TREK REVIEW: Prodigy 2-3 & 2-4

2.3 - Who Saves the Saviours? 

2.4 - Temporal Mechanics 101

A solid couple of episodes which kick off the main storyline for the season, as Starfleet's youngest accidentally pervert the flow of history. The time travel rules are either very complicated or very shaky on this show. These episodes occur in the same place in two different time periods, with Gwyn on the planet Solum 52 years before Dal and co. get there, stumbling across Chakotay and his first officer, Adreek-hu. 

It seems that all this criss-crossing in time has tied history up in knots. While they work together and try to maintain the timeline like Starfleet officers should, Dal and his pals end up altering history so that Chakotay and Adreek-hu are successful in their escape from Solum abord the Protostar. This means that the ship never ends up on Tars Lamora, so that the kids never find it in the first place and reach Starfleet. Indeed, the Diviner never goes to Tars Lamora to track the ship down, never buys the orphans to use as labour, and never creates Gwyn in the first place. Even though the events are in the future, changing them has altered the past.

All very well, except that the whole point of Gwyn going to Solum in the present was to stop the devastation it faces in the future. So how does Dal and his friends' accidental alteration of future events cause such a drastic change to the timeline? Surely, if Gwyn had been successful and prevented the war on Solum, the distruption would have been even worse? And if Dal's deduction that they were always meant to be in the future to help Chakotay launch the Protostar is correct, how did things end up going so wrong at all?

It's probably best not to think too much on it, just like it's best not to think too much on how Gwyn is slowly fading from existence, "in superposition between two quantum realities," and doesn't just wink out of existence straight away. For that matter, why are the rest of the kids still there, and not wherever they would have grown up if it weren't for the Diviner? Lawd knows.

There's a lot to enjoy here, from Dal's natural leadership to Ma'jel's softening on the team and helping them try to fix things. Jankon ditching his attempt at politeness and embracing his Tellarite crabbiness, while proving again what an amazing engineer he is, is another highlight. The time travel shenanigans work dramatically, even if they don't quite make sense. The bird puns are dreadful, but in the best way.

However, some parts work less well. Having the ritual to prove Gwyn's true Vau'Nakat-ness be just another big fight is visually fun, but a bit of a let down, and something of a Trek cliché. Dr. Erin MacDonald is a real science advisor and is apparently a big deal, so having her play a future version of herself (a descendant?) is fun, but I found her a bit annoying. And, well, Chakotay is back. I realise we didn't know what a dickhead Robert Beltran was when they were recording this, but no one really liked Chakotay first time round anyway. So a series revolving around tracking him down doesn't exactly grip me.

Overall, this is a fun adventure with some high stakes, with Gwyn's very existence hanging in the balance and some great performances from Brett Gray and Ella Purnell. Plus, we have the mystery of who is speaking to the crew from the future (my initial assumption that it was an evolved future version of Zero was way off, though).

Links and references:

• "We're hurtling through a time hole!" After paraphrasing Doctor Who last week, now Dal's throwing around Red Dwarf references. Janon turning his mechanical hand into a spider-like helper might be a nod to Kryten's similar gambit in "Terrorform," but probably not.
• Ma'jel refers to the Bell Riots from DS9 "Past Tense" (set this year, fact fans) and Cochrane's first warp test in Star Trek: First Contact when explaining causal loops.
• MacDonald's Temporal Mechanics lesson refers to the USS Enterprise and Bounty's slingshot time trips, and Q's temporal trickery.
• The USS Voyager-A has temporal shielding, probably in case they run into any Krenim while they're messing about near the Delta Quadrant.
• Adreek-hu is an Aurelian, a species that first appeared in Star Trek: The Animated Series. Giving Chakotay an eagle as a first officer is a bit on the nose.

 

Cliché count: "I'm a doctor, not an exorcist!" That's two in four episodes.

Best line: "Over here! Look how distracting I am!"

New fiction - "The Gorgon"

I'm posting on Vocal again, and trying my hand once more at some of their fiction challenges, not least because they force me to actually knuckle down and write something creative.

The latest challenge is "Legends Rewritten," for which I have devised The Gorgon: Medusa's Story, a sci-fi take on a very old myth. Go give it a read, if you fancy it.

REVIEW: Nosferatu

 

Never underestimate the staying power of a good horror story. Over a century since F. W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror was released, another version has rocked the world with its powerful gothic imagery. Of course, even the original Nosferatu wasn’t actually original, being simply Dracula with the names and half the setting changed, to the point where several versions have had the names of the main characters changed back to the ones from the book. It’s a funny thing, copyright: the 1922 Nosferatu was almost destroyed at the orders of Bram Stoker’s widow and now it’s in the worldwide public domain itself. Hence two remakes in just over two years (the 2023 version by David Lee Fisher has not made such a big impact, but it does star Doug Jones, so must be worth a look).

Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse) has had Nosferatu on his ambition list for years, announcing it back in 2015 before production finally started in early 2023. Director’s dream projects that sit in pre-production for years don’t often make for very good films in the end, but Eggers’s ambition and flair are more than up to the task of bringing Nosferatu back to haunting and powerful unlife. Infused with a desolate, strange beauty, Nosferatu is ashen, cold and dour, and yet palpably unsettling. There’s barely any more colour to it than the original, with the odd flashes of bold colour energising the scenes around them: a bouquet of lilacs, the blonde locks of the doomed Anna Harding, and, of course, plenty of blood.

There’s an incredible attention to detail in the production, with pains taken to make the archaic Transylvanian locations look authentic. For external shots, Castle Orlok is in fact Corvin Castle in Transylvania, where the real Vlad Dracula was once imprisoned, with much of the remaining filming taking place in Czechia. Orlok is dressed in heavy furred robes rather than the long, shroud-like coat of the original or eveningwear popularly associated with Dracula. Together with the decision to use a reconstructed form of the ancient Dacian language for Orlok’s own tongue, makes him appear as an actual Transylvanian noble for once. There’s a dedication to using genuine vampire folklore rather than the elements introduced by Dracula and more modern stories; the plague that follows Orlok, while taken from the original Nosferatu, is a common association in Eastern European vampire myths, as is the drinking of blood from the chest or heart, rather than carefully from the neck.

Bill Skarsgård is completely unrecognisable as Count Orlok, the Nosferatu himself. Eschewing the iconic rat-faced look of the original, Skarsgård is made up to appear ancient, haggard and diseased, his pale face dominated by a prodigious moustache. This is more in keeping with the appearance of Dracula at the start of the novel, something infrequently retained by adaptations. However, unlike the original Dracula, Orlok doesn’t rejuvenate as he feeds on others, remaining decrepit, albeit still frighteningly powerful. Skarsgård moves in a disturbingly stiff and deathly way, in keeping with Orlok’s corpselike appearance, but what’s more impressive is his voice. Incorporating operatic training and Mongolian throat music techniques, he reduces his voice to a subhuman growl, something that in most productions would be achieved by electronic or digital modulation.

Eggers initially intended to cast Skarsgård as Thomas Hutter, the Jonathan Harker equivalent of the story. While it’s easy to see that he would have played it well, we would have been robbed of his Orlok as well as Nicholas Hoult’s Hutter. Less than two years since his title role in Renfield, Hoult gets to play a different leading role in a Dracula adaptation with considerably more dramatic clout. His performance is remarkably realistic in an unreal situation; you can sense how desperate and out of his depth he is from the moment he is assigned the job of getting Orlok to sign the legal papers. Meanwhile, the Renfield role is taken by Simon McBurney as Herr Knock, who gives a fabulously over-the-top performance that stays on just the right side of believable.

Willem Dafoe, while restricted to the second half of the film, is almost as intense as Professor von Franz, this version’s equivalent to the great Van Helsing. Having played a vampiric version of original Nosferatu star Max Schrek in 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire, it’s no surprise that Dafoe was considered to play Orlok here. While it would have been interesting, and no doubt entertaining, to see him more-or-less reprise that role, he is so well-cast as the deeply eccentric alchemist/occultist von Franz that the film would be far poorer without him. There are strong performances from Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Ineson as well (particularly pleased to see how many Hollywood roles Ineson is getting lately).

Out of a stellar cast, the best performance is by Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter, the central figure of the narrative whose uncanny abilities cause her to call out to Orlok and set the events in motion. While based on Dracula’s Mina Harker, Ellen is central to the story in a much more profound way, and Depp gives an astonishingly intense and deep performance that carries the film. It’s to her credit that, even when we’re immersed in her husband’s experiences in Castle Orlok, we are more than content to be taken back to Wisborg to spend time with the ailing Ellen. Depp shares strong chemistry with Hoult, but it’s her scenes with Skarsgård that are the most compelling.

While Nosferatu almost eclipses its inspiration in foreboding, death-laden atmosphere, it’s not without its flaws. While naturally a slowly-paced film, it loses further momentum as both Hutter and Orlok travel to Wisborg. Much of this is down to the time spent on the cursed journey of the ship that carries the vampire, a sequence that almost invariably slows down and overstretches the more faithful tellings of Dracula. (This reminds me that I must watch The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which overcomes this problem by committing a whole film to the section.) While the sea voyage is also present in the original Nosferatu, its inclusion is just as questionable in both, Dracula sets its second half in England, but why is Orlok travelling from Transylvania to Germany by sea? Hutter has no trouble taken the more sensible course over land.

The film never quite recovers the momentum it needs in the final act, even as events crescendo with plague ravaging Wisborg and Orlok carving a bloody swathe through the main cast. Nonetheless, Nosferatu remains powerfully haunting till its inevitable, dark and moving end. Both tangibly sexual and profoundly distressing, carefully beautiful yet achingly dark, Ellen’s final encounter with Orlok reflects the atmosphere and emotions of the film as a whole. Nosferatu is a quite unforgettable experience.

TREK REVIEW: Star Trek: Section 31

You can wear anything you like, as long as it's black.

After what seems like forever since it was first announced as another new Star Trek series, Section 31 finally arrives as Trek’s first streaming TV movie. Indeed, it’s a first for the franchise in a number of ways: the first production not to focus on Starfleet characters; the first to be set in the “lost era” between the original cast movies and The Next Generation; and the first to be headed by an East Asian and non-Anglosphere lead.

It’s also not very good, which is pretty much the worldwide consensus on the film. Much of this stems from its origins as a series, which was scuppered by COVID and Michelle Yeoh’s status as one of the most in-demand actresses in Hollywood. The reworking into a one-off film (ostensibly, the sequel hook is as clear as it is unlikely to lead to anything) shows what a hack job was needed to make it fit. With more room to breathe, and time to get to know the characters enough to actually give a shit about them, it may have worked a lot better.

Even accepting that, Star Trek: Section 31 is an inherently flawed production. It’s a real pity, as there is stuff to enjoy here, and frankly, the idea of a different sort of Star Trek is always welcome. While there are many, many fans who would be happy with TNG clones forever, the franchise has to move with the times and try new approaches, as the recent burst of new series has shown. For better or worse, Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds and Prodigy have all delivered different takes on Star Trek, and while each has its flaws, they all succeed in different ways as well.

There’s room for all kinds of stories in the Trek universe, but one as cynical as this is a tough fit. I’ve long thought that a ragtag antihero gang, in the vein of Guardians of the Galaxy or Farscape, could work well in Trek, but the critical point of those is that while flawed, the characters were essentially decent when the chips were down and had each others’ backs. Guardians and Farscape are both about criminals and dropouts from different backgrounds who are forced together by a common cause, and end up becoming a found family. What’s more, there’s a sense of optimism to their stories, which is essential to Star Trek and missing from Section 31.

But let’s consider the good parts, for there are plenty. Michelle Yeoh is a real leading lady who deserves her own show, with former-Emperor Philippa Georgiou succeeding in spite of being a fundamentally monstrous character thanks to Yeoh’s charisma. The obligatory gang of aliens from all manner of origins is done well, even if individually they don’t all work. Visually it’s stunning, with some of the most impressive battle and space scenes seen in the franchise. It even manages to be funny, occasionally, although not often enough.

One thing that’s really welcome is the lack of legacy characters in this story. Yeoh is the only actor to return from a previous production, this being her own Discovery spin-off. The only character to return from the old days is Rachel Garrett, who’s obscure enough that only the hardcore fans will mark her inclusion as noteworthy. While we have some familiar aliens, they’re from previously seldom seen races, or tweaked in interest ways. The only major elements being carried forward with little explanation are the Mirror Universe and the Empire, which are such basic sci-fi concepts that they barely need explaining.

Let’s look at the rest of the gang. The only one who, for me, works completely is Sam Richardson’s Quasi, the anxiety-ridden shapeshifter. We can buy the idea of an incredibly powerful being hamstrung by indecision thanks to his sympathetic performance, and he stands out thanks to being the only actually likeable character in the whole film. There’s no shortage of metamorphs in Trek, but making him a chameloid is a nice touch, calling back to one of the most memorable characters of the classic Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country without being a copy in any way.

I also found myself enjoying big cyborg guy Zeph, which surprised me, as his character is uninspired. Robert Kazinsky (born in my hometown only one year before me, fact fans, so no wonder he looked so familiar) plays him dumb-but-fun, which downplays the absurdly overpowered threat played by his mechanised suit. The big dumb mech is cliched sci-fi character but a new one for Trek, and the idea of someone suffering from mecha-dysmorphia, while thrown in as a joke, is worthy of exploration.

The other character I enjoyed was Fuzz, played by the very cute South African Sven Ruygrok, for reasons best known to himself, with an outrageous Irish accent. Fuzz is a whole bunch of fun ideas together: a microscopic alien intelligence with small-man syndrome, piloting an android body around, is a daft, Men In Black-esque idea that really works. Add to that severe emotional regulation problems, and then making the android a Vulcan, and you’ve got a wonderfully bizarre combination. Both Zeph and Fuzz have some of the best lines, which is to say, lines that were actually kind of funny, if only because they were sufficiently ridiculous. Frankly, the entire script could have done with being more stupid; it would have been a lot more fun.

As for the rest: Alok Sahar makes an OK male lead, with Omari Hardwick giving a decent enough performance with little to work with. The Augments are by now as tired a trope as the Mirror Universe, but being from the grimmer side of Trek had to have some kind of involvement here. There’s an added spin with Alok, though, in that he was originally an ordinary human and was augmented later by one of the Eugenics Wars despots. This, and his man-out-of-time nature, could have been explored and provided much needed depth; another thing doubtless lost to condensing this to a single sitting.

Humberly Gonzalez as the Deltan Melle does exactly what a Deltan needs to do: be incredibly hot and distracting. She might have had more to offer than that, but doesn’t get a chance. Finally, we have Kacey Rohl as Lt. Rachel Garrett, the solitary member of Starfleet along for the ride. Garrett seems like the real missed opportunity. A chance to flesh out the least-known captain of the Enterprise, she’s given next to no actual character, existing solely to have an officially moral character to chide the various criminals she has to work with. I can’t help but feel terribly sorry for Rohl, who seems to be a decent actor but has very little to work with here.

There’s potentially a good story to be told with this bunch of characters, but you won’t find it here. The first act has enough madcap action to at least be reasonably entertaining. Once they’re off the Baraam, Georgiou’s elaborate and impressive space station, and on their actual mission, there’s little to enjoy. There’s precious little to mark this out as Star Trek beyond the name and the surface trappings. It’s not that we can’t follow the dangerous and disreputable parts of the Trek galaxy – there’s enough of them, after all, and they’re often favourite characters. At the end of the day, though, something of Star Trek’s spirit always shone through even the grimmest tales of the past. All this can muster as an endorsement for Starfleet is that they don’t commit murder, and the best it has for a moral “there are no benevolent dictators.” Which, while distressingly topical, is a bit hollow coming from someone whose leadership style was “gleefully genocidal maniac.”

This is wrapped up in a script with some of the most witless (and somehow already dated) dialogue ever, with a storyline involving a faceless villain with the most painfully obvious secret identity, which eventually devolves into the surviving characters standing around pointing out their own cliches to each other.

Yeoh pitched a Georgiou spin-off this to Alex Kurtzmann before Discovery was even broadcast, mainly because she reportedly loves playing her. You can see that in her performance on Discovery, even when the character isn’t written well. Throughout Section 31, though, she appears jaded and tired, and I can’t escape the feeling that this isn’t acting. You can’t blame her; Yeoh is absolutely wasted on this.

Spoilery bits and Trekkie observations

Future history:

• The exact setting of this story isn’t clear, but it’s the early part of the 24^th century. Memory Alpha goes off the stardate of 1292.4 and calculates that (somehow) to 2324, or forty years before The Next Generation, which sounds about right.

• The Terran Empire is still in power at this time. By the late 2360s it will have fallen to the Alliance.

• Alok Sahar was born in the 1970s, which would support an old school dating of the Eugenics Wars in the 90s. On the other hand, given that he was genetically altered after the fact, he could be older than he looks (even accounting for stasis), so a 2030s date might still hold.

Alien life forms:

• Various aliens from Discovery’s later seasons are seen on the Baraam, and will no doubt show up in other eras as the costumes are reused.

• Dada Noe, the arms dealer, is apparently a Deltan as well. He’s not as sexy as Melle.

• Quasi’s transformations have a completely different effect to Martia’s, making it appear that he’s made up from a bundle of tendrils.

• Virgil, Georgiou’s major domo, is a Cheron, the two-tone species from the classic TOS episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” In that episode we were led to believe that Bele and Lokai were the last survivors of their species, but there’s nothing to say no more of them managed to escape the planet before it was devastated.

• The singer on the Baraam appears to be of the same species as Natalia, the semi-crustacean poster girl for Star Trek Beyond’s creature designs.

Cameo surprise:

• So seeing Jamie Lee Curtis as Control was a nice touch, reuniting with her buddy Michelle Yeoh. The old Control was a crazy AI; this one seems to be a cybernetically-enhanced human. Cyborg stuff seems to be the fashion in this era.

• Control sends the gang off to Turkana IV, failed colony and legendary hellhole that will be home to Tasha Yar. I think I could do without a sequel on the planet of the rape gangs, thanks.

TREK REVIEW - Lower Decks 5-3 - 5-4

 

5-3 - "The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel"

A fun episode which sees our leads growing up some more, although this does mean regressing them a bit to begin with. Both Mariner and Boimler act more like their season one/two selves, with Bradward freaking out over Ransom's alleged treatment of his recruits and Beckett absolutely refusing to engage emotionally. 

The "Jariner" storyline is silly, and feels like a reaction to fans complaining that the relationship was never resolved onscreen. A quick line to explain that they broke up a while ago would have done, but instead we get a prolonged farce by both Mariner and Jennifer refusing to talk with each other. Similarly, the idea that Ransom is brutally risking his officers' lives by putting them in danger's way ignores the revelations that he's actually a pretty decent officer, and Boimler's over-the-top response is more like his earlier, more panicked self. 

So, it feels like an earlier season episode, but that's no bad thing. It's a lot of fun, and the idea of a ridiculously elaborate space resort and an Apolcaypse Now-inspired drop-out admiral provide a fun storyline, with the nanite monster adding an actual threat. Plus, if it was an older episode, it wouldn't have T'Lyn, who is an absolute delight here, from her increasingly sardonic humour to her surprising following of Krog, a rock-like beach music player.

Starships and stations: 

• The Cosmic Duchess is described as a cruise ship, but it's the size of a moon, with multiple biomes and an artificial sun, so it's practically a mobile Dyson habitat.
• The USS Endeavour is a tiny wee Intrepid-class from a miniature parallel universe, this episode's link the arc plot.

Alien life forms: 

• We finally get to see some Gallamites, previously only mentioned as the species of Jadzia Dax's old flame Captain Boday. I assumed that, aside from their transparent skulls, Gallamites were pretty much humanoids, but they looks absolutely terrifying.
• Krog is probably named after Korg from the Thor movies, given that he looks so much like him. We've seen the odd member of his species in the background before. It's possible he's meant to be a Brikar, like Rok-Tahk on Prodigy.
• The Kreetassans make their first appearance outside of Enterprise, although why they'd be hanging around a bar when they're so offended by people eating and drinking is anyone's guess.

5-4 - "A Farewell to Farms"

Klingon episodes can be pretty tiresome, but this one works because it, quite rightly, constantly takes the piss out of them. It's always good to catch up with Ma'ah, who's now slumming it on his brother's farm after being kicked out of the fleet thanks to his crew's mutiny. I prefer his brother, Malor, though, an easygoing sort of chap who's quite happy with farmwork and pimping out his shuttle. The Klingons can't all be warriors, after all; not only would that be unbelievable, but you need farmers and the like. Otherwise, where'd all the bloodwine come from?

It's also good to see the corrupt side of Klingon culture, which clearly didn't all go away when Martok took over. Bargh, using his position to punish Ma'ah because he killed his brother, rings true, even if it's very dishonorable (after all, isn't getting killed in battle what it's all about?). Anyway, the Beckett-Ma'ah friendship is a highlight, and this time Boimler is along for the ride, back to his new, super-enthusiastic self.

Meanwhile, the B-plot with Migleemo's people is pretty slight, but it's nice to see him get some background, and the idea of a culture focused on food and recipes makes as much, if not more, sense as one based on fighting and killing. 

Alien life forms: Migleemo's species are named as Klowahkians, from the planet Klowahka, following Areolus in the new Lower Decks tradition of naming avian race's planets after suggestive body parts. This one is more bird-appropriate, though.

Callbacks:

• Enaran food is said to be the best in the quadrant (not sure whether we're talking Alpha or Beta), but the Enara Prime is in the Delta Quadrant (VOY "Remember").
• On the farm, Ma'ah dresses like Picard in his vineyard in TNG "All Good Things."

Trek Stars: Sam Witwer does double-duty as the voices of both Malor and Klowahkian critic Legnog, while Mary Chieffo returns to her Klingon roots as the fun Kelarra (she was L'Rell in the first two seasons of Discovery).