I take notes when I'm watching this episode of things that stand out to me when I'm watching it. My ones for this episode extend to over 2 1/2 pages. A5 pages, that is.
In this case, the stuff standing out is not necessary good. Quite the opposite.
- The bi-coloured skin was the director's idea. It should have been rejected.
- Seriously, Starfleet needs better defences against mental ship hijacking. Also, how on earth do you hijack an electronic system using your mind anyway.
- An invisible spaceship of course saves you a lot of money. As well as reusing effects footage from a previous episode as they did for the original; the Netflix version uses the remastered CGI stuff.
- Kirk is a great poker player when he activates the self-destruct. He'll of course eventually self-destruct the Enterprise for real in The Search for Spock... with the same codes being used.
- One wonders how the crew of the Cerritos would have handled this. It may well have been a lot more enjoyable too.
- Alas, persecution did not end in the 20th century, as my own country demonstrates.
- There's a reference to the Vietnam War here, with an implicit comment about African-Americans being drafted to go and fight there - a reason why Muhammad Ali refused to serve, getting (among other things) banned from sanctioned boxing bouts for over three years. However, this is also a series that did "A Little Private War".
- Today's racists are a good deal less erudite.
- How do you spray something from orbit? Liquids don't stay liquid in a vacuum.
- "Proceeding without incident"... then there's a pretty big incident.
- Lokai is wearing some very tight trousers in this; he has a noticeable bulge.
- There's some stupidly fast repairing and travelling in this.
- For a species with little real contact with the Federation, they seem to know an awful lot about operating its technology.
- Piles of unburied corpses... yet vegetation is reclaiming the cities. That doesn't really make sense.
- By the end, it feels rather padded - by Fred Freiberger's admission, the chase scene was because they were running under-length.. There's also the use of stock footage from the Second World War of burning cities, also for padding.
Conclusion
This could have been an interesting story about racism and hate... with a page-one rewrite. Instead it's got less subtlety than the Doctor Who episode "Orphan 55", which is saying something.
It's really just awful.
2/10
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