loonyblog.

The Graysons, the planned young Robin show that would have replaced Smallville, has been killed.

And there was much rejoicing. It was a stupid idea.

It’s taken me a little while (I actually wanted to wait until after I had watched the entire run of DS9 yet again), but here it is, the fourth part of my series on the entire Star Trek franchise. Part one looked at the whole franchise, part two examined the original series, and part three was all about Next Generation. This one will look at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, otherwise known as The Best Damn Star Trek Show Period.


Yep, that’s right, I’m gonna start this off by throwing a stake in the sand. In my opinion, Deep Space Nine is - by far - the best Star Trek show. It may not have dudes in skirts like Next Generation, or the charm of Kirk and Bones, but what it has in spades is character development, something each of the other shows had to find time for among all the other stuff they had to deal with every week.


It was a side effect of the premise, of course. Being stuck in one place (as opposed to every other series’ problem of having to come up with interesting and original stuff every single week), Deep Space Nine looked inward. We got tons of character development on the show, plus loads of new details about the societies of races that were already pretty well established (Humans, Klingons, Romulans) and even more on the ones that were either slightly established or merely referred to loosely before (Ferengi, Cardassians and Bajorans to name a few). Example: did you know there’s a president of the Federation? There is, and he’s kind of a lame duck during wartime. The funny thing is that a lot of the best known races were completely ignored by DS9. This is a show with only a handful of Vulcans. The Romulans are much better represented here.


With all that time to work on their backstories and motivations, the writers really went to town making the characters shine. In part one, I mentioned that I thought that Odo is the best developed character in the entire franchise…and that’s true. His arc is completely fleshed out over the course of the show’s run…he goes from being a gruff introvert to understanding who he is and where he comes from. His relationship with Major/Colonel Kira isn’t simply tacked on…it’s established early and develops very slowly and believably (unlike, for example, the very clumsy “relationships” on Voyager or Enterprise which were painful to watch).


Commander/Captain Sisko’s arc isn’t quite as complete…his ultimate fate feels unfinished at the end of the series. But the steps along the way are excellent. His early reluctance to take the position on DS9, his long-term (and again, believable) relationship with Kasidy Yates, his relationship with his son (Jake, the anti-Wesley Crusher), and his changing relationship with Bajor all felt right for the character. There are even well-developed quirks like his love of baseball, his initial distaste for the Vic Fontaine holosuite program or his obsession with the traitor Eddington. These all just fit in with the character, and add a dimension sorely lacking from any other Star Trek lead.

But really, virtually every character on the show has his or her moment. Some of the best episodes belong to Miles O’Brien, who was at best a third-tier character on Next Generation. His relationship with his wife Keiko feels completely real (the punchline to “Armageddon Game” is a great little insight into their marriage). Worf does some great growing as a character once he comes on board, Julian Bashir could easily have fallen into cliche territory, but nope, he’s very well developed, with a nice arc of his own (that crisscrosses with the Dax storyline).


If any character is slighted at all, it’s Quark. His storyline is hijacked by his brother Rom and nephew Nog, who each get more of a complete arc than he does. But really, where was his story going to go? Kira is also left without a resolution, but the implication at the end seems to be that she’s the new captain (or colonel for that matter) of the station, so I guess that’s a resolution.


Pinpointing the high point of the entire show is virtually impossible. Probably my favorite episode is “Hard Time” from season five. In this episode, O’Brien is wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to 21 years of virtual incarceration. It represents only a second in the real world, but in his mind, he was in jail for 21 years. What follows is less a story about serving time, and much more a surprisingly raw story about coping with post traumatic stress disorder. It’s a tough episode, and shows what a great actor Colm Meaney truly is.


A pair of Nog episodes are other high points for the series: “Valiant” from season six is a really well written episode about a ship run by overzealous cadets that’s cut off behind enemy lines, and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” from the last season is another excellent PTSD episode (oddly enough), where Nog copes with the loss of his leg by retreating into the holosuite. Aron Eisenberg may not be the world’s greatest actor, but he pulls off this episode well enough, and he’s flanked by some great actors to help carry the load.


Some of my other favorites include, “Badda-Bing Badda-Bang” (the shameless Ocean’s 11 knockoff episode…it’s obvious everyone was having a great time), “The House of Quark” (where Quark goes against the Klingon empire), “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?” (the episode with The Doctor from Voyager, in which we learn of Bashir’s sordid past), “Blaze of Glory” (the resolution of the Eddington storyline) and the series finale, “What You Leave Behind” (which is easily the best final episode of any of the Star Trek shows).


Low points are few and far between, a rarity for any sci-fi show that lasts for seven seasons. The two worst episodes I think are “Move Along Home” from season 1 and “Change of Heart” from season 6. “Move Along Home” is just a stupid episode. This was early on, when the show was having a hard time establishing an identity…it features an alien race that visits the station for the first time and brings along with them a game that they trick Quark into playing. And wouldn’t you know it, while the game itself appears to be played with oddly shaped marbles and Pocky sticks, it’s actually being played by the entire senior staff of the station, who are in mortal danger. Woo. It’s a really stupid episode, particularly because there doesn’t seem to be any actual game here. To the people outside it seems to be played by hitting your Pocky sticks and acting all excited when someone moves a marble from a plexiglass floor to another. But to the people inside the game, it’s actually a bunch of ridiculously easy puzzles? I don’t get it.


As for “Change of Heart”, it’s just a frustrating episode. It focuses on the weakest character on the show - Jadzia Dax - and her relationship with Worf. And while Worf’s side was never in question (Michael Dorn has that role down pat), Terry Farrell never seemed comfortable as Dax, particularly not in episodes like this one that required her to show a range of emotion. It’s also frustrating because you leave this episode thinking that these kids are going to make it, only to have her die a few episodes later.


Another general low point for the series (even if none of the episodes were particularly bad) was its continued reliance on the Mirror, Mirror universe. They dipped into that well one too many times. The episodes aren’t bad by any means, but they’re just repetitive. And it’s a little weird how they had to keep updating the cast of characters in the evil universe to reflect cast changes in the series (although I will admit to getting a chuckle out of seeing Vic Fontaine show up). Mostly what annoys me about them is the character of the Intendant, also known as Evil Kira. She has every evil cliche down pat. Wearing skin tight lycra? Check. Way too much makeup? Check. Overtly sexual? Check. Bisexual? Check. Chews up dialogue in a “sexy” way? Double check. All that, plus a tinfoil headband. By the end it got pretty painful.


The final season of the show, usually a low point for most series, is actually quite good here. The addition of Ezri Dax is a good one (and quite welcome). Not only is Nicole deBoer a welcome addition to the cast, but her character added something to the series as well. Although her presence on away missions was terribly confusing, in truth, it was no more absurd than any of their away missions. What military organization sends the entire senior staff of a major strategic outpost out on virtually every offsite mission? But I digress.


The point I was making, is that the last season is great. The storyline of the series doesn’t conclude until right up to the last episode, so there’s no time for an extra, unnecessary ending. There’s one final scene, and yes, it’s very, very sentimental, but I love that. It doesn’t even feel tacked on, given these characters and the relationships that have visibly developed between them all over the course of the series. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I loved Vic Fontaine. He’s such a stupid character for a sci-fi series, but man, that cat can really swing.


Deeps Space Nine has aged remarkably well. It got a bum rap as the anti-Star Trek series because of the lack of the whole “boldly going” schtick but DS9 did more than any other show to fill in the blanks of the races, characters and universe. If you can stand things like character development and storytelling, this should be your favorite Star Trek series. It certainly is mine.


Next up: Voyager. Ugh. But hey, at least it’s better than Enterprise…

Apparently The WB CW, knowing that the writing is on the wall for Smallville, has started work on The Graysons, a coming-of-age series about a young Dick Grayson in his years before becoming Robin.

Ugh.

Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I mean, Birds of Prey didn’t have to suck, but it did. This? This is just a baaaaad idea. The proposed Bruce Wayne series, now that would have been pretty good. But a show about a young Grayson? Yeesh.

You never know. I mean, maybe it’ll be awesome. But I can’t see it. The kid’s got no powers. He’s just an acrobat!

But I guess we’ll see. Me, I’d probably be happy with a Green Arrow spin-off.

My travel show of choice at the moment is Dexter, the delightfully dark Showtime series about a cop-slash-serial killer. I love it (enough so that I’m reading the book it’s based on), but there’s something really funny going on with Jennifer Carpenter, the actress playing Dexter’s sister Debra. It was driving me crazy as I watched the whole first season over my last few trips, but I finally stumbled on it…aside from the hair color, she looks exactly Daphne from Scooby Doo. Don’t believe me? Take a look:

Okay, maybe I’m crazy. I’m willing to accept that. But if you watch the show, just think about it. There’s something in her eyes that reminds me of Daphne. It’s uncanny. And for the record, lest anyone assume that I’m insulting Ms. Carpenter by comparing her to a crudely drawn cartoon icon, I’d point out that I think Daphne is hot. Always have, always will.

So there.

If you haven’t seen it, the best part of the Battlestar Galactica season 3 gag reel, aside from Edward James Olmos’ serious flatulence problem, is “I Wanna Frak,” the rap song that can be heard over the credits.

Details about this silly bit of frakiness (including the lyrics) can be read on the BSG Wiki, but I was surprised that the song itself wasn’t available anywhere, so I extracted it. You can listen to it below, or click here to go directly to the file.

You can also go watch the whole gag reel, but be warned, there are lots of spoilers for last season.

(And for the record, the best part about the image to the right here is the place I got it from. Well, that and the image itself, of course).

Apparently this has been added to reruns of the recent James Woods episode of Family Guy:

Frankly, I’m amazed Stewie made it through the whole thing. Hell, Joe Rogan couldn’t make it through it! I only made it a couple of seconds, and that was plenty.

This is part three of my look back at the entire Star Trek franchise. Part one was an overview of the franchise and part two looked at the original series. For part three, I’m going to look at Star Trek: The Next Generation, which isn’t just the second Star Trek series, it’s also the template that all modern sci-fi shows have followed.

Next Generation is a strange beast. The show started in 1987, following four successful Star Trek films, including The Voyage Home, a campy, tongue-in-cheek affair that was also the most successful one until 1996’s First Contact. From the outset, the show sent mixed messages. The show presented us with what at first appeared to be a largely humorless captain in Picard…a stern, child-hating man with a rod pretty far up his ass. On the other hand, it was clearly going to take the franchise to new heights of Roddenberry-ism.

By Roddenberry-ism, I mean the sort of heavy-handed utopianism that’s all over Star Trek. All the shows do it (even Deep Space Nine, although they do an excellent job breaking free of the mold), but the premiere of Next Generation (”Encounter at Farpoint“) is simply laden with it.

The plot involves humanity on trial, defending its worst actions against a higher power who has determined the species to be evil. We’ve seen this before already in several episodes of the original series, not to mention the first and fourth movies. And none of that is a coincidence. “Encounter” was co-written by D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry himself. And that’s okay. “Encounter” is a little painful at times…Wesley’s wide-eyed innocence is grating, Q is lacking the humor he would get in later appearances, and generally everyone’s a little stiff. But what cracks me up the most is just how badly they tried to be politically correct.

Image source: NexusTrek

You’ve got a veritable rainbow of a crew, including a Klingon (a Klingon!) showing that in this generation, the federation has managed to bury the hatchet with their enemies, and that women aren’t just limited to being communications officers (oddly enough, this is a position that was phased out) or yeomen. Oh, and not only are the skirts slightly more conservative, but men wear them too.

Yeah. Dudes in skirts.

Thankfully, this didn’t last long. But it cracks me up that someone, somewhere thought this would fly. According to Wikipedia, The Art of Star Trek explained it by saying, “the skirt design for men ’skant’ was a logical development, given the total equality of the sexes presumed to exist in the 24th century.”

Once the series got under way, things got a little clearer. Picard developed a sense of humor, Wesley became a little less grating (relatively speaking) and the show developed into an excellent series. This is largely because the cast and characters (aside from Wesley, of course) were all so likable. Also the man skirts went away.

Only Data has a real arc over the course of the series, and even that’s a little open ended. But generally, my favorite character is Riker. He had that Kirk charm and a real sense of humor to him, and the Riker-centric episodes are always enjoyable. The exception to that rule would be “The Outcast“, the season five episode where Riker falls for the androgynous alien…that one was pretty bad. But episodes like “A Matter of Perspective” and “Future Imperfect” are loads of fun. But really, all the characters are great here, a notable contrast to the later series (particularly Enterprise, with its throughly unlikable crew).

Fans inevitably point to “The Best of Both Worlds” as the series’ pinnacle, but I disagree. My favorite episode is definitely season five’s “Darmok“. This episode was clearly a writer’s episode. It’s a word nerd story where Captain Picard gets stranded on a planet with a member of a race the federation has never been able to communicate with. What’s most remarkable about the script is that after watching the episode, you can go back to those early scenes and actually understand the language they speak. It’s really a remarkable achievement, and one of the high points of the entire Star Trek franchise.

There are lots of other gems…I particularly like “Second Chances” (the twin Rikers episiode), “Reunion” (a great Klingon one, and one featuring Worf’s delightful wife), “The Perfect Mate” (the episode featuring Famke Janssen as the perfect woman, because who else would you cast?) and of course, “Elementary, Dear Data” and “Ship in a Bottle” the two Professor Moriarty episodes. I even like a Wesley Crusher episode…”The First Duty“, the one featuring Wes at Starfleet Academy. Maybe it’s because he’d been gone for a while, so it was easier to take, but I like that episode quite a bit.

The low point of the series - and really, as far as I’m concerned, the entire franchise - is season one’s “Skin of Evil“, also known as “that episode where Tasha Yar dies.” This has to be the lamest death of any major character in any sci-fi show I’ve ever seen. I’m all for killing characters…hell, I love it. I’m even for having her die in a senseless and meaningless fashion. That’s great. But unfortunately the antagonist in this episode looks like a reject from Fraggle Rock. It has zero menace, and while I was able to forgive effects that cheesy in the original series, there was just no excuse for something that lame two decades later. The fact that good stuff came from her death (namely Data’s further understanding of humanity) is a plus, but the episode itself is a complete waste of time.

There are a number of episodes featuring older cast members, and there’s a mixed bag if ever there was one. McCoy’s appearance in “Encounter at Farpoint” is a disaster that’s best left unmentioned, but the Sarak and Spock appearances (in “Unification“) fare a bit better. And then there’s “Relics” a great overall episode that just happens to feature Scotty.

The one major criticism I have against Next Generation is that there was never really any long-driving storyline. But considering how much ground they were breaking by simply being a successful prime-time science fiction series, and how many conventions they were creating on a week-to-week basis, it’s hard to hold it against the show. It is unfortunate that the final episode (”All Good Things…“) is sort of a downer, but at least it left things open for the inevitable movies (even if all of them except First Contact are forgettable).

Next Generation is a great series. It lasted seven seasons, and it the quality never really dipped. It paved the way for Deep Space Nine (not to mention every other sci-fi series since), and completely fleshed out the franchise into the world it is now. It may not be my favorite series, or even my second favorite series, but it’s a heck of a lot better than numbers four and five on that list.

For part two (here’s part one again, if you missed it) in my look back at the entire Star Trek franchise, I’m going to examine the original series.

The original series ran for three seasons, and 79 episodes (80, counting The Cage, although that pilot episode became the much superior two part episode The Managerie). Considering how groundbreaking the series was, and how little they had to work with at the time, the show really holds up very, very well. Had it lasted a few more seasons, there’s no doubt in my mind that it would top Deep Space Nine as my favorite series. But as it is, there just isn’t enough of the show. But what there is, is almost uniformly excellent.

What makes TOS so great is its combination of characters. Sure the secondary characters and guest stars tend to be pretty annoying (particularly in the early episodes, with people like Reily or Yeoman Rand), but the main characters are pretty much all great.

Kirk is my favorite captain because he has such a great combination of strength, good humor and charm. That combination was attempted with both Archer and Janeway, and neither one quite got it. But Kirk was always charming, even when he was being overly manly (as he was in some of the weaker episodes).

My favorite original series episode is definitely For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky. That’s for several reasons. For one, it’s a showcase episode for McCoy, my overall favorite Star Trek character (and unlike in Shore Leave, he actually gets to do something other than stand around and look dumbfounded). But also I love the general plot, which could easily have been ripped right out of Philip K. Dick (people living on the inside of the world, but nobody realizes this until one day someone actually reaches up and touches the ceiling). It’s just good ol’ fashioned 60’s sci-fi at its best, from the title to the conclusion.

Unlike every other series, I don’t really have a least favorite episode of TOS, just some episodes that are generally pretty weak. Arena comes to mind as a particularly silly one, as it offers little more than Kirk at his barrel chested manliest. Also A Piece of the Action is pretty ridiculous, with its premise of a world of 1920s Chicago.

But really, the quality level of TOS is remarkable. You get great episodes like Amok Time, Space Seed, and of course, the Harlan Ellison-penned City on the Edge of Forever. And for all his cartoonish glee, the two appearances by Harry Mudd are welcome as well.

Incidentally, when I rented it from Netflix, I watched the entire run of the series in their initial DVD release, but I’ve just been re-watching them in the new “remastered” format that was recently released on HD-DVD. The HD doesn’t do much here, but the new special effects shots, which I fully expected to hate, are actually kind of nice. They’re limited to just the exterior shots of the Enterprise and other ships, and they look good, and not nearly as out of place as you might think. It’s worth checking out, if you’re a fan.

Coming up in part three, I delve into the first full-length series (Next-Generation), and look back on the many-gendered loves of Riker, cringeworthy Barclay appearances and even men in skirts. Stay tuned.

WARNING: This post violates the rules

Way back in March of 2006, I decide to begin a project of simply monstrous proportions. Having recently (thanks to Netflix) watched the complete runs of Farscape, Angel, Buffy and The X-Files, I decided to turn my attention to Star Trek. I made a pact with myself to watch all of Star Trek. Not just a single episode, or series or movie, but the entire franchise, from start to finish.

Just over two years later, I have achieved that impossible goal. I’d be lying if I said it was easy, but I have watched the entire franchise. Every series, from the original through Enterprise, every movie from The Motion Picture through Nemesis. I skipped nothing. I made it through all of Enterprise, all of Voyager, and through the entire Animated Series, and somehow retained my sanity.

I’ll be posting various rundowns of the whole experience in multiple posts in the future, but first, here are some random stats and quick opinions:

• Total amount of time wasted spent: Approximately 576 hours
• Real world time: 1 year, 11 months, 20 days
• Favorite series: Deep Space Nine
• Least favorite series: Enterprise
• Favorite captain: James T. Kirk (Original Series)
• Favorite character (overall): Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Original Series)
• Best developed character: Odo (Deep Space Nine)
• Worst developed character: T’Pol (Enterprise)
• Most irritating character: Tom Paris (Voyager)
• Best part of an otherwise not-so-good series: The Doctor (Voyager)
• Best movie: Star Trek: First Contact
• Worst movie: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• Most welcome guest star (tie): James Cromwell (TNG, DS9, First Contact), Jeffrey Combs (DS9, Voyager, Enterprise)
• Least welcome guest star: Dwight Schultz (Reginald Barclay on TNG, Voyager)

Lots more to come. I didn’t kill a month of my life just to let this go in one post.