Flora Arrangement

It would probably be going too far to call myself a "fan" of writer-director John Carney. But I've enjoyed enough of his work at this point that I'm automatically curious at anything new he creates. Most recently, that's a movie you can stream on Apple TV+, called Flora and Son.

Flora and Son follows a single mother in Dublin, trying to raise her rebellious early-teen son, Max. When he rejects the guitar she gives him for his birthday, she decides to take online lessons herself. What starts as a lark (and a chance to shamelessly flirt with a stranger) turns into an blossoming love of music. And she soon learns that Max is interested in music -- just not the guitar. Finally, the two have a common interest they may be able to bond over.

This movie is firmly exploring the same themes as an earlier Carney film I loved, Sing Street. This is another very Irish story, and also very much about how the power of music can bring people closer together. It's openly sentimental, and utterly unapologetic for being so. Yet in Carney's hands, it somehow all seems natural, universal, and moving.

The movie stars Eve Hewson as Flora, and she is excellent. Her character is a "warts and all" sort, but she manages to be charming as a whole despite not always being "likeable" (especially early on in the movie). Of course, it also matters that Hewson is quite skilled with the musical elements that this story demands. Her young co-star Orén Kinlan, who plays Max, is a real find. He's a great scene partner and musical collaborator, and just as good at playing a "lovable screw-up."

The movie also features Joseph Gordon-Levitt as online guitar instructor Jeff. It's a subtly challenging role, as most of his characters interactions with Flora are through a computer screen. He has great chemistry with Hewson despite that obstacle. (And small spoiler, the movie does find ways to put the characters in scenes together.) Also featured is Jack Reynor as Max's father Ian; Reynor has collaborated with Carney before, and it's easy to see why the director would look to him again here.

The movie seems to be barreling toward a cliche that would be perfectly endearing in this context... but then changes course in a compelling way in the final act. It could hardly be considered a "twist"; the movie declares right there in its title what the most important relationship in the story is. Still, like another of Carney's works, the TV show Modern Love, it's interesting to see a tale not rigidly follow all the traditional elements of the rom-com formula.

Also, the songs are great. This movie isn't quite a musical, in that none of the songs you hear are a narrative artifice; the characters really are singing and playing music whenever we the audience hear a performance. But the movie also is very much a musical in that it features a number of truly catchy tunes that could live even outside the story. (And the actors themselves were collaborators in the creation of these songs.)

I find myself thoroughly charmed by Flora and Son. It was an A- for me, and sure contender for my Top 10 List of movies for the year (no matter how many other movies I might manage to get to). If you have an Apple TV+ subscription, I think you'll find it a most satisfying hour-and-a-half.

Voyager Flashback: One Small Step

The original Star Trek arrived in the late 1960s, a time when crewed space travel captured much more of the public's imagination. Later Star Trek series would air in times where space seemed more like "just another setting" in which to tell stories. But occasionally, we'd get an episode aiming to romanticize the exploration of space. Voyager's "One Small Step" is very much one of those.

Voyager encounters an unusual cosmic phenomenon that gathers up space debris, and soon discovers that inside may be the remains of Ares IV, one of the earliest crewed missions to Mars. As the Voyager crew sets themselves on retrieving the historic vessel, Seven of Nine struggles to understand the relevance of the endeavor.

This episode has a wall of on-screen writing credits -- often the sign of a troubled behind-the-scenes process and a harbinger of rocky results. In this case, however, the issues didn't stay behind the scenes; actor Robert Beltran was very public in his criticisms of this episode over the years, basically offering it as Exhibit A in how the character of Seven of Nine took over Voyager and led to the sidelining of other characters.

If Beltran tells it true, this was first conceived of as a Chakotay story. You see traces of that in the finished project, and it fits with the character's back story. He's long been attuned to history and traditions, and it's not such a leap to make him interested in early human space flight. However, a late script rewrite gave this episode to Seven, transforming the story into one about her expanding humanity as she must confront feelings of nostalgia and historical context.

On paper, this does work as a Seven story. But there are several problems too. A big one is timing; this would have been a good story to tell soon after Seven was separated from the Collective, but coming at this point, after she's had more than two years to explore her humanity, she really should have evolved beyond this deep a level of confusion. She can still personally feel nothing. She can still argue that the risks of retrieving Ares IV aren't worth the potential gains. But her bewilderment at the mere fact that humans feel confusing emotions just doesn't track here. (She's had many chances to explore emotional attachments already.)

I can understand Robert Beltran's feelings about the episode. Not only was this story taken from his character and given to someone else, but his character is "benched" in a most unceremonious way to allow that to happen. Chakotay is so irrationally set on recovering Ares IV that he's literally willing to die for it (?!), gets himself critically injured, and spends the rest of the episode in a sick bed.

And Chakotay isn't the only character getting short shrift. Rather than giving the main cast more screen time, we instead get a series of flashbacks to the Ares IV mission itself. It's a weird choice that I assume was made to help the history feel "more real" to Seven and the audience. Yet so much time is spent on it that I honestly felt for much of the episode like there was a chance the Voyager crew would at some point come upon astronaut John Kelly, somehow still alive after centuries. (It doesn't help that they cast actor John Norris in the role. He's far from a household name, of course. But he's enough of a "that guy" that when you see him, you recognize him and assume his role in the story will be more significant.)

Other observations:

• The fourth crewed mission to Mars takes place in 2032. So we don't have many years left here to somehow fit in the first three. (Fitting it in around World War III and the Eugenics Wars, if you're a stickler for Star Trek continuity, of course.)

• Speaking of Trek continuity, the mention of the London Kings baseball team and their star player Buck Bokai picks up threads woven in both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. 

• The "graviton ellipse" in this episode resembles a giant space-borne ravioli.

• The Doctor mentions a mission to an "Arrakis Prime." Dune fans totally know what's being referenced here.

• Maybe I'm as clueless as Seven, but I don't understand why they go to such lengths to retrieve John Kelly's body only to turn around, load him into a torpedo, and shoot him out into space again. He was already "buried at sea," effectively. And arguably more honorably, having "gone down with the ship."
  

• It probably should be worth more than a mention that this episode was directed by cast member Robert Picardo... but I simply don't have anything to say about the fact.

It's unclear to me just what this episode is trying to say, and more unclear whether they're saying whatever it is about the right character. The results aren't "bad" as such, but they aren't very compelling either. I give "One Small Step" a C+.

Educational Curriculum

I recently finished watching the final season of Netflix's series Sex Education. I watched all four seasons at the time they were released, and yet (in a major oversight) I seem never to have blogged about the show. I must take this last chance to rectify that, because I really can't praise it highly enough.

Sex Education centers on young Otis Milburn, student at a secondary school in small English town. His mother is an accomplished sex therapist, and much of her knowledge has transferred to Otis. With the help of a rebellious fellow student, Maeve, Otis sets up a "sex clinic" at his school where he dispenses the sort of advice the teens aren't getting from the authority figures in their lives. It's all a sound foundation for teen sex comedy hijinks. But this show transcends those conventional foundations in every conceivable way.

First of all, creator Laurie Nunn and her writers are interested in more than laughs. The show is as much a drama as a comedy, and is very interested in exploring the profound and real problems of its large cast of characters. Sex Education is the epitome of "you'll laugh, you'll cry" entertainment; within a single episode, the show can get as raunchy as American Pie, and as deep as Freaks and Geeks. (I go back to the 90s for those touchstones, because I can't readily think of anything that's done as well at either thing -- much less both -- since then.)

Secondly, the show has a deep commitment to diversity. From day one, the characters include a young gay teen trying to reconcile his sexuality with the values of his Nigerian family, a pansexual teen being raised by her single father, and a writer of alien-themed erotica. Over the course of four seasons, the show includes story lines exploring trans issues, poverty, deafness, wheelchair accessibility, and more. The stories are all interesting, illuminating, and relatable -- and it all just seems to get better the more it encompasses.

Third, the cast is exceptional. In the beginning, the recognizable star was Gillian Anderson as Jean Milburn. But as good as she is (and she is), it seems like everyone else on the show rises to her level. Asa Butterfield plays Otis, and always threads the needle of playing a character who can be both wise beyond his years and painfully exactly his age. Ncuti Gatwa is outstanding as Otis' best friend Eric, and has parlayed his work here into becoming the next Doctor on Doctor Who.

Familiar guest stars from James Purefoy to Hannah Waddingham to Jason Isaacs to Dan Levy come rolling through -- sometimes for a single episode, other times on a recurring basis. But while they may have been there early on in the series to lend credibility, it seems by the end of the show that several other young performers in the cast eclipse them, poised to go on to more successful film or television roles, from Emma Mackey to Aimee Lou Wood (who won a BAFTA for the second season) and more.

The final season moves the kids to college, but the show is still as strong as ever... and I respect the choice to end it at this point and essentially "go out on top." In particular, the final 3 episodes of the 8-episode season include some of the most powerful moments in the show's entire run.

Netflix has a way of swallowing great content whole, more than any other streaming service. It's entirely possible you've never even heard of Sex Education. If not, that's a tragedy -- but one you can easily remedy. From beginning to end, the show was an absolute A... one of the very best things on television during the time it ran. Check it out!

Tearing Up

If you've noticed that my posting here on the blog has been a bit irregular over the past few months, there's basically one reason why -- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Earlier this year, the newest Zelda game arrived on Nintendo Switch. It's essentially the first direct sequel in the history of the franchise, following up on the excellent Breath of the Wild. In Tears of the Kingdom, the world layout is largely similar, many of the gameplay systems are the same, and many of the same characters return in the story (complete with memory of the things that happened in the previous game). Indeed, I'm hard-pressed to recall the last time I played an open-world RPG crafted as such a continuation of a previous game... perhaps decades ago, in the run of Ultima IV through Ultimate VII?

Tears of the Kingdom is able to pull off this sequel in spectacular fashion. One reason is, simply put, that Breath of the Wild was one of the most satisfying, engaging games I've ever played. The saturation of quests, the multiple related gameplay systems, the way it would breadcrumb you constantly into new activities, and the bite-sized nature of many of its puzzles (ensuring that nearly every play session would result in some accomplishment) -- it all made for a game that kept me coming back again and again. Simply by offering "more of the things you loved," Tears of the Kingdom starts from a strong place.

But Tears of the Kingdom also takes the "more" to heart in offering "more of the things you loved." A brand-new system allows you craft useful contraptions. The sprawling game world is now supplemented with a complete underworld area to match, a series of floating sky islands to take the game upward, and an enormous number of caves and wells you can explore on little side adventures. Puzzle-style gameplay is no longer as constrained to the shrines of the first game (though there are more of those too, of course, and as clever as ever); now you encounter dozens upon dozens of fun puzzles out wandering the world as well.

I will confess that Tears of the Kingdom didn't set its hooks into me as fast as Breath of the Wild did. There are so many systems at play here that the "tutorial section" that opens the game literally takes hours to play through. And given that much of it is teaching you things you may well remember from Breath of the Wild, it can at times feel a bit constrained. But when the game did ultimately open up, a few hours in, I was enthralled.

Much to my surprise, one of the things that grabbed me this time was the story. Narrative has never been the franchise's strongest suit, partly because each installment always remixes most of the same story beats. But this time around, it felt like a real effort was made to figure out how to give the character of Zelda some agency of her own within the established framework of the "save the princess" story. Her role here is surprising for longtime Legend of Zelda players, and the culmination of the story quite clever. I feel like the final battle of this game is going to stick with me far longer than any of the franchise's predecessors.

For months now, my husband and I have taken turns on our own Tears of the Kingdom campaigns, letting TV shows we usually watch pile up, not reading as much when we go to bed, and generally sacrificing all other leisure activities on the altar of Zelda. Now that I've beaten it, I'm beginning to play less (but not yet stopping; there's so much side content to explore!). I've watched a few movies that had been on the list for a while... I'm generally "coming up for (pop culture) air" again.

But I don't regret any of the time I've spent playing Tears of the Kingdom. Together with Breath of the Wild, it's been about the best "one-two punch" I've experienced playing video games. Another absolute grade-A experience.

Voyager Flashback: Dragon's Teeth

"Middle era" Star Trek would occasionally conclude an episode with an open-ended ending, teasing future stories... only to never actually pick up and continue the story later. To me, one of the bigger missed opportunities was in Voyager's "Dragon's Teeth."

Voyager seeks shelter from an alien attack on the surface of a bombed-out world once home to a technological species. When they find survivors of that species and revive them from stasis, they don't realize who it is they've truly awakened: a ruthless menace from centuries past.

With Voyager on a long journey back to the Alpha Quadrant, it makes sense that any recurring villain on the show would last only for a while before needing to be replaced. This episode seems to explicitly tee up a new one in the Vaadwaur. They're sort of pitched as "space Nazis," assured of their own race's purity and disdainful of any others. The threat they once posed in the past was sufficient for multiple other factions to ally in war against them.

Now on the one hand, I can see why the writers may have soured on any long-term potential for these aliens. Voyager had kind of already done "space Nazis." The Hirogen began as something very different, but then a memorable two-parter clothed them in a direct Nazi metaphor and sort of consumed the obvious story angles that further episodes around the Vaadwaur might have mined. Indeed, "Dragon's Teeth" itself was reportedly conceived as a two-part episode, but when Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky were working on the script for "part one," they concluded there wasn't actually enough material there for a part two.

On the other hand, I feel like there are other interesting avenues of Vaadwaur that might have been explored. There are only a few hundred left, period, at the end of the episode. The sorts of tactics they might have resorted to in their desperation might have made them a truly unpredictable and menacing adversary. The fact that some of their ancient technology was still cutting edge even today might have made for a threat able to "punch far above its weight class."

I appreciate the signs along the way that Voyager's new allies aren't actually the "good guys": the way the first person revived seems to express disdain rather than grief for his dead wife, the way they want to pursue and exterminate adversaries even once they're fleeing, the appreciation they show for the bloodiest aspects of Klingon culture. At a certain point, though, it strains credibility that the Voyager crew hasn't figured out the truth that the audience -- hell, that Naomi Wildman -- has figured out about the Vaadwaur. (That it takes Neelix researching fairy tales to make the final breakthrough feels almost insulting somehow.)

I kid a bit about Neelix there (because I always do), but it's actually quite clever that his cultural heritage is key in unmasking the Vaadwaur. (It's a much more subtle incorporation of Nazi and Jewish themes than the Hirogen two-parter.) There's also a lovely scene with Seven of Nine, who talks about the gratification of reviving an alien species from extinction after having been responsible for the assimilation of so many.

But the real missed opportunity here is not embracing a more morally ambiguous ending. Sure, it's a bummer to make a point of saying "a few hundred Vardwaur escaped" if you're never going to use them again... but it would have been far more profound had they not escaped. Bad as the Vaadwaur are, it would be quite a thing for Voyager to ultimately be responsible for the true and total genocide of the last of their species. But the Voyager crew doesn't have to contend with that either.

Other observations:

• This episode really showcases how far CG had come in a short span of the 90s. Barely five years earlier, most visual effects on Star Trek were still being done with models. Here, we get a bombed-out city skyline (with Voyager flying among the buildings), the debris-littered tunnels of their space travel network, and more. And it looks pretty good.

• When Voyager detects faint life signs on the planet they thought uninhabited, why don't they bring the Doctor on the away mission?

• Actor Robert Knepper gives good villain here as a Vardwaur soldier. While he's arguably best-known for the villain he played on the TV series Prison Break, Star Trek had previously cast him as a good guy -- the man engaged to Deanna Troi in one of The Next Generation's earliest episodes.

• While the alien character of Gedrin is essentially presented as a pacifist for the entire episode, I still don't feel like his behavior at the end of the story makes a lot of sense. He sacrifices himself when there's pretty clearly no one left among his people to advocate for his views after he's gone. I guess he goes out being true to himself.
  

What's here is a decent episode of Voyager. But I can't help but feel like there might have been more to the story... or at least a more impactful version of this story. I give "Dragon's Teeth" a B.

Charm Will Only Get You So Far

It's been a little over a week since Loki finished up its season two. I'm arriving late to the party with my thoughts.

That tardiness itself tells you something about my feelings on the season. I found it a bit of a slog, especially in the middle of the season, and it became enough of a "chore" to watch for a while there that I fell behind. (What with so many other more enjoyable shows to watch.) The season did pull out of its stall for a decent ending... but it nearly crashed completely for me before doing so.

In its second season, Loki basically amplified everything I felt about season one. Its peculiar isolated-but-not status from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe grew more peculiar still. The show leaned into an elaborate plot that managed to be several contradictory things at once. It was both dense and "important" and Macguffiny meaningless. It required no real MCU background knowledge, while fundamentally being all about the new Big Bad for the current and future sequence of films. The biggest contradiction of all was how often the show relied its greatest strength -- its actors -- while so rarely actually writing moments designed to featured that strength.

In my view, Tom Hiddleston remains the most charming performer in the MCU. And yes, given the A-list star wattage throughout, that's a Big Claim. But he has crackling energy with everyone he shares a scene with, and he basically forced his character's evolution from villain to antihero by being so likeable. Loki was at its worst in season two during back-to-back episodes that basically didn't have enough Loki; it became mired in "too much story" about the weird villain team-up of Renslayer, Miss Minutes, and Kang variant Victor Timely, and totally lost sight of the fact that Hiddleston is the reason to watch the show.

It was surely clear for all to see that the best moments in season one revolved around Hiddleston's chemistry with Owen Wilson as Mobius and Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie. And yet season two wasn't written to give us nearly enough "more of that." (Again, it was far more interested at times in developing other characters and relationships.) When we did finally get more of Loki-Mobius and Loki-Sylvie in the final episodes of the season? Well, that's when the show managed to stick the landing of its uneven season. But you could uncharitably characterize it as too little, too late.

And on the subject of the show not getting the most out of its actors, I have to comment on the season two addition of Ke Huy Quan as OB. He too was a charming presence on the show... but he was always just used to make the dispensing of exposition and technobabble lighter and more entertaining. This was probably a case of having the whole season written before the role was even cast, but I couldn't help but feel like he was squandered a bit as well.

I don't want to get too spoilery for others who also may not have finished the season yet, but as I said, it does all wind up in a decent place. (Indeed, another issue with the season may have been that they knew their "perfect ending," but didn't really have 6 episodes' worth of material to get from A to B.) I just don't think I would have hung in there were it not for Hiddleston, and his character, being so likeable. I give Loki season two a C+. This seems to have been crafted as a series, not just season, finale. And I'm perfectly happy to leave it at that.

Voyager Flashback: Riddles

I have a riddle for you. How can a bad Star Trek episode also be a good Star Trek episode? When it's Star Trek: Voyager's "Riddles."

When Tuvok is attacked by a non-corporeal alien, he loses both his memory and his emotional control. Neelix dedicates himself to helping this new Tuvok discover his own identity. And it's one Tuvok may not want to give up.

While there are good elements to this episode, I find it ultimately also find it a bit disappointing. There's a world in which that wouldn't be the case: a world that didn't already have the episode "Tuvix." That past episode, which saw Tuvok and Neelix fused-by-transporter into a single being, hangs over every moment of this one.

The writers don't ever want to mention "Tuvix," of course, lest they make too many people more aware of the similarities: Tuvok becomes a new person and doesn't want to go back, Neelix and Tuvok grow close and bridge the gap between their personalities in a science-fictiony way. What's more, this episode cops out in a way that "Tuvix" didn't; where Janeway was forced to a decision in that episode that remains controversial among Trekkers to this day, here Tuvok just sort of changes his mind at the end for no apparent reason, letting everyone off the hook.

On the other hand, how would the characters themselves not think of the Tuvix incident in a situation like this? Early on, when Neelix is trying to jog Tuvok's lost memory, how could he not share the memories he surely retains from their past merging? When Tuvok declares that he doesn't want to return to the person he was before, how could Janeway not confide her thinking in Chakotay, in how this situation recalls the previous one? It might even be that her previous decision has altered the way she thinks about this one.

But ignoring history isn't the only weird character behavior in the episode. The alien scientist, Naroq, is willing to sacrifice his life's work (without explanation) to help Tuvok. The Doctor, who has typically derided all mysticism, invites Neelix into Sickbay to play Vulcan chants in the hopes of reviving Tuvok.

There's also the extent to which this episode dances blithely along the line of being offensive -- though this is hardly the only bit of 1990s entertainment to tell a story of an "idiot savant" without considering what they're unintentionally saying about the perceived of people with autism or similar conditions. (Hell, they gave Oscars for this kind of thing.) The episode is fumbling around in the dark for the concept of "emotional intelligence" that it can't quite grasp.

So, wow, total dog of an episode, right? Well, surprisingly, not entirely. Because the ensemble work put in here is really quite superb. It starts with a truly deft performance from Tim Russ as Tuvok. He has to play a wide-eyed "child" learning to recover speech itself. He has to give the sort of "simpleton" performance that movie actors of the era would often spend months preparing, when he was just shooting another episode the day before. He has to channel feelings that his regular work always calls for him to mute. And he's actually quite good at all that.

At the same time, Ethan Phillips is doing some of his best work as Neelix, being genuinely empathetic and helpful, two qualities I think the writers think ascribe to the character despite all the evidence to the contrary. (Hell, he's annoying Tuvok again in the very first scene of this episode!) Jeri Ryan also does a lot with her one big scene of the episode, in which Seven compares Tuvok's plight to her early days severed from the Borg Collective.

It's not surprising that overseeing all these good performances from the Voyager cast is one of their own: this is the first episode directed by Roxann Dawson, who (like Robert Duncan McNeill) would go on to have a longer and more successful career as a director than as an actor. Sure, it must have helped to know these actors for years, but that doesn't diminish the great work she's able to get from them. And she's not bad at the technical aspects either, even in her first effort. There are plenty of interesting camera angles and moments of neat staging. The effects get space to shine -- both the digital (the strange alien) and the practical (actual smoke coming off Tuvok's skin after he gets zapped). Dawson's work as director here is better than many steadily-working television directors can do after years at the job.

Other observations:

• This episode starts with Neelix giving an "ambassador's log." My eyes rolled so hard.

• The title "Riddles" is a bit of a stretch. Sure, the bookend riddle, about living in isolation for a year with only a calendar for sustenance, does show Tuvok's arc. But a scene in the middle that tries to connect the invisible aliens to the riddle metaphor is too big a contortion.

The competing factors make this a hard one for me to grade, but I think I'd call "Riddles" a B-.

You Look Marvel-ous?

Entertainment media is currently serving up a lot of stories about the low-earning opening weekend of The Marvels. But it looks like most of the people in my social media sphere saw it, so... wanna compare notes?

The Marvels is billed partly as Captain Marvel 2 and partly as Avengers 4.5-or-something, but what it really feels like is the sequel to the television series Ms. Marvel. That show was a bit uneven, but was enjoyable overall -- and most especially for the effervescent enthusiasm of its star, young Iman Vellani. That's exactly what this movie is: a bit uneven, but enjoyable overall -- with Iman Vellani being undeniably the best part.

One great challenge of the "superhero teamup" movie is trying to blend the different tones of the solo characters into one that makes sense. The Marvels approaches this mostly by making every other previously-seen-in-the-MCU character drift toward the tone of Ms. Marvel. And the movie is absolutely better for it. The MCU hasn't really been very fun (at least, on the big screen) for some time. It either hasn't tried to be (the dour and dull Eternals) or has been trying "too hard" (the candy-sweet Quantumania). But The Marvels centers a character who's just delighted to even be there at all, and allows the other characters to meet her in that emotional place.

Without that willingness to just "find the joy," we wouldn't have a movie with not one, but two major music-oriented sequences. (All apologies to James Gunn, but the second sequence takes the title of the most inspired "needle drop" ever in the MCU.) We wouldn't have a movie where the typical incoherence of a visual noisy fight sequence is somehow turned into an advantage, thanks to the core conceit of the plot. We wouldn't have such great "normal people in fantastical situations" sequences, as the movie finds a way to use even its non-powered characters in fun ways.

But while the movie is fun once it gets going, the setup is rather nonsensical. First, the villain's dual motivations to be a savior and exact revenge don't mesh well; she'd have a much easier time at the former if she weren't hell-bent on the latter. Second, the loose explanation for how the core three heroes are brought together works well enough for two of them while failing to explain at all how the third became involved.

The ending makes even less sense. It's a parade of things happening "just because" (because it's now time for the movie to end); the moment that problems become complications for the writers and not just the characters, they just magically disappear. Still, the biggest issue with most MCU climaxes is that they revolve around epic battles with impersonal stakes -- and this, at least, is not that. CG still abounds, of course, but the final showdown doesn't sprawl out of control.

So overall, I'd give The Marvels a B+. Surely, the low box office performance is going to make a bunch of people gather in a room somewhere to diagnose "what went wrong." I hope those people don't draw the wrong conclusions.

Voyager Flashback: Alice

For all that Star Trek fans praise the way the series often comments on important social issues, the realities of a relentless production schedule mean that not every episode can be that deep and thoughtful. Sometimes, you just gotta get something in front of the cameras, and may not have time for anything more than "let's just take these two ideas and mash them together." I suspect that's what may have happened for Star Trek: Voyager's "Alice."

Tom Paris becomes obsessed with a "fixer-upper" of a shuttlecraft that Voyager received in trade from a shifty alien collector. The ship, in turn, becomes obsessed with him; it houses an AI consciousness that begins to exert its influence on Paris, manipulating him into pursuing her own ends.

This episode feels to me like it must have been inspired by two particular early 1980s B movies. Christine, adapted from the Stephen King novel, is the story of a young man who becomes obsessed with fixing up a haunted hot rod that menaces anyone else who comes between them. Throw that in your stock pot, and add a dash of Firefox, a mostly-forgotten Clint Eastwood film about a high-tech fighter jet you control with your mind. You get "Alice."

The resulting story feels about as lackluster as I'd imagine a blend of two average-at-best movies to be. In particular, it's a rough episode for Tom Paris. Even though he has the excuse of being mind-controlled, his behavior toward everyone (and B'Elanna in particular) is digging a hole not easy to crawl back out of. He develops a hobby that could easily include the woman he claims to love (she's an engineer!), but he specifically excludes her. (And names the object of this hobby for an old crush from his past.) He blows off his best friend. He's persuaded to compromise Voyager itself in service of fixing up Alice. And through it all, the "addiction" isn't clearly justified; Paris is ready to run away with Alice long before he's even flown in the ship even once.

Guest star Claire Rankin plays the physical personification of Alice as written, but it's not a very well-written part. From jump, she's too psychopathic and alarming, never half as seductive and charming as the story would seem to want us to believe. And her motivations are never made logical. In time, we learn that all she really wants is to reach a deadly particle fountain. But we never understand if she believes her consciousness will survive there, or if she's simply suicidal and needs assistance.

That said, the weak skeleton of this episode is actually able to hold a surprising amount of weight. That is, there are good scenes and character moments sprinkled all throughout the episode. B'Elanna's role is especially good. She's initially supportive of the hobby (shockingly so), being flirtatious and light where she could easily have been jealous and petty. When things turn, she quite rightly points out that Tom ignores her every time he gets a new hobby. (Red flag, B'Elanna!) Ultimately, she gets to save Tom from danger, in a welcome gender role reversal rather rare in this era of television.

Harry Kim gets a fun little moment talking about the Ferengi's "five stages of acquisition." Neelix actually helps for once, figuring out how to get one over on the alien trader who sold them Alice. (Side note: that trader is played by recurring Star Trek guest star John Fleck, in one of at least half a dozen roles he played across various series.) A "cold open" scene about guessing Tuvok's age is actually fun and entertaining as intended. (Though they talk openly about pon farr in a weird way. We've come a long way from Spock's embarrassed refusal to discuss the matter even with his closest friends.)

Other observations:

• There are some great production moments, like a wide shot that shows both levels of the fantastic Voyager engineering set.

• But there are equally weak moments. The montage of Paris repairing Alice is pretty ridiculous, featuring him cleaning the windshield twice -- once with a rag, and once with a more technological tool.

It's a shame that there are characters on Voyager who simply don't get many episodes centered on them. It's even more a shame that when they do, those episodes are often as weak as this. I give Alice a "C+"

Lower Decks: Old Friends, New Planets

Star Trek: Lower Decks resolved its two-part cliffhanger and fourth season with "Old Friends, New Planets." And this is going to be the only paragraph of this post that won't by stuffed full of spoilers, so if you haven't seen the episode, here's your chance to back out.

Mariner has been taken aboard the mysterious ship behind so many disappearances this season, and now learns Nick Locarno has been behind it all. He invites her to join his new alliance of "lower deckers," but she is determined to stop him -- and prevent him from using the Genesis Device aboard his ship. Meanwhile, the Cerritos must come to the rescue, and the only way to do so requires Tendi to make a big sacrifice.

Overall, I felt this episode hit all the right emotional beats. The show really did complete a story arc particular to life on "the lower decks," and paid off a lot of personal character journeys that had been in the mix this season. Mariner finally pulled out of her self-destructive funk. Tendi had to embrace the Orion identity she has shunned (more fully than ever) to save the day. T'Lyn came to realize the place where she feels (logically, of course) that she belongs. And ambitious Brad Boimler made it to the big chair, taking command of the Cerritos in a key situation.

But even if all that hit right "in the feels," it wasn't quite as smooth rattling around in the head. Lower Decks has always been a tricky blend of elements, though when it's at its best, it manages to be both a credible Star Trek story vehicle and very funny at the same time. This week, it struck me as something less effective: a cartoon show that happens to be about Star Trek. It had the breakneck pacing of a half-hour cartoon that sometimes has to ignore "real-world" logic to move through the story it aims to tell.

For example: I had a hard time imagine that Nick Locarno (of all people) could have managed to put together an organization like this. And more (given the friction we saw throughout between his willful allies and his own gargantuan ego), it was hard to see how it all could have lasted this long and not have fallen apart well before Mariner arrived on the scene. Captain Freeman wagering the Cerritos was a necessary development to force Tendi into her own no-win scenario, but... Captain Freeman wagering the Cerritos?! Even logical T'Lyn felt a bit chaotic, choosing to stay on the Cerritos with her "bestie" when she knew Tendi had already promised to leave.

But like I said before, all these broad swings did often hit the mark emotionally. So did the wall-to-wall nostalgia. The climax that lovingly revisited Star Trek II was delightful, as were the many specific shot-for-shot re-creations of moments from that great film. And the opening flashback to Starfleet Academy was wonderful. The series took advantage of something only it (and Prodigy) can do, and brought back both Wil Wheaton and guest star Shannon Fill to voice their characters of Wesley Crusher and Sito Jaxa -- as they were decades ago. On a cartoon, you don't need to wheel out some horror from the uncanny valley when you want to de-age a cast member; you just bring the actor up to the microphone.

And, as always, the jokes were funny, from gags about Tom Paris and Nick Locarno looking alike to Boimler's editorializing about the Maquis to the return of "Twaining" as a form of conflict resolution.

So overall, I'll give the finale of season four a B. I feel like if they'd spent a little less of the season teasing their mystery and given a little more time to the resolution of the mystery, the story could have flowed more naturally. But endings are hard, as they say, and this one did at least strike the right tone. Now, the long wait for season five begins.

Voyager Flashback: Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy

Star Trek has a tradition of the occasional comedic episode, going all the way back to the original series. But not since the original series has an entire episode gone quite as broad with the humor as Star Trek: Voyager did in the sixth season with "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy."

The Doctor has been experimenting with adding a "daydreaming" subroutine. But when it begins to overwhelm his programming, he soon can't distinguish reality from fantasy, and the ship has a crisis on its hands. What's more, an alien species lurks nearby, having hacked into the Doctor's mind and taken his fantasies for intelligence on life aboard Voyager.

Many of the roles Robert Picardo played before Star Trek: Voyager were in comedy films. (Seriously, you'll be shocked at the number of 1980s "modest hits" he appears in, from Inner Space to Explorers to Gremlins 2.) So he's a good choice to put at the center of a light-hearted episode of Star Trek. This one is further tailored to Picardo's skill set, incorporating opera singing and the Doctor's well-established irritability.

The comedy is working right from the very first scene, as the Doctor wows the crowd with his vocal performance, improvises lyrics to an opera, and stops a raging Tuvok all in the span of two minutes. And it's not just Picardo who gets to be funny; the whole cast gets to have moments throughout. Tim Russ plays Tuvok's imagined pon farr episode to the hilt, Roxann Dawson is fun in a scene where B'Elanna watches her imagined self be dumped by the Doctor, and Robert Duncan McNeill gives the best deliberately "dopey wave" possible. Even the voice of the computer quips that a warp core breach is coming "a lot sooner than you think."

Also nice: the story isn't all about the comedy. There are a couple of genuinely touching moments along the way. Janeway is ultimately quite sensitive to the Doctor's potential embarrassment at having his dreams made public. Kim is sympathetic to his anxiety about actually taking command. The alien spying on the Doctor expresses genuine admiration of him, and of being able to "rise above one's station." Plus, there's a foot in both comedy and humor when the episode culminates in its version of a Star Trek classic "corbomite maneuver" type of moment, in which the Doctor bluffs his way out of a crisis.

All that said, it feels like the series as a whole has to regress a bit to tell this story; this feels like an episode that would have been more at home in the second season than the sixth. The Doctor is having to argue for his essential humanity much more forcefully than seems necessary. He complains of how others treat him, but we haven't actually seen that sort of behavior toward him on the show for several seasons; he's long ago been accepted as the closest thing to human he can be.

The nature of the Doctor's daydreams feels a bit regressive sometimes too. As fun as it is to see him fantasize about commanding the ship, it's equally not fun to watch all the women on the ship throw themselves at him as demeaningly as 1990s network television will allow (complete with a lascivious saxophone soundtrack).

An interesting new concept for an alien race is a bit squandered here too. The Overlooker are a really different idea for a society: calculating to a fault, unable to act without consultation with their authority figures (or AI? Seems like it could be either). If I recall correctly, they do show up again once or twice more in the series, but they feel to me like they have more potential than that -- or certainly more than other aliens who wore out their welcome in earlier seasons of the show.

Other observations:

• In the opening scene, some members of the Doctor's concert audience seem quite bored to be there. It's his fantasy, so that shouldn't be the case.

• When the Doctor transforms into the "Emergency Command Hologram," Harry Kim speaks for all of us when he says "this is the part I like." Watching the uniform turn red, and the four pips melodramatically appearing on the Doctor's collar, is really funny.

• Seven of Nine posing topless for the Doctor. Ick. At least she does get to razz him at the end when she kisses his cheek: "That was a platonic gesture. Don’t expect me to pose for you."

Effectively fun overall (despite a few rough edges), I give "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy" a B+.