From: ira2p@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Iain Robert Asplin)
Subject: Saturday Night Review - Time's Arrow Part II - *spoilers!*
Organization: University of Virginia
Distribution: rec.arts.startrek.,current,  and the land of uninventice scripts
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 06:05:53 GMT


Another review of Time's Arrow Part II upcoming.....

SPOILERS!



SPOILERS!



A cute comment usually goes here on the last spoiler-protect, but this
episode doesn't leave me with a sense of humor tonight....





"Time doesn't go round and round in circles.
"You can't get on and off wherever you like in the past or the future.

"Really?  Where does Time go then?

"It doesn't go anywhere, it just happens and then it's finished!"

These quotes from the very first episode of "Doctor Who" I feel aptly
sum up two feelings I get, one from your postings and one from the episode
itself.  On the one hand, I like these quotes as they make the idea that
"Time Travel is and always will be utterly impossible," look a little
abrupt, early-to-judge, and silly.  That's one thing I want to say to
the time travel naysayers out there.

The other thing this quote fits well is my opinion of this episode,
"It doesn't go anywhere, it just happens and then it's finished!"



Far, far too much was not dealt with in the story, the most obvious and
glaring and grating one being the aliens.  Not only did they not get
one ounce of character, they didn't even get a proper name!!  just
"the aliens!"

I've read and heard that the Next Gen writers usually write these
cliffhanger episodes without knowing how they will end the next season,
and by looking at this one, I can believe it.
So much of the emphasis in the set-up in Part One was totally abandoned
for Part Two, and thus the episodes' flows seem to completely be at
odds with one another.  In Part Two, Jack London is shoved out of the
script as soon as the writers can manage it, Mark Twain has no relevance
whatsoever to the plot, the acting jokes were a waste of time and weren't
funny, etc. etc.

And what of the plot?  All the writers seemed to want to achieve with
this episode was to tie up all the time knots they'd started last season.
Everything else, characters, setting, and emphasis, was neglected.

I'm sorry, I have to say it again, the treatment of the aliens....
....this was very very poor, ,  BLOODY poor.
WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING WRITERS?  
We're supposed to be watching this show to meet and greet new life forms,
and this is clearly the most gratitious use of aliens Next Gen has ever
done; in a word SHALLOW.

I'm going to bring in some Who things again here....

I couldn't help but think when the preamble of the show was being said,
that it absolutely positively did not seem to fit with what this episode
was about, and by the end, it still didn't.  Star Trek is supposed
to be about exploring strange new worlds, I thought.  
Time puzzles are "beyond your purview."  Once again, whether by design
or accident, Next Gen is treading onto territory I've seen well-covered
by Doctor Who, and this time they failed miserably.
Whovians call this type of story a "pseudo-historical," where we travel
into Earth's history and have something science-fiction happenning.
In Who, these are some of the most interesting stories, but seeing an
attempt at the same sort of thing in Star Trek just jars me somehow.
What I see is a series believing it has limitless bounds stretching out
the plot ideas, and not realizing their universe is indeed bound until
they're falling out the edge.  

Another thing just occurred, (you can see I'm making thisup as I go,
as this entire review is extremely disjointed, apologies), something
that disappointed me.  I had really hoped we would get to see Worf
acting in command on the bridge, making decisions the Klingon way, 
wrestling with teh temporal paradoxes from a warrior's point of view,
and NOTHING happened with this!  This is the type of thing I've longed
to see Worf do for a long time...we had a set-up for it at the end of
last season...and they let it dangle.

As you can tell here from my incoherence tonight, this episode has left
me a bit puzzled.  Everything the netters were predicting at the end
of last season came true....it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest
if the writers wrote the first part, and then read the net to find out
how they should end the thing!  It looks like something like that happened.


Time's Arrow was a risk for Star Trek, as the series was treading into 
temporal territory.  Harlan Ellison knew how to make this work, TNG's
writers blew it.  

I guess I'm just disappointed that Next Gen failed so miserably at 
something Doctor Who has done quite well several times over, and Trek
even had the episode-minutes to match this time, and still....

Stay out of the past Next Gen...that's my advice to you.  Going by
Time's Arrow, I don't think you belong there.....


Overall rating (scale one to ten):  two


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