102. Quality Counts

Personally, I embody both Ted's and Lara's views on this. I am anticipating the film with some excitement, yet, the first J.J. Abrams Trek was a mixed bag, to put it charitably. J.J. was on The Daily Show the other night and reiterated that until he got the gig to do the previous Trek movie, he wasn't a fan and in fact, “didn't get it.” Then he made his movie, proving to the world that he still didn't get it. Has he gotten it in the intervening years? One can hope, but I'm not holding my breath. On the other hand, he does know how to make fun popcorn movies, so I'm sure I'll be entertained. I'll know more Thursday night.

Re: “Planet of the &#%@ing Africans” — My friend the late, great Scott Tolson always referred to the Next Generation episode “Code of Honor” as “Planet of the Africans.” It was one of the first episodes they made and there was a lot of failure in those early episodes, but this one was especially notable in its fails because it is the one and only racist episode of Star Trek in any form. (Not even Brannon Braga has stooped that low. Though he did have the anti-Midas touch and turned every script he had anything to do with into a more formulaic, less interesting, more juvenile product.) The story's “aliens” were all dark-skinned, tribal, scarred from ritual violence, spoke with vaguely Ugandan accents, referred to as both “primitive” and “noble,” and lacked only a bone-through-the-nose to complete a hideous caricature. Legend has it Gene Roddenberry fired the director in mid-shoot over it. Wil Wheaton did one of his awesome snarky reviews of the episode for TV Squad (which apparently got eaten by AOL and then HuffPo).

For the uninitiated:

• J.J. Abrams
• The Appalling Finale of Star Trek: Enterprise
• “Spock's Brain”
• The Adventures of Berman and Braga, “a short parody that mutates into a grand epic that spans the Earth, time, and subspace!”
• Star Trek: Voyager can suck my balls, says some guy with a beard