Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Mirror-acuilous


When it's all over, and you have nothing left to lose, that's when bad Trek gets good. Look at the last 5 or so eps of Voyager. Look at the last 3 or so eps of Enterprise before TATV, which we will discuss later, make no mistake. Look at them!

It's like they stopped being afraid of what would happen and it all just worked. Magically. By the time they made In a Mirror, Darkly, I don't care what Manny says, we all knew the show was cancelled - barring a miracle. We didn't get one, at least not the way everyone was looking for.

The miracle came later, at least for me.

After cancellation, when there was no more to come, somehow it became easier. I actually remember thinking, "well, they can't fuck it up anymore." It was over, and over was better than under. Under the thumb, under control, underwritten and underacted. Underused, understood (too well), underappreciated at times, but definitely underperforming. Now it was over.

Over.

And that was the miracle, because then the under-ness was finished and it was what it was and I could deal with that. At first it was still too hard, but then three things happened. 1. Damon LIndelof made a very passionate statement explaining that you can't just take one piece and throw away the others. 2. I rewatched TNG's first season. Talk about crappy. 3. I wanted it to work. Now that it was done, I wanted to make it work, because if I hadn't, it would have all been for nothing and I couldn't take that. I couldn't take failiure.

Maybe that was the Kirk in me. But it worked, sort of.

There are some things that are inexcusable, but somehow I feel that it is my duty to find excuses, to make them fit. I have an obligation to put the world back together the way it should be, or, in the words of Angel, which is really very profound, "We live as if the world were as it should be. To show it what it can be."