After the last episode of “Picard” that shows us alternate reality I decided to review another episode that deals with changed timelines which brought me to the classic of “Star Trek: The Generation’s” “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” This is a good episode that captures the characters well and is a good episode for Tasha Yar, who was very poorly explored in her past appearances. So, if you haven’t seen this episode, I do recommend it.
The episode was directed by David Carson with teleplay by Eric A. Stillwell and Trent Christopher Ganino.
When the Enterprise-D encounters the Enterprise-C exiting through a timerift we are left with a future with a militarized Federation fighting a war with the Klingon Empire with only Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) aware of the change.
SPOILERS ahead
The Pros:
The Premise – The idea of a time change by Enterprise-C is a great premise as is Guinan being the only one aware of the timeline change. The stakes are high with the Federation in a losing war with the Klingons which adds the Enterprise-C dying defending a Klingon outpost against Romulans being a realistic change in building peace with Klingons for the main timeline’s future.
The Enterprise-C and Her Crew – I liked the crew of this ship. Captain Garrett is professional and driven and we see how she accepts having to go back alone without any technology from the past to help to save the future and Lieutenant Castillo is a sweet guy. This is a crew who knows that they are going to their deaths but believe in the Federation and cause and seeing them connect with the alternate Enterprise-D crew is fantastic. I loved Castillo and Picard’s interactions with each other.
Captain Picard – Picard is the one who makes some huge calls in this. He trusts Guinan’s jugement and honors Tasha Yar’s with to go back with the Enterprise-C. You can see why the crew trusts him as he opens up to Captain Castillo about the losing war the Federation is fighting and how the Enterprise-C is their best hope for a future. Patrick Stewart’s performance is amazing.
Lieutenant Tasha Yar – This is Tasha Yar’s story as we see her connect to the Enterprise-C crew and learn from Guinan she had a pointless death. Guinan was right and seeing the weight of that hit Yar is powerful as Denise Crosby is one of the main folks making this episode so good. Her choosing to go to a death with a purpose fits her character so well and I’m glad Picard honored her wish as she helps save the future and restore the timeline.
Guinan and her Conversations – Guinan’s conversations are great in this. She introduces Worf to prune juice and helps him open up. She talks to Picard and Yar in the alternate timeline helping them fight to restore the future back to normal and she talks to Geordi after about Tasha Yar as she had died in the main timeline so she had never met her.
The Cons:
The Love Story – Castillo and Yar’s love story feels contrived. They fall in love fast and it doesn’t make enough sense. It felt that it only existed to give Tasha another motivation to join the Enterprise-C.
An Alternate Future Not Fully Explored – We learn the Federation is set to lose the war against the Klingon Empire in 6 months but besides Starfleet ships being fully military we don’t learn what the culture of the Federation is like. Part of this is alternate Enterprise-D folks are not that different from their main timeline counterparts. They are more serious, but that is it.
If the love story had been cut out and the alternate future more deeply explored this episode would have been great. So much about this story works and it is still really good and well worth your time. There are some amazing performances and the core premise keeps the episode working the entire time. I highly recommend checking it out.
We continue “Star Trek Week” with “Star Trek: Armada.” “Star Trek: Armada” is a solid, simple Real-time strategy game that lets you play as the Federation, Borg, Klingons and Romulans in multiplayer and their own campaigns. I first beat it Middle School and later again in High School. This was around the time I first became a Trekkie and getting the chance to play a RTS in a universe I love was so much fun. The thing that keeps it from being great is how simple the maps and strategy are. This is still a solidly good game worth checking out if you like “Star Trek” or RTS games.
The game was produced and developed by Activision.
The story follow Captain Picard post-Dominion War as the Enterprise-E saves a Federation ship from the future who warns them about an incoming Borg Invasion.
SPOILERS ahead
The Pros:
The Gameplay – I am a fan of RTS games from “Age of Empires II,” “Age of Mythology,” “Rise of Nations,” both “Starcrafts”and “Warcraft III.” The gameplay is much simpler than most of these games but the core gameplay isn’t bad. It works as a simple RTS with the two resources you gather.
The Factions – The Federation, Klingons, Romulans and Borg are so much fun to play. Romulans are my favorite faction in “Star Trek” and their specialty of cloak and stealing shields adds a nice dynamic where the Klingons are all about damage and the Federation is all about shield power-ups. The Borg are hard to kill and can assimilate all factions ships late game. It is fun and their feel from the shows are captured really well.
The Campaign – The campaign is good but doesn’t do anything special. You have time travel to defeat the Borg like the “First Contact” film. The Romulans and Klingons are fighting and it is only with them making peace the Federation can win and the Borg use cloning Dominion Tech to bring back Locutus. There isn’t much to say about the campaign, it works and having Picard, Worf, Sela and Locutus as the POV makes their individual campaigns solid enough even if none ever reach the level of great with a Federation, Romulan and Klingon Alliance being the only way to defeat Locutus and the Borg.
The Cons:
The Maps – The maps are simple to the point a grid is over the entire map. It is simple with nebulas that can hurt or help and resources to gather. None of the maps are creative and they all feel the same. This definitely was a con given how diverse space is.
Lack of Strategies / Simpleness of the Game – You can turtle and power-up to get the final warships and at that point you win. There aren’t really any good rush strategies so you end up turtling and sending out giant fleets at the end. This is where the limits in the simple design of the game really come out. The ships before the warships end up mattering very little in the end because they are comparably so weak or slow to shoot.
“Star Trek: Armada” is a game I can’t wait to come to steam or Gog.com. It is a solid RTS and I’d been wanting one of these types of games in “Star Trek” as I watched the show growing up so when this game came out when I was in middle school I loved it. Beating it later in life has been fun too as the game always stays as the simple, solid fun adventure in the universe of “Star Trek.”
It has been a while since I’ve done anything “Star Trek” related on the blog. So this was fun to return to as the villains are part of what helps make so many of the stories of the “Star Trek Franchise” memorable and have brought about so many compelling stories both in the show and films. Some of these villains were so memorable future writers would attempt to create that same magic in other films and largely be unsuccessful with it. I’m considering all the shows and films for when I made the list and these were the 5 favorite that have always stayed with me when considering the “Star Trek Universe.” Also there will be story SPOILERS for all the characters on this list.
5) General Chang
Christopher Plummer’s is a warrior driven by a fear of change as war is always known and what it means for what it means to be Klingon. He frames Kirk and McCoy for the death of Chancellor Gorkon and nearly succeeds in stopping the peace process of the Khitomer Accords as the only reason he loses is he didn’t bring backup and his Federation conspirators were discovered before they could assassinate the Federation President. Chang is ruthless but also has a respect for Kirk as a soldier as he is clearly enjoying the final battle against Kirk and Captain Sulu as he quotes Shakespeare and pummels them both from his cloaked ship. Like most of the adversaries on this list his cleverness is part of what makes him stand out as well as his ideology built on war that he is unable to grow past. To him there could be no Klingon Empire without war and it blinded him to the suffering of his people. He was powerful both at getting under the Federation’s skin with words and in battle. R.I.P. Christopher Plummer for playing one of the best villains in “Star Trek” and made the film “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” so memorable.
4) Gowron
Gowron is a character who is driven by personal ego and honor versus the societal honor that guided the ideology of General Chang. When we first meet Gowron he shows how crafty he is as he is willing to trade a seat on the High Council to become Chancellor and his working with the Federation against the Duras family in the Klingon Civil War. Robert O’Reilly captured the joy this character has in both the political and personal battles. He loves combat and all moves he does are to build himself up and diminish potential threats. We see this in his doing away with the Khitomer Accords to go to war with Cardassia, believing they were taken over by Changelings and his taking all of Worf’s families money and land when he refused to support the Klingon Empire in their war. He later does this again when General Martok’s star is rising and so he takes control of the Dominion War to send Martok on impossible missions. This leads to his undoing as Worf who is now of House Martok challenges and kills him. Gowron own personal honor and ego are what make him so compelling and crafty are also what end up being his undoing as it was putting himself before his people that lead to Worf’s challenge, that was tactically backed by the Federation. O’Reilly created a memorable character and he is probably my favorite Klingon besides General Chang lasting through “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
3) Weyoun
Jeffrey Combs’s amazing Weyoun (all the ones we meet) is a character driven by ideology like General Chang. Though Weyoun’s is religious as it is his worship of the fascist Founders that drive his diplomatic and military actions in the Alpha Quadrant. He is the face of the Dominion and the enforcer of their will and Combs does it beautifully. He can act kind and is curious about the worlds the Dominion is to conquer. He is limited in what he can see and taste but can hear extremely well and navigates the Alpha Quadrant politics extremely well. He really only loses when the Female Changeling’s hate for solids overrides her tactics when combined with the deadly virus against the Founders. Weyoun brings in the Breen and the Cardassians and if his cautiousness had been bettered adhered to by egos like Dukat and the Founders the Dominion probably would have won the war. In the end the line of Weyoun is ended after Damar destroys his cloning facility and Garak kills the last Weyoun. He was a memorable villain who truly captured the complexity and threat of the Dominion throughout “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
2) Khan Noonien Singh
Ricardo Montalban’s Khan Noonien Singh is an icon of “Star Trek.” Appearing first in “Space Seed” in “Star Trek: The Original Series” he bested Captain Kirk and his crew and won enough to the point that he was given his own planet with his augments as Kirk thought Federation rehabilitation of this past Earth tyrant impossible. The augments of which Khan is one of caused World War 3 and you feel their influence through “Trek.” Sadly, this comes back to bite Kirk as the planet Seti Alpha VI shifted orbit leading to much of Khan’s crew and family dying. He succeeds in revenge to as even though he doesn’t defeat Kirk it is only through Spock’s death he failed. This is the best revenge story in “Star Trek” and we see all the failed attempts to replicate it in Shinzon, Nero, Alternate Khan, Krall, etc. Most films tried to create this same magic but none are as personal as the losses Khan faced and his ego and rage are incomparable. All he does is to hurt Kirk and the Federation, even to his dying breath. Khan is a Shakespearean tragic figure and I can’t wait to review “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” He is easily one of the best and compelling characters to come out of “Star Trek.”
1) Gul Dukat
Mark Alaimo’s Gul Dukat is the most compelling villain to come out of “Star Trek.” This former Prefect of Bajor is responsible for the occupation that killed millions but fails ever to see how he is responsible. Dukat’s ego is what drives him and his need to impress those he respects (as a way to show he is right to himself). This is most apparent in his relationship with Captain Sisko and Major Kira as he sees their validation of him what he needs to be right and understood. This villain is wonderfully complicated to as he takes in his half-Bajoran daughter Zyal leading to his family and the Cardassian Government exiling him to him becoming a rogue fighter against the Klingons in the Klingon-Cardassian War. It is in this war he finds his out by negotiating with the Dominion to rule Cardassia after which he retook Deep Space Nine, from where he had ruled Bajor prior. Eventually it all comes crashing down when the Federation retakes the station and his second-in-command Damar kills his daughter. He breaks with reality at this point and after escaping Federation captivity starts a Pah-Wraith cult as he attempts to destroy Bajor once and for all. He nearly succeeds again but Kai Winn’s change of heart and Captain Sisko’s arrival stop him as he is trapped forever with the Pah-Wraiths as his final fate. This villain had so many rises and falls and never stops being interesting, charming and narcissistic. He is an intelligent villain even after he psychologically breaks and is set-up as a threat from the very first season of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” He had a great arc and Marc Alaimo gives such an amazing performance as the best villain in all of “Star Trek.”
I’m curious who your favorite villains in “Star Trek” are too. This was a fun list to make.
“Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” might be my favorite film out of all the “Star Trek” films. The biggest competitor is still “Wrath of Khan” which I need to re-watch but from my memory both are so close in score. I love the deeper themes they explore and the rich characters who are brought to the screen. Suffice to say, this film still very much holds up. It has a few problematic that I noticed this time around, but the story, without going into spoilers, is still amazing.
The film was directed and co-written by Nicholas Meyer with the other screenplay writer being Denny Martin Flinn.
After the Klingon moon of Praxis explodes from overmining Spock reaches out for a chance for peace with the Klingon Empire, and asks for Kirk to be on his envoy. From here the story unfolds as those wanting to sabotage peace act upon events.
SPOILERS ahead
The Pros:
Relevant Cameos – I want to get some neat cameos out of the way upfront as most of the moments I’ll be describing are major events and characters (for the pros and cons) so without further ado. I loved seeing Yeoman Rand’s cameo, Michael Dorn as Colonel Worf, Worf’s grandfather were two cameos that were fantastic in this film.
Destruction of Praxis – The Destruction of Praxis was meant to mirror Chernobyl’s destruction and the ending of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. What works about this is how there is a complete shutoff of info from the Klingon Empire and that Captain Sulu witnesses it first hand so the truth of what happened can’t truly be denied. It lended weight to events especially as Spock mentions that without aid the Klingon homeworld of Qo’noS will be unhibatible in 50 years prompting the work for peace.
The Dinner Party – The dinner party is such a fun scene. In this the clash between Klingon and human cultures is on full display. You have General Chang egging on Kirk and Kirk rising to it while Gorkon is attempting to keep things civil as folks on both sides of the table alienate each other through misunderstanding. Even with how uncomfortable it is, it still gives Gorkon hope and he shares that hope with Kirk before returning to his ship.
Chancellor Gorkon – David Warner does an amazing job as the idealist Klingon leader fighting for peace. He has elements in his cabinet who want war, which means the Klingon High Council is probably similar. This in turn leads to his assassination, as people from the Klingon Empire and Starfleet do not want the war to stop. In the end he believes in fighting for peace though as his dying breathe to Kirk is to not let this be the end.
The Assassination of Gorkon – Gorkon’s assassination is visceral as it looks like the Enterprise-A fired upon Gorkon’s ship and two people beamed aboard and killed Gorkon and members of his cabinet. It is a brutal scene that does not shy away from how horrible the act is. This in turn leads to the arrest of Kirk and McCoy as being framed as responsible for the murder.
The Prison Planet Rura Penthe – Rura Penthe feels like something out of “Star Wars” both in the alien design and how chaotic it is. This works though and I enjoyed seeing the Klingon underbelly where no one was safe and how it forced Kirk and McCoy to think on their feet. It was such a fun location and I enjoyed Martia, the shapeshifter we are introduced too.
Martia – Martia is such a fun character. She is working with the Warden to frame Kirk and McCoy and escapees and get paid but before that she does help them make peace and respect with the other prisoners. She is a complicated antagonist and Amen is wonderful in the role. She honestly carries the scenes she is in more than Kirk and McCoy.
The Investigation on the Enterprise-A – The investigation begins with the Enterprise crew stalling so they have time to investigate and so that the evidence of the assassination (the magnetic boots that were used). You get to see them exploring all parts of the ship and multiple main crewmembers coming up with new excuses to give starfleet or ideas of where the evidence might be. It is really thorough and the reveal is powerful.
Uhura, Chekov and Scotty – Uhura gets to use her diplomatic skills and is with Chekov suggesting solutions to the mystery. Scotty is also on hand doing the same and in the end discovers the assassination uniforms and gets to punch the man attempting to kill the Federation President. This film makes use of the entire crew and I love that they were more than glorified cameos. Doohan, Nichols and Koenig do a great job.
Valeras – Valeras is the villainous Vulcan who believes peace is illogical as it entirely depends on faith and goes against the history the Klingons and Federation have. In a way she’s right as there would be later wars but even those wars wouldn’t have the rubric for peace if not for the events of this film. She is a great character and shows how complicated the Federation and Vulcans can be.
General Chang – Christopher Plummer is amazing as this Shakespeare quoting Klingon obsessed with war. You can see how much it has come to define him as he will work with his enemies to make sure peace will never happen, even if his homeworld is destroyed in the process. He is the driven nationalist and his defeat is rewarding. He also has a proto-type Bird-of-Prey that can fire when cloaked and nearly wins multiple times in this movie. He is easily one of Star Trek’s best villians.
Captain Sulu and The Excelsior – I love Captain Sulu. This tea drinking captain discovers the destruction of Praxis and does all he can to help Enterprise ending in his ship The Excelsior helping to defeat General Chang in the end. George Takei really deserved a mini-series with his character. He’s such a great captain.
McCoy – McCoy is there as support to Kirk through all and we see how deeply he is invested in the peace process as well as how ready he is to enjoy his retirement. This dynamic is contrasted with Kirk who doesn’t want to leave while McCoy will always do his duty and protect his friends but is more at peace with his age and the next stages of his life.
Spock and Kirk – Spock and Kirk drive the primary action of the film and we see them grow as both grow over the course of the film. Kirk confronts and overcomes his prejudice due to Gorkon’s hope and him seeing first hand where hate leads and Spock sees the flaws in the Federation through Valeras’s betrayal and how his idealism blinded him to those who would want to keep the war going on. It is really well done and Shatner and Nimoy truly gave these characters a great sendoff. In the end they both find faith and hope once more and help the Federation and Klingon Empire find it too.
Chancellor Azetbur – Chancellor Azetbur is Gorkon’s daughter and still believes in his dream as she finds justice by trying Kirk and McCoy, which was fair given what she knew. She doesn’t let the Nationalists and zealots sway her and in the end it pays off as she signs the Khitomer accords and makes peace with Kirk as the true murders are revealed. Rosana DeSoto did a fantastic job.
The Cycle of Hatred – One of the themes of the film is how war feeds the cycle of hatred. Kirk’s hatred of the Klingon’s for one killing his son almost leads to greater war happening again and because of past battles old scars are carried forward by the people wanting there to be no peace.
Empathy and the Chance for Peace – In the end it is through empathy that peace is found as it is in Gorkon’s death that Kirk realizes how wrong he was and Azetbur does in the nationalist and zealots revealed. It is beautifully handled.
The Cons:
Kirk’s Shapeshifter Panic – Kirk sleeps with Martia who at one point turns into a giant beast and changes her gender. The film makes a joke of it. I hated it. “Trans panic” and “gay panic” is real and it harms people as homophobes and transphobes use that defense for their hatred. Kirk and McCoy should have been better.
Spock and Valeras Mind Meld / Mental Assault – When Spock is finding out the conspiracy he does a mind meld against Valeras’s will as she is one of the betrayers herself. It is horrible and I wish it had been called out in the film. There should been another way like a truth serum or something akin to that or Spock simply changing her mind through logic and reason as Trek usually does at it’s best. Like the “panic” scene I hated this so much.
This film is amazing, a favorite and still problematic. In this we get the best of hope for humanity and growth and also see where that growth is still needed. This evolution and embracing all is what the heart of “Star Trek” is and I hope we can see those greater stories in the future. This film ends the Klingon War and “The Original Series” in a way that matters and truly captured what made the show and films so memorable.
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