The show should have been cancelled after the first season, except the network had developed a new ratings method just a few years prior. They should have been cancelled after the second season, except massive - MASSIVE - fain mail was able to get the network to concede. However, they set the show up to fail for the third season essentially sealing its cancellation at that point. The reduced budget will be something interesting to look for in the next season, but for this season at least I didn't notice.
I don't think the second season is noticeably worse than the first, or at least the differences are so small as to make it irrelevant. The first season was good, but it took about half the season for it to hits its stride. Even that good stretch had some clunkers. Being a revolutionary television show is a tough gig. They tried a lot of new things - too many for me to grasp because they have been ingrained into pop culture. When you try new things though, things don't always work. That's not really a complaint. Think of Star Trek as a trial run for shows that came later.
I mentioned this in my first season review, but it bears repeating - in fact I'll probably say it in my third season review: this show had to write for 56 episodes in two years. That's insane. That's over four seasons worth of episodes of your typical cable drama nowadays. If Star Trek was forced to cut down to 13 episodes a season, I think that it would have been a fantastic show even by today's standards. Not only would they remove some of the lesser episodes, but they could spend more time polishing up the episodes they had.
Somehow William Shatner's acting is even more unbearable in this season. He literally ruins this show for me. The writing's pretty good, although laughably sexist. The other actors are a little over the top, except for Leonard Nimoy, but they basically sell you the scenes. Shatner on the other hand is infuriatingly terrible. I actually looked for cases where I saw good acting for him and could find none. But I don't even need to be paying attention to notice his bad acting. Some people dig the line readings from Shatner, but I absolutely despise it. And I realize that IS Star Trek, but Shatner is the only basic weakness of this show for me - ignoring 1960's attitudes - and boy it is a huge one because he is in just about every scene.
On the other hand, Nimoy is the saving grace of this show. He has this character down pat and he can really act. He's remarkably measured while everyone else seems to be in a stage play they overact so much. I have found zero inconsistencies in his character throughout the show's run. That's a credit to both Nimoy and the writing team who have seriously created one of the greatest characters of all-time.
Nothing exemplifies my opinion of acting on this show better than "Return to Tomorrow." Shatner is at his hammiest. Sargon "borrows" his body for a short time and the transfer scene is absolutely hilarious. I don't think it was intended to be hilarious. It kind of takes you out of the scene. But then Nimoy comes to the rescue when Henoch takes over his body. This is when you can tell he can actually act. He instantly transforms into a different person and it's completely believable. Nothing has held up better than Nimoy's performances.
The show built off last season's string of great episodes by having a few to start of this season. Four off the first six episodes were genuinely still really great. In the first episode, Spock needs to return to meet his future wife, and any Spock story thrust to the forefront of the episode I will probably love. There's also a wonderful parallel universe storyline, a murderous intelligent probe who confuses Captain Kirk for his creator, and a guilt-stricken captain who wants to destroy the thing that killed his crew.
It's at this point that I wondered if I could unequivocally praise this season. These were episodes I didn't have to like with reservations about a certain plot point or character. It's probably not a coincidence that none of the stories involved Kirk and his women. Oh how I hate those storylines. Since I am obviously allergic to Shatner's charms, you can imagine how I feel when almost every significant woman of the week that appears turns into a girl with a high school crush. There is so little time invested into the characters and their sole defining trait is that their inexplicably smitten by Kirk just because he gives them a sideways glance or a smile. And when Shatner starts hitting on the females, it's cringe-worthy as hell. It is so obvious men wrote these scenes because these blatant, inappropriate actions work every damn time.
Anyway, after "The Doomsday Machine," the season tails off a bit. Harry Mudd makes an appearance in an ok episode, only really memorable because Harry Mudd is one of the few returning guest stars. Spock's parents visit in another episode in an episode that is pretty good, except "women are always emotional" is a little too prominent for my tastes. McCoy gets to be the one with a woman for once in "Friday's Child" and the results are amusing in a good way. But the McCoy aspects are the only interesting parts of that episode. "Obsession" has the potential to be great with Kirk questioning himself. Of course, Kirk's irrational actions turn out to be completely justified in the most ridiculous way possible. "Wolf in the Fold" suffers because there's never a sense that Scotty murdered anyone. The episode with the tribbles was mildly amusing, although the episode itself is pretty average. Anyway, episodes seven through sixteen are decidedly unimpressive and that's quite a long stretch of episodes.
Not to fear, the season gets back on its feet with "A Piece of the Action." Once you can get past the ridiculous premise that this world copied 1920s Chicago based off a book, it's entertaining and completely different than anything the show had done. At this point, any new episode that is radically different than its same basic formula - godlike being with a flaw, computers are evil, the merits of interfering with a foreign planet - that its welcome for me even when it doesn't work.
A fresh idea occurs in the next episode when the starship gets threatened by a giant, energy-sucking organism that is horrifying and appropriately scary in "The Immunity Syndrome." "A Private Little War" tackles the merits of interfering with a foreign planet, but its pretty ambiguous on an easy answer (and apparently is a comment on interfering with Vietnam). "Patterns of Force" is yet another episode about interfering with another's culture, and uh, features Nazis. Between this and American Horror Story, I think I've had my fill of random Nazi appearances in shows where having Nazis makes no sense.
Unfortunately, the season kind of slowly simpers out with weak and/or extremely repetitive storyline. There's an utterly ridiculous episode about some foreign country following the actual US Constitution that is taken completely at face value, a story about a computer with too much power that is entirely too predictable, an episode about the gang entering a culture that has adapted from the past very strictly, and then the finale that seems to come from a different show (because it does; it was meant as a pilot episode that didn't get picked up and they shoehorned the plot into Star Trek for some reason).
Overall, this season has nothing resembling "A City on the Edge of Forever" and that probably makes this season worse. It also has a few downright awful episodes as well. Despite the inconsistent quality of the episodes, the second season doesn't do anything to diminish the reputation of Star Trek in my mind (Shatner does that all on his own).
Playlist
1. "Holding on For Life" - Broken Bells
2. "Midland" - Arthur Beatrice
3. "Act Your Age" - Bliss n Eso
4. "99 Problems" - Jay-Z
5. "Loot My Body" - Man Man
The show built off last season's string of great episodes by having a few to start of this season. Four off the first six episodes were genuinely still really great. In the first episode, Spock needs to return to meet his future wife, and any Spock story thrust to the forefront of the episode I will probably love. There's also a wonderful parallel universe storyline, a murderous intelligent probe who confuses Captain Kirk for his creator, and a guilt-stricken captain who wants to destroy the thing that killed his crew.
It's at this point that I wondered if I could unequivocally praise this season. These were episodes I didn't have to like with reservations about a certain plot point or character. It's probably not a coincidence that none of the stories involved Kirk and his women. Oh how I hate those storylines. Since I am obviously allergic to Shatner's charms, you can imagine how I feel when almost every significant woman of the week that appears turns into a girl with a high school crush. There is so little time invested into the characters and their sole defining trait is that their inexplicably smitten by Kirk just because he gives them a sideways glance or a smile. And when Shatner starts hitting on the females, it's cringe-worthy as hell. It is so obvious men wrote these scenes because these blatant, inappropriate actions work every damn time.
Anyway, after "The Doomsday Machine," the season tails off a bit. Harry Mudd makes an appearance in an ok episode, only really memorable because Harry Mudd is one of the few returning guest stars. Spock's parents visit in another episode in an episode that is pretty good, except "women are always emotional" is a little too prominent for my tastes. McCoy gets to be the one with a woman for once in "Friday's Child" and the results are amusing in a good way. But the McCoy aspects are the only interesting parts of that episode. "Obsession" has the potential to be great with Kirk questioning himself. Of course, Kirk's irrational actions turn out to be completely justified in the most ridiculous way possible. "Wolf in the Fold" suffers because there's never a sense that Scotty murdered anyone. The episode with the tribbles was mildly amusing, although the episode itself is pretty average. Anyway, episodes seven through sixteen are decidedly unimpressive and that's quite a long stretch of episodes.
Not to fear, the season gets back on its feet with "A Piece of the Action." Once you can get past the ridiculous premise that this world copied 1920s Chicago based off a book, it's entertaining and completely different than anything the show had done. At this point, any new episode that is radically different than its same basic formula - godlike being with a flaw, computers are evil, the merits of interfering with a foreign planet - that its welcome for me even when it doesn't work.
A fresh idea occurs in the next episode when the starship gets threatened by a giant, energy-sucking organism that is horrifying and appropriately scary in "The Immunity Syndrome." "A Private Little War" tackles the merits of interfering with a foreign planet, but its pretty ambiguous on an easy answer (and apparently is a comment on interfering with Vietnam). "Patterns of Force" is yet another episode about interfering with another's culture, and uh, features Nazis. Between this and American Horror Story, I think I've had my fill of random Nazi appearances in shows where having Nazis makes no sense.
Unfortunately, the season kind of slowly simpers out with weak and/or extremely repetitive storyline. There's an utterly ridiculous episode about some foreign country following the actual US Constitution that is taken completely at face value, a story about a computer with too much power that is entirely too predictable, an episode about the gang entering a culture that has adapted from the past very strictly, and then the finale that seems to come from a different show (because it does; it was meant as a pilot episode that didn't get picked up and they shoehorned the plot into Star Trek for some reason).
Overall, this season has nothing resembling "A City on the Edge of Forever" and that probably makes this season worse. It also has a few downright awful episodes as well. Despite the inconsistent quality of the episodes, the second season doesn't do anything to diminish the reputation of Star Trek in my mind (Shatner does that all on his own).
Playlist
1. "Holding on For Life" - Broken Bells
2. "Midland" - Arthur Beatrice
3. "Act Your Age" - Bliss n Eso
4. "99 Problems" - Jay-Z
5. "Loot My Body" - Man Man
No comments:
Post a Comment