Pop Art: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (DC Edition)

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Marshmallow Dispenser (Kraft)

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Video Game (Level Systems, Inc.,1989)

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Spaceships (ERTL; 1989)

Model Kit of the Week: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier U.S.S. Enterprise and Shuttlecraft (AMT; ERTL, 1989)

The Visitors are Coming: V: The Series: "The Wildcats" (February 15, 1985)

In “The Wildcats” Diana (Jane Badler) and Lydia (June Chadwick) conspire to point the finger of blame at the mothership’s pharmacist, Marta (Gela Jacobson) for the murder of Charles.

If they are successful, Marta will spend eternity with Charles’ corpse in a space-bound sarcophagus.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Julie (Faye Grant), Willie (Robert Englund), Elizabeth (Jennifer Cooke) and Kyle (Jeff 

Yagher) are desperately combating an epidemic of diphtheria, but need fresh supplies of medicine to stop it. 

A local gang of young resisters, the Wildcats, reluctantly offer assistance, but a traitor in their midst threatens everything. 

Now Donovan (Marc Singer) must make a daring flight to Julie’s location to drop off the needed medicine, but Julie fears that if the mole in the Widlcats isn’t identified, a disaster will occur.

Meanwhile, a Wildcat named Ellen (Rhonda Aldrich) falls in love with Willie, unaware that he is actually a Visitor. He must tell her the truth, but it isn’t easy.

The fifteenth episode of V: The Series follows up on the pattern of last week’s installment, “The Champion.” In short, it features an underwhelming Resistance story and a delicious tale of intrigue with the Visitors.

This week, Julie is miraculously recovered from her neck-brace injury of last week, and is the central human character. This time, it is Mike Donovan who puts in a mere “guest appearance,” and is barely present.  This arrangement seems very much like a way to eliminate the characters’ former romance.  If they are hardly on-screen together, there’s not much time for them to interact meaningfully.  Similarly, the new pattern -- Julie as our star one week, Mike the next -- looks a lot like a schedule-saving measure, a way to lower costs, perhaps.

Meanwhile, the overall story, about a young gang of resistance members, the Wildcats, seems to mirror strongly the dynamic of the movie Red Dawn (1984).  There, high school students formed a resistance cell when Soviets took over their western town. Substitute the Visitors for the Soviets, and you get the premise of “The Wildcats.”

Still, two elements of this episode really stand-out, and deserve a mention. 

First, Willie’s subplot with Ellen functions remarkably effectively as an allegory of gay men in America, and for 1985 network television, this is an outstanding development. 

In particular, a beautiful woman shows interest in a handsome stranger she has met, Willie, and he must break it to her that he is “different” from other men she knows, and not suitable as a romantic partner or lover.

It’s true, Willie is an alien -- a Visitor -- and not a gay man, but the scene wouldn’t unfold differently at all if his nature changed in that way. He is an outsider who hides his inner-self from those around him, for fear of rejection and hostility. 

So, very clearly, V: The Series presents an allegory for being in the closet in 1980s America, and again, this is simply staggering in terms of getting socially-conscious material past the network censors. Watching “The Wildcats” today there is virtually no other way to interpret the subtext of Willie’s story. And I should hasten, this kind of material is infinitely more interesting for Englund to vet than the lame comic-relief he is often asked to front.

Secondly, V briefly reclaims its history as a truly macabre production in “The Wildcats.”  In the past we have seen all manners of dreadful horror imagery in the program, from reptilian babies to rodent-eating lizard people.  But this episode resurrects that brand of chilling imagery with a premature burial.  Poor Marta is framed for the murder of Charles by two “fiendish hellcats” Diana and Lydia.  Her fate is to travel through space -- awake and conscious -- in a transparent sarcophagus…with the corpse of her victim, the decaying Charles, at her side.

Today it is easy to write this scene off as silly because of special effects, and because some moments seem to our modern eyes to border on camp.

But much like the “Space Vampire” episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981), there’s also an extreme darkness to the imagery featured here.  In 1985, to see an innocent woman bottled up with a corpse and shot into space was nothing less than harrowing, at least to my young eyes.  It just wasn’t something you expected to see on network TV.  This is very gruesome stuff…and further evidence of Diana’s absolute depravity.

All of V’s deficits at this point in its history are present in “The Wildcats,” particularly a simplification of the human characters so that the Resistance seems almost cartoony, and yet “The Wildcats” also features that sub-plot with Willie “coming-out” and explaining to a human woman that he does not have the same taste as other men.  And finally, it features the macabre living-death of Marta, one hell of a send-off to the long-standing Charles subplot.

All in all, that’s not too bad a legacy for the series in its final evolution.

Next week: “The Littlest Dragon.”

Cult-Movie Review: Under the Skin (2014)

[There are spoilers in this review, so proceed accordingly.]

Based on the acclaimed novel by Michel Faber, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2014) follows in a long line of historical science fiction movies that concern alien beings contending with human sexuality. 

In 1978, for instance, the low-budget film Alien Prey starred Barry Stokes as a carnivorous, canine-like alien falling into a sometimes-violent love triangle with two lesbians in rural England. After his lovers were dead, he signaled for an alien invasion to commence, noting that planet Earth is “a good source of protein.”

Species (1995), of course, also dealt with an alien/human hybrid, Sil (Natasha Henstridge) seeking to mate with human beings, but with disastrous consequences for the world.

Under the Skin is a far more oblique and thoughtful rumination on the subject. The film quietly, and with dazzling imagery explores the nature of humanity, biology, and the drive and desire for sexual intercourse.

The 2000 novel by Faber is also more straight-forward in one important regard than is this 2014 adaptation.

The literary effort operates as an allegory for modern industrial farming techniques, with the central alien female, Isserley, capturing and delivering to the butcher’s block human males aroused by her beauty.

In the novel, Isserley comes to experience a degree of compassion for those who are being killed to serve her people. The message is that if we were to see what was done in our names to the animals forming our food supply, we too would harbor grave moral doubts.

Oddly, the movie still contains imagery intimating that the men’s innards are being harvested for purposes of diet. Their bloody red flesh is delivered -- like piles of chunky ground meat -- to a red-hued light source, traveling down a kind of factory assembly line, for example.

Yet, very much in the same spirit as David Bowie’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Under the Skin doesn’t concern itself directly with the concrete details of the alien plot, or even the alien culture behind it.

Instead, Under the Skin focuses squarely on the central character, played by Scarlett Johansson, and her life-changing journey to define her nature, to adjust to life as alien inside a suit of human skin.

What is she, precisely?

Human or alien?   

Thus Under the Skin proves worthwhile as an examination of the sometimes invisible forces that push and drive humans -- and presumably all living things -- to seek connection with one another. Whether that force is unthinking sexual desire or intellectually-based empathy, we are all helpless, in a sense, to resist forces of nature.

In Under the Skin, this notion is transmitted almost entirely through canny visualizations, as the film features very little by way of meaningful dialogue. 

Instead, viewers are invited to view the world through an alien’s eyes. Simply by wearing a human suit and living with humans, Johansson’s extra-terrestrial goes from being a cold, clinical, uncomprehending observer of mankind to a being who regards herself, as, finally, one of us.

Before long, she reacts in ways we recognize and comprehend: seeking connection and fearful, finally, of her own mortality. 

When you are part of the world, not a detached observer, you see things quite differently.

Viewers expecting a sexual circus, or watching the film only to leer at Johansson’s nudity will be disappointed by Under the Skin’s dedicated, cerebral, dignified approach to the material. Under the Skin isn’t an action film, or a special effects film, or even, truly, a horror film. 

Instead -- and again much in the fashion of The Man Who Fell to Earth -- Under the Skin is about what it means to walk among us, and be one of us, even when starting from a point of total “alienation.”

“People wind me up.”

A female alien (Johansson) is born on Earth, in Scotland, and assumes the form of a dead woman, a form acquired by a male colleague of her own kind. 

After acquiring new clothes and lipstick, the alien begins to prowl Scotland for human males. She lures them back to a remote house, and -- promising sex -- leads them to a gruesome fate. They become trapped in black goo and their innards are excised, leaving only their skin as a byproduct of the process.

The alien continues to claim male victims, but after luring a young man deformed by Neurofibromatosis, experiences a change of heart.  She frees him, and leaves her colleagues behind. 

She runs away to another rural area and encounters a human male who shows kindness, chivalry and affection for her. She feels drawn to him, but discovers that her own lure -- sexual intercourse -- is just that; a trick.  Sex is physically impossible for her.

Leaving her companion behind, the alien treads into a vast forest, only to be assaulted by a rapist.  She attempts to escape from him, but he pursues her relentlessly.

“I just wanted to get away from it all.”

Under the Skin tells the story of an alien’s life on Earth, from start to finish, birth to death.

The film begins with the alien’s birth, for example.

We see weird imagery of orbs morphing and changing shape and forming into a human eye. On the soundtrack, we simultaneously hear sounds that we come to recognize as English words. The alien is “becoming” human -- learning and taking form -- before our very eyes.  But this being begins the odyssey not merely as an alien, but as a child, one unfamiliar with the human race.

As the movie continues, Scarlett Johansson’s alien character becomes more deeply acquainted with humanity, and furthermore, impacted by it. 

At first she leads men back to the house and the alien trap without remorse, pity, or perhaps even real understanding of her actions. 

She is a black-widow spider in a sense, capturing the men in a web that destroys them.  She acts not out of hatred or evil, but because, perhaps, it is in the nature of her biological programming.  The indication seems to be that this is what she has been engineered to do.

But the longer this alien remains in her human suit and in human environs, the more deeply she connects with the men she encounters. She soon feels conflicted and deformed among them, neither human nor alien, which, I suspect, is the very reason that she shows pity for the human victim with Neurofibromatosis. 

Like her, he has no real friends, and has never known love, connection, or even physical affection.  Like her, he walks the Earth alone, unconnected to others and feeling apart or different. 

By freeing him, in essence, she is freeing herself. 

The interlude involving the gentle, deformed man is perhaps the film’s most important, because for the first time, the alien recognizes something kindred in another being.  The young man is human, but outside humanity nonetheless.  He is different on the outside (deformed) than he is on the inside (as human and vulnerable as the rest of us). 

This description reflects the alien’s nature.  She is human outside, but not quite human inside…at least not yet.

It is a very cruel turn of events then, when this questing alien learns finally how to be close with someone, a man who demonstrates kindness and friendship. He protects her (carrying her over a large dirty puddle), shelters her (providing her a space heater in a cold room), and asks no questions that she may prefer not to answer.  He makes her feel connected to another being in a way she has never known, and soon she comes to feel sexual desire for him.

Yet, as she graphically learns, she is not an anatomically correct human. She has been “created” by her cohorts without the capacity to physically love another as a human would.  Yet in a human suit, in a human world, she is still buffeted by human desires, human emotions, and human needs.

This concept -- of being driven by natural or biological forces -- is expressed visually in a few crucial scenes.

Early in the film, the alien hunts a man from the Czech Republic who is swimming in dangerous waters.  We see the turbulent sea, and it claims two human lives (and the life of a dog, as well).  The alien reveals no pity for the dead or for their infant child on the shore, but the very force of the sea --- the pulling, driving force of the ocean -- suggests a natural force that is implacable.

Later, we see another natural force -- wind -- that causes trees to bend and sway dangerously in the forest, and once more, the impression is of life being acted upon or driven by something natural and inescapable.

At one point, Glazer crafts a special effects shot of the alien, huddled in the fetal position in place of the swaying trees, thus visually forging the connection that she too is being impacted by forces of biology, forces outside of her conscious control.

The same idea is connected explicitly with the men who provide easy prey for the alien.

They are led to their deaths by the desire to physically connect, to have sexual intercourse. Under the Skin, in these moments, depicts at least two men who are physically aroused -- sporting erections on camera -- and so desire is again equated to a natural force, something that humans must respond to, just as they are buffeted by the ocean’s pull, or by a strong gust of wind.  We see -- right there on screen -- the impact of desire on these men.

In her alien form, Johannson’s character is immune to such forces, perhaps.

As a human, however, she is susceptible to them. The gravity of such forces begin to impact her and her choices. They shape her feelings and decisions. She leaves a de-humanizing “mission” (luring men to their death) and strikes off alone.

Under the Skin culminates with a scene of pure human ugliness, as a man attempts to rape and kill the alien in the isolation of the forest. She has traveled full circle in a sense, crossing the distance from hunter to prey, herself. Her suit of humanity becomes torn and ripped, and we see her in her true form.

At this juncture, the alien mournfully regards her human face -- which still seems alive, somehow -- and visibly grieves the thing taken from her: her hard-won humanity. Like the raging sea, physical desire can become so powerful a force that it can harm those it impacts, this moment suggests. 

Those individuals who are raped feel very much indeed like they have lost their humanity, I suspect: that they have been exploited as an object, and that the desire to “take” was more powerful than the desire to emotionally connect.  They gaze at themselves in the mirror, and feel like their identity has crumbled, and is in shards or pierces, not unlike the alien in the film’s final scene.    

This is the point where Under the Skin asks some important questions.

It is true that this alien has led human males to the slaughter, using sexual desire as her primary weapon.

But in the scene of assault, a human’s desire burns out of control (and there are literal flames in the scene soon afterward), and the alien is on a receiving end of the vicious, cruel force she once utilized without thought or remorse..  

In the end, everything she has learned, everything she has gone through is lost…up in ashes.  The human desires she dreamed of understanding, and first deployed against others, ultimately destroys her. Again, I can’t help but think of The Man Who Fell to Earth.  The alien in that film is corrupted and destroyed by his interface with humanity, and that’s pretty much what occurs here too.  

Is the message, then, that the alien in this film deserved to be attacked for playing with fire?  And should the film thus be interpreted as carrying an anti-woman message? 

You know: be sexually alluring, and you’ll pay for it!

No doubt some will interpret it exactly that way. 

Yet I don’t believe the film is misogynist in nature. In fact, the opposite may be true.  The men in the film are led around by their sexual desires, and the rapist succumbs violently to them.  In neither specific case is a male of the species insightful enough to understand that he is dealing not with a human woman, but with an alien being. 

Instead, men respond to the alien only as a sexual being, carried away by the force of their desires.  If anything then, the film plays as an indictment of the male of species for being so out-of-control…a fact which doesn’t necessarily make the film laudable either.

So perhaps the film’s deepest value arises outside of pre-conceived notions of sex roles.  Again and again Under the Skin suggests that humans respond only to the appearance of things, not the true nature or substance of things. 

The man with Neurofibromatosis is kind and sweet, but is seen by everyone as a monster…and shunned because he is ugly.

The alien woman is seen by men as a siren or an object of sexual conquest.

She is seen by her alien cohorts as a tool for their agenda. 

But she is not those things.

She has becoming a feeling human being who wants to live and connect to others in a way that carries meaning for her. She is, in the truest sense of the word, a real individual residing outside of any specific box or demographic.

The alien’s journey in the film takes her from clinical disinterest in humanity - as exemplified by her unthinking, callous treatment of a child -- to the heightened desire to endure as a human.  In the end, she struggles mightily to remain on this mortal coil and in her human guise because she has fought for humanity, and seen how quickly someone rip it -- like a torn suit -- from her flesh.

Perhaps then, the film is not anti-woman or anti-man, but merely about the casual way we can dehumanize and destroy others in our rush to satisfy our own needs.

One thing is for certain: Under the Skin is visually-dazzling. The film’s visualizations and imagery are haunting, and presented with a near-Kubrick-like precision. We frequently race down winding roads, destinations unknown, and view moments in the alien’s life against stark white, or stark black backdrops. 

The white backgrounds visually represent, after some fashion, the purity associated with birth.

The black visuals, which blend in with the black goo, intimate the alien’s dark night of the soul when she responds only to her alien programming, and not to the process of metamorphosis.

Glazer also at points seems to apes Kubrick’s approach to sound, permitting discordant sounds to grow and develop, sometime to harrowing aural impact.  But this discord, again, fits the narrative.  Under the Skin is about an alien struggling with a dual nature, and competing values, and it’s only natural that disharmony should result, given such a conflict.

This is one film, finally, that lives up to its title.  It not only gets under your skin, it asks you to peel back the surface of things, and consider, at least for a time, what it means to be a human being, and what forces drive your actions.

Movie Trailer: Under the Skin (2014)

Ask JKM a Question: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2009 - 2013)?

A regular reader, Jason, writes:

“I'm interested in your opinion of Cartoon Network's "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" (2009-2013) series.”

Jason, I’ll be honest about this.

Before I received your e-mail (several weeks ago....) I didn’t have a very clearly formed opinion of The Clone Wars. 

I had watched only a handful episodes with my son, Joel -- out of order too -- and found them likable enough. 

However, after reading your e-mail, I went back and watched several more installments of the program.  The whole series is now available on Netflix and so this seemed like the perfect time to wade in.

So my opinion -- with the caveat that I have still have still viewed less than thirty installments, overall -- is that it is an enjoyable series, and more than that, a dignified, respectable, and worthwhile continuation of the Star Wars saga.

More significantly, I feel that The Clone Wars has mimicked the general creative approach of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) in a way.

By that comparison, I mean only that Star Trek: The Next Generation took a while to find its legs as a successful creative endeavor.

Early on, for example, the Ferengi were an embarrassing disaster in terms of their villainy. But The Next Generation writers and producers didn’t drop the Ferengi, ignore the Ferengi, or mark them as toxic failures. 

Instead, they figured out how to deploy the Ferengi creatively and dramatically, and then brought them back to serve as prime supporting players in both TNG and Deep Space Nine.

Similarly, many long-time Star Wars fans did not like the prequel movies (1999 – 2005) or their universe very much.

There were complaints about Jar-Jar Binks, young Anakin, older Anakin, and so forth. 

But to its credit, The Clone Wars doesn’t shy away from the universe established by the live-action prequels, and brings back races and characters that weren’t happily perceived the first time around.

Yes, even Jar-Jar Binks.

Yet as I believe The Next Generation proved, something intriguing happens when disliked or initially unsuccessful characters (such as the Ferengi or Jar-Jar) return in additional (and often superior…) stories. 

We get to know them better. They become deeper. We know and understand how they "fit" into the universe, and we start to accept them.

And, finally, this new-found success in later ventures sort of retroactively shines back on the earlier stories. You can suddenly go back to the lesser tales and find some value that was harder to see before, when you were distracted by the creative missteps.

There, I said it.

Watching The Clone Wars actually makes re-watching the Star Wars prequels a better, and far more intriguing and engaging experience.  

This principle applies to the development of Anakin (and his eventual journey to the dark side), his relationship with Padme, and many other factors that some fans felt were inadequately handled in three movies.  

By revisiting the Gungans (in stories such as “Gungan Attack”) or Watto’s people, the Toydarians (in stories such as “Ambush,”) the aliens take on new substance, and the universe seems, oddly enough, less like a cartoon designed to sell toys.

Again, my caveat is that I have not seen the entire series at this juncture.  But based on what I have seen, The Clone Wars actually does an extraordinary job deepening a universe that could use some deepening.

There are two important factors that I noted on my survey.

The first is that with Star Wars functioning as a TV series, the creators have far more time to discuss issues of moral complexity.  

The six feature films dramatize an epic story of a galaxy in transition, and so there often simply isn’t time to go into detail regarding some aspects of life in the Empire or Republic. But the episodic nature of The Clone Wars allows writers to linger on those world-building qualities and moral shades that the movies, by necessity, gloss over.  

For instance, we remember young Anakin as a slave in The Phantom Menace (1999).

Here, episodes such as “Slaves of the Republic” in season four of The Clone Wars allow that idea to play out a little more fully, and in a way that adds to our understanding of Anakin’s journey as a character.  For example, Anakin recalls that his mother was sold in a slave market like the one he visits on the planet Zygerria. 

Ahsoka, Anakin’s padewan, must pretend to be a slave herself in the course of the story and questions how a “civilization as advanced” as the Republic permits such atrocities to continue.

Other episodes ask additional questions that the movies simply couldn’t get to. One clone notes in “Rising Malevolence,” an early episode, that “we’re just clones…we’re meant to be expendable.”  

Is that true?

If so, one can tie this comment from a clone to the notion of slaves in the Republic and see that nobody, not even the Jedi, have clean hands. The series thus asks -- at least occasionally -- whether it is right for a society to maintain, essentially, second class citizens.

The episodes of The Clone Wars that I have watched are not overly deep, it is true. But they at least touch tangentially on these issues of importance in the Star Wars universe. They add color and texture to places and people that, in the movies, were afforded no such color or texture.

The second and perhaps more noticeable virtue in The Clone Wars involves the visuals.  

They are often, as far as I can determine from my viewing, simply breath-taking.  

“Gungan Attack” -- which features an underwater war between the Separatists and the people of Admiral (here Captain…) Ackbar, is positively stunning in its imagery. Huge alien and mechanical armies battle beneath the sea with giant machines, robots, and vessels, and light-sabers swinging everywhere.

The whole set-piece resembles some brilliantly imaginative 1930s era pulp cover, and one Separatist ship in the episode even boasts the large “eyeball” windows, it looks like, of Disney’s Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954).

Actually, I really admired this story a great deal because the visuals are superb, and the touches of continuity-- Ackbar, Mon Calamari, and Gungans -- suggest a fidelity to all eras of the franchise.

The episode captured the essence of Star Wars, in my opinion. That essence consists of splendidly-realized action-adventure in an unusual setting (wild alien planets or environments) -- combined with a knowing pastiche of earlier science fiction images, re-purposed for maximum excitement.

Are there some aspects of The Clone Wars that give me pause? 

I suppose so. I have a bit of trouble with the Battle Droids, who act crazy and function as overt comic relief, but never really project a genuine menace. I fail to understand why the Separatists make their battle droids talkative blunderers with bad aim.

But the bottom line is this:  I wish I had about fifty hours to kill, right now, to watch the whole series from start to finish. 

Perhaps, after I watch more, I’ll find something to really dislike in Clone Wars, but for right now, I’m hoping that Joel swings back to a fascination with Star Wars so we have the opportunity to watch the whole series together start to finish. 

Don't forget to ask me your questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com

Cult-TV Theme Watch: Filmmaking

Hooray for Hollywood! The world of filmmaking has frequently been seen in cult-television programming of all stripes. 

In The Twilight Zone (1959 – 1964) episode “A World of Difference,” for example, a business-man named Arthur Curtis (Howard Duff) suddenly discovers that his life is not real at all, but a movie.  In particular, he’s an actor working on a film titled “The Private Life of Arthur Curtis,” and his real name is Gerry Raigan.

An episode of Gerry Anderson’s UFO (1969 – 1970) called “Mindbender” finds Commander Straker (Ed Bishop) fall under the influence of an alien device that alters his sense of reality. In the middle of an argument with General Henderson (Grant Taylor), Straker hears a director call “cut” and finds himself not in SHADO Headquarters, but on a set of headquarters.  He looks out to see the crew of a production…filming him. Summoning all his faculties, Straker must will himself back into the real world, and out of the world of filmmaking.

One episode of Ghost Story/Circle of Fear (1973) late during its run, “Graveyard Shift” involved a night watchman (John Astin) who discovers that the Fillmore Studio Lot is haunted by the ghosts of a movie that was never shown.  This episode features a cameo by real life producer William Castle, as the head of Fillmore Studios.

In V: The Series (1984 – 1985), the L.A. Resistance, following the death of Nathan Bates (Lane Smith) briefly hid out in an abandoned movie studio, in the episode “The Rescue.”

In 1985, one episode of Steven Spielberg’s anthology Amazing Stories (1985 – 1987) was called “Mummy, Daddy” and involved a horror movie that was shooting on location when the man playing the Mummy was called away -- while still in costume -- for the delivery of his child.  Unfortunately, the local town people thought he was a real Mummy, and began to pursue him…

On The X-Files (1993 – 2002), one episode -- directed by David Duchovny – saw Mulder and Scully (Gillian Anderson) visit Hollywood for a film version of one of the investigations.  In “Hollywood A.D.,” Garry Shandling played the movie version of Mulder, and Tea Leoni was Scully.

In the third season episode of Millennium (1996 – 1999), titled “Thirteen Years Later,” Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) and his partner Emma Hollis (Klea Scott) investigate a murder on the set of a low-budget horror film.

Recently, Smallville (2001 – 2011) featured an episode titled “Action” about a “Warrior Angel” film being shot on Clark’s farm.