Dispelling: B

A bit more than a year ago, I began a science fiction trilogy by Mark Lawrence, Impossible Times. A time-travel adventure in the mold of Ready Player One or Stranger Things, the series opens in the mid-80s as young Nick Hayes receives a visit from his adult self, kicking off a sequence of events that must be adhered to in order to preserve the future. Now, book three follows adult Nick as he invents the time machine to fulfill his destiny, learns that time travel doesn't actually work at all like he'd imagined, and tries to somehow cheat a fate he'd rather avoid.

Dispel Illusion isn't a mind-blowing conclusion to this trilogy... but neither is it a letdown. If you've come this far, you'll want to finish the entire series, and you probably won't be disappointed. But there are both good and bad things about it.

The Impossible Times has many of the trappings of young adult fiction, but it's always had a rather sophisticated view of time travel. There are shades of the movie Primer in where this final book takes the story, the plot line deeply concerned about questions of predestination and moral obligation to alternate realities. This sort of take is rather rare in my experience, which makes it rather novel and fun. But at the same time, a protagonist who feels locked on rails isn't always the most compelling character to read about. The middle chunk of the book does sag a bit, feeling rote and predictable.

What kept me engaged was the wealth of interesting images along the way. I can't think of an example of time travel looking quite as its presented here, leading to several interesting scenes throughout the book. As for the language? Lawrence has a fairly stripped-down writing style overall, but does land the occasional zinger to spice things up.

There is one massive plot hole in the final act, in my view. It didn't truly detract from my enjoyment of the book, but I could see it driving a fan of more "hard sci-fi" into a rage... not that I think that sort of reader would have made it this deep into the series in the first place. This tale is more sophisticated than usual, like I said... but this is still not truly "idea driven" science fiction. (If you want the somewhat-revealing spoiler, it's this: any barrier to time travel inserted into a time stream is going to work both ways. This is even explicitly stated in the book, though later overlooked.)

Still, I enjoyed the book overall -- about on a par with the first two before it, which is to say I'd give it a B. If you're looking for a quick read and enjoyed Ready Player One, you should probably give Impossible Times a try.

Blood Screening

Oscar season has been delayed a few months (what in the age of COVID hasn't been delayed?), but is starting to take shape. Spike Lee is likely to be in the mix, as he is most every time he makes a new movie -- this time for Da 5 Bloods.

In present day, a group of four friends return to Vietnam for the first time since fighting in the Vietnam War. They tell others they're going to recover the body of their fifth friend who was killed in the conflict... but they're secretly also out to recover gold bars they stole, buried, and then lost track of all those decades earlier. The movie peppers their hunt for the loot (and a hunt for them) with flashbacks to the war.

You may have seen your share of Vietnam movies before, but you likely haven't see one like this. The sheer number of black men who fought in Vietnam is an overlooked aspect to the conflict, and Spike Lee is the right director to highlight that history. A potent opening montage uses real-world footage to establish the background for this fictional narrative, before embarking on a stylized, violent look at the conflict.

That style is very Spike Lee, and you may find you love it or hate it. Maybe even both, at different times. There are unusual inserts of still photos into the action. There are visual effects that seem to be deliberately less than fully convincing. There are close-ups so extreme that you can see the reflection of the camera in an actor's eyes. But you also never lose track of where you are in the narrative; three different aspect ratios are used to separate the past, the modern city, and the modern jungle outside the city.

Another element never lost is the emotional toll of war on the characters. Spike Lee is hardly the first filmmaker to observe that war is hell for everyone -- the Vietnam war in particular. But in turning an eye toward the Black experience, to the overlooked and unappreciated, he earns extra credibility in the moments that paint Vietnamese people in a similarly sympathetic light.

The movie is a tremendous showcase for actors. Delroy Lindo is the real powerhouse here; his "peg the needle" approach to this character may strike some people as too extreme to feel natural, but I felt it was exactly the right approach to showing the complete unraveling of the character. Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr, and Norm Lewis round out the modern-day "Bloods," with Chadwick Boseman playing the fifth in the flashbacks. They're all strong individually, and stronger together as a team.

But one aspect of their performances that feels distracting to me is that it's still all of these same actors playing the characters in the flashbacks. You're never unaware that men in their late 60s are pretending to be teenagers, and while it's clear Spike Lee was deliberate in this choice, it feels to me like it's undermining the message about the horrors of war to have such a conspicuously unrealistic aspect.

Overall though, I enjoyed Da 5 Bloods more than most other Vietnam movies I've seen. It had some new things to say -- or at least a new perspective from which to be saying them -- that I appreciated. I give it a B+, and a slot on my Top 10 Movies of 2020.

Voyager Flashback: Time and Again

After a reasonable effort at character building in its second episode, Star Trek: Voyager shifted fully into "adventure of the week" mode with its next episode, "Time and Again."

When Voyager diverts to investigate strange readings from a nearby planet, they find a dead civilization recently annihilated in a global holocaust. Janeway and Paris are pulled through a time distortion to the prior day, where they must find an escape before the coming disaster... without violating the Prime Directive.

This is in many ways an odd episode to be coming at this point, this early in the run of the series. For one thing, there was already a time travel element to the only other regular, one-hour installment so far. For another, the episode's final twist of revealing and escaping a predestination paradox means that really, "none of this ever happened," nullifying any growth we'd get with these new characters. (The one character with even minor awareness of the averted timeline, Kes, has no way of convincing anyone (even herself!) that what she senses with her nascent mental abilities ever actually happened.

It's also odd that we've come to the other side of the galaxy, ostensibly to have all-new adventures that don't involve established elements of the Star Trek universe, only to have this as one of the first planets we meet. It's populated by completely normal-looking humans whose only cultural oddity is their commitment to three stripes of color on their shirts. Sure, the budget must have been tight after the expensive series premiere, but maybe instead of paying for yet another trip to the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant (perhaps second only to the Vasquez Rocks as a popular Star Trek filming location), you throw a little money to the makeup department?

Weirder still are the rather conservative, not-very-Star-Trek-like ideals that seem to be on display when you actually scrutinize the story. It seems to be anti-technology, centered on a nuclear energy metaphor and giving space only to the notion that it's too dangerous to use. Maybe it gets a pass on this point, since the "polaric energy" of this story is indeed dangerous on a scale that puts even nuclear energy to shame. But tilt your head and squint, and the episode also seems to be anti-protest; if the activists hadn't been stirring up trouble here, the global catastrophe would never happened.

Weirdest of all, the episode is kind of anti-Star Trek itself. "Seek out new life and new civilizations" is the franchise mantra, yet here it's the very act of our heroes exploring that leads to the destruction of an entire world. Maybe in, say, the third season of the show, once Voyager's Star Trek credentials had been well established, a story like this would make more sense -- a story that doesn't do much to illuminate character, doesn't highlight Star Trek's more noble principles, is just a straight-up sci-fi short story.

So what do we get? The beginning of the long-running "Delaney Sisters" running gag. The undercutting of Neelix's supposed Delta Quadrant expertise. The Doctor's strange dismissal of a potentially serious medical issue with Kes (and his apparent forgetting that he already met her in the previous episode). But also, some fun stuff for Paris, between his banter with the alien kid and the discussion of his Daddy Issues via the Prime Directive. Captain Janeway getting right into the center of the action without any of the Riker-style first officer protectiveness. And, ultimately, a time paradox that is at least moderately interesting. It's not a great episode, but it's hardly a disaster.

Other observation (just the one, really):

• Neelix does try to be sweet in comforting Kes, but his dismissal of her telepathic experiences plays differently from a more modern viewpoint.
  

A rather forgettable installment of Voyager, I give "Time and Again" a C+. It's more a case of the episode not really doing anything "right" more than doing anything particularly "wrong."

Charmed, I'm Sure

Now that J. K. Rowling seems determined to repeatedly set herself on fire in the court of public opinion, Harry Potter isn't the escapist fun it used to be. One of those ways it was really fun was the deck-building game based on it -- Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle. It's one of the best "based on a license" games I've played, a campaign experience that progresses from "you really could get the non-gamers in your family to play this" to "sophisticated enough to satisfy even veteran deck-building fans."

The game is still a lot of fun. So is its expansion, The Monster Box of Monsters, which added four new "scenarios" to the core game's seven. It would have been a complete no-brainer for me to pick up the new Charms and Potions Expansion, absent the question of whether giving J.K. Rowling any more money (in the form of buying Harry Potter merchandise) is an appropriate thing to do. I came to this conclusion in this instance: this game publisher secured the license some time ago, and stands to lose a lot more money than Rowling from a decision not to purchase the game. (Should they opt to renew the license when the time comes? That would likely change the calculation for me.)

But what about the usual question you ask when buying a game or its expansion: is it any good? The short answer is yes. But the Charms and Potions expansions is notably different than the previous expansion. The Monster Box of Monsters was a "light touch" expansion that added just a few new elements that were substantially similar to things already in the core game. It wasn't really very different, but in adding new scenarios to a campaign game, it was perfectly fine.

Charms and Potions is a lot. It's an expansion for the experienced gamer, not appropriate for the more casual crowd. (And that too is fine, if you're the target audience, and you know that.) It adds a significant number of supplemental "Charms" boards you pick from to augment your character, each giving three different powers you use by managing the amount of damage you've taken. Most of the powers are just "strictly better the more damage you've taken," but a few add some intriguing new gamesmanship and strategy to the idea of who you heal and when.

And once you pop open the second of four boxes (containing the expansion's new scenarios), you get a quite elaborate Potions systems. (Spoilers, I suppose, since you don't unlock these right away.) Each game gives you a list of five event triggers to watch out for during your turn. For each trigger you meet, you choose one of two available potion ingredients (there are five different kinds, plus a wild), and assign all ingredients you collect to one of two face up potion cards. Each card requires some number of ingredients to complete, whereupon you then choose whether to immediately trash the card for a one-time effect, or to add it to your deck where (when played normally) you'll get the choice of a repeating power or that original one-time trash effect. I think it's perhaps not quite as complicated as I've just surely made it sound... but it is ultimately a choice leading to choices, leading to another choice, leading to another choice. The complexity of play has taken a big jump, and the pace of play slows down a bit too.

But the difficulty has not jumped. Where the Monster Box of Monsters continued to ramp up the difficulty level from the already difficult scenarios in the back half of the core game, the four boxes of Charms and Potions all seem quite easy. Admittedly, some of this can come down to luck of the draw in which villains are randomly added to the scenario when you set it up (and my friends and I got quite lucky in this once or twice). Still, we beat each of these four games in one attempt, which was decidedly not the case in games 5, 6, and 7 of the core game (or the Monster expansion). Charms and Potions gives the players a lot more new options and abilities than it seems to give the villains, and this leads to the outcome you'd expect: it's easier to win.

I get the sense that even if J. K. Rowling had not through her transphobic comments made the Harry Potter license toxic, this would probably have been the last expansion for this game -- because it is scraping the bottom of the barrel for material to depict on the cards. There are new villains cards to defeat and new character cards to add to the main deck, but a great many of these are people they'd ask about on special Harry Potter Trivia Night at the bar. There would be that one team maintaining a perfect score, of course, but most of us mortals would ask "who the hell is that?" and return to our beers.

I should note that Charms and Potions also allows you to add a fifth player to the game. Monster Box of Monsters kept the player count at four while adding a fifth character option (giving you six playable ones now when you add Charms and Potions). I haven't had a chance to play with five, so I have no thoughts on whether the game accommodates the extra player well. But I wanted to mention it, as it's a major selling point of the new expansion that I have not otherwise mentioned.

I respect that they tried something different and more complex here. And it is fun to play. But I'd say that the Charms and Potions expansion doesn't quite measure up to the core game or first expansion. I think you will like it if you liked those. But in being less of a challenge, more complex, and more obscure, I think it inevitably is going to feel "not quite as good." I give the expansion a B. But I think it's worth having in your collection -- if you're still collecting Harry Potter things, anyway.

F*** Yeah!

We all know the way Netflix foists its many series onto viewers: because you liked that, you'll probably like this. Occasionally, though, I'll get a similar kind of recommendation from friends. From more than one person, I heard "you liked I'm Not Okay With This? Have you watched The End of the F***ing World?"

The End of the F***ing World (title officially styled that way, with asterisks or Xs) is a dark British dramedy -- two seasons, eight half-hour episodes each, done. It's the story of teenagers Alyssa and James. She's rebellious and angry, and wants to completely upset everything in her life. He's a psychopath who is ready to graduate to murdering humans, looking for his first victim. The two embark on a road trip together. Events ensue. They are not the events you'd expect.

I wouldn't say the show actually has all that much in common with I'm Not Okay With This -- nor do I think the people who recommended it to me felt so either. But they are similarly quite dark, and both interested in the intersection of typical teenage angst with wildly atypical circumstances. (Also, they're both based on comic series.) The first episode is powerfully off-putting, almost challenging the viewer to want to keep watching the show. Hmmm.... maybe the whole show is that way, but you get acclimated to it by the second episode (if indeed you're ever going to.)

It's interesting writing in that it's hyper-focused on character. The premise -- "she wants to run away with him, he wants to kill her" -- makes for an odd hook, but there actually don't seem like there are that many plot beats on that journey. And so at first, the series really doles them out at a deliberate pace. Things do happen, but for a time, you can't be sure they amount to much. But if the characters do grab you and you stick around, you are ultimately rewarded. Like everything after the first drop on a roller coaster, you're in for a wild ride. The situation keeps heightening more and more, particularly as it crosses into the second season and introduces a wild new wrinkle to the plot.

Series creator Charlie Covell knows exactly the tone she wants to strike here, making strong creative choices to foster an odd atmosphere. The visuals look washed out, the vistas look stark, and the performances are "properly British" -- low-key and unfazed. Existing songs are used far more extensively than conventional score, and it's a very carefully cultivated selection of sometimes deep cuts.

The main performances are quite fantastic. They're muted in many ways, but perfect. Jessica Barden is hilariously contemptuous as Alyssa. Alex Lawther does a great job of showing how much lies beneath the surface of the creepy James. (Both are laugh out loud funny in their dry narrations.) In the second season, Naomi Ackie is a fantastic addition to the cast... but the less said about her role ahead of time, the better.

I think this is one of those shows where you'll know rather quickly if it's "for you." And if it is, and you hang in to the end, you'll reach a satisfying conclusion. (Not that 16 episodes at a half hour or less is that much of a demand on your time.) I give The End of the F***ing World a B+.

Looking to the Future

Chances are if you've known me for a while, you know that my favorite movie is (and probably always will be) Back to the Future. (I've written about it a few times.) When I heard that a new board game based on it had been released (and heard from a few places that it was actually good), it was inevitable that sooner or later, I would try it.

Back to the Future: Back in Time is a cooperative game for up to four players. You're collectively given a limited number of turns to accomplish three important tasks in 1955 Hill Valley: move your time-traveling DeLorean to the main town street facing the clock tower, gather the three pieces of equipment you'll need to power the machine, and make sure that George McFly and Lorraine Baines fall in love. You must achieve all these goals even as Biff roams around town making trouble, and a variety of complications pop up to make things harder.

It's likely my expectations for this game were raised too high; the truth is that many licensed games miss the mark, and I'd certainly be hoping for a lot from this game -- this license -- in particular. To be clear: this game is far from a dud. But I did find it something of a mixed bag.

First, some items in the plus column. The game is a challenge. You start out feeling far behind, wondering how you could ever possibility succeed in getting all the goals done in time. It requires a high degree of coordination between players, with each of the four characters having a specialty that will contribute to the mix. The game has a nice arc to it. You build powers quickly, and what seems impossible early on becomes reasonable as you acquire special cards with unique powers to stretch the rules. Even still, the tension of feeling you might lose really doesn't ebb until the final few turns (unless you really are going to lose).

In the middling column, I'd put the game's flavor. Mileage will vary here for different players, of course. I'd put myself on the more forgiving side -- put a few well-chosen nods to the license into the game and I don't mind you hand-waving the rest. Make a good game, first and foremost, I say. And the game does put its fair share of fun movie references in there, mostly in the form of the special items you can acquire during play -- a radiation suit, a Walkman, a comic book, and so on.

But in order to support four players, (necessary but) dubious flavor choices are made right at the top level. The playable characters are Marty, Doc, Jennifer (whose specialty is helping Lorraine and George fall in love?), and... Einstein (whose specialty is... driving the DeLorean??). Yes, I'm glad this isn't limited to a two-player game. But I do wonder if there was some world in which specific players didn't have to portray specific characters, so that there weren't two clear "also rans" in the mix with such clearly wedged-in-there game effects.

(Side note: there's also a fun bit of flavor in turning the movie's iconic clock tower into a dice tower you use to roll dice in the game... but the fact that it sends them jetting out onto the game board where it can mow down the pieces moves this fun element into the "mixed bag" category for me.)

On the negative side, I'm not convinced there's much replayability to the game. The tasks the game sets before you are always the same: gather the parts, unite the lovers, get the car to Main Street. There's a little variation in the hazards you face along the way, but the order you problem solve doesn't change like in Hogwarts Battle, the places you most need to focus your efforts don't change like in Pandemic... the challenge feels to me like it's going to be substantially the same every time you play.

I could see playing Back to the Future: Back in Time every now and then as a nice change-up to whatever cooperative games your play group normally enjoys. But I don't see it becoming the new "first choice" in the genre. I give it a B-. Fans of coop games will likely want it in their collection, but I don't personally feel like I need to be the one in my circle that owns it.

Voyager Flashback: Parallax

The premiere episode of Star Trek: Voyager didn't quite put every piece into place for the series to come. It did not establish B'Elanna Torres as the chief engineer. That detail was pushed for time out of a crowded pilot script and became the backbone of the first regular episode, Parallax.

Chakotay is lobbying for B'Elanna to take over as chief engineer of Voyager, but her fiery temper may keep her out of the running in the eyes of a captain who expects Starfleet protocol. B'Elanna gets a chance to prove herself when the ship becomes trapped in a quantum singularity, and she might have the idea for how to escape.

Parts of this episode feel like a confident step forward for this new series, while other parts feel like just as big a step backward. The character work is a clear improvement. Where Chakotay and Tom Paris were too easily dropped into the mix, short-circuiting interesting friction they might have generated over a few episodes, B'Elanna's period of adjustment is given a lot of space here. She professes not to even want the job, but we get to dig deeper and learn that she has a Starfleet Academy background that's the source of unhappy memories. We also see her recalibrate upon learning that her Academy professors thought more highly of her than she realized. Simply put, there's a nice arc here.

What's more, B'Elanna's story here is a stone tossed in the pond, making interesting ripples for the other characters. In defending his engineer, Chakotay comes into conflict with Janeway and Tuvok -- while also taking heat from Maquis crewmembers. In finding common ground with B'Elanna, Janeway again gets to show her own science and engineering chops; where previous Star Trek series had characters like Spock and Data and Dax to throw to for this sort of stuff, Janeway could hold her own with them.

It's natural that the backdrop in which all this is explored is a science/engineering "problem of the week." But it's not a very engaging one. It repackages any number of "we're trapped and can't leave" ideas from multiple Next Generation episodes, without any new angle to distinguish it. We're all but drowned into technobabble as they work toward a solution, with the script using Paris and Kes as dummies to allow characters to explain things for the audience. Paris is shorted again when, after being set up to show his expert piloting chops, Janeway instead just has him "punch through" the hole back to normal space.

Of course, no character is "shorted" more than the Doctor, whose subplot in this episode revolves around a malfunctioning holoprojector that causes him to shrink. Although there's a nice moment when Kes shows him the courtesy of deactivating him when she leaves, the rest is pretty awkward. Is the Doctor supposed to be "stretching" as he's shrinking? That's what it looks like, and yet no one mentions this. And it's an oddly cheap visual effect. (Stretch a 4:3 picture to fill your 16:9 television, and it look pretty much exactly like this.)

Other observations:

• This episode mentions that holodecks run on a different power system from the rest of the ship. This is clearly justification for why power scarcity on the ship won't stop us from having holodeck episodes in the future. It's a little weird, though, to bring this up for the first time when it isn't a holodeck episode.
  

• The guy who "loses" the chief engineer job, Carey, has the kind of wholesome, Starfleety reaction that Star Trek: Lower Decks lovingly mocked in one of its episodes.
  

• This is arguably Star Trek's most feminist episode to this point. It's directed by a woman (Kim Friedman), and the two most important characters in the plot are women (B'Elanna and Janeway).
  

Better in some ways than the first episode but worse in others, I'd give "Parallax" the same mark: a B-.

What's the Good Word?

Are you familiar with the two-player game Mastermind? One player creates a secret "code" out of four hidden pegs. The other player has a limited number of attempts to guess it, receiving clues along the way about which pegs they've guessed are part of the solution.

This game was undoubtedly a touchstone for the newer creation Master Word. One player has a secret password that they're trying to help the other players -- working as a team -- to guess. Initially, only a broad category is known: the group is trying to guess a character, a brand, a food, or some such. Over six rounds, each player writes down a sort of "20 questions"-esque suggestion to narrow things down: "is a cartoon," "is clothing, "found in a supermarket," or some such. All the players' ideas are arrayed in a row, and then the clue giver indicates how many of the clues in that row are accurate.

Only once during an entire "game" can the master indicate which clue was accurate. More players on the guessing team can make for more suggestions and in theory more information... but can also make the deduction harder. Two rounds ago, when two out of five clues were said to be accurate, which two was it? These, that seem to naturally fit together, or something more obscure?

It's almost more activity than game... which isn't necessarily bad. My group of friends will play Codenames and Telestrations for the hell of it, not truly keeping score even though both of those games do come with defined scoring systems. But designer Gérald Cattiaux seems to have wanted something more gamelike here, introducing an odd element for actually guessing the password. The whole team collectively has three opportunities to make an official guess, writing it on a specially designated clue card and substituting that for one of their normal "narrow things down" style entries in a round. If they're right, they win. If they run out of guesses, they lose. If they write down the right answer and it's not on one of the three special clue cards, they also lose. It's not immediately clear what this adds to the experience, other than to introduce a "but be careful!" element that's more gamelike.

With or without that element, I would say that Master Word does have a light touch. I mean, obviously, truly enjoyable games for large groups are almost always going to have easy-to-explain, simple rules that just about any potential player can easily wrap their head around. Even by that measure, I'm not entirely sure there's much "there" here. Yet also, it is sort of fun to quickly go once around a table, giving everyone a turn as the password "master." More than one time around, though, I'm not sure I can quite see... not with so many strong group games out there. (And certainly not in the age of COVID, where group games aren't really even a thing.)

I give Master Word a B-. I can imagine many people "more or less" enjoying it... and liking other games in the genre better.

Last... But Least?

For some time now, I've been writing some form of the same blog post every year. That's because author Terry Brooks publishes a new book like clockwork every year. Every year, I read that book, lament that it's not nearly as good as the ones he wrote decades ago, and then wonder if it's really just me that's changed. This year might just be the last time I write that post, though, because there's something different about Brooks' newest novel, The Last Druid: it's the final book of his long-running Shannara series.

There are a couple of asterisks you can throw on that declaration. First, the Shannara books have never been a massive single narrative. Though the series overall numbers 20 books, it's always been released in sets of three or four (or occasionally two), with generational time jumps in between to introduce new characters and new plots. There have occasionally been elements that continue across multiple "mini-series," but basically, few popular fantasy series have ever had as many on-ramps as the Shannara books.

Secondly, The Last Druid is the last book in the chronology of the series. Because of all those time jumps (and the occasional novella written to go back and revisit past characters), there are plenty of places Brooks could go back and drop in new stories if he wanted to. (And he has expressly suggested this is a thing he might be open to.)

So essentially, this book is an ending to a saga that felt too segmented to really need an Ultimate Ending... and it's not really the "end" of it anyway. It's The Rise of Skywalker. And it's about as good too. (When I say that, know that I neither loved nor loathed Star Wars Episode IX.)

The Last Druid is full of nostalgia for Brooks' loyal readers. Callbacks to earlier books abound. The final endings for the characters feel a touch more "final" somehow. The series' overall flirtation with the clash between magic and science takes a more central role, and is the issue on which that Ultimate Ending hangs. Structurally, it's fairly satisfying, hitting the notes you want in much the way that a good series finale of a long-running television series does.

But look at it in a different light, and you can just as easily say that The Last Druid shows the same repetitive formula, the same dearth of new ideas, that has plagued the Shannara books for years. It has the same tropes, the same blunt prose, that has made me question after every new book I've read for the better part of a decade: "why am I still reading these?"

In short, The Last Druid is a real prism of a book: what you get from it depends on how you view it. Is echoing elements of earlier books lazy, or is it well-crafted narrative resonance? Is it a good ending, or are you just glad it's over? It's kind of all that, at the same time, to me. And so I find myself giving it a grade that's "just past meh, just shy of truly good": a B-.

Now can I quit reading Terry Brooks? I guess we'll find out in a year or so.

Unhappy Ending

Quirky screen writer Charlie Kaufman is one of the few writers in Hollywood whose involvement with a movie gets trumpeted just as loudly as the stars. Decades ago, I would have said there was good reason; the run of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was quite impressive. (I liked all three, though probably the first one more than most people and the last one less than most people.)

But then Kaufman amassed enough clout to direct his own scripts. The result was the off-putting Synecdoche, New York -- and, I now realize, the moment I should have jumped off the Kaufman train. Well, better late than never, as I've totally received that message now that I've watched I'm Thinking of Ending Things.

Based on a novel by Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things is a movie somewhere between surreal and absurdist. I will tell you what it purports to be about: a woman has been invited to meet her boyfriend's parents in a snowy, rural house... but little does he know that she's been "thinking of ending" their relationship. But that plot description is a bald-faced lie, as nothing in the movie is as it seems.

Over two-plus hours and four plodding story "acts" (the drive there, meet the parents, the drive away, the finale), the movie keeps pouring on the bizarre. Character names change, along with their physical features. There are jarring jump cuts, strange symbolism, and deliberate errors in continuity. The entire movie is a puzzle box suggesting some hidden, underlying truth, but it unspools so slowly that it makes you doubt whether any explanation will in fact ever come, and whether it will satisfy if it does.

This movie is like the creeping tension of Get Out without any justification for the weird behavior. It's the first three episodes of WandaVision without any more (and without the humor). And it ignores as many modern film conventions as possible: it's shot in a claustrophobic (throwback) 4:3 aspect ratio, it has virtually no musical score, and it defers any revelations as long as as possible. There's no plot development, there is only two hours of set up, followed by 10 minutes of... payoff?

At the risk of spoiling things a little, I'll simply say that just minutes into the movie, a thought popped into my mind: "oh, is this what's happening?" Ultimately, I forgot about it as endless strangeness piled up. And then, in the end? It was exactly what I guessed at the beginning. The movie was all airline travel, no vacation. All journey, no destination.

The cast sure does give it their all. Jessie Buckley stars as "Young Woman," her sorrow and terror and nerves expressed all throughout the movie in convincing tears. But the movie seems not to want you to invest in her feelings. As Jake, Jesse Plemons delivers his signature menacing/creepy schtick with precision. Toni Collette and David Thewlis give wild and intentionally over-the-top performances as Jake's parents. But good as all four are, they only made the movie "regrettable" to me rather than "unbearable."

I would say I'm Thinking of Ending Things is a D at best. It's two hours I truly wish I had back to watch something else. And as for my "relationship" with Charlie Kaufman? I'm thinking of ending things.

By All/Other Means...

A couple of years back, I wrote in praise of an audiobook novella that introduced me to writer John Scalzi, The Dispatcher. Now Scalzi is back with a sequel, once again read by actor Zachary Quinto: Murder by Other Means.

The premise of the original was tantalizing enough that a revisit seems worthwhile, even inevitable. Both stories are set in an alternate version of our own world in which murder has become virtually impossible. Whenever a person is deliberately killed by someone else, there's a 999-out-of-1000 chance that they instantly reappear in their own home, physically unharmed. "Dispatchers" are freelancers you can hire to deliberately kill you if you're undertaking a risky surgery, engaging in some dangerous activity, or might otherwise need to be "murdered" to get out of trouble. Where the first story focuses on a situation that arises from an unlikely 1-in-1000 miss, this second tale engages in efforts to find a loophole around the other 999.

All the significant characters from the first story return -- though as before, I found the world and the narrative the bigger draw over the characters. Once again, Scalzi has a knack for exploring all the facets of a core idea, taking a world in which X is true and seeing where that logically leads. I hadn't felt that the first story had left any big stones unturned in that department, but Murder by Other Means trucks in a whole bunch of new and interesting stones.

I could easily repeat all of the things I praised of the first story. The pace is brisk. Quinto's performance is a fun, often-sarcastic twist on film noir. If you liked the first novella, you are absolutely going to like this one. (And you'll be thrilled to hear that Scalzi has already announced his intentions to deliver a third at some point.)

But also, it would be only fair to say that Murder by Other Means isn't really as good as its predecessor. It's a little less clever overall, a little more predictable. It's structured like a mystery, but it isn't really all that mysterious. In several ways, it really gives the game away long before the ending -- though at least not all the thrills and fun are hinged on being surprised.

I'd give Murder by Other Means a B. It gets a recommendation-by-proxy in that I would still very strongly endorse The Dispatcher... and from there, it's only natural to proceed to this decent follow-up.

Voyager Flashback: Caretaker

As with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine when I recently re-watched it, I haven't seen any episodes of Star Trek: Voyager since they were brand new. (Not counting scrubbing quickly through episodes for my work on the the Star Trek CCG.) Unlike with Deep Space Nine, though, I've never felt like I wanted to go back and watch them again. My memory of Voyager is that while you could cultivate perhaps a dozen or so "top shelf Star Trek" episodes from its seven season run, the "average score" of any given episode was far lower than that of Deep Space Nine or The Next Generation (even including The Next Generation's terrible hit rate in the first two seasons).

But the Star Trek podcast I listen to is now turning to Voyager, and my actual recall of most episodes is spotty at best. Glancing at a list of season one episode titles, for example, I could only give you a "one sentence summary" of less than half. Twenty years is plenty of time for me to have changed. Maybe I'll think differently about Voyager now if I start watching it, week to week, along with the podcast? And so I'm embarking on a new Star Trek "flashback" series of reviews, beginning with Voyager's two-hour pilot episode, "Caretaker."

The technologically advanced starship Voyager is dispatched to the Badlands to investigate the disappearance of a Maquis ship... and is suddenly whisked 70,000 light years across the galaxy by a mysterious alien entity. The two crews work together to find people who have been abducted and sent to a nearby planet, uncovering a strange relationship between the natives and the "Caretaker" who transported the ships. 

First episodes of television series are often a soul-sapping experience for those who write them, incorporating endless notes from countless people who somehow get a voice in the process. It's one reason a lot of shows don't "find themselves" until several episodes in (when many of those overseers have moved on to other projects). The stories surrounding the creation of Voyager sound worse than usual. Paramount was launching its own television network. It needed new shows to fill out its schedule, and this Star Trek show in particular to be the network's crown jewel. This show was going to be exactly what every single UPN executive wanted it to be.

"Caretaker" is hardly a disaster of a pilot. It's better than "Encounter at Farpoint" was for The Next Generation, and it does set some pieces up on a game board in interesting ways. But it also suggests and immediately forecloses a number of interesting possibilities, I think precisely because there were "too many cooks" in the kitchen -- and moreover, too many cooks trying to craft the most broadly appealing meal.

Voyager is clearly made in the shadow of two Star Treks before it, and everyone involved clearly wants it to be like The Next Generation and not like Deep Space Nine. They didn't want complex continuing story lines, so the whole show is premised on the ship constantly moving so that you can't revisit anything. They don't seem to want friction between characters like on Deep Space Nine, so even though they build in the compelling premise that two very different crews must learn to live and work together as one, everyone's in a Starfleet uniform by the end of these two hours -- and instantly united behind the captain who just consigned them all to being stranded decades from home. (It's kind of wild to think that the Maquis were created for this show, but created far more meaningful drama on DS9 than they ever do here.)

So much of this first episode seems to be about avoiding, mitigating, or undoing anything that would make this show stand out as distinct from either The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. We have the first female captain of the franchise in Kathryn Janeway... but rather than center this episode on her, it's framed as a redemptive arc for Tom Paris. And speaking of Paris, there was a real opportunity to explore what criminal justice means in Star Trek, to have an unrepentant rogue as a main character -- not just a scoundrel like Quark, but someone who actually turned his back on Starfleet. Instead, Paris is fully on the side of right by the end of the episode.

Then there are elements peppered in that feel like they're there to specifically appease one person somewhere... and it often turns out they were. "Bioneural technology" is a meaningless bit of technobabble here, but they probably figured they could do something with it later. A few guest characters get early scenes as though to sell what the Voyager crew might look like... but when no one shows any remorse over their deaths, it's impossible for the audience to feel much either. The Caretaker manifests a "comforting" farm to the crew, a deception serving no real purpose because one of the writers thought there needed to be a surreal element in the first episode (like Q's courtroom for TNG, or the wormhole for DS9). Talk of "another Caretaker" out there somewhere is never followed up on in the series (that I recall), but was reportedly suggested by an executive who wanted a sort of "escape hatch" to bring Voyager back if the "far from home" premise wasn't received well by fans.

Then there are the missed opportunities. Harry Kim and B'Elanna Torres go through a major experience together, enough that you'd expect their relationship to be a significant ongoing thing for the show. Not as I recall. Kes expresses a progressive skepticism to the orthodoxy of her people's culture... but the episode doesn't really say much of anything about religion vs. science. Chakotay's heritage is ignored as a serious element and played for a couple of bigoted jokes. (There are some unsavory racial connotations to the behavior and appearance of the Kazon too.)

Egad... all those negatives. Sure, Encounter at Farpoint wasn't a great Star Trek episode, but did I really think this was better?

There is stuff here to like too. The friendship between Paris and Kim plays well right out of the gate. Janeway comes off as a different kind of captain who cares more about her crew than Kirk, Picard, or Sisko (at least, in the beginning for any of those characters). There's a lot of fun action compared to earlier, talkier Trek pilot episodes.

Plus, there are a few truly great elements. With just a couple of scenes and maybe 20 lines, Robert Picardo makes The Doctor a character you instantly need more of on your screen. The opening theme from Jerry Goldsmith threads the tiniest needle between mournful and hopeful, setting the perfect tone. The new sets look great, and lots of location shooting makes the episode feel big. (The only place they seem to have spared expenses is the cramped cockpit of what appears to be a tiny Maquis ship. Where were all those Maquis crew members we meet later actually working?)

Other observations:

• Harry Kim seems already consigned to the Chekov role of screaming when in jeopardy.

• Why does Janeway blow Tuvok's Maquis cover the moment he arrives on the bridge?

• The background Ocampa characters distract in a way they could never have anticipated when making this episode. The masks go over your nose, people!

• If Kes just snuck out of the Ocampa city and quickly got captured by the Kazon, when did she and Neelix meet?

• The Ocampa city is two miles underground and our heroes are climbing stairs to the surface? When I would sometimes take 10 flights of stairs in my office building (back when going to the office was a thing), I felt like I wanted to die. Some quick math extrapolating from the height of my building suggests these characters climb over 830 floors!

• The Ocampa are given five years of energy just before the Caretaker dies. Voyager ran for seven seasons, meaning the Ocampa run out before the series is over. I'm curious what happened to them -- like, more than I think I would have been if they'd arbitrarily said there was 10 years of banked energy or whatever.
  

• I'm not the first person to say this, but if only they had the ability to put a timer on a bomb, they could have avoided being stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

• It's well known that Kate Mulgrew was not the first performer cast as Janeway. After many auditions (including a screen test with "Leah Brahms" performer Susan Gibney), French Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold won the role and filmed for a day-and-a-half before reportedly quitting. All parties involved were said to agree she wasn't a good fit -- stories range from her not realizing the pace of making television (compared to film), her desire to play more aloof and withdrawn than the production wanted, and many takes lost to flubbed dialogue. I've never seen footage of Bujold in the role, though I understand snippets of it were included in the Voyager Season 1 DVD set.
  

• Even after recasting Kate Mulgrew, there ended up being more reshoots (expensive, on-location), as Paramount executives reportedly hated the hairstyle she was given on her first days of filming. Is a woman's hairstyle really the thing that keeps any person from getting into a TV show, or is this just one more bit of scrutiny/indignity that the female star of a TV series must endure that a man doesn't? (There was early consternation over Picard's baldness, but contrary to an internet meme that circulates every now and then, they did not make Patrick Stewart ever screen test with a toupee.)
  

I give "Caretaker" a B-. It's neither the best Star Trek pilot nor the worst. For better and worse, it does set the stage for things good and bad about the series to come.

Santa Slay

"Is The Nightmare Before Christmas a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie?" Both, probably. But, being a family movie more than any of that, there must surely be another movie out there that better combines the genres of horror and Christmas, right? Better Watch Out wants to be that movie.

12-year-old Luke Lerner's parents are going to a Christmas party, and hire babysitter Ashley to watch him for the night. But it's anything but a "silent night" when a psychopath shows up outside the house to torment them. And that's only the first half-hour of the movie, which takes some strange twists and turns from there.

I definitely don't want to spoil much more if you're a horror fan who might actually want to check this movie out. But I will say... it's not really much of a Christmas movie. The parents in this story could be hiring a babysitter for any night out. There's snow outside and Christmas decorations in the house, but there are hardly any moments where it being Christmastime plays any truly significant role in the plot. (It's why I feel alright posting about this movie now, well after Christmas. You can watch this completely independent of whether you're feeling the Christmas spirit.)

If you're a horror movie fan, you probably should check this one out. I have friends who have seen more of the genre than I have, but I'm pretty sure I've seen more than most people... and Better Watch Out served up something I hadn't seen before. It wasn't "blow your mind" wonderful, but I thought it enough for the jaded to sit up and take notice.

And while this is rarely the case for a horror movie, the main reason to watch is for the performances. Well, one in particular, by young Levi Miller in the role of Luke. The movie asks him to take some big swings; indeed, the whole thing pretty well hinges on him. And he pulls it off.

In the grand scheme of things? Better Watch Out probably only rates something like a B-. But I found it an enjoyable B-, and fans of the horror genre in general (and the slasher subgenre in particular) may well like it even more than that.

Lightening the Upload

Ever since The Good Place concluded its brilliant four-season run, a significant Good Place-shaped hole in my television viewing has remained. Of course, nothing is going to come along and perfectly capture that show's blend of hilarity, thoughtfulness, introspection, and depth. But it turns out that there is a show that can scratch the same itch reasonably well.

Upload is a half-hour comedy series on Amazon Prime. Set in 2033, it posits a world where a person's consciousness can be preserved upon death, to live on in a virtual afterlife -- either to enjoy the "better than life" perks there, or to await future technological breakthroughs that can return them to the real world. But the virtual afterlife is highly corporatized, with behemoth companies controlling the best places to store yourself, and constantly dinging your real-world bank accounts for upgrades and perks.

Into this backdrop, newly dead programmer Nathan tries to get to the bottom of his suspicious death while pleasing Ingrid, his girlfriend in the real world -- who controls the purse strings to his existence. His ally is Nora, his "tech support" operator.

Upload is not tackling "big meaning of life" type philosophy as The Good Place does. But it is nevertheless much deeper than the average sitcom, and probably wouldn't draw comparisons were it not for the "afterlife" subject matter. Then again, maybe it would, as it comes from Greg Daniels, who co-created Parks and Recreation with Michael Schur; Schur went on to make The Good Place, while Daniels has gone on to this.

There are a lot of angles into liking the show. There's the scathing commentary on capitalism (subversively hilarious for a show that "airs" on Amazon Prime). There's a sweet rom-com element that builds in a satisfying way throughout the 10-episode first season. And it always remembers to be funny too -- full of clever turns of phrase, sight gags, and more.

Nathan is the protagonist of the show, and actor Robbie Amell is a likeable enough lead, but the show's real ace-in-the-hole is Andy Allo in the role of Nora. Her character escorts the audience on its journey from not-really-liking to caring for the hero, while having many problems of her own to deepen our emotional investment.

Ten episodes at half an hour each may not seem like much (and in the sense that it leaves you wanting more, it isn't), but it is enough for Upload to unspool an interesting story with an intriguing premise. A second season has been ordered... though it may take time to deliver it in coronavirus times. Until then, enjoy what there is so far. I give Upload a B+.

A Gaming Treasure?

I feel like in my gaming circle at least, board game designer Rüdiger Dorn doesn't get as much credit as he deserves. He's designed a number of great games, including one or two that we play fairly regularly, and yet his name is not always on my lips if I start rattling off prolific and well-known designers. But I got a recent reminder when I played one of Dorn's newer creations, Luxor.

In Luxor, players control teams of tomb raiders trying to collect the best treasure from a game board that spirals deeper inside an Egyptian pyramid. A turn is straightforward: play a card, choose one of your team members, and move them deeper into the tomb. But there are a number of mechanisms in the game that make that simple framework quite interesting.

First, there's the collection method. Each space on the board is loaded with a tile at the start of the game. While some present permanent "points of interests" with special game rules (which creates uncertainty and variety during each play), most are treasures with a number of icons indicating how many pawns of one player's color must be present to take the token. You have to play a card with an exact number to reach any given space, so there's often a gamble involved. Just because an opponent has one pawn present on a treasure that requires two doesn't mean they'll absolutely beat you to the punch. Maybe they don't have the card they need to play. Or maybe you should just look elsewhere to a different treasure onto the board.

As you go deeper into the tomb, you receive additional workers to place at the start and increase the size of your team. Movement of those pieces gets easier too: once a treasure is claimed from a space, the space becomes empty and is skipped over during play, making it faster to get deeper into the tomb. Or maybe you want to use your new pieces to tag some of those permanent points of interest on the way in?

Playing cards to move also uses an interesting system. Each player has a five card hand that must be kept in strict order. On your turn, you can only play one of the two cards on the "outsides" of that hand of five. Then the new card you draw is inserted into the center position, pushing the other cards slowly toward the fringes. It's a little tricky, but in exchange for fighting the urge to reorganize your hand, the game gives you an intriguing way of planning ahead. Yet despite the planning potential, analysis paralysis is kept to a minimum, since you can only play one of two cards on any given time (and that in turn will lead to one of two cards you'll be able to play next turn).

There are a variety of scoring systems in the mix, though I haven't played Luxor enough to have a sense of whether this is a "focus on only some" game or a "pay attention to them all" game. There's collecting sets of treasure types, tagging certain points of interest with your pawns on the way in, and endgame scoring for getting each pawn as deep into the tomb as you can (with a special bonus for being first or second to reach the center).

Luxor isn't quite operating at a "you could teach your non-gaming friend to play this" level of simplicity, but it is a pretty easy rules set that nevertheless contains a fairly satisfying amount of strategy. I'd give it a B+. It's perhaps not "another instant classic" from Rüdiger Dorn, but it is a solid and fun design I'd happily play again.

Second Look

It can take quite a while to get through an audiobook these days, what with the "not really ever going anywhere" and all. But there are some more manageable, short novellas that suit the times. But some are better than others.

Take Second Skin, by Christian White. Explaining the story unfortunately requires giving away at least an hour of the four-and-a-half hour total running time... but you have to be sold on it in the first place, of course. Grieving widower Stan meets nine-year-old Erin, who claims to be the reincarnation of his late wife. And if she's to be believed, the circumstances the death of Stan's wife are not what they seemed.

It's a tantalizing little premise, a sort of mystery-thriller with a supernatural angle. This shorter novella package seems to be about the right size too; the ramp up into the idea is brisk and fun, and you aren't made to wait too long between plot revelations. But if it's a clever idea, and a slightly less compelling narrative, the writing itself is rather poor.

The story features a nine-year-old girl as a major character, but the author doesn't seem to have a very realistic grasp on children and age-appropriate behavior. Erin feels like an early teenager, not innocent enough (even given her unusual circumstances) for who the book says she is. And once you begin to question that bit of logic, you quickly notice plenty of other minor details in the story that don't make sense.

Narrator Ellen Archer does a commendable job of keeping the doubts at bay and keeping you engaged in the story. With clever performances for each major character in the story, and a good sense of how to inject tension and make the story more of a thriller, she is the element that kept me engaged and eager to know the ending.

Then I reached that ending, and it's a pretty bad one. Well, maybe not "bad," but ridiculous. The mystery has a surprising twist. That the logic of it is shaky (to put it charitably) should probably have been expected after all the other holes in the story to that point.

I'd give the Second Skin -- the story itself -- a C. Perhaps the overall experience of listening to it might have been as high as a B-, thanks to that skilled narration I mentioned. Still, there are better audiobook choices out there, even among freebies you can snag from Audible.

Trial Run

You could easily argue that Aaron Sorkin has been doing the same "trick" for his whole career. But it's been a hell of a long career, and that "trick" works for me almost every time. His latest iteration is the movie The Trial of the Chicago 7. Based on real events with which I feel I really should have been more familiar, the movie chronicles the politically motivated prosecution of a group of protestors arrested in riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

This movie is, quite frankly, utterly formulaic. It's not that it strays very far away from actual events, it's just that actual events have been carefully curated to maximize drama. And on the off chance that you didn't detect the authorial hand, Aaron Sorkin infuses the script with his trademark patter. You get exactly what you expect when you sit down to watch this movie.

But the formula is done exceptionally well. The Trial of the Chicago 7 gives you all the moments of righteous indignation and inspirational opposition to authority that you could ever hope for. And the movie itself arrives at just the right moment, confirming that all the injustices that many are now only perceiving for the first time has been around for quite a while. (Longer by far than the events of this movie, to be sure.)

To the extent that the movie may feel manipulative in moments, that's arguably a good thing. Watching it left me with a powerful desire to do some internet research, to learn more about the actual events and see what went down like it does in the movie and what didn't. And if that motivation was instilled in me by way of snappy Sorkin zingers? Well, I wasn't going to watch an Aaron Sorkin movie if I didn't like his dialogue.

The movie has an exceptional cast, giving a number of great performances. The one being talked about as an award contender is Sacha Baron Cohen, but I think the actor most giving the movie exactly what it needs is Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman. I can't remember the last legal drama I watched with such a perfectly loathsome villain. And if neither of those performances grabs you? Well, maybe you'll enjoy the work from Eddie Redmayne, John Carroll Lynch, Mark Rylance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, or Michael Keaton -- to name only the more recognizable people in the cast. (Good roles for women, though? That's rare in Aaron Sorkin's work, and this movie is not one of the exceptions.)

I give The Trial of the Chicago 7 a B+. At a time where I'm still working to fill out my Top 10 List of 2020 movies, it earns at least a temporary spot.

It's Not Really "Bad" Bones, But...

Every so often, a board game comes along that's trying to capture a digital game experience in physical game form. Bad Bones is one of those, a "tower defense" game for up to six players.

Each player has a playmat in front of them, showing a 5 x 5 grid. You have a 4-level tower in the center square, and 5 village tiles along the bottom edge (though those tiles aren't keyed to specific columns). Skeleton tokens enter along the left, right, and top edges, drawn at random from a bag and placed on your board according to a series of symbols. They move once each turn, obeying arrows on your playmat that gradually direct them toward your tower and villages to cause destruction. Your goal is to stave off disaster longer than your opponents; the game ends when one player is knocked out, and the best remaining score is the winner.

Your tools for dealing with skeletons are traps and a hero. Once each turn, your hero moves around your grid, instantly mopping up any skeletons it touches (or that walk into the hero). Your traps are a series of tiles you have in reserve, each turn adding one to your board or removing one for repairs. Traps can deflect skeletons in new directions (to potentially march off your board), fling them via catapult toward your opponents, devour them in a fountain of dragon fire, or lure them toward valuable treasure. But traps are also worth points to you if you don't lose them, and each can only withstand a little damage from skeletons before being destroyed.

There are aspects of the game that work well, but it all probably still adds up to an experience that's not really "for me." I can get into the core principle here of a game where you don't exactly "win" so much as "cope." This game is set up to overwhelm you. You can't keep up with all the skeletons heading your way; you're just trying to hold out a little longer, a little better, than everyone else. I found that surprisingly fun.

But there's a lot of "take that" to this game. Many of the traps in this game provide methods of deflecting your skeletons to an opponent's game board -- sometimes simply to the player on your left or right, but often to the player of your choice. Kingmaker scenarios and "gang up on the leader" plays are inevitable in this experience, and I think make it a lot less fun.

The rules also walk a line of being fairly simple, but maybe not quite simple enough? I've played the game a handful of times now, and more than once have run into situations where one player's misunderstanding of the rules really broke the game in a critical way. Because play is chaotic and simultaneous, checking what everyone else is doing isn't really easy, and it isn't until many rounds in, when you look at someone else and wonder how they could possibly be doing so well (or so poorly) that you suddenly realize something has probably gone wrong somewhere.

The game takes only 20 to 30 minutes to play, a run time that doesn't really change much no matter how many players participate. That does carve out a bit of a rare niche for Bad Bones: a fast game for a higher player count that nevertheless doesn't feel quite like a "party game." Still, it's not going to satisfy any strategic itch for the type of player who craves that -- which I must admit is me, even in a "fast and easy" game.

So I give Bad Bones a C+. It's not a game I'd refuse to play outright, but it won't ever be a suggestion (or recommendation) for me. Still, if chaos management in the style of a mobile phone game sounds intriguing to you, there's a very good chance you'll enjoy it quite a bit.

DS9 Flashback: What You Leave Behind

All good things must come to an end. But "All Good Things..." was the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm here to talk about the Deep Space Nine finale, "What You Leave Behind."

A united armada of Federation, Klingon, and Romulan ships sets out to end the war once and for all. But the Dominion isn't going down without a fight, and begins a planetary holocaust to quell rebellion on Cardassia Prime. Meanwhile, Dukat and Kai Winn set out to release the Pah-wraiths from the Fire Caves on Bajor.

Even for two hours, this is a jam-packed episode. The slate of guest stars is the longest of any Star Trek ever. There are several major plot lines and dozens of characters arcs to wrap up. But it's all nearly flawless.

We get action of all kinds. There's one last epic space battle -- a mix of flashy previous footage with dynamic new material (including the Defiant performing an "aerial" loop). There's ground fighting as a new crop of Cardassian resistance rises up. The real cost of all this fighting is made clear too; we don't just hear of the staggering 800 million Cardassian deaths, we see the familiar city landscape (used all throughout the run of the show) reduced to smoldering rubble. It's a victory that Sisko and Admiral Ross can't even celebrate. (Though pouring Martok's decades-old bloodwine out right in front of him seems a tad risky, diplomatically speaking.)

Even though "endings" are the main agenda here, there are still plenty of great little character moments along the way. Quark gets a pep talk from Vic Fontaine (the final scene filmed for the series). Damar sincerely thanks Kira for her role in saving Cardassia -- a sentiment which must surely leave her conflicted. Weyoun's role of True Believer is expressed both in his callous call for genocide and the way he sops up praise from the Founder Leader even after she's just lied to the Breen. Kira inherits Sisko's baseball. We get one more righteous monologue from Avery Brooks as Sisko confronts a Dukat clearly emboldened, not cowed, by almost dying. And on the lighter side, there's playful flirting between Mila and Damar, uncontrolled hysterics as the rebels realize they can't even succeed in a suicide mission, and Quark's tone making clear that he's happier to be rid of Worf than Odo.

Almost every character's ending is satisfying and fitting. The end of Garak's exile from Cardassia is far more bitter than sweet. Miles must say goodbye to his dear friend Julian. Nog is promoted. Dax and Bashir are exploring their new love. Worf is made ambassador, officially becoming the bridge between the Federation and the Klingons that he has always been in action. Odo finally returns to his people, an agent of change in every sense of the word. Kira takes charge of the station. Quark is exactly where he's always been, where he wants to be. (Fitting that he gets the last line of the series, following an argument with Kira that mirrors one he had in the first episode.)

Then there are the deaths (and "deaths"). Damar goes out a hero. Weyoun goes out having delivered one smile-laced insult too many. Kai Winn's unchecked ambition finally exacts the ultimate price. Dukat winds up in "hell" with the very "devils" he tried to release. And Sisko's existence becomes a closed loop as he returns to the Prophets who created him.

That last point was a little fraught for actor Avery Brooks. The writers had scripted a definitive ending: Sisko knew that he would never return from the Celestial Temple. But after filming that ending, Brooks went to show runner Ira Steven Behr to express a deep reservation: leaving Kasidy Yates a single mother with an unborn child carried a pervasive, negative stereotype of black men. The scene was rewritten and refilmed to state that Sisko would return... he just could not say how or when.

That's not the only example of one of the actors being insightful about the script; other performers have said many interesting things about the finale over the years. Andrew Robinson shared his belief that Mila was actually Garak's mother. Jeffrey Combs is convinced that the Dominion (and the Vorta in particular) would never be so "all eggs in one basket" foolish enough to let Weyoun's last clone be destroyed, thinking there surely must be another out there somewhere. Armin Shimerman praised the fact that Quark never got a goodbye directly from Odo; he thinks Odo was a true friend in that moment for not "ending the game" between them.

Music plays a key role in the finale. The Vic Fontaine performance of "The Way You Look Tonight" is an unforgettable cap to a scene clearly saying goodbye to the show itself. James Darren gives a great performance full of little moments. ("That laugh that wrinkles your nose" to Kira -- and Nana Visitor's reaction -- is perfection.) This scene was filmed on the actual final day of production, and the anonymous holograms in the crowd are all members of the writing staff and recurring alien actors going without their makeup. Many in the real-world audience won't know this, yet I feel like it all infuses the scene with love and closure.

Dennis McCarthy's score is strong too, with the clear highlight being his piece for the montage of clips highlighting the growth of the characters over the years. It effortlessly weaves the Deep Space Nine theme with both "The Way You Look Tonight" and "The Minstrel Boy," hitting the emotional bullseye. It's also a clever score for the moments with no music, crucially the chilling scene when Weyoun announces the extermination of an entire city.

There are a couple of small misfires -- most having to to with Dukat. That he just shows up with his eyesight restored feels like we've skipped over some worthy chapter of the story. The odd couple pairing of him and Kai Winn has lost some momentum (and believability) in their absence of many episodes. The Winn/Dukat scenes are sprinkled throughout the episode for dramatic effect, even though they clearly can't be unfolding over the same.... days? weeks? ... as the conclusion of the Dominion War. And even though multiple episodes have built Dukat up as "the anti-Emissary," I still feel like his main conflict is with Kira, and she should have been the one to kill him if he was to die.

The sudden conversion/persuasion of the Founder Leader after linking with Odo also feels a bit convenient -- though I suppose one must consider how horrifying the prospect of "dying as a Solid" was to her. Plus, since they last linked, Odo has had a deeper relationship with Kira that surely changes the math on whether solids and changelings can truly coexist.

Perhaps the biggest misfire of all is the absence of Jadzia Dax from the clip montage (most keenly lacking in the section devoted to Worf). Apparently, lingering bad blood between the production and Terry Farrell (hard to blame her for that) led her agent to quote a sky-high price for agreeing to re-use her footage in a new episode of television. The budget couldn't afford it. But it sure distracts from the story on-screen.

Still, the strong parts of the finale so outshine the few weak spots. And the final silent moment is simply perfect: a wordless meeting of Kira and Jake, and a long pullback to literally leave the station behind. This finale isn't designed to be a tearjerker from beginning to end, but man, the moments when it turns that on really work for me.

Other observations:

• This is the first time in an entire season that we've seen O'Brien's family. Molly is looking much older. (I mean, not "came back through a time portal as a teenager" older, but you get my point...)
  

• Before the battle, in a moment that plays very pointedly when you know how it all ends, Kasidy Yates makes Sisko promise he'll come home to them.
  

• Dukat explicitly tells us that the Bajorans fear the Fire Cave. Which I guess is why a place with ancient rock carvings on a mountainside isn't crawling with tourists.
  

• As I noted in reviewing "Far Beyond the Stars," the writers reportedly gave some consideration to using Sisko's alter ego Benny Russell in the finale -- an idea I'm happy was discarded.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine goes out strong; rarely do I find the finale of a television series as satisfying as this. I give "What You Leave Behind" an A. The final season as a whole is quite strong too, with my Top 5 picks of season 7 being this finale, "The Siege of AR-558," "Tacking Into the Wind," "When It Rains…," and "Image in the Sand."

And with that, I leave Deep Space Nine behind -- another series of Star Trek "flashback reviews" complete. To those who have followed along as I've droned on these several years, thanks, and I hope you enjoyed it!

The Oscar for Best Sound Should Go To...

Academy Awards season is looking rather different this year, but even with the ceremony delayed and most theaters that would be showing the major contenders closed, word of the award darlings is still trickling out. One movie I've been hearing buzz about -- particularly in the category of Best Actor -- is Sound of Metal. I recently popped open Amazon Prime to stream it for myself.

Sound of Metal is the story of Ruben, the drummer in a black metal duo, whose life is completely upended when extreme hearing loss from his constant close quarter gigs leaves him practically deaf. Concerned that he'll slip back into drug addiction, his girlfriend and music partner Lou helps him connect with an addict recovery group for the deaf. But Ruben isn't ready to face the reality of what his new life will be.

Riz Ahmed stars as Ruben, and it is increasingly suggested that he'll receive his first Oscar nomination for the role. It's certainly an "award catnip" kind of role, for which he learned to drum and learned sign language, and he gives a raw and exposed performance. He is indeed very good, even if I am perhaps making a little fun of the sheer "engineered for critics" quality of it all.

Though as good as Ahmed is (and he is), I would say that the real strength of the movie is its sound design. Large chunks of this movie are crafted to put us in Ruben's place, and the incredibly thoughtful work of the sound team does so brilliantly. This isn't "every action blockbuster ever" -- you know, with the moment where all other sound drops to an underwater murmur as a high-pitched whine shreds the speakers. This is a prolonged soundscape deployed in multiple environments that feels so authentic that it actually makes the movie physically uncomfortable to watch at times.

There are some notable supporting performances in the film too, particularly by Paul Raci in the role of the support group leader. Though he is a hearing actor, he was raised by two deaf parents, and brings a great authenticity to his performance.

While the film does include many impactful moments, it's also opens at a rather languid pace (despite featuring almost all of the snippets of metal music you might expect right up front in the movie). And it heads toward a fairly predictable destination. It's not an inappropriate or unwelcome one, but this is definitely one of those cases where the journey is more important.

I would recommend the movie on the whole, though. For the many strong moments along the way, I'd give Sound of Metal a B+, and it does make my Top 2020 Movies list. It's probably not essential Oscar viewing (as the film itself may not be a Best Picture nominee, and Riz Ahmed is all but guaranteed to lose Best Actor to Chadwick Boseman). Still, it's a movie I think many would enjoy more than typical Oscar fare.