scifi reflection
Reflecting upon “Starship Mine”:
“I enjoyed the episode enormously. It’s now in my top half a dozen episodes.”
Captain Jean-Luc Picard?
An action hero?
The truth is that each iteration of the Gene Roddenberry franchise has its own track record with action-centric episodes. Actor William Shater’s Captain James T. Kirk rather famously had his shirt torn in several classic Star Trek fisticuffs, so why shouldn’t his TV successor get the chance to swap a few blows with bad guys here and there? Maybe even tear a shirt or two? Well, the 1993 episode titled “Starship Mine” amped up the idea to noticeably degree, pitting the Starfleet captain in a cat-and-mouse match-up aboard an evacuated Enterprise where galactic terrorists who’d stop at nothing to obtain enough Trilithium resin – a substance that could be refined into a dangerous explosive – to sell on the black market.
Fans of this sixth season installment noticed the rather obvious similarities between “Starship Mine” and the hugely successful Die Hard, a 1988 blockbuster film that saw Bruce Willis first play John McClane, a New York City cop trying to save his wife and her work colleagues at the worst holiday work party imaginable. In the picture, terrorists seized the Nakatomi Building and took everyone inside hostage, unwittingly leaving one man – McClane – on the loose after hours so that chaos between the good guy and the bad guys ensued throughout its two-hour run-time. To Star Trek’s credit, screenwriter Morgan Gendel’s script trimmed everything down to a manageable 45 minutes; and the comparisons were valid.
Some fans dubbed it: “Die Hard In Space.”
Others called it: “Die Hard Picard.”
Even actor Patrick Stewart is alleged to have loved the episode, largely because it gave the classical-trained Shakespearean actor a chance to step outside the box of so much of what he’d usually been asked to do as the veteran Starfleet captain. Gone were the speeches about galactic injustice. Gone were the usual Trek technobabble on science and morality. Gone were the dialogue-heavy sequences that had the man proving his intellectual mettle. In its place were TV-grade throwdowns with guest stars, a bit of gunplay, and even the chance to put to use a Vulcan nerve pinch he had learned from a previous mind-meld with Sarek – the famed Vulcan ambassador – back in season 3. Star Trek once again delivered the kind of small screen adventure that Roddenberry envisioned on its wagon train to the stars, and here was the next generation showing they, too, were unflinching unafraid to go where no one had gone before.
A citation about the episode’s enduring popularity posted to Memory Alpha claims that even veteran Star Trek producer Rick Berman thought that the chapter was inspired. He called it a ‘bravura role’ for Stewart within a premise that a tone uniquely its own. Screenwriter Gendel took a bit of convincing, having to watch the completed dailies a second time in order to be certain that director Cliff Bole and all involved had fully captured what he was trying to accomplish with the script.
While the original airdates for syndicated television shows vary widely across U.S. markets, “Starship Mine” – the eighteenth episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s sixth season – was first broadcast on this day back in 1993 as according to IMDB.com.
-- EZ
“I enjoyed the episode enormously. It’s now in my top half a dozen episodes.”
- Patrick Stewart (Source: Memory Alpha)
Captain Jean-Luc Picard?
An action hero?
The truth is that each iteration of the Gene Roddenberry franchise has its own track record with action-centric episodes. Actor William Shater’s Captain James T. Kirk rather famously had his shirt torn in several classic Star Trek fisticuffs, so why shouldn’t his TV successor get the chance to swap a few blows with bad guys here and there? Maybe even tear a shirt or two? Well, the 1993 episode titled “Starship Mine” amped up the idea to noticeably degree, pitting the Starfleet captain in a cat-and-mouse match-up aboard an evacuated Enterprise where galactic terrorists who’d stop at nothing to obtain enough Trilithium resin – a substance that could be refined into a dangerous explosive – to sell on the black market.
Fans of this sixth season installment noticed the rather obvious similarities between “Starship Mine” and the hugely successful Die Hard, a 1988 blockbuster film that saw Bruce Willis first play John McClane, a New York City cop trying to save his wife and her work colleagues at the worst holiday work party imaginable. In the picture, terrorists seized the Nakatomi Building and took everyone inside hostage, unwittingly leaving one man – McClane – on the loose after hours so that chaos between the good guy and the bad guys ensued throughout its two-hour run-time. To Star Trek’s credit, screenwriter Morgan Gendel’s script trimmed everything down to a manageable 45 minutes; and the comparisons were valid.
Some fans dubbed it: “Die Hard In Space.”
Others called it: “Die Hard Picard.”
Even actor Patrick Stewart is alleged to have loved the episode, largely because it gave the classical-trained Shakespearean actor a chance to step outside the box of so much of what he’d usually been asked to do as the veteran Starfleet captain. Gone were the speeches about galactic injustice. Gone were the usual Trek technobabble on science and morality. Gone were the dialogue-heavy sequences that had the man proving his intellectual mettle. In its place were TV-grade throwdowns with guest stars, a bit of gunplay, and even the chance to put to use a Vulcan nerve pinch he had learned from a previous mind-meld with Sarek – the famed Vulcan ambassador – back in season 3. Star Trek once again delivered the kind of small screen adventure that Roddenberry envisioned on its wagon train to the stars, and here was the next generation showing they, too, were unflinching unafraid to go where no one had gone before.
A citation about the episode’s enduring popularity posted to Memory Alpha claims that even veteran Star Trek producer Rick Berman thought that the chapter was inspired. He called it a ‘bravura role’ for Stewart within a premise that a tone uniquely its own. Screenwriter Gendel took a bit of convincing, having to watch the completed dailies a second time in order to be certain that director Cliff Bole and all involved had fully captured what he was trying to accomplish with the script.
While the original airdates for syndicated television shows vary widely across U.S. markets, “Starship Mine” – the eighteenth episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s sixth season – was first broadcast on this day back in 1993 as according to IMDB.com.
-- EZ
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