Three Out of Seven

Fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, take comfort! It's not just the next book of that fantasy series that George R.R. Martin is not writing. He's also not writing more Dunk and Egg novellas!

Back when new Ice and Fire books were coming at a steady pace (and then a not-so-steady pace, but still some pace), Martin was peppering installments of a spinoff in between. A series of novellas (short stories even, by his standards) was telling another tale in the same world, from nearly 100 years before the events of A Game of Thrones. An unlikely knight called Dunk and his even more unlikely squire Egg wandered Westeros and got into tiny (mis)adventures out on the margins of the kingdom's power struggles.

Over the course of three novellas, published in various short story collections featuring multiple authors, Martin told more focused stories with fewer characters. They weren't quite a continuing saga, though the tales did build on one another. They weren't exactly any cliffhangers, though there was the sense that there was some grander end to the story coming after some number of additional installments. But, just as with the main Ice and Fire books, Martin just sort of stopped writing at some point. (2010, in this case.)

The publishers, of course, need more George R.R. Martin books, whether he deigns to write them or not. So at one point, a few years back, they decided to collect the three existing Dunk and Egg adventures into one volume dubbed A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The three novellas together comprised a roughly novel-length book (if a touch short for most fantasy). And they were punched up with over 160 black-and-white illustrations by artist Gary Gianni.

The three tales overall are pretty good. Martin does have a way with words, and his writing is very vivid and evocative. Beautiful as the Gianni illustrations often are, they are in many cases superfluous, as Martin describes the scene so effectively that you look at a drawing and think, "yep, that's what I imagined." In this shorter format, where all the storytelling focuses on just one character's point of view, some of Martin's "tricks" are somewhat easier to spot. His use of repetition to cement a personality seems a bit more... well... repetitive. His lavish detail in describing food seems more clearly a predilection of Martin himself and not a trait of a character. But generally, I find I'm just drawn in, remembering part of what I loved about Martin's books in the first place.

The first tale, The Hedge Knight, is the strongest of the three. Its tale of an arena battle feels dangerous, high stakes, and visceral. All three tales are worthwhile, though. The Sworn Sword is an interesting story where the trouble at hand doesn't call for Dunk's strengths. The Mystery Knight is more of a tale of intrigue... though the pacing is not as well-managed as in the first two tales. Not all of these stories were easy to get your hands on before they were assembled in this one volume, though, so I was glad to have the collection.

I'd give A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms a B+. It's no Ice and Fire, of course. And you may well have made the decision that you won't give any more of your money to George R.R. Martin until it's for The Winds of Winter. But if you haven't, and you also haven't read the tales of Dunk and Egg, I'd recommend you check them out.

Voyager Flashback: Cathexis

Star Trek: Voyager fell into a few recurring patterns in season one: they sure do enter a lot of nebulae, and they seem to have episodes all "about" a character who's hardly in the episode. With "Cathexis," you get both!

A shuttlecraft returns from exploring a nebula, carrying a comatose Chakotay. The other passenger, Tuvok, explains that they were attacked by an alien ship. But as Voyager goes for a closer look, a new concern presents itself: one of the aliens seems to be aboard the ship in non-corporeal form, hopping between crewmembers, possessing them, and performing sabotage. Paranoia rises as no one can be trusted.

I usually take it as a given in my flashback Trek reviews that 25-year-old spoilers aren't really spoilers anymore, but because the mystery here really is The Thing This Episode Offers, I'll sound an extra alarm before revealing... that this whole episode's twist sprang from a conversation between Star Trek writers Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky. They'd done the "alien among us" story before, but what if "the alien" was actually one of us?!

Thus, for the second episode in a row, the character who the episode is theoretically centered upon isn't really in the episode much. (Kim as Beowulf, felled by holoGrendel; Chakotay wandering the ship as a disembodied spirit.) The writers were ultimately somewhat disappointed in the results, feeling that they could not capture the sense of paranoia, the "And Then There Were None" with a body-hopping suspect, that they were really hoping for. And to be fair, they're right about that. The moments of most intense paranoia are actually played for comedy: Kim zones out for a moment in a meeting and gets a phaser leveled at him; the Doctor displays a twisted sense of humor when he turns Neelix's suspicious eye back on him.

But the writers did nevertheless build a pretty clever mystery here. (A much better one than the "who is the traitor?" mystery of a few episodes ago.) The idea that "anybody could be possessed" is introduced at just the right time to make it very hard to suspect that there's a second alien (the real alien) continually possessing Tuvok. You're thrown off the scent of there even being a solvable mystery here in a way that ultimately makes the Tuvok reveal land.

Along the way, there are a few nice bits of character building. B'Elanna tries to honor Chakotay's wishes with a medicine wheel ceremony, and when she thinks the Doctor is going to criticize the dogma, he instead corrects her sloppy performance of the ritual. Paris waxes nostalgic about a childhood doctor he liked. The Doctor is handed the command codes of the ship (in a moment that I wish had been given a little more weight). Ensign Kim has to be the first to take sides between Tuvok and Janeway in a mutiny situation.

But there are also plenty of moments that don't quite work. Tuvok's "wide beam stun" phaser setting seems so useful that there's no explaining why it isn't just used all the time. The idea of Chakotay's two-dimensional medicine wheel serving as a map through three-dimensional space makes no sense. And the hand-waving about "reintegrating Chakotay's consciousness" at the end of the episode approaches a "Spock's Brain" level of science fiction silliness.

Yet the biggest "this doesn't work" element of it all is the bizarre gothic holonovel Janeway plays at the opening of the episode. Star Trek: The Next Generation began its share of episodes with holodeck scenes... except that those scenes were always related thematically. Squint and tilt your head, and you can maybe see that "paranoia" is the theme of the holonovel, and also the theme of the episode? But the reality is, this holonovel scene was actually written and filmed for a completely different episode, "Eye of the Needle." It had no more resonance there, from what I can tell, but they spent a ton of money (for some reason) on building the set and were determined to re-use the scene somewhere. And so you get Janeway involved in a territorial squabble with a former Romulan commander -- amounting to nothing.

Other observations?

• Uh... nope, I think that covers it this time.
  

I'm really not sure that "Cathexis" is a strong episode. But it's essentially a mystery, and I find it a better one than "State of Flux," which I called a B-. So I'll say "Cathexis" merits a B.

May Tomorrow Never Come

Man, did I waste my time on a movie recently. But it sounded like it would be a cool horror movie with an intriguing premise. Given that many of my readers are into horror movies, I figure I should send out a warning lest some of you fall into the same trap.

She Dies Tomorrow is a low-budget indie film from 2020. It's not quite horror, not quite thriller, not science fiction -- though it could have been effectively any of those with more commitment. As the movie opens, Amy is in a lethargic reverie, listening to Mozart's Requiem over and over again and she wanders listlessly around her house. Her friend Jane arrives, but Amy is inconsolable: she is certain that she is going to die tomorrow. Jane ultimately leaves... but can't shake the feelings of her encounter with Amy. She too is now convinced that she will die tomorrow. And as she proceeds to have interactions with more people, the sensation spreads like a pandemic: everyone she interacts with becomes convinced that they are going to die tomorrow.

On paper, this seems like a more intellectual, psychological take on Final Destination. How do different people react to the news that they're living their last night on Earth? And just what horror awaits them "tomorrow?" Are they really going to die? How? The possibilities seem endless! And so it's utterly frustrating that this movie doesn't pick up on any of them.

The reactions to the news of impending death are disappointingly uniform throughout this movie. These characters don't truly seem afflicted with cursed knowledge so much as they struck by profound lethargy. Tantalizing suggestions of what they might be seeing and experiencing are left only as suggestions; the audience is forced to do all the work here, relying on only a few flashing lights as guidance.

My experience with the short, 84-minute movie unspooled in four phases (each feeling perhaps as long as 84 minutes on its own). The opening section is frustratingly sparse and pretentious, but I hung on figuring I needed to give the movie space to set the stage on its own terms. Then the story actually begins to spin up -- at a maddeningly slow pace, but I figured it had to be heading somewhere. Then I was sure I hated the movie, but I kind of had to see where it was going to end up. Finally, I learned that the filmmakers had no interest in actually explaining anything, instead delivering an abrupt and unsatisfying ending. At any one of the points along the way, I could have taken the hint and bailed.

The acting doesn't save anything. Though there are a few actors you may recognize from other places (including Chris Messina, Michelle Rodriguez, and Josh Lucas), none of them get to give an interesting performance. Script and director are both forcing them down a path of behaving withdrawn and cowed, which only makes a tedious story that much more boring.

Quite simply, there is no there there. She Dies Tomorrow is an absolute grade F of a film, a complete waste of my time... and I only waste more time writing about it now in the hopes of saving others. Do. Not. Watch.

Kind Words

Last year, I wrote a post praising the first season of the TV series For All Mankind. While the "space race" subject matter made me predisposed to love it, I recognized that not everyone would think it alone would be a reason to subscribe to Apple TV+. Since then, two things have changed. First, Ted Lasso has become the show many critics laud as the reason to subscribe to Apple TV+. And For All Mankind has completed a second season that's even better than the first.

For All Mankind is an alternate history story in which Russians are the first to land a man on the moon. The first season showed how the 70s changed as a result. Season two jumps ahead to 1983. The waves have rippled out and the world is more different. But tantalizing bits of reality are still woven into the tale -- the culture and trends of the early 80s, significant events that still take place (albeit with a different context), and little accents for fun (such as which famous people live or die in a different timeline).

But as fun as all that is, For All Mankind is a character-driven show, and the writers find intriguing stories for those characters in season two. There's a redemptive arc, a tale of the privileged brought down a peg, a story of standing up to injustice, a tense conflict between work and a personal life, and more. And almost every story line threaded through the season works. (The one exception? Well, let's just say that in any series about a "profession," writers always seem to struggle with "the wife" who isn't in the profession. For All Mankind isn't able to buck that trend.)

Season two pulls off some incredible narrative stunts. Many shows now have the luxury of planning ahead, but they still don't plan as skillfully as this. Elements woven throughout the opening episodes, story threads that feel like they're getting perhaps too much attention, come around to be absolutely vital as the season concludes. The action keeps building, the complications keep escalating, and the season finale winds up being a jam-packed thrill ride as a result. It's a machine built so meticulously that you grant a few bits of dramatic license, a few moments that seem far-fetched, because they fit so well thematically, and seem natural for the characters we've come to know.

I loved season one of For All Mankind. But I LOVED season two. It would not surprise me at all if, during the wait for the next season, I wind up going back to watch the entire series again from the beginning. This has been "appointment TV" for me, the show I had to watch on the day a new episode dropped, the show I found myself thinking about between episodes, the show that almost never disappointed.

Season two of For All Mankind is a total A for me. If you haven't tried it, you must!

And the Oscar Snark Goes To...

It's an annual tradition: me and some snarky friends quipping about the Oscar broadcast. This year, there was a lot of text messaging involved, but we found a way...

It feels like they're having the Oscars in just some cafe somewhere.

I feel bad for the people who are sitting where the blinding sunlight is streaming in through the window.

If you're Zooming in your acceptance speech, it's easy to play you off when you run long.

You could have just gone with Regina King as the host; she was great.

Laura Dern has been styled as an ostrich.

Is Sacha Baron Cohen really in Sydney, or just in front of a green screen in a basement?

These Oscar-shade table lamps feel like they'll be in a thrift store a week from now.

I didn't think "your parents having sex" needed to be on the list of things you shouldn't mention in your Oscar speech, but let's put it on the list now.

They'll be selling WWWHD bracelets now. (What would Werner Herzog do?)

Presenting Best Director so early in the show really deflates any tension over Best Picture.

So is The Eternals the first Marvel movie directed by an Oscar-winning director?

Was there a black tux/black shirt memo?

What if a dress were an upside-down plaid chef's hat?

"In the 30 years since Terminator 2." I just aged like I drank from a false grail.

I'd say no one but Oscar voters seem to have seen News of the World... except that judging by the movie losing every category, Oscar voters didn't see it either.

Mank wins Production Design and Cinematography. Making movies in color is for suckers.

Is Blade Runner the best movie to set up for the Best Editing award when that movie was re-cut like 12 times -- and the original theatrical version is almost universally considered the worst?

Why is the Eye of Sauron pulsing behind people as they accept their awards?

Everyone else give up. Viola Davis has the best dress.

Stephen Colbert may be losing his band leader.

I was getting tired of this "Oscar music trivia" bit... and then Glenn Close did Da Butt. She lost another Oscar, but maybe she can win an Emmy.

Angela Bassett is wearing floaties for the after-show pool party.

The award for best editing will NOT go to the hyperactive editor of this year's Memorium montage.

Are they doing Best Picture early because they know Chadwick Boseman is winning and they want his award to be last?

Uh... wow. Apparently not.

I mean, Anthony Hopkins wasn't expecting it either. He was awake earlier on the Zoom call from the U.K., but it was like 4am there and he went to bed.

Revisiting the Revisiting of the JFK Assassination

I recently wrote about Stephen King's book 11/22/63 -- how I enjoyed it, and how I intended to go on and watch the Hulu mini-series based on it (styled with periods instead of slashes): 11.22.63. I've now done just that, and am back with some new thoughts.

For certain, I found the tale made a stronger novel than a TV show. Television generally demands a faster pace (and movies faster still), where novels can make a meal of the internal thoughts of the characters. I did note of the book that the middle slowed a bit, but even still, seeing the tale rendered in eight one-hour episodes really exposed that there are big stretches of the story where you could effectively argue that little-or-nothing happens. There's a big psychological component to "time traveling to save JFK" that just can't be captured easily on screen.

I suspect largely because of that inherently internal quality, there are some rather substantial changes made in the television adaptation. The main character needs to have people to interact with so that some of those internal monologues from the book can become external dialogues on the show. And the primary way the show does this is to take a minor character from the book, who appears in only a handful of early chapters, and expand them into a significant role. This is both an understandable, necessary choice for the adaptation... and a change that introduces more problems than it solves. A lot of 11.22.63 (the show) is spent trying to button up and explain away plot holes that weren't a problem for 11/22/63 (the book). Most of that revolves around having an extra character where there wasn't one originally.

The casting of the mini-series as a whole is pretty solid. George MacKay plays a good hot-tempered galoot (perfectly masking his native British accent with a Kentucky twang). Sarah Gadon is charming and sharp as "the love interest." Daniel Webber makes for a pretty good Lee Harvey Oswald. Chris Cooper does a great job imbuing personality into a character who's basically an exposition vehicle. In villainous roles, Josh Duhamel is appropriately intimidating, and more surprisingly, T.R. Knight makes quite an effective creep.

But if you know anything about 11.22.63, you've noticed I haven't mentioned the main character, star James Franco. There's a reason. I find him quite miscast here in the lead role. He's far too smooth and slick for the character of Jake Epping, even almost smarmy at times. This story calls for more of an Everyman at the center, and while of course you need some star wattage to anchor your TV mini-series, I think you could find one without the sort of "above it all" quality I sense here in Franco's delivery.

Much of what I liked about the book is still here in the show, but it definitely feels diminished this way. I'd give 11.22.63 a B-. It might still be worth the watch for writers, as an interesting study in adaptation. Otherwise, probably only Stephen King fans will want to try it -- and since the series is five years old, I'm betting they've already beaten me to it anyway.

Voyager Flashback: Heroes and Demons

It seems obvious in retrospect that the Doctor would be a breakout character on Star Trek: Voyager -- the non-human outsider who has more emotion than he would claim possible is clearly the heir to fan-favorites Spock and Data. Yet with barely a dozen lines in the first episode of the series, it seems just as clear that the Doctor wouldn't have become as popular as he did without the performance of Robert Picardo. The first major showcase for him and his character was "Heroes and Demons."

Harry Kim goes missing from his holonovel of Beowulf... as do Chakotay and Tuvok when they investigate. Something alien has infiltrated the holodeck, and only the Doctor can take up the search without being placed at risk himself.

While you could easily regard this episode as "yet another holodeck malfunction" story, the fact that it's finally letting the Doctor out of Sickbay does help with the sense that there's a new angle to explore this time. The episode did come from a familiar place, though: former Next Generation staff writer Naren Shankar. While Shankar also penned two Deep Space Nine episodes, this was his only Voyager effort. It cast a very long shadow, though, as you could pinpoint this as the moment where the series really cemented an interest in the Doctor that would ultimately lead to the marginalization of many other characters.

The thing that struck me in re-watching it? It actually could have been a much better episode. The Doctor voices a little anxiety for his first "away mission" (and gets another pep talk from Kes), but that scene feels like the only serious examination of his emotional state. He notes that he's never before seen anything outside of one room, but he handles with (too much) aplomb a romance, an intimidation, and a negotiation. He eats for the first time, feels something like love for the first time, is shown genuine respect by other crew members for the first time... and I don't think we're made to feel the weight of almost any of that. We're just not keeping tabs on his emotional journey along the way.

But we sure do get a lot of the holographic Beowulf characters. Naren Shankar had to write this script early, before much was known about the Voyager characters (even by the actors playing them), and it feels to me like he compensated by overepresenting the Beowulf characters -- over which he could exert full control. Freya's death is given a rather silly amount of dramatic heft, especially since the Doctor risks losing the only means to get back the missing crew members as he stays at Freya's side. (And we really haven't seen enough to suggest the Doctor would really care that much; he's shown general disdain for the holonovel characters.)

Guest stars Marjorie Monaghan (who you might recognize from Babylon 5) and Michael Kennan (who after this would play "mutant" Patrick on Deep Space Nine) get most of the fun. They boom in performative RennFest tones, repeat dialogue like thinly scripted RPG characters, and go on at surprising length about the troubles in their fictional village... troubles that you could also read in Beowulf. (Don't look for Freya there, though; she's trucked in from other legends.) To be sure, Robert Picardo is giving a big, fun performance too. I just think it's his sharp comic instincts more than the script that ultimately lands this episode in entertaining territory. It's certainly what made the writers want to start giving him more to do.

Other observations:

• The Doctor chooses (and ends up discarding) the name Schweitzer, for the real-world Nobel Prize winning doctor. Naren Shankar admitted he chose the name solely for the humor in hearing a bunch of Vikings shouting it in tribute.

• Since you're giving so much time to the holonovel characters already, maybe don't have them be so at ease with the Doctor's displays of what should look like magic to them.
  

• The character of Unferth doesn't trust anything anyone says and jumps straight to a wild conspiracy theory at every opportunity. He's Viking QAnon.

• Poor Harry Kim (and Garrett Wang). He gets all dressed up and in theory gets to be Beowulf! But he has exactly one line of dialogue in this episode.
  

I'd give "Heroes and Demons" a B-. It's stronger than it would be without Robert Picardo... but it's much weaker than it would be if there wasn't so much focus on the Beowulf characters.

Brought to Ruins

Last year, when my company was previewing our new board game Dune: Imperium, much of the gaming community latched onto comparing it to another new game, Lost Ruins of Arnak. Ultimately, both games were well-received -- this was a case of "a rising tide lifting all boats" and not "there can be only one." But are the games really all that similar?

In Lost Ruins of Arnak, players trudge through a jungle in search of ancient ruins and the treasures inside -- facing fearsome guardians in the process. The game includes the two broad mechanisms also used in Dune: Imperium -- deck building and worker placement. But designers Mín & Elwen have used them in different ways and different proportions, and they've blending in other elements too.

There are only five rounds played in a game of Lost Ruins of Arnak, and this has a huge impact on how deck building operates in the game. A staff token inserted in the row of cards you can buy migrates to the right to serve as the round tracker, and also creates an intriguing dividing line. Cards on the left can be played immediately when you buy them (before they begin circulating as usual for a deck-building game)... and then each subsequent time you play them, you must pay 1 resource of a specific type to activate them. Cards on the right of the staff circulate in a more conventional way.... though you place them on the bottom of your deck when you buy them. Given the very small starting decks this game uses (relative to other deck builders), you're going to see any new buy soon.

The worker placement differs from most games in a number of small ways that really add up. You only ever get two workers; this is not a game that offers a method to get more. The number of spaces for workers is not fixed; as play unfolds and players discover various ruins, those become new spaces offering different kinds of actions that can focus the game on one particular aspect or another. But there are actions you can take with your turn that don't require a worker... including many of the new cards you'll buy.

One aspect of playing workers has also led to some of the comparisons between Lost Ruins of Arnak and Dune: Imperium -- you must play one or more cards to generate the "movement" necessary to reach the space for your worker. There are four types of moment, and they're arranged in a sort of hierarchy: boots are the lowest; ships and cars are called for to reach jungle locations (but can also be used as boots); planes are wild and can be used as anything. You do have to choose whether to use a card for the movement it allows or for the other effects it creates -- though this feels more like an accent on this game rather than the core element it is in Dune: Imperium.

You gather points mainly from exploring ruins (and defeating the guardians there), or advancing along a research track with two different tokens. These main sources of points are supplemented in a few places, including the handful of points you'll get on the cards in your deck. These methods all have their own particulars that come together to make the game distinct.

Indeed, I don't think there really is all that much in common between Lost Ruins of Arnak and Dune: Imperium. There's certainly room for both in the gaming world, which seems to be what BoardGameGeek users have concluded -- each game has its devotees, plenty of players are saying "why not both?", and both games have quickly risen to the top of the rankings.

I've played Lost Ruins of Arnak a few times now, and it's already been quite fun and different each time. I'd call it a B+ with room to grow if we continue to keep playing it. I also think there are plenty more ways that deck building and worker placement might be combined. If this game and Dune: Imperium encourage other designers to explore the possibilities, I'd wager we'll get some new and interesting games too.

Sampling Sanderson

For a very long time, author Brandon Sanderson has been on my reading list. I read a lot of fantasy, many of my friends have enjoyed his books, and it just seemed like something I'd naturally get around to at some point. When I finally did, it went differently than I'd imagined in a few significant ways.

First, I listened to one of his novels on audiobook. My steady diet of too-many-podcasts means I don't really listen to many audiobooks. But when my husband and I are driving somewhere together, an audiobook is a great choice. Of course, there aren't many long car rides in Pandemic Times, so not only does it take a while to get through an audiobook, writers like Brandon Sanderson are arguably a terrible choice: any writer of "doorstop fiction" -- most any fantasy writer -- can take quite a long time to get through indeed.

Although... second (and unexpectedly) I found myself listening to a Brandon Sanderson book that is not fantasy. I listened to Skyward, a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel that's first in a series currently forecast for four books. This didn't make the "read" any faster; Skyward is not a short book. But I always figured that when I finally wound up sampling Sanderson, it would be one of his many well-regarded fantasy series.

Skyward is set on a distant planet where the human descendants of a small fleet of crashed ships are struggling to survive against a mysterious alien race known as the Krell. Regular fighter attacks keep the humans stranded on the planet, but are always limited enough to allow a society to exist. Pilots fend off the Krell attacks in ships built mostly with scavenged technology... and 17-year-old Spensa Nightshade is desperate to join their ranks. The problem? Her father is the most notorious coward ever to be a pilot, and the stain of his legacy hounds Spensa decades later.

I found Skyward to be a very engaging tale. While there are certainly trope-ish bricks used in its construction, the structure itself feels satisfyingly different on the whole. Sanderson is also careful to make sure the book works on multiple levels -- the lead character is compelling enough to stick with for a lengthy first-person narrative, the single book itself has meaningful plot developments and reveals, and there are interesting threads set up for future books in the series.

There's a fairly large cast of characters in Skyward, but Sanderson takes the time to develop most of them beyond their utility to the plot. In this aspect, he gets a big boost in audiobook format from performer Suzy Jackson, who has a lot of weapons in her vocal arsenal. She takes on multiple accents, shifts deftly to different pitches, using everything from a slow and warm drawl to a cool and clipped monotone. There might be as many as 20 distinct and important characters in Skyward, and Suzy Jackson adopts a specific performance for each of them that always keeps you anchored.

If Skyward is any indication of what Brandon Sanderson's fantasy writing is like, I'll definitely be reading some in the future. For now, though, I'm fully engaged in this tale and looking forward to what happens next. I give it an A-. Book two is already available and in my queue, and I'm watching out for the release of book three later in the year.

A Beautiful Walk

One of the movies competing for this year's Best Animated Feature Oscar can be streamed free on Apple TV+, if you have it. Wolfwalkers is the third film in a loose trilogy inspired by Irish folklore, following The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea -- though it's the first that I've watched myself.

A young girl named Robyn lives with her father in an Irish village in the mid-1600s. It's run by a tyrannical Lord Protector, and menaced by dangerous wolves in the nearby forest, who legend says may be influenced by "wolfwalkers," humans able to take wolf form.

I didn't find the plot here particularly compelling. While this story is drawing on a legend with which I'm not familiar, it still deals with a lot of formulaic and familiar plot elements. The pacing is strange too, with a lot of events happening simply "because it's time for the next thing," and not feeling particularly motivated by anything that's come before.

The voice cast is fair enough, but also not a huge draw to the movie, I think. Robyn is a quite trying main character at times, one of those "always makes exactly the wrong decision" types of protagonist, and it's asking a lot for a young actor to make her sympathetic in a voice-only performance. Honor Kneafsey does her best, as does Eva Whittaker as her friend Mebh, but the script isn't exactly helping them. Fans of Sean Bean may enjoy his presence here. Maria Doyle Kennedy is a performer I've liked through The Tudors and Orphan Black, but her role isn't especially showy or demanding. Simon McBurney gives good villain as the Lord Protector, but again -- he isn't the reason to watch the film.

What is the reason, then? The animation. This film strikes its own visual path that's not quite like anything else. It's definitely not Disney or Pixar. It seems more inspired by Japanese anime, but at most only as a jumping off point to arrive at a style very much its own. There are moments when it seems to deliberately be left unpolished, but even then, it's quite beautiful and striking throughout. Now even in animation, strong visuals alone are not enough for me to love a movie -- but I did feel that what I saw here was strong enough that I had to bring it to the attention of my film-loving and/or artist friends.

For me, Wolfwalkers was only about a C in whole. I found the story a little too dry. But I believe many of my readers would absolutely love to watch it, so I hope I can nudge those people in the right direction here.

Solar Wins

When it first debuted on Hulu last year, Solar Opposites didn't grab me right away. It seemed too similar to co-creator Justin Roiland's other big animated show, Rick & Morty -- and not nearly as good. But it wasn't hard to hang in for eight half-hour episodes and slowly warm to the elements of Solar Opposites that were pretty good: the family dynamics found a more distinct rhythm, and a running subplot about shrunken humans living in "The Wall" became the best part of the series.

Now Solar Opposites is back with a second season, and I'm no longer wavering about the show. One thing that's maybe changed since season one is that I no longer have to think of it primarily as "Justin Roiland's other show." I can now also think of it "Mike McMahan's other show"; the other co-creator of Solar Opposites is also the creator of Star Trek: Lower Decks, a show which a few have called the best of the modern Trek series (and maybe aren't totally off base in saying so). Ten episodes of Lower Decks have taught me the rhythms of a McMahan animated series, and perhaps I'm recognizing those now in going back to Solar Opposites.

In any case, Solar Opposites is now leaning more heavily into what worked best in season one. "The Wall" story line continues, and is even stronger in the new season. It's also where some of the best guest voices are deployed, including Christina Hendricks, Sterling K. Brown, and Alfred Molina. (Though don't overlook Jane Lynch, who is funny as usual in her "non-Wall" role in the season premiere.)

Season two also cultivates a self-referential vein of comedy. There are regular nods to their own status as a TV show, plenty of sometimes-barbed jokes about Hulu, and other meta gags. The show is also just consistently funnier -- ultimately the most important measure of any comedy show.

I feel that Solar Opposites has risen to a consistent B+, with some episodes being even better than that. The wait for a third season -- already in production, and reportedly for 12 episodes this time -- seems like a hiatus I'll actually notice this time around.

Voyager Flashback: State of Flux

In modern television, there are some shows that write all the scripts for a season of television before a single frame is filmed. But in decades past, the typical model was to sprint just a few steps ahead of the runaway boulder, completing one script just in time to gather the sets, costumes, guest stars, and everything else needed for filming just a few days later. Being able to plan anything ahead was quite rare. But that's exactly what Star Trek: Voyager did with the first season episode "State of Flux."

Voyager comes upon a Kazon ship in distress: an onboard disaster involving an experimental technology has killed all but one of the crew. When our heroes investigate, they learn that this experimental technology is based on Starfleet systems, which seem to have been given to the Kazon by a traitor aboard Voyager. Suspicions quickly turn to Seska, a Maquis crew member who has had trouble fitting in, and Carey, the Starfleet officer who was passed over for the role of chief engineer.

Freelance writer Paul Robert Coyle had read the script of "Caretaker" (before it was even filmed) and got a chance to pitch story ideas to the show. Co-creator Michael Piller loved his pitch of a Cardassian spy disguised as a Bajoran amidst the Maquis crew, and it became the first outside story sold to the series. But as another co-creator, Jeri Taylor explained: "...it would probably be a good idea – since all of these people are new – if we did some stories in which we established this character before we did a whole episode about her."

As the writers wrote material for Seska to build toward this plot reveal, they discovered she was actually a very useful character to have around, quite different from the usual Star Trek characters with her grumpiness and abrasiveness and mutinous tendencies. It feels to me like they enjoyed writing for her a little too much... or, at least, too much for you to take the alternative suspect of the comparatively underwritten Carey very seriously.

Still, if the "mystery" here isn't especially strong, there are at least some good scenes throughout. We get the back story that Chakotay and Seska previously tried a romantic relationship -- a detail that both says a lot about how dedicated a spy Seska is and sets up future stakes for Chakotay with the recurring villain the show is now putting in play. The episode also hangs a lantern on the obvious question of "just how many spies were on Chakotay's ship after all?" It depicts his crisis of confidence: "how big a dupe am I?" he basically asks Tuvok.

Other "lanterns" are hung in this episode to somewhat less effect. Janeway dismisses Tuvok's conjecture that any other Starfleet ships could have been pulled to the Delta Quadrant before Voyager -- but a few seasons later, we'll learn this is exactly what happened. Seska deflects Chakotay's suspicions by saying that he wouldn't have had any secrets good enough for a Cardassian agent to steal -- which sounds correct; why was she infiltrating his Maquis ship?

Around the margins of the episode, characters are becoming more themselves. B'Elanna explains how she's not a Scotty (not quite in so many words) who pads her time estimates to look like a "miracle worker." Tuvok continues to be efficient and effective as security chief, ahead of the game at basically every point of this story. Neelix... well, the writers seem determined to make him as annoying as possible, and they keep writing for his one major character trait: he's a terrible cook (and doesn't know it).

The Kazon become the first Voyager baddies to repeat... though we get a different "sect" here than we did in the premiere. My memory of the series is that they don't do nearly enough with this notion of rival Kazon factions to amount to much, but this episode does at least makes them seem a more credible threat than "Caretaker." By establishing that a Kazon leader would rather murder his own subordinates than give away information to an enemy, we see how far they'll go. That in turn informs the climax of the episode, which hinges on the fact that once a handful of Kazon ships are united in one place, that's a threat Voyager can't ignore.

Other episodes:

• This episode heads briefly back out on location, to a popular Star Trek spot. Bronson Canyon has appeared several times, though their caves haven't really been featured. I'm not sure this episode needed that extra touch, but the real caves do look better on screen than the fake ones back at the studio.

• For the first time, the Doctor does not say "please state the nature of the medical emergency" when activated. I suppose this is because he was in some sort of "half on" mode to watch over Seska. Or maybe it has to do with Chakotay mixing up the order of the words when he asks for the "Emergency Holographic Medical Program."
  

"State of Flux" makes good moves for the future of Star Trek: Voyager, but as an episode unto itself, it could use a bit more punch -- Chakotay could feel more shaken, the "Carey or Seska?" mystery could be more convincingly balanced. I give it a B-.

The Fever Breaks

Lorenzo Silva is a game designer who has popped up a few times at our gaming table. The King's Dilemma was a storytelling delight, Potion Explosion is pretty fun, and I enjoyed Railroad Ink more than many other similar games. With Unicorn Fever, he's collaborating with another designer, Lorenzo Tucci Sorrentino. But unfortunately, this is a game I don't expect to return to our game table.

Unicorn Fever has the players wagering on unicorn races in a colorful rainbow kingdom. Six unicorns race three times, with players having an opportunity to wager on which will place first (or in the top three). They also have some limited means of influencing the outcome, and a chance to acquire special powers to last them throughout the game.

Put simply, I don't feel this game is bringing anything that Camel Up doesn't do better in every way. It's possible -- perhaps even likely -- that the designers were well aware of that earlier game, and were deliberately setting out to make the "gamer's game" version of it: more sophisticated, more involved.

It's certainly more complex. There's kind of a lot going on here, and I'm not convinced all the rules and mechanisms are carrying their weight. For example: there's a deck of cards full of minor boons and pitfalls you can play face down on different unicorns; they're revealed just after betting is finished (but before a race is run), and in theory they can affect how well the unicorn will do in the race. But the effects are so minor that when you take the action allowing you to play such cards, you actually play several -- and even then, the random luck of any given race seems to ensure that many of the cards played don't have any effect at all.

There are two kinds of bet you can place on a unicorn: one that it will take first place, and two others that it will take first, second, or third. The payout gap between these is so enormous as to seem fickle: first place nets you more than three-to-one over the lesser bets, making them the best bang for your buck. But only one unicorn in six can win, of course, and so in the end, it feels almost random in each race run who scores big and who gets nothing.

Perhaps my frustrations with the game stem from having played it at the maximum player count of six. The game purports to take that many, but when so many opponents are taking turns between your actions and gobbling up (what are probably?) good bets, you aren't left with much of a sense of agency over your own actions in the game. Where this is especially punishing is in the game's inclusion of a "take this action to go first in the next round (race) of the game" action. The theory was likely that players at the back of the pecking order would get dibs on this as others acting first do other things. In practice, it's so hard to get paid through the random betting that you're kind of just as well off choosing the "go first" action (with its minor benefits). And if a player who goes early in round one reaches that conclusion? Then the same player(s) are going to go last for the entire game; they arguably aren't really missing out on much amid the randomness, but they're certainly going to feel like they are. The BoardGameGeek community has decided this game is best for only four players, and I would agree with them.

But all of those drawbacks I mentioned feel like problems that Camel Up had already solved. The rules are simpler, the pace much faster, and the connection between decisions and rewards much stronger. Even with each opponent acting between your turns, there's always something you can do to inch closer to a winning score. There are short term opportunities for the round and long-term opportunities for endgame scoring. There are even some mini-expansions available if you feel the need to dial up the complexity in the direction of Unicorn Fever.

I can say that the art in Unicorn Fever is solid. The cards have fun illustrations. They and the board are full of vivid colors. The sculpted unicorn racers are goofy and light. And yet all of that arguably speaks to a strange mismatch of flavor with game mechanics. It looks light, playful, and family friendly. But it's actually quite complicated, takes longer to play that you'd expect, and is difficult do plan strategy for effectively.

While I could recommend many other Lorenzo Silva games, I would not recommend this one. I give Unicorn Fever a D.

Babysitter's Club... and Knife, and Gun...

A while back, I wrote with modest praise for the horror film Ready or Not. One of the high points of the goofy slasher was the lead, Samara Weaving, who gave an intense and largely realistic performance amid the over-the-top shenanigans. But that movie was not her first brush with the genre. One of her earlier horror roles was in the Netflix movie The Babysitter.

Pre-teen kid Cole is obsessed with finding out what his babysitter Bee does after he goes to bed. But when he stays up late, he finds himself in the middle of a horrific, ritualistic bloodbath -- pursued by multiple killers and barely staying one step ahead of them.

It may tell you everything you need to know about the tone of this movie to point out that it's directed by McG, the high-energy director of the Charlie's Angles movies, Terminator: Salvation, and more. Writer Brian Duffield hasn't had as long a career, but his titles also paint a clear picture with movies like Underwater and Jane's Got a Gun (and the as-yet-unproduced-but-Blacklist-famous Your Bridesmaid Is a Bitch).

Almost from minute one, The Babysitter pegs the needle hard, slathering the screen in dopey gore. Just in case you were mistakenly taking any of it seriously, freeze frames and cartoonish on-screen captions make sure to drive the point home: this movie is all killer, no filler. If you love bloodbath horror movies, you're probably going to like this.

But I do wish the movie had tried just a little bit harder with plot. The characters don't have a very clear motivation for anything that happens, and few have even a basic, archetypal personality. There are jokes, and they are funny, but I found even the swift 1 hour and 25 minutes too long a stretch to keep my brain completely switched off the entire time.

The movie was in many ways cut from the same cloth as Better Watch Out, though I found it not as engaging. That movie zagged where this movie zigged, the performances there were a bit stronger, and the modicum of character psychology on display made it a little more fun for me. But once again, Samara Weaving is a good thing in a movie that wouldn't be nearly as good without her. It's a very different role than she had in Ready or Not, even if the movie overall had a similar tone, and she's equally good at both. There's also stupid fun in a running gag surrounding the character played by Robbie Amell, star of the TV series Upload, leaning into the nonsense as hard as possible.

This is not a great movie that's going to turn anyone into a fan of bloody slashers. And yet even though I'd say it's only a C+ movie, I can see why it spawned a recent sequel. Basically, sometimes I am in the mood for a movie like this (though I generally hope they're a bit better than this one). If you like comedy-horror and haven't seen The Babysitter, you might want to check it out.

Many Worlds... One Predictable Plot

If you own an Amazon Kindle, then you may be aware of their First Reads program. Each month, a selection of half-a-dozen-or-so books is offered free to Prime members. Pick one to download, read it later whenever you like. I've been dutifully grabbing a monthly book that sounds interesting for a while now, but had never carved out the time to read one until now.

It turns out, in this instance at least, you get what you pay for.

Infinite is a thriller by Brian Freeman. Protagonist Dylan Moran is in a car accident with two world-shattering ramifications: his wife is killed, and he's convinced he saw himself standing nearby, observing the accident. When he looks to a hypnotherapist for help, he unlocks the ability to travel to parallel worlds. Different Dylan Morans are leading different lives... but one in particular is also a world-hopper, and a homicidal maniac looking to inflict as much damage on his dopplegangers as he can.

Arguably, my synopsis of the book gives a bit too much away, at least given the pace at which the narrative unfolds. I'd say that's the first, most critical flaw of the tale, though: the writer assumes he's much farther out ahead of the reader than is actually the case. The plot is crafted with many moments of "shocking revelation," but few if any of these moments bring any actual surprise; you don't have to have read many thrillers (or many science fiction books) to easily anticipate the way the story is going to go. In particular, the contrived ending comes toward you like a train blaring its horn a mile off from a busy intersection.

I'll admit, surprise isn't everything. The premise itself, of a "multidimensional serial killer," is an intriguing one, and the book was brief and brisk enough that I'd finished it before I ever really gave serious thought to abandoning it. But on the other hand, I think there's little to recommend it beyond the concept itself. The truth is, if it hadn't been so short, I could easily imagine not having finished it.

Some very well-respected writers opt for lean and direct prose, and I have a lot of friends who prefer this sort of writing. But I found Freeman's words so stripped down and straightforward that the moments he did try the occasional literary flourish stuck out awkwardly, as though someone else did a half-hearted polish pass an another writer's manuscript.

Like I said -- you get what you pay for. I paid nothing for Infinite, and I didn't get much more than that. Since I did finish it, and did find the idea compelling enough, I might charitably grade it as high as a C-. But to the degree it's now dulled my interest in sampling any of the other "First Reads" I picked up -- some of which might well be good efforts from lesser-known writers who might conceivably get a boost in sales for their other books -- I should probably rank it a D-or-so, a nod to the disservice done here. By any measure, I wouldn't recommend it.

A Word on Caution

Sometimes you listen to a podcast because you know you love "this thing," and sometimes you listen to a podcast because it tells you about "this thing" you didn't know you loved. I've recently picked up a new podcast in the latter category.

Cautionary Tales is a podcast featuring true stories of errors and calamities, with an emphasis on the lessons to be learned from the follies of others. Host Tim Harford brings a new story with each episode, hopping eclectically from topic to topic: an ill-fated ship with a stubborn captain; a musician's encounter with an "unplayable piano"; a doctor who became one of the world's most prolific serial killers; and much, much more. He narrates each tale with wry humor and sharp insight, with snippets of dramatic reenactment featuring the likes of Alan Cumming, Helena Bonham Carter, Jeffrey Wright, and more.

I find the podcast excellent for hitting both elements of its premise so effectively. The "Tale" part is always compelling, whether it's a story I didn't know before (a competition between government and private entities to build an airship) or one I did (the Moonlight/La-La Land Oscar mix-up). Harford is quite skilled at spinning a yarn, particularly in episodes that weave two parallel tales together in pursuit of a common thesis.

But there's always the "Cautionary" part as well. Don't just look and laugh at the idiocy on display in these stories, and definitely don't imagine that, had you'd been in the same place, you wouldn't have done exactly the same thing. Each episode of the podcast will teach you something you'd do well to remember, from how a well-intentioned backup system can create a problem, to how improvisation is sometimes preferable to methodical planning, to how people can respond to incentives you did not intend to create. The mission statement of Cautionary Tales might well be summed up as: make sure it's "better them than me" and not "better them THEN me."

Cautionary Tales hasn't been around all that long, and because it seems like the sort of thing requiring lots of research and creative writing, there isn't that big a back catalog of episodes. The second season is running now, but there are still barely more than 20 episodes to listen to (each averaging about 30 minutes). I made myself parcel them out slowly, I was enjoying them so much. But I've now opened all my "Christmas presents," and there's nothing left for me to do but wait for new episodes each week...

...and recommend that you give the show a listen. I have quite a few podcasts in the rotation, but Cautionary Tales is among my very favorites. I give it an A.

Voyager Flashback: Prime Factors

In season one of Voyager, the writers planned to introduce three alien races as recurring villains for the show. Two of these, the Kazon and the Vidiians, would indeed repeat. But the third, the Sikarians, ended up being a one-off in the episode "Prime Factors."

Voyager is greeted with hospitality by an alien society that's preoccupied with pleasure and stories. But when Harry Kim discovers they have a technology that could cut the journey home by more than half, tensions rise. The government refuses to share the technology, citing their own law not unlike Starfleet's Prime Directive. Rogue elements reach out to mutinous Voyager crew members to pursue an exchange in secret. And Tuvok arrives at a surprising conclusion on how to resolve the situation.

While I find "Prime Factors" to be a decent enough episode of Voyager, it seems that few involved with making it were completely happy with how it turned out. The story originated with David R. George III and Eric A. Stillwell, who pitched it as a sequel to the original series episode "Assignment: Earth" -- "what if we ran into the aliens who used long-range transporter technology to dispatch Gary Seven to Earth?" George and Stillwell were okay with the Voyager execs eliminating the connection to an earlier Star Trek series, but they were disappointed that they were never given a chance to write the script themselves.

Executive producer Michael Piller felt the alien race didn't come together in a very interesting way -- which is ultimately why they never reappeared after this episode. And I can't say he's wrong. The Sikarians' focus on "pleasure" and "stories" does admittedly sound like... not the stuff villains are made of. Their look is goofy, with Renaissance-portrait-halos hovering behind their heads. Their leader, Gathorel Labin, is odd -- from how often he touches Janeway in mildly creepy ways to the French-esque accent that actor Ronald Guttman seems to be trying to hide sometimes.

Actor Tim Russ apparently wasn't happy either. Although Tuvok's betrayal of Janeway is the best part of the episode, he argued forcefully against it. He even persuaded the writers to revise "about thirty percent" of his material (to hear him tell it), though he wished they'd changed "another twenty-five." He did not believe Tuvok would ever betray his friend Janeway in this way, saying it could be justified only by Tuvok deciding that a mutiny was inevitable if he didn't intervene. Russ then publicly threw some shade at the writers during a later interview, over lines in episodes ("Learning Curve" and "Twisted") where Tuvok claimed to observe strict protocol and respect the captain's decisions.

I can't blame an actor for wanting to protect their character, but I'm surprised that Russ was so against playing something this interesting here. My memory of Vulcans and Spock from the original series is that their ego and elitism was almost as sharp as their logic (an idea that Star Trek: Enterprise would later expand), so I can totally believe that Tuvok would make a mistake without even stopping to consider that it was a mistake -- especially when that error is not anticipating the emotional reaction his decisions would provoke. The final confrontation between Tuvok and Janeway is an interesting scene for its quiet restraint; Tuvok is of course emotionless, while Janeway is so livid that her voice goes soft rather than screaming her anger.

The episode is well book-ended: it opens with B'Elanna and Seska (Maquis) bonding with Tom and Harry (Starfleet) as Janeway and Tuvok look on like proud parents. By the end of the episode, it's been made clear that these two Maquis in particular still don't default to the "Starfleet way," and these parents have had a profound disagreement over how to "raise their kids."

I also find it an interesting idea to put our Star Trek heroes on the "other side of the fence" (as they put it) when it comes to the Prime Directive. Indeed, it drives home a major argument against the Prime Directive: citing "principle" as reason not to help when you could is not an inherently moral position. I wonder, had the Sikarians recurred after all, might the series have been able to dig in any deeper on this core Star Trek ideal?

Other observations:

• Perhaps one reason the Sikarians don't really pop as villains is that they ask your consent before taking from you the thing they most value. And... that thing is "stories?" (I'll bet the Sikarians would love the ending of Game of Thrones.)

• Janeway seems awfully close to having a romantic entanglement with Gathorel Labin -- close enough that I feel a mention of her fiance Mark was called for. If she's moving on, that needs to be a bigger moment, I think.

I suppose all the people who worked on this episode and who had problems with it are right about one thing: the execution isn't 100%, even if some the ideas in the mix are interesting. I give "Prime Factors" a B-.

The Presentation Is the Meal

I knew that Godzilla vs. Kong wasn't going to be up my alley. But maybe, like Cobra Kai, it would be the kind of thing that manages to be quite entertaining despite also being frequently dumb. Also, the bar for a "good time" was quite low... because this was the first movie I saw in a theater in more than a year. (Since last January, in fact.)

Among the things that movie theaters have been doing as they struggle to keep afloat is selling private showings in their auditoriums. One of my friends felt that Godzilla vs. Kong was exactly the sort of occasion that deserved one. A Godzilla fan to her core (but never happy at the ratio of time they spend on the "boring humans" in these movies), she was excited to have a select group of friends see a big, loud movie on a big movie screen.

And indeed, the experience was pretty awesome. Obviously, this is exactly the kind of movie that really would lose something when you watch it at home. Seeing giant monsters projected giant in front of us was great. It's too early yet in the vaccination and recovery process to be thinking of things as "getting back to normal," but man, this was a delicious one-bite-dessert of normal.

But okay, yeah, the movie itself was pretty bad.

They spend an awful lot of time in Godzilla vs. Kong trying to actually explain their "science," and in this case, I honestly understood what my friend means when she says there are too many "boring humans" in these movies. The garbage technobabble they were spewing (with such Shatnerian intensity!) was quite literally laughable. That I'm watching this movie at all means I've already made the pact to "shut off my brain" as much as I can, so you really don't need to try to justify concepts that haven't sounded credible since Jules Verne was publishing new books.

In a movie featuring monsters hundreds of feet tall, "gravity inversions," and visuals too wild to spoil, by far the most ridiculous notion thrust upon the audience is that Alexander Skarsgård is a "nerdy scientist." Sure, listening to him try to manhandle this wooden dialogue does sap him of, say, 10% of his charm, but it sure seems like this movie wants Chris Pratt as early-season Andy Dwyer and gets something closer to Chris Pratt as Starlord.

But you're not here for the humans, right? (Not even the cute kid or the comedy relief from Brian Tyree Henry.) The action is action-y, the destruction is wanton, and the musical score from Tom Holkenborg is loud and relentless (his Mad Max: Fury Road score turned up to 11 -- no, it wasn't already).

I'd have to say the movie was mostly too dumb to even succeed at "big dumb fun," and I'd give it a D+. But also, it felt like a pretty great choice for "first movie in a theater in a year." I certainly wouldn't recommend watching it any other way, and I'm really grateful to have had the experience.

The Karate Adult

I actually do know someone who had watched Cobra Kai back when it was on YouTube Red, before Netflix bought it and released season three to a reportedly sizable audience. That friend did say good things about it, too. But like I was going to subscribe to... YouTube Red? For a TV series picking up 30 years later on the story of The Karate Kid?

Well, I've now joined the masses that have watched Cobra Kai. And yes, it's pretty fun. It's so deeply dumb at times, but somehow always in exactly the right way that it never stops being fun. Everyone involved with the show, from behind the scenes to on camera, clearly know just what kind of show they're trying to make, and it guides all their decisions.

Cobra Kai is a soap opera, through and through. The plot always steers toward the big soap opera moments -- someone harboring a secret, someone escalating a feud, people breaking out into a huge argument (which on this show, means a big karate fight). All the construction debris in the writing is just left there out in the open, and it's kind of liberating in that it really doesn't matter. You can very often guess exactly what's going to happen; the show only surprises you when it imagines bigger and goofier than you do. (But sometimes, it does! And it's entertaining.)

With a big cast of young actors playing teens, you might want to mentally slot this show as some kind of CW parade of beauty. But Cobra Kai is equally set on really being a sequel to the Karate Kid movies. And so also, it's the only action show on television with multiple major characters in their 50s (and 70s!) that are regularly involved in fight scenes. And most of the time, they're not bad at it.

In fact, William Zabka in particular is surprisingly good in this show. His Johnny Lawrence is a serious contender for one of the most entertaining characters on television right now. Likeable? Rarely. Hilarious? Always. Zabka has killer comedic instincts, little vanity, and it just seems like he's having tons of fun. (Also, other performers -- including Ralph Macchio -- seem to be better in scenes with him.)

Still, it can be so silly, so over-the-top. I wonder if this is what people who are into Real Housewives show are vibing on? It's smart that Cobra Kai episodes are only half an hour long; the show knows that it could never sustain hour episodes. Almost every episode has a moment that makes me feel myself getting dumber for watching it... and about five moments that have me grinning stupidly with pleasure.

It's a hard one to "grade," but I think I'd give Cobra Kai a B overall. Whether you ever watched any Karate Kid movies or not (because they'll explain everything you need to know if you didn't), it's a fluffy bit of television cotton candy. You might enjoy it, if cotton candy is your thing.

Land of the Lost

Not long ago, I savaged Mank, this year's most-nominated film in the Oscar race. I truly could not imagine the person who would really love it. Now I turn my attention to the movie that seems to be the favorite for Best Picture, Nomadland. Here, I can imagine the audience it might be for. But it's not me.

Nomadland stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a widow who lives out of her van and who has taken to the road -- partly out of financial strife, but mostly in a defiant choice of lifestyle. The movie follows her around the U.S. as she bobs from job to job, runs into the same people living as she does, and struggles to stay afloat.

In my eyes, Nomadland is less a movie than a book of poetry. It barely has a narrative; a very loose collection of not-always related scenes serves as a plot. Characters weave in and out of the movie, sometimes making an impact and sometimes not. Most scenes feel like we the audience are joining them already in progress; the editing favors "starting late" and "ending early" to such a degree that it seems more about establishing a mood than conveying information.

The visual sensibilities are poetic too. Landscapes star more than people in this tale. Director Chloé Zhao and cinematographer Joshua James Richards make sure that all the natural beauty of the movie's many locations is displayed in all its glory. Wide shots rule the day, the close-ups being the rare exception. We get gorgeous terrain, gorgeous sunsets, gorgeous desolation. I'd say it makes you want to visit some of the places in the movie, but the goal seems to be to present it so fully that you feel like you already have.

Nomadland is based on a non-fiction book, and so it makes sense that it becomes an almost-documentary movie that's more interested in exposing its audience to something new. It wants to educate us on "nomad life," not character. Indeed, the only character progression in the entire film is tacked on in the final three minutes, as if in weak acknowledgement that travelling (emotionally) from A to B is something that narrative fiction should probably do. The film is capitalizing on the presence of Oscar winner Frances McDormand, using her to build character as a shortcut for what it would rather not waste time on.

There are other movies in this style, and I think this is a strong version of that movie. But I can't say for sure what people are looking for in these narratively sparse, style-over-substance movies. I don't care for them, and I didn't like this one. For me, it was a D-, with only my occasional acknowledgement of the visual artistry making the watch remotely worthwhile. But this movie does have its audience out there, and I hope they find their way to it.

Fired Up

Bonfire is the newest board game from renowned designer Stefan Feld, and it's exactly what one should expect from a Stefan Feld game. It's likely to please his existing fans and not win over many new ones.

Nominally, Bonfire is about tribes of gnomes heading into abandoned cities to relight dormant bonfires that will please the mystic guardians of the area. In practice, the game is light on story but fat with mechanics. There's a lot to manage as you play, in a way that very loosely reminded me of the collage of systems in Feld's popular game Trajan.

Stefan Feld is known for action-taking games with clever new ways of constraining your choices. He has another new system here that I find both demanding and fun. Seven different actions you can take in the game are each represented on tokens, each with their own color and symbol. Each player has a series of tiles that show different configurations of three of these actions, arrayed in a straight line. You begin the game with one of those tiles placed on your board, and the three action tokens it shows given to you. When you deplete your action tokens, you take a turn off to place a new tile on your personal board -- giving you not only the three tokens for the symbols on the new tile, but additional tokens if you line up matching symbols in rows or columns on your board. Build a long chain, and you might get two or three or even more tokens for the same action... which is useful, since you can take more powerful versions of actions by spending multiple tokens on your turn.

Each of the actions puts you in a different head space, with its own strategic considerations. There's one kind of token that moves a counter around a wheel, collecting you different resources (and forcing your opponents to re-plan when what's available changes). Other kinds of tokens play a role in a loose form of area control: you move a ship around the board, scooping up "quest"-like tokens from different islands you land on. Competition for good tokens can be fierce. Gathering what you need to fulfill those quests poses yet another challenge. There are even character cards you can acquire (with yet another action type), which provide endgame points and ways of cheating the rules.

There's a lot going on here, though in a few plays, I've felt that it all integrates together fairly well in a satisfying way. This isn't one of those games where you can pick just one thing and lean into it as your path to victory; I'm not convinced at this point that you can afford to completely ignore any of the game's action avenues. But what you can do is focus on one type of action more than the others, and which one you do will probably be determined by what symbols you're able to line up most on your personal game board. This is not a game where you can develop a "winning strategy" and then re-run that each time you play; you have to make the most of the opportunities you're given.

There's an interesting ebb and flow to the action. You're required to spend all but one of your action tokens before you can "restock" yourself with new ones, so the range of things you can do grows and shrinks multiple times throughout the game. Gameplay can bog down a little in the middle, but it starts fast (since you have only three tokens in the beginning) and ends fast too (as you're rushing to complete tasks you've committed to).

Until I have a chance to play Bonfire more, I'd say that it doesn't quite supplant some of my favorite Stefan Feld designs (but he has had so many good ones, spread out over more than 15 years). Still, there's a lot to unpack here, so you never know! For now, I'd give Bonfire a B+. If you're a fan of Trajan, or Merlin... or, really, any of Feld's more elaborate games, you should check it out.

Voyager Flashback: Emanations

Star Trek writer Brannon Braga had reportedly been wanting to do an episode "about death" since he first joined The Next Generation. But he never quite found an angle on it until season one of Voyager, when he wrote "Emanations."

While investigating an alien burial site at a planetary ring system, Harry Kim is involved in a transporter accident that sends him to the aliens' homeworld. There, he's seen as the first being to return from the afterlife, setting off a local crisis of faith. Meanwhile, the Voyager crew tries to understand the strange spatial phenomena that are transporting these dead bodies from who-knows-where, in the hopes they can find and rescue Kim.

"Emanations" is a decent enough episode, but I think it does bear the marks of a long gestation period that began on a different Star Trek series. Harry Kim's defining character traits at this point in the show are his youth and "naiveté," and this story doesn't really make much use of them. Put another way, I'm not really sure how this story would unfold much differently if the crew member sent to the alien world had been Paris, or B'Elanna, or Kes. You have to think hard to read much about Kim here: he's bold (willing to hop into an alien machine and be killed on the chance Voyager will rescue him).

The episode is much more interested in the sci-fi concept and the alien culture. The alien Hatil gets a parallel protagonist's story line complete with multiple scenes that don't include any Voyager main characters. Another alien, Ptera (I kept hearing "Pantera," and therefore, "Cowboys From Hell"), is the character going through the most emotional turmoil: she's confronted with the fact that she died and experienced nothing, destroying her entire belief system.

The focus is so much on the aliens that some basic and obvious trappings of Star Trek: Voyager -- that you'd certainly think would come up -- aren't even touched upon. The Prime Directive isn't mentioned at all, even though this is clearly as great a violation of it as there could be. And while it is novel that we never learn where the alien homeworld is actually located (maybe it is in another dimension), you'd think the Voyager crew would want to establish concretely that it's not in the Alpha Quadrant and that these "vacuoles" don't represent a possible way home.

And yet... this alien culture, and what this story is able to explore with them, is interesting. With only minimal sci-fi trappings, their idea of an afterlife is quite close to a Christian vision of heaven, yet the episode steps gingerly through the minefield of not offending real-world religious sensibilities -- even as it depicts the destruction of a key article of faith. The issue of euthanasia is also given meaningful space.

There are a few nice little moments for the main characters. There's Kes trying to comfort P[an]tera by talking about her own views of the afterlife. Janeway advises Kim to reflect on his experience lest the extraordinary become routine. Neelix... again isn't in an episode, seeming to cement early on that his character is hard to use in serious situations that aren't happening to him.

Chakotay's respect for alien burial traditions is given a lot of space, complete with a back story for his beliefs that isn't about his heritage. But I think it goes too far and is ultimately a disservice to the character. He raises his objections to disturbing a burial ground; fine, even commendable. But then he presses the point so far that he makes everyone put their tricorders away, becoming a Skyler White (Breaking Bad). No matter how valid a perspective the character may have, they're actively standing in the way of the point of the show. (Okay... in Skyler's case, sexism certainly played a role in the fan reaction.) We're trying to "seek out new life and new civilizations" here, and Chakotay's saying "let's not do that." Then he just becomes a hypocrite; he whips out his tricorder the moment a subspace Macguffin shows up, and personally runs scans from Voyager later in the episode.

Other observations:

• Rocks within a planetary ring system, able to individually hold their own atmospheres? Sounds far-fetched, but I guess whatever. The production savings of not wearing spacesuits are obvious.
  

• If all the "spun silk" in the caves gives you the initial impression that you're going to see a giant spider, you're in for a disappointment. (Or maybe not, considering what a giant spider probably would have looked like on mid 90s television.)
  

• Jerry Hardin is one of those actors who shows up everywhere. Including as two different characters already on The Next Generation.

• There is something really creepy about these four-nostriled aliens. Who knew nostrils were a portal to the uncanny valley?

"Emanations" is a mix of good and not-so-good. I could imagine there being a much stronger execution of the concept, but I'd call it a decent-ish B- as it is.