guess what? more Trek reviews!
Jun. 19th, 2009 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitSpoilers for "Return to Tomorrow," "Patterns of Force," and "By Any Other Name."
"Return to Tomorrow"
When I watched this episode I had thinky thoughts about anxieties of embodiment, but that was a few days ago and even with my notes they're hard to reconstruct. The short version would be: this episode, and Star Trek in general, and maybe 1960s sf in general, are profoundly ambivalent about bodies. There's often a sense that we really would be better off if we were all made of pure energy, without troublesome bodily demands. And especially without troublesome bodily pleasures like sex and food. More on that in reference to "By Any Other Name," but it's notable in this episode that Henoch and Thalassa are corrupted by the senses, and the redemption of Thalassa happens when she joins Sargon in disembodiment (which doesn't seem to mean the obliteration of consciousness, although that's unclear--I think the writers were trying to wriggle out of the question of an afterlife).
Moving on to the vastly more important issue of slashiness, I sort of melted when Bones describes Spock as Kirk's "best friend." It made me a little sad for Bones, too; I'm convinced that some of the tension between McCoy and Spock comes from a rivalry for Kirk's attention. However slashily one wants to read that.
In the last scene, Spock does not look pleased at Kirk kissing Thalassa, even though it's really Sargon in Kirk's body. It could be just embarrassment at the emotional display, but I have my slash goggles firmly in place. In fact, I've pretty much had slash Lasik; I don't need the goggles anymore.
"Patterns of Force"
This is really two episodes. There's the one that takes up the first twenty minutes, which is beautiful near-porn crack about Kirk and Spock's kinky playtimes. Shirtlessness, flogging,bloodplay cutting out each other's subcutaneous transponders (said transponders being a damn good idea, incidentally, and therefore never used except in this episode), crawling all over each other while talking about "excitation" and "achiev[ing] the necessary stimulus" (SURE you're discussing lasers, boys): there's nothing here that is not mindboggling innuendo-laden and awesome.
The other episode tries to make a Serious Statement About Fascism and ends up deep in WTF territory. I should say that I appreciate the episode's good intentions. My understanding is that the Holocaust was not nearly as much in the public consciousness in the 1960s as it is now, and so the educational work that "Patterns of Force" tried to do was important.
However, by making John Gill responsible for the Nazification of Ekos, the episode loses both plausibility and any sense of history. Nazism built on a millennium of anti-Jewish prejudice and persecution in Europe. German political culture didn't suddenly go crazy; the elements were already there. There's something weaselly about taking Nazism out of that historical context and suggesting that it's really all attributable to one lunatic with a mission (whether that lunatic is Hitler, John Gill, or Melakon). The corollary, that it can all be cured by getting the lunatic out of power, is equally problematic. The episode concludes with a sense that everything's all right now, as though the Ekosians can just shed their militarism and racism overnight.
And then there's John Gill's claim that he was trying to create nice Naziism. Not the kind that starts wars, just the kind that makes the trains run on time. This could be merely Gill's delusion, but nothing in the episode challenges it. It's a bizarre assertion; fascism is inherently brutal, because its basis is the absolute subordination of the citizen to the state. Nobody has rights under fascism. Yet there's no opposing voice against Gill's claim that, basically, the bad consequences were all Melakon's fault for corrupting the benign fascism Gill created. (I was also slightly annoyed by Gill saying he's realized that "the non-interference directive is the only way." It's a false dichotomy. There are a lot of other choices besides "do nothing" and "turn the whole population into Nazis." However, this is a minor point compared to the episode's other problems.)
One moment that I did really love was Melakon doing racial analysis on Spock. It manages to be both chilling (because this stuff really happened, and less obvious forms of it still happen today) and funny in a bitter, satiric sense (because we know how wrong Melakon is about Spock).
The comedy bits of this episode came off as rather too Hogan's Heroes, but I did like the guys pretending to be a documentary crew, and Spock's sudden realization that he's, er, excited by risk. I'm sure he and Kirk had a fascinating discussion about that later.
"By Any Other Name"
This was made just two episodes before "Patterns of Force," and there are some interesting connections. The Kelvans consider other sentient species inferior (and themselves therefore justified in conquering and slaughtering them); they also use Orwellian euphemisms like "neutralize," which certainly isn't a practice confined to Nazis but nevertheless echoes language like "final solution" that was used in PoF.
The main issue, though, is anxieties of embodiment again. The Kelvans become so overwhelmed with the sensations and emotions from their human bodies that it ruins their plans. But it also saves them, in an ethical sense, because it gives them an incentive to stay and enjoy their fun new toys rather than starting the long trip home so that the invasion can commence. And the dialogue directly links compassion with embodiment.
I'm not sure whether the depiction of sexuality and romantic love is genuinely ambivalent or if I just read it that way due to my damn dirty feminism. The immediate consequences of Rojan's newly-realized love for Kelinda are jealousy, attempts to control her (no talking to Kirk, dammit!), and violence (grabbing her arm so tightly that it hurts her). Her agency disappears, as indicated by Spock's appalling comment to Rojan: "It would appear, sir, that you have little control over her. Or perhaps Captain Kirk has more." Because it's not like she could choose for herself or anything. I'm somewhat mollified by the fact that in the end Kelinda does make a choice, and we see her make it, but there's still a sense throughout that women are prizes to be won. And I know Spock was trying to provoke Rojan into jealousy, but the remark is still very telling about an underlying worldview.
(Sidenote: since the Kelvans initially have no idea what desire is, or what things like kissing are all about, why are they instantaneously heterosexual? I want fic where the Kelvans start going around kissing everyone.)
I know that drunk scenes are a cheap kind of humor, but I loved every minute of the one with Scotty and Tomar. Maybe it was just the welcome distraction from the umpteenth iteration of "Kirk's duty requires him to seduce this beautiful woman!" And it's kind of fabulous that Scotty's quarters were decorated by the Society for Creative Anachronism, or possibly the set designers from Braveheart.
In the slash department, there was some McCoy/Spock this time. When Spock is thrown across a prison cell by a mysterious forcefield, naturally this gives McCoya plausible excuse a perfectly innocent and platonic reason to go and cuddle him.
And then there's the fight scene between Rojan and Kirk. Kirk gets thrown across the room (this is a theme in Star Trek) just as Spock and McCoy walk in. "I'm stimulating him!" explains Kirk. And Spock, like every viewer who can find a double entendre with a spotlight, a map, and an arrow-shaped neon sign, just raises an eyebrow.
*****
"Return to Tomorrow"
When I watched this episode I had thinky thoughts about anxieties of embodiment, but that was a few days ago and even with my notes they're hard to reconstruct. The short version would be: this episode, and Star Trek in general, and maybe 1960s sf in general, are profoundly ambivalent about bodies. There's often a sense that we really would be better off if we were all made of pure energy, without troublesome bodily demands. And especially without troublesome bodily pleasures like sex and food. More on that in reference to "By Any Other Name," but it's notable in this episode that Henoch and Thalassa are corrupted by the senses, and the redemption of Thalassa happens when she joins Sargon in disembodiment (which doesn't seem to mean the obliteration of consciousness, although that's unclear--I think the writers were trying to wriggle out of the question of an afterlife).
Moving on to the vastly more important issue of slashiness, I sort of melted when Bones describes Spock as Kirk's "best friend." It made me a little sad for Bones, too; I'm convinced that some of the tension between McCoy and Spock comes from a rivalry for Kirk's attention. However slashily one wants to read that.
In the last scene, Spock does not look pleased at Kirk kissing Thalassa, even though it's really Sargon in Kirk's body. It could be just embarrassment at the emotional display, but I have my slash goggles firmly in place. In fact, I've pretty much had slash Lasik; I don't need the goggles anymore.
"Patterns of Force"
This is really two episodes. There's the one that takes up the first twenty minutes, which is beautiful near-porn crack about Kirk and Spock's kinky playtimes. Shirtlessness, flogging,
The other episode tries to make a Serious Statement About Fascism and ends up deep in WTF territory. I should say that I appreciate the episode's good intentions. My understanding is that the Holocaust was not nearly as much in the public consciousness in the 1960s as it is now, and so the educational work that "Patterns of Force" tried to do was important.
However, by making John Gill responsible for the Nazification of Ekos, the episode loses both plausibility and any sense of history. Nazism built on a millennium of anti-Jewish prejudice and persecution in Europe. German political culture didn't suddenly go crazy; the elements were already there. There's something weaselly about taking Nazism out of that historical context and suggesting that it's really all attributable to one lunatic with a mission (whether that lunatic is Hitler, John Gill, or Melakon). The corollary, that it can all be cured by getting the lunatic out of power, is equally problematic. The episode concludes with a sense that everything's all right now, as though the Ekosians can just shed their militarism and racism overnight.
And then there's John Gill's claim that he was trying to create nice Naziism. Not the kind that starts wars, just the kind that makes the trains run on time. This could be merely Gill's delusion, but nothing in the episode challenges it. It's a bizarre assertion; fascism is inherently brutal, because its basis is the absolute subordination of the citizen to the state. Nobody has rights under fascism. Yet there's no opposing voice against Gill's claim that, basically, the bad consequences were all Melakon's fault for corrupting the benign fascism Gill created. (I was also slightly annoyed by Gill saying he's realized that "the non-interference directive is the only way." It's a false dichotomy. There are a lot of other choices besides "do nothing" and "turn the whole population into Nazis." However, this is a minor point compared to the episode's other problems.)
One moment that I did really love was Melakon doing racial analysis on Spock. It manages to be both chilling (because this stuff really happened, and less obvious forms of it still happen today) and funny in a bitter, satiric sense (because we know how wrong Melakon is about Spock).
The comedy bits of this episode came off as rather too Hogan's Heroes, but I did like the guys pretending to be a documentary crew, and Spock's sudden realization that he's, er, excited by risk. I'm sure he and Kirk had a fascinating discussion about that later.
"By Any Other Name"
This was made just two episodes before "Patterns of Force," and there are some interesting connections. The Kelvans consider other sentient species inferior (and themselves therefore justified in conquering and slaughtering them); they also use Orwellian euphemisms like "neutralize," which certainly isn't a practice confined to Nazis but nevertheless echoes language like "final solution" that was used in PoF.
The main issue, though, is anxieties of embodiment again. The Kelvans become so overwhelmed with the sensations and emotions from their human bodies that it ruins their plans. But it also saves them, in an ethical sense, because it gives them an incentive to stay and enjoy their fun new toys rather than starting the long trip home so that the invasion can commence. And the dialogue directly links compassion with embodiment.
I'm not sure whether the depiction of sexuality and romantic love is genuinely ambivalent or if I just read it that way due to my damn dirty feminism. The immediate consequences of Rojan's newly-realized love for Kelinda are jealousy, attempts to control her (no talking to Kirk, dammit!), and violence (grabbing her arm so tightly that it hurts her). Her agency disappears, as indicated by Spock's appalling comment to Rojan: "It would appear, sir, that you have little control over her. Or perhaps Captain Kirk has more." Because it's not like she could choose for herself or anything. I'm somewhat mollified by the fact that in the end Kelinda does make a choice, and we see her make it, but there's still a sense throughout that women are prizes to be won. And I know Spock was trying to provoke Rojan into jealousy, but the remark is still very telling about an underlying worldview.
(Sidenote: since the Kelvans initially have no idea what desire is, or what things like kissing are all about, why are they instantaneously heterosexual? I want fic where the Kelvans start going around kissing everyone.)
I know that drunk scenes are a cheap kind of humor, but I loved every minute of the one with Scotty and Tomar. Maybe it was just the welcome distraction from the umpteenth iteration of "Kirk's duty requires him to seduce this beautiful woman!" And it's kind of fabulous that Scotty's quarters were decorated by the Society for Creative Anachronism, or possibly the set designers from Braveheart.
In the slash department, there was some McCoy/Spock this time. When Spock is thrown across a prison cell by a mysterious forcefield, naturally this gives McCoy
And then there's the fight scene between Rojan and Kirk. Kirk gets thrown across the room (this is a theme in Star Trek) just as Spock and McCoy walk in. "I'm stimulating him!" explains Kirk. And Spock, like every viewer who can find a double entendre with a spotlight, a map, and an arrow-shaped neon sign, just raises an eyebrow.
*****
