And this is where our story begins. And so it continues.

There are very few Star Trek episodes you could point to and identify as moments where everything about the franchise simply changed, mostly because there are very few actual moments like that anywhere. History does not divide neatly into clean, compartmentalized bits: It’s a constantly unfolding tapestry of intersecting lives and events.

“The Magicks of Megas-Tu” is one of those moments. Magick is real.

In the time of the First Ancestors, when the world was new, there was a Spark at the beginning of All Things: A barely-formed thought that dared dream. The Dream the Dreamer Dreamt was the mortal plane, the idea that things continued and shaped themselves as they would. In this Dream, divinity existed within and between each individual. And this was a very dangerous idea.

Conventional cosmological wisdom holds that the further away we can look into space, the further back in time we see. This is because the speed of light is a constant, thus the light we observe from a fixed location has taken us an equal amount of time to reach us as the distance it is away from us. Thus, the furthest, most distant objects are by definition the oldest. This is the line of thought Captain Kirk muses on as the Enterprise travels to the centre of the galaxy, supposedly the region of space closest to the origin point of cosmic history.

Star Trek fan lore perports that the entire franchise takes place within the boundaries of the Milky Way Galaxy, with very few excursions beyond (the events depicted in “By Any Other Name” and the two “…Have Gone Before” stories are the most frequently cited: “Beyond the Farthest Star” is typically not accounted for in this accounts). Even Star Trek Voyager, as removed as it is from 24th century politics, still only takes place at the other end of the galaxy, not somewhere outside it. The Star Trek universe, then this version of events holds, encompasses only the “known space” of the Milky Way Galaxy.

There is a certain line of thinking within cosmology that the universe simply could not have come into being out of nothing during the Big Bang, as the idea of something spontaneously emerging from nothing is simply incomprehensible. A more helpful thesis, this account goes, is that the Big Bang is the dividing point between two universes, and that universes exist in a constant, repeating cycle of expansion and contraction.

The Enterprise and her crew approach the center of the galaxy. The closer they get, the more and more the laws of physics seem to break down. All the ship’s systems cease to function.

Current quantum physics theory posits there are at least eleven dimensions of space-time. This hypothesis is a response to a kind of particle behaviour known as “quantum tunneling”, where particles appear to disappear from one location and reappear in another. The theory goes they’re not phasing in and out of existence, but travelling in higher dimensions that humans cannot measure.…

Continue Reading

“I give you…SPOCK!”

“The Infinite Vulcan” is Walter Koenig’s sole contribution to the Animated Series, and if absolutely nothing else it’s solid evidence Star Trek’s cast by in large tends to have a good idea about what the franchise’s virtues are, whether or not other creative figures do. Koenig was actually working on this script as early as the end of the Original Series, and it was one of those things that D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry thought would be a great idea to dig up as soon as the new show took off, just like “More Tribbles, More Troubles”.

The plot is one of the stranger ones we’ve seen so far in the Animated Series, and that’s counting the one about the giant space-cloud-cow that eats solar systems that the Enterprise tries to give indigestion. While exploring an uncharted planet, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sulu discover a civilization of hyper-intelligent sentient plants called Phylosians. While they at first seem friendly, reviving Sulu after a chance encounter with local toxins, it is soon revealed they have ulterior motives as they kidnap Spock at the behest of their “Master”, a fifty foot tall clone of a former Eugenics Warlord by the name of Stavos Keniclius 5. Keniclius is determined to forcibly impose peace on a what he considers a galaxy in turmoil, and in Spock’s mastery of Vulcan logic and human emotion and intuition he sees the perfect model by which to base his new society, so he steals his brain and makes a fifty foot tall clone of him to help rebuild the Phylosians’ space fleet.

A…controversial episode, to say the least, I definitely think “The Infinite Vulcan” is working through some very interesting ideas. Just like last week, the Animated Series is picking up abandoned ideas from the Original Series (and ones that it was a mistake to abandon in my opinion) and trying to take them further. However, also like last week, “The Infinite Vulcan” is held back by a lot of missteps that make it feel less then effective, and there’s a general sense of “been there, done that” about the proceedings. In this case, the closest analog is naturally “Patterns of Force”, which shares this episode’s attitude towards liberal authority and top-down pacifism. Keniclius is depicted as being very much in the wrong for taking up the mantle of imposing peace throughout the galaxy, and the episode’s best moment comes when Kirk essentially asks him why he thinks he has the right to do that. The problem is, this time the script completely fails to offer any kind of solution or alternative. The whole point of “Patterns of Force” was denouncing what Kirk comes right out and calls “the leader principle”. Anyone who aspires to a position of power by definition thinks they know better than everyone else, and that’s wrong.

But “The Infinite Vulcan” doesn’t come anywhere close to following up on this. Instead, Kirk’s debate with Keniclius (and later Kaiju!Spock) flounders around a lot and doesn’t seem to have any actual premise aside from “what you’ve done to Spock is mean and bad” and eventually ends up at “Keniclius is out of touch and doesn’t realise the Federation already has peace”…which is basically the opposite of the point of “Patterns of Force”.…

Continue Reading

“Wait…Haven’t we done this already?”

On the surface, there’s not a whole lot interesting going on with “The Survivor”. Answering a distress signal from a one-person starship, the Enterprise crew is thrilled to discover it’s registered to Federation philanthropist and hero Carter Winston, missing and presumed dead for five years. As it happens, Winston’s fiance is aboard the ship: Eager to resume the relationship she goes to meet him, only to have him break her heart by saying he’s not the same person he was when he proposed. It quickly turns out that Winston is quite literally not the same person anymore, as he is, in fact, a shapeshifting alien Romulan operative who goes on to assume the forms of Kirk and McCoy to divert the Enterprise into the Neutral Zone, giving the Romulans have a reason to justify impounding the ship so they can reverse engineer it. Similarities immediately appear between this episode, “The Enterprise Incident”, “The Man Trap” and any one of the million billion other evil twin stories Star Trek has done for the past decade.

And exasperation is a not entirely unwarranted reaction, as this is definitely one of the weakest Animated Series episodes we’ve seen yet. The evil duplicate plot is, predictably, stultifyingly boring, but thankfully the show doesn’t linger on it that long and the crew figures out what’s happening pretty quickly, so there’s a minor plus. I’d really appreciate it if this franchise never did one of these stories again, but I suppose if it must it’s nice to see it somewhat self-aware and willing to address some of the inherent flaws with this kind of plot. The Romulans are, of course, wrong: Sending in spies to clandestinely violate the peace treaty with the Federation is behaviour in keeping with Star Trek: The Next Generation-era Romulans, but not the Romulans as we see them at this point. Of course, nobody except D.C. Fontana and Paul Schneider have ever gotten the Romulans actually right, so that’s to be expected…Except for the fact one of those people is the current showrunner and therefore a person one would expect might have been in a position to catch this. Really, you could have replaced the Romulans with Klingons and the episode would have been just as effective, if not a bit more so: They’re generic baddies (and indeed the Romulan ships shown here are, in fact, Klingon).

Although that said the actual Romulan Commander we get to interact with (who astonishingly still doesn’t get a name: Seriously, say what you will about Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Romulans-they at least had the decency to name them) is terrific. His exchanges with Kirk are delightfully snarky and self-aware. My favourite exchange in the whole episode comes here, where the Enterprise is first surrounded by Romulan battlecruisers:

ROMULAN COMMANDER [on viewscreen]: You appear to have a propensity for trespassing in the Neutral Zone, Captain Kirk.

KIRK: It was not deliberate, I assure you.

ROMULAN COMMANDER [on viewscreen]: It never is.

Continue Reading

The absolute pinnacle of limited animation.

Making a sequel to an Original Series episode is a self-evidently obvious thing for the Animated Series to be doing. Doubly so when the episode in question is “The Trouble with Tribbles”.

I don’t think there’s any disputing the fact “The Trouble with Tribbles” was the moment at which Star Trek secured its immortality. It’s pretty much the definition of “iconic” and an absolutely perfect bit of television. No questions asked. In fact, perhaps the most damning evidence the season three team simply didn’t understand Star Trek is to be found in Fred Freiberger saying “The Trouble with Tribbles” was too silly a thing for the show to be doing. But that said there’s danger in revisiting a story like this: There’s a significant risk that, in doing so, the sequel will inevitably cheapen the original’s impact and retroactively damage its reputation. Sequels simply are not as good as their source material, and I’m comfortable making that a firm declaration. There are rare exceptions of course and serialized, episodic stories are another matter entirely, but as a general rule that’s frankly the way it is.

Things look pretty bad for “More Troubles, More Tribbles” then. However, this is no ordinary sequel: For one, Dave Gerrold is writing again (and mercifully back in what’s familiar and comfortable territory for him this time) and then there’s the matter of this being planned for the third season of the Original Series. “More Troubles, More Tribbles” was not meant as a cheap cash-in on the popularity and legacy of the Original Series’ most beloved episode for the low-budget animated spinoff, it was a follow-up the original writer wanted to write, and for the “proper”, “grown-up” show to boot. Gerrold was one of the first people D.C. Fontana called when the Animated Series was greenlit and, as the two had become friends, basically told him “and the first thing you’re doing is writing that Tribble episode you wanted for the third season”. And so it was.

But even so, there’s an inescapable sense of…sequel-ness about “More Tribbles, More Troubles”. The Enterprise is escorting two robot ships loaded with special quintotriticale grain (it’s like quadrotriticale, except quinto) to Sherman’s Planet (of course) and they have to be on the lookout for the Klingons (of course) who are rumoured to be testing a new super weapon. Eventually, they run into some: A Klingon battlecruiser is pursuing a Federation scout ship and relentlessly pummeling it with disruptor fire. As this is in violation of treaty, the Enterprise moves to intercept and Kirk demands a cease fire, which is soundly ignored. A couple more volleys of words and gunfire and the scout ship is destroyed (though not before Scotty manages to rescue the pilot and cargo) and the Enterprise gets whacked with the Klingon’s new weapon, a projected stasis field that immobilizes all higher level energy functions on a starship, but drains a massive amount of power from the user’s own ship. The pilot turns out to be Cyrano Jones (of course) carrying a cargo of Tribbles (of course) genetically engineered to not breed (of course).…

Continue Reading