The Next Generation 7x5 "Gambit, Part 2"

rating: ****

the story: Riker and Picard get to the bottom of the archeological search the space pirates have been on.

what it's all about: The moving parts here all involve layers of trust, from the obvious to the less-so (Worf isn't sure what to think of Data in command).  It doesn't seem like Next Generation at all, except when you realize the series routinely focused on exactly these matters in its biggest stories. 

What helps set "Part 2" apart is that it's the rare opportunity to see Riker and Picard actively collaborating.  This is certainly something strange to admit, because in every other series, it was much more common, from the one-two punch of Kirk and Spock to Sisko's necessary relationship with Kira, Janeway needing Chakotay as a source of strength, and Archer having T'Pol operate as a testing ground.  Yet more often than not, Picard worked in concert with his whole crew (the movies would finally simplify this by pairing him with Data), and Riker in a vacuum, notably in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2."  "Part 2" also evokes "Redemption, Part 2," where Data originally has personnel problems with how he runs things while in command.  Seeing how he and the crew handles things (including the incredibly tall Klingon!) is almost as much fun as watching Riker and Picard wing their way among the space pirates.

But the episode works best just watching everything develop, including the obligatory twist (Next Generation is easily the most the franchise ever got out of the relationship between Romulans and Vulcans), represented by Robin Curtis, who had previously appeared in Star Trek as the second actress to play Saavik (in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home). 

As a whole, "Gambit" is like the Next Generation version of an original series episode, and it's a terrific breath of fresh air.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Romps are a tradition in Star Trek!
• series - But, a unique experience in this series!
• character - Making for great character work!
• essential - All of which makes it a classic.

notable guest-stars:
Robin Curtis
James Worthy

The Next Generation 7x4 "Gambit, Part 1"

rating: ****

the story: Riker and the crew investigate whether or not Picard is really dead.

what it all means: This is the start of an unlikely Star Trek classic: space pirates!  In a way, this is like Harry Mudd taken to the next level, or "The Outrageous Okana" remastered.  The best part?  It convincingly gives Patrick Stewart something he'd desperately yearned for earlier ("Starship Mine") but wasn't quite able to get, which is a full-out Next Generation romp.

"Part 1" is like a clever rephrasing of "Chain of Command, Part 2," in which the crew tries to figure out what happened to Picard.  The difference is huge!  Investigation episodes always have the potential for great franchise material, and they're done sparingly enough so that they're always a pleasant surprise, and done differently each time so that they always leave you guessing.  "Part 1" has a huge advantage in that it is, of course, the first of two episodes, and so gets to have a killer ending (Picard is working with the bad guys!).

Those paying attention will also be rewarded during "Part 2," because "Part 1" not only lays the groundwork for figuring out what's going on with the captain, but why this is happening in the first place.  In short, it does everything necessary to be a true standout.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Gene Roddenberry hated space pirates, but they always proved memorable.
• series - Plays fast and loose with series lore.
• character  - Works for Riker and Picard.
• essential - It works well on all accounts!

notable guest-stars:
Robin Curtis

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Star Trek is always at its best when it is deliberately crowd-pleasing, as evidenced by all the episodes in the original series that continue to be warmly remembered to this day: “The Naked Time,” “Shore Leave,” “The Trouble with Tribbles.” So it’s no surprise that the original cast met its greatest film success in the time travel romp The Voyage Home.

Released and set mostly in 1986, what is ostensibly the conclusion of a movie trilogy actually allows for many of the classic elements of the TV run to return in full prominence, from the social awareness of the plot to an adventure plot that allows viewers to enjoy themselves unabashedly as they come along for the ride. Star Trek had and would bury itself in heavy narratives thick with pathos and solemn proceedings, but this crowd-pleaser was content to swim with whales named after two Hollywood legends (no, not “Kirk and Spock”).

Another of the great ironies in the film series is that the basic plot of The Voyage Home is another rehash of The Motion Picture, just as Wrath of Khan had been in other ways: a deadly probe threatens all life on Earth, and only Kirk can stop it. This time, however, none of the drama is wrung from the characters, instead coming from their reactions as events unfold, allowing them to enjoy themselves for the first time on the big screen, completely without reservation.

Kirk has no personal stakes in this one, for a change. He does have to answer for the controversial decisions he’s been making, and is flying around in a Klingon ship, but he never seems troubled by any of it. He’s light-hearted enough to engage in a playful (read: platonic) relationship with contemporary marine biologist Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks, who would one day join Motion Picture alum Stephen Collins on TV with 7th Heaven), and shoot a bunch of witty banter with Spock (“did a little too much LDS”) around her. It’s the first time he’s truly been able to have fun in decades!

Spock, meanwhile, who has been suffering for one reason or another through his human/Vulcan dichotomy throughout each of the previous films, finally seems to find an appropriate balance, learning all about “colorful metaphors” (and inappropriately using them) and even mind-melding with lumpy, non-humanoid creature for the first time since “Devil in the Dark” for a little conversation that reveals new perspectives. He actually seems at home walking around in a ceremonial robe (and improvised headband) in San Francisco. He is not a fish out of water.

Scotty and Chekov make some lasting impressions during the movie as well, whether seeking transparent aluminum or “nuclear wessels,” which is hardly a surprise, given that the inner circle of three usually maintained in this crew regularly opened to admit these two. Sulu even gets to foreshadow the command George Takei had been anticipating since Wrath of Khan (even though the timing he got seemed completely reasonable to me, since the character hardly ever actually distinguished himself) when the Excelsior they sabotaged in Search for Spock is referenced as the crew’s possible replacement ship after they all get back home. I’m sure Uhura does something memorable as well, but I’m not really recalling it at this time.

None of this would matter a whole lot if there was a dramatic culture clash that made our characters the object of deliberate jokes rather than seamless visitors occasionally stumbling into jams. But none of it turns out to be things they can’t handle, whether an unruly bus passenger playing his boom box too loud (nothing a Vulcan Nerve Pinch can’t handle) or a trip to the hospital (which turns out to be a piece of cake). Even Gillian’s involvement and dawning awareness of the scope of this escapade progresses naturally, without a lot of needless fuss. Kirk’s charm can be thanked for that.

This was introduced to me as the big success of the films, and I became aware of it shortly after it was released. (Being six at the time of its release was still too soon to have been a natural first-hand impression.) Sometimes, having a positive opinion before an actual experience isn’t so bad (while conversely, I suspect a lot of Trek, as well as other things, has suffered from negative opinions floating around for no good reason). It allows you to sit back and enjoy what is unerringly an entertaining experience, following beat by beat the things you were already aware of (which is a little of how I first saw Star Trek: First Contact, having already heard a breathless account from a friend at school). In that sense, I don’t really put much stock in the idea of spoilers. You can read a novelization and still not anticipate the full impact of the same events brought vividly to life. There’s a certain thrill seeing a Bird of Prey flying about our familiar skies, whether scooping beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, or setting down in a park, even while cloaked.

(Just as an aside, Voyage Home did a lot of great work with cloaking technology, too.)

We get the debut of Admiral Cartwright (Brock Peters, who would later portray Sisko’s dad in Deep Space Nine), a comparatively minor and undeveloped character, but who would help serve as some of the backbone of the conspiracy in The Undiscovered Country, as well as the Klingon played by John Schuck, who helps to link the events of Search for Spock with the aforementioned sixth film, in which he also appears. We get the first appearance of a Federation president, another appearance from Sarek, even cameos from Saavik and Amanda, Spock’s mom, plus the debut of a new Enterprise.

Either as a fan or a general filmgoer, The Voyage Home is a pleasure, a welcome diversion from the kind of story just about every other Star Trek movie has explored, in mood and scope. It doesn’t hurt to have seen the two previous films (and serves as a definite reward if you do), but you can easily enjoy it on its own, and in that sense serves as another satisfyingly complete experience, though in a far different way than Search for Spock.

If you want to experience the best possible representation of the original series in film form, you can’t possibly top Voyage Home.

It’s not really hard to see how the success of this one prompted Paramount to finally launch a second TV series, about a decade after it gave up on the idea originally. What’s a little more difficult to understand, though certainly beneficial to Gene Roddenberry and his last chance to run a Star Trek, is that this new show shared nothing in common with this audience pleaser.

Now, just imagine…A Star Trek series that transports a crew from the future to our present, for the entire duration of the show. Talk about a concept…

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

The movie in the entire film series that I think has always gotten the shaft, and for no discernable reason, other than coming between the ones fans (Wrath of Khan) and general audiences (The Voyage Home) really love, the middle part of the original crew trilogy that can be too easily dismissed as merely utilitarian. My argument is that it’s so much more than that. It may be, pound for pound, the most completely satisfying Star Trek movie.

Released in 1984, urged on by its predecessor and by that decade’s fascination in recreating the Star Wars experience in as many ways as possible (something that would doom many franchises by its end, including the Ghostbusters, Superman, and even Mad Max), The Search for Spock was perhaps the only movie the fans absolutely demanded, given that Spock had been killed off in the closing moments of Wrath of Khan, which had to reshape its ending to allow for a little more hope, which the new film had to then extrapolate and dramatize. It’s the only piece of franchise history that you absolutely can’t see on its own to fully appreciate (and then, maybe that’s a little of why its reputation suffers, because fans are at once fiercely protective of what they love, and yet strangely averse to be apologetic, lest their interest come off as weak), even though the key moments and plot points are presented again, to maintain at least the semblance of a closed loop.

And yet this creates a sense of urgency throughout the movie, a need to finish something the fans are now expecting, in as interesting a way as possible, and indeed, many obstacles are placed in front of Kirk, from a Starfleet completely unsympathetic to his need for redemption (because for him, the last film amounted to something of a tangible defeat), Klingons who seek to exploit the planet and its secrets that provide the hope Kirk needs, and the unexpected deterioration of that planet. You might even say that the Genesis device is better represented in this film than the other, reaching its full potential, both for good and otherwise, making Wrath of Khan more a prelude than superior product to Search for Spock. It’s almost less important that our famous Vulcan is dead than his unlikely new relationship to the device’s implications.

Indeed, Saavik (now played by Robin Curtis, looking and acting different than Kirstie Alley) is another example of this heightened atmosphere. Instead of supporting our established characters in activities that never really concern her, she takes the Chekov role from Wrath of Khan, amping it up, and is engaging in her own adventure, which is interrupted both by circumstances and the villain of the movie. She’s accompanied by David Marcus, who is similarly free to pursue his own interests, for the first time allowed to run his own experiments, unencumbered by family concerns (mostly).

But what truly sets the film apart, and is something that has probably be overlooked by most fans, is that this is the first time the new Klingons introduced in The Motion Picture take center stage. Without Search for Spock, The Undiscovered Country would be unlikely (and considerably less personably compelling), or the work four subsequent TV shows accomplished after it.

One of the most blatantly unfair charges against the movie revolves around the principal Klingon, Kruge, who has the distinction of being portrayed by Christopher Lloyd, who is still to this day known as a comedic actor. Viewers refused to accept him in a dramatic role, and critics were equally confused, because they expect genre properties to have built-in devices so that everyone knows the proceedings aren’t being taken too seriously (the only known exception to this rule is the extreme reverence everyone seemed to embrace Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy with). Lloyd should have been comic relief. And yet, he clearly wasn’t. He took the role quite seriously, and is still to this day probably the closest Star Trek has come to portraying, as a central figure of a story, an ordinary Klingon warrior, dedicated to duty, his pet, and the empire.

Perhaps tellingly, he makes for a more satisfying villain than Khan, too, at least for the filmmakers. After all, he does get to engage Kirk in the only hand-to-hand combat our hero actually gets to do (with a significant figure) in the Star Trek films before he finally dies in such a struggle, which had been so common in the original series, with whole episodes sometimes built around this tendency. For much of the film, Kruge is as removed from Kirk as Khan was, but in the end that fight can no longer be resisted, especially since the Klingon does what the genetic superman couldn’t bring himself to do despite all his bluster: he made it personal. Khan had two generations of Marcus to threaten, Kruge had one, and could have killed Spock, personally. You can imagine what was going on in the writing room when these scenes were conceived. I would argue that the filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing, even if fans would come to think of their efforts as just another confirmation of the emerging Odd Number Curse.

I would submit that the ending of Wrath of Khan is strengthened by its repetition in Search for Spock, that it takes on mythic proportions when reiterated between Kirk and Sarek (Mark Lenard, making his first appearance in the films, and another reasons why I love this one) and Kirk and Spock himself, not to mention the creepy (and at times amusing) revelation that McCoy got stuck with Spock’s soul, which makes an ironic and compelling connection between normally lightly antagonistic friends. In fact, one of my favorite scenes is when DeForest Kelley pulls off his best impression of Leonard Nimoy, in the shadows, the first time we see Bones in the movie. Kirk is already on edge, far more depressed than in the two previous films (which amounts to an escalation that few could have anticipated when they consider The Motion Picture even for the tenth time). In that sense, because maybe people really just want to see our hero happy and carefree for a change, it’s better to look elsewhere for a cherished movie memory.

But as a single experience, even with a lot of loose ends dangling, plots left over and picked up by later films and series, Search for Spock presents a heck of an experience, perhaps the most complete story and character arc for Kirk. It’s a full adventure, blows up a beloved ship, elicits really emotion from William Shatner, and closes the loop opened in the first film, bringing us back to Vulcan for another dramatic ceremony, except this one we’re more than happy to see to conclusion.

All of this isn’t to say it’s my favorite one. I think it lacks a lot of punch, that it does seem a little too inevitable in its beats (Curtis is such a departure from Alley that she seems to hardly exist at all, at least in the role of Saavik, and David becomes an afterthought, only to be killed off, with the audience expected to care for him based on the previous film alone). The rest of the familiar characters have a few things to do so they can get to the Genesis planet, but they’re all forgotten by the time they get there. There’s a lot to sacrifice so that this story as conceived can happen, much like Wrath of Khan, even though what we’re given works so well in its most important elements.

Perhaps the most successful piece of the film is the absence of Nimoy (except behind the camera, where he proves a deft hand as director) until absolutely needed, a move calculated for maximum impact. Just as Kirk is beginning to wonder if he’s sacrificed everything just to lose it all, Spock finally offers a glimmer of recognition. His friend is back.

But Search for Spock is an exercise in proving that an old friend was never really gone. In many ways, this was the true beginning of a whole new era.