StarTrek (TOS) 1.01-02
So I’m thinking or starting yet another review project wherein I tackle some of the iconic shows where I’ve either never see, seen very little, or it’s been a long time if I have seen it. These wouldn’t be as much of an undertaking as my B5 rewatch, nor as brief as my weekly show reactions, but a few thoughts on each episode as I get to it. And for me the obvious place to start is Star Trek.
I’ve basically never seen The Original Series, only knowing enough about the iconic classic episodes as obtained through years of nerd culture osmosis. I’ve never seen any of The Animated Series (which happens to be on Netflix for now). I’m not sure whether or not I’ve seen every episode of The Next Generation, there’s probably some I’ve completely missed, but there’s a lot of episodes I don’t really remember as I haven’t watched the show in many many years. Same goes for Deep Space Nine except that I’m more sure there are some episodes I missed. Voyager I basically stopped watching after a couple seasons back when it first aired and have never really revisited it. Same thing with Enterprise except the cut off was about two episodes. So as a franchise I’ll be approaching it with 90% at best fuzzy memories and a decent amount completely unseen.
I guess there comes a point in every nerd’s life when they have to say, “Yes I could be watching B5, Farscape, Avatar, the DC shows on the CW, or The Middleman yet again, but I probably should give Star Trek a real chance; there are podcasts about it that I want to listen to after all.”
So, without further ado, and at least until I decide this isn’t really worth my time, on with Star Trek. I think I’ll post two at a time and see how long I can keep ahead of the project.
TOS 1x01: The Cage
I’m going with the order and numbering on Netflix since that’s where I’m watching this and it’ll be easiest to keep straight. I don’t know if these are going to turn out to be the remastered versions (it seems to be the revised/restored order rather than the other - maybe DVD - one I’ve seen, but we’ll see, this one didn’t exactly appear remastered, but since I don’t know what it looks like either way, for now I’m undecided).
Also before I get going, I’m going to try and be...fair to this series for being of a different time in terms of presentation and pacing and effects and such. Plus this is a pilot that ended up not even being presented to public and as I’m well aware pilots are rough things and since I’m not exactly sure how it may improve in the proper series I’ll keep it in mind.
That said, I was finding this one pretty rough for a while. I like Pike a lot more in theory than I think I did in practice (he at least starts off with a lot of character space that in a modern show I might have regretted we didn’t get to see play out) because in practice he was just kind of there. And the plot ended up being more interesting than the characters or anything else about the episode, and the plot was pretty scattershot and odd and I don’t exactly like it.
But, for the time, I can see why it would get interest. It showed a lot of range of ideas for stories by having this one move about so much and it has an ‘anything is possible’ vibe to it for the viewer to want to see more. The messages and themes were very of the time and perhaps just progressive enough to be daring without really pushing the envelope; though apparently even what it had was supposedly too much (women in pants, how dare they).
I can’t say I understand why Spock/Nimoy was the character to make the transition to the show proper, because he’s pretty much a non-entity here, but I’m also not going to go look into it. Not that that’s that (now that’s a word chain) much different than the presentation of the other characters, just that since he will stick around it feels like he should have been a stand-out and really wasn’t.
TOS 1x02: The Man Trap
So these do appear to be the remastered versions, just to get that said; it’s clearer here.
That was a much better episode than the original pilot, the pacing was a lot better, although the action scenes weren’t exactly impressive to a modern eye, the story pace was fine. The energy level was a lot higher overall too and the character interactions seemed a lot more...relaxed, playful, and natural, some combination of that I’ll say.
I’ll say that a lot of that is probably down to Shatner, even if his performance is already setting him up to mocked for generations to come, he definitely brings a liveliness that wasn’t there in The Cage. Probably a lot of other factors at work too, but I can see Shatner being a big one.
Although I don’t recall anyone actually dying in the pilot and a whole lot of people do get killed here. And the number of people who die is kind of incongruous with the creature surviving this long without having more people around to kill. It never seemed full; it was calmer at times but never able to go long at all without sucking the salt out of someone. Which sort of makes me wonder if it was entirely sentient or if the appearance of sentience was a consequence of the psychic influences giving it shape.
I’m also guessing someone who was writing for the 2009 movie watched this episode (at least, I don’t know if it’s there in other eps) and liked the idea of Spock/Uhura from their flirting here. I’m certainly not against it, although the dialog is pretty poor by today’s standards.
I suppose I also need to try and not let my shipping opinions in the reboot-verse influence my thoughts here too much, but this definitely wasn’t bad for my Kirk/Bones feelings for the reboot versions. I can already kind of see why Kirk/Spock was the fandom favorite, depending on how it goes later of course, but even if I could completely throw out my preconceived notions, I’m not sure it’s what would appeal to me. After all, Bones now has a pretty big start on being my favorite character, and that has more influence on such things for me than much else.
Also somewhat weird take by 60s early environmentalism, draw lots of comparisons with the apparently extinct buffalo but not really have any emotional connection with the idea that they’re gone, or have it relate on an emotional level with what happens here. Although there also wasn’t really enough acknowledgement on the real Nancy’s death for me either, I guess I just wasn’t really getting a lot of feeling for the end even though I think it was trying to evoke some feeling that I wasn’t latching onto.
I’ve basically never seen The Original Series, only knowing enough about the iconic classic episodes as obtained through years of nerd culture osmosis. I’ve never seen any of The Animated Series (which happens to be on Netflix for now). I’m not sure whether or not I’ve seen every episode of The Next Generation, there’s probably some I’ve completely missed, but there’s a lot of episodes I don’t really remember as I haven’t watched the show in many many years. Same goes for Deep Space Nine except that I’m more sure there are some episodes I missed. Voyager I basically stopped watching after a couple seasons back when it first aired and have never really revisited it. Same thing with Enterprise except the cut off was about two episodes. So as a franchise I’ll be approaching it with 90% at best fuzzy memories and a decent amount completely unseen.
I guess there comes a point in every nerd’s life when they have to say, “Yes I could be watching B5, Farscape, Avatar, the DC shows on the CW, or The Middleman yet again, but I probably should give Star Trek a real chance; there are podcasts about it that I want to listen to after all.”
So, without further ado, and at least until I decide this isn’t really worth my time, on with Star Trek. I think I’ll post two at a time and see how long I can keep ahead of the project.
TOS 1x01: The Cage
I’m going with the order and numbering on Netflix since that’s where I’m watching this and it’ll be easiest to keep straight. I don’t know if these are going to turn out to be the remastered versions (it seems to be the revised/restored order rather than the other - maybe DVD - one I’ve seen, but we’ll see, this one didn’t exactly appear remastered, but since I don’t know what it looks like either way, for now I’m undecided).
Also before I get going, I’m going to try and be...fair to this series for being of a different time in terms of presentation and pacing and effects and such. Plus this is a pilot that ended up not even being presented to public and as I’m well aware pilots are rough things and since I’m not exactly sure how it may improve in the proper series I’ll keep it in mind.
That said, I was finding this one pretty rough for a while. I like Pike a lot more in theory than I think I did in practice (he at least starts off with a lot of character space that in a modern show I might have regretted we didn’t get to see play out) because in practice he was just kind of there. And the plot ended up being more interesting than the characters or anything else about the episode, and the plot was pretty scattershot and odd and I don’t exactly like it.
But, for the time, I can see why it would get interest. It showed a lot of range of ideas for stories by having this one move about so much and it has an ‘anything is possible’ vibe to it for the viewer to want to see more. The messages and themes were very of the time and perhaps just progressive enough to be daring without really pushing the envelope; though apparently even what it had was supposedly too much (women in pants, how dare they).
I can’t say I understand why Spock/Nimoy was the character to make the transition to the show proper, because he’s pretty much a non-entity here, but I’m also not going to go look into it. Not that that’s that (now that’s a word chain) much different than the presentation of the other characters, just that since he will stick around it feels like he should have been a stand-out and really wasn’t.
TOS 1x02: The Man Trap
So these do appear to be the remastered versions, just to get that said; it’s clearer here.
That was a much better episode than the original pilot, the pacing was a lot better, although the action scenes weren’t exactly impressive to a modern eye, the story pace was fine. The energy level was a lot higher overall too and the character interactions seemed a lot more...relaxed, playful, and natural, some combination of that I’ll say.
I’ll say that a lot of that is probably down to Shatner, even if his performance is already setting him up to mocked for generations to come, he definitely brings a liveliness that wasn’t there in The Cage. Probably a lot of other factors at work too, but I can see Shatner being a big one.
Although I don’t recall anyone actually dying in the pilot and a whole lot of people do get killed here. And the number of people who die is kind of incongruous with the creature surviving this long without having more people around to kill. It never seemed full; it was calmer at times but never able to go long at all without sucking the salt out of someone. Which sort of makes me wonder if it was entirely sentient or if the appearance of sentience was a consequence of the psychic influences giving it shape.
I’m also guessing someone who was writing for the 2009 movie watched this episode (at least, I don’t know if it’s there in other eps) and liked the idea of Spock/Uhura from their flirting here. I’m certainly not against it, although the dialog is pretty poor by today’s standards.
I suppose I also need to try and not let my shipping opinions in the reboot-verse influence my thoughts here too much, but this definitely wasn’t bad for my Kirk/Bones feelings for the reboot versions. I can already kind of see why Kirk/Spock was the fandom favorite, depending on how it goes later of course, but even if I could completely throw out my preconceived notions, I’m not sure it’s what would appeal to me. After all, Bones now has a pretty big start on being my favorite character, and that has more influence on such things for me than much else.
Also somewhat weird take by 60s early environmentalism, draw lots of comparisons with the apparently extinct buffalo but not really have any emotional connection with the idea that they’re gone, or have it relate on an emotional level with what happens here. Although there also wasn’t really enough acknowledgement on the real Nancy’s death for me either, I guess I just wasn’t really getting a lot of feeling for the end even though I think it was trying to evoke some feeling that I wasn’t latching onto.