Old Friends, New Planets

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (Old Friends, New Planets)

A few problems, a few disappointments, but on second viewing I really rather enjoyed this season finale, it was a worthy cap for the fourth year, right down to the mysteriously upbeat and exciting end credits music that suggests Tendi has some Big Plan now that she's been recalled to Orion by her sister, it recalled what works about Trek. Yes, as often is the case it is riffing on past Trek, most clearly 'Star Trek II,' the perennial favourite of riffs, with a Genesis Device (or 'GD,' as Mariner abbreviates her imaginary First Officer, like she's Tom Hanks in 'Castaway'), an old-style Bridge for Mum's former ship, the USS Passaro, and a beautiful lingering shot of the forming of new life in the blackness of space after the GD's detonation, not to mention recreating actual shots from the nebula battle when Mariner and Nicholas Locarno face off in an ion storm. I think I originally came to it with certain expectations, such as there being more to the addition of Sito Jaxa and Wesley Crusher (he's becoming almost ubiquitous in this late stage of new Trek, what with this, a recurring role on 'Prodigy,' and his brief cameo appearance in 'Picard' Season 2 - who'd have thought!), than there is in reality, with only the one scene set on the grounds of Starfleet Academy thirteen years ago (was that Boothby in the background?), to show Mariner was a contemporary (well, she was a first year Cadet, a bit behind the others), and looked up to Locarno and his Nova Squadron gang.

What was special about that scene, other than bringing together three characters once again voiced by their original actors, with Robert Duncan McNeill as Locarno, Wil Wheaton as Wesley and Shannon Fill as Sito (there's even a little interview with her on the Blu-ray, which was nice), was actually getting to see Joshua Albert, the lad killed in the illegal flight manoeuvre, so that added to the canon. It was also lovely to see the old Starfleet Academy as it was always portrayed in the 90s Treks, 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager,' just one more familiar element that makes 'LD' ring true, at least visually. I was fairly comfortable they didn't overdo it with the flashback scene, either, as while it might have been nice to have more scenes (much like Riker back in 'The Pegasus' during 'These Are The Voyages...'), they had to fit it into the existing 'The First Duty,' and doing much more than what they showed might well have upturned the balance of it all. As it was, a nice little moment that neatly tied in this obsession Locarno has with inexperienced young officers looking up to him and allowing him to lead them. I hadn't remembered this aspect of the story at all, that the whole point was the lower deckers of each race's ships were in collusion with Locarno and had enabled him to take them over. I'm not sure it really adds up in the sense that we see lots of ships in this 'Nova Fleet' (again, I'd not thought of the connection before, but the symbol Locarno uses would appear to be the Starburst manoeuvre that caused all his troubles in the first place!), yet we saw each ship destroyed when it encountered his mysterious vessel across the season, unless it was meant to fool watchers into thinking that, and actually it was prepared debris.

My one big problem with the story is no redemption for Locarno (and that he doesn't survive to meet his 'twin,' Tom Paris - enjoyed the exchange between Rutherford and Boimler about how they look alike, with Boimler refusing to see it!), an outright villain whose only apparent motivation was to refuse to learn from his past mistakes and instead multiply them into an even greater magnitude, to create a force more powerful than Starfleet or any other power... by having a Genesis Device... which is actually Ferengi in origin, so that must mean anyone can make them? And the fleet is all held together by... his magnetic personality? That idea worked in 'TNG' because it was from the perspective of one young Ensign, Wesley learning to tell the truth through conflicted loyalties, but it's much more difficult to accept Locarno, especially in this slightly mad stage, of having the influence to corrupt all these other races. I suppose his appeal was in the idea of an alliance where everyone was equal, but how would that work, how would anything be decided? As we saw, it simply didn't, the others quickly taking umbrage when they see it as him ordering them into the storm after Mariner, and it all breaks down from there. But it's always best to keep in mind that this series is about taking the tropes or oddities of Trek to new extremes - it happened, that's all you can say.

If the overarching plot of the season didn't live up to its early mystery (and I was mostly more relieved it didn't turn out to be a plot from either Badgey or Peanut Hamper!), I found this finale to be better as an episode in its own right. Mariner gets to be the action heroine she shines as, while the other characters support their Captain - it's too big a story for it to be about individual little plots for our four main characters, and if you look at most old Trek finales you'd find it was the same: they tended to reserve the last episode for big, dramatic sweeps and less time for character scenes. Instead, the characters are more supporting to Captain Freeman as she 'goes rogue' (again?!). I think perhaps it would have been better to make it much more about stopping Locarno than rescuing her daughter, since that's the professional Starfleet way, but if she could also accomplish the secondary goal then she would. There's lots to like, and what works at least as well as the Trekferences (which were relatively sparse compared to some episodes - young Mariner mentions being excited to learn about The Preservers and The Xindi, Boimler throws in the Maquis when Locarno's claiming his is the first 'unaligned' fleet in the Alpha Quadrant, but that's about it, unless the cylindrical corridors with conduits running along the sides aboard Locarno's station, were a deliberate visual reference to similar ones in 'Voyager'), are the 'Deckferences.' Okay, I just coined that one, but I mean the references to this series' lore itself: like Rutherford's beef with Livik who got promoted before him (then demoted so Rutherford could have the pip, ridiculously!), or them hashing out their differences in the Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens holoprogram!

It's totally whimsical and ridiculous that everything would stop so the two Engineers can find common ground in the middle of a crisis (a veiled laugh at the kind of silliness rife on 'DSC' perhaps?), yet it entirely fits with this series and crew, and we'd seen it before. Another Engineer, the Chief himself, Billups, gets to remind us of the Scottys of Starfleet and how they get riled up by any slight on their ships, rolling up his sleeves at Tendi's sister, D'Erika's assertion the Cerritos is a measly support ship! It was also great fun to have Dr. Migleemo (best line of the episode from Tendi: "Fluff your down!"), all tiny hopping bird psychologist of him, against this hulking green muscle woman (a she-hulk, you might say...), defeating her thanks to allergies! 1. I don't think there'd be allergies in the 24th Century, everyone would have overcome such things, and 2. he doesn't actually defeat her in the end since her bulk collapses on him, squashing the poor fellow, considered a win on the Orion side, but it did amuse, and was just so Migleemo to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like that! That Tendi sacrifices her Starfleet career to help her friend, was touching, offering herself up to her sister in exchange for a battleship with which to take on Locarno's fleet. My theory is Tendi won't be out of uniform for long, she'll be running the family business and then she can allow herself to come back, otherwise the final season's going to be a very different prospect! Another bump in the plot is this battleship: it does seem hard to believe the Orions would have the resources to build gigantic, powerful vessels, tougher than Starfleet's own (and we've seen how these things never work out well - just look at the giant Mirror Universe Klingon ship in 'Shattered Mirror' on 'DS9'...).

At least the bulk was its only real use, the Cerritos towing it to be a battleship battering ram. Again, not sure about the reality of a hole being 'smashed' through an energy shield for a few seconds (allowing Freeman and a dedicated team to swoop through in the Captain's Yacht!), surely the whole thing would deactivate, it's like an electrical field, you can't have bits that work and bits that don't, it's all or nothing. Not that it matters, I expect Trek has done the like before and to be honest I found all the shots of ships majestically soaring and arcing about, lancing Phasers splitting the darkness of space, bubble-shaped shields... all of it was simply beautiful and makes me long for the live action aesthetics to simply follow these well and long established visuals, it's bizarre so much Trek has kept to the 'new way' of 'DSC' for so long, I suppose for consistency, but there's a consistency that trumps the relative handful of modern live action episodes, and 'LD' shows how it could and should look. There's also a happy ending with Freeman off the hook thanks to establishing diplomatic relations with the Orions for the first time, Tendi going back to them making me think of Rom and the Ferengi - I assume more Rules of Acquisition have been added to the canon of 285 since here we get the 289th (shoot first, count profits later - although it doesn't sound like a Rom kind of saying!), Mariner accepting she's been acting badly (although I wasn't a fan of her "let's get drunk," at the end...), and even Locarno getting the newly formed planet named after him (even if that sounds a little unfair, but I did like it being mentioned it's because his genes are part of it - does this mean he could come back somehow, I wouldn't put it past them?).

We learn a little more of Orion culture with the 'barter by combat,' another pretty silly idea, but it's fun, and its silliness is the point. I like that they now have a word for using the Twain/Clemens program for ironing out disputes, calling it 'Twaining,' and I like that there are, on occasion, attempts to question questionable things, like when Mariner stole the Passaro Locarno wonders how she even got the engines online, which was a good point (she'd somehow got hold of her Mother's command codes for this old ship - handy that!). Flying a starship with a Joystick coming out of the Command Chair was ludicrous, but was obviously meant to invoke memories of Riker doing the same with the Enterprise (one of the few silly things about 'Insurrection,' the last great Trek film). There are always going to be some things it's hard to explain away, like when Freeman says the crew don't have to support her decision to go against orders - what if someone didn't wish to sacrifice their career by going along with it, would they be booted off the ship in an Escape Pod? It also irked me slightly to see an Andorian ship like we're still in the 22nd Century: Vulcans, Andorians, etc, they're all part of Starfleet, they shouldn't commonly have their own segregated ships and crews so I don't know why they keep doing things like that, it doesn't make sense unless in specific cases.

The supporting cats of characters has grown nicely so that you almost forget Billups or Migleemo aren't in the main credits as regulars, but we even see Goodgey, apparently working aboard ship, which was fun, and obviously tying Livik back in after 'I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee,' which they didn't need to do. Obviously the big one is Fill as Sito since she was part of the episode 'Lower Decks' on 'TNG' that was the inspiration for this entire series, so it's nice that they acknowledged that (they just need to do a specific 'Lower Decks' tribute episode now where they bring back Alexander Enberg and the rest so they really can eat their own tail!). If anything you could complain that the genuine main cast of the credits, like Ransom, Shaxs and Dr. T'Ana, don't have all that much to do, but we get moments, as we do for Kayshon or T'Lyn (continuing her excellent Vulcanness). I will continue to reiterate that Season 4 was one of the weaker, but it still has a lot of pretty good stuff even then, and it is sad the series was cancelled with Season 5 as I'd have loved them to keep going for the simple fact that for the most part they get Trek right, and what I don't like is easier to ignore when that's happening, so I look forward to starting the final season (tonight!), and eventually writing reviews for that.

***

What We Left Behind

 YouTube, What We Left Behind (2019) documentary

'You've seen The Original Series and The Next Generation, now you can watch The Best Generation.' That's my favourite quote of the documentary because it's so true. There's been so much Trek in the time since this was released, more main cast deaths, and a continually changing world, so it's a strange point at which to see it for the first time. With the most up to the minute news from 'Starfleet Academy,' the next Trek series to come, we learned Nog only made it to Commander and The Sisko never returned from the Celestial Temple, or that seems to be the suggestion (historical records can be inaccurate, of course, and that is set almost a thousand years into the future...), the point being that the ideas this team of writers came up with in their day of returning to the world of Deep Space 9 has already been overwritten by the current crop, and presumably they feel just mentioning 'DS9' characters or events qualifies as a sort of service to the fans, not realising the damage they do by nailing such things down. But that's the Trek world we're living in now, where so much of what made Trek great has fallen away to be replaced by... well, we can see them making a doc in another twenty years with exactly these kinds of comments being read out as they did about 'DS9' in this very doc, and I don't want to hi-jack myself in a review of this specific production by bemoaning how bad things have become (my other favourite quote which really stood out for today was 'officers don't want a commander who's their friend, they want someone who's going to keep them alive' - and I know that's not necessarily mutually exclusive, but it is a big issue with modern Trek!), but it's tough not to go there when this doc reminds you so potently of how far, far beyond all those distant stars, and Trek that came after it, that was: D. S. 9. (And even though I disagree with the viewer comments they read out, I appreciated Ira's response that he was pleased it made an impact with those people, even though it was a negative reaction - something we could do with more today in the ever greater polarity of 'sides').

I'm not sure I was really in the know about backing docs when this was being advertised - I knew about the production itself, it took some time and obviously they got the word out to back it, and docs... well, I can often take them or leave them, however great it is to see these actors, writers, producers, etc, the whole shebang, but if I'd known how difficult it was going to be to get a copy I probably would have put down the hard, cold latinum and ensured I had my name in lights (well, the end credits), if nothing else than to get a hard copy. But it never seemed possible to get a European region version of the disc and while I've always been on the lookout in all the familiar places it never happened for me. So it was with great glee I recently discovered Shout! Factory had generously put the entire doc up on YouTube as a freebie and it's with that I send them grateful thanks for the chance to finally see the most important Trek doc in recent years, perhaps ever! While the series has been given comparatively shortest shrift in the modern Trek era (and in some ways that's a good thing as it's a bit risky when those people meddle with something they don't fully understand), this doc is a hugely fitting tribute to what is not just the greatest Trek, but my favourite series in any world (and that includes space, too). It punchily runs the gamut of so many gears and cogs that made up the series that when they mention it not being eight episodes during the end credits, I thought that might actually be about right to do the series justice.

On the other pylon, there's always the danger they might spend more time on the more controversial topics which they're forced to breeze over, some of which I didn't appreciate, some of which I did. Some of which appeared to be bizarre reinterpretations based on current ideological fervour. But I'm not going to get too much into criticising what I have to consider one of the best Trek-related productions of the last twenty years, despite the vast output we had in the last few especially. This is that famed love letter to Trek that has been bandied around (it was this, it was that - primarily and controversially said of the 'Enterprise' finale, which I also love!), and it all came from Ira Steven Behr, still fighting the good fight even to this day (or that day), protecting the corner, going to bat, holding the baseball, whatever analogy you want to use. Now much of the novelty and anticipation had evaporated by the time I got to see this - I knew we were getting Rene Auberjonois and Aron Eisenberg before their deaths, I knew Avery wasn't coming back with new comments as he felt he'd already said what he had to say on the subject, and I knew several of the writers gathered together to 'break' the beginning of a Season 8 that will never see the light of day. So it didn't surprise me in that way. I was surprised they had Max Grodenchik sing the intro when it surely must have been written for James Darren to reprise his Vic Fontaine, but maybe he was too ill or tied up (another one we've lost since this doc was released), not that Max doesn't sing it beautifully, he does.

But there's so much they couldn't fit in - maybe for me the biggest missing piece was Barry Jenner as Admiral Ross, I could be wrong, but I don't even remember the casting directors mentioning his name when they were giving a rundown of the many extended cast (some of whom were only in three episodes, but it shows how integral they were!), and it wasn't until his picture came up at the end that I suddenly was surprised there hadn't been any discussion of the best Admiral in Trek. What I did love as much as I hoped I would, were the ideas shooting back and forth as all these great writers who made it with 'DS9' and have gone on to be powerhouses in their own right, were happy to come back together and hash out a new story. I'm aware there's an extended version of this on the physical release and this is perhaps the one bonus I feel the absence of, only being able to see the doc itself, but I'm not too sad, we do get a lot of them. I think there's always a danger in thinking the people of the past could Make Trek Great Again, as it were, not remembering they aren't the people they were then - I mean, just look at what happened with Bryan Fuller, he managed to singlehandedly create the genesis for so many problems that have helped lay the groundwork of all this current era! So I don't look to the big names as a guarantee they wouldn't take it off in their own direction (just listen to Ira when he talks about what he'd have done differently with Garak at the time, for an example!), but what worked with this exercise was recreating the little band they had back then and just going for it as if they were back then, not necessarily making it for the 1999-2000 TV season as it was, but continuing twenty years later in the now.

It showed they still had it where it counts and if they want to do more 'DS9' go right ahead, you have my blessing if this segment was anything to go by. With the caveat it would have to be done like that, of course! More than anything the doc is an emotional tribute - this isn't always a good thing, there's far too much throwing our guts all over the place in our time, but what I mean is, they got the tone just right, as much as modern Trek fails to on that score. Of course it's a delight to see these old actors, for example, after all these years, and most of them have aged exceedingly well, but already this doc is a few years old so it's a product of a different time, stuck in amber, and that gives even more perspective to its making and makeup, it's not the latest new thing in Trekdom. But it is a finished, slick, successful piece that uses humour and lightness alongside the serious in the same way the series did. Look at Andrew Robinson basically playing Garak as a human in his first scene where he sets the stage: it's an absolute delight and straddles the line between light and shadow, reality and fiction, drawing you in like the opening to a Shakespeare play. I'd have liked to see the whole cast together, I didn't feel we really got that (again, I think that may have been one of the extras), but whenever we saw a group of them it was so lovely. And you can tell, just as the series was a passion project, essentially the equivalent of a low budget concept, the art they wanted to make rather than some Thing of The Week (although I wouldn't lay the burden of modern TV's dreary penchant for serialisation at the series' door - it had the perfect blend of continuing arcs and individual sci-fi concepts that made it work far better), and so was the doc itself.

Like Auberjonois at the end, I'm not sure what else I can say - it is disconcerting to hear actors using offensive language for whatever reason when you really only know them as their characters, but they are people in real life. I was going to take notes and make comments on the doc in more detail, but I found myself simply being drawn in to the doc, not needing to distract myself by stopping and starting. It's a lovely thing to have done, and in the same way 'The DS9 Companion' is the best behind the scenes book I've ever read, this doc is just about the ideal companion piece, another staked out flag (maybe one of the ones on Jeffrey Combs' slalom which Avery Brooks told him to ski down?), that connects our time to that past where for so many years it was the best thing being made. I collected every video for a reason, you know! It reminded me I need to get back into rewatching the series again, no greater tribute needed.

****

The Quick and The Dead

 TV, The Quick and The Dead (1995) film

The golden rule with Westerns is don't watch them post-1960s, but to my detriment I broke that rule with this film. Since Gene Hackman's death earlier in the year they've been showing a lot of his films and I'm often open to seeing what he's done, even if it is a Western made during the 90s. But they may as well have called it 'The Dull and The Nasty' since there aren't any positive characters and very little redemption. I will say I liked the theme that came through with Hackman's character, the big bad boss of the town, claiming he keeps order - no law, just order, so a kind of totalitarian control as he sees fit. And at the end, Sharon Stone's character tosses her Father's Marshal badge to Russell Crowe's priest with the injunction that now the town has law, so there was something there thematically, but it was only a sliver in the grand scheme. The trouble is there's no good role model character, and that's one reason why I don't like what the genre became: it's all relative, there may be avenging angels, and I'm sure some of Clint Eastwood's characters could be called heroic (Bronco Billy!), but for the most part it's about lecherous, leering types or vengeance-driven vigilantes, from those films I've seen, a grotesquerie of the toothy unclean shoved in your face, often apparently meant in a humorous way.

Take the nasty old lech who preys on the young girl, who must be only twelve or thirteen, maybe fourteen at best, grooming her to the point he has his way with her later in the film. I can see this is held in disgust by Stone's character and becomes added motivation for her to kill, but it has an inhumanly comedic angle to it at times as if we're meant to find it funny rather than disturbing. The same with many of the other members of this kill or be killed competition that have descended on this outpost town to win a suitcase full of money. I'm not sure what the object of it all was, maybe Wells Fargo put up the money hoping as many varmints in the area would kill each other off and they'd have an easier time sending their coaches through, but motivation isn't the film's strong point - the main one is Stone's revenge on Hackman for malevolently forcing her child self to kill her Father when he 'allows' her to try and shoot down the rope holding his neck in a noose, and being a child untrained in guns can't help but kill him. This is obviously what has led her to become an expert gunman (gun-woman?), and adds more reason to why she was so horrified at seeing Crowe strung up, able to shoot the rope and save his neck. But what became of her after her Father's death, she's obviously grown up full of hatred, bent on destroying Hackman, so not only did he waste her Father's life, but hers too, not a very optimistic place for the film to come from or go.

There's very little to like about her character, I assume she wanted to simply do a kind of female Eastwood who comes and goes with the wind, exacting her form of justice and disappearing again. The film could have taken a more memorable direction towards the end when she and Crowe, allies against Hackman, are forced into a duel to the death and she loses - if she really had died it might have had more of an impact to show that revenge leads to destruction for the person trying to carry it out, but I suspected it was all a trick, and so it proved in typical Hollywood fashion (complete with the town blasting into explosions all around, since it's believed a big explosion at the end of a film impresses the audience and makes it more profitable - that kind of template thinking that makes a film fit to a mould rather than be artistic in its own right). They could even have had the pair turn on Hackman's men and prevent them from enforcing what are changeable rules anyway, an alternative to the binary 'one dies, one lives' plot. Crowe is supposed to be a sympathetic character, the closest we have to a real hero in that he was once partners in crime with Hackman, but has since eschewed violence after he killed a priest and now believes he can never find redemption and get to Heaven, a false notion since even the worst sin can be forgiven if admitted to God and asked for forgiveness, so maybe he wasn't an actual priest as he doesn't seem to know even basic Biblical teaching.

He isn't really a hero since he isn't able to control himself and does kill when he has no other option - it's made to look in his first duel as if it was all instinct rather than choice, and that he's bewildered about what he's done, but it just serves to make him look weak and unable to stick to his principals - more realistic perhaps, but hardly inspiring, and when most of the characters behave like cartoon characters it doesn't really fit. We later see he's able to shoot two of Hackman's goons at once, on opposite rooftops, without aiming, so he and Stone could easily have dealt with them instead of going through with their duel, which didn't add to the believability! He's also unable to control himself when Stone drapes herself all over him since tomorrow they die, so again, if he is meant to be a priest he really doesn't know what he stands for, and lets it happen. I was excited to see Woody Strode's name in the opening credits, and Kevin Conway - the former was in many a Western of the past, my favourite role of his in 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' and I can see why they'd want to tie into the past like that - it shows even back then nostalgia was a factor in film decisions, but he only gets one line and maybe a couple of seconds of screen time, so that was disappointing. And Conway, whom I know as Emperor Kahless in 'TNG,' I never recognised out of his Klingon makeup, so that came to nothing, too!

What it comes down to is a bloodthirsty desire on the filmmakers to show violence and display the nastiness of human nature, the very opposite of what I saw in Westerns of the past which emphasised the battle to overcome such nature or to step in and deal with injustice (which does happen to a certain extent, I suppose) - whether that's realistic or not isn't the point, these are films after all, not reality, we're telling stories to entertain and hopefully come away refreshed and happy, not to wallow in ugliness and destruction. Director Sam Raimi was certainly capable of depicting the highest heroism since he went on to do the 'Spider-Man' trilogy in the following decade, but this film was far from a heroic effort. I imagine it was done on the cheap - even if they built an entire frontier town so they could blow it up, it's not going to be all that expensive, and no doubt the bulk of the budget went on the star names. And it worked: I saw Hackman's name and against better judgement gave it a go, only for it to follow the usual pattern of the 'modern' (1994+?), take on the genre. There's always a chance they can create a successful entry, I like 'Dances With Wolves' and 'The Last of The Mohicans,' a couple more Western-leaning productions of the early 90s, although they could just as easily be considered historical adventures. Perhaps it was the simple morality tales that filmmakers of more recent decades turned their nose up at? If so it was their loss and I'll stick to the traditional greats of the Western genre, for all the novelty of seeing Russell Crowe (whom I didn't even realise was acting as early as that), and Gene Hackman acting together on film.

*

The Inner Fight

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (The Inner Fight)

Likeable story, good twists, too much swearing, some fun little humour jolts - about what you'd expect for the average episode of this series. Throw in a special cameo at the very end, like Spock in the last scene of 'Unification I,' and it's a well-rounded package. On the downside, however, is the reveal of the season-long arc as Nicholas Locarno is shown to be piloting the mysterious attacker ship that's been nobbling vessels from various races over the course of the episodes, and while we're still in the dark about motive or means, I remember being rather disappointed by the whole angle. For one thing, it's a sad thing to find Locarno never learned from his mistakes, and much like Raffi in 'Picard,' has become a failure and given in to baser instincts. That's not apparent in this episode so I won't go into it this time, but we know he left Starfleet and became a pilot for hire, so that's not the usual story of redemption we'd hope and expect from Trek (well, used to, anyway). But this isn't really Locarno's story, it's Mariner's as we finally discover the secret of her rebellious nature and what prompted it all - only talking to a Klingon warrior whom she thinks will either shortly kill her, or be killed by her, as soon as the 'glass storm' of sheer knife shards raining down (love to know how they explain that scientifically...), is over. So she uncharacteristically opens up, and fortunately Ma'ah (Jon Curry in his third appearance in the role, along with a few other characters that have previously appeared), is a wise warrior and a careful listener to be able to bring her inner fight out into the open.

It rings so true that a Klingon would recognise someone with a divided inner nature and I'm sure he does a far better job than Migleemo would have, often portrayed as a fluffy idiot. I wasn't quite sure why Mariner had suddenly started acting more recklessly (shades of B'Elanna Torres in 'Extreme Risk' responding to news of the Maquis being wiped out by the Jem'Hadar - in fact it's not a million miles away from that story since Sito was Bajoran, killed by Cardassians, we believe, in one of the kind of incidents which created the Maquis in the first place), unless it was being reminded of Locarno in a recent episode which brought her memories of the Nova Squadron incident flooding back. Her bitterness over Sito dying on a mission wasn't entirely believable, but at least it gives us some depth to the character she was lacking and that we've seen added to her friends over time with Rutherford's rough pre-implant years and Tendi's shame and guilt over her Orion heritage. And it was possibly the most serious and heartfelt scene the series has done, as far as I can remember, since this is meant to be a comedy and they don't go out of their way to work towards character motivation and the kind of Trekky development we used to expect. But whether it fits or not, it was a fine scene and Mariner becomes something much more than a carefree rebel, even leading her to what could be the first genuinely rousing speech of modern Trek - many have tried (Burnham, Picard, etc), but none have rung true, while Mariner's exhortation to all these disparate races to work together to escape the hostile planet was in no way forced and entirely fitting and organic to events.

It's lovely to see all these familiar Trek races, especially the lesser used ones of recent years (or decades!), such as Cardassians and Bynars, and was like the 'Voyager' episode 'Flesh and Blood' in which a gang of holographic representations of Alpha Quadrant races are on a planet together, only this time it's in the flesh... and blood. Purple blood, when it comes to the Klingons. Not quite sure why they did the old 'Star Trek VI' trick of having that colour since I think every time since then (unless it's been on this series, perhaps), Klingon blood was shown to be red and it's been put down to the 'atmosphere' or something along those lines to suggest why the pink or purple colour came about. In real terms it was so the film could get a 'PG' rating, but I always liked the idea that Klingons had this garish blood running through their veins in the same way Vulcans and Romulans have green and Bolians and Andorians have blue - it fits. I didn't appreciate Ma'ah burying his face in the Bird-of-Prey Captain's blood, but that was the worst culprit of the episode and we don't actually see anything gory happen, it's all off screen (same with the Tremble-lizards and the 'Jurassic Park' theme of the teaser which really only served to demonstrate Mariner's reckless state of mind at this time).

It's questionable why a BOP would be shooting down a clearly marked Federation shuttle since the Klingons are allies, and I also found it strange Ma'ah says Mariner won the Dominion War since it was his people who played a decisive role, especially towards the end when Klingon ships were the only ones invulnerable to the Breen shield-sapping weapon and carried the major heft of the fighting for some time. But he clearly wasn't around for the war since he wishes he'd had the chance to fight Jem'Hadar, although I suppose he could mean that literally, in personal combat, but even then it would be odd for him to suggest the Federation won the war - it'd be more in keeping with Klingon bravado and bragging to claim credit, just one more sign I think that the writers aren't necessarily keeping up with the nuances of the history they're adding to, unless I'm forgetting something about him (was he too young, it was only a few short years before?). The BOP could have been a rogue ship, I suppose. Still, it was a rather risky tactic to bait it into swooping down and blasting the installation (which looked like the forest antenna building in 'Return of The Jedi,' perhaps intentionally), since it could just as easily have dove down without stopping, though I do love the visuals and sense of weight and speed when we see it drop through the clouds, a truly beautiful classic design that never gets old. It was all so the temporary alliance of aliens could jump onto the hull and somehow squeeze inside, an unlikely solution to their predicament!

The B-story gives Captain Freeman a chance to show she's not as dimwitted as she sometimes appears, cunningly making a show of her apparent stupidity at going down to a planet which resents Starfleet and stumbling around ineffectually, while Billups goes down as a bounty hunter to get the information on Locarno's whereabout, using the planet's bias against them, clever psychology. Because there are certain people that need to be brought back to Earth. Because of... the threat... from the mysterious ship? Yes, perhaps best to hand wave the motivation for the whole story away and just enjoy the joke that of the four Trek celebrities they mention, Seven of Nine, Beverly Crusher, Thomas Riker (confirming he survived a Cardassian prison camp in the Dominion War), and Nick Locarno, it's the unloved Locarno whom the Cerritos gets tasked with tracking down! As Tendi, asks: "Who?" The other gag I particularly enjoyed was the Balok's puppet creature so famous for being the last, glaring image in the end credits of 'TOS' for many episodes, one of those iconic faces that have endured for almost sixty years, like the Gorn and the 'green woman.' Well, we get all those in this episode (although the Gorn may not have been a Gorn, difficult to tell with those included for background colour), especially the green women. The joke is that Freeman assumes the short, ugly creature is a puppet until she finds out otherwise! Okay, it's only a simple subversion of expectation, but out of the blue like that it worked nicely.

They go to Mudds, which you'd assume has some connection to Harry Mudd, or else why bother, though there's no update on his legacy. I enjoyed Ransom telling the story of an example of Mariner's recent strange behaviour when she jumped out of a shuttle to fight a Borg only to find it was just a pile of junk - we didn't need to see it, it's easily imagined and all the more humorous for it! Then there's Rutherford discovering his Starfleet trousers have pockets when he never realised, a joke about how the actors always wanted pockets but never could have them (apparently, with the Cerritos' uniform at least, they were always there!). Even Mariner using the two-handed hammer punch when fighting her Klingon opponent was lovely to behold and it sounded like she was grunting Kirk's name with each strike! I also loved the attention to detail on the 'venom suits' at the scientific outpost, which looked like a cross between the environmental suits of 'TOS' and the sleek, 'modern' version first seen in 'First Contact' - it could also be seen as a comment on how there's a uniform for every occasion in modern Trek. Ma'ah was very true in his way of demeaning Federation antics as a desire 'to solve puzzles and mysteries,' something he may not be impressed with, but which Mariner's friend, Sito, gave her life in protection of. It sums up the different cultures well, while also jabbing home the point, which is exactly the Trekky way of doing things in the old days, and something I miss in the new stuff. Having Mariner and Sito Jaxa be friends ties up the whole series in a neat circle since it was obviously inspired by the episode of the same name, 'Lower Decks,' in 'TNG,' so if they weren't making any more it suggests a nice way for the series to wrap up, directly connecting with a character from that inspiration, and as the next episode would prove, even giving us flashbacks to that time. Some of the decisions may seem a little odd, and I may not have loved the conclusion to the arc, but I can still appreciate it for what it was, and look forward to the final season, too.

**

Caves

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (Caves)

We've got one of those 'mixed' episodes where they have some fun, but it's somewhat undermined by the series' excesses in the language, gore and inappropriate humour stakes, otherwise it had the potential to have been another good one. As it is, it does at least improve on being a one-note joke: caves are seen in Trek a lot so Mariner comments on how she feels like she's been in this cave a hundred times, and it's like a third of their missions are in caves and so on and so forth. Caves were obviously a big part of Trek, mainly in the 80s and 90s (and even into the 2000s), when the famous 'Planet Hell' set was built for 'TNG' and continued to be revamped and reused for 'DS9' and 'Voyager,' so it's only fitting that this key piece of Trekness got its own episode, this being a comedic approach to Trek tropes. It's always fun when they bring in familiar elements like this and it had become something of a joke for regular viewers (in retrospect, not particularly in the moment), but at the same time they often did an excellent job disguising the set in various ways: altering the floor to be sandy or adding plants; making use of the upper level more; creating different lighting effects; smoke; constraint breeds creativity and as it was mostly the same people working in production they brought a steady stream of innovation to money-saving production budgets - 'Enterprise' took it even further with more elaborate sets, but there's something quite reassuring and comforting about beaming down to yet another cave, and after all, Trek being practically a series of stage plays, the setting itself could often be mere extraneous detail (see 'Spectre of The Gun' for the ultimate in that idea - it may not be a cave, but the point stands!).

It helps that we get all four of our characters alone together as if to prove they can still do those kinds of stories, and while it's a bit funny they'd all be assigned to this specific mission and no one else, who's to say it wouldn't happen? There are plenty of other things to level that criticism at... Take Steve Levy, the Cerritos' resident conspiracy theorist who always comes up with the wackiest ideas about what's 'really' going on. I find it hard to believe that anyone in Starfleet would be that suspicious or disbelieving, but then I think of people like Lieutenant Reg Barclay, the poster child for Starfleet officers that don't measure up to the social standards you'd expect, but make up for it with their skills in other areas. Levy isn't in the same bracket of characters like Raffi or Rios from 'Picard,' he's more in that Barclay vein so I was glad we at least got to know a little more about him, key being that he's a maths genius, that's why they put up with his 'crackpot with dangerous beliefs' persona. Obviously it's meant to be an amusing comment on the many who are taken in by internet misinformation, he even admits he goes on forums and makes stuff up, but I just feel like the world Roddenberry created wouldn't suffer from the same problems we do of having a surfeit of information and uncertainty. The difference is that we know we can't necessarily trust the organisations who have power in our lives, be they governments or corporations, but greater knowledge hasn't made people more intelligent, it's merely confused.

Having Steve Levy as a joke we can laugh at is a bit unkind, in keeping with modern Trek's more cynical attitude, but at least Rutherford and he do bond to some extent thanks to, well, Levy actually being right for once! Is this meant to placate the conspiracy-lovers in the audience or merely to turn the tables on expectations (it's clear even he didn't expect to be correct when predicting those wily old shapeshifting Vendorians from 'TAS' are behind it all with their 'morality test'!), either way I'm not entirely sure what the writing was trying to say - Boimler himself confesses he's not sure what lesson he's supposed to learn from it all: not to yell at Levy so much? I'd have preferred a more concrete idea of compassion for those with easily led minds instead of this impression of having a whipping boy upon which to show how much superior 'we' are who go merrily along accepting whatever we're told has been proved, but even in Trek we've seen numerous people in power who've been untrustworthy or have had nefarious agendas and even the very Federation itself is secretly supported by an underground society that is the stuff of conspiracies in Section 31. I suppose the answer to all this is that the so-called 'perfect' world Roddenberry reinforced for his 24th Century in 'TNG' had already been torn down long ago, undermined even within the series that spawned it, and Utopia once again crashes and burns because it's the impossible dream. The important thing is that there's some kind of understanding between Rutherford and Levy, and not to either entirely denigrate and leave room for questions is the more Trekky way.

Oddly enough, the least unpleasant flashback story of the four was actually the one featuring Dr. T'Ana when she and Rutherford were stuck in a cave where he gave birth to a cave baby. How many Trek connections can you spot here? It's a bit like 'The Passenger' from 'DS9' where a criminal passed on his consciousness to Bashir when dying, only this time the dying alien woman's touch creates a clone baby within him and he becomes a man who has to give birth (as in Trip in 'Unexpected' on 'Enterprise'). A relief they didn't actually show Rutherford being cut open with the laser scalpel and it soon becomes about T'Ana softening to this bouncing cave-baby and even to Rutherford, having complained she hates both babies and Engineers! There's even a surprising lack of swearing from her. No, they save most of that and the gore for Mariner's story when she recalls being stuck in a cave with Delta Shift, the gang with chips on their shoulders because they feel like they work on a different ship always doing nights and barely seeing anyone. I would've thought there must be some shift rotation and these wouldn't be permanently assigned to night duty, I'm sure we saw examples of some of our main characters sometimes working at night, like Harry Kim being in charge on the Bridge. The sci-fi side of it wasn't the issue - it's one of those chroniton fields as we'd seen in 'Timescape' where Picard reaches out for fruit and his hand withers, only here 'LD' has to take it beyond the bounds of good taste so that Mariner and her team are cracking up as their bones age too much for their weight, or even worse, one of them loses his already damaged leg.

I don't find that kind of humour funny, the 'gross-out' style of comedy just doesn't sit well with the optimistic tone that was Trek's hallmark, one of the reasons it simply doesn't feel very Trekky nowadays. And again we have yet another Starfleet officer displaying a bad attitude when Mariner's order is defied - it does get rather tiresome that such things are so common in modern Trek, and while I'll give this particular series credit for following the trend less fully, it still has its problems that prevent it from ever completely being the thing it's trying to ape, while yet often doing so well in many areas. I was expecting Tendi's story about being trapped in the Turbolift for hours post-rage virus on her first day aboard the Cerritos in the very first episode, a story she keeps trying to tell and is repeatedly interrupted or shot down, to be the key to their escape, so I'm glad that expectation was avoided as it seemed so obvious. Instead they put a nice little bow on proceedings by letting us see that this cave with the sentient moss (which speaks in the voice of one of those booming entities from 'TOS' - I didn't realise Jerry O'Connell (Ransom) was both the moss and a Vendorian in this, he doesn't often do other characters), is actually another Vendorian test and it was they that blocked communications (another trope of cave storytelling, as Mariner points out early on, rocks always beat centuries of technological progress - true!).

Adding to the lowered tone we have wee jokes and once again we see our people doing something to excess: namely drinking (hence the wee jokes when they're trapped in the Turbolift...), but I did at least appreciate they mentioned they thought they were imbibing Synthehol, which as we know from our 24th Century lore, is able to simulate the intoxication effects without the side effects, allowing a much higher level of control where people can snap out of the fug if they choose, except Mariner being Mariner she switched it for real alcohol. She says the catchphrase "Cerritos strong!" but I thought that came about in response to the Pakled encounters which would have occurred later in Season 1? Maybe they put it in deliberately for people like me to notice and speculate about? I'm starting to become Steve Levy! Maybe there wasn't all that much to the story and I'm not sure you could even say they really delved (delved!), into the cave trope sack all that deeply when you consider how many episodes there have been with people trapped in caves, let alone ones where they simply visited a cave (out of interest: how many are there, someone must have worked it out by now?), but it ends happily and has a nice reinforcement of their friendship.

The story isn't riddled with needless Trekferences, yet they manage to squeeze in their fair share (like Boimler's list of Levy's silly theories: Wolf 359 wasn't planned, Q exists, Picard isn't a hologram, Voyager's EMH is...), the delightful angular grey backpacks with the black straps so common in 90s Trek, Mariner saying Levy believes they're all trapped in the evil Mirror Universe, the Vendorians admitting they had nothing to do with the Klingon civil war, Rutherford says there are no natural stairways or hidden passageways from secret societies, even the grey alien lady's body disintegrating was reminiscent of Changelings when they die and desiccate, and even the Grafflax reminded me of the kind of overgrown predatory CGI creatures from the Kelvin Timeline films. Phasers get a new use as T'Ana vaporises the baby's poop bag, but can Tricorders really be used to translate and speak in an alien language? I'd have thought you'd need to tie it into the Combadge, but Rutherford didn't seem to do that. I also hate wheeled vehicles in Trek, they make no sense, just use a forcefield! I will say that sometimes reusing the voices of main cast members was a little jarring, with the lead Vendorian sounding exactly like Captain Freeman, and maybe they overuse Fred Tatasciore on this series - granted, most of the other characters didn't appear, so maybe they needed to save some money, but at least try and sound different! I'll give Fred credit where it's due: I never realised he was Levy and this was his third appearance after 'No Small Parts' and 'Trusted Sources,' I like that they bring back members of the crew: Asif (Asif Ali), was also on his third episode (Ali also doing the Grafflax' Tricorder voice), as was Karavitus (Artemis Pebdani), they've gone long enough they can refer back to characters and episodes and it's normal because so much time has passed now.

**