Star Trek: The Original Series - Season One

Thanks to Netflix adding the majority of the Star Trek Universe series to their streaming library, I'm taking the opportunity to watch the Original Series. I grew up watching and loving the The Next Generation. While I saw many of the Original Series episodes, it never captured me the way that TNG did.

I'm watching the remastered versions of the episodes. The updated effects are very nice and surprisingly fit in well enough with the live-action portions of the show. Well done, Paramount! Now I want the Special Editions where additional characters are added and Chekov is replaced with a thinly-veiled racial stereotype CGI character... oh wait - George Lucas doesn't own Star Trek and therefore can't ruin this property too. Excellent.

Some thoughts on season one:

It's been a long time since I watched a show where the actors kept up their motions as the credit roll even if none of their dialog comes through. I like how they often making exaggerated motions and ceasing even pretending to talk. It's kind of breaking the fourth wall.

One element that stands out to me is the transporter. I've never been a fan of the idea of transporters - not as an element in a story or a plot device, rather the prospect of actually using one. The thought of using one as depicted in the original series and made using the technology they would have imagined at that time - truly terrifying! It occurs to me now that the transporter was viewed more as a telephone call or a radio broadcast that requires no computation rather than a highly complex operation that would have required the equivalent of a planet-sized computer at the time.

The first pilot, the Cage, was interesting enough. It kept up well with the science fiction of the time and had some very good character development. A series with Captain Pike and "Number One" with Yeoman Rand would have been interesting indeed. The love triangle that we see the beginnings of surely would have led to some fun developments. Spock was a bit more enthusiastic. The overall feeling was much more military - sort of like a WWII navy picture of the time.

The second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, was certainly more polished. The cast was more dynamic, and the costumes were *slightly* better, though still needing improvement even for the time. The most notable aspect I picked up on that I had never noticed previously was the flirtatious nature of Uhura, especially demonstrated toward Spock. In retrospect, I'm glad that the recent movie picked up on that and took it further.

Wow - this show is sexist. Damn. Though I like the short skirts and scantily-clad womens.

Overall I have to say that the first season of TOS is really solid. Comparatively, especially in sci-fi, it seems that the first season of a show is typically not the best - more like a shakedown cruise. As I move on to the second and third seasons, I have to wonder if the show gets better or worse. I didn't notice much of the brash Kirk and overly scientific Spock. There's a strong balance between Kirk-Spock-Bones that I like quite a bit.

Babylon 5 (viewing order)

I haven't watched this series, but I plan to some day. I know there's a lot of discussion as to the proper viewing order and all that. This link appears to have some good information.

Once I actually watch the episodes, hopefully I'll remember to post back about it and whatever thoughts or changes.

Fringe Steals from Ex Machina!

WARING: SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST SEASON FINALE OF FRINGE AND THE COMIC SERIES EX MACHINA FOLLOW!!!!!




I just got done watching the first season of Fringe. While I have to say that I enjoyed it, I also have to admit that I'm left with a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Brian K Vaughan has been writing a fantastic comic series from Wildstorm/DC called Ex Machina. It's about a superhero in a world very much like our own. Mitchel Hundred went by the name of the "Great Machine" when he was out saving the world. Perhaps his greatest achievement as a hero was stopping the second airplane from striking the second World Trade Center tower in New York City on 9/11.

There is a mystery surrounding the origin of Hundred's powers - even to him. In one of the issues there's a visitor from another dimension that meets with Hundred and tells him that he's crossed over from another reality in advance of a invading army that aims to take over not just the world - but ALL the worlds.

Cut over to Fringe - the early episodes were very much in the vein of X-Files with a mystery of the week and a slow build-up to the overall story. Suffice it to say a large component of the story involves travel between worlds and various factions battling against one another. The final shot of the finale pulls away from two characters talking in an office. As the shot widens and travels further from the window you see that both towers are still standing and it is implied on a newspaper front page that it was the White House that got destroyed in this reality. ["Obamas set to move into new White House"]

Of course it's not a blatant rip-off, certainly nothing that BKV could go after JJ Abrams for stealing, but it definitely takes some key points.