DVD, Smallville S1 (Zero)
One of the best episodes of the season, for sure, and a personal favourite for its excellent melding of Lex' Metropolis past, his current life in Smallville, and mixing in the characters well. The two main story-lines mesh superbly, and that's important in making an episode that links thematically to create a more satisfying watch than a simple mystery-of-the-week. While Clark is warned off Lex' own past, he is at the same time trying to keep Chloe from delving too deeply into his own for a school project. It makes for great tension, mixed with comedy as Clark and his parents deal with Chloe's bulldog tenacity for finding out secrets. But it ends on a somewhat sinister note with a device that would be used a number of times on the series: the arrow cursor of a mouse travels back and forth between Delete and Save, the document being information on Clark's adoption. It's ripe for continuation without being a specific cliffhanger, it's not flashy or melodramatic, but simple and contained, and no less powerful for it because we know Chloe's devoted to him, but why does she choose to keep this compromising document? Elsewhere, we see Lex in all his manipulative glory, be manipulated, and although I'd seen the episode a number of times I'd completely forgotten the twist at the end! Although such devices as the mouse cursor or the 'Three Years Earlier' flashing back may seem a little outdated and overdone nowadays, they were certainly fresh and exciting back then, and the style of the episode was terrific, producing a strong visual flavour to the Club Zero scenes.
The mystery is in who shot Amanda's fiance just before their wedding, and with Corin Nemec at full creep mode (before he joined the 'Stargate SG-1' team for a season as fine, upstanding Jonas Quinn!), it really is a question of how he can still be alive. Uniquely, it's a story that doesn't have anything to do with meteor freaks and shows once again how well they could pull off the world they'd created, and how inventive the series could be when it chose to play outside of the established formula. We'd seen it once or twice already, but this is the most fully formed. As well as having a good actor for Jude Royce, it ingeniously features the dead Phalen, a thorn in Clark's side in 'Rogue' earlier in the season, back when he had more hair and seen playing the role of Lex' protector against the law thanks to Daddy Lionel's money. It's truly fascinating to see a little of the kind of life we've heard rumours of Lex living before he came to Smallville - he was just the same then, with an almost fanatical devotion to his friends. You can tell he set up the evening so Amanda would find Jude at Club Zero cavorting with women, so that she knew just whom she was about to marry. It shows both his good and bad sides of personality, in that he will go to extremes to prove a point and is ruthless in following it through, even though it can often be for good reasons. That's why this version of Lex is such a strong one - we believe he believes he's right, and we see the direction this character flaw can eventually take him, even if his more naive young friends don't necessarily understand it and are more willing to judge only on what they see.
'Jude' warns Lana to stay away from Lex (not the best way to get a job: warn your potential boss about her boss, but then the application was just an excuse to spread discord in Lex' world), not the first or last to unleash negative innuendoes on him and his character. There are some inconsistencies or flaws in the writing that come through, despite it being a great story: the fact that Chloe somehow took a huge mugshot of 'Jude' when he was in disguise as the CEP man that kidnaps Lex - unless that was an amazingly good blowup of another photo, but I didn't get that impression. So Chloe was able to take a photo without him noticing, but nobody ever saw Lex being zapped into the van? And there are occasions where characters go somewhere just to say something and never fulfil a good reason for being there, or leaving without good reason. For example, Lex goes to meet the contractor at the Talon as it prepares for its big opening, but he meets his old acquaintance from Club Zero outside. After entering he rushes out to try and find Jude who had just been there and never goes back in for the important meeting, dashing off in his car. I can understand him being shaken, but Lex is usually better than that! And Clark makes a 'pitstop' at his house to find his parents being interviewed by Chloe - he makes his excuses and goes, but why go there in the first place, just to say hello? (Thanks, 'Always Hold Onto Smallville' podcast - I've begun to notice more details like that because of you!).
I like the structure of the story where we go three years before to see one view of what happened in the club, then back to current events where Lex is hanging suspended, shot by 'Jude,' apparently. It's a super opening and you wonder how they're going to get out of it, but after the opening credits we then travel back a week before to see how he got to that point, so it's really quite clever in that way. I also really like the three different perspectives through the episode on who actually did the shooting. Like Garak on 'DS9' we're never entirely sure of the truth - was Lex trying to put Amanda's brother off by making out he was only trying to save her, or was that the true playback of events? I'm more sympathetic towards that view than the others simply because Lex' whole purpose for being there appeared to be for Amanda's interests (though we don't know if he and Jude had enmity or a score to settle for other reasons), and it is the kind of thing he would do, according to what we've seen of his character. It isn't an act when he shows willingness to go far for a friend, but on the counter side it also shows how far he can go against an enemy. Clark isn't a big part of the story, but he does get to save Lex in the most fabulous use of powers and special effects: Lex is shot through a fish tank and over a railing to fall to his doom, but Clark super-speeds in, pushes a settee perfectly under the falling Lex, dashes upstairs to fling the bad guy unconscious against a wall, then speeds back to the doorway as if he'd just run in. It's brilliant, and perhaps the best use of powers on the series, ever!
The third story interwoven with the two main ones (unless you count the shocking loss of the Kents' entire field of cows to a LuthorCorp 'environmental disaster'), is Lana's plans to open the Talon which are moving ahead. Despite the hand of Lex' former Club Zero owner turning up as a grisly warning (why didn't Clark use his x-ray vision to look inside the box? Obviously because they wanted to preserve the shock for the audience on Lex opening it, but it could have been a bomb!), Lana successfully holds the grand opening and even Whitney gets a haircut for the occasion. He must be keeping a low profile after the events of 'Kinetic' and doesn't even show a shred of jealousy over Clark giving her a charming old photo of the Talon back in its black and white days, nor about Clark doing a school project on her! Maybe we just never saw those conversations? When Chloe and Pete are suspecting it was rigged you have to wonder if it really was for Clark to get Lana as his subject! Maybe he used x-ray vision when picking out his piece of paper, assuming that's how they were assigned? Chloe's dismay at so offending Clark is really sad, but it also opens up serious questions for him, since he hasn't really thought too much about the adoption. He knows about the spacecraft in the storm cellar, and he wonders about his birth parents all the time, but he's had a happy childhood so it makes sense that he wouldn't have done any digging as Chloe does. Of course we later learn Lionel Luthor had everything to do with the adoption, and even more bizarrely that he even knew Clark was coming to Earth (which was all a bit stupid, so let's forget about that!).
At this stage of the series we're seeing a real confidence in what they could do with the format so that you believe it could become almost anything. So it's a sad thing to realise things were never going to be as good as this again for much longer. They were still casting well (the contractor was also played by an actor who had a recurring role on 'SG-1,' and Mitchell Kosterman's Sheriff Ethan gets the odd line here), and while Pete and Whitney still draw the short straw most of the time, the way Clark's parents are integrated into the ongoing saga of his growing friendships with Lana and Lex is a delight to behold. It's not all about special effects, they use them sparingly and to… good effect! The nature of Lex is explored well and it's just a rollicking good story with plenty of strong character moments. Zero consequences couldn't be further from the truth, and the title is almost irony itself - I'd give it a much higher rating than zero!
****
Tuesday, 28 January 2020
Project Daedalus
DVD, Discovery S2 (Project Daedalus)
Right, so this is almost an Airiam episode. Possibly, in the context of this series which doesn't really do character episodes as such, this is an Airiam episode. In that regard it is the first and the last Airiam episode, and therein lies a problem. Judging by the highly emotional ending where she must be jettisoned into space in order to prevent her killing Burnham and taking control of the weapons on the ex-penal station to destroy Discovery, we're supposed to care deeply about her fate. But she isn't really a character at all, she's little more than background support due to the style this series has chosen - just like most of the Bridge crew, she's a face and a name and we know almost nothing about her, let alone had a chance to get to know her as a person. There's a belated attempt to try and create a bond with the audience by showing a few selected memories of her time with shipboard personnel or her walk on a beach with her new husband, but that's all! As with everything on the series it's yet another sped-up element of what Trek once was: rather than injecting little morsels of character interaction across the first season and a half in which we 'knew' her, it's all crammed into this one episode. Maybe for people with tiny attention spans and constant need for stimulation this is what passes for development, but it's nowhere near enough to make me care a jot about her emergency death and it suggests to me that maybe there was more going on with this story idea.
It begins with Airiam being played by another actress from the start of this season, for what reason I still don't rightly know, but perhaps they felt they couldn't keep the character going because of that and so came up with a plan to use her before killing her off. Maybe it was simplification, I'm not sure, as she was fine as she was, maybe they saw it as an opportunity to do something with her instead of just having this unexplained person there for viewers to wonder about and add to the background exotica of showing weird aliens a lot which the series believes is enough to sustain interest without ever getting to know them. There's no time to get to know anyone much and there are recurring characters on previous Treks that have had more development than some of the main cast on this series, so it's no surprise that Airiam was just another casualty of this wrongheaded approach to Trek as mere action drama rather than the richness we used to see. Turns out shorter seasons don't work in Trek's best interests. It actually was of interest to learn her past, that she's half human, half cybernetic and was injured in a shuttle crash, and see her idiosyncrasies: how she spends her time, what her Quarters look like, but it was too little, far too late, and it's distressing to see yet another aspect of the series fail because of the format and approach.
She could have been a fascinating character, albeit one that is a little problematic in some ways because Data was supposed to be such an advancement, and he lived a century later. At the same time we saw many superficially flawless androids and suchlike on 'TOS,' so it makes sense to address artificial life in some way, but they did neither (though touching on it with this 'Control' that is the Starfleet main computer, or something they input data into and gives them strategies, and now wants independence). They don't have room for philosophical discussion on the issues of artificial intelligence or exploring ideas because they're not tapping into that form of storytelling, preferring to concentrate on visual effects and galaxy-spanning dangers, forgetting that the personal is far more relatable. On the whole I would say this season has been far more 'Trekkish' than Season 1, and yet it still doesn't sit right and whatever they do doesn't seem to fit with the vast majority of Trek. It's such a strange sensation to be watching something that plays it as being part of that universe, yet clearly so doesn't wish to be, and it jars. I did like the shot of Airiam in space with her last memory playing across her eye before everything shuts down and so does the episode, but even the fact there was a notable lack of end music, replaced by lapping waves and wind, suggested this was a big, significant moment, yet it wasn't. If Airiam was misused, or more precisely, not built up to a point where she was someone whose loss was meaningful, Spock was also lessened in importance.
He admits himself that he is unusual, but that there are others like him, and in the context of the conversation they were talking about his half-humanness, so they've managed to make him a lesser character. I don't believe it was ever stated anywhere in canon that Spock was the first human-Vulcan hybrid, or that he was the only one, but that's the impression we've always had and one of the reasons why he's so special. It may seem logical that other Vulcans and humans would have mated and borne 'half-caste' children, but this in turn lessens the impact of Sarek and Amanda's union. In 'Enterprise' there was a big deal about the DNA of human Trip and Vulcan T'Pol being combined to create an infant, but that's the only other connection we've seen prior to Spock and it's hard to imagine, given the Vulcans we've seen in both 'Enterprise' and 'DSC' that they would consent to fraternise with humans voluntarily, Sarek being a special case because of his Ambassadorship to Earth. But when even the naming conventions are forgotten (I assumed Admiral Patar was P'Tar until I saw the end credits - typical that this character, who was actually the most true Vulcan portrayal on the series so far, is killed off), they seem oblivious to the damage they're doing to the former consistency and efficacy of Trek, and it is consistent only in disappointing those that care about such things as I do.
They chuck in references to kadis-kot, the game favoured by Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman on 'Voyager,' and tri-dimensional chess, which we see Spock and Burnham play until their civility falls apart and they bicker like the two non-Vulcans they are on this series, culminating with Spock admitting that for the first time in his life he enjoys expressing emotion (didn't he do just that in 'The Cage' a few years earlier), and smashing the chess set to the floor. I remain generally appreciative that they found someone who could do a good approximation of the voice, and he does maintain a Spockishness in his speech that is admirable, but I really don't know what they're doing with the character other than using him to drum up interest in the series. And I do wish he'd tidy himself up with a shave and a comb, though how he looks is the least of my problems with the series. Each episode is somewhat of a chore to take onboard and I don't look forward to seeing the next part in an ever-advancing plot that still feels like it's treading water. Perhaps that's why they threw in the Mirror Universe jaunt in the second half of Season 1, because they realised they couldn't sustain such slight storytelling across 'so many' episodes. This season hasn't had that advantage of being able to turn on its head, relying instead on our desire to see how they were going to achieve a young Spock, and now, I suppose, how accurately they're going to achieve the USS Enterprise. Obviously we're not expecting the galaxy to end, but they're not even postulating that, really, it's more that events at this time can affect the outcome of the future, an intriguing idea that has barely been touched.
I keep coming back to the reality that had Airiam have been given even a little characterisation every other episode, she'd have become someone whose loss would have meant something, but she wasn't given that dignity. But then I'm not even sure someone familiar, like Admiral Cornwell, has enough of my respect that I'd care about her demise. Here, she's back as an ally of the renegades, as usual doing her own thing regardless of Starfleet, even if she is right in this case. I really get… I was going to say annoyed, but I can't even get that stirred up any more about anything that happens on this series because it's so distant from the precepts and principles of Trek that it's easier to spot things they do right. But about the shuttlecraft she arrives in, all beat up, worn and grimy… That's the 'Star Wars' aesthetic and doesn't fit in Trek. Things are supposed to be clean and smooth, not battered and falling apart. I'm not sure I've ever really liked the Admiral anyway, but she's a difficult person to pin down. She answers Pike's concerns with frank flattery about why he was ordered to sit out the war: Starfleet wanted to protect the 'best' parts of itself by sending the Enterprise (and presumably the other Constitution vessels), out away from the conflict so that if they were defeated what would be left was worth saving. It's all rather false to me, because it's silly to think Starfleet wouldn't be using its best ships in the fight and seems rather designed as an explanation to quiet Pike's moral qualms. That's the reason I see they divided their forces like that: so the less principled, hard-edged officers like Cornwell, could do whatever they wanted in compromising Starfleet principles and shut up people like Pike. It sounds very pat and handy, but it would have made a lot more sense to say he was off on a distant exploratory mission and simply couldn't be reached easily. Instead, he looks like an easily placated guy, not shrewd, just pacified with a compliment, typical of the non-utopian worldview this series chooses to embrace, it seems.
Cornwell is the poster-girl for such views, the ends justifying the means and all that, and she should really have been stripped of her rank when the truth came out about the attempted genocide of the Klingons once Burnham was able to singlehandedly prevent it. Once again we're reminded of Burnham as being this super-important, destiny child which everything hinges on as Airiam says before she gets sucked out that it's all about her. It's all rather tiresome and far from the simple values and qualities of Starfleet previously, and doesn't aid in my appreciation of the series. As always there are many questions thrown up by events in the episode, such as if Admiral Patar is a known logic extremist then why is she allowed to be in Starfleet? Or are there legitimate nonviolent examples of the creed? If so, we haven't seen them, nor have we seen any positives in the position which appears to be all about getting rid of non-Vulcans from their planet, far from the inclusiveness of Starfleet. I may have missed something in dialogue then, but it's hard to believe yet another Admiral is compromised. Then again, Admirals have a bad reputation on Trek and it's always been implied that the Captain, on the front line of decision-making, is the true hero of the organisation, having to deal with the superiors and subordinates to get to the right course of action, which is what is supposed to make the role compelling.
Any concepts and ideas that come up from thinking about the episode are paled by the many choices made, whether that be battered shuttles, more two-handed Phaser grasping (don't they realise how much cooler it looks when they just hold one arm out - see 'Enterprise' especially, for details), not to mention the weedy little poops instead of the screeching beam, or the heavily fantastical approach to Starfleet design that has things like EVA suits whose helmets fold away, click-click-click, rather than simply being removed normally. It's so silly! And what about Burnham failing to minister to the downed Naarn whose breathing apparatus is damaged by Airiam and who could be dying! Instead, she prefers to run around like a headless chicken, emoting like crazy. So much for the Vulcan training, then, and indeed, we've barely seen this aspect of her that was so intriguing, since the first two episodes. Maybe Vulcan behaviour is deemed too boring for modern audiences so she needs to be highly volatile, panicky and superhero-like in her fighting choreography and glamour, a real 'fight first, think later' type, and a real disappointment. If this is the secret base of Section 31, wouldn't there be someone there who would know Discovery was approaching and activate weapons rather than these illegal automated mines (the Federation doesn't permit them at this time, apparently, though this would change a century later when they needed to mine the Wormhole to stop the Dominion bringing in more enemy forces to the Alpha Quadrant).
And Burnham lecturing Spock on the purpose of logic?! And what about Airiam's weekly memory sorting - does she really go through every memory for the week and decide what to keep or junk - we see it in realtime, but if that were the case she'd spend another week going through the process! Maybe she only works every other week? And Cornwell says they're blackout mines that interfere with navigation when Detmer says sensors tell them they're flying upside down, but on this series there's never been a right way up in space, as they've loved to show ships approaching at different orientation, so is this in relation to the station, or what? At least it's more obvious when the shields are being hit, although, rather than the bubble we used to get they appear to be form-fitted to the hull, but then they really love to be as different as possible, distance themselves from those boring old Treks that nobody really liked - who needs Phaser beams, stars travelling in a straight line when seen in a warp field, or shield bubbles? I will say that it was good to see a tiny flashback to when Burnham's parents were being murdered by Klingons, as we've seen flashbacks to the aftermath of the Vulcan bombing in her past, but never to this other integral event of her life. And it's stated on screen about Naarn being Barzan and what that means, even if it is merely to set her up to be damaged later. Because, don't forget, the audience is stupid and needs a lot of help. They can't afford to be 'fanatical' about how much knowledge they take in these days because there's so many other things vying for their attention, so we need to not put them off with anything too complex. I was hoping the Daedalus of the title was connecting to the episode of the same name on 'Enterprise,' and it still could, but I doubt it.
At least there was no Georgiou to stain the halls of Starfleet vessels this time, though it didn't prevent from the usual lack of tension due to chop-socky laughable martial arts combat being the end point of any creeping around. I always like a good creep around in the dark, but, and I'm surprised to say this, considering this was another Jonathan Frakes-directed episode, there really was no build-up of tension. And I really did snort in derision as Burnham tries to fight a cybernetically augmented assailant rather than using her brains. Sure, she eventually traps Airiam in the airlock, but they really did slow-motion kicks across the room, with Airiam leaping through the air like Trinity, and it's just totally off-the-wall ridiculous. All sense of reality is lost in this series. And I love 'The Matrix,' and I always loved a good fight in Trek, but it's just so boring now, all about the flashiness and the glory rather than the functional, graceful simplicity of old. I don't see why she didn't simply Phaser Airiam in the first place as soon as Naarn was overpowered, instead of hesitating. Well, I do know - it's because, like the modern films, they think this is the only way people will be interested in watching. I can't imagine this series ever conceiving of doing a 'Shuttlepod One,' 'The Inner Light' or any contemplative approach that Trek formerly excelled at. Perhaps once their current strategy eventually comes to fruition, and there's a multiplicity of Trek series', each with their own approach and audience in mind, we'll see true diversity that is now missing, and that was so great about Trek: that each week it could be something different. Until that time, 'DSC' is all I have to go on and it doesn't do the job, not by a long way!
**
Right, so this is almost an Airiam episode. Possibly, in the context of this series which doesn't really do character episodes as such, this is an Airiam episode. In that regard it is the first and the last Airiam episode, and therein lies a problem. Judging by the highly emotional ending where she must be jettisoned into space in order to prevent her killing Burnham and taking control of the weapons on the ex-penal station to destroy Discovery, we're supposed to care deeply about her fate. But she isn't really a character at all, she's little more than background support due to the style this series has chosen - just like most of the Bridge crew, she's a face and a name and we know almost nothing about her, let alone had a chance to get to know her as a person. There's a belated attempt to try and create a bond with the audience by showing a few selected memories of her time with shipboard personnel or her walk on a beach with her new husband, but that's all! As with everything on the series it's yet another sped-up element of what Trek once was: rather than injecting little morsels of character interaction across the first season and a half in which we 'knew' her, it's all crammed into this one episode. Maybe for people with tiny attention spans and constant need for stimulation this is what passes for development, but it's nowhere near enough to make me care a jot about her emergency death and it suggests to me that maybe there was more going on with this story idea.
It begins with Airiam being played by another actress from the start of this season, for what reason I still don't rightly know, but perhaps they felt they couldn't keep the character going because of that and so came up with a plan to use her before killing her off. Maybe it was simplification, I'm not sure, as she was fine as she was, maybe they saw it as an opportunity to do something with her instead of just having this unexplained person there for viewers to wonder about and add to the background exotica of showing weird aliens a lot which the series believes is enough to sustain interest without ever getting to know them. There's no time to get to know anyone much and there are recurring characters on previous Treks that have had more development than some of the main cast on this series, so it's no surprise that Airiam was just another casualty of this wrongheaded approach to Trek as mere action drama rather than the richness we used to see. Turns out shorter seasons don't work in Trek's best interests. It actually was of interest to learn her past, that she's half human, half cybernetic and was injured in a shuttle crash, and see her idiosyncrasies: how she spends her time, what her Quarters look like, but it was too little, far too late, and it's distressing to see yet another aspect of the series fail because of the format and approach.
She could have been a fascinating character, albeit one that is a little problematic in some ways because Data was supposed to be such an advancement, and he lived a century later. At the same time we saw many superficially flawless androids and suchlike on 'TOS,' so it makes sense to address artificial life in some way, but they did neither (though touching on it with this 'Control' that is the Starfleet main computer, or something they input data into and gives them strategies, and now wants independence). They don't have room for philosophical discussion on the issues of artificial intelligence or exploring ideas because they're not tapping into that form of storytelling, preferring to concentrate on visual effects and galaxy-spanning dangers, forgetting that the personal is far more relatable. On the whole I would say this season has been far more 'Trekkish' than Season 1, and yet it still doesn't sit right and whatever they do doesn't seem to fit with the vast majority of Trek. It's such a strange sensation to be watching something that plays it as being part of that universe, yet clearly so doesn't wish to be, and it jars. I did like the shot of Airiam in space with her last memory playing across her eye before everything shuts down and so does the episode, but even the fact there was a notable lack of end music, replaced by lapping waves and wind, suggested this was a big, significant moment, yet it wasn't. If Airiam was misused, or more precisely, not built up to a point where she was someone whose loss was meaningful, Spock was also lessened in importance.
He admits himself that he is unusual, but that there are others like him, and in the context of the conversation they were talking about his half-humanness, so they've managed to make him a lesser character. I don't believe it was ever stated anywhere in canon that Spock was the first human-Vulcan hybrid, or that he was the only one, but that's the impression we've always had and one of the reasons why he's so special. It may seem logical that other Vulcans and humans would have mated and borne 'half-caste' children, but this in turn lessens the impact of Sarek and Amanda's union. In 'Enterprise' there was a big deal about the DNA of human Trip and Vulcan T'Pol being combined to create an infant, but that's the only other connection we've seen prior to Spock and it's hard to imagine, given the Vulcans we've seen in both 'Enterprise' and 'DSC' that they would consent to fraternise with humans voluntarily, Sarek being a special case because of his Ambassadorship to Earth. But when even the naming conventions are forgotten (I assumed Admiral Patar was P'Tar until I saw the end credits - typical that this character, who was actually the most true Vulcan portrayal on the series so far, is killed off), they seem oblivious to the damage they're doing to the former consistency and efficacy of Trek, and it is consistent only in disappointing those that care about such things as I do.
They chuck in references to kadis-kot, the game favoured by Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman on 'Voyager,' and tri-dimensional chess, which we see Spock and Burnham play until their civility falls apart and they bicker like the two non-Vulcans they are on this series, culminating with Spock admitting that for the first time in his life he enjoys expressing emotion (didn't he do just that in 'The Cage' a few years earlier), and smashing the chess set to the floor. I remain generally appreciative that they found someone who could do a good approximation of the voice, and he does maintain a Spockishness in his speech that is admirable, but I really don't know what they're doing with the character other than using him to drum up interest in the series. And I do wish he'd tidy himself up with a shave and a comb, though how he looks is the least of my problems with the series. Each episode is somewhat of a chore to take onboard and I don't look forward to seeing the next part in an ever-advancing plot that still feels like it's treading water. Perhaps that's why they threw in the Mirror Universe jaunt in the second half of Season 1, because they realised they couldn't sustain such slight storytelling across 'so many' episodes. This season hasn't had that advantage of being able to turn on its head, relying instead on our desire to see how they were going to achieve a young Spock, and now, I suppose, how accurately they're going to achieve the USS Enterprise. Obviously we're not expecting the galaxy to end, but they're not even postulating that, really, it's more that events at this time can affect the outcome of the future, an intriguing idea that has barely been touched.
I keep coming back to the reality that had Airiam have been given even a little characterisation every other episode, she'd have become someone whose loss would have meant something, but she wasn't given that dignity. But then I'm not even sure someone familiar, like Admiral Cornwell, has enough of my respect that I'd care about her demise. Here, she's back as an ally of the renegades, as usual doing her own thing regardless of Starfleet, even if she is right in this case. I really get… I was going to say annoyed, but I can't even get that stirred up any more about anything that happens on this series because it's so distant from the precepts and principles of Trek that it's easier to spot things they do right. But about the shuttlecraft she arrives in, all beat up, worn and grimy… That's the 'Star Wars' aesthetic and doesn't fit in Trek. Things are supposed to be clean and smooth, not battered and falling apart. I'm not sure I've ever really liked the Admiral anyway, but she's a difficult person to pin down. She answers Pike's concerns with frank flattery about why he was ordered to sit out the war: Starfleet wanted to protect the 'best' parts of itself by sending the Enterprise (and presumably the other Constitution vessels), out away from the conflict so that if they were defeated what would be left was worth saving. It's all rather false to me, because it's silly to think Starfleet wouldn't be using its best ships in the fight and seems rather designed as an explanation to quiet Pike's moral qualms. That's the reason I see they divided their forces like that: so the less principled, hard-edged officers like Cornwell, could do whatever they wanted in compromising Starfleet principles and shut up people like Pike. It sounds very pat and handy, but it would have made a lot more sense to say he was off on a distant exploratory mission and simply couldn't be reached easily. Instead, he looks like an easily placated guy, not shrewd, just pacified with a compliment, typical of the non-utopian worldview this series chooses to embrace, it seems.
Cornwell is the poster-girl for such views, the ends justifying the means and all that, and she should really have been stripped of her rank when the truth came out about the attempted genocide of the Klingons once Burnham was able to singlehandedly prevent it. Once again we're reminded of Burnham as being this super-important, destiny child which everything hinges on as Airiam says before she gets sucked out that it's all about her. It's all rather tiresome and far from the simple values and qualities of Starfleet previously, and doesn't aid in my appreciation of the series. As always there are many questions thrown up by events in the episode, such as if Admiral Patar is a known logic extremist then why is she allowed to be in Starfleet? Or are there legitimate nonviolent examples of the creed? If so, we haven't seen them, nor have we seen any positives in the position which appears to be all about getting rid of non-Vulcans from their planet, far from the inclusiveness of Starfleet. I may have missed something in dialogue then, but it's hard to believe yet another Admiral is compromised. Then again, Admirals have a bad reputation on Trek and it's always been implied that the Captain, on the front line of decision-making, is the true hero of the organisation, having to deal with the superiors and subordinates to get to the right course of action, which is what is supposed to make the role compelling.
Any concepts and ideas that come up from thinking about the episode are paled by the many choices made, whether that be battered shuttles, more two-handed Phaser grasping (don't they realise how much cooler it looks when they just hold one arm out - see 'Enterprise' especially, for details), not to mention the weedy little poops instead of the screeching beam, or the heavily fantastical approach to Starfleet design that has things like EVA suits whose helmets fold away, click-click-click, rather than simply being removed normally. It's so silly! And what about Burnham failing to minister to the downed Naarn whose breathing apparatus is damaged by Airiam and who could be dying! Instead, she prefers to run around like a headless chicken, emoting like crazy. So much for the Vulcan training, then, and indeed, we've barely seen this aspect of her that was so intriguing, since the first two episodes. Maybe Vulcan behaviour is deemed too boring for modern audiences so she needs to be highly volatile, panicky and superhero-like in her fighting choreography and glamour, a real 'fight first, think later' type, and a real disappointment. If this is the secret base of Section 31, wouldn't there be someone there who would know Discovery was approaching and activate weapons rather than these illegal automated mines (the Federation doesn't permit them at this time, apparently, though this would change a century later when they needed to mine the Wormhole to stop the Dominion bringing in more enemy forces to the Alpha Quadrant).
And Burnham lecturing Spock on the purpose of logic?! And what about Airiam's weekly memory sorting - does she really go through every memory for the week and decide what to keep or junk - we see it in realtime, but if that were the case she'd spend another week going through the process! Maybe she only works every other week? And Cornwell says they're blackout mines that interfere with navigation when Detmer says sensors tell them they're flying upside down, but on this series there's never been a right way up in space, as they've loved to show ships approaching at different orientation, so is this in relation to the station, or what? At least it's more obvious when the shields are being hit, although, rather than the bubble we used to get they appear to be form-fitted to the hull, but then they really love to be as different as possible, distance themselves from those boring old Treks that nobody really liked - who needs Phaser beams, stars travelling in a straight line when seen in a warp field, or shield bubbles? I will say that it was good to see a tiny flashback to when Burnham's parents were being murdered by Klingons, as we've seen flashbacks to the aftermath of the Vulcan bombing in her past, but never to this other integral event of her life. And it's stated on screen about Naarn being Barzan and what that means, even if it is merely to set her up to be damaged later. Because, don't forget, the audience is stupid and needs a lot of help. They can't afford to be 'fanatical' about how much knowledge they take in these days because there's so many other things vying for their attention, so we need to not put them off with anything too complex. I was hoping the Daedalus of the title was connecting to the episode of the same name on 'Enterprise,' and it still could, but I doubt it.
At least there was no Georgiou to stain the halls of Starfleet vessels this time, though it didn't prevent from the usual lack of tension due to chop-socky laughable martial arts combat being the end point of any creeping around. I always like a good creep around in the dark, but, and I'm surprised to say this, considering this was another Jonathan Frakes-directed episode, there really was no build-up of tension. And I really did snort in derision as Burnham tries to fight a cybernetically augmented assailant rather than using her brains. Sure, she eventually traps Airiam in the airlock, but they really did slow-motion kicks across the room, with Airiam leaping through the air like Trinity, and it's just totally off-the-wall ridiculous. All sense of reality is lost in this series. And I love 'The Matrix,' and I always loved a good fight in Trek, but it's just so boring now, all about the flashiness and the glory rather than the functional, graceful simplicity of old. I don't see why she didn't simply Phaser Airiam in the first place as soon as Naarn was overpowered, instead of hesitating. Well, I do know - it's because, like the modern films, they think this is the only way people will be interested in watching. I can't imagine this series ever conceiving of doing a 'Shuttlepod One,' 'The Inner Light' or any contemplative approach that Trek formerly excelled at. Perhaps once their current strategy eventually comes to fruition, and there's a multiplicity of Trek series', each with their own approach and audience in mind, we'll see true diversity that is now missing, and that was so great about Trek: that each week it could be something different. Until that time, 'DSC' is all I have to go on and it doesn't do the job, not by a long way!
**
Tuesday, 21 January 2020
Kinetic
DVD, Smallville S1 (Kinetic)
One I had no memories of, so I didn't know where it was going, though I did remember the concept of meteor-juiced tattoos that allow people to walk through walls. But the story is much more than that and really uses the cast well, so I became very impressed. It may be a side effect of watching something like 'Star Trek: Discovery,' where I come out of it uncomfortable and down, so that when I watch this series it's so wonderful in contrast that I love it all the more, but I really did warm to this episode early on and went with it every step of the way, even if there were things that seemed a little strange. Like the prosthetic arm, for example - one of the three hoodlums who raid Lex' Mansion removes this arm before exiting the vehicle and you're left to wonder why, and later Clark does the 'Kent Thousand Yard Stare' as Pete calls it, using x-ray vision to gaze into the Smallville Savings and Loan bank and sees a human arm embedded in the wall. It's not until later it gets confirmed by the guy that lost it what happened, but for some reason it was a bit puzzling as I thought it meant something, like he took an arm with him whenever he did one of these jobs and left it somewhere for some reason, but I got completely the wrong end of the stick. Or the arm. Then I think it was Lana trying to get Lex to consider returning the Talon into operative status just because she wants him to, and it was an odd thing for a usually bright girl to ask. I wonder if he always had in mind that she would want to save it and so his plan was to challenge her so that they ended up working together and maybe he'd have more influence over her regarding Clark…?
It's a bit Machiavellian, I admit, but it would be very true to his character, and at this stage of the series he's often doing things to bring the young people around to their place in the world and what they can do - he's very supportive in that way, even while he's also slightly sinister in that he promises he'll deal with the robbers and you get the impression he could and would make them disappear, just as he threatened to do to Nixon a few episodes back. So he definitely displays his ruthless side, but he's not a bad guy. Someone else who isn't a bad guy is Whitney. This is really his episode to a large extent, and certainly the most he's gotten to do on the series so far, and he shines at it. He's at a low ebb, has just lost his scholarship and sees no future other than a monotonous daily grind at his Dad's store for the rest of his life, his whole existence has flashed before his eyes and he doesn't like what he sees. Then out of the blue along come some guys who were once in a similar position, but know how to have a 'good time.' Right from the start the ringleader has a dangerous edge to him by the way he's fiddling around with this baseball bat in the shop as if he's no stranger to using one, and not in a baseball field! He was really well played as this plausible villain, a manipulative man that preys on Whitney's vulnerable situation and manly pride at being unable to confide in anybody else (I assume that's why he couldn't talk to his old football buddies for help), while showing him the dubious benefits of his lifestyle. In Whitney's state he's easily drawn into this world and it isn't until actual violence is perpetrated on Lex Luthor that he shows his true character.
It's not that he stops what they're doing, but he adds a note of horror to the proceedings, and it's really only Lex' foresight in not bringing the blackmail money with him that stops him from being killed. Otherwise Whitney would have been implicated in a murder and this would have become a very different series. But he reckons against Clark's strong sense of right and wrong, his desire to atone for what happened in his and Chloe's encounter with the dropouts at Lex' Mansion. It was a really shocking opening, not just because of the raucous music and thuggish attitude of the criminals, but because it gets us to the point where we think we're about to reach a release from the scariness. When Chloe goes through that stained glass window I was so relieved because I thought it was going to be great to see Clark rush down there and catch her before she hit the ground, but instead of the expected, our preconceptions are thrown off balance: Clark is unable to get there in time. As usual for the series (at this stage, anyway), things happen in a believable way. So the tattoos make Clark weak and he can't fight them, but he heroically yells at Chloe to run. As soon as you see her out in the hall with the window at the end you sense something bad about to happen. I was so glad she didn't break out into karate moves and overpower her assailant because although this suggests she's not a 'strong' woman, it certainly grounds her. Oops, I honestly didn't mean to make that pun! Seriously, she isn't able to fight back effectively, there are always bigger predators out there. The point is that she proves herself strong by bouncing back from the experience and not becoming a shrinking violet. That's a good lesson to be teaching.
As is that which Clark learns: he's on the reverse side of her position in that he is big and strong, but he has to realise whatever he can do he can't save everyone. It's been a theme that recurs here and there, but it's a tough lesson to grapple with because it's against his innate nature to believe that. So he hides out in the barn smashing wood. Not chopping, smashing. With his bare hand. It's a great scene, made even better by Jonathan and Martha coming in to reassure him and give him a new focus (and to save the wood pile from being reduced to chips!). It would be better if they'd been in the episode more, but what influence they had was deeply felt. Something that's impressively handled by the writers is the inherent dislike between Clark and Whitney. You see the look of disgust that crosses the latter's face when Clark pops into his Dad's store. It's like one more thing to kick him when he's down is to be reminded of Clark and his happy, secure future on the farm. He can't condescend to tell Lana about his loss, but he can throw it in his 'enemy's' face as a backhanded insult. But I can't help thinking he also may have suspected Clark would pass on this information to Lana that he couldn't bring himself to say. Clark is a real friend and such a good guy to Whitney. He may be acting out of guilt at Chloe's injuries, he may be looking for redemption, he may even want to for Lana's sake, but for all these reasons he makes sure to watch over Whitney as best he can. Sure, he's inexperienced and so doesn't realise that threatening Whitney not to go off with those guys again wasn't the most tactful thing to do, but he's still learning.
Once Whitney's seen what company he's fallen in with he comes clean with Lana and Clark and doesn't even feel angry that he has to depend on his 'rival' for assistance. He won't let Clark go alone to get the disk, even though it would actually have been easier for Clark to operate on his own, Whitney a liability. Then again, Clark is susceptible to the 'phasing' attack of the goon leader, so maybe he would have been killed if there hadn't been Whitney as another person they decided to have some fun in the killing of. They're obviously adrenaline junkies, and you can see why when they go crazy with the initiation of Whitney into the gang: bodily lifting him over a guard rail and flinging him into the path of an oncoming truck with no chance of escape. I have to mention at this point how irresponsible the driver was! He should have noticed them ahead messing about on the side of the road and slowed down at such suspicious activity. At the very least he should have screeched to a halt when a young lad was suddenly in his path, but he just honks his horn and drives on through the energised Whitney and apparently never had a second thought. Maybe that's realistic and he didn't want to lose his job or his payload, or just assumed it was 'kids' messing about and there was obviously no impact so nothing to worry about!
It was a big deal for Whitney to present himself to Lana in the state he was in, scared and weak, and it shows what a strong bond they have. Lana's problems seem minor in comparison to what her boyfriend goes through in the course of the episode: the sentimental connection of the place her parents met is threatened with being turned into a parking garage. But it's still important because it means so much to her, and that's why Lex' casual attitude to her proposal seemed very suspect as if Michael Rosenbaum was playing it from the idea that he was expecting Lana to fight for it and use her skills to try and persuade him and end up working with him, or essentially for him! You'd think Nell would be a little more sympathetic to Lana's feelings, but as Lex said, she's a teenage girl, mercurial doesn't do her justice! Importantly, Nell wanted to get the sale so she could ensure Lana's future and send her to whatever college she wanted to go to, so it's not a selfish decision, she has her charge's best interests at heart. Both she and Lex are serious business people and in business there can't be sentiment. We find out there are more businesses in Lex' portfolio than we knew about as we hear about some other secret project that involves a particle accelerator, part of the classified details on the disk the gang stole, not to mention he's embezzling funds from his Father to fund it. So there's more going on with Lex than we see, but at the same time I still believe him when he says to Clark that he didn't come for the disk, he came to protect his friend.
The other thing I didn't feel particularly clear on was on the reason the gang needed new blood. Why were the tattoos running out of power, was it just their bodies adjusting to the chemical changes wrought from the Kryptonite ink? We see the tattoos stop glowing, and so does Clark in the scene with the car that's going to crush Whitney while the leader holds him in place - so did Clark deliberately save only Whitney, knowing the other guy would be crushed to death? It's ambiguous and doesn't seem in character for him, but he seems to see the tattoo fade and then rugby tackles Whitney across the ground. It was also so fast that you have to wonder how the goon it happened in front of explained it. One thing's for sure: it was very cold at the time of filming as everyone has red noses! It was also funny to hear Clark ask how Chloe got internet access while she's in hospital. Now it would be all wi-fi, but then it would have been dialup and Pete did the dirty with patching her into the hospital's line! I couldn't tell if the snowboarding game at the goon's hideout was '1080ยบ' on N64, but it certainly looked similar. And lastly, I'm not sure if the music at the end fit Lana's hesitation at the realisation she'd be working with Lex, when she looked somewhat concerned. Still, it was a real treat: a great idea, a new spin on the meteor freak, they were still coming up with gold and masterfully handling the characters and subplots, making it a joy to watch.
****
One I had no memories of, so I didn't know where it was going, though I did remember the concept of meteor-juiced tattoos that allow people to walk through walls. But the story is much more than that and really uses the cast well, so I became very impressed. It may be a side effect of watching something like 'Star Trek: Discovery,' where I come out of it uncomfortable and down, so that when I watch this series it's so wonderful in contrast that I love it all the more, but I really did warm to this episode early on and went with it every step of the way, even if there were things that seemed a little strange. Like the prosthetic arm, for example - one of the three hoodlums who raid Lex' Mansion removes this arm before exiting the vehicle and you're left to wonder why, and later Clark does the 'Kent Thousand Yard Stare' as Pete calls it, using x-ray vision to gaze into the Smallville Savings and Loan bank and sees a human arm embedded in the wall. It's not until later it gets confirmed by the guy that lost it what happened, but for some reason it was a bit puzzling as I thought it meant something, like he took an arm with him whenever he did one of these jobs and left it somewhere for some reason, but I got completely the wrong end of the stick. Or the arm. Then I think it was Lana trying to get Lex to consider returning the Talon into operative status just because she wants him to, and it was an odd thing for a usually bright girl to ask. I wonder if he always had in mind that she would want to save it and so his plan was to challenge her so that they ended up working together and maybe he'd have more influence over her regarding Clark…?
It's a bit Machiavellian, I admit, but it would be very true to his character, and at this stage of the series he's often doing things to bring the young people around to their place in the world and what they can do - he's very supportive in that way, even while he's also slightly sinister in that he promises he'll deal with the robbers and you get the impression he could and would make them disappear, just as he threatened to do to Nixon a few episodes back. So he definitely displays his ruthless side, but he's not a bad guy. Someone else who isn't a bad guy is Whitney. This is really his episode to a large extent, and certainly the most he's gotten to do on the series so far, and he shines at it. He's at a low ebb, has just lost his scholarship and sees no future other than a monotonous daily grind at his Dad's store for the rest of his life, his whole existence has flashed before his eyes and he doesn't like what he sees. Then out of the blue along come some guys who were once in a similar position, but know how to have a 'good time.' Right from the start the ringleader has a dangerous edge to him by the way he's fiddling around with this baseball bat in the shop as if he's no stranger to using one, and not in a baseball field! He was really well played as this plausible villain, a manipulative man that preys on Whitney's vulnerable situation and manly pride at being unable to confide in anybody else (I assume that's why he couldn't talk to his old football buddies for help), while showing him the dubious benefits of his lifestyle. In Whitney's state he's easily drawn into this world and it isn't until actual violence is perpetrated on Lex Luthor that he shows his true character.
It's not that he stops what they're doing, but he adds a note of horror to the proceedings, and it's really only Lex' foresight in not bringing the blackmail money with him that stops him from being killed. Otherwise Whitney would have been implicated in a murder and this would have become a very different series. But he reckons against Clark's strong sense of right and wrong, his desire to atone for what happened in his and Chloe's encounter with the dropouts at Lex' Mansion. It was a really shocking opening, not just because of the raucous music and thuggish attitude of the criminals, but because it gets us to the point where we think we're about to reach a release from the scariness. When Chloe goes through that stained glass window I was so relieved because I thought it was going to be great to see Clark rush down there and catch her before she hit the ground, but instead of the expected, our preconceptions are thrown off balance: Clark is unable to get there in time. As usual for the series (at this stage, anyway), things happen in a believable way. So the tattoos make Clark weak and he can't fight them, but he heroically yells at Chloe to run. As soon as you see her out in the hall with the window at the end you sense something bad about to happen. I was so glad she didn't break out into karate moves and overpower her assailant because although this suggests she's not a 'strong' woman, it certainly grounds her. Oops, I honestly didn't mean to make that pun! Seriously, she isn't able to fight back effectively, there are always bigger predators out there. The point is that she proves herself strong by bouncing back from the experience and not becoming a shrinking violet. That's a good lesson to be teaching.
As is that which Clark learns: he's on the reverse side of her position in that he is big and strong, but he has to realise whatever he can do he can't save everyone. It's been a theme that recurs here and there, but it's a tough lesson to grapple with because it's against his innate nature to believe that. So he hides out in the barn smashing wood. Not chopping, smashing. With his bare hand. It's a great scene, made even better by Jonathan and Martha coming in to reassure him and give him a new focus (and to save the wood pile from being reduced to chips!). It would be better if they'd been in the episode more, but what influence they had was deeply felt. Something that's impressively handled by the writers is the inherent dislike between Clark and Whitney. You see the look of disgust that crosses the latter's face when Clark pops into his Dad's store. It's like one more thing to kick him when he's down is to be reminded of Clark and his happy, secure future on the farm. He can't condescend to tell Lana about his loss, but he can throw it in his 'enemy's' face as a backhanded insult. But I can't help thinking he also may have suspected Clark would pass on this information to Lana that he couldn't bring himself to say. Clark is a real friend and such a good guy to Whitney. He may be acting out of guilt at Chloe's injuries, he may be looking for redemption, he may even want to for Lana's sake, but for all these reasons he makes sure to watch over Whitney as best he can. Sure, he's inexperienced and so doesn't realise that threatening Whitney not to go off with those guys again wasn't the most tactful thing to do, but he's still learning.
Once Whitney's seen what company he's fallen in with he comes clean with Lana and Clark and doesn't even feel angry that he has to depend on his 'rival' for assistance. He won't let Clark go alone to get the disk, even though it would actually have been easier for Clark to operate on his own, Whitney a liability. Then again, Clark is susceptible to the 'phasing' attack of the goon leader, so maybe he would have been killed if there hadn't been Whitney as another person they decided to have some fun in the killing of. They're obviously adrenaline junkies, and you can see why when they go crazy with the initiation of Whitney into the gang: bodily lifting him over a guard rail and flinging him into the path of an oncoming truck with no chance of escape. I have to mention at this point how irresponsible the driver was! He should have noticed them ahead messing about on the side of the road and slowed down at such suspicious activity. At the very least he should have screeched to a halt when a young lad was suddenly in his path, but he just honks his horn and drives on through the energised Whitney and apparently never had a second thought. Maybe that's realistic and he didn't want to lose his job or his payload, or just assumed it was 'kids' messing about and there was obviously no impact so nothing to worry about!
It was a big deal for Whitney to present himself to Lana in the state he was in, scared and weak, and it shows what a strong bond they have. Lana's problems seem minor in comparison to what her boyfriend goes through in the course of the episode: the sentimental connection of the place her parents met is threatened with being turned into a parking garage. But it's still important because it means so much to her, and that's why Lex' casual attitude to her proposal seemed very suspect as if Michael Rosenbaum was playing it from the idea that he was expecting Lana to fight for it and use her skills to try and persuade him and end up working with him, or essentially for him! You'd think Nell would be a little more sympathetic to Lana's feelings, but as Lex said, she's a teenage girl, mercurial doesn't do her justice! Importantly, Nell wanted to get the sale so she could ensure Lana's future and send her to whatever college she wanted to go to, so it's not a selfish decision, she has her charge's best interests at heart. Both she and Lex are serious business people and in business there can't be sentiment. We find out there are more businesses in Lex' portfolio than we knew about as we hear about some other secret project that involves a particle accelerator, part of the classified details on the disk the gang stole, not to mention he's embezzling funds from his Father to fund it. So there's more going on with Lex than we see, but at the same time I still believe him when he says to Clark that he didn't come for the disk, he came to protect his friend.
The other thing I didn't feel particularly clear on was on the reason the gang needed new blood. Why were the tattoos running out of power, was it just their bodies adjusting to the chemical changes wrought from the Kryptonite ink? We see the tattoos stop glowing, and so does Clark in the scene with the car that's going to crush Whitney while the leader holds him in place - so did Clark deliberately save only Whitney, knowing the other guy would be crushed to death? It's ambiguous and doesn't seem in character for him, but he seems to see the tattoo fade and then rugby tackles Whitney across the ground. It was also so fast that you have to wonder how the goon it happened in front of explained it. One thing's for sure: it was very cold at the time of filming as everyone has red noses! It was also funny to hear Clark ask how Chloe got internet access while she's in hospital. Now it would be all wi-fi, but then it would have been dialup and Pete did the dirty with patching her into the hospital's line! I couldn't tell if the snowboarding game at the goon's hideout was '1080ยบ' on N64, but it certainly looked similar. And lastly, I'm not sure if the music at the end fit Lana's hesitation at the realisation she'd be working with Lex, when she looked somewhat concerned. Still, it was a real treat: a great idea, a new spin on the meteor freak, they were still coming up with gold and masterfully handling the characters and subplots, making it a joy to watch.
****
If Memory Serves
DVD, Discovery S2 (If Memory Serves)
Better than most this season, but it still suffers from the wilful selective adherence to Trek's precepts, rules and consistency, and thus ultimately saddens me. That's the common reaction I have to almost every aspect of modern Trek, because almost every aspect is shifted or off-balance. I've been thinking a lot about it recently, and I realised that that's what bothers me. Beyond the obvious plot holes or over the top emotive acting, the whirlpool of musical manipulation that is the score, the extreme lens flare that goes back to the modern film series, beyond all these clearly intrusive changes on the larger end of production, it's the tiny details that pile on top of each other and make me feel subconsciously uncomfortable where the old Treks made me feel reassured by their consistency and attention to the details. In every episode of 'Discovery' I'm constantly doing battle with my well-honed knowledge of what is right in Trek, how things should be, and were for decades across hundreds of hours of film and TV. I was listening to the Cirroc Lofton and Aron Eisenberg podcast 'The 7th Rule' recently, and they managed to encapsulate what I hadn't quite put my finger on before: that there are specific rules of operation, of procedure, of style, that have been abandoned or forgotten. They mentioned how it makes no sense to hold a Phaser with both hands because there's no recoil, you only need to hold it out straight. Such a little thing, but it made me realise that the makers of this Trek aren't paying attention to basic realities of this world, so how can they hope to get me invested?
Instead, they throw in references to other Trek, much like the Kelvin Timeline films did, I'm sure it's not supposed to be a diversion, but thinking that that is enough to show their Trek knowledge. But it's not. If you're not keeping to the style of Trek, then no amount of plotting or characterisation is going to make it feel right. I noticed it in so many little things in this episode, in an episode in which we're travelling back to Talos IV. We're seeing the Talosians for the first time since the 1960s (unless you count the little action figure on Rain Robinson's desk in 'Future's End' from 'Voyager'!). And we're meeting up with Vina again. If any of the other Trek series' had done something as radical it would have knocked my socks off with delight, but here, it's all so far removed from how Trek was that it may as well be the Kelvin version for all the symmetry there is. Again, Burnham and others hold the Phaser as if it's a gun - now some may be reading this and thinking why am I so fixated on something so mundane and unimportant to the plot, but I'm just using it as an example of the mental processes, or lack of, behind the scenes. This is just something that was drawn to my attention and it's easy to say it doesn't matter, and perhaps in isolation it wouldn't. It's a bit like how they always fire bolts of energy rather than the traditional beam. That's the way it's been on the series so I should be used to it, but it's failed to bring me into this world because there are so many of these wrong choices and that the stories aren't good enough to paper over these mistakes. And when you get them stacking up on each other this is what causes me to feel that this isn't the world I knew, this isn't the tight, realistic galaxy I grew up with, and so I feel pushed away.
It's exactly the same thing as the Klingons in Season 1: if we'd seen a mix of styles, some with hair, some flat-headed, then you can build your speculative excuses and say we just didn't see these bulbous-headed, claw-handed Orc versions in the other Treks, but maybe they were around somewhere. If we saw beams being used sometimes and there was actually a rationale for them using the bolts then that would deepen the universe, not divide it into pre- and post- modern Trek. If some people always carried and aimed the Phaser with one hand, then… etc. But we only get this one new style, this wrong style, and it's upsetting. I had to get that off my chest because although in many reviews I've mentioned my problems with the series I haven't seen the light of explanation that 'The 7th Rule' highlighted for me. That's why I so often come out of it conflicted, sometimes even depressed and it's good to understand your reaction. Not so I can 'move forward' as a grumpy Culber says to Stamets when he can't simply resume his old life, but so that I can temper any expectations with the knowledge that it's not going to be possible, while these people continue to follow their own rules, to ever accept modern Trek. Whether 'Star Trek: Picard' will be closer to what it should be, I don't know, but it should at least work better for the characters who are being played by the same actors who know them so well.
Another 'TOS' character is brought back in this episode, and I suppose I was thinking that either the Talosians would remain hidden behind their illusions, or that we'd see them as they were, and I never really gave thought to Vina, the woman injured beyond recognition in a crash on their planet. It was nice to see her again, but I do wish they'd at least try to cast people that look like the actor they're taking over from - it would be hard to find someone like Susan Oliver who dazzled as the original Vina way back in 'The Cage,' but the actress they got, while she was okay, was a mere generic female character, she didn't have the intensity of Oliver. What I did like was how they reconciled the canon of 'The Cage' with that seen in 'The Menagerie' because they are slightly different in how they end. In 'Cage' Vina is given an illusory version of Pike to live with her when the real one leaves, and in 'Menagerie' we see Pike going back to her and they reuse the shot of the fake Pike as real Pike going to be with her, the character's ultimate canonical endpoint. Vina actually mentions that she's lived with Pike, the illusion (not in so many words, but alluding to it was a good choice), so I really appreciated that level of care taken. If they can do those things why can't they do it for everything else!
My happiness with Vina's role didn't extend to the Talosians themselves. They had to redesign them, didn't they! Why? The episode even begins with a montage of clips from 'Cage' to remind us of its connection, and those aliens were one of the best designs of all Trek history. So naturally they felt they needed to make them blander. I suspect there's some political correctness going on here, too - the original efforts in creating the most alien aliens they could was to use petite female actors with male voices, a natural way to make them unnatural to us, and the bulbous craniums stood out even more. But in our current world of gender confusion and not wanting to offend minorities (it's impossible not to offend someone, which would explain why films are so often bland these days), I bet they deemed this excellent method to be unacceptable. If it was just that I wouldn't mind, but they also changed the look of their great heads for no good reason and the overall effect is for a far less impressive, more plasticky, and by far inferior version of these iconic aliens. I'm sure no one ever really thought we'd be given the chance to see them again, although after twenty years of Trek prequels you could also say it's surprising how long it's taken to get to them (though you have to remember we've only had six seasons and three films in that category and time period). Were they really necessary to the story, however? Of course not, it was all a stunt to excite, oddly, people like me that know and love their Trek history! So while they're going their own way with regard to every little thing about Trek, they still want to appeal to me, it seems, which is a little confusing. To Trek or not to Trek…
What I will praise is this version of Spock. I don't know if Ethan Peck knew the character before he was cast, whether he watched all the episodes and films, but however he came by it, his cadence and line delivery are very good. He has a richness to his voice that is, if not quite close enough to Leonard Nimoy's, far more accurate than Zachary Quinto's whiny approximation - I hope we never have to endure that again! The beats of his words and the kind of things he says are largely true to Nimoy and so I was pleased about that. He obviously doesn't look that much like Nimoy, but again, he's slightly closer than Quinto, and if they have to recreate such a beloved character, any degree they can come closer to the original is required. There are still things about him that smack of 'DSC' - his fighting with Burnham over the controls of the shuttlecraft as they head towards an apparent black hole which he knows to be an illusion. The Spock we know would have voiced his solution, not had a martial arts whack-a-mole session, but in his defence he had been drugged up a lot, had issues with his adopted sister, and is a younger, less fully formed version of the Spock we know so well. It was hard to accept his smile to Pike at the end (especially as a smile to a Captain has meant a huge amount in 'TOS'), but they generally fail to show Vulcans as truly even and devoid of emotion on the surface as they used to, which used to make them my favourite race. At least the Vulcan Admiral we see seemed much more Vulcan than some (Sarek, my biggest problem).
Why did Spock need to go to Talos IV? He claims it was so Burnham could read his thoughts and see what he saw of the Red Angel, but as we saw in his memory, he did a mind meld on it, so why not just do that? Obviously it was a contrivance to bring in the Talosians, Vina, etc, and that's the more simplistic nature of modern TV for you. You can suggest that his mental problems were too extreme and only the Talosians could set his mind straight, which would also explain why he didn't rationally unmask the black hole, or even speak, to Burnham, his mind in too much turmoil. It doesn't explain why he couldn't simply go to Vulcans and get them to help him, except he's an outcast to them so I can just about buy the Talosians as his only hope. Okay, I'm winning myself round slightly, but there's still much to irk. One thing is that the death penalty for travel to Talos IV is completely ignored as it has been all along - the computer says travel in the Talos Star System is prohibited, and nothing more. I was really hoping that at the end of the episode one of the Admirals would say that just sticking up a warning isn't working (and where was the warning buoy you'd expect from the Federation on the edge of dangerous space?), and we need to make it a death penalty. There's still time for them to do that, but it would have set my mind at rest on at least that one thing.
When we do find out what Spock knows it makes for an… interesting development. Apparently the Red Angel is actually human (no surprise there), and is changing the past because in the future the galaxy will be overrun by those squiddies from 'The Matrix' films, seen in that which the Discovery probe turned into when it returned from the time rift and proceeded to attack Pike's shuttle. Showing the end of life across the galaxy is never going to work - they need to realise it's sometimes best to leave things to the viewer's imagination, but unfortunately, in this age of CGI advancement they forget the power of the human brain to fill in the gaps with the right trigger words and so we see a load of probes flying through the galaxy to blow up planets. Okay, so it can't be the Borg as I previously thought, since removing potential drones through destruction isn't their way, or fulfils their purposes. It could still turn out to be them, however, considering how loosely 'DSC' understands Trek races (nice to see the Andorian and Tellarite Admirals again, though - is that the first time we hear a Tellarite speak on the series? And I wonder why they dialled back the Andorian's robotic vocal effect to about normal speech, while the Tellarite has quite an affected voice?).
The end result of all this is that because Burnham and Spock are not handed over to Section 31 (once again, everyone's expected to know the name of this clandestine organisation - I guess it must have upped its game by the 24th Century and destroyed all historical records available to Starfleet officer below Admiral level, because back in the 23rd Century even an ordinary Doctor tells Spock 31 are coming to pick him up, and expects Spock to know who they are! How they've ruined such a superb idea from 'DS9'!). And the result of Pike retrieving his officers is that Discovery goes on the run. Why is Starfleet always portrayed as the bad guys now? It sounds like 'Picard' is going that route with him and his friends not being in the service any more, and in 'DSC,' Cornwell, Sarek and other high-ranking officials got away with attempting to blow up Qo'noS without any repercussions, it was all swept under the carpet. Now Starfleet are using 31 with abandon and Discovery is forced to go rogue. It's all upside down and makes me wonder if they're making a comment on government leaderships in the West in their current state. Whatever they're doing I don't like it - we've seen many times when Captains and crews have been forced to go against Starfleet, but usually it's against a specific Admiral or group (like the infiltration in 'Conspiracy' from 'TNG'), but I don't like my utopian Federation to be constantly compromised. That's not true to the Roddenberry vision at all.
The trip to Talos IV, which I assumed was going to have nothing whatever to do with Pike as I had the impression he hadn't met them since 'Cage' when he goes back in 'Menagerie,' does make an impact on the Captain, but it can be assumed that this helped him to reach his decision about returning to them after his injury a decade later, so there are things that work and make it sit acceptably within the timeline. What isn't so acceptable is Pike's seeming lack of experience with human nature - he can't seem to see beyond his Starfleet rulebook when he talks to Saru about his non-intervention of the Culber/Tyler altercation in the Mess Hall (I assume that's what it's called on this ship, but we so rarely hear about ship details, another reason why it's hard to be invested as much in this vessel and crew compared with older series' that took the time to explore their ship). If this had been another Captain he'd have given Saru a proper dressing down, but Saru remains confident and assured as if there is no hierarchy. I really miss that sense of authority and designated roles in Trek. Partly it's come from the confused attempt to make the series different, the last remnants of Bryan Fuller's original concept being that the Captain isn't the main character, it's Burnham, but that has never really played out properly since she may as well be high up in rank considering all she does and the series hasn't played with the lower decks idea. Regardless, you'd think Pike would understand the psychology of what was going on - I agree that he should be against what happened, just not that he needed Saru to spell it out as it makes him look stupid.
Other stupid things included the plot with the spore drive's sabotage and secret messages being sent with Tyler's command codes. I thought at first the writers were assuming the audience is incapable of understanding a frame, because it was just so obvious that Tyler wasn't the culprit, but Airiam, since she was infected by that probe in the previous episode. It may well be that this whole thing was developed to get rid of her character since Sara Mitich had dropped out of the role and been replaced by Hannah Cheesman with no explanation. Maybe it was also that she's a holdover, again, from Fuller's ideas and they weren't really going to explore robots in Starfleet after all (especially with Data coming back to prominence thanks to 'Picard'). Who knows how these decisions are reached? I'll be sad if they do get rid of Airiam (and I have a feeling I heard a rumour of her demise), because, of all the Bridge crew she's the only one with intrigue surrounding her that I wanted them to explore. They've failed for the most part to make the crew living characters, and it probably has something to do with the fewer hours in a season with which they could afford to explore such things. That's how old Trek used to operate, anyway, so we don't want to be like that anymore. That's the attitude I'm sensing. Since they showed Airiam and reminded us she's compromised (by the three red dots in her eyes), I guess they don't think we're complete idiots, but you'd think the crew would have realised Tyler isn't stupid enough to send unauthorised transmissions using his own codes, too.
Speaking of Airiam, was the blonde woman in what passes for Engineering (is it just the spore hub, or what?), who actually gets lines, Lieutenant Nilsson? Because Sara Mitich is credited as that and there was something familiar about her, plus I'm sure she's been seen before this season. Good that they gave her something else to do and suggests it was a problem with the makeup rather than a plot choice to change the actress over. If the main story on Talos IV isn't enough then we have two other plots going on at the same time. The aforementioned story of Tyler and the others, and something that ties into this: Culber's difficulty in acclimatising back to his old life after all he's been through. Stamets is particularly unable to see the problem, or he ignores it and tries to be a good friend, but all Culber really wants to do is escape and ends up in the Mess trying to beat up Tyler. It did seem like just another excuse for a fight, and I'd have had more respect for Tyler if he'd nobly allowed Culber to take out his rage on him without ever fighting back or flinching. That's the kind of thing that Trek used to do and would have shown there was some Klingon honour in there. In the end I'm not sure anything really came of it unless it was to further increase suspicion of Tyler for when he's accused of spying for 31 at the end.
One thing came of it: another irritation and failure to understand Starfleet and the ways of future humans. I'm referring to the little cleaning hover-robots that come in and right the chairs after the fight, and go round tidying up. Starfleeters aren't lazy enough to require robots to do things like that for them, it's not true to the way we know they operate and is somewhat demeaning and very much a contemporary take. Where the writers in the Eighties and Nineties reminded us that it's the traditional mindset they continue to have (books, opera, classical music, culture that has remained for hundreds of years), it's also the traditional approach to what they do - so farming the land, like Picard's family vineyards or the value of physical activity and natural operation of the body. All this boils down to the fact that I don't believe the Starfleet we've seen before would avoid mundane tasks like tidying up chairs and tables, and while actual cleaning would probably have something to do with the ship's interior technology itself (for example, spills might be absorbed into the bulkhead perhaps), I never had the impression that humans were removed from dirty work completely. The phrase 'scrubbing the plasma manifolds' comes to mind. I don't like that once again they're putting in these little touches that would probably be considered 'cool' by a modern audience, but when you think about it doesn't fit with established ways of operating. The value of hard work, the value of physical interaction with your environment is alienated in favour of automation, further taking people away from living. Not least that it should have been given as a task for Culber and Tyler to jointly clean up the place, but there's no punishment, no reinforcing of the rules other than verbally to Saru so it all fits very well within modern ideals and attitudes. Ease and expression of emotions rather than self control. A kind of people that can't even pick up their own overturned chairs and need robots to do it for them. How far we've fallen in this version of the future.
One thing that was true to old Trek was reusing locations - I recognise the look of that old rock quarry as the surface of Talos IV! It was the site of the rebel base in the Mirror Universe from Season 1. Maybe not the exact place, but it looked like the same quarry! I did love the updated version of the singing blue flowers, and we even see Burnham experience the exact same reaction to them as Spock in 'Cage': touching a leaf so it stops vibrating, then smiling. They even had the old music or sounds when on that planet and that was lovely. It was also very true to the Talosian attitudes when they wish to observe Burnham's memories of the rift that developed between her and Spock as children. Both an alien unfeelingness to the sensitivity of the request, and a suitable curiosity to see such a thing. I don't know why they didn't simply take the memories, pluck them from her mind like the leaf of one of their blue plants, but maybe it comes out better with the willing cooperation of a subject (much like Pike in 'Cage'). It was good to see Spock use nerve pinches on the Doctor and her guards in order to escape, especially with all the emphasis on Vulcan martial arts they've gone for on this series. When we witness Burnham casting young Spock aside I felt sure I'd seen similar scenes somewhere in Trek before - it was like Sybok leaving young Spock (how sad it happened to him twice), and we see old Nimoy in 'Star Trek V' talking as if he's a child asking why he has to leave, and it's so affecting, but this wasn't so much so, down to Peck and Martin-Green not being actors of the Nimoy calibre.
I had to rationalise Burnham's actions as being wrong because she acted out of fear, because it really was a stupid motivation that she was so certain in her childish mind that the Logic Extremists would bomb her family's home that the only thing she could do was leave. I couldn't remember what was supposed to happen after this, though. She was saved by Spock's intervention (though having a ridiculous multi-legged creature chase her through a forest was another awful indulgence, just like the mindless stupidity of the Kelvin films - and the forest of Vulcan's Forge? I thought it was supposed to be a desert!), so she must have returned home, but what happened then, did they just not speak to each other for the rest of childhood? It was daft, and I don't entirely buy this whole Burnham in the Spock family backstory - not that I mind him having a heretofore hidden adopted sister, I never had a problem with that, especially considering that was just copying Sybok, it's just the way they present things on this series that I can never fully accept. It's like when they couldn't resist showing us Vina's damaged true self and it's so much less shocking and extreme than it was in 'Cage.' It could be said that this is a few years earlier so maybe more healing has taken place, but she already said back then that the Talosians hadn't known how to put her back together properly so how would they be able to heal her since then? It's also like the gangway for the shuttlecraft that comes out like Kelvin Sulu's magical folding sword, because this modern way of thinking is always about trying to impress with pretty graphics, not about making sense or being functional as was the aesthetic so superbly shown across Trek before. Now it's gone way into fantasy.
It's always the same, there are far, far too many of those moments that make my toes curl and push me away. It was interesting to hear that if two Transporter beams both try to beam you away then it would rip your atoms apart, but again, even that doesn't sound right. We've seen things happen before (like Riker being duplicated), so I suppose it's possible, but they never think things through and for all old Treks faults it did prize 'thinking' highly, not something common nowadays. It's the same kind of attitude as Georgiou shows when she says in her universe the Talosians tried it on and she blew up their planet. Mindlessness and stupidity, the hallmarks of modern Trek and that sadly couldn't be papered over by adding in Talosians, Vina or even Spock. It appears Shazad Latif is back in the cast again after being only a guest character in the first half, but then he wasn't part of the cast in all of the first season either. I'm beyond being dismayed by the misuse of Section 31 and I really have few expectations that the series can ever grab me as Trek always has, but at least there are a few more things to like as it progresses, even if I fear they will always fail in a big way and the more they play with established characters and races the more 'off' things will be. At least when 'Enterprise' was at its blandest it was dealing with inoffensive aliens of the week that had no bearing on the future, or anything, really. But I will give them credit for the Security Chief being a Barzan - another spot I didn't get without 'The 7th Rule' (I thought she was the same race as the princess from Tilly's 'Short Trek'!). And finally, credit for a fitting title - it's just the kind of thing Spock would have said.
**
Better than most this season, but it still suffers from the wilful selective adherence to Trek's precepts, rules and consistency, and thus ultimately saddens me. That's the common reaction I have to almost every aspect of modern Trek, because almost every aspect is shifted or off-balance. I've been thinking a lot about it recently, and I realised that that's what bothers me. Beyond the obvious plot holes or over the top emotive acting, the whirlpool of musical manipulation that is the score, the extreme lens flare that goes back to the modern film series, beyond all these clearly intrusive changes on the larger end of production, it's the tiny details that pile on top of each other and make me feel subconsciously uncomfortable where the old Treks made me feel reassured by their consistency and attention to the details. In every episode of 'Discovery' I'm constantly doing battle with my well-honed knowledge of what is right in Trek, how things should be, and were for decades across hundreds of hours of film and TV. I was listening to the Cirroc Lofton and Aron Eisenberg podcast 'The 7th Rule' recently, and they managed to encapsulate what I hadn't quite put my finger on before: that there are specific rules of operation, of procedure, of style, that have been abandoned or forgotten. They mentioned how it makes no sense to hold a Phaser with both hands because there's no recoil, you only need to hold it out straight. Such a little thing, but it made me realise that the makers of this Trek aren't paying attention to basic realities of this world, so how can they hope to get me invested?
Instead, they throw in references to other Trek, much like the Kelvin Timeline films did, I'm sure it's not supposed to be a diversion, but thinking that that is enough to show their Trek knowledge. But it's not. If you're not keeping to the style of Trek, then no amount of plotting or characterisation is going to make it feel right. I noticed it in so many little things in this episode, in an episode in which we're travelling back to Talos IV. We're seeing the Talosians for the first time since the 1960s (unless you count the little action figure on Rain Robinson's desk in 'Future's End' from 'Voyager'!). And we're meeting up with Vina again. If any of the other Trek series' had done something as radical it would have knocked my socks off with delight, but here, it's all so far removed from how Trek was that it may as well be the Kelvin version for all the symmetry there is. Again, Burnham and others hold the Phaser as if it's a gun - now some may be reading this and thinking why am I so fixated on something so mundane and unimportant to the plot, but I'm just using it as an example of the mental processes, or lack of, behind the scenes. This is just something that was drawn to my attention and it's easy to say it doesn't matter, and perhaps in isolation it wouldn't. It's a bit like how they always fire bolts of energy rather than the traditional beam. That's the way it's been on the series so I should be used to it, but it's failed to bring me into this world because there are so many of these wrong choices and that the stories aren't good enough to paper over these mistakes. And when you get them stacking up on each other this is what causes me to feel that this isn't the world I knew, this isn't the tight, realistic galaxy I grew up with, and so I feel pushed away.
It's exactly the same thing as the Klingons in Season 1: if we'd seen a mix of styles, some with hair, some flat-headed, then you can build your speculative excuses and say we just didn't see these bulbous-headed, claw-handed Orc versions in the other Treks, but maybe they were around somewhere. If we saw beams being used sometimes and there was actually a rationale for them using the bolts then that would deepen the universe, not divide it into pre- and post- modern Trek. If some people always carried and aimed the Phaser with one hand, then… etc. But we only get this one new style, this wrong style, and it's upsetting. I had to get that off my chest because although in many reviews I've mentioned my problems with the series I haven't seen the light of explanation that 'The 7th Rule' highlighted for me. That's why I so often come out of it conflicted, sometimes even depressed and it's good to understand your reaction. Not so I can 'move forward' as a grumpy Culber says to Stamets when he can't simply resume his old life, but so that I can temper any expectations with the knowledge that it's not going to be possible, while these people continue to follow their own rules, to ever accept modern Trek. Whether 'Star Trek: Picard' will be closer to what it should be, I don't know, but it should at least work better for the characters who are being played by the same actors who know them so well.
Another 'TOS' character is brought back in this episode, and I suppose I was thinking that either the Talosians would remain hidden behind their illusions, or that we'd see them as they were, and I never really gave thought to Vina, the woman injured beyond recognition in a crash on their planet. It was nice to see her again, but I do wish they'd at least try to cast people that look like the actor they're taking over from - it would be hard to find someone like Susan Oliver who dazzled as the original Vina way back in 'The Cage,' but the actress they got, while she was okay, was a mere generic female character, she didn't have the intensity of Oliver. What I did like was how they reconciled the canon of 'The Cage' with that seen in 'The Menagerie' because they are slightly different in how they end. In 'Cage' Vina is given an illusory version of Pike to live with her when the real one leaves, and in 'Menagerie' we see Pike going back to her and they reuse the shot of the fake Pike as real Pike going to be with her, the character's ultimate canonical endpoint. Vina actually mentions that she's lived with Pike, the illusion (not in so many words, but alluding to it was a good choice), so I really appreciated that level of care taken. If they can do those things why can't they do it for everything else!
My happiness with Vina's role didn't extend to the Talosians themselves. They had to redesign them, didn't they! Why? The episode even begins with a montage of clips from 'Cage' to remind us of its connection, and those aliens were one of the best designs of all Trek history. So naturally they felt they needed to make them blander. I suspect there's some political correctness going on here, too - the original efforts in creating the most alien aliens they could was to use petite female actors with male voices, a natural way to make them unnatural to us, and the bulbous craniums stood out even more. But in our current world of gender confusion and not wanting to offend minorities (it's impossible not to offend someone, which would explain why films are so often bland these days), I bet they deemed this excellent method to be unacceptable. If it was just that I wouldn't mind, but they also changed the look of their great heads for no good reason and the overall effect is for a far less impressive, more plasticky, and by far inferior version of these iconic aliens. I'm sure no one ever really thought we'd be given the chance to see them again, although after twenty years of Trek prequels you could also say it's surprising how long it's taken to get to them (though you have to remember we've only had six seasons and three films in that category and time period). Were they really necessary to the story, however? Of course not, it was all a stunt to excite, oddly, people like me that know and love their Trek history! So while they're going their own way with regard to every little thing about Trek, they still want to appeal to me, it seems, which is a little confusing. To Trek or not to Trek…
What I will praise is this version of Spock. I don't know if Ethan Peck knew the character before he was cast, whether he watched all the episodes and films, but however he came by it, his cadence and line delivery are very good. He has a richness to his voice that is, if not quite close enough to Leonard Nimoy's, far more accurate than Zachary Quinto's whiny approximation - I hope we never have to endure that again! The beats of his words and the kind of things he says are largely true to Nimoy and so I was pleased about that. He obviously doesn't look that much like Nimoy, but again, he's slightly closer than Quinto, and if they have to recreate such a beloved character, any degree they can come closer to the original is required. There are still things about him that smack of 'DSC' - his fighting with Burnham over the controls of the shuttlecraft as they head towards an apparent black hole which he knows to be an illusion. The Spock we know would have voiced his solution, not had a martial arts whack-a-mole session, but in his defence he had been drugged up a lot, had issues with his adopted sister, and is a younger, less fully formed version of the Spock we know so well. It was hard to accept his smile to Pike at the end (especially as a smile to a Captain has meant a huge amount in 'TOS'), but they generally fail to show Vulcans as truly even and devoid of emotion on the surface as they used to, which used to make them my favourite race. At least the Vulcan Admiral we see seemed much more Vulcan than some (Sarek, my biggest problem).
Why did Spock need to go to Talos IV? He claims it was so Burnham could read his thoughts and see what he saw of the Red Angel, but as we saw in his memory, he did a mind meld on it, so why not just do that? Obviously it was a contrivance to bring in the Talosians, Vina, etc, and that's the more simplistic nature of modern TV for you. You can suggest that his mental problems were too extreme and only the Talosians could set his mind straight, which would also explain why he didn't rationally unmask the black hole, or even speak, to Burnham, his mind in too much turmoil. It doesn't explain why he couldn't simply go to Vulcans and get them to help him, except he's an outcast to them so I can just about buy the Talosians as his only hope. Okay, I'm winning myself round slightly, but there's still much to irk. One thing is that the death penalty for travel to Talos IV is completely ignored as it has been all along - the computer says travel in the Talos Star System is prohibited, and nothing more. I was really hoping that at the end of the episode one of the Admirals would say that just sticking up a warning isn't working (and where was the warning buoy you'd expect from the Federation on the edge of dangerous space?), and we need to make it a death penalty. There's still time for them to do that, but it would have set my mind at rest on at least that one thing.
When we do find out what Spock knows it makes for an… interesting development. Apparently the Red Angel is actually human (no surprise there), and is changing the past because in the future the galaxy will be overrun by those squiddies from 'The Matrix' films, seen in that which the Discovery probe turned into when it returned from the time rift and proceeded to attack Pike's shuttle. Showing the end of life across the galaxy is never going to work - they need to realise it's sometimes best to leave things to the viewer's imagination, but unfortunately, in this age of CGI advancement they forget the power of the human brain to fill in the gaps with the right trigger words and so we see a load of probes flying through the galaxy to blow up planets. Okay, so it can't be the Borg as I previously thought, since removing potential drones through destruction isn't their way, or fulfils their purposes. It could still turn out to be them, however, considering how loosely 'DSC' understands Trek races (nice to see the Andorian and Tellarite Admirals again, though - is that the first time we hear a Tellarite speak on the series? And I wonder why they dialled back the Andorian's robotic vocal effect to about normal speech, while the Tellarite has quite an affected voice?).
The end result of all this is that because Burnham and Spock are not handed over to Section 31 (once again, everyone's expected to know the name of this clandestine organisation - I guess it must have upped its game by the 24th Century and destroyed all historical records available to Starfleet officer below Admiral level, because back in the 23rd Century even an ordinary Doctor tells Spock 31 are coming to pick him up, and expects Spock to know who they are! How they've ruined such a superb idea from 'DS9'!). And the result of Pike retrieving his officers is that Discovery goes on the run. Why is Starfleet always portrayed as the bad guys now? It sounds like 'Picard' is going that route with him and his friends not being in the service any more, and in 'DSC,' Cornwell, Sarek and other high-ranking officials got away with attempting to blow up Qo'noS without any repercussions, it was all swept under the carpet. Now Starfleet are using 31 with abandon and Discovery is forced to go rogue. It's all upside down and makes me wonder if they're making a comment on government leaderships in the West in their current state. Whatever they're doing I don't like it - we've seen many times when Captains and crews have been forced to go against Starfleet, but usually it's against a specific Admiral or group (like the infiltration in 'Conspiracy' from 'TNG'), but I don't like my utopian Federation to be constantly compromised. That's not true to the Roddenberry vision at all.
The trip to Talos IV, which I assumed was going to have nothing whatever to do with Pike as I had the impression he hadn't met them since 'Cage' when he goes back in 'Menagerie,' does make an impact on the Captain, but it can be assumed that this helped him to reach his decision about returning to them after his injury a decade later, so there are things that work and make it sit acceptably within the timeline. What isn't so acceptable is Pike's seeming lack of experience with human nature - he can't seem to see beyond his Starfleet rulebook when he talks to Saru about his non-intervention of the Culber/Tyler altercation in the Mess Hall (I assume that's what it's called on this ship, but we so rarely hear about ship details, another reason why it's hard to be invested as much in this vessel and crew compared with older series' that took the time to explore their ship). If this had been another Captain he'd have given Saru a proper dressing down, but Saru remains confident and assured as if there is no hierarchy. I really miss that sense of authority and designated roles in Trek. Partly it's come from the confused attempt to make the series different, the last remnants of Bryan Fuller's original concept being that the Captain isn't the main character, it's Burnham, but that has never really played out properly since she may as well be high up in rank considering all she does and the series hasn't played with the lower decks idea. Regardless, you'd think Pike would understand the psychology of what was going on - I agree that he should be against what happened, just not that he needed Saru to spell it out as it makes him look stupid.
Other stupid things included the plot with the spore drive's sabotage and secret messages being sent with Tyler's command codes. I thought at first the writers were assuming the audience is incapable of understanding a frame, because it was just so obvious that Tyler wasn't the culprit, but Airiam, since she was infected by that probe in the previous episode. It may well be that this whole thing was developed to get rid of her character since Sara Mitich had dropped out of the role and been replaced by Hannah Cheesman with no explanation. Maybe it was also that she's a holdover, again, from Fuller's ideas and they weren't really going to explore robots in Starfleet after all (especially with Data coming back to prominence thanks to 'Picard'). Who knows how these decisions are reached? I'll be sad if they do get rid of Airiam (and I have a feeling I heard a rumour of her demise), because, of all the Bridge crew she's the only one with intrigue surrounding her that I wanted them to explore. They've failed for the most part to make the crew living characters, and it probably has something to do with the fewer hours in a season with which they could afford to explore such things. That's how old Trek used to operate, anyway, so we don't want to be like that anymore. That's the attitude I'm sensing. Since they showed Airiam and reminded us she's compromised (by the three red dots in her eyes), I guess they don't think we're complete idiots, but you'd think the crew would have realised Tyler isn't stupid enough to send unauthorised transmissions using his own codes, too.
Speaking of Airiam, was the blonde woman in what passes for Engineering (is it just the spore hub, or what?), who actually gets lines, Lieutenant Nilsson? Because Sara Mitich is credited as that and there was something familiar about her, plus I'm sure she's been seen before this season. Good that they gave her something else to do and suggests it was a problem with the makeup rather than a plot choice to change the actress over. If the main story on Talos IV isn't enough then we have two other plots going on at the same time. The aforementioned story of Tyler and the others, and something that ties into this: Culber's difficulty in acclimatising back to his old life after all he's been through. Stamets is particularly unable to see the problem, or he ignores it and tries to be a good friend, but all Culber really wants to do is escape and ends up in the Mess trying to beat up Tyler. It did seem like just another excuse for a fight, and I'd have had more respect for Tyler if he'd nobly allowed Culber to take out his rage on him without ever fighting back or flinching. That's the kind of thing that Trek used to do and would have shown there was some Klingon honour in there. In the end I'm not sure anything really came of it unless it was to further increase suspicion of Tyler for when he's accused of spying for 31 at the end.
One thing came of it: another irritation and failure to understand Starfleet and the ways of future humans. I'm referring to the little cleaning hover-robots that come in and right the chairs after the fight, and go round tidying up. Starfleeters aren't lazy enough to require robots to do things like that for them, it's not true to the way we know they operate and is somewhat demeaning and very much a contemporary take. Where the writers in the Eighties and Nineties reminded us that it's the traditional mindset they continue to have (books, opera, classical music, culture that has remained for hundreds of years), it's also the traditional approach to what they do - so farming the land, like Picard's family vineyards or the value of physical activity and natural operation of the body. All this boils down to the fact that I don't believe the Starfleet we've seen before would avoid mundane tasks like tidying up chairs and tables, and while actual cleaning would probably have something to do with the ship's interior technology itself (for example, spills might be absorbed into the bulkhead perhaps), I never had the impression that humans were removed from dirty work completely. The phrase 'scrubbing the plasma manifolds' comes to mind. I don't like that once again they're putting in these little touches that would probably be considered 'cool' by a modern audience, but when you think about it doesn't fit with established ways of operating. The value of hard work, the value of physical interaction with your environment is alienated in favour of automation, further taking people away from living. Not least that it should have been given as a task for Culber and Tyler to jointly clean up the place, but there's no punishment, no reinforcing of the rules other than verbally to Saru so it all fits very well within modern ideals and attitudes. Ease and expression of emotions rather than self control. A kind of people that can't even pick up their own overturned chairs and need robots to do it for them. How far we've fallen in this version of the future.
One thing that was true to old Trek was reusing locations - I recognise the look of that old rock quarry as the surface of Talos IV! It was the site of the rebel base in the Mirror Universe from Season 1. Maybe not the exact place, but it looked like the same quarry! I did love the updated version of the singing blue flowers, and we even see Burnham experience the exact same reaction to them as Spock in 'Cage': touching a leaf so it stops vibrating, then smiling. They even had the old music or sounds when on that planet and that was lovely. It was also very true to the Talosian attitudes when they wish to observe Burnham's memories of the rift that developed between her and Spock as children. Both an alien unfeelingness to the sensitivity of the request, and a suitable curiosity to see such a thing. I don't know why they didn't simply take the memories, pluck them from her mind like the leaf of one of their blue plants, but maybe it comes out better with the willing cooperation of a subject (much like Pike in 'Cage'). It was good to see Spock use nerve pinches on the Doctor and her guards in order to escape, especially with all the emphasis on Vulcan martial arts they've gone for on this series. When we witness Burnham casting young Spock aside I felt sure I'd seen similar scenes somewhere in Trek before - it was like Sybok leaving young Spock (how sad it happened to him twice), and we see old Nimoy in 'Star Trek V' talking as if he's a child asking why he has to leave, and it's so affecting, but this wasn't so much so, down to Peck and Martin-Green not being actors of the Nimoy calibre.
I had to rationalise Burnham's actions as being wrong because she acted out of fear, because it really was a stupid motivation that she was so certain in her childish mind that the Logic Extremists would bomb her family's home that the only thing she could do was leave. I couldn't remember what was supposed to happen after this, though. She was saved by Spock's intervention (though having a ridiculous multi-legged creature chase her through a forest was another awful indulgence, just like the mindless stupidity of the Kelvin films - and the forest of Vulcan's Forge? I thought it was supposed to be a desert!), so she must have returned home, but what happened then, did they just not speak to each other for the rest of childhood? It was daft, and I don't entirely buy this whole Burnham in the Spock family backstory - not that I mind him having a heretofore hidden adopted sister, I never had a problem with that, especially considering that was just copying Sybok, it's just the way they present things on this series that I can never fully accept. It's like when they couldn't resist showing us Vina's damaged true self and it's so much less shocking and extreme than it was in 'Cage.' It could be said that this is a few years earlier so maybe more healing has taken place, but she already said back then that the Talosians hadn't known how to put her back together properly so how would they be able to heal her since then? It's also like the gangway for the shuttlecraft that comes out like Kelvin Sulu's magical folding sword, because this modern way of thinking is always about trying to impress with pretty graphics, not about making sense or being functional as was the aesthetic so superbly shown across Trek before. Now it's gone way into fantasy.
It's always the same, there are far, far too many of those moments that make my toes curl and push me away. It was interesting to hear that if two Transporter beams both try to beam you away then it would rip your atoms apart, but again, even that doesn't sound right. We've seen things happen before (like Riker being duplicated), so I suppose it's possible, but they never think things through and for all old Treks faults it did prize 'thinking' highly, not something common nowadays. It's the same kind of attitude as Georgiou shows when she says in her universe the Talosians tried it on and she blew up their planet. Mindlessness and stupidity, the hallmarks of modern Trek and that sadly couldn't be papered over by adding in Talosians, Vina or even Spock. It appears Shazad Latif is back in the cast again after being only a guest character in the first half, but then he wasn't part of the cast in all of the first season either. I'm beyond being dismayed by the misuse of Section 31 and I really have few expectations that the series can ever grab me as Trek always has, but at least there are a few more things to like as it progresses, even if I fear they will always fail in a big way and the more they play with established characters and races the more 'off' things will be. At least when 'Enterprise' was at its blandest it was dealing with inoffensive aliens of the week that had no bearing on the future, or anything, really. But I will give them credit for the Security Chief being a Barzan - another spot I didn't get without 'The 7th Rule' (I thought she was the same race as the princess from Tilly's 'Short Trek'!). And finally, credit for a fitting title - it's just the kind of thing Spock would have said.
**
Light and Shadows
DVD, Discovery S2 (Light and Shadows)
It's back to normality for this blighted version of Trek once again, but it's mercifully short at thirty-eight minutes. An episode in which very little of consequence occurs as if it was supposed to be enough that we see adult Spock for the first time. Back in the old Treks, the good Treks, they would have devoted an entire episode like this to that subplot of Captain Pike and Specialist Tyler off on a mission together and getting trapped, forced into finding common ground. And that probably would have been good drama. With 'Discovery,' they think good drama is flinging flashing lights and sounds at you as a substitute for character and plot, and so it feels like another largely wasted three quarters of an hour of them playing with the Trek train set. We do learn some new and important facts for the ongoing stories, but the rest of it is like they can't construct a narrative, they can't ever reach a conclusion, it's all about setting up the audience to want the next 'fix.' Because of that I'm never satisfied and on the intensely rare occasion that an episode actually has any merit, as the previous one did, it's notable as a blip, an anomalous reading in the time stream, shall we say, before tripping back into meaningless melodrama.
The best I can say about this 'story' is that they didn't break canon about Sarek and Spock not speaking to each other at this time, since the son is out of it, babbling away while the Father has trouble leashing his wife's passions. For a woman that came to love a Vulcan, this version of Amanda is incredibly emotional and rebellious to her husband, even saying she doesn't live under his authority and generally making a mockery of his position by saying that she claims diplomatic immunity for Spock. For a moment I actually appreciated Sarek and his authoritative attitudes, having faith in Starfleet that they wouldn't incarcerate Spock if he's innocent, but he doesn't look like a very impressive figure with his diminutive wife bossing him about and holding the reins, and it's not hard to forget what a mess they've made of this character who sat by, even supported, the terrible genocidal actions of laying a bomb on Qo'noS last season. It's not just James Frain's failure to understand how a Vulcan should be portrayed (he once again shows emotion quite heavily), but what the writers have done to a once proud and noble heritage that they inherited from people that actually could write intelligently. Every time I see Amanda I like her less, and Sarek is the same, which doesn't help when this season in particular is so strongly based around this family. As usual, the noodly direction and constantly dramatic music heaps portent and meaning on scenes that have very little, and it's a disappointment once again to see what has become of Trek's signature style, grace and coherence in the hands of these modern writers.
At least they didn't break the canon, as I said before, and at least Burnham asks permission of her Captain to visit Vulcan, and at least Stamets remains calm and professional next to the burbling, fluttering Silly Tilly, but these minor positives are small comfort to take from a series that lost so much of Trek in exchange for a malaise of misplaced humour and melodrama. The main interest comes from news that the Red Angel is from the 28th Century, even if the surmise is completely conjectural from Captain Pike, since he bases this on the fact that the probe they sent into the temporal rift came back modified from five hundred years in the future, and therefore the Angel must be too. I've heard whispers of the Borg having something to do with things, so the probe's modification might have something to do with that, especially as it seemed to 'assimilate' all the shuttle's data once it had smashed its way aboard. The best the writers could come up with in the way of character development was that Pike and Tyler don't see eye to eye, Pike sees a ripple of the future where he's at the back of the shuttle and shoots Tyler, and you're supposed to wonder when this will happen and what brings them to that point, only it turns out that he was actually shooting the probe's Doctor Octopus arm to save Tyler. They like their twists, but that's all there is. Message to the writers: can you please watch some real Trek and find out how it's done, because even 'Enterprise' was more sophisticated than the superficial action-based 'storytelling' you keep giving us. Thanks.
When Tyler said at the end that they were in the middle of a fight for the future, it once again brought to mind the Temporal Cold War, and it's also in keeping that five hundred years in the future we know that Starfleet has time ships - at least in the 29th Century they do, and I believe it was in the 26th Century time travel began to be used as a method of exploration. What I didn't get was Pike's comment about Tyler being right about his reasons for wanting to go on the mission: Saru suggests he shouldn't go because he's too important and he goes anyway (surely at this period of history captains were allowed much more leeway, it's in the 24th Century that things became so rigid - another example of failing to adhere to the era they're supposed to be representing), and Tyler accuses him of wanting adventure or, I don't know, I can't even remember or be bothered to go back and check, I just didn't see Pike's agreeing with him on his motives for leading the mission. The shuttlecraft they travel on doesn't even appear to have a name, which is another break from tradition and shows how throwaway their view of the ships are in this Trek - it didn't even matter about forming a bond with the shuttle anyway because it's blown up by the end. They don't seem to care about the fidelity of this world, about building bonds between the audience and the technology or ships, something else that alienates me from it. While we're on ships, it seems that Section 31, far from just having this one 'special' vessel, has a whole fleet of them - we see three of the same kind searching for Burnham when she escapes with Spock!
That was another ridiculous part of the story - for one thing, why would Georgiou care to help her, she's an evil self-serving horror that has no right to exist in our universe, let alone serve in a branch of Starfleet (let alone even more to have her own series - oh, calamitous days!), and how does her blackmailing of Leland work? She claims she knows the truth about him being responsible for the death of Burnham's parents, but so what? What difference would it make to anyone except Burnham? I didn't believe in Burnham being able to take out Georgiou in a physical confrontation, so why would they even bother to pretend that's how she escaped? Oh, right, it was so they could shoehorn in some martial arts since that's all Michelle Yeoh is good for - she certainly isn't good at creating a real, breathing character! Anyway, I thought it was the Vulcans who killed her parents. Or was it the Klingons? Everything's so vague and poorly defined, in complete opposition to how Trek used to be and had as its strength. Murky, messy and muddled is how contemporary 'storytelling' is supposed to be, it seems, and Trek is just a follower of the crowd these days, and for the last decade with the films, so no wonder none of this works for the Trek faithful like me! And how did this super-duper Section 31 ship fail to stop a single shuttle from escaping? It's so silly!
I was at least slightly more interested in Leland as a character when he shows concern and seems to be not so bad when assuaging Burnham's fears about Spock, but we learn that was all an act and he just wanted her off the ship so they could use some mind-emptying device on Spock, so there goes the nuance once again. I did wonder how it would seem to have Spock with a beard. This might sound like a small thing to those unfamiliar with Trek, but the Spock beard is a whole concept in itself since it came to represent an evil version of someone, as his Mirror Universe counterpart had a little goatee. I suppose I should be grateful they gave him a full beard (I'm 'sure' it has nothing to do with beards being fashionable these days or an attempt to make Spock seem more contemporary and 'cool'), and I can see that it is all part of the straggly look of a man living on the run with mental problems. It'll be interesting to see how Ethan Peck holds up as a normal, rational, clean-shaven Spock, because although he doesn't look like the character (which hasn't bothered the makers in the slightest with Sarek, Amanda, Mudd and Stella, so why should it now?), his voice does have the same deep timbre of Leonard Nimoy, so that's one promising sign to hang onto, and closer than Zachary Quinto's high-pitched squealing.
I also liked Pike's brainy way of alerting Discovery to his whereabouts by ejecting some of the fuel to burn, the same technique used by Spock in 'The Galileo Seven,' an episode made over fifty years ago that has far more drama and tenseness than anything this series can come close to. It's also of interest that Burnham is off to Talos IV at the end of the episode, Spock's babbled numbers turning out to be coordinates for a planet. Now I knew Talos IV and the Talosians would be coming into the story at some point (I've managed not to see any image of them so I hope they live up to the superb design of 'TOS' and don't change a thing), and it is a little hard to see how this is going to fit in since we know that there were two encounters with the Talosians in 'TOS': 'The Cage' in which we saw Pike's mission there, and 'The Menagerie' where we saw Pike's mission there again, and it ended with the Enterprise returning to leave Pike to give him a new lease of life after his paralysing accident, so it's tricky to see how another interaction with them would work. At least Pike isn't on the shuttle ride so that's something, but the only death penalty in the Federation is for going to this planet and they haven't even mentioned this. You'd think the computer would have flagged it as soon as the coordinates came up, so I hope they're not going to ignore this integral piece of canon (I think there was a mention by Cornwell last season that there is no death penalty in the Federation and it bothered me then).
I was hoping the 'Tokma,' this intense meditation thing that's supposed to telepathically connect with lost souls and guide them home, which Sarek performs in his home, was something already established, but they have to have some latitude to create new things. I wasn't happy with what they created for the shuttlecraft - I admire the fact that it has the little red bussard collectors at the front of the nacelles, and I quite like the external design for seeming quite close to the film-era versions (even though it should look more like the Galileo, and is sad that it doesn't), but the insides look the same as ones from 'Voyager' - indeed, I almost felt at home imagining Seven of Nine or Tom Paris being in there, which is not what you want from a period specific ship, and another sign they don't give a monkey's about the integrity of Starfleet design and development over the decades. But what really annoyed were the metallic shutters that come down over the front window - what happened to shields? And what good would a metal shutter do that this futuristic transparent material in the windows wouldn't already? And don't even get me started on the shot of Discovery's internal Turbolift structure which is some vast empty space where they run on rails! What's the point of bottomless shafts and all that wasted space? Due to the many irritants of the episode I couldn't even enjoy things like Sarek's house and views of Vulcan which otherwise would have stood out as being meritorious, despite all the rain on that desert planet… Bad design, bad Trek, bad mood for me.
**
It's back to normality for this blighted version of Trek once again, but it's mercifully short at thirty-eight minutes. An episode in which very little of consequence occurs as if it was supposed to be enough that we see adult Spock for the first time. Back in the old Treks, the good Treks, they would have devoted an entire episode like this to that subplot of Captain Pike and Specialist Tyler off on a mission together and getting trapped, forced into finding common ground. And that probably would have been good drama. With 'Discovery,' they think good drama is flinging flashing lights and sounds at you as a substitute for character and plot, and so it feels like another largely wasted three quarters of an hour of them playing with the Trek train set. We do learn some new and important facts for the ongoing stories, but the rest of it is like they can't construct a narrative, they can't ever reach a conclusion, it's all about setting up the audience to want the next 'fix.' Because of that I'm never satisfied and on the intensely rare occasion that an episode actually has any merit, as the previous one did, it's notable as a blip, an anomalous reading in the time stream, shall we say, before tripping back into meaningless melodrama.
The best I can say about this 'story' is that they didn't break canon about Sarek and Spock not speaking to each other at this time, since the son is out of it, babbling away while the Father has trouble leashing his wife's passions. For a woman that came to love a Vulcan, this version of Amanda is incredibly emotional and rebellious to her husband, even saying she doesn't live under his authority and generally making a mockery of his position by saying that she claims diplomatic immunity for Spock. For a moment I actually appreciated Sarek and his authoritative attitudes, having faith in Starfleet that they wouldn't incarcerate Spock if he's innocent, but he doesn't look like a very impressive figure with his diminutive wife bossing him about and holding the reins, and it's not hard to forget what a mess they've made of this character who sat by, even supported, the terrible genocidal actions of laying a bomb on Qo'noS last season. It's not just James Frain's failure to understand how a Vulcan should be portrayed (he once again shows emotion quite heavily), but what the writers have done to a once proud and noble heritage that they inherited from people that actually could write intelligently. Every time I see Amanda I like her less, and Sarek is the same, which doesn't help when this season in particular is so strongly based around this family. As usual, the noodly direction and constantly dramatic music heaps portent and meaning on scenes that have very little, and it's a disappointment once again to see what has become of Trek's signature style, grace and coherence in the hands of these modern writers.
At least they didn't break the canon, as I said before, and at least Burnham asks permission of her Captain to visit Vulcan, and at least Stamets remains calm and professional next to the burbling, fluttering Silly Tilly, but these minor positives are small comfort to take from a series that lost so much of Trek in exchange for a malaise of misplaced humour and melodrama. The main interest comes from news that the Red Angel is from the 28th Century, even if the surmise is completely conjectural from Captain Pike, since he bases this on the fact that the probe they sent into the temporal rift came back modified from five hundred years in the future, and therefore the Angel must be too. I've heard whispers of the Borg having something to do with things, so the probe's modification might have something to do with that, especially as it seemed to 'assimilate' all the shuttle's data once it had smashed its way aboard. The best the writers could come up with in the way of character development was that Pike and Tyler don't see eye to eye, Pike sees a ripple of the future where he's at the back of the shuttle and shoots Tyler, and you're supposed to wonder when this will happen and what brings them to that point, only it turns out that he was actually shooting the probe's Doctor Octopus arm to save Tyler. They like their twists, but that's all there is. Message to the writers: can you please watch some real Trek and find out how it's done, because even 'Enterprise' was more sophisticated than the superficial action-based 'storytelling' you keep giving us. Thanks.
When Tyler said at the end that they were in the middle of a fight for the future, it once again brought to mind the Temporal Cold War, and it's also in keeping that five hundred years in the future we know that Starfleet has time ships - at least in the 29th Century they do, and I believe it was in the 26th Century time travel began to be used as a method of exploration. What I didn't get was Pike's comment about Tyler being right about his reasons for wanting to go on the mission: Saru suggests he shouldn't go because he's too important and he goes anyway (surely at this period of history captains were allowed much more leeway, it's in the 24th Century that things became so rigid - another example of failing to adhere to the era they're supposed to be representing), and Tyler accuses him of wanting adventure or, I don't know, I can't even remember or be bothered to go back and check, I just didn't see Pike's agreeing with him on his motives for leading the mission. The shuttlecraft they travel on doesn't even appear to have a name, which is another break from tradition and shows how throwaway their view of the ships are in this Trek - it didn't even matter about forming a bond with the shuttle anyway because it's blown up by the end. They don't seem to care about the fidelity of this world, about building bonds between the audience and the technology or ships, something else that alienates me from it. While we're on ships, it seems that Section 31, far from just having this one 'special' vessel, has a whole fleet of them - we see three of the same kind searching for Burnham when she escapes with Spock!
That was another ridiculous part of the story - for one thing, why would Georgiou care to help her, she's an evil self-serving horror that has no right to exist in our universe, let alone serve in a branch of Starfleet (let alone even more to have her own series - oh, calamitous days!), and how does her blackmailing of Leland work? She claims she knows the truth about him being responsible for the death of Burnham's parents, but so what? What difference would it make to anyone except Burnham? I didn't believe in Burnham being able to take out Georgiou in a physical confrontation, so why would they even bother to pretend that's how she escaped? Oh, right, it was so they could shoehorn in some martial arts since that's all Michelle Yeoh is good for - she certainly isn't good at creating a real, breathing character! Anyway, I thought it was the Vulcans who killed her parents. Or was it the Klingons? Everything's so vague and poorly defined, in complete opposition to how Trek used to be and had as its strength. Murky, messy and muddled is how contemporary 'storytelling' is supposed to be, it seems, and Trek is just a follower of the crowd these days, and for the last decade with the films, so no wonder none of this works for the Trek faithful like me! And how did this super-duper Section 31 ship fail to stop a single shuttle from escaping? It's so silly!
I was at least slightly more interested in Leland as a character when he shows concern and seems to be not so bad when assuaging Burnham's fears about Spock, but we learn that was all an act and he just wanted her off the ship so they could use some mind-emptying device on Spock, so there goes the nuance once again. I did wonder how it would seem to have Spock with a beard. This might sound like a small thing to those unfamiliar with Trek, but the Spock beard is a whole concept in itself since it came to represent an evil version of someone, as his Mirror Universe counterpart had a little goatee. I suppose I should be grateful they gave him a full beard (I'm 'sure' it has nothing to do with beards being fashionable these days or an attempt to make Spock seem more contemporary and 'cool'), and I can see that it is all part of the straggly look of a man living on the run with mental problems. It'll be interesting to see how Ethan Peck holds up as a normal, rational, clean-shaven Spock, because although he doesn't look like the character (which hasn't bothered the makers in the slightest with Sarek, Amanda, Mudd and Stella, so why should it now?), his voice does have the same deep timbre of Leonard Nimoy, so that's one promising sign to hang onto, and closer than Zachary Quinto's high-pitched squealing.
I also liked Pike's brainy way of alerting Discovery to his whereabouts by ejecting some of the fuel to burn, the same technique used by Spock in 'The Galileo Seven,' an episode made over fifty years ago that has far more drama and tenseness than anything this series can come close to. It's also of interest that Burnham is off to Talos IV at the end of the episode, Spock's babbled numbers turning out to be coordinates for a planet. Now I knew Talos IV and the Talosians would be coming into the story at some point (I've managed not to see any image of them so I hope they live up to the superb design of 'TOS' and don't change a thing), and it is a little hard to see how this is going to fit in since we know that there were two encounters with the Talosians in 'TOS': 'The Cage' in which we saw Pike's mission there, and 'The Menagerie' where we saw Pike's mission there again, and it ended with the Enterprise returning to leave Pike to give him a new lease of life after his paralysing accident, so it's tricky to see how another interaction with them would work. At least Pike isn't on the shuttle ride so that's something, but the only death penalty in the Federation is for going to this planet and they haven't even mentioned this. You'd think the computer would have flagged it as soon as the coordinates came up, so I hope they're not going to ignore this integral piece of canon (I think there was a mention by Cornwell last season that there is no death penalty in the Federation and it bothered me then).
I was hoping the 'Tokma,' this intense meditation thing that's supposed to telepathically connect with lost souls and guide them home, which Sarek performs in his home, was something already established, but they have to have some latitude to create new things. I wasn't happy with what they created for the shuttlecraft - I admire the fact that it has the little red bussard collectors at the front of the nacelles, and I quite like the external design for seeming quite close to the film-era versions (even though it should look more like the Galileo, and is sad that it doesn't), but the insides look the same as ones from 'Voyager' - indeed, I almost felt at home imagining Seven of Nine or Tom Paris being in there, which is not what you want from a period specific ship, and another sign they don't give a monkey's about the integrity of Starfleet design and development over the decades. But what really annoyed were the metallic shutters that come down over the front window - what happened to shields? And what good would a metal shutter do that this futuristic transparent material in the windows wouldn't already? And don't even get me started on the shot of Discovery's internal Turbolift structure which is some vast empty space where they run on rails! What's the point of bottomless shafts and all that wasted space? Due to the many irritants of the episode I couldn't even enjoy things like Sarek's house and views of Vulcan which otherwise would have stood out as being meritorious, despite all the rain on that desert planet… Bad design, bad Trek, bad mood for me.
**
Tuesday, 14 January 2020
The Sound of Thunder
DVD, Discovery S2 (The Sound of Thunder)
There are a couple of minor additions that detract from its goodness, namely Tilly's usual 'humorous' bluster and the slight subplot of Culber being uncomfortable in his new body (and I could also say Burnham deciding she needs to pop back to Vulcan on a whim at the end, as if one crewman can make choices like that so easily), neither of which added anything, but this is one episode that is otherwise pretty good, the music was beautiful, and though the roving camerawork is tiresome at first, I soon forgot about minor aesthetic annoyances as the story took hold. Surprisingly it came from Lippoldt and Kim, two of my least favourite (to put it diplomatically), writers on the series! After their ludicrous plotting seen in 'Short Treks' episode 'The Brightest Star,' they effectively undo all (well, most - we still see a shot of Georgiou in current uniform that doesn't make sense, especially as we get confirmation it was eighteen years previous!), of the logic flaws and errors of judgement I levelled at our first visit to Kaminar and provide a stimulating, thoughtful, and heroic episode that rings true of Trek through the ages, and gave me some small hope again that this modern era could yet turn into something that more than merely resembled Trek, but wasn't true to it at the core. It helped that Section 31's influence was minimal, reduced down to Tyler's cynical reaction to the new information they learn of the Red Angel - he's certainly swallowed wholeheartedly Leland's paranoiac rhetoric and it shows just the kind of damaged souls that 31 uses for its own ends.
Apart from this note of caution, this episode is very satisfying in its depiction of Kelpien culture, answering most of the many questions raised by 'The Brightest Star' and providing Saru the chance to reveal the truth to his people without violating the rules as blatantly as blurting out that Vahar'ai, the natural Kelpien development, is okay, a kind of puberty that turns them from prey to predator, childlike race to adult. He so wanted to express this truth, but the saying 'the truth will out,' was never truer: it comes out as a necessity as the Ba'ul press home their technological advantage, but leave themselves vulnerable in doing so. I found it fascinating that the Ba'ul themselves were the ones operating out of fear, that even their great technological advancements over their fellow Kaminar dwellers wasn't enough to give them a sense of security. They were fearful of the Kelpiens because they had once been prey to them, and this 'Great Balance' was the thing holding them in check. There are still many questions that could be answered, such as how this bizarre, twisted, tar-like race (my first thought was Armus, the oil-slick creation of pure evil that killed Tasha Yar in 'TNG'!), came to have the capacity to develop sciences that led to warp travel (they achieved it only twenty years previous to the episode), and were able to build intricate and complex technology with those long, greasy claws! From that perspective it's a little ridiculous, but it's possible the way we see them in this episode was only one form - perhaps they liked to make a muddy entrance like that to intimidate their enemies, and in the background there were lots of clean Ba'ul in suits operating controls. Or perhaps this was part of their cycle, a sleeping arrangement (in which case, no wonder it was so cranky), or even that this was the leader of their High Council, and only it rested in the gunk?
The point from all this is that it throws my mind into speculation, and rather than saying how stupid it all is, and how little sense it makes, a good episode can inspire and cause the creative synapses to fire. This really hasn't happened on the series yet, and this must be the best episode since 'The Vulcan Hello.' The downside is that they cram so much development into the space of a single episode. In old Trek money it would have been the unspooling ongoing arc for seasons, in amongst the mix of other stories and plots - it would be like Odo discovering his people at last, then in the same episode the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar come to bombard the planet, and then Odo infects them with the virus, etc! But with far more limited storytelling potential in their short fourteen or fifteen episode seasons, and the likelihood that there probably won't be that many years to come (although in truth we're in uncharted territory as regards how long the series might last), I suppose it does fit with the sped up nature and lack of hanging around to smell the Fredalias. Whatever it means for Saru's people in the longterm, and I really hope we get to see how the Kelpiens and Ba'ul come to live together on the planet, this on its own was a nice story. As long as they work out better than the Kes and Prytt from 'TNG,' another story about two races inhabiting the same world.
As ever, you do wonder certain things about how it all played out, such as why the Kelpiens would be a threat with their little threat ganglia turned to dart shooters, as no Ba'ul has been seen in living memory, so they don't come into physical contact, and these things are shown to be harmless compared to the might of forcefields, so the Ba'ul come across as a species that you would say has atrophied through lack of threat if not for the fact it was only two decades ago they achieved warp travel. There was another way to tell this story, too, since if they'd approached the Federation for trade and diplomacy, that would have added further complications - if the Federation had already had a connection with them it would have been harder for the Kelpiens, though once the Federation found out they'd have had to do something. I do like the issues at hand, whether it was whether Saru should be permitted to beam down to his home planet and all the pros and cons of getting involved with a warp capable world, yet having to make contact with a pre-warp species on that planet. It was quite unseemly for Saru to be so openly hostile to his Captain on the Bridge. He should have requested a private audience with Pike in his Ready Room, since he has one on this massive ship, and then hashed out the arguments in private. I'm still not sold on Pike as being the man we knew from 'TOS,' though he remains a considerable improvement on Lorca, and I did appreciate his dedication to upholding General Order One even while his crew are so eager to break it!
Talking of which, Saru does break faith to save his sister, Siranna, whom we'd seen in 'The Brightest Star,' now a full grown woman, and the priest of her village, taking over from her deceased Father, Aridar, who died shortly after Saru left. It was a simple matter for Burnham to stop him - she didn't need to point the Phaser, she could just have powered down the Transporter console, so it would have been an ideal moment to indicate that it was encrypted to prevent anyone tampering with Saru's plans. A small matter, but the kind of detail the old Treks would have made sure of. That there were no consequences of either Saru interfering with Pike's orders or Burnham for not stunning him is easy to get past since everything turned out well in the end, but I would have liked Pike to have a word with the two of them at the end to say that if they ever act like that again there will be consequences. Again, it's only a small addition required to make it more Trekky, but there's enough good to overlook such things. It's harder to accept that the USS Discovery, this powerful Starfleet ship could so easily be outgunned by primitive vessels such as those which the Ba'ul possessed. I know there were ten of them (they reminded me of another 'TNG' episode where a vast 'God-like' machine thing prevented interference from space), but really!
I also felt it was highly unlikely the Ba'ul would listen to Pike after he'd effectively allied himself with their enemy, the Kelpiens, by saying that Saru was one of his people. I'm glad he stood up for his First Officer, but you'd think he'd be experienced enough to know that such a brutal race would immediately take against any positive action towards their enemy. I also wondered why the Red Angel needed Discovery to do what it did if it could just deal with the Ba'ul in their moment of attempted genocide, but I gathered that thanks to the events that took place with Saru going there and inciting the Ba'ul to action, it left them vulnerable for a window. They worked this ongoing story of the benevolent avenging angel being into the story again well, and even better, because Saru witnessed its appearance we were given a more detailed look at it thanks to his superior eyesight, a brilliant and logical use of the character's abilities - we discover that it appears to be wearing some kind of EVA suit, and knowing that Burnham is going to wear a 'time suit' at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be her from the future (though I could be wrong - I predicted the Ba'ul would turn out to be another group of Kelpiens). I would have liked some reference to the Temporal Cold War of 'Enterprise' when Pike and Tyler are discussing it at the end, but I'm not sure how much of that was known outside Archer, and just as Section 31 shouldn't be the common knowledge that it is, I'd much rather they kept to canon than break it for effect as they seem to have done by making 31 so obvious and well-known. It's more likely that the TCW never entered the writers' heads, but in this case, now I think about it, it probably worked best not to mention it.
Another question I had was in the forced activation of the Kelpien Vahar'ai across the planet. Rather than make them seem unthreatening, I'd have thought this was exactly what would stir up a hornet's nest with the Ba'ul. Obviously they needed to know the truth that The Great Balance was a lie designed to keep them in order and prevent them from turning into the predators the Ba'ul feared, but even for the wellbeing of the Kelpiens it seemed a little extreme to do it without any warning. I could imagine terrified Kelpiens committing suicide or helping others to do the same if they'd had the opportunity, just as Saru asked of Burnham before. Fortunately it all happened so fast they didn't have time to react to it and we see with Siranna that she was incapacitated with pain. I'd have liked a more concrete conclusion to how the Kelpiens and Ba'ul were going to progress from that point, since the Ba'ul still have all the power with their superior tech, and the Kelpiens only know a simple existence, as well as that they were almost wiped out by the Ba'ul, which wouldn't be the best basis for mutual understanding. If these things are addressed in the future then all the better, but I suspect we'll never hear anything more about Kaminar, except in passing. I suppose it's true to the style of 'TOS' which would make fundamental changes to societies, then go on their merry way without much sense of responsibility to those they interfered with. At the same time Kirk used to give these races the benefit of the doubt that they'd find their way and should deal with their own problems now they'd been shown the way, so maybe that's the same here.
One other little thing I wanted was to see Burnham made up as a Kelpien for her mission to the planet. We're told that although Kelpiens are pre-warp, they now know about space travel, thus why General Order One could be disregarded, but it still would have been a shock if Burnham had been seen by anyone other than just a single, solitary Siranna who also had the benefit of being primed by her long thought dead brother! It would have been in keeping with Starfleet even of this time, as we saw Kirk go undercover as a Romulan in 'TOS,' so it would have been a nice reminder of Starfleet operating procedure. But once again, I was so taken with the story that any qualms or questions I had weren't enough to take me out of it. I even noticed the odd little detail that pleased me, such as seeing buttons flicked rather than everything on touch screens, and Yellow Alert is visibly used. Lastly, Linus was credited, but I never noticed him - I was waiting for him to crop up again so I could correct a mistake in my previous reviews: I denoted him an Arcturan, but he's actually a Saurian! Whoops. If this episode is an indication of where the series will go then I would say there is still hope for it. If only they could create episodes that work as well as this one on a regular basis I would be much happier - it's just like when they showed the Klingon with flowing locks of hair, it reassures me that it can be true to the history even if things seem so distorted and messed up so much of the time. It doesn't take much to make most things feel right, and I'm glad they achieved that on this occasion. My only fear is that this was a one off - after all, we haven't seen Spock yet.
***
There are a couple of minor additions that detract from its goodness, namely Tilly's usual 'humorous' bluster and the slight subplot of Culber being uncomfortable in his new body (and I could also say Burnham deciding she needs to pop back to Vulcan on a whim at the end, as if one crewman can make choices like that so easily), neither of which added anything, but this is one episode that is otherwise pretty good, the music was beautiful, and though the roving camerawork is tiresome at first, I soon forgot about minor aesthetic annoyances as the story took hold. Surprisingly it came from Lippoldt and Kim, two of my least favourite (to put it diplomatically), writers on the series! After their ludicrous plotting seen in 'Short Treks' episode 'The Brightest Star,' they effectively undo all (well, most - we still see a shot of Georgiou in current uniform that doesn't make sense, especially as we get confirmation it was eighteen years previous!), of the logic flaws and errors of judgement I levelled at our first visit to Kaminar and provide a stimulating, thoughtful, and heroic episode that rings true of Trek through the ages, and gave me some small hope again that this modern era could yet turn into something that more than merely resembled Trek, but wasn't true to it at the core. It helped that Section 31's influence was minimal, reduced down to Tyler's cynical reaction to the new information they learn of the Red Angel - he's certainly swallowed wholeheartedly Leland's paranoiac rhetoric and it shows just the kind of damaged souls that 31 uses for its own ends.
Apart from this note of caution, this episode is very satisfying in its depiction of Kelpien culture, answering most of the many questions raised by 'The Brightest Star' and providing Saru the chance to reveal the truth to his people without violating the rules as blatantly as blurting out that Vahar'ai, the natural Kelpien development, is okay, a kind of puberty that turns them from prey to predator, childlike race to adult. He so wanted to express this truth, but the saying 'the truth will out,' was never truer: it comes out as a necessity as the Ba'ul press home their technological advantage, but leave themselves vulnerable in doing so. I found it fascinating that the Ba'ul themselves were the ones operating out of fear, that even their great technological advancements over their fellow Kaminar dwellers wasn't enough to give them a sense of security. They were fearful of the Kelpiens because they had once been prey to them, and this 'Great Balance' was the thing holding them in check. There are still many questions that could be answered, such as how this bizarre, twisted, tar-like race (my first thought was Armus, the oil-slick creation of pure evil that killed Tasha Yar in 'TNG'!), came to have the capacity to develop sciences that led to warp travel (they achieved it only twenty years previous to the episode), and were able to build intricate and complex technology with those long, greasy claws! From that perspective it's a little ridiculous, but it's possible the way we see them in this episode was only one form - perhaps they liked to make a muddy entrance like that to intimidate their enemies, and in the background there were lots of clean Ba'ul in suits operating controls. Or perhaps this was part of their cycle, a sleeping arrangement (in which case, no wonder it was so cranky), or even that this was the leader of their High Council, and only it rested in the gunk?
The point from all this is that it throws my mind into speculation, and rather than saying how stupid it all is, and how little sense it makes, a good episode can inspire and cause the creative synapses to fire. This really hasn't happened on the series yet, and this must be the best episode since 'The Vulcan Hello.' The downside is that they cram so much development into the space of a single episode. In old Trek money it would have been the unspooling ongoing arc for seasons, in amongst the mix of other stories and plots - it would be like Odo discovering his people at last, then in the same episode the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar come to bombard the planet, and then Odo infects them with the virus, etc! But with far more limited storytelling potential in their short fourteen or fifteen episode seasons, and the likelihood that there probably won't be that many years to come (although in truth we're in uncharted territory as regards how long the series might last), I suppose it does fit with the sped up nature and lack of hanging around to smell the Fredalias. Whatever it means for Saru's people in the longterm, and I really hope we get to see how the Kelpiens and Ba'ul come to live together on the planet, this on its own was a nice story. As long as they work out better than the Kes and Prytt from 'TNG,' another story about two races inhabiting the same world.
As ever, you do wonder certain things about how it all played out, such as why the Kelpiens would be a threat with their little threat ganglia turned to dart shooters, as no Ba'ul has been seen in living memory, so they don't come into physical contact, and these things are shown to be harmless compared to the might of forcefields, so the Ba'ul come across as a species that you would say has atrophied through lack of threat if not for the fact it was only two decades ago they achieved warp travel. There was another way to tell this story, too, since if they'd approached the Federation for trade and diplomacy, that would have added further complications - if the Federation had already had a connection with them it would have been harder for the Kelpiens, though once the Federation found out they'd have had to do something. I do like the issues at hand, whether it was whether Saru should be permitted to beam down to his home planet and all the pros and cons of getting involved with a warp capable world, yet having to make contact with a pre-warp species on that planet. It was quite unseemly for Saru to be so openly hostile to his Captain on the Bridge. He should have requested a private audience with Pike in his Ready Room, since he has one on this massive ship, and then hashed out the arguments in private. I'm still not sold on Pike as being the man we knew from 'TOS,' though he remains a considerable improvement on Lorca, and I did appreciate his dedication to upholding General Order One even while his crew are so eager to break it!
Talking of which, Saru does break faith to save his sister, Siranna, whom we'd seen in 'The Brightest Star,' now a full grown woman, and the priest of her village, taking over from her deceased Father, Aridar, who died shortly after Saru left. It was a simple matter for Burnham to stop him - she didn't need to point the Phaser, she could just have powered down the Transporter console, so it would have been an ideal moment to indicate that it was encrypted to prevent anyone tampering with Saru's plans. A small matter, but the kind of detail the old Treks would have made sure of. That there were no consequences of either Saru interfering with Pike's orders or Burnham for not stunning him is easy to get past since everything turned out well in the end, but I would have liked Pike to have a word with the two of them at the end to say that if they ever act like that again there will be consequences. Again, it's only a small addition required to make it more Trekky, but there's enough good to overlook such things. It's harder to accept that the USS Discovery, this powerful Starfleet ship could so easily be outgunned by primitive vessels such as those which the Ba'ul possessed. I know there were ten of them (they reminded me of another 'TNG' episode where a vast 'God-like' machine thing prevented interference from space), but really!
I also felt it was highly unlikely the Ba'ul would listen to Pike after he'd effectively allied himself with their enemy, the Kelpiens, by saying that Saru was one of his people. I'm glad he stood up for his First Officer, but you'd think he'd be experienced enough to know that such a brutal race would immediately take against any positive action towards their enemy. I also wondered why the Red Angel needed Discovery to do what it did if it could just deal with the Ba'ul in their moment of attempted genocide, but I gathered that thanks to the events that took place with Saru going there and inciting the Ba'ul to action, it left them vulnerable for a window. They worked this ongoing story of the benevolent avenging angel being into the story again well, and even better, because Saru witnessed its appearance we were given a more detailed look at it thanks to his superior eyesight, a brilliant and logical use of the character's abilities - we discover that it appears to be wearing some kind of EVA suit, and knowing that Burnham is going to wear a 'time suit' at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be her from the future (though I could be wrong - I predicted the Ba'ul would turn out to be another group of Kelpiens). I would have liked some reference to the Temporal Cold War of 'Enterprise' when Pike and Tyler are discussing it at the end, but I'm not sure how much of that was known outside Archer, and just as Section 31 shouldn't be the common knowledge that it is, I'd much rather they kept to canon than break it for effect as they seem to have done by making 31 so obvious and well-known. It's more likely that the TCW never entered the writers' heads, but in this case, now I think about it, it probably worked best not to mention it.
Another question I had was in the forced activation of the Kelpien Vahar'ai across the planet. Rather than make them seem unthreatening, I'd have thought this was exactly what would stir up a hornet's nest with the Ba'ul. Obviously they needed to know the truth that The Great Balance was a lie designed to keep them in order and prevent them from turning into the predators the Ba'ul feared, but even for the wellbeing of the Kelpiens it seemed a little extreme to do it without any warning. I could imagine terrified Kelpiens committing suicide or helping others to do the same if they'd had the opportunity, just as Saru asked of Burnham before. Fortunately it all happened so fast they didn't have time to react to it and we see with Siranna that she was incapacitated with pain. I'd have liked a more concrete conclusion to how the Kelpiens and Ba'ul were going to progress from that point, since the Ba'ul still have all the power with their superior tech, and the Kelpiens only know a simple existence, as well as that they were almost wiped out by the Ba'ul, which wouldn't be the best basis for mutual understanding. If these things are addressed in the future then all the better, but I suspect we'll never hear anything more about Kaminar, except in passing. I suppose it's true to the style of 'TOS' which would make fundamental changes to societies, then go on their merry way without much sense of responsibility to those they interfered with. At the same time Kirk used to give these races the benefit of the doubt that they'd find their way and should deal with their own problems now they'd been shown the way, so maybe that's the same here.
One other little thing I wanted was to see Burnham made up as a Kelpien for her mission to the planet. We're told that although Kelpiens are pre-warp, they now know about space travel, thus why General Order One could be disregarded, but it still would have been a shock if Burnham had been seen by anyone other than just a single, solitary Siranna who also had the benefit of being primed by her long thought dead brother! It would have been in keeping with Starfleet even of this time, as we saw Kirk go undercover as a Romulan in 'TOS,' so it would have been a nice reminder of Starfleet operating procedure. But once again, I was so taken with the story that any qualms or questions I had weren't enough to take me out of it. I even noticed the odd little detail that pleased me, such as seeing buttons flicked rather than everything on touch screens, and Yellow Alert is visibly used. Lastly, Linus was credited, but I never noticed him - I was waiting for him to crop up again so I could correct a mistake in my previous reviews: I denoted him an Arcturan, but he's actually a Saurian! Whoops. If this episode is an indication of where the series will go then I would say there is still hope for it. If only they could create episodes that work as well as this one on a regular basis I would be much happier - it's just like when they showed the Klingon with flowing locks of hair, it reassures me that it can be true to the history even if things seem so distorted and messed up so much of the time. It doesn't take much to make most things feel right, and I'm glad they achieved that on this occasion. My only fear is that this was a one off - after all, we haven't seen Spock yet.
***
The Brightest Star
DVD, Short Treks (The Brightest Star)
This was the one I foolishly thought might actually be good, but while it does give us a little on Saru, and it isn't objectionable like the first 'Short Treks' was, it is as stupid as ever, and seeing who wrote it, I'm unsurprised. It answers a lot of questions I had after seeing 'An Obol For Charon,' but I don't think the order of seeing it after that made any difference because however you look at it, it's poorly conceived. First, the good: it is interesting to see what Saru's home looks like, and we get to meet his sister, Siranna, and his old Father, who is the village priest. This is where things immediately fall apart, though - far from the impression given of the Kelpiens being prey on this planet of a predator species, one you'd have presumed they had to outrun and outfox to stay alive, thus suggesting a nomadic, animal-like lifestyle, they're a settled species that appear to farm seaweed from the sea (are they called Kelpiens because they eat kelp?). They have a deeply religious way of life, believing in some universal 'balance,' like yin and yang I suppose, and that they have to keep this up and not question it. I knew about Vahar'ai from 'Obol' so that explained what that was, but here they actually traipse over to some kind of Transporter in the sand that beams them up, presumably to be eaten by the Ba'ul.
I'd imagined these Ba'ul to be predators in the usual sense, but they're actually just more advanced (for all we know they could be just other Kelpiens, like the Son'a and the Ba'ku in 'Insurrection,' since we never see one), and cull the population without any effort on their part - presumably they're a pre-warp civilisation, though one with space ships and the tech to transport beings, unless that spire just converted them directly to consumable energy. So why do the Kelpiens have such strength and the ability to run really fast, what was the point of that? It was all very different to what I imagined, and far less dramatic, the only drama being that Saru is the only one that has any questions about their way of life and why they should just meekly go when it's their time. As usual for the series, that's not enough, his method of getting off the planet is equally as contrived - a piece of a Ba'ul ship just drops out of the sky for no apparent reason and it just so happens that it's technology that can be used for communications! Wow, how incredibly convenient. Not only that, but simple farmer Saru has the wherewithal to make it work! That's probably the most farfetched part of the story, but it gets even better than that! Not only does he get it working, the Ba'ul, so careless about dropping bits of their ships onto their cattle, never even pick up the signal he sends out, or miss their technology! Amazing.
The stupidity doesn't even end there, unbelievably! Lieutenant Georgiou herself is the one to pick up the signal and against General Order One, communicates with him because he's been ingenious enough to use alien tech he didn't create! She gets Starfleet to make an exception and goes to pick him up! Just as an aside, how long has Starfleet been using those uniforms because they're the same as on Discovery. I'm not quite sure how far this is supposed to be in the past, but this would have been an ideal moment to trot out the different uniforms from 'The Cage,' since it's just a tiny one-shot that isn't going to make any difference, except to the faithful, but no, they lazily reuse the same uniforms they've invented for contemporary Starfleet. Ugh. Anyway, Starfleet allows her to bypass the Prime Directive and a new friendship is born. Oh, how 'Discovery' this all is. What a disappointment that they can't even get a sub-fifteen minute short making sense! It was nice to see the true Georgiou again, even for only a minute or two, and the moment Saru says his goodbyes to his unaware sister had something in it, but it's yet another signpost that this series is never going to grow up from being a simplistic, illogical and ill-thought out mess, disguised by high production values and frequent emotional manipulation. So sad, I really did think there was potential for a good story on Saru's past and to show a believable route for him to leave his planet and people behind, but they failed, along with Georgiou and Starfleet. It's almost a relief that the other two 'Short Treks' aren't included on this DVD set as it saves me from more misery!
**
This was the one I foolishly thought might actually be good, but while it does give us a little on Saru, and it isn't objectionable like the first 'Short Treks' was, it is as stupid as ever, and seeing who wrote it, I'm unsurprised. It answers a lot of questions I had after seeing 'An Obol For Charon,' but I don't think the order of seeing it after that made any difference because however you look at it, it's poorly conceived. First, the good: it is interesting to see what Saru's home looks like, and we get to meet his sister, Siranna, and his old Father, who is the village priest. This is where things immediately fall apart, though - far from the impression given of the Kelpiens being prey on this planet of a predator species, one you'd have presumed they had to outrun and outfox to stay alive, thus suggesting a nomadic, animal-like lifestyle, they're a settled species that appear to farm seaweed from the sea (are they called Kelpiens because they eat kelp?). They have a deeply religious way of life, believing in some universal 'balance,' like yin and yang I suppose, and that they have to keep this up and not question it. I knew about Vahar'ai from 'Obol' so that explained what that was, but here they actually traipse over to some kind of Transporter in the sand that beams them up, presumably to be eaten by the Ba'ul.
I'd imagined these Ba'ul to be predators in the usual sense, but they're actually just more advanced (for all we know they could be just other Kelpiens, like the Son'a and the Ba'ku in 'Insurrection,' since we never see one), and cull the population without any effort on their part - presumably they're a pre-warp civilisation, though one with space ships and the tech to transport beings, unless that spire just converted them directly to consumable energy. So why do the Kelpiens have such strength and the ability to run really fast, what was the point of that? It was all very different to what I imagined, and far less dramatic, the only drama being that Saru is the only one that has any questions about their way of life and why they should just meekly go when it's their time. As usual for the series, that's not enough, his method of getting off the planet is equally as contrived - a piece of a Ba'ul ship just drops out of the sky for no apparent reason and it just so happens that it's technology that can be used for communications! Wow, how incredibly convenient. Not only that, but simple farmer Saru has the wherewithal to make it work! That's probably the most farfetched part of the story, but it gets even better than that! Not only does he get it working, the Ba'ul, so careless about dropping bits of their ships onto their cattle, never even pick up the signal he sends out, or miss their technology! Amazing.
The stupidity doesn't even end there, unbelievably! Lieutenant Georgiou herself is the one to pick up the signal and against General Order One, communicates with him because he's been ingenious enough to use alien tech he didn't create! She gets Starfleet to make an exception and goes to pick him up! Just as an aside, how long has Starfleet been using those uniforms because they're the same as on Discovery. I'm not quite sure how far this is supposed to be in the past, but this would have been an ideal moment to trot out the different uniforms from 'The Cage,' since it's just a tiny one-shot that isn't going to make any difference, except to the faithful, but no, they lazily reuse the same uniforms they've invented for contemporary Starfleet. Ugh. Anyway, Starfleet allows her to bypass the Prime Directive and a new friendship is born. Oh, how 'Discovery' this all is. What a disappointment that they can't even get a sub-fifteen minute short making sense! It was nice to see the true Georgiou again, even for only a minute or two, and the moment Saru says his goodbyes to his unaware sister had something in it, but it's yet another signpost that this series is never going to grow up from being a simplistic, illogical and ill-thought out mess, disguised by high production values and frequent emotional manipulation. So sad, I really did think there was potential for a good story on Saru's past and to show a believable route for him to leave his planet and people behind, but they failed, along with Georgiou and Starfleet. It's almost a relief that the other two 'Short Treks' aren't included on this DVD set as it saves me from more misery!
**
Saints of Imperfection
DVD, Discovery S2 (Saints of Imperfection)
I appreciate that this season is more episodic, but this was another one that I knew right from the opening I wasn't going to like. Even Kirsten Beyer can't save the series now. Burnham's 'weighty' voiceovers I can do without, I really don't care for her simplistic philosophising, and when it's added to dreamy slow motion running it once again proclaims loudly how much this is style over substance. It begins and ends with this, and not a lot of any interest happens in between, making it feel like wading through a river of treacle. For a few moments, as they close in on Spock's medical shuttle he stole from the Starbase, and he pulls a typically Spock-like manoeuvre to escape his Captain's pursuit, it was beginning to turn into an episode of Trek I could recognise, but then we have the shock twist of Georgiou stepping out of the captured shuttle and even that little spark went out. She's a reminder of so much that was wrong about Season 1, where the potential dropped off a cliff as the writers set out their stall definitively: we'd rather feature a mass murderer as one of our key characters than a good starship Captain, the Mirror Universe's version of our ideals are much more potent and attractive to modern viewers. They might even have convinced themselves that the idea of throwing up a mirror on our good Starfleet heroes was exactly what would make great Trek, and in the right hands it probably would (although even the greatest of Trek writers, the 'DS9' ones, found it difficult to do anything more with the MU than knockabout fun), but these weren't the right hands.
And now we have to live with this useless character that serves no real purpose. And while we're on that subject, Ash Tyler gets to come on over to Discovery for a joint mission as liaison for Leland, an old friend of Pike's, and one who openly admits to being head of Section 31, a secret organisation everyone knows about. Yes, we're being reminded once again of how stooooopid this series is. Not only are these hyper-secret intelligence agents open about themselves, but they wear big, black badges so there can be no confusion over who they are. Stooooo-pid. This time we even discover that they have their Communicators in their badges, what a novel idea… And while it's never been written into canon when the combadge was invented, the earliest we ever saw one was from the time of the Enterprise-C, which was early 24th Century, so once again 'DSC' makes a mockery of the timeline, the universe and the technology for the sake of some immediate superficial thrills. Whoah, coooool, Section 31 have combadges, man! Ugh.
So what is this week's story actually about? As far as I can make out the whole forty-odd minutes was designed to get us to the point where we can have Dr. Culber back because people were upset he was killed off in Season 1. I wonder if they originally planned to do this or whether it was as a result of the outcry that went up from some corners, because his surprise murder was actually one of the few moments that actually was dramatic. But just like modern 'Star Wars,' Trek follows the trend of needing to make right what was 'wrong.' At least they didn't do it in the same season, but Culber was hardly the essential character we needed so badly, and I wonder if this means Dr. Pollard will take a step backward once he's up and running again. I wouldn't be surprised if things go back to normal pretty quick - that's the kind of quality writing we're dealing with on this series! Even if you hadn't heard that he was going to return, the actor's name in the main credits every week should have tipped you off, so it was very easy to predict who the 'monster' in the mycelial network was going to turn out to be! I suppose there was some interest in the interplay between Ensign Tilly and her imaginary friend, May, but Tilly acts so childishly and far from the stoic, respectful and well-trained Starfleet officer she wants to be. She overreacts to every situation and then has to backpedal or spit out her thoughts like she's in a panic, and we know from the other series' that this just isn't how Starfleet trains its people to react to new life and situations. But it's funny, or we're meant to be swept along in all the hype of emotion and panic, people apparently don't want to see professional, well-adjusted people just doing a good job.
Maybe they think there's no drama there, but I'd much rather watch any other Trek, even 'Enterprise,' which has some of this series' flaws, and set a number of poor precedents this series has picked up and run with, with relish. Whether it's the pantomime villainy of Georgiou (even down to an actual "Ssssss," she hisses at Burnham in response to a jibe about belonging to a pit of snakes), the ridiculous lack of mysteriousness about Leland and his idiotic Section 31 (laughably, he suggests that even they have court martials when Georgiou oversteps the mark and somehow knows our universe's technology better than we do - I doubt official sanctions like that would work with such a rogue organisation!), or the oddly unscientific turns of phrase (Tilly says she really believes the universe will bring her and May back together somehow, as if the universe were a living entity!), it continually defies its monicker of 'Star Trek,' and is absolutely the most stupid version we've seen. Okay, well maybe not quite as clod-hoppingly idiotic as the Kelvin films, but then they haven't had quite as big a budget with which to make such huge clunking holes in the virtues of the franchise.
Amidst all the nonsense there are reminders that this is connected to a coherent universe - this was written by an established Trek novel writer after all, so she was likely to feed in some relief for longterm viewers. It was fun to hear reference to the scorpion and the frog tale, not a Trek invention, but memorably cited by Chakotay in 'Voyager,' to which Beyer is obviously very attached. Then there's mention of tachyons, with Pike giving a rundown of what they could mean, though it is a bit of a poke in the eye as for a few brief seconds it really does sound like Trek before dropping back into 'Discovery' again. It's really telling that what should be the most important part of the ship, the Science Lab, is also the tiniest room aboard, more like a broom cupboard. Supposedly this was meant to be a science vessel, so it shows the hierarchy of where science stands on the series: fantasy is far more important than even the internally consistent pseudoscience Trek became famous for. It's nice to see a tractor beam in operation, but even there they had to add some weird new addition where the Section 31 ship (the series is poor at establishing names and identities of people or places to keep things clear, preferring murkiness and messiness), has to fire three little sensor drones or something before they can attach the beam. The whole point of a beam is that it attaches to the object itself! If they'd explained that they needed these special latching on points because of the ship being half buried in the mycelial network, then it would have been fine and I'd have applauded, but if you ever want detail to expand the universe and make things fit more logically they only do that for the sake of a laugh, like Tilly explaining what a Type-3 Phaser is to the 'monster.'
I will give them one thing about the tractor beam - at least they didn't try to pull Discovery out of there, which wouldn't make sense since they're submerged in another universe or subspace pocket or whatever they've not bothered to explain it as, and brute force wouldn't have got them out. Instead, Section 31 were just holding them from sinking further in and it was the spore jump that extricated them. But these are small crumbs of comfort in a series that doesn't ever do what I want it to, is uncomfortable to watch, and is so far from being true to Trek that I feel down after watching it rather than having that familiar boost of positivity that Trek used to thrive on. Sure, if you like snazzy CGI then this must be your dream series because that's what it's all about, and little else. Who are these people? What is the story? I am glad we haven't seen Spock yet because I suspect I'm going to be railing against a new portrayal and I have so little confidence in these writers and the production staff that I'm even losing my earlier excitement about the 'Picard' series coming soon. The writing is still so heavily portentous and melodramatic as if it's all deep and important, but it's just pure fluff, like a snowflake evaporating on warm skin. You'd think when Georgiou came aboard she'd have just told Pike her mission was classified, but instead they talk around it in an excruciating attempt to be hip and clever in the dialogue (meanwhile Tyler has no compunctions of hiding behind 'classified' as an answer for Burnham). Going through the first season of 'Smallville,' which is so well constructed and a joy to watch, 'Discovery' is like the middle seasons of that series where it was largely nonsense without logical progression. Trek used to seem like a realistic and grounded extrapolation of the future, but now it's just a miserable mess. And I really hope the reference to Leland having been up to his neck in alligators on Cestus III wasn't referring to the Gorn because they don't meet for another ten years!
**
I appreciate that this season is more episodic, but this was another one that I knew right from the opening I wasn't going to like. Even Kirsten Beyer can't save the series now. Burnham's 'weighty' voiceovers I can do without, I really don't care for her simplistic philosophising, and when it's added to dreamy slow motion running it once again proclaims loudly how much this is style over substance. It begins and ends with this, and not a lot of any interest happens in between, making it feel like wading through a river of treacle. For a few moments, as they close in on Spock's medical shuttle he stole from the Starbase, and he pulls a typically Spock-like manoeuvre to escape his Captain's pursuit, it was beginning to turn into an episode of Trek I could recognise, but then we have the shock twist of Georgiou stepping out of the captured shuttle and even that little spark went out. She's a reminder of so much that was wrong about Season 1, where the potential dropped off a cliff as the writers set out their stall definitively: we'd rather feature a mass murderer as one of our key characters than a good starship Captain, the Mirror Universe's version of our ideals are much more potent and attractive to modern viewers. They might even have convinced themselves that the idea of throwing up a mirror on our good Starfleet heroes was exactly what would make great Trek, and in the right hands it probably would (although even the greatest of Trek writers, the 'DS9' ones, found it difficult to do anything more with the MU than knockabout fun), but these weren't the right hands.
And now we have to live with this useless character that serves no real purpose. And while we're on that subject, Ash Tyler gets to come on over to Discovery for a joint mission as liaison for Leland, an old friend of Pike's, and one who openly admits to being head of Section 31, a secret organisation everyone knows about. Yes, we're being reminded once again of how stooooopid this series is. Not only are these hyper-secret intelligence agents open about themselves, but they wear big, black badges so there can be no confusion over who they are. Stooooo-pid. This time we even discover that they have their Communicators in their badges, what a novel idea… And while it's never been written into canon when the combadge was invented, the earliest we ever saw one was from the time of the Enterprise-C, which was early 24th Century, so once again 'DSC' makes a mockery of the timeline, the universe and the technology for the sake of some immediate superficial thrills. Whoah, coooool, Section 31 have combadges, man! Ugh.
So what is this week's story actually about? As far as I can make out the whole forty-odd minutes was designed to get us to the point where we can have Dr. Culber back because people were upset he was killed off in Season 1. I wonder if they originally planned to do this or whether it was as a result of the outcry that went up from some corners, because his surprise murder was actually one of the few moments that actually was dramatic. But just like modern 'Star Wars,' Trek follows the trend of needing to make right what was 'wrong.' At least they didn't do it in the same season, but Culber was hardly the essential character we needed so badly, and I wonder if this means Dr. Pollard will take a step backward once he's up and running again. I wouldn't be surprised if things go back to normal pretty quick - that's the kind of quality writing we're dealing with on this series! Even if you hadn't heard that he was going to return, the actor's name in the main credits every week should have tipped you off, so it was very easy to predict who the 'monster' in the mycelial network was going to turn out to be! I suppose there was some interest in the interplay between Ensign Tilly and her imaginary friend, May, but Tilly acts so childishly and far from the stoic, respectful and well-trained Starfleet officer she wants to be. She overreacts to every situation and then has to backpedal or spit out her thoughts like she's in a panic, and we know from the other series' that this just isn't how Starfleet trains its people to react to new life and situations. But it's funny, or we're meant to be swept along in all the hype of emotion and panic, people apparently don't want to see professional, well-adjusted people just doing a good job.
Maybe they think there's no drama there, but I'd much rather watch any other Trek, even 'Enterprise,' which has some of this series' flaws, and set a number of poor precedents this series has picked up and run with, with relish. Whether it's the pantomime villainy of Georgiou (even down to an actual "Ssssss," she hisses at Burnham in response to a jibe about belonging to a pit of snakes), the ridiculous lack of mysteriousness about Leland and his idiotic Section 31 (laughably, he suggests that even they have court martials when Georgiou oversteps the mark and somehow knows our universe's technology better than we do - I doubt official sanctions like that would work with such a rogue organisation!), or the oddly unscientific turns of phrase (Tilly says she really believes the universe will bring her and May back together somehow, as if the universe were a living entity!), it continually defies its monicker of 'Star Trek,' and is absolutely the most stupid version we've seen. Okay, well maybe not quite as clod-hoppingly idiotic as the Kelvin films, but then they haven't had quite as big a budget with which to make such huge clunking holes in the virtues of the franchise.
Amidst all the nonsense there are reminders that this is connected to a coherent universe - this was written by an established Trek novel writer after all, so she was likely to feed in some relief for longterm viewers. It was fun to hear reference to the scorpion and the frog tale, not a Trek invention, but memorably cited by Chakotay in 'Voyager,' to which Beyer is obviously very attached. Then there's mention of tachyons, with Pike giving a rundown of what they could mean, though it is a bit of a poke in the eye as for a few brief seconds it really does sound like Trek before dropping back into 'Discovery' again. It's really telling that what should be the most important part of the ship, the Science Lab, is also the tiniest room aboard, more like a broom cupboard. Supposedly this was meant to be a science vessel, so it shows the hierarchy of where science stands on the series: fantasy is far more important than even the internally consistent pseudoscience Trek became famous for. It's nice to see a tractor beam in operation, but even there they had to add some weird new addition where the Section 31 ship (the series is poor at establishing names and identities of people or places to keep things clear, preferring murkiness and messiness), has to fire three little sensor drones or something before they can attach the beam. The whole point of a beam is that it attaches to the object itself! If they'd explained that they needed these special latching on points because of the ship being half buried in the mycelial network, then it would have been fine and I'd have applauded, but if you ever want detail to expand the universe and make things fit more logically they only do that for the sake of a laugh, like Tilly explaining what a Type-3 Phaser is to the 'monster.'
I will give them one thing about the tractor beam - at least they didn't try to pull Discovery out of there, which wouldn't make sense since they're submerged in another universe or subspace pocket or whatever they've not bothered to explain it as, and brute force wouldn't have got them out. Instead, Section 31 were just holding them from sinking further in and it was the spore jump that extricated them. But these are small crumbs of comfort in a series that doesn't ever do what I want it to, is uncomfortable to watch, and is so far from being true to Trek that I feel down after watching it rather than having that familiar boost of positivity that Trek used to thrive on. Sure, if you like snazzy CGI then this must be your dream series because that's what it's all about, and little else. Who are these people? What is the story? I am glad we haven't seen Spock yet because I suspect I'm going to be railing against a new portrayal and I have so little confidence in these writers and the production staff that I'm even losing my earlier excitement about the 'Picard' series coming soon. The writing is still so heavily portentous and melodramatic as if it's all deep and important, but it's just pure fluff, like a snowflake evaporating on warm skin. You'd think when Georgiou came aboard she'd have just told Pike her mission was classified, but instead they talk around it in an excruciating attempt to be hip and clever in the dialogue (meanwhile Tyler has no compunctions of hiding behind 'classified' as an answer for Burnham). Going through the first season of 'Smallville,' which is so well constructed and a joy to watch, 'Discovery' is like the middle seasons of that series where it was largely nonsense without logical progression. Trek used to seem like a realistic and grounded extrapolation of the future, but now it's just a miserable mess. And I really hope the reference to Leland having been up to his neck in alligators on Cestus III wasn't referring to the Gorn because they don't meet for another ten years!
**
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)