Christine: "Do you really think that Starfleet is just gonna waltz on in there, phasers blasting, and obliterate a heritage site?"
Maybe they should have done just that.
At the outset, it seemed like this could be a cool planet story. Yes, we all want Roger Korby to go away, and the technobabble about immortality as ancient technology was dense and hard to follow, but all of a sudden the deflector beams revealed a huge, creepy-looking dark palace and instructions related to blood sacrifice, and dried out dead bodies, the landing party were trapped inside, and our blue guest alien N'Jal became a messy streak on the disappearing floor...
And yet.
In the first two seasons of Strange New Worlds, I couldn't get enough. I loved this series with a passion. Not every story was perfect, but nearly all of them were at least good. And now halfway through season three, I haven't truly liked a single episode. Well, I sort of liked the Q entry, and the holodeck episode was fun, but the show is not feeling right to me. Too much with the horror, perhaps? Too much with the comedy?
Maybe it was the awfulness of what happened to Ensign Dana Gamble, red shirt extraordinaire. This young, enthusiastic medic attained his dream of an assignment to the Enterprise, was thrilled to go on his first landing party, picked up a large orb and smiled like Indiana Jones, and his eyes were burned out, along with his soul.
What made it worse was that M'Benga essentially got punished for encouraging and mentoring another young person, after losing his daughter Rukiya in such a painful way. And yes, space exploration is dangerous. M'Benga couldn't have known. But this wasn't just getting hurt on a mission. Gamble was possessed and killed by pure evil.
(And now I'm thinking, is this the First Evil, another Buffy reference? Beto even referred to the place as something similar to a Hellmouth.)
I did like some stuff. The landing party all in the same room but unable to see each other. Spock figuring out that the cut on his hand appeared before he got cut, and that it meant that the bridge was already there before they walked across it and turned the on switch. And La'an taking Chapel's hand and just walking out into thin air. I would at least have felt for the invisible bridge with my toe.
Okay, now that I'm thinking about it, I also loved Pelia and Scotty saving the day together almost as if they'd rehearsed it. And Pelia hamming it up for Beto's documentary camera.
I also liked the idea that maybe the Gorn are, I don't know, enemies of the Vezda, these evil parasite glowy things? Couldn't we just set them and the Gorn up with a cage match and move on?
Bits:
— Stardate 2184.4. Dana Gamble's first and last log. Archaeological dig on planet Vadia Nine.
— Beto is still making his documentary and still flirting with Uhura.
— La'an told Christine that she and Spock were basically, and I hate the term, f-buddies.
— The eye-fixing visor thingy looked a bit Geordi LaForge-like.
— Like Rukiya, the Vezda are now trapped in the Sick Bay transporter buffer. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of them.
— Seriously, though. Are the Gorn possessed by some sort of evil that opposes the Vezda? Is that why they're heartless alien space sharks and possibly different from the original series Gorn?
Quotes:
Christine: "Captain, we're going to need a bigger landing party."
Christine: "Well, if the door liked me then, it's done liking me now."
Pelia: "I have no scientific way of putting this, but whatever it is, it gives me the heebie-jeebies."
Spock: "Curioser and curioser."
Pike: "Good and evil are relative terms, son."
Pelia: "Nonsense. There is evil in this universe, as sure as there is good. As sure as there is matter, as sure as there is light. I know that being was ancient. Malevolent. The desire to malign, to pervert, and consume, given corporeal form. If any of those things ever escape that well down there... God help us all." (Turns to Beto) "You want one for the camera?"
What did you all think? I'd love a comment or two. Am I completely off base giving it two out of four heebie-jeebies? (Or would that be a heebie and a jeebie?)
Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.
I didn't vibe with this one either, and I'm not entirely sure why. It featured a new potentially interesting villain. It went hard sci-fi with strange time stuff and dimensional shenanigans, and featured all my favorite characters heavily. I don't know, maybe the writing is off.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the writing being off, has anyone noticed that Pike is barely doing anything this season except worry about Batel? It feels almost like Kirk has had more to do this season than Pike, and he wasn't even really there for his featured episode.
I did like almost all of the Spock and La'an stuff. I'm very done with Korby, but might just be because we know where his story ends. I'm not entirely convinced the thing in Batel is a Gorn, it feels almost like something else snuck in during the whole magical flower thing and they just haven't told us yet.
Hmmm, I think a 2 feels right.