Strange New Worlds: Orders of Magnitude

I'm going to pause the France blogs today, in part because the season finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has arrived, and I'm three episodes behind. Let's make that two, at least, with a look at "Orders of Magnitude."

Pike, Una, Uhura, Chapel, and A'Sha form a landing party to seek out a distress signal in a deep cave of a planet, falling out of contact with Enterprise. In their absence, Admiral Simon Reeger arrives and commandeers the ship for an urgent mission to pursue a mysteriously cloaked enemy that has just carried out a vicious attack on a Federation colony. With key command personnel not aboard, Reeger makes the highest-ranking officer present his first officer: the visiting James T. Kirk. Soon, the two are at odds with each other about the lengths worth going to to catch their prey. Meanwhile, on the planet, an ambush by Andorian smugglers puts the landing party in danger -- and it may be up to Uhura to save them all.

So much for season four of Strange New Worlds being "oops, all genre episodes." Even "Off-Hour," the former trophy holder for this season's "most normal" episode, was a visual homage to 24. "Orders of Magnitude" is straight-down-the-middle Star Trek... so much so, in fact, that some fans have a nickname for this kind of episode: "Badmiral." The Star Trek franchise has seen plenty of episodes about some misguided admiral (or commissioner, or otherwise ranking officer) coming aboard and messing everything up with their malicious/incompetent/just-plain-different mission.

This particular incarnation of the Badmiral conceit is lifting a lot of plot points from the movie Crimson Tide -- but by no means to the degree that it becomes anything like an homage or send-up of that film. (I'd hardly call Crimson Tide a movie that everyone knows super well anyway. It's not even in the same league as "Star Trek does Muppets" or "Star Trek does Jurassic Park.") And the thing is... even I, who have basically loved and defended this wild Strange New Worlds season of tonal potpourri, have to admit that was pretty clearly the best episode so far. I can certainly point out that classic Trek did widely-loved episodes with gangsters and Tribbles, Next Generation turned the crew into children, Deep Space Nine played baseball for a whole episode, and more. But at the end of the day, if Strange New Worlds is going to be at its best when it's not taking crazy genre swings? Maybe it shouldn't take so many crazy genre swings.

There are a lot of reasons this episode works so well, but the performance of guest star Joe Morton as the Badmiral is a a big one. He exudes authority and mixes it up with the cast very well. Every confrontation with Paul Wesley as Kirk crackles; it feels like Reeger could do something wild at any moment. (And so it really feels earned at the end, when he really does lose it.)

This episode is a big step toward positioning characters where they're "supposed to be" at the end of this prequel. I didn't necessary need an explanation for why Dr. M'Benga would wind up essentially demoted to serve under McCoy by the time of the original series, but this episode gives a good one that's strongly rooted in character. This series has established M'Benga as a person who acknowledges the horrible things he's done, and who isn't above grand gestures to atone for them. Taking the fall for Kirk is exactly the sort of thing the character we've come to know would do.

In the original series, so many episodes turn on Kirk disagreeing with the orders of some leader above him that it feels only natural for a prequel series to give us the chronologically first time that happened. And the heavy implication here (though technically it's never confirmed) is that this is a Romulan ship out on a "Balance of Terror" style bombing run. (Maybe it's even the same ship, under the same captain?!) I feel like that particular detail might play better if Strange New Worlds hadn't already done an episode tying into that classic, but it still plays. Indeed, the tie-in actually shores up the arguments of both Kirk and Admiral Reeger. Twice now, we've seen that a "Balance of Terror" situation with anyone other than Kirk in the captain's chair doesn't end well. But also, Reeger is absolutely right that by not dealing with this problem today, it will happen again in the future.

Uhura also gets a promotion -- but more importantly, a key story for her character. Star Trek has offered up the lesson that "you can make no mistakes and still lose" a few times before, but I feel like Uhura's emotional investment in the cadet she's been mentoring was a new take on that. Having the baddies she's up against be Andorian, calling to mind her mentor, was an inspired detail. And getting to see her save the day was simply delightful.

Throw in some great visual effects (as always) and a soundtrack that seemed deliberately evocative of James Horner's work on Star Trek II, and... well, like I said, it was clearly the best episode of the season so far. I give "Orders of Magnitude" an A-.

Versailles

The next day of our France trip was mostly spent not in Paris, but in nearby Versailles, to see the famous palace there. It's an hour subway ride each way, and the château and its grounds are huge -- so a visit is easily going to take up most of your day.

It's well worth it, though. In the context of the modern super-rich, this shrine to opulence is a reminder that "the more things change, the more they stay the same" -- a place simultaneously impressive, ridiculous, beautiful, and gaudy. The chapel alone is larger than Sainte-Chapelle (which we'd seen back in Paris the day before), with elaborately detailed paintings covering every inch of its high ceilings.

There's an official Versailles app with audio guide, and we downloaded it to hear the descriptions of the dozens of rooms we wandered through. Though each room had a different theme, and was used historically for something specific -- guard's quarters, guest spaces, dining, separate bedrooms for each member of the royal family -- there was an unintended bit of comedy in the narrations. It seems that almost every room in the palace was also occasionally used for gaming. It became a running joke for us for the rest of the trip, that any space we entered was "also sometimes used for games." It conjured a new kind of board gaming "challenge" in my mind -- not to play each game in your collection at least once, or to play 10 games 10 times each in a year, but simply to play some board game in every room of your house. I'm sure us commoners could pull that off if we really set our minds to it (though the bathrooms might be awkward). But if your house is the Palace of Versailles? Good luck.

We paused for lunch at a restaurant in the palace before continuing the tour outside in the palace gardens. There's a whole separate admission fee to see them, and when we first stepped onto the plaza behind the palace, we wondered if we'd been conned. But soon, we discovered that if your time at Versailles is limited, you'd be much better off spending it in the gardens rather than the building.

At first, you see only a wide graveled area...

But there is a staircase up ahead. There must be something down there...

And yes, that's quite beautiful. This area, called the Orangerie (for the many boxed trees planted there) is certainly striking. And yet, after the so-far-over-the-top-we-can't-even-see-the-top of the palace interior, this can't really be worth charging separate admission, can it?

But wait... there's another staircase on the far side of the plaza. What's over there? We almost didn't go over to see. And when we did, and initially saw only a path down along a stone wall leading to a break in the trees on the right, we almost didn't go down. It just didn't look like much!

Boy, would we have missed out. That's where the real gardens -- implausibly huge -- begin. There are a series of hedge mazes, each one leading to a unique "bosquet" in the center. A wide open space with a waterfall feature...

A huge colonnade...

 A fountain show...

 

And more. Plus, a grand park -- literally named "Grand Trianon" with its own wild basin and artwork. There were hundreds of people milling about, canoeing, you name it. A few were driving golf carts, and only after we'd seen a few did we clock that they weren't gardeners, they were tourists who'd found a spot to rent the carts in order to easily reach as much of the area as possible. (We wished we'd done that.)

We'd come that close to missing out on the best part of a visit to the Palace of Versailles. (So finally! A day where something didn't go a little wrong!) And now I can report back to make sure you don't miss out if you ever have the chance to go.

Once we made it back into the city, we wandered for a bit in Le Marais, the Paris district that includes the city's "gay neighborhood." It was definitely an active, open place full of restaurants and bars. We enjoyed one of the former. We skipped the latter after seeing dozens of people crowding the streets outside for a smoke (and a break from the pounding music?). We're too old for that scene.

In all, a real highlight of a day for the trip.

Tower Interrupted

The rest of "monuments day" on our France trip actually featured fewer monuments than planned.

We had a couple of hours to kill before timed tickets to ascend the Eiffel Tower (that we'd secured in advance). We decided to fill them with another recommendation we'd be given before the trip: a visit to Chartreuse Paris-Vauvert. It's a tasting room dedicated to the green (or yellow) French liqueur -- a place where you can try a mixed flight of their more common varieties and more limited small batches. You can also order from a menu of Chartreuse cocktails, and pick up bottles at a far cheaper price than you find in the U.S.

As we were enjoying our drinks, the "misfortune of the day" arrived. An email came in to let us know that the Eiffel Tower was experiencing delays for "operational reasons" and we might not be able to get in at our reserved time. Should we not get to go up the tower, don't worry, our ticket purchase would be refunded automatically. There were a bunch of other "wiggle words" in there that left me with the impression that they'd opened late or something, and so the thing to do would be show up anyway and hope it all worked out.

It did not. When we arrived, the Tower was closed. You could still go through security screening and enter the park area directly beneath the structure, but no one was going up by stairs or elevator to any level. And from the "Operational Reasons" signs everywhere, it was clear no one was going to go up.

We wouldn't learn until the next day that we'd been caught up in something almost as quintessentially French as the Eiffel Tower itself: a workers' strike. It seems that a religious group had recently visited the Tower, and female employees were instructed to stay out of their sight. In response, the workers chose the one day we had tickets to stage their understandable protest. An official statement issued the next day sliced the bologna really thin: “To the best of our knowledge, at no point was anyone prevented access to the Eiffel Tower." I don't know about you, but when you think "I'm going to go to the Eiffel Tower," then unless you have a fear of heights, you aren't thinking "to just stand under it and look up." (It is kind of an interesting view, though.)

It was easier to accept our bad luck once we found out the reason for the closure later on. We'd have to settle for the picture from the start of this post. (Instead of "cheese," we were saying "we got screwed.") But... put a pin in this topic, because it'll come around again later in the travelogue.

We decided to do some shopping with the sudden gap in our afternoon. We liked the idea of looking for clothes that weren't necessarily "touristy," but were of a somewhat different style than you readily find back home. Something you could wear in the future, and you would know it was a trip souvenir, but no one else would.

When it came time for dinner, we decided to include an appetizer of escargot. (Had to do it at least once during the trip, right?) They tasted good enough, but the amount of work involved was pretty high. You'd have to eat a lot of escargot to build the dexterity required.

We wandered a bit in the area of our hotel, and finally ended our night with an unexpected stop at a speakeasy called Moonshiner. You literally walk into a pizza place, nod politely to the staff, and head directly for the door of their walk-in freezer.... which, when opened, actually takes you to a dark-but-classy bar.

I sort of find the idea of a speakeasy a bit silly, but there was something surreal and next level about visiting one in France. You guys never even had Prohibition like America, you know? I mean, can you even imagine the French giving up their wine? Our (stupid) "culture" is not your costume! But the cocktails were pretty good, and a nice way to end the day.

Going to Church(es) in Paris

Our first full day in Paris was, loosely speaking, "monuments day." It began as nearly every morning would for the rest of the trip: with a stop at a new and random bakery for croissant, pain au chocolat, or some other bit of concentrated deliciousness. I've already mentioned that we'd learn any French wine at any price point was going to be good at a minimum. That seemed to go double for breakfast baked goods. We never picked a bad boulangerie for the entire trip, and sometimes it seemed like each was better than the last.

Next we were off to Sainte-Chapelle, a Gothic royal chapel dating back to the 13th century. It's on the Île de la Cité, just a few minutes' walk from the far more famous Notre-Dame. It's easy to see both in one morning, though I think not so many tourists do. That's their loss, because the upper of the two levels features a stunning array of stained glass windows. While the space is undergoing repairs right now, a very cunningly placed mirrored wall served to preserve the full effect of the open space and vivid colors.

As beautiful as Sainte-Chapelle was, we weren't going to skip Notre-Dame de Paris, of course. It's coming up on two years since the cathedral reopened after a five-year closure following the 2019 fire. Work continues with cranes still on site, though as you approach the well-known front facade, there's really no sign that anything ever happened. But the main entrance was not our destination; instead, we'd bought tickets ahead of time to visit the towers high atop the building.

That experience was a wonderful blend of old and new. On the one hand, you get to see dozens of the cathedral's gargoyles up close -- in all their unexpected varieties from demon-faced to bird-headed to... baby-eating(?). And this is all often set against the Paris skyline in a magical way. On the other hand, you make the last half of the tower climb on a freshly built spiral staircase replacing the one lost in the fire.

After the tower tour, we decided to wait for a while in the line to enter the ground floor of the cathedral. The timing of that worked out quite fortuitously, as we made it inside at about 11:57 am. Notre-Dame isn't just a tourist destination; it's an active church, and we had arrived just in time for noon mass. While I have zero affinity for religion and even less knowledge about the steps of the "Catholic hokey pokey" (stand up, sit down, say this phrase, etc.), my husband and I decided it was worth sitting a while anyway for the unique experience.

I'd been trying to use my modest French language skills on the trip, but they were clearly not up to understanding a Catholic mass in French. I suspected that Apple probably wasn't up to that task either, but I popped in my AirPods anyway and toggled translation mode just to see what would happen. It turns out that the volume was the real obstacle; the different priests (even "amplified") were practically inaudible in the cavernous space. Rather humorously, the voice of Siri would occasionally spit a single word in my ear ("Lord"). Every now and then, it would shock me with a surprisingly coherent sentence fragment ("Jesus said to the Pharisees"). After perhaps 10 or 15 minutes, the moment came to take communion, and we took that as our cue to leave the area of the service and join the other tourists milling about the side chapels and niches.

By the time we were done with Notre-Dame, it was time for lunch -- and a dear friend had given us a great recommendation. Not a specific restaurant, but an idea. You don't have to work hard at all in Paris to find fresh bread and good wine, and you can even find them at a corner store that also has lunch meats and cheeses. Basically, the makings of an impromptu picnic are probably never more than five minutes away. So for the first of several times throughout the trip, we did just that -- this time setting up our "picnic" right there on the banks of the Seine right by Notre-Dame.

It was barely past 1:00, but it already felt like a wonderful and full day. And also, a long enough blog post for now. So at the risk of making my trip recap last more days than it actually took to take the trip, I'll pause there and resume the narrative another time.

We'll Always Have Paris

It's been a few weeks since my last blog post... because I've spent most of those two weeks vacationing in France! It was a magical trip for me and my husband. To help me preserve the memories, I'll be sharing a detailed recap over the coming weeks (sprinkled in with other kinds of posts).

We had a direct flight to Paris on Air France, for which we showed up to DIA "probably too early." (We just don't like the stress that comes with cutting it close.) So for lunch, we discovered a speakeasy on Concourse A called Williams and Graham. (It seems these days they'll put a speakeasy anywhere. They know alcohol has been legal again for a while now, right?) Anyway, great pesto pasta and good drinks there, which helped going into the long flight.

Our arrival in Paris immediately kicked off an unfortunate recurring theme of the trip: there were going to be quite a few (fortunately minor) misfortunes; almost one every day. On this day, it was that the subway from the airport into the city was shut down for a power outage. So they were running busses to take people to the closest operating station to pick up the subway from there. Not nearly enough busses, though; it took a little over two hours just to get on one.

We did finally reach our hotel, and the Star Trek fan in me couldn't help but be tickled that it was on the opposite corner from a "Picard." (It's a nationwide store chain that sells frozen dinners, so... actually not that interesting.) Once checked in at last, we began a light afternoon and evening. We ate early dinner at a restaurant called Pradel. That started a much more pleasant recurring theme of the trip: the food was pretty good everywhere we went. The wine was even better; you could pretty much roll the dice on any French wine at any price point, and the results would "good" if not "great."

We wandered a bit before making our way to a cruise on the river Seine we'd planned ahead of time. This one was timed at sunset, which made for many lovely views (which have been the images throughout this post). However, they informed us at the outset that their sunset cruises are never "guided." I guess they figure that pointing out the different sights to you isn't quite romantic. Fortunately, the most famous locations speak for themselves. We passed Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, and of course the Eiffel Tower, among many others. We got to see the balloon-like Olympic Cauldron, which still lights up and floats in the evening sky.

Seine River cruises are a popular tourist activity, and we passed a lot of other boats full of people doing the same thing we were. And we couldn't help but notice, with a lot of kids doing the "6-7" hand-weighing gesture at us with amused giggles. Call it brain fog from the time change, but it took us several boats (no, not quite six or seven) to realize this was all being instigated by some guy near the front of our boat. 

Anyway, jet lag will not be denied. That was all the energy we could muster for the first day. So whether we'd sleep through the night or not, at least it would be in a hotel bed and not seated on an airplane. Next time... our first full day in Paris. 

Strange New Worlds: Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds continued its season four genre tour this week. And chances are you knew exactly what this week's genre would be just by glancing at the title: "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass."

Pike awakens in Sickbay to find the ship's entire crew acting in an unusually heightened manner. When Uhura tells him she's his long lost daughter, Pike suspects what's really happening: interference from the unusual godlike alien Enterprise encountered a year earlier. Indeed -- he's back, and running a social experiment on the ant-like humans to impress his elders: turning Enterprise into a soap opera. Spock needs a "living heart transplant" from his twin brother Sybok. Dr. M'Benga must confront his "space madness." And Pike must deal not only with Uhura, but uncover the reason why only he seems aware that he's living in a daytime drama.

I really have just one qualm about this episode: I don't like that they went back to the Trelane well. As fun as Rhys Darby was in the character's previous Strange New Worlds appearance, I'm not at all eager for Strange New Worlds to overuse him in the way that past Star Trek overused the character of Q.

But... if you're going to use Trelane (a Q by any other name, as his last episode established), then you can get away with a lot. He's a dose of fantasy and magic in a fundamentally science fiction show, for all the good and ill that represents. So if you want to do a soap opera episode, you can just do it. No bending over backwards for a sci-fi explanation about why the crew is singing, or turned into Vulcans, or having a "Hangover."

So, having dispensed with the justification? I pretty much give the rest of the episode a 10 out of 10, no notes. The commitment to the bit was complete at every level. The camera work was spot on, from gauzy filters (which even Pike notices) to subtle handheld drift to abrupt crash zooms. The musical score (which again, Pike commented on) absolutely captured the soap opera vibe. The script not only featured over-the-top dialogue, it made sure to repeat that dialogue whenever coming back from a commercial break or intercut scene.

As for the actors? They got it. Genre science fiction is already closer to a soap opera than many fans might like to admit, and it took only the tiniest push for the acting to cross the line. (I think lifting so much Sybok dialogue directly from Star Trek V only underscores the point.) Some of the techniques were hilariously direct, like taking strange pauses and staring off into nowhere (again, commented on by Pike). Some were delightfully subtle, like Uhura's pouty walk as she stormed out. Shaky hands from M'Benga, an eyebrow from Ortegas... all straight from the soap opera playbook. (And let's not overlook the guest star turn from Days of Our Lives stalwart Deidre Hall.)

But the even greater acting accomplishment came in the moments that weren't over-the-top. When Pike finally gets to talk to his "real daughter," I was actually moved -- that quickly, at the climax of a relentlessly comedic episode. Pike's breakdown at the end (opposite Deidre Hall!) was equally powerful. And in perhaps the greatest tightrope act a Star Trek actor has ever walked, Celia Rose Gooding crushed the scene where she talks about the death of her family when she was a teenager: she pulled things back just enough for it to not be silly, but was still emotional enough for it to read as a soap opera performance. (Someone give her a Daytime Emmy.)

Thankfully, they didn't try to pull "it never happened" on us for the second time this season. (Even though "it was all a dream" would have been a tonally perfect soap opera choice.) Letting the characters carry these feelings into the future may pay off in later episodes -- much as this episode paid off for Pike's experiences in previous ones. Once again, Strange New Worlds blends the one-off stories with ongoing story arcs in master fashion.

I give "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass" an A-. It's my favorite episode of the season so far. (Right down to the post-credits gag! Don't touch that "back" button!) 

Don't Overlook the Bay

Most of the shows on Apple TV+ seem to be relying exclusively on word-of-mouth; you hear about them from one of your friends, or you don't hear about them at all. But a recent new show that bucked that trend was Widow's Bay. I didn't finish the series during the hot minute everyone online seemed to be talking about it... but I have now, and better late than never?

Widow's Bay is a titular island town in New England, beset with all kinds of unsettling supernatural evils thanks to a centuries-old curse. That doesn't stop mayor Tom Loftis from pushing to bring more tourism to the island. But after a chain of unexplained and increasingly horrific experiences, he might just start listening to the crackpot Wyck Crawford.

This show is the brainchild of Katie Dippold, one of the writers of Parks and Recreation who has now gone onto a "solo career after the band broke up." That background should help set your expectations, because Widow's Bay is a weirdly funny show. This isn't a horror tale with one or two moments designed to release tension by provoking laughter -- a twisted sense of humor is woven throughout. But the show does also have plenty of straight-up scares and creeping dread. The tone really refuses to be pinned down.

To pull it off, you need a very nimble cast of actors. Fortunately, Widow's Bay has it. Matthew Rhys stars as the mayor. Rhys is one of the handful of true TV stars, a person who has been around for decades and has never gone long without being on a show. This is surely the closest thing to comedy he's ever done... though the show uses him to great effect like the "straight man" in a double act. Also playing somewhat against type is Stephen Root as Crawford. There's something about this "crazy ol' coot" character that comes across even more fun when an accomplished comedian like Root is playing it so earnestly.

But while those two are nominally the stars, there's a long list of secondary characters all perfectly cast with long-working actors (with memorable faces) who totally understand the mixed tone the show is going for: Dale Dickey, Jeff Hiller, K Callan, and more. And one key part of the ensemble is Kate O'Flynn as the mayor's quirky assistant Patricia, who takes the spotlight herself in a key early episode that breaks up the formula you might think the series is settling into.

It's a shame (and a bit mystifying to me) that the show premiered in spring and spooled out weekly episodes into the summer. It would been a much more fitting release to premiere now and unfold over the run-up to Halloween. Then again, it did capture buzz like I said -- which few Apple TV+ shows do. But perhaps if you haven't tried Widow's Bay yourself, this would be the perfect time to start! I give the show a B+. If you liked The X-Files, but wish that that show's most iconic horror and comedy episodes were somehow swirled together in one? It'll be right up your alley.