Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 7

Back with what may just be the most ambitious fan film to date: Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum courtesy of Chris Bouchard and Independent Online Cinema.

If we can agree that emulation is at least part of the agenda when making fan films, it stands to reason that the bigger the source material, the harder it'll be for low-budget fan work to reach even an approximation of that level. Rob Caves' "Hidden Frontier" universe used a lot of CGI and green-screen to resemble "Star Trek", visually if not ideologically, though the extent of its success is entirely debatable (as are most aspects of this particular field: YMMV is practically the First Commandment).

"The Hunt for Gollum" sets its sights much higher, as it's based on Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which remains (in my opinion) one of the most impressive cinematic spectacles in recent history. This 40-minute fan film is set during a specific ellipsis in "The Fellowship of the Ring", when Gandalf returns to the Shire for the last time and tells Frodo that Gollum - the only other person who knew the location of the Ring - was captured by Sauron's forces.

Bouchard is working with two sources here: Jackson and Tolkien (specifically Tolkien's appendices to "Lord of the Rings"). The plot of the film is dictated by the appendices, wherein Gollum escapes Mordor only to be captured by Aragorn and imprisoned by the Elves (followed by a second escape). Visually, though, it's very much derived from the Jackson films: the Orcs have Cockney accents, Adrian Webster has that whole Grimy Badass look down pat as Aragorn, and there's considerable emphasis placed on the lovely natural setting.

But there are a few problems here, primarily to do with Gollum. Lacking the resources to sustain a prolonged CGI depiction of Gollum, Bouchard uses a combination of extreme long-shots and keeping Gollum in Aragorn's sack for most of the film, screaming and howling and babbling to himself. To be honest? It's not the most creative solution. Sure, realistically speaking it'd be a bit much to expect competition with New Line Cinema, and yet I can't help thinking that it diminishes Gollum's presence. I'm also fairly certain that some split-second shots in "The Hunt for Gollum" were cut-and-pasted from "Fellowship of the Ring", though I wouldn't swear on it.

I suppose the question that came to mind when I saw this was "Why?" There's no shortage of "side-stories" to tell in Middle-Earth - why choose to fill in a blank that, on the whole, isn't that interesting? Aragorn hunts down Gollum, kills some Orcs, catches Gollum and brings him to the Elves, and that's about it. Given that the stylistic/visual recreation is spot-on, I guess I would've preferred a story with a bit more meat to it.

Still, I have to fall back on a phrase that's probably becoming familiar if you've been following this column: there's something to be said for ambition. As Carlos Pedraza once pointed out during a discussion of "Hidden Frontier", there's a case to be made that fan films are in a state of "reciprocal evolution" - creators learn from their peers' mistakes and successes, and thanks to the medium of the Internet it's a lot quicker and a lot easier than Hollywood's learning curve. Pedraza attributed at least part of James Cawley's success with "Phase II" to the earlier presence of "Hidden Frontier", specifically the fact that there was a popular rough template that could be (and needed to be) adapted and refined for better results. And if "The Hunt for Gollum" represents a new starting point for future Tolkien fan-creators... well, they could do a lot worse.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6h

Today we'll be concluding our stay in Rob Caves' fan-series universe, with a review of the three Star Trek: Hidden Frontier spin-offs.

The first thing worth mentioning is that there's a plot superstructure in place here, which I honestly didn't expect: all three spin-offs use the same event as a launching point, though they each go in very different directions. The event in question is the invasion of Romulan space by the Archein Empire, hailing from the Andromeda Galaxy. "Odyssey" follows a Starfleet crew stranded in Archein territory; "The Helena Chronicles" is set in the former Briar Patch; and "Federation One" explores the political fallout of the invasion. In the background of the latter two, Section 31 - a black ops splinter group of Starfleet - is conspiring to do... well, something. It's not entirely clear yet.

The internal post-HF chronology is a bit tricky. While "Odyssey" stands independent of its sister series, the prequels to "Federation One" take place between episodes 2 and 3 of "The Helena Chronicles". In fact, it's been suggested that the best way to view the spin-offs is to combine them into one season - the numbers work out, as "Odyssey" has five episodes, "The Helena Chronicles" has three and "Federation One" has two (plus a pair of prequels), so it just about comes up to one of the longer seasons of "Hidden Frontier". However, the three series are so thematically different that I advise against that kind of amalgamation.

I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed that the central hub of the post-HF narrative is yet another war story. Granted, the Archein attack is much more compelling and interesting than either of the major conflicts in "Hidden Frontier", but it would've been nice to see something different. I understand that war's in the zeitgeist (just look at the Marvel Universe over the past five or six years) but it's wearing a bit thin, especially in a science-fiction setting that's always had a... complicated relationship with the concept of war.

Visually, there's been an incredible surge upward in terms of CGI quality and screen resolution; the final seasons of "Hidden Frontier" looked good, but I can honestly describe the current efforts of Caves and associates as "professional-level quality".

So let's get to it, then:

Odyssey comes first, mostly because its series premiere ("Iliad") seems to take place immediately after the "Hidden Frontier" finale: Ro and Aster are on their honeymoon, and it's implied that the Romulans are having trouble fending off the Archein due to their losses in the Briar Patch war.

The pilot episode does a great job of establishing the Archein as a very different threat than the Tholian/Breen alliance of "Hidden Frontier" - we have specific characters within this enemy organization such as the demented princess Seram, her dying mother, the honorable but determined General Morrigu and so on. Moreover, the Archein are given a strong, rational explanation for their attack: their home systems in the Andromeda galaxy are collapsing into singularities, and their only hope for survival is to seize and colonize the Beta Quadrant (specifically, Romulan territory).

Without spoiling too much, the premise of the series involves the Odyssey, a Starfleet vessel deployed to Andromeda through new (and apparently dangerous) slipstream technology, to stop the invasion at its source. Though successful, the Odyssey finds itself stranded deep within the Archein Empire, struggling to find a way home.

Well, it's "Voyager", obviously... albeit with a few correctives applied. For example, it's acknowledged rather plainly that, being three million light years away from Earth, there's no conventional way for the Odyssey to get home. The inter-character dynamics are also different, as junior officers like Ro are forced to assume command positions following the deaths of the senior staff.

The only characters imported from "Hidden Frontier" are Ro, our central protagonist, and bit character Wozniak (Rawlins' replacement from the fourth season). Everyone else is tabula rasa, though the series features many of the same actors such as Sharon Savene (Faisal/Seram), Julia Morizawa (S'Tal/Maya), John Whiting (Henglaar/Morrigu), Michelle Laurent (Tesla Mor/T'Lorra) and Adam Browne (Zen/Caecus). Some, like Morizawa, are clearly having fun playing characters so different from their previous roles; others can't help a certain level of bleed-through (Caecus is every bit the timid mouse Jorian was in his pre-Dao days).

But if we're talking actors here, the big news is that the part of Ro Nevin has been recast again - though Bobby Rice reprises the role in the first episode, he's then replaced by Brandon McConnell. It's a striking change, because McConnell is much more emotionally reserved; this is somewhat justified in that Ro should have developed some kind of stability by now, having gone through all that emotional uncertainty in the final seasons of "Hidden Frontier". On the other hand, Rice's version of the character was an open book, you could always tell what he was thinking and feeling, and I don't get that with Ro 3.0. But McConnell's new to the role... we'll have to wait and see where that goes.

Characterization has improved since "Hidden Frontier" but remains a bit off: I find myself constantly wanting to see more of these characters, to go beneath the surface and see what makes them tick, but the first season of "Odyssey" doesn't deliver much of that. Oh, there are quite a few likeable characters: Maya's fun, Gillen is just adorable, and T'Lorra's an excellent foil for Ro. But there's still something missing, that little extra bit that makes a character memorable.

The plot also gets a bit repetitive after a while; nearly every episode involves Ro getting the ship into trouble by setting off a trap, while encountering alien cultures that have inexplicably learned all about Bajorans, Romulans and Starfleet. There's a Kirk reference in there somewhere, which makes me wonder whether the whole Andromeda thing has actually been done before, but I can't seem to find any solid reference one way or another.

Still, I like the core concept and certain twists, like Seram's true connection to Caecus, were well-executed. All it really needs is a bit more depth of characterization and some new storyline ideas. Of course, what I'd really like to know is whether the writers intend to follow the broad outline of Homer's poem, because Ro succumbing to an Andromedan (male?) analogue of Circe probably wouldn't go over with viewers as smoothly as Odysseus' Old-School Mattress Marathon, but it'd certainly serve his character arc.

The Helena Chronicles picks up six months after "Iliad", in a more familiar setting (Ba'ku and what used to be Briar Patch). We're following the Helena, commanded by Theresa Faisal (former XO to Tolian Naros). Jorian Dao is first officer, Artim Ibanya is helmsman, and Corey Aster joins the crew in the series premiere (basically providing the Penelope to Ro's Odysseus). We even get to peek in on DS12 (though this comes with an unwelcome dose of Knapp - I suppose someone had to hold the Idiot Ball), and the second episode brings back Joseph Johns (the last surviving member of Admiral Cole's crew), Robin Lefler and Admiral Rand.

Which isn't to say that we don't get a bunch of entertaining new characters, such as Chief Engineer Rockney (a technophile in the creepiest sense of the word), the semi-psychotic Lt. Dais, snarky Dr. Ness or the flamboyant pirate Caeleno. As with "Odyessy", I'm left wanting to know more about these characters, but with the first season consisting of only three episodes, there isn't much room for development.

I should point out, apropos of characterization, that there's a real effort being made here to push Ro and Aster as an epic romance - they're having visions of each other, they're acting out the parts of mythological figures, but even after all this time... eh. Still not feeling 'em, dawg.

Meanwhile, if the premise of "Odyssey" remains consistent throughout its first season, "The Helena Chronicles" does an abrupt - but entirely welcome - left-field twist in the second episode, as Lefler, Aster and Dao start experimenting on ways to either follow Ro to Andromeda or bring him home. I'm not entirely clear on why the reaction to their work is so hysterical, since it's already been done in the very recent past, but if you can make the leap that Starfleet is willing to murder its own officers to prevent some kind of unexplained galactic catastrophe, you'll be okay with the new, and rather bold, direction.

And finally, we have Federation One, a very different creature altogether. The series begins with two prequels - "Orphans of War" and feature-length "Operation Beta Shield" - both of which are crossovers with Scottish fan production Star Trek: Intrepid. This isn't actually the first time these two fan series have crossed paths: the fifth-season finale of "Hidden Frontier" featured a cameo by "Intrepid" character Keran Azhan. But in the context of the episode, it was a rather superfluous appearance.

Not so here: both the Intrepid and Shelby's Excalibur are front-and-center in both prequels, and they actually mesh rather well together. Shelby has a playful rapport with Captain Hunter, and that's a side of her we've never really seen - her friendship with Lefler is, after all, offset by her status as Lefler's commanding officer.

(Speaking of Lefler, it turns out she's engaged to Ben Nordstrom, the Excelsior's new Chief Engineer. It's yet another relationship that's taken place almost entirely off-screen...)

"Orphans of War" is a short ten-minute piece about the Intrepid and the Excelsior picking through the debris of an Archein/Romulan battle and finding some surprises left behind; servicable, but the real story begins with "Operation Beta Shield". Here's where the chronology gets a bit tricky: "Orphans of War" is set before the game-changing second episode of "The Helena Chronicles", but "Operation Beta Shield" takes place afterwards - this explains Lefler's absence and Barrett's promotion to first officer of the Excelsior (which has a new and interesting look).

"Operation Beta Shield" gives us a look at the political effects of the Archein attack and the resulting rescue of the Romulan Empire by Starfleet and the Klingons. It also marks the return of my favorite "Hidden Frontier" villain, Karah Vindenpawl, who rises to the most powerful position in the Federation through a sudden and violent assassination that she may (or may not) have instigated. As in fifth-season episode "Security Counsel", Vindenpawl brings out the best in Matt McCabe, who's still determined to expose and defeat her even as her machinations take on galactic proportions.

All of which leads to "Federation One", as McCabe - now Head of Presidential Security - tries to investigate Vindenpawl while simultaneously being forced to protect her against external and internal threats. It is, in that sense, a much more subtle series than either its sister shows; McCabe is the only Starfleet officer in a cast of politicians, reporters and scientists, and the focus veers away from space battles and the physical/visual manifestations of war. This, by the way, probably explains the season 2 format switch to audio drama: that sort of thing wouldn't work with either of the other spin-offs, but I suspect it'll do nicely here.

Normally, this would be the point where I'd make a comparative assessment and try to determine which series is "best", but I don't think it's so much a case of being qualitatively better as it is that each spin-off compliments the others: "Federation One" has the best character dynamics, since it's mostly just Vindenpawl and McCabe and they've had the benefit of exposure in the parent series. The Helena's story, on the other hand, is much more kinetic and exciting, while Odyssey... well, Odyssey has the potential to do a lot of new and interesting things but that hasn't really happened yet.

One thing I can say, with a great degree of confidence, is that "Odyssey", "The Helena Chronicles" and "Federation One" continue the tradition of gradual overall improvement that their parent series demonstrated; as with the later seasons of "Hidden Frontier", my feeling is that there are certain gaps and flaws that repeat themselves (mostly to do with plot and characterization techniques), but these diminish over time.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6g

To sum up, some macro-level observations about "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier".

As a fan-series, "Hidden Frontier" has an interesting and somewhat contradictory relationship with its source material. On the one hand, Rob Caves and his associates explored themes that neither Roddenberry nor Berman and Braga dealt with at length (or at all), such as homosexuality, clinical depression, drug addiction and the deeper implications of interracial relationships. That's the sort of thing you'd expect from a fan-based project, since the lack of a censoring authority means freedom to depict any controversial concepts the mainstream would've avoided. And in a way, that approach is very much in line with the most basic premise of "Star Trek" - to go where no one's gone before.

On the other hand, if we look at the overall narrative of "Hidden Frontier", what emerges is a story that doesn't really conform to "Star Trek" at all. It's clear that the series was heavily influenced by the Dominion War arc of "Deep Space 9", but that arc also had a spiritual/metaphysical dimension (the thing with Sisko and the Big Book of Evil, which I suspect was the long-lost eighth Harry Potter novel). Once Siroc comes into play, "Hidden Frontier" becomes a war epic to the exclusion of all other storylines, and there is no additional dimension to that conflict.

Moreover, it's not a war between two collective identities or ideologies - in DS9, you had certain characters who represented the factions, like Weyoun and Dukat, but the Briar Patch Wars are fought against Siroc and his cohorts on an individual level, with the Tholians and the Breen minimalized to the point of eventually becoming irrelevant altogether. And... well, that's more along the lines of "Star Wars", isn't it? With the Empire of Evil British White Guys just being an extension of the Alpha Villain? Think of that last celebratory scene in "Return of the Jedi" - the Emperor's death is equated with the death of the Empire as a whole. Hell, even the Expanded Universe could never shake this need to associate the entire Empire with a single figurehead, whether it was Grand Admiral Thrawn or Daala or Darth Krayt. And that's Siroc's function here: everything revolves around his actions and agendas.

But Siroc only rose to prominence in the fourth season; what about before that? Well, the main antagonists for the first three seasons of "Hidden Frontier" were the Grey Confederacy, an ill-defined race that seemed to combine the strong points of the Federation's two greatest opponents in the 24th century - like the Dominion, the Grey were a consortium of races all dominated by the psychic Ethereals; like the Borg, the Grey take over the minds of their victims and their ships can regenerate over time.

Unfortunately, the Grey failed because where Siroc was a highly specific and individualized enemy, the Grey are too anonymous, too vague. They have no voice, no personality, no real communication with their enemies - even the Borg had their infamous catchphrases ("You will be assimilated, resistance is futile"). In seven seasons we learn nothing of value regarding the Grey themselves: their member races, their philosophies, their motivations. They just turn up as a plot-required wild card whenever needed.

Moving on to another issue: time. I mentioned during the sixth season review that the series develops a timeline problem by equating each previous season with a year of story-time, so that the Federation had been fighting the Grey for three years before Siroc showed up, and that conflict lasted another four years.

Carlos Pedraza makes an interesting point about the perception of time in this particular fan-series: the episodes were produced at intervals of roughly two months, which meant that in real time the series had lasted for seven years. The assumption (which becomes explicit in the last two seasons) is that viewers who were watching the series as it was being produced would equate real time and narrative time.

But I disagree with that assumption, simply because "Hidden Frontier" is a visual narrative - and like all visual narratives, time only passes if we see it pass. It's certainly legitimate to pull an occasional time jump, with or without a "Two/Five/Ten Years Later" tag; however, I strongly doubt real time has any influence there. For example, the "Lord of the Rings" films were released annually, but in story time only a few days pass between installments (at most). If we go a little closer to the subject matter, the various Trek series made roughly the same equation - Picard had been captain of the Enterprise for seven years by the end of "The Next Generation" - but twenty-odd episodes are a much longer (and much more credible) span to depict a year's worth of stories than six, or even nine.

Of course, the bigger problem is that if you add a two-month gap after every single episode, it kills a lot of story momentum: McCabe's grief in "The Widening Gyre" doesn't make much sense if you're meant to think it's been over a year since "Vigil", Aster's one-two punch with Hanar and Zen in season 4 falters, and so on. It doesn't help that there was no explicit indication of time passing on that kind of scale until the fifth season - and even then, it was just Aster and Zen celebrating their one-year anniversary, and enough time had passed in-series since "Crossroads" to sort-of-justify the jump.

Winding down, let's talk about what "Hidden Frontier" did well: conceptually speaking, I loved (and still love) the idea of exploring a fixed location in space (the Briar Patch), with both a static setting (DS12) and several ships in rotation (Shelby's Excelsior, Cole's Independence, etc.) There's a clear and visible improvement from the fifth season onward in terms of story arc construction, acting and visual effects. I should also note that "Hidden Frontier" is exceptionally fair to its female characters, with women like Cole, Elbrey, Nechayev, Lefler and Shelby holding their own against (and in some cases, outshining) their male counterparts. And we can't ignore the fact that this series ran for seven years - warts and all, that's an impressive achievement that speaks to genuine dedication and consistent hard work.

What "Hidden Frontier" didn't do so well: characterization. Looking back, I can point to several characters and say they're my favorites - McCabe, Bobby Rice's Ro, Rebecca Wood's McFarland, etc. - but I can't say that any of them were explored in any depth. Some characters didn't seem to have a personal life (Shelby has an in-story excuse for that in the fifth season, but nothing happens after that), others were locked in a monotonous cycle (the Aster-Dao merry-go-round of "I love you/No you don't"). And Ian Knapp will forever baffle me.

As I said, the Grey just didn't work out in the long run - they go from being the primary innovation of the fan-series (at least at first) to sixth-stringers in just three seasons. Things get much better when Siroc is integrated into the story, but there would've been no way to plausibly retcon the Grey at that point so they just sort of hang around.

I gather the green-screen technique will have its detractors and defenders: personally, I didn't mind it, as that's precisely the sort of thing I'm inclined to overlook when dealing with fan-productions (again, it's all about standards and expectations being adjusted for the medium and the mode).

And finally, what I would've liked to see: according to John Whiting (who played Henglaar), the writers of "Hidden Frontier" deliberately avoided three concepts throughout their run: time travel, the Borg (with the exception of "In Memory Of", which really wasn't that bad) and the Mirror Universe. The reasoning behind that decision was that these concepts had already been done to death on the various Trek series. And I'll concede the first two - TNG gives us more than enough time travel stories, and nothing more needed to be said about the Borg after "First Contact" - but...

Obviously, as a fan of the Mirror Universe, I'm going to wish "Hidden Frontier" had gone there. But it's more than just an appreciation of the setting: the appeal of the Mirror Universe is that it lets actors put different spins on their characters. Someone like Rebecca Wood pulls this off easily enough - Betras, McFarland and Vindenpawl are very distinct and separate characters - but it might've been interesting to see Bobby Rice attempt a Mirror Ro in the mold of Intendant Kira, or see Risha Denney portray a broken and hopeless Shelby (alternatively, a gun-crazy sociopathic Shelby). Knapp would probably still be a douche, but some things never change. The point is, yes, the Mirror Universe degenerated into farce by the end of DS9, but it still offered a bit of leeway and range for the actors, allowing their characters to do things that wouldn't be possible in a standard episode.

Final thoughts: overall, I have to admit that "Hidden Frontier" ended up being more an academic project than genuine entertainment for me. I can say it was an interesting experience, but fun? Not so much. And that's not because I held it up to the standards of network television - on the contrary, I tried to avoid making any kind of unfair comparison, not only because different fan-production groups have different resources, but also because "Hidden Frontier" is much older than, say, "Phase II", and it's not impossible to see Cawley's efforts as being informed, at least to a degree, by the successes and failures of its thematic predecessor. All that said, I hesitate to recommend "Hidden Frontier" for anyone just looking for an enjoyable fan film, as I imagine the flaws will be difficult to overlook if you're not interested in doing a bit of digging.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6f

At last we've come to the final season of "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier". It's been a long road, with plenty of ups and downs. Today we'll do an episode-by-episode review of Season 7, and next time I'll take a macro-level overview of the series in terms of what it has (and hasn't) accomplished.

* "Heavy Losses" picks up right where we left off, in the middle of the Battle of Tren'La. Knapp is, of course, behaving like a child, sulking at Elbrey because she had him removed from command. Meanwhile, it turns out those giant constructs in the middle of the Tholian fleet are orbital platforms, and all this time I'd thought they were Tetrahedrons. Hmm.

The villains have a chat about vague bargains they've made with Siroc, and I really wish this had been developed further: given what his ultimate goal turns out to be, and Betras' actions in the finale, I'd love to know why any of them were helping him in the first place. I'm also a bit disappointed that the Cardassians are shown to regress to Dominion-era behavior, as I'd thought "Grave Matters" had done a fine job of moving them beyond that.

Dao gets reassigned to Naros' ship, the Helena, effectively splitting him and Aster up. The next few episodes are pretty much a textbook deconstruction of a relationship, very predictable and thorough, but I still can't help feeling that it's incredibly forced and that the alternative we're heading towards hasn't been established.

"Heavy Losses" ends with a new status quo, effectively setting the stage for the last act of the story. It's worth noting that the closer we get to the end, the bolder the risks "Hidden Frontier" will take; while we've had a few character deaths and departures so far, it pales in comparison to the next eight episodes. And I'm quite pleased about this: in mainstream television, characters will be killed off because their actors want to leave, or want more money, or get arrested for drunk driving, but "Hidden Frontier" had been more resistant to this, with very few characters actually being killed off as opposed to recast. And that makes sense: if you don't have a network imposing its authority on you, and - barring real-life constraints - your actors want to be there, you could conceivably become protective of your characters to the point where they're beyond real harm. It's a very easy trap to fall into, but Caves and company dodge the bullet quite well, as we'll soon see.

* "Bound" has Knapp resigning and heading off in search of Traya. I hoped that meant he'd stay away for a while... no such luck. We also have an amusing subplot with Lefler not quite adapting to her new position, and I liked that twist simply because it's completely in character: she's not command material, she doesn't have Shelby's ambition, and she only accepted the job because Shelby couldn't find anyone else.

But the most interesting storyline here is Ro's, as Matt pushes him to hook up with Nej'ta (the Klingon captain from last season's finale). The results are... pretty hilarious. I mean, it's a milestone for Ro because he's finally with a guy (even if it's not the guy he wants), but the whole Klingon-mating-through-S&M is so overwrought it skirts dangerously near parody (ie: turns out Klingons have ridges in other places too).

Here's the thing, though. Nej'ta? Is Karen Filipelli from "The Office". Perfectly likeable, but nothing more than a placeholder, a delaying tactic to make sure the real love story (Jim and Pam, or - in the case of "Hidden Frontier" - Ro and Aster) goes as far as it possibly can. And a Ro/Aster pairing has been so heavily telegraphed that you can't see Nej'ta as anything other than an obstacle.

* "Past Sins" sees the surprising return of Jenna McFarland, last seen in the third season. She's now played by Rebecca Wood, her third role on the series (she also plays Betras and Vindenpawl), and I thought she did a great job of separating the three, putting much more of a Starbuck-esque "crazy pilot" spin on Jenna.

The Doomsday Clock is still ticking for Aster and Dao, as Jorian reunites with Cassius Dao's former lover. Unfortunately, this leads into an uninspired Trill storyline that's basically a retread of "Security Counsel", yet another corrupt and hypocritical politician abusing his power, etc. That said, it leads to a great reveal where Siroc turns out to be much more flexible than most serial archvillains.

Elbrey and Henglaar have a subplot with Henglaar's niece Silan, and right about here is where Elbrey's sarcastic streak really takes off. It's pretty refreshing to have such a bitchy counselor, especially after Deanna Troi, but I do wonder about her success rate with patients - if Silan is any indication, probably not great.

* "Hearts and Minds" is another milestone, telling the last story of the USS Independence. I've always enjoyed the momentary asides to Jennifer Cole and her crew, and this final tale is appropriately tragic given that it's the last episode before the series finale gets underway. I loved the unnerving sequence with the collapsing bulkheads, and the glimpse of civilian resentment towards Starfleet raised some interesting questions about the supposed unity of mankind in the 24th century.

I'm less enthusiastic about Lorenzo Leonard replacing Brandon Stacy as Surgant - Leonard gives it a good try, but can't come close to Stacy's previous performance. It's a bit odd: "Hidden Frontier" tends to do very well when it replaces protagonist characters (ie: Ro, Lefler, Traya), but falters when it comes to recasting antagonists (I still think Suzy Kaplan's touch of flamboyance added a lot of color to the character of Vorina, and it didn't survive the switch in actresses).

The Aster/Dao storyline is just becoming repetitive at this point, and neither party is shown in a positive light: Corey's grasping at straws (seriously, what does he want already?), Jorian's being an asshole for no reason and is probably lying about wanting to play Hide The Symbiont with Mor. I see this sort of thing in romance storylines, where the writer wants a certain couple to reach a specific emotional state, but can't quite seem to get them there without someone overreacting in less-than-credible ways.

* As the name implies, "The Widening Gyre" is basically the beginning of the end, as "Hidden Frontier" wraps up with a four-part finale. Naros and the Helena go after Dr. Mor, Silan joins Traya in captivity, and Shelby's starting to crack under the strain of maintaining the Alpha Quadrant alliance.

Character-wise, McCabe has a new look - not so much the fresh-faced newbie anymore - and I love that he's still dealing with the fallout from "Vigil". Ro's looking a bit worse for the wear, which still amuses me (you have to wonder what constitutes Klingon spouse abuse). Anyway, this is the first episode with a significant Ro/Aster scene since... well, since Tara Abis was around. It's a scene that almost works thanks to Ro's newly-acquired self-awareness: it's a great reversal of "Ashes", where Corey was the one who knew exactly what was going on. But it doesn't work here because Ro basically talks himself out of his own offer - this could have been the starting point of an actual relationship, but good guys don't cheat, so nothing happens.

"Things Fall Apart" keeps the momentum going, finally taking us back to the Grey Research Facility and what they've been up to all this time. There's an odd comedy sequence where Ro, Aster, McCabe and Lefler run interference for a recuperating Shelby; this doesn't strike me as the most ideal time to try and get a laugh out of the viewers, but better late than never, I suppose. This episode also pulls off what may be the best cliffhanger in the series' entire run: there's an abduction, a bombing, a death, and a comeback for a presumed-dead character (although any real surprise is negated by the fact that S'Tal has basically been telegraphing the twist since last season).

"The Center Cannot Hold" starts by driving the final nail into the Aster/Dao coffin, so to speak. And I know I've stressed the point ad nauseum by now, but this latest development feels so transparent and manipulative, especially in light of Aster's decision in "The Widening Gyre" (in retrospect, he probably should've gone for broke). But Corey does manage to sum up the entire problem towards the end of the episode with a single line: "You are not the man I fell in love with."

Elsewhere, Princess Iliana fulfills her plot function as the Grey finally stage their comeback. In the long run, the Grey haven't quite worked as ongoing nemeses for our heroes, both because they're totally inconsistent in their motives and actions and because we never get to see any individual characters within that faction.

I should note that the pacing seems a bit off here, as characters find time for extended heart-to-heart chats while an apocalyptic battle rages around DS12. But that's a symptom of a larger issue we'll talk about next time.

And so we come to "Its Hour Come Round At Last", the series finale. For better or worse, seven years and fifty episodes come to an end here.

Sadly, we're still dealing with pacing problems, as Shelby and Nechayev have to deal with a new threat that quite literally comes out of nowhere, shifting our attention away from the Dyson Sphere showdown (which had been building up for a few seasons now). The villain alliance falls apart much too quickly, and when Siroc's motivation is finally revealed, it turns out to be pretty compelling - which would've been great, if it wasn't part of a last-minute reveal so condensed that I still don't understand what happens in the end.

On the up-side, there's a lot of closure here: for Jorian and Corey, for Myra, for Aris, for Ro and Nej'ta (that silent scream during the montage was actually rather moving). Of course, we're left with a few loose threads: was the Cardassians' treachery discovered? Why were the Tholians and Breen still involved after Siroc discarded them? Why wasn't Ba'ku destroyed by the giant wave of fire that spread throughout the Patch? Did Nechayev survive the final battle? (She's noticably absent at the end.)

The penultimate scene of the series is a Six Months Later epilogue with Ro and Aster getting married. And... look, I'm not necessarily saying Dao and Aster should've stayed together, because if the point of the Trill storyline was that you can't maintain a relationship with someone after his whole personality changes, that's perfectly valid. But Ro and Aster never had a relationship. Never even started one. The scene is played as a culmination of an ongoing storyline (Shelby's speech practically spells it out), but that's exactly the problem: we haven't seen any of this. Hell, even the wedding scene is laden with religious mumbo-jumbo as opposed to wedding vows (because at least then the characters could verbalize some kind of sentiment). As with Siroc, it just seems like a massive missed opportunity, telling rather than showing, summarizing events and emotions that should've played out on screen.

And then we get a coda with Shelby, Lefler and the Excelsior - there's a sense of palpable relief now that the war's over, and Starfleet can return to its roots (exploration, diplomatic relations, etc.) It's good that Caves and his team remembered that, because it's what separates "Star Trek" from its contemporaries: war was never the norm for Roddenberry's universe, and even if you needed the occasional Borg or Dominion or Grey threat to rear its head, that idea of exploration, of discovering cosmic anomalies and new species and whatnot, never completely faded away.

So that's how the story ends.

Sort of.

Turns out "Hidden Frontier" has produced no less than three spin-offs, and we'll be looking at those as well: what does it mean to extent a fan-fictional universe beyond its core narrative? What kinds of stories emerge from that? Do the series define themselves via the parent series, or is the "canon" Trekverse still the standard? Which characters make the transition to which spin-off, and why? All things I'm interested in examining.

How does the seventh season rate, then? On a purely technical level, there's no question that we've come a long, long way: actors are much more comfortable in their roles, the CGI's been refined, and if the storylines don't totally satisfy, they're at least exhibiting basic structure and coherence (which is more than we got with earlier efforts). I'll go into greater detail next time, but for now, suffice to say that "Hidden Frontier" goes out with a bang (more than one, in fact).

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6e

(Minor administrative note: I've reconfigured the numbering for "Hidden Frontier" reviews. Seriously, it was getting out of hand, miles to go, yadda yadda...)

So we've finally reached the long-awaited sixth season of "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier". Does it redeem the mistakes of the past? Does it hit your brain like a particularly pleasant splash of acid, burning away the horror of "Santa Q"?

Yes. Yes, it does. To an extent. It would be more accurate to say that season 6 changes the type of criticism it invites, but before we get to that, let's take it episode by episode:

* "Countermeasures" is the Big Action Episode, as the Tholian/Breen alliance launches an all-out attack against the Federation. We've got ships exploding left and right, Commodore Cole delivering an Aragorn Speech that actually kind of works... and there's a last-minute surprise that really works.

Traya Knapp's been hit by the SORAS bug and is now Harvard-bound; I actually like her better at this age, as it lets her have her own storyline away from her father. In related cast news, Bobby Rice replaces Arthur Bosserman as Ro Nevin, and... let's just say it's a big step up and leave it at that.

One other noteworthy thing about this episode: the scene with Iliana suggests it's been three years since "Worst Fears", but that timeline just doesn't add up without mid-season time jumps every single season (because the finales and subsequent premieres are always two-parters). That's a lot of time to compress into half a dozen episodes, and we'll see the reprecussions of that towards the end of the season.

* "Dancing in the Dark": Oh, hey, Martinez! Long time no see. But the big revelation in this episode is Brandon Stacy as Betazoid interpreter Milo Surgant, who has this delightfully creepy way of alternating speech patterns between himself and his Horta partner. Brr. Meanwhile, we get a new tidbit of information regarding the Tetrahedrons: they're somehow connected to Omega, an ill-defined molecule that can somehow stop warp travel in the entire galaxy, forever. Not quite sure where the hell that came from, but... okay, I'll go with it for now.

* "Homeport" sets quite a few things in motion. First, the villains are starting to pull together, as Glinn Betras (from S4's "Grave Matters") joins Vorina (now played by Julie Anne Gardner, though I find she lacks the flourish Suzy Kaplan brought to the role) and Surgant (on a slightly shallow note, Brandon Stacy looks damn good in black; practically a dead ringer for the world's hottest serial killer).

I do have a slight problem here, though: it's never made clear why these individuals are working with Siroc. What exactly is Betras after? What's Surgant's motivation?(We can assume Vorina's getting paid.) The Tholians have no screen presence to speak of, so they're hardly important, but if we're getting to know Siroc's inner circle on a personal level, it would've been nice to understand their stake in this whole matter.

Meanwhile, there's a nice bit with S'Tal and Barrett exploring humor, though I still think S'Tal's depiction is a touch on the extreme side - she's basically being written as a flesh-and-blood Data, which makes her romantic subplot rather awkward.

We're also introduced to Tara Abis, a new love interest for Ro; this seems to put a quiet end to the Ro/Aster/Dao triangle (which never really seemed to go anywhere, as I can only recall a single episode where Jorian and Nevin were in the same room), but as we'll see later, the situation's not quite that simple.

Speaking of Dao, this is really the first time we see Jorian with his new gestalt personality, and I'm pleased to say that Adam Browne pulls it off, giving Jorian a quiet but solid well of confidence that most certainly wasn't there before. Nicely done!

* On to "Beachhead", and how's this for continuity: Aris and the trapped Ethereals, last seen in "Worst Fears", make a comeback. We also return to Vrijheid ("Security Counsel"), still under the control of the subtly menacing Vindenpawl. Knapp is promoted to Admiral (oy) and the Federation manages to sign up virtually every Alpha Quadrant power to take on Siroc, the Tholians and their Tetrahedron (no mention of the Breen anymore; are we to assume they backed out?).

There's also an odd twist with Aster and Dao, where Corey basically flies off the handle for reasons that don't make a lot of internal sense (though, from a plot-centric perspective, it's certainly obvious where they're going with that). More on that later.

* If "Beachhead" deals with internal continuity for the "Hidden Frontier" series, "Vigil takes intertextuality a step further: James Cawley (who plays Captain Kirk in "Phase II") guest-stars as Mackenzie Calhoun, Shelby's ex-boyfriend and the protagonist of Peter David's "New Frontier" novels. On top of that, this episode is a quasi-sequel to my second-favorite DS9 episode, "In The Pale Moonlight" ("Duet" being at the top of the list), as a Romulan commander exposes the Federation deception that led the Romulans to participate in the Dominion War. Unfortunately, that plotline gets aborted halfway through to deal with a more generic scenario (tension between former enemies dissolving in the face of teamwork).

Tension's also starting to mount between Ro, Tara and Aster. Let's start with the good: I loved how Tara's insight is so subtle, in that she thinks Ro doesn't like to talk and it turns out he just hasn't been talking to her.

Of course, the most noteworthy scene is the Big Reveal where Ro finally admits everything: that he lied about remembering Corey from the Academy (a nice callback to "Encke"), that he's been in denial all this time, and, of course, that he's in love with Corey. Now, granted that there's a bit of a fake-out here (which I loved), but... okay, it's pretty clear by now that the writers have done an about-face and they're set on Ro and Aster getting together. And I could see that working, except for two things: first, it's way too soon, Tara had only just started out and there hasn't been enough... hell, there hasn't been any groundwork laid to really sell this development.

The second issue is simply that the writers sold me on Aster and Zen back in the fourth season: they were cute together, the actors have chemistry, and there haven't been any significant Ro/Aster scenes in the interrim. To get Ro and Aster together, Dao's got to go, which explains the sudden and exaggerated bickering. It's all more than a little forced.

Oddly enough, there's no follow-through on last episode's cliffhanger. Hmm.

* And finally, we have "Her Battle Lanterns Lit" in which the Klingons make their long-overdue debut (excluding Qu'Qul from "Entanglement"), McCabe deals with his grief by visiting Sensei Kickass again (always a pleasure!), and the Alpha Quadrant powers move against Siroc.

Lest you think that Knapp's ascension to the top of Starfleet's food chain has in any way changed him for the better... no, he's still a douche. Uprooting Shelby just because he's comfortable on the Excelsior? Check. Folding in the middle of combat because of a personal threat? Check. I'd love to know whether he's supposed to come off as a complete idiot, or... no, I can't think of an alternative to that. It must be intentional.

The season ends on the best cliffhanger so far, which says a lot about how far the series has come over the years. Now, remember when I said the sixth season changes the type of criticism it invites? Here's the thing: in earlier seasons, the sentiment I found myself repeating over and over was that I could just about see what Caves and his team were aiming for on the conceptual level, and in those terms their ideas were sound and interesting. But the execution of those ideas was awkward at best, downright awful at worst, resulting in a consistent sense of missed opportunities.

That's not the case here. Or rather, I do feel opportunities were missed, but in a more general "spilled milk" sort of way. For example, Surgant's betrayal would've had a lot more bite to it if he'd been around in the fifth season; the problems between Aster and Dao should have started much earlier so that Ro's sudden change of heart wouldn't seem so convenient, etc. It's not the execution that's flawed here, it's the timing. And that's a different matter, because if you took the events of this season, intact, and simply rearranged the sequence of events so there'd be enough build-up over an extended period of time, those same events would've been much more dramatically satisfying.

So there's definite, tangible improvement here, all across the board. It's not an ideal jumping-on point by any means, and I don't rightly know if it's enough to keep less-patient viewers going through the earlier seasons... but for me, personally, this series just got a lot more interesting.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6d

To use the Savage Critics' scale, if the first four seasons of "Hidden Frontier" represent a slow rise from AWFUL to OKAY, the second half of this season finally edges into genuinely GOOD territory. For the first time, the series makes proper use of its core concepts and character arcs; it's still far from ideal, because there's more mileage that could've been wrung out of every storyline, but at least the basic execution holds together. Carlos Pedraza, one of the series' staff writers during the fifth season, pointed out to me that this was the point in which the HF story arcs stopped being ad hoc, replaced with a long(er)-term plan, and I think that much is readily apparent.

* The season starts with "Entanglement Part II", and it actually feels more like part of the fourth season because the improvements haven't quite kicked in yet: it turns out the Grey are using mind-control parasites on their subjugated population (aren't they supposed to be telepathic?), Iliana pops up to remind everyone that the Tren'La storyline from the second season was never resolved, and everyone's still worked up about Tetrahedrons. But the episode does have some high points, mostly to do with Qu'Qul and Henglaar squabbling over Sou.

* "Imminent Danger" reintroduces S'Tal, last seen in S4 episode "Addictions" (though, wow, she looks a lot better without the Eyebrows of Doom). It's basically a character piece for Andrew Barrett, who undergoes the traditional Heroic Blue Screen of Death after killing a Tholian during an ambush. It's done competently enough, though I thought depicting S'Tal as being unable to understand basic concepts like friendship and psychological trauma was a bit much. Meanwhile, the Tholians have appointed Siroc as their ambassador to the Federation, and I'm definitely starting to warm up to him as the primary villain, despite the obscurity of his plans and agendas.

* "Darkest Night" is... well, it's a bit odd given that it follows "Imminent Danger", because there's another planet-side ambush, another Tetrahedron-related mystery, and Barrett once again gets slapped upside the head by the Bad Luck Fairy. The episode holds itself together in a very basic and adequate fashion, but it had so much more to offer on the level of character dynamics: there's a build-up to a Ro vs. Zen showdown that never actually happens, and Barrett... I would've loved to see him interpret his misfortune here as karmic payback for killing that Tholian last episode, but that doesn't happen either. All things considered, it feels like a missed opportunity.

* "Security Counsel" is an interesting post-9/11 allegory, where a corrupt president of a Federation world is using anti-terrorist measures to assume more and more control over the planet and its people; McCabe serves as the voice of reason, teaming up with a sympathetic civilian investigator to uncover the truth. This episode does for McCabe what "Grave Matters" could have done for Ro, fleshing out his character just enough to make him an effective focalizer for the audience. The metaphors for the Patriot Act and its ilk are a bit heavy-handed, but then, I assume that's the whole point - to take that whole discourse to its most extreme conclusion. And it works well, despite being a bit dated in the post-Bush discourse (which I imagine is the same problem all Bush-era fiction will face in the coming years).

* Continuing the theme of long-overdue characterization, "Epitaph" finally gives us a closer look at Elizabeth Shelby. For all that she's been the center of the post-Knapp series, this is the first time we've seen her outside her capacity as captain of the Excelsior. Now, ordinarily we'd assign the fault for that to the writers, but this episode puts a rather clever twist on things: Shelby, as it turns out, has been so focused on her career that she literally has no personal life, and that's become a point of regret for her. Coming so close to the end of the season, there isn't much room for this plotline to continue, but I hope it shows up again.

Back at DS12, Iliana's still moping about, but we finally get some answers about the Grey, the Tetrahedrons, the Patch and the Tholians. There's a bit of rewriting going on, if Naros is to be believed: apparently the Tren'La provoked the Grey in the first place. And yes, that changes the dynamics, but I'm not comfortable with the implication that the extermination of the Tren'La is karmic payback - it seems disproportionate, especially in the Trekverse where wholesale obliteration isn't exactly common.

* I've neglected to mention this before, but seasons four through seven of "Hidden Frontier" bring the episode count down to six (as opposed to nine). The pros: less filler, a greater sense of urgency, and momentum. The cons: well, season five finale "The Battle Is Joined" starts with Aster and Zen celebrating their one-year anniversary. Three episodes ago, Zen was still insecure and jealous of Ro, and that whole situation was very much unclear. It feels a bit like a cheat, fast-forwarding through all the actual relationship bits to get to the Drama... but that's the price we pay for having so many storylines and so many characters in the rotation.

Anyway, this finale makes some dramatic changes on both the personal and the galactic level: Zen's worst fear comes to pass, as he's asked to join with a Trill symbiont at the risk of destroying his relationship with Aster. That's a storyline I've been looking forward to ever since the possibility was raised back when Zen and Aster first got together; I'm quite curious to see how it turns out. Meanwhile, the Federation finds itself in the middle of a free-for-all, as the Tholians turn out to be at war with the Grey as well. I like this development despite still not seeing enough of either faction to care, one way or another, as to what they're up to.

Apparently there's a minor crossover here with fan series "Star Trek: Intrepid", as Naros chats with another El-Aurian from that production. It's a rather superfluous scene, though guest character Keran makes an interesting point: the El-Aurians (and Siroc) are, by virtue of their long life, "playing a longer game" - each one of them could potentially be setting up schemes that span decades, even centuries. It's not an easy thing to pull off in fiction, at least not convincingly, so I doubt this scene foreshadows some Grand Master Plan in the wings so much as a generic Ominously Vague Chat Between Two Folks In The Know.

And with that, we've caught up with the ideal entry point pegged by the series' creators: next time we'll look at Season 6 and see whether enough progress has been made to really make a difference.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6c

The fourth season of "Hidden Frontier" represents a step sideways rather than forward: we get some changes to the status quo, a few set pieces moving around, but in general the quality is equal to last season. Which means it's neither excruciatingly bad nor genuinely entertaining; an acceptable limbo in the short term, not so much for a span of thirty episodes.

Because of this, I don't have much to say about the fourth season, but some things merit attention:

* Last season's finale and this season's premiere constitute the "Hell's Gate" two-parter, in which we lose an old villain and gain a new one in Siroc, a man from Naros' past who's working with the Tholians against the Federation. Luko is sent off to command his own ship, replaced by Matt McCabe (formerly of Cole's crew). McFarland also seems to have disappeared, though she's still mentioned often.

Luko was a borderline character: far from fleshed out, but more sympathetic than earlier attempts in this series. We get a last-minute reminder that there was something going on between him and Lefler, but as has become par for the course, it doesn't go anywhere.

What this season does demonstrate successfully is a quality that sets "Hidden Frontier" apart from the canonical "Star Trek" on a thematic level: change occurs much more often in the former than the latter, and I'm referring to change both on the level of character and on the level of galactic events. In seven years of the Picard era, the core bridge crew changed exactly twice: Tasha Yar died in the first season, and Dr. Crusher was replaced for a while before coming back. The first Borg attack on Earth had no visible reprecussions (those turned up in the "First Contact" movie). The Klingon civil war that erupted in the fourth or fifth season (I forget) was about Worf, and ultimately led him right back to where he'd already been. Stability was very much part of the show's foundations at that time. "Deep Space 9" tried to change this with the Dominion War, and it worked (for a while), but on the other hand, the only main character to die throughout that series' run had a resurrection angle built into her backstory.

"Hidden Frontier" seems to openly oppose that notion of stasis and stability: people are always moving about, arriving and departing and dying, and the Federation can find itself fighting the Grey one moment and the Tholians the next (although this can be as much a weakness as a strength, as it leaves no room to develop the villains). Incidentally, this is one reason why I'm so fond of the established Mirror Universe, because it's also very dynamic and active, things can change and characters can die, and there's no obligation to stick to any particular status quo (one of the great tragedies of the Berman/Braga era was the eventual decay of the Mirror Universe into a repetitive farce; as a plot device, it worked wonders for characters like Kira, Quark and Sisko).

* We also have "Grave Matters" and "Crossroads", a pair of back-to-back episodes that complicate the Ro/Aster storyline, which I'm continuing to follow with some degree of interest.

We'd seen Starfleet dealing with post-Dominion Cardassia prior to "Grave Matters", but this is the first time we've had Cardassian characters interacting with our cast. When a science vessel uncovers a mass grave for Bajoran refugees, Starfleet and Cardassia launch a joint investigation, and Corey finds himself attracted to one of their junior officers (much to Ro's consternation).

Now, I know I'd decided not to criticize acting in these reviews, but... well, "Grave Matters" is the episode that should have made Ro Nevin. He's at the center of this story: still carrying the scars of the Occupation, still ashamed of his feelings for Aster, and quite possibly disgusted - racially - at the thought of Aster having sex with a Cardassian, which is the sort of thing "Star Trek" never did before with regards to race relations; what do you do if you're a Klingon and your quasi-love interest sleeps with a Romulan? What if you're a Bajoran and a person you're interested in falls for a Cardassian? After all, the aliens of "Star Trek" tend to carry personal baggage on species-wide levels (ie: all Klingons hate all Romulans, all Romulans hate all Vulcans, etc., though you always have a minority that opposes this).

But Arthur Bosserman, the actor who plays Ro, can't get any of this across. This was perhaps the pivotal Ro episode and it's botched because Bosserman doesn't emote, doesn't put out any kind of feeling beyond detached apathy and juvenile anger that doesn't even scratch the surface of what should be going on.

"Crossroads" complicates the romantic subplot by throwing Ensign Zen into the mix, an unjoined Trill who's fallen for Corey but doesn't want to get involved; if he's chosen to bond with a symbiont, he might not be the same person afterwards. As with "Grave Matters", "Crossroads" takes general facts already established in the Trekverse and asks very practical questions about them: we don't know what Jadzia or Ezri were like before Dax, so maybe Zen's concern is legitimate - could you have a relationship in which one person undergoes a transformation so profound and so permanent that they essentially become someone else? It's a metaphor for the way people change over time, except that for Trills the change is instant and the ramifications are immediate. At any rate, Corey's decision isn't a surprise, though I do think it's the more interesting of the two possibilities.

Meanwhile, the Federation has another encounter with the Tholians, and Starfleet is defeated. Again. For all that it's a welcome change to the perceived invincibility of the Federation in earlier series, I have to admit the losing streak in "Hidden Frontier" is starting to get a bit out of hand. By constantly being in the dark and on the defensive, they - and by extension, the viewer - still have no idea what Siroc wants with the Tetrahedrons (which were introduced two seasons ago and yet remain completely obscure).

* The season finale, part 1 of "Entanglement", follows the same broad lines as "Hell's Gate": Vorina and the rest of the Orion pirates return, now working for Siroc; it's still All About The Tetrahedrons, for reasons that are still unclear. There's also a subplot in which Henglaar's ex-wife visits with her new Klingon beau, and it's almost - almost - fun. Points for avoiding the stereotype of the shrewish ex: Sou (bad name for a pig-based humanoid) is likeable enough, and all she really wants is for the two men in her life to get along.

That's about all I have to say at this point; the fourth season doesn't really distinguish itself beyond the Ro/Aster/Zen storyline, which is still being handled a touch too clumsily for my tastes.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6b

Onto season three of "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier", and I'm glad to say the upward mobility continues - at a snail's pace, but it's something.

* We start with the two concluding chapters of "Worst Fears", in which the Grey finally attack DS12 using the old bait-and-switch tactic. I didn't mention the cliffhanger ending to the previous season because all three parts of "Worst Fears" are oddly abbreviated, only about 10-15 minutes per episode. This likely contributed to how abruptly the whole situation is resolved; it also kills any drama that could have emerged from the body count, as a first-season character dies off-screen while another introduced last season is written off in a manner that seems permanent. Unfortunately, we're not only lacking any reason to care about these characters in the first place, but there's no time to see anyone else react except for a rather awkward one-line eulogy in the next episode: "That boy never knew when to quit." Ouch.

* "Heroes" marks the first time I was drawn into a character's subplot, as Sha'Kev returns to torment Robin after their last encounter in "The Great Starship Robbery". Now, this doesn't actually go anywhere until the season finale, but the episode still manages to create a sense of empathy for a character who, until now, had been a sometimes-irritating cipher.

It's also worth noting that "Heroes" is the first episode to really take advantage of the multiple settings available in this series, as the A-plot features Commodore Cole and the USS Independence taking on Tzenkethi pirates. It's a nice change, but Caves and company haven't quite mastered the art of character introduction - we get new faces like Commander Johns and Lieutenant McCabe, but they're as much ciphers as anyone else in this series and we're given no reason to like them any more than we do the crew of the Excelsior. The one person who does stand out is Jennifer Cole, if only because her composed and unshakeable command style is a marked contrast to Knapp's hysterics.

Speaking of the Galactic Prat, we also have a (mercifully) short C-plot with Knapp and Traya stuck on a shuttlecraft and and finally communicating properly; I understand that they're trying to soften him up through his daughter, but after over a dozen episodes with Knapp in the spotlight, the damages has been done. The good news is that this is the last episode with Knapp in the foreground, but we'll get to that later.

* "In Memory Of" brings Corey Aster back for a flashback episode in which he, Jason Munoz and Jenna McFarland went up against the Borg and the Q. It's actually a decent enough story, marred only by Munoz figuring everything out moments after getting involved - though, if we're inclined to be lenient, we can handwave this as the result of pacing versus "air" time; most "Hidden Frontier" episodes run for 25-30 minutes, whereas the average "Next Generation" episode would go for at least 40, and could therefore afford to spend five or ten minutes investigating the Mystery of the Week before providing a solution.

It's interesting that this episode tries to restore the Borg's credibility as a viable threat - they really were terrifying during the Picard era, especially in "First Contact", but it's my understanding that "Voyager" pretty much castrated them by the end of its run. "In Memory Of" begins with present-day Aster dreaming of Farpoint Station being destroyed by the Borg; moments later that event is reported on the Federation news network. Being a Wolf 359 survivor, Corey is bitter that Starfleet had become complacent about the Borg, especially since the Borg have now adapted to whatever technological advantage the Federation had previously held. It's a valid point and a great way to reestablish the Borg as a major threat... except that "Hidden Frontier" already has a technologically-superior antagonist in the Grey. I can't see the Borg serving any long-term story-related purpose, which begs the question: what are they doing here, then?

* "Modus Operandi" introduces some interesting character dynamics. First we have Commander Tolian Naros, a mysterious El-Aurian who seems to have his own agenda; Shelby, of course, starts digging. Naros may or may not be the character who crossed over to Sulu's timeline in "Yesterday's Excelsior" last season: it was the same actor, but there's no evidence to suggest a connection so far. We also get to see a more sympathetic side to Nechayev, and Lefler's friendship with Shelby (apparently established in Peter David's "New Frontier" novels) gets some screen time as well.

Rawlins is the latest off-screen departure, sent off with his half-Son'a girlfriend to start a family. Again, I appreciate what Caves is doing here in terms of keeping things fluid (though I do wonder how many of these changes were intentional rather than imposed due to real-life considerations), but Rawlins was an incredibly minor character - the only real contribution he made in two seasons was his indifferent reaction to the Ro/Aster thing.

We're also starting to see the beginning of a bigger picture, so to speak: Matt McCabe is still investigating the artifacts retrieved from the Orion Syndicate in "Heroes", and he believes they're connected to the hyperdimensional Tetrahedrons from "Encke". The episodes are too far apart to be considered a running subplot, but it's better than nothing.

* But "nothing" would have been far better than "Santa Q". Oh God, it's bad. It's so, so bad. Knapp and Elbrey explain the Meaning of Christmas to Traya while admitting that, being the 24th century and all, nobody actually celebrates religious holidays anymore (we are, after all, dealing with Roddenberry's Homogenous Humanity). And then Q turns up to talk theology for a bit. NEXT!

* "Ashes takes the Ro/Aster storyline a step forward: seems Ro is attracted to Corey, he's just too uncomfortable with that idea to admit it to anyone. Corey, of course, sees right through him and pushes forward anyway. Being the First Gay Storyline in "Star Trek" (regardless of its non-canonical status), these developments are certainly noteworthy, though I still find I much prefer the "Phase II" approach of treating the Issue as a Non-Issue; it certainly smoothes out awkward moments like the cliche-tastic speech Corey delivers on how he and Ro should understand themselves rather than listen to other people. That said, I liked the reversal at the end, and matters between them are left very much unresolved, so we'll see where that goes.

But by putting Ro in the spotlight, "Ashes" inadvertently calls attention to the fact that, in terms of his backstory, he's the most problematic character in the entire series. Generally speaking, the cast of "Hidden Frontier" divides into two categories: imports drawn from pre-established series (ie: Shelby, Ibanya, Nechayev) and original characters (ie: Knapp, Elbrey, McFarland). We do have some minor continuity implants, such as Luko being a former member of the Voyager crew (though nothing is done with that potentially interesting set-up), but Ro Nevin is a problem: he's Ro Laren's little brother, except that Laren's entire character arc was about how alone she was. So does she think he's dead, despite being in Starfleet? Does he think she's dead? We literally don't know anything about him, and that wouldn't be a problem (because how much do we know about Elbrey or Henglaar or any non-established characters?) except Ro Laren was one of TNG's most compelling characters, and - as with the "remixes" of last season - comparison becomes inevitable.

* "Voyage of the Defiant" is... well, it's filler. It's a sequel to "The Tholian Web", and the original Defiant is recovered, and to be fair it makes more sense here than it does in that "Enterprise" Mirror Universe two-parter. But other than making Starfleet look completely incompetent by having them fall for the exact same tactic the Grey used in the season premiere, I'm not sure what this episode is meant to accomplish. On the surface, it establishes the Tholians as yet another hostile power for Starfleet to contend with in the Briar Patch, but given the sparse screen time given to the threats we've already seen, I'm far from convinced we needed another. And we get Luko in command of a Kirk-era ship, but he's obviously not going to keep the Defiant. And the Defiant's story is glossed over, so it's not actually about the Defiant either.

* As with last season, we end this one on a cliffhanger, but I'll save that for next time.

Overall, the third season of "Hidden Frontier" makes some changes that result in a better series: Knapp's promotion (rank) and demotion (screen time) is indicative of a larger, more gradual process where most of the characters from the first two seasons are being quietly shunted off in favor of newer faces: Henglaar and Elbrey are minimized, Martinez and Rawlins are swapped out for Luko and Aster, Shelby replaces Knapp while Naros occupies her former position and role in the crew dynamic. It's a stronger cast, not necessarily because they're being characterized any better than their predecessors, but because there's a difference between being a cipher and being an unbearably annoying cipher (*cough*knapp*cough*). "Voyage of the Defiant" aside, there's also a very clear and visible effort here to recreate the feel of Trek stories without remixing specific episodes (which was last season's primary weakness).

To be honest, while this series is improving, it's not happening quickly enough for my tastes: steps have been taken to make things better, and I certainly appreciate that, but... well, they're baby steps. At this point, I'm following "Hidden Frontier" more out of my commitment to review the project in full than out of any sense of fun I'm deriving from it. I wouldn't blame any other viewer for jumping ship at this point, with the caveat that we haven't jumped the shark just yet - theoretically, at this specific point in the series, it's still possible for "Hidden Frontier" to get so much better that its past mistakes can be overlooked. The potential is there; will next season finally seize it? Stay tuned!

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6a

Well, the good news is that the second season of "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier" is a marginal improvement over the first. The bad news? It's largely because some of the episodes remix "The Next Generation" and "Deep Space 9". For example, "Yesterday's Excelsior" is basically TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" only with Borg instead of Klingons; "Old Wound" is a take on DS9's "Rules of Engagement" where Worf is court-martialed for allegedly destroying a civilian transport, etc. It's an unfortunate creative decision, because I think the one thing fan films should avoid at all cost is inviting direct comparison to the source material; it's possible to let a lot of things slide when it comes to fan-created projects, but I'll never choose David Dial over Patrick Stewart, you know?

The cast has been juggled around a bit: after being promoted to Second Officer at the end of last season, Wesley's nowhere to be found; Rayvan the Iconian is also killed off-screen as an afterthought (pretty much a tacit acknowledgement that he was superfluous anyway), and we lose Toby Witzcak (sp?) midway through. Artim Ibanya, apparently a canon character from one of the later TNG films (the last one I saw was "First Contact"), is introduced as a new Ensign (Knapp is, of course, kind of a dick to him), and we also have a new Tactical Officer in Lieutenant Luko. Admiral Nechayev, another TNG import, assumes command of DS12.

And I've made this point before, but it bears repeating: a rotating, dynamic cast is a good thing. There's a lot of potential drama in the idea of characters disappearing into the night or suffering a quick and sudden death, leaving others to cope with the fallout. This was something "Exiles" did quite well during the Winick days: losing Thunderbird the first time was hard, and Blink's absence was felt every time Magik opened her mouth to cause trouble.

But for this tactic to work, you have to forge some kind of connection with the characters, an emotional attachment that gets you interested in them as people. "Hidden Frontier" is, at this point, still too concerned with plot machinery and doesn't offer enough "heart" for me to care about any of these changes.

The second season scales back the threat of the Grey considerably; as a result, after fifteen episodes we still know very little about them and their objectives. It might be because one element this series has lacked over the past two seasons is focus: the Federation's struggle against the Grey ostensibly glues the whole of "Hidden Frontier" together, and yet it's treated as an afterthought (if the Grey are mentioned at all) throughout the second season. Likewise, character moments occur in isolation, with no consistency from one episode to the next: Robin suffers a certain trauma in "The Great Starship Robbery" and it's never mentioned again, there's a Ro-centric episode after that except Ro has minimal screen time, and "To The Stars" delivers an origin story for Ibanya, a minor character whose presence is barely noteworthy. All of these represent what would ideally be the first step in an ongoing plotline, but they're completely scattered and, consequently, ineffective.

Noteworthy episodes:

* "Yesterday's Excelsior" does a cute '70s "Battlestar Galactica" homage, complete with the Colonial theme. It's worth noting that even in an alternate timeline, Knapp is an asshole. The episode is apparently missing its teaser due to... legal problems? I don't know, again, Caves seems to be dealing with problems no other fan production has had to cope with. Characterization of the Federation at large is also very problematic: we're supposed to believe Kirk-era Starfleet exterminated the Klingons en masse, and the present-day version abandons helpless civilizations to a superior threat. I'd applaud bringing the idealized United Federation of Planets down a notch, but this seems to go a little too far in the other direction.

* "Old Wound" has what may be the most contrived ending to a Trek courtroom drama ever.

* "Encke" introduces engineer Corey Aster as the first explicitly gay Starfleet officer we've seen (remember, this was filmed long before "Phase II"). When I reviewed "Blood and Fire" I mentioned that the two fan series treat the subject matter differently, and "Encke" is a perfect example: Ro is clearly conflicted about Corey's attraction to him, and it is about gender (contrary to what he says), which suggests that homosexuality is still seen as something "different". In "Phase II", it's just taken for granted that Alex and Peter are lovers, and the reaction would be exactly the same if Alex were a woman. To be honest, the treatment here is a bit on the clunky side, more concerned with The Issue than how said Issue affects the characters involved.

* "Fire in the Heart" is another Knapp-centric episode; surprise surprise, he's still a douchebag whose main concern during a reunion with his estranged daughter (after nine years of slavery!) is that she doesn't mess up his comfy life.



I hear ya, Captain.

In conclusion, I'm still seeing a lot of potential in this series, but so far they haven't capitalized on it. Maybe three's the lucky number?

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6

As promised, starting this week we'll be doing a season-by-season review of "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier", quite possibly the longest-running fan series currently available. I'm hoping to get a twice-weekly rhythm going, but that depends on my progress with various seminar papers and my commitment to the Savage Critics.

Series creator Rob Caves has a short note on the "Hidden Frontier" website, in which he asks viewers to start with the sixth season premiere, rather than season 1. Obviously, that's out of the question if you're doing a comprehensive review... but after briefly comparing the two, I can certainly understand Caves' request.

If "Phase II" impressed me in terms of how much it improved over time, the gap between the first and sixth seasons of "Hidden Frontier" is even more remarkable (granted, they'd been working at it for much longer than Cawley's group). But I don't want to go into that now, as it'll be far more relevant when we actually get to the later seasons; we should just keep that in mind as we go over Caves' earlier efforts. Because the first season of "Hidden Frontier" is a mess. I want to be charitable, I really do, but I can't find many redeeming qualities in the initial six episodes.

For starters, we have a fairly large cast of characters and yet there isn't a single sympathetic person in the bunch: Knapp, our Captain figure, is a douchebag of galactic proportions, and you'd think that was intentional except he never gets his comeuppance and he's not viewed in a negative light, despite the fact that he constantly berates his crew (when he's not abandoning them to die on hostile alien vessels) and he's way too trigger-happy for a starship captain. Robin Lefler, imported from "The Next Generation", quotes her Laws so often that it quickly goes from cute to annoying (Diana's Law #26: Don't speak in platitudes, because you can't eat an omlette without gaining some calories). Munoz, the cheerful first officer, disappears midway through the season and is replaced by Elizabeth Shelby (another "Next Generation" import), only this incarnation of the character lacks the backbone that made her such a great foil to then-Captain Riker. None of them act much like Starfleet officers, and the only characters who aren't unbearably annoying are Counselor Elbrey and Dr. Henglaar, who don't get enough screen time to make the most of their appeal.

The plot doesn't do much better, either on an episode-by-episode or season-wide basis: the three-part premiere is basically a rehash of the Dominion War, in which a new enemy - the Grey Confederacy - launches unprovoked attacks against the Federation. Unlike the Dominion, there's a far more parasitic nature to the Grey, as they mind-control humans in order to feed off their neural energy. That storyline is then interrupted so we can have a bizarre time-travel story involving the Titanic, and an episode featuring a visit from Darth Vader's flagship. The season finale reintroduces Wesley Crusher in an utterly disjointed storyline where the Tzenkethi demand access to the healing planet of Baku, for reasons that are neither known nor discovered, and then we abruptly segue to a Grey invasion of Tzenkethi space. This episode also recasts Lefler with an older actress, and that's an interesting choice, but Joanne Busch doesn't have enough screen time to leave an impression, good or bad.

On a technical level, I have to criticize the use of low-resolution Quicktime videos; Caves says this was done with an eye towards preventing the sale of pirated DVDs (which, in turn, could bring the Wrath of Paramount down on the whole production), but no other fan film I've seen so far seems to have this problem.

"Hidden Frontier" represents an interesting thematic departure from what we saw with "Of Gods and Men" and "Phase II". Those fan projects emphasized homage, recreating specific characters and getting as close to the "feel" of the original as possible. As I said, this series does feature characters from the canon series - Lefler, Shelby and Wesley Crusher - but they're secondary figures, and part of a mostly original ensemble. The setting's also quite distant from usual Trek fare: focus tends to alternate between the station, Deep Space 12, and the various ships assigned to that sector, which obviously allows for a much wider array of potential stories as it combines the fixed center as seen by "Deep Space 9" and exploring the unknown via starships. We'll see where that leads us.

All in all, it's off to a very awkward start; thanks to Caves' urging, I know the series will improve, but it's also true that there's a limit to how far one's patience can be stretched while waiting for things to get better. We'll have to see whether the second season has any kind of upward mobility in that sense; I can't see myself sitting through another two or three seasons as poor as this one.

Of The People...

... is on a minor break this weekend, as the Gaping Maw of Academic Hell is threatening to swallow me whole. Look for a first-season review of "Hidden Frontier" late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 5

Four episodes in, "Star Trek: Phase II" (formerly known as "New Voyages") and its creator, James Cawley, have gained quite a reputation in the field of fan films. And not undeservedly so.

"Phase II" is remarkable for several reasons. It's the first example we've had of a proper fan series - all of the works I've reviewed so far were clearly conceived either as feature films or miniseries with a set conclusion. "Phase II" is an ongoing series, and as a series it gets to demonstrate something most fan works can't: improvement over time. The differences between the first and second episodes of "Phase II" are nothing short of astonishing in the sense that every aspect of the production gets better: by the third episode, it's pretty much up there with Roddenberry's original series.

Like "Of Gods and Men", "Phase II" serves as a useful example of how Trek fans recreate rather than innovate: the premise is that "Phase II" depicts the last two years of the Enterprise's original five-year mission (never filmed due to the series' cancellation). So it's Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the gang continuing their adventures, very much an extension of the Shatner series; it should be interesting to compare "Phase II" to the upcoming movie when it comes out, because you have two very different groups (with, we may presume, different agendas) telling stories about the same characters, roughly at the same time.

Unlike "Of Gods and Men", the primary roles have been recast, though Cawley's series still interfaces very deeply with canon, as we'll soon see. Since it's not a very long series (especially in comparison to next week's feature), I thought it might be interesting to do an episode-by-episode review and see what emerges.

1. Come What May/In Harm's Way: Listed together here are the pilot for "New Voyages" (as it was known at the time) and the first "official" episode. I'll be upfront about these: they're not very good. Everything's a bit off - the lighting's too strong, the acting's too weak, James Cawley (Kirk) sports a disturbing Elvis quaff, the plot's so disjointed all you get are scenes that fail to mesh into a coherent whole... the CGI's impressive, so there's that, and "In Harm's Way" had Gene Roddenberry Jr. as consulting producer, cameos by William Windom (reprising the role of Commodore Decker) and BarBara Luna (Marlena Moreau of "Mirror Mirror"), and while I haven't been able to confirm this, apparently Sam Witwer of "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" and "Battlestar Galactica" voiced the Guardian of Forever. Not a bad grab for the first time out, but it's still a very, very rough start.

There's not much point in providing summaries of either episode, due to the shoddy plotting, but we might as well go with it: in "Come What May", the Enterprise stumbles across a continuing battle between Onabi, a flirtatious girl with Q-like powers, and a threat she calls the Monap (though the design is unmistakably that of a Borg ship). She seems to know a lot about what the future holds for Kirk and his crew, but aside from some babble about possible futures, nothing really comes of this. So Onabi hangs around for a while, turns into an Orion dancing girl in an attempt to seduce Kirk, and then she goes back to her ship and disappears along with the Monap. That's about it. Rather anticlimactic - I get the feeling the whole point of that episode was the montage near the end where Cawley and Jeffery Quinn (Spock) get to play out a sequence of scenes from the first batch of Star Trek movies (ie: Spock's death and resurrection, the anti-Klingon conspiracy in... was it the fifth or the sixth? And, of course, Kirk's death scene in "Generations").

"In Harm's Way" is a direct sequel to an episode of the original episode, specifically "The Doomsday Machine", but there's almost no context to explain what's going on. Memory Alpha to the rescue once again, though having the background information doesn't really help here because, again, the story is extremely muddled, with some interesting ideas lost in the rapid shuffle.

And yet... despite their shortcomings, these episodes are worth wathcing for the glimpse they provide of the project's potential: at first, it seems the creators' reach is exceeding their grasp, which is a fair enough assessment, but you can also see the germ of something better in the making, and "Phase II" certainly delivers on that promise with later episodes.

2. To Serve All My Days: This episode marks two major changes for "Phase II". First, this is where the series really starts interfacing with canon: Walter Koenig guest-stars as Chekov, while former Trek writer D.C. Fontana contributed the script.

But the far more significant issue has to do with episode quality; in every area, "To Serve All My Days" represents improvement on a quantum level. The visuals are sleek and polished, there's a greater emphasis on the characters, and the acting is more refined - Andy Bray is excellent as a young and insecure Chekov, while Cawley's Kirk is approaching that Shatner-esque mix of camp and uber-gravitas (and he'll get it just right starting next episode). John Kelley's McCoy could stand to be a bit crankier, but he's a lot younger here, so we can let that one slide.

The plot's still a bit clunky, with a rapid-aging disease that quite literally comes out of nowhere and a B-plot that would've been a great start to an ongoing Myth Arc, except - as kazekage points out here - "Star Trek" didn't really start doing those until late into "Deep Space 9" (owing, apparently, to the influence of "Babylon 5"). "Phase II" seems to deliver an anti-arc where nothing flows from one episode to the next: a major character dies here, only to return the very next episode with no explanation. As I recall, resetting to the status quo at the end of every story was standard practice during the Shatner run (in fairness, a general aversion to lasting change is typical of most late '60s and early '70s TV), so in that sense "Phase II" is remaining true to the structure of its template, but... well, why bother creating the illusion of change only to undermine it immediately afterwards? It's refreshing to see a situation that isn't resolved through contrivance and technobabble, but I'm not sure ignoring it altogether to get on with the show was the best decision.

3. World Enough and Time: Now this is where "Phase II" really hits its stride. Guest-starring George Takei as Sulu, Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand, and Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (in one of her final roles) as the ship's computer, it might be a bit much to do two rapid-aging stories in a row, but this episode is so entertaining that I can't begrudge the contrivance. It really feels like an episode of "Star Trek", both in terms of appearance and plot, and unlike "To Serve All My Days", there is a typical explanation (albeit delivered in Trekspeak, but at least it's there). Takei delivers a superb performance, as always, and while Alanna is clearly doomed from the get-go (precisely because we know the status quo is going to be restored by the end of the episode), Christina Moses' performance still manages to evoke a great deal of sympathy.

4. Blood and Fire Part 1: This is the first episode released as "Phase II". It's a name with some history attached to it, having to do with Roddenberry's planned relaunch of the series following its original cancellation (the seeds of which eventually became the first "Star Trek" movie). So we're once again given a statement of intent here: to be faithful to the original, to tell the same types of stories Roddenberry might have told, to be seen as an extension of the past rather than a reconfiguration or a modernization of that past.

In other news, Uhura and Spock have been recast; while Kim Stinger acquits herself as well as can be expected given Uhura's minimal role thus far, Ben Tolpin disappoints as Spock, as he can't quite manage the ever-calm, ever-neutral facade Leonard Nimoy and Jeffery Quinn (and, I expect, Zachary Quinto) did so well. Fortunately, based on preview information for upcoming episodes, the role will be recast yet again after the second half of "Blood and Fire", so we'll see how that works out.

This is the episode that drew my attention to "Phase II" in the first place, due to the publicity storm surrounding a certain subplot. I am, of course, referring to Kirk's nephew Peter coming aboard the Enterprise to marry his boyfriend.

Most "Star Trek" viewers with a mild interest in this particular issue probably know how the legend goes: Gene Roddenberry had planned to feature gay characters in "Star Trek: The Next Generation", under the (hopefully accurate) belief that homosexuality would be entirely normalized in the 24th century. David Gerrold had penned a script called "Blood and Fire", which - according to reports - had a few lines of dialogue discussing a relationship between two male crew members. Unfortunately, network television of the early '90s wasn't the most supporting environment for taking creative or social risks, and the episode was censored. There's a widespread opinion that, had Roddenberry lived, he would've eventually succeeded in getting a gay character into the Trekverse, but that never materialized during the subsequent tenure of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, unless you count the women of the Mirror Universe, and I don't, because that was just puerile fanservice. (Nana Visitor actually pointed out that turning Mirror Kira into a hedonistic bisexual sort of missed the point, because in the first DS9 Mirror episode her attraction to the "real" Kira is pure narcissism.)

In any event, Gerrold eventually reworked his script for the Kirk era (which would've been even more unthinkable, given the way people reacted when Kirk and Uhura kissed that one time), and here it is. This is very much a situation where fandom "picks up the slack", as it were: the Internet as a medium isn't subject to morally outraged Christian families or sponsors or network executives, it's very much an arena where any theme, any content, can be explored. I should note, though, that "Phase II" isn't exactly breaking new ground: fan series "Hidden Frontier", which started in 2001, had an ongoing love triangle between three men throughout its run. In fact, Bobby Rice - the actor who plays Peter Kirk in "Blood and Fire" - also played one of the characters in that triangle, though the role originated with another actor (but we'll talk about that when we start reviewing "Hidden Frontier" next week).

So what we have here is a case where two completely unrelated fan productions picked up the same theme and used it, albeit in very different ways (we'll go into greater detail about those different approaches when it becomes relevant to "Hidden Frontier"). And here's the thing: homosexuality isn't necessarily the issue critics had with "Star Trek", it's not something that absolutely demanded to be addressed in the vein of women or ethnicity in "Star Wars", yet it's something both projects felt obliged to explore.

"Phase II" follows Roddenberry's alleged perspective on the matter (ie: who cares?) so Peter and Alex have a completely conventional, if slightly sappy relationship (seriously, postponing your wedding until after an away mission to a ship whose entire crew died under mysterious circumstances? Might as well paint a bullseye on your forehead and scream "VICTIM HERE! VICTIM HERE!"). The word "gay" doesn't even exist in this milieu - Cawley plays Kirk's reaction to the news as having to do with Peter's youth (and probably Kirk's own relationship issues as well, especially in light of what happened with Alanna last episode). But there's no distinction between types of relationships here, and that's a paradigm I whole-heartedly embrace.

(As an aside, that's what "Hidden Frontier" did differently: homosexuality is socially acceptable, but still viewed as "alternative" in that one of the men has to struggle for a very long time before coming to terms with same-sex attraction. "Phase II" implies the opposite, that no one sees any difference.)

Like "World Enough and Time", this episode looks and feels right: from the opening battle with the Klingon warship, to the "creature feature" horror of the Bloodworms, "Blood and Fire" is perhaps as close to the source material as is humanly possible without time machines; the days of pointy Elvis 'dos and bad lighting are long over.

For the next few installments (which I might condense into a twice-weekly thing depending on my pace and time considerations) we'll review "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier", quite possibly the longest fan series available: fifty episodes divided into seven seasons, plus no less than three spin-offs running concurrently.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 4

This week we're breaking away from "Star Wars" (at least for a while) and turning to the other giant of sci-fi TV, "Star Trek". Based on what I've found so far, these two franchises seem to produce very different types of fan films.

Generally speaking, "Star Wars" fan productions tend to demarcate canon and fandom very clearly - I'm not just talking about the obvious gaps in visual effects, but in terms of story, films like "Revelations" and "Dark Resurrection" are less interested in recreating what George Lucas put on the screen, instead focusing on innovation, inserting new twists and concepts into familiar settings. As a result, there's a great distance between the source material and the way each fan production uses that material.

The "Star Trek" franchise, curiously enough, seems to have the opposite effect on its fans, because that line between canon and fandom gets considerably blurred. Today's fan film serves as a perfect example: Renegade Studios' Of Gods and Men. This fan film is remarkable - and problematic - for several reasons, but let's start with the basics: the plot.

Twelve years after James Kirk's death, Uhura, Chekov and John Harriman reunite aboard a museum ship modeled after the original Enterprise. They're summoned to a familiar planet, where an old enemy of Kirk's goes back in time and changes history. We then find ourselves in a dystopian alternate timeline where the Federation has been usurped by the Galactic Order, a tyrannical organization that bullies and intimidates entire populations to maintain "security". Our three heroes - now living completely different lives - have only the vaguest memories to guide them, and must find a way to restore the timeline.

"Of Gods and Men" could have easily served as an episode (or two) of the Shatner-era "Star Trek" - its plot structure is very similar, right down to the convenient deus ex machina that ultimately resets the status quo. If "Star Wars" productions try to step out of Lucas' shadow, "Of Gods and Men" (like other "Star Trek" fan films we'll be talking about in the coming weeks) seems to embrace the source material, to the extent that it tries to recreate that fictional universe without redefining it at all.

I'm curious as to why this is the case - why "Star Trek" generates the sort of loyalty where adaptation and homage are prioritized over... not originality per se but that whole process of using the extra-canonical position to address blind spots and bypass network-imposed constraints. It's not as though "Star Trek" doesn't have a large Expanded Universe of its own - in fact, I'm reasonably sure that its output in novel format is considerably larger than "Star Wars" - but "Star Wars" fan-creators use that largely-obscure playground to get away from Luke Skywalker and that whole familiar milieu. "Star Trek" fans run in the other direction.

This might have something to do with the memory of Gene Roddenberry; on the whole, fandom seems more inclined to remember him fondly as opposed to the oft-vilified (and perhaps not unjustly so, given the whole Jar-Jar Binks thing) George Lucas. I also imagine some degree of sensitivity is called for when the creator whose fictional world you're entering into is gone. But there could also be a completely diegetic reason for this: the flaws of the "Star Trek" universe, while numerous, aren't as grossly obvious as those of "Star Wars", in the sense that the "problem areas" of Roddenberry's creation don't necessarily demand immediate correction. I mean, we've covered the issue of women in "Star Wars", and Kirk's series was very much a product of its time, but women are represented with much higher frequency starting with "The Next Generation", and if they're not exactly on equal ground there, "Deep Space 9" gives us Kira Nerys, and Kathryn Janeway would've made a much more positive impression if the writers hadn't saddled her with the Idiot Ball of Bitchery after a season or two. In fairness, this is a franchise that four decades to evolve, across twenty or thirty seasons of television and ten films, while Lucas only had those two trilogies to work with... on the other hand, the twenty-year gap between "Return of the Jedi" and "The Phantom Menace" should have pushed "Star Wars" a lot further forward than it did.

Let's go back to the whole process of adaptation. One example, with regards to "Of Gods and Men", is the high amount of intertextuality with the original series; in fact, there's so much continuity that if you're not familiar with specific episodes (ie: "Charlie X"), I don't know if you'll really understand what's going on here. I had to make extensive use of Memory Alpha to figure stuff out, and the whole principle of having to research the finer points of a story is something I find problematic. So points off for that, at least from the perspective of a casual viewer: more dedicated fans will probably be very pleased at how strong those connections are. It also reinforces the notion that we're meant to see this film as a natural extension of the series, rather than a conscious step away from the conventions and tropes that defined the source material.

Another way that "Of Gods and Men" diminishes the boundaries between canon and fandom has to do with its cast, featuring a frankly astonishing number of "Star Trek" alumni from every series: Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koening, Alan Ruck, Tim Russ (also the film's director), Garrett Wang, J.G. Hertzler, Chase Masterson, Gary Graham, Cirroc Lofton and many others. There's even a bit of fan film crossover, as "Phase II" stars James Cawley and Jeffery Quinn put in cameos (more on "Phase II" next week). The entire project has an air of camaraderie about it, of iconic actors freely and gladly participating in a celebration of the series.

All of this creates an interesting dilemma: is "Of Gods and Men" a fan film? Most of its cast and crew came from "Star Trek" in the first place; granted, it's not backed by Paramount, but so what? Visually, it takes its cues from the '60s incarnation, and by those standards it looks better than any episode of the original series. It doesn't do anything "Star Trek" didn't or couldn't do on its own (with the possible exception of Xela, the Orion slave woman, being portrayed as the real power behind Harriman's captaincy in the alternate timeline - that was a nice twist on a traditionally icky aspect of the Trekverse). What is it, then, that separates "Of Gods and Men" from canon at all? Not script quality - even when it stumbles, it still does so more gracefully than some of the clunkers in the original series. Not the use of amateur actors, because even bit characters like Stonn are played by their original actors. Resources? Maybe, but... eh, I've said all along that I don't like to bring the financial aspect into the reviews, because creativity tends to find ways around budget-oriented obstacles.

I don't really have an answer to that question, and it's one that'll pop up again in the coming weeks. The level of interaction between Trek canon and Trek fandom runs deep, and that problematizes my initial definition of what a fan film is: here, unlike "Star Wars" fan films (and, on a broader level, all fan fiction), the goal isn't to modify the fictional world on any level, or to plug any ontological gaps that were never addressed on-screen. Rather, it seems simulacra is the objective here: how close can you get to the original? How much does your production feel like "Star Trek"?

On that level, "Of Gods and Men" feels very much like the real thing; "Star Trek" always had a knack for decent, if not consistently good, alternate timeline stories, and this one's no exception.