A New Spin(-Off) on the Apocalypse

Over the past few months of blogging, I've drifted into a "policy" where I don't really bother posting mixed or negative reviews of a thing unless it's pretty solidly in the zeitgeist where everyone is sharing their opinion and I might as well too. I figure it's usually not worth it to point out something obscure only to say, "but I didn't really like it all that much." But I'm going to make an exception today for a TV series you can stream on Netflix, called Yakamoz S-245.

"What the hell is that?" I can imagine you asking. Answering that is easiest if I tell you why I'm blogging about it -- and that's because it's related to another series I posted about, Into the Night. That series from Belgium took place in an apocalypse where the coming dawn kills everyone on Earth, and followed one group of survivors who struggles to keep flying their commercial airplane ever westward, staying under cover of darkness.

Yakamoz S-245 is a spin-off of that series from the same creator, Jason George. Same apocalypse, but a different setting: this series follows the people aboard a deep sea exploration submersible, who survive the sun apocalypse and are then picked up by a military submarine and are forcibly integrated into its command structure. Like Into the Night, many nationalities and languages are represented here, but Yakamoz S-245 is primarily a Turkish series. Between the different language and culture, and the different survival premise, the series makes a pretty good case for what a compelling spin-off can be: it's an entirely different story grown from the same kernel of a conceit.

From there, a number of great anchors for drama are built into the series. Where the characters of Into the Night are almost all complete strangers to one another at the start of the series, Yakamoz S-245 is about two distinct groups of people trying to work together -- and there are additional family connections within each group. The oil-and-water qualities inherent in mixing military personnel with civilians also makes for a lot of dramatic friction.

I chose to blog about this series because A) it gives me one more chance to plug Into the Night, which I enjoyed; and B) if you liked Into the Night, you'll probably want to go on and give Yakamoz S-245 a try. That said, I certainly would not recommend that you watch Yakamoz S-245 on its own. Yes, it's a more conventional one hour drama (where Into the Night was doing "one-hour show" things in a half-hour format), and yes, it has clearly higher production values. But while it's interesting, it's simply not as good.

Starting from its tantalizing "ingredients," Yakamoz S-245 winds up following a pretty conventional "recipe." By halfway through the 7-episode single season, you'll have gotten wise to its formula. Every episode makes the same plot moves for its emotional pops, to diminishing returns. Also, the season doesn't conclude in any way -- and while that's also true of the "mother show," Into the Night, I feel it more keenly here. This is very much a story without an ending, and there's no word online of whether we'll ever get one.

So all told, I'll give Yakamoz S-245 a B-. It's not bad, but probably not good enough that I would have bothered posting about it if not for the connection to Into the Night. But I'll take another bite at that apple and suggest that perhaps in the weeks and months ahead, as corporate greed drags the two Hollywood strikes on and on (and new content begins to dry up), you might want to give Into the Night a try. (And then maybe try the spin-off too.)

Strange New Worlds: Those Old Scientists

This weekend, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds dropped a bonus episode, the much-anticipated crossover with Lower Decks. "Those Old Scientists" was everything I could have hoped for and more.

When the Cerritos is investigating a defunct time portal device, it's accidentally reactivated and sends Boimler back in time to Captain Pike's Enterprise. As the crew tries to figure out how to send Boimler back to his own time, Boimler tries (not very successfully) to avoid leaking information about the future that might alter the timeline. Then the problems double when Mariner also arrives from the future.

Star Trek has done a few crossovers before, but nothing of this scope or effectiveness. When Julian Bashir marched into Beverly Crusher's Sickbay, it was a minor element of a fundamentally "The Next Generation" episode. When Barclay showed up in late in the run of Voyager, he so thoroughly took over that it wasn't really a Voyager episode anymore. But the real magic of "Those Old Scientists" (among many magical moments) is that it legitimately felt like an episode of both Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks. Each show and its characters got to keep true to their identities, and any failure of those two tones to blend was harnessed as a strength of the storytelling, not a weakness.

On the Lower Decks side of the equation, Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome were thrown the tremendous challenge of bringing their performances out of the voice recording booth and onto a set. Both were superb at making the same fast-talking, wild, and definitionally cartoonish antics seem realistic. Quaid in particular gave us Boimler's scream, his wild "power walk," and his manic energy. It was remarkable. But also, the episode gave us legitimate storytelling for the Lower Decks characters: Mariner only participating in this mission in the first place because she knew what it would mean to Boimler, and the bit of social justice for Tendi and her Orion heritage.

On the Strange New Worlds side of the equation, we got a story that honored multiple story threads that have been accumulating throughout the season, including La'an's time travel experience, Una's deep feelings for Starfleet (even when Starfleet doesn't feel the same about her), Uhura's workaholic mentality, and Chapel and Spock's new relationship. Each of these character touchstones (plus a newly introduced one about Pike's father) were parts of largely serious moments in the episode. Jess Bush's performance as Chapel, in the moment Boimler unknowingly devastates her, was her best work yet on the show. Anson Mount's moment of realization at the profound wisdom he's just been given by these "toddlers" was another great moment in the vast collection he's building on this series.

But yes, there were hijinks aplenty -- and there, it did help that Strange New Worlds has taken its own big comedic swings at times, making an episode this light already within the boundaries of what was possible. Loads of referential jokes (and even a joke about being overly referential). So many good lines that I'll have to watch again and again to catch the ones I laughed over the first time around. An absolutely "chef's kiss" opening credits sequence that added Lower Decks animation (and references) to Strange New Worlds, serving as the perfect thesis statement for what you were about to watch. An animated epilogue with the Strange New Worlds crew that was fantastic (but also perhaps containing the only part of the episode that wasn't absolutely perfect: I don't think cartoon Pike's hair was high enough).

Cast and crew pulled off nothing short of a miracle here, and Jonathan Frakes may have delivered the most towering achievement in his Star Trek directing career. If this episode had merely been "not terrible," I feel like it would have seemed great simply for the degree of difficulty here. But I found it transcendent, a grade A peak for Strange New Worlds that tells me in no uncertain terms that this show really can do anything. (And they've teased another wild swing in a couple more episodes, to test that very theory.)

What a time for Star Trek fans.

Opp In?

I, like many, went out to the movie theater this weekend. I didn't complete the so-called "Barbenheimer" pairing (but I want to at some point), though I did catch half of that portmanteau in writer-director Christopher Nolan's newest opus, Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer might be the most Christopher Nolan movie yet. The biopic is sprawling in scope, a knotted braid of three different time periods presented in interpolated order. It's more star-studded you than possibly imagine, with practically every character (no matter how few lines they have) played by a recognizable actor looking to check "work with Christopher Nolan" off their bucket list. And, of course, its run time is epic too, clocking in at three hours.

To some extent, I think Oppenheimer is successful enough to earn these indulgences. The timey-wimey-ness of the biopic largely works (save an exception I'll get to) because it directly juxtaposes two core, critical truths of its subject: the man ushered in a previously impossible era for Weapons of Mass Destruction, and later became an outspoken opponent of them. The length of the film largely works (again, save an exception) because it provides the space to show that these two "versions" of Oppenheimer were not as incompatible as one might think, but were both within the man all along.

The star-studdedness of film just works, period, because when you can assemble a team of All Stars like this, you can rely on having an entertaining Home Run Derby. It would spoil the fun to reveal too many of the people who show up in Oppenheimer at one point or another, though certainly it spoils nothing to say that Cillian Murphy is strong at the hub of the movie. And most of the time, just as I'm beginning to wonder why such a big name would take such a small part, you get the grandstanding scene that shows why. (Emily Blunt is the strongest example of this.)

However, there is an aspect of the movie that simply didn't work for me at all: the "political thriller" story line. Oppenheimer tracks the man's "rise" and "fall" as you would expect, but also spends an outsized amount of time focusing on a Senate confirmation hearing for the man who orchestrated that fall, Lewis Strauss. I think that on just about every level, this aspect of the movie -- which takes up a full third of its run time -- is a misguided detour in an otherwise powerful film.

At the most basic level, I think the "Strauss hearing" story line fails because Oppenheimer himself appears nowhere in it. It's manifestly not about the biopic's principle subject. Structurally, it isn't woven into the film very effectively; where other "rise" and "fall" moments are juxtaposed right against each other to pair every triumph with a setback (and vice versa), the movie's expected climax -- the bomb test -- comes with a full hour of run time remaining... and then most of what follows is this awkward coda of the Senate hearing.

Most notably: thematically, this plot line doesn't work because it undermines the key emotional takeaway of the movie. The bulk of the story is keen to deliver a complex picture of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and leave you torn about how to evaluate his place in history: is he a hero or a villain? But the hearing story line is a lengthy take down of a man who tried to take Oppenheimer down, which slides an unhelpful thumb on the scales. If we need to witness the comeuppance of a man clearly presented as a "villain," that must by proxy make the object of his ire a "hero."

In short, I'd excise the entire Strauss hearing from the movie, relegating it to one of those on-screen blocks of "what happened next" text you often see at the end of a biopic. This would give the added benefit of removing one of the more unnecessary indulgences of the movie -- the fact that this story line is presented in black and white. I think the only thing you'd lose is that two of the stronger performances, from Robert Downey Jr. and Alden Ehrenreich, are centered in this part of the movie.

(Though there is one other indulgence where you just have to let Nolan be Nolan: it's kind of laughable to film this entire movie on IMAX cameras when the bulk of it is about tense conversations in tiny rooms. Collectively, there are only about 10 minutes of footage over three hours that showcase the scope one would associate with an IMAX screen. Short version: you can totally watch this movie at home and lose nothing.)

If I dedicated more of my write-up here to identifying what I didn't like about Oppenheimer, let me close by circling back to say that I still found it pretty good overall. (In any case, I think plenty of louder voices than mine are out there singing its praises.) I give it a B-. If you're the sort of person who cares about Hollywood award season, this is probably a movie you'll have to watch between now and then to be in the loop (and it will be better than many of the other movies you'll "have to watch"). But I think Christopher Nolan has been better than this.

Strange New Worlds: Lost in Translation

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds dropped a surprise this weekend, releasing the Lower Decks crossover episode several days ahead of schedule. But there was an episode before it that I haven't blogged about yet, and the "meal" was too good to skip straight to "dessert." So I'm here to talk about the sixth episode of season two, "Lost in Translation."

The Enterprise is working with the Farragut to bring a resource gathering station online inside a nebula. When Uhura is beset by audio and visual hallucinations of an increasingly horrifying nature, she's hard-pressed to convince anyone that they aren't symptoms of overwork. But one person from the Farragut believes her and is determined to help get to the bottom of it: James Kirk.

After two episodes featuring "alternate timeline" versions of Kirk, this time Paul Wesley shows up as the genuine article... and once again, I find him a compelling character both as written on the page and as portrayed by the actor. The sibling rivalry between Sam and Jim Kirk is especially interesting (a bit of an inversion of the typical older/younger brother dynamic).

Of course, the more interesting material comes in his interactions with Uhura. It seems likely that Kirk really is hitting on her when they first meet (that's the Kirk we know), but that quickly gives way to a genuine empathy and concern that plays out in a wonderful way. It's playing up an aspect of Kirk's character that I think has always been there, but wasn't exactly in the wheelhouse of William Shatner. (We saw Shatner's Kirk care this much for Spock -- and the "random strangers" alluded to in dialogue here -- and that's about it.)

But what I enjoyed best was that Kirk's presence in this episode didn't overwhelm and take over the story. This remained an Uhura episode, and I love how it examined her feelings on death. This is "the episodic" live-action Star Trek series right now, in sharp contrast to Discovery and Picard, and yet it's also honoring continuity for characters in a way that prior eras of Star Trek never did. The loss of Uhura's family and Hemmer (great to see him back for a bit!) still weighs heavily upon her.

Strange New Worlds is typically great with finding moments for most of its characters in every episode, and this week was no exception. Chapel and Spock get just one scene, really, but it's a great scene about trying to define their new relationship. (Side note: I love that Spock's first meeting with Kirk was filmed momentously for us, but wasn't actually important at all to the characters.) I wasn't as taken by the Una storyline, as it featured her seeming less "put together" than normal... though I did find it an interesting use of the new character of Pelia. Carol Kane's new character is usually prickly and doesn't care what others think, but here's that's shown to be compatible with caring how others feel.

One "punch-up" to the climax that I would have liked to see would have been someone finding something at the end that corroborated Uhura's explanation of events. (Preferably, something Sam Kirk discovers.) Pike going along with her at the end of this episode seems like a big vote of confidence on incredibly flimsy evidence. Still, that ultimately didn't undermine for me the things I really liked about this episode: a great Uhura story that showcased Celia Rose Gooding, deft use of James Kirk, and solid moments for the amazing Strange New Worlds cast.

I think I'd put this episode right in the "could go either way" territory of a B+ or A-. I'm going to fight the temptation to look downward on this episode in comparison to the wild crossover we got right on top of it; one downside of getting that early is that this episode didn't fully get its time in the sun. So yeah, call it an A-.

Voyager Flashback: Think Tank

Star Trek: Voyager made a big splash in early 1999 when, in some random mid-season episode, it featured a guest star appearance by Jason Alexander -- less than a year from the end of Seinfeld. Alexander himself had long been a Star Trek fan, and was thrilled to be in the episode "Think Tank."

When Voyager finds itself in hostile alien space with no apparent escape, they turn to a small group of hyper-intelligent strategists for a solution. But this "Think Tank" charges a high price for their services, and as payment for their help, they want Seven of Nine to leave Voyager and join their ranks.

Jason Alexander's character of Kurros is at the center of this episode -- but this doesn't feel like "stunt casting." He's here to act. His performance was a revelation at the time for anyone who knew only his work on Seinfeld: in sharp contrast to the manic, screaming George Costanza, Kurros is soft spoken, poised, and quite creepy. And he's positioned at the hub of a group of aliens far more alien than Star Trek usually presents, including a strange skin graft floating in a tube, a vague whale-like creature glimpsed through a window, and an old prop repurposed as an "artificial intelligence."

It's not just the weirdness here that makes the Think Tank -- and Kurros in particular -- a strong concept. The more we learn about Kurros, the more complicated he becomes. His sense of morality isn't exactly indefensible, but it really doesn't line up with Starfleet ideals. He himself was "payment" to the Think Tank as a child. He seems like a villain built to recur, and it's almost a shame he appears in only the one episode. 

On the other hand, repeat appearances probably would only have defanged the Think Tank just as the Borg were over time. (Indeed, they're rather similar except in scope, and the fact that the Think Tank anticipates your plans rather than reacting and adapting to them.) Even in this one episode, they're presented as so smart and so ahead of the game that it's almost tough to swallow that our heroes, with or without help, can actually get the drop on them. (Tom Paris' version of a "Rubik's cube" is quite inspiring.)

Plus, as much as I'm intrigued by the Think Tank itself, the episode has a few shortcomings that to me keep it from being truly great. The connections to the main characters is lacking: not enough is made of Seven's willingness to sacrifice herself from the greater good by joining the Tank, nor is enough made of Janeway's diplomatic prowess in persuading the Hazari to unite against the Tank. The Hazari themselves are a rather Hirogen-like alien race that don't seem fleshed out. And the destruction of an entire planet early in the episode is just an unresolved plot element: presumably the Think Tank caused this in their quest to win Seven of Nine, but this is never articulated.

Other observation:

• There are tons of nods to continuity here for Voyager fans. Kurros tries to pin his trickery on the Malon, mentions having helped a race resist the Borg, and even claims to have cured the Vidiian Phage. (If the Think Tank can travel that far, Voyager seems to be missing a "fast travel" opportunity here.)

"Think Tank" is a decent enough episode, but I feel like it's most memorable for Jason Alexander's presence. I give it a B.

Face Time

I really didn't want to subscribe to another streaming service. But I really did want to see the newest TV series starring Nastaha Lyonne, Poker Face. That meant subscribing to Peacock -- and during a big summer sale in which the streamer threw a year's subscription at me for practically the price of a month of some other services, I bit.

Poker Face is the creation of writer-director Rian Johnson, who set out to make the show specifically as a starring vehicle for Lyonne. The two bonded over a love of mysteries, and the format of Columbo in particular, and the resulting series essentially blends Columbo with The Incredible Hulk, casting Lyonne as Charlie, a woman on the run hopping around the country and solving murders everywhere she stops. Her special talent: she can tell, absolutely, when anyone is lying.

If you aren't familiar with Columbo, it's not a "whodunnit?" mystery format, but rather a "howcatchem?" Each episode of Poker Face starts with a full 10-15 minute vignette setting up the murder of the week. We see the crime and the culprit; what we usually don't see is Lyonne's character Charlie. The rest of the episode then shows us how Charlie fits into the scenario (often by jumping back to show us events before the crime), and how she ultimately cracks the case.

It is a challenging thing to make this format compelling, in my estimation. It's a real test of the old adage that it's the journey, not the destination. But Poker Face has two big weapons in its arsenal. One is Natasha Lyonne herself, who here again (as in other shows) is simply a delight to watch. Easy-going but prickly, likable but tough, raspy-voiced but musical, I think she's simply a capital-S Star who would have fit right into classic Hollywood (but who's a little too idiosyncratic to have ever been cast back then, I'd imagine.) To love watching her is to love this show.

The other weapon is the writing. Rian Johnson himself contributes several of the scripts, but he's also assembled a writing staff who makes sure that the show keeps improving as its 10-episode season unfolds. Once the formula is well-established, they begin finding marvelous ways to subvert it. I'd hate to spoil the surprises by giving examples here, but suffice it to say that episodes feature increasingly clever murders, weave Charlie into the story in increasingly smart ways, and throw in increasingly clever twists that reveal the opening sequences you saw at the start of an episode aren't the whole story.

There's also a shockingly deep bench of prominent guest stars. Rian Johnson has accumulated quite the contact list over his career, and many more people besides seem to be lining up to guest star in an episode of "Columbo." Thus, episodes of Poker Face feature Adrien Brody, Ron Perlman, Lil Rel Howery, Chloë Sevigny, Judith Light, Ellen Barkin, Tim Meadows, Nick Nolte, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Stephanie Hsu, Clea DuVall, and many, many, many, many more.

At the beginning of the season of Poker Face, I found it a fun bit of escapism, rather different than anything else in my regular TV "diet." By the end of the season, I was finding it an addictive dessert I was worried about consuming too quickly. Johnson and Lyonne have both pledged a second season, but between strikes and Johnson's obligations to a third Benoit Blanc movie, my bet would (sadly) be we won't get that until 2025. Still, don't let that stop you from enjoying what's here now (assuming Peacock fits into your streaming budget). I give Poker Face an A-, the "minus" only being a nod to the slower earlier episodes that were setting up the format that the show would go on to brilliantly play with.

Strange New Worlds: Charades

With its latest episode, "Charades," Star Trek: Strange New Worlds may have established a mid-season tradition for itself: the comedic Vulcan "hijinks" episode.

When Chapel and Spock are nearly killed in a shuttlecraft accident, mysterious aliens swoop in to save them. But they mistakenly "repair" Spock to be fully human -- which poses an imminent problem, as Spock's fiancée T'Pring is visiting with her parents. Spock's mother Amanda must help her son "learn to lie" so that he can complete an engagement ritual to the exacting standards of T'Pring's severe mother. Meanwhile, Chapel must confront the truth of her feelings for Spock to try to convince the aliens to reverse their mistake.

For a series that isn't primarily a comedy, Strange New Worlds really does know how to deliver the laughs. From great jokes in the script to crisp editing and (as always) razor-sharp performances from the cast, "Charades" delivers laugh out loud moments all throughout.

Ethan Peck absolutely crushes his huge opportunity here. He "acts big" without it seeming too big, nails the rare moments of physical comedy he's been given, and gives a performance that genuinely feels connected to the "Spock we know" while being quite different. While Peck's basking in the spotlight, though, don't overlook some fantastic non-verbal comedy from Anson Mount (especially during the Vulcan ritual sequence), or the women of Enterprise giving lessons on acting Vulcan, or the great work of the guest stars here -- Mia Kirshner (as Amanda) and Gia Sandhu (as T'Pring) are both returning to roles they've played before and giving us something new.

In another case of Strange New Worlds understanding just the right about of 1960s to give us, two other big guest stars serve up a Vulcan-tinged mini-episode of The Dick Van Dyke show right here in the middle of it all. T'Pring's parents, T'Pril and Sevet (played by Ellora Patnaik and Michael Benyaer), are a classic comic pairing of "impossible to please" and "eager to please (everyone)" that might come off as too broad to some. I found it just the right accent to augment the "classic Star Trek" vibes of this episode.

All that said, the real flourish here is when things get serious in the final act. The episode actually has something meaningful to say about bigotry, when Spock finally confronts his would-be mother-in-law. Best of all, his speech to her isn't centered on his own struggles, but on the greater appreciation he now has for what his mother has endured by living on Vulcan. In an episode where Spock has (explicitly, in dialogue) been reduced to the self-centeredness of a pubescent teenager, he -- again, we're talking about Spock -- arrives at a moment of profound empathy. We didn't know we were in a "walk a mile in someone else's shoes" story until it surprises us at the last moment.

And this is nearly as much a "Nurse Chapel" episode as it is a Spock episode. Chapel wrestles with guilt, overcomes her own self-doubt to confront a bigot of her own, and makes a big sacrifice for the person she loves. And with her carefully tuned performance, Jess Bush makes the "Chapel pines for Spock" story line, inherited from the original series, something actually compelling and nuanced to watch.

Like the first season's "mid-season Vulcan hijinks episode," I thought that "Charades" was a highlight of the season so far. I give it an A-. If Strange New Worlds wants to find a way to do this every season for the rest of its run, I'm here for it.

I Reckon

With Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to have planted a seed for a number of other movie franchises: what if we made big two-part movie events? This is the year those seeds all seem to be producing fruit, and this weekend gave us the cumbersomely titled Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

This movie sees Ethan Hunt and his team in pursuit of as pure a MacGuffin as the franchise has ever seen -- a mysterious two-part key that unlocks something they don't even know about. As the two-hour, 43 minute unfolds, they find themselves up against a dangerous new enemy unlike any they've faced before. But don't expect a resolution here; this is part one, after all.

The Mission: Impossible film franchise wasn't solid out of the gate. Nearly everyone hates on the second installment, while I myself didn't much care for the first one either. But then the franchise found two pillars of a winning formula: building a cast of fun supporting characters, and featuring Tom Cruise in increasingly over the top stunts. Then, with the arrival of director writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, everyone pretty much agreed that these movies had reached their true potential.

For me, Dead Reckoning Part One was a little bit of backslide. For certain, there are still parts of the formula this movie delivers very well. The wild stunts are as entertaining as ever. The motorcycle cliff jump featured in the last year's worth of trailers totally delivers. No other franchise would make the choice to blow up a bridge and wreck an actual train rather than use CG. The series' signature "rip off the ultra-realistic disguise mask" moment keeps paying off (even though you've seen it like 47 times by now).

There's also a big win here in the additional of Hayley Atwell to the cast. Everyone who ever watched Agent Carter can immediately imagine how well Atwell would fit into a movie like this... and guess what? Your imagination does not mislead you here. (That said, it seems that this franchise can accept only one female co-star at a time; Rebecca Ferguson is quite sidelined here to make room for Atwell.)

This movie gives you everything you should realistically expect from it. And yet, I don't think it does so as successfully as recent Mission: Impossible films. I must say, I felt every minute of the long run time here -- and I found it especially uncomfortable that it felt so long when we were only getting half a story here. The plot is really quite straightforward, and yet the movie always seems to make choices to overly complicate it. It also doesn't deliver enough on the core premise here; keeping things as spoiler-free as possible, the conceit here should make for the most paranoid movie of the franchise, in which it's absolutely impossible to trust anything or anyone. Yet surprisingly few moments take full advantage of this inherent potential.

And it's not just the plotty dialogue that's too long-winded. Some of the action sequences overstay their welcome as well. A car chase early in the film completely resolves only to start again for very little reason. Then there's a big set piece near the end that aims to be "a particular sequence from Jurassic Park: The Lost World, times two!" Except that it decides to go "times five!!!!!" instead and actually starts to get boringly repetitive as a result.

I think all that sounds a little too down on the movie, as I read it back. I would say that overall, the movie entertains quite a lot. But also, the movie is... quite a lot. I think the two hour-ish cut would be tighter, more thrilling, and leave me ready for Part Two instead of feeling like "I could actually use the break right now." I give Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One a B-.

Watergate Exposed

I recently finished watching the five-part HBO mini-series White House Plumbers. It's a "comed-ization" of the Watergate scandal, centered on political operatives Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who planned the break-in.

I have often wondered about Watergate whether you simply "had to be there" -- alive at the time -- to fully understand it. It has always felt to me like a Byzantine conspiracy that an unstable person would map out on a wall with lots of red string. Moreover, every account of Watergate I've ever come across feels like it's presuming some knowledge already in the audience. It's a large part of why the critically acclaimed All the President's Men left me cold.

In White House Plumbers, I now have a version of Watergate that, while not "the whole story," certainly makes a large part of the story crystal clear. Best of all, it makes clear that Watergate isn't actually complicated at all. In truth, it's an incredibly stupid story, of stupid people making stupid decisions for stupid reasons, leading to stupid outcomes. It's so stupid!

Now, of course, some artistic license is being taken here in this telling of the story. White House Plumbers is definitely meant to be satirical. It tells you directly at the end of each episode that some of what you've just seen might not have happened exactly the way you just saw it. But it's not all exaggerations and mirth; there is a foundation of truth here. And that truth is: all this was so stupid! Over the course of five episodes, White House Plumbers shows you incompetence at a champion level, from people so blindly certain of their righteousness that it clouds whatever tiny capacity for intelligent thought they might have.

Needless to say, this mini-series feels very much in conversation with the present day. Dialogue is finely crafted in just the right way to make sure the audience sees this story giving them a knowing wink. "It was ever thus," seems to be the message. You think modern political scandals are just so dumb, and they don't make them like they used to? Wrong. Every political scandal you've ever heard of (that isn't feverish fantasy), you've heard of because people involved in it were this stupid. Stupid enough to do something so basic, stupid enough to leave undeniable evidence of doing it. Yes, White House Plumbers, I see what you're saying.

The actors in this mini-series know exactly what way they're telling this story. Justin Theroux gets the spotlight as G. Gordon Liddy, portraying a cartoon fascist with an unwavering moral compass (that never functioned). Doing more subtle work (but only by comparison) is Woody Harrelson as Howard Hunt, who thinks he's the much-put-upon "brains of the operation" (again, only by comparison). Lena Headey channels much of Cersei, her Game of Thrones character, in this role as Dorothy Hunt -- the wife of Howard, who must increasingly to step in and do what the dumb men in her life are incapable of doing. And along the way are more fun performances in roles of various sizes, from Judy Greer, Domhnall Gleeson, Gary Cole, Ike Barinholtz, Kathleen Turner, and many, many more.

I give White House Plumbers a B+. It may take some liberties, but not at the expense of anyone who deserves otherwise. It makes fun of history, and in doing so makes history fun.

Strange New Worlds: Among the Lotus Eaters

A new episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was released today -- and I'll mark the occasion with my thoughts on last week's episode, "Among the Lotus Eaters."

The Enterprise is sent to pre-warp planet Rigel VII, to investigate evidence of cultural contamination from a brief mission Pike led there five years earlier. But this mission will be more difficult than expected, as a strange property of the planet causes people to forget all memories but their most deeply ingrained skills -- a phenomenon that affects both the landing party and the Enterprise crew in orbit.

Much has been written (by me and others) about how Strange New Worlds is the Star Trek series that most captures the vibe of classic Star Trek. Usually, that just means that this series is largely episodic and not built on epic season-long story arcs. But here, the story and script itself feel a lot like an episode of the original series.

Part of that here is that this episode is a sort of sequel to back story established in the original Star Trek pilot episode, "The Cage." From this standpoint, the episode is surprisingly successful to me. It could have felt like a transparent writing exercise: the writers were given a few random details to have to work into their story: there's a planet with primitive aliens who wear weird helmets and live in a big castle; there was a mission here where people died and many others were injured, which had a profound emotional impact on Pike. Given these details, build out a full story. Aaaaand go.

But the ways in which the larger story was fleshed out features several plot choices that also seem very much like what the original series might have done. The idea of an alien planet with a rigid caste system that Our Heroes have to come in and puncture sounds like the most classic Star Trek. And it was peppered with lots of just-this-side-of-hokey elements like classic Star Trek would have done: referring to amnesia with a ritualistic term like "The Forgetting," a mysterious totem with carved symbols being the only source of history, the myth of a casket of memories to be opened. Hell, there are classic Star Trek episodes that featured elements very much like these things. ("The Apple," "The Paradise Syndrome," "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.")

I'm not pointing all this out as a weakness of the episode. Indeed, one of the things that makes Strange New Worlds so good is that it's consistently able to package these sort of classic Trek vibes in a more modern wrapper -- and it does so again here. But where the conception of this episode worked pretty well for me, some of the execution wasn't as strong.

You can't blame the writers for trusting their talented cast of actors here; they've been able to pull off basically everything thrown at them so far. But this episode asks a LOT. Anson Mount (finally given a meaty role in an episode this season) has to stomp around screaming about his memories in one scene. Melissa Navia has to repeat "I'm Erica Ortegas. I fly the ship!" and keep it inspirational and not funny. (She's being asked to pull a Mandy Patinkin.) And pretty much, these big asks stay just on the right side of dramatic... yet you can't overlook that they're a tiny bit silly at the same time.

Actually, for Navia in particular, this episode made me wish for a true Ortegas-centric episode soon. Ortegas is the one character who hasn't yet been the featured A-plot character at all (through last season or this one). And while this episode certainly gave the character a "hero moment" (and she's had plenty of delightful character moments all along the way), we still haven't really seen the episode that tells us more about Ortegas' background. (And obviously, an episode about memory loss isn't going to be the vehicle for that.)

A couple of my other criticisms are more persnickety and specific. That tinnitus sound effect was intolerably over the top, mixed at too high a volume relative to the rest of the episode. (You didn't need to make the audience live tinnitus that much to get the point across!) After the episode made a point of detailing certain knowledge not susceptible to memory loss, it's then a little clear why Spock loses his ability to read. (Is it because English isn't his native language? Is it a reference to the dyslexia we were told he has?)

But even in an episode that isn't as sharp as other Strange New Worlds have been, we're a long, long way from an episode being "bad." It's simply not as good. There's still an intriguing sci-fi gimmick here, well woven with compelling character arcs, and performed by a top-notch cast. So I'd still give "Among the Lotus Eaters" (that title is oh-so classic Trek too!) a B.

Among: Good Company

I'm not always at the leading edge of the popular new movies at the movie theater. (The comforts of streaming movies at home are just so damn appealing!) But I do try to take note when the masses -- and particularly my friends -- proclaim something good, and try to circle back around to it on a delay of a few months. That's what I did recently with Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

I must admit that it's been a long (long, long) time since playing Dungeons & Dragons was a regular part of my life. That helped lower my expectations here, as did the terrible D&D movie released in 2000. But friends and online reviewers alike were all united on this new movie: it's actually good, they declared! And you know what? They were right.

Honor Among Thieves is doing the same kind of thing that the Willow TV show recently did. Both realized that fantasy was taking itself awfully damn seriously these days, and that a lighter, even occasionally irreverent tone might be a welcome breath of fresh air. Well... you can't watch Willow anymore, as Disney+ removed it from their service for a tax break (yuck), but thankfully you can stream this movie -- which in my view hits closer to the bullseye of this "light, fun fantasy" target anyway.

It helps that this movie has drawn a more talented cast than you'd ever expect it to have. This may be the furthest possible thing from a hot take, but Chris Pine is an incredibly charismatic actor with a keen intuition for how not to take himself too seriously. Putting him at the center of this movie would have been enough; the casting director could have called it a job well done. But the movie also has Michelle Rodriguez, the perfect "straight man" for a comedy duo (who is strong with fight choreography as well). It has Hugh Grant using his charm for evil as the the villain. There's Sophia Lillis, proving Stephen King's It was not a one-off (though some of us already knew that). I imagine Bridgerton fans are happy to see Regé-Jean Page doing "Airplane" style humor here (being funny because he's too serious). And Justice Smith is key to a heartfelt subplot in the script -- which is smart enough to know this movie can't be all funny all the time.

I really wasn't here for the Dungeons & Dragons references specifically, but I was delighted at how many more were stuffed in here than I even would have imagined. Rattle off five classic monsters from the role-playing game, and odds are at least four of those appear in here somewhere. Your favorite module or PC game set in the D&D system? That probably gets name-checked too. This script (by directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, along with Michael Gilio) gets away with its light-hearted mirth because you can sense a love of the source material at every turn.

I kind of sat down to watch this thinking it couldn't actually be as good as people were saying. But truly, it was -- just a fun fantasy romp. I give Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves a B+. If you're reading this and you haven't seen it, I can say with near certainty that it's "for you" and you should check it out.

A Well-Made Apocalypse

Apple TV+ has recently added a new show to its growing stable of science fiction TV series. Silo, based on the books by Hugh Howey, unfolds in an apocalyptic future where just 10,000 humans survive in a massive underground silo. The worst punishment in their society is being "sent out to clean" the camera showing the world outside, a one-way trip into an irradiated hellscape left behind by the unknown builders of the structure. The drama follows people who begin to question the foundational "truths" of their world, and the revolutionary upheaval their actions threaten to kick off.

There's a lot to Silo that, in the simple description of it, sounds like a shopping trip to "Apocalyptic Fiction 'R Us." Yup, there's a stratified caste system here, and a "defiant" female protagonist with a "hunger" for upsetting the norm. (See what I did there?) Yup, there are people in power going to cartoonishly extreme lengths to maintain their grip on society. But there's something more subtle and clever in the execution of Silo (on both page and screen) that make it more interesting to me than more well-known hits of the subgenre. (Though don't get me wrong -- young adult fiction is perfectly acceptable reading for us older adults.)

As a TV series, Silo has even more going in its favor. It's adapted very smartly, spearheaded by series creator Graham Yost. Yost has a pedigree here in adapting Elmore Leonard's writing for Justified (as well a wonderful "canceled-too-soon" crime drama called Boomtown). He and his writing staff have identified and retained all of the best parts of Howey's original story. Then, to expand the tale for television, they've beefed up the roles of many secondary characters and have invented more of their own -- each in ways that actually support those core pillars of the story. Silo is one of those rare adaptations that's "better than the book."

But that's not just thanks to the writing; the cast of Silo is truly excellent. That ranges from people you will know by name -- Tim Robbins and Rashida Jones -- to people you should know by name if you don't -- David Oyelowo -- to great working character actors you'll recognize immediately -- Iain Glen and Will Patton. Two performances right at the top of the cast sheet are especially great. Rebecca Ferguson (who between this, Mission Impossible, and Dune, is gonna have a helluva year) stars as Juliette, the determined and talented engineer who must sink or swim as she tries to uncover a sinister conspiracy. Common is a spectacular foil as Sims, arch "fixer" for the Silo whose "power ranking" among Silo heavy hitters seems to change from episode to episode.

There are some slow stretches over the 10 episodes of Silo season 1. Yet there are also some truly stunning episodes too. There's masterful suspense in episode 3, centered on (of all things) a speedy repair job. The plot revelations of episode 8 (even for me, who read the books and knew they were coming) were stunningly delivered with the force of a gut punch.

Silo has been renewed for season two (though you can expect a delay on that, until Hollywood executives come around to paying writers what they deserve). I'm truly fascinated to see what that season is going to look like, because I'm convinced the TV show is going to have to take more radical departures from the source material. (Season one of the show has essentially been book one of the trilogy; but there's no way that season two will be a literal adaptation of book two -- it would upend everything expected about making a TV series. Oh, but would they actually do that?!) I also felt as though the best part of the Silo books was actually the material the show has now already covered; but since they've improved on the source material in every way so far, I want to see how they'll do that going forward.

I give Silo an A-, putting it in the "reason to subscribe to Apple TV+" category (alongside many other worthy reasons).

Strange New Worlds: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

I continue to stay one episode behind in reviewing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (but we'll see if I can catch up this week). That brings me to the new season's third installment, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow."

La'an is recruited by a dying Temporal Investigations agent for a time traveling mission back to the early 21st century -- and the need is urgent, as La'an's timeline has already changed around her, putting James T. Kirk in command of a non-Starfleet Enterprise. Kirk and La'an accidentally travel back in time together, where they quickly open up to one another during their uncertain mission to figure out just what they've been sent to do.

In discussing Strange New Worlds with a friend shortly before this episode was released, I commented that the cast of the series was incredibly strong, and I suspected that any one of them could really carry their own episode. Then along comes this episode to very specifically test that theory -- a full hour featuring almost nobody but La'an.

Yes, Christina Chong is largely able to carry this episode featuring her character. Of course, it helps that she's essentially in a two-person play with Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk. And the dash of Carol Kane we get as Pelia is great fun. They're all good here, and the story is interesting. But all that said, while I think any actor/character can carry a Strange New Worlds episode, I don't think I actually want to see that often going forward. Up to this point, the series has done an excellent job including meaningful scenes with other characters who aren't the main focus in a given episode. I think this is exactly what has made me grow to like these characters and actors in such a relatively short period of time -- and I find I now miss that a great deal in an episode that doesn't have any of that.

Not that any of that makes me dislike what we do get here. This is an intriguing episode featuring lots of little fan bread crumbs that feel earned to me for how the story is framed. This is a story about La'an being unhappy with her life and having a wish granted (on a cursed monkey's paw) to live a different one. It's such a thorough exploration of her feelings about her own heritage that I feel like it illuminates things in her character that aren't even voiced in dialogue. I found myself wondering at one point: "if she feels like her name is such an albatross around her neck, why doesn't she just change it?" That thought in turn led me to realize this probably increased the sense of betrayal she felt by her mentor Una Chin-Riley; Una did hide who she was, a decision La'an couldn't even comprehend.

But to focus back on the text and not the sub-text, both characters in this two-hander were well-written. While it's funny that in Paul Wesley's second appearance as Kirk, we still have barely gotten any of the "real" Kirk, we certainly have seen enough (this episode especially) to see how these Trek writers handle the character. He still has all the charm, libido, and seat-of-the-pants improvisation of the character Star Trek fans have always known... but they've effectively sanded down some of the more archaic, chauvinist edges of the 1960s incarnation.

Essentially, I thought this episode was good (but not great), and I appreciated the willingness to break with format a bit... and I also kind of don't want another episode like this any time soon, weird as that may sound. I give "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" a B+.

Third Time's a Charm

One final day at Yellowstone National Park. Having failed the day before to find parking anywhere near Grand Prismatic Spring, we were sure we had this day planned out right. We were up early, and would head straight there to beat the crowds. In particular, we'd get to the parking lot for the Fairy Falls Trail, a hike with an overlook above and behind the Grand Prismatic Spring, where you could take it in in all its splendor.

We did all that. But it turns out that there's a flaw in being too early to see this particular site. The hot water of the spring, with the cold morning air, results in a towering column of steam. It's beautiful in its own way, but totally obscures the thing you're really there to see. We waited around a bit to see if things would warm up enough to disperse the steam, but ultimately decided we'd have to try to come back later in the day for "take three."

So from there, we headed to Artists Paintpots, another of the lesser-known (but there on the Grand Loop Road) places that is a personal favorite for me and my husband. A short hike up a small hill takes you do a number of bubbling mudpots, plus a fantastic view. The loop trail was half-closed on this occasion; parts of trail had decayed and were being rebuilt by a team. (Carrying loads of heavy wood a quarter-mile or more back to where it was to be used seemed like a tough job!) But what was open was as beautiful as we remembered.

We stopped for another lunch picnic and another random picnic site. This one, we had completely to ourselves until near the end of our meal, when a pair of park employees also rolled in for their lunch break. (Here's one of the up sides of the hard job -- you can seek out a different gorgeous vista every lunch break.)

We were now into the afternoon, so took one last try at Grand Prismatic Spring... and succeeded. First we saw it up close, for which we had to park nearly half a mile out on the main road and then hike in. We also ended up having the day's "awkward encounter" as we waited for one of four outhouses at the entrance to the area. The amorphous blob of people waiting their turn sort of separated organically into four separate lines, much to the consternation of one woman who was emphatic that it was a single line, and began railing at the others who she was certain had jumped ahead of their turn. (We also later came across this woman on the boardwalk hike through the geyser basin. And as it's a one-way walk, there was no choice but to push past her and risk a second round of haranguing.)

After seeing the beautiful Spring up close, we went back to that Fairy Falls Lot for the hike up behind, expecting to wait as long as necessary to find a parking space. We lucked out and found one right away. The hike back to the overlook seemed to take two or three times as long in the afternoon heat as it had in the morning, but the payoff was as wonderful as we'd hoped.

From there, we drove to the nearby Lower Geyser Basin, another interesting collection of geysers and mudpots. Among these examples of natural beauty, we came upon a more grisly sight: the decaying remains of some unrecognizable animal being eaten away in the acidic goo. (I think I won't share that photo.) But we also caught the Clepsydra Geyser mid-eruption, and took in the bubbling of the Fountain Paintpots.

We didn't really have enough time left to take off to far reaches of the park for something new. But Old Faithful was close -- and as reliable as the name implies, of course. (Plus, we decided we needed to circle back for some previously passed-up souvenirs.) There was no yammering drunk this time as we watched the most well-known geyser erupt once more, and then we drove back to the hotel dining room near Yellowstone Lake for one final dinner. (And one final "awkward encounter?" A server had a most unfortunate mishap with a serving tray, prompting our server to comment that we were getting "dinner and a show.")

The next day was our drive back home to Denver -- not eventful enough to warrant its own post, but with a couple of highlights worth mentioning. On our way out of Yellowstone, we had a few final wildlife encounters: we saw a porcupine rushing across the road (too fast to capture a photo), and paused to "pet" a bison (shown at left). Later, partway through Wyoming, an accident involving a semi closed the road entirely for a time, sending us back to lunch at a brewery in Thermopolis. But despite at one point being caught in the open during a tornado warning (thankfully, we saw nothing; must have been elsewhere in the county), we ultimately made it back home without incident.

Will I head back to Yellowstone once again in another nine years? Hard to say -- though I'm certainly glad I revisited on this occasion.

Hey You Geysers!

I'm turning back to my recent trip to Yellowstone National Park -- specifically, our second full day in the park.

We began by heading to the Norris Geyser Basin. My husband and I already noticed on the day before that Yellowstone seemed a lot more crowded than when last we visited (in 2014). Today was the day that really drove that home. Parking was a challenge everywhere we went. Most of the time, you had to stalk someone walking back to their car so that you could take their space as soon as they left it. Here at Norris Geyser Basin, you had to park out on the main road and hike a quarter mile in to the actual parking lot.

We came up with some theories to explain the larger crowds (which I'll come back to later), but in the case of Norris Geyser Basin, there may be a specific reason for the surge in popularity. The area is home to Steamboat Geyser, the tallest active geyser in the world. It's totally unpredictable, and has generally erupted only at exceedingly rare intervals. It has gone over two decades between eruptions, multiple times since recording began. It erupted just once during 2014, the year we'd last visited, and didn't erupt again for 4 years after that.

But Yellowstone is always changing, and in 2018, something about Steamboat Geyser did change. It erupted 32 times that year, and 48 times each the following two years. This period of increased activity seems to be slowing back down again, but by no means has returned to the old "normal." Steamboat has erupted 5 times so far this year (including less than two weeks before this trip). I think more people are trying to "buy a lottery ticket" to see this special event in person.

Nope, we didn't "win." But Norris Geyser Basin is still a neat place to visit. It's separated into two sections -- with the Porcelain Basin section especially beautiful in my opinion. Among the many terrains of Yellowstone, this area rides the line between strange alien landscape and conventional Earthly beauty. And if you walk the whole area (which we did), odds are you will see some geyser going off at some point (which we did -- the poor Minute Geyser, which has become choked over the decades by people treating it as a wishing well).

We stopped for lunch in one of Yellowstone's many picnic areas, dipping into the deep store of snacks we'd brought along for the trip. After that, we tried to go to Grand Prismatic Spring. The parking situation here was simply impossible, and we resolved to try again early the next day. Here's where the theories on the crowds at Yellowstone fully developed. One notion was that people might still be taking their first "post-pandemic" vacations, with Yellowstone just one of many possible destinations. But our second notion seemed like the correct one -- tourism is probably being driven by those Yellowstone television series (which I've never watched), making people want to see in person whatever they saw on TV.

Anyway, we moved along to the Upper Geyser Basin, where you can find Old Faithful. Crowds were huge here too, of course -- but we had to fight to park, because we had a dinner reservation at the Old Faithful Inn. But we bookended that dinner with watching the park's most famous geyser. First, we hiked a trail to an overlook behind Old Faithful to watch from a distance. While the vantage point was great in theory, the direction of the wind made it a bit less majestic than hoped for -- the spray obscured the view of the spouting water itself.

After a nice dinner, we joined the throng on the boardwalk near Old Faithful and watched up close. And here we had the "awkward encounter" for the day, as we happened to sit next to a guy who was staggeringly drunk and supremely talkative. (If you're a fan of Letterkenny, he sounded a LOT like McMurray.) We weren't personally engaged in conversation with him, thankfully -- but he'll always be a part of our memories of the day, because his voice is all over the videos we took of the eruption.

We had one more full day in Yellowstone before the drive back home... which I'll come back to recount in a future post.

Strange New Worlds: Ad Astra per Aspera

The second episode of season two of Strange New Worlds picked up on Star Trek's sparse but long-running tradition of "legal drama" episodes, with "Ad Astra per Aspera."

Una is in legal jeopardy for having concealed her "augmented" status as an Illyrian. Pike convinces a talented Illyrian lawyer named Neera Ketoul to take his first officer's case, despite a past grievance between the two women. But the robust defense leads Starfleet to throw the book at Una, and to pursue possible charges against Pike and other Enterprise crewmembers as well.

It's true that there wasn't a lot of "action" (in the conventional sense) in this episode. Yet some of Star Trek's most memorable episodes have been legal dramas, going back to the original series' "Court Martial" and including The Next Generation's superb "The Drumhead" and "The Measure of a Man." (Not that such episodes are always Star Trek's best.) Like those two great Next Gen episodes, "Ad Astra per Aspera" has something to say about civil rights... and goes about it in a way that I think puts it in their esteemed company.

There are, sadly, too many real-world allegories that one can easily map to Una's background of persecution. When she talks about the ghettoization of her people on the planet where she grew up, it sounds very much like the plight of disfavored immigrants trying to succeed in a new country. When she talks about hiding who she is and "passing" for "normal," it sounds very much more like the discrimination faced by the LGBT+ community. (I saw someone online note that the straps holding young Una in the flashbacks has pink, blue, and white stripes -- corresponding to the colors of the transgender flag. Doesn't feel like an accident to me.)

In any case, there are many ways the audience can feel kinship and find common cause with Una in this episode -- and Rebecca Romijn does a great job in giving voice to these themes through her performance in the pivotal scene on the witness stand. And she's not alone in strong acting in this episode; while Pike doesn't have a lot here, Anson Mount makes you want to stand up and cheer in the few scenes he does have. Spock, M'Benga, and La'an have good witness stand scenes of their own, in a cleverly edited montage. (Spock's scene even calls back a fun Short Treks episode.)

As good as the regular cast is, though, it's the guest stars who really get to shine this week. Captain Batel is written on a fine line here, having to prosecute Una on the one hand even as Pike and the audience are meant to believe she's sympathetic with the defense. Melanie Scrofano walks that line perfectly, particularly nailing the scene where Batel demonstrates the sort of legal jiu-jitsu that will await Pike if he tries to take the stand himself.

Then, of course, actress Yetide Badaki is given a feast in the role of Neera Ketoul. It's a testament to Badaki that the role feels as showy as it does, because the character does not rant and rave and pound the table in the expected Emmy-baiting way. (Maybe she knows that actors never win Emmys for Star Trek, no matter how much they may deserve it.) Instead, Ketoul (and Badaki) goes through all the associated emotions while acting within tight constraints of poise and intellectual rigor. It's a real tour de force of "don't overdo it."

Yes, the end of the episode (and the court case) turns on a big gimmick. Legal dramas usually do. But I think it works, especially in the way it takes the "prequel problem" and turns it into a huge dramatic advantage. We know from Deep Space Nine that "Augments" will still be banned from Starfleet a century after this; but we also have to have a win here that frees Una up to continue being on Strange New Worlds. The script carefully threads this needle in a way that feels incredibly true to life in this respect: legal battles for civil rights are won one small skirmish at a time. (And sometimes, as we've been shown quite recently, it feels like a step backward soon follows any meaningful step forward.)

In all, I give "Ad Astra per Aspera" an A-. It's an excellent Star Trek episode, in good company with several episodes of past Trek series.

Destiny Awaits

It's one last ride for everybody's favorite action-archaeologist hero (sorry, Brendan Fraser) in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. And it's a pretty good finale at that: not as great as the best films of the Indy saga, but about as good as you could reasonably expect.

I went in most interested to see how much this movie would really look and feel like Indy, given that neither Steven Spielberg nor George Lucas were involved with making it. I'm sure at this point that most of the fandom would say "good riddance" to George Lucas' involvement with the story (I'll come back to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in a bit)... but an Indiana Jones movie without Steven Spielberg in the director's chair? Sounds like cause for some nervousness. And yet, it's probably no surprise that director James Mangold (like so many directors) has carefully studied everything about Spielberg, and has effectively mimicked the style without getting lost slapdash homage.

And despite there being four names credited on the script (usually a sign of extensive re-writing; not usually a sign of coherence or quality), Dial of Destiny has a pretty solid story. It effectively explores the question, "if this is the last Indiana Jones adventure, what are the themes that need to be covered?" It honors the fact that the star has aged, without beating you over the head with the idea that he's too far past his prime for one more adventure. It has a good final villain for a final Indy movie, and a gimmick quest object that's even better. Moreover, the script does a good job of weaving in almost every moment you'd want to see in "one last Indiana Jones movie" without it feeling as obligatory as it actually is. Above all, it's a fun movie (despite having some very serious moments).

The elephant in the room here, of course, is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I haven't actually watched that fourth Indy movie since it was new, but when I look at my thoughts at the time, I seem to have enjoyed it a great deal more than the conventional wisdom now agrees. I noted that the ending wasn't great. (Today, I think we've all collectively decided it was actually terrible.) In any case, that was the worst aspect of the movie... and a reason to be glad that it's no longer "the last word" on Indiana Jones. Crystal Skull took a big swing in its final act, and struck out. Dial of Destiny takes just as big a swing, but manages to make it work.

No, it's not as close to the perfect movie as most people agree Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were. It's a little too reliant on long sequences using "de-aging" CG that still isn't quite perfect (no matter how hard movie studios keep pushing it). There's a loose end or two that aren't effectively tied up, and one or two items on the "last adventure checklist" that don't get checked off.

At the same time, Harrison Ford is as entertaining as ever. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a great foil, and a surprisingly effective action star (jumping in for a number of sequences where you could never include a star of Ford's age). Mads Mikkelsen gives great villain (as he always does), and Ethann Isidore is fun as a new sidekick character.

All rolled up, I'd give Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny a B+. I'm glad this is now the final Indy adventure, and I'd encourage any fans to catch it soon in theaters before any of it is spoiled for you.