Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Face of Evil

Leela's introduction is written a hell of a lot better
than her exit.

Doctor Who - Season 14, Story Four - The Face of Evil
Written between 6th and 7th June 2013

Science versus faith. Reason triumphing over superstition. Such is the stuff of some of my favourite science fiction, with this week's wonderful story not only providing a fine example but also ushering in the preparations for a new era for the show. It is here we find the intoduction of Louise Jameson's Leela, the character who combined a certain "something for the Dads" appeal with a smashing characterisation, breaking the mold of modern-day Earth girl companions for at least another seven years.
     The story's main concept followed a The Time Machine style story of humanity undergoing divergent evolution, except this time limited to the decendants of a science team who crash-landed ona planet in the far future, separating into the savage society of the Sevateem (the Survey Team) and the ritualistic technocracy of the Tesh (Techs). I think the Sevateem were a little better executed - while groups of "savages" are very often generic in Doctor Who, the story mixed them with elements of a Cargo Cult and their descendance from the science team felt quite clear. The Tesh were considerably less inspiring; their ridiculous dress and bland acting didn't do them any favours, and I think I preferred them as the whispered-about enemy of the Sevateem than what we actually saw.
     Leela is a bit conflicting for me, even though I love the character. In terms of the feminist movement at the time, I think it's a combined step backward and forward. On the one hand she's clearly been deasigned aesthetically to attract the male audience - a scantily clad warrioress running around the place in a leather loincloth. On the other hand, her characterisation is somewhat progressive - a strong and (compared to the rest of her tribe) smart woman who comes from what feels like an equal society (although we once again have Deadly Assassin Disease and Leela is the only woman in the story). There are no subtle hints of romantic tension like we've had since the beginnings of the Pertwee Era - their relationship is purely platonic, Leela curious as to the depth of The Doctor's knowledge (her having been brought up to believe The Doctor to be an evil monster) and he just appearing to be glad to have the company.

Four is quite influential sometimes...

     The story's anti-villain was Xoanon, the ship's computer which was suffering due to multiple personality disorder accidentally caused by the Fourth Doctor some time ago, leading him to take on Four's personality and appearance even as its own sentience fought through. Tom Baker gets to ham it up quite a bit, and calls back to his Rasputin days to express the madness of the machine. The third episode's cliffhanger has the face of Tom Baker on the screen while a child's voice cries out, wondering who it is, and it's a brilliantly chilling cliffhanger that I think would have terrified all the kids. As a device, Xoanon's use as the centre of a new religious cult (which strangely seems to be very similar between the Tesh and the Sevateem) which morphs the purpose of their original mission is not original, but is certainly very well executed for a Saturday tea-time show.
     The Face of Evil shows a marked difference in tone to the previous two seasons. Maybe it's the focus on a well-executed concept rather than focussing on the fun of the runaround with the themes in the background, or maybe it's the loss of the whimsical and comforting face of Sarah Jane. But Doctor Who celebrates change, and change the show The Face of Evil did. A few of the executions of perhaps the Tesh and the spaceship itself were a little shoddy after the convincing jungle setting, but as an overall the story's concepts and its introduction of a quite well-characterised companion make this a certified winner.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: It's Gallifrey Base's favourite story, and I have no idea why. Join me in running away from The Robots of Death.

Review: Voyager 1.14: Faces

Human and Klingon B'elannas.

Star Trek Voyager - Season One, Episode Fourteen - Faces
Written 16/6/13

Apparently the attraction of Phage's premise was too good to just leave hanging, and so this week we get delivered a sequel to that episode, as well as a chance to focus upon B'elanna that doesn't make physicists cry. For an episode with a number of quite absurd moments and ideas about how people work, it was surprisingly moving in places, down entirely to the brilliant acting from Roxann Dawson. (Who would later go on to direct episodes of Lost and Heroes, as well as later Voyager and Enterprise stuff.)
     Tom, B'elanna and some random yellowshirt from last week get kidnapped while off on an away mission by the Vidiians, the race of fleshy people from Phage who are affected by that eponymous virus and thus harvest other species' organs to survive. Crazy Vidiian scientist Sulan has worked out that Klingons may be immune because of some intangible "strength" to their species, and so has managed to use technobabble to split half-Klingon B'elanna into two individuals; one Klingon, one human. While he infects angry Klingon!B'elanna with the Phage, which she survives easily, her human counterpart reveals to Tom how she feels weaker and despite her childhood identity issues, wishes they could be together. Chakotay disguses himself and beams inside, and Klingon!B'elanna helps Human!B'elanna to escape, giving her life in the process. The reset button is pushed and B'elanna is returned to normal.
     Despite the odd idea of having a hybrid split into two different species is by modern biological standards (the rules regarding hybrids seem to be consistent if different in Star Trek), I think that it worked to bring B'elanna out from her shell. The normal B'elanna would rely too much on her defences, built up from years of abuse and mistrust, to ever reveal as she does Tom her childhood issues surrounding her poor mother and absent father, and the stigma presented about being neither Human nor Klingon felt very akin to the issues felt by mixed-race people in the US.

If this is what the title is referring to, I'm going home.

     The episode's more odd moments came quite often. Dr. Sulan is an incredibly creepy character; not in a mad scientist way, but in a "this is a really creepy guy" way, especially as Klingon!B'elanna offers sexual encounters in return for her release and in response he goes off and grafts the yellowshirt's face to his own as some kind of plumage. The scene where he reveals his new face paces that very fine line between the terrying and the hilarious, and which I think it is very much varies on my state of mind at the time. (On this viewing, for example, I was laughing my ass off.)
     Voyager is clearly trying, and for that you have to give it some kudos. I think that the episode should have been a bit more about B'elanna than it was, and the way that the premise was handled meant that the final messages felt very insincere, as I felt as if it was treated as through B'elanna has some kind of multiple personality disorder with a Klingon voice and Human voice always arguing in her head. Which isn't how brains work, unless the show was trying to tell us that B'elanna has some serious mental issues. But it was nice to get some development out of her at all, and I think that made up for the rest of the episode's faults.

Thanks

NEXT WEEK: Voyager gets serious as we talk about war criminals, genocides and we wonder if they can write an episode in which Neelix is not a dick... it's Jetrel.

Review: Lost 1.22: Born To Run

Whachu doing, Kate?

Lost - Season One, Episode Twenty-Two - Born To Run
Written 11/6/13

Kate's character in the first few seasons is a great deal more complex than later seasons would end up portraying, and this fourth centric episode for the character, despite revealing slightly how over-exposed we've been to her, adds another huge dollop of complexity upon her backstory as well as sorting out a few more threads to be left hanging for next week's finale.
     In her flashback, we saw Kate visit childhood sweetheart Tom Brennan, the owner of the Toy Plane. She wants him to arrange a meeting with her dying estranged mother, and, his family out of town, he accepts. While they wait, they go and dig up a time capsule they buried fifteen years prior, and both of them look back on the way things went wrong. Tom arranges the meeting but Diane isn't as pleased to see Kate as she hopes, and Tom is still in the car when Kate runs from the police. In a shootout, Kate walks away unscathed while Tom is killed in the crossfire, leading Kate to blame herself for his death and hold so much value on the plane later in life.
     On the Island, and as Locke showed the Hatch to Jack and Sayid, Kate was spurned by led by Charlie's dreams of post-Island fame to try and earn a place on the Raft, reasoning that she has more boating experience than Sawyer. The hillbilly is understandably pissed, especially as crazy Dr. Arzt has said that they have to set sail by the next day or they've got no chance. Sun, not wanting Jin to go, accidentally poisons Michael, and when suspicions fall to Sawyer he outs her to the group as the Marshall's criminal. Everything continues on as normal, with the raft due to set sail the next day.

Kate bonds with childhood sweetheart Tom.

     The scenes in the past revealed a new side to the character. I get the feeling that when she's with Tom we actually get to see the real Kate - someone a little more compassionate and vulnerable than her criminal past would have us believe. Her relationship with Tom felt very believable, especially in the Time-capsule scene, but there was a problem in the manner of his dispatch that made it feel very rushed - it lacked a certain momentum that robbed it of the empathy it so sorely needed.
     The main island storyline felt very much like a quick cleanup operation, trying to shove in some light character dysfunction after the past few weeks of intense.stuff. It didn't take away from Born To Run's better moments, but it certainly felt as though in the long run very little was acheived. Of course, that wasn't really the point. This week set the targets and the stakes for the three-part finale, and it worked very well in fitting in some character development as it did that. We're in for a kerazy ride, readers. Just you wait.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Danielle says that The Others are coming, The Raft sets off on its journey and Jack and the gang prepare to blow up The Hatch.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Deadly Assassin (Revisited)

See here for my previous look at this story.

The Crispy!Master in his first and most subtle appearance.

Doctor Who - Season 14, Story Three - The Deadly Assassin (Revisited)
Written 4/6/13

The Deadly Assassin is bound in my memory to a certain level of uniqueness, standing out from the rest of Season 14 for not just its various casting and setting decisions, but for the levels of inbuilt political commentary and satire that rarely seem to show up in this era. The most detailed (and most well-done) portrayal of Time Lord society is riddled with reflections of 1970s politics, taking issues from both sides of the pond. At the same time, its story is pioneeringly different, taking place for the majority in a virtual reality, and forcing Tom Baker's Doctor to embody his more brutal and animalistic traits.
     Before this point, Time Lords and Gallifrey were held in a great deal of mystique. They first appeared in lofty positions during Two's last story, The War Games, and in the 10th Anniversary story The Three Doctors. To the outrage of many a comtemporary fan (and to my absolute delight), The Deadly Assassin humanises the Time Lords and paints a picture of the unequal, degenerative society that The Doctor was so desperate to get away from. Cardinal Borusa tries to "adjust the truth", the Capitol is filled entirely with white males (probably an unconscious choice on behalf of the producers but what ho) and there are high-ups so deperate for power that they'd work with The Master.
     The story's companion-replacement is the wonderful George Pravda as Castellan Pravda, adding his Czechoslovakian tones to both great comic relief and in enforcing some of the story's political ideas. He heads up a strong (unfortunately all-male) cast that also features Hugh Walters as the young newsreader Runcible, three-time guest actor Bernard Horsfall as misled villain Chancellor Goth and Angus Mackay as the first-seen incarnation of Borusa, one of the more interesting Time Lord recurring characters. All are quite strong, especially Horsfall who relishes his final and lengthiest appearance as the story's villain, joining The Doctor in exploring his own ruthlessness in the Matrix.

George Pravda is great as Castellan Spandrell

     The Matrix sequence, beyond the rest of the episode's satire and political themes, is what should make this story stand out for the everyman. Robert Holmes uses the opportunity to throw everything at us, mixing imagery of clowns, World War II fighter jets, samurai warriors. There are a few scenes where The Doctor attempts to deny the reality that he's fighting in, and that leads to some cool effects. Perhaps a tiny complaint would be that half-way through Part Three when you're watching Tom Baker and Bernard Horsfall play a game of cat and mouse in a Jungle, you get either so engrossed or so bored that you forget that it's Doctor Who at all.
     The Deadly Assassin marks the transition between the era of Sarah-Jane and the beginning of the end of Hinchcliffe's tenure. It was a challenge for the show, its charismatic lead and for the contemporary fanbase, but in this one little story the show was redefined as something with a rich backstory and a grandeur to it. It opened the door for the remaining Gallifrey stories, for references to Gallifrey and the Time Lords throughout the rest of the Classic Series, to the Expanded Universe and Koschei and Theta Sigma. The Deadly Assassin showed us that putting human dramas onto alien cultures, especially ones as revered as the Time Lords, was not a bad thing - and sometimes worked better than looking at them first hand.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: I decide whether Leela is eye-candy or brain-food in The Face of Evil.

Review: Doctor Who 7.Z: The Day of The Doctor

Totes epic, brah. From the BBC

"Wow, I wonder what the 50th Anniversary is gonna be like!" What I probably said in around 2004 when I learnt to count and found that Doctor Who was 41 years old.

Saturday, 23rd November, 1963. A little show, pioneered by a Canadian, a 26-year-old woman and a gay asian director, is broadcast on the BBC as a gap-filler between Grandstand and Jukebox Jury. Despite low initial ratings on account of the recent death of US President Kennedy, it would go on to run continuously for 26 years before a spectacular revival series in the early Noughties. Three films, thirty-three seasons and 798 individual episodes later, and we find ourselves at the mercy of the hand of one Steven Moffat as he invites us to share in the 50th Anniversary. In this, my 800th Post, I look at what went right, and what went wrong with this thing. I will try not to spoil, as I know this is going out at weird times and some people may have to catch up, but do be cautious.
     The idea behind a "War Doctor" is one that troubles me greatly, and that seems to have been concocted mainly to allow Moffat to deal with the 13-regeneration limit with Matt's regeneration at Christmas. The endless layers of PR promoting this as "the regeneration The Doctor tries to forget" is totally at an odds with Nine and Ten's characters, both of whom were underlined by the guilt of the War, both in terms of Survivor Guilt and at having been the one to end it. It contradicts pretty much all of Nine's tenure, in fact, from the quiet musings on his people in The End of the World, the brilliant outspill of rage and anger in Dalek, and the quiet resolution and acceptance of his fate in The Parting of the Ways. If anything, the quirky little minisode featuring Paul McGann, Night of the Doctor, makes this worse, because that means that there really is no reason other than Moffat's insulting regeneration-shuffling for it to be John Hurt in the role instead of McGann. It's a narrative and promotional misstep that gave me a lot of misgivings about this episode before it even began - and that's not even taking into account my increasing wearyness when it comes to Moffat's blatantly sexist and queerphobic moments.
     That said, the special did surprise me in that it aimed high and, for the most part, reached it without making too much trouble for itself. It felt quite odd in the way that it blended a plot which was quite epic and large-scale with one that was more run-of-the-mill, giving proceedings a quiet intimacy. The interactions between Doctors Smith, Tennant and Hurt were quite well-written, even if there were one or two off-colour jokes upon their initial meeting. I felt that the three were done well, and were more enjoyable together than apart, especially as Moffat tackled the issues surrounding the Time War in a way which, despite being a clear attempt to negate its effects upon the Whoniverse, didn't feel that insulting towards his predecessor. 0The special to me feels weirdly paradoxical in that blend of grand-stand anniversary and quiet contemplative piece, but the structure of the story itself was quite well thought-out, with not a single introduced element or reference going unused, and this provided the story with quite a fun pace inbetween segments of character bouncing.

Clara is actually written well! It's a miracle!
From the BBC

     It's still a bit of a continuity nightmare in that one of the defining events of the New Series has essentially been thrown out of the window and taken under Moffat's custody, as well as yet another instance of Moffat bringing in all of the Doctors since Hartnell in on a plot point and re-writing 50 years of Canon for his own little schemes. But despite that, despite the astounding levels of egotistical crap which have gone into the mythos on this one, I'm not sure that I currently mind. Not right now. Because the idea of the The War Doctor, while terrible, was made to work by a combination of an okay script and John Hurt being a fantastic actor. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't the massive ground-breaking, ball-blowing Anniversary that I'd been waiting for. But for some reason, simply because it wasn't as terrible in its substance as it had the potential to be, I'm not walking away from The Day of the Doctor disappointed.
     If you really want a show which'll celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the show, I'd head over to the BBC Bio-drama An Adventure In Space And Time, which, while simplifying things a little for a modern audience, portrays Doctor Who's beginnings in a way which is moving and brilliant. If you want an episode written by Moffat featuring Ten and Eleven that isn't terrible, then I suppose this is the one for you. It got stuff done, didn't fuck it up too badly in the execution - hell, what do I care. It was good television. And for a show that recently's been rather up and down in quality, that in itself is a fantastic thing.

Thanks.

P.S. Those who haven't seen it yet... look out for a surprise appearance by someone you may or may not recognise!

Review: Voyager 1.13: Cathexis

This is kinda a Chakotay episode, even though Robert
Beltran gets to sleep for most of it.

Star Trek Voyager - Season One, Episode Thirteen - Cathexis
Written 16/6/13

Cathexis, joining the ranks of Voyager titles made up of single, hard-to-define words (Looking at you, Parallax), is a word which describes the mental energy put upon an object by a person. It is a title that brings us an oddly tense episode which uses several tropes I usually find annoying, and I can't really decide if I like it or not. It's an episode about paranoia and trust and it could quite possibly be something terrible that's just well-executed.
   Chakotay and Tuvok come back from an away mission severely injured, with Chakotay's mind having been extracted from his body, leaving him braindead. Tom Paris sends the ship away from a nebula that they'd been trying to go into, but can't remember doing it - other people keep reporting similar things across the ship. Suspicion falls upon a moving alien parasite that seems to be posessing people and not wanting to enter the nebula. The Doctor finds that the people affected have had their brain-waves replaced by another one. Paranoia sweeps the ship; especially for Neelix, who's on full asshole-mode this week. As things turn out, there are two possessing creatures - one that's taken over Tuvok permenantly and is trying to lead Voyager into the nebula to its doom, and the disembodied mind of Chakotay, which has been trying to help them out.
     The episode's execution is as muddled as its core premise, with one producer wanting to focus on the tension of the situation and the other wanting to make the episode a study of paranoia. The result is an exploitation of the tried-and-tested Posession trope, executed in a way which is quite muddled and garbled. And yet, I did enjoy it. The beginning of the episode runs along quite nicely, building the tension consistently, and once we reach the mind-fuck "what the hell is going on?" stage it's quite fun to see Tuvok as the possessed evil guy for a change. It's rare that Voyager delivers some honest-to-god tense drama, especially with its fondness for the reset button.

Also, we never see this haircut before or after this episode.

     An entertaining diversion came in the first appearance of a strange subplot surrounding Janeway's favourite Holonovel, wherin she takes on the role of a governess in a 19th Century manor. This storyline pops up for a while into the second season, but it unfortunately doesn't get to develop into much. It was originally supposed to be introduced in Eye of the Needle, and it feels as out-of-place here as it does there. It did perhaps have a minor connection to the episode's theme of paranoia, as the Lady of the House is suspicious of Janeway's intentions. But that's ridiculously tenuous, even for me.
     So, while its tension wasn't bound together with its plot, Cathexis was a decent outing. I had to call a little bullshit on the whole "Chakotay's flying mind" stuff, but otherwise the episode provided a few nice surprises and it ran together in a way that early Voyager doesn't tend to do very often. It lacked focus a little, and if it was really attempting to focus on paranoia I think I'd have put the odd beginning subplot somewhere else, but at this stage in the game you have to take what you can get.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: All around me are familiar aliens, worn out plot points, worn out Faces.

Review: Lost 1.21: The Greater Good

Essam is a little pissed when he discovers Sayid's lie.

Lost - Season One, Episode Twenty-One - The Greater Good
Written 10/6/13

The arc surrounding Boone's death forces Lost to become a show where actions have definite consequences. The Greater Good is the reverb of the events of last week, taking stock of the characters affected and how it impacts the deceptions that our characters hold. It is a new and exciting brand of storytelling that Lost is making great use of, tying multiple characters into a rich blend of tension, character development and anticipation of what's to come.
     Locke turns up at Boone's funeral and explains what happens, to varying levels of belief. Despite pouring his soul out to Shannon, she's still pissed off (more so than I think she really should be) and basically tells Sayid to do his thing. Sayid is more rational; he has Locke take him to the plane, where he confirms his story. In order to gain Sayid's trust, Locke confides that it was he that knocked him out all those weeks ago. Sayid returns and tells a resting Jack that he believes him, but Shannon still doesn't and she tries to kill Locke with a gun from the case, only to be stopped just in time by Sayid. As return for saving his life, he then asks Locke to take him to the Hatch.
     In the past, we find a rather dark sequence to explain Sayid's presence in Sydney. He's cornered at Heathrow by a CIA agent and her Aussie mate, who tell him that one of his old schoolmates, Essam, has become part of a terrorist cell in Sydney that has stolen 300 pounds of C4 explosive. They want to catch him in the act, and in return they will tell him where Nadia lives and prevent her from being deported to Iraq. He goes into the cell and gains Essam's trust, having to at length convince Essam to go through with his matyrdom. When Sayid reveals his plan and tells Essam to try to get away, Essam shoots himself. The CIA give him a plane ticket to LA, but he picks the next day's flight in order to have time to bury Assam, leading him to Flight 815.

Locke has no idea about decent timing.

     I find Sayid and Locke's interactions in this episode to be really interesting, with Sayid the master interrogator and Locke the master deceiver. They work very well off of one another, and there's this dynamic level of trust and mistrust that runs through their relationship that makes everything wonderfully unpredictable. Of anyone to force Locke to reveal the secrets of the Hatch, Sayid really is the perfect candidate, especially as he has that cool demeanor to him and we can see from both he and Locke's development that they're fundamentally opposite. Sayid has a lot of things that he wants to make up for in his life, whereas Locke is all about taking back his life from his own misfortune. In this episode their roles are reversed, which is what charges their scenes.
     It's a real sign of Lost's confidence that a show already about an unexplained plane crash could go further and do a subplot about preparing to blow up innocent civilians in an era of history where 9/11 was stil particularly raw (although that period did last for a long time.) It's another sign thatr thais fits seamlessly into the themes of an episode that not only gives us fascinating character dynamics but that also pushes us on towards the finale in a way which maintains the tension in a remarkabley controlled manner. One more episode before the three-part finale, and I'm stoked.

Thanks.

NEXT: We see at least one of the things Kate is so guilty about in Born To Run.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Hand of Fear

Sarah is controlled by Eldrad's hand and their gaudy ring.

Doctor Who - Season 14, Story Two - The Hand of Fear
Written 3/6/13

The Hand of Fear has gained its main place in Who lore as the last episode of the Classic Series to feature Sarah-Jane Smith as a continuous companion, and after three and a half seasons her presence has really made itself known. While I never really liked anything specific about Sarah Jane's character, she had very enjoyable chemistry with Tom Baker, and in the two and a half seasons since I started looking at Classic Who again, she and Tom have been the two things I look forward to most with each story. From the perspective of someone whose first experiences with Sarah Jane came from first The Five Doctors and then in NuWho, getting to see her original stories has justified to me why so many people love her.
     The Hand of Fear as a story, however, does not betray its starring feature until the last few minutes. Instead, we're given a sotry in two distinct halves whose tone and atmosphere couldn't be more different. The first, taking up the first two episodes, feels very much like a UNIT hangover and sees a magic stone hand possessing people and causing The Doctor to go running round hospitals and nuclear power stations. The second half is much weirder and much sillier, where the episodes' main concepts spill out like angel hair pasta and it's not very clear what's going on. My cup of tea entirely then.
     The main villain of the story is the memorable Eldrad, and their (I'm going to use neutral pronouns because they're both a woman and a man at different points in the story) abilities make this quite possibly the first story that I think I would have really enjoyed as a child in a "re-enact it in the playground" kind of way. Director Lennie Mayne's odd camera angles add a wonderful sense of mystery to the first half of the story, as we're unsure of what exactly is going on even as Elisabeth Sladen does her best as a possessed Sarah. Later, when Eldrad manifests themselves, they are a remarkably complex villain who despite their ranting and raving is given just the right treatment to make us wonder whether or not they're right.

Eldrad in their female form gives us most of their complexity.

     While some may argue that the final episode on the barren planet of Katria devolves very much into silliness, I think that comes as a light relief to the first few episodes of gripping power-plant action. Not to put those episodes down, though - there are attempts made to evoke the horror of the Nuclear Threat during the Cold War, and it has moments both very effective (the head of the plant calling his wife and saying he loves her when he believes the plant is going into meltdown) and less so (the Government decide to kill the radiation-absorbing creature by firing a Nuclear Bomb at it, because logic.) It's a matter of personal taste, really.
     My apologies if this review has come off as a little rambling, but that's because of its final few minutes. Written by Sladen and Baker themselves, Sarah Jane's departure has the right amount of tragedy, the right amount of love and just the right amount of humour. There's this definite feeling of loss; the unimaginable concept that after all this time, Sarah-Jane's just gone, and she won't come back in any permenant capacity in Doctor Who. It took me back to Elisabeth Sladen's death in 2011 and underlined it painfully. But, despite that, I am still thankful that Sarah Jane's character was there through these past two and a half seasons, and I am looking forward to seeing her beginnings when this run-through ends back at Season 11.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: A slightly less rambley revisitation of The Deadly Assassin.

Review: Voyager 1.12: Heroes And Demons

The Doctor hits it off with Freya the Sheild Maiden.

Star Trek Voyager - Season One, Episode Twelve - Heroes and Demons
Written 14/6/13

This week delivers us a double whammy - a Doctor-centric episode and a holodeck episode. Holodeck episodes are generally cool because the holodeck allows the show to explore locales and characters that would otherwise be impossible in its futuristic sci-fi setting. While the cliche of "something going wrong on the Holodeck" is ever-present, this episode's use of The Doctor (for this episode calling himself Dr. Schweitzer) keeps things lively with Robert Picardo's sense of comic timing.
     Harry Kim goes missing on the Holodeck (ahem, Kim Death Count - 2) and is followed by Chakotay and Tuvok after they investigate. When it is discovered that they've been converted from matter to energy by the Holodeck's systems, The Doctor is sent into Kim's Beowulf program to attempt to discover where they've gone. Along the way he meets and forms a relationship with holodeck character Freya, and uses his hologram powers to appear like an invulnerable warrior. The Doctor discovers Grendel, the beast in the story, to have been replaced by a technobabble life-form angry at the fact that the energy it's made from has been scooped up by Voyager. The Doctor releases the life-forms, Freya sacrificing her life in the process, and the three crew members are reconstituted.
     A lot of the episode's humour comes from The Doctor's relative dryness. A later Doctor would be a lot more enthusiastic about getting in the Viking mood, but as we're in the early stages of his character development he reacts to the world of Norse legend with a kind of matter-of-factness that is mostly quite charming. The relationship with Freya, while a little too reminiscent of a hidden Women In Refrigerators for me, was at least a continuation of the feelings he appeared to share with Kes in Eye of the Needle. It was nice to see him out and about doing things instead of in his normal, claustrophobic surroundings. That I suppose is the problem with early Doctor episodes - they're mostly set in the same grey-lined set. (Most sets in Star Trek are grey; the weird architecture in Deep Space Nine is one of the reasons I love that series too.)

The Doctor is badass in order to avenge Freya's death.
(Even though by rights it's a holoprogram and he could
just switch her back on if he wanted.)

     Other than that... the episode was a tad linear. I understood that it was probably an episode used to let the main cast get on with filming some other episodes, filming the on-location scenes with Picardo at the same time as other episodes' ship scenes, but it felt a little straightforward. The problem with stories like Beowulf in the modern era is that we're used to something a little more complex than the hero arriving, getting the girl and defeating the monster. Heck, the original Beowulf is more complex than that, it's all about temptation and regret and the story ends with him killing his son who happens to be a dragon.
     I never throught I'd be criticising Heroes and Demons for that, though. Because I think I enjoy the Doctor enough that despite the relative calling-it-in nature of the plot, Picardo's natural charm and some stellar writing for The Doctor's interactions with that world made it really quite captivating. I liked that Star Trek got a chance to be all olde-worlde and that pretty much everyone involved in the Holodeck scenario got to do old-timey-times overacting, which from experience is the most fun kind of acting there is. Indeed.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Who's possessing people? How many people are getting possessed? Who will save Chakotay? We ask these questions and more in Cathexis.

Review: Lost 1.20: Do No Harm

Lost - Season One, Episode Twenty - Do No Harm
Written 9/6/13

Do No Harm shifts the show's gear-lever up to maximum as we face the first season's most intense and beautifully tragic episode, seeing the culmination of both a long-awaited event and of a more recent, more surprising one. Matthew Fox's acting and Michael Giaccino's score do everything in their power to make Boone's death as sad as is physically possible, and they jolly well manage it, too. Do No Harm seems custom built to balance just the right amount of happiness with these tragic events - not to even them out, of course, but to in comparison make the tragedy even worse.

Boone takes one for the team.

     Jack desperately tries to treat Boone, ranging from using his own blood to transfuse him to creating a make-shift guillotine in order to prepare to chop his leg off. Just as he's pouring his own blood into Boone and praying that it'll work, Jin rushes through the jungle and Sun translates that errand-running Kate has stopped to help Claire, who is now having the baby in the middle of the jungle. He sends Jin and Charlie back with the message that Kate will have to deliver it. Boone awakens before Jack prepares to amputate his leg and tells him to stop, soon after succumbing to his wounds. Claire's baby is born, and in the celebration Jack must tell Shannon of Boone's death. Later, he goes off on a hunt for Locke, whom he blames for the whole affair.
     In his flashback, whose purpose seems to be a wonderfully cute counterpoint to the main plot, Jack is getting married to Sarah, who conveniently explains via an expositional wedding rehearsal speech that he performed miraculous back surgery on her a few years ago and saved her from paralysis. He struggles to come up with his own vows, frightened of getting them wrong, but a visit from not-quite-yet-disgraced Christian helps him to channel his thoughts. At the wedding, he claims he hasn't written any vows, because he can't put down in words how much she means to him. Aww.
     Initially I thought that the focus on Jack was a little odd for Boone's last episode, but the development of Jack's main character trait in the early seasons (obsessive commitment) really works well with both of these scenarios and you can't help but feel for the poor guy as he, in the words of Christian Shephard, "isn't good at letting go" when there's little hope of Boone's survival. Had anyone else been in that situation, it would have probably been euthanasia time, considering the level of bleeding and the fact that they're on an Island in the middle of nowhere, but Jack's desperation to save him just this once ties into a deeper insecurity that we see in his flashbacks. It's really well-done character development and I think it's just marvellous.

Jack is nervous about writing his vows for wife-to-be Sarah

      The birth of Claire's baby (which fans all know as Aaron) is also a big moment in the season, with Kate's delivery forming the inception of the Kate/Claire relationship that would get so much time spent on it in the later seasons. I don't really think the baby could have been born in any other circumstances, really - the deliberate life-and-death symbolism aside, I think that its presence here allows all sources of tension to be stretched to their absolute limits, which leaves behind an episode that is powerful and memorable.
     Do No Harm was a sad episode for me, and thus as far as I'm concerned that meant that it was a qualified success. I had a lot of nasty things to say about Boone over the course of his run, but the character was beginning to grow on me in his last few episodes and this is the beginning of a looooong Lost tradition whereby the moment that a character comes to terms with their personal baggage, they get killed for their troubles. I'm going to miss Boone, but my feelings around that are less important than how excited I am as we inch ever closer to this season's finale.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Sayid gets to the bottom of whatever the fuck Locke's doing in The Greater Good.