"Star Trek: Odyssey REVIEW" by Troy H. Cheek on Dec 24, 2007
The good people over at Hidden Frontier have come out with a new online Trek series... Star Trek: Odyssey. This is named after and features the adventures of (you guessed it!) the USS Odyssey. Based on the prophetic naming that Trek uses, I'm surprised anyone signed up for that ship.
I mean, really. Who's going to step foot on a ship named Voyager or Odyssey or Traveller and not expect to spend the next 20 years trying to get back home? Go ahead and call me insensitive, but that's like getting assigned to the Grissom or Christa or Valentine and not expecting to go up in flames at some point.
Maybe they think it's a reverse Murphy's Law thing. After all, you know that in real life, the HMS Unsinkable is going to hit bottom two hours into her maiden voyage. As I remember, the HMS Friday was named such so the Royal Navy could prove that they didn't really believe that Fridays were unlucky. They laid the keel on a Friday, launched it on a Friday, and even found a man named Friday to captain it. Pity it collided with a ship whose registry number ended in "13" before clearing the harbor. Using this reverse psychology, the USS Bon Voyage will be assigned nothing but milk runs between the two outermost planets of her home system and should be a safe, if boring, career choice.
But back to Star Trek: Odyssey... In the near future of the far future, the Federation has made friends with most of her traditional enemies and, after a long and costly struggle, has managed to defeat most of her new enemies. A time of peace and prosperity is sure to...
Aw, who am I kidding? We all know that the next major threat to galactic peace is going to appear before the Champagne goes flat. In this case, it's aliens from another galaxy. Well, it's oddly-colored humans from another galaxy, but you know what I mean. They open up a huge wormhole and threaten to overrun the Romulan Star Empire, or whatever they're calling it this week. As the Romulans are Federation allies, more or less, it falls upon our heroes from the Hidden Frontier to save them. Using an experimental "slipstream" drive, the Federation's USS Odyssey and the Klingon's IKV Honorably Flee From First Sign Of Trouble rush off to the other galaxy to try and shut down the wormhole from the other end.
The Odyssey gets stranded in the other galaxy and is going to take a long time to get home. Who didn't see that one coming?
Okay, so I didn't catch the name of the Klingon vessel. It probably had a very noble name and history. Which didn't prevent it from having to viciously advance to the rear all the way back to Romulan space due to story requirements. If that hadn't happened, the romantic leads wouldn't have gotten split up and a years-long trek back from the Andromeda galaxy would have just been an extended honeymoon.
This did manage to break up my least favorite couple (sorry, kids!) in all of Trekdom. Combine this with the recasting of the actor playing one of the leads and the lack of "I'm stranded a zillion light years away from my mate" angst in Episode 2 compared to Episode 1, and suddenly this series seems a lot more interesting to me.
(Anyone who wants to email me about why I'm some kind of bigot or pervert or jerk for thinking these two should have never gotten together in the first place, remember three things:
- You know nothing of my private life and what relationships I've been in.
- You've not read my fiction and seen how I handle relationships when I'm the author.
- This isn't your review and you don't have any say in what I write here. So there. Nyah!)
As of this writing, two episodes have been released, along with a crossover bonus episode. Two episodes and a special is not much to go on, but I feel my usual complete lack of qualms about making a bunch of judgmental statements anyway.
The green screen, chroma key, green screen, background removal thing looks unbelievably better than Hidden Frontier and related earlier efforts by the same team. I mean, this is near-professional quality stuff, folks. I see just a hint of green fringing from time to time, and none of the "green halo with the whole actor tinted a lovely shade of green" effect that I remember from Hidden Frontier. Most times, it's easy to forget that the background probably never existed as anything other than a file on some computer. It looks like people are really where the story says they are. I've played with chroma key myself and, take it from me, this is impressive.
I'm also impressed with the story and writing. I really want to know how the story will progress and (hopefully) end. I'll be really disappointed if this turns out to be nothing more than a Star Trek: Voyager ripoff.
I've picked up a couple of characters that I'm already quite fond of. The characters in general seem pretty interesting. No obvious Mary (or Marty) Sue characters, everyone has strengths and flaws, and by Episode Two I'd stifled any urge to strangle even the most annoying.
The acting in Odyssey is at least a notch higher than what I remember from Hidden Frontier, even though I see a lot of the same faces. Perhaps it's the writing. Perhaps I'm only remembering the worst and most cringe-worthy performances from the old show. Of course, there are a few parts that I wouldn't mind seeing recast, but the biggest one has already been taken care of.
And for those who seem to think that you have to be an expert in something before you're allowed to criticize it (as if you have to be a professional opera singer to notice that someone on stage is singing off key), I will mention that I have both written and acted myself.
Even the makeup is better, though that might be because they seem to be aiming more toward funky skin colors and bumpy foreheads and away from full-face appliances. The Romulan forehead and ears seem a bit off in Episode Two, though. Since Vulcanoids range from "baby bottom" smooth to "this Klingon has visible brain folds" lumpy, they could have made the forehead appliance much smaller, suggested browlines with a little dark pigment, or even skipped it altogether. My advice would be to quietly tone down the forehead, or perhaps the Romulan could suffer an unfortunate head injury. And her hair is long enough to cover those pointed ears most of the time.
But Troy, how will we know she's a Romulan? Well, the fact that she's wearing metal weave clothing, probably metal underwear, blushed green when I mentioned the underwear thing, and spouts off about how the Federation is insulting her Romulan honor every five minutes, I think we can figure it out. A Hispanic actor whose name escapes once complained that the producers of his TV show wanted to put a tortilla machine in the kitchen, otherwise how would viewers know the kitchen was in a Mexican home? His reply was "because the kitchen is full of Mexicans!"
The special effects and space scenes are quite good in Odyssey. I'll have to wait and see if they start recycling them after a few episodes. I swear that happened quite a bit in Hidden Frontier. If not the actual footage, then the same battle maneuvers with different ships rendered in.
I'm going to give Star Trek: Odyssey a tentative two thumbs up and keep a close eye on it this first season. I suggest you go over to the Hidden Frontier and do the same.
