Bird Watching

I've never read a novel by Dennis Lehane, but thanks to the many high-profile movie adaptations of his books, I'm very much aware of his style. Mystic River, Shutter Island, Gone Baby Gone -- unless you're a movie-watcher who avoids drama completely, chances are you've seen at least one. And it's Gone Baby Gone in particular (I thought it was excellent) that made me take interest the newest Lehane project.

Black Bird is a six-episode Apple TV+ mini-series starring Taron Egerton, Paul Walter Hauser, Sepideh Moafi, Greg Kinnear, and Ray Liotta. It's adapted from the real-life story of Jimmy Keene, a cocky young narcotics dealer recently sent to prison. When his father's health begins to decline sharply, he grows desperate to get out, and agrees to assist an FBI investigation. Brutal child serial killer Larry Hall is currently in prison, but on the basis of a confession his lawyers are now arguing was coerced. Without more evidence against Hall, the FBI fears he will be freed... and it's up to Jimmy to transfer into Hall's maximum security facility, buddy up to the killer, and elicit actionable information to use against him.

Much of the focus of those previous Lehane film adaptations were on the high-profile directors -- Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, and Ben Affleck. But the similarity of tone in those movies makes clear that no auteur was bending Lehane's voice to his will. With Black Bird, Lehane is the show creator and head writer, ostensibly freed to tell the story "his way," given the power that writer-producers wield in the medium of television. There's very little difference here. Put simply: if you've liked anything by Dennis Lehane, you're going to like this.

There are good performances throughout the series. Paul Walter Hauser gets the showiest role as killer Larry Hall. He doesn't ooze danger in every frame like most film/TV serial killers, but he's creepy and "off" at every turn. Adopting a high, lilting voice (and the real Hall's distinct physical appearance), Hauser is the appropriately chilling foil for the hero of this story. That hero, Taron Egerton, is quite good too... though his work is far more subtle. His character Jimmy is on a real arc here, and you can see all the steps. Ray Liotta's role here is very much secondary, but there's a subtlety there too that stands in contrast to his most famous, showy performances; that this sadly serves as one of his final performances before his death will in time serve as a testament to a range greater than he was often allowed to show.

However, despite being only six episodes long, Black Bird is a little slow at times. The promise of the show is quite suspenseful: that Jimmy is in real danger in this "worst of the worst" prison, but he can't move too quickly against Hall without risk of tipping him off. The show introduces several vectors of jeopardy along these lines. But ultimately, the culmination of them feels less than you imagine beforehand. I got the impression that Lehane was less willing to take liberty with real-world facts than many other writers might have been. Where the story could have been "heightened," Black Bird generally opts to keep things on a much tighter leash. A lot of what you might call "the action" is deferred to the final episode... and that episode doesn't quite qualify in my mind as a "grand finale."

Black Bird is not bad -- and it bears repeating: if you've liked any of Dennis Lehane's other work, you will like this. Still, I wouldn't call it essential. I'd give it a B. I've made a point of calling out reasons you should subscribe to Apple TV+. Black Bird doesn't make that list. It's more "another thing you could watch once you get Apple TV+ for one of those other things."

Lower Decks: Grounded

Star Trek: Lower Decks has returned for its third season, and its first episode back, "Grounded," is a strong reminder of why this show was so beloved before most of us Trekkers became the Distracted Boyfriend meme whipping their heads toward Strange New Worlds.

Mariner is determined to do something to help Captain Freeman out of legal jeopardy, and enlists her friends to help her. They soon find themselves on a quest to hijack a theme park ride to reach the Cerritos... and that's before the plan begins spiraling out of control.

This episode was a great reminder of the powerful alchemy of Lower Decks. At the base, it tells character-driven Star Trek stories that are just as legitimate as any other series in the franchise -- they're just shorter and more light-hearted. "Grounded" is not just a romp, it works because we've actually grown to love these characters over time, and they care about each other even more than the audience cares about them. So yes, they get to riff on Star Trek III and have it matter, risking and sacrificing anything because someone they care for is in trouble and needs help. Yes, the comedic capper on it all is that they didn't actually need to do any of that, but the adventure still feels valid.

But it's Lower Decks, of course, so that Star Trek III-inspired adventure is peppered with references -- particularly to another film, Star Trek: First Contact. That's another part of the alchemy of Lower Decks: the show can endlessly reference existing Star Trek for laughs (check out that news report crawl at the start of the episode), but you don't actually need to know any of that to enjoy the thrill ride. (Literally a thrill ride this week!)

If you do know the references, though, you see that the humor is coming from people who love Star Trek as much as you do. It's not diminishing Picard at all to twist his years spent in a vineyard into Boimler's family raisin business. It actually dovetails with First Contact's soft message about hero worship to depict an entire theme park built around Zefram Cochrane. (James Cromwell thought it was all fun enough to be worth coming back to voice the character himself.) And it's basically what real Trek fans would do to imagine a vacation using a real transporter, having Tendi and Rutherford plan a globe-hopping day that includes a lunch stop at Joseph Sisko's restaurant, because of course you would!

With as many jokes as fly at you in the typical Lower Decks episode, it's tempting to describe it as an anarchic assault to try anything for a laugh. But in fact, the show is very carefully managed and orchestrated, and I instantly realized how much I missed it. I give "Grounded" an A-. I'm excited to be getting more of this for the next two months.

The Rogue Prince

The first episode of the new House of the Dragon was, as all television pilots must be, a table-setting enterprise for the series to come. Though as it turned out, episode two, "The Rogue Prince" was even more of a "get things ready" affair.

Six months have passed since Rhaenyra was named the heir to the Iron Throne, and pressure is mounting for King Viserys to take a new wife. Adding to the delicate political landscape is the threat of Prince Daemon, who from his seat at Dragonstone makes an aggressive declaration that cannot be ignored.

That might well read as a rather boring synopsis of the episode. Part of that is my effort to minimize spoilers for anyone who hasn't watched yet. But another large part of it is: not much really happens in this episode. As if in direct conversation with the final season of Game of Thrones -- which many fans criticized for moving too fast through large piles of important story -- the pace of this episode of House of the Dragon is languid, and the truly meaningful developments are freighted into the final 10-or-so minutes.

Another important contrast to the parent TV show is that the moments that were important here were very much the quiet scenes of dialogue, often between just two characters. The few set pieces of large-scale action? Not so much. A showdown between two dragons in this episode really isn't a showdown at all. Interludes of horrific violence pointing to a coming war focus only on the aftermath of battles, not the conflict itself. And it's not that I needed visual, visceral thrills to engage my interest -- not if those quiet scenes of dialogue were compelling. But, as I suggested, those quieter scenes were very much still about setting up the board for the game to come.

This episode -- and here come the more direct spoilers -- was basically about setting up the king's betrothal to Alicent, and Corlys' treacherous turn to support Daemon, both of which only happened in the final minutes. Now the story can move forward with the battle lines drawn. But up until then? Good actors doing their best, sure. A few attention-getting details along the way -- from maggots as medical treatment to the horrifying prospect of marrying a 12-year-old girl to an aging old man (which is hardly remarked upon). But mostly... a "fine" episode in which not a lot happened.

And while I'm on the topic of only a few things changing, I must point to the series' opening theme. I find it an odd choice not to ask composer Ramin Djawadi to come up with a spin-off title theme for a spin-off show. I thought the repeated references to the classic Game of Thrones theme in episode 1 were just for the sake of continuity. But no, someone made the call that "we don't need a new theme here; let's reuse the old one." This isn't even deciding to repurpose the anthem from Star Trek: The Motion Picture as the music for Star Trek: The Next Generation. I wonder: was a new theme even attempted?

I didn't enjoy this second episode of House of the Dragon as much as the first, and I would give it a B-. I'm hardly soured on the new show so quickly, but I am hopeful that with the narrative landscape now more carefully set, that we can properly get on with the new story.

Voyager Flashback: Year of Hell, Part II

After setting up a compelling premise in "Year of Hell," Star Trek: Voyager had a lot to wrap up in "Year of Hell, Part II."

Chakotay and Paris have been taken aboard Annorax's time ship, remaining there for so long that they're given freedom to move about -- which they each use in different ways. Meanwhile, a skeleton crew tries to hold a crumbling Voyager together and take the offensive in their battle against powerful aliens.

I mentioned in my write-up of part one that the writers had originally envisioned an entire season with elements of this "Year of Hell" story sprinkled throughout. Part II hints most at what this might have looked like. Chakotay buys into Annorax's fruitless quest to reset time, gradually adopting the same madness as his own. Paris reacts as a prisoner of war, looking for any opportunity to best his captors. Tuvok and Seven demonstrate a truly interesting friendship. Janeway has to deal with scars both physical and mental.

All of these are good ideas, but there are two major problems as this episode ultimately depicts them. One is the compression of time. I doubt very much that there was a whole season's worth of television here... or even, say, a 10-episode arc like the ending of Deep Space Nine. If there's a kernel of truth in the studio executive opposition to a long story arc, it's this: watching multiple episodes of Voyager beaten to the brink of destruction simply wouldn't be that fun.

And yet, some more screen time really feels necessary for much of this to seem realistic. Chakotay and Paris show no effects from months of solitary confinement. The idea that Annorax's crew would have tolerated 200 years of this hopelessness, without revolting already, is patently ridiculous. Set pieces like the opening sequence, where purple gas from a nebula has leaked into Voyager, look quite cool -- and you could easily imagine a few more "Voyager is messed up" scenarios being compelling as they drive the jeopardy home.

But the real flaw in this episode is the ending. It's a literal reset button, in which "temporal shielding" is disabled to allow all the events of this two-parter to be undone. It's such a cop-out that none of this mattered, that none of the character growth sticks, that no consequences remain to be dealt with in the future. (And that after two centuries of time meddling, Annorax would not consider this solution himself, if it was that simple.)

The writers reportedly did not want it this way. They wanted Voyager to remain damaged for several episodes before it could be fully repaired, but the studio vetoed it. They wanted some characters to have even faint memory echoes of the alternate timeline, but executive producer Rick Berman reportedly nixed that and mandated a simple reset. And so everything ends in the least satisfying way imaginable.

That this doesn't immediately place this episode at the bottom of rankings for me is a testament to just how compelling much of it is before that ending. The friction between the Doctor and Janeway is especially compelling. Conflict between Chakotay and Paris is pretty good too. The way a connection between Chakotay and Janeway is maintained even though they aren't together in this episode is really well-handled (if a bit of a tease for the 'shippers out there). The true friendship between Janeway and Tuvok is outstanding (and one of the few elements that is continued after this episode, since it had precedent before). Plus, guest star Kurtwood Smith is truly great as Annorax; if he weren't here, the episode would be much worse for it.

The production really pulls out all the stops presenting great visuals. Voyager looks even more trashed throughout this hour. New alien ship designs are brought in for just this one episode. The scope of the final battle feels appropriately big. Even little details are fun, like seeing what the bridge's main viewscreen looks like when it's malfunctioning, or thoughtful and evocative camera shots like Janeway alone on the bridge, ready to go down with the ship.

Other observations:

• The recap at the start of this episode is terrible. It doesn't show the capture of Paris and Chakotay or the blinding of Tuvok from Part I, two major things you need to remember before watching Part II.

• The epilogue scene between Annorax and his wife is perhaps even worse than a strict "it never happened" ending. It implies that this is all actually a loop of some kind, destined to repeat endlessly and uselessly.
  

And yet... frustrating as this episode can be, parts of it really are fun, well-written, and well-acted. So I'll give "Year of Hell, Part II" a B. I guess the bad ending isn't a dealbreaker for me.

Lost in Thought

Whenever a beloved movie from decades past gets a remake, a segment of the internet replies predictably to decry the foolish decision that's destroying childhoods. I try not to get swept up in such notions (though I'd be challenged if a Back to the Future remake was ever announced). Still, I feel like the best movie remake targets might be "middling" movies -- films that made back their money the first time around, but were perhaps flawed, or somehow forgettable.

The Lost City isn't exactly a remake. The light-hearted movie about a romance-adventure novelist who finds herself swept up in an actual romance-adventure is an original script. But for anyone who has ever seen (or even heard of) Romancing the Stone, it's hard not to think that's where the inspiration came from. Now it has been years and years since I've seen Romancing the Stone, so my memory of it isn't all that clear. And we know that plenty of movies from the 1980s age quite poorly if you watch them now. Still, my impression is that this new incarnation of the movie is indeed the lesser version that the internet trolls might rail against.

The Lost City is fine enough, if you come to it with quite modest expectations. You probably aren't going to watch it at all if you don't find its stars charming to begin with -- and sure enough, they're all charming here. Sandra Bullock has done comedy and drama in her career, and comedy-drama like this. She's a clearly A-list actor, and it would probably still be fair to say she's underappreciated. Channing Tatum has historically been at his best when he's not taking himself too seriously, and the dopey cover model he plays here can't be taken seriously by anyone, least of all himself. Daniel Radcliffe is always happy to show up in a movie, chew the scenery, and add ever more distance to his Harry Potter origins; he does so again here as an over-the-top villain. And Brad Pitt seems to be having the most fun of all, in the smallest but funniest of these four main roles. Every one of the four is better than the material. They're here for fun: to have fun, poke fun, whatever.

While the movie puts a smile on your face, it does so intermittently. And it never really comes close to actually making you laugh. It also feels like the creative team knew this, because they clearly kept tweaking the movie in an attempt to improve it, well after it was shot. An enormous, obvious percentage of the dialogue in the movie is "looped" in, spoken during wide shots or against the back of the speaker's head, because it was clearly recorded months later in a studio and dropped into the movie. This includes everything from exposition (probably, wisely, to bring the movie in under two hours) to a large number of the jokes (where a game of "best idea wins" was seemingly started way too late in the movie-making process).

If you don't like Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, or Brad Pitt, then there's absolutely nothing here for you. But come on -- who doesn't like Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, OR Brad Pitt?! Still, I predict this movie is destined to be even more forgotten than the 80s film that likely inspired it. I give The Lost City a C.

Hammered Out

Twice now, I've written about The Iron Druid Chronicles, a long-running series from Kevin Hearne about an ancient magic user living in the real modern world. I likened it to The Dresden Files, another lengthy and well-liked series, for the similar demeanor of the protagonist, the similar incorporation mythology into long-term world-building, in the similar accumulation of side characters from book to book.

Now, with book three of the series, Hammered, I can add another comparison: both series started off entertaining to me, and then lost steam after a few books.

Many of the things that slowly soured me on Dresden are the very things that made me enjoy this third Iron Druid book less. Hearne's series already has a number of intriguing secondary characters after just two books... and book three sidelines most of them. A compelling coven of witches introduced in book two (and not fully dispensed with) barely appears. Main character Atticus pointedly tells his apprentice she is not coming on this current adventure. Even his loyal dog Oberon, source of much comic relief, is left at home for the bulk of this novel.

It is a very focused story. I had commented of later Dresden books that they seem to weave together ever more disparate plot threads to create a sense of jeopardy coming at the protagonist from all sides. The Iron Druid Chronicles seemed to be following a similar formula in its first two books. But Hammered takes a different approach. Its entire narrative springs as a consequence of the events of the previous book, and there are no subplots at all to distract from the main character's single-minded quest: to kill the god Thor. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, perhaps; I could have used a "side quest" in this story. It takes an awful lot of pages to do something quite straightforward.

However, I still found things to like about Hammered. The side characters I enjoyed from previous books may not be here, but there are new ones (and existing ones that take on a larger role here)... and they're actually the most compelling thing about the book. This is about an "adventuring party" all questing together to kill Thor, and in a fascinating middle section of the novel, the first-person narrative of Atticus gives way to a series of flashbacks from different POVs, detailing each character's personal reason for hating Thor. I found many of these back stories more compelling (and, alas, more readable) than the motivations of the main character.

Ultimately, I'd put Hammered just barely at a B-. Nevertheless, it definitely blunted my enthusiasm for continuing with more of the books. It felt stretched, like it could have been a novella, and currently I don't have plans to seek out book four.

Voyager Flashback: Year of Hell

Over its seven-year run, Star Trek: Voyager did a number of mid-season two-part episodes that were generally well-received by fans. One of the most loved was season four's "Year of Hell."

An alien captain's meddling with time creates an alternate reality in which Voyager is battered to the brink of destruction by the Krenim. As both the ship and morale deteriorate, it's increasingly unlikely that Voyager and her crew will ever return home to the Alpha Quadrant.

The story goes that the writers of Voyager conceived of "Year of Hell" as a literal year-long arc for the series, where occasional stand-alone episodes would be sprinkled in among the larger continuing story of Voyager's near-destruction. With Deep Space Nine increasingly embracing serialized storytelling (and, in the eyes of many studio executives, losing viewers as a result), this concept for Voyager was vetoed at the highest level. The story was then salvaged for this two-part episode.

It's doubtful that the Voyager writers got very far into plotting much of a 20-plus episode story arc. Yet it's clear from watching "Year of Hell" that there are far more ideas here than can fit comfortably in just two episodes. While it's Part II that really shows the strain (and I'll get to that, of course), I still feel that Part I is overstuffed. We have to see time rewritten a few times to be sure the audience really understands the "butterfly effect" nature of this alien time weapon -- but, of course, each "rewrite" essentially renders every story beat that has come before largely irrelevant. The Doctor has a powerful moment (straight out of a submarine movie) where he has to essentially kill crew members to save the ship, but we only get one brief moment of him dealing with the emotional fallout of his choice. A great friendship begins between Tuvok and Seven of Nine, but there's not enough time to really explore how Tuvok's life changes after he loses his eyesight.

Meanwhile, there isn't enough time at all for other important story. We don't see the moment when Neelix is officially promoted to security. (How desperate must they be?!) We don't learn why Annorax is fixed on a Sisyphean quest for "100% restoration" of his desired timeline until Part II -- which I suppose adds a little suspense, but very much at the expense of making him a sympathetic character. (If they didn't have Kurtwood Smith in the role, I think it would have been impossible for Part II to crawl out of the villainous hole they dig for Annorax here in Part I.

Still, you can see why many fans would really embrace this episode. The visuals are great throughout, from a teaser that immediately grabs your attention with the destruction of an entire society, to the increasing damage to the Voyager sets, to the final moment showing the dramatic launch of all escape pods. There are fun nods to "canon," including a callback to the "time torpedo" stuck in the hull from a season three Kes episode, and a trivia game scene in which the events of Star Trek: First Contact are referenced. There are also a lot of great character interactions; besides the Tuvok/Seven friendship I mentioned, there's yet another great scene between B'Elanna and Kim (I still say they should have become the couple), and effective "shipping" of Janeway and Chakotay.

Other observations:

• We see the new Astrometrics Lab set at last, after several episodes talking it up. It reportedly will take 5 years off the journey home... though I'm unclear about how that works exactly. What's there to recalculate about their route, exactly? It's space. Shouldn't they just... head that way?
  

• Early on, Janeway talks about them having a "Week of Hell." Remember March 2020, when we were all going to shut things down for "a couple of weeks" before "returning to normal?" It's that energy.
  

• Did Kes tell the crew nothing about the Krenim after her own time-traveling adventure? The extra warning could have helped a lot. (And the torpedo's frequency is even exactly the same in this episode as it was in the earlier one!)
  

• Janeway claims that she's made it her goal to avoid time travel. She hasn't done a very good job of meeting that goal.
  

There is a lot to like about this episode. At the same time, I think "Year of Hell" hits better the first time around, when you're wondering how they're going to get out of it. Watching Part I when you know the unsatisfying "it's all a dream"-like answer to that question? It robs a lot of the tension. I give the episode a B.

The Heirs of the Dragon

HBO's new prequel spin-off to Game of Thrones premiered last night. House of the Dragon jumps back nearly two centuries in the timeline of George R. R. Martin's fantasy world to follow an earlier Targaryen generation in its own mesh of politics, violence, and plotting.

I'll be quite interested to learn just how widely the new series is watched. Anecdotally, it doesn't seem as though anyone I know is excited about the prospect of more "Game of Thrones," siding with the broad displeasure of the masses over the final season (and ending) of the mother series. At the same time, it doesn't seem like vast swaths of people have defiantly declared they will not watch the spin-off. So it feels to me like viewership could range wildly.

If people do tune in, what might they think after episode one? My own review would be something like "it's fine, though far from exceptional." The network and creatives at the show are obviously hoping for another multi-year hit to replace Game of Thrones, so episode one is clearly just an amuse-bouche that really can't get us very far into a story. Still... everyone involved must also know that a lot of people are coming to this (if they're coming at all) with extreme skepticism, so they must feel an obligation to get your attention quickly.

I think how you react to the first episode, "The Heirs of the Dragon," probably depends a lot on how much you need this to be "better" in your mind than your perception of the Game of Thrones finale. The more guarded you are, the more you need to be sold on this prequel, the less it will likely succeed in doing so. The more you're just open to "more dragons, please," with a general hope that it will get better, given time? The more likely I think you'll get exactly that (if nothing more).

This first episode wasn't gripping to me. But it did have a few characters who popped right out of the gate. Matt Smith's Prince Daemon is an effective heel, a sort of adult Joffrey who toggles between petulance and true danger. Milly Alcock as Rhaenyra shows potential as a compelling protagonist, though perhaps simply by not slotting into a simple box as the rest of the archetypal characters do at this very early juncture.

A few scenes definitely popped as well. The juxtaposition of child birth with the jousting tournament did feel a bit "film paper" in conception, especially after a character explicitly defined giving birth as a battlefield earlier in the episode. Still, despite seeing all the strings being pulled, the resulting scene worked for me in delivering a meaningful emotional (even physical) reaction as it unfolded. Another sequence stuck out at me for what it didn't show. Hand of the King Otto Hightower seems to be sending his daughter Alicent into a situation specifically to seduce someone, but the result was a rare case in which the world of Game of Thrones does not give in to base or repugnant attitudes about sex.

After one episode, House of the Dragon has not made itself "can't miss TV" for me. But I'm intrigued enough to want to see more, and hopeful that there are enough ingredients in this stew for it to be something tasty once it's simmered. I give the first episode a B.

Shore Thing

The time has come once again for me to sing the praises of Brandon Sanderson's Skyward series, a science fiction saga centered on human descendants eking out a meager existence on a barren world, in the face of aliens bent on their destruction. In the core four book series, three have been released so far. Amid that, a trilogy of novellas has also arrived, co-written by Janci Patterson; today, I'm looking at the last of those, Evershore.

The novellas each shift the focus from main protagonist Spensa to one of the other characters in her orbit. Evershore focuses on Jorgen, by-the-book flight leader who is forced to throw that book out the window in the wake of a tragedy just to hold everything together. Evershore also forms vital connective tissue with new characters who were introduced in book two of the main series, Starsight.

While the concluding book four of the main saga has yet to arrive, at this point, I cannot imagine how these three novellas could possibly be "optional" to the full experience. This is not a case of George R. R. Martin traipsing off to write historical back stories instead of finishing his Ice and Fire books, or Robert Jordan side-tripping to a prequel and ultimately not completing his Wheel of Time series on his own terms. These novellas have all been vital parts of the story, and compelling in their own right.

That said, I do think that novella three, Evershore, is probably the weakest of the lot. (By a small degree.) I find Jorgen a challenging character to shift the narrative onto, as he's something of a "superhero" in a story that very much already has one in the main books. Yes, he is riddled with doubts, and is certainly a rounded character. Still, his capabilities are vast, the respect afforded to him by other characters is considerable, and there can be little questioning that he will triumph in the end.

It doesn't help that any opposition to him in this story feels rather weak and underdeveloped. Evershore introduces a new Vice Admiral character to the mix that is ostensibly a savvy political actor setting Jorgen up for a fall -- but he's too soft-spined to amount to more than a distraction. Still, it's awfully deep into this saga for me to be mounting anything remotely like a "Mary Sue" criticism against any of the characters, and in particular it's nice for Jorgen to rack up a few wins at this point. (Points for diversity: in Skyward, the two major characters are a woman and a black man.)

Also notable in my case, as I've listened to all the Skyward books in audiobook format, it's fun for narrator Suzy Jackson to take on a first-person narrative in which the main character is male. She's been doing Jorgen's voice all along, of course, but in Evershore it's a full-time job rather than just something called up for dialogue. It's a fun thwarting of audiobook convention. Suzy Jackson had already convinced me she can do pretty much anything, and she can do this too.

Despite minor quibbles, Evershore is still quite enjoyable. I give it a B+. It gives me one more opportunity to plug the series before the final book is published (reportedly, some time in 2023).

Voyager Flashback: Scientific Method

Star Trek: The Next Generation had done an episode about aliens experimenting on the crew. But where "Schisms" tried mostly for a horror tone (and fell a bit short), Voyager's take on the same concept -- "Scientific Method" -- put a face on the aliens and focused more on how the characters were pushed to different limits.

When Chakotay undergoes rapid aging, it's just the most overtly threatening of many oddities among the crew. Janeway is suffering from debilitating headaches. Neelix is breaking out in spots. And all of it seems to be caused by alien tampering with the crew's DNA. They've all become part of a series of twisted experiments, and must find an escape before people die in these bizarre tests.

In the plus column, this episode has plenty of story to go around for many different characters. Janeway "plays through the pain" and does some of her most forceful captaining. Tuvok trades some especially wry banter with her in a scene underscoring their friendship. Seven must act with subterfuge, rising above her nature and experience. The Doctor is played for comedy, giving Janeway the worst looking massage imaginable. Chakotay and Neelix compare their "war wounds" in an entertaining scene.

But in the minus column, some story threads get short shrift -- if they make sense at all. There's true horror in the concept that Seven can see the aliens experimenting on her even as she must not react and give herself away; the episode really doesn't tap into the tension of the situation. B'Elanna and Tom continue to hide their romance (badly) for inexplicably juvenile reasons. (At least this time, alien interference is a possible justification.) And an attempt at encoding a "message" in all these sci-fi shenanigans feels half-hearted at best; this is a cautionary tale about the evils of scientific testing on animals? Maybe?

There are a lot of surprisingly good visual effects throughout. The CG exposing interior anatomy look pretty credible (and showing the skeleton/musculature of a couple while they kiss certainly carries a high degree of difficulty). The "binary pulsars" look great. Even good old practical effects are solid. The various torture devices we see on the crew are truly unsettling, and the moment when Chakotay pulls out a clump of his hair is a legitimately horrifying beat in the episode.

Other observations:

• The ongoing story about the construction of the Astrometrics Lab continues.

• They still can't quite nail down Seven of Nine's look the way they want. After discarding the structured silver catsuit in favor of less-painful-to-wear brown version, they've now put the high collar from the silver suit onto the new brown suit.
  

• Decades before the eggplant would be widely recognized (as an emoji stand-in for something else), it appears here on Neelix's kitchen counter as a "food so weird looking that it will pass for alien."

• Actress Annette Helde makes an appearance. I call her out among the many other recurring Star Trek actors in minor roles because she was part of the Denver Center Theater Company throughout the 90s, and I saw her perform live many times.

• When Harry Kim interrupts Tom and B'Elanna's dinner at the end of the episode, he remarks that it "smells good." They're eating salad. Harry can smell salad.

"Scientific Method" continues an emerging trend of season four, of episodes that are fine if not particularly great or memorable. I give it a B.

Prey Tell

The arrival of a new Predator movie is hardly an anticipated event in my movie-watching schedule. I'm fairly sure I've never seen any but the Arnold Schwarzenegger original, and I've never really heard anyone suggest that I've been missing out for that. But the newest film in the franchise, Prey, debuted on Hulu to a good deal of online buzz -- and more than one friend assuring me that it was worth a look.

Set in 1719 in Commanche territory, Prey centers on Naru, a young woman eager to prove herself as a hunter amid a society that would slot her as a gatherer. She is soon testing herself on "hard mode" when an alien trophy hunter arrives and begins marauding the area.

Action movies don't always need much in the way of story, and the original Predator had barely any at all. Prey is hardly sophisticated in this regard, but that it has any story at all puts it ahead. Naru's need to prove herself is a simple and brute force character arc, but it's enough here. Prey is also ahead of the game in terms of thematic resonance. Where Predator nodded half-heartedly to a "the hunters have become the hunted" motif, Prey includes a number of explicit scenes showing the pyramid of death. Again, it's simple and brute force; again, it's sufficient in this context to be meaningful.

Prey is actually a well-directed film, which surprises me less when I know that it was helmed by Dan Trachtenberg, director of the excellent 10 Cloverfield Lane. There's still a tendency to regard "direct to streaming service" films as "lesser" movie-making somehow (no matter how much money Netflix throws at such efforts). Yet this movie wound up on Hulu only as a consequence of the Disney/Fox merger, and you can tell Trachtenberg was thinking of how it would look on the big screen when you see the panoramic landscapes, and aggressive use of nighttime and shadowy cinematography.

The lead performance is good. Amber Midthunder will be recognized by fans of the unusual "superhero" series Legion (where she played Kerry). This role calls upon the physical acting and facility with fight choreography that she honed there. But it also requires a lot of non-verbal communication with the audience that she handles well.

The script isn't amazing, but it is clever in moments, particularly in the "conversation" it strikes up with the original Predator. On occasion, it lifts lines of dialogue directly from the first film in organic ways that don't really call attention to the shout-out. There are a couple of clever moments where you're made to think the plot is going to "zig" because that's how it went in Predator, but it instead "zags" to do something different.

At the same time, just hearing from a few people that Prey was "actually good" may have already been setting the bar a little too high. It's certainly worth a watch, and enjoyable. But to call it "better than you might think" is overselling it. I'd call it "exactly as good as you might think," and give it a B. That's probably better than any Predator movie since the original, though, so if you've bothered with any of those, you probably owe it to yourself to catch up with this one.

Voyager Flashback: The Raven

My memory of the later seasons of Star Trek: Voyager is that the character of Seven of Nine would ultimately take over the series. But early in her tenure, at least, she truly was just one character in a large ensemble cast, and "The Raven" was really the first episode to center on her.

Seven of Nine is experiencing strange visions, and soon her dormant Borg technology begins to reactivate. She leaves the ship, certain she is about to reunite with the Collective. But her destination does not relate to her past in the way she thinks.

This is something of a landmark script for Star Trek: Voyager, in that it's the first one credited to Bryan Fuller. He's the creator who later made multiple ambitious television series (including Star Trek: Discovery, which he left early on). He'd written two installments of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. and had helped polish Kes' Voyager send-off, but this was his first on-screen credit for the Star Trek series he would work on until its conclusion.

It's an episode with a rocky genesis. Not for the first time, the show had bought a pitch from an outside writer (Harry Doc Kloor) that turned out not to really work when they started to develop it. Aliens abducted Seven of Nine and reactivated her Borg elements, turning her into a Terminator-like killing machine... to reportedly little interest. There was no there there, and the Voyager staff in particular felt the lack of any "heart" in the story. A late full staff rebuild, followed by a rapid one-week rewrite by Fuller, retooled the story into what "The Raven" became.

There are some interesting elements here, especially with an eye toward Bryan Fuller's future career. The unusual dreamscapes of the episode feel like a test run for things that would later become disturbing staples of Hannibal. The deadpan humor of Seven of Nine (talking about what aspects of a species make them good drones) feels a bit like the black comedy of Wonderfalls. A focus on character interactions -- be they "odd couple" like Seven and Neelix, or like-minded as with Seven and Tuvok -- feel like hallmarks from Pushing Daisies or Dead Like Me.

But to whatever degree Bryan Fuller might have "saved" this episode, some of it feels beyond saving. The "unstoppable Terminator" elements are still here, and are indeed unsatisfying; Seven throws off all opposition with shocking ease in her bid to leave Voyager. The idea that mere proximity to her family's shipwreck could activate Seven's Borg implants feels like a ridiculous stretch. There's a real security risk here that's just hand-waved at the end... and the timing of this happening now, so soon after Seven has joined the crew, certainly seems like it should set the precedent that she can never be trusted.

Secondary story elements just feel forced. An opening scene in Da Vinci's holodeck workshop seems there only to justify the expense of building such a large set (by cramming it into one more episode). The officious aliens-of-the-week are so tedious that it's immediately obvious that dealing with them is a waste of time. Everyone has an inexplicably juvenile attitude toward consenting romance between adults: the Doctor inexplicably griefs Tom and B'Elanna about their budding relationship, and B'Elanna in turn hassles Harry Kim about his "working relationship" with Seven.

That said, there are some nice performances here, elicited by director LeVar Burton. Jeri Ryan does well with Seven's more vulnerable moments. Ethan Phillips is actually funny in a scene where Neelix tries to feed Seven with "toddler in a high chair" techniques. (You finally get a sense of the real funny man that everyone on the show clearly likes, rather than the forced character as written that it's impossible for the audience not to hate.) Burton handles the dream imagery well too, including rare use of slow motion photography for Star Trek. (Plus, a key image of a Borg drone letting out a bird's shriek really is chilling and weird.)

Other observations:

• Seven gets a new look in this episode. Her original silver suit with its visible internal structure was reportedly very uncomfortable for Jeri Ryan, and quickly retired in favor of another style of catsuit. The brown color here is pretty drab, but eventually there would be variations on that.

• For a moment, it sure feels like the show is trying to make us think that eating Neelix's cooking is somehow the trigger that causes Seven to go on a Borg rage bender.

• Seven is able to reconfigure a shuttle's shields with Borg enhancements, leaving you to wonder why such enhancements can't just be made to them (and the shields of Voyager itself) all the time.
  

• In a fun reversal, when Tuvok tries to give Seven the trademark Vulcan nerve pinch, she turns the tables and applies one to him.

"The Raven" seems like a better episode than it might have been, but I'd still call it just barely on the right side of "good." I give it a B-.

The Kids Are More Than Alright

I have been a fan of The Kids in the Hall since original episodes were airing in the U.S. on Comedy Central. I bought the series on DVD when it was released in season box sets. So I was filled with delight to hear that an 8-episode revival season was coming in 2022 on Amazon Prime. That I would enjoy them was a given. The only question was: could I make this small handful of new episodes last, properly savoring each one?

I did, which is why you're getting this post almost three full months after the episodes were released. Whether you're a binge-watcher or a TV grazer, a fan of classic KITH, or someone who has never watched them before... I highly recommend this new revival season.

These new episodes have a nice balance of bringing back old characters with completely new material and characters. I recognized every callback to classic KITH, of course, but they always seemed to me to be very natural, not winking to an inside audience at all, in a way that could allow anyone to laugh. Indeed, some of the best bits of the season were all-new creations -- with new references already sneaking into conversations with my husband and friends, like the music of the "post-apocalypse DJ," an unfortunate misunderstanding of the word "ambulance," or a peculiar way of describing water temperature.

Basically every episode has at least one extremely memorable and hilarious sketch. And episode one in particular really comes out... uh... swinging. Taking full advantage of the fact that they're no longer working on broadcast television, this new season of KITH has stronger language and shocking, hilarious nudity. Sure, there are some dud sketches sprinkled in too... but that's the promise of sketch comedy: let us try a bunch of different things, and if you don't like this one, maybe you'll love the next one.

Watching new episodes made me really appreciate the alchemy of these five performers in particular. How they work together isn't always captured in whatever separate performances you may have seen them give in other things. They each have a way of delivering even an innocuous line in a twisted way that creates "catch phrases" (whether that's the goal or not) -- especially Kevin McDonald and Bruce McCulloch. Dave Foley remains marvelously dry in his roles. Scott Thompson gets to play a bit more against his classic KITH type this season, to fun effect. And as ever, Mark McKinney intensely commits, maybe even over-commits, to every sketch and every character (a quality they even joke about at one point).

The season is full of fun cameos. Many come in the form of "Fans of Kids in the Hall" interstitials filmed with plenty of recognizable faces, but a few great comedians in their own right actually appear in a handful of the sketches, including stand-up Eddie Izzard and Whose Line Is It Anyway? mainstay Colin Mochrie.

I give this revival season of Kids in the Hall an A-. I absolutely loved it. I wish I could have made 8 episodes last even longer. I could easily see myself watching them again some time. It has certainly made me want to revisit the classic episodes while I hope and wait for another new season to come at some point.

Genning Up Support

This past weekend was the four-day gaming extravaganza of Gen Con. For the first time since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, my work was in attendance. For the first time in even longer, I was part of the Dire Wolf Digital team sent to staff our booth and meet with industry partners.

It was a fun but very exhausting event. That's true of Gen Con even under normal conditions, and despite what some people may think, things really aren't "back to normal" just yet. Proof of vaccination and mandatory face masks throughout the convention center were part of this year's strategy to keep this event from being a super-spreader... and while I'm glad the organizers chose caution, it did increase the "degree of difficulty" for Gen Con.

After nearly two-and-a-half years of working from home, it had certainly become easy to take for granted the benefits of that situation. Plenty of people have kept on going to their work, including retail and restaurant workers who have often been mentioned in public debate. "No one wants to work," some have groused, with very little concept of what such work actually entails. I would have thought myself more informed, more sympathetic... but until I spent four days shouting over the normal convention ruckus and the muffling effects of a face mask too? It was pretty abstract.

Gen Con was a lot of fun, and the new games we were showing there seemed to go over really well. I brought back a load of games I scooped up from the show floor, finally got to put some faces (or at least, eyeballs above a face mask) to a number of people I've been emailing for months and years), and got a pleasant reminder that people really like what we do.

And also, I have almost no voice right now, my sleep schedule is wrecked, and my feet still ache. But hey, all things considered, I feel quite fortunate.

So Much Nope

After thoroughly enjoying Jordan Peele's two previous movies, Get Out and Us, I did not need to be sold on seeing his latest, Nope. I was so ready that I'd be a bit disappointed when a trailer for Nope would run before some other movie I was seeing, because I was perfectly happy making plans to go without knowing anything about the movie. Fortunately, the trailers kept things mostly vague: it was something involving a ranch far out in the country, and UFOs. Plus, that familiar Peele cocktail of horror scares, clever wit, and forceful message seemed once again assured.

I did enjoy Nope and would generally recommend it. But I also felt it wasn't as strong as effort as Jordan Peele's first two movies. That might say more about just how great those were than about this one... but of course, I'm here to talk about this one now. Nope is an incredibly clever and meticulously crafted movie, but I was more impressed by that craftsmanship than I was fully entertained by it.

Nope is Peele's most thematically dense movie to date. You could ask a dozen people what it's "about" and plausibly get 12 different answers. It's about exploitation, spectacle, animal rights, cultural erasure, filmmaking, obsession, hunger, and more. Ordinarily, a movie that diluted comes across as being about "nothing," but Peele has written a very Swiss watch-like script where one thought connects to the next, and the next, and the next. There's no concept, and barely a line of dialogue, that doesn't resonate somewhere later on in the story. In many ways, it feels like Peele was writing a sequel to Us, in terms of taking his experience on that previous film and using it to inform this one. A lot of the story moves in Nope are structured in the same way.

But at times, I found the movie to be so focused on theme that narrative and characters became subordinate. The final act of Nope is a bit long, and rife with characters acting in ways that didn't feel quite in sync for me with what had come before. It was easy to see exactly the themes resonating in the story's wrap-up, but not as easy to understand the deep fixations of the characters.

It also felt to me like star Daniel Kaluuya was being underused. His character is set up specifically as a quiet opposite of his fiery sister played by Keke Palmer. I understand why it's written the way it is. And yet the end result is still that the normally very dynamic Kaluuya is sedate, bordering on dull. Only by contrasting this with his other roles can you sense there's any performance here at all -- which is commendable in its own way, but in another way winds up once again feeling to me like Get Out is the stronger movie. Other stars do get showier material, at least; besides Keke Palmer (really, the true star of the movie), Steven Yeun is a curious blend of trauma and desperation (hidden behind a smile), and Brandon Perea brings fun comic relief.

I'd give Nope a B. That's certainly strong enough to recommend to anyone who likes suspenseful thrillers. But at the same time, I could imagine Nope not making my Top 10 list of 2022, assuming I see enough strong contenders in the coming months. For Get Out and Us, they were clearly at or near the very top of the lists I made for those years. On the other hand, if this is as "bad" as Jordan Peele gets, then he's still clearly among the strongest writer-directors working today. My enthusiasm for Nope may be a little muted, but my interest in whatever he makes next certainly isn't.