Lower Decks: The Stars at Night

Star Trek: Lower Decks wrapped up its third season (quite neatly, with no real cliffhangers) in the action-packed "The Stars at Night."

Admiral Buenamigo has convinced the Starfleet brass to back his program of uncrewed starships, replacing the entire line of California-class ships. But Captain Freeman convinces everyone to agree to one last race between the Cerritos and an uncrewed Texas-class ship, to see which ship can really do the job best. When a deception is exposed, the Cerritos is soon put in grave danger -- and only Mariner can rally help to save them.

Setting aside the painfully unfunny Peanut Hamper episode this season (which for me will always be an "asterisk" in Lower Decks), this may have been the "least comedic" episode of Lower Decks ever. A handful of jokes were sprinkled throughout -- Ransom teaching Riker's technique for sitting in a chair, Shaxs finally living his dream to eject a warp core -- but for the most part, this was just a straight-up, action-packed, season-culminating thrill ride.

I didn't mind that one bit. Lower Decks really earned an episode like this by actually setting all this up over the course of the season. This finale paid off every major character arc we've seen -- Mariner realized how much she really cared about Starfleet and the Cerritos in particular; Boimler's newfound boldness allowed him to stand up for Shaxs; the secret of Rutherford's memory loss was revealed; Tendi had to face the possibility that her career track would be derailed; Freeman had to confront and apologize for her behavior.

And of course, as usual, the series was building on the Star Trek franchise overall at the same time. The "evil admiral" trope has been around for ages, and Lower Decks gleefully used it (and called attention to the fact). Images of Starfleet Command were recreated straight from past episodes and films, and the show's own three-season long canon of California-class starships came back (and was built up a ton!). Indeed, this episode seemed so epic and definitive that I have to wonder: did they not know, when they were writing it, whether they'd have a season four or not? (Fortunately, they do.)

There was even a small dash of Star Trek social commentary in there. The debate between crewed and uncrewed space flight isn't an issue that most people care deeply about, but it's a pretty hot button topic among those who follow space exploration more closely. And casting that debate as "California vs. Texas" gave it a wry connection to current U.S. politics.

I'd give "The Stars at Night" a B+. It was a solid end to an even more solid season. Had Strange New Worlds not come around, I'd have no problem anointing Lower Decks the best of the modern Trek series. The fact that we have two Trek shows on now that are consistently great (and multiple others that at least bring us great moments) makes this the best time ever to be a Star Trek fan.

Voyager Flashback: The Killing Game, Part II

Though the two parts of Star Trek: Voyager's "The Killing Game" were made assuming they'd air over two weeks, network executives chose to make a "movie event" of it, originally airing both parts on a single night. In that spirit, I'm back just one day after my review of part one to discuss "The Killing Game, Part II."

Conflict with the Hirogen has spread beyond the holodeck, and now Voyager itself is at risk. But the crew soon regains their memory of their true identities, and Janeway figures out what the Hirogen leader is really after -- a way out of the stagnation he sees in his society. Perhaps diplomacy between them really is possible... unless the Hirogen second-in-command, emboldened by the Nazi ideology he's learning on the holodeck, sabotages the effort.

This episode picks up immediately where the first part left off (no doubt fueling that notion that it could work as a two-hour movie). With holoprojectors now installed all over the ship, it makes for some fun and unusual action for Star Trek -- Nazis loose on the ship, pistols and rifles in the corridors instead of phasers.

The early tension is fun; having some people aware of their identities when others aren't is compelling: Paris nearly kills his best friend Kim, while Janeway and Seven have to lie and manipulate their crewmates under Tuvok's suspicious eye. The latter situation is diffused (with the neural inhibitors being disabled) before it really comes to a boil, which is a little disappointing. On the other hand, watching the alter egos of Paris and B'Elanna play out a little soap opera over her holographic baby isn't really compelling, so the sooner that's abandoned, the better.

One of the more surprising elements of this episode to me is how Nazism isn't just used as a shorthand for "evil." A holographic character delivers a lengthy speech in which he lays out fascist, racist Nazi values with unvarnished intensity. This episode isn't just saying Nazis are bad guys, it wants to remind you why Nazis are bad guys. This in turn highlights the nobility of Hirogen leader Karr, who wants to show his people a better way.

The final showdown isn't as much about such heady subject matter, but at least it's fun. Klingon warriors attacking Nazis, what's not to like? Seven throws down a stone cold threat of assimilation as she refuses to do as the Hirogen wish. Janeway cleverly turns the tables in a classic "hunted becomes the hunter" situation. We get a huge "falling off a cliff" death. There's an epic rain storm -- real on the day they filmed outdoors and not planned for in the production.

But there are also elements of the episode that don't work so well for me. We get far too many scenes of Neelix and the Doctor wasting time with the Klingons; yes, you need at least one such scene in order to telegraph the ending, but it's expanded too much at the expense of more interesting story elements. Paris is stupidly goaded into a confrontation with a hologram over a baby that isn't even real. An unnecessary countdown is put on the destruction of the holoprojectors when it seems like they should, you know, just DO it.

Most of all: it's pretty silly, with Karr now dead, that any of the remaining Hirogen would honor the deal to take holotechnology and leave Voyager peacefully. Not to mention that this moment effectively writes the Hirogen out of the series until the final season. They've been too good for the show to dispense with them this quickly. (Think how long we suffered the far less compelling Kazon before they were finally ditched!)

Other observations:

• We learn that Klingon blood wine is twice as strong as whiskey. Though to me, that doesn't say "don't drink it," it just says "don't drink as much of it."

• On two occasions when holoprojectors are supposed to be disabled (one locally, one ship-wide), characters and objects vanish... but the city setting itself continues intact.

• Jeri Ryan later spoke of nearly breaking down when shooting this episode. The season had been difficult for her: dealing with early makeup calls and uncomfortable costumes, the star of the show instigating a feud with her. She says she was so exhausted, stressed, and constantly sick that when this episode brought on a late night shoot that forced everyone out into an unplanned downpour, it nearly pushed her over the edge and she actually contemplated whether staying on the show was worth it.

This episode hits some wonderful highs both in action and theme. But it has a few key flaws as well. So, like part one, I'll give it a B+. Regardless, both parts of "The Killing Game" do feel like a high point for the season.

Voyager Flashback: The Killing Game

After Star Trek: Voyager delivered a two-part episode early in its fourth season that fans enjoyed, they decided to do it again with "The Killing Game."

Voyager has been captured by the Hirogen, and their unusual leader is forcing both his own crew and their captives to engage in various conflict scenarios on the holodeck. With neural inhibitors in place, the Voyager crew has no memory of their real identities, believing themselves to be their assigned characters in each scenario. As they play out the Nazi occupation of a French town in World War II, their only hope for escape is the Doctor -- forced to triage wounded combatants in Sickbay -- and Harry Kim -- one of the few people left as himself so he can repair and expand the holodecks.

"The Killing Game" actually has a fair bit in common with that earlier fourth season two-parter, "Year of Hell." Both depict Voyager beaten down and the crew struggling hopelessly. Both feature an alien captain with unusual motives that aren't made clear until deep into the story. But "The Killing Game" drops the audience right into the action -- so immediately, in fact, that we don't even know at first that the "Klingon warrior" we're watching is actually Katherine Janeway. The explanation of how we got here comes later, and slowly.

Smartly, the episode gives us fun things to latch onto as we wait for those explanations. The World War II scenario casts the roles familiarly, even though the characters don't actually know themselves: Janeway is a leader, friendly with Tuvok and butting heads with Seven of Nine. Paris and B'Elanna have a complicated romantic relationship. Neelix wants to help, but ends up being a liability. Even the Hirogen fit the narrative; they're cast as Nazis because they generally believe themselves to be better than the people they seek to exterminate. And the resistance outside the holodeck mirrors the reenacted one going on within.

But the fun's just getting started. Roxann Dawson's real-life pregnancy is incorporated into the script. Jeri Ryan gets to sing (and wear something other than the corseted cat suit). Ethan Phillips wears both Talaxian and Klingon makeup simultaneously. (Not exactly logical, but it looks fun.) We get hand-to-hand combat and gunfights too. And alongside the action, Harry Kim absolutely runs out of fucks to give, becoming a more compelling character than he's been in more than a season.

The production values are sky high. Much of the episode is filmed on a huge outdoor set, and director David Livingston uses every inch of it. There are many impressive shots -- including a long "one-er" of Neelix riding a bicycle through town that seems almost impossible when you remember that cameras on drones didn't exist in 1998. This first half culminates in a massive explosion of a great miniature, and fades out on a shot of a gaping hole spanning four decks inside the ship.

Other observations:

• I guess the show has already run out of seven-foot-tall actors and has exhausted the budget for shoe lifts; these Hirogen don't tower over the Voyager crew like the previous ones did.
  

• The hiding of secret messages inside a weather broadcast is one of several real-life details from World War II. Staff writer Joe Menosky returned to Star Trek after a long sabbatical in Europe, bringing with him the desire to do a "World War II story" somehow, and hoping to fill it with real details he'd learned.

• Harry Kim was reportedly left out of the holodeck action because at this point, episode writers Menosky and Brannon Braga didn't actually care for the character much. But the episode reportedly came in short, and it was too expensive (if not outright impossible) to go back and add more holodeck scenes to pad the run time. The result was extra moments showing Kim fighting for his own survival -- and Garrett Wang's embittered performance actually inspired the writers to put Kim at the center of the 100th episode when it came next season.
  

This episode is a lot of fun, and has decent roles for all the series characters. That said, it's less a cliffhanger than simply an incomplete story. By the end of part one, we're almost just getting started, with the characters only beginning to learn who they really are. So I think this tops out for me at a B+. But once again: another effective Hirogen story.

Lower Decks: Trusted Sources

The penultimate episode of season three of Star Trek: Lower Decks paid off a slow-burn, season-long story line centered on Mariner.

The Cerritos is the first ship to test a new initiative to revisit planets that Starfleet has long left alone, and a Federation news reporter is on the scene to cover it. The stakes are high for Captain Freeman, so she's suspicious when it seems Mariner has undermined her authority by spreading gossip to the reporter -- gossip so damning, in fact, that Freeman reassigns Mariner to the dreaded Starbase 80 to be rid of her.

All season long, the writers have been teasing out that Mariner might be reaching her usual "expiration date" for any one Starfleet posting. In one episode, she was pointedly tempted with a life outside of Starfleet. Now that all pays off with this episode that pushes her over the edge. It's a plot development that easily could have been a season finale, and it's rather interesting that it isn't. Is a bigger cliffhanger yet to come, or is Lower Decks looking to wrap up this particular season neatly by resolving the situation next week?

I do like that Lower Decks has been slowly laying ground on a big story like this. (And in particular, that it's been in sync with stories for Boimler, Rutherford, and Tendi -- all showing them looking for big changes in their lives as well.) But packing this much story in does mean there's less room for jokes, and indeed this episode of the show isn't as laugh-out-loud funny as many are. I've said before that I prefer for the balance to favor jokes more than story, but I respect that that balance is going to be different from one episode to the next -- and one of the strengths of Lower Decks is that it does tell legitimate stories amid the comedy.

But there is another reservation I have about this episode that I feel more keenly -- the way Freeman behaves throughout. She is certainly well-established as being the opposite of self-confident, and the very premise of the show requires that she be far from the best captain in Starfleet. Still, I thought the relationship between her and Mariner had progressed farther than this. This episode marks a real backslide for Freeman that feels quite artificial and sitcomy, and her reaction feels quite extreme and cartoonish. Yeah, it's gotta be this way, and half-hour shows must be brisk. But as slowly as Mariner's discontent was hinted at all season, I would have wished for a somewhat more deft hand here.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I smiled at the revisiting of one of The Next Generation's oldest episodes. Pointedly, it was not a very good episode, with a rather unsatisfying ending... which made it perfect fodder for the premise of this episode: "can you believe we just left them that way?" You'd think the whole debacle with Khan might have put Starfleet in more of a mind to check up on planets that Enterprise captains just abandon after an hour... but I guess Starfleet can be stretched pretty thin. It was fun of Lower Decks to address this, and the Away mission to Ornara generated the best laughs of the episode.

I give "Trusted Sources" a B. I'm eager to see where they'll take Mariner's story in the coming season finale.

The Black Queen

The season finale of "House of the Dragon" was not only an effective capper for the show's first season, but offered a taste of how the final season of Game of Thrones might have been stronger.

Rhaenys reaches Dragonstone with new of King Viserys' death, and of the rapid installation of Aegon as his successor. As the news comes, Rhaenyra goes into labor -- only to deliver a stillborn child. She is crowned Queen soon after, but is determined to cool the tempers of the men around her who are ready to declare war. Yet the decision to dispatch her two oldest sons as messengers to would-be allies will have fateful consequences.

Many criticisms are leveled against the final season of Game of Thrones, but one of the most consistent is the "heel turn" of Daenerys right near the end of the story. I've always maintained that people who claim her violent rage at King's Landing "came out of nowhere" weren't paying attention to all the signs of her hot and violent disposition all throughout the series -- though I can't deny that the series had done nothing to remind us that near the end of the story, when it was about to matter most.

So by contrast, this entire season of House of the Dragon -- and this final episode most keenly -- has been carefully crafted to make us understand, when Rhaenyra succumbs to rage, exactly why she has done it. The stillbirth, though perhaps overly graphic in depiction, was an important moment. The day Rhaenyra's throne was usurped was the very day she lost her child. It magnified the importance of family at that critical moment, setting the stage for a magnified reaction to what was in store at the end of the episode.

And that long sequence was extremely well executed. "Executed" might be a play on words there, as the episode was not trying to hide from the audience that something awful was going to happen to young Luke. But hiding it was not the point. This was suspense by degrees; maybe he'll be taken prisoner? Maybe he'll only be maimed? Maybe he'll bring about his own demise in his hasty retreat? The tension was teased out well, with the pinnacle coming in the lightning strike that revealed Aemond's massive dragon high above. (And notably: the music did not start at that moment; it kicked in later.)

The season seemed clearly written to save on CG earlier in earlier episodes so that the budget was available here and now for this all-important sequence. And it was probably a good trade. As terrible as the "dark episode you couldn't see" a few weeks ago looked, this chase in a rainstorm looked as oppositely great and more.

One issue, however, that I hope the show is able to address when season two comes around? Daemon. He feels like the odd man out in the stable of characters -- with the possible exception of the devious Larys Strong (who is clearly a more secondary character). Every other major character on the show has their flaws, to be sure. They make good decisions and bad decisions. They've been shown to be capable of evil or benevolence. But Daemon is a fairly detestable figure at all times, just able to wear a thin mask of civility for short stretches. Sure, a show needs its villains, but it feels to me like every other character as central to the story as he is has been sketched in shades of grey. Daemon is as dark as night, and to my mind, not particularly fun to watch in that role. This episode was no exception.

But in all, I enjoyed this season finale, and I'll be looking forward to season two, whenever it comes. I give "The Black Queen" a B+.

Voyager Flashback: Retrospect

One shouldn't be surprised to find, when watching TV episodes that are 25 or 50 years old, some content that makes you recoil a bit -- or to perhaps feel grateful that social progress has been made.  Star Trek ages better than most television, no doubt because it's future-looking and grounded in inclusive ideals. But even it can have the occasional episode that doesn't age well. Voyager's "Retrospect" is one of those.

Janeway is negotiating for upgraded weapons technology from an alien arms dealer with a distasteful personality. He turns out to be a predator when Seven of Nine recalls being captured and subjected to a medical procedure in his lab. But is the memory genuine, or the product of latent memories from her time with the Borg? And to what degree is the Doctor scrambling those memories as he tests out new psychological subroutines?

It is simply a fact than human memory is unreliable. It's well documented that with the passage of time, people can come to recall -- in vivid detail -- events that never actually happened, while genuinely believing them to be true. The writers of Star Trek: Voyager came across this information and were inspired to create this episode that they intended to be all about Seven experiencing a false memory.

The problem is that the memory happens to be about a skeevy man violating a woman. Even at the time, the writers say they knew this put the story pretty close to the topic of "date rape," which they hoped to steer around. With the passage of 24 years, it seems clear that they did not. Watching "Retrospect" today, you hardly think about the intellectual curiosities of false memories as you watch this clear example of everything the MeToo movement stands for -- and see Star Trek kinda take the wrong side.

I say "kinda" because this episode does not quite go so far as to argue that we should "not believe women." B'Elanna is a witness to an early physical altercation between Seven and the alien Kovin, and she says he provoked it. When Seven later comes forward with her memory, Janeway immediately does what every Star Trek captain does when a crew member claims some wild science-fiction experience -- she believes Seven and investigates things seriously.

But in the course of the investigation, the episode means for us to understand that Seven is actually mistaken. Kovin is telling the truth. The threat to his reputation is meant to be more serious than the possibility of what was done to Seven. Corroborating evidence for Seven's story can't be found. (You'd think they could scan the planet for the Borg drone she remembers Kovin creating in his lab!) The episode that starts out believing Seven ends up with the audience meant to understand that everyone (including her) knows she was wrong. And sure, this is one weird sci-fi case that isn't deliberately commenting on all cases. But it's awfully cringe-worthy that this rare episode dealing with the topic chooses to depict that "the accused man was absolutely, 100% telling the truth."

As uncomfortable as all that is to watch, there are at least a few good elements in the mix. This is a good story arc for the Doctor, as he starts out literally thinking himself to be better than everyone else (talking about the "lower standards" of the rest of the crew), and realizing in the end that he is quite fallible. Robert Picardo gives a strong, impassioned performance. Though it's maybe another problem that this is a better Doctor episode than a Seven episode, as he paternalistically pushes Seven to feel a rage she herself was not inclined to feel.

Jeri Ryan gives a good performance in the episode too -- as she usually does when asked to stretch beyond the most rigid version of her character. The way director Jesús Salvador Treviño films the episode is intriguing too, with unusual camera work for the show, and a particular style within the flashbacks that subtly untethers the events from reality.

Other observations:

• The episode certainly opens with a big impression, as Voyager uses a spiky space drone for target practice.

• There's mention of the Hirogen in this episode, but I can't help but miss their presence after so many good episodes featuring them.
  

"Retrospect" was probably meant to be Star Trek: Voyager's Rashomon. (Every TV show gets around to that idea if it runs long enough.) But today, it stands as more of a monument. Yes, we still have a long way to go... but at least we've come farther than this. This episode is a watchable, though uncomfortable, C.

Fit for a Queen

I've written previously in praise of the board game Azul. But when a board game is as successful as Azul -- retaining the love of gamers while appealing to a wider audience -- there's no way its stopping at just one product.

Azul is not the sort of experience that easily lends itself to expansions, so instead it gets spin-offs. I've blogged (positively) about one of those, Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra. Recently, I've had the chance to play another, Azul: Queen's Garden.

Queen's Garden is really something quite different. Without the Azul branding on it, I doubt I would have been likely to compare it to the original game. It's hard to say whether designer Michael Kiesling was always planning this as an Azul (while wanting to do something new and different), or created this game independently and then used the name of one of his most successful games to help sell this one. Either way, I respect the departure.

There are superficial similarities to Azul. There are tiles you pull from a bag, which are then drafted by players. Drafted tiles temporarily go in a personal "holding area" of sorts, until they are placed on to an individual game board the player is building up. And the first player to pass in each round loses 1 point and goes first in the next round. But to my mind, that's all Queen's Garden has in common with Azul.

The way the tile drafting pool works is different. Instead of all options for the round being visible from the start, a round of Queen's Garden begins with limited choices, ultimately balloons to a much wider array, and then contracts again.

The tiles themselves are different. The ones pulled from the bag now have two characteristics instead of one -- not only a color (as past Azul games had), but a symbol indicating their cost/value. They're hex-shaped instead of square, affecting the patterns you can make. And you place them in spaces on other, larger cardboard tiles that you also have to draft.

Scoring is different. You have more flexibility in the patterns you can make on your board. More expensive tiles get very much harder to play, but can be worth very many more points over the course of the game. There's also a quite brutal penalty for unused tiles at the end of the game, which forces you to plan well ahead to make sure you don't get bit.

I might argue that there's another, even surer sign that Azul and Azul: Queen's Garden are quite different games. I'm not especially good at Azul. I enjoy playing it, though I generally lose to people who navigate its particular spatial puzzle more effortlessly than I. But so far, at least, my record at Azul: Queen's Garden is quite good. It's still a spatial puzzle, but apparently it's sufficiently different that I engage with it in a different way.

Of course... it's easier to reflexively love a game you happen to be good at, so I'll understand the skepticism you might have when I say that I really love Azul: Queen's Garden. So let me perhaps temper that by saying that Queen's Garden is a far less elegant game than its forebear. Despite a short rulebook, it feels much more difficult to wrap your head around at first. I'd say it does not have the crossover potential of the original Azul; I would try Azul out on very casual gamers, but I'd absolutely keep Azul: Queen's Garden on the shelf among such a crowd.

But I think all that just means that there's room for both in many gamers' collection. I give Azul: Queen's Garden an A-.

Law Review

Last week, the latest Marvel TV show served up its finale. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law had been my most anticipated of all the MCU shows for one reason only -- Tatiana Maslany.

I haven't had enough chances to praise Tatiana Maslany here on the blog. I wrote about the series finale of her breakout show, Orphan Black (but not about other episodes along the way). I sampled season one of HBO's Perry Mason, in which she appeared -- but I found the show too dull and dour for even her appeal to keep me engaged (so I never wrote about that)

So let me shout now into the microphone: Tatiana Maslany is an amazing actress. She has an incredible range, encompassing drama and comedy. She seems to have no vanity, taking on anything with aplomb. She so likeable and effervescent. If I were a director, she'd be in every single one of my projects (probably in multiple roles).

With She-Hulk putting Tatiana Maslany front and center (unlike Perry Mason, where she was on the margins), I was probably destined to love the series no matter what. But I'd like to think I would have enjoyed what it turned out to be even on its own merits. She-Hulk was a fun concoction of lightness and irreverence. It met some expectations while thwarting others. It blessedly kept the stakes low, unlike most recent MCU fare -- but by tying those stakes directly to such a likeable character (again, see: Tatiana Maslany), events still felt important.

The show's supporting cast was great fun too. Jameela Jamil brought a fun variant of the "spoiled rich kid" persona she mastered on The Good Place to her role here as Titania. Josh Segerra turned down the "dumb" he displays on The Other Two, while retaining much of the goofiness, in his role here as "Pug." Nikki Ramos, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jon Bass -- all fun spices in the dish. And, of course, I can't overlook the arrival of the MCU's biggest breakout character in years: Madisynn, played indelibly by Patty Guggenheim. (They've gotta be slating in her own Phase 5 movie now, right?)

Even more fun were the many cameo appearances throughout She-Hulk, most simply too good to spoil. (Though many of which you would assume, given the story.) The fourth-wall breaking antics of She-Hulk allowed for lots of fun commentary on these cameos, and on the MCU at large, which I also really enjoyed.

I did love the show, though I can't quite put it in the top spot among MCU shows. (Hawkeye in particular is a tough act to follow.) The overall story of She-Hulk's season did come in fits and starts. And the ending wasn't exactly satisfying. (Not the fourth wall breaking elements of it, which were delightful. I mean the abruptness with which everything "just sort of ended" right after that.) Still, I respect the way the show often zigged where formula said to zag. And, at the risk of repeating myself, Tatiana Maslany made that unusual journey fun at every step of the way.

I give She-Hulk: Attorney at Law a B+. I'd love to see another season some day.

The Green Council

The latest episode of House of the Dragon was an interesting departure for the series so far in several ways, while simultaneously shoring up the whole and affirming that while things may have gotten off to a slow start, they're humming along now.

In King's Landing, Alicent and her allies rush to shore up Aegon's claim to the Iron Throne... but without Aegon himself, who has gone missing in the night, and is now the object of two competing manhunts. Alicent tries to appeal to Rhaenys, but is rebuffed with thorny advice. It's all building toward a memorable coronation for the new king.

After a season that routinely skipped weeks and years between episodes, it's telling that House of the Dragon picks up this time literally the next morning after the previous episode. We really are done with the preamble now. Also different: Rhaenyra (and Daemon, and their children) are nowhere to be seen this week. This episode is set entirely in King's Landing, focusing on the scramble to install Aegon as king before word of Viserys' death can reach the world beyond.

It is almost an episode from Alicent's point of view, in as much as Game of Thrones or its spin-off would ever truly do such a thing. Much of this first season has shown us Alicent through Rhaenyra's eyes, a dear friend turned cold rival who seemed sympathetic only in the occasional moments when Rhaenyra wasn't actually around. And so, without her around at all this week, we get Alicent in her most sympathetic light yet.

No, we see for certain, Alicent is not Cersei. And of course, the characters of House of the Dragon should not map one-to-one to characters from Game of Thrones. But where you might have imagined both characters as "queens playing the game, not as well as they themselves would say they are," this episode highlights the important difference between the two. Alicent really has no ambition for herself -- and consequently, she has no ruthlessness in her.

Cersei would have heard Viserys' dying words, deliberately misconstrued them, and made big political moves accordingly. Alicent seems to have truly misunderstood Viserys, assisted by wishful thinking, and is only willing to make small moves (as of now). Yes, she's playing a game -- as illustrated most viscerally in the scene where she exploits (and is exploted by) Larys and his foot fetish. But she's no grandmaster.

This fact was pointed out best by Rhaenys in one of a few scenes this week that seemed to style her as another Game of Thrones character, Lady Olenna. Again, of course, not every character in this maps to one from the original show, but Rhaenys displayed the same sharp insight backed by sharp words. She really put Alicent in her place, exposing that she works in service of men. Sure, Olenna would have had even more withering words in this situation, but then... Olenna didn't have an actual dragon to ride.

Rhaenys' big moment at the end of the episode has been the talk of the internet -- most of it centered on "why didn't she say 'Dracarys!'?" And yes, that was certainly my gut reaction in the moment as well. But I think here's a payoff for the slow burn the show was in getting to this point; we get context to help understand moments like this. In another departure from Olenna, Rhaenys is not a vengeful woman. She's certainly not a stone cold killer. Remember, she believes in earnest that her own son was murdered by his wife... and she has still chosen to ally with that wife. Forgiveness is in her nature. If anything, she pities Alicent more than she harbors any malice there... and I think that explains why, on this occasion that she (and the realm) may later come to regret, she lets Alicent and her family live.

A solid episode of House of the Dragon with political intrigue that's actually intriguing, major plot developments, and plenty of action too. I give "The Green Council" a B+. On to next week's season finale!

Lower Decks: Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus

A week after Star Trek: Lower Decks brought back one of its least appealing characters for an episode that left me cold, it now gets back on track with a sequel of sorts to the best episode of its first season.

Boimler, Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford are enjoying another holodeck movie when Boimler gets news that shakes him to his core. As he veers "off script" in search of personal meaning, Tendi is left as captain of the story, finding she has a taste for it.

As much as I personally disliked last week's strange "return of Peanut Hamper," I commented at the time that it was clearly enough of a one-off story that it wouldn't interfere with the show getting back on a track that appealed to me more. Quite fitting that it did so by again revisiting something from a past episode -- this time, the brilliant and hilarious conceit of knowingly making a "Starfleet movie."

Once again, we got plenty of great goofs on what Star Trek movies look like and how they're put together. Some of the jokes really called attention to themselves, like gags about how sequels are usually bad, and Mariner dissing the plausibility of the Kelvin timeline (young versions of established characters). But my favorite jokes were more subtle, like stepping over the black letterbox bar to leave the holodeck, the winking references in the planet names shown on screen, and the way Romulan triplets with ample cleavage were a clear one-upping of Lursa and B'Etor.

But where the first "Crisis Point" really was a big joke factory (at least, that's how I remember it), this sequel was actually more serious overall, with two big dramatic story arcs for the characters. Tendi's thread, worrying about being taken seriously as a captain, nicely played into the character's well-established insecurities. Still, I feel like it won't be believable for much longer when such insecurities involve Rutherford. Every time Tendi needs an enthusiastic cheerleader, Rutherford is right there to be that. I love that about him and their relationship, though she really ought to know by now that he's always in her corner. (And I don't even mean this in a "ship them" sort of way.)

Boimler's arc was akin to Jean-Luc Picard's in the movie Generations (appropos of this being a "movie"). Still, it's interesting to see the upbeat character shaken in this way -- and felt like a novel use for the doppelganger trope in Star Trek. And of course, this story line culminated in one of the most fun cameo appearances in the series so far, with George Takei returning as Sulu. It was a fun inclusion -- and equally fun that Boimler was as happy to "meet" Sulu as he probably would have been for Captain Kirk. Still, part of me wonders... was this always the writers' plan? Did they go out to Shatner first and get turned down, or did the "Lower Decks" mission statement mean they were never going to aim for the top like that?

For pure laughs, I would say that this sequel wasn't quite as good as the original -- as mentioned cheekily in the episode itself. Still, "Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus" was a good episode with surprisingly strong stories for the characters. I give it a B+.

Voyager Flashback: Prey

The introduction of Star Trek: Voyager's new alien enemies continued with the third straight episode to include the Hirogen, "Prey."

Voyager encounters a Hirogen ship whose hunters are near death after tangling with prey too strong for them. And soon that prey is loose aboard Voyager: a member of Species 8472, isolated from its people and trying to return home.

This episode is almost "all plot, all action." That's a formula that can be really satisfying in the moment, while often not being as satisfying in the long term. But the story here really is rather exhilarating, even if (once again) television CG of the time isn't quite up to the task of creating a believable 8472 alien. There are multiple scenes of slow and spooky tension: our heroes exploring the derelict Hirogen ship (where Paris finds a severed head!), and searching the "haunted house" of Voyager's own corridors for the intruder.

After going full "Alien movie" for a time, the episode circles back around to being Star Trek when Janeway sympathizes with the 8472, recognizing that they both "just want to get home." This is one of the elements that transcends this episode just being pure action and suspense. The other big one is the conflict between Seven of Nine and Captain Janeway. It is frankly great to see this level of friction on the show -- though I can't help but wonder if it was inspired by real-life animosity at this point (reportedly resolved in the years since) by Kate Mulgrew toward Jeri Ryan. It's interesting, as I imagine the writers want this to be a "balanced" conflict where each character has a point -- but I think Seven's comes across much more effectively: "you are the one who wants me to be an individual, but now you don't like the individual I've become."

Another boon to this episode is Tony Todd's presence as the Hirogen character. He would later call this the most difficult makeup of his career (as it required an additional hour-and-a-half of costuming after a lengthy makeup application), but he was keen to appear on yet another Star Trek series (after The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine). Todd's regal affect helps flesh out the Hirogen urge to hunt, how they respect their prey even while seeing themselves above them. Though this is Todd's least showy Star Trek role, he still gets some good moments with several of the regular cast members -- particularly Robert Beltran as Chakotay.

Other observations:

• The writers have learned how to write comedy for Jeri Ryan. Seven's social lesson with the Doctor is great fun.

• The spacesuits from First Contact are reused here. Literally. Voyager didn't have the budget to make more, and only three were made for the movie, so here, even though four characters wear the suits, you never see more than three on screen at the same time.

• Kate Mulgrew gives a delicious delivery on: "If he steps out of line, shoot him."
  

• The situation gets so dire that Tuvok drafts Neelix to help with security.

• Since the last encounter with Species 8472, Voyager has traveled 10,000 light years. So it maybe doesn't quite make sense to be seeing one again. The creature really IS lost!  

I almost want to give this episode an A-. Had the conflict between Janeway and Seven been more even, with Janeway having what felt to me like a more relatable point of view, I think it would have gotten there. (Yes, Janeway is right about showing mercy to the alien. But the cost for that being Voyager and the life of everyone aboard? I have to side with Seven.) Still, I'd give the episode a pretty good B+. And noting that that's what I've thought of every episode to include the Hirogen so far, I'd say that makes them a very valuable addition to the series.

Low(brow) Society

I've read (and posted about) several books by John Scalzi over the years. He's been writing for quite a while, at a fairly rapid pace -- so I've never really been at the leading edge of his books. But that changed this year when I did make time for his newest release, The Kaiju Preservation Society.

Quite simply, the book is built around the premise that a parallel Earth is a world dominated by actual, this-is-where-the-stories-about-Godzilla-really-come-from, giant monsters. In particular, it's the story of one person brought aboard a research company that conducts scientific research in that parallel world.

John Scalzi includes a rather substantial Afterword to this book, describing how it quickly came to exist when another book he was writing didn't pan out. COVID had arrived, the more serious novel he'd been writing held no joy, and he had just informed his publisher that he was (much to his regret, and against his custom) not going to make his deadline. Then, The Kaiju Preservation Society sprang into his mind, and from there into his word processor in very short order.

I think it would have been helpful had this Afterword actually been a Foreword to the book, because it does a great job of expectations-setting. This book was meant to be fun. Obviously, I knew that on some level when I started reading, from the goofy title alone. And anyone who has read any other Scalzi books (or seen his installments of the series Love, Death and Robots) knows that his hallmarks are sarcastic and witty characters, pop culture references, and glib treatment even of dark subject matter.

Still, I don't think I was ready for The Kaiju Preservation Society to be this much about having fun -- only, nothing more. The premise is great. The world-building is light. But the narrative borders on non-existent. Things happen to protagonist Jamie Gray, and obviously there is a sequence of events. But it felt to me like nothing but world-building, following a "stranger in a strange land," for nearly two-thirds of the book. It's very late in the page count when anything like a quest/complication/jeopardy manifests. And when it does, it has a fairly pat resolution that feels like an afterthought.

Now don't get me wrong, the book is still pretty fun to read. For the most part. In the middle third, my enjoyment really waned -- not because the setting was any less entertaining, but because I was impatient for something to actually "happen." Had I been better armed with Scalzi's Afterword, "this book is just fun, at a time where I really needed something that was just fun," I might have more easily succumbed to its charms. Because those charms are there, even if a strong story isn't. This book will make you laugh, or at least smile.

I suspect that my outlook turned a book that I might have graded a B into something far less enjoyable; I'd actually call The Kaiju Preservation Society a C+. But if you're just looking for a fluffy escape (indeed, the protagonist is literally escaping from the world of COVID in 2020), then perhaps you'll like it more than I did.

Voyager Flashback: Hunters

Following a brief "viewscreen only" introduction in the episode "Message in a Bottle," the Hirogen make a more complete debut in the next episode of Star Trek: Voyager, "Hunters."

Using the galactic relay network discovered by Voyager, Starfleet Command sends the ship a bundle of letters from friends and family back home -- but the tremendous distance involved means it will take time to receive and unscramble the garbled messages. During that time, Voyager remains vulnerable to attack when Hirogen hunters arrive on the scene.

A more detailed synopsis of this episode would surely mention that Seven of Nine and Tuvok are at one point captured by the Hirogen. But their imprisonment doesn't last long, and is never the true focus of the episode. This is an episode all about the letters from home. Indeed, the Hirogen are really only here to put a ticking clock on that story, and to facilitate the destruction of the entire relay network at the end of the episode (lest Voyager have a too-easy way to keep communicating with home).

To the extent this is about introducing the Hirogen, they are an interesting foe -- even if they seem derived from the Predator in nature and sheer size. They have inscrutable rituals about war paint and skinning their prey. Their ship is a large, fun set adorned with skulls, cargo nets, and vats of goo. (The production could spend some money here, knowing this set would be used in more than one episode.)

Still, it's all about those letters -- which makes this episode incredibly high stakes as far as the characters are concerned, and also able to involve all of the characters in a way that really shows us how they feel. It's a rare moment where the writers can have their cake and eat it too. Nothing fundamental about the show needs to change here; they're still trapped in the Delta Quadrant and unable to do anything about the news they receive. Yet the news they receive can still have a profound impact.

Chakotay and B'Elanna learn that the Maquis have been completely wiped out (which happened a few months earlier on Deep Space Nine). The way this shakes B'Elanna impacts her relationship with Paris, who is reverting to his season one roguish aloofness at the mere prospect of being judged by his father. Paris in turn is contrasted with his best friend Kim, who must sweat up until the last moment whether he'll even hear from home at all.

Janeway must confront that her fiance has moved on (and Kate Mulgrew gives a marvelous, wordless performance in the moment her character learns what has happened). Tuvok finds out that he's a grandfather. Even Seven is forced to consider that she might actually have family on Earth. And Neelix again proves he's the worst, opening other people's mail and reading it.

There are still more good character moments sprinkled throughout, separate from the "letters" storyline. B'Elanna and Harry talk about his infatuation with Seven of Nine. Seven and Tuvok have a meaningful talk about why the captain's opinion of her has become important. The table is really set at the end for a relationship between Janeway and Chakotay. (I can understand the writers eschewing that for the obviousness of it, but the chemistry between the two actors feels undeniable to me.)

Other observations:

• The Hirogen station looks like a reuse of the Caretaker model. Its implosion, however, is clearly CG -- and taxes the limits of what was possible to make look good on a television budget at the time.

• Janeway's enthusiasm for coffee gets another shout-out, when she declares it the "finest organic suspension ever devised."

• Janeway also says, and I quote: "Leave it to Neelix to come up with the right idea at the right time." Is there another Neelix on the ship that we haven't met? I swear, the writers' love of actor Ethan Phillips (deserved, as far as I can tell) is totally blinding them to how they're actually writing his character.
  

A more daring -- and I think more effective -- version of this episode would have dispensed with the Hirogen subplot entirely and focused only on Voyager's first news from home. (And it wouldn't have had Neelix behaving so obnoxiously.) Still, what we do get feels fairly daring for Star Trek: Voyager, and I find myself caring about many of the characters more than I might have expected. I give "Hunters" a B+.

The Lord of the Tides

Two episodes remain in the first season of House of the Dragon, but we may already have gotten the most pivotal episode of the season in the eighth installment, "The Lord of the Tides." (And I'll say right now: here there be SPOILERS.)

Six years have passed since Rhaenyra and Daemon married, and they are now returning to King's Landing to fight for the succession of their son to the throne of Driftmark. They arrive to find King Viserys all but insensate, lost to pain, painkillers, disease, and old age. Queen Alicent rules in his stead, and is sure to rule against Rhaenyra. But the king has one more burst of life in him, and he uses it to try to reunite his fractured family.

There is probably a way you could have told the story of House of the Dragon by starting with this episode. This episode brings the inciting incident, the moment beyond which the coming events are inevitable: the death of Viserys. That said, this is not a tight, one-act stage play; this is epic fantasy. Climbing to the top of the roller coaster's first hill, before the big drop, is not only expected here, but it does make sense. Spending some time with these people before they go to war is vital in making us care what happens to them next.

Perhaps there could have been a bit less table-setting, spread over fewer episodes, than what we got? Perhaps that sort of pacing would have kept tuned in some of the people I know who have bailed on this show? But even as things stand now, it does feel like most of the setup really did inform specific grievances that will matter now -- not just between Alicent and Rhaenyra, but between all their children, between them and members of the court, and between them and other players in this incarnation of the "game of thrones."

But whether or not the seven episodes before this might have been abbreviated in some ways, this episode felt essential to me from start to finish. There were highlights, of course, most surrounding the depiction of the dying Viserys. It ranged from the realistic (the way his mind slipped in and out of reality is surely something that many in the show's audience have experienced themselves) to the ghastly (the erosion of half his face felt like the most grisly thing in the episode -- even when that episode featured someone's head being cut in half).

The dinner scene was perhaps the best scene of the series so far. Viserys was essentially granted his dying wish for his family to reconcile, and that perhaps gave him "permission" to finally give up the struggle and pass on. Except... the very instant he left the room, the squabbles all began anew. If a peace can't last when he leaves the room, what is sure to happen when he leaves this world? The sniping between cousins, the ludicrous interjections from Aegon's wife, the heartfelt (but brief) words of forgiveness exchanged between Alicent and Rhaenyra -- all of it felt wonderfully, perfectly calibrated to me.

And I feel compelled to mention one other element that fell well-calibrated -- or, at least, handled better than Game of Thrones has historically handled similar material: the scene in which Alicent must deal with the aftermath of a rape committed by her son. It was a chilling scene, with Alicent herself spouting terrible rhetoric of denial and blaming. And showing that was enough. I can't help but feel like the Game of Thrones of old would have actually shown us the rape (and, likely, not this aftermath). This is just as effective at making the point without being needlessly lurid: we understand clearly that in the coming struggle for the Iron Throne, the conventional, patrilineal heir is a horrible person.

I give this episode a B+. The "prologue" now complete, it will be interesting to see just how much more story House of the Dragon aims to tell in two remaining episodes, and what sort of cliffhanger it opts to leave between seasons.

Lower Decks: A Mathematically Perfect Redemption

With five (!) new first-run series in the modern age of Star Trek, one "lesson" lurking in the background has been that "not every Star Trek show has to be tailor-made for YOU." In its latest episode, Lower Decks delivered that message at the micro level with an episode that quickly polarized the audience: "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption."

When the Exocomp crewmember Peanut Hamper leaves the Cerritos, she winds up on a technologically primitive world populated by an avian species. There, she is shown a new perspective on life, ends up in a relationship with the heir to the village leadership, and must ultimately defend the village from an alien attack.

I have seen a handful of tweets claiming to like this episode (even better than the previous week's adventure on Deep Space Nine!). I have to take these people at their word, because this episode was emphatically not "For Me." I found it to be not only the worst episode of Lower Decks by a wide margin, but the worst episode of Star Trek since Discovery brought the franchise back to television.

Peanut Hamper was introduced back in the season one finale, "No Small Parts," and for me was the worst element of that episode. I didn't even mention her in the write-up I did at the time. She was abrasive and strange, clashed with the Star Trek aesthetic, and wasn't especially funny. But at least in her previous appearance, we got only small doses of the character. Here, she takes center stage for an entire episode that barely even includes the regular characters, and the results are predictably annoying from beginning to end.

As exhausting as this episode was up until the much-needed arrival of the Cerritos, it might at least have been tolerable if the episode was going to convoluted lengths to give us what the title promised: a redemption for Peanut Hamper. Instead, what a twist!, she remains just as reprehensible at the end of the story as she was in the beginning -- a self-centered, psychopathic character who in any other episode of Star Trek would be the villain, not the star.

Because there is no character arc here, no change of any kind, the entire episode feels like a waste of time. Why tell a story if nothing meaningfully changes between the beginning and the end? Even among the crowd saying they liked this episode, I can't believe that anyone was actually thinking "I wonder whatever happened to Peanut Hamper?" before this came along; it's not like this was a loose end that truly needed tying up.

I can think of literally only one thing I enjoyed about the episode: it gave us the brief return of Jeffrey Combs as the Evil AI Agimus. Combs, of course, is one of the best things in all of Star Trek... though this episode really tested just what I'm willing to put up with to "see" more of him.

Obviously, this episode was a one-off experiment by the writers; it hasn't permanently changed anything in a way that would keep next week's Lower Decks from rebounding. Yet at the same time, we only get 10 episodes of Lower Decks in a season, and to me it felt like this deprived us of that precious, limited resource. I give "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption" a D-. This is one episode of Star Trek I'll never watch again.

Isn't It Bro-mantic?

This past weekend, a rarity arrived in movie theaters: a romantic comedy centered on a gay couple, featuring an almost-entirely LGBT+ cast. Bros was written by star Billy Eichner and director Nicolas Stoller, and the hope was for a movie that would attract gay and straight audiences alike.

Unfortunately, theaters remain in a COVID fog where only a slice of movies actually attract people to leave their homes, and a gay rom-com was entirely out of that slice. Bros opened in 4th place, earning under $5 million (half of what was originally projected), probably ensuring that studios will resume shunting their LGBT content, however worthy, to streaming services for the foreseeable future.

In the case of Bros, I do get that there's another factor looming large: Billy Eichner himself. The entertainment persona he's cultivated for himself is "brash to the point of obnoxious." Assuming you know who he is, you're probably either going to think he's a) funny; or b) annoying. This goes beyond the comedic antics of, say, a polarizing star like a Jim Carrey or an Adam Sandler -- Eichner is most known for literally accosting people on the street.

Fittingly, this subtext becomes text in the movie Bros. A major element of this rom-com story arc has to do with Eichner's outsized personality, and whether he should "tone it down" in certain situations. It goes right to the heart of a major message of this movie, that "love is love is love" is not in fact true -- there are aspects of the gay experience that are not "just the same" as love between a straight couple. This movie's main character talks about calibrating just How Much Gay strikes the right balance between "Personal Truth" and "Making Others Comfortable," and it's a deep and heartfelt theme to raise in a largely light-hearted movie.

But it is largely light-hearted. There are a lot of jokes, and they hit more than they miss. The hits often offer scathing-but-loving commentary on how LGBT+ people have been portrayed in media over the years. The misses generally feel like shoehorned-in one-liners from a stand-up routine. But I legitimately laughed out loud a few times throughout the movie, as did others in the small audience when I saw it.

The cast is great. Of course, Billy Eichner looms large over all, as I've already noted. The other half of the couple, Luke Macfarlane, has been great in a number of television roles, and is as likeable here. The bench of supporting cast members runs very deep, and there are a ton of fun cameos beyond that.

I'd give Bros a B. The die is sadly already cast on its theatrical run, but it's worth checking out in some venue, at some point.

Driftmark

I felt like the latest episode of House of the Dragon was the best so far -- a solid blend of fulfilling some expectations while thwarting others. But it still probably wasn't quite at the level where I'd start suggesting that people who have given up on the show come back to give it another chance.

A funeral reunites the royal family that just recently went their separate ways, and sparks fly. The children of the princess and the queen are increasingly at each other's throats. Rhaenyra is increasingly drawn to her uncle Daemon. King Viserys is increasingly made to look a weakening fool. And the tension can't increase much more before something snaps.

I suppose I should either go read the Fire and Blood history book on which all this is based, or get out of the House of the Dragon prediction business. Last week, I was disappointed that so much time was spent on the squabbling children only to separate them at the end of the hour. This week, all that squabbling paid off, having setup the major confrontation this week that sees Aemond lose an eye. If anything, perhaps more time could have been spent on souring relationships last week, as the one moment I couldn't quite get on board with this week was Alicent's sudden demand for a literal eye for an eye. (It felt like an escalation that, given her reaction to Larys' butchery last week, she isn't quite ready to spearhead.)

Another shocking development was the marriage of Rhaenyra and Daemon at the end of the episode. Shocking, in it being one of the most direct depictions of incest in the GRRM-iverse since season 1, episode 1 of Game of Thrones... but certainly not surprising, when you remember (though you easily could forget) that Daenerys was ultimately revealed to be Jon Snow's aunt. This is just how Targaryens roll.

Perhaps the long game of so many episodes of seemingly aimless Daemon scenes now begins to reveal itself? Daemon has a history of dead wives; is Rhaenyra now in danger? (Ah, but I said I needed to get out of the prediction business.) In any case, it is satisfying to begin to see disconnected tendrils finally start to entwine with one another as the last few episodes of the season come.

But one huge distraction in the episode is the one the internet has widely seized upon. Just as in the final season of Game of Thrones, the creatives behind the show deliberately served up an episode "you can't see." Things were definitely too dark throughout the middle act of the episode, with many important scenes taking place at night on the beach. For the record, no television show will ever be as "too dark" as episode 6 of Apple TV+'s Invasion. Still, the purportedly intentional creative decision made here was the wrong one. The encounters between Daemon and Rhaenyra, and Aemond and Vhagar, were the emotional highlights of the episode, and they were so mired in darkness that you couldn't tell what was going on. (Which kid with white hair is that? What is he looking at down on the beach? And people, I've calibrated my television well. I'm not one of those people who can't tell the difference when Motion Smoothing is on.)

Absent that issue that forcibly kicks the audience out of the most critical parts of the episode, I'd have said House of the Dragon had probably served up its first A/A- episode. As it stands, I'll call "Driftmark" a B+. Some television directors and editors need to consider more how this stuff will play outside of their pitch black editing rooms.

Lower Decks: Hear All, Trust Nothing

Star Trek: Lower Decks crossing over with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine? Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! That's exactly what we got in Lower Decks' latest episode, "Hear All, Trust Nothing."

When another Starfleet ship is diverted from a rendezvous with the Cerritos, it falls to Captain Freeman to take on their mission: a diplomatic negotiation at Deep Space Nine. Boimler quickly settles in at Quark's dabo table, Tendi and Rutherford pair up with an Orion who annoys Tendi with his cliche attitudes, and Shaxs constantly trades Resistance stories with Colonel Kira. Soon, another one of Quark's schemes escalates into a crisis. Meanwhile, back aboard the Cerritos, Mariner tries to be on her best behavior as she meets Jennifer's friends.

Lower Decks is clearly written by a team who know Star Trek well and love it... and an episode like this actually shows how much restraint they exercise on a regular basis by not throwing into each episode every reference they could. You can imagine how far "full fan service" in a scenario like this would go, and this wasn't that. We don't run in to Julian and Ezri, we don't see Jake Sisko still wandering the Promenade, and so on. The scope of the crossover here is wisely limited to a number of elements that can be incorporated well into a tight sub-30-minutes episode of television.

It's interesting that Kira is used more as the comic relief than Quark in this story construction. It's perhaps even more interesting that her most dramatic and soulful moment in the episode comes when she gazes out the window at the wormhole -- a moment that doesn't rely on Nana Visitor's acting chops at all, but rather is carried entirely by the animators. In any case, the Deep Space Nine fan in me was desperate for more, more, more... and the Lower Decks fan in me knows that they made the right choice not to do that.

As fun as it was to have Visitor and Armin Shimerman back voicing their iconic characters, the guest star having the most fun this episode might just have been Adam Pally as the Orion Mesk. His purposefully over-the-top performance put the screws to Tendi in an interesting way. And while it made for good humor along the way, I was also impressed at the more serious elements of the story line. We already knew about Tendi's misgivings about her Orion heritage, but Star Trek rarely circles back to hit a character over the same vulnerability more than once. Often, the end of an episode brings a full resolution to whatever personal problem might be plaguing a character... but real-life insecurities don't work that way of course. All the more remarkable, then, that a Star Trek cartoon is dealing with insecurities in a more realistic way.

The other subplots of the episode certainly kept things from getting too serious. Mariner out of her comfort zone has been good for the character all season long, and "trying to tone it down for the Significant Other" is just an obligatory rom-com premise you have to check off eventually. Putting Boimler in his element is equally unusual, and was good for a simple joke-centered runner.

For deftly juggling all these balls so well, I give "Hear All, Trust Nothing" an A-.