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4thofelevenIn which gods are needlessly cryptic, and a number of secrets come to light.
Once again I feel like I'm being needlessly contrary in my opinions, as once again I'm clashing with the general consensus, as I felt “Children of the Comet” was a far stronger episode than “Ghosts of Illyria”. It's nothing special, but we never got an Uhura-focused episode in TOS, so it's nice to finally get one here. Some nice character moments between her and Spock, the general debate over the nature of fate and the meaning of prophesy ties in nicely with Pike's situation, and it's a good gag that Sam Kirk spends most of the episode lying on the ground doing nothing, just like his only previous appearance as a corpse in “Operation Annihilate.” The fanatical aliens could have come out of any generic episode of Voyager, but it's fun to see the Enterprise outgunned, and we got to see Pike pull off a Kirk-style bluff. Decent episode, nothing really to say.
“Ghosts of Illyria”, meanwhile, feels like it's trying to be a lot more ambitious... and falling flat on its face. The plot alternates between boringly predictable and utterly nonsensical, while the character stories don't seem entirely sure what they're tying to say. Pike and Spock get trapped on a planet and spend half the episode working out what everyone in the audience has already guessed – that the plasma beings are the missing colonists. This story just peters out without any real resolution; apparently the Enterprise just warps off at the end without making any effort to either restore or communicate with them.
Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, it's that old standby – a weird alien virus that makes everyone act strange! Nobody seems to make any effort to initiate proper quarantine procedures; everyone who's sick just gets thrown into sickbay, but nobody stops other characters from just wandering in and out as they please. It's baffling that a show made in the 2020s would write about an infectious plague like this; but then, so little about this story makes sense that I suppose we can give that a pass. The plague apparently makes the crew obsessed with light because the... virus is transmitted by light and the more light the more easily it can be transmitted? Sure, whatever. You'd think that the ship's blind engineer would play a role in solving the problem, but no, he's just as affected as everyone else.
Basically a bunch of nonsense happens to set up a situation where Una has to reveal her deep, dark secret. You see, she's... Illyrian!
Illyrian!
They were in Enterprise, once? I think? Anyway, shut up, this is a big deal, because it means she's genetically engineered. And, um, nobody noticed this up until this point because Starfleet medical is dangerously incompetent. Kinda makes Voq having to go through painful surgery to pass for human seem like a waste of time, huh?
So, this is potentially an interesting storyline. It has some issues – because of the nature of a prequel, we won't actually be able to ever see the Federation or Starfleet get over their prejudice against genetically engineered people because, well, it has to still be around in the 24th century to screw over Bashir. And it's a neat twist that everyone assumed La'an Noonien Singh would be the augment onboard because of her name, but actually it's Una.
(I mean, not that great a twist, since the idea comes from D.C. Fontana's Pike era novel “Vulcan's Glory” from the 1980s. But I didn't see it coming, which was a novelty for this week.)
There's problems, though. First, there's the whole awkward “You know who people are really prejudiced against? The attractive white woman!” issue. It's not really that bold to tackle prejudice against a made-up minority played by a former model. And, yes, I like the message – that Una's enhancements saved the ship, but she shouldn't be tolerated just because she was useful this one time, 'being one of the good ones' shouldn't be necessary – well, there were better ways to handle it than having it be literally spelled out to us in her log entry. Again, this goes back to my criticisms of the pilot; there's no subtly to the storytelling; doing a prequel doesn't mean the scripts should feel like they could have been written decades ago.
And then there's the whole mess with La'an. We get a bit more of her backstory; that she was teased as a child for her name and her connection with Khan, and feels the need to prove that she's not an augment and so feels extra betrayed by Una's secret. And... this just raises so many questions. If she's Khan's decendant... did Khan have a family? Why didn't they go into exile with him? Why on Earth did they keep his name? For that matter, why did she keep her name if it's apparently still an issue? Her entire family were killed by the Gorn and she was the sole survivor, surely that would have given her a perfectly good opportunity to reinvent herself?
(And, of course, it's painfully contrived that she apparently feels the need to go by 'Noonien-Singh', the name indelibly associated with Khan, rather than just going by 'Singh', one of the most common names on the planet.)
It still isn't clicking for me; the show really needs to either come up with character dynamics a bit more nuanced than 'prejudice is bad', or give us an idea we haven't seen half a dozen times before in Star Trek. I'm just not seeing whatever spark of quality that seems to have so many other reviewers entranced.
Once again I feel like I'm being needlessly contrary in my opinions, as once again I'm clashing with the general consensus, as I felt “Children of the Comet” was a far stronger episode than “Ghosts of Illyria”. It's nothing special, but we never got an Uhura-focused episode in TOS, so it's nice to finally get one here. Some nice character moments between her and Spock, the general debate over the nature of fate and the meaning of prophesy ties in nicely with Pike's situation, and it's a good gag that Sam Kirk spends most of the episode lying on the ground doing nothing, just like his only previous appearance as a corpse in “Operation Annihilate.” The fanatical aliens could have come out of any generic episode of Voyager, but it's fun to see the Enterprise outgunned, and we got to see Pike pull off a Kirk-style bluff. Decent episode, nothing really to say.
“Ghosts of Illyria”, meanwhile, feels like it's trying to be a lot more ambitious... and falling flat on its face. The plot alternates between boringly predictable and utterly nonsensical, while the character stories don't seem entirely sure what they're tying to say. Pike and Spock get trapped on a planet and spend half the episode working out what everyone in the audience has already guessed – that the plasma beings are the missing colonists. This story just peters out without any real resolution; apparently the Enterprise just warps off at the end without making any effort to either restore or communicate with them.
Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, it's that old standby – a weird alien virus that makes everyone act strange! Nobody seems to make any effort to initiate proper quarantine procedures; everyone who's sick just gets thrown into sickbay, but nobody stops other characters from just wandering in and out as they please. It's baffling that a show made in the 2020s would write about an infectious plague like this; but then, so little about this story makes sense that I suppose we can give that a pass. The plague apparently makes the crew obsessed with light because the... virus is transmitted by light and the more light the more easily it can be transmitted? Sure, whatever. You'd think that the ship's blind engineer would play a role in solving the problem, but no, he's just as affected as everyone else.
Basically a bunch of nonsense happens to set up a situation where Una has to reveal her deep, dark secret. You see, she's... Illyrian!
Illyrian!
They were in Enterprise, once? I think? Anyway, shut up, this is a big deal, because it means she's genetically engineered. And, um, nobody noticed this up until this point because Starfleet medical is dangerously incompetent. Kinda makes Voq having to go through painful surgery to pass for human seem like a waste of time, huh?
So, this is potentially an interesting storyline. It has some issues – because of the nature of a prequel, we won't actually be able to ever see the Federation or Starfleet get over their prejudice against genetically engineered people because, well, it has to still be around in the 24th century to screw over Bashir. And it's a neat twist that everyone assumed La'an Noonien Singh would be the augment onboard because of her name, but actually it's Una.
(I mean, not that great a twist, since the idea comes from D.C. Fontana's Pike era novel “Vulcan's Glory” from the 1980s. But I didn't see it coming, which was a novelty for this week.)
There's problems, though. First, there's the whole awkward “You know who people are really prejudiced against? The attractive white woman!” issue. It's not really that bold to tackle prejudice against a made-up minority played by a former model. And, yes, I like the message – that Una's enhancements saved the ship, but she shouldn't be tolerated just because she was useful this one time, 'being one of the good ones' shouldn't be necessary – well, there were better ways to handle it than having it be literally spelled out to us in her log entry. Again, this goes back to my criticisms of the pilot; there's no subtly to the storytelling; doing a prequel doesn't mean the scripts should feel like they could have been written decades ago.
And then there's the whole mess with La'an. We get a bit more of her backstory; that she was teased as a child for her name and her connection with Khan, and feels the need to prove that she's not an augment and so feels extra betrayed by Una's secret. And... this just raises so many questions. If she's Khan's decendant... did Khan have a family? Why didn't they go into exile with him? Why on Earth did they keep his name? For that matter, why did she keep her name if it's apparently still an issue? Her entire family were killed by the Gorn and she was the sole survivor, surely that would have given her a perfectly good opportunity to reinvent herself?
(And, of course, it's painfully contrived that she apparently feels the need to go by 'Noonien-Singh', the name indelibly associated with Khan, rather than just going by 'Singh', one of the most common names on the planet.)
It still isn't clicking for me; the show really needs to either come up with character dynamics a bit more nuanced than 'prejudice is bad', or give us an idea we haven't seen half a dozen times before in Star Trek. I'm just not seeing whatever spark of quality that seems to have so many other reviewers entranced.
no subject
on 2022-05-28 01:46 am (UTC)The genetic engineering thing sounds even weirder considering Spock is there. I mean, okay, technically he isn't "enhanced," but you can't just splice human and Vulcan genomes together and call it good; there must have been considerable genetic jiggery-pokery (technical term) to make that work. And it did lead to him being significantly stronger than his human ancestors, and telepathic, so he kind of is enhanced with alien DNA, from a certain point of view. But it sounds like no one brought this up as a comparison for some reason? Or asks why it is that people might object to Spock's ancestry but aren't freaking out about him being a Frankenkid or whatever they'd call it in the 23rd century?
And yeah, why not just go with plain "Singh"? It's as conveniently anonymous as "Smith" and still part of her original name if she's attached to it!
no subject
on 2022-05-28 03:59 am (UTC)Have we ever seen a 'Smith' in Star Trek? I'm going to chose to believe that after the atrocities commuted by High Lord Bob Smith in the Third World War, the name was irrevocably tainted - even more so than Noonien-Singh! - and every Smith changed their names to avoid the association.
no subject
on 2022-05-29 09:51 pm (UTC)If La'an is a practicing Sikh, she could also go by La'an Noonien Kaur (or La'an Kaur Noonien), which would also make the family connection less clear. This might be less likely than just dropping "Noonien" since Earth seems to have become much more secular by this point, but it's another option that someone could have thought of.