2013 Hugo and Locus SF Winner: REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi

Hey, I'm alive!

I have a good streak of reviews for all of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus SF winning novels going, so I thought I'd peek in to keep those up. So, I'm doing Locus-winner Redshirts today, Nebula-winner 2312 in a couple of weeks, and maybe a general 2013 Hugos post before WorldCon. I rather hope that either Redshirts or 2312 wins the Hugo as well. I wouldn't mind reading a third novel if it were good, but I'm not that excited by the other entries. Throne of the Crescent Moon does look interesting, but the word that seems to pop up the most in reviews is "light," which I feel is a euphemism for "this is a generic fantasy adventure in a slightly unusual setting." I would feel bad about ignoring the two female nominees, but I think I've given Bujold and Grant their fair share of consideration. I really enjoyed Miles Vorkasigan's early adventures, but I feel like it's time - at book fifteen - for that series to either wrap up or grow into something different. And Grant's zomblogging series has never really worked for me. If I'm wrong, and you think any of these three are brilliant, let me know.

I like that I'm pretending I still have an audience after a fourteen-month break. :)

I was extremely skeptical about Redshirts as well. The idea of following some of the expendable ensigns on an Enterprise-like ship has potential, but there seemed to be even larger potentials that this novel would be overly meta, or, worse yet, a cavalcade of Trekkie in-jokes. I can't honestly say that Scalzi avoided either of those pitfalls, and yet, I really enjoyed this novel much more than I expected to.

We follow a new cohort of ensigns, led by a former student of an alien seminary named Andrew Dahl, as they join the Universal Union flagship Intrepid in the 24th century. They soon learn that the Intrepid has an alarmingly high casualty rate among those who go on away missions with a small core or bridge officers. They also learn that people often act irrationally, and the laws of physics even seem to change, in events surrounding these officers. Most of the ship's crew goes to great lengths to avoid any contact with them, for fear of being dragged off on a likely-fatal away team mission, but one crewman in hiding spurs them into action when he tells them his theory that the Intrepid is locked into the narrative of an old tv show, and the lethal bridge crew are the stars.

So, yes, the whole thing is a big in-joke, and an old one at that (I know the "redshirts always die" concept goes back decades in fandom). And yes, it all gets very meta as the characters come to understand they are characters, and Scalzi starts to explore the meaning of death in fiction (especially in the codas). But Scalzi still does a great job selling it all. He tosses off plenty of classic space opera plot ideas, and, though The Chronicles of the Intrepid is supposed to be a bad show, some of them were pretty interesting. For instance, he deals with Dahl's religious background well, and he has the feel of episodic space opera plotting down pat. This novel really made me miss Star Trek on television (especially reading it soon after watching another one of Abrams' dumb blockbuster pseudo-Trek movies). It also made me more interested in reading Scalzi's more straightforward sf; Old Man's War has moved up significantly on my "to read" list.

When the novel turns to the more meta aspects and begins to focus on storytelling more, it does lose some of its charm. But, Scalzi, other than short-cutting through a lot of the disbelief that some characters should have felt, manages to do some solid character work and say a few interesting things about writing along the way. I'm sure it's not the most brilliant novel about writing we've ever seen...but we've seen a lot of works in that category. Scalzi keeps his approach grounded, accessible, and character-oriented. In the process, he doesn't match the brilliance of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, Auster's New York Trilogy, or Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds, but he doesn't end up on that steaming mountain of garbage made up of 99% of postmodern metafiction either. The three codas, where Scalzi really starts to spend more time in the "real world" could have been a good deal shorter (especially the second), but they do have some nice moments.

I'm surprised to say, I'd be perfectly happy to see this win the Hugo - even against a more ambitious book like 2312 (though I'm only halfway through it, maybe it will wow me in the second half).

By the way, I listened to this as an audiobook. I think it was paced well for that mode of presentation. Wil Wheaton reads, and I was worried that would be an uncomfortable gimmick, but he acquitted himself well.

Grade: B+

2000 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation – GALAXY QUEST

Galaxy Quest follows actors from a fictional Star Trek-like show of the same name that aired in the early 80s for three or four seasons. The actors now make their living touring the con circuit and dealing with obsessive fans. These fans include a group of real aliens, Thermians, who think the old episodes are “historical documents.” They need the crew from Galaxy Quest to save their species from the cruel alien overlord Sarris. Tim Allen plays the Shatneresque Captain, full of swagger and always trying to overshadow his crew. Alan Rickman plays his alien first mate, who, like Nimoy in the ‘70s, wants to be taken seriously and is somewhat ashamed of his role. Sigourney Weaver plays the female officer who never had much to do (her job was to repeat everything the computer says). Sam Rockwell gets some of the biggest laughs as a “red shirt” who died early in an episode. All of them are taken by the Thermians to a complete, thorough recreation of their ship.

I’ll be honest; when I first saw this film, I really didn’t like it. A lot of the satire, especially in the first half, is dead on… But, as the film goes on, it becomes more and more like the material it initially mocks. By the end, it’s much more of a love letter than a satire. It’s a full on space adventure with real action, and real stakes. Back in 1999, I was in my heady, pretentious college days. I was both too good for Trek and really sick of it, and I was in no mood for a corny knock-off, as I saw it.

On this review, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Mostly, I’ve just gotten over myself. The thing is, this film works both as a space opera and as a gentle, fun-poking love letter. In hindsight, it’s one of the best space operas between Star Trek: First Contact in ‘96 and Serenity in ’05. The Fifth Element is the only film during that almost-decade span that I can really say might be better. True, the rest of the qualifying films are horrible Star Trek: The Next Generation films, awful Star Wars prequels (none of which even received a nomination from the Hugo voters, amazingly), and failed Vin Diesel vehicles. After all of those trainwrecks, this film looks a lot more successful. It’s funny, fun, and it has a great cast.

That said, this is a spectacular era for films with speculative elements, and I would’ve been happy with any of this crop of nominees. I already talked about Malkovich and The Matrix. The Sixth Sense is a fine supernatural drama, that holds up despite the steep decline of its creator's reputation. The Iron Giant is a wonderful animated film by Brad Bird, who went on to greater fame with Pixar. I’d probably rank Galaxy Quest fourth or fifth out of that set of films, and it certainly doesn'r have the credentials or influence of The Matrix. But, I do have a much greater appreciation of it now.

I guess you could even argue that this movie continues our “what is reality?” theme in the film reviews of late, as it does rest on a misunderstanding about the nature of fiction in a sf tv show. That's kind of a stretch though.

Grade: B+

No post on Monday, but I'll be back Wednesday.

1997 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation – “Severed Dreams,” BABYLON 5

Back to B5 with its second, and final, Hugo win. I chronicled my B5 watching history last time: there’s no question that the long, intricately planned arcs are ground-breaking and influential. However, horrible production values marred the series’ first season. By season 3, the production values have improved quite a bit. It seems to be in the same range as a show like early Buffy (whose production values I have no problem ignoring). However, even in season 3, at the show’s creative peak, I’m still not entirely won over by the characters and plot.

In the last Hugo-winning episode, Babylon 5’s quest for peace was collapsing as the evil “Shadows” manipulated alien races into attacking each other. These problems continue, but the newest threat is from within. An alliance of Alfred Bester-inspired psi-cops, the Shadows, and an evil President have taken over Earth and declared martial law. Under Commander John Sheridan, Babylon 5 breaks with the new Earth government and becomes a beacon of resistance. A lot of fighting ensues, and the production team really does pull out all the stops to make the battles look relatively decent…and even better.

I’m still not entirely sold on this series though. I wish I knew more about the Shadows. I wish everything wasn’t framed as a titanic struggle between pure good and pure evil. I wish the characters weren’t cookie-cutter clichés. I wish JMS could dial back his love of melodrama and preaching from the soap box. I wish a lot of things. There’s so much to admire about this series, but there continue to be a lot of little things that bother me. I doubt I’ll be a convert in the end, but I really do appreciate the layered, continuity-heavy storytelling that the show represents.

Unlike last time, I don’t think this episode was up against extremely strong competition. DS9’s “Trials and Tribble-ations” was a fun, nostalgic romp, but it was also very gimmicky. First Contact is also fun but flawed – more in the JJ Abrams school of Trek movies than the Nicholas Meyer school. If I were to pick an alternate winner, it might be a previous B5 episode called “Messages from Earth,” wherein we learn that the evil Earth government has found Shadow ships on Mars and Ganymede. It’s got a great archaeological mystery and an action sequence that may not be as elaborate as this episode’s but is more exciting (and less inevitably headed toward dues ex machine).

Grade: B

1996 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation – “The Coming of Shadows,” Babylon 5

My teenage sf-nerdom didn’t really tail off until ’97, so it’s a bit of a surprise that I didn’t give more attention to this critical darling of sf fandom. To this day, there’s a fairly significant group who consider this the best science fiction show of all time. Back in the day, I watched the tv movie and the pilot, and maybe one or two other episodes…and I really didn’t enjoy what I saw. Now, I’m working my way through the whole series (thanks Netflix Instant Viewing!) and I can see exactly why I didn’t like it. However, just maybe, with this episode, I’m starting to see why it’s so beloved.

The overall series takes place in a space opera setting dominated by races which are often at each others’ throats. The plume-haired Centauri are the old colonial overlords of the spot-headed Narn, and humans have recently fought a long, losing war with the mystical bald-headed Minbari. And then there are the mysterious Vorlons, whom few have ever seen because they wear bulky atmosphere suits. In an attempt to establish galactic peace, these five races have created a sort of League of Nations dispute-resolving body that meets on a human-controlled space station called Babylon 5. However, this Alliance is highly controversial, and the first four Babylon stations came to bad ends.

The show is the brainchild of J. Michael Straczynski , who wrote an overwhelming number of the series’ episodes himself and came in with a detailed plan of its overall arcs. The heavy foreshadowing and intricate maneuvers that JMS’s plan made possible are what really sets the show apart from others. “The Coming of Shadows,” an episode from the second season, is one of several turning points that progresses the multi-season arc in some major ways. A mysterious force known as the Shadows has been manipulating some of the characters since season one, and here it provokes an all out war between two Alliance members – the Narn and the Centauri – as the Centauri emperor dies. In a sub-plot, B5’s former Commander (from season one) sends a message that he is preparing a resistance to fight in the dark times that are to come. The fact that the show would change its lead for the second season (Bruce Boxleitner comes in and does a decent job) is another example of its boldness.

In other words, it’s an episode that plays to the show’s two biggest strengths – intricate long-term plotting and the aliens’ diplomatic intrigues. At a time when serialized television was virtually non-existent, Babylon 5 rewarded careful viewing in ways that influenced Buffy, Lost and the Battlestar reboot. The second season also shows some significant improvement on the show’s weakness – those problems that kept me from watching it when I was in high school. Frankly, the production values in the first season are terrible, even for a low-budget syndicated show. The show was one of the first to eschew model effects in favor of cgi, which doesn’t look much better than some of the stuff kids younger than me were doing on their home PCs around the same time.* The make-up is okay (you can tell from my description of the aliens that it’s fairly simple). Worst of all are the acting, directing, and editing – you don’t really appreciate how well these things are typically done on television until you see them done really badly, as on the first season of B5. We come into shots too early, the camera-work can be lazy, and the actors are so wooden that it can be painful to watch. Things do get much better in the second season, but problems still abound. So, the question is: is an intriguing sf story worth wading through a terrible production? I guess I’ll check back on how I feel about that when we cover a season three episode for the next Dramatic Presentation Hugo…

I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in here somewhere. The show ran concurrently with Babylon 5, and shares a lot of the same themes: set on a space station, war with a shadowy alien force, focus on long-term alien diplomacy with religious overtones, and a whole host of smaller similarities. JMS had pitched his space opera to Paramount, so it’s certainly possible that something sketchy happened here. There’s enough circumstantial evidence to arouse suspicions. On the other hand, JMS’s indebtedness to Star Trek is very clear, and B5 is really a synthesis of ideas from the first two Trek tv series anyway. And, the shows are very different once you get past some of the basics. DS9 has far better production values and much more interesting characters, and for my money, it’s the best sf show tv has ever seen. It didn’t win any Hugos and was beaten head-on by B5 twice. DS9’s “The Visitor” is much better than “The Coming of Shadows,” in my view, as is Twelve Monkeys, but I won’t deny that Babylon 5 is beginning to look like a show deserving of Hugo recognition. Maybe I’ll take an opportunity to talk about DS9 in depth down the road sometime.

*to be fair, some of these kids work at Pixar and Disney now.

Grade: B+

1995 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation – STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION: “All Good Things…”

Ron Moore and Brannon Braga wrote this final episode of The Next Generation. They had become fairly integral to the show by this point, and I think their aesthetics added a lot to the show – it became less episodic, more serious and just a tinge darker under their watch.

Like, “Inner Light,” this is a fine example of what Star Trek: The Next Generation does well, and, again, it focuses on Patrick Stewart, by far the show’s strongest actor and biggest presence. It’s also an amazing model for how to do a series’ finale: it looks back to the show’s beginning and looks forward to see where the characters might go without losing sight of the present. The godlike entity Q (John DeLance) causes Picard to skip back and forth, Slaughterhouse-Five-style, through three periods in time – the show’s present, seven years earlier when the Enterpise-D launched (the show’s pilot episode, “Encounter at Farpoint,” which was nominated for a Hugo), and twenty-five years into the future. In all three time periods, Picard must investigate a cosmic MacGuffin – these leads to doubts from his fledgling crew in the past, and, in the future, Picard has to “get the band back together” while his old crew suspects that he is suffering the effects of a degenerative brain disease. The MacGuffin is rather pointless and nonsensical, but the writing and acting are excellent, and it’s a brilliant way to send off the show.

Star Trek has yet to pick up another Hugo, though there is some good material out there after this – at some point maybe I’ll take an opportunity to say a bit more about DS9. There’s also a lot of really bad Trek after this as well, including a few awful Next Generation films, including Generations, written by the same Braga-Moore team and filming almost immediately after this episode. You can’t win them all.

I wonder how many more Hugos TNG would have won if they had separated the dramatic presentation categories as they do now. There wasn’t much competition; I think The Next Generation prompted a lot of the sf shows that appeared in the 90s. These two Picard episodes are very deserving, especially “The Inner Light,” but it would have been nice for some of the Klingon episodes to get more attention – the show builds a fairly rich culture for these aliens that were just swarthy moustache-twirlers in the Original Series. “Sins of the Father” and “Reunion” are very good. The alternate timeline action episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is also worthy of attention, as are some of the Asimovian robot stories about Data, like “Measure of a Man.” Then there’s the more action-oriented battle with the Borg in “Best of Both Worlds.” I’m sure the show was bad as often as it was great, but those great episodes really are some of the finest science fiction television of all time.

Grade: A-

1993 Hugo for Dramatic Presentation – STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, “The Inner Light”

No Hugos for Star Trek for over two decades, and then two in three years (and a Saturn). Yep, the early nineties is a real Renaissance for the Trek franchise, and The Next Generation is at the heart of it.

The Next Generation picks up about a century after the original series (so, it should’ve been called “Star Trek: Four or Five Generations Later”) and follows a new Enterprise (version “D”) with a more rationalist and diplomatic Captain than Kirk named Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). There’s also a robot, an empath, a blind engineer, and a Klingon security officer. It’s a nice cast of characters, and it’s much more of an ensemble series than the original. Or, most of the time. Patrick Stewart is the star of the show, however, and he can usually act circles around everyone else on set. As a result, the series really hinges on Picard.

In fact, I’d say the first two seasons suffer by not highlighting Stewart enough. The Hugo voters nominated the pilot and then promptly ignored the show for four years. It’s not too surprising considering the show’s obvious growing pains. This episode, from near the end of the series’ fifth season, is all about Patrick Stewart. Beware, I’m going to spoil this one, though I think it’s fairly obvious where it’s all going.

The Enterprise investigates a strange probe, which promptly puts Picard into a coma. He awakes on an alien world, where everyone insists that he is a man named Kamin, and that he is married. At first, he resists their claims and tries to figure out how to get back to his ship, but years pass, and he settles down. He starts a family with his wife, teaches his daughter science, becomes an upstanding member of the community, and learns to play the flute. He becomes an old man, and his astronomical observations lead him to realize that their planet is dying. Then he wakes up and discovers that whole life had been implanted in his mind as a monument to a dead civilization. What was decades of life for him was mere minutes for the rest of Enterprise crew.

It’s a great science fiction concept that creates a really touching scenario. It’s a quiet episode with no action sequences or alien baddies (take that Abrams!). It’s just scenes from a random guy’s life, but it’s about family, loss, and mortality, and it’s entirely carried by Stewart’s performance, which is amazing. In my opinion, this is Star Trek’s finest hour.

Grade: A

1992 Saturn – STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about Star Trek. Of course, the original series was revolutionary, but cut short. Then, it became hugely successful in syndication. There were plans to bring the series back, and the success of Star Wars finally led to a series of films and eventually a new tv show (which we’ll be discussing shortly).

So, why did it take until movie six for the series to get recognition? Four of the first five were nominated for Hugos, but failed to win. My views of those films, which are pretty much in line with most peoples are: first movie – dreadfully dull but pretty; second movie – excellent; third movie – short and sloppy but kind of fun; fourth movie – silly but very fun. The fifth movie was directed by Shatner and is so appalling bad that it should probably win some sort of award of evil. The second film was great, but had to go up against Blade Runner.

For the sixth film, the producers decided to remove the unpleasantness of Shatner’s movie by handing the reins back to the second film’s writer/director, Nicholas Meyer. The result is the second best Star Trek movie.

The Klingons (now with ridges!) have always been the Federation’s main enemy, and they managed to kill Captain Kirk’s son in the third film. At the beginning of this film, the moon of the Klingon homeworld explodes, and their entire Empire in endangered. Their need for Federation supplies creates a unique diplomatic opportunity and a real chance for peace. It could end the “cold war” between the two powers. Get it? Yep, the Cold War (which was a big topic when we were covering the ‘50s) has just ended, and this becomes an opportunity to do something topical.

A conspiracy among hardline elements within both the Federation and the Klingon Empire threatens the peace process, and there’s a great zero-g assassination scene. Meyer also adds the great touch of making the Enterprise crew into Cold Warriors themselves. They’re not sure they want peace with the Klingons, who killed Kirk’s son, after all. The cast fought this, and Roddenberry would’ve hated it, but I’m all for bringing a little moral complexity to the show’s central characters.

This is the last film with the original cast (though a few appear in the next film), and there were already a lot of jokes at the time about their general oldness and expanding waistlines, but Meyer makes great use of the fact in his scenario while still getting in some fun action scenes (there’s a nice escape from a Klingon prison planet and a tense space battle). This is a really great piece of space opera filmmaking. It might not be as thrilling as Abrams' recent take, but it’s about 10 times smarter.

Grade: A-

2010 Hugo nominee, Dramatic Pres., Long Form: Star Trek Screenplay by Robert Orci & Alex Kurtzman; Directed by J.J. Abrams (Paramount)

I'm going abroad for the rest of the month (to a country that's likely to have dodgy internet), so this is the last post of May. I'll be back in early June, and I'll post quite frequently to catch up (I'm on summer break now!)

J. J. Abrams' reboot of the Star Trek franchise was a fun crowd-pleaser. As long as you don't think too hard about the plot, there's a lot to enjoy.

Abrams had a tough choice here. Stay within the 43 years of continuity and possibly alienate new fans (who are certainly needed for a film this big to make a profit), or throw out the continuity and anger the fanbase (also essential to the film's success). Somehow, Abrams managed to do both. He uses a little time travel to create a new, branching continuity. The characters can go in new directions, and anything can happen, but there are plenty of Easter eggs for the old fans. Surprisingly, this approach actually seems to have worked. The film was a critical and financial success and most Trekkies (Trekkers, whatever) seem to have really liked it.

A Romulan miner named Nero manages to bring a ship from the 24th century to James Kirk's 23rd. Kirk's father is killed in the first contact between the Federation and the future ship, and the young Kirk takes a different path to Starfleet Academy. While still at the Academy, the students are scrambled to combat an attack by Nero on the planet Vulcan. In the battles that follow, the familiar crew make their way up the ranks of the Enterprise.

In a lot of ways, the film is patently ridiculous. It has cadets taking command of a starship. The villain's motivations are strange and his plot incomprehensibly convoluted. There are a few over-the-top slapstick humor sequences. And, there are a series of horribly contrived meetings between characters. It is, on a lot of levels, a stupid film, and I don't think that should be surprising since the writers, Orci and Kurtzman, were responsible for the very stupid Transformer films.

And yet, the film does work and was deserving of a lot of its success. The production values are so high that it manages to transcend so major story flaws. The acting is great, and Chris Pine especially does a great job filling the shoes of Shatner's iconic Kirk performance. And the film looks and sounds incredible. J. J. Abrams did a great job, even if he could have dialed back the lens flare a bit.

While critics were raving about it, the Onion had this hilarious news story. It's funny, but at the same time, I did want more boring alien diplomacy scenes. Or at least a story that made sense and had some real resonance. I'm looking forward to seeing more Trek in the years to come, but as long as Orci and Kurtzman are running things, I'm not too confident. The film had a lot of good will when it first came out, but I think that enough people have come to see the film's flaws that I don't see it winning the Hugo.

Grade: B

1968 Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation – STAR TREK “The City on the Edge of Forever”

Star Trek wins again, fittingly (it's sort of surprising that they don't get so much as a nomination from here on, even considering the declining budget and quality of the show). "The City on the Edge of Forever" is an episode from late in the first season that's widely considered the original series' finest hour. A drugged Bones wanders through "The Guardian of Time" into 1930s America, where he saves a young woman's life. Kirk pursues him and falls in love with the woman, who is named Edith Keiller (Jackie Collins). Bones and Kirk soon learn that Keiller is a very persuasive spokesperson for the pacifist movement - now that she's alive, she will prevent the United States from entering World War II in time to defeat Nazi Germany. In other words, Bones is going to change history and destroy humanity's utopian future in the process.

It's a fascinating ethical dilemma, a wonderful character moment for Kirk (somewhat undermined by the fact that he falls in love with a woman in every episode), and a fantastic production all around, with most of the series' best acting on display. I'm not sure if it's my favorite episode, but it's up there, and I don't disagree with its status as a classic for a second.

I should also take this moment to mention that the screenplay was written by Harlan Ellison, a staple of '60s science fiction. Ellison won three Hugos for short stories in just four years in the late '60s. 1966 winner "'Repent Harlequin,' said the Ticktockman" is a psychedelic metaphor that protests the tyranny of schedules and time in modern society. 1968 winner "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" tells the psychedelic story of five people tortured for eternity by a sentient computer he hates humanity for making him feel. "The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World" is just plain psychedelic. Can you tell it's the late '60s? I understand why Ellison is a legend, but his bleak and surrealistic visions really aren't for me. I think I'd rather read Ginsberg or Burroughs.

Ellison has long complained that Gene Roddenberry made several cuts and changes to the script (Star Trek mainstay Dorothy Fontana ended up with a co-writing credit). From everything I've heard about his script, the aired version sounds much superior (though the drug-dealing in the Federation sub-plot does sound intriguing). Ellison has a tendency to stir up trouble.

Grade: A

1967 Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation – STAR TREK, “The Menagerie”

Star Trek is certainly a watershed in science fiction. It draws heavily from published science fiction works, and especially works like Asimov's Foundation with its interstellar politics, and faster-than-light starships. There's also plenty of odd (but usually humanoid) aliens, telepathy, and time travel thrown in - the show hits pretty much all of the sci-fi tropes. In the context of all of the Hugo reading I've done, it's easy to see this show as derivative - merely a translation of ideas and themes that are old hat in the written medium to the newer medium of television. I don't think there is any question though, that science fiction from here on bears the stamp of Gene Roddenberry's creation. I think Trek re-canonized these ideas at a time when sf was drifting away from them.

I'm not the hugest fan of the Original Series - despite the fact that the show is blazing lots of new ground with material we've never seen on television before, it quickly falls into a few stock stories. 1). Godlike aliens test the Enterprise, and the crew must make a case for the innate goodness of humanity or the importance of freedom. Or, 2). the Enterprise discovers a planet that exactly resembles some period of Earth history. Those two plotlines cover about 80% of Star Trek episodes. These limitations were probably in part the results of budget constraints (plot #2, especially, saves money on sets by utilizing locations already on the studio lot), but it can still be frustrating.

Nonetheless, the 8 episodes that received Hugo nominations during the series' three year run (all five Hugo nominations for best dramatic presentation in 1968 went to Star Trek) are all very good examples that do break the mold. The losing nominees are an intriguing lot: "The Corbomite Maneuver" is an early episode in which Captain Kirk must match wits with a powerful alien presence. It's worth it for the odd, offbeat ending. "The Naked Time" sees the crew descend into madness following an alien infection and is most famous for allowing George Takei's Mr. Sulu to run around with a fencing sword rather than playing to racial stereotypes with a samurai sword. "Amok Time" delves into Vulcan mating rituals, which tend to involve arena combat. In "Mirror, Mirror," the crew must combat evil (and sometimes goatee'd) versions of themselves from a parallel dimension. "The Doomsday Machine" pits the Enterprise against a giant, planet-gobbling weapon from another galaxy, while "The Trouble with Tribbles" pits them agains cute little fuzzballs that quickly multiply and create a Malthusian crisis (an early example of the perils of biological invasion).

In 1967, "The Menagerie" won the big prize (I'll talk more about 1968's winner soon). It's actually the series' original, Shatnerless pilot, repackaged as a flashback set in a two-part framing story. Captain Christopher Pike is kidnapped by godlike aliens (see???) who want to use him in a breeding program. They offer him lots of sex with what appears to be a beautiful woman who will cater to any number of fetishes, but Pike would rather live free in reality than trapped in the aliens' sexy zoo. Ironically, in the framing story, Pike has been horribly burned in a starship accident, and his old second mate Spock has decided to return him to the sexy zoo where he can live free in the aliens' illusion rather than trapped in his wheelchair. It is an intriguing storyline that highlights much of what Trek is about (strong characters, godlike aliens, sexy women in short skirts), though it's probably not Trek at its best.

Grade: B