online review: To Boldly Go, Part I

There's a difference between ending and merely stopping. The Fugitive, the first TV series to ever produce a deliberately constructed series finale, had a proper ending. The original Star Trek, by contrast, merely stopped. You kept watching the original broadcasts until, one day, there were no more new Star Trek episodes. There was absolutely nothing about the last produced episode, "Turnabout Intruder," that, either narratively or thematically, felt like a proper farewell to the show. This was especially jarring for audience members who had taken to heart that the U.S.S. Enterprise was on a "five year mission," according to its opening narration, while the series itself lasted only three years.

Since then, as we all know, of course, Star Trek has become not just a franchise, but a phenomenon. Movies, novelizations, revivals, and spin-offs abound. But apart from all the official releases, two online amateur filmmakers, working on two different fan-film projects, set out to depict what might have happened to the Enterprise and her gallant crew during the two remaining years of their five year mission.

The first of these to appear was James Cawley's online series Star Trek: New Voyages*, which, with multiple celebrity guests and even a Hugo nomination (a big deal in science fiction), is certainly the better known of the two productions. Previous entries of this very blog have addressed and even praised New Voyages. Both New Voyages and Star Trek Continues are astounding in how exactlly they nail the look, sound, and general feel of the costumes, sets, sound effects, etc. You really do feel like you're watching new episodes of the original 60s Star Trek -- if, of course, you're able to get past the idea of new actors playing the familiar roles.

*The show was briefly re-branded as Star Trek: Phase II, in honor of Paramount's aborted TV spin-off of the 70s that never made it to production, but is still better known as "New Voyages."

I'd argue that the second series to appear, Vic Mignogna's online series Star Trek Continues, is the better of the two shows. Some people would disagree with that assessment, and that's fine, everyone's entitled to an opinion. And lord knows I'd never disparage Cawley's  many impressive achievements with New Voyages. But Star Trek Continues has two distinct advantages of New Voyages. First is the role of Captain Kirk. Both Cawley and Mignogna cast themselves in the lead role. As Kirk, Cawley nails the machismo aspect of the role, but his lighter moments have mixed results, sometimes effective, sometimes awkward. The decidedly Elvis-like hairdo he sports (Cawley is an Elvis impersonator in his day job) is distractingly un-Kirk-like.

Mignogna, by contrast, nails every aspect of Kirk. It's really something to behold, if you're familiar with William Shatner in the role. It makes you think: Many, many comedians, both famous (Jim Carrey, Kevin Pollak, etc.) and obscure, have made fun of Shatner's admittedly melodramatic style of acting, but in over-emphasizing that one aspect of his performance, they're less mimickry and more grotesquerie. Mignogna, on the other hand, doesn't do an impression, exactly -- or if it does count as an impression, it's the best damn impression of anybody I've ever seen. Mignogna's performance as Kirk strongly implies to me that Mignogna himself learned to act by studying Shatner in the role. Every mannerism, every nuance is decidedly Shatneresque, yet the performance as a whole doesn't come across as mockery. The contrast is striking: Cawley, with a constant hint of a wink to the audience, is pretending to be Kirk, like a kid on a playground. Mignogna is acting in the role of Kirk -- and the result is a much more effective suspension of disbelief.

The second advantage Star Trek Continues has over its sister show is the writing. Whereas the writing of New Voyages is hit-or-miss -- and again, at least one of my earlier blog entries addressed this -- Star Trek Continues has a uniformly high quality of writing. Every episode is a winner.

Which brings me to the most recent episode, "To Boldly Go, Part I." Because of recent decisions by Paramount's legal department, the two-part "To Boldly Go" will be the very last episode of Star Trek Continues -- which, true to the show's original ambition, the writers are treating as if it's a series finale to the original show as well. And as is often the case with the best series finales, Star Trek Continues is ending by taking a look back to its beginnings. There's always something satisfying about this approach to series finales. Richard Kimble finally confronts the One-Armed Man in The Fugitive, Buffy finally enters the Hellmouth that was introduced in the pilot episode of The Vampire Slayer, Captain Picard finally learns the verdict of the trial that Q launched at the beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and so on. Writers like to use their last episode to look back on the first so often, because it so often works so wonderfully.

In "Where No Man has Gone Before," Captain Kirk's very first episode of Star Trek, originally aired back in 1966, the Enterprise tried to penetrate the mysterious energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy. In the process, two crew members -- including Kirk's best friend, Lt. Gary Mitchell -- were zapped with some kind of weird energy, giving them extraordinary mental and physical capabilities, including but not limited to telekinesis and telepathy. Absolute power corrupted absolutely, and as Mitchell's powers increased, he decided to launch a grand tradition of destroying the Enterprise. Kirk barely escaped with his life.

Now, five years later in story time (or 51 years later in real time), Kirk discovers that Starfleet has been secretly using the Galactic Barrier's mysterious energies to breed a small band of "espers," similarly empowered people with abilities identical to those of Gary Mitchell. Before long, Kirk and the Enterprise are drawn into a conflict between the espers and the Romulans. Kirk has to sort out who are the bad guys, who are the victims, and which of the two threats is the deadlier. Should he team up with one faction to defeat the other?

"To Boldly Go" continues the online show's tradition of tying up loose ends left behind by the first show. In addition to the various "whatever happened to this charactor or that character" questions Star Trek Continues has answered, the show has also addressed everything from what happened in the mirror universe (the "evil Enterprise crew" episode) after the end of "Mirror, Mirror," to the question of how Kirk can fall so madly in love so often, and still find meaning in each new romance.

Satisfyingly, "To Boldly Go, Part I" really dips into the "tying up loose ends from the original series" well. In addition to the return of the galactic barrier/ telepath storyline from "Where No Man has Gone Before," we get the return of the female Romulan commander from "The Enterprise Incident." We even get an in-story explanation for the writers' mistake in the 60s when they inadvertantly changed Kirk's middle initial from R to T. But all of this would be almost meaningless if the story wasn't good as well. It is. "To Boldly Go, Part 1" leaves you wanting more. I'll be excited when Part 2 comes out. But at the same time, sad to see this wonderful show end.