Springing a Show on You

While no one person can subscribe to every streaming service out there, it seems to me like most of my friends have Amazon Prime, presumably because it kinda-sorta feels "free," included with shipping from the Amazon website. But if it happens that you don't have Amazon Prime, then there is a segment of their streaming content you can access for free: the ad-supported Freevee. This walled garden within a walled garden has its own content, where you must watch the commercials even if you pay for Amazon Prime. Diabolical.

But I have found at least one reason to dip a figurative toe in Freevee: the limited TV series Sprung. Set in 2020, at the onset of Covid-19, Sprung is a sitcom centered on three felons released early from their sentences in an effort to curb prison outbreaks. Rooster invites the Jack and Gloria to come live with him and his mother Barb as they try to get back on their feet. Jack wants to straighten up and reenter society, but the struggle to get by -- especially in the pandemic -- is too real, and the skills he learned in prison too useful. So he resolves only to steal from people who actually deserve it, and his new roommates become his enabling crew.

That may not sound like a comedy to you. But then consider that Sprung is the brainchild of Greg Garcia, the creator of (among other things) My Name Is Earl and Raising Hope. Sprung is a distinctive blend of both, featuring the light moral themes of the former, and key cast members from the latter. Garret Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton anchored Raising Hope, and now they do the same here on Sprung, joined by Shakira Barrera and Phillip Garcia. All four are hilarious, as are the supporting cast members who fill out the wacky world of Sprung.

The show is both fun and funny, and while that would be enough, it also offers up its own form of "prestige television" in a serialized storyline that involves planning one big heist. And over the course of the 9-episode season (sort of 10, with the final episode being double-length), that story is told in its entirety. Sprung seems to be built as this one-off, serving a complete story with resolution for all the major characters. While it's not rare for dramas to be like this, I'm hard-pressed to think of many comedies that have taken this limited approach to television. It's refreshing and rewarding.

If you've liked any of Greg Garcia's previous shows, you will like this -- it's that simple. If you're unfamiliar with him, but you think you'd enjoy Martha Plimpton hamming it up, you should definitely check it out. And yes, if your TV queue is as long as mine, I know you don't need any more recommendations, but this one will slot in at only about 5 hours total (not counting those commercials you can't avoid or skip). Then you'll be done -- and I'd wager, entertained.

I give Sprung a B+. Amid so many serious "must watch" shows right now, I found it pure fun.

Voyager Flashback: Unforgettable

Actress Virginia Madsen isn't someone most people would say is on the Hollywood "A List." Still, she's a star many audience members know, particularly after her role in indie darling Sideways. But she was apparently a "big get" even before that, judging by her "Special appearance by" credit in the fourth season episode of Star Trek: Voyager, "Unforgettable."

When Voyager responds to an alien distress signal, they find a woman who already knows the entire crew. Memories of her species vanish from the minds of other life forms, and that's exactly what happened after the weeks she spent with Voyager already. Now she's seeking asylum from her own people... and hoping to rekindle the romance she claims to have had with Chakotay.

There's a lot of hand waving and heavy lifting to get this story off the ground. I suppose the "why" and "how" of the Ramuran aliens isn't really important: how every other species forgets them, why even technology is affected, what exactly people think they were doing in any missing time when a Ramuran drops out of their memories, and so forth. But it's somewhat harder to overlook the obvious things you might try to overcome such a situation: writing things down physically (which happens at the end of the episode), getting tattooed like Memento (if you really care deeply enough), hiding recordings of your own voice, and so forth.

Assuming you can just let all of that go and "enjoy the ride," this episode still has its hits and misses. The acting is good. Director Andrew Robinson (Garak from Deep Space Nine) is definitely focused on his two leads, Robert Beltran and Virginia Madsen, doing his best to make their relationship compelling and trying to breeze by the sci-fi trappings. Not much time is spent on her character, Kellin, trying to convince people to believe her story; it's accepted in pretty short order. What follows is then a pretty interesting variation on a love story: it's not so much about Chakotay falling in love as it is about Kellin convincing him to fall in love again.

But in a way, that's where the episode ends up a bit flat. The moment we hear about a technology that wipes the memories of Ramuran "runaways," we know where this story is going. Sure enough, the final act sees Chakotay trying to convince Kellin to fall in love a second time, just as she had to convince him. Of course, for the sake of episodic television, that's not going to work. But objectively, this seems to mean that Chakotay just isn't as convincing as Kellin is. He doesn't want the relationship as badly, isn't as resourceful or persuasive, isn't as invested. And if we sense, at some level, that he isn't fully invested, why should we be? (Particularly when, after all is said and done, this is kind of like one of those time travel stories where no one even remembers that any of this happened.)

As I said, though, the performances are committed -- and that extends to little moments for the rest of the regular cast as well. Paris and Kim banter about the latter's crush on Seven of Nine. Tuvok gets in a good Vulcan-style joke about Neelix's food. Seven and Kim have a nice scene awkwardly discussing the customs of courtship. And while it wouldn't be my choice to give Neelix the last (dramatic) word on love, Ethan Phillips does a lovely job with the episode's closing monologue. (I suppose Neelix is the one character on the show who to this point has been in a long-term romance, so maybe it's not that weird.)

Other observations:

• Kellin says that during her first (forgotten) stay on Voyager, she was quite fond of Neelix's cooking. Everyone should immediately doubt her entire story at that point.
  

• This is the first Voyager episode with no B'Elanna at all; Roxann Dawson was out on her maternity leave.

• This episode got me thinking about memory more generally. My memory was that when Seven of Nine was written onto Voyager, the character immediately took over the series. Here, near the end of the fourth season, that hasn't yet proven to be the case. Seven is a background character most of the time, and the fact that other characters feel under-serviced by the writers doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that there are "too many Seven of Nine episodes." (There aren't.) We'll see if that changes in season five.

It's the easy quip, but "Unforgettable" ultimately feels pretty forgettable to me. I give it a C+.

Prodigy: Masquerade

I'm several weeks behind in posting (though not in watching) Star Trek: Prodigy, so let me backtrack to look at the episode "Masquerade."

The Protostar crew is trapped on a planet in the Neutral Zone. As they try to evade Romulan pursuers and face possible destruction by the Dauntless, Dal encounters a strange scientist who answers the question of his origins -- kicking off a crisis of identity.

This episode felt fast-paced, even for Prodigy. In a couple of places, I was a little disappointed in just how quickly it breezed through things -- most keenly in how quickly the character of Okona just takes off again as suddenly as he arrived the week before. I guess he wasn't really meant to be a long-term presence on the show after all.

Another curiously brief appearance came when Admiral Jellico got on the "phone" to snap at Janeway. On the one hand, it is wild to me that they called up Ronny Cox to actually come record a handful of lines, reprising a character he created decades earlier. On the other hand, Ronny Cox has a singular gift for portraying someone you immediately hate the moment he opens his mouth. I do like that the Prodigy writers are keen to touch on all these elements of the Star Trek universe, including them in ways that don't derail their storytelling and don't matter to the segment of the audience who won't catch all the references. "Fan service" is a nasty term -- but appropriate for the way it's so often done. This feels to me like fan service done right.

At last, we get the revelation of who and what Dal is, and it's very surprising, clever, and fitting. He's an experimental blend of multiple species, explaining why we've never seen anyone quite like him before. Moreover, he's an Augment -- a genetically-enhanced human -- explaining why the Starfleet scan of him set off alarm bells a few weeks earlier.

But more important than the facts of it all is Dal's reaction to the truth... and that's also surprising, clever, and fitting. This kids' show really understands it kid characters. Dal didn't just want to know where he comes from in a general sense; he specifically wanted to meet his parents. Learning that he doesn't really have any is a crippling emotional blow. Sure... it leads to a bunch of slapstick, after his procedure to bring out the latent DNA inside him. Nevertheless, the insight into the character is still meaningful. (Plus, the animation combining physical traits of multiple Star Trek aliens is very well done.)

Dal's revelation was not the only one either, as the episode ends with Asencia revealing that she's really a member of the Diviner's species. And she has a Drednok! (Explaining why Jimmi Simpson's name has stayed in the credits all this time.) It's a great tease to lead you into the next episode... which I'll get to soon enough.

I give "Masquerade" a B+. Star Trek: Prodigy remains "good enough." Better even that that, the more you can meet the show on its own terms.

The Best Star Wars Since Star Wars

Amid the taking of vacation and the writing about it, I've fallen behind in my commentary on miscellaneous pop culture. While I have many items to go back and pick up, I think one demands attention first -- Star Wars: Andor.

The newest live-action Star Wars television show finished its 12-episode first season right before Thanksgiving -- and it was outstanding. Much as Rogue One was the best Star Wars film to come along since the classic trilogy, so Andor has become the best Star Wars television series (including all the animated ones). In my mind, it's done more for Star Wars (the franchise) than anything since Star Wars (the film).

Sometimes Star Wars just feels like a toy factory, serving up characters and settings that'll make good action figures and LEGO sets. Sometimes it transcends that and tells an engaging story that makes you actually root for those characters. Andor has transcended that and injected meaningful social commentary at the same time.

The series takes everything that has ever been slightly abstract about Star Wars and made it crystal clear. There have always been "bad guys" in Star Wars, starting of course with the Empire. But not since they blew up an entire planet in the original film has it been so manifest why they are the villains. And Alderaan's destruction wasn't really all that significant; we'd never been there or seen it, Obi-Wan gets briefly wistful, and Leia gets over it immediately. But Andor shows us a fascist state committing atrocity after atrocity, depicting the daily evil that is the Empire as a whole (and not just the cackling figurehead who rules it).

That in turn makes the conflict with the Empire feel more important and real than it ever has in Star Wars. This is not a game; there are stakes here. We see people killed, and their crushed and lifeless bodies collapse to the ground rather than vanish into thin air. We see the horrifying effects of a most cruel torture -- and unlike Leia on the Death Star, the victim doesn't simply bound into action when her prison cell door is opened. And all this arrives at a timely moment when the world seems to need the reminder that fascism is evil.

The characters of Andor are wide-ranging and different. We see people like Cassian Andor who fight in the most literal sense. We see people like Mon Mothma who fight in a very different way. We see people oppose the Empire even though they have everything to lose, and we see people oppose them because they have nothing to lose. (And speaking of the efficacy of characters here: like Rogue One, Andor brought us one of the franchise's best droid characters ever, imbued with true personality. The sequel trilogy's BB-8 was a technical achievement, sure... but he can't hold a candle -- or thumbs-up lighter -- to B2EMO.)

I have heard some people call the first season of Andor absolutely "perfect," and there I will mute my praise ever so slightly. The first two episodes are a bit slow to get the whole thing off and running, with the real meat of the story kicking in around episode three. And I remain uncertain how I feel about the musical score composed by Nicholas Britell. I don't mind the departure from the style of John Williams. (With The Mandalorian, Ludwig Göransson certainly showed us that "this is the way.") But the music of Andor is often purposefully off-key and pitch bent; while clearly meant to unsettle, I find it sometimes distracting in this effort, pulling me out of the moment on occasion.

But aside from those small quibbles, I can only praise the writing, praise the cast, praise the production, praise the ambition... and sit back to impatiently await the second season. I give Star Wars: Andor an A-. Other series coming in 2023 have an incredibly tough act to follow.

Universal Experience

The final two full days of our Orlando trip were spent on back-to-back days at Universal Studios Orlando. But new rides have been built since my last trip, so there were plenty of new things to experience.

(Another thing that has changed is that J.K. Rowling has fully revealed herself to be cruel and transphobic in the time since my last trip, which certainly changed the way the Harry Potter areas at Universal hit. The debate of "art vs artist" is probably worthy of a whole blog post of its own sometime, but suffice it to say that I no longer wanted to buy any souvenirs that might put some additional royalty percentage in her bank account.)

We were parked in the garage at "Spiderman 451," which we jokingly noted was "the temperature at which Spiderman burns." And now I'll probably always remember where we happened to park on this one particular day.

We went directly to the new ride in the Hogsmeade section, Hagrid's Magical Creature Motorbike Adventure, figuring we'd knock off The Big New Thing first on the agenda. The wait was nearly two hours, including a 15 minute pause in line for new cars to be added to the track (where we happened to be stopped right next to a speaker that played the same safety notice -- which we memorized -- on a loop every 15 seconds). But the ride was fantastic. You sit astride a motorbike or in its side car, twisting and turning through different environments to see animatronics of magical creatures. The ride has multiple high-speed launches and a surprise best not spoiled if you're ever going to ride it. We all absolutely loved it.

We also road the newest Velocicoaster in the Jurassic Park area. It's a far more aggressive ride with incredible inversions, steep drops and climbs -- tons of high speed thrills. But the thing is, it's also remarkably smooth for such an intense coaster. (In sharp contrast, when we rode The Hulk later, lurching our brains around inside our heads as it wrenched our shoulders, every single one of us -- even the thrill-seeking kids -- agreed that we'd never want to ride that again.) Make no mistake: riding the Velocicoaster isn't a "sit back and relax" ride by any stretch. But afterward, you feel only the glow of a fun experience.

The rest of the day was spent mostly on rides I've written about before, and so in the interests of compressing the final two days of the trip into a single blog post, I'll just mention that we were around for an evening holiday parade (complete with fake snow that dazzled people in the crowd who apparently don't see the real thing much).

On day two, we tried a couple of new rides in the second Universal park. We went on Fast & Furious - Supercharged, thinking that regardless of the fact that none of us care much about that franchise, it would surely make a good thrill ride. Sadly, they very much found a way to mess it up. It's a low-thrill experience similar to the Skull Island: Reign of Kong ride, but inferior to Kong in every way. You sit for too long in front of woodenly-acted movie clips, the laughably thin plot is just stolen straight from Star Tours over at Disney (a now decades-old ride, mind you), and the actual chase at the culmination of the ride feels more like watching something than experiencing something. This ride sucks, and I like to think it's why hammy ride-attendants in the pre-show area have now added Jungle Cruise-style "I'm miserable too" banter to the experience.

The strangely themed Race Through New York with Jimmy Fallon isn't much of a ride either. It's another 3D movie with motion simulation experience. (But with the giant car built more like the audience stands of the Tonight Show set.) However, you don't expect much from a "Tonight Show ride," I dare say. So when you go on a kind of Mario Kart type of adventure for a few minutes -- you know, the kind of ride you might have expected Fast & Furious to be -- it's fine enough if you don't have to wait more than a few minutes for it.

But we wanted to end the day (and the trip) on rides we knew we'd really enjoy. And so we hopped back over to the other park to wait for Hagrid's Motorbikes again. A full-on ride breakdown for half an hour ballooned our wait to over two hours, but we stuck it out and enjoyed the ride yet again. Then we rode Velicocoaster twice, back-to-back -- a feat only possible for me thanks to the 45-minute line wait for each ride, giving me a buffer between the experiences.

I've talked a lot in these posts about my top 5 rides of the trip. The order shifts a lot, but the top 4 are definitely the Smuggler's Run, Rise of the Resistance, Hagrid's Motorbikes, and the Velocicoaster. Depending on my mood at a moment, that fifth slot might go (surprisingly) to the Ratatouille-themed ride at Epcot, or the new Guardians of the Galaxy coaster (also there).

But any way you slice it, we'd had our fill of fun that last night, as we also got our fill of food at a restaurant in Disney Springs. My feet felt anything but rested when I returned home, but overall I felt recharged and ready for the downhill sprint to the end-of-year holidays.

You Have to Wake Up Early to Save the Galaxy

Our fourth full day in Orlando was our third and final day at Walt Disney World. The plan was to spend the day at Epcot... but the waiting in line started hours before it even opened.

The newest ride at Disney is Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, a roller coaster that opened at Epcot earlier this year. To manage the demand, they're not doing the conventional "show up and stand in line" thing; instead, you have to join a "virtual queue" using their mobile app. The queue only opens up a couple of times a day, one being at 7:00 am. We were warned ahead of time about the narrow window to sneak through here: by 7:00 and say, 5 seconds, you can reasonably expect that the entire queue until past lunchtime will be completely full.

So we woke early and pooled together no less than six different phones, all of us set to push the "join queue" button literally the instant the clock struck 7:00. We did get in, but even as fast as we were, we were still group 69 (nice) to register for the day -- we would wind up getting on the ride about 3 hours after Epcot opened, around 12:30.

But before that, we went to the also new(ish) Remy's Adventure ride back in the France section of the park. This ride was a wonderful surprise. In a way, it's nothing you haven't seen before if you've ridden a theme park ride built in the last 10 years or so. A small car moves your group from "room" to "room," where different scene snippets are projected on a large screen, with programmed motions meant to make you feel like you're there. But this Ratatouille-themed ride was especially clever in how it pulled from the theme park ride bag of tricks -- when and why it lurched you backward, blasted you with heat, squirted you with water, and so forth. Highly recommended.

We didn't have enough time to wait out the long line for the Frozen themed ride in the Norway section, but for me, Epcot is more about the food, drinks, and shopping anyway. (Which is why kids don't like it as much, I'm sure.) We ambled along, picking up crepes, cider, saki, and souvenirs until our number was called for the Guardians of the Galaxy ride.

It's a good coaster. In many ways, it's the modern version of Space Mountain -- it's mostly a dark coaster, but it does what all modern rides seem to do, using large screens to project a story. The pre-show experience is fun too, lifting a signature element from the now-defunct Star Trek Experience that used to be in Las Vegas and deploying it to great effect. The ride also features most of the Guardians cast members -- including, surprisingly, Glenn Close. (But excluding, also surprisingly, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel; Rocket and Groot are voiced by not-quite-sound-alikes.)

It's well worth riding, but the Remy ride might actually have edged it out to get into my "top 5 rides of the trip." The audio mix of Cosmic Rewind seemed off to me. Blaring music is part of the experience (inspired by the "Awesome Mix" tapes of the Guardians movies), and it totally drowns out the dialogue that's trying to tell you the thin story of the ride. Also, that music right now is a Christmas tune medley with Guardians-themed lyrics, rather than the normal random selection of more authentic 80s tunes. But I'd absolutely ride it again, given the chance.

We rode Test Track, which has gotten a major upgrade since I last rode it. They're definitely trying to expand Epcot to be a more plausible destination for thrill ride fans. We had lunch at a buffet in the German pavilion, enjoying too much beer and too much food (see above). We meandered more. There were other little moments too -- looking for Mulan in the China pavilion, watching an ibis unexpectedly lunge for a small lizard hiding in the grass and gobbling it up in one bite, knowing that $100 for an Infinity Gauntlet and stones wasn't for us (but trying it on anyway). Whatever is going on in this picture:

But ultimately -- our feet being tired from 10 miles of walking every day, plus knowing we'd be hitting Universal next -- we decided to call it early for once. (Even though the temptation to park hop to Hollywood Studios for more Star Wars was quietly whispering.)

In all, the Disney section of the trip was a blast, as expected. But there were still two more days of fun ahead.

It's Magic (and... Pandora)

It's hard to imagine many people traveling to Walt Disney World without specifically visiting the Magic Kingdom park -- especially when traveling with kids who have never been there. That's just where we went on the second Disney day of our trip.

Both previous times I visited Orlando, I went to Universal Studios before visiting Walt Disney World. This time, we did the reverse -- and I'm here to say that if you're doing both, that's the order to do it. The rides at Disney (and Magic Kingdom in particular) can seem a little tame if Universal is freshly in your mind. Going to Disney with a "first timer" helps a lot too.

Disney World gets crowded the week of Thanksgiving, I hear... but we were there the following week. We were also there on a day when Magic Kingdom was closing early for an evening Christmas event. Those factors seemed to combine to thin the crowds for us. We got to do basically everything we wanted without ever waiting more than 25 minutes (and typically almost walking right on).

(The one exception was the Jungle Cruise. I would have liked my fill of Dad Jokes on a Boat, but the Christmas themed "Jingle Cruise" version of the ride seems to be extra popular. I didn't need to wait an hour for said Dad Jokes.)

There were a couple of new experiences in the mix. We ate lunch at Be Our Guest, a dining hall set in the castle from Beauty and the Beast. Pricey, but great food. (Yes, there is "grey stuff," and yes, it's "delicious.") I also rode Splash Mountain for the first time, getting that in just weeks before they close the ride to re-theme it for The Princess and the Frog (to finally remove the last vestiges of the racist Song of the South).

We were able to breeze through Magic Kingdom so quickly that we weren't quite ready to call it a day. We'd had Animal Kingdom on the back burner, "if there's time," and our friends' son was especially keen to get there and ride Expedition Everest. So park hop we did, where he loved that ride so much he rode it 3 times consecutively, all in less than half an hour. (Once was good for me.)

Then we decided to brave the wait for the the Avatar Flight of Passage ride -- not for any love of the subject, but because it's one of Disney's newest things and people say it's actually worth the wait. Let me caution you: it can be a rough wait. We only waited about 75 minutes; I've heard it can take 2 to 3 hours. But the queue is oddly retro, with very little going on in it to keep you entertained until almost the very end. You just pass through decorated forest areas and caves for an hour until finally ending up in a lab. A touchstone for Denverites: it reminded me a lot of Casa Bonita.

But... the ride is pretty good. (Not top 5 for the trip for me, though.) A huge 3D IMAX movie is projected in front of you as you straddle a seat that moves like a bird in flight. It's like Soarin: The Next Generation. And the Pandora area of Animal Kingdom in general is pretty impressive.

Night had fallen between the time we got in that line and the time we exited the ride, so it was time to go. A Christmas show was being projected on Animal Kingdom's giant tree as ended our day with the most walking of the entire trip. (Not that there were any "light" days.)

We had one more Disney day to go in the trip....

The Edge of the Galaxy

The first day of my recent Orlando trip revolved around space travel. The second day focused on fake space travel. We went to Disney's Hollywood Studios, home of the Galaxy's Edge Star Wars area that's opened since the last time I visited Walt Disney World.

We were allowed in early enough to beeline straight for the hottest ride, Rise of the Resistance, and face only a 20-or-so minute wait (compared to the 90 to 100 minutes the ride quite regularly balloons to). Rise of the Resistance is a big leap forward in the theme park "technology" of expanding the experience. Yes, it had the now-standard "here's a cleverly realistic movie to watch while you're standing in line." But then it also led to essentially three rides: a mild motion simulator experience, followed by a march through a fully realized set, culminating in a second more intense ride. Once you hit the part that felt like The Ride, the whole experience actually lasted 15 minutes -- epic for the amount of time we waited, but quite novel and enjoyable even if we'd had to wait longer. Rise of the Resistance is, simply, every bit as good a ride as it's said to be.

From there, we headed to an appointment at Savi's Workshop to build our own lightsabers. This is, to be frank, an expensive experience. Even if it were more reasonably priced, it wouldn't be for everyone. You don't end up with a toy you're going to play with; you end up with a highly personalized memento of your vacation that you'll keep on display. That said, that memento is cool as can be. If you've ever swung a plastic lightsaber, this is not that. You choose crystal (blade) color, emitter piece, hilt sections, and end piece -- each from multiple options, resulting in an end product that truly does feel uniquely yours. (Out of more than a dozen people in the room, we were the only one to build a green-bladed lightsaber, so that alone made ours feel more rare.) And this thing is sturdy, hefty. The parts are weighty and metal (or something cleverly crafted to feel sufficiently like metal). In the end, I think the only way you could feel more like "you actually built a lightsaber" is if the end product could actually cut things.

As we continued through Galaxy's Edge, we found the Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run ride, which wound up being a personal favorite of mine for the entire trip. You pilot the Millennium Falcon on this ride -- actually steer it in a fantastic motion simulator experience. The ride is built for 6 people, and there happened to be 6 of us together. Two people pilot, two fire the guns, and two repair damage the Falcon takes along the way. All of this is directed by flashing lights directing you to flip switches all over the Falcon cockpit, making this so much more than a passive ride you sit back and experience. We rode it enough times throughout the day for everyone in the group to experience all three roles in the simulator -- and when the line dwindled to a mere 5 minutes at the end of the day, rode it a fourth time for good measure (getting a great group photo of us all for good measure).

The bulk of the day was actually filled with other non-Star Wars rides in the Hollywood Studios park. I'd done the Tower of Terror before, but it was fun to experience it again.

I'd actually never experienced the Aerosmith-themed Rock 'n' Roller Coaster before this trip; that was fine, if well outshined by other coasters in Orlando (even others at Disney). This was notable, though, for the Disney "Magic Bands" we'd secured for the trip. Our travel friend had suggested them as a way to make gathering ride photos much easier (you just wave your band at a button as you get off a ride). But in this case, waiting in line with a band on triggered custom "band tour posters" that displayed on the walls.

We'd encounter that sort of use of Magic Bands again the one time we rode Star Tours this trip. (We got Hoth and Coruscant as the random locations -- nothing added from the sequel trilogy.)

We'd also wait in a too-long line for the Slinky Dog coaster in the Toy Story area, after some friend of friend recommended it. Maybe if you have a kid who's looking to move beyond explicitly "kiddie" roller coasters, sure. It was a big bust with us, given the 60 minute wait to get on.

We closed out the entire day with a stop at Oga's Cantina for a couple of Star Wars drinks that looked quite authentic and tasted amazing. I actually wish more of the Galaxy's Edge area had been built up like this. Seeing the Millennium Falcon just parked there was great, of course. But otherwise, the area looked like a fairly non-descript rock quarry -- not as impressive as the Harry Potter-themed areas over at Universal. Basically, each individual experience within Galaxy's Edge felt wonderful, even if the whole area containing them felt a little underwhelming.

Before this trip, Hollywood Studios was the Disney World park where I'd probably spent the least time. After this, I would say it's the Disney park I'd absolutely want to spent the most time at in any future Orlando trip.

Vacation Blastoff

Hello readers!

I've just returned from Orlando, enjoying an unusual November/December week in the 80 degree sun (even as I watched and cheered on the foot of snow falling on the ski slopes back in Colorado). I've visited Orlando twice before, but there were still plenty of new experiences this time out -- which I'll recount in the days ahead.

Our friends had long been planning to take their kids to Disney -- with the opening of Galaxy's Edge at Disney's Hollywood Studios being the particular push to go. They generously offered up a room in their mother/mother-in-law's condo for my husband and I to join them. Although we'd spend a whole lot of time walking and waiting in lines with them in the next week, our excursion on our first full day was actually just the two of us: we drove out to visit Kennedy Space Center.

I've long been a history buff when it comes to space travel, and was excited to visit this famous site of so many launches. KSC (which does sound like "KFC" when spoken over a loudspeaker, which made us want chicken all day long) is an interesting location: part active rocket launch site, part museum, part theme park. We didn't get to enjoy that first part; apparently, during the week we were in Florida, two different rockets did launch, but we weren't there on those days. (And we were a few weeks late for the much-rescheduled launch of Artemis I a few weeks ago.)

The other two parts, though, we definitely enjoyed. The "museum" aspect of KSC was my favorite, of course. On display at different parts of the center is the actual Space Shuttle Atlantis, a Saturn V rocket remaining from the Apollo program, command capsules from more than one space flight of the 60s and 70s, and all kinds of memorabilia from moon rocks to spacesuits and more. I loved it. Much of it was accompanied by super cheesy short films you were made to watch before being admitted to see the things, which I admit tested my patience. I think the artifacts speak quite well for themselves; but then again, I've been reading about all this stuff since I was a kid.

As for the "theme park" element of KSC, there are a number of motion simulator rides on site -- because this is Florida, and that's the rule. The ones we did were decent enough, though. There was a simulated space shuttle launch -- a sort of "Star Tours" kind of experience, albeit one that actually does tip you mostly on your back for the launch. We also did 2 of 4 different "Soarin" type of rides: your feet dangle from a motion-controlled seat as you're thrust out toward an enveloping circular screen -- in our case, for a tour of the outer solar system and a surface buzz over Mars. We would, of course, experience more entertaining and more intense rides later in the trip, but these were a fun way to "get your feet wet."

If you're not a space nerd like me, KSC might be a bit too far a drive from Orlando amid a Disney/Universal vacation. But I'm glad to have finally done it this time around.

Easy as One Two Three

The original 1974 version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is not a movie that tends to show up on lists of "Best Movies Ever Made" or "Movies You Must See Before You Die" and the like. But it does seem to cast a long shadow over people in the filmmaking business. Over the years, I've seen it pop up again and again in interviews, social media, and more -- with writers, directors, and actors all citing it as an influential movie. I recently decided to check it out.

For those who don't know the movie (or its 1998 TV movie remake, or the 2009 Denzel Washington version), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a straightforward story about a small criminal crew that hijacks a New York subway car to ransom its passengers. Why did this one novel by John Godey capture Hollywood enough to spawn three movies? I'm not sure I can say... but it indeed feels like a milestone movie on the way to the modern Hollywood blockbuster.

Though made in 1974, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three isn't at all the "slow burn" that most big movies of the early 70s often were. In fact, it's almost more compact than the modern blockbuster. We pretty much jump right into the hijacking; the movie then does everything and slips out in a rather slim 104 minutes. And no time is spent delving into the private lives or motivations of the perpetrators -- they're all just here to do a job.

Which is not to say there's no characterization in the movie. Indeed, this is surely the main way in which this movie influenced Hollywood. There are dozens of characters in this movie -- and while only a handful are truly central to the plot, they pretty much all "pop." This is a case study for screen writers, and for the actors' adage that "there are no small parts." With a remarkable economy of dialogue and/or behavior, you get a strong sense of personality from multiple criminals, police, hostages, subway workers, and government officials. (Sure, a handful of these depictions center on cliches that read poorly today, but this is nearly 50 years old.)

The cast is stacked for its time. Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, (major "that guy") Hector Elizondo, Jerry Stiller, and more are all here. Shaw's presence in particular contributes a lot to the sense that this movie helped birth the modern blockbuster; with this and Jaws in the following year, there's a real throughline here. In two otherwise different characters, we see "stoic under pressure," "villainous protagonist," and other action conventions created right before our eyes.

The score by David Shire is really something. Most of the movie actually plays "dry," without music, but when it does enter the scene, it's loud, in your face, and funky. As if fearing that a movie largely confined to one subway car might get dull (even though it is about a hostage situation), the music is over the top and elevates the stakes.

But despite the reasons I recognize that this film could be studied, I'm not as convinced it can be enjoyed. There's really not much meat on the bone when it comes to the plot -- little more than the question of "how will they get away?" Many of the characters, so vividly constructed in a handful of lines, basically just get dropped. It's quite possible that movies made later, with more complex inner workings, have spoiled me on something this simple -- this... well... old. For whatever the reasons, though, I found myself understanding why film enthusiasts think of this movie much more than I found myself actually liking it.

I'd give The Taking of Pelham One Two Three a C. I'm glad I watched it. If you're the sort of person who might ever call movies "cinema," this might be one you want to watch. If you're more an action movie lover looking for throwbacks you might have missed, this feels to me like more of a risk.

Prodigy: Crossroads

The latest episode of Star Trek: Prodigy united the separate plot threads that have been running now for several episodes, while serving up a fistful of Trek franchise shout-outs in the process.

To counter the risk of contacting Starfleet from the Protostar, the crew hides the ship and sets out to find other transportation. But Starfleet is also looking for them. They run into each other (literally) on an icy planet, but misunderstandings kick off a dangerous chase that culminates at the border of the Neutral Zone.

On the one hand, episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy are barely 20 minutes long (not counting the credits), so we haven't really spent a lot of screen time watching the real Admiral Janeway's search for Chakotay and the Protostar. On the other hand, it has been multiple episodes, and we would probably begin to question Janeway's competence if she didn't catch up to the kids of Prodigy soon. So it's good that the series didn't make us wait any longer to bring the disparate plot threads together in this action-oriented episode.

On the other hand, bringing the Prodigy gang face to face with the real Janeway sort of does make us question the latter's competence a little anyway. This is essentially the same issue that the Borg episode a few weeks ago had. In order for a group of kids to get the upper hand on someone, you have to "dumb down" that someone -- which, in the case of a character as long-established as Janeway, is a bit of a bummer.

But the writers did take some steps here to mitigate this. The specifically "hung a lantern" on the fact that none of the kids were able to just come out and tell Starfleet the truth. (Kids can be awfully circuitous in their storytelling, so I buy it.) They made contact with another adult who could help them out. (More on Okona in a moment.) The real Janeway, knowing there were kids involved (and knowing that one specifically is the daughter of her alien guest) was, of course, not shooting to kill.

So this journey to an interesting cliffhanger ending with the Romulans actually worked well enough, serving up some nice character moments along the way. The comic relief of Jankom Pog felt particularly good this week, with another Tellarite puncturing his bluster. I would imagine the meta-Murf-osis of the series' most plush-worthy character was a delight for the target audience. And while the series didn't have to make characters out of Admiral Janeway's crew, it's nice that it has; the moment in which her first officer Tysess calls out her emotional attachment was effective, and the empathy of Ensign Asencia toward Gwyn worked well too.

Meanwhile, there were abundant Trek franchise references to delight another segment of the audience. Enterprise fans got an appearance by the Reptilian Xindi. I imagine even the casual Trek watchers caught the "make it so" reference. Then the big connection: the freighter captain Okona. Dal and company could have met up with any random independent freighter captain, of course -- an original character created for this story. Instead, the writers went deep in the archives and gave us the return of the "outrageous" Billy Campbell, for what looks like multiple episodes. Maybe this time around, he'll get to be truly charming and roguish in a way the original Next Generation episode didn't really capture.

Overall, I'd give "Crossroads" a B. It's certainly a milestone episode for the ongoing story the series is telling, and leaves me quite interested to see where things go from here.

Voyager Flashback: The Omega Directive

As a franchise with a strong positive focus on science, Star Trek isn't in the best position to tell stories about religion (unless it's to dismiss religion as backward and primitive). But they were making 26 episodes per season per series at the time, and couldn't resist the occasional attempt at the topic. One result was the mixed bag "The Omega Directive."

Voyager detects a rare and highly volatile particle on a nearby planet, and automatically delivers a new mission to Captain Janeway: destroy the particle before it destroys warp travel on a galactic scale. But Seven of Nine is eager to tap this "Omega particle" as a powerful energy source, fueled by a reverence instilled in her by the Borg -- for the particle is the closest thing to true perfection in existence.

This was reportedly a difficult script for the Voyager writing team to crack. It started out centered on the idea of "a directive that superseded even the Prime Directive." It never really escaped the concept of "a threat to warp travel" (which The Next Generation had already covered). They finally decided to inject the religious angle -- Seven's yearning for the Omega particle -- as a way of putting more meat on the story bone.

But to my mind, none of that is what's most interesting about this episode. I'm drawn to the friction among the characters. Janeway is initially required to keep this mission secret from her entire crew, which is a quite interesting jumping off point for the story. (The logic of Starfleet encoding their ships to flash an ominous symbol on every monitor when trying to keep a secret is questionable, but whatever.) The notion that Janeway actually does have one person she can confide in... but it's Seven of Nine, who she's repeatedly been at odds with? That's gold. Chakotay is having to order crew members to do things even he doesn't understand -- another great source of tension.

Yet I feel like the episode doesn't dwell nearly long enough in this interesting state. Chakotay argues for the crew to be "read in" on the crisis, and Janeway caves too quickly. The secrets and strife among the crew are resolved too quickly, and then it just becomes another mission. (Even "redshirts" seem to know about Omega soon enough -- a bunch of background ensigns are milling about on the Away Team later in the story.)

After resolving the most interesting aspect of the plot a third of the way into the episode, the writing actually stumbles onto another interesting story element. But it doesn't fully engage with this one either. The alien society who has discovered Omega is facing a global crisis, the literal end of their entire society. Only Omega will rescue them, we're told... and Janeway must take it away from them. Yes, the galactic stakes are very high here, but there's no musing about "the needs of the many," no dark night of the soul where Janeway must accept that she's condemned an entire planet to armageddon for "the greater good." In the midst of an episode about religion, you'd think there would be room for a serious examination of the morality behind enabling an apocalypse (even if you think your reasons are noble).

There's little examination of the fact that it's Janeway specifically in this position. Tuvok points out that her desire to destroy Omega contradicts the scientific curiosity that's normally key to her character. She simply says "the final frontier has some boundaries that should not be crossed," and that's that. Wouldn't having Janeway herself wrestle with this contradiction have been at least as interesting as playing another conflict between her and Seven of Nine?

And yet, for all these roads not taken, the episode does still serve up a number of compelling scenes. Seven of Nine makes an unusually impassioned plea to Chakotay at a spiritual level. She experiences the character growth of actually respecting the command structure (mostly) this time, rather than rebelling -- and she's basically rewarded; she gets to "see God" before Omega is destroyed.

Then there's a sprinkling of comedic moments that all work pretty well. Kim and Tuvok spar a couple of times in the episode, first over a kal-toh board, and later with the amusing exchange: "Wanna know what I think?" / "No." Seven is put in a leadership role, and responds by assigning Borg designations to her subordinates. So it's not like this episode is missing out on good stuff and giving us nothing, it's just missing out on good stuff.

Other observations:

• Janeway mentions Carol Marcus and the Genesis Project, citing a nice (and prominent) bit of Star Trek lore.

• Roxann Dawson appears as B'Elanna in only one scene in this episode. She went into labor immediately after filming it, so her remaining scenes in the episode were hastily rewritten to give her lines to other characters. She would be on maternity leave for a few more episodes... though to my mind, would return to work fully in a surprisingly short amount of time.

"The Omega Directive" is a fun sort of swashbuckling adventure, but it feels like the potential was there for a far more insightful and introspective story. I give it a B-.

Return to Wakanda

This past weekend, the theaters were once again ruled by Marvel, as the much-anticipated Black Panther: Wakanda Forever arrived to huge audiences. I mostly enjoyed it, but found it to be an uneven movie with high highs and low lows.

The highest of the highs was how many significant characters in this movie were women. The movie's main villain was a man... but beyond him, you have to go pretty deep into the cast list to find another one. This is Letitia Wright's movie, and she steps into the lead role wonderfully. Angela Bassett commands the screen in every scene she's in. Danai Gurira gets to shade her formerly "all badass, all the time" character with meaningful emotion. Lupita N'yongo and (perhaps this is a spoiler for you?) Julia Luis-Dreyfus appear in a more limited fashion, but the former brings the heaviest-hitting drama as the latter twirls a figurative mustache in a fun way. And new-to-the-franchise Dominque Thorne has a significant role to play as well.

In my mind, all that makes this by far the most feminist MCU movie to date -- more so than the films that were explicitly touted to be that: Captain Marvel and Black Widow. And of course, it can be no coincidence that director and co-writer Ryan Coogler was, once again, the one to really "level up" the MCU in representation and diversity. Of course, he did all that while having to delicately navigate the death of Chadwick Boseman. As you would expect, the movie makes a major element of that loss -- and the scenes addressing it are generally the most impactful of the movie.

So all that is clearly in the "plus" column. But there's a lot about the movie that I'd put just as clearly in the "minus" column. (And here's where the spoilers really begin.) It feels like we're approaching a point where more characters in the MCU have an "Iron Man suit" than don't, and the familiarity is starting to breed contempt (or at least boredom) for me. All action sequences with a besuited character are feeling pretty interchangeable to me, and I feel like I've seen everything that can be done there.

The tactics, small and large scale, are laughably bad throughout the movie. When facing enemies who must wear face masks to breathe, not once do we see one of those masks ripped off. And the inevitable final (CG laden) showdown to end the movie? The narrative suggests that the Wakandans could pick anywhere they want that to happen, but they choose to play an "away game" on the enemies' home turf of the ocean. Seems pretty dumb to me.

The pace dragged a lot in the middle of the movie, and I think a lot of that unfortunately had to do with the go-nowhere CIA subplot. Julia Louis-Dreyfus' role here affects nothing in this movie's narrative. This felt like the most transparent "we're just setting up the next phase" subplot in the MCU since Thor went for a cosmic spa day during Age of Ultron. This was more entertaining, because Julia Louis-Dreyfus is, of course, entertaining. But it's 10-20 minutes of unnecessary distraction that could be lifted from this movie to speed things along.

So with heavy weights on both sides of the scale here, I'd give the movie a B-. I do understand the reactions of people who enjoyed it a great deal more; there is a lot to like here. But I found my attention wandering for long stretches (where perhaps other people were more able to coast on the high highs).

Prodigy: All the World's a Stage

The writers of Star Trek: Prodigy clearly know their core audience, focusing each episode on the children they hope will be watching. But they know Trekker adults will be watching too -- and it's for them that the latest episode, "All the World's a Stage," was clearly targeted.

The Protostar crew arrives at a planet who has previously met someone from Starfleet -- an encounter which had a profound impact both sociologically and in the form of a poison corrupting their land. Meanwhile, the Dauntless continues its search for Chakotay... and now, for the people who they believe destroyed a Federation relay station.

Star Trek has done its share of "society polluted by Starfleet contact" episodes (with Star Trek: Voyager in particular doing one with similar plot points to this). Still, I don't believe the telling of this particular story line has ever embraced comedy as fully as this episode of Prodigy, which served up a buffet of delightful references for Star Trek fans. From "James'T" and his exaggerated Shatnerian delivery to "Sool'U" exclaiming "my my" to the phrase "live logs and proper," this episode kept a near perpetual smile on my face.

The way in which the fun serviced a greater theme was quite well done too; the Protostar crew (and Dal most keenly) is feeling a crisis of confidence over not being "Starfleet material," and now through their interactions with these "Enderprizians," they learn that Starfleet is more a way you choose to act than a status someone else bestows on you. Sure -- the revelation was a bit direct, but... kids' show, 22 minutes, you know.

But I did find it a little odd what specific bit of original Star Trek writer Aaron Waltke chose to focus on here. My husband asked me early on: "is this talking about a specific original series episode?" And I really wasn't sure. By the time the shuttlecraft Galileo was revealed, I was rifling mentally through the plotline of the classic "The Galileo Seven," trying to figure out how this could possibly fit. It turns out that Waltke is an even deeper fan of Star Trek than I. (I guess you want some people like that on a Star Trek writing team.)

Ensign Garrovick was featured in the classic Star Trek episode "Obsession," but his fate was not open-ended in any way that sets up this Prodigy episode. Waltke himself has said that he was just inspired that one redshirt in particular had such an important role in one episode of the show, only to never be seen again. He wanted to give the character a big send-off, an "explanation" for why we never saw him again. (As for the shuttle, there were multiple shuttlecrafts name Galileo on the original series anyway; what's one more?) It's fun that a true Star Trek fan got to explore a real bit of minutia now that he writes for the franchise... but it also struck me as weird to essentially do a "sequel" to an episode that wasn't really an episode. (I mean, "A Piece of the Action" is sitting right there -- a lightning rod for fan fiction for more than five decades.)

Still, my big takeaway from the episode was simply that I had fun. I give "All the World's a Stage" a B+. Just when I'm starting to think that maybe I don't need to watch Star Trek: Prodigy, an episode like this makes me glad that I am.

The End of the Fight

Yes, it's ultimately all the new Star Trek shows that make me subscribe to the Paramount+ streaming service. But if I'm being honest, I was often enjoying even more watching The Good Fight. CBS ran The Good Wife for seven fun seasons of character-driven legal drama, and I loved every moment. At that show's end, the creators (Robert and Michelle King) were no more ready to let go of all its characters than I was, and from that was born a six season spin-off starring Christine Baranski -- which itself just released its series finale this week.

Though conceived as a show about a career woman on the brink of retirement suddenly forced to continue working, The Good Fight arrived just as Hillary Clinton lost the presidency that everyone (certainly the Kings) assumed she would win. So right out of the gate, the show transformed into the far more political version of The Good Wife. (Which, let it be said, was pretty political itself; the title referred to the wife of a philandering politician who must "stand by her man.") The Good Fight became more openly critical, sarcastic, even outright angry, and was often ready to meet me at exactly the mood I was feeling at the time.

The spin-off distinguished itself from its predecessor by placing Baranski's lead character in the midst of a predominately black law firm. The show continually added new and more central black characters throughout its run. As the Black Lives Matter movement ascended in the real world, the show more fully embraced these characters and this setting to tell stories quite different from the average (lily white) TV law show.

The emotions and the challenges depicted on The Good Fight were always grounded in reality, even as later seasons grew more and more fantastical. Mandy Patinkin came for a full season to portray the judge at a "civilian" court run out of the back of a copy shop. Andre Braugher arrived in the final season to play a larger-than-life personality more suited to the zany world of Ally McBeal than a serious legal drama. But it was easy to forgive any flights of fancy the show took; the acting was always outstanding, the underlying messages always clear and strong. And the show was always capable of setting all the wildness aside when it wanted to. (A final season episode about trying to save the life of a terminally ill child was one of the strongest of the entire series.)

The series began by bringing just two characters from The Good Wife over. But as it grew more self-assured, all sorts of major and minor characters from the original came to visit the spin-off in delightful ways. Robert and Michelle King (and their writing team) sure knew how to write a memorable character -- and cast the role with an actor who would really make it pop. Guest appearances over the six season included Gary Cole, Paul Guilfoyle, Jane Lynch, Andrea Martin, John Cameron Mitchell, Matthew Perry, Bernadette Peters, Cary Preston, Fisher Stevens, Alan Alda, Margo Martindale, Tim Matheson, Wayne Brady, Wanda Sykes, Alan Cumming, and Phylicia Rashad. (Those were all just the recurring actors; a list of notable one-offs would be even longer.)

And don't let that deep bench distract you from the people who were in the main cast at one time or another over the years: Rose Leslie, Delroy Lindo, Cush Jumbo, Sarah Steele, Justin Bartha, Nyambi Nyambi, Audra McDonald, Michael Sheen, Charmaine Bingwa, John Larroquette, John Slattery, and the aforementioned Mandy Patinkin and Andre Baugher.

The Good Fight was, quite simply, one of my favorite shows of the last few years. It had a few downs, sure, but a lot more ups, and I'd rate it an A- overall. Whether you watched The Good Wife before it or not, I thoroughly recommend it. If you're not willing to subscribe to Paramount just for the Star Trek shows, maybe let this put a thumb on the scales.

Prodigy: Let Sleeping Borg Lie

Each of the modern Star Trek television series strikes its own tone, offering its own "on ramp" to viewers who might not be life-long Star Trek fans. Star Trek: Prodigy in particular is the show that Trekker parents should watch with their children, bringing them into the fandom they love so much. In this gateway capacity, this week's episode introduced the young audience to the apex villain of the franchise, the Borg.

The Protostar crew discovers the unknown weapon embedded in their ship, but are unable to remove it. When they then encounter a Borg cube, they see an opportunity to learn some advanced science that might help the situation... despite Holo-Janeway's warning to avoid the Borg. Elsewhere, Admiral Janeway continues her search for Chakotay, as the Diviner recovers aboard her ship.

I'll just come straight out and say it: I think it was a mistake for Star Trek: Prodigy to feature the Borg. The series was not able to do them justice, and I believe it would not have been possible for them to do so.

I've written about Lower Decks that the Pakleds seemed like the perfect adversary for that series. The writers can maintain the light tone while introducing some jeopardy, and when the Cerritos crew overcomes their adversary, it doesn't feel like they've undermined any critical sense of menace (since the Pakleds aren't threatening to begin with).

The Borg are badass -- even after the later seasons of Star Trek: Voyager chiseled away at their threat level. To feature the Borg in a story where children must overcome them in the end? There's simply no way to do that and have the Borg behave like Borg. Which is why in this episode they capture the Protostar crew without assimilating them right away. They're also generally tame because of other children to think about here: the children in the audience. The Borg are about as close as Star Trek comes to depicting horror, and there's only so much horror genre you can inflict on a young audience. It's okay to show kids scary things... but not too scary.

Another problem in the episode is the breakneck pace. There's a lot of plot being stuffed in here, and so a fair bit of it is confusing. At the beginning of the episode, is Gwyn using the holodeck to recover her own memories by watching some sort of saved "diary" -- or has she reconstructed a recently recovered memory so that she can share it with her friends? If the Borg cube was dormant when the Protostar first encounters it, where did it even come from -- was the ship on autopilot and just happened to come upon it? There's just not enough time to make these elements clear.

Sure, let a group of kids get the drop on the Kazon. But the Borg? Not my favorite moment for Prodigy, and maybe a sign that I should draft a niece or nephew into watching the show with me to properly enjoy it. Without that, this episode was a C- for me.

For Your Own Sake, For the Future of the Supreme Court, Vote Democrat

Tomorrow is election day in the United States. If you are eligible to vote and haven't yet (or haven't made your plans to do so tomorrow), then let me use this infrequent post about politics to do so -- and to urge you to vote for Democrats.

I could offer reasons enough to have my blog become all politics, all the time. But let me focus on one reason in particular: the Supreme Court. Its six-member conservative super-majority spent last term making one terrible ruling after another, and is poised to do even worse this term (if you can imagine that). Voters need to make sure that for the foreseeable future, any new justice appointed (thorough vacancy, or should the need for court rebalancing become even more obvious) must be appointed by a Democratic president and Senate.

You are of course aware of the Supreme Court's ruling last term in Dobbs, a case which overruled Roe vs. Wade, removing the nationwide right to an abortion. That wholesale degradation of women's freedom would be bad enough all its own. And yet, that ruling was in fact so appalling, drawing so much focus, that it covered for several other rulings that, in any other term, would be the headline-making disaster on everyone's mind.

Right around the same time the Supreme Court was ruling that women should only have rights that would have been recognized two-and-a-half centuries ago (a time when they had almost none), they also released these rulings. They restricted how concealed firearms can be limited in public spaces. (Not their own court, of course.) They declared that the right of someone to pray publicly supersedes the rights of those who might feel coerced to participate because of power disparity. They ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks the agency to protect the environment from power plant emissions (under the specious theory that it's a "major question" that a gridlocked Congress must weigh in on).

And those cases all just come from a period of a few weeks. Don't overlook "highlights" from earlier in last year's term. The court blessed a scheme to take away individual rights, so long as it's rooted in bounties collected by private citizens. It eroded laws separating church and state in a case requiring states to fund religious schools. It ruled that a state can violate your constitutional rights in a criminal proceeding, so long as the state assures that such violations don't affect the jury. (Also, they can search your property without cause if you're close enough to a border, and you can't sue anymore if they fail to detail your Miranda rights.) Plus, if a defendant with a bad lawyer should get another bad lawyer to argue that fact? That's your fault; you have no recourse.

If all that isn't enough to make you mad, here are the cases which the Supreme Court has already heard in just one month of its current term -- and the rulings they seem likely to make, based on attitudes during the oral arguments. They will likely rule that universities have no interest in ensuring that their enrollment looks like a cross-section of the country's population. They seem likely to allow even more gerrymandering of congressional districts, ruling that even openly racist drawing of district lines is legal so long as a half-hearted non-racist justification can be offered. Odds are they'll allow the wealthy to pollute the nation's water supply under the theory that it's just too hard to know what water is actually part of the nation's water supply.

Then there are the cases that still lay ahead this term. The Court will be hearing a case that could give a state's gerrymandered legislature final say over election administration -- over any election officials, the governor, or even judges. They will rule on an argument that laws prohibiting discrimination against LGBT+ people are unconstitutional because a person's right to discriminate supersedes the right of the discriminated to secure good and services. And they'll hear dozens of other cases -- any of which could massively affect your life and your rights -- cases that even an avid Court watcher like myself hasn't even really processed yet amid the ceaseless stream of sewage currently flowing from the Supreme Court building.

Something at the Court must change, and soon. Vote Democrat to ensure that when that change comes, it's for the better.

Voyager Flashback: Vis à Vis

"Body thief" episodes of Star Trek have a long history, going all the way back to the original series -- where the final episode ever made was just such a story. Star Trek: Voyager took its run at that plot with season four's "Vis à Vis."

At a time when Tom Paris is beginning to bristle at his responsibilities aboard the ship, a free-spirited alien named Steth arrives with tantalizing hints of a different kind of life. But in fact, Steth covets Paris' comfortable life aboard Voyager -- and has the ability to swap bodies and take that life for his own.

There is a lot to like in this episode. Guest star Dan Butler (perhaps best known as "Bulldog" on Frasier) gives a subtly great performance here in essentially three different roles; his take on Tom Paris demonstrates that he must have studied Robert Duncan McNeill in earlier episodes. McNeill himself seems to be having fun as well. And when, in the final act, Kate Mulgrew gets to sink her teeth into playing a villain, she does so with relish.

All of that is so fun, in fact, that I'm kind of shocked how much I enjoyed this episode once I start to think about all its numerous flaws. Foremost, there's the "circa season one" way it writes Paris as a malcontent just to pave the way for the plot to come; he's acting weird already so that it will seem less weird when an alien has taken his identity. Suddenly, Chakotay is calling him out for slacking, and he's feeling stifled by B'Elanna for no articulated reason. It feels oddly reminiscent of late season two, when Paris faked a misfit act to expose a traitor on the ship... but that was just an act. The only bit of this sedentary unhappiness that feels legit is that Paris has visibly gained a lot of weight -- and that's just the real-world reality of McNeill enjoying easy access to a craft services table in his fourth year as a TV series regular. (The same thing would happen to me, were I so fortunate.)

Not much of this makes sense from the alien Steth's side either, when you think about it. How has be been so successful at swapping bodies for so long without killing the people whose bodies he takes? How stupid does he have to be to try to assimilate into a ship with nearly 200 people, all of whom know Paris to some degree and could spot something to expose him? Yes, he's shown to be quite a smooth talker able to think on his feet, but it's hard to imagine that Tom Paris' life seems so appealing to him that it's worth such a great risk.

Then there are the little inconsistencies. Steth steals what must be a holographic tool (replicator use is rationed aboard Voyager), but is able to take it back to his ship. Steth retains his voice when we see him briefly revert to a female identity, but takes on Tom Paris' voice when he takes that identity. The sheer hand-waviness with the Doctor returns everyone to the right body in the end is laughable.

Ah, but then there are cool little details too. As the series embraces CG more, it allows for things like the alien ship we see here with moving parts on its hull. B'Elanna's mispronouncing of Camaro ("CAM-a-row") is cute. And Steth is an intriguingly progressive character for the time, if you think about it: totally gender fluid, with no one ever commenting on the shift from male to female and back -- and seemingly sexually active. (Steth talks about chasing women with Paris, and it seems heavily implied that he sleeps with B'Elanna while in Paris' body. I'd chide the episode for not digging into the ramifications of that, but it would surely spoil the lighter tone.)

Other observations:

• There are some fun moments for the Doctor. Robert Picardo's pause after talking about the wind whipping through your hair is gold, as is his reaction when Steth-as-Paris strokes his ego.

• There's something about the alien "fast travel" effect that looks to me more like a shrunken object re-enlarging.

• Extra nostrils on a Star Trek alien always seems to be the most distracting makeup addition.

• I've often wondered what it would be like for someone to tell a body swap story without letting the audience in on the fact that a swap has occurred. Could we figure out why someone is acting strangely? We get a taste of that with the fun Janeway plot twist at the end of this episode, but I'm talking a whole episode like that.
  

I really don't quite know how to reconcile all the nits I want to pick here with the fact that it's actually quite a lot of fun to watch. Call this an improbable B? Yes, this could have been a better episode, but it also could have been much, much worse.

Finally -- The Beginning

For years, author Brandon Sanderson had been on my reading list. I enjoy fantasy fiction, he's one of the most recognized names in the genre, so I ought to give him a try -- simple as that. When I finally did get around to Sanderson, I didn't exactly scratch the itch as I've just defined: I began his (excellent) science fiction series, Skyward. But now, I've gone back to where Sanderson began; I've read his first book, Mistborn: The Final Empire.

This first book of Sanderson's career kicked off a series he's still expanding today, set in a world where a dictator rules harshly over a deeply class-divided society. Rebels seek to overthrow the apparently immortal ruler, their best weapon being guerilla tactics employing allomacy, a metal-based magical system.

Mistborn: The Final Empire was first published in 2006. You would expect anyone doing any one job for 16 years to get better at it over time, and this book definitely reflects that. It's not badly written. (Of course it isn't; Sanderson became popular for a reason.) But Skyward is one of Sanderson's most recent creations, and there is a noticeable difference. Not all of the characters in Mistborn are as crisp. Not all of the writing is as tight.

But the setting, the creativity, the ideas? Sanderson had that going for him right out of the gate. The world of Mistborn is a fascinating one, with a unique, intriguing, and elaborately detailed system of magic. (Indeed, there are actually two kinds of magic here, interrelated but distinct in a compelling way. But I leave that for the book itself to reveal.) Metals are literally consumed by the magic-user, ingested and burned off for some particular ability they grant. And seemingly with each new chapter, some new aspect of this is revealed.

There is, of course, a plot here too -- and a decent one. But the way this story operates in a fascist society isn't as vivid as the fantasy elements. Mistborn is a product of its time, I suppose, in which fascism was more distant, a more abstract evil useful for storytelling. It's borrowing heavily from other fantasy staples too, most clearly in it centering on a Chosen One character, anointed by destiny to rid the world of an ancient villain, mentored by a secretive magic wielder. So I center on the setting as the most compelling and different element here -- though it's worth noting that Sanderson does depart from the conventions in meaningful ways as the book unspools.

I would give Mistborn: The Final Empire a B. If you're not an enthusiast of fantasy, it's probably not a book that's going to win you over. But for fantasy readers, it's solid and enjoyable, and seems a strong enough effort for one of the titans of the genre. And I will be proceeding with the series.

Prodigy: Asylum

There was a time when a "lull" in Star Trek content meant years on end with absolutely nothing new. These days, it's a lull when the Star Trek series actively releasing new episodes is aimed squarely at a different audience. Star Trek: Prodigy, the kids' show, is back for the second half of its twenty episode season, with "Asylum."

The Protostar crew has been racking up "good deeds" they hope will offset the fact that when they arrive with the Federation, they'll be doing it in a stolen starship. They pull up to a remote Federation station with only one inhabitant -- and while they receive a warm-ish welcome, their presence soon triggers a disaster aboard the station. Elsewhere, Admiral Janeway remains on the trail for Chakotay and his ship.

There's an undeniable sense of whiplash going from Star Trek: Lower Decks to Star Trek: Prodigy; the two shows might be striking almost the most different tones possible underneath the larger Star Trek umbrella. (It really highlights the folly of thinking of "animation" as a single genre.) I constantly have to remind myself that if I'm choosing to watch this show, I can't be too upset about the plots being simple, the characters being innocent, the pacing being rushed. In short, I can't expect Prodigy to, any episode now, become one of my favorite Star Trek shows. I'm not the target audience.

Still, I find myself wanting to stick with Prodigy because it does still offer plenty to enjoy. For one thing, the animation is simply beautiful. This single half-hour episode spans a chase sequence through a detailed underwater environment, the emotional subtlety of the flashback scene between Janeway and Chakotay, and an action-packed climax full of massive and dangerous explosions. The animators of Prodigy can pull it all off, big or small, quiet or epic.

And the sentiments of a Prodigy episode (certainly this one, at least) still feel like "what Star Trek fans like about Star Trek." Different characters face small crises of confidence in the episode (Dal with reaching the Federation, Zero with the mental damage they caused Gwyn, Rok-tahk with her own abilities), and each must overcome them. Sure, some of this is basic, archetypal stuff -- but the core audience here probably hasn't seen many of these tropes before. (I'm sure kids haven't seen A Beautiful Mind, for instance, so Rok-Tahk visualizing complex equations is a brand-new thing.)

Even in "kids' show adjusted terms," though, a few parts of the episode still clanged for me. Not giving us a "previously on" opening package to catch up on the story (after more than eight months) felt like a weird choice. Having the Starfleet officer on the station abandon a bunch of kids to die felt pretty reprehensible, even for someone who's been isolated for a while. The jeopardy at the end, with Rok-Tahk having to tell them all exactly when to jump, felt pretty false with Janeway able to steer the ship and rescue them. (At least that's exactly what she did.)

At the same time, the show does aspire to bigger things in terms of ongoing story. Arriving at part of the Federation only opened up the mysteries, with Dal's identity tripping some kind of alert. The Diviner is not dead, so that story line from the first half of the season isn't wrapped up after all. And the real Janeway's pursuit of Chakotay remains an element that doesn't feel aimed at the kids at all -- not in its emotional heft nor in its clear appeal to people who watched a 25-year-old television show.

I'd give "Asylum" a B. Would I watch Prodigy if "Star Trek" weren't also in the title? Surely not. But it remains good enough to keep a fan like me on board for now.