Where Trek Actors Had Gone Before: Five Episodes of The Twilight Zone with Trek Actors

Before the dawn of Star Trek, there was The Twilight Zone. The cast who would eventually be known for their roles on Star Trek: The Original Series was made up of mostly veterans who had been acting on television for years already. Rod Serling's Twilight Zone featured a plethora of prominent actors of the early 1960's, made possible by the show's anthology format; as such, many regulars and some guest stars had appeared in Twilight Zone episodes.

While many of the articles here on The Nerd Gimoire that could be called 'episode studies' deal with drawing conclusions about common themes, plot threads or motifs, there will be no such analysis in this article. The only common thread between these episodes is the presence of actors who would later appear together as part of the same cast, and other than this there is little to tie these episodes together. But, if you're a fan of Trek and haven't seen a lot of Twilight Zone, these episodes happily provide a variety of Zone offerings, differing somewhat in content, tone and narrative structure. There are a few classics, but also some obscure episodes and even one that was pulled from syndication for its controversial subject matter.

What do William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan and George Takei all have in common? They acted together on that 60's TV show - you know the one, the Twilight Zone!

1. Nick of Time (Season 2, Episode 7)

"The hand belongs to Mr. Don S. Carter, male member of a honeymoon team on route across the Ohio countryside to New York City. In one moment, they will be subjected to a gift most humans never receive in a lifetime. For one penny, they will be able to look into the future. The time is now, the place is a little diner in Ridgeview, Ohio, and what this young couple doesn't realize is that this town happens to lie on the outskirts of the Twilight Zone."

Of all the actors featured here, William Shatner would have been considered the most notable by the audiences of the 1960's. Shatner's career has been a somewhat unusual one. While he looked poised to take the industry by storm, his career began to fade for a time; it would be several years before he would return to the same levels of mainstream prominence.

Most are familiar with the second Twilight Zone episode in which Shatner appeared, possibly because it was remade for The Twilight Zone movie. Nick of Time was his first, and it is a much more subtle episode, with a more underplayed performance from Shatner, who plays a young, newly-wed professional - Don Carter. Don and his wife Pat are on their honeymoon when their car breaks down. After having it towed to Ridgeview, Ohio, the couple decides to wait at the Busy Bee Cafe (a thinly-veiled name for a locale in the Twilight Zone). When the two sit down, they find that their table has a magic 8-ball-esque 'fortune-telling machine'.

We immediately get the impression that Don Carter is the kind of man who always has his mind on work, or all of his problems for that matter, even when on his honeymoon. What begins as an interest born out of novelty or just as a game to pass the time quickly becomes an obsession for the afternoon as Don begins asking question after question to the 'mystic seer'. After a few of the fortunes the couple receive turn out to be correct - possibly by coincidence, possibly not - Don's credulity only increases. It starts to look like Don is becoming enamored and maybe even dependent on the machine for guiding his every decision, as his wife, Pat, concerned with her husband's developing neurosis, tries with all her might to reason with Don. Unfortunately, as the episode progresses, Don is only sucked deeper and deeper into a feverish interrogation of the machine for the 'right decision' in regards to every last life decision, no matter how big or small.

This episode might be taken as a commentary on the very human tendency for many to turn to superstitious means to alleviate their anxiety about all the 'unknowns' in life. Or, more generally, about confirmation bias and obsessive disorders and their affect on one's mental well-being. There is also something a bit sinister about the little 'mystic seer' - the episode achieves the not-inconsequential feat of tonally connoting a sense of mystery and even 'devilry' behind an inanimate object with an unmoving face. It certainly seems like something of a 'deal with the devil', as the seer threatens to hold Carter in its thrall, as he anxiously seeks safety and certainty within his every decision.

As we reach the end of the episode, it's implied that such a thing might even be possible with the 'mystic seer', but not desirable. As long as he feeds his own dependency on the fortunes, Carter is crippled in his ability to interact in the real world. We're left to wonder if seeking to be totally secure in every aspect of one's life is really attainable without supernatural means, and what it would really mean for one's life if it were.

2. A Quality of Mercy (Season 3, Episode 15)

"It's August, 1945, the last grimy pages of a dirty, torn book of war. The place is the Philippine Islands. The men are what's left of a platoon of American Infantry, whose dulled and tired eyes set deep in dulled and tired faces can now look toward a miracle, that moment when the nightmare appears to be coming to an end. But they've got one more battle to fight, and in a moment we'll observe that battle. August, 1945, Philippine Islands. But in reality it's high noon in the Twilight Zone."

Leonard Nimoy's episode out of the bunch, A Quality of Mercy unfortunately features the least screentime from a Trek actor on this list. Nimoy plays Hansen, a soldier stationed in the Philippines who, like his brothers in arms, is wearied from years of brutal fighting against the Japanese. When Katell, a young lieutenant who is fresh onto the battlefield arrives, he is put off by the lethargy of the soldiers. Many of them, Nimoy included, have the signature 'thousand-yard stare' and have made camp near a small cave where the last, wounded survivors of a Japanese regiment have taken refuge.

Lt. Katell wants to storm the cave to kill or capture the last Japanese hold-outs, but the sergeant, Causarano and the rest of the men are unsure. Katell is disgusted. He rants that he doesn't care whether it's the first day or the last day of the war - their job is to 'kill Japs'.

In a classic Twilight Zone twist, Katell suddenly finds that he has become Lt. Yamuri, a Japanese officer who is part of the command staff of a Japanese regiment two years earlier, in 1943. The enemy soldiers are hold up in the same cave - but now, Katell finds that it is his own countrymen, the Americans, who are in the cave, wounded. He argues with his superior officer that they should show mercy to the Americans, and he hears his own words from earlier repeated back to him, seeing his own ugliness when the same sentiments are echoed by the enemy.

This episode was loosely re-imagined for the Twilight Zone movie as well, into the segment 'Time Out'. I'd consider A Quality of Mercy to be far and away better, for a number of reasons. Serling writes about the experience of American soldiers fighting in the Philippines with more sincerity and honesty than most, as he actually fought during WWII in that theater, and witnessed a number of things that stuck with him, sometimes scarred him. Furthermore, the surrealist aspect included in A Quality of Mercy is just what the title suggests - a lesson learned which imparts this 'quality' into Katell, teaching him to be more merciful. By contrast, Time Out sees a bitter, angry old bigot being punished by being transported into the body of a Viet Cong soldier, an African American in the south being chased by the KKK, and a Jew on the way to a concentration camp - where he presumably dies in punishment for saying bigoted, hateful things.

The sense of 'cosmic justice' in A Quality of Mercy seems appropriate - bloodlust is discarded in favor of reprieve, an adequate medicine to turn hatred into compassion. In Time Out, someone whose only crime is holding opinions - reprehensible opinions, but opinions nonetheless - faces nothing less than a horrific death. It seems mean-spirited and vindictive (like creating an unlikeable character for the purposes of killing him off) rather than a story aimed at teaching a lesson.

A Quality of Mercy remains a relatively heart-warming episode, in a sense. At the risk of spoiling a thing or two, I'd recommend this episode for those who are fans of the magical realist style of the series but who aren't exactly comfortable with the supernatural horror elements that sometimes bring the series to a dark place. The episode stands as one of Serling's many encouragements towards progressing beyond hate and fear, even as a veteran who experienced the horrors of war - or perhaps, especially as such a veteran.

3. Valley of the Shadow (Season 4, Episode 3)

"You've seen them. Little towns, tucked away far from the main roads. You've seen them, but have you thought about them? What do the people in these places do? Why do they stay? Philip Redfield never thought about them. If his dog hadn't gone after that cat, he would have driven through Peaceful Valley and put it out of his mind forever. But he can't do that now, because whether he knows it or not his friend's shortcut has led him right into the capital of the Twilight Zone."

While James Doohan has only a bit part in Valley of the Shadow, fans of TOS may recognize the actor who plays Dorn in this episode, David Opatoshu, as the same actor who portrayed Anan 7 in the Star Trek episode A Taste of Armageddon. Ironically, he's playing a very similar role in this episode as well - as the mysterious leader of a council presiding over a backwater community, who, in strict accordance with the laws of his land, must reluctantly imprison the protagonist.

When a reporter and writer named Philip Redfield loses his way on the road to Albuquerque, he stops to get gas in the small town of Peaceful Valley. A number of factors coincide to Redfield's misfortune - his dog jumps out of his car and startles the pet of a local child. She produces a mysterious piece of technology and seemingly makes his dog vanish. When Redfield, frantically searching for his dog, brings this to the attention of the girl's father (James Doohan), he reacts with incredulity, as one would expect. They're soon able to find the dog, and Redfield leaves to explore the town; he quickly becomes suspicious by the strange and evasive behavior of the people of Peaceful Valley. When he finally gets the message and tries to leave the town, he wrecks into an invisible wall.

Redfield is brought before the city council, led by Dorn, who freely admits the town's wrongdoing - in his words, they panicked, and raised the 'screens' around the town. Confused, Dorn goes on to explain that the people of Peaceful Valley were gifted with amazing technology, which coincidentally mirrors most of the technology that seemed to be the basis of the future of human advancement in Star Trek: 'transporters', 'replicators', and other technology based on disassembling and reassembling matter, as well as medical technology that can heal any wound and bring the dead back to life.

This technology, which is heavily implied to have been given to them by an alien, came with the stipulation that it could never be known to the rest of the world, so that it would never be misused for violence or malicious ends. Redfield doesn't agree - he believes that it should be freely shared to solve the world's problems - but this is immaterial because Dorn and the rest of the town aren't going to let him leave. They put Redfield up in the local inn, managed by Ellen Marshall, who develops a relationship with him over his time there. What follows is Redfield's struggle to convince the people of the town that the technology would be best used for the rest of the world, as well as his inability to be happy in a single, isolated place.

Rod Serling famously hated the change in season four of the Twilight Zone to an hour-long episode format; he complained that this led to padding the episodes with 'soap opera'-type material. Valley of the Shadow suffers from this, in a sense - if this episode were trimmed down to the half-hour format with which Serling was most comfortable, a few of the clumsier aspects of this episode might have been avoided.

For all the time that the episode has, it neglects to get into the meat of the dilemma - whether or not man should have access to such futuristic technology, or whether it would be helpful or harmful. Twilight Zone episodes have to be careful about pacing and dolling out information at the right intervals in order to maintain the tone and avoid spoiling any twists, and consequently this episode is forced to spend a bit too much time building towards the reveal of the fantastic nature of Peaceful Valley. Then, we only have a few scenes to establish the romance between Redfield and Ellen. And, in the end, the solution to the problem seems a little too easy. Still, hearing James Doohan act with no Scottish accent was shocking enough to hold my attention, and Valley of the Shadow at least has the distinction of being one of the better episodes of the rocky fourth season.

4. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (Season 5, Episode 3)

"Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father, and salesman on sick leave. Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanitarium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home - the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson's flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. Tonight, he's traveling all the way to his appointed destination, which, contrary to Mr. Wilson's plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone."

Shatner's more famous episode on The Twilight Zone, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet sees Shatner once again portraying a young, nervous professional, Bob Wilson. Again, his wife Julia is ever at his side as the voice of reason. However, in this episode, the lines between what is real and what is imagined are blurred even further - the sane people around Bob begin to seem crazy and the manic protagonist begins to seem sane.

Shatner's Bob Wilson is almost an exaggerated version of the character he was portraying in Nick of Time. Like Don Carter, Wilson is obsessive and more than a little anxious. He's previously had a mental breakdown on an airplane, and now he is flying once again. While Julia is nothing but supportive and Bob believes that he's finally 'cured', he begins seeing strange things on the wing of the plane. Recalling the tales of 'gremlins' who were rumored to tear up the machinery of airplanes and cause them to malfunction, Wilson determines that this must be the strange, furry, pig-faced creature that he's seeing.

This gremlin is indeed ripping into the plane's innards - at least as far as Bob can see - but whenever he tries to tell his wife, the stewardess and eventually the captain, the creature vanishes. After a time, it notices that Wilson is watching it, and begins toying with him, even pressing his face right against the window. Shatner conjures a convincing nervous breakdown - it really seems that he doesn't want to be seeing the things he's seeing, that he doesn't want to believe it himself, and yet, there it is, right before his eyes.

The Twilight Zone definitely mastered the tried and true surrealist storytelling technique of showing us what the main character sees, and getting us frustrated right along with him when whatever it is always recedes into the imperceptible just as the surrounding characters arrive to confirm it. While the veracity of what Wilson sees is unclear throughout the episode, since we are seeing things 'from his point of view', it seems just as real to us, and we feel a real sense of injustice when he is humiliated by being put into a strait jacket for all the disturbances that he's caused.

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet made its way into The Twilight Zone movie, and it remains a perennial favorite to this day, often touted as one of the classics of the series. The gremlin costume is a fair bit outdated, however, and doubtful to be very scary on its own. Thankfully, the real terror comes through timelessly - the prospect of believing, maybe even knowing that yourself & everyone around you is in grave danger... only to have them dismiss you as insane.

5. The Encounter (Season 5, Episode 31)

"Two men alone in an attic, a young Japanese-American and a seasoned veteran of yesterday's war. It's twenty odd years since Pearl Harbor, but two ancient opponents are moving into position for a battle in an attic crammed with skeletons, souvenirs, mementos, old uniforms, and rusted metals. Ghosts from the dim regions of the past, that will lead us into the Twilight Zone."

The Encounter was one of the most controversial episodes of The Twilight Zone, and the reasons why it is controversial are all the more bizarre given who was involved in its making. George Takei, who has, in recent years, been a vocal advocate for greater awareness about the treatment of the Japanese-Americans during WWII, appears in one of two main roles. I can't help but wonder what Takei thought of the episode while he was acting in it, as he's been relatively quiet about his views on it in retrospect. He has said, however, that he got a chance to work with Neville Brand, an actor who he looked up to, and to meet Rod Serling, which not every Zone actor did. Perhaps as a young, hungry actor, he was able to ignore some of the controversial aspects of the script for the opportunity it presented. In any case, The Encounter was pulled from syndication after some expressed disapproval of its premise.

When Arthur Takamori (Takei) arrives at the house of WWII veteran Fenton (Brand), looking for work, he discovers that the aging Fenton harbors resentment towards the Japanese to this day. Despite a constant passive-aggressive sense of underlying racism from Fenton, he invites Takamori to have a beer with him. The two talk about the possibility of Takamori's employment for a bit, but Fenton won't stop insinuating things based on Takamori's race and nationality, and Takamori strangely puts up with it. Really soon, things start to get weird.

I get the impression that The Encounter is an attempt to tell a story about two men from opposite sides of a war that is long-since over, but who both carry on a sort of lingering hatred from the conflict; the war is not over for them. It's revealed that Fenton possesses an old katana, taken as a war trophy, and one that he's tried to throw away many times - it just keeps coming back. When Takamori tries to leave the house, made uncomfortable by the old veteran, the door won't open. The two eventually begin spilling their guts, with Fenton revealing that he killed an unarmed man in combat, and that he is tortured to this day by the wartime propaganda that taught him that the Japanese weren't human, unable to adapt to the reality that this isn't the case. Takamori reveals that his father was a traitor, who signaled the planes in as they attacked Pearl Harbor. Historically, nothing of this nature happened, and this is the primary reason for this episode's controversy.

I'm not really sure why they didn't just have Takamori be the son of a Japanese soldier; making his father an American who betrayed his country doesn't so much craft an image of two individuals with personal baggage that sets them on a collision course, but rather (probably unintentionally) serves to slander the Japanese-Americans who were nothing but loyal to the United States and were still interned as prisoners. In any case, the episode at least manages to implicitly condemn racism and prejudice, recognizing how hard it is to let go of such perceptions whilst showing that if one cannot do so, they will be set on a course towards resentment and pain.

In a word: this episode is clumsy. It attempts to set the two characters against each other, both with equal reason for vindictiveness and a festering past that drives them to carry on their own personal war even though WWII has long ended. In its execution, however, Fenton doesn't come off as a likeable character, and Takamori's reveal of his father's betrayal doesn't seem believable. This might have been excused if the episode wasn't the Zone equivalent of a 'bottle show', shot all in one location and managing to cram plenty of 'soap opera' into a thirty-minute span; it's also another example of an ending that is all too easy given the set-up. Still, it's worth watching on the merit of its controversial place in Twilight Zone history - probably the unintentional result of bad decision-making in storytelling - and as a performance early in Mr. Takei's long career.

Conclusion:

As I said at the outset of this article, there's a good sampling of Twilight Zone episodes here. There are episodes that end well and badly for the protagonists; episodes that are clumsy in their execution and masterful; there is a famous episode and a banned one, as well as a handful of episodes of varying notoriety. If The Twilight Zone is a series you're interested in, and you don't know where to start (and really, you could start anywhere), then I'd say that these five are as good as any for fans of Trek, who might enjoy a few familiar faces to introduce them to Serling's world of shadow and substance.

"Portrait of a blog: a small, relatively insignificant corner of the world wide web, one of many such periodicals of the modern age, where the common man can share his opinions, air his grievances and indulge in his hobbies. But what every reader of this quaintly-named, little blog called The Nerd Grimoire didn't know, was that by recommending this article on google, they could offer something in the way of a helping hand. Which, by the way, is something that any blogger could use. Especially because this author's posts are written, edited and approved for publication from a cluttered, little desk - in the Twilight Zone."

Eight Demons: Retro Review of Ninja Scroll & Yôtôden

Two classic anime films - one popular and one obscure - share some common plot threads.

The anime trope of ninjas with magical abilities dates to the early days of the art-form. When one is first exploring what anime has to offer, they usually end up watching Ninja Scroll eventually, a movie with detailed, realistic and fluid animation that represented some of the best the industry had to offer in the early 1990s. It tells the tale of the familiar shinobi protagonists, pitted in this case against the likes of 'eight demons' - essentially, a group of incredibly powerful and evil individuals.

But six years earlier, the producers of Ninja Scroll had released Yôtôden, a movie which has flown under the radar of many casual anime fans. For all intents and purposes, it seems like Ninja Scroll was a retooled version of Yôtôden, and in many ways they are similar: the eight demons show up again, and once again they're led by a powerful shogun, intent on dominating all of Japan. I wondered if eight demons represented anything important in Japanese mythology - the nearest thing I could find was the story of Susano'o, who was to slay an eight-headed demon serpent. Whatever the reasons may be for the similar plot threads - Yôtôden stands as a fascinating precursor to Ninja Scroll, differing in a few important ways, and providing a window into the progress in animation between 1987 and 1993.

1. Ninja Scroll (1993)

Directed by: Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Japanese, Kevin Seymour (English)

Written by: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Starring: Kôichi Yamadera, Emi Shinohara, Takeshi Aono (Japanese), Dean Elliot, Wendee Lee, Stephen Apostolina (English)

IMDB Ranking (as of publication): 7.9/10

The first time I saw Ninja Scroll is forever burned into my memory. A remarkable thing about this film is that this sentiment seems to be fairly common among those I know who have seen it. Ninja Scroll simply isn't a movie that you soon forget about, despite its content and style placing it squarely in the pulp category - maybe even exploitation, or 'grindhouse' anime, if such labels should be applied to anime. To be sure, there have been more shocking works of Japanese animation, but Ninja Scroll sets itself apart with an immersive world a story that ropes you in.

A word of warning - if a studio re-shot this frame by frame as a live action movie and submitted it to the MPAA, it'd probably receive an NC-17 and a half. This movie is not for everyone, nor should it be. Gratuitous sex and violence have their place in media, and this is it. Maybe part of this movie's appeal is that it explores a range of attitudes towards its admittedly harsh topics - there are times when violence is lamented, and times when it is celebrated, even wallowed in. Sex is sometimes depicted erotically or casually, but underlying everything is a kind of disgust, a sickening feeling that is clearly intended by the filmmakers, but for which an explanation doesn't materialize until later in the narrative.

Deciphering the details of Ninja Scroll's plot can be difficult on one's first viewing - but the basics are clear. Our protagonist is Jubei Kibagami, a self-described 'vagabond' who hires himself out as a mercenary, but holds to a basic code of ethics - he doesn't overcharge the impoverished villagers, and doesn't hesitate to stop and help strangers. While just passing through, he comes to the aid of Kagero, the sole survivor of a regiment of ninjas that was investigating strange activity in the area. Having been captured by the brutal monster Tessai, who intends to rape her, Kagero escapes with Jubei's help, but the two quickly part ways.

Tessai quickly catches up to Jubei, thirsting for revenge for the slight against him. Jubei manages to kill him, though he isn't initially sure how he was able to penetrate the monster's stone skin. Since Tessai was one of "Eight Demons of Kimon" - eight elite shinobi with terrible powers - his death is sure to be avenged by them, and Jubei is drawn into a confrontation with this organization, no matter how he tries to avoid it. Because they're now dealing with the same deadly enemies, Jubei and Kagero end up running into one another again. Together with a government spy named Dakuan, the three join their resources for a better chance of survival.

The scenes of sexual violence will turn many people away from this film, but its important to remember that this behavior is never endorsed - the characters who engage in this type of thing in the context of Ninja Scroll are not exactly 'model citizens'.

Yeah...

That being said, this film does not shy away from sexualizing its characters and eroticizing certain situations which are borderline uncomfortable. I can't help but think that one is actually supposed to be somewhat uncomfortable throughout this movie; that, and on your first viewing, you're on the edge of your seat the whole time, wondering what the filmmakers are going to do next. Ninja Scroll's hand-drawn animation is something that you don't see anymore, and as far as hand-drawn animation goes, this is one of my favorites. That technique is harnessed to its maximum potential in order to craft a visual style that is consistency striking, with memorable images - some of which have become iconic. And not all of it is memorable because it is pleasant.

The real trick that the movie pulls over on you is that, by the final confrontation, you're attached to the characters. You don't really notice exactly when it happens, but you become invested in them at some point. It's fitting that Ninja Scroll is a Romeo & Juliet-esque tale in that the two protagonists meet and fall for one another within the span of a few short days. It all happens so fast, and the plot feels dense even though the movie's running time is only around an hour and fifteen minutes. Only two days have passed, but it feels like an eternity - to us and the characters. And when one of them is suddenly killed, with little to no warning, it's a genuine shock.

When you really do get into the plot, it's essentially a complex political thriller, with the agents of various rival feudal lords vying for power over Japan. A shadowy figure known as the 'Shogun of the Dark', who is said to control the Eight Demons has secured funding to purchase the most advanced weapons to bring down the reigning government - he's literally discovered gold mine. To keep the opposition away before he and his minions can remove the gold, the 'demons' have no problem poisoning whole villages to death, spreading the rumor of a plague.

Ultimately, the overly-complicated plot is just a driving force to pit these essentially noble characters against nihilistic, powerful enemies in a hellish, 'depraved' world. Both Jubei and Kagero have scars - from events taking place before the movie and during - and it is on this basis that they bond. But it is also because of this that they are impeded - becoming distracted by the lust for revenge, or by fears of their own shortcomings. Both our protagonists come to seem more fragile than they appeared at the outset - the only purely rational, motivated character on their side is Dakuan. Unsurprisingly, he is just as unscrupulous as anyone else when all is said and done, willing to kill, steal and deceive for his government.

Anime films are often successful at placing us in a world that seems much bigger than what we  immediately see in the frame. You feel like this film is part of a larger mythos. Essentially, I think this is one of the indications that an author knows how to show, or maybe even imply a lot while saying only a little. In the same way, the ending is solemn and understated, and the emotional impact sneaks up on you.

When it comes to fight scenes, weird monsters, shall we say 'creative' supernatural powers, and well-animated action, Ninja Scroll delivers on every count. The film doesn't fail to disappoint on the core premise, either - eight demons are spoken of in hushed whisper, and eventually a confrontation with all eight occurs, and the battles are simple, effective and gripping. Even though this film is a little short for my liking, it stands up upon re-watchings, even multiple times. You notice things on subsequent viewings that happen too quickly or go right over your head the first time around. I was still noticing details I hadn't caught even on my fourth or fifth viewing.

Recommended?

Yes. If you're a fan of exploitation cinema or anime and you haven't seen it, watch it now. That is, if you don't have a problem with graphic violence or sexuality.

Japanese or English?

Honestly, Ninja Scroll is one of the few anime films I'm seen with an excellent dub in either language. The Japanese subtitles elaborate on more plot details and are generally clearer than the English dub; on the other hand, the English dub is more cryptic, and a little more poetic as a result. Example: the line: "Gemma, burn in your golden hell!" was an interpolation included in the dub that was much sharper than the line as it was written in Japanese.

2. Yôtôden, aka Wrath of Ninja (1987)

Directed by: Toshiyuki Sakurai, Osamu Yamasaki

Written by: Shô Aikawa, Takeshi Narumi

Starring: Keiko Toda, Kazuhiko Inoue, Takeshi Watabe (Japanese), Rose Markisello, Hideo Seaver, Peter Patrikios (English)

IMDB Ranking (as of publication): 5.6/10

Yôtôden is not as highly regarded as Ninja Scroll, and its easy to see why. The animation looks and feels its age, when compared to the anime of today, or when comapred with Ninja Scroll. Still, it's hand-drawn and even though it seems like they were stretching their budget a little at certain points, the end result is a noble effort that hinted as the potential for animation that was to come.

Many of the elements of Yôtôden are familiar - the protagonist is a traveling swordsman, Hayate - who somewhat resembles Jubei. He encounters another ninja in the woods - who somewhat resembles Kagero. I'm not sure how much overlap there actually was between the people behind Ninja Scroll and Yôtôden, but if there were some of the same creative minds behind the two movies, perhaps this article elucidates how much pessimism someone can accrue in six years. Yôtôden is a much more hopeful movie - the third companion, Ryoma - is, in this case, the 'brawn', a stubborn, but likable warrior with no duplicitous designs in the vein of Dakuan. There is some sex appeal and there's definitely violence - but none of it could be called gratuitous. There are no 'doomed lovers', and the story is not as tragic.

That being said, the antagonists in Yôtôden are a bit more visually disturbing. In terms of dialogue and character, they're all basically flat, just demons to slay. But the 'demons' of Yôtôden are less like nihilistic, ambitious men and more like actual monsters. There's a bit of the grotesque here, and its often sudden and revolting. The 'body horror' that pervades much of Japan's take on the horror genre is present here.

Also in contrast to Ninja Scroll, the plot goes on for months of story time. At one point, Hayate leaves and goes into reclusion for a while, having given up the fight. Ninja Scroll whisks you away into a complicated, dangerous political struggle - one in which a lot can change in a day, and if you don't pay attention, you won't be able to navigate what's happening. It's the story of an insurgency, and thus an exploration of passion. Yôtôden, while it is the earlier story, and a bit more 'raw', is the tale of a long, drawn-out conflict. It wears on the characters. Yôtôden is about a war of attrition, and while the demons are themselves less complex, they're more grotesque psychologically.

The villain, Nobunaga Oda, is based on a real historical figure of that name. The back of the DVD box helpfully explains that Nobunaga was said to be uncommonly vicious because he didn't believe in the afterlife, and therefore didn't think that he would suffer for his depravity. But in the context of the movie, even Nobunaga eventually is rent asunder by the pure, horrific reality of evil surging into the world. The character Ranmaru, who was before only a servant to Nobunaga, presides over a sort of black magic sacrifice of his own master, to bring forth a demonic apocalypse. Nobunaga seems to have wanted to gain dominion over the world, not destroy it. In the end, the evil he partnered with was a more dangerous and volatile force than he could control. It's a fitting fictional end for a character who acted like a monster because he didn't fear supernatural reprisal.

All this adds up to a story that is also thematically tied to Ninja Scroll. Three characters bond over their alliance, in order to band together in trying times. Decent men and women stand up to literal armies of demons and bizarre creatures, and are torn apart like mannequins. It is still a story of heroism in an unimaginable world. But the three virtuous warriors at the end of this tale actually stand a fighting chance against the possibility of the world becoming truly hellish. It's a nice fantasy tale, with serviceable characters.

Recommended?

If you liked Ninja Scroll, I'd recommend giving this a chance. The plot does not flow quite as smoothly, the characters aren't quite as well-written, and the animation isn't quite as good. But if you like vintage, hand-drawn anime, you'll find this film highly enjoyable.

Japanese or English?

Japanese with English subtitles. The dub is... meh.

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Retro Review: Battle Beyond the Stars

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

Directed by: Jimmy T. Murakami

Written by: John Sayles & Anne Dyer

Starring: Richard Thomas, Darlanne Fluegel, John Saxon, Robert Vaughan

IMDB Rating (as of publication): 5.4/10

For those who don't already know - there's a little thing called the Corman Film School.

Actually, let me back up a little bit. Before we talk about the Corman Film School, the obvious place to start is with Roger Corman. If you're a fan of B-movies, creature features, or sleazy 'skinemax'-style action films - or if you've watched your share of MST3K - then you're probably familiar with Roger Corman's movies. They're not exactly known for their quality, though Corman's filmmaking generally produces better, more entertaining offerings than most of the 'so bad, it's good' variety. If you're a fan of films for this reason, then you also know that it's very easy for a 'so bad, it's good' film to turn into a 'so bad, it's boring' film for long stretches of running time. This is part of why MST3K is so beloved, by the way, if you're not in the know about that either. Try watching Manos: The Hands of Fate with Joel, Tom & Crow for company, and see if you don't blow your brains out. Corman films, for the most part, tend to avoid boring you to death, so they have that going for them.

But I digress - because the real reason why Roger Corman is set apart from most other B-list producers has to do with the prestigious company with whom he makes his films. You see, for decades Roger Corman provided one of the few 'ins' that prospective actors, directors and others in the film industry had available to them. Before they were acting in major motion pictures, Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Robert De Niro, Sandra Bullock and David Carradine appeared in Corman films. When they were learning the ropes of the industry, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola were directing movies produced by Corman.

A sentient starship with busty features.

In the case of Battle Beyond the Stars, the up and coming director's name was James Cameron, although, he didn't work on the film as its director. Cameron was in charge of visual effects on Battle Beyond the Stars - a skill for which he is known, even when it comes to the films he directs. And so, despite the fact that this campy, thoroughly-drenched-in-cheesiness outing that was, down to the core, a Roger Corman B-picture, it was also one that was made with impressive special effects and memorable visuals. Corman was clearly trying to ride on the space opera craze that ensued following Star Wars, and Cameron, accordingly, mimicked Industrial Light & Magic's prowess and style, backed by a score clearly 'inspired' by John Williams. There's quite a bit here that is visually reminiscent of Star Wars. In fact - and I mean this both as a compliment to Cameron and as a shot at Lucas - a lot of it looks better and more 'like Star Wars' than the Star Wars prequels.

And this is a lot of what makes Battle Beyond the Stars so fun to watch. You get to see Cameron cutting his teeth, early in his career, making visual effects for a B-movie - and yet, he has his own style that he brings to the film, giving the movie it's own distinctive look. It's like listening to the first record of a band you like, before they got famous. Raw, showing their influences, but with a style that bleeds through and gives a glimpse of the promise to come. But beyond this, Battle Beyond the Stars stands as a relic of one of the many 'reverberations' felt through Hollywood following the massive success of Star Wars. It's been argued that the renewed interest in sci-fi spawned Star Trek's return, in the form of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Cubby Broccoli, producer of the Bond films, is on record saying that Moonraker was adapted as it was because of the popularity of Star Wars. There were other B-movies trying to get in on the action as well - Krull is one of my favorites on that front.

Sador - an alien with a disfiguring splotch of make-up on his face.

As far as the plot goes - Battle Beyond the Stars adopts a fairly simple, tried and true shell for its narrative structure. Most of us are familiar with The Magnificent Seven, but even if you aren't, you're probably familiar with A Bug's Life. It's the trope of a small village who faces extortion (or extinction!) from an evil force that they can't possibly cope with, and turns to a group of (usually seven) mercenaries to defend them. In Battle Beyond the Stars, the evil force is Sador, a conqueror who is served by hideous mutants and possesses a weapon - the 'Stellar Converter' - which can turn planets into small stars, obviously killing everyone on the surface. When he comes to the peaceful world of Akir - who have a religion of non-violence, and whose warriors of their old ways are all now old or dead themselves - the people send a young man named Shad on a quest to find warriors that could challenge Sador and preserve Akir from annihilation.

Really - the plot doesn't go much farther than this. What will hold your attention in this film isn't the nuances of a really deep story, but the novelty of this film's place in history, the campiness and cheesy acting set against great effects and memorable setpieces, and some genuinely original sci-fi ideas. But mostly, the enjoyment to be found in Battle Beyond the Stars is the colorful cast of characters that Shad collects to join him. There's a character named 'Space Cowboy' - a literal cowboy from the planet Earth who drinks whiskey and was going to sell lazer guns to another planet before it was destroyed by Sador, so Shad convinces him to give them to Akir. There's the pouty-lipped, lonely assassin named Gelt (played by Robert Vaughan) who has all the gems and riches he could need but nowhere to spend it. There's Saint Exmin, a 'Vakyrie warrior' who is scantily clad, fierce in battle, and propositions other women to sexually experiment with her.

"From now on, I shall be 'The Artist Formerly known as Space Cowboy'."

And this doesn't even get into the race of clones who share a single consciousness and thus experiences the cosmos by sending its many copies of itself out into various directions, the sentient ship, or the lizard-man slaver with a score to settle with Sador, the aliens that communicate through heat, or the daughter of the mad scientist who is now a Futurama-esque head, fitted into the control center of a space station. Meanwhile, the actors range from acting their hearts out to bouts of scenery-chewing, at times.

As you can see, this film has no shortage of novelty to be found. But the plot and the tropes therein are all pretty standard fare, in keeping with the stripped-down, fairly black and white adventure tale that Star Wars was. It's just fine, though, if you're watching this movie for the camp value. The simplicity of the plot arc, the fairy-tale-esque 'gathering up' of all the heroes, each with their own backstory, and the sincerity conveyed in the filmmaking all equal a product which has real charm. Battle Beyond the Stars isn't going to shake your world to the foundations or redefine what a sci-fi film could be - far from it. But it's a good story that is well-made with some fun characters. And maybe that's the key word: above all, this movie is just good, old-fashioned fun. Especially if you're a fan of pre-CGI visual effects.

Everyone stands around the heat-radiating aliens like they're a bonfire. Not joking.

Personally, I have a preference for simple, well-told stories with plot elements that are set up and paid off and characters with arcs, however conventional, as well as tonal consistency and at least some attention paid to continuity. This isn't a very demanding list of things from a movie, but it seems like most 'epic' summer blockbusters can't even achieve this. Sometimes I find myself defending movies with incredibly campy premises - such as Cowboys & Aliens or John Carter - because they actually satisfy this most basic criteria of filmmaking. As such, I'd even go so far as to say that Battle Beyond the Stars makes more sense and has a better narrative than a lot of overly-complicated, plothole-ridden major studio releases of today. Putting together a film that makes sense is difficult when your writing staff consists of 27 people, you have a dozen producers all trying to cram things into the movie to put butts in seats based on the latest market research, and directors who are trying to push the envelope in the wrong direction.

Which brings things back to James Cameron - I don't much care for what Cameron has done recently, but the man has a knack for making simple, effective movies. Maybe his time working with Corman had something to do with it.

Call me a curmudgeon or a contrarian - but as things stand today, I can safely say that I find more enjoyment watching a focused, simple B-movie like Battle Beyond the Stars than most of the major studio releases in sci-fi for the past 5-10 years. Because Corman hired filmmakers and actors who were young, hungry and eager to work their asses off to make a name for themselves, there's a certain vitality to a lot of his films. And because Corman was primarily concerned with turning a profit on low-budget productions, his movies generally don't overthink themselves. Sometimes, out of that mix of factors, you get a film like Battle Beyond the Stars, which is still enjoyable today.

Should I see it?

Yes. This is the kind of movie that, with a generous supply of popcorn and beer, you can have a small gathering of friends over and turn it into a party. It's not quite 'MST3K bad', but there will be plenty of things to laugh at and plenty of jokes to interject.

Arbitrary numeric score?

8.2/10

On a technical level, this film doesn't deserve that rating. On the other hand, it's not really fair to rate films like this according to that metric. What rating would a film like Troll 2 deserve if it was rated according to how competently it was made, rather than how enjoyable it is? Accordingly, this rating is based on enjoyability alone.

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SPECTRE: Then & Now

A look at the history of SPECTRE & Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

 

In the novel Diamonds Are Forever (1956), James Bond is brought to the hideaway of the villains, a ghost town known as, 'Spectreville'.

In the novel From Russia With Love (1957), the book that would immediately follow Diamonds in the series, Bond battles it out with SMERSH for the possession of the 'Spektor' decoding machine.

Finally, in 1958, Ian Fleming toys with the idea of writing a script for the purpose of bringing James Bond to the big screen. He enlists the help of Kevin McClory, and, subsequently, Jack Whittingham, to do so. In 1959, the three produce a draft, which includes the villainous organization known as 'SPECTRE'. However, it began to seem as though the screenplay would never be adapted, and the project was scrapped. Fleming then decided to publish a novel which was an adaptation of the screenplay - without crediting Whittingham or McClory. This led to a legal dispute, but one which was quickly resolved.

Which ideas belonged to Fleming and which to McClory remains something of a mystery to this day - both claimed ownership of Blofeld and SPECTRE as their creator. We may never know who was telling the truth, or if the process wasn't maybe a bit more collaborative than either man let on. One thing is certain, however - given his fascination with the word, it was probably Fleming who came up with the name, 'SPECTRE'.

"And then we come to Step 3: Profit."

Thunderball was just the latest Bond novel when the first film, Dr. No, was being made, so it conceivably had a solid wait before it could expect to see the big screen, assuming the franchise was to become successful at all. Nevertheless, one element was taken from that novel and used for the plot of Dr. No. Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman at EON felt that, by making the primary antagonists the Russians, the films would be dated to a specific time and place. Eventually, when the Cold War was over, the movies would seem archaic. This prophetic assessment led the two to take the criminal organization SPECTRE out of Thunderball, and basically use it as a replacement for SMERSH.

In the novels, SMERSH was behind almost everything. Characters such as Le Chiffre, Mr. Big, Donald Grant, Goldfinger, Dr. No and Scaramanga were all Russian agents - on the screen, most of these characters have little to nothing to do with Russia. And, admittedly, mostly the fact that the villain was funding SMERSH or working for them in some capacity was only mentioned in their dossier, and not as relevant to the actual details of the plot. So the decision was made - rather than Dr. No declaring his allegiance to Soviet Intelligence, locked in a nationalistic power struggle with the west, he coldly mentions instead that he is a member of SPECTRE.

The plot of Dr. No hardly delved into SPECTRE at all, aside from what the titular character had to say about it. The real revisions came in From Russia With Love, where the entire plot of the movie was adjusted to include both SPECTRE and SMERSH. Of course, this led to the changing of the name of the 'Spektor' decoding machine from the novel to the 'Lektor'. The decision to insert SPECTRE is still somewhat controversial among fans - while most consider From Russia With Love to be one of the best Bond movies, there is no consensus on whether or not it would have been better to stick to the blueprint of the novel. In any case, the mystique of SPECTRE established by Dr. No works in From Russia With Love's favor - Grant is always two steps ahead of Bond, and it quickly becomes believable that they're able to outwit British and Soviet Intelligence. From Russia With Love is arguably SPECTRE at its most threatening.

And, strangely enough, Thunderball managed to become a film only four years after its publication, becoming the fourth Bond movie in 1965 (Goldfinger took a break from the SPECTRE plotline). The novel was meant to become a film from the very beginning, so little is changed. Fleming and McClory's vision for SPECTRE was realized on the screen; to avoid sparking off a legal battle, EON brought McClory on as a producer. A rival franchise was averted, McClory got the credit and got to produce a movie. The film was massively successful - the franchise was showing the first signs of becoming a cash cow. Everyone was happy.

But the SPECTRE organization would never again be consistently represented in the continuity.

First, Blofeld was recast for his live appearance in You Only Live Twice - as Donald Pleasance, whom many consider to be the definitive Blofeld. Compared to the commanding, malicious baritone voice of Eric Pohlmann in the previous films, however, I consider Pleasance a step down. Telly Savalas is the underdog favorite in OHMSS, but he is not without his detractors. In Diamonds Are Forever, they cast Charles Gray, who is perhaps the most controversial Blofeld thus far. Whatever one's opinions on each portrayal is, the fact remains that the casting, nor even the portrayal of the character, wasn't consistent and it damaged the character's legacy in the canon. In Thunderball, Blofeld is calm and calculating; when Pleasance takes on the character in You Only Live Twice, he seems borderline psychotic. Savalas' Blofeld is tough, direct and brutal. Gray's is almost effeminate, and a little bit goofy. And, as we'll get to in a moment, when the legendary Max Von Sydow would eventually portray the character, he underplayed Blofeld to the point of being forgettable.

Four entirely different characters with the same name.

And during this point in the franchise - the end of Connery's tenure, Lazenby's lone outing and Connery's return - the serialized nature of the films began to break down. While the events of previous films seemed relevant in From Russia With Love, Thunderball and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, past canon was completely disregarded, unimportant or even rewritten in films like You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever. And to top it all off, Blofeld's end was somewhat ambiguous at the end of Diamonds - probably because the producers had every intention of bringing him back. He was their most recognizable evil character, despite his confused portrayal.

But, McClory reared his head around this time - EON had only acquired the rights to Thunderball, and all its contents, for 10 years. Since those contents were technically the first appearance of Blofeld and SPECTRE, McClory tried to acquire them. Thus, Thunderball, SPECTRE and Blofeld's rightful ownership was now in dispute. I've heard that they'd originally planned on including the first scene of For Your Eyes Only as the pre-credits sequence for Live And Let Die, but their legal problems began and they decided it was a bad idea. They probably thought McClory would go away eventually, and the original draft for The Spy Who Loved Me had Bond teaming up with SPECTRE to take down a new, more dangerous organization - this was scrapped when McClory and his legal challenge to the franchise didn't go away, and the plot was altered, ironically, to swap out SPECTRE for the KGB. Things had come full circle.

For a long time, McClory was thought to be the man most likely to kill James Bond.

Eventually, when McClory won the rights to remake Thunderball, the aforementioned pre-title sequence of For Your Eyes Only was included with the intentions of: definitively tying the current Moore films in with the continuity of the Connery and Lazenby films; definitively killing Blofeld without naming the character outright, as a rebuke to McClory; and to wrap up any ambiguity about the Blofeld and SPECTRE plotline. By this time, the series had become pretty much episodic anyway, with only a few recurring characters and occasional references to Bond's past. Thus, For Your Eyes Only represents the last time Blofeld appeared in any Bond movie in the original continuity, and was an intentional 'farewell' to the serialized style of Bond storytelling.

Of course, Kevin McClory eventually won the rights to remake Thunderball, and went on to make Never Say Never Again. While this Bond film is interesting in a number of ways, it is basically just an attempt to imitate the style of the EON movies, and a second-rate attempt at that. It has the distinction of including the first black actor to portray Felix, a few fun moments, but ultimately not much else. It competed with Octopussy at the box office, which outperformed it by a bit, but the passage of time has seen Never Say Never Again mostly forgotten; now its basically a semi-obscure film that mostly only die-hard fans of the EON franchise end up watching, as a novel non-canon offering.

However, while SPECTRE and Blofeld haven't been used since that time, the legal battles had not ceased. There was conjecture about SPECTRE's return from the moment the films rebooted in 2006 with Casino Royale, but Barbara Broccoli claimed that this 'wasn't the plan'. Though they were tight-lipped about ever using these plot elements again, EON did not relent in its legal attempts to acquire the rights to entire franchise and every aspect of it, including Blofeld and SPECTRE. As soon as they finally won those rights, the plan "mysteriously" changed - Spectre (2015) almost immediately went into pre-production. 

A candid picture of Daniel Craig while on holiday, snapped by a paparazzi

'Spectre' will be the 24th Bond film, and it has the distinction of being the first film to involve that organization since 1983, and the only Bond film with the word 'spectre' or any variation thereof in the title. Some fans are concerned that the rebooted franchise will botch SPECTRE's portrayal as an organization - but, frankly, it was botched pretty terribly in the first continuity. In the reboot continuity, the filmmakers have put out two Bond films - Casino Royale and Skyfall - that have become instant fan favorites (and despite Quantum's lukewarm reception, I enjoyed it and would argue that it wasn't terrible). At the very least, the competency that is now applied to the Bond franchise is far beyond the kinds of blunders that were made in Diamonds Are Forever. And really, all the appearances of Blofeld and SPECTRE after Diamonds were intended to be a bit nostalgic even as of 1983. McClory was relying on Blofeld being a recognizable villain for Bond every bit as much as he was relying on Connery's star power. So, to be more accurate - Blofeld and SPECTRE haven't been a central part of the franchise since the 1960's. It's more than high time for an overhaul of their portrayal.

Besides, the character of Blofeld and his dastardly minions in SPECTRE have already been completely dynamic throughout their many appearances - aside from a few key features that are present in almost every Bond storyline that includes them, both seem to have been represented in totally different ways as the canon progressed. It's hard to pin down which film is the definitive portrayal of SPECTRE, or whether this can only be found in the novels. It's subjective to select one actor's Blofeld or another to elevate as the 'correct' representation of the character. Ultimately, EON has a great deal of wiggle room to portray SPECTRE in the upcoming film; they have iconic source material that they can mold into a variety of possible stories. Here's to hoping that they make something amazing.

Even though it's been in production longer, Star Wars 7 will be out two months after Spectre.
Way to churn 'em out, EON.

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Long Live Kahless!

One episode from each series that developed or changed the way we saw the Klingons. (And a couple others we couldn't help but mention.)

The Klingons, not unlike many other aspects of the Star Trek universe, were subject to many changes throughout the lifetime of the franchise. Appearing in some form in the majority of Trek movies and in every incarnation on television, the Klingons are possibly the most well-known non-human species in the mythos, with the possible exception of the Vulcans. And one of the realities of being a species that appeared in The Original Series (and every other to follow it) is that the Klingons' portrayal has not been consistent.

Aside from the obvious - the make-up change between TOS and TNG, which altered the way we physically see the Klingons - the Klingon race, its culture, its values and pretty much everything else that has been explored on the screen has evolved as the series has continued. And I would applaud the showrunners for managing the continuity in what is perhaps the best way - rather than 'retconning out' all the plot elements that don't fit, or ignoring them, or remaining beholden to past continuity that seems outdated, Star Trek has consistently tried to incorporate every element of Klingon portrayal into the continuity going forward. In other words, there are a fair number of retcons when it comes to the Klingons, but I'd look at them more like a surgical scalpel than a butcher's knife. And finally, towards the end of Star Trek's last series, the showrunners ambitiously tried to incorporate even that troublesome make-up change.

So, without further ado - here is the story of how the Klingons have been portrayed throughout all five shows, with a single episode from each show that presented something new or different that changed how we view the Klingons. And, since a few shows had more than one episode of this nature... I've included a few, brief honorable mentions.

1. TOS: Errand of Mercy (Season 1, Episode 26)

"Well, Commander, I guess that takes care of the war. Obviously, the Organians aren't going to let us fight."
"A shame, Captain. It would have been glorious."
-Captain Kirk and Commander Kor

Before any episode could change the way we saw the Klingons, we had to see them for the first time. We learn quickly in the episode that the Klingon Empire is a known rival for Starfleet, who has been negotiating with them to prevent a war. Unfortunately, those negotiations have 'broken down', and the hapless planet known as Organia, which has no defense against either power, will be conquered and subjected to Klingon rule. Kirk and Spock beam down to ask the Organians to join the Federation - which would seem to be a violation of the Prime Directive, given what they believe to be the facts at this time - but the Organians refuse. Ayelborne, their leader, insists they're in no danger. And, as things progress, we start to think that they may not be letting on the whole picture.

Season one of The Original Series features many classic elements of Trek which were not yet crystallized into the universe that we know and love. There were a few attempts to introduce a nation of long-standing villains, with the Romulans created as a species that would resemble the Roman Empire, and represent the reality of detente that America was facing with the Russians. However, the Romulans only appeared in a single episode of season one, and towards the end of the season appeared the Klingons. Gene L. Coon's brainchild, his only physical description of them was that they were to be "oriental", "hard-faced" - and they quickly absorbed the role of 'Soviet-style adversary' (with a more 'Eastern' flavor) from the Romulans, who required too much time in make-up to show up regularly. The opposite would be true of TNG, of course, but the Klingons of this era were 'ridge-less'.

The idea of alien races acting as a 'stand-in' for a real-life nation or culture is an enduring feature of sci-fi. Conceiving of truly alien worlds and value systems is next to impossible, so we usually tend to turn aliens into a composite of that which we're familiar. And, in their first appearance, there is little to suggest that the Klingons were much more than this - a composite adversary that was characterized by much of how the west viewed the east: militaristic, brutal, and fanatical. Commander Kor of the Klingon Empire certainly fits this description, introducing himself as 'military governor of Organia' the moment he beams down on to the planet.

"We are similar as a species. Here we are on a planet of sheep, two tigers, predators, hunters... killers. And it is precisely that which makes us great. And there is a universe to be taken."
"It's a very large universe, Commander, full of people who don't like the Klingons."
"Excellent. Then it shall be a matter of testing each other's wills, and power. Survival must be earned, Captain."
-Commander Kor and Captain Kirk

The idea of 'testing' each other's wills was a common idea about the Soviets, and it endures in foreign policy research to this day as a legitimate strategy in geopolitics that the Russians often employed. In lines like these from Commander Kor, while they are designed to conjure connotations of the Russians to audiences from the 1960's, we can see the seeds of the Klingon warrior culture emerging even in their first appearance. Unfortunate for this episode was Kor's obsession with his 'mind scanner' - a device that seems more Romulan than Klingon, which is understandable given that the Klingons were being introduced into the same 'design space' as the Romulans. Indeed, this episode established the Klingons as stubborn, aggressive and thoroughly villainous, always 'pushing' or 'testing' to see what they could get away with.

Kor, after the make-up change.

After their renewed peace with the Federation, the Klingons are constantly trying to take whatever they can by deception. The concept of 'Klingon honor' did not seem to have been created yet. Ironically, the Romulans seemed more honor-bound in their two appearances - three, if you count seeing their ships in The Deadly Years, known as 'Birds of Prey' in TOS, a title which would also be later taken by Klingon ships - and they also were the race known for 'taking no prisoners' in TOS (something we'd tend to hear about the Klingons in the TNG era). And while we would get more of a sense of Klingons as warriors and learn of their 'dueling tradition' in Day of the Dove, as well as hear Kang offer some very Klingon sayings, the Empire was defined by its militarism, and its imperialist desires, not any code of honor.

What is perhaps most interesting in retrospect about this episode is Ayelborne's prophetic statement that "eventually, you will have peace; but only after millions of people have died. It is true that in the future, you and the Klingons will become fast friends. You will work together." Kor does not accept this assessment, yelling, "Never!" But, despite a gap of decades before it came true, the showrunners held to this bit of continuity - either revealing that Organians can see the future, or that Ayelborne is just a pretty perceptive energy being.

2. TNG: A Matter of Honor (Season 2, Episode 8)

"It's been my understanding that one of the duties of the first officer of a Klingon vessel is to assassinate his captain?"
"Yes, sir."
"Wouldn't that bring about chaos?"
"Of course not. When and if the captain becomes weak, or unable to perform, it is expected that his honorable retirement should be assisted by his first. Your second officer will assassinate you for the same reasons."
-Commander Riker and Lt .Worf

By the time The Next Generation was airing in 1987, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home had debuted in theaters. There were a few minor, but very important changes to the Klingons that had occurred over the course of the four feature-length films. First of all, the make-up change. They'd always wanted more detailed make-up for the Klingons, but it simply hadn't been possible with their budget and means on TOS - in fact, as was mentioned, the Klingons were partially introduced as a way to avoid make-up costs. Secondly, the Klingon language had been introduced in the first film, almost completely crafted by James Doohan in that outing. Finally, the general look and feel of Klingon uniforms and ships updated the look of the military, with armor that was reminiscent of Samurai garb, and truly alien-looking blades.

However, the portrayal of the Klingons themselves had remained more or less the same - a militaristic power with ambitions of Empire, which rivaled (if not always directly challenged) the Federation. Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, is as stubborn and ruthless as the Klingons we'd come to know in TOS. However, TNG began to expand the Klingon culture, and A Matter of Honor was the first major step forward in this direction: while we had an inkling about Klingon honor in Heart of Glory, A Matter of Honor gives us a look inside the inner-workings of a Klingon vessel, where we learn its true importance to Klingon society. The episode is aptly-named: every significant decision or order given on the ship takes place in the context of a strict honor code.

"First officer's log: I have been aboard the Pagh for a short time, but long enough to be impressed with the abilities and single-mindedness of the Klingons."
-Riker

Klingon hipsters like posting pictures of their gagh on Instagram.

After accepting a temporary assignment as first officer on a Klingon vessel as part of a cultural exchange, Riker becomes privy to the many details and idiosyncrasies of Klingon life which were as yet unknown by many of the Federation. These tropes are standard fare for Klingon episodes throughout the series - the violence of Klingon mating, the lamentations of an officer as he recounts the story of his father, who was captured in battle and not allowed to die. Riker chows down on Klingon food, which most humans usually seem to find disgusting - the first mentions of gagh & rokeg blood pie. These were all firsts at this point in the series, and we learn, first-hand through Riker, what 'honor' really means, in tangible terms, to a Klingon.

This episode is also interesting in that it feels somewhat 'transitional' in its take on the Klingons. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country hadn't yet shown us the achievement of the Federation's lasting peace with the Empire - even though it happened, chronologically, before this episode - and so the Klingons, while they aren't openly hostile, are more than a little eager to 'turn' and attack the Enterprise at the first suspicion of trouble. All in all, it works - the Klingons seem, if not totally alien, sufficiently different in their values as to make Riker's struggle to convince them of the Enterprise's good intentions seem dire. And, in true Starfleet style, Riker manages to overcome these obstacles by working within the Klingon system, rather than against it.

TNG Honorable Mention: Sins of the Father (Season 3, Episode 17)

While A Matter of Honor fleshed out Klingon society in the context of their military operations - an aspect of the Empire with which Starfleet had often interacted, but only from the outside and often on hostile terms - Sins of the Father took a step into Klingon politics. Taking cues from the complex responsibilities of Klingon culture established by A Matter of Honor, this episode sees Worf saddling a heavy burden that would become a defining aspect of the character. It also established the enmity between Klingons and Romulans, as well as the notion that some elements of either society have, at times, collaborated, often for nefarious purposes.

There would be many more episodes from TNG that greatly expanded the mythos, but much of the jumping-off points for those episodes would be created in this episode. Setting into motion the ongoing plotlines involving Gowron, House Duras and the many machinations that occur behind the scenes of the High Council, Sins of the Father can be seen as the first in a long saga that stretches across TNG and DS9. However, the most important expansion of the mythos of the Klingons involves the episode's namesake - the Klingons' somewhat Biblical code which ties one's own honor or dishonor to his bloodline. It's an idea that is as foreign as could be to the values of the Federation and Starfleet, and Worf must live the consequences of those values.

3. DS9: You Are Cordially Invited (Season 6, Episode 7)

"We are not accorded the luxury of choosing the women we fall in love with. Do you think Sirella is anything like the woman I thought that I'd marry? She is a prideful, arrogant, mercurial woman who shares my bed far too infrequently for my taste. And yet... I love her deeply. We Klingons often tout our prowess in battle, our desire for glory and honor above all else... but how hollow is the sound of victory without someone to share it with? Honor gives little comfort to a man alone in his home... and in his heart."
- General Martok, to Worf

If any show did as much to expand the mythology behind the Klingons as The Next Generation, it was Deep Space Nine. Needless to say, narrowing it down to one or even two definitive episodes that changed our view of the Klingons was more than a little difficult, but You Are Cordially Invited kept coming to mind. There are probably one or two 'better' Klingon episodes from DS9, but this one represented one of the deeper delvings into another aspect of Klingon life that we hadn't explored yet, at least through direct experience in an episode - marriage and the family.

Worf's transfer to Deep Space Nine had seen him developing a relationship with Jadzia Dax. As Curzon Dax, Jadzia's symbiote had become legendary within the Klingon Empire, as a negotiator fierce enough to warrant their respect. Every Klingon who meets Dax treats her with a sort of reverence, and Worf is no different. Their friendship and eventual romance thus seems natural, and the time comes when they decide to get married - in a traditional Klingon ceremony. Of course, this becomes problematic, because Worf has joined the House of Martok, and now Jadzia must answer to the general's wife before she can be considered an acceptable candidate for marriage to Worf. To marry him, she must also join the House of Martok, and the gatekeeper in that respect is Sirella.

"Sirella is a woman of strong convictions. She believes that by bringing aliens into our families we risk losing our identity as Klingons."
"That is a prejudiced, xenophobic view."
"We are Klingons, Worf. We don't embrace other cultures, we conquer them."
- General Martok and Worf

Part of why the Klingons are enduring in their interest to the fanbase has to do with the nuances to their culture. In this episode, Martok stops just short of denigrating the worth of 'honor', reminding us that the Klingons are also very a passionate people, unafraid to give in to love, hate, grief or anger. However, their rules must be satisfied and obeyed. We learn more about Klingon culture, as outsiders, but are ever-reminded that the Klingons simply don't see culture in the same pluralistic way as Starfleet or the Federation: to them, their culture is truth. In this episode, as TNG had elaborated on for the duration of the series, we get the clear impression that being an exemplary Klingon means walking a fine line between many duties, pushes and pulls, some of which are contradictory.

We also get a window into the goings-on of a Klingon bachelor party, as Worf invites his male friends from Deep Space Nine, as well as his son, to participate. Like most Klingon traditions, it is painful and laden with cultural symbolism. In the end, everything about the Klingon wedding seems like a challenge to be overcome, which is perhaps one of the best summations of the Klingon life. And, quite effectively, we are proud of the characters for enduring the challenges as they do, and it even brought a smile to my lips as the marriage party attacked Worf and Jadzia, as is the custom at the end of the ceremony. The whole thing seems like a bit of a release - one last battle to fight to solidify the union, and watching Bashir, Sisko and O'Brien lead the charge is more than a little amusing considering how irritated they all are with Klingon customs at this point. It's probably the only custom our protagonists have enjoyed so far about the ceremony.

DS9 Honorable Mention: Way of the Warrior (Season 4, Episodes 1 & 2)

The second battle of DS9.

"They fight like Klingons!"
"Then let them die like Klingons!"
-Martok and Gowron, (in Klingon)

Despite the fact that the events of this episode are set into motion by the Dominion's machinations and the replacement of Martok with a changeling, this episode stands as a fan favorite in the DS9 saga. We're reminded that Gowron, like many Klingons we have encountered, does not hold to Federation scruples - even he, who has been a steadfast ally in the past, is perfectly capable of giving into ambition or yielding to the expectations of his colleagues in the Empire. If anything, this episode didn't so much 'change' the way we saw the Klingons as elucidate what we already knew: this is a warrior race that will have absolutely no problem attacking you if they deem it necessary, no matter how cordial your alliance may have been. We also learn that Klingons and Cardassians don't much care for each other (Bashir shoots down Garak's more charitable assessment of their relations), which is understandable, as the Cardassians seem to be fairly honorless and equally aggressive. So perhaps this episode also changed the way we saw the Klingons in this regard - the behavior of the Cardassians, which is remarkably similar to how the Klingons tended to behave in TOS, is enough to earn the contempt of the Klingons of TNG.

It had been a long time since the Federation did battle with the Empire, and this episode did not disappoint. It was a great starting point for Worf in DS9, based on Sisko's assessment of Klingons (that the only ones who really understand them are other Klingons), and led to Worf's renewed problems with his reputation back home. This set into motion the events that would lead to Worf killing Gowron in one of the most shocking Klingon episodes of the franchise. Really, there were many great Klingon episodes that expanded the universe one way or another in DS9 - Blood Oath or House of Quark both come to mind - but Way of the Warrior showed us, in no uncertain terms, that the Klingons aren't allies to humanity in the same sense as the Vulcans, for example. The alliance between the Federation and the Empire is delicately maintained, and only be the estimation of equal strength and after years of respect earned in battle.

4. VOY: Barge of the Dead (Season 6, Episode 3)

By virtue of taking place in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager is perhaps the only series where the choice was easy, even obvious. Barge of the Dead comes to us as one of the deepest explorations of Klingon religion, a topic which the franchise was not entirely silent on before.

As Worf states in DS9, the Klingon Gods are dead, having been killed by ancient Klingon warriors 'millennia ago'. In Barge, we get to meet Kortar, a 'Klingon Adam' of sorts - the first Klingon to be created, but who rebelled and went on to kill the Gods who made him. It's left ambiguous throughout the episode whether or not we really meet Kortar - B'Elanna's experience on the barge may well have just been a hallucination brought on by a near-death experience, and whether it corresponds to any actual experience is up for us to decide.

"Do you believe in an afterlife?"
"I accept there are things in the universe that can't be scanned with a tricorder.
- B'Elanna Torres and Chakotay

Many on Voyager council that this is what it must be: Chakotay describes how his grandfather would go on 'spirit journeys', believing himself to wander the wilds as a skinwalker, but he cautions that this doesn't mean that he grew fur and walked around on four legs. This is not surprising, giving the scientific materialism that pervades the series and the outlooks of the characters. As Worf would probably say, it doesn't really matter - what one matters is what you believe, and how that gives you purpose.

We'd gotten admittedly mixed messages on Klingon spirituality throughout the series - Kang claims that the Klingons have no devil, whereas in TNG, Fek'lar appears as a clear devil-type figure. While Fek'lar is nowhere to be found here, B'Elanna does specifically describe the underworld, Gre'thor, as 'hell', and while it may not necessarily be a place of eternal torture, none of the 'dishonored dead' are happy to be there.

Although, to be honest, it doesn't look that different from the Klingon homeworld.

The affect of bloodlines on one's spiritual destiny had also been touched upon in past episodes. Worf led a raid in Jadzia's honor in order to see her reach Sto-Vo-Kor, the Klingon afterlife and a thinly-veiled stand-in for Valhalla. In this episode, after almost dying, B'Elanna sees that her mother is bound for the underworld, and determines that this is because she has failed to live up to the Klingon standards of 'the good life'. Eventually, the episode evolves into an exploration of B'Elanna's very personal insecurities about her mixed heritage, which is central to the character. Barge of the Dead shows us once more that the ideals of Klingon society are felt very immediately and experientially by even those who have chosen not to live as part of the Empire.

By this point in the series, the Klingons had been established as a very traditional and religious people, as a way of accounting for the ease with which Klingons go to their deaths and for the strict honor code by which they abide. This episode borrows from a number of world religions to flesh out some of these bits of Klingon dogma - the barge is reminiscent of the Stygian ferry of Charon in Greek mythology, and the burdens of one's family and bloodline might imply inspiration from the Chinese Diyu. But what is fascinating at this point in the series is how far Klingons have come in how we view them, and how the inspiration from such a wide variety of Earth cultures has eventually coalesced into one fictional culture that we recognize. The whole episode feels 'very Klingon'.

5. ENT: Affliction / Divergence (Season 4, Episodes 15 & 16)

"How do you expect us to return home, looking like this? We will be outcasts. There will be no place for us in the Empire."
"Your heart is still Klingon."
"Are you certain of that? During the battle with the Starfleet ship, I felt fear for the first time since I was a child. I wasn't alone. I could see it in the eyes of the others. We've become like them. Weak, cowardly. It would be better for us to die."
-Lt. Larab and K'Vagh

Enterprise is a divisive series, and with good reason. But I'm personally of the opinion that the series really hit its stride in season four, and produced some of its first truly 'world-expanding' episodes in the vein that a prequel should. Perhaps the most important episode of them all in this respect is the two-parter: Affliction and Divergence.

Famously, in the episode Trails and Tribble-ations, the protagonists of the Next Generation era didn't even recognize the Klingons of Kirk's time. Until that point, characters from the two eras hadn't come face-to-face with the inconsistency in the Klingon make-up, and it had to be addressed - but this didn't mean that a definitive answer needed to be given. Worf shows embarassment and declines to speak of it. Bashir and O'Brien hypothesize a virus, or possibly genetic engineering (two fan theories at the time) but we're not given anything conclusive. Ultimately, Affliction & Divergence proved both of those theories to be correct, in a sense.

After being kidnapped by members of Section 31 - a Starfleet 'black ops' organization that is technically rogue - Phlox is taken to a Klingon research facility. While the Enterprise hunts for them, the ship is infected with a computer virus by Klingons who look remarkably like humans. After a gripping sequence in which the Enterprise must link up with another Starship in mid-warp, the crew discovers that something very big is going on, and it involves both the Klingon High Command and their own Section 31.

One of my biggest problems with Enterprise is how the series tended to ignore established continuity about past events - of which there was little that had been said, but Enterprise somehow managed to revise almost all of it. Synthesizing their plotlines with established continuity didn't seem to be a priority on the show, but this episode represented a masterstroke in that direction, and one that flowed from past events on the show.

After discovering Dr. Arik Soong's plans for genetic engineering, and knowing the power that human augments had wielded in the past, the Klingons decide to look into using the same technology to augment their own soldiers. Unfortunately, human DNA cannot be parsed out from the project, and Klingon warriors end up being spliced with humans. Then, when exposed to a contagious disease, this genetic change begins to spread throughout the Empire. Dr. Phlox manages to mitigate its effects to prevent it from killing millions, but the damage is done. A huge chunk of Klingons, especially those staffing its military, are now part-human.

Klingon ridges melting away.

"Do you understand what will happen if the general learns that we've deceived him?"
"A cure would save millions of innocent lives. What more honorable death could there be for a healer – Klingon or Denobulan?"
-Antaak and Phlox

As we saw, obviously a cure was eventually developed, or else, further generations of Klingons were able to become immune. But this does explain why there might be great animosity towards Starfleet from the Klingons, why their personalities and strategy tended to be a bit different in TOS, and the overall change in the look of the race. While this is clearly a retcon and a bit of a stretch, it was a bold move and an attempt to harmonize disparate portrayals into an intelligible whole. It's one of the few creative decisions made in Enterprise that enriches one's viewing of the other shows.

Conclusion

It's funny that, even having discussed all these episodes, I still feel that there's way more ground that one could cover in talking about the Klingons. And we've hardly mentioned Kahless himself, who is referenced in the title of the article. So perhaps Kahless can serve as an example of how we've changed our view of the Klingons over the years.

When we first see Kahless, he is an image generated by aliens as part of an experiment on morality. He's portrayed as TOS Klingon, which is obviously not in line with continuity at this point, and is little more than an evil thug. After all, he is the founder of the Klingon Empire, and thus he must have set them on the course to becoming such a militaristic, dictatorial state. He displays no honor whatsoever, though he is a ruthless warrior.

Contrast this with the portrayal of Kahless as he eventually comes to be known - a revered figure who epitomizes all that is great about Klingon culture. He was honorable, passionate and a great warrior, and the source of many Klingon traditions. Every Klingon seeks to emulate him in their way of life. When a genetic clone of him appears, he becomes a symbol, who opposes much of the excessive, irrational or unnecessary actions on the part of the council, including their invasion of Cardassia. In other words, he stands as a moral paragon of Klingon principle in contrast to the immorality of Klingon political practice.

Thus, the Klingons endure as perhaps the most nuanced species on the show, aside from humanity itself. If I had to summarize a common thread of the Klingon portrayal, I'd say that even in the Original Series we get a sense of respect for the Klingons. They're sometimes an adversary, sometimes a rival, and sometimes an ally - but always the Klingons merit a kind of reverence, either as a friend with a rich culture and tradition, or as an enemy who is worthy in battle and can usually be counted on to hold to a code of honor. There are certain 'rules' with the Klingons, and that makes them admirable. At times, they stand in opposition to the Federation's every value, but it comes from a sincere place, from a differing worldview, and one that the Federation's way of life demands be respected, even if it is not seen as agreeable.

Even though the Klingons began as an allegory for the Soviets, in a sense I'd say they've evolved to represent any ideological rival who must be dealt with, not merely destroyed, because of a combination of approximately equal strength and a respect for their right to their views and their right to exist. I might even go so far as to say that the Klingons are the most charitable assessment that a progressive might have for the right: traditional, religious, war-like and at times incomprehensibly different. But, at the end of the day, fighting them only leads to negative consequences. The best resolutions for problems with the Klingons always end in peace-making, and the captain that can avoid conflict with a race who is so diametrically opposed to Starfleet is a clever one indeed. To the Klingons, everything is a challenge - and likewise, living with them, working with them, and learning to respect them even when we disagree or can't understand them represents the challenge that was most important to Roddenberry and the showrunners of Star Trek. It's a challenge that the characters routinely have to overcome, often with great difficulty. It's a challenge that Star Trek, through the examples of its protagonists, challenges us to overcome also.

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