Deep Space Nine: Episode 1 "Emissary"

For the longest time, DS9 was not available on Netflix, and I had to be content with buying as many episodes I could with whatever iTunes money I could get my hands on. My mother isn't a big fan of DS9. She says it's because of the format of the story - that it happens on a space station and not on a starship - that she doesn't like it - and because she doesn't like it, I couldn't hope for her to buy any of the seasons of the show. I honestly was prepared to start buying it for myself once I went to college. Thankfully, Netflix finally made it available for Canadian viewers and I didn't have to dish out any of what precious little money I have.

I'm reviewing the two parter pilot of DS9 for the 2017 Sci-Fi Experience, because I'm a sci-fi nerd, and Star Trek is one of my favourite sci-fi giants. I'm doing this for fun, and not for money, just saying.

DS9 opens in the midst of a terrifying battle between the Federation and the invading Borg. This episode begins during The Next Generation episode "The Best of Both Worlds", after Captain Jean-Luc Picard was kidnapped by the Borg and assimilated so they could take over the Federation. In the subsequent battle, the ship the main character of the episodes - Benjamin Sisko - served on was destroyed and he ended up losing his wife.

I know the real reason why my mother doesn't like DS9 - it's because the series takes a lot of time to focus on the Bajoran's religion and faith in "the Prophets", inter-dimensional alien beings who don't perceive time like people in the normal universe do. I like the series because it involves the Romulans a lot more than The Next Generation did, and they play more of a friendly role towards the end of the series where they're allies with the Federation.

This episode felt like a satisfying introduction to a series that lasted as long as this one did. The beginning was terribly sad, but it quickly gave way to a fascinating side of Star Trek that I look forward to seeing through to the end.

Some notes:

- DS9 starts out differently than the other shows. It starts out in the middle of the conflict between the Federation and the Borg at Wolf 359.

-Why the heck would they go into battle with ships laden with civilians? Wouldn't it be more logical to drop the civilians off before going to battle? Send the ships without civilians in first!

Star Trek: From History's Shadow

From History's Shadow. Dayton Ward. Based on the concept created by Gene Roddenberry. (Star Trek: The Original Series).  2013. Pocket Books. Pages: 427. [Source: Bought]

He heard breathing and the rustling of clothing. Muscles tensing in anticipation of a confrontation if not a full-blown firefight, Kirk stepped around the stacked containers and levelled his phaser at the figure standing in the open. It was the Vulcan, who appeared flush and disheveled. At his feet lay what could only be the particle weapon detected by Spock's tricorder.

"That is my only weapon," he said, standing in place and holding his hands away from his body. "I am not a threat. It is my counterpart who should concern you."

~~~

I've had this pocket book sitting in the data-banks of my iPad for 6 months to a year. I can't quite remember when I bought it, I just remember that I wanted to read it very badly since it sounded like it was quite exciting. And I wasn't disappointed. Did I love From History's Shadow? Yes, yes I did.

From History's Shadow starts out with the crew of the Enterprise just having returned to the 23rd Century after the whole incident with Gary Seven in the Original Series episode "Assignment: Earth". They've barely been in their century a day before a disturbance in a cargo bay has them slamming on the brakes so they can go investigate.

What exactly is causing all that fuss in the cargo bay, anyway? Turns out, Enterprise somehow gained a couple of stow-aways when it was in the 20th Century.

One of the reasons why I grabbed this book was because Mestral was in it. Mestral is a Vulcan character from the only Star Trek: Enterprise episode I've ever watched - "Carbon Creek". The reason why I like him so much is because he decided to stay on Earth after kind of falling in love with a Carbon Creek resident named Maggie. The thought that Mestral, a Vulcan, decided to stay and live amongst the human race, which at the time was extremely interested in the concept of alien invaders, is an interesting concept.

I liked the action and the cohesiveness of the plot of this story. Despite the fact that there were at least four points of view at any given time, I understood what was happening at each point and the only times I felt lost were when I returned to the story after stopping in the middle of a scene. Each and every character read like they were supposed to. Sometimes I felt that the situations weren't described as much as they could have but in every scene my imagination took over and compensated because there was enough information!

At the end of the novel, when one of the characters, a James Wainwright, is retired and old and slowly succumbing to Alzheimer's Disease, a breaking news TV spot pops up on his TV, showing a picture of a very familiar UFO. After several encounters with a similar-shaped ship which was under the command of Captain Kirk when he was in his prime, Captain Janeway's starship pulls the memories of his times chasing aliens and seeing things out-of-this-world from the depths of his mind where they had long since been buried.

What I would have liked to have seen at the end was Mestral visiting James after he saw the image of Voyager on the TV, since they had a bit of a working relationship halfway through the novel. You know, just to see how he was doing since Mestral would have hardly have changed at all. But it didn't happen. Oh well.

Note: The reader of this novel would have to be extremely well-versed in the Star Trek universe to get a lot of what happened in this novel. I just squeezed in thanks to my curiosity and due to the fact that I'm finally watching Star Trek: Voyager from the beginning.

This novel takes elements from:

• Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Assignment: Earth".
• Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday" with a cameo by Captain John Christopher.
• Star Trek: Voyager episodes "Future's End & Future's End, Part II"
• Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Carbon Creek"

Movies That Have Left Me Dissatisfied

This was something I just wanted to share, since it occurred to me that, lately, I've been subjected to certain stories that have made me want to scream with frustration. Only one novel I've read in recent memory has had this affect on me, and that was The Phantom of the Opera.

But this post is about the movies that left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, literally.

I don't really know why I wanted to make a post about it, but I guess I wanted to talk about story endings. I know that there are effective ways to end a story, but some of them end up being totally unnecessary. Really, some endings I've seen on movies have just left me frustrated and furious.

Here is a list of movies that have made me frustrated:

1. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
2. The Amazing Spiderman 2
3. Star Trek Generations
4. Maze Runner & Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
5. The Pretender: Island of the Haunted

Usually, I'm pretty tolerant about how a story is crafted, due to the fact that I'm a realist 50% of the time. Real life often doesn't allow for happy endings of "happily ever afters". So when something doesn't go perfect for the main characters, then I'm fine. Because that's realistic. Though, even though I'm fine with it, that doesn't mean that I'm happy about it, lol.

1. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

One evening, Mom was flicking through the channels when she stumbled across this movie. She went "eh, why not?" and changed to it. When I was little and I was just becoming coherent enough to play computer games (I've been playing video games since I was five - and computer games are more challenging than video games, I swear! lol) I discovered Mom's copy of the Tomb Raider CD-ROM disk. I quickly discovered that I could only make it through a quarter of the first level before I would make it to a stone bridge in this cave where I would be taken down by a couple wolves (and where exactly did those come from???) and GAME OVER would be thrown up onto the screen.

The reason why I was dissatisfied with this movie's ending: Terry had to be such a overgrown baby in the Cradle of Life. Didn't he realize that if he took Pandora's Box, he could, eventually, be the last living man on Earth (if he opened the box) or would eventually become a victim of the plague contained within the box (if he sold it)? I was really disappointed that he was greedy enough to try to push past Lara in the Cradle so she was forced to shoot him. I really liked Lara and Terry as a pair.

2. The Amazing Spiderman 2

I really enjoyed the first Amazing Spiderman movie, so I thought I would love this movie just as much. At the beginning, it was exactly what I expected, but then it quickly spiralled into something less than what I was hoping for. I sympathized for Max Dillon/Electro - one of the villains.

The reason why I was dissatisfied with this movie's ending: Gwen's death. The subsequent twisting of Harry Osbourne's mind because of his inherited disease so that he was eventually so desperate to live that he labeled his childhood friend - Peter Parker - his enemy. And he killed Gwen! I fully believe that Peter should have been able to save Gwen despite how intense his battle with Harry was, but the writers decided that she had to die instead of actually getting to fulfil her dreams. (Oh, and if you can't figure out why she died when Peter clearly caught her - well, the sudden stop caused by Peter catching her with his webbing snapped her back).

3. Star Trek Generations

I like this movie. I loved how it brought the original Star Trek series and The Next Generation together through finding Captain James T. Kirk in the Nexus. One thing I didn't like about it, though, was the fact that Data just had to swear as the Enterprise-D's saucer-section crash-landed. Was that exactly necessary? I thought people had almost completely discarded the instinctive need to swear? I know Data was trying out his emotion-chip, but still--

The reason why I was dissatisfied with this movie's ending: Captain Kirk's death. Probably every Star Trek fan agrees with me - Kirk's death was unnecessary. He had plenty of time to get off of that catwalk before it fell. I knew that he was out there distracting Soran so that his rocket would blow up on him, but Kirk could have started running for solid ground as the rocket exploded, or he could have run over to somewhere else. I really wanted to see how Kirk would have reacted to the 24th Century.

4. Maze Runner & Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

Where can I begin? For one thing, I really don't like dystopian films or novels, but the action in the first movie had me intrigued. I got to like the characters, even though dread throbbed in the pit of my stomach. I was intrigued from the beginning of the first movie because I wondered if these kids were on some other planet, and were being dropped off by machines left over from the human race and that the human race no longer existed. But then I quickly learned that, no, the teenagers were not on another planet, but were actually on Earth, and Earth has been hit by some sort of catastrophe caused by the sun?? I'm not sure since it's only called "The Flare". Apparently there was a massive solar flare that must have weakened every human's immune system that a plague of epic proportions swept through the population of the planet. I didn't like The Scorch Trials at all, and spent the time my family watched it building Lego as it droned on in the background.

The reason why I was dissatisfied with these movies' ending: I admit, I liked the action in these movies, but the endings left me with bitterness to end all bitterness in my mouth. With the first movie, when they killed Chuck off - they didn't have to kill Chuck off! But probably it happened in the book (I haven't read the book). The ending of the second movie frustrated with how Teresa betrayed her friends for W.C.K.D. even though it was made very apparent that W.C.K.D. is evil. Really, Teresa??!?

5. The Pretender: Island of the Haunted

The Pretender has to be one of my favourite cat & mouse-themed TV shows of all time. In each episode, Jarod - the main character, the "pretender" - goes about helping someone who was wronged, like a security guard who was killed by a couple of police officers who broke into the bank he was guarding and made it look like he was the criminal. Or the family of an pilot who was accused of being drunk when he was flying a jet (so it crashed and he died) so they couldn't get his pension. And all the while he teases and taunts the organization who kidnapped him when he was a kid and exploited his genius for their research. More often than not, I wish the Pretender had gone on for more than four seasons and two movies.

The reason why I was dissatisfied with this movie's ending: This is the second movie of the two movies produced to help tie up the TV series since the Pretender was cancelled, leaving it at a very tense and suspenseful situation. The reason why I was dissatisfied with the ending of this episode was the fact that it revealed why Jarod was taken by the Centre when he was a child. He was taken because of a prophecy. But that's not entirely the whole reason why I wasn't happy with ending - viewers were left with Jarod still on the run. What I wanted was for the entirety of the Centre to be gone, destroyed, so Jarod could settle down, start a family, and find his mother, father, and sister. After all, wasn't that his goal and was what he had been striving for the entire show?

~~~

Now, those are the movies, that I can remember, that have frustrated with their endings. They leave me going into overdrive with my thoughts. I overthink about it until, ultimately, I have to abandon it knowing I can't change them. So all I can do it fume quietly about them, lol.

But every writer has a reason for an ending that may annoy me, but sometimes those endings really don't make sense, or entirely unnecessary.

What movies have driven you up the wall, or driven you crazy?

Star Trek - Green Lantern: The Spectrum War

Star Trek - Green Lantern: The Spectrum War (Star Trek reboot movies; Green Lantern comics). Mike Johnson; Angel Hernandez; Alejandro Sanchez. Based on the movies directed by J.J. Abrams; based on the comics published by DC Comics. 2016. IDW/DC Comics. Pages: 140. [Source: Bought]

The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise meets the Green Lantern Corps for the first time in an all-new adventure that spans the cosmos! Kirk and Spock make a most unusual discovery on a lost world... igniting events that will change the fate of empires!

- back cover

~~~~

There is something about crossovers that tickles me pink (for a lack of better turn of phrase). Ever since my mom and dad introduced me to the Star Trek reboot movie in 2013 (shortly before its sequel, Into Darkness, came out in theaters), I've been an avid fan - despite the fact that this version of Kirk sleeps with a different girl whenever he has a chance to have shore leave. Which I can. Not. Stand.

Anyway, I waited patiently for the day where they would collect and bind all six issues of this story arc into one book so I could go and buy it. I find that it's just too pricey for me to go and buy every issue digitally. I almost have to pay the same amount for a digital copy as I would to get a physical one! And this omnibus edition (wow, new word for me), is gorgeous. And sleek. And sports that awesome new comic and/or book smell every time I open it.

And yes, I got it yesterday when I went to the city.

This is new for me, reviewing a comic book. I've never reviewed one before.

What really caught my eye about this crossover series was the fact that I'm both a Star Trek and a Green Lantern fan, so much so that I created a half Romulan, half human fan character and a human Green Lantern (her superhero name at the moment is "Girl Lantern"). I've drawn pictures of them both, but the images are lost on my flash drive somewhere.

But to get to the review - I just need to explain one more thing...

In the Green Lantern universe, emotions are personified. Someone at DC took the idea and ran with it I guess. And each emotion has a colour.

Green - will

Violet - love

Blue - hope

Indigo - compassion

Red - hate

Orange - greed

Yellow - fear

But in this comic, it incorporates two more colours...

Black - death

White - life

Life and death aren't exactly emotions, though, but I haven't followed the comics at all, so I have really no idea what's going on with those. The only Green Lantern "experiance" I've got is through Green Lantern: The Animated Series. 

The art that makes up this comic is exquisite - the characters look like the actors who portrayed them. They look realistic, to the point that if they stepped off the page and into my bedroom, they would look like real people and not cartoons. I enjoyed it immensely, and the colours were so bright and wonderful. The fluidity of the characters on the page looked realistic and not goofy (like a certain other Star Trek series I know... *cough*Star Trek: The Next Generation - Doctor Who crossover*cough**cough*watercolour comic?!?!*cough*)

The only qualms I have with the comic is that Lt. Uhura uses the Lord's name in vain when she is presented with her pink ring. There also may be a few uses of h***, and maybe even d**n. And the pink lantern/Star Sapphire's suit was so tight, and the pale star on the chest of her suit made me think for a moment that she was on the verge of baring it all - until I compared the colour of the suit to her face's skin tone. Then it was a false alarm. Oh, and if any of you don't like seeing reanimated corpses, well, this may not be the comic for you...

Other than that, it's a pretty good afternoon read. I don't want to say anything more, lest I spoil it for you if you haven't had the chance to read it. Right now you can purchase it from Indigo.ca for $22.76 Canadian. And it's obviously cheaper on the IDW or comixology app.

Now, I will leave you. But before I go, here is my favourite art that can be found at the back of the comic:

Star Trek: The Rings of Time by Greg Cox

The Rings of Time. (Star Trek: The Original Series). Greg Cox. Based on the TV series created by Gene Roddenberry. 2012. Pocket Books. Pages: 304. [Source: Bought.]

 

This was rather interesting. I liked it, and I got to learn about some of Star Trek history.

 

In this adventure, you're introduced to a crew of four original characters - Colonel Shaun Christopher, son of US Force Captain John Christopher (which we've met in the The Original Series episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday"), Alice Fontana, Dr. Marcus O'Herlihy, and Zoe Querez . Throughout the novel, you switch back and forth between Shaun's point of view and Kirk's.

 

It was an engaging read, and it had quite a few laugh-worthy moments. But there are a few things I didn't like about it.

 

In the 23rd Century, it seems the need to swear has disappeared almost entirely. There's only a few times where words that have been said have ever jumped to the PG-13 level (such as in the movies, and books). In The Rings of Time, because it jumps between the 23rd and 21st Centuries, you go from having calm waters (in terms of expletives), to an almost raging river in 2020. Fontana is definitely the most vocal in that respect, but thankfully she never uttered (or the author never revealed) anything that would have made me flinch if I was watching it on TV.

 

The second thing that got me was the fact that Kirk gave into temptation when he was locked in an airlock with Zoe. As you can suspect, they got a little handsy, so I skipped the scene. Thankfully, it wasn't very long. Really, Greg?! We didn't need to see that!

 

In the end, all I could do was facepalm with a sigh, because its Kirk we're talking about. The most notorious ladies man of the Star Trek franchise. This is why I prefer Picard over Kirk.

 

I enjoyed the novel because of the suspense most of all. I love a good tense adventure. There was certainly a lot of Spock in the novel, which I liked because, you know, I'm a big Spock fangirl. Again, I wished it was a little longer, but it can't be helped - I didn't write it! lol.

 

The Rings of Time gives a brief peek into the life of Earthlings and how the societies of Earth were functioning before the Vulcans arrived on the scene. Oh, and before World War III decimated most of the planet.