Tag Archive | Star Trek
August 29, 2022  

Some Kinda Moon Jaunt?

This review was originally published via The Classical Mess, a Substack I was doing a few years ago before I found out they gave money to bigots.

There’s a crisp, bracing energy to Star Trek: First Contact (1996) that I will attribute to director Jonathan Frakes. Although he was a film novice, Frakes had a clear and deep understanding of Trek after playing Commander Riker in universe for nine years. He also knew which corners to expand to make everything feel cinematic. First Contact is widely regarded as the best movie featuring the “Next Generation” characters and I’d only argue on one critical point where verisimilitude is lacking.

Zefram Cochrane is a historical figure in Star Trek celebrated for piloting Earth’s first warp speed space flight during the 21st Century, a voyage that facilitated our planet’s inaugural encounter with alien life. These events are threatened in First Contact when machine-based conquerors the Borg travel back in time from “the present” (the 24th Century) and murder Cochrane’s flight crew a day before launch. Captain Picard, Cdr. Riker et al race beyond the clock to help Cochrane, who, as it turns out, has more in common with Dennis Hopper than da Vinci. The “joke” about this aerospace pioneer being a rock n’ roll smart ass goes over like mildew. Cochrane is written in a weak and one dimensional way and James Cromwell doesn’t seem right for the part.

“So you’re all astronauts on some kind of star trek?” he asks our heroes at one point, breaking new barriers in cringe (and cheapening a much more clever title reference in “Next Generation’s” final episode). Paramount originally wanted Tom Hanks to play Cochrane. Could Hanks squeeze life into that line? Could he make the billowing fur coat and leather cap work? That getup is like Blade Runner meets “The Golden Girls.”

The meat of First Contact is with Captain Picard. Years earlier he was assimilated by the Borg into their shared consciousness, an event so traumatic it continues to haunt him. Picard’s struggle is pronounced enough that even a few of his contemporaries in Starfleet question his reliability when engaging the Borg. Patrick Stewart achieves the usual excellence as Picard and First Contact gives him a terrific screen partner in Alfre Woodard. Woodard plays Lily Sloane, a gutsy Cochrane associate who through no fault of her own becomes trapped aboard the Enterprise during a Borg attack. Sloane may be overwhelmed by the situation but she isn’t intimidated by Picard. She dishes out some hard truths he needs to hear when the situation starts getting real hairy.

First Contact has another memorable debut from the Borg Queen, who descends upon the Enterprise and takes a special interest in assimilating Lt. Commander Data. Is this surprisingly human Borg really their queen? Does she control their hive mind or does she only represent it? I think the jury’s still out on that. Alice Krige’s portrayal of the Borg Queen is imbued with a thin benevolence that suggests she might not be entirely evil. Spoiler alert: she is.

A poignant ending caps Star Trek: First Contact, one with hope, wonder, and humor. It could have served as the final ringing note for this lengthy film franchise. Lucky for us, First Contact made enough moolah to propel the adventuring forward. I can assure you no one says “star trek” in the final two installments.

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November 6, 2021  

Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generations

This article debuted in February on The Classical Mess, a newsletter I was creating on Substack until I found out they were doing bad stuff.

“Star Trek: The Next Generation” was that rarest of things — a high quality tv show that actually made money, consistently and over a lengthy span of time. Seven seasons went by and figureheads could brag that “TNG” remained “extremely profitable.” They knew the ride couldn’t last forever, though, so the series concluded and the characters graduated to feature films. There was little wait for the “Trek” devoted; as soon as the masterpiece series finale “All Good Things…” wrapped production “TNG” began work on its theatrical debut, Star Trek: Generations. The movie was released just six months after “All Good Things…” aired in 1994.

Generations didn’t need any gimmicks tying it to the previous dynasty of Trek cinema, but they insisted on two big ones anyway. The film begins 78 years in the past where we witness the death of Captain James T. Kirk as he heroically rescues the Enterprise-B from a mysterious and lethal anomaly. That same anomaly, known in universe as the Nexus, brings Kirk and Captain Jean-Luc Picard together at the end of Generations. Together they must thwart an evil scientist named Saron who is trying to bend the Nexus to his whims at the expense of several nearby planets.

It’s explained that if a person manages to get inside the Nexus it will allow them to experience their dream life. That’s what Saron wants, and Picard, whose emotions are brittle in Generations following personal tragedy, will eventually find himself seduced by what the realm might provide. This has all the makings of a classic Star Trek, and a lot of it is quite entertaining, but Generations has trouble striking the right cinematic tone. Like an oversized coat, some of it fits and some of it is lost to exaggeration.

Director David Carson had never helmed a feature film prior to Generations and he only made a handful afterwards. Yes, the scale gets away from him at times and the movie’s lighting is periodically insane, but Carson deserves credit where it’s due. He gives Klingon antagonists the Duras sisters a compelling sendoff. That sequence is perfect and will make you holler whatever the Klingon word is for “oh snap!”

So what does William Shatner’s rug look like in Star Trek: Generations? It’s pretty good. A fine rug to wear the day you die. And through all that running around and all those fisticuffs, it never slips once, boldly staying where real hair used to grow before.

November 30, 2013  

A Glimpse Into My Gatesgiving

There we were, three fleshy lumps on the couch, the bare minimum of our energies directed toward the television. What else were we to do as we awaited Tom Turkey and all his trimmings? Discuss local affairs? I’m afraid there was just nothing left to say about the bowl of pumpkin-flavored M&Ms that sat on the coffee table before us. Still, we couldn’t suppress every stray thought as BBC America pelted us with reruns of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“Is it just me or are all these episodes really Gates McFadden-heavy?”

“It’s just this one, really.”

“Feel like I’m watching Gatesgiving, not Treksgiving.”

“Did you know she was a Muppet movement choreographer for Muppets Take Manhattan?”

“How could I have possibly known that?”

“Why are we watching with the sound off?”

“You think the visuals are bad, imagine the dialogue.”

“God, I wish she’d stop making out with that Kevin Sorbo-looking motherfucker.”

The Satellite of Love this was not, but we were amusing ourselves, doing our best to prevent Roddenberry-induced comas. The steamed bird did not arrive before the episode where our intrepid late eighties space nuts work out some Robin Hood fantasy to save the Captain’s sexy twenty-something personal assistant from the clutches of that nefarious Q, which of course means I had to watch LeVar Burton play a lute in leggings.

The wounds, they won’t heal.

April 27, 2009  

What The Fuck Is So Random About Kelsey Grammer?

That’s my question for Lev Grossman, who wrote the following passage about his favorite “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode, “Cause and Effect,” in a May 4th Time article that generally concerns the forthcoming J.J. Abrams Trek reboot, but also Star Trek at large:

There’s a lot to love about ‘Cause and Effect.’ The fetching but elusive Ensign Ro Laren is in it. Generous amounts of drive plasma are vented from the starboard warp nacelle—always good. The writers actually give Dr. Crusher something useful to do for a change, and Kelsey Grammer makes an awesome, beyond-random cameo as the captain of the other ship.”

Now hold the phone there, Tex. Just what the fuck is so random about Kelsey Grammer? Kelsey’s been a working actor since at least the early 1980s. He was definitely a working actor in 1992, the year “Cause and Effect” was produced. In fact, one could accurately state Grammer was at the height of his fame that year as beloved barfly psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane on “Cheers” (the following year marked the beginning of his eleven year run on the spin-off “Frasier”). So I really don’t see how “Star Trek” hiring one of the most popular sitcom actors of that era is even slightly in the neighborhood of “random,” let alone “beyond-random.”

You want “random” for a “Star Trek” captain? How about a toaster? How about a Kodiak bear? How about a toothpick or a diaper or a can of fart spray or a cardboard cutout of Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas? How about something that isn’t a working human actor whose credits include “The Simpsons” and “Another World?” I mean, shit, it wasn’t like Kelsey Grammer was just walking by the Paramount lot when he accidentally tripped, fell into a costume, learned a bunch of lines, and ended up in front of a camera. A pile of uncooked hot dogs? The keys to Brent Spiner’s Honda? Yes, I’ll accept those items as totally “random” Starfleet Officers, but not Kelsey Grammer, a PROFESSIONAL ACTOR and “STAR TREK” FAN who had to be BOOKED and PAID to appear.

While I’m busting your chops here, Lev, I’d also like to take you to task for using that awful “wait for it” gag TWICE in one paragraph. “Wait for it” really only works in spoken dialogue. You’re building suspense for the listener. They will indeed have to wait for the crazy information you’re about to lay on them. They cannot make you speak faster. Your mouth is an instrument only you can control. In print, “wait for it” is just a cutesy pile of vomit that gets in the way of the narrative. I am not going to pause and ready myself for whatever insane fact awaits me in the next part of the sentence. I’m just going to damn you for wasting my precious time with trendy garbage slang that belongs in a sassy pre-teen conversation about Zac Efron.

And yes, Lev, isn’t it just completely fucking insane that “Enterprise” star Scott Bakula was once on “Quantum Leap?” Oh, no, wait—that isn’t completely fucking insane, not at all, because “Quantum Leap” was the most high-profile shit Scott Bakula ever did. Nothing he’s ever appeared in before or since has been more popular—not that football movie he did with Sinbad, not his role on “Murphy Brown,” not his high school turn as the lead in “Godspell.” In the words of Amy Poehler, really? That’s your reveal? Some shit me and my Grandma already knew for over a decade? If your article were an actual real-time conversation between the two of us and that little nugget of info was prolonged with a “wait for it,” I probably would have gone semi-Christian Bale on you. Next thing you’re gonna tell me is the guy who played Urkel doesn’t really talk like that! HOLYFUCKINGSHIT!

As for your prediction that this new Star Trek won’t have a “sense of intimacy” or be both “brilliant and ridiculous,” I guess you haven’t seen the following trailer:

Robot cop, that little kid’s hair, that little kid’s line, James Dean Biker Kirk, Uhura’s granny bra, Crazy Action Suit Sulu—all brilliant, all ridiculous (intimacy quotient pending). How could they not have you at Thelma & Louise Convertible Death Wish Nine Year Old?

Sorry if this all seemed a bit harsh, Lev. I guess I’ve been a little touchy since the Hipster Grifter randomly stole my—wait for it—“Quantum Leap: Season 1” DVD that was autographed by Scott Bakula! It was right underneath my—wait for it—framed photo of Kelsey Grammer! That’s random beyond Thunderdome!