Milton Keynes

Visited this most infamous of new towns today to check out the National Film and Sci-Fi Museum. There's a huge amount of stuff there - including Ripley's helmet from Alien, Orac from Blake's 7, multiple rooms of Star Wars stuff and loads of screen-worn costumes. Almost too much in fact; the space is too small for all this science fiction goodness.

Mind you, if you're going to visit Milton Keynes to see it, make sure you find something else to do in that place while you're there - you'll be done in an hour. Partly as there's a no photography rule for all bar a few designated points, including a replica TARDIS console that should really have been labelled as such.

After lunch, I visited the MK Gallery, which has an exhibition on Laura Knight, a 20th century English realist painter who ended up a Dame and was the second woman elected to the Royal Academy.

This one you might recognise:

This is Take Off - one of her war artist works. Lot of other good stuff there - she rather liked doing nudes... but most painters do, she seems.

The wide avenues and very non-pedestrian friendly environs of Milton Keynes are not going to be somewhere I'll forget in a hurry, that's for sure.

In any event, my Network Railcard got me £8 off my ticket from Euston, so now I need to find another £22 worth of savings... but I don't intend to ride a LNWR Classs 350 again if I can help it.

Every dog has its very bad day (Review: 'Star Trek' 3.1, "Spock's Brain")

Now, I'd heard of this episode by reputation as supposedly the worst episode of Star Trek, quite possibly of the whole franchise. It's not the worst science fiction episode I've ever seen, but it's heading in that direction.

****

While investigating a mysterious spacecraft, a beautiful woman suddenly beams onto the bridge of the Enterprise (seriously, they need some shielding) and knocks everyone out. When they come too, they might that she has absconded with Spock's brain, removed without leaving any marks and with Spock's Vulcan physiology somehow keeping him temporarily alive. So, they must follow her and persuade her to give it back, but she needs it to run a planet...

****

The third season of TOS see the show moved to the Friday Night Death Slot (remember no streaming or DVR back then and much of its audience had other things to do on a Friday night) and its budget slashed. The Netflix episode being the 2007 remastered version, the cost-cutting is a lot less obvious, especially on the spacecraft scenes.

Gene Roddenberry stood down from day-to-day production duties, although kept the executive producer credit.

So, anyway, this episode was written by Gene L. Coon under a pseudonym. Coon as the former producer had created a huge chunk of the lore or at least written the episodes they debut in... but I suppose everyone has at least one clunker during their writing career. I know that I have.

We start with a ludicrous premise, and it doesn't get much better from there. We've got more "sexy" costumes" from William Ware Theiss, who is frankly starting to get on my nerves now. The dialogue is mostly inane with the primitives of the icy world they visit being particularly stereotypical and the women not exactly doing wonders for female representation; they're dumb and the men are dumber - when I first saw the later cavemen, I immediately thought of Monty Python's "It's" guy. It is also unclear how this species managed to survive with the social structure as set up.

The worst bit of the episode is 'Remote Control Spock' where McCoy somehow manages to develop a device allowing a Starfleet officer to pilot his body with no training and sufficient control to win a fight. 

Actually, strike that - the surgery scene at the end takes the proverbial biscuit where Spock somehow is able to talk McCoy through inserting his brain... and once it's done, there is again zero marks - his hair isn't even ruffled. Speaking of hair, Scotty has a new back-combed hair cut that makes him look much older and is distracting to boot.

The leads try their best with material they know is awful and admitted as such in later accounts on this one.

It's a pity, because there's potentially a good story underneath this and a couple of good scenes, including an application of 'science' being attacking the guards.

Conclusion

This is pretty poor - it's watchable, but I wouldn't choose to watch it again. 

3/10

****

A quick glance at articles on "worst episodes of Star Trek" reveal that there are a number more to come in Season 3...

Didn't he turn up in Lower Decks? (Review: 'Star Trek' 2.26, "Assignment: Earth")

The answer to that question is no, but Gary Seven has appeared in a number of non-canon works[1], including the Year Five IDW comics series from as recently as 2020.

Been a good while since I did one of these - when a 'current' series is running, I will focus on that. In any event, Discovery is on hiatus until February, so I might do a couple more of these before then. 

****

In a spot of rather casual time travel, the Enterprise goes back to 1968 to observe Earth's history and find out how the planet dealt with historical problems back then. As they're doing so, they intercept a transporter beam from a thousand light years away, with a suited man and his black cat. Who it turns out has advanced alien technology and plans to do something on Earth. Can the crew stop him? Should they stop him?

****

Star Trek was not doing well in the ratings during its second run and Roddenberry basically created the episode I am reviewing as a "backdoor pilot" for another show that was ultimately not picked up. NBC, convinced by among other things a mass letter writing campaign, renewed Star Trek, but... more on that in another post.

The plot is very Cold War in its basis and would have worked just fine as a standalone episode. A mysterious operative with high-tech gadgets (including an early version of a speech-to-text machine, a concept under development, but still very primitive at the time) that could be mucking around in Earth's history... definitely a good idea. Space nukes were something in the headlines at the time - the Outer Space Treaty banning them had been signed and ratified in 1967. 

The execution, however, is rather lacking. The Enterprise regulars are fine. Zero complaints about any of them - Sulu turns up as well in this one.

But then you've got those for the proposed spin-off series, Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln. Gary Seven is a rather forgettable character, one of those generic action heroes that fill so much of television even today. Any series would have likely built on his background of course. As for Roberta Lincoln, the very-of-her-time secretary, she's a 'dumb blonde' who in one case literally advances the plot with her backside. As for Isis the cat, who is very well trained (any cat owner can tell you that getting one to do what you want is not easy), the revelation at the end really cheapens the character. Terri Garr would go on from this to get much better roles, including an Oscar nomination.

The rest of the guest cast... not really memorable... and look more than a bit silly after being hypnotised by Gary Seven. I wonder when the NYPD got rid of the double-breasted overcoats? They certainly don't wear them now. Feel free to respond in the comments.

There is a lot of stock footage of a Saturn V in this story, which would of course be the rocket that took man to the Moon for the first time, although it had only made one test flight at this point. It does seem a very odd choice for the space nukes described in the episode - there were plenty of far less powerful rockets in the US inventory that could do the job just fine. This footage in any event provides a considerable amount of padding.

That's the problem with this episode. It's too slow and padded out with not very good set-up for a series. The denouement is great as Spock and Kirk have to work out if they can trust Gary Seven... but that's the best part of the episode.

Ironically and tragically in the latter case, shortly after this episode aired, a Saturn V did have problems[2] and there was an "important assassination" - namely Martin Luther King Jr., who had persuaded Nichelle Nichols to stay on the show as she was an inspiration to young black women.

****

Conclusion

The concept is interesting, but let's be honest, I would not be joining the Gary Seven Army.

Oh, and "Spock's Brain" is next... I will brace myself.

6/10

[1]CBS policy is basically that only the TV series and films are 'canon'. The Abrams films from 2009 onwards are considered part of an alternate reality called "the Kelvin timeline" after the ship that was attacked at the beginning of the first of those, a term that has become official. The Animated Series went from being canon to non-canon to de facto canon again. In any event, stuff from these works has turned up in TV and film, therefore becoming canon, such as James Kirk having the middle name Tiberius.

[2]Apollo 6 had been planned to simulate a lunar return profile and had a number of engine problems meaning that the full mission plan could be achieved. In any event, with Lyndon Johnson's decision not to seek re-election and MLK's assassination, followed by mass riots, meant that the thing was rather ignored in the press.

Coronavirus #36 - past the Omicron peak

It is looking like Omicron has very peaked in the UK, with recorded case numbers coming down pretty rapidly over the last week. It is likely that this won't be the last wave of Covid infections here, but we're getting better at treating this all the time and I'm not sure how much more evolution the virus can do considering its pretty contagious as is.

In any event we will need to be vigiliant.

I've been following the developing scandal about parties in Downing Street like everyone else here. There seems to have been serial breaches going on here and Boris Johnson should have been aware of what has happening in his own offices. It's time for him to resign.