One Love

Last night, I went to see Steven Spielberg's newest movie, the adaptation of the pop culture lovefest novel Ready Player One.

In a dystopic future, most of the world's population escapes into a sprawling VR game for entertainment and comfort. But the sanctity of the game is threatened now that its creator has died. He's left behind an Easter Egg that, if found, will transfer sole control of the game to one lucky winner. A wealthy corporation is bringing all its resources to bear so that it can monetize the game. Meanwhile, a clever teenager strives to get there first.

For many readers, the book was a beloved geeky joy. Who better to put that on film than Spielberg, the director of so much of the material being name-checked? But as it turns out, he's wasn't very interested in self-congratulations. In making the film, he instructed his team not to include references to his past movies. In many cases, he didn't even want to allude to movies he'd produced, until book author (and screenplay co-author) Ernest Cline reportedly pleaded with him to relent at least on important details like the Delorean car from Back to the Future.

Spielberg's humility is one way in which the movie departs from the book, but there are many others. In some cases, rights to show certain things couldn't be secured, and substitutions were made. In other cases, ideas from the book that weren't exactly cinematic were wisely replaced with something else. (For example: the book's "first key" is found amid a solo Dungeons & Dragons adventure, where the movie's is placed in an enormous full-contact rally race.)

Many of these changes actually improve upon the book -- even the already good parts. A section of the book that brought a smile to my face was when the hero has to assume the role of Matthew Broderick's character inside the movie WarGames. The film opts for an homage to an entirely different movie -- and an entirely different director -- and gets enormous mileage out of the change. I'd hate to spoil it for anyone, but suffice to say that a film with far more notorious visuals becomes the focus, and everyone involved in the movie does their utmost to render it faithfully. The set design is a dead ringer, Spielberg and his cinematographer place and move the camera with slavish fidelity to the original, and even the musical score lifts directly from the source material. It's giddy fun.

Also great fun is the presentation of the VR game, the Oasis, in general. It's an entirely CG environment, but a stylized and compelling one -- sort of Pixar meets Avatar. Very early on, I wasn't sure if I was going to stop thinking about whether it looked "real enough" to me or not, but I very quickly forgot about it.

On the other hand, I'm reminded in some ways of another book that spread like geek wildfire and was later adapted into a movie -- The Martian. The book was entertaining, but flawed in having shallow and ill-defined side characters. The movie actually shored up this shortcoming of the book, doing a better job fleshing out the characters as real people. Not so with Ready Player One. The main characters of Parzival (Wade) and Artemis are the only ones with any texture at all (not much), and everyone else is completely nuance free. Some of the more veteran actors are able to sneak a hint of personality into their roles -- Ben Mendelsohn as villain Nolan Sorrento, and Mark Rylance as Oasis creator James Halliday. Everyone is having fun, it's clear, but it's only surface deep.

There is a lot of fun to be had on that surface, though. The movie is stacked so high with references that you'll never find them all. There are deep cuts from movies that today's target demographic will never remember. There are references to things from other countries. There are obvious movies everyone will know... but then also subtle background references to them that might slip by most. (Back to the Future is all over this movie, for example. Most people will know the Delorean. Few, I think, will spot the poster to re-elect Mayor Goldie Wilson.)

Before closing, I should shout out to the person whose work I think is strongest in this film: composer Alan Silvestri. This is one of the exceedingly rare occasions where Spielberg did not have John Williams compose his score, and Silvestri deals with this once-in-a-lifetime chance wonderfully. He essentially delivers what I might call an alternate universe version of the Back to the Future score -- and as that's one of my favorite scores he ever did, I'm all about it. This new music literally references the old in a few choice moments, but mostly it lifts a few bars from one section of the orchestra and then spins up an entirely new composition around them. It's effective, exceedingly clever, and I suspect will reward careful listening all on its own. (And as I noted earlier, the score references at least one other notable movie score, in the act two "enter a movie" sequence.)

Ready Player One isn't deep, but it was never going to be. It's a very good "fun thrill ride" of a movie. I give it a B+. It's definitely one to go catch on the big screen.

DS9 Flashback: Duet

Deep Space Nine was chugging along with a largely forgettable first season. You could say that a typical episode was perhaps a touch better than the average first season episode of The Next Generation, but that really wasn't setting a high bar. Compared to the quality Next Gen was delivering at the time (it its sixth season), Deep Space Nine was a clear and distant second.

Then came "Duet."

A Cardassian visitor to the station is detained at Major Kira's insistence, as his chronic medical condition indicates he's a war criminal who was present at a notorious labor camp. Though he initially hides his identity, the Cardassian is soon discovered to be Gul Darhe'el, the leader of the camp and architect of its atrocities against the Bajoran people. But when further investigation exposes inconsistencies in his story, Kira is forced to confront the possibility that simply being Cardassian is not itself a crime -- and that not every member of the race who oppressed her world is deserving of her rage.

Watching Deep Space Nine up to this point, it is hard to explain how suddenly, in just one episode, the quality increased so dramatically. In any case, it absolutely began with a script far superior to any that had come before. Still, there was no reason to expect that. The story pitch came from Lisa Rich and Jeanne Carrigan-Fauci, the same duo who'd contributed the deeply goofy "Move Along Home." (Apology accepted.) They wondered "what would happen if you had to defend your worst enemy?" -- and smartly realized that Kira was the character to best tell that story.

With the season's budget depleted, the production seized on this opportunity for a "bottle episode" that could be filmed cheaply, using only existing sets and minimal visual effects. Staff writer Peter Allan Fields is credited with the script, though lots of help reportedly came from Ira Steven Behr, who worked with him to craft the first of what would become a Deep Space Nine staple, the "long Cardassian monologue," as Behr called it. ("Cardassians love to speak.")

The script is sophisticated in so many ways. It has no need for a B-story to fill the hour; they wisely identified that Kira's emotional turmoil was the only plot line this episode required. Exposition is handled more deftly; the way even Quark talks with respect about the Gallitep prison camp tells you it's serious business, while leaving the particular horrors to your own imagination. The foreshadowing is careful and subtle; when Odo releases a Bajoran criminal from a cell early in the episode, there's no reason to suspect he'll be back for the story's climax. The friendships between characters play a central role, and in particular we're shown that Dax has one with Kira already growing as deep as the long-running bond she has with Sisko.

The episode does all this while essentially playing with fire. Drawing such a direct allegory to a Nazi concentration camp and mining that for drama could easily have come off crass. Instead, the episode chillingly depicts how one side's monster is another side's hero. At times, Kira is made to duck the admission that she too killed civilians during the occupation. The script weaves in other great accents too, such as a cunning moment of misogyny when the Cardassian calls Kira a "girl" in a clear attempt to provoke her.

Despite all this nuance on the page, it seems that some people involved with the show didn't know, going into filming, what a hit they had on their hands. The feeling was the director Jim Conway had drawn a tough assignment, having to deal with this story that had little conventional action.

What probably made the difference was the casting of veteran character actor Harris Yulin as the Cardassian Aamin Marritza. Yulin gives a towering performance, digging into all the monstrous qualities of the Darhe'el persona with a sickening verve -- the consummate villain for Kira to focus all her rage upon. And Yulin is nothing short of brilliant in the pivotal final scene where the "performance" strays too close to reality; Marritza's facade cracks and a torrential grief comes pouring out.

With a great actor to play off of, Nana Visitor ups her own game to deliver her best performance of the season. She'd delivered moving moments of unchecked emotion already, but her work here is better still for being more restrained and realistic. Visitor shows reverence at the thought Kira might meet a Bajoran war hero. She's a ball of rage when she comes to interrogate "Darhe'el," and stripped bare by the emotional beating he gives her instead. She's brought up short when forced to question if she's just out for vengeance. And her delivery of the final line of the episode is killer. ("No. It's not.") This episode shows that Kira has evolved even since we first met her (maybe those Federation ideals are rubbing off), and Nana Visitor makes everything she possibly can of the opportunity.

Perhaps the greatest compliment this episode could be given came from Armin Shimerman. Ask an actor about their favorite episode of their own TV show, and they'll inevitably cite one that revolve around their character. Yet even though this episode barely includes Quark, Shimerman called this his favorite episode of the entire series, an example of "the writing and the directing and the acting all coalescing perfectly."

Other observations:

• Gul Dukat returns for the first time since the pilot episode. There's still little evidence here of how important a role the character would play over the life of the show, but having an adversary recur at all is an important first step.

• The "Shakaar resistance cell," in which Kira fought during the occupation, is first mentioned here. This would get fleshed out in much greater detail in the seasons to come.

Armin Shimerman was not alone in loving this episode; you can find more than a few ranked lists of Deep Space Nine episodes that put this one on the very top. I wouldn't go quite that far, as I can think of a handful episodes I'm looking forward to even more as I work my way through the series. Still, this is unquestionably the highlight of season one, an absolute grade A installment. It's the moment when Deep Space Nine really arrived.

An Ode to Weirdness (Almost)

One school of thought would say you have to have lived a long, full life to fill the pages of an interesting memoir. Another school of thought would say that at any age, if you can put down enough interesting experiences in a memoir that people want to read them, go for it! A great example of the latter is Felicia Day's book: You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost).

I actually listened to the audiobook version of the memoir on the drive to and from Steamboat Springs a month ago. It was read by Felicia Day herself, naturally (with a foreword by Joss Whedon read by the man himself, also naturally). It sounded like a fun way to pass the time, and indeed it was.

If you're the sort of person who'd be reading this blog, you likely already know who Felicia Day is. If not, suffice it to say that she's carved out a wonderful niche being professional geeky, appearing as a guest star on many Shows Geeks Love, and at many conventions geeks attend. She didn't just fall into this status; she earned it by creating and starring in one of the earliest successful internet series, The Guild -- about the personal drama within an MMORPG raiding group.

Day's memoir talks a lot about the process of making her dream TV show herself when no network would do it for her. It also talks a lot about being female in a world that is often stridently male. (Gamergate gets a chapter; if you're fortunate enough not to know what that is, you're living in a world less sad than the rest of us, and perhaps that innocence should not be pierced.) Before all that, though, you get many chapters about how one grows up geeky in the first place. Unsurprisingly, there are familiar touchstones throughout her back story, even though she grew up in the deep south (not normally associated with breeding geeks).

The audiobook format seemed a perfect one for this particular memoir. While I'm sure much of the humor in the book would have been apparent on the page, there is something about Day's delivery that made it extra fun listening to her read it. There's plenty of sarcasm, self-deprecating humor, and lengthy asides that just works better hearing Day perform it.

This is not likely a book to change your world view, to deeply inspire or surprise you. Still, I'd venture to say that anyone expecting that from a memoir by Felicia Day has wildly inappropriate expectations. I hoped to laugh at some jokes and maybe on occasion share a moment of sympatico with a fellow geek. Check and check.

I'd say You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) deserves a solid B -- perhaps a B+ if you, like me, go for the audiobook version. If you're looking for a quirky background to a road trip or a series of workouts, it's worth checking out.

The Devil Complex

The latest episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was pregnant with emotion, and moved the continuing storyline to a compelling place. But I do question a bit the way in which it got there.

One plot arc revolved around Fitz's efforts to close the rift into the "fear dimension." It ended with the powerful revelation that solving his problem meant tapping into his inner psychopath. He closed the rift, but only by hurting his friends, risking several lives, and generally behaving monstrously without regard to the cost. It was a truly meaningful development with far-reaching implications... but it didn't feel entirely earned to me because of the way the episode was written overall.

The Trouble With Fitz, as it were, was a bait-and-switch, of course. We were led to believe that the evil Leopold from the Framework had emerged as a phantom from the fear dimension. A lot of shoe leather went into convincing us of this. While it worked in the sense that I did not see the twist coming, for me it didn't work in that there wasn't a lot of time to explain what was actually going on.

As we were reminded, Fitz used to see people who weren't there (Simmons in particular), at the start of season two, after Ward tried to kill him. At that time, he also had linguistic difficulties and struggled to find words. Iain de Castecker gave a solid performance that called all that back... yet Fitz then confides that he's felt this returning for a while now. I get the distinct impression no one told de Castecker that before he saw this script. So I felt like he overcompensated a bit, playing extra weak, extra tongue-tied, to such a degree that I even began to wonder if Fitz's "greatest fear" was losing his mental faculties, and that the latest twist from the fear dimension was somehow bringing that to pass.

Perhaps that's all quibbling. What I simply mean is that I would have felt more moved by Fitz's slide into darkness if it hadn't happened all at once in this episode. (And really, all in one scene, after the Jekyll/Hyde gimmick was revealed.) When Daisy said she would never forgive Fitz, I want to believe that's true... or at least, believe it enough for it to land with dramatic heft. But if Fitz can turn evil in the span of one episode, there's really nothing to say he can't be forgiven just as quickly if the whim strikes. I love the twist that was made, and I think it will work well for future episodes. I just think the twist wasn't earned enough for maximum dramatic impact.

The other story line also ended up in an intriguing-but-unearned place in my mind. Showing Coulson's increasingly suicidal tendencies (though he'd call them self-sacrificial, perhaps) was quite interesting, and having him give himself up, going with Hale to save the rest of the team, makes perfect sense. But getting to that place required Coulson to be stupid enough to fall for a fairly transparent trap. Maybe we the audience have a benefit Coulson hasn't, of having watched just how conniving Hale has been, thus learning to take her seriously as an adversary. Still, it just seems to me Coulson should have known that Hale's "careless slip up" was in fact a deliberate baiting of a trap.

But like I said, I enjoyed where the story ended up, even if I didn't buy into all the steps that took it there. In any case, there were plenty of moments along the way I did enjoy. May and Coulson were unable to dig into their relationship "in front of the bad guys." Yo-Yo became increasingly despairing of being able to alter the future -- and that came with incongruous bliss, from her certainty that she will survive no matter what happens. Deke confessed to Simmons that he's her grandson (and she had a hilarious reaction to puncture the importance of the moment).

A good story overall that I think I wish had been paced more deliberately over a couple of episodes. I give it a B+.

Far, Far Away -- Closer Than Ever Before

I've written before on several occasions about attending symphony concerts in which a movie is projected above the musicians as they play its score live, in its entirety. I've thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. Last night came the granddaddy of them all -- the original Star Wars.

John Williams' score for Star Wars is regarded in many circles to be the best ever written for a film. Fans and experts agree, recognizing it as something special, a modern orchestral masterpiece. I've attended symphony concerts before where they've played excerpts from throughout the saga, but this is the first time the full original movie has been offered.

When I went to see Back to the Future in a similar format, I knew the movie so well that I barely needed to watch it, and could focus completely on the performers. Here, with Star Wars, I not only knew the movie that well, of course, I also knew the music inside and out. I've listened to that soundtrack so many times that I can tell you from the opening brass chord whether its the recording of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, the prequel trilogy, or The Force Awakens. (Despite being identical on the page, the sound quality and musicians' technique are not identical in the performances.)

This level of familiarity with the music made this concert a particular treat. I would often find myself looking to a section of the orchestra just before they'd play a particular phrase I knew was coming. But also, I did discover new things in the music even after all this time. Because the music was being mixed live in a new space, instruments that were buried in the original recording had moments where they popped through. Also fun were moments when I could see performers playing without being able to discreetly identify them. There's way more piano and harp in the score than I was aware of before or that I could actually hear last night, but seeing it played made me wonder on what subconscious level it was blending with other sounds to create a particular effect.

There were really only a couple of minor things to detract from the experience. First, the film was subtitled so that the dialogue could still be followed even if the live orchestra overpowered it. A great choice -- except that it was subtitled quite inaccurately overall, with a lot of words omitted. It was fortunate that I really only watched the screen when the orchestra wasn't playing anything, since when I did watch the screen, I found it quite distracting. Second, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra wasn't playing in their native space. Rightly expecting a swell of interest in this Star Wars concert, they moved up to the 1st Bank Center, where they could accommodate a larger audience. But that also means this was a custom microphone/sound setup they're not accustomed to, and I'd say it wasn't quite 100% perfectly mixed all the time. Still, these small issues weren't enough to mar a wonderful experience.

Normally, when I write about one of these film/symphony concerts, the window has passed. My recommendation is just that readers consider attending another one like it, next time the opportunity comes around. But this time, for the folks in Denver at least, it's not too late. The CSO is performing Star Wars again tomorrow, Saturday the 24th. So if you want to see and hear it for yourself, snap to it! You won't regret it.

Love, Actually

This week, I went to go see Love, Simon -- the new rom-com about a closeted teen who connects anonymously by e-mail with another gay kid at his high school. The movie was never going to top the box office with Black Panther still ruling the roost, but it has nevertheless found a modest audience. (The weeknight screening we went to was, much to our surprise, sold out -- and to an enthusiastically responsive crowd.)

A lot of recent talk has centered around the value of inclusion in movies. There's been a little negative backlash, a good amount of positive affirmation... and, I think, a fair amount of polite indifference. But it really does matter. When it comes to gay subject matter, most movies fit into one of two constricted boxes. You have award bait like Call Me By Your Name and Moonlight, movies that I think come across like they're packaging a message for straight audiences more than they're trying to reach and/or entertain a gay one. Then you've got the sort of cheaply made stuff that streams in rivers on Netflix. Every once in a long while, you'll find a decent-though-not-exceptional one, and you'll have to wade through a dozen terrible ones to find it. (I've watched several truly bad ones that I've never even bothered to blog about. Hopefully it was because of embarrassment as a movie watcher and not embarrassment as a gay man. Maybe I've still got some issues to work on there.)

In any case, Love, Simon does what I'd hoped -- it doesn't slip neatly into either category. The movie may be a milestone for being the first major studio release to center on an LGBT teen romance, but thankfully that sense of Importance doesn't permeate the film itself and weigh it down. There's a fair amount of material here that does seem more intended for the straight people (who I suppose will make up most of the audience), but some of that is due to the fact that many well-worn staples of the romantic comedy genre are being appropriated. There's a lot to the story that to me felt honest, true, and familiar -- this isn't set in a sun-dappled Italian villa no one actually gets to live in, nor is it about secluded cowboys (with or without pudding -- thanks, South Park).

The movie does a great job of capturing versions of several key moments in the "coming out" experience. (Well, mine, anyway.) The litany of excuses you make up to avoid telling anyone. The first time you're confronted by someone who has figured you out. The first time you choose to tell a close friend. The first time you tell your family. It's all woven through a fairly light and fluffy "secret admirer" type of story, and there are plenty of jokes... and yet, there are moments that are surprisingly deep. I wasn't expecting just how moving I would find some of the scenes to be.

The cast is solid. Nick Robinson is excellent at the title character, natural and charismatic. Simon's close trio of friends -- Katherine Langford, Alexandra Shipp, and Jorge Lendeborg Jr. -- are fun. Logan Miller walks a great line as Martin -- he's the heel of the story, and yet has to remain not-totally-unlikeable for the bulk of it, which Miller pulls off. The comic relief is entertaining from the always-funny Tony Hale, and even more so from Natasha Rothwell (who steals every scene she's in as the much-suffering drama teacher). Anchoring some of the film's most dramatic scenes, as Simon's parents, are Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel. Each is perfect in their role; Garner in particular is key to the strongest scene in the movie.

When I ranked Love, Simon in my Flickchart, it landed right on the cusp of A-/B+. For me, I'd say it's probably the former; I suspect for most people it would probably be more the latter. It depends on whether you're perceiving this as a first-of-its-kind movie, or just another teen rom-com. Either way, I'd recommend it. I certainly enjoyed it more than the last few years' worth of LGBT films that have come with hand outstretched for awards.

DS9 Flashback: The Forsaken

I'm not sure how Star Trek fans at large received Lwaxana Troi episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but it feels like everyone I know hates them. And with only one or two exceptions, that's a fair reaction; they were generally bad episodes. You might think that in a spinoff series without her daughter Deanna around, there would be no reason to ever feature Lwaxana Troi. You don't think like the writers who gave us "The Forsaken."

A group of haughty Federation diplomats is visiting Deep Space Nine, and Bashir has been assigned the ignominious task of entertaining them. But one of the ambassadors soon finds a more interesting diversion -- Lwaxana Troi becomes infatuated with Odo after he recovers her stolen jewelry. Meanwhile, a passing space probe downloads a playful computer virus with an apparent infatuation of its own: the attention of Chief O'Brien. Malfunctions caused by the virus soon threaten the lives of Bashir's charges, and trap Odo and Lwaxana together in a turbolift... just as the shapeshifter is nearing the end of his regenerative cycle.

The annual episode featuring "the boss's wife" was a tradition on Star Trek, even after the death of Gene Roddenberry. There hadn't been one in the sixth season of The Next Generation. Somehow, it was decided to have her appear in season one of Deep Space Nine instead. Maybe they realized all the plausible character interactions on Next Gen had been played out. Majel Barrett herself, if not her character, was more beloved by fans; maybe the producers thought that her appearance on the new show would earn some goodwill. Who knows? But here's the shocking thing: Lwaxana Troi is actually the best part about this episode. And it's not even close.

Certainly, that could be read as the most backhanded of compliments. And yes, the other elements of this episode are pretty terrible. When we learn that Bashir has been ordered to babysit some spoiled ambassadors, for example, I'm not sure whether to be more sorry for him or the ambassadors. I do wonder how a group of people so oblivious to basic social cues ever rose to such positions. (But then, I'm assuming some sort of meritocracy here in the future of Star Trek. If you're using modern day as the model, then ambassadors can be spoiled rich people appointed by their powerful friends.)

The O'Brien story line isn't much better. Act 1 opens with a barge full of technobabble that lasts for minutes. It's supposed to establish a baseline for the audience of what the computer normally acts like, but goes on way longer than necessary (especially for anyone whose been hearing O'Brien complain about Cardassian engineering for over a dozen episodes). From there the story goes through some boilerplate puzzle solving, then culminates in belaboring the analogy of this computer virus to a needy puppy.

But the thing is, none of that stuff really matters. It's all shoe leather to get to this episode's reason for being -- trapping Odo and Lwaxana in a turbolift together. And amazingly enough, I'd have to say that payoff is actually worth it. It's such an important moment of growth for Odo. We learn that he's really never been shown any warmth or tenderness in his life, and has become unwilling to be seen as vulnerable as a result. It's a huge deal that here he experiences kindness and sympathy for the first time.

It's also interesting to see where Odo has drawn his own boundaries. He freely confesses things to Quark that might seem quite personal to the rest of us -- that he's never been in love, that he has no sense of smell -- but there's one line he won't cross. He's never shown reluctance to shift in front of others, but he doesn't want to be seen forced to remain in a fully liquid state. Nor does he want to step outside of his comfort zone even a little. He seeks help from Sisko on getting rid of Lwaxana, and is quite put out to get only romantic advice. When the turbolift gets stuck and he realizes his predicament, he looks genuinely alarmed, more so than we've ever seen him.

It would be enough if this marked good character development for Odo, but it's actually great character development for Lwaxana too. We see how much of her boisterous persona is merely a constructed front. We see what happens when she finally runs out of steam talking about herself, and it's that she taps into an empathy more profound than even her daughter famously possesses. Lwaxana lets herself be vulnerable too, and the moment she removes her wig for Odo is surprisingly tender and genuine.

Majel Barrett excels, it seems, when she has an excellent actor to play off of. We saw this opposite David Ogden Stiers in the Next Generation episode "Half a Life," and it happens again here with Rene Auberjonois. He seized this opportunity to add more dimension to his character, and as a result, she did too. Auberjonois explained his approach in an interview, and I find it quite insightful: "When I'm doing a tragedy or playing a serious character, I concentrate on finding as much humor in the character as possible. And if I'm playing a comic character, I look for the sad side. Because that's the way you get the audience's emotions going, by making the pendulum swing in as great an arc as you possibly can. So Odo's vulnerability is something that interests me a great deal."

Speaking of the comic side of things, the humor in this episode works better than in a typical Lwaxana episode too. Her quip referring to Odo as the "thin beige line" is hilarious, and her brushing off of Odo's protests are cute ("I can swim"). There are more good jokes at the margins too, such as Quark taking it as a compliment when Odo says he's above petty theft.

Other observations:

• The back story of Odo's relationship with a Bajoran scientist is sketched in lightly here. This would become the basis of some solid future stories.

• Sisko maybe needs an HR department. When people come to complain to him about sexual harassment (Odo here being the second time), he seems to shrug it off too easily.

• The producers acknowledged that Odo's "melting" should have affected his uniform as well as his face. Still, the uniforms were too expensive to ruin one that way, they said.

If you're going to build a whole episode around one idea, at least have that idea be good. "Odo and Lwaxana stuck in an elevator" delivers. Still, I certainly could wish the episode hadn't been such a strain getting there. I give "The Forsaken" a B-.

Ethnical Debate

Board games that work well for more than 5 players are not as common as some might hope. In many cases, a game's mechanisms would work well enough for more than 4, but the down time in between turns would simply be too long to introduce any more players to the mix. Other times, the mechanisms themselves don't scale up well to the number of players. I think Ethnos might belong in that second category.

Ethnos is a game that combines card set-building with area control on a board. Each card in a shuffled deck depicts a fantasy creature of a particular type, and is also (unrelated) one of six colors. On your turn, you either draw a single card (from a face up spread, or from the deck), or play a set. The set must contain a mix of creatures all of one color, or be a group of the same kind of creatures. In either case, two things follow: you place a control token in one of six countries on a map (corresponding to the color of the top card in your set), and then you discard all remaining cards in your hand to the face up spread.

Each one of the monster types has its own special ability, which scales to the size of the set you play. As with the control, whichever creature you place on top of a set you play gives you its ability -- to cheat the map placement rules in some way, win tiebreakers for the round, manipulate the cards in your hand, and so forth.

The game is played in three rounds, with scoring triggered randomly near the end of the deck at the end of each round. Sets you played during the round score you points, more for larger sets. Then each of the six countries on the map scores for the round, giving points to the player with the most control tokens (and second most in round 2, and third most in round 3). Area control gets harder as you go, because placing a new token as you play a set requires that the set has more cards in it than the number of tokens you already have in the country.

My explanation may have sounded a bit convoluted there, but it's a really straightforward game to grasp. I think it involves quite a bit more luck than I'd expected on the surface. That luck comes down to one particular rule -- that you must discard the rest of your hand whenever you play a set. You're constantly having to evaluate whether the "one important thing" you're trying to do is worth wasting several turns drawing for it, and whether the extra cards you're accumulating are getting too good to put out there for others to draft when you're forced to discard them.

This is where I'm convinced that playing with too many players hurts the game. Ethnos takes up to 6. I've played now with 6 and 5, and I really think it ought to cap out at about 4. The face-up pool of cards never lasts long enough. Whenever one player makes a set and refreshes the pool with their discards, there's an immediate feeding frenzy on the scraps. Depending on how tightly other players are managing their hands, cards might not even be there by the time your turn comes around. Often, you're just drawing blindly from the deck, usually for lack of any other option. There is some meat to this "my trash can become someone else's treasure" mechanic, but you barely get to engage with it when playing with so many players. Instead, the game feels almost as random as Fluxx at times -- just draw and hope for the best.

For fast-paced game with area control and cards, I was much more impressed by Eight-Minute Empire. Still, the creature powers here did strike me as clever and interesting, and I would be willing to try the game again some time with a smaller number of players. For the 6 the box claims it can take, though, Ethnos feels like a bust. Withholding the option to revisit this review if I do ever get to play it with 3 or 4, I'm giving Ethnos a C. There might be an interesting game in there, but I think it doesn't know its limitations.

Principia

The newest Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode was a sort of return to the old formula we haven't seen in some time: the whole gang goes on a caper. Said caper was aboard a ship floating a mile up in the sky, so the more current science fiction thrust of the show was definitely there. Still, it was generally a more straightforward episode that we've had of late.

The caper involved teaming up with Jake Busey, of all people. Usually, he's the guy you cast to play obnoxious and/or crazy, so there was a little bit of me waiting for the other shoe to drop here. It was a pleasant surprise to me that it did not double-cross the team, that the character was purely about needing a new ally, and rounding out Mack's past by telling us about "Candyman" and "Mackhammer."

That Mackhammer bit, by the way, might just have led to the funniest joke Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever done. When Coulson said, "Mackhammer.... you can't touch this," I roared. Maybe the writers retro-engineered the name from that joke, but however they got there -- props. And speaking of jokes, the characters are moving onto a place where they can crack a few about Yo-Yo's predicament, and it's nice to see levity permeate the proceedings more again.

The writers have also been having a lot of fun with Deke. They've made a small but effective tweak to his character. He's less self-assured than he was when we met him, with his lack of knowledge about his new time period serving as a means to make him more innocent and childlike. Being childlike, of course, is very much the point, so that we can get fun banter between him and FitzSimmons now that we know he's their grandkid. Deke knows it now too, and I imagine it won't be long until we get the opposite of the cliche, enraged "you're not my Dad!" moment, when Deke reveals what he knows.

But I almost enjoyed more the villainous component of the hour. First, we tracked Alex as we learned about his new power -- perfect recall of everything in his life. The episode effectively presented this as a double-edged sword, playing up the dark side of what that would be like. Second, the episode fleshed out Ruby a good deal more, doing for her character what I wished had been done before she maimed Yo-Yo. She now feels to me like a more credible villain from which we should expect great (diabolical) things.

Overall, I'd give the episode a B. And this intriguing season keeps humming along.

A Sauvage Review

Those of you who have never read the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman, are really missing out on something great. (Though if your decision not to read them was informed by the movie The Golden Compass, I can sort of understand. That film didn't really capture the best of the book.) If you have read the series, then Philip Pullman has something exciting for you: a new trilogy set in the same world!

The new trilogy is dubbed The Book of Dust, and begins with a prequel novel called La Belle Sauvage. (It's said that not all of the series is to be set before the events of the original trilogy, but the first book, at least, is a prequel.) Set a decade before His Dark Materials, La Belle Sauvage centers on a young boy named Malcolm, who helps at his parents' inn and owns the trusty canoe the book is named for. He spends time helping the nuns at the nearby priory, and takes an interest in a baby girl named Lyra who has been left there. When government schemers, a crazed psychopath, and even a natural disaster all seem to conspire against the baby, Malcolm decides it's up to him to save the day.

Ultimately, La Belle Sauvage is a book about how the protagonist of the original trilogy winds up where she does at the start of the book. Fortunately, though, this is a rather tangential thread of the new story. This book is really a self-contained adventure starring this new character of Malcolm. Moreover, it's a revisiting of the wonderful fantasy world Pullman created years ago.

The world of His Dark Materials (and now the Book of Dust) is deeply fascinating to me. It proceeds from the simple premise that in a world otherwise exactly like ours, every person's "soul" is manifested as a physical animal familiar that lives outside them. One of the best parts of the original series is how Pullman explored so many facets of that idea, creating conflict that could only exist in his world, while using it as effective allegory for our own. Though the new book doesn't have too much new cleverness to add on this front, its social commentary on authoritarian religion is as sharp as ever. In any case, I'm happy just to spend more time in one of the more fascinating fantasy settings I've ever come across.

I'm also fascinated just to read more of Pullman's writing. That's the real star here. Philip Pullman has an incredibly compelling manner of telling a story. Without seeming too fussed over, his way of putting a sentence together always seems perfect to me. He's also excellent at writing for a child protagonist. The child or teenage protagonist is a staple of fantasy literature, but inevitably the reader has to overlook that these characters usually aren't written quite right -- "children" are wise beyond their years, pouty lodestones on the plot, or otherwise "off." I feel like Pullman gets them just right, capturing their sense of wonder and desire for adventure, while tempering it with the emotional and physical limitations that come with immaturity.

The plot itself? Well, that might be the weakest part this time around. Not to say that I thought the story was bad -- it's more that the first half of the book really layers in a lot of compelling suspense and detail that isn't totally paid off in the back half. (It reads much like a stand-alone novel, though I suppose this is really material to be picked up later in the trilogy?) The back half of the book is essentially a long chase that strangely isn't quite as engaging as the slower paced, more thoughtful material that came before. (It also takes a strange turn into supernatural territory for a chapter or two that doesn't quite feel of a piece with the rest.)

Still, I'm enthused to have the book even with its flaws. Pullman's writing style and overall creation make up for any shortcomings. I'd grade La Belle Sauvage a B+. If you've read the first series, you should definitely pick this one up (even if you're worried about starting a new, unfinished trilogy. As I said, this one really plays like it stands alone, leading up to the original trilogy.) If you've never read the original series, go grab a copy of The Golden Compass (or, as it's known outside the U.S., Northern Lights) and get started!

DS9 Flashback: Dramatis Personae

Among the more dedicated Star Trek fans, writer Joe Menosky is known for his "big concept" episodes -- the most successful and well-received being The Next Generation's "Darmok." He also contributed a handful of episodes to Deep Space Nine, the first of which was "Dramatis Personae."

A Klingon ship returns from the Gamma Quadrant and almost immediately explodes! Though the Deep Space Nine is able to rescue one crew member and his personal log entries, the former quickly dies, while the latter is damaged and must be recompiled. It gradually emerges that a mutinous struggle for power broke out aboard the ship, and it appears to have been viral in nature, beginning after the Klingons explored a particular planet. That virus is now affecting the senior staff, with people acting unlike themselves and choosing sides against each other. A bored and aristocratic Sisko is being protected by a concigliere-like O'Brien, while an extra-fiesty Kira seeks to persuade a reverie-obsessed Dax to overthrow him. It's up to Odo, unaffected by the virus, to save them all.

This episode is quintessential Joe Menosky. He's developed an entire alien mythos here, in detail apparently greater than the episode actually requires, to lend a sense of authenticity to his story. This background is revealed by context, but there's never a big dump of exposition to fully acclimate the audience. It's similar to the myths that underpin the Tamarian language of "Darmok." It's even more like the premise of the Next Generation episode he'd write a year later, "Masks." Both episodes see main characters embodying personalities from an alien culture to act out a power struggle no one fully understands.  Neither "Masks" nor "Dramatis Personae" seems fully cooked. Both lack any meaningful subtext or moral that seems to make the story worth telling. "Dramatis Personae" at least has two things going for it.

First, Deep Space Nine is a series where the characters already have some natural conflict with one another. This lets the mystery sneak in gradually, grafting itself onto a minor actual conflict between Kira and Sisko at the start of the episode. From there, the episode is essentially posing an intriguing "what if" question: what if the friction between those two, between the Federation and Bajor, was dialed all the way up?

Second, and more importantly, the episode gives more people the chance to play. Most of the fun in a story like this is in watching the main cast act out of the ordinary. On The Next Generation, "Masks" gave only Brent Spiner this opportunity; here, the virus affects five main characters. But then, the down side here is that we're less than 20 episodes in. The actors know these characters far better than the audience at this point, and so it often seems like this story is more fun for them than it is for us. (Nana Visitor sort of confirmed as much when speaking of this episode in an interview, saying she so enjoyed it that she "came and watched scenes I wasn't involved with just to see what was going on.")

There is some entertainment value here, to be sure. It's amusing to watch everyone hold paranoid conversations about whose "side" people are on. Terry Farrell is fun, going broad with a version of Dax that's forgetful in the moment and permanently lost in her own reminiscing. Avery Brooks had not yet found the right balance for Sisko between buttoned-up Starfleet and his own quirky personality, and so he turns his acting up to 11 when given this chance to do something else. (Exhibit A: the way he tells us he's building "a CClocKK!") Rene Auberjonois finds joy in Odo sly efforts to play along with the rest of them.

But it just doesn't amount to much in the end. As the episode title implies, it feels like everyone is just play-acting here and that there's never any real jeopardy. The conclusion, that seems to involve flushing disembodied brain waves out into space, seems a bit trite and silly -- even by trite, silly Star Trek standards. It feels like the only meaningful scene we get is when Odo collapses and Quark quickly runs for help, demonstrating that there really is a friendship beneath their rivalry.

Other observations:

• Quark has a great line about Klingons equating pain with pleasure, and conceding "in small doses, perhaps" that's correct.

• The aliens of the episode are called the "Valerians." Coincidence, or had Joe Menosky heard of Valérian and Laureline (which became the disappointing Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets)?

• Director Cliff Bole gets in on the fun here too, filling the episode with a number of closeups far more extreme than you usually see on Star Trek.

• If you're looking to build your own Bajoran uniform costume, you get a great look at Kira's boots in this episode, when she puts her feet up on Odo's desk.

• The filling of Sisko's office continues. Just as he picked up the baseball a few episodes back, the Saltah'na clock he builds here would remain part of the set dressing for the rest of the series.

Entertaining performances add to a premise that isn't as inherently interesting as you'd think, but this episode still remains on the lackluster side. I give "Dramatis Personae" a C+.

Another Score to Settle

So, part two of the "film score double-header" post I promised yesterday is a movie I recently watched, Score: A Film Music Documentary. It comes from Matt Schrader, an investigative journalist who here has turned his camera "behind the camera" to look at the composing of modern film music. Score is a tight 90 minutes, though a junkie like me could have welcomed twice as much material. Still, Schrader manages to cover a lot of material.

The documentary opens briefly on the important role of scores in the silent film era. Quickly though, its interviews transition from film historians to modern composers, getting them to talk about their heroes from earlier generations. Much deserved praise is given to Bernard Herrmann (the reason Alfred Hitchcock's movies pack the punch they do), Jerry Goldsmith (in particular, his unprecedented score for Planet of the Apes), and Alex North (who with his first score, for A Streetcar Named Desire, began a jazz-infused age of film music that would dominate for decades).

20 solid minutes in the heart of the movie are dedicated to the most revered film composer of them all, John Williams. (It's well deserved attention; though unfortunately, all footage of the man himself is archival.) The documentary visits most of his greatest achievements -- Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., and Jurassic Park. There are interviews with modern composers who gush about his abilities, with a scientist who tries to explain the physiological effects the music has on the brain and body, with film historians who credit Williams with reviving a lost era, and more.

From there, the documentary dances through the decades, looking at composers who ushered in new eras of their own -- Danny Elfman (whose pop synth background reconstituted as a dark signature sound), Thomas Newman (with his quirky approach and mastery of the contemplative solo piano), Hans Zimmer (who began the age of the boisterous and brazen BWWWWAAAAAAA), and Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor (among the latest of many rock artists to cross over into film, bringing a haunting, untethered sound all their own).

Nearly every working film composer today that you could think to name shows up in the documentary at one point or another. (It's noticeably short on women and people of color, though those demographics are notably underrepresented in the field.) The composers talk about all aspects of the process -- the raw exploration phase, finding obscure instruments and inventing new ones, orchestration, the recording process (and conducting), and even the post-production mixing. Brian Tyler, composer of Avengers: Age of Ultron, even takes the process one step farther, going to a theater to watch an audience react to his work in the hopes that it will give him guidance on his next effort.

Though there is plenty here to like, the fact that the movie takes such a wide view does mean a lot is left out. I'd prefer a deeper dive, as my gushing review of the Settling the Score podcast surely made clear. Perhaps a multi-part mini-series, aired on some streaming service, would have scratched the itch this documentary leaves me feeling. It's good -- at least for people into film scores -- but falls short of "great."

I'd give a B to Score: A Film Music Documentary. I'm glad I made the time for it. I just wish I'd had to make more.

Running Up the Score

Long time readers of the blog (and/or those who know me well) will know of my love for film scores. This post is the first part of a double header about that.

I'm starting with the thing I want to recommend more enthusiastically: a podcast called Settling the Score. It's a relatively new show that's only about a dozen episodes in, but it has already become essential for me, the podcast that will shove everything else backward in the queue whenever a new episode drops. Hosted by "Jon and Andy" (Jonathan Dinerstein and Andy Boroson), each episode is a deep dive into the score of one particular film.

To kick off their show, the hosts have chosen to countdown through the AFI Top 25 Movie Scores. As with all of the American Film Institute's lists, some of the picks seem inevitable and correct, while other seem baffling and moronic. Both categories of selection have provided excellent material for the podcast. Episodes so far have focused on head scratchers ("How the West Was Won"), unassailable masterpieces ("E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial"), and movies that probably just made the list for one memorable tune/scene ("The Pink Panther").

What quickly became apparent to me in just one or two episodes is how well these hosts know their stuff. They are clearly passionate experts on the subject of film music. They do in-depth research for each episode, getting their hands on actual printed sheet music from the scores where they can. They talk in great detail about how the music is constructed, both technically and emotionally. They explain unfamiliar musical concepts in approachable detail. And each episode is slickly edited to play exactly the passages of the music they refer to during their hour-long discussion.

I've been enthralled by episodes even when I didn't know the music beforehand. Their deep dive on "A Streetcar Named Desire" (which I've seen only as a stage production) really digs into how composer Alex North revolutionized film music with his score, making me appreciate the music both on its own and in historical context. Their examination of "Sunset Boulevard" (which I had seen, without taking particular note of its music) illuminated how Franz Waxman served up a score from a dying era of film to perfectly complement the movie's themes.

Even when I know the score being discussed quite well, Jon and Andy's discussion exposes new layers for me. The "Planet of the Apes" episode revealed the secret order governing Jerry Goldsmith's apparently chaotic score, teaching me about "twelve-tone technique" and actually identifying many of the things making those noises that I'd found unidentifiable. Their most recent episode, on "E.T.", was a real eye opener. I've always liked that score, enough even to have gone to see a symphony perform it live. I think the podcast made me love that score, stripping it apart to reveal how the magic was done in a manner that in no way compromised the thrill of the magic itself.

My only complaint about the podcast is its frequency. After launching with a few episodes and a weekly schedule, Jon and Andy fell into an every-other-week schedule. Then they did a special episode about the 2018 Oscar nominated scores that (understandably) took longer to produce, and that seems now to have led them to a once-every-three-weeks schedule. Quality like this takes time, I suppose, and I was perhaps too greedy to have devoured the available episodes too quickly. Maybe I'll listen to them again while I'm waiting for new ones to drop.

I imagine a podcast this niche might not be for everyone. But that's sort of the joy of podcasts -- with so many of them out there, there is The Perfect Podcast for everyone. I believe I've found mine. If you love movies, I think you should check it out. If you love movie scores, even half as much as I do, do not delay -- this was made for you as surely as it was made for me. Settling the Score is top notch, grade A. (A+, if I had a history of giving them out.) I wish my own signal were larger so I could boost theirs to the degree it deserves.

The Real Deal

The most recent episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was the series' 100th, and they marked the occasion with a premise that let them pull the "greatest hits" of their run into the episode. Many of the individual elements worked, but things were perhaps too crowded for most of them to breathe fully.

Take the team's realization that Coulson is dying. The ensemble gave it their all to make the emotional weight of this punch land... and yet I wasn't completely sold on it. Maybe it's that we found out about it from Future Yo-Yo a few episodes ago, blunting the sudden shock. Maybe so much time passed between when this "sickness" was discovered and Coulson got it (we learn it was when he made the deal with Ghost Rider) that it lacked immediacy. Maybe it's that the entire show's survival is questionable when this season is done, making me unsure whether I should be mourning the whole thing rather than just Coulson, as it's trying to convince me to do.

But I do know that the scene in which Daisy's tough exterior crumbled completely worked. I do know that the conversation between May and Coulson, where she put him in his place for deciding how to handle her heart for her, was one of the more effective scenes with May in a long time -- even though it was restrained and deliberately not written to boil over.

Take the procession of baddies spilling out of the "fear dimension." It was fun to see Lash again, and Deathlok, and an L.M.D. (this time of Simmons), and Hive. But some of these moments whizzed by so fast it almost felt like commentary on how effective those particular elements had been as long-running story lines in the series. And I honestly could not decide how I felt about the fake Deathlok's attempt to mess with Coulson's head. The "you've been dreaming the entire TV show" trope is so done that I don't think there are any compelling angles left on it. On the other hand, the fact that Coulson actually started the show having died in the Avengers at least gave the gimmick a grounding that made sense. (And Clark Gregg acted it wonderfully, in his signature style where you see the gears work without him sailing over the top to show you.)

One element of the episode that I appreciated without reservation, though, was the wedding of Fitz and Simmons (finally). The show definitely had its fun with throwing obstacles in their way to keep them apart -- and got great stories out of it. But now it was finally time to pay things off. This isn't Moonlighting, where the show will be changed irrevocably by putting them together. (Indeed, I don't imagine it will change much at all.) And something celebratory to commemorate 100 episodes was in order.

The marriage came with the revelation that Deke is their grandson from the future. I'm not sure I needed his irreverent quips to Deathlok intruding on the moment, but the big reveal itself was nice. It's a good way to bring Deke more into the fold (even if only for the audience). It's also a nice promise, in a way, that whatever else may happen to FitzSimmons, they can and will overcome it. (Though I suppose that's no more inevitable than the complete destruction of Earth, which our heroes will surely prevent.)

The pressure of the "100th Episode" is tough to live up to, so I can't be too disappointed if the episode fell flat in a few ways. Still, I'd say most of this season has been better than this installment. I give "The Real Deal" a B.

DS9 Flashback: If Wishes Were Horses

"If Wishes Were Horses" is not quite the worst episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's first season, but if my memory is correct, it's the last truly bad one.

The imaginations of the crew are running wild! Different things are coming to life, ripped from the imaginations of the people on the station: Jake and Ben Sisko's favorite baseball player, a doppleganger of Dax ready to succumb to Dr. Bashir's advances, a child-stealing Rumplestiltskin from the bedtime story O'Brien read to his daughter, and more. What begins as a whimsical diversion soon becomes deadly as more and more things manifest.

"If Wishes Were Horses" might represent the moment where Deep Space Nine reached peak "this feels like a Next Generation episode." Even setting aside the fact that the Enterprise crew was briefly threatened by imagination in a subplot of an early episode, this is ultimately an episode about "seeking out new life" and making first contact with it -- it's just that the life happens to come to the station instead of being "sought out."

It would have been even more of a Next Generation episode if they'd stuck to the story originally pitched by outside writers Nell McCue Crawford and William L. Crawford. They came in with a "holodeck malfunction" story in which characters were emerging into the real world. Because The Next Generation was almost at the same time mounting a "return of Moriarty" episode, the staff shunted the holodeck aspect to a small red herring (Buck Bokai following Jake home from the holosuite) and leaned into a new ending -- aliens were studying our heroes by embodying their imagination.

The loose collection of what's imagined works better for some characters than others. Bashir's creepy obsession with Dax is thrown back in his face to great effect -- first by the real Dax (who notes that he's chasing plenty of other women while claiming to have eyes only for her), and then by the demeaning "sex kitten" version that everyone gets to see. (Though Dax is perhaps a bit too magnanimous in saying she feels like Julian's privacy is the one more invaded.)

Sisko's relationship with his son is explored a bit more through their shared interest in baseball. It's interesting to hear baseball referred as a dying game at the time their favorite player was a star, because it casts both of them as fans of the underdog. (Or it makes them both hipsters, if you're less charitable.) It also says something interesting about Kira that her imagination doesn't conjure anything nice -- she only encounters a deadly fireball in a hallway.

But the rest of the characters don't really benefit from the episode premise. We already know Quark is sleazy and can't think long term, so it's hardly illuminating to see his conjured arm candy and his failure to anticipate the consequences of his costumers all winning non-stop. Odo gets a brief moment of joy in imagining a captured Quark, but spends most of the episode chasing a "Gunji jackdaw" around the promenade.

Perhaps most awkward is Rumplestiltskin, inflicted on O'Brien. Genre actor Michael John Anderson gives a game performance of what's on the page, but the character doesn't really pick enough at the core fear of losing one's family. Yet it could have been worse. In the original script draft, O'Brien was tormented by a leprechaun. Colm Meaney objected strongly to trodding out an Irish stereotype, and all but refused to do the script. (This shows the value of diverse viewpoints in a writers' room -- I can't say I would have realized myself how deeply offensive the stereotype might be taken.) At the last minute, a rewrite was done to substitute a fairy tale character, but I don't think the change was really baked in deep enough to resonate.

The ideas here may be scattershot and shallow, but it also seems like most of the actors had fun. Armin Shimerman acknowledged in interviews the thrill of having two beautiful women on his arms. Terry Farrell had fun playing the imagined Dax, so much so that Siddig el Fadil reportedly ruined a dozen takes with his laughter.

On the other hand, you know the Hollywood cliche: don't work with kids or animals. This episode had both. The emu playing the "Gunji jackdaw" wouldn't perform, so they costumed its trainer as a Bajoran to prod it around on camera. (Even then, Rene Auberjonois has to pretty much just stare at it in one scene.) Meanwhile, young Hana Hatae (playing Molly O'Brien) was reportedly sick and had to be bribed with toys from the set to perform. (Later, as an adult, Hatae said she was terrified of Rumplestiltskin when making this episode, thinking he'd actually steal her.)

Other observations:

• Odo says here that he has no sense of smell. I wonder if that detail will ever be contradicted.

• The episode takes advantage of the old 4:3 television ratio it was broadcast in to cheat on visual effects. It was prohibitively expensive at the time to do "split screen" (duplicating an actor) without locking down the camera so it couldn't move. Some of the shots of two Daxes are achieved by filming the scene in a wide aspect ratio, then pan-and-scanning across the static shot to create the illusion of motion.

• There's an avalanche of technobabble near the end of this episode as the crew struggles to close a mysterious rift in space (before realizing that it too is imagined). Kira's take on the technobabble is fantastic: "Perimeter sensors are picking up a subspace oscillation. What the hell does that mean?"

• The baseball that would remain on Sisko's desk for the rest of the series arrives here -- it's apparently the one imagined thing that remains permanently real, a gift from "Buck Bokai."

There are some fun moments scattered throughout this episode, but it's frankly a mess overall. I give "If Wishes Were Horses" a C-.

Kitten

I'm still chipping away at the episodes of The X-Files that aired before their February break. Next up for me was "Kitten," an episode that had a compelling premise, but which ultimately came up a bit short.

When Skinner goes missing, Mulder and Scully undertake a search. The trail leads to a rural Kentucky town where Skinner has gone to reunite with someone from his old Vietnam unit. But soon it seems that Skinner has been lured there for vengeance by his friend's crazed son.

I've gone on plenty about disliking the mythology episodes of The X-Files, which I think is really a shame since they're the ones that get most personal with the characters of Mulder and Scully. But there are other characters on The X-Files, ones who haven't had their personal lives spoiled by entanglement with the series' nonsensical continuing story arcs. Focusing an episode on Skinner's back story is a good way, in theory, to have your cake and eat it too. You get a stand-alone story, but one with significant personal stakes for the characters.

Indeed, the Skinner parts of the episode are generally pretty solid. Overall, the story demonstrates that he does right by his friends and always has, and that he does count Mulder and Scully among those friends. As far as this impacts the ongoing story line, it suggests he has pure motives in his associations with the Cigarette Smoking Man. But more simply, and more compelling within this hour, it shows us a moral compass, a guiding light, that makes Skinner more relateable than he's been until now.

But the adversary that leads us to these revelations is frankly a complete failure. It starts with bad writing. Davy, the son of Skinner's war buddy, is completely untrained and a transparently terrible liar, and yet still manages to easily get the drop on Skinner. He's quirky and borderline crazy for undefined reasons -- are we meant to take it that he's experiencing hereditary effects from his father's war experiences; that the government gassing he's railing against has leeched his mental faculties (whereas for everyone else, it's just causing tooth loss); or is it something else entirely? The fact that he dresses up in a weird monster suit is a meaningless red herring never given any context; it's just there to goose the audience.

And the whole thing is undermined further by the stunt casting of Haley Joel Osment in the role. Even if his current physical appearance comported with that of a credible soldier (which it does not), he still looks so similar to his childhood self that it can be hard to see him and not think of The Sixth Sense. This isn't to say that he shouldn't be getting work. It's just that you shouldn't cast him in something that at any point is trying to be scary (as The X-Files is here) unless you want the audience to think: "I see dead people."

The result is a mediocre hour that squanders the intriguing premise of giving us "a Skinner episode." I give "Kitten" a C.

A Key Recommendation

I don't have a raft of stories to share from my Steamboat Springs vacation. We skied a bunch. I actually can do that now, unlike two years ago. We played plenty of board games, and I'll probably post some thoughts on them in the weeks to come.

But one story that certainly deserves sharing is our return trip to the Crooked Key. Our visit last year to Steamboat Springs' escape room was the first time any of us had done an one, and we loved it. It turns out that it may have spoiled us a bit for the escape rooms we did later, because the production values at Crooked Key are sky high by comparison. It costs more to go, but I have no reservations saying its totally worth it -- they take the money from the higher ticket price and they put it in the room.

Less than a month before this year's ski trip, Crooked Key installed a new room/game, themed around Edgar Allan Poe. The room is called Taphophobia -- the fear of being buried alive. With this room, Crooked Key outdid themselves. It was agreed by all that this was the best escape room we'd ever done... and for some of us, it wasn't even close.


Of course, I don't want to discuss any particulars that might spoil the experience for anyone who wants to go, but there are a few things I think I can safely mention. The room has a very strong sound component to it (and this is mentioned by the operator before you begin). You must listen to things almost as much as you look at them, and the soundscape is key in making progress.

There are no "locks from a hardware store" in the entire room! I've done my share of escape rooms with as many as a dozen locks. Some are word-based, some are number-based, some are directional, and some use keys -- and there is some sense of variety in that. But ultimately, the room distills down to a procession of locks to be opened. Not Taphophobia. There are legitimate puzzles to solve beyond "how do I get a 4 digit number out of this?" That's both clever and wonderful.


The room also did a great job of requiring teamwork. It wasn't just a matter of more than one mind all trying to crack a puzzle -- there were moments where more than one person had to physically work together to solve something. The better escape rooms I've done have had moments of this, though not all of them do. And here, the teamwork moments really were highlights of the experience. Again, clever and memorable design work.

I really can't praise the Crooked Key highly enough. Anyone who'd be reading this blog would love it, and should absolutely go there if they ever find themselves in Steamboat Springs. In fact, I can think if a few people here in Denver who are so keen on escape rooms that I might consider recommending a drive up to Steamboat for the express purpose of going there.

All the Comforts of Home

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returned from its Olympic-sized hiatus with our heroes returning from the future to their own time. The episode threw them from the frying pan straight into the fire, going after a dangerous signal they believed would draw an alien attack to Earth. Though Daisy stays behind to avoid tempting fate (specifically, hers to destroy the world), she soon finds herself at work on a new problem: Deke has also traveled back from the future, and has gotten himself into trouble in this unfamiliar setting.

It was great to see the show outdoors again, and even greater that the episode took time to acknowledge that for the characters. For the regulars, it was the first time in a while; for Deke, it was his first time ever, sending him into a funny but fundamentally dramatic hippie reverie. Comedy was actually great across the episode, with Patrick Warburton's cameo being a highlight as the circa 1970s S.H.I.E.L.D. director. (I can think of no one better able to deliver the "1980s got here early" line with such dry wit.) The scene in the van where the characters all recapped the terrible things that have happened to them over the years, with May culminating in "dancing," was a true laugh out loud moment.

The set up of the season's new villain in Hale's daughter (should I be putting that in quotes?) sort of worked and sort of didn't. The twist was well executed, setting her up in the teaser as a disaffected teenager and revealing at the end that she's some sort of badass government superweapon. The middle, where we didn't know her identity and she wreaked havoc on the team, that's where I have some reservations. She waltzed into the scene as an anonymous masked figure, maybe even another robot for all we knew, with very little sense that she was anything to be taken that seriously. The next moment, she's cut off both of Yo-Yo's arms.

There's something to be said for surprise here, and since I think that's what the writers were going for, I suppose a polite nod is in order. They'd shown us "future Yo-Yo" in this maimed state, and I think effectively led us to imagine that it had maybe come as the result of torture by Kasius. Certainly, I'd never imagined that it would come to pass in the very next episode. Still, it unfolded in an especially brutal way (and also a somewhat unclear one; is it just bad luck that lightning fast Yo-Yo was in the wrong place at the wrong moment?), and I think I would have liked to have felt an underlying sense of dread going into the scene. By contrast, Sinara had been set up as a dangerous adversary quite well in the first arc of the season. (Too well, maybe, considering how easily it seemed Daisy offed her.) If this new character has strutted in with Sinara's pedigree, I would certainly have felt more tension -- and still, I think, have been surprised when something terrible happened to Yo-Yo.

The betrayal by Piper wasn't entirely successful for me either, and for much the same reason -- insufficient establishment of the character. It's been a long time now since we've seen Piper, and she really wasn't much of a character when we did. The heroes recognized her immediately, but I admit to spending a few moments going "where do they know her from?" The story played alright whether you ever really remembered that or not, I think, but I didn't feel the weight of "their friend stabbed them in the back!" as strongly as I think the writers imagined.

Still, the episode entertained overall. If we expected a bit of a breather after completing the future arc, wrong! The pace is still ratcheted high, and big things are happening. I give the episode a B. As always, I'm left looking forward to next week.

And the Oscars Snark Goes To...

Hey all! I've just returned from a week's vacation in Steamboat Springs... just in time for my annual Oscars watching party with my snarky friends! Here's a sampling of the better comments:

This year's Oscars is set inside a geode.

Helen Mirren, having a good time as always.

Viola Davis is presenting from inside the Great Gatsby's manor.

So many actors seem to react to the clip of their performance with a "really, that's the clip you chose to show?" reaction.

Gal Gadot and Armie Hammer emerge from the Beauty and the Beast dance hall.

The geode changes color. Now we're inside Blood Geode.

This year, the categories on the envelopes are printed REALLY BIG.

Did they instruct people to hold open their envelopes to camera while giving their speeches as if to say, "no really, see, I won!"?

Every year, they try to explain to us the difference between Sound Design and Sound Mixing, and every year, they award the same movie in both categories anyway.

One of the winning Production Designers apparently lost a bet -- rolled up tux sleeves, sunglasses, no shave, and sneakers. Boo.

Casa Bonita!

Rita Moreno's dress is such a deep black, it looks like her chest is being censored by the network.

When you're worried your set isn't sparkly enough, bring out the Sparkle Curtain!

Wait. Academy Award Winner Kobe Bryant?

The singer of the song from Call Me By Your Name is dressed like a kung fu ice cream man.

Our Oscar viewing party came to a screeching halt when we had to call that telephone number in the fake Overlook Hotel commercial.

Tom Holland came from his production of A Christmas Carol. Where he's playing Tiny Tim.

That triangle/Oscar statue icon they pop up when the award winners speak looks like a warning sign.

Matthew McConaughey has Trump skin going on.

Who had Guillermo del Toro carrying a 6-foot sub on their Oscar Bingo Card?

Maya Rudolph brings the funny as always, but kinda looks like she's wearing a red Snuggie.

Salma Hayek's dress is so sparkly, it's translating everything being said into Morse code.

Nicole Kidman is wearing a blue suspension bridge.

Jordan Peele actually won for the Get Out screenplay! So freaking happy!

"THEY'RE USING MATRIX BABIES TO POWER THE OSCARS BROADCAST!" (Okay, you maybe had to be there for that one.)

Kinda mean to cut to Mary J. Blige right after the performance of the song from The Greatest Showman brings the house to its feet. She has this whole "everyone else is standing, but this is my competition!" dilemma.

After apparent disinterest in winning the jet ski in the opening half of the show, there seems to be a lot of jet ski interest in the back half.

When you start talking about your dead mother, the music playing you off will cease immediately.

Who had "Orgasmatron" on their Oscar Bingo Card?

You may be cool, but you'll never be "Oscar winner riding on a jet ski with Helen Mirren" cool.