For years now I’ve been putting my non-stop thoughts about Superman up on this site, right? And I’ve also put more thought into Rocket Racer than anyone else on the planet, right? So you must think those are the only things that ol’ PDR ever thinks about! But no! I think about Star Trek too!
I felt the need to post about Superman so much because I got to reading what other people thought about Superman on the Internet and I so rarely felt like I agreed with what was being said that I felt ostracized from the “fandom” of the character. And I post about Rocket Racer because nobody else cares. But when it comes to Star Trek, I feel like I mostly agree with what the Internet at large has to say. Sure, there’s a lot of difference among the fans. I may not enjoy one series in the franchise as much as some others, or maybe I dislike an episode or two that are considered classics. But overall, it’s a massive franchise the size of which builds in room for such disagreement. You’re allowed to think the reboot movies are the funnest thing if you want to. You’re allowed to think Voyager is the best show. I may not agree, but I’ve already got DS9, so I’m good.
But there are nits to pick. Believe me, I can overthink any franchise of fictional stories. Ask anyone who knows me. So I’m gonna start doing that to Star Trek here on this site. I’ve got to do something with the constant torrent of thinking my brain does and, while I may watch other shows, Star Trek is where I feel at home, so my brain doesn’t shut up about it.
The show continues to stretch into different war-related genres. This episode, which starts with a quote from John Wilkes Booth, is a political intrigue thriller. Even though the Earth in this future era is still one divided into countries (our characters are explicitly United States Marines), it turns out that there is a uniting governmental body in the form the United Nations. That means that the person who holds the title of the Secretary General is basically the leader of the Earth.
And then the Secretary General is assassinated. By an In-Vitro no less. This causes all manner of strife, including making the populace even more suspicious of “Tanks” so the two on the cast, Hawkes and McQueen, have to undergo loyalty testing. Meanwhile, one of the frontrunners for the position of the world ruler is the leader of a far right wing party (complete with a swastikish logo) that holds very anti-In-Vitro policies. The episode does all that you’d expect with further assassination attempts, including Hawkes being basically hypnotized by the loyalty test to try to kill this potential fascist ruler. In the end, though, the fascist is not elected and it is mostly a victory.
The woman who actually does win the Secretary General position is interesting. She’s clearly well-meaning, but is willing to get her hands dirty because she’s behind the assassination attempts on the fascist. When West prevents one of those attempts, he says that killing is not the answer and that they have to trust the voters (Must be nice to have that level of confidence in the system). And Hawkes clearly didn’t support the fascist party, but he wasn’t a fan of being forced to be a puppet assassin either. And finally, it is suggested that her company knew about the existence of the aliens before they sent out the colonists who got massacred in the pilot and kept it secret for some reason. So, she’s definitely the “good” choice to rule the planet, but the show is treating her as a complex player in the political game here. Also, for the record, she’s played by the woman who played Bebe on Frasier and the character is blind, with some sub-Geordi level of technology compensating for sight. I can only assume she’ll be back.
The episode also has some replacements come to the Wild Cards to take up the positions of the extras who have been killed off over the course of the show. That’s interesting because I assumed they’d just whittled it down to the main cast and it’d be like that from now on. One of the replacements turns out to be an attempted assassin and gets killed, but the others (whose names I have not yet bothered to learn) may indeed be actual new additions to the cast.
At first it seemed that McQueen (I don’t remember any of these characters’ ranks, but I’ve got their names down now) is going to be the focal character of the episode, but actually it’s about him being replaced temporarily, so he’s not around for most of it.
The Saratoga (which I have neglected to mention looks pretty much like a less pointy Star Destroyer from Star Wars) finds a space plane drifting, seemingly dead, but it lands in the carrier of its own volition. They discover aboard it one Ray “Kicks” Butts, a gruff pilot who has been through a lot of wars. In spite of his cool name, Butts is a real jerk. He’s racist to the In-Vitros on the crew, he takes opportunities to berate or embarrass the Wild Cards, and just in general he’s a prick. And it isn’t until after he spends a while being a prick to the team that he reveals that he’s got orders from the brass to replace McQueen and take control of the Wild Cards for a secret mission.
The mission, the team is told, is to recover some space planes that the Chigs have managed to capture. The Wild Cards parachute down onto a Chig-controlled planet and then Butts immediately goes AWOL (is it still called going AWOL when you’re in charge?). It turns out that those planes belonged to his unit and on their last mission he was the only one to get away. He wants to bury his friends’ bodies. So he does that, then they go and do the actual mission. The team have a bonding moment where Butts makes them realize they might not all come back from the mission, so they say preemptive goodbyes, just in case (slightly undercut by them all being main characters, save Butts who is pretty clearly being set up to die). Anyway, Butts dies to help the team escape. The end.
Butts being a prick is intentional, sure. It’s meant to show that he’s been messed up by the wars and whatnot. But I never warmed up to him even when the story thought he was redeeming himself. The only positive about him is that he’s pro-pancakes. Anyway, I don’t know. I didn’t like him.
One thing I do like is that Hawkes, the angsty bad boy In-Vitro, is by this point completely a part of the team. They all get along with him and that pleases me. I like it when teams get along.
