Hail Mary, Full of Grace

Andy Weir's book Project Hail Mary was one of my favorite reads of the last several years. Ever since the film version was announced, I've been waiting for it with equal parts enthusiasm and nervousness. They couldn't possibly mess it up, right? But were they going to mess it up?

When the movie finally arrived, I was out of town for a ski-trip-turned-board-game-trip. Fortunately, since I'd already read the book, I didn't need to worry about anything being spoiled for me. But I did start to get a bit worried about the rapturous response from audiences. There was no corner of social media where I wouldn't encounter someone raving about how good the movie was. ("Two thumbs down! If you know, you know!") Was the experience going to be totally overhyped for me by the time I finally did see it?

Well, maybe a little. But generally -- nope, the movie actually does manage to capture most of what made the book so enjoyable.

That book/movie, if you're unfamiliar, is the story of Ryland Grace, who wakes up aboard a spaceship that's traveled to another star. As his memories of how he got there slowly return, he tries to learn why this star is immune to a contagion that's gradually killing our own sun and threatening all life on Earth. What the movie campaign eagerly spoils (that talk of the book avoided) is that Grace has an unlikely ally on his mission -- an alien creature named Rocky from another star similarly affected. The two first learn to communicate, and then forge a deep friendship as they work together to save their planets.

It's tempting to become mired in what Project Hail Mary loses in transition from page to screen. To forge a potential blockbuster with broad appeal (something the filmmakers achieved!), they definitely sand down the sharp edges of all the science talk -- that's just not cinematic enough. To bring down the run time, most of the "slow progress" moments of the book are transformed into montages or sudden "eureka!" moments. (Not that the movie is "short," clocking in at 2 hours, 36 minutes.) But if you want all of that, the book still exists. Indeed, the movie has made me seriously consider going back to it soon.

And I mean that as nothing but a compliment. Because I really didn't receive the movie as some "pale shadow of the book," but rather as a potent reminder of everything I loved about the book. When you step back and think about it, the degree of difficulty here was impossibly high.

Few movies rely so much on the performance of a single actor. And not since Tom Hanks and Cast Away have so many people appreciated the ability of such a single actor to develop chemistry with the least likely of screen partners. The filmmakers' decision to realize Rocky through puppetry instead of CG was crucial. Their much-discussed choice to keep the voice performance of the lead puppeteer (rather than stunt cast a new voice-over) was alchemy. And Ryan Gosling is that good here. He's carrying the movie so well that you almost don't feel like he is carrying the movie; Project Hail Mary feels like a two-hander that just happens to have an unusual second character.

And before I move away from character and casting, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that Sandra Hüller is also very strong as Eva Stratt, head of Earth's planet-saving efforts. Hüller's performance actually made me appreciate the character more than the book, as she shades the bureaucratic martinet with just enough humanity and dry humor to make an important turn in the story hit harder.

The last time this particular screen writer, Drew Goddard, adapted an Andy Weir book, the result was The Martian. That was an excellent movie... which laughably won the Golden Globe for "Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy" simply because science fiction wasn't (probably still isn't) respected enough to compete in the Drama category. But Goddard's work here on Project Hail Mary, along with the direction by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, really does feel more legitimately comedic. This adaptation may have had to jettison some of the hard science, but it clung tightly to the elements of humor.

Finally, a few notes in praise of the filmmaking. Lord and Miller chose to do this movie using practical effects and in-camera effects as much as possible, and it's absolutely the right decision. In just the post-production time since the movie was filmed, the rise of AI slop has made most of us more savvy than ever to the artificial look of unreal images. And while talented Hollywood effects artists can, of course, achieve visuals much better than said slop, there's still at least a subconscious level on which most viewers reject something they know is completely digital. I already mentioned the decision to render Rocky through puppetry and not computers, but it goes beyond that. The "make it work somehow" ethos of the physical approach dovetails perfectly with the message of the story.

I also appreciated the music. The score by Daniel Pemberton shifted nimbly to support both humor and drama, and some notable "needle drops" certainly paid off well. (I might even say the one we get by The Beatles could be in the running for the most perfectly curated and placed Beatles track used in any movie.)

So... "thumbs down?" (If you know, you know.) Yeah. I'll give Project Hail Mary an A-, probably shaving a bit only for my total enjoyment of the source material.

Redder Late Than Never?

Months ago, when my friends and I locked in a spring break getaway to Steamboat Springs, I might have imagined a few ski days in fresh mountain snow. But by the time the trip arrived, Colorado (and much of the west) was ending a near-record year of low snowfall since recording began -- with snowpack actually at the record low. The daytime temperature ranged between 65 and 80 degrees for the entire week. Over the course of that week, the ski resort went from over 100 open runs to just over 40, with the only way down to the base being to hop back on the gondola.

So for me, there was no skiing. But we checked out the new scenario at the great local escape room, The Crooked Key, enjoyed some great food and drink, and played lots and lots of board games. I hope to talk about some of those in the days and weeks ahead.

I'll start with a game that may have just been rescued from a crack it fell through several years ago. I brought The Red Cathedral back from a Gen Con some time ago, whereupon my group played it once and then completely lost track of it amid new releases and persistent favorites. But it was a great choice to take on this trip -- a crunchier game in a small box -- and I got to revisit it more than once on the trip.

Players take on the role of builders working to construct Saint Basil's Cathedral under the watchful eye of the tsar. A pattern of cards outlines the base, towers, and spires of the cathedral, with players sometimes using their turn to take ownership of a card -- and responsibility to provide the materials to build it.

Eight actions are arrayed in a circle around a central board. On most of your turns, you will select one of these actions by choosing one of five dice. Move the chosen die clockwise by the number of pips it shows, and the place you land will determine the action you take. But also, the number of dice on the space you land determines the strength of the action. So the game often asks you to weigh getting the thing you want most right now against changing your plans to take advantage of a dice cluster that's just emerged. These clusters don't last long, you see; after each action, the player re-rolls all the dice on the space they used, scrambling the options for the next player.

There are other wrinkles in the mix, such as bonus actions you can take on the different spaces, and extra resources you can collect if you've paid in advance to get a bonus for moving a die of a specific color. The most significant wrinkle is the limited number of "ornamentations" you can build during the game -- on any completed section of the cathedral. The more jewels you earn and set into an ornamentation, the more points it's worth immediately, pushing you to take the time to earn all the jewels you can. But where the ornamentations are placed figures large in endgame scoring, pushing you to move as quickly as you can.

At endgame, each tower of the cathedral is assigned a point value, 2 points for each of its completed sections, plus 1 point for each "ornamentation" that players have built there during the game. Those same sections and ornamentations each provide one point of "control" for the player who built them, with the player who did the most scoring the tower's full value, the second most getting half, and the third getting half of that. So a well-placed ornamentation can swing the ownership of a valuable tower your way.

After replaying The Red Cathedral a couple of times, I couldn't quite understand how it had slipped off our radar years ago. This game seems right at the center of what my group enjoys. The rules set is right about our speed, the play time a compact "hour or less" for experienced gamers, and the number of decisions it asks of you throughout satisfying. I guess I must have brought something else really good back from that particular Gen Con years ago.

I give The Red Cathedral a B+. I suspect that this time around, it may remain in the mix a while. 

Starfleet Academy: Rubincon

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy concluded its first season with an episode meant to make you ask, "is there a typo in the episode's title?" Let's talk about "Rubincon."

Nus Braka captures Captain Ake, then proceeds to put her and the Federation on trial -- with Anisha Mir serving as judge. Meanwhile, Jett Reno and the cadets race to disable the weapons Nus Braka has used to mine the Federation border.

I noted about the previous episode that the short 10-episode season of Starfleet Academy didn't seem like enough time to show us how the characters had grown as close as the story required. That "not enough time" issue hangs over this finale too, as more time was also needed to show Caleb Mir's growing relationship to Starfleet. This entire episode builds to a poignant Caleb monologue, where he must convince his mother not only that Starfleet isn't the force for evil she's known it to be, but that it was key in making him the man he's become. Because Sandro Rosta delivers the speech well (and Tatiana Maslany is the one reacting to it), the moment does work. Yet, to borrow the legal parlance of this episode, I feel like it assumes facts not in evidence from the season as a whole.

And on the subject of that trial -- I find myself very divided about it. There's a long tradition of great Star Trek legal episodes, in which characters deliver lofty speeches and score moral points. I get why Starfleet Academy wants to take a run at that. But then... this isn't actually anything like a real trial. Nus Braka wouldn't conduct one, of course; he'd do exactly what he does here and stage an opportunity to grandstand. But it's so "not a trial" that Captain Ake doesn't even bother to put up any kind of defense. She has arguments, but doesn't even raise them until the "verdict" has been delivered and Caleb has arrived on scene. So to the extent this episode "promises" a trial at all, I feel like it doesn't deliver -- and that left me feeling a little unsatisfied.

But I felt the rest of the episode offered enough pleasures to make up for that. Give me "Captain Jett Reno" all day, every day. I never imagined we'd get to see Tig Notaro in the captain's chair -- never mind so much, and all while never taking off the teacher's hat. I thought all of Reno's material in this episode was well written, and perfectly delivered by Notaro. There's just a solid link there, with the writers knowing how to write for her, and performer in turn making the words fit perfectly.

I thought the "degree of difficulty" for Anisha Mir was higher this episode, more worthy of what Tatiana Maslany can do. Specifically, most of her key scenes in this episode were reactive. She had to listen to Nus Braka and Nahla Ake trade barbs, listen to her son's impassioned plea... all of her most important moments of the episode had no dialogue. But I still felt a whirl of emotion emanating from her character. And I appreciated that she was not so easily won over; there were no magic words Ake could say that would do it. 

I gotta say, I don't understand why or how the Doctor, of all people, would suddenly understand the way to stabilize a dangerous particle that has stumped scientists for centuries. But work past the conceit, and I liked how it set up Sam to save the day. I also liked how it set up Genesis to be the one to help Sam reconcile her feelings about the two different lives she's led. (Though again, I would have wished for more episodes to showcase more of her differences since returning from her home planet.)

I could have wished for more of the characters to figure more centrally in the plot. (Jay-Den, Darem, and Lura Thok didn't get much to do.) But at least we know they'll have another chance next season; this wasn't the final Starfleet Academy episode, period. I'd say "Rubincon" landed around a B... but overall, I found season one of this show to be engaging. I'll be ready for more whenever season two arrives.

Enterprise Flashback: The Augments

Star Trek: Enterprise concluded the first three-episode arc of its fourth season with "The Augments."

As the Augments escalate their attacks, Arik Soong realizes the extent of Malik's depravity and commits to working against him. Can Soong get back to Enterprise and convince Archer of his intentions? And can they actually stop these genetically enhanced foes before they strike a Klingon world and provoke an all-out war?

I talked a little in my last review about how this Augment story line was a classic three-act story arc for Arik Soong. There's not much left to say there. There's not much to say generally, in fact. This last hour basically puts the pedal to the floor on big action with big stakes. It does briefly poke at one moral quandary -- whether it's right for Soong to further alter the DNA of the Augment embryos to reduce their aggression, changing their nature. It's interesting to put a kind of "born this way" argument in the mouth of Malik, who is 100% villain at this point. But the audience isn't made to think about it too deeply. With the commercials taken out, we're in the final act of a two-hour action movie here.

But there are still a few quiet moments. Soong tries one last time to appeal to Malik, who has become utterly disillusioned with his "father." Trip and T'Pol talk about her recent marriage, and the star-crossed nature of a human/Vulcan relationship. Mostly though, we get a wide variety of action.

It starts immediately with the daring rescue of Archer from space. (The CG isn't great, but the idea of this action set piece certainly is.) Along the way, Malik puts Archer in a classic hero's dilemma -- to catch the baddie or save the innocent -- when he dumps a Denobulan ship into a gas giant. There's cloak and dagger, as Persis smuggles Soong off the Augment ship, and Enterprise bluffs a Klingon ship into allowing them passage through Klingon space. Malik and Persis get into a climactic knife fight (in perhaps the fourth or fifth moment you're made to think, "oh, now Malik has gone full pyscho"). Enterprise gets into a scrape with a Klingon ship and uses its grappler of all things to escape.

The episode pays plenty of fun homage to franchise history. The talk of whether Khan's lost ship is fact or myth is a fun argument, as are explicit "rhymes" in the story, like a burned Malik crawling around the wreckage of his defeated ship to set a self-destruct. But the episode also name-checks Insurrection's Briar Patch, and concludes with a playful nod to Soong's new interest in cybernetics, which he imagines will yield results "in a generation or two."

Other observations:

• There's fun makeup on Archer after he's beamed out of the vacuum of space. 

• The sequencing of action seems off to me in the middle of this episode. When Enterprise disguises itself as a Klingon ship, then encounters the Augments first, I found myself asking "what was the point of that? The Augments are going to treat any other ship as hostile." It's only later, when Enterprise encounters an actual Klingon ship in its territory, that the point of the ruse is made crystal clear.

• Enterprise's determination not to use its characters at all is so frustrating sometimes. Even Uhura got to say "hailing frequencies open" on the regular. At one moment in this episode, when Mayweather is issued an order, he doesn't even get a line of dialogue to acknowledge it.

• By this point, even Reed is aware of his own shooting accuracy. When Enterprise has to shoot down the Augments' weapon before it hits the Klingon planet, Reed fires three torpedoes. (And only hits on the third shot.)

• Malik is so tough, you have to shoot a "Death Becomes Her" style hole in him to finally take him out. 

• Even though Enterprise saves the Klingon colony, Klingons are always itching for a fight. Why wouldn't they still use this incident as provocation for war?

There's something about the conclusion here that feels awfully tidy. Maybe it's just that an entire 20+ episode season of Xindi stuff has conditioned me not to expect wrap ups to come so quickly. Still, even if it's tidy, the episode is fun. I give "The Augments" a B.

Starfleet Academy: 300th Night

I'm a bit late getting to my thoughts about last week's episode of Starfleet Academy, in part because it was a clear "part one" in need of a "part two" for full context. Ah... but if I wait to actually watch part two before I write about part one, I'll lose the purity of my current uncertainty about it. So here we go, my "still processing" thoughts about "300th Night."

As a year at the Academy winds down and cadets are bound for Betazed for the dedication of the Federation's new government seat, Caleb (with help from Sam) is finally able to retrieve coded messages from his mother, Anisha. But with her calling for a meeting outside Federation space -- whose borders are about to be closed due to a credible threat from Nus Braka -- the only way Caleb can get there is to steal a shuttlecraft. And Caleb's Academy friends aren't about to let him go it alone. As they proceed to their rendezous, Chancellor Ake takes a skeleton crew on a rescue mission. But all of them may end up on the wrong side of the border when Nus Braka springs his trap.

I think the biggest area of uncertainty for me in this story is simply that it doesn't feel like we've gotten enough Starfleet Academy yet for it to fully land. I understand that 10-episode seasons are all Star Trek in the streaming age can give us now; gone are the 20+ episode seasons of the last generation. And I'll be the first to admit that quantity over quality wasn't always a trade that worked in favor of some of those past series.

But the issue is, this episode asks us to believe in friendships that have built up over a year at school -- and it simply doesn't feel like even a fraction of that time has gone by. Sure, they've been telling us about the passage of time all season, giving us a mid-semester break, and saying very explicitly here that it's been 300 days that our cadets have been at school. But there just haven't been enough episodes to show, not tell, this passage of time. Not enough episodes that feel like they unfold over a course of weeks or months. Not enough episodes, period. So when Sam, Genesis, and (a more reluctant) Darem all throw in to help Caleb on his "mission to Mom," it's much more the performances and chemistry of the actors that sell their loyalty than the situation or script itself. 

Still... if you just get on board, the ensuing adventure is quite fun. They travel to an alien world that is rendered for the audience in rather elaborate and effective detail. And little time is wasted in finding Mom, bringing Tatiana Maslany back onto our screens. Of course, having seen Orphan Black, I'll pretty much always think that every movie or TV show she appears in is underusing her considerable talents, but she still elevates the story as she gradually realizes how her son her changed -- particularly in the past year.

It's kind of wild to me that another episode omits Lura Thok. (Is she not a main character on this show?) And I'll admit -- until we saw Darem "glitter barf" again, I wasn't entirely sure whether the first time really happened, or it was just Sam's perspective on what happened. But despite those couple of goofy choices, I found this episode overall to be a pretty rousing action-adventure.

But, like I said at the top... also an incomplete one. I'd call it a solid B. In the season one finale, I'm hoping for an episode that uses all the characters effectively in some way, like the premiere did. I'm expecting a big scene between Holly Hunter and Tatiana Maslany, and I hope it stuns me. I'm sure I'll get a big Paul Giamatti performance. But also -- with the show already set for a second season, I don't have to pin all my hopes on just the next episode to satisfy. 

Enterprise Flashback: Cold Station 12

When last we left the Enterprise crew, they'd been bested by a group of genetically engineered "Augments," aided by the devious Arik Soong. Fans tuning in for the conclusion were surprised, however: "Cold Station 12" turned out to be a continuation.

Soong and the Augments set their sights on a biological research station where genetically enhanced embyros are kept in storage. Enterprise may have help in stopping them, if Archer can get through to Udar, a "defective" Augment with limited gifts. But there's also a personal stake in the confrontation -- Phlox's longtime friend Dr. Lucas works on the station and is directly in harm's way.

With the decision having been made to tell this story over three episodes, it shouldn't be surprising that it essentially follows a three-act structure. What's perhaps more surprising is that this middle "act" suggests that the main character of the story is Arik Soong. At least, he's the character with the conventional story arc. Part one positioned him as a villain and the "smartest person in the room." Now in part two, he learns he's neither of those things; Malik is plotting deeds more clever and dastardly than Soong could conceive or condone. This episode sets the stage for Soong to turn against his "children" in the final act. 

I get it, Brent Spiner is Star Trek royalty, and they wanted to give him a juicy part to play. But that does come at the expense of other characters. I think the story line that suffers most is that of Udar, the non-augmented Augment. We don't get any sense of why he would be loyal to the siblings who teased and abandoned him. That in turn makes it less impressive when Archer talks him into turning good. (All it takes is some info on biological relatives he's never known?) Worse still, Udar doesn't really do much once he decides to help our heroes... before getting coldly executed by Malik. I suppose this is the skeleton of a story arc. There just isn't enough meat on the bones to be convincing.

Maybe that time could have been claimed by taking out some of the dull scheming between Malik and Persis. This is "sexposition" before Game of Thrones caused the zeitgeist to coin the term. But it can only be so sexy on network TV, and it doesn't do nearly as much to reveal Malik's psychopathy as his actions elsewhere in the episode. (Most of his plans go straight to "then we kill a bunch of people," which Soong has to regularly redirect.) 

But there are plenty of nice moments sprinkled throughout. There's talk about the consequences of banning genetically research -- which, given the time this episode was made, was probably intended as a proxy for stem cell research. Genetic manipulation might have saved Archer's father from a disease... that sounds a lot like a proxy for dementia. But the issue isn't painted as clearly black and white. Because human society's technological reach exceeded its moral grasp, we're told over 30 million people died in the Eugenics War.

Elsewhere in the episode -- when we finally get to meet Phlox's oft-talked-about friend Dr. Lucas, it's delightful to find that he's played by veteran character actor Richard Riehle. (You've seen him in many places. But for better or worse, he's probably best known as the "Jump to Conclusions Mat" guy from Office Space.) Not only does the episode benefit from latent affection we probably have for this actor, but John Billingsley does what he does so well as Phlox, making us feel for Lucas through the strong feelings he expresses. When Phlox's life is threatened, we TV viewers of course know that he isn't going to die... but we don't have to believe he will for Lucas' reaction to land.

The episode ends with a literal ticking clock: a countdown until every lethal pathogen stored on the station is released to kill all our heroes left aboard. It's mystifying why Archer is the one sent up a ladder to stop it (right after having caught the beating of his life from Malik). But it's a fun cliff to hang from until next week.

Other observations:

• Even the Augments' underwear has tastefully ripped holes in it. Although they're clearly not wearing it under their actual clothes, or we'd see it through the, you know, tastefully ripped holes.

• The FX shot of stored embryos inside Cold Station 12 is an unusually unconvincing visual effect for the series.

• As the Augments flee in a shuttle, Enterprise fires some torpedoes and misses. Reed's not at the trigger. So... maybe it's not that Reed sucks as his job? Maybe it's the ship?

I wish this episode budgeted its run time a little better. But there's still enough I like about "Cold Station 12" to give it a B.

Enterprise Flashback: Borderland

After a season-long story arc, a season opening two-parter, and an epilogue to wrap it all up, the time had finally come for Star Trek: Enterprise to "get back to normal." But it had been so long, what even was normal for the show anymore? Star Trek fans would find out with "Borderland."

A group of "Augments" -- genetically-enhanced humans -- is stirring up trouble at the edge of the Klingon Empire and Orion Syndicate territory. Their actions threaten to destabilize the region and incite war. But how can these super-powerful beings be stopped? For that, Enterprise must turn to the unethical scientist who raised the Augments as children, Dr. Arik Soong.

The very first episode of Enterprise set the stage for an intriguing series: humans were stepping onto the interstellar stage for the first time. They were closely monitored by skeptical Vulcans, but they deftly managed their first encounter with the Klingons. Set aside the gobbledygook of the Temporal Cold War, and the prurient titillation of the decon chamber, and you could see the promise being offered by a "Star Trek prequel series." How did we get from there to the more distant future fans knew?

In my eyes, Enterprise stopped being about that almost immediately. Instead of charting a course for the future as we knew it, the show became a less interesting repetition of previous Star Trek series. The only real nod to it being a prequel was that everything was less polished -- the technology was less evolved, and the characters less intelligent. There are many theories about why the series steadily lost viewers. I offer this one: who wants to watch "Star Trek, but everything and everyone is dumber?"

Writer Manny Coto might not have been thinking in exactly those terms -- but when he was put in charge of the series for season four, he clearly had the same sense that Enterprise wasn't fulfilling its prequel promise. He had a vision for what the show should be like: constantly mining the franchise's rich history of hundreds of episodes for intriguing and underexplored ideas, and developing them in "mini-arcs" of two- and three-part episodes. More simply: let's dump out the Star Trek toy box and start playing.

"Borderland" is the first episode of this new format. And while I won't claim that it's instantly a top five episode of the series, I think it does immediately feel like "what the show should have been like all along." I understand, they were trying to attract new fans to Star Trek. So maybe the show never could have been this from the beginning. I'm certainly not the person who can imagine what it's like to watch this episode without knowing who Klingons or Orions are, grasping what Augments are and how they relate to one of the most beloved Star Trek movies, or understanding that Arik Soong is supposed to be the great-(times-several)-grandfather of the creator of a fan favorite android. Is "Borderland" asking a Marvel Cinematic Universe level of "required reading" to be enjoyable?

Maybe. But I've done the reading.

I'm perfectly situated to pick up everything this episode is putting down. I already know that Brent Spiner is at his best when getting to cut loose and play any character other than Data, so I'm here for his take on the villainous narcissist Arik Soong. He's so irreverent, he even makes fun of some of the deficiencies of Star Trek: Enterprise -- what a non-character Reed is, how you can just go to the Trip/T'Pol relationship for a cheap thrill, how whatever is happening with the Augments seems far more Enterprise than anything happening aboard Enterprise.

Well... on that last point, I maybe don't quite agree. A lot of screen time this episode is given to squabbling among the Augments, which amounts to a lot of plotting and backstabbing (and so much villain monologuing) between characters we don't know. The actors in these roles are all cast for their looks. (And to be clear, I mean their model-like appearance, not for a match to the character names that are meant to imply a lineage with Khan.) Alec Newman, who plays Malik, is arguably the most recognizable -- at least, if you remember that there was a Dune TV mini-series in between the version David Lynch disowned and the modern Denis Villeneuve take. But Brent Spiner is in no danger of having to share a spotlight with any other actors in this story; the Augments can all just look good in their so-tastefully ripped outfits.

They can also kick some ass. With Wrath of Khan being the memorable "Augment" story in Star Trek, and with the conflict there being more psychological than physical, it's easy to forget that these guys are basically supposed to be Superman without the flying and laser eyes. So it's great fun watching two Augments take down the entire crew of a Klingon ship. Or watching Malik threaten Archer in slow detail because he knows that no one is fast enough to stop him. These Augments may not be the most charismatic villains in Star Trek, but they do feel menacing.

Along the way, there's a side trip into an Orion slave den -- a setting that holds an outsized position in classic Trek lore. It's entertaining to see professional wrestler The Big Show manhandle T'Pol, and even more entertaining to watch the big action set piece that follows. There are great moments of T'Pol getting even with her captors, Archer outsmarting Soong with a set of magnetic handcuffs, and more. I keep saying it: this kind of action stuff is what Enterprise is best at.

Other observation:

• J.G. Hertzler appears too briefly at the start of this episode as a Klingon. At first, I thought it was weird to cast such a fan favorite Trek actor in such a minor role. Then I decided that actually, who better than Hertzler to help kick off this new, past-honoring incarnation of the series? 

• Star Trek has a long history of luxuriating in "spacedock launch" sequences set to triumphant music. It's a bit weird how late the music begins in this one.

• T'Pol now sports Starfleet pips and an Enterprise arm patch. Of course, there's no way they're going to switch her to one of those jumpsuit uniforms.

• In the brig scene where Archer confronts Soong, I found the editing to be distracting. Most of the cuts are on "the other side of the glass" from the person speaking, so most of the dialogue in the scene is oddly processed and muffled.

I don't know that there's any kind of moral to "Borderland." And not every part of it works. But it is a lot of fun. It's a well-planted flag to mark this new (final) era of the series. I give it a B.