Bloody Thoughts

It has now been 13 years since George R.R. Martin published the fifth novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. It seems ever less likely we'll ever get the next book, The Winds of Winter, (much less the one after that, meant to conclude the series). And after the final season of the TV adaptation Game of Thrones, many former fans have simply decided they don't care.

But Martin has been busy this last decade, writings and editing all sorts of things that aren't The Winds of Winter. One of these, his 2018 book Fire & Blood, seemed almost like a challenge to anyone who might count themselves a George R.R. Martin "fan." It was a book set in Westeros -- just not the one everyone was waiting for. It recounted the history of past Targaryen kings, assembled in part from previously existing novellas, and (in its last half) forming the basis for the spin-off TV series House of the Dragon. But also... it was a project that Martin himself jokingly dubbed his "GRRMarillion," in reference to The Silmarillion -- J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth book that's so dry that it wasn't even published in his lifetime, and hasn't been read cover-to-cover by most of his fans. Was Martin implying his book was equally dense?

Well, the coming of House of the Dragon season two later this year inspired me to actually give it a shot; I recently finished Fire & Blood. And mostly, I was entertained. Thankfully, while the book is very much a history, it's not dry at all. It essentially reads like engaging non-fiction, like an author gathering up 150 years of a country's history and trying to lay it all out for you in the most compelling way possible.

There's an extra twist in Martin's approach here, as he writes not as himself, but as a "maester" within the world of Westeros who is himself setting down this history. Part of the conceit here is that the author openly sifts through conflicting accounts written at the time they happened, editorializing on which is more likely true. This allows Martin to lean into one of his greatest strengths as a writer: writing from the entrenched perspective of a specific character. The Ice and Fire series itself famously trades character viewpoints from chapter to chapter; here, Martin takes on one character's viewpoint for an entire book, as the character himself in turn comments on other characters. It may sound like an unnecessary contrivance, but I believe it's a key part of what keeps Fire & Blood from being too dull for all but the most devoted fans.

And it's not like the gimmick gets in the way. The maester character doesn't assert his presence on every page, or anything so overt. Mostly, the narrative just flows naturally. It is more compressed than Martin's more traditional novels, but there are many scenes that feel just as engaging, just as easily conjured in the mind's eye, as anything from the Ice and Fire series proper.

That said, the book purports to be examining the entire Targaryen dynasty from the first King Aegon I all the way to the end of the lineage. There are two problems with that. One is simply that some material is simply not compelling enough that it would have been included absent the narrative conceit. There's a reason why most people have heard of Henry V or VIII, or Victoria, or other monarchs whose tales have been told over and over. But unless you're a student of English monarchs, I'm guessing you've never heard of Cnut? Or Eadwig? My point is, not all of the content in Fire & Blood is as exciting as the chunk seized upon to create House of the Dragon.

And the second issue is that at the conclusion of this 700-page doorstop of a novel, Martin has still not told the complete Targaryen history. In terms of number of years, he's actually a bit less than halfway; so if indeed he ever means to complete this story, he has at least one more volume to write, and maybe two. So yes, you've got that right: George R.R. Martin set aside his epic unfinished series to take up another project and not finish it. If you choose not to reward this behavior by buying the book, I can't say I blame you.

But if George R.R. Martin is not "dead to you," then I have to say that Fire & Blood is at times a quite fun read. It cannot compare favorably to the imagined book we all wished we'd gotten, the sequel to A Dance With Dragons that begins working toward a conclusion we all find more satisfying than the one given to us by the television adaptation. But this book is here, and can actually be read, and I'd give it a B overall.

Voyager Flashback: Lineage

Star Trek episodes often use a science fiction metaphor to examine a real world social issue. The franchise doesn't necessarily strike the right balance of fiction and reality every time; one occasion I think they missed a bit was Voyager's "Lineage."

When B'Elanna learns she is pregnant -- and in particular, just how much Klingon DNA she is passing on to her daughter -- she is deeply shaken. Overwhelmed with memories of her own difficult childhood, she sets out to genetically modify her daughter in the womb, to make her more human.

Children bully one another for all sorts of reasons. Some of the ill effects of that are fairly universal, while others can be quite particular to the reason behind the bullying. "Lineage" is a sober look at what it is to be picked on for having a mixed racial heritage, and how that can still leave you scarred as an adult.

I do like the laser focus this episode gives to that issue. There's no artificial jeopardy to the ship here; the episode is entirely about a character and her feelings, and how that impacts others around her. Star Trek: Voyager is now just half a season from ending, and so the writers are actually willing to take risks when they know they don't have to live with the consequences in future seasons. Tom and B'Elanna have a child? Why not!

Still, B'Elanna would have been much better served as a character had we seen these flashbacks to her childhood much earlier in the show's run. It goes much deeper than the bullying; we learn that she effectively blames herself for her parents' divorce. We've known all along that B'Elanna's issues with her Klingon side colored her relationship with her mother, but now we know she feels her father rejected her. It goes a long way to explaining "why she is the way she is," and it's a shame we're only getting this now, in sight of the series' finish line.

But I think the science fiction overwhelms the story here. Ultimately, the episode is a fight over genetic modification -- and B'Elanna's stance is so extreme as to essentially be pro-eugenics. The episode doesn't really explore that issue. Nor can it. For one thing, there really isn't a "both sides" to the issue. For another, Star Trek has thoroughly covered that ground with one of its most well-known characters, Khan. (Indeed, genetic modification is banned in the Federation, a fact that isn't even mentioned in this episode.)

When B'Elanna goes so far in her crusade that she hacks the Doctor and rewrites his program so he'll support her, she has clearly has crossed a line. That there are no repercussions for this seems ridiculous; at the very least, the Doctor should be angry with her (rather than eager to accept an invitation to be the child's godfather). I suppose you could argue that what's going on here is that "hurt people hurt people," but again B'Elanna is underserved as a character by not giving us this background earlier. It hardly seems like she could have been as stable as we've seen her for six-plus years if this wild a decision was in her nature. (I suppose you could chalk it up to really intense Klingon pregnancy hormones?)

But before the episode turns serious, and everyone is still basking in the news that Tom and B'Elanna are expecting, there is fun to be had. Almost every character has a nice exchange with one or both of them. In my mind, Tuvok's talk with Paris is the most poignant, with the Vulcan offering genuine parenting advice from his own experience. (We aren't reminded often enough that Tuvok is a father.)

Other observations:

• At the start of the episode, Tom notes how chipper B'Elanna is and asks "what did you have for breakfast?" Their quarters aren't that big; shouldn't he know?

• I guess Harry has officially given up clarinet and plays saxophone now. It seemed like a continuity error when introduced a few episodes ago, but twice is a pattern.

I like the underlying themes here. I like that the episode is character-focused. But until now, Voyager as a whole hasn't been interested enough in fleshing out its characters to earn B'Elanna behaving this wildly. I give Lineage a B-.

Fine Fellow

I've noted before that "bingeing" isn't really part of my television diet; I tend to watch a series "one episode a week" (at best), which often leaves me behind the pop culture curve. But there are some series I'd wager no one binge-watches, owing to the heavy themes at play that all but demand the viewer takes a break between installments. I recently finished a mini-series like that, Fellow Travelers.

Based on the novel by Thomas Mallon, Fellow Travelers is the decades-spanning, complicated romance story of Hawkins Fuller and Timothy Laughlin. The two men meet in Washington D.C. in the 1950s, a time and place where staying carefully in the closet is a matter of survival. We get that stage of their lives alternating with flash-forwards to the 1980s, when Tim is dying of AIDS and Hawkins flies across the country (and away from his wife and family) to see him. Over the course of eight episodes, both stories move in parallel, along with (ultimately) glimpses of the couple's separations and reunions throughout the 60s and 70s.

Make no mistake, Fellow Travelers is a "hard watch." This is a story about how poorly this world treated gays and lesbians, and even how poorly this led them to treat each other. There's very little uplifting "within the text"; you have to compare the time frame depicted to where things stand now to find any sense of inspiration. Fellow Travelers nonetheless feels like a topical story, in light of the ways that not everyone under the LGBT+ umbrella has been embraced as well.

Along the way, the mini-series makes a number of other potent points. It shows, for example, how it can take only one person in the "right" place to cause real harm: the real-world history of Senator Joseph McCarthy is woven throughout the 1950s story line. It shows how being closed off ("closeted" specifically, yes, but more generally) can lead to behavior both self-destructive and damaging to those around you. It also demonstrates that no amount of fairy tale "meant for each other" can overcome two people not being ready for each other at the same time and place.

Even the subplots of Fellow Travelers are emotionally heavy. The story also tracks another couple, Marcus and Frankie, as they navigate a relationship of their own amidst additional issues of racism,  gender non-conformity, and activism. It follows Lucy, the eventual wife of Hawkins, who gradually comes to understands the true nature of her husband and their relationship. For a time, it even tracks the relationship between two men who work for Senator McCarthy, using their position to "do unto others" as they absolutely would never have "done unto them."

The air of this story is so thick that even the romantic moments, which might be a prurient distraction in many other tragic love stories, aren't especially light. That said, Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, who star as "Hawk" and Tim, are excellent throughout this series, both individually and as a screen couple. So are Jelani Alladin and Noah J. Ricketts as Marcus and Frankie; and Allison Williams makes the character of Lucy more interesting, I think, than the story itself seems to be interested in her. All five of these actors play their characters believably in four different decades, and garner audience sympathy in key moments of the story.

I give Fellow Travelers a B+. It was rarely the show I "wanted" to watch (and never the show I "enjoyed" watching), but I found it powerful and moving, and well worth it.

Discovery: Face the Strange

One of Star Trek: Discovery's best episodes to date (certainly one of its most memorable early episodes) was the time-looping adventure "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad." Now, as the series is even closer to its ending than that episode was to its beginning, we get a new time-hopping adventure in "Face the Strange."

Moll and L'ak use a Krenim "time bug" to lock Discovery in a twisted time loop where the ship hops back and forth to different points in its own history. But there is a way out: Stamets is aware of the time jumps, thanks to the tardigrade DNA mingled with his own. And by coincidentally attempting to use the transporter during the initial attack, Burnham and Rayner are also manifesting in each time frame, and can work with Stamets to undo the damage.

This episode arrived just as I was posting my review of a Star Trek: Voyager episode it resembles quite a bit: "Shattered." Both episodes allow the show to visit its own "greatest hit" episodes from the past (and both arrive in the final seasons of their series). Both episodes -- to different degrees -- espouse a moral along the lines of "our relationships are what makes us strong." Shocked as I am to say so, though, I feel the Voyager episode was actually the (slightly) stronger take on this story.

I mentioned in reviewing "Shattered" that Voyager (to me) didn't have as many standout "greatest hits" episodes to revisit as other Star Trek series might. That problem is even more pronounced for Discovery. First, they've always been about season-long story arcs, and so they simply don't have many individual "memorable episodes." Second, Discovery has a tendency to raise the stakes so high with such regularity that -- at least in retrospect -- there isn't a lot of differentiation between their jeopardies. "Flying through a timestream in pursuit of the Red Angel" didn't look or feel much different from "the ship is under attack by Osyrra" as we revisited three-minute snippets of both.

But Discovery has also always been a show where the characters are very forthright with their emotions, as they truly change and grow. That was the element that made "Face the Strange" an enjoyable episode. It was great to highlight just how far Burnham has come over five seasons, by showing us the Burnham of the series' opening episodes -- and so much like Discovery to give us both the emotional subtext-made-text of that, and give us a visceral fist fight between past and present Burnhams. (And I would be remiss not to mention another Discovery hallmark: being the best-looking Star Trek series to date. The visual effects of the Burnham-vs-Burnham fight were top-notch.)

Signs of change were peppered all over the episode in ways big and small. There was the big moment where Burnham had to confront and persuade Airiam, of course. But also, we got to see just how much more nervous Tilly was in the beginning, and have Stamets comment on just how irritable he used to be. And of course, Rayner was in the middle of his own journey of change, as he experienced the benefits of trust among a close-knit crew.

So the Discovery episode ends up begin good in my eyes for embracing the uniquely "Discovery" tone to this perhaps familiar story. From there, it winds up being a touch less enjoyable than the Voyager version of the same thing because of what it leaves out -- namely, appearances of other characters from earlier seasons. I understand you're not going to get Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh to show up again for one scene; nor would Jason Isaacs likely want to return to Canada for one day of filming not central to a story. Still, I felt the absence of Georgiou and Lorca. You can't even give us a scene with Ash Tyler? How about Christopher Pike? Spock? (Anson Mount and Ethan Peck are still employed by the Star Trek industrial complex.) Was it required to give Doug Jones the week off? (Saru has gone through more changes from the first episode that most characters. No acknowledgement of that?)

I give "Face the Strange" a B. Looking back on "the road from there to here" is a natural thing for a show to do in its final season. Star Trek: Discovery had some fun with that, though I feel it could have done more.

Voyager Flashback: Shattered

Notoriously, one of the worst episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation was the made-on-the-cheap clip show "Shades of Gray." But revisiting the "greatest hits" of a TV series' past doesn't have to be terrible. Star Trek: Voyager found a way to make that clever indeed with "Shattered."

A temporal distortion splits Voyager into a dozen different time frames, and only Chakotay is free to pass between them. His efforts to unify and restore the ship are challenged by trials from the ship's adventurous history, including a Janeway who doesn't yet know him, a Kazon takeover, the threat of macroviruses, Tom Paris' holodeck characters, and more.

"Shattered" is basically pure adventure, and purely for the fans, though it's not wholly without moral quandary -- as a "pre-Caretaker" Janeway is faced with the classic theoretical dilemma: "if you had to do it all over again, would you?" (She really does have to be convinced that her future self hasn't made a series of dreadful mistakes.) This is the very rare Chakotay-centric episode that's actually good -- and even works best because it's him and not some other character, as he is truly the best option to struggle in trying to persuade a skeptical Captain Janeway to help.

The episode gets great boosts from both the actors and the production team. Subtle performance shifts by Robert Picardo and Kate Mulgrew really sell you on them playing earlier versions of their characters. Great visual effects appear throughout, including the weird aging distortion on Chakotay's face, or what passing through a time rift looks like. Blending performance and production: Jeri Ryan endures the Borg makeup again to take us back to her character's first appearance.

The fact that this comes in the seventh and final season of Voyager, rather than at the end of two generally weak Next Generation seasons (as "Shades of Gray" did), helps a lot to provide a wide variety of past episodes for this story to time travel back to. Just hearing Chakotay describe some of Voyager's adventures, and seeing Janeway's dumb-founded reaction, is enough to get you smiling. (In one part of the ship, Chakotay can't even be sure which of two different times the entire crew was knocked out they're actually in.) But it isn't all just fun and games, and it isn't all just about the past -- two of the more effective scenes involve an "alternate present" death of Tuvok, and an encounter with "possible future" versions of Naomi Wildman and Icheb

But the thing about a "greatest hits" episode is that it helps if you actually have great hits. Reach into a figurative bag and pull out an episode of Star Trek: Voyager at random, and chances are you're going to get a decent episode -- arguably better than the average you'd pull from a Star Trek: The Next Generation bag. But nowhere in the Voyager bag will you find a "Darmok," "The Inner Light, "A Measure of a Man," etc. Sure, none of those episodes I just named would work well in the context of a "part of the Enterprise has time-slipped back to when this episode was happening" story. But I think you take my point: I'm excited by the concept of "Shattered" overall, yet I'm not eager to revisit any one past episode in particular via that concept.

Other observations:

• Chakotay hides his liquor in the one of only two rooms on the entire ship where a child sleeps.

• Janeway's fiancé gave her a copy of Dante's Inferno as an engagement gift? Weird subtext on that.

• One of the unwritten rules of this scenario makes no sense from a story perspective, but perfect sense from a production perspective: each character appears in only one of the fractured time frames. (Isn't it just as likely that one person could appear in any number of time frames on the ship?)

• Dozens of time frames, no Kes. (But yeah, this also makes sense from a production perspective.)

• The resolution has one of the nitpicks you can level at most time travel stories. When time is restored and Chakotay has only seconds to prevent the ship from being split, there's no particular reason he has to be successful this time; he would seem to have as many attempts/cycles at this as required. 

• It's a bit funny, but Star Trek: Lower Decks did an episode that in many ways felt like this one. In showing Voyager turned into a museum, with different exhibits of "different episodes" installed throughout, "Twovix" is kinda-sorta this exact episode without the sci-fi conceit.
  

"Shattered" is a fun idea and enjoyable to watch. But essentially, a chef is only as good as their ingredients, and so "Shattered" can't be any better than the various episodes it revisits. I give it a B+.

Slice of Cake (and Fionna)

A few months back, I wrote about the animated series Adventure Time. Over the course of 10 seasons and nearly 300 episodes, the show presented the endlessly entertaining exploits of Jake the Dog and Finn the Human through the fantasy world of Ooo, picking up surprising pathos and stakes along the journey.

A hallmark of Adventure Time was the truly weird subplots it would indulge and allow to become the main plot for entire episodes. One of these goofy larks involved the characters of Fionna and Cake, gender-swapped facsimiles of the main characters who appeared in literal fan fiction written by one of the other characters in the show.

I hope that brief description is enough to give you sense of how strange it was to hear that a brand-new Adventure Time spin-off series debuted in 2023, Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake. There had been a few episodes of the original Adventure Time that were, beginning to end, the Ice King's fan fiction about these characters. So I supposed this new series would be just that all the time. Fair enough, I thought. Adventure Time was always clever and enjoyable, including those "alternate universe" episodes, so sure -- sign me up for more Adventure Time!

But the Fionna and Cake series is so not that, it's hard to wrap your head around. It's different in almost every conceivable way. The format is half-hour episodes, rather than the 15-minute eps of the original series. It's an explicitly dramatic show telling a serious story; OG Adventure Time certainly had its serious themes at times, but was fundamentally a light and comedic show. Strangest of all, Fionna and Cake is not a fiction-within-a-fiction, but somehow pulls off being an actual sequel to the events of the flagship series. (How this happens is best left to discover for yourself when you watch it.)

Most of the Adventure Time cast returns to voice their characters in Fionna and Cake. (Or versions of their characters.) The small handful of actors who don't return have their roles handed off to performers definitely trying to impersonate the originals. And it's important to attempt this sort of seamless continuity with the original series... because the show is otherwise asking a lot of its audience.

If the original Adventure Time was a show originally intended for a young audience, and slowly grew into a more "young adult" show as its audience grew up along with it? Then Fionna and Cake is a show made for those now-adults. It's a single serialized story told over 10 episodes. (In fact, it's so serialized and feels so complete that I'm not sure where they'll go in the announced season 2.) It's the tragedy mask to Adventure Time's comedy mask, though every episode still has the potential to leave you with the "what did I just watch?" feeling that often concluded an episode of the original.

Having watched the whole season, I struggle to say how much I actually liked the spin-off. I mean, it was good television. I didn't enjoy it as much as the original, for sure. But also, comparing the two is to compare the proverbial apples and oranges. You can respect the creative choice to come at a spin-off this way, to say "ok, but we're not going to give the audience what they'll expect in a spin-off."

Call season 1 a B overall? What I can say for sure is a) that anyone who finishes the original Adventure Time probably owes it to themselves to check out this radical departure; and b) this sequel probably doesn't resonate if you haven't seen the original. (Which I know sucks for them trying to grow a new audience, but hey... there it is.)

Civil Discourse

I haven't loved everything by writer-director Alex Garland, but he has made enough things that really wowed me that I felt compelled to check out his new movie, Civil War. Set in a war-torn America in the final days of a massive conflict, the story follows photo journalist Lee Smith and her partner on a mission to reach the autocratic president and interview him before his regime collapses. Along for the ride are an older journalist and mentor to Lee, and young Jessie, who aspires to do what Lee does -- but has never truly witnessed the horrors of war in person.

Alex Garland set an impossibly high bar with Ex Machina and Devs, so I know I shouldn't be expecting something that good every time I see his name in the credits. In fact, this isn't even Garland's first trip into what you could brand as an "apocalypse," as he wrote the script for 28 Days Later. But it does seem like Garland's first run at "realism." Civil War does not concern itself with the premise of "how we got here." It simply puts us there, in a war zone that also just happens to be the (formerly) United States.

The resulting movie is just vaguely science fiction (to the degree it reads as "alternate history" in the present), but much more akin to a movie like The Hurt Locker. This is a story about the kind of person who took the infamous Saigon Execution photo, and it wants to be as visceral as fiction can be in capturing that feeling. Civil War effectively keeps the audience on edge by seesawing back and forth: much of the time, it could be a story set in any war zone, foreign and remote in the way that frankly most Americans think of most wars; then it has a moment tailored to remind the audience that this is all happening "in your neighborhood."

In being a movie about a particular kind of driven professional in a war -- a type of person doing a job you probably haven't thought much about -- this movie succeeds. It's often visceral and shocking, and makes you reconsider war in interesting ways. But it also feels like there's an entire story the movie isn't telling and isn't interested in telling. "Civil War" is a misleading title, because that isn't the story here; it's only the setting. The movie has absolutely nothing to say about autocracy, "brother against brother," or how normal "life goes on" in the midst of a conflict. It's fine that this simply isn't the story Garland wants to tell, but it's the story I personally would have been more interested in.

Kirsten Dunst makes a solid and stoic protagonist. Wagner Moura is an actor I don't recall seeing elsewhere, but he takes on the more emotional character in the pair, and gives a solid performance. Most other key roles are filled with actors Alex Garland has worked with before, including Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sonoya Mizuno, and Nick Offerman. There's also a chilling uncredited performance by Jesse Plemons (who reportedly replaced another actor who dropped out at the last minute).

Civil War can be a hard watch. Whether you think it's "can't miss" is much tougher to say. But I give it a B. Interestingly, Garland says he now plans to pull back on directing and focus more on writing. I'm curious to see what results from that renewed focus.

Discovery: Jinaal

The farewell season of Star Trek: Discovery continues with "Jinaal."

Discovery travels to Trill for the next piece of their galactic puzzle. Culber agrees to serve as a host in a zhian'tara ritual so that Burnham and Booker can get the information they need. On the ship, Rayner has been ordered to meet the crew, and Tilly is dismayed at the way he seems to skirt the spirit of that order. Meanwhile, Adira and Gray confront the state of their relationship, while Saru and T'Rina prepare an announcement regarding theirs... which T'Rina's aide tries to forestall.

Lots of story lines in this episode mean that it's perhaps a bit overstuffed. But it also means that no matter which elements of the show you enjoy best, there's probably something for you somewhere in this episode. For my money, the continued RPG quest, bringing a clash with CG monsters and a predictable test for the heroes, wasn't the most engaging part of the episode. Still, there was fun to be had, thanks in large part to Wilson Cruz's fun, swaggering portrayal of the Trill Jinaal.

I continue to enjoy the abrasive nature of the new Rayner character. Sure, his "hardassery" was dialed up to the max this episode, but that just serves to highlight how different he is from the more emotional crew of Discovery, to make the gap between them that much wider to bridge. (Though perhaps there's something interesting in the fact that Discovery really seems to accept all types of people, but not someone whose instinct is to be "all business." They're huggers, the Discovery characters, and you're just going to have to let them hug you.)

I was least engaged in the Adira/Gray parts of the episode, but mostly because I felt like this had largely been resolved when they separated physically last season. Them separating emotionally here didn't seem as weighty -- especially when neither Culber or Stamets, they're "parental-ish" figures, couldn't be bothered to care about it either. (Though I love that Stamets' indifference allowed Jet Reno to step up and fill the gap. Give me all the Tig Notaro that you can possibly stuff into this last season, please.)

While the Saru / T'Rina story really had nothing to do with the ongoing galactic-level concerns of the season, I enjoyed it nonetheless. Indeed, it was really my favorite part of the episode. I continue to just be entertained by them as a couple, but I especially enjoyed seeing Vulcan conflict resolution on display. I also liked the show wagging a finger at mansplaining: T'Rina understood the politics of the situation better than Saru or her aide.

Plus, as a fun garnish on the episode, there were lots of great deep cut references sprinkled throughout -- fan service done right in that none of it was required background to follow the story, just things for you to notice (or not) and smile at (or not). My personal favorites were the mentions of tongo, the order of a Slug-o-Cola, and the appearance of a Selay alien in a makeup that didn't look stupid.

For me, it all works out to giving "Jinaal" a B+. I feel like the season is slowly warming up.

Voyager Flashback: Flesh and Blood

Star Trek: Voyager served up three two-part episodes in its final season. (Four, if you count the resolution of the season six cliffhanger.) The first of those originally aired as a single, two-hour event: "Flesh and Blood."

When Voyager responds to a Hirogen distress call, they find a station that was overrun by the holograms the Hirogen were hunting there. Lamenting her prior decision to give the Hirogen holographic technology, Janeway sets out after the escaped holograms. The Doctor feels a kinship with these holograms, finally free to pursue their own lives and start their own culture -- and he even turns against Janeway and the Voyager crew to help them. But the holograms' leader, Iden, may be a false prophet, pursuing an agenda the Doctor cannot endorse.

I suppose there are lots of reasons that an episodic television show might choose to stage a two-part episode -- including purely financial ones. But if there's any artistic integrity in the endeavor, surely it must be because you have a story to tell that would feel too compressed in the traditional one-hour format. "Flesh and Blood" gets two hours, and yet feels just as rushed and illogical to me as it would have been had it been stuffed into a single hour. I'm hard-pressed to point to a single character here who follows a logical arc of behavior from the beginning to the end of the story. Everyone is at the whims of a story that has a schedule to stick to. Every plot twist is utterly predictable, and yet simultaneously feels completely unearned.

Janeway is usually willing to be diplomatic and give the aliens of the week every benefit of the doubt, but here she decides immediately that these holograms are irredeemably violent and ought to have their memories excised. It's an artificial plot move solely to motivate the Doctor to "mutiny" against her. And in the end, she abruptly changes her mind and decides that the holograms are fine as long as they have a "supervisor" in the form of the Hirogen Donik (even though he was there when they rebelled and escaped the station the first time).

A few seasons ago, B'Elanna was so opposed to a hologram who looked like a Cardassian that she said she'd rather die than interact with him; what's changed since then that she can now come to accept the holographic Cardassian engineer she meets here? It's another artificial move -- necessitated because someone has to come to accept the holograms as people, and the story structure means that can't be Janeway.

The guest characters of this episode don't behave any more logically. The audience is made to feel sympathy for Iden when he engages in Bajoran prayer; yet not long later, he is decrying all organic culture as anathema, and eager to start his own holographic culture. Why the abrupt change? Because he can't be exposed as a megalomaniac until after the Doctor has made the mistake of joining him. Then, of course, he's free to become cartoonishly evil.

There are at least elements of the narrative that are interesting. The oppression of these holograms is palpable, and the notions that they were specifically made to feel pain when they don't have to (because "prey" must feel pain), and that they've been killed and revived over and over again with their memories intact -- these are particularly effective details. In the character of Donik, you're introduced to the idea that the Hirogen really didn't even have engineers like him until they were given holotechnology. And it's clever that holograms could settle on a traditionally uninhabitable planet, simply because they are holograms.

Even though the script may be weak, the production team seizes the moment. The Hirogen hunting scenario that opens the story is one of the series' most convincing settings, with more (realistic looking) trees than normal and even a pond (from which ambushers rise up in slow motion as if out of a war movie). The huge variety of species among the holograms allows the makeup department to show off -- we've got a Bajoran, a Romulan, a Cardassian, a Borg, a Breen, a Klingon, a Vulcan, a Jem'Hadar... it's great fun.

Other observations:

• Recurring Star Trek guest star Vaughn Armstrong is back, adding another alien (Hirogen) to the long roster of parts he's played across multiple series.

• Donik sounds a lot like a young Josh Gad. (No, it's not him.)

• Iden sure gives "his word" a lot.

• The Doctor gets off with a slap on the wrist at the end of this story, as Janeway says she "let" the Doctor grow to the point where he could act like this. When Paris acted mutinously, he got demoted and confined to the brig from 30 days. In an episode that's all about treating holograms as you would any flesh and blood being, the Doctor needed a true punishment of some kind to end it.

In the final season of any show, each episode feels precious -- one of the last opportunities the series will ever have to tell a story. In expanding to a two-parter here and then not making good use of it, it feels like at least one episode wasted. I give "Flesh and Blood" a C+.

Discovery: Under the Twin Moons

The two-episode kickoff to Star Trek: Discovery's final season continued with "Under the Twin Moons."

Discovery begins its search for Progenitor technology at a burial ground on a now-uninhabited planet, and the away team must overcome the security measures installed there. It will also be Saru's last mission as Burnham's first officer, as he has decided to accept an ambassadorial appointment. Tilly is also there on temporary assignment from Starfleet Academy, making this one "last ride" together for much of the Discovery crew. Meanwhile, Booker helps in the hunt for Moll and L'ak, and uncovers a personal connection.

In many ways, I felt similarly about episode two of this final season as I did about episode one, both in what I found good and not-so-good. But I also felt like this was a generally more polished episode that I enjoyed quite a bit more.

We got another big action set piece that might well have been what the episode was crafted around... but the running and hiding from mechanical sentries on the planet surface felt well integrated -- not "action for action's sake." (Not to mention, when you plant the idea of "Action Saru," you have to pay it off.)

The structure of this season-long story was more fully revealed, and I'm entertained. The fact that Discovery will seemingly have to collect five pieces of some mystical device feels straight out of some RPG, and maybe that's a little cheesy, but I'm here for it all the same. I think it sets up for "chapters" that will feel slightly less serialized than normal for Discovery, allowing them to bring us different adventures in different settings.

And wow, is the show amazing at that. When past Star Trek would visit a jungle planet, it always looked like the production cleaned out the garden center at the local hardware superstore and awkwardly clustered things together on a sound stage. The planet of "Under the Twin Moons" was an absolutely realistic environment with fantastic-looking stone ruins, convincing wide landscape shots, dangerous drones, and enough airborne pollen(?) to choke you. Very cool. A season format that allows Discovery to do this kind of thing several more times sounds great to me.

Another thing I appreciate about the story structure here is bringing in Rayner as the new first officer. It makes perfect sense for Michael Burnham's story to come full circle, for her to give someone else the second chance she herself was given. And I actually don't have confidence that Rayner will embrace that chance wholeheartedly, which I think is also good for the show. The characters on Discovery sometimes feel too open with their feelings, sometimes too supportive of one another and too easily able to learn and grow. Rayner feels like a welcome bitter taste to balance all the sweet. Plus, I loved Callum Keith Rennie on Battlestar Galactica, and am excited to see him take on a different role here.

But still, the episode had its weaker elements too. Bringing Tilly back for this mission felt like a weird stretch with a half-hearted justification at best. And timing that with Saru's "last mission" felt especially ill-considered. If Tilly can leave and then just come back this easily, does Saru's departure actually mean anything?

If Moll and L'ak reached this planet before Discovery, how did they get by all the sentry drones, and why was there no apparent evidence of any fireworks from their recent presence? For that matter, how did the Romulan scientist get in there centuries ago to actually leave the piece of the Macguffin? Does the tenuous connection revealed between Moll and Booker (that she's the daughter of his mentor) actually mean anything important? (Despite having taken the man's name, Booker never really talks about the guy.)

Still, call this episode a step in the right direction after a season premiere I felt much more mixed about. I give "Under the Twin Moons" a B.

My Ride (Campaign) Has Come to a Final Stop

I've played several Legacy board games with my gaming group over the years, and recently we've completed another --  Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West. This takes the approachable gameplay of one of the premiere "gateway" board games and builds it out over a 12-game campaign.

Because part of the fun of a legacy game is the surprise twists revealed throughout the campaign, I'm going to try to be a bit circumspect in my thoughts here. Still, if you plan to play yourself and don't want anything spoiled for you in any way, perhaps you should just skip to the last paragraph here for my summation.

Ticket to Ride Legacy comes from legacy game gurus Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock (along with original Ticket to Ride designer Alan R. Moon), and I'm pleased to say that despite the large number of legacy games they've created, they haven't run out of innovation or new ideas. One aspect of this game in particular feels like an evolution on the genre that I expect to see popping up in future legacy games. (Small spoiler here: most mechanics or "modules" in the game have a built-in expiration to ensure they'll last only a few games before passing out of the campaign. This is a mechanism to control the ever-escalating complexity that's a not-always-good hallmark of previous legacy games.)

The game also delighted me with one of the components revealed early in the campaign. I'm not usually the sort of gamer who is swept up by a particular part in a board game; I'm much more drawn to the way the systems of the game interact with one another. But when this particular component was revealed, I grinned ear to ear. On one level, it seemed so obvious, so perfect for Ticket to Ride Legacy, that of course the game was going to include it. On the other hand, I certainly hadn't anticipated that it was coming -- and I can't say for certain that I, had I been tasked with creating a Ticket to Ride Legacy, would have thought of it.

But while Ticket to Ride Legacy certainly has its clever ideas and enjoyable elements, I do also have reservations about the experience overall. Competitive legacy board games are hard. Really hard. Balancing things so that one or two players don't build out an early advantage in the campaign and ride it to victory over the remaining games is very much at odds with the idea that the decisions you make in one playthrough will have an important, lasting impact in later plays. It's a target with an impossibly small bullseye, and I cannot say that Ticket to Ride Legacy hits it.

Another issue is that the game gets uncomfortably complex in the middle of the campaign -- shockingly so for a board game that is fundamentally something as "easy" for "real gamers" as Ticket to Ride. I mentioned earlier that the design had a clever way to control the growth of complexity. I think that method doesn't do so enough, at least not for the pace at which significant new mechanics are brought into the campaign. For a period of several games in the heart of our campaign, all the players struggled to remember the many consequences that could result from a single action. This caused frustration no matter how we handled it, be it allowing someone to roll back later to do the things they'd forgotten, insisting we not do that, or trying to handhold fellow players through the 3 or 4 possible consequences of their turn (assuming somebody else even remembered them all).

And while I was generally positive on the experience when the whole campaign was said and done, at least one of our group of four was actually miserable -- continuing to play only so we could all complete the thing, and despairing of having any fun for many, many games before it was all over. (Watching a friend be so unhappy playing a board game he felt obligated to continue playing certainly wasn't fun, regardless of whatever other fun I might have derived from the experience.)

So all told, I think I would give Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West a B. Despite how great the original Ticket to Ride is for introducing people to the wide world of gaming beyond the likes of Monopoly and Sorry, I'm not sure this game would be a casual gamer's best introduction to legacy games. But if you have enjoyed other legacy games, I'd bet this one would at least be worth consideration for your gaming group.

Discovery: Red Directive

The final season of Star Trek: Discovery has begun, with two of the 10 episodes dropped together late last week. I'm here to talk about the first of those, "Red Directive."

Discovery is given a highly classified mission to retrieve something from an ancient Romulan ship. But Captain Rayner, of the starship that Discovery must team up with, plays much looser with the "at any cost" parameters of the mission. Meanwhile, Saru must decide whether to accept a new position that will take him away from Discovery.

I would never have expected differently, but this first episode of the final season made it clear that Discovery is going to go out just like it came in. The show has always had operatic, galactic stakes, and has always been highly serialized. It's had jaw-droppingly amazing visuals -- as good or better than any Star Trek movie, brought to television every episode. It's also occasionally had deficits in the writing, which in my view are usually made up for with two big plusses: top notch acting by Sonequa Martin-Green, and a roster of characters that have filled Star Trek's "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" ideal better than any series that came before (or since).

"Red Directive" certainly demonstrated all of this -- to a new extreme, if anything. Parts of the episode felt like the action beats of a summer blockbuster around which the whole thing had been crafted: Burnham "surfing" on the outside of a ship at warp, "motorcycles" running from a massive rockslide. Mindless action that felt much more "Star Wars" than "Star Trek," but which looked fantastic.

Saru's relationship with T'Rina remained as charming to me as it was last season. I appreciated that the way Discovery has gone, Saru might credibly said yes OR no to the job offer. This is a show determined to grow its characters and not put them back in the package at the end of each episode -- even when that sometimes makes storytelling a bit more challenging. (See: the struggles to keep Tilly around despite her new job.) Every major character on Discovery has grown and changed since we first met them, though for Saru it has probably been the longest (since he literally transformed from cowering "prey" to dart-throwing badass)... and so I appreciate this final arc for him.

But other character moves in the episode were less successful. The intended awkwardness of bringing back Book didn't really land for me. Yes, time has passed in both the world of show and the real world since Discovery's last adventure. And yet, we didn't even have an episode without Book around, so it really doesn't feel like he ever left. And with Burnham seemingly determined to make it not weird, to just ignore everything he did, it really comes off like nothing's wrong at all -- and that is kind of weird.

Discovery began its run very much tied to classic Star Trek, and now it appears it's going to go out tied to The Next Generation, setting up a season-long arc following up on a fan-favorite episode. It's arguably an easy trick to pull in a longtime Star Trek fan like me... and yet I don't mind being "tricked." It does feel to me like the right kind of story to pick up on, with enough interesting elements to form a worthwhile sequel, while not messing with something so "sacred" that you'd wish they'd left it alone. I'll be interested to see where it goes.

But... man, did this feel like a rocky start. I had a hard time with the episode's mindless action and needless secrecy. Like I said, though, Discovery has sometimes been these things too, amid things I've really liked. It's no surprise it's going out on its own terms. I give "Red Directive" a C+... but I hold out hope for what's yet to come in this final season.

Sight (No Longer) Unseen

I'm a huge fan of director Steven Soderbergh's remake of Ocean's Eleven. Surprisingly, though, I had never seen the movie that essentially made Ocean's Eleven possible. No, not the original Rat Pack version. (What a snooze!) The 1998 movie Out of Sight. Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard, Out of Sight is the story of bank robber Jack Foley, who escapes from prison and becomes infatuated with the U.S. Marshal pursuing him, Karen Sisco.

There are numerous reasons I could have found my way to this movie earlier. It was the first collaboration between Soderbergh and actor George Clooney. (That's what I mean when I say it paved the way for Ocean's Eleven.) It was near the front of a trend that brought more "non-chronological storytelling" to movies; you can see where this film took the baton from Pulp Fiction and passed it on to many that followed. It was based on the writing of Elmore Leonard, which I might easily have backtracked to pick up after so thoroughly enjoying the TV series Justified. It was the first notable screen appearance of the character of Karen Sisco, which I might also have backtracked for after thoroughly enjoying the half-season-and-cancelled-too-soon series named for the character, starring Carla Gugino.

In any case, I may be more than 25 years late to the party, but I'm here now. And as far as I'm concerned, the party is still going strong: Out of Sight is super fun. The casting is great and the characters are sharp. If you liked Ocean's Eleven (and/or any of its sequels) you can't help but enjoy George Clooney's brand of unflappable cool, oozing all over this movie. His Eleven co-star Don Cheadle is here too, playing an often-as-smooth, but very "flappable" villain.

Ving Rhames is here, which totally makes sense when you think about how "heisty" this movie is, and realize that Mission: Impossible was just turning into a franchise at about this time. (What's surprising, actually, is that Rhames didn't appear in the Ocean's movies.) The movie's deep, deep bench of supporting characters are played by the likes of Steve Zahn, Albert Brooks, Dennis Farina, Luis Guzmán, Isaiah Washington, Nancy Allen, Catherine Keener, and Viola Davis. And there are a couple of delightful cameos as well, best not spoiled if you too have somehow gone all this time without seeing this movie.

Then there's Jennifer Lopez in the role of Karen Sisco. Certainly, I like her performance; she has great chemistry opposite Clooney, and what her work was enough to make some studio executive say, "hey, this character deserves a TV series." Without taking anything away from Lopez though, I'll just say two things. One, I feel like the writing of her character isn't as strong (in several senses of that word) as it could be. And two, Carla Gugino is to me just a next level actress who is amazing in everything. I haven't watched an episode of the Karen Sisco series since it was canceled-too-soon, and yet I still remember how that show made me thinking, "who is she?" -- and subsequently liking her in everything I've seen her in right up to The Fall of the House of Usher. In my own personal non-chronological approach to the character of Karen Sisco, Jennifer Lopez had a tough act to follow.

Regardless, I was tickled by this movie. Even though I'd heard people talking about it here and there over the years, I feel like I've discovered some hidden gem. I give Out of Sight an A-. If you've never seen it before, and even remotely like the heist genre (and/or Elmore Leonard), I think you'll love it. If you have seen it before, but it's been a while, it's probably a movie you'd appreciate revisiting.

Voyager Flashback: Nightingale

Watching Star Trek: Voyager for the first time in two decades, and now being on the last season, I've been finding that the show is generally better than I remembered. That's a topic I'll explore more fully, I imagine, when I reach the finale. But today, I'm here to discuss an episode that's exactly the kind of thing I thought I remembered, "Nightingale."

When Harry Kim rescues an alien starship from attack, its passengers install him as their captain. But a humanitarian mission to deliver medical supplies is soon revealed to be hiding something darker. And Harry Kim is soon revealed to have much to learn about command. Meanwhile, aboard Voyager, Icheb mistakenly believes that B'Elanna has feelings for him.

One of my criticisms of Star Trek: Voyager -- particularly coming on the heels of Deep Space Nine as it did -- was that most of the characters generally felt so limited and one-dimensional. That may not be entirely true across the board, but it's true enough to make an episode like "Nightingale" not work. The Voyager characters are so constrained in their range of behavior that when they behave at all out of character, they don't feel true to themselves.

Harry Kim's aspirations for higher rank and starship command have been a runner throughout the series. He's even been commanding night shifts aboard Voyager for several seasons now. Why then is he so inept in this command scenario? Is he still so naive, after nearly seven years, that he actually thinks strangers will blindly follow his orders without question? Why, after he final turns his failure into success in the end, does he then decide that he's actually ready for command after all? Hell, the writers can't even remember that they've established he plays clarinet; he brings a saxophone aboard the alien ship to decorate his ready room.

Kim is hardly the only one behaving out of character. Seven of Nine has far too much intelligence about social cues and leading people than she should; literally any other character on the show would have made more sense to pair with Harry aboard this ship (though, of course, literally any other character -- but the Doctor (?) -- would have outranked him). B'Elanna is creepily nice in this episode simply to facilitate Icheb's misreading of the situation. She never treats anyone as kindly as she does Icheb in this episode (and certainly not a Borg drone, as we've seen from her interactions with Seven); it's no wonder Icheb thinks she has a crush on him. (She's even still nice when she lets him down easy in the end rather that verbally crushing him like a bug.) The Doctor, for once, is not the perviest character on the show -- instead, he's the voice of reason who says that the social signals Icheb is picking up might be just signs of friendship instead.

Even the one-off aliens of this episode don't behave believably. After ousting Kim as their captain, they quickly make him their captain again! (And don't oust him again when he goes right back to barking orders without explanation.) Plus, the concept of "Star Trek itself" is kind of off its game here, as the episode never interrogates whether these aliens are telling the truth. They claim they're oppressed by the others who are hunting them down. But they lied about their cloaking device technology actually being "medical supplies," so are they telling the truth about anything else? Who are really the oppressors here? And how good is this cloaking device anyway? In the opening sequence, their ship can seemingly be detected and fired upon even while it's cloaked.

The story may be poorly written, but some aspects of the episode do work. LeVar Burton directs, and when an actor directs other actors, you usually get stronger performances. It's also nice to see Ron Glass here as a guest star (only shortly before he'd return to science fiction on the short-lived Firefly.) There are great visual effects, including Voyager set down for repairs, and the Delta Flyer running from an attacking ship.

Other observations:

• Okay, Neelix is still behaving in character. His terrible advice about command is that you have to know your answer to everything (even what you want to eat), and never show indecision or solicit advice.
  

• The captain's chair aboard the alien ship is ugly: olive green, with alternating corduroy and leather stripes.

• When Tom challenges Icheb to a friendly car race, Icheb interprets it as competition over B'Elanna. Were this episode made today, a far more interesting angle to take would be if Icheb thought Tom was also into him, or hinting at a poly relationship, or some such.

This is another point I'll likely touch on when talking about the series finale and summing up Star Trek: Voyager -- but even when it's bad, the series usually isn't that bad. Performances, production value, and pace are all fine in this episode... so it is essentially "watchable." It's just not an episode I expect to ever re-watch again. I give this episode-long justification for "why we haven't promoted Harry Kim" a C-.

Berry Entertaining

I recently streamed on Hulu the movie BlackBerry -- the story of the rise and fall of the once ubiquitous smartphone that was a status symbol for all the high-powered executives and tech bros of the world. It's an interesting movie in a few ways.

First is the odd synthesis of tropes at play here. I think everyone is familiar with the "cradle to grave" biopic that tells the story of one noted individual. We're also familiar with the "birth of a great idea" movie; it seems like virtually any great invention you can think of from the last century or so has at least one movie celebrating its creation. BlackBerry is an interesting blend of both these things: it's a "cradle to grave" story about an invention, featured on one of the few inventions that might have such a tale worth telling.

Secondly, it's a distinctly Canadian film. This is fitting, since the BlackBerry itself was the invention of a Canadian company. The movie is written and directed by Canadians, and stars mostly Canadians in the key roles. And the "Canadianness" seeps into the movie in ways big and small -- from the occasional, faintly detectable accents to the inclusion of a hockey subplot to the foreign (to American eyes) approach to business and interpersonal conflict.

The casting I mentioned is a key part of the appeal. The two leads are played by actors known mainly for comedy, which makes their performances here a shocking -- but effective -- change of pace. Jay Baruchel stars as soft-spoken engineer Mike Lazaridis, while Glenn Howerton plays power-broker investor Jim Balsillie. Both are well-suited to their roles, though it's Howerton who really commands the screen, playing a wound-too-tight-for-living asshole. Appearing in minor roles throughout the movie, you'll also see Michael Ironside, Rich Sommer, Martin Donovan, Saul Rubinek, and Cary Elwes. (No, there really aren't any women in this story.)

It's an entertaining movie... and yet there honestly isn't that much "there" there. Despite the performances, the characters border on caricature; there's a certain level at which this could be the story of any technology being supplanted by another, or even (if you squint hard) any clash of "art vs. commerce." The story of the BlackBerry doesn't cry out as one that Must Be Told -- even if here, it is told well enough.

I understand there was enough cut footage from the film that it was repackaged in longer form as a three-part TV series on AMC; if you subscribe to that channel's unique streaming service, you can watch the longer version instead. Maybe that would change my opinion some? Likely not. I would guess it's a fun diversion in either form. If you, like me, have a large "slush pile" of things to watch, this might not ever find its way to the top. But if a certain kind of movie has hit the bullseye for you before -- say, Tetris -- then you'll probably enjoy this. I give BlackBerry a B-.

Voyager Flashback: Body and Soul

Most sci-fi television shows that run for enough episodes are eventually going to do their take on a few genre staples: the "Groundhog Day" episode, the "entire show might be a delusion" episode... and the "body swap" episode. Voyager's take on that last was to do half a body swap episode, with "Body and Soul."

When Harry Kim, Seven of Nine, and the Doctor are captured by aliens with a prejudice against holograms, the Doctor must hide somewhere to avoid being erased. That "somewhere" ends up being Seven of Nine's body, where his invading consciousness pushes her own to the side. Meanwhile, aboard Voyager, Tuvok undergoes his pon farr -- and with the Doctor away, he has only Tom Paris to turn to for medical help.

There's a reason "body swap" (even in this case, where the "swap" isn't actually reciprocal) is such a popular story idea. When a show runs long enough, everyone comes to understand at a very deep level how all of the characters would react in most situations. So it's just plain fun to watch another actor take over that character for an episode. It's a very knowing wink to the audience. It's watching someone do an impersonation right in front of the person being impersonated.

It's especially fitting that this kind of story would also be directed by one of the main cast members; this is actor Robert Duncan McNeill's last turn in the director's chair for Star Trek: Voyager, and he guides the action well. According to episode writer Mike Sussman, Robert Picardo videotaped himself performing all the scenes of the episode to give a reference on how he thought the Doctor would behave.

We can't know how much that reference was really followed, but it's clear from the results that Jeri Ryan really learned to give an excellent Robert Picardo impersonation. Her comedy with the cheesecake is delightful. The many knowing lines she delivers to the audience all land perfectly. The scene in which the Doctor must distract the alien captain has a classic comedic tone, like a scene from Some Like It Hot.

It's good that Ryan does all this so well, generating so much fun for the episode. Because there's also a lot about the episode that's really quite uncomfortable. The fact that the Doctor has expressed romantic interest in Seven before makes this situation quite skeezy. The character becoming drunk (and aroused) in Seven's body really is a horrible violation as Seven of Nine says it is (even though her declaration is played as a laugh line). Some of the comedy hits the gender switch element here in a way that feels a little transphobic.

But there's still more to distract from all that: the Tuvok subplot is pretty fun too. You get the expected jokes about Vulcans' peculiar relationship with their sex drives.... but they're well-tempered with more sensitivity from Paris than one would expect, and understanding from Janeway as well. (Neelix, predictably, is clueless.) This B plot even connects well with the A plot, as Paris' holodeck solution must be put on hold when Voyager must interact with the hologram-hating aliens.

Indeed, the whole tone of the episode is so light that the turn at the end doesn't quite work. The Doctor winds up saving the alien captain's life, and this one moment of kindness seems to be enough to unravel a lifetime of racism for at least the aliens on this ship. Yes, it's true that what often seems to change a bigot's mind is when the "face-eating leopards come to eat their face," but it still feels like the change here comes too easily. Yet that's the easy tone of this episode overall, and that must be honored.

Other observations:

• The opening scene of the episode sets up friction between Seven and the Doctor for the sake of the story to come. Still, it feels weird for Seven, the Doctor's closest friend, to be joking about disabling his vocal processor because he talks too much.

• I wonder what Tuvok's wife would think about all this when Tuvok returns home? (I suppose simply that he did the logical thing -- so maybe there's no real story potential there after all.)

Jeri Ryan makes this episode what it is. But the creepy undertones of the Doctor's behavior keep it from being "great." I give "Body and Soul" a B.

Voyager Flashback: Inside Man

After multiple episodes featuring the characters of Reginald Barclay and Deanna Troi, Star Trek: Voyager had essentially laid claim to the characters to bring back on a recurring basis. They did so for one last time (together) with "Inside Man."

Voyager receives a hologram of Reginald Barclay in place of their monthly data stream from Starfleet, and he brings exciting news: he has a plan to return them home! But back in the Alpha Quadrant, the real Reginald Barclay is dismayed that his attempt to send a hologram to Voyager has apparently failed. And with the help of Counselor Troi, he soon learns that someone has hijacked his program and modified it for nefarious purposes.

When Star Trek: Voyager served up its first Barclay/Troi episode, I commented that as much as I enjoyed seeing the characters again (especially Troi), it didn't exactly feel like a Star Trek: Voyager episode with it featuring the main cast so little. "Inside Man" is balanced a little better in this regard, with scenes split between the Alpha and Delta Quadrants. Yet it still falls flat for me as a Star Trek: Voyager episode in one key way. Our regular characters are made to look painfully, fatally stupid.

Voyager never actually has any direct communication with Starfleet at any point in this episode, and thus the characters never have any agency in the plot. They're all duped by holographic Barclay (despite initial skepticism that quickly goes away), and then come moments away from all being killed before they're saved by an outside intervention they're completely unaware of. Worse still, it's a group of particularly stupid Ferengi that manage to pull one over on the entire Voyager crew. It's a truly poor showing for them all.

If you can overlook that and see this more generally as a Star Trek episode, then at least it's rather fun. Barclay is always good for an "it's not paranoia if it's actually happening" story. (You'd think sooner or later, his boss would start believing him. I guess we're not seeing all the times he's wrong.) In particular, it's a good episode for Dwight Schultz, who gives two very different takes on his character between "Barclay actual" and the smooth-talking, supremely confident "Barclay hologram." Plus, Troi (and Marina Sirtis) gets some good moments too: actually counseling Barclay about his breakup, and applying pressure in an interrogation to extract useful information.

There's some great production value here. We get a return of the Pathfinder project lab, this time with a group of school children on a tour. We get the bridge of a Ferengi starship, with three different bantering characters. There's even a day of filming out on the beach, complete with background actors in alien makeup. (Every last bit of dialogue would have to have been dubbed later, due to the sound of the crashing waves. What a pain!)

Get past that concern I have with the story construction, and the writing actually seems pretty good throughout. I appreciate "hanging a lantern" on this being the umpteenth time Voyager might find a fast way home, as Paris specifically references past episodes where that happened. The talk of a just-off-screen Will Riker serves well enough to make you not miss Jonathan Frakes too badly. And the Ferengi characters, along with Leosa the scamming dabo girl, all feel consistent with everything we've seen on Deep Space Nine.

Other observations:

• The scene of the Barclay holo doing impersonations of Janeway and Tuvok for entertainment cleverly sets up the later moment when he'll impersonate Seven of Nine's voice as part of his scheme.

• I love the ridiculousness of Barclay's improv about "Vidiian Phage torpedoes." (But also... remember that the people who were fooled by that are the same people who fooled the entire Voyager crew here. Yeah, just not a good day for Our Heroes.)
  

I'm jumping ahead here to a review I suppose I'll end up writing years from now, when I point out that the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise was widely criticized for featuring characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation more prominently than those of that show itself. In many ways, I feel like this episode laid a crucial bit of track getting to that later point. But this is at least is the better, more fun version of that. I give "Inside Man" a B.

Using My Platform to Talk About Another

Today, I bring you another "from the depths of Netflix" review. This one has actually been on my radar for some time, ever since it sprang from nowhere onto the Top 10 Movies of 2020 list from critic Tasha Robinson. Finally, the moment seemed right, and I watched The Platform.

This movie is a dystopian thriller with a dash of science fiction. It's a Spanish film. (The original title is "El hoyo" -- The Hole.) It's set in a prison facility of an uncertain number of levels, each one a single room housing two prisoners. The only food delivered comes via a large stone platform that slowly descends through the levels. What begins on Level 1 as a lavish feast becomes a picked-over mess of leftovers, and ultimately a collection of empty plates.

The social commentary here is not subtle, nor new. In particular, Snowpiercer featured many of the same ideas about class structure that are centered here. Also not new is the idea of a science fiction movie in a repetitive, spartan setting. (There have been more Cube movies than I have managed to see.) And yet, as The Platform unfolds, it feels like something surprisingly original.

It certainly feels darker and nastier. The Platform is a visceral and harrowing story even before it becomes violent and cruel (which doesn't take long). There are very few characters, as you might expect, so much of why the movie works at all is thanks to the main actor, Iván Massagué. From what I can see online, he's actually known mainly as a comedic actor, making this a massive casting against type. But his performance as Goreng draws you in and makes the horrors of the situation feel more real.

I'll be blunt: the ending of the movie doesn't quite make sense -- it defies logic in ways that are hard to accept. And yet, at the same time, I sort of feel like it shouldn't be hard to accept them. If you've come 85 minutes, believing in the heightened premise this movie proposes, what you're asked to believe in the last 10 minutes probably isn't asking that much more. And it's not like the ending hasn't been earned through various seeds planted throughout the story. Still, it's tough to go out asking "how is that possible?" when suspension of disbelief has been so skillfully deployed before then.

Put simply, were it not for the ending, I probably also would have put The Platform on my Top 10 Movies of 2020 list (or 2019, if you go by the original Spanish release). And I'd still say it was more of a "hop on the landing" than a full face plant. I give The Platform a B+. It's not an easy watch, but if the concept sounds intriguing to you, I certainly recommend it.

From Dune to Tune

When the SAG-AFTRA strike last year delayed the release of a number of movies, it broke up a double-dose of Timothée Chalamet: the originally-scheduled release date of Dune Part Two would have seen it in theaters at the same time as Wonka, the musical prequel centered on one of author Roald Dahl's most beloved characters. I wound up having that double feature experience anyway. Wonka has just arrived to stream on Max, and so I have indeed chased worm-riding, knife-fighting, war-leading Chalamet with singing, dancing Chalamet.

I think I'm one of the very few people of my generation not to hold the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in the highest regards. By not watching it until I was older, it seems I was rendered immune to many of the movie's charms. But one that still connected was the performance of Gene Wilder. So while I was not as skeptical of this new prequel as I'm sure many were, I was still probably a bit cautious in my expectations of what a Wonka prequel would look like.

In the months since Wonka's original release, the online consensus seems to have become that while the movie is generally "good," Chalamet's take on the main character lacks the occasionally sinister undercurrent of Wilder's take. And that is true; if you come here looking for anything like a Gene Wilder impersonation, you're going to be disappointed. But I think that expectation is overlooking a key feature of the writing of Roald Dahl.

I don't pretend to be a Dahl scholar when I say this. (I don't think I've even actually read any of his books, but I've consumed enough film adaptations to have observed this.) Every Dahl story I've seen is littered with monstrous villains whose evil is exaggerated to a comedic extreme. Set in direct opposition to that is the impossibly virtuous, even naive, protagonist at the story's heart. When Simon Farnaby and director Paul King set out to write the screenplay for Wonka, they were creating a new story, but very much wanted to be faithful to Dahl's style. And so they've made a completely pure protagonist of Wonka. No, none of Gene Wilder's at-the-margins darkness is here, because that's not likely how Dahl would have written this story (had he actually done so).

Timothée Chalamet gives a performance perfectly suited to that take on the character. But it's also something of a thankless role, being the wild-eyed "child" in a Roald Dahl (inspired) story. The fun here is had by the supporting cast playing the monstrous villains I spoke of, and so the real scene-stealers of the movie are Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton, Rowan Atkinson, Tom Davis... and most of all, Olivia Colman. (But come on, you knew that. Olivia Colman is always the best thing about everything she's in.)

Another key feature is the lineup of catchy songs. There's nothing here that's going to compete with "Pure Imagination." (Though the filmmakers don't run from that; both it and versions of the "Oompa Loompa" song with new lyrics are included here.) Still, Neil Hannon has crafted several earworms that'll stay in your head long after the end credits have rolled.

So, while your mileage may vary here depending on your love for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, or Roald Dahl generally, I found Wonka to be a pleasant enough spectacle for the eyes and ears. I give it a B.

Project (Expectation) Management

When the new Percy Jackson and the Olympians series made a splash at the start of the year, several older clips of lead actor Walker Scobell resurfaced, from a few years ago when he was promoting his first-ever film, the Netflix movie The Adam Project, starring Ryan Reynolds. Oh yeah, I thought... I remember the half-week-or-so that movie felt like "a thing." And these clips of this kid quoting Deadpool around his cast mates (in full R-rated glory) seem hilarious. Maybe I should give the movie a chance.

The Adam Project is the story of pilot Adam Reed, who time travels back from a dystopian 2050 to try to find his girlfriend and stop the dark future from ever coming to pass. He crash-lands in 2022, where he meets up with his own 12-year-old self. Together, both must flee from future hunters as they pursue the older Adam's goal.

It seems like a couple times a year, Netflix just backs up the money truck and produces a giant $50 to $100 million movie that ought to be one of the tent poles of the summer blockbuster season... and then they just drop it exclusively on their service like everything else, where it quickly vanishes in an algorithmic swamp. The Adam Project easily could have been a widely-seen theater movie of 2022; instead, here I am reminding you it was actually a thing two years later. That's just how Netflix rolls.

Now, to be clear, I'm not here to tell you that The Adam Project was one of the best movies of 2022. It's pretty rote pulp sci-fi, and it doesn't think of anything especially clever with the "meeting your younger self" time travel premise that you wouldn't have thought of yourself. Yet at the same time, the movie certainly feels like a thing that more people should have seen, and would have talked about for a bit if they had. In my mind, that's because the cast is surprisingly excellent.

For one thing, there's a weirdly deep bench here in the supporting cast. Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo stage a mini "13 Going on 30" reunion here as Adam's parents, and the movie leverages their chemistry in making you want to see them together on screen more than you do. Plus, both bring a lovely bit of sentiment to an otherwise jokey, actiony movie. Catherine Keener makes for a fun villain, chewing up the scenery in a fun dual role (just don't look too closely at the "de-aging" effects used on her younger version). Zoe Saldaña, underheralded queen of multiple science fiction franchises, brings her high-wattage action star power to bear as well.

But, of course, the premise is the entire movie here: kid meets his future adult self. So the movie can only ever be as good as that pairing. And that part, at least, is excellent. Walker Scobell feels like he was grown in a lab to impersonate Ryan Reynolds (which, "retroactively" makes me appreciate his very different performance in Percy Jackson even more). The two have a fantastic rapport, deliver plenty of laugh out loud funny exchanges, and will generally make you glad you watched the movie... even if you decide the rest of it doesn't make a lick of sense and isn't all that great. (Seriously, just watch this and then tell me you're not open two more hours of it.)

I'll try to temper overall expectations, though, and say that I'd give The Adam Project a B-. It may well be that even if it had had a big summer theatrical release, we still wouldn't remember it much now. But I think it's a pretty fun diversion.

Voyager Flashback: Critical Care

Star Trek is well known for taking modern issues and filtering them through a science fiction lens to offer social commentary. Rarely has the franchise been so "on the nose" in doing this as it was with Voyager's "Critical Care."

The Doctor has been stolen from Voyager, and finds himself put to work in an alien hospital where the quality of patient care is proportional to an assessment of the patient's value to society. The Doctor takes it upon himself to care for the "have nots," as Voyager works to track down where he's been taken.

As modern Star Trek has continued in its storied tradition of espousing humanist values, and has expanded its storytelling to include a wider variety of people than ever before, a small cadre of the online clueless has risen to demand "when did Star Trek become so woke?" I wonder what they'd make of an episode like this, so proudly waving an "eat the rich" flag? (Perhaps they'd say the parable here is about allowing "death panels" to decide a person's worth, not denying basic healthcare to the poor.) It just feels impossible to miss the point on this one. And yeah, part of me thinks that a truly top-notch episode would be a bit more subtle than this.

But then, it's not like this episode has its heart in the wrong place. The Doctor really is the perfect character to put at the center of a story about the "haves" and "have nots"; the fact that it's an explicitly medical story just cements it. Yet it's also effectively a fish-out-of-water tale, as the Doctor isn't trying to cure some rare disease. His attempts to circumvent this system range from trying to hack it to actual theft. He shows particular ingenuity in convincing another doctor (played by Star Trek and 24 veteran Gregory Itzin) to help him out before the system start cracking down on his own resources. It's a great story overall for the Doctor.

The one part of it that doesn't land quite as well for me is the end, where he asks Seven to check if his ethical subroutines are still intact. I suppose it's a beat that makes sense for the character, given some of his past ethical lapses. But I feel like we've seen it before. Moreover, it feels like one moment where this transparent allegory could have been slightly more opaque. The question of undertaking "unethical" actions to thwart an unjust system feels deserving of its own full episode exploration, and not just as a footnote here.

The subplot of Voyager's search for the Doctor serves as comic relief to the rest. Neelix puts his famously toxic cooking to use as a form of socially acceptable torture. (He isn't doing anything to a captive that he hasn't done to his own friends.) An almost montage-like quest through a procession of side characters (including Parks and Recreation's Jim O'Heir!) leads Janeway and Tuvok to pose amusingly as a couple. At another point, Janeway has to deal with, essentially, an automated call menu. Fun.

Other observations:

• CG is just fully part of Star Trek: Voyager at this point. The episode opens with an elaborate vista of an alien cityscape.

• Paris and Kim get their comedic moment walking down the hallway wearing full hockey gear. My question: is it possible to get injured playing hockey on the holodeck? Did they turn the safeties off?

I wish that this medically-themed episode could have wielded a scalpel rather than a mallet. Still, it's not bad. I give "Critical Care" a B.