Change Your Image
kateymaybe-98888
Reviews
Galactica 1980: The Return of Starbuck (1980)
how can you not love it?
OK, the plot is utterly preposterous, and full of holes. Much of the acting is questionable at best...and yet. A snarky, moody, Cylon and smarta$$ Starbuck eye candy. Perfect.
Some of the dialog between Cy and Starbuck in this episode has stuck with me for more than 30 years, in that list of stupid movie or TV quotes that most of us have some version of in our heads. So it's hokey; who cares? If you watch it accepting that it is an old TV show, and don't take it seriously, it is a lot of fun.
The rest of the season was pretty much torture that only die-hard Battlestar Galactica fan desperation can get you through, but this one almost makes up for it.
Enterprise: Cogenitor (2003)
This Star Trek series has some serious moral issues
Wow. Just, wow.
The Enterprise encounters a new species, the Vissians, who have 3 sexes - male, female, cogenitor. Cogenitors are needed for procreation, but nothing else. They consist of only 3% of the population, so they are passed around from couple to couple as needed. They are not educated, they have no names, and to call them third class citizens would be overly generous.
Trip becomes fascinated with the cogenitor on board the Vissian ship, and discovers that it is every bit as intelligent as the male and female members of the species. He secretly interacts with the cogenitor, teaches it (later referred to as she, as she appears rather feminine) to read, shows her a movie, and generally shows her what it's like to be treated as a person, not just a fertility aid.
When the Vissians are ready to go on their way, the cogenitor request asylum from the humans, understandably reluctant to return to her restricted life with no rights.
Archer denies her request, and berates Trip for "interfering" with another culture. Archer is indignant when Trip says he was just doing as Archer would have done (which is very true). And when the cogenitor commits suicide, Archer blames Trip for interfering in the first place, rather than Archer's own decision to force her to return to her life of slavery.
So in "Doctor, Doctor" we have Archer and Co. willing to allow an entire species to become extinct rather than providing them with a cure for a disease which is wiping out the entire population, because their continued existence might interfere with the evolution of a second species which lives on the same planet. But apparently repressing a race (or one sex of a race) that is already at a high level of evolution is OK. Yay for genocide, yay for sexual slavery - at least for the Enterprise.
I find the entire premise implausible. The Vissians are way ahead of the humans on an evolutionary scale. Trip's cogenitor friend learned to read and made huge emotional/social changes within a day. I find it unlikely that people (of whatever species)with so much potential living within an advanced culture would not have picked up a certain amount of knowledge, and developed socially in spite of the restrictions within the culture.
And if a day or two of being treated decently would lead to an individual preferring suicide to returning to her previous restricted life, it is highly unlikely that as a group the cogenitors would have accepted their slave status for so long.
But my biggest issue is with the idea that "it's their culture" is treated as an excuse for any kind of atrocity (except when Archer makes a personal connection with the victims).
The Enterprise is roaming the galaxy, but historically Star Trek has always been allegorical. The humans meet new species during their travels, and the issues that develop are usually problems common to humanity in all its social and cultural variations here on Earth. There are certain things that present day humans are willing to accept as "that's their culture", but there are also things that are considered utterly unacceptable; although of course there are limits to how far nations are willing to go to address "unacceptable" events in other nations.
Going to war with the Vissians to "liberate" the cogenitors would have been excessive, but granting asylum to the cogenitor from the Vissian vessel would have absolutely been appropriate, and the "right" thing to do morally. Not to mention far more consistent with Archer's character.
Enterprise: Dear Doctor (2002)
beyond disappointing
I realize that the intent of this episode was to provide some background for the development of the Prime directive, but it did so very poorly.
The Enterprise is asked to help a race called the Valakians who are suffering from a disease that is killing them by the millions. In the process of investigating the disease and the Valakian people, Dr Phlox discovers that there is a second sentient race on the planet; the Menk. Both species are living in apparent harmony, although the Menk are "less evolved" and the Valakians are clearly dominant. The Human crew feels that the Menk are being exploited, but Dr Phlox is dismissive of their concerns, blaming them on human cultural bias.
While working on a cure, Dr Phlox discovers that the disease is actually a genetic flaw, and predicts that the Valakians will be extinct within 2 centuries. When he reports to the Captain, Dr Phlox also reveals that the Menk are more advanced than believed, and states that if the Enterprise helps the Valakians, they will be "playing god" and interfering with the evolution of the Menk.
This is the point at which it really goes downhill for me. As another reviewer points out, the evolution of the so called "genetic defect" in the Valakians has some serious scientific flaws...it just doesn't fly. Also, why would anyone believe that the continued existence of the Valakians would be detrimental to the Menk? Their co-existence hasn't prevented the Menk from developing thus far. In fact, at this point, constant exposure to a more developed culture would likely create an environment which would encourage continued evolution of the Menk.
It would be one thing if both species were at a much lower level of development, such as the Neanderthal and Cro-magnon that Dr Phlox compares them to. At that stage, the races would have been fighting to survive, and would have been rivals for available resources; but they are well past that point. Or if the planet were dealing with overpopulation pressures...and that isn't likely an issue with the millions of dead, and the knowledge of the availability of space based options for expansion.
So, when it was thought that the Valakians were dying from a disease with a bacterial or viral cause, Dr Phlox was all (basically) "sure, let's find a cure. Oh, there's another sentient race? Fascinating! The Menk are being used as a servant class, have had their land taken from them, and generally the Valakian's treatment of them is somewhere between benevolent ownership and condescending guardianship/mentoring...but if you humans are bothered by it that you're just prejudiced. It works for them". But then when it turns out that the illness is genetic, suddenly his attitude is "Oh, those Valakians are interfering with the evolution of the Menk, so let's let all the hundreds of millions of Valakians - including all future generations - die, and the species become extinct." Yeah, that's a good plan.
I guess I'm just not a fan of Genocide, even the fictional variety.
I Am Here (2014)
Total waste of time
This was an unimaginably awful movie. The plot was terrible and the dialog stilted as well as often difficult to hear. In fact, it was so bad I wasn't able to finish watching it. Kim Basinger plays Maria, a woman who becomes unhinged after years of unsuccessfully trying to have a child and multiple miscarriages. She decides to go to a town on the German-Czech border and buy a black market baby from a prostitute. For some crazy reason, she decides to enlist a complete stranger -a drug addicted dwarf she picks up on the side of the road- to help her. And instead of buying a baby, he "rents" a baby from a prostitute for an hour, then steals her. Now, all of that is hard enough to buy into, but it just goes down hill from there. Maria has gone to great lengths to get a baby, but has brought no supplies; no car seat, diapers, food, bottles...nothing. She ends up in a hotel with the baby, but there really isn't anywhere in Germany she couldn't have reached with a day's driving, so why wouldn't she have gone home? Now, here is the most implausible part to me...the Russian Mafia, and the baby's mother, come after Maria. The baby's mother is a 14-15 yr old prostitute, in a low class brothel. She has been a prostitute for long enough to have a 3-6 month old baby, so at least since she was 13 or 14. She keeps the baby hidden in a closet, with tape over her mouth to silence any crying. And, Mama prostitute, while reluctant, is willing to rent her infant daughter for an hour to a man she(Mama) believes is going to rape the baby. Which implies she either doesn't care all that much for her child, or indicates an extreme level of desperation. Maybe a little of both. This is not a young woman with resources; if she had any she wouldn't be living as she does. Therefore,I find it hard to believe that anyone in the Mafia would give a damn about her or the baby. In such an organization, Mama prostitute would be pretty much considered disposable, and her baby would have even less value. They might even be glad to have the baby gone - one less thing to distract Mama prostitute from her primary purpose. To track down and capture Maria would take time and money resources that the Mafia would not be likely to waste.