Voyager Flashback: Warhead

One night, Star Trek: Voyager staff writer Brannon Braga was watching a documentary about nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union potentially falling into other hands after the Cold War. The "what happens to weapons after a war?" story inspired the fifth season episode "Warhead."

Voyager discovers an undetonated weapon of mass destruction that's driven by an artificial intelligence. Unconvinced that its war has ended, the weapon seizes control of the Doctor and takes hostages in pursuit of its last designated target.

This episode has a lot in common with two previous episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. In "Dreadnought," B'Elanna had to convince a weapon that its destructive protocols were malfunctioning. But that older episode felt stronger to me: the fact that B'Elanna herself had programmed the weapon was a personal connection. It made for a more compelling story with more present emotional stakes than can be felt here.

But "Warhead" also feels similar to "Darkling" simply for being an "evil Doctor episode." And here, I think "Warhead" comes out ahead. Robert Picardo's performance as the "Mister Hyde" of "Darkling" felt to me like an unhinged caricature, but the weapon of "Warhead" feels like a more bounded performance, with many moments where the danger feels earned and not cartoonish. Picardo also spends the first 10-15 minutes of the episode carrying on weird "C-3PO to R2-D2" types of conversations where we're only hearing half the dialogue. The writing there feels forced at times to me, though Picardo handles it rather well.

There are elements of the story that don't feel like "remixes" of previous episodes. For one thing, this is a pretty good episode for Harry Kim. He gets a nice subplot: he's been captaining the ship during night shifts, and worries that his decisions have now facilitated a crisis. There's an especially nice scene harkening back to his early friendship with B'Elanna, where she confesses one of her own command failures. And as the warhead/Doctor's prisoner, he tries repeatedly to talk the weapon back from the brink of destruction.

While this episode wasn't written as a parable about "confirmation bias," the episode makes a prominent and effective sub-theme of it. Every new bit of information the warhead gets is integrated into the narrative it already wants to believe. Indeed, it's so good at rationalizing contradictory information that it's a bit unclear how our heroes truly manage to get through to the warhead to change its mind in the end.

There are other threads in the episode that I wish the dialogue had highlighted more specifically. The Doctor pushes hard to help this AI, and ends up learning that "no good deed goes unpunished" when he gets possessed. It would be nice for some character (Janeway?) to let him off the hook in the end by pointing out that he was only acting in accordance with his most core identity as a doctor, to render aid. Elsewhere, Seven of Nine has had a pretty long run of being "equal to any challenge" -- but here she isn't able to act quickly enough to carry out the plan to disable the warhead. In an episode where "flesh-and-blood life vs. artificial intelligence" is a prominent theme, it would have been good for Seven to express her own crisis of self over her "lack of efficiency."

Other observations:

• The writers reach into the "sitcom husband plot bag" and pull out "last minute planning for an anniversary" as a gimmick for Tom Paris.

• Ensign Jenkins, who sits at helm during the night shifts, seems kind of flirty with Harry Kim.

• Early on in the crisis, they have the chance to beam the warhead off of Voyager, but they don't do it because they can't get it far enough away to avoid being caught in the explosion. Well, why not just "beam it up" and never materialize it again?

I'd give "Warhead" a B-. It's not a bad episode, and I especially like the Harry Kim elements. But for me it lives too much in the shadow of "Dreadnought" (which, while not an "all-time great episode of Star Trek," was one of Voyager's better early installments).

Voyager Flashback: Relativity

Some Star Trek episodes are thoughtful explorations of heady topics using a science fiction lens. Others are just escapist romps. "Relativity" is one of the latter.

Seven of Nine is recruited by Starfleet officers from the future to help deal with a temporal incursion aboard Voyager. Seven pursues the culprit through time to different moments in the ship's history... until coming to a shocking revelation of who she's really pursuing and why they're trying to destroy Voyager.

It's clear from the first moments of this episode that we're just here for "fun" this week. (Assuming you like time travel stories, anyway.) We get a sweeping view of starships being built in orbit of Mars, then the reveal that we've flashed back to the beginning of the series (with clues like Janeway's old hair bun and talk of chasing Chakotay into the Badlands). But what's a shifty-acting and implant-less Seven of Nine doing there? The teaser and first act of this episode does a nice job of making the audience slowly come to understand the plot, all while serving up some fun "deleted scenes" that we never actually saw in the original pilot.

From there, the episode proceeds to unleash as much anarchy as it dares. Seven of Nine dies! And lives again! Voyager is destroyed! But can still be saved! Temporal distortions cause different parts of the ship to exist in different times. Blast from Voyager's past include appearances by Lieutenant Carey, the Kazon... and Captain Braxton, the Starfleet time traveler Voyager tangled with before (albeit now played by actor Bruce McGill). We get a shout-out to the plot of the movie First Contact, Seven of Nine interacting with herself, a neat new time travel paradox, and several time-travel related jokes (including the clever hero one-liner: "Come here often?").

But there are a few elements at the margins that for me keep this from being top shelf fun. The "rule" the writers introduce to cover why Seven of Nine can't keep time traveling until she gets everything right doesn't seem like it applies to the characters from the future (who time travel all the time). Janeway's memory strains credibility, as she recalls details of an insignificant conversation from years earlier. And while this has no bearing on the time travel shenanigans, it feels a bit strange to me that neither Paris' best friend Harry nor girlfriend B'Elanna want to be his ping pong partner; they'd both rather team up against him.

Other observations:

• Seven of Nine is something of an "internet hypochondriac"; she basically Googles her symptoms and diagnoses herself with a rare disease before seeking out the Doctor's opinion.

• We get a "Seven of Nine POV" shot that's all tinted green. So... her vision is like that all the time?

• Robert Duncan McNeill must have felt some pressure shooting the scene where he has to have a conversation as he walks down the hall bouncing a ping pong ball. I wonder how many takes it required.

• Trek fans would recognize actor Jay Karnes from this Voyager episode when he later appeared on Star Trek: Picard. Given that it was in the middle of a season-long time travel story, it led some to theorize that Karnes was playing the same character.

As can sometimes be the case in a time travel story, the stakes don't feel that high here. Still, at least they avoid an "it never happened" ending and allow some characters to retain knowledge of this little adventure. I give "Relativity" a B+.

Duty Bound

"Practical joke" TV shows have been a recurring staple of television for decades: pranks played on celebrities, pranks played on non-celebrities, even "long form" practical jokes that sustain one premise over multiple episodes. It's that last tradition that's been picked up by the Amazon Prime series Jury Duty.

Ronald Gladden appears for jury duty, having been told that for this trial, a group of documentary filmmakers has gotten permission to film the proceedings and interview the jurors, to tell the story of how the American justice system works. But in truth, Ronald is completely surrounded by actors: everyone on his jury, everyone involved with his case, every person he interacts with in the hotel where the jury is being sequestered -- they're all actors there to put Ronald at the center of the wildest trial he can possibly believe is real.

I said Jury Duty is a new long-form "practical joke" show... but that's also perhaps not entirely accurate. A practical joke generally feels like it's coming at someone's expense, and it's clear that the creative forces of this show aren't out to make their "hero," Ronald, look bad. This show simply isn't mean-spirited. Indeed, they caught lightning in a bottle when they cast this guy; Ronald is a genuinely caring person who somehow walks a line line between "able to fooled" and "not looking stupid for being fooled."

Part of the trick here is the old analogy about slowly turning up the heat on the frog in boiling water. In episode one, things don't seem that odd. Most of the outrageous behavior comes from actor James Marsden, appearing here as an amped-up version of "himself" whose conceited antics cause most of the early mischief. But as Ronald accepts each strange new event (sometimes even muttering how the whole thing feels like reality TV!), the creatives behind the show throw increasingly ridiculous scenarios his way.

Behind the scenes footage in the eighth and final episode reveal just how nimble a production this was, and how "game to play" everyone involved really was. A COVID scare at their courtroom led to an hastily conceived road trip episode (that happens to mark the point when the series really picks up). Later they stage a restaurant outing that's a highlight of the entire show.

Funny as the scripted elements can be, it's sometimes funnier still when Ronald does something that no one could have anticipated, and the actors simply have to roll with it. You can kind of forget this level of the reality if you choose to, because each episode is presented in a sort of "The Office in a Courtroom" kind of way. But carry in the back of your mind that a dozen-plus actors are here playing characters for hours and hours on end, and there's a new level to appreciate. James Marsden actually got an Emmy nomination for his work, no doubt due to just how willing he was to look bad while being "himself." But really, all the actors here are engaged in a bizarre high wire act, and at least three or four others are especially good.

It's possible that more than any actual humor on screen, I enjoyed the underlying achievement of keeping up this hoax for so long. But on whatever level I had fun with the show, I did have fun. I give Jury Duty a B+.

Voyager Flashback: 11:59

In May of 1999, a few months ahead of the turn of the millennium, Star Trek: Voyager served up an episode to mark the occasion, "11:59."

Captain Janeway shares the story of her ancestor Shannon O'Donnel, astronaut and driving force behind the construction of the Millennium Gate on Earth, a monument built at the dawn of the new millennium. But as some of the crew takes an interest in the story and researches it further, everyone learns that the real history doesn't match the stories Janeway heard growing up.

This unusual episode had an unusual origin. Actor John de Lancie had suggested a episode in which his character Q took Janeway back in time to meet one of her own ancestors. That molecule formed up with two others the writers had floating around: to do an episode acknowledging the (then-coming) turn of the millennium, and to try an episode that had "no science fiction" in it. Indeed, there was a point where the plan was not to feature Voyager at all, instead doing a true one-off episode in which Kate Mulgrew would just play Janeway's ancestor along a cast of only guest stars.

Ultimately, it was decided that a framing device aboard Voyager was needed... though I'm not sure the episode would have played well for me either way. I think the lack of any science fiction hook in this episode is too great a subversion of Star Trek, like a procedural show with no crime or a sitcom episode with no jokes. Moreover, I feel like there are simply no stakes to this episode. Perhaps if I personally were more into genealogy, it would resonate more? Even so, it's not like Janeway has ever mentioned this ancestor before, so it feels like a stretch that she's investing so much of her own sense of self-worth in O'Donnel.

A lot of the episode seems to be saying "don't believe everything you've heard about history," with flashbacks to Shannon O'Donnel regularly subverting the amplified version of events Janeway believes. Unfortunately, the same sort of theme was centered for much greater effect in the earlier Voyager episode "Living Witness" (literally the best Voyager episode so far, and thus not one to "go up against").

Still, I find the episode more "dry" than "bad," because there are good aspects to it. Casting is good, particularly in "special guest star" Kevin Tighe as Henry Janeway, and ubiquitous "that guy" John Carroll Lynch as a wealth real estate developer. The production values are solid, from a credible winter decorating of a backlot "town" environment to a two-story bookshop set complete with spiral staircase.

Small subthemes resonate faintly with Star Trek in somewhat satisfying ways. "Progress" wins out, but in a way that doesn't completely trample "the little guy." We're told that Y2K turned out to be nothing at all, a simple "don't panic about the future" message that wasn't entirely clear to everyone seven months before the end of 1999.

But there are elements that I find weirdly generating friction with Star Trek values. As uplifting as it is to say that "what inspires you is what matters," the notion that truth isn't as important feels weirdly dissonant. Not nearly enough is made of young Jason Janeway's aspirations, and how he's pinned in working for his Luddite father. It's also very hard to see how a relationship between Shannon and Henry would actually endure, given how completely different they are and how many things they fundamentally disagree about.

Other observations:

• There's real-world footage of an Apollo moon landing in Shannon's dream. (She also has a lunar lander model hanging from her car's rear-view mirror.)

• On the evening of the turn of the millennium, a local news station chooses to devote its coverage to a live view of the dark door of a closed bookshop, in the hopes that something will happen. Ratings bonanza!

• We still get a "captain's log," in the form of Shannon dictating a diary into a tape recorder. 

Ultimately, there are far "worse" episodes of Star Trek: Voyager than this, and so I would grade "11:59" a C+. Still, this is only an episode I would ever choose to watch when watching the entire series, front to back. It's simply not what anyone seeking out Star Trek is actually seeking.

The Spirits Are Among Us

Making alcohol is something of a recurring theme in the board gaming world. There are multiple games about making wine and making beer, a couple of them major hits that are well known among board game enthusiasts. Now comes a new game about making other spirits, from whiskey and gin and rum to soju and cachaça and baijiu: Distilled.

Over the course of seven rounds, players make the best spirits they can to amass the most points possible. Each round begins with a shared phase in which players take turns acquiring ingredients and upgrades to their distillery. It then moves to a shared distilling phase, featuring an intriguing little mechanic that's the game's twisty little innovation. Finally, players sell or age their spirits before the process repeats.

For the most part, there aren't any radical new mechanics in Distilled, though that isn't really to the game's detriment. It's a fun little puzzle as engine building games often are, challenging you to find the right balance between investments and profits that let you move on to bigger things without falling too far behind in the ultimate race for points. The game includes many more types of spirits than can actually be made in a single game, with several different "menus" included to use for different plays; this changes up the nature of the puzzle from one play to the next so it can't be too easily "solved." (Players also take on the role of a character with a unique benefit that affects the course of your strategy.)

But Distilled is not simply remixing board game systems in its own recipe. One mechanic at the heart of it all simulates the distilling process in an intriguing way. You're allowed to throw together basically any ingredient cards you want each turn, but each spirit has specific definitional requirements -- for example: one spirit might require at least one sugar of a specific one of the game's three types, while another might require at least two sugars of a different type. When the time comes to distill, you must gather up all the yeast, water, and sugar cards you've allocated for the turn. To them, you add one alcohol card (a card which works as a "wild" of sorts -- either water or yeast) for every sugar you included. Then you shuffle them all and randomly remove the top and bottom card of your shuffled stack -- the undrinkable "heads" and "tails" of your batch of booze. Then you reveal what's left to learn what you've made.

There are some subtle ramifications of this system that aren't only about luck of the draw. You can always include more ingredients than necessary to make a thing, and this generally gives you more victory points, more income, or both -- so "overloading" a recipe for fear of the cards that might randomly get removed isn't necessarily a harmful strategy. You actually get back the ingredient cards that get kicked out in this process, to use again in a future recipe on a future round of the game -- so no setback can really be that large, and you might even be able to turn it into a windfall.

But mostly, I find this system a fun and flavorful distillation of the game's central theme. I can't claim that Distilled is like no other game I've played before; it's made of the same kinds of game design "atoms" any long-time gamer has encountered in other places. But this one little twist suits this game well, and carves out a space for it in a collection alongside those others. Some players may want more player interaction, and others less. Some players may want a shorter run time, and others longer. But I have found Distilled to be a satisfying "the main game we play this evening," and I look forward to playing it more. I give it a B+.

Voyager Flashback: Someone to Watch Over Me

Voyager cast member Robert Duncan McNeill had gone through "Star Trek director's school" and directed two episodes before getting his most unconventional assignment on the series, a retelling of My Fair Lady featuring the Doctor and Seven of Nine, "Someone to Watch Over Me."

The Doctor makes a bet with Tom Paris: that he can teach Seven of Nine enough about socializing and etiquette for her to go on a date with a member of the crew. But along the way, The Doctor discovers he has feelings for Seven himself. Meanwhile, when an ambassador of a strictly religious species overindulges in pleasures during his visit to Voyager, the crew must find a way to sober him up and hide the transgressions from his superior.

Star Trek generally is all about contorting other genres into a science fiction mold, but "rom com" isn't a genre the franchise tried often. Combining that with a frat-like screwball subplot makes this one of the lighter episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. Assuming, at least, that you find the formula of My Fair Lady to be light or romantic more than chauvinist and creepy.

This episode offers plenty to fit both categories. The Doctor is kind of "gross" in a lot of scenes in this episode. He alters Seven's appearance, drives her to socialize at a pace she would not choose for herself, actually inserts himself into Seven's date as the bar's piano player... and of course there's the bet with Paris. Generally, his gleeful planning of lessons on dating is hard to watch; considering his own lack of experience in the matter, it really borders on mansplaining. And then he goes full Barclay in the end, simulating his own crewmates (well... one of them, at least) for a holodeck scenario.

But there are more genuine moments too. Seven refers to the easy rapport she has with the Doctor, and we see that in several scenes. The moments that the two sing together arguably go on for too long, but the two actors (and characters) are very good together, and there's the sense of actual story being told through the songs. And Jeri Ryan nails many more scenes throughout the episode, from the comedy of Seven's awkward date with crewman Chapman, to the suave sophistication of Seven's simple toast, to the defiant moment where she tells off Paris over making the bet.

There are good moments for many for the other characters too. B'Elanna's reaction to being scientifically observed by Seven is a lot of fun. Kim setting his own infatuation aside to help Seven pick someone for her date marks a nice bit of growth. And the way Paris is ultimately supportive of the Doctor telling Seven how he feels is actually touching.

I also find the subplot quite successful -- it's sort of one thread of the middling Next Generation episode "Liaisons" given more space. But they wisely cast Kids in the Hall veteran Scott Thompson as the alien ambassador, and then actually allow him to play the role broadly. He cavorts around drunkenly, raving until he passes out, and being genuinely funny. 

Other observations:

• It has always seemed like you really can just walk in on anybody's holodeck scenario at any time, but here we actually see Tom Paris do it at one point. (Fair enough; they take his Sandrine's Bar program for their own use.)

• Besides Scott Thompson, there are two other recognizable guest stars. Brian McNamara, who plays Chapman, has done like one episode of every television show that aired in the 1990s. And Ian Abercrombie will be recognizable to anyone who watched Seinfeld (as Elaine's boss, Mr. Pitt).
  

I do love that this episode is very much "about the characters." And I like that the subplot is legitimately funny. But in an episode that really is just "Star Trek does My Fair Lady," for me to feel that the episode is "good except for the My Fair Lady parts" does mean I had problems with the entire thing. "Someone to Watch Over Me" is funny, sweet, and a good showcase for the performers... when it's not old-fashioned, creepy, and awkward. I'll average that all out to something like a B+.

Last But Not Least

True crime is a long popular genre that's lately been going through a gradual metamorphosis. As audiences have become more sensitive to the ways that grisly recaps of horrific crimes can be traumatizing to the victims and their loved ones, true crime makers have increasingly centered their storytelling on those victims and less on the horrible people who visited these evils upon them. Arriving very much in this spirit is a four-part mini-series on Max, called Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York.

This series chronicles several brutal murders of gay men in New York dating back to the early 1990s. More than that, as I was just saying, it delves into the lives of those men and the people the men were taken from. And in equal measure, it's a tale of anti-LGBT violence and rhetoric. The mini-series Last Call makes a strong case that society is currently backsliding to a time we haven't really advanced all that far from in the first place.

Through interviews with organizers in the New York gay community, Last Call makes it clear how much of an uphill battle it was to get law enforcement to treat these victims with respect and actually pursue their killer with any real effort. It shows that just 30 years ago, "indifference" was by far the "best" response that LGBT people -- even in a city like New York -- could expect from the police. And while this mini-series never strays far from its subjects, it makes abundantly clear that there are people today who would have it be that way or worse again. (It makes more clear that it's never really stopped being that way for transgender people.)

It's a "message documentary" that really works because so many of the interview subjects themselves are 100% in support of conveying the message. These deaths are not a pain being co-opted from family and friends, but a pain shared by a much larger community. It's effective because it's never really an irrational rant equating people who "enabled" the murders as murderers themselves; it really lets the facts speak for themselves and shows how people who would never think of themselves as bigoted can nonetheless engage in bigotry.

And yes, it's the tale of catching a horrible murderer. Though when the documentary finally gives some of the spotlight to the perpetrator in the final hour, it's only to reveal just how long the trail of murders actually is.

It's not an easy watch, but I found it a very powerful one -- and far more cathartic than a simple, salacious tale of grisly murders. I give Last Call a B+.

A Not-At-All-Tough Pill to Swallow

I had planned a different blog post for today. But then last night, I saw Jagged Little Pill.

This musical based on the songs of Alanis Morissette had a brief and ill-fated fun on Broadway, affected just months after opening by the COVID shutdowns of 2020, and then affected again shortly after re-opening by a wave of COVID infections among the cast that brought the show to an early end. Now it's back in a touring U.S. production.

I didn't exactly have high hopes going into the performance. There are way too many "jukebox musicals" coming out of Broadway these days, and the ones I've seen are all "meh" at best. They all have the same problem: they feature threadbare stories (usually based on the life of the featured artist) that bend over backwards to fit in the narrow catalog of songs they have to work with. One's enjoyment of such fare turns entirely on whether one likes the artist in question... and even then, the shows can't help but be a pale imitation of just listening to the original song recordings.

Jagged Little Pill surpasses all that to a stunning degree. And I personally attribute it all to the woman they turned to to write the script. Diablo Cody has a notable career in film and television of telling stories that blend acerbic wit and genuine heart. She was also apparently a big fan of Alanis Morrissette's music, and willing to work within the one creative restriction Morrissette reportedly gave this production: don't make this musical her life story.

The result is a jukebox musical done not just right, but superbly. There is an actual story here, with many well-realized and topical subplots and themes, including addiction, racial justice, sexual identity, and rape. It's so defiant and matter-of-fact that it could have come across false or reductive, were it not for Diablo Cody's earnest writing assuring you that this isn't performative, but deeply felt. It could have come across like "medicine" (the title of show becoming, well... if not "ironic," then on-the-nose), but Cody weaves in dozens of legitimately great jokes to lighten the mood.

And the real trick of the writing -- which deservedly won the Tony for Best Book of a Musical -- is that the songs all feel completely organic. Imagine that you'd never heard "Head Over Feet" or "Hand in My Pocket" or "You Learn" (hard as that might be). You would never know that these songs weren't written for this musical. (Side note: Morrissette actually did write two original songs for this show... but you'd never know those weren't deep album cuts that simply never got radio play.) It's all organic in a way that no other jukebox musical I've ever seen even comes close to.

Then there are the moments where writing and acting converge to create something truly magical. It happens at least once in each act of the show: first in the new song "Smiling" in Act One, which features a haunting melody staged with stunningly complex and well-executed choreography that feels like watching an excellent, special-effects laden music video play out in real time. (I'd love to tell you the specific gimmick of the staging, but I think it would spoil the fun if you ever get to see it.)

Then there's the staggering one-two punch in Act Two, back-to-back, of "You Oughta Know" and "Uninvited." Performers Jade McLeod and Heidi Blickenstaff give powerful, emotional performances that each brought the production to a halt for enthusiastic applause. The script has cleverly steered their characters to moments where each song is the perfect peak for their story arcs. It's another way in which Jagged Little Pill bucks a Broadway trend, of the second act almost never being as good. Even if nothing about the production was good, these two songs would be reason enough to see it.

But just about everything else about the production is good. Things maybe drag for just a bit in the middle of the first act -- but then, laying this much story track takes a bit of time, and this features more significant characters than the average Broadway musical. The interpretive dancing of a large chorus is perhaps occasionally distracting -- though moving any complicated dancing to them lets the main cast focus on the acting and singing.

In any case, I'd give Jagged Little Pill an A-. It's in Denver a short while longer, and then continuing to tour the U.S. If you have a chance to see it, I highly recommend it.

Wander Lust?

While I went to Gen Con for work, I was able to pick up a few new board games to bring back home. One of the first that my group was able to try out is Wandering Towers.

Players control a handful of wizard meeples who are each moving around the spaces of a large circle. There are nine towers arrayed around the circle, plus one destination in particular that the wizards are trying to reach: Ravenskeep. On your turn, you play two cards, each one able to move one of your wizards clockwise a certain number of spaces.... or one of the nine towers. Towers stack on top of one another, covering wizards in the process. Any time you cover wizards, you fill a "potion" (flipping a token over); filling all your potions and getting all your wizards to Ravenskeep is the win condition of the game. But having your wizards covered is the real challenge of the game. A card that moves a tower can move an individual tower segment, or as many segments as you choose in an entire stack -- carrying with it all the wizards hidden inside. You must mentally track the locations of your hidden wizards, making the right moves on your turn to reveal them again and then pursue your goals.

I had heard some good buzz about this game before Gen Con, as the German language original has been around since last year. A few things in particular sold me on wanting it. First, it came from the design team of Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer, who individually have each created a number of great games and together created Tikal and others. Wandering Towers looked like an intriguingly more simple and fast-paced game, and was said to take up to 6 players. A reasonably strategic game that plays fast and takes a lot of players is a precious find for larger get-togethers.

On the other hand... I felt like there was a chance this game would go over in my group like a lead balloon. A handful of "memory games" have come and quickly gone over the years; they just don't get a lot of play in my group because the skill gap can be very wide in such games (with no real way to bridge that gap). It seemed like there wasn't that much to track here, and if the game's stated play time of 30 minutes was true, not much "agony" to be in if you weren't fully engaged. Still, I wasn't sure.

So far, I've only had a chance to play it a few times with four players. There at least, the game has been well-received. Indeed, the memory component is meaningful but relatively minor. Each player only has a handful of wizards (fewer at higher player counts), and you only have to remember the locations of some of those (the ones that have been covered, obviously). The game does indeed play in only half an hour, with the explanation to first timers taking only a couple of minutes. More than one declarative "I like this" was uttered over the course of our first play.

That said, I haven't yet "stress tested" this with the full 6 players. It might end up being that there's a little too much chaos with that many involved. Even with only 4 players, it's essentially impossible to do anything like "plan ahead" for your turn. You may know exactly where your wizards are, and have exactly the right cards in hand to move things how you need them to move -- but each player acting between your turns can easily foil that plan with moves of their own. Since any one player gets only two moves in a turn, it might even be that a player can be actively kept from winning by enough other players making moves to thwart an opponent's one remaining wizard. (Though that would probably require an awareness of other people's pieces that so far hasn't really happened in the plays we've done.)

Still, there's a role for a certain amount of chaos in most games, and I myself am more open to that in a game that takes only 30 minutes. So yes, I'm fairly positive on Wandering Towers myself. I'm eager to see what happens when we do get 6 players in it, and happy to play it on request in the meantime even with fewer. The game isn't an "all-timer," but it's clever, easy, and fast-paced, and turned out to be a good Gen Con pick-up. I give it a B+.

Voyager Flashback: Juggernaut

The Malon were an interesting introduction to Star Trek: Voyager, a race of garbage-hauling villains who served as an obvious climate change parable in storytelling. But the return appearance of the aliens in the episode "Juggernaut" wasn't particularly successful in my eyes.

Voyager must help a damaged Malon freighter control a deadly leak before it explodes and destroys an entire sector of space. The mission is a particular trial for B'Elanna Torres, whose simmering rage mirrors that of a "boogeyman" said to dwell in the contaminated areas of the Malon ship.

There are interesting ideas at play in this episode. "Bigfoot is real" seems like a good enough hook for an episode of science fiction; "Bigfoot has a legitimate beef over how people treat him" is a particular Star Trek kind of take on the story. Connecting the sci-fi story thematically with the emotions of one of the main characters? Well, that's exactly the formula that Star Trek: The Next Generation used to create some of its very best episodes.

The problem here is that this episode feels like it was written by someone who had only ever seen a couple of first season episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, using solely that knowledge to craft this script and ignoring anything that had happened in the intervening four-plus years. That's not actually the case; the script is credited to three staff writers (Bryan Fuller & Nick Sagan and Kenneth Biller). Nevertheless, they regress almost every character to tell this story. Neelix is back to blustering about skills he doesn't really possess just so he can seem useful. The Doctor is especially caustic and annoying and without self-awareness, nearly back to "factory settings."

B'Elanna, being front and center in the story, gets the biggest regression of all. Since basically the only defining character trait she's ever been given is "Klingon anger," she's back to a season one level of being "mad at everyone and everything" to facilitate this story. She's surly about diplomacy being Captain Janeway's solution to everything, as though she hasn't had five years to get used to that. She's easily goaded by an insult from Tuvok (which the Vulcan even delivers in expected emotionless fashion). Tuvok and Janeway debate whether she's up to the mission at hand, as though she hasn't proven herself over and over during their time in the Delta Quadrant. The whole affair highlights how little growth occurs for most of the characters on this show -- one of Voyager's biggest weaknesses compared to The Next Generation and (especially) Deep Space Nine before it.

Still, "Juggernaut" has its good moments too. The guest stars are solid, all actors who have been on Star Trek before and who are more than capable of performing through heavy makeup. Ron Canada in particular is solid as the Malon captain, helped by his character's interesting back story of being a part time waste hauler, part time sculptor. The one scene that acknowledges any character growth of the last few seasons is a good one: Paris giving his girlfriend a pep talk and goodbye kiss before the big mission.

The production quality is great. There's extensive use of CG that looks really good for its time. The Malon sets are dripping with goo, filled with steam, and actually look hot and dangerous to be in. Props are cool, especially a grisly two-pronged medical device used to deliver injections. Makeup is great, from the irradiated monster to the lesions that appear on our crew the longer they stay on the Malon ship, to even the simple dirt and grime coating B'Elanna after the mission.

Other observations:

• Why does no one consider sending the Doctor -- a hologram immune to radiation poisoning -- over to deal with the crisis on the Malon freighter? All we needed was a quick line of dialogue saying that his mobile emitter wouldn't be reliable in the irradiated environment or something.

• Neelix's homeopathic remedy is a rare case of him making food so nasty that even he thinks it's nasty.

• I'm not sure how long this episode should have stayed in "horror movie" mode (it's not a genre that Star Trek is strong at). In any case, there's no denying that most of the tension deflates the moment we see the "monster" and know that it's "just a guy."

Ultimately, the biggest problem with this B'Elanna episode is that B'Elanna just doesn't get many episodes -- so few that it seems the writers have only one note to strike when writing about her. "Juggernaut" isn't bad, but it is shallow. I give it a B-.

Toy Story

"Barbenheimer" may have peaked weeks ago, but part of the bizarre double-feature meme has had true staying power: Barbie itself. When I caught the movie just before I left for Gen Con, I figured that my blog post about it would be old news by the time I returned and posted it. Instead, Barbie has topped the box office every week since its release, and is likely to be the biggest movie of the year. And while it's not likely to end up as my personal favorite of 2023 when all is said and done, I do think it's quite deserving of the Movie Everyone Sees mantle.

For one thing, it's very clever. Much has been written about how writer-director Greta Gerwig (along with co-writer and partner Noah Baumbach) crafted a script with surprising bite, given the need to appease a corporate overlord. More clever is how the movie pushes past the premise that easily would have been "enough": it's not just a story about fictional Barbie getting a rude awakening in the real world, but how the real world is then brought back to infect the fictional one. It's a bizzaro Wizard of Oz for the modern age.

Still more clever are the messages at play in the movie. Of course, proud feminist ideals are front and center, and have been the target of much performative ire from conservative sticks-in-the-mud. But the movie does not "wedge in" its messages of female empowerment, it makes them a part of the plot. And the movie doesn't shy away from the notion that Barbie-as-role-model has perhaps hurt young girls just as it's helped them. And it points out that patriarchy and toxic masculinity can be caustic and damaging to men and women alike. And it also manages to float a more subtle message about creativity: that once you create a thing and share it with the world, you can no longer fully control your creation

But mostly, it's funny. Perhaps the biggest weakness here is that star Margot Robbie, though perfectly doing everything the script asks of her and giving a fine performance, gets the movie stolen out from under her by basically everyone else in an excellent cast. America Ferrera gets the big, rallying speech at the movie's emotional core. Kate McKinnon gets to bring her specific brand of irreverent wit to a funny, flashy role. Michael Cera is perfectly cast for his milquetoast brand. Will Ferrell is at maximum Ferrell as he plants a flag atop "call me to be the villain in your toy movie" mountain. Helen Mirren gets to plant tongue firmly in cheek as a wry narrator. Half the cast of Sex Education is here just for fun, to shoot together between seasons.

And Ryan Gosling seems to be having the kind of anarchic fun usually reserved for Ryan Reynolds. In his role as Ken, he swings wildly from needy to pompous to clueless to awed. He sings. He dances. He does physical comedy, delivers ridiculous puns. He does everything to honestly earn a Best Actor nomination, if the Oscar voting body is cool enough to give him one (and isn't worried about the optics of Ken being the Oscar-nominated performance in the Barbie movie).

I may be overselling all that. It's actually a little hard to talk about the good things in Barbie without sounding like you're overselling it. The truth is perhaps not so much that the movie arrives as a one-of-a-kind triumph, but as a well-made and funny movie that stands on the shoulders of other influences that have come before. (Which Greta Gerwig herself has readily acknowledged.) I give it a B+. (Which, if you're keeping track and/or care, means I did like it better than Oppenheimer.) I would say you should go see it, but it seems like everyone has already gotten that message.

Strange New Worlds: Hegemony

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has had a superlative second season, serving up a wide variety of genres and tones, each one a perfectly crafted example of the thing it's aiming to be. But I feel like unfortunately, they saved the worst for last; the season finale, "Hegemony," felt to me like the weakest episode of the season.

When the Gorn violently attack a non-Federation colony where Captain Batel and Nurse Chapel were visiting aboard the Cayuga, the Enterprise must come to the rescue. But the Enterprise is deprived of sensors, communication, and transporters, and also can't be seen crossing a territory border that Starfleet has agreed to with the Gorn.

Let me first say that the "worst" from Strange New Worlds is still a thoroughly enjoyable hour of television; it may well be that any disappointment I feel about this episode stems mostly from how great the rest of the show has been by comparison. Let me also say that I have no problem with the series adopting "horror movie" as one of its episodic genre experiments. (It did so the last time we saw the Gorn as well.)

Still, there are some elements here that feel a bit off to me. I wrote of the prior Gorn episode that the degree to which they were borrowing from the Alien franchise felt more "homage" than "ripoff." Yet it didn't sit quite right with me, and I think this episode drew more into focus the reason why. The more monstrous the show makes the Gorn -- the more the content justifies Pike's zinger of a line that "sometimes a monster is just a monster" -- the less it all hangs together for me. It's hard to believe the logic of a space-faring race this hostile not only outwardly but amongst itself, and hard to accept how utterly disinterested in diplomacy all our heroes are here, even with Hemmer's death coloring their perceptions.

And while I'm on the lack of empathy here -- we don't get any confirmation that Chapel is the only survivor left aboard the Cayuga, which in turn makes both Spock and Chapel look quite callous even before the unusually visceral fight they have with the adult Gorn. (Side note: what reason did Spock have for going inside the ship if he hadn't spotted Chapel? He surely didn't need to position a rocket inside on the bridge.)

But like I said, even a "bad" episode of Strange New Worlds really just amounts to a "less good" episode, and there was plenty here that I did like. I loved how central Chapel and Spock's relationship was to the story here, adding big personal stakes. Ortegas got more good moments over the course of her first landing party. The arrival of Montgomery Scott felt well executed on every level, from the way the character was written, to the "why now?" of him appearing here, to the casting of Martin Quinn -- who not only channeled just enough of James Doohan to feel right, but who became the first actual Scotsman to play the role.

There were also some very smart choices about how certain characters were put in danger late in the episode. A lot of the cast of Strange New Worlds has "plot immunity," because we know they exist in the time of the original series. And while there are ways to generate suspense that don't only turn on they question of "will they live or die?", that question is the main focus of a horror story like this. So it's notable that characters who aren't explicitly safe are in harm's way: La'an and Ortegas are among those who have been abducted by the Gorn, and Batel is the one who's incubating lethal baby Gorns inside her body. (That said, the actual final moment of the cliffhanger -- Pike's moment of indecision -- rings false to me. If he was actually going to order the Enterprise to break orbit and leave everyone behind, then surely that would have been the moment of cliffhanger.)

So... cliffhanger, huh? This is probably going be the longest Star Trek fans have ever dangled off a cliff; thanks to studios opting to play hardball against the reasonable demands of striking actors and writers, the third season of Strange New Worlds hasn't even begun filming. That in turn makes it quite likely we won't get a resolution until 2025. Ouch.

But then, waiting for more Strange New Worlds was going to be hard anyway. Because while I'd probably only give "Hegemony" a B, I'd say this season as a whole was the best Star Trek we've had in the modern era -- and I greedily want more of that, as fast as they can give it to me. (Not really; I think the smaller episode count and the time they take creating them is exactly why and how it can be that good.)

Strange New Worlds: Subspace Rhapsody

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, having successfully staged a crossover with a cartoon, decided in its penultimate episode of season two to give us that most gimmicky of television stunts: a musical episode. (Though perhaps the real shocker is that in nearly 900 episodes of television, the Star Trek franchise never served one up before now.)

While experimenting on an unusual subspace phenomenon, Spock and Uhura entangle their reality with another which adheres to the conventions of musical theater. Soon the entire crew is breaking into song -- revealing emotional secrets in the process -- as they try to restore normality before a Klingon battle group causes widespread destruction.

With two union strikes underway in Hollywood, there's not much the writers and actors can tell us about the creation of this unusual episode. Still, you can watch the episode itself and see that a major touchstone was the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (There's even a shout-out to bunnies, for fans of both franchises.) Though many series (dramatic and comedic) have done musical episodes over the years, they're almost always siloed endeavors that you really can "take or leave" according to your willingness to accept the gimmick. Buffy's musical episode was different, deeply integrated into the ongoing story lines at the time, forcing characters to reveal deep secrets to one another and kicking off new plot lines that would turn the course of the season.

"Subspace Rhapsody" takes that same approach to fully integrate the episode with ongoing story (just as "Those Old Scientists" did), resulting in an episode that really matters. The episode grapples with multiple elements of season two, from Pike's rocky romantic life, to Una's resolve to be more open in the aftermath of her trial, to La'an's deeply impactful time adventure, to Spock and Chapel's new relationship, to Uhura's gradual journey toward self-assuredness following her promotion. These are more plot threads than you could normally advance in a satisfying way in a single episode, but here the fact that this is a musical episode is leverage to do exactly that. All that and more (Kirk mentioning Carol Marcus!) can thus be included here while not feeling "packed in."

All that said, some of the songs were more effective than others. Naturally, it helped when an accomplished singer was being featured. Celia Rose Gooding and Christina Chong have both starred in major musical productions, so it's no surprise that the solos for Uhura and La'an were the biggest "show stoppers" of the episode, weaving emotion and musicality to absolute perfection. Yet the weakest number of the episode for me wasn't due to the performance. Ethan Peck showed off a surprising effective baritone, though I thought his big number missed the mark emotionally. Spock basically sang about being dumped, in a number that felt centered on the wrong embarrassment; his deeper shame is surely that he dared to express more emotion and now it hasn't worked out.

That's just a minor quibble, though. Really, there's just one significant issue I'd raise against the episode: I think it should have leaned in harder. I imagine there was a lot of behind the scenes discussion about whether a significant number of Star Trek fans would accept a premise this fantastical (though far fewer seem to have an issue when the "magic" results from, say, Q snapping his fingers). I say that once you've taken the leap, just go for it. The most impactful moments in the episode fully embraced the musical conceit: cuts to dancing redshirts in the corridors, the auto-tuned Klingon boy band (it's K-Pop, get it?!) -- or, on the more serious side, La'an's visions of another reality with Jim Kirk.

I think there could have been more of all that -- if not in the script, then at least in the directing and cinematography. Director Dermott Downs (who, incidentally, has done a few "musical episodes" now for other series) did do a decent job of moving the camera enough to keep this from feeling like we were sitting static in a theater, watching a stage... and yet there wasn't a lot of variety in the visual presentation, either. More theatrical lighting, more fully realized dance numbers (like Chapel's), more spectacle could have pushed this episode to even greater heights.

Still.... it did soar to respectable heights for me. If there's one Strange New Worlds episode from season two that I re-watch obsessively, it's going to be "Those Old Scientists." But I'd still say "Subspace Rhapsody" deserves an A-.

A Secret Not Worth Keeping

Shortly before I left for Gen Con, the latest Marvel TV series finished up its six-episode run. Picking up on plot threads seeded in Captain Marvel, Secret Invasion centered on Nick Fury as he struggled against alien Skrulls capable of impersonating humans. The show was generally panned throughout its brief run, and I can't say my opinion was much different. Every week, Tuesday would roll around, and only the knowledge that another new episode was about to arrive would make the previous episode bubble to the top of the "time to watch this" queue.

The problems with the show were numerous, and essentially all at the script level. The overall story was weirdly both too complicated and too simple at the same time, in a way that made it really difficult to follow the narrative from A to B to C. That's largely because character motivations made little to no sense, quickly devolving into humdrum "the main villain hates the main hero, just because" tropes. Along the way, significant characters are killed off in stupid ways for minimal impact -- from classic "killing the female character to motivate the male character" to "killing off one of the better actors on the show without ever giving them a truly good scene first."

But the biggest miss of all is that Secret Invasion failed to deliver on its core premise. The very first scene of the first episode is an extended sequence that shows the audience that anyone we've ever known, anywhere, might actually be an alien Skrull. The ramifications of this are staggering, setting the stage for a paranoid thriller in which no one can be trusted, and in which we're sure to discover that multiple characters we've followed for years might actually be bad guys.

And then, essentially none of that ever actually happens. The "stolen identity" reveals are few and far between, and only one has any long-standing ramifications on the MCU. (Does it really, though?) This is probably the inevitable consequence of telling this story as a TV series and not an actual Marvel movie, because very few MCU characters are actually here in the show (and many of the ones who the audience would care about most have already left the franchise). Or maybe it's just bad writing more generally. It's not like Marvel television is incapable of telling a story like this; I could not help but think of the "LMD" arc on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and how much stronger it felt by comparison.

So why did I keep tuning in for six episodes? Well... because the acting was superb, better than any entry in the MCU has seen in years. It was, of course, a showcase for Samuel L. Jackson to do his trademark thing more fully than anywhere else in the MCU. It was an opportunity for more of his great banter with Ben Mendelsohn. Don Cheadle was given the best scenes he's ever had in the MCU.

And Olivia Colman gets a paragraph of her own here, because as always, she crushes it. This multiple award winner has a long history of being the very best thing in basically every project she takes on, despite often being surrounded by a talented ensemble. That's no different here, as she steals every scene playing a jolly psychopath of an MI6 agent, and ultimately leaves me wishing we were watching the show centered on her.

I wrote of the movie Eternals that it was the worst entry in the MCU franchise. Were it not for the efforts of a great cast spinning something like gold from straw here, I think Secret Invasion would have given that movie a run for its money. That monumental effort pulls this up to a "still not worth watching" C- for me.

Strange New Worlds: Under the Cloak of War

I have returned home from a long week of Gen Con to a week's worth of piled up television that kept chugging along in my absence. That included the big musical episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (one of the first things I wanted to watch upon my return). However, I actually didn't manage to post a review of the prior episode before my departure. So first, my thoughts on "Under the Cloak of War."

When the Enterprise is tasked with transporting a Klingon war criminal turned diplomat, tension is high among the crew -- especially for M'Benga, Chapel, and Ortegas, all of whom had difficult experiences during the war.

I'll stipulate right out of the gate that if your taste for Star Trek is only for things Gene Roddenberry would have approved of, you're probably not going to like this episode. Even 1960s Star Trek, before Roddenberry fully embraced his own "futurist visionary" hype and imposed difficult drama-curtailing restrictions on character behavior, would not have dared to show heroes in as dark a manner as this episode does. Yet I think the decision to do so pays great dividends, in the form of Star Trek's best episode about "the horrors of war" since Deep Space Nine's "The Siege of AR-558."

For starters, it's now possible for television to present a much more believable and visceral war setting than ever before. This script, by Davy Perez, does an amazing job of transposing war movie tropes into a Star Trek setting, from lack of supplies becoming a more specific lack of working technology to patients dropped in by transporter rather than helicopter. (Side note: The dispassionate drone of the "incoming transport" warning was a super-effective trigger for transitioning in and out of the episode's many flashbacks.)

Moreover, modern television better understands that "show, don't tell" is the way to engage the audience's heart as well as brain. (Maybe it always understood that and simply now has the means.) A particular episode of The Next Generation gave O'Brien an excellent monologue about the effects of war, concluding in the memorable line "I don't hate you, Cardassian. I hate what I became because of you." As well written as that was, and as skillfully as Colm Meaney delivered it, this episode takes the same arc for M'Benga and shows it to us. Along the way, we learn better about the drug he and Chapel took earlier in the season, get a prequel to his use of the transporter to save his daughter... and crucially, learn just how far he's still willing to go.

Yes, M'Benga's decision at the end of this episode will be controversial, as will Chapel's choice to cover for him. But I do think the episode earned that final twist. (And if you prefer, the deliberate choice to show the audience the death of Dak'rah only through a blurry screen perhaps provides a modicum of deniability if you want to interpret the episode another way.)

The episode also gave us ominous progression in the relationship between Chapel and Spock. There's something sadly ironic in the fact that Chapel wants to repress and ignore emotion here, and cannot connect with Spock about that. Regardless, this is a part of Chapel's past that matters profoundly, and Spock may well be incapable of understanding it even if Chapel could bring herself to discuss it. This relationship was already doomed by "canon," of course -- but this episode made it feel plausibly doomed in a more natural narrative way as well.

All that, plus Clint Howard collecting yet another Star Trek series appearance!

Strange New Worlds has shown how agile and flexible it can be, changing up genres and tones from week to week with seemingly no effort at all (though I'm certain the effort is substantial!). They did it again here, producing another great episode in a great second season that I rate as an A-.