Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Cathedrals of Memory

I can close my eyes, and it's like I'm right there. Like Santa's Village never shut down and decayed away for years into chipping, fading paint and crumbling pads where rides once sat. No, in my mind, the cloying scents of funnel cake batter and cotton candy mix with the oily aroma of sunblock, and the tinny carnival music can fill the air if I only stop to remember it. The icy chill of the "North Pole" on even the most sweltering summer's day, the brightly painted concrete of the ponds and fountains, and the numerous Alpine buildings that housed gamerooms, gift shops, or restaurants. And the rides.

Oh, yes, the rides. So many beloved memories, like treasured friends from long ago. Here's the convoy, gleaming in the sun, the newest ride a cacophony of bulb horns ringing out. There's the 15 seconds of whiplash from a ride on the dragon coaster. And down the hill toward Coney Island are a pair of favorites: the antique cars and the dodge-em. The antique cars click along their prescribed track with a measured cadence, lanternesque headlights glowing as they drive through "tunnels" and a small boy carefully steers along with every turn. Just down the path the bumper cars crash together under jangly rock n roll songs and the crisp smell of burning electricity.

I could keep going, talking about the clanking chains of the yo-yo, the terror of weightlessness at the top of the galleon's arc, but I'll stop with one last ride. The fire truck. This was an actual truck, towing a trailer that for all intents and purposes was a set of bleachers on wheels, driving along the paths in one corner of the park. It stops at a small metal house, through the windows of which burns an actual fire. As the truck lurches to a halt, the small hose ends in front of each kid spring to life with streams of water that always seem to fall just short of the burning house. Clutching the hose, aiming with marksman precision, and gritting my teeth, willing the water to spray just a little further, I finally get the water to reach the flame. After (what seems like a predetermined amount of) time, the flame extinguishes, and the truck returns to the boarding area, victorious and triumphant.

Now, of course, I know that the fire was a simple gas flame that was turned on and off. Similarly, the rides I cherished were simple carnival amusements, the buildings cheap flimsy constructions, and the brightly painted Christmas trees were clumsy hunks of fiberglass. If I'd been an adult back then, what would I have thought of Santa's Village? Would I see all those imperfections, or would I be able to feel the magic I now recall? Or how would I feel about other places from my childhood? The Piano Factory, an outlet mall that probably should have been structurally condemned, is a place whose uneven stairs, dim hallways, and collections of weird mismatched shops I remember so fondly. The rough wood and scalding aluminum slides of the now-defunct playground equipment at my old school was a kid's palace. Or even something as simple as the McDonald's where my Mom used to bring me for a chocolate milk while we waited to pick up my brother from school. It's since been completely renovated, but I can remember every corner of how it used to be from those trips. To anyone else, just a burger joint, but to me a sacred cathedral of memory.

That's the funny thing about nostalgia. You never know what seemingly insignificant item or place will insinuate itself indelibly onto your memory while remaining totally meaningless to someone else. And that's really the main connection between the first three episodes of io9.com's list of the top 100 Star Trek episodes (link). What, you didn't think that's where I was going with all this? Well, regardless of the rambling way I got here, io9 has provided me with a list, a "complete-them-all" opportunity, and it's all about Star Trek. In my usual way, I'm going to start (and likely never finish) watching all of the episodes. Here are the first three:

100) ST Voyager - Bride of Chaotica! Here's where  nostalgia can differ so much from person to person. This episode is your typical "trapped in the Holodeck" scenario as we've seen repeatedly since these things first came to be on The Next Generation. And it seems each series needs to find its own Holodeck niche. For example, TNG had Data as Sherlock Holmes and Picard as the 1940's detective Dixon Hill, both of which were lots of fun. DS9 continued the trend with Sisko's baseball obsession (slightly less fun) and Bashir's 007-esque exploits (fun again). So by the time Voyager got to play with a Holodeck, most of the best ideas were already taken. Rather than repeating one of these, they decided to go with Tom Paris being a connoisseur of old Sci-Fi serials like Buck Rogers or Lost in Space. And they did a wonderful job recreating that kind of world: black and white photography, cheesy sets, overacting everywhere. But the problem is that's all they did. The main story was so bland, the baddie was defeated in a (very non-Star Trek) unintelligent way, and so many plot holes were left totally unaddressed. What about even trying to communicate with the aliens trapped in the Holodeck? Eh, leave that part out, let's just have more death ray. I'm too young to feel nostalgic for old campy Sci-Fi serials, and without that, this episode is pretty skippable. 5/10.

99) ST Original Series - Day of the Dove. Again, if you grew up with something, you are more likely to appreciate it than someone approaching it later on. That applies for me to essentially the entire original Star Trek series, which I credit more for spawning great shows later on than for any merits of its own. Cuz let's face it, original Star Trek was pretty bad at times. Day of the Dove wasn't one of the worst offenders, but it wasn't great either. This episode had a pretty good idea and really poor execution. The main gist is there's an alien that feeds on hatred and is encouraging humans and Klingons to fight for its amusement/nourishment. Great, except that is made abundantly clear to the viewer in the first 10 minutes of the show, then we spend more than half an hour watching Kirk and co. flail around trying to figure out what we already know, all for a 5 minute conclusion that is almost embarrassing. I wanted to like this much more, but the plot was so poorly written that I was actually bored watching it. The most interesting part was seeing Spock overcome by the alien and his almost bigoted comments to Scotty (in response to Scott's outright racism), as well as the overall theme about why we fight. That said, not being a child of the Kirk/Spock era made this one harder for me to get into. 5/10.

98) ST Deep Space Nine - Paradise. Fair warning, I probably rated this episode lower than I ought to have because I felt a slight personal affront from it. Here, Sisko and O'Brien decide to visit a planet that they subsequently discover renders technology of any sort unusable. The colonists seem to relish their old-fashioned ways despite the Starfleet folks' protestations that technology is totally better, right? The leader of the colonists is smug and self-righteous, a perfect love-to-hate style antagonist. As she becomes more and more Dolores Umbridge, Sisko and O'Brien fight back more and more, and the tension eventually comes to a fairly unexpected climax. Good episode, with my gripe that the conflict between self-sufficiency and technology was presented in a total technology-good, old ways-bad kind of view. As someone who grows his own food, cans and preserves the harvest, whose wife knits clothes and hats, etc., this is kind of insulting. Sure, technology can grow more food than I can, and preserve it quicker, but there are costs to that, too, and there is satisfaction in doing something yourself. Painting the people who look back fondly on low-tech ways as simpletons or manipulated is kind of irksome. But for the oh-so-nasty antagonist and her standoff with Sisko, I can overlook some of that and rate this 6/10.

So whether it's nostalgia for old TV shows (serials or the original Star Trek), or just for days without so much technology in our lives, each of these episodes ties in somewhat to the theme of remembering the past in a positive light. Perhaps the only oddity is that for someone who admittedly pines for the good old days of shows like Star Trek, I sure didn't rate these three very highly. I would expect that to change as we get further into the countdown, and particularly once we spend some time with my favorite crew, the members of NCC-1701-D. Until then, it was at least interesting to see some episodes I had somehow missed in my years of watching the various Star Trek series. And given the tendency of memory toward the nostalgic, maybe one day I'll look back at this blog and tell myself these episodes weren't that bad, and wish for the days where I'd wake up early to watch some Star Trek before heading to work. I think I have room in my memory for a few more "good old days," and those could definitely fit the bill.

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