The Good Old Faith in the New

There are a number of ways 1955's Escapade is eerily resonant to-day: it features a writer whose aggressively proselytised philosophy for peace continually has the opposite of its intended effect, it features a school shooting, and it features a rumination on the idea that it'll be children who advance humanity in the cause of peace after chucking the paralysing systems of the old. The resonances aren't always for the best, though, as the decades following the film's release emphasis the hopeless naivete of its ideas and the sentimentality in their expressions. But some of the dialogue is really clever and performances by leads John Mills, Yvonne Mitchell, and Alastair Sim elevate the material considerably.

Mills and Mitchell play Mr. and Mrs. Hampden, a couple with three children who attend a boarding school where the headmaster, Dr. Skillingworth, is played by Alastair Sim. The film really isn't a comedy--maybe it was intended to be but it's never especially funny. But Sim here is playing a slightly more contemplative version of headmaster characters he played in comedies throughout the 50s.

In the Hampden household, the kids are kept awake by the noisy arguments from downstairs in the meetings for pacifism organised by Mr. Hampden. Constantly in a rage and eager to hold forth on politics at all times, he barely seems to notice that Mrs. Hampden is growing distant and cold. He notices but doesn't quite have the presence of mind to pay attention when she laughs after he's held forth on the importance for women to feel like they're considered valuable contributors to conversation.

Meanwhile, at school, Skillingworth is trying to uncover some kind of conspiracy among the boys. When eventually one of the boys shoots a professor it turns out to be a diversion from their real intent--the episode is played for laughs in a way you can only have in a movie made in a time and place where school shootings are rare or non-existent. It turns out the kids have a really improbable, and improbably altruistic, plan that plays off the fact that one of the Hampden kids is named Icarus, a creative decision from the screenwriters that feels increasingly too broad as the film goes on.

As wrong as the movie ends up being in so many things, its basic intentions and ideals are all the more appreciable. This scene has an especially bittersweet quality to-day:

Apparently Escapade was never released on VHS or DVD. You can watch the whole movie on YouTube here.

Intergalactic Women's Day

After pointing out the scarcity of female writers on Star Wars: Rebels a couple days ago--the series had only one, Nicole Duboc, who wrote two and a half episodes (the series finale also had Lucasfilm producer Kiri Hart credited alongside five male writers)--I thought to-day, being International Women's Day, would be a good time to assemble a list of outstanding episodes from various Sci-Fi/Fantasy series written by women. Here are four, listed chronologically:

Star Trek, "The Enterprise Incident" by D.C. Fontana

Even the original Star Trek series had more female writers than Rebels, among them one of the best of any gender, D.C. Fontana. She wrote several episodes and worked on Next Generation as well. "The Enterprise Incident", a third season episode of the Original Series, also featured one of the best female characters on the series. The Romulan Commander played by Joanne Linville was essential, coming off as a capable and cagey rival for the Enterprise crew in an episode that defined many aspects of the Romulans as a people for the Original Series and its descendants.

Doctor Who, Englightenment by Barbara Clegg

This 1983 story was the first Doctor Who serial since 1966's The Ark to have a credited female writer and the first to have a woman as the sole credited writer. It was also directed by a woman, Fiona Cumming, who took Barbara Clegg's keen scripts about an interstellar boat race between omnipotent alien aristocrats and gave them some of the most memorably fantastical visuals from the series' history.

Farscape, "A Clockwork Nebari" by Lily Taylor

Lily Taylor's second season script brought a satisfying expansion on the backstory for series' favourite, Chiana (Gigi Edgley). We learn how she and her brother escaped from their homeworld's oppressive system of behavioural modification (thus the title's reference to A Clockwork Orange). Filled with Farscape's usual visual splendour and amazing practical effects, this episode was an excellent showcase for the series' most fascinating species and one of its best characters.

Star Wars Clone Wars, the Dathomir arc by Katie Lucas

There's no mystery about how George's daughter, Katie, got a job working on Clone Wars but she did more than hold her own among the other writers. Taking the world established in the old Expanded Universe novel The Courtship of Princess Leia, Katie Lucas gave audiences a great origin story for the popular character, Asajj Ventress, by creating one of Clone Wars', and the Star Wars universe's, most memorable places and cultures. It's a shame Ventress doesn't seem to be around anymore but, then again, maybe it wouldn't be the same without Katie Lucas around writing for her anyway.

Twitter Sonnet #1091

In limits red the body bounds a ghost.
Horizon's tree presents a brocc'li great.
A forest pooled to pour a paper host.
With cherry limbs a spider laces bait.
In stocking minds a footless shape ascends.
Unlikely moons absorb the sun and Earth.
The fire text in forests late appends.
A fading ship in iron halls was birthed.
Unchosen lamps discreetly lead the lost.
A swaying branch amassed a soil path.
Above, some walls of leaves were lightly tossed.
As rocket crews would take a sonic bath.
Rerouted veins deploy the ore to Oz.
The toughest clouds are really made of gauze.

Dekpa Remembers Dahomey and John Milton

A new chapter of my infrequently updated web comic, Dekpa and Deborah, is now online. Inspiration for this chapter came from literary critic William Empson's 1961 book on Paradise Lost called Milton's God. This bit:

" . . . the poem is not good in spite of but especially because of its moral confusions, which ought to be clear in your mind when feeling its power. I think it horrible and wonderful; I regard it as like Aztec or Benin sculpture, or to come nearer home the novels of Kafka, and am rather suspicious of any critic who claims not to feel anything so obvious."

I came across this while I was reading about both Milton and West African Vodun for my comic. It was a slightly weird coincidence to come across something about Benin sculpture in a book about Milton.

Enjoy.

Baby's First Star Wars?

Another chapter of the Star Wars saga drew to a close last night with the series finale of Star Wars Rebels. Coming from much of the same creative team, notably showrunner Dave Filoni, as the beloved Clone Wars, Rebels had its good points but suffered from greater restrictions with regards to depictions of violence due to Disney's apparent desire to market this show to kids too young for the kinds of dismemberment and killing seen in A New Hope. I'm guessing two to three year-olds? Maybe that's also why the writers were comfortable leaving so many plot holes in last night's movie length finale--consisting of two episodes, one a half hour, one over forty minutes. But many of the people who claim The Last Jedi makes no sense or is badly written also happen to be strong advocates of Rebels, a fact perhaps related to the series' much more male-centric stories. The finale certainly doubled down on that premise presenting a world where female characters are motivated by their devotion to boys who would be obnoxious or unremarkable in real life and male characters who are also driven by their devotion to other male characters. And at the centre of everyone's universe is a charmless boy named Ezra Bridger.

Spoilers after the screenshot

Being so used to Clone Wars, which achieved appeal for all ages by drawing inspiration from old adventure movies and serials, it hadn't occurred to me until recently to try to see Rebels from the perspective of what must be its only intended audience: very, very young children. In this context, Taylor Gray's performance as the character's voice actor, which I always found so gratingly whiny, might have been sympathetic to those whose primary means of communicating with other people had been crying for most or all of their short lives. Ezra's expressions of emotional and physical needs are met selflessly and tirelessly by maternal female characters, Hera (Vanessa Marshall) and Sabine (Tiya Sircar).

There'd been a couple episodes, notably in season two, that had focused on Hera, her backstory, and her motivation, written by the series' only female writer, Nicole Duboc. This stood in contrast to the multiple female writers employed on Clone Wars, none of whom were among the several carried over for Rebels. I'm not one of those people who thinks men can't write women and vice versa--I think Rey is a good character, after all. But maybe if there'd been some more gender diversity in the Rebels writing staff it would've helped the show achieve the wider perspective portrayed on Clone Wars. On the other hand, maybe a narrower perspective was precisely the point on Rebels. With Disney going all in on female protagonists in the feature films, maybe Rebels was intended to make sure they also captured the audience uncomfortable with that. There was an attempt made in season three to foreground Sabine a bit more by giving her a sword and involving her people, the Mandelorians, but she never connected the way Ahsoka did on Clone Wars. Partly this is due to Rebels' generally inconsistent character development for nearly all characters, male or female. Ezra, who began season four providing comic relief with broad Jar Jar-ish slapstick, was abruptly arced into being a canny strategist in the finale.

Here a shot, cribbing from the popular Darth Vader action sequence from the end of Rogue One, displays Ezra's deliberate theatricality to inspire terror in stormtroopers who attack the Rebel base on Lothal, Ezra's homeworld. Not that any Imperial need worry; much like the cartoon tiger on Walking Dead, these wolves can distinguish friend from foe and can take prisoners.

Some stormtroopers tossed off-screen presumably died but not so explicitly that young children will get any idea there's anything ugly about killing. The finale does feature a sequence where, Ezra's brilliant plan apparently not accounting for the possibility of Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) using the firepower of his Star Destroyers, many civilians are probably killed by turbolaster fire, though no deaths are shown. The only character who definitely dies is one of the aged clone troopers (Dee Bradley Baker).

These characters, who were the titular clones of Clone Wars, are brought in to help the Rebels in their attack on Lothal's Imperial base along with another carry over from the old series, the pirate Hondo (Jim Cummings), who now expresses a zealous devotion to Ezra. Why this shady character, who seems a prototype for Benicio del Toro's character in Last Jedi, has suddenly found himself so committed to the Rebel cause isn't explained. Maybe it's something Disney has left open for tie-in media. Many of the plot holes in last night's episodes made me wonder if the company has taken a page from EA, the video game company who has gained notoriety lately by generating profits in Star Wars video games via charging for extensive downloadable content. Any plot hole or unexplained element could be a canon book or comic Disney can sell.

A good candidate for such tie in media would be the bounty hunter Ketsu Onyo, Sabine's former partner introduced in season one. Voiced by Gine Torres, she's a very welcome boost to the show's otherwise mostly lacklustre acting talent. She's brought in for the finale with even less explanation than Hondo, her conflicted feelings about the cause Sabine had subscribed to apparently having been tidily resolved at some point.

The finale also brought back Mart Mattin (Zachary Gordon). A character introduced in a second season episode with peculiar emphasis, intended to be a charming rogue type, he was then oddly shunted to a non-speaking background part for season four until the last episode when he's sent off to enlist the aid of the giant space squids Ezra had befriended in season two.

How Mart is able to lure the beasts to Lothal without Ezra's Force ability to communicate with the animals is left unexplained.

Ezra, meanwhile, has delivered himself to Thrawn in exchange for Thrawn holding fire on the civilian population. Ezra derides Thrawn for stealing art he didn't "earn", an ironic statement coming from Ezra who started the series as a street thief and who is currently in league with the pirate Hondo. Thrawn then takes Ezra to the hold of the Star Destroyer where there's stashed a fragment of the Jedi Temple which in a previous episode had allowed Ezra to reach back in time to save Ahsoka Tano. Here Emperor Palaptine appears via hologram, voiced by Ian McDiarmid himself, who's so good you almost don't notice what he's doing doesn't make any sense. It seems similar to Palpatine's tempting of Anakin to go to the Dark Side by promising the power to save Padme from death but no connexion to the Dark Side is made when the Emperor shows Ezra a portal through which his dead parents can be brought back to life. What exactly was the plan? "Phase 1: Get Ezra on the ship. Phase 2: Show him how he can resurrect his parents. Phase 3: Something something Dark Side." In any case, Ezra refuses to save them because "letting go" is more important than saving their lives. I'm not sure how the two to three year-old target audience would take that.

In the end, the show moves forward in time to after Return of the Jedi when we see Hera has given birth to a child she'd conceived with Kanan. Apparently she and Kanan had had sex before she told Kanan she loved him. Was Disney promoting the idea of a kinky, purely physical relationship between Kanan and Hera? Well, given the target audience I suppose it's more likely we're to assume a Loth Stork delivered the baby.

Ahsoka shows up with no explanation as to what she'd been up to during the original trilogy (something else for potential tie-in media) and she and Sabine, who finally has a decent haircut, rush off to find Ezra, wherever he is, now that the war is over, fervently clinging to the belief that he's survived somehow. It's too bad Lorca didn't have friends like that on Star Trek: Discovery. Personally I hope they only find that Thrawn is still alive.

And the Naked Gold Man Goes to . . .

A movie I actually liked won Best Picture and Best Director at last night's Oscars. That hasn't happened in ten years. So congratulations to Guillermo del Toro, a very fine director and an incredibly nice guy. As is often the case, the Oscar seems more an award for a career than for the specific film: The Shape of Water is a really good movie but I thought Crimson Peak was even better and of course Devil's Backbone is a classic. The first Hellboy remains one of my favourite comic book movies. I'm glad to think this'll help make it easier for Del Toro to get decent budgets for his weirdest ideas.

As usual, I didn't watch the ceremony. I'm not a big fan of awards ceremonies in general--I tend to agree with Major Briggs on Twin Peaks: "Achievement is its own reward. Pride obscures it." The Academy Awards in particular have long been especially difficult to watch for me though maybe artists in the film industry who plumb the depths of their rawest emotions and routinely bare them for take after take need this kind of thing for catharsis. If I get some decent movies out of it I don't mind. I was happy to see Roger Deakins' work for Blade Runner 2049 was recognised--again, likely an acknowledgement of a career, though Blade Runner 2049 is last year's most under-appreciated film.

I didn't see most of the Best Picture nominees this year. I saw Shape of Water, Dunkirk, and Get Out. Certainly I think Shape of Water is the best of those three--the other two I thought were both good but overrated. I'm not sure I feel like seeing Lady Bird--I wasn't really impressed by Frances Ha, a film Greta Gerwig co-wrote and starred in, and I tend to feel like she's one of those people promoted by the Castigliane Brothers from Mulholland Drive. I thought the trailers for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri looked horrible with kind of a cheaply smug political attitude but some of the reviews I've seen make it sound like the film's pushed some real buttons so I might check it out.

Jimmy Kimmel seems to be a really popular host. I haven't had much exposure to him, I've never watched his show and I haven't thought he was particularly funny whenever he was on Howard Stern. I hated The Man Show though I thought this article in The Atlantic, which rehashed some of the worst moments of The Man Show a few days before the Oscars, was unintentionally hilarious. "Forgiving Jimmy Kimmel" it's called. Like families across the country sat down at the kitchen table and carefully weighed the moral implications of accepting Jimmy Kimmel onto our television sets.

Twitter Sonnet #1090

A zoom reshapes a plushy hat to big.
Forgotten rows of fabric eyes decide.
In judgement like a dusty station rig.
The pocket watch ordains the countryside.
Arranged in jelly rows was harvest dough.
In blinking lights the phone at last amends.
A single colour shook the light to go.
On purple webs the passenger depends.
Hotels with secret monocles adorned.
A house with confidential glasses graced.
An inn with rubber goggles slyly worn.
Motels at night with shades upon their face.
Linoleum's a darkened space enclosed.
To bring the lives of silver fish to close.

Too In the Know to be on the Inside

In the sometimes unspoken but often crystal clear social hierarchies of the city, the private detective emerged as the go-between archetype in the 19th century; the cool, independent intellect whose job was to cut through the bullshit. Mainstream audiences enjoyed a black lead as such a detective in 1971 with Shaft. While race issues in crime films had been approached in a more realistic manner in Sidney Poitier vehicles like In the Heat of the Night and No Way Out, Shaft is unabashedly pulp detective entertainment, creating a cool fantasy world version of New York City. Our guide in this world is a hero who doesn't quite side with any faction but has more sympathy for some than for others. He also has a singular, and singularly badass, fashion sense.

Based on a novel in which the character of John Shaft is a white man, the film stars Richard Roundtree as the iconic African American version of the character. I love all the location shots of New York in this film, they provide a terrific glimpse into the time and place, but this film doesn't present the rough realism of Mean Streets or Taxi Driver. Shaft is referred to as a "Spade"*, seemingly a reference to Dashiell Hammett's detective character, but I was reminded much more of Raymond Chandler for several reasons, among them Shaft's ease and amenability to finding romantic companions.

It could be taken as reflecting the stereotype of male black libido but somehow always running across beautiful women who want him physically is very Philip Marlowe. Unlike Marlowe, though, Shaft has a girlfriend (Gwenn Mitchell) who is either blissfully ignorant of or doesn't care about women like the white brunette (Margaret Warncke) Shaft sleeps with at one point in the film. We don't learn much about how Shaft's wife feels--the film won't win any awards for Feminism, there aren't even any female characters as well developed as those typically found in a Chandler novel.

A slightly anachronistic 1940s style of clothing on the cops and mobsters underlines the influence of mid-century pulp even further. Shaft's friendly with one white police detective (Charles Cioffi) who begs to be let in on the secrets current in black circles. There are apparently no black detectives like the one Poitier played a few years earlier in In the Heat of the Night and the film presents a city where lines are very clearly drawn for race. As a private detective, Shaft exists in between worlds. He has some cache in the straight white world of law enforcement but he has currency in the world of the black mob and street culture. But his in-between status makes him suspect in both worlds, too.

He's hired by a black mobster named Bumpy (Moses Gunn) whose daughter (Sherri Brewer), little more than a MacGuffin with legs, we eventually learn is being held hostage by Italian mob. To fight them, Shaft realises he needs an army. He finds this in an underground black militant group headed by his old friend, Ben (Christopher St. John).

This was early days for the Black Panthers and groups like them so it might have been a little easier to portray such a group as a sort of racially progressive Baker Street Irregulars, ready to mobilise in the cause of community safety that the white police force implicitly won't provide. Shaft isn't part of their team technically but he's consistently forced by circumstances to work with them throughout the film, his sympathy very clearly being with them. They provide a clear "good guy" faction faction for fighting the Italian "bad guys", the film's story a much more crowd pleasing adventure tale than the great but weirder and more complicated Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song released the same year. Roundtree's charisma is great and the music by Isaac Hayes deserves its legendary status. *EDIT: I’ve been informed “spade” is also a racial slur.

How Green was My Peladon

I think 1974's Monster of Peladon is the greenest Doctor Who serial. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. But you've got green Alpha Centauri, green Ice Warriors, and the Doctor's wearing a green smoking jacket, green shirt, and green bow tie. Did they plan on having so much green? Part of me thinks not because, although I like this serial, I suspect the Ice Warriors were brought in halfway through when people realised the plot occupying the first three episodes didn't have legs.

The sequel to Curse of Peladon from two years earlier, the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) returns to the planet Peladon hoping to visit his old friend the King, only to find the TARDIS has carried him 50 years further into Peladon's future than his last visit. The former king's daughter, Thalira (Nina Thomas), is on the throne now, trying to keep the peace between the world's powerful religious order headed by Chancellor Ortron (Frank Gatliff) and miners who are protesting the world's membership in an intergalactic union of planets called the "Federation" (no relation to Star Trek's Federation).

There's certainly a lot of potential in this premise. The story aired two years after a 1972 miners strike in the UK and disagreements among the miners in Monster of Peladon about the amount of violence they ought to employ seems like it was specifically meant to address a very real contemporary issue. With Queen Thalira being the first female ruler, one could draw comparisons to Margaret Thatcher and the miner's strike that occurred ten years later. One could even draw comparisons to Brexit with the political conflict between the miners' belief that the Federation is only exploiting Peladon's resources and the belief of the ruling class in the broader benefits of belonging to an intergalactic community.

Maybe writer Brian Hayles decided he bit off more than he could chew--once the conflict is established with the usual business of the Doctor and companion being captured, escaping, pleading for sanity and reason, and concocting desperate plans and solutions, there's not a who lot of insight into the conflict. The Doctor's companion this time is Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen, with whom Pertwee didn't seem to have as much chemistry as he had with Katy Manning or Caroline John. Sarah Jane would really shine later, in Tom Baker's second season, but Sladen does give a decent performance in Monster of Peladon--I was particularly impressed by her ability to mime eating.

There's an interesting scene where Sarah Jane tries to encourage the Queen to be more proactive by telling her about Women's Lib, after which the monarch tries to be a little more assertive in controlling the Chancellor. It's one of those moments that makes the recent Christmas special trying to portray Doctor Who as being so very sexist back in the day seem ridiculous.

But all this is pushed aside by the big green men from Mars, the Ice Warriors, led by Azaxyr (Alan Bennion), who I'm apparently not alone in believing was an influence on Darth Vader.

Imagine you only saw the last two episodes of Monster of Peladon, and then imagine no other Star Wars movie but A New Hope exists. In the Doctor Who serial you have this weird, imposing commander who makes a sudden dramatic appearance, wearing a tapered helmet/mask at all times that no-one questions--we also never see him remove the mask--with tinted lenses over the eyes. Then there's also the cape and the odd breathing, his interactions with space royalty and ambassadors--his calling Alpha Centauri "ambassador" while accusing him/her/it of being a traitor, which we know is true, seems like a dry run for Vader's confrontation with Leia at the beginning of A New Hope.

It could be a coincidence, I suppose.

Anyway, with the Ice Warriors there the plot becomes a lot simpler with all the Peladon factions uniting with Alpha Centauri against the Ice Warriors' illegal faction of the Federation and the main issues of the drama in the first three of six episodes are essentially forgotten. Well, it's a fun story in any case.

The Persistence of Ruin

Texture is the star of Andrei Tarkovsky's 1983 film Nostalghia, particularly the textures of old plaster and mossy stones. One might assume from the title and the plot that this is a film about longing for a vanished past but Tarkovsky creates such a beautiful and intensely vital present of ruins that every character's desire for the past or attempt to create a potential future seems like a tragic and frightening madness.

This was Tarkovsky's first film made in Italy and there seems to be an autobiographical element to the plot. Andrei (Oleg Yankovsky) is a Russian writer visiting Italy to do research on the life of an 18th century Russian composer named Pavel Sosnovsky. Andrei misses Russia and we periodically see his flashbacks in black and white to what is presumably Russia and a woman that is presumably his wife (Patrizia Terreno). The film begins with this beautiful black and white composition:

From this shot we go to the first set in the present and Tarkovsky brilliantly gives us colour footage that at first seems to be black and white, being of a foggy grey hillside.

A car drifts by and Andrei emerges along with his interpretor, Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano). Throughout the film as Andrei roams the ruins, thinking of Russia, his wife, or a madman he meets named Domenico (Erland Josephson), Eugenia exhibits increasing frustration at her inability to seduce him. An incredibly beautiful woman, likely not used to wholesale rejection, her feelings manifest as aggression and hatred.

Characteristically of Tarkovsky, his camera doesn't seem especially concerned with the desires of his characters. Tracking shots drift over characters and then past them at a steady pace, revealing the beauty of crumbling, flooded structures while the disembodied dialogue continues. The human mind being composed of its desires and memories is curiously dwarfed by the insistent reality of mute walls and leaking roofs.

The movie has two really startling moments, one of them being a deeply disturbing climax involving Domenico. These moments punctuate the ruminating pace of the rest of the film, the loudest rebukes to any human attempt to build on the inexorable erosion and growth of nature.

Twitter Sonnet #1089

The map could make no proper spike or spear.
To find a line to digits draw the string.
The armour conf'rence clangs while drawing near.
The choirs merge inventing ways to sing.
The plaster grins at thoughts to take a form.
Beside the siren rock's a stable boat.
A tipping toy reverts for magnets warm.
A painted magma livens common moat.
A feather room contained replacement lights.
Above a water stage the land awaits.
On either side of bird and bug were heights.
A sky behind the blinds at last abates.
Persistence lives in pictured changing stones.
A candle brought a galley made of bones.

Data Knows Best

Maybe one day your kids who grew up on Star Trek Discovery's hairless Klingons and emotional Vulcans will stumble across an old episode of The Next Generation or The Original Series. Naturally, your child might have questions. How do you deal with it? Over the past couple nights I revisited a decent consecutive pair of episodes from Star Trek: The Next Generation's fifth season that dealt with some of the challenges of parenting, "New Ground" and "Hero Worship".

"New Ground" centres on Worf (Michael Dorn) and his reunion with his son, Alexander (Brian Bonsall), while "Hero Worship" involves Data (Brent Spiner) finding himself inadvertently becoming a surrogate father figure to a recently orphaned child (Joshua Harris). I was thirteen years old when these episodes first aired and I remember hating them and all other episodes like them, which probably isn't surprising since they're both clearly aimed at adults with kids. In both cases the child characters are defined more by the enigmas of their behaviours than by real insights into how kids think.

For some reason, Alexander being under the care of Worf's human foster parents all this time has caused him to become a compulsive liar and kleptomaniac while Timothy, the kid from "Hero Worship", decides he wants to become an android like Data.

This concept has a little more weight. Discovered pinned under a beam on a wrecked starship, Timothy is the lone survivor of some kind of engineering disaster caused by a space anomaly. His parents are among the dead and, we later learn, he mistakenly believes the accident was his fault. It's no wonder he would want to emulate Data whose great capacity for precision removes much potential for error while Data's lack of emotion shields him from the effects of trauma. It might have been interesting to see how the story would have played out with a Vulcan in place of Data. Earlier in the season, in the "Unification" two parter, Data and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) have a conversation about how Data yearns for a state that Vulcans spend their lives trying to avoid--Data has no capacity for emotions while Vulcans adhere to a philosophy of emotional repression.

This is, perhaps unintentionally, mirrored by a conversation between Timothy and Data. When the child talks about the appeal of not having nightmares or emotional pain in general, Data remarks that, as an android, he also doesn't know the pleasure of a good beverage. "I would gladly risk feeling bad at times if it also meant I could taste my dessert," says Data in one of those lines that reminds me of one of my favourite lines from Futurama, when the robot, Bender, says, "Being a robot's great but we don't have emotions and sometimes that makes me very sad." I like Data but he has a similar problem to Obi-Wan and Anakin in the Star Wars prequels, whose habitual bickering was somehow never considered a conflict with Jedi emotional discipline.

But it works well enough for the moment to illustrate the fact that emotions come with benefits as well as drawbacks. A Vulcan, meanwhile, may well have encouraged the child to refine the process of emotional repression. The fact that this is never brought up as an issue in Michael Burnham's development on Discovery is one of the indicators that the famous Vulcan philosophy has been scrubbed or altered. It's an unfortunate loss because the conversation over the relative benefits of giving into emotions or eschewing them has always been one of the most fundamentally interesting aspects of Star Trek. Having Sarek espouse a belief in the miracle of love puts everyone on one side of the conversation. To-day, it might not be so terrible to have a story about people who achieve peace by refraining from letting emotion dictate their actions.

And what about Worf's hair? Let's sit down with Counsellor Troi (Marina Sirtis) and talk about how it makes us feel. Threatened? Enticed? Too enticed? I wonder if the moustache's resemblance to the Fu Manchu moustache, and therefore carrying associations with negative Asian stereotypes, was behind the decision to make the Klingons hairless on the new series. It seems a drastic response to a connexion 99% of people likely don't make.

Troi occupies an interesting role in these two episodes. They aren't about her but she's integral in much the way LeForge (Levar Burton) is for all the things having to do with the ship's engines. I googled a bit and can't find any real psychiatrist that approves of the brand of psychotherapy exhibited by Troi on the show. Most conversations seem to focus on her supposedly exploitative outfits which, I guess compared to the normal Starfleet uniforms are vaguely sexier. A quote on Troi's Wikipedia entry even calls them "bunny suits". I know Sirtis never liked them. I never quite understood the fuss either way, I neither find them sexy or demeaning. But I like the idea of a Federation starship having a counsellor. If the same attention to detail were given to formal psychology as was given to physics on Star Trek it could open up some interesting story conflicts.