Fear and Loathing on the Planet of Kitson

Before I conclude the Portland trip stories, I figure I should touch on last week's episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (before the new one drops tonight). It was an unusual hour, rather different in tone for the series -- even the more exotic tone struck so far this season.

Robbed of their ship and possessions, Fitz and Enoch hit a casino to try to gamble their way off a strange alien world. Meanwhile, Daisy, Simmons, and their team arrive at the same planet on their hunt for Fitz -- only to deal with complications of their own. They cross paths with a strange alien hunter, and they're not prepared for the effects of the local food on humans.

I did like the idea of a doing a lighter episode that allowed for silly moments and gave the cast a chance to cut loose. Simmons and Daisy -- or more to the point, Elizabeth Henstridge and Chloe Bennet -- are a pretty fun comic team. The drug haze that sends them crawling under the table is just a fun premise. That it also led for an extended riff on their Hogwarts houses, and showcased a hallucinated Fitz in a monkey suit? That's just bonus.

But to reach the comedy, the episode first had to get through a lot of material that wasn't up to the show's usual dramatic or action standards. Simmons threatening Daisy was an unbelievable and ridiculous moment. Daisy casually using torture to extract information wasn't good for the laughs it seemed intended to elicit. That the whole team would so easily and stupidly consume strange food stretched credibility. (And later, the idea that Daisy could still kick ass that easily while being high as a kite? All of the above -- unbelievable, ridiculous, not actually funny, easy, and stupid.)

At least the plot was streamlined and easy to follow this episode, more so than the two preceding it. And there was some good character development for Fitz through it all. I've expressed concern about rolling back a year's worth of growth for him, but this episode helped him to grow in a new and different way than he did in that stolen year. Still... when he and Simmons reunited for seconds, only to be separated again? Well, let's just say after they finally married last season, I'm not sure I'm ready for a fresh round of keeping them apart.

To the degree that I once again enjoyed this episode a little bit more than the one before, I again want to nudge my rating up. But I'd still say this was a B- episode of the series at best. Season six has gotten off to a very rocky start in my view. I guess if it keeps on this trend, even at this slow pace, the show will be back in fighting shape soon enough. I just hope I don't start wishing they'd just ended it after season five...

Visiting the Hood

Day two of our Portland trip... wasn't actually in spent in Portland. We hopped in our car, loaded up an audiobook, and drove east of the city to reach Hood River. Besides the great sights all along the Columbia River drive, we had great tastes when we arrived -- we were heading there to visit some wineries.

Our first stop was The Gorge White House, an orchard/vineyard that actually produced both ciders and wines. Of course, we had to sample both. The eight ciders we tried were a wide variety of blends; only two of them were more traditional apple-based drinks, while the rest were made with all sorts of berries. There were enough good options that it was tough to pick a favorite. The wines were all decent, though outshone by the ciders. We got to hear about the fires that threatened the area two years ago, and also got some tips on other places in the area worth visiting.

We immediately pursued one of those tips, driving to Stave & Stone Wine Estates. They'd recently built a new tasting room outside of the main town, and it had been talked up quite a bit. With a beautiful view overlooking some of their own vineyard, it was a lovely place to relax and sample. Here, we found a couple of wines we thought worth bringing back; we've got a couple of bottles now to some day remind us of the trip.

One more winery stop took us to Phelps Creek Vineyards, a small tasting room right next to a lush golf course. Here, we were informed that it was National Wine Day! (Sure enough: May 25th.) Unlike the previous two places, this tasting room was marking the occasion with something special, two more rare wines brought out from their cellar to supplement their normal flight. Though we didn't find anything we enjoyed as much, it sure made our day out in wine country seem fortuitously chosen.

Before heading back to Portland, we stopped in town for a late lunch. The pizza at Double Mountain Brewery had been talked up in a couple of the locations we'd already visited, so we made the choice to switch from wine to beer. The pizza was... yeah, pretty good. The beer not bad, either, though we were being more selective at this point about just how much we were willing to try. After all, there was not only this place, but two other breweries a stone's throw away.

It was a one-block walk over to Full Sail Brewing Company, which I didn't associate with anything familiar until we walked through the doors and saw the giant Session Lager logo everywhere -- this is a beer widely bottled and distributed, and available in Denver. But we tasted a few things from the source anyway, since we were already there.

Lastly, we felt compelled to check out the nearby pFriem Family Brewers, held by many to be among the best breweries in Oregon. Honestly, we shouldn't have saved them for last -- after a full day, and with a drive back to Portland still ahead of us, we just weren't in the mood for trying much. We were there, we tried something, we can put a pin in the map... but I don't know that I could firmly say whether we thought highly of them or thought them overrated. The one beer we tasted just didn't make for much of a (heh) sample size.

We weren't up to much else that day after returning to our Portland hotel room. We grabbed seafood for dinner -- we always look for seafood options when we're closer to the coast. Still, even if we did had something of an early night, we'd certainly had a full day.

Welcome to Portland

This past weekend, my husband and I took a long weekend in Portland, Oregon. With some interesting sights to see and even more craft beer than Denver (though that hardly seems possible), it seemed like a great place to spend a lazy, not-rigidly-planned vacation.

We arrived late Friday morning, hours before we could check into our hotel, so we jumped right in. Ecliptic Brewing is a place that distributes its most popular brews even here at home, but they had enough local-only options to make them seem worth a stop. From a tasty Guava Blonde Ale to an unusual Coconut & Vanilla IPA that was hazy enough for even my bitter-averse taste buds to enjoy, their taster flight was a nice intro to the trip.

Next up was Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland, a location that looked beautiful in screen after screen of photos online. Indeed, it is beautiful -- though hardly the overwhelming site that I'd been expecting. To reach those numbers of photos I'd seen, I'd wager every square foot of the place had been photographed. I suppose my "go go go!" vacation mentality is too at odds with the simple pleasures of relaxing in a tranquil garden. In any case, I was expecting to wander around aimlessly and get lost in the experience. Instead, it was a short 10-minute stroll around a meandering path to return to the entrance -- which you never really lost sight of along the way. We sat for some tea, but soon wanted to move along.

A short hike was next. Colorado has plenty of gorgeous places to visit, of course, but not many pristine slices of nature just plopped down right in the middle of Denver. Forest Park is a surprisingly large area right there in the middle of it all, and just a few dozen steps down one of its many trails transports you instantly into a thick, green forest unlike anything you'll find back here in Colorado. We walked along a trail to the so-called "Witch's Castle," a strange old stone house named in the spirit of the city mantra: "Keep Portland Weird."

At last, we were able to check into our hotel. (Half the time there seemed like it was spent waiting on the least efficient elevator in the world.) But we did head back out for two more beer stops before dinner. The first was at Three Mugs Brewing Company. It was one of those tiny, hidden-in-a-warehouse-complex type of places you get in the cities most deeply into craft beer. But it was also a "throw the garage door open and let the cigarette smoke do what it will" place, which made it hard to stay for long. I was intrigued by a sample of their White Chocolate Blonde Ale, but not enough to really enjoy it amid the smoke. So we quickly moved on.

Vertigo Brewing brought out the welcome committee. When we started asking the bartender about other good places we should visit, a local couple next to us eagerly jumped in to fill us in. Figuring we meant business, having found a spot like their favorite place-in-a-warehouse, they gave tons of suggestions -- while confirming some of the places to visit I'd researched in advance. One of them even insisted on leading us back to the brewing area to get a picture of us in front of the brewing equipment, then bought us a sticker to remember the place by. Raspberry Wheat was the beer we liked enough to bring back home, but there were easily several more we liked nearly as much. We would have gone back for more on another day -- but sadly, Vertigo was closed Sunday and open too late for our flight home on Monday. But it was certainly an early highlight of the trip.

Tired from travel, and from having packed so much into the day, we settled in early for the night after dinner. But there was more fun to come.

A Notorious Reputation

In the past, when I've sampled classic films, I've had the best luck with Alfred Hitchcock. I haven't enjoyed all of his most famous films (I simply cannot see what most people seem to in The Birds), but have liked them often enough (Psycho, Rear Window, Rope) to keep checking back in. That recently brought me to his 1946 spy film, Notorious.

Alicia Huberman, daughter of a convicted spy, is recruited by a government agent to infiltrate a group of Nazis who have fled to Brazil after World War II. Alicia must juggle a budding romance with her handler, Devlin, as she seduces the Nazi leader, Alex Sebastian -- and all without blowing her cover.

It's easy to understand why Notorious is held up as a significant film. It's not just a template for the spy genre that would emerge more forcefully in the 1960s, it's a template for much of what Hitchcock himself would do later in his career. You can see the artist at work, discovering or developing some of his greatest techniques here: long and unedited camera shots that track an object of tension, cheeky ways of getting around censorship of the period, and more.

Yet I found the film to be much more an intellectual curiosity than a genuinely engaging movie. On paper, this should soar -- it's an entire story built around characters lying to one another, engaged in a massive battle of wits. But the first hour is ploddingly dull; only the last 40 minutes of the movie really fulfill the promise of tension inherent in this premise.

I often struggle with pacing issues and acting style when watching an older film, and this movie has both on full display. A languid 15 minutes opens the film, as Alicia is oh-so-gradually coerced into accepting a job as an undercover operative. Her ensuing efforts at embedding herself should be intriguing, but unfold too slowly and without suspense. It's only once the "machine" has been constructed that the movie finally starts to work -- and you have to watch and wait as every last gear and spring of that machine is put in place.

As for the acting? Well, this is a stacked cast of the most famous actors of the era. Ingrid Bergman is Alicia, Clark Gable is Devlin, Claude Rains is Sebastian, and classic Hollywood "that guys" fill out the roles all the way down. But each actor has embraced their own particular cliche of the era. Bergman is vamping in the fake "mid-Atlantic" accent of classic films. Gable is so aloof and disaffected as to be above emotion entirely. Everyone else is larger than life and unnatural. Of course, it's not entirely fair to expect modern acting from a movie made before, say, the 1970s... except that sometime you do get it (12 Angry Men), showing that even at the time, some filmmakers knew there was a more natural way.

I nearly shut this movie off halfway through out of boredom. I am glad I hung in there, as the last half really is the best part of the movie -- having made it that far, it would have been a shame to miss out. Yet better still would have been to never watch at all. I give Notorious a D. It's not my least favorite Hitchcock film (as I indicated earlier), but I've seen so many better ones that I'd never recommend it.

DS9 Flashback: The Search, Part II

Continuing the two-part episode that opened Deep Space Nine season three, "The Search, Part II" continues setting the stage for one of the series' most important ongoing story lines.

Odo has found the home planet of his people, yet something doesn't feel right. He's having difficulty connecting with them, can't help but notice their xenophobia toward "solids," and becomes increasingly certain they're hiding a secret from him. Meanwhile, the crew of the Defiant is rescued after their Gamma Quadrant mission and returned to Deep Space Nine. There they meet shocking news: the Dominion has made overtures of peace with the Federation. But this too doesn't feel right. The Federation seems too eager to agree to the Dominion's increasingly difficult demands: to break an accord with the Romulans, give up control of Deep Space Nine, and abandon the Bajorans.

There's a bait-and-switch in this episode that reportedly annoyed many viewers when it first aired: everything that happens on the station is really part of a simulation in the minds of the characters. Or, uncharitably: "it's all a dream." I side with the writers and their intentions here; the episode shows just how powerful the Dominion is to toy with the heroes like this. Cunning too. As writer Robert Hewitt Wolf put it, "the whole thing was a test" for them -- if they can take over the Federation slowly, by diplomacy, why expend military resources?

Even if this part of the story is fake, interesting things still happen. We see Sisko stick up for his team, charging in to yell at a superior officer over Dax's transfer. We see him and his officers take a firm moral stance, choosing insubordination over blindly following bad orders. We can also infer the cleverness of the Dominion in how complete the scenario is... it pushes the test subjects one way with a stonewalling Admiral Nechayev, pulls them another with a supportive Garak, draws out their feelings with a questioning Jake, and mocks them with a self-righteous Quark.

But you don't just have to infer; you learn even more about the Dominion from what the Founders come straight out and say. The Changeling Leader that interacts with Odo tells a story of how her people were once hunted and tormented by "solids," leading to their xenophobia. We never learn the actual historical truth in the series, but it's probably not as white as she paints, nor as black as the changelings being maniacal subjugators without provocation. In any case, their attitudes are so deeply entrenched that Odo's interactions with them changes nothing -- not his memories (shared via "link"), and not seeing firsthand how caring and true a friend Kira is to Odo.

Odo may have finally found "his people," but the episode repeatedly shows how little he has in common with them. He has no instinct to explore other shapes in the arboretum, as the Leader suggests. When he tries it, it means nothing to him. Most profoundly, the Founders have no sense of justice as Odo recognizes it -- the core of his being is absent in theirs. The conflict is well-defined right out of the gate, this episode serving to develop the Founders as clearly as the second season finale set up the Jem'Hadar. (Notably, though, the writers still haven't quite figured out what to do with the Vorta. After this, we wouldn't see them again until nearly the end of season four -- when Jeffrey Combs' performance as Weyoun would blaze the trail.)

Other observations:

• Jonathan Frakes directs his first episode of Deep Space Nine, with his signature use of high, wide angles to put characters in isolation. He spoke glowingly of this experience, noting that an Odo story "was like having a Next Generation episode assignment to direct a Data story." Besides praising the work of Rene Auberjonois, he also loved the spacious Deep Space Nine sets, saying "it's hard to find a bad angle on that space station."

• In a nice bit of continuity, the monolith seen in the changeling arboretum matches the one in seen in "The Alternate," that was claimed to be a "relic of Odo's people."

• The Vorta character of Borath was originally planned to be Eris, the same character from "The Jem'Hadar," but actress Molly Hagan was unavailable to reprise the role. Her loss perhaps was ultimately Jeffrey Combs' gain.

• "No changeling has ever harmed another" is a huge bell placed in this episode that you know will someday be rung. It also further underscores the Founders' xenophobia, as the idea of killing each other is so unthinkable, while the idea of killing solids is so unworthy of thought.

I give "The Search, Part II" a B+, though in terms of importance to the series, it would rank higher still. It's a huge milestone in establishing Deep Space Nine's unique identity in the Star Trek universe.

Forum Letter

At the risk of repeating myself, I do love board games by designer Stefan Feld. Sparing you a lengthy introduction that belabors that point, I'll get right to it: I had a chance to try one of his more recent releases, Forum Trajanum.

Set at the height of the ancient Rome, players each compete to develop their own piece of the Empire. The story wrapper has a few more nuances to it than that, but the simple truth is that the particulars aren't terribly important. It's a vehicle for delivering another intricate Feld game system.

It's perhaps too much a generalization, but the closest Feld game I'd compare this one to is Notre Dame. That's because actions in Forum Trajanum are drafted -- each turn, you look at two options and pass one to another player. You then choose whether to take the one action you picked or the one you were passed. It's a system that immediately gets you more invested in what your opponents are doing -- or one of them, at least -- just to be sure that you're not passing them a great opportunity.

I'd love to attempt to explain the other systems in the game in more detail, but it feels quite challenging to do it justice without having the board and pieces close at hand to illustrate. It's not necessarily that it's "too" complex. (I've played more convoluted games.) But it is hard to wrap your head around until you've played a few turns of it.

But then, maybe it is a bit more involved than it absolutely has to be. I wonder this because when I played, it seemed like all players (myself included) were having to "take back" actions more often than usual. Certainly more often that would be desirable. Planning ahead in Forum Trajanum is harder than you think it will be. There are lots of ways to convert resources into points, which is great from a "many ways to win" standpoint, but pretty hard when you try to think through all your options and their ramifications.

It does at least all seem balanced -- no surprise there. There's a section of the game devoted to unlocking special rules-cheating powers, along a series of ability tracks. Each track seemed useful for different strategic approaches to the game. It was easy to simultaneously be both proud of an engine you'd developed and envious of someone else's engine.

I did enjoy the game, and would play it again if the opportunity arose. Still, I'm pretty sure this doesn't reach the top tier of Feld games for me. It feels a touch too hard to teach, a touch too much to wrap your mind around. Likely it would smooth out with more regular plays, but my group has found other game options lately that I suspect will be more popular. Forum Trajanum probably sits just outside looking in. I'd grade it a B. It's far from a Stefan Feld "failure," but it doesn't sit along his long list of past triumphs.

DS9 Flashback: The Search, Part I

Season 3 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was unique for the series. For the first half of the run, it was the only Star Trek series on the air, carrying the torch after The Next Generation ended and before Voyager began. The premiere made clear that it wasn't content to just keep doing what it had been doing; Deep Space Nine was going to continue evolving.

After time away from the station, Sisko returns to Deep Space Nine with a surprise -- a tough warship named the Defiant, built in response to the Borg threat. With it he brings a mission to enter the Gamma Quadrant and seek the Founders, the mysterious leaders of the Dominion.

Adding the Defiant to the series was reportedly a real battle the writers had to win with Rick Berman and the executives at Paramount. Voyager was right around the corner, and it was supposed to be the "starship show." There were fears of brand dilution if Deep Space Nine were to add its own ship and start "boldly going" every week. The writers had to provide reassurance that the goal here wasn't to take the characters away from the station any more than usual. In truth, they just wanted to be able to take more characters than a runabout could comfortably hold (from both a story and production perspective).

There were still more fights beyond getting the ship itself. Staff writer Ronald Moore had wanted to name it the Valiant, but another "V"-named ship was not going to fly. Rick Berman was reluctant to let the ship have a cloaking device, worried that Gene Roddenberry would not have been happy about the Federation "sneaking around." Then there were budgetary considerations; the series wouldn't be able to show all the expected locations aboard a starship, and would have to make do with just a bridge, hallway, and single crew quarters.

All of these limitations led to some clever creative decisions that made the Defiant the compelling part of Deep Space Nine it would become. Its warship nature made for a really different visual design, more like an armored turtle than any Federation ship we'd seen before. The close crew quarters allowed for intensely personal scenes, like the one here in which Odo doesn't want to show vulnerability by "sleeping" in front of Quark.

Not every aspect of the Defiant was fully realized out of the gate, though. The machine gun-like phaser fire, though cool here, would be retooled. The idea that a Romulan character would be around to supervise the use of the cloaking device would be dropped after the two-parter (though actress Martha Hackett would get to play a recurring character on Star Trek -- Seska, over on Voyager).

The same attitude with the Defiant to "try new things -- some will stick, some won't" permeated other aspects of the episode too. Dax has a new (and wildly big) hairstyle here, never to be seen again after the two-parter. Odo has a new uniform with a belt and collar (a request from Rene Auberjonois, who liked these aspects of his "mirror universe" look); it would last a bit longer, though not permanently. What would last was the new character of Michael Eddington. Like the minor character of Primmin from season one, he was put there so that on screen he could clash with Odo over security issues, and behind the scenes he might fill in for Colm Meaney when he booked movies mid-season (as he'd done the first two years).

In many ways, this episode functions as a second pilot for the show. Explanations of the Dominion, the main characters (especially Odo), and the overall situation are laid on extra thick as if for first time viewers hopefully making the jump from the now-ended Next Generation. It's probably not a coincidence that this was the first episode scripted by Ronald Moore, a writer from The Next Generation who himself was making the jump to Deep Space Nine. Moore fits in right away, nailing a tense submarine-like scene of cat and mouse with the Jem'Hadar ships, delicately weaving in a discussion of racism (Odo thinks Starfleet is anti-shapeshifter; Sisko has to talk him down), and depicting friendships that feel comfortably and realistically lived in (both Kira/Odo and Sisko/Dax).

What Moore nailed on the page, director Kim Friedman nailed in the execution. Returning from the second season finale, Friedman puts great camera work in this episode. A roving, handheld camera stalks Dax and O'Brien while they're on a risky away mission. A "Vertigo zoom" captures Odo's reaction to meeting other shapeshifters for the first time. Friedman is also good with the actors. An early scene between Ben and Jake Sisko really convinces you they think of the station as home now. Odo's animalistic draw toward the Omarion Nebula somehow feels both spooky and natural. Eddington comes on nice; actor Kenneth Marshall said Friedman coached him that just the fact of his being there was threat enough to Odo.

The ending of the episode packs quite a punch, when Odo comes face to face with another changeling for the first time. As fun as parts of the season two finale were, it would have truly been something if this had been the cliffhanger end of that season. Odo has found his people? What?! Writers Behr and Wolfe had been cooking up the twist of the Founders being Odo's people for much of the previous season, but according to Behr, "we never thought they'd go for it in a million years." Similarly, Rene Auberjonois had often joked of his character that "the day we find out where Odo is from is the day that they will be writing me out of the show." But producers Michael Piller and Rick Berman were reportedly on board with the idea right away, and Auberjonois quickly realized that the development would only make his character more complex.

Other observations:

• One moment that doesn't play well at all is when Sisko produces the Grand Nagus staff and forces Quark to pay homage by kissing it. It's a weirdly petty moment for Sisko. There's also no particular reason why Quark should trust it's the genuine article and not a replica. (I mean, if Sisko can be that petty, why not that deceitful?) As actor Armin Shimerman aptly put it: "it seems to me that this was another example of the Federation making fun of, taking advantage of, and ridiculing the Ferengi way. So kissing the scepter was a bit irksome to both the actor and the character."

• In a small role as an alien, "I know that guy" actor John Fleck makes an appearance in the episode.

• When the Jem'Hadar board the Defiant, they barely fire their weapons at all, engaging instead in hand-to-hand combat. Is this saving the special effects budget, expressing the race's bloodthirst, or hinting at the truth (revealed in part two) that the goal of this attack is to take prisoners? All of the above?

• The Founders' homeworld is described as a rogue planet not orbiting a star, though when we see the planet from space, there's a very prominent and bright star in the visual.

I'd give "The Search, Part I" a B+. I thought it was a rather strong season opener. But of course, it's only half the story...

Window of Opportunity

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. started off its sixth season with an episode in no hurry to dispel audience confusion. The second episode continued very much in this mold.

The team is on the trail of the strange new threat that looks like Agent Coulson. Meanwhile, Fitz is trapped aboard an alien space ship, trying to hide as a member of its engineering team. But when his cover is blown, he scrambles to save his own life without sacrificing his sense of right and wrong.

Ever so slowly, the series is giving us more information about what's going on this season. But it's still finishing the outside border of the jigsaw puzzle. The threat is from a marauding group of alien baddies who leave a trail of destroyed planets in their wake. But are they causing that destruction or staying just a step ahead of it? In their search for precious (to them) resources, are they fighting to survive, or involved in some profit-seeking adventure? I feel like I need to understand who these people even are before I can begin to engage in why their leader looks like Coulson. So far, the show isn't offering many answers.

But at least it isn't stingy with the fun visuals. The "portable hole" technology that connected the aliens' HQ/big rig with the inside of a vault was fun both as the heist began and as it turned into a cross-location fight with May later in the episode. There were other simple thrills too -- visual gags like the rig's cloaking technology, and tantalizing morsels of character development as the personalities of the people on Sarge's team were slowly penciled in.

I feel like I should have felt more engaged in the Fitz plot line this week -- it does, after all, revolve around a character I know, one I'm very happy to see not dead. And yet the underpinnings of the story here make it a little hard to get into. Time travel being what it is, this version of Fitz is almost completely ignorant of the events of season five -- events that advanced and changed his character a great deal. His notion of destiny has been reset, his marriage to Simmons has been undone, and he's regressed in working through his guilt over the Framework and the end of season four. That's a lot to undo, and seeing him "do" it again isn't especially compelling. In short, I feel like he needs to be found by the rest of the team sooner rather than later. The longer he's isolated, the more he's just repeating previous emotional beats.

I suppose I did find this second episode a touch more engaging than the premiere. But I'm still not really on board with this new season of the show just yet. I give the episode a C+. Here's hoping they find their groove again.

The Iron Throne

Right now, I'm mostly satisfied. It's the morning after the Game of Thrones finale, and while it's hardly in contention with me for one of television's all-time great series finales, I'm reasonably contented with what we got. Throughout the day, I have no doubt I'm going to read a lot on the internet trying to convince me I'm wrong... but in this moment, I feel like I got an ending, the parts more or less fit, and it ticked most of the boxes.

I imagine you're not here right now if you haven't seen it yourself. But just in case, this is where my thoughts stop being spoiler-free.

I will concede that as with several elements this season, the plot developments were good ones, even if the moves to get there weren't as skillful as some might have hoped. I think the biggest example of this was the rise of Bran to lead the remaining Six Kingdoms. It seems like a reasonable choice at like a reader/viewer level, but Tyrion's speech was hardly the most persuasive argument for it. If it's just about who had the best, most transformative "story," then any one of the surviving Starks would easily compete. (And not coincidentally, nearly all of them ended up ruling somewhere.)

No, I think the most compelling arguments for Bran would be that he's demonstrated himself the least bloodthirsty of the surviving characters. After a catastrophe like the destruction of King's Landing, that would seem to be the most compelling criterion. The fact that he could "research" any crisis throughout all of history to see how it (or anything similar) was handled? Also fairly compelling. Assuming you trust his judgment, anyway.

And that's the area where I wish a little more connective tissue could have been laid in for us. I could see why Tyrion and Samwell might support Bran for King. But there really isn't any established relationship with any of the other characters on that dias with him. I mean, weeks did pass after Dany's murder, so maybe Bran went around after arriving in King's Landing, giving his creeper stare to everyone and making believers of them. But we have to imagine how this all came to pass, adding facts not really in evidence. And that's especially a bummer given the fact that Bran's own sister was unwilling to support him as her ruler. In any plausible political reality, that feels like all the excuse someone ambitious would need to pitch a fit and sow discord.

Still, Bran felt like a decent choice, even if it wasn't perfectly depicted. Certainly, it's good that he served a purpose in the narrative beyond being bait for the Night King. It felt right for Sansa to get her own throne as Queen in the North, and for Jon to become, essentially, King Beyond the Wall. It also felt right for Arya not to end up in charge of anyone or anything -- sure, she recently steered away from vengeance, but it wasn't that long ago she was poisoning a whole room full of people. If Daenerys isn't fit to lead, neither is she. (I was less persuaded that Arya had expressed any past wanderlust that set up her ending, but a friend convinced me that it was more present in the books.)

The element that I think most needed space did get it: the death of Daenerys. The hour led off with Jon and Tyrion's horrified reaction to the destruction, and then we got a solid one-on-one scene between them where Tyrion made argument after argument as Jon still tried to parry them away. But just enough got through Jon's thick head so that in his scene with Dany, he could be pushed that last step. Emilia Clarke made the best of a truly tough monologue, speaking as though everything she was saying was perfectly rational. Perhaps the most subtle and skillful line of the episode was when Jon alluded to all the other people who think they're doing the right thing: an accusation of Dany not quite phrased as one. I think they earned Jon's reaction in their two key scenes. (Grey Worm's comparitive non-reaction to Dany's death? Maybe not so much. But, again narratively speaking, no one really needed another big battle at this point, did they?)

Otherwise, the episode was filled with nice symbolism and some good moments. Samwell naively pitching the idea of democracy and getting laughed down by the nobles was gold, a great acknowledgement of one of the fan theories that had been making the rounds. The destruction of the Iron Throne: on the nose, but necessary. Jon holding Daenerys as he once held Ygritte (and being far more personally culpable in the death): a nice dramatic echo. Drogon riding off with Daenerys' body: a fitting final image for her. Tyrion being chosen as Hand after so many blunders made me shrug at first... until I considered that Bran really doesn't need advisors, he just needs middle managers. Tyrion's fate is arguably more a punishment than anything else, and a cleverly subtle one at that.

Bottom line? We got an ending. And I'll offer this one more Game of Thrones theory: I doubt George R.R. Martin will ever finish A Song of Ice and Fire himself. So I'm extra happy we got this. And yes, far less down on the final season than most corners of the internet seem to be. My grade for the finale: a B. Yes, it could have been better. It could also have been much, much worse.

Like I said at the beginning: right now, I'm mostly satisfied.

It's Harder the Fourth Time Around

I didn't exactly plan on this being a "series" on my blog, but I have been slowly working my way through all the Die Hard movies. Besides the original, I'd never seen any of them before. Some readers advised me I'd probably be fine leaving it that way. And yet somehow, I found myself watching the fourth installment.

Live Free or Die Hard puts John McClane up against Thomas Gabriel, a former Defense Department analyst who is staging a massive cyber attack on the country. As in the third Die Hard movie, McClane is forced into a pairing with an unlikely partner -- this time, a young hacker named Matt Farrell.

While one could debate just how "realistic" the original Die Hard was, the sequels grew increasingly less so. By movie three, when Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson were solving riddles against the clock, it felt more like a classic Batman episode than a serious action adventure. But this fourth movie escalates to new heights of ridiculousness, in an almost "James Bond before the Daniel Craig reboot" sort of way. John McClane has gone from saving an office party to saving multiple commercial airplanes to saving the New York financial district to now, literally, saving the entire country.

If the increasing sense of scale and stakes were the only ridiculous thing about Live Free or Die Hard, you could chalk it up to run-of-the-mill sequel-itis, the urge for an ongoing movie series to constantly one-up itself. But if anything, this movie is even more ridiculous in execution than in concept. Although it's not that old a movie, made in 2007, its handling of computers (the core element of the plot) is fanciful and ignorant. There's lots of hand waving about how anything actually works. Hilariously, the hacker character even says at one point that he doesn't really know how he knows everything he knows. It's cyber stuff, audience... who cares?!

There are some fun set pieces throughout, but they hit "that's cool!" and "that's crazy!" in fairly equal measure. Car vs. helicopter, semi truck vs. fighter jet -- the action sequences are both entertaining and preposterous. Yet it might be that the over-the-top quality of it all is a perfect counterbalance to one of Bruce Willis' core strengths as an actor. He can "take a punch" as few other actors can; when he's beat up and/or beat down, he shows it well. So use John McClane's core humanity to ground the insanity.

But the script also compromises one of the best aspects of the McClane character. In the prior Die Hard films, luck was the character's curse -- bad luck. He was always in the wrong place at the wrong time, with things happening to him in the worst way... but he'd find a way to use his smarts to get out of the situation. The McClane of Live Free or Die Hard is instead incredibly lucky instead of unlucky. He just happens to avoid explosions, just happens to take out bad guys, and just happens to possess new skills he just happens to need for this particular adventure.

Even altered and compromised as John McClane is, none of the movie's new characters are as compelling as he is. Timothy Olyphant's villain is often implausibly stupid, Justin Long's hacker ally is more of a burden than an asset, Maggie Q is a personality-free ass kicker, a young Mary Elizabeth Winstead is inconsistently weak or strong as needed by the plot, and Kevin Smith is... what the hell is he doing here?

If you can switch your brain off and let this movie just wash over you, there is some fun to be had. But that's a tall order at times, a demand that the first Die Hard movie didn't make of its audience so regularly. I give Live Free or Die Hard a C. My readers were right: I probably shouldn't have bothered with it. (And yet, with just one more Die Hard movie left to go, I'm probably "pot committed" to finishing the series at some point.)

Left (Coming Soon) to Your Own Devices

For years, the head writer behind Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has been promising a documentary looking back on the series. He crowdfunded the effort, and it hardly seemed likely that he was scamming everyone and making off with the money... yet, year after year, no movie. But finally, this year, it has arrived.

What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is the result of this long wait. Ira Steven Behr has gathered up nearly everyone you could think of involved with the show for wide-ranging interviews on the series -- cast, crew, writers, and producers. (Notably, star Avery Brooks participated in no new interviews here, but some previously existing clips of him are incorporated. His co-stars also have plenty to say about him and his positive but unusual creative energy.)

I was perhaps a little disappointed that the film didn't delve more deeply behind the scenes than it did... but I also think I was on some level judging it against unfair competition. The book series on the original Star Trek, These Are the Voyages, remains fresh in my mind. Three hefty tomes, those books have space to delve far more deeply than a two-hour documentary ever could. They also set an unreasonably high standard for unearthing previously unknown information about the show; Star Trek has been around for five decades, with countless books written about it, yet nothing else came close.

All of this is to say that fans really in the know about the behind the scenes of Deep Space Nine shouldn't expect many new revelations from this documentary. But you do get a lot of pleasant nostalgia. Indeed, it's easier to be more nostalgic about the series than its more widely acknowledged predecessors, since you don't hear as many people talk about it.

The documentary gets into how the show was at the forefront of serialized storytelling on mainstream television, as well as racial diversity and representation, prominent use of well-rounded and powerful female characters, unflinching examination of spikier subject matter, and more. Show runner Behr also pointedly acknowledges at one point an area in which the show could have been more daring than it was: LGBT representation.

An interesting element of the film is how it uses the reunion of the Deep Space Nine writers. Five of them spent a full day together in a room brainstorming what they might do with a new, eighth season of the show, were they given the opportunity to produce it today. They wind up sketching out an entire season premiere episode in rough form, which is presented to us in bits and pieces throughout the film via animatics. It drives home the pervading sense of nostalgia as it shows off one of the hallmarks of the show: how it wasn't afraid to indulge increasingly big ideas over the years. (It's now 20 years later, and they don't actually have to make this show; imagine how big the ideas get!)

Seeing all these people reunite to reminisce and stick up for the overlooked installment of Star Trek was a lot of fun. And seeing the film screened in theaters for one night was also fun, to see fans of Deep Space Nine in particular (not just Trek generally) come out to show their love for the show. The documentary will be released on streaming and Blu-ray in just a couple of months, but this early, special screening was worth not waiting.

I give What We Left Behind a B+. If you loved Deep Space Nine, it's well worth checking out. (And if you've never seen the series, you're truly missing out.)

It's a Trap!

It's easy to conflate the idea of being a "serious gamer" with the enjoyment of elaborate games with complex rules. But those two ideas don't necessarily go hand in hand. To some extent, a "serious gamer" is born the day a board game lover realizes that Monopoly, Risk, The Game of Life, and the like simply aren't very good games.

The truth is, there are plenty of great games that are fairly streamlined. Many are in the "party game" space, a genre my group of friends explores regularly. A recent favorite we found is the cooperative clue-giving game Just One. Around the same time, we found a similar but far more complex game called Trapwords. And though it's by no means a bad game, it does serve as example that more complex isn't necessarily better.

Trapwords takes a core of clue-giving gameplay and presents it in a fantasy dungeon crawl wrapper. Players divide into two teams, each representing a party of adventurers trying to progress through a dungeon to beat the boss monster inside. The real challenge is to avoid all the traps along the way -- traps laid by your rival adventurers.

Teams take turns trying to guess a word on a clue card. (Half the words are everyday, while the other half are all fantasy-themed, allowing you to nominally stay inside the metaphor of the game.) Before the one-minute timer starts on one player trying to get their teammates to guess the word, the other team gets to see what the word is. They set a number of "Trapwords" -- taboo words which the clue giver can't say. And the clue giver doesn't get to know ahead of time what the trapwords are. They have to tiptoe through their allotted time, trying to avoid the words they think have been forbidden. Who can outthink whom?

The boss monster at the end of the dungeon (aka, the final round) is randomly selected from a deck at the start of the game. Different monsters have different abilities that put some additional restriction on the team trying to win the game.

The game is fun enough. It's like Taboo, except that instead of some game designers you'll never meet trying to make it hard for you, it's your own friends on the opposing team doing it. The thought process works a lot like Just One, despite that game being cooperative. Ultimately, you're trying to get into the heads of the other players. You want to think of clues no one else will think of -- here, as clue giver, to skirt around the Trapwords likely chosen for you.

But the game hardly needs all the window-dressing. The dungeon crawl flavor doesn't add much. The final round rule given by the boss monster feels like at least one complication too many. Take Decrypto as a contrasting example. The story there is that you're a spy trying to slip secret messages by a rival trying to intercept them. That's as far as the story goes, and as far as it really needs to go.

I would play Trapwords again if it were suggested. But it also feels like that suggestion isn't likely to come in my group, not with other options around (and, in particular, the two I mentioned by name in this very post). I'd give it a B. Perhaps it would be a bigger hit with a group that really wants more complexity, even in their party games? That's not really us.

Missing Pieces

The one year wait for Avengers: Endgame was a long one for many fans. But the slice of the MCU I was more eager to get was the sixth season of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- which finally arrived last Friday. Yet while I found Endgame an incredibly welcome surprise after what I thought to be a lackluster film in Infinity War, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. stumbled off the starting line.

It's one year after the death of Phil Coulson, and the team has moved on by splitting up. A small group has taken to space in search of Fitz's stasis pod, while the rest continue their mission of protection on Earth. And their latest foe turns out to be quite a surprising one.

One of the things I liked best about Endgame was the way it actually carved out time to take the life and death stakes seriously. I was moved by the sense of loss the characters expressed, and intrigued by how the film acknowledged tales of loss that might exist all throughout the MCU. I came into Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. eager to see how they might weave this into the background of their new season. The disappointing answer seems to be: not at all.

Look, I get it. The writers of the show don't really want to have a story forced on them from the outside. They have other things they want to build a season around, and they don't want "dealing with the extermination of half of all life" to overwhelm it. Certainly, they don't want to have to randomly eliminate any of their cast members to satisfy a Thanos story they didn't choose. Yet it sure appears that the next Spider-man movie is going to ask the audience to accept the unlikely math that all of its characters were "snapped" then restored. I'd be willing to accept that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s characters were all improbably spared; just give us brushes of that other world on the periphery.

Instead, the choice suddenly seems to be that it's not "all connected" anymore, as they once proudly proclaimed. With no acknowledgement at all of a post-Thanos world, the series seems to have decidedly they aren't living in one. Not even casual references to it with any of the new characters introduced. Again, I get it; I'm just disappointed that they didn't want to pick up any of the interesting possibilities offered to them.

As for the story they did decide to pursue? Well, I frankly found it rather confusing, teasing and fostering confusion more than legitimately tantalizing us with what this year's story is going to be. I'm usually supportive of the "throw the audience in deep and trust them to figure it out" approach, but they hardly gave us enough to work with before the episode was over.

I mean, I'm glad they had to conviction to stick with Coulson's death. And also glad they've manufactured a way to keep Clark Gregg on the show. But they've also done the "one of our heroes is now a bad guy" twist before with Ward (twice!). So I really want to know, sooner rather than later, how this time is going to be different. Or at least: what the hell is going on?

The Fitz story line hardly gave us anything either. Of course, it should not be easy to just get him back. But this episode made essentially no progress at all in "finding" him. The episode marked time on this plot, just to get us to a final scene... that was still more tease without context.

The only element presented completely enough to wrap your head around was that there's now a love triangle of sorts between Mack, Yo-Yo, and a new character -- and I can't say I immediately found that compelling. (I guess we also got a taste a new, more verbose May. Not exactly a story thread to grab onto, but at least something different and entertaining?)

Now, of course, it's entirely possible that once we get deeper into the season and have better context, this episode is going to look a lot better retroactively. But I really think the episode's job was to pull you back into a show that had fairly effectively concluded the last time we saw it. And I just don't think it did that.

I suppose the most fair grade for this episode would be "incomplete." But to put a more conventional label on it, I'd give it a C. It was not one of my favorites.

The Bells

The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones served up an hour of chaos and destruction last night... and judging by my social media this morning, most people were just. Not. Having. It. For my part, I think the show made mostly all the appropriate narrative choices, but some felt more satisfying than others, because some felt more earned than others.

Perhaps working my way up in increasing order of "rightness," we finally got Clegane Bowl, the confrontation so widely anticipated by fans everywhere that they gave it a (goofy) name. It was a conflict every bit as brutal and violent as we all expected. The Hound and The Mountain were so fixated on ending one another that the world was literally crumbling around them and they didn't care. Nothing could get between them -- least of all poor, unmourned Qyburn. Both fighters used their signature moves, but no amount of zombie stabbing was going to take down the Mountain. In the end, it came down to the only logical ending: how badly did Sandor want his revenge? Badly enough to die for it.

Another big death in the hour came to Varys, who went out much like Littlefinger before him. The two biggest schemers on the show each attempted one scheme too many. Here, perhaps, the abbreviated number of episodes of this final season damaged the narrative ever-so-slightly. In, say, a 10 episode season, the writers might have had the chance to show us exactly what Varys was risking and attempting (as opposed to having him learn of Jon Snow toward the end of one episode, then dying to put him on the throne in the beginning of the next). But then, we got to watch Littlefinger plot all throughout season seven and no one really believed any of it. Maybe short and sweet like this was better.

Arya's harrowing escape through the crumbling King's Landing was one of the strongest elements of the episode. You had to set aside the matter that she rode all the way down from Winterfell in the company of the Hound, but that he finally found the right thing to say at the last moment to make her turn away from her quest for vengeance. But get over that bump, and you were really in for a wild ride. Arya gave us a guided tour through the destruction of the city, including a futile attempt to save lives, nearly dying several times herself, and generally getting messed up. I'm not sure "the horrors of war" has ever been presented more effectively on the show, and it was incredible. This material had all the import and scope that the big Walker battle of a couple weeks ago sometimes lacked.

Now we start to get into the more controversial moments. The confrontation between Euron Greyjoy and Jaime Lannister wasn't exactly a moment anyone was clamoring for. You can sort of squint and tilt your head and get there: Euron slept with Cersei, Jaime loves Cersei more than anyone in the world, so.... sure? But why sideline Yara entirely from the season and deny the more logical confrontation?

For me, the more surprising moment for Jaime is that he sided with Cersei to the bitter end. Suffice it to say, I believe this to be a moment of major divergence between the show and the books (should George R.R. Martin ever finish them). The book version of the prophecy given to Cersei includes more details than the show version, and one of them seems to telegraph fairly directly than Jaime will turn on Cersei before the end. But no, that detail was never a part of the television show. And so, on those terms, this frankly was a fair ending for the two characters, dying arm in arm, fully committed to one another. "The things we do for love."

The wildly different level of effectiveness of Qyburn's scorpions are the thing that bothered me personally the most this week. Last week, they took down Rheagal in a shocking few seconds, brutally effective and seemingly insurmountable. This week, they were just bundles of kindling for Drogon, with Daenerys essentially not even needing an army to conquer King's Landing. Surprise counts for a lot in medieval warfare, I guess.

I've saved the best for last: the ultimate transformation of Daenerys into bloodthirsty, crazed villain. This is lighting up every corner of the internet this morning, with most people rushing to declare character development dead, this heel turn wholly unearned. And yes, extraordinary claims do require extraordinary proof. But I have to say, this plot development has been telegraphed for a long, long time.

In basically every single season, Dany has at one point or another thrown a temper tantrum at least once, violently lashing out at her enemies. It's been easy not to notice for three reasons. One, she didn't always have much power to wield, so the scope of her wrath has been limited. Two, she has had people near her able to ground her and talk her away from her worst impulses (people who have pointedly been killed off in the last couple of episodes). Three, the people she's lashed out at have generally been positioned to "deserve it" in the eyes of the audience. Daenerys has been a villain-in-training all along, but she's had enough other aspects to her character to round her out.

If the army at King's Landing had surrendered the way it did, and then Dany flew over to the Red Keep and burned it to the ground, killing off Cersei and leaving the rest of the city intact? I think not a single audience member would have complained. So really, the gap comes in explaining just one detail: why burn the whole city? And I do wish the show had done a better job here. In the press for time here, about all we get is that she desperately needs to be loved, and because Jon didn't love her enough, she snapped -- an admittedly unsatisfying answer. But this was always going to be the ending for this character. Maybe if George R.R. Martin ever finishes the tale himself, he'll earn the ending more convincingly. We all may have needed and fervently wished for this to be a "woman ends up in power" story, but that's not what the story has been telegraphing to us all along. (Though for what it's worth, don't count out Sansa yet as, at the very least, the true power behind whatever's left to call a throne.)

Yes, I wish the episode had been able to handle some elements more artfully. But it did present a lot of it very well. Mine seems to be a minority opinion this morning, but I'd give the episode a B+ overall.

Fun Escapism

I've tried quite a few "escape room" games over the years -- boxed products attempting to deliver the experience of an escape room in the comfort of your own home. But just when I might have thought I'd seen everything the genre had to offer, along came Escape Tales: The Awakening.

This game puts the players collectively in the role of one man, Sam. After the death of his wife, he faces a new trauma when his daughter falls into a coma. Desperate for a solution the doctors cannot provide, he performs a strange ritual that begins a sort of vision quest. Passing through various "rooms" representing his life (and his wife's and daughter's), Sam must gather the items that might awaken his little girl.

There's a lot to like about this game, but what I found most novel were the ways in which it didn't try to faithfully recreate the escape room experience. Story is always threadbare in an escape room. There's certainly a theme to each room, but the "story" of why you're there and what escape means is generally (and rightly) a paper-thin lampshade hardly necessary to the experience. The Awakening (ostensibly the first of an "Escape Tales" series) endeavors to present a complete and legitimate narrative. It comes with a book of 100+ numbered story snippets; as you work your way through the game, you read new parts of the story as you would with a Choose Your Own Adventure book. You truly do make decisions that affect the narrative (and not always in immediately obvious ways).

Most intriguing of all, time is not a factor in this game. In every other escape game I've played, you're either put on a strict time limit, or scored at the end based on how long it took you to complete the game. Escape Tales makes the simple (yet not obvious) tweak: why put you on a clock? Actual escape rooms are trying to move through as many customers as they can, resetting the room multiple times a day for each new batch of patrons. But what's a board game's financial incentive in forcing you to complete it in an hour?

This game declares a run time on the box of 3 to 6 hours, which you can do in one sitting or across multiple sessions (by writing down key information to "save your game"). By not making you race against the clock, the game encourages much more involvement from all players throughout the experience. If one player struggles with a particular puzzle, nothing is lost in giving the other players a chance at it. Even if the second player stumbles too and the original player susses out the solution, all that's happened is that more people got to participate. It's nothing but upside. And there's no pressure to solve multiple puzzles at once; each person playing the game can watch every bit of the gameplay.

Those puzzles are quite well-crafted. They're tough, but they're generally not too tough. They rely on all different sorts of skills and intuition: math, observation, pattern recognition, geometry, logic, and more. It's a rather impressive variety generated just by illustrations on cards, and it really gives everyone a chance to shine, no matter their escape room strengths.

My group broke up the experience over more than one evening, and after the first session, I was ready to declare this the best escape room board game I've ever played. But ultimately, I'd come to have a reservation. The game purports to be replayable. It does this in a few ways. One is by including more puzzles than you'll encounter in a single playthrough. We did about 80 to 85% of them when we played, and while that does leave 10-15% untouched, I'm not sure if that's enough to go back and replay for.

Also, there are multiple endings. The one we got to (and, we checked, the other two we could have gotten to) are "bad." Essentially, you lose. While on the one hand, it's a totally reasonable thing for you to be able to lose a cooperative game (that's sort of the point of those), I'm not sure it's reasonable for you to lose such a game when it has no random elements. Playing it the second time won't really be different. You can make a few different choices in the moments that a choice is presented, but the puzzles will all be the same. If you remember them, there's no mountain left to climb. Sounds pretty boring to me, and as much as I enjoyed playing, I really can't see myself playing again for the right ending. Not, at least, in say the next year or two, while there's still a good chance I remember particulars about the puzzles.

Until the unexpected "you lose!" at the end, I was on track to give Escape Tales: The Awakening an A-. That definitely affected my view of it. But the bulk of the experience is still quite fun and satisfying. So I'm going to give the game a B+. If you've enjoyed the Exit: The Game series (or any other escape room games), you should definitely check this one out.

Back for a Second (Season) Look

A while back, I blogged about a book that showed me I didn't know everything about Star Trek like I thought I did -- These Are the Voyages: Season One. Painstakingly researched and carefully written by Marc Cushman, the book chronicled the production of the first season of the original Star Trek. Cushman wrote two more volumes to cover subsequent seasons, and I've now finished his book on season two.

Once again, Cushman impresses with his level of detail. Not only does he dig deeper than any Star Trek book has gone before, he actually corrects misinformation that has been taken for truth over the decades -- from the actual production order of the episodes (which isn't what other sources have listed) to accurate Nielsen ratings for each telecast (showing that Star Trek was hardly a failure, even in a tough Friday night time slot).

Season two was a year of major upheaval for Star Trek, and the book conveys this well. Lucille Ball's studio, Desilu, about to go under, was sold to Paramount. Under new management, budget and schedule overruns were not to be tolerated. Oh, and that budget? Reduced from the first season. Cushman's episode-by-episode account really helps you appreciate why Star Trek was the way it was. Not every show could hit the mark because of the incredible time pressure. And did it seem to you like William Shatner's acting got broader and hammier in season two? Well, that's because there really wasn't time for more than a couple takes on any given scene, and not even the resident directors were willing to crack down too hard on the star.

Getting this full context made me appreciate the successes of the second season more -- and there were many, to be sure. I was particularly shocked to learn that the classic episode "The Doomsday Machine" was somehow filmed not in a modern standard seven or eight days, or even a Star Trek standard six days. It was filmed in just five days, in an attempt to get finances and scheduling back on track. (An attempt that not only worked, but still somehow resulted in a standout hour of the series.)

This book also made me better appreciate the role of producer Gene Coon in the history of Star Trek. It's creator Gene Roddenberry that gets all the praise now, but it turns out that if you're a typical Star Trek fan, most of what you like best was probably Coon's contribution, not Roddenberry's. Gene Coon created the Klingons (one tidbit I did know before this book). He built up the playful rivalry between Spock and McCoy. Most significantly, he shepherded the more comedic episodes of the series; "The Trouble With Tribbles" and "I, Mudd" were both developed while Roddenberry was on a working sabbatical from the series (and he reportedly hated them when he came back), while "A Piece of the Action," written by Coon, was allowed to be finished only out of desperation to get something in front of the camera.

Not that this book is a hit job on Gene Roddenberry as such, but it also provides many examples that take the shine off his legend. One great example of him believing too much in his own hype is the episode "The Omega Glory," a dreadful late season episode that he'd been trying to make since the series' inception. He thought it was so wonderful that he pushed it for Emmy consideration, to the exclusion of other episodes... and as a result, Star Trek missed out on nominations in several categories it had been part of for season one.

Obviously, as with volume one, this book will be of little interest to anyone who isn't a serious Star Trek fan. But if you are one, it's a real delight. As with the book before, I give this These Are the Voyages: Season Two an A-. I recommend it highly, and look forward to finishing the set with the book on Season Three.

A Scythe of the Times

I've long been curious about the hype that rocketed the board game Scythe to the top 10 on BoardGameGeek. But only recently did I finally get to experience the game for myself.

Scythe remixes many Eurogame elements in its own particular package. There's resource gathering, area control, engine building -- all the staples you'd expect to see in a game so widely loved. Add to that some hefty and detailed miniatures I'm sure many people have had fun painting, and I start to get the acclaim.

But after experiencing the game for myself, I have a few doubts. One is more a matter of personal taste, the role that direct player conflict takes in the game. Resources you gather remain on the board in the space where they were gathered. If you let them accumulate for too long without spending them, you run the risk that an opponent will attack you to take control of an area and the resources stockpiled there. It's an interesting idea, certainly, but it feels more appropriate to a game more expressly about conquering terrain -- a more elaborate war game than this.

Another doubt I had was about the player count. Scythe takes up to 5 players, which is how many were involved in the first game I played. But that felt to me like at least one too many, maybe two. There's a lot of down time between turns as people contemplate their options, and even more wait time when battles break out between two opponents as you sit idly by.

I was also skeptical of the scoring system, a powerful multiplicative system that reminded me a fair amount of Concordia without being as cleverly integrated. Like Concordia, the way the multipliers stack up seems to really blindside some first-time players when counting score at the end. Sure, there's something to be said for obscuring the scores in a way that trailing players don't believe they're out of the race. But it's pretty rough for a player to suddenly realize, only at the end, that they never were prioritizing the right things, and can hand an easy victory to someone who grasped it all much earlier. Like Concordia, it seems to me like Scythe players need to be closely matched in skill for the game to shine.

One system in Scythe that did fascinate me, though, was the way that eight different game actions were arranged in four pairs. (And in different pairings for each player.) You'd essentially choose a "pair" for each of your turns, and do both actions. The core of the game was learning to maximize this, trying to get as many two-for-one deals as you could managing and trying never to do one action without at least getting something out of its pair.

There was also a fascinating way of upgrading the power of certain actions. On each player's personal action board, four actions begin the game partially covered with wooden cubes. Uncovering the cubes, one by one, makes an action more powerful and efficient -- and you get to choose where you'll upgrade first. At the same time, the other four game actions improve as they're progressively covered up. Every time you upgrade one action by uncovering a cube, you place that cube on one of your other actions, upgrading it too. Again, it's your choice, making every improvement a dual-pronged decision moment with fascinating ramifications.

But as intriguing as Scythe was in moments, I really don't see myself ever preferring it over other games that, for me anyway, scratch a similar itch. (Concordia, for example, has only grown in my esteem since I first blogged about it years ago.) I can certainly imagine it would have some fans, and I'd say it's not a bad game. Yet top 10 on BoardGameGeek? That, I'm having trouble seeing.

If someone suggests a game of Scythe to me, I would join in to see if there's more there than I could see at first. But if Scythe fails to come out on game night again, bowled over as we continually try new things, I doubt I'll miss it that much either. I'd grade it a B. Perhaps it was simply overhyped for me.

Search Party

Last year, among the movies that flitted through theaters just on the edge of my radar was Searching. It was a suspense thriller starring John Cho, about a father trying to find his missing daughter. It looked like it might be interesting, but also looked quite gimmicky -- the entire movie was presented in the online world, in a series of computer screens, web cam images, FaceTime phone calls, and viral news clips. I hadn't really heard anyone I knew say the movie was actually good, and so it passed from my mind.

But it's kept bubbling back up since then. I've noticed reviews touting that it was far better than you'd expect. It would show up in the "suggestions" of various web sites and streaming services. And then, finally, someone I know did tell me they'd seen it and liked it a lot. In fact, when I said I was debating between Searching and another option or two, they emphatically told me: "watch Searching."

It turns out my friend was right: Searching is indeed quite good. And yes, as I'd imagined, it is quite gimmicky, but not at all in a bad way. For starters, the story here is actually a fairly clever mystery regardless of the format in which it's presented. David Kim's search for his daughter is full of suspects, breakthroughs, red herrings, and twists. It's a tense story in a taut little 100 minute package.

When you see the "gimmick" in action, it feels like a natural and smart evolution of a very long-standing narrative tradition: the one-act play. When presented on a stage, these stories are often told in a single location, working within that limitation. Here, the "single location" is, essentially, a computer screen. That too brings challenging limitations, but it also opens up some interesting storytelling techniques that wouldn't otherwise be available. It turns out that a computer screen is a great way of conveying a character's inner monologue, as we see a cursor hovering over something David is hesitant to click, or see him type something then reconsider and delete it without hitting "SEND."

If you're a real stickler, there are a couple of cheats within the format. You're not literally just watching a computer screen the entire time. Conventional camera techniques of zooming and panning are used to draw focus to particular moments. There's also a conventional (but well-crafted) suspense movie score, composed by Torin Borrowdale. To me, these seem like necessary concessions to traditional movie-making, to give this story the pacing and impact it needs. In any case, I don't think they detract from the purity of the premise.

And they certainly don't make it any easier for the actors. John Cho gives a very strong performance, and it would be easy not to appreciate how great he is here. He has to give us his character in little bits and pieces of screen time. The camera is never really helping him with his job -- he's often blurry, reversed, distant in frame, pixelated, or relegated to a tiny corner of the screen. But through all of these obstacles, he powers through and makes us care about his character and the situation. High marks too to Debra Messing, who plays against her comedic reputation as the police detective on the case; and Michelle La as David's daughter Margot (whose role in the story is even more fragmented than the main character's).

Indeed, I was quite surprised by just how much I liked Searching. Not only would I give it an A-, but when I compared it to other 2018 movies, I realized it was very high up on this list, in the #2 slot. It was a fun, suspenseful ride.

The Last of the Starks

It's perhaps a little strange to think that more than half of the final season of Game of Thrones will have taken place at Winterfell when all is said and done. But it's less strange when you think about what dividends the setting has yielded for the story so far. After last week's climactic battle, much of this week returned to the format of the season's first two episodes: meaningful, subdued conversations between characters at the northern keep.

The funeral scene was a great place to start, helping to drive home the costs of the battle with the White Walkers. I still maintain that for The Epic Battle the show has been building toward for its entire existence, the price wasn't high enough. But the staging of the funeral scene did help underscore that many survivots felt deeply personal losses in the handful of characters that fell.

Soon, things turned romantic in a variety of satisfying ways. The Jaime and Brienne story line was compelling not just for what happened along the way, but for where it ended up. Any time in the past that Jaime has found a moment of contentment, he's essentially self-sabotaged it, not thinking himself worthy of it. He did so again here. Gwendolyn Christie was heartbreaking in the farewell moment. Brienne has never remotely let her guard down with anyone as much as this, resulting in a wound that may never heal.

Then there was Arya's sweet but firm handling of Gendry. He was already several fantasies deep into planning a life with her; she, of course, has very different goals in mind. She bid him a gentle goodbye, not expecting to see him ever again.

The theme of goodbye continued for many other characters. It seems likely we've seen the last of Tormund (and Ghost!). Have we seen the last of Sam and Gilly, or does Jon only think he has? With only two more episodes left, it's becoming a real thing that even characters who survive the story will nevertheless not be seen again.

Much of the episode was dedicated to Daenerys, looking both smart and foolish in turn. She is advised to wait and rest her forces before marching on King's Landing, but she'll have none of that. Worse, she splits those forces and doesn't even wait for them to reunite before going on an ill-fated attack. And in the final scene, she's clearly, hopelessly outmatched -- yet still demanding surrender and being goaded into another foolhardy attack.

All that is because the story is trying to make clear that Daenerys is not meant to "win" in the end. But the show also hasn't totally abandoned what's been likeable about the character in the past. She's thirsty for power, but not paranoid, and quite astute. She's right that everyone would prefer Jon as ruler over her. The scene where she confers a title on Gendry, only to have everyone turn around and praise Jon for riding one of her dragons, is all about this. She's also right about Sansa -- Jon doesn't know how she'll react to the truth of his parentage; Daenerys gets it exactly right. (As for Sansa's choice there? Littlefinger would never hesitate to break his word after giving it. Why should Sansa, if it will get her what she wants?)

But where I think the episode did falter a bit is in the big battle in the waters outside King's Landing. It's strange to say that such a long episode, that included everything I've mentioned so far, felt rushed. But that's exactly what happened in the battle. Think back to the second season's "Blackwater," where a battle in this exact setting took an entire episode. This one was crammed into about 5 minutes. It felt like a sort of Cliff's Notes version of a larger thing -- like it couldn't have really happened so simply, even if you could imagine the outcome being the one we got. (There was also more of the season seven style "fast travel," as Daenerys' forces were defeated at King's Landing, retreated all the way to Dragonstone so Tyrion and Varys could talk about it, and then returned to King's Landing for the final confrontation. All without waiting for Jon's reinforcements to arrive.)

Much of the episode was handled wonderfully. But the last third was definitely weaker, and is what more people will remember about it. Overall, I'd give the episode a B.

That's Sama-gressive Gameplay

In board gaming, so-called "take that" mechanics generally lead to my least favorite kinds of games. These are games where players have to make their own gains by explicitly attacking an opponent, and specifically choosing that one opponent from the rest.

There are exceptions for me. It's hard to feel too slighted, for example, in a two-player game -- your opponent has no one to pick on but you, and so an attack is in no way arbitrary. Other games manage a brisk pace and simple decisions in a way that makes you feel like you still have a decent degree of control -- Potion Explosion being an example that I found fairly fun.

I mention all this so that when I tell you I did not enjoy Kami-Sama, you can take it with a grain of salt, knowing that some gamers enjoy this style of game a lot more than I do. But I'll also try to point out aspects of the game that I think would make even fans of the "take that" genre look to other games.

In Kami-Sama, each player takes on the role of a "Kami" (or spirit) exerting control over a region of feudal Japan. The tantalizing gimmick of the game is that it takes place on a circular board divided into quarters, and essentially set up like a Lazy Susan: at the end of each round, you rotate the board and wind up with a different section in front of you. An action point system lets you put shrines onto the board each turn, with the cost to act outside your current region much higher than just focusing on the quarter of the board in front of you. You score points in a variety of ways stemming from the positions of your shrines, doing the best you can with the region "passed" to you that round, and then hoping your position holds as that region passes to opponents on future turns.

If the simplicity of this core idea carried throughout Kami-Sama, I feel like it could have been a truly fun game. But there's a great deal of complexity layered on top of this. Each player is assigned a role to play, a Kami with unique and asymmetric powers. In essence, every player gets four actions they can take on their turn. Three of the four are always quite dissimilar to the actions any other Kami has available. It takes you a while to wrap your head around what your Kami can do, and it's essentially impossible for you to ever fully understand what all three of your opponents (in a four-player game) can do with their Kami roles. If you try, you'll be asking constant questions that just slow down the pace of the game.

This confusion in turn amplifies that feeling of victimization that often accompanies a "take that" game. It's one thing to be attacked by an opponent when there's a reasonable chance to have seen it coming. But in Kami-Sama, you'll never really comprehend all the ways you're vulnerable to the powers of your opponents. You all have the same scoring conditions, so you can grasp an opponent's incentive for coming after you -- you just can't easily know how they were able to do it until, too late, it's happening.

This mysterious and constant vulnerability might foster in some a relaxed attitude about being attacked. It's inevitable, and nearly impossible to anticipate, so just roll with the punches. But butting up against that is just how difficult it is to execute a turn in Kami-Sama. There are a lot of ways you can use your four powers, so many that the conscientious thing to do is to plan your turn ahead of time as best you can, to keep the game moving. But so much chaos can happen during your opponents' turns -- and, as I noted, none of it easily anticipated -- that there's simply no chance that the board you're looking at now will in any way resemble the board you face when it's finally your turn. You can't plan ahead; shrines will rise and fall, areas you thought you'd secured get conquered, and places you thought you could commandeer get reinforced. The middle of every turn you take is an "apology phase," where you say sorry to your opponents for how long you know you're taking to execute your turn.

Adding to the sometimes capricious nature of a "take that" game is an explicit "kingmaker" mechanic baked into Kami-Sama. One space in each of the four regions is, essentially, the tiebreaker space. Whenever two players control equal amounts of territory for scoring, the player in the tiebreaker space chooses who wins. Mind you, this is not just for ties involving that player -- it's for all ties in the region. Multiple times in a game, a player in a tiebreaker spot ends up deciding, say, second and third place between two of his opponents. It's a choice that always feel bad when you're on the losing end of it, and can even feel bad for the person making it, no matter what logic you might point to in defense of your choice.

Kami-Sama is a game where opponents must regularly hurt each other, and smile with indifference as they do it. When we tried it out in my group, by the end of the game, we'd taken to joking that Kami-Sama might translate to "go fuck yourself," the playful refrain you offer to your opponents' protests of being wronged. I believe the choices are too difficult, and the overall pace too slow, to satisfy players who truly enjoy "take that" games. Despite a clever idea or two at the core, it's a hybrid game not likely to be embraced by any fans of the constituent parts. I give Kami-Sama a D.