Nov 17 | Originally hired as co-executive producer to help with the second half of the show's first season, Kevin Murphy has now taken the reins of Caprica, the Battlestar Galactica prequel on Syfy, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He now serves as an executive producer along with Ronald D. Moore, David Eick and Jane Espenson and oversees the day-to-day functions of the show.
Nov 12 | Star Trek star Zachary Quinto is loosely attached to star in the romantic dramedy Whirligig, reports Risky Business.Quinto would play the lead role in the independent Canadian film, which is aiming to shoot early next year. The movie centers on a man who, in a misguided attempt to woo an older woman, befriends the woman's adopted son.Chaz Thorne is directing the pic, based on a screenplay by Michael Amo, creator of the Canadian supernatural series "The Listener."
Nov 11 | The CNS Foundation, is hosting an on-line charity auction at www.charitybuzz.com. One of the items they are auctioning is a signed movie poster of the new Star Trek movie which has all the cast members and writers. The president of our organization is Carol Abrams, JJ's mother, and she arranged for the donation from Bad Robot Production Company. J.J. Abrams is also a major donor to their organization. The funds raised will go to help find a cure to neurological disorders in children. The auction link is here.
Nov 10 | Candice Bergen, Charles Lisanby, Don Pardo, Gene Roddenberry, Tom and Dick Smothers and Bob Stewart have been selected as the next inductees into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame. They will be honored at a Jan. 20 ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel. "This year's inductees have challenged and shaped popular culture, changed television for the better and entertained us royally while doing so," TV Academy Chairman-CEO John Shaffner said. More info at the Hollywood Reporter
Nov 08 | Unreality-SF.net has interviewed Star Trerk author James Swallow about some of his upcoming projects. He talks about Titan: Synthesis and Seven Deadly Sins: The Slow Knife, as well as some forthcoming Doctor Who and Stargate stories.
Synopsis: Fanatical aliens who worship the creators of the mysterious spheres hijack Enterprise.
Review: "Chosen Realm" has many of the ingredients of a good and
possibly even great episode. There's a strong performance by
both Archer and the Prenom. There's a story with current
events and sociopolitical relevance. It's an episode written by
promising ENTERPRISE newcomer Manny Coto, who had also been
responsible for the rather intriguing "Similitude" and directed
by Roxann Dawson, who has quickly become a veteran series
director. But "Realm" never actually becomes a great
episode or even a particularly good one.
There are a number of reasons for this. First is the
formulaic plot that when stripped down to its skeleton is
yet another story about aliens hijacking a starship and forcing
the crew to retake it. And as formulaic plots go, "Chosen
Realm"'s is a thoroughly uninspired, by-the-numbers rendition
of episodes we've seen a hundred times over. Right down to
one of the aliens proving to be a sympathetic ally and aiding
the crew in the retaking of the ship. It's all predictable.
Very predictable indeed.
But not only is it predictable but it's also clumsily
executed. Archer is too quick to cooperate with the hijackers
while at the same time picking arguments over religion he
knows will achieve nothing instead of using the Prenom's
obvious desire to bond with him for his own purposes. The
method of Archer's execution--his chat room style
conversation with Phlox and Phlox's bat would have been great
moments in a comedy episode--but feel out of place in the
stridently serious "Chosen Realm." The hijackers go from open
ruthlessness in taking lives to ignoring missing personnel
and being satisfied with trying to chase down the saboteur
instead of lining up members of the Enterprise crew and
threatening to shoot them if the saboteur didn't turn himself
in. Behavior that would have been entirely in character for
them. But the Prenom abandons his supposed ruthlessness just in time for the crew to get the drop on him. The result is action scenes with no real intensity or impact.
It's also a little hard to believe that the Prenom had read
Archer's logs, that he and his crew had full access to
Enterprise's systems and yet didn't know the function of the
transporter. Even if he hadn't read up on it before this, it
would have taken a few seconds of reading the logs to
determine what it really was for. Certainly the notion that a
starship would build a special device for executions on board
a ship that doesn't have all that many people on it to begin
with should have raised some serious suspicions.
All this might not have mattered too much if "Chosen Realm" had
managed to make the characters and the ideas gripping enough
to make us overlook the threadbare plot. Unfortunately the script doesn't have ideas so much as it has cliches
with no real life or depth. Like many religions on STAR TREK,
the religion of the aliens is absurd and vague. Where real
religions and ideologies connect to the lives of their
worshippers in a real way, no matter how unreal they might
be, religions on STAR TREK usually fall into two categories.
They're either incantations of vague spirituality in which the religion is hodge podge of new age and a Hollywood writer's surface grasp of eastern philosophy that neither stands for anything or means anything except 'peace' and 'love' and 'destiny'; or their entire religion is defined by fanatical lunacy in which they're out to slaughter everyone who doesn't believe as they do. "Chosen Realm" is a textbook definition of the latter, especially since Archer frames his accusation in almost these exact same words. But it rarely feels like a real religion, a faith people would be willing to kill and die for.
Even the most extremist and fanatic religions are not defined
by fanaticism, so much as the fanaticism is an expression of
their interaction with the larger world. But "Chosen Realm"
makes the commonplace STAR TREK mistake of assuming that
creating a believeable religion is just a matter of throwing
together an absurd belief with fanatics who rant on about it.
But no real life religion is as simple as that and the result
is another two-dimensional villain overcome by the
predictable and unchallenged good of Starfleet ideals. By the
time we learn that the entire conflict over their belief
system lies in a difference over how many days the spheres
were created in, the episode has stopped even bothering to maintain the illusion of its
credibility.
And that is a shame because drama comes from a conflict in
which the victory is not easy or inevitable. An episode in
which the villain is easily beaten would be boring. Similarly,
a battle of ideas in which there's never any doubt as to the
outcome holds little interest. No episode whose battles
are fought solely with weapons and in which there is no
actual contest of ideas can seriously claim to be an episode
about ideas. STAR TREK's best episodes of ideas have been
episodes that were never that simplistic. There are no
complications in "Chosen Realm," though, no doubt as to who is
right. It's a secular exemplum in which there is a physical
struggle but no intellectual struggle.
Its strongest point is the guest-starring
performance by the actor portraying the Prenom, who in
cooperating with Dawson plays the character as a man who
genuinely believes himself to be a hero, instead of an
obvious villain as such characters are often portrayed on
TREK. As such, he's closer to Kurtwood Smith's 'Annorax'
than F. Murray Abraham's 'Ru'afo'. That makes his final revelation
on the planet all the more tragic when he finally has no
choice but to see himself as the villain.
But Coto's script gives little to anyone else on the Enterprise crew other than fight or distract the guards. T'Pol has an out of character angry confrontation with the Prenom over science vs. religion but has little else to do except be casually restrained when attempting to prevent the Prenom from destroying his enemy's ships. Thus once again demonstrating that the ENTERPRISE producers have again forgotten that T'Pol as a Vulcan has superhuman strength and special combat training. And instead she ends up as another helpless female in yet another episode.
Archer gets the bulk of the dialogue but he never manages to
to come off as particularly cogent in dealing with the Prenom
and no real connection ever occurs. Coto's script seems to
be making some attempt to link the Prenom and Archer perhaps
as a commentary on the possible person Archer could become if
he continues down a path of ruthless fanaticism. But that
element never really comes through in the episode, especially
as Archer is confronting a physical threat, and the Prenom's
threat is independent thought. The Prenom needs to see
himself as a hero while Archer has increasingly abandoned
that notion in favor of a brute force pragmatism. The Prenom
makes a great show of his sensitivity and empathy to
compensate for the self-indulgent nature of his brutality
while Archer conceals those outwardly in order to do what has
to be done because he knows he has no other choice.
Ultimately the invocation of religious fanaticism, suicide
bombers, and holy wars bringing down societies is supposed to
seem topical and relevant but it never does. Aside from the
suicide bomber preparing to blow himself up as a crewmember
watches, "Chosen Realm" doesn't feel particularly relevant. A
truly insightful episode should have something more to say than
'killing people in the name of religion is bad' or at least
find a better way to say it. "Chosen Realm" very badly wants to be "Let This Be Your Last Battlefield" but lacks either the intensity or the struggle. So, unfortunately,
it fails to make the grade as either an action
episode or an ideas episode, leaving it with little to offer
except a memorable guest star and yet another hole punched in
Enterprise's side.
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