The Measure of a Stand

It must have seemed like a great idea just a couple of years ago. In a decades-long career of hit novels, Stephen King's The Stand remains one of his most beloved. It had been over 20 years since the previous television adaptation -- which had a mostly solid cast, but the exceedingly limited production values of a 1990s television mini-series. Why not take another swing at it?

Of course, the people who set out to remake King's story of a battle between good and evil in the aftermath of a global pandemic... could never have known that they'd finish filming just days before a real-life global pandemic (albeit a less apocalyptic one) changed everything. They never could have imagined the world their new version would be arriving in.

Still... the new version of The Stand (on CBS All Access, now Paramount Plus) is not too bad. The story was always more about the aftermath than the disease, and if you can get over the hump of the first pandemic-centric episode or two, it all begins to feel like escapist fantasy again.

This new version has a lot more money behind it -- not to mention that fact that money can buy you a much slicker-looking product today that it could in the 90s. This version of The Stand feels like it has appropriate scope for fans of the book. In particular, the Las Vegas material improves most in the new version; the seat of post-apocalyptic evil feels grand and hedonistic and unhinged.

Some of the casting is particularly strong in this version. Alexander Skarsgård makes a great Randall Flagg, menacing and seductive in turn. Owen Teague makes a good Harold Lauder, smarmy and awkward and self-important. Ezra Miller is an indelibly creepy and dangerous "Trashcan Man." Whoopi Goldberg is a commanding yet still Mother Abigail. You also get James Marsden, Greg Kinnear, Amber Heard, J.K. Simmons, and more in the enormous ensemble.

Yet also: The Stand is from that period in King's work where he could rarely find a good ending, and this mini-series has to battle with that. That battle comes out something of a "split decision." On the one hand, the goofiest element of the book's climax is actually rendered here in a convincingly scary and powerful way. On the other hand, Stephen King himself steps in to script the ninth and final episode, and it's a fairly meandering bit of fluff that acts as an inessential coda to the meat of the story

Overall, I'd say no one should be picking up another streaming service just to watch The Stand. But since a lot of my readers will be subscribing at some point or another to watch new Star Trek series, you might want to consider watching The Stand while you're there. I give it a B.

Buttery Goodness?

Wingspan has been one of the biggest recent board game hits -- both in the community at large and in my gaming circle. In it, designer Elizabeth Hargrave struck many clever balances. The core rules are fairly simple and easy to explain, while the interactions among the game's many cards add enough sophistication to satisfy more experienced gamers. Wingspan has risen to a lofty Top 20 position on BoardGameGeek, which I think is deserved.

I was quite interested to see what Hargrave created next... and now we have that in Mariposas, a game about monarch butterfly migrations across North America. Tiles are set up across a hex map of the continent. Players start with a single butterfly token in Mexico, but as you head out onto the map, you gather tokens to expand into later generations.

A goal condition for each of three seasons is selected, specifying different ways of scoring victory points: getting different butterflies to different colored hexes on the map, moving butterflies to the east coast, or migrating them north of a given line on the map. But at the end of the game, the big scoring happens for getting as many butterflies as you can back down to Mexico where it all began. Balancing these competing interests is the key to a winning score.

There are a lot of customizable aspects to this game that would ensure variety on repeat plays. Many more goal tiles than there are seasons in the game will give you different priorities for your movements. Special power tokens switch around too, rewarding you for collecting sets of tokens from the map.

But one thing that isn't likely to change much on replays: the game doesn't create much interaction between the players. A dozen or so cities on the map have scrambled tokens that are face down until the first butterfly arrives. Once the token is revealed, everyone knows the reward for going there. The player who revealed it gets a slight bonus, but it's so negligible that it's arguably not compensation for the time you spent moving toward an unknown city for something you personally might not value. And yet, this seems to be the only element in the game that cares at all about what anyone else is doing. Mariposas is otherwise a quite solitary affair where no opponent can ever really do anything to make you rethink your strategy on the (butter)fly.

There are a couple of unfortunate gaps in the rulebook, having to do with how new butterfly tokens (numbered by "generation") are spawned. Like Wingspan, Mariposas is a very thematic game, so the intent seems evident. But in a couple of places, a strict reading of the rulebook language would lead to an ambiguous or even contradictory conclusion to what that intent would seem to be. Look... I hate to be that guy that says a game's rulebook isn't clear. (It's impossible to anticipate every possible question that someone somewhere is going to have.) But I'm afraid this game's rulebook isn't entirely clear.

Perhaps the bar was set too high in my mind after Wingspan. Few designers ever have a game that rises so high in esteem in the gaming community, and fewer still have back-to-back hits. Certainly, Mariposas does have fun puzzle elements asking you to balance competing interests in an engaging way. It's also (commendably) a very different kind of game than Wingspan. But the comparative lack of player interaction here is quite a disappointment for me, that no amount of flexibility and variety in the game's core can fully overcome.

I give Mariposas a B-. I would try it some more if the opportunity arose. But I think it will be hard to want to do that in light of other games there on the same game shelf.

At My Wicz End

In each year's Oscar race, the movie to garner the most nominations is often (but not always) considered the one to beat for Best Picture. This year, with 10 nominations, that movie is Mank, David Fincher's biopic-adjacent tale of how writer Herman J. Mankiewicz crafted the script of Citizen Kane. It has many other elements that seem like catnip to Oscar voters: it's a movie "about movies," it makes a bold stylistic choice (to be presented in black-and-white; though that seems not as rare as you'd think these days), and it's anchored by a scenery-chewing lead performance by Gary Oldman. So, is Mank going to win Best Picture?

Man, I hope not. It's terrible.

I should probably at this point offer the disclaimer that I'm not much of a fan of Citizen Kane. I think I appreciate its place in film history, from its array of clever camera tricks to its stark lighting to its foundational use of the "non-chronological narrative." Take all that, add in the fact that so many of Hollywood's biggest directors worship at Kane's altar, and you can safely say that whatever your favorite movie is, it probably wouldn't exist without Citizen Kane.

But all that is intellectual... and that's how I find the experience of watching Citizen Kane to be too. It's dry, distant, slow. I know it's the Mona Lisa of film (or perhaps The Scream, or Guernica), but it just doesn't do it for me. And Mank is really just begging for you to make comparisons.

Mank is just two-plus hours of trading on the audience's knowledge of Citizen Kane. Its jumbled narrative is constructed to mirror Kane's, with an array of flashbacks meant to build an understanding of the title character. Its endless allusions to Kane range from plot (an election plays an essential role in both stories) to technique (the staging and lighting is painstakingly crafted to match) to even re-staging specific shots (a callout to the famous snow globe drop is the one everyone will spot, but no doubt Kane scholars could list dozens if not hundreds).

David Fincher controls the movie to the nth degree (as he does all his movies). He coaxes heightened, old style acting from his performers. He renders visual effects using the same techniques used in the 40s (or, at least, uses modern techniques to achieve the same look). He adds burn marks to the film to indicate where the reel changes would be. He has on-screen captions rendered as though by typewriter (which incongruously rolls the text in the wrong direction after the typist hits the carriage return). This is a temple of style over substance.

Of course, that's because there's so much style and so little substance. This movie is really only "about the writing of Citizen Kane" as a nominal hook. There's almost no time spent on wrestling with the writing; instead, it's a bunch of simplistic psychoanalysis suggesting that Herman Mankiewicz simply vacuumed up events from a decade of his life and used them to spit out the Kane script in two months. Mank isn't even about the controversy about the shared writing credit between Mankiewicz and Orson Welles; that issue is raised half-heartedly in the final minutes of the film, as though to give a belated point to the entire waste of time.

Indeed, there is only one thing I can say in praise of the film. It has an excellent score that mimics the style of golden era Hollywood with a bombastic, swelling orchestra. There are many composers working today who could have provided such music, but it's more notable in this instance for coming from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. In dozens of movies they've scored (including everything from David Fincher, once they started collaborating), nothing they've done sounds like this. Reznor and Ross discarded their usual form entirely to produce something to fit the subject, and it struck me as more authentic than the mimicry of the film's story and visuals themselves.

It's possible a fan of Citizen Kane might enjoy Mank more than I did? But then, if you really do think of Citizen Kane as the greatest film ever made, then surely there's no way this will stack up, right? I give Mank an F. I wish I had the time back. If indeed it does win the Best Picture Oscar, I will regard it as the worst film I've ever seen to do so.

A Walk on the Wild Side

It seems like all the cool kids have had a Nintendo Switch for literally years now; it just celebrated its fourth birthday. One of the launch day titles was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But I've only recently picked up both the console and the game. I recognize that I'm being neither timely nor controversial when I say: it's excellent.

Zelda games have been "console sellers" for Nintendo going back decades. Sometimes I've gone for them, sometimes I haven't. But I've never really been disappointed. The teams behind these games know what they're doing, rise to the occasion, and always succeed in making something familiar-yet-new and so very satisfying. But they've really outdone themselves here. Breath of the Wild is a real contender for the best Zelda game ever.

Again, being quite late to the party on this one, there's probably nothing I could say about the game that hasn't already been said somewhere. Nevertheless, I can still highlight the things I loved. This is an "open world RPG" about as perfectly balanced as it can be. You never have to wander far to find some new shiny object to draw your attention. You're never at a loss for things to do, places to go, monsters to fight.

Most significantly, all this content is broken up into super-satisfying bite-sized chunks. It's very rare to play the game -- even for just an hour or so (assuming you can stop yourself) -- and not feel like you've accomplished something meaningful during the session. The "shrine" system is one great way this happens, a series of 120 mostly puzzle-based instances where you can find loot and gradually level up. There's seemingly no end to the ways a shrine can call upon your skills in a new way, make you work step by step toward some clever solution, and look at things from new angles. Even after beating the game by completing its story, I found myself continuing to play mainly to find more shrines and experience their compelling gameplay.

"Durability" systems in RPGs, in which items break and are lost, often feel like too much realism and too little fun. Breath of the Wild threads the needle here, though, using the gradual destruction of items as a way of coaxing you into trying out different weapons and shields. The system is sufficiently vast that everything has some purpose somewhere: one- or two-handed weapons, bows and arrows of half a dozen types, powers of fire and ice and lighting, and gear (which doesn't degrade) to help you swim or climb better, hike deserts or snowy mountains more easily, and more. There's an enormous array of items in this world, and nearly everything is useful at some point.

Cooking and crafting systems have often felt tacked-on to me in other games, but the system is much more satisfying in Breath of the Wild. You can experiment on your own or learn from guidance throughout the game. None of this is revolutionary; it just feels polished to me here, by designers who were definitely learning from other games in the genre.

The music is excellent. There are a number of melodies that will get stuck in your head in the best way... but that's not because of a shortage of music overall. Dozens, if not hundreds, of situations in the game each have their own music, a wide backdrop to your adventuring. It's the first game soundtrack in quite some time that I could imagine listening to outside the game... though the association will be so strong that the game would be very much in my mind if I ever did.

I may be four years behind when it comes to this game, but I'm here in time for the sequel. In designing downloadable content for Breath of the Wild, the team reportedly found their way into a whole new game that has been in development now for some time. Years between Zelda games isn't that unusual; quality like this takes time. But I know I won't be behind the curve next time around. I'm excited to see what's next from the people who created this masterpiece of a game.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an absolute A for me, and deserves the highest of praise. If, like me, you somehow haven't played it either, I really can't recommend it enough.

Voyager Flashback: Ex Post Facto

Depending on who from Star Trek: Voyager you ask, "Ex Post Facto" was one the first season's best -- or worst -- episodes.

Tom Paris is accused of a murder by the people of an alien world, and they punish him by implanting the final memories of his victim inside his mind -- he'll relive the crime through the victim's eyes every 14 hours. Tuvok sets out to prove Paris' innocence, investigating an unhappy housewife, two warring alien races, and suspicious government officials.

While "Ex Post Facto" began as a pitch from outside writer Evan Carlos Somers, it's mainly the work of series co-creator Michael Piller, who seized the opportunity to write what is essentially a film noir (right down to the memories shot in black and white by director LeVar Burton). Piller thought this was one of the best episodes of the first season. Another series co-creator, Jeri Taylor, thought this was the worst by a mile. She found the film noir indulgent, and the damage to the character of Tom Paris unforgivable (portraying him as a womanizer not nearly reluctant enough to get involved with a married woman).

I tend to side with Taylor on this one. So much about this episode falls flat. Robert Duncan McNeill may have been good so far bringing us a smug, swaggering Tom Paris, but I'm not sure he's a strong enough actor to portray the pain and torment called for here. He gets no help from the script or guest star Robin McKee as the "femme fatale" of the piece; her character of Lidell Ren is cold and aloof as the film noir style demands, but this gives nothing for any scene partner to act off of.

The whole "first person murder" element doesn't work at all. A scene that should be violent and dangerous plays like everyone is trying to protect an expensive camera from damage. The spoken dialogue is stilted and wooden, feeling exactly like what it almost certainly was: actors trying to play to an off camera script supervisor reading the unseen victim's lines (with the real actor dubbing them in later).

The story borrows from a lot of other sources. The role of the "dog that did not bark" in solving the crime is a lift from Arthur Conan Doyle. The way Tuvok gathers all the suspects in one place to solve the mystery is straight from Agatha Christie. This doesn't even feel particularly original for Star Trek. Starfleet trying to tiptoe neutrally through two warring alien races is one of the franchise's most enduring tropes. And this murder mystery construct with its conflicting witness statements feels a lot like The Next Generation's "A Matter of Perspective." (Not that repeating parts of an earlier Star Trek means the results will be bad by default. One year after this episode was made, Deep Space Nine would use the "implanted memories as punishment for a crime" idea in one of the very best episodes of that entire series.)

The good intentions do at least shine through in some elements of the episode. It does a pretty good job of giving most of the characters something to do: the protagonist baton is handed smoothly from Paris to Tuvok partway through the episode, while Kim gets center-stage in filling us in on what happened, Chakotay gets to take point when the ship is attacked, and the Doctor has some nice character building moments (and some fun "just the facts"-style interactions with Tuvok). Director LeVar Burton also stages some good moments with the camera: the extreme close-ups during Voyager's first mind meld are effective, and Janeway's command strength comes through loud and clear when she delivers threats directly into the camera.

Other observations:

• While considering names, the Doctor pauses before mentioning "Spock." It's enough of a pause to create some ambiguity about whether he means the 20th century pediatrician/author, or the Star Trek character. (But it's almost certainly the former, right?)
  

• The budget for this episode is clearly tight in places (a reused matte painting from The Next Generation) and clearly not in others (the strange feathery, coral-like "hair" of the Baneans is pretty wild).
  

• It seems to be Neelix's principle character trait that he cannot read people/situations. During different serious moments of the episode, he's cracking unwanted jokes and rushing to point out that he was right.

• I praised some good staging earlier, but Paris and Lidell kneeling together during a prolonged scene of flirtation is truly awkward. (And maybe it's my "old man knees" talking, but they're doing it in a rainstorm too -- it just seems painful.)
  

The bottom line: The Next Generation told a better version of this episode before this, and Deep Space Nine told a way better version of this episode after this. Voyager's take is quite superfluous. I give "Ex Post Facto" a C+.

Jenga, Remixed

Remember when going to bars was a thing we could do? And some of those bars had giant Jenga sets you could play with? Jenga can be fun under the right circumstances, but it's hardly the game of choice for a bunch of true gamers getting together for an evening, right? But what if, like, strategic Jenga were a thing? That's the niche that the three designers of Stacked -- Sean Brown, LeAnn Phillips, and Tim Phillips -- seemed to be trying to fill.

Stacked comes with a supply of mostly Tetris-style blocks. The "cubes" of which the blocks are formed are sort of devilish in that they're thinner in one dimension than the other, making for an increasingly unstable tower as you stack them.

There are three different games in Stacked, three different rules sets for the blocks and their accompanying deck of cards. One is essentially a fusion of a trick-taking game with Jenga. Each card shows one of the game's block pieces. In a round, each player must add a block to the tower, the one shown on the card they played. But the winner of the trick instead forces an opponent to add their block to the stack, avoiding the risk of toppling the tower and losing half the points they've earned. You play as many games as it takes to reach an agreed-upon point total.

It's debatable whether anyone really needed there to be "more to Jenga." But assuming you're on board, I don't think Stacked quite fulfills the promise of adding any meaningful strategy. There are enough "suits" (block colors) that when you're working with a limited 7-card hand, you often don't have a choice (or much of a choice) in following suit as required. (That's pretty much how trick-taking games work.) If you rarely have a choice, then you're basically just playing regular Jenga... albeit one with extra steps in the rules.

As I said, there are two other rules sets here. One is "draw a card, play the piece shown," the other is a "HORSE"-like game where each player has to match the shape or color of the previously played piece when adding a new one. I didn't play either of these versions, so there is more to experience in Stacked than I actually did. To be fair, then, my review should be considered "incomplete."

Still, I think I've seen enough here to say that this is basically as fun as Jenga -- little more, little less. I'm lukewarm. Call it a C+? Maybe a B- when you catch me in the right mood for this sort of thing? If you like manual dexterity games a lot, this one might be worth adding to your collection.

Do Tell

On past occasions, I've written about a few novellas I've listened to on Audible, available free through a subscription. The past repeats as I now write about a thriller by J.P. Pomare: Tell Me Lies.

Margot Scott is a psychologist with a happy family... but it wasn't always that way. Dark episodes in her past come roaring back into the present with she takes on a charming new client named Cormac. His flirtations seem harmless enough at first, until a fire at Margot's home endangers everyone and upsets the equilibrium of her life. The fire was set intentionally... but it may not even have anything to do with Cormac. Is Margot being stalked by another of her patients?

There are a lot of fun threads at play in this mystery-thriller. But it's ultimately a lot more successful as a thriller than a mystery, as the writing gives quite a lot away. A slow introduction of characters leaves you with few "suspects" early on, which makes something that might have been a "whodunit" into more of a "whydunit." A prologue framing device reveals action from many months later in the narrative, providing far too many clues for the clever listener to reason what the journey is going to be to get that point.

But the characters are rather well drawn. Tell Me Lies is Margot's first-person narrative, and author J.P. Pomare does a good job making her complex and believable. You follow a well-intentioned person one step at a time down a dark road to things she wouldn't have thought of doing at first. Information in the narrative is hidden in ways that feel natural for Margot, rather than a construct of the writer to maintain suspense. Margot's family are hardly major players, but they are fleshed out enough to be more than utilitarian. And Cormac is a fun mix of charisma and danger.

The 6-hour-plus tale is narrated by Aimee Horne, who is the best reason to experience this story. She has the perfect pace for building tension, does an excellent job of delineating characters, and juggles some challenging accent work. The story is set in Australia, and she herself is Australian; yet she also delivers a flawless Irish accent for the mysterious Cormac, moves her pitch up and down all over the place for different characters, and more. I'm quite certain that reading this story on the page would be less effective than hearing it in this format.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this performer's polish takes a story I might have given a B- (it's rather predictable, and a bit long) and lifts it all the way to a B+ (the journey is fun, it's interesting to spend time in Margot's head). Unless you listen to so many thrillers that you'd likely be jaded by this one, I'd say it's probably worth your time.

Boys-terous

Truly timeless entertainment is rather rare, I think. More often, you look back and see the signs of age in something written years ago. In some cases, this transforms a work into a fascinating time capsule of another age. The Boys in the Band is such a case.

Mart Crowley wrote his boundary busting play about gay men in 1968 -- a year before Stonewall marked what many consider the beginning of the LGBT civil rights movement. That play was revived on Broadway in 2018 for its 50th anniversary, a production in which all nine characters were played by openly gay actors. All those actors then reprised their roles for this 2020 film.

The story is of a birthday party gone horribly wrong. When host Michael's old college friend -- who doesn't know he's gay -- shows up unexpected, where many guests refuse to be closeted, conflict is inevitable. And once things descend into chaos, Michael becomes determined to drive it to rock bottom as quickly and forcefully as possible.

It's hard to imagine exactly what the "message" of The Boys in the Band really is or was meant to be -- then or now. I don't read it as something that was ever meant to "change hearts and minds," because while the characters do run a spectrum that does show there's not just one way that gay looks, the overriding character trait of all of them is that they're assholes. The scenario of this story persists long past the point of realism, characters sticking around for seemingly no reason other than they're characters in a play who haven't yet reached the page on which they exit.

But then, maybe this is that time capsule effect. While the journey toward equality is still incomplete, it's hard to overstate just how far things have come since 1968. Casting your thoughts into that past: if you have only a few people with whom you can be yourself, maybe there's no real limit to the amount of shit you'll take from them? It makes sense that internal pressure could harden self-loathing into a toxic diamond.

That's all well and good as a signpost of progress, or as an intellectual exercise. But I didn't find it particularly entertaining. Imagine two hours of cringe comedy without really all that much comedy. A room of witty people determined to use that wit to eviscerate one another. An emotional battlefield where there are to be no survivors. That's The Boys in the Band.

If you are going to watch it, though, you will be treated to a hell of a cast. This stars Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, Charlie Carver, Robin de Jesús, Brian Hutchison, Michael Benjamin Washington, and Tuc Watkins. And because it's making no attempt to hide its origins as a stage play, almost everyone gets their "show-stopping monologue" to act their ass off. In my view, Zachary Quinto rises most to the occasion; his character of Harold remains cultivated and aloof until swooping in for a vicious verbal swipe. (But also, if all you know Jim Parsons from is The Big Bang Theory, you'll be in for quite a shock.)

I'd give The Boys in the Band a C-. I'm glad the film exists, though I'm certain I'll never watch it again. I am also truly grateful it feels as dated as it does.

Speaking for Itself

Although the pandemic has me missing live theater, and grateful at some efforts to bring that experience into our homes, filmed productions are ultimately only a substitute for the real thing. And some live theater loses quite a bit in the translation. One example, in my view, is currently streaming on Hulu: Derek DelGaudio's In and of Itself.

This is one of those quasi-mysterious things where many people insist that the less you know about it before you watch it, the better. While I'm not sure I agree, it is true that it defies easy explanation; the whole here is undoubtedly greater than the sum of its parts. But since the alternative for me would be to creep along in a riddle-like review, here's my summary: In and Of Itself is part magic act, part one-man show (and moves throughout to different points on a continuum between those two things). Derek DelGaudio regales a captive audience with a series of stories, punctuated with clever illusions and sleight of hand, built around a central thesis of defining the self.

Some of the show works marvelously in the film format. Close-up magic is nearly always effective when a camera can get right in there and present things more clearly than you could see sitting in the back row of even a modest-sized off-Broadway theater. Elements of the show that differed from one night to the next in the live performance are sometimes shown in rapid-fire montage, underscoring how live theater isn't fixed in the way that movies and TV series are.

There's alchemy in what DelGaudio created with this show. He manages to be very serious without slipping into the off-putting pretentiousness that most self-serious magicians seem to have. He manages to tell deeply personal stories without the ridiculous navel-gazing commonly associated with "the one-man show."

But at the same time, it truly seems to me that "you had to be there." Throughout the film version (and particularly at the climax), we see audience members weeping openly at the experience they're having. The reaction seems utterly genuine and powerful... but also very personal. Perhaps I was in too hard-hearted a mood when I watched it, but for me it never really crossed the line from "well-crafted performance" into the sort of "life-changing revelation" that the live audience seemed to be having. I found it more thought-provoking than emotion-provoking.

Make no mistake: if you are a fan of magic, you will enjoy In and of Itself -- regardless of whether you would have liked it more in person. I'd grade it a solid B. But I may always wonder what it would have been like to see the show live, without knowing too much about it.

Voyager Flashback: Eye of the Needle

Star Trek: Voyager reportedly began with an agreement among the writers not to reference any "Alpha Quadrant species" early in the show, while they were still establishing the series. But they decided to make an exception when former Next Generation intern Hilary J. Bader pitched them the idea for "Eye of the Needle."

The crew discovers a small wormhole leading to the Alpha Quadrant -- too small to allow travel, but sufficient to establish communications with someone on the other side. Janeway soon finds herself struggling to convince a skeptical Romulan of their situation before the opportunity to communicate with home vanishes.

While falling back on existing Star Trek villains is clearly a risk to telling a story like this, the greater risk is turning Star Trek: Voyager into Gilligan's Island; there are only so many times you can do "the crew may have found a way home, only to be thwarted" before the audience will get tired of it. But once is not too many, and I think this episode is actually the series' strongest one yet.

While technobabble still figures into the plot a great deal, it's handled much more deftly than other episodes so far. For one thing, they're having to figure this science out one step at a time, an endeavor the Romulan on the other end of the wormhole begins to help with. More importantly, the personal stakes remain in the foreground at all times -- Tuvok voices Vulcan caution against getting one's hopes up; Kim's eagerness to talk to home is contrasted with B'Elanna feeling that everyone she cares about is on Voyager; The Doctor faces the possibility that he might be left behind on the ship all alone.

Vulnerability is on display throughout. Without it seeming exploitative to put Janeway in a nightdress, we get an entire scene in which the captain must pop straight from bed to appeal emotionally to a Romulan whose name and face she doesn't even know. She eventually wins him over by drawing out his vulnerabilities, getting him to speak of a daughter so young that he hasn't seen her since leaving for deep space.

The Romulan, Telek R'Mor, is played by veteran Star Trek guest star Vaughn Armstrong (in one of his many alien roles). He gives us a surprisingly nuanced character, considering we don't even learn his name until very late in the episode. He starts off as suspicious as we expect a Romulan to be, but a throughline of scientific curiosity and that aforementioned scene of vulnerability softens him into a sympathetic character.

The final twist helps steers things away from Gilligan's Island territory. By having the wormhole be a passage not only through space, but 20 years into the past, it turns out this was never a viable path home to start with. Leaving it on the ambiguous note that Telek R'Mor died -- probably before ever delivering the crew's messages -- also avoids deflating the series' central premise just a half-dozen episodes in: so far as they know, there's still no one else who knows they're stuck out here.

The main subplot works well too, focusing on the Doctor's friction with the rest of the crew. The bookends are perhaps slightly off -- the character who mistreats him maybe should have been Maquis rather than Starfleet, and he doesn't look like a guy obsessed with working out (he sounds like a Crossfitter). But along the way, we get more of the solid Kes-Doctor rapport, good persuasion by Kes to get Janeway to take the hologram seriously, and genuine concern by the captain once she's been convinced. It's a great moment when Janeway asks the Doctor what he wants, and he's stunned silent by the question: he never figured anything would change, and so he's never given it any thought.

Other observations:

• Tom Paris introduced Kes to... spinach juice with a touch of pear? That has to have been Paris totally punking her, right? "No, really! Everyone on Earth loves this!"

• Way back when, the first Star Trek: The Next Generation episode to feature the Romulans dropped a little dialogue suggesting that they'd been in a decades-long period of isolation and that no one had heard from them. I'm guessing the writers wish they'd never said that, as it wasn't relevant to the plot there, already contradicted an earlier episode, and just made for multiple points down the road where they and other Star Trek series had to pretend it had never been said. (Although... maybe this would explain why Telek R'Mor is so skittish to be talking to the Federation here?)
  

• When Tuvok insists on following the Romulan the entire time he's aboard Voyager, Janeway immediately agrees. It's a refreshing change of policy regarding "advice from the security officer," compared to Worf getting endlessly shot down by Picard.
  

• The Doctor ends this episode on a poignant moment, declaring that he'd like a name. But the poignancy of that moment is undercut somewhat when you know that after seven seasons, he'd never get one.

• This is the first episode in which Neelix does not appear. (And it's the best Voyager episode so far. Coincidence?)
  

"Eye of the Needle" does a good job weaving a techno-problem with personal stakes. I give the episode a B+.

Comedy Half-Life?

"That has not aged well." It's a reaction many of us are used to having about beloved entertainment from our childhood that we haven't revisited since childhood. Whether we rightfully "should have known better at the time" or "attitudes have evolved over the years," pop culture history is full of movies and television littered with cringey moments you may have forgotten.

Some entertainment is showing its age even faster than that. One TV series I recently watched that seems to be aging observably in real time is Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix. Debuting just six years ago and concluding in 2019 (not counting an interactive special that followed in early 2020), the series is already showing its age in uncomfortable ways. I almost bailed while watching season one -- partly from the the growing pains of a new comedy that hadn't really figured out its brand of funny, and partly for the humor that doesn't seem so deft today.

A lot of the early humor in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt comes from a place of "we totally know this is inappropriate... but you all can tell that we know that, and that makes it okay... right?" Maybe? When the jokes are funny? But while the series is learning to be funny, it's using co-star Tituss Burgess -- a gay person of color -- as a flak jacket to excuse some humor that's not quite racist, not quite homophobic... but not quite right either. (Meanwhile, the humor about Matt Lauer in the pilot episode? Yeah, that plays terribly today. And it's only one of an uncomfortable number of cringey examples in the first half of that first season.)

But, like I said, I almost bailed out. The series did pull out of its early tailspin (especially once it reached the second season). The show hits on a kind of "live action Family Guy" vibe, loaded with quick cutaway gags and silly one-liners. It also drifts toward a Seinfeld approach that assumes you aren't actually supposed to find the characters likeable most of the time. The jokes that might seem like they're punching down start to work as it's increasingly clear they're punching down at the characters themselves.

Plus, a preposterous parade of top notch guest stars is always there to steal the show. Yes, main cast members Ellie Kemper, Tituss Burgess, Carol Kane, and Jane Krakowski have their moments. But for me, the real laugh out loud moments come from Amy Sedaris, Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph, David Cross, Josh Charles, Zachary Quinto, Busy Phillips, Fred Armisen, or Lisa Kudrow -- to name only some of the most recognizable performers to wander through.

I'm not sure I'm going quite as far as recommending Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to those who haven't watched it already. (I definitely don't like to hear recommendations that go, "give it a bunch of episodes, and then it'll get good.") On the other hand, if the rest of the series somehow ages as harshly in the next few years as those first few episodes somehow already have, there might not be much time left to enjoy it. I'd say it starts out at maybe a C and eventually reaches a fairly reliable B+. It's perhaps a B overall.

For now, at least...

Failing to Outrun the Monster

The month of March has been filled so far with people's "one-year anniversaries" of the Year of Living COVID-ly. Here's one of mine: one year ago today was the last time I worked a full day in an office alongside other people.

But I've had a much more recent brush with COVID than that -- more recent, and more than a brush. Just a few weeks ago, my husband started showing symptoms. Mine were close behind. There was a short window where we hoped it might be something else (as if people just catch a common cold right now), but soon a positive COVID test confirmed the situation. A bit superstitious and not wanting to jinx anything, I decided I wouldn't write anything about it until we'd at least made it through the recommended quarantine period.

Nope, we don't have any real idea how or where we contracted COVID. One source seemed like a good bet, but no positive tests there ever materialized. And in a stroke of good fortune, when we alerted people we'd had contact with ourselves and they got tested, there were no positive returns. It was the Immaculate Infection.

Except obviously it wasn't, which is why I decided to say something about it here. We are on the home stretch of this thing, everybody. There are multiple effective vaccines currently being administered. Quantities are on the rise, and eligibility restrictions are being reduced. A good number of people I know have already been vaccinated. We're so close!

My husband and I had not started taking any crazier chances than we had in the 52+ prior weeks in which had not contracted COVID. Maybe one of the more infectious variants got us. Maybe the law of large numbers did, in one of countless little chances to get through. Either way, with perhaps single-digit weeks left to go before we could have received a vaccine... womp, womp.

Fortunately for the two of us, COVID was a mild enough experience that I can make light a little bit like that. But obviously, that was hardly a given. We've both definitely felt more sick than this before in our lives, but the congestion we have experienced lingers, migrating slowly around my head, nose, and throat in a lazy loop every few days and getting only a little bit better with each circuit.

Could we have buttoned down a little tighter for a little longer and avoided catching it? Seems likely. Basically: now that my moment of anxiety has passed, I just feel kinda stupid.

Don't be stupid. Don't do COVID immunity on "Hard Mode" when at this point you really don't have to.

Get your vaccine as soon as you're eligible, keep being careful here on the home stretch, and let's all drive a stake through the heart of this vampire. I realize I've lost moral high ground on this, but believe me when I say I'd do things differently if I had the chance.

Road Trip

The "roll-and-write" board game genre has been growing and growing over the past few years. It's possible the attraction comes from the accessibility -- many people are familiar with Yahtzee, so you don't really need a "cross-over" game to bridge potential gamers into something new. To sample even just the best-loved roll-and-write games would take some dedicated effort, which is part of why some that are already a few years old are still new to me. One such example I played recently was Railroad Ink.

Each player receives a dry erase board showing a 7x7 grid. There are 12 entrances onto the grid, three on each side; half of the entrance points are marked for streets, while the other half are marked for railroads. The game is played over seven rounds. In each round, four dice are rolled, determining four different patterns that each player must draw into four squares on their board. There are road-only paths, railroad-only paths, odd intersections of the two... and six special squares that don't come from the dice, that you can use three of over the course of the entire game. Your goals include connecting entrances, making a long street and railroad track, filling up the central area of your board, and closing off any unfinished paths by the end of the game. Each of these goals is worth points, with the player who scores the most winning the game.

I've developed a skepticism of most "roll-and-write" games. In the interest of faster play and accommodating a high number of players (both worthy goals), most of these games opt to present every player the exact same choices at every stage of the game. Railroad Ink does the same, with every player having to draw the same 28 rolled squares (and having access to the same 6 bonus squares) by the end of the game. It's theoretically conceivable that everyone could make identical decisions at every step of the way, resulting in a complete tie -- indeed, every player has the exact same path to victory, if only they'd done exactly what the ultimate winner did.

Of course, it's not practical that all players would make the same choices all throughout a game. And Railroad Ink does a better job here than many "roll-and-write" games, by presenting everyone with so many choices to make all at once each round. The downside there is that it can take a while to figure out where to draw all four squares (and whether to use a bonus this round), so there can be a notable gap in time between the first and last players to finish in a round. Still, I think the possibilities here are good for the game, and it moves faster anyway than it would if players weren't taking turns simultaneously.

But the core of my criticism is this: I don't enjoy that no player can at any point in the game make a decision that has any impact whatsoever on any opponent. There's a puzzle-like quality here than can certainly be satisfying, but I don't feel it quite scratches the "game" itch for me. Does this really take "up to 6 players," or is it just a solitary activity that 6 people can participate in at once?

Still, I have played a couple times now, and have at least enjoyed Railroad Ink on those puzzle terms a bit more than other games in the roll-and-write genre. Plus, if my group keeps playing, Railroad Ink does have more yet to offer us. Different editions of the game come with different "natural disaster" types of complications (on additional dice) that you have to work around. My group has been playing the "Blazing Red Edition" of the game, though we have yet to actually use the Lava and Meteor expansions it includes. Meanwhile, the BoardGameGeek community seems to think the "Deep Blue Edition" is superior, to the point of rating it several hundred spots higher on the charts. (Two more new editions are coming this year.)

So while roll-and-write continues to generally not quite be "my thing," Railroad Ink is certainly a game I'm more open to playing again than, say, Welcome To or Super-Skill Pinball. It just feels to me like the choices are more meaningful here. And so I'll score it a touch higher, at a B-. That said, it sure feels to me as though people who enjoy the genre more than I do would also like Railroad Ink. So perhaps it's worth checking out in your gaming group.

A King and a President

I've read my share of Stephen King books over the years (though only a fraction of what he's written). I've also seen my share of film and television adaptations of his work (though again, only a fraction, since virtually everything he's ever written has been adapted). But not since reading The Dark Tower series many years ago have I had the experience of reading one of his books before seeing the adapted version. Then I read 11/22/63.

The book follows a man attempting to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- so obviously, I wasn't coming to it with a completely blank slate. Plenty of real-world locations and people appear in the book, and I had enough familiarity with some to "cast" them in my mind's eye as I read. (I was also aware of some of the actors in the Hulu mini-series, though I didn't find them intruding on "my version" of the tale.) Still, not having some director's striking visuals, not hearing some actor's take on a particular line, not knowing quite where the narrative was going to end up... these feel like rare experiences when it comes to Stephen King, and experiences I quite enjoyed.

It also helped that I liked the book in general. Stephen King was definitely writing in a different mode here, stepping away from the horror genre he's best known for. You could debate the genre here if that matters to you... science fiction? Historical fiction? But this is a different kind of story. (One which he notes in his Afterword that he dreamed of early in his career, but doubted then he had the writing skill to tell it the way he wanted.)

It is a rather long book (as Stephen King books tend to be), though it's also a fairly brisk read. Things do slow down a bit in the middle; the plot is set up in a way that years pass, and they do so mainly in service of a romantic subplot. Nevertheless, this middle section still adds meaningful personal stakes to the overall "high concept" plot, so even if you'd call the middle slow, you could hardly call it inessential.

There's plenty of good tension throughout. (Stephen King may not be writing "horror" here, strictly speaking, but he knows tension.) Clever ideas are peppered throughout too. (I found particularly interesting the idea that the past is actively protective of itself, and hostile to those who would try to alter history.) Perhaps best of all, the ending feels strong to me, which when it comes to Stephen King is not always the case. (He credits his son in the Afterword for help in that area. Whatever gets the job done, I suppose!)

The only weak spots for me were minor ones. Stephen King clearly did a lot of research for this book, including various conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination. I think in a couple places, he internalized that background a little too much and assumed greater knowledge on the part of the reader than he should have. In particular, the importance of one George de Mohrenschildt in validating some of the "Oswald didn't act alone" theories didn't feel at all clear to me while reading the book; it instead was just a Macguffin I rolled with.

But overall, this was one of the better experiences I've had reading Stephen King. I give 11/22/63 an A-. Not to get ahead of myself on future blog content, but soon after finishing it, I found myself diving right into the Hulu adaptation. I wanted more. More. More!

Roped In

Ted Lasso had been on the edge of my radar for quite some time. The television series was being promoted pretty heavily (on web sites I visit and, for a time, on the Apple TV menu screen). It was up for several awards. But it took personal recommendations from a few friends before I finally decided to give it a try.

To be fair, the premise doesn't sound particularly appealing to  me, someone with minimal interest in sports. American football coach Ted Lasso up and relocates to England to become the coach of a struggling football (soccer) team. Culture clash (and hilarity) ensues.

Four people share credit for creating the show, but it's an interesting pedigree that actually would have increased my interest in watching had I fully been aware of it before hand. Besides series stars Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly was a staff writer on How I Met Your Mother for multiple seasons, and Bill Lawrence was the creator of Scrubs and co-creator of Cougar Town. All three of those shows I mentioned included wilder elements than the comparatively more realistic Ted Lasso, but they also all have a strong element of heart and "found family" that is a hallmark of this show.

To be honest, I do prefer those earlier shows. But Ted Lasso has plenty of charms to recommend it. It is consistently funny, and manages to be so without resorting to belittling its characters for laughs as often as most sitcoms do. It also isn't content to just be funny, telling a serialized story over its 10-episode season. Sure, that story is often predictable... but it's satisfying and uplifting nevertheless, and picks up steam in the final few episodes.

The cast feels quite settled in their roles right out of the gate. Jason Sudeikis has been getting most of the attention as the unflappably wholesome title character, but I enjoy the big laughs from Brendan Hunt as man-of-few-words Coach Beard, and the deadpan dialogue for Brett Goldstein as doesn't-know-this-is-a-comedy Roy Kent. And I love the great character arcs for conniving club owner Rebecca Welton and whip-smart Keeley Jones, played by Hannah Waddingham and Juno Temple (who have great rapport on screen together).

So while I might feel like the praise for Ted Lasso is a little overblown, there's no question I enjoyed it, or that I'll be back for the two additional seasons the show has already been renewed for. I've give the first season a B+. It's certainly one more thing for the list of "reasons you might actually subscribe to Apple TV+."

Voyager Flashback: The Cloud

"The Cloud" isn't exactly a bad episode of Star Trek: Voyager. But it is quite boring, which at this early point in the life of a new television series trying to find its feet, amounts to much the same thing.

With limited resources a growing concern, Voyager explores a nebula with potential for harvesting of energy -- but the nebula harbors a secret the crew fails to anticipate.

In principle, the formula for this episode should be a good one. It features a "problem of the week" that's so simple and straight-forward that it leaves plenty of time for interesting character scenes. But what sounds good on paper doesn't work out right on screen; "The Cloud" is a slow and meandering episode.

I think part of the problem is that the episode doesn't focus enough on any one character. It starts out like it's going to be a Janeway episode -- the captain is concerned that she needs to be more than just a captain to her crew, but is stymied as all her efforts to interact with people result in awkwardness. But then we get a lengthy sequence on the holodeck with Kim and Paris, and later a long scene demonstrating the relationship between Neelix and Kes. The story drifts away from Janeway, and only occasionally finds its way back to her.

Maybe this wasn't intended to be a Janeway episode, but rather a "ripples in the pond" sort of story where one external element intrudes and all our characters must react. But the episode isn't really successful in this approach either, because most of the characters are reacting as if to a completely different episode. The holodeck antics of Paris and Kim are completely at odds with the idea that the power supply is a growing concern. (It was vaguely implied several episodes ago that holodeck power doesn't come from the same place, but why you wouldn't mention that in this episode is beyond me.) And while Neelix might have had valid criticisms about Starfleet's reckless curiosity in any other episode, here the reason for the exploration is to replenish ships' supplies. Neelix decides to complain the first time we're "boldly going" not on a lark.

While I'm hardly one to suggest that all characters on a television series must be likeable, it is rather remarkable how many character traits displayed here are decidedly not likeable. Paris breaks into his friend's quarters and wakes him up in the middle of the night... to go play. Janeway mutes the Doctor after they call him for advice. Neelix is completing incapable of reading a room, deciding that a crisis on the bridge is the best time to serve appetizers. Tuvok chastises Kim for unprofessionalism on the bridge, then turns around and hypocritically does the very thing he called out Harry for. (At least Harry gets an admittedly funny retort in this moment.)

The flaws in Chakotay's story line deserve special discussion. I could call out Tom Paris' unsavory line about "setting the Indian up for the hustle." (B'Elanna rightly says that Paris is a pig... though she's talking about still other boorish behavior on his part.) I could point out the inconsistency that Chakotay says he's never shown his medicine bundle to anyone but Janeway, then ends the very same scene by saying he introduced B'Elanna to her animal guide (which she tried to kill -- haha!). But more than that, this is as good a place as any to discuss a larger issue with Chakotay.

Nominally interested in infusing the character with some authentic Native American heritage, the writing staff of Star Trek: Voyager worked with a consultant throughout the run of the series. The man they consulted was Jamake Highwater -- a quite problematic individual. Born Jackie Marks, "Highwater" invented his Cherokee lineage in the late 60s as a way of selling books, scamming grants from public broadcasting, and getting paid for public appearances. And lest you think this fraud was exposed only after "Highwater" had been working on Voyager for a while, think again: a reporter and a true Sioux activist both separately exposed Marks as a phony back in 1984.

In this episode, the story of the animal guide (and specifically, Janeway's vision of a lizard) were reportedly details given to script writer Michael Piller straight from Marks/"Highwater." The writers were actually getting exactly what it seems they really wanted here: something that sounded authentically Native American without actually being that. That's going to be a hallmark of many Chakotay character traits to come.

Other observations:

• The prop department certainly had fun making whatever sludge Neelix says substitutes for coffee.
  

• I think one scene in particular showcases just how strange the pacing of this episode is. B'Elanna runs a test in engineering on some kind of futuristic centrifuge, ponders the results, then leaves. This takes about half a minute of screen time, there's absolutely no dialogue, and no other characters. Story-wise, this all could have just started with the next scene, with B'Elanna arriving in Sickbay to discuss the test with the Doctor. But this episode had that much time to fill, and nothing better to fill it with.
  

• Although they're scattered weirdly throughout the episode, there are a few genuinely good character beats. The final moment is especially good: Janeway is truly bonding with her crew off-duty, having reached in just a few episodes the point it took Jean-Luc Picard an entire series to reach (as that series finale makes a point of highlighting).
  

But is "The Cloud" actively bad? That might be going a bit far. It's certainly not on par with stinker first season episodes from The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. So I think I'll give it a possibly-too-generous grade C. Either way, it would certainly never make anyone's "best of Voyager" list.

Freak on Repeat

It doesn't necessarily take a huge, A-list celebrity to make me interested in watching a movie. Sometimes, just the right mix of a few "hey, I know them"s can get the job done. So it was with the low-budget sci-fi movie Time Freak.

Young physics genius Stilman is completely obsessed with Debbie, the girlfriend who just dumped him. His crazed quest to figure out where their relationship went wrong leads him to invent time travel. But his inability to "solve" the "problem" of their breakup even with a technological edge leads him to enlist his best friend Evan to time hop with him and act as an observer. If they can only repair enough mistakes in the past, Debbie will be back together with Stilman and all will be well... or so goes the plan.

Before watching the movie, I knew only that it involved time travel and that it starred three young actors I've enjoyed in various television series. Stilman is played by Asa Butterfield of Sex Education. I realize now that I've never talked about that most excellent series here on the blog (an oversight I really should address at some point), but suffice it to say that this movie calls on the same skillful mix of intelligence and awkwardness that Butterfield displays there. Debbie is played by Sophie Turner from Game of Thrones. That's relevant experience here in playing a character you still find intriguing even though the story isn't always interested in her agency. Evan is played by Skyler Gisondo of Santa Clarita Diet. The clear comic chops he displayed there are put to great use here as the movie's comic relief.

This movie isn't exactly the most original thing you've ever seen; it plays a lot like (500) Days of Summer, with just a little pinch of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure mixed in. It all works mostly because the three main actors are great playing off each other. (Well, it's mostly two pairs: Stilman and Debbie, and Stilman and Evan.) It doesn't dig quite as deeply into the pathology of obsession as (500) Days of Summer, but it does have a fair number of solid laughs along the way -- most of those thanks to Skyler Gisondo's broad character.

There's little chance that Time Freak is going to become one of your favorite movies. But it's easily one of those "if you liked [that], you'll probably like this" movies. (And I could see "[that]" being a fairly wide range of things.) I give the movie a B. If you're looking for some light entertainment with a hint of sci-fi, you might want to give it a try.

The Dark Night

I recently wrote of a Netflix documentary series that I found to be excellent, about the Space Shuttle Challenger. I've also watched another series that I found to be rather less excellent, Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. It's a 4-part look at the horrible 1985 crime spree of Richard Ramirez, the efforts of police detectives to identify him, and his ultimate capture.

It's not that Night Stalker is a bad documentary, but watching it does call attention to many ways in which a documentary about the Golden State Killer, I'll Be Gone in the Dark, was a superlative work. In comparison, there's something a little ghoulish about this Night Stalker documentary. That's an accusation you might have thought could be leveled against any examination of a serial killer -- and might well have been right otherwise.

The devil is in the details, or if not the devil, then a major difference in apparent intent. As Night Stalker chronicles the many crimes of its subject over the first three installments of the series, there seems to be a casual insensitivity to the victims. The filmmakers do interview both survivors of assault by Ramirez and family members whose loved ones were murdered by the monster. Still, there's an exploitative quality to the many crime scene photos displayed with only minor censoring in the documentary.

I'll Be Gone in the Dark focused largely on citizen detectives like author Michelle McNamara, who had taken up the cause of hunting a serial killer. Because these people aren't "professionals" as such, the cost of letting a touch of evil into their lives felt like it had more weight. Grizzled career detectives are not only the investigators in the case of Ramirez, they're the celebrated protagonists of the Night Stalker documentary. And without doubt, they done a good service to society in catching this killer -- making sacrifices to their own psyches and families as also made clear in this series.

But the Night Stalker documentary is more interested in making heroes of these detectives than it is observing the loss of the victims. On occasion, the filmmakers are so dogged in this pursuit that they obliviously include some decidedly unheroic actions on the part of the detectives. It doesn't feel like directors James Carroll and Tiller Russell are aware of how potent a moment it is when a San Francisco detective proudly explains how he physically beat information out of an informant. One could well probe whether such behavior is ever right for the police, or if here it's in a difficult-to-weigh area when the information led directly to the identification of Ramirez. But the documentary neither casts judgment nor invites any; it's "just the facts."

It isn't usually content to let those facts speak for themselves, however; the documentary is definitely crafted to invoke a particular mood. To exaggerate the creeping dread of already-horrible circumstances, we get slow-motion footage of gnawing rats, firing guns, and shadowed footsteps. To exaggerate the sense that the killer could strike anywhere, the on-screen maps of Los Angeles feel deliberately unhelpful, whipping around in 3D at ground level in a way that makes it impossible to tell where any one event takes place relative to any other.

This Night Stalker documentary did hold my attention, and I powered through all four parts at a pace I rarely set for streaming TV. But at the end... I didn't feel especially good about it, and felt that a more informative, better-told account of the crimes of Richard Ramirez is still out there. If you're a true crime junkie, perhaps this is the show for you. I'd say for me, Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is only a C+.

Just Blowing Through

Every year, there are one or two movies that show up on several critics "best of the year" lists, but that nevertheless remain completely outside the conversation for the major awards. This year, seizing that honor ("honor?") is Blow the Man Down.

Set in a Maine fishing town, Blow the Man Down is the story of two sisters, Priscilla and Mary Beth, just straddling either side of adulthood. In the wake of their mother's funeral and subsequent financial concerns, the two are forced to cover up an accidental (but arguably justifiable?) murder. And their secret is hardly the only one in the small town.

You might best characterize this movie as a gender-swapped version of the movie Fargo. That's a bit simplistic, and ill-fitting in a few areas. But every major role in the story is a woman other than the cops on the case. There's a similar style in that the setting is so hyper-specific as to become a character itself. The subject matter is similarly dark and grisly, yet laced with a quirky streak of black humor. If you liked Fargo (in either its film incarnation, or any of the subsequent seasons of television), you will probably find something to like in this movie.

But writer-directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy aren't merely trying to be "the Coen Sisters," if you will. It feels so much more subtle to me than any Coen movie, with a better balance between narrative and character, and relatively fewer fanciful flourishes. (One key one, though, seems to have anticipated a viral internet meme: sea shanties.) There is something defiantly feminist in this movie, despite the fact that so many of the characters are despicable (or, arguably, because they are).

The core cast is strong, with the two leads, Morgan Saylor and Sophie Lowe, carrying the story well enough. The real show-stealer, though, is a performer you will undoubtedly recognize from any number of other places: the exceptional character actor Margo Martindale plays Enid, the proprietor of the town's brothel, and infuses every scene she's in with quiet menace.

The movie still wasn't quite "for me," and just misses out on my own Top 10 list with a Grade B. But I think enough readers of my blog would find it much more to their liking, so I'm giving it my own modest signal boost and recommendation.

Voyager Flashback: Phage

The three Star Trek franchises before Voyager didn't rely on just one alien race to be the only recurring adversary on the show. So even though Voyager had created the Kazon in the first episode, they soon introduced another recurring race, the Vidiians, in "Phage."

Hostile aliens with advanced medical technology steal Neelix's lungs during an Away Team mission. As the ship pursues them, the Doctor struggles in Sickbay to keep Neelix alive with holographic replacements, and Neelix faces the possibility of being immobilized for the rest of his life.

Star Trek: The Next Generation gave us the Borg, and Deep Space Nine gave us the Dominion: iconic villains that resonated deeply with audiences. I feel that on Voyager, the Vidiians could have been that, but the writers didn't quite lean into any one perspective that would have made them a truly great addition to the Star Trek baddie roster. (At least, not here in their first appearance.)

There's an inherently tragic quality to their background: ravaged by disease for over 2000 years, these aliens no longer have any moral boundaries when it comes to survival. Janeway is on the verge of tears when she learns their story, a potent blend of rage and sympathy that's Kate Mulgrew's best performance on the show so far... but this moment comes in a long exposition dump of a scene, made that much drier by the lack of any musical score. We're basically told how rough it is to be a Vidiian, rather than shown, and the impact is lessened accordingly.

Alternatively, the Vidiians could have been horror movie monsters, their ghoulish and unapologetic behavior worse even than their ghastly appearance. But the episode doesn't really give much space for anyone to pause and really take in just how horrific and dangerous it is to be facing a foe that can beam your internal organs out of you in the blink of an eye. Neelix does go through a hyper-abbreviated version of the "five stages of loss," but the episode makes his situation feel like just a run of the mill "problem of the week" that will be solved easily by the end.

Yet another alternative path is suggested in the unusual name the Vidiians give their star empire: the Vidiian Sodality. That word "sodality" smacks of something found at random in a thesaurus after a writers' room bitch fest about how all the other good words have already been used. But it's so rare a word that its main religious (Roman Catholic) connotation seems unavoidable. What if the Vidiians had been a group of dangerous zealots, believing themselves either cursed by some divine power, or forgiven by a higher power for all the evil they do? Seeing as how religion was one of the elements of Deep Space Nine that the Studio Powers That Be didn't like, probably nothing like this was ever even in the discussion. Bottom line? Much of the episode is surprisingly talkie for a story with so many visceral and emotional elements in the mix.

It's perhaps strange that scenes focus on the Doctor more than Neelix, but at least in doing so, we get a number of great Doctor moments. The show has already figured out how to use him for razor-sharp comic relief, from his McCoy-style complaints ("I'm a doctor, not..." has clearly been written into his programming) to his awkward bedside manner ("Don't worry, I'm not going to kiss you."). Dramatically, we're already seeing that he and Kes have an excellent rapport, the Doctor only really showing his emotional side to her, and Kes in turn holding that up as evidence that he's more than he gives himself credit for. The end of this episode sets things up for the Doctor and Kes to work together more, and it feels like a pairing to look forward to.

There are a few other nice character moments at the margins. We're reminded that Tuvok and Janeway are long-time friends, when he cautions her on taking impulsive action (much as Spock might to do Kirk). Because it's a small ship with a fixed crew, we're already starting to see minor characters repeat, as Seska does here (in advance of her becoming a much more significant character later in the season).

The reaction to Neelix here is very much in the eye of the beholder. His "try hard" attitude makes sense when you remember that he doesn't know these people, and must really feel like he needs to earn his keep or risk being "evicted" at any moment. The camera is sympathetic to him throughout; director Winrich Kolbe crops out his mouth during a major scene in Sickbay to convey the sense of claustrophobia he must be feeling. But on the other hand, Neelix opens this episode with a machine-gun series of actions that won't endear him to anyone: he acts without permission in a quasi-military structure, invades someone's personal space, invites himself to a (landing) party, and ignores a warning that directly leads to his accident. No, he doesn't deserve lung removal for any of that, but I feel like the audience is being made to work a little too hard to sympathize with Neelix in this episode.

Other observations:

• There's a lot of hand-waving here about the future technology of artificial lungs. I don't know that I ever really buy that a holographic replacement will work when a mechanical one won't, but whatever... I guess that's the story. Still, if an artificial replacement won't work for Neelix, would it have worked for Kes after she donates one of her lungs? Surely it would have worked for one of the humans, had they been Neelix's donor.

• While Voyager is trying to mold itself like The Next Generation in many ways, one of those ways is not "send the first officer down to the planet because it's too dangerous for the captain." Moments after someone has their lungs stolen on a mission, Janeway is leading the team that investigates.
  

• Neelix asks the Doctor if he's programmed to sing. Singing would become a notable bit of character for the Doctor a few seasons down the road.

• First, episodes two and three of Voyager shared time travel elements. Now, this fourth episode repeats an element of episode two, with the ship encountering a reflection of itself. (Many reflections.) I understand that at a certain point, Star Trek has done some version of every idea you could possibly do. (This episode could be accused of being a knock-off of the notoriously bad original series episode "Spock's Brain.") Still, how are two ideas being repeated in the first four episodes?

I would say this episode is actually the best installment of Voyager yet. But I'd also say it still fumbles things in enough places that it winds up at pretty much the same mark: a B-. I know there are more Vidiian episodes to come, and I don't clearly remember what happens in all of them. Maybe some of the holes get patched up later? But I wish they'd gotten off to a stronger start.

The Cat's Meow

While there are a number of new board games being made today that could be completely abstract, just about every game now has some kind of theme at least draped over the top. There might be room to argue whether this actually adds to the value or appeal of the average game. But one game where it clearly does is Calico.

Calico is a tile drafting game. Each player has a small double-layered board in front of them, with sockets to place 22 hex-shaped tiles. Every turn, you place one of two tiles from your hand somewhere onto your board, then draft one of three face-up tiles to replenish your hand for the next time your turn comes around.

Each tile has two characteristics: color and pattern. (There are six different colors, and six different patterns.) Three scoring spots on your board are looking for specific tiles to be placed in the 6 adjacent spaces -- two sets of three, three pairs, or some other requirement. They score you one lower point reward for fulfilling the requirement with either color or shape, and a second higher value if you manage to satisfy both color and shape.

Meanwhile, there are additional goals to chase. Every set of 3 adjacently placed colors nets you a 3-point bonus chip for the end of the game. And then there are 3 special conditions (different in each game) that ask for specific configurations of patterns somewhere on your board to earn still more bonus points. In the end, the player who has best juggled the fulfillment of multiple criteria at the same time will score the most points and win the game.

That's the rules-oriented explanation of what's going on in Calico. You could probably put any number of flavorful scenarios on top of that rules set. But the one chosen by designer Kevin Russ is definitely going to get more eyeballs on the game: each hex tile is a piece of a quilt. You're trying to assemble a quilt in a pleasing pattern that attracts cats to come nap on it.

You could argue that this is a cheap trick, using cats to attract gamers. But at least it's in service of a pretty good game. Squint enough, and you could argue that there's similarity here to Sagrada, another game that's fundamentally asking you to arrange things with two aspects on a board in point-qualifying patterns. But while the nature of the task may be similar, there are many meaningful differences in the gameplay of Calico. (Also, I happen to love Sagrada, and don't object to there being another "variant" of it.)

Calico plays quite fast. Even though players take turns in sequence, there usually isn't much down time between turns (even with the maximum 4 players). There's an interesting decision arc here that helps that pace: early on, it's fairly easy to draft tiles, since you can imagine anything working somewhere on your board; later on, you're looking to fill specific holes with specific things, so you will eagerly snatch them up if they're available.

There's some great art design here by Beth Sobel. It addresses color-blindness in a clever way that still works even though the normal method for helping -- pattern -- is another facet of the gameplay. There are also some adorable illustrations of sleeping cats, all based on that actual pets of different people who worked on the game. My only objection with the art? The game is called Calico, but the cat featured on the cover looks like a tabby to me.

If it's a contest, I don't think Calico is going to displace Sagrada for me. But I also don't think it has to be a contest. I'd certainly like to play Calico more. I think it deserves at least a B+, and I could see myself growing to like it even more as I replay it. (For one thing, I still need to win it some time; my regular gaming group includes some skilled "spatial thinkers" that consistently do well at these sorts of games, which makes any victory a real triumph.) So here, kitty, kitty... I have a warm, fluffy quilt for you to nap on!

Holmes Renovation

There's something about Sherlock Holmes that makes the character and his adventures incredibly popular to repurpose and adapt. (Something besides most of Doyle's stories now being in the public domain.) The new versions generally have an "above average" hit rate with me, so I was willing to give the movie Enola Holmes a chance.

Based on a young adult book series by Nancy Springer, this movie is the story of the teenage sister of Sherlock Holmes. Raised by a mother with the same razor sharp intelligence of her adult brother -- but largely cloistered from the world -- Enola embarks on an adventure of her own when her mother disappears for mysterious reasons.

I don't feel that I'm much of a "gatekeeper" when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. I've had few qualms with takes that have modernized it, or made prequels and sequels of it. Inventing a sister more than a decade younger than Sherlock seemed a fine hook from which to hang a new story. But it turns out this movie (and perhaps the books on which it's based) isn't actually interested in any of the trappings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's writings. It just wants to trick you into watching this mostly unrelated tale.

The creation of a new Holmes protagonist would have been more interesting to me if the story had been at all faithful to any other elements of the classic stories. Instead, Enola Holmes gives us barely any Sherlock, a dim-witted Mycroft, and no Watson at all. It serves up some nice commentary on the subject of equality, but the "mystery" is quite transparent. The movie is as much an action-adventure as the Robert Downey Jr. take on Sherlock Holmes, but feels even farther removed from the source material.

There is a bright spot in the casting of Millie Bobby Brown. Given a role less emotionally constrained than the one that made her famous (Eleven on Stranger Things), she's quite charming as the title character. She monologues often to the camera with wry ease, kicks butt in the many action scenes, and generally steers the movie away from insultingly dumb and into intermittent fun. She's doing the heavy lifting all by herself, though. Helena Bonham Carter is practically typecast as Enola's mother, pulling traits from other movies and sleepwalking through her few scenes here. Henry Cavill is virtually charisma-free as Sherlock. And the film's various villainous types don't leave much of an impression at all.

The Enola Holmes book series has lasted several books; this could well be another of the many, many cases where a young adult book series simply doesn't work very well when put on film. (It's still a hell of a lot better than some.) I give this movie a C-. If there are any Millie Bobby Brown fans out there, you might enjoy it. Otherwise, I'd steer clear.

Flight Recorder

It seems like a new trend on Netflix is the "four-part documentary mini-series." The Netflix algorithm has pushed a few on me recently, and while I have no shortage of things to watch, the "it's only four hours" appeal has led me to try a couple. The first of these was Challenger: The Final Flight.

This examination of the 1986 Space Shuttle disaster is likely made for a younger audience than me, who doesn't have memories of the actual events. But my interest in all things "space travel" made me want to check out the series even though I didn't necessarily expect it to tell me much I didn't know. Ultimately, it did tell me enough I didn't know that I was quite glad I watched. (It would be hard to say I "enjoyed" it, though, given the tragic subject matter.)

One thing I quite appreciated about the series is the wider focus it took with the Challenger's entire crew. So much of the coverage at the time revolved around Christa McAuliffe, the "teacher in space" whose presence on the mission drew attention even before the tragedy. (She's the reason a good number of people my age -- then in elementary school -- watched the ill-fated launch live.) This documentary series does of course spend time on McAuliffe... but it also spends time on Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, and Greg Jarvis too. Each had their own story, left behind their own grieving family, and gets their due in this retelling of the story.

The documentary gets a number of people on the record that you might not have expected to hear from. Family members with enough time and distance from their loss appear on camera to talk about their loved ones. Engineers responsible for what happened, now retired and not needing to protect a career or reputation, are remarkably frank in discussing the events. (One unrepentant decision maker makes quite the impression when he insists that he'd do nothing differently if he had it to do over again.)

As far as "telling me something I didn't know," the documentary really reveals just how avoidable the disaster truly was. A perfectly good launch window had been scrubbed just two days earlier... and had the Shuttle launched then, there is every reason to think it would have done so successfully. But it's not only in hindsight that the outcome might have been different; the documentary stresses how the Shuttle boosters' notorious O-ring problem was actually well-known even before the flight, more so even than I'd realized. And if you thought that Christa McAuliffe would have been the first "civilian" in space, you thought wrong. As a political ploy to boost NASA funding, members of Congress had flown on the Shuttle before this... one even bumping a previously assigned astronaut to the disastrous Challenger flight itself.

I found Challenger: The Final Flight to be a sensitive, informative, and well put together documentary. I give it an A-. Sure, the subject matter all but ensured I was going to be fascinated... but many of my readers have the same interests, and I think they'll appreciate the series too.