From: kanamori@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Atsushi Kanamori)
Subject: Re: OPINIONATED COMMENTS (SPOILERS for THE FIRST DUTY)
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University.
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 15:33:25 GMT

In article <1992Apr7.215024.26643@cco.caltech.edu> tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch) writes:
>Now that the news server seems to actually be sending mail out again, time
>for the heavy work.  :-)
>
>kanamori@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Atsushi Kanamori) writes:
>
>>Spoilers below for THE FIRST DUTY.



>>So much for what worked. What *didn't* work was the character of Nicholas 
>>Locarno, and for that matter, the entire "choose between friendship and 
>>truth" angle. 
>
>Gentlemen, start your engines...:-)
>
>>The problem was in that every scene, Nick projected 
>>"silver-tongued phony" at me -- he had no depth, no charisma, nothing to 
>>make him sympathetic and indeed, I couldn't *believe* that Wes would feel 
>>such loyalty towards the creep 
>
>I wouldn't go that far at all.  I didn't care for him much myself, but in
>some of the same ways that I've never cared overmuch for Jim Kirk--and yes,
>I do think much of the parallel that's been discussed here is valid.

But not enough, IMO. I *do* like Kirk, as much as I do Picard (although
for entirely different reasons), and I can't equate the two at all.
Most importantly, I can imagine being loyal to Kirk even if I disagreed with
him -- I can't say the same for Mr. Locarno. Kirk may be undisciplined but
he has, IMO, the right values at heart -- Locarno didn't. I think Locarno
reflects the *stereotype* that Kirk has been (often unjustly, IMO) hung
with around here, but not Kirk himself.


>A couple of times, he really lost me (the "no one could have asked..." line
>is one of them), but most of the time my impression was not "this guy's a 
>sleaze", but was "well, I can't see myself working with him, but I can
>see where lots of others might".
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nobody I could take seriously, though. It may explain why I empathized
with Picard more than Wesley for this episode and I empathized with
Wes largely in the abstract, except in that final scene.




>>Yes, we are TOLD (not shown!) via Boothby 
>>that the Nova team is a highly worshipped team on campus and that the team 
>>members would follow Nicholas into hell and back, but I just couldn't
>>believe it from what I saw. 
>
>Believability aside for the moment, I don't think telling vs. showing was
>so bad here.  To show it would probably have taken time, 

There was enough time; much of it could have been done between the lines -- 
as Mark Miller pointed out, it's not so much WHAT you say as HOW you say it 
and the image you project by your composure (example: the ready room scene
worked not so much because of what Picard said but the WAY he said it
with that choked up voice. With an inferior actor, those same lines could
have sounded like THE OUTCAST-style proselytizing ("The FIRST DUTY of
EVERY Starfleet officer is to the TRUTH...".)

To make it work *completely*, I'd say you'd have to introduce some 
inarguable evidence at some point that Locarno cares about *something* other 
than himself -- this wouldn't require an extra scene (and it *shouldn't*, 
it'll be too obvious). Shorten some of the Boothby scenes, tighten up
some of the expository material and remove some of the less successful
Lacarno material ("No one could have asked...") and there's plenty of
time, IMO. 


>detracting 
>significantly from the real strength of the episode--and I doubt either of
>us would have wanted that.

Here, I don't know what to say. Would a properly constructed "peer-pressure"
thread detract from the Picard-Wesley thread? I don't think so. You pointed
out that Wesley was faced with a choice between two fathers: Picard and
Locarno, and that interpretation didn't work for me, *precisely* because
Locarno had so little substance that the choice was, IMO, obvious. A 
choice between Picard and a CAREER, I would have bought, but not between 
Picard and Locarno. If they'd written Locarno so that I could accept that
I *might* irrationally side with Locarno for *personal* reasons even if
it meant betraying a captain I respected deeply, I would have found it much
more interesting and it wouldn't have blunted the betrayal aspect at all.



>>Nick's eleventh hour noble sacrifice rang false -- it was inconsistent
>>with the character he'd projected for the past hour. Now, it's certainly 
>>possible for a character to do something unexpected, yet for it to make
>>sense afterward. It doesn't here. 
>
>It did to me, initially, but I've been talking with a few friends and have
>been persuaded of an alternate interpretation that both of us might be able
>to find palatable.
>
>Namely, that Locarno's last act was still fairly self-serving.  He was already
>going down, and he'd lose nothing with this confession.  What he might do
>is gain back the respect of a lot of the campus, and probably turn Wes into
>more of a pariah than he would have been beforehand.  (And Wes, in his current
>funk, would be very likely to see it simply in the terms of "he protected the
>team and I didn't", I think.)  Could you imagine two years or so down the
>line, when Locarno is still a folk hero without even being around, and Wes
>is being treated like dirt?
>
>I actually prefer this more than treating Nick's sacrifice as genuine, 
>although
>I had little problem doing the latter.  The problem now seems that it wasn't
>made particularly clear which we're meant to see it as.

I prefer the above interpretation too, in that it makes the character
more consistent. I still have a problem in that his characterization
makes the peer pressure thread one-sided and uninteresting, but I went
over that above.



>>The other problem is that the actor who played Nick just didn't 
>>project any depth -- he played it like an obvious, one-dimensional phony. 
>
>[obligatory statement that "see, the Kirk parallel just gets stronger!"
>deleted :-) ]

Nope. Shatner's Kirk was at least TWO-dimensional. (.5 :-)



>>I do have a few other gripes about the show, although mostly minor.
>>First, the scenes with Boothby were a waste of time and celluloid. 
>
>I completely disagree here, but if I remember right you outline this more
>fully elsewhere and I'll bop you on the head for it there.  :-)

I'll watch for it.


>>Overall, the Boothby scenes smelled far too much of 
>>another "give a big-shot actor a token cameo so he can say he was on Star 
>>Trek" gimmick. 
>
>Ray Walston is a big-shot actor?  I can't think of anything he's done
>since "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", personally.

Big-shot enough that Paramount press info mentions his name in a four
line description of the show and that he receives an honorary guest star
billing ("And Ray Walston as Boothby") for what was really an incidental part.



>>On the other, we had half a step backward when Picard
>>reminded Geordi "Wesley's one of us.", which smelled way too much like
>>Wes's "Worf's our friend. We have to help him." schtick in THE ICARUS FACTOR.
>
>Oh, not at all.  The one in TIF was bad primarily because it was so 
>*incredibly* overdone.  This one was kept very simple:  "Wesley's one of
>our own."  Five words--and nothing else needed to be said.  Had he had a 
>couple more sentences on the topic, I might have joined you; but not
>here.

I'm not sure even those five words needed to be said (or rather, if they
needed to be *said*, I question the sincerity of this friendship.) But
this is really flimsy data to be making a call -- we're probably both 
overreacting a bit here.

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