Voyager Flashback: Memorial

Not every episode of Star Trek can be wildly original -- certainly not with over 900 episodes of it across the entire franchise. But a few ideas seem to get remixed again and again, as they were with Star Trek: Voyager's "Memorial."

Harry Kim, Tom Paris, Chakotay, and Neelix return from a two-week mission on the Delta Flyer. They bring with them unsettling, fragmented memories of a war they became embroiled in on an alien world... and atrocities they may have been personally involved in. The rest of the crew is determined to seek the truth and fill in the gaps in their memories.

The "stew" that is this episode comes from ingredients well-stocked in the Star Trek pantry. Voyager itself has already done an episode specifically about "implanted memories of brutal war crimes," and another that entangled a character in an alien war. Meanwhile, The Next Generation did an alien abduction story that echoes the "what happened to us?" mystery of this episode in many ways. In short, the "been there, done that" meter pegs high for me on this episode.

That wouldn't be bad, in and of itself, if this episode had anything new to say, or remixed the ingredients in a compelling fashion. But this story isn't tailored to its characters in any way. Shouldn't Neelix be especially affected by the violence he experienced, given the loss of his family to a weapon of mass destruction? Perhaps Tom Paris might be impacted in a particular way relating to his past criminal incarceration? Maybe Harry Kim is hit especially hard because he's never been in a war zone before? But "general trauma" takes the place of any specificity here; it really could have been any four characters on the Delta Flyer, for all the difference it makes in this story.

Perhaps the episode could have been improved by going harder at making us (and/or the characters) really experience the atrocities involved. Maybe this simply wasn't possible on the UPN network in the year 2000, but the episode is so cowardly about avoiding controversy that it doesn't even make an act break out of the moment when a PTSD-addled Neelix endangers Naomi Wildman; Chakotay talks him down, gets Naomi out of danger, and then we get the commercial break.

Another problem may be that Voyager has established such a constrained acting style at this point that when someone breaks out of it, it feels out of place. Indeed, the show literally cannot contain it. In a scene where Tom Paris experiences his most intense war flashbacks, Robert Duncan McNeill gives such a loud, shouting performance that he spikes the audio and they don't even bother to replace it with something cleaner. (Perhaps looping the dialogue of such a big performance simply wasn't possible.)

Still, "Memorial" is not without merit. The production value is pretty good. The on-location filming of the monument in the meadow adds a lot of bang for the buck. The musical score gets a bit experimental, with more electronic elements than you usually hear in an episode. Footage from The Untouchables is cleared for use on Tom's television. Smart camera placement throughout emphasizes the PTSD.

And the final debate -- the ultimate point of the episode -- is good. Is the notion that one should "never forget" sufficient to justify inflicting a mental invasion on others? Is it right to repair the memorial in the end, or would it have been right to dismantle it? Even the characters don't agree on this, and I wish the episode had had more time to explore this at length, really digging into why each character might feel the way they do about it.

Other observations:

• One complaint about being stuck on the Delta Flyer for two weeks is that someone left their plate in the replicator. Seriously, who would do that? This isn't even as "hard" as loading a dishwasher. All you have left to do is say "computer, recycle."

• I don't attach any particular significance to this, but it does seem weird that two different people (Harry and Naomi) both burn their hands on a hot cooking pot in the same episode.

• The one character (predictably) who does get a tailored moment in the story is Seven of Nine, who, as a Borg, talks with Neelix about feelings of guilt over participating in atrocities.

• It feels like there's a Dune fan on the writing staff somewhere, adding a T to the front of a planet name to create "Tarrakis."

I wish this episode had said more specifically about the characters involved, enough to justify its similarity to other Trek episodes that have come before. "Rerun" that it is, I can only give "Memorial" a C+.

Ushering in the New Year?

As much as Netflix would have me binge its offerings, that's just not how I roll. Indeed, I often want to savor a show when I'm particularly enjoying it. That's why I've only just finished The Fall of the House of Usher, two-and-a-half months after its appropriately-timed pre-Halloween release.

Of course, it was always likely that I was going to enjoy the mini-series. It was the latest from writer-director Mike Flanagan, whose previous offerings include not only series like Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Hill House, but the surprisingly excellent movie of the supposedly impossible-to-adapt Stephen King novel Gerald's Game. Flanagan also makes a habit of working with the same actors as much as he can, accumulating a reliable "repertory company" of talented performers. So I'm at a point where I want to check out anything he creates.

In this case, he was synthesizing his own modern day tale of gothic horror out of bits and pieces lifted from the works of  Edgar Allan Poe. My own knowledge of Poe runs rather shallow: I've certainly heard a few of his poems over the years, I've read a short story or two, and am loosely familiar with plot elements of a few others. That put me in an interesting place for viewing The Fall of the House of Usher, where I felt engaged in three different ways in roughly equal measure. Sometimes, the story would completely surprise me with its twists in turns. Other times, I would know exactly what was coming thanks to familiarity with the source material. Still other times, I'd embrace the atmosphere of the macabre and anticipate what was coming next just by os-Poe-sis. My response to the show was also divided in roughly equal measure: I enjoyed the mini-series on its own terms, and it made me want to seek out the specific original Poe writing that most inspired it.

The visuals of this mini-series were stellar. Every episode was directed by Mike Flanagan himself, or by the director of photography, ensuring the same heightened, dreary look throughout. The performances were even better. Carla Gugino might be the best actor of all in that "Flanagan Repertory Company" I mentioned, and this story spotlights her in a delightful way. Meanwhile, the structure of the season overall allows a different performer to take center stage in every episode; I found the episodes featuring T'Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli, and Kate Siegel to be especially strong.

The "FRC" picks up a couple of new actors as well, both making a big splash. Mary McDonnell is excellent as the cold and conniving Madeline Usher (and Willa Fitzgerald, who plays the same character in 40-year old flashbacks, really shows how closely she studied McDonnell to deliver a similarly calibrated performance). Meanwhile, Mark Hamill gives great villanous energy as family lawyer Arthur Pym. I hear Hamill is already cast in Flanagan's next project, and it's no surprise to me from watching Usher why actor and director would seek to work together again right away.

It's not a completely flawless series. For one thing, at eight episodes, it might be a touch long. The formula of each episode is made abundantly clear very early on (in case you missed the not-subtle title), and I found myself wondering if perhaps there were one too many "Usher kids," one too many episodes, before the grand finale. (For one thing, it began to strain credulity how long one man is willing to sit in a chair and listen to a meandering story, as the overall framing device dictates.) Still, for the high highs in the series overall -- the most delicious come-uppances, creepy deaths, and well-executed jump scares -- I was willing to forgive the occasional indulgences.

Overall, I'd give The Fall of the House of Usher an A-. Now that I'm finished, I have a notable hole in my TV viewing for something fun to savor.

Playing Camp

Are you a fan of Christopher Guest mockumentaries like A Mighty Wind, Best in Show, and others? Well, then you're no doubt sad that Guest hasn't made one in several years. But there is a new movie this year that feels very similar: Theater Camp.

Theater Camp is set exactly where the title says. When the head of a summer camp for theater kids is hospitalized, her resident staff tries to carry on without her as her decidedly non-theater-immersed son tries to take over the finances and management of the camp. "Documentary cameras" capture all the strangeness of characters taking their work way too seriously: a faculty who treat the productions like they're Broadway bound, and kids as committed to their performances as though they're up for a Tony. Hilarity ensues -- and it's particularly hilarious if you've ever been involved in a theater production yourself at any point in your life.

I said this movie had the feeling of a Christopher Guest film, though it likely wasn't created in quite the same way. Where the Guest films are known to be improvised in large part, Theater Camp looks to be mostly scripted -- the work of its two debut directors, Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman, and two more of the stars, Noah Galvin and Ben Platt. With all of them having a theater background (full of exposure to the tropes they want to lampoon), and most of the rest of the cast being actual kids, it seems unlikely they'd often just let the camera roll to "see what happens."

In a way, it is those kids -- mostly "unknown" -- that are the best part of the movie, even if Platt is an actual Tony winner, Galvin has starred in a sitcom, and Gordon has appeared in things from Booksmart to The Bear. The wildly over-the-top performances of these young actors is made even funnier by how often age-inappropriate the material they're working with is. It's arguably a form of the same joke told repeatedly, but at a tight 90 minutes, the movie doesn't come close to the end of how funny it can be.

Though, admittedly, Theater Camp is a little bit slow to get started. A powerhouse cameo from Amy Sedaris as the real camp manager almost gets things off on the wrong foot; she gets to play broad (as she does best) and doesn't have to create a character that's built to last for an entire narrative. Once she's "taken off the board," the movie is a bit slow to find its rhythm, balancing the comedy with the story. But it does get there. And the finale, a performance that's been built up for the entire movie, is absolutely as hilarious as all the build-up leads you to hope for.

I give Theater Camp a B. Hopefully, you don't have to have any personal history with theater to enjoy it. But if you do, this may well be a "must see."

Voyager Flashback: Virtuoso

Star Trek: Voyager was producing a staggering 26 episodes a season, so it could hardly afford to hold an episode idea for later when something needed to go in front of the cameras right now. But the sequencing of episodes, even in a largely unserialized television series, can matter a lot. And it really hurt season six's "Virtuoso."

When Voyager visits an alien planet, the local population is stunned to learn of the existence of music -- and infatuated with the one who introduces it to them, The Doctor. As his celebrity grows, the Doctor considers leaving Voyager to become a global superstar... and Janeway considers limiting his autonomy by forbidding him to go.

There's an interesting story here in the Doctor's evolution from "unfeeling program" to "person in all but flesh and blood." But there are two big problems with the timing of it. As with another (better) Doctor episode earlier in the season, we're simply past all this. Voyager is in its sixth season, the Doctor has long since been fully accepted as an individual by the crew, and to craft a story at this point that pretends otherwise requires rolling his character development back a year or four.

More specifically, this episode comes immediately after "Blink of an Eye," in the course of which the Doctor spent three years (by his reckoning) living on an alien planet, establishing a family, and having another life. Now this episode turns largely on the idea that the Doctor is being offered something here he has never had before. True, time will be passing for Voyager if the Doctor leaves now, and that's a new element. But the Doctor has now already lived a life on another world, has already found love (it seems) and fathered a child (somehow; adoption?). So yeah, while the Doctor here is meant to be tantalized by celebrity (while also being infatuated with one woman in particular), it feels hard to believe these things would appeal to him quite this much when he was literally just telling us last episode how glad he was to be back on Voyager after years.

Part of the friction here is that to the writers, this doesn't seem to be a story about the Doctor as much a story about fame generally. That's why we get details like signing autographs, fan mail overstuffing the ship's communication systems, aliens going bald to imitate their idol. It's a story that could have happened to anybody, perhaps, though the Doctor certainly has the right naivete about the subject to cast him as the protagonist.

But it's not like the Doctor is the only one behaving strangely. It's unclear why Voyager stays at this planet for so long. They're not "stocking up" on any vital resources; why are they delaying their trip so long for all this? Why do the alien Qomar, so formal and calculating, lock in the Doctor and only the Doctor as the conduit for music in their society?

Yet there are a few good scenes, especially late in the episode. Seven of Nine's embittered reaction to being abandoned by her friend rings true. The Doctor's heartbreak when he is ultimately replaced feels real (even if part of you feels like he deserves to be taken town a rung after his behavior). B'Elanna's counsel against changing a core part of yourself is just plain good advice. Janeway being moved to tears by a final song that leaves the aliens bored is just the right final (ahem) note for the episode.

Other observations:

• If this episode had been made today, there's no way the Doctor would sing "I've Been Working on the Railroad." Now the writers would pause to think about the original likely context of that tune.

• The Doctor also sings "That Old Black Magic." This is the second time Voyager has used this song.
  

• The Doctor's final performance is the one time in the entire series where the character's singing isn't recorded by Robert Picardo himself. And while I get the urge to go for a trained opera singer for the moment, they should have at least tried to get a recording that actually sounds like it exists in the environment depicted. (It's obvious Picardo is lip-syncing.)
  

• The final song we hear, written by one of the aliens, is a fun bit of composition, weirdly dissonant, full of unusually long notes, and generally like the rock aria from The Fifth Element on steroids.
  

Despite some good moments, I found it hard to let go of the "why is this happening now?" kinds of questions that permeate the episode. I give "Virtuoso" a C+.

Pipe Dreams

One of the more provocatively titled movies in recent memory was the eco-thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline. This indie film was released in the U.S. earlier this year, and I was recently able to catch up with it on Hulu.

The movie is the story of eight characters who band together to destroy an oil pipeline in the desert, striking a blow to control climate change. As final preparations take place in the present, we flash back in turn to each of the characters involved, learning their backgrounds, how their activism was activated, and more.

It's an interesting movie in many ways, a foundational one being that it is inspired by a non-fiction book (of the same name, by Andreas Malm) while itself being a fictional narrative. The core of both works is the idea that with the climate situation being as dire as it is, the only moral response is overt eco-terrorism to bring about change as quickly as possible. The film feels like a story about characters who read the book and from there decided to take matters into their own hands.

And it is character that's key here. Each of the eight is nuanced and complex, with their own intriguing histories. The movie paints them all in varying shades of grey, giving them all sympathetic motives while not entirely excusing the fact that they're all essentially terrorists. The use of flashbacks to illuminate character is hardly a new idea, but it nonetheless works very well here. In particular, the sequencing of the flashbacks is quite clever; it usefully keeps some characters more murky until key moments in the "present day" narrative.

Essentially, it's a heist movie -- and if you know me, you know how much a love I heist movie. When the "big day" came, I was quite wrapped up in whether this group would be able to pull off their scheme. Perhaps an absolute top-shelf movie would have made more of questioning whether you want these characters to succeed -- and there was certainly some hand-wringing about that from many reviewers when the movie was first released. Setting that aside, though (if you can), I was engaged.

The movie feels like the very making of it was also something of a guerilla operation, small and inexpensive, with mostly unfamiliar actors. Mostly, that fits with the story. But there are a few jarring elements -- a big one being the overt electronica score by Gavin Brivik. It feels to me like the composer may have watched a lot of Mr. Robot (the only other touchstone for "moral terrorism," I guess), figured "that's what the music should sound like," and then imitated it. But not very well. Without understanding what can make an electronica score sounds good, this one bulldozes conspicuously over most of the film.

Still, I liked the movie overall. I give How to Blow Up a Pipeline a B. Assuming you're OK with not interrogating the morality too deeply, you too might be entertained.

Voyager Flashback: Blink of an Eye

Star Trek isn't typically a show built around "high-concept" science fiction. But occasionally they dip their toe in that water, as they did with the sixth season's "Blink of an Eye."

Voyager enters orbit around a planet where time moves at a highly accelerated rate: one day on the planet is a mere second aboard the ship. When Voyager becomes stuck, its presence begins to affect the course of history for the aliens on the planet below.

I'm often down on Star Trek episodes that focus too much on the guest stars and not enough on at least one of the main characters. But this episode is a bit of an exception. It's a cool enough concept -- watching a society mold itself around Voyager over nearly a thousand years -- that it doesn't quite need a deeper emotional heft. The intellectual stimulation is enough. Hell, Star Trek fans get a full meal just in the debate over what the Prime Directive even means when they've been interfering with an alien culture for centuries.

And there are at least little tendrils of impact for some of the main characters. Chakotay flexes his often-dormant anthropological muscles. The Doctor is sent down to the planet at one point, and winds up enduring years of separation (by his reckoning). I wish even more could have been made of his experience, though. We're told he starts a family and has a son -- and we know firsthand how powerful the effect of having even a fake family had on him. Yet the only lasting impact of the experience seems to be that he misses watching sportsball and having someone to talk about it with.

But a story about time moving fast doesn't leave time for personal details, I suppose. And it's not like only the main characters are getting shorted there. The astronaut played by Daniel Dae Kim (here a few years before he broke through on Lost) has a truly interesting story, if only the episode had time to tell it. He volunteers for a space mission and winds up being gone so long that everyone he knew on his own planet ages and dies. Then he has to go back and persuade his government to pursue a particular course of action; how does he do it? What is the rest of his life like?

Despite all these things I'd really like to see more of, I really don't think their absence is where the episode falls a little short. Instead, it's that even streamlined like this, the episode calls for more than a weekly television show can portray convincingly. This episode calls for numerous alien sets: a pre-industrial Legend-of-Zelda type village, a Renaissance observatory, a crewed space capsule, and more. But the budget doesn't exist to render all these things (and all the associated props and costumes) with more than what could be raided from the studio vault.

Similarly, the episode calls for a lot of guest stars... and it seems that when you need to cast this many actors all in a single week, you're not going to be able to find good ones for every role. Daniel Dae Kim is solid, of course (and his is the most important role). But others are pretty weak -- one so bad, apparently, that his original vocal performance is obviously dubbed over after the fact by someone else. And all these people need an alien makeup too... which no doubt is why the production reached for an easier one, a sort of melted version of the Cardassian spoon forehead. Essentially, it seems impossible for "the best version of this script" to have been filmed on a television schedule -- and so what we get is by necessity "good but not great."

Other observations:

• There's another character scene between Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman, the latest of many. This has become such a thing that it's making me feel that Star Trek: Picard may have missed an opportunity somewhere by not following up on this relationship somehow, having Seven meet an adult Naomi at some point.
  

• CG may have been shorted in the budget this week to try to help the other departments. While the planet itself looks good enough, Voyager seems weirdly fake in many of the shots (especially the first shot of the episode), as though it wasn't given full render time to fill in all its usual details.
  

I should perhaps be more willing to look around the rough edges of this episode and give it a higher mark. But I'm going to call it a B+.

Hold On?

Director Alexander Payne has been in the Oscar hunt a few times before, and the buzz is he will be again with his latest, The Holdovers.

In 1970, a boarding school is breaking for the holidays and all the students are leaving. One curmudgeonly teacher has the task of watching the handful of students who have nowhere to go. One of these students in particular is struggling to come to terms with a secret, unshared trauma. Meanwhile, the cafeteria administrator is also staying on campus to be closer to the spirit of her son, who was recently killed in the Vietnam War. These three broken people might have the pieces to help put each other back together.

The Holdovers is notable for Payne working again with Paul Giamatti, star of one of his first critical darlings, Sideways. But the similarities are really only at the surface level. Sideways isn't terribly interested in exploring why the main character is the way he is, but is more fixed on how he's messing up his present. The Holdovers is much more about history -- and isn't subtle about the fact: Giamatti's character is a teacher of ancient history.

I found the movie to be rather slow-paced. And it really keeps its three primary characters siloed from one another for a long time. I suppose that makes sense; if bringing these three closer together is going to help all of them heal, then you have to take that process slowly or you don't have a movie. And yet, you spend a lot of this movie feeling like you know at least generally where it's going, and wondering why it's taking so long to get there.

There are some weird diversions along the way that the movie doesn't really pay off. Another faculty member at the school, played by The Good Wife/Fight's Carrie Preston, is dangled in front of the audience for a while as potentially important, but really just fizzles out at the end of Act Two. A janitor character saunters in at a point where we thought we'd met every character still at the college for the holidays, yet not to play much of a role in the story.

But that doesn't mean I disliked the movie. That's because it had two really strong points in its favor. One is the final 30-to-45 minutes, where things finally pull together. It turns out that the movie does have a few surprises in store: revelations about each of the characters that truly reframes what you've seen so far. The journeys for each of them really entwine in a satisfying way as this bittersweet tale leans into the sweet.

The other huge strength is in the performances. It's probably no surprise to anyone that Paul Giamatti is fun as this crusty and initially unlikeable character. It's probably only slightly less surprising that, in a movie that turns on casting a strong young actor, they've conducted a deep enough search to discover Dominic Sessa, who plays student Angus Tully. But stealing the movie from both of them is Da'Vine Joy Randolph as cafeteria administrator Mary. She's hardly new to acting; she has a Tony nomination under her belt. But I don't believe I've seen her on screen before, and I'm certain this role will change that -- she deserves to find many more roles from this.

I do hope there's a movie in the Best Picture hunt this year that I like more enthusiastically than this one. But I was ultimately satisfied with how this one comes together, and I wonder if Christmas has found a new melancholy classic. I give The Holdovers a B.

Voyager Flashback: Fair Haven

In the previous episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the crew finally established regular contact with Earth -- as important a moment for the overall story of the show as possible. Naturally, you'd want to follow that up with... a story with the lowest stakes imaginable? That's "Fair Haven."

Tom Paris has created a quaint Irish town on the holodeck. And now that a space phenomenon is going to stall Voyager's progress for days, crewmembers will be using that program to lift their spirits in the off time. For Captain Janeway, the program becomes more than a diversion when she falls in love with the owner of the local pub. But can she really have a romantic relationship with a holographic character?

Because of the budgetary realities of television production, the holodeck can never really be what a Star Trek character might really use a holodeck for; it would simply be too expensive to show too grandiose a setting. Still, it compromises the fiction a bit that they're always running programs of contemporary Earth. This would be something like a modern-day human wanting to spend all their vacation time at a Renaissance festival. It's about as historically accurate too. Fair Haven (the town, not the epsiode) is loaded with cultural stereotypes and broad caricatures.

According to staff writer Bryan Fuller, the writers considered other settings for this episode, including a "futuristic aircraft carrier, an Agatha Christie-type drawing room, a haunted castle, a movie studio" and others. Would that we had gotten one of those more interesting options. But no, of course, we get the one that can be filmed on a generic "Europe" backlot set over at Universal Studios.

Adding to the lack of excitement, it's clear right out of the gate that basically nothing is going to happen in this episode. The teaser before the credits, by definition meant to tease us with what interesting story is to come, shows Paris getting hit up for money by the town drunk, Harry flirting with a local girl, and the Doctor dressed up as a priest. Ooo, I can hardly wait for this one! We go on to equally exciting "come back after the commercial" moments like the bartender goading Janeway into a spirited game of ring toss.

After a lot of aimless scenes (highlighting the guest characters we don't care much about, rather than the recurring characters of Voyager), the episode finally stumbles into something at least a little interesting: Janeway's romantic plight. In several ways, we learn that the writers have categorically ruled out any kind of relationship with Chakotay, no matter what chemistry they may have seemed to have in the past. (For one thing, Chakotay tells her to go for it, strongly implying that he himself has slept with a hologram before.)

This does lead to a few nice scenes. The Doctor (an appropriate choice) advocates that a holographic love interest is real enough for the feelings they can make you feel. There's still deeper talk about how "the little, annoying things" can actually make a relationship, because Janeway's ability to simply erase any such things from her bartender boyfriend only underscores how unreal he is. There are also some light comedic moments throughout that do work. A scene featuring Tuvok's space-sickness -- and Neelix's story about gross food, which aggravates the condition -- is quite funny. Seven of Nine has a fun interaction with that town drunk.

But you also have to overlook a lot of things that don't make sense. Janeway is pursuing her romance in a public holodeck program, the equivalent of screwing in a dorm room without putting a sock on the doorknob. If she's so concerned with maintaining an appropriate relationship with her crew, she'd never do this (not when all she has to do is lock the holodeck door). When a big bar fight breaks out, crewmembers are sent to Sickbay with injuries; wouldn't the safety protocols have to be off for that to happen? In the end, when Janeway orders the computer to deny her access to edit the Fair Haven characters, couldn't she just countermand her own order if she wants to later?

Other observations:

• The "space tidal wave" that rocks Voyager is toilet water blue.

• Tom Paris totally knows what's going on with Janeway; he seems to be specifically needling her about "which 10% of the program to save" at the end of the episode.

This episode may be something of a test to the viewer: is it better to try something big and be memorably bad, or (as this episode does) to just be thoroughly boring and forgettable? When it comes to grading "Fair Haven," I feel like the episode would have to be worse than just "boring" to get a truly terrible mark. So I'll give it a C-.

A View to a Killer

The prospect of a new movie from director David Fincher is no longer alone sufficient to rouse my interest. I disliked his last effort, Mank, enough that now there has to be something more than just his name attached to the movie for me to consider watching.

Fincher's newest film is now streaming on Netflix. The Killer is the story of a nameless assassin whose carefully ordered world is upended when something goes wrong on a job. Soon he's on a globe-trotting vendetta, even as he tells himself that none of what he's doing is personal.

The "something more" that pulled me into this movie was the writer, Andrew Kevin Walker. He's responsible for the script of Seven (or "Se7en"), arguably Fincher's best movie -- though certainly a stand-out in the director's career. These two re-teaming felt like reason enough to be curious. Though Walker was here adapting a French graphic novel rather than writing an original script, it certainly seemed as though these two collaborators could absolutely serve up "moody and violent" with great results.

Of course, I'd like to think I wasn't actually expecting "another Seven" here, as those expectations are too high to saddle a new movie with. But I probably was expecting too much, at least, and I did wind up being a little bit disappointed. The Killer is kinda-sorta an "art house John Wick." It has only a fraction of the wild action of Keanu Reeves' adrenaline-charged franchise, but it is similarly crafted on the thinnest of a narrative skeletons -- it's a framework for set pieces. But in The Killer, those set pieces are often intellectual more than physical. Confrontations are as likely to take the form of a coolly intense conversation as a physical brawl.

In its own way, I think The Killer has the same key flaw as many of the John Wick movies. I've noted of John Wick that while I like parts of each movie well enough, I often find the whole to be a bit monotonous and repetitive in the action. The Killer can be that way in its intellectualism. Walker's script is literally monotonous: there's more voice-over from the main character than actual spoken dialogue. And it's literally repetitive: the main character is always reciting mantras meant to tell the audience how methodical and professional he is. I totally see what you're doing here; that doesn't make it any less repetitive.

Still, like John Wick, there are charms to be had. One of those is the charming star, Michael Fassbender. It's kind of wild how much charisma Fassbender exudes on screen, because this is likely the least charismatic, least emotive, most restrained character he has ever played. Yet even when he's being flat and cold, he's got a "can't take your eyes off him" quality. That might sound at odds with the story here, but on the contrary, it plays right into it all. You feel the dangerous potential beneath the icy surface, and you are transfixed by what the character does even when you might want to look away.

There are interesting supporting performances throughout the movie as well. The way everything unfolds is evidence of the original graphic novel roots; the chapters are literally identified on screen like a new "issue," as the titular killer pursues a new target. But many of these targets are interesting characters of their own, particularly Charles Parnell as a wicked lawyer, and Sala Baker as an imposing adversary literally called The Brute. And then there's Tilda Swinton -- THE actor at #1 on your list if you're looking for a memorable character (no matter the size of the role) in your movie. This isn't the kind of big, "swing for the fences" sort of Swinton performance that you sometimes get, but she is able to go toe to toe with Fassbender and turn the movie's most outwardly sedate scene into its most inwardly fraught and tense scene.

So all told, I think I would give The Killer a modest recommendation, and a B-. You have to already be interested in something about it; it's not the kind of movie that's ever going to "win you over" if it doesn't sound like your thing. But it is a case of many talented creative people showcasing what they can do: even if it's not their personal best, it's still not bad.

Voyager Flashback: Pathfinder

When is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager not really an episode of Star Trek: Voyager? When it's season six's "Pathfinder."

Reginald Barclay has become obsessed with creating a method to communicate with the starship Voyager, despite their tremendous distance from Earth. His efforts have landed him in hot water at his job, and now he meets with Deanna Troi to recount how he got here and what he might do next.

This is an unusual episode of Voyager that I find difficult to rate. From one perspective, it gives the entire episode over to the guest stars; the actual Voyager crew (as opposed to their holographic counterparts) doesn't even appear on screen until there's barely 5 minutes left in the episode. And as far as how those guest stars relate to the main story? It's never really clear why Barclay cares so much, since he's never actually met any of the Voyager crew before. (Barclay's earlier appearance on the series, remember, was the Doctor's hallucination.)

But of course, it's not like Voyager exists in a vacuum. The series is Star Trek: Voyager, and the real appeal here is for fans of The Next Generation. And boy, does this episode lean in. Barclay is back with a new obsession/addition, and is again spending too much time in the holodeck (where he's programmed real people to fawn over him). His conversation encompasses the Enterprise, Geordi, Data's cat, and more. It's a reminder of characters you know and love.

Well... alright, I don't know many people who actually "love" Barclay. But I really am thrilled to see Troi again. Marina Sirtis reportedly agreed to this appearance without seeing a script, just on the knowledge that Dwight Schultz would be guest starring. But it's actually an episode in which Troi does real counseling. And, as Sirtis noted in an interview, she got to be more serious and less "wacky, zany," as Troi was in her last two appearances in First Contact and Insurrection. (Though Troi doesn't come off perfectly. She's going to take a leave of absence to help Barclay? Sounds like she's got an addiction herself.)

While the episode doesn't really feature Voyager, the story is still very much about the core premise of the show: that the ship is stranded far from home, and that any contact with Earth is a Big Deal. Tom Paris' father (recast since his last appearance) is on hand to add personal stakes. And despite any flaws the episode might have, I must admit: that first time Voyager hears the call from home, and is able to talk in real time with Earth? It is moving.

Other observations:

• Voyager has actually found a few shortcuts toward home since they last communicated with Earth. Technically, the attempt to communicate with them should fail, because the ship is far ahead of where Starfleet would reasonably be looking.

• It's never really clear why Barclay's boss is against trying the plan to use the array for communications. No "cost" is ever articulated; it's not like any resources are being consumed, or that doing this causes any sacrifice to anything else. He just... doesn't want to do it?

• Admiral Paris has a photo of his son Tom on his desk... though it's actually a photo of Robert Duncan McNeill as Nick Locarno.

• For once, we see holodeck safety protocols functioning correctly. When a holographic character tries to shoot security officers, the weapons are ineffective.

I don't love how much the Voyager characters are sidelined here in their own show. (Indeed, this episode might have been the first step down the road that ultimately led to the much-derided series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise.) Yet at the same time, I'm a sucker for seeing Next Gen characters again, and I have to admit that this episode really sticks the landing and makes you feel the weight of an emotional moment. So I'll give "Pathfinder" a B+.

City Living / Island Flopping

My board gaming group has circled back to legacy games this year -- those campaign-style board games that permanently change each time you play them. It started back in the summer when we played designer Reiner Knizia's 2020 creation My City, and then continued when most recently we completed his follow-up from this year, My Island.

I certainly want to post about My City, because we enjoyed it reasonably well. It's a tile-laying game that uses polyominos. In each game, a shuffled deck of cards is revealed one by one, each card indicating the next building shape that each player must place on their board. Buildings come in three "categories," and how you place them to maximize scoring is one of the elements that changes from game to game in the legacy campaign.

That campaign sounds daunting at 24 games... but each individual game takes only about 30 minutes to play. That's why the campaign is actually organized into "chapters" of 3 games each. You're sort of intended to play 3 games in a sitting (though certainly, you don't have to); there are only minor changes between games of a chapter, while the more significanat legacy adjustments are introduced as you begin a new chapter.

My City starts off frankly too simple for experienced gamers, but the activity of playing it is fun and fast enough to see you through to a point when things start to become more interesting. Spoiling those twists and turns would be ruining the fun of discovering them for yourself. But I can say that even some of the simplest elements of the design have intriguing ramifications again and again. For example, this is one of the few polyomino board games I've played in which the pieces aren't double-sided: the non-symmetrical pieces aren't "reversible," and that trips you up again and again as you wish for zigzags to "zig" the opposite way."

The game grows gradually, reliably more interesting as you work your way through the campaign -- and we did so rather quickly. My City probably won't "blow your mind" (unless it's your first legacy game, period), but we enjoyed enough to want to seek out the sequel when we learned it was around the corner. I'd rate My City a solid B.

In contrast, however, I cannot recommend the new follow-up, My Island. If you play My City and enjoy it, no doubt you, like us, will be interested in how Reiner Knizia tweaked it for a sequel. For starters, he switched from a grid of squares to a grid of hexagons. He also switched from tiles in which every square is the same "category" to tiles in which different hexes have different characteristics.

These minor changes, combined with interesting new rules about placement, makes My Island a much stronger experience right out of the gate than My City. My Island is another 24-game (8 chapter) campaign, and by just a few games in, everyone in my group was feeling like this sequel had surpassed the original.

Unfortunately, the rising arc of enjoyment we experienced with My City was reversed for My Island. At right about the halfway point of the campaign, the game begins to come apart at shocking, disappointing speed. New added elements have a dramatic impact on the speed of play, turning a breezy 30-minute game into something that can easily take 4 players close to an hour. And the balance falls apart, with random chance able to give a player a significant edge over the rest that just keeps widening over the rest of the campaign.

We did finish My Island, but by Chapter 8, nobody in our group seemed particularly enthused to do so; we just felt like we couldn't come that close to the end only to quit. (Sunk cost fallacy?) My Island does have the option for some form of post-campaign play, and since we enjoyed it so much in the beginning, there's a chance we might explore that at some point. Maybe. After we've forgotten how burned we felt by the back half of the campaign. Overall, I'd give the game a C-.

I probably wouldn't have bothered to write about My Island... but My City could well be worth a look, and it seems appropriate to then warn you, if you like the first game, what may then follow if you explore the second.

Voyager Flashback: The Voyager Conspiracy

Fresh on the heels of a Seven of Nine episode, Star Trek: Voyager serves up... another Seven of Nine episode!

In an attempt to maximize her time, Seven of Nine reconfigures her Borg alcove to download data from the computer into her brain while she regenerates. But the vast amounts of information quickly overwhelms her, and she begins connecting unrelated events in elaborate conspiracy theories. Soon, she has Janeway and Chakotay pitted against each other for command of the ship.

Conspiracy theorists and their wild notions have been around a long time, of course. For the bulk of that time, they've mostly been a light-hearted lark to laugh at. But it seems like social media has poured gasoline on the fire, and that whackadoodle theories spread these days much more easily (and dangerously) than they used to. Thus, this episode that was surely meant only as breezy fun when it aired in 1999 now reads quite a lot differently. Not that every episode of Star Trek must have a message, I suppose... but what is the message here? Stay off the internet? Too much information is a dangerous thing? (Near the end of the episode, there's talk of "quality being more important than quantity." Sure, I guess?)

It's interesting to me how correct this depiction of a conspiracy theorist really is. No amount of refutation or new information can dissuade Seven of Nine from her imagination; she just incorporates or ignores, then forges ahead. She actually confronts a child to demand who she's working for. She puts herself at the center of her ultimate conspiracy, because of course it's all about her. (Set aside that it's reaching the point where Star Trek: Voyager kind of is all about her.)

It's not like this episode is hardly so awkwardly dated that it makes you go "yeesh"; there is still fun to be had. Longtime fans can enjoy the thrill of twisting and distorting the show's history. Current events are connected back to the very first episode of the series. Janeway might have planned being trapped in the Delta Quadrant on purpose! Kes was forced off the ship because she knew too much! The Doctor has been a conduit for secret communications with Earth! Chakotay is still working for the Maquis!

But while the episode is fun, a lot of it is also unclear and unresolved. When Seven of Nine feeds essentially the same story to both Janeway and Chakotay, does she not know she's repeating herself or is she trying to pit the two leaders against each other? What was the deal with the tractor beam Seven detects near the Caretaker -- did she just make that up? And is the trust between Janeway and Chakotay really this fragile? Sure, the two pull back before doing anything truly terrible, but they both seem a little too ready to trust Seven of Nine over each other.

Other observations:

• Lots of flashbacks in Seven's conspiracy narrations -- both to actual footage from past episodes, and new elements created for this episode. My favorite is "flea cam," at the moment an alien insect gets inside the ship's computer.

• The visual effects of the space "catapult" look pretty cool.

I wonder if I liked this episode better when it first aired than I do now. (I don't clearly remember.) I also wonder how it will look in another 20 to 25 years. Now, at least, I give "The Voyager Conspiracy" a B-.

Flora Arrangement

It would probably be going too far to call myself a "fan" of writer-director John Carney. But I've enjoyed enough of his work at this point that I'm automatically curious at anything new he creates. Most recently, that's a movie you can stream on Apple TV+, called Flora and Son.

Flora and Son follows a single mother in Dublin, trying to raise her rebellious early-teen son, Max. When he rejects the guitar she gives him for his birthday, she decides to take online lessons herself. What starts as a lark (and a chance to shamelessly flirt with a stranger) turns into an blossoming love of music. And she soon learns that Max is interested in music -- just not the guitar. Finally, the two have a common interest they may be able to bond over.

This movie is firmly exploring the same themes as an earlier Carney film I loved, Sing Street. This is another very Irish story, and also very much about how the power of music can bring people closer together. It's openly sentimental, and utterly unapologetic for being so. Yet in Carney's hands, it somehow all seems natural, universal, and moving.

The movie stars Eve Hewson as Flora, and she is excellent. Her character is a "warts and all" sort, but she manages to be charming as a whole despite not always being "likeable" (especially early on in the movie). Of course, it also matters that Hewson is quite skilled with the musical elements that this story demands. Her young co-star Orén Kinlan, who plays Max, is a real find. He's a great scene partner and musical collaborator, and just as good at playing a "lovable screw-up."

The movie also features Joseph Gordon-Levitt as online guitar instructor Jeff. It's a subtly challenging role, as most of his characters interactions with Flora are through a computer screen. He has great chemistry with Hewson despite that obstacle. (And small spoiler, the movie does find ways to put the characters in scenes together.) Also featured is Jack Reynor as Max's father Ian; Reynor has collaborated with Carney before, and it's easy to see why the director would look to him again here.

The movie seems to be barreling toward a cliche that would be perfectly endearing in this context... but then changes course in a compelling way in the final act. It could hardly be considered a "twist"; the movie declares right there in its title what the most important relationship in the story is. Still, like another of Carney's works, the TV show Modern Love, it's interesting to see a tale not rigidly follow all the traditional elements of the rom-com formula.

Also, the songs are great. This movie isn't quite a musical, in that none of the songs you hear are a narrative artifice; the characters really are singing and playing music whenever we the audience hear a performance. But the movie also is very much a musical in that it features a number of truly catchy tunes that could live even outside the story. (And the actors themselves were collaborators in the creation of these songs.)

I find myself thoroughly charmed by Flora and Son. It was an A- for me, and sure contender for my Top 10 List of movies for the year (no matter how many other movies I might manage to get to). If you have an Apple TV+ subscription, I think you'll find it a most satisfying hour-and-a-half.

Voyager Flashback: One Small Step

The original Star Trek arrived in the late 1960s, a time when crewed space travel captured much more of the public's imagination. Later Star Trek series would air in times where space seemed more like "just another setting" in which to tell stories. But occasionally, we'd get an episode aiming to romanticize the exploration of space. Voyager's "One Small Step" is very much one of those.

Voyager encounters an unusual cosmic phenomenon that gathers up space debris, and soon discovers that inside may be the remains of Ares IV, one of the earliest crewed missions to Mars. As the Voyager crew sets themselves on retrieving the historic vessel, Seven of Nine struggles to understand the relevance of the endeavor.

This episode has a wall of on-screen writing credits -- often the sign of a troubled behind-the-scenes process and a harbinger of rocky results. In this case, however, the issues didn't stay behind the scenes; actor Robert Beltran was very public in his criticisms of this episode over the years, basically offering it as Exhibit A in how the character of Seven of Nine took over Voyager and led to the sidelining of other characters.

If Beltran tells it true, this was first conceived of as a Chakotay story. You see traces of that in the finished project, and it fits with the character's back story. He's long been attuned to history and traditions, and it's not such a leap to make him interested in early human space flight. However, a late script rewrite gave this episode to Seven, transforming the story into one about her expanding humanity as she must confront feelings of nostalgia and historical context.

On paper, this does work as a Seven story. But there are several problems too. A big one is timing; this would have been a good story to tell soon after Seven was separated from the Collective, but coming at this point, after she's had more than two years to explore her humanity, she really should have evolved beyond this deep a level of confusion. She can still personally feel nothing. She can still argue that the risks of retrieving Ares IV aren't worth the potential gains. But her bewilderment at the mere fact that humans feel confusing emotions just doesn't track here. (She's had many chances to explore emotional attachments already.)

I can understand Robert Beltran's feelings about the episode. Not only was this story taken from his character and given to someone else, but his character is "benched" in a most unceremonious way to allow that to happen. Chakotay is so irrationally set on recovering Ares IV that he's literally willing to die for it (?!), gets himself critically injured, and spends the rest of the episode in a sick bed.

And Chakotay isn't the only character getting short shrift. Rather than giving the main cast more screen time, we instead get a series of flashbacks to the Ares IV mission itself. It's a weird choice that I assume was made to help the history feel "more real" to Seven and the audience. Yet so much time is spent on it that I honestly felt for much of the episode like there was a chance the Voyager crew would at some point come upon astronaut John Kelly, somehow still alive after centuries. (It doesn't help that they cast actor John Norris in the role. He's far from a household name, of course. But he's enough of a "that guy" that when you see him, you recognize him and assume his role in the story will be more significant.)

Other observations:

• The fourth crewed mission to Mars takes place in 2032. So we don't have many years left here to somehow fit in the first three. (Fitting it in around World War III and the Eugenics Wars, if you're a stickler for Star Trek continuity, of course.)

• Speaking of Trek continuity, the mention of the London Kings baseball team and their star player Buck Bokai picks up threads woven in both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. 

• The "graviton ellipse" in this episode resembles a giant space-borne ravioli.

• The Doctor mentions a mission to an "Arrakis Prime." Dune fans totally know what's being referenced here.

• Maybe I'm as clueless as Seven, but I don't understand why they go to such lengths to retrieve John Kelly's body only to turn around, load him into a torpedo, and shoot him out into space again. He was already "buried at sea," effectively. And arguably more honorably, having "gone down with the ship."
  

• It probably should be worth more than a mention that this episode was directed by cast member Robert Picardo... but I simply don't have anything to say about the fact.

It's unclear to me just what this episode is trying to say, and more unclear whether they're saying whatever it is about the right character. The results aren't "bad" as such, but they aren't very compelling either. I give "One Small Step" a C+.

Educational Curriculum

I recently finished watching the final season of Netflix's series Sex Education. I watched all four seasons at the time they were released, and yet (in a major oversight) I seem never to have blogged about the show. I must take this last chance to rectify that, because I really can't praise it highly enough.

Sex Education centers on young Otis Milburn, student at a secondary school in small English town. His mother is an accomplished sex therapist, and much of her knowledge has transferred to Otis. With the help of a rebellious fellow student, Maeve, Otis sets up a "sex clinic" at his school where he dispenses the sort of advice the teens aren't getting from the authority figures in their lives. It's all a sound foundation for teen sex comedy hijinks. But this show transcends those conventional foundations in every conceivable way.

First of all, creator Laurie Nunn and her writers are interested in more than laughs. The show is as much a drama as a comedy, and is very interested in exploring the profound and real problems of its large cast of characters. Sex Education is the epitome of "you'll laugh, you'll cry" entertainment; within a single episode, the show can get as raunchy as American Pie, and as deep as Freaks and Geeks. (I go back to the 90s for those touchstones, because I can't readily think of anything that's done as well at either thing -- much less both -- since then.)

Secondly, the show has a deep commitment to diversity. From day one, the characters include a young gay teen trying to reconcile his sexuality with the values of his Nigerian family, a pansexual teen being raised by her single father, and a writer of alien-themed erotica. Over the course of four seasons, the show includes story lines exploring trans issues, poverty, deafness, wheelchair accessibility, and more. The stories are all interesting, illuminating, and relatable -- and it all just seems to get better the more it encompasses.

Third, the cast is exceptional. In the beginning, the recognizable star was Gillian Anderson as Jean Milburn. But as good as she is (and she is), it seems like everyone else on the show rises to her level. Asa Butterfield plays Otis, and always threads the needle of playing a character who can be both wise beyond his years and painfully exactly his age. Ncuti Gatwa is outstanding as Otis' best friend Eric, and has parlayed his work here into becoming the next Doctor on Doctor Who.

Familiar guest stars from James Purefoy to Hannah Waddingham to Jason Isaacs to Dan Levy come rolling through -- sometimes for a single episode, other times on a recurring basis. But while they may have been there early on in the series to lend credibility, it seems by the end of the show that several other young performers in the cast eclipse them, poised to go on to more successful film or television roles, from Emma Mackey to Aimee Lou Wood (who won a BAFTA for the second season) and more.

The final season moves the kids to college, but the show is still as strong as ever... and I respect the choice to end it at this point and essentially "go out on top." In particular, the final 3 episodes of the 8-episode season include some of the most powerful moments in the show's entire run.

Netflix has a way of swallowing great content whole, more than any other streaming service. It's entirely possible you've never even heard of Sex Education. If not, that's a tragedy -- but one you can easily remedy. From beginning to end, the show was an absolute A... one of the very best things on television during the time it ran. Check it out!

Tearing Up

If you've noticed that my posting here on the blog has been a bit irregular over the past few months, there's basically one reason why -- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Earlier this year, the newest Zelda game arrived on Nintendo Switch. It's essentially the first direct sequel in the history of the franchise, following up on the excellent Breath of the Wild. In Tears of the Kingdom, the world layout is largely similar, many of the gameplay systems are the same, and many of the same characters return in the story (complete with memory of the things that happened in the previous game). Indeed, I'm hard-pressed to recall the last time I played an open-world RPG crafted as such a continuation of a previous game... perhaps decades ago, in the run of Ultima IV through Ultimate VII?

Tears of the Kingdom is able to pull off this sequel in spectacular fashion. One reason is, simply put, that Breath of the Wild was one of the most satisfying, engaging games I've ever played. The saturation of quests, the multiple related gameplay systems, the way it would breadcrumb you constantly into new activities, and the bite-sized nature of many of its puzzles (ensuring that nearly every play session would result in some accomplishment) -- it all made for a game that kept me coming back again and again. Simply by offering "more of the things you loved," Tears of the Kingdom starts from a strong place.

But Tears of the Kingdom also takes the "more" to heart in offering "more of the things you loved." A brand-new system allows you craft useful contraptions. The sprawling game world is now supplemented with a complete underworld area to match, a series of floating sky islands to take the game upward, and an enormous number of caves and wells you can explore on little side adventures. Puzzle-style gameplay is no longer as constrained to the shrines of the first game (though there are more of those too, of course, and as clever as ever); now you encounter dozens upon dozens of fun puzzles out wandering the world as well.

I will confess that Tears of the Kingdom didn't set its hooks into me as fast as Breath of the Wild did. There are so many systems at play here that the "tutorial section" that opens the game literally takes hours to play through. And given that much of it is teaching you things you may well remember from Breath of the Wild, it can at times feel a bit constrained. But when the game did ultimately open up, a few hours in, I was enthralled.

Much to my surprise, one of the things that grabbed me this time was the story. Narrative has never been the franchise's strongest suit, partly because each installment always remixes most of the same story beats. But this time around, it felt like a real effort was made to figure out how to give the character of Zelda some agency of her own within the established framework of the "save the princess" story. Her role here is surprising for longtime Legend of Zelda players, and the culmination of the story quite clever. I feel like the final battle of this game is going to stick with me far longer than any of the franchise's predecessors.

For months now, my husband and I have taken turns on our own Tears of the Kingdom campaigns, letting TV shows we usually watch pile up, not reading as much when we go to bed, and generally sacrificing all other leisure activities on the altar of Zelda. Now that I've beaten it, I'm beginning to play less (but not yet stopping; there's so much side content to explore!). I've watched a few movies that had been on the list for a while... I'm generally "coming up for (pop culture) air" again.

But I don't regret any of the time I've spent playing Tears of the Kingdom. Together with Breath of the Wild, it's been about the best "one-two punch" I've experienced playing video games. Another absolute grade-A experience.

Voyager Flashback: Dragon's Teeth

"Middle era" Star Trek would occasionally conclude an episode with an open-ended ending, teasing future stories... only to never actually pick up and continue the story later. To me, one of the bigger missed opportunities was in Voyager's "Dragon's Teeth."

Voyager seeks shelter from an alien attack on the surface of a bombed-out world once home to a technological species. When they find survivors of that species and revive them from stasis, they don't realize who it is they've truly awakened: a ruthless menace from centuries past.

With Voyager on a long journey back to the Alpha Quadrant, it makes sense that any recurring villain on the show would last only for a while before needing to be replaced. This episode seems to explicitly tee up a new one in the Vaadwaur. They're sort of pitched as "space Nazis," assured of their own race's purity and disdainful of any others. The threat they once posed in the past was sufficient for multiple other factions to ally in war against them.

Now on the one hand, I can see why the writers may have soured on any long-term potential for these aliens. Voyager had kind of already done "space Nazis." The Hirogen began as something very different, but then a memorable two-parter clothed them in a direct Nazi metaphor and sort of consumed the obvious story angles that further episodes around the Vaadwaur might have mined. Indeed, "Dragon's Teeth" itself was reportedly conceived as a two-part episode, but when Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky were working on the script for "part one," they concluded there wasn't actually enough material there for a part two.

On the other hand, I feel like there are other interesting avenues of Vaadwaur that might have been explored. There are only a few hundred left, period, at the end of the episode. The sorts of tactics they might have resorted to in their desperation might have made them a truly unpredictable and menacing adversary. The fact that some of their ancient technology was still cutting edge even today might have made for a threat able to "punch far above its weight class."

I appreciate the signs along the way that Voyager's new allies aren't actually the "good guys": the way the first person revived seems to express disdain rather than grief for his dead wife, the way they want to pursue and exterminate adversaries even once they're fleeing, the appreciation they show for the bloodiest aspects of Klingon culture. At a certain point, though, it strains credibility that the Voyager crew hasn't figured out the truth that the audience -- hell, that Naomi Wildman -- has figured out about the Vaadwaur. (That it takes Neelix researching fairy tales to make the final breakthrough feels almost insulting somehow.)

I kid a bit about Neelix there (because I always do), but it's actually quite clever that his cultural heritage is key in unmasking the Vaadwaur. (It's a much more subtle incorporation of Nazi and Jewish themes than the Hirogen two-parter.) There's also a lovely scene with Seven of Nine, who talks about the gratification of reviving an alien species from extinction after having been responsible for the assimilation of so many.

But the real missed opportunity here is not embracing a more morally ambiguous ending. Sure, it's a bummer to make a point of saying "a few hundred Vardwaur escaped" if you're never going to use them again... but it would have been far more profound had they not escaped. Bad as the Vaadwaur are, it would be quite a thing for Voyager to ultimately be responsible for the true and total genocide of the last of their species. But the Voyager crew doesn't have to contend with that either.

Other observations:

• This episode really showcases how far CG had come in a short span of the 90s. Barely five years earlier, most visual effects on Star Trek were still being done with models. Here, we get a bombed-out city skyline (with Voyager flying among the buildings), the debris-littered tunnels of their space travel network, and more. And it looks pretty good.

• When Voyager detects faint life signs on the planet they thought uninhabited, why don't they bring the Doctor on the away mission?

• Actor Robert Knepper gives good villain here as a Vardwaur soldier. While he's arguably best-known for the villain he played on the TV series Prison Break, Star Trek had previously cast him as a good guy -- the man engaged to Deanna Troi in one of The Next Generation's earliest episodes.

• While the alien character of Gedrin is essentially presented as a pacifist for the entire episode, I still don't feel like his behavior at the end of the story makes a lot of sense. He sacrifices himself when there's pretty clearly no one left among his people to advocate for his views after he's gone. I guess he goes out being true to himself.
  

What's here is a decent episode of Voyager. But I can't help but feel like there might have been more to the story... or at least a more impactful version of this story. I give "Dragon's Teeth" a B.

Charm Will Only Get You So Far

It's been a little over a week since Loki finished up its season two. I'm arriving late to the party with my thoughts.

That tardiness itself tells you something about my feelings on the season. I found it a bit of a slog, especially in the middle of the season, and it became enough of a "chore" to watch for a while there that I fell behind. (What with so many other more enjoyable shows to watch.) The season did pull out of its stall for a decent ending... but it nearly crashed completely for me before doing so.

In its second season, Loki basically amplified everything I felt about season one. Its peculiar isolated-but-not status from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe grew more peculiar still. The show leaned into an elaborate plot that managed to be several contradictory things at once. It was both dense and "important" and Macguffiny meaningless. It required no real MCU background knowledge, while fundamentally being all about the new Big Bad for the current and future sequence of films. The biggest contradiction of all was how often the show relied its greatest strength -- its actors -- while so rarely actually writing moments designed to featured that strength.

In my view, Tom Hiddleston remains the most charming performer in the MCU. And yes, given the A-list star wattage throughout, that's a Big Claim. But he has crackling energy with everyone he shares a scene with, and he basically forced his character's evolution from villain to antihero by being so likeable. Loki was at its worst in season two during back-to-back episodes that basically didn't have enough Loki; it became mired in "too much story" about the weird villain team-up of Renslayer, Miss Minutes, and Kang variant Victor Timely, and totally lost sight of the fact that Hiddleston is the reason to watch the show.

It was surely clear for all to see that the best moments in season one revolved around Hiddleston's chemistry with Owen Wilson as Mobius and Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie. And yet season two wasn't written to give us nearly enough "more of that." (Again, it was far more interested at times in developing other characters and relationships.) When we did finally get more of Loki-Mobius and Loki-Sylvie in the final episodes of the season? Well, that's when the show managed to stick the landing of its uneven season. But you could uncharitably characterize it as too little, too late.

And on the subject of the show not getting the most out of its actors, I have to comment on the season two addition of Ke Huy Quan as OB. He too was a charming presence on the show... but he was always just used to make the dispensing of exposition and technobabble lighter and more entertaining. This was probably a case of having the whole season written before the role was even cast, but I couldn't help but feel like he was squandered a bit as well.

I don't want to get too spoilery for others who also may not have finished the season yet, but as I said, it does all wind up in a decent place. (Indeed, another issue with the season may have been that they knew their "perfect ending," but didn't really have 6 episodes' worth of material to get from A to B.) I just don't think I would have hung in there were it not for Hiddleston, and his character, being so likeable. I give Loki season two a C+. This seems to have been crafted as a series, not just season, finale. And I'm perfectly happy to leave it at that.

Voyager Flashback: Riddles

I have a riddle for you. How can a bad Star Trek episode also be a good Star Trek episode? When it's Star Trek: Voyager's "Riddles."

When Tuvok is attacked by a non-corporeal alien, he loses both his memory and his emotional control. Neelix dedicates himself to helping this new Tuvok discover his own identity. And it's one Tuvok may not want to give up.

While there are good elements to this episode, I find it ultimately also find it a bit disappointing. There's a world in which that wouldn't be the case: a world that didn't already have the episode "Tuvix." That past episode, which saw Tuvok and Neelix fused-by-transporter into a single being, hangs over every moment of this one.

The writers don't ever want to mention "Tuvix," of course, lest they make too many people more aware of the similarities: Tuvok becomes a new person and doesn't want to go back, Neelix and Tuvok grow close and bridge the gap between their personalities in a science-fictiony way. What's more, this episode cops out in a way that "Tuvix" didn't; where Janeway was forced to a decision in that episode that remains controversial among Trekkers to this day, here Tuvok just sort of changes his mind at the end for no apparent reason, letting everyone off the hook.

On the other hand, how would the characters themselves not think of the Tuvix incident in a situation like this? Early on, when Neelix is trying to jog Tuvok's lost memory, how could he not share the memories he surely retains from their past merging? When Tuvok declares that he doesn't want to return to the person he was before, how could Janeway not confide her thinking in Chakotay, in how this situation recalls the previous one? It might even be that her previous decision has altered the way she thinks about this one.

But ignoring history isn't the only weird character behavior in the episode. The alien scientist, Naroq, is willing to sacrifice his life's work (without explanation) to help Tuvok. The Doctor, who has typically derided all mysticism, invites Neelix into Sickbay to play Vulcan chants in the hopes of reviving Tuvok.

There's also the extent to which this episode dances blithely along the line of being offensive -- though this is hardly the only bit of 1990s entertainment to tell a story of an "idiot savant" without considering what they're unintentionally saying about the perceived of people with autism or similar conditions. (Hell, they gave Oscars for this kind of thing.) The episode is fumbling around in the dark for the concept of "emotional intelligence" that it can't quite grasp.

So, wow, total dog of an episode, right? Well, surprisingly, not entirely. Because the ensemble work put in here is really quite superb. It starts with a truly deft performance from Tim Russ as Tuvok. He has to play a wide-eyed "child" learning to recover speech itself. He has to give the sort of "simpleton" performance that movie actors of the era would often spend months preparing, when he was just shooting another episode the day before. He has to channel feelings that his regular work always calls for him to mute. And he's actually quite good at all that.

At the same time, Ethan Phillips is doing some of his best work as Neelix, being genuinely empathetic and helpful, two qualities I think the writers think ascribe to the character despite all the evidence to the contrary. (Hell, he's annoying Tuvok again in the very first scene of this episode!) Jeri Ryan also does a lot with her one big scene of the episode, in which Seven compares Tuvok's plight to her early days severed from the Borg Collective.

It's not surprising that overseeing all these good performances from the Voyager cast is one of their own: this is the first episode directed by Roxann Dawson, who (like Robert Duncan McNeill) would go on to have a longer and more successful career as a director than as an actor. Sure, it must have helped to know these actors for years, but that doesn't diminish the great work she's able to get from them. And she's not bad at the technical aspects either, even in her first effort. There are plenty of interesting camera angles and moments of neat staging. The effects get space to shine -- both the digital (the strange alien) and the practical (actual smoke coming off Tuvok's skin after he gets zapped). Dawson's work as director here is better than many steadily-working television directors can do after years at the job.

Other observations:

• This episode starts with Neelix giving an "ambassador's log." My eyes rolled so hard.

• The title "Riddles" is a bit of a stretch. Sure, the bookend riddle, about living in isolation for a year with only a calendar for sustenance, does show Tuvok's arc. But a scene in the middle that tries to connect the invisible aliens to the riddle metaphor is too big a contortion.

The competing factors make this a hard one for me to grade, but I think I'd call "Riddles" a B-.

You Look Marvel-ous?

Entertainment media is currently serving up a lot of stories about the low-earning opening weekend of The Marvels. But it looks like most of the people in my social media sphere saw it, so... wanna compare notes?

The Marvels is billed partly as Captain Marvel 2 and partly as Avengers 4.5-or-something, but what it really feels like is the sequel to the television series Ms. Marvel. That show was a bit uneven, but was enjoyable overall -- and most especially for the effervescent enthusiasm of its star, young Iman Vellani. That's exactly what this movie is: a bit uneven, but enjoyable overall -- with Iman Vellani being undeniably the best part.

One great challenge of the "superhero teamup" movie is trying to blend the different tones of the solo characters into one that makes sense. The Marvels approaches this mostly by making every other previously-seen-in-the-MCU character drift toward the tone of Ms. Marvel. And the movie is absolutely better for it. The MCU hasn't really been very fun (at least, on the big screen) for some time. It either hasn't tried to be (the dour and dull Eternals) or has been trying "too hard" (the candy-sweet Quantumania). But The Marvels centers a character who's just delighted to even be there at all, and allows the other characters to meet her in that emotional place.

Without that willingness to just "find the joy," we wouldn't have a movie with not one, but two major music-oriented sequences. (All apologies to James Gunn, but the second sequence takes the title of the most inspired "needle drop" ever in the MCU.) We wouldn't have a movie where the typical incoherence of a visual noisy fight sequence is somehow turned into an advantage, thanks to the core conceit of the plot. We wouldn't have such great "normal people in fantastical situations" sequences, as the movie finds a way to use even its non-powered characters in fun ways.

But while the movie is fun once it gets going, the setup is rather nonsensical. First, the villain's dual motivations to be a savior and exact revenge don't mesh well; she'd have a much easier time at the former if she weren't hell-bent on the latter. Second, the loose explanation for how the core three heroes are brought together works well enough for two of them while failing to explain at all how the third became involved.

The ending makes even less sense. It's a parade of things happening "just because" (because it's now time for the movie to end); the moment that problems become complications for the writers and not just the characters, they just magically disappear. Still, the biggest issue with most MCU climaxes is that they revolve around epic battles with impersonal stakes -- and this, at least, is not that. CG still abounds, of course, but the final showdown doesn't sprawl out of control.

So overall, I'd give The Marvels a B+. Surely, the low box office performance is going to make a bunch of people gather in a room somewhere to diagnose "what went wrong." I hope those people don't draw the wrong conclusions.