Monday, June 16, 2014

Star Trek: S1E1 The Man Trap second thoughts

I'm going to keep this one short, because I'm still running off of Jurassic Park energy and I'm sure I'll fall back into talking about that movie if I type for too long. I said I'd be fair to Star Trek, so let's see how I did.

Yeah, it's an old show. The primary-color costumes are bland, the ship interior is weirdly blocky. I'm going to have to get past that and accept that Star Trek won't be about showing me things. That's fine, really; I can use a break from incredible sights and sounds.

This was a good episode to get introduced to our cast of six characters. Captain Kirk is instantly likeable; the only thing that gets him out of joint is the death of the men in his command, and that's pretty valid. Beyond that he seems to have good relations with Dr. McCoy and, by inference, Mr. Spock. I'm going more by what Uhura (thank you Rachel) said there than anything I saw on screen but I'll give it time. McCoy's a classic older grump experiencing some nostalgia and starry-eyes, helped along by an illusion. Seems like a no-nonsense type, excepting when he's all about the creature's nonsense. Spock is a cold fish through and through, but I like that we get an immediate sense that he's an alien not just through the ears and the reference to his home planet being not Earth and having no moon, but also where the creature can't kill him because he doesn't have human blood.

The second string has Uhura, who it's interesting is called out not for her race but for her specific ethnicity or cultural group - the creature entrances her by speaking in her own language. It's implied earlier in the episode that she's new to the ship, and she tries making some flirtatious overtures to Spock, who's an alien but looks white. I feel like for the time that was a boundary being filed away. No clue what her job is (apart from the doctor and the captain I'm not sure of anyone at this point, though Mr. Spock seems like the first mate) but she's in the captain's area of the ship I know there's a word but I don't have it in my brain right now. Point is, I can see the strokes of the show trying to do better than the standards of the time, and I appreciate that.

Sulu and the blonde lady round out the second string. I know they gave her a name in the episode but I have no idea what it was. She's got an odd job, although going around delivering food trays might not be her actual job but instead something she was doing as a courtesy, I suppose. Sulu is an articulate Asian fellow without a trace of the ridiculous accents that I know Hollywood used to love slapping on Asian actors. I don't know what country he's from, but I thought he might be another human-looking alien like Spock when he said something about the Great Bird of the Galaxy and I'm sitting here thinking "that sounds like the stupidest thing, I hope he's from another planet." I don't know Asian cultures but I'm pretty sure galaxy birds appear in no religion on this Earth. He, too, has a job in the top floor, and given that out of six main characters two are nonwhite in this era of storytelling and are also not there to get stereotyped (that I've seen. Things could go sour) I'm optimistic that even if it won't look progressive from where I'm standing, I will at least be able to see how it was progressive given the circumstances.

Now let's talk show. The salt vampire is a weird plot, and its accomplice is a real twerp. The consistent gesture to show which person was playing the disguised creature was a good touch, but I was confused by how it had multiple appearances at the same time when they first ran into it, but later took on one appearance at a time like a shapeshifter. That's inconsistent. They made no bones about what was going on. It wasn't a mystery at all. The plot wasn't the most effective by any stretch of the imagination, but I appreciate that I was being treated to an idea of what the show wants to be - weird creatures, laser gunfights in exotic locales, a few character moments. What else it will be, I have no idea, but despite the cheesy qualities it was quick and fun. I'm a bit more optimistic now about boldly going where many Jeremys who are not me have probably already gone.

From here on through, I'll be doing just one post per episode. They definitely don't have enough meat on them to keep doing two; if I hadn't been talking about the characters this would have been one paragraph long.

16 comments:

  1. My advice to you... just to keep you interested, would be to watch the "Space Seed" episode, and then immediately after that watch the film Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.

    Khan is, without a doubt, one of the best movie villains of all time. He will look a bit silly (as everything does in the original show) at first, but by the time of the movie that picks up his plot thread, you will be enthralled. There are also some themes that touch upon classic western literature that you'll be impressed with.

    Bottom line, I can see you getting way burned out on trying to watch/analyze the classic Trek TV series, and I think that maybe just a few selected episodes would give you the gist of it while giving you an intro to one of the true great classics of science fiction cinema. I hope this helps!

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    1. This is my feeling as well. Though maybe a few more episodes than that... I'd definitely recommend at least Balance of Terror, The Trouble With Tribbles, and maybe one or two others.

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    2. Thanks for your support in this great experiment, Rachel. ;)

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  2. Classic Trek is a hard sell, and to be honest it isn't where I'd say to start watching the franchise. But, since you are you should keep in mind that it was made on a shoestring budget (even for the time) and during the first two seasons they were still mostly figuring out things about their setting. So uniforms will change from episode to episode, technology will be inconsistent, and while many episodes will be laughably bad, there are quite a few standout gems. Good luck.
    -J-

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  3. Kirk: Captain
    Spock: Science
    Uhura: Communications (space receptionist!)
    Sulu: Pilot
    Dr. McCoy/Bones: Doctor
    Scotty: Engineer
    Later...
    Checkov: Pilot/Weapons

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    1. Chapel : nurse
      Rand: blonde female yeoman
      Hadley : navigator and helmsman. 63 episodes and he never gets any lines, but he sits next to Sulu when Checkov's not present (even in the later episodes of Season 3)

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  4. Sulu is from Earth-- specifically, I think he was born in San Francisco. His first name, Hikaru, is Japanese, the actor who plays him here, George Takei, is Japanese-American, and the actor who has played him in the recent movies, John Cho, is Korean, but his specific extraction has never really been specified (though I believe he is meant to be of mixed heritage.)

    Uhura is the communications officer, Spock is the science officer (and second-in-command), and Sulu is the helmsman. There are also two more main characters you have not yet been introduced to in this episode, Chief Engineer Scott and Navigator/Tactical Officer Chekov, and a couple of other recurring ones.

    I don't know what was up with the "Great Bird of the Galaxy" thing either, except that I know it was a nickname of series creator Gene Roddenberry.

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    1. Definitely mixed heritage. 'Hikaru' is a Japanese name, but 'Sulu' isn't; I forget what it is precisely -- Indonesian or something.

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    2. It's a part of the Pacific in between Indonesia and the Philippines.

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    3. I think Sulu is a Filipino name, but I'm not certain.

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  5. (Oh, and I think they explained it in the episode, but you might have overlooked: The Salt Vampire wasn't a shapeshifter so much as using its hypnotic powers to make people see it as what they expected to.)

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    1. Oh is that it! I know they mentioned some kind of hypnosis to catch people and keep them still while it fed, but I suppose I'm overthinking it anyway. :D

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  6. The lack of impressive visuals is limited to the original series. All the movies and the subsequent series were made after Star Wars revolutionized the industry (in fact, most of the movies had their effects done by ILM, who originally did Star Wars) so there will be more impressive stuff later on.

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    1. They were actually in preproduction on a second series called STAR TREK: PHASE II when STAR WARS hit, and shifted direction to make films instead (the first came out in 1979, two years after STAR WARS).

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  7. If you're only doing one post per episode, I suggest making it more of a recap instead of a liveblog, because for lots of these episodes I'm not going necessarily remember what happened in the show that you're responding to (or I might never have seen that episode).

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    1. That's what's going to happen. I think it's a better format for TV.

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