So, is this going to be the botany metaphor or the ‘terror’ metaphor? Spoilers.
A good enough episode that could potentially have been great, but ultimately failed to deliver on the premise. The idea of Ortegas stuck alone on a moon, needing to rely on a Gorn to survive, has a lot of potential. But it didn’t deliver because of a few missteps, leaving this is merely a well done adventure-peril episode.
The core problem is the lack of emotional stakes for Ortegas. There’s no sense of her trauma or past interactions with the Gorn. She is frankly far too willing to trust, and shows no suspicion about motives. Her character arc through the episode needed more dynamic range, instead she gets to ‘work with the Gorn’ way too quickly. It’s also a little too forced by the hand of the story, rather than being a free (if reluctant) choice for Ortegas.
The other big problem for me was the physical effects on the Gorn. On the one hand I really appreciate that they went for something practical over CG. But the puppet didn’t have great continuity with the other appearances of the Gorn, and its limited movement robbed it of threat and menace.
One thing I was surprised I didn’t have a problem with – previously I would have said something about ‘don’t cut away’ to the rescue scenes on the Enterprise. But they earned their presence in the episode with the character moments for Uhura.
Quick hits:
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Well
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Model plane nerds and motorbike nerds don’t normally overlap
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OK, thanks author of the episode, you’ve done enough work to justify the setup. Can we move on now?
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The controls of that shuttle look very uncomfortable.
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OK, if you don’t know where you are how do you have coordinates?
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Oh of course there’s a vaccine ticking clock.
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I feel there’s a fifty percent chance that the Gorn is all in Ortegas’s head.
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That is a very Dark Crystal looking Gorn.
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‘Don’t look at it’ – immediately looks at it.
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The camp cooker has a Star Fleet logo aperture? Very extra.
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Yes, playing chess is cute. But weren’t we trying to repair the comms array?
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Ooh, Metro’s. Direct tie-in to ‘Arena’ in TOS.
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Surely ‘showers’ comes ahead of ‘stare4 pensively’. You can even combine them if you want to.
968 down.