Frenchman Street (and other tales of New Orleans)

Day two of our New Orleans trip was our one full day in the city... and we certainly made it a full day. We began with breakfast at a place called Curio, where I enjoyed a delicious bourbon caramel french toast and my husband had chicken and waffles.

We then walked away from the French Quarter and over to Julia Street -- the arts district, where many galleries are clustered together within a few blocks. It struck me that you get to see a much wider variety of work hitting up several tiny galleries like this than when you go to a large art museum. Where the museum will have large exhibitions on a shared theme, the tiny galleries can be different from one wall to the next -- and very different from each other. We saw sculpture, photography, oil painting and more; realistic and abstract; kitschy and serious. And we did briefly flirt with the idea of buying a piece to display back at home. (The price tag, understandably, was more "you're decorating your home" as opposed to the "impulse vacation purchase" mindset I think we were in.)

After a short rest back at our hotel room, we started once more into the French Quarter. We were slowly working our way toward the French Market, expecting a number of great food options there. But (unfortunately, I suppose) we decided to cross "beignets" off the list by stopping at Cafe du Monde along the way. The beignets were delicious, of course... but also super-filling and packed with enough sugar to put us off wanting to eat for the next several hours. So even though the market had stall after stall of amazing looking food options, we wound up just window shopping through it.

Next, we curved our way out of the French Quarter and into the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood -- specifically to Frenchman Street. This is where both prevailing internet wisdom and my friends who had been to New Orleans agreed that you actually want to spend time (rather than Bourbon Street). The collective advice was spot on. We went into two different places, Cafe Negril and the Spotted Cat Music Club, listening to a set in each from a local band. Here's where the jazz was at -- yes, still pretty "tourist friendly," and certainly played by people with other day jobs... but still relaxing fun over the course of several drinks. (And had we been there a few hours later in the day, there would have been even more bars and clubs open with similar offerings.)

Finally we were in the mood for food again, which we wound up getting at Pat O'Briens (shrimp, once again) before heading over to a bar called Peychaud's -- named for the inventor of the particular style of bitters that's a key ingredient in New Orleans' signature cocktail, the Sazerac. A Sazerac is a kind of off-shoot of an Old Fashioned, but based on rye whiskey. A few splashes of other ingredients accentuate flavors in the rye: sugar, Peychaud's bitters, a lemon twist, and lastly (and this is the dealbreaker for many) a "wash" of the glass with a hint of absinthe. There was a time I could never have imagined myself going anywhere near even the mildest licorice/anise flavor, but what can I say? My tastes have been changing.

Still, not all Sazeracs are created equal, as I can personally attest having had them at locations all over the French Quarter over the course of a few days. The worse ones seem to assume "you're here for the absinthe" and overdo that wash of the glass. As you would hope from a place called Peychaud's, they had it right. We sat out back in their patio area and enjoyed a couple. And worth noting -- more ubiquitous in New Orleans even than the Sazerac is the "outdoor patio area." They usually feel like found spaces, wedged in between close buildings and completely hidden from the main street... but they're always decorated with lush greenery, and generally nice places to sit and have a drink. (Or a wedding. We saw a bride and her father here, preparing to walk to the next patio for her ceremony.)

After lazily passing the rest of our afternoon, we grabbed some random fried chicken from one of the many more "fast food-like" local options (Willie's Chicken Shack, if you're curious) before heading over to Preservation Hall. This venue offers short evening jazz shows (several each night) in an old restored building dedicated to, as the name suggests, the preservation of jazz. Crammed close onto benches (with more people standing in the back), we listened to a group of six play several standards and encourage the crowd to get involved. We sang along to the catchy "Little Liza Jane," a guest vocalist stepped in for a slow and haunting rendition of "Summertime," and ultimately we were all led in a dance line around the tiny space in an upbeat finale. You certainly don't have to pay to see jazz in New Orleans (but tip the band!), though if you're going to get a ticket, Preservation Hall was a good one.

A random stop or two on the way back to the hotel closed down our biggest day of the trip. I'll be back one more time with highlights of the final day.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

My husband and I have just returned from a 3-day getaway to New Orleans. Neither of us had been before, and we were looking forward to an "eat, drink, and be merry" vacation that we hoped was well timed between two times we'd never want to be in New Orleans: the raucous congestion of Mardi Gras, and the stifling heat of summer. We got just what we were looking for.

After an early afternoon arrival and checking in at our hotel, we got right to it with lunch at Olde Nola Cookery on Bourbon Street. We had kind of a long list of foods "you have to try," and we checked one off right away with authentically messy shrimp po' boys that oozed everywhere. It was the first of many times we ate shrimp on the trip... and why not? You have to eat as much seafood as you can stand when you're in a place where it will be reliably good.

From there, the afternoon consisted of zig-zagging on and off Bourbon Street to various locations. Our first stop was at Crescent City Brewhouse, a place with German-style beers good enough to impress a couple of jaded Denverites who've been to more craft breweries than they can (should?) count. There wasn't a bad beer in a flight of six.

The next stop was Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar. This place is billed as "the oldest structure used as a bar in the United States." And if that statement feels a bit precisely worked to you, it did to me too. That wording elides the fact that Louisiana wasn't part of the U.S. when it was built, obscures that it's the building that's old (not necessarily the bar), and perhaps a few other details besides. The drink selection was pretty slight, actually... so we ordered what was easy: a Voodoo Daiquiri -- some kind of frozen, liquified Grimace in a styrofoam cup that tasted like grape Kool-Aid and too much rum.

This is a good moment to pause to voice my agreement with both the prevailing wisdom online and advice I got from friends who knew where I was going: if you go to New Orleans, you have to at least see Bourbon Street -- but it's probably not where you'll want to spend most of your time. If you've never been, you might have an image of endless bars serving endless cocktails to the accompaniment of endless live jazz groups; but Bourbon Street isn't actually that. (On a post about another day, I'll get to a place that is.)

Bourbon Street is basically spring break, 24/7. The sickeningly sweet alcoholic Slurpee we got at Lafitte's was typical of the drinks most accessible on Bourbon Street. And I'm not sure I heard any jazz there the entire weekend. We got plenty of bands both decent (one doing Fleetwood Mac and other covers) and bad (one screeching Are You Gonna Be My Girl worse than my friends sound on a drunken Rock Band night) -- but none of the music New Orleans is known for.

We wound up dumping the half-finished daiquiris on our way to a short walk back along the Mississippi River, before a series of quick stops at a series of random places. There was Chartres House -- a place playing nice (non-live) music but with drinks served by a comically disinterested bartender. There was Bourbon Street Drinkery, where we sat outside on our first of many hidden patio areas in New Orleans. Then there was Cafe Beignet -- where we actually didn't get beignets, but did enjoy our first of several sazeracs while listening to a live trio.

We closed out the night with a late dinner reservation at GW Fins. This is the kind of restaurant that won't post the entirety of their menu in the morning because they don't know what's been caught until the boat brings it back in the afternoon. It's the kind of place that made me exchange my ID for a collared shirt to wear in the dining room. (Taking an ID from the average drunken New Orleans tourist and relying on them to remember to retrieve it later seems like a dicey proposition to me -- but I at least pulled it off.)

The meal was everything we'd hoped for and more. My husband had perfectly seared fresh tuna; I enjoyed a shrimp pesto dish. We shared a bread pudding dessert... and a couple of after dinner drinks that it seems were about the right time to quit for the night, as I couldn't recall them the next morning.

I'll have a couple more posts recounting a couple more days of the trip... but to spoil the ending, the "eat, drink, and be merry" goal of the weekend was met in full. It was a lovely long weekend getaway, with more highlights in store.

Voyager Flashback: Dark Frontier

When February "sweeps" came around in 1999, the network execs at UPN asked Star Trek: Voyager to deliver them another two-part episode like they'd done the year before with "The Killing Game," which they would air on one night as a movie-length event. Though the writers didn't have an idea for such an episode, they quickly coalesced around using the Borg, and introducing the Borg Queen from First Contact to the show. Thus was born "Dark Frontier."

Janeway is determined to steal propulsion technology from a weakened Borg vessel, and thinks she has enough advantages to pull it off. But secretly, the Borg Queen is aware of Voyager's efforts, and is using the pending encounter to force Seven of Nine to rejoin the Collective. Can technology pioneered by Seven's human parents, Magnus and Erin Hansen, prove the difference in this confrontation?

This two-part episode certainly does have the scope of a movie, and it clearly feels like budgetary mountains were moved to increase the production values here. Sets, visual effects... everything feels a cut above typical Voyager. We get new Borg ship designs, a huge Borg city in space, and more drones than we've ever seen (giving us a marvelous haunted house vibe at times). Stuff that was barely possible in a multimillion dollar movie just years before is now achievable on television as the power of CG continues to develop at light speed. An expanded orchestra, including weird instruments Jerry Goldsmith used for First Contact, is employed here by David Bell to score this episode.

Indeed, one of the few elements to suggest this isn't a "big huge movie" is that Alice Krige does not return to play the Borg Queen. (She was reportedly unavailable.) Still, Susanna Thompson does an excellent job taking over the role. (Or is it the role? Here begins the nebulous question of what exactly the Borg Queen is. Is the same Borg Queen from First Contact, a copy of that Queen, a different Queen altogether, or something your puny human mind can't fully comprehend?) Thompson definitely uses Krige's performance as a touchstone, but her incarnation is perhaps a bit less sensual and a bit more vicious.

Despite this "movie" being stuffed with action, there are a number of nice character moments throughout. In a rare scene featuring Neelix not being annoying, he connects with Seven over the losses of their families. Naomi Wildman's friendship with Seven is highlighted in a nice scene where she shares her "rescue plan" with the captain. Flashbacks with the Hansens quickly establish them as Dian Fossey types researching especially dangerous "animals." Seven's blend of secrecy and self-sacrifice makes sense for me -- she's experienced enough as a human to care for others, but is too inexperienced to ask for help when she's being cornered. And the Borg Queen's coercive techniques to break down Seven's will really play up the strange "cult leader" nature of the character.

But in the way that a big summer action movie is sometimes skimpy on narrative logic, this episode also features some elements that don't add up. Seven's research into her parents' history is left unfinished before the "heist," just to maintain a flashback structure and preserve a twist for later. The idea that there's something special in Seven's experience that means she's more valuable not as a drone feels like quite a stretch. The fact that Voyager abandons Seven's father to the Borg when they rescue her seems unforgivable. And the writers really fumble the emotional resonance by having Seven's father be the focus of the flashbacks; given that the present struggle is between two mother figures in Seven's life (Janeway and the Borg Queen), the flashbacks should center on Erin Hansen, not Magnus.

Then there are the nitpicks for longtime Star Trek fans. The Hansens are going out to research the Borg -- who they know by name -- years before the Enterprise first encountered them. The decision to send the Doctor -- and his mobile emitter -- on a mission to the Borg seems idiotic in light of past experience. The Borg seemingly need to be reminded of information about the Hansens (and their methods) that they've already assimilated. And after decades of fan arguments about whether the Enterprise or the Death Star would win in a fight, this episode breaks everything by showing the obvious answer to any conflict: beam a torpedo aboard your target.

Other observations:

• Janeway has never fiddled with her combadge, the "tell" Chakotay says telegraphs her thinking.

• Seven gets a new purple/maroon suit in this episode. (Apparently, the previous blue incarnation had proven difficult for visual effects shots.)

• There's an unintentionally hilarious moment during the heist rehearsal. Chakotay says they're running six seconds behind schedule... and everyone keeps walking placidly.

• It's a great exchange when Seven declares "I will resist" and the Queen replies: "I know." She practically looks to the camera as if to say: "bet you thought I was going to say 'resistance is futile.'"

• I'm not sure why the Borg record of humans is a holographic image of a male underwear model, but whatever.

• The Borg Queen says she comes from Species 125, meaning there were Borg before there was a Borg Queen. I'm not sure what that means, but it feels interesting.

• One place the massive budget does look thin is in the scene where Seven tries to help a group of aliens escape assimilation. The too-docile background actors playing the victims aren't up to the task of conveying the tone of the situation; I feel like they really needed to pay at least one actor to speak.

"Dark Frontier" is certainly a "summer blockbuster" of a two-part episode -- mostly entertaining in the ways it was intended to be... and not fully able to hold up to scrutiny. But I'd say it still works out to about a B+.

Many Kind Words

A few months back, I embarked on the "Bobiverse" series by Dennis E. Taylor. The science fiction trilogy (more recently expanded beyond its original three volumes) focuses on a modern day human whose memories and personality are revived as a sentient AI in a distant future. As he self-replicates and explores the cosmos, versions of him become entangled in an increasingly diverse series of adventures.

One of the things I really enjoyed about that first book -- We Are Legion (We Are Bob) -- was that diversity. Once the premise was firmly established, the book became almost an interpolated collection of novellas, related but somewhat disconnected. Book two, For We Are Many, does continue to develop each separate thread in an interesting way. We get new copies of Bob embarking on still new adventures, while established Bob characters now face new problems.

But the book also finds ways to start connecting the stories more directly to one another. One of these is a simple technological conceit that takes on a greater role in this book, allowing freer communication between the Bobs. Another way is a new twist in the narrative, the introduction of an intergalactic alien threat to galvanize all the disparate Bobs into combined action.

It all blends wonderfully in a perfect balance between giving you "more of what you liked about the first book" and "developing the story in exciting ways." Given the central conceit that copied Bobs do not in fact behave like exact copies of one another, there's room for a lot in this book: two very different versions of "first contact" with aliens, a counter-terrorism thriller, plenty of sarcastic comedy... even (surprisingly) a sort of love story.

And, as I mentioned of book one, another highlight continues to be the audiobook performance by Ray Porter. He deftly navigates playing a dozens of characters (including many who are all to some extent the same character), nails all the humor and sci-fi references, and generally makes an already enjoyable book breeze by. When I finished For We Are Many, I thought seriously about just plowing ahead into book three.

But with reports that Dennis E. Taylor has hit a snag in his writing of the newest Bobiverse book (number five), I should probably make an effort to make the two books I have left last a while longer. As much as I'm enjoying them, they need to be savored. I give For We Are Many an A-.

Voyager Flashback: Bliss

A television writer will often bounce around from show to show before getting a big break to stay in one writers' room full time or create a show of their own. The fifth season Voyager episode "Bliss" is a one-off Star Trek pitch by a now-famous writer just on the cusp of his break.

A huge space creature is luring Voyager inside its maw by causing the crew to hallucinate their greatest desire: that they've found a shortcut home to Earth. Only Seven of Nine and young Naomi Wildman are immune. Once the crew succumbs and loses consciousness, it's up to those two to save the ship -- with the help of an alien captain obsessed with destroying the creature who has them all trapped.

This story was the invention of Bill Prady, creator of The Big Bang Theory and numerous other sitcoms -- and it aired just months before his first big show, Dharma & Greg, began. No, this episode is not comedic in any way -- but then, that's the job of a writer "gigging" their way around Hollywood: to completely adopt the look and feel of different shows as they pitch different story ideas. Obviously, there was an intriguing enough science fiction idea in this pitch for the episode to get made, though it lacks the moral allegory level that most top-shelf Star Trek has -- the closest you can come to that is to say maybe this is a cautionary tale about confirmation bias?

There are a lot of fun elements to this episode. I like seeing how Janeway's skepticism of an apparent wormhole to Earth erodes quickly under the spell of this giant space creature. The little details surrounding just what everyone is imagining are fun: Janeway's ex-fiance is available again, Chakotay has received a pardon for his crimes, Neelix is being made an ambassador, B'Elanna thinks her Maquis friends are not dead after all, and Tuvok is reunited with his wife. We even see some of this stuff in several... call them dream sequences?... shot with interesting lighting and an over-cranked camera frame rate. It's a nice little twist on the recurring "shortcut home doesn't pan out" episode, in that the audience quickly learns it was never real in the first place.

I also have to admit, if you're going to add a "cute kid" to juice later seasons of your show, the way Naomi Wildman is used here works pretty well. The script walks right up to the edge of several annoying "lines" without crossing over. Her early Starfleet-ing lessons aboard the Delta Flyer skate up to the line of cloying, but stay on the right side of charming. Later on in the crisis, Naomi is just frightened enough to seem realistic without being too burdensome. And she offers just the right amount of emotional support to Seven without seeming overly precocious. It's surprisingly well executed.

But the particulars around this giant alien creature don't hold up to much scrutiny. It clearly can project different "wishes" into the minds of its victims -- not only does each Voyager crew member see a different version of what it means to get home, but the alien captain Qatai is seeing something completely different. So why don't Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman get a hallucination more tailored to them? Late in the episode, the entity tries to deceive them into thinking they've escaped when they haven't, so they are susceptible -- its just apparently not even trying. (But I suppose it's also not clear how much of this power is voluntary versus animal instinct?)

The Qatai character is fun thanks to the performance by perennial Star Trek guest star W. Morgan Sheppard, but he also doesn't make a lot of sense. We're told his ship has been inside the creature for decades, but Voyager happens to show up just before the ship is about to be destroyed? After that long a time under the creature's effects, how could he ever believe that he's meeting the Voyager in reality? Then there's the ending that really makes him out to be a Captain Ahab, determined to slay his Moby Dick. It's a fun idea, but also an odd way to close out an episode that really hasn't been about him.

Other observations:

• Naomi's creepy stuffed Flotter doll is back.

• It seems like director Cliff Bole has decided that since they rented the slow-motion camera anyway (to shoot the dream sequences), he might as well use it for other stuff too. But it's really weird for Seven of Nine to blow into engineering like an action movie, stunning everyone in sight.

• I like the Seven vs. the whole crew interplay of this episode. It feels more realistic, in that Seven is able to outwit them in moments, but that ultimately the combined efforts of everyone against one person are enough to overcome Seven.

• Naomi's summation of Borg philosophy is fun: two heads are better than one.

"Bliss" is sort of a fun diversion, but without much lasting impact. It needed to make more of the personal stakes somehow, or to somehow use the Qatai character to make a more forceful commentary (about revenge or slef-deception... or something). I give the episode a B-.

Cleverer and Cleverer

A few years back, I wrote about the dice game Twice As Clever. My gaming group had picked up designer Wolfgang Warsch's sequel to his dice game That's Pretty Clever!, and while we found it a bit complicated, we still enjoyed it. (And we attributed it to the fact that we had skipped the first game, which we all assumed was simpler.) Since my post, the "Clever franchise" has grown with three(!) more games (including a "Kids" version), and my group has played a total of three out of the five. So I wanted to check back in with more recent thoughts.

I'm going to combine here my comments on the first game, That's Pretty Clever!, and the third game, Clever Cubed. That's because it would be quite hard to explain how the games are different without going deep into the weeds. Fundamentally, the whole franchise (at least, what we've played of it) works like this. On their turn, a player rolls a set of six dice of different colors. They select one to mark something on their own personal roll-and-write sheet; if any of the other dice have a lower value than the selected dice, they must be set aside. The player then re-rolls any remaining dice (neither previously selected nor set aside), and repeats the process... up to a total of three rolls. After that's done, each opponent gets to mark something on one of their own sheets as well, by selecting one of the dice that was set aside by the player taking their turn.

What each die does when you go to mark it on your sheet is where each of the games differs, and what makes later installments of the franchise grow more complex. There's a wide variety of "set collection" type effects, bonus effects, "press your luck" type effects, and more. On the one hand, there's enough variety here that you can easily have your favorite "Clever game" simply because of the particular scoring methods it includes. On the other hand, the gameplay itself is so fundamentally similar that you probably wouldn't need more than one of these games in your collection unless you appreciate the variety. It seems like my group does appreciate the variety -- and the franchise is clearly built for that. Each game is just dice, pens, and scoring pads, and so the price point is quite low. They're also very portable, if you want to take your gaming on the road.

My personal preference is for the original, That's Pretty Clever! An uncharitable description would be to call it "Clever Enough" in comparison to its sequels, but I really do enjoy the game without the later bells and whistles. (Though I'm a gamer who prefers Calico to Cascadia -- I quite respect a solid, simple design.) Still, it's not like I will avoid the sequels. In fact, my gaming group has talked about a future game night where we do a "vertical flight" and play all the Clever games for a more direct comparison. (Though it seems like we should at least add Clever 4Ever to the collection before we do.)

I'd give Clever Cubed a B (like I gave Twice As Clever), and That's Pretty Clever a B+. If "roll-and-write" has ever gone over well in your gaming group, you should probably pick up at least one game of the series and see what you think.

Well? That Was Disappointing

I've written periodically about my forays into books by Brandon Sanderson. I've found the author's stories good, and often great, so I've continued to keep him in my rotation. But I hit a recent hiccup with book two of his original Mistborn trilogy, The Well of Ascension.

For me, this book was a case of the proverbial sophomore slump. After Mistborn introduced a compelling world and magic system, interesting characters, and a satisfying battle of good and evil, The Well of Ascension tries to apply a dose of reality -- and reality is perhaps not entirely welcome in escapist fiction. After a hard-fought victory, the characters of Mistborn now find themselves having to deal fully with "now what?" Having overthrown a despotic ruler, they now must rule instead. Having created a power vacuum, they're now opposed by other formerly minor powers seeking to fill that vacuum.

It's a logical extension of a story that otherwise felt like a fairly self-contained "one and done" sort of novel. And "what happens after the big adventure" remains relatively untapped material for the fantasy genre, despite J.R.R. Tolkien pointing the way down that path in the final chapters of The Lord of the Rings. But a situation mired in stalemates and politics makes for a novel that feels quite slow-paced and long-winded. I found The Well of Ascension to be a plodding chore of a read. It's a story of inaction, one that makes you want to grab the shoulders of the characters and shake them more than the usual tale of "characters not always making the best choices."

Perhaps part of the reason this book is built so much around political brinksmanship is that this helps contain the power of the main character, Vin. Mistborn used Vin in a pretty typical-for-fantasy story arc of being plucked from nothingness to ultimately master incredible magics. But now she's Superman in a world that has no real Kryptonite. She would be too expedient a solution for the sorts of problems that tend to oppose the heroes in a fantasy story, so here the story has to serve up different sorts of problems that she can't just "punch" her way out of. Yet while I'm certainly not saying my fantasy fiction needs to be littered with frenetic magical battles, I'd take a few of those over chapter after chapter of paralyzed inaction.

What ultimately pulled me through The Well of Ascension was residual good feelings for the setting and the characters that carried over from book one. It certainly feels like a rich enough world to keep telling stories in (as Sanderson continued to do after this). In particular, this felt like a strong book for the character of Sazed, and a newly introduced character whose story arc ultimately intertwines with his.

And yet, I felt stuck in this book for weeks on end. Months, even -- preferring to just go to sleep over reading a chapter in bed at the end of a day. When I got to the big cliffhanger that concludes this book,  I felt myself at a real crossroads: I certainly didn't want to read more of what I'd just read... yet I've liked basically every other Brandon Sanderson book I've read before. And he probably pulled himself out of the tailspin of this book, given his long, subsequent career. Right?

But after a grade C experience (at best; like I said, that was mostly "residual feelings" from book one), I can't say I'm eager to find out. I'd be curious to hear from other Sanderson fans their thoughts about The Well of Ascension -- and the next book to follow it.

Voyager Flashback: Gravity

Tuvok episodes of Star Trek: Voyager are few and far between, so you have to take what you can get if you're a fan of the character. Yet while there's plenty to like about "Gravity," there's also some awkwardness in just how much story is packed into this single episode.

Tuvok, Tom Paris, and the Doctor crash land on a planet, and there befriend an alien, Noss, who helps them survive the many hazards of this world. But Noss is developing feelings for Tuvok that he cannot reciprocate. Meanwhile, Voyager discovers that a rescue will be quite difficult: the crash site is inside a space anomaly where time is moving at a much faster rate. The survivors could be trapped for months.

Lori Petty had made a big enough splash in science-fiction fandom with the movie Tank Girl that her appearance as Noss in this episode was a casting coup, as her "Special Guest Star" credit indicates. The episode certainly needed a heavy hitter in this demanding role -- you spend time with Noss alone before Tuvok and Tom Paris arrive, she speaks only in alien gibberish for a time, she then must speak like someone who has learned English only recently, and she then must believably fall in love with Tuvok. I am not in any way denigrating Lori Petty's efforts here when I say that this is a lot of material to pack into 40-some minutes of television.

And the thing is, the episode still isn't done packing! Tuvok has a Lost-like running series of flashbacks that relate to his current situation: we see a teenage version of him who, spurned by a girl he loved, is now rebelling against the idea that he should repress his emotions. I do like the resonance this adds to the episode, though I wish they could have justified a "closer to adult" version of Tuvok in the flashbacks that might still have been played by Tim Russ. His subtle work here (reacting to Noss kissing Tuvok, for example) is quite good, and so I wish I he could have had an opportunity to work with more "showy" material.

Russ reportedly contributed to this episode in other ways, though. The final scene, in which Tuvok mindmelds with Noss to share his true feelings with her, was apparently Russ' suggestion -- a much more Vulcan-brand choice than a hug or wistful goodbye. Since Tuvok episodes are rare, I'm happy to get this one that uses his character well. (And it uses Tom Paris as a reasonably good foil for Tuvok too.)

Yet I wish even more run time could have been devoted to Tuvok's inner conflict, rather than other outside conflicts. This episode really doesn't seem to know when enough jeopardy is "enough." Voyager crewmembers are trapped in a desolate wasteland where survival is struggle to hunt large spiders for food. But there are also alien marauders on the planet for even higher stakes. Voyager is struggling to rescue their people from this anomaly before it collapses. But also there are aliens trying to destroy the anomaly even sooner (despite the fact that it's about to collapse on its own anyway). And then they decide to do so even earlier than the deadline they originally gave. The "raising the stakes" of this episode is also "moving the goalposts" in a way I find transparent and false -- and if that's a mixed metaphor, that matches the way I feel generally about how all this content gels together.

Other observations:

• The writers don't want to lose the Delta Flyer, of course. But that means to put Tom Paris here, they have to wedge in dialogue that lamely explains why they didn't take it on this mission.

• There's extensive shooting on location, in an appropriately remote-looking place. The outcropping where Tuvok sits to meditate is a particularly excellent spot.

• After the writers rather rudely commented on Robert Duncan McNeill's weight gain in the previous season, it's worth noting that by this point, he'd certainly lost it again.

• Poor Ethan Phillips spends a day getting in and out of makeup to deliver two lines as Neelix.

As I've said, this episode feels overstuffed -- and it isn't like you could trim much without affecting the plot. (You need months to pass for the relationship between Noss and Tuvok to develop.) Still, it feels like the sci-fi of the time dilation is crowding out the emotion of the main story, and vice versa. I give "Gravity" a B-.

Looking Into the Mirror

Over the past few years, I've been working my way through the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks. It's taken a while, since I've switched to audiobook and shared drives with my husband (mixed with other books). But we both remain interested in this interesting story with an interesting light-based magic system: magic users "draft" their power from different colors in the spectrum, each with unique properties.

I've now finished book four, The Blood Mirror, and there's very little I could say about the plot -- it either would spoil things for people starting the series, or be incomprehensible to those who haven't read it. Suffice it to say, there are still multiple running plot lines, each centered on a different characters. High status characters continue to be brought down, lower status characters continue to ascend, and the narrative is working its way to the conclusion coming in the next book. What I can do is again recommend the series as a whole, and as of this book, I still would. The Blood Mirror may not be perfect, but it's absolutely something I think most fantasy readers would enjoy.

There are still fun new revelations in the plot, even this deep into the story. Book four brings a "the truth was sitting there the whole time" kind of reveal that made me better appreciate the time that had been spent with one particular character whose story I'd thought had come to be a bit repetitive. (Bonus: I feel like the books had mostly played fair in hiding this development from the reader up to this point.)

I continue to love Teia, a character only introduced to the series in book two. Looking with dispassion at the story as a whole, she's not the main character. Yet she gets just as much screen time as the figure the world seems to turn upon, if not more. She's a more nuanced, more compelling, and more sympathetic character -- who doesn't have as much power to get easily get herself out of the problems that befall her.

I especially appreciate Teia's presence as elsewhere, another female character (who has been around since book one) has fallen out of the story almost entirely. It's almost laughable how little Liv appears in this book; I guess she's already arrived at where the story needs her to be for the big ending in the next book, so she has to just sit and wait for everyone else to catch up. Still, it definitely feels like one of the weaker parts of this book that a major character isn't really important in it at all.

Still, I can repeat praise I've given to previous books: I find the world and magic interesting and I've enjoyed seeing characters develop. I do feel this book might have been a bit slower generally than the ones before, as though the Lightbringer series really could have been four-and-a-half books (but a deal had already been signed). But the elements that work really did work for me. I feel that going into the final book, a good balance has been struck between expectations I have for the ending and uncertainty about what some of the particulars of that might look like.

I give The Blood Mirror a B+. Next time I'm back to talk about the series (many months down the road), it will be to report whether the series stuck the landing.

Room with a Review

Years ago, I wrote about the board game Mysterium, an interesting cooperative game in which one player tries to lead the others in solving a mystery, using only the unusual artwork on a deck of cards. I liked the game, hoping it would get some repeat plays in my group. It didn't. Neither did Obscurio, a similar game that (in my view) sacrificed the smoothness of the original concept in trying to add a "hidden traitor" element.

Now I'm wondering if the third time's the charm with Rear Window. This is one of the newer games from Prospero Hall, a design studio that's found success with licensed games that are often more solid than the average licensed game. (Though it's a matter of personal taste, of course. The "take that" gameplay of their most successful line, Villainous, leaves me cold.) Rear Window feels like an odd choice: a game based on a nearly 70-year old movie? (Albeit, a pretty good one.) But the game both suits the theme well enough to make sense, and works completely independently of any knowledge of the film.

The players have four "days" (rounds) to crack a case. The "Director" player is the only one who knows the solution to the mystery: a specific layout of 4 characters (from 8 possible) and 4 traits (from 12 possible). Each day, the Director places eight illustrated cards into "window" slots that the "Watcher" players are spying on to gather information. The Watchers team uses tokens to guess what they think the 4 characters and 4 traits are; the Director then scores how many of the 8 tokens they've placed correctly. Anything less than perfect, and the game proceeds to the next day.

There are some small wrinkles in this to spice things up. The Director has 3 chances to discard any number of cards they're working with and draw replacements. The Director can also place up to 2 of their 8 window cards face down, to hide images that might only confuse the players. The Watchers can invoke the special powers of four movie characters, once per game for each, to zero in on particular information they'd like to confirm.

But there's also one interesting big wrinkle. When the Director is randomly setting up the mystery at the start of play, a "Murder" tile is mixed in with the 12 possible traits. If that tile ends up involved in the mystery, then the conditions of the game have secretly changed. Now the Director wants to deceive the Watchers... just the right amount. If at the end of the four days, the Watchers have guessed only 6 or 7 of the 8 answers correctly, and have failed to identify the slot where the "Murder" tile resides, then the Director alone wins the game. If the Watchers guess 7 or 8 of the tiles correctly and identify the correct slot of the Murder, they thwart the Director and win. And if there's too much confusion, with 5 or fewer answers guessed correctly -- nobody wins.

I've played a half dozen or so games of Rear Window so far (both as Director and on the Watcher team), and I feel like they really hit the sweet spot with this twist. About two-thirds of the time, it's a straight-up cooperative game. About one-third of the time, it's a head-to-head (head-to-team?) game... though you don't know it right out of the gate. It's a good balance to leave you wondering: "Are we being tricked, or is our Director having honest difficulties?" (They might be drawing bad cards, or not thinking about how to play them in the same way the Watchers do.)

The game can have a touch of the "quarterbacking" issues that many cooperative games have, with one player dominating the team discussion of strategy. That said, the ambiguity of the card illustrations, combined with the fact that there are 8 answers to get correct, does help enough (I think) to make room for input from everyone on the team at one point or another. I've enjoyed the game in both roles, and I've enjoyed it both with and without a Murder tile in play. (Though my group has yet to have a "Murder game" end in any way other than "everyone lost.")

I think maybe the game won't stick around for the long haul in my group; there are a few regular players who don't seem to care for it as much as I do. But I'd say it has a better chance than Mysterium or Obscurio ever did. And if it does stick around, there are clever variant tiles you can bring in that up the difficulty for Directors who have learned too-effective ways of communicating with their Watchers.

I give Rear Window a B+. It's a bit of an odd duck: competitive and cooperative, deductive and conceptual. But it's a soup of ingredients I personally happen to like, so I hope I get to play it more.

Voyager Flashback: Bride of Chaotica!

There's a Star Trek tradition that goes back to the original series, of occasionally throwing in a purposefully over-the-top, campy, comedy episode. Voyager got in on it with the holodeck romp "Bride of Chaotica!"

Voyager becomes stuck in space at the site of a rift between universes. Photonic based life-forms are coming to the ship... where they encounter Tom Paris' Captain Proton holodeck program and take it for reality. To get Voyager "out of the mud," the crew must reach an accord with the aliens by playing along with the scenario.

This episode reportedly came about after a fire broke out on the sets at Paramount Studios. The Voyager bridge sustained minor damage and needed repairs, so an episode was needed -- fast! -- with virtually no bridge scenes. Seizing on the Captain Proton holodeck program that had seemed to go over well this season, staff writer Bryan Fuller pitched a story that would put it center stage.

Clearly, this was fun for everyone involved. For the writers, it was an opportunity for self-mockery. ("Why are the recaps always inaccurate?" "Doesn't this planet look familiar?") For the actors, it was a chance to cut loose and behave out of character. (Tuvok gets a lot more sarcastic humor than usual, though of course the biggest camp comes when Janeway dons the Arachnia costume.) Post-production is in on the fun too, with an old-timey musical score, Warner Brothers-style animation of drifting "pheromones," and an edit that includes wipes and irises.

There's a lot of mileage here in lampooning a bygone era of ridiculous science fiction. (Careful though -- Voyager will one day soon be as old as Flash Gordon was at the time this episode was made!) Guest star Kirsten Turner ruptures eardrums with her terrified shrieks. Names like "Satan's Robot," the "Death Ray," and "the President of Earth" are made to laugh at.

I actually appreciate the restraint here of doing a holodeck story in which the ever-malfunctioning "safety protocols" are never compromised. Voyager and its crew are only briefly in real jeopardy here -- a good choice for an episode setting out to be "just for fun." (Well, maybe there only being four functioning bathrooms on the ship is a true threat. But hey... one of the rare confirmations that there are indeed bathrooms in Star Trek.)

With all that to like here, I must confess that there's an unfair ceiling on how much I can truly enjoy this episode: the fact that in the very same year, the movie Galaxy Quest was released. Galaxy Quest is all of this: aliens mistaking science fiction for reality, loving send-up of classic science fiction tropes, lots of great jokes. But Galaxy Quest is also itself surprisingly heartfelt at times, and actually an amazing incarnation of the very thing it's sending up. (Count me in the crowd that says Galaxy Quest is actually the best Star Trek movie that's ever been made.)

Other observations:

• There's an implication early on that the music we here in the Captain Proton scenario is actually audible in the holodeck itself.

• Tom reads a message on his ship's ticker tape device at one point... backwards from the direction in which it would actually be printed.

There might have been a few months in 1999 where I might have regarded "Bride of Chaotica!" as grade A or A- Star Trek... and then Galaxy Quest came to knock it off the pedestal. Hard. It's not that there's room for only one up top; it's just that Galaxy Quest does everything this episode does (and more) so well that it makes me rethink whether this was really that good in the first place. So I wind up giving "Bride of Chaotica!" a B. Maybe unfairly... but there it is.

Galaxy Brained

Writer-director James Gunn is off to run the DC superhero film franchise (and if Peacemaker is any indication, it'll be better for that). But first, Gunn has a goodbye to the franchise and characters that turned so many into fans, with Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.

If you're a fan of the other Guardians movies, you're almost certain to like this one; it's very much of a piece with the first two in tone and content. It is, as expected, fairly irreverent and definitely funny. Marvel movies have shifted much more to this mode over the years, so much so that it's easy to forget that before the first Guardians movie, the MCU was a much more dour and uninviting place. Still, not all the movies are hitting this strike zone as consistently as James Gunn and this cast.

Speaking of the cast, it's fun to watch Gunn continue to collect actors. It's clear that if you do good work one of his movies, he's going to keep looking to you whenever possible. (That's why the likes of Nathan Fillion and Michael Rooker show up in so many of his films.) In the long six years since the last Guardians movie, Gunn has added to his collection. So Guardians Vol. 3 includes a broad turn from Chukwudi Iwuji (from Peacemaker) as the larger-than-life villain The High Evolutionary.

In basically every review I post of an MCU movie, I wind up complaining about the CG-laden climax that has insufficient emotional weight. It's as if pixel count and stakes are inversely proportional. But it's also as if this is part of the viewer's "contract" with the MCU, and that I should stop bringing it up. Still, I'll mention it here to say that Guardians Vol. 3 does better in this regard. The finale does indeed throw more CG on screen than the mind can process (though with its space setting and countless alien creatures, the whole movie does that) -- and yet there is a smart awareness of the problem, and so Gunn has included "something to fight for" in the script that does help give a humanist lifeline to hold on to during the spectacle.

Still, I think it's fair to say that this franchise within the larger MCU franchise is exhibiting signs of diminishing returns. I'd say each Guardians move has been slightly less good than the one before, and so to me it feels pretty good that this is set to be the last one -- I feel the "decay rate" applied to a Vol. 4 would take the movies below some notable threshold of quality, and I think a credible claim can still be made that it's "going out on top" to end now.

But if this is the end, there is one decision I don't quite understand. A minor spoiler of the first 10 minutes of the movie, but the plot here is ultimately about trying to save Rocket's life. Putting the character basically in a coma is a perplexing choice to me. Yes, he's in the movie via flashbacks (and those flashbacks are even the source of most of the movie's most emotional scenes). But to do a "final Guardians of the Galaxy" movie structured in a way that means you don't get to see all the Guardians together on one final adventure? That seems strange to me. (Especially in light of the fact that Gunn was forced by franchise decisions to write for a Gamora-who-isn't-Gamora.)

Despite a couple of reservations, though, I'd say Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was generally good. I'd give it a B. It does feel like the MCU has some losses to now make up for in losing some of these characters and the creative force behind them.

Night Terrors

Ever since I watched Dark (and enjoyed it tremendously), Netflix has seized upon the knowledge that I'm open to watching high-concept TV series in foreign languages, recommending to me all manner of things I'd reckon most people have never heard of. I recently decided to take a chance on one in particular: Into the Night.

This is a Belgian television series, primarily in French (but featuring a cast of diverse nationalities and languages). It kicks off when a desperate man hijacks a red-eye flight to demand the pilot continue to fly away from the sunrise. His wild claims are soon substantiated: the sun has become lethal, its rays killing everyone on Earth in an inexorable march around the globe. For the people on this plane, their only hope to stay alive is to keep finding ways to stay in darkness, flying ever westward and... into the night.

The simplest encapsulation of this series I can think of is that it's a streamlined version of Lost. It features a diverse cast of people struggling to survive after a catastrophe. Each episode is nominally about one character in particular, featuring a flashback of their life before the airplane. It's a character drama at its heart, about the divisions within the group that manifest in the high-pressure situation. And it's a bit science fiction, of course, given the central conceit of it all.

But, as I said, it's also streamlined -- in every conceivable way. There's really just the one central "mystery," and it does ultimately have an answer. The character flashbacks aren't woven throughout an episode, but rather are short vignettes at the beginning of an episode that get right to the point before rejoining the action in the present. Episodes run closer to a half-hour than an hour. There are only six episodes in each of the two seasons.

Still, even this stripped-down storytelling is sufficient to be engaging. Characters, and the relationships between them, develop quickly -- and this quickly becomes the reason to keep watching. Some people are likeable and others loathsome. Some toggle back and forth between the two. New problems arise that have to be overcome -- though with so few episodes, the series doesn't have to go to extreme lengths to keep injecting new jeopardy into the mix.

Unless you're dialed in to foreign actors to a far greater extent than most, you're not likely going to recognize any of the performers here. Still, everyone seems well cast for their roles, and more than capable of making this far-fetched situation seem believable. Many of them are acting in at least two languages, upping the degree of difficulty. But there really aren't any characters I didn't "care" about (in one way or another).

Unfortunately, the second season does end on a cliffhanger... and there has been no indication either way as to whether there are more episodes to come. There is a single season of a spin-off series (which I've begun to watch; perhaps that will be a future post), but it's a different take on the central premise rather than a continuation. This could be all the Into the Night there will ever be, and that lack of a real ending might be a dealbreaker for many who would otherwise enjoy it.

But I myself would give the series a B+. At roughly 6 hours, end to "end," it's far less of a time commitment than most TV recommendations you'll get. If you're one of those people who liked Lost, but thinks it went on far too long for its own good, this almost certainly will be up your alley.

Voyager Flashback: Latent Image

One thing about the streaming era of television is that an episode that really needs about 10 extra minutes can get it. That's something that broadcast TV can't offer, and an issue that I think hurt Star Trek: Voyager's "Latent Image."

The Doctor learns that someone has erased several of his memories. Yet the fact of that is not as shocking as the reason for it: a moral conundrum that his ethical subroutines cannot resolve threatens to corrupt his entire program.

This is an interesting stew of an episode with a lot of ingredients -- as you might note from the three credited writers on the story. I think it's wise that this episode isn't too much of just one thing, though. The mystery of the Doctor's missing memories is intriguing at first, but the audience figures out that Captain Janeway is responsible well before the "encyclopedia anatomy transparencies" revelation of her holographic representation. The decay of the Doctor's faculties is potent, but also too similar to a previous episode's subplot to fill more of the run time here. Janeway's moral conundrum is interesting, though the nature of the choice and the stoic way she approaches it feels pretty reminiscent of "Tuvix." But because none of these elements are the sole focus of the episode for long, each is able to provide good moments.

In the early going, it's fun that the Doctor turns to Seven of Nine as an investigator. There is a conspiracy here, but it predates her arrival on the ship, so she is unaware of the context and willing to help. The episode seems to want us to figure out the "who" before actually revealing it, knowing that the "why" is far more interesting. So it gives us knowing looks between characters, and an apparently immovable moral stance by Janeway. Most effectively, it puts Seven in the position of moral advocacy for the rights of an individual (not a Collective), and then allows Janeway to be moved off that "immovable" stance because of it.

As the episode segues into "how we got here," we get an interesting blend of emotional trial and science fiction trappings. The Doctor has to make an choice to save one of two lives, and because he is a program who can experience a "run time error," he ends up breaking down as a result. But I find this the weakest part of the story. For one thing, there's a big "bump" getting into it, in the fact that Tom Paris is there at the moment of the decision. For the story to work, Paris can't "make the Doctor's decision for him," and yet it's unthinkable that he wouldn't lobby to save Harry Kim over some random ensign. Then there's the fact that the Doctor's breakdown doesn't have enough screen time to be gradual. The reality of the pace of making TV means that Robert Picardo doesn't have the time to craft a nuanced performance -- so he pretty much ends up ranting like a psychopath (as he did in a previous episode).

Finally, the episode focuses on Janeway as she reevaluates and reverses the decision she made. I love seeing a stoic leader reconsider like this, and I really love that the situation makes her seem more strong (not less) for doing so. Yet while I praise not revisiting a version of the Tuvix dilemma at length, I do think not quite enough time is given here either. I'm not sure the episode convincingly leaves us at a point where we believe in the Doctor's eventual recovery. It just sort of... ends. (Apparently, script writer Joe Menosky had an alternate version of the final scene that was heavily rewritten by show runner Brannon Braga, and Menosky insists his version would have been better.)

Other observations:

• The physical examination the Doctor gives Janeway early on in her ready room is absolutely ridiculous. What the hell kind of "medical techniques" is he using?

• Janeway drinks coffee at 2 AM? And doesn't have trouble sleeping because of it?

• Of course, Kes should be present in these flashbacks to the Doctor's past. (But isn't, for obvious production reasons.)

While I believe this episode had to be the sort of hodgepodge that it is, I also think it gets shorted for time in key areas, and consequently asks too much of its actors with too few scenes. It's still reasonably effective, though; I give "Latent Image" a B.

Bodies at (Final) Rest

I had heard -- both in online articles and from friends who watch a lot of movies -- that 2022 was an exceptional year for the horror genre. The list of 2022 horror movies I've heard praised, and would like to get to at some point, is quite long. Gotta start somewhere. And I did recently, with Bodies Bodies Bodies.

A group of young friends (and not really friends) are throwing a "hurricane party": they're all going to a mansion to play drinking games and ride out a coming storm. One of those games is "Bodies Bodies Bodies," in which the group tries to identify who among them is a "killer." But when the power goes out and someone actually turns up dead, the game turns terrifyingly real.

This movie is the English-language view of Dutch director Halina Reijn. With a screenplay by Sarah DeLappe (and a story by Kristen Roupenian), the result is an effective fusion of a horror movie with a teen comedy like Mean Girls or Clueless. You might even say it takes an already black comedy like Heathers and adds more blood and gore. In any case, it's a razor sharp work of satire and social commentary.

Ultimately, Bodies Bodies Bodies is about how shallow and empty these characters are, and how their priorities are completely out of order. (Even in a crisis. Especially in a crisis.) Force them to go without the internet for one night, and all hell breaks loose. The movie rides the line between comedy and horror incredibly well, generating a laugh one moment with precision dialogue, and honoring the horror genre with the next with a fun, tense set piece.

This is an incredibly smart use of a limited cast and a single location. Your buddies that maybe have said "we should make a movie some time?" You probably could have made this one... if you'd been clever enough to think of it and skilled enough to execute on the idea.

The most recognizable faces in the cast are Pete Davidson and Lee Pace... but it's the five women who really make the movie what it is. Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Myha'la Herrold, Chase Sui Wonders, and Rachel Sennott all trade verbal and physical blows over a tight 94 movie that entertains every step of the way.

And so I begin my survey of 2022 horror movies I've missed by finding one that makes me revise my Top 10 Movies list for the year. That's just by a bit; at a very solid B, Bodies Bodies Bodies just takes over that 10th slot. Still, I'm very glad I watched it, and I think plenty of my readers would enjoy it too.

Picard: The Last Generation

To my loyal readers who last week were looking for my thoughts on the finale of Star Trek: Picard -- I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. I went to the GAMA Expo last week. So yes, this is now a week-and-a-half after the fact, but here it is: my review of "The Last Generation."

An old enemy has revealed itself to be behind the attack on the Federation all along. Now only Picard and his old crew can save the day -- and his son.

To not keep you waiting any longer: yes, I liked this finale. It was notably better than the finales of Picard seasons one and two. It was an enormously better than the last "finale" the Next Generation cast got, in the horrible Star Trek: Nemesis. But no, it was not "perfect." And I think maybe I'll start with those parts that weren't, to then make way for all the good stuff. And as for what wasn't great, I think you can sort of begin and end with all the Borg stuff. (Well, one other thing: I certainly didn't need that bonus scene with Q.)

It's always been sort of the M.O. for Star Trek: Picard to be emotionally right on the mark while being a bit shaky in the fine details, and so perhaps there should be no surprise that we got that again. The Borg Queen's team-up with the Dominion was "explained," but it felt like a brisk and perfunctory explanation. "We're both mad at the Federation, something something, evil plan."

Then there's the problem that has plagued the Borg ever since they started showing up on Voyager on a recurring basis: they were too easily defeated. The day one Borg concept of their technology being decentralized was ditched in favor of a Star Wars style "fly inside and shoot it here" weakness. As we waited for this weakness to be exploited, the spacedock held out for a ridiculously long time against the fire of a hundred starships. (It gave real "why don't you make the whole plane out of the black box?" vibes -- why not build starships out of whatever the spacedock is made of?) Basically, the Borg Queen twirled her figurative mustache for a while, but was ultimately pinned rather helplessly to the wall until it was time for her defeat.

The more weight I give to all that material, the less charitable I'm inclined to be about this final episode. But fortunately, there was so much else to like. Foremost, the finale deftly found a way to give every one of the seven core TNG cast members their own moment to shine. For many viewers, the favorite moment might be linked to a favorite character; for me, is was actually seeing one character finally get their due: Troi got to pilot the Enterprise and not crash it, rescuing half the team thanks to her connection to Riker.

That moment was emblematic of what made the emotional tone of this episode so right: you could see that the writers were also fans, and they wanted to give all fans (including themselves) a better ending than we got last time around. That's why, despite my expectation that a character would be killed off in the finale, it didn't happen. We all got that ending when Data was killed off in Star Trek: Nemesis, and it was terrible. Characters were willing to die, and in this case, that really was enough. I may not have liked most of the Borg's involvement here, but it's undeniably the right move for the character of Picard to make him face his fear one final time -- crucially choosing to embrace it for the sake of his own son.

As I'd hoped, the show also found time for Seven and Raffi do get their moments too. I actually found myself oddly moved, perhaps more than by any other scene, at the farewell between Worf and Raffi. Through some alchemy of using the now-mostly-comedic character of Worf for drama, and/or Michelle Hurd's ability to say everything with a look, I found Worf's gift to Raffi of restoring her reputation to be sweet and profound. And of course, what's not to like about seeing Captain Seven of the starship Enterprise? (Except perhaps not learning her "catch phrase" after so much wind up.)

Other little touches through really made this finale a triumph. The audio cameo by Walter Koenig as Chekov's descendant brought in one more "generation" to a season that's tried to include as many others as it could. (And naming him "Anton" in honor of Anton Yelchin was a lovely accent.) We did indeed get real Tuvok -- and if you're not going to have Janeway be the one to come give Seven her promotion, Tuvok does feel like the next best choice. Ending everything on a poker game was a lovely echo of "All Good Things..." -- and having the camera linger on them for so long subtly reminds us: this Star Trek cast is the one that truly all loves one another in real life, with no behind-the-scenes drama.

This final season of Star Trek: Picard, and this finale in particular, gave us exactly what it set out to give, much like Star Trek VI for the original cast: one final, grand adventure, ending on an uplifting and happy note. I'm going to call that an A-. (Even though the more I let myself think about the Borg stuff, the more it might start to look more like a B+.) As they say, the people involved in this final season of Picard "understood the assignment."