LogFAQs > #969043806

Episode 16: The Jihad

A potential religious war and a mad planet with ever changing weather? Pretty great concepts for the finale.

Kirk keeps a cool head and demonstrates why he's in command. His polite, but complete lack of interest in Lara is funny. Spock continues to mention his interest in art and holds his own during the bigotry, but is mostly exposition.

The aliens are all fascinating. The Vedala manage to grab a surprising amount of mythic weight for how little their one representative appears. Everything about her, from the notion that they're the oldest race, the soft, enlightened manner of speaking, appearing as a noble wolf, suddenly howling when she exercises realty warping powers, to even the hunched over posture, which makes it seem like the wolf skin is more for our comfort than hers, give off an impression of godliness. It's pretty amazing.

The others get by mostly on design work, which is fantastic, but the few character traits they do get mostly work well. It helps that we get a brief hint into some of their cultures. Em being cowardly and having a very odd full name is just one example of doing a fair bit with just a few lines. With a bit of tidying up (and a greater budget), they could probably serve as a decently interesting main cast in their own right. Lara maybe being the one exception. She's very much a stock nubile savage (although it's good that such types exist in this world, at all, and are treated as equals both by the characters and the narrative) and the hitting on Kirk is marginally better than the reverse in the originals, but still pretty sexist in execution. I feel like she's shouting all her lines (though that might be dodgy audio mixing), with little attempt at inflection, as well. What's weird is that the same actress voices the Vedala and I have no problems there, whatsoever. In the end, she's a better female character than most, but still not quite realised enough for my standards.

Tchar, of course, gets the biggest piece of exploration. A hypothetical main cast role would need his treatment (which is a little bit sinister, tbh) to stick, but he could make it work. Its an interesting angle to have him see Alar as a false messiah, but, even with the short run time in mind, it doesn't quite get the focus it deserves, due to needing to keep the plot twist, such as it is.

Speaking of, it seems like there's a decent (by the standards of kids shows, anyway, which is not the insult it sounds like) attempt at misdirection there. Sord is the obvious candidate for a traitorous role. He's a lizard, he's irritable, rude to Spock (so is Lara, but she has the "romance" angle to keep her mostly beyond suspicion), is the first to "notice" the sentinels, keeps himself on the ground floor at the end and doesn't have an obvious specialism like the others. When they begin properly speculating about a traitor, the camera cuts to him and he looks as shifty as limited animation allows.

The gathering of the ships is full of beautiful designs, but the Enterprise, with its use of shadows, takes the cake. The backgrounds, even though I'm certain some were recycled, are still beautiful and the changing planet allows for some pulpy sub episodes to keep the pace going. Best part about the pace, though, is that, apart from Spock running his mouth and, even then, he doesn't really wear out his welcome, most of the pure exposition is saved for the opening log. Character introductions occur almost immediately and its brilliant.

A pretty fantastic finish to the season.

Before I check out The Pirates of Orion, some rankings.