Geek of the Week

Name: Reed T. Paulson
Age: 22 (in Vulcan years)
Blue pill or red pill? Blue pill
Pet Peeve: Still can’t get over the fact that they cancelled Star Trek: The Animated Series (the glommer was so cool!)
Career: Works part-time as a soccer goal post on Saltspring Island
Fannish Claim to Fame: Creator of Odo/Neelix fiction
Favorite Book: Star by Pamela Anderson
Favorite TV Show: Baywatch (but only the Pamela Anderson years)
Favorite movie: Barb Wire
Best Pick-Up Line: You’re almost as hot as T’Pol!
Worst Pick-Up Line: You’re almost as hot as T’Pol!
Secret No One Knows: Still lives in his parents’ basement (didn’t have the heart to move upstairs after they died)

text by John W. Herbert
Photoshopped by Karl Johanson

Star Trek: Generations

Kirk, Scotty and Chekov are on board attending the launch of the Enterprise B when the ship is forced to respond to a distress call. A couple of ships have been caught by a strange ribbon of electromagnetic energy (the nexus). For the fourth time in seven movies, the Enterprise is the only ship in position to respond to this distress call. (For the third time in seven movies, the Enterprise is still in Earth’s solar system when the call comes in. Doesn’t Starfleet keep any other ships in the neighbourhood?) The Enterprise responds and saves some of the people (including Guinan and Dr. Soran) on board the ships caught in the nexus, but an energy bolt from the nexus vaporizes a portion of the Enterprise and, presumably, Kirk along with it.
Flash forward 78 years. The Enterprise D receives a distress call from a solar research station, while Captain Picard receives some distressing personal news. His brother and nephew have been killed in a fire. Meanwhile, Data has decided it’s time to install the emotion chip that will allow him to experience emotions for the first time. The Enterprise discovers that the Romulans have wrecked the station, leaving among the few survivors, Dr. Soran. But after further investigation on the station, LaForge and Data discover that Soran has built a weapon that will destroy stars. Soran returns to the station and fires his weapon at the local star, and escapes thanks to some Klingons he has been working with.
Guinan explains to Picard about the nexus, and how she and Soran were in the nexus but plucked out just in time by the Enterprise B. The nexus is a place of joy and harmony, she says, and that everything you could want was there. Picard and Data realize that Soran is blowing up stars to alter the course of the nexus so that it hits a certain planet, where Soran will once again enter the nexus, this time permanently. Unfortunately, the next star he needs to blow up will kill hundreds of millions of people.
Picard beams down to stop Soran, while the Klingons duke it out with the Enterprise. This time, the Klingons manage to fatally injure the Enterprise before they themselves get blowed up. The Enterprise crashes on the planet. Picard cannot stop Soran who launches a rocket that blows up the sun, and alters the course of the nexus to the planet and it absorbs both Picard and Soran.
Picard finds himself having Christmas dinner with his wife and kids. Except he doesn’t have a wife and kids. He realizes this is some sort of illusion. Guinan appears, and explains that she is but a shadow of the real Guinan left behind when the Enterprise B’s transported her away. She tells Picard that he can leave and return to anytime he wishes. He wants to go back and stop Soran, and Guinan suggests there might be someone here who can help him: Kirk. Picard convinces Kirk that all in the nexus is an illusion, and together they return and defeat Soran, but at the cost of Kirk’s life. Picard returns to his all but destroyed Enterprise, and gathers a few effects, and leaves. The End.
This film has serious problems. The opening prologue on the Enterprise B is great; brisk, fast-paced and exciting. The first scenes in Picard’s timeline, involving a promotion ceremony for Worf, are also well done, but after that, with the exception on the spectacular crash sequence, the film’s pacing somehow goes off-kilter and it drags terribly in some places. The movie plays like a tv episode (I was waiting for a preview for next week’s movie at the end), and the constant alternating between an emotive scene, then a bit of action, then a bit more emotion, then some action, kills the momentum this film desperately needs. It seems to take a lot of time to get nowhere, and many things are tossed in for no apparent reason than to kill time. The Klingons, for one, could been cut and no one would have missed them.
Another major problem here is that most of the important plot points have all been done in previous Star Trek movies:
- the death of a major character;
- a madman on a deranged/spiritual quest;
- the old “give the unemotional character emotions and play him for laughs” routine;
- the old “blow up the Enterprise” routine;
- the old “kill off part of the captain’s family” routine, or, more specifically, kill off the younger generation of the captain’s family so the captain can emote and wax philosophically on the nature of life, death, blah, blah, blah;
- a strange unexplainable interstellar phenomenon causing havoc and destruction;
- and Klingons running amuck.
Data even rescues his cat, à la Alien. In addition, we’re treated to two hackneyed TNG clichés: the “alternate universe/timeline,” much overused in the last season of TNG; and Geordi shouting that’s there a warp core breach as the Enterprise begins her death throes. (Geordi saying, “Coolant leak! We have a warp core breach!” should be added to the TNG drinking game.) In fact, the Enterprise crew’s memory is slipping: Geordi doesn’t order the warp core ejected, a trick he’s done numerous times in the past; and when the Klingons discover the Enterprise’s shield frequency and blast a photon torpedo through them, no one thinks to change the shield frequency, another trick they’ve done numerous times in the past. (Of course, the Klingons are no better -- when the Enterprise finally gets off a good shot, they just sit and watch it come towards them. Hardly the sort of thing a warrior would do.)
Another major disappointment is the long-awaited meeting between Kirk and Picard. During their initial meeting in the nexus, the film picks up considerably, but upon their return to reality, the climatic fight scene is poorly staged, sloppily edited, and, quite frankly, an embarrassment. Ultimately, their encounter is giving short shrift and the very thing that should have made this a very special movie instead marks another disappointment. In fact, most of the supporting cast is barely seen after the opening scene: Worf and Crusher seem to have disappeared completely, Troi has very little to do, and Riker spends most of time stoically barking orders. Data, at least, gets to steal some scenes with emotion chip subplot, but even that started to wear thin. Malcolm McDowell makes the most of the thankless role of Soran, but even he as the villain has surprisingly little to do.
This week’s episode, er um, I mean this movie’s plot hinges on the mysterious nexus, and it is here that it opens holes big enough to fly a Klingon Assault Group through. If “part” of Guinan has been left behind, is part of Picard left behind? Or Soran? Or Kirk, for that matter, to be revived for the next movie? In the nexus, how come Guinan is able to find Picard? Why couldn’t Soran find him? (A neat scene would have been Picard fighting an intellectual battle with Soran in the nexus, and Kirk fighting the physical battle with Soran outside the nexus. Oh, well....) If Picard and Kirk can exit the nexus at any time, why do they choose to do so at a time when Soran still has all the advantages? Why not earlier on in the proceedings when they have the advantage over Soran? Or why, when it was obvious that Kirk was fatally injured, didn’t Picard just let Soran win again and re-enter the nexus, meet Kirk again and take another go at Soran? The could’ve tried any number of times until they got the result they wanted. (Why wouldn’t Kirk go back and try to save Edith Keeler? Or even back to his own time? Or back to his own time and leave Soran in the nexus? Why wouldn’t Picard go back and make sure the Borg never take him over?) The nexus is implied as the cause of Guinan’s strange “sixth sense.” Will Picard, having undergone the same experience as Guinan, now have this same strange awareness? Don’t hold my breath. Soran is blowing up stars to force the nexus to arrive at a certain planet because, we are told, that ships get blown up if they too close to the nexus; yet we’ve already seen earlier in the film Kirk, Guinan and Soran enter the nexus from ships! The nexus passes through the planet and leaves it unharmed. It blows up ships, but leaves planets intact! Soran is using a chemically powered rocket to deliver his technobabble payload to the sun. It takes only eleven seconds for this rocket to go from the planet to the star! He’s created a faster than light chemical rocket! And the sun blows up instantly, none of this waiting around a few minutes for the light of the explosion to travel back to the planet (physics is so damn annoying, anyway).
Star Trek: The Quest for Bucks continues. The once mighty franchise is now in the hands of people who only care about delivering product, not satisfying entertainment. They believe that mindless Trekkies will watch any mindless pap that appears before them. Trouble is, they may be right.

Originally published by Under the Ozone Hole Number Ten – December, 1994

The Transformed Man by William Shatner, and Mr. Spock's Music From Outer Space by Leonard Nimoy

These legendary albums, both recorded during the filming of the original Star Trek in the late 1960s, have been recently reissued on CD by Varese Sarabande Records. (Please don’t send them hate mail. They put out some good stuff, too.) It goes without saying that William Shatner’s versions of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” are the stuff that nightmares legends are made of (if John Lennon wasn’t already dead, listening to this would probably kill him), but when one listens to all of The Transformed Man, one gets the sense that Shatner is at least trying to make a statement of some kind. It’s a shame no one, probably including Shatner, knows just what the hell it is. Shatner recites some poetry and text pieces (including three Shakespeare pieces) against orchestral backdrops, which mysteriously segue into spoken-word versions of 1960s pop songs. Some of the text pieces are nearly effective, and the liner notes claim that the pieces are thematically linked. Yeah, right. But at least give Shatner credit for trying something different, and for not attempting to actually sing.


Leonard Nimoy, on the other hand, has no excuse. He does sing, and the results are even more excruciating than Shatner smarming his way through “It Was a Very Good Year.” Shatner’s album is at least funny (in the Ed Wood sense), whereas Nimoy’s album is just painful (in the Irwin Allen sense). His album consists of lame instrumentals, terrible readings, and actual singing (only in the strictest of definitions). While both albums are examples of commercialism at its most crass, Nimoy goes a step further than Shatner by prostituting the Spock character by his performing some truly hideous Spockian soliloquies. And sadly, although some bonus tracks are included, Nimoy's "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" is does not appear in this collection of songs (and I'm using the word loosely).
If you, like me, are a fan of “it’s so bad, it’s good” stuff, then the Shatner CD is must. Nimoy’s is just painful.

Originally published by Under the Ozone Hole Number Fourteen – June, 1996

Star Trek: The Next Generation - "Unification I" and "Unification II"

It sounded too good to be true: Leonard Nimoy guest starring as Spock in a two-part TNG episode wherein Spock attempts to reunite the Vulcans and the Romulans. But alas....
The first episode sets up the play: Ambassador Spock has mysteriously travelled to the Romulan homeworld, Romulus. Has he defected? Picard and the Enterprise are ordered to find out. After a brief visit to Spock's father, the dying Sarak, Picard and Data borrow a Klingon ship and crew in order to approach Romulus under the protection of the Klingon ship's cloaking field. Picard and Data, in the guise of Romulans, beam down in an attempt to meet Pardek, a Romulan politician whom they feel Spock may try to contact. They are correct; Pardek leads them to Spock. Meanwhile, Riker has his own mystery to solve: someone has stolen a Vulcan ship from a Starfleet junkyard.
All in all, the first part does a fairly good job of setting things up. Unfortunately, everyone takes a large dose of 'stupid pills' for the second part and it all falls apart.
It turns out that Pardek helping Spock with his unification plans has been part of a bigger plan by Commander Sela, the blonde Romulan with the uncanny resemblance to the late Tasha Yar, to use Spock in an unwitting attempt to take over Vulcan. By making the Federation believe that Spock's negotiations have been successful, she plans to use stolen Vulcan ships to carry an attack force to Vulcan. The attack force, a mere two thousand troops, will dig themselves in (and do what? That's never made clear.) Two thousand troops doesn't seem like to hold a key planet presumably deep in the heart of the Federation. (Apart from the fact that Starfleet weapons are accurate to within a city block and could stun all the enemy troops from orbit, Starfleet could blockade the planet and starve them out. Sure, it's bad news for Vulcan in the short term, but there's no military advantage for the Romulans to be gained here; they're just being bad guys for the sake of being bad guys. And why aren't any Romulan citizens suspicious about this Vulcan that's running around?)
Later, Picard, Data, and Spock are betrayed by Pardek and brought to Sela, who, after spilling the beans about her plan, leaves the three of them, three of the most resourceful people in the galaxy, alone in a room which just happens to contain some computer consoles and a holographic projector. Dumb and Stupid! She leaves Spock and Data alone with computers!!! She knows who they are and what they are capable of. Dumber and Stupider! At the end of the episode, the members of the underground help our heroes escape. Yet Pardek knows them all; why weren't they all "disappeared"? This is not a very good way to run a totalitarian government. (And how come Romulans have forehead ridges and Vulcans don't? Seems like a useless (and quick) evolutionary trait for the Romulans, as a Vulcan offshoot, to have developed. Or maybe Vulcans always had ridges and after the Romulans split off, Vulcans lost theirs by continually slapping their foreheads and shouting, "No, dammit, I've got to use logic!")
Our heroes fare no better. When Sela returns to Picard & co., they knock out her guards with the help of a surprise they've cooked up with the aforementioned computers and holographic equipment. Data then explains to her how they plan to escape! Then they knock her out (with Data deftly applying a Vulcan neck pinch; what should have been a highlight of the episode comes off instead limp and unsurprising), and our intrepid heroes leave Sela and her cohorts unbound, ungagged, and unsecured. More Dumb and Stupid!
Now back to the Enterprise. Riker has followed the trail of the missing Vulcan ships (despite the fact that he blew up his only clue, a mysterious ship, in the first part, and no explanation is provided on how he got back on the trail) to the Neutral Zone. Just as the Vulcan ships cross the Neutral Zone (at Warp One), Dr.Crusher receives a communiqué requesting medical assistance at some colony or something. (The call was received in the Sick Bay only, not on the bridge!) It's the old fake distress call routine -- how original -- and once again, the Enterprise is the closest ship that can respond. By now, the Vulcan ships have entered Federation space (still at Warp One -- these guys aren't in much of a hurry), and Spock manages to get through a signal that the Vulcan ships are manned by a Romulans invasion force. Enterprise is fourteen minutes away from the invasion force. As they come within visual range, Worf reports that the invasion force is retreating to the Neutral Zone and that the Vulcan Defense Fleet has been dispatched.
A brief digression. According to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, written by Mike Okuda and Rick Sternbach, production people on TNG, Warp One = the speed of light, or c. In interstellar terms, that's real slow. (Warp Seven, for instance, is calculated to be 656 c.) So, if the invasion force was moving at Warp One for only fourteen minutes, then the furthest they could penetrate Federation space is fourteen light-minutes which isn't far at all (roughly the distance from the sun to Mars). And yet they were close enough to Vulcan (which I always assumed was deep in Federation space) that the Vulcan defense Fleet responds to these slow-moving craft. Obviously then, Vulcan must be very near the Neutral Zone, otherwise it might take the invasion force years to get there (thus robbing them of the element of surprise.) Why then is the Enterprise, cruising the Neutral Zone very close to Vulcan, the only starship in the area able to respond to that distress call? One would think that Starfleet would constantly have ships cruising along the Zone and you'd think there'd be a ship or two near Vulcan. (I know the Borg decimated the Fleet, but really....)
So the Enterprise is closing on those Vulcan ships when a Romulan Warbird de-cloaks. Riker orders shields up, phasers armed, etc., but before he can act, the Warbird blows up the three ships and quickly cloaks. In repsonse, Riker (get this) orders the Enterprise to stand down from Red Alert. A Romulan Warbird, in federation space, blows up three Vulcan ships, and Riker orders the ship off Red Alert and doesn't even try to pursue it!! He doesn't even maintain the Enterprise's defense posture!! A cloaked and hostile Romulan Warbird is in his immediate vicinity and he orders the ship to stand down!!! Arrgh! The man should be court-martialed, not allowed on a Starfleet ship again except to scrub toilets.
Nor will we let the Klingons off easily (we're an equal opportunity criticizer). Since this episode clearly establishes that Klingons can use a cloaked ship to penetrate Romulan space right to Romulus, the Romulan homeworld, and even beam down to the planet undetected, why didn't they ever beam down an anti-matter bomb or something down to the planet and blown up them pesky Romulans a long time ago? And why haven't the Romulans used their cloaking technology to sail deep in Klingon space and blast a few Klingon planets? Or some Federation planets? Maybe even Earth? (Why not Vulcan? It seems to be as close as the corner store, and there's never any starships around when you need one!)
"Unification" resulted in nothing but disharmony.

Originally published by Under the Ozone Hole Number One – August, 1992

Star Trek: Insurrection

What a piece of crap.

Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever

by Harlan Ellison; White Wolf; $16.25

Perhaps the most famous feud in sf was the decades-long war of words between Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and writer Harlan Ellison over “The City on the Edge of Forever,” arguably Trek’s best episode. In this biting polemic, Ellison presents his side of the debate. The Roddenberry line, as presented in numerous interviews and books (many cited in this book), had Ellison refusing to do a rewrite on his script which has Scotty dealing drugs, and would have gone horrendously over budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars to film (the actual amount has risen through the years. Inflation, I guess). Roddenberry rewrites the script, thus saving the episode, and it goes on to win a Nebula and at the ceremony, Ellison pushes aside the recipient to rant about how he was mistreated. (Ellison’s draft goes on to win a Writers’ Guild of America Award.)

Ellison’s teleplay has been reviewed in these pages before (it was previously published in Six Science Fiction Plays), so I won’t dwell on that here – suffice it to say that it is reprinted in its entirety, along with a treatment and revisions. Ellison’s beef is that he has spent the last 30 years listening to what he considers to be Roddenberry’s revisionist history. He claims that he did as many as five rewrites on the script trying to accommodate Roddenberry’s directives. Scotty was never dealing drugs, because Scotty was never in the script. “City” won a Hugo, not a Nebula, and Ellison wonders how Roddenberry saw him push anyone aside since Roddenberry was never at the convention. He also notes that the Roddenberry rewrite, which was done partly to save money, still went $66,000 over budget (and when your budget is $191,000 per episode, that ain’t chicken feed). He also has some surprising evidence that Roddenberry never actually did the rewrite that he would eventually spend years taking credit for.
To say that Ellison is not kind to Roddenberry, is something of an understatement; Ellison is downright malicious. But the mounting evidence since his death that Roddenberry spent his career acting like less like a divine prophet and more like a glory-hogging television producer, makes Ellison’s version of events all the more believable.