Whoo boy, this was certainly “Roddenberry Unchained”.
You know, I kind of loved it?
The pitch: like so many other similar stories, smarty man from the past is frozen in time and wakes up in the future — this time around it’s 150 years. Upon being woken, the two major factions recognize his value as someone who has knowledge of how to fix things, like nuclear power plants, and just what all these “k-cup” things are. One side tricks him into helping, but they’re really the bad guys. The good guys kind of suck, too, in a weird science/near-religious mish-mash kind of way, but one group doesn’t have pain sticks, nukes, and slaves, so our hero reluctantly makes his choice by the end.
It was kind of awful, and needlessly horny (as was tradition), but… man, there’s just this weird charm to it that only something ambitious, but produced on a low budget in the 1970s can make work.
The cast is mostly good, with Mariette Hartley, especially, standing out among them.
There’s much of the original 1966 Star Trek DNA strewn about this pilot-cum-TV-movie, including some VFX tricks with the elevator, the wardrobe and cinematography, those phony ‘caverns’, musical stylings, a small Majel Barrett role, the hand-to-hand combat stunts, etc.
Pretty much what I was hoping for when I’d first heard about this.
Again, I had fun with it, riding the line right down the center of “fun to riff on” and “genuinely enjoying it”.
I’ve heard this is the BAD version of this, and the seemingly traditional network order to later remake it “less cerebral, and more action-oriented” is the superior one.
Sounds like a win-win for me.
Observations:
– This feels like the missing link between the original “Star Trek” and “ST: The Motion Picture” in terms of technical evolution. In reality there were only 3-4 years between this and Star Trek‘s third season finale. Yet it feels very much like a 1970s production. Maybe what Star Trek might have looked like if they had a sliiiightly larger budget.
– Lurch plays a “white Comanche Warrior”.
– “Decepticons” was a name invented for a kids TV series. What’s the “Tyranians” excuse, Gene?
– After detonating a fucking NUKE over the Tyrianian city: “you didn’t take any lives did you?” 👉🥺👈
– “Bet you’ve got a nice pancreas.”
⭐⭐⭐1/2
