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Reviews
Star Trek (1966)
Wagon Train for sci-fi fans
While granting that this series is absolutely brilliant and a favorite of mine, I still have a few Bones to pick (!). There are some specific gripes I have with TOS.
One, Kirk is always able to dispatch lesser opponents with a quick karate CHOP, which is totally unbelievable. More formidable opponents require more of a brawl, wherein you notice Shatner's stunt double quite often.
Two, Spock and Bones spend an inordinate amount of time bickering. The usual dynamic is that Bones is questioning a decision of Spock's. Bones also likes to abuse the nurse, who dares to question his orders. Aside from that, Bones is a great character.
Three, none of the crew ever wear seat belts, even when they are warned in advance of severe turbulence. Consequently, you see the crew tossed about the bridge. Even in those days of the 60s, airline pilots always wore seat belts!
As a lesser complaint -- the crummy "uniforms" of the characters. A Starship Commander wearing a v-neck t-shirt? I guess the budget. The outfits were much more dignified in the Trek movies.
Trek's 3 central characters achieved an incredible chemistry, and scripts were usually written to emphasize this. I also like that each show had a complete musical score, which I guess was more common in those days.
Star Trek: Who Mourns for Adonais? (1967)
Tricks are for kids?
Okay wait. Why is the episode called Who Mourns for Adonais? I thought it might be an alternate name for Apollo but it's not. Shelley wrote a poem about Keats using that name, but that's all I can find.
No need to rehash the plot, other reviewers have spelled it out. I think this is a very clever bit of writing, as well as good acting. At first you take it seriously, but on repeated viewings I realize that a lot of humor was injected into it. And appropriately so.
"You're no god to us mister!" snaps Kirk. It's fun to see the Enterprise crew using their tricorders and other devices to try to unravel the "cheap tricks" of Apollo and to discover the source of his power.
He almost gets the crew killed by the creature who calls himself Apollo.
I think the point of the episode is to examine the tension between encroaching technology and religion, in our culture. Just as the firestorm was begun by Nietzsche proclaiming that "God is dead", it continues today even in our politics as the evangelicals square off against the liberals. Nothing dated here.
So I don't think that the writer is taking the side of Kirk and the agnostic 'technocrats' who are so scornful of Apollo. I think the writer, as evidenced by a few of Apollo's heartfelt speeches, is expressing the view that man needs a god, someone to worship. Technology has flooded into our civilization, and has rendered obsolete the old pursuits of man. A century ago, most US citizens were farmers -- and church-goers. The story does not clearly answer the question of where Apollo came from, but suggests that Greeks worshipped these advanced aliens, in an arrangement that was beneficial to all parties concerned.
Very well done and with enough tongue-in-cheek or situational humor to make it entertaining.
Star Trek: What Are Little Girls Made Of? (1966)
Kirk is roughed up
Great episode, aided by an original and ominous musical score. It explores the theme that is central to much of sci-fi, namely just how far can computers advance and what threats might they pose to the human race? Good script too.
What strikes me on later viewings is how well delineated each character is. Many of the later episodes had Kirk stealing the show, or interplay between Kirk, Spock and Bones. Here the characters of Korby, Ruk, Andrea and Christine get a chance to shine with Kirk a bit more in the background.
Just overall creepy, and the episode reminded of the nightmarish mood of a Kafka story.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
Thinly-veiled Nazi symbolism
The best part, the CGI effects. The worst part, the derivative plot which borrows from all the previous Star Wars (and even Star Trek) movies.
I would not consider this a spoiler but some people might so be forewarned.
From reading other reviews, it surprises me that so few people caught on to the Third Reich references. First Order? Third Reich? A hysterical ranting leader firing up the troops at a rally? For those who doubt, just check out starwars.wikia, where you'll find a quote directly from the director himself: "The First Order was created for the 2015 film Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens and was developed through conversations amongst the production team. According to J.J. Abrams, the film's director, the team wondered what would have happened if the Nazis who went into hiding in Argentina after World War II started working together again."
So there you have it. If this is your cup of tea, then pay the full admission. For myself, I was seriously about to nod off at just the moment that Harrison Ford made his entrance. He managed to keep me awake for a little while, but honestly this movie just did not hang together for me. Not even as much as Star Trek into Darkness.
For my money this summer's Mission Impossible Rogue Nation was much the better entertainment value, the former being a much tighter work of edge-of-your-seat film-making. Star Wars has some handsome young actors but a lot of gratuitous yelling and too many gratuitous scenes of weird aliens that we've seen before.
Mannix (1967)
A sign of the times
I thought that I recalled that I liked Mannix when I watched it in my teens, but my wife and I caught some episodes a few nights ago and it struck me that Mannix is quite dated. Maybe for its time, it was groundbreaking or whatever but that cachet has vanished. Aside from the great theme music and the charismatic masculine leading man who smoked too much, the acting is often wooden as if unrehearsed or like the director simply didn't care that much. The similarities of the writing to Mission Impossible are obvious --both Bruce Geller productions. The much ballyhooed violence which was an attraction to viewers back then, looks pretty darn tame today. One repetitive theme that we chuckled about was that so many episodes featured someone being killed by falling from a height (with the accompanying scream); usually a high rise or a cliff. In one episode a guy who had been shot fell back out of a fully open window. How many people living 5 floors up keep their windows fully open?? It was a formula I guess, to inject something exciting and violent. Oh one more thing...Compared to Columbo? Forget it.