Tag: Gene Roddenberry
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STAR TREK REWIND: “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” I remember reading an article in the old Trek fanzine published and then re-printed for a paperback compilation in which writer Russell Bates was required to defend himself on charges of stealing the central idea of the second season episode, “Who Mourns…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “Albatross”
“Jim, if I’m ever in jail again, don’t send that Vulcan to release me. Just let me rot!” I love how the inhabitants of Dramia wait for the Enterprise to finish delivering necessary medical supplies before they put McCoy under arrest for charges equivalent to genocide. Pretty sneaky, Sis! This brings out the anger in…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “The City on the Edge of Forever”
“I am my own beginning. My own ending.” I dreaded writing about “The City on the Edge of Forever” not only because it is considered the greatest single episode of Star Trek, past and present, ever made but also because so much has already been written. Harlan Ellison himself wrote a book on the subject.…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “Homefront,” “Paradise Lost”
“Don’t kid yourself, Ben. This Pandora’s Box of yours…we’re opening it together.” Neither the consequence of patriotism nor nationalism, Starfleet Command wages a war against the citizens of Earth by way of fear-mongering. That’s a word we hear much more often these days. After a terrorist bombing is revealed to be the handiwork of the…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “The Price”
“Just tell me there’s some chocolate here.” It never fails that when an underutilized character is given the spotlight, it more often than not results in that character’s undoing. Like “The Galileo Seven” with Spock, “The Price” nearly destroys Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis). The same thing happened two episodes earlier with “Booby Trap” and…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “The Bonding”
“Let’s just hope it doesn’t blow us to kingdom come while it’s figuring out how to blow us to kingdom come.” “The Bonding” is a strange episode for me. It’s a difficult episode. It was, atypically, one of Ronald D. Moore’s first scripts for Star Trek: The Next Generation. I use the word, “atypically,” because…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “Rejoined”
“The forbidden love angle is all wrong for an episode of this type. There’s no reason former lovers in different bodies shouldn’t get together, and the rule smacks of fascism. Any rule that infringes upon another person’s privacy (or lays out conditions upon which we are permitted to love) is fascistic, and there’s nothing more…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “The Practical Joker”
“Come on Spock, where’s that Vulcan sense of humor?” Chuck Menville was a name virtually synonymous with ’80s children’s entertainment. Menville wrote for Land of the Lost, The Real Ghostbusters (not to be confused with the ’70s live-action series starring Larry Storch), as well as The Smurfs, and Tiny Toon Adventures. His material was characterized…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “Errand of Mercy”
“Even the gods did not spring into being overnight.” I stated in a previous review that the Romulans too closely resembled humans in their desires, fears, and motivations that they could never be considered the uber-villain of the Star Trek franchise. The Klingons were designed (by writer/producer Gene L. Coon) to fit that bill. As…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “Children of the Comet”
“Sometimes, Mr. Spock, things go so badly, you just have to laugh.” Now this is more like it. A few weeks ago, I had ended my association with Second Union after the editor informed me he did not intend to publish my review of the Strange New Worlds pilot episode. He thought I was unnecessarily…
Misadventures in Blissville 