"Upgrade"
Tales of the Seventh Fleet
reviewed by William Batross

This episode is short. It starts at Starbase 24 where the U.S.S. Justice is docked. The opening scene is quite dark. You hear and see the doors "swooshing" open and a figure in the dark, with a flashlight, messing with a ship’s panel. The scene flashes to the U.S.S. Justice, where the ship’s doctor, Doctor Lupia, loses a patient: Doctor Hopler, who was working on warp drive capabilities for a single nacelle starship like the Justice. It then cuts to a quick funeral, where the captain is talking, but you don’t hear him. All you hear are the bagpipes playing loudly in the background. You see the Justice crew mourning over the coffin.

At Starbase 24, Admiral Voce (who looks like James T. Kirk) informs Commander Carl Stoeffles, the Justice's chief science officer, that he wants him to take over the project that Doctor Hopler was working on. Stoeffles objects and recommends Chief Engineer Robert Lupia instead, but the admiral insists. Even so, Voce then informs Lupia of his decision, leaving the engineer to complain bitterly to his wife and to confront Stoeffles about the project. The chief engineer mistakenly believes that the chief science officer arranged things for his own benefit.

Later on, while investigating a control panel, Chief Engineer Lupia kneels down and messes with a control panel and then passes out! Next scene, he is on the medical table and his wife is taking care of him. They find out that the decease is in Engineering on a panel, but a crewman touches it, before they quarantine it. But he is immune. They ask for a sample of his blood, at first he refuses, but he eventually gives it. Doctor Lupia takes the T-bodies out of the immune crewman's blood and injects them into Chief Engineer Lupia, who fully recovers. The source of the disease is never found, but they leave space dock anyway for their "shake-down" mission.

When I started watching this second episode, I realized that it was a slight improvement from the previous episode, but not by much. The echoing of their voices has diminished a little in this episode and the episode itself was interesting to watch. But, the odd thing about the episode, is that the cause of the sickness, goes from being a simple virus to a chemical warfare weapon. Also, the acting was a little unrehearsed as well in this episode, because sometimes they kept stuttering over the scripted words! I didn't like how the character Chief Engineer Lupia kept whining about how he did not get promoted for the single nacelle warp drive project. He kept giving an aggrieved attitude toward Commander Stoeffles, even though Stoeffles advised him that he really did not want the promotion in the first place and that he was planning on leaving before this promotion came to him! When Commander Lupia hears of this, he acts very offended by this news! For not liking the guy getting promoted over him, he was sure offended by the news of him leaving! That's totally incongruous. Morever, when three senior staff discover that the virus problem started in the engineering area, all three staff members go down there themselves, risking all getting the infection themselves! They should have quarantined the area immediately. The refusal of Crewman Pima to give his consent for a blood draw doesn't make sense either. If it was a life or death situation in real life, the crewman would have been ordered to give his blood to the doctor. And in addition, I have the same problem with Starfleet commbadges as I did in the previous episode; as far as my knowledge goes, the Star Trek movie era did not have this technology!

I did like the character of Admiral Voce who had a striking resemblance to the character of Captain James T. Kirk! It's too bad though that they didn't use Kirk. I also thought that it was funny that at the end of the episode, the captain of the Justice still has problems hiding his natural hair under the blond wig. I did like the interaction of Chief Engineer Lupia and his wife, Doctor Lupia, but that would be expected though, since they are apparently married in real life. The blue screen effect was a little better this time. Their bodies did not seem too out of place. Finally, the thing that I did not like about the ending is that they never did determine the identity of the saboteur who placed the effected panel there in engineering. They also went ahead and had their "shake-down" voyage, even though the crime was not solved! I would have stayed at space dock, until I find out who put the infected engineering panel there!

Overall, I liked this episode too, but not as well as the first episode. It had a good mystery feel to it, but the murder was never solved. And at the end, they act like that everything is hunky-dory, even though the culprit was never found. The special effects were better this time; no bleeding of the character out-lines against a blue screen this time. The dialog was still a little faulty, as before. I give this episode a 55. Would I recommend it to a friend? Ha, maybe, if they really liked Star Trek and were bored and did not mind loose ends.

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