Lower Decks: Something Borrowed, Something Green

One of classic Star Trek's most indelible images, from the very beginning, was the alluring green-skinned Orion dancer. But for decades, the writers' interest in the Orions was literally only skin deep. Even Enterprise, which dove ever deeper into Trek lore in its final season, made only minor use of them. Then came modern Trek -- and in particular Lower Decks, featuring a regular character who was actively rebelling against the values of a society we actually know little about. The latest episode, "Something Borrowed, Something Green," changes that.

Tendi is invited to her sister's wedding... in part because it's her duty as oldest sibling to rescue the bride-to-be from a prenuptial abduction. Mariner and T'Lyn tag along to experience more of the Orions' secretive culture. Meanwhile, Boimler and Rutherford experience roommate friction, which they're working through on the holodeck when they become entangled in a diplomatic impasse.

I kind of love that the animated, comedic Star Trek series is getting to lay groundwork here that future Star Trek series will be obliged to incorporate in the franchise's ever-expanding canon. I love it because there is a coherent, organizing principle you could take seriously (it's "planet Mafia")... but Lower Decks absolutely does not, instead stuffing a goody bag with all sorts of sweet treats for us to enjoy. Hilarious names like "B'rt." The "murder bug drinking game." Ever-present knives that always find their way to the same wound, in a perfectly executed form of the comedy "rule of threes." There's like an improv scene premise here that the writers just get to pitch on, and it's hilarious.

Another thing I love about this A story is how it incorporates the newer character of T'Lyn. I'm really warming to her stepping into the role of the "fifth Lower Decker" on this show; her dry one-liners are among the biggest laughs of the episode. But also, segueing into the serious, T'Lyn actually gets a real character arc here too: a Vulcan character gains emotional awareness and intelligence, making the choice to protect a friend's feelings in the end. (And she gives a perfectly Vulcan explanation that sounds logical, to cover for what might really be a fundamentally emotional decision.)

The episode's B plot this week seems like little more than an excuse for everyone to revel in imitating the Mark Twain accent that actor Jerry Hardin employed when he played the character on The Next Generation. Still, this is also good for a lot of laughs. And if you want to look for something more serious, maybe you can appreciate the inversion of expected gender roles in this episode: the women are out having the action adventure, while the boys are working through an emotional conflict.

And the season-long arc of the mysteriously destructive ship is back. We get a taste of another alien ship's "lower decks" -- this time, of course, Orion -- just before it's destroyed.

When the laughs and the character growth come together, it's a good Lower Decks episode in my eyes. And I laughed a lot at this one. I give "Something Borrowed, Something Green" an A-.

Voyager Flashback: Barge of the Dead

Objectively, "Barge of the Dead" is not an especially notable episode of Star Trek: Voyager. I don't even think it's particularly good. But it is a milestone hour of Star Trek, on both a general and very personal level.

When B'Elanna has a near death experience in which she sees her mother on the fabled ship that transports souls to Klingon hell, she's determined to restore her mother's honor before it's too late. But it may mean a permanent trip back to the afterlife.

I'll get right to it: the personal significance of this episode was that I was there. Back in 1999, I had recently started working at Decipher, the maker of the game that began my career in games, the Star Trek Customizable Card Game. I was in San Diego to work at Comic Con, and I'm awakened one morning (before the convention had actually kicked off) by a phone call from a co-worker who says simply, "can you get up to Los Angeles by [ridiculous time only a couple hours from now]? If you can get up here to meet us, you can come tour the Star Trek: Voyager sets." They had used our company's connection licensing Star Trek to leverage the special visit, and I was being invited too.

Most car rental agencies won't rent a car to someone under 25. Northbound traffic between San Diego and Los Angeles on a weekday morning is a nightmare. But I wasn't going to let anything stand in my way of meeting my co-workers "at the Forrest Gump bench" on the Paramount lot at the appointed time. How I pulled it off is honestly a blur to me today, but somehow I did get a car, and somehow I did make it to the Paramount lot. What seemed most improbable of all to me was that my name was indeed "on the list," and I was allowed into the gate, where I found "the bench."

Even then, I wasn't as big a fan of Star Trek: Voyager as I was of Deep Space Nine or The Next Generation, but the set tour was still magical. The bridge was dark that day, with nothing being shot there, but we started by watching active filming in the mess hall, followed by a walk down the lit corridor to engineering, which was being set up for a shot later in the day. We also got to go to the separate sound stage where temporary sets for Voyager were always built, where the actual titular Barge of the Dead was standing in stunning, massive glory.

The filming we saw was truly weird. There's a nightmare sequence in this episode where B'Elanna sees visions of Klingon warriors killing off her friends and co-workers one by one. The production knew that some kind of special treatment was required here, but they wanted a few options to play with later in the editing room. So cast members were coming in, each in turn, to shoot their deaths at the hand of Klingons, multiple times each for a different film speed of slow motion.

As we walked in, Jeri Ryan had apparently just finished filming and was leaving the set. Now it was Ethan Phillips' turn. Readers will know that I don't like the character of Neelix. Nothing against Ethan Phillips, but I hated the writing for the character then, and I hate it now. So, appropriately, the thing I got to see on the day I visited the Voyager set was Neelix being killed.... again, and again, and again, and again. As many times as it took to get the right take for one speed of film, then as many times as it took to get it right for the next speed. In the final assembly of the episode, it's on screen for less than a second. It's motion-blurred the entire time. (I know, because I tried desperately to screen capture the moment to put on a card in the card game; but it was not to be.) But it's seared into my memory forever.

So that's my personal connection. Elsewhere, Star Trek as a franchise was losing a key creative force. Ronald D. Moore had been a staff writer on two prior Star Trek series, with his credit on 60 episodes before he transferred to Voyager. As I've mentioned in my last two episode reviews, Voyager basically "broke" him and he immediately left the franchise. This is the last episode his name appears on, in a "story by" credit because he'd tried to tell a version of this on Deep Space Nine before seeing it recycled here. (A "trip to Klingon hell" was discarded from a late series episode for being too expensive, complicated, and off-topic.)

I can't say whether I think there was a great episode somewhere in the idea. But the version as executed is pretty rough, and I can kind of see how it pushed an already-skeptical Moore out the door. So much of the Klingon mythology talked about here seems ad hoc and unconvincing. The "lesson" B'Elanna learns in the end -- to throw away her weapon and stop fighting -- seems at odds with Klingon cultural values as we've come to know them. The episode doesn't effectively ride the line enough between whether what B'Elanna experiences is "real" or all in her mind.

It doesn't work especially well for the character of B'Elanna either. She's spent five seasons resenting the Klingon part of herself that she inherited from her mother, but now goes "full Klingon" to help her. (You could imagine this story making much more sense if Worf were seeing his father Mogh in the afterlife.) The episode tries too hard to make Janeway into a mother figure for B'Elanna that she's never really been -- going so far that B'Elanna strangely embraces her and not Tom Paris (who's right there) when it's all over.

The episode misses on other characters too. The Doctor agrees too easily to help B'Elanna recreate a near-death experience. (And it's a missed opportunity for B'Elanna not to have to convince Tom to supervise the medical procedure, say, after the Doctor flat out refuses.) There's not nearly enough dialogue between B'Elanna and Chakotay, who have a deep friendship, about the meaning of her vision.

But there are still some fun moments. Much of the cast doesn't even appear as their real character, and everyone seems to be having fun playing a twisted nightmare version of themselves -- like a taunting Tuvok, or the Doctor and Seven singing a drinking song. There's also a good debate between Janeway and B'Elanna about how far the freedom of religion should extend. And the production is off the charts. That ship was as impressive in person as it looks on screen. The visualization of the Klingon afterlife is fantastic, from the lake of blood to the upside-down Klingon emblem above the gates of "hell."

Other observations:

• The opening shot is terrible, though. Looking into a shuttle cockpit as B'Elanna crashes, you can see smoke leaking out of the ship where the windshield should be, and the shot is framed so broadly you can see it for the "shake the camera" cheapness it is.

• When B'Elanna begins to suspect something is off, the first thing she says is: "Computer, end program." Yeah, that's totally what you'd do in a world with holodecks.

• Guest star Karen Austin, who plays B'Elanna's mother, is in real life only four years older than Roxann Dawson. That's Hollywood for you.

I'm possibly rating this episode too highly at C+. But my association of that very special day in 1999 colors the experience. (Meanwhile, I'm sure Ronald D. Moore has very unpleasant memories about this episode.) Anyway... that's "Barge of the Dead."

Lower Decks: In the Cradle of Vexilon

Star Trek: Lower Decks takes a week off from teasing out its season long "mysterious ship" arc with a Star Trek classic: a story about a malfunctioning society-controlling AI. But there are plenty of Lower Decks twists along the way (such as the fact that the AI isn't evil!). 

The Cerritos is tasked with the repair of a (surprisingly non-malevolent) computer intelligence who tends to all the needs of an alien society. As Captain Freeman's over-confidence in her own "ancient computer repair skills" triggers a crisis, Boimler is elsewhere experiencing an extreme lack of confidence as he must command his first away mission. Meanwhile, aboard the ship, Mariner suspects that she, Tendi, and Rutherford are being hazed by another officer... but are they?

Lower Decks generally adheres closely to what its title promises, focusing episodes on the low-ranking characters. But Captain Freeman (and Commander Ransom) are also main characters, and the show needs to give them stories too. Unfortunately, Freeman has always been characterized as a sort of "sitcom character boss." It's necessary, I suppose, to explain why she herself works in the "lower decks" of Starfleet as a whole. But it also means that almost every time an episode centers her character, she's usually the architect of her own problems.

So while I did find it refreshing that we got a Star Trek supercomputer who wasn't evil, I didn't love that Freeman basically precipitated the entire crisis of this episode single-handedly. It was true to how her character has been depicted in the past. And it was a plot mirror to Boimler's own lesson in delegation. But it felt so... Homer Simpson-like, so Michael Scott-like.

And to the degree that it was "doubling up" on the story message, I felt like it wasn't needed. It felt much less contrived to watch Boimler struggle with command. (Indeed, some past Star Trek episodes have also built on the idea.) It was also good that his story separated him from his closest friends, forcing him to struggle on his own and ultimately take advice from somebody else to be his best.

That's saying an awful lot about the more serious aspects of the episode, though. And, of course, Lower Decks is always a lot of fun. This time, it was the "C plot" with Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford that generated most of the laughs. It certainly featured most of the Star Trek callbacks, from Chula to a Betazoid Gift Box and more. (Though the episode also called back to Lower Decks itself; Boimler's near-death experience included details Shaxs revealed about death, plus of course, the koala.)

Lower Decks made me laugh as always. But for the second episode in a row, I found the main story thread (of three) to be the least interesting. I give "In the Cradle of Vexilon" a B.

Voyager Flashback: Survival Instinct

When I posted about the choppy sixth season premiere of Star Trek: Voyager, I noted the criticism of writer Ronald D. Moore, who had come onto the show after Deep Space Nine. I promised I'd have more to say about his short tenure on Voyager, and now here we are with the only Voyager script credited to him, "Survival Instinct."

A group of three former Borg drones with a past connection to Seven of Nine comes looking for her. The trio has been locked together in a psychologically torturous neural link, and they're convinced that the solution has something to do with an event all four shared in their past. Will Seven feel a debt to these people and help them, or turn away from painful memories she doesn't want to dredge up?

Television viewers who don't pay attention to writer names (and honestly, that's most of them), may not know who Ronald D. Moore is -- but I'd wager a longtime Voyager fan would sense on some level that something is different about this episode. It's not even a matter of quality; I'm not offering this up as a top-shelf episode of the series. But there are many markers in how this episode is written that set it apart from most Voyager. It's no wonder Moore immediately knew this wasn't the right working environment for him.

In short: character matters a whole lot more here than in the average Voyager episode. That feels a bit funny to say, given that this is a Seven of Nine episode, and she becomes more and more featured in the final seasons. But this episode doesn't simply center on her, it's structured to illuminate something particular about her -- her feelings about family. The episode gives her a "family" in a trio of intriguing guest characters with distinct-yet-intermingled personalities. It integrates Seven's relationship with  Naomi Wildman. It sets up how Seven must re-embrace what she's turned her back on in order to help those she cares about.

But almost more notable is in how many other characters get interesting moments around the periphery of the main story. Tuvok cracks dry Vulcan jokes ("I am pleased that you are pleased."). B'Elanna is an insightful sounding board. ("You may not have nostalgia about the past, but you definitely have feelings. Strong ones.") Janeway and Seven have their best heart-to-heart in a long while, as the captain helps clarify the emotional and personal stakes at play here. Chakotay also helps draw Seven out on her thoughts in the most substantial scene the two of them have had... ever? The Doctor poses the potent question of whether Seven ultimately chooses what the three former drones would want, or is choosing just to assuage her own guilt. Tom Paris and Harry Kim have a playful little scene recounting their hijinks aboard an alien station. (It's not hard to imagine such a scene played by Julian Bashir and Miles O'Brien on Deep Space Nine.)

In short, it feels like this script is trying awfully hard to give as many characters as possible their little moment to shine amid another character's featured episode. That it's notably awkward at times showcases how unlike Voyager it is to do this... and so it comes as no great surprise that Ronald D. Moore didn't want to stick around on a show not interested in its characters in this way.

Elements of the production feel strangely different here too, perhaps serving to magnify the things that feel different in the script. The inhabitants of an alien station come swarming onto Voyager, giving us far more background actors that we usually see on the series. The lighting of some sets feels subtly different, brighter. (Janeway's ready room in particular.) The musical score is more prominent than usual, and tinged with some stylings more common in horror movies than Star Trek.

Don't worry, though -- this is still Star Trek. Every one of the three main guest stars had appeared in the franchise before. And one in particular -- Vaughn Armstrong -- would ultimately take the record for playing more characters than any other actor in Star Trek. (Yes, beating even Jeffrey Combs, though more of Combs' characters would recur.) Trek fans also get to see Jeri Ryan briefly returned to full Borg makeup (I'm sure she hated every minute of it), a redressing of the jungle "outdoor" set (used here as the Borg crash site), and other trappings like a Bajoran appearing on Voyager.

It's possible that the trio of drones overwhelms the story a bit too much; their plight feels more interesting than Seven's, and I'm left perhaps too interested in what the final weeks of their lives will be like after this episode. Still, I like the ultimate message here, that "survival is insufficient" when compared to a fulfilling existence.

Other observations:

• Perhaps three Trek veterans are cast as the drones because the whole gimmick of them needing to finish each other's sentences is actually quite difficult to pull off. It would have helped to know you have people who can handle the rest of it already: the makeup, the technobabble.
  

• Young Scarlett Powers, who plays Naomi Wildman, gets "demoted" in season six. Her name used to appear in the episode credits at the beginning of act one. Here (and for the rest of the season), she's only listed in the end credits.

I think that if Star Trek: Voyager had been more like this all along, or had grown to be more like this in its final seasons, I personally would have been more of a fan. But this is an odd outlier, and I see it more of a grade B episode.

Dream a Little Dream?

Longtime readers of my blog may recall some of the occasions where I've posted about the writing of John Scalzi. I find him generally to be entertaining, taking a more pulp approach when fleshing out his strange science fiction concepts. (Though on one occasion, the cocktail didn't taste right to me.) This time, I dipped back into his bibliography and came up with another playful, quirky, weird read in The Android's Dream.

In the future, Earth is one of the less powerful members of a galactic confederation of alien worlds. But they're now central to a crisis precipitated by the assassination of an alien diplomat, and the ensuing power struggle. For a new alien leader to ascend, they must perform a ritual involving a species of sheep with a very specific DNA profile... that someone is going around and methodically slaughtering to prevent the ritual. But one candidate remains, stored inside the "junk DNA" of a human woman who has no idea she was genetically engineered. And one war veteran now working as a spy must keep her safe using his wits and an AI/resurrected-human hybrid.

Does that sound like a lot? Well, I didn't even mention that the assassination setting up the story is carried out by one person literally farting at the victim and triggering their death. I didn't mention the pursuing alien thug who ingests people whole to torture or kill them (or how his society actually encourages such behavior as part of adolescence). And I wouldn't spoil some of the strange settings for action sequences throughout the book, except to say: they're strange.

Yeah, The Android's Dream seems like John Scalzi at his very Scalzi-est: out to entertain himself first and foremost as he writes. But it's not like he doesn't want the reader to enjoy it too; he just isn't going to restrain his playful instincts to try to court a more serious readership. He doesn't want them. And not that he's incapable of serious thought, either. By the end of the book, the narrative has brushed up against deeper topics like religious fervor and PTSD... amid a classic "keep on the run" story.

While I did have fun reading, though, I will say that I didn't feel as fully engrossed in this book as with some of Scalzi's other tales I've sampled. It's quite a light read, but it still took me a rather long time to get through the book. There were many nights when I simply chose not to keep reading, not feeling that drive to learn what happens next. I finished it, I liked it, and I'd even recommend it... but it's not a "must read" by any means.

I give The Android's Dream a B. If you've read some John Scalzi, but not this one, you might want to check it out. If you've never sampled his books before, I'd suggest starting with something different. (Lock In, perhaps?)

Lower Decks: I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee

You might think that with the writer and actor strikes going on, networks and streaming services wouldn't be in a rush to burn through what new banked content they have. But then, you're not Paramount+, deciding to kick off season four of Star Trek: Lower Decks with two episodes in one week! So, time to talk about "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee."

When Mariner misinterprets an overheard comment by Ransom, she's sure he plans to demote her... and is determined to earn the demotion with as much bad behavior as she can muster. She gets the perfect opportunity when the two of them are on away mission to an alien menagerie, where a cute-but-lethal creature has escaped. Meanwhile, Rutherford sets out to earn a fast promotion so he can move up with his recently-promoted friends. And Boimler tries to find new quarters without unlivable down sides.

Plenty of Star Trek episodes have used the sort of A/B/C plot structure that's used here, but it isn't often that I find the "A plot" to be the least engaging. We've seen Ransom and Mariner at odds a fair amount before, and "I overheard something and took it out of context to the extreme" is one of the most well-traveled sitcom tropes there is. Also, this story line didn't quite follow the Lower Decks norm of giving us "an actual Star Trek story" with a humorous slant -- at least, not in the ending, where our heroes decide not to rescue the imprisoned humans just because they'd tried to escape themselves and caused trouble.

Still, there were laughs to be had. Some came from poor Ensign Gary, stuck between Mariner and Ransom. Others came from the shamelessly cute horror that was "moopsy." (They have to make a stuffed animal version that says its name when you squeeze it, right?) Still more came from more unexpected places, like the final reveal of Ransom's new teeth.

And as for the "B" and "C" plots? I was much more entertained. I feel like among the "core four" of Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, and Rutherford, it's Rutherford who is least often shown to be out of his element. His rivalry with "new guy" Livik, outdoing him by insignificant fractions at the most dense of technobabbly tasks, was just a fun idea. Meanwhile, if Lower Decks had a longer run time, I could imagine several other "terrible quarters" that Boimler might have found himself in -- though the ones depicted were quite funny. (I especially liked the room "between two holodecks.")

I guess there was sort of a "D plot" too? The episode did begin with another tease of the season-long story, in which we see a Romulan ship (with its own Lower Deckers) destroyed by the same force that took out the Klingons at the end of the season premiere. We'll see where it goes.

Perhaps Lower Decks, as much as I do love it, is a show better taken in smaller doses rather than two in a week? For whatever the reason, I didn't enjoy this episode as much; I'd give it a B.

Lower Decks: Twovix

Last season, Star Trek: Lower Decks served up a loving tribute to Deep Space Nine. Now they've kicked off their fourth season by giving Voyager a similar treatment, in "Twovix."

The Cerritos is tasked to transport the U.S.S. Voyager, which has just undergone extensive refurbishing, to its final home in a Starfleet museum. But a transporter mishap combines T'Ana and Billups into a hybrid "Tuvix"-style lifeform... and that's only the first of several threats from Voyager's history that soon return, from macroviruses to Chaotica to a menacing clown. Meanwhile, Boimler feels the pressure after Ransom tells him a promotion is imminent.

When Lower Decks staged its Deep Space Nine episode, they included returning DS9 cast members. With Voyager, they take a slightly different approach -- perhaps because they've already featured Tom Paris as a talking plate, perhaps because many Voyager characters are still being featured on other Star Trek series, or perhaps they just wanted more distance from another recent Trek crossover (which Mariner mentions in dialogue).

Whatever the reason, I like the "greatest hits" approach to representing the Voyager TV series. I think without being mean, it highlights how Voyager (in strong reaction to the hyper-serialized Deep Space Nine) chose a stalwartly episodic format. Even decent episodes (which I think most of the ones referenced here were) wound up feeling like "deep cuts." But hey, why not one more ride for the macrovirus, the evil Clown, or Janeway's holographic love interest? And why not poke a little loving fun at Janeway's solution to the "Tuvix" situation that caused such a fan uproar? And absolutely why not take "Tuvixing" to a Lower Decks extreme and bring us a giant meatball of merged people? It's all a great use of the medium animation, which allows all of these things that would be a challenge to revisit in real life. (Not to mention simply showing so many old Voyager sets!)

But Lower Decks has a great track record of being interesting and heartfelt even amid the chaos, and once again does so here. Boimler's deep anxiety about what will happen after he's promoted isn't just a great story for the character (though it is), it specifically calls back a past character arc aboard the Titan. As great season premieres do, this episode reminds the audience of the core qualities of their characters, both here and in how Mariner helps Boimler overcome his issues to be his best self.

All that, plus the seeding of what looks to be a season-long story arc with the strange alien ship/probe/device that takes out a Klingon ship (with its own Lower Deckers) in the episode's final moments.

It's kind of easy to forget, with Strange New Worlds being so amazing so far, that Lower Decks has also been a reliably great Star Trek series. But now that it's back, we can appreciate that again. I give "Twovix" an A-.

Worlds End

I've posted twice now about the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor, a science fiction series with four books and counting. Set hundreds of years in the future, the series follows the computerized copy of one early 21st-century man, restored to life at the moment of an extreme global crisis. It also follows the many copies of that man, each with slight personality variations, as they face even more problems in their travels through the galaxy. You've probably guessed that this third post is about book three, which is titled All These Worlds. At the time Taylor wrote it, he was concluding a trilogy, so this book is all about completing character arcs, tying off loose ends, and concluding the narrative.

Endings can be hard -- particularly for any longer form story that's quite likely grown in the telling and drifted away from whatever conclusion the author might have originally intended. That might sound like I'm gearing up to say I was disappointed by the way this story ended; let me be clear that's not the case. But I would say that the book felt a little "rushed" to me, and that different facets of the ending played better than others.

The hallmark of this series has been just how many copies of "Bob" it introduces, and how they manage to keep finding new problems to face. It's inherently been a story about branching outward, finding new paths and taking them. So it's kind of antithetical to the very essence of the story to end it. (Maybe this is why Taylor published book four, and has just delivered book five to his editor.)

Still, the various Bobs are all essentially immortal and ageless, while the flesh-and-blood characters are not -- they have endings. And those endings are among the parts of All These Worlds that I found most satisfying. One Bob's long time living among an alien species reaches a touching conclusion. Another Bob's long-felt attraction to a particular woman comes to a resolution.

I think those are the aspects of the story that most interested the author as well, because they feel to me like they have the most polish. Elsewhere, an ongoing threat from another alien species leads to a climactic battle... that seems too easily resolved. The continuing menace of a rival "resurrected human" gets a blink-and-you-miss-it wrap-up. The Bobiverse series has introduced these story threads of literally galactic stakes, and yet they're all concluded in a book with a runtime (I listened on audiobook) shorter than any book yet in the series.

Still, I don't exactly mind that it's this way. As I said, I did find the conclusions of the more intimate and personal story lines to be satisfying. And moreover, this book still delivered all the things I liked about the first two: sarcastic first-person narration, a just-right interest in science fiction ideas that don't overwhelm the storytelling, and a fantastic audiobook performance by Ray Porter.

But yeah -- I'll grade this book just a touch below where I put its predecessors; I'd say All These Worlds gets a B+. Endings can be hard. But then... this turned out not to be the ending. There are more books to come, and I certainly plan to check them out.

Voyager Flashback: Equinox, Part II

When the writers of Star Trek: Voyager wrote the season five finale, they were starting late and racing the clock, yet still managed to pull off a compelling episode. But when they came back to resolve the cliffhanger with their season six opener, despite having much more time to plan, they fell short in "Equinox, Part II."

Captain Janeway is determined to bring the wayward crew of the Equinox to justice at all costs, ultimately sinking to the level of their immoral behavior. Meanwhile, Seven of Nine is being tortured aboard the Equinox by a reprogrammed Doctor -- even as Captain Ransom is having a crisis of conscience and reawakening of his Starfleet ideals.

After several years of there being two Star Trek series on the air at the same time, this episode marked the moment where Voyager was carrying the franchise torch on its own: Deep Space Nine had concluded months ago. Ronald Moore had written on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine for a decade, and had been thinking about moving on from Star Trek. But he was persuaded by his Next Gen writing partner Brannon Braga (and, he'd later say, his own self-doubts about "life after Star Trek") to join the Voyager writing staff.

I lead off with this background because Moore's tenure on Voyager would be spectacularly short, and flamed out spectacularly hard. His friendship with Braga was strained for years by the few short weeks he worked on Voyager, and he was not shy in publicly airing his complaints about the way Voyager was run. I'm going to talk about Moore a lot for the next few "Voyager flashback" blogs, because in my view he was absolutely right about everything. (Indeed, objectively so, when you consider how many TV shows he'd subsequently create and keep running for years. Moore knows a thing or two about making television. Yes, no matter what you think of the end of Battlestar Galactica.)

"Equinox, Part II" is clearly built on the writerly device of role reversal: the first part showed Ransom as a "fallen angel" of a Starfleet captain and Janeway as the righteous figure judging his actions. This conclusion shows Janeway descending into Ransom's brand of obsession and evil, while Ransom's better instincts reawaken. The problem is there's no justification for any of it. Or, as Moore put it: "The things that Janeway does in 'Equinox' don't work, because it's not about anything. She's not really grappling with her inner demons. She's not truly under the gun and suffering to the point where you can understand the decisions that she's made. She just gets kind of cranky and bitchy."

Yeah. Janeway goes full Ahab. She threatens to murder someone to get them to talk, and it's clear she would have gone through with it had Chakotay not intervened. Because he does, she relieves him of duty rather than stop to consider why one of the people she trusts most is expressing doubts about her. In short order, she threatens to do the same to Tuvok, her oldest friend. These certainly are all moments that tell the audience, "oh shit, this is serious." But why is Janeway this worked up about it? She's been in tighter spots before. She has no personal connection to Ransom (as, say, Captain Sisko did with Eddington when he got similarly set on vengeance). Worse, she just lets it all go at the end for even less reason, and everything goes back to normal.

The change in Ransom is equally unjustified, though easier to overlook since we don't know the character as well. He's been on a wicked rampage for years, but apparently letting someone else torture Seven of Nine is the final straw... because he thinks she's hot and daydreams about her? And he just decides to sacrifice his life for no reason in the end when he could easily be saved?

Amid the unjustified behavior of the captains are tons of missed opportunities for other characters. The history between B'Elanna and Burke, set up intriguingly in part one, barely figures into part two. Gilmore's PTSD is no longer a thing, and she too has an unexplained change of heart. Rather than emotionally pitting The Doctor and Seven of Nine as prisoners, we instead get "instant psychopath, just remove ethical programming"; the Doctor spends the episode torturing her, without much of a reckoning in the end about what happened.

Then there's the "schmuck bait," the writers basically lying about the jeopardy of characters just to falsely ratchet up the tension. That starts with the resolution of the actual cliffhanger moment from last season: Janeway was caught helpless with an alien creature bearing down on her, but now after the summer break, she easily dodges and is fine. A big showdown between Doctors is forestalled when the Voyager version is simply faster on the "delete button" and erases the Equinox version.

OK, there are a few nice moments scattered about. Seven's stoicism in the face of her predicament is entertaining (particularly her one-liner to Ransom: "You would be an inferior role model."). The cat and mouse games of Voyager stalking the Equinox do evoke some of that classic "submarine combat" vibe that often works well in Star Trek. The fact that Janeway and Chakotay are allowed to get into a major conflict is nice (even if the way they get there doesn't feel earned). You do feel these thrills and others as you watch the episode.

Other observations:

• In the end, a few Equinox crewmembers are brought into the ranks of Voyager. But despite how interesting it might have been to see if they truly fit in, we never see the characters again.

• Is Voyager's Doctor still missing his ethical subroutines when he deletes the Equinox Doctor? That would certainly explain his willingness to "kill." Though why he's suddenly working for the good of Voyager is unclear.

I will say that while this episode breaks down utterly for me under even a little scrutiny, there is something that's kind of viscerally entertaining about it as you watch it. It moves at a breakneck pace, and delivers fireworks that you feel like you've wanted to see on the show for ages. So that makes me want to grade it a little higher than the predominately negative response I've outlined would probably lead you to think. I'll give it a probably too generous C.

Voyager Flashback: Equinox

For the fifth season finale of Star Trek: Voyager, the writers decided to do an episode about "the road not taken," introducing a second Federation ship trapped in the Delta Quadrant, whose crew had made decisions far less in keeping with Starfleet ethics and ideals.

Voyager responds to a distress call from another Starfleet ship, the Equinox. With the ship barely surviving on a skeleton crew, it seems only natural to combine onto Voyager. But as Janeway pushes this option, she meets with unusual resistance from the Equinox captain, Ransom. Soon she learns the reason why: the Equinox crew has been experimenting on alien life to fuel a new propulsion system. What Janeway doesn't realize is that the Equinox crew is even willing to double-cross Voyager in order to get home.

"Equinox" is a pretty solid season finale and cliffhanger. Not only does it provide an interesting gaze through the looking glass at how things might have gone differently for Voyager, it populates the story with interesting guest characters (and casts them with solid actors). John Savage brings traditional Starfleet stoicism to Captain Ransom. Titus Welliver is oily as his first officer Burke. Meanwhile, Rick Worthy as Lessing and Olivia Birkelund as Gilmore are both allowed to play genuine trauma that their characters have experienced and not recovered from. There's also the fun twist when the Equinox's EMH is activated, and turns out to be even more wicked than the rest of the crew.

The Equinox crew is interesting as a whole as well, and their decent into "evil" reasonably well presented. First is the subtle and simple hint of just how lax they've gone on protocol: they call each other by first names. In flashback, we see that their first alien kill was a true accident and not a malicious decision to essentially create fossil fuels out of a species not yet fossilized.

The way all these characters play off the regular Voyager characters is compelling as well. Seven of Nine finds herself in a situation far outside her comfort zone, when she has to provide comfort to Lessing. Chakotay empathizes with the extreme PTSD exhibited by Gilmore. Janeway and Ransom swap "war stories" about the Delta Quadrant (including a moment about the Prime Directive where you can see Ransom mentally calculate the answer Janeway wants him to give). And Burke has a former relationship with B'Elanna Torres (complete with the cutesy nickname "BLT"), perfectly calibrated to spur jealousy in Tom Paris.

There are perhaps a couple of weak spots in the script. (These are likely due to the breakneck pace at which it was reportedly written. This story idea apparently came so late that they blew past outlining it and went straight to script drafts, hoping to find the story in the process.) In order to draw contrast between Janeway and Ransom, any of the grey areas Janeway herself has entered are carefully avoided. Sure, you get a good moment when Ransom says his crew was only following his orders and she retorts coldly, "their mistake." And yet, Ransom would only need to spend a few minutes skimming Janeway's logs to find any number of past episodes of the show that would make Janeway's moral high ground seem not so high. Essentially, I think the Voyager crew (Janeway especially) isn't really forced to look hard enough about whether they would have behaved the same were the situations reversed.

Also, I can't help but wonder if, given even a little more time to work on the story, the writers might have found what seems to me to be a more compelling angle to approach it from. That's basically the one that, a few years later, Ronald Moore's revival of Battlestar Galactica would take with its "Pegasus" story arc: craft the story so that Janeway isn't in charge. "Pegasus" found tremendous friction in introducing a hard-assed leader who outranked Commander Adama, leading to an all-time great story arc for the series. Here, Janeway "outranks" Captain Ransom by virtue of having the superior ship, skating right by a fruitful chunk of story in which the Voyager crew might have bristled at Ransom calling the shots until Janeway makes the call to mutiny.

Other observations:

• The sets of the Equinox are all dark and moody and trashed in a way that looks great on screen.

• At one point, someone mentions that they're all 35,000 light years from Earth -- so, about halfway home from the pilot's original 70,000 figure.

• This is kind of the second of back-to-back "evil Doctor" stories.

Even if I could imagine a more interesting (more Battlestar Galactica-like) version of this episode, I will say this one is pretty good. I give "Equinox" a B+.

And that concludes season five of Star Trek: Voyager. My picks for the top 5 episodes of the season are: actually, this episode at #1, followed by "Relativity," "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Timeless," and "Dark Frontier." Basically, I think the season didn't have any A or A- "stand-outs," but did have a number of very solid B+ installments.

On to season six!

Splitsville

One of my favorite games for a large group is Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, a fusion of two different games (Between Two Cities and Castles of Mad King Ludwig) that allows up to 7 players to play a strategically intriguing game in the span of 45 minutes. It's a good game for gamers at a party who aren't looking for a party game. Still, it's not "perfect." Scoring is convoluted and dense; it can take 10 minutes at the end of the game to figure out who won. That's because the rules on how to score are pretty complicated; that's the tradeoff you make to get some of the strategic nuances.

Now, Splito has entered the "chat." This game from designers Romaric Galonnier and Luc Rémond isn't going to replace Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig for me, but it is a welcome substitute that offers a simpler version of similar ideas. Splito features a large deck of cards: six suits with numbers 1 through 6 (two of each number), plus a series of "goal cards" (I'll come back to those). You shuffle up and deal 13 cards to each of the up to 8 players.

Play is quite simple. Everyone chooses one card from their hand, then places it face down in a scoring zone next to them: either the zone they share with the player on their left, or the zone they share with the player on their right. Once everyone has chosen, cards are revealed, and then everyone passes the remaining cards in their hand to the next player on their left. Play proceeds, playing a card to one of two zones then passing the rest, until all cards have been played.

The goal cards are key to scoring. Each one lists some particular condition that must be met in the zone where you play them, and some number of points (1 to 4) that meeting the condition is worth. A 1-point goal might be to play at least one card of three different specific colors into the zone. A 4-point goal might be to play at least one of every number in the zone, 1 through 6). In between, you might get goals like "play no orange cards in this zone" or "play at least 15 cards in this zone" or "play exactly two 2s in this zone."

When you reach the end of the game, you look at each zone and total up the points that it's worth. (Two "communal" goals in play for the whole game can also each be added to one specific zone.) Then each player calculates their personal score: multiply the points in your left zone by the points in your right zone. Whoever has the most points wins.

This is an incredibly fast-paced game, playing in just 10-20 minutes even with more players and even if you're teaching it for the first time. It doesn't have the breadth of decision making in Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, but you do have to make the same kinds of decisions (and often enough to make for a satisfying experience). Which of your zones should you be prioritizing right now to get your end score up? If you pass these cards "downwind," can you count on your partner to help your shared zone, or will they focus on their other zone? If you and a neighbor both play into the same zone at the same time, are you confident you aren't "duplicating effort" (or worse, unknowingly sabotaging a specific goal)?

I've had a chance to play Splito several times now (the fast play makes that easy to do). I've also played it with a lower player count and a higher player count. So far, it's been pretty solid in all those cases. It doesn't have the nuance of Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, but in exchange for giving those up, you get to play a game in half the time. (Or closer to one third the time, if you include the difficult scoring of BTCoMKL in the tally.) So yes, depending on what I'm in the mood for on a particular occasion, I feel like both games now have a place in my collection. I give Splito a B+.

Force Majeure

As of the day I post this, the strike by the Writers Guild of America has been going on for over three and a half months. (The SAG-AFTRA strike of actors began about two months later.) My sympathies are completely with the strikers, who are seeking to secure livable wages and key protections against corporate greed. But until an agreement is reached with the studios, plenty of people who were not making "the big bucks" before will continue to go with nothing at all.

The very first entertainment to show the effects of the strike were talk shows. Because they're written, filmed, edited, and broadcast all in the same day (or week), the strike instantly put those shows out of business. Five hosts of those shows, who essentially haven't been able to do their regular job, have now united to do something else.

Strike Force Five is a new limited-run podcast with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver. The five late night hosts had been talking with each other already about strike-related issues (such as their out-of-work staffs), and decided to spin their conversations into a podcast -- from which any sponsorship revenue would be used to pay those staffs.

There's no additional gimmick here; they're just gathering to talk, and recording the conversation for an audience. But based on just the one episode so far, it's going to be hilarious. The first episode covered everything from more than one of them being offered (and turning down) the same "co-hosting" gig before hitting it big, to which deposed dictator has a pair of pants in Colbert's mom's attic. It's just a wild, meandering talk with five funny people all working to one-up each other and keep their comedy muscles limber during this period of inactivity.

They say their plan is to run the podcast for at least 12 weeks -- and I imagine the hope is that it doesn't need to run any longer. For however long it lasts, though, I expect to enjoy the weekly present being dropped into my feed. And while I don't feel like I should review it as such based off just one episode, I do feel like it's something that many of my readers might take an interest in. So... putting that out there. Strike Force Five! (Thunder sound effect.) Available wherever you get your podcasts.