DS9 Flashback: Return to Grace

Actions have consequences in the Deep Space Nine universe -- even for characters who aren't part of the main cast. The consequences of Dukat's decision from "Indiscretion," to publicly acknowledge his half-Bajoran daughter, are shown in "Return to Grace."

Ostracized by his family and demoted from his position of authority, Gul Dukat now commands a lowly freighter tasked with ferrying Major Kira to a conference. When a Klingon ship attacks the conference, Dukat is determined to seek revenge despite being vastly outgunned. Kira must educate him in guerilla tactics to give them any chance of success... all while rebuffing his amorous advances.

I wrote of "Indiscretion," the previous episode in Dukat's story arc, that it marked the apex of the series treating Dukat as "maybe not such a bad guy after all." He's definitely less of a good guy here. Sure, he is given sympathetic qualities in this episode, and he really milks them to play the sad sack. We're told how important family is to Cardassians, and he's lost all of his in disgrace. Another Gul who "collects" his rivals' wives is now together with his. He displays real affection for his daughter, Ziyal -- and in the end, does right-ish by her, by not dragging her along to live the same dangerous life he plans to lead.

But largely, Dukat is just plain creepy in this episode. All his posturing at morality seems disingenuous, aimed at Kira in a vain effort to make her like him. He can't help but "neg" her as he tries to win her, mocking her taste for "powerful men" (first Bareil, then especially Shakaar -- a "lumbering field hand" who he says was a womanizer in days past). And while Dukat drapes his actions throughout this episode in patriotism, it seems equally driven by bloodlust. He's been running combat drills in anticipation of such a confrontation. When offered the chance to again become a military advisor, he turns it down as he's not interested in advising a military that's pursuing peace.

Kira's role in the story is interesting too. Sure, there's the strong and overt part of it -- never for one moment entertaining any kind of relationship with a man that to her is Hitler. But the subtleties are more compelling. She can compartmentalize, being friendly with Ziyal while hating her father, helping a man she loathes for the greater good. Most interesting of all is the demonstration of how much she has changed in recent years. She spends the whole episode telling Dukat he needs to think more like a terrorist. But when he needlessly slaughters dozens of Klingons at the end of the episode, she realizes she's no longer the sort of person who could go that far.

Ziyal completes the unusual relationship triangle of this story. She acts as intermediary between Kira and Dukat, trying to convince the Major of her father's better qualities. (There are almost moments where it feels like she's riding to set them up romantically!) Kira gets a big win in ultimately separating Ziyal from his toxic influence. I can't help but wonder if Kira expects (or even secretly hopes) that Dukat's new life as a marauding terrorist on a stolen Klingon ship will get him killed, and thus permanently remove him from Ziyal's life.

Other observations:

• The episode opens with Kira receiving a battery of vaccinations -- notable not just for the explicit endorsement of science, but for implying the existence of a nearby bathroom when she heads off to be sick.

• This is the first appearance of Damar. He's really a nothing character here, and actor Casey Biggs noted that he felt anyone could have played the part. But he also says director Jonathan West made a point of telling them he'd heard the writers were already planning to bring back the character later and do more -- so West gave him plenty of reaction shots and close-ups that a typical minor character wouldn't have.

• According to writer Ira Steven Behr, Dukat's angry declaration that "I am the only Cardassian left" was inspired by a real-life statement from Sioux leader Sitting Bull. (In refusing to sign a treaty that had already been signed by 'every other Indian,' Sitting Bull scoffed: "What other Indians? There are no other Indians but me.")

• The boarding of the Klingon ship was originally planned as a much more elaborate hand-to-hand combat sequence. But Jonathan West argued to the writers that it would strain credibility to have Kira and Dukat overpower an entire ship of Klingons. He lobbied for a suggestion by assistant director B.C. Cameron to use the transporter to swap crews, and the writers agreed, reducing the combat to just the Klingons in one part of the ship.

Again, I'm less than enthusiastic about giving Dukat the main character treatment. (The title makes it clear: it's his story.) Nevertheless, I'm intrigued enough by Kira's role in this story to give "Return to Grace" a B.

Strangerer Things

Every month, Amazon Prime members with a Kindle get to choose a free book from a half dozen choices. I don't necessarily need more in my stack to read, but hey... free! And occasionally, something is offered up that sounds right up my alley. So it was with the book One Word Kill, by Mark Lawrence.

15-year-old Nick Hayes had a normal teen life, playing Dungeons & Dragons with his friends. But his world is rocked when he's diagnosed with cancer. And it's rocked again when a strange yet familiar man warns him that the new girl in the group, Mia, is in serious danger than only Nick can prevent. Soon they're in for secrets and science all far more out there than any of them could ever have imagined.

I've seen some people review this book as "Ready Player One" meets "Stranger Things" -- but I think that characterization shows a lack of creativity. It's set in the 1980s, there's a lot of pop culture references, and the kids play D&D; it must be a mash-up of these other two things that do that! (Even if the kids are British instead of American.)

In truth, the book is a pretty good character study of someone dealing with a cancer diagnosis, someone who will draw hope from any source and grab onto any lifeline for the future whole-heartedly. The writing itself is perhaps not revelatory here, but the plotting is actually still very engaging. You'll likely suspect the "twist" long before the novel confirms it -- but it's an interesting idea all the same.

This does wind up being essentially science fiction, but along the way it teases out some interesting theories about destiny and sacrifice. I might wish for it to do more than tease (it never goes that deep), but it turns out this is the first book of a trilogy, and what I'm looking for might be expanded upon in the second and (forthcoming) third volumes. (I suppose this is why Amazon gave you the first book free.) The book does sort of stand on its own well enough; I could see continuing the story or simply ending it where it does here, in an ambiguous yet fitting place. But it does continue, and I might just be intrigued enough to see what happens next.

To say much more about the positives or negatives of the book would require spoiling aspects that, judging by the summary blurb, the writer/publisher didn't want revealed in advance. So I won't either. Suffice it to say that while I doubt this is destined to become a classic, I found it an engaging and brisk read all the same. I give One Word Kill a B.

DS9 Flashback: Crossfire

Science fiction in general, and Star Trek in particular, is often praised for taking modern-day social issues and examining them through a metaphorical lens. A less lofty but equally common form of sci-fi storytelling is to take an existing story and re-cast it in a futuristic setting. This was the initial inspiration for Deep Space Nine's "Crossfire."

Shakaar, the leader of Kira's former resistance cell and now First Minister of Bajor, is making an official visit to the station -- and is the target of a credible assassination threat. Taking charge of his security, Odo spends a great deal of time with Shakaar and Kira... and must watch enviously as a romance blossoms between the two, a relationship he wishes he could have with Kira.

You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that this episode was originally inspired by the movie The Bodyguard, starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston: a security guard gets close to his charge and falls in love. Of course, with Odo's secret love for Kira already established on Deep Space Nine, the story would be tweaked a bit. Instead, Odo is run through the emotional ringer as he watches someone else takes the relationship risk he wishes he had the courage to take himself.

It's striking how little the assassination plot actually matters in this episode. It's purely a MacGuffin to facilitate a touching and sad examination of Odo's psyche. We see how much Kira means to him, from his methodical preparation for their weekly meeting to the way a casual comment from her makes him change the "clothes" he wears. Odo may look like an adult, but he's really an adolescent at best -- awkward at taking a compliment, mortified that anyone would discover his "darkest secret" (one that shouldn't really be so embarrassing), torturing himself needlessly (when he personally guards Kira's quarters all night), and in the end willing to strain any relationship with Kira when he can't have the one he wants.

Odo's relationship with Quark also shines in this episode. We see a petty side of Odo, positioning his quarters above Quark's just so he can make noise. But the closeness between the two does come out; Odo does confess his love for Kira to a sympathetic Quark, Quark helps lift his spirits, and the two acknowledge that they're "almost" behaving like friends to one another. Odo has a nice rapport with Worf too, as the two share a common outlook on the lack of order and routine on the station.

It's easy to overlook how great Rene Auberjonois is in this episode. Sure, director Les Landau helps him a lot with the camera -- in every major scene where Odo must hide his emotions, the camera remains tightly on his face as the other character in the scene (Shakaar, Sisko, Kira) unknowingly twists the knife on him off camera or out of focus. But remember, Auberjonois is having to emote through what is essentially a mask covering his entire face. He does so perfectly; we know exactly how Odo feels in each of these key scenes.

Less effective is the character of Shakaar. As is so often the case in television, the audience is asked to believe in a relationship that didn't really get much run-up. Shakaar has only appeared once before, and is suddenly meant to be a credible love interest for Kira. To get him there, the character is written much softer, trying to sell him as "boyfriend material" rather than "politician material." Show runner Ira Steven Behr was particularly harsh in critiquing this, saying that they'd made "Clint Eastwood" too "sensitive." He took pains to say that actor Duncan Regehr should not be blamed for the inconsistencies. And in my view, Shakaar was a more convincing romance for Kira than Vedek Bareil. Still, the writers clearly didn't like what they'd done here; Shakaar would be talked about a fair amount, but would only actually appear in one more episode after this.

Other observations:

• Besides the tight framing on Odo's face in the key moments, there's plenty of other good camera work in this episode. Particularly effective, I think, is the handheld technique used to underscore Shakaar's exposure to potential danger when he greets people on the Promenade.

• There are shapeshifting gags both subtle (the appearance of Odo's belt) and elaborate (when he stops the turbolift). But one interesting bit of "shifting" are the strands of his hair that hang askew after he trashes his quarters. Since Odo's "hair" is in fact him, his disheveled appearance suggests an inability to hold his regular form. This was not scripted, and indeed the producers were almost concerned enough to consider reshooting the scene when they saw the film. The "look" was improvised in the moment by Rene Auberjonois himself, who had seen an art print of a Japanese warrior in defeat and wanted to mimic it.

"Will they, won't they" is a staple trope of television. This episode is the peak of "they won't" for Kira and Odo, and effectively conjures audience sympathy. I give the episode a B+.

Key Notes

I enjoyed the cooperative board game Mysterium well enough when I got to try it, but it hasn't quite had any real staying power in my group as other board games keep coming into the mix. Since playing it, I've heard the same criticisms from different places that fairly peg some shortcomings of Mysterium: that it's considerably more fun for one player (the "ghost") than the others, and that it takes too long to play (with a lot of down time as the ghost player thinks about the clues they want to give).

Addressing the second problem, at least, comes the new game One Key. It could almost be called "Mysterium Lite," and feels like the essence of that earlier game, distilled down into a slim 10-minute package. The game comes with a wide array of unusual picture cards (as you might find in Dixit, another game you could lump in this "family"). 11 of these are dealt face up in view of all players, and a clue giver is randomly assigned one as the answer they must guide the others to guessing.

Over four rounds, the clue giver draws additional picture cards and assigns to them a status of being a "good, neutral, or bad" clue toward the identity of the target picture. In round one, the rest of the players (acting on the clue they've been given) must eliminate one card from the possibilities. In round two, they eliminate two more, then three in round three, and finally four in round four -- leaving (if correct) only the actual answer.

This is, essentially, the gameplay at the heart of Mysterium -- one person guides while the others try to guess. But it's presented here in a much simpler form that takes a lot less time. There's also a timer used to prevent debate among the players from spiraling out of control. Consequently, the whole affair takes only 10-15 minutes. That means it's a game that can accommodate multiple consecutive plays, giving more people a chance at the role of clue giver in the same time an entire Mysterium game might still not fit into.

Of course, stripping away so many trappings removes the sense that there's any complexity here. It does make for a game that's easy to bring out at a large party and quickly explain to everyone. It's harder for cynical veteran gamers to imagine there's much depth there to be worth even the small amount of time. There's not really any strategy here, only a marginal opportunity to be "good" at the job of clue giver, and a lot of random luck of the cards determining whether you'll win or lose. (In observing or participating in half a dozen games by now, I actually have yet to see anyone win.)

If you're looking for a game that accommodates both children and adults reasonably well, One Key might be worth a look. But it feels possible parents would burn out on it faster than their kids. I'd give One Key a B-. It's breezy enough that I can't see myself declining to play it... but it's also not likely to ever be my suggestion.

DS9 Flashback: Paradise Lost

"Paradise Lost" follows up on "Homefront," and concludes Deep Space Nine's two-part episode about paranoia and terrorism on planet Earth.

A global blackout has panicked Earth, driving the Federation president to agree to increased security measures. But as Sisko and Odo investigate how a changeling infiltrator could have sabotaged the power grid, they make an unsettling discovery: that's not what happened. Instead, it appears to be a military coup within Starfleet by forces convinced that extreme measures are needed in the face of the Dominion threat.

Much like part one of this story, "Paradise Lost" is a good idea -- with occasional moments of greatness -- that unfortunately falls short in many ways. The producers blame budget shortages (with show runner Ira Steven Behr even claiming to have pinned a note to his office wall after this as a cautionary tale against making too many compromises: "Remember Paradise Lost"). They are right that the episode feels strangely small despite the enormous stakes, and that much of that is about a lack of money in the production. (Constant cutting away from a pitched space battle to feature two people talking in an empty office, for example, is an ineffective technique you'd wouldn't likely choose if you had the budget to show more of the ships.)

Still, I think the larger issue is that the story doesn't quite succeed in making the disloyalty of Starfleet officers feel credible. I'm hardly a Roddenberry purist when it comes to the notion of noble future humans, and I'm very much open to showing Star Trek characters who have lofty goals but flawed methods. (Several episodes later in Deep Space Nine's run do a great job of this, in fact.) I just don't think Admiral Leyton's "heel turn" here is particularly well-earned. We really do need to see every step down the road that gets him to the point of ordering one Starfleet ship to fire on another. We need to understand why the Dominion threat (and not, say, the Borg, who have also attacked Earth in recent Trek history) affects Leyton so profoundly. We simply don't get that vital connective tissue.

That said, there are moments where the sense of paranoia does play right. Using Colm Meaney to play a "shapeshifter O'Brien" is particularly effective, as he smirks and mocks and reveals that only four changelings on the entire planet have managed to cause this kind of havoc. This is how paranoia works: give someone a little push, plant one small seed of doubt, then let them do the rest. Put a little fear in someone, and watch their behavior transform completely -- as Joseph Sisko's does when he enthusiastically submits to the blood screening he decried just last episode. There's an important moral here, and it does come through: don't destroy your own way of life. You may indeed have enemies who want to do that, but you should at least make them do that.

This is a strong episode for Benjamin Sisko (and Avery Brooks) as he investigates the conspiracy. The way he pulls rank on both Nog and a Red Squad cadet shows the business side of Sisko in a compelling way. The fact that he bluffs at knowing more than he actually does shows his cleverness. Brooks is good in the family moments, too. He has noted in several interviews how important the relationship between Jake and Ben was to him, a break of the negative stereotype of "brown" (the word he uses himself) sons and their absent fathers. Three generations of Siskos feature in this story, and you can sense that this means a great deal to Avery Brooks in how he shades his performance.

Other observations:

• The apparently throwaway plot in part one, of Nog attempting to join "Red Squad," pays off here in part two when the Squad is revealed to be at the core of the conspiracy.

• The changeling posing as O'Brien claims that "we do not fear you the way you fear us." But that doesn't seem objectively true. Xenophobia and paranoia are closely related. While the Founders may not have a paranoid fear of humans, their rejection of all "solids" is ultimately rooted in a xenophobic fear of ever again being treated in the way they once were treated.

• Odo uses a Vulcan nerve pinch to disable someone. According to writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe, this was an example of the budget being short on this episode: "We ran out of money for the morphs."

I like the message at the core of "Homefront"/"Paradise Lost," but the episodes themselves feel lacking -- hollow in character motivation, and lacking in production value. I give this second part a B-.

The Road Not Taken -- For the Better

It's widely acknowledged among fans of action, sci-fi, and horror movies that while Alien and Aliens were both great, Alien 3 was... not. Though it essentially launched the career of director David Fincher, its troubled gestation -- multiple script drafts by multiple writers -- was an insurmountable obstacle resulting in a disappointing and flawed movie.

Because the story passed through so many hands, there's always been talk about the Alien 3 that might have been. And now, one particular incarnation of that is seeing the light of day. A script by author William Gibson has been unearthed and given a full audiobook treatment by Audible. With a complete cast including Michael Biehn as Hicks and Lance Henriksen as Bishop, and an elaborate soundscape of audio effects, this is being presented essentially as "Alien III" -- essentially a movie, missing only the picture.

Unfortunately, it's an idea that I think does not work. This story, appropriately for the movie it was meant to be, is very action oriented. While there's a game attempt to set a stage with sound, this is not the medium in which to be telling this kind of story. In this format, it's not tense, scary, or exciting. If anything, it's just confusing. The characters are shallow in the way of mindless blockbusters, and cast with a variety of largely indistinguishable voices. In important scenes, you often can't tell who's who, nor do you care about any of them enough to make the effort.

There are a few interesting ideas in the story, new notions of how the alien creatures might morph and where they might come from, but it feels as though the most interesting details of this story were already mined years ago to make Prometheus and Alien: Covenant (to diminishing returns). There's a fair bit of exploration of what communism would be like in a dystopian future, though these elements really make this feel like what it is: an abandoned script from the 1980s.

It's hard to tell if some of the problems here were that William Gibson never got enough drafts of his story to polish it, if it was compromised in rewriting to create this audio drama, or some combination of both. Regardless, there are many other problems. The biggest complaint of the Alien 3 we actually got is how it summarily dispense with the characters of Hicks and Newt. This audio drama marginalizes Ripley almost as badly. Is this because they weren't planning on having Sigourney Weaver at the time, or because they didn't have her now? Either way, it's the same flawed way of following up Aliens: failing to use its surviving characters the right way,

The first half is also quite frustrating and slow. Sure... characters in slasher films shouldn't know they're in a slasher film, but such movies should also get to the point fairly expediently. Half of this 2.5 hour audio drama is spent waiting for a cast of mostly new characters to figure out they've been making bone-headed decisions and are starting to get slaughtered for it. The audience is way too far ahead of them, for far too long.

There is some nostalgia here in hearing Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen back as their beloved characters from Aliens. And the production values thrown at this presentation feel sky high for the format. But William Gibson's Alien III is so boring that, even for all its flaws, I actually prefer the real Alien 3. I give the audio drama a D.

DS9 Flashback: Homefront

The story that ultimately became Deep Space Nine's two-part episode "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost" was originally conceived of for the third-season finale, then shelved when the studio asked they not do an explicit cliffhanger. Then it was postponed from opening season four when the decision was made to introduce Worf to the series, necessitating a big, Klingon-centered story. Finally, just over a third of the way into the season, the time for "Homefront" finally arrived.

When a changeling infiltrator stages a terrorist attack on Earth, Sisko and Odo are summoned to Starfleet headquarters to discuss increased security measures. It's also an opportunity for Jake to see family (his grandfather Joseph) and friends (Nog, in his first year at Starfleet Academy). The hawkish Admiral Leyton installs Sisko as Chief of Starfleet Security, and pushes the reluctant Federation president Jaresh-Inyo for sweeping changes that affect even civilian life on the planet.

"Homefront" is a solid story idea that stumbles in execution in a few important ways. One is a lack of money to convey the necessary scope. This story puts all of Earth in jeopardy, but we don't see much of Earth beyond tiny offices (not befitting the status of the people working there), the sparsely populated grounds of Starfleet Academy, and Joseph Sisko's restaurant (both tiny and sparsely populated). Had this story been a season finale or opener as originally conceived, there might have been money in the budget to convey the right sense of scope here. As it stands, planet Earth feels strangely almost more claustrophobic than Deep Space Nine.

The other key shortcoming is one of tone. Simply put, I don't think the episode's writers (Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe) truly understood terrorism at the time they wrote this. It was nearly six years before 9/11; really, did any of us fully appreciate what terrorism could look like or how it could make us feel? The conference bombing that opens this episode is supposed to be the first thing like this to happen on Earth in a century. But O'Brien and Bashir's supposedly shocked reaction is played for comedy opposite an atypically empathetic Quark. Worf, rather than contacting his family on Earth, is cracking jokes about Klingon mythology. Joseph Sisko is oddly light about the situation. Even Leyton feels off the mark; I'd expect his anger about how he could have prevented this to ride closer to the surface.

All that said, even if this story isn't being told as convincingly as I'd hope, they are at least trying to tell the right story. The balance between security and freedom is very much at the heart of this episode. Joseph Sisko makes an impassioned speech against the evils of totalitarianism, standing up in defiance much sooner than I think most people would. We get to see warhawks and pacifists clash in their philosophies, and see Benjamin Sisko slide along that continuum throughout the story. (That's "Benjamin Lafayette Sisko," we learn, when his father gets particularly riled up.)

The episode also presents the ugliness of xenophobia, from the racism Odo expects to face when he goes to Earth to the casual way Leyton claims an alien president can't care about Earth the way humans do. And for good measure, there's an authentic look at the struggles of trying to get an older family member to take their health seriously. In all these moments where the episode really does treat its subject matter more seriously, it's excellent.

There's great guest casting too. Besides first-time Trek guest Robert Foxworth (who'd reportedly been "saved" for a bigger role when he auditioned earlier in the season), we get two actors doing something truly rare in Star Trek: playing a second human character when they'd played one previously. Susan Gibney had memorably played Leah Brahms on The Next Generation (twice!), while Brock Peters played Admiral Cartwright twice in the classic Star Trek motion pictures. Both get to show their range in these new roles; Gibney has none of the warmth she projected as Brahms, while Peters as Joseph Sisko gets to rail again exactly the sort of person he played as Cartwright!

It's also nice to see Nog continue on the series, something you wouldn't necessarily have expected after he was sent to Starfleet Academy. Unfortunately, his part in this episode contributes more to the jarring tonal clash -- in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on Earth, his greatest concern is not fitting in with the cool kids at school. At least this subplot would be revealed to have hidden significance in part two.

Other observations:

• Up until this point, any mention of Ben Sisko's father has strongly implied he was dead. Not only is he shown to be alive here, we also learn Ben has a sister, Judith, who lives in Portland.

• In speaking of family on Earth, Bashir somewhat pointedly doesn't have anyone he wants Odo to relay a message to. Next season, the writers would pick up on this apparent tension between Bashir and his parents, providing an intriguing explanation.

• In the midst of his defiant rant, Joseph Sisko suggests that a clever changeling could beat a blood screening test, and even suggests how. He's probably right, too, as I can think of one specific character who is tested at one point in the series, then revealed to be a changeling at a later point. It'll take a while, but we'll get to that eventually.

This episode may not be action-packed, but it's quite on point with its look at paranoia. Still, it's an especially incomplete tale without its second half. I give the setup, "Homefront," a B.

Dino-Might

Always willing to try out a new escape room, my friends and I went this weekend to Escape the Room Denver, a spot located in Southwest Plaza mall. Eight of us teamed up to take on their Jurassic Escape, a room loosely themed to the movie Jurassic Park. The goal (besides, duh: escape) was to destroy a designer-dino hybrid DNA sample to prevent evil-doers from cloning and breeding the monstrosity.

The experience was mixed. Escape the Room Denver had some pretty strong pluses and minuses on the continuum of escape room experiences. Overall, the group seemed to have had fun (mostly), but I would speculate that with so many escape rooms available all over Denver, it's not very likely we'll return to this one.

On the plus side, this was the most elaborate environment I've ever seen in an escape room. I've done a few rooms before that felt really polished -- as much as I would have said a room could get. This place blew the top of the bell curve. There was impeccable set decoration, outstanding and clever interactive elements, and fantastic props. If you're a fan of haunted houses (and 'tis the season!), think of the best haunted house you've ever been in. This was the escape room equivalent of that. Top notch.

The actual puzzles you encountered inside the room, however, weren't nearly as polished as the world they'd created. Key parts of the mystery were arbitrarily obtuse; afterward, we talked about how we'd felt like there were several elements we never really "solved" so much as "brute forced" until we tripped upon a solution. I think you could make the case that a couple of these moments were on us. (The room was more observation-based than most, and our group was "failing our perception rolls" quite a bit that day.) Still, there were elements where there was, for example, no clear connection between X and Y -- they just went together.

We also got the strong sense that elements of the room were either malfunctioning, or weren't actually automated (and our monitor fell asleep at the wheel when they were supposed to trigger something for us). Without divulging specifics, I can say that the challenge did contain several escape room staples: electromagnets you have to release, keypads where you have to enter a code, and so forth. More than once during our experience, we would try a solution, have nothing happen, then retry the exact same thing later and have it work. (And if we'd changed something in the interrim that turned a non-working answer into a working one? Well... back to "there was no clear connection between elements.")

Particularly frustrating for us was that the room actually wasn't set up correctly when we began. One puzzle we encountered near the end had actually already been solved when we reached it. We wasted a great deal of time trying to "solve" the puzzle, all the while saying to each other, "but it seems like this IS the answer, right? What are we supposed to DO here?" Further annoyance came when we broke down and asked for hints about it, and had our monitor first give two or three hints about solving the puzzle that was already solved -- not telling us (or not realizing) the mistake that had been made in preparing the room.

In the end, we were successful in escaping with less than two minutes to spare. And while we did have fun, there was also the sense that we'd relied on help more than we'd have liked, and didn't quite understand how we'd made it all the way through. We machine-gunned the monitor with questions at the end. Triumph mixed with confusion is an odd way to feel at the end of an escape room experience.

Escape the Room Denver does certainly excel in the look and feel of its environments, if Jurassic Escape is representative. But other places (like Denver Escape Room in Northglenn) are nearly as impressive in this respect while having much more clever and satisfying puzzles. If you're an escape room junkie "collecting" different locations, you'll probably want to give Escape the Room Denver a try. If you've never done a room before, I'd recommend somewhere else for your first experience.

Rated El

It's been six years since the series finale of Breaking Bad perfectly concluded that show. So perfectly, in fact, that it seems like a risky proposition to even consider revisiting the story, as has now happened in the direct-to-Netflix movie El Camino.

El Camino picks up the action immediately after the finale, following Jesse Pinkman in the aftermath of his imprisonment as he evades law enforcement and struggles with his own PTSD. Intertwined with the action are flashbacks that fill in his year of captivity, demonstrating that as tortured and haunted as Jesse often was during the series, he is even more broken now.

It's likely that if Better Call Saul hadn't been running in the intervening years since Breaking Bad -- and proving to be every bit as compelling a series in that time -- the prospect of El Camino might not be welcome at all. But Better Call Saul built enough goodwill to change the math. Instead of fearing disaster, I went in assuming that creator Vince Gilligan wouldn't come back without good reason.

Watching El Camino, I suspect that reason was, above all, a desire simply to revisit characters he cared about, and reunite with actors he loved. I don't begrudge that, and indeed I share (to a lesser extent, surely) in the feeling. But the truth is that outside of nostalgia, El Camino doesn't offer all that much. It doesn't add a lot to the Breaking Bad story that you couldn't have conjured in your own imagination. It isn't essential or especially insightful.

That said, it doesn't mess anything up either. El Camino is like a jumbo-sized three part episode of the show (without commercial breaks). And though it doesn't rise to the lofty highs of Breaking Bad's finest hours, it does still feel warm and familiar. It makes you remember just how good the show was, and lets you bask in the enjoyment of it all. (If "enjoyment" is the right word to describe the complicated feelings you can have watching the morally ambiguous world of the series.)

It's actually a bit flippant to just call El Camino another "episode," though, because there are cinematic sensibilities about it. The movie is shot in a different aspect ratio than the series was made in, and uses different lenses. There's a lot more panoramic outdoor filming. It looks larger and more special, and if the events depicted don't necessarily seem to have grown to match that scale, perhaps it only feels that way because the show itself was already quite dramatic in scope, operatic with its characters.

It's a grand showcase for Aaron Paul in the role of Jesse. This hollowed-out version of the character calls for a different gear than Paul usually played in Breaking Bad, and he absolutely rises to the occasion. Meanwhile, a bunch of cameo appearances from actors who appeared in the show let you revisit characters you loved (or loved to hate).

I'd give El Camino a B+. If you're a Breaking Bad fan, you can watch it without any risk of damaging the experience of the show itself, or its fitting ending. On the other hand, "episode" or not, it's not likely to supplant whichever of the true episodes of the series was your favorite.

Shock, Without Awe

During my summer trip to Napa Valley, one of our stops was at Chateau Montelena. We'd chosen it purely to see its beautiful grounds, but while we were there, we got a taste not only of their wine, but of their backstory. In the 1970s, their Chadonnay took top honors at a competition in France that helped bring global respect to California wines. It's a story, we were told, that was dramatized in the movie Bottle Shock. The woman pouring our wine seemed surprised that we'd found our way to their particularly winery without having heard of that movie -- apparently, it drives most of their visitors.

I tracked down Bottle Shock after the vacation... and frankly, I too am surprised I'd never heard of the movie. Though it's a smaller, independent film from 2008, it's hardly cast with unknowns. Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Chris Pine, and Rachael Taylor star, along with Freddy Rodriguez (of Six Feet Under), Eliza Dushku, Dennis Farina... and an oddly brief appearance by Bradley Whitford. Seriously, how had I never heard of a movie with all these people in it?

Perhaps, I now suspect, because it's not really all that good.

Bottle Shock is a cute enough bit of fluff. It's a pretty straightforward "underdog sticks it to the man" tale, of the kind that's always good for a cheap thrill even when it isn't packaged in a way that really packs a punch. But surface thrills are all you'll get here. Most of the real life people on whom this story is based have said that a lot of creative license was taken by the film. (One key figure refused to give permission to include his "character.") The ultimate fact of the wine tasting victory is true... and pretty much everything else about the story is fabricated.

You feel that when you watch it. Everything that transpires adheres too neatly to the template you'd expect a movie like this to follow. There's a strained relationship between an ambitious father and his lazy son. There's a pompous "city guy" who learns respect for "common country folk." There's a wedged-in romantic subplot. And none of it delves particularly deep into any particular emotion. It doesn't even make much of an effort to convey a love for wine, showcasing obsession without ever answering the question "but why for THIS?"

Still, it's a pretty movie to look at. Filmed on location in Napa and Sonoma (and in particular, at the real Chateau Montelena), you can see why this movie would drive tourism. It makes the place look beautiful (and isn't false in this). There's also some enjoyment in seeing many great actors play so strongly "on brand." Alan Rickman could look down his nose and sneer better than anyone, and does it wonderfully here. Chris Pine's brand of "lovable screw-up" was in its nascent form here, just before Captain Kirk became his big step to stardom. Eliza Dushku's "take no crap" signature is well-utilized. So on down the cast list. If you like these actors, and like what they usually do, you'll get exactly what you like from them here.

I myself wish the movie had scratched deeper. It feels to me as though it's operating in a very similar space to The Hundred-Foot Journey, but falls well short of the simple pleasures of that film. I give Bottle Shock a C-. It gave me the opportunity to remember a place I've visited... and little more than that.

Dragon Along

Not every board game has a revolutionary mechanic at the core unlike any you've ever seen before. And that's perfectly fine. A game that takes something that already exists to use in a new way can be quite compelling too. That's the case with Dragon Castle.

Dragon Castle is a game unapologetically based on Mahjong. Tiles with various symbols are stacked in a specific pattern, and then players take turns using solitaire Mahjong rules to remove pairs of tiles from the stack. The extension of Dragon Castle is that players must then use those tiles in a kind of construction effort on their own personal boards. The idea is to group tiles of the same color together, then flip them over to score points. Bigger areas score more points... but areas of 4 or more tiles must be flipped over, so the trick is to set up smaller groups you can merge together with a single tile placement. Add to that scoring in a third dimension by capping stacks of tiles after you've flipped them over, and you've got scoring in literally several dimensions to plan for.

The rules of Dragon Castle are pretty straightforward (and still more so if you've ever played solitaire Mahjong). Still, it's enough to give you a tricky spatial puzzle to work through. The game is also fairly interactive despite not directly pitting players against each other in any "attack" posture. It's the classic situation where you need to look ahead and think about what moves the players will make after you, and what in turn that might open up for you when it gets back to your turn.

For that reason, I actually think Dragon Castle probably excels as a 2-player game (even though I played with 3 the first time I tried it). The anticipation seems like a key part of the fun here, and that's much easier to do against just one opponent. Still, I liked it well enough that I look forward to a chance to play it again, even with three or four players. There seems to be plenty of room for strategic growth and mastery.

I'd give Dragon Castle a B+. There are countless games you can play with a deck of 52 cards, numerous adaptations of chess... why not a new take on Mahjong?

DS9 Flashback: Our Man Bashir

During season four of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, there was a run of several "homage" episodes in a row: "Starship Down" (a submarine movie), "Little Green Men" (1950s sci-fi schlock), "The Sword of Kahless" (Indiana Jones... sort of), and the top of the heap -- "Our Man Bashir," a loving send-up of James Bond.

Bashir is enjoying a classic spy novel program in the holosuite when he's interrupted by a curious Garak, looking to see what fanciful notions of spycraft the doctor has. But an even bigger interruption comes when a transporter accident deposits Sisko, Dax, Kira, Worf, and O'Brien in the holosuite computer. With the program's characters now embodied by Bashir's friends, he must keep the story running -- and everyone alive -- until a rescue can be attempted.

The Star Trek producers had all but put a ban on "malfunctioning holodeck" stories when Deep Space Nine's own Assistant Script Coordinator, Robert Gillan, pitched them an unusual take. What if the transporter malfunctioned, not the holodeck, resulting in fictional characters appearing like our heroes? It was "sold in the room," as they say, even though it wasn't until later that staff writer Ronald Moore suggested that the program in question be a mashup of 1960s spy thriller fiction (earning himself the script assignment in the process).

Of course, James Bond is clearly the largest influence on the story. The references are endless: a "pre-credits sequence" that puts Julian in a one-off adventure; his introduction as "Bashir, Julian Bashir"; rooms with secret panels and rotating walls; wild, monologuing villains with eyepatches and knockout cigars and Nehru suits; ludicrous character names (Anastasia Komananov, Mona Luvsitt, Honey Bare, and Doctor Noah); killer lasers (with heroes tied to them for execution); even a closing promise that "Julian Bashir, secret agent, will return." The episode has all the camp of the Roger Moore era and all the cold hard swagger of the Sean Connery era.

It arrived on television right at the start of the Pierce Brosnan era. After several years being out of commission, the James Bond franchise returned with Goldeneye just one week before this episode aired. MGM, concerned about the reboot of their cash cow, was reportedly not pleased with what they saw here. Their lawyers contacted the Star Trek producers, feeling this episode had intruded too close for comfort (and too close for "parody"). There would be only one more appearance on Deep Space Nine of Julian's secret agent program, and it would be much more brief and far less direct in allusions to Bond.

Still, everyone clearly had fun while this lasted. Nana Visitor adopts the most hilariously fake Russian accent. Avery Brooks cuts loose with wild eyes and staccato dialogue delivery. Even the actors who don't have a dual role get plenty to do that's out of the ordinary: Alexander Siddig gets to be an action hero with unusual methods, shooting his friend and destroying the world to save the day; Andrew Robinson plays everything from amusement to umbrage to shock to admiration as he watches Bashir first play spy and then ultimately take Garak's lessons to heart.

But it may be that no one is having as much fun as composer Jay Chattaway. He noted in an interview that even on holodeck episodes, the producers didn't usually allow the music to stray too far from the norm. But he fought hard to be allowed to do a true, John Barry inspired James Bond score for this. He got his way, filling the hour with screaming brass, sultry sax, and cool electric guitar. There's even a moment where the Deep Space Nine theme itself is rendered in the Bond style. It's all perfect for this fun romp of an episode, and earned Chattaway an Emmy nomination.

Other observations:

• Bashir mentions that it's illegal to enter another person's holosuite program uninvited. A reasonable privacy consideration that the crew of the Enterprise never respected on The Next Generation.

• Speaking of The Next Generation, there are some superficial similarities between this episode and "The Big Goodbye": our heroes unable to leave the holodeck, forced to play out the scenario, and with actual death on the line. Yet for my money, this episode does a much better job of making those stakes feel real.

• The episode reportedly took longer to film than any other standard one-hour episode of the series. Seven day shoots were the norm on Deep Space Nine, with the occasional eighth day for complicated episodes. "Our Man Bashir" filmed for nine days, owing to the elaborate stunts and more complicated sets.

• According to Nana Visitor, this was the first episode filmed after she and Alexander Siddig became a couple -- and it was a timely chance for them to play around with their new love on camera. Interestingly, Visitor also says their relationship was not unlike Kira's with Odo: Siddig had feelings for her for years that she herself was not aware of.

It might just be that I've seen every James Bond film and have a particularly soft spot for the more campy ones, but I simply love "Our Man Bashir." It's a case of light done right on Deep Space Nine, and I give it an A-.

Burn Out

Gene Hackman retired from acting 15 years ago, but back when he was working regularly, he was rightly regarded as one of the more natural and believable actors in movies. I've seen both the films for which he won an Oscar (Unforgiven and The French Connection), but I was curious to see one of the others for which he was nominated. That brought me to Mississippi Burning, the 1988 movie lauded in its time and given seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture.

Loosely based on real events, Mississippi Burning revolves around a 1964 FBI investigation into the disappearance of three civil rights advocates working to register black voters in the South. The investigators soon have reason to suspect the advocates have been murdered... and that local law enforcement may actually have been involved. But the code of silence protecting the perpetrators may be even more harder to crack than their virulently racist attitudes.

Mississippi Burning is set in the 1960s, but the fact is that today, we're actually more years removed from when it was made than the movie was in its time from the events it depicts. Now, with growing awareness of just how sweeping and systemic racism is in America, the movie actually feels like a time capsule of the 1980s every bit as much as it does the 1960s. Case in point: in this movie ostensibly about the fight for civil rights, there aren't really any significant black characters with a story line of their own. Almost no black actors are listed in the rather lengthy opening credits.

Of course, one could debate just how much things have improved since 1988. After all, just last year, the film that actually won Best Picture... was a civil rights era drama that focused more on the reforming racist than the victim of racism. Sure, Green Book had its merits, but it also had its shortcomings that could be quite validly argued.

Mississippi Burning has fewer elements to commend it. The plight of the segregation's victims in the South is all over the movie and yet barely dealt with. The ugliness of racism permeates every scene, but the effects of it often feel like they come at a step removed. Just as real-life racists would hide behind their hoods and burn crosses, the movie sometimes hides behind symbols that stand in for more serious atrocities.

Some scenes do work better, though, and it's usually thanks to the actors involved. Gene Hackman brings his trademark gravitas to this role, even if the character feels a bit inconsistent from scene to scene. The movie is setup as a work conflict between his character and the lead agent played by Willem Dafoe, and both play their conflict with gusto. Frances McDormand appears here in a role that earned her an Oscar nomination and turned her from a working actor to a big star. You can see how a career was jump-started here. Elsewhere in the film, we get an array of great character actors all giving good "scumbag": Brad Dourif, R. Lee Ermey, Michael Rooker, and Pruitt Taylor Vince. Also look out for a decidedly non-humorous Stephen Tobolowsky.

Mississippi Burning is a well-intentioned film, and not without its moments. But it falls far short of the powerful emotion it thinks it's presenting. And it hasn't aged particularly well. I give the movie a C.

DS9 Flashback: The Sword of Kahless

When Star Trek producer Rick Berman suggested that Worf be added to the regular cast of Deep Space Nine, many of the fourth season's episodes were already in development. Consequently, after the initial two-hour premiere, Worf appeared only in small doses and B-plots -- things that could be easily added to scripts already in progress. "The Sword of Kahless" was the first episode developed in full after his presence on the show was known, and the first to feature him in a major role.

Venerable Klingon Kor has found a clue to the location of a near-mythic artifact, the Sword of Kahless, and he wants Dax and Worf to accompany him on the adventure to retrieve it. Rivals to their quest are only the beginning of their problems, however. The prospect of wielding the Sword and its symbolic power to rule the Klingon Empire soon has Kor and Worf at odds with each other.

Writer Hans Beimler developed the screenplay to this episode. He'd been part of the writing staff on The Next Generation during season three, and remained close with some of the writers even though he left the show. He envisioned a brash adventure, part The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, part Indiana Jones -- including elaborate traps protecting the Sword from plunderers. All that was written out of the script in later drafts, reportedly not so much for cost as for the time it would have taken to film the multiple action gags.

Unfortunately, you really feel what's missing when you watch the episode -- if not exactly what's missing, then at least the fact that something is. The adventure is hardly adventurous, and feels particularly un-Klingon-like in its need to overcome force fields and holograms rather than life-threatening danger.

Likewise, the ostensible nemesis of this tale, Toral, falls flat. Calling back Duras' son from The Next Generation seems like an intriguing way to leverage Worf's history to heighten this story, but he's a threat too easily dispatched here. Sure, that's because the episode is more interested in the drama between Worf and Kor -- but then, why mention Toral at all? Why not just make it some random Klingon? Why suggest Worf's past might suddenly be a going concern on Deep Space Nine, only to never show Toral again?

Other callbacks to past Star Trek are handled more skillfully. They mention that a clone of Kahless is now the Emperor of the Klingon Empire, while somehow managing not to let that detail bog down the story. The original series gets a shoutout when Kor's confrontation with Kirk (from "Errand of Mercy") is referenced. A mind-reading Lethean is important to the story, calling back earlier Deep Space Nine. And of course, there are several nods to Dax's previous quest with Kang, Kor, and Koloth.

If only one of those three Klingons was to survived "Blood Oath," it perhaps worked out for the best that it was Kor. His gregarious personality is a nice part of this episode -- regaling our characters with tall tales, instantly becoming friends with Worf ("Any enemy of Gowron and the High Council is a friend of mine."), and building the story of their own quest even as they're on it. He's not all fun and games, though. As the story turns, he and Worf squabble over who's the bigger disgrace to Klingons -- Worf for failing to kill Toral years ago when given the chance, or Kor for drunkenly fabricating tales of glory that never was.

Worf and Kor's argument goes perhaps a bit too far, though, when they come to blows and literally try to kill each other. Their lust for power and visions of commanding the Empire with Sword of Kahless get a bit "One Ring-like" in the level of pure obsession, so much so that many fans thought that some supernatural power of the Sword had gone unexplained in the episode. The writers were reportedly disappointed that anyone read the situation this way. While I do agree that a non-technobabbly answer is the more dramatically compelling one here, the fact that so many people thought this episode was hinting otherwise shows how over-the-top, almost cartoonish, the behavior here gets before the end.

Other observations:

• This episode is directed by LeVar Burton. It's especially fitting for Worf's first big episode on Deep Space Nine (premiere notwithstanding) to be directed by his former Next Generation castmate.

• Worf has been a character for seven years before arriving here, but because Deep Space Nine is more interested in fleshing out its characters' histories than Next Generation usually was, we get to learn more about him. We get a story of Worf seeing a vision of Kahless as a child, promising he'd do something no Klingon had done before. He feels he fulfilled that vision by joining Starfleet.

Before it's pushed too far, the interplay between Worf, Dax, and Kor is engaging. But the action-adventure elements of this story are lacking, and its climax is so muddled that different sections of the audience reached different conclusions about what it meant -- when ambiguity was not the intention. I give "The Sword of Kahless" a C+.

Faceless in a Crowd

Magnets!

It's a cliche, but every now and then, someone actually decides to “do it with magnets.” So it was with the cooperative board game The Faceless.

One kid in a group of friends has gone missing in a strange nightmare world. The rest band together for a rescue, entering this horrific plane of existence to gather items needed to rescue their friend before the evil monster who dwells within finds them and catches them.

So goes the premise of the game. The mechanics surround a hexagonally-shaped board where your playing piece is a compass. Three pieces at the perimeter of the board can be moved by the players, the magnets inside drawing the compass needle in different directions. The monster who moves around the board contains a needle as well. By rotating figures to repel or attract the needle, and by playing cards to move the compass itself in whatever direction the needle points, the players team up to navigate the board and collect objects.

The game is wonderfully evocative. The art is delightfully creepy, from the illustrations on the cards to the two-faced miniatures that circle the board. This story feels like something of a trope, what with Stranger Things and Stephen King's It and everything that came before to inspire those things, but The Faceless serves up the right mix of familiar and original in terms of its art.

Also fun, at least in principle, is the idea of using magnets to indirectly guide a playing piece around the board. It's not fully under your control, but neither is it totally random. It also somehow suits the theme in a non-obvious way, that your fate is in the hands of forces you cannot see, and can only affect at a remove.

But the game itself is not as compelling as the idea of the game, and certainly less compelling than its spooky art. The puzzle is actually quite rote. Presumably, you understand how magnets work, and can reasonably guess how things will interact 90+% of the time. The only question is whether the adjustable difficulty level of the game gives you enough turns to solve the puzzle or not.

I don't think much is gained from this being a cooperative game. It feels like it would be an entertaining enough puzzle for one. Maybe a decent two-player game, at the most. But when you play with more (four players, in my case), there's simply not enough for everyone to do. Characters have specific powers, but they're not broad enough to have more impact than the simple movements of the magnets. There's not much debate about whether the group should do "this" or "that," with one best move pretty clear to everyone every time a new player's turn begins. There's simply not that much to this game, and the rules for higher difficulty levels don't really address giving everyone more to do -- they simply start you out more under the gun.

The theme is compelling, and the look of the game is a fantastic realization of that theme. But the gameplay itself lacks enough to really engage me. I give The Faceless a C+. There are many stronger cooperative options out there.

DS9 Flashback: Little Green Men

By the fourth season of Deep Space Nine, Michael Piller had left the series, handing over show runner duties to Ira Steven Behr. Voyager was on the air, getting more of the attention from on high. A few years had gone by since Gene Roddenberry had passed away, and the impulse to abide strictly by "what he would have wanted" had relaxed. All this made for an environment where Deep Space Nine was willing to take more risks, like the outright farce that was "Little Green Men."

Quark is given a ship by his cousin, and he wants to use it to fly Nog to his first day at Starfleet Academy... and to smuggle some contraband along the way. When the ship malfunctions, Rom saves their lives with a risky procedure that transports them back in time to 1947 Earth. Captured by the U.S. military, the three Ferengi become the infamous Roswell aliens. Realizing how primitive the humans are, Quark begins hatching a scheme to take over and profit.

The Ferengi had long been a vehicle for comedy on Deep Space Nine (though often with interwoven commentary on the excesses of capitalism). But this episode dialed it up to max with an overt homage to 1950s alien invasion movies. The performances are deliberately broad. The characters are all archetypes of the genre -- the caring nurse, the cigar-chomping general, the noble scientist, and more. Even the names are references to 50s actors: General Denning (Richard Denning from Creature from the Black Lagoon), Nurse Garland (Beverly Garland from It Conquered the World), and Professor Carlson (Richard Carlson from It Came from Outer Space).

The idea for the episode had been pitched in the first season by Toni Marberry and Jack Treviño, but was rejected by show runner Michael Piller. When it was mentioned again for this season (ostensibly because the 50th anniversary of the Roswell incident was coming up... in two years), Piller wasn't around to object, and the rest of the staff loved the idea.

The script by Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe piles on the jokes: parents of young Ferengi "yard sale" their kid's childhood possessions when they move out; Rom's fluent technobabble leaves Quark and Nog in a daze; smacking your head might just reset your universal translator; a frightened Rom cries for his "Moogie" while a cornered Nog comes on with bluster; and countless more sight gags and one-liners.

Even though it's a comedic episode, it does have some more serious moments. Jake and Nog say a heartfelt goodbye to one another in their trademark spot on the promenade. (Nog really does leave for the Academy, though thankfully he's not off the show.) There's aggressive commentary on the folly of nuclear weapons, which Behr was keen to include after seeing the movie True Lies and being appalled at the way it used a bomb as a backdrop for a romantic kiss. Smoking is held up as equally foolish -- though reportedly the production had to fight the studio to show this much smoking in the episode, insisting that to do otherwise would be failing to be true to the 1950s films they were sending up.

The guest cast definitely leans into the heightened acting style of those classic films, not taking the situation as seriously as their characters realistically would. Particularly fun are Megan Gallagher (in her second Deep Space Nine appearance) and major "that guy" Charles Napier (who guest starred on the original Star Trek in the not intentionally cheesy "The Way to Eden"). With most of the regular cast barely in this episode, these guests step up to fill in and bring the funny.

Other observations:

• Worf is only in the opening moments of the episode, but is featured in one of the funnier jokes (enjoying a "Ferengi tooth sharpener") and one of the more incisive bits of social commentary (when he opines that Ferengi maybe shouldn't be in Starfleet, O'Brien points out that not long ago, some would have said the same of him).

• Nog noticing that historical figure Gabriel Bell looks like Captain Sisko is not only a fun callback to an earlier episode, it's a discreet nod to the fact that time travel will soon figure in this one.

• We hear a snippet of Ferengi language in this episode, written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe. He says he meant it to sound deliberately goofy. "I tried to use a lot of silly sounds, like p's. P's are funny, so there's a lot of them."

• Oo-mox. Always a cheap, gross joke. (But especially here, when the woman performing it doesn't know what she's doing.)

• Quark tosses away a line about when humans, Vulcans, Klingons, and Ferengi all developed warp drive -- and nitpicking fans have seized upon the many inconsistencies with his claims that were created in subsequent Star Trek. I think when you consider how much Earth history the Ferengi don't get quite right in this episode, you could easily dismiss any inconsistencies here as Quark simply not knowing the past of alien races particularly well.

• The writers wanted real bomb footage for the climax of the episode. The clip from the Nevada Test Range used here had to be cleaned up a great deal to remove its many scratches and tears.

• Ira Steven Behr later said that he wished Quark had returned to the 24th century with a massive smoking habit. Interestingly, The Orville would craft an entire subplot about nicotine addiction for one of their episodes.

"Little Green Men" is a lot of fun, though I think I don't love it quite as much as most Deep Space Nine fans. I'm bothered a bit by the unrealistic behavior of the humans (even as I understand it's a deliberate part of the homage). Then again, I'm entertained by the silliness overall. I give the episode a B.

A Season to Remember

I've played through a few Legacy games (and I'm currently playing several more), but until recently, I'd never completed the one many gamers consider the best of all -- Pandemic Legacy: Season 1.

A Legacy board game, if you're not in the know, asks the same group of players to play multiple times. Some events that happen during one play become permanent -- through stickers, marks you make to the game components, materials you add to or remove from the game, and more. If a good board game is a book you love enough to read again and again, a Legacy game is like a series of books you read all the way through.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 was not the first such game, though it made the big splash that introduced most gamers to the concept. Based on the existing board game Pandemic, it brings players together as a cooperative team to prevent the spread of a worldwide dangerous disease. The Legacy elements unfold over a game "year," with unique scenarios assigned to each month.

Our experience -- a team of me, my husband, and two good friends -- actually took a year (and then some!). We'd play most times we got together for our standing monthly dinner, sometimes more than once. But sometimes we wouldn't be in the mood, or we'd postpone for one reason or another, or we'd lose a particular "month" of the game and have to play it again. So our final play of Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (that took place on our weekend getaway to Steamboat Springs) came some 15 months after our first play.

Not many games hold our group's attention even half as long these days, which I think is a testament to how engrossed we became with this experience. That's possible, though, as it's a very clever design. It has a nice story arc with some surprising twists along the way. The game really does grow over time, switching out goals and rules so that you're not really just playing the same game time after time. And the Legacy elements are quite impactful and satisfying -- successes you fight for in one play become permanent benefits you can draw on later, while the scars of past defeats can come back to bite you.

The reputation Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 has in the gamer community is well deserved. Still, I have a few small issues with it that keep me from enshrining it as my single favorite game as many others have. One is an element of the original stand-alone Pandemic game on which it's based; random chance can be especially harsh at times. When an "Epidemic" breaks out, bad luck can grow that into catastrophe literally before any player has a chance to do anything about it. And while I appreciate that a good cooperative game should be challenging and not just always "let you win," this particular confluence of circumstances never stops feeling unfair when it comes up.

My other small quibble is with an aspect unique to this Legacy version. In the middle of the campaign, a particular system is introduced that then figures heavily for several games. There's a particular time pressure involved, it turns out -- but you're not sufficiently warned about that before the deadline passes. Failure to complete one of the tasks winds up having a substantial impact on how the entire campaign is scored in the end, though, and that's the real issue. The stakes could be high with warning, or more surprising with less on the line. Blindsided and penalized is a demoralizing combination. Fortunately, the overall experience is plenty satisfying, and I really don't think an arbitrary score total for your campaign changes that fact all that much. Still, the FAQ for the game mentions a change to how this particular element should be scored in the end -- a sign that my group was hardly the first to feel betrayed.

Nevertheless, the overall experience of Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 was wonderful. Everyone had great fun with its ups and downs. I would do it again if I could. And I can! The same group of four of us has begun the next game in the series, Pandemic Legacy: Season 2. And if we maintain the same relaxed pace, enjoying it over the course of an actual year rather than rushing through it, who knows? There might be a Pandemic Legacy: Season 3 for us to move on to after that.

I give Season 1 an A-. Any board game enthusiasts who haven't tried it out should really do themselves a favor and experience the hype for themselves.

DS9 Flashback: Starship Down

During Star Trek's "Renaissance era" of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, publisher Pocket Books was releasing a steady stream of tie-in novels, overseen by editor John J. Ordover. But some of his work made the official "canon"; together with writing partner David Mack, he sold the idea to Deep Space Nine that became the episode "Starship Down."

The rescue of a Karemma ship leads the Defiant into a deadly cat-and-mouse chase with the Jem'Hadar, deep inside the atmosphere of a gas giant. When the Defiant takes heavy damage, people become isolated throughout the ship, each facing their own crisis. Dax and Bashir must survive behind a sealed bulkhead until rescue comes. Quark and Karemman representative Hanok must defuse an unexploded torpedo. Worf must lead a stressed team of engineers in a counterattack against the Jem'Hadar ships. And Kira must keep a concussed Sisko alive, confronting her own feelings toward her people's Emissary in the process.

Some Star Trek fans have compared this episode to The Next Generation's "Disaster," in the way it tracks multiple fish-out-of-water stories across a severely damaged ship. But really, it's much more like a submarine movie. Hulls creak under pressure in a planet's crushing atmosphere. Echo location is used to hunt for ships. Systems "run silent" to escape detection.

Mack and Ordover were most specifically inspired by Das Boot, with the former suggesting they "sink the Defiant." They literally wanted to crash the ship in an ocean, but budgetary limitations led them to revise their idea. A lot of the tropes still play, though.

Dax and Bashir become trapped together, leading to a nice commentary on how much less creepy the Doctor has become since the series began. Kira is made to confront her relationship with Sisko. It's easy to forget that for her, working for him is not unlike working side by side with Jesus. His prominence in her religion could probably be touched on even more often than the series does, but it's certainly used well here. Just as Nana Visitor gave a powerhouse performance when she watched Kai Opaka die, her emotions erupt here as the same thing nearly happens with Sisko. Though Sisko is a mostly passive figure in the story line, he does seem to gain more understanding of her situation in the end.

Worf gets another subplot (following "Hippocratic Oath") that shows him having to adjust to fit into the world of Deep Space Nine. We get a good number of minor engineer characters here, that Worf initially storms over like a bull in a china shop. (Imagine how intimidating it would be to have a Klingon's anger directed at you!) O'Brien gets to draw on his longer-running friendship with Worf, going back to The Next Generation, to guide the Klingon on how to deal with people wired for problem-solving, not crisis management. Yet also, O'Brien advises, don't let up on the reins too much.

Quark gets a fun story line, initially about how he's injected himself and the Ferengi as an intermediary between the Federation and the Karemma so he can scam both. Actor Armin Shimerman called this episode a favorite, in part for how it lays out Quark's philosophy that risk is a vital part of life, and in part that he got to play scenes with his old friend, James Cromwell. Cromwell had been on Star Trek: The Next Generation before (twice!), and had just finished filming the movie Babe when he came in for this Deep Space Nine episode. When Babe suddenly broke big, his celebrity rose to a point where, just one year later, he'd be drafted as a "bigger name" to appear in Star Trek: First Contact.

I have the oddest memory of watching Cromwell's performance the first time around -- I was convinced he might in fact be Rene Auberjonois, covered up in elaborate makeup. Odo hardly appears in this episode (presumably because his shapeshifting abilities would have been too useful in solving problems aboard the Defiant in this episode), and I was convinced the production decided to have him play this one-off character of Hanok instead. Their voices seemed similar, and the sparring relationship with Quark was very much the same. And strangely, in the final scene in Quark's bar where Odo and Hanok actually interact, the two are never together on screen in the same shot; the edit just cuts between close-ups of the two. In a world before anyone knew who James Cromwell was, it's only his atypical height and extra-lean frame that offers any clue that he's not Rene Auberjonois in makeup!

Cromwell does give a great performance, though, starting out indignant at Quark's games before ultimately getting caught in a game of his own -- selling a substandard torpedo that fails to explode. Hanok comes over to Quark's way of thinking, embracing risk as a life-affirming part of existence. He's a fun little guest character.

Other observations:

• This episode marked the most extensive use of CG to date in Star Trek. The Defiant, the Jem'Hadar ships, the atmospheric probe, and the gas giant environment itself were all rendered by computer.

• The writing staff seemed to feel that too much got lost in translating underwater submarine tropes to this setting. In particular, they felt that the "sealing the bulkhead from rushing water" moment just didn't work when trying to stop a gas leak instead. Show runner Ira Steven Behr said he even joked for the rest of the series, when a new episode idea was needed: "we could still do that submarine movie, and we could do it right this time."

• Morn "tells" Bashir he has 17 siblings, continuing to expand the wild little details we know about the non-speaking character.

• Nana Visitor is great at more than the heavy dramatic moments. Kira's ear-to-ear grin at the end of this episode, when Sisko invites her to a holosuite baseball game, feels like the most pure expression of joy I could imagine.

If you do compare this episode to The Next Generation's "Disaster," it comes off not as good. Still, it's a fun premise with some great scenes. I give "Starship Down" a B.

The Book I Just Red

A while back, I wrote about my enjoyment of John Scalzi's novella The Dispatcher, which I caught in audiobook format during a vacation. It made me want to add another of his books to my reading stack, and when I got to researching his standalone tales, one leapt to the front as perfect for me was Redshirts.

Life on the starship Intrepid isn't what Ensign Andrew Dahl had hoped for. Yes, he's serving aboard the flagship of the Universal Union, and his job in the xenobiology lab will put him at the forefront of new alien life the ship encounters in its interstellar travels. The problem? An unusually high percentage of low-ranking crew members get killed whenever they're assigned to planetary missions. Indeed, Dahl is part of a large crop of new crew recently added to replenish the ship's waning complement. And he and his friends may be next to die.

Yes, if you didn't get it from the title alone, this is a parody of Star Trek. A loving one, to be sure, and not exclusively a comedy. But it's a quite playful and quite fun story, full of wonderful meta jokes to make a Star Trek fan grin from ear to ear. I loved it from the prologue, and that feeling never really faded.

The story does take some twists and turns, though, forcing you to recalibrate your expectations along the way. Some readers might even be put off a bit by how downright weird it gets, though I for one think that John Scalzi is just making the most of Star Trek-inspired premise. Trek fans who can't take a joke might find it hard to read as well, I suppose, though I think anyone willing to pick up a fiction book called Redshirts is probably going to appreciate the humor. (I hear Wil Wheaton reads the audiobook version, so consider that a seal of approval.)

Redshirts was not actually the original published title of the book -- not the full one, anyway. It was called Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas. As that title promises, you reach "The End" with still more than a quarter of the book to go. And it's actually these three codas that turn this lightweight lark into a more dramatic tale with emotional heft. It's where Scalzi demonstrates he's not here just to crack jokes and point out the soup stains on Star Trek's figurative tie. And it adds a lot to the experience.

I really enjoyed the book, and give it an A-. The Hugo Awards agreed with me, giving it the Best Novel honor in 2013. To this reader, Redshirts showed some range after The Dispatcher, and made me want to seek out still more of John Scalzi's work in the future.

Stumbling in the Dark

Sometimes, a game is far more clever in concept than in execution. I recently played such a game called Nyctophobia -- lauded in a few circles for its innovation, but not particularly fun in actuality.

Nyctophobia is a "1 vs. the rest" game. The one plays an axe-murdering psycho chasing the others through the woods at night. The game takes place on an 8 x 8 grid where plastic pieces are snapped into place to form a maze of trees. The "victims" all put on opaque glasses, and are unable to see the board. The "psycho" also serves as gamemaster, helping everyone take their turns as the only player able to see.

On your turn, you're allowed to move two spaces and, at each space, "feel around" to the adjacent spaces near you. You describe aloud to all players what you're feeling as you "stumble around in the dark," and as a team you try to solve the maze and reach your car to go for help. The killer takes his turn accord to scripted rules, moving toward the players who most recently made "noise," and trying to attack and defeat any one member of the group to win the game.

It's a fun enough premise, riffing on the "cabin in the woods" sort of horror movie trope. But in practice, the game simply does not work. First, the rules are sort of unresolved about the role of the sighted player. To what degree are they really trying to win the game, as opposed to trying to facilitate a fun experience for the other players, "dungeon master" style? The game doesn't seem particularly balanced for either choice, nor does it seem particularly fun to just operate as a game master in such a non-narrative system.

It's no better for the victim players. No matter how much literal hand-holding you get from the single player, it's impossible to feel around the spaces near you without accidentally brushing against things you're not supposed to be feeling. "Um... that's actually two spaces away. You're feeling the wrong space." "Well... there's a tree right next to you. You're not supposed to feel what's on the other side."

The components aren't great either. I imagine the makers of this game didn't have much chance to test with the final production components, because the board isn't big enough, nor the pieces all distinct enough, for the gameplay to flow smoothly. Also, the dark glasses you wear to play the game aren't actually solid black -- they're slightly reflective. Once the glasses are on, you're forced to close your eyes anyway, as the reflections are unsettling and awkward even after you dim the lights in the room. And long before the game ended, this actually caused me a headache.

Each player in the game is given a special power that's straight-forward enough to remember (since you can't look back at it), but also too complex for the solo player to remember all of them. Our game melted down in short order when the "killer," forgetting about my tree-climbing power, started me super-close to the car (as the crow flies). By random chance, I ended the whole thing in about 10 minutes... which felt like at least 5 minutes longer than any of us wanted to be playing.

There's a fun idea at the core of Nyctophobia, but I can't recommend this implementation of it. I'd grade it a D. Not many board games have ever actually caused me physical pain, so it's not one I'd look to play again.