Enterprise Flashback: Babel One

After hundreds and hundreds of Star Trek episodes across multiple franchises, many pillars of "canon" had become a bit flexible and open to interpretation. But one of the few absolutely inviolable elements of Star Trek lore was that, until the events of the classic episode "Balance of Terror," no one had ever seen what a Romulan looked like. This restriction for the prequel series Enterprise never led its writers to bend over backwards more than they did for the trilogy that began with "Babel One."

When Shran's ship is destroyed by Tellarites, the burgeoning alliance led by the humans threatens to crumble. But when evidence suggests the Tellarites were framed for the attack, the question soon becomes, who does control this powerful, chameleon-like ship that's marauding through space?

If you actually watch "Balance of Terror" (which I've done recently, in my re-watch of the original series), you learn all kinds of things that don't really track with the Romulans of subsequently-produced Star Trek. They're a noble race with overt imperialist tendencies. They have slow-moving ships with powerful weapons. And yes, no one has seen a Romulan and lived to tell the tale. That last detail about the Romulans is practically the only one that sticks.

And "Babel One" really strains credulity when it comes to Romulans. Here, their super-powerful ship has advanced holographic technology that can masquerade as another ship, is too fast for the Enterprise to catch, and can be piloted remotely (and instantly) from light years away (by a member of Daft Punk?). Sure... we'll learn about a few limitations of this technology as this trilogy unspools, but one wonders why the Romulans didn't just persist with this for the next few centuries and become an unstoppable force on the galactic stage.

But if you can get past all of that, you do get a fun story about the possible "End of the Federation before it ever begins." Any episode with Jeffrey Combs is, like, 25% better... and here Shran is back on his heels after the destruction of his own ship. It's a fun new texture for the character, as is seeing him interact more with Talas. For her part, Talas is getting a far better scene partner than she had in her first appearance -- though I don't love that they're beefing up her role here just to "fridge" her for Shran's character development. 

I wouldn't think to cast the physically imposing Brian Thompson as a Romulan... but he's been on the Star Trek contact list for a long time, and it's fun to see him add another alien to his collection. It's also fun to see more insult-charged interactions with the Tellarites, And it's nice to check in on the T'Pol/Trip relationship, as it's confirmed her marriage is officially ended -- with Reed (a bit creepily) encouraging Trip to make a move.

The cliffhanger is an exciting one, leaving Trip and Reed stranded aboard the Romulan ship -- having just discovered there's no crew aboard it. We're also fresh off of a dramatic shoot-out aboard Enterprise... though, as I mentioned, I don't love where it's left Talas. In any case, it definitely leaves you wanting to see what happens "next week."

Other observations:

• Aboard the Romulan ship, Reed and Trip use their magnetic boots to stay anchored to the floor when the ship starts maneuvering wildly in an attempt to injure them. I feel like maybe the force of the movement would like... snap their legs or something.

• The Romulan uniforms in this episode actually come from Star Trek: Nemesis. It saves some money, even if they aren't really period-accurate. 

I struggle with how super-powerful the Romulans are in this episode. But aside from that, "Babel One" is a fun opening to a new trilogy, with lots of espionage and diplomacy. I give it a B.

Star Trek Flashback: This Side of Paradise

In an early episode of Star Trek, fan-favorite character Spock's emotional control was compromised, driving him to tears. But what about a situation that could make Spock smile, or even fall in love? That seems to be the creative spark behind "This Side of Paradise."

The Enterprise checks in on a distant colony, expecting to find none alive due to the previously unknown radiation bombarding the planet. Instead, our heroes find the colonists alive and well -- quite well, with no ailments and almost blissful happiness. This seems to be the work of unusual spores in the environment, whose mysterious effects begin sweeping through the Enterprise crew and driving them to mutiny. Can Kirk resist the call to shirk his duties, and break the hold these spores have over his crew?

In this back half of Star Trek season 1, I've really been struck by how often the show goes on location. Later Star Treks chose to do more on a studio stage -- or perhaps didn't have the proportional budget to go outside as much. In any case, here the show is out on the road again, using Malibu State Park as the idyllic location of this colony -- and making a real meal of the visuals by having Spock dangle euphorically from a picturesque tree branch.

That Spock moment -- and more generally, the idea of an emotionally free "Vulcanian" must surely have been the point this episode worked backward from to reach. Because absent that, this feels uncomfortably close to another very recent episode, "The Return of the Archons." Both episodes feature Enterprise crew members deserting their duties in search of bliss as they interact with a planet of "pod people"-like locals.

If Star Trek is going to repackage the same story again so quickly, at least they make it more character-focused this time around. Besides the spotlight on Spock's romantic relationship (and a nimble performance from Leonard Nimoy), McCoy gets a sprinkling of funny moments ("Just an educated guess – I'd say that man is alive") and an almsot Foghorn Leghorn persona once mind-controlled, and Sulu gets to be a bit of detective (who seems to realize just how bizarre the possibilities might be).

But the episode is most illuminating of Captain Kirk, whose sense of duty is apparently so all-consuming that it somehow allows him to break the hold of the mind-altering spores. Assuming you can just roll with that, it really shows the true core of the character -- not the pursuit of a new woman every episode (that's actually not much of a thing in season one), but of always putting one "lady" first: the Enterprise. 

There's a loosely demarcated moral in the end, the notion that people need an ambition to strive for, or they'll just stagnate and do nothing. There's also a lot of meat for the fans -- from detailed closeups of Enterprise bridge panels, to tidbits about Spock's history, to a showdown between Kirk and Spock. But overall, I find myself wishing there had been a lot more space between this and "Archons." That episode may have had more creative flaws than this one, but the proximity still does it no favors.

Other observations:

• In the future as imagined in the 1960s, we still have appendectomies and tonsillectomies.

• When Kirk is alone on the Enterprise, there's a brief shot of an empty bridge before he exits the turbolift. This shot was used as a background plate for Scott's holodeck visit to the Enterprise in his Next Generation episode.

• There are plenty of stunt performers in Star Trek that look nothing like the actors they replace. But the "Captain Kirk" in this episode looks like a kid. 

I'm sure Spock fans would find it heresy that I give "This Side of Paradise" only a B-. I might even think better of it had I just watched it as a one-off, instead of in sequence so near "The Return of the Archons." But I think the repetitive elements of the story, combined with Kirk's convenient "immunity" to the spores, drags down the story from its full potential.

Boys Will Be Boys

After five seasons and nearly seven years, the series The Boys ended last week. The ultra-violent take on superhero fiction spent 40 episodes constantly trying to top its own level of gore while stuffing in ever more strident social and political satire in an effort to outpace reality. Fundamentally, the show never really changed; if you're aware of it and at some point decided it wasn't for you, this isn't a post trying to change your mind. No, this is simply me throwing my hat into a crowded ring of people on the internet offering their opinion on the final season and episode. (And I'll do my best to avoid specific spoilers.)

I am reminded in many ways of the response to the final season of Game of Thrones. Internet fandom is by no means as animated in hatred of the way The Boys ended as it was about the end of Game of Thrones... but the spirit seems similar. There are actually plenty of people defending the end of The Boys -- and I'm mostly going to be one of them. But comparing the two shows and the response to them, I feel like a few previously amorphous notions are crystalizing for me.

First, it is impossible to end a show whose bread-and-butter is plot twists. You could argue that neither Game of Thrones nor The Boys were a "plot twist" show in the same way as, say, Lost (which has been waiting a long while for others to enter the chat). But both shows were absolutely crafted to shock, one with sudden deaths of major characters, the other with violent set pieces (and, nearer the finish line, sudden deaths of major characters). The thing is, good endings are about giving characters what they deserve. And "what they deserve" can't come out of nowhere; it isn't satisfying if it hasn't been telegraphed.

It seems to me that majority of the outrage around the final season of both Thrones and The Boys came from people who imagined some other fate for a character that really did not fit the ample telegraphing of a fate they deserved. I'm talking Daenerys... or Homelander and Butcher. For some people, it was a shock they didn't like because they refused to see it coming; for others, it was disappointment in not being shocked because they did see it coming. Two sides of the same coin.

I said that was the majority of the outrage. I'd say almost all the rest of it is not actually anger at Game of Thrones or The Boys specifically, but the modern television format as a whole. Thrones had just six episodes in its final season; The Boys had eight. We're a long way from the 20-plus episodes of classic network seasons, or even the common streaming model of 12 or 13 episodes. When a show costs a ton to make, you get 8 episodes a season or less... because it costs a ton to make. And when it's time for an expensive show to end, it almost always means "not enough episodes to get to the natural ending in a natural way."

I actually thought the finale of The Boys was basically pitch-perfect. I'm not holding it up as one of the great finales of television history... but it was a finale that basically served up "the right ending" for every single major character. And that show had a ton of characters. So that's no small feat. That can be true, while at the same time acknowledging that season five as a whole was rather uneven. The pacing sputtered around from too fast to too slow. Major interpersonal conflict that was teed up at the end of season four, seemingly to set the stage for the final run, was instead mended too easily to defer the conflict for the final episode. The writers made a choice to stick with their formula right up until the very end, not just the final season as a whole. And I can understand that choice. I think it made for a satisfying finale at the end of a not-completely-satisfying season... a B+ at the end of maybe a B- or something like that?

Endings are hard. That's why TV viewers seem pretty united around the canon of great ones we've gotten over the years. 

Enterprise Flashback: A Taste of Armageddon

If I'd had to name 10 episodes of classic Star Trek, rapid fire, I doubt that "A Taste of Armageddon" would have come time to mind. But having recently re-watched it, I think it may actually be one of the more important episodes of the show.

Under the direct orders of a visiting ambassador, Enterprise visits the planet Eminiar VII -- despite a regulation declaring it is not to be approached for any reason. There, the crew finds a government embroiled in a centuries-long war with another planet... which has nevertheless maintained society through an agreement to conduct that war virtually. Attacks are registered by computer, and victims dutifully report for disintegration when so ordered. But not the Enterprise, when it is logged as "destroyed" in an "attack." Not if Captain Kirk has anything to say about it. He's determined to end their computerized war and force the people of Eminiar VII to confront the real thing.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the writers of this episode -- Robert Hamner and Gene L. Coon -- had two key points of inspiration for this tale. Nuclear warheads were still a quite-recent invention, allowing for death at a previously unthinkable scale all at the push of a button. Also, the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was newer still, but had already reached the point where the gap had grown miles wide between the bureaucrats prosecuting the war and the people embroiled in it. Roll those ideas up, add the sci-fi twist of computerization, and I think you get "A Taste of Armageddon."

It may seem over-the-top that a world's population would, without protest, consent to suicide whenever told to do so by a computer. Yet I think this episode has only grown more topical in the years since it was made. Now, computers really do play a much larger role in warfare. We have more precise forms of attack that can nevertheless feel as impersonal as the dropping of an atomic bomb. The line between combat drones and a realistic video game is so thin that the human mind may not be equipped to fully appreciate the difference. "A Taste of Armageddon" isn't exactly prescient, but I do think it feels less fanciful today.

Not that every aspect of it holds up brilliantly. The writers are already starting to lean too much on the Vulcan mindmeld as a plot device; it's gone from a dangerous and intimate exchange to a parlor trick Spock does through a wall to overcome a guard. The fact that every name on Eminiar ends with a number feels especially dated. It seems odd for the ships of the Federation to have a General Order they can call by number to exterminate an entire planetary population. And we have yet another overbearing, upholstery-clad bureaucrat wielding power over our heroes to artificially inject jeopardy into the episode. (A "popinjay," Scotty pegs him.)

The tone is also curious. We are talking about mass genocide, at a global level. But there's a lot of humor in this episode. ("There is a multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.") I can't quite tell if this is the show not quite knowing how to balance drama and comedy, or if this is actually part of the toxic allure of a virtual war... you can't really take it seriously.

But beside the searing metaphor, you get many great moments for the characters. Kirk's solution is so quintessentially Kirk. The banter between him and Spock is delightful. Up on the ship, Scotty has one of the first of many great runs taking the captain's chair in Kirk's absence. (And great banter of his own too, with McCoy.) For one of the first times, I felt keenly aware that Star Trek really had figured itself out by this point -- telling the kinds of stories it wanted to tell, actors playing the characters the way we came to know them, and more.

Other observations:

• The lighting of the hallways on Eminiar VII is wild -- real "aren't you glad you bought a color television set" stuff.

• At least this overbearing diplomat actually redeems himself at the end of the episode instead of being a heel to the bitter end.

I really appreciate the story of "A Taste of Armageddon," and the way it uses the regular characters. I'm less certain about its lighter moments, and of the several tropes employed along the way. But overall, this is one of the better episodes of the show... that maybe isn't as well-regarded as some of the most famous? I give it a B.

The Cinematic Adventures of Baby Yoda

The long-running Star Wars franchise added another movie to its ranks this past weekend with The Mandalorian and Grogu. And in my eyes, it's a strong contender for the "most OK" of the lot. Picking up on the three-season long television series The Mandalorian, the movie follows "Mando" on an action-packed adventure with the character people will always call "Baby Yoda."

The Mandalorian and Grogu is an entertaining movie. There are action sequences of seemingly endless natures and scopes. There's a surprisingly deep relationship between a character whose face you almost never see and a character whose face is rubber. Sigourney Weaver seems to be having fun, and it's kind of infectious.

But the fact that this comes after three seasons of television actually makes a huge difference. The Mandalorian has been around for years, bringing a lot of film-caliber action to our living rooms. The line between movies and television has never been thinner or blurrier than it is right now, yet the idea that a movie has to be "bigger and better" than a TV show persists. And so, to amp up The Mandalorian to cinematic size, they basically took what you could imagine as a "fourth season" of the show, and removed nearly all the quiet parts.

For nearly an hour-and-a-half, the movie bounces from one set piece to the next, deliberately leaving the audience with almost no time to catch a breath. Each sequence as an island is well-realized. Delivered as they were in assembly line fashion, I found myself getting a little numb to it all. Which is probably why I felt the best stretch of the movie was the 15-minute "end of act two" centered on Grogu. The pace relaxed, the stakes felt more personal, and character took center stage. Before, of course, an over-the-top final act.

Actually, it's probably not the shadow of three seasons of The Mandalorian looming over this movie for me as much as two seasons of Andor. It's not fair to now compare all of Star Wars to what I'm increasingly convinced is the best Star Wars there's ever been... but there's also some recency bias. Over the past several years, I've watched a lot of different "fine" Star Wars TV shows (and bad ones; looking at you, Boba Fett). I've accepted the tonal shifts between The Acolyte and Skeleton Crew. But when Star Wars is capable of being Andor instead? I understand The Mandalorian and Grogu wasn't remotely trying to be that. But also... most of me says, wistfully, why not?

Trying my best to set all that aside, I'd give The Mandalorian and Grogu a B-. I have a hard time imagining that it could ever be anyone's favorite Star Wars movie... or least favorite. But it's a serviceable action romp.

Dungeons and Aliens

From time to time, I've used reviews of books to shout out their audiobook narrators. And it almost pains me to say it, but Ray Porter no longer rules the roost as the best narrator I've listened to -- not now that I've listened to the first two books of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.

These books seem ubiquitous in the circles I travel in -- but on the off chance you don't know, Dungeon Crawler Carl is a book about an especially strange apocalypse. Abruptly, aliens arrive on Earth, utterly destroying all of civilization and forcing its decimated survivors into a fantasy-based dungeon game with real magic, real monsters, and real peril. And it's all televised like a reality program for a galactic fan base. The titular Carl finds himself woefully ill-equipped for the dungeon, but nevertheless endures with a healthy dose of gallows humor and the help of his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut.

Author Matt Dinniman is one of the latest success stories in self-publishing. Driven into writing full-time by the Covid pandemic, he began churning out books in this series that spread like wildfire and were eventually picked up by a publishing house. We're very recently at eight books and counting.

As I mentioned, I'm two books in, having completed Dungeon Crawler Carl and Carl's Doomsday Scenario. They're both fun and breezy thrill rides. I was perhaps not fully on board after book one. I had slightly mixed feelings about the way Dinniman had so blatantly scavenged his story from other places; had he truly assembled it all in a way that felt original? More importantly, was there really anywhere for the story to go that wasn't going to be repetitive? But those doubts were easily quieted. The book was laugh out loud funny, for sure. And it also did a pretty good job of not just going for laughs, with surprisingly earnest moments contemplating the actual scope of global apocalypse. Might as well try another book and see where things went.

Book two silenced the doubts completely. It's clear that Dinniman realized that the mere premise alone would not sustain a long-running series. I don't know whether he planned the larger sprawl of the story from the beginning and wisely kept things accessible to start out, or improvised his way into something bigger after having fun the first time around. Either way, there's plenty of "there" there.

But then there's the real special sauce of the series: audiobook narrator Jeff Hays. Dinniman himself has said that audiobook sales of this series have far surpassed book physical and e-book sales, and there's absolutely no mystery why. Hays gives an absolute tour de force performance -- about 50 times over as he voices character after character after character, so convincingly that you'd swear this audiobook had a full cast. Hays is picking up the sort of humor Dinniman puts down. I've had a chance to flip through the pages of a physical copy of Dungeon Crawler Carl, and I have to say, some of the jokes are only jokes because of the way Hays delivers them. I absolutely cannot recommend reading Dungeon Crawler Carl when the audiobook version exists.

But the audiobook? That I absolutely can recommend. I'd say book one lands around a B+ for me, and then book two jumped up to an A. I'm fully invested now in finishing the series... my only dilemma being how to pace myself with other audiobooks in between, to not overindulge in the delightful experience. And whatever awards exist for audiobook narration should all go to Jeff Hays for as long as he keeps doing these.

Enterprise Flashback: Observer Effect

The final season of Star Trek: Enterprise was mostly made up of multi-episode story arcs that each delved into key elements of franchise history. But then, in the middle of the season, the show zigged where you might have expected it to zag -- serving up two back-to-back stand-alone episodes. This is the second, "Observer Effect."

A pair of non-corporeal aliens observe the Enterprise crew as they face a crisis. Though they do not want to interfere, they want to be as close to the action as possible... and so they migrate around the ship, possessing different members of the crew with the best vantage points for scientific observation.

This episode is almost a throwback to the sort of self-contained science fiction parable that was classic Star Trek's bread and butter. The only "shout out to the fans" that connects this to Trek history is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it mention that these alien visitors are Organians, the powerful aliens who enforced a peace treaty of sorts between the Federation and the Klingons. It doesn't feel like we're dumping out the Star Trek toy box to play.

No, it's the actors who get to play in this episode. At some point in the hour, every one of the show's seven regular cast members gets to play one of the two aliens. Not only do they get to cut loose and play a new character, they're thrown the challenge of making that character seem consistent across multiple different actors, as the aliens hop bodies.

It's possible that the writers did most of the heavy lifting there. The script was written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, the Trek novelists turned show writers I've mentioned previously. The two "observer" characters are sharply drawn with their own personalities and motivations, and are easy to track as they pass from actor to actor.

It's a clever enough story, and entertaining... and yet watching it actually makes me feel sorry for the actors. Reed and Mayweather haven't really had anything good to do on the show in ages. So while I'm glad that Dominic Keating and Anthony Montgomery finally get to headline an episode, it's a shame that we don't learn anything at all about their characters. Hoshi Sato hasn't figured meaningfully into a story all season; now we actually learn a few new details of her back story... but only in the context where she expects to die. (I feel like the Star Trek: Discovery writers saw this and thought it was a good approach they should run with for a while.)

It's more enjoyable to take a step back and appreciate this episode as a sort of inversion of Star Trek. So many episodes of the franchise turn on our heroes butting up against the Prime Directive of non-interference with alien cultures. Here, an alien culture has the exact same policy, and the consequences harm our heroes. The shoe is on the other foot, in a cheeky way. And the moral summation of the episode dances dangerously close to repudiating the Prime Directive, noting the importance of compassion in considering what is moral and just.

Other observations:

• When they don't actually have to show a movie the characters talk about, they aren't limited to old films in the Paramount archives. (Hence, the reference to The Andromeda Strain here.)

• Trip and Hoshi seem to become closer friends from their trial here. I wish the show had been able to make more use of that in the future.  

This episode kind of works better for me if you imagine it as a one-off of some anthology series. In the context of Star Trek: Enterprise, it's still decent, but foregrounds the way the series doesn't seem to care enough about its characters. I give "Observer Effect" a B.