Fine Fellow

I've noted before that "bingeing" isn't really part of my television diet; I tend to watch a series "one episode a week" (at best), which often leaves me behind the pop culture curve. But there are some series I'd wager no one binge-watches, owing to the heavy themes at play that all but demand the viewer takes a break between installments. I recently finished a mini-series like that, Fellow Travelers.

Based on the novel by Thomas Mallon, Fellow Travelers is the decades-spanning, complicated romance story of Hawkins Fuller and Timothy Laughlin. The two men meet in Washington D.C. in the 1950s, a time and place where staying carefully in the closet is a matter of survival. We get that stage of their lives alternating with flash-forwards to the 1980s, when Tim is dying of AIDS and Hawkins flies across the country (and away from his wife and family) to see him. Over the course of eight episodes, both stories move in parallel, along with (ultimately) glimpses of the couple's separations and reunions throughout the 60s and 70s.

Make no mistake, Fellow Travelers is a "hard watch." This is a story about how poorly this world treated gays and lesbians, and even how poorly this led them to treat each other. There's very little uplifting "within the text"; you have to compare the time frame depicted to where things stand now to find any sense of inspiration. Fellow Travelers nonetheless feels like a topical story, in light of the ways that not everyone under the LGBT+ umbrella has been embraced as well.

Along the way, the mini-series makes a number of other potent points. It shows, for example, how it can take only one person in the "right" place to cause real harm: the real-world history of Senator Joseph McCarthy is woven throughout the 1950s story line. It shows how being closed off ("closeted" specifically, yes, but more generally) can lead to behavior both self-destructive and damaging to those around you. It also demonstrates that no amount of fairy tale "meant for each other" can overcome two people not being ready for each other at the same time and place.

Even the subplots of Fellow Travelers are emotionally heavy. The story also tracks another couple, Marcus and Frankie, as they navigate a relationship of their own amidst additional issues of racism,  gender non-conformity, and activism. It follows Lucy, the eventual wife of Hawkins, who gradually comes to understands the true nature of her husband and their relationship. For a time, it even tracks the relationship between two men who work for Senator McCarthy, using their position to "do unto others" as they absolutely would never have "done unto them."

The air of this story is so thick that even the romantic moments, which might be a prurient distraction in many other tragic love stories, aren't especially light. That said, Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, who star as "Hawk" and Tim, are excellent throughout this series, both individually and as a screen couple. So are Jelani Alladin and Noah J. Ricketts as Marcus and Frankie; and Allison Williams makes the character of Lucy more interesting, I think, than the story itself seems to be interested in her. All five of these actors play their characters believably in four different decades, and garner audience sympathy in key moments of the story.

I give Fellow Travelers a B+. It was rarely the show I "wanted" to watch (and never the show I "enjoyed" watching), but I found it powerful and moving, and well worth it.

Discovery: Face the Strange

One of Star Trek: Discovery's best episodes to date (certainly one of its most memorable early episodes) was the time-looping adventure "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad." Now, as the series is even closer to its ending than that episode was to its beginning, we get a new time-hopping adventure in "Face the Strange."

Moll and L'ak use a Krenim "time bug" to lock Discovery in a twisted time loop where the ship hops back and forth to different points in its own history. But there is a way out: Stamets is aware of the time jumps, thanks to the tardigrade DNA mingled with his own. And by coincidentally attempting to use the transporter during the initial attack, Burnham and Rayner are also manifesting in each time frame, and can work with Stamets to undo the damage.

This episode arrived just as I was posting my review of a Star Trek: Voyager episode it resembles quite a bit: "Shattered." Both episodes allow the show to visit its own "greatest hit" episodes from the past (and both arrive in the final seasons of their series). Both episodes -- to different degrees -- espouse a moral along the lines of "our relationships are what makes us strong." Shocked as I am to say so, though, I feel the Voyager episode was actually the (slightly) stronger take on this story.

I mentioned in reviewing "Shattered" that Voyager (to me) didn't have as many standout "greatest hits" episodes to revisit as other Star Trek series might. That problem is even more pronounced for Discovery. First, they've always been about season-long story arcs, and so they simply don't have many individual "memorable episodes." Second, Discovery has a tendency to raise the stakes so high with such regularity that -- at least in retrospect -- there isn't a lot of differentiation between their jeopardies. "Flying through a timestream in pursuit of the Red Angel" didn't look or feel much different from "the ship is under attack by Osyrra" as we revisited three-minute snippets of both.

But Discovery has also always been a show where the characters are very forthright with their emotions, as they truly change and grow. That was the element that made "Face the Strange" an enjoyable episode. It was great to highlight just how far Burnham has come over five seasons, by showing us the Burnham of the series' opening episodes -- and so much like Discovery to give us both the emotional subtext-made-text of that, and give us a visceral fist fight between past and present Burnhams. (And I would be remiss not to mention another Discovery hallmark: being the best-looking Star Trek series to date. The visual effects of the Burnham-vs-Burnham fight were top-notch.)

Signs of change were peppered all over the episode in ways big and small. There was the big moment where Burnham had to confront and persuade Airiam, of course. But also, we got to see just how much more nervous Tilly was in the beginning, and have Stamets comment on just how irritable he used to be. And of course, Rayner was in the middle of his own journey of change, as he experienced the benefits of trust among a close-knit crew.

So the Discovery episode ends up begin good in my eyes for embracing the uniquely "Discovery" tone to this perhaps familiar story. From there, it winds up being a touch less enjoyable than the Voyager version of the same thing because of what it leaves out -- namely, appearances of other characters from earlier seasons. I understand you're not going to get Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh to show up again for one scene; nor would Jason Isaacs likely want to return to Canada for one day of filming not central to a story. Still, I felt the absence of Georgiou and Lorca. You can't even give us a scene with Ash Tyler? How about Christopher Pike? Spock? (Anson Mount and Ethan Peck are still employed by the Star Trek industrial complex.) Was it required to give Doug Jones the week off? (Saru has gone through more changes from the first episode that most characters. No acknowledgement of that?)

I give "Face the Strange" a B. Looking back on "the road from there to here" is a natural thing for a show to do in its final season. Star Trek: Discovery had some fun with that, though I feel it could have done more.

Voyager Flashback: Shattered

Notoriously, one of the worst episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation was the made-on-the-cheap clip show "Shades of Gray." But revisiting the "greatest hits" of a TV series' past doesn't have to be terrible. Star Trek: Voyager found a way to make that clever indeed with "Shattered."

A temporal distortion splits Voyager into a dozen different time frames, and only Chakotay is free to pass between them. His efforts to unify and restore the ship are challenged by trials from the ship's adventurous history, including a Janeway who doesn't yet know him, a Kazon takeover, the threat of macroviruses, Tom Paris' holodeck characters, and more.

"Shattered" is basically pure adventure, and purely for the fans, though it's not wholly without moral quandary -- as a "pre-Caretaker" Janeway is faced with the classic theoretical dilemma: "if you had to do it all over again, would you?" (She really does have to be convinced that her future self hasn't made a series of dreadful mistakes.) This is the very rare Chakotay-centric episode that's actually good -- and even works best because it's him and not some other character, as he is truly the best option to struggle in trying to persuade a skeptical Captain Janeway to help.

The episode gets great boosts from both the actors and the production team. Subtle performance shifts by Robert Picardo and Kate Mulgrew really sell you on them playing earlier versions of their characters. Great visual effects appear throughout, including the weird aging distortion on Chakotay's face, or what passing through a time rift looks like. Blending performance and production: Jeri Ryan endures the Borg makeup again to take us back to her character's first appearance.

The fact that this comes in the seventh and final season of Voyager, rather than at the end of two generally weak Next Generation seasons (as "Shades of Gray" did), helps a lot to provide a wide variety of past episodes for this story to time travel back to. Just hearing Chakotay describe some of Voyager's adventures, and seeing Janeway's dumb-founded reaction, is enough to get you smiling. (In one part of the ship, Chakotay can't even be sure which of two different times the entire crew was knocked out they're actually in.) But it isn't all just fun and games, and it isn't all just about the past -- two of the more effective scenes involve an "alternate present" death of Tuvok, and an encounter with "possible future" versions of Naomi Wildman and Icheb

But the thing about a "greatest hits" episode is that it helps if you actually have great hits. Reach into a figurative bag and pull out an episode of Star Trek: Voyager at random, and chances are you're going to get a decent episode -- arguably better than the average you'd pull from a Star Trek: The Next Generation bag. But nowhere in the Voyager bag will you find a "Darmok," "The Inner Light, "A Measure of a Man," etc. Sure, none of those episodes I just named would work well in the context of a "part of the Enterprise has time-slipped back to when this episode was happening" story. But I think you take my point: I'm excited by the concept of "Shattered" overall, yet I'm not eager to revisit any one past episode in particular via that concept.

Other observations:

• Chakotay hides his liquor in the one of only two rooms on the entire ship where a child sleeps.

• Janeway's fiancé gave her a copy of Dante's Inferno as an engagement gift? Weird subtext on that.

• One of the unwritten rules of this scenario makes no sense from a story perspective, but perfect sense from a production perspective: each character appears in only one of the fractured time frames. (Isn't it just as likely that one person could appear in any number of time frames on the ship?)

• Dozens of time frames, no Kes. (But yeah, this also makes sense from a production perspective.)

• The resolution has one of the nitpicks you can level at most time travel stories. When time is restored and Chakotay has only seconds to prevent the ship from being split, there's no particular reason he has to be successful this time; he would seem to have as many attempts/cycles at this as required. 

• It's a bit funny, but Star Trek: Lower Decks did an episode that in many ways felt like this one. In showing Voyager turned into a museum, with different exhibits of "different episodes" installed throughout, "Twovix" is kinda-sorta this exact episode without the sci-fi conceit.
  

"Shattered" is a fun idea and enjoyable to watch. But essentially, a chef is only as good as their ingredients, and so "Shattered" can't be any better than the various episodes it revisits. I give it a B+.

Slice of Cake (and Fionna)

A few months back, I wrote about the animated series Adventure Time. Over the course of 10 seasons and nearly 300 episodes, the show presented the endlessly entertaining exploits of Jake the Dog and Finn the Human through the fantasy world of Ooo, picking up surprising pathos and stakes along the journey.

A hallmark of Adventure Time was the truly weird subplots it would indulge and allow to become the main plot for entire episodes. One of these goofy larks involved the characters of Fionna and Cake, gender-swapped facsimiles of the main characters who appeared in literal fan fiction written by one of the other characters in the show.

I hope that brief description is enough to give you sense of how strange it was to hear that a brand-new Adventure Time spin-off series debuted in 2023, Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake. There had been a few episodes of the original Adventure Time that were, beginning to end, the Ice King's fan fiction about these characters. So I supposed this new series would be just that all the time. Fair enough, I thought. Adventure Time was always clever and enjoyable, including those "alternate universe" episodes, so sure -- sign me up for more Adventure Time!

But the Fionna and Cake series is so not that, it's hard to wrap your head around. It's different in almost every conceivable way. The format is half-hour episodes, rather than the 15-minute eps of the original series. It's an explicitly dramatic show telling a serious story; OG Adventure Time certainly had its serious themes at times, but was fundamentally a light and comedic show. Strangest of all, Fionna and Cake is not a fiction-within-a-fiction, but somehow pulls off being an actual sequel to the events of the flagship series. (How this happens is best left to discover for yourself when you watch it.)

Most of the Adventure Time cast returns to voice their characters in Fionna and Cake. (Or versions of their characters.) The small handful of actors who don't return have their roles handed off to performers definitely trying to impersonate the originals. And it's important to attempt this sort of seamless continuity with the original series... because the show is otherwise asking a lot of its audience.

If the original Adventure Time was a show originally intended for a young audience, and slowly grew into a more "young adult" show as its audience grew up along with it? Then Fionna and Cake is a show made for those now-adults. It's a single serialized story told over 10 episodes. (In fact, it's so serialized and feels so complete that I'm not sure where they'll go in the announced season 2.) It's the tragedy mask to Adventure Time's comedy mask, though every episode still has the potential to leave you with the "what did I just watch?" feeling that often concluded an episode of the original.

Having watched the whole season, I struggle to say how much I actually liked the spin-off. I mean, it was good television. I didn't enjoy it as much as the original, for sure. But also, comparing the two is to compare the proverbial apples and oranges. You can respect the creative choice to come at a spin-off this way, to say "ok, but we're not going to give the audience what they'll expect in a spin-off."

Call season 1 a B overall? What I can say for sure is a) that anyone who finishes the original Adventure Time probably owes it to themselves to check out this radical departure; and b) this sequel probably doesn't resonate if you haven't seen the original. (Which I know sucks for them trying to grow a new audience, but hey... there it is.)

Civil Discourse

I haven't loved everything by writer-director Alex Garland, but he has made enough things that really wowed me that I felt compelled to check out his new movie, Civil War. Set in a war-torn America in the final days of a massive conflict, the story follows photo journalist Lee Smith and her partner on a mission to reach the autocratic president and interview him before his regime collapses. Along for the ride are an older journalist and mentor to Lee, and young Jessie, who aspires to do what Lee does -- but has never truly witnessed the horrors of war in person.

Alex Garland set an impossibly high bar with Ex Machina and Devs, so I know I shouldn't be expecting something that good every time I see his name in the credits. In fact, this isn't even Garland's first trip into what you could brand as an "apocalypse," as he wrote the script for 28 Days Later. But it does seem like Garland's first run at "realism." Civil War does not concern itself with the premise of "how we got here." It simply puts us there, in a war zone that also just happens to be the (formerly) United States.

The resulting movie is just vaguely science fiction (to the degree it reads as "alternate history" in the present), but much more akin to a movie like The Hurt Locker. This is a story about the kind of person who took the infamous Saigon Execution photo, and it wants to be as visceral as fiction can be in capturing that feeling. Civil War effectively keeps the audience on edge by seesawing back and forth: much of the time, it could be a story set in any war zone, foreign and remote in the way that frankly most Americans think of most wars; then it has a moment tailored to remind the audience that this is all happening "in your neighborhood."

In being a movie about a particular kind of driven professional in a war -- a type of person doing a job you probably haven't thought much about -- this movie succeeds. It's often visceral and shocking, and makes you reconsider war in interesting ways. But it also feels like there's an entire story the movie isn't telling and isn't interested in telling. "Civil War" is a misleading title, because that isn't the story here; it's only the setting. The movie has absolutely nothing to say about autocracy, "brother against brother," or how normal "life goes on" in the midst of a conflict. It's fine that this simply isn't the story Garland wants to tell, but it's the story I personally would have been more interested in.

Kirsten Dunst makes a solid and stoic protagonist. Wagner Moura is an actor I don't recall seeing elsewhere, but he takes on the more emotional character in the pair, and gives a solid performance. Most other key roles are filled with actors Alex Garland has worked with before, including Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sonoya Mizuno, and Nick Offerman. There's also a chilling uncredited performance by Jesse Plemons (who reportedly replaced another actor who dropped out at the last minute).

Civil War can be a hard watch. Whether you think it's "can't miss" is much tougher to say. But I give it a B. Interestingly, Garland says he now plans to pull back on directing and focus more on writing. I'm curious to see what results from that renewed focus.

Discovery: Jinaal

The farewell season of Star Trek: Discovery continues with "Jinaal."

Discovery travels to Trill for the next piece of their galactic puzzle. Culber agrees to serve as a host in a zhian'tara ritual so that Burnham and Booker can get the information they need. On the ship, Rayner has been ordered to meet the crew, and Tilly is dismayed at the way he seems to skirt the spirit of that order. Meanwhile, Adira and Gray confront the state of their relationship, while Saru and T'Rina prepare an announcement regarding theirs... which T'Rina's aide tries to forestall.

Lots of story lines in this episode mean that it's perhaps a bit overstuffed. But it also means that no matter which elements of the show you enjoy best, there's probably something for you somewhere in this episode. For my money, the continued RPG quest, bringing a clash with CG monsters and a predictable test for the heroes, wasn't the most engaging part of the episode. Still, there was fun to be had, thanks in large part to Wilson Cruz's fun, swaggering portrayal of the Trill Jinaal.

I continue to enjoy the abrasive nature of the new Rayner character. Sure, his "hardassery" was dialed up to the max this episode, but that just serves to highlight how different he is from the more emotional crew of Discovery, to make the gap between them that much wider to bridge. (Though perhaps there's something interesting in the fact that Discovery really seems to accept all types of people, but not someone whose instinct is to be "all business." They're huggers, the Discovery characters, and you're just going to have to let them hug you.)

I was least engaged in the Adira/Gray parts of the episode, but mostly because I felt like this had largely been resolved when they separated physically last season. Them separating emotionally here didn't seem as weighty -- especially when neither Culber or Stamets, they're "parental-ish" figures, couldn't be bothered to care about it either. (Though I love that Stamets' indifference allowed Jet Reno to step up and fill the gap. Give me all the Tig Notaro that you can possibly stuff into this last season, please.)

While the Saru / T'Rina story really had nothing to do with the ongoing galactic-level concerns of the season, I enjoyed it nonetheless. Indeed, it was really my favorite part of the episode. I continue to just be entertained by them as a couple, but I especially enjoyed seeing Vulcan conflict resolution on display. I also liked the show wagging a finger at mansplaining: T'Rina understood the politics of the situation better than Saru or her aide.

Plus, as a fun garnish on the episode, there were lots of great deep cut references sprinkled throughout -- fan service done right in that none of it was required background to follow the story, just things for you to notice (or not) and smile at (or not). My personal favorites were the mentions of tongo, the order of a Slug-o-Cola, and the appearance of a Selay alien in a makeup that didn't look stupid.

For me, it all works out to giving "Jinaal" a B+. I feel like the season is slowly warming up.

Voyager Flashback: Flesh and Blood

Star Trek: Voyager served up three two-part episodes in its final season. (Four, if you count the resolution of the season six cliffhanger.) The first of those originally aired as a single, two-hour event: "Flesh and Blood."

When Voyager responds to a Hirogen distress call, they find a station that was overrun by the holograms the Hirogen were hunting there. Lamenting her prior decision to give the Hirogen holographic technology, Janeway sets out after the escaped holograms. The Doctor feels a kinship with these holograms, finally free to pursue their own lives and start their own culture -- and he even turns against Janeway and the Voyager crew to help them. But the holograms' leader, Iden, may be a false prophet, pursuing an agenda the Doctor cannot endorse.

I suppose there are lots of reasons that an episodic television show might choose to stage a two-part episode -- including purely financial ones. But if there's any artistic integrity in the endeavor, surely it must be because you have a story to tell that would feel too compressed in the traditional one-hour format. "Flesh and Blood" gets two hours, and yet feels just as rushed and illogical to me as it would have been had it been stuffed into a single hour. I'm hard-pressed to point to a single character here who follows a logical arc of behavior from the beginning to the end of the story. Everyone is at the whims of a story that has a schedule to stick to. Every plot twist is utterly predictable, and yet simultaneously feels completely unearned.

Janeway is usually willing to be diplomatic and give the aliens of the week every benefit of the doubt, but here she decides immediately that these holograms are irredeemably violent and ought to have their memories excised. It's an artificial plot move solely to motivate the Doctor to "mutiny" against her. And in the end, she abruptly changes her mind and decides that the holograms are fine as long as they have a "supervisor" in the form of the Hirogen Donik (even though he was there when they rebelled and escaped the station the first time).

A few seasons ago, B'Elanna was so opposed to a hologram who looked like a Cardassian that she said she'd rather die than interact with him; what's changed since then that she can now come to accept the holographic Cardassian engineer she meets here? It's another artificial move -- necessitated because someone has to come to accept the holograms as people, and the story structure means that can't be Janeway.

The guest characters of this episode don't behave any more logically. The audience is made to feel sympathy for Iden when he engages in Bajoran prayer; yet not long later, he is decrying all organic culture as anathema, and eager to start his own holographic culture. Why the abrupt change? Because he can't be exposed as a megalomaniac until after the Doctor has made the mistake of joining him. Then, of course, he's free to become cartoonishly evil.

There are at least elements of the narrative that are interesting. The oppression of these holograms is palpable, and the notions that they were specifically made to feel pain when they don't have to (because "prey" must feel pain), and that they've been killed and revived over and over again with their memories intact -- these are particularly effective details. In the character of Donik, you're introduced to the idea that the Hirogen really didn't even have engineers like him until they were given holotechnology. And it's clever that holograms could settle on a traditionally uninhabitable planet, simply because they are holograms.

Even though the script may be weak, the production team seizes the moment. The Hirogen hunting scenario that opens the story is one of the series' most convincing settings, with more (realistic looking) trees than normal and even a pond (from which ambushers rise up in slow motion as if out of a war movie). The huge variety of species among the holograms allows the makeup department to show off -- we've got a Bajoran, a Romulan, a Cardassian, a Borg, a Breen, a Klingon, a Vulcan, a Jem'Hadar... it's great fun.

Other observations:

• Recurring Star Trek guest star Vaughn Armstrong is back, adding another alien (Hirogen) to the long roster of parts he's played across multiple series.

• Donik sounds a lot like a young Josh Gad. (No, it's not him.)

• Iden sure gives "his word" a lot.

• The Doctor gets off with a slap on the wrist at the end of this story, as Janeway says she "let" the Doctor grow to the point where he could act like this. When Paris acted mutinously, he got demoted and confined to the brig from 30 days. In an episode that's all about treating holograms as you would any flesh and blood being, the Doctor needed a true punishment of some kind to end it.

In the final season of any show, each episode feels precious -- one of the last opportunities the series will ever have to tell a story. In expanding to a two-parter here and then not making good use of it, it feels like at least one episode wasted. I give "Flesh and Blood" a C+.