I suppose at least the Church of Satan can make some mischief with this.
(Oh, and while I'm here -- shout-out to any college applicants out there trying to to write an essay that's compelling at the same time it doesn't trip an admission board's fear of a lawsuit. Assuming they can still afford to apply for college.)
Soon after that, we stopped at an area that was new to all three of us, an overlook at a spot named Calcite Springs, a real treat for park visitors interested in rock striations.
From there, we gradually worked our way back to our lodge -- a drive of well more than an hour, as far out as we'd gone... and longer even than we expected, owing to what may count as the day's "awkward encounter." Back at the start of the day at the Mud Volcano, a gushing woman came up to us (uninvited, so far as I know) to tell us that a mama grizzly and her two cubs were about a half mile up the road, and if we hurried, we might see them. No such luck. (Actually call this the awkward encounter -- she'd just decided to go up to strangers and con them?)
Captain Pike departs to seek legal help for his first officer, leaving Spock in command. But routine repairs at spacedock turn into a vital mission when the Enterprise receives a message from La'an, who has uncovered a conspiracy that threatens the tenuous peace between the Federation and the Klingons.
This was a solid episode of Strange New Worlds, and I'm beyond thrilled to have the show back. That said, there were a couple of odd choices about it... and I'll focus there first before turning to unreserved praise.
I know modern Star Treks are more "ensemble cast" affairs than "star vehicles," but it's pretty wild to me to exclude Anson Mount so thoroughly from the season premiere of the show. I suppose this was necessary because they wanted to open the season with more whiz-bang action than a "court episode" about Una Chin-Riley could allow... and it's not like the rest of this cast can't carry an episode without Mount. (Any one of them could on their own; together, they're more than up to it.) Still, I felt the absence of Mount's undeniable charisma in this episode.
Also, that action they wanted to showcase in this first episode? Not all of it felt totally organic to me. After both the physicians, M'Benga and Chapel, had moments highlighting how war has left them haunted, we got a sequence that involved them shooting up with "super soldier serum" to kick much Klingon ass in a prolonged fist fight. Both Babs Olusanmokun and Jess Bush were great in the sequence (and I totally get that you'd want to showcase Olusanmokun's real-world martial arts skills, just as Discovery used Michelle Yeoh in a similar way). Still, it felt like a dissonant note for the two characters.
...amid an episode that otherwise used all the characters (that weren't having off-screen adventures) excellently. What a display of what a great cast they have here on Strange New Worlds. It's not that everyone was getting "Emmy reel" moments here (with one possible exception I'll come back to), but everyone was showing how solidly they know their characters here after just 10 episodes. And the whole highlighted just how well these different instruments in the orchestra played together: the prickly sass of Ortegas, the skilled poise of Uhura, the stoic resolve of La'an, and so on, and so on.
And it was, obviously, a great Spock episode. From his quiet nerves about command to his quickly-hidden concern for Chapel, the character got great moment after great moment. Ethan Peck benefits, of course, from having more consistently better writing than past Spocks received... and Zachary Quinto in particular often had to share the screen with Leonard Nimoy, which certainly limited his ability to truly own the role. But the way Peck delivers time and time again is really something. If Strange New Worlds were to run, say, five or six seasons, even at just 10 episodes each, his time in the role could approach enough episodes to make the unthinkable thinkable: yes, Leonard Nimoy will always be Spock, but could Ethan Peck be an even better Spock?
And while I'm on the cast, let me acknowledge the new addition, Carol Kane in the recurring role of Pelia. Her quirky demeanor and quirkier accent feel like a pretty wild tonal shift, but I think it's within the bounds of what Strange New Worlds can accommodate. Not that I'm going to turn down appearances from the delightful and funny Kane in any case. I'll be particularly interested to see how her character plays off the other characters throughout this season; we got a fun interplay between Pelia and Spock in this episode, and I think that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I'll also add that I'm glad Trek overall has seemingly decided to pull back from Star Trek: Discovery's particularly "monstrous" take on how Klingons look. I was more or less on board with having a changed appearance (Trek has done that before, after all), but I think the dramatic reasons for it in Discovery (to make them more threatening and alien) don't necessarily apply here. This new take (not quite Next Gen era either) feels about right.
Back in the car, where we gradually made our way counterclockwise around Yellowstone's Grand Loop Road and arrived at our home for the next few days, the Lake Lodge Cabins. We were expecting perhaps a cut above "walls and a roof," but they've been rebuilding some of the lodging in this area near Yellowstone Lake, and we wound up with something pretty close to a standard hotel room. We had just a little bit of time to decompress before it was back to the car for a long drive to a dinner reservation at the Grant Village Fish House. (If you've never been, everything in Yellowstone is a long drive.)
The dinner we ate was good enough, but the reason I mention it is that it gave us our third straight day of "awkward encounters." Our poor server might well have been having her first "un-shadowed" day ever on the job -- she seemed both young enough and nervous enough. She'd never opened a wine bottle before, and wound up splitting the cork in half and losing part of it inside the bottle. This left her so flustered that when she took off for help, she left her serving tray at our table. While I don't think we did anything to make her feel particularly bad about any of this, she pretty much avoided our gazes every subsequent time she stopped by for the rest of dinner. (But hey, I once worked a little less than two months waiting tables, and was as bad at it as I hated it. Nothing but sympathy here.)
It was still raining as we drove back to the lodge for the night -- the combination of rain, windshield wipers, and lodgepole pines pressed in on the road forming an especially hypnotic challenge to maintaining focus behind the wheel. But good news! This was the last rain for the rest of our time in Yellowstone... a time I'll pick back up with in a future post.
And unfortunately, that was about all we were able to do. The drive back to Jackson took us right by a number of beautiful lookouts in the park -- some made famous by Ansel Adams photography, some easily located in a quick internet search. All were completely obscured by what was now approaching "downpour," and even the first row of the Tetons had vanished from view. Perhaps some other day, I'll have my own worthy picture from Oxbow Bend, the Snake River Overlook, or Schwabacher Landing. (We tried again the next morning during our drive north into Yellowstone, but the rain persisted.)
Still, the late afternoon and evening were not a loss. Jackson is, famously, a destination ski town. That made for plenty of options for food and drinks. We had wood-fired pizza from Yeah Buddy, and great cocktails at FIGS to cap off the day. (And this was after some brewery stops the night before, when we'd first arrived in Jackson.) We did cement on this second night, though, that "awkward encounters" were to be a running theme of the trip.
On this night, we watched the awkward encounter as some stranger just sat down with a couple at the table next to us, despite being told "no," and proceeded to chat them up for... a ride? A threesome? We never found out before we left, but we watched the stone-faced expressions on the couple gradually soften to the point where it no longer seemed like anyone should step in (even had I been inclined to do so).
It takes two events at least to begin a pattern, so it's worth noting that the most awkward encounter of the trip had actually come the night before. Suffice it to say that public bathrooms have locks for a reason -- and it's tough to gracefully close out with your server after they have failed to use one of those locks. (More awkward still when somehow, you run into the same person coming off your hotel elevator -- at a totally different location a half mile away -- 90 minutes later!)
In the days ahead, I'll bring tales of Yellowstone, mixed with catch-up on the unfolding new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and whatever else jumps in.
A group of 4 to 8 players each takes a wipe-off plastic slate and fields personal questions one at a time. Every question has a numerical answer. "On a scale of 0 to 100, how much do you like your first name?" "How long have you been practicing your favorite hobby?" "How many times have you been skiing?" Everyone secretly writes their own answer, and then one by one must rank their answers in ascending order, without looking at what anyone else has written. When everyone has placed their answer on the top, bottom, or somewhere in the middle of the answers that players ranked before them, all is revealed. You remove answers that aren't arranged in the proper order, and the group collectively scores 1 point for each answer that remains. Over the course of 8 questions, you try to amass the best score you can.
With this game, designer Kasper Lapp (whose credits include the quirky Magic Maze), has tackled what I think may be one of the trickier challenges in game design. Fun Facts isn't just a party game, it's basically a "get to know you" game. I've played my share of those over the years -- and while it may be the introverted side of me talking, I find them to generally be terrible. Maybe it's that so many of these kinds of games are half-hearted, mass market efforts -- the kind you find at 50% off in the snaking checkout queue of a store that generally doesn't actually sell board games. It doesn't feel to me like much thought is usually brought to bear on these kinds of games.
Fun Facts feels different. Certainly, it won't be for everyone. If, for example, you and your gaming group can't get with the fact that Just One sort of has a score, but it sort of doesn't really matter, Fun Facts isn't going to win you over. But like Just One, Fun Facts feels like a game and not merely an activity. You have to think about the questions, think about the answers you give, think about where you place them -- and you find yourself second-guessing yourself at many steps of the way.
The questions in the game feel carefully curated, too. I don't get the sense that Kasper Lapp just wrote down the first couple hundred questions that occurred to him and called it a day; most of what's here really does make you think. We played multiple times in our first session, and while we did reject a few questions (something the game encourages you to do if you think a question isn't good for your group), we generally found a variety that worked for "all ages" and got you thinking about things in a different way.
Okay, this is a "get to know you better" game. You'd be completely lost trying to play this with total strangers. But it was fun and sometimes surprising to learn things about people I've known for decades (how much they really love to cook, how much they'd say the weather affects their mood), and fun to discuss oddball minutia with them (does showering count as time "working on your appearance" in the morning?").
Fun Facts was recently nominated as one of this year's three candidates for Spiel des Jahres. While I haven't played the other two nominees yet, I think this sets a high bar for the others to "win my vote." (The vote I don't actually get, to be clear.) My prediction, based on the taste preferences indicated by past award winners, is that Fun Facts probably won't win. But I also have another prediction: this is going to become the go-to "one more game?" option on nights where we have large groups. Simple, elegant, and fun, I give Fun Facts an A-.
When Voyager becomes trapped in a "chaotic space" phenomenon, Chakotay begins to have more and more intense visions incorporating his holodeck boxing scenario. As he comes to realize these might be a message from aliens, he becomes the ship's only possibility of escape.
This episode is kind of a remake of The Next Generation's "Night Terrors," itself a not-great episode that's a rough place to start from. But what really makes "The Fight" the opposite of a chef's kiss is the dopey way that the boxing motif is woven throughout the episode. The narrative of a boxing match being a metaphor for your internal fight feels pretty played out (even at the time of this episode; Rocky had won Best Picture two decades earlier). Having your "corner man" literally tell you this moral in dialogue, lest the audience miss the metaphor, is just bad writing.
Of course, there's plenty more bad writing here to go around. Plucking for some reason Boothby out of Trek lore to be in this episode? I can believe that everyone liked working with Ray Walston before, but it simply makes no sense to turn the groundskeeper into a coach. Nor does it work for Chakotay to be genuinely questioning his sanity here because of a similarly afflicted grandfather we've never heard about before. Character attitudes shift without explanation; one moment, Janeway is practically begging Chakotay to go into one of his hallucinations, but the next it's Chakotay begging to go back in and everyone else saying no.
We get a lengthy, overwrought dream sequence that meanders without reaching a point. (Just like a real dream. And just about as much fun as hearing someone else describe theirs to you in elaborate detail.) We get that hackneyed trick of starting in the middle of the action and then jumping back in time to see how we got there. Oh, and let's not overlook the sheer silliness of the name "chaotic space."
Bad writing leads to bad directing; the dream sequences are an "everything at the buffet" collection of Dutch angles, harsh lighting, handheld camera, and weird lens choices. Bad acting too: it's too hard for Robert Beltran to sell screaming technobabble at the top of his lungs. (And Robert Picardo seems to forget at a few points that he's playing the real Doctor and not "dream Doctor," as he behaves quite strange and over the top in multiple scenes with Chakotay.)
Other observations:
For me, this episode "surpasses" the terrible "Nemesis" (another Chakotay episode) to become the worst episode of Star Trek: Voyager. (So far, at least.) I give it a D+... which is maybe a little high when you consider that while watching The Next Generation, I did give out a couple of lower marks to that show. Perhaps I just expected more of them than I do of Voyager? In any case, this one's only for the completionists.
Shortly after Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres marry, problems aboard Voyager begin to mount. People begin dying and the ship itself starts to decay. Soon, the crew discovers the "cause." They're not the real Voyager and its crew, but the mimetic life forms left behind when the actual Voyager encountered them. And now there may be nothing they can do to prevent their imminent destruction.
On the one hand, I appreciate that Voyager actually tries its hand here at a bit of serialized storytelling, with a direct sequel to a previous episode. Even more impressive is that they've taken what was actually a rather poor episode and made a clever and often compelling sequel to it. The writers lean into the conceit, embracing a quite tragic ending that's quite unusual for the series. On the other hand, nothing about episode actually "matters." It almost feels like a time travel reset, in that our real characters aren't impacted at all and have no idea that anything ever happened to them.
On the one hand, there are several emotional moments throughout the episode that do land, despite the fact that this isn't the "real crew." Characters die, and it has a profound effect on the survivors. Paris spirals after losing B'Elanna. Janeway and Chakotay argue about what to do, and it takes Chakotay's death for Janeway to come around to his point of view. Ultimately, Harry Kim finally gets a "promotion," to first officer and then captain, as everyone else around him is lost. There's tragedy both in the crew being unable to get their story out, and the fact that the advanced engine they created (dooming them all) could have actually helped the real Voyager.
On the other hand, there is an awful lot of hand-waving here -- so much that even if you can look past some things, it's hard to ignore them all. How did the entire crew forget the truth of their identities in just a few months? How did the mimetic goo of their homeworld graduate from copying life-forms to copying Voyager?
Actually, one thing about this episode actually does "matter," in how it actually shackles the writers for later. By depicting a wedding here between fake Tom and B'Elanna, they close off the option to do much with the real couple down the road. (It would feel too much "been there, done that.") That's a shame, both because the actual characters deserve better, and because this is a really weird wedding. Hearing "Heart and Soul," even in a jazzy rendition, sounds like a music lesson. The toast includes very awkward quips about homicide and pain sticks, and strange smack talk. It feels oddly old-fashioned to see guests throwing rice (though I guess there aren't any pigeons on Voyager to worry about.) The honeymoon is going to be on the holodeck in Prohibition-era Chicago; this would be like you honeymooning in the Dark Ages.
Yet, perhaps there's some special spark in asking the cast to play characters who aren't quite their usual characters. Because somehow, I do think this episode mostly works. Much of the writing is really quite deft, like the way Tuvok and Chakotay almost sneak up on revealing to the audience that this episode is a sequel. And yes, daring to give us about the bleakest ending possible.
Other observations:
Part of me can't get over the fact that this episode kind of "doesn't happen." But taken on its own terms, it's a pretty solid, almost Twilight Zone-ish episode of Voyager. I give "Course: Oblivion" a B. In any case, it certainly redeems the episode "Demon" that inspired it.
This is a difficult series to pin down. It's a primarily dramatic show, but its episodes only run 30 minutes. It's based on a novel by M.O. Walsh, but apparently a quite polarizing novel -- you don't have to look far to find a sizeable number of passionate detractors arguing against the book's ardent fans. Where you can perhaps begin to get a handle on the series is the fact that it was developed by David West Read, one of the executive producers and writers of Schitt's Creek. While the two shows are quite different in tone and execution, it feels like they're both walking toward the same guiding star: an exploration of characters who knowingly undertake a journey of self-improvement.
The Big Door Prize follows the residents of the small town of Deerfield, where a mysterious arcade-like machine one day appears out of nowhere. This "Morpho" machine is able to tell you your "Life Potential" on a little blue card, and soon the whole town is affected. People dabble in hobbies they've never indulged. Others explore potential new career paths. Some are awash in sorrow about a life missed that they didn't lead. Still others are troubled by how seriously everyone else seems to be taking things.
The show mostly centers on married couple Dusty and Cass, played by Chris O'Dowd and Gabrielle Dennis. Their relationship begins to falter a bit when Dusty gets an usually bland and on-the-nose "life potential" as Cass gets a shockingly outlandish one. This also draws focus away from their teenage daughter Trina (played by Djouliet Amara), who was already going through difficult things her parents knew nothing about.
As the season tracks their family story line, each new episode also throws a spotlight on one particular resident of the town and their "Morpho card." The show admittedly isn't in top form right out of the gate, but what soon emerges is a wide-ranging look at characters presenting a false face to the world while hiding the truth for themselves. This manifests in a variety of ways, both literal and figurative, and for a variety of reasons. But I soon found myself swept up in the stories of particular characters and wanting to know more.
As with all streaming services, figuring out what it takes for a show to be renewed can be something of an impenetrable black box. But The Big Door Prize was renewed by Apple TV+ just a few episodes into its 10-episode season. That season just concluded a few weeks ago, so it will be a while before new episodes arrive (especially with the writers' strike still unresolved). Perhaps making the series a harder sell: you'll spend that waiting time on a cliffhanger, as season one concludes in a far-from-final place.
Still, I'd say it's worth the journey and give The Big Door Prize a B+. I won't re-list every top notch show on Apple TV+ yet again, as I often do in these posts; I'll just say that if you add the service for one of those, you might also check this one out while you're there.
It turns out that this is one of the few negative things I can say about the movie -- that it's an animated movie pushing two-and-a-half hours long and still couldn't wrap up its story. It remains for the next movie to show us just how much is left to tell here, or whether the studio is just trying to get themselves a piece of Infinity War/Endgame (like so many other blockbusters are doing right now). For now, though, geeks can debate whether this movie is an Empire Strikes Back of its era, a rock-solid film, despite a cliffhanger, that might just be better than the original.
Across the Spider-Verse carries the torch proudly in everything that Into the Spider-Verse did so well. It's brilliantly organized visual "anarchy," allowing a potpourri of animation styles to live together in one movie. Each universe feels fully fleshed out, even when its only there for a quick sight gag. And the main universes where the story spends the most time are each fully capable of carrying a movie on their own.
But the narrative might be even more impressive. The MCU has been playing around in this multiverse space for an entire "phase" or whatever now, but has often been shaky on the drama amid the visceral thrills. The story of Across the Spider-Verse features several strong elements anchored fully on character. There are deep personal stakes here for both Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy. There's meaningful story here for their parents. There a worthwhile character arc for at least one other returning Spider-variant from the first movie, and interesting new characters with tales of their own too.
Hmm... I guess the reason why you couldn't wrap all that up in one movie start to look obvious. Indeed, perhaps it's all the more praise-worthy in that this movie was doing a lot of the things that the last live-action Spider-Man movie did well without having to leverage seven-plus movies before it to get there.
Returning voice actors from the first movie remain excellent, from Shameik Moore to Hailee Steinfeld to Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Vélez, Jake Johnson, and more. New cast members are equally compelling, including Oscar Isaac, Issa Rae, Daniel Kaluuya, Jason Schwartzman... and more. But to get too far into that even begins to touch on more spoilers than I'd like.
So I'll just wrap-up by saying I think Across the Spider-Verse is an A-. I look forward to the next movie (coming early next year, apparently), and hope that it can wrap things up with a film as deft as this one.
When Harry Kim pursues a clandestine relationship with an alien woman named Derran Tal, he contracts a disease that exposes the truth. But Derran is hiding a secret too, that strikes at the heart of her xenophobic, nomadic society.
The big "wait, what?" at the heart of this episode is that suddenly, after over 500 episodes of Star Trek across multiple franchises, we're now learning that hooking up with an alien hottie (without the captain's permission) is against Starfleet regulations? That's just the most laughable, contradictory notion. And it seems to me like a sign of the writers losing their nerve. There are already stakes here: Harry Kim's relationship has given him a sexually-transmitted disease, which in this science-fiction setting could have presented extreme risk. Instead, the effects seem largely cosmetic and benign, and the "lingering heartache" is really only an issue for the final scene (and not something that the audience will ever really see Kim grapple with).
The whole episode really operates this way, occasionally presenting good scenes or interesting avenues for story development before immediately doing something to undermine it. Paris is a friend to Kim by helping him initially hide the relationship... but he isn't caught and doesn't face consequences for doing so. There's sort of "Romeo and Juliet" potential in both ship captains forbidding the relationship... but no consequences at large attributable to the forbidden love itself (as opposed to the alien dissident movement; and there are no consequences at all for Voyager). The story is ultimately revealed to be about an oppressed minority within the alien society... but we really aren't shown how they're oppressed beyond a vague "I don't want the same things my square parents want, man."
It seems that at the beginning of their relationship, Darren really was just using Kim to facilitate some terrorism. Then they actually fell in love -- which I can more or less believe, as Garrett Wang and guest star Musetta Vander do have reasonably good chemistry together. But if the characters really loved each other -- so much that they've been breaking all these rules throughout the episode -- then nothing is stopping them from being together in the end! She could come to Voyager and be with him; he could leave Voyager to be with her. Instead, they just sort of break up for absolutely no reason. (Kim doesn't even voice a perfectly reasonable reason why: "you've been lying to me this whole time.")
Even the "ornaments" on the story work against each other in this way. It's quite interesting to have Voyager encounter another species that's surviving on a spaceship like they are. But the fact that they're also mistrustful of aliens doesn't feel like it adds much; Janeway has already broken down diplomatic barriers (after two weeks of effort) as the episode begins. Good moments (like Chakotay lobbying Janeway for leniency with Harry; Seven of Nine's dry "you're glowing" comment that's misread by Kim) live right along side bad ones (Seven's late decision that "love is not a disease" feels forced; I'm tired of Paris giving Kim shit about his love life; a momentary jeopardy that Voyager won't be able to detach from the "exploding" alien ship is nothing more than a tease before a commercial).
And another quiet friction within the story is how much Janeway essentially infantilizes Harry Kim. This conflict is at least represented in the dialogue -- Janeway says that she expects better from him and that she's protective of him, while Kim says he's not that fresh-faced newbie of five years ago. This really feels like the moment where Janeway, having heard from Chakotay and now from Kim himself, should realize Kim isn't that person anymore, and give him a promotion. But it doesn't seem like the writers much care about the character.
Other observations:
Garrett Wang does his best with a rare episode written for Harry Kim. But ultimately, this episode just feel underdeveloped: the alien dissident movement is vague, the romance runs inexplicably hot-then-cold, and the conflicts simply aren't that compelling. I give "The Disease" a C+.
We began with a brunch at the Court of Two Sisters. We ate from a Nola-inspired buffet, in a large and green courtyard area, to the soft sounds of a jazz duo. It was a lovely, laid-back way to start the last day, and was also a chance to cross off a few more expected foods from the list: grits, andouille sausage, and jambalaya. (GW Fins, our dinner on the first night, set a high bar for "best meal of the trip," but this might have cleared it.)
From there, though it was still before noon, we were on vacation. So we headed to the Carousel Bar and Lounge. This was a location we'd stopped by (on our way to other places) a couple of times, but we had never lingered due to the crowds. After all, there's one particular attraction people are here for: the circular bar. Around 20-25 people sit at a single-piece, granite-topped bar (in circus-themed chairs), as it slowly rotates once every 15 minutes. Yes, it's totally a novelty -- one that people line up several deep to experience. We were there early enough to snipe two seats as people were leaving, and enjoyed the very weird sensation of the room spinning with our first drinks of the day. (A Sazerac for me, of course.)
Pralines were another food item we had to cross off on a successful New Orleans "food and drink" trip, so we stopped off at one of many candy shops, Laura's, and picked up a box of half a dozen, in several varieties. We enjoyed a couple then and there, and took the rest to eventually finish over the next couple of days as one final lingering experience from the trip. I would imagine pralines are one of those things that can be quite different, depending on who makes them, but these were a delicious treat. (And not nearly the sugary torpedo of a beignet.)
One last shrimp meal came at a place called Bourbon House. I'd have probably gone on about how great it was had it come early in the trip, but by this point, this was just one more delicious-as-expected seafood option from a city where that's always delicious.
This felt like just the right amount of "eat, drink, and be merry" for a long weekend; I felt satisfied when we returned home. I could imagine perhaps one more day on a New Orleans vacation, more focused on other activities in the area -- perhaps one of their noted cemetery tours, or an excursion on a swamp boat. But I felt like we'd found almost everything we'd want to within walking distance of the French Quarter.
And I can always make myself a Sazerac whenever I want to "travel back" and remember the good times.
