"Blood and Fire" Part 1
Star Trek: New Voyages/Phase 2
reviewed by Fred Dixon

"Blood and Fire" is the first episode done under the Star Trek: Phase II aegis. The stated goal is now to be the bridge between the original series and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. As the reader may recall, Phase II was the aborted sequel to the original series that was to have featured the original cast (except for Leonard Nimoy). It was to be the cornerstone for launching the United Paramount Network in the ‘70s. That plan was canceled. Star Wars was the rage and a big budget Star Trek movie was Paramount’s counterpunch. Now the New Voyages team picks up the ball that dropped some thirty years ago. A redesigned Enterprise, new characters, new props and uniforms are in the offing plus the use of some of the scripts that were originally written for Phase II. A fresh, new direction indeed.

The episode starts with a lengthy written preamble about the AIDS crisis. Surely a worthy topic, but Star Trek made its commentary on current events plain through story telling without resorting to a scrolling manifesto before the teaser. It would have been appropriate for a benefit showing, but not for a broadcast drama. The Star Trek audience has proven its perceptiveness over the years, and we would have gotten the point as the story unfolded.

The show itself comes out of the gate at warp speed. The Enterprise is in a desperate fire fight with a Klingon D-7 cruiser. The two starships inflict serious damage on each other before the Enterprise manages to drive the Klingons off. We then discover that Kirk’s nephew, Peter, is now serving on the Enterprise. He followed in his uncle’s footsteps to the Academy and then to a posting on a starship. The captain is worried about his nephew’s safety, especially in the face of the recent battle. He starts protecting him by taking him off of a landing party that is going to respond to a distress call from a Federation starship, the Copernicus. Peter is like his uncle in some ways, but different in others. The young Kirk is put off that he has been scratched from the landing party. The older Kirk would have been irked, too. While James T. Kirk is an icon of heterosexual masculinity, nephew Peter Kirk is a homosexual. He plans to marry a fellow male crewmate. The captain is virtually the last one to know on the ship. When Peter asks the elder Kirk to perform the marriage ceremony, he reconsiders his initial order and reassigns his nephew to the landing party. Once the beamout is complete, the landing party lead by Spock finds that the Copernicus is a plague ship. There is no cure, and Federation law has been broken. Starfleet orders Kirk to destroy the Copernicus and its occupants which now includes Spock and Peter Kirk. We have to wait until Part I for the resolution--the plague (and how it is an analogy for AIDS) and Peter Kirk’s situation.

It is a bit frustrating reviewing half of a story. However, this first part is well-crafted in terms of set design and special effects. I thought the teaser was maybe one of the most action packed openings ever for a Star Trek episode; however, the rest of the Part I story is a bit of a slow roller. The length of the love scene between Peter and his male lover did not help matters in this regard. It seemed interminable up to the point that one felt like a voyeur instead of a viewer. Ben Tolpin did fine as Spock, but I missed Jeffrey Quinn who had an other-worldly aura essential for the part. It was nice to see Meghan King Johnson as Rand return to the show. It was also a pleasant surprise to see Nick Cook from Star Trek Intrepid as an unfortunate redshirt, the role literally consumed him. While I have appreciated John Kelley’s portrayal of McCoy in general, he came off character as being cruel in the Sickbay scene instead of irascible. One quibble, the new Phase II costumes didn’t work for me. The "jumpers" looked like drab kitchen aprons and the captain’s tunic was not flattering to James Cawley’s physique. (Quite frankly, I always found the non-Starfleet costumes in the original series to be somewhat clunky, and I never liked the captain’s green wrap-around tunic which seemed to be somewhat stylistically discordant with the standard uniform.)

Blood and Fire is a work in progress. I give it an A for production design and special effects, an A for casting Nick Cook and Meghan King Johnson, and a C- for the Phase II uniforms. The jury is still out on the story until Part II is released.

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