Chemical Reaction

In the board game Alchemists, players take on the role of potion makers and academics. They compete against each other to discover the magical properties of different potion ingredients, and race to publish their findings. It's an interesting and flavorful setting, and it's supported by an intriguing sales pitch of mechanics. It's a deduction game crossed with a worker placement game! It has a clever smartphone app to adjudicate the players' deduction process! But in my opinion, Alchemists is a suspect brew of ingredients that don't really go together.

The two core game styles that this game combines are too much at odds with each other. A good worker placement game puts the players in a race they cannot win. There are more things you want to do in a single round than you actually can do. You have more plans for rounds to come than there are actually rounds left in the game. You have to make tradeoffs, and you have to weigh those tradeoffs against your best guesses about what your opponents will do. On the other hand, a deduction game isn't about managing the journey, it's about the destination. There's an answer out there. Opponents have limited ways to thwart your investigation (if, indeed, any at all). All the tools to find the solution are at your disposal.

Alchemists exposes all the friction between these two systems. It's a worker placement game in which turn order matters. A lot. In fact, the placement of your opponent's workers can cut off your attempts to "solve the mystery" of the ingredients. In a pure worker placement game, that might be a fun part of the challenge. In a game of deduction, I found it frustrating.

The game lasts just six rounds, which I also found annoying. Most deduction games last until the mystery is solved. (Mystery Express is another example of a limited-turns deduction game, and the fact that some games end without anyone completely solving the murder is part of my reticence about it.) Alchemists is deliberately engineered to always end without any player complete solving the "mystery" of what the eight ingredients all do. Again, in a worker placement game, not getting to do all you want to is part of the fun. But to play a game of deduction where the puzzle is deliberately unsolvable? Maddening.

If six rounds played out as breezily as it sounds, I might still find it in myself to enjoy Alchemists. But in its actual pace, it reminds me of a quite different game: Dungeon Lords. You place workers just six times in that game too... but the game still takes an hour-and-a-half (or even two hours, with some players). Alchemists is the same; a round takes around 15-20 minutes to play out. But where you can spend your down time planning in a game like Dungeon Lords, in Alchemists, I just found myself stewing in my own frustrated inability to fully investigate the puzzle.

What it really comes down to is this. Alchemists isn't actually a deduction game -- at least, not to the degree that it could satisfy a lover of such games like myself. It's really just a worker placement game, with an unconventional "risk" to be mitigated. Judging from the rave reviews on Board Game Geek, this is satisfying a lot of players. Me, I think it's neither fish nor fowl, in a most unsatisfying way.

I've only played Alchemists a couple of times, and I'll acknowledge that it hasn't yet reached a point where I'd actually refuse to play it. But I do feel like there are better choices. If I want to play a deduction game, I'll push for the far superior (and faster) Sleuth or Code 777. If I want a worker placement game, I have countless choices, even within the subgenre of "a limited number of rounds." (I love Dungeon Lords.) I'd give Alchemists a D+. It's simply not two things that taste great together. It's a peanut butter and tuna fish sandwich.

TNG Flashback: Aquiel

"Aquiel" may be the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode about a coalescent organism, but pretty much nothing else about the episode coalesced.

Investigating an abandoned subspace relay station, the Enterprise crew finds evidence of a murder. Geordi begins going through the logs of the presumed victim, a Lieutenant Aquiel Uhnari. But when Lieutenant Uhnari is found alive by a Klingon ship, presumptions are upended -- she begins to look like the culprit rather than the victim. Complicating matters are her inability to remember what happened on the station, and her emerging romance with Geordi.

Reading behind the scenes stories about the creation of this episode, it becomes apparent why it's rather flat in execution: nobody really seemed to know what they wanted. Showrunner Jeri Taylor apparently first pitched the idea of giving Geordi a recurring love interest. She was concerned that the only committed couple on the show, the married O'Briens, had just left for Deep Space Nine. With no "attached" main characters, The Next Generation seemed to be unintentionally sending the message that long-term relationships were rare or not valued in the future.

But then Michael Piller made a suggestion to mimc plot elements from the classic 1944 film Laura, and have Geordi fall in love with a woman he first assumes to be dead. The writing staff, generally feeling that the series had never solidly executed a mystery episode, got behind the idea. But in laying out that story, the character of Aquiel transformed from long-term love interest to cold-blooded killer: she was indeed going to be responsible for the murder. Suddenly, the writers worried that they'd wound up in a place too similar to the then-recent film Basic Instinct, so they scrambled to resolve their mystery in another way. Dismissing Aquiel's crewmate Rocha and the Klingon character of Morag as "too obvious," they finally landed on the idea of making the killer be the dog.

By this point, the core idea that once motivated this episode was sufficiently lost in the weeds that no good episode could likely result. The finished script reflects a lot of these flaws. We don't get any sense of what it is about Aquiel's messages that rouses Geordi's interest in her. Consequently, he comes off as a bit of a creep in his pursuit of her, the way he sadly seems to be with every love interest he pursues.

The episode works too hard trying to present Aquiel as a potential femme fatale who might be out to kill Geordi. It doesn't work hard enough to make credible suspects of the people the writers had dismissed, especially the only-seen-on-camera-in-a-blurry-computer-photo Rocha. The ending awkwardly writes Aquiel off to some other adventure, so as to specifically not leave Geordi a recurring love interest.

The already shaky story got even worse when it went before the cameras. Actress Renée Jones is woefully flat as Aquiel, stilted and unnatural. Worse for the romance angle, she has absolutely no chemistry with LeVar Burton. You get the distinct impression that the script played faster than anticipated, because there are lots of awkward pauses in the way the episode is edited together -- gaps in dialogue, and odd silences at the ends of scenes. Plus, the visual effects are pretty terrible. The quivering jell-o that kinda-sorta attacks Geordi in the final act was subcontracted out to another FX house, who delivered their work too late for some much needed touchups that might have better integrated it into the environment.

Other observations:

• In all the machinations to be like Laura and not like Basic Instinct, the writers wound up aping another movie possibly without even realizing it. The "coalescent organism," which copies living beings and devours the original, is essentially the monster from John Carpenter's The Thing. It even hides as a dog! Interestingly, more than a decade later, episode co-writer Ronald Moore wrote the first draft for what became the 2011 prequel film The Thing. (Though his script was completely re-written, and he ultimately received no credit on the finished film.)

• Ronald Moore acknowledges the poor result here. In a 1997 AOL chat, in response to being asked what he would have done differently while working on Star Trek, he answered that he would not have written "Aquiel."

• In the version of the episode where Aquiel was to have been the killer, Geordi was to have ended up owning her dog. A final scene would have had Data visiting Geordi's quarters, noting the dog's bad behavior, and declaring, "Geordi, I think I am a cat person."

This episode is narrowly better than some of The Next Generation's worst. It has a great scene, for example, where Picard manipulates Klingon Governor Torak into helping him. But overall, "Aquiel" is a clear disappointment. I give it a D+.

A Winner, By a Nez

In "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez," another Scotland Yard detective, versed (though not as skilled) in Sherlock Holmes' methods, comes to the great detective with a challenging murder mystery. He has done an exhaustive sweep of the crime scene and come up essentially blank. But he has one piece of evidence with deep ramifications: a pair of glasses snatched by the victim from the face of his attacker.

This Sherlock Holmes short story is distinct in at least two ways. First, his "client," Stanley Hopkins, is not a complete fool. Though he is of course no match for the super-sleuth himself, he is not the bumbling idiot that the Scotland Yard inspectors invariably are in the Holmes canon. Hopkins has applied many of Holmes' methods; he's just missed some important details. Moreover, he's not willfully advancing an outlandish theory of the crime. Instead, he simply admits he's stumped.

More interesting about the story is the way that Arthur Conan Doyle has stuffed as much as he can into a single clue, the titular golden pince-nez. Most Holmes tales present three or four details that prove key in cracking the case. A few stories have even more. But this story revolves around just this one pair of glasses, and a rather clever set of deductions that derive from it. Not only do the glasses tell Holmes a great deal about their owner, but the fact that they were taken -- thus seriously impairing the attacker's vision -- puts limitations on just what the attacker could have done after the deed.

Along the way, Doyle serves up a few more character details than he usually includes. We see Holmes put on an unusually charming demeanor during a few suspect interviews, and indulge in some furious chain smoking in the name of investigation. Watson is a bit ahead of his normal game too; instead of being utterly amazed and confounded by Holmes' analysis as he so often is, this time he at least follows the clues to a point -- if not to an ultimate solution.

In all, I was rather pleasantly taken by this story, and give it a B+.

A Not-So-Grand Finale

The Battle of the Five Armies was the lackluster end to the mostly underwhelming The Hobbit trilogy. As it was the least effective of the three films, I probably shouldn't be surprised that its soundtrack is similarly disappointing. Composer Howard Shore, after a brilliant start with An Unexpected Journey, and a still-reasonable effort on The Desolation of Smaug, stumbles at the finish line.

The big problem with the score is its lazy reliance on the material established in Shore's five prior Tolkien film scores. Not on specific leitmotifs, mind you; a bit more of that might have actually been welcome. (For example, Shore's themes for Hobbits and the One Ring, established in the original trilogy, make only a few brief appearances.) Instead, much of the music for The Battle of the Five Armies leans on established chords in established keys, without actually finding any melodies to lift them from an often-bland symphonic swamp.

There are moments of interest, here and there, but they rarely last for more than 4 to 8 measures amid otherwise mediocre tracks. The aftermath of Smaug's attack, for example (in "Shores of the Long Lake") seems to make a point of not taking an emotional view at a time the music ought to do exactly that. Are the people of Dale sad at their loss? Happy to have at least survived? The music doesn't want to say, nor does it convey a convincing blend of the two.

Smaug's faintly Middle Eastern theme, introduced in the prior film, is interesting for a while -- in tracks like "Fire and Water" (where it represents the dragon himself) and "Mithril" (where it personifies the corruption of Thorin). But in perhaps a reflection of how long the movie holes up under the Lonely Mountain without much actually happening, Shore runs out of ways to reinterpret that theme in interesting ways.

Fortunately, the battle material itself is more compelling. And as the movie devolves into what feels like an hour-long action sequence, there is at least a fair amount of that kind of music once you've made it through the first half of the soundtrack. "Bred for War" is an attention grabber where different sections of the orchestra seem to engage in a shouting match with each other, building a wonderful din of menace. "Battle of the Mountain" is full of energy, particularly in its bombastic final minute. "Ravenhill" is the all-out pinnacle of the album; the brass virtually scream at the listener, relenting only when the choir steps in.

Actually, it's the use of choir -- throughout the score -- that is the best thing about Shore's work on this film. He plays a lot with the different feelings evoked by male and female voices, from the bass martial cadences of "Sons of Durin" to the apocalyptic creepiness of sopranos in "To the Death." There's also some fun experimentation in the one new theme he creates for this final film, "Ironfoot." No doubt inspired by the casting of Billy Connelly in the role, the character's theme has a distinctly Scottish flavor. In the film itself, I actually found it a jarring break of the fourth wall, in how strongly it evoked a Braveheart vibe. But listening to the music in isolation, I find it to be some of the most inspired work of the soundtrack.

I'm not as moved by "The Last Goodbye," this film's end credits song. Billy Boyd, who played Pippin in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, sings the vocals. But the way it's all crafted feels like it's trying too hard to trade on fond memories of a great sequence in a far better film -- The Return of the King. When Pippin sang in that movie (as Denethor stuffed his face and soldiers perished), it was a haunting and jarring scene. Here the song is inert, trying to express a vague melancholy about the journey's end. I imagine that sentiment was felt by the people who worked on the films, but few audience members actually did.

In all, I'd say The Battle of the Five Armies soundtrack rates an average C. There is a sprinkling of standout moments, but most of it feels like music you already own if you own any of Shore's previous Lord of the Rings or Hobbit soundtracks.

Unleash the Fury

This past weekend, critics and fans alike were tripping over one another in a rush to heap praise upon the new Mad Max: Fury Road. In what perhaps was an overreaction to disappointment in The Avengers: Age of Ultron, they created another situation where a movie couldn't possibly live up to its incredible hype.

There is a lot to like about Fury Road. Artistically, it's an absolute triumph. The designs of characters, locations, and vehicles are all powerfully evocative. Each image in the movie seems as carefully staged and framed as movies like Sin City, which try much harder to look painterly (often sacrificing the human touch in the process). Peppered throughout are indelible images too fun to deny: the skeletal appearance of the War Boys, the apocalyptic "fife boy" with the flame-throwing guitar, porcupine-spined cars, the crazed Cirque du Soleil quality to the warriors who attack from swinging poles, and so much more. Especially noteworthy is the fact that the majority of these action sequences were achieved in camera, without resorting to lifeless CG.

The protagonist of the movie is a charismatic and likeable character. I'm referring to the new Imperator Furiosa, played with bold intensity by Charlize Theron. Mad Max may be the title character, but he's really a glorified supporting player. (And Tom Hardy here lacks the personality to overcome this.) Furiosa is the one character whose motivations seem explicit and relatable, and the movie generally works best when it's following her

The War Boy character of Nux is played with crazed conviction by a barely recognizable Nicholas Hoult, but the motivation behind changes in his character aren't made nearly clear enough. Beyond him, characters are so much meat for the slaughter. A handful get a personality quirk or distinguishing physical feature, but when they start dropping like flies in the high octane climax, you're hard pressed to care about them, or even distinguish who is still alive and who is dead.

I found myself longing for a bit more strategy in the action. There are certainly moments to get the blood pumping, but rarely does an attack involve anything more sophisticated than driving fast with weapons blazing. Villains with superior numbers, superior resources, and superior terrain never make effective use of those advantages. Indeed, the entire climax of the movie hangs on the main villain having made an unbelievably stupid tactical error.

But while the movie doesn't make sense all the time, it's effective at silencing any doubts at other times. The amazing visuals, the earth-shaking soundtrack by Junkie XL (Tom Holkenborg), and the all-out performances of Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult count for a lot. Don't let the sky-high Rotten Tomatoes score set your expectations unreasonably high -- but you might still consider giving it a shot. I give it a B-.

Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken

This week's Game of Thrones was a deftly managed blend of stories close to the books and others wildly diverged from them, of stories about character growth and others more action-centered.

For Arya, the episode was all about learning to lie convincingly. But there was perhaps another layer of depth to it than that -- she also learns to kill not out of anger or for vengeance, but as a kindness. The books made very much more explicit that these worshipers of the Many-Faced God see death as a gift, only to be bestowed on those who deserve it (be that the victims themselves, or those who seek death for others). I think it's important that the lie that finally impresses Jaqen H'Ghar revolves around Arya achieving a greater understanding of death.

The Jorah/Tyrion pairing took a turn straight from the book this week, with the two captured by slavers. But there was a welcome addition before that happened: a conversation about Jorah's father. In the books, George R.R. Martin seems to take a sadistic delight in keeping characters apart. (More even than in killing characters, as many would have it.) It seems obvious in retrospect that Tyrion, who met Lord Mormont of the Night's Watch, should have exchanged a few words with Jorah about it at some point along their journey. But it never happened in the book. And while it probably serves little purpose in propelling the narrative (Jorah is already quite far down and in need of no more kicking), it was a much appreciated bit of character development.

Littlefinger returned to King's Landing this week -- something he has yet to do in the books. It led not only to a wonderfully fun verbal sparring match with Lancel, but to the reveal of another layer in his plan. He wants Cersei to send soldiers to take Winterfell from whoever holds it after the clash between Stannis and the Boltons. At this point, Littlefinger has told so many plausible stories to so many people, it's hard to know what he really intends. Whether this latest version is his real plan, or just another reasonable explanation of it to satisfy people in power, this is exactly the clever character from the book I'm glad to see remain intact.

An even more welcome return to King's Landing came in Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns. Though only a very minor character in one of the books, she popped off the page for a number of readers. On the show, the wonderful performance by Diana Rigg made her an even more potent presence. The showrunners saw fit to give us more of her, and I for one am thrilled. The withering barbs she traded with Cersei were a delight. And I eagerly await learning if Olenna can find a way to extricate Loras and now Margaery too from their precarious positions. In the books, Cersei is our only viewpoint into events at King's Landing, and she is a predictably self-absorbed narrator. We really don't get to learn much of what's going on with Margaery once the Faith Militant seize her. It's all the more interesting on the show, where we know that Loras and Margaery are in fact guilty and complicit. (The show has scoffed as much about the criminalization of homosexuality as I reasonably expect it to.)

The adventures of Bronn and Jaime, and their big fight with the Sand Snakes, was probably the least interesting aspect of the episode for me. It was a well choreographed battle, and fun to watch. But this is basically why the Sand Snakes didn't work for me as a subplot in the books. Time was spent building up them and their awesome fighting prowess, only for them to be quickly captured and sidelined. I suppose here at least they did get to fight (more than I can say for the books), and one of them did escape with Myrcella. We'll see where it leads.

Finally, we had Sansa's story up at Winterfell. I love that before plunging her deep in the darkness, the show gave her one last chance to hold her head up high. Myranda tried toying with her, and Sansa boldly threw it all back in her face and refused to be frightened. Of course, Ramsay is one of the most wicked characters in the story (and that's saying something), so the attempt to frighten was at the same time a legitimate warning. Not that there was much to be done in any case. The episode ended on a violent rape, perhaps made more uncomfortable in that it was left largely to our imaginations -- through the horrified eyes of Theon Greyjoy. Nope, weddings in the world of Ice and Fire are never a good thing.

I give this week's episode an A-. It continued this season's excellent trend of condensing the quagmire of Martin's least effective two books into a compelling, visual narrative.

A Novel on the Rails

The bestseller Gone Girl whet appetites not only for the big screen adaptation that soon followed, but for more novels with similar elements: an unreliable narrator, marital strife, a flawed female lead, and crime. Coming along to fill that role is the new book The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

Alcoholic Rachel lost her London job months ago, but still rides the train in to "work" every day to deceive her overbearing roommate. At a particular point along the route, she stares longingly at the street where she used to live with her ex-husband -- specifically, at the house a few doors down, where a young couple is living what she imagines to be a perfect life. But when the woman goes missing the very night after Rachel spied her kissing a strange man, Rachel the voyeur becomes Rachel the investigator.

With so many similar elements, comparisons between The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl are inevitable. In truth, the comparison would be rather superficial; the two plots really have no more in common with each other than say, The Lord of the Rings does with A Song of Ice and Fire. Besides, for the most part, a comparison would just reflect unfavorably on the inferior The Girl on the Train.

Written in the first person from the perspectives of three different women, the novel does best with its main character, Rachel. She's a complete mess, at the mercy of gin-and-tonics and wine, and wallowing in self-pity over the life she still hasn't come to terms with losing. She's not "likeable" in any conventional sense, but she feels like a real person. But the novel's two other narrators, despite having very different personalities than Rachel, "speak" in an almost identical voice.

The Girl on the Train is more of a mystery than Gone Girl. Still, it isn't a particularly elaborate one. The story has a rather insufficient number of suspects to engender real uncertainty about events. There are at least enough plot twists along the way to keep the journey interesting, but the ultimate destination isn't particularly shocking.

It's a breezy enough read, if you're looking for something pulpy. But all told, an intriguing premise doesn't result in the most satisfying novel. I give The Girl on the Train a B-.

Burnt Wick

Though action movies are quite often summer blockbusters, those two kinds of films aren't always one and the same. A recent example of this was last year's John Wick -- a full-tilt action film released well outside the summer season.

Keanu Reeves stars as the title character, a former hitman/cleaner/boogeyman that got out of the game when he met and married the right woman. His life has recently changed again with her death to disease, and his grieving process is rudely interrupted by a chance encounter with the weaselly son of a Russian mobster Wick used to work for. Suddenly, Wick has a purpose again: a scorched earth quest for vengeance.

I've been deliberately vague in my description of the movie's plot, as there's very little plot to it. There's only the bare bones needed to get the thrill ride started. While that might be a detriment for most movies, it works well enough for this one. There are no lofty ideas or motivations here to fill the spaces between fight scenes, nor would they feel fitting if they were here.

The problem is, for a movie that aspires only to be a collection of kickass fight scenes, there's not nearly enough variety in those fight scenes. You'd certainly think the film had the right people for the job; it was directed by Chad Stahelski (and an uncredited David Leitch). Though the two are first time directors, they've worked as stunt coordinators on numerous previous films. In particular, they've worked in the past with Keanu Reeves, even doubling for him on The Matrix films. They ought to have a deep bag of tricks built up over decades of experience.

Instead, you see the same handful of moves reordered in fight after fight after fight. I found myself getting particularly bored of "the hero maims one guy with a shot at close range, then holds him while he shoots some other guy, before finishing off the first guy with a shot to the head." Seriously, they showed that move so many times, I feel like you could point a camera at me and I could do it. Thanks to the repetition, the not-actually-long hour and 40 minute movie winds up feeling too long by about 15 minutes.

But the cast does pick up the slack a bit. It's a surprisingly big roster of recognizable faces. Besides Keanu Reeves (not talking much, and he's pretty good at that), there's Willem Dafoe, John Leguizamo, Bridget Moynahan, and a gallery full of "I know them from..." actors. There's Michael Nyqvist, from the original Swedish version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. There's Alfie Allen, Theon from HBO's Game of Thrones. (He gives good weasel.) There's Dean Winters, guest star in many TV series and "Mayhem" in those goofy Allstate commercials. (Ditto.) There's Adrianne Palicki, Bobbi Morse from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (She gives good asskick.) There's Lance Reddick, Broyles from Fringe. There's Ian McChane, Swearingen from Deadwood. But unfortunately, while each actor has fun with their sprinkling of scenes, no one person other than Reeves has enough screen time to really do much heavy lifting.

So it's not the simple aspirations that make John Wick a disappointment, it's the average execution. There are certainly worse action movies, but there are certainly better ones too. I give it a C+.

TNG Flashback: Ship in a Bottle

A product of the late 80s and early 90s, Star Trek: The Next Generation was a predominately episodic series. Still, it did occasionally present continuing storylines and follow-ups to earlier episodes. One of its more effective sequels was "Ship in a Bottle."

When Lieutenant Barclay is assigned to repair a glitch on the holodeck, he happens upon the program of Professor Moriarty, the Sherlock Holmes character given sentience in a misadventure several years earlier. Frustrated that no progress has been made in finding a means for him to live outside the holodeck, Moriarty rashly leaves its confines, discovering that in fact he can exist in the real world. Soon he seizes control of the Enterprise, coercing the crew to search for a means to bring his love, the Countess Regina Bartholomew, off the holodeck as well. But not all is as it seems. In truth, Moriarty's miraculous entrance into the real world has been faked inside his own holographic simulation of the Enterprise -- where he has trapped Picard, Data, and Barclay in his efforts to commandeer the real thing.

Everyone on the writing staff was fond of the episode "Elementary, Dear Data," and was keen to make a sequel. But Paramount Studios had reportedly upset the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with the film Young Sherlock Holmes, and confusion as to whether the copyrights on the characters had expired. (An issue which was sparking lawsuits in America as recently as last year.) When this legal feud forced a late rewrite to excise Holmes from a third season episode, a moratorium was declared: Sherlock Holmes would never appear on Star Trek again.

But Jeri Taylor wasn't around during the third season. And by the time she took over as showrunner in season six, she wondered if the problems with the Doyle estate were really as bad as she'd been led to believe. She decided to inquire about the situation, and quickly learned that the dust had settled; the Doyle estate was willing to license the characters to Paramount for a quite reasonable fee. Immediately, the writers went to work crafting a new Sherlock Holmes episode.

...and failed in the attempt. Jeri Taylor was discussing with Michael Piller (now over on Deep Space Nine) how their first idea had fallen through, and Piller had a suggestion. Back when writer Rene Echevarria had pitched his first episode ("The Offspring"), he'd followed up with three other ideas that never took off at the time. One, Piller recalled, involved characters being deceived into taking a holodeck scenario for reality. Perhaps that could be a means to bring Moriarty back for another episode? Echevarria, just recently made a staff member on The Next Generation, was shocked that Piller had remembered the idea after so many years, but was eager to pick it back up and adapt it for a new Holmes adventure.

One of the first decisions made was to bring in the character of Barclay. And while it seems obvious to use him in an episode centered on the holodeck, the idea to include him was actually for different reasons. The writers felt that a character who wasn't around for the first Moriarty episode would need to be involved in this one -- perhaps to explain the accidental "unleashing" of the villain, or perhaps just as a means for delivering exposition to anyone in the audience who'd missed the prior episode. In any case, Barclay slips very well into the story -- though this episode features him far less than any of his prior appearances.

Michael Piller was right: the scheme of a holodeck-inside-a-holodeck is perfect for the character of Moriarty. It's a fiendishly clever scheme, worthy of the real Doyle character. Not only does he force his unknowing prisoners to work on solving his problem, he cons Picard into giving him the means to take control the real Enterprise.

In fact, the only part of the episode that really doesn't track for the character of Moriarty is his love for the Countess Bartholomew. That character is a Star Trek creation, without basis in Doyle's original writings. As such, if the writers want to say that this Moriarty is deeply in love with her, that she was made for him, fair enough. But a better ruse, worthy of the "real" Moriarty (you know what I mean) would have been for even his love to be a fabrication -- for him to have pretended to care for a woman he'd invented, just to play on the sympathies of the Enterprise crew. (Though I admit, it would have made for an unsuitably dark ending, with Moriarty discarding a woman he cares nothing for rather than riding off into the sunset with a loving partner.)

Other observations:

• It's interesting how this whole episode turns on Moriarty's inability to leave the holodeck, when the originally planned ending for "Elementary, Dear Data" was that he in fact could have done so.

• It's also interesting how, a few years later, Star Trek: Voyager would introduce a means for the Doctor to leave the confines of his holographic environment.

• There's a very subtle clue pointing to the falseness of the holodeck scenario. Most episodes of The Next Generation include shots of the outside of the ship to transition between scenes. In this episode, the exterior of the Enterprise isn't seen from the moment Picard, Data, and Barclay enter the holodeck, until the scene after they discover the ruse (right before Moriarty contacts the real Commander Riker).

• While Moriarty's version of Counselor Troi is shown wearing a uniform (continuing formality even after Captain Jellico's departure), the real Troi seen at the end of the episode wears one of her off-duty outfits.

• There are a few minor scene extensions offered as deleted scenes on the Blu-ray version of this episode, but neither really amounts to much. The first attempts to explain why Moriarty remains active even when Barclay tries to shut him off. The second prefaces Moriarty's exit from the "holodeck," with justification of alien species who really do have mind-over-matter powers.

The very clever conceit of this episode may be blown after the first viewing, but it's still great fun even once you know the twist. Indeed, I think it surpasses the original Moriarty episode. I give it an A-.

Urban Jungle Music

Every once in a while, I add a film score to my collection despite never having seen the movie for which it was composed. Most recently, I added Predator 2 to my library, a soundtrack which Varese Sarabande re-released not long ago in an expanded 2-disc version.

While I haven't actually seen Predator 2, I certainly had an idea what to expect of the music even before I listened to a few samples from the album. That's because the score was composed by the same man who wrote for the first Predator movie, Alan Silvestri. That soundtrack was some of his best work outside of Back to the Future, the perfect music to accompany the action and suspense of cat and mouse in the jungle.

Predator 2 may have been less of a movie by all accounts I've seen, but its music is much more, on virtually every count. It starts with an orchestra that sounds notably larger than Silvestri received for the original movie. He takes two of his powerful themes from the first score and incorporates them into the new -- without relying on them too much and overusing them.

His most interesting choice is not to change out the tribal sensibilities of the first score. Instead, he doubles down on it, with percussion that's even more loud, urgent, and chaotic. The city setting of the second film simply becomes an urban jungle. And while I'm not sure how well it works in context, it certainly makes for a kick-ass listening experience.

I definitely have my favorite tracks, though I don't really know the scenes that explain their names. "Welcome to the Jungle" opens the album and sets the stage like a re-mix of the first film's main title; a mournful hunting horn over sacrificial drums ushers in just a hint of the main melody. "Chat" accelerates the tempo while bringing in the string and brass sections more fully. "Subway Predator" is an inexorable four-minute assault by timpani, capped by one minute of dread as the orchestra withdraws as a whole and lets individual instrument sections occasionally disturb the silence.

The result is a soundtrack I enjoy just as much as that from the first movie, a clever sequel to the original work. I give the album an A-. Any fan of Alan Silvestri should definitely pick it up.

S.O.S.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. used up all the remaining periods on television, naming its two-hour season finale "S.O.S." But it was a solid wrap-up, and a tantalizing springboard for what may come next.

One thing the episode did exceptionally well -- better than most action movies including, sorry to say, Age of Ultron -- is tell a story through its fight scenes, rather than pausing story for a fight scene. Take the very first confrontation, where Skye takes on May. The way May casually fended Skye off at first, one-handed, told you everything you needed to know about who was really in control there. Only by using her powers to swing the battle did Skye win out.

This sort of turning the tables continued throughout the episode. Even after grisly torture, Bobbi seemed more than a match for Ward. Only when the odds went against her, with Agent 33 joining the fight, did she fail. When Skye took on multiple copies of the self-cloning Inhuman (in another cleverly staged single take), her superior training kept her in it for a time -- until sheer numbers won the day. Then there was Mack's hopeless stand against Gordon, until Coulson and Fitz (and Fitz's tech) showed up to swing the outcome.

The story between these clever conflicts was fairly engaging too. Despite (I hope not because of) the discomfort of the torture, the Bobbi storyline was the most effective to me. And that's even though we knew that neither she nor Hunter was going to end up dead at the end of it (because they were just talking about a possible spin-off for them). Morse never backed down from being all-business, never apologized for making the strategic call. She managed to endure, escape once, and then still save Hunter's life despite being chained to a chair. A rather thorough thwarting of the damsel-in-distress cliche.

The Cal storyline didn't work nearly as well for me. I understand the writers' choice to take killing Jaiying out of Skye's hands, but I have a hard time with giving Cal a redemptive story arc. He was responsible for a lot of death and destruction this season, and I'm not sure one moment undoes all of that. It's the Darth Vader redemption arc (which I don't buy either), except Vader ends up memory wiped and working as a veterinarian.

What did work for me is pushing Ward deeper into villain territory. I feel like any other show would probably have tried to redeem him and get him back with the team. Putting him in charge of HYDRA certainly seems to take him past redemption. (Indeed, it seems to set at least a general expiration date for his time on the show.) He got a nice jolt of personal motivation at the end too. May's trick that led to Ward killing Agent 33 himself was both brilliant and cruel.

It was hardly the only change for the main characters. Some of the changes likely won't take, once the show spins up again in September. Bobbi surely won't leave SHIELD as she threatened, nor will May stay away (though she could soften up in demeanor). But other changes seem built to last.

Mack cutting Coulson's hand off was to me the episode's biggest shocking moment. Even if he ends up with some kind of prosthesis, it still made me recoil to see it. The prospect of putting Skye in charge of an emerging group of supers certainly seems like it's pushing the show in a very different direction next year -- one that hopefully doesn't marginalize the existing non-super characters too much. Ah... but then perhaps that's changing too. Who knows what Simmons will be like when they get her back from that morphing obelisk? (The one thing I'm guessing is: fundamentally changed enough not to pursue the romantic relationship with Fitz that they again teased us with.)

Whatever the show is next season, several good guest stars for the show won't be around to see it. Raina was probably the greatest loss, a villain since season 1 who had only managed to get even more interesting. Still, she had a good send-off, walking into a death she knew was coming. Jaiying had run her to me inconsistent course, as had Cal and Agent 33, but Gordon felt like he might have still had some life in him. Maybe this makes room for Lincoln to get more interesting if they keep using him. (You'd think Skye would look to start her new team with him.) And it seems like Mack might bump up to series regular status next year.

In all, I found S.O.S. a satisfying wrap-up to the season. I give it an A-.

TNG Flashback: Chain of Command, Part II

The conclusion of the "Chain of Command" two-parter has a backdrop of imminent war, but it's a personal drama between two men that dominates the storytelling.

Captain Picard has been captured by the Cardassians, and is now in the hands of Gul Madred. Madred's questioning of Picard for military secrets soon gives way to intense physical and psychological torture. Meanwhile, aboard the Enterprise, Captain Jellico's leadership style continues to clash with the crew, particularly Commander Riker. It seems they can prevent a war with Cardassia or rescue Picard, but not both. And perhaps not either.

Writer Frank Abatemarco wasn't working out on the writing staff of The Next Generation (keenly visible in his dreadful episode, "Man of the People"). But here he made one worthy contribution to the series before soon leaving the job. He did intense research for this story, including meetings with Amnesty International, to learn about the psychology of torturers and survivors in preparation for this script.

But despite being the sole credited writer on the episode, this ultimately wasn't Abatemarco's script. Showrunner Jeri Taylor stepped in to do a complete rewrite from the ground up -- no doubt the final straw leading to Abatemarco's departure. Patrick Stewart, a supporter of Amnesty who'd been delighted by the first draft, was concerned to hear about the rewrites. He was afraid that the stark reality of torture would be dulled, that the episode might become more of a lecture about the subject rather than a portrayal of it. But Taylor shared his desire, and crafted a final script that didn't pull punches at all. Indeed, some viewers still wrote complaints over the graphic nature of the episode, while the BBC edited one of the scenes for re-broadcast in the United Kingdom. Taylor agreed in a later interview that the episode was intense, and wished that it could have carried a disclaimer -- but she had no regrets or apologies for it being exactly what was intended.

It's actually remarkable how powerful the episode is without being truly, overtly violent. A number of movies and TV series have depicted torture in the 20+ years since this episode was made, and nearly all of them resort to truly horrific bloodletting and maiming to make their point. Picard is essentially physically intact at the end of this episode, but is no less scarred by the experience. And there's no question that we the audience understand that.

The script reflects all that background research, as Madred comes at Picard in a variety of ways. The episode begins with the more legitimate approach of using a truth serum to extract information from Picard -- the only true information he has to provide. And though Madred says point blank that he believes Picard has told him all he knows, he then begins the torture -- apparently just because he wants to, just to see if Picard can be broken. Madred strips him of identity, refusing to call Picard by name. He plays a mind game with the infamous "four lights," reminiscent of a "how many fingers am I holding up?" scene from Orwell's 1984. He teases Picard with freedom, getting him to choose imprisonment out of fear that Beverly Crusher will be next in the torture chamber. He feeds Picard disgusting food just to watch him devour it in desperation.

Picard's attempts to preserve his humanity are equally varied. He tries appealing to Madred's better nature, commenting on the Cardassian's interactions with his daughter. He tries different levels of defiance, from steadfastly replying there are "four lights" to flippantly asking "what lights?" He holds on to thoughts of home. He nurses an image of his torturer as a helpless child, motivated to cruelty by a squalid upbringing. But ultimately, Picard is broken -- reduced to desperately trying to smash the torture control device with strength he doesn't have.

The message of it all is expressed starkly in the final scene between Troi and Picard. The captain confesses that in the end, he would have told Madred anything he wanted to hear, admitted to any lie. Moreover, he wouldn't have thought he was lying in the moment; he truly believed the falsehood Madred had forced upon him. Torture can produce no information but that which the torturer implants.

The powerful script is only amplified by two powerhouse performances. David Warner had worked for Star Trek before, playing a minor role in Star Trek V, and the Klingon chancellor in Star Trek VI. He took this role on just three days' notice, in large part to work with his "old colleague" Patrick Stewart. He struggled with learning his more technobabble-centric lines, and admitted to ultimately reading much of the part off cue cards -- not that you can tell from the finished episode. Warner makes Madred an absolutely despicable villain... with a personality that seems all too real.

Then, of course, there's Patrick Stewart, possibly doing his finest work on the entire series. (And I say "possibly" only because he is so excellent in so many other episodes.) Like the script writer, he too prepared for this episode through research with Amnesty International. It's an intensely physical performance, full of perfectly calibrated details. After hanging in agony overnight, Picard is unable to lower his arms. When Madred first uses his implanted torture device, Picard's reaction is exactly what Madred warned it would be, a complete lack of preparation for the intensity of the pain. As the ordeal wears on, even speaking takes a clear effort. Stewart even insisted on actually performing the earliest torture scenes in the nude.

These performances were supported wonderfully by the production team. The makeup department shows us the scar of Picard's implantation, and the way his wrists have been rubbed raw by restraints. Set designer Richard James built a dramatically lit, stark room for the battle of wills, an environment that intriguingly plays against expectations -- where you might expect a cramped dungeon of a room, it in fact seems quite spacious.

Michael Piller, showrunner on Deep Space Nine by this point (but still involved to some extent with The Next Generation) thought this was the best episode in the history of the series, and praised David Warner and Patrick Stewart for that. In the run-up to Emmy nominations the following summer, Piller himself paid for a full-page ad in Variety, campaigning for Stewart to be nominated -- which he absolutely should have been. Jeri Taylor put it quite aptly: "It is not possible that there are five better male actors in this town than Patrick Stewart!"

In all this (understandable) fixation on one part of the episode, I'd be remiss not to point out that the action back on the Enterprise is quite compelling too, if less intense. Jellico continues to be an abrasive character... though not always necessarily wrong. He's likely correct not to allow a rescue mission to be planned. He certainly justified in relieving Riker of duty, given the disdainful way Riker calls out his "mistakes." The only point in the episode where you could possibly argue Jellico is wrong is when he dismisses the notion that the Cardassians could have peaceful, "scientific" intentions in the nebula. His duty as a Starfleet officer should be to avoid war at all costs, and certainly not to provoke one as he risks doing. But even in this decision, Jellico is nevertheless proven correct in his doubts. Plus, he saves the day and secures Picard's release. He's really not all bad.

And neither is Riker all good. He disrespects Jellico at several points in the episode, most of all when the captain comes to his quarters to ask him to take part in a critical mission. Riker refuses to come to his feet for a superior officer, and ultimately makes Jellico "ask" him to help, with a smirk on his face. We the audience, knowing Riker as we do, can certainly side with his indignation. Still, in the context of a military command structure, he's almost certainly in the wrong.

Other observations:

• It's hard not to compare Picard's experience in this episode with his treatment at the hands of the Borg in "Best of Both Worlds." Ultimately, it's that experience that stays with him more (as we see in the film First Contact) -- possibly because there he could do nothing to resist, where here against Madred he can at least attempt to retain his humanity. Nevertheless, I think it's this experience that resonates more strongly with an audience, as it's less removed from reality behind a veneer of science fiction.

• It's fun getting to see Data don a red uniform in this episode, taking over as Jellico's first officer. And I especially like that no comment on this is made at all. The audience is trusted to infer what has happened.

• The only place where the episode lets you down a bit is in the rather simplistic conflict with the Cardassian fleet -- which isn't even shown. A bigger confrontation was originally envisioned, but it was taken out in the rewrites. This was meant to be a money saving episode, after all.

I remembered this as a strong episode, but in watching it again, I found it even better than I remembered, surpassing even a long time favorite of mine like "The Best of Both Worlds." Where the passage of time hurts some episodes of The Next Generation, it has only improved this one. In today's world, where our political figures have condoned torture -- and gained no useful intelligence from doing so, just as this episode promises -- this seems like a more immediate and topical story. It's right up there with the most profound parables Star Trek has to offer. "Chain of Command, Part II" deserves an unconditional A.

Kill the Boy

This week gave us another episode in which Game of Thrones generally managed George R.R. Martin's story better than he himself did in the books.

Dany's plot, the quagmire of A Dance With Dragons, improved by the show making her much more of an agent in her own story. In the books, the character of Hizdahr continues to nag Dany with both the request to reopen the fighting pits and a marriage proposal. He seemingly wears her down until she finally believes she has no other option to turn to. But in the show, both decisions come from her; indeed, the idea of a marriage is her idea entirely in the show. The entire audience might still be screaming "NO!" at her, but at least this way she feels more in charge, like the queen she is.

As an added bonus, the show also gave us the awesome visual of dragons dining. A character and subplot from the book, Quentyn Martell and his story, has been excised, which generally seems like no great loss -- save for the fiery climax of that thread in the book. The show writers lifted that one great moment and found a way to still present it to us in some form.


Another way of covering up for a cut character came in the final sequence of the episode, where Jorah and Tyrion were attacked by the Stone Men. It played out almost exactly as it does in the books, save with Jorah Mormont in the role served in the books by a different character. The visuals of the ruins, not to mention the staging of the attack and the work both in the boat and underwater -- it was all presented with particularly impressive production values. (Not that the show often skimps on those.) And now we see the reason why the series has been talking so much of greyscale for the last several episodes: Jorah's shot at redemption now has a ticking clock of disease on it.

Up at the Wall, there were a number of interesting developments. First, there was a lot of talk around Sam about the vast library at Oldtown, a hint that perhaps a storyline that appeared to have been cut from the show might actually just be a bit delayed instead. Second, there was the departure of Melisandre along with Stannis' army. That leaves no apparent way for the show to deliver a bunch of implication Martin scattered throughout the last half of A Dance With Dragons, nor for the show to continue the story in the next book/season in the way many readers (myself included) expect. I'm quite curious to see how that all develops.

A big improvement in the story at the Wall was a simple matter of changing perspective. In both the show and the book, Jon concludes that he must make peace with the Wildlings. In the books, we really only get chapters in Jon's own head about this storyline. As a character, he's so focused on what needs to be done -- and so generally blind to how other people are having a hard time accepting it -- that it doesn't seem like the Big Deal it really is. By being out of Jon's head on the show, viewers are better able to see how the other characters are taking the news. And the addition of the young boy, who saw his family and village slaughtered by Wildlings just two seasons ago, is particularly useful in driving the point home.

Then there was the story at Winterfell, full of uncomfortable moments. There were several scenes to build up Ramsay's character. He was given a love interest, which delicately rounded him out without softening his creepiness in the slightest way. And later, when his father told him the story of his mother, we not only felt little sympathy for Ramsay, we saw that Roose is as bad or worse a person.

The scene where Sansa was engaged in talk of memories was set perfectly, at the base of the broken tower that in fact carries no good memories at all. It's the spot where Bran fell, almost to his death. And the dinner scene was a nightmare, another one of Ramsay's twisted games. Sansa gets her doctorate in concealing her emotions as she listens to Theon apologize for killing two Starks -- a dastardly deed for which he is actually innocent, while Roose Bolton is actually guilty. (The Red Wedding never stops hurting, people.)

I never thought I'd say this, but I missed the Dorne storyline this week. Why bother adapting such a tedious chunk of the book for the series if it's only going to appear in two out of five episodes? I suppose we'll see what they have in mind soon enough, as we're halfway through the season now already! I give this episode an A-. The show continues to make lemonade from the relative lemons the books gave them.

Three Student Monte

"The Adventure of the Three Students" is an odd but entertaining story in the Sherlock Holmes canon. Set at an unspecified England university, the case involves the theft of answers to an upcoming exam, and a professor who doesn't want to compromise the university's public image with any official investigation. He is able to furnish Holmes with three suspects, and leaves it to the detective to identify the guilty party and quietly deal with the situation.

Among all the cases Holmes ever tackled, this one has to be among those with the lowest stakes. The crime is minute -- and might not even be seen as such outside academic circles, since nothing was physically taken. What's more, the changing times in the century since Arthur Conan Doyle wrote it has blunted what little impact there might have been. It's hard to imagine today any truly serious university scandal arising from the stealing of answers from one part of one professor's one exam.

But with the matter so trivial in nature, full focus can fall on the investigation. And here, Doyle has crafted a rather intriguing puzzle. In the story itself, Holmes compares the situation to a game of Three Card Monte (though he doesn't name it thus); the target is one of three students, it's only a matter of picking the right one. Other Sherlock Holmes stories present false suspects, but I can't think of another one that so straightforwardly identifies them to the reader. And there's no twist here; the culprit is not revealed to be any fourth individual that wasn't under suspicion.

So here, more than in most Holmes stories, the reader has the chance to pit himself against the detective -- or, if not to solve the case, to at least spot the clues that are crucial in the solution. I've criticized the way Doyle hasn't "played fair" in past stories, so it's only fair to praise him for doing so here. If the case had a bit more heft to it, this might well be my favorite story from the collection. As it is, I still give it a respectable B.

Congressional Discord

The two posters you see to either side are for the same movie. That alone should tell you a lot about the confused mess that is The Congress. A foreign film with both French and Israeli origins, The Congress was made in 2013, but is only just seeing distribution in the U.S. thanks to a deal with the Alamo Drafthouse's "original programming" branch, Drafthouse Films.

It's incredibly hard to describe what The Congress is about, in large part because the face it presents at first does not reflect the movie it ends up being. Here's the "Being John Malkovich"-like pitch that sold me on wanting to see it in the first place:

Actress Robin Wright, of The Princess Bride and Forrest Gump fame, is at a career crossroads. She has passed over enough acting jobs during the prime years of her career to jeopardize her "brand," and she is now faced with only one option. Her studio is beginning to branch out into an exciting new area, digitizing performers and using their computer avatars in perpetuity to make new films. Wright is offered the money needed to help her son's medical condition, in exchange for giving up acting and allowing her digital avatar to carry on making movies in her stead -- movies Wright herself was too picky to agree to in her prime.

I'm sure that sounds plenty odd to you, but here comes the really odd part: that describes only the first 40 minutes of the film. The second act picks up 20 years in the future, when Wright's studio wants to extend her contract for all sorts of new technology, and she agrees to enter an "animation only environment" to finalize negotiations. The remainder of the film then becomes animated, and is a hallucinogenic screed against the perils of dehumanizing technology.

This second half of the movie is what completely lost me. To be clear, the animation is absolutely beautiful. An imaginative and stylized world is lovingly rendered, a bizarre hybrid of old black-and-white Warner Brothers cartoons and Japanese anime. But aside from the tenuous thread of "out of control technology," this section of the film has absolutely nothing to do with the first part. Where the live action intro relies on Wright's reputation as a choosy and "difficult" actress, leveraging it into a quirky narrative, this animated film could easily be about anyone. The result is a very pretty, yet incoherent, jumble.

But Robin Wright, playing "herself," gives it her all. It's a strong and deeply emotional performance, both in the live action and animated chunks of the film. The strangeness of the film makes it awfully hard for the audience to care, but there's never any doubt that she cares very much. Similarly committed performances come from Jon Hamm as the voice of Wright's "character animator" in the animated section, and Paul Giamatti as a doctor in the live action section (himself no stranger to actors playing "themselves" for the sake of a gimmick).

Still, the performances -- no matter how good -- can't save the confusion of two incompatible films being forcibly stitched together. If you're a fan of painstaking animation, there might be some compelling visuals in this for you. Otherwise, I really can't recommend the film for anyone. I give it a D-.

TNG Flashback, Chain of Command, Part I

"The Best of Both Worlds" may be remembered as the defining two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Certainly, it's the best season-ending cliffhanger in all of Star Trek. But the best two-part episode, strongest in both its first and second parts? That honor goes to "Chain of Command."

Picard is abruptly relieved of command and reassigned, along with Dr. Crusher and Worf, to a top secret mission. The three of them are sneaking into Cardassian space to investigate rumors of a dangerous new weapon the Cardassians are developing. Meanwhile, the rest of the Enterprise crew must adjust to their by-the-book captain, the abrasive Edward Jellico.

Though you'd never know it from the tense pacing of the episode, the "Chain of Command" story wasn't originally intended to be a two-parter. Michael Piller suggested to showrunner Jeri Taylor that there was enough material here for two episodes, and a big opportunity to save on the series' budget by getting two for the price of one (particularly since much of the second episode could take place in a single room, with just two characters talking).

Where this first half benefits most from the extra time is in its portrayal of Jellico, the replacement captain, and in the ways that our regular characters are forced to react to him. Jellico blows in like a hurricane, changing the duty schedule before he even reaches the turbolift, and telling Picard to his face that the Enterprise is his now (because Picard is unlikely to survive his covert mission).

It's an absolutely perfect bit of casting to get Ronny Cox to play Jellico. Amongst science fiction fans, he was most recognizable as the despicable villains of Robocop and Total Recall, and he immediately brought that association with him. The audience was primed to hate him, even before he started rearranging the furniture. Cox loved the role, joking, "I've done a lot of things in my career, and I've got people in my family who think that's the only thing of any worth I have ever done." He also appreciated Jellico's place in Star Trek. He was aware of the fact that "Gene Roddenberry didn't like conflict between the characters," and knew that he was the first human character to really come in and "ruffle everybody's feathers" like this. Cox also quipped that this appearance made him a "trivia answer" -- as one of the few non-main cast members to ever record a log entry.

But in truth, Jellico isn't entirely a villain, as script writer Ronald Moore does a very good job of walking a line where, objectively, he isn't really such a bad guy. He's just a guy with a more military bearing. It's easy to forget that Starfleet really is a military organization. Certainly, most Star Trek viewers aren't going to be in the military themselves. But is it so awful for Jellico to want to choose the number of shift rotations on his own ship? To want Troi -- like all other crewmembers -- to wear a uniform while on duty? To want Data to pipe him onto the bridge with the respect he's earned from a long career? Plus, we see that Jellico is a family man (another key difference from Picard), with a son sending him drawings from back home. And we get to see that he's actually quite good at his job; he knows exactly how to deal with the Cardassians, making them think they're working to squeeze out a concession he would have freely given.

No, Jellico is not a bad guy at his core. But certainly the way he goes about doing things rubs everyone, characters and audience, the wrong way. Here, seven years before the movie Office Space would immortalize the Lumbergh style of management, Jellico is "by the way"ing half his orders, tacking them on at the end of unrelated conversations. And the other half of his orders, he's barking out with a coarse "get it done" that perfectly contrasts with Picard's "make it so." We bristle on behalf of Riker, Troi, and LaForge.

Meanwhile, there are several great moments for the team of Picard, Crusher, and Worf. First, it's great even having Crusher in the mix here; the "metagenic weapon" Macguffin is a great story justification to use her, and it's great to see that character used in an action-oriented role. The three make a great team as they work the Ferengi Solok for transportation -- Picard is the diplomat, Worf the muscle, and Crusher the flirt. Worf and Crusher also have fun ribbing each other about their respective phobias. (Bats and heights, respectively.)

The episode also lays some track for Deep Space Nine. Originally, the Ferengi character of Solok was meant to be Quark. When it was realized this episode would air one month before the new series began (and that thus, no one in the audience would know who Quark was), the character name was changed in an otherwise identical scene. Instead, references are made to a treaty in which Cardassians give up control of a number of planets -- one of them being Bajor, just as the spin-off series would soon show. The episode also introduces Admiral Nechayev, who would recur on both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. (And her bristly, acidic demeanor paves the way for us to hate the change of Enterprise command even more.)

There's plenty more to say, but most of it more relevant to part two. So I'll quickly wrap up with...

Other observations:

• Troi actually does look much better in the uniform. Putting her in it was Ronald Moore's idea, and Marina Sirtis was reportedly happy about the change. Seeing her in uniform really makes you realize that her not wearing one was subtly demeaning to the professionalism of the character.

• As for the change to remove Livingston the fish from the captain's ready room, Ronny Cox claims this was actually Patrick Stewart's doing. Stewart had been lobbying the producers to get rid of the fish; he thought it reflected poorly on Star Trek's values to have a captive animal on display in such small confines. (In fact, I remember seeing him speak at a Star Trek convention myself, and explaining this view to a questioning fan.) Unfortunately, the fish returned along with Picard.

• With this episode begins the rather shockingly forward practice of having women rub on Ferengi ears when they want something. Oh, not the fact that their ears are an erogenous zone -- Lwaxana Troi discovered that a few seasons back. But she found that out by accident, and in a situation that was sexually charged to begin with. I mean, when you really think about it, if the scene in this episode were involving a human, what Crusher does is just start massaging his crotch. And we'd see this kind of thing again and again, more times than I could count, on Deep Space Nine. I'm not entirely sure what I'm saying here. After all, Ferengi are generally sexist characters that are always getting the tables turned on them in these situations. Maybe I'm just saying I find it a little odd that this is always played for laughs. Or that you could get it on television in the early 1990s.

• If there's one great missed opportunity in this episode, it's that Whoopi Goldberg wasn't available to appear in it. It would have been quite interesting to see how Guinan handled Picard's reassignment, and the new Captain Jellico.

With so many great character moments in the episode, and clever manipulation of the audience to make us feel what they feel, "Chain of Command, Part I" is the best sixth season episode yet. I give it an A-. Of course, even better was immediately around the corner...

Scars

This week's episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was burdened a bit by having to address the events of Age of Ultron. With a complicated plot of its own already in play, and not many episodes left to tell it in, the show really couldn't afford to spend much time tying in with the film. But with the world basically brought to the brink of extinction in that movie, they couldn't really ignore it either.

So the TV writers did probably the best they could. First, they simply had Edward James Olmos say "Ultron" a bunch. (Alright, it was a little more skillfully done than that, but that's basically what it amounted to.) Second, they did a breezy, unrelated flashback teaser revealing to us that the long-running "Theta Protocol" Macguffin was actually the construction of a new hellicarrier, as seen at the end of the movie. Fair enough. Bringing back Patton Oswalt for his first guest appearance in too long helped that pill go down easily enough. (And you have to love the cross-Disney tie-in of the Star Wars bed sheets.)

But the episode was also a bit burdened by having to end the way it did, with Jaiying suddenly going all Magneto on all non-mutantsInhumans. Unlike "Theta Protocol," which the writers had carefully teased for the last several episodes, there wasn't much inclination before this that Jaiying had these warmongering tendencies. She's been the zen calm voice of reason. And while this bait-and-switch provided a moment of surprise, I would rather have seen a more consistently drawn character.

Yes, Jaiying has said how protective she is of her people. Yes, we know she had past bad experiences involving Whitehall (putting it mildly) and "the Cavalry." And she's really not even wrong that letting her people be "indexed" is a gross violation of privacy and kind of fascist. But I feel like the kind of person who'd take on all of S.H.I.E.L.D. in open war wouldn't have allowed Cal to stay at Afterlife for any length of time. She certainly wouldn't have allowed him to return after trying to get rid of him. Nor team up with him, as it appears from the last few scenes of the episode that she's done.

Unfortunately, having trouble fully accepting that big reveal, I had a hard time finding much else to be thrilled by in the episode. This was an episode without much action, and with a lot of talking that moved plot pieces into position more than it explored character. I guess the two standout moments for me were:

First, the scene where Mack resigns from S.H.I.E.L.D. I have to believe they wouldn't write the character off the show in such a low-key way, and that he'll be back later. But it was interesting to see Mack take a stand on principles, even if they were kind of vaguely racist (anti-alien) ones.

And second, there was the fun thread with Raina. The writers very cleverly didn't show us her visions this week, leaving us to wonder whether she was slipping back into her old, manipulative self. Jaiying's twist at the end seemed to say that Raina was actually being on the level, and might have been able to avoid conflict between S.H.I.E.L.D. and Inhumans. (Not that we the viewers would have wanted that on an action-adventure show, but it made a nice turn for the character.)

I guess I'd say this episode landed around a B- for me. I'm pleased that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has reached a point where even when it slips, that's about as low as it gets for me. That wasn't the case in the first season. We'll see if this breather to set up the final act pays off with a satisfying finale.

Ultron Legacy

After seeing Avengers: Age of Ultron, I believe I understand why Joss Whedon is choosing to step away from Marvel to pursue other work. It is a pretty good movie -- better than most action blockbuster fare, better than many Marvel films, and certainly better than any superhero film DC has served up in 7 years. But there are also notable creative misfires in the film. They basically all have to do with where time and attention is being spent in an overstuffed story, and I feel confident saying Whedon himself would never have made such mistakes were he not at the mercy of the Marvel machine.

(Since it seems like everyone saw the movie this past weekend, I'm not going to steer clear of spoilers in the following.)

The film is at its best when it gets the most personal. Hawkeye's storyline is fantastic, a nice apology for him getting the short end of the story stick in the first Avengers. Perhaps because he is one of the least conventionally "super-powered" heroes of the piece, it's revealed that he has found a way to balance a personal life with his "Avenging." Saving the world is less abstract for him; he has a family he's saving while he does it. And he comes off perhaps more brave and noble than the rest of the team too, putting it all on the line even though he is more vulnerable and has more to lose than the other Avengers.

Similarly, the romantic storyline between Black Widow and Bruce Banner worked for me. There's a clear logic that Black Widow, a character bred for fighting and subterfuge, would begin to question that commitment after the events of The Winter Soldier -- where the organization she worked for turned out to be corrupted by evil. And then, in contemplating a withdraw from fighting and subterfuge, it makes sense that she would be drawn to someone who always tries to avoid the fight, and who is open with her about his one great "secret." This put a relationship that matters in play not just for members of the team, but within the team.

But beyond that, relationships and motivations started to get shorted for time. We heard people talk about the longstanding bond of the Maximoff twins more than we actually got to see it depicted on screen. We never learn where Nick Fury has been hiding all this time, why was he in hiding all this time, nor why he decided to come out now. We never really got to delve far enough into the philosophical implications of creating an artificial intelligence, neither with the barely-a-character Vision, nor the inexplicably "just born bad" Ultron. (Stark had built one quasi-intelligence, Jarvis, who turned out just fine. How exactly did Ultron come out all crazy and genocidal?)

And why were these vital bits of character pushed out of the story for time? To make room for material that didn't even truly have a place in this movie; it was just setting up for future Marvel movies. Thor's nonsensical cave spa trip, for example, stole precious minutes of screen time (setting up for Ragnarok and Infinity War) and added absolutely nothing to any kind of character arc for him in this film. And while War Machine and Falcon each got a few nice lines, I certainly wouldn't have missed either of them if leaving them out of the movie could have made the story tighter for the remaining characters.

Not that Joss Whedon didn't get in plenty of good stuff, even with Marvel's master plan tying one hand behind his back. There was, as expected, a lot of great humor. Much of it was infused with character and not just pithy for the sake of being pithy -- Captain America's trouble with "language," Hawkeye's rivalry with Quicksilver, Tony Stark's attempt to scientifically explain Thor's hammer, and more.

Whedon's script also really nails the personal cost when titans collide. The destruction in this movie matters, and the heroes undertake mighty efforts to minimize the casualties. (Quite unlike Man of Steel, where all of Smallville and half of Metropolis are thoughtlessly devastated.) And as a director, Whedon definitely ups his game too. He has always been a fan of "oners" (long single takes), but here includes several of them -- including a long one to open the film.

I feel special mention should also be made of the stellar motion capture performances in the movie -- perhaps the most nuanced yet achieved. The Hulk absolutely looks and moves like Mark Ruffalo, and you can see James Spader's mannerisms captured in even the slightest lip curl of Ultron. (I could wish for Ultron to be less a clone of Spader's character Reddington from The Blacklist, but that's on Spader, not on the amazing work capturing his copycat performance.)

All told, it's an entertaining film. I give Age of Ultron a B+. But its best elements are often subsumed by that unfortunate urge that infects all superhero sequels: too many new characters and too much action. Whedon handles that better than most, but still can't make natural the agenda (outside of his personal aims with the film) to set up the next phase of the franchise.

Sons of the Harpy

With this week's episode of Game of Thrones, the showrunners fed book readers' an enormous feast on the one hand... while on the other, completely pulling the rug out from under us.

Without being too explicit for non-book readers in my audience, I'll simply say that the episode incorporated a big helping of back story that, coming as it did in a single episode, seemed to confirm the single most compelling fan theory surrounding a plot thread George R.R. Martin has not yet resolved

But on the other hand... holy crap, Barristan Selmy is dead! (I myself was in doubt as the end credits rolled, but actor Ian McElhinney has given interviews confirming his character's death.) Not only is Ser Barristan still very much alive as of the end of A Dance With Dragons, but he was actually pivotal -- to George R.R. Martin, at least -- in how that book finally took shape. Martin famously struggled in writing Daenerys' storyline, to a degree where that plot is the main reason that story wasn't continued until 11 years after the publication of A Storm of Swords. And ultimately, the only way Martin finally saw through the mess was to turn Barristan Selmy into a viewpoint character. It's a bit galling to think that the showrunners may have found a better way... and on their regular, 10-episodes-every-year schedule.

And make no mistake: so far, I think the show's way is better. One of the biggest problems with the "Sons of the Harpy" subplot of the book is how abstract a threat they are. All of their attacks take place off screen, taking lives neither Dany nor the readers ever meet. By putting two known characters right in the thick of a massive fight with the terrorists -- and actually killing one of those characters -- Dany's next course seems crystal clear. She tried public execution, and that didn't work. But she absolutely must have peace, at any cost, before she loses someone else close to her... which justifies the desperation of her next move.

Another big change from the book seems to be a means of getting at a similar result in a different way. Much in A Feast for Crows hangs on whether Margaery has remained chaste while married to a too-young-to-consummate King Tommen. By aging Tommen on the show (and making Margaery more crafty), the threat had to transfer to someone else. And as Lorys wasn't serving any particularly compelling role in the book, he was perfect for the job. Making Lorys' sexuality an issue for the pious Sparrows serves that narrative purpose, while injecting the potential for interesting social commentary on "religion versus homosexuality."

Speaking of sexuality, they certainly amplified that aspect of the relationship between Jon Snow and Melisandre this week. The book definitely tells us that there's something about her that Jon finds seductive. But in the book, she never so aggressively pursues a desire to make shadow assassin babies with him. Neither does she tell Stannis point blank that she will go with him to assault Winterfell. Either something is going to frustrate that intention of hers quite soon, or arguably the second most popular fan theory as of the end of A Dance With Dragons is going to have a major hole punched in it!

The adventures of Bronn and Jamie proved as entertaining this week as I'd hoped. There were plenty of nice moments, from Bronn's doubt that Myrcella is Jamie's "niece," to Jamie's silent quip that he's no good for rowing a boat, to the outstanding fight scene they had in the desert. Actually, Dorne in general featured more prominently this episode, with the introduction of the Sand Snakes. Dorne finally even made the opening credits map.

In some smaller moments: Stannis got some much needed humanizing this week, in the form of a well written scene with his daughter. (Again with the prominent grayscale references!) The crown's debt will be a plot point in the TV show after all... though here it seems to be about sending Ser Meryn to Braavos, where Arya just happens to be. Tyrion and Jorah had a few brief but fun scenes; I realized this week that by having Tyrion travel with Varys (unlike in the books), Jorah actually kidnapped Tyrion from his former employer -- a nice way to refute his work as Varys' spy. And lastly, I was reassured that Littlefinger remains as clever as I've always thought he was. He has put Sansa in harm's way on purpose, just so Stannis can rescue her. (And should Stannis fail, he thinks Sansa can work some magic on the Boltons as a backup plan.)

The story continues to entertain, staying far more compelling and fast paced this season than the books upon which it's ever-decreasingly based. I give this episode an A-.

Um... Never Mind

So... change of plans.

There was a wrinkle in the Fiji vacation plans. A bit of a family crisis. Everything is okay now, fortunately, but the bottom line is:

I'm back in Denver, and soon back to regularly scheduled blogging. Not that you weren't getting by fine without me.