Happy First Contact Day!!

It is First Contact Day! The 50^th Pre-Anniversary of First Contact day! Yep, 50 years from now, the T’Plana Hath will be heading into Earth orbit after picking up a warp signature, just hours from landing in Montana. Zefram Cochrane will offer his hand to the strange visitor and then introduce them to the music of Roy Orbison…

We’ll be lucky to avoid them wiping us out for the good of the galaxy. I have a theory the Xindi attack was in fact entirely motivated by Zefram Cochrane trying to pass his CD’s to other races.

Anyway, I digress from the point I was vaguely considering making. Well, less of a point and more of a list! Yes, to commemorate this momentous pre-anniversary, I am listing my top 5 Vulcan moments in Trek! These are my personal top 5 moments, other opinions are available.

5. Sarek

I am a dude who got into Star Trek with The Next Generation. By the time Sarek rolled around I was already gaining some familiarity with the character and Vulcans, having got through the movies, though had yet to realise the full backstory from Journey to Babel. This episode always stuck out for me as particularly brilliant though. I think this was the first time I really understood that Vulcans do have emotions, they just control them. The concept of a Vulcan who is losing that control is brilliant. It’s almost horrifying to watch, the character has such gravity and dignity and it’s gradually crumbling. The final solution, for Picard to meld with him to give him emotional strength is also marvellous as it leads to the scene of Picard struggling with all of Sarek’s 200 years of repressed emotion. Which give Patrick Stewart the chance to let loose, which is awesome to see and underscores how much control a Vulcan must have to exert over a lifetime, which makes Sarek and Spock and all the Vulcans more impressive for managing it.

4. Kir’Shara

Ah Enterprise. For three series I persisted and struggled with you. Then season 4 arrived and wow, you got seriously awesome!

I’d never been too keen on Enterprise’s portrayal of Vulcans as a race. I liked Soval and T’Pol just fine, I just wasn’t keen on the idea of Vulcan as an overbearing, disapproving group holding us back from exploring space. I liked even less the idea that they were engaged in ongoing hostilities with the Andorians. I didn’t mind the hostilities as much as the way the Vulcan’s were dicks about it. They were, they were being dicks.

So this episode went a long way to redress that. In fact it was pretty momentous in terms of changing the status quo with Vulcan, as we pretty much have them go through a big old shift in philosophy. Yes, they’ve retained the basic idea of emotional control and logic, but from here they have to re-assess a lot of what they think they know about Surak’s teachings. As with so much of Enterprise’s fourth season, I would loved to have seen where this led in future years, but of course, that’s not possible now. Also, I really enjoy Robert Foxworth, I loved seeing him as a Vulcan/Romulan agent!

3. Innocence

I loved the character of Tuvok. I thought he was brilliant and tragically underused on Voyager. And when he was used, I felt they often failed to make good use of him. There seemed to be a lot to do with Tuvok losing emotional control through injury or some other thing or being injured.

But this episode Tuvok just got to be a Vulcan. Trapped on a planet alone apart from three scared children and a monster! Brilliant! Though I quite like the twist at the end that the children are actually really old people, the highlights for me are Tuvok’s interactions. He talks about his children and how Vulcan’s raise their young and his attempts to teach the 3 ‘kids’ Vulcan techniques to control their fears are all really brilliant.

2. Journey to Babel

I adore this episode! From the opening scene, when the Vulcan ambassador openly disses Spock and then Kirk offers Spock the chance to beam down to visit his parents and there’s the slightly awkward pause before Spock explains the Vulcan ambassador  and his wife ARE his parents, you know this is going to be good. What often happens in Trek is when an actor comes in to play a Vulcan, that stoicism coupled with that slight air of superior feeling that Vulcan’s seem to have means they come across as more Romulan than Vulcan. But Sarek comes across as perfect Vulcan while still having this air of disapproval and being a complete hard ass, but doesn’t end up feeling more like a sneering Romulan. Of course, Spock totally ups his game on the no emotion stakes by flatly refusing to donate blood for his father’s life saving operation as he needs to be in command of the ship. Throw in poor Amanda trapped in between the two most important people in her life for years of this conflict and now faced with losing one due to the others refusal to act… it’s marvellous. And leads to the payoff at the end, when in the face of Amanda’s emotional outburst, Spock asks why Sarek married her, the answer being, ‘it seemed logical’! You… you probably had to be there.

1.Amok Time

My number one moment with the Vulcans! The pon farr thing is kind of ridiculous if you think about it, but it’s one of the big things now in Star Trek lore, Vulcan’s absolutely have to mate every seven years… OR THEY DIE!!!
There’s a lot of big moments in this episode, our first real glimpse of Vulcan, our first encounter with other Vulcans and a pretty awesome fight and a crazy crazy Spock. It establishes that for a race steeped in logic, the Vulcans have a penchant for needless ceremony and ritual. It also seems odd that when everyone thinks Spock has killed Kirk in ritual combat, everyone is pretty ok about it. That seemed odd, admittedly 20 minutes of outcry would be rendered pointless at the final reveal, which is still very effective for Spock’s emotional slip when he sees his friend is ok. It’s one of those episodes where if you look deeply at it there’s a bunch of stuff that is actually stupid. But it doesn’t matter because it all works and you’re swept into this story where every moment is just brilliant. Who cares that needless gongs are necessary for a people steeped in logic, that Spock’s mother didn’t bother coming to his wedding/fight, that the deadly mating urge can also be cured by a punch up, altogether these things are brilliant because this episode is just brilliant. See, I can't even make that coherent an argument for why this episode ranks number 1 in my list of 5 great Vulcan episodes, it’s just so brilliant I am reduced to babbling and gushing about how much I love it.

I’m going to go watch it again this weekend. Actually, I think I need to watch this episode every seven weeks…OR I MIGHT DIE!!

(But I’ll probably be ok if I can have a fight instead)

Been being nerdy

Crap! Crap crap crappity crap! I've gone almost a month with no post! So much for posing more regularly! And I got a netbook for my 30th (thankyou Faye!), so there's not really a good excuse, I should be able to post a blog anywhere! I am hopefully going to post more, but I have filled my time with nerdy activities.

I was a bit unsure what to talk about. Obviously there was the Doctor Who special recently, but you know what? I've been massively in a Star Trek mood of late. So I'm going to reflect a little on some of my Star Trek viewing in the last month.

I got the 2nd series of the original Trek on DVD for my birthday. I got the 1st series a few months back and have watched a few episodes here and there, but slowly been working through it with my fiancee who, bless her, is enduring this experience to share time with me. So far we've found that when I say 'this is one of my favourites!' she normally doesn't like it! And I mean she doesn't like The Corbomite Maneuver or Balance of Terror. I am aghast! However, she apparently enjoyed Miri, The Conscience of the King and The Menagerie, so all is not lost. On top of this, she has the charming habit of pretending that she thinks the recent movie is part of the same continuity to wind me up. And an odd thing that she keeps mixing Scotty and McCoy up. I can't figure that last one out, but I don't think that's a deliberate thing!

Visually these remastered episodes look amazing. The picture is all cleaned up and looks great. The effects shots though...wow. All the shots of ships and planets in space have been replaced with new effects. And they look really good. But more than that, they don't look hugely out of place. A lot of effort has been put into replicating the style of the original series effects. The Enterprise moves and orbits like she always has, but as a cgi model looks more like a spaceship than a model of one. And in many cases things have been beefed up. Planets all look better, and shots of outposts on planets look awesome. Watch The Naked Time for a great example of this.

I don't know if there's been a negative reaction to these sets, I've deliberately avoided finding out. It's one of those things that I can imagine 'purists' ranting that it spoils the feel of the episodes and the original effects are part of the charm. If so that's fine, but I enjoy the new visuals, and I always found the charm of the original series to be in the characters and the stories. And these are as strong as ever.

I may get a little defensive here, but I've got the feeling on occasion that I'm not supposed to 'get' the Original Series as much as i wasn't around in the sixties. Y'know what? i think I do get it. I enjoy these episodes as much as anyone. Right, ok, deep breaths...
So recently I've noticed McCoy's moments a lot more than I think I ever did before. I'm not sure why, but in my recent viewings, Deforest Kelley has really stood out for me. Maybe it's because I've become disillusioned with Shatner and his childish arguments with George Takei, (FFS you're both pensioner age, grow up!) but then there's the awesome character moments with Kirk and McCoy, Spock and McCoy and Kirk and Spock that are also standing out for me more than before.

I also wondered if it's part of this thing that people also say about Star Trek that it represents a hopeful future with a better world. So when I was younger I like the idea of a future where the silly conflicts of earth were resolved and we went out into space. Because, y'know, space! (Odd, I don't even like to fly...) As I grew, I appreciated the resolution of these conflicts more. Star Trek showed a society built on equality and tolerance, it was something that our current society should be aspiring to.

So maybe at this time in my life I'm appreciating the various relationships in my world and finding the core friendships of the 3 main characters in Star Trek to be something that resonates a little more with me than before.

It's an odd amateur psycho-analysis of myself that I've veered off into here!

I watched the new movie again this week. Still loving that. And I found that the core friendships between Kirk, Spock and McCoy, while not developed as they are in the series, are key points in the movie. They made tremendous efforts to lay the seeds and I think they've got a good handle on it. There's enough going on between the three of them that I can see it establishing. Hopefully the next film will give some time to showing us a more progressed friendship. I particularly want to see some Spock/McCoy exchanges. Those moments were unequalled, though DS9 had some marvellous Quark and Odo moments. But yeah, in the next film, I want some Spock McCoy arguments, and the climactic confrontation should be driven by Kirk finding a plan from the extremes of Spock's logic and McCoys emotion. Oh and some explosions! Loadsa explosions! I know there's a lot of talk about Khan, but isn't the point of the last film that they have a whole new direction to go play with? I know you could go many different ways with Khan, I've read some suggestions. But I still think Klingons, explosions and Kirk/Spock/McCoy relationship is the way to go! After all, and I shouldn't say this after the successful recasting that Star Trek demonstrated, but who could really play Khan like Ricardo Montalbahn??