Anatomy Lesson

In 2023, the winner of the Palme d'Or -- the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival -- was "Anatomie d'une chute," or as it's known in English, Anatomy of a Fall. The drumbeat of praise kept coming after that win, with the film appearing on many critics' "best" lists, and the movie ultimately securing an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.

At a secluded mountain home in France, Sandra Voyter discovers the body of her husband Samuel Maleski. He has apparently fallen from the highest balcony of the home -- or perhaps, as the police conclude -- he's been pushed. A trial ensues, showcasing the peculiarities of France's legal system, and upending the lives of Sandra and her young, blind son Daniel.

It seems to me that none of the discourse I've seen surrounding this movie has really done it justice. Most recently, the talk has centered around director Justine Triet, who earned an Oscar nomination for her work in a category that seemingly can support only one woman at a time; Triet and Anatomy of a Fall have seemingly been cast as a "spoiler" for Greta Gerwig and Barbie.

Before that, the American ad campaign for the movie, complete with hashtag, revolved around the question of "did she do it?" -- IS Sandra Voyter a murderer, or an innocent woman? And while certainly different people will find different "access points" into a movie, I personally feel like that question turns out to be one of the least interesting things about Anatomy of a Fall. For one thing, the answer seems quite unambiguous to me, as I read the movie. (I'd be fascinated to have a conversation with someone who reached the opposite conclusion on that, to see what led them there.) More importantly, the movie so clearly places other concerns in a brighter spotlight.

To me, this movie is most "about" being forced through the meat grinder that is the legal system. It's the first "legal thriller" I've seen in some time to put the emphasis squarely on the "legal" part and hardly at all on the "thriller" aspect. And while it undoubtedly plays differently to a French audience, it's a unique trip for an American audience. I would hardly hold up the U.S. justice system as a paragon of excellence, and many stories can be (and have been) told about the unjust quirks to its mechanisms. Still, watching how a trial in France works blew my mind (even knowing that surely some aspects of the presentation here must have been exaggerated for dramatic effect).

Add to that strangeness the fact that this is very much a bilingual film. French is not the main character's first language. (Nor is English, actually; but as she says at one point in the film, she sees English as a point at which to "meet halfway.") Sandra Voyter is on trial for murder, is forced to defend herself in a forum where the "right not to testify" does not exist, and she must conduct that defense in her third language.

The language barrier is only one aspect in which this is a movie about "alienation." A separation is driven between Sandra and her son Daniel, that relationship being a key part of the story. And one of the most damning pieces of evidence against her is a recording that Sandra says lacks full context. In short, the core theme of the movie pervades absolutely every aspect of the story.

Sandra Hüller plays the character of Sandra Voyter. She has earned an Oscar nomination of her own here, for Best Actress. One could begin to support that nomination purely for the technical difficulty of the language; she's a German actress portraying a role in French and English, and her emotions ring through loud and clear in every moment. You might criticize that her portrayal isn't murky enough; that performance is the main reason why I felt so confident in my conclusions about the character's guilt or innocence. (Though I really don't feel the film was trying to be ambiguous on this point.) Ultimately, though, I praise the performance for showcasing such a wide range of emotional intensity without often resorting to the sort of shouting histrionics that normally courts Oscar voters.

All that praise heaped upon the movie, I do want to temper my apparent enthusiasm a little. For all the good qualities of Anatomy of a Fall, I also want to be clear that it is a glacially-paced movie. As I said, there's barely any "thriller" in this legal thriller. There isn't even a score to heighten the tension; the only music featured are the piano practices of young Daniel. Had this movie not found as much success as it has, I could easily imagine the Hollywood remake that would ditch the thematic commentary for more action-driven jolts. (Not that this would have been better. But there's certainly room to reconstruct it that way.) As engaging as I usually found the movie, I can't say I never checked my watch during its two-and-a-half hour run time.

But all told, I would give the movie a B+. And I do think it's worth including on my "slowly approaching a Top 10" list of best movies from 2023. I think it's probably destined to lose every one of the five Oscars it's up for (Best Original Screenplay is the only category in which it might have a chance), though I am glad it racked up some more award attention to draw in a wider audience to see it.

Voyager Flashback: Fury

When Kes, and actress Jennifer Lien, were written off Star Trek: Voyager at the beginning of season four, it seemed quite final, by no means certain that we would ever see the character again. But we did indeed, near the end of season six, in the episode "Fury."

Kes returns to Voyager, her mental powers now so advanced that she doesn't fit in anywhere. Enraged and uncaring about any of the Voyager crew, she travels back in time to mere weeks after Voyager arrived in the Delta Quadrant, determined to remove her younger self from the ship and change the course of her own life.

I'm of two minds about this episode. On the one hand, I think this episode really does Kes dirty. The core of her character was always how thoughtful and poised she was, how empathetic. And sure, seeing her be none of those things makes for an exciting change. But it feels inauthentic. It was one thing to kill Tasha Yar on The Next Generation, then bring Denise Crosby back to play a different villainous character. Here, Kes herself is the villain, who destroys half the ship, unthinkingly murders B'Elanna, sells everyone out to the Vidiians, and sneers to the audience any time she's forced to play nice with one of her former friends.

And not only is Kes a villain -- she's a dumb villain. The way she goes about her plan makes no sense at all. If she's got the psionic mojo to shrug off phaser hits, rip apart bulkheads, and travel through time, then why does she go undercover when she arrives in the past? Why not just go full-frontal assault and tear up that version of Voyager too? And why is she so easily persuaded to give up her mission when confronted in the end with the recording of her younger self? She comes in at the start of the episode angry about being isolated and alone -- and then it seems like she's just going to head back out into the Delta Quadrant, again isolated and alone.

But on the other hand -- as a fan of Back to the Future Part II, I love the idea of a time travel story about going back to actually interact with a younger version of yourself. True, the "first season era" story we see isn't an actual previous episode of Star Trek: Voyager, but it feels close enough -- what between the return of the Vidiians and the subtle shifts in the portrayals of all the main characters. It's fun to see touchstones of the earlier seasons, including Ensign Wildman and Lieutenant Carey. (Though neither character has died, so why don't we see them on the show anymore?) Tuvok's odd premonitions of the future are entertaining too, especially when various children who don't even exist yet appear all over the ship.

Other observations:

• Executive Producer Rick Berman gets a "story by" credit on this episode -- though by all accounts, all he did was suggest that they bring Kes back, then left it to writer Brannon Braga to figure out the details.

• The opening scene has Janeway surprising Tuvok for his birthday. She says he's about to hit triple digits, but I think his presence during the events of Star Trek VI means he must be 100+ already.

• The visual effects in this episode are all over the place. The attack of the Vidiian ship at the climax of the story looks fantastic. A simple split screen shot of holographic young Kes speaking to her older self looks terrible.

• Ubiquitous Star Trek guest star Vaughn Armstrong racks up another appearance (and another alien played) as the Vidiian captain.

• When Jennifer Lien delivers the line "they abandoned me long ago," you can't help but feel like there's some real-life spin on it.

• I'm apparently not the only Trekker who didn't like how Kes was written here. I hear there's a Star Trek novel in which author Heather Jarman retconned this episode to say in essence that this was a dark manifestation of Kes and not actually Kes herself.

My mixed feelings on this episode are going to pencil out to "mostly positive." I'll give "Fury" a B. Still, fun as this is, if they were bringing Kes back for one last episode, I wish she could have had a better "ending" than this.

Elementary, Dear Viewer

Later this year, Pixar will be releasing a sequel to one of their best-ever movies, Inside Out. That feels a little wild, because you might swear they already released a spiritual sequel to it last year. At least, that's sure how the movie Elemental looked in previews (to me, at least) -- like some sort of rehashed Inside Out. It's a shame that I, or anyone else, got that impression. Because now that I've caught up with Elemental, I've learned that it really is trying to do its own thing.

The movie is set in sprawling city where elemental beings of water, air, earth, and fire all co-exist... mostly harmoniously. The city is certainly arrayed in a way that's easier for some beings more than others, as the residents of Firetown know quite well. Still, Bernie and Cinder have run a successful shop there for years, and now the father wants to pass it down to his daughter Ember to run. But Ember's hot temper threatens almost every customer interaction, and even threatens to get the shop shut down by city inspectors. Ember must try to protect an inheritance she's secretly uncertain about... and also keep secret the budding romantic relationship she's developing with a water elemental.

When I say Elemental is trying to be its own thing, that's two things, primarily. First, it is very strongly a story of immigrants. Director Peter Sohn says the story was inspired by his own parents, who immigrated from Korea to run a grocery store in New York City. The allegory isn't veiled at all here, nor softened for a movie "aimed at kids" -- Elemental repeatedly demonstrates exactly the sort of systemic racism that Republican politicians don't want anyone to talk about.

Second, this is Pixar's first legitimate love story. We're not talking "aren't WALL-E and EVE cute together," or "doesn't the Up opening montage about Carl and his wife pull at your heartstrings?" This movie is the whole story arc from meet-cute to "meet the parents" and more, with many plot points from the rom-com playbook faithfully observed along the way. Pixar has dared to make a movie that their core demographic would likely receive with anything from indifference to disgust. ("Kissing? Ew, gross!")

Elemental then triples down on its refusal to do the typical things an animated movie does for broad appeal, by not casting any A-list celebrities. The biggest name anywhere in the cast is Catherine O'Hara, and her character gets maybe five minutes of screen time. Elemental is looking for something more authentic, and casts Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie as the leads in its "inter-elemental" romance.

There is one way in which the movie doesn't break with Pixar tradition, and that's in the way it really pushes the boundaries of computer animation. Because of who the characters in this story are, the need for complex animation of fire, water, and smoke particles is baked right into the story. Along with that, light reflections and refraction, steam, condensation, and more. It's easy to take for granted that you can just "do anything" now with CG -- but in truth, it feels like Pixar hasn't pushed the boundaries of what's convincingly possible this hard since Sully's fur in the original Monsters Inc.

I do wish that I could say all these bold choices leads to the best Pixar movie ever, or even the best one in years. But Pixar has set the bar so high in the past that it simply cannot be cleared very often anymore. Still, I would put Elemental near the top of "mid-tier" Pixar -- which means the quality is still rather high. I give it a B+. I was glad to have watched it, and I'm glad to make room for it on my beginning-to-expand Top Movies of 2023 list.

Thirst for Adventure Time

I don't really attend fan conventions for recreation anymore; I think that once you've worked enough of them, it kind of kills the magic. I think it has been around a decade since my last "non-working" trip to a con, which I went to for one afternoon with my husband. We saw actors from Game of Thrones, Star Trek, and other geek hits... but it seemed like out of everyone, the person my husband was most excited to see was Olivia Olson. She not only spoke about her television series, she actually sang "Daddy, Why Did You Eat My Fries?" for an enraptured audience.

If you're thinking "huh?" -- so was I, in the moment. That's because I'd never watched any episodes of Adventure Time, animated fantasy series that would ultimately run 10 seasons and a staggering 283 episodes (not even counting the spin-offs). My husband said at the time that he was sure I'd love the show, but it was only years later, after it had concluded, that we decided to actually start watching together from the beginning.

Not that there's anything wrong with adults enjoying a show made for kids... but it's debatable how much Adventure Time is really made for kids. In the beginning, it almost certainly was. Viewers are introduced to the far future fantasy world of Ooo, and its enormous cast of quirky characters. But as those characters recur and story arcs develop, the show increasingly incorporates deeper themes and emotions. The show grew up right along with that original audience.

Also, like every other episode of Adventure Time is a candidate for the weirdest episode of Adventure Time ever made. You watch the main characters' handheld game console clash with its own mirror-bound evil doppleganger. You get gender-swapped fan fiction about the show written by one of the characters in the show. (Repeatedly.) You see the hero's arm get severed and replaced -- twice.

All the while, you get to enjoy what may be the best voice cast ever assembled for American animation. Each episode is anchored by Finn the Human (Jeremy Shada) and Jake the Dog (John DiMaggio). Major secondary characters are voiced by cartoon mainstays like Hynden Walch, Tom Kenny, Dee Bradley Baker, and Maria Bamford. Guest stars include... well, frankly, everyone: Ron Perlman, Felicia Day, Kumail Nanjiani, Lou Ferrigno, Kristen Schaal, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Rainn Wilson, Mark Hamill, Dave Foley, Cloris Leachman, Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, Matthew Broderick, Donald Glover, Lucy Lawless, Tig Notaro, a notable number of Star Trek alumni, and so very, very many more.

Even with episodes being just 15 minutes long, it took a while to get through Adventure Time. But I did indeed enjoy it every step of the way, as my husband predicted. And now I'm a little sad it's over. (We're watching the new Fionna & Cake spin-off... which is its own unique and interesting thing. But also: it's just not quite the same "lightning in a bottle.") Still, I can get over any sadness by spreading the word and encouraging others to check out Adventure Time. It's a solid B+ from beginning to end, with many superb peaks above that along the way.

Voyager Flashback: Muse

Many of the stories of ancient Greek theater are thought to be compelling even today. But the stylistic conventions are so different now as to seem alien. Which may well be why Star Trek: Voyager decided to literally apply them to an alien culture in the episode "Muse."

When B'Elanna Torres crashes on an alien planet, her only hope to repair the shuttle and contact Voyager is to accept the help of one of the primitive locals. Kelis agrees to help B'Elanna only in exchange for her stories of life "among the gods" on Voyager, so he might adapt them for the stage to please his patron.

Unsurprisingly, this episode sprang from the mind of Joe Menosky -- who gave Star Trek many "high concept' episodes both effective and... less so. "Muse" was a favorite with many behind-the-scenes personnel on the series, who got to build a miniature amphitheater, costume actors in a classical style, and create face masks to evoke Voyager's main characters. The episode is cast with plenty of "stage-trained actors with sci-fi credentials," including Tony Amendola (from Stargate) and John Schuck (from Star Trek IV). They and their co-stars give us a classic Greek chorus, direct "asides" to the audience, and more. It's all a hoot for any theater geek.

Except that it never really feels like a story with danger or stakes. B'Elanna's life is only in jeopardy (a little) in the opening moments, and after that there can be no doubt that she of all characters is going to (literally) engineer a way to get herself off the planet. Kelis the poet is no threat to her, nor does Kelis' Caesar-like patron ever menace her. If you're a deep enough Trekker to care about the violations of the Prime Directive in giving information to a primitive alien society, you might care about that -- but the episode doesn't even dig very deeply into it. All you have to care about is this alien playwright's livelihood... which, for mystifying reasons, B'Elanna actually decides to do in the final act.

As you can tell, I thought the story fell flat. Some of the trappings are entertaining, though. There's drama within the theater troop (as there always is), with a jealous actress thinking that the writer has a romantic interest in B'Elanna. There's insider talk about the process of writing itself -- how a story needs surprises and reversals.... that don't feel like manipulation or tricks. There's also the writer's self-aggrandizing notion that a good piece of writing can literally change the world.

Then there's a lot of meta commentary about Star Trek itself. The writers tell us basically point blank that they refuse to put Janeway and Chakotay together as a couple, by having B'Elanna mock Kelis' version of that story line. A frustrated actor comments on the difficulties of playing a Vulcan, saying that a typical audience would find an emotionless performance to be "bad acting." Another actor's instinct is to play Seven of Nine for sex appeal, because she thinks that's what the story needs to be entertaining.

Still, the episode almost stalwartly refuses to go near any real emotion or action. Tom Paris has lost both his girlfriend and his best friend, but still can keep it light enough to laugh at a sleep-deprived Tuvok falling asleep in the captain's chair. Kim's ordeal to survive a nights-long walk of over 200 kilometers, all alone and in hostile territory, sounds way more interesting that what's happening to B'Elanna -- but I guess it's too expensive to show us (and doesn't involve Greek theater). 

Other observations:

• It strains belief that Kelis is able to understand the Delta Flyer's technology enough to play log entries, when his understanding of science is at a "let's bleed this wounded patient to help her" level.

• Why is it such a sore subject for B'Elanna to talk about Tom Paris? If you're ashamed to talk about the partner you're with, that's saying a lot.

Though "Muse" is cute in moments (particularly if you enjoy the theater, and/or Star Trek poking a little fun at itself), its complete lack of stakes, danger, or urgency makes it a harder watch in my book. I give it a C+.

Cunky Town

Among all streaming services, Netflix has really mastered the "art" of releasing things I might be interested in without me ever knowing they're there. Even if I spent more time browsing within the app, their recommendation algorithm always falls short; I wind up having to hear about things from other places (if at all).

One such place was the "Top Television of the Year" lists that critics were posting throughout December 2023. In a few places, the odd title "Cunk on Earth" popped up, making me pause to take note without exactly leading me to want to investigate further. But then, independently, my husband also mentioned having heard about this show, and we decided to check it out.

Cunk on Earth is a 5-part mockumentary series about human history, hosted by journalist Philomena Cunk. She is as pretentious as she is fictitious. Each episode plays all the documentary hits, from "talking head" interviews to stern narrations directly to camera to low-budget reenactments. Starting from ancient civilizations and working up to the space race and the internet, the series lampoons all the accomplishments that a real documentary on human history might feature -- while ultimately suggesting that the cornerstone of civilization was the release of "Pump Up the Jam" by Technotronic.

Although each half-hour episode isn't continually hilarious, each one does deliver a handful of true laugh out loud moments. Your mileage may vary as to what those are, but the show really is firing a barrage sure to appeal to any taste -- dumb puns, sight gags, running jokes, cringe comedy... it's all there.

And it all relies on the pitch perfect performance of Diane Morgan, who plays Philomena Cunk to the hilt. While much of the humor here is scripted, and much more surely "found in the edit," Morgan does actually have to conduct interviews with many real academics. She perfectly walks them into traps the writers have set up, getting them to say the most ridiculous things. She's quick-thinking and inserts plenty of jokes that had to have been ad libbed in the moment. She is, quite simply, brilliant at playing an idiot.

No, Cunk on Earth wasn't so great that it would have made my own personal Top 10 List for 2023 television. Nevertheless, I enjoyed popping one in the right moments, working my way through the five episodes over the several weeks. Some jokes will likely stay with me forever (the description of the Titanic, for example). I give Cunk on Earth a B+. If you love dry British humor, you'll probably love this.

Voyager Flashback: Live Fast and Prosper

The core premise of Star Trek: Voyager was that the titular ship was in a place far across the galaxy and different from all previous Star Trek that had come before. Despite this, many episodes of the show were "planet of the week" kinds of adventures that could just as easily have played on one of the other Star Trek series. But one episode that feels distinctly like an "only on Voyager" episode was the sixth season's "Live Fast and Prosper."

A trio of con artists are working through the sector, trading on the starship Voyager's good name to swindle people out of valuable resources. When the actual Voyager comes across a planet that's been wronged by the imposters, Captain Janeway resolves to capture the culprits and reclaim her crew's reputation.

I think it would have been harder to tell this story on, say, The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine, where the identities of our heroes could be easily verified from some secondary source. Here, only Voyager is around to vouch for themselves. The stakes are higher too; if some random Alpha Quadrant planet decides they've been wronged by "Picard" and the "Enterprise," it simply doesn't matter as much as it does to Voyager, always scraping to get by and needing any allies it can make.

Not that this episode is as serious as all that... and that's fine, because it leans into the fun. The alien con artists are an entertaining group of characters. Their leader Dala is actually conning people out of money to help "poor orphans," so on the nose it brings a smile to your face. Her partner Mobar is even funnier, a "method actor" who is devoted to remaining in character at all times. Their oversized communicator badges and rank pips call to mind the licensed Next Gen toys of the 1980s, cheesy knock-offs that look nothing like the real thing, that any convention cos-player would be too embarrassed to be seen in.

This approach of playing for comedy also serves the major subplot: Neelix and Paris are reckoning with how they, of all people, could have been swindled themselves by Dala and her team. Though I think if any scam would entrap a Starfleet officer (or Starfleet type), you'd have to imagine it would be someone posing as a cleric; Starfleet is conditioned to give such a wide berth to cultural quirks that they're reflexively going to accept religious beliefs at face value. Plus, if you wanted to, you might dig into whether Starfleet ideals themselves are approaching the dogmatic level of a religion; the fact that Dala's crew slips so easily from posing as clerics to posing as Starfleet officers suggests little distance between the two. But, again, we're rightly keeping it light here -- and so the Neelix/Paris subplot features them trying to scam the Doctor, being mocked by Tuvok, and ultimately working to con the con artists in the end.

All that said, I think the real charms of the episode weren't necessarily there on the script page. I don't really buy that Neelix ever thought of himself as a scammer. (A drifter or freeloader? Sure!) It's even harder to believe that Voyager's counter-con actually works on Dala, who seems far too smart for such a thing. But fortunately, the episode benefits from other elements beyond the page: fun directing by LeVar Burton, and an especially good performance by guest star Kaitlin Hopkins as Dala. This episode calls for her to play her character, that same character posing as a cleric, and posing as Captain Janeway... and then to play The Doctor pretending to be her character. She handles all that ably, and has great bickering chemistry with Gregg Daniel as Mobar.

Other observations:

• Early on, there's talk of Tom Paris and Harry Kim pranking Tuvok by hacking and altering his holodeck program. I'm with Tuvok -- that doesn't sound funny.

• Paris mentions a sedative called ambizine -- which sounds a lot like "Ambien." (Deliberately, I assume; as the drug existed years before this episode was made.)

• If you're keeping track, Voyager is now said to be 30,000 light years from home in this episode. (More than halfway there!) 

I do think this episode is fun... though also not the sort of "laugh out loud" fun that would earn a truly high mark from me. I give "Live Fast and Prosper" a B.

Lots in the Shuffle

One of the games most recently rocketing up the rankings on BoardGameGeek is Forest Shuffle. From a designer known simply as Kosch, it's a game with its own distinct blend of systems, but the sensibilities of Wingspan. It's another game about nature with a sprawling deck of cards; in this game the cards represent a forest you grow and all the plants and animals that are closely connected to the trees there.

The game is driven by combinations of card effects. Certain trees score well by concentrating on their own type while others encourage diversification. Certain plants inevitably drive you to play specific kinds of animals that go well with them. The connections are "loud" (very easy to recognize as you read the card) and powerful (the rewards for pursuing the combinations always feels worth it).

The system for paying to play cards is one common to quite a few games: each card has a cost that you pay for by discarding the indicated number of other cards from your hand. But there are a couple of wrinkles added to this that make the game something different and compelling. One is that the cards you discard in payment go in a face-up row (that holds up to 10 cards before it's truly removed from the game). This means that the cards you throw away can be picked up by your opponents, which in turn means that you really need to pay attention to what your opponents are doing -- your trash could really be someone else's treasure, and you need to discard with that in mind.

That's further supported by the most distinct feature of the game. All the plant and animal cards in the game are actually two cards in one, split top/bottom or left/right. Each such card must be attached to a tree you've played -- above, below, to the left, or to the right of the tree. (And each tree can have just one card on each edge.) This "dual card" element is designed with a subtle and deliberate cleverness.

Sometimes, both sides of a split card will appeal to you, and you will face the challenge of deciding which side you want to play for yourself. Other times, one side of a card will clearly help an opponent... but the other side isn't too shabby for you, and so maybe you'll play it yourself after all. But bottom line, every non-tree card in the game has two shots at catching your interest, which dramatically increases the chances that most cards in the game will "matter" to you and your decision making in some way.

Because most cards in the game are really two cards in one, the functions need to remain pretty simple so as not to be overwhelming. This is another way in which Forest Shuffle shines. Simple and elegant game design is not as easy as it looks, yet the game does it again and again. The game could be accused of being a "point salad," since many of the effects just fundamentally come down to different ways of scoring points based on different configurations of cards. But there are also cards that encourage you to collect other things for various reasons: cards that stack together in a single space next to a tree, cards that let you take extra turns, cards that (when paid for with cards that have matching icons) unlock bonuses, and more.

And so I find that Forest Shuffle fits well on that quite coveted shelf in a board game collection: a game that's fairly simple to explain and quite fast to play, but that nonetheless offers enough decision making to be more than simple filler. It also takes from 2 to 5 players, and has been satisfying at every player count I've tried at (which is all but the 5-player, so far). It's a game that feels to me like it could usurp for a good while the "one more quick one before you head home?" slot on game night.

I give Forest Shuffle a B+. Fans of nature-themed games and fans of games that can be played in under an hour will both likely want to check it out.

A Late Horse in the Race

When I gathered my list of the Top 10 TV Shows of 2023, I noted an honorable mention of the third season of Slow Horses. I hadn't yet finished it at the time of that post, but it was "great from what I've seen so far." Well, it finished as strong as at began, and so for a proper accounting of the best of 2023 (and with all apologies to Star Trek: Picard, which just got bumped down out of slot #10 on my list), I must now dedicate a new post to one of the best reasons to get Apple TV+.

Slow Horses is based on the Slough House novels by Mick Herron. And while there seems to be no shortage of British spy thriller shows on TV, this show stands apart from all I've seen. Part of that has been the compelling stories so far; each season is based on one book, and they've all been so expertly paced and perfectly balanced between action and character that it has made me strongly consider reading the books. (And yet... could they live up to the show?)

Part of that is a wonderful cast. It's led by Gary Oldman as weary-but-brilliant Jackson Lamb, a thorny, crotchety agent whose "warm gooey center" is probably there, but far too small and buried to know for sure. Jack Lowden plays the younger, action-oriented lead, River Cartwright, while Kristin Scott Thomas is the deputy head of MI5, Diana Taverner. While each of these three "in the opening credits" actors is perfect for their role and plays them excellently, another strength of the show is the deeper bench of performers that round out the workers of "Slough House," a dumping ground for bad agents to be gradually worn down into leaving the service.

Season 3 of Slow Horses, based on the book Real Tigers, turned out to be my favorite season yet of the show. That's because even as it continued to do what it does so well, it added a new ball to juggle in the form of an intriguing mystery: somebody is trying to steal information from inside MI5; what exactly is it they want, and why do they want it? Seasons of Slow Horses are each a tight 6 episodes, which was the perfect length for a mystery like this. The "taffy" never seemed artificially stretched, yet at the same time, there were enough twists and turns in the mystery that each episode brought something new.

Season 4 of Slow Horses was filmed concurrently with season 3, and so it will be coming later this year. Better news still, the show was just recently renewed for a season 5. So this isn't going to be one of those British series that makes 6 or 12 episodes before riding off into the sunset. But also, judging from the "best yet" quality of the most recent season, it isn't going to be a show that lingers too long either. I'm eager for more.

So, to make it official, I give season 3 of Slow Horses an A. If I were making my Top 10 of 2023 list today, it would slide into the the #4 slot on my list.

Voyager Flashback: Good Shepherd

Years after Star Trek: The Next Generation gave us "Lower Decks" (the episode), but decades before we'd get Star Trek: Lower Decks (the series), Star Trek: Voyager broke off a piece for themselves with the sixth season's "Good Shepherd."

When Seven of Nine identifies three underperforming crew members aboard Voyager, Janeway realizes that none of them have ever been on an away mission, and resolves to lead them on one herself. But the stakes of the mission ratchet up during an alien encounter that critically damages the Delta Flyer.

Between the different personalities of the three "lower deckers" and the way Janeway is inserted into the story when she makes their redemption her personal mission, this does feel to me like a sufficiently different episode from The Next Generation's original take on "Lower Decks." To me, the problem is that Voyager itself had basically already done this episode, back in the first season. "Learning Curve" wasn't exactly a strong hour, but it was grounded in something unique to the series: the presence of Maquis crew members on the ship, struggling to fit in with a Starfleet way of doing things. "Good Shepherd" comes out of the gate feeling like the watered-down version of that, in focusing on people who likely would have washed out of Starfleet had they stayed in the Alpha Quadrant.

However, one nice improvement over "Learning Curve" is that these three "screw-ups" are more interesting characters than the Maquis of that early episode. Telfer may just be an amplification of the hypochondriac parts of Reginald Barclay, but he cares for his friend in a way that makes him more sympathetic. Harren is one of the few sociopaths on television who isn't either a punch line or a serial killer, and that alone makes his scientific obsessions feel like something different. And the Bajoran Tal Celes feels the most genuine of them all -- she's simply out of her league, not the "best of the best" as basically every Star Trek main character we've ever seen is.

Yet a clear step down from "Learning Curve" is how Janeway is written into the story. Ever since season six began with her bloodthirsty quest for vengeance, the writing of her character has been increasingly irrational. Here, she decides without evidence that they're dealing with benevolent aliens (before it's even clear that it's aliens of any disposition), and from there she's willing to put her ship and crew at risk "just because." She's furious with Harren for what she sees as a murder of an alien... and then just lets him off the hook because the episode needs a happy ending. Her strange behavior is infectious too: Telfer stops being a hypochondriac when a something actually does happen to him; Harren suddenly feels a need to self-sacrifice in atonement when he's never cared about how others perceive him before; Tal gets over six years of mounting self-doubt for no particular reason whatsoever.

But at least there are neat moments along the way. The series is using CG more and more, and in effective ways: two especially rugged moments include seeing the hull get peeled off the Delta Flyer, and seeing the Alien-like emergence of the creature from inside Telfer. There are nice little character beats as well, like Seven of Nine's harsh scoring of all her fellow crew members, and Paris' attempt to be nice to Harren backfiring spectacularly.

Other observations:

• Tom Morello, guitarist of Rage Against the Machine and huge Star Trek fan, gets an extended cameo as the junction operator Janeway interacts with on the way to find Harren. 

• If you were just the right age, actor Jay Underwood (who plays Harren) might actually have seemed at the time to be a "big celebrity get" for Star Trek: Voyager. Underwood's starring roles in the often-replayed-on-cable movies The Boy Who Could Fly and Not Quite Human made him a very familiar face to sci-fi loving 80s kids.

• The opening teaser is kind of ridiculous. The reason this PADD is being carried around is so we can see it pass through the hands of all the minor characters who will take center stage in this episode. But it's like hand-delivering a letter than could have been an e-mail.

Perhaps this episode would have struck me better if we hadn't already gotten "Learning Curve." But it is still a bit more enjoyable than "Learning Curve," so I'll give "Good Shepherd" a B-.

Flower Power?

Over the years, I've changed things here on the blog when it comes to movie reviews. I used to post about basically everything I watched, whether I liked it or not. But these days, I tend to bother with the negative reviews only when it's a buzzed-about movie. It's in that spirit that I feel compelled to offer my $0.02 about Martin Scorsese's three-and-a-half-hour epic, Killers of the Flower Moon. (And given most people's rapturous response to the film, my take is coming in hot.)

Based on the non-fiction book by David Grann, the movie tells the story of a series of murders of Osage Nation members in the 1920s, to appropriate their vast oil wealth. It's a shocking true story that isn't nearly as well known as it should be (much like another event referenced in the film, the 1921 Tulsa race massacre). I didn't know the story myself, until a podcast that I love covered it a few months ago, around the time the film was released.

My sense is that because the story is an important one, combined with the fact that Scorsese made it, combined with the big names in the cast -- this is what has critics anointing it as the only film with any chance of challenging Oppenheimer for the Best Picture Oscar this year. But I feel that while all those things make the movie deserving on paper, the actual sum is unfortunately less than its parts.

It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that a 206-minute movie might be a bit long-winded, but I'll say it anyway. The languid pacing may sound like a reasonable choice for recounting events that unfold over years and years -- but to me it seemed to highlight a "slow descent into evil" for the perpetrators. And the choice to make Ernest Burkhart the main "character" of the story feels like the wrong one to me, or at least to spend so much of the movie trying to engender any sympathy for him when he's ultimately such a villain. For me, that podcast (Cautionary Tales) served up a much more potent version of this story -- and it condensed it into just two 40-minute episodes.

But in my view, worse than any "dramaturgical" concerns about Ernest Burkhart was casting Leonardo DiCaprio to play him. DiCaprio gives a performance that's far too internalized. You see him thinking far too much for a character that the script is constantly telling us is dumb and manipulable. And whether you like DiCaprio's interpretation or not, he's simply too old for the role. For the events portrayed in this movie, the real-life Burkhart was in his late 20s and early 30s. DiCaprio may still look like a movie star, but a movie star pushing 50 and by no means the young heartthrob he once was. The idea that we're supposed to believe him as a grunt returning home from World War I, or a rube without enough worldliness to stand up to his controlling uncle? Ridiculous. DiCaprio reportedly lobbied for the role after originally being cast in the part that ended up going to Jesse Plemons; I think Scorsese made the wrong call in going along with it.

Yes, Lily Gladstone is as good in the movie as they say -- though to me it's very much a "Supporting" role that vanishes for the middle of the movie. (It's being celebrated in the "Lead" award categories because this does feel like a huge role compared to what performers of Indigenous heritage have historically been cast to play.) Robert De Niro gives a fine villain performance, perfectly hateable -- though I might have wished for it to feel more dangerous.

But by and large, I was disappointed at how dry this telling of the story felt. I wish that, rather than devoting so much of my time to the movie, that I'd started reading the original book instead. (I could have read a lot of it in the same amount of time.) I give the movie a D-.

Voyager Flashback: Child's Play

Star Trek: Voyager dipped its toe in the "continuing story lines" water in season six by introducing four new Borg children. Then, after one episode showing us that the kids really were going to stick around, they were in a position to tease us with "...or maybe they won't." That's the episode "Child's Play."

Voyager locates the home planet of the young ex-drone Icheb -- and even find his own family, who is shocked to have him back. But Icheb's parents are hiding a secret, and it turns out they may not be the most responsible people to raise him.

I think "Child's Play" has a really interesting story. It takes a big risk (for Voyager) by leaning into continuity; not only is it about the ex-drone kids that the crew has taken in, it specifically calls back the mysterious virus that infected the Borg cube from which the children came.

Generally, the "risk" of going non-episodic pays off here. Seven of Nine has to face her own emotions and realize that she's already bonded with these kids. Icheb goes on a journey -- not wanting to return to his family, before gradually coming to feel at home with them. Janeway has to play diplomat to Icheb's parents, and counselor to an embittered Seven.

Yet I can't help but feel like the emotions are dialed to about a "7 out of 10" here, where Deep Space Nine would have found a way to at least turn them up to a "9." Icheb's parents are written as too gentle and soft-spoken in the face of Seven's opposition. They're too patient, too understanding, in a way that really undermines the twist in the story -- you almost feel like they don't really want Icheb back. They're so patient, in fact, that they suddenly seem cartoonishly evil when it's revealed that they've engineered their own son as a weapon against the Borg.

That twist could have been justified better if you'd really been made to understand how threatened these aliens are. There's lots of abstract talk about the danger the Borg pose (plus a gnarly establishing shot showing their landscape with "scooped-out Borg holes"). But despite actual location shooting for the planet surface, it kind of just feels like any other agrarian society from any other episode of Star Trek. This doesn't really feel like a war zone, no one really feels on edge, and leaving Icheb there doesn't feel dangerous. This isn't the bitter "custody battle" it could have (or, I think, should have) been, with the parents having the "claim" of blood while clearly having the worse living conditions.

Other observations:

• Guest star Mark A. Sheppard would, in the years after this appearance, go on to become something like "Geek TV royalty." He'd make a big impact in just a couple appearances as Badger on Firefly, then become such an entertaining villain on Supernatural that they made him a series regular. I think he's got a scene in this episode that stands out, too: his character's conversation with Seven of Nine reveals a sense of guilt -- just not for the thing you assume at the time.

• After years -- decades even -- of fan theorizing about how the transporter could be used to beam a torpedo aboard an enemy ship during a battle, someone finally does it in this episode.

"Child's Play" is an interesting episode, but I can't help but feel like there could have been a better version of it. I give it a B.

Devil's Bargain?

It's been a year-and-a-half since season three of The Orville wrapped up, and while the show hasn't officially been cancelled, the actors have all been released from their contracts and creator Seth MacFarlane has been focusing on other projects. To me, it feels likely that we've seen the last Orville episodes that will ever be made.

But we haven't heard the last. An audiobook novella has been released, narrated by recurring Orville guest star Bruce Boxleitner, called Sympathy for the Devil. It's essentially an episode of the show in another format, set specifically between two late season three episodes. Through a fascinating sci-fi conceit, the ship encounters an actual Nazi from the World War II era, actually bent on the extermination of Jewish people. But there's more to the situation than there appears to be on the surface, and it's quite unclear what the "right thing to do" is when futuristic ideals clash with archaic hatred.

How this audiobook came to exist is itself an interesting story. This was an intended 11th episode of season 3 (between the existing episodes 8 and 9), written by Seth MacFarlane himself and slated for production like all the rest. But the filming of season 3 was interrupted for nearly a full year at the onset of the Covid pandemic, and when it resumed fully in 2021, things had changed radically for this episode. Because of the World War II subject matter, the original concept had been to actually film on location in Europe for fully half of the episode. And even had the production been willing to compromise on that point and film on a set, the scenes called for an extensive guest cast... more people than the Covid monitoring protocols could effectively keep safe. It simply wasn't possible to make the episode as written; and rather than re-write it, they simply scrapped it.

So instead, Seth MacFarlane took his existing script, reframed it with more conventional prose, and came up with a three-hour novella. That's "Sympathy for the Devil," and it is an oddball episode. MacFarlane himself acknowledged that had it been made as intended, it was always going to be "experimental."

That's because -- minor spoiler warning here -- the full first half of it takes place in the 1900s, following one particular boy as he grows into a man who becomes commandant of a concentration camp. There's no indication this is actually an episode of The Orville, no science fiction at all, until an uncomfortably long time into the story. You're made to sit with the life story of a Nazi, which is very much the point.

In many ways, this is the purest form of The Orville, whose mission (as a show) was to be the purest form of Star Trek. Since there have been five new Star Trek shows in about as many years, since Star Trek shows are actually being cancelled now to make room for more new Star Trek shows... it's hard to remember that when The Orville was first conceived, it was essentially to give us a Star Trek show in a long drought of there being no Star Trek on television. And for a while, The Orville still had a niche to fill, as the show that was just giving us episodic morality plays in the mode of classic Star Trek and The Next Generation. And then, even after Strange New Worlds came along to do that same thing, The Orville was doing so earnestly enough, at a high enough level of quality, that you could imagine there was room for both shows. (Especially when each was only making 10 episodes a season.)

Anyway, Sympathy for the Devil is the most classic elevator pitch for a Star Trek episode you could imagine: "our heroes meet an actual Nazi." It's so classic that more than one Star Trek series actually did it. But none did it quite like this episode of The Orville -- and, surprisingly, none with as effective a moral dilemma at the heart of the story. Sympathy for the Devil is actually a really compelling episode of the series, and it would have been great to see it made in the normal way.

But this presentation of it here is tremendously compromised. For one thing, MacFarlane's writing to flesh it out in conventional prose (essentially -- the flowery ways in which he replaced the script's stage directions) is pretty rough at times. For another, the pacing is much harder to take in this format; had this been on television, I'd imagine shifting in my seat a lot wondering why half an hour of an Orville episode was tracking a Nazi in the 1900s, but listening to 90 minutes of that when I thought I'd signed up for a sci-fi audiobook? It's quite strange.

Plus, hanging over it all is the timing of the release. Had this been a late third season episode of the show, then the daring departure from format, combined with the emotional and intellectual heft of the ideas ultimately explored, would have likely made for one of the best (or at least most memorable) episodes of the season. But released later, it's an odd coda, an epilogue. In fact, it's very likely the last Orville we're ever going to get... and half of it doesn't even feel like an Orville episode. Which, in a way, serves as a frustrating reminder of this nice thing we don't get to keep having.

Overall, I'll give Sympathy for the Devil a B. But as for a recommendation? That's tricky. If you're a Star Trek fan who's never actually watched The Orville, it might actually be easiest to recommend to you -- without other attachments, you'll be able to enjoy this intriguing sci-fi story. If you're an Orville fan trying to decide if it's worth your time? Well, yes, it's worth your time, since it's "more of what you like." But prepare to be a little sad that you can't have even more of what you like.

Not Feeling the Burn

I've written before about the podcast The Next Picture Show, which pairs up new movies with previous ones for intriguing comparative analysis. Over the years, I've come to realize that of the four film critics on the podcast, the one whose tastes align most with mine is Tasha Robinson. Between her insightful observations on the show, her posts about board games and geek things on social media, and just generally the kinds of movies she's praised, I've come to know that any movie with the "Tasha Robinson seal of approval" is probably worth at least my consideration.

Recently, that lined up perfectly with a movie I'd been hearing weird buzz about: Saltburn. This twisty tale of sex, decadence, and manipulation was emerging as one of the most polarizing movies to come around in a while. Was it scintillating or simplistic? Was it provocative or puerile? I was on the fence about wanting to see it... and then Tasha Robinson proclaimed it her #1 favorite movie of 2023. Well, OK then, guess that settled it for me; I needed to see it for myself.

The movie centers on Oxford student Oliver Quick, who becomes enamored with popular (and rich) kid Felix Catton -- and then actually befriends him. Felix invites Oliver to summer at his family's literally palatial estate of Saltburn... whereupon a darker side of Oliver begins to emerge. As he worms his way in with Oliver's family, we begin to question how much of his identity is true, or calculated to some conniving purpose.

What I would have liked to have known before watching this movie is that it comes from Emerald Fennell, the writer-director of Promising Young Woman. That movie from a few years back is one I enjoyed, though I know several people who really didn't. And that's worth mentioning, as I think it's probably "table stakes" for wanting to even watch Saltburn: if you didn't like Promising Young Woman, I see little chance that you would like this movie.

But I don't think it's a given that you'll like Saltburn just because you liked Promising Young Woman. I didn't. Or at least, I wasn't sure. Indeed, it's been a while since I've watched a movie that had me so regularly vacillating between "I might like this" and "why the hell am I watching this?" There are times that the "eat the rich" subtext really lands... and other times it feels derivative of (and inferior to) Knives Out. There are times that I felt compelled to crack the code of just what's up with the main character of Oliver -- is he love-struck, or manipulative, or actually supernatural? And then there are other times it all just feels like Diet "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

To the degree that the movie works at all, it does so on the back of two key performers. First is Barry Keoghan as Oliver. He gives a shifty, Rorschach test of a performance that allows you to read all sorts of different meaning into the character (as I did) at different points in the movie. Yet at the same time, there's an oddball specificity to the character that leaves you feeling that Keoghan, at least, has made choices and could tell you exactly what's going on with his character.

The other is Rosamund Pike as family matriarch Elspeth Catton. Her character is hilariously indifferent to reality and possibly drugged to the very edge of consciousness, leaving her to say whatever insanity is on her mind at any moment. And Pike's delivery of this parade of one-liners is a real highlight of the movie -- always worth a laugh.

But overall, I feel like I've seen before all that Saltburn has to offer. (Well, unless you're counting some significant Barry Keoghan nudity.) So, sorry Tasha Robinson, I'm not with you on this one. I give Saltburn a C.

Voyager Flashback: Ashes to Ashes

Star Trek: Voyager spent most of its time on the air at the same time as Deep Space Nine, and so it often zigged where its sibling show zagged. Deep Space Nine was all about continuity and ongoing story lines. So to be distinct, Voyager was generally episodic -- to a degree that I think hurt an episode like "Ashes to Ashes."

An alien contacts Voyager, saying she's really a fallen crewmember who was killed years ago and revived by a scavenger alien species. The crew welcomes her back with open arms... but she may soon learn that you "can't go home again." Meanwhile, Seven of Nine is growing into her new role as guardian to the ex-Borg children, but the kids are rebelling against her strict rules.

For roughly the first half of Star Trek: Voyager's seven-year run, alien species were "built to last"; the ship would travel for a while in Vidiian space, or Kazon space, or Hirogen space, and those aliens would recur for several episodes. But now, in the back half of the run, even aliens with interesting concepts (the Vaadwaur, for example) are "one and done." So it is here with Kobali, a people who revive the dead bodies of other races to procreate.

This episode does explore one interesting aspect of this concept... but it also leaves so much on the table. Not nearly enough is made of the violation here; they could easily have done a Kobali episode focused on how this sort of "graverobbing" and desecration analogizes to archaeological excavations of burial grounds. The transformative aspect of these aliens would be good fodder for another kind of story; Deep Space Nine found ways to use Jadzia Dax to get at transgender issues in a way "coded" enough for the times, and I feel like Voyager might have done something similar with the Kobali. Or how about a story sympathizing with someone rejected by the Kobali, but utterly unable to find a home with their original people, a sort of parallel for an American-raised child of immigrants forcibly expelled to a country that's never really been their home?

This one story that we do get is interesting enough... but I feel like we're getting a sort of compromised version of it. Put simply, we the audience don't actually know this character, Lyndsay Ballard. What it difference this would have made if Ballard had been an actual recurring character before this, who had been killed off on-screen and was now returning. It would have gone a long way toward making the audience feel the way the other characters do: glad to see an old friend return, and conflicted about how she's changed.

The episode also deflates the conflict a little too conveniently. Even before Harry Kim is put in an emotional vise, Ballard has already confronted Janeway about the circumstances of her human death (already making it clear she's not going to fit in). In the final act, "down sides" to staying on Voyager accumulate at breakneck speed as she increasingly slips into speaking alien language, forgets details about her human life, and more.

Ironically, the light B-plot of this episode is building exactly the sort of ongoing story that would have benefited the A-plot. Seven raising the Borg kids picks up on a previous episode and carries the story forward for future ones. There's not much to say here, since the story is so light. But it does give us humorous moments: Mezoti "answering the phone" just as children do (or did, back when there were land lines), and Seven's declaration that "fun will now commence." Though it also gives us one scene that to me really doesn't work: the final exchange between Harry Kim and Mezoti. Just two episodes ago, as a drone, Mezoti tried to assimilate Kim. I think he would need some time to feel so comfortable around her.

Other observations:

• The Kobali look to me a little like the Borg Queen. Which kind of works, since what they do is sort of like assimilation.

• Voyager has had a couple of "instant leaps across thousands of light years" since Ballard died. I don't think it would really be possible for her to locate and catch up with the ship.

• Janeway burns dinner while she's replicating it. Like... how is that even possible, short of a replicator malfunction?

I feel so many missed opportunities with this episode that it really brings down the rating for me. I give "Ashes to Ashes" a C+.

Burnt Ends

For years now (two-and-a-half of them), I've been working on the Lightbringer series by author Brent Weeks. (Fortunately, not back-to-back; I've interspersed the series with other books). Now, at last, I've completed the fifth and final book, The Burning White.

The Lightbringer is a fantasy series set in a world with a light-based magic system. Magic users are capable of "drafting" a magical substance directly from light itself; the effects depend on which color on the spectrum the wielder is capable of using. This intriguing system formed the backdrop of an epic series involving an evil magic-user trying to conquer the world, a powerful force for good secretly hiding his true identity and dark nature, a young boy who may or may not be a "chosen one" with a destiny, an unusually-powered slave girl caught up in a web of treachery and murder, and much, much, much more.

This final book of the series is the longest one yet -- the single volume alone is easily the length of many complete fantasy trilogies. With the exception of book one of the series, I've listened to all of them in audiobook format, and this one took literally months to get through, in shared car trips with my husband. But was it worth it?

Probably? But I'm deeply conflicted about the way the series wrapped up.

On the one hand, most of the characters in the book (and there are a lot of them) reached a truly satisfying ending. And the story overall allowed for a wide range of endings: some were expected where others weren't, some villains got the comeuppance they richly deserved while others didn't, some heroes triumphed while others didn't make it to the last page. I was, by and large, very satisfied with the endpoint for each of the characters in this sprawling tale.

But I was far less satisfied with how they got there. For one thing, that length I spoke of didn't feel at all necessary. The novel felt so long-winded that it seemed often more about the writer's self-indulgence than rewarding the fans. It simply didn't feel like it needed to take so long to get all those characters to those satisfying endings.

Particularly when Brent Weeks was ultimately going to employ some huge cheats in the final act. The phrase "deus ex machina" gets tossed around a lot by people who want to express dissatisfaction with cop-outs by pretending to know a little Latin. But it would be more than fair to use that phrase in describing the way The Burning White ends. Huge, insurmountable problems are solved trivially, in the least satisfying possible way.

So ultimately, do the ends justify the means? That's really hard to say -- though I suppose I'd say that the ends were good enough to make me not want to rage on the whole series, which I've otherwise enjoyed. Frankly, I'm just shocked that a modern fantasy writer, who had put so much work into weaving costs and stakes into his created world, would actually make the choices made here. But maybe he just didn't know how else to get to his intended ending? (Which, again, felt ultimately "correct" to this long-time reader.)

With great uncertainty, I'm going to give The Burning White a B-. In my view, it is undeniably the weakest book of the series. Yet it's still been an enjoyable series overall. I'm glad I read it (in audiobook form or otherwise). But if someone were to ask me whether they should start the series? It may be a while before I have that answer.

Voyager Flashback: Spirit Folk

I was left cold by Star Trek: Voyager's episode "Fair Haven," a holodeck adventure with low stakes (Janeway's love life) and little fun. Imagine how I feel about receiving a sequel to that lackluster episode in "Spirit Folk."

When the "Irish village" holodeck program by Tom Paris is thrown into continuous use by the crew, it begins to malfunction. Characters become aware of unexplained "magic" being worked by visiting crew members, and soon come to view them as malicious "spirits" who mean the village harm.

I can understand why the cast and crew of Star Trek: Voyager might have had a lot of fun making "Fair Haven." They got to wear different costumes, film in different locations, and generally take a break from space opera for a week. But I can't help but feel that the writers had a real blind spot about how much the audience might have enjoyed it, to dive back in and continue the story only a few episodes later. Maybe everyone just loved working with the guest cast (they're all back for round two). Maybe they needed to amortize the cost of sets built.

But granting all that, why come back with a story that has even lower stakes than the first time around? At least our first visit to Fair Haven had something to say about Janeway and the emotional tolls of command. This time, the episode is basically about the fictional holodeck characters, and it's impossible to care about what happens to any of the one-off (well, two-off, apparently) stereotypes. The episode doesn't even have anything vaguely interesting to say about the dangers of artificial intelligence, as The Next Generation did when it made a holographic Moriarty sentient (and then cleverly followed up that story).

Indeed, the Voyager characters become virtual guest stars on their own show, and to support the story, their behavior throughout ranges from perplexing to idiotic. Kim is wasting his replicator rations to make flowers for a holographic date (when he could just conjure them on the holodeck). Paris thinks the height of hilarity is to make his "best friend" kiss a cow. (I'm beginning to question why Kim actually wants to be friends with him.) Janeway is far too willing to let this scenario play out even after the lives of her crew are endangered.

If you work hard, there are a few pleasures you can extract from this episode. Ian Abercrombie ("Mr. Pitt" from Seinfeld) joins the guest cast this time around, bringing some additional comedic heft. The jokes at the Doctor's expense all feel pretty fun (even the other holograms think he can be a blowhard). Also, a quirky subset of Trekkers out there have made an annual tradition out of this episode: if you begin playing this episode at 11:49:35pm on December 31st, midnight and the new year will arrive exactly when Harry Kim kisses a cow. (No, I didn't do that this year. Or any other.)

Other observation:

• Just the one: how are the characters able to shoot out the hologrid to turn off the safety protocols? Should those very same protocols keep the characters from being able to inflict that damage in the first place?

In doubling down on "Fair Haven," Star Trek: Voyager served up an episode that's arguably a bit more fun, but I think inarguably much dumber. I give "Spirit Folk" a D+.

2023 in Review -- Movies

Here's one more post in my look back at 2023 -- this time about the movies I saw last year.

As luck would have it, I watched 52 movies over the course of the year, working out to an average of one a week. They were not at all so evenly spaced, though. In fact, I'd seen half of those movies just one quarter of the way into the year. (Then along came The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, consuming huge swaths of my time.)

I caught 16 of those movies out at a theater, one at the symphony (when I saw Danny Elfman's score from Tim Burton's original Batman played live to picture), one on an airplane (Weird), and the rest from the comfort of my own couch. 24 of the movies I saw were 2023 releases, which puts me slightly ahead of where I was the year before when I first made my Top Movies List for 2022.

But the thing is -- I'm far less confident in my list than I was last year. It's always the case that I wind up revising my annual list as I catch up on more movies, and "good but not great" movies near the bottom of my list get pushed out by worthier fare. But this year, "good but not great" would make up at least half my list. It may be that I haven't seen the right movies yet... or it may be that, for my tastes, 2023 wasn't actually a very good movie year.

So this time around, instead of posting a "Top 10" list, I'm going to launch this provisional version of my list as a "Top 5" only, and hope to extend it later. My picks (so far) for 2023 are:

1. Flora and Son
2. Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse
3. Renfield
4. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
5. Barbie

Even though I have seen several of the movies in the "award season" discussion, Barbie is the only one I wanted for my list. I liked-but-didn't-love The Holdovers, was lukewarm on Oppenheimer, and thought too little of Past Lives and Asteroid City to even bother with a review post. (Maybe if either becomes an actual Best Picture Oscar nominee, I'll circle back.) Meanwhile, the 2023 movies I most want to catch up with right now are on nobody's award radar, but rather just intrigue me with high concepts (No One Can Save You), compelling casts (A Haunting in Venice), or both (Leave the World Behind).

Here's hoping that 2024 brings some better movies -- perhaps movies that were held from 2023 during the Hollywood strikes?

Updated 1/31/2024:

1. Flora and Son
2. Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse
3. Elemental
   
4. Renfield
5. Anatomy of a Fall
   
6. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
7. Barbie

Voyager Flashback: Collective

When a television show adds a new, cute kid to the cast of characters late in the series run, that's called a "Cousin Oliver." When a show adds four new kids to a show that already has a cute kid (Naomi Wildman)? That's Star Trek: Voyager's "Collective."

Voyager encounters a nearly inoperable Borg cube, where almost all the drones aboard have been killed by a mysterious virus. But even though the handful remaining are only children, they pose a threat to Voyager when they capture an Away Team... and the group's leader shows irrational, emotional behavior.

The "Cousin Oliver" is generally regarded as a negative, desperate trope for a TV show -- so I'm being a bit flippant to invoke it here. When the rescued Borg children are brought aboard Voyager at the end of this episode, it's not really done to be cute; it's actually opening up a lot of story avenues. Of course, it's basically juicing Seven of Nine's gradual takeover of the series, since the story avenues are pretty much all for her -- can she now learn to be a parent and mentor in much the way she was parented and mentored by Captain Janeway. (Kate Mulgrew had to be thrilled. This move sort of makes her character into a "grandmother.")

But besides the long term, this story about "child Borg drones" actually makes for an interesting one-off episode. It actually allows for a Borg episode that doesn't utterly de-fang them just so the Voyager crew can emerge victorious. If the Borg are erratic and vulnerable here, it makes sense in the context of this story. And of course, it makes for a good Seven of Nine episode in the moment, giving her quite a conflict to resolve. On the one hand, she's already bonding with the children (and Icheb more than the rest -- a trend that would continue in future episodes). On the other hand, she's rejecting the lot of them, telling Janeway that she thinks not all drones can be saved as she was.

Yet while the episode does a good job of setting things up for the future, it does a rather poor job of acknowledging the past. Seven of Nine shows absolutely no apprehension about going back aboard a Borg cube. When dealing with the young "First" drone, who is single-mindedly trying to relink to the Borg collective, she doesn't share her own similar experience when she was severed from the Collective (nor her regrets over her actions).

Then there's a lot of strangeness throughout the episode -- the sorts of things that would usually form my "other observations" section of a Star Trek flashback review, but there are a lot of them this time:

• Poker is always so bad in TV and movies. Here, besides the illegal "string betting" typical of fiction ("I see your 20... and raise you 50!"), it appears the hand played at the start of this episode is going counterclockwise!

• Remember when photon torpedoes were supposed to be a limited resource? Now, even the Delta Flyer has some.

• Maybe this was an issue with my subjective interpretation, but I always thought that the "Borg voice" we'd hear in communications was the sound of thousands of Borg speaking in unison. But in this episode, even though there's only five Borg kids, their calls to Voyager have that familiar "Borg voice." So, I guess the Borg just run an audio processor over their speech to be spooky.

• It's a weird choice to show that these Borg kids are "half finished" drones by removing large chunks of their armor. They end up with single sleeves and pant legs that look comical. And one of them is showing so much hip that it's practically side butt, which... these are kids, people!

• We learn that the Borg deliberately abandoned this cube after it became infected. Seems weird that they wouldn't self-destruct it, though. They know the value of their own technology, as we've seen drones show up to reclaim parts from fallen drones. Even if they think this cube is infected and thus risky to them, they should know better than to possibly let it fall into someone else's hands.

• Kim using playing cards to mark his path through the Borg cube is a clever idea... except that he places them in random order rather than in a pattern that would make it possible to remember the route (by number, by suit?).

• Also, when the drone we'll learn is Mezoti catches Kim doing this... how did she get there? In the immediately prior scene, she was gathered with all the other Borg in the chamber where we spend most of the episode. Was she like, "oh hey, I gotta go do a thing. BRB."

• There's actually a fifth Borg drone brought to Voyager: the baby who nearly dies before the Doctor intervenes. But we never hear about the Borg baby again.

• When they're planning to release a pathogen aboard the cube at the end of the episode, to overcome the Borg kids, why does no one consider that said pathogen could well be fatal to Seven of Nine also?

• The flip side of finding an amazing child actor is finding these twin boys who play Rebi and Azan. I mean, I don't know that they're bad actors, but I think they get one line each in this whole episode -- which is pretty typical for the rest of their time on the series. They apparently could not be trusted with more.
  

Add it all up, and "Collective" is a tough one to grade. It's an interesting story, but full of flaws. It sets up for future episodes without fully engaging with past episodes. It adds a new wrinkle to the series, but one that's positioned only to give more storylines to the character who already gets the most. Still... it's by no means a "bad" episode, so I think I'll call it a B.

Supreme Overview

Now that I've posted my "Top TV Shows of 2023" list (complete with "honorable mentions"), I want to take a moment to talk about another show that, while not truly close to making that list, was nevertheless something I'd like to recommend.

Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court is a documentary from director Dawn Porter. It was released on Showtime, so depending on what sort of Paramount+ access you might have (say... to watch Star Trek), it may already be available to you. The four-part series is a well-edited collection of interviews with prominent legal scholars, detailing exactly how we got to the current Supreme Court membership we have.

The series begins with a look at the Warren Court era of the 1960s, the period that most people -- even casual observers or non-observers of the Supreme Court -- think of as the "ideal" of what the Court can and ought to be. While the documentary shows just what the Court could do at that time, it also shows that in the moment, it became increasingly unpopular for doing so: the first domino being pushed in the chain. From there, the documentary tracks every new justice to be appointed to the Court, leading up to today.

As you may know, I'm really a Supreme Court junkie. I suppose I've always considered it a natural extension of the fact that to an alarming degree, the amount of civil rights I personally enjoy stems directly from the whims of the nine people who happen to be part of that group at any given time. But the thing is, I really think that more people should be Supreme Court junkies. And for the same reason.

I would certainly think that the rulings handed down from the Court over the last couple of years would shine a brilliant spotlight on that fact. Whether you're LGBT, non-religious... or a student, a woman, or just someone who enjoys drinking clean water, there's a Court ruling in just the last two years alone that notably carved out a big chunk of your freedoms. So if you're not really aware of who's currently a Supreme Court Justice -- and whether you would have voted for the people who put them on the bench --  I highly recommend you rectify that. And this documentary series is a good way to do that.

As a Court junkie, there was really nothing in this documentary that was new to me. It certainly didn't go as deep as I personally would have liked. Still, it's very well made, featuring insightful interview subjects throughout. Heading into a national election year... well, it's not that I needed the reminder of what's at stake. It was welcome all the same.

I give Deadlocked a B. If you're looking for a "crash course" on the subject, you'd be hard-pressed to find something else that packs in so much, so clearly, in such a tight package.

2023 in Review -- Television

With each new year, I post about the movies I watched and games I played in the year before. This year, I'm trying out a new addition: a look at the best TV series I saw. Given how many episodes there are of just how many shows are out there, I'm spending a lot more time on those series than on the movies or board games anyway.

Fortunately, that's not just quantity, but often quality. I'm having some difficulty putting together a worthy Top 10 List for 2023 movies -- which is why I haven't posted one yet. (The bottom of the list looks like it will be rounded out with things I'd rate only a B, that will easily get knocked off the list when a see just a handful of the right movies from 2023.) But for the TV shows, every single series in my Top 10 earned an A- or better in my eyes for its 2023 season -- with several more shows also at that level that still weren't good enough to make it in.

My regular posts about TV shows tend to the extremes: I either post about a series one time (no matter how long it runs), or post about every single episode. So, because I don't have many 2023-specific posts to link to, this Top 10 will include some comments on each. And it will take the form of a countdown... because it somehow feels more fitting.

10) Star Trek: Picard. The third and final season was a nostalgic injection straight into the veins of any fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I may be slightly overrating the season overall to give it an A- (though certainly many episodes were at least that good). But I'll slide a thumb on the scales without apology, simply for this now being the final adventure for these characters instead of the horrible Star Trek: Nemesis. Add in that at least half the core cast were given their best scenes in decades of playing these characters, and yes, this deserves a spot on my list.

9) The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. This show was admittedly never as good as it was in its first season. But the crackling dialogue and nimble performances never wavered in quality, and this fifth and final season really honored that by doing right by all the characters. Fans always sensed where the show "had to end," so this season cleverly added a flash-forward structure to confirm that ending, thus highlighting the journey as the essential thing.

8) The Other Two. I don't know many people who watched this Max show... and the few who did seem to think the show jumped the shark in the final season. I agree it did so -- in the truest sense of that overused phrase. The Fonz jetskiing over an actual shark was a delirious departure from reality, which is exactly what The Other Two did in its third and final season. What began as a mostly grounded series about the corrupting influence of fame became hilariously untethered in the final season, with non-celebrities literally invisible to those in the business, an elaborate parody of the movie Pleasantville, a barbed mockery of pretentious multi-night theater productions, a complete skewering of method acting, a dinner in a fake Applebee's, and more. I laughed uncontrollably at every episode; they really did save the best for last.

7) The Fall of the House of Usher. I just blogged about this show a week ago, so you can go read that for the full details. Suffice it to say, I appreciated the way it wove a new and modern story around source material from Edgar Allan Poe, I liked the dark and moody atmosphere, and I loved the performances.

6) Heartstopper. If season 2 of this wonderful show was a step down, it's only because season 1 set the bar so incredibly high. (And because it had stiff competition from another Netflix show putting diverse stories of teenage love front and center. See below.) Heartstopper remains the show I wish had been around when I was younger, though I'm so glad it's at least here now. I can't wait for more stories of Nick and Charlie and their friends.

5) Schmigadoon. The first season of this musical comedy felt like a one-off, made possible only because a bunch of top-tier Broadway talent had Covid-sized openings in their schedules. But not only did they reassemble everyone for a season two -- it turned out to be even better than the first. Part of that may be that I personally have much more familiarity with the musicals from a decade later that formed the basis of season two's parody, but I also think the story took a more sophisticated look at "happily ever after." I'm glad lightning did strike twice here.

4) Shrinking. For the first episode or two, this show was "fine enough filler until Ted Lasso returns." But this show from most of the same creative team soon surpassed Ted Lasso in my eyes (even without accounting for the fact that when we did get the third and final season of Ted Lasso, it was "good but not great" compared to the previous two seasons). I legitimately grew to love every character and performer on Shrinking, as the writing deftly balanced sentiment and humor without becoming cloying or unreal. I'm eagerly awaiting the next season.

3) Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I did blog about this show from week to week, so I don't need to repeat much here. I'll just confirm that yes -- this was even stronger Star Trek to me than the laser-guided nostalgia missile of Star Trek: Picard. I would rate the season overall an A (as, obviously, I would for all the remaining entries on this list).

2) The Last of Us. Before this premiered, I would have said I didn't need a new zombie-based movie or TV show in my life again, ever. But this show was always about its core characters and their relationship first, zombies second, in a way that every zombie story claims to be (and then quickly forgets). Any of about three or four episodes of the first season of The Last of Us could lay legitimate claim to being the best hour of TV of the year. My only hope is that they somehow maintain the quality and don't go the way of all those other zombie tales in their next season.

1) Sex Education. The only minor flaw in the fourth and final season of this show was that "moving on to college" separated the characters I'd come to love, for large chunks of the story. Still, it was a perfect ending to a wonderful show, with episodes 6 and 7 being especially superb. With natural-feeling inclusion of even more diversity than Heartstopper, the show was a breath of fresh air compared to most television. And while the cast will now go their separate ways, it sure seems like we'll be seeing more of them.

A few honorable mentions:

• I watched both The Peripheral and Slow Horses season 2 during calendar year 2023 -- though both were released in 2022. If this were purely a list of the best TV I watched last year, regardless of when it was made, both would have earned a spot in this list.

• Slow Horses released season 3 in 2023 -- but in December, where the holiday crush and a general television backlog kept me from completing it. It's great from what I've seen so far, though. Maybe when I've finished the season, I'll find it takes a spot on this list.

• I said that several other shows would also get an A- from me for their 2023 seasons, even if they weren't quite great enough to crack the top 10. Those would include: 
  

• Ghosts. The best network show I'm watching was especially harmed by the twin Hollywood strikes, but the show will finally be back early this year to resolve their "who got sucked off?" cliffhanger. (Which, if you haven't seen the show, doesn't mean what you might think.)
  

• What We Do in the Shadows. This show has always been good; shockingly so compared to the film that spawned it. Season 5 was no exception. I hope the upcoming final season isn't either.
  

• Harley Quinn. The blink-and-you-miss-it teases at the end of each episode weren't always fun, and I certainly missed having Clayface around in every episode. Still, the show remained hilarious and anarchic in season 4; if anything, it upped the ante in weird risks they took with major DC characters. And a whole episode subplot devoted to Bane learning to make pasta? Sublime.
  

• Silo. Season 1 of this show surpassed the books it was based on in terms of quality. I hope that continues, as season 2 will move into very hard-to-adapt material.
  

Of course, with so much quality TV out there, and the audience more fractured than ever, I'm sure this list will be met with plenty of "did you watch THIS?" responses. I did watch probably more TV than I should, though -- and this was the best of what I caught.

Updated January 19, 2024:

My latest Top 10 list is:

10) The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
9) The Other Two
8) The Fall of the House of Usher
7) Heartstopper
6) Schmigadoon
5) Shrinking
4) Slow Horses
3) Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
2) The Last of Us
1) Sex Education