Unification III

Star Trek: Discovery has always made use of the larger Star Trek franchise, but still its latest episode, "Unification III," was one of the biggest examples of that yet.

Discovery is in need of more data to pinpoint the origin of the Burn, and there's one place they can get it: Ni'Var, the planet once known as Vulcan and now home to a unified Romulan and Vulcan people. But Ni'Var withdrew from the Federation a century ago in a cloud of distrust that remains to this day. The only play to secure their help is a Vulcan rite invoked by Michael Burnham, in which she will be represented by a surprising advocate.

With a title like "Unification III," the Star Trek: Discovery writers were making it clear that they were following up on the Next Generation two-part episode that featured Spock. Only in reflecting on this episode afterward did I really appreciate how bold a move this was; those episodes are older today than all of Star Trek was at the time they were made. Tethering a story so fully to other (sorry folks, but:) old Star Trek is a risk. But I thought the episode did an excellent job of filling you in on information a new audience would need to know, without making anyone feel like they were watching the end of a trilogy they'd never started (or sitting through an extended re-cap of information they already knew).

A key example of their clever approach came in the name planet name itself: Ni'Var. Poking around after the episode, I myself learned this word first came from a Star Trek fanzine, where it was said to mean "two-form." Fans recirculated that idea enough that in a later short story collection, an introduction written by Leonard Nimoy himself referenced the word. Star Trek: Enterprise name-dropped it just for fun. And now, Discovery is perfectly appropriating the concept to flesh out its tale, without worrying whether a viewer understands the choice or not. It's texture, not text.

Plenty more great texture fed the episode to various degrees, much of it picking up on intriguing Romulan concepts introduced in Star Trek: Picard -- the Qowat Milat and their ideals of "absolute candor" and defense of "lost causes." Actually playing footage of Nimoy himself from Unification II was the most overt connection, and a very nice touch. (Plus, I appreciate the restraint in not drafting actor Ethan Peck to deliver some kind of recorded message from Spock to Michael.)

The writers were also clever in the ways they expanded on and challenged Vulcan and Romulan lore. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is about the closest thing to a Commandment in Star Trek, but the Vulcan president undermining that concept here made a great deal of sense: in the context of government, if "the few" are always the same people, repeatedly, how is that not oppression and injustice? This new trial of T'kal-in-tet (a chance to indulge in Star Trek's rich "legal episode" heritage) had an authentically Vulcan spin. Star Trek has always shown us that Vulcans believe themselves to be better logicians than they actually are; the idea that an ad hominem attack would be go-to practice in such a proceeding rings true.

So yeah, a lot about this episode felt smart and reverent, and I liked it very much. But there were also elements that didn't really work for me. Burnham's crisis of identity, built up in such a big way so far this season, seemed too easily resolved and addressed here. And while maybe I can believe that a meaningful interaction receiving "tough love" from her mother would do that, I don't really think it makes sense for Gabrielle Burnham to be there in the first place.

Michael is extended some degree of Vulcan status in having been adopted by Sarek. What's Gabrielle's connection? How did she even wind up at Ni'Var, never mind being accepted there, never mind being accepted by the order of the Qowat Milat (who Star Trek: Picard showed to be pretty closed to interlopers)?

You kind of just had to go with it, acknowledging that it was the right thing for the drama even if the mechanics of the narrative didn't quite work. That includes in the B plot, where Saru invited (not ordered) Tilly (of all people) to become his first officer (without any promotion in rank). You had to go with it. And you are rewarded by this show for "going with it": Sonequa Martin-Green and guest star Sonja Sohn were great together in every mother-daughter scene. This change for Tilly will allow her character to be used in interesting new ways.

Still, I'm sad for some opportunities this episode did miss. It seems criminal to give Georgiou the week off, not to have any kind of interaction between Burnham's birth mother and the other major mother figure in her life. And how do they not beam down to Ni'Var -- not even an indoor set there? I know the budget needed recovery time after all the great location filming and impressive sets so far this season, but they pick the moment Star Trek goes back to Vulcan as the moment to pinch pennies?

I wish there could have been a bit more (heh-heh) logic in the plotting of this episode. But it did pay some effective emotional dividends. I give Unification III a B.

Now: Sea, Hear

Over a year ago, when Broadway theater was still a thing actually happening, there was a short run of a production called Sea Wall / A Life. It was a pair of long-form monologues by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne, performed by actors Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal. Only so many people were able to see the show during its two-month engagement, but it now lives on in a new format: an Audible Original audiobook starring the same two performers.

I'd try to summarize the plots of the two stories, but they're collectively brief enough that I feel even a summary would give too much away. I'll simply say that the two stories aren't deeply connected to one another beyond theme and tone. Each is a tragic tale laced with humor (often of the gallows variety). Each is a bald and brutal meditation on death. They feel crafted to evoke melancholy at the least, to make you cry if they're working at their best.

I can't say how these pieces might have played in person, on a stage, but in this audiobook format, I'd say they're not really working at their best. There are sections that play well. Indeed, this feels like audition material, ripe to be mined by any actor needing a new piece in the repertoire. Collectively, though, this chain of audition pieces can almost lead you to think, "alright, you've got the part; now can we start the show?"

There are one or two odd mysteries in the first piece, Sea Wall, that led me at least to think that the two plays would be slyly connected, that some link between characters or narrative would be revealed in the second piece, A Life. No such luck. So being left with that sense of incompleteness had me feeling that the second half was the stronger piece.

That's probably also true of the performances. Neither Sturridge nor Gyllenhaal gives a bad one, but in Sturridge's reading of Sea Wall, the delivery felt overly calibrated to me. Pauses were placed unnaturally at times, for an effect more than to lend to any sense of authenticity. Then again, perhaps it's that the Sea Wall monologue is written in more naturalistic fashion, where A Life makes extensive use of a narrative gimmick, whiplashing between two time frames without clearly demarcated transitions.

I'd probably grade Sea Wall / A Life a B-. The right person might really enjoy it. However, these are not times where the typical person I know is looking for something else to feel depressed about. So I think I'll stop short of actively recommending it.

The Sorcerer of Your Troubles

If you're a fan of real-time board games, where you have to think fast and beat the timer to achieve some task, there's a new game that might be up your alley: Sorcerer City. But beware: I've played a handful of games in the genre, and I've liked the others more.

In Sorcerer City, each player begins with an identical stack of shuffled tiles. They have two minutes to turn them over, one at a time, and arrange them into a city. Tiles all have various patterns of different colors on their edges (out of four colors total). A handful of specific tiles trigger scoring for a continuous straight line of the same color, a continuous path of the same color (even if it zigs and zags), and having a corresponding color in the 8 surrounding spaces (whether their path connects or not).

After each round, your score is tallied in three categories (with the fourth a wild assigned to any other of the three colors you wish). One category is buying power, in the style of a deck builder, to improve your tile stack for future rounds of city building. One category is raw points. The third pile is a competitive one, awarding points and special powers to those ranked highest in it.

Each round, a new monster type is added to the game, with each player receiving one monster to shuffle into their stacks. During building, when you draw a monster, it ravages your city and complicates your efforts in some specific way that you must try to work through before time runs out.

Unfortunately, there are just a lot of issues going on with this game. The contrast in the scoring methods -- line vs. path vs. surroundings -- is simply confusing, and needed to be re-explained every round of the game I played. Having two scoring methods that care about building sensible, Carcassonne-style connections, while another doesn't care about that at all... it was enough to break brains, repeatedly.

The monsters added to the confusion. Though the game feels a bit convoluted, there aren't actually that many design levers in the rules set. That means that a lot of the monsters are quite similar. By the end of a game, you have 4 different monsters in your city stack, and some of them are going to be close enough to each other to make you ask "wait, is this the monster that does THIS, or THAT?" When you have to interrupt a two-minute timer to ask what you're supposed to do (because you can't read tiny text on a reminder card halfway across the table), it does serious damage to the flow of the game.

The balance seems pretty far off too. Of course, many a gamer has often made this claim of a game, having played it far less than its designers and playtesters -- so take this particular critique with a grain of salt. But chasing the "competitive scoring color" (red) seemed like a fool's errand when we played. While other players clashed and got in each others' way, players who just pursued the self-dependent scoring color (green) walked away with the game. What was even worse is that the player who scores lowest in red each round was assumed by the rules to need a leg up, and received a free tile for their stack -- which was often, by random chance, just as good as the reward for winning! The ideal strategy for the five round game seemed to be quite straightforward: yellow (the tile-drafting color) as the focus for your first two rounds, a blend of that and green for your third, and then all green for the last two rounds to cruise to victory.

The game played fast enough that I wasn't really that down on it in the moment. Yet it left an aftertaste, and thinking about the experience only made it seem worse in retrospect. There are plenty of other games that nail the "real time chaos" genre much more effectively; Galaxy Trucker is a Top 200 game on Board Game Geek, and Fuse is a fun option offering cooperative play. Sorcerer City feels unpolished by comparison.

If it had a strong flavor, maybe the game would be more appealing on that basis? But Sorcerer City's tiles don't really look like anything. You don't actually get a sense that you're building anything -- you're just color matching unlabeled, unflavored patterns. The monsters seem like the only significant story element (and, as I mentioned earlier, many of those feel nearly interchangeable).

So all told, I give Sorcerer City a D+. Possibly a fan of the real-time game genre can point out to me what I'm missing here. But unless someone does, I have no desire to play it again.

Scavengers

The last several episodes of Star Trek: Discovery have been built as tear-jerkers, or to be thought-provoking. But the latest episode, "Scavengers," was a straightforward action-adventure episode.

Book has found information that may help determine the origin of the Burn... but he's also been captured and imprisoned. Michael Burnham goes rogue, taking Georgiou with her, to mount a rescue. Meanwhile, a newly upgraded Discovery is on call to help Starfleet, and Stamets' friendship with Adira grows deeper.

The action component of this episode was top notch. The environment of the prison planet was very cinematic and convincingly oppressive. The fight to escape was fun and suspenseful, and served up pretty much everything you'd want in a straight-up "run and shoot" kind of episode. Watching Michelle Yeoh kick butt is probably never going to get old, and the series knows this.

There was even a compelling character story tied to this action plot. They're exploring an interesting evolution with Burnham this season: that not only can you take her out of Starfleet (as the year alone in the future did), you can apparently take the Starfleet out of her. In her year of separation from Discovery, it increasingly seems like Starfleet just doesn't work for her anymore. The ideals, sure. The methods, not at all. It's an interesting story arc for her, in part because the endgame seems unclear. She can't really leave Starfleet, you'd think, or else there kind of isn't a show anymore -- not, at least, with all the characters we've come to enjoy. But there's clearly growth and change in the works here.

There were other ways the Burnham storyline was laying track for later too, it seemed. We keep hearing about Osyraa, who is increasingly being built up as a sort of "end boss" for the season. (Will some notable actor play her when we finally do see her?) Also notable: the poor Andorian Ryn, who it seemed was being set up just to die a noble and redemptive death in the end, was not killed off thanks to a visit to the Discovery Sickbay. Perhaps he'll be back, with another important role to fill.

The rest of the episode was considerably weaker for me, though. Fine to separate Burnham and Georgiou for their own adventure, but the "B plot" was literally waiting around for a potential B plot to happen that never arrived. The Discovery crew was on standby, preparing, being told to start preparing, preparing some more... and then never being sent into action. Not a very strategic use of a valuable resource, Admiral, nor a compelling use of the characters. (Though the comedy was nice at times: Linus goofing with his personal transporter, Tilly not getting along with Grudge the cat.)

Stamets and Adira bonding more was a mixed bag for me. I like seeing the softer side of Stamets. I like involving Adira more in the story. The angle that Stamets doesn't just recognize her kindred brilliance, but that they have a similar history with their loved ones? Well, that's a meaningful character connection... and also makes me feel just the slightest bit queasy. Of all the characters on this show, and of how few the LGBT characters in all of Star Trek have been, why is it that it's the LGBT characters bonding over the deaths of loved ones?

There's something vaguely like an AIDS allegory in here that I'm hoping the writers were smart enough not to intend, but that feels slightly regressive if they don't hurry up and plant their flag on an alternative story line with all due haste. (And it felt somewhat insensitive that as Stamets and Adira are commiserating over how difficult their romantic relationships have been, Burnham and Book are elsewhere having Star Trek's most melodramatic first kiss ever, with four separate sweeping cameras covering the moment.)

Because the whiz-bang action worked (and quite well), I was mostly able to look past the other characters being mostly sidelined this week. I'd say "Scavengers" works out to a B+ or so. But I'll be hoping for something that uses the whole cast more effectively next time.

DS9 Flashback: Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang

With Deep Space Nine about to begin its final, connected arc of episodes, the writers wanted to do one final, light-hearted standalone story. Show runner Ira Steven Behr had also long been wanting to do a heist episode. Those two wishes converged in "Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang."

A mobster takes over Vic Fontaine's casino and lounge, in a plot twist created by the holoprogram's author to spice things up. Our heroes can't reset the program without resetting Vic and erasing all memory of his experiences with them, so they set out to pull off a heist, robbing the casino to oust the interlopers.

No, the regular characters are not themselves in jeopardy in this story, and that was a deliberate choice by the writers (who didn't want another "malfunctioning holodeck" episode). Behr thought it would be enough that they had an emotional investment in the fictional character of Vic, a sort of meta-commentary on the way Star Trek fans develop an emotional investment in fictional characters too.

Behr was also aware by this time, though, that some Trek fans didn't like Vic Fontaine very much. So he had the idea to make Sisko an initially reluctant participant too, to be a proxy for that audience segment to say "if he can just go with this too, can't you?" Sisko's objections end up offering up some valuable civil rights perspective too: 1962 Vegas was decidedly not welcoming to non-white people. Kasidy Yates and Sisko do debate some meaningful points about whether revisionism for entertainment is in fact unhealthy erasure and denial -- a rather significant conversation for two black characters to have with each other on a 1990s television show. Was there more exploration possible here? Of course! While keeping the tone of a fun and light caper episode? No. So I'll come down on the side of "glad at least this much was included."

But then, I am inclined to be forgiving here, as I almost always love a heist story. This one is rather explicitly patterned off of one I actually didn't like much, the original (glacially paced) Ocean's 11. (This episode came two years before the popular remake.) It plays all the required beats: the heroic shots of the team assembled both before and after the heist, showing us how the plan should go first so that we understand the importance of things going wrong later, giving every character in crew their own tiny duty to fulfill.

The episode is sometimes slavish to a fault in serving up these moments, because they don't necessarily hold up to scrutiny. Why does Ezri need to bring Julian the drink to be drugged -- can't Ezri just drug the drink herself? If Odo is already in the room with the safe, aren't his skills at least as useful for cracking it as Nog's?

On the other hand, the heist itself does deliver all the fun thrills you hope will be there, watching the characters improvise their way around troubles from spilled drinks to the wrong count man to an early arrival by the Big Bad. And much of the logic in this story does hold up. It makes sense than Julian, O'Brien, Kira, Odo, and Nog would all be committed to helping Vic (and that Worf wouldn't care -- though Jadzia would have forced him to help). It makes sense that Kira would be such a smooth flirtatious operator; one could imagine her doing this sort of thing with Cardassian Guls many times during the Occupation.

And the production makes sure to get all the trappings right. The guest stars are a murderer's row of recognizable faces who have often played these kinds of characters in these kinds of stories in countless movies and TV episodes -- Mike Starr as Cicci, Robert Miano as Frankie Eyes, and Marc Lawrence as Zeemo. There are extensive period costumes and hairstyles. And the set might not look like much by modern standards, but it was one of the largest ever built for the show -- all dressed and decorated to look like classic Vegas movies, and big enough to fit a crane for complex shots. Add in the huge number of background actors, and you actually get one of the most expensive episodes Deep Space Nine ever made.

And reportedly, the Paramount execs liked the results so much, they asked that the episode be bumped up earlier so that it aired at the end of February Sweeps. So while this had been written and filmed as the "last stand-alone episode" (with the song "The Best Is Yet to Come" cheekily selected to end it), the opaquely titlted "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" wound up in that slot instead. (Though, as I'll get to next time, that's not exactly stand-alone.)

Other observations:

• As is typical for a Vic Fontaine episode, there are several songs included. Most this time are instrumentals, though, like the ubiquitous "Night Train." The opening song, "Alamo," isn't an actual crooner standard, but an original creation for this episode crafted to sound like one.
  

• Behr had long wanted Avery Brooks to sing on the show (more than just the rare snippet of a song), which led to the duet on "The Best Is Yet to Come." The reactions of the other characters to their singing captain make it a fun scene.

• The "replacement count man" Ezri encounters is played by Robert O'Reilly, the actor who plays Gowron. They weren't 100% sure Gowron himself would return for the final story arc, and wanted O'Reilly to have a possible "final appearance" (without his makeup). He's credited under a different name to make it a little more of an Easter Egg for fans; he chose "Bobby O'Reilly" as the childhood name he actually went by in the real 1962.
  

A neat last bit of fluffy fun before things on Deep Space Nine turn heavy, I give "Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang" a B+.

Spring Fling

I've devoted three past blog posts to the first three books of a gay romance series, the Something Like... books by Jay Bell. Over the course of Something Like Summer, Something Like Winter, and Something Like Autumn, Bell explores a love triangle between three young men, each book from a different character's perspective. They skewed a bit Young Adult at times, but I generally enjoyed them. But there's one more season in the year, of course, and Bell obligingly provided a fourth book in the series for it.

Something Like Spring is both a break in the format and a slavish adherence to it. It picks up with a new character, Jason Grant, who did not appear in any of the three prior books. He is in his late teens as the story opens, and the story of his sexuality is different from what's come before. Mostly. Jason is in foster care, bouncing from family to family, and putting up emotional barriers for his own protection.

The character may be different, but the format is the same. Spring is divided into three sections, each with a time jump of years between, exactly as the first three books were. Spring is told entirely from the perspective of a single character, exactly as the first three books were. And then, about one-third of the way through the book, major characters from the first three resurface. It's hardly a surprise, I suppose -- and to Bell's credit, the book actually doesn't take a turn for the worse when it happens. The events of this new book are set after those of the three prior, propelling the story forward rather than revisiting its "greatest hits."

But as the book moves into the final act, its wheels settle firmly in the ruts carved by the earlier stories. Something Like Spring turns out to be the same formula reconstituted for a new character. Jason finds himself in a love triangle, torn between two men -- one who has treated him poorly in the past, and one the fates seem to be pushing him away from. There are subtle differences in the players, but it very much seems like a recasting of the same play, new performers taking on the same roles.

And something like Spring is not actually the last in the series. Bell found a new non-season-based naming scheme to continue on for many more books, no doubt continuing to shift perspectives within this new cast of characters. But while there were parts of Something Like Spring that I did like, I'm not sure I'm ready for another go on the same ride.

Put another way, I thought Something Like Spring was notably weaker than either of the three books before it, a B-. It was fine, though I am feeling like perhaps with so many other long-running series in my reading queue, this might be the point where I walk away from this one.

Afternoon Delight?

For years, I've been enjoying the podcast Craig's List. That probably deserves its own post here, but in a nutshell: Craig Cackowski is a huge movie buff and an obsessive list maker. He has a list of his 100 favorite movies, and his wife Carla has agreed to watch them all and record a podcast about each of the films. With the wit and rapport between these two comedians and improv teachers, and her tastes being quite different from his, amusement ensues. But if both of them sing the praises of the same movie I haven't seen? That gets onto my radar.

That's how I came to watch Dog Day Afternoon, the 1975 Sidney Lumet film based on an actual Brooklyn bank robbery gone off the rails. A quick in-and-out plan falls apart, resulting in a lengthy, sometimes farcical standoff.

There's a lot to like here, but nothing (in my view) more so than the movie's first half hour. Dog Day Afternoon seems to be in conversation with every slick heist movie made before and since, declaring "these characters may think they're in Ocean's Eleven, but this is what a robbery would really be like." In its opening act, Dog Day Afternoon is truly, laugh-out-loud funny. Everything that can go wrong seemingly does, strange character quirks from every corner heighten the situation in fun ways, and the movie genuinely skirts the line between comedy and drama with deft skill.

It's a tone I wish had sustained throughout. There do continue to be fun grace notes here and there, but the movie did begin to drag for me in the middle, the standoff situation truly starting to feel like a standstill at times. There are several cuttable and trimmable scenes, like a series of lengthy jumps to the airport the robbers are hoping to escape to, or moments that spend a bit too much time with characters outside the bank.

Still, the performances are quite good throughout. Al Pacino stars as Sonny, in a compelling performance that predates Pacino turning into a parody of himself. Chris Sarandon has an LGBT role that's surprisingly subtle and progressive for its time; some other characters in the movie are laughing as if it's a joke, but the movie itself definitely isn't sharing the laugh. Charles Durning is strong as the police officer trying to negotiate with Sonny. Then there are a bunch of fun and compelling supporting performances on the perimeter, from John Cazale, Sully Boyar, Penelope Allen, and Carol Kane. (And yep, that's Lance Henriksen.)

Dog Day Afternoon wouldn't make my own Top 100 list (or even come close, really), but I'm glad I made the time for it. It starts strong, finishes decently, and generally held my interest better than many other movies of its time. I give it a B-.

DS9 Flashback: Chimera

By the middle of Deep Space Nine's final season, the writers knew they would be ending the show on a long, multi-episode story arc. And they knew enough of the major "bullet points" of that arc that they wanted to prepare for that with some one-off stories. One of these was "Chimera."

Odo encounters another changeling like himself: Laas is not a Founder, but rather was sent away from the Great Link as an infant. He proposes that he and Odo team up to search the galaxy for other cast-off changelings like themselves. Odo is torn between his love for Kira and this possible connection with his own people that comes without the baggage of the Dominion.

One of the first things the writers settled on for the series finale was that (ahem -- decades-old SPOILER here) Odo would return to his own people. But they felt that to "earn" that ending, the audience needed to see that not all changelings were "bad guys." I'm not sure they quite make their case with Laas, however, who in the course of this episode reveals much of the same bigotry and disdain for "monoforms" as the Founders. Laas doesn't necessarily see himself as a superior race in the way the Founders do. Still, I think the episode doesn't present as sharp a contrast (or as much a dilemma for Odo) as may have been intended.

Of course, it's not like Laas is exactly in the wrong. His comments about the way human life disrupts the natural order is spot on. The main characters can't muster much of a defense for their reactions to shapeshifters beyond "but Odo is different." Quark even has a well-written speech arguing that intolerance might just be genetic. I don't think any of it really sets the stage for the finale, but I do find it thought-provoking.

If Laas is compelling, it's a testament to the performer. The credited "Garman Hertzler" is actually J.G. Hertzler, better known for playing Martok. The producers apparently tried casting for the part normally and found no one they thought who could stand opposite Rene Auberjonois as Odo. They then decided to go with an actor they already knew, reportedly considering Jeffrey Combs (who already had two recurring characters) and Andrew Robinson (who they felt too many people would recognize as Garak) before settling on Hertzler. He used the different name of Garman to force a bit of separation from the character of Martok, of whom he was fiercely protective -- particularly since Laas would actually kill a Klingon in the course of this story.

Though Hertzler's distinct voice does peek through in moments, the higher register and halting speech he adopts are a fairly effective disguise. The makeup completes the transformation, of course, with Laas getting an interesting "smooth-faced" treatment of some unseen alien race just as Odo is a smooth-faced Bajoran. There are fun CG assists throughout too, from the space squid they first encounter, to the fiery and foggy forms Laas adopts, to the T-1000 style stabbing he inflicts on a Klingon would-be bully.

But the best acting in the episode (as is so often the case) comes from Nana Visitor. Kira reacts to Odo's relationship not with jealousy, but with love. It's clear that his bond with Laas is not a threat to her as much as it's a source of sorrow -- it's not that she can't relate to Odo as closely as Laas can, but that she can't relate to him as closely as she wishes she could. It's actually a bit wild that Kira isn't threatened, since linking with the Changeling Leader is exactly what caused the troubles with Odo during the "re-occupation." But it's clear Kira is all in on this relationship; she wants happiness for Odo more than she wants it for herself. In the end she gets both, which Nana Visitor sells the hell out of in the final scene where Kira is joyfully surrounded by light.

Other observations:

• Laas says Odo would be back with his people except for Kira, and you could argue he would know, having linked with Odo. But his interpretation, given his own views on "monomorphs," feels suspect. I don't buy that "but for love of Kira," Odo would be all in on fascism.

• This can be seen as a pretty progressive episode for its time, depending on how sexually you interpret the act of linking. (I mean, it was fairly explicitly so when it was Odo and the female Changeling Leader.) Odo might be the first significant bisexual representation on Star Trek.
  

• More big SPOILER talk here on coming events in the final season. Later, we'll learn that Odo does in fact carry the same disease the Founders have. This is a detail the writers had not landed on yet when writing this episode, and the ramifications that Odo would have infected Laas did weigh on them. They apparently tried to wedge in bringing back Laas at some point during the final run to tie up that loose end, but they just couldn't make it work. (I hear the tie-in novels set after DS9's final episode did.)
  

"Chimera" has some good moments, but I don't think I see it being quite as necessary as the writers do in setting up Odo's final story arc. I give it a B-.

A Trip to the Dice C U

Sometimes, a board game's name is evocative and mysterious. Other times, a game tells you exactly what it is in the name. Guess which category Dice Hospital falls in?

Players each assume control of a hospital, trying to manage the care of their dice patients. Each round, a number of ambulances arrives (one more than the number of players), each carrying three dice. Dice are rolled to fill the ambulances, but with several caveats -- 1s and 6s are re-rolled, and then dice are placed three to an ambulance in ascending order.

Players then draft which ambulance of three dice they'll take in to their hospital before proceeding to use tokens to perform a number of actions. The goal is to "heal" your dice by raising their values to "7" or more, thus discharging them from the hospital. Different "rooms" in your hospital can each be used once per round, each one with a different specialty. Dice come in three colors, and some rooms can only treat a particular color. Other rooms treat dice only of certain values, or certain groups like pairs, sets, and runs.

Each round, you draft either a new room for your hospital, or a specialist token that can grant you an extra action with special benefits. This drafting is done in order by the ambulances chosen earlier in the round; take on a bunch of particularly dire patients, and you will get to pick your upgrade before anyone else.

You only have 12 "beds" for dice in your hospital, so you need to discharge patients at least as fast as you're taking them in each round; if you don't have room for an incoming die, then one of your existing dice dies. (Heh. Dies.) That's negative points at the end of the game. But scoring well requires a different kind of coordination -- the more dice you discharge successfully from your hospital in the same turn, the more points that's worth. (Because, as we all know, hospitals work hard to send as many people out the door at one time as they can. For the photo op.)

I kid there a bit on the flavor, because it all makes a fun sort of sense aside from that one wrinkle. Illustrations on your hospital board show dice going into MRI machines, being hooked up to contraptions... or lying "dead" in your morgue. It's all cute.

The game itself? Not bad. It's pretty smooth and fast. Once everyone has drafted ambulances and upgrades for a round, they can actually take actions in their hospitals simultaneously (assuming everyone understands the rules). You get the thrill of figuring out a killer combo without the grind of waiting for every opponent in sequence to do execute theirs.

While I admittedly haven't played enough yet to know for sure, though, I'm not convinced the drafting of new rooms and specialists is a major part of the strategy here. The way the scoring works, and the strict 8 rounds of play, basically means you're working to send two, maybe three, big groups of dice out the door in a single go. That basically means that you may have a plan for your dice now, but you can't know what dice you'll have later. Being asked to think on the fly is great, but the rooms/specialists you take now may not be useful to you later. And the ones you get "stuck" with now may turn out to be great later. I'm just not sure chasing an early draft pick in this game pays off.

There's also a optional variant we haven't played yet, that involved a random event each round shaking things up for the players. I don't know if more randomness would help or hurt the game, but I'm open to trying.

I suppose I'd give Dice Hospital a B? Ish? It didn't blow me away, but it's reasonably breezy fun that's worth a few more plays.

Die Trying

So far this season, Star Trek: Discovery has been delivering a lot to like. That continued in the latest episode, "Die Trying." But at the same time, it was also the least successful episode of the season so far for me.

Discovery arrives at Starfleet headquarters, but doesn't really receive the warm welcome they'd imagined. Overcoming suspicion and doubt, the crew manages to be assigned a mission to prove their worth: rendezvous with a "seed ship" to collect a sample needed to cure a deadly disease. But that mission turns out not to be so straightforward.

(And we're getting SPOILERS right out of the gate here...)

Star Trek: Discovery did not invent the TV trope of "saying goodbye to a character by making them the focus of an episode." But I feel like it has spawned a version of that trope in: "tell you nothing about a character until the episode where you make them the focus and write them off the show." This happened with Airiam in season two (in an episode that's a key part of this week's "previously on"), and now they tried to do it again with Nhan.

But it's a heavy lift to make an audience invest deeply in a character and sad that they're leaving all in just one hour of television. Heavier still here, when I feel like the only thing I knew about Nhan was that she seems weirdly into torture. ("Yum yum.") And that her performer, Rachael Ancheril, had just been promoted to the main credits at the start of season three. (Psych!) So it fell on this episode to convey to me the depth of family connection felt by Barzans generally, and the depth of homesickness Nhan in particular was feeling. Which somehow was supposed to add up to a powerful goodbye that I just wasn't feeling. The magic trick the writers pulled off last week in investing the Adira/Gray story line with genuine emotion just couldn't be repeated twice in a row.

Part of the issue may have been that amid this personal journey for Nhan, we got a Russian nesting doll of technobabbly problems. Discovery was there to get a seed to cure a disease. But upon arrival, they found that first they needed to solve the mystery of a phasing family. It felt like side quests upon side quests, and all those layers distracted for me from the efforts to build up Nhan's personal attachment to the situation.

But... the rest of the episode was pretty good. Our first glimpse of the new Federation was great. We got a lengthy, almost "Star Trek: The Motion Picture-like" introduction to the headquarters, but our gawking heroes helped make it all seem as wondrous as we were meant to take it. At the same time, the progressive technology was paired with regressive people, made distrustful by the hardships they've endured.

Oded Fehr was solid as Admiral Vance, a decisive and cautious leader. His point of view made perfect sense; if someone from the year 1200 showed up today offering to help us with our coronavirus problems, how warmly do you think they'd be greeted? (OK, I admit, the "how did you get here from the Dark Ages" part would be fairly compelling.) Vance nevertheless was not fixed in his attitude, and slowly warmed to our heroes over the course of the episode.

Even more fun was the mysterious character of Kovich, played by... David Cronenberg. (?!) Perhaps taking a casting queue from The Mandalorian's use of director Werner Herzog, Discovery enlisted a director known for the profoundly disturbing to be a menacing foil to Georgiou through calm reserve. And it was perfect. Georgiou is used to thinking she's the smartest person in the room, and is usually probably right. This extended scene of her debriefing gave the strong impression: not this time. I don't know how much this material will prove important here in Discovery, or how much of it is starting to lay track for the Michelle Yeoh Star Trek spinoff that's in development, but either way, I want more of these two!

The humor was working well too, with Stamets, Reno, and Tilly being a wonderfully geeky comic trio. It's probably best that Jet Reno isn't showing up in every episode, probably right to use her sparingly so we don't tire of her dry wit. (Could I get tired of it, though?) It was wonderful here to take the serious edge off a run of technobabbly scenes.

Overall, I give "Die Trying" a B. The "A plot" may not have really done it for me, but everything else was just great.

Quinn-tessence

There was no reality in which I was ever going to subscribe to the DC Universe streaming service. (And apparently, I was not alone in this, as it has now contracted into a comics subscription service and handed off all its programming to HBO Max.) But at least a couple of my comic-loving friends did try it, and made a point of telling me that if I was going to try just one of the DC shows, Harley Quinn was the one.

I was, needless to say, profoundly skeptical. The DC movies had been more misses than hits with me, with Suicide Squad (the first movie to include the character of Harley Quinn) an especially big miss. I had even soured on the few DC shows I'd been watching on the CW; after years of watching The Flash and Supergirl, I gave up both last season and haven't missed either even a little. But I'm somehow going to like a half-hour cartoon starring a character I care nothing about, voiced by Penny from The Big Bang Theory?

No. I'm going to love it.

Harley Quinn is irreverent, hilarious, gleeful entertainment. As far from the relentless "grimdark" of the DC films as you could possibly get, the show is colorful, playful, and exciting. It's as enjoyable as a melt-in-your-mouth dessert while actually including meaningful character growth, story arcs, and slick action at the same time. It's frankly miraculous, and if the execs at DC had half a brain, they'd hand the keys over to the creative team behind this show immediately. (Instead, they made them sweat a bit over whether they'd get renewed -- like all their other shows had been -- before finally announcing a third season.)

The show is emphatically for adults, with extreme violence that's somehow over-the-top, necessary, and artistic all at the same time. The language is R-rated and foul in a way no superhero blockbuster outside of Deadpool is ever allowed to be. And it effortlessly juggles being crass, feminist, escapist, and fun in equal measure.

The cast could not be more perfect. Kaley Cuoco is brash and engaging as Harley Quinn. Lake Bell is fantastically dry as Poison Ivy. Alan Tudyk brings his VO chops to bear on the Joker and a DC Universe character I'd never heard of who is now my absolute favorite: Clayface. Tony Hale as Doctor Psycho, Jason Alexander as Sy Borgman, J.B. Smoove as Frank the Plant, Ron Funches as King Shark, Matt Oberg as Kite Man.... each is more delightful and funny than the last.

And the recurring cast is equally exceptional. Diedrich Bader, Rachel Dratch, Giancarlo Esposito, Michael Ironside, Wayne Knight, Christopher Meloni, Alfred Molina, Jim Rash, Wanda Sykes... the list goes on and on and on. And the way the show uses their characters is always inspired. A sad sack Commissioner Gordon, an impossible-to-take-seriously Bane, a childish Batman (and a literally childish Robin). It feels to me like this show does for DC what Lower Decks was doing for Star Trek -- poking fun in a loving way.

I would happily watch the two 13-episode seasons of Harley Quinn again, right now. I'm eagerly looking forward to the third that's now been green-lighted. Harley Quinn makes me grin ear-to-ear the whole time I'm watching it... except when it's making me laugh out loud. I give it an enthusiastic A. It. Is. Great.

DS9 Flashback: Field of Fire

There's a murder investigation on Deep Space Nine, a hunt for a serial sniper who could hit anyone at any time. Sounds like an Odo episode, right? Wrong, if that episode is "Field of Fire."

A serial murderer is hunting aboard Deep Space Nine, with a technological method and an unknown motive. To profile the killer, Ezri Dax taps into the memories of her murderous former host Joran, using a Trill ritual to bring him to the surface.

This is the third Ezri-heavy episode in a row, though show runner Ira Steven Behr didn't set out to have it that way. The writing troubles on "Prodigal Daughter" had put them behind schedule, leaving no one on staff to work on the episode in this slot. Behr reached out to Robert Hewitt Wolfe, his close writing partner who had left Deep Space Nine after season five, and gave him a quick writing prompt: a serial killer sniper is loose on the station. Figure the rest out.

Behr expected to get back an Odo episode. But Wolfe was eager to explore a character who hadn't been around during his time on the show. Seizing upon the back story of Joran Dax (which had been created during Wolfe's tenure), he came up with a surprising angle on this mystery episode of the show. Actually, he'd planned to have Ezri interact with a hologram version of Joran, but Behr encouraged a less limited approach, leading to "the Trill mumbo-jumbo route," as Wolfe playfully called it.

The result sort of works, and sort of doesn't. We've seen Odo solve murders before, so it is refreshing to feature a different character here. And yet it's quite illogical how little Odo is involved, leaving me to wonder if some sort of "team up" could have arranged. The mystery itself, with the combination rifle/transporter and the twist reveal that the culprit is a Vulcan, is fairly clever and actually produces a few good moments of suspense. But the Joran angle is a fairly watered-down "hello Clarice" knock off that doesn't really feel like the personal reckoning for Ezri that the story wants it to be.

Yet there are some fun moments throughout. The goo-filled fruit that O'Brien shoots as a demonstration is a great prop, and the scene feels straight out of CSI. The shock that the Starfleet officers express at even the idea of murder is a nice detail that reminds you this is Star Trek. There's excellent camera work in Ezri's dream sequence, playing with film frame rate to achieve an unsettling effect. (This was the brainchild of director Tony Dow. Yes, Wally Cleaver -- that Tony Dow.)

But there are almost as many moments that really don't work. Bashir and O'Brien's sad observation that they should have let the first murder victim come to the holosuite seems a rather tasteless joke. Worf's stalkery, patriarchal, and possessive scene with Ezri is not the ice-thawing overture the writers think it is. The music by Gregory Smith is conspicuous without being entirely effective (and this is the last of only three episodes he scored). And I'm not at all frightened by the performance of Leigh J. McCloskey as Joran; you can tell McCloskey is a storied soap opera actor by the soap opera ham-and-cheese he brings to it. (The role of Joran was recast when the original performer -- a magician hired for his mask trickery -- was unavailable to return.)

Other observations:

• The whole premise of a Trill "emergence" rite just makes me wish that Jadzia had been brought back this way. But of course, that bridge with Terry Farrell had been completely burned.

• Pay very close attention, and there's token representation in the episode: the Bolian victim is said to have a wife and co-husband.
  

• The world of Star Trek had "live photos" decades before the concept (or even Harry Potter) was a thing: the second victim's picture frame plays a movie taken around the frozen moment on display.
  

The writers promised Nicole de Boer and Ezri Dax a better episode after "Prodigal Daughter," but I'd say this one is only better by the smallest amount. I give "Field of Fire" a B-.

On Guard

We've been in what many call the era of "prestige television" for years now, and yet among some, there's still a sense that British television series are often extra prestigious. One that I'd heard good things about was Bodyguard, a political thriller from 2018 starring Richard Madden (of Game of Thrones) and Keeley Hawes.

Bodyguard is a six-part, complete story following David Budd, a PTSD-stricken veteran in the British protection service who is assigned to guard Julia Montague, an ambitious right-wing politician. Multiple attempts on the minister's life suggest a conspiracy with a personal connection to Budd, who struggles to sort out his own feelings to perform a job in which his personal feelings aren't supposed to matter.

Right away, I found a lot to like about Bodyguard. It's suspenseful and patient in equal measure; the first episode opens with a long sequence running fully a quarter of the hour, in which the main character deals with a bomb threat. It does a great job delivering the tension you want in an action-thriller like this, while still making clear that in this story, character will play a role.

The twists and turns of the story over the first few episodes were just as engaging to me. The plot thickens in fun ways, and a particular twist right at the halfway point (ending episode three) really shocked me by going to a place I would never have anticipated. It was somewhere around this point in the narrative that it struck me that creator Jed Mercurio had perhaps been inspired by the action and tension of the American series 24 -- then decided to do his own, much more sober, far less fantastical take.

Unfortunately, the final episode of Bodyguard flushed all the seriousness away. The final 20 minutes expose the entire plot that's been hidden through the story... and it is preposterous. The mastermind is revealed to have Bond villain-level machinations, a convoluted plan that could have failed in countless ways (and indeed, it has) when a more direct approach would have been far more effective. The ending asks you to play back through many moments from earlier in the series in light of new knowledge, and when you do, it's utter nonsense. The series that started out feeling like it was trying to be "more serious 24" ends up being exactly as ridiculous as 24 (but without the "big swing" moments that made 24 so delicious).

A story ending at a bad destination doesn't always invalidate the journey. But I think it hurts a lot in this case. The characters of Bodyguard may be more real, but their emotions are powerfully repressed, leaking out only in rare, carefully chosen moments. This creates scenes that would absolutely be the clips you'd show during the "and the nominees are..." montage, but leaves you feeling the performances are too restrained, even flat, the rest of the time. That leaves you to focus on the story most of the time, and if that story has a weak ending? It brings down the whole.

At the end of all six episodes, I felt the whole experience had been a B-. A B- with some A moments in it, yes... but with some equally bad moments to result in that average. I'd say the show lands in a spot where I probably wouldn't recommend it -- and yet it's short enough and requires a small enough commitment that you probably could sample the first one and know if it seemed like your thing.

DS9 Flashback: The Emperor's New Cloak

On the list that the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine writers knew the final season "needed" to wrap up (needed, "with a small 'n,'" said show runner Ira Steven Behr) was the Mirror Universe. Tired of playing the concept with a serious tone, though, they crafted a lighter episode in "The Emperor's New Cloak."

Grand Nagus Zek has chased financial opportunities into the Mirror Universe and has managed to get captured by Regent Worf. Quark and Rom must come to his rescue, bringing a cloaking device to trade for his freedom. But it being the Mirror Universe, they must face a lot of backstabbing along the way.

Decades after this episode, Star Trek: Discovery would offer up the franchise's most dramatic take on the Mirror Universe. But Behr had come to regard the very concept as somewhat "wacky" and not to be taken seriously. (No offense to the beloved original Star Trek episode intended; this DS9 episode is dedicated to the memory of the original's writer, Jerome Bixby.) Behr encouraged the writing staff to lean into the silliness that has always been there (in a goateed Spock, a shrieking Kirk, a leering Sulu), and provide one last Quark/Rom adventure before the series' final story arc. This was the result.

I'm inclined to believe that the sillier Mirror universe is indeed better -- the best DS9 Mirror ep is rather campy, while its worst is a dour and serious one. But I think what really makes the concept work is seeing the actors cut loose and have fun playing something different from their usual characters. And you get that here in the form of a leather-clad and eye-shadowed Ezri, an eerily nice Brunt, and a wild 30-second cameo from Vic Fontaine.

But it is starting to feel like the actors who've done this Mirror thing before aren't as excited by it anymore. Andrew Robinson admitted to hating this Garak (a toady opportunist with no subtext, whose death this episode made him "really, really, really happy"). Nana Visitor gamely played the vixen once more (her performance clearly a touchstone for Michelle Yeoh as Georgiou, years later), but she noted of this episode's kiss with Ezri that she had "never intended for the Intendant to be bisexual," and that she thinks people read that into her narcissistic (not sexual) fascination with prime Kira.

The moments I enjoy most in this episode have to do with the "prime universe" characters involved. Quark and Rom's theft of the cloaking device is hilarious, and sold marvelously through great mime work by Armin Shimerman and Max Grodénchik. Rom's efforts to make sense of everything is a constant source of fun (and a clear commentary directed right at a certain type of fan). Watching the Ferengi turn the tables and save the day is pretty enjoyable.

Other observations:

• The entire premise of this episode is a retcon. Earlier Mirror Universe episode showed decloaking ships, establishing that cloaking devices do actually exist there. But as this had never been a significant plot point, it was easy enough to overlook to tell the story the writers wanted to tell now.
  

• Mirror Ezri thankfully subverts the "gays and lesbians are all evil" trope that was practically the only way you ever saw LGBT characters in the 1990s. Yes, she starts evil, but does display a conscience throughout, and ends up doing the right thing in the end. (Without "turning straight" either, given her final encounter with Leeta.)

• There's a nice moment where the camera pulls back from an apparent "exterior" shot of the Defiant to reveal a viewscreen and then sweep the Klingon bridge. This was probably achieved with on-set projection -- a rarity on Trek at this time, and a clever staging from director LeVar Burton.
  

Though this is far from one of my favorite Deep Space Nine episodes, it's hard to dislike it too much. There actually is a decent character arc here for Quark (having a positive, non-romantic relationship with Mirror Ezri), and there are jokes throughout that do land. I give "The Emperor's New Cloak" a B.

Flick, Flick, Flick: Sonora

Over the past couple of years, the "roll and write" genre of board gaming has increasingly become just the "...and write" genre, as new games have come along with new angles other than dice. Common to all these games is a personal score sheet where you mark your own progress, but what you're doing to win can be very different.

Designer Rob Newton has paired this with a manual dexterity game in Sonora, making essentially a "flick and write" game. A square "arena" is placed between up to four players; it's divided into four quadrants that each correspond to a different section of a personal score sheet given to each player. On your turn, you flick one or two discs from the side rail into the arena, proceeding around the players until all players have flicked discs valued 1 through 5 into play. Then players mark things off on their score sheets according to which numbers have ended up in which areas.

The game lays on the mini-games pretty thick, not unlike another roll and write game I've played, Twice As Clever. On your score sheet, there's a race section, a vaguely Tetris-like section, a vaguely hopscotch section, and a vaguely "dots and boxes" section. Any one mini-game is manageable, but the four collectively are pretty overwhelming.

And that's before you get into the quirks of the flicking arena. There's a depression in the center; get your disc in there and you immediately remove it to place on any scoring quadrant you choose. Then, in each of the four sections of the arena, there are two small areas a disc can land over -- each suddenly switches the scoring to a different section of the game, sometimes for double points.

The game is hard to understand at first, and so chaotic that it feels almost completely random for most of your first play. What does a good shot even look like? What's good, and then, assuming you know what is, do you have the flicking skill to even make that happen?

And I'm sorry to say, there's some difficult art design here that magnifies all those issues. Sonora has a very artistically chosen color scheme, presenting a desert in stark yellows, oranges, and blues. Different sections of the arena use similar colors and not-different-enough patterns; your score sheets don't match up to those colors and patterns clearly enough. There's an animal symbol in each quadrant of the sheet that's supposed to help, but those aren't printed in the arena, save in tiny iconized form in that center depression -- where the four icons are similar looking and similarly colored. Basically, the art not only doesn't help you play the game, it actively makes it harder.

As I've played more Twice As Clever, I've come to feel that it has an odd kind of "balance." There are five different parts of the score sheet, and good strategy is to focus most on two for a winning score. Except that you can't really chose any two if you want to be competitive -- after a dozen playthroughs, it's emerged in my group that one section in particular is really a "must do." Sonora appears to have a similar balance, where you really should try to concentrate your scoring/flicking efforts... yet there's one zone in particular where you must compete to win.

Doesn't sound great, does it? Well... here's the thing. It does grow easier to understand as you play it more. A limited sense of strategy does start to appear. And that core idea, merging the "and write" genre with a flicking game is a very fun idea. Basically, I would play Sonora again if given the opportunity, to see if it grows on me, because I do want to like it. But man, it feels like it's making itself way harder to like than it should be.

I give Sonora a C+. If you're a big fan of dexterity games, or of other roll and write games, you might want to give this one a try. But I suspect for most groups, this will be average at best.

Forget Me Not

After kicking off season three with action-oriented episodes, Star Trek: Discovery took it down a notch with "Forget Me Not," an introspective episode literally all about the emotional turmoil of the characters.

To help Adira unlock the memories of her Trill symbiont, the crew heads for the Trill homeworld. But an initial warm welcome sours when the group receiving Adira realize she's human. Meanwhile, Saru looks for a way to help his traumatized crew cope with their unthinkable new circumstances.

This episode started out a little bit bumpy to me. There was a clear destination the writers were trying to reach, but moving all the pieces into position wasn't quite as elegant as I could have hoped for. A spat between Tilly and Stamets feels a bit out of nowhere (particularly as it's been quite some time since we've seen such a cranky Stamets), but it's necessary to set the stage for later. Culber foisting onto Burnham his responsibility to escort Adira to Trill feels a bit mechanical (he's doing it because Sonequa Martin-Green is the top star of the show), but it's all in service of putting the best character in the right narrative place.

Once the slightly clumsy setup is out of the way, the episode goes on to be excellent. The dinner party scene was a much-needed continuation of Tilly's breakdown last week, an effort to really delve into the emotional truth of what a one-way time-traveling leap into the future would do to a person. After all, while there's probably a sci-fi explanation for Detmer's behavior that's yet to be revealed, everyone else in the scene was finally, really expressing themselves. Stamets has a desperate, deep-seated need to be The Man that was put on full display; both he and Tilly (and yes, Detmer) got to speak some unvarnished truths that were very impactful.

But even more moving was the planet-side story. And this was a real magic trick of writing and acting, because even though we did have Sonequa Martin-Green present in moments, giving a skillful emotional push, this story was all about a character we just met. And it was moving. The love story between Adira and Gray was both powerful and efficient, making you care deeply and quickly. The work by Blu del Barrio and Ian Alexander was exceptional, and it was a real tour de force by director Hanelle M. Culpepper, who managed to keep focus on these performances even as a ton of visual effects permeated the entire Trill vision sequence.

Even the fan service here was spot-on. We saw these Trill caves before on Deep Space Nine, and the look from that episode was recreated faithfully and upgraded significantly. The spiritual overtones of various "Dax talks to her past hosts" episodes was similarly referenced and expanded. All while keeping grounded to the emotional core of the story.

Overall, I'd give the episode a B+... though I'd also say this episode contained some of the strongest scenes yet of the season. So far, I'm really liking what Star Trek: Discovery is doing with this season.

Mars Investigations

It's been a long time since I've read a "tie-in novel," though there was a time many, many years ago when every other book I read for fun was a Star Trek book, and Star Wars novels were the only thing that universe had beyond the original movie trilogy. Even though I feel there's no reason to be snobbish about such fiction -- Peter David and Timothy Zahn, for example, wrote some great material in those two universes -- I just sort of drifted away from it.

Still, there have been a couple of tie-in books on the outer edge of my radar for some time: two Veronica Mars mysteries written by Jennifer Graham, based on stories by the creator of the television series, Rob Thomas. These were published in 2014 and 2015, right on the heels of the movie (the first revival of the original show). Until the recent Hulu season continued the series once again, these novels were the only way to get another fix of the great show I loved in the mid-2000s. And yet... I just never made time for them.

When I finally did recently dive into the first book, The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line, I was thoroughly entertained. It picks up in the weeks after the movie, and delivers everything you'd want in a Veronica Mars story. It feels exactly like the sort of season-long mystery the show would have tackled in its original run, with twists and turns, red herrings and fun clues. Nearly all the major and minor series characters make an appearance. It's not a mystery so clever it will blow your mind, and you almost certainly have to have watched the show to get at all excited over it... but it's a solid tale that will scratch your nostalgic itch.

Adding to the enjoyment, though, was the fact that I "read" The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line as an audiobook. And it's narrated by none other than Kristen Bell herself. Since the show itself featured plenty of film noir voice-over from the title character, having the actual Veronica Mars narrate this story only increases the authenticity. Bell's just a solid actor in all her work, and she slips back into her first big role with ease.

She also slips into everyone else's, in a really fun way. Audiobook listeners know the fun of a narrator who really performs voices for other characters, and Kristen Bell does so here. It might have been awkward for her to mimic actors she's actually worked with... but then, she'd be the one to have seen them up close over years of work. When she performs Keith, or Logan, or Mac, or Weevil, or Wallace, she's really channeling them. You can see it in your mind's eye. The only thing missing for it to be the complete Veronica Mars experience is a 30-second burst of "We Used to Be Friends" at the end of the Prologue chapter.

If you were just to read the book itself? That's probably a B, I'd imagine? But the top notch reading from Kristen Bell really elevates it, to a B+... maybe even an A- if you've just gotta have more Veronica Mars. If you're a fan of the series who hasn't listened, you're missing out.

A Set of Brass

(Nope, no election thoughts to share here today. Those thoughts are still coalescing. Instead, I'm sharing something I'd already written before Election Day.)

 

A while back, I wrote about Brass: Birmingham, a board game esteemed by gamers that, as I learned from replies to my post, is also highly-regarded in my online friend circle. That game is a successor to the earlier Brass: Lancashire, a game I resolved to also try out after enjoying Birmingham.

I heard from Birmingham fans when I made the original post. I said in that post that I would be trying Lancashire. So I feel obligated to write something now about Lancashire. But the truth is, I'm challenged to figure out what to say.

The two games are quite similar -- perhaps as much as 90% of the rules are identical. Lancashire still has the turn order mechanism that was great about Birmingham: spend the most money in one round, and you will go last in the next; spend the least and you'll get to act first next round. It also has the fantastic system of spending resources your opponents create, which emphasizes the need to take advantage of sudden opportunities when they appear.

There are differences between the games, but I feel like they're too subtle for someone like me -- new to both games -- to truly appreciate. The game boards that you play on show different networks of cities, and I'm certain that the way different connections relate to each other has a strategic impact. One resource of Birmingham (beer) is here replaced with a slightly different token flipping system (ports). But the tweaks didn't strike me as being better or worse than the sequel game (that I'd played first).

Lancashire did feel a bit more approachable to me -- easier to learn. I'm fairly sure that's not actually the case, rather that a transfer of learning from the other, largely similar game made it easier to find footing in this one. But then again, the personal board that each player has in Lancashire has fewer tokens on it than the Birmingham board, so it must be easier to wrap your head around. Right?

The board gaming community at large has decided that Birmingham, the sequel, is the (slightly) superior game. I've seen several enthusiasts suggest that Lancashire, the original, is the game that enables players to get up in each other's faces more. I can only say, I enjoyed both very much, and would happily play either again. I'd happily play them until I was able to develop a sense of which I thought was better -- though I wouldn't put both in my own personal collection.

At this less experienced moment? I'd give Lancashire the same mark I game Birmingham, a B+, with the feeling that repeat plays would improve that grade.

Spinning Off in the Shadows

And now, something funny to watch tonight...

Many years ago, I watched the movie What We Do in the Shadows, and found it "good, not great." But now there's a TV series spinoff of the movie, which a few months back finished a second season that received an Emmy nomination for Best Comedy. Having watched the 20 episodes so far, the accolade is deserved, as the show surpasses the movie in every way.

It might be a matter of format. At 85 minutes, the movie can sometimes feel like one joke stretched too long. As a half-hour comedy series, each episode can introduce a simple plot, squeeze all the humor out of it, and leave the stage. It does this with reliable consistency, showing us how vampires deal with local city government, animal control, a dreary office job, or a centuries-old vendetta.

It might be a matter of character. Right from the first episode, the TV incarnation of What We Do in the Shadows feels like it has better characters: more well-drawn, more diverse than the movie, more clever and built to last. (And this out-of-the-gate success is odd, as a couple of the characters are quite similar in raw concept to some in the movie.) It's one of those rare shows where I feel like my favorite character at any given moment depends on who is the focus of an especially fun subplot -- or even just who is on the screen at a given moment. That said, the character of Colin Robinson is an especially funny and smart idea the original film didn't have, an "energy vampire" who opens up a path to many other kinds of jokes the rest of the characters can't reach.

It might be a matter of cast. Don't get me wrong, I like Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, and they weren't bad in the original film. But the assembled cast of the TV series each has razor-sharp comic instincts. It's a definite oversight that none of the five core members of the cast were nominated for an Emmy -- but I think it's because each shines as bright as the others when the story focuses on them. And the guest stars who show up are exceptional; the show has featured Nick Kroll, Craig Robinson, Jake McDorman, Kristen Schaal, Evan Rachel Wood, Mark Hamill, Haley Joel Osment, and many, many more.

Ultimately, there really isn't "the one reason" this show works better than the film that spawned it. There are so many reasons it's worth watching. We burned through the 20 episodes to date too fast, and are eagerly awaiting its eventual third season. Even the occasional "weaker" episode isn't really weak. Overall, I'd give the series an A.

People of Earth

Reunited and it feels so good. That's what permeated the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery.

With Michael Burnham now back together with the Discovery crew, they all turn to a search for the remnants of Starfleet and the Federation. And what better place to go than Earth? But far from receiving a warm welcome, they find that things are as changed on Earth as they are everywhere else in the universe.

I'm not sure Star Trek: Discovery has been running long enough to call something like this a "pattern," but the series has so far positioned more stand-alone stories earlier in a season and transitioned to a tightly-serialized narrative by the end. This episode felt like it struck a better balance there to me, with threads of the ongoing mystery of The Burn woven into a more self-contained story.

In many ways, that story felt like pure old-school Star Trek. Our heroic starship and crew find themselves at the center of a long-standing conflict between two warring sides. They take it upon themselves to broker a peace, a speech of lofty and harmonious ideals is delivered, reason is seen, and the day is saved. It sounds a bit hokey when I boil it all down like that, but it really wasn't -- it was a warm and comfortable blanket. And it being a story about Earth retreating into isolationism in the wake of a tragedy, with our heroes now the catalyst to pull them back -- it felt like it perfectly met this 2020 moment in an inspiring way.

Another moment with powerful 2020 context: the reunion of Michael Burnham with her friends. There's something extra emotional right now, even subversive, in watching good friends hug one another. I've heard some TV watchers have felt creeped out seeing TV characters in close contact right now, but this moment played exactly the opposite for me: it was energizing and hopeful. Throw in some not-at-all-subtle (but perfect for the moment) music from composer Jeff Russo, and I was moved.

It wasn't all uplifting, of course. The early scene between Tilly and Burnham was a good one highlighting loss, as Tilly finally caught a moment to mourn everything and everyone they've all left behind centuries in the past. And Tilly's comments about a changed Burnham? I felt that too; it isn't a radical change, but Sonequa Martin-Green really is showing us a character whose emotions are a little closer to the surface, less steeped in Vulcan influence. If the series continues to lean into that change, I think it will serve them well, expanding the character and playing to SMG's strengths as an actor.

Another thing I'll be interested to see more of in episodes to come is the new character of Adira. The casting of the character was something touted in press before the season began: this was to be Star Trek's first recurring non-binary character (not counting the one-offs from the Next Generation episode featuring a non-gendered race), and played by an actor who identifies as non-binary. So far? The character has been referred to as "she/her," which perhaps undermines the moment a bit? But there's interesting promise here too.

The wider fan circle did not realize this at the time Deep Space Nine was new, but recently, I've seen online that the character of Jadzia Dax is a favorite among transgender and non-binary Trekkers. I'd wager not even the writers knew the aptness of Trills as a metaphor for that part of the LGBT+ community, but it was there. And you'd better believe the writers are aware of it now. Maybe it isn't perfect to consider the human character of Adira non-binary if it's only the Trill symbiont and its past lives that make them so? But a more thoughtful and aware examination of what it means to have been a man and a woman, and to contain both those experiences? Could be quite interesting.

It's entertainment first, of course, and on that front, the show seems to have done an expert bit of casting. Hard enough to find a performer who can balance the worldliness of a long-lived Trill with the aspects of its current host. Now, they seem to have done that with a young performer (who either is the teenager the show claims, or is quite credibly close). Quite a coup.

Out of the gate, I'm already far more intrigued by the mysteries of season three than I was in seasons one or two. Star Trek: Discovery might be on track to give us its best season yet. I give "People of Earth" a B+.