WWdN: In Exile

Code of Honor Review at TV Squad

You may have already heard a little bit of this review on Radio Free Burrito Episode 11, but now you can experience the entire thing for yourself as Wil Wheaton reviews Code of Honor at TV Squad:

When they get to the planet, Lutan introduces his lovely wife Yareena, who is seriously rockin’ the Rick James hairdo and wants to party all the time.

Picard acknowledges that she is quite the Superfreak, but he really wants to see Tasha. Lutan relents, and we learn a little bit more about Ligonian culture, and the importance they place on honor and ritual. If you’ll allow me to stop snarking again for a moment, this is also a decent scene – grading, as always, on a steep curve – where we see Picard’s diplomacy and strength on full display. Oh! Snark back on: It’s too bad he can’t seem to access this particular skill when dealing with Doctor Crusher and Wesley. Maybe he constantly fails his save vs. hot redheads with boobies. Thank you. Snark off. The writing in this scene isn’t horrible, and the acting is quite good, so what could be painful exposition is instead a chance for the characters to develop while we all learn something together. Also, this is great misdirection. As we’ll see in a few minutes, Lutan isn’t interested in counting coup at all, and actually just wants all of Yareena’s money and power (hey, it’s just like John Kerry! Wait. McCain? Tell you what: apply your own politics, and have a good laugh at the other side.)

Tasha shows up, and though she is clearly unhappy with the whole “hey, I was just kidnapped by the 7*UP guy” thing, she’s obviously okay. Which may explain why, even though she has her damn communicator on, she never once tried to contact the Enterprise so she could be safely beamed away.

After a few tense moments of delicate diplomacy, Picard and Lutan agree to chill out for a little bit, until they can have a little party, where he swears to Zombie Jesus he’ll give up Tasha and the vaccine.

The party is a high class function. Food is served, and Picard’s stone cold munchin’. Tasha walks in at the end of the show, and sits next to Lutan , who’s sportin’ a really sweet ’fro. She’s dressed in yellow, she says “Hello, beam me the hell out of here you fine fellow.” Picard does his best to incite the groove, but Lutan won’t let him bust a move.

Er, what I mean is, they have their banquet. When it’s over, with great dignity and grace, Picard follows Ligonian custom, and asks – politely and with great humility – for Lutan to let him take Tasha back to the Enterprise.

The thing is, Lutan isn’t all that interested in letting Tasha go, because he’s got Jungle Fever.

Yareena thinks Mandingo is a little out of line, so she says, “Hey! I have a great idea! Since TNG is only three episodes old, and we’ve only rehashed one original series episode so far, let’s do it again! A show of hands: who here has seen ‘Amok Time’?”

This isn't my strongest review to date, and I'm not sure of that's because the humor well is running dry (I certainly hope not) or because it was really hard (like it was with Angel One) to come up with lots of different jokes and different ways of saying "Oh my god this is crap." I think the funny bits are pretty funny, though, and make up for the not-so-funny bits that tie them together.

The most interesting thing to me, though, is that after watching this episode for the first time in 25 years, it's not nearly as overtly racist as I thought it was when I was younger (certainly not as racist as Angel One is sexist.) However, let's put the episode into context:

This is only our third episode, and as I mockingly pointed out in the synopsis, it borrows way too heavily from "Amok Time," immediately after an episode that was essentially a rewrite of another TOS classic. We were still proving that we deserved the right to carry the Star Trek mantle, and when I look back at "Code of Honor" and see that it came between "The Naked Now" and "The Last Outpost," I'm astonished that we weren't canceled by mid-season. In fact, if we hadn't been first-run syndication, and if the core audience of Trekkies hadn't been as patient as the Ligonians – not to mention incredibly forgiving – we almost certainly would have been.

As I said in my podcast, I'd completely forgotten I was even in this episode, which is why I skipped it back when I started writing these reviews for TV Squad. After watching it, I can see why it was such a forgettable experience for me, since I probably worked half a day on the whole thing. But if I can be completely and embarrassingly honest for a moment: even though it's fucking retarded to put Wesley on the bridge the way they did, when I watched Code of Honor last week, I remembered how cool I thought it was that I got to sit on the bridge, at Ops, no less. As I write about it now, I can feel the butterflies in my stomach that I got every time I got to work there, or the transporter room, or sickbay, or engineering, or . . well, any of the sets that were iconic Star Trek sets. I thought it was so cool back then to be part of it, I didn't care how horrible the scripts were, as long as I got to be on the spaceship.

Watching the show now as a fan, I can see why everyone hated that shit so much. Hell, I agree with them. But as an adult looking back on his 14 year-old self, I feel a great deal of affection for that kid, who is so obviously excited to hang out with the grown ups on the space ship, he doesn't care how lame his dialog is.

Gorgeous Tiny Chickens, Batman, and the Happiest Media Kit

I guess it's appropriate that I'm a computer geek, because I have a very binary lifestyle: my level of work is either 0 or 1, with nothing in between.

I'm currently set to 1, so my time to post is very limited (though I've been using Twitter like crazy, because it's fast, immediate, and portable.)

However, I wanted to take a moment and share three things for your pleasurable enjoying.

1. I did an episode of Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show last week. I don't know when it will be released, but I saw an edit of it last night that is hilarious.

2. I got permission from James Tucker, producer of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, to tell the world that I worked on the show Monday. I can't say anything about the content of the episode or the character I play -- apparently, it's a Darth Vader-is-his-father kind of secret -- but it was massively fun, and since I'm one of the world's biggest Batman Geeks, it was kind of a dream come true.

3. I can't believe how many orders of Happiest Days were recently placed! I guess I should run out of printings more frequently. Many of you asked for a media kit, like the one I did for Dancing Barefoot. Well, here's the Happiest Days of Our Lives media kit. Please download it and use it; it's under a Creative Commons license, so I encourage you to get crazy go nuts with it.

Shit. The robots are crawling all over the lab again. I have to get back to work.

more excellence in journalism

In a review the Sarah Jane Adventures, Tod Emko at UGO writes:

So, children's show, yes. Has young teens in it, yes. Yet, a show you may actually want to watch, despite your probable hatred for Wil Wheaton-type characters through the years. It's definitely one of the most intelligent shows for kids you'll ever see, and if you can't get enough of the Doctor's universe, this will give you a decent fix.

Well. Glad he liked the show, and is encouraging teenagers to watch intelligent programming; we certainly need more of that to act as a counterbalance on Hanna Montana. But I feel compelled to point something out that is apparently lost on Tod Emko-like writers: I didn't invent that type of character. I just played one of them for a few seasons. Twenty years ago. Using my name as a pejorative in this case isn't just profoundly offensive to me, it's profoundly inaccurate.

Despite my probable hatred of Tod Emko-like writers through the years, though, I'm totally going to do Tod Emko-like writers a solid here: Hey guys! Send your resumes to Entertainment Weekly; they love your style.

the daily facepalm

io9:

Season three of Heroes will introduce two new characters, because the show isn't overcrowded enough already: Joy, who's in her early twenties and good at getting herself into, and out of, trouble. And Senator Robert Malden, a "political straight shooter" in his fifties.

Yeah, because introducing new characters worked so very well last season.

Dammit. I loved Heroes in season one. Let's have more of that, and less of whatever the hell last season was, pretty please?

yet another way to know if you're a trekkie

Have you been feeling unfulfilled? Like your life is missing something? Have you been feeling . . . not so fresh?

You could be a Trekkie, and not even know it. Savage Chickens has a simple test to help you determine if you are a Trekkie in just three simple steps, so you can embrace your inner geek, and start living again.

(Thanks Jess!)

saturday morning flashback

Set the wayback machine for the early 80s, Sherman. Any Saturday morning will do . . .

I was such a nerd, I thought Timer was actually kind of cool. He taught us how to be healthy through song!

I was such a nerd, I thought the Dungeons  & Dragons cartoon was really cool.

Except for Uni. I hated that stupid little Scrappy Doo idiot.

Remember how excited you were to see your favorite video games become cartoons? The only thing that could have been better for a kid in 1983 would have been turning your favorite video games into a cereal!

Hmm . . . on second thought, maybe not.

Happy Saturday, everyone.

Angel One Review at TV Squad

My review of Angel One, which is part of the Top Five Most Painful TNG Episodes Ever, is up at TV Squad.

If you missed this morning's preview (and if you did, what the hell, man?) here's another bit of Mojo for your Nixon:

When they get to the planet, we discover that the women are all statuesque beauties with perfectly feathered hair, and the men are all refugees from Planet Simper V. After a tense palaver with the planet's only two leaders with any opinions whatsoever, Mistresses Beata and Ariel, the away team is sent to their room to think about what they did while mommy and mommy talk. Like all kids who are sent to their rooms, though, instead of contritely thinking about what they did, they plot against the people who sent them there.

Troi says that pretty much everyone in the room was freaked out about something. Maybe it has something to do with the Odin crew. Tasha's insightful analysis: "Why? Good question." Data (and the audience) wonder what they'll do if the Mistresses deny the existence of any survivors. Hey, that's a good question, and probably something we'd all like to be prepared for, right, Riker? Actually, no. Riker petulantly tells Data, "Let's not look for problems." Yeah, because looking for and solving problems just isn't the way we do things in Starfleet, dog.

Of all the reviews I've done so far, this was the hardest for me to write. I didn't work on the episode for more than one day, so I don't have that many behind the scenes memories. The final product is so unbelievably horrible, it was a challenge to do more than write, "This thing was stupid, this thing was also stupid, this thing should be retconned, this thing was lame," etc.

So I wrote the first draft, and I asked Andrew to give me some help with the rewrite. I figured that he would have his own take on it, and would be able to help me find jokes where I was missing them. He did, and so far, the jokes everyone is picking out as their favorites were all written by him. I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so direct your praise for Worf's sinuses and Riker's wait for command in Andrew's direction. He also found a gag to go with the vase, which I wanted to put in, but just couldn't find on my own. The snu-snu, though, was all me, baby. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised.

The column was getting long, so I didn't have space to include something that I think it historically important about this show. If I only had a blog where I could share the additional information, I'd say . . .

Angel One is mostly crap, but the original story  sounds like it was pretty cool. Larry Nemecek's Star Trek The Next Generation Companion (which is a surreal experience for me to read, because it speaks to the fanboy and cast member in me simultaneously) says that "Heavy rewrites changed Patrick Barry's original story -- a direct, action-filled, allegory to apartheid using the sexes instead of the races to make his point." Larry gives more plot details in the book, which I won't reprint here because I think that probably exceeds fair use. Director Michael Rhodes says that a big reason this story falls flat was Gene's determination to strip any conflict out of this script, and that Gene decreed that there was "no place for conflict in Star Trek." I hate to be critical of Gene, but I clearly remember Rhodes and several members of the cast sitting on Stage 6 one morning, absolutely incredulous that anyone could think that interesting drama was possible without conflict.

You know how you're a kid, and your parents are arguing about something, and you know they're arguing but they tell you everything's fine, we're just talking, so go back to bed? That's how I felt during this entire episode (even though I wasn't working on it, I was there every day to go to school.) The actors hated it. I mean, they really, really hated it -- almost as much as I hate Dick Cheney. I haven't been able to confirm this with people who allegedly participated, but I've heard from other Star Trek alumni that some of the actors hated this script so much -- it was even more sexist and stupid in one of the drafts that it is in the final cut, if you can believe that -- they refused to work for a day or so until various things were rewritten. Some people would say that's a case of actors being difficult, but I'd say it's an example of how much we all cared about the show, and how we all wanted it to be awesome and successful.

Oh, and if you Digg it and Propel it, a talking goat will bring you a box of wine, for free! If that doesn't wax your skis, I can assure you that Digging and Propelling will get you laid. And who doesn't like that?

(Heh. "get you laid" sounds like 9th grade tough-guy talk during lunch. It also makes me think of Beavis and Butthead, for some reason.)

Angel One Preview

Sometime soon, my review of Angel One will go live on TV Squad. Until it does, here's a little preview:

While Data and Trent are off seeing the wizard, Riker gets ready to play dress up for a meeting he has with Beata. She's sent him one of the hideous twink suits, apparently unaware that body wax and muscle definition have gone out of favor in the Federation. Tasha and Troi and throw up in their mouths a little when they see it, one of the first times in TNG when we can clearly see the characters sympathizing with the audience, instead of the other way around. Riker gets really defensive about the whole thing, and essentially accuses them of being jealous, because he's putting on a Siegfried and Roy costume to go meet up with Beata, who is "a woman, and an attractive one."

Oh, brother. Can we get a tiger sent down to Angel One?

. . . what? Too soon?

Back on the Enterprise, Picard is crankier than usual, and Dr. Crusher says he's just too sick to stay in command of the Enterprise. As she escorts him to his quarters, he gives command to Geordi, who is all too happy to get away from Worf, who is about to shower Geordi and everyone in the first ten rows of the arena with a Klingon Sneeze. Turns out that those forehead ridges are just extra sinuses. Ouch.

Geordi approaches the captain's chair, and a ray of awesome breaks through the clouds of crap that have obscured most of this episode: As he sits into command, we can feel how much Geordi respects the responsibility he's been given, and just how cool it is to sit in the big chair. Worf starts his scan and quickly locates the Odin survivors.

(Personal aside:  LeVar and I were the only two original cast members on TNG who were self-proclaimed Star Trek fans. I never asked him, but I wouldn't be surprised if this moment meant a lot to LeVar, personally. I know that when I got to sit in the captain's chair in Farpoint, even though it was kind of silly and lame, it still meant a lot to me. Fun fact: when we weren't rolling, nobody ever sat in the captain's chair except Patrick. Sure, we'd get visitors who would want to have their picture taken in the chair, and it was a popular stop for studio executives who wanted to impress people, but for all of us in the cast and crew, there was a very real reverence for the captain's chair.)

Okay, that wasn't as little as I thought it'd be.

That's what she said!

Oh boy. It's going to be one of those days . . .

on a routine expedition

Did you know that Walter Koenig (who, by the way, told me Happiest Days was "delightful," Squee!) created the character of Enik on Land of the Lost? Did you know that Harlan Ellison wrote a story for the show that was never produced? Oh! Oh! Oh! Did you know that David Gerrold came up with a whole backstory for the eponymous land that makes sense?!

I didn't know any of this until I read the Land of the Lost Triviagasm at io9 last night.

When they announced it, I though io9 was going to be snotty, too cool for the room, and hideous (like most Gawker blogs, which seem to have have an attitude I outgrew in my twenties.)

They're proving me wrong (like my opinion counts, right?) with content that's consistently interesting and cool, and commentary that doesn't seem to fit into the smug, condescending, dismissive tone that seems to be the Gawker model. It's almost like they realized who their target audience is, and -- gasp -- actually respect and speak to that audience.

Speaking of Land of the Lost: did it scare the living daylights out of anyone else? I remember being scared by most of the Krofft shows, because they all seemed to feature kids who get separated from their parents and sent into a weird world from which they can never return, but Land of the Lost terrified me, even though the kids had their dad with them. Maybe it was because I was a young geek with an overactive imagination, but when I was nine or ten, it seemed to be the most plausible of all the Krofft shows.

Oh, and if you're a fan of the Krofft shows, you should track down a copy of Pufnstuf & Other Stuff. It's awesome.

The Return of MST3K

I was twenty years-old the first time I saw MST3K. I was sitting on the couch with a friend of mine, looking for something to watch on a Sunday morning, when she stopped on some crappy old horror movie.

"What's this?" I said.

"You've never seen this before?"

"No," I said, "That's why I asked 'what's this.'"

"It's a show about this guy who is trapped in space with robots, and is forced to watch horrible movies. So he and the robots talk back to the screen."

It reminded me of this show I first watched on KDOC here in Los Angeles when I was a freshman in high school, called Mad Movies. I became a fan for life in a matter of minutes, and developed a list of favorites just as fast: Manos, the Hands of Fate, Rocketship XM and Lost Continent are a few that come instantly to mind.

MST3K's Joel Hodgson once said, "We don't ask ourselves, 'will anyone get this?' We tell each other, 'the right people will get this.'" I was inspired by that philosophy, and when I wrote sketch comedy or did improv (both pursuits inspired by MST3K and the British Whose Line?) I used it, and I still use it today, even when I'm not writing comedy.

So now that there's some context for how much I love MST3K, you'll understand how excited I was when I saw that most of the original crew has reunited for Cinematic Titanic, which I believe can be safely called The Return of MST3K:

Cinematic Titanic is a feature length movie riffing show and is an artist owned and operated venture created by Joel Hodgson, the creator of the Peabody award-winning Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Cinematic Titanic features the original cast and writers of MST3K, which is Hodgson (Joel Robinson), Trace Beaulieu (Crow), and J. Elvis Weinstein (Tom Servo). Filling out the ensemble is Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester) and Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank).

While this is exciting to me as a fan, it's also inspiring and validating to me as a creative person who lives on the Long Tail. Instead of waiting for a network to give them the opportunity to bring their show to viewers, they're distributing the show on DVD themselves. Between this and Riff Trax, we Misties have a lot to celebrate these days.
 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some rock climbing to do.