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Jammer's Reviews Latest Posts
  • 25 Mar 2024
    Jammer’s Blog: The assimilation
    JammersBlog.com is irrelevant. I hinted that this was likely coming with the redesign announcement, and later my blog post announcing that I would no longer cross-post in the blog for the purposes of getting review announcements into the RSS feed. But now it’s time to make it official: This separate (but very-related) blog website, first […]
  • 15 Feb 2024
    The blog is dead. Long live the blog.
    A Borg cube hovers ominously over the code for Jammer’s website. What does this mean? IDFK. It’s “art.” Or maybe it’s a metaphor for this blog being assimilated into Jammer’s Reviews. Death is irrelevant. I don’t know what the future holds for Jammer’s Blog, but I know that it won’t be what it has been […]
  • 02 Nov 2023
    ‘Lower Decks’ season finale: The origin story that got away
    "Old Friends, New Planets" seems to be an episode ripe for some sort of major character payoff, specifically around Mariner and/or Locarno. This seems especially true at the beginning of the episode when it smartly flashes back to 13 years earlier, where we see Locarno convincing his Nova Squadron team to take on the Kolvoord […]
  • 26 Oct 2023
    Mariner faces her demons in ‘The Inner Fight’
    "The Inner Fight" might be the most plot-heavy episode of the season. It’s more adventure than comedy, and that ends up working in its favor, because it feels like more meat than fluff. It also has a character core that’s intriguing, although not outstanding. And it ends in a cliffhanger, setting up next week’s season […]
Some Kind of Star Trek Latest Posts
  • 06 Apr 2024
    Adversaries of the Delta Quadrant: Attack Wing Launches into 2024

    Three new expansions line up for March and we'll be looking at each one in turn, starting with a new Independent pack that takes fans back to the adventures of one USS Voyager.

    Cleverly utilising four already existing Attack Wing models, Wizkids have certainly packed out this release to the max with a storming 52 playable cards, six ship options and a campaign book (make sure you check under the box tray!).

    The ship options comprise of the Alpha Hunter and Relic Stalker for the Hirogen, the Fina Prime and Honatta Prime for the Vidiians, the Antares Shadow Numiri patrol ship and the Nasari Nerada.

    The Hirogen, Vidiian and Numiri ships are pretty evenly matched in terms of their basic stats although the Antares Shadow does suffer from not having the Scan ability. Previously seen in the game as the Bajoran troopship, it's features here in the Delta Quadrant make it significantly more playable especially with the chance to pick off weaker targets with added firepower. The Nasari ship... well, that's a Romulan Science Vessel backwards - just as it was in the show!

    But each has its own twists. The Alpha Hunter can Sensor Echo after every move, the Relic Stalker can gain a Battlestations if it's in range of an enemy ship after moving. For once it feels as though the adversaries might have a better and more productive run with some genuinely effective Actions.

    Even the significantly lower scored Nerada can kick back if it gets up close to an opponent.

    As for captains, the pack takes its lead from right across the spectrum of Voyager's journey. Alongside those expected faces of the Hirogen and Vidiians are Iden from Flesh and Blood, Dala from Live fast and Prosper and the Vaadwaur Gaul from Dragon's Teeth. Iden, the Bajoran hologram, is the highest priced here at a full 10 points for a skill of 10 although his cost reduces if you equip other "?" upgrades to his ship. The downside is that he's only really effective against other Independent ships or ones with "?" upgrades onboard. A personal favourite in here has to be the new version of Karr that sees the Hirogen built to pick off weaker captains as well as being able to re-roll dice on attacks.

    But where I really feel this pack excels is in its choice of subject matter and then into the abilities. Choosing to dive into the holographic crew from Flesh and Blood was a bold move but with the chance to use them as either Crew OR Tech upgrades it opens up the dynamics of your ships. Just playing about with these cards I initially thought of using the Relic Stalker but then contemplated switching it out for the Antares Shadow. Why? Because by using the hologram crew upgrades Iden became cheaper to attach as a captain.

    But dig even further into the cards and there are some new and intriguing features plugged in to add a new layer to Attack Wing. Faux Janeway aka Dala utilises a new Reputation Permanent Effect which (if I read the rather convoluted phrasing correctly) makes any game effects hit it as though it's on the enemy fleet ie the ones who gave it the token. I'll have to play around with this a bit more to totally understand it in play.

    Kurros also has one of these nifty new abilities. He can place a Bounty Permanent Effect on an opponent allowing the theft of a unique Crew upgrade. For the rest of the game attacks at the BPE ship gain an additional damage point if a blank or Battle Stations is rolled.

    These two new inclusions do turn up the heat a bit with more peril for players encountering them and maybe even a faster ways to a defeat. Interestingly enough, this pack looks more to causing operational restrictions on an opponent than physical points damage. Check out the Vidiians for one as they are all about disabling Crew while the Tech cards tend to lean more towards repair and consolidation of your fleet. It's certainly a different dynamic to play with instead of just a continuous pummelling of weapons fire.

    The adversaries do play to their character traits in that sense so the Hirogen do still cater for pure assault while there are more "intelligent" ways to battle and demoralise your enemy. Take away their upgrades, reduce them to a shell and then move in for the final kill or in some respects, let them do it to themselves!

    Also in the box players will find the new Delta Quadrant Campaign. Duplicated in the Lost in the Delta Quadrant set, this new series of missions offers a host of scenarios to recreate Voyager's journey home. Ok, you could do this with any ship and any auxiliary craft but let's be honest, most players are going to want to follow it with Voyager and the Delta Flyer. Having the chance to complete each mission and reset does mean you're not trying to keep track of progress too much (well played Wizkids for the series nods in the booklet). It also makes players want to try as the Delta Master since this pack is a lot of fun with new things to try and a campaign that caters for both sides almost equally.

    Would I consider playing out a Delta Quadrant fleet? After this pack, the answer is a resounding YES.

  • 27 Mar 2024
    USS Cerritos Crew Handbook

    No secret, I love Lower Decks so after a recent acquisition of the Beckett Mariner Funko Pop, the Crew Handbook was always going to be on the list.

    Taking a more light hearted look into the Star Trek universe, this is the ultimate guide to the USS Cerritos rather than as a series companion. With the overview of a guide for new Lower Deckers, readers are taken through every crucial area of the ship, introduced to the crew and given notes on potential foes and allies from across the Alpha, Beta and Delta Quadrants.

    Realised in print by Chris Farnell, the book is a weighty 175pages in paperback and you want to keep on turning them.

    The text itself isn't a trawl to read and instead the necessities of the Cerritos are broken down into more manageable chunks coupled with the stunning animation from the show itself. It's also incredibly current with the lieutenant ranks of Boimler, Mariner, Tendi and Rutherford in place.

    But what adds to this perhaps in a different way to the more "serious" technical manuals and other reference works is the asides (proof reader notes in-universe) from the crew. Adding a level of character to the handbook and keeping in line with the personalities of those characters at the same time!

    Lower Decks has always been a little more sartorial when it comes to the Star Trek universe and the handbook is no exception. It doesn't take itself too seriously and the balance of information and humour means that this is accessible to fans of all knowledge levels and interest. A highlight for you ship connoisseurs is a potted history of the Cerritos' namesake which you may or may not take with a pinch of salt and in a way helps put a little substance into the series backstory.

    In fact that's one of the big wins for me here. While there's a lot of suggestion and intimation it still leaves fans without 100% clarity and allows your imagination to fill in some of the blanks. Bits you might be able to join the dots thanks to episodes (certainly An Embarrassment of Dooplers) but in other instances it leaves a good amount of room for future developments. However, according to the author, the wonderfully UK-based Chris Farnell, the matter surrounding Admiral Jellico's circulatory system IS canon. Period. Fight him.

    But that's not to say that the book ignores the canon of the show's episodes so far. Readers get nods to all types of stripy tricorder, the best holodeck programmes to run and even a Strange New Worlds homage with Cerritos bingo which might be a tad more extreme and expectedly curveball.

    Indeed, Farnell might have been given the reins to do as he wished with the handbook but he's absolutely kept it under control and well within Star Trek specifications especially since it still had to get the seal of approval from The Top Man Mike McMahan before printing (as Chris noted to me during a brief chat!).

    If you're expecting a detailed technical piece of literary wizardry a la the TNG Technical Manual then this isn't the book however if you are looking for something that acts as a side guide and extremely entertaining companion to Lower Decks then this will definitely hit the spot.

  • 25 Mar 2024
    The Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko

    Producing an autobiography of a character who has transcended the physical plane has to be one of the most difficult assignments to come from this book series.

    Edited (wink wink) by Derek Tyler Attico, the story of Benjamin Lafayette Sisko is the one that I’ve been personally waiting for since the books first appeared.

    So how does one circumvent the obvious flaw that Sisko ‘can’t’ write this book? Well I won’t ruin that little twist but suffice to say it makes this volume extremely unique when it comes to how these have been written to date.

    And if you’re wanting this to be a detailed first person account of Deep Space Nine, be prepared for a wait and also for it not to take up that much of the book. This really does go right back to the start of Sisko’s life. This autobiography provides a deep dive into three generations of the Sisko line packed into the hotel/restaurant/home that exists in New Orleans. There’s even time to offer glimpses at older history emphasising the importance of family bonds that exist not just in that structure but also down the years in Ben’s Starfleet journey.

    Covering everything from Sisko's childhood, coupled with it's distinct lack of technology, Attico's work follows a path from adventurous and highly inquisitive youth through to maturing teen and into Starfleet officer. The journey feels natural and the level of detail not only traces its roots back into episodes of Deep Space Nine but into a deeper cultural exploration that hasn't been as apparent in other works from this ongoing series.

    Attico's research into Sisko is certainly extensive but it doesn't suffocate the story. Rather than relying on just the material we've been drip fed through 176 episodes of the show, the reader can explore Ben's first encounter with a transporter or a tricorder with the same sense of wonder that the character himself does.

    But that feeling of family and personal bonds is always present. There is loss, not only of his wife at the battle of Wolf 359 but earlier in respects to grandparents and his mother as well as more complex relationships with his sister and younger twin brothers.

    Indeed, a good three quarters of the autobiography is filled with events that viewers and fans of the show will not have seen or were just hat-tipped such as Cal Hudson meeting his future wife or the way in which Sisko became Captain (later Admiral) Layton's first officer on the USS Okinawa.

    The clarity of events pre-DS9 is just staggering; the construction of the Defiant for instance brings both Leah Brahms and Cmdr Shelby into play while Attico has brilliantly woven in the single episode character of Tryla Scott (TNG's Conspiracy) both logically and seamlessly. This feels like the true defining of the Ben Sisko character that, for a good part of DS9 was actually avoided although perhaps not consciously.

    Yes, there were nods to his sister, visits to the Sisko restaurant and the occasional appearance of Brock Peters' Joseph Sisko but for the most part Atttico has had a clean slate/ sandbox to play in and explore. Opinion; he's done it with aplomb and style. There's still enough legroom in here for future canon events to sneak into the narrative but this does show the development of the person before he was the Emissary and commander of Deep Space Nine. In the cases of both Janeway and Picard we've been privy to key events from earlier in their lives whether by visions of parents or Q interventions but Sisko avoided all of that bar two moments in Emissary that added meat to his back story.

    DS9ers will adore this book which not only explores Sisko's backstory but actually utilises soome (I'm reliably informed) of Derek Tyler Attico's own personal history and experiences to flesh out Starfleet's finest captain (fight me on it!).

Soul of Star Tek Latest Posts
  • 09 Sep 2023
    Strange Old Worlds

    On September 8, 1966 the first season of the Star Trek series began. It explored strange new worlds in the galaxy of imagination as well as in television storytelling. But 57 years later, I wonder if it is truly exploring anything more than its own mythology. Star Trek today seems more and more to be about itself.

    The new Star Trek shows display excellent writing, acting, directing and visual effects. It produces entertaining television. The current series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds seems to have tried to recapture that original innocence, with its premise, its stand-alone episodes and that thrilling variation on the original opening with updated imagery. But most episodes seem to explore mostly the styles of presenting the established (if visually updated) Star Trek universe—comedy, horror, mixing animation with live action, musical comedy. Star Trek now seems to comments on itself more than any outside world, real or imagined, including the self-consciousness of Lower Decks.

    Discovery tried to push the envelope at times, and bravely explores diversity and the internal life of a starship in a different way, though its obsession with feelings feels excessive at times (in my weaker moments I’ve referred to Captain Burnham as Captain Emo.) While season 4 in particular pushed Star Trek forward, even in this series, Star Trek mythology generated lots of story.

    It’s not that these shows lack values or significant content. And it's not that decades and hundreds of Star Trek stories should be ignored. But maybe the emphasis seems different. Strange new worlds aren't primary. At best the new shows are about the characters and their relationships and interactions within the canonical Star Trek mythology. They seem to be less about exploring the previously unknown, or involved with testing our assumptions against what is found out there. Character-driven drama with technobabble is not all of what Star Trek started out to be.

    Maybe it’s at least partly inevitable. When Star Trek began, nothing like it had been done on television before. The series invented its story universe with every episode, and so every episode was exploring the unknown. Perhaps it’s impossible to get back that innocence.

    For a lot has happened in 57 years. Back when it began, Star Trek’s content was shaped more directly by generations of science fiction and not quite two decades of television drama.

    Science fiction that followed Jules Verne speculated on new technologies and what might be found on other planets, both imagined from the basis of known fact and science. The science fiction that followed H.G. Wells used imagined technologies, phenomena and forms of life as metaphors to illuminate aspects of human life. (This is how Margaret Atwood divides it, and it’s a good starting point.)

    Following either progenitor, s/f writers also explored highly speculative science with cosmological and philosophical implications—everything from alternative archeology and anthropology (some of which has turned out to have some basis in fact) to implications of quantum physics and the additions and alterations over the years suggested by new astronomical and sub-atomic data.

    Just as the Star Trek series adapted technologies and protocols seen in earlier sci-fi movies and television shows, the stories followed both Verne and Wells in speculating on a possible future while telling metaphorical tales, some of which applied to urgent contemporary social and political questions.

    While some of these stories came from science fiction writers, a great many were created by veteran television writers, sometimes re-purposing plots found everywhere, from ancient drama and classic fiction to TV westerns and Captain Video. This was television drama, but westerns and other shows also often told morality tales, and so did Star Trek.

    Yet as the first full-hour network drama set in the far future, Star Trek was also open-ended: everything was possible in locations in time and space where no one had gone before.

    But seeds of the current situation were also sown back then. Gene Roddenberry believed that for a series with continuing characters set in the strange new worlds of the future, the show had to create and maintain a self-consistent story universe.

    So besides envisioning the basic template of as diverse a crew as he could get away with (or perhaps as diverse as anyone could imagine existing in a few centuries), as well as assembling talented collaborators and working carefully on how the series would look, GR did what Wells and other designers of alternative worlds knew to do: he made rules.

    Every week would bring a new story, but the technologies would have the same capabilities and work the same way week after week. There was a chain of command aboard the Enterprise, and a set a standard procedures. As much as possible for a starship warping through the galaxy, the Enterprise was grounded.

    As writers introduced new planets and new aliens, later writers had to honor the basics of those planets and characters if they used them in subsequent stories. (There were periods of adjustment but once the template was found—for Klingons, say—it remained consistent.) Events in one story might inform later stories, until a kind of backstory was created for the main characters and Star Trek as a whole.

    Some of the “rules” were set forth in the Star Trek Writer’s Guide, which was revised as the series went on (I have before me the third revision: 31 typed and mimeographed pages dated April 17, 1967.) It provides character background, technology and capabilities. Believability in action is stressed, but also meaning, the metaphorical layer.

    The rules were needed because each episode had a different writer and director. That’s also why actors playing the major roles became caretakers of their characters and what they did and how they did it. Together they created the Star Trek universe.

    That universe expanded with new crews in a new century, beginning with The Next Generation. A rich storytelling universe supported hundreds of stories for five main crews and sets of characters, over nearly 40 years.

    In the meantime, the Star Trek universe generated other stories, principally in a series of novels. Though officially permitted by whatever entity owned Star Trek at the time, these novels often went their own ways in terms of story and characters. It was I believe in connection with the novels that the concept of “canon” was first introduced. “Canon” was meant to denote all the aspects of the “real” Star Trek universe, at first defined as everything in the television and motion picture stories (but not the novels.)

    Canon is an interesting concept, and today it is a powerful one. While the dictionary defines it as a general law or principle, its second definition is a collection of sacred books regarded as genuine. The Star Trek rules and guidelines (commonly called its Bible), along with that long history of story, had become canon law.

    Those of us raised as Catholics recognize canon law as the fundamentals of the institution of the Roman Catholic Church. Violations of canon were serious stuff, heavily sinful. Canon was zealously guarded by Church hierarchy. Violating canon was heresy, punished by excommunication (an early version of being blocked,unfriended or ghosted—in other words, excluded and exiled.) Canon today seems to have become a real factor in what stories are told.

    But the hierarchy in charge of Star Trek is not the only arbiter. Star Trek’s relationship to the corporate entities that made the shows was always complicated. According to GR, he was constantly fighting against corporate control. That control seems to have become more pronounced at the end of the Berman era. Today Star Trek is seen as a valuable “franchise,” and the changes in corporate ownership in recent years has been dizzying. The switch to streaming is still fluid, as evidenced by recent cancellations and the abrupt changes in access to the catalog.

    But there is another factor strongly in play, with roots in the original series era. With GR’s connivance, fans organized to write letters demanding that the original series be renewed after the first and second seasons. After the original series left the air, fans organized Star Trek conventions. There had been science fiction conventions where some attendees wore costumes, but there had been nothing the size and specific focus of those Star Trek conventions in the 1970s forward. With the letter campaigns and especially the conventions, the phenomenon of fandom was born—not just for Star Trek, but for everyone.

    Fandom then acquired new tools for expression. Mostly through the bulletin boards on sites devoted to Star Trek, the Internet started to have influence, especially in the final years of Star Trek: Enterprise and the Star Trek: Nemesis feature film. The negativity on the Internet, together with low ratings and box office failure, ended in the demise of the Rick Berman era in 2005, and the lineage from Gene Roddenberry through Berman was broken.

    By the time of the J.J. Abrams features, social media was prominent. Abrams and then the creators of Star Trek: Discovery and other television shows paid closer attention to social media, made producers and stars more accessible, and saw conventions as potent promotional opportunities.

    Meanwhile, fandom (which may be defined as a subset of the more diverse universe of Star Trek fans) was becoming more aware of the business side of Star Trek. Online discussions were at least as likely to be about production costs and box office as possible meanings in Star Trek stories. Corporate, producers and fandom were growing more aware of each other, and engaging more directly.

    Today fandom is a real force in Star Trek and its storytelling. In particular, fandom engages in questions of canon. Variations are closely debated, and though some are accepted, others are condemned. Star Trek canon is not enforced only by a corporate Vatican but by a hyper-informed and vigilant fandom. This process is not all destructive, but it is consequential.

    All these past Star Trek stories, with their basic consistencies and through-lines, form a kind of mythology, and fandom is deeply engaged with that mythology, its familiar characters and events. Thanks to social media and the structures of the entertainment business today, Star Trek producers cannot afford to offend fandom too much. They depend on fans who operate in social media, and vote by means of streaming subscriptions. In this context, it’s all fan service.

    Gene Roddenberry respected fans and interacted with them at conventions. But he was very direct and firm that fans would not dictate Star Trek content. Today fandom may not write the stories, but it is one factor that may be limiting the storytelling.

    These seem to me to be the chief factors leading to my impression that today’s Star Trek is less about exploring strange new worlds or ideas and their implications, and more about itself and its own mythology.

    The apparent emphasis on character interaction over situation and ideas may be another important factor. Taken together, the character emphasis and the self-referencing tendency may help to explain my impression that current Star Trek gives much lower priority than in its formative years to really engaging with urgent concerns of today’s world by means of exploring strange new worlds. In sometimes awkward but sometimes revelatory ways, that’s what the original series and TNG did. That to a great extent is what inspired Star Trek fans in the first place.

    Today’s Star Trek shows have revisited and expanded on issues that past Star Trek stories explored, for a new audience. They have dealt to some degree with certain implications of technology, though they seem oddly obsessed with cloning.

    But more powerful technology is no longer the chief source of urgent problems, if it ever was. Many of our concerns and our understanding of the world have changed in 57 years. We are much more aware of the roles of ecological factors and non-human life, as we are faced with the challenges of climate distortion and the imminent possibility of mass extinctions. We are more aware than ever of the dire consequences of a planet ruled by a few extremely wealthy individuals and corporations, with everyone else scrambling in uncertainty and insecurity.

    Engaging in such questions as race, the arms race and the nuclear age, cultural differences and such larger questions as a more complex reading of human nature, Star Trek formed its character: the essence, the soul of Star Trek. The commitment to retain that character by today’s Star Trek creators as well as viewers is heartening. It was the motivation for many over the years to become devoted Star Trek fans (whether or not they became vocal members of fandom.) But that commitment loses its power if it becomes the rote of canon. It has to be actualized.

    Perhaps I’m wrong about the current shows. My perspective is derived from watching Star Trek for all of those 57 years. That does not make me (in today’s terms) the target demographic, to say the least. Perhaps newer viewers see the same kinds of explorations, and feel themselves changed by them as we once did.

    But consider this possibility: at its best, Star Trek once engaged with the strange new worlds that illuminate our world—the world that television drama largely refused to examine. These were the urgent public problems and mysteries that most vexed us as viewers. Now Star Trek seems to live in the no-longer-strange old world of its own mythos. Mythologies can be defining and healthy, generating new stories and insights, but they can also become stultifying and irrelevant, until eventually they consume themselves.

  • 23 Jun 2023
    Star Trek: Insurrection (Star Trek IX)

    This is the ninth of a series of essays on the first ten Star Trek features, the Trekalog.

    by William Severini Kowinski

    Star Trek: Insurrection has become a problematic movie as the ninth in the original ten (or Trekalog) of Star Trek features. Even its title has become troublesome. (There’s no insurrection to overthrow the government in this story. We now know better what that looks like.) Though I have great affection for this film, I’ve been bothered by its shortcomings, from the first time I saw it in a theatre the week it was released in December 1998. I felt then it could have been a great Star Trek movie, as well as a brave one. In many respects, it dazzled me. I still believe thematically it remains a major evocation of the soul of Star Trek.

    This film, written by Michael Piller from a story by Piller and Rick Berman, and directed by Jonathan Frakes, has its fans. At the time it opened, critic Gene Siskel said it was the only Star Trek movie he truly enjoyed. (His TV partner, Roger Ebert, had a different view.)

    Others have come to value it over the years, or at least elements of it. Jerry Goldsmith’s score—especially the lovely Ba’ku theme—remains one of my favorites, and the acting, the characterizations, the humor gave it an attractive buoyancy. After many subsequent viewings, I’ve found more that’s annoying but I also retain that initial affection, and admire it even more for its courage.

    The conventional wisdom has become that it is more of a television episode than a movie. Insofar as I even know what that means, I take the opposite view: I think it tries too hard to be an action movie. Or more generally, it may simply be that the Star Trek features series started to run out of luck. Many if not most very good feature films have a pretty long history. They may have been conceived five or eight or ten years before they get made. Even some sequels take years to develop. But Star Trek movies rolled out at a faster pace—every two or three years. They typically emerged from assembling bits and pieces of screenplay drafts, often at the last minute, with lots of different imput. This fortuitously resulted in some excellent films. Unfortunately that kind of luck doesn’t always appear.

    But before wallowing in the details, the most important element of this movie is the core story, the principles that are at stake. In special features interviews for the first expanded DVD of this movie, writer Michael Piller said that he wanted to move away from the darker Star Trek (not only the previous feature, Star Trek: First Contact, but the ongoing television stories, particular of Deep Space Nine) and the darker path science fiction had been taking in general in the 1990s, to revive the optimistic spirit and idealistic modeling of Gene Roddenberry’s original vision. “I wanted to do one for Gene,” he said. So Insurrection pivoted on a moral issue with a real world history, as well as portraying a society that emphasized a different aspect of the soul of Star Trek.


    The title sequence—set to that lilting but slightly unconventional Goldsmith theme—depicts a happy, healthy and busy agrarian society with some pre-industrial mechanisms. But we quickly see hidden observers, Starfleet uniforms and unknown aliens (the Son’a), just before violence disrupts this peaceful day. The android Data has seemingly gone berserk, and has deliberately unmasked the hidden observers. He also appears to be wounded.

    Meanwhile the Enterprise-E is far away, on yet another minor diplomatic mission (“Does anyone remember when we were explorers?” Captain Picard asks.) After being contacted by an Admiral Dougherty requesting Data’s schematics, and then a brief conversation with the Admiral about Data apparently gone amok, Picard (against the Admiral’s wishes) diverts the Enterprise to the distant planet involved, in an untraveled pocket of the galaxy called the Briar Patch because its environment disrupts starship technologies.

    Maneuvering a shuttle and a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan, Picard and Worf disable Data, and Geordi La Forge learns what went wrong: Data had been attacked and engaged his ethical subprograms. But why was he attacking the Son’a and Federation personnel—everyone but the Ba’ku on the planet?

    Picard and an Enterprise team beam down to free the unmasked observers Dougherty tells him are hostages. They find instead peaceful, calm and intelligent villagers, treating the “off-worlders” as guests. Picard soon learns that the Ba’ku are warp-capable but have chosen a life without advanced technology, on this welcoming planet.

    Picard and the Ba’ku investigate what Data found that got him shot: a holo-ship, programmed to simulate the Ba’ku village. When several Son’a attack them, Picard realizes what is happening: a conspiracy to transport the Ba’ku onto the holo-ship and abduct them. “You go to sleep one night in the village. Wake up the next morning on this flying holodeck transported en masse. In a few days, you’re relocated on a similar planet without even realizing it.” But the question remains: why?

    By now some of the Enterprise crew are feeling and acting oddly. Riker and Troi are re-igniting their old romance, Worf is showing signs of going through Klingon puberty, and Picard himself feels a burst of vitality and exuberance. Having danced his way to a mirror to examine his jawline, he realizes what is happening, and returns to the planet to speak with Anij and the other Ba’ku, who confirm that the “metaphasic radiation,” a quality of the rings around the planet that continuously regenerates genetic structure, is keeping them young and even improves their health. Just being in orbit around the planet is enough to affect the Enterprise crew. Three centuries earlier, the Ba’ku left a war-torn planet and searched for an isolated haven to establish a peaceful culture, ending up here.

    Picard now realizes that the planned Ba’ku abduction has something to do with the “fountain of youth” effects of the planet’s rings. He vows to prevent it, and in explaining his reason to Anij, Picard states in plain language the moral core of this story: “Some of the darkest chapters in the history of my world involve the forced relocation of a small group of people to satisfy the demands of a large one. I’d hoped we had learned from our mistakes, but…it seems that some of us haven’t.”

    Those forced relocations and related behaviors (up to and including genocide) have happened multiple times on every inhabited continent on Earth, from ancient days through our own time in the 21st century. Many would observe that they are still happening.

    But the instance Michael Piller said was foremost in his mind when he wrote this script was the removal over several centuries of a series of American Indian peoples, most graphically represented by the Trail of Tears that resulted from what was literally called the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Cherokee, Seminole and other tribal groups were driven from their communities in the southeast (near where gold was discovered) and forced—including force-marched—thousands of miles to reservations in the West. Thousands died of starvation and disease along the way, while others perished shortly after their arrival.

    Later, in his confrontation with Admiral Dougherty, Picard asserted that removal “will destroy the Ba’ku, just as cultures have been destroyed in every other forced relocation throughout history.” Relocation and related oppressions certainly destroyed American Indian cultures that had flourished for many centuries.

    In this confrontation, Dougherty makes the case for kidnapping the Ba’ku. The Son’a have developed a way to extract the youth-preserving qualities of the planet’s rings but the process would render the planet “uninhabitable for many generations.” They will deploy the huge, eye-catching particles collector, with technology the Federation can't duplicate. But the planet (oddly, it is never named) is in Federation space, so for this mission the Son’a and the Federation are partners, sanctioned by the Federation Council.

    After Dougherty parries his proposals to delay the procedure for further study of alternatives while the Son’a and Ba’ku share the planet, Picard lays it on the line: “We are betraying the principles upon which the Federation was founded. It’s an attack upon its very soul.”

    Though there are technical interpretations of how the Prime Directive does or doesn’t apply, Picard is consistent in his assertion about history. For him, the nuances of “non-interference” are based upon a hard-won founding principle, which in a TNG episode he spelled out to his crew: “We are not invaders. We are explorers.”

    The distinction is basic, and a huge change. Historically, explorers were the scouts for invaders. Again, we have to look no further than the Americas. Explorers, financed by governments and commercial interests, returned with news of lands to inhabit and resources to plunder and bring back to Europe. Columbus thought the friendly natives might make good slaves.

    When the Federation was founded, it committed to not repeating this history, to respecting the cultures and the lifeforms on planets it explored. A number of Next Generation stories were about this very subject.

    This is what Starfleet’s Prime Directive is really about. It is what makes the Federation different, not only in the fictional universe it inhabits, but in our universe as a vision of justice, diversity, and respect for all life. It is as Picard said, an element of the Federation’s soul, and a major expression of the soul of Star Trek that has inspired so many for generations.

    Dougherty counters: “Jean-Luc, we are only moving six hundred people.”

    “How many people does it take, Admiral, before it becomes wrong?” Picard replies. “A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people does it take, Admiral?”

    With its swelling music tag, this speech is a popular moment with many Trek fans. Personally I feel this choice of tone makes Picard sound too pompous and self-righteous—he’s not really asking the question, he’s being indignant. It’s no wonder that Dougherty dismisses his objections and orders him to another part of the galaxy. But his point is solid—and controversial.

    Many people, evidently including some members of the cast, see sense and maybe a more persuasive case based on the numbers: Dougherty said that the regenerative properties of the rings’ radiation could benefit billions. Doesn’t helping billions justify moving six hundred people (and probably sacrificing their current perpetual youthfulness, perhaps condemning them to imminent death)? Don’t the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

    By positing billions against 600, this script forces a hard look at the core principles. Doubtless the European invaders thought timber from American forests for sailing ships and other purposes, as well as crops like tobacco, would benefit millions in Europe, and therefore justified getting rid of the cultures of hundreds or thousands living in those forests and on those lands that were in the way. Just as they justified the Trail of Tears because gold would help their country’s economy, and therefore more people.

    Invasion and exploitation always justifies itself on supposed principles, as long as they don’t get in the way of the invader’s gain. What may look like a sensible calculus is usually a convenient rationalization for greed, based on greater military power and (almost always) assumptions of racial and cultural superiority. Even the implication that the Federation can do what it wants with this planet because it is in "Federation space," (and apparently the Ba'ku who live there don't have to be consulted) is a species of imperialism.

    Picard had allowed himself to be swayed by this calculus before, in the seventh season episode “Journey’s End,” as described in an earlier post. In that story it was young Wesley Crusher who rebelled against the forced relocation of a group of American Indians. Perhaps it was this incident, augmented by the youthful idealism and rebelliousness revived by the rings, that reminded Picard so forcefully of the costs of violating this principle—as well as the price of upholding it.

    The rest of the story involves Picard and his core crew—the Magnificent Seven—and their championing of the Ba’ku. There is a final twist—the discovery that the Son’a and Ba’ku are the same race, the grotesquely aging children against their perpetually youthful parents. The Son’a’s motives are revealed to include revenge.

    There are also a few scenes involving the Ba’ku culture, particularly two conversations between Picard and Anij, as they grow closer. In essence, Anij talks about fully inhabiting the present moment, without reviewing the past or planning for the future. “You explore the universe,” Anij says to Picard. “We have discovered that a single moment in time can be a universe in itself, full of powerful forces. Most people aren’t aware enough of the now to even notice.”

    Here on Earth, mindfully exploring the present moment is a both meditation technique and its intention, developed in Zen and other Buddhist practice, only recently adapted in American and European contexts. A different approach to valuing the present moment was a theme in Star Trek: Generations, where it was a consequence of mortality, rather than a lesson of immorality.

    Later Anij demonstrates the ability to slow time down, or at least the perception of time. (Making the water drops visible as they fall, or the hummingbird’s visible wings may remind some viewers of effects of a certain herb, and of spending seeming hours watching smoke curl under a lamp.) The Ba’ku insights may suggest the value that can be derived from different “alien” cultures, even small and isolated ones, like Tibet (though forms of Buddhism are prominent in many Asian countries.) Perhaps what the Ba’ku have to teach would be more valuable than what the rings of their planet can offer.

    Though our own (often small) Native cultures were crushed before many of their profound insights were known or understood, some of those cultures made deep impressions on the dominant culture, and that continues to happen. For instance, the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) Confederation of tribes existed democratically, probably for longer than the United States has so far. Contacts with Founding Fathers and others, some scholars say, meaningfully influenced the idea and structure of the United States. In turn, it influences the United Federation of Planets, though the Haudenosaunee had a different Prime Directive than Starfleet: In every decision, consider the impact on the seventh generation to come. (For us, seven generations takes us into the 23rd century.)


    J    .M. Dillard’s novelization, published to coincide with the movie’s initial release, was based on a slightly earlier version of the script, but differs in plot details mostly in a different ending, in which Ru’afo escapes the collector but plunges into the rings, speedily becoming younger and younger until he disappears. Apparently this was changed during shooting when that ending didn’t seem to be working. The actual ending is disappointing: Picard and the villain climbing and fighting against a ticking clock to get to a control panel replicates the Generations climax and there are similar scenes in First Contact, while the blue background (meant to be the rings outside?) screams unfinished visual effect.

    The Son’a’s appearance is different in the novelization—not the wrinkled wraiths we see on the screen but with surgically thin baby smooth skin, and ostentatiously adorned in robes and jewels. Perhaps this was too close to a Hollywood reality. Apart from their skin stretching salon, just about the only remnant of the Son’a’s conspicuous love of luxury is the incongruous sofa that is Ru’afo’s command chair on the bridge of his ship. (In the film, the Son’a have two alien slave races: the Ellora, who look like Vegas showgirls in body paint, and the Tarlac, who resemble the aliens in Buckaroo Banzai.)

    Apart from some Harlequin romance level descriptions, Dillard does elaborate on motives and intentions. The duck-blind observation of the Ba’ku, in her interpretation, was itself always a ruse, to mask the secret of what the Son’a and Admiral Dougherty were up to. It takes an extra step to realize this from the actual movie, for the only hint I got was the implication of Dougherty saying the Ba’ku originally came from elsewhere in space (and hence weren’t covered by the Prime Directive), suggesting he mus have known they weren’t a pre-warp society that required secrecy to study.

    Towards the end, when Admiral Dougherty learns the true relationship of the Son’a and Ba’ku, Dillard has him realizing that Ru’afo was primarily seeking revenge, and that he never intended to share the youth-giving technology or its fruits with the Federation. Similarly, Picard has a flash of recognition as he confronts Ru’afo on the collector: just as he had been driven by vengeance against the Borg in the events depicted in Star Trek: First Contact, so Ru’afo was obsessed with revenge against the Ba’ku who had rejected and exiled him. Even though revenge seems the default motivation for Star Trek movie villains, this movie might have benefited from such clarifying moments.

    Dillard also elaborates earlier on Picard’s thoughts from his initial confrontation with Dougherty. He reasons that the Federation would probably need no more than a few years to figure out a better way to benefit from the cellular regeneration effects of the rings, and that the Son’a were rushing things for reasons of their own. He doubts that the full and true plan had ever been presented to the Federation Council. Clearer indications of Dougherty’s and Picard’s suspicions and realizations in the movie (perhaps as Dillard developed them) might have added texture and interest to the movie’s story, making it more of the unraveling of a mystery.

    I don’t want to belabor what I experienced as flaws in the film. Every film has flaws, but some are serious enough—or there is an accumulation of them—to weaken the credibility and flow of the movie, or to engender confusion and raise questions, all of which are harmful when they take the viewer out of the story. My disappointments are no doubt heightened by my conclusion that this could have been the best of the TNG features.

    My first impression that this was a movie that just missed being really good was based on what seemed to be a confusing rhythm, a sense that, despite some slow scenes and comic moments, it just rushed on, with no rhythm but momentum. I felt it needed more pace; it needs to breathe. It’s not as if running time was a problem—this was the shortest of all Star Trek features.

    I felt this most acutely on first view in the cut from Geordi’s viewing of a sunrise—the first time in his life he’d seen one with normal vision, due to the planet’s regeneration effect. In his original commentary to First Contact, director Jonathan Frakes noted the temptation to cut off a scene too quickly just to keep the movie moving. The quick cut from the sunrise and Geordi’s eyes to an overview of orbiting ships was jarring, and to me trivialized what could have been a more powerful moment.

    I was also taken out of the flow by elements of the story that didn't seem credible, like the simpleminded plan to relocate the Ba’ku (they weren’t going to notice they were no longer on their planet, with its hills and sky?) or Data and the others in their invisibility suits tromping around supposedly undetected, as if the Ba’ku had no other sense but sight.

    I was always uneasy with the portrayal of the Ba’ku, though the actors rescued it for me. Subsequent viewings suggest why they seem less credible than symbolic: their gracefully styled but rigidly earth-tone clothing, their uniformly pristine village buildings-- more elegant versions of a Phoenix suburb (as Marina Sirtis suggests in a recent commentary) and (as Jonathan Frakes notes) their unbroken whiteness.

    Then there are the missed opportunities, including a clearer sense (perhaps from a single point of view, like Picard’s) of the contrast between the trivial hurry of the Enterprise greeting a new Federation member, and the slower, fuller life on the planet, absent phaser fire. Another is the assertion that deploying the collector would destroy life on the planet for generations, implying for more than its people. So even if the Ba’ku were removed, all other planetary life would be destroyed, an act of geocide that would have been a major concern in a TNG episode. (And if Ru’aflo didn’t misspeak when he said “everything in this sector will be dead or dying," on more than one planet.)

    I get the impression now that not everybody making this movie was on the same page, contributing to a lack of clarity and pace that can prevent viewers from just riding along on a voyage, with its ups and downs, sidetracks and problems solved together. Confusion and disagreement about the core issues probably also contributed. Even in the third season of Picard, Captain Shaw’s erroneous if funny description of this movie’s events, particularly that it was Picard who violated the Prime Directive, suggests this confusion, as well as how the story might be whispered about at the time so that the Federation saves face.)

    Yet a lot of the pieces are there: the exodus from the village, the Enterprise space battle, the transporter and holoship trickery on the Son'a, the hummingbirds. Some fans reacted against the humor, and the change in characterizations. I enjoyed all of that. (Sure, Data in the haystack was sappy and forced, but so goofy that isolated it remains an awkward highlight.) The Enterprise crew didn’t need an alien virus to get a little silly, as in The Naked Now/Time—just an infusion of youth. It’s fun watching these actors do humor, and do it well. In this (as well as other respects) it reminded me of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, when the Kirk Enterprise crew loosened up. It also turns out to be a kind of preview to aspects of the TNG characters as they appear in Picard season 3.

    If the viewer gets swept past the incongruities, then the buoyancy and the scenery in this movie combine for a bright ride. There are plenty of incidents, a fine romance for Captain Picard and Anij (though their kiss got cut entirely) and along with the main cast there are solid performances by F. Murray Abraham (Ru’afo), Anthony Zerbe (Admiral Dougherty) and Donna Murphy (Anij) as well as Gregg Henry (Son’a Gallatin),Daniel Hugh Kelly (Ba’ku Sojef) and a very young Michael Welch (Ba’ku child Artim.)

    Director Frakes had approached First Contact’s Enterprise scenes as a horror story, using some traditional horror movie moves. Those scenes were dark—often literally. Everyone—from Paramount to Rick Berman to Patrick Stewart, credited for the first time as a producer, wanted something lighter for this film. So this time Frakes directed an action adventure out in the bright daylight, like a western. That final shot of the seven Enterprise officers all lined up, capped the reference to The Magnificent Seven heroes defending a helpless village.

    The CGI is now a little outdated (this was the first Trek film to use it exclusively) but the Briar Patch is visually stunning, and the action scenes are fun. Despite its reputation, this movie didn’t do so badly at the box office, either. It’s too bad that it couldn’t more seamlessly bring together its moral center, the story and the mood, as did its model predecessor, The Voyage Home.

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Memory Alpha: Star Trek on this Day

27
Apr

1918 Bruce Schoengarth is born.
1952 Hilary J. Bader is born.
1957 Robert Curtis Brown is born.
1959 Peter Stratford is born.
1961 Eugenie Bondurant is born.
1963 Schae Harrison is born.
1964 Michael Mahonen and Lisa Wilcox are born.
1966 First story treatment submitted for TOS: "Charlie X". Scott Brody and Shawn Michael Perry are born.
1967 Revised final draft script for TOS: "Catspaw" is submitted. Michael William Rivkin is born.
1969 Star Trek: The Original Series premieres on Japanese television. Broadcast by the Nippon Television Network Corporation, Japan is the third and last country, after the United States and Canada, where the series was broadcast, while it was still in production. [1]
1977 Stanley Adams dies.
1979 Ifé Moore is born.
1981 Bonnie Morgan is born.
1987 First draft script for TNG: "The Naked Now" is submitted.
1989 Musical score for TNG: "Q Who" is recorded.
1992 TNG: "The Perfect Mate" airs.
1993 Mustafa Bulut is born.
1994 Twenty-second day of filming on Star Trek Generations.
1996 Adam Roarke dies.
1997 Paul Lambert dies.
1998 Twentieth day of filming on Star Trek: Insurrection.
2001 Jack Murdock dies.
2004 Pocket TNG novel A Time to Harvest published.
2009 Season 1 of The Original Series is released on Blu-ray Disc in Region 2. Also released are: Slimline editions of the remastered Original Series seasons 1-3, Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection (Blu-ray), and Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection (DVD).
2010 Sophia Webster is born.
2012 Seventy-sixth day of filming on Star Trek Into Darkness.
2022 David Birney dies.

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  • 30 Mar 2024
    Heritage March 29, 2024 The Greg Jein Collection Showcase Auction - Star Trek Results

    Presented below is the complete set of final prices realized for the 128 lots of Star Trek memorabilia that were offered in Heritage's Greg Jein Collection Showcase Auction which concluded this afternoon in a live online bidding session at the HeritageLive! (www.HA.com/Live) auction site.

    The most expensive Star Trek related items in the sale were Lot # 4080, a Star Trek: The Original Series Mid-Grade Type-1 Phaser prop, and Lot # 4082, a Greg Jein-built TOS Galileo Shuttlecraft exhibition model, which each sold for $25,000 (including the 25% buyers premium). Lot # 4081, the "Teacher Helmet" from the 3rd season Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Spock's Brain", witnessed a final sales price of $17,500 including buyers premium; while Lot #4283, the USS Defiant Master Systems Display II LCARS panel from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, finished at $15,000.

    The following results show the final amounts realized for the various memorabilia lots, which includes the 25% buyers premium. Just click on any of the images below to view an enlarged version ...


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