Thursday, June 16, 2016

17 to 01: Is There No Truth in Beauty?


There's so much happening in this episode. Commercialism. Diana Muldaur. Stolen reels. Friendzoning. Broken aesops. Jackie Chan.

Good episode? Bad episode? Good lesson? Bad lesson? "Is There No Truth in Beauty" is a series of contradictions, much like Dr. Miranda Jones.

Action Comics #27, which introduced Batman, premiered in 1939. I was also wrong about Marvel's Golden Age. Technically, that era ended with the publication of Fantastic Four #1, which revolutionized Marvel Comics and possibly the superhero comics medium.

17 to 01 is available on iTunes. It updates Thursday mornings at 2:00 AM ET / 1:00 CT. We're also amazingly on Stitcher.

4 comments:

SkilTao said...

Wesley Crusher: "You mean they're in a place where space and time and thought (and visors which aren't designed for noses) aren't the separate things they appear to be?" Kirk cannot cope with this without finishing everybody else's drinks.

TNG: "Telepathy and a vision device? Oh cool, let's make them part of our main cast. We'll do so many things with them."

Good point about needing to use NPCs as vectors for conflict, how that undermines them as characters, and how Miranda Jones manages to remain complex. I like how the dinner starts with two serving women, to contrast with Miranda standing toe-to-toe with the Big Three Plus Scotty. I also like how Miranda eavesdrops telepathically on Kirk after he leaves sickbay; I thought she'd decided to risk her life to revive Spock, but man, maybe she *was* trying to kill him? They spent a fair amount of time setting up how she's afraid of connection with people, so I wish Kirk hadn't been so on target with the accusations of jealousy.

I can't say how villainous she looks through the eyes of 1960s culture, but Kolos did give her a psychic bitch-slap.

"I can memorize anything instantly / I am standing exactly 1 meter 4 centimeters from the door" - I have to think Miranda inspired the character of River Tam on Firefly (not to mention the *planet* named Miranda in the Serenity movie), which then suggests the Medusans (the sight of which make people go crazy) had something to do with the Reavers ("men who reached the edge of space, saw a vasty nothingness, and went bibbledy over it").

This seems like a well executed ep to me--I especially like the security phalanx striding down the corridor--so I'm surprised that they completely skip over how Kirk knew security was needed at the ambassador's quarters.
-Long shots of corridor: I didn't realize all their hallways might be one continuous set.
-Rare shot from Turbolift: I forgot about the navigational display down between Sulu and Chekov.
-Scotty hearing the PA announcement of crazy, and McCoy's finely tuned Spock/not-Spock detector, are pretty great.
-Wow, Derek was spot on in interpreting that "Day of the Dove" preview image.

I thought they gave the Eddaic symbol the right balance of brevity and background, so I'm surprised it started out as purple prose. (Maybe I'd be less surprised if I paid more attention to script development.) You covered the highbrow aspect pretty well; I'll just add that, nowadays, I'd like to think that designing for merchability and for cosplay is considered a worthy artistic endeavor in itself.

VanVelding said...

"Telepathy and a vision device? Oh cool, let's make them part of our main cast. We'll do so many things with them."

Sick burn on TNG. I vow to dedicate the next four years of my life to clearing that bar.

Derek's hit or miss, but when he hits, it tends to be eerily accurate.

It's weird reading about how the art and money are so intertwined. This weekend we're actually recording the Season 3 Supplemental and that...nuanced artistic/money, staff/exec, idealism/bigotry duality of the series is on the list as a topic. It's emerged as a theme of 17 to 01 and it's worth discussing.

SkilTao said...

I started TNG, and was about ready to eat my words, but then I got to the writers' strike. Troi seems to have some agency up to then, and I actually kinda like the silly crap they have Geordi do. Shame they lost Tasha and Crusher so quick.

I vow to dedicate the next four years to getting a microphone/audio setup that works.

VanVelding said...

Good luck with that. I've been very fortunate to be able to build my setup around that over the months we've been doing this.