Enterprise Flashback: Fortunate Son

On Star Trek: Enterprise, the character of Travis Mayweather was created to be the experienced space traveler of the bunch, a young man who had grown up on an interstellar freighter. The first episode to really focus on the character, "Fortunate Son," centered on this history.

The Enterprise is sent to aid a freighter that has been attacked by Nausicaan pirates. But the freighter's acting captain has taken matters into his own hands, imprisoning one of the pirates. He only escalates from there, attacking the Enterprise and threatening to spark a diplomatic incident. Through it all, Travis Mayweather may be caught between his loyalty to Starfleet and his own history on freighters like this.

...except that he really isn't, at all. It seems like every opportunity this episode could take to create a meaningful moral quandary, it takes a less compelling path. Mayweather could feel true, deep sympathy for this freighter to a degree where he really questions his loyalty; but no, Archer asks about this, and Travis totally deflates any tension on this issue. The episode could make it really seem like the freighter crew has a point here; after all, these are pirates, and Nausicaans are a notably brutal (through sparingly used) alien in the Star Trek universe. But no, the only brutality we really see in the episode is torture inflicted on a prisoner by the acting freighter captain. The Nausicaans look tame, perhaps even innocent, removing any moral ambiguity in the story.

The fact that it's an acting freighter captain also robs the story of potency. This situation could have been that pirate activity is so relentless and hostile that even an old, grizzled veteran of the space lanes has decided enough is enough. Instead, that guy gets wounded to make room for a young hothead, whose lack of experience only further goes to paint him as the one "in the wrong" in this situation.

It all culminates in an action sequence where only characters we've never met before now are actually in any jeopardy -- and we've been manipulated to have such specific feelings about them that it's impossible to care about what happens. The episode is so devoid of suspense, in fact, that conspicuous efforts to inject some feel really awkward. When Mayweather delivers the climactic monologue in the final act, director LeVar Burton understandably wants to put some movement in the scene. But the answer can't be to have Mayweather abandon his post during a battle to walk around the bridge and speechify. The composer wants the music to escalate the emotions of the scene... yet strangely, the biggest action music comes after things have been resolved, accompanying the Nausicaans' withdrawal from the freighter.

When the story itself is a real dud, you have to draw entertainment from the accents along the way. There's interesting universe building that's different for Star Trek -- talk about the difference between slow warp and fast warp (and "enjoying the trip"). We learn of entire generations of families who spend their whole lives on the same interstellar freighter. It's an interesting and especially "primitive" look for Star Trek, even on the series that, being a prequel, is supposed to look more primitive than we're used to.

But there are also accent moments that don't work very well. Fans know that the claim that "Vulcans never lie" has always been itself a lie. But they don't lie for no reason, so T'Pol's decision to "lie by omission" to help a kid playing hide and seek feels like an odd choice for her character. Mayweather's more "insubordinate moments" (one even earning a "look" from a stunned Hoshi Sato) lead to no real repercussions.

Other observations:

• Vaughn Armstrong makes his first repeat appearance here as Admiral Forrest. Enterprise is just going to take a different approach than The Next Generation. Story structure on both shows often requires the captain to communicate with an Admiral back at Starfleet. But where The Next Generation would just cast a new actor every time, Enterprise is going to reuse the same one.

• Granted, there are only so many ways to show a shuttlepod being launched, and it's probably not worth the cost to render a lot of new CG of the same kind of thing. Still, it's already noticeable that we keep seeing the same shuttlepod launch in episode after episode.

I suppose the writers didn't want to go with a trope and have Mayweather really contemplate turning against Starfleet in this story. Yet while I appreciate not wanting to do the trope, they didn't really replace it with anything. That leaves "Fortunate Son" a boring episode. Good looking, as Enterprise always is, and with a few nice scenes. But boring overall. I give it a C.

Prodigy: Last Flight of the Protostar, Part I

Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 didn't just have a two-part episode as it arrived at the midpoint of the season, it immediately had another to begin the back half. First up, "Last Flight of the Protostar, Part I."

The cadets have found Chakotay, marooned with the Protostar on a mostly desolate world -- and he's been there for ten years, with only the holographic Janeway for company for most of that time. Chakotay is determined to keep the ship safely out of reach from forces that would harm the Federation... and the Protostar is unable to take off in any case. These are two problems the cadets must solve: first helping to restore Chakotay's spirits after his long isolation, and then helping to repair the Protostar so that they all might leave this planet.

This is a really nice episode for all the characters. After the previous installment centered so much on Voyager and to some extent sidelined the cadets, this episode puts them front and center, and with a mission that's decidedly out of their element. For the entire first season of Prodigy, these kids were the ones getting the pep talks (from holographic Janeway). Here, they must give the pep talks, motivating a truly broken Chakotay to jump back into the action.

It's an equally good story for Chakotay -- quite possibly one of the most effective for the character including all seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager. "Chakotay episodes" have been few and far between, and always seemed to be either centered on the inauthentic culture crafted for him, or high-concept sci-fi stories that could just as easily have centered on any other character. This Prodigy episode is a story that centers on the profound sense of duty Chakotay has always had... though it is now firmly centered on Starfleet (instead of the Maquis, as it was so many years ago). Chakotay has experienced things that have stripped away pretty much everything but that duty, putting him in a deep hole to crawl out of. It's a credit to him, and the cadets who persuade him, that he does.

And while holo Janeway isn't a major player in this episode, it is certainly nice to spend time with her again. Kate Mulgrew has been on the show all along, of course, but there are subtle differences between this character and the Admiral, and it's this character that we came to love in season one of the show.

But of course, this is quite literally only half a story, with more to see in Part II. But I think this Part I was absolutely the high point of Prodigy season 2 so far. I give it a B+.

Enterprise Flashback: Civilization

As a prequel to all Star Trek that had come before, Enterprise sometimes had a "throwback" quality to its episodes. The early season one episode "Civilization" was the purest example of this to that point.

When Enterprise detects signs of advanced technology in a pre-warp civilization, Archer orders a covert mission to the planet. There they discover a group of aliens working toward nefarious ends, and Archer finds himself drawn to one of the locals.

In this series' model of "becoming Star Trek," it seems early on like this episode is going to show us why the Prime Directive, a rule to avoid interfering with less advanced societies, is needed. Yet the episode becomes an unexpected subversion of that. It turns out that other aliens are interfering with these aliens, and it's incumbent on our heroes to interfere themselves to restore the status quo. Not that the episode spends much time contemplating the morality of the situation. Mostly, it's just an adventure very much in the mold of the original Star Trek series -- a Vulcan hiding their ears, cloak-and-dagger mischief on the planet, and an alien romance for the captain.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I actually found this to be the most entertaining episode of Enterprise so far, in large part because it doesn't try for too heavy a tone. There's time for humor: jokes about alien abductions and UFOs landing in corn fields. There's time for action: shoot-outs, a face-peeling homage to the mini-series V, and a classic "which wire do we cut?" climax. And hey, there is light-touch morality in there too, as the problem of the episode ultimately turns on poisoning of ground water and the resulting health issues that causes.

Along the way are some nice little character moments. Hoshi is thrilled about the number of languages spoken in this alien society. Phlox is impressed at the scientific advances of the local apothecary. T'Pol takes command of the Enterprise and excels. (Best not think too hard about the moment where Trip flies off the handle, questioning her judgment.) And, of course, from beginning to end, the episode is a chance for Archer (and Scott Bakula) to engage in some classic Kirk (and William Shatner) swashbuckling.

Still, the episode is hardly top notch. Archer is so "Kirk" in this story that at times it plays too chauvinist and paternal. For the second time in just eight episodes, we've got a story about aliens with a hidden underground installation -- is Enterprise already running out of ideas? And some of the performances feel a bit extreme, low-key one moment and full-tilt the next. (Though there's context for that; see below.)

Other observations:

• The first day of filming on this episode was September 11, 2001. They'd just begun their day when news of the terrorist attacks came and filming shut down. Some of the people involved in the show have said that they feel the shadow of that all over this episode when they watch it, and I think perhaps they're right. Not that you'd ever put your finger on what exactly is going on, but sometimes the performances feel just a little off somehow.

• In a fun Trekker detail, the transporter is a new enough technology that the ability to do a "site to site transport" doesn't exist. They have to beam up the alien reactor to the ship, and then turn around and beam it into space.

I'd probably wish for Archer to be a little less Kirk-like, but I ultimately enjoyed the simple pleasures of this episode. I give "Civilization" a B.

Back to One

Although I liked the first two A Quiet Place movies well enough, I'd waited to watch the sequel at home -- and did the same for the newest film in the franchise, A Quiet Place: Day One. This prequel takes the audience to Manhattan, on to the day of the alien invasion that started at all, for another round of "don't make a sound" suspense and horror. Ultimately, I enjoyed the movie and I'd recommend it (certainly for anyone who liked the first two)... but I also found it to be something of a mixed bag.

This series doesn't exactly have the most complex "mythology," but if you're looking for this movie to add to it, you're going to be disappointed. Going back to day one of the invasion sounds like a compelling hook for a story, but it turns out that everyone who doesn't quickly get with the "be quiet" program winds up dead in very short order. And that quickly leaves the movie without many new gimmicks to present. It turns out that "being quiet on an abandoned New York street" doesn't ultimately feel much different from "being quiet one year later in a more rural setting." To the extent that a horror sequel thrives on providing new twists on the core premise, A Quiet Place: Day One doesn't really deliver.

On the other hand, this story does focus on new characters, and that does make a difference. Part of the appeal of the original A Quiet Place was that it centered on people that aren't usually the stars of a "post-apocalyptic survival story": a family of four (and, most notably, a non-hearing character). Day One continues that model of centering characters you don't see in horror movies -- and as long as you can keep doing that, one could imagine a fair number of new Quiet Place movies that do feel to some extent different despite the familiar trappings.

Minor spoilers here (all revealed very early on in the movie): the lead character of this prequel is dying of a terminal illness. That's an inspired and novel choice. Audiences are used to a cast of horror movie characters being figuratively the walking dead, each waiting for their turn to be killed by the monster. But it's truly a different thing for a character to know they're fated to die. And this one winds up falling in with another character clearly suffering from some form of anxiety. We have seen versions of that character in horror before, but always as the "first to die" or "comic relief."

A typical horror movie simply asks, "can anyone survive?" If you can set aside that understandable expectation, you'll find that A Quiet Place: Day One is focused instead on "smaller victories." What these two characters quest for is a detail I won't spoil -- partly because it is the true driver of the movie, and partly because it would sound ridiculous out of context. But suffice it to say that the movie opts for low stakes in a way that shouldn't work, but then winds up packing a surprising emotional punch in the final act.

It's not the only chaotically strange choice in the script writing, either. Djimon Hounsou is back to play his character from A Quiet Place Part II again... and while he does get one of the more powerful moments in this prequel, he also gets maybe five minutes of screen time total. Why bring him back? Then there's the most wild choice of all, giving the main character an emotional support cat. "Don't work with animals" is a famous Hollywood cliche. I figure above all, don't work with a cat, who can barely be trained (if at all). But the script writer was also the director here, choosing to inflict this difficulty upon himself -- and indeed insisting on it after star Lupita Nyong'o asked if the cat could be changed to another animal... revealing that she was actually afraid of cats! (She got over it to make this movie.)

Speaking of Lupita Nyong'o, she's absolutely dominated a horror movie before, with Us. It's no surprise (but still welcome) to see that she's good in this movie. More surprising is the strong performance of Stranger Things season four fan sensation Joseph Quinn, and the great rapport the two have together. A "two-hander" movie ultimately lives or dies by the casting of those two, and A Quiet Place: Day One definitely has Nyong'o and Quinn going for it.

Still... I find the movie fades fast from memory. By ultimately not adding much to the "franchise," the movie doesn't offer much that I think will stick with you in the long run. So I think I'd say A Quiet Place: Day One is a B-. It's not essential viewing, though I do think that horror fans who check it out will ultimately enjoy it.

Prodigy: The Devourer of All Things, Part II

The first half of Star Trek: Prodigy season two concluded with "The Devourer of All Things, Part II."

Voyager arrives at the same planet as the cadets... to find they must stage a rescue amid a dangerous fight for their lives. As the Loom erases crew members from existence, Ma'jel is part of an away team and learns that she has an important role to play in finding the Protostar.

This is an unusual episode of Prodigy, distinct even from part one, in that the main characters -- the Protostar cadets -- aren't actually in it very much. And when they are, they're not driving the action at all, but going along with (uh, spoilers incoming, folks!) Time Lord Wesley Crusher's hectic plan to save the universe.

Now usually, when a Star Trek episode becomes too much about the guest stars, I tend not to like it. But there are two things working in this episode's favor. One, of course, is that Janeway is also a main character on this show -- albeit one traditionally in a supporting role. Here, there's a lot of action set aboard Voyager, and Janeway is at the heart of it all, in her biggest episode of the season to this point.

Two is that, like Deep Space Nine before it, Prodigy has been steadily building up guest star characters over multiple episodes to make them feel like an integral part of the whole. Maj'el has already had an interesting character arc this season, starting as something of a nemesis for our heroes and now positioned to join their team in as "official" a capacity as she can. (Wesley says she has to be there -- so the writers have laid down a big marker.)

Meanwhile, the elements of part one that I found most interesting continued into this part two. The Loom continued to be a surprisingly scary and dangerous monster for this kids' show. We continued to get answers to the questions the season has been posing; by the time the episode ends, we don't just know where Chakotay is, our heroes have found him!

In short, the momentum of this two-part episode carried successfully through both installments. If anything, I thought things picked up a little. (Or maybe I just acclimated to any annoyance I felt over hyper-caffeinated Wesley Crusher.) I give "The Devourer of All Things, Part II" a B+.

Found in Translation

This past weekend, Shōgun won a large pile of Emmy Awards (joining the large pile it won weeks earlier at the Creative Art Emmy Awards). I'm taking that as the nudge I need to get around to posting my thoughts on the series. (While Shōgun went on my "to watch" list as soon as it arrived, but it was only around a month ago that I finally finished the final episode of the mini-series-turned-first-of-three-planned-seasons.)

Many will know that Shōgun is based on the doorstop of a novel by James Clavell in 1975. In this day and age, probably fewer will recall that it was made into an epic TV mini-series back in 1980. But this is 2024, and we've come a long way since 1975 and 1980. The ground was fertile to revisit Shōgun, bringing modern awareness of cultural sensitivity, gender issues, the toxic pervasiveness of the "white savior" narrative, and so very much more.

The new Shōgun deals with all of that, while never forgetting its first and foremost job: to tell an engaging story. It also helps that it arrives in a TV landscape that's no stranger to tales of political machinations, from The Wire to Game of Thrones to Succession. (Maybe a few that weren't on HBO too.) While the setting of Shōgun is quite different, the calculations and manipulations feel universal. At the same time, it doesn't feel like any concessions were made to make the show more broadly "accessible" -- and I do mean that in the best way. The vast majority of the dialogue is subtitled, the societal roles of most of the characters are very slow to be revealed, and you generally have to work hard as a viewer to keep up. And I find that all part of the appeal.

Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai both won Emmys for their performances in the show, and both are well-deserved. As Lord Toranaga, Sanada's entire performance hides in the subtext; his character is planning many moves ahead, and the actor has to walk a tricky line to walk between "keeping his cards close" and not appearing to be "doing nothing." As Mariko, Sawai takes a character who I can't imagine was so compelling in the original novel, and makes her the undeniable star of the show. While the character's main function in the plot is as a translator, the writing is excellent in how the character approaches this duty, and Sawai is always able to convey everything in her considered pauses before she speaks.

All that said, I did find viewing Shōgun to be something of a "bell curve" experience. Getting into it during the first few episodes is demanding -- and while I wouldn't have that otherwise, the fact remains that in this crowded TV environment, it can be rough to not know that you like a show right out of the gate. Then there's the final episode, which feels oddly truncated -- as though everything we've been building toward is dispensed with in an off-screen coda. (I guess the book did this too; being a prequel release amid a longer series?)

In the middle, though? The show just works, so effortlessly that it almost undermines the great care that went into making it. It's smart without feeling too clever, suspenseful without feeling drawn out, violent without feeling gratuitous, insightful without feeling didactic, and so much more. Definitely worth watching, worth the awards love, and worth looking forward to in the future to see how they'll handle additional seasons. (I guess there are other Clavell books to work from?) I give Shōgun a B+.

Enterprise: Breaking the Ice

Here's a small peek behind the curtain about my reviews of Enterprise. I'm actually many episodes ahead in my viewing, beyond what I've been able to keep up with writing about. And while I would like to close that gap at some point, there are moments when the lag between the two helps lend some perspective. It is with that perspective that I now offer this "hot take": the most pivotal episode of Enterprise's first season (and thus, perhaps, the entire series) is "Breaking the Ice."

The Enterprise encounters a comet, and Archer decides to send Reed and Mayweather down to land on it for some exploration. When a Vulcan ship arrives, seemingly to observe the Enterprise more than the comet, Archer tries to play nice. But he must ultimately swallow his pride to ask the Vulcans for help when an accident jeopardizes the landing party. Meanwhile, T'Pol receives unsettling news from Vulcan, and can only discuss it with Trip.

"Breaking the Ice" is notable as the first episode in which neither Rick Berman nor Brannon Braga have a writing credit. They'd crafted the script or story for every episode to this point, setting the course for the series. Here, two staff writers -- Maria Jacquemetton & André Jacquemetton -- are the sole writing credits. And I think this is significant because "Breaking the Ice" is not a good episode; indeed, it's the worst episode to this point.

I'm not saying that this episode marks any kind of big tonal shift from what's come before. I'm certainly not saying that the episode lacks any "Berman and Braga magic." But this is a weird, meandering episode that seemingly lacks enough story to fill 42 minutes, and doesn't really have much in the way of action or suspense.

No doubt Berman and Braga had some role in this -- that's how writers rooms work, and showrunners ultimately give their "stamp of approval" to every episode that goes out. (Even if it goes only because the clock has run out.) But I can easily imagine those two looking at this weak episode -- and it is objectively dull -- and saying to themselves, "see what happens when we relax the reins and let someone else write an episode? We're the only people who understand our show." I think Berman and Braga looked at the failures of "Breaking the Ice," decided to assert their will even more upon the show, and that then set the course of it for the rest of its shorter-than-normal-for-the-time run.

First, there's what's nominally the main story: Reed and Mayweather explore a comet. There's some dressing up of the idea -- it has a rare mineral; it's bigger than any other comet ever seen -- but this is ultimately this is all just to show us something that looks different for Star Trek. We've never landed on a comet before! And yes, those sky-high Enterprise production values make it look pretty good too, both in space and on the surface.

But not much happens once we're there. They build a snowman. (Which, come on, looks nothing like a snowman is supposed to look. Three stacked balls, people! Not this weird baby bottle nipple blob thing.) They blow a big hole in the comet, which for some reason is necessary before they can drill (but is really necessary just so they can cause themselves some jeopardy). Then, because the show is somehow already running out of ideas, a shuttlepod is lost in cave-in, exactly as it was just two episodes ago.

Even less is happening on board the ship. An unbearably long scene about recording a message to school children back home seems to be a long setup for a poop joke. Phlox drones on about germs in a way that's not quite funny. I guess I like that we're seeing the characters unwind a bit in a moment that's not about crisis, but it robs all of what little momentum the episode had. Another scene, nearly as long, is about hosting the Vulcan captain at dinner. There aren't really any real stakes there, either -- it's just a thin comedic premise about the Vulcan being rude (without realizing it? I doubt it), and Archer twisting in the breeze.

The one subplot that works here -- though it has nothing to do with anything else -- is T'Pol receiving word that she must leave Enterprise for her arranged wedding. I like the "odd couple" pairing of T'Pol and Trip as the characters who must talk through the differences in cultural values between Vulcans and humans. Seeing Trip be thoughtful and kind here makes you realize that in so many moments we've seen him in the series so far, he's been rather standoffish and belligerent. (He's had Archer acting even more so as "cover" to this point.) It ends up being nice growth for both characters. And the conclusion is well-written too: there's no big speech in the end where T'Pol announces her decision in an un-Vulcan way. Instead, we simply get it from context.

Other observations:

• The episode opens with physical letters and drawings that Enterprise has received from school children on Earth. How did those get all the way out here?

• Shouldn't the cliche be that Trip likes key lime pie, not pecan pie? He is from Florida, after all. But then, that fact itself is chaotic and strange, after they asked Connor Trinneer to do a Southern accent (which sounds like no one from Florida I've ever met).

I suppose there are nice character moments throughout the episode. But they come almost entirely separated from anything like a "plot." The episode winds up feeling meandering and dull. For the worthwhile Trip/T'Pol subplot alone, I'll give "Breaking the Ice" a C+. But it's clearly the weakest Enterprise episode to this point.

Prodigy: The Devourer of All Things, Part I

Star Trek: Prodigy arrived at the middle of its second season with a two-part episode. First up, "The Devourer of All Things, Part I."

Our heroic cadets arrive at the strange planet that's the source of the signal from Chakotay. Except... the message turns out not to be from Chakotay, but from a surprising source. They soon learn that the temporal paradox they're caught in is a threat to the entire universe, and if they cannot repair it, strange time-stopping entities known as The Loom will devour their entire reality.

There's a bit of Stephen King's The Langoliers in the mix here: mess with time travel and you'll come at risk from omnivorous monsters that will swallow you and the world itself whole. Needless to say, CG has come a long way since the goofy-looking TV adaptation of The Langoliers made decades ago. Here, the Loom look as terrifying as anything that would ever be allowed on a kids' show, and the danger to our heroes feels real. (Not so much in a "someone might die" kind of way -- this isn't that show. But in a "they're right to run for their lives" way.)

But then, the kids do find an unexpected ally in this episode. (And I have to get spoilery here, so you can jump down to the last paragraph now if you haven't watched the episode yourself.) Star Trek: Prodigy has been using animation to bring back all sorts of characters from Star Trek history, and now we get a second "new Trek" appearance by Wesley Crusher in his "Traveler" persona.

This is a wild performance. Wesley Crusher was already far from the character we knew on The Next Generation; when he appeared in the season two finale of Star Trek: Picard, Wheaton was already allowed to portray something much closer to himself: the effusive, bubbly personality he displays in the "Ready Room" recap shows he hosts. But here, Wesley and Wheaton both go full cartoon, infusing that core persona with inexhaustible energy.

Granted, we've only ever seen one other Traveler, and by no means should assume that all such entities have that guy's morose and constrained mood, Traveler Wesley is basically playing the Doctor here. (Not Robert Picardo; Doctor Who.) He's talking a mile a minute and spewing babble about timey-wimey-ness, a sort of motormouth magician who doesn't feel to me like he really belongs on Star Trek. But... you know, in small doses like this (and a two-part episode of a half-hour show is basically just a regular episode of most Star Trek -- that's just math), I suppose I can accept it.

I may be uncertain about that aspect of the episode, but I'm totally down with the genuine scariness on display here. Not to mention, we get a lot of answers in the season-long story arc we've been following. So overall, I'm going to give "The Devourer of All Things, Part I" a B.

An Unheroic Ending

Over the past few years, I've been giving author Brandon Sanderson a try. I started with a series I really enjoyed, the Skyward books. But Sanderson first got to the bestseller list with his fantasy writing, so it was inevitable that I'd eventually read his Mistborn series. I enjoyed the first book for its inventive setting, but didn't care much for book two. Still, I felt like I needed to finish this fantasy trilogy, with The Hero of Ages.

I found book three to be a frustrating slog.

As I said, book one laid out a fascinating setting that pulled me into the story. Book two built upon that in interesting ways, even as the plot itself slowed down in a way I didn't care for. But I think book three throws all the rules out the window.

Like many fantasy series, Mistborn is a world filled with magic and magic users. There are plenty of people in the world who wield some degree of power, but the story really focused -- as such stories generally do -- on one particularly "super-powered" character. Book one followed that character coming into her powers. Book two put that character up against problems that superpowers can't solve, and in dilemmas where she couldn't be in "two places at once."

In book three, everybody has super powers. A character who has never wielded magic of any kind now has it in this book, to as full an extent as the main protagonist has always had. Another character who has had minor -- almost trifling -- magic ability now suddenly wields vastly more magic than he has before. Yet another character, who'd never previously been a "perspective" character for the narrative, becomes one in this book, magnifying the extent to which it feels like their sort of magic-adjacent abilities drive the plot.

There are explanations for all of this, reasons why everyone is suddenly "leveling up" both within the story and as matter of narrative construction. Still, to me, it doesn't make for a fun read. Magic becomes the answer for everything. There's never a sense of true danger, never the notion that any problems might be insurmountable, never the feeling that anyone is in over their heads. This book has no stakes.

On top of that, Sanderson spends an outsized number of pages on material that wouldn't feel important even under the former "terms and conditions" of the story. In the middle of the book, when the two main characters make time over multiple chapters to attend not one but two lavish balls, it was all I could do to keep reading. As another character spends literally the entire book paging through historical records, it hardly mattered to me that it was an expression of his deep crisis of faith, I couldn't help but be bored by the repetitiveness.

There is one compelling subplot of the book, though it doesn't get enough attention. I mentioned earlier that one character whose perspective we'd not previously gotten comes to the foreground in this final book. And while I don't love how their "magic" lends to an over-magicked whole, I did enjoy the insights into what makes the character tick. The character is the closest thing to an "alien" in this fantasy setting, caught up in a web of different societal values, and driven by an entirely different way of thinking. I felt this story ultimately did enrich the novel, though it was only one small part of a frustrating whole.

The ending was most frustrating of all. It's certainly of a piece with the "too much magic" I felt of the rest of the book, resolving all the problems by escalating the power once again beyond its already-escalated levels. And while I can't claim that the conclusion is "without consequences," I'd long since stopped caring enough about the characters involved for any sacrifices they made to matter to me in the slightest.

I give The Hero of Ages a D, about the lowest mark I could imagine giving to a full-length novel that I actually finished reading. If I didn't have the prior experience of finishing the Skyward series (and liking it from beginning to end), I'd quite likely be done with Brandon Sanderson altogether at this point. Certainly, I'll question ever giving his other "classic fantasy" books a try.

Enterprise Flashback: The Andorian Incident

The pace of network television -- making 20+ episodes a season -- often drives a series to reuse actors and directors who have worked well for them before. Even in its first season, Enterprise could draw on the history of people who had worked on past Star Trek series... and they did so in a big way for "The Andorian Incident."

The Enterprise decides to visit a Vulcan monastery. But they arrive just after a gang of Andorian freedom fighters have attacked the monastery and taken the monks hostage. They claim the Vulcans are operating a secret spy operation from the site, and they'll tear the place apart -- and take the Enterprise landing party prisoner too -- to prove it.

This episode is directed by Roxann Dawson -- yes, B'Elanna Torres from Voyager. Her career as a director was spinning up as Voyager wound down, and continues to this day. Here, she does a great job of staging and pacing, injecting movement into a story that's mostly "a bunch of people held prisoner in one room." There are plenty of unusual camera setups, and good work in getting the best performances from the actors.

Of course, one of those actors is a Star Trek stalwart who seemingly doesn't need help. Jeffrey Combs adds another alien to his collection, in his first of many appearances as Shran the Andorian. Pun not intended, but it truly is a new color for Combs: he's played quiet menace, been obsequious and disingenuous, and has given us more than one distinct takes on "middle management." Here, he's a rage-fueled live wire... but in a way that feels distinct from Klingons. Andorians are a largely blank canvas, despite appearing in the original Star Trek. Why not get Jeffrey Combs to help paint it out?

Vulcans are also "painted out" in this episode, in a way that I think rubbed many Trekkers the wrong way. The monks of this episode lie in ways big and small. They show more emotion than we're used to Vulcan showing (toward the interloping humans). And, of course, in the end, it's revealed that the Vulcans are spying on the Andorians. I'm of two minds about all this. On the one hand, given the premise of Enterprise as "learning how to become Star Trek," we should allow that Vulcans are "learning how to become Vulcan." Just as present-day humans differ from humans of, say, the 1800s, so should the Vulcans of Star Trek: The Next Generation differ from those of Enterprise.

But just as Enterprise so far has made the main characters feel so inexperienced at times as to seem stupid, so these Vulcans seem too clueless. Were any one of them to apply any logic at all (in this episode, or any prior Enterprise episode in which we've seen them), you'd think they'd anticipate the reactions of aliens to their behavior. Yet I suppose empathy is an emotion, and the thesis here is that as conventionally intelligent as the Vulcans are, they're emotionally dumb. We don't really get much of their motivations in this episode, in favor of saving the twist until the last possible moment. Consequently, pun very much intended, the episode doesn't feel entirely logical in the end.

It finally hit me in this episode that the writers really are trying to make a "Captain Kirk" out of Archer (to mixed success at best). He's been kissing alien women, stomping blindly into danger... and now here, he's telling others how to run their society and starting fights (including one where the "plan" is to actually get the crap beaten out of him). It's all very Kirk-like behavior -- though, like the Vulcans, lacking in much of the sense of empathy Kirk had. It might also be another piece in the puzzle of "why I disliked Archer so much" the first time around; this was coming on the heels of Quantum Leap, where Bakula's character (and the entire show) was about empathy, literally putting yourself in someone else's shoes.

Still, there's quite a lot to like here. I continue to love Phlox and John Billingsley; the doctor is chaotically eating food off T'Pol's plate without asking in one moment, and wisely pointing out where human and Vulcan values align in the next. Reed gets a chance to be in command while more senior officers are held captive -- and I have to say, Reed seems like a smarter, more effective captain than Archer has been so far. Little comedic moments hit throughout, from the awkward silence of arriving at the monastery (because Archer has been told not to speak first), to the "I'm all ears... no offense" quip to the Vulcans, to T'Pol's decidedly emotional snatching of the blanket away from Archer.

Other observations:

• While I like the Andorians' brand of aggression generally, one of them is just written as a pig threatening sexual violence on T'Pol most of the episode. Not great.

• The new Andorian makeup is excellent, with puppeteers for the antennae actually contributing to the performance in key moments.

I wouldn't say this is a great episode of Star Trek, but I do think it's the best of Enterprise to this point. (I'd also say it's not a great Jeffrey Combs episode, though it does whet my appetite for more of him as this character in the future). I give "The Andorian Incident" a B.

Prodigy: Is There in Beauty No Truth?

The cleverly-titled eighth episode of Star Trek: Prodigy's second season re-mixes the title of a classic Star Trek installment ("Is There in Truth No Beauty?") with "Is There in Beauty No Truth?"

Unable to repair Zero's containment suit, the cadets bring them to a planet inhabited by non-corporeal beings in the hopes of receiving help. And these inhabitants can help, in the most surprising way: they're able to give Zero a physical body to inhabit! But there's a hidden side to this amazing gift.

When you think about Prodigy through the lens of its young core audience, you see the writers systematically working through all the stock narratives of the franchise, presenting a child-accessible version of them for a first-time Star Trek viewer. This episode feels like it's delivering perhaps the most enduring Star Trek trope of all: the "alien society is hiding a dark secret" trope.

Part of making this classic story construction more accessible, I think, is not making the secret that dark, or even surprising. (Indeed, I feel like any adult -- Star Trek fan or not -- is going to see it coming from a mile off.) Still, the idea that Zero's new body will only endure if they remain on the planet is a meaningful "twist," largely because it sets them up to make a second big sacrifice in as many episodes. Zero is getting something they've always wanted, and giving that up to remain with the Protostar gang feels like an even greater sacrifice than "saving the day" was in the prior episode. It's great growth for the character either way -- and it seems that it'll be growth with lasting consequences. (Zero's body won't decay immediately upon leaving the planet, we're told to expect.)

Another nice twist on the formula is that the inhabitants of this planet truly mean well. They're not "evil," nor even following their own twisted morality that our Star Trek Heroes are here to comment on. Okay, the whole business with the race from the flying creatures (specifically, whether death there is permanent, or whether they could give Zero another body) is a bit fuzzy. But fundamentally, they're trying to make Zero happy, and have correctly read something that will do that. They've simply missed that Zero feels an even greater obligation to their friends.

Meanwhile, a mystery is afoot aboard Voyager. Maj'el has figured out that something is up with the cadets, leading to the discovery of the holograms they left behind. But it turns out this subplot isn't just about getting the adults on the show caught up with the young protagonists. We've got a mystery that involves missing time and some as-yet-unrevealed threat. Intriguing.

One final note. Though it doesn't figure large in the plot, I think this episode is the first time we actually see what a game of Parrises Squares looks like. They've been talking about that game on Star Trek for decades, so it's fun to finally get a peek.

For its meaningful story about Zero, and a tantalizing hint of bigger things aboard Voyager, I found this to be a compelling episode. I give it a B+.

Enterprise Flashback: Terra Nova

The first season of Enterprise continued to unfold with "Terra Nova."

The Enterprise investigates a decades-old mystery, the disappearance of a human colony on an alien world. The answer lies underground in the caves near the colony.

We're just five episodes into Enterprise (and that's if you're counting the premiere as two), but the show has already established some clear patterns. I think that's directly due to show creators Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, who wrote (or at least are credited for the story) on every episode so far. They continue to try to differentiate this Star Trek by having it be about "learning how to do Star Trek" -- and that does continue to make the show feel superficially different. But it continues to come at the cost of making the characters often look foolish.

That all feels magnified to me in this episode. The elements of this episode feel so familiar to a Star Trek fan (it feels particularly similar to the original series classic, "Miri") that the audience is way out ahead of the characters. Of course the "aliens" in the caves are the descendants of the human colonists. Of course this is a tale about people making bad assumptions on incomplete information. We've seen it all before.

That in turn makes the "dumb" moments feel extra dumb. Archer is kind of right to suggest that if he can't even make successful first contact with other humans, he has no business being the captain out here. Later, he basically makes Mayweather "do his homework" for him, assigning him the report to Starfleet about the mission. And the slang-riddled language of the Novans feels silly throughout.

But there are some good elements at the margins, if you look for them. Guest star Erick Avari (a veteran of Stargate and other science fiction) gives a mostly credible performance, despite the language. John Billingsley continues to show keen instincts in his portrayal of Phlox; the moment where he awkwardly raises his hands in surrender just because that's what Archer seems to be doing really showcases the character's alien nature in subtle, wordless moment.

The production values continue to amaze, compared to Star Trek that came before. The episode is filmed in part on a real-world outdoor location, where they actually bring a full-sized shuttlepod for set dressing. There's a big set piece about a cave-in when a shuttlepod lands, featuring reasonable VFX and an elaborate set complete with flooding water. (Though admittedly, the danger doesn't feel as real as the story demands.) The musical score is growing more daring, with conspicuous and unusual percussion -- and an effective interlude highlighting the Novans making music on "found" instruments.

And it's a low-key great episode for Malcolm Reed, even though he spends much of it off screen. He does what a security chief should, and takes point during the landing party's trek into the caves. He takes a serious wound and just sucks it up for the sake of the mission. And actor Dominic Keating actually does his own stunt at one point. At least, I'd call it a stunt, as he comes sprinting down a steep-looking hill (in a real-world location), where a stumble could have had real consequences.

Other observations:

• Established Star Trek directors continue to come help to get Enterprise off and running. Here, it's LeVar Burton in the director's chair.

• T'Pol gets a great dig in on Trip. When Trip says human children are made to learn all about ancient Vulcan space expeditions, she calmly challenges him to "name one."

• Early on, they're unable to detect lifeforms on the planet. Later, they're able to scan for them in the caves. What changes?

• Lots of leg injuries in this episode.

• Mayweather mentions another mystery, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Star Trek: Voyager previously solved that one. (Or... would later solve it, by in-universe time.)

This episode feels a little bit too familiar to be truly great. And the major "new" element, the hokey Novan language, is a major distraction. But with nice character moments for T'Pol, Reed, and Phlox, it's not a total loss. I give "Terra Nova" a C+.

Prodigy: The Fast and the Curious

Episode 7 in the second season of Star Trek: Prodigy gives you a pretty big hint about the content in its title, "The Fast and the Curious."

When the Protostar cadets use an abandoned Borg conduit as a shortcut to finding Chakotay, they're diverted by the Kazon leader who has claimed the conduit as his property. Soon, they're forced into a dangerous race for their own freedom... even as it slowly becomes clear that the Kazon is not the one pulling the strings.

The centerpiece of this episode is the "street race" proxy that pits small fighters on a wild (but visually compelling) course that makes Mario Kart's Rainbow Road look tame. It doesn't exactly feel like Star Trek, but of course, the franchise does need to break the mold now and then to stay fresh. Prodigy is as good a place as any to do that.

Besides, the other main element of the episode is as "classic Star Trek" as it gets. "Evil supercomputer controlling civilization" is such a vintage trope that Lower Decks lovingly poked fun at just how often it's come up. Since Prodigy is crafted to be a young audience's first exposure to Star Trek tropes like this, I have to respect the inclusion... even if I don't really feel that the episode hangs together as a whole. (The evil supercomputer's master plan is to force people to drag race for it?)

Most of the time, Prodigy does an excellent job using its shorter run time -- either sweating down a model Star Trek episode into half an hour, or choosing a story that only needs half the time to begin with. Here, though, I can't help but feel like the dissonance I felt was largely a factor of the breezy length. These kids all have a particular history with the Kazon that makes the aliens uniquely threatening in a way they can't be to anyone else in all of Star Trek. The episode is barely taking a moment to explore that when the race story is thrust upon them. Then, Dal's weird competitiveness takes over.

Sure, Dal's a blowhard, and has always been portrayed as such. But you'd think even he would realize they're all in a dangerous situation, and it only makes sense to work together to get out of it. Instead, he's gotta beat Gwyn -- just to inject a little extra tension in the plot, I guess? Or to distract both audience and characters from thinking too much about why this Kazon is behaving so strangely (to preserve the final reveal)?

If the episode does feel like a bit of a jumble, it does at least end on a strong note. Zero steps up with a noble sacrifice that I thought played well -- nothing so consequential as death, but still something that feels non-trivial for the character.

Still, this episode felt mostly like a rest stop on the longer journey. Pretty as it was at times, I'd give it only a C+ overall.

Adding By Subtraction

A few months back, I wrote to express my surprising enjoyment of a Godzilla story -- the Apple TV+ show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. But little did I know just how surprising and enjoyable things could get in a Godzilla story.

I recently watched Godzilla Minus One. It was the first Japanese-made Godzilla in seven years, and released near the franchise's 70th anniversary. None of that was really playing on my mind as I sat down to watch it, though; I'd simply heard that it was worth seeing. And it turned out to be far better than that.

I've always been aware of the creative message originally behind Godzilla: the story was deeply influenced by the U.S. use of nuclear weapons on Japan at the end of World War II. But it had seemed to me that the franchise had long ago stopped being about that (or about anything at all but giant monsters). Maybe that's just natural for a franchise making action sequels for seven decades, or maybe that's just my impression from consuming the American Godzilla films, and not so much the Japanese films. In any case, I wasn't expecting much from Godzilla Minus One beyond "monster movie."

Instead, the movie went back to the heart of what I'd dimly understood Godzilla to be about -- it's literally set in the years immediately after World War II, and in large part, in the actual remnants of a city destroyed by U.S. forces. It's not just window dressing, either. The movie seriously engages with its serious material, quickly revealing itself to be a thought-provoking story about PTSD, survivor's guilt, societal trauma, found family, and more. Aspects of it feel specific to Japanese culture, and other aspects absolutely universal. In truth, Godzilla Minus One isn't a monster movie with a deeper-than-necessary narrative woven through it -- it's a heady, emotional drama with a lot to say... and happens to have Godzilla in it.

Don't worry, monster movie fans: there is plenty of Godzilla in it. And they "play all the hits" from a city rampage to ocean battles, and of course the atomic beam. Indeed, if there's one weak spot in the film, it's how so many people who have never encountered Godzilla before (as far as we know) so quickly seem to know so much about it. It feels as though "everybody knows the audience knows all of this," and so the characters should too. Or maybe it's that scientists get special deference? (What a concept.) It's awkward, but only because it seems like so much thought has been put into the rest of the movie.

I was expecting a fun diversion, and instead got one of my favorite movies of 2023. I give Godzilla Minus One an A-, and a slot on my Top Movies list from last year. What a delightful surprise.