look after his son before he leaves the Enterprise and finds love with Jadzia Dax. In the final “proper” Star Trek movie, “Nemesis”, she is shown as having married Riker. She is a strong female role model, but perhaps mindful of the miniskirt-and-boots era of TOS, the producers of TNG originally give her an unflattering tight bun hairdo and a purple catsuit to wear, before she is eventually allowed to gracefully blossom into an attractive but independent young lady later in the series.

She maintains a close but always platonic relationship with Reginald Barclay, a transporter engineer whose shyness she helps him overcome, and is one of Data’s friends. Picard values her counsel but rarely if ever uses her first name, and of course she is very friendly with the other strong female on the ship, its doctor and chief medical officer; they often work out together and have dinner. She has the dubious distinction of being the only person --- never mind female --- to have crashed the Enterprise and destroyed its saucer section. Her mother in the series is Lwaxanna Troi, played by the late Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who turns up from time to time in the various series. She learns, in the episode “Dark page”, that she once had a sister but that the child drowned, and her mother has or had blocked this memory out so completely that she had managed to convince herself she had only one daughter ever. Deanna’s father was a Starfleet officer, killed in action when she was little.

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