I watched this when it first came out on nicktoons! I had no idea the show would become so popular!!
Great plot twist. Best work of M. Night Shyamalan so far.
i swear to god this looked like an episode from Dora the Explorer, she had to get somewhere but always had something in the path!
Well so far so good, really touched by this episode, even if the pacing was kind of weird and not typical for this show. Let's see what the ending has coming for us!
A friend recommended this series and I have to say I'm stunned. It literally has everything. Great music, quality animation, storyline from the humourous and light hearted to the darker recesses of humanity. Some episodes make you laugh some could make you cry. All life is here in an at at times whymsical series but often a serious one as well.
For anyone who has friends who think animation isn't a serious art form then you can do a lot worse than point them here.
Damn... That FBI description of the "killer"...
Nooooo Omar T_T
It was obvious that it would happen, but still... Nooooo!!!
I knew this was coming but it still made me angry. What an absolute bullshit way to kill a legendary character :(
[7.0/10] “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” is, at least so far, the peak of those goofy sci-fi conceits that people (lovingly) make fun of the show for. Let’s be frank, nothing here makes sense. The time-travel related trek-no-babble is patently ridiculous; the grave concern and then general lax attitude about messing with past is puzzling, and the solution to all of these problems is as much of a nonsense cheat as it is full of people diving out of their chairs on the bridge of the Enterprise.
And yet, there’s such a joie de vivre to the proceedings that it’s hard not to be charmed despite that. As ridiculous as the premise, plot, and resolution of the episode are, the people involved are having such insane, occasionally swashbuckling fun, and the episode coasts off that pretty damn well considering.
Let’s get right down to it – as much sci-fi mumbo jumbo as Star Trek has, it’s pretty silly that they just happen to go back in time to the 1960s where the show was airing. The explanation is fairly weak (jargon about a “black star”) as the cause, but what’s striking his how nonplussed everyone seems about this development. Bones and Scotty make brief comment on the fact that they’re trapped in the past, and maybe working on the federation’s flagship inures you to fantastical happenings taking place on a regular basis, but for the most part, everyone takes being flung two centuries into the past in stride, and it’s really weird.
That extends to the presence of the Air Force Captain whom the crew beams up. Maybe it’s years of stories where characters rail about the risks of changing the past, but tons of people are incredibly cavalier about letting him see and learn about all this stuff from his future. That seems like a pretty bad call. Spock’s aware of this, and admonishes against him, but then spills the beans that the Captain’s son becomes a big famous space hero, totally tainting the timeline! For someone who seemed concerned about what that Captain Christopher does or doesn’t know, he sure doesn’t mind telling him what the future holds.
What kills me is that there’s a cool story there – the prospect of a man who knows too much, and the dilemma of whether to trust him to return to his own time and risk changes to the timeline from his advance knowledge, or to take him away from his wife and kids and risk messing up the timeline through his absence. But Star Trek mostly glosses over that, giving him an interesting character motivation of following his duty the same way the members of Starfleet would and wanting to get back to his family, but compartmentalizing that for most of the way.
Don’t even get me started on the other guy they beam up. The air force major is, I think, supposed to be scared stiff, but the fact that he gets beamed up, causes no fuss, and essentially becomes a living prop in the episode is just bizarre, and makes you wonder why he was included in the episode at all.
At the same time, the resolution to this conundrum just makes absolutely no sense. It is super, super convenient that the method to getting back to the future will takes the Enterprise just far enough into the past to deposit their unexpected passengers back in their own time. What’s worse is that the episode seems to imply that Captain Christopher’s and the USAF Police Sergeant have their memories erased in the process. Why does that happen? How does that happen? Why doesn’t the journey seem to affect the members of the Enterprise crew? “Who knows! The episode’s over! Stop asking questions!”
That climax is also the absolute height of “just reverse the polarity” and “say something complicated and explain it using a simple metaphor” that most notably Futurama has tweaked Star Trek for. Having the enterprise just reverse the process that got them there, and take advantage of an intergalactic (and interchronal) “slingshot effect” to get back to the future is an extraordinarily contrived method to undo something as momentous as being sent two-hundred years into the past.
So why did I still rate this episode as “good,” albeit just barely? Because it’s pretty damn fun in the process. There’s a droll humor on display that just kept me chuckling throughout. Spock looking at the film of the Air Force’s surveillance of the enterprise and offering a dry comment of “Poor photography” is great. Captain Kirk telling Bones that he’s beginning to sound like Spock, and Bones responding “If you're going to get nasty, I'm going to leave” was the line of the episode. And Kirk’s smugness and self-satisfaction, which can often make the character grating, were perfectly deployed when he was being interrogated by the air force. His playing dumb, acting like a wiseass, and saying things like “what, this old thing? I just slipped into it” were all great uses of the character and his personality.
It also produced what I’d venture to call the best hand-to-hand fight of the show so far. I’ll admit, I laughed out loud when Kirk sort of dove into the collection of soldiers in what felt like a ten-year-old’s attempt at a cross-body takedown, and many of the individual moments in the scene were contrived. That notwithstanding, there was a kinetic quality to fight, a certain level of chaos where one skirmish flowed directly into the other, that made this stand out among the typically stolid punch-and-kick fests in the show.
Which is to say that when Star Trek gets goofy, outlandish, and even nonsensical, it should at least be fun. “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” delivers on that. Sure, it handles the issues raised by time travel and unintended consequences with all the deftness of an intoxicated buffalo. Sure, its answer to the plot predicament is to just throw faux-technological terms at the problem and it’ll just go away. And the crew’s attitude about changing the timeline, and the rules employed, make as much sense as the instructions for building a bookshelf translated into Swahili and then translated back again. But by god, it’s all entertaining enough to pass muster, and that gets you a lot of slack.
Ah, so she's a T-1001 model. LOL I like the little jokes and comedy in this one, especially the sad math book joke and the elevator scene. It also has some deeper meaningful stuff in it too.
Surprised to see Derek has a love interest from his time. Something's telling me that something's a brewing in that basement other than the A.I.
What a sad ending (last scene) for a show that deserved to be renewed...what a shame
i know who would love this technology. the answer is orange and lives in a white house.
the production here has really stepped up, shit looking like a film or something. great way to start the new season with a different pacing, an episode filled with tension and a surprsingly "happy" ending, the universe looked really fine and the whole plot was interesting while deviating from the whole "technology is EVIL" from past seasons. Black Mirror is truly one of a kind!
I don't think I breathed once during the entire episode. I'm not okay. This was not okay.
Can somebody please kill Madison? The irrational choices she makes are past annoying ...
Ah, what do we have here? Mmm, Madison making a stupid decision A-GAIN, how original ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Poor baby Alicia, suffering from her mother's and brother's stupidities.
The old lady was more of a mother to her in those 10-15 minutes than Madison has been her whole life
Those windows won't hurt anybody now. Seriously wtf were they shooting at?
[7.6/10] Cards on the table -- I have no idea how to rate or judge this episode. The first 2/3 or so are a pretty darn good bit of Trek adventure, with another rogue commander, some interesting science fiction concepts, and a good if hammy performance from a guest actor. Then, in the last third, the episode gets downright idiotic, but it’s so ridiculous, so loony, so absurd, that it can’t help but be entertaining as jingoistic kitsch. The first portion of the episode is pretty great, and the last portion of it is pretty great too, but for entirely different reasons, to the point that they practically feel like different episodes.
The setup is pretty standard. The Enterprise shows up to a new planet, something is amiss (in this case, another starship that was patrolling the planet earlier is still there and won’t respond to hailing), so Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam over to investigate. They find that the crew has all been killed by some biological agent -- reduced to a few pounds of chemicals, but a last log from the ship’s doctor (the disease seems to have taken away his ability to act) that tells them by boarding the ship they’re all infected and their only hope is to beam down to the planet.
That’s where things get interesting. Captain Tracy is the most recent Starfleet commander gone mad. He’s effectively taken over the planet, siding with the Congs -- who appear to be Inuit, and are dignified and able to communicate with humans -- and against their rival group, the Yangs, who appear to be a wild, uncivilized people. Tracy’s used his phaser to take control, and taught his local allies about his “fireboxes.”
I really like the idea of a starfleet commander gone rogue like this. Tracy is just unhinged enough to be believable as a madman who believes this is the only way, drunk on his own kool aid. It adds an air of real threat, the way he’s dismissive of Kirk quoting regulation and wise to his tricks. (As an aside, it’s pretty funny that Kirk’s so aghast at Tracy having violated the prime directive, considering how many times he’s pretty brazenly interfered with a local species and left them to pick up the pieces, but whatever).
But what makes this part of the episode really interesting is Tracy’s motive. For one thing, he genuinely believes that he’s trapped on his planet, that what killed his crew will kill him if he dares to leave. But he also thinks he can get rich, or powerful, because he believes he’s found the fountain of youth. What’s fascinating is that he’s half-noble and half-greedy on this account. Sure, he clearly wants to profit from his find, and maybe it’s a rationalization, but he also thinks the veritable fountain of youth, whatever secret these people have found that lets them live for a thousand years, if worth violating the prime directive for. (See also: Star Trek Insurrection).
There’s even an air of tragedy to it once McCoy discovers that, naturally, there is no fountain of youth on the planet. The alleged science is a little incoherent, but the thrust of it is clear -- the locals’ immunity and long life is a product of natural selection and adaptation to their surroundings after biological warfare wiped the less adapted members of their society out, and it’s unable to be replicated.
The tragedy comes with the realization that it was all for nothing. Spock uncovers that Tracy blasted away three phaser power packs’ worth of Yangs to protect the Congs’ cities (which presumably were something he thought he needed to synthesize the cure?), and it turns out he was doing it for a false promise. Tracy is just nuts enough to be dangerous, but just logical enough to still be a threat, and the reveal that his grand quest is a fool’s errand heightens that.
The marginal stuff in the first part of the episode -- the endless scuffle between Kirk and the Yang prisoners he’s with, Spock talking to him through the bars, the chase with Kirk and Tracy -- are fairly pointless, but the core of this section is solid and interesting. There’s hints that it’s supposed to be a polemic on the dangers of germ warfare (apparently Earth had both germ warfare and the Eugenics wars in the 1990s in the Trek universe?), but it’s also a character study -- a Kurtz-like examination of a colonial nation violating all his rules in the name of some mythical holy grail that doesn’t really exist.
The turning point comes when our heroes (and villain) are captured by the Yangs. One of them walks in with an American flag, the score plays an ominous yet patriotic sounding sting, and I just died laughing. The episode half-explains that the Yangs are the Yanks, the Congs are the Communists, and somehow this planet had the exact parallel history of Earth except the “Asiatic” people won the cold war, and drove the Western people into the desert where, for unexplained reasons, they adopted Native American culture.
Oh my goodness is that a stupid, stupid, stupid story development, and it cracked me the hell up. Most of the time when Star Trek is bad, it’s the dull sort of bad, where it’s weak enough to be irksome but competent enough to be dull. But this was the full on, ridiculous sort of bad that cannot help but be entertaining.
It makes so little sense. At least “A Piece of the Action” had the decency to offer the fig leaf of the old book on 1920s gangsters. How did this planet not only develop parallel Capitalists and Communists, but also the exact same American flag and Constitution? Why would otherwise Westernized individuals suddenly adopt Native American identities and rituals just because they have to live in the desert? How did they forget language and have it all turn into a religion. (Alright, maybe that last part is frighteningly plausible.)
So it ends as it must -- with Spock’s psychic powers calling Sulu to come play Big Damn Hero, Kirk beating Tracy in an erstwhile fight to the death but forbearing, and most importantly of all, with Kirk giving one of big, supercilious lectures on the importance of freedom and how great the Good Ol’ US of A is. It’s laughable stuff, but again, the kind of full-throated, absurd sort of laughable stuff, without a hint of irony, that makes it absolutely work as camp even though it doesn’t work at all as the stirring bit of patriotism it’s intended as.
I still don’t know what to make of “The Omega Glory.” Most of it is a pretty standard, well done Trek episode with some very interesting ideas, and then after the big reveal, it turns into an unintentional farce. All I can tell you is that I enjoyed the whole thing, though for the last third, not necessarily for the reasons the episode’s creators intended.
[9.1/10] Maybe the secret trick to getting a good, spiritual, philosophical episode of The Original Series is just to bring Diana Muldaur in as a guest star. It’s hard to believe that the future Dr. Polaski, who rather irked me in her turn on The Next Generation, is such a shot in the arm to Star Trek, both here and in “Return to Tomorrow”.
Muldaur brings a grace but also a firmness in her portrayal of her Star Trek characters. Dr. Miranda Jones is an interesting role to play, requiring her to be both the equal and opposite of Spock as a human with telepathic abilities raised on the Vulcan home world in order to master her abilities. Muldaur is up to the challenge. Writer Jean Lisette Aroeste gives Dr. Jones agency in the story, and Muldaur gives her a presence, and leans into her resistance to the various individuals fawning over her, in a way that makes her a memorable and important guest star right off the bat.
“”Is There No Truth in Beauty,” true to its name, is an episode that plays in both poetry and irony. While philosophical ruminations on the nature of beauty could be tedious in other hands, Aroeste’s script makes exchanges over dinner, or debates between Kirk and Jones feel lyrical, serious, and engaging. Despite the outlandishness of the premise, Star Trek takes it all seriously, and that pays off.
By the same token, it doesn’t shy away from the elegance or ironies of the situation. The notion of a beautiful woman who is blind, and thus unable to see her own beauty, but also who also understands (and is understandably dismissive) of the effect it has on those around her, is an interesting one. By the same token, her affection for Ambassador Kolos, someone no human can look upon, makes sense.
Full disclosure, it’s tough for me to articulate what makes this episode great because so much of it is in the execution, which is laden with layers of complexity and performance that are hard to put into words. For instance, the alien species introduced here, The Medusans, have a ridiculous name, and the idea that merely looking at them in their true form could make a person go mad, could be a ridiculous plot device.
Instead, “Beauty” turns it into a meditation on the nature of aesthetics, and a compelling premise about what makes us who we are and how we’re shaped by the ways in which we can and cannot perceive the world. To that end, the highlight of the episode comes when Spock mind-melds with Kolos and the two become one.
For one thing, it’s another chance for Leonard Nimoy to stretch his acting muscles a bit and portray a version of Spock who is more expressive. (Though to be fair, the show goes to that well fairly frequently.) It’s a treat to hear Spock laugh, to see him call Kirk a good friend, to have him chuckle with recognition of Bones, and speak poetry to Uhura. Making Spock emotional, practically human, for more than about three minutes would quickly start to feel like too much, but the episode whets the audience’s appetite for this glimpse at the repressed inner feelings of Spock without overdoing them.
At the same time, Nimoy and the script craft a quick but compelling character in Kolos. It fits that Muldaur links this episode to “Return to Tomorrow” because the two installments play at similar themes. Kolos remarks on the odd futility of language, again speaking poetically, and marvels at the way corporeal beings are so alone, limited to their shells. It’s a form of lateral thinking, truly capturing the way a different form of life would respond to the novelty of ours, in a fashion that gives force to Kolos’s short time as a humanoid.
There’s also some outstanding direction, design, and editing work in the episode. There’s more directorial creativity here than Trek’s tight production schedule and reduced budgets allow for. But “Beauty” depicts the madness of seeing a Medusan first-hand well. There is a frenetic, dizzying pace to the scenes where humans confront the Medusans.
The tye-dye flashes are a little cheesy, but for the most part the episode does well to convey the mental unraveling through a rush of images. The quick cuts offering different angles on the same events, seeing things from the maddened character’s distorted perspective, and the rapid jumps from one image to another, communicate the mental chaos well.
In the same vein, Particular kudos are owed to David Frankham, who plays Marvik. It’s a tough thing to play a man who goes crazy in the span of about fifteen minutes without seeming too over the top, but Frankham plays his scary “I simply love you too much” just right and then rants and raves in a way that convincingly portrays Marvik’s depleting sanity.
The episode isn’t perfect. Frankly, it goes about one act too long, with the story beat of having to save Spock’s mind after he sees the Medusan unsheathed feels a bit tacked on, even if it’s a necessary challenge for Jones to overcome her insecurities and inability to mentally link with Kolos. And watching Kirk berate and manhandle her so as to prompt that solution is more than a little uncomfortable.
Still, “Beauty” works as a high-minded reflection on what it is to perceive things and how that shapes what we value and how we identify, but also as an interesting plot progression with murder, unique challenges, and elegant solutions. Reveals that Jones is not only blind, but basically Daredevil with her sensor suit are intriguing and add poetry to the proceedings. Marvik steering the ship into an unknown hole in the time space continuum requiring a Medusan to steer them out of it makes for a clockwork problem.
And on top of all of these, the episode spends time to have the characters debating and challenging one another over what really matters aesthetically and qualitatively in life. Star Trek is, as ever, a bit ironically provincial about such things, but it still crafts interesting, unusual characters to communicate opposing views and enunciate opposing perspectives. “Beauty” is a highfalutin episode of Star Trek to be sure (though it has its share of action and excitement) and it’s easy to see how that might bore some folks or scare them away. But I love when Trek gets high-minded and philosophical like this, and bringing back Muldaur to deliver the lyrical dialogue here (and leaning on the talented Nimoy to do the same) results in a poignant and insightful episode.
[8.0/10] We’ve played this game before. (I’m beginning to sound like a broken record talking about how Star Trek is beginning to sound like a broken record.) It’s hard not to think of “Arena” in this one, with the crew being transported against their will into a hostile situation, improvising weapons using the local materials, and being rewarded by their uber-powerful instigators when they show restraint instead of viciousness. This is pretty standard stuff for Trek at this point.
And yet, “Spectre of the Gun” gets by on atmosphere, performance, and the cleverness of its conclusion. I’ll admit, there’s something that still strikes me as cheesy every time our spacemen from the future end up visiting some familiar earthlike civilization (“this week it’s gangsters, then Nazis, then Romans, hooray!”) but there’s an eeriness to transporting Kirk and company to Tombstone, Arizona.
A big part of that comes from the production design. There’s a part of me that assumes the half-pieced together set is a result of budgetary concerns than any real choice to create an eerie, half-formed sense to the surroundings, but either way it works. The episode offers the fig leaf that the Melkotians, despite their psychic abilities, don’t have a great grasp on Earth’s history and that this is the best they can come up with. The result is a boom town that doesn’t feel all there, in a nicely unnerving way.
That lends to a foreboding atmosphere that permeates the episode. Random storefronts flanked by a red sky, shop facades that lead nowhere, clocks floating in the sky without the right flora or fauna help establish the dream-like confines in which our heroes find themselves. Something immediately feels wrong about this place, and it’s a great example of the show using its visual tools to build to the plot’s conclusion.
To the same end, the episode has some really nice shots in it, like the symmetrical framing of Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Scotty tending to Chekov while boxed in by the silhouettes of the Earps. And it’s a neat trick to show the crew’s mind over matter bona fides by shooting them from the back and watching the wooden fence become riddled with bullet holes while they remain unscathed. There’s some cleverness in this script, but despite it’s rehashes, it’s the aesthetics of this one that really rule the day.
Still, the episode also works because of the guest performers and the tone. What’s separates this episode from the prior visits to other civilizations out of time is that “Spectre” mostly plays the Western angle straight. While the gangster planet was explicitly comedic, the Roman planet was over the top, and the Nazi planet was cartoonish and weird, “Spectre” treats things as though the crew of the Enterprise have stumbled their way into a Sergio Leone film.
At times that gets a little corny. The Earps and Doc Holiday announcing themselves rings a bit too much with “here’s a name you might remember” syndrome. But what I like is that the guest actors who play the black hats in this one carry themselves with purpose and, more to the point, menace. There’s an understatedness to them most of the time, something that makes them feel like genuine bad guys from a Western movies, which creates a contrast when they’re juxtaposed with our colorful space-farers. “Spectre” creates antagonists (and allies for that matter) who feel like a real part of their world, not just adjuncts to that of Kirk and company, that makes their bits of intimidation land and create a genuine sense of impending, unavoidable doom.
It’s the way our heroes manage to avoid that doom that really bumps “Spectre” up a notch. What’s great about the episode is that it shows Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, and Chekov using their familiar tricks to try to avoid getting into a shootout at the OK corral, and finding that nothing works. As much as “Spectre” returns to a certain amount of formula, it also has the wherewithal to play out that formula and show Kirk being stymied and ineffectual nonetheless.
Kirk tries diplomacy, and is warned that he’ll be shot on sight if he tries it again. They try running away, but find that leaving Tombstone is impossible, thanks to a Malkotian forcefield. They try improvising a tranquilizer, the sort of MacGyver-esque solution to these problems the show often employs, but it ends up having no effect. They even try just staying put, in the hopes of avoiding the confrontation altogether, but get whisked to the site of the gunfight regardless.
There’s a futile fatalism to this one, a sense in which Kirk can’t just fight or trick his way out of it. There’s no third option, no clever workaround, just a looming confrontation and a literal ticking clock that promises danger and death.
That’s when Spock comes up with a Matrix-esque solution, realizing that the trick to surviving this little pocket world is to understand that it doesn’t truly exist. His clue is that the laws of science don’t work, and thus decides that if they simply focus themselves on the fact that this Tombstone is a fantasy, a construction, they will not be subject to its dangers. It’s a clever way out of the problem. Sure, the necessity of a mind meld feels a little forced, but helps build tension leading up to those final moments.
There’s issues at the margins of this one. The color in the episode is a mixed bag, with Chekov’s dalliance with a local coming off alternatively cute and weird, Scotty’s appreciation for bourbon being entertaining but stereotypical, and the rest of the Western cast going a bit over the top. In addition, “Spectre” drags in places and, as usual, Shatner has a tendency to overact his moral dilemma in not killing these imaginary cowboys that oppose him.
Still, “Spectre” works because even if some of the beats are familiar, and the destination is something of a repeat, to the solution to the problem isn’t, and the atmosphere and mood of the episode is superb. This late in the show’s run, it’s nice that it can still surprise the audience with a tense, unnerving, even nightmarish scenario for our heroes that runs on different logic and a different aesthetic, that allows the show to feel like something different this week.
Is it just me or this episode very structurally similar to the Corbanite Maneuver?
"You were warned to stay away! We Kill you!" "The Situation is impossible! We solved it! Let's not kill!" "Okay let's be friends now."
sometimes it feels like the capt. Kirk dating show.. the man falls in love in hours.
[6.7/10] It’s not every day that the Enterprise runs into Abraham Lincoln. “The Savage Curtain” gets credit for its high concept premise -- what if the greatest heroes of history (plus Kirk) squared off against the greatest villains? The mystery that leads up to that match up (How exactly did we just beam aboard the 16th President of the United States?) is a compelling one, but once Kirk and Spock beam down to the planet and the rumble actually goes down, the episode stumbles considerably and ends in one big muddle.
It feels odd to say, but one of the best parts of this episode of Star Trek was its depiction of Lincoln. Lee Bergere gives the man a certain inherent grace and dignity in how he conducts himself, but also a certain playful quality that marks him as a human being and not just a figure on a pedestal. The makeup for Lincoln is a little dodgy in places, but for the most part, between rescue attempts and back and forths with the crew, Honest Abe feels about right for someone who died in the 1800s beaming aboard a starship.
There’s two things that make him work here. The first is that he’s as guileless and puzzled about this situation as anyone. Rather than being an evil alien himself or a willing part of some nefarious plot, he’s just a genial guy who doesn’t know why he’s here or how he knows certain things, just that he’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing. That gives him an interesting part to play, because his very presence suggests a threat, or at least something unusual going on, but he has no answers. The second is the idea that he is a product of Kirk’s conception of Lincoln as a personal hero, giving the two of them a rapport that makes Lincoln seem avuncular and warm to the starship captain.
The problem comes when Kirk, Spock, and Abe beam down to the planet below. The trio run into Surak, the erstwhile patron saint of all Vulcans, who preaches a Gandhi-esque philosophy of peace and nonviolence. It’s then that they all meet Yamek, the latest in a long line of Star Trek’s uber-powerful beings who wants to put the crew in a fight to prove some philosophical point. In this instance, it’s to decide whether good or evil is better.
Yamek introduces team evil, which includes a double-crossing war criminal Colonel, a woman who performed inhumane experiments, Genghis Khan, and notorious Klingon warrior Kahless. (Comic Book Guy alert -- Kahless looks super different than the character we see a glimpse of in The Next Generation, though perhaps it can be excused with the idea that all these figures are reflections of Kirk’s and Spock’s minds, and they’ve only seen ridgeless Klingons). The two groups are then put in a fight to the death, “Arena” style, where the Enterprise is at stake and the crew can watch the battle going down live on pay per view.
The problem is that once the fight gets going things turn pretty dull. Sure, the rock creature facilitating this whole thing is neat design work from the production side, and there’s the playground conversation-level thrill about who would win in a standoff between Abraham Lincoln and the good guys vs. Genghis Khan and the bad guys. But Star Trek has done this sort of shtick so many times that once the novelty of the historical angle wears off, it’s just more foraging for weapons and strategizing on a foam rock planet for vaguely philosophical reasons with little to show for it.
There’s some minor intrigue from Surak taking his peace-loving ways to their logical ends -- namely pleading for understanding, getting killed, and then being staged as part of a trap. And there’s some fun from seeing Lincoln cite his history as a wrestler and a woodsman and try to arrange a rescue. But on the whole, it’s just more generic gladiator material that the show’s done several times before.
What’s odd is that the message of the episode is murky at best. After Lincoln is killed by Colonel Green and the others, Kirk and Spock say the hell with peace or strategy and just beat their opponents with braun and scrapping. That leads Yemak to say that all he’s learned is that good and evil are the same, because they use the same methods and so one prevailing says nothing. Maybe there’s some commentary there on moral equivalency, about how one person thinks them better than another, but when your back’s against the wall we all turn into animals. There’s a hint of that with Lincoln admitting that even though he’s a man of peace, he was the commander-in-chief of the bloodiest war in our nation’s history. But it’s not an idea delivered with much clarity.
Maybe that can be chalked up to complexity. Kirk claims that the difference between him and Colonel Green is that he was fighting to save his people, while Green & Co. were just fighting for power. On the other hand, he chastise Yemak for “doling out life and death,” but Yemak paints himself as a seeker of knowledge and new information just like Kirk is, and that his motivations for staging this fight were the same exploratory impulses that brought Kirk down to the planet in the first place. Again, there’s the potential for some nuance here, but it’s generally lost in rock-throwing tumult of it all.
“The Savage Curtain” isn’t a bad episode. Again, anytime you can put Abraham Lincoln on a spaceship and fighting alien overlords and make it work, you’ve done something noteworthy. But when the episode devolves into the usual “I’m a powerful alien and I’m making you all fight to prove a point” routine, the seams start to show quickly. Star Trek often tries to balance headiness and action, and these skirmishes with high-minded intentions serve that end. Unfortunately, it’s just another well The Original Series has gone to one too many times, to where even throwing in historical figures and an impressive-looking Power Rangers villain instigating can only sustain the same old combat for so long.
While this was probably the weakest episode so far, it still had quite a few good moments in it and overall I enjoyed it. I thought it felt appropriately claustrophobic given that the characters were stuck on a space ship. And the monster had to be some of the best CGI Doctor Who has ever done! It looked so realistic and its movements were so smooth that I fully believed it was actually there. If you think that it was too cutesy, that's fine. Personally, it didn't bother me too much. I actually liked the expectation subversion and the fact that such a little thing could be so threatening.
Some of the dialogue felt clunky and I really wish Chibnall would let someone else actually write an episode (I know we've got a few stories by other screenwriters coming up, which I'm very excited about). And it pains me to say that as brilliant as Jodie is in the role, the writing in this one didn't do her any favors. Don't get me wrong, there were certainly some good lines in there (I liked Thirteen naming all the things she was a doctor of, I thought the goodbye speech to the pilot was beautiful, the Doctor's amazement at the antimatter drive made me fall even more in love with her, and the banter between the Doctor and Yaz while they were waiting for the monster cracked me up), but most of it just didn't flow well, I guess? I can't quite put my finger on it.
We saw Ryan and Graham's relationship develop a bit more, as well as Ryan helping the pregnant guy and encouraging him to keep the baby, telling him that fatherhood isn't about being perfect, but rather about being there for your kids. That's one thing that Chibnall does really well, I think, and it's why so many moments this season have reminded me of Broadchurch: those long, character-focused conversations, often accompanied by close-ups keeping the focus on the characters' faces, allowing the emotions to shine through. It's the kind of thing that you don't see much of in sci-fi and it's definitely one of the main reasons why this season feels so different from the previous ones. Not bad different, but there's been undeniably a big change in the overall tone of the show, which I imagine some fans might not appreciate. Personally, I like that they're doing something new and those quiet moments let me connect with the characters more, which is a big plus.
So, was this a bit of a mess? Yes, yes it was. But as a rule, I always try to focus on the positives because life's just more fun that way. I certainly wouldn't call this a bad episode by any means, and I'm 100% certain that it's going to end up being a lot more memorable than most of season 10, for example (I love you, Peter, but I don't remember what happened in that season for shit). It's not the first so-so story in the show's history and it won't be the last, but since the previous 4 episodes were really good, this little bump in the road doesn't worry me. I'm sure there's plenty of quality writing and good fun ahead.
Oh, and one last thing: at this rate the TARDIS will have to handcuff the Doctor inside so she stops losing her. Seriously, it's getting embarrassing. Give us more scenes in the TARDIS!
"Crazy Barbara" giving Nygma the clues of who is responsible for the death of Isabella, was great. Nygma verifying Cobblepott's involvement was also great storytelling. Bruce/ Selina/ Alfred vs. Talon was also very good and the introduction of Selina's mother was very shocking and welcomed. I'm honestly tired of the Gordon/ Tompkins/ Falcone love triangle. I somewhat even enjoyed a little bit of Jervis Tetch that was written in. "Crazy Barbara" and her crew teaming up to destroy the Penguin and become the Queen of Crime is intriguing. Solid episode minus the love triangle crap.
Give us Valerie Vale back ! :(
That ending tho.