On which I write about the books I read, science, science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that I want to. Currently trying to read and comment upon every novel that has won the Hugo and International Fantasy awards.
Left to right: Butler, Spurgin, Fark, Rittenhouse, and O'Connor
Based in Indianapolis, Five Year Mission is, quite simply, the best Star Trek themed band in existence. Composed of Noah Butler, Andy Fark, P.J. O'Connor, Mike Rittenhouse, and Chris Spurgin, the band was originally formed with the intent of writing and recording a song for each of the episodes of the original Star Trek series, including the originally unaired pilot The Cage (which was later reworked into the two part story The Menagerie). Thus far, the band has released three CDs consisting of songs about individual episodes up through The Immunity Syndrome, plus two more specialty CDs composed of songs all focused on a single episode: One for The Trouble With Tribbles, and another for Spock's Brain.
Between August 2015 and February 2016 I laid out what I would consider to be the best play set for the band, drawing from the songs they had released through that time period. As far as I know, this set has never actually been played, and nor is it likely to, as I believe some of these songs are songs that the band either no longer plays live, or has never played live. Even so, this is the playlist I wish they would play some time, and if I were the king of the world who could make such things happen, it would be.
Shore Leave is the final song in my Dream Five Year Mission set. In my opinion, Five Year Mission should close out every one of their concerts with this song. It is the perfect way to cap off a concert, with an upbeat rhythm, a peppy melody, and lyrics that simply follow along one of the more surreal episodes of the Star Trek series. Plus, the way the song ends, with each instrument's part dropping out one by one, seems like a perfect means of pulling each band member off the stage.
Back in 2011, when I saw them perform live for the first time at InConJunction, this is how the band finished its performance. It was a perfect close to a near perfect appearance, and has stuck with me ever since. That is the only time I have seen the band perform this song live because, sadly, it seems that Five Year Mission doesn't include it in their live performances any more, which is a real shame. I have met some very dedicated fans of the band who don't even know that they ever performed this song live. In my dream concert, however, they do perform it, so I am including it here.
Bearing a striking similarity to, although perhaps not directly influenced by, Fredric Brown's story Arena, this episode of Star Trek has Kirk shanghaied by a race of incredibly powerful aliens and forced to fight the captain of a rival alien ship with the lives of everyone on their respective ships as the stakes while his crew watches it all on video.
This episode is the only appearance of the Gorn in the original series, which is somewhat disappointing, because this story sets up a scenario that seems like it would have been interesting to explore. On the other hand, 1960s episodic television wasn't really prepared to handle ongoing story lines, so it may have been just as well that they never tried to pick up the threads from the episode in subsequent installments. Be that as it may, it seems like the Gorn could have been at least a semi-regular adversary for the Federation in the series, as they seem to have been at least as interesting when they were introduced as either the Klingons or the Romulans. Alas, despite this moderately promising beginning, the Gorn were mostly cast aside and have been treated as almost an afterthought by Star Trek writers in the years since.
Taking up where the writers of Star Trek left off, Five Year Mission shows us the true face of the Gorn, who is just a hard-working guy who only wants to get through his difficult day. After being ripped off by guitar thieves, dealing with stores prejudiced against dogs and Gorn, and having his dog stolen, is it any wonder that the Gorn is just a little bit testy?
And no, I don't know what magic keeps Andy Fark's glasses from falling off.
As Thanksgiving approaches, it is time for everyone to gather together with their friends and family to relax and unwind. This is a season to take a break from the pressures of everyday life, and alleviate your stress. Enjoy some food and drink and maybe some entertainment.
Just learn from Scotty's mistakes, and don't kill anyone.
I will also point out that this is one of my favorite Five Year Mission songs, just because it is so silly (albeit slightly inaccurate). The way the entire song builds up to the final line and then simply cuts off there, leaving the listener hanging with "Scotty killed a hooker" with no further elaboration, is simply brilliant.
The Changeling is one of two episodes in the second season of Star Trek that seem to have been, at least in part, inspired by Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series of stories. This episode is also an example of the well-worn Star Trek trope in which Captain Kirk talks a computer to death by turning its own logic against it.
In a way, this episode is somewhat like the middle stage in an evolution of a story. It either draws upon Saberhagen's Berserker stories or derives its inspiration from the same wellspring that Saberhagen drew upon. The Changeling, in turn, seems to have served as at least something of an inspiration for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This episode also has some thematic similarities to The Doomsday Machine, which originally aired a mere three weeks after this one, insofar as they both dealt with alien (or at least partially alien) machines intent on destroying life wherever they find it.
There is an interesting interplay between The Changeling, The Doomsday Machine, and Star Trek:The Motion Picture, or at least something of a progression (although given the fact that The Doomsday Machine came after The Changeling, a somewhat out of order progression). In The Doomsday Machine, Kirk and the Enterprise are confronted by an implacable enemy who can only be confronted and destroyed, and so they do. In The Changeling, by contrast, the antagonist is an almost wantonly destructive foe, but one that can (and ultimately is) reasoned with, although the application of reason has the ultimate result in destroying the machine. Finally, in Star Trek:The Motion Picture, the crew of the Enterprise is once again at odds with an Earth probe merged with alien technology that has returned to pose a danger to human life, but it is a machine that can be reasoned with, and in the end, they neutralize the threat while . . . well they don't destroy the machine, but they do make it go away.
In The Doomsday Machine, the heroes blow up the antagonist. In The Changeling, the heroes understand and then blow up the antagonist. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the heroes understand and then help the antagonist fulfill its destiny. The last seems to be the most in line with Roddenberry's vision for the future, but it produced the least interesting story: Raw idealism, it seems, simply doesn't produce compelling narratives. The Doomsday Machine has a lot of action and space battles, but other than Commodore Decker's emotional struggles, the episode could be any number of other science fiction shows - it just doesn't have that unique "Star Trek" feel. This episode, however, seems to capture the balance between action adventure and idealistic reason that made Star Trek something out of the ordinary in the history of televised science fiction.
Mirror, Mirror is one of the best episodes of the entire Star Trek series. It also makes for an excellent song. You simply can't go wrong with a beard on Spock.
After a side track for some Halloween themed music, it is back to the Dream Five Year Mission set.
Where No Man Has Gone Before was originally filmed as a replacement pilot episode for the series after the network rejected The Cage as being "too cerebral". The script was one of two offered to the network as a replacement pilot - the other one was later filmed as the episode The Omega Glory, which is arguably the worst episode of the entire series. Although filmed as a pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before was the third aired, which must have been somewhat disorienting for viewers during the original run of the series, because there are several noticeable differences between this episode of Star Trek and pretty much every other.
The most readily apparent difference between Where No Man Has Gone Before and the episodes that preceded and followed it is the absence of DeForest Kelly as Dr. McCoy. Instead, Paul Fix appears as Dr. Piper. In addition, Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhuru is entirely absent from this episode. Lieutenant Sulu is identified in the episode as being the head of the ship's astrophysics department, a position and a department that is never mentioned again in the series. In all other episodes, Sulu is identified as the helmsman of the Enterprise. This is also the only episode of the original series without a voice over for the opening credits. On some very small notes, when Gary Mitchell creates a tombstone for Kirk, he puts the name "James R. Kirk" on it, and this episode is the only time a phaser rifle is seen in the series.
Unlike The Corbomite Maneuver, the song Charlie X isn't really a "funny" song, although given that the original Star Trek series was inherently campy, a lot of songs written about it have humorous notes. For example, I am reasonably certain that in the original episode whenever Charlie Evans (played by Robert Walker) rolled his eyes back in his head when he used his powers he was supposed to be scary and creepy. But now, whenever I see the episode, I can't help but find him hilariously silly. And when Kirk decides to teach Evans to be a man by taking him down to the Enterprise gymnasium for some wrestling, the sequence now appears to be both incredibly homoerotic and also incredibly goofy.
On the other hand, the episode is fairly creepy - Charlie is a petulant teenager with almost no impulse control and strange supernatural powers that allow him to lash out and punish those he takes a dislike to by stealing their voices, removing their faces, turning them into lizards, or simply making them disappear. In some ways, this episode of Star Trek is reminiscent of the 1953 Jerome Bixby short story It's a Good Life, which was made into a Twilight Zone episode of the same name in 1961. It is probably no accident that Bixby later wrote four Star Trek episodes: Mirror, Mirror, By Any Other Name, Requiem for Methuselah, and Day of the Dove. The humor in this episode is tempered by the impending sense of horror as Charlie lashes out again and again, and even the best efforts of the Enterprise crew prove to be ineffective at stopping his rampages. Unlike It's a Good Life, this episode has a happy ending, as the aliens from Thasus show up to take Charlie into hand and fix all of the problems he caused (essentially pressing the reset button for the first time in Star Trek history).
But the real question this episode raises is why, exactly, does Yeoman Rand have a button in her quarters that opens a communications channel directly to the captain's chair on the bridge? Is this a booty call button?
Continuing the run of humorous songs from Five Year Mission, here is the quirky and silly tribute to the invented material behind Kirk's greatest bluff. Confronted by a superior adversary, Captain Kirk resorts to fabricating an imaginary material that he tells his mysterious adversary is built into the hull of the Enterprise and will explode and destroy any attacking ship with an equal and opposite reaction to any offensive weapon used against it. So, of course, Five Year Mission had to write a song from the perspective of the future salesman who would actually sell such a material for use in star ships in the Star Trek universe. Never mind that it is supposed to be imaginary even in the imagined future: Just sit back and listen to the future equivalent of a used car salesman pitch products from the hair club for men of the future.
For Labor Day, I'm going with a song about the hardest working man in the Star Trek universe. Granted, his hard work is all dedicated to conning other people out of their possessions, including the Enterprise, but that's just details.
Although he only appeared in two episodes of the original series and one more episode of the animated version, Harcourt Fenton Mudd is one of the most memorable characters in all of Star Trek. In a setting full of aliens impersonating Greek gods, intrigues involving dueling space empires, mad scientists manufacturing alien androids, guardians manning portals through time, and alternate realities, a portly guy who is little more than a fairly incompetent grifter stands out as one of the high points of the series. Perhaps this was due to the fact that Mudd was the only character who wasn't a member of the Enterprise crew who appeared in multiple episodes of the original series and was portrayed by the same actor each time. Perhaps this was due to Roger C. Carmel's strong portrayal of the character. Or perhaps it was because the iconoclastic, irresponsible, and ethically challenged character served as such a clear counterpoint to the mostly straight-laced characters that made up the crew of the Enterprise.
As to the song: This is a love song of sorts, so long as you define "love song" in a very loose manner. Written by P.J. O'Connor, this song was the result of his adorable wife Savannah asking him to write a love song out of one of his chosen episodes for the band's Year Three album. Because P.J. simply cannot do anything that is completely normal, he wrote this song about the love affair between galactic scoundrel Harcourt Fenton Mudd and his lovely and not-nagging-at-all spouse Stella. In it, he recounts the couple's beautiful and touching relationship in which they certainly didn't despise, loathe, or even hate one another.
I'm going to line up a couple of humorous songs next, so I'm okay with going to a song here that is a little darker at this point in the set, so I'm going to put one of my favorite Five Year Mission songs about one of my favorite Star Trek episodes in this slot. The Doomsday Machine is a bleak and harsh episode that doesn't really have a happy ending, which seems kind of fitting as it seems to have been inspired by Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series of stories (which I would recommend as being quite good, albeit in many cases dark and grim). Even though Kirk ends up figuring out a way to halt the implacable doomsday machine, the price Starfleet pays for the victory is quite high.
But Five Year Mission was able to transform this bleak episode into a really great song, so it has that going for it. And then they made a great video to go along with it. But really, this is a great song and the band doesn't seem to play it live often enough any more. In my version of reality, they do, and so it gets stuck right in the heart of the imaginary set.
After City on the Edge of Forever, the Five Year Mission Dream Set needs something to pick up the pace and lighten the mood. So how about a song about an episode in which kids live for hundreds of years, but suffer from a horrible sickness as soon as they reach their long delayed puberty? Yeah, that sounds about right, so the next song in the lineup is Miri. So go bonk-bonk on the head and enjoy.
So after opening the set with two fast-paced songs, I think we should slow things down just a bit with one of the very few actually romantic songs in Five Year Mission's oeuvre. The episode City on the Edge of Forever is a fairly quiet, and entirely tragic tale of a doomed love affair. Kirk and Spock travel back in time to depression-era United States hot on the tail of a deranged McCoy, and once there Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler. He is then forced to let her die as a result of the cruel dictates of time travel as explained using the cold and unyielding logic of Mr. Spock. Chris Spurgin's lyrics perfectly capture the combination of hope and sadness that are the hallmarks of this episode, resulting in a song that is beautifully sorrowful.
The underlying Star Trek episode is also somewhat topical this week, as it won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1968, and the Hugo awards for 2015 will be presented this Saturday at the upcoming WorldCon in Spokane, Washington. I don't think there are any television episodes as well-written as City on the Edge of Forever up for an award this year (after all, it is very hard to top something that was written by Harlan Ellison), but there are several excellent movies nominated for the Long Form Best Dramatic Presentation category, so there is that to look forward to.
Continuing my Five Year Mission Dream Set, the second song up is Balance of Terror, featuring the tragic love story of Robert Tomlinson and Angela Martine, two characters basically put into the original episode so they could be torn apart by the plot. The band doesn't play this song very often - I would guess that it has been close to two years since they last played it, and they only did so because they were performing at a friends' wedding. According to Andy Fark, it was more than two years before that that they had performed the song live, so they had to rehearse the number quite a bit for the occasion. On the other hand, I don't see the band perform more than two to three times a year, and they might have performed this song more recently. If I was making the decisions about what they should perform, they'd play it every time they took the stage.
One might ask why I think they should perform this song. The first reason is simple: Balance of Terror is my father's favorite episode of the Star Trek series, and by osmosis, it has become one of mine. The second reason is even simpler: This is a really catchy song, with great lyrics about a doomed romance that serve as a counterpoint to its upbeat music. There is something slightly humorous about focusing the song for an episode that is essentially a space-borne version of The Enemy Below upon a disrupted marriage ceremony. But the song is ultimately a bitter paean to love lost to Romulan aggression. I love it. I love the off-kilter approach to the song. I love the contrast between the music and the subject matter. I love the episode it relates to. I just wish that the band would play it live more often, so it is part of my dream set for them.
As we have every year that we have gone to Gen Con, the redhead and I went to a lot of musical performances this go around. We saw the Doubleclicks (twice), Molly Lewis (also twice), Sarah Donner, Paul & Storm, the Shake-ups, and, of course, Five Year Mission (twice). They played two sets that were heavy on songs from their most recent Spock's Brain album, which was great because the album is quite good. However, neither were my dream Five Year Mission set. So I decided that over the next several weeks worth of Musical Monday posts, I'm going to map out what my dream Five Year Mission set would be, starting this week with The Cage.
Why The Cage? Simply put, this is the song that I think every Five Year Mission performance should open with. Not only is it about the original unaired pilot episode of the original Star Trek series, it opens with a set of notes that just sound like Star Trek, immediately putting the listener into the right frame of mind for a whole bunch of music about Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and the rest of the crew of the starship Enterprise. I know, this song isn't actually about any of those characters - well, except Spock, who was the only character to transition from this pilot episode into the series itself - but the song, like the episode itself, is the foundation upon which the rest of the edifice is built. As a result, I think this song should be front and center, and in my dream Five Year Mission set, it is.
