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Review: The Helena Chronicles 1x02 - 'Obsessions' |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
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 The crew of the U.S.S Helena is back, this time headed out to Hell’s Gate. Well, not literally to Hell, but to a rather unsavory place with the very same name. This is the second episode of Hidden Frontier’s Star Trek: The Helena Chronicles, released earlier this week. Like all Hidden Frontier productions, it’s not the best of television, but it’s still entertaining enough, and they put heart into it, so what more can you ask? And it’s free, so that’s a plus.
This second outing of Helena, titled ‘Obsessions,’ improves greatly upon the previous episode. Almost overnight the characters have developed a new level of depth that gives them a nice touch of realism in an unrealistic world: that of Star Trek. That’s not to say that it’s all roses, of course. This is a fan film, after all, and while there are trained and experienced actors in the cast, they’re not anywhere close to what we see on the small and silver screens on a daily basis, or even in some of the closer-to-professional-but-still-not-quite fan films like Star Trek: Phase II. But, as said earlier, it’s still entertaining, and clearly an impressive effort on the part of both the cast and crew.
‘Obsessions’ improves on the Corey Aster (JT Tenapa) story arc, this time with some progress being made, which is always a good thing for a story. And that progress is what drives the rest of this episode, which leads directly into episodes to come. I won’t spoil the ending, but I’m usually pretty good at predicting these kind of things and I didn’t really expect what happened to happen. If that makes any sense.
It’s very nice to see development in the characters. Both Captain Theresa Faisal (Sharon Savene) and Commander Jorian Dao (Adam Browne) have developed emotions and moved past the one-dimensional characters we saw in the premiere episode, ‘Sanctuary Lost.’ Doing some research into Hidden Frontier’s excellent wiki-style encyclopedia, both Faisal and Dao are established characters from the earlier Hidden Frontier series (though Dao more so), so it’s nice to see some of those past associations seeping back up to the surface. At the same time, even though The Helena Chronicles is a spin-off series of Hidden Frontier, it is still a new series and could stand to have some brief background explanations to some things (like the status of Jorian Zen/Dao’s Trill symbiont). But in the 30 minute format of The Helena Chronicles, it can be difficult to squeeze in bits of exposition here and there.
Speaking of exposition, we do get some about Security Lt. Dias (Gina DeVettori). Unexplained in the first episode, we now learn that she’s a Bolian/Nausicaan hybrid. That said, her Nausicaan side shows much more than her Bolian as the character borders on maniacally masochistic. Even so, the character is interesting in a way and has great potential. It was nice to see some of that potential explored in this episode. Along with Dias, the oddball Dr. Mordan Ness (Ben Euphant) gets a good amount of screen time, but Chief Engineer Arvin Rockney (PK Eiselt) and Helmsman Artim Ibanya (Beau Williams) again have very limited roles in this outing.
There are two notable guest characters in this episode, both good and bad. On the side of the good guys we get Commander Robin Lefler, played by Joanne Busch. Lefler comes to the Helena to help Aster sort through the vision of his husband, Ro Nevin (lost on the U.S.S. Odyssey in the Andromeda Galaxy), and she frankly gives a lackluster performance in the role. The other guest character is played by Melodee M. Spevack, a sultry alien merchandise dealer named Caleno. Her character isn’t necessarily the bad guy, but she certainly does complicate things. Spevack gives a great performance, with the perfect hints of shadiness, confidence, and proficiency.
As is usual for Hidden Frontier productions, the ship graphics are of good quality. They aren’t always the best, but they get the job done. And as this is Hidden Frontier, the entire production is filmed in front of a greenscreen and the virtual sets are chroma-keyed into the scenes. Unfortunately, that means that there’s not much interaction with the set, apart from chairs and desks, and the on-the-fly chroma-key process occasionally leaves behind fuzzy outlines for the actors.
While the process has advanced significantly since Hidden Frontier launched in 2000, it still is not as clean as replacing the greeenscreen in post-production, and unfortunately means that the cameras cannot move with the actors, unless an expensive computer-controlled system is rigged up to pan the background with the camera. For a fan film, that’s not feasible. One upside of the live chroma-key is that no extra time has to be spent in post-production setting up the greenscreen effects, so there’s a much quicker turnaround time for Hidden Frontier productions. It also can lead to some odd effects, especially when they have to create layers of effects for set pieces like corridors and doors.
Greenscreens aside, the costuming has improved since the last go and is markedly better than those in Helena’s sister series, Star Trek: Odyssey. None of the Starfleet uniforms stood out as ill-fitting and the handful of alien costumes were distinctly not-Human but still well-made. They’ve adhered to a very simple policy that will serve them well: keep it simple.
All of that out of the way, let’s get to the plot. Unlike ‘Sanctuary Lost,’ ‘Obsessions’ dispenses with the giant space squid and moves on to an interesting story that has both parallel and intertwining plot lines. Additionally, there are plenty of twists and turns as you go, especially leading up to the end. There’s a small amount of technobabble, but it stumbles into the realm of weak and slightly convoluted (inverse radiation?). Regardless, the plot earns a solid ‘A’ this time around.
‘Obsessions’ runs for 34 minutes and is available for download right now from the Hidden Frontier website in both high and low resolution formats (410 MB and 127 MB, respectively).
Watch: Star Trek: The Helena Chronicles - ‘Obsessions’
Discuss: TrekUnited Forum
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