Travel Agent

Author John Scalzi is a skilled writer of pulpy, cotton-candy science fiction. The more I've read of him, and the more online discourse I've seen about his work, the more clear it's become to me that literary snobs tend to turn their noses up at him. Still, I usually enjoy his creative settings and snarky characters, and find myself periodically returning to his stories.

One story was a no-brainer for me: the third volume of The Dispatcher, a series of novellas released in audiobook format. The first one was my introduction to Scalzi, and I loved it. The second one wasn't as compelling, though I still welcomed the return trip to the interesting universe: a modern day world in which 99.9% of the people who are murdered are immediately resurrected back at their homes; main character Tony Valdez is a "dispatcher" hired to intentionally murder people, effectively saving their lives in dangerous situations.

Book three is Travel by Bullet, and is an interesting evolution on the setting in at least two ways. The title itself hints at one; where the first two stories focused largely on the "murder" aspect of the premise, this story focuses more on the fact that victims are transported elsewhere upon resurrection, allowing those willing to risk a 0.01% chance of death the means to "travel by bullet" to another destination.

The second twist? Scalzi decided to incorporate the real-world coronavirus pandemic into his fictional universe. This isn't the only time he's done so, but The Kaiju Preservation Society focused on a parallel Earth sitting alongside our real one. Here, the setting is manifestly not our reality, yet the world is reacting to a pandemic just as ours did. It's an interesting choice, as the story really isn't about a pandemic -- narratively speaking, it's mostly there just to explain why the characters don't find themselves in book three at the places you'd expect they'd be as of the end of book two. Still, writers often incorporate current topics into their work, and it's interesting to see it done in a non-metaphorical way.

I've focused on the pandemic aspect perhaps a bit more than it deserves, but that's largely because I want to avoid giving away too much of the story for people who haven't "audio-read" the first two Dispatcher books. They're all worth the time (even if the first is really the best). Suffice it to say, this one is a compelling new mystery set in this by-now well-established world. I still love the premise, and John Scalzi still seems to be finding interesting tales to tell with it. Zachary Quinto returns once again to narrate, and once again is completely in sync with Scalzi's trademark blend of wry and snarky humor.

I'd give Travel by Bullet a B+. If you've listened to any of The Dispatcher books, you should check out this one. If you haven't? You should at least check out the first one and see if the series is for you.

Your Servant?

I have on several occasions praised different shows on Apple TV+ as "a reason you should subscribe to Apple TV+." Today, my enthusiasm is a bit more muted; I'm here to discuss more of a "show you might be interested in once you're there."

Servant just concluded its fourth and final season, wrapping up a strange 40-episode psychological tale with increasing supernatural elements. The show was created by Tony Basgallop, but the executive producer and showrunner (and occasional director) was M. Night Shyamalan, taking a run at television rather than movies with buzzed-about twist endings.

The show follows a young couple, Dorothy and Sean Turner, whose infant son Jericho has recently died. The trauma has psychologically broken Dorothy, so with the help of her brother Julian, Sean has introduced a lifelike doll to replace Jericho -- and Dorothy has taken it for her real son and blocked out all memory of the loss. When Dorothy pushes to go back to work, Sean and Julian play along by looking for a nanny to look after the doll, finding young Leanne and welcoming her into their home. But as soon as Leanne has settled in, things take a strange turn: the doll Jericho has suddenly been replaced with a real, live baby.

That's just the first episode, and the show only gets wilder from there. The first season largely focuses on where Leanne comes from, and whose baby she might have abducted and brought to the Turner household. But with each new season, the story becomes more fantastical and bizarre, until a final cataclysmic season weaves together cultism, religion, destiny, and more.

For the Shyamalan doubters out there, let me tell you that this show ultimately does have a satisfying ending. Season two does spin out a bit, as the show stops trying to sit on the fence of whether "magic" is at work here. Yet it does feel like the writers' room either had a plan for where they were going all along, or made a decision and then stuck with it. If you want to "figure out" what's really happening here, there are enough breadcrumbs along the way to do that. And while the series ending does have one or two surprises to it, they aren't about trying to upend your understanding of everything you've seen before.

But honestly, the writing isn't the main reason I'd suggest trying Servant. The main appeals here are the acting and the filmmaking. The core cast of four are all excellent. Lauren Ambrose (from Six Feet Under) plays the highly-strung Dorothy, a woman so controlling that she's controlling her own memories without even knowing it. Toby Kebbell (who has popped up many places, including a memorable Black Mirror episode) plays Sean, who struggles to survive the chaos without upsetting the powerful women in his life. Nell Tiger Free plays Leanne, who is asked to change her performance the most over the course of four years, and always rises to the challenge. But the scene stealer is Rupert Grint (yes, Ron Weasley) who plays foul-mouthed, boozing, grumpy Julian. He's absolutely incredible -- the reason I hung with Servant at a point where my husband had enough of the meandering in the second season and abandoned the show.

The filmmaking and production of the show are, if anything, of an even higher caliber. The house in which the Turner's live is the perfect blend of fancy and creepy. The fake Jericho doll is a horror genre triumph. Amazing use of the camera controls every aspect of the experience, punctuating moments by being uncomfortably close to or far from the actors. The use of lighting steers the eye effectively. The way food is photographed toggles back and forth between sumptuous and horrific. Servant showcases the sort of considered cinematography you usually only get in films, because the schedule of television making rarely allows for it.

Servant is not for everyone. It's an odd duck in being a dramatic TV series with half-hour episodes instead of one hour. It certainly has its high points (the first and last seasons) and low points (the middle two seasons). But overall, I'd call it a B. If you like the horror-thriller genre, and have a taste for both the psychological and supernatural varieties of it, you'll probably enjoy it.

Picard: The Bounty

The flames of nostalgia continue to be stoked in the best way by the latest episode of Star Trek: Picard, "The Bounty."

As Worf, Raffi, and Riker board Daystrom Station to discover what's been stolen, the Titan hides out at the Starfleet museum and Picard seeks help from an old friend.

Earlier in the season, I noted that it was an effective and correct choice to slowly bring in The Next Generation cast over the course of many episodes. But now that we're halfway through, it's time to stop stretching that taffy; the writers agreed and gave us this episode that actually includes all the original cast members. (Mostly. Troi and Beverly's roles were quite small indeed. But we have four more episodes to go.)

First, there was LeVar Burton's return as Geordi. I welcome the idea that not every old crew member from the Enterprise was eager to jump back into a new adventure. Still, Geordi's reluctance to help felt a little too hard in the face of the stakes -- all the Federation is threatened, Geordi himself had already sensed this (arguing against bringing the fleet together for Frontier Day), and yet he still doesn't want to help?

On the other hand, he did have a reason to be reluctant: his concern for keeping his daughters out of harm's way. And just as this season has already given Beverly Crusher and Will Riker their best scenes ever, so did this lead to some of Burton's best work as LaForge. The one-on-one conversation between Geordi and Sidney allowed LeVar Burton to channel the vulnerability he's so easily able to access as an actor -- while underlining just how criminal it was to cover his incredibly expressive eyes for seven years.

Someone was arguably even more thrilled than me that Geordi was there: I loved seeing the heretofore cranky Captain Shaw absolutely fan out over one of the classic characters. It made sense for Shaw, giving him a new dimension without compromising anything we've seen of him until now.

Brent Spiner's return to Star Trek: Picard was less momentous, given that he's been in both prior seasons. Still, the concept behind his new character is interesting; Spiner has played every member of the Soong family, and now he gets to do them all at once. The late scene back on the Titan, that saw him flipping between characters, showed that each of the characters truly is different and has recognizable speech patterns and mannerisms that instantly tell the audience who they're seeing. 

I liked seeing the next next generation try to grab the reins a bit in this episode; Jack and Sidney's team-up to steal a cloaking device for the Titan was a fun idea. I wish the budget could have been big enough for us to see actual scenes aboard the Klingon Bird-of-Prey from Star Trek IV (more on that in a moment), but I hope the few sparks of chemistry between the characters is nurtured into a small flame in the coming episodes.

Speaking of Jack, this episode seemed targeted to calm my nerves about the last one -- it pinned his hallucinations not on possibly being a changeling, but on having the same disease as Jean-Luc. I do hope that's the truth of it and not a fake-out, because not only does that strengthen the family connection between the characters, it sets the stage for big personal stakes at the end of the season: what will Picard do to save his son's life?

There was some awkwardness to the episode, though. First, it simply makes no sense to me whatsoever to put the Data-amalgamation synth in charge of Daystrom security. Just two seasons ago, synthetic life forms were banned in the Federation specifically because they were not to be trusted. How did we get from there to using a synth to protect the most important facility in all of the Federation? (I get it... we need to work Brent Spiner into this final season somehow. But this is a real stretch.)

The brief Moriarty appearance left me pretty cold too. The whole thing felt like a fake-out specifically for the season trailer. (Which, I suppose, is exactly what it was: "let's put Moriarty in the trailer and everyone will lose their minds!") He's only there for a minute, acts nothing like Moriarty while he's there (whipping out a gun and shooting up the place), and had no particular connection to the characters in the scene with him (if you're going to do Moriarty, Data or Geordi needed to be there). 

Then there was another very small moment that for me, at least, caused an outsized mental stumble. We're told at one point that all Starfleet ships are now networked together... which to me sure made it sound like the thing to do was to go steal one of the old ships from the museum (presumably not networked) and "trek" off in that. I get that the series spent the money on the Titan sets, didn't have the money to spend on recreating some classic starship, and wouldn't want to even if they could have. (You wouldn't want to spend the rest of the season aboard a ship that looks dated.) But why even raise the question if it couldn't be "answered?"

Still, there were enough other delights to distract from those few elements that didn't work so well. All those classic starships, for example -- the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, Voyager, the Enterprise-A -- each one appearing as a spray of its theme music played in the score. Then there was the Daystrom Station, a fire hose of Easter eggs blasting the audience from every direction. Another Genesis torpedo for the movie fans. An even more weaponized tribble (who hates Klingons, of course) to give us a good laugh. The tease that James T. Kirk's body was stored there (setting up the reveal at the end of the episode). There are surely more references I missed... and erstwhile Photoshoppers have made my social media feed a delight for the past several days, imagining up other Star Trek artifacts that could have been stored here.

Overall, this season of Star Trek: Picard continues to deliver for me. I give "The Bounty" a B+. Now that the whole crew is back together (in an episode, at least, if not actually in the same place), my hopes are high for the next episode.

Split Decision

In my experience, one of the toughest "needles to thread" in board game design is to accommodate a large number of players without being a "party game." I have nothing against a good party game for a group of 6 or more, but sometimes I'm looking for something with a little more strategic meat on the bone -- and I don't want to be playing it for hours and hours (or be waiting for what feels like "hours and hours" between each of my turns).

I've occasionally found games that fit that specific set of criteria, and now I've found another: The Great Split. This is collection game built around one of the first game mechanics many people are exposed to as a child: "I cut the pie, you choose which slice you want."

In the game, players track their progress on a personal board as they amass rare books, artwork, precious jewels, gold, and "certificates" (of authenticity?). Alright... let me say right out of the gate that strong theme is not a virtue of this game. This is what's known by gamers (often pejoratively) as a "point salad" in which points come this way, that way, or the other... but all sort of nebulously add up into a competitive score in the end. If you need a strong thematic element in a board game, you're probably going to bounce hard off of this one.

Still, if you can accept a threadbare game "story," there's just enough nuance in the point salad of The Great Split to make it interesting. Books, artwork, and jewels all have different methods of scoring. Gold is essentially a track for helping you boost your other collection goals. And certificates are a kind of endgame scoring that keeps you from chasing just one goal too much to the exclusion of everything else -- you have to at least juggle a couple of considerations.

The game is played over 6 rounds, and the process of each round is quite straightforward. You're looking at a hand of cards with different icons corresponding to the different collection tracks. You divide this hand into two (equal or unequal in card count -- that's your choice), then insert a "splitter" card to separate your groups. You pass that to the player on your left, and they choose which group to keep, leaving you with the other. Meanwhile, you'll choose from the split offered by the player on your right, ultimately collecting two different "half hands" to make the full hand you'll play that round. You move up on various scoring tracks for each of the icons on the cards you end up with.

The challenge is in forming your own split offer. Do you try to make both groups as equal in appeal as you can? How much do you try to account for what it looks like the player on your left is collecting? Do you try to put a thumb on the scales and create an offer too irresistible for your opponent to refuse (leaving you with the other offer that you truly want)? What if you get that analysis wrong; will you truly be able to make progress of your own no matter which half-hand your opponent gives back? The mechanic is simple enough, but the ramifications are satisfyingly deep.

Here again, the fact that it's a theme-light "point salad" game might drag on your experience a little. There are several viable routes to victory here. The first game of The Great Split I ever played saw 5 players finish all within a 7-point spread of each other (ranging from 134 to 127 points), and I admit that this left me wondering if any of the choices we had made actually mattered that much. (Did all roads just lead to a respectable score?) Subsequent replays have relaxed that concern for me, as I've seen things like a wider spread of scores, interesting "gluts" of one icon type in one area of the table, and the randomized order of scoring all subtly affecting the arc of the game.

And oh yes, there have been subsequent plays. This game has gone over great in my extended gaming group -- who like me longs for options when we all gather once a month. The Great Split takes up to 7, and the simultaneous play ensures that it doesn't take that much longer to play even at the maximum player count. And in the 45 minutes it takes, you get to make a pretty satisfying number of sometimes difficult choices.

I'd give The Great Split a B+. I could wish for it to have a little more thematic resonance, a few more strategic options, and so forth... but I'm pretty sure that any such tweaks to its design would compromise the things about it that make it perfectly fit its niche: a quick non-party game for a large group. If that sounds like something your gaming group needs, you should check it out.

Picard: Imposters

I've recently returned from a week-long vacation in Steamboat Springs. It was a fun-filled week of skiing and board games. I don't really have any tales of the former to share (though this continues to be an excellent season for skiing); I will likely post about new games I enjoyed in the days and weeks ahead.

But right away, I want to pick up with Star Trek: Picard's final season before I fall even further behind. The episode that dropped right as I was heading out on vacation, "Imposters," was certainly one that set internet tongues wagging.

When the Titan returns to Federation space, they receive a less-than-warm welcome from Starfleet Intelligence. An agent with a past connection to Picard and Riker is there to conduct an inquiry, exposing old emotional wounds that have not yet healed. Beverly Crusher discovers that changelings are now able to impersonate targets even more completely than ever before. Jack Crusher wrestles with the increasing influence of voices deep inside him. And elsewhere, Raffi and Worf follow a new lead to try to uncover the plot against the Federation.

There was a lot to talk about here, but the lightning rod for all the online conversation was the episode's special guest star. (Spoilers, if you've somehow come this far without knowing!) The return of Michelle Forbes as Ro Laren was an unexpected but exciting development in this final nostalgic season. Though her character arc on The Next Generation was concluded rather definitively, there were at least two reasons to revisit it now. With the complete destruction of the Maquis a few years later on Deep Space Nine, you might well wonder what became of Ro Laren. And, more importantly, The Next Generation was -- as a mostly episodic series -- not always equipped to explore the emotional fallout of important character milestones, and it did not really do so in this character's case.

Star Trek: Picard was very much interested in the emotional aftermath of Ro joining the Maquis and turning against Picard. In a way, there was so much hurt dredged up that it was hard to believe that Picard and Ro could reach an accord of any kind in the span of just one episode. On the other hand, the episode wasn't really trying to say that they did. They were softening to each other, perhaps only in the face of a greater threat they needed to unite against... and then, tragically, that's all the time they got. This was one occasion where bringing back a character for a single episode, just to kill them off, was actually a very effective writing choice. True, this moment probably packed little punch if you weren't a long time fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation... but at this halfway point in the season, it feels like this series is done "onboarding" people; if you're a newer Star Trek fan and you've come this far, you're probably here until the end.

The rest of the episode was good, but not quite as satisfying. The Raffi/Worf subplot was a bit heavy on the cliches (as it sort of has been so far), building up to a staged "fight to the death" that felt a bit forced. Still, the false death of Worf did help make the real death of Ro in the "A plot" land with more impact. Also, it remains fun to see Worf and Raffi work as an "opposites attract" buddy cop team. And there was another treat for fans of Terry Matalas' previous show, 12 Monkeys, as Kirk Acevedo -- another alum of that show -- appeared as the Vulcan crime lord (there's a fun idea) Krinn. (At this point, if you were on 12 Monkeys and aren't in the final season of Star Trek: Picard, it would seem you've either given up acting, are too busy on other projects, or were secretly a pain to work with. Everyone else is getting a role.)

There are a couple of areas of the episode that have me feeling some cautious skepticism. First is the Jack Crusher subplot. The show sure seems to be steering the audience to think that Jack is a changeling -- so hard, in fact, that I retain some optimism that this must not be what they're actually doing. I certainly don't want that to be the case; any revelation that undermines the core truth that Jack is Beverly and Jean-Luc's son feels to me like it would destroy an emotional pillar of this final season that must remain in place.

Also, it's begun to rub me just a little bit how weird it is to have Picard and The Next Generation crew talking so much about changelings. All of that was Deep Space Nine's thing, and it feels a bit strange to see The Next Generation crew (save Worf) picking up that language, that paranoia, so easily. Though I'll wager if you give me a DS9 character cameo at some point (especially if it's O'Brien, who originated on The Next Generation anyway), my small discomfort will be more than adequately addressed.

I give "Imposters" a B+. It might not have offered much for newer Trek fans, but it was a solid episode for a long-time fan like me.

Legen-Derry

In the age of streaming, American television has gradually come to look a lot more like British television, with more series sporting shortened seasons and limited runs. At the same time, this is also the age of the franchise -- so it can be a bit jarring to come across a show that, in true British fashion, is only here for a handful of episodes and then gone. I recently found one in Derry Girls.

Derry Girls is a half-hour sitcom (no audience, no laugh track) set in 1990s Ireland, during the final years of the Northern Ireland conflict. Four Irish teens attend a girls' Catholic school (with their one male friend, who's English, and an exception to the enrollment rules). They navigate commonplace problems and local terrorist threats in equal measure, mostly oblivious to how pivotal a time they're living in.

Many a popular sitcom reaches their popular status on the back of one breakout character that takes over the series and passes into the collective zeitgeist. The truly transcendent sitcoms have not just one, but a whole cast of contrasting and fun characters. Derry Girls is very much in that mold. The core five teens of the show run the archetypal gamut from vain to ditzy to neurotic to horny to exasperated. Much of the comedy stems from the fact that you quickly learn how each character will react in a given situation... and then they act even more in the way you expect.

At the same time, the characters don't feel like caricatures. While the background of the Northern Ireland conflict is never brought so much to the fore that it threatens the comedic tone, it is still a backdrop of the real problems of real life, and it simply wouldn't work to have completely unrealistic characters layered on top. So while these characters are certainly heightened, they do feel like real people. There are plenty of jokes in Derry Girls, but the characters themselves are not "the joke."

They're supported by an expansive supporting cast that you come to know as well as the girls themselves. Here on the periphery, the characters are allowed to be a bit more broad and silly, and so you get plenty of the awkward family dynamics of two of the girls (whose families are related and live together). You get the surly antics of the school's headmistress. You get the hilarious cringe of the class suck-ups. Before you know it, you get a sense of this small town, and it feels familiar.

And it all happens in just three seasons, over 19 episodes that (with the exception of the double-length family) run just 20 to 25 minutes. That there's so little of Derry Girls quickly made me come to regard it as a precious candy to be made to last for a long time. This, of course, is exactly the opposite of what Netflix, the U.S. home for Derry Girls, would want of me -- but the show was actually made in the U.K. by Channel 4, immune to the streaming bean-counters.

Derry Girls is a show that creates its own quirky little world -- it's a Cheers, a Parks and Recreation, a Letterkenny. It has its own language you must learn to speak... and in learning a new language, you can travel to a new place you couldn't have gone before. I was delighted by the series, and give it an A-. Even in this age of "too many worthy things to stream," I feel like most people could (and should) make time for it.

Voyager Flashback: Infinite Regress

In much the way that "Warlord" was a Star Trek: Voyager episode that showcased actress Jennifer Lien by letting her act outside her usual character of Kes, "Infinite Regress" offered the same opportunity for Jeri Ryan to step outside of Seven of Nine.

When the dormant personalities of assimilated people are awakened within Seven of Nine, it manifests as a sort of multiple personality disorder that threatens to overwhelm her own identity. The Voyager crew must locate and deactivate the errant Borg technology at the heart of the problem before Seven is lost.

Given the pace of television filming and the lack of preparation time, this kind of script is among the very hardest that can be thrown at a TV actor: playing multiple characters in a single episode. Jeri Ryan was especially challenged here, not only for the breadth of personalities awakened within Seven of Nine, but for the fact that Ryan was not a Star Trek fan prior to being cast on Voyager. This "assignment" to play a Klingon, a Ferengi, and more required stacks of video tape she scarcely had time to absorb.

Ryan is actually quite good in this episode, establishing many clearly different characters with efficient choices in physicality and speech. But it's perhaps not surprising that her "Trek aliens" aren't among her best characters; for example, her Ferengi sports a bit of a Stooges/gangster accent. But her young girl -- sometimes playful, sometimes frightened -- is surprisingly effective. And the speed with which Ryan has to switch from one character to the next (it's breakneck by the end of the episode) is something she always handles well.

Not only is Ryan digging into a turkey leg as a bellicose Klingon, laughing and playing with Naomi Wildman, and recounting Wolf 359 as a Starfleet officer... she actually gets some big scenes as her regular character. We don't often see Seven scared, but we do here (and it's distinct from the fear of the child character). And the scenes with Naomi Wildman all work well too.

It also turns out to be a pretty good episode for Tim Russ as Tuvok. The mindmeld that the Doctor dismisses as "Vulcan mumbo jumbo" is a brave rescue (though, of course, Tuvok would think nothing of being called "brave"). And the meld sequence itself is a showcase for some wildly different filming techniques that really work -- distorting lenses, dropped frames, and sinister angles inside the Borg hellscape of the mind.

But you really have to accept some hand waving in the story to get on board here; the script itself isn't nearly as good as Ryan's central performance. The main gimmick of the Borg "vinculum" contradicts everything we've been told about how Borg don't have centralized components in their design. The jeopardy is transparently and falsely manufactured: the Doctor tells us right before a commercial break that Seven is "gone," but quickly backtracks in the next act. Chakotay reopening the question now of whether Seven could be restored from the Collective feels like it's coming about a year too late after she's been around this long.

The ending especially makes no sense at all. The whole reason Voyager has to go after this vinculum is because no amount of distance from it will matter for the effect its having on Seven. Surely the Tron raincoat aliens that hacked it to kill Borg will "repair" it, or try this again on another Borg ship, which should put Seven right back in this situation at some point.

Other observations:

• Several effects shots of Seven's reflection keep the audience current on which character she's been taken over by.

• There's kind of a lot of animosity here between Voyager characters. Tuvok treats Neelix's concerns about mess hall security with withering disdain. And the Doctor says to Tuvok: "With all of these new personalities floating around, it's a shame we can't find one for you." 

There's much about this episode that doesn't really make sense. But Jeri Ryan hoists it over her shoulders and carries it over the line. I'd give "Infinite Regress" a B.

Lasting Impact

This is going to be the absolute opposite of a contrarian hot take: the first season of The Last of Us was truly excellent. The hugely successful HBO series, based on the acclaimed video game, just finished up its 9-episode first season -- and the quality held up at every step of the way.

For me, this was not a given when the series began. I was coming to the series not having played the game, though my skepticism had nothing to do with those origins. I was simply tired of of the zombie subgenre: tired of the tropes, tired of the nihilism, tired of equating sadism with drama, tired of "Zombie Kill of the Week" style plotting... tired of all the excesses that had been embraced by pretty much every zombie story of the past decade or two. But I kind of had to try The Last of Us anyway, because everyone who had ever played the game was crowing about how good this television series could be if they just didn't mess it up.

The series quickly assuaged my doubts in a number of ways. It served up "zombies" that were just enough not-zombies to tweak the formula. It went on to boldly not even feature these creatures in the major moments of most of its episodes. And while The Last of Us certainly did serve up moments showcasing that "people are the real monsters," the best moments of each episode were rarely about that either.

Instead, shockingly (except, perhaps, to those who played the game), it was usually moments of kindness and human connection at the center of the biggest scenes in each episode. The major theme of this story was not about learning to survive in an apocalypse, but learning to love in one. Drama usually came not from being forced to make hard choices, but because opening oneself up to love carries with it the capacity to experience deeper loss. So even as this "zombie show" presented pretty much all the head shots and distrust and awfulness that the genre basically requires, it felt like a far more humanist take than its cousins.

And that's why the discourse (that I saw online, anyway) rarely dwelled for long on a zombie kiss of death or a horde of infected spilling up from a sinkhole. It would instead quickly turn to the familiar banter of a long-married Wyoming couple, the latest groaner from the book of puns, or the peculiar joy of wearing a seat belt for the first time.

Not that it was only the light moments that made the show, either. The Last of Us could break your heart right along with the best of them. I mean literally the best of them: it released instant contenders for some of the best one-hour episodes of television made in decades. There was the much-celebrated (and deservedly so) episode focused on Bill and Frank, but also the moving flashback of Ellie's fateful night with Riley, and the tragic story of Sam and Henry. (And stay mad, "woke haters," each of those episodes centered on the kinds of characters who aren't usually featured in stories like this -- and they were better for it.)

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey were an outstanding duo at the heart of this show, each excelling individually, and even more powerful when paired together. This casting is lightning in a bottle, a high water mark against which pretty much every other television show is going to come up short. I wouldn't need more of them in another season of this show to be satisfied, but I'm thrilled that we're going to get it.

It's probably too early in the year for me to feel that I've watched the best television I'm going to see all year... but there's no other way to put it. The Last of Us was, to me, unqualified grade A television. If you've somehow resisted all the hype, let me assure you: the hype is real.

Picard: No Win Scenario

The fourth episode of Star Trek: Picard's final season was another excellent installment.

Adrift in a nebula and out of options, the crew of the Titan has only the time to put their affairs in order. Picard tries to reach out to Jack. Seven tries to hunt down the saboteur before they do more damage, turning to unlikely help in her efforts. Meanwhile, Beverly discovers the situation may not be as hopeless as it seems.

The main characters of Star Trek rarely reckon, truly, with death. They're going to escape every dark situation in time for the next episode, and the writers know that we know that. Plus, the franchise is a fundamentally hopeful and optimistic one. So time is rarely spent on "well, I guess this is the end"  fatalism; it would just ring false.

And yet, precisely because the franchise never goes there means that on this one occasion, when it does, it's quite effective. Wisely, the Worf and Raffi subplot is benched this week to give full focus to the crew of the Titan facing the prospect of their deaths. (Yeah, it does sort of retroactively make that subplot from the first three episodes seem more inessential, but it's the right choice anyway.) And it pays off in many ways.

Picard and Jack have a long conversation together, freighted with even more weight once you've seen the final scene of the episode and realize the stakes. Jack had Jean-Luc tell him, to his face, that Starfleet was the only family that mattered to him; no wonder he chose not to pursue a relationship with this distant and irrelevant old man.

Captain Shaw, from the beginning, was of course crafted as an icy character meant to thaw over time and save the day at some point -- so no surprise that this was the week he did so. Yet even as he saved the day, we got two other great moments with him. One preserved his status as a "villain" of sorts; Seven of Nine got to slyly tell him off for his insistence on calling her "Commander Hansen" (which read to me as a wonderful bit of meta-commentary on the phenomenon of "dead-naming" trans people, even though that surely was not the writers' primary intention).

Another great Shaw moment exposed where his animosity for Picard and Seven springs from. And while you could have guessed it had something to do with the Borg (and even Wolf 359 in particular), the way in which it was expressed was powerful. Picard has been the target of ire before, from no less than Sisko in the first episode of Deep Space Nine. But one thing Sisko did not feel was survivor's guilt; Shaw carries that to this day, and it's a powerful thing to see dramatized in the episode.

Last week, I noted that Picard had given Beverly Crusher (and Gates McFadden) her best material ever. This week, it might have done the same for William Riker and Jonathan Frakes. Riker was not a character so short-changed in The Next Generation, of course... and yet never have we seen the character so emotional as he was here, struggling to record a goodbye message to Deanna. Never had Frakes been asked to sell something as difficult as comparing the open hole of a grave to the blackness of space -- and he actually sold such an on-the-surface, seemingly silly metaphor. (All while directing himself! This was another stellar effort from Frakes in the director's chair.)

This was so unlike a conventional Star Trek episode in so many ways, and so very quintessentially Star Trek in one very key way: the revelation of the "space babies" at the end was, as Beverly literally put it, exactly the show's stated mission to "seek out new life." They even mentioned Farpoint by name, to bring things full circle back to the first adventure of the Next Gen crew. A wonderful moment for the episode.

And here are a few other moments that struck me, that don't seem to fit anywhere else in this stream-of-consciousness review:

• I love how gruesome changeling morphing looks now. Gelatinous changelings look like raw meat here.
  

• Behind Picard in the booth at Ten Forward is a Left Hand Brewing Company sticker! It's nice to know that with so many craft breweries struggling and going out of business these days, that Colorado staple is going to live on to the 25th century.

• The internet lost its mind because Jean-Luc Picard said "fuck" in this episode. In a situation that absolutely called for it. Picard can say fuck now, people; get over it.

For the second week in a row, I give Star Trek: Picard an A-. I'm loving this final season so far.

And the Oscar Goes To....

The Oscars are being awarded this Sunday, and for the first time in a few years, I've actually seen and reviewed all 10 of the Best Picture nominees. The Oscars use a "ranked choice" system for this category, so I figured I'd show you what my ballot would look like:

1) All Quiet on the Western Front -- In the alternate universe where I actually got to fill in an Oscar ballot, there's a chance I wouldn't use the ranked choice system at all. This is the only film that I felt strongly positive about. I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I found it properly somber and moving.

2) Avatar: The Way of Water -- This is the first Avatar movie repackaged; it's only this high on my list in recognition of the technical achievement here. That's so not like me to prioritize in a movie, which I think indicates just how visually impressive the movie is. (But the variable frame rate experiment is a disaster that undermined what probably would have been an even stronger reaction to the visuals.)

3) The Fabelmans -- Two perfectly nice movies in one, that sort of get in each other's way a little too often for the whole to be great. But it's still watchable; I'm not sure Steven Spielberg has made a "bad" movie since 1941. (Made in 1979; "who's on first?")

4) Top Gun: Maverick -- Though not quite the complete repackaging of the original movie that Avatar was, this sequel is ultimately still a remix of the same plot points. But the original Top Gun has aged rather poorly in many ways, so arguably, an update was needed.

5) Triangle of Sadness -- A terrific act three, and a pretty good act two (even if it does go on a bit too long). Has good points to make, but takes its sweet time getting there.

6) Everything Everywhere All at Once -- The smart betting money says this is the movie that's going to win on Sunday. Truly, I wanted to like it more than this. Certainly, I think the cast was excellent, and I'll be happy to see them win the awards that, again, the smart betting money says is likely. But the movie was a trip through a buffet line loading the plate with tacos, spaghetti, a cheeseburger, and shrimp tikka masala. Some of the wild swings work; some really don't. And I think that "the eclectic nature of it is the point -- it's there in the title!" is an insufficient response to my feeling that the movie doesn't fully cohere.

7) Elvis -- Great performance by Austin Butler. I'd vote for him out of the Best Actor nominees I've seen. But the movie itself is a pale imitation of Moulin Rouge -- stylish, but lacking substance.

8) Tár -- Another movie that's all (and only) about the good performance at the center of it. But this is not the moment for a movie that plays into the false narrative that "all LGBT people are sexual predators," nor that portrays a rare woman in a male-dominated field only to tear her down.

9) The Banshees of Inisherin -- A black comedy without the comedy. The movie only gets slightly interesting when one seemingly innocuous line of dialogue suddenly becomes the entire focus of the plot.

10) Women Talking -- Stilted and formal, a square peg of a powerful stage play pounded into the round hole of a movie.

Don't agree with my takes? I'd love to hear your order! (And I'm betting your quibbles with me would pale in comparison to the ire you'll feel reading some of the anonymous "brutally honest Oscar ballot" articles floating around this week!)

Voyager Flashback: Timeless

Reaching a 100th episode is always a big milestone for a TV show (and even more rare in the modern age of shorter, serialized seasons). Star Trek: Voyager marked the occasion with a time-traveling spectacle, "Timeless."

In the future, Voyager is found encased in ice at the site of its crash landing years earlier. An embittered Harry Kim holds himself responsible for the mistakes in the propulsion experiment that led to this and killed the crew. But he has a plan to send a message back in time to rewrite history.

The character of Harry Kim only took center stage in one, maybe two, episodes in each season of Voyager, and this is by far the most substantial and interesting of those so far. Perhaps inspired by the "cranky Kim" portrayed by Garrett Wang in the previous season, this episode shows the character sapped of all youthful exuberance by time and trauma. He's a blunt, rude criminal who understandably cares nothing for himself or anyone else; he intends to erase all that from existence.

It's rare that a TV series regular is colored this far "outside the lines," and so its fitting that helping guide this performance as director was a Star Trek veteran, LeVar Burton. He feels like a real "actors' director" here, not only getting a good performance from Wang, but some great comedy (Jeri Ryan is superb as "drunk Seven of Nine"), and helping you overlook the weirdness of Chakotay's girlfriend (eager to erase her boyfriend from her life). He also gives a good performance himself, reprising the role of Geordi LaForge. (It helps that it's well written; LaForge has sympathy for the wild, time-meddling antics, even though he is bound to try to stop them.)

The production crew also steps up to make this 100th episode look spectacular. There are elements that show their age (the snow, both blowing on the ice planet and piled up on the set, looks fake), but the bulk of it is great. The frost on the frozen Voyager's walls, the eerie prop of Seven's Borg head implant, the envelope-pushing (for the time) CG crash of the ship... all that and more really make this episode a feast for the eyes.

But underneath all this is my least favorite structure for a time travel story: "if we succeed, nothing you're watching will have ever happened." That put a cap on my enthusiasm for the fan-favorite "Year of Hell" two-parter, and it dampens my ability to fully invest in the action here. In "Timeless," at least, a message is sent back into the "true timeline," and Harry Kim gets to hear about what his future, alternate self did. But this is literally the last scene; there's no time for an emotional reckoning of how present Harry feels about this. At least there's the lasting effect here of Voyager shaving 10 years off the trip home.

Other observations:

• Cleaning up the sets after this episode must have been a nightmare -- not only all the snow and frost, but the confetti used for the party in the engine room. (Clever writing to put your party for your 100th episode in the episode, though.)

• Speaking of the party, there's a well-executed "one-r" that tracks through three different conversations between characters without a single cut.
  

• How did the snow get inside Voyager when it was encased several meters below an ice shelf?
  

• Chakotay refers to programming a replicator as "cooking." Is that accurate? Does anyone today think they're "cooking" when they heat up a microwave dinner?

• The writers are really just openly messing with fans who want Janeway and Chakotay together as a couple. Exhibit A: the candlelit dinner scene.
  

• This future is actually around 10 years in the past relative to the current season of Star Trek: Picard.

• Trying to track "how many years Voyager has shaved off its journey home" is probably about as fruitful as trying to count the photon torpedoes and shuttlecraft they expend along the way. But for what it's worth, between this episode, "The Gift" from Kes, and a few odd shortcuts, I think they're now down some 20-25 years from their original expected trip.
  

I suppose that production values and good performances mostly get me over the hump of my disliking "it never happened" time travel stories. Ultimately, I'll give "Timeless" a B+.

Knock-On Effects

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan arrived in the zeitgeist with a few great movies in a row (there's wide agreement on The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable; a bit less on Signs, and rather few who would continue the "great" list beyond that). But a wildly uneven string of films since then have led to where his movies are hardly "must see" anymore, and outright "must not see" to many. I'd put myself in the camp of "would consider," on a case by case basis.

Shyamalan's latest effort was one I decided to try, largely for reasons having nothing to do the man himself. Knock at the Cabin is one of his few movies to be adapted from existing material, as opposed to being an original story and script. This is obscured by the title change from the novel on which it's based.

The Cabin at the End of the World is a book I read years ago and mostly liked. I said at the time that it seemed tailor-made to become a film... and unsurprisingly, had already been optioned for exactly that. Still, I had no idea, when I first saw the slightly enigmatic trailer for Knock at the Cabin, that it was that movie.

Indeed, the first half to two-thirds of the movie are an incredibly faithful adaptation that follows the book almost exactly. I was reluctant to say much about the plot of the book years ago, but will now say more about the movie: a gay couple and their daughter are staying at a remote cabin when four people burst onto the scene with a wild demand. They say the apocalypse is nigh, and the only thing that can avert it is for the family of three to decide, willingly, to sacrifice one of themselves. The demand is naturally refused, but the extreme claim is increasingly accompanied by extreme proof. The question of just what is real gradually leads to the question, will this family make such a horrible choice?

My review of Paul Tremblay's book wasn't sky high; I liked it, but didn't love it. Most of my reservations had to do with choices in the writing style more than the plotting, but however you slice it, I did feel there was room for improvement. So I didn't necessarily mind (in principle) that the movie diverged from the book in the third act. But for how closely the rest of the movie follows the book, it's striking how little the ending does. I guess you could call this the Shyamalan signature "twist ending?" ; the twist is that if you've read the book and think you know the ending you're going to get... surprise!

In essence, the film departs by refusing to include the darkest story turn in the book. And for a movie that wants to play to a broad audience (and it did; this was the movie that finally dethroned the Avatar sequel from #1 at the box office), I sort of get why Shyamalan and his script co-writers didn't want to go there. However, from that big change flows many subsequent changes that I think pile up to undermine some of the best elements of the book.

When I blogged about the book, I noted that it felt like LGBT+ representation done in a satisfying way, because the fact that the couple at the heart of story was gay felt incidental to the story. The movie version made me rethink that assessment and realize how wrong I was. The way the book ended centers entirely on how this couple feels about how the world has sometimes treated them. The book still retains some plot threads about bigotry and "straight privilege," but in the real-world spectrum of how "conformist vs. defiant" LGBT+ people and culture can and should be, the movie manages to come down squarely on the "conformist" side where the book was proudly "defiant." Basically, it made me more aware of the novel's subtext (some of which, in retrospect, wasn't that "sub") by bulldozing over it.

That sounds largely negative... yet I can't claim the movie offers nothing in exchange. Chiefly, it offers a great performance by Dave Bautista as Leonard. He's the character doing the titular knocking at the cabin, and it's great to see him in a role like this. While the film is of course leveraging for tension what an intimidating presence he is, the character's behavior runs counter to this imposing exterior. Leonard is a gentle giant, empathetic and sad, and Bautista really gets to act in this part, in a way I haven't really seen from him in other movies.

It's great that the couple in the story is played by two actors both openly gay in real life, Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge. I don't happen to subscribe to the notion that gay roles must be cast this way. (Actors "pretend" to love people all the time, and I don't see this as different. Also: if the reverse were true, and queer actors weren't cast in straight roles, their parts would sadly dry up.) Still, it feels important to me in this story that these roles are cast that way, and I think Groff and Aldridge work well off each other.

All told, though, my reservations about the movie are a bit greater than they were for the book. I'd still probably come down just on the side of recommending it, with a B-. But I wish the moments of levity felt less forced, I wish all the performances were as strong as Dave Bautista's, and I wish that the ending retained more of the defiant spirit of the original novel. (I guess you could say the title is different for a reason.)

Picard: Seventeen Seconds

The third episode of Star Trek: Picard's final season put Riker in the captain's chair and Jonathan Frakes in the director's chair.

As the Titan tries to hide from the Shrike in a nebula, only to keep being discovered, it becomes clear that something -- or someone -- is giving away their position. Jean-Luc and Beverly have a difficult conversation about their relationship and Jack. And elsewhere, Worf and Raffi learn who is really behind the theft of dangerous technology.

I'm going to start by jumping to the end of the episode, which pits Riker and Picard against each other over how to deal with the Shrike. I think for characters who have cared for each other as long as these two (and they even showed that multiple times in this episode), the writers have to work extra hard to make such a conflict believable -- and I think they fell short. Picard's argument for going on offense seemed non-existent, an unsupported contrivance for the plot. The way Riker chastises Picard in the end ("You've killed us all.") felt like dialogue that would have been written for Captain Shaw, simply put in Riker's mouth. I thought it was an unfortunately sour note to end the episode on.

And that's a shame, because I thought just about everything else about the episode was excellent. At center was the amazing confrontation between Beverly and Jean-Luc. There, both characters did have a point of view that made sense, and argued them believably. Indeed, the scene struck me as so good that it actually made me a bit sad to think back to The Next Generation: Gates McFadden was capable of delivering this, and her skills were never fully utilized. At least when given her best scene ever as Beverly Crusher, she knocked it out of the park.

Relationships were key throughout the rest of the episode too. Before Riker and Picard's false feud, the early flashback demonstrated their deep friendship and set up the meaning of the "Seventeen Seconds" title to be beautifully paid off later. Worf's addition to Raffi's storyline boosted that narrative. Worf was written at his best -- a blend of operatic drama, dry humor, and unaware humor -- and Michael Dorn seems not to have missed a beat playing him. Worf and Raffi made a fun good cop / bad cop team that carried their part of the episode. (Though I'm antsy for them to unite with Picard and company soon.) Even Seven got a nice character moment, with LaForge.

The production values felt sky high this week, with a number of eye-popping visuals for the chase through the nebula, and the Shrike's horrifyingly clever use of its "portal gun." The score continued to use classic Goldsmith Star Trek themes in just the right amounts -- and even gave us an homage to James Horner's Wrath of Khan score as the Titan plunged into the nebula.

The big reveal this week is, essentially, that this isn't just a curtain call for The Next Generation, but in many ways for Deep Space Nine as well. As Worf spent four seasons there too, it really just makes sense. Indeed, it seems obvious in retrospect: the Shrike has the lines of a Dominion ship, and the helmets worn by the "henchmen" we've seen could have been covering the fact that they're Jem'Hadar. In any case, I'm eager to see how this story picks up the baton. (And I can now hope for some appearances by Deep Space Nine characters too!)

Other observations:
(For whatever reason, I usually only do this in my "retro" Star Trek reviews. But I have a couple more thoughts here and didn't have anywhere better to put them...)

• OK, the first use of Deanna Troi in this season also wasn't a great part of the episode. But I assume better is still to come. (And I liked her "bring the whiskey" demand, a connection of sorts to First Contact.)

• I struggled to figure out where I recognized the criminal captured by Worf and Raffi. That's because I wasn't picturing him as a surly teenager, as John from The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
  

• I appreciate the quick hanging of a lantern on the subject of Jack's British accent.
  

This final season picked up a lot of energy from this episode. I give it an A-, and I hope that's energy it can maintain in the weeks to come.

No Lie: This Pinocchio Is Delightful

Writer-director Guillermo del Toro's has reportedly had one passion project for the whole of his career. After false starts and a long stint in "development hell," he has finally been able to release that project: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. (The title seems more of an effort to distinguish the film from the live-action remake of Disney's film, released in the same year, and not a slight on del Toro's co-director in the project, Mark Gustafson.)

This Pinocchio is a stop-motion animated effort full of del Toro's signature style. Lush visuals, child-like wonder, and dark undertones all blend in equal measure in this telling of the story. While it does draw on the original 1883 Italian novel as a basis for the script, it's still very much an reinterpretation; the action is transposed to Italy between the two World Wars, and the rise and role of fascism in daily life is a major element of this version.

Wait, this Pinocchio is about fascism? That's right; this is definitely not a Disney movie. It also throws softer punches at organized religion... all of these big themes more than you'd expect in a movie that's sure to attract a younger audience. Del Toro, it seems, doesn't want to alienate the kids, but he's probably making the movie for the adults.

Which is not to say that this movie is overly didactic or heavy. The characters especially are a lot of fun. Ewan McGregor plays Sebastian J. Cricket with a delightful mix of exasperation and sentiment. David Bradley plays a sympathetic Geppetto. Christoph Waltz built his career on playing this sort of hateable villain. Tilda Swinton plays her trademark blend of regal oddness. And in perhaps the weirdest bit of casting, Cate Blanchett only makes monkey noises for most of the movie. (She reportedly wanted to do the movie very much, but del Toro had only this part left to be cast.)

The animation is wonderful, as is the character design. It's tempting to compare some of it to Tim Burton or Henry Selick, but I think only because stop motion animation is rather rare, and those are the styles within easy mental reach. There's a seriousness here that holds even in the more playful moments, matching the tone of this take on the material.

Still, there are a few elements that don't quite hit the bullseye. While Pinocchio himself is, of course, supposed to be wide-eyed and naive, his exuberance is a bit cloying at times. (But I think the directors got exactly what they wanted out of young actor Gregory Mann.) I also question the choice to make this a musical with nearly 10 original songs. Perhaps only one of those songs leaves even the tiniest lingering impression; inevitably, they will seem lacking in unavoidable comparison to the songs from the 1940 Disney version (some of the most iconic tunes from the original Walt era).

Nevertheless, I'd certainly recommend the film overall. It's a solid B+, and it in fact earns a slot in my now-settling-down list of the Top 10 Movies of 2022. (At #7.)

Tales Spin

A few months back, I blogged about the excellent Star Wars: Andor. But now that The Mandalorian has returned with season 3, I'm reminded that there was actually another Star Wars series that overlapped Andor a little, and I've said nothing about it.

Tales of the Jedi was a collection of 6 short stories. Bringing back the Clone Wars characters, these 15-minute-ish episodes focused on Ahsoka Tano and Count Dooku. The episodes are arranged chronologically, skipping forward through a period of about 20 years to show us moments not previously covered in the Clone Wars series.

In so many ways, this mini-series really felt like a Clone Wars season 8. (Or perhaps, 7.5?) Not only did it bring back the characters, it brought back the voice cast, the animation style, and the storytelling techniques of the more sophisticated later seasons of Clone Wars. And more, no effort was made for Tales of the Jedi to feel like a stand-alone series.

That's particularly true in the episodes that focused on Ahsoka Tano. There's really no arc to those three episodes; they're just painting in fine details of things you're already assumed to know. In particular, I expect the very last episode would lack any resonance at all unless you're a fan who has seen every single episode of Clone Wars and Rebels, and has pretty good recall of what happened in those series. Maybe in this modern age of entertainment "universes," all this is supposed to contribute to the whetting of your appetite for the coming Ahsoka TV series? (And these episodes maybe kind of do that. Yet they're hardly essential viewing.)

It's actually the three Count Dooku episodes that really shine here. First, they cover a period of time not previously depicted in a Star Wars film or TV series -- the time before he turned to the Dark Side. Second, the episodes collectively present a tight, clear character arc: how Dooku's disillusionment took root. As the saying goes, the bad guy never thinks they're the bad guy... and yet until these episodes, Dooku was still fundamentally just a mustache-twirling adversary. Far less background with the cartoon series is needed to appreciate the simple-but-effective story being told here.

Overall, I'd give Tales of the Jedi a B. Ultimately, if you've liked Clone Wars (or The Bad Batch, or Rebels), you'll like these. At the same time, if you've confined your Star Wars viewing to the live action stuff, you really shouldn't start with these -- both for the content and for the fact that they probably aren't going to "win you over."

A Strange Look Back

For years, I'd been hearing good things about the 1995 movie Strange Days -- both from people I knew and more generally, whenever a critic would name-check it in comparison to some new release. Still, I'd never gotten around to watching it. (Not helped by the fact that it wasn't available to stream anywhere until quite recently.) But at last, I've now arrived to the party, nearly three decades late, and can confirm: Strange Days is pretty good.

Set in a then near-future (that's likely also meant to read as "not quite our reality"), Strange Days centers on Lenny, a former cop who now traffics recordings of people's lives that you can experience firsthand through fully-immersive sensory technology. When the friend of Lenny's ex-girlfriend is murdered, he's swept into a hunt for the reason why. A fusion of thriller and action film, cyberpunk and neo-noir, ensues.

Strange Days now sits adjacent to a major milestone in movie-making: it's an early-career movie directed by the first woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Director. Kathryn Bigelow, who won for The Hurt Locker, has directed action-packed movies (or at least, testosterone-driven ones) throughout her career. Strange Days is of a piece with that, and the story of how it was written shows how she has always personally enjoyed these kinds of movies and wanted to make them.

Bigelow and James Cameron were already divorced after a rather short marriage, but were still working together on this kernel of an idea that Cameron had for a new sci-fi movie. Bigelow, it's said, took this world of memory smuggling and developed its action beats. Cameron, it's said, was more interested in a romantic subplot between the two major characters, and developed that. Together, the two reportedly turned out a monstrous outline of endless pages, then turned to screenwriter Jay Cocks, who hammered it all out into the shooting script for Strange Days.

However it really got there, Strange Days is a pretty compelling story -- though it does take a while to get there. The first 45 minutes or so laboriously sets up the concept of recording, sharing, and living memories as though for an audience they seem to assume really isn't going to "get it" without a lot of help. Maybe for the time, when a huge chunk of the audience wasn't even on the internet, that was a correct assumption. By today's standard, it feels super slow getting started; you could probably cut half of that opening 45 minutes without losing much.

Otherwise, besides the references to the year 1999 and the occasional use of a pay phone, this movie feels like it could have been made today. The story that ultimately emerges is laced with unvarnished social commentary that remains all too current, and was far ahead of its time in 1995. Strange Days is fundamentally about cops perpetrating racist violence, and where the tipping point might be for a jaded public to take notice (or even believe in the problem).

At the same time, the movie never feels like it's preaching at anyone. First and foremost, it's here to be an entertaining thrill ride, and is quite successful in that. Kathryn Bigelow knows absolutely how to stage an exhilarating action scene... and she dealing with the highest degree of difficulty in the form of numerous first-person sequences throughout the film. Every scene that involves witnessing a recorded memory is filmed in the first person, with the audience as the viewer. This required an extreme amount of not only planning, but camera trickery. (Remember, there weren't really any tiny film camera options available at the time.) The trouble is worth it to put you right in the action for the movie's most key sequences.

Then there's the cast, a real Who's Who of stars -- most at the time, yet still more so today. Ralph Fiennes stars (looking oddly like Bradley Cooper in certain shots). There's Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Vincent D'Onofrio, William Fichtner, Michael Wincott, and more. But the absolute stand-out of the movie is Angela Bassett as bodyguard and limo driver "Mace." No surprise, I suppose, as she's good in absolutely everything. (Hell, she's secured an Oscar nomination for being in a Marvel movie.) But it's certain that without Bassett, this movie (and in particular, its more serious elements) would be far less effective.

I'd give Strange Days a B+. And if I made more allowances for the fact that its slow start was probably necessary at the time it was made, I'd probably mark it higher still. I can imagine how it fell short at the box office in 1995. I can absolutely see how it found dedicated fans later.

Voyager Flashback: Once Upon a Time

With "Once Upon a Time," Star Trek: Voyager was just one episode shy of reaching its milestone 100th episode. But this 99th episode had a milestone of its own: it was the moment that young Naomi Wildman became a heavily recurring character on the show.

When a shuttle goes missing on a dangerous mission, young Naomi Wildman is forced to deal with the uncertainty of what may have happened to her mother. Neelix is determined to shield her from emotional trauma, whipping himself into a frenzy as he tries to keep her distracted.

The first (non-baby) appearance of Naomi Wildman had happened in the prior season, but this time the role was re-cast with Scarlett Pomers, who would end up playing the role in 16 episodes over the show's final three seasons. For comparison, that's twice as many times as the 8 episodes in which the character's mother, Ensign Samantha Wildman, would appear in the entire run of the show. (In fact, Samantha appeared in just one episode after this!)

To some extent, this is the "Cousin Oliver-ing" of Star Trek: Voyager, adding a cute kid to the mix to spice things up. This was nothing new for Star Trek, of course; The Next Generation actually cast one of the original "cute kid to spice up your show" actors when they brought Brian Bonsall (of Family Ties) on to play Worf's son Alexander. Still, the expansion of the Naomi Wildman character does feel more earned than gratuitous to me in at least two ways.

First, depicting a kid growing up on Voyager was a good way to dramatize the "far from home, struggling to survive" premise of the show that would often get lost in conventional "planet of the week" episodes of the series. (That's probably part of why the writers would later add several more children in season 6.)

Second, they found a rather solid actor in Scarlett Pomers. She reportedly thought this would be her only appearance when she was cast, but an obvious and immediate rapport with Ethan Phillips (and briefly here, Jeri Ryan) clearly got the writers' imaginations going and led to future appearances. They let this kid be a kid, not too wise beyond her years (even if her education seems advanced, but I guess she lives in the future).

So no, I don't have a problem with the idea of a Star Trek episode focused around a precocious child. But I can't say I loved having so much of this episode taking place in a holodeck version of a kids' storybook. The "Flotter and Timber" world shown here does have decent production values (and they show the landscape both lush and destroyed). It isn't quite as corny as The Next Generation's "cute kid spends time on the holodeck" episode. But it still involves two actors (one of them veteran "that guy" Wallace Langham!) in dopey costumes, spouting dopey dialogue, and engaging in a dopey story that can't help but be dopey because its all make believe and set against a very real jeopardy happening on the crashed shuttle.

That said, another flaw of the episode is that the jeopardy on the shuttle doesn't feel all that real. The fact that it's the brand-new Delta Flyer in the crash subtly reassures us, even more than the presence of two main characters, that no one is in real danger here. And although Deep Space Nine might have been daring enough to kill off Samantha Wildman for dramatic effect, you can feel pretty certain that Voyager isn't going to make an orphan of Naomi.

I don't care much for the character of Neelix generally, but I do appreciate the way he's used in this episode. The story plays to his past (the loss of his family) as he fights to shield Naomi from hard truths. Along the way, he gets pushback from other characters in a series of effective scenes; Seven's observation that Naomi will "adapt" is flawlessly on brand, and the confrontation with Janeway is a good scene for both Ethan Phillips and Kate Mulgrew.

There are some nice moments aboard the crashed shuttle as well. The "emotionless" Tuvok gives wonderful emotional comfort to Ensign Wildman about parenting. The goodbye messages from Paris and Wildman as they think they're about to die... well, they aren't tearjerkers, but they work well enough in the moment.

Other observations:

• Janeway, Kim, and Ensign Wildman all speak of having played these interactive Flotter stories as children. That would seem to contradict the first episode of The Next Generation, where holodeck technology was a brand new wonder.

• The stuffed Flotter toy Harry Kim creates looks creepy as hell.

• Are there no security measures in place to keep young Naomi from wandering the corridors and going to the bridge?
  

There are good moments in this episode, and the "cute kid" works well enough. But the hollow sense of jeopardy and the excessive time spent on the world of Flotter keep this episode from rating very highly in my view. I give "Once Upon a Time" a B-.