Star Trek - Unspoken Truth by Margaret Wander Bonanno

Spoiler Level: High

Poor Saavik. Is she Kirstie Alley or Robin Curtis? Half-Romulan or full Vulcan? David Marcus's lover or betrayed co-worker? Spock's future wife, or adopted younger sister? Ditched in The Voyage Home, ignored in Final Frontier, replaced in Undiscovered Country and bumped from the Next Gen episode "Cause and Effect." I can't think of another character who was greeted with so much enthusiasm and potential that ever got fumbled so badly.

So I was really looking forward to Margaret Wander Bonanno's new Star Trek book, Unspoken Truth, which follows what happened to Saavik during and after Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I was hoping this would be the book to put Saavik back on the map and get her back into the Star Trek mythos. (Especially after Bonanno's wonderful Captain Pike book, Burning Dreams, which I absolutely loved.)

But I don't think I realized just how fractured a character Saavik was before this book. Oh sure, there's always the Kirstie Alley vs. Robin Curtis issue, and I assume that's why the cover features a Vulcan building and not Saavik herself. But I don't think I realized how radically different books had used her.

The original books with her had been, of course, the novelizations for Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock by Vonda N. McIntyre. In these books Saavik is half Romulan (based on a cut scene from Wrath of Khan which can be seen here on YouTube) and she and David fall in love. So when he's killed in Search for Spock, Saavik goes berserk. However when directing the film, Leonard Nimoy took the approach that since the half-Romulan line was cut from Wrath of Khan Saavik was now a full Vulcan and insisted she play the scene where Saavik tells Kirk that David is dead with no emotion at all.

There's also a book that deals with how Spock met Saavik called The Pandora Principle by Carolyn Clowes (which I own, but confess I haven't read yet), and she and Spock get married in the book Vulcan's Heart.

This book keeps the events from Pandora Principle, so it keeps any of the elements that Clowes followed up on of McIntyre's, but Unspoken Truth also chooses to ignore anything from McIntyre's actual books themselves. I suppose I can understand this; it has been 26 years since they came out, and it's more likely that new readers have only seen the films and not read the books. But I loved the relationship between Saavik and David as a kid, and I'm saddened to see it go.

More complicating, however is that Saavik has been raised by Sarek and Amanda. Apparently this was also set up in The Pandora Principle, but since she repeatedly calls them Father and Mother this really makes the concept that she'll one day marry Spock feel rather incestuous. So I'm left feeling that this book isn't meant to connect with Vulcan's Heart either.

All of this really made it tough for me to get a bead on Saavik in this book. I would keep coming across things that made me have to unlearn what I thought I knew about her. If it had treated her as full Vulcan or even half-Romulan with a different origin, it would have been easier; but the fact that some parts were consistant and others weren't kept throwing me off.

The story itself is okay. Saavik runs into an old friend from her youth on the failed Romulan world of Hellguard, who warns her that survivors from that world are being killed. She also accepts an assignment to the USS Chaffee, where they explore a world with giant telepathic worms (which if I understand the timeframe right would explain why she wasn't in Final Frontier). There's intrigue, twists, romance, and Saavik goes through a lot of angst as she tries to recover from everything she's gone through. It's not bad, but it didn't really excite me either.

The book does set her up for potential future books, either with the new characters introduced here or with the classic TOS cast. And now that I know what direction she's being given, I think I'd enjoy future books with her more.

Smallville - "Checkmate"

Spoiler Level: Low

Eh. S'allright.

I'm not a big fan of when everyone refuses to talk to each other and do things on their own. I don't find it mysterious, I just think, wow, if these people would just talk to each other this storyline might really go somewhere. And this was definitely one of those episodes.

On the plus side, it was nice to see the Martian Manhunter in action again, and using his mental powers as well. And mentions of the JSA are always nice.

V - "Pound of Flesh"

Spoiler Level: High

I think I liked this episode. I'm not entirely sure, because I was watching it on abc.com, and it had some buffering issues, which messes with my brain.

I definitely like the bits with Father Jack and Chad, and the bits with Ryan aboard the Mother Ship. And the bit where Anna's broadcast was interrupted with the "John May Lives" message was truly awesome. Was there any logical reason for the message to look like spray paint? No, but it stirred in me the images over big red Vs spray-painted over top of posters that said "The Visitors Are Our Friends," so it made me cheer to myself. I think the Fifth Column storyline is growing quite nicely, but I agree with Hobbes that a human Resistance of 5 people is pretty sad. I hope it expands into a real movement and they don't feel they can't add any more resistance fighters because it will make the cast too big. Not everyone in the Resistance has to be a lead character.

Although technically they have nothing to resist against, really. It's still all just conspiracy.

I don't like that Ryan is giving his girlfriend drugs that "once she takes it, there's no going back" without even telling her, even if it is to help her with the pregnancy. If it's that important, he needs to talk to her about it first. Not cool.

Smallville - "Escape"

Spoiler Level: High

Well, this was a pleasant surprise! At first I thought we were getting a classic "freak-of-the-week" story. Then I thought, hey, with those eyes and the skull-like face and the streak of white hair, this reminds me of Silver Banshee. And low and behold, it was Silver Banshee! Y'know, if I knew my super-villains better I probably would have realized from the moment they said they were going to the McDougal Inn. Silver Banshee was never my favorite villain so that's probably a big part of why I didn't recognize her real name,* but I still think it's absolutely awesome that they used her and made her recognizable even to someone with a bad memory like me! This season of Smallville has been just great.

(In fact, I wanted to watch Smallville instead of Stargate Universe the other day, but I couldn't get The CW's video player to work on either Firefox or Internet Explorer. I tried again today using AOL's browser, which worked.)

I also loved the character interaction. Watching Clark and Oliver try to make small talk was hilarious. "So... save any orphans lately?" "No, no... Oh, I did stop a bank robbery the other day." "Oh look, little jellies!" But Chloe got the best line of all... "Don't take relationship advice from Clark Kent." Amen.

I like how Chloe has come out from under Clark's shadow and is becoming her own person this year. She's no longer the unrequited love, and they seem to have dropped that story line of Clark ignoring her. They're doing a much better job of balancing the super hero action and the character growth. Clark's still a bit pompous, but he's getting better.

* Oh, and by the way, I had no idea that Siobhan was pronounced "Shuh-VON." Which is funny, because one of my best friends growing up had a cat named Siobhan, and I always assumed the cat's name was spelled Shouvon. Learn something new every day!

Stargate Universe - "Space"

Spoiler Level: High

Remember how I said that SGU was like Voyager meets Macross wrapped in a Battlestar Galactica coating? Well, I may not have mentioned I've always had a love/hate thing going on with both Voyager and Galactica.
Voyager was a lot of wasted potential, and Galactica was too much of people making stupid decisions. SGU has both flaws wrapped into one show, with the wasted potential being all the Macross elements that were in the premiere. So I'm getting the same mixed feelings I always got with both of those shows.

I liked the aliens. About time we got some aliens! Well, besides the dust-cloud monster. But if you're on a ship exploring the universe, you really should be running into LOTS of aliens.

I didn't like that the show is filmed so dark I couldn't get a look at their ships at all. I kept fiddling with my TV settings to no avail.

I like that the aliens want Destiny. Shades of the Zentraedi wanting the Macross.

I figured Rush would be back in this episode, but I had kinda' hoped it would take him more than one episode to make it back to the Destiny.

I like that Rush and Young were willing to put aside their attempts to kill each other for the sake of the crew. I don't like that Camille immediately began planning the next attempt to get rid of Young, and Rush was right there with her. I know the drama on this show is supposed to come from the conflict between the military and the civilians (again, Voyager with Starfleet and the Maquis) but that's Galactica drama-- the "let's do something stupid even though it's obvious it would work against us" logic. I'd like to see these people learning to pull together and rise up to the challenge. But that's not what this show wants to do, so I have two choices: get used to it or quit watching.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - "Bounty Hunters"

Spoiler Level: Medium

Obi-Wan was way cooler in the movies than in this series.

While investigating an attack on a medical base, our heroes crash land on Falucia. The Falucians are being harassed by pirates and have hired some bounty hunters to protect them. And good old Obi-Wan only cares about getting off-planet as fast as he can to notify the Republic that the medical base has been destroyed. Oh, sure, he's concerned that if they stay there too long it'll bring the Seperatists down on the Falucians, and since we've seen that happen in a previous episode it's a valid concern. But dammit man, you're a Jedi. You protect the innocent and the weak. And not just any Jedi, you're freakin' Obi-Wan Kenobi, dispenser of wisdom. So stop acting like such a douche in this show already!

The rest of the episode is awesome. The character designs for the Falucians is great. Hondo's little Salacious Crumb-critter is humorous. There's a great duel sequence between Anakin and Hondo. And bounty hunter Embo totally steals the show-- he doesn't speak Basic, he's tough, he kicks some serious butt, and he can use his hat as a shield! MORE EMBO!!

The Greatest American Hero - "Divorce Vensian Style"

This is the first time I've seen this episode in many, many years. I'd like to say it still holds up, but in many ways it doesn't.

First off is the fighting between Ralph & Bill that leads to Ralph taking of the suit in the first place. It feels kind of forced. I get that they're supposed to have been getting on each other's nerves being cooped up for 3 days on a stakeout, but that just doesn't seem to be enough to justify how fed up Ralph gets.

Next is the interior of the spaceship itself. I was sufficiently wowed when I first saw this in when I was 13, even though I did recognize the sound effects as being from Star Trek. But man, I didn't realize nearly all the sound effects were from Star Trek. The doors, the bridge noises, the warp drive... worse yet, some of the sound effects were from Lost in Space! And now I recognize the footage of the alien's homeworld as being a simulation of Mars and Olympus Mons. Basically, they just didn't have the money to develop much original beyond the alien himself and his little sidekick.

But Greatest American Hero never had a big budget, so I can forgive all that. And the scenes after Ralph has been shot and Bill is holding him in his arms are just priceless. "Maybe it's our time," Ralph says, referring to the episode where their predecessors with the suit died and were taken away in the space ship. "They'll send you down another partner," Ralph chokes out as he's dying. "I got the best partner in the world, I don't want another partner" Bill replies, and Robert Culp makes it sound 100% believable. Damn, I'm sad he just passed away. That man was a great actor.

So even though the special effects may not hold up, the characters still make it worthwhile.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - "Cat and Mouse"

Spoiler lever: high

Man, I hate spiders. And Seperatist bad guy Trench was spider-like enough that I threw a pretzel at my screen. At least I didn't go for my Spider-Whacking Stick. He made for a great villain, though, so it's almost disappointing that he didn't survive. (Almost. Brrr. I hate spiders.)

Anakin is way cooler in this series than in the movies.

It was interesting to see a cloaking device handled in Star Wars. It was mentioned in The Empire Strikes Back that they do exist in the Star Wars universe, but we've never actually seen one before.

And as always, lots of great spaceship battles.

V - "Welcome to the War"

Spoiler Level: High

Really? Are we going to have a war on this show? Honest? You promise?

Sorry... still trying to unlearn.

Actually, this episode did seem like more of a turn toward the original show, which makes me happy.

The introduction of the mercenary Kyle Hobbes ads a Ham Tyler character to the mix, albeit a blander version. But since all the characters in this version are blander than the original (what others would call "more realistic and less cheesy"), it's appropriate.

And the Dream Chamber seems to be a more passive version of the classic Conversion Chamber-- instead of flat-out brainwashing you, it shows the Visitors your emotions so they know exactly which buttons to push to get you to do what they want.

And best of all, they're starting to play on the Visitors' alien nature more-- Ryan showing his alien eye, an allusion to the Visitors eating mice (FINALLY!), Anna's big sharp pointy lizard teeth... okay, wait a minute, what was up with that? Come to mention it, what was up with that whole mating scene? You're telling me Anna is going to give birth to an army? Well, thank God we did away with the cheesy concept of them simply bringing an army and setting themselves up as our fascist protectors.

But again, in the show's defense, they did have the Visitors stepping in and using the attack on the warehouse as an excuse to further their own agenda and remove someone who they would consider a threat to them, so that was good too.

And Valerie is becoming the Robin Maxwell of the series-- pregnant with an alien child and starting to get cravings for mice!

I'm trying real hard to enjoy this show on its own merits, but I think I'd be doing a better job of it if they called it something else and I just felt it had homages to V and the alien invasion genre in general. I don't know if I'll ever be able to stop comparing it to the original.

Heechee Rendezvous by Frederik Pohl

Spoiler level: medium

Frederik Pohl's Heechee trilogy never fails to produce surprises for me. I absolutely loved the first book, Gateway, but I figured that was all there was to tell for the book's protagonist, Robinette Broadhead, and that further Heechee books would focus on different characters, similar to Asimov's Foundation trilogy. So when I heard that the follow-up book Beyond the Blue Event Horizon still focused on him I was wondering how that would work. The answer was, brilliantly.

Heechee Rendezvous ties up the plot threads opened up in Horizon, giving the Heechee series a good place for closure while at the same time opening up the door for even wider stories. (And a quick wiki search has shown me that there are two more novels and a collection of short stories left! Oh boy! I'm not done after all!)

There are many things that make this book special, my favorite of which is seeing how Robin has grown as a person from the first book. His demons have been mostly exorcised, and he's a much more compassionate (if not still practical) man. His own survival has become one where his every need has been met for years, so his goals now are to the survival and growth of mankind. And Wan, the man-child discovered in the previous book, is his exact opposite: the universe revolves around him, and having all his needs met has only reinforced his selfishness. We see both extremes of humanity in these two characters.

The book also digs deeper into artificial reality than ever before. AI characters have always been a part of the Heechee books, with Robin's counterpart being Sigfried von Shrink in Gateway, followed by Robin's virtual Albert Einstein in Horizon, but they were always treated as simple programs imitating intelligence; here the line is firmly crossed into sentience. And the question of why the Heechee disappeared in the first place is finally answered, with major implications for the future of the human race.

It's a shame that most of the books are out of print. Finding them is no trouble thanks to the internet (half.com has most of them for $0.75), but I would think that there was more demand for these books since Gateway is considered a classic. I found Heechee Rendezvous at a used bookstore over a year ago and bought it even though I had yet to find Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, and I'm glad I did. It was definitely worth it!