"In Harm's Way"
Star Trek: New Voyages
reviewed by Fred Dixon

Star Trek: New Voyages shakily launched with "Come What May," but stepped up with "In Harm’s Way." However, at this point, the production is still mired in the need to pay homage to the original Star Trek instead of going in a fresh direction. Much like "Come What May," the story abounds in references to Trek history and borrowed dialog. The plot finds its roots in "The Cage," "The Menagerie," "The Doomsday Machine" and "The City on the Edge of Forever." New Voyages eventually finds better footing with subsequent episodes "To Serve All of My Days" and "World Enough and Time." (See the reviews by Diane Doyle.) Indeed, New Voyages is now known as Star Trek: Phase II with intended goal of bridging the original series to Star Trek: The Motion Picture–-perhaps a fresh direction. Now let’s take a look at "In Harm’s Way."

The adventure begins with the Doomsday Machine altering history by going back in time and destroying the Enterprise during the Christopher Pike’s command, but Spock and a few scientists stationed at the Guardian of Forever were spared any effect of the temporal change. Spock contacts Captain Kirk who in this timeline is commanding the U.S.S. Farragut and does not know Spock (similar to the animated episode "Yesteryear"). Eventually, Kirk, Spock and McCoy go through the Guardian of Forever to the present day and find that Commodore Decker was not killed in the doomsday machine. He went back in time, but has passed away. His wife (played by Barbara Luna) shows the three a videotape made while Decker was still alive. This is great as Star Trek nostalgia, but lacking as relevancy to the story. The Big Three return to the Guardian after learning, well, nothing. The Enterprise winds up flying through a newly discovered larger version of the Guardian (this idea had been championed by Gene Roddenberry as part of a possible Star Trek movie). They wind up teaming with the Pike-era Enterprise and eventually the Class-J starship where Fleet Captain Pike was injured along with the Star Trek: The Motion Picture-era Enterprise to defeat the self-replicating Doomsday Machine invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. That’s a lot of Trek to pack into one episode. Whew! We didn’t have enough of the original series, but now we have too much!

The regular cast returned intact except Charles Root took over as Scotty from Jack Marshall. I got more comfortable with them playing original characters this second time out. I know James Cawley makes a living as an Elvis impersonator, but the pompadour is still a little annoying (corrected in the next episode). The Pike-era cast does fine as well, especially Kurt Carley as Pike. The guest stars included William Windom, Barbara Luna and a favorite of mine, Malachi Throne. William Windom gave an affecting reprise of Commodore Decker. Barbara Luna adds a refreshing revisit to her charms as his wife. Malachi Throne plays a Klingon commander and does the voiceover of Commodore Mendez in a flashback scene with Fleet Captain Pike. (I miss Noah Bain from It Takes a Thief.)

I was impressed with the quantity of specials effects in this episode, if not the quality. It was a CGI extravaganza! Over half of "In Harm’s Way" seemed to be SFX. There were two Guardians of Forever, the Guardian planet itself, three different Enterprises, an animated doomsday machine, a Class-J starship, and Starbase 11. I didn’t like the acrobatic moves of the Enterprise. (The Enterprise is a large ship and with its mass should move in a stately manner as a result of inertia.) To see the rapid fighter-jet-like movements detracts from the realism. There is an interesting take on the Doomsday Machine. It is now has segments and moves in a worm like way instead of it just being a hunk of solid neutronium. The Starbase 11 sequence was quite good. The opening sequence to the Guardian planet was also somewhat amazing in its complexity, but came off as video-game-like.

I give "In Harm’s Way" an A for effort and a B- for execution. This was an overly ambitious project. The everything and the kitchen sink plot, the uneven special effects and some lingering problems with the acting subtracted from this episode. However, it was somewhat of a marvel to behold at the time. Again, I appreciate the work put into fanfilms. The New Voyages team learned from its first two outings to move into the big leagues with their next episodes, "To Serve All of My Days" with Walter Koenig and "World Enough and Time" with George Takei.

Truly, Star Trek lives!

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