Discovery: The Galactic Barrier

Star Trek: Discovery has always been a show willing (even eager) to drop in little references to past Star Trek series -- minor details that don't derail their storytelling, while serving as a tasty treat for long time Trekkers. That may have done them a disservice in the latest episode, "The Galactic Barrier."

To reach the location of the mysterious "10-C" aliens, Discovery must pass through the dangerous barrier at the edge of the galaxy. Meanwhile, Tarka and Book are making their own preparations to cross the barrier, which require Tarka to confront his past.

For fans of the original Star Trek series, the "galactic barrier" is a concept that looms large. It didn't come from just any episode, but from the first episode ever made with most of the familiar cast (after the original, discarded pilot). For casual fans, it surely means nothing. For those who know the old episodes, it's the place where one or two people on your crew are going to threaten your ship after they develop telekinetic powers and god complexes.

To me, that feels like too foundational a thing to just ignore. It's a thing you'd imagine the writers specifically wanted to grapple with; otherwise, they'd have just placed these mysteries new aliens in some "unexplored part of the galaxy" rather than specifically outside of it. It's why they'd have devoted an entire episode to "The Galactic Barrier," right? But no, they did indeed ignore all that, leaving fans to infer that this all-important "shielding" they kept talking about was also a barrier against corrupting "ESP" powers. (I guess, at least, Discovery and her crew do come from a time before any of that happened to Kirk and the Enterprise. They just didn't know. And apparently no one thought to warn them?)

Part of me acknowledges that all of that is a pretty silly and minute thing to get hung up on. "You're not respecting continuity from 56 years ago!" is, on the face of it, a fairly stupid complaint. But I really could not let go of it as I watched Discovery go on a "Fantastic Voyage" that involved entering "cells" and going through color timing shifts. None of it felt remotely as interesting as what that provocative episode title primed a Trekker like me to expect.

Most of the rest of the episode fell flat for me too. Tarka's backstory, meant to humanize him, felt oddly insufficient. It seems that his deep yearning to reunite with an old friend is exactly that, nothing more than a desire to atone for a betrayal. And sure, people can be illogical and contradictory, but with all the subsequent betrayals Tarka has committed over the last few episodes, it really seemed to me that something more profound was needed in his backstory to justify his behavior. I guess for Tarka, two wrongs (or five, or thirty) really do make a right.

The overall stakes of the season have reached cartoonish heights. The entire galaxy was already threatened (and not for the first time on Discovery); specifically threatening Earth and Ni'Var felt unnecessary to me. (I only hope it means there's nowhere to go but to a more muted "season-long plot" for season five.) And while I absolutely love Sonequa Martin-Green's performance on this series (and she is the star of the show), I think it's OK for them to let Burnham have more moments of weakness. This week, she was essentially teaching President Rillak how to President, in an incredibly awkward bit of "Captainsplaining."

There were a few enjoyable moments for me. I continue to love the slow burn romance between Saru and T'Rina. Saru confessing his feelings with the expectations he'd never see T'Rina again, only to then... have to see her again? Marvelously awkward. Adira as the embarrassed kid rolling eyes at the proud parent was a fun scene. (Though I wish Tilly had returned more than Adira.) And I loved the small moment of the bridge crew all sharing their dream Earth vacations; those are the sorts of little details I've been wishing for all along, to gradually flesh out the side characters rather than dropping convenient backstories onto them when the plot demands it.

But overall? Another pretty weak episode for the season in my view. I feel a bit generous in giving it a C+. But the good news (I think) is that with only three more episodes in the season, there can't be too much more marking time like this before we get to the big, impactful events that wrap up the story.

Give Peacemaker a Chance

I didn't have high expectations for the TV series Peacemaker. The thing it was spinning off of, The Suicide Squad, was "good, but hardly great." The ongoing concerns of the DC film universe aren't even on my radar.

But... this show was spun-off from one of the best elements of that movie; John Cena has shown again and again that he has comedy chops. Writer-director James Gunn was returning to write every episode of the show (and direct most of them), ensuring the sense of fun he's brought to everything he's been involved in since Slither. So yeah, I was going to check out the show.

The first episode was a little slow to get started, but by the second, I was hooked. And the series pretty much continued to get better each week, building to an excellent season finale. There's a lot to like about the show -- with a lot of attention given to that catchy opening credits dance, all things Eagly, and an unashamed enthusiasm for hair metal. And yes, that's all great. But for my money, here were the real highlights.

They didn't use John Cena only for comedy. As the season progresses, his character of Peacemaker gets some moments of real pathos that are all the more remarkable for the fact that very similar moments earlier in the season were meant to make us laugh. I feel like I remember a time when John Cena was "another wrestler trying to cross over into acting like The Rock." It turns out, Cena is a better actor on absolutely every level than the "always plays himself" Dwayne Johnson.

There was a new character brought in to be the clownish comic relief that Peacemaker himself was in The Suicide Squad movie -- Vigilante. Freddie Stroma's complete sociopath became my favorite character on the show within five minutes of showing up, and that pretty much never changed.

There were meaningful story arcs for all of the characters who rounded out the team. (Mild spoilers here...) Harcourt was a hardass who softened over time without becoming weak. Adebayo goes from wanting to be anywhere else to choosing exactly where she wants to be, from in over her head to capable and essential. And memorably, the finale served up an emotional sucker punch with Economos, another reliable source of laughs throughout the season who becomes more exposed and relatable than any other character.

I would never have imagined there would be another season of Peacemaker. It just felt from the beginning like it was built to be a one-off, and I would think James Gunn and John Cena both had too much on their plates to want to come back. But through some combination of HBOMax backing up the money truck and both of them truly enjoying this storytelling, they've agreed to a second season. I'm cautiously excited. I'd say season one was a B+ as an overall average, but on a steadily rising trend throughout. If they can keep that trend rising in a season two, Peacemaker could (as unlikely as it sounds) become one of the best shows on television.

Discovery: Rubicon

The latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery felt like one written backwards from the plot development it was meant to end on... and I'm not sure there were enough logical underpinnings put in along the way to earn the ending.

The Discovery and Book's ship play cat-and-mouse inside the Dark Matter Anomaly, Burnham trying to prevent Book from destroying it with Tarka's weapon. Aboard Discovery is Nhan, assigned to a supervisory role ito make sure that Burnham will make the hard choice, if it comes to that.

The end point of this episode is compelling, to be sure. The Dark Matter Anomaly is destroyed, but it's a meaningless victory all around: another one has replaced it, and Tarka didn't even get his universe-hopping Macguffin for the trouble. More tantalizing to me is the notion that we don't really know how the mysterious and powerful "10-C" aliens feel about what has happened. Their reaction could be anything from "now you've kicked the hornet's nest" to "other species are so far beneath their notice that they were just replacing a burned-out light bulb." It's a great setup for next week.

But man, getting there seemed rough to me. I didn't have much attachment to the character of Nhan either way, beyond being surprised at how abruptly she was written out in season three. I'm all for bringing her back. It just doesn't work for me at all in the context of this story. We get some exposition about how a Barzan will always put the mission first, and that's why she should have authority over Burnham. But first, the many personal interactions between Nhan and Burnham throughout this episode belie that premise. Second, the last time we saw Nhan, she went off mission for personal reasons. And three, Nhan never actually does what she's brought there to do; she keeps moving the goalposts in Burnham's favor, giving her a second, third, fourth, fifth chance. And in the end, the thing Nhan was supposed to prevent "at all costs" happens anyway, when she had ample chances to prevent it.

Of course, everybody knew Tarka was going to destroy the anomaly. Everybody in the audience, anyway. Not anyone in the episode, apparently, which made them all look dumb, dumb, dumb. No one thought to consider that they're all dealing not just with Booker, but with Tarka (the man who "converted" Booker). And so Tarka is left essentially unsupervised to do exactly what he did. Yes, it's a dramatic necessity for the season-long narrative, but it felt like almost any other way of getting there would have been an improvement. Telegraph it less? Find a way to make the characters consider Tarka yet still fail?

Setting aside the gaping holes for me in the A-plot, I did at least enjoy many of the scenes on the periphery. I'm charmed by the budding relationship between Saru and T'Rina. We've seen a Vulcan in a relationship already, but we've never really seen how a Vulcan "falls in love," despite all the Star Trek there has been. That alone gets me on board here, though Saru's awkwardness about it all adds extra fun.

Presenting Rhys as pro "blow up the anomaly" was an interesting bit of character. I do like that we're long past worrying about Gene Roddenberry's "no conflict among Starfleet characters" edict, so the arguments between Rhys and Nilsson (and Bryce) were interesting to me. And I like getting to know more about all of those characters. Still, this far into Discovery, I wish we just already knew more about them. It feels to me like 50 episodes into The Next Generation, you could have gone through all the characters and anticipated how most of them might feel about a debate like this. For Rhys, his vehement emotions felt a bit out of nowhere.

I think this episode bottoms out for me at a C+, one of the weakest installments of the season. I certainly like where things seem to be going next, but this is one chapter of the novel that could have used a polish.

Bel Weather

If you believe the odds makers, the two films most likely to win the Best Picture Oscar this year are The Power of the Dog and Belfast. I figured if I didn't get to all the nominees this year, I would at least cross the winner off my list.

Belfast is written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, and he's called it his "most personal" film. Set in 1969, it focuses on a young boy growing up at the start of the Northern Ireland conflict. To me, it's the kind of movie that tries to plow its way to an Oscar by pedigree: look at all the big names involved, it must be good! I found it dry, milquetoast, so seemingly concerned with being uncontroversial that it hardly says anything at all.

The movie is definitely made for a target audience who isn't me. It assumes a level of familiarity with The Troubles of Northern Ireland that requires you to be at least 10 years older than I am, or from British Isles, or a U.K. history buff. Possibly all three. The film itself doesn't provide sufficient context for the historical backdrop here.

One could argue that the lack of clarity was a deliberate narrative decision, given that the focus of the movie is a young boy who wouldn't understand the political and religious tensions at play either. But the audience (and the young protagonist) is made privy to plenty of adult themes and conversations over the course of the film. I think more was needed to make the themes this movie presents as "universal" were truly more accessible.

Belfast is also very artistic in its presentation, in ways that feel like Oscar bait, but left me baffled as to any other motivation. The bulk of the action takes place on a street (and in one particular house on that street) that's clearly a set. Little more effort is made to conceal this than was done for The Tragedy of Macbeth, which was trying to conjure an environment that was part film and part theater. To me, this effect serves to put Belfast at an emotional remove; it feels like it's fiction, which combined with its lack of actual historical details, strips this of true emotional heft.

Also like The Tragedy of Macbeth, Belfast is filmed in black-and-white, and with an unusual array of camera lenses that keep things in hyper-focus that normally would not be. This makes the falseness of the sets even more pronounced. And then, in another artistic move, a few brief moments in the film are presented in full color -- clips from movies or other performances. Perhaps the intent was to show the deeply formative effect that a movie can have on a young mind. To me, it felt like an unfortunate inversion: fiction appeared more real, while real events felt false.

I can praise only one thing about Belfast. It does manage to stumble onto two or three moments of actual poignancy. I would have said it does this completely by accident, except that each of these moments features actor Ciarán Hinds in the role of the main character's grandfather. I don't understand any other Oscar nomination this movie received (including Judi Dench, who in my eyes got nominated here because she's Judi Dench), but I can understand the Best Supporting Actor nod for Ciarán Hinds. I thought he was the one good thing about this movie.

Mind you, that puts it nowhere near being a "good movie" in my book. I give Belfast a D-. It's vaguely infuriating to me if the odds makers are right -- that this or The Power of the Dog will win Best Picture. They are two of the worst three 2021 movies that I've seen. (Eternals just managing to squeeze between them.)

Discovery: All In

I've fallen a week behind again on Star Trek: Discovery, but I'm here to begin catch-up, with my thoughts on its first episode back from the mid-season break, "All In."

All roads lead to an alien gambling den beyond the borders of the Federation. Booker and Tarka are headed there to get what they need to build a weapon to destroy the Dark Matter Anomaly, while Burnham and the Discovery are going to give chase and to procure a map of space just beyond the galactic barrier, where the mysterious "10C" aliens the originate.

After a fairly tense mid-season cliffhanger that implied imminent catastrophe, this new episode suddenly moved the goal posts in a way I found rather unsatisfying. As I understood things "last time, on Star Trek: Discovery," Booker and Tarka were on their way to destroy the anomaly, while Discovery had everything they needed to travel to the home of the aliens who made it. Suddenly, neither of those things is true; an extra step has been inserted into the narrative to stretch the taffy for another episode: the guys need a rare element for their weapon, the Disco suddenly needs a map. This is all pretty emblematic of the way this season of Discovery has increasingly gone. The details of the plot seem to add up less and less, but are "load bearing" enough for the emotional weight of each episode. Once again, at least, there was good material in that regard.

"Burnham vs. Booker" was a fun setup here, especially because even when the two are at odds, they can't help but find themselves working together. The criminal underworld setting was well-realized by the production, with good sets, good aliens, interesting background music, and more. There were cliches, yes, but they were generally fun cliches: the character of Haz Mazaro, the boxing ring subplot for Owosekun, the poker game.

Several side notes about that poker game. Film and television pretty much never get poker right, and this was no exception. Pot splashing, string raising, and other bad behavior abounded. And, as always in fiction, the final hand ended up being a showdown between a good hand and a better hand that somehow the loser never saw coming. Just once, it would be nice to see a showdown like this end on a big bluff that gets called, and the context here would have been great for that: Burnham has already said she knows she can't beat Book; how perfect would it have been for her to try to bluff him and for him (being empathic, and knowing her too well) to see through that? Oh well, they didn't really get anything wrong here that all the movie/TV poker doesn't get wrong too. (Oh, and: they've got to make and sell that deck of cards. They seemed like a lovely blend of distinct but usable. The stark black looked great, and the Trek aliens on the face cards were a lot of fun. I want a deck.)

I thought it a little strange that there was just one scene centered on Culber. It was a solid scene, him spiraling over his failure to help Booker, and being soothed by his husband. But there was no "arc" to Culber's story in this episode. It was just one scene, that could just as easily have been dropped into this episode or the next.

I liked a lot about this episode, but never could quite get past the feeling that it felt "unnecessary," following the season-long plot as it had previously been described to us. Overall, I'd give "All In" A B-.

A Rejuvenating [Cy]tonic

I probably don't need to blog at great length about the third book in a four-book series. Still, it's an opportunity for me to both acknowledge that yes, I'm still enjoying the books as I continue that series, and yes, I once again recommend them to any blog readers who missed me praising them the first time around. So here we go.

Cytonic is the third book of author Brandon Sanderson's Skyward series. While Sanderson is best known for his many fantasy novels, this saga is science fiction, and the first time I've ever actually tried his writing. The books follow Spensa Nightshade, a young pilot living on a backwater planet under constant attack by aliens.

Explaining the plot of this latest in the series would give away far too much... but suffice it to say that just as with book two, I was pleasantly surprised with the new direction of this third book. Twice now, Sanderson had previously delivered a fun and exciting tale that left me wanting more, and then delightfully thwarted my expectations by serving up something completely different in the next book. Where book one was a sort of "Top Gun meets alien invasion" flight jockey story, and book two was almost a political spy thriller, book three is an intriguing survivalist tale in an unusual setting.

What has been especially rewarding about these big shifts in the story is that they've felt earned by what's come before. Cytonic does a great job of building on the first two books, even as it's changing everything up. It answers questions that didn't even quite feel like unanswered questions before. It takes one character in particular on a major arc that leaves them changed in a satisfying way. And it sets the stage well for the yet-to-be-published fourth and final book.

I have found characterization to be one of Sanderson's strengths -- at least in this series. This third book introduces several more to the overall story, but it takes only a few chapters before they become just as interesting and important as those from the earlier books. It all seems to have been set up for an exciting final volume in which beloved characters from three different volumes may all meet and interact for the first time. Then again, Sanderson has had something new up his sleeve each time so far, so far be it for me to say for certain what will come when book four is published in 2023.

What I can say: once again, I give a Brandon Sanderson book an A-. (And side note: once again an A to the narration of the audiobook version, by Suzy Jackson.) Since I have a bit of a wait now until book four, it seems like I probably should try one of Sanderson's completed fantasy series in between.

Voyager Flashback: Macrocosm

Some of the most memorable episodes of Star Trek came when the writers revolted against the constraints of their own format. The Next Generation notably put Picard in "Die Hard on a spaceship," and in season three, Voyager did "Janeway as Ripley in Alien/Aliens" with the episode "Macrocosm."

Neelix and Janeway return by shuttle from negotiations with an alien race to find Voyager adrift, maybe even deserted. They cautiously board to find a ship infested with a "macrovirus" that exists at both the microscopic and macroscopic level, infecting the crew and using them to incubate more deadly versions of itself.

According to episode writer Brannon Braga, he didn't actually set out to make "Alien" here, despite the obvious touchstones of slime, rifles, deadly creatures, and lots of crawling around in ducts. He had been writing for one Star Trek series or another for years, and felt that the show was often "too talky." He set out to build an episode with the least dialogue possible. He actually was rather critical of his own finished product, disappointed that he ultimately needed quite a lot of dialogue in the flashback sequences to explain the premise.

But even if the episode didn't quite meet Braga's goals, and even if a lot of it feels cribbed from all-time great movies, there's still plenty that's fun and effective. The idea that this threat is both a virus and a flying monster is a great concept, allowing for both gross creature explosions and "why doesn't Janeway see the monster?" fake-outs. The CG of the time is often lacking, particularly when it has to interact with actors -- but the sound design and victim makeup are really top notch, and the first half of the episode uses classic "don't show the monster" techniques to suspenseful effect.

The narrative structure is solid too. Bringing two characters into a "disaster in progress" was a move that The Next Generation used at least once, but this time we know nothing of what they're getting into at first. It makes for a great mystery. What happened to everyone? When Neelix is attacked, has he vanished? Been taken? And the next act, featuring a solo Janeway wordlessly working her way around the ship, is everything Braga hoped for in his original concept, perhaps the best visual storytelling on Voyager to date.

But there are several tiny details that collectively hold the episode back. The Tak Tak and their performative language make for one of the dopiest alien races in the whole franchise. And because they're so ridiculous, their threat in the final act to destroy Voyager is toothless. What I think is an attempt by Tom Paris to flirt with B'Elanna comes off like a grade schooler pulling on pigtails. (Thankfully, B'Elanna plays it off affably.) The writers continue to show that they have no idea how Neelix comes off to the audience; I think his talk of enduring extreme heat is meant to tell us that something is wrong when he gets stung and starts sweating, but instead it comes off as more of his bragging about skills he doesn't actually possess. Finally, it's wild to me that in the end, we aren't shown that everyone is in fact alright (when the episode makes a point of putting Kim, Paris, B'Elanna, and Neelix in specific jeopardy).

Other observations:

• The Tak Tak were reportedly conceived by the writers solely to prank Kate Mulgrew. They'd noticed how often she put her hands on her hips, and decided to create aliens who would find that insulting. I can't decide if that's fun, or weirdly passive-aggressive. (They could have just asked, "could you maybe do that less?")
  

• I think the hole in the transporter room floor is meant to be one of the big viruses using its stinger to bust through. But so much of this episode reads like Alien that all the slime around the hole makes it seem like "acid blood." Thus, it's especially wild when Neelix gets slimed and doesn't immediately take his shirt off. (Even if it's "just slime" and not acid, you'd probably take it off anyway if you had anything else on underneath, wouldn't you?)
  

• To my thinking, the way the transporter effect is used on the Doctor doesn't look right. Beaming him looks like beaming anybody else, but shouldn't it just look like the tiny mobile emitter going through the transporter, while his body just sort of "fades in" like it's on a dimmer?
  

• The holodeck resort has been a weird setting for the last couple of episodes, but it might be all worth it for its comedic use here as a diversion for the viruses.

• Production costs have always prevented characters from wearing spacesuits in situations where it really would make sense, but it really would make sense here. (Maybe it's the coronavirus experience that makes this look especially weird now. At least Chakotay declares a quarantine the instant he becomes aware of the problem.)

The bad CG (or, more fairly, the attempt to do something CG wasn't yet ready to do on a television budget) detracts a lot from this episode, as do a handful of other details. But overall, this is a pretty good action-mystery episode for Voyager. I give "Macrocosm" a B.

It Bears Scrutiny

I know that among my blog readers are at least a couple of people interested in goings-on at the United States Supreme Court. For that small contingent, I have a podcast to suggest: Strict Scrutiny.

First, I can recommend it for the knowledge and experience of the hosts. Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, and Kate Shaw are each professors or assistant professors at law schools, and before that, each of them clerked for a Supreme Court Justice. They know a great deal about the law, and particularly about the culture and procedure at the Supreme Court.

Second, I can recommend Strict Scrutiny for the depth of coverage. The court itself isn't hearing cases every week, but the podcast has a new episode every Monday. (At a minimum; when the Court makes big news outside its usual schedule, the podcast is close behind with a special episode.) Every single case of a term is touched on in either a preview episode of the week to come, an analysis episode of the week concluded, or both. The three hosts started their podcast primarily for their own students, so they go pretty far into the details... but they soon discovered (to their surprise) that they had a wider audience, so they also now do a pretty good job of explaining things for laypeople. (That wider audience included the people behind Pod Save America. Strict Scrutiny is being brought into their Crooked Media podcast family.)

Third, I can recommend the podcast for being staunchly feminist, which is a much-needed perspective when it comes to Supreme Court coverage. You might think: the current court has more women Justices than ever in history. But the number of women lawyers who argue before the court is still woefully low. And the behavior by some of the Justices toward the few who do appear is often -- as this podcast regularly shows -- condescending to insulting. (Besides: three out of nine Justices, or even the fourth that President Biden intends to nominate -- is still under-representation.)

The podcast is unabashedly liberal in its perspectives, which neither they nor I make any apologies for. I would call it unabashedly "correct," especially as the Court tacks ever farther to the right, in defiance of the views shared by a majority of Americans. (Poll after poll has made clear where the people are on campaign finance laws, gun regulation, abortion -- to name but a few. But it's pretty clear that the Supreme Court is going to be moving the law far in the opposite direction this term.)

If I had one criticism of the podcast, it would be that the hosts can at times be pretty snarky. But even that is a criticism I wouldn't put much force behind. For anyone paying any attention to the Supreme Court right now, a heaping helping of gallows humor is the only way to get through it. And anyone not paying attention to the Supreme Court is likely in for some unpleasant surprises in the months ahead.

Want to know more about the Supreme Court? Strict Scrutiny is a good way to do so. I'd give the podcast a B+ overall.

Voyager Flashback: The Q and the Grey

The character of Q became a fan favorite on Star Trek: The Next Generation. While his crossover appearance on Deep Space Nine was widely regarded as a flop, his Voyager outing was more well-received. Between the response and that episode's open ending, the stage was set for return... which happened in "The Q and the Grey."

Q approaches Janeway with an unusual proposition: he wants her to be the mother of his child. Janeway repeatedly rebuffs his advances until Q comes clean with his true motives: the Q Continuum is embroiled in a civil war, and he believes a new child will unify them.

On the one hand, this episode has plenty of what most Star Trek fans like about Q. He tosses off amusing nicknames (Chuckles, Bar Rodent), he plays mind games, he upsets the status quo. His presence allows the whole episode to let its hair down with broad comedy, a puppy and a baby, unusual snap zooms straight from the classic Western style book, and quirky visuals (like how two Qs conceive a child). Q even learns and grows, which is not a given for a Q episode; he makes an earnest plea to spare Janeway from execution near the end of the episode.

As a bonus, you get Star Trek veteran Suzie Plakson guest starring as a female Q. In the modern parlance, Plakson always "understands the assignment," and she certainly did here. She vamps it up, nails one liners even better than John de Lancie ("I'm not talking about the puppy" and "Helm Boy"), and guilelessly makes inside jokes (she comments on Vulcans and Klingons, two alien races she's already played on The Next Generation). She's just plain fun.

On the other hand, I find so many problems in the construction of this plot. Q's plan here is idiotic; having a child famously does not help people in a sour relationship, and absolutely no details are offered here about how a child would help resolve a conflict that is fundamentally about individuality. If the idea is that this child is going to be some kind of moral beacon, surely Q would go to the most moral person he knows: Jean-Luc Picard. (For Q, gender really shouldn't be a factor in the ability to make a baby.) And speaking of The Next Generation, it already did an entire episode about how, in fact, two Qs did have a child before.

Q's initial pursuit of Janeway is also pretty gross. That's not always apparent because it's played with the lightness of a Pepé Le Pew cartoon. But the fact remains that in the first 10 minutes of this episode, Q forcibly removes Janeway's clothes, blocks her path when she tries to leave the room, and brags about his sexual prowess when she's told him she doesn't want to hear it. Janeway is unflappable through it all, but the truth of course is that she has no true power in this situation. So, uh... yeah. Ick.

I find I don't really have any "other observations" to relay this time. "The Q and the Grey" is kind of a terrible episode when you really strip away the veneer. On the other hand, John de Lancie and Suzie Plakson sure can put on a hell of a veneer. And their fun seems truly contagious; all the regular actors seem like their having a grand old time making this episode. So... that all might weirdly work out to something like a B-? There are far worse installments than this of Star Trek generally and Voyager in particular. It's a watchable episode that I kind of don't ever want to watch again.

Spilling the Boba Tea

The internet has thoroughly picked over The Book of Boba Fett, to a degree where me offering my own take probably isn't adding much. But hey, it's my blog, and there might be one or two of you who might care to know my VERY SPOILER-FILLED thoughts on the show. The bottom line: though it's probably overstating things to call it "bad," it was so aggressively subpar in so many ways that it really piled up quickly.

Let's start with some important background: I never understood why Boba Fett was so popular. He had maybe five lines in the original Star Wars trilogy, then is unceremoniously defeated by someone who never even saw he was there. He basically walks into someone's fist and gets killed. My husband has tried explaining to me, repeatedly, that the cool comes from the costume, that he had a jet pack and that was enough to make him the best action figure in the collection. I still don't get it; we see that jet pack work twice, and the second time it's to catapult him into a toothy sphincter.

Everything that Boba Fett was supposedly good at, The Mandalorian (show and character) is better at. We already had a Star Wars show centered on a principled man of few words who wears a cool costume, wields awesome weapons, and kicks ass. He had a better theme song, ominous and percussive and relentless instead of slow and dirge-like. We didn't need the same show again, repackaged around a guy who's determined to become the crime lord of the Armpit of the Universe that the protagonist of Star Wars told us was a horrible place he never wanted to go back to. (Pointedly, given the opportunity to go back to it again in this season of The Book of Boba Fett, he does not. He calls Grogu an R2-ber.)

As if The Mandalorian wasn't already "the better Boba Fett," Boba Fett's show itself is loaded with more "better Boba Fetts." Fennic Shand is a much more stoic and brooding character, more interesting, and played by the more capable Ming-Na Wen, a stronger actor and in an entirely different class when it comes to delivering exciting fight choreography. Different episodes gave us guest star appearances by Timothy Olyphant (one of the most dynamic brooding tough guys on television in the last two decades), and Danny Trejo (the guy you call to play a tactiturn badass). Add to that the fact that, true to what we saw in the original trilogy, Boba Fett got the snot beat out of him in pretty much every fight he engaged in throughout the season, and yeah... he was getting upstaged on his show in every single episode.

And that's not even considering that the back half of the season was really just The Mandalorian season 2.5. Everyone has pointed this out already, of course, but it really bears repeating because it's really a strange decision. When Angel spun off of Buffy, sure you'd get a cross-over episode every now and then, but you wouldn't just have Buffy show up for the last half of the season to resolve plot threads that were introduced on her show. When Loki got his own show in the MCU, it didn't suddenly become Thor's show in the last half.

Maybe that's because they simply didn't know what story they wanted to tell with Boba Fett. Was this supposed to be a redemptive arc, taking a villainous character and turning him into an upstanding man of the people? Was it supposed to be The Godfather, where becoming embroiled in a criminal enterprise threatens to peel away parts of his soul? Nah, seems like it was just the story of him accumulating cooler lackies than he himself. (I, like most, wasn't keen on the Power Rangers bikers that looked like they'd been sorted into Harry Potter houses, but we all liked seeing a Wookiee actually be a badass fighter, right?) When the protagonist of this show was already the least interesting thing about it, of course the further adventures of Mando and Grogu, and cameos by Ahsoka and Luke and Cad Bane, are going to be more exciting than the aimlessness.

It ended alright. Ish. The action of the final episode was fun. But notably, the character moments that truly mattered all had to do with elements ported in from The Mandalorian. Boba Fett's showdown with Cad Bane was underwhelming to a degree that made the latter's return feel like a waste. (But I take that blinking light on Bane's chest at the end to mean we shouldn't actually count him for dead yet? I mean, not when the whole show started with a dead man coming back to life.)

The Book of Boba Fett really was two shows. The show that was episodes 1 through 4, and some of 7? I'd give that show a C- at best. The show that was episodes 5 through 7? That was probably a B+ for me. Factor in the proportions we got of each show, and I think I'd call The Book of Boba Fett a C overall. It would be completely inessential Star Wars if you didn't have to watch it between seasons two and three of The Mandalorian.

Voyager Flashback: Warlord

Kes was a young character on Star Trek: Voyager, and played by a young actress. Still, it's easy to forget just how young Jennifer Lien was during her three years as a series regular -- she was 20 years old when Voyager began. The show increasingly took advantage of her acting maturity and skill, perhaps never more so than in season three's "Warlord."

The rebellious former dictator of an alien world uses technology to invade Kes' mind and take over her body. Soon, "Kes" is ruling with an iron fist and attacking her enemies with Ocampan mental abilities. But inside, the real Kes is fighting back, as the Voyager crew plans her rescue.

I'll be direct: pretty much the only good thing about this episode is Jennifer Lien's performance. But she's really good, enough to make it reasonably enjoyable to watch. As the power-mad Tieran, she has arch, over-the-top fun as she swaggers around. She plausibly intimidates people far more physically imposing than her, dropping her voice half an octave into raspy gravel. She has a great scene with Tim Russ, poking at Tuvok's suppressed emotions. She has another good "internal" scene with "the real Tieran," surrealistically filmed with Dutch angles in multiple sets. She has fun yelling and flirting (though the episode wimps out on showing a same-sex kiss one moment, while suggesting a "throuple" a few scenes later).

But all of that plays against the backdrop of a bad Game of Thrones episode plucked from the middle of a season we haven't watched. The political landscape the planet Ilari is boring, as are all of its characters. There's no reason to care who comes out on top of their struggle to rule, but the episode seems actually more interested in all of that than it is in saving Kes. Yet despite the time and space given to all these politics, the episode doesn't have anything interesting to say about authoritarianism or rebellion.

There's also a weird subplot disassociated from everything else, about Neelix creating a Talaxian resort holoprogram and rolling with the punches as Kim, Paris, and Torres fill it up with cultural cliches and titillation. (But it's equal opportunity, at least. The Speedo on B'Elanna's holo-beefcake seems shocking for 90s broadcast television.) Even people with foot fetishes get their due (I guess?) as we for some reason get multiple shots of Neelix's super-gross feet.

In the course of the episode, Kes-as-posesssed-by-Tieran actually breaks up with Neelix. It's a wild scene. "Kes" actually makes several valid points about how obsessive Neelix can be and how he inserts himself into every aspect of her life... except that it more accurately describes a version of Neelix we really haven't seen in at least half a season. (In fact, the Neelix in this scene is actually quite understanding and supportive.) Weirder still, at least by memory, this ends up being the actual breakup of Neelix and Kes. Despite the circumstances here, I believe the two characters are officially not a couple going forward.

Other observations:

• Voyager alien design plays a lot with not only makeup but hair as well. I don't know that the "salad/turtle heads" here are very effective, but the six nostrils these aliens have are a lot of fun -- particularly when Kes/Tieran uses her mind powers to send blood gushing out of all of them.

• There's a briefing scene in the middle of this episode with really weird camera choices. A slightly fish-eyed lens, with uncharacteristically tight close-ups, looks rather awkward. (Especially for Neelix.)
  

• There's a character named "Demmas," whose name at least one time sounds a lot like "dumbass."

I'm here for some Jennifer Lien grandstanding, so I'll give "Warlord" a B-. But I'd understand a weaker reaction from others. If her part of the episode doesn't entertain you, there's really nothing else here.

Material Concerns

You know the old saying that you can't judge a book by its cover? Well, in the case of Boyfriend Material, by Alexis Hall, you absolutely can.

Look at the back of the book, and you'll get a summary of a romantic comedy plot that sounds so predictable, you can practically hear the perky voice of the winking trailer narrator. The only wrinkle that keeps it from being like countless other rom-coms you've probably seen or at least heard of is that the couple in the story is gay.

Luc is a mess with a chip on his shoulder about his famous rocker father. Oliver is a barrister wound so tight he might snap. Both think they're undateable, and both of them need a boyfriend -- one to clean up his public image, the other to attend an upcoming formal event. Though they have nothing in common, they agree to serve as "fake boyfriends" for each other. But might it be the start of something more real?

If you don't already know exactly how this story is going to go, know that you can also judge this book by its front cover. This story is very British, as the iconography around the title promises. The "why can't anyone say how they really feel?" trope of rom-coms is ratcheted up another notch when you add the stiff-upper-lippedness common in British culture. (At least, British culture as commonly fictionalized.)

What I guess I'm really driving at is this: I can't be too disappointed by this book, because I can't pretend I didn't know precisely what I was in for. Maybe I'd imagined a more sexy LGBT romance novel when the book was determined to be the most chaste rom-com imaginable, but the contours of the narrative here were abundantly clear before page 1.

But am I a little disappointed that the road to this book's inevitable ending didn't make a little more sense. It's a one sided-book, with the perspective locked in Luc's head the entire time. We're living his self-doubts and hang-ups, while only hearing about Oliver's. And of course, Luc is in the process of falling in love with Oliver, so he doesn't come off very flawed at all. Oliver comes off like the author's  wish fulfillment. He's too perfect for the premise that he'd need a "fake boyfriend" to ever be believable.

Then again, it's possible that rom-com characters are often this shallow and simple, existing only to serve the plot, and I just haven't read/seen many rom-coms. Representation means gay people too can be part of mediocre fiction.

I'm inclined to grade Boyfriend Material something like a C for being quite literally average. On the other hand, I probably entered into a pact to grade it on a curve just by reading it in the first place. Maybe something like a B- is more fair? If it sounds like something you'd ever want to read, you'll probably find it to be a pleasant enough diversion.

Prodigy: A Moral Star, Part II

Star Trek: Prodigy went into its second mid-season break last week, with the conclusion to the two part episode "A Moral Star." (And we're going deep into the spoilers here, everyone!)

The Diviner is returning to Tars Lamora, and the marooned crew of the Protostar doesn't have much time to get ready for him. Meanwhile, aboard the Protostar, the Diviner reveals to Gwyn the purpose behind all he has done.

Prodigy continues to be good at straddling the line of being sufficiently "for kids" and "like Star Trek" at the same time. It's not like those are wholly incompatible goals; the themes in this story of helping people in need, fostering communication, and working as a team certainly hit a sweet spot for both audiences.

But interestingly, I think the Star Trek that this episode felt most like was actually the first movie from J.J. Abrams. This was a largely action driven episode, featuring a villain who turns out to have time-traveled from the future to exact vengeance for an apocalypse perpetrated against his people. Being a TV show, Prodigy actually had the opportunity here to shore up the one big weakness of that movie: it could spend more time with the villain and really flesh him out.

It sort of did, and sort of didn't. Yes, we've gotten a lot more time with the Diviner over these first 10 episodes of Prodigy. Yet I do wish that we'd learned the what or why of his evil plan a little bit earlier than this, to round him out more as a character. He has what seems to be a legitimate grievance here, even if Gwyn rightly points out that his method of redressing it is monstrous. Maybe that's not the kind of nuance you really look for in a kids' show.

Or maybe we're not really done with the Diviner yet, despite where this episode leaves him. He's a time traveler, so some other version of him could show up. And who knows how many bodies Drednok has stashed around. Plus, John Noble and Jimmi Simpson are both part of the credited cast of this show; was that really just for 10 episodes? (And don't forget, we still need to find out what happened to Chakotay, making flashbacks another means these villains could still be around.)

On the other hand, the end of this episode certainly teased a change in direction for the rest of the season, giving us a tantalizing taste of the real Kathryn Janeway, on a new ship with a new crew. A lot is possible, really, which is quite fun!

I'll just jam a few other random thoughts in here at the end, as I usually do when reviewing older Star Trek episodes:

• They didn't save the cat, the cat saved them!

• I'm not sure it really made sense for Holo-Janeway to keep playing "evil" for as long as she did, but whatever.

• It's funny what a difference pacing makes. I bumped a bit on Dal just suddenly turning manacles into universal translators as a plot convenience... but I don't seem to have much of a problem when hour-long Star Trek reconfigures one bit of imaginary tech to be something else (which happens basically every episode).

I'd call "A Moral Star, Part II" a solid B+. As Prodigy heads off into hiatus, I'd summarize it in this way: it hasn't yet reached any of the "highs" other Star Trek can reach (and maybe it never will, for a longtime adult Star Trek fan). But it also has never really given us a dog of an episode either. If it can maintain that standard as it produces more and more episodes, it may well go on to be the most consistent of all the Star Trek series.

Nobody Does It Better

Keanu Reeves has a history of being in trendsetting movies. After Speed came a bunch of movies that were "like Speed, but in this setting." Of course, there was The Matrix and its many imitators. And now, after John Wick, there's been a raft of "it's like John Wick but..." movies. The best I've seen is Nobody. In fact, in my book, it's better than John Wick.

Hutch Mansell has a common family life... until one night, a break-in at his home taps into something buried deep inside him. Action ensues. I'd describe more of the plot, but truly, there isn't much plot here, so saying too much more would only spoil the fun. Just as John Wick loses his dog and winds up fighting Russians, and that's all you need to know, so Hutch Mansell's routine home life is disrupted and he winds up... well, that would be telling.

When I say that I thought Nobody was better than John Wick, I mean that on multiple fronts. It's even more slimmed down than John Wick -- especially the sequels that convoluted the story with excessive world building. With an unheard-of-in-these-days run time of 92 minutes, Nobody gets right down to business, and doesn't get tangled up with anything that's going to get in the way of its mission to deliver adrenaline-fueled action. You get fist fights, you get car stunts, you get gun play... it ticks all the boxes, with absolutely zero fat.

Nobody stars (and this will blow your freaking mind, if you didn't already know) Bob Odenkirk. Anyone who has watched Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul knows that Odenkirk has grown from a comedian into one of the most subtle and real dramatic actors around. And because of his mastery of these gears, the shift from mild-mannered into ass-kicking machine feels much grander. Plus, through a combination of his own skill with fight choreography and incredibly well done stunt and camera work, he looks just as credible in the action as Keanu Reeves, or Liam Neeson, or Charlize Theron, or any other star you can think of who has made a movie like this.

But what I like best about Nobody is the "but" they chose for their "it's like John Wick, but" premise. Nobody is John Wick, but it hurts. It fucking hurts. So many action movies built around fist fights feel slick and glossy. The moves are pristine. The hero is invulnerable. Not Nobody. (Not no-how.) Every moment of every fight in this movie is brutal. That's not to say that it's strictly "realistic," because this is ultimately still an over-the-top action movie. It just feels more genuine somehow.

And of course, the movie earned extra points with me for featuring Christopher Lloyd in a supporting role. (The nature of that role is more fun I'd really rather not spoil.)

Nobody is a movie with a simple agenda, but it does it oh so well. I give it a B+, and a slot on my Top 10 Movies of 2021 list. If you don't like violent movies, that's understandable. But otherwise, you really should add it to your queue.

Voyager Flashback: Future's End, Part II

Star Trek: Voyager concluded its first "mid-season two-part episode" with the unsurprisingly titled "Future's End, Part II."

20th-century tech billionaire Henry Starling seems to have all the advantages in his clash with the crew of Voyager. He has more advanced technology. He has fewer morals constraining the length he'll go to. He's "abducted" the Doctor. But the game is not as one-sided as it seems. Tom Paris has earned the trust of astronomer Rain Robinson, and she's willing to help. Plus, a new technology allows the Doctor to move about more freely. Can our heroes prevail and return to their own time?

"Future's End, Part II" is a jam-packed episode. It's very exciting, but also feels rushed at times. The big cliffhanger of part one, that Voyager was recorded on camera as a UFO, turns out to be a problem our characters don't even have to take steps to solve. A subplot in which B'Elanna and Chakotay are captured by redneck conspiracy mongers isn't given enough time to feel dangerous before a rescue comes. And the logic of the ending requires even more hand-waving than the shaky opening of part one: somehow the timeline gets reset enough to erase everything that happened to future Starfleet Captain Braxton, but without doing the same to Voyager, or changing the fact that his timeship's technology affected Earth history.

This is all evidence of the original plan for "Future's End." The writers conceived of it as a three or even four part episode, which executives at Paramount reportedly nixed. And this was hardly the only debate behind the scenes. Some writers wanted to see Rain Robinson join the Voyager crew as a regular character, an idea firmly squashed by executive producer Rick Berman. (For what it's worth, Sarah Silverman -- anxious about a long-term commitment to one project -- has said she probably would not have played Rain had she been slated to become a series regular.) Actor Robert Picardo was strongly opposed to the permanent introduction of the Doctor's "mobile emitter," feeling that it would compromise something core about his character to lift the key limitation of his existence.

But despite off-camera turmoil and on-camera shortchanging of some story, there's still plenty of good stuff that ended up in the episode. The relationship between Tom and Rain plays quite well. It's basically the first time we see Paris as something other than a chauvinist cad. Also, critically, Rain is not blind to his flaws: she challenges him about his secrets, pokes holes in his lies, and delivers plenty of zingers even as she helps Tom and Tuvok. (In short, Sarah Silverman is even better in part two than she already was in part one.)

Henry Starling continues to be an intriguing villain, kinda-sorta like a Ferengi you can actually take seriously. He's driven by greed and utterly indifferent to future consequences (in a way that must have been interesting for climate activist Ed Begley Jr. to portray). He also displays truly psychopathic behavior in this half of the story, inflicting torture on the Doctor not for any actual goal other than to demonstrate that he can.

What an episode for the Doctor! Yes, the mobile emitter is going to change his character forever -- though as Robert Picardo would later acknowledge: he was wrong, it was for the better. Right out of the gate, the Doctor gets in a fist fight, rescues his shipmates, and tosses off action movie one-liners. (And side note: I made a mistake when I blogged previously that his Alzheimer's-esque memory loss was never mentioned again on the show. It does indeed get a passing mention here.)

And while I wish there had been more time for Chakotay and B'Elanna's story, there are still some good moments there too. In particular, we see how much Chakotay really has moved beyond the Maquis: he speaks about a time when he thought he was a freedom fighter. Also, he and B'Elanna talk at length about their Starfleet Academy experiences.

Other observations:

• Ed Begley Jr. has a particular accent that pokes through whenever he says the words "anything" ("anithing") and "everything" ("everithing"). And for whatever reason, this episode calls on him to say both a lot.
  

• B'Elanna mentions that a large portion of the ship's data (including the Doctor) was irretrievably lost to Starling's download. (I guess Starling "cut-pasted" instead of "copy-pasted.") But while they do get the Doctor back, there's no talk of any of the rest of the lost data. What do you suppose is now just gone forever? Or did it somehow magically return in the incredibly selective resetting of the timeline at the end of this episode?
  

"Future's End, Part II" might be overstuffed, and its ending is as flawed as part one's beginning. But it's even more fun... one of the somewhat rare Star Trek two-parters where the conclusion is better than the introduction. I give it a B+.

Voyager Flashback: Future's End

Ask someone who knows very little about Star Trek to tell you what they do know about it, and chances are pretty good they'll mention something about a movie where they saved the whales. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home turned out to have some crossover appeal beyond Trekker circles. So it's not surprising that one of the Star Trek series would at some point be inspired to try a similarly lighthearted time-traveling romp to "present day." Voyager did just that with the two-part episode "Future's End."

A Federation timeship appears from the future and attempts to destroy Voyager to prevent a catastrophe... but in the process, both ships are thrown pack in time to the 20th century. The timeship falls into the hands of a schemer who raids its technology to build a business empire, while Voyager lands in 1996 and the crew must find a way to break the cyclical loop of events they're now trapped in.

Just as Star Trek IV just hand-waved time travel as something you can just do when it's good for the plot, so "Future's End" has a really rough and non-sensical opening to get you into the story. You have to overlook a time traveler shrieking about how he has "no time" to explain a problem (that's not going to happen for centuries). You have to buy that Voyager would have any means at all to resist an attack by technology 500 years more advanced. You have to believe that a future Federation officer's standard procedure would be "shoot first, ask questions never." (And accept that no apology will be requested or offered for him turning out to be dead wrong about his reasons for wanting to destroy Voyager.)

Get past all that, and this episode really is a lot of fun. Watching the Voyager crew try to navigate 1996 is great (particularly with Tom Paris, who's working at a level of knowledge where he doesn't know how much he doesn't know). The crew gets hooked on soap operas, the ship is caught on film as a UFO, we get callbacks to past Star Trek time traveling ("stone knives and bear skins"), and it's all contained in the fun premise that our own real-world technological boom was the result of a visitor from the future.

It all must have been a lot of fun to make too. It feels like there's more location shooting for this two-parter than in all preceding Voyager episodes combined. (Plus: for once, they get to film at Griffith Observatory and tell you it's Griffith Observatory.) The production team has fun serving up wild fashion, Photoshopped fakery (of a famous "Nixon meets Elvis" photo), and well-decorated sets (the offices of Henry Starling and Rain Robinson).

The best part of the episode is the casting of two big guest stars. Ed Begley Jr. is playing wonderfully against type here; though in real life he's an active environmentalist, his role here as sociopathic "tech bro" Henry Starling (before we had the nomenclature for such a thing) turns out to be Voyager's most effective villain to date. Then there's Sarah Silverman as Rain Robinson. Though she's certainly more well-known today, her reputation as a stand-up was well-established at the time, and she was crossing over into acting. She was reportedly thrilled to do something that wasn't a dopey sitcom role, and she actually demonstrates more acting chops than a lot of Star Trek guest stars of the era showed.

Other observations:

• If the episode weren't clearly intended to be fun, you could seriously dig into the question of what would be worse: to be trapped an impossible distance from your home, or to be at your home but in the wrong time period?

• How and why has tennis changed in the future to use a weirdo ball with suckers? And why is Janeway just practicing in her ready room as opposed to a holodeck or something?

• This episode came a year after the movie 12 Monkeys, which clearly put the idea in the writers' heads that knowledge of the future turns you into a raving maniac.
  

• It's great to see Harry Kim put in command (and for him to be good at it). But still... why? There are higher-ranking people who could have taken the captain's chair (including B'Elanna). After this, the fact that Kim never gets a promotion for the entire run of the show looks egregious. He doesn't even get the dignity of an "acting captain's log" in this episode; he delivers the "Operations Officer's log."
  

• Why risk taking Voyager close to the planet's surface when you could send a shuttle? (There's nothing wrong with the shuttles, because we see exactly that in the second half of the two-parter.)
  

Man are there a lot of plot holes in getting this episode up and running. But once it's there, the great guest stars and the overall fun tone make for a nice ride. I give "Future's End" a B.

A King Is Crowned?

Plenty of movie fans don't much care about what gets nominated for the Oscars. But I do often try to watch all the Best Picture nominees before the awards are handed out. I'm not always successful in that, and it usually has to do with whether I've been able to get a jump on watching "sure-fire contenders" before the nominations.

With the hazy goal in mind to "collect them all" this year, I watched King Richard, the biopic of tennis greats Venus and Serena Williams, and of their father, who always had a "plan" for their success. Will Smith is thought to be a sure thing for Best Actor here, while the movie itself is expected to be a Best Picture contender.

I certainly wanted to like the movie more than I did. But I should stipulate at the outset that I'm not "widely read" when it comes to sports movies. I'm certainly not the ideal audience here. I'm even less the target for a tennis movie; I don't think I've ever watched a tennis match other than channel surfing by one. I did know Venus and Serena Williams, at least, and how superlatives run short in describing their skill at the sport.

Because they are so good, I suspect that it might not be possible to make a broadly compelling narrative out of their story. The typical sports movie model, in my limited experience, tracks the highs and lows of a person/team. They struggle, they persevere, and finally they triumph. King Richard is almost nothing but triumph. Watching it, I got no sense of what skills are required to play tennis, no real sense of what made these two young up-and-comers especially good at it, and little sense that it was hard at all for anyone to see their success coming.

Of course, race and class were obstacles for the Williams sisters, and the movie does show that. But the enormous unwavering faith of their father Richard mitigates any feeling of struggle there. The first half hour in particular paints a picture of how unlikely it is for a tennis great (much less two) to come from Compton. But Richard the character makes their destiny seem like such a given that, when combined with the knowledge of how the real life story ended, it all just seems effortless. That surely can't be the truth.

So in the end, I walk away with no more understanding of Venus and Serena Williams, or their father, than I had coming into the movie. Just the same nebulous respect of an uneducated non-spectator that I had before. I don't think the movie told me anything I didn't already know. And basically, I didn't know anything.

I'd give King Richard a C-. I feel like any award love bestowed upon the film would be in acknowledgment of the real life subjects, or for Will Smith and his long career. But all of them have more award worthy achievements on their resumes than this.

Voyager Flashback: Sacred Ground

During the runs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, a number of main actors on each series put in for the opportunity to direct episodes themselves. The first Voyager cast member to do so was Robert Duncan McNeill, on the episode "Sacred Ground."

Kes has an encounter with an alien shrine that puts her in a comatose state. In the hopes of reviving her, Janeway undergoes a religious rite to ostensibly commune with the alien gods. The captain's scientific principles soon come into conflict with the spirituality of the ritual.

Robert Duncan McNeill wasn't yet expecting to be given an episode to direct, and indeed another Trek-actor-turned-director was slated to be in charge of this one. But when Jonathan Frakes was given the chance to helm the movie First Contact, producer Rick Berman decided to give McNeill his big break in the director's chair... with less than two weeks to prepare before the first day of filming. But there were a number of things going for McNeill here. The episode featured few visual effects and no major action beats. It was very character-centric story featuring Janeway, and actor-directors generally seem well-equipped to speak to other actors and get good performances.

In particular, the guest cast is really solid. Harry Groener has appeared on Star Trek before, and while his role this time is minor, it's quite novel to see an alien government official in Star Trek who actually wants to help. Becky Ann Baker is great as the Guide, injecting a very different-from-Trek-usual energy into the episode, needling and playing with Janeway (like, say, Yoda to Luke Skywalker when they first meet). The three "waiting" people are all recognizable working actors, perhaps none more so that George Costanza's Mom, Estelle Harris. Their scenes feel straight out of a Samuel Beckett play, and showcase the episode's major theme.

That theme, of course, is to pit science vs. faith. And this might be where many Trekkers simply won't be on board with this episode. Star Trek is all about "we can solve any problem if we just understand it," but this episode declares that "some things can't be understood." Deep Space Nine played with this theme a lot, but at least there, the Bajoran Prophets had the nominal scientific explanation of being non-linear lifeforms. The spirits here are as close to "magic" as anything in Star Trek outside of perhaps Q. (The Doctor has an explanation in the end... but then, he thought he had one halfway through the episode and was very wrong.)

Indeed, McNeill said in many interviews about his first directorial effort that he saw this as an episode of The X-Files just as much as of Star Trek. He wanted the same ambiguity The X-Files embraced, empowering both a scientific and supernatural read of what transpires. And while he does basically get that result, I find myself wishing the script had supported it a little better.

There's a great early scene between Janeway and Chakotay talking about religious ritual -- and Chakotay is far and away the best character on Voyager to discuss the topic with the captain. But then, at the climax of the story, Chakotay does an unexplained about face and argues the side of science to her. It feels so unlike his character, in fact, that I found myself expecting a reveal that Janeway's entire experience -- including this moment -- was an hallucination, a part of the ritual.

Despite those few missteps in the script, though, I find it a fairly good episode overall. And yes, a good first effort for McNeill, who would go on to direct many episodes of other television series after Voyager. Even this first time out, he's got an instinct for interesting camera moves, and knows how to work with actors (even if, with a guest cast this good, it might have been as much about "getting out of the way" as much as anything).

Other observations:

• When Neelix sees a statue in the alien caves, his first thought is that it could be some kind of fertility symbol. He's really thirsty, that Neelix.

• B'Elanna and Kim aren't in this episode much, but there's a good early scene where she is spouting off with Klingon rage and he diffuses the situation. I've said it before, but I think they're a good character pairing. I truly believe they would have made a better romance than the B'Elanna/Paris couple we ultimately got.
  

• There's nice makeup on Janeway to show her dehydrated and tired after her ordeal -- pale skin, cracked lips. Subtle, but effective.
  

I give "Sacred Ground" a B. In hundreds upon hundreds of episodes of Star Trek, I'm okay making room for the occasional one that's perhaps more fantasy than science fiction.

A Lovely CODA

There was a time when the notion was laughable that Netflix would be home to an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture. Today, however, the streaming platform backs promising films in production, or buys them after film festival screenings spark a bidding war. Apple TV+ is still in the process of proving its credentials as a major streaming service. Part of that is securing its own "Oscar bait." And it turns out that this year, I like their movie more than any of the other expected Best Picture contenders I've seen so far.

CODA centers on Ruby Rossi, the titular Child of Deaf Adults. She's about to graduate high school, and is expected to work full-time in the family fishing business where she already plays a key role. But she's beginning to embrace her love of music and singing, and she connects with a teacher who thinks she has a real shot at pursuing it with a college scholarship. How can Ruby, the only hearing person in a family of four, expect her family to support her dream? And even if they do, how can she turn her back on them when they've come to rely so much on having her around?

I was moved by CODA emotionally, even as intellectually, I realized just how well-worn some of the tropes of the plot truly are. This is every drama about the "odd one out" in a family unit, of a dreamer whom others just don't understand. It's the time-tested tale of a kid expected to take up the family business, but who wants something very different for themselves. Yes, it's a formula, but it continues to endure and endear because so many people can relate to it. Anyone who's ever felt isolated, who has harbored a secret, who has dreamed to be different -- and that's basically everyone -- can find something familiar in a story like this.

The particulars of such a story are what determines if each new version feels like a cliché. And I find those particulars here to be refreshing and profound. Obligation and family are bigger themes here than in other movies of this type. It has a lot to say about how one might not even see or feel family as obligation, and about how frustration can build up over time.

The movie is about Ruby, but it doesn't simply use the rest of her family as props in her story. At different points, the movie gives us strong empathy both for being an isolated hearing person surrounded by deaf people and for being an isolated deaf person among the hearing. Ruby's brother Leo has a strong point of view on his own place in their family that a lesser movie wouldn't have bothered to present. And Ruby's parents get memorable scenes both together and one-on-one with Ruby over the course of the film.

The casting here is wonderful. Emilia Jones is exceptional as Ruby. If you've watched any of Netflix's Locke & Key, you've already seen her, and may well have thought she was quite solid for a younger actor (like most of the cast of that show). CODA reveals just how much talent Emilia Jones has that her show isn't even scratching the surface of. I'm talking more than just "she can sing!" (she can) or "she learned to sign and drive a fishing boat for this movie" (she did); this movie reveals how much emotional depth she's capable of. If I were an Oscar voter, I'd be putting her on my nominations ballot.

The three other members of Ruby's family are (appropriately) cast by deaf actors. Marlee Matlin, of course, will be known to almost everyone, though it is worth noting that her performance here is different; her character is not as put-together, not as sophisticated, not as sensitive as other roles she's played before. Troy Kotsur and Daniel Durant surely won't be as widely known to audiences, but both are just as great in this movie. Plus, there are two more solid performances from Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (of Sing Street) and Eugenio Derbez.

I loved CODA. I've already seen almost every movie expected to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar this year, and it easily rose to the top of that list... and, indeed, almost to the top of my personal Top 10 Movies of 2021 list. Writer-director Sian Heder has created a lovely movie here. I give it an A-. If you have Apple TV+, I highly recommend watching it.