Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Star Trek's Midsummer Night's Dream

“Time’s Arrow, Part 2.” By Jeri Taylor. Perf. Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, and Brent Spiner. Dir. Les Landau. Star Trek: The Next Generation. Season 6, episode 1. Syndicated television. 21 September 1992. DVD. Paramount, 2002.

Shakespeare can be used as an excuse or a distraction. In this clip, it's both. It serves as an excuse to explain the odd behavior of the crew of the Enterprise, who have travelled back in time to Mark Twain's San Franscisco. Ah, they're actors! Putting on a Shakespeare play! What could be more natural? It also serves as a distraction to the comic-relief-providing landlady, who keeps popping in at inopportune moments to demand the rent.

Many of the actors in the Star Trek franchise have performed in Shakespeare elsewhere (Patrick Stewart being the most noted example). I wonder what Data would be like as Puck in a more complete production of the play. Hmmmmm. Well, until that happens, we have his "Wither wander you?" to contemplate:



For more connections between Star Trek and Shakespeare, head to Shakespeare and Star Trek Complete.

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1 comment:

Scott Scheper said...

You may want to try out Yonkly. It's the first niche microblogging platform that integrates with Twitter: http://yonkly.com

Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest