From the Ashes

The latest episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't cover a lot of ground in terms of plot, but it did put a lot of focus on characters and their complex emotions -- which was nice this deep in the season, as everyone was being nudged into position for the season finale.

Mack and Yo-Yo are captive, and soon joined by Benson, who Izel has figured out knows the location she seeks. She's torturing them all to extract this information -- but the torture is psychological instead of physical. Meanwhile, back at the Lighthouse, FitzSimmons and Deke try to develop a tech solution to Izel's body possession advantage, as May and Daisy clash over whether any part of Coulson is still alive in Sarge.

I was just complaining last episode about how the series made Benson disappear, and suddenly here he was back, and put through the emotional wringer more than anyone else this week. Of course, May would have had some sense of his pain -- of seeing the one you loved brought back to life only to behave wickedly. But the nightmare version of Benson's husband was both closer to the real thing and particularly calibrated to cause pain in a way Sarge hasn't been. Plus, Izel murdering him -- and threatening to do it repeatedly -- was really the capper on the horror for Benson. Guest star Barry Shabaka Henley played the scene very well.

After several weeks where Sarge has simply been the new character Clark Gregg plays on the series, it was nice to get the "he might be Coulson"-ness of it back into the story in a big way. Daisy's take on the matter was articulated well by Simmons: she has a history of running from the big emotional blows. More specifically, and not as directly stated: she has a history of being let down by father figures. So when Coulson died, she was emotionally determined, right away, to put the whole thing behind her. That made the moment when Sarge's Coulson memories poked through, and he called her "Skye," extra poignant. (Another poignant moment came when she read the letter from Coulson -- which the writers let us understand in context without giving us a ham-fisted voice-over of the letter's contents. It was better left to the imagination.)

May was on the opposite end the debate because the emotional place she was coming from was opposite. She hasn't really had a wide array of romantic relationships in her life (that we know of anyway)... but even after divorcing one husband, he remained on the periphery of her life. May forges very deep relationships (with friends too) that don't fade easily -- so she was open to the idea that a part of Coulson might remain in Sarge. (Also... she was right.)

I've mentioned once or twice this season how the heroes haven't always used the full sweep of their powers or intelligence, sometimes in an artificial way to keep the plot going. This burden kinda-sorta shifted to the villain this week, with Izel not just setting up residence in Yo-Yo to have access to her abilities. Some of her hopping around was motivated, at least -- when Izel thinks her host has information she needs, she has to hop somewhere else to get it. But ultimately, her evil plan is that she and others like her are going to each possess a human on a permanent basis. So it seems like her behavior ought to be to stick with Yo-Yo unless she has a specific reason to step away. Of course, this is bad for the narrative, which rightfully gave us real character interaction between Yo-Yo and Mack instead... but it felt like another moment this season where characters weren't quite being true to themselves.

FitzSimmons and Deke were more on the periphery this week, cooking up a tech solution to their situation -- but I did really like the moment where "grandpa was proud." Deke hasn't had the biggest character arc this season, but what's been there has been about not fitting in, and being particularly worried that Fitz doesn't like him. So the quick little exchange between them, when they really had worked out a solution together, was nice.

I'd say this episode was a solid B. Next week, we get a two-hour season finale... and then begins one last one-year wait before the final season.

DS9 Flashback: Past Tense, Part II

Picking up on "Past Tense, Part I," the concluding installment of Deep Space Nine's mid-season two-part episode continued its examination of homelessness and indifference toward the underprivileged.

Trapped in 2024 San Francisco, Sisko has been forced to assume the persona of civil rights icon Gabriel Bell in an attempt to preserve history. This may cost him his life, as Bell died in the hostage situation Sisko must now control. Meanwhile, Kira and O'Brien travel to moments throughout Earth's past in an effort to find Sisko and the other missing crew members.

In my review of "Part I" of this story, I wrote about its underlying message and how it both predicted and underestimated what the world might be like a few decades later. Rather than reiterate that here, I'll try to focus on things specific to the second half. For starters, "Past Tense" wasn't originally planned to be a two-part episode. In reviewing the story outline, executive producer Michael Piller noted that the Attica-inspired hostage situation didn't even develop until Act 4 of a five-act script -- and that there was easily enough meat on that bone to sustain an entire episode of its own.

This hour gives us our first real taste of Ben Sisko as "tough guy." Actor Avery Brooks had previously played the badass character of Hawk on Spenser: For Hire (and a spin-off) for several seasons of television, but his Star Trek character had gone a different direction -- likely written to put deliberate distance between the two. But Brooks excels at depicting a contained emotion spilling over, where Sisko had previously not often spilled over. This episode makes better use of Brooks' strengths. He shows more passion here than in any previous episode, from chastising a cop for ignoring the plight around him to handling hostage takers as forcefully as hostages. In a way, this episode is a precursor of the end of this season and the start of the next, when the producers would finally allow Avery Brooks to grow his goatee, shave his head, and act in a more natural manner.

This episode is also a precursor to Jonathan Frakes, movie director. This was Frakes' third (and final) episode of Deep Space Nine, and it became part of his demo reel (along with The Next Generation's "Cause and Effect") to convince the studio executives he could direct Star Trek: First Contact. He keeps great tension throughout the episode, bringing his own sense of style while not totally clashing with the tone set by the previous director who'd made Part I.

The story continues hard with its cautionary tale of rounding up the homeless into what the writers themselves dubbed concentration camps. Improbably, according to show runner Ira Steven Behr, the show received some letters from people complaining that the story "should have presented 'both sides' and not just the 'liberal' point of view." In an interview, he wryly noted, "In other words, we should have showed the positive aspects of putting the homeless into concentration camps? And I do admit we probably failed in that – we really did not show the many, many wonderful aspects of life without money and living in over-crowded camps." On a more serious note, he noted that while of course two hours of television weren't going to solve the problem, he thought it important to treat the situation realistically.

By and large, the episode does so. But not always. The character of Grady, played by Clint Howard, feels like a misguided addition to the tale. His mad conspiracy theories are presented for broad laughs rather than in recognition of the serious mental health issues they likely connote. Don't blame Howard for the wild performance, though -- Behr reportedly wrote the character this way, intending the part for Iggy Pop. (The rock star/actor was unavailable, but would eventually show up on Deep Space Nine.)

The subplot of Kira and O'Brien's search through time for their missing crew members is also played for disruptive laughs. Kira's "I broke my nose" excuse for her appearance echoes similarly light explanations for Spock's ears while undercover in the original series, and the 1960s-era encounter with hippies is a particular groaner of a scene. (Though it's one of the few times that real world, non-classical music is used on Star Trek: "Hey Joe" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience plays in the background).

One way you can't fault the episode is for its failure to anticipate the ubiquity of cameras and cell phones in the world of today. Honestly, who in 1995 could have foreseen that? Chalk this up as one of the countless movies and television shows of yesteryear that would fall apart completely with access to a smartphone -- the hostage crisis and the effort to get the stories of the Sanctuary District "residents" out into the larger world simply wouldn't work this way.

Big as the budget is for its time, it's not big enough to do justice to the ending. Hundreds of people are said to have died in the Bell Riots. We see no more than half a dozen. The action condenses down to little more than Sisko taking a bullet for one of the police officers. It certainly doesn't feel big enough in scope to be the historical turning point we've been told this moment is. (But what are you going to do on a 1990s television budget?)

Other observations:

• Dax sneaks in and out of the Sanctuary District through the sewer. Surely once the hostage crisis began, this sort of entry/exit would have been monitored.

• There's a lot of talk about baseball, furthering the fictional future history of Buck Bokai (started on The Next Generation and continued on Deep Space Nine).

• One of Kira and O'Brien's quick visits in time is to the 1930s, a moment that evoked for scenic artist Doug Drexler the memory of the classic Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever." Drexler wanted to acknowledge that classic episode in some way, so he took a poster from "City" that advertised a boxing match at Madison Square Garden and here did a poster advertising "their first rematch since Madison Square Garden."

As in Part I, the message of this story remains spot on. But some awkward humor is dropped into this episode (with a resounding clang) and knocks it down a peg. As with the first part, I give "Past Tense, Part II" a B+.

A Walk in the (Rocky Mountain National) Park

My husband and I just got back from a three-day weekend where we decided to be tourists in our own home state. We hopped in the car and drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park. We took our time getting there, stopping in Boulder at both Twisted Pine Brewing Co. and Upslope Brewing Company, and ultimately arrived at Estes Park in the late afternoon.

We checked in at the Stanley Hotel, the place made famous for inspiring Stephen King to write The Shining. And boy, do they know it. By the end of our two nights there, we felt they'd surely have torn the place down decades ago without the shot of Shining-based tourism. From the pipes leaking into our closet from the room above to the computer/credit card systems that were down for most of the weekend, it wasn't a great place to stay. Pretty, though. All the furnishings were carefully selected to blend early 20th-century with Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation. It was sort of fun, in a visiting a movie set kind of way. (Even if the Stanley was only used in the 90s TV mini-series, not the original film.)

On our first night in town, we sampled the first of three Estes Park breweries: Lumpy Ridge Brewing Company, which is located in a converted old gas station (and which has pretty solid beer). We also stopped at Snowy Peaks Winery to taste some of their offerings. We enjoyed their wine enough to bring a few bottles back to enjoy later. We then had dinner at the Dunraven Inn (delicious Italian food) before walking the shops of Estes Park (seemingly half souvenir shops, half salt water taffy stores) on a lovely summer night.

The next day, we trekked all over Rocky Mountain National Park. We went for a drive up Old Fall River Road, a less traveled (and less often open) one-way dirt road that was the only way across the park before the construction of the more famous (and maintained) Trail Ridge Road.

There are all sorts of great sights to see along the nine-mile drive, from a picturesque waterfall (Chasm Falls) to bright green meadows to forested paths to snow-covered valley walls in territory home to marmots -- ending up at the Alpine Visitor Center, near the highest point in the park.

From there, we continued along Trail Ridge Road, farther west into the park and intending to find a spot for an afternoon picnic. We'd planned all the food, but a heavy afternoon downpour spoiled those plans. We parked the car just a few feet off the Continental Divide and ate there, watching the rain pour all around us (half into the Pacific, half into the Atlantic, of course). It did finally let up enough for us to stop for a short hike around a spot called Lake Irene. The trail was covered with puddles from the storm, but we had the place mostly to ourselves, with people not yet coming out again after the rain.

Next, we backtracked on Trail Ridge Road, but not yet to returning to the hotel. We headed to the Glacier Gorge Trailhead for a short hike to a popular spot in the park, Alberta Falls. It's a lovely spot for pictures... it's just really hard to get one without any other people in them. We considered briefly a longer hike back up to a more secluded location, but decided it was a bit late in the afternoon for that. (Plus. we weren't as fully outfitted for such an adventure as we'd have liked.)

The evening back in town saw us trying the two other local breweries, Estes Park Brewery and Rock Cut Brewing Company. Neither was a standout, though the former was also having their fun riding the Shining gravy train, with multiple beers named in reference to the book. After another sunset walk among the shops in town, we closed down the night back at the Stanley Hotel in their whiskey bar. Neither of us is an aficionado of whiskey, but we appreciated how rare it was to find a place with literally hundreds to choose from. We were guided to a good choice by our server, sipping slowly amid the bustling Saturday night crowd.

When we'd planned our weekend, we weren't sure whether we'd want to head back into Rocky Mountain National Park on Sunday too. As it turned out, we were in a lazy mood. We didn't do much that morning but take a quick trip through the hedge maze they've planted in front of the Stanley -- again, in honor of the Shining. (Only installed four years ago, it hasn't had time to grow to heights that make it particularly difficult to navigate.) Some coffee and breakfast, and one more quick browse of the town shops, and we were on the road back home.

Rocky Mountain National Park has some beautiful spots. But also, you kind of can't go anywhere in Colorado without stumbling onto beautiful spots. Those of us lucky enough to live here are pretty spoiled. And being a "home state tourist" was a nice opportunity to appreciate that. We saw license plates from all over the country or people who drove days to get here. We saw it all, and then were comfortably back home in less than two hours (even after a traffic delay for a huge weekend festival in Lyons).

It was a lovely little getaway.

DS9 Flashback: Past Tense, Part I

From the very beginning, Star Trek was always presenting allegorical episodes that looked at present-day issues through a futuristic science fiction lens. Sometimes, the allegory would lose the remove of being set on an "alien world," as our heroes time traveled back to earlier periods in Earth's history. So it was with Deep Space Nine's two part episode, "Past Tense."

While the Defiant is visiting Earth, a transporter accident sends Sisko, Dax, and Bashir back into the past. They become separated in 2024 San Francisco, the men winding up in a "Santuary District" -- a concentration camp for the homeless -- just days before a formative historical event known as the Bell Riots.

This episode had been in the works since early in the season, when staff writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe pitched the idea of sending Sisko back in time to wind up homeless and diagnosed insane for his rantings about being from the future. Wolfe himself thought his script wasn't quite right (though it sounds like it may have been inspiration for the later episode "Far Beyond the Stars"); still, the writers wanted to do something that commented on homelessness.

Show runner Ira Steven Behr came up with the angle to make the story work: the idea of "Sancutary Disticts," concentration camps into which people would be callously rounded up -- out of sight and out of mind for the rest of society. He also took inspiration from the 1971 prison riot at Attica, which was driven largely by inhumane living conditions. Behr thought he was presenting a fictional cautionary tale, yet as the staff was crafting the story, the L.A. Times ran an article describing a proposal by the mayor to move homeless people into fenced-in areas to "make downtown Los Angeles friendlier to business." As Wolfe put it: "literally there it was in the newspaper. We were a little freaked out." But also, of course, determined to tell the story.

It's quite a different experience to view "Past Tense" today than it was when it first aired in 1995. What was theoretical then is closer to reality today. This isn't an off-the-mark, 1960s prediction of interstellar travel in sleeper ships by the 1990s; this story is set in 2024, just five years from now. And while there isn't a "Sanctuary District" in every major U.S. city, people are being rounded and penned in like cattle. It's not about homelessness or class, as this episode posited -- it's about nationality and race.

This episode isn't blind to the racial angle, though. It's quite telling that when Sisko, Bashir, and Dax all find themselves trapped in the past, the two dark-skinned men are essentially incarcerated, while the white woman is ushered into the lap of luxury. Sisko and Bashir sleep outside in an alley; Dax gets a ritzy party and a swanky hotel room.

Of course, the writers of this episode weren't trying to predict the future, they were merely trying to depict that you don't get to utopia without some troubles along the way. Yet there are some interesting details they get surprisingly close: the ubiquity of advertisements online, the way society can backslide on its ideals when the going gets tough, and more. Really, the least plausible detail in the episode is that people in 2024 San Francisco are measuring the temperature in Celsius.

Well... except for one truly disheartening aspect. What the episode really gets most "wrong" is in what it would take to awaken society from a complacent torpor. The description we get here of the Bell Riots (which will be dramatized more in Part II) is that of a linchpin, eye-opening event in which online videos and tragic deaths alter the course of history. Sadly, similar events in the real world -- over not just the past few years, but decades -- suggest it will take a lot more than that. "Past Tense," sadly, feels a bit dated even as it feels eerily prescient.

At the time, these episodes were criticized by some as being too preachy, though I think if anything, they spend a lot of time they could be moralizing on technobabble to explain the time travel. There's a lot of overworked explanation of how three crew members were sent back, how the Defiant remained insulated from the timeline, stuff that just isn't as important as the message being delivered. (And it's an especially weak explanation anyway. If transporting from ship with a cloaking device runs any risk of causing time travel, you'd think that would be something Klingons or Romulans would have weaponized by now.)

In the inexorable grind of making a season of television, the production staff at Deep Space Nine may not have felt they were making a "Very Important Episode" here. But it feels like they did give it special consideration. By expanding the story into two parts, they were able to absorb the costs of extensive new sets, outdoor filming, dozens of extras and several guest stars (including classic "that guy"s Dick Miller and Bill Smitrovich). There's plenty of money spent here that all appears on the screen.

Other observations:

• Sisko mentions that he has a sister who lives in Portland. We never get to meet her, though.

• In a discussion of Earth's blue oceans, we learn that the water on the Trill and Bajoran homeworlds is purple and green. I'm not sure that actually matches with what we've seen before, but it sounds beautiful and exotic.

• Quark gets a small scene at the top of this episode, to make up for him not being in the rest of this two-parter.

• Dax is pretty smooth, keeping her wits about her and playing along with the man who finds her until she can figure out what's going on.

• That man, by the way, is supposed to be the CEO of a huge company that owns a cable station. Why is he taking the subway? (Was the assumption that public transportation would be more of a thing in the U.S. by 2024? Another optimistic prediction.)

• Several of the characters in this episode -- Brynner, Vin, Lee, Calvera, and Britt -- all take their names from characters or actors in The Magnificent Seven.

• During a fist fight in this episode, we get to see a classic Kirk-style double-fisted hammer punch.

The message and morality of "Past Tense, Part I" is excellent. But the episode is dragged down a bit by too much technobabble... and by how it underestimates the power of entrenched indifference. I give the episode a B+. (But maybe I should be docking the score of reality rather than this episode.)

Go, Fourth

I remember, after the first Toy Story movie, when Pixar announced the sequel. Sequels are what studios do with their hits, after all. And, impressively, Toy Story 2 was even better than the original. More years then passed, with Pixar focusing mainly on new projects and hardly ever doing sequels. Then they announced Toy Story 3. Couldn't they just leave well enough alone? There's no way a third movie could be as good! And indeed it wasn't. It was even better!

A few months back, a friend of mine was recently hosting an online discussion: what's the greatest movie trilogy of all time? Some said the original Star Wars trilogy. A few claimed Back to the Future. I suggested it might actually be Toy Story... except, of course, that Toy Story was about to cease being a trilogy. And surely there's no way Pixar could beat the odds again, right?

Welp. No, they didn't. But that's not because Toy Story 4 is a "bad" movie. It's just that the bar set by its predecessors (which I recently re-watched before seeing the new film) was set that high. It's not really hating on Toy Story 4 to say that it's the worst of the Toy Story films. One of them has got to be.

There is an intriguing new idea at the heart of the story. Woody is struggling in his new toy room. He remains as certain as ever that his job is to be there for his owner, but Bonnie isn't interested in playing with him as Andy was. How can he be there for her when she doesn't really notice if he's around? It's truly a clever extension of Woody's character arc, the fear he had of being replaced in the original film actually coming to pass.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn't offer much for the other characters. Bo Peep is back (after being absent in Toy Story 3), and her return is a major element of the plot -- but everyone else you remember from the earlier films is reduced to glorified cameos. That includes Buzz Lightyear, more minimized in this story than he's ever been. Sure, the Toy Story films have always been Woody's stories, but they've at least utilized the other characters in fun ways. This movie is more interested in the new characters.

They are a lot of fun, though. There are clever concepts from Forky (the hand-made creation) to Duke Caboom (traumatized by his inability to live up to his TV commercials). There's great new voice casting, including Tony Hale, Keanu Reeves, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Christina Hendricks, and Carl Weathers. And the humor is among the best since the original film, particularly as the toys (far more adventurous now, in their fourth film) push the boundaries of "getting caught" being alive.

Plus there's the animation, which is more stellar than ever. (It's a particularly shocking progression when you watch all four Toy Story movies in close proximity.) This movie features realistic rain storms, a hopelessly cluttered antique shop, dazzling light displays, and facial expressions (on both toys and humans) more natural than Pixar has ever presented.

Also praise-worthy: the movie sticks the landing with an emotional, poignant conclusion. Sure, it falls short of Toy Story 3, whose final 20 minutes (from the garbage dump sequence to the end credits) is all but weaponized to stir your emotions. But Toy Story 4 is very moving, very fitting, and (once again) feels like closure for the series.

If the movie had treated a few of its other returning characters as well as Woody (Buzz and Jessie in particular), this would have been another absolute triumph. As it stands, it's still very good -- worth seeing in the theater, and good enough that I don't "wish they hadn't made it." But I think it's "only" a B+.

DS9 Flashback: Fascination

While Star Trek: Deep Space Nine helped pioneer the more serialized approach to mainstream television that dominates the medium today, the show was often still episodic. Part of that formula is juggling tone from week to week to keep things feeling fresh. This led to the intentionally light (though not intentionally weak) "Fascination."

The Bajoran Gratitude Festival is in full swing, a holiday season in which Bajorans set aside their troubles and focus on the good. But trouble comes to the station all the same. Lwaxana Troi arrives to comfort Odo after his sad meeting with his people... and she unknowingly brings a medical condition that psychically projects her feelings of lust onto everyone around her. Meanwhile, Keiko returns from her job on Bajor for a short stay. But she and Miles are feeling friction in their marriage as never before.

Show runner Ira Steven Behr deliberately wanted something fun here, knowing that the intensely dramatic "Past Tense" two-parter was next up on the schedule. The idea was pitched to basically do Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on the station, and this was the result -- an episode Behr admits was "dangerously wacky." The lightness itself wasn't a bad idea; as staff writer Ronald Moore observed in one interview, the original series would do a "romp" every now and then, leading to famous episodes like "The Trouble With Tribbles." The Next Generation, by comparison, had been (in his words) "so straight-laced and stiff."

Unfortunately, this particular "funny" episode just feels like a hopelessly watered-down version of TNG's "Sarek": an aging diplomat inflicts psychic mischief on the crew, making them act out of character. But horny instead of angry. Near the end of the episode, it's suggested that people are only acting on preexisting latent attraction. But that doesn't stand up to scrutiny when you think back on what you just watched. Jake chases Kira. Bareil chases Dax. Kira and Bashir chase each other -- funny only if you know those actors were a couple in real life. Dax chases Sisko -- an idea so out of place that it's how Sisko immediately knows something unnatural is going on. Quark chases Keiko -- an idea that does nothing but embarrass everyone (Armin Shimerman called this his least favorite of all DS9 episodes).

Even if the humor had been done well, it still would have clashed with the more serious elements of this episode -- elements which actually are pretty good, if you consider them in isolation. Lwaxana's reason for coming to the station is actually quite sensitive when you think about it; she's the only one who has ever really seen Odo be emotionally vulnerable, and she's right to think that Odo needs a friend now.

Odo's crush on Kira is also articulated here for the first time (again, sensitively), by Lwaxana Troi, who knows what it's like to love someone who doesn't love you back. This is the culmination of something that began back in the second season, when the writers noticed (in "The Collaborator") that Rene Auberjonois seemed to be shading his performance with an unexpressed love for Kira. But this expression of actual love gets bulldozed by the facsimile that dominates the main story line.

An even more profound exploration of love is happening in the B plot, focusing on a real trial in Miles and Keiko's marriage. They've been suffering the strain of living apart, and now Keiko reveals they'll have to keep doing that for half a year longer than they'd planned. Minor squabbles over unimportant things explode into full-blown arguments. Each of them is forced to really think about what they'd sacrifice for the sake of the relationship.

Colm Meaney and Rosalind Chao each give an excellent, pained performance. And in the end, their characters recommit to loving each other more genuinely than I think any couple on Star Trek ever expressed (certainly before this episode; quite likely since too). Yet juxtaposed against the rest of this episode, you're always wondering in the back of your mind if this is a real argument they're having, or if this is also somehow being caused by Lwaxana's psychic "leakage" as well. (For the record, I doubt it is -- but I don't think the episode makes this explicitly clear.)

It's probably not a coincidence that Meaney and Chao are so good here, as actor Avery Brooks directed this episode (just as he did another time when the O'Briens were a more natural and believable couple, in "Tribunal"). Brooks shows more directorial confidence here, using several impressively long takes with complicated camera moves, allowing crew to play with lighting, and guiding actors to stretch their performances. Of this episode, he once said: "I guess it was over the top. But what is over the top, after all? If you're having a pint of Guinness and you see the foam pouring over the top, you think, 'That's great!'"

"Over the top" or not, there are some small moments, peppered throughout the episode, that really do work. There's Kira and Miles waiting side by side for their loved ones to disembark from the shuttle. There are scenes in which we see that Julian and Miles really have become the best of friends, after their initial friction. Dax sticking up for herself by throttling Bareil is the rare comic moment in this episode that actually is kind of funny. Then again, it may just be that the few good moments stick out because they're surrounded by such silliness.

Other observations:

• Not long after we finally got to meet Jake's girlfriend Mardah, they've broken up.

• Odo is handing off security to a Starfleet deputy for the holiday. But it's not Eddington. After the series introduced him at the start of the season, Eddington has gone missing for a long while.

• It feels to me like a particular challenge to take an alien character who always wears makeup and put them in "makeup." Kira in particular is a character who basically never dresses up. But her formal look here feels particularly well-executed.

The cheesy parts of this episode are just so cheesy that I wouldn't blame anyone for finding it intolerable. But I think the O'Brien subplot and the handling of Odo's unrequited love are really quite lovely -- good enough to make this episode average out to a C+. It's certainly one of the season's weakest hours, but not without its merits.

Leap

If you've been waiting all season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for them to explain who Sarge really is, why he looks like Coulson, and how he's alive, then the latest episode was the one for you!

The team learns that Izel survived the destruction of her ship, by using an ability to possess the body of an unwilling host. Now she's hopping between hosts and loose on the base. She's already shot Sarge -- who, surprisingly, did not die of his injuries -- and what she's up to next can only be assumed to be "no good."

Not only was this the big Sarge/Coulson reveal episode, it was the first episode to air following the announcement that next season (being filmed already) will be the final one for the series. It freighted the episode with extra meaning... an episode that was already carrying a lot. Like, a lot.

It turns out that to keep a big plot twist from legions of guessing fans on the internet, the secret has to be pretty complex. Fitz made a somewhat implausible leap of intuition (not the "leap" of the episode title) to conclude that the monoliths gathered in the Lighthouse last season control creation as well as time and space, and this somehow led to the formation of a Coulson duplicate.

If the explanation had stopped there, that might have been good enough. After all, the upshot is that Clark Gregg is still on the show, so we're all good with a bit of hand-waving there, right? But Izel took things one step farther (or two or five) with a massive exposition dump explaining what kind of life form she is, that "Sarge" is one too, and that the two belong together. In a scene stuffed full with villain monologuing, we got her real nature, her evil plan, "Sarge's" real back story... everything short of a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. It was too much, especially after a season that spent several episodes not revealing any information of this kind at all.

And I'm not even entirely sure it all adds up anyway. If the shrikes are really Izel's way of bringing her people over into our plane of existence, then haven't the previous planets she's destroyed (like the Chonicom homeworld) already done this job? At the very least, shouldn't there be more of her people "crossed over" by now than just her? Did she shoot Sarge hoping that his rapid healing would jog his memory or something? I mean, it's possible there were answers to some of this in her lengthy speech; it was so much I may have lost some of it there.

Which is a shame, because there was some decent suspense in the rest of the episode. The characters were faster on the uptake than they have been most of this season, suspecting immediately that something was off with May, and figuring out in short order about Izel's body-leaping abilities. Mack responded smartly by locking down the base, figuring out tests to verify people's identities, and locking away Yo-Yo and Daisy for everyone's safety.

In the midst of it all, we got to see many actors play "just a bit off" as an Izel-possessed version. This would have been stronger if Izel was a longer-running character with better established behaviors the actors could mimic, but in most cases, having an actor play generally elusive and weaselly was good enough to make the point. Certainly, there was menace to it all, as we saw just what Izel could do while in someone else's body. Alas, poor Davis. (We should have known he was toast when we first heard about his family a few weeks ago.)

I suppose the show did need to thin out a few characters, though, as we're losing track of some of them. No sign of Snowflake this week, who must have just spent the hour watching her big screen TV. Also, I'm missing Dr. Benson, who I'd really like to see interact a bit with Fitz and Simmons, overburdened as he was in their absence. (Also... not a great look to actually add an LGBT character to the recurring cast and then have him disappear without explanation.)

The "locked in with the villain" aspects of this episode worked, even if the giant exposition dump was a little rocky. Even then, I suppose the alternative to that was not getting any answers at all -- so it's hard to be too down on it. I give "Leap" a B.

So... if "Sarge" is possessing Coulson like Izel possesses other people... we're getting back an actually real Coulson at the end of this season when Sarge presumably departs. Right?

It's Candy, Man!

This past weekend, my husband and I went to see the touring production of the musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Each of us came with a different perspective: I'd never watched the beloved Gene Wilder film (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) all the way through as a kid (and coming to it late made me like it far less), where he had. But both of us quite enjoyed this adaptation.

The musical -- from David Grieg, Marc Shaiman, and Scott Wittman -- has a delicate line to walk. It's trying to please the people who loved the movie, and does so primarily by including all its famous songs ("Candy Man," "I've Got a Golden Ticket," "Pure Imagination," "The Oompa Loompa Song"). But it also wants to do its own thing, and does so not only with many new songs, but by telling a more dark and sinister version of the story (which I understand is more in keeping with Roald Dahl's original writing).

The structure of the story fits pretty naturally into that of a Broadway musical. Act One covers Charlie's home life and culminates in him finding the ticket to tour the Wonka factory. Act Two covers everything that happens inside. Not only is it a clean split, it has the effect of producing the rare Broadway musical with a second act that's better than the first.

Act One does have its moments. It's where the vast majority of Charlie's material is presented. He's played at various performances by four different child actors, and the one we got at our performance was great. Upbeat and energetic, he's exactly what was needed to play to a huge theater like the Buell. There was also fun comedy from Charlie's family; Grandpa Joe's really the only one to get a personality in the movie, but on stage, the other three each got their particular slice of humor. (Fatalist Grandpa George was a highlight for me.)

The introductions of the other four contest winners are the big moments of the first act, though. These "kids" are all played by adult actors, and each is giving their own quintessential "show-stopping number" in their own distinct musical style. There's an elaborate oom-pah number with a full chorus line of dancers for Augustus Gloop. Veruca Salt is a Russian ballerina who dances on point with her father as he sings. Bubble-gum-loving Violet Beauregarde declares in a brash R&B anthem that she's the "Queen of Pop." And hyperactive Mike Teavee bounces around with gymnastic flips that barely fit on the stage.

But it's Act Two everyone's really here to see. Getting out from under the specter of Gene Wilder is a tall order (and on the night we saw, the show's understudy was taking the stage as Willy Wonka), but the musical helps by adding lots of other spectacle. A puppet-esque approach to the Oompa Loompas works wonderfully, a ballet number with dancers costumed as squirrels is delightfully weird, elaborate set pieces built on principles of stage magic are used in the Mike Teavee sequence, and more. They know you're coming to this musical wondering "how are they going to do this?", and then make a meal out of doing that.

There are a few shortcomings. While the staging is great, none of the new numbers really take up residence inside your brain like the toe-tapping originals from the movie. I still hate Grandpa Joe (though less than in the movie; the scene where he nearly gets them kicked out of the factory is cut from the play). But overall, it makes for a fun and enjoyable night at the theater.

Whether you're a fan of the classic movie or not, I think you'll find something to like in this stage version. I give it a B+. It's playing in Denver for the rest of this week before moving along to its next city. Check it out if you have the chance!

DS9 Flashback: Defiant

Throughout its run, Deep Space Nine had peppered in small crossovers of secondary characters from The Next Generation -- Lursa and B'Etor, Vash and Q, Lwaxana Troi, Gowron. But not since Patrick Stewart appeared as Jean-Luc Picard in the series premiere had any main actors from Next Gen crossed over. Until "Defiant."

William T. Riker visits Deep Space Nine, becoming fast friends with Major Kira. But when she gives him a tour of the Defiant, he stuns her with a phaser and reveals the truth: he's actually Will's transporter duplicate Thomas, a Maquis leader who plans to use the ship to prove Cardassian espionage. Meanwhile, Dukat recruits Sisko to come to the Cardassian homeworld and help track the renegade ship.

It's a bit strange to take an episode of one series and do a sequel on a different series -- so unusual, in fact, that we get an expository scene explaining the events of Next Gen's "Second Chances" to Dukat (as an audience proxy) just to make sure everyone's caught up. But show runner Ira Steven Behr really felt there was a great opportunity to have their cake and eat it too with the character of Thomas Riker -- have a main actor from the earlier, now-ended series, but have complete control of the character on Deep Space Nine's terms (not having to put him "back in the box" for future movies).

Jonathan Frakes was up to come play. In fact, he'd already directed more than one episode of DS9, including the one made immediately before this. He also liked the opportunity to play the Thomas Riker character again, saying: "Tom is insecure. He's much less confident than Will. But he's also kinder and sweeter. I think I like Tom better!"

Before Tom's cover is blown, we get fun tastes of how characters like Sisko, Dax, and Quark all know Will Riker. We also get a clever scene of Tom faking anger at O'Brien to avoid a person he probably couldn't deceive. But the really interesting relationship here is between Tom and Kira. We're pointedly reminded that even though we've come to know and like Kira, she was a terrorist not many years ago. Terrorists don't get to be heroes, she says, and she thinks Tom isn't doing this for a cause he truly believes in so much as to distinguish himself from his "brother." The only false moments in any of this come in an awkward kiss at the end, and in what retroactively becomes a more awkward promise from Kira to someday get him out of Cardassian prison. It would never happen. (Jonathan Frakes noted this episode felt like it deserved a follow-up, but by the start of next season, the writers had specifically put Tom Riker on this list of stories they did not want outside writers to pitch.)

To hear script writer Ronald Moore tell it, cracking the Riker angle of the story came quickly. Why would Tom come to the station posing as Will? Ah, to steal the Defiant! But involving more characters in the story was harder... until another writer on staff suggested an homage to a 1964 Sidney Lumet film, Fail Safe, in which Henry Fonda stars as a president forced to help Russians shoot down an American plane on its way to launch a nuclear strike on Moscow. Putting Sisko in a similar role with the Cardassians gave him something significant to do, and was also a nice reversal of the last major conflict with the Maquis, where Dukat was forced to help Sisko.

This aspect of the plot connects both forward and backward in Deep Space Nine's overall story arc. We learn about the internal Cardassian conflict between the Obsidian Order and Central Command, personified in sniping between Dukat and the "observer" Korinas. We get a "humanizing" moment with Dukat talking about his son's 11th birthday, instantly undermined by the venom he spews moments later. And we get a rumor about a secret fleet the Obsidian Order is building -- a thread that would be picked up on later this season (a connection which reportedly was not planned at the time this episode was conceived).

It's a fun little tale, though it stumbles in a couple places. The ending is too neat -- how are the Cardassians made to honor the deal they strike here, and why do they release the Defiant back to Starfleet? There's also not enough money in the visual effects budget to really do it all justice; there are some fun moments near the end of the Defiant looking dangerous and nimble, but most of the battles it's involved in play out as blips on a computer screen.

Other observations:

• At the start of the episode, Kira is snapping at everyone, and is ordered to take time off work. I've not found this to be an effective way of getting time off.

• Tom Riker calls the Defiant a "tough little ship." Will Riker would make exactly the same comment in the movie First Contact.

• The Cardassian Korinas is played by Tricia O'Neil. This is her third (and final) Star Trek appearance, but she's most known by fans for her first, as Captain Garrett in "Yesterday's Enterprise."

• Tom Riker isn't the only character from a Next Gen episode to appear here. The Maquis character Kalita originated in "Preemptive Strike."

Although this episode doesn't quite stick the landing, it's fairly entertaining overall. Watching Jonathan Frakes do his thing is worthwhile enough. I give "Defiant" a B.

Maybe Five Out of Twelve?

Several months ago, I wrote about the first book of a trilogy by Justin Cronin -- both the book and the series are titled The Passage. It's a series about the apocalyptic destruction of society after a group of medical researchers unleash a plague of vampirism. Since I finished that first book, season one of a television adaptation has aired... and the series has subsequently been cancelled. That about sums up the feeling I have on the books after reading the second volume, The Twelve.

Structured similarly to the first book, The Twelve is split into several sections. The opening third unfolds in modern times, following events and characters close in the aftermath of the nationwide outbreak. The remainder of the book skips ahead almost a century to show how future generations are coping with the resulting horror.

Book one had its flaws, most notably its epic length, but it was overall a compelling tale that left me intrigued for book two. But while book two was a shorter volume than its predecessor, it ended up being, if anything, more difficult to read.

The first third of The Twelve, set during the fall of civilization, is a real slog. The narrative already moved past this period in book one, on to different situations and different characters. Skipping back to where it all began feels like a pointless diversion, even though a couple of characters from the first book do return. We already know that the world ends -- hell, the dust jacket told us that, never mind the doorstop tome that was volume one. There's no reason to go back and touch on that period, unless what's revealed is going to weigh heavily on the narrative. While events do factor in, I suppose, they certainly don't warrant the extended flashback.

Having gotten away with one giant novel, Justin Cronin begins to indulge some bad habits here -- and his editor seems unwilling or unable to rein him in. The writing in The Twelve is of markedly poorer quality than The Passage. It's packed with aimless, run-on sentences. The characters lack dimension; new characters are stubbornly one-note, while returning characters from the first book seem to lose facets of personality they previously had.

Side note: Cronin also engages in an off-handed bit of transphobia for no particular reason. In a minor scene that just plays for a page or two, one of his characters uses an anti-LGBT slur. It doesn't tell us anything about the character using the slur, doesn't paint in any meaningful shade of villainy or ignorance that was missing before, and isn't relevant to anything that occurs later in the plot. It's just a moment of Cronin being casually cruel and in no way improving his tale for it.

Before The Twelve can slide off the rails entirely, it "catches back up" with the time frame that concluded book one... and finally improves a bit. But even as the plot becomes more interesting, it depends a lot on treating its female characters horrifically. One is painted as delusional and crazy. Another must continually confront the psychological trauma of being separated from her child. Yet another is captured, and her imprisonment consists of repeated torture and rape. Sure, a reader should not expect the apocalypse to be a happy place -- but it feels as though the book is being especially cruel to its female characters in a way it isn't to its male characters.

Perhaps because of how long these books are, I found myself still striving to find good in The Twelve even as I was finding so much not to like. I had to finish it, right? Since I'd invested so much time already? Perhaps because of this determination, I did get swept up in a need to know what happens next, and sped through the last quarter of the book. I'd perhaps grade it a C- overall, which may seem like a high mark given the negatives I cited above. (Somehow it's easier to put my finger on what I didn't like than to identify the ineffable qualities that kept me reading.)

But now I'm at quite a crossroads. Unlike countless other fantasy series with authors who can't seem to get them finished, this trilogy is complete. There's one more book, and I could go read it to see how it all ends. I feel I've invested so much time in it now that I almost have to see it through. Almost. Book two was such a sharp drop in quality from book one that it might be smarter just to cut my losses here.

Stay tuned, I suppose, and see what I decide. But I can tell you this: if you haven't already started reading The Passage series, I'd recommend you don't start.

Collision Course, Part II

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. wrapped up its recent two-part episode with an hour that came surprisingly close to a season finale, at least from the number of happy reunions it provided and dangling plot threads it clipped off. Still, it left just enough in play to propel a few more installments.

Sarge's truck is careening toward the Shrike tower with Daisy, May, Deke, Snowflake, and an alien atom bomb on board. The Quinjet has been hijacked by Sarge, who is determined to destroy his nemesis. Izel has figured out that both Sarge and FitzSimmons are onto her. And it's all coming to a head at once in an action-packed climax.

This episode was mostly entertaining, with good quipping under pressure, fun fisticuffs, and well-managed parallel jeopardies. But it also suffered from a selective use of characters' powerful abilities, depending on whether or not the writers wanted to prolong those jeopardizes. Of course, it's a tough problem they have, given just how powerful some of their characters really are.

On the one extreme, Daisy single-handedly saved the day twice this episode, once by Quaking the bomb into a sort of stasis so that it wouldn't detonate, and then again when she atomized all the threatening Shrikes at once. These displays made the resolution to the crises a bit easy and maybe even unsatisfying... and yet in each case, it's totally how you'd solve the problem if you had Daisy's powers. Ignoring that fact would hardly have been better writing.

On the other hand, Yo-Yo's abilities should have made quick work of the problems on the Quinjet. When she gets her moment of opportunity to run by the temporarily-lowered force field, what does she do? Hands Mack a key and lets him solve his own problems. She couldn't have let him out of the cuffs? Or knocked out Sarge? Or given Mack a weapon? Or maybe a dozen other things that would have been just as easy and far more helpful? Resolving the problem as easily as it should have been wouldn't have been particularly satisfying... yet it's totally how you'd resolve the problem if you had Yo-Yo's powers. The writers tried to have it both ways in this episode, with a powerful Daisy and a defanged Yo-Yo.

But if that inconsistency was a bit jarring, other moments in the episode scored well enough. FitzSimmons' grace under pressure was fun. Their reunion with the rest of the team was also everything you could have hoped for. Sarge losing all his team -- as a result of his own actions -- was a nice comeuppance for the villain-ish character. And while the show hasn't invested as much in the Yo-Yo/Mack relationship as it has FitzSimmons, it was nice to see them work past whatever not-totally-clear issues they were having and reconcile.

Sarge is captured, Izel's ship is destroyed... end of crisis, right? Except that Izel went missing shortly before her ship was blown up, and surely isn't actually dead. And then May stormed into Sarge's cell and shot him multiple times. Some twist has to be coming there, right? Not to mention that the question of Sarge's identity (and now, we've learned, his missing memories) must still be resolved.

So, despite many points of closure, there's still a bit more story to cover this season. I'd say this episode warrants a B. I'd like to see the series step up a bit coming down the home stretch, but I suppose if they at least hold at this level, I'll be entertained enough.

DS9 Flashback: Meridian

Star Trek, in all its incarnations, has a long tradition of episodes in which a main character falls in love with a guest star in a whirlwind romance that ends in the span of an hour. Very rarely, these episodes can be good. Most of the time, I think, they aren't. So it was with the Deep Space Nine episode "Meridian."

Exploring the Gamma Quadrant, our heroes come upon a planet that flashes back and forth between our universe and one of pure energy. Its inhabitants are welcoming, though they have only a matter of days in our universe. It's enough time for Dax to fall deeply in love, and then to be faced with the choice to remain on the planet -- and leave our universe for 50 years. Meanwhile, on the station, a sleazy alien pays Quark to build an explicit holosuite program featuring Major Kira.

To hear it told by many involved with the series, they knew they were making a stinker even while "Meridian" was being filmed. Television is a merciless beast that must be fed, especially for a series that made 26 episodes a year. They didn't have the luxury of backing out of this episode, even though they knew it had gone wrong. And pretty much everyone involved has acknowledged that it went wrong.

The core idea came from show runner Ira Steven Behr, who admired the musical Brigadoon -- the tale of a magical village that appears only once a century. (Later, he said of his own idea: "I am a moron.") Behr made it known he wanted a Brigadoon-inspired idea, and writer Hilary Bader obligingly delivered this one. It would ultimately be retooled by the writing staff, fused with a separate story pitch by Evan Carlos Somers (the naughty holoprogram plot), and then given to yet another writer to actually fashion the script. Mark Gehred-O'Connell had done a not-quite-believable "romance in a single hour" episode the previous season, with "Second Sight." This effort was not an improvement.

So much about this episode doesn't work. The centuries-old Dax is implausibly written here with implausible, bubbly youthfulness. Besides the science fiction obstacle to her relationship, there's a colony leader pushing Dax's love interest Deral into an assigned relationship like some strange cult leader. There's a fairly meaningless plot point about the planet being unstable, though it hardly affects the narrative at all.

The B-plot is worse. It's the second episode straight to include a guy perving on Kira. It centers on a truly serious moral issue of recreating holograms of real people. Next Generation played in this space, but here the salacious context offers the chance for a new take. Instead, it's played mostly for inappropriate laughs.

And yet, it's not like every instinct the creators had about this episode was wrong. If one is going to attempt this story, Dax probably is the best character to place in it; as a character who has started a whole new life several times, it kind of makes sense that she'd be willing to do so here. You might also say her long life explains the way she jumps at the chance to live on Meridian: after centuries in our reality, a completely different one would be a sure way to have some new experiences. It's also nice that Deral actually offers to leave his planet for Dax first, before she chooses to leave her established life for him.

There are even a handful of elements in this episode that are truly great. The relationship between Kira and Odo plays well throughout, especially in the opening scene when she touches his hand and pretends they're a couple. (Odo's stunned reaction speaks volumes.) The score is good, even though it comes from a composer I don't generally like as much, Dennis McCarthy. His lyrical music for Dax and Deral's garden stroll is exactly what the scene needs. The scene where Dax and Sisko say goodbye to one another showcases a powerhouse performance from Avery Brooks, and Terry Farrell rises to match. It's the most honest and believable scene in the episode (even though you know Dax won't really be leaving the show).

Also, no matter what flaws this episode may have, it's the episode that gave us Jeffrey Combs. This was the actor's first Star Trek appearance, before going on to play the recurring characters of Brunt and Weyoun on Deep Space Nine, Shran on Enterprise, and a couple more one-off aliens. His portrayal of the sleazy Tiron here oscillates between posturing self-assurance and bottled-up rage, and it all seems to play effortlessly through one of the thicker, facial-expression-nullifying make-ups Star Trek has ever presented. (Jonathan Frakes directed this episode. Do we have him to thank for the casting decision? If so, he gave Star Trek a gift as big as his own portrayal of Riker.)

Other observations:

• This is one of the few episodes that divides the characters entirely along Starfleet lines. Putting all the Starfleet characters into one plot (while the non-Starfleets are in the B-plot) is another part of what makes this feel like generic Star Trek romance.

• The process of slowly adding sets for the Defiant begins here, with the first appearance of the ship's transporter room.

• Seriously, though... 5 days to make a decision you won't be able to go back on for 50 years? That's messed up.

• The visual effect placing Quark's head on Kira's body is rather convincing, but wasn't easily achieved. Nana Visitor had intended to do the scene herself, but it required wearing a rubber mask to obscure her own head for replacement with Quark's. Fresh off her claustrophobia during "Second Skin," she couldn't go through with it, so a body double was used.

• If Odo were better at shapeshifting, the "Quark's head on Kira's body" trick might have been achieved that way, rather than by hologram.

• In the end, the attempt fails to alter Dax's physiology so she can remain on Meridian. It could have been a more powerful moment if there had been some sort of error or oversight made because of the extreme time pressure involved -- to know that her conversion could have worked, if only they'd had more time to get it right.

"Meridian" is not a good episode. Yet I can actually find enough good bits within it that I don't feel it truly deserves to be lumped in with Star Trek's worst hours. Perhaps too generously, I give it a C.

I Didn't Believe in Yesterday

This past weekend, I went to see the new movie Yesterday. It's the story of struggling singer-songwriter Jack Malik who, after an accident, wakes up to discover he's the only person in the world who remembers the music of The Beatles. This becomes his ticket to fame and fortune, as he begins to "write" the greatest music the world has ever heard.

I'm enough of a fan of The Beatles to have been instantly intrigued by the premise of this movie. Added to that was another significant draw for me -- the screenwriter of this movie is Richard Curtis, whose many credits include Love Actually and About Time (among a number of other widely beloved movies I should really get around to seeing).

Unfortunately, there's simply not much to this movie beyond the idea itself. "No one remembers The Beatles" is a fun springboard, but it turns out to be an idea without enough meat on the bone to sustain a full length movie. An improv sketch or a short story, perhaps. But as a nearly two-hour film, it sort of devolves into using classic Beatles songs as filler to pad out a simplistic and familiar romantic comedy -- one that's only occasionally all that romantic or comedic.

The movie is directed by Danny Boyle, the man behind Trainspotting, The Beach, Slumdog Millionaire, and more. His movies have often been hit-or-miss for me, but it always depends on the relative strength of the script. He's not an especially flashy director, and though that non-intrusiveness could be argued as a virtue, it means in this case that there isn't much visual panache to elevate the proceedings.

The cast is likeable enough. The leads are more well known in England than the U.S., but Himesh Patel (of EastEnders) and Lily James (of Downton Abbey) are an easy enough pair to root for. Patel in particular has the heavier lift of singing throughout the film (and playing piano and guitar as well). But the script doesn't really put any too-serious obstacles in the couple's way that might have brought more emotional heft to the film. It's perhaps a deliberate choice to just "make room for the songs," but it hollows out the already lightweight story.

There are a few small delights along the way. Kate McKinnon cuts loose as a sleazy producer-manager who takes over Jack's career and steers it for her own gain. Ed Sheeran appears as himself and gets to poke a little fun at his own image along the way. Robert Carlyle has a small scene that nevertheless serves as one of the film's few deeper moments.

If you're a fan of The Beatles, you might find the movie a pleasant enough distraction. But ultimately, it's the band's famous music that sticks with you as you're leaving the theater. The story is a trifle that begins to evaporate almost instantly. I'd grade the movie a C.

DS9 Flashback: Civil Defense

One winning method for building tension in a story is to line up problems a mile deep. Every effort by the characters to solve a problem only makes the problem worse. It's a technique deployed to good effect in the third season Deep Space Nine episode "Civil Defense."

A dormant Cardassian program in the station's computer is triggered, locking down Deep Space Nine as though in response to a revolt by Bajoran prisoners. The crew must race against the clock to regain control, but it won't be easy with everyone divided by force fields and counter measures. And matters get worse when the real Gul Dukat arrives to gloat and exploit the situation for personal gain.

This episode reportedly was one of the hardest to craft of the entire season, though the results don't seem particularly troubled. The writers were looking for an idea that would be more action-oriented, and were also looking for a "bottle" show that could be produced on existing sets (and thus be cheaper to produce). They thought they'd found both things in a pitch from outside writer Mike Krohn, who suggested the rough "man-vs.-machine" angle of the story. Though once the staff was working on it, they found it hard to get at any emotional level to the situation.

Virtually every DS9 writer took a run at the script. Then, with filming about to start (and producer Michael Piller still unsatisfied), they carved the story up in pieces and worked on it all together. They subdivided the characters much like in the Next Generation's "Disaster," and that finally did the trick. Characters aren't even necessarily put together in "odd couples," yet the small groups still give each of them a chance to shine.

Ben and Jake Sisko get to show how their father/son relationship holds up under pressure. This is a subconscious reminder that Jake has lived through tough things, and Ben doesn't need to shield or coddle him in a crisis. Jake is active in solving problems, and never buckles to stress. Why Jake is still apprenticing with O'Brien when he's already stated that he doesn't want to join Starfleet is an unanswered question, but O'Brien did need to be used somewhere -- and keeping him out of Ops works best for this story.

Odo and Quark are an obvious but fun pairing. Forcing them into proximity starts off predictably with jokes and barbs (which do work; Quark having higher Cardassian security clearance than Odo is a funny idea). Ultimately, their story moves into more serious territory, with each paying a heartfelt compliment to the other during the crisis... before reverting to their cynical norm at the end.

Bashir and Dax make for another obvious pairing -- though how their story line plays out isn't quite so obvious. This might be the moment when Bashir's rehabilitation as a character is finally complete. He started out brash, unlikable, and skeevy. Bit by bit, we saw professionalism replace his naivete, and a friendship with O'Brien that showed he could be likeable. Now, at last, his distasteful lust for Jadzia Dax is put behind him. He's trapped with her for hours and doesn't try to play the situation for romance. (Though perhaps him commenting on this isn't quite necessary?)

That's not to say there isn't lecherous behavior on display in this episode. The writers had felt like Dukat had been too friendly in recent appearances, and so deliberately set out to make him more villainous in this episode. His arrival on the scene is the moment that really separates this plot from "Disaster," and the joy he takes in the situation is great. He feuds with Garak, knocks Sisko's baseball off the desk, and tries to extort Kira. All properly villainous.

He also flirts with Kira. This too is villainous... and the writers seem not to be aware of just how much. In a throwaway comedic moment, we see that Cardassian flirting takes the form of pompous posturing (well... for Dukat, it does) as he makes a pass at Kira. Garak calls him out, but from this scene, the writers would ultimately begin toying with the idea of putting Kira and Dukat in a relationship together.

Nana Visitor rightly shut that shit down. Knowing her own character better than anyone, she strongly lobbied against it, pointing out that Dukat's role in the occupation, to Kira, made him "Hitler." As Visitor explained in an interview: "She's not ever going to get over that. She can never forgive him, and that is important to me. Kira may have started to see Cardassians as individuals, but she will always hate Dukat." And while her argument won in the long run, she still wished this moment hadn't gone by so lightly: "I would have liked my character to make the point that only a few years earlier, Dukat's wanting me would have meant that he could have had me, and I wouldn't have been able to do a thing about it."

Dukat does at least get something of a comeuppance in the episode, though. His gloating backfires, and his own program turns on him when he's perceived to be fleeing the station. This is another great moment where the jeopardy deepens. Unfortunately, though, we never really get to see Dukat eat crow. Once the program is actually disabled, the episode ends on Odo and Quark. We never get back to Ops to see Dukat lamely return to his ship, defeated.

Indeed, the climax of the episode is generally a bit of a letdown next to the rest of the episode. After layer upon layer of great escalating danger, the final minutes are resolved in a thick cloud of technobabble. That, and a lot of people moving far too slowly too convey any of the urgency their situation deserves.

Other observations:

• Even though Garak has already revealed himself to be an exiled Cardassian spy, he still has fun playing the "is he / isn't he?" game, pretending not to know where everything is in Ops. Indeed, he seems to be having a fun time in general this episode, needling Dukat at every opportunity.

• Quark first mentions his cousin Gaila, who owns a moon. We'd meet the character in person in later seasons.

• Odo's new third season belt disappears in this episode. Rene Auberjonois had lobbied for the costume change after "Crossover," but ultimately felt that the belt only worked in the darker color of that mirror universe costume. Seeing it with his regular beige, he thought it looked "Buck Rogers-y," so he asked to change back.

Although the final minutes of the episode are a bit of a letdown, there's a lot of fun here leading up to it. I give "Civil Defense" a B+. Despite the episode's troubled creation, the results turned out well.

Getting All Up in That Grill

I rarely go for reality shows, and when I do, they're almost never about food. But somehow, I've found a soft spot for Netflix's Nailed It! Hosted by the hilarious Nicole Byer (who manages just the right blend of sweet and caustic), this is a bake-off show featuring contestants who can't bake. Each episode presents impossible challenges of elaborate cakes to be made on ridiculously short timetables, and the results are predictably (and laughably) horrible.

In my circle of friends, I'm not the only one who has been enjoying Nailed It! Indeed, it seems I'm not even the one enjoying it most, because someone floated the idea to do a "Nailed It party" and try it ourselves -- an event that came together this past weekend. We selected a particular cake from an episode of the show that seemed not too far out of reach, stocked up on fondant, dyes, edible markers, and colored sprays of all sorts, and gathered together to try our luck.

We selected the "Barbecue Grill" cake from a second season episode:

This involved multiple stacked-and-carved cake layers, fondant covering and replica food, Rice Krispies beer bottles... and a lot of effort.

Amazingly, so many of us went in on this crazy way to spend an evening that we had couples, families, and friends all teaming up to create six different cakes! Obviously, we didn't have enough oven space or mixers in one place for all that, so we made a few concessions on the time limit: everyone baked their cakes ahead of time, and got a chance to make their butter cream icing before the time officially started.

We gave ourselves two hours. This is as much time as contestants on the show had to do the entire thing -- without partners. But then, they had so many supplies on hand that there was no need to share, as well as professional tips should they need them. Oh, and a $10,000 prize for motivation. (No such stakes for us.)

It turns out that cake decorating done this elaborate is -- unsurprisingly -- both fun and really hard. Fondant is really hard to work with. You want to roll it out as thin as possible to minimize the weight you're adding to a precariously stacked cake. (Also, does anyone actually like the taste of fondant?) But roll it out too thin, and it tears as you try to drape it onto your cake. Oh, and good luck smoothing out the wrinkles, hiding the joins, or dyeing it to the right color.

The grill itself turned out to be quite the challenge. That inward slope to the stacked cakes caused more than one of our group's efforts to collapse at some point during the night.

...but hey! Paste it together with butter cream and cover it up with fondant. It still tastes good, right? (Good enough, in fact, that the cake above would, after all was said and done, "win" our little "competition!")

Where everyone seemed to shine was in sculpting the food for the top of the grill. Every one of the six cakes had one piece or another that looked really good -- from shrimp kebabs to perfectly browned hot dogs to convincing corn to Swiss cheese on a tasty-looking burger. There were some great beer bottles too.

The cake me and my husband made landed somewhere in the middle of the pack, but we had a good time making it. (Even if hunching over the table to work on it for two hours gave me a backache that followed me all the way to bed.)

I'm in no rush to do this sort of thing again. For one thing, it results in a truly preposterous amount of dessert. I doubt that I'll be looking to make some fondant-draped piece of cake art for the next special occasion that comes along. Still, we all had great fun at this unconventional party.

Perhaps you have yet to discover that cake is your true medium as an artist. Give it a try! How hard could it be?

Collision Course, Part I

We're now about two-thirds into the latest season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and at last the season seems to have revealed its ultimate shape: Sarge vs. Izel. Neither one exactly the "good guy," but Izel most likely the "Big Bad." Right?

FitzSimmons are arriving back on Earth aboard Izel's ship, not knowing that she is the destructive entity who controls the Shrikes that threaten the planet. Meanwhile, Sarge is racing toward the ship's landing site, planning to be there to destroy Izel. But his idea of "acceptable losses" to win that battle doesn't sit well with Mack and the heroes... who also don't know that the ship they're thinking about shooting out of the sky carries their friends.

It's kind of a foundation of drama (and even more, comedy) to have characters hide information from each other. Often, if characters would just reveal all they know to one another, they could untangle the knotted plot easily, leaving no story to tell. The trick of the writer, then, is to make it believable that everyone is withholding from one another -- giving them a reason to keep their secrets. And hopefully, not making anyone look too foolish.

The lack of trust between Sarge and the heroes is playing well enough. Everyone is concealing secrets from one another, in a believable way. The "not making anyone look too foolish" part, though? Well, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been dancing right on that line this season, stepping on one side or the other in different episodes. Here, Mack knows not to trust Sarge, enough to put his agents on the scene and shadow him in the air... but he isn't quite savvy enough to avoid the double cross. Right on the line, I guess. The audience would prefer the guy we've known so long be a bit smarter; but if he were, we wouldn't really have a story.

If the foundation of the story isn't quite rock solid, the adornments at least were super fun. There was nice stunt work this week, with Sarge climbing out on the roof of his vehicle for some thrills with teleporting. (The portal gags have been great every time they've come along, enough to make me wish they'd be an even bigger part of the season.)

The more comedic elements worked for me too. Sarge's psychotic team member Snowflake was just beginning to wear thin for me; adding a new horny dimension to her wild-eyed intensity made for a fun change of pace. (And Deke continues to be a good character for comedy.) Yo-Yo's confrontation with the other two members of Sarge's team made for a fun moment, and Simmons' embarrassed callbacks to her recent alien drug trip were amusing too.

Now that the big conflict of the season has been laid out, it feels like just two big questions remain. Why does Sarge look like Coulson... and who's really the bad guy here: Izel or Sarge? We'll see if next week's episode answers either question. As for this installment? I give it a B.

Flights of All Kinds

The last full day of our Napa Valley trip... wasn't spent in Napa. We headed to the neighboring Sonoma Valley instead, starting our day in downtown Sonoma. We walked around, checking out random stores -- and looking for one place in particular.

The day before, while at Cakebread Cellars, we got to talking about our plan for an afternoon picnic somewhere in Sonoma. We were advised to check out the Vella Cheese Company near Sonoma Plaza, not just to pick up some great cheese, but also a purportedly phenomenal butter. A San Francisco local, also sampling wines at Cakebread, jumped in to endorse the suggestion. The butter is "amazing," we were assured. So first thing on our Sonoma day, we tracked down the place and bought both cheese and butter to tuck in our cooler, all the while wondering how good it could possibly be.

Next we had an hour drive ahead of us. We were headed closer to the coast, and to the Redwoods. The drive took us through Petaluma, California -- and the most acrid, rancid, shockingly bad odor any of us has ever encountered. Colorado residents: think Commerce City and Greeley somehow combined and amplified. I dubbed this memorable smell the "Petaluma Funk." I Googled after the trip was over and learned it has the far more clever name of the "Sonoma Aroma," which can be attributed to local dairies, the seasonal spreading of cow manure over local fields, or both. It is haunting. Fortunately, we planned no stops in the area.

We made our way to Sonoma Canopy Tours, a zipline course through the Redwoods. It was the first time my husband and I had ever been ziplining, and a great location to try it out.

Seven different lines (plus two Temple of Doom style rope bridges and a "rappel" off a platform at the end) led throughout the Redwoods.

At heights of up to 250 feet, speeds of up to 40 MPH, and with one line 1500 feet long, it was great fun.

Afterward, we headed over to Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates. K-J is another kind of wine widely available here in Denver, but there were opportunities there at their tasting room to try things you couldn't get elsewhere. We enjoyed a flight, then selected our favorite and bought a full bottle to take outside to a gazebo on their grounds.

Picnic time had arrived. There at Kendall-Jackson, we pull out a variety of cheese, bread, crackers, and fruit we'd brought with us. Plus, of course, the famous Vella Cheese Company butter. Maybe it was the power of suggestion, or maybe the buzz of the wine, or the lovely view, or the fond feelings of the trip overall... but that butter was everything it was promised to be and more. Somehow it was both light and rich, airy but also flavorful. It was damn good butter, and we'd wished we'd brought about twice as much bread as we did. (We took the rest back home for toast the next morning.)

The special alchemy of scenery, butter, and Kendall-Jackson wine finally wore us down. All trip, every winery we'd visited had sought to sign us up for their wine club. Special bottles only available from the winery! Personal shipments multiple times a year! (And, in many cases, exorbitant prices for the service.) Cakebread Cellars had almost convinced us. Kendall-Jackson, with a more reasonably priced club that still included Sonoma exclusives we couldn't get back in Denver, finally closed the deal. A few times a year, we can look forward to shipments from the winery that also double as reminders of the great time we had on the trip.

One last dinner back in Napa, and our vacation was basically over. We drove back into San Francisco the next morning and caught a rather turbulent flight home to Denver. (A nervous old woman in our row wailed dramatically with each shake, declaring repeatedly that "this is the worst it's ever been!") But a few bumps at the end of a flight were nothing compared to great times we'd had flitting through wine country. At more than a dozen wineries in five days, maybe we overdid it a bit? But hey, that's why we went.

We got everything we'd hoped for.