TV, Rogue One (2016) film
It's taken me some time to see this first true spinoff of the 'Star Wars' saga, mainly because I was so underwhelmed by the bland Episode VII, 'The Force Awakens' more aptly known as The Force Nods Off, or The Force Rehashes. I didn't go to the cinema to see the three succeeding spinoffs and sequels, and intensely mixed reactions suggested an iffy chance on whether I'd have been right to do so. I all but lost interest in the Disney-fied version of what was once the greatest trilogy of all time (since superceded by 'The Lord of The Rings'), and didn't care if I ever saw the films I'd missed. I hadn't even bought the DVDs as they never went down to a low enough price for me to consider it a worthwhile investment, either of my time or money, so I had to wait until this one came to Freeview TV. I went in expecting it to play out one of two ways: either it would increase my apathy and lack of connection to the franchise, or it would interest me and make me think there were worthwhile films to be told outside of George Lucas' uncertain hands. Immediate impressions were mixed - for some reason I liked the opening of that Imperial Shuttle skimming across the horizon of this planet, and though it's somewhat strange not to have the booming 'Star Wars' name blazing across the screen as it recedes into the vastness of space, for the first time ever, the usual opening crawl and pulp science fiction serial scene setting wasn't missed for this story.
It did initially appear to be going down the Disney route again (though I suppose this was only the second of their films so it wasn't getting as old yet), with the starring role given to some little girl, but at least she was supported by Mads Mikkelsen as her Father, an actor I've esteemed ever since first seeing him as Le Chiffre in the best James Bond film ever made, 'Casino Royale.' While there is an element of recognisable actors taking you out of the story a little (oh, it's Mads; it's Ben Mendelsohn; it's Forest Whitaker), the same could have been said upon first viewing the original 'Star Wars' - it's Alec Guinness, it's Peter Cushing! But they've become embedded in those roles through long association, and while I don't expect the same thing will happen with these films since they aren't the genre-defining game-changer the originals were, still living off the ancient blood of those greats, it's not a problem for the film. I will say that, after getting past the little girl opening and moving into the future, it does take the film quite a time to get going. We're introduced to various characters, but we don't get to know them or penetrate into the story. The story itself is much clearer cut than the Rey trilogy, which is a big plus, but it does suffer from the same almost aimless travelling around from planet to planet and character to character for an early chunk of the film.
As much as I loved seeing the old 1970s aesthetic of what a big budget sci-fi spectacular should look like, the definitive 'Star Wars' look, the old Stormtroopers, ships and all, it wasn't until well into the film that I truly began to be engaged. Thinking back I think the moment that it first sparked something for me was when they call the stolen Imperial ship 'Rogue One,' and I realised that I hadn't even considered where the title came from, so little thought had I given the film before seeing it. So something clicked there as we realise this small band of rebels even against the Rebellion, are the crew of this ship which gave us the title. It wasn't much, but it was something, and as things progressed I found more to be interested in until it culminated in a great ending that connected strongly. I didn't know that much about the film other than it was about spies that steal the plans for the Death Star (no, not the 'many Bothan spies' who died to bring the Rebellion the information on the second Death Star in 'Return of The Jedi,' it would be easy to confuse the two), they were all going to die at the end (makes sense), Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader and Princess Leia were all going to appear, and Vader had a much lauded scene of slaughter.
Before coming to the film I really didn't know if I'd even have enough thoughts or interest to be encouraged to write a review, but there were plenty of points of intrigue or discussion that prove the film was engaging mentally. One of the biggest issues the film raised was in production, outside of the universe and story: should we bring back dead actors to reprise their roles in modern films? It's a fascinating question to explore because there are the ethics as well as the technical achievement. I was undecided about it, and remain so, but I do feel they were entirely true to the original characters in this particular instance. CGI manipulation had been around for a number of years prior to this, with such films as 'X-Men: The Last Stand' attempting to show de-aged versions of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen that was a sight to see, but mainly looked off-kilter. Technology had improved to the point where they could do a whole performance within that realm, but it was still not quite right. It's fun to have Peter Cushing back, but there's something dead about Tarkin, the eyes have no soul, maybe that's it, or the skin is too flat. I don't know what it was, but I suspect even if you didn't know the actor you'd sense things were off. They wisely didn't do anything out of the ordinary, seeing him (and Leia at the end), in the kind of setting we saw them before, doing and saying what they did in the original, and so there wasn't much to get wrong - in fact Leia's one word is a triumphant moment to end the film, perfectly judged.
The question of whether it's right to do this is something else, and is a serious quandary. I don't want to see a young William Shatner as Captain Kirk, spouting swearwords and doing things he wouldn't have done in the original 'Star Trek,' and that's the danger: that filmmakers misuse the likenesses of actors against either the original character or the attitudes of the actor. There's also something to be said for an actor's career having an end, as everything does. Who are creatives to come along and decide that they're going to resurrect a popular figure of the past, to exploit them as novelty value? Would I go and see a new John Wayne film that had been shot today? I can't say that I wouldn't, but it would be a novelty and I suspect such things would be abused, with political motives, whether to deal with minorities, the environment or any other current issue, and by the nature of modern storytelling, probably be untrue to an actor or the characters they played. That's the big trouble with this stuff, even if the estate of the actor concerned sells the rights, it's a dangerous path to tread. It also leads me on to a point that was a negative for this film, and for most modern films that aren't set contemporaneously: modern sensibilities, especially in speech.
Now granted, there was no swearing, no gore, no romance in this film, and it was all the better for it, but at the same time the characters do use turns of phrases or patterns of speech that you wouldn't necessarily expect from a film made in 1977, and so I do wish that as closely as they aligned the visuals to the period of the first 'Star Wars,' I would have liked it a lot more if it had been made, directed and shot in the same way, and written as it if was a period piece, Shakespearean and staged. I know it's really a misconception on my part, and that the ideas I have of westerns or war films are largely a 1940s-1960s version of the past, which use the language and sensibilities of those decades rather than an accurate representation of the period they're portraying, and that films have generally always been made to be identifiable to the audience of the time in which they came out. I understand that, but it also lessens my appreciation of modern films when they portray a period, yet talk in the same way as the current generation, or ignore the style of the past. 'Star Trek' is the perfect example - for so long it had a developing aesthetic that was beholden to the design history of each series that came out, but in the current films and 'Discovery,' that was abandoned in favour of remaking an old era with modern visuals that don't fit the established history, and current speech patterns. It's frustrating and a slap in the face to people that have followed the unfolding future history, but this film was an antidote to that, a balm that showed you can play in an era that was created in the past without needing to completely overhaul it!
They managed to extrapolate from the production design of the Original Trilogy (OT), and paint a world of the Empire and alien worlds that fit with what had gone before, and we even get to revisit character or locations. I really liked how they bridged both the hated prequels and the loved OT with things like the Yavin base, the little cameo from C-3PO and R2-D2 that was completely unexpected (though they probably have as much, or more, time together here than the whole current trilogy did, which is sad!), and the small roles for both Bail Organa ('King' of Alderaan, I suppose), and Mon Mothma! But you cannot live on cameos alone, and if the new characters had fallen flat, the film would have been as average and dull as Rey's films. So it was fortunate that, though they weren't instant classics, this little band of rebels worked well enough that you bond with them, and their deaths are meaningful, unlike the main characters in the new trilogy, any of which could have died and it would have been of no consequence to me! Almost immediately this gang are more likeable and interesting than those dullards, and Tarkin's subordinate is less annoying or a figure of fun than General Hux was. I was unsure about the droid (K?), who was a droll, casual version of 3PO, and throughout the film I never trusted him, expecting this reprogrammed Imperial droid to be a plant by the baddies who would turn on them when they least expected it. Instead he gets as heroic a death, defending his friends, and we see a mini arc conclude when Jyn shows her trust in him by handing him a Blaster.
One digression: I did wonder at the logic of this Empire who can build droids that are this strong and accurate and don't use them as their army rather than the consistently poor shots of the flesh and blood troops. I like how accurate that is with the OT, but this one droid can take out loads of them before he's dispatched, and that wasn't the only flaw I noticed in what was a generally tight story: how could they take down even one AT-AT with blasting weapons when they're supposed to be 'too strong for Blasters,' yet that's exactly what happens when one of the legs is targeted and they bring it down. Perhaps this skirmish forced the Imperials to toughen the armour to what it was at the Battle of Hoth. There are always going to be holes or mistakes in a film, the important thing is whether you can forgive them and move on, or come up with an explanation as I just have, and if you like a film it's more of a boon than a mistake as it forces you to think about what this may mean in-universe, which gives you more investment therein. One other rather large question that hovers over not just this film, but all of them, is just how much the ordinary mortal can have dealings with the Force. This was prompted by the blind monk-like character who has a strong belief in it, but isn't a Jedi.
The Jedi were wiped out, we saw that in Episode III, and in the OT I always got the impression that such beliefs were generally long dead, nor was it ever really explained what it took to be a Jedi, that was the mystery and myth of it all that made those films such a draw. If it was as simple as trusting in the Force and allowing it to work through you then why did we need Luke? That's where the problem lies: whatever you do, if you're going to do it by using parts of the other films, since that's what 'Star Wars' is, then it undermines those originals. How do you make something that is part of an ongoing mythos, yet don't rely on the parts of it that need to be unique to the other films? In most cases you don't, so in most cases these films fail. Not financially, giving the people more of what they want is the easy option (as much as making a film can ever be an easy option!), but giving them something that builds on the other things they like, but is significant in its own right? That's tough. There's an appetite to learn more about this world, the Force, the Empire, the heroes, that's why we want more 'Star Wars,' after all, but ever since the prequels explained so much and took away the mystery, and narrowed the time period, the settings and what you could expect, it took away from the speculation and the joy of discovery and potential in the OT. More is definitely less. But if you are going to do more you need to find ways of adding something without taking away, and I took this blind character as an attempt to do that.
He is faithful, despite his friend's disbelief, a Luke and Han dynamic, but anything he does can be attributed to his skill and training, his honed senses, and pure chance that he didn't get shot when he takes it upon himself to go out into the firefight and press the lever that will transmit the essential data. If you want to read it that he does have a closeness to the Force, you can, but it's ambiguous and we're spared learning any more about him or anyone else by the fact that we only have this one film to know these characters. I must admit, I'd much rather have seen this as the culmination of a new trilogy set between III and IV (just as in 2006 it was first announced that a series set in that period was going to happen), than the trilogy we got, but who knows if dragging out the characters across three films would have worked any more than Rey, Finn and Poe did? The important thing was that there was actual dramatic stakes between characters, Captain Andor (a Trek reference, or coincidence?), having the mission to kill Jyn's Dad, Galen Erso, but at the moment of truth he couldn't do it. I thought this was going to be the thrust of the film, but it occurred relatively early in the story, Galen dying anyway through the friendly fire of a Rebel attack. Andor reminds Jyn that she's not the only one to lose everything, and that was an important point, too - just as Luke would find his simple life broken when his Uncle and Aunt are murdered and the homestead burned. It shows that this horror was happening to a lot of people which in turn makes the Rebellion more real, whereas Rey, her life and her motivations were never very strong.
For these reasons, this film felt far more 'Wars' than Disney compared to the trilogy, so it was sad that everyone had to die, but then it may be that their fleeting contribution made them bittersweet characters whom didn't outstay their welcome. I really was impressed over all - you know where we're going and what has to happen, one flaw with a prequel that can be turned to an advantage because there's a melancholy to the inevitable, and while Anakin's descent was of a similar stripe, it was never logical or earned, where these people met their fates heroically. You care what happens to them, and the film doesn't let you down on the war front either, with probably the best space battle scenes of any of the new films, X-Wings, TIE Fighters, ground forces, it was all marshalled to an understandable and believable conclusion, far from the messy retreads of the trilogy. With this there's a connection that goes beyond the nostalgia for seeing old faces - the cameos fit neatly in this one and it made me think I'd have been happy if I'd gone to see this at the cinema, where the others have been disappointments. I liked that in the same way as playing the side missions away from the known battles of the OT in games like 'Rogue Leader' on the GameCube, or watching the old 'Droids' cartoon of the 1980s, this was away from the main stage, but still of importance, tragic in its impression of forgotten heroes in the Rebellion and setting up 'A New Hope' perfectly. I only wished that the Battle of Scarif was actually on Kothlis from 'RL'!
The final thing I need to mention is Vader's role. I'd had it reiterated by various people how cool his scene at the end was - I knew he was going to kill a load of people and I went into the film wondering if I was going to feel uncomfortable, as if it was going to glorify his evilness and make you want to cheer him on, which is clearly wrong since he's evil. But delighting in power, whether it's good or evil seems to be something more common now, and the impression I get with some 'Star Wars' games I've heard about is an ambivalence between right and wrong, almost as if it's a good thing to have the option to be a Sith rather than a Jedi, it's just a 'different' path. Like the vague nature of the Force and its impersonal existence, it becomes more about making choices rather than absolutes - as they openly said in one film, only the Sith deal in absolutes, which was always a worrying admission in my eyes. But far from the Vader scene being something to glorify him, it was a tense moment on a much smaller scale than I'd anticipated as the man in black stalks the Rebel ship's corridor and a rebel desperately tries to deliver the plans, then he uses all the powers at his disposal to grab guns, deflect Blaster fire, levitate enemies and slice through them with his lightsaber - it was cool, but it wasn't excessive. I'd imagined either a mass slaughter of Rebels or Director Krennic and his supporters being put in their place, a horror of fascination with the evil powers Vader possesses, but it was matter of fact and direct, with the heroes winning out, even at the cost of those sacrificed beneath the red beam of death.
The film tripped along, despite the running time, and unlike Rey's boring trilogy which often drags, and it showed how to do a prequel - indeed, you can't get more of a prequel than this, directly before IV, and its mix of a new group out on their own mission against orders, taking place off to the side of a larger world, gave it that remote feeling those OT films were so good at. I was surprised and pleased to find I liked it, and while it only just ticks across the line into my good books, the ending is what pushes it through. If I was going to rank the films I'd say this was one of the middling ones below the OT and Episode I, but better than all the other Disney 'Star Wars' films. It's probably just below Episode III, but it's hard to say without watching both of them again. The fact that I had the desire to write a review at all shows that this was a worthwhile film, and in a decade where there's been sparse comfort in viewing new films (off the top of my head I can only think of 'The Dark Knight Rises' and 'Interstellar' as being ones I really liked), it's good to have one more to add to the list. Long live the Rebellion!
***
Tuesday, 31 December 2019
Tuesday, 24 December 2019
Hug
DVD, Smallville S1 (Hug)
If you're ever feeling down, be it the dark winter months or the misery of the Christmas season, you can always come to the bright, upbeat and optimistic 'Smallville' to pick you up and shine its warm glow into your soul. Well, the first season at any rate. I've said it before, but its primary colours and good, cosy storytelling is the perfect antidote to any downhearted feelings, and this episode continues that trend with a portentous vision of how two best buddies could one day end up being enemies through ideological differences: Bob Rickman and Kyle Tippett, two salesmen caught in the meteor shower of '89, and finding their natural talents (or lack), bolstered into the power of persuasion. That might have been a better title than 'Hug,' but I suppose what they went for was a bit of mystery that doesn't immediately give away what this power's going to be. It expands the series to feature meteor freaks that aren't part of the High School and were infected at the time of the shower, much like old Cassandra in 'Hourglass,' so they continue to find varied methods of setting up the weekly challenge for Clark to face. It's all meant to be a foreshadowing of his and Lex' eventual enmity, and this is more poignant by the fact that Clark is shown here really trusting and believing on his friend - he's the one he goes to when Jonathan sells the farm to evil Bob (I love how Mr. Kent begins to protest that he doesn't want a Luthor's help, then a furious Martha shuts him down!), or takes the injured Kyle to as safe harbour for a fugitive. He even calls him his best friend, which I'm not sure how Pete would take if he'd been there at the time!
Friendship is a strong theme of this story, approached from various angles. I didn't buy that Lana considers Clark a friend of Whitney's, something which leads to a falling out between her and Clark when he takes a neutral stance rather coming down on her boyfriend's side about the fight between him and Kyle - I know Clark has saved him before (and does so again in another of the series' spectacular action effects shots where he takes the full force of a baseball bat to the shoulder, splintering it into the camera!), and has shown himself willing to team up if the situation demands (like when he and Whitney went after Lana when she was kidnapped by Bug Boy), but they've never been very genial around each other, more like barely tolerant. Of course the arc with his Dad in a bad way continues, so both Whitney and Lana are more prone to flare-ups than usual, and she proves especially protective towards him. It's telling, however, that she feels the need to stick up for Whitney to Clark, because if she was truly angry with him she'd probably just avoid coming near (so she hears Kyle's escaped from prison and she thinks it's a good idea to go out in the dark to sit in Clark's barn?!). But as we see from the ending, she values her friendship with good guy Clark far more than she does her pride, and although her first advance is pushed away earlier in the episode when Clark's still feeling a little injured by her turning on him, they both come down off their high horses and make it up, saving what otherwise might have been a silly finale in what was a sensitive episode.
The finale I speak of is certainly high concept: Lex, urged by Bob's powers, arrives to kill both Clark and the man he's protecting, Kyle, setting his own car alight, then hunting them down with an automatic weapon. We even get a first taste of how he might react to Clark's keeping secret his own powers, and all the angst this young Luthor holds within is splayed out in bile against all those that distrust him for his name. I can't actually remember how it was when Lex finally found out, which reminds me how forgettable the later seasons' use of Lex was. I don't even recall if he found out before he exited the series, but I've always remembered this scene where he says, "You've got a lot of explaining to do, Clark!" As is usually the case, he conveniently forgets all he did or saw once the persuasive power has worn off, but it's an insight into what he could become, even at such an early stage. It's always sad to think how the series degenerated when you see these early episodes that are so good, but later failures can't take away from the successes here. That said, the action, despite being vibrant and dramatic, does make things a bit simplistic compared to the themes and character nuances through the episode, but it doesn't detract. We get another slow motion shot of Clark reacting to bullets - twice in fact, the first where he shoves Kyle out of the line of fire from a persuaded cop bent on killing him, then again when Lex fires his clip into Clark. On the first occasion I was wondering why he didn't do what he'd commonly do later when it came to gunfire, and pat the shot away, but by his surprise at surviving Lex' spray we realise he didn't know he could.
That also explains his slow reaction as he lay on the floor of the garage while Lex walks up to him ready to unload another clip into his prone form - he was still recovering from the shock of his mate firing at him, and his body rebounding the impacts! It's almost comical except for his horror at what's happening, and the episode, though creepy (crazed, baseball bat-wielding Whitney; Bob's terrible toothy smile), still has time for humour, whether that be Chloe's inability to ride a horse with ease, or Chloe being given a demonstration of Kyle's power when he persuades her to kiss Clark, and then there's Chloe… okay, there's a bit of a theme here. Usually Pete's the comedy character, but he's barely in evidence and they still haven't quite got the Scooby Gang mentality off to a tee yet. It makes more sense for Clark to be dealing with things on his own sometimes, especially in this case where his powers become known to the guy he helps. Pete would only have been an obstacle to overcome, someone to hide his powers from as usual, and sadly that was the way Pete's role went on the series, and presumably why he left. Clark could team up with Chloe or sometimes Lana, but he didn't really need a best buddy he couldn't confide in while his parents were there, and sadly that meant Pete often got shortchanged. Not that it harms this episode because Lex is clearly filling in the role of friend to Clark, and the direct connections to their future are beautifully observed. "Our friendship will be the stuff of legend," claims Lex, and if only the series had had the writing to be able to pull it off down the line.
There are, as ever, a couple of points you have to pick at because although Bob was a menace to society I can't believe Clark would condone Kyle killing him. I know that technically he committed suicide, but it was Kyle overpowering his mind, just as he had done to the environmental officer at the beginning, and we see there that goading someone into the hopelessness of suicide is about the worst, most evil way you could find to murder someone. I can see the parallel that Bob got what he had doled out to others, but Clark was a little too nonjudgmental when it came to Kyle's act. He had to pay for it, going underground for the rest of his life, and actually he'd have been a great character to bring back down the line when Clark was dealing with superheroes on a regular basis, but I don't remember him ever showing up again as some of the freak survivors did. He was a cool character, walking around in his long coat, looking like a Jedi with the mental power to match, it was all very evocative and creative, not to mention that it gives them somewhere else to have an adventure as the woods hadn't really been used before. It all helps to broaden this small ville, even if we didn't see any of the recurring characters this time, aside from a brief appearance from Victoria to remind us she's still around. Nell makes an impact, though not in person, threatening to go to the police over Lana's accident and you can imagine she could be a tough cookie to deal with. Again, it's a shame her role wasn't grown. Like Lana she's very protective and obviously cares a lot.
I suppose there's a sort of veiled environmental message in the story, but it's more about big businesses staring down each other's big guns, with Lex standing in the way of Bob's devious plans, hints to his past (including a specific reference to Club Zero which we'd be hearing more about soon), and his own confidence readily standing up to Rickman, like a guardian angel protecting the Kents. There are good messages about solitary people not necessarily being dangerous people, a warning that friends will always stab you in the back eventually, as loner Kyle states, and redemption in a new sense of purpose for him when he finally accepts his gifts as a role to play in the world rather than something to hide and escape from, which is inspiring and lays the path Clark would eventually follow. There are even the usual Superman hints, such as Clark talking about being unsure of his future except he knows he doesn't want to wear a suit and do a lot of flying! The series is really swimming along nicely and shows no signs of running out of ideas. I love this style of storytelling where you learn a lesson or two along the episodic way, while also tying into ongoing concerns that affect the characters and deepen their interactions and background.
***
If you're ever feeling down, be it the dark winter months or the misery of the Christmas season, you can always come to the bright, upbeat and optimistic 'Smallville' to pick you up and shine its warm glow into your soul. Well, the first season at any rate. I've said it before, but its primary colours and good, cosy storytelling is the perfect antidote to any downhearted feelings, and this episode continues that trend with a portentous vision of how two best buddies could one day end up being enemies through ideological differences: Bob Rickman and Kyle Tippett, two salesmen caught in the meteor shower of '89, and finding their natural talents (or lack), bolstered into the power of persuasion. That might have been a better title than 'Hug,' but I suppose what they went for was a bit of mystery that doesn't immediately give away what this power's going to be. It expands the series to feature meteor freaks that aren't part of the High School and were infected at the time of the shower, much like old Cassandra in 'Hourglass,' so they continue to find varied methods of setting up the weekly challenge for Clark to face. It's all meant to be a foreshadowing of his and Lex' eventual enmity, and this is more poignant by the fact that Clark is shown here really trusting and believing on his friend - he's the one he goes to when Jonathan sells the farm to evil Bob (I love how Mr. Kent begins to protest that he doesn't want a Luthor's help, then a furious Martha shuts him down!), or takes the injured Kyle to as safe harbour for a fugitive. He even calls him his best friend, which I'm not sure how Pete would take if he'd been there at the time!
Friendship is a strong theme of this story, approached from various angles. I didn't buy that Lana considers Clark a friend of Whitney's, something which leads to a falling out between her and Clark when he takes a neutral stance rather coming down on her boyfriend's side about the fight between him and Kyle - I know Clark has saved him before (and does so again in another of the series' spectacular action effects shots where he takes the full force of a baseball bat to the shoulder, splintering it into the camera!), and has shown himself willing to team up if the situation demands (like when he and Whitney went after Lana when she was kidnapped by Bug Boy), but they've never been very genial around each other, more like barely tolerant. Of course the arc with his Dad in a bad way continues, so both Whitney and Lana are more prone to flare-ups than usual, and she proves especially protective towards him. It's telling, however, that she feels the need to stick up for Whitney to Clark, because if she was truly angry with him she'd probably just avoid coming near (so she hears Kyle's escaped from prison and she thinks it's a good idea to go out in the dark to sit in Clark's barn?!). But as we see from the ending, she values her friendship with good guy Clark far more than she does her pride, and although her first advance is pushed away earlier in the episode when Clark's still feeling a little injured by her turning on him, they both come down off their high horses and make it up, saving what otherwise might have been a silly finale in what was a sensitive episode.
The finale I speak of is certainly high concept: Lex, urged by Bob's powers, arrives to kill both Clark and the man he's protecting, Kyle, setting his own car alight, then hunting them down with an automatic weapon. We even get a first taste of how he might react to Clark's keeping secret his own powers, and all the angst this young Luthor holds within is splayed out in bile against all those that distrust him for his name. I can't actually remember how it was when Lex finally found out, which reminds me how forgettable the later seasons' use of Lex was. I don't even recall if he found out before he exited the series, but I've always remembered this scene where he says, "You've got a lot of explaining to do, Clark!" As is usually the case, he conveniently forgets all he did or saw once the persuasive power has worn off, but it's an insight into what he could become, even at such an early stage. It's always sad to think how the series degenerated when you see these early episodes that are so good, but later failures can't take away from the successes here. That said, the action, despite being vibrant and dramatic, does make things a bit simplistic compared to the themes and character nuances through the episode, but it doesn't detract. We get another slow motion shot of Clark reacting to bullets - twice in fact, the first where he shoves Kyle out of the line of fire from a persuaded cop bent on killing him, then again when Lex fires his clip into Clark. On the first occasion I was wondering why he didn't do what he'd commonly do later when it came to gunfire, and pat the shot away, but by his surprise at surviving Lex' spray we realise he didn't know he could.
That also explains his slow reaction as he lay on the floor of the garage while Lex walks up to him ready to unload another clip into his prone form - he was still recovering from the shock of his mate firing at him, and his body rebounding the impacts! It's almost comical except for his horror at what's happening, and the episode, though creepy (crazed, baseball bat-wielding Whitney; Bob's terrible toothy smile), still has time for humour, whether that be Chloe's inability to ride a horse with ease, or Chloe being given a demonstration of Kyle's power when he persuades her to kiss Clark, and then there's Chloe… okay, there's a bit of a theme here. Usually Pete's the comedy character, but he's barely in evidence and they still haven't quite got the Scooby Gang mentality off to a tee yet. It makes more sense for Clark to be dealing with things on his own sometimes, especially in this case where his powers become known to the guy he helps. Pete would only have been an obstacle to overcome, someone to hide his powers from as usual, and sadly that was the way Pete's role went on the series, and presumably why he left. Clark could team up with Chloe or sometimes Lana, but he didn't really need a best buddy he couldn't confide in while his parents were there, and sadly that meant Pete often got shortchanged. Not that it harms this episode because Lex is clearly filling in the role of friend to Clark, and the direct connections to their future are beautifully observed. "Our friendship will be the stuff of legend," claims Lex, and if only the series had had the writing to be able to pull it off down the line.
There are, as ever, a couple of points you have to pick at because although Bob was a menace to society I can't believe Clark would condone Kyle killing him. I know that technically he committed suicide, but it was Kyle overpowering his mind, just as he had done to the environmental officer at the beginning, and we see there that goading someone into the hopelessness of suicide is about the worst, most evil way you could find to murder someone. I can see the parallel that Bob got what he had doled out to others, but Clark was a little too nonjudgmental when it came to Kyle's act. He had to pay for it, going underground for the rest of his life, and actually he'd have been a great character to bring back down the line when Clark was dealing with superheroes on a regular basis, but I don't remember him ever showing up again as some of the freak survivors did. He was a cool character, walking around in his long coat, looking like a Jedi with the mental power to match, it was all very evocative and creative, not to mention that it gives them somewhere else to have an adventure as the woods hadn't really been used before. It all helps to broaden this small ville, even if we didn't see any of the recurring characters this time, aside from a brief appearance from Victoria to remind us she's still around. Nell makes an impact, though not in person, threatening to go to the police over Lana's accident and you can imagine she could be a tough cookie to deal with. Again, it's a shame her role wasn't grown. Like Lana she's very protective and obviously cares a lot.
I suppose there's a sort of veiled environmental message in the story, but it's more about big businesses staring down each other's big guns, with Lex standing in the way of Bob's devious plans, hints to his past (including a specific reference to Club Zero which we'd be hearing more about soon), and his own confidence readily standing up to Rickman, like a guardian angel protecting the Kents. There are good messages about solitary people not necessarily being dangerous people, a warning that friends will always stab you in the back eventually, as loner Kyle states, and redemption in a new sense of purpose for him when he finally accepts his gifts as a role to play in the world rather than something to hide and escape from, which is inspiring and lays the path Clark would eventually follow. There are even the usual Superman hints, such as Clark talking about being unsure of his future except he knows he doesn't want to wear a suit and do a lot of flying! The series is really swimming along nicely and shows no signs of running out of ideas. I love this style of storytelling where you learn a lesson or two along the episodic way, while also tying into ongoing concerns that affect the characters and deepen their interactions and background.
***
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
cinema, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) film
Once you're home to Christmas lights and a hot cup of tea it seems ungrateful to be downhearted about the failure of a film to do what you want it to, in a rich, Western world in which we have so much. But while I was there I couldn't help the hollow feeling I was getting from this latest and last in the current 'Star Wars' trilogy. In the interests of disclosure I should say that I had no expectations whatsoever, except for the tiniest light under a bush of a hope that it would be a better film than 'The Last Jedi,' and as I had successfully avoided all details of the hype, just the bare facts that Emperor Palpatine and Lando Calrissian would return, this only gave me enhanced security that I might enjoy what they came up with because it would be entirely new to me. Like Episode VIII I feel obligated to give the film at least two stars, just because it's 'Star Wars' and features some of those old actors, but this goes right back to the start of this trilogy and its desire to play with the nostalgia of the original trilogy (OT), while also giving us a new main cast to carry the story, with the emphasis on modern ideals to make little girls love this stuff more by appealing to them directly. Not saying that's bad, just that it lessens the chances of the films appealing to a middle-aged male. I feel the problems were inherent in the concept - I applauded the use of the old characters, sets and style of filmmaking that was all in reaction to the heavy CGI and lack of connection to the OT in the prequels, but in retrospect it might have been better to dispense with them and concentrate completely on the new ones.
I'm not saying that would have made them appeal to me more, just that a clear vision might have been the result rather than trying to meld two distinct generations together. Either that, or don't bother with a new main cast, put all the old people back together and have them go on an altogether different adventure, obviously not predicated on personal action and peril. But that could have been too far from the 'Star Wars' concept, which this trilogy adheres to strongly. If you think about it, of course you're going to have wars, and happening in the stars - the clue's in the name! That still didn't prevent me from hoping for a more coherent universe that was a believable extrapolation from the end of 'Return of the Jedi.' That was another problem with the series, there was no satisfying explanation for the state of the galaxy at war, it was just so because that's what you need it to be for the set-piece action and mythic storytelling. And that's another thing, this mythic narrative doesn't follow the conventions of myth and legend, it's all a bit muddled and unsure of itself. Originality would be a boon, but in reality it was set firmly in the OT mould in the sense that they were using those films as the template for chunks of each new film. In consequence you feel yourself essentially viewing the same events, just a bit shifted around, like a moveable jigsaw puzzle, but when you put it all together it's nowhere near as strong a picture. I find this same style of storytelling in so many of the latest franchise films, and maybe formula is what you should get when that's what you're paying for, but again, it doesn't provide much of an experience for those well versed in the Force.
Repeating some of the best bits with superior graphics and inferior everything else wasn't a good idea. You can't see this trilogy as its own thing because it is so heavily invested in those old films, but at the same time I find myself thinking how much more I'd be enjoying one of those old films rather than seeing the same sort of thing with these new characters. Part of it is no doubt the jadedness of age: I even thought Episode II was pretty great when it first came out, and now it's the worst. It's no help to me, however, to know that it might be me that's part of the 'problem,' and I still think that if they had managed to get someone less bland and safe to direct then the material might have been elevated, but only if the writing was also vastly improved. Except JJ Abrams wasn't the only guy to be responsible, it was Rian Johnson who directed Episode VIII, so who knows how it might have been saved? The OT had three different Directors, but it was also held together by one man's vision, whereas it's painfully obvious that this trilogy went off the rails between the first two parts, and was never really 'on the rails' to begin with. This third instalment appears to be an attempt to get back towards the initial direction that Abrams set in motion, but I never got the impression there was a clear idea of travel from the start. Was Rey always going to be the granddaughter of Palpatine or did they bring in the Emperor as a ploy to win over the disaffected? Did they map out how the war would end and the whos, whats and wheres? Or did they just make it up as they went along? That's what it felt like to me.
It was a long film, something around two and a half hours, and it did drag, but the length of a film has no bearing on its enjoyment factor - in fact, the best films are the ones you wish were even longer because you don't want to leave that world! That was far from the case here, it was a lot of running around using up time rather than building a story structure. The films have always been a bit messy in terms of location and object, but somehow the OT flowed neatly and purposefully. This film in particular didn't appear to have a strong structure. I'm not even sure what it was about, and if you can't sum up a story concept simply then you've failed. It was about finding a gizmo that points the way to a place where Palpatine is holed up so Rey and Ren can confront their destiny, I suppose is the best I can do, but it's not entirely as simple as that. What was the purpose of the other main characters, Finn and Poe? Finn seems to have a new girlfriend every film and Poe balks at command when he's thrust into the role at last, yet in the previous films he's quick to lead and even go against his superiors because he's so sure of himself, so this newfound crisis of confidence rang false. They also undercut any dramatic potential by quickly and easily undoing any terrible things that happen. By my count this happened at least three times: firstly, when Chewbacca is believed killed when Rey and Ren Force-fight over an enemy transport, tearing it apart; then C-3PO must sacrifice his life (essentially - his memory of all that had gone before, though they pulled that stunt to similar effect in the prequel trilogy); and lastly in Rey killing Ren.
In each of these cases there's little time to experience horror, remorse or regret before the problem is solved, and this is where the 'Disney' effect comes in hard as if they're afraid to deal out too much to the characters because it's for children. That's fine, but that's also why it appeals far less to me. It's not because I want to see Chewie die, of course I don't, but if you remove the stakes and think that at every turn everyone's going to be fine then where is your drama? I never thought for a moment that Rey was really going to turn to the Dark Side, a growing plot point that had been poorly implemented across the trilogy - it was like an even poorer man's Anakin from the PT, someone we know is inevitably going to turn. At least Rey was a little more likeable than that awful character in Episodes II and III. Actually, likeable is too strong a word, she was middling, and I don't rate Daisy Ridley as an actress. Whether it was her local southern British accent that makes her so everyday to me, or that the character never went anywhere, I don't know, but I never found myself caring what happened to her. At least Poe had a slight edge to him, even if he was just a younger, tamer Han Solo. Finn, too, was awfully bland and forgettable, so it was up to the older supporting cast to prevent the film from being completely at a loss (although I do think Kylo Ren's role had some interest, and he's clearly a good actor).
I was pleased that 3PO actually made it into the adventure this time rather than having a couple of lines and being no more than a redundant reminder of the OT. But as I said, his great sacrifice amounted to nothing because R2 could back him up - it smacks of the empty death of Data in 'Star Trek Nemesis' where we can just fill another android body with his memories and allow his personality to filter out eventually. I liked the symmetry of R2 returning his memories when at the end of the PT I seem to recall he wiped his friend's mind, but it also wiped any sacrifice. Again, I don't want 3PO to become a vegetable, and I was glad that the impending running gag of the protocol droid continually getting 'laughs' from not knowing what everyone else knows was much more sparsely implemented than I expected, groaning inwardly as I thought I saw the direction things were heading in. Chewie didn't seem quite himself, and I know that Peter Mayhew died before this was made, I don't remember if he was even alive for Episode VIII, but I noticed visible signs that this was a different performance in the way the big lump walked or growled - it shows that the role wasn't just a background extra and that Mayhew was able to imbue this creature with personality, just as until Andy Serkis played Gollum people didn't really believe motion capture was acting. If Chewie had died in the ship crash (and it was a little daft since Rey should be able to sense his absence from it if she can sense his presence later), it would have been a pointless, lacklustre death, but if it had been a well-kept secret only to come out later in the film that he might still live it would have had some impact.
The biggest flaw with this is when Rey kills Ren in the same manner as he murdered his Father, Han. I can see where they were going with Ren actually being the Skywalker who rises in the title, thus he couldn't die at that point because he needed to join Rey, but his contribution and even turning away from Palpatine was poorly handled, something the PT was equally guilty of, so it's not like this film wasn't committing the same sins as its derided forebears. Ren was just as easily and oddly turned as Anakin was: the latter gets a bit miffed because he killed his wife, Padme, and the former has a pep talk from a surprise guest cameo of Harrison Ford. I did wonder how many and who would be showing up (I'm sure that was Wedge Antilles manning the gun on the Falcon at the end - they must have offered him a bajillion pounds to do it!), but in so much of this trilogy, as much as it was nice to see him back, it just felt empty. From the start I was disappointed that we didn't get the gang all back together as I so wanted to see, and it never happened: Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, the droids and Lando were largely kept separate, and that was galling. I know they aren't the stars of the show, but that's what I paid my money to see! 3PO without R2 by his side is like… well, something that should be together that isn't. Yes, my writing ingenuity is about as accomplished as the script writers so I shouldn't be pulling them down, but I just wish they'd shown evidence of aiming higher!
So Ren is killed, then right away Rey sees the error of her ways and heals him as we saw in the cavern earlier in the film. I liked that scene - it did come across as unimportant until you realise it was clear foreshadowing, but it makes you wonder why any Jedi couldn't heal each other - Obi-Wan could have healed Qui-Gon, for example. Okay, so Rey is supposed to be this super-powerful Force user since she's got Palpatine blood running through her veins, but even so, it's an ability that is almost as difficult to deal with as General Holdo's hyper-speed through the enemy fleet in VIII (which is brought up as a tactic, then sensibly fixed by saying it was a one in a million chance, one line of dialogue I appreciated to make up for idiocy of such an act in the previous film). Were we supposed to assume that because 'good' Rey healed 'bad' Ren, that was what gave him his change of heart? If so, that's a nonsense in itself since she was full of anger about the murder of her parents: a never-before-known son of Palpatine was her Dad. Trouble with it is that Ridley doesn't have the acting skills to portray someone torn apart by anger and hatred so you never get the slightest hint of this burning rage - at least the petulant Anakin seemed dangerous, in his whiny, snivelling way ("It's Obi-Wan, he's holding me back!"), but Rey is nothing but a clean-cut straight arrow simple girl with none of the struggle the role should have been about. Driver at least embodies some of the struggle, but even he has no real development to this precipice moment of decision.
I think back to Luke learning who his Father is, and the furore of emotions that overpower him and lead him to cast himself away to potential doom rather than deal with this hideous truth thrust in front of his unsuspecting face. Or the rage of bloodlust as he tastes his own power on the Death Star when he takes on Vader for the second time. There's not one moment in any of these films that even comes close to the vitality and raw horror and power of these scenes that have made those films classics. Blandness, suffused with complication and a confusion of avoiding mythical archetypes in order to fit with a modern sensibility have robbed this latest trilogy of any strength and life - it's an insult to the young girls it's trying to please, to suggest that this is good enough. It could have been so much more! As much as I was pleased to see Ian McDiarmid back, one of the best actors in the franchise, I also have to concede that his presence is yet another destruction of the OT. If all that was for nothing, Vader died to save Luke and defeat the Emperor, freeing the galaxy from tyranny, then what good was it all for if a few decades later he's still hanging around in some underground cavern with hordes of followers (were they supposed to be clones of him - we never got to see under their cowls?), and a vast fleet of Star Destroyers he just happens to have stowed away.
The First Order, and now this Last Order, as it was known, was one of the biggest problems with the trilogy. I see the problem: if you're going to have wars then you need an army to fight, but right from Episode VII's beginning I was dismayed that they glossed over any sense of development of the story and just had a huge army there running the galaxy again. They'd already done a story of the Republic falling prey to Palpatine's political machinations (which were almost as daft as this trilogy), so they couldn't easily do the build up to yet another Evil Empire, but surely they could have come up with a better idea than simply conjuring up a load of Star Destroyers and the hundreds of thousands needed to crew them! In this film, Richard E. Grant does a commendable job of being a new lieutenant to Ren's Supreme Leader. At least he isn't the butt of stupid humour all the time like useless Hux was. His death, shot for being a traitor and helping the rebels (because he hated Ren? Um…), fitted his pointless, useless character perfectly, and a note of interest was injected into proceedings when Grant's character says he helped the Emperor in the first war. Where did all these people go? Were all those ships hidden at the Sith planet crewed there? How did the Emperor feed them all? How long did they have to wait on this dark, dreary planet and what was their motivation?
There's some talk of other Stormtroopers being held against their will as Finn was, but again it was never explored. We don't know much of anything about the First Order, what happened after Episode VI, or anything else, and it would have been helpful to at least get some backstory. The closest we come to that is a fleetingly charming scene in which we see Luke instructing his sister in the ways of the Force, with a lightsaber duel in the woods - their faces are covered to save on production budget, but we do at least get a short shot of them flipping up the visors to present youthful versions from VI, even if they did seem a little lifeless. That's something I would also have to level at Carrie Fisher's current state as General Organa in this film. The actress had died just before VIII was released, and I thought there was going to be only a little of her using material from an unused scene in VII, reworked to include her. We actually got far more of her than I expected, but I wondered if a lot of it was CGI - it's impressive if I'm not sure, which I'm not, but it also felt odd, like they'd cut around her or picked out specific lines because that's all they had to work with. So sometimes her presence in a scene goes unfinished, and though I'd much rather have the Princess of the franchise than not, I don't know that it really worked and it must have been hard to have the dead body of Leia on set when they knew Fisher herself was also dead - as if they'd had Leonard Nimoy's Spock die on camera in the third modern Trek film.
Yet it was good to see her again, as it was Luke, and especially Lando, still in the flesh. I don't like the too-solid Force ghosts they've been going for and I was terribly disappointed that we didn't get a shot of all the old Jedi Masters at the very end, it was just Luke and Leia back at the old Tatooine homestead, which, now that I know was kept up as a tourist attraction where you can stay, has far less sentimental impact on me than when I first saw it brought back in Episode II! It almost felt like a travel advert with that knowledge: come and stay at the Skywalker ranch! It also doesn't entirely make sense that Luke and Leia would be the ones to reappear - surely her parents were more important to her, but because we only see them briefly in flashback they don't mean anything to us. I really wanted Alec Guinness, Liam Neeson, Yoda, and every good character that had died to be present, but it suited the muddled story that you don't know who to expect in that scene. I had no sense of where the story was going to go from there, either. It's supposed to be the end of the Skywalker saga, but it would have been good to know what was going to happen next, for Rey at least. I wonder if she'll be coming back in forty years time in a similar role as Fisher, Hamill and the rest fulfilled here? I wouldn't be surprised unless Disney exploits the property into the ground. Can I see this trilogy going down as film classic and being loved for generations? Nope, but it's an unfair comparison to make since the OT was a true revolution in cinema, marketing and merchandise that could probably never be repeated to have the same impact as it was such a moment in cinema (and business), history.
As is so often the case, my negative opinions have swamped any positive observations, but I must say that I loved having 3PO play a role as big as the old films, and I think they really missed out by not keeping the format of everything happening around the droids as if they were the real main characters. Partly, this was down to the desire for toy possibilities, which is as much as BB-8 ever meant. He, or it, never had any of the character of R2, and I can't even remember who he even belonged to. It was a good design, but something that fell through the cracks as they failed to understand the things that made 'Star Wars' work. Oops, I'm straying back into negativity, so let me say I liked McDiarmid, even if I questioned the choice to bring him back and the way he was defeated was simplistic. But he was pretty good. Poe was fairly good, there was still a lot of the contemporary humour undercutting everything, but it was always going to be 'fun' and 'funny,' it's just a shame they forgot about the drama. The tiny droid-fixing character, Bibbo Frik or whatever he was called, was amusing and used sparingly and to good effect. The environments were big and bad, it was slightly touching to return to the wreckage of the Death Star, crashed as it was in the ocean of Endor - I was especially pleased to get my shot of some Ewoks as I felt they were missing when we met the rebels on that world.
I have to say that there were a few things that pulled me out of the 'story,' mainly the casting - seeing a Hobbit among the rebels (i.e.: Dominic Monaghan), was bad enough, and Richard E. Grant was good, but obviously Grant, and there were one or two other faces I recognised. That was never really a problem in the OT because it was made so long ago that I didn't know the actors other than from those films. I just like having an actor in a role where they're so well served you forget they're an actor, or another famous role. That's why the main cast should have been spellbinding as I only know them as those roles, except the casting department fell down and didn't deliver. Nothing on the scale of Hayden Christensen, obviously, or even Ewan McGregor who was up and down, but neither was there a Liam Neeson to hold up the cast - you hear Qui-Gon's voice as one of the Jedi urging Rey on, but I couldn't work out if they were new lines or a reuse of previous ones. I've so wanted to see a Qui-Gon reappearance as Episode I is still my favourite post-OT film, and nothing since has come close in matching him, Darth Maul, or the events of that film. What more can I say, except that I did appreciate the minor course corrections that were made, the old relics that were brought back (like Luke's X-Wing), but as before it was just too heavily dependent on the past stories and didn't effectively develop the characters or plots beyond the standard 'Star Wars' fare of throwing a load of ships into pitched battle. Even seeing Lando and Chewie in the pilots' seats of the Falcon failed to move me. If I'd had expectations I'd have been majorly disappointed, but as it was it merely justified my lack of cinema attendance for the last three years and didn't encourage me to go back there any time soon. Sad, but that's what I got from it.
**
Once you're home to Christmas lights and a hot cup of tea it seems ungrateful to be downhearted about the failure of a film to do what you want it to, in a rich, Western world in which we have so much. But while I was there I couldn't help the hollow feeling I was getting from this latest and last in the current 'Star Wars' trilogy. In the interests of disclosure I should say that I had no expectations whatsoever, except for the tiniest light under a bush of a hope that it would be a better film than 'The Last Jedi,' and as I had successfully avoided all details of the hype, just the bare facts that Emperor Palpatine and Lando Calrissian would return, this only gave me enhanced security that I might enjoy what they came up with because it would be entirely new to me. Like Episode VIII I feel obligated to give the film at least two stars, just because it's 'Star Wars' and features some of those old actors, but this goes right back to the start of this trilogy and its desire to play with the nostalgia of the original trilogy (OT), while also giving us a new main cast to carry the story, with the emphasis on modern ideals to make little girls love this stuff more by appealing to them directly. Not saying that's bad, just that it lessens the chances of the films appealing to a middle-aged male. I feel the problems were inherent in the concept - I applauded the use of the old characters, sets and style of filmmaking that was all in reaction to the heavy CGI and lack of connection to the OT in the prequels, but in retrospect it might have been better to dispense with them and concentrate completely on the new ones.
I'm not saying that would have made them appeal to me more, just that a clear vision might have been the result rather than trying to meld two distinct generations together. Either that, or don't bother with a new main cast, put all the old people back together and have them go on an altogether different adventure, obviously not predicated on personal action and peril. But that could have been too far from the 'Star Wars' concept, which this trilogy adheres to strongly. If you think about it, of course you're going to have wars, and happening in the stars - the clue's in the name! That still didn't prevent me from hoping for a more coherent universe that was a believable extrapolation from the end of 'Return of the Jedi.' That was another problem with the series, there was no satisfying explanation for the state of the galaxy at war, it was just so because that's what you need it to be for the set-piece action and mythic storytelling. And that's another thing, this mythic narrative doesn't follow the conventions of myth and legend, it's all a bit muddled and unsure of itself. Originality would be a boon, but in reality it was set firmly in the OT mould in the sense that they were using those films as the template for chunks of each new film. In consequence you feel yourself essentially viewing the same events, just a bit shifted around, like a moveable jigsaw puzzle, but when you put it all together it's nowhere near as strong a picture. I find this same style of storytelling in so many of the latest franchise films, and maybe formula is what you should get when that's what you're paying for, but again, it doesn't provide much of an experience for those well versed in the Force.
Repeating some of the best bits with superior graphics and inferior everything else wasn't a good idea. You can't see this trilogy as its own thing because it is so heavily invested in those old films, but at the same time I find myself thinking how much more I'd be enjoying one of those old films rather than seeing the same sort of thing with these new characters. Part of it is no doubt the jadedness of age: I even thought Episode II was pretty great when it first came out, and now it's the worst. It's no help to me, however, to know that it might be me that's part of the 'problem,' and I still think that if they had managed to get someone less bland and safe to direct then the material might have been elevated, but only if the writing was also vastly improved. Except JJ Abrams wasn't the only guy to be responsible, it was Rian Johnson who directed Episode VIII, so who knows how it might have been saved? The OT had three different Directors, but it was also held together by one man's vision, whereas it's painfully obvious that this trilogy went off the rails between the first two parts, and was never really 'on the rails' to begin with. This third instalment appears to be an attempt to get back towards the initial direction that Abrams set in motion, but I never got the impression there was a clear idea of travel from the start. Was Rey always going to be the granddaughter of Palpatine or did they bring in the Emperor as a ploy to win over the disaffected? Did they map out how the war would end and the whos, whats and wheres? Or did they just make it up as they went along? That's what it felt like to me.
It was a long film, something around two and a half hours, and it did drag, but the length of a film has no bearing on its enjoyment factor - in fact, the best films are the ones you wish were even longer because you don't want to leave that world! That was far from the case here, it was a lot of running around using up time rather than building a story structure. The films have always been a bit messy in terms of location and object, but somehow the OT flowed neatly and purposefully. This film in particular didn't appear to have a strong structure. I'm not even sure what it was about, and if you can't sum up a story concept simply then you've failed. It was about finding a gizmo that points the way to a place where Palpatine is holed up so Rey and Ren can confront their destiny, I suppose is the best I can do, but it's not entirely as simple as that. What was the purpose of the other main characters, Finn and Poe? Finn seems to have a new girlfriend every film and Poe balks at command when he's thrust into the role at last, yet in the previous films he's quick to lead and even go against his superiors because he's so sure of himself, so this newfound crisis of confidence rang false. They also undercut any dramatic potential by quickly and easily undoing any terrible things that happen. By my count this happened at least three times: firstly, when Chewbacca is believed killed when Rey and Ren Force-fight over an enemy transport, tearing it apart; then C-3PO must sacrifice his life (essentially - his memory of all that had gone before, though they pulled that stunt to similar effect in the prequel trilogy); and lastly in Rey killing Ren.
In each of these cases there's little time to experience horror, remorse or regret before the problem is solved, and this is where the 'Disney' effect comes in hard as if they're afraid to deal out too much to the characters because it's for children. That's fine, but that's also why it appeals far less to me. It's not because I want to see Chewie die, of course I don't, but if you remove the stakes and think that at every turn everyone's going to be fine then where is your drama? I never thought for a moment that Rey was really going to turn to the Dark Side, a growing plot point that had been poorly implemented across the trilogy - it was like an even poorer man's Anakin from the PT, someone we know is inevitably going to turn. At least Rey was a little more likeable than that awful character in Episodes II and III. Actually, likeable is too strong a word, she was middling, and I don't rate Daisy Ridley as an actress. Whether it was her local southern British accent that makes her so everyday to me, or that the character never went anywhere, I don't know, but I never found myself caring what happened to her. At least Poe had a slight edge to him, even if he was just a younger, tamer Han Solo. Finn, too, was awfully bland and forgettable, so it was up to the older supporting cast to prevent the film from being completely at a loss (although I do think Kylo Ren's role had some interest, and he's clearly a good actor).
I was pleased that 3PO actually made it into the adventure this time rather than having a couple of lines and being no more than a redundant reminder of the OT. But as I said, his great sacrifice amounted to nothing because R2 could back him up - it smacks of the empty death of Data in 'Star Trek Nemesis' where we can just fill another android body with his memories and allow his personality to filter out eventually. I liked the symmetry of R2 returning his memories when at the end of the PT I seem to recall he wiped his friend's mind, but it also wiped any sacrifice. Again, I don't want 3PO to become a vegetable, and I was glad that the impending running gag of the protocol droid continually getting 'laughs' from not knowing what everyone else knows was much more sparsely implemented than I expected, groaning inwardly as I thought I saw the direction things were heading in. Chewie didn't seem quite himself, and I know that Peter Mayhew died before this was made, I don't remember if he was even alive for Episode VIII, but I noticed visible signs that this was a different performance in the way the big lump walked or growled - it shows that the role wasn't just a background extra and that Mayhew was able to imbue this creature with personality, just as until Andy Serkis played Gollum people didn't really believe motion capture was acting. If Chewie had died in the ship crash (and it was a little daft since Rey should be able to sense his absence from it if she can sense his presence later), it would have been a pointless, lacklustre death, but if it had been a well-kept secret only to come out later in the film that he might still live it would have had some impact.
The biggest flaw with this is when Rey kills Ren in the same manner as he murdered his Father, Han. I can see where they were going with Ren actually being the Skywalker who rises in the title, thus he couldn't die at that point because he needed to join Rey, but his contribution and even turning away from Palpatine was poorly handled, something the PT was equally guilty of, so it's not like this film wasn't committing the same sins as its derided forebears. Ren was just as easily and oddly turned as Anakin was: the latter gets a bit miffed because he killed his wife, Padme, and the former has a pep talk from a surprise guest cameo of Harrison Ford. I did wonder how many and who would be showing up (I'm sure that was Wedge Antilles manning the gun on the Falcon at the end - they must have offered him a bajillion pounds to do it!), but in so much of this trilogy, as much as it was nice to see him back, it just felt empty. From the start I was disappointed that we didn't get the gang all back together as I so wanted to see, and it never happened: Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, the droids and Lando were largely kept separate, and that was galling. I know they aren't the stars of the show, but that's what I paid my money to see! 3PO without R2 by his side is like… well, something that should be together that isn't. Yes, my writing ingenuity is about as accomplished as the script writers so I shouldn't be pulling them down, but I just wish they'd shown evidence of aiming higher!
So Ren is killed, then right away Rey sees the error of her ways and heals him as we saw in the cavern earlier in the film. I liked that scene - it did come across as unimportant until you realise it was clear foreshadowing, but it makes you wonder why any Jedi couldn't heal each other - Obi-Wan could have healed Qui-Gon, for example. Okay, so Rey is supposed to be this super-powerful Force user since she's got Palpatine blood running through her veins, but even so, it's an ability that is almost as difficult to deal with as General Holdo's hyper-speed through the enemy fleet in VIII (which is brought up as a tactic, then sensibly fixed by saying it was a one in a million chance, one line of dialogue I appreciated to make up for idiocy of such an act in the previous film). Were we supposed to assume that because 'good' Rey healed 'bad' Ren, that was what gave him his change of heart? If so, that's a nonsense in itself since she was full of anger about the murder of her parents: a never-before-known son of Palpatine was her Dad. Trouble with it is that Ridley doesn't have the acting skills to portray someone torn apart by anger and hatred so you never get the slightest hint of this burning rage - at least the petulant Anakin seemed dangerous, in his whiny, snivelling way ("It's Obi-Wan, he's holding me back!"), but Rey is nothing but a clean-cut straight arrow simple girl with none of the struggle the role should have been about. Driver at least embodies some of the struggle, but even he has no real development to this precipice moment of decision.
I think back to Luke learning who his Father is, and the furore of emotions that overpower him and lead him to cast himself away to potential doom rather than deal with this hideous truth thrust in front of his unsuspecting face. Or the rage of bloodlust as he tastes his own power on the Death Star when he takes on Vader for the second time. There's not one moment in any of these films that even comes close to the vitality and raw horror and power of these scenes that have made those films classics. Blandness, suffused with complication and a confusion of avoiding mythical archetypes in order to fit with a modern sensibility have robbed this latest trilogy of any strength and life - it's an insult to the young girls it's trying to please, to suggest that this is good enough. It could have been so much more! As much as I was pleased to see Ian McDiarmid back, one of the best actors in the franchise, I also have to concede that his presence is yet another destruction of the OT. If all that was for nothing, Vader died to save Luke and defeat the Emperor, freeing the galaxy from tyranny, then what good was it all for if a few decades later he's still hanging around in some underground cavern with hordes of followers (were they supposed to be clones of him - we never got to see under their cowls?), and a vast fleet of Star Destroyers he just happens to have stowed away.
The First Order, and now this Last Order, as it was known, was one of the biggest problems with the trilogy. I see the problem: if you're going to have wars then you need an army to fight, but right from Episode VII's beginning I was dismayed that they glossed over any sense of development of the story and just had a huge army there running the galaxy again. They'd already done a story of the Republic falling prey to Palpatine's political machinations (which were almost as daft as this trilogy), so they couldn't easily do the build up to yet another Evil Empire, but surely they could have come up with a better idea than simply conjuring up a load of Star Destroyers and the hundreds of thousands needed to crew them! In this film, Richard E. Grant does a commendable job of being a new lieutenant to Ren's Supreme Leader. At least he isn't the butt of stupid humour all the time like useless Hux was. His death, shot for being a traitor and helping the rebels (because he hated Ren? Um…), fitted his pointless, useless character perfectly, and a note of interest was injected into proceedings when Grant's character says he helped the Emperor in the first war. Where did all these people go? Were all those ships hidden at the Sith planet crewed there? How did the Emperor feed them all? How long did they have to wait on this dark, dreary planet and what was their motivation?
There's some talk of other Stormtroopers being held against their will as Finn was, but again it was never explored. We don't know much of anything about the First Order, what happened after Episode VI, or anything else, and it would have been helpful to at least get some backstory. The closest we come to that is a fleetingly charming scene in which we see Luke instructing his sister in the ways of the Force, with a lightsaber duel in the woods - their faces are covered to save on production budget, but we do at least get a short shot of them flipping up the visors to present youthful versions from VI, even if they did seem a little lifeless. That's something I would also have to level at Carrie Fisher's current state as General Organa in this film. The actress had died just before VIII was released, and I thought there was going to be only a little of her using material from an unused scene in VII, reworked to include her. We actually got far more of her than I expected, but I wondered if a lot of it was CGI - it's impressive if I'm not sure, which I'm not, but it also felt odd, like they'd cut around her or picked out specific lines because that's all they had to work with. So sometimes her presence in a scene goes unfinished, and though I'd much rather have the Princess of the franchise than not, I don't know that it really worked and it must have been hard to have the dead body of Leia on set when they knew Fisher herself was also dead - as if they'd had Leonard Nimoy's Spock die on camera in the third modern Trek film.
Yet it was good to see her again, as it was Luke, and especially Lando, still in the flesh. I don't like the too-solid Force ghosts they've been going for and I was terribly disappointed that we didn't get a shot of all the old Jedi Masters at the very end, it was just Luke and Leia back at the old Tatooine homestead, which, now that I know was kept up as a tourist attraction where you can stay, has far less sentimental impact on me than when I first saw it brought back in Episode II! It almost felt like a travel advert with that knowledge: come and stay at the Skywalker ranch! It also doesn't entirely make sense that Luke and Leia would be the ones to reappear - surely her parents were more important to her, but because we only see them briefly in flashback they don't mean anything to us. I really wanted Alec Guinness, Liam Neeson, Yoda, and every good character that had died to be present, but it suited the muddled story that you don't know who to expect in that scene. I had no sense of where the story was going to go from there, either. It's supposed to be the end of the Skywalker saga, but it would have been good to know what was going to happen next, for Rey at least. I wonder if she'll be coming back in forty years time in a similar role as Fisher, Hamill and the rest fulfilled here? I wouldn't be surprised unless Disney exploits the property into the ground. Can I see this trilogy going down as film classic and being loved for generations? Nope, but it's an unfair comparison to make since the OT was a true revolution in cinema, marketing and merchandise that could probably never be repeated to have the same impact as it was such a moment in cinema (and business), history.
As is so often the case, my negative opinions have swamped any positive observations, but I must say that I loved having 3PO play a role as big as the old films, and I think they really missed out by not keeping the format of everything happening around the droids as if they were the real main characters. Partly, this was down to the desire for toy possibilities, which is as much as BB-8 ever meant. He, or it, never had any of the character of R2, and I can't even remember who he even belonged to. It was a good design, but something that fell through the cracks as they failed to understand the things that made 'Star Wars' work. Oops, I'm straying back into negativity, so let me say I liked McDiarmid, even if I questioned the choice to bring him back and the way he was defeated was simplistic. But he was pretty good. Poe was fairly good, there was still a lot of the contemporary humour undercutting everything, but it was always going to be 'fun' and 'funny,' it's just a shame they forgot about the drama. The tiny droid-fixing character, Bibbo Frik or whatever he was called, was amusing and used sparingly and to good effect. The environments were big and bad, it was slightly touching to return to the wreckage of the Death Star, crashed as it was in the ocean of Endor - I was especially pleased to get my shot of some Ewoks as I felt they were missing when we met the rebels on that world.
I have to say that there were a few things that pulled me out of the 'story,' mainly the casting - seeing a Hobbit among the rebels (i.e.: Dominic Monaghan), was bad enough, and Richard E. Grant was good, but obviously Grant, and there were one or two other faces I recognised. That was never really a problem in the OT because it was made so long ago that I didn't know the actors other than from those films. I just like having an actor in a role where they're so well served you forget they're an actor, or another famous role. That's why the main cast should have been spellbinding as I only know them as those roles, except the casting department fell down and didn't deliver. Nothing on the scale of Hayden Christensen, obviously, or even Ewan McGregor who was up and down, but neither was there a Liam Neeson to hold up the cast - you hear Qui-Gon's voice as one of the Jedi urging Rey on, but I couldn't work out if they were new lines or a reuse of previous ones. I've so wanted to see a Qui-Gon reappearance as Episode I is still my favourite post-OT film, and nothing since has come close in matching him, Darth Maul, or the events of that film. What more can I say, except that I did appreciate the minor course corrections that were made, the old relics that were brought back (like Luke's X-Wing), but as before it was just too heavily dependent on the past stories and didn't effectively develop the characters or plots beyond the standard 'Star Wars' fare of throwing a load of ships into pitched battle. Even seeing Lando and Chewie in the pilots' seats of the Falcon failed to move me. If I'd had expectations I'd have been majorly disappointed, but as it was it merely justified my lack of cinema attendance for the last three years and didn't encourage me to go back there any time soon. Sad, but that's what I got from it.
**
Tuesday, 17 December 2019
Jet Force Gemini
N64, Jet Force Gemini (1999) game
By this time in the console's lifespan, Rare had long cracked the N64 code and were at the height of their powers, evidenced by the excellence in craftsmanship of this game's visuals, sound, music and technical ability: they did it all without the aid of the 4MB Expansion Pak that doubled the N64's memory, and which other games such as 'Donkey Kong 64,' 'Perfect Dark,' 'Banjo-Tooie' and 'Majora's Mask' would require in order to work. An example of how far they'd come is in the simple fact you have space for six save slots where the majority of games had room for three, or four at the most, and even more by the visuals which, even through the debilitating conversion of a VGA adaptor which I had to use to play the game, it still looked beautiful, the varied environments distinct and attractive enough that they still pop to this day. Sure, I'd have preferred it if it had used the Expansion Pak and a higher resolution so I could have played it this time without the VGA, but it also shows just how accomplished the gameplay was that I always wanted to keep going and (almost) never got discouraged - the only time I had any problem was when there was direct sunlight or bright white-out such as on the Walkway or inside Mizar's asteroid, but these were only minor inconveniences far from a serious issue as I've had with '1080' or 'Snowboard Kids' which are so bright (VGA ramping up the contrast far too much).
It's not quite true that I never had any problems, because I did find myself dismayed for a good chunk of time when I started playing it. I didn't have strong memories of the game overall, I thought I liked it well enough, and it was a Rare game, so I knew it was going to be above the average N64 software. But beyond the occasional memories of traversing purple moon-like expanses (Cerulean), travelling along some high up mountain road (Walkway), or finding a bug disco (Ichor), as well as trying out the multiplayer with family members and it not being one of the better deathmatch experiences in comparison to first person shooters, I had little to go on. Researching back I found that I first played it in June 2001, bought secondhand for £14.99 from a little Virtual Games shop on my high street which closed down long, long ago, along with 'Turok 2' for £4.99. I played it until October of that year, then put it down and didn't complete it until May 2003, which shows how tough I found it, how many other games took my attention, and/or I just wasn't thrilled with it. I even began another file in June 2004, but didn't stick with it for very long, and a couple of other people started files on the cartridge and never played it for more than an hour or so. This does show the flaws in the game, because even on this occasion it took me a good six or seven hours to break into it, which is a long time to persevere with a game that wasn't thrilling me.
It wasn't that it was particularly bad, it was just that I went in with the wrong mindset, planning to whip through and move on to my next N64 game since I was going through a few titles in celebration of my twenty years together with the machine. So I wasn't planning on picking up all the Tribals or discovering all the secrets, it was just a bash through as quickly as possible - the way I play games has certainly changed in twenty years as I used to carefully pry each and every game apart to the best of my ability, sucked into these 3D worlds that were so amazing, but over time I became disillusioned with gaming in that it was the same old genres in which I was performing the same old tasks, with little enough innovation to make the experience anywhere near as thrilling as it had been when I started. So I practically gave up playing in the style of searching out every last bit and squeezing as much time and value out of the experience as I could. But I had less money then, and in the last decade I've been able to find games cheaply on the internet instead of roaming games stores for deals (weirdly, £15 seems a lot more to pay for an old game now than it did in 2001 - I don't really like paying more than a tenner, and many games can be had for under a fiver!), so I've had a surfeit of retrogames to enjoy, and less time to devote to them with so many other options for entertainment, becoming more open to playing in a way that I imagine the majority do, which is to race through without fear of not getting the full 'money's worth.'
'JFG' isn't the game for that manner of approach, and indeed, as I came towards the end I even wished there were more levels to revisit, and more collectables to hunt. But at the start it was almost a chore: the controls were the first irritant, the camera not available to direct as in other third person adventures like the 'Banjo' games or 'DK64,' leading to a sense of frustration that I couldn't look where I wanted to and had to resort to circle strafing with the C buttons to be able to peer round corners. It was doubly frustrating when you go into aiming mode and your character phases out to become semi-transparent so you can see through them to shoot at the enemies, but then the controls are fouled up and you find yourself manoeuvring in the wrong direction, upsetting your aim, annoying in the extreme. Add to that the horror of imprecise movement in a game with platform elements, where you have slight inertia, so when you stop your character they'll keep going half a pace or so, and it could get to teeth-gnashing levels. This all added to my desire to get through the game quickly so I really wondered what I had seen in the game originally and was feeling likely I'd be awarding the two stars of an average game, rather than the expected three stars I'd mentally predicted. I think when I found out I'd have to retrace my steps and go through all the old levels multiple times in order to track down every last Tribal, the cute Ewok-like victims of villain Mizar's tyranny, it was with a heavy heart that I set out on my quest.
What a relief then to find that I began to really enjoy the experience. Suddenly, the fetters were off, there was purpose to collecting the Tribals and retreading old ground, no longer only the dull goal of getting to the end of a level as fast as I could - the freedom and empowerment you experience after having to follow this linear route through each level for the three characters, who start at different places before making their way to Mizar's Palace at the centre of the map, was immense. You find new weapons, keys to unlock previously barred doors, new abilities such as jet pack flying, and then reach new mini levels that you'd not accessed before. I went from finding the game a trifle boring and average, to thinking it was up there with the greatest games on the system and wondering if I might end up awarding the game the full five stars of excellence! What a turnaround. Reason prevailed, and I did find myself revising that score to a very good four stars before the end, but it was an amazing comeback for something I'd almost written off as a real trudge. It wasn't just the control issues that prevented a top score, I did also experience some of that 'stuckness' that is a problem in large games where just when everything is going so well, you've got everything you know how to get (all the Tribals in this case), you realise you still haven't finished the game. I had the majority of the twelve Ship Parts (technically eleven as you're given the final piece by King Jeff on finding the others), required to get the Tribals' special spaceship off the ground and intercept Mizar's attack on Earth, but there was still one outstanding and it was a slight pain to have to backtrack again, wandering and searching desperately for the last elusive piece.
I'd been good at noticing the spots I'd been unable to explore before and didn't have trouble with the other Ship Parts, so I went down the misguided, but understandable reasoning that I'd have to achieve a Gold Rating in all of the Floyd Missions, these first person flying challenges where you took control of one of Mizar's reformed drones who accompanies you once you've fixed him earlier in the game. These missions really could be challenging, at least in getting a Gold award, and I spent many an hour repeating the same missions over and over to knock a few more seconds off the time, and I never got bored with it, it was definitely an old-skool addictive pull of just-one-more-go's, with a rush of pride when you succeed. Even after I'd won Gold on most of them, found the last Ship Part by accident, and beaten tough, tough Mizar for the second time, I still wanted to go back and make sure I got all the Golds. My satisfaction with achieving this was tempered somewhat when I was checking up online checking that the fifth Floyd mission was the one at the Palace which you couldn't replay, when I found out it was possible to get Expert Ratings beyond Gold! I didn't quite have the stomach to go back and get my times below 55 seconds… But it was a bit of a concern that I'd only found the last Ship Part by stumbling upon the pyramid at the Palace when searching for a Floyd mission I remembered from first reaching that level, and realising I could now jet pack up the central column, turn into an ant and go on to race in a 3D version of Jeff and Barry Racing you play in 2D on an arcade machine at the Big Bug Fun Club on Ichor.
If it hadn't been for random chance I might well have been wandering the worlds for hours. All the other Parts had been found because I made a mental note of any underwater passages (only Vela could swim), lava rooms (only Juno could walk on lava), or hard to reach areas that Lupus the dog could boost to without the aid of a jet pack fuel pad, so I did feel as if stumbling on the last piece wasn't the best design or gameplay. It was also up to me to realise what the difference between the characters was. It's easy to learn Lupus' speciality since you use it from the start, and Vela's swimming becomes apparent as soon as she hits water, but I didn't know what Juno's unique ability was until I accidentally discovered he wasn't hurt by lava. It's a bit clumsy, and isn't even referenced in the manual, so I assumed all three were modified to withstand the heat after their armour was upgraded once Mizar was beaten the first time, and became confused when Vela and Lupus were injured when stepping onto the lava. This also highlights another issue: despite having much information on the pause screen, from weapons and inventory, to options and Tribals counts for each level (tell me, do they still sing songs of the Great Tribal Hunt?), sometimes I wished there was a bit more detail. I wanted to be able to select each of the Floyd awards and find out what planet or ship they were located on, as well as my best time and number of items collected there, maybe even play them from the menu. I suppose I take accessibility for granted in later games, but then this was resolutely designed to be akin to old-skool gaming, hence the tough difficulty on some things, the 2D mini-games, and a level of secrets that almost encouraged you to note down anything out of reach for future reference!
At first I felt that it was a cross between a couple of Rare's other games, 'Goldeneye' and 'Banjo-Kazooie,' and that it didn't really know what it was, without either the precision control of character or camera that they exhibited. I felt there wasn't much to the game, just run-and-gun, a few simple platforming tasks, the occasional NPC to meet and greet, upgrade your weapons and play the odd mini-game, but I came to realise it was much more than that, an expertly designed gaming experience that was a real treat to rediscover - I liked it so much I wished I'd held it over to play at Christmas as it was the ideal type of game to play at that time, with both longevity, so you could spend hours at a time indulging in its worlds, and bite-size chunks - like platform games, you can visit a level and play through that particular area, or attempt a Floyd mission, fro example, achieve what you want, and leave it there. I really did look forward to coming back to it, the mark of a great game, and even with some frustrations, there was far more to reward. You didn't have to replay the level bosses after defeating them the first time, as that would have been really annoying every time you reached the end of that stage. And you would do, on more than one occasion because essentially you have to play the game three times, once with each character. It's not really fair to say that it's the same game each time, however, as you reach certain areas you couldn't previously and the feeling of power and scope is lovely.
The trouble with Tribals is they have a level of cuteness that, much like the Jinjos of the 'Banjo' games, you find yourself diverting from the path just to save them, even after you've saved the full complement in a level on a previous visit. The babies, or the ones that stumpily hurry after you instead of waiting for you to come to them, are even more delightful! It's not all sweetness and light, of course, as the game is about dismembering alien villains that splatter all over the place when you mow them down, it's encouraged to collect heads, and I must say I didn't like the emphasis on killing every enemy, even when they hold their hands up in surrender as it breeds an automatic compulsion not to even consider compassion - there are times when you actually have to execute those who've surrendered so you can pass a Life Force door, and it's all too easy to just blast away, even when you don't need to, when it would have been better to have the option to disarm and send them on their way occasionally. But most of the time there should be no compunction to blasting these varmints, and there are a multitude of weapons and gadgets with which to accomplish this, the main source of gameplay. In fact there are more than you really need and I spent most of my time with the Machine Gun, an all-purpose weapon that mows down the advancing squads nicely, though you do have to watch out whenever you're in a new area that you don't accidentally take out a Tribal, so there is strategy involved. The same goes for Tri-Rockets, my second favourite. As you'd expect from the company that brought us 'Goldeneye' and 'Perfect Dark' the weapons are varied, chunky and powerful, with ideal rumbling sound effects to complement.
It is a big game, and took me something under twenty-eight hours to get to Mizar the second time, but it took me longer this time than my original play through in 2001, which I was hoping to beat, another reason I blazed through at first, not recalling I'd be coming back multiple times anyway, or I might have paid more attention! There were times I really did wish I'd taken notes so as to systematically empty each section of everything, even though I could have referred back to the old N64 Magazine game guide, though that would have felt like cheating (after I'd completed the game I did use it to try and find the Floyd missions, and there really should have been details on the map screen so you knew where to go, as my memory wasn't up to it!). The time counter on your game file doesn't actually give a full account of time spent as it's only if you save that it records your playing time, so it would have been over thirty hours for all the failed attempts I took to defeat Mizar (you need as many missile upgrades as you can get). It's a shame Vela and Lupus don't get to play a part in the final battle, considering the game is geared to all three working separately to reach a combined goal, and you could almost have made the game Juno's story alone with him gaining upgrades and new skills as he progressed, but it extended the life of the game and makes it refreshing to switch to a different character. I'd forgotten the ending - let's just say it explains where Jeff and Barry Racing gets its name! And twenty years later it's now awkward to see the Jimmy Saville reference at the end… I must be a lesser gamer now, since it took me slightly longer to complete (and I did get the Golds even then), though I was on course to beat my time until I was plunged into running around searching. Even so, I can imagine myself, in ten or twenty years, coming back to this game once more to use up that sixth and final save slot.
****
By this time in the console's lifespan, Rare had long cracked the N64 code and were at the height of their powers, evidenced by the excellence in craftsmanship of this game's visuals, sound, music and technical ability: they did it all without the aid of the 4MB Expansion Pak that doubled the N64's memory, and which other games such as 'Donkey Kong 64,' 'Perfect Dark,' 'Banjo-Tooie' and 'Majora's Mask' would require in order to work. An example of how far they'd come is in the simple fact you have space for six save slots where the majority of games had room for three, or four at the most, and even more by the visuals which, even through the debilitating conversion of a VGA adaptor which I had to use to play the game, it still looked beautiful, the varied environments distinct and attractive enough that they still pop to this day. Sure, I'd have preferred it if it had used the Expansion Pak and a higher resolution so I could have played it this time without the VGA, but it also shows just how accomplished the gameplay was that I always wanted to keep going and (almost) never got discouraged - the only time I had any problem was when there was direct sunlight or bright white-out such as on the Walkway or inside Mizar's asteroid, but these were only minor inconveniences far from a serious issue as I've had with '1080' or 'Snowboard Kids' which are so bright (VGA ramping up the contrast far too much).
It's not quite true that I never had any problems, because I did find myself dismayed for a good chunk of time when I started playing it. I didn't have strong memories of the game overall, I thought I liked it well enough, and it was a Rare game, so I knew it was going to be above the average N64 software. But beyond the occasional memories of traversing purple moon-like expanses (Cerulean), travelling along some high up mountain road (Walkway), or finding a bug disco (Ichor), as well as trying out the multiplayer with family members and it not being one of the better deathmatch experiences in comparison to first person shooters, I had little to go on. Researching back I found that I first played it in June 2001, bought secondhand for £14.99 from a little Virtual Games shop on my high street which closed down long, long ago, along with 'Turok 2' for £4.99. I played it until October of that year, then put it down and didn't complete it until May 2003, which shows how tough I found it, how many other games took my attention, and/or I just wasn't thrilled with it. I even began another file in June 2004, but didn't stick with it for very long, and a couple of other people started files on the cartridge and never played it for more than an hour or so. This does show the flaws in the game, because even on this occasion it took me a good six or seven hours to break into it, which is a long time to persevere with a game that wasn't thrilling me.
It wasn't that it was particularly bad, it was just that I went in with the wrong mindset, planning to whip through and move on to my next N64 game since I was going through a few titles in celebration of my twenty years together with the machine. So I wasn't planning on picking up all the Tribals or discovering all the secrets, it was just a bash through as quickly as possible - the way I play games has certainly changed in twenty years as I used to carefully pry each and every game apart to the best of my ability, sucked into these 3D worlds that were so amazing, but over time I became disillusioned with gaming in that it was the same old genres in which I was performing the same old tasks, with little enough innovation to make the experience anywhere near as thrilling as it had been when I started. So I practically gave up playing in the style of searching out every last bit and squeezing as much time and value out of the experience as I could. But I had less money then, and in the last decade I've been able to find games cheaply on the internet instead of roaming games stores for deals (weirdly, £15 seems a lot more to pay for an old game now than it did in 2001 - I don't really like paying more than a tenner, and many games can be had for under a fiver!), so I've had a surfeit of retrogames to enjoy, and less time to devote to them with so many other options for entertainment, becoming more open to playing in a way that I imagine the majority do, which is to race through without fear of not getting the full 'money's worth.'
'JFG' isn't the game for that manner of approach, and indeed, as I came towards the end I even wished there were more levels to revisit, and more collectables to hunt. But at the start it was almost a chore: the controls were the first irritant, the camera not available to direct as in other third person adventures like the 'Banjo' games or 'DK64,' leading to a sense of frustration that I couldn't look where I wanted to and had to resort to circle strafing with the C buttons to be able to peer round corners. It was doubly frustrating when you go into aiming mode and your character phases out to become semi-transparent so you can see through them to shoot at the enemies, but then the controls are fouled up and you find yourself manoeuvring in the wrong direction, upsetting your aim, annoying in the extreme. Add to that the horror of imprecise movement in a game with platform elements, where you have slight inertia, so when you stop your character they'll keep going half a pace or so, and it could get to teeth-gnashing levels. This all added to my desire to get through the game quickly so I really wondered what I had seen in the game originally and was feeling likely I'd be awarding the two stars of an average game, rather than the expected three stars I'd mentally predicted. I think when I found out I'd have to retrace my steps and go through all the old levels multiple times in order to track down every last Tribal, the cute Ewok-like victims of villain Mizar's tyranny, it was with a heavy heart that I set out on my quest.
What a relief then to find that I began to really enjoy the experience. Suddenly, the fetters were off, there was purpose to collecting the Tribals and retreading old ground, no longer only the dull goal of getting to the end of a level as fast as I could - the freedom and empowerment you experience after having to follow this linear route through each level for the three characters, who start at different places before making their way to Mizar's Palace at the centre of the map, was immense. You find new weapons, keys to unlock previously barred doors, new abilities such as jet pack flying, and then reach new mini levels that you'd not accessed before. I went from finding the game a trifle boring and average, to thinking it was up there with the greatest games on the system and wondering if I might end up awarding the game the full five stars of excellence! What a turnaround. Reason prevailed, and I did find myself revising that score to a very good four stars before the end, but it was an amazing comeback for something I'd almost written off as a real trudge. It wasn't just the control issues that prevented a top score, I did also experience some of that 'stuckness' that is a problem in large games where just when everything is going so well, you've got everything you know how to get (all the Tribals in this case), you realise you still haven't finished the game. I had the majority of the twelve Ship Parts (technically eleven as you're given the final piece by King Jeff on finding the others), required to get the Tribals' special spaceship off the ground and intercept Mizar's attack on Earth, but there was still one outstanding and it was a slight pain to have to backtrack again, wandering and searching desperately for the last elusive piece.
I'd been good at noticing the spots I'd been unable to explore before and didn't have trouble with the other Ship Parts, so I went down the misguided, but understandable reasoning that I'd have to achieve a Gold Rating in all of the Floyd Missions, these first person flying challenges where you took control of one of Mizar's reformed drones who accompanies you once you've fixed him earlier in the game. These missions really could be challenging, at least in getting a Gold award, and I spent many an hour repeating the same missions over and over to knock a few more seconds off the time, and I never got bored with it, it was definitely an old-skool addictive pull of just-one-more-go's, with a rush of pride when you succeed. Even after I'd won Gold on most of them, found the last Ship Part by accident, and beaten tough, tough Mizar for the second time, I still wanted to go back and make sure I got all the Golds. My satisfaction with achieving this was tempered somewhat when I was checking up online checking that the fifth Floyd mission was the one at the Palace which you couldn't replay, when I found out it was possible to get Expert Ratings beyond Gold! I didn't quite have the stomach to go back and get my times below 55 seconds… But it was a bit of a concern that I'd only found the last Ship Part by stumbling upon the pyramid at the Palace when searching for a Floyd mission I remembered from first reaching that level, and realising I could now jet pack up the central column, turn into an ant and go on to race in a 3D version of Jeff and Barry Racing you play in 2D on an arcade machine at the Big Bug Fun Club on Ichor.
If it hadn't been for random chance I might well have been wandering the worlds for hours. All the other Parts had been found because I made a mental note of any underwater passages (only Vela could swim), lava rooms (only Juno could walk on lava), or hard to reach areas that Lupus the dog could boost to without the aid of a jet pack fuel pad, so I did feel as if stumbling on the last piece wasn't the best design or gameplay. It was also up to me to realise what the difference between the characters was. It's easy to learn Lupus' speciality since you use it from the start, and Vela's swimming becomes apparent as soon as she hits water, but I didn't know what Juno's unique ability was until I accidentally discovered he wasn't hurt by lava. It's a bit clumsy, and isn't even referenced in the manual, so I assumed all three were modified to withstand the heat after their armour was upgraded once Mizar was beaten the first time, and became confused when Vela and Lupus were injured when stepping onto the lava. This also highlights another issue: despite having much information on the pause screen, from weapons and inventory, to options and Tribals counts for each level (tell me, do they still sing songs of the Great Tribal Hunt?), sometimes I wished there was a bit more detail. I wanted to be able to select each of the Floyd awards and find out what planet or ship they were located on, as well as my best time and number of items collected there, maybe even play them from the menu. I suppose I take accessibility for granted in later games, but then this was resolutely designed to be akin to old-skool gaming, hence the tough difficulty on some things, the 2D mini-games, and a level of secrets that almost encouraged you to note down anything out of reach for future reference!
At first I felt that it was a cross between a couple of Rare's other games, 'Goldeneye' and 'Banjo-Kazooie,' and that it didn't really know what it was, without either the precision control of character or camera that they exhibited. I felt there wasn't much to the game, just run-and-gun, a few simple platforming tasks, the occasional NPC to meet and greet, upgrade your weapons and play the odd mini-game, but I came to realise it was much more than that, an expertly designed gaming experience that was a real treat to rediscover - I liked it so much I wished I'd held it over to play at Christmas as it was the ideal type of game to play at that time, with both longevity, so you could spend hours at a time indulging in its worlds, and bite-size chunks - like platform games, you can visit a level and play through that particular area, or attempt a Floyd mission, fro example, achieve what you want, and leave it there. I really did look forward to coming back to it, the mark of a great game, and even with some frustrations, there was far more to reward. You didn't have to replay the level bosses after defeating them the first time, as that would have been really annoying every time you reached the end of that stage. And you would do, on more than one occasion because essentially you have to play the game three times, once with each character. It's not really fair to say that it's the same game each time, however, as you reach certain areas you couldn't previously and the feeling of power and scope is lovely.
The trouble with Tribals is they have a level of cuteness that, much like the Jinjos of the 'Banjo' games, you find yourself diverting from the path just to save them, even after you've saved the full complement in a level on a previous visit. The babies, or the ones that stumpily hurry after you instead of waiting for you to come to them, are even more delightful! It's not all sweetness and light, of course, as the game is about dismembering alien villains that splatter all over the place when you mow them down, it's encouraged to collect heads, and I must say I didn't like the emphasis on killing every enemy, even when they hold their hands up in surrender as it breeds an automatic compulsion not to even consider compassion - there are times when you actually have to execute those who've surrendered so you can pass a Life Force door, and it's all too easy to just blast away, even when you don't need to, when it would have been better to have the option to disarm and send them on their way occasionally. But most of the time there should be no compunction to blasting these varmints, and there are a multitude of weapons and gadgets with which to accomplish this, the main source of gameplay. In fact there are more than you really need and I spent most of my time with the Machine Gun, an all-purpose weapon that mows down the advancing squads nicely, though you do have to watch out whenever you're in a new area that you don't accidentally take out a Tribal, so there is strategy involved. The same goes for Tri-Rockets, my second favourite. As you'd expect from the company that brought us 'Goldeneye' and 'Perfect Dark' the weapons are varied, chunky and powerful, with ideal rumbling sound effects to complement.
It is a big game, and took me something under twenty-eight hours to get to Mizar the second time, but it took me longer this time than my original play through in 2001, which I was hoping to beat, another reason I blazed through at first, not recalling I'd be coming back multiple times anyway, or I might have paid more attention! There were times I really did wish I'd taken notes so as to systematically empty each section of everything, even though I could have referred back to the old N64 Magazine game guide, though that would have felt like cheating (after I'd completed the game I did use it to try and find the Floyd missions, and there really should have been details on the map screen so you knew where to go, as my memory wasn't up to it!). The time counter on your game file doesn't actually give a full account of time spent as it's only if you save that it records your playing time, so it would have been over thirty hours for all the failed attempts I took to defeat Mizar (you need as many missile upgrades as you can get). It's a shame Vela and Lupus don't get to play a part in the final battle, considering the game is geared to all three working separately to reach a combined goal, and you could almost have made the game Juno's story alone with him gaining upgrades and new skills as he progressed, but it extended the life of the game and makes it refreshing to switch to a different character. I'd forgotten the ending - let's just say it explains where Jeff and Barry Racing gets its name! And twenty years later it's now awkward to see the Jimmy Saville reference at the end… I must be a lesser gamer now, since it took me slightly longer to complete (and I did get the Golds even then), though I was on course to beat my time until I was plunged into running around searching. Even so, I can imagine myself, in ten or twenty years, coming back to this game once more to use up that sixth and final save slot.
****
Point of Light
DVD, Discovery S2 (Point of Light)
The comfort levels of watching this series creeps up ever so imperceptibly, but with a few course corrections clear in this episode it shows, if only in part, how it could have been, and should have been, from inception. The biggest deal for me was seeing the Klingons with hair. It wouldn't mean anything to 'DSC' viewers that had never known Trek before this or the modern films, but for me, this was a very important moment in the production of the series. Although I suspect claims of the makers that say everything will eventually adhere to canon and 'line up,' as they put it, with 'TOS,' I never really believed that because the overwhelming evidence before me was that they considered visual aesthetics (and even realistic behaviour), to be unimportant. But this one change does at least take action in that direction and was probably brought about because of the protestations on the altered Klingons seen in Season 1, so it gives more hope that other things will change and that one day this will feel like Trek. They still made some of the Houses' representatives look a bit silly with a variety of hairstyles and coverage (and sadly there's no getting around those stupid, unwieldy claws), but the brilliant thing was, and this is all I was asking for from the start, was that we had one guy that looks just like the Klingons of old and future history: the biker gang rockers with the flowing locks, beards and moustaches! Hooray! I had to rewind the first few seconds of the Klingons' reintroduction because they cunningly bury the change in looks by distracting with something equally as desirable to those who care about Klingon culture.
The D7 Battle Cruiser was always a stroke of genius, even in its 'TOS' form of basic texture, and it was astonishing how poorly conceived the Klingon vessels of the first season were in comparison to this. We'd already witnessed something of a design lineage in 'Enterprise' thanks to the (ugly, but not as ugly as 'DSC'), D5 class we saw there, so it was baffling that they had cast off the two most recognisable alien ships (both Klingon - the other being the Bird of Prey), in Trek visual history, and didn't even seem to have the confidence to display their new designs with pride, though that latter complaint may be more in line with the style of the series which is a space show that has rarely indulged in showing ships in space in any significant way or amount of time in which to experience them and take in their design sufficiently. It's only a holographic representation (just can't escape those holograms, it seems), but it was alluring enough that I completely missed the hair at first, which is saying a lot. It's true that I had heard of the change to Klingon appearance long ago, and applauded the decision, but it was fulfilling to see it in reality. If they really are tending toward the Klingon accuracy again, then these are very promising signs. We get mentions of Boreth, the monastery where Tyler and L'Rell's baby is to be raised as a monk (where Kahless was supposed to reappear and did, in 'TNG,' the same place Worf retired to between the destruction of the Enterprise-D in 'Generations' and his new role on DS9), and actual reference to Kahless and the Lady Lukara (though spoken in Klingon English, Kahlesh and Lukareth, which may be more accurate, I don't know), though I'd have loved it even more if they'd called back to the prophecy about him coming to Boreth.
I like that they're even beginning to build up enough of their own lore to go back to, including the great tradition of bringing back an actor from a previous role and putting him in as a new character. This time it's Kenneth Mitchell playing his own Father, Kolshar I think was the name, the traditional Klingon with the white flowing locks. That was something I didn't pick up on until the end credits, as I had heard Mitchell was going to be in it again somehow, but had tried to avoid knowing as much as possible. Considering I wasn't enamoured with the Kol role as a mere dully two-dimensional villain, it's somewhat surprising that I enjoyed his Father so much, reminding me of the villainous power-mongers of old. It may be that I was so struck by how cool it was to see a proper Klingon again that I wasn't thinking about anything else, but he really seemed like those older, wilier members of a House, and his treacherous acts were fitting for the Klingons we know of in the time of 'TOS' and the films beyond. It would be nice to see a fully honourable Worf or Martok type, but we haven't really seen that many Klingons that have had an appreciable role other than a mere name, so it's asking too much of the state this series is in. The question of whether Worf could play his character again without changing the makeup is now moot as we see that with the hair as it should be there's no inconsistency in the face, and it was such a relief to have a Klingon back. Even L'Rell looks so much better with her hair!
Filling in some of the much needed backstory and connections between the Klingons was highly necessary and suddenly they come alive from the mere empty-headed thugs of last season to something akin to what they used to be. Ujilli was a character that had appeared in a couple of episodes before, and is now said to be L'Rell's Uncle who has looked after the baby that sprang from Voq and L'Rell's union, though he doesn't last long enough to be a recurring character thanks to Kolshar. They pack in a bat'leth fight, which is overly gory with lashings of blood, but not as unpleasant to watch as some of the previous season's excesses. I felt it was wrong of L'Rell to go into battle stance when her little baby was there as a hostage ready to be killed at any moment, but then it was a desperate time and it looked like all three of her 'family' were going to be executed as soon as she imprinted her thumb on the Klingon seal. I just feel that in past Trek, if it had been Worf or someone like that, they'd have found a way to protect the child and then take the battle to their enemies. But it is all consistent with brutal Klingon ways, so I'm not going to come down too heavily on that, there are other things to fault… If anything in the Klingon story that rang hollow it was the way Tyler is drawn to Ujilli and the reveal of his baby: someone stalks through his living area so he follows thinking they're spying on him, which leads him to Ujilli and baby, but as Ujilli turned out not to be the enemy he might have been, it makes sense that he wanted Tyler to get to the conclusion indirectly.
It's also very true to the kind of plotting of the series that Kolshar's espionage plan hinged on him goading Tyler enough so that he'd pull off some of his face paint which contained tiny implants that could be used as listening devices, but again, the Romulan-esque deviousness of the race at this time in their history especially, rings true, even if it is a daft idea. The one thing they didn't do that I expected was to name the baby as some famous figure we'd heard of in later series' - I was waiting for that right up until the drop-off at Boreth, but it never came. I really was expecting it to be Worf's cousin or B'Elanna's Grandfather or something, tying things further to other Trek. Maybe they'll keep it for another day, or maybe that's it as far as that storyline goes and L'Rell's offspring won't play any part other than as… well, I'm not really sure what the point of it was. To show the vocalised differences between her and Tyler that he realised meant he couldn't remain Klingon with her as a liability to her position? I must say the transition from living among his people to ending up recruited by Section 31 (yes, it was they), did feel organic so that I bought that part of the story, and despite grave reservations of turning such a secretive and immoral organisation into an important part of both 'DSC' and indeed, getting its own spinoff, I wasn't appalled by that side of the story. I saw Michelle Yeoh's name in the opening credits and already low expectations dropped further, but by the time she shows up disguised as a hooded Klingon to rescue L'Rell and Tyler from execution, I'd forgotten she was even scheduled to be in the episode!
That made me thoroughly intrigued on whom this hooded saviour could be, and even when she was revealed she wasn't quite as bitingly evil as before. I knew she'd been recruited into Section 31 from a deleted scene at the end of the final Season 1 episode, and I knew her recruiter, 'Control,' would be back, but other than that it was all new to me. If this is, as it seemed, a first step on a redemptive arc for the character then I'm all for it, because she was one of the most distressing and hateful things about the first season, this mass murderer allowed to roam free in our universe by the good guys. Her slightly toned down appearance here gave me a modicum of hope that it won't be as ridiculous a decision as it first appeared, another minor course correction perhaps? It's still hard to accept that these writers see Section 31 as something of a boon (a bit like 'Enterprise,' though even there they were shied away from by our characters), rather than something to be stamped out as Bashir and Sisko viewed them - an evil within that needed to be purged to save the Federation's soul, as it were. Now they're the ones with the cool technology and we don't care that they're immoral, fitting much more with our own time than with the bright future Trek used to portray. They still wring humour out of Georgiou's evil nature, which is jarring, but it was more like she was becoming accustomed to this universe and our ways. I wondered if her interference in the Klingons' internal matters was more than just a 31 mission for her - was she doing a Lex Luthor on 'Smallville' and manipulating Tyler away from L'Rell for the benefit of Burnham, just as Lex did with Lana and Whitney in the first season, trying to get Clark hooked up?
If they were trying to get Georgiou into our good books, having her save a couple of characters that had had some development in an episode was a good way to do it. The 31 ship that Control apparently commands was certainly intriguing, and I imagine that's what the spinoff series will be set on. From just that little snippet I can see how a series might work, though I also have major concerns about it. If they had more of what was going on in this episode, however, it might not completely fall apart on scrutiny, though we've yet to see 31's crew and how they operate, so it all hangs in the balance. This episode at least had a more organic structure than previous clumsy attempts to pull off a Klingon story, so it was pleasing in that way. It's sad that they created something that was actually more than surface filler between Tyler and L'Rell only to part them and the baby all three, but it made me interested again in Klingon politics and wish that we could see more Klingons like Kolshar on the series. But I know the Klingons don't have much to do in this season, and I was all for that after Season 1, so I'm pleased at least they managed to claw back some respect for the warrior race. I can't say I'm a fan of their volcanic buildings, I think they put far too much stock in dramatic sets as if that's what really matters on this series - obviously the older series' didn't have the ability to pull off as elaborate designs, but that rarely mattered because you were so drawn into the stories of Klingon soap opera, or culture, in a stage play so you didn't worry as much about surface detail.
There are three stories to this episode so it was good it had over forty-seven minutes in which to tell them, and none feel rushed to conclusion. We get some payoff at last from the little green spore that landed on Tilly last season, revealed to be a multidimensional parasitic creature. I assume it was not really sentient and just using Tilly's mind to create May as otherwise it would seem a bit harsh of Saru to kill it. Although I think they ended up just trapping it in a forcefield rather than killing it, so perhaps it's not the last we'll see of this life form. I liked that we got a non-humanoid creature, another Trekky addition, and the stress it put Tilly under was both uncomfortable to see and funny to watch - yes, I admit it, Tilly actually made me laugh out loud, though it was more with glee at what they were doing than at her usual extremes of behaviour. When she's on the Bridge fouling up her latest Command Programme assignment it was funny as she's talking to May, who no one else can see, in the same way as Sam talking to Al in 'Quantum Leap' could be a great source of amusement. But when things become more sinister it was also worth watching, and you feel for the wearing down of Tilly. It's another of those strange ironies that, like Burnham, Tilly is a much more accessible character, at least for me, when she's miserable. Maybe it's the bunny wabbit hopping chatter and 'cuteness,' mixed with girly-girl talk that puts me off normally? Whatever, I did enjoy this B-story and liked how they wove her and Burnham's story together.
Michael's story (is it the 'B' or 'C' plot?), which begins with another comfort stop for me as we hear her Personal Log (even if it does swerve off into Tilly's marathon), ends abruptly when she has a falling out with Amanda who has come to ask for help in decrypting Spock's medical files (would it not have been simpler to send a communication?). This was the story that fell flattest as some of what was said were characters telling other characters what they should already know: after they've witnessed Captain Vela of Starbase 5 claim Spock murdered his doctors and went on the run, both Amanda and Burnham seek to convince Pike that he would never do such a thing, but they know Pike is his good friend and is well aware of his pacifistic nature - in fact Pike says he agrees with them. Then there's also the moment where Burnham's cracked the files and Amanda tells her adoptive daughter what it was like for Spock growing up, and how she feels she was a poor Mother to him because Sarek wanted him brought up in the Vulcan way and so she had to bury her feelings to accomplish that and saved them all for Burnham (even though she was also brought up in the Vulcan way - interesting then that Amanda wonders if Spock's upbringing led to his current mental state). I suppose families, parents and children, don't necessarily tell each other these things, so it could be a revelation to Burnham, but as usual it seemed like the writing should have been taken up a notch there for such an important scene. It's also, if not hard to believe, hard to accept from the little we know of Amanda, that she would steal Spock's files as the 'logical' thing to do (being human), or that she'd react so badly to Burnham telling her why she and Spock don't speak any more.
That was something we've been waiting for, and it's far more interesting than whether a human is a Klingon spy or vice versa, the kind of fantastical twists that were built up to in Season 1. Burnham thought she was protecting Spock from the Logic Extremists (were they the ones who killed her parents and left her for dead, as there were two separate attacks in her life, the Vulcans and the Klingons, right?), by wounding him so badly that he'd keep away from her, as she was a target and didn't want to endanger him. Okay, so she was young and it doesn't make that much sense, but in her mind it does, so I buy it. What doesn't make sense at all is how badly Amanda takes this news, claiming that this is why 'the four of us' can't get together (I really wish there had been a reference to Sybok somewhere in this scene where she speaks of another family member that disappointed them or created problems), when in Trek canon we know that it's Sarek and Spock that aren't speaking at this time since he disagreed with his son's choice to go to Starfleet Academy (made even deeper a wound by Sarek having to choose to sponsor either Spock or Burnham as we found out in 'Lethe'). So Spock is the real reason they can't get together, or as equal a reason, but I suppose we can put all this down to the emotional state of an older woman, and her worries over what has happened to her son.
What did work is that Burnham's sorrow at Amanda's swift exit leads into her desperation to have a problem to solve, which is exactly what Tilly's dealing with, and she uses logical reasoning to come to a belief in this strange and straining apparition that is starting to break Tilly, even though 'May' herself isn't exactly a nasty horror, it's just the constant battering of her on Tilly's mind at this crucial time in her work in the Command training. So things come full circle, Stamets gets the creature out of her (even if it is typically cartoonish), and all ends happily to some degree or another, which can't be said of many a 'DSC' episode. There are still some of the usual issues of story logic or sense, such as Section 31 black badges being instantly recognised by Tyler (this is supposed to be a secret organisation, you know!), or how weird it is that L'Rell often speaks to her people in English as if they were trying to hold back a little on the Klingon language, the integration into the series of which was one of the few achievements of the first season. There are also a few other details that are worth a mention, the main one being Captain Vela suggesting Pike isn't moving with the times using 'old-fashioned' screen communication rather than hologram chat, which was either a dig at old viewers like me complaining about the overuse of holograms, or an insight into Pike's methodology, and if I'm being optimistic, perhaps a sliver of hope that they're highlighting this because they'll eventually be moving to screens again, or that the Enterprise (when we see it), will adhere more to the old-fashioned conventions we know because that's what Pike prefers.
There's a robot head guy on the Bridge of Discovery that looks just like the one on the Shenzhou, but as usual, we don't get any explanation. It's also becoming increasingly clear how different this version of Airiam sounds and I really want to know what's going on with her. The Vulcan city of ShiKahr, created in 'TAS' and where Burnham was escaping from when Spock found her as a child thanks to the Red Angel, is mentioned, which is lovely, and one oddity is what appeared to be Burnham having a Tribble as her 'ringtone' for communication - funny that the first time we ever see it used it's for a Klingon communication as they hate the fuzzy blighters. The scene with Tyler contacting Burnham was well shot, alternating between the different hologram views and even combining the two locations into one for a different approach. I appreciated that it was explained why Tyler was contacting her, tying the episode together, because why would he when he could just send a message direct to the Federation, and it is this that is ultimately responsible for keeping L'Rell in power, at the cost of having to distance herself from her love, even to the extent of 'killing' him in the eyes of her people, chucking a severed head into the volcanic pit below. His betrayal of the lie of Klingon disunity to the Federation means that he's now an outcast in both places, officially dead, and so an ideal candidate to join a clandestine organisation. Even if I'm uneasy with supporting that organisation I can appreciate how the episode got him there. Does this mean the series has turned a corner and we can expect more logical progression and development? I end another review with hope, and that's the right direction of travel.
**
The comfort levels of watching this series creeps up ever so imperceptibly, but with a few course corrections clear in this episode it shows, if only in part, how it could have been, and should have been, from inception. The biggest deal for me was seeing the Klingons with hair. It wouldn't mean anything to 'DSC' viewers that had never known Trek before this or the modern films, but for me, this was a very important moment in the production of the series. Although I suspect claims of the makers that say everything will eventually adhere to canon and 'line up,' as they put it, with 'TOS,' I never really believed that because the overwhelming evidence before me was that they considered visual aesthetics (and even realistic behaviour), to be unimportant. But this one change does at least take action in that direction and was probably brought about because of the protestations on the altered Klingons seen in Season 1, so it gives more hope that other things will change and that one day this will feel like Trek. They still made some of the Houses' representatives look a bit silly with a variety of hairstyles and coverage (and sadly there's no getting around those stupid, unwieldy claws), but the brilliant thing was, and this is all I was asking for from the start, was that we had one guy that looks just like the Klingons of old and future history: the biker gang rockers with the flowing locks, beards and moustaches! Hooray! I had to rewind the first few seconds of the Klingons' reintroduction because they cunningly bury the change in looks by distracting with something equally as desirable to those who care about Klingon culture.
The D7 Battle Cruiser was always a stroke of genius, even in its 'TOS' form of basic texture, and it was astonishing how poorly conceived the Klingon vessels of the first season were in comparison to this. We'd already witnessed something of a design lineage in 'Enterprise' thanks to the (ugly, but not as ugly as 'DSC'), D5 class we saw there, so it was baffling that they had cast off the two most recognisable alien ships (both Klingon - the other being the Bird of Prey), in Trek visual history, and didn't even seem to have the confidence to display their new designs with pride, though that latter complaint may be more in line with the style of the series which is a space show that has rarely indulged in showing ships in space in any significant way or amount of time in which to experience them and take in their design sufficiently. It's only a holographic representation (just can't escape those holograms, it seems), but it was alluring enough that I completely missed the hair at first, which is saying a lot. It's true that I had heard of the change to Klingon appearance long ago, and applauded the decision, but it was fulfilling to see it in reality. If they really are tending toward the Klingon accuracy again, then these are very promising signs. We get mentions of Boreth, the monastery where Tyler and L'Rell's baby is to be raised as a monk (where Kahless was supposed to reappear and did, in 'TNG,' the same place Worf retired to between the destruction of the Enterprise-D in 'Generations' and his new role on DS9), and actual reference to Kahless and the Lady Lukara (though spoken in Klingon English, Kahlesh and Lukareth, which may be more accurate, I don't know), though I'd have loved it even more if they'd called back to the prophecy about him coming to Boreth.
I like that they're even beginning to build up enough of their own lore to go back to, including the great tradition of bringing back an actor from a previous role and putting him in as a new character. This time it's Kenneth Mitchell playing his own Father, Kolshar I think was the name, the traditional Klingon with the white flowing locks. That was something I didn't pick up on until the end credits, as I had heard Mitchell was going to be in it again somehow, but had tried to avoid knowing as much as possible. Considering I wasn't enamoured with the Kol role as a mere dully two-dimensional villain, it's somewhat surprising that I enjoyed his Father so much, reminding me of the villainous power-mongers of old. It may be that I was so struck by how cool it was to see a proper Klingon again that I wasn't thinking about anything else, but he really seemed like those older, wilier members of a House, and his treacherous acts were fitting for the Klingons we know of in the time of 'TOS' and the films beyond. It would be nice to see a fully honourable Worf or Martok type, but we haven't really seen that many Klingons that have had an appreciable role other than a mere name, so it's asking too much of the state this series is in. The question of whether Worf could play his character again without changing the makeup is now moot as we see that with the hair as it should be there's no inconsistency in the face, and it was such a relief to have a Klingon back. Even L'Rell looks so much better with her hair!
Filling in some of the much needed backstory and connections between the Klingons was highly necessary and suddenly they come alive from the mere empty-headed thugs of last season to something akin to what they used to be. Ujilli was a character that had appeared in a couple of episodes before, and is now said to be L'Rell's Uncle who has looked after the baby that sprang from Voq and L'Rell's union, though he doesn't last long enough to be a recurring character thanks to Kolshar. They pack in a bat'leth fight, which is overly gory with lashings of blood, but not as unpleasant to watch as some of the previous season's excesses. I felt it was wrong of L'Rell to go into battle stance when her little baby was there as a hostage ready to be killed at any moment, but then it was a desperate time and it looked like all three of her 'family' were going to be executed as soon as she imprinted her thumb on the Klingon seal. I just feel that in past Trek, if it had been Worf or someone like that, they'd have found a way to protect the child and then take the battle to their enemies. But it is all consistent with brutal Klingon ways, so I'm not going to come down too heavily on that, there are other things to fault… If anything in the Klingon story that rang hollow it was the way Tyler is drawn to Ujilli and the reveal of his baby: someone stalks through his living area so he follows thinking they're spying on him, which leads him to Ujilli and baby, but as Ujilli turned out not to be the enemy he might have been, it makes sense that he wanted Tyler to get to the conclusion indirectly.
It's also very true to the kind of plotting of the series that Kolshar's espionage plan hinged on him goading Tyler enough so that he'd pull off some of his face paint which contained tiny implants that could be used as listening devices, but again, the Romulan-esque deviousness of the race at this time in their history especially, rings true, even if it is a daft idea. The one thing they didn't do that I expected was to name the baby as some famous figure we'd heard of in later series' - I was waiting for that right up until the drop-off at Boreth, but it never came. I really was expecting it to be Worf's cousin or B'Elanna's Grandfather or something, tying things further to other Trek. Maybe they'll keep it for another day, or maybe that's it as far as that storyline goes and L'Rell's offspring won't play any part other than as… well, I'm not really sure what the point of it was. To show the vocalised differences between her and Tyler that he realised meant he couldn't remain Klingon with her as a liability to her position? I must say the transition from living among his people to ending up recruited by Section 31 (yes, it was they), did feel organic so that I bought that part of the story, and despite grave reservations of turning such a secretive and immoral organisation into an important part of both 'DSC' and indeed, getting its own spinoff, I wasn't appalled by that side of the story. I saw Michelle Yeoh's name in the opening credits and already low expectations dropped further, but by the time she shows up disguised as a hooded Klingon to rescue L'Rell and Tyler from execution, I'd forgotten she was even scheduled to be in the episode!
That made me thoroughly intrigued on whom this hooded saviour could be, and even when she was revealed she wasn't quite as bitingly evil as before. I knew she'd been recruited into Section 31 from a deleted scene at the end of the final Season 1 episode, and I knew her recruiter, 'Control,' would be back, but other than that it was all new to me. If this is, as it seemed, a first step on a redemptive arc for the character then I'm all for it, because she was one of the most distressing and hateful things about the first season, this mass murderer allowed to roam free in our universe by the good guys. Her slightly toned down appearance here gave me a modicum of hope that it won't be as ridiculous a decision as it first appeared, another minor course correction perhaps? It's still hard to accept that these writers see Section 31 as something of a boon (a bit like 'Enterprise,' though even there they were shied away from by our characters), rather than something to be stamped out as Bashir and Sisko viewed them - an evil within that needed to be purged to save the Federation's soul, as it were. Now they're the ones with the cool technology and we don't care that they're immoral, fitting much more with our own time than with the bright future Trek used to portray. They still wring humour out of Georgiou's evil nature, which is jarring, but it was more like she was becoming accustomed to this universe and our ways. I wondered if her interference in the Klingons' internal matters was more than just a 31 mission for her - was she doing a Lex Luthor on 'Smallville' and manipulating Tyler away from L'Rell for the benefit of Burnham, just as Lex did with Lana and Whitney in the first season, trying to get Clark hooked up?
If they were trying to get Georgiou into our good books, having her save a couple of characters that had had some development in an episode was a good way to do it. The 31 ship that Control apparently commands was certainly intriguing, and I imagine that's what the spinoff series will be set on. From just that little snippet I can see how a series might work, though I also have major concerns about it. If they had more of what was going on in this episode, however, it might not completely fall apart on scrutiny, though we've yet to see 31's crew and how they operate, so it all hangs in the balance. This episode at least had a more organic structure than previous clumsy attempts to pull off a Klingon story, so it was pleasing in that way. It's sad that they created something that was actually more than surface filler between Tyler and L'Rell only to part them and the baby all three, but it made me interested again in Klingon politics and wish that we could see more Klingons like Kolshar on the series. But I know the Klingons don't have much to do in this season, and I was all for that after Season 1, so I'm pleased at least they managed to claw back some respect for the warrior race. I can't say I'm a fan of their volcanic buildings, I think they put far too much stock in dramatic sets as if that's what really matters on this series - obviously the older series' didn't have the ability to pull off as elaborate designs, but that rarely mattered because you were so drawn into the stories of Klingon soap opera, or culture, in a stage play so you didn't worry as much about surface detail.
There are three stories to this episode so it was good it had over forty-seven minutes in which to tell them, and none feel rushed to conclusion. We get some payoff at last from the little green spore that landed on Tilly last season, revealed to be a multidimensional parasitic creature. I assume it was not really sentient and just using Tilly's mind to create May as otherwise it would seem a bit harsh of Saru to kill it. Although I think they ended up just trapping it in a forcefield rather than killing it, so perhaps it's not the last we'll see of this life form. I liked that we got a non-humanoid creature, another Trekky addition, and the stress it put Tilly under was both uncomfortable to see and funny to watch - yes, I admit it, Tilly actually made me laugh out loud, though it was more with glee at what they were doing than at her usual extremes of behaviour. When she's on the Bridge fouling up her latest Command Programme assignment it was funny as she's talking to May, who no one else can see, in the same way as Sam talking to Al in 'Quantum Leap' could be a great source of amusement. But when things become more sinister it was also worth watching, and you feel for the wearing down of Tilly. It's another of those strange ironies that, like Burnham, Tilly is a much more accessible character, at least for me, when she's miserable. Maybe it's the bunny wabbit hopping chatter and 'cuteness,' mixed with girly-girl talk that puts me off normally? Whatever, I did enjoy this B-story and liked how they wove her and Burnham's story together.
Michael's story (is it the 'B' or 'C' plot?), which begins with another comfort stop for me as we hear her Personal Log (even if it does swerve off into Tilly's marathon), ends abruptly when she has a falling out with Amanda who has come to ask for help in decrypting Spock's medical files (would it not have been simpler to send a communication?). This was the story that fell flattest as some of what was said were characters telling other characters what they should already know: after they've witnessed Captain Vela of Starbase 5 claim Spock murdered his doctors and went on the run, both Amanda and Burnham seek to convince Pike that he would never do such a thing, but they know Pike is his good friend and is well aware of his pacifistic nature - in fact Pike says he agrees with them. Then there's also the moment where Burnham's cracked the files and Amanda tells her adoptive daughter what it was like for Spock growing up, and how she feels she was a poor Mother to him because Sarek wanted him brought up in the Vulcan way and so she had to bury her feelings to accomplish that and saved them all for Burnham (even though she was also brought up in the Vulcan way - interesting then that Amanda wonders if Spock's upbringing led to his current mental state). I suppose families, parents and children, don't necessarily tell each other these things, so it could be a revelation to Burnham, but as usual it seemed like the writing should have been taken up a notch there for such an important scene. It's also, if not hard to believe, hard to accept from the little we know of Amanda, that she would steal Spock's files as the 'logical' thing to do (being human), or that she'd react so badly to Burnham telling her why she and Spock don't speak any more.
That was something we've been waiting for, and it's far more interesting than whether a human is a Klingon spy or vice versa, the kind of fantastical twists that were built up to in Season 1. Burnham thought she was protecting Spock from the Logic Extremists (were they the ones who killed her parents and left her for dead, as there were two separate attacks in her life, the Vulcans and the Klingons, right?), by wounding him so badly that he'd keep away from her, as she was a target and didn't want to endanger him. Okay, so she was young and it doesn't make that much sense, but in her mind it does, so I buy it. What doesn't make sense at all is how badly Amanda takes this news, claiming that this is why 'the four of us' can't get together (I really wish there had been a reference to Sybok somewhere in this scene where she speaks of another family member that disappointed them or created problems), when in Trek canon we know that it's Sarek and Spock that aren't speaking at this time since he disagreed with his son's choice to go to Starfleet Academy (made even deeper a wound by Sarek having to choose to sponsor either Spock or Burnham as we found out in 'Lethe'). So Spock is the real reason they can't get together, or as equal a reason, but I suppose we can put all this down to the emotional state of an older woman, and her worries over what has happened to her son.
What did work is that Burnham's sorrow at Amanda's swift exit leads into her desperation to have a problem to solve, which is exactly what Tilly's dealing with, and she uses logical reasoning to come to a belief in this strange and straining apparition that is starting to break Tilly, even though 'May' herself isn't exactly a nasty horror, it's just the constant battering of her on Tilly's mind at this crucial time in her work in the Command training. So things come full circle, Stamets gets the creature out of her (even if it is typically cartoonish), and all ends happily to some degree or another, which can't be said of many a 'DSC' episode. There are still some of the usual issues of story logic or sense, such as Section 31 black badges being instantly recognised by Tyler (this is supposed to be a secret organisation, you know!), or how weird it is that L'Rell often speaks to her people in English as if they were trying to hold back a little on the Klingon language, the integration into the series of which was one of the few achievements of the first season. There are also a few other details that are worth a mention, the main one being Captain Vela suggesting Pike isn't moving with the times using 'old-fashioned' screen communication rather than hologram chat, which was either a dig at old viewers like me complaining about the overuse of holograms, or an insight into Pike's methodology, and if I'm being optimistic, perhaps a sliver of hope that they're highlighting this because they'll eventually be moving to screens again, or that the Enterprise (when we see it), will adhere more to the old-fashioned conventions we know because that's what Pike prefers.
There's a robot head guy on the Bridge of Discovery that looks just like the one on the Shenzhou, but as usual, we don't get any explanation. It's also becoming increasingly clear how different this version of Airiam sounds and I really want to know what's going on with her. The Vulcan city of ShiKahr, created in 'TAS' and where Burnham was escaping from when Spock found her as a child thanks to the Red Angel, is mentioned, which is lovely, and one oddity is what appeared to be Burnham having a Tribble as her 'ringtone' for communication - funny that the first time we ever see it used it's for a Klingon communication as they hate the fuzzy blighters. The scene with Tyler contacting Burnham was well shot, alternating between the different hologram views and even combining the two locations into one for a different approach. I appreciated that it was explained why Tyler was contacting her, tying the episode together, because why would he when he could just send a message direct to the Federation, and it is this that is ultimately responsible for keeping L'Rell in power, at the cost of having to distance herself from her love, even to the extent of 'killing' him in the eyes of her people, chucking a severed head into the volcanic pit below. His betrayal of the lie of Klingon disunity to the Federation means that he's now an outcast in both places, officially dead, and so an ideal candidate to join a clandestine organisation. Even if I'm uneasy with supporting that organisation I can appreciate how the episode got him there. Does this mean the series has turned a corner and we can expect more logical progression and development? I end another review with hope, and that's the right direction of travel.
**
New Eden
DVD, Discovery S2 (New Eden)
Trek's relations with faith have followed somewhat of a pattern with society: as the western world has grown steadily more secular and materialistic, so Trek has eschewed portraying faith, at least for humans. In 'TOS' Christianity was still the dominant worldview of America and that was represented by a few minor references that showed Captain Kirk and his crew took such things for granted, and probably annoyed atheists no end! He mentions that 'the one God is enough for us' when dealing with Apollo, one of the Greek 'gods,' and on other occasions, such as 'Bread and Circuses,' where the Roman Empire rules a planet, we see the crew's excitement at the realisation that the underground group they helped were followers of 'the Son,' or Christ, wondering happily that the same historical events could be transpiring there. Of course Gene Roddenberry's views shifted, or he had more control by the time he came to his 'purer' vision of Trek in 'TNG,' by which time he was much less interested in discussing such things (though it certainly wasn't as simple as a belief, or I suppose a non-belief, in atheism - read his long interview in the book 'The Last Conversation' for more on what he really thought in that regard). Those who took the reins after he was gone, through sickness and then death, continued that path of largely ignoring matters of faith and preferring to act as if all Trek was, and always had been, based on science, and science alone. No longer were assumptions made about what 'western' humans believed, and in fact it was more likely that if they were discussed at all they were dismissed wryly or it would be eastern philosophy or religions that would be given the limelight.
'The Star Trek Encyclopedia' has a reference for Hinduism and Divali, but not one for Christianity, which is a telling choice, as if the latter is too personal to be approached, while the former is 'other countries beliefs,' so it's safe to mention. Perhaps they thought they were being true to Roddenberry's ethics, or maybe the word Christianity never actually appears in Trek? There are certainly hints at it, such as in the Leonardo Da Vinci holoprogram that Captain Janeway was so fond of on 'Voyager' - there's even an episode in Season 4 where she almost seems wistful about the kind of beliefs he had, and certainly in 'DS9' we see much discussion over the years of alien beliefs, something key to the series, along with the difference between faith in something beyond oneself, and a straightforward belief in scientific fact. The difference is, it's never humans who are allowed to show faith - sure, they can have it for their friends and their Captain, even their technology, and especially the science that makes so much of it work, but they never look for answers beyond their own understanding, the reason of existence having been created, for them, as the unending vastness of space to explore. Indeed, if such things were looked into too strongly then there's the danger they would realise that all of Trek is empty endeavour, ultimately the struggle or the 'adventure' the end in itself, which is a cold reality to confront. By the time of 'Enterprise' they'd reverted to a much more simplistic mode of storytelling akin to 'TOS,' with pretty much only religious alien terrorists to represent the issue, inspired by the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, without the assumptions of Christianity being the main influence, and ignoring such things to focus on the action rather than the philosophical.
I find it interesting that the current key-holders to the Trek brand (on 'TV'), have chosen to explore belief and faith. They outright announced it as the direction of the season, perhaps as an antidote to the war focus of the first season. I wonder if it had a backlash from some people, however, as I know one person who had never seen Trek before and was sucked into Season 1, but quickly gave up on Season 2. I suspect he had issues with addressing religion, and that this is what turned him off it. That's a good thing, because if Trek is doing something to shake some people out of their bubble with its storytelling then it's no longer the bland, rather mindless shambles that Season 1 gave us. Now, I know that Trek isn't going to come down on the side of faith. It can't, as that would undo its aims, and people are comforted by its scientism because that philosophy says that we can explain it all, given time. We don't need outside help, and therefore we don't need outside rules. We make our own morality (regardless of the reality that morality comes from the absolute rules of a benevolent dictator). But at least if Trek is dealing with such issues there's a chance they might stumble upon some truth that wouldn't have even been skirted around if they were ignoring them, and perhaps for a few people it will make them question, where there was no interest in even asking a question before.
That said, I much preferred it myself when Trek either ignored the reality of faith or just showed the results of it in moral ways. Trek has largely lost its moral compass because of the secularisation of society. It's gone far from being an optimistic vision of the future, which, let's be honest, was a false hope for viewers if they were treating Trek as a roadmap for the real future of our world, or even as inspiration in that direction. Quite apart from the fact that warp travel is essentially impossible for us, humanity will never band together, either as the Borg with no individuality, or a combining of our differences into a shared vision, without guidance from beyond humanity. Some look to aliens for this, others the supernatural, but there's only one source that will make this world perfect. Trek is entertainment to me - the finest (though I can't say that wholeheartedly after 'Enterprise,' the current film series, and 'DSC'), and it doesn't go beyond that. Which is why I'd rather they didn't tackle that part of my life if they're going to misrepresent it. However, I was intrigued hearing about the theme of this season, and even heard rumours that Pike was to be presented as an actual Christian, something we'd never seen before. I do sense some kind of struggle in him in this episode, we hear that he had disagreements with his Father, who was both a scientist and a teacher of comparative religion, and he does squirm a bit with the issues that are presented in the story. But in the previous episode we hear him use God's name in vain, so he clearly isn't a committed example of the faith, which is much more realistic for Trek as I doubted they would make such an iconic character come down on that side very strongly, if at all.
Still, it adds an interest to the character that I wonder about. He's not the Pike I really wanted him to be, he doesn't have the open charisma of Jeffrey Hunter, nor the intensity. He's pretty laid back, although he does get to present his rash, heroic side (in a scene that was also stupid - a native girl picks up a Phaser and somehow overloads it in seconds!), but succeeded in displaying one of the key character traits of this man, something we know will eventually injure him so badly that he'll be completely immobile and trapped in a propelling chair for the rest of his life (at least that chair and injury seemed believable for this century, whereas I don't get the rationale behind showing people in wheelchairs on the ship - unless they're Elaysian and find Earth gravity too strong then their ailment or disability would be cured: McCoy could give someone a pill that grew them a new kidney, that's the level of medical advancement they'd reached!). The only trouble, and that goes for every aspect of the series, is that I don't have trust or faith in the ability of the writers to deal respectfully and realistically with either classic characters (look how they botched both Harry Mudd and Sarek, one a murderer, the other signing off on genocide, where before their characters were respectively a roguish con artist and a noble ambassador!), or deep themes. Even if it were the 'DS9' writers, the best in Trek, I'd wonder if they could pull off such things, but I'd at least have some hope. I come to 'DSC' without that.
One major issue with the series is that it's all based around a flawed character - Michael is like an angel herself, she floats in, has all the answers, like a female Wesley Crusher, and her backstory is in name only, she hardly shows the Vulcan heritage I thought was a masterstroke when I first saw her, but was so quickly stripped away. She has learned lessons, for example that she didn't go against Pike's orders not to reveal who they really were, even when he's injured, as that's exactly what she would have done before her previous experience of being held responsible for so much in her mutinous behaviour to her favourite Captain, Georgiou. At the same time you know that they'll probably forget this if it ever becomes convenient, because like modern 'Dr. Who' (which, again, this episode feels very reminiscent of), there's little internal consistency or logic. Not only is she an unstable character who gets more attention than she deserves (a bit like if Seven of Nine became the Voyager crew's keenest, and most trusted advisor in her first season), but here she shows her lack of diplomatic skill that is surprising from someone who has had Sarek as a guide for much of her life, probably the best diplomat in Trek history. Mind you, this version of Sarek is also unstable, so perhaps in this alternate reality (because come on, this must be another timeline, it can't be the Prime for all the massive changes to tech, attitude and everything else!), she has learned everything from him and that's why she is the way she is.
Burnham insults the whole colony of humans they've uncovered on this planet they're calling Terralesium by suggesting all their beliefs are ridiculous, saying there must be some 'rational theories' as to how the church they were transported within from Earth came to be in the Beta Quadrant - I did appreciate that for once the writers were sticking to distances in space by having Pike say the planet is a hundred and fifty years of travelling time away from them, which is why they're allowed to dust off the spore drive. I need to detour here because there are some points to consider, I'll come back to Burnham later. We hear that the spore drive is considered off limits because the use of tardigrade DNA that enabled Stamets to make the jumps was against Starfleet's rules on genetic manipulation. Now that's a cool rationale for why the spore drive could be technology that is unavailable to crews in later series', at least partly, because it's a following of the rules and procedures which is what Trek had laid down, and must follow. 'DSC' has been terrible at upholding Trek convention so I'll applaud any time they do so, and it is a small thing that makes it feel more like Trek than, say 'Stargate SG-1' (which I definitely had an impression of in this episode!). It still isn't enough to show why spore was ignored in the end, because as we see here, if it's deemed necessary they can use it under the Captain's discretion.
There's much more of a 'TOS' cowboy feel to the role of Captain so far this season, and not cowboy in the way that Lorca did whatever he wanted, often in contravention of his superiors, but in the style of a ship being far out in space and having to rely on the experience and intuition of its Captain to make decisions. That's what Trek really needs and potentially Pike is the leader you want in such a situation, which is why he's always been a strong character in the psyche of Trek despite having so little screen time. It doesn't mean you have to agree with his reasoning as a viewer, however. The spore drive use was overlooked, they say, because it was a time of war, and I buy that, even though it's not a well presented time in Trek history, but I'm still not sure what the urgency and importance of these signals are that Pike claims mean so much to the Federation. I don't understand the threat, or if there even is one. I can see it's something that's had a grave effect on Spock, since Pike reveals that he checked himself into a mental facility on a Starbase shortly into his leave, but it's not like we know his mind is falling apart and Burnham has to find the answers to save him. That may be what it becomes, I wouldn't be surprised because they seem unable to create stories unless they're personal, but I hope not. Anyway, to me it remains questionable why Pike would have carte blanche authority to reach these signals, especially as they don't actually find anything on that planet (except for the artefact from our 21st Century, more on which later).
The reference to genetic manipulation legislation is cool because it resulted from the fallout of Khan and his Augments, as we hear in 'Dr. Bashir, I Presume' in 'DS9,' so I like that they put that in there, and I like even more that they did it without referencing Khan, who gets too many mentions in modern Trek, and whom, after the debacle of 'Into Darkness' is persona non grata in Trekland (will we ever see Nicholas Meyer's Ceti Alpha V series? I'm in two minds). But Pike's choice to unspool the spore drive again and put Stamets back in the seat (he has little other integration into the story otherwise, and had become a mechanical device, essentially, defined only by his bond with Dr. Culber), is only one decision that is questionable. The other is his use of General Order Number One, the Prime Directive as we know it, that Archer so wished he had back in the NX-01 days. It apparently applies to this colony on the planet because they're a pre-warp civilisation, and yet they're also human, brought there by the Red Angel (we never find out how, though the possibilities relating to time travel add further mystery, since the Angels have been seen in the 21st Century, and also by Spock as a child so they're clearly something that encompasses a wide time period). If they're human then surely the directive wouldn't apply to them, and this is the thorny issue at the heart of this episode: whether to tell them of the fate of Earth or not.
That's another cool aspect of the story: these people are descended from those who were transposed from Earth during World War III in 2053. That's terrific because so little has been said of this conflict that was a defining moment in human history. Ironically, it does smack a bit of 'TOS' inventing the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s because that was still thirty years away from their TV production in the 1960s, and they had not even the slightest hint of a clue that Trek would not only be alive and well in that future decade, but would be thriving! I wonder if the same will happen with WW3, which I believe was first hinted at in the pilot of 'TNG' (actually it was in 'TOS,' amazingly!), when Picard was summoned to a court of the post-atomic horrors of the 21st Century, recreated by the power of Q. It was tied down to a definitive year by the film 'First Contact' (are they hinting at Borg involvement in the season - I did hear rumours), and out of the ashes of that period rose the Phoenix of Zefram Cochrane, the first human warp ship, and thus Trek was born. It's a great story that fits well with Trek ideals and history both, so it's wonderful to have it part of the story, and is the kind of thing 'Enterprise' would have done in its Season 4 canonfest, for sure. It's telling 'DSC' uses it, because this is the most miserable Trek series ever made, and the least optimistic. Maybe, if it was written better it would be the most realistic, too, but I won't get into that here when there are far more interesting things to discuss. Will Trek still be remembered in the real 2050s? We're almost in the 2020s now, so that's a mere thirty years away, the same timeframe as 'TOS' and its Eugenics Wars. It's funny to think of.
I'm still not sure why humans, even humans from WW3 would be covered by the Prime Directive - we even saw similar events happen before, where people from the past, which essentially these are, were allowed to wake up in the Trek future. There's obviously Dr. Gillian Taylor from 1986 in 'Star Trek IV' who returns to the 23rd Century with Kirk and crew. More relevant still is the 'TNG' episode 'The Neutral Zone' in which other people from the 20th Century are found in cryo-stasis and brought out of the freeze to find themselves in a completely different world. That was a fascinating episode that really showed how people might react from 'our' time if they were brought into the future, but all we get from this episode is the reaction of one solitary scientist who Pike breaks the directive for so as to get something from him! That doesn't seem right when he could just as easily have beamed down, transferred the data from the helmet cam of a soldier who was in the church during the 2053 attack, and beamed back up without the guy knowing. So he's behaving inconsistently, as you'd expect from these writers. I don't know why they'd be left in the dark, but if they are going to be then there shouldn't be any exceptions. I suppose the answer is that Jacob (whom I almost thought was Tony Todd when we first see him in the dim lighting of the chapel), was a 'follower of science' and had realised who Pike and the others were, so the damage was done. It was because of him that they found the beacon in the first place, he and his ancestors had kept it running 'in faith' that someone would come eventually. No explanation of why aliens never came to their aid.
They do seem to be implying that these Angels are a force for good, in that the only two times we've seen them so far, one turned into Pike when he came to rescue Burnham, as if giving her hope, and the second rescued the people in the church from the war, and could also be said to have initiated the Discovery's mission to Terralesium, which allowed them to save the planet from an asteroid field that would have been an extinction level event for the planet, killing everything and everyone. So there's a sense that these things are benevolent for some reason and I look forward to finding out what it all means, because I have no idea, though as usual they're just as likely to drop the ball and fail to follow through on the clues and facts they're giving us, just as they failed so spectacularly to portray a war, or the Klingons, previously. I also find that this episode is a bit unsettling, and I'm not sure what message it's supposed to be saying. To return to Burnham, she obviously doesn't put stock in faith, which is strange when she was brought up as a member of a race that was so heavily religious, Vulcan mysticism such a key part of their culture that she would probably have been a part of it. Granted, Spock is a Science Officer and we didn't see much of that from him in 'TOS,' but it was a different story in the films, where he underwent the most transition of anyone through death and rebirth, and became a different person through that experience.
Burnham hits the nail on the head when she claims her religion is science, because that has been the religion of Trek, as much as it might not want to admit that it follows something, has belief in what it doesn't know, and therefore faith. It's a deliberate decision to believe that everything is natural, there is no supernatural, and therefore we make of life what we will. That has almost always been Trek's creed, and that's fine when it's not specifically comparing such an ideology with the faith of the Bible and God, but here it's a very muddied exploration of the subject matter, even blasphemous in its depiction of a combination religion that is a collection of all the major Earth religions into a new one in the stained glass of the church. Again, I found it to be a very 'Dr. Who' type of approach, which is both shallow, so as not to offend, but also not thought out. In reality, far from everyone joining their differing beliefs, many of which would be diametrically opposed, they would each continue to believe from their experience and wouldn't cobble them all together into one. It doesn't make sense and fails to understand what faith and religion means. It also makes the people appear simple. 'SG-1' was always doing this, visiting agrarian, pastoral colonies of humans that had no idea of the kind of technology the team had or understood aliens, and you have to remember these people are descended from us, those who went missing could be alive right now. I get that the've lost the ability to use technology, but again, the scientists wouldn't have let such things die, and the most important thing to remember is that science and faith are not mutually exclusive - otherwise you wouldn't have any Christians who were also scientists, and indeed many of the most famous believed in God and that they were exploring his creation, just as he'd given us brains to reason with, the ability to design and make, really the whole ethos that Trek is founded upon. But because science has been portrayed as being 'truth' rather than bare fact, and man's theories that have either not been proved, or mistakenly 'proved,' faith has become known as something that is not compatible with reason.
It's true that it goes beyond understanding, but not reason. Blind faith is something else, and is just as likely to be found in science where mistakes have been made or theories disproved - and that's another thing, not all scientists agree, so it's not even as simple as science being an unshakable certainty on all we know. Into this strides Burnham with her religion of science, but I'd have to agree with her that it seems unfair to leave these Terralesians to continue on their misguided path. I didn't even get the impression Pike thought it was a good thing they had built as I can imagine Picard might have celebrated it (as wrong as he'd have been), so it's not like they're even portraying this group as having developed an enlightened brotherhood that was worth being ignorant for. Even if they had decided to inform the people of WW3's end and that Earth is still in one piece, and as he tells Jacob, they're part of a Federation of many worlds that work together in peace, I'd have expected a speech on what those people had done, comparing them to the Federation in miniature, but it was more like poor scientist man, he's the only one who knows the truth and will go back to his daily grind knowing what really happened, leaving these people in the dark. That was the other thing, Jacob is shown as being a man of faith himself - he waited so long for his beacon to be found, but it's reliance on tech to solve problems rather than a power beyond our own (even though it appears it was a power beyond that manipulated the whole mission). And like 'Dr. Who' it's all okay because Pike gives him a power source so the church can have its lights back on. Surely that's a major violation of the Prime Directive, changing their culture - if they can't learn to build a power source for themselves then maybe they shouldn't have one, going by the Prime Directive's logic?
Things also might have been different if the colony was ruled by a cruel leader: in 'Paradise' on 'DS9' a similar story occurs where Sisko and O'Brien crash on a world with a human colony. They're from the 'present' so the Prime Directive never comes up, but it is a tale of one woman's desire to shake off technology, which she considers evil. Nothing like that level of depth is apparent in this episode, which is another reason why the series feels like it doesn't know its own history. Trek kept growing and developing for so long because the same people were making it and they kept track of what had come before so you gradually saw more and more development that fed off and advanced from previous events - they could do the same story with a different crew, but delve in deeper or approach from another angle, and that's the sad fact of this new group: despite having a few people familiar with Trek, it's not enough to keep track of all the details and so it's reverted to square one. It could be the 1980s where they make the same mistakes as 'TNG,' and I don't know if they'll have eighteen years in which to maximise their output and get to a point where we're seeing genuinely new and satisfying developments and exploration of issues or cultures, especially with the slow addition of new material, fewer episodes over a longer period of time, and serialised stories that don't allow the characters or locations to breathe. In that respect it is so much more like 'Stargate' which was 'soft' sci-fi, as much science fantasy, a bit like 'Star Wars,' and very repetitive, relying on likeable characters to carry it through regurgitated sci-fi tropes. The difference is that I do actually like 'SG-1' because of the characters, but 'DSC' I often don't appreciate, often because of the characters.
At least the Bridge crew continue to get more exposure, this time Owosekun even allowed on the Landing Party (I can't see why they wouldn't have at least one security guard to accompany them, but no), which was a rare treat for her. Not that we find out much about her that makes her anything more than a walking Tricorder - she's a non-believer, which is handy because it suggests that some people are believers, and I think a lot of Trek people would wish that there aren't any believers in this future, so I'm finding a positive out of a negative. It's also a revelation to hear that she came from a Luddite collective (the opposite of the Borg collective, perhaps), which is why she's assigned on the mission as she'll be able to blend in better. Do we see this? No, of course not. There is a moment in a deleted scene on the DVD that demonstrates this when she gets them time alone by volunteering her and her friends to clear away after the meal, but there's nothing in the episode that showcases her un-technological upbringing, unless you count using a magnet to open the bolt of a trap door, but any Starfleet officer should be able to show such aptitude and sense. It's typical of this series that it's logic for having someone along is mainly so she can pull a bolt back for them, that's her specialism!
If Owosekun remains bland and undeveloped, it's left to Tilly to carry the B-story, and she really takes the episode down. I can't imagine a more irritating character, and all those people who hated Jar Jar Binks must be absolutely wretched watching her! For myself, I liked Jar Jar, but Tilly is too much for even my mild proclivities, a constant annoyance - I think Stamets says something along the lines of her being quiet again, and she really should. She's the most unprofessional Trek character ever, and not funny in the least. She's an embarrassment to Trek. I was thinking it over, and how similar she is to Reg Barclay from 'TNG,' and I came to the conclusion that he's a fun character because he's not there all the time. If Q showed up every week we'd soon grow tired of him, as we would of Barclay, and I do of Tilly. In small doses, perhaps if she had as little to say as the Bridge crew, she might be someone I could tolerate, but she's just so awful. We're supposed to feel sorry for her whenever something bad happens or she gets slapped down, or in this case, thrown across the Cargo Bay to bounce off some crates, ending up in Sickbay, but I don't feel any sympathy for her whatsoever. I guess it's a product of knowing one of the few things I do about the season, the mycelial network bringing dead people back, that it wasn't a surprise when her old friend from school shows up. At first I found her almost as irritating, this girl that keeps popping up as a weird visitor to Tilly in Sickbay, but she became more interesting when you realise she really is weird, not just a dud note in the writing. That's the trouble, the writing is usually so uneven that her initial oddness didn't stand out enough, whereas in the old series' that would have sparked off an atmosphere.
Tilly's story of trying to use the asteroid they picked up last time as a way of replacing Stamets in the spore drive (don't ask me how), does tie into saving the planet as they use it to draw the meteors away, and is a moment that works fine - you actually get to see the ship in space, for one thing, and I like it when plots have synergy, but it can't disguise the fact that Tilly is so objectionable and does not fit in the Trek world at all. Saru even chews her out for taking a risk that injures her, yet because she comes up with the plan to save the day he commends her for ignoring orders, and generally I don't think Saru has been very well written either so far. The kinds of things he says in that faux school teacher fashion, are just awkward and he's really not the character I thought he was set up to be. He also gets his wires crossed, as Pike has already announced this is a Prime Directive issue, but then when the meteors are set to collide with the planet Saru states that they're responsible for everyone on it, but if they were truly following the directive it would mean abandoning the people to their fate, just as would have happened if they hadn't been there (getting involved makes me think of 'Into Darkness'). I'm not saying that's the moral thing to do, but that's the way Starfleet usually works, unless they can find a way around it. So there remain some silly inconsistencies like that and Pike merely getting his ribs cracked when a Phaser went off underneath him, or whether they consider the people right to continue their weird amalgam religion or not, or Stamets just wandering onto the Bridge so causally because he heard there was a problem, or Saru telling him to run to the spore drive when they've so frequently used intra-ship beaming as a method of expediency - if there was one time when it would be justified it was there!
I was expecting the Red Angel to show up and fix the problem, averting the collision, but the only sighting we have of it is in the helmet footage from WW3. It was exciting to see even that tiny glimpse of the conflict that hadn't been shown before, the closest being in 'First Contact' when there's still the aftermath of war going on even a decade later, but wise of them not to try and present anything of the mid-21st Century. It was slightly disappointing that there wasn't much to see, but this marks the first connection to time travel (other than the loop last season), with its vision of what's to come in the middle of our century, two hundred years before 'DSC.' It was also fun to notice Jonathan Frakes was back as Director, though nothing stood out about this episode, so maybe when I saw his Season 1 entry it was just my imagination that it felt more Trekky? It was fine, and I liked the drone shots they can use now to get a proper aerial view looking down from a starship, but there was still so much that nettled or made me uneasy - seeing all those symbols of other religions in the stained glass of the church I found a little chilling; appropriating the Enterprise theme when all is well at the end never feels right for this series; Dr. Pollard (who is, like the Bridge crew, getting a little more screen time now), mentioning a xylophone in a Klingon marching band - for one thing I doubt the Klingons would ever use a plinky-plonky instrument such as that, and they wouldn't have a marching band, it's totally ridiculous and gives the wrong image of their culture yet again! And the door chime from 'Voyager' being used when Burnham visits Pike's Quarters is awkward and wrong, as if they're tying to squeeze in all eras, when they should be staying true to a specific era.
The message was muddled, despite numerous references to faith, even early on, such as Pike's lack of experience with the spore drive leading him to say he's taking it on faith, which runs through the episode, but doesn't get a payoff. I don't know what Pike really feels like, whether he's a believer, or whether it should even be important to the story. I don't know if what he said about Arthur C. Clarke's famous line of 'sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic' being altered to 'sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence being indistinguishable from God' was a bit bizarre. Is that really what it's been adapted to, or was that invented - I wouldn't put it past the idiocy of the writers to think they could rewrite a classic sci-fi author like that, the height of arrogance, and I'm not sure what it's saying, either. It was already done practically in 'Star Trek V,' a Vulcan tricked into following a false god that led him to destruction, and I can get onboard with that, but if they're saying, for example, the supernatural revelation of the Bible is given by aliens then it's ludicrous. Mind you, Burnham even goes so far as saying that the faith the Terralesians cling to is a lie. She was right in that it was false, a conglomeration of ideas strung together, but I didn't know if she meant all faith, or just this mishmash on the planet. Either way, if they come down too hard it risks alienating viewers, and being an American TV show, even in that increasingly secular country, must mean they wouldn't be as definitive as Burnham appears to be. Right?
One good thing I did like, besides the WW3 references, and Tilly's device for extracting a part of the meteorite and holding it in its own internal gravity, was that Burnham does actually make right an earlier mistake which she's committed before on the series: she's about to tell Pike she saw an Angel when he rescued her in the first episode, but then just thanks him for rescuing her, but at the end of the episode she admits she's wanted to tell him about the vision and there's a slight discussion about more data giving context. That wasn't too bad a way to end an episode because it shows Burnham is learning to trust, and I like it when she does that instead of being about to say something then keeping it to herself and lying so convincingly as she has done on other occasions. Because of this, and the other good things I noted, I liked this episode about the same as the first, whereas I would have felt it was a lesser story due to Tilly's awfulness. But it inspired lots of thoughts from me, as you've just read, so if they can keep that up, they may not be onto a winner this season, but they won't be as much of a loser as Season 1, and I'll take even minute progression at this point!
**
Trek's relations with faith have followed somewhat of a pattern with society: as the western world has grown steadily more secular and materialistic, so Trek has eschewed portraying faith, at least for humans. In 'TOS' Christianity was still the dominant worldview of America and that was represented by a few minor references that showed Captain Kirk and his crew took such things for granted, and probably annoyed atheists no end! He mentions that 'the one God is enough for us' when dealing with Apollo, one of the Greek 'gods,' and on other occasions, such as 'Bread and Circuses,' where the Roman Empire rules a planet, we see the crew's excitement at the realisation that the underground group they helped were followers of 'the Son,' or Christ, wondering happily that the same historical events could be transpiring there. Of course Gene Roddenberry's views shifted, or he had more control by the time he came to his 'purer' vision of Trek in 'TNG,' by which time he was much less interested in discussing such things (though it certainly wasn't as simple as a belief, or I suppose a non-belief, in atheism - read his long interview in the book 'The Last Conversation' for more on what he really thought in that regard). Those who took the reins after he was gone, through sickness and then death, continued that path of largely ignoring matters of faith and preferring to act as if all Trek was, and always had been, based on science, and science alone. No longer were assumptions made about what 'western' humans believed, and in fact it was more likely that if they were discussed at all they were dismissed wryly or it would be eastern philosophy or religions that would be given the limelight.
'The Star Trek Encyclopedia' has a reference for Hinduism and Divali, but not one for Christianity, which is a telling choice, as if the latter is too personal to be approached, while the former is 'other countries beliefs,' so it's safe to mention. Perhaps they thought they were being true to Roddenberry's ethics, or maybe the word Christianity never actually appears in Trek? There are certainly hints at it, such as in the Leonardo Da Vinci holoprogram that Captain Janeway was so fond of on 'Voyager' - there's even an episode in Season 4 where she almost seems wistful about the kind of beliefs he had, and certainly in 'DS9' we see much discussion over the years of alien beliefs, something key to the series, along with the difference between faith in something beyond oneself, and a straightforward belief in scientific fact. The difference is, it's never humans who are allowed to show faith - sure, they can have it for their friends and their Captain, even their technology, and especially the science that makes so much of it work, but they never look for answers beyond their own understanding, the reason of existence having been created, for them, as the unending vastness of space to explore. Indeed, if such things were looked into too strongly then there's the danger they would realise that all of Trek is empty endeavour, ultimately the struggle or the 'adventure' the end in itself, which is a cold reality to confront. By the time of 'Enterprise' they'd reverted to a much more simplistic mode of storytelling akin to 'TOS,' with pretty much only religious alien terrorists to represent the issue, inspired by the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, without the assumptions of Christianity being the main influence, and ignoring such things to focus on the action rather than the philosophical.
I find it interesting that the current key-holders to the Trek brand (on 'TV'), have chosen to explore belief and faith. They outright announced it as the direction of the season, perhaps as an antidote to the war focus of the first season. I wonder if it had a backlash from some people, however, as I know one person who had never seen Trek before and was sucked into Season 1, but quickly gave up on Season 2. I suspect he had issues with addressing religion, and that this is what turned him off it. That's a good thing, because if Trek is doing something to shake some people out of their bubble with its storytelling then it's no longer the bland, rather mindless shambles that Season 1 gave us. Now, I know that Trek isn't going to come down on the side of faith. It can't, as that would undo its aims, and people are comforted by its scientism because that philosophy says that we can explain it all, given time. We don't need outside help, and therefore we don't need outside rules. We make our own morality (regardless of the reality that morality comes from the absolute rules of a benevolent dictator). But at least if Trek is dealing with such issues there's a chance they might stumble upon some truth that wouldn't have even been skirted around if they were ignoring them, and perhaps for a few people it will make them question, where there was no interest in even asking a question before.
That said, I much preferred it myself when Trek either ignored the reality of faith or just showed the results of it in moral ways. Trek has largely lost its moral compass because of the secularisation of society. It's gone far from being an optimistic vision of the future, which, let's be honest, was a false hope for viewers if they were treating Trek as a roadmap for the real future of our world, or even as inspiration in that direction. Quite apart from the fact that warp travel is essentially impossible for us, humanity will never band together, either as the Borg with no individuality, or a combining of our differences into a shared vision, without guidance from beyond humanity. Some look to aliens for this, others the supernatural, but there's only one source that will make this world perfect. Trek is entertainment to me - the finest (though I can't say that wholeheartedly after 'Enterprise,' the current film series, and 'DSC'), and it doesn't go beyond that. Which is why I'd rather they didn't tackle that part of my life if they're going to misrepresent it. However, I was intrigued hearing about the theme of this season, and even heard rumours that Pike was to be presented as an actual Christian, something we'd never seen before. I do sense some kind of struggle in him in this episode, we hear that he had disagreements with his Father, who was both a scientist and a teacher of comparative religion, and he does squirm a bit with the issues that are presented in the story. But in the previous episode we hear him use God's name in vain, so he clearly isn't a committed example of the faith, which is much more realistic for Trek as I doubted they would make such an iconic character come down on that side very strongly, if at all.
Still, it adds an interest to the character that I wonder about. He's not the Pike I really wanted him to be, he doesn't have the open charisma of Jeffrey Hunter, nor the intensity. He's pretty laid back, although he does get to present his rash, heroic side (in a scene that was also stupid - a native girl picks up a Phaser and somehow overloads it in seconds!), but succeeded in displaying one of the key character traits of this man, something we know will eventually injure him so badly that he'll be completely immobile and trapped in a propelling chair for the rest of his life (at least that chair and injury seemed believable for this century, whereas I don't get the rationale behind showing people in wheelchairs on the ship - unless they're Elaysian and find Earth gravity too strong then their ailment or disability would be cured: McCoy could give someone a pill that grew them a new kidney, that's the level of medical advancement they'd reached!). The only trouble, and that goes for every aspect of the series, is that I don't have trust or faith in the ability of the writers to deal respectfully and realistically with either classic characters (look how they botched both Harry Mudd and Sarek, one a murderer, the other signing off on genocide, where before their characters were respectively a roguish con artist and a noble ambassador!), or deep themes. Even if it were the 'DS9' writers, the best in Trek, I'd wonder if they could pull off such things, but I'd at least have some hope. I come to 'DSC' without that.
One major issue with the series is that it's all based around a flawed character - Michael is like an angel herself, she floats in, has all the answers, like a female Wesley Crusher, and her backstory is in name only, she hardly shows the Vulcan heritage I thought was a masterstroke when I first saw her, but was so quickly stripped away. She has learned lessons, for example that she didn't go against Pike's orders not to reveal who they really were, even when he's injured, as that's exactly what she would have done before her previous experience of being held responsible for so much in her mutinous behaviour to her favourite Captain, Georgiou. At the same time you know that they'll probably forget this if it ever becomes convenient, because like modern 'Dr. Who' (which, again, this episode feels very reminiscent of), there's little internal consistency or logic. Not only is she an unstable character who gets more attention than she deserves (a bit like if Seven of Nine became the Voyager crew's keenest, and most trusted advisor in her first season), but here she shows her lack of diplomatic skill that is surprising from someone who has had Sarek as a guide for much of her life, probably the best diplomat in Trek history. Mind you, this version of Sarek is also unstable, so perhaps in this alternate reality (because come on, this must be another timeline, it can't be the Prime for all the massive changes to tech, attitude and everything else!), she has learned everything from him and that's why she is the way she is.
Burnham insults the whole colony of humans they've uncovered on this planet they're calling Terralesium by suggesting all their beliefs are ridiculous, saying there must be some 'rational theories' as to how the church they were transported within from Earth came to be in the Beta Quadrant - I did appreciate that for once the writers were sticking to distances in space by having Pike say the planet is a hundred and fifty years of travelling time away from them, which is why they're allowed to dust off the spore drive. I need to detour here because there are some points to consider, I'll come back to Burnham later. We hear that the spore drive is considered off limits because the use of tardigrade DNA that enabled Stamets to make the jumps was against Starfleet's rules on genetic manipulation. Now that's a cool rationale for why the spore drive could be technology that is unavailable to crews in later series', at least partly, because it's a following of the rules and procedures which is what Trek had laid down, and must follow. 'DSC' has been terrible at upholding Trek convention so I'll applaud any time they do so, and it is a small thing that makes it feel more like Trek than, say 'Stargate SG-1' (which I definitely had an impression of in this episode!). It still isn't enough to show why spore was ignored in the end, because as we see here, if it's deemed necessary they can use it under the Captain's discretion.
There's much more of a 'TOS' cowboy feel to the role of Captain so far this season, and not cowboy in the way that Lorca did whatever he wanted, often in contravention of his superiors, but in the style of a ship being far out in space and having to rely on the experience and intuition of its Captain to make decisions. That's what Trek really needs and potentially Pike is the leader you want in such a situation, which is why he's always been a strong character in the psyche of Trek despite having so little screen time. It doesn't mean you have to agree with his reasoning as a viewer, however. The spore drive use was overlooked, they say, because it was a time of war, and I buy that, even though it's not a well presented time in Trek history, but I'm still not sure what the urgency and importance of these signals are that Pike claims mean so much to the Federation. I don't understand the threat, or if there even is one. I can see it's something that's had a grave effect on Spock, since Pike reveals that he checked himself into a mental facility on a Starbase shortly into his leave, but it's not like we know his mind is falling apart and Burnham has to find the answers to save him. That may be what it becomes, I wouldn't be surprised because they seem unable to create stories unless they're personal, but I hope not. Anyway, to me it remains questionable why Pike would have carte blanche authority to reach these signals, especially as they don't actually find anything on that planet (except for the artefact from our 21st Century, more on which later).
The reference to genetic manipulation legislation is cool because it resulted from the fallout of Khan and his Augments, as we hear in 'Dr. Bashir, I Presume' in 'DS9,' so I like that they put that in there, and I like even more that they did it without referencing Khan, who gets too many mentions in modern Trek, and whom, after the debacle of 'Into Darkness' is persona non grata in Trekland (will we ever see Nicholas Meyer's Ceti Alpha V series? I'm in two minds). But Pike's choice to unspool the spore drive again and put Stamets back in the seat (he has little other integration into the story otherwise, and had become a mechanical device, essentially, defined only by his bond with Dr. Culber), is only one decision that is questionable. The other is his use of General Order Number One, the Prime Directive as we know it, that Archer so wished he had back in the NX-01 days. It apparently applies to this colony on the planet because they're a pre-warp civilisation, and yet they're also human, brought there by the Red Angel (we never find out how, though the possibilities relating to time travel add further mystery, since the Angels have been seen in the 21st Century, and also by Spock as a child so they're clearly something that encompasses a wide time period). If they're human then surely the directive wouldn't apply to them, and this is the thorny issue at the heart of this episode: whether to tell them of the fate of Earth or not.
That's another cool aspect of the story: these people are descended from those who were transposed from Earth during World War III in 2053. That's terrific because so little has been said of this conflict that was a defining moment in human history. Ironically, it does smack a bit of 'TOS' inventing the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s because that was still thirty years away from their TV production in the 1960s, and they had not even the slightest hint of a clue that Trek would not only be alive and well in that future decade, but would be thriving! I wonder if the same will happen with WW3, which I believe was first hinted at in the pilot of 'TNG' (actually it was in 'TOS,' amazingly!), when Picard was summoned to a court of the post-atomic horrors of the 21st Century, recreated by the power of Q. It was tied down to a definitive year by the film 'First Contact' (are they hinting at Borg involvement in the season - I did hear rumours), and out of the ashes of that period rose the Phoenix of Zefram Cochrane, the first human warp ship, and thus Trek was born. It's a great story that fits well with Trek ideals and history both, so it's wonderful to have it part of the story, and is the kind of thing 'Enterprise' would have done in its Season 4 canonfest, for sure. It's telling 'DSC' uses it, because this is the most miserable Trek series ever made, and the least optimistic. Maybe, if it was written better it would be the most realistic, too, but I won't get into that here when there are far more interesting things to discuss. Will Trek still be remembered in the real 2050s? We're almost in the 2020s now, so that's a mere thirty years away, the same timeframe as 'TOS' and its Eugenics Wars. It's funny to think of.
I'm still not sure why humans, even humans from WW3 would be covered by the Prime Directive - we even saw similar events happen before, where people from the past, which essentially these are, were allowed to wake up in the Trek future. There's obviously Dr. Gillian Taylor from 1986 in 'Star Trek IV' who returns to the 23rd Century with Kirk and crew. More relevant still is the 'TNG' episode 'The Neutral Zone' in which other people from the 20th Century are found in cryo-stasis and brought out of the freeze to find themselves in a completely different world. That was a fascinating episode that really showed how people might react from 'our' time if they were brought into the future, but all we get from this episode is the reaction of one solitary scientist who Pike breaks the directive for so as to get something from him! That doesn't seem right when he could just as easily have beamed down, transferred the data from the helmet cam of a soldier who was in the church during the 2053 attack, and beamed back up without the guy knowing. So he's behaving inconsistently, as you'd expect from these writers. I don't know why they'd be left in the dark, but if they are going to be then there shouldn't be any exceptions. I suppose the answer is that Jacob (whom I almost thought was Tony Todd when we first see him in the dim lighting of the chapel), was a 'follower of science' and had realised who Pike and the others were, so the damage was done. It was because of him that they found the beacon in the first place, he and his ancestors had kept it running 'in faith' that someone would come eventually. No explanation of why aliens never came to their aid.
They do seem to be implying that these Angels are a force for good, in that the only two times we've seen them so far, one turned into Pike when he came to rescue Burnham, as if giving her hope, and the second rescued the people in the church from the war, and could also be said to have initiated the Discovery's mission to Terralesium, which allowed them to save the planet from an asteroid field that would have been an extinction level event for the planet, killing everything and everyone. So there's a sense that these things are benevolent for some reason and I look forward to finding out what it all means, because I have no idea, though as usual they're just as likely to drop the ball and fail to follow through on the clues and facts they're giving us, just as they failed so spectacularly to portray a war, or the Klingons, previously. I also find that this episode is a bit unsettling, and I'm not sure what message it's supposed to be saying. To return to Burnham, she obviously doesn't put stock in faith, which is strange when she was brought up as a member of a race that was so heavily religious, Vulcan mysticism such a key part of their culture that she would probably have been a part of it. Granted, Spock is a Science Officer and we didn't see much of that from him in 'TOS,' but it was a different story in the films, where he underwent the most transition of anyone through death and rebirth, and became a different person through that experience.
Burnham hits the nail on the head when she claims her religion is science, because that has been the religion of Trek, as much as it might not want to admit that it follows something, has belief in what it doesn't know, and therefore faith. It's a deliberate decision to believe that everything is natural, there is no supernatural, and therefore we make of life what we will. That has almost always been Trek's creed, and that's fine when it's not specifically comparing such an ideology with the faith of the Bible and God, but here it's a very muddied exploration of the subject matter, even blasphemous in its depiction of a combination religion that is a collection of all the major Earth religions into a new one in the stained glass of the church. Again, I found it to be a very 'Dr. Who' type of approach, which is both shallow, so as not to offend, but also not thought out. In reality, far from everyone joining their differing beliefs, many of which would be diametrically opposed, they would each continue to believe from their experience and wouldn't cobble them all together into one. It doesn't make sense and fails to understand what faith and religion means. It also makes the people appear simple. 'SG-1' was always doing this, visiting agrarian, pastoral colonies of humans that had no idea of the kind of technology the team had or understood aliens, and you have to remember these people are descended from us, those who went missing could be alive right now. I get that the've lost the ability to use technology, but again, the scientists wouldn't have let such things die, and the most important thing to remember is that science and faith are not mutually exclusive - otherwise you wouldn't have any Christians who were also scientists, and indeed many of the most famous believed in God and that they were exploring his creation, just as he'd given us brains to reason with, the ability to design and make, really the whole ethos that Trek is founded upon. But because science has been portrayed as being 'truth' rather than bare fact, and man's theories that have either not been proved, or mistakenly 'proved,' faith has become known as something that is not compatible with reason.
It's true that it goes beyond understanding, but not reason. Blind faith is something else, and is just as likely to be found in science where mistakes have been made or theories disproved - and that's another thing, not all scientists agree, so it's not even as simple as science being an unshakable certainty on all we know. Into this strides Burnham with her religion of science, but I'd have to agree with her that it seems unfair to leave these Terralesians to continue on their misguided path. I didn't even get the impression Pike thought it was a good thing they had built as I can imagine Picard might have celebrated it (as wrong as he'd have been), so it's not like they're even portraying this group as having developed an enlightened brotherhood that was worth being ignorant for. Even if they had decided to inform the people of WW3's end and that Earth is still in one piece, and as he tells Jacob, they're part of a Federation of many worlds that work together in peace, I'd have expected a speech on what those people had done, comparing them to the Federation in miniature, but it was more like poor scientist man, he's the only one who knows the truth and will go back to his daily grind knowing what really happened, leaving these people in the dark. That was the other thing, Jacob is shown as being a man of faith himself - he waited so long for his beacon to be found, but it's reliance on tech to solve problems rather than a power beyond our own (even though it appears it was a power beyond that manipulated the whole mission). And like 'Dr. Who' it's all okay because Pike gives him a power source so the church can have its lights back on. Surely that's a major violation of the Prime Directive, changing their culture - if they can't learn to build a power source for themselves then maybe they shouldn't have one, going by the Prime Directive's logic?
Things also might have been different if the colony was ruled by a cruel leader: in 'Paradise' on 'DS9' a similar story occurs where Sisko and O'Brien crash on a world with a human colony. They're from the 'present' so the Prime Directive never comes up, but it is a tale of one woman's desire to shake off technology, which she considers evil. Nothing like that level of depth is apparent in this episode, which is another reason why the series feels like it doesn't know its own history. Trek kept growing and developing for so long because the same people were making it and they kept track of what had come before so you gradually saw more and more development that fed off and advanced from previous events - they could do the same story with a different crew, but delve in deeper or approach from another angle, and that's the sad fact of this new group: despite having a few people familiar with Trek, it's not enough to keep track of all the details and so it's reverted to square one. It could be the 1980s where they make the same mistakes as 'TNG,' and I don't know if they'll have eighteen years in which to maximise their output and get to a point where we're seeing genuinely new and satisfying developments and exploration of issues or cultures, especially with the slow addition of new material, fewer episodes over a longer period of time, and serialised stories that don't allow the characters or locations to breathe. In that respect it is so much more like 'Stargate' which was 'soft' sci-fi, as much science fantasy, a bit like 'Star Wars,' and very repetitive, relying on likeable characters to carry it through regurgitated sci-fi tropes. The difference is that I do actually like 'SG-1' because of the characters, but 'DSC' I often don't appreciate, often because of the characters.
At least the Bridge crew continue to get more exposure, this time Owosekun even allowed on the Landing Party (I can't see why they wouldn't have at least one security guard to accompany them, but no), which was a rare treat for her. Not that we find out much about her that makes her anything more than a walking Tricorder - she's a non-believer, which is handy because it suggests that some people are believers, and I think a lot of Trek people would wish that there aren't any believers in this future, so I'm finding a positive out of a negative. It's also a revelation to hear that she came from a Luddite collective (the opposite of the Borg collective, perhaps), which is why she's assigned on the mission as she'll be able to blend in better. Do we see this? No, of course not. There is a moment in a deleted scene on the DVD that demonstrates this when she gets them time alone by volunteering her and her friends to clear away after the meal, but there's nothing in the episode that showcases her un-technological upbringing, unless you count using a magnet to open the bolt of a trap door, but any Starfleet officer should be able to show such aptitude and sense. It's typical of this series that it's logic for having someone along is mainly so she can pull a bolt back for them, that's her specialism!
If Owosekun remains bland and undeveloped, it's left to Tilly to carry the B-story, and she really takes the episode down. I can't imagine a more irritating character, and all those people who hated Jar Jar Binks must be absolutely wretched watching her! For myself, I liked Jar Jar, but Tilly is too much for even my mild proclivities, a constant annoyance - I think Stamets says something along the lines of her being quiet again, and she really should. She's the most unprofessional Trek character ever, and not funny in the least. She's an embarrassment to Trek. I was thinking it over, and how similar she is to Reg Barclay from 'TNG,' and I came to the conclusion that he's a fun character because he's not there all the time. If Q showed up every week we'd soon grow tired of him, as we would of Barclay, and I do of Tilly. In small doses, perhaps if she had as little to say as the Bridge crew, she might be someone I could tolerate, but she's just so awful. We're supposed to feel sorry for her whenever something bad happens or she gets slapped down, or in this case, thrown across the Cargo Bay to bounce off some crates, ending up in Sickbay, but I don't feel any sympathy for her whatsoever. I guess it's a product of knowing one of the few things I do about the season, the mycelial network bringing dead people back, that it wasn't a surprise when her old friend from school shows up. At first I found her almost as irritating, this girl that keeps popping up as a weird visitor to Tilly in Sickbay, but she became more interesting when you realise she really is weird, not just a dud note in the writing. That's the trouble, the writing is usually so uneven that her initial oddness didn't stand out enough, whereas in the old series' that would have sparked off an atmosphere.
Tilly's story of trying to use the asteroid they picked up last time as a way of replacing Stamets in the spore drive (don't ask me how), does tie into saving the planet as they use it to draw the meteors away, and is a moment that works fine - you actually get to see the ship in space, for one thing, and I like it when plots have synergy, but it can't disguise the fact that Tilly is so objectionable and does not fit in the Trek world at all. Saru even chews her out for taking a risk that injures her, yet because she comes up with the plan to save the day he commends her for ignoring orders, and generally I don't think Saru has been very well written either so far. The kinds of things he says in that faux school teacher fashion, are just awkward and he's really not the character I thought he was set up to be. He also gets his wires crossed, as Pike has already announced this is a Prime Directive issue, but then when the meteors are set to collide with the planet Saru states that they're responsible for everyone on it, but if they were truly following the directive it would mean abandoning the people to their fate, just as would have happened if they hadn't been there (getting involved makes me think of 'Into Darkness'). I'm not saying that's the moral thing to do, but that's the way Starfleet usually works, unless they can find a way around it. So there remain some silly inconsistencies like that and Pike merely getting his ribs cracked when a Phaser went off underneath him, or whether they consider the people right to continue their weird amalgam religion or not, or Stamets just wandering onto the Bridge so causally because he heard there was a problem, or Saru telling him to run to the spore drive when they've so frequently used intra-ship beaming as a method of expediency - if there was one time when it would be justified it was there!
I was expecting the Red Angel to show up and fix the problem, averting the collision, but the only sighting we have of it is in the helmet footage from WW3. It was exciting to see even that tiny glimpse of the conflict that hadn't been shown before, the closest being in 'First Contact' when there's still the aftermath of war going on even a decade later, but wise of them not to try and present anything of the mid-21st Century. It was slightly disappointing that there wasn't much to see, but this marks the first connection to time travel (other than the loop last season), with its vision of what's to come in the middle of our century, two hundred years before 'DSC.' It was also fun to notice Jonathan Frakes was back as Director, though nothing stood out about this episode, so maybe when I saw his Season 1 entry it was just my imagination that it felt more Trekky? It was fine, and I liked the drone shots they can use now to get a proper aerial view looking down from a starship, but there was still so much that nettled or made me uneasy - seeing all those symbols of other religions in the stained glass of the church I found a little chilling; appropriating the Enterprise theme when all is well at the end never feels right for this series; Dr. Pollard (who is, like the Bridge crew, getting a little more screen time now), mentioning a xylophone in a Klingon marching band - for one thing I doubt the Klingons would ever use a plinky-plonky instrument such as that, and they wouldn't have a marching band, it's totally ridiculous and gives the wrong image of their culture yet again! And the door chime from 'Voyager' being used when Burnham visits Pike's Quarters is awkward and wrong, as if they're tying to squeeze in all eras, when they should be staying true to a specific era.
The message was muddled, despite numerous references to faith, even early on, such as Pike's lack of experience with the spore drive leading him to say he's taking it on faith, which runs through the episode, but doesn't get a payoff. I don't know what Pike really feels like, whether he's a believer, or whether it should even be important to the story. I don't know if what he said about Arthur C. Clarke's famous line of 'sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic' being altered to 'sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence being indistinguishable from God' was a bit bizarre. Is that really what it's been adapted to, or was that invented - I wouldn't put it past the idiocy of the writers to think they could rewrite a classic sci-fi author like that, the height of arrogance, and I'm not sure what it's saying, either. It was already done practically in 'Star Trek V,' a Vulcan tricked into following a false god that led him to destruction, and I can get onboard with that, but if they're saying, for example, the supernatural revelation of the Bible is given by aliens then it's ludicrous. Mind you, Burnham even goes so far as saying that the faith the Terralesians cling to is a lie. She was right in that it was false, a conglomeration of ideas strung together, but I didn't know if she meant all faith, or just this mishmash on the planet. Either way, if they come down too hard it risks alienating viewers, and being an American TV show, even in that increasingly secular country, must mean they wouldn't be as definitive as Burnham appears to be. Right?
One good thing I did like, besides the WW3 references, and Tilly's device for extracting a part of the meteorite and holding it in its own internal gravity, was that Burnham does actually make right an earlier mistake which she's committed before on the series: she's about to tell Pike she saw an Angel when he rescued her in the first episode, but then just thanks him for rescuing her, but at the end of the episode she admits she's wanted to tell him about the vision and there's a slight discussion about more data giving context. That wasn't too bad a way to end an episode because it shows Burnham is learning to trust, and I like it when she does that instead of being about to say something then keeping it to herself and lying so convincingly as she has done on other occasions. Because of this, and the other good things I noted, I liked this episode about the same as the first, whereas I would have felt it was a lesser story due to Tilly's awfulness. But it inspired lots of thoughts from me, as you've just read, so if they can keep that up, they may not be onto a winner this season, but they won't be as much of a loser as Season 1, and I'll take even minute progression at this point!
**
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