DVD, Smallville S1 (Stray)
Another of the many from this season that I think of fondly, and it doesn't let you down with a strong opening, a happy ending and plenty of good bits in between. Ryan is the stray of the title, a young lad who would return the following season. It's not explained in this episode (and I can't remember about the sequel), whether his power of hearing the thoughts in people's minds was something from the meteor shower or not - he seems like he might just about be old enough to have been a baby when they hit, maybe not, but perhaps his Mother was affected in some way before she had him. That's the biggest question left open by the episode and I was surprised to find it wasn't even considered. I suppose that was due to his secret being inextricably tied to Clark's, so Clark couldn't discuss it with Chloe (or Pete, who is once again, along with Whitney, absent from the story), which is how we usually get a backstory for a freak-of-the-week. It doesn't harm the episode, however, it's just different, and the real point of the story is to set up a few things for the future, tease a little bit about the characters, just as Cassandra did with her ability to show moments of a person's future to them in 'Hourglass.' There are some similarities as both situations were about others' personal secrets and inner lives, one coming from someone at the end of her life and now one who is at the start of a new life, and both were drawn to Clark in friendship.
It's a good job Ryan was a decent chap as if he'd been a little terror like most of the meteor-affected he might have found out Clark's secret and held it over the family, but in actual fact if he'd been a bad lad he probably would have revelled in the company of his Stepfather and wife who were only intent on getting rich from armed robberies. I suppose their previous felonies weren't very fruitful, unless they spent all the money before it was on to the next town, which wouldn't be a surprise considering how low their morals were - the guy even killed his wife before the end, not to mention innocents! It's another case of Clark possibly being a killer himself as a bowling ball travelling at that distance, at that speed, enough to burst through the machinery to thump right into the bad guy's chest with enough power to fling him back against the wall… well, could he be likely to survive that? As often is the case on the series that side of it's glossed over and we don't hear any confirmation or denial - if they'd only said he had been treated and then taken to prison it would have been fine. Otherwise you'd think the Sheriff's office would have a few questions for Clark about how he was able to throw that ball with such force! That's not the only questionable thing he does - when he rescues Ryan did he have to rip the back panel off the rubbish lorry (or garbage truck in their parlance)? He did the sensible thing in ripping out the hydraulics to stop the crush, but couldn't he have got the driver to open the back?
I know it was meant to evoke imagery of Warrior Angel, the comic book hero Ryan so idolised until he met a real life hero in Clark, but where was the driver in all this? Didn't he notice his truck had stopped working? Didn't he see the panel had been forced open? Or did Clark pull Ryan out and then bend the thing back into shape? If so, then the driver must have gone to sleep on the job! As ever, these minor inconsistencies that are so much more noticeable in later seasons, are easy to ignore because the rest of the story, acting and drama is so good, whereas in those latter seasons they were suspect and didn't have the weight to distract from the narrative or logic flaws. Here, Ryan is this quiet, but nonetheless insistent young fellow who has had to deal with physical and mental abuse and has found an idyllic refuge from the outside world. I don't know why they couldn't have adopted him really, except that for all its ongoing plots, it was still birthed in episodic structure so things were likely to reset by the end of the episode. Will Lex leave for Metropolis to accept his Dad's job offer? Will Lana admit where she stands with Clark? Will Chloe admit she wants to go to the ball with Clark?
There was a lot of material to mine from this particular power, probably one reason they brought him back the next year, and although Ryan's tragic story allows Clark to be the hero he's always going to become, now, in a small way, it's as much about setting up the end of the season as anything else: Lana becoming available, Chloe and the prom, Lex having a moral choice to make regarding loyalty or enmity with his Father. Is he really bad deep down as Ryan suggests? Well for a start he can only read people's surface thoughts (which begs the question why Martha was thinking of the spaceship in the storm cellar so he knew about it - maybe she was half worried he might explore and find it for himself?), so there might be a slight touch of the Pete best mates jealousy that Lex is so high in Clark's esteem, but we know there are still undeniably suspect parts to Lex. At the same time, what he says to his Father is true: he has turned his life around, he doesn't party, he's worked hard at his projects and senses his Father's disquiet with his new behaviour. Clark likes to give him the benefit of any doubt. Clark is a good guy, he can be a little naive in his belief in the best of people, but it's also inspiring because he is such a positive person. And although he's a few years older than Ryan, he is still learning the ropes, he does have a lot to go through before he really becomes Superman in that far future we'll eventually see right at the end.
Ryan precipitates a microcosm of Clark's life, observing his powers firsthand, noting the realities just below the surface pertaining to Clark's closest friends, but at the same time being unable to read him, which was intriguing and fit perfectly with Clark's alien nature. Reminding us of the storm cellar was also a wise move considering how much of a part it would play in the season finale. As so often with the series (at this stage of it, anyway), they get the domestic side as right as the criminal or action sides, with plenty of scenes with Ryan wishing he had what Clark has, making breakfast for the Kent family and in a typically childish point of view only seeing things simply. Why did he run from his Stepfather when he had Clark and his friends around? He didn't know about Clark's powers at that point, although he did know he was different (I liked that he was able to feel peace around Clark because he couldn't detect the thoughts he got from everyone else around him), so maybe he was scared the guy would start shooting up the place, or maybe it was as simple as not thinking rationally and reacting in a fight-or-flight way to immediate danger. He was guileless in his revealing of people's personal thoughts (although the way Lana says he was right about her employee, she was stealing from the till, it sounded like he had suggested that specific thing himself, which he didn't!), which made it hard for people to be angry with him, but as always you'd think they'd pay heed right away to anything that was slightly weird - instead Clark thinks he's just making up stories, kids, tsk tsk, etc!
There's plenty of charming meandering pensiveness about what might have been and what Clark means to his parents, so although it's not full of excitement it is a bright, happy place to be, which also serves to contrast the vicious and ruthless violence of the enemy. He's not difficult to defeat as he has no power to harm Clark except vicariously by his power to hurt Clark's parents or Ryan, but whenever the shocking scenes of this maniac are on they are jarring compared with all those colourful happy moments. I'd thought Clark took Ryan to see Lex' Warrior Angel collection, but that must be in the sequel. I'm not sure now if Chloe did buy a dress in advance of the prom or not, as Ryan says she did and she protests that she didn't actually buy it, so maybe she just tried it on and to Ryan's mind that meant she'd bought it. Or she was lying to Clark in her embarrassment! It's also a little funny when Clark whips up and finds Lex lying in the road having been ejected from his limo by the hijacking pair - he was a little dazed, but where did he think Clark had come from? Just out jogging and he's going to go off and run after the car? Or was driving by, in which case couldn't he have given Lex a lift instead of leaving him injured at the roadside! And there's also the thing that Clark always does where he runs super fast until he gets near somewhere he needs to be, in this case the bowling alley. Why not keep going at that speed to scour out the whole place, it doesn't make sense he wouldn't, but obviously for the audience's sake we need to see him do stuff as the whole thing can't be in slow motion!
The upshot is that in some ways it is quite silly, but then that's the series, and the key thing is that it's pleasant and reassuring, bright and positive, the Kents, Clark and others being shining examples of good human beings doing the right thing. That's what makes you want to come back week after week, not how far Clark throws a villain, or what special effects they use (the x-ray vision gets a good workout, even down to spotting a photo in Ryan's backpack). It's the outdoor domestic bliss of country life and family, deliberately lit brilliantly and designed to be full of primary colours to create a feeling of happiness and joy, while also showing scary, nasty scenes that Clark has to keep at bay from his world. It's easy to see why Ryan would want a piece of this pie, as everyone would (though I'd recommend against eating one of those cooking apples Martha was using to make apple pie - he grabs one from the bowl on his way out!). That's the most success you can get, not the heartless moneymaking of the Luthors, and that's the lesson of the series. We get to hear about a brother of Lex' who died as a baby (Julian). I'm sure there was another brother we meet next season, too (Lucas?), so there were more revelations to come in the Luthor line. Oh, and witness a pre-'Battlestar Galactica' (and very pre-'Star Trek: Discovery'), Rekha Sharma as a nurse or doctor at the Smallville Medical Centre. I didn't recognise her until I saw the name in the end credits.
***
Tuesday, 25 February 2020
Such Sweet Sorrow
DVD, Discovery S2 (Such Sweet Sorrow)
Sweet, no, sorrow, yes. It's got to that point again where I can no longer overlook the flaws in this series. Apparently to a lot of people they aren't flaws, they're positives as I don't get the sense that it's unsuccessful. I'm not surprised because it is very modern, but I'll say it again, it's not Trek. And I'll correct myself again, it's not good Trek. Throughout these last several episodes I've taken the one good point that Spock was a reasonable version of the character, especially compared with what I was expecting, and because of that minor success I was really hoping the Enterprise would come close to matching. Knowing we were going to be getting the classic ship in these last two episodes of the season I was holding out hope that this at least I would like and feel as if it were part of the universe I grew up with - you know, the one that paid tribute to its past and didn't needlessly update everything to appeal to the magpie generation who are only drawn to shiny, pretty things. As usual whenever I try to take this series seriously as a part of Trek canon, I couldn't muster strong feelings, but instead an inevitable lethargic pall of disappointment chilled me and once again my only hope for this era of Trek is that they one day decide that, yes, it's all different because this is yet another alternate universe, not the original, the 'Prime' timeline. I didn't used to think that way, but I care so little for what they've done with, no, done to, Trek, that it seems the only way out.
It's laughable the way they throw out that line confirming holo-communications will never now be possible on the Enterprise, as if that papers over all the cracks in the universe by their insistence on changing the iconic, classic interiors of the ship that started it all. Less standing on the shoulders of giants, and more spraying gloss paint into the giant's face as it sinks to its knees in anguish! I can't say I was horrified by the 'updating' of the Bridge, corridors and meeting room, just completely disappointed, frustrated and alienated. You can spot many elements of the original ship: Sulu's navigation viewer, the same Captain's Chair and Bridge chairs. Even some of the same monitors displaying coloured blocks on black. But these things stand out as a collection of classic decals stuck on top of a souped-up sports car that neither fit, nor disguise, the underlying ugliness of The New. In keeping with this bizarre desire to pump everything up in size, as if that's important (forgetting that smaller sets make for more drama), the Bridge is simply huge. It has the same shiny floors, glistening surfaces, ridiculous lights shining out of everywhere, and stupid great window in place of a viewscreen that Discovery pioneered. No, wait… Discovery didn't pioneer that, nor even the Shenzhou - it was the Kelvin Timeline version of the Enterprise and other ships in those films that so abused the basic format of established Trek.
Those films ruined Trek forever, it seems, because although we're supposedly in the true universe with these CBS productions, it's all academic since they take all their inspiration from those films, and deliberately so. I don't know if Alex Kurtzman hadn't been hired, that we would have had an aesthetic closer to the Roddenberry/Berman eras, but it can't have helped to have the guy spearheading the new TV wave be the same one so heavily involved with all the things people like me couldn't stand about those films. I've heard the term 'Second Golden Age' bandied around in regard to Trek's current state of health, and I can only assume that I'm a minority, that people like me who value so many aspects of Trek, not just its content, but its presentation, too, are such a small section of the audience as to be negligible. Because for me, 'Discovery' has heralded a Trek Dark Age! I'm not condemning every production this CBS team is making (I haven't seen them yet), nor can I put all the blame on their shoulders - again, a lot of the terrible things about it go back to the modern films, but I'm back to complete ambivalence as to what they'll do next with the property. I was hoping Season 2 was going to be an improvement on the first, and in some ways it was, but it turns out those ways were minor. I hear cries going up for a Captain Pike series, and at first I was okay with that, but now seeing the Enterprise it's dashed any meagre hopes it would be truer to the classic era.
I had thought my final realisation of the feminine skew of this series (which I came to see during the previous episode), would actually make it easier to understand and accept, but in fact it's just made it easier to spot the deliberate mechanics that have made it so female friendly: so I cringe at it being Sarek who feels he must apologise to his wife and adopted daughter for not being a better husband and wife, and I cringe at the girly-girly friendships constantly being at the forefront. The montage where some of the characters (again, almost exclusively women), record personal messages home as if they're sitting on their beds holding up a mobile phone, is so uncomfortably 'women's TV' that I struggle to comprehend who they're marketing this series at? Traditionally sci-fi has been a male-dominated genre, and I suspect that even now the balance would be heavily in that direction, so I'd love to know why they think men are going to enjoy the kinds of things they've done! It's so female-centric as to be unappealing, and these core values which I took so long to recognise play a huge part in ruining the series for me. Added to the modern aesthetic, rewriting the look and style of everything and not paying tribute or significant attention to the history and canon, and the shameful stupidity in the writing, it is by far the worst Trek series and I see no indication of its improvement since they don't see any of these things as brokenness!
I wouldn't even put the series in contention as good sci-fi (which would make it only one level down from Trek, which is great sci-fi: the average episode of Trek has been good, where the average episode of other sci-fi is merely average!), it hasn't managed to do anything surprising or worthwhile, and if it had created well-rounded, well-written characters and plots, it wouldn't matter if there were cringe-inducing scenes every episode. There just isn't anything to draw me in, despite it having the words 'Star' and 'Trek' on the bonnet. I guess the engine is coughing and spluttering underneath and the series isn't going anywhere. Correction: it's going to the future. I knew this was coming, it's practically impossible not to get some kind of spoiler, just as I knew the Enterprise was going to show up at the end of Season 1. It seems they don't even have enough of a plan to know what to do in the era they've chosen to exist in. Have we learned anything about the politics of this time? Have we developed the races or met compelling new ones? There's been a half-hearted attempt to drill into Kelpiens, and surprise, surprise, that episode was the standout of the season, because that is what appeals about Trek. Not rogue AI co-opting a fleet of Section 31 ships! Not a murderous Mirror Universe Emperor finding her place! Not even time travelling signals from the future, although that had the biggest (and only), potential in the season. I feel like I'm summing up the whole season in this penultimate review, but I don't expect any changes that are going to save it in the finale, having experienced Season 1's poor example. This one wasn't quite as bad, it had mildly less bad moments such as Pike officially taking his leave of those he'd captained, but it's in the same area.
Even there, it makes a nonsense of Starfleet, procedure, protocol and a sense of reality! What, he just promotes Saru to Captain of Discovery? It's not even as clear-cut as that, it's like a woman's view of military matters, which is probably what it is, since there is a heavy female bias in the writing staff. So there isn't even a definite promotion, it's just sort of hinted that Saru is the one to take over and he says he'll just leave that for now! A ship needs a Captain, you can't do anything without it! Saru needed to step up, but it's as if we need to not have too much power over Burnham because we know she's really the one in charge! It's just embarrassing, and I can't imagine what Roddenberry himself would have made of this utterly abused version of his future world. When a 1960s TV series makes more sense and has a better impression of reality than something made with all the bells and whistles of today, you have to wonder what's going on. I guess it proves beyond doubt that writers' brains are the most important thing in creating great TV, not production value or computer effects, but that was never really in doubt for me in the first place! That's why all the previous Treks hold up (even 'Enterprise,' by far the weakest until now, looks intelligent, serious and sensible in comparison), because they had a rulebook which they ran by, they had people with a personal understanding of the military, and of dramatic structure. They had big budgets for the time and they used them to the full, and guess what: the production side isn't the part that went down in history, it was the storytelling and the ability to play with characters in a created world.
There's no point ranting on about current Trek, but it does remind me why I was so unexcited to get back to 'DSC' in the first place, and though there have been occasional things along the way that almost distracted me from the failings, that hasn't changed. And so to this episode, now that I've talked generally about the series: in its defence it isn't an action-packed entry, and in fact has a lot of character stuff going on, which is exactly what you want. Or it would be if I cared about the characters and their fates. As I said before, it's all so female in its execution and its focus, so you get the scene with the ex-boyfriend, or the scene with the girly best mate, or the one where Dad says he wishes he'd been better. You get roomfuls of women discussing problems while Spock quietly stands at the wayside. And you get the slowest and most pointless starship evacuation ever! I ask you, if there was one scene where they could have legitimately injected tension and drama, it was in leaving this starship that has become their home to hitch a ride on the Enterprise. But again, because of the feminine approach, we've never even got to a point where we bond with the ship itself, so who cares? How often do we actually get to revel in its lines and gracefulness? No, we have to cut inside and space is mainly seen from the Bridge window! And then of course, after all that slow evacuation, and a rather useless remote auto-destruct that fails because the Sphere data won't let the ship be destroyed, they trudge back aboard!
In the past, auto-destruct sequences were great sources of drama as a clock counted down and the Captain and First Officer had to go through a short procedure of voice confirmation, etc, but here Pike and Saru do a handprint on touch-screens and then they have to activate it from the Enterprise! It's a miserably poor evocation of such an important moment in a starship's life, in keeping with the usual tragic lack of interest in the staples of Trek! They even have these silly evacuation corridors that unfold to the opposite ship, with only a forcefield between the evacuees and space! I thought Burnham was going to stay behind and decide to take the ship off on her own, but in actual fact it seemed like the only reason for the evacuation was to show off their newly-minted Enterprise sets, although you could tell the corridors were just redressed Discovery ones, and perhaps the Bridge was, too? It was certainly big enough and ugly enough. Burnham gets to be unprofessional again, perhaps her female intuition allowed to work, since as soon as Pike's left the room (was that a lab just off the Bridge?), she touches the crystal to see a vision of her future, but that's encouraged because she was able to see the destruction of the Enterprise (I think), and so prevented it by warning them not to do something… I think. It's a bit hazy, as the series so often is (apparently Yeoman Colt was in there somewhere, but I only know that from her name coming up in the end credits - talk about keeping cards close to the chest when they should be celebrating the Enterprise and its past!).
It was nice to see the handrail control in the Turbolifts, something that should have been standard in Discovery if they'd cared a jot about history, so putting them in now is a bit late, though it's one of the few things I liked about the episode. But was it really sensible to discuss things like there being no holo-comms now in the middle of an evacuation? They need to get their priorities straight. After getting past the gut-wrenchingly, woefully sad ruination of the beloved Enterprise (actually, I still haven't, and it cast a shadow of misery across the episode), they go back to Discovery having failed to destroy it, while Leland and his mighty fleet of ships is still on the way. In the meantime, somehow Sarek (using his katric connection to Burnham), and Amanda find them to say goodbye to Burnham. Again, so incredibly stupid: how can they get to wherever the Discovery was in that short a time, and yet Leland is on the way and is still some time off? Nothing about it makes sense, and the writers don't care. All they care about is how they can get Burnham to shed a tear so the female audience can clap their hands with emotion at all this display of emotion, emotional, emote, emotive emotion. It's emotional, you see? They perform a spore jump yet again, as if it's nothing, the only reference to the fact that it's supposed to be dangerous for Stamets is that Culber comes to check if he's alright after doing it. They have no idea about drama, do they? To be honest, they've done so many jumps that I can't even remember what the issue was supposed to be with using it, that's how clear and consistent the writing is on everything. You're supposed to forget whatever rules were laid out because, like 'Dr. Who,' they don't matter, only there to provide 'drama' for a specific scene or episode, not something to be kept track of as if Trek was supposed to be an internally consistent entity. Hah!
They stop off at Xahea for some reason I can't remember, and Tilly's friend from the awful 'Short Treks' episode 'Runaway' makes her debut on the series proper as this Wesley Crusher-esque engineering genius that can do anything the writers need her to do. I'm reminded why I thought Naarn was of the same race because they do look similar, even down to the hairstyle. As usual we eschew any protocol for a laugh at the taken aback Pike, dignity lost, but it's okay because it's funny and Tilly gets to see her girly fwend again. Ooh, isn't this charming. Ugh. They need this child prodigy to be able to make the time crystal work because they haven't got a time suit so they're going to make Discovery be the suit, I think. Again, wasn't following what was going on very clearly, but then you don't have to, it's not important and doesn't have much reality to it. I was guessing that Georgiou would knock Spock out and take his place with the others who volunteer to go permanently into the future with Burnham (maybe she still will?), so the Control AI will never be able to get its hands on the all-important Sphere data which will somehow give it some kind of power, or something, I don't know, it's all ridiculous and childish. We know Spock isn't going to be lost in the future, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't go, so something's going to prevent him next episode, even though he had a heart-to-heart with his 'sister' and wants to be with her, even affectionately patting her hand (Vulcans don't touch because they're touch telepaths! Grraaargghhh!).
Why did Dr. Burnham record all those YouTube videos on how to operate the time suit? I guess she just had nothing better to do. I was thinking, if Pike had any sense he'd be going with them into the future to avoid his grisly fate, but of course he's not going to do that because that would go against the canon of what we know will happen. But it doesn't make sense! And why choose some bits of canon to keep to while ignoring the majority? They have no idea what they're doing. At least if he did go we'd know this was an alternate universe, unless they are set to come back from the future at some point, which I suspect they are, because as much as I think they're going to ruin the future as effectively as they've ruined the past, at least it would make a semblance of sense that Discovery isn't around later during 'TOS,' but it's all silly anyway so it doesn't matter either way, I don't see this team or era ever doing anything good with the series, or even, sadly, the franchise. Then we get swarms of shuttles, more than could be carried by a fleet of ships, and apparently they all came from Enterprise and Discovery - just like that scene from the opening to 'Star Trek XI' where there are hundreds of shuttlecraft floating away from the USS Kelvin! It's that same level of idiocy that ties the films and TV together in a destructive dance of horror, trampling Trek's entire world and its credentials to be proper sci-fi, collapsing any reality the series ever had.
Oh, but then Leland's fleet warps in and Burnham says they're surrounded and we see a graphic with the ships all around them ON A 2D PLANE! It's like Khan's two-dimensional thinking in 'The Wrath of Khan,' they could still escape up or down, they're not really surrounded! After all that spatial orientation business (and we even see it in this very episode when Discovery orients itself to Enterprise to connect the stoopid evac corridors!), they've gone back to ships being on the same plane. They contradict themselves in the same episodes (same thing happened in the previous one)! I despair, I really do. I don't know where things went wrong, but they've been wrong from Day 1 on this series. I genuinely wish Trek had never come back so that I could say without reservation that I loved it. Now if I said that it would be like a validation of the last ten years of idiotic films and the awfulness of 'DSC,' and possibly 'Picard,' 'Lower Decks' and 'Section 31.' It's like they've made it for the brains of children, fire and forget, nothing matters. And I still have one episode to slog through. And then I'm going to have to watch through the season again in quick succession to understand things better without needing to write a review. Not looking forward to that. I suspect I'll be giving up Trek eventually because although it's 'alive' again, when it had 'died,' it's been reborn as something I… not detest, I don't feel that strongly about such a mush of misery, but it disgusts me: in other words there was something exciting about it still being produced so that you never knew if a character, ship, or race would reappear, new information uncovered, new perspectives on the history and more history would add to the lore, but instead it now just overwrites what came before and kills it deader than ever. Should have called it 'Star Trek: Mort.'
*
Sweet, no, sorrow, yes. It's got to that point again where I can no longer overlook the flaws in this series. Apparently to a lot of people they aren't flaws, they're positives as I don't get the sense that it's unsuccessful. I'm not surprised because it is very modern, but I'll say it again, it's not Trek. And I'll correct myself again, it's not good Trek. Throughout these last several episodes I've taken the one good point that Spock was a reasonable version of the character, especially compared with what I was expecting, and because of that minor success I was really hoping the Enterprise would come close to matching. Knowing we were going to be getting the classic ship in these last two episodes of the season I was holding out hope that this at least I would like and feel as if it were part of the universe I grew up with - you know, the one that paid tribute to its past and didn't needlessly update everything to appeal to the magpie generation who are only drawn to shiny, pretty things. As usual whenever I try to take this series seriously as a part of Trek canon, I couldn't muster strong feelings, but instead an inevitable lethargic pall of disappointment chilled me and once again my only hope for this era of Trek is that they one day decide that, yes, it's all different because this is yet another alternate universe, not the original, the 'Prime' timeline. I didn't used to think that way, but I care so little for what they've done with, no, done to, Trek, that it seems the only way out.
It's laughable the way they throw out that line confirming holo-communications will never now be possible on the Enterprise, as if that papers over all the cracks in the universe by their insistence on changing the iconic, classic interiors of the ship that started it all. Less standing on the shoulders of giants, and more spraying gloss paint into the giant's face as it sinks to its knees in anguish! I can't say I was horrified by the 'updating' of the Bridge, corridors and meeting room, just completely disappointed, frustrated and alienated. You can spot many elements of the original ship: Sulu's navigation viewer, the same Captain's Chair and Bridge chairs. Even some of the same monitors displaying coloured blocks on black. But these things stand out as a collection of classic decals stuck on top of a souped-up sports car that neither fit, nor disguise, the underlying ugliness of The New. In keeping with this bizarre desire to pump everything up in size, as if that's important (forgetting that smaller sets make for more drama), the Bridge is simply huge. It has the same shiny floors, glistening surfaces, ridiculous lights shining out of everywhere, and stupid great window in place of a viewscreen that Discovery pioneered. No, wait… Discovery didn't pioneer that, nor even the Shenzhou - it was the Kelvin Timeline version of the Enterprise and other ships in those films that so abused the basic format of established Trek.
Those films ruined Trek forever, it seems, because although we're supposedly in the true universe with these CBS productions, it's all academic since they take all their inspiration from those films, and deliberately so. I don't know if Alex Kurtzman hadn't been hired, that we would have had an aesthetic closer to the Roddenberry/Berman eras, but it can't have helped to have the guy spearheading the new TV wave be the same one so heavily involved with all the things people like me couldn't stand about those films. I've heard the term 'Second Golden Age' bandied around in regard to Trek's current state of health, and I can only assume that I'm a minority, that people like me who value so many aspects of Trek, not just its content, but its presentation, too, are such a small section of the audience as to be negligible. Because for me, 'Discovery' has heralded a Trek Dark Age! I'm not condemning every production this CBS team is making (I haven't seen them yet), nor can I put all the blame on their shoulders - again, a lot of the terrible things about it go back to the modern films, but I'm back to complete ambivalence as to what they'll do next with the property. I was hoping Season 2 was going to be an improvement on the first, and in some ways it was, but it turns out those ways were minor. I hear cries going up for a Captain Pike series, and at first I was okay with that, but now seeing the Enterprise it's dashed any meagre hopes it would be truer to the classic era.
I had thought my final realisation of the feminine skew of this series (which I came to see during the previous episode), would actually make it easier to understand and accept, but in fact it's just made it easier to spot the deliberate mechanics that have made it so female friendly: so I cringe at it being Sarek who feels he must apologise to his wife and adopted daughter for not being a better husband and wife, and I cringe at the girly-girly friendships constantly being at the forefront. The montage where some of the characters (again, almost exclusively women), record personal messages home as if they're sitting on their beds holding up a mobile phone, is so uncomfortably 'women's TV' that I struggle to comprehend who they're marketing this series at? Traditionally sci-fi has been a male-dominated genre, and I suspect that even now the balance would be heavily in that direction, so I'd love to know why they think men are going to enjoy the kinds of things they've done! It's so female-centric as to be unappealing, and these core values which I took so long to recognise play a huge part in ruining the series for me. Added to the modern aesthetic, rewriting the look and style of everything and not paying tribute or significant attention to the history and canon, and the shameful stupidity in the writing, it is by far the worst Trek series and I see no indication of its improvement since they don't see any of these things as brokenness!
I wouldn't even put the series in contention as good sci-fi (which would make it only one level down from Trek, which is great sci-fi: the average episode of Trek has been good, where the average episode of other sci-fi is merely average!), it hasn't managed to do anything surprising or worthwhile, and if it had created well-rounded, well-written characters and plots, it wouldn't matter if there were cringe-inducing scenes every episode. There just isn't anything to draw me in, despite it having the words 'Star' and 'Trek' on the bonnet. I guess the engine is coughing and spluttering underneath and the series isn't going anywhere. Correction: it's going to the future. I knew this was coming, it's practically impossible not to get some kind of spoiler, just as I knew the Enterprise was going to show up at the end of Season 1. It seems they don't even have enough of a plan to know what to do in the era they've chosen to exist in. Have we learned anything about the politics of this time? Have we developed the races or met compelling new ones? There's been a half-hearted attempt to drill into Kelpiens, and surprise, surprise, that episode was the standout of the season, because that is what appeals about Trek. Not rogue AI co-opting a fleet of Section 31 ships! Not a murderous Mirror Universe Emperor finding her place! Not even time travelling signals from the future, although that had the biggest (and only), potential in the season. I feel like I'm summing up the whole season in this penultimate review, but I don't expect any changes that are going to save it in the finale, having experienced Season 1's poor example. This one wasn't quite as bad, it had mildly less bad moments such as Pike officially taking his leave of those he'd captained, but it's in the same area.
Even there, it makes a nonsense of Starfleet, procedure, protocol and a sense of reality! What, he just promotes Saru to Captain of Discovery? It's not even as clear-cut as that, it's like a woman's view of military matters, which is probably what it is, since there is a heavy female bias in the writing staff. So there isn't even a definite promotion, it's just sort of hinted that Saru is the one to take over and he says he'll just leave that for now! A ship needs a Captain, you can't do anything without it! Saru needed to step up, but it's as if we need to not have too much power over Burnham because we know she's really the one in charge! It's just embarrassing, and I can't imagine what Roddenberry himself would have made of this utterly abused version of his future world. When a 1960s TV series makes more sense and has a better impression of reality than something made with all the bells and whistles of today, you have to wonder what's going on. I guess it proves beyond doubt that writers' brains are the most important thing in creating great TV, not production value or computer effects, but that was never really in doubt for me in the first place! That's why all the previous Treks hold up (even 'Enterprise,' by far the weakest until now, looks intelligent, serious and sensible in comparison), because they had a rulebook which they ran by, they had people with a personal understanding of the military, and of dramatic structure. They had big budgets for the time and they used them to the full, and guess what: the production side isn't the part that went down in history, it was the storytelling and the ability to play with characters in a created world.
There's no point ranting on about current Trek, but it does remind me why I was so unexcited to get back to 'DSC' in the first place, and though there have been occasional things along the way that almost distracted me from the failings, that hasn't changed. And so to this episode, now that I've talked generally about the series: in its defence it isn't an action-packed entry, and in fact has a lot of character stuff going on, which is exactly what you want. Or it would be if I cared about the characters and their fates. As I said before, it's all so female in its execution and its focus, so you get the scene with the ex-boyfriend, or the scene with the girly best mate, or the one where Dad says he wishes he'd been better. You get roomfuls of women discussing problems while Spock quietly stands at the wayside. And you get the slowest and most pointless starship evacuation ever! I ask you, if there was one scene where they could have legitimately injected tension and drama, it was in leaving this starship that has become their home to hitch a ride on the Enterprise. But again, because of the feminine approach, we've never even got to a point where we bond with the ship itself, so who cares? How often do we actually get to revel in its lines and gracefulness? No, we have to cut inside and space is mainly seen from the Bridge window! And then of course, after all that slow evacuation, and a rather useless remote auto-destruct that fails because the Sphere data won't let the ship be destroyed, they trudge back aboard!
In the past, auto-destruct sequences were great sources of drama as a clock counted down and the Captain and First Officer had to go through a short procedure of voice confirmation, etc, but here Pike and Saru do a handprint on touch-screens and then they have to activate it from the Enterprise! It's a miserably poor evocation of such an important moment in a starship's life, in keeping with the usual tragic lack of interest in the staples of Trek! They even have these silly evacuation corridors that unfold to the opposite ship, with only a forcefield between the evacuees and space! I thought Burnham was going to stay behind and decide to take the ship off on her own, but in actual fact it seemed like the only reason for the evacuation was to show off their newly-minted Enterprise sets, although you could tell the corridors were just redressed Discovery ones, and perhaps the Bridge was, too? It was certainly big enough and ugly enough. Burnham gets to be unprofessional again, perhaps her female intuition allowed to work, since as soon as Pike's left the room (was that a lab just off the Bridge?), she touches the crystal to see a vision of her future, but that's encouraged because she was able to see the destruction of the Enterprise (I think), and so prevented it by warning them not to do something… I think. It's a bit hazy, as the series so often is (apparently Yeoman Colt was in there somewhere, but I only know that from her name coming up in the end credits - talk about keeping cards close to the chest when they should be celebrating the Enterprise and its past!).
It was nice to see the handrail control in the Turbolifts, something that should have been standard in Discovery if they'd cared a jot about history, so putting them in now is a bit late, though it's one of the few things I liked about the episode. But was it really sensible to discuss things like there being no holo-comms now in the middle of an evacuation? They need to get their priorities straight. After getting past the gut-wrenchingly, woefully sad ruination of the beloved Enterprise (actually, I still haven't, and it cast a shadow of misery across the episode), they go back to Discovery having failed to destroy it, while Leland and his mighty fleet of ships is still on the way. In the meantime, somehow Sarek (using his katric connection to Burnham), and Amanda find them to say goodbye to Burnham. Again, so incredibly stupid: how can they get to wherever the Discovery was in that short a time, and yet Leland is on the way and is still some time off? Nothing about it makes sense, and the writers don't care. All they care about is how they can get Burnham to shed a tear so the female audience can clap their hands with emotion at all this display of emotion, emotional, emote, emotive emotion. It's emotional, you see? They perform a spore jump yet again, as if it's nothing, the only reference to the fact that it's supposed to be dangerous for Stamets is that Culber comes to check if he's alright after doing it. They have no idea about drama, do they? To be honest, they've done so many jumps that I can't even remember what the issue was supposed to be with using it, that's how clear and consistent the writing is on everything. You're supposed to forget whatever rules were laid out because, like 'Dr. Who,' they don't matter, only there to provide 'drama' for a specific scene or episode, not something to be kept track of as if Trek was supposed to be an internally consistent entity. Hah!
They stop off at Xahea for some reason I can't remember, and Tilly's friend from the awful 'Short Treks' episode 'Runaway' makes her debut on the series proper as this Wesley Crusher-esque engineering genius that can do anything the writers need her to do. I'm reminded why I thought Naarn was of the same race because they do look similar, even down to the hairstyle. As usual we eschew any protocol for a laugh at the taken aback Pike, dignity lost, but it's okay because it's funny and Tilly gets to see her girly fwend again. Ooh, isn't this charming. Ugh. They need this child prodigy to be able to make the time crystal work because they haven't got a time suit so they're going to make Discovery be the suit, I think. Again, wasn't following what was going on very clearly, but then you don't have to, it's not important and doesn't have much reality to it. I was guessing that Georgiou would knock Spock out and take his place with the others who volunteer to go permanently into the future with Burnham (maybe she still will?), so the Control AI will never be able to get its hands on the all-important Sphere data which will somehow give it some kind of power, or something, I don't know, it's all ridiculous and childish. We know Spock isn't going to be lost in the future, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't go, so something's going to prevent him next episode, even though he had a heart-to-heart with his 'sister' and wants to be with her, even affectionately patting her hand (Vulcans don't touch because they're touch telepaths! Grraaargghhh!).
Why did Dr. Burnham record all those YouTube videos on how to operate the time suit? I guess she just had nothing better to do. I was thinking, if Pike had any sense he'd be going with them into the future to avoid his grisly fate, but of course he's not going to do that because that would go against the canon of what we know will happen. But it doesn't make sense! And why choose some bits of canon to keep to while ignoring the majority? They have no idea what they're doing. At least if he did go we'd know this was an alternate universe, unless they are set to come back from the future at some point, which I suspect they are, because as much as I think they're going to ruin the future as effectively as they've ruined the past, at least it would make a semblance of sense that Discovery isn't around later during 'TOS,' but it's all silly anyway so it doesn't matter either way, I don't see this team or era ever doing anything good with the series, or even, sadly, the franchise. Then we get swarms of shuttles, more than could be carried by a fleet of ships, and apparently they all came from Enterprise and Discovery - just like that scene from the opening to 'Star Trek XI' where there are hundreds of shuttlecraft floating away from the USS Kelvin! It's that same level of idiocy that ties the films and TV together in a destructive dance of horror, trampling Trek's entire world and its credentials to be proper sci-fi, collapsing any reality the series ever had.
Oh, but then Leland's fleet warps in and Burnham says they're surrounded and we see a graphic with the ships all around them ON A 2D PLANE! It's like Khan's two-dimensional thinking in 'The Wrath of Khan,' they could still escape up or down, they're not really surrounded! After all that spatial orientation business (and we even see it in this very episode when Discovery orients itself to Enterprise to connect the stoopid evac corridors!), they've gone back to ships being on the same plane. They contradict themselves in the same episodes (same thing happened in the previous one)! I despair, I really do. I don't know where things went wrong, but they've been wrong from Day 1 on this series. I genuinely wish Trek had never come back so that I could say without reservation that I loved it. Now if I said that it would be like a validation of the last ten years of idiotic films and the awfulness of 'DSC,' and possibly 'Picard,' 'Lower Decks' and 'Section 31.' It's like they've made it for the brains of children, fire and forget, nothing matters. And I still have one episode to slog through. And then I'm going to have to watch through the season again in quick succession to understand things better without needing to write a review. Not looking forward to that. I suspect I'll be giving up Trek eventually because although it's 'alive' again, when it had 'died,' it's been reborn as something I… not detest, I don't feel that strongly about such a mush of misery, but it disgusts me: in other words there was something exciting about it still being produced so that you never knew if a character, ship, or race would reappear, new information uncovered, new perspectives on the history and more history would add to the lore, but instead it now just overwrites what came before and kills it deader than ever. Should have called it 'Star Trek: Mort.'
*
Tuesday, 18 February 2020
Nicodemus
DVD, Smallville S1 (Nicodemus)
By any other name, 'This Side of Paradise' from 'TOS,' and in fact the kind of story every sci-fi series does at some point, it's just that in that Trek episode it was specifically about flowers that puffed their pollen into victim's faces and made them effectively drunk so that they behaved without inhibitions. In that story the problem was solved with provoking strong emotion in the victims, but this episode isn't really about the problem itself, more about what inner feelings it lets out of people so we never find out how a cure was reached or what it was, just the ever-useful, unseen team of experts in Metropolis the Luthors keep on call at all times to handle any emergency, 'dealt' with the issue, solved it, and everything's fine, except for the obvious exception of the minor character who was first to be infected, but he doesn't matter to the larger world of 'Smallville' so it's fine! In truth I didn't have that many specific memories of this one, apart from the flowers and Mr. Kent driving around with the door of his truck open, screaming at other motorists and passersby and packing a shotgun, but that's probably because his turn at being 'free' is the most memorable. I thought a lot more characters were exposed and became their uninhibited selves, but it's really only Jonathan, Lana and Pete, and they were a more than plenty handful for Clark to deal with.
Deal he does, whether it be family, romantic interest or best mate, he has different tactics with each as the understanding of what's going on develops. It does strike me as strange how long it takes people sometimes to recognise that someone is acting out of character, almost as if they think it's just a phase or they woke up that morning and decided to be different. Maybe that's what some of them do on occasion, otherwise you'd think they'd be showing concern and asking if they'd had any concussions lately! This is, after all, a world in which crazy things happen on a regular basis so when one of their own acts up surely the signs are clear that some meteor rock related solution is to blame. But no, they just go along with it, all for the drama of the episode, I suppose. I'm not going to pull it apart, it's a fun episode, but the one thing I did find it hard to accept was how Clark managed to get Lana up that rickety windmill at the end! She has her eyes closed like he's blindfolded her and led her into a room, yet they're metres up in the air and she must have known what was going on. Obviously he convinced her to climb up herself with eyes closed so as not to be afraid, but I'm not sure that would be a good idea! It's a lovely ending to the episode, even with the fact you can tell it's green screen and they're not really high in the air, just as you can spot their photo doubles when the camera pulls away, but it's a nice shot nonetheless.
If there is a real complaint, it's a very minor one, in that the CG flowers look very fake, something 'TOS' has the advantage of since they only had the option to build physical props. Sometimes CGI can be overused, and perhaps an in-camera solution would have been better. Then again, seeing the rudimentary movement of the flowers in jars suggests it might not have worked. It's good to have Dr. Hamilton back again, as well as Principal Kwan in his one minor scene that was quite expressive without any words, all helping to continue the feel of a living, breathing community of people that still exist and live out their lives even when we don't see them on screen - Nell is mentioned as being away in Metropolis, too, furthering that feel. What marks this episode out as special is that it puts Lex in the position that Clark is usually in, worried about something he's indirectly responsible for, while someone reassures him it's not his fault (usually anything related to the meteors since Clark came down in their shower). Lex blatantly lies this time, persuading Clark he doesn't have anything to do with Hamilton or the problem, which we can clearly see is complete fabrication. And for once, though Lex is doing the right thing in trying to contain the outbreak and cure it as fast as possible, he doesn't appear to have any altruistic motive other than curiosity for its own sake in the meteor rocks and their effects. He outright lies to Clark, the exaggerated distrust and even hatred displayed by Jonathan and Pete having merit, despite coming from an untrustworthy reaction, and is shown to be based in truth.
I do believe Lex was intent on doing everything he could to save Jonathan, but now we can't take anything at just surface value if we ever could and he has taken a step towards the villain he would become, or the villain his character is supposed to be. Clark gets to be seen by Pete doing something impossible when he grabs the gun off him at the Luthor Mansion, but it's okay because he doesn't remember what happened - I wonder how he'd have explained that if Pete had remembered. It's also a step for Pete, who we learn has deep-seated reasons for his dislike of Lex stemming from the way his family had been treated by the Luthors and the way Clark had taken to Lex as a pal, something we hadn't seen much of before. What he says about how they used to be best friends turns out to be true, because Pete would leave shortly into Season 2, unable to remain friends with the heavy weight of Clark's secret on him, and the lack of trust Clark showed in him, and you can see that Clark's problems are far from being as simple as fighting crime or super-powered villains: he has to deal with all the people problems everyday mortals experience, too. Issues of trust and dependence, and also the realisation that super speed and strength can't do anything against diseases. Perhaps there's an underlying message there that doctors and scientists who examine, research and treat patients are the real superheroes, doing what others can't.
The downside is that it is probably the teen soapiest episode so far, the kind of thing I thought the series was going to be all about, but wasn't. So we have Lana misbehaving and pouting around, throwing her weight about at school and the Talon, insulting Whitney and casting him off, before rushing straight for Clark and leading him on. There was a scene missing in which she made up with Whitney and apologised, we're only left to hear that she did do that to various people. You can almost see the cracks of the cast appearing as Whitney and Pete are shown up as the extra bodies they were. I personally like both of them, and prefer the series with them in it, but these are little signs of the series running out of steam in a way, being able to spot that they're not making good use of them, but not that they're heading towards getting rid of them. It's also one of the first to be about characters acting out of character - yes, we had seen it on occasion, but not on this scale, something that would be happening all too frequently as the series 'progressed.' Seen as it is on its own, and with its own merit, it's a fun story: Martha gets to tell a little tale about meeting Jonathan (though her weepy admittance that she still has the thought that Jonathan would marry her didn't make sense as they are married, but she was at the end of her tether!), Chloe and Pete get to go snooping, there's another clear out like Level 3 where everything's taken away and only an empty space is left of Hamilton's lab, and this time a friend of Clark's falls to certain injury he's there to catch her. There's not a lot more to it than Lex lying to Clark, but it's enough and makes for another good instalment.
***
By any other name, 'This Side of Paradise' from 'TOS,' and in fact the kind of story every sci-fi series does at some point, it's just that in that Trek episode it was specifically about flowers that puffed their pollen into victim's faces and made them effectively drunk so that they behaved without inhibitions. In that story the problem was solved with provoking strong emotion in the victims, but this episode isn't really about the problem itself, more about what inner feelings it lets out of people so we never find out how a cure was reached or what it was, just the ever-useful, unseen team of experts in Metropolis the Luthors keep on call at all times to handle any emergency, 'dealt' with the issue, solved it, and everything's fine, except for the obvious exception of the minor character who was first to be infected, but he doesn't matter to the larger world of 'Smallville' so it's fine! In truth I didn't have that many specific memories of this one, apart from the flowers and Mr. Kent driving around with the door of his truck open, screaming at other motorists and passersby and packing a shotgun, but that's probably because his turn at being 'free' is the most memorable. I thought a lot more characters were exposed and became their uninhibited selves, but it's really only Jonathan, Lana and Pete, and they were a more than plenty handful for Clark to deal with.
Deal he does, whether it be family, romantic interest or best mate, he has different tactics with each as the understanding of what's going on develops. It does strike me as strange how long it takes people sometimes to recognise that someone is acting out of character, almost as if they think it's just a phase or they woke up that morning and decided to be different. Maybe that's what some of them do on occasion, otherwise you'd think they'd be showing concern and asking if they'd had any concussions lately! This is, after all, a world in which crazy things happen on a regular basis so when one of their own acts up surely the signs are clear that some meteor rock related solution is to blame. But no, they just go along with it, all for the drama of the episode, I suppose. I'm not going to pull it apart, it's a fun episode, but the one thing I did find it hard to accept was how Clark managed to get Lana up that rickety windmill at the end! She has her eyes closed like he's blindfolded her and led her into a room, yet they're metres up in the air and she must have known what was going on. Obviously he convinced her to climb up herself with eyes closed so as not to be afraid, but I'm not sure that would be a good idea! It's a lovely ending to the episode, even with the fact you can tell it's green screen and they're not really high in the air, just as you can spot their photo doubles when the camera pulls away, but it's a nice shot nonetheless.
If there is a real complaint, it's a very minor one, in that the CG flowers look very fake, something 'TOS' has the advantage of since they only had the option to build physical props. Sometimes CGI can be overused, and perhaps an in-camera solution would have been better. Then again, seeing the rudimentary movement of the flowers in jars suggests it might not have worked. It's good to have Dr. Hamilton back again, as well as Principal Kwan in his one minor scene that was quite expressive without any words, all helping to continue the feel of a living, breathing community of people that still exist and live out their lives even when we don't see them on screen - Nell is mentioned as being away in Metropolis, too, furthering that feel. What marks this episode out as special is that it puts Lex in the position that Clark is usually in, worried about something he's indirectly responsible for, while someone reassures him it's not his fault (usually anything related to the meteors since Clark came down in their shower). Lex blatantly lies this time, persuading Clark he doesn't have anything to do with Hamilton or the problem, which we can clearly see is complete fabrication. And for once, though Lex is doing the right thing in trying to contain the outbreak and cure it as fast as possible, he doesn't appear to have any altruistic motive other than curiosity for its own sake in the meteor rocks and their effects. He outright lies to Clark, the exaggerated distrust and even hatred displayed by Jonathan and Pete having merit, despite coming from an untrustworthy reaction, and is shown to be based in truth.
I do believe Lex was intent on doing everything he could to save Jonathan, but now we can't take anything at just surface value if we ever could and he has taken a step towards the villain he would become, or the villain his character is supposed to be. Clark gets to be seen by Pete doing something impossible when he grabs the gun off him at the Luthor Mansion, but it's okay because he doesn't remember what happened - I wonder how he'd have explained that if Pete had remembered. It's also a step for Pete, who we learn has deep-seated reasons for his dislike of Lex stemming from the way his family had been treated by the Luthors and the way Clark had taken to Lex as a pal, something we hadn't seen much of before. What he says about how they used to be best friends turns out to be true, because Pete would leave shortly into Season 2, unable to remain friends with the heavy weight of Clark's secret on him, and the lack of trust Clark showed in him, and you can see that Clark's problems are far from being as simple as fighting crime or super-powered villains: he has to deal with all the people problems everyday mortals experience, too. Issues of trust and dependence, and also the realisation that super speed and strength can't do anything against diseases. Perhaps there's an underlying message there that doctors and scientists who examine, research and treat patients are the real superheroes, doing what others can't.
The downside is that it is probably the teen soapiest episode so far, the kind of thing I thought the series was going to be all about, but wasn't. So we have Lana misbehaving and pouting around, throwing her weight about at school and the Talon, insulting Whitney and casting him off, before rushing straight for Clark and leading him on. There was a scene missing in which she made up with Whitney and apologised, we're only left to hear that she did do that to various people. You can almost see the cracks of the cast appearing as Whitney and Pete are shown up as the extra bodies they were. I personally like both of them, and prefer the series with them in it, but these are little signs of the series running out of steam in a way, being able to spot that they're not making good use of them, but not that they're heading towards getting rid of them. It's also one of the first to be about characters acting out of character - yes, we had seen it on occasion, but not on this scale, something that would be happening all too frequently as the series 'progressed.' Seen as it is on its own, and with its own merit, it's a fun story: Martha gets to tell a little tale about meeting Jonathan (though her weepy admittance that she still has the thought that Jonathan would marry her didn't make sense as they are married, but she was at the end of her tether!), Chloe and Pete get to go snooping, there's another clear out like Level 3 where everything's taken away and only an empty space is left of Hamilton's lab, and this time a friend of Clark's falls to certain injury he's there to catch her. There's not a lot more to it than Lex lying to Clark, but it's enough and makes for another good instalment.
***
Through The Valley of Shadow
DVD, Discovery DVD (Through The Valley of Shadow)
One of those episodes that shows some promise, but by the end I'm glad it's over. I almost don't wish to bother recording my thoughts because it just makes me so numb and uninterested that it's a chore to have to note down all the things my first impressions gave me due to them being largely negative, and that's tiring and dispiriting. Sometimes you can take some keen-edged pleasure in ripping into things that are stupid and ridiculous, but I don't even have that dubious advantage, it's just a miserable exercise. But it must be done, I have to review every episode of every Trek. Aside from all the changes in style and aesthetic that push me away it's the slight stories that value dramatic music and swirly camera moves as disguise for their emptiness. There are three stories, the main two of which could, and should (and would in old Trek), have been suitable for expansion to a full episode on their own, but are instead rushed through for no real purpose other than to continue the plot. The third, and slighter C-plot is Chief Engineer Reno sticking her oar in on Stamets' emotional issues to remind us of her existence on the ship, which I had actually forgotten. What it did remind me, positively, is that at least Tilly and Georgiou were absent, and that I'd like to know more about Nilsson, whom we see in a deleted scene when Reno and Stamets are talking, or in the Mess Hall (why was the Saurian speaking English?), as she has potential to be an interesting character, given a chance. But as usual, most characters aren't given much chance, and if they were trying to recreate a 'TOS' level of background character development (in other words, next to nothing), then they succeeded. Except that we're not in the Sixties any more, and if they aren't going to give us the look and feel of the Sixties series, then why do it with the flaws of that era!
The episode did at first pique my interest, what with Boreth being the destination, a place shown in 'TNG,' and I hoped it would be a chance for them to redress the balance of all the hairless Klingons we'd seen in Season 1 and give us a proper old-fashioned Klingon adventure. Because, considering the fact that the monks of Boreth must be traditionalists, waiting as they are for Kahless' return, that being the whole purpose of building a monastery there, they'd probably all be old, white-haired, long-locked types, right? No. Not only do they not use the famous Dan Curry matte painting (which they'd possibly have to pay out for - can't think of any other reason for not having the continuity), as basis for the look of the place, but they have very few Klingons and only the main one is in the traditional Kahless hairstyle. We have one female cleric or guard, and another male who's bald. And of course they use the ugly and overly detailed version of the bat'leth that 'DSC' invented, and so favours above the simple, but graceful lines of the traditional weapon we saw so much before. As usual they go in for simple gimmicks rather than explaining anything, so the guy who's seemingly in charge is actually Tyler and L'Rell's son, T'Navik, who has grown up even faster than Alexander Rozhenko ever did due to the presence of time crystals. Hang on, they might even have said that the purpose of the monastery was to guard these crystals, which changes the mission statement of the place from what it was supposed to be. But rather than explore this apparent breach in continuity as an avenue to discuss Klingon beliefs as they could have if this was satisfying Trek, by suggesting perhaps that the purpose of the place had changed due to unbelief in Kahless' return, or something along those lines, they completely gloss over anything of substance and put everything down to fantasy.
Too too often this series has strayed into fantasy as if they're ashamed of their sci-fi heritage and wish to appeal more to the 'Game of Thrones'/ Harry Potter/ 'Star Wars' crowd than those of us that prefer world-building within the laws of nature as a rule. Time crystals are the big sin this season, this undefined mcguffin, the 'rabbit's foot' of 'Mission: Impossible III,' however you want to call it, it's not detailed or catalogued or extrapolated with pseudoscience and theory, it just is. You could argue that that's been done plenty of times in Trek, for example the Orbs of the Bajoran Prophets, but as with most things on this 'interpretation' of Trek, it's not what they do that is usually the problem, it's how they do it, defying the conventions rigidly set out over many decades of episodes and film that hang together so well and draw you into this as a real place. Reality has been chucked out the window with 'DSC,' early on it made this very apparent. It's like the firefight between Control and Burnham later on. It has none of the drama firefights on Trek used to have, and doesn't even fit with this series' own internal logic, as surely this AI would have perfect pinpoint accuracy so Burnham wouldn't stand a chance. And of course it's all about glamour, yet has none of the beauty and impressiveness of those Phaser beams of old, ripping through the air with a scream, replaced by zob, zob, zob of empty 'bullets,' Burnham even defying the reality of the weapon when she has to hold two Phasers to hold off approaching 'nanobots' as they call them - Phasers are an energy weapon, not a projectile weapon, it's not the force of the blast that sends something back, it's the stream of energy pulsing into it, but because beams are classed as too boring for quick cuts, they throw out meaning for false drama, and those of us that see through it inwardly groan.
But I'm getting away from my point, which is that the balance of fantastical to sci-fi is way over the top and poorly executed. On the face of it, Pike's singlehanded mission to Boreth, should be a great moment for the Captain, but even before it starts L'Rell openly insults him to his face by saying that it wouldn't be safe for him to go as it's not for the faint of heart! What a slur on Pike, she's saying he's a fainthearted Captain! I must say, although I don't agree with that, he hasn't been shown to be the strongest Captain we've ever seen, and this is more evident when he's constantly coming up against singleminded and 'strong' female characters - his First Officer on Enterprise, Burnham who is always asserting herself (specifically in this episode she even says that!), his Chief of Security, Commander Naarn, his Chief Engineer, Reno, Admiral Cornwell, his two main Bridge crew, Owosekun and Detmer (although you can't call them strong characters). Maybe L'Rell was right? Maybe his desire to be matey with people is a bad idea, and his reliance on regulations shows a Captain who is unsure of himself. That would, strictly speaking, be true of the character we saw in 'The Cage,' but he was more manly and heroic then, even with his doubts and uncertainty, and he'd resolved his issues by the end of the episode, a great example of drama, and one that 'DSC' could and should have learned from. If anything, this version of Pike seems like a younger, more inexperienced one, and so I almost wish he was the one in 'The Cage,' and the one played by Jeffrey Hunter was the one we had now.
That's not how things work, however. It's not that I dislike Pike, I just feel like he's been undermined, not just from the strong females perspective, but from the fact that this isn't his series, or even his ship, he's just a temp. He's so often unsure of himself, second-guessing in the way he speaks to people, not quite the thoughtful Captain I expected, as by this stage of his career he should be sure of himself and his position. All of this to say that he does, to an extent, look a little weak sometimes, and that's not something we're used to in a main Captain character. So perhaps L'Rell's unintentional slur on his character isn't so far from the truth after all? He goes down to Boreth in a position of weakness and Captains always need to be as bold as possible when facing up to Klingons, as we've seen so many times in the past. It seems that the main reason for going down there was to show off some special effects - what other reason is there for a monk to be planting something and then show it growing into full plant in seconds? It's another visual gimmick, it's a little eye treat to keep low attention spans from sagging, that's what the series often is, it seems, rather than mining the occasionally apparent intellectual material. That's what the series has chosen to do, like Spock in the modern films where he accepted his emotional side rather than repress it as a good Vulcan should, to fit in with modern audiences, and that's why things are always played so emotionally. I'm not saying they appeal emotionally, but they are emotional, there's a big difference as I've probably noted before: having a character display emotion is significantly less powerful than evoking emotion in the audience, but the first is the far easier path. 'DSC' likes to do the former, at the loss of logic and mental depth, so I can only be relieved that their version of Spock is far less emotive than I expected from Burnham's complete reversal into a creature of continual emotional reaction from one of logical thought and action, though that was never strong with her even at the start, it was there all the same.
Pike is 'guided' by T'Navik to these 'time crystals' which the monks are 'protecting' and… but even there I don't buy that Klingons would have forbidden the use of such things as time travel, not the ones we've seen who are only interested in destroying non-Klingons. Regardless, Pike gets taken to one and has to accept his destiny or whatever, to take it. How much more fantastical can you get? Characters like Burnham are so often stating that the future is what we make it, and in fact that's exactly what she reiterates in this very episode when discussing the future destruction that Control is, erm… responsible for, or trying to prevent its own destruction from? Uncertain, I don't follow Control's motivation at all, other than, like the Klingons, a wish to destroy all that is not it to preserve its own existence. In the same episode Pike has to accept the future where we know he'll suffer in a debilitating accident and be scarred and immobilised for life! I get it, they wanted to show the famous moment we know happened (from the perspective of 'TOS' onwards)/ will happen (from the perspective of 'DSC'), but even in the showing of that they failed mightily! How can it be that they weren't even able to come close to that moment in a Sixties TV show where Spock rushes in and saves Stiles from Engineering in 'Balance of Terror' at the risk of his own life? We simply see Pike and some others in a room (that looks suspiciously like Discovery's Engineering or spore room, I'm not sure which - with huge budgets and few episodes we were supposed to be spared such reuses as Trek is famous for, but attitudes to cost-cutting haven't changed even at this level!), he shouts for them to get out, and fails to do so himself, badly burned by the door.
It's not that heroic, and even the scene earlier in the season where he jumps on an overloading Phaser or whatever it was, was more dramatic and courageous! How they could make something so essential to the history of the character so bland, I do not know. Then in another flash forward he sees himself as he will be, a disfigured invalid in a mechanical chair, face sagging, and is terrified and horrified at what he's become. Granted, knowing his destiny, or fate, or whatever they call it, and still going through with taking the crystal, and still staying in Starfleet and doing his duty and eventually getting to that point in time and going through what he knows he'll go through, makes him a brave man. It also makes him look foolish in the future because if he knew this was coming surely he'd be ready and prevent it. And once again I cite the point of view that is embodied by our main character, Michael Burnham, that the future isn't written and we can change it. Except we know the future because we've been there in other Trek and so we know Pike does end up that way and so Burnham is proved wrong by other Trek, and that's not a good position to put your main character in, where she's wrong, even though they seem to be saying that's the right way to think! It's all so messed up and you get the impression they don't really have a singular idea of what Trek means or thinks, or the point of view they're following. Because all points of view can't have equal merit, and if there are two opposing ones, one of them has to be right. Except that we do get L'Rell saying something about it being possible that there can be two different truths, which muddies the issue further, even though she's actually referring to the split personality of Voq and how he and the human Tyler existed in the same body at the same time. It just adds further confusion because you don't know if that was intentionally written that way or more likely, they haven't noticed what can be read into their own writing!
That's the continual problem with 'DSC,' it doesn't know itself, what it can be or should be, it doesn't have a strong direction and instead tries to appeal broadly, as so many things do. This lack of singular vision makes it singularly unappealing. It wants to be 'TOS' era for the characters and connections to pop culture that can help it appeal to the mainstream consciousness, yet at the same time it wants the advancements of 'TNG,' and that is why it fails, to paraphrase Yoda, whom ironically wouldn't be out of place in the series because it is so much more 'Star Wars' than Trek. If Pike is Luke Skywalker going off to face his personal issues in the cave of Dagobah, then Burnham and Spock are… I don't know the analogy, maybe Luke and Obi-Wan going to the Death Star or something, but the point is they go off on an adventure to find this Section 31 ship that hasn't reported in. Oh dear, they strip 31 of more mystery every time they use them. If they'd simply used Starfleet Intelligence in place of 31 most things wouldn't seem so bad (just like if it had been one of Khan's minions in 'Into Darkness' rather than Khan himself), but not only do we learn their ships are supposed to check in every hour (what happens when they're in deep space or don't they ever go anywhere?), later, Saru states that they have thirty ships as their fleet and they're all approaching Discovery. Is there anything about this clandestine, 'secret' organisation that the average Starfleet officer doesn't know? It even sounds like Gant joined up rather than being recruited (though that could be untrue as it's not actually him talking). This iteration of Section 31 has been plainly ridiculous from beginning to end!
If easy ridicule of storytelling was the goal of the 'DSC' writers they've passed with flying colours, but it's not just that, it's also failure to understand the rules of drama, replacing it with cartoon-levels of simplicity. You only have to take the Lieutenant Gant stuff as an example. That was a nice little piece of continuity, something the series has begun to creep towards, that the other series' did so well, because they've had so few episodes in comparison. In old money we'd only just be at the very start of Season 2 with this, the twenty-seventh episode of the series. Instead we're careering to the end of Season 2, and not only that, but we've done so few stories in comparison, as many episodes of old Trek were a complete story in themselves, whereas this is mainly one story, with a few you might be able to consider standalone. So they have clear disadvantages, when we were sold on this being better because there wouldn't be filler episodes where nothing much happened, or take so long to build up to things. They don't understand that to deal out a truly satisfying payoff you have to go the long route, you can't take narrative shortcuts, and if you can they've taken the wrong ones. Anyway, I liked that Gant, the Tactical Officer of the Shenzhou is the one body left alive after Control has flushed the crew out of this 31 ship. At first I thought it was Danby Connors, even though he's dead in this and the Mirror Universe! But Gant was interesting to meet again, even if contrived that he should be the one to live. Except that problem is solved by the truth coming out that this was all a trap to capture Burnham and conform her or bring her over to its side (read: assimilate), so that works.
What doesn't work is that as soon as Gant is unmasked as Control masquerading as him for its current host body (does this mean no more Leland or will its 'nanobots' take over as many people as it wants - probably, I wouldn't be surprised), it immediately begins speaking in a robotic accent as if to underline how sinister it is. In reality if it kept talking like Gant with all the nuances of a human voice that would be far more sinister and distasteful, almost as if it enjoyed using the long dead vocal cords of its human host, a creepy and terrible fate for anyone. Instead of horror gleaned from drama they prefer to do things much more graphically, the example from this episode being when Pike views his ultimate condition, this face that is actively melting as it screams at him! Where's the quiet dignity or the sad poignancy? No, it's all about shock value, which not only does a disservice to the character, but also gives him no hope, when we know that his true fate is much better than that which he sees. This could have been a warning about looking into the future because you don't have the full context of what you're seeing, but there's none of the subtlety or subtext Trek should be aiming for as intelligent sci-fi. Because it's stupid fantasy now.
With stupidity come many questions left unanswered: how does T'Navik know all this about time crystals, and how does he know that what Pike sees is certain to come to pass? For that matter, why would someone who had been there so short a time, be in charge of the whole place and keeper of the keys, or whatever he is? Or is he merely head guard and the real group of monks are behind the scenes? None of it is touched on because it's all got to be hurried through. Woe betide anything that slows things down or allows thinking time for things to sink in or be explored. That's probably why the 'Picard' series is getting negative reviews. There's also the fact that once again Burnham is the linchpin of the galaxy, she's practically a time crystal herself, I wouldn't be surprised if her eventual fate is to become the sentient computer AI that powers all Federation starships in the distant future, or some such rubbish! Burnham is the one threat to Control's objectives, what a surprise. I'm not sure why, but she just is. Why does this character have any importance at all? Doesn't matter, she just does. She's Rey from modern 'Star Wars.' Things just are, get over it. But things aren't always insanely simplistic and glossed over: I was left wondering why they did another spore jump just to get to Boreth when there was no imminent threat or specific time pressure, other than Control buzzing about doing what it wills, but I wasn't left wondering for long as Reno's only worthwhile purpose in the episode is when she mentions Stamets pulling off another spore jump, so at least it was drawn attention to. And Kenneth Mitchell gets yet another integral Klingon role again after his turn as Kol in Season 1, and the old Klingon this season: now he's T'Navik, the 'guide' who doesn't do much guiding of Pike.
However I look at this series it just keeps lowering my expectations or messing with Trek convention and doesn't even have its own consistency to enjoy. It's up and down, it's one thing here, and changes to be completely different there. In short, its very nature is feminine. It doesn't even like showing off its ships as if that would be a turn-off for a sizeable chunk of the audience: in the past if a D7 was shown it was a cause for excitement and they'd give you time to pore over the detail, not skim over it in one shot and that's your lot! The whole approach to what matters in 'DSC' is at odds with Trek, hence it's no surprise that episode after episode passes with my sorrow. Things like the nanobots crawling out of Gant like the Replicators from 'Stargate,' moving like a physical mass towards Burnham on the floor zap, zapping with two Phasers because one ain't enough - just try flickin' on the beam, darlin'! Not very nano, are they? 'Stargate' is what this is more like than Trek, except there they had characters which were likeable, and adventures that, though simple, I didn't have any preconceptions about. By the end of this episode they've even got the trope of Discovery needing to self-destruct, the Enterprise en route to provide a safe haven. For one thing, the destruct is supposed to be something you do quickly, not wait for another ship to come and get you, and for another, if the series is anything to go by then I'm in for major disappointment when we finally go aboard the Enterprise. Forget the uniforms not looking right now, they didn't look right in the flash forward Pike saw with a whole other design to either Discovery's standard fleet-wide issue, the slightly similar Enterprise design, the 'TOS' version, or even the turtleneck-collared missing link of 'The Cage' and 'Where No Man Has Gone Before'! What are they playing at! At least there was plenty to write about…
**
One of those episodes that shows some promise, but by the end I'm glad it's over. I almost don't wish to bother recording my thoughts because it just makes me so numb and uninterested that it's a chore to have to note down all the things my first impressions gave me due to them being largely negative, and that's tiring and dispiriting. Sometimes you can take some keen-edged pleasure in ripping into things that are stupid and ridiculous, but I don't even have that dubious advantage, it's just a miserable exercise. But it must be done, I have to review every episode of every Trek. Aside from all the changes in style and aesthetic that push me away it's the slight stories that value dramatic music and swirly camera moves as disguise for their emptiness. There are three stories, the main two of which could, and should (and would in old Trek), have been suitable for expansion to a full episode on their own, but are instead rushed through for no real purpose other than to continue the plot. The third, and slighter C-plot is Chief Engineer Reno sticking her oar in on Stamets' emotional issues to remind us of her existence on the ship, which I had actually forgotten. What it did remind me, positively, is that at least Tilly and Georgiou were absent, and that I'd like to know more about Nilsson, whom we see in a deleted scene when Reno and Stamets are talking, or in the Mess Hall (why was the Saurian speaking English?), as she has potential to be an interesting character, given a chance. But as usual, most characters aren't given much chance, and if they were trying to recreate a 'TOS' level of background character development (in other words, next to nothing), then they succeeded. Except that we're not in the Sixties any more, and if they aren't going to give us the look and feel of the Sixties series, then why do it with the flaws of that era!
The episode did at first pique my interest, what with Boreth being the destination, a place shown in 'TNG,' and I hoped it would be a chance for them to redress the balance of all the hairless Klingons we'd seen in Season 1 and give us a proper old-fashioned Klingon adventure. Because, considering the fact that the monks of Boreth must be traditionalists, waiting as they are for Kahless' return, that being the whole purpose of building a monastery there, they'd probably all be old, white-haired, long-locked types, right? No. Not only do they not use the famous Dan Curry matte painting (which they'd possibly have to pay out for - can't think of any other reason for not having the continuity), as basis for the look of the place, but they have very few Klingons and only the main one is in the traditional Kahless hairstyle. We have one female cleric or guard, and another male who's bald. And of course they use the ugly and overly detailed version of the bat'leth that 'DSC' invented, and so favours above the simple, but graceful lines of the traditional weapon we saw so much before. As usual they go in for simple gimmicks rather than explaining anything, so the guy who's seemingly in charge is actually Tyler and L'Rell's son, T'Navik, who has grown up even faster than Alexander Rozhenko ever did due to the presence of time crystals. Hang on, they might even have said that the purpose of the monastery was to guard these crystals, which changes the mission statement of the place from what it was supposed to be. But rather than explore this apparent breach in continuity as an avenue to discuss Klingon beliefs as they could have if this was satisfying Trek, by suggesting perhaps that the purpose of the place had changed due to unbelief in Kahless' return, or something along those lines, they completely gloss over anything of substance and put everything down to fantasy.
Too too often this series has strayed into fantasy as if they're ashamed of their sci-fi heritage and wish to appeal more to the 'Game of Thrones'/ Harry Potter/ 'Star Wars' crowd than those of us that prefer world-building within the laws of nature as a rule. Time crystals are the big sin this season, this undefined mcguffin, the 'rabbit's foot' of 'Mission: Impossible III,' however you want to call it, it's not detailed or catalogued or extrapolated with pseudoscience and theory, it just is. You could argue that that's been done plenty of times in Trek, for example the Orbs of the Bajoran Prophets, but as with most things on this 'interpretation' of Trek, it's not what they do that is usually the problem, it's how they do it, defying the conventions rigidly set out over many decades of episodes and film that hang together so well and draw you into this as a real place. Reality has been chucked out the window with 'DSC,' early on it made this very apparent. It's like the firefight between Control and Burnham later on. It has none of the drama firefights on Trek used to have, and doesn't even fit with this series' own internal logic, as surely this AI would have perfect pinpoint accuracy so Burnham wouldn't stand a chance. And of course it's all about glamour, yet has none of the beauty and impressiveness of those Phaser beams of old, ripping through the air with a scream, replaced by zob, zob, zob of empty 'bullets,' Burnham even defying the reality of the weapon when she has to hold two Phasers to hold off approaching 'nanobots' as they call them - Phasers are an energy weapon, not a projectile weapon, it's not the force of the blast that sends something back, it's the stream of energy pulsing into it, but because beams are classed as too boring for quick cuts, they throw out meaning for false drama, and those of us that see through it inwardly groan.
But I'm getting away from my point, which is that the balance of fantastical to sci-fi is way over the top and poorly executed. On the face of it, Pike's singlehanded mission to Boreth, should be a great moment for the Captain, but even before it starts L'Rell openly insults him to his face by saying that it wouldn't be safe for him to go as it's not for the faint of heart! What a slur on Pike, she's saying he's a fainthearted Captain! I must say, although I don't agree with that, he hasn't been shown to be the strongest Captain we've ever seen, and this is more evident when he's constantly coming up against singleminded and 'strong' female characters - his First Officer on Enterprise, Burnham who is always asserting herself (specifically in this episode she even says that!), his Chief of Security, Commander Naarn, his Chief Engineer, Reno, Admiral Cornwell, his two main Bridge crew, Owosekun and Detmer (although you can't call them strong characters). Maybe L'Rell was right? Maybe his desire to be matey with people is a bad idea, and his reliance on regulations shows a Captain who is unsure of himself. That would, strictly speaking, be true of the character we saw in 'The Cage,' but he was more manly and heroic then, even with his doubts and uncertainty, and he'd resolved his issues by the end of the episode, a great example of drama, and one that 'DSC' could and should have learned from. If anything, this version of Pike seems like a younger, more inexperienced one, and so I almost wish he was the one in 'The Cage,' and the one played by Jeffrey Hunter was the one we had now.
That's not how things work, however. It's not that I dislike Pike, I just feel like he's been undermined, not just from the strong females perspective, but from the fact that this isn't his series, or even his ship, he's just a temp. He's so often unsure of himself, second-guessing in the way he speaks to people, not quite the thoughtful Captain I expected, as by this stage of his career he should be sure of himself and his position. All of this to say that he does, to an extent, look a little weak sometimes, and that's not something we're used to in a main Captain character. So perhaps L'Rell's unintentional slur on his character isn't so far from the truth after all? He goes down to Boreth in a position of weakness and Captains always need to be as bold as possible when facing up to Klingons, as we've seen so many times in the past. It seems that the main reason for going down there was to show off some special effects - what other reason is there for a monk to be planting something and then show it growing into full plant in seconds? It's another visual gimmick, it's a little eye treat to keep low attention spans from sagging, that's what the series often is, it seems, rather than mining the occasionally apparent intellectual material. That's what the series has chosen to do, like Spock in the modern films where he accepted his emotional side rather than repress it as a good Vulcan should, to fit in with modern audiences, and that's why things are always played so emotionally. I'm not saying they appeal emotionally, but they are emotional, there's a big difference as I've probably noted before: having a character display emotion is significantly less powerful than evoking emotion in the audience, but the first is the far easier path. 'DSC' likes to do the former, at the loss of logic and mental depth, so I can only be relieved that their version of Spock is far less emotive than I expected from Burnham's complete reversal into a creature of continual emotional reaction from one of logical thought and action, though that was never strong with her even at the start, it was there all the same.
Pike is 'guided' by T'Navik to these 'time crystals' which the monks are 'protecting' and… but even there I don't buy that Klingons would have forbidden the use of such things as time travel, not the ones we've seen who are only interested in destroying non-Klingons. Regardless, Pike gets taken to one and has to accept his destiny or whatever, to take it. How much more fantastical can you get? Characters like Burnham are so often stating that the future is what we make it, and in fact that's exactly what she reiterates in this very episode when discussing the future destruction that Control is, erm… responsible for, or trying to prevent its own destruction from? Uncertain, I don't follow Control's motivation at all, other than, like the Klingons, a wish to destroy all that is not it to preserve its own existence. In the same episode Pike has to accept the future where we know he'll suffer in a debilitating accident and be scarred and immobilised for life! I get it, they wanted to show the famous moment we know happened (from the perspective of 'TOS' onwards)/ will happen (from the perspective of 'DSC'), but even in the showing of that they failed mightily! How can it be that they weren't even able to come close to that moment in a Sixties TV show where Spock rushes in and saves Stiles from Engineering in 'Balance of Terror' at the risk of his own life? We simply see Pike and some others in a room (that looks suspiciously like Discovery's Engineering or spore room, I'm not sure which - with huge budgets and few episodes we were supposed to be spared such reuses as Trek is famous for, but attitudes to cost-cutting haven't changed even at this level!), he shouts for them to get out, and fails to do so himself, badly burned by the door.
It's not that heroic, and even the scene earlier in the season where he jumps on an overloading Phaser or whatever it was, was more dramatic and courageous! How they could make something so essential to the history of the character so bland, I do not know. Then in another flash forward he sees himself as he will be, a disfigured invalid in a mechanical chair, face sagging, and is terrified and horrified at what he's become. Granted, knowing his destiny, or fate, or whatever they call it, and still going through with taking the crystal, and still staying in Starfleet and doing his duty and eventually getting to that point in time and going through what he knows he'll go through, makes him a brave man. It also makes him look foolish in the future because if he knew this was coming surely he'd be ready and prevent it. And once again I cite the point of view that is embodied by our main character, Michael Burnham, that the future isn't written and we can change it. Except we know the future because we've been there in other Trek and so we know Pike does end up that way and so Burnham is proved wrong by other Trek, and that's not a good position to put your main character in, where she's wrong, even though they seem to be saying that's the right way to think! It's all so messed up and you get the impression they don't really have a singular idea of what Trek means or thinks, or the point of view they're following. Because all points of view can't have equal merit, and if there are two opposing ones, one of them has to be right. Except that we do get L'Rell saying something about it being possible that there can be two different truths, which muddies the issue further, even though she's actually referring to the split personality of Voq and how he and the human Tyler existed in the same body at the same time. It just adds further confusion because you don't know if that was intentionally written that way or more likely, they haven't noticed what can be read into their own writing!
That's the continual problem with 'DSC,' it doesn't know itself, what it can be or should be, it doesn't have a strong direction and instead tries to appeal broadly, as so many things do. This lack of singular vision makes it singularly unappealing. It wants to be 'TOS' era for the characters and connections to pop culture that can help it appeal to the mainstream consciousness, yet at the same time it wants the advancements of 'TNG,' and that is why it fails, to paraphrase Yoda, whom ironically wouldn't be out of place in the series because it is so much more 'Star Wars' than Trek. If Pike is Luke Skywalker going off to face his personal issues in the cave of Dagobah, then Burnham and Spock are… I don't know the analogy, maybe Luke and Obi-Wan going to the Death Star or something, but the point is they go off on an adventure to find this Section 31 ship that hasn't reported in. Oh dear, they strip 31 of more mystery every time they use them. If they'd simply used Starfleet Intelligence in place of 31 most things wouldn't seem so bad (just like if it had been one of Khan's minions in 'Into Darkness' rather than Khan himself), but not only do we learn their ships are supposed to check in every hour (what happens when they're in deep space or don't they ever go anywhere?), later, Saru states that they have thirty ships as their fleet and they're all approaching Discovery. Is there anything about this clandestine, 'secret' organisation that the average Starfleet officer doesn't know? It even sounds like Gant joined up rather than being recruited (though that could be untrue as it's not actually him talking). This iteration of Section 31 has been plainly ridiculous from beginning to end!
If easy ridicule of storytelling was the goal of the 'DSC' writers they've passed with flying colours, but it's not just that, it's also failure to understand the rules of drama, replacing it with cartoon-levels of simplicity. You only have to take the Lieutenant Gant stuff as an example. That was a nice little piece of continuity, something the series has begun to creep towards, that the other series' did so well, because they've had so few episodes in comparison. In old money we'd only just be at the very start of Season 2 with this, the twenty-seventh episode of the series. Instead we're careering to the end of Season 2, and not only that, but we've done so few stories in comparison, as many episodes of old Trek were a complete story in themselves, whereas this is mainly one story, with a few you might be able to consider standalone. So they have clear disadvantages, when we were sold on this being better because there wouldn't be filler episodes where nothing much happened, or take so long to build up to things. They don't understand that to deal out a truly satisfying payoff you have to go the long route, you can't take narrative shortcuts, and if you can they've taken the wrong ones. Anyway, I liked that Gant, the Tactical Officer of the Shenzhou is the one body left alive after Control has flushed the crew out of this 31 ship. At first I thought it was Danby Connors, even though he's dead in this and the Mirror Universe! But Gant was interesting to meet again, even if contrived that he should be the one to live. Except that problem is solved by the truth coming out that this was all a trap to capture Burnham and conform her or bring her over to its side (read: assimilate), so that works.
What doesn't work is that as soon as Gant is unmasked as Control masquerading as him for its current host body (does this mean no more Leland or will its 'nanobots' take over as many people as it wants - probably, I wouldn't be surprised), it immediately begins speaking in a robotic accent as if to underline how sinister it is. In reality if it kept talking like Gant with all the nuances of a human voice that would be far more sinister and distasteful, almost as if it enjoyed using the long dead vocal cords of its human host, a creepy and terrible fate for anyone. Instead of horror gleaned from drama they prefer to do things much more graphically, the example from this episode being when Pike views his ultimate condition, this face that is actively melting as it screams at him! Where's the quiet dignity or the sad poignancy? No, it's all about shock value, which not only does a disservice to the character, but also gives him no hope, when we know that his true fate is much better than that which he sees. This could have been a warning about looking into the future because you don't have the full context of what you're seeing, but there's none of the subtlety or subtext Trek should be aiming for as intelligent sci-fi. Because it's stupid fantasy now.
With stupidity come many questions left unanswered: how does T'Navik know all this about time crystals, and how does he know that what Pike sees is certain to come to pass? For that matter, why would someone who had been there so short a time, be in charge of the whole place and keeper of the keys, or whatever he is? Or is he merely head guard and the real group of monks are behind the scenes? None of it is touched on because it's all got to be hurried through. Woe betide anything that slows things down or allows thinking time for things to sink in or be explored. That's probably why the 'Picard' series is getting negative reviews. There's also the fact that once again Burnham is the linchpin of the galaxy, she's practically a time crystal herself, I wouldn't be surprised if her eventual fate is to become the sentient computer AI that powers all Federation starships in the distant future, or some such rubbish! Burnham is the one threat to Control's objectives, what a surprise. I'm not sure why, but she just is. Why does this character have any importance at all? Doesn't matter, she just does. She's Rey from modern 'Star Wars.' Things just are, get over it. But things aren't always insanely simplistic and glossed over: I was left wondering why they did another spore jump just to get to Boreth when there was no imminent threat or specific time pressure, other than Control buzzing about doing what it wills, but I wasn't left wondering for long as Reno's only worthwhile purpose in the episode is when she mentions Stamets pulling off another spore jump, so at least it was drawn attention to. And Kenneth Mitchell gets yet another integral Klingon role again after his turn as Kol in Season 1, and the old Klingon this season: now he's T'Navik, the 'guide' who doesn't do much guiding of Pike.
However I look at this series it just keeps lowering my expectations or messing with Trek convention and doesn't even have its own consistency to enjoy. It's up and down, it's one thing here, and changes to be completely different there. In short, its very nature is feminine. It doesn't even like showing off its ships as if that would be a turn-off for a sizeable chunk of the audience: in the past if a D7 was shown it was a cause for excitement and they'd give you time to pore over the detail, not skim over it in one shot and that's your lot! The whole approach to what matters in 'DSC' is at odds with Trek, hence it's no surprise that episode after episode passes with my sorrow. Things like the nanobots crawling out of Gant like the Replicators from 'Stargate,' moving like a physical mass towards Burnham on the floor zap, zapping with two Phasers because one ain't enough - just try flickin' on the beam, darlin'! Not very nano, are they? 'Stargate' is what this is more like than Trek, except there they had characters which were likeable, and adventures that, though simple, I didn't have any preconceptions about. By the end of this episode they've even got the trope of Discovery needing to self-destruct, the Enterprise en route to provide a safe haven. For one thing, the destruct is supposed to be something you do quickly, not wait for another ship to come and get you, and for another, if the series is anything to go by then I'm in for major disappointment when we finally go aboard the Enterprise. Forget the uniforms not looking right now, they didn't look right in the flash forward Pike saw with a whole other design to either Discovery's standard fleet-wide issue, the slightly similar Enterprise design, the 'TOS' version, or even the turtleneck-collared missing link of 'The Cage' and 'Where No Man Has Gone Before'! What are they playing at! At least there was plenty to write about…
**
Perpetual Infinity
DVD, Discovery S2 (Perpetual Infinity)
Another 'Discovery' episode, another forty-odd minutes of bad 'Star Trek,' shot through with some good Spock (though even he has the terrible line "I like science," to be 'cute' and make the audience titter. Ugh!), and very little else. Oh, wait, there's the small matter of the origin of the Borg. Okay, so maybe I'm being presumptuous, and I really hope the writers aren't, because things are seemingly pointing to the creation of the Borg and if that is the case it will be one more thing this series has ruined in Trek - I had the impression of Borg involvement early on, first from rumours, then when the altered probe from the future attacked Pike and Tyler's shuttlecraft in that episode (you know the one, I can't remember what it was called, they all blend together), and it had been sent back from the future augmented and alive with AI, or guidance, that wanted organics dead. Then we get Starfleet computing power turned into AI through the influence of the data from the sphere. I think… Where did Control come from, I forget? It was Starfleet, but was it AI? Anyway, now we see Leland get assimilated, right down to the creepy black veins that come from nanoprobes, and it even appeared to show us a stream of these devices entering his bloodstream in the best Seven of Nine manner. And there's the whole future time where everything's been destroyed (except of course for a handy Class-M planet so that Dr. Gabrielle Burnham, Michael's Mother, can survive!), so are we really doing the Borg's origin and saying it was Starfleet's fault? I really, really hope not!
I was half expecting Alice Krige to show up as some crewmember ripe for being sucked into the future, things were going so much in that direction ('Enterprise' planned to do a Borg origin if it had continued, so it's not a new idea). Oh no, don't tell me Dr. Burnham becomes the Borg Queen. I say again: ugh! The potential messing up of one of Trek's most legendary 'races' was actually the only point of interest in this whole emotive mess of an episode. Once again we're supposed to care for a character so much that we're devastated when she's taken away, this time pulled from her daughter in the most 'dramatic' fashion, but though they valiantly cram in as many as possible mission logs and scenes with her conversing with various people, not to mention recordings of when she, her husband and young Mike, were last together (and a dream flashback for the newly-awakened-from-death Burnham), it's still a stranger who goes shooting into the red void at the end of the episode. How did that even happen? She wasn't in the suit, no one else was affected, so what is it that has so changed her genetic makeup that she's snapped back along with the time tech she travelled in? This 'Metroid'-like time suit makes less and less sense - I thought Leland told us in the previous episode it was invented by the Burnhams (sure, when can we trust anything he says, I know), but how could this couple, no matter how clever they are, be able to do something like that on their own? I keep expecting to hear that it's actually something that dropped out of the future (where are the Temporal Operatives like Captain Braxton of the USS Relativity?), but here we see it in their home-cum-lab when the Klingons show up to 'kill' them.
Not quite getting what was about to happen I actually thought for a moment it was a Romulan ship that was descending on that planet or moon, or whatever it was where they were carrying out their experiments, but of course it was the Klingons. It's just because it looked so 'raptor's wing'-ish and shows that if you have that extensive knowledge and sympathy with Trek lore of old it's actually a stumbling block to you now! Granted, the Klingons always used Birds of Prey, and would go on to have a tech sharing phase with the Romulans, but it was like something out of 'Nemesis' (probably designed by John Eaves who also did the ship designs in that film). 'How interesting,' I thought. 'How are they going to bring the Romulans into this?' Obviously they weren't, so at least that's one bit of canonical correctness they've kept to, though I don't suppose they'll be able to keep away from anything if the series runs long enough. It's so strange to be in a position to be hoping a Trek series doesn't go on too long when I used to want them to run and run! But almost nothing about this series makes me warm to it and I don't even feel disappointed any more: I just expect it to be silly and wrong. Take Burnham, or more specifically, the actress that plays her - it seems like she bursts into tears every episode and it's all so forced and unnatural. Sure, it's easy to argue that these are momentous occasions for her, she's meeting the Mother she'd thought dead for twenty years, but she's always so unprofessional and un-Starfleet in her actions and far from the heroes we're used to seeing.
Even the fake Control version of her as a hologram, where she talks flatly, like a Vulcan (now we know why the Vulcan Admiral Patar seemed so accurate - she was really just a computer simulation, so they can't even do a real Vulcan right!), was better than the normal flesh and blood Burnham. That's a problem when it's your series' lead. She's so… I don't know if the word irrational is right. Maybe she's so lacking in control, her feminine side on display so much, not reining in her emotions. I'm not even talking about when she's blubbing in front of the Mother that's become so jaded by her endless sojourn as a time traveller that she's unwilling to connect with her only daughter. That's understandable that she'd lose control, although not admirable or desirable in a Starfleet officer. No, it's things like when she wakes in Sickbay and they tell her about her Mother and she's desperate to jump up and go and speak to her. And when Pike is requested to meet her and not Burnham, they have to have a counsel in Pike's massive Quarters where she tries to make a case from every angle except a daughter's right, that she should go down too. It's important to note that they are on a time limit, with the containment field holding the suit and Dr. Burnham in place, set to only last so long! Pike indulges a bit of discussion, which I'd normally champion, but ultimately decides to deny her wishes. It's all rather silly, why not just go down, why wait until the Doctor is ready to talk, and accede to her wishes about who she'll see?
Although the whole idea of Dr. Burnham filming herself is odd, I can buy it because she is a scientist ("I like science!"), and this is all part of the process, and I liked that we see what happened to her when the Klingons attacked and so on, only through these devices (even though flying robots are incredibly overused in this series - you pretty much never saw them on other Treks, one reason the advancement of CGI isn't necessarily a good thing because it encourages the makers to break the rules or alter what is common or possible to a degree that alienates those familiar with Trek's style and approach). It was also intelligent in the way that when she travels into the future that first time she isn't on the same planet/moon/whatever that she started because the orbits would have changed so she would be in space, the kind of accuracy we're not used to seeing on 'DSC'! I immediately had questions of how she survived in this future if there was nothing left, so it was inevitable that a convenient Class-M world had to be there to explain where she went, ate, slept, etc. That tale of survival would have been more interesting than what actually happens in the episode. But as well as they did some things, the important stuff was simply stupid. Once again, if this is a suit made by the Burnhams, how does it have practically infinite data storage? Where did they get the time crystal, what even is it? There are so many questions about this tech, it's all frustratingly vague, just like the modern film series - it's all glossed over, which is a big reason it has come to feel like fantasy rather than science fiction.
The season is tied together by Dr. Burnham as she was responsible for sending the sphere to Discovery (and Terralysium is also mentioned), but I am a bit confused about all that. The sphere was the last remnant of an ancient civilisation, wasn't it? It wanted its knowledge to live on, and that knowledge is what Control used to become AI? Or it was already AI and needed that data to become all-powerful? I don't know, maybe I'm slow, but it's not easy to follow the complications because they don't present them in a clear way. It all boils down to Dr. Burnham being there at various points in time to… ensure Spock and Burnham get to the point where they destroy the sphere knowledge? So why send the sphere to them in the first place? And can the suit see into time, too, rather than just travel there, because she claims to have seen various moments from her daughter's life, and we know there was no Red Angel hovering over the scene. Unless it also has a cloaking device, which would be even more ridiculous. They gloss over the details and just generalise, filling up the space with the usual melodramatic outpourings of emotion, so far removed from the general attitude of restraint shown in Trek previously as to make it bizarre! They even do the cliches like the hands meeting on glass (or forcefield in this case), and again, hands reaching out before Mum Burnham gets sucked away in time, just too late. Again, it feels very like modern 'Dr. Who,' with the same lack of depth and reliance on surface-level shininess and unfettered emotion.
That's not all, they even radically retcon our most famous character: Spock is said to be dyslexic! So they want to make this era seem far more futuristic than it ever was shown to be before, and yet when it comes to medical conditions they slap it right bang into our time! As if dyslexia wouldn't have been cured long before then! There's also another example of a wheelchair skimming through the Discovery corridors, which has been seen before. 1) Why wouldn't it be a hover-chair considering how much antigrav hoverbots we see, and 2) any disablement or physical problem would be fixed. Unless, and I may have made this point before, the person in question is an Elaysian or some other low-gravity alien that can't stand in normal Earth gravity. The reality is it's all about showing diversity, the same reason we have people like Detmer who apparently can't get an artificial eye to look like her organic one, and has to live with a metal plate on her face (without the excuse of being Borg like Seven had!). It's about drawing in people by showing them an example of themselves, I suppose you could say the same about La Forge in 'TNG,' except that really was a different era with specific context and he was shown to actually have greater range of vision than normal eyes would have given him. But really, Spock dyslexic? Then we have Saru referring to firewalls as if that would be a term still used in the 23rd Century. They really have no idea how to craft a future world where everything is similar enough to be identifiable, yet also clearly advanced, something that even 'TOS' achieved on a regular basis.
There are always going to be anachronisms and things that are put in for the time they're made, but I don't trust these writers' judgement and it continues to be something that is constantly taking me out of the world, so much so that it breaks and fragments a poorly constructed iteration of that world and fills me with dismay how much they get it wrong! And then there's Michelle Yeoh. At least she isn't hissing and contorting like some silly 'Flash Gordon' villain, but when I think about it that is about the right analogy. It is just that with added glitz: we're reminded of the only reason she gets roles is to show off her considerable martial arts skills when Control/Leland, who has assimilated his body to use as a host, beams down and starts pew-pew-pewing away with the usual pop-gun Phasers as if he's Commander Data - how was he endowed with super speed, agility and reactions? Those are some nanoprobes! The one good moment of that whole scene is actually seeing one of their once-a-season uses of an actual Phaser beam when he shoots the time crystal, but even that is spoiled by the fact that this beam is somehow firing through a forcefield that is so strong it takes all Discovery's resources to power it, and so powerful it can prevent the suit and its passenger from being pulled into the future! So how can this beam go right through like it isn't even there? There's no consistency to the technology any more, they don't care if it makes sense, it's whatever the story needs, and a story without boundaries to rein it in just goes off its rocker.
As is the norm for the series there are so many problems you have to turn your brain off to keep going through the episode: Tyler takes a huge bug with him when Leland orders him to spy on Discovery, and activates it during a briefing. Initially I thought it was a listening device, but later realised it's to download the sphere data to the Section 31 ship - you notice how barebones they are in their approach to building this world in that such important things as a recurring ship don't even have a name! Bryce refers to it as 'the Section 31 ship,' which could get confusing since we've already seen they have other identical ships! Is it such a top secret vessel that it won't even say its name: 'oh here comes that mysterious big black ship with the crew that wear big black badges, I wonder who they could be?' Why wouldn't Discovery's own internal sensors detect and flag up that Tyler had activated a bug, anyway? When we're talking 'Flash Gordon' levels of ineptitude, it's not just in scenes degenerating into a one-on-one high-kicking fight scene, it's also in the ridiculous dialogue that precedes Georgiou and Leland's confrontation.
Back on The Section 31 Ship he convinces her to do what Tyler wouldn't and beam down with a bug to intercept the data (is the data stream from Discovery to the suit? So why do they need a bug anyway, can't they take it out of space since they have The Section 31 Ship hanging there!?), and he does it by appealing to Georgiou's base instincts and ego of being 'the most powerful woman in the galaxy.' But she's not, she's orphaned from her Mirror Universe and has had to be an underling for S31 as something fun to do, she's not the Emperor (or even Empress), and it shows how shallow the character is that she'd be influenced by him saying how much more powerful Dr. Burnham is thanks to her time suit. Genuinely, it wouldn't have been out of place in a 'Captain Proton' Holodeck adventure, that's the level of cartoon Trek has lowered itself to, and it is continually distressing. In fact there are more coherent episodes of 'The Animated Series'! I struggle to come up with anything that stops me giving this the lowest rating on my five star chart, but Dr. Burnham's veiled reference to Pike's future injuries, a future 'he won't like,' was fun, and I appreciated the poetic justice of Control's logic when deciding to use Leland's body, turning S31's own immoral ways against them because he's the ideal host due to holding multiple points of view in his head and not succumbing to guilt as the ends justify the means, so that was all good. Where this series differs from Trek is that that kind of stuff is where the real drama lies, not in 'Flash Gordon' hokey dialogue and silly laughs (Tilly's only contribution), or contrived fight scenes, but in the ideas. But they seem to have no idea.
**
Another 'Discovery' episode, another forty-odd minutes of bad 'Star Trek,' shot through with some good Spock (though even he has the terrible line "I like science," to be 'cute' and make the audience titter. Ugh!), and very little else. Oh, wait, there's the small matter of the origin of the Borg. Okay, so maybe I'm being presumptuous, and I really hope the writers aren't, because things are seemingly pointing to the creation of the Borg and if that is the case it will be one more thing this series has ruined in Trek - I had the impression of Borg involvement early on, first from rumours, then when the altered probe from the future attacked Pike and Tyler's shuttlecraft in that episode (you know the one, I can't remember what it was called, they all blend together), and it had been sent back from the future augmented and alive with AI, or guidance, that wanted organics dead. Then we get Starfleet computing power turned into AI through the influence of the data from the sphere. I think… Where did Control come from, I forget? It was Starfleet, but was it AI? Anyway, now we see Leland get assimilated, right down to the creepy black veins that come from nanoprobes, and it even appeared to show us a stream of these devices entering his bloodstream in the best Seven of Nine manner. And there's the whole future time where everything's been destroyed (except of course for a handy Class-M planet so that Dr. Gabrielle Burnham, Michael's Mother, can survive!), so are we really doing the Borg's origin and saying it was Starfleet's fault? I really, really hope not!
I was half expecting Alice Krige to show up as some crewmember ripe for being sucked into the future, things were going so much in that direction ('Enterprise' planned to do a Borg origin if it had continued, so it's not a new idea). Oh no, don't tell me Dr. Burnham becomes the Borg Queen. I say again: ugh! The potential messing up of one of Trek's most legendary 'races' was actually the only point of interest in this whole emotive mess of an episode. Once again we're supposed to care for a character so much that we're devastated when she's taken away, this time pulled from her daughter in the most 'dramatic' fashion, but though they valiantly cram in as many as possible mission logs and scenes with her conversing with various people, not to mention recordings of when she, her husband and young Mike, were last together (and a dream flashback for the newly-awakened-from-death Burnham), it's still a stranger who goes shooting into the red void at the end of the episode. How did that even happen? She wasn't in the suit, no one else was affected, so what is it that has so changed her genetic makeup that she's snapped back along with the time tech she travelled in? This 'Metroid'-like time suit makes less and less sense - I thought Leland told us in the previous episode it was invented by the Burnhams (sure, when can we trust anything he says, I know), but how could this couple, no matter how clever they are, be able to do something like that on their own? I keep expecting to hear that it's actually something that dropped out of the future (where are the Temporal Operatives like Captain Braxton of the USS Relativity?), but here we see it in their home-cum-lab when the Klingons show up to 'kill' them.
Not quite getting what was about to happen I actually thought for a moment it was a Romulan ship that was descending on that planet or moon, or whatever it was where they were carrying out their experiments, but of course it was the Klingons. It's just because it looked so 'raptor's wing'-ish and shows that if you have that extensive knowledge and sympathy with Trek lore of old it's actually a stumbling block to you now! Granted, the Klingons always used Birds of Prey, and would go on to have a tech sharing phase with the Romulans, but it was like something out of 'Nemesis' (probably designed by John Eaves who also did the ship designs in that film). 'How interesting,' I thought. 'How are they going to bring the Romulans into this?' Obviously they weren't, so at least that's one bit of canonical correctness they've kept to, though I don't suppose they'll be able to keep away from anything if the series runs long enough. It's so strange to be in a position to be hoping a Trek series doesn't go on too long when I used to want them to run and run! But almost nothing about this series makes me warm to it and I don't even feel disappointed any more: I just expect it to be silly and wrong. Take Burnham, or more specifically, the actress that plays her - it seems like she bursts into tears every episode and it's all so forced and unnatural. Sure, it's easy to argue that these are momentous occasions for her, she's meeting the Mother she'd thought dead for twenty years, but she's always so unprofessional and un-Starfleet in her actions and far from the heroes we're used to seeing.
Even the fake Control version of her as a hologram, where she talks flatly, like a Vulcan (now we know why the Vulcan Admiral Patar seemed so accurate - she was really just a computer simulation, so they can't even do a real Vulcan right!), was better than the normal flesh and blood Burnham. That's a problem when it's your series' lead. She's so… I don't know if the word irrational is right. Maybe she's so lacking in control, her feminine side on display so much, not reining in her emotions. I'm not even talking about when she's blubbing in front of the Mother that's become so jaded by her endless sojourn as a time traveller that she's unwilling to connect with her only daughter. That's understandable that she'd lose control, although not admirable or desirable in a Starfleet officer. No, it's things like when she wakes in Sickbay and they tell her about her Mother and she's desperate to jump up and go and speak to her. And when Pike is requested to meet her and not Burnham, they have to have a counsel in Pike's massive Quarters where she tries to make a case from every angle except a daughter's right, that she should go down too. It's important to note that they are on a time limit, with the containment field holding the suit and Dr. Burnham in place, set to only last so long! Pike indulges a bit of discussion, which I'd normally champion, but ultimately decides to deny her wishes. It's all rather silly, why not just go down, why wait until the Doctor is ready to talk, and accede to her wishes about who she'll see?
Although the whole idea of Dr. Burnham filming herself is odd, I can buy it because she is a scientist ("I like science!"), and this is all part of the process, and I liked that we see what happened to her when the Klingons attacked and so on, only through these devices (even though flying robots are incredibly overused in this series - you pretty much never saw them on other Treks, one reason the advancement of CGI isn't necessarily a good thing because it encourages the makers to break the rules or alter what is common or possible to a degree that alienates those familiar with Trek's style and approach). It was also intelligent in the way that when she travels into the future that first time she isn't on the same planet/moon/whatever that she started because the orbits would have changed so she would be in space, the kind of accuracy we're not used to seeing on 'DSC'! I immediately had questions of how she survived in this future if there was nothing left, so it was inevitable that a convenient Class-M world had to be there to explain where she went, ate, slept, etc. That tale of survival would have been more interesting than what actually happens in the episode. But as well as they did some things, the important stuff was simply stupid. Once again, if this is a suit made by the Burnhams, how does it have practically infinite data storage? Where did they get the time crystal, what even is it? There are so many questions about this tech, it's all frustratingly vague, just like the modern film series - it's all glossed over, which is a big reason it has come to feel like fantasy rather than science fiction.
The season is tied together by Dr. Burnham as she was responsible for sending the sphere to Discovery (and Terralysium is also mentioned), but I am a bit confused about all that. The sphere was the last remnant of an ancient civilisation, wasn't it? It wanted its knowledge to live on, and that knowledge is what Control used to become AI? Or it was already AI and needed that data to become all-powerful? I don't know, maybe I'm slow, but it's not easy to follow the complications because they don't present them in a clear way. It all boils down to Dr. Burnham being there at various points in time to… ensure Spock and Burnham get to the point where they destroy the sphere knowledge? So why send the sphere to them in the first place? And can the suit see into time, too, rather than just travel there, because she claims to have seen various moments from her daughter's life, and we know there was no Red Angel hovering over the scene. Unless it also has a cloaking device, which would be even more ridiculous. They gloss over the details and just generalise, filling up the space with the usual melodramatic outpourings of emotion, so far removed from the general attitude of restraint shown in Trek previously as to make it bizarre! They even do the cliches like the hands meeting on glass (or forcefield in this case), and again, hands reaching out before Mum Burnham gets sucked away in time, just too late. Again, it feels very like modern 'Dr. Who,' with the same lack of depth and reliance on surface-level shininess and unfettered emotion.
That's not all, they even radically retcon our most famous character: Spock is said to be dyslexic! So they want to make this era seem far more futuristic than it ever was shown to be before, and yet when it comes to medical conditions they slap it right bang into our time! As if dyslexia wouldn't have been cured long before then! There's also another example of a wheelchair skimming through the Discovery corridors, which has been seen before. 1) Why wouldn't it be a hover-chair considering how much antigrav hoverbots we see, and 2) any disablement or physical problem would be fixed. Unless, and I may have made this point before, the person in question is an Elaysian or some other low-gravity alien that can't stand in normal Earth gravity. The reality is it's all about showing diversity, the same reason we have people like Detmer who apparently can't get an artificial eye to look like her organic one, and has to live with a metal plate on her face (without the excuse of being Borg like Seven had!). It's about drawing in people by showing them an example of themselves, I suppose you could say the same about La Forge in 'TNG,' except that really was a different era with specific context and he was shown to actually have greater range of vision than normal eyes would have given him. But really, Spock dyslexic? Then we have Saru referring to firewalls as if that would be a term still used in the 23rd Century. They really have no idea how to craft a future world where everything is similar enough to be identifiable, yet also clearly advanced, something that even 'TOS' achieved on a regular basis.
There are always going to be anachronisms and things that are put in for the time they're made, but I don't trust these writers' judgement and it continues to be something that is constantly taking me out of the world, so much so that it breaks and fragments a poorly constructed iteration of that world and fills me with dismay how much they get it wrong! And then there's Michelle Yeoh. At least she isn't hissing and contorting like some silly 'Flash Gordon' villain, but when I think about it that is about the right analogy. It is just that with added glitz: we're reminded of the only reason she gets roles is to show off her considerable martial arts skills when Control/Leland, who has assimilated his body to use as a host, beams down and starts pew-pew-pewing away with the usual pop-gun Phasers as if he's Commander Data - how was he endowed with super speed, agility and reactions? Those are some nanoprobes! The one good moment of that whole scene is actually seeing one of their once-a-season uses of an actual Phaser beam when he shoots the time crystal, but even that is spoiled by the fact that this beam is somehow firing through a forcefield that is so strong it takes all Discovery's resources to power it, and so powerful it can prevent the suit and its passenger from being pulled into the future! So how can this beam go right through like it isn't even there? There's no consistency to the technology any more, they don't care if it makes sense, it's whatever the story needs, and a story without boundaries to rein it in just goes off its rocker.
As is the norm for the series there are so many problems you have to turn your brain off to keep going through the episode: Tyler takes a huge bug with him when Leland orders him to spy on Discovery, and activates it during a briefing. Initially I thought it was a listening device, but later realised it's to download the sphere data to the Section 31 ship - you notice how barebones they are in their approach to building this world in that such important things as a recurring ship don't even have a name! Bryce refers to it as 'the Section 31 ship,' which could get confusing since we've already seen they have other identical ships! Is it such a top secret vessel that it won't even say its name: 'oh here comes that mysterious big black ship with the crew that wear big black badges, I wonder who they could be?' Why wouldn't Discovery's own internal sensors detect and flag up that Tyler had activated a bug, anyway? When we're talking 'Flash Gordon' levels of ineptitude, it's not just in scenes degenerating into a one-on-one high-kicking fight scene, it's also in the ridiculous dialogue that precedes Georgiou and Leland's confrontation.
Back on The Section 31 Ship he convinces her to do what Tyler wouldn't and beam down with a bug to intercept the data (is the data stream from Discovery to the suit? So why do they need a bug anyway, can't they take it out of space since they have The Section 31 Ship hanging there!?), and he does it by appealing to Georgiou's base instincts and ego of being 'the most powerful woman in the galaxy.' But she's not, she's orphaned from her Mirror Universe and has had to be an underling for S31 as something fun to do, she's not the Emperor (or even Empress), and it shows how shallow the character is that she'd be influenced by him saying how much more powerful Dr. Burnham is thanks to her time suit. Genuinely, it wouldn't have been out of place in a 'Captain Proton' Holodeck adventure, that's the level of cartoon Trek has lowered itself to, and it is continually distressing. In fact there are more coherent episodes of 'The Animated Series'! I struggle to come up with anything that stops me giving this the lowest rating on my five star chart, but Dr. Burnham's veiled reference to Pike's future injuries, a future 'he won't like,' was fun, and I appreciated the poetic justice of Control's logic when deciding to use Leland's body, turning S31's own immoral ways against them because he's the ideal host due to holding multiple points of view in his head and not succumbing to guilt as the ends justify the means, so that was all good. Where this series differs from Trek is that that kind of stuff is where the real drama lies, not in 'Flash Gordon' hokey dialogue and silly laughs (Tilly's only contribution), or contrived fight scenes, but in the ideas. But they seem to have no idea.
**
Tuesday, 11 February 2020
The Red Angel
DVD, Discovery S2 (The Red Angel)
Airiam was right, it very much is all about Burnham, she's the Luke Skywalker destiny child of this fantasy melodrama that was created in opposition of the science fiction 'Star Trek' once was, and I don't think Martin-Green has the ability to be that centre-of-the-universe figure. It's not entirely her fault, it's as much the behind-the-scenes ravages that struck the series right from its early days, losing her her essential essence that creator Fuller set up: she's a human Vulcan child, she's logical and restrained and repressed in a way unnatural for a human. Except she very soon lost that one defining characteristic that made her somewhat fascinating. Maybe this is the result. Maybe her repressive upbringing is what has pushed her to be the most emotional, melodramatic character in Trek history? In which case they're doing a fine job of showing what the result of a formative life without emotion might do to a human psyche. I could buy that if the rest of the world these writers create was coherent, but it's pretty far removed from the straight-talking, grounded (yes, I'm using that word yet again), believable extrapolation of a future first shown in 'TOS' and furthered on 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager.' Everything really is about her, though, she's not just some scientifically minded savant, she really is the centre of this universe that we're following, and it's just such a frustrating alteration of the way Trek tells stories that I can never entirely take it seriously!
I've highlighted so many times the blatant flaws that run through this shiny, glossy iteration that seems fit only for magpies attracted to its cathedral-like sets and glowing special effects. People that can ignore its two-dimensional characterisations and portentous, self-important dialogue and directorial choices that look like they come from 'The Lord of The Rings' rather than serious sci-fi. People who can ignore its confused morality and its bizarre need to distance itself from its own genetic heritage by bringing in technology far too early for the era it's supposed to represent in the history of the future. And it's not getting any easier to justify the series' existence, no amount of Captain Pike sternly reminding characters of his strict adherence to Starfleet regulations, able to do that. Take this episode, a mostly expository one with some new information that is not uninteresting, but still rife with the ground-level problems of this cracked and broken series: it begins with a sad farewell to Airiam's corpse, a kind of funeral service in which they show the traditional Trek manner of disposing of a body by launching it out into space within a torpedo casing, which itself was an updating of the traditional maritime method of disposing of a body by casting it into the sea. The character is eulogised and everyone's very emotional, but it means so little because we had so little to do with her! Tilly says she was her friend, so it's a shame we never (apart from in the previous episode), saw that. We were never allowed to develop a bond with this character, just as we haven't with many of them.
If the episode begins in this way, it also continues the same path. So we have Culber moping around still unable to get a grip on being a different Culber so that he even stops by Admiral Cornwell to get advice as she was once a counsellor or therapist, or whatever. We have Burnham getting so unprofessional that she actually bops Captain Leland on the nose. Twice! We have Discovery trusting Section 31 and working together in their goal of capturing the Red Angel (I wouldn't even have wanted them to know they believed Burnham to be inside). We have Georgiou expressing concern for Burnham when she doesn't really care about anyone but herself. It is, as usual, a big mishmash of mush, the only bright spot being that Ethan Peck's Spock remains Vulcan, reserved and deliberate in his speech. But really, Burnham practically justifies Leland's role even though she's unhappy with his 'intricate moral gymnastics' - she says that is his job, she knows. It's bad enough that everyone in Starfleet seems to know about this organisation that was supposed to have been kept hidden since its inception in the Federation Charter, the best and most fascinating thing about the organisation. They stripped out the good stuff about S31 being an impossibly secret, clandestine part of deep cover Federation intelligence so they can run around in big black ships, cliched up to the max, wearing big black badges so everyone knows their 'authority.' It's so laughable if it weren't a tragic waste of an invention by Trek's best writers. And then we have Saru saying he needs to know Leland can be trusted. He actually says this. To Leland.
Then we learn that, not content with introducing 24th Century technology into the 23rd Century because it's too boring to make stories without it (the writers completely misunderstanding the point of different eras is that very difference, not just in the galactic relations of alien politics, not just in the different approaches Starfleet makes, but in the limitations of their time - creativity needs boundaries to soar, and they completely fail in this regard!), we now have S31 developing a time travel suit, run on 'time crystals' (Project Daedalus). A one-man time travel suit. So it's not from the future, it's from this era! Not only that, it was designed by Burnham's own parents! Not only that, her Mother is still in it! Okay, so that was genuinely interesting, although this series does seem to have a thing about girls and their Mothers (Tilly and hers stands out; Burnham and her adopted Mother, Amanda, too). At least it being Mummy Burnham sets right a few questions I had about Burnham once again being the focal point of all time and space (it sometimes seems!), as if she's the Doctor from 'Dr. Who'! I was wondering why Burnham wouldn't know about attempts to trap her if she was from the future, but it wasn't her, so that's okay. Even Burnham wonders why she wouldn't say anything about an apocalyptic future if she knew about it (to which Spock replies that perhaps she has a penchant for the dramatic - understatement of the week!). But still, a time travel suit, invented in the 23rd Century? I was expecting it to be Burnham in there (I'm glad it wasn't), but I still assumed it would be tech from the future.
Somehow S31 can invent such a device (or Burnham's parents can), that, just like the spore drive, is going to have to be uninvented, otherwise what's to become of all the history past this? I'm hoping at some point they'll just admit this is another universe, not the 'TOS' one, because it simply does not fit. In 'TOS' they could time travel, but only by using the full power of their starship to zip round the sun. In later series' we saw other methods, but none of them were certain or something that anyone could just do, certainly not a one-person operation. Indeed, we've even been told that it isn't until around the 26th Century that time travel began to be used, and then only with great care by Starfleet and other races. If they were tying into the Temporal Cold War, that would have been an ideal avenue to explore, but it's just so continually frustrating that they cast aside the rulebook in order to muck about and do whatever they want. Because they don't have the imagination or the vision to do Trek as it should be done, they want to make a fantasy series using the Trek branding. They should have left well alone and made a whole new space series not constrained by Trek's coherent and consistent world, but then who would care? It really is like some 'Dr. Who'-inspired rubbish, where you can have unexplained fantastical time crystals and nothing has to make sense from week to week, one reason I don't think much of 'Who.' Even in the 24th Century they weren't hopping about on a whim into past or future, they had to engineer a good reason or a specific set of circumstances, but now 31 can just come up with tech.
As usual I can't stand Georgiou, or Tilly, but at least there was one good moment involving both of them: when Tilly's in Engineering (or a Science Lab, I don't know - they still haven't laid out the ship's sense of place very well at all), she burbles and bumbles as she does, until Georgiou tells her to 'stop talking!' There's never a Picard around when you want him: "Shut up, Tilly!" There was one other thing I quite liked in the episode: when Leland is talking about how Burnham's parents were investigating certain leaps in technology and advances in certain cultures weren't 'happenstance' as he puts it, but the result of time travel. I don't know, but this sounded exactly like what happened to our own 20th Century when Henry Starling created the computer boom of the latter half by using tech from a crashed 29th Century ship (as seen in 'Future's End' on 'Voyager'), which was a fun way to explain the rise of computers in our lives. I was really hoping for some reference to Chronowerx or Starling, and maybe we'll get it, but probably not. I also found that the punch bag Burnham got out her stress on, although initially odd to see, made some sense - we'd already seen a gym on the NX-01, and in 'TOS' the Enterprise also had a gym, so perhaps the holograms we've seen on 'DSC' aren't physical entities that can be interacted with as they could be on 'TNG' and beyond? That would ameliorate my problem with them a little, but I'm not sure what the evidence is for them being non-interactive physically, I just can't remember an example on this series.
Despite these few positives I still find the episode to be hard to accept, with Burnham a real disappointment, so far from the upright, good Starfleet officer that she initially seemed. Can you imagine Kira or Dax, or most of the other female characters on other Treks getting all weepy and snivelling about the difficult task they're about to do? But Burnham heads to Tyler's Quarters for some moping. I'm sure it's meant to make her more identifiable and human to audiences, especially female audiences (which this series, more than any other Trek, is very much gunning for, even against male viewership by the choices they make and the style they choose), but she just comes across as pitiful. Yes, it's more realistic that someone would be feeling vulnerable and upset, but she agreed to do this mission where she will 'die,' if only for a short time, in order to lure the Red Angel to save her (since, once again, everything revolves around her which is how they realise they can trap it). Once resolved she should be showing courage, not whimpering and simpering. Maybe I'm too harsh, but yet again it's an example of her lack of Starfleet (let alone Vulcan), strength and polish. It's a big deal for her to risk her life like that, and she is courageous to go through with it, I just can't stand her making the decision and then booing about being scared - it reminds me of that teary Ensign in Red Squad from 'Valiant,' an episode in which the Cadets take over the asylum and run a ship behind Dominion lines.
That and her assault on Leland put her in a very poor light this episode - as much as it's supposed to be something we like to see, Leland's decking means nothing other than lack of self-control and discipline, suggesting it's alright to do such a thing if you have a good enough reason. That's the way of the jungle, yes: you hurt me, so I'm gonna hurt you. But it's not the Starfleet way, and any organisation in which a subordinate struck a superior officer would take it very seriously. Well, we know they do since they came down ridiculously hard on her for 'mutinying' against Georgiou in the first episode, imprisonment for life not fitting with Starfleet any more than ignoring such an infraction does! In this case we can guess that Leland just took it and didn't report the action, but how did Spock know about it? I can't imagine Pike accepting such behaviour, and to me it's just another worrying trend in the series, when discipline and punishment are deemphasised because that's how our society seems to be going (like decriminalising drugs or the TV licence fee - almost as if, well, people are doing this stuff so we may as well stop trying to stop them!). But really, it does look bad for the organisation, even though Leland is scum and probably deserved what he got, that we're supposed to feel cheered by such an action is very uncomfortable and only makes me like Burnham less. Not only does she break down into emotional tempests all the time, she doesn't have control and is fast becoming a repugnant character.
When we finally get to the heroic moment of Burnham going through intense and mortal agony (and it is uncomfortable to watch and to see all the crew watching from their various positions - note Nilsson replacing Airiam at her station, so it's nice that they're not getting rid of the actress even though they chucked her earlier character), and the mysterious Red Angel is captured, yes, it is a good twist that it's her Mum, and a good cliffhanger making you wait to find out what's going on. When I first saw her I thought maybe it was Owosekun, then I thought Georgiou, then maybe a relation of Georgiou and it wasn't until Burnham spoke that I realised it was her Mother (and credit for Spock for having faith to keep the others from stopping the experiment - they all knew the idea was to temporarily kill Burnham, so why get upset about it, especially Georgiou who has seen, and done, far worse things!). One thing I did not get at all was when Leland is stabbed in the eye by his own ship. Huh? Why would you even have a needle in an optical piece of equipment, that was weird, and then that it wasn't explained what he was doing was also weird. It's easy to assume that it was 'Control' and this altered AI has infiltrated the S31 ships so there's more danger there, but why, why and why?
Finally, one little nugget worth mentioning is the series' approach to time travel. So often nowadays we're supposed to accept that time travel supposedly would split you off into an alternate reality, and every journey in time would be to a subtly different alternate, thus dispensing with so many of Trek's great time travel stories, or classic films like 'Back To The Future' - the point has always been that we can restore the past or save the future if we change something or restore it to the 'correct' version. That our time stream matters, rather than just being a permutation of infinite versions, none of which have any claim to being the 'right one.' Again, there are moral implications here, that nothing really matters and every version of everything exists somewhere. All to say that I was glad when Spock mentions the Grandfather paradox of Burnham not existing if she doesn't come back to prevent her death, which sounds to me like they're going with the traditional Trek approach to time travel, that things can be altered and restored, and that our 'reality' is important, so well done there. Of course that's a lot to extrapolate from one comment, but coming from Spock, an authoritative scientific figure (if not yet), it means something (I just wish he'd thrown in a mention of his own people once denying time travel, as a reference to the Vulcans of 'Enterprise'!), even if it turned out the Angel wasn't Burnham after all, thus negating his theory. I do hope they stay with the traditional Trek view, after all it is all fiction and theory, not reality and fact, and it's better to stick to the proven rules of Trek, even though they mostly don't on this series, which is why it suffers.
**
Airiam was right, it very much is all about Burnham, she's the Luke Skywalker destiny child of this fantasy melodrama that was created in opposition of the science fiction 'Star Trek' once was, and I don't think Martin-Green has the ability to be that centre-of-the-universe figure. It's not entirely her fault, it's as much the behind-the-scenes ravages that struck the series right from its early days, losing her her essential essence that creator Fuller set up: she's a human Vulcan child, she's logical and restrained and repressed in a way unnatural for a human. Except she very soon lost that one defining characteristic that made her somewhat fascinating. Maybe this is the result. Maybe her repressive upbringing is what has pushed her to be the most emotional, melodramatic character in Trek history? In which case they're doing a fine job of showing what the result of a formative life without emotion might do to a human psyche. I could buy that if the rest of the world these writers create was coherent, but it's pretty far removed from the straight-talking, grounded (yes, I'm using that word yet again), believable extrapolation of a future first shown in 'TOS' and furthered on 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager.' Everything really is about her, though, she's not just some scientifically minded savant, she really is the centre of this universe that we're following, and it's just such a frustrating alteration of the way Trek tells stories that I can never entirely take it seriously!
I've highlighted so many times the blatant flaws that run through this shiny, glossy iteration that seems fit only for magpies attracted to its cathedral-like sets and glowing special effects. People that can ignore its two-dimensional characterisations and portentous, self-important dialogue and directorial choices that look like they come from 'The Lord of The Rings' rather than serious sci-fi. People who can ignore its confused morality and its bizarre need to distance itself from its own genetic heritage by bringing in technology far too early for the era it's supposed to represent in the history of the future. And it's not getting any easier to justify the series' existence, no amount of Captain Pike sternly reminding characters of his strict adherence to Starfleet regulations, able to do that. Take this episode, a mostly expository one with some new information that is not uninteresting, but still rife with the ground-level problems of this cracked and broken series: it begins with a sad farewell to Airiam's corpse, a kind of funeral service in which they show the traditional Trek manner of disposing of a body by launching it out into space within a torpedo casing, which itself was an updating of the traditional maritime method of disposing of a body by casting it into the sea. The character is eulogised and everyone's very emotional, but it means so little because we had so little to do with her! Tilly says she was her friend, so it's a shame we never (apart from in the previous episode), saw that. We were never allowed to develop a bond with this character, just as we haven't with many of them.
If the episode begins in this way, it also continues the same path. So we have Culber moping around still unable to get a grip on being a different Culber so that he even stops by Admiral Cornwell to get advice as she was once a counsellor or therapist, or whatever. We have Burnham getting so unprofessional that she actually bops Captain Leland on the nose. Twice! We have Discovery trusting Section 31 and working together in their goal of capturing the Red Angel (I wouldn't even have wanted them to know they believed Burnham to be inside). We have Georgiou expressing concern for Burnham when she doesn't really care about anyone but herself. It is, as usual, a big mishmash of mush, the only bright spot being that Ethan Peck's Spock remains Vulcan, reserved and deliberate in his speech. But really, Burnham practically justifies Leland's role even though she's unhappy with his 'intricate moral gymnastics' - she says that is his job, she knows. It's bad enough that everyone in Starfleet seems to know about this organisation that was supposed to have been kept hidden since its inception in the Federation Charter, the best and most fascinating thing about the organisation. They stripped out the good stuff about S31 being an impossibly secret, clandestine part of deep cover Federation intelligence so they can run around in big black ships, cliched up to the max, wearing big black badges so everyone knows their 'authority.' It's so laughable if it weren't a tragic waste of an invention by Trek's best writers. And then we have Saru saying he needs to know Leland can be trusted. He actually says this. To Leland.
Then we learn that, not content with introducing 24th Century technology into the 23rd Century because it's too boring to make stories without it (the writers completely misunderstanding the point of different eras is that very difference, not just in the galactic relations of alien politics, not just in the different approaches Starfleet makes, but in the limitations of their time - creativity needs boundaries to soar, and they completely fail in this regard!), we now have S31 developing a time travel suit, run on 'time crystals' (Project Daedalus). A one-man time travel suit. So it's not from the future, it's from this era! Not only that, it was designed by Burnham's own parents! Not only that, her Mother is still in it! Okay, so that was genuinely interesting, although this series does seem to have a thing about girls and their Mothers (Tilly and hers stands out; Burnham and her adopted Mother, Amanda, too). At least it being Mummy Burnham sets right a few questions I had about Burnham once again being the focal point of all time and space (it sometimes seems!), as if she's the Doctor from 'Dr. Who'! I was wondering why Burnham wouldn't know about attempts to trap her if she was from the future, but it wasn't her, so that's okay. Even Burnham wonders why she wouldn't say anything about an apocalyptic future if she knew about it (to which Spock replies that perhaps she has a penchant for the dramatic - understatement of the week!). But still, a time travel suit, invented in the 23rd Century? I was expecting it to be Burnham in there (I'm glad it wasn't), but I still assumed it would be tech from the future.
Somehow S31 can invent such a device (or Burnham's parents can), that, just like the spore drive, is going to have to be uninvented, otherwise what's to become of all the history past this? I'm hoping at some point they'll just admit this is another universe, not the 'TOS' one, because it simply does not fit. In 'TOS' they could time travel, but only by using the full power of their starship to zip round the sun. In later series' we saw other methods, but none of them were certain or something that anyone could just do, certainly not a one-person operation. Indeed, we've even been told that it isn't until around the 26th Century that time travel began to be used, and then only with great care by Starfleet and other races. If they were tying into the Temporal Cold War, that would have been an ideal avenue to explore, but it's just so continually frustrating that they cast aside the rulebook in order to muck about and do whatever they want. Because they don't have the imagination or the vision to do Trek as it should be done, they want to make a fantasy series using the Trek branding. They should have left well alone and made a whole new space series not constrained by Trek's coherent and consistent world, but then who would care? It really is like some 'Dr. Who'-inspired rubbish, where you can have unexplained fantastical time crystals and nothing has to make sense from week to week, one reason I don't think much of 'Who.' Even in the 24th Century they weren't hopping about on a whim into past or future, they had to engineer a good reason or a specific set of circumstances, but now 31 can just come up with tech.
As usual I can't stand Georgiou, or Tilly, but at least there was one good moment involving both of them: when Tilly's in Engineering (or a Science Lab, I don't know - they still haven't laid out the ship's sense of place very well at all), she burbles and bumbles as she does, until Georgiou tells her to 'stop talking!' There's never a Picard around when you want him: "Shut up, Tilly!" There was one other thing I quite liked in the episode: when Leland is talking about how Burnham's parents were investigating certain leaps in technology and advances in certain cultures weren't 'happenstance' as he puts it, but the result of time travel. I don't know, but this sounded exactly like what happened to our own 20th Century when Henry Starling created the computer boom of the latter half by using tech from a crashed 29th Century ship (as seen in 'Future's End' on 'Voyager'), which was a fun way to explain the rise of computers in our lives. I was really hoping for some reference to Chronowerx or Starling, and maybe we'll get it, but probably not. I also found that the punch bag Burnham got out her stress on, although initially odd to see, made some sense - we'd already seen a gym on the NX-01, and in 'TOS' the Enterprise also had a gym, so perhaps the holograms we've seen on 'DSC' aren't physical entities that can be interacted with as they could be on 'TNG' and beyond? That would ameliorate my problem with them a little, but I'm not sure what the evidence is for them being non-interactive physically, I just can't remember an example on this series.
Despite these few positives I still find the episode to be hard to accept, with Burnham a real disappointment, so far from the upright, good Starfleet officer that she initially seemed. Can you imagine Kira or Dax, or most of the other female characters on other Treks getting all weepy and snivelling about the difficult task they're about to do? But Burnham heads to Tyler's Quarters for some moping. I'm sure it's meant to make her more identifiable and human to audiences, especially female audiences (which this series, more than any other Trek, is very much gunning for, even against male viewership by the choices they make and the style they choose), but she just comes across as pitiful. Yes, it's more realistic that someone would be feeling vulnerable and upset, but she agreed to do this mission where she will 'die,' if only for a short time, in order to lure the Red Angel to save her (since, once again, everything revolves around her which is how they realise they can trap it). Once resolved she should be showing courage, not whimpering and simpering. Maybe I'm too harsh, but yet again it's an example of her lack of Starfleet (let alone Vulcan), strength and polish. It's a big deal for her to risk her life like that, and she is courageous to go through with it, I just can't stand her making the decision and then booing about being scared - it reminds me of that teary Ensign in Red Squad from 'Valiant,' an episode in which the Cadets take over the asylum and run a ship behind Dominion lines.
That and her assault on Leland put her in a very poor light this episode - as much as it's supposed to be something we like to see, Leland's decking means nothing other than lack of self-control and discipline, suggesting it's alright to do such a thing if you have a good enough reason. That's the way of the jungle, yes: you hurt me, so I'm gonna hurt you. But it's not the Starfleet way, and any organisation in which a subordinate struck a superior officer would take it very seriously. Well, we know they do since they came down ridiculously hard on her for 'mutinying' against Georgiou in the first episode, imprisonment for life not fitting with Starfleet any more than ignoring such an infraction does! In this case we can guess that Leland just took it and didn't report the action, but how did Spock know about it? I can't imagine Pike accepting such behaviour, and to me it's just another worrying trend in the series, when discipline and punishment are deemphasised because that's how our society seems to be going (like decriminalising drugs or the TV licence fee - almost as if, well, people are doing this stuff so we may as well stop trying to stop them!). But really, it does look bad for the organisation, even though Leland is scum and probably deserved what he got, that we're supposed to feel cheered by such an action is very uncomfortable and only makes me like Burnham less. Not only does she break down into emotional tempests all the time, she doesn't have control and is fast becoming a repugnant character.
When we finally get to the heroic moment of Burnham going through intense and mortal agony (and it is uncomfortable to watch and to see all the crew watching from their various positions - note Nilsson replacing Airiam at her station, so it's nice that they're not getting rid of the actress even though they chucked her earlier character), and the mysterious Red Angel is captured, yes, it is a good twist that it's her Mum, and a good cliffhanger making you wait to find out what's going on. When I first saw her I thought maybe it was Owosekun, then I thought Georgiou, then maybe a relation of Georgiou and it wasn't until Burnham spoke that I realised it was her Mother (and credit for Spock for having faith to keep the others from stopping the experiment - they all knew the idea was to temporarily kill Burnham, so why get upset about it, especially Georgiou who has seen, and done, far worse things!). One thing I did not get at all was when Leland is stabbed in the eye by his own ship. Huh? Why would you even have a needle in an optical piece of equipment, that was weird, and then that it wasn't explained what he was doing was also weird. It's easy to assume that it was 'Control' and this altered AI has infiltrated the S31 ships so there's more danger there, but why, why and why?
Finally, one little nugget worth mentioning is the series' approach to time travel. So often nowadays we're supposed to accept that time travel supposedly would split you off into an alternate reality, and every journey in time would be to a subtly different alternate, thus dispensing with so many of Trek's great time travel stories, or classic films like 'Back To The Future' - the point has always been that we can restore the past or save the future if we change something or restore it to the 'correct' version. That our time stream matters, rather than just being a permutation of infinite versions, none of which have any claim to being the 'right one.' Again, there are moral implications here, that nothing really matters and every version of everything exists somewhere. All to say that I was glad when Spock mentions the Grandfather paradox of Burnham not existing if she doesn't come back to prevent her death, which sounds to me like they're going with the traditional Trek approach to time travel, that things can be altered and restored, and that our 'reality' is important, so well done there. Of course that's a lot to extrapolate from one comment, but coming from Spock, an authoritative scientific figure (if not yet), it means something (I just wish he'd thrown in a mention of his own people once denying time travel, as a reference to the Vulcans of 'Enterprise'!), even if it turned out the Angel wasn't Burnham after all, thus negating his theory. I do hope they stay with the traditional Trek view, after all it is all fiction and theory, not reality and fact, and it's better to stick to the proven rules of Trek, even though they mostly don't on this series, which is why it suffers.
**
One of Our Planets Is Missing
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (One of Our Planets Is Missing)
There are some things Trek isn't suited to: complete serialisation, short seasons, action films. And animation. We've been getting a lot of what Trek isn't suited to lately, which is one reason I've found it difficult to go back to 'TAS,' the other being a lack of enjoyment. And if you don't really enjoy 'Yesteryear,' the most lauded (perhaps the only one to be so), of this series, then what hope is there for the rest? Still, I'm surprised it had been almost half a year since I last watched one, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise indeed, the most authentic so far. It's very much like an episode of 'TOS,' only with the addition of the more outlandish three-limbed Lt. Arex sitting next to Sulu, and a visit to a part of the engine room we never saw before. The story concerns a vast cloud, sentient, and consuming planets, and that must be thwarted from doing so to a very inhabited human colony in its path. Very V'Ger of 'The Motion Picture,' and though a couple of episodes of 'TOS' often get the credit for inspiring the debut Trek film, this must also have been heavily in mind.
Spock even mind melds with the being and it is through this ability to communicate that all it made right, an excellent lesson. It's made better by Majel Barrett resuming her usual role as computer voice which the cloud uses to communicate, something extremely Trek-like. The use of science and knowledge, tempered with hard decision-making by Kirk as he takes everything into consideration and is prepared to sacrifice this living creature to save the many colonists is also very accurate to the style, right down to Spock and McCoy providing differing viewpoints for Kirk to weigh up. I suspect if a story like this were made now, and perhaps even in Picard's day on the Enterprise-D, it would be all about the creature, the lives of people, unknowing and without a say, sacrificed for its wellbeing, whereas Kirk is more concerned about the many of his own kind. It's a victory then, whichever viewpoint you subscribe to, that a nonviolent solution is found and all is made well!
James Doohan once again performs admirably in multiple roles: as Scotty, as Arex and as the planet's Governor, Bob Wesley, and each of the characters is part of the adventure from their positions on the Bridge. It all feels very reassuring and comfortable. Maybe watching 'DSC' has helped me appreciate it more, what with its complete opposite: of discomfort and simplistic storytelling. But this cartoon had far more of the Trek spirit in it and it's good to hear those familiar voices again. For me, this is a proper Trek episode, and whether low expectations and exposure to much recent and unreliable Trek made it seem so much better, or whether I'd have come to the same conclusion regardless of what else I'd watched recently, I have to recommend this one, a story with real stakes, hard choices, nothing too wacky, and the right usage of the characters. It makes me want to see more…
***
There are some things Trek isn't suited to: complete serialisation, short seasons, action films. And animation. We've been getting a lot of what Trek isn't suited to lately, which is one reason I've found it difficult to go back to 'TAS,' the other being a lack of enjoyment. And if you don't really enjoy 'Yesteryear,' the most lauded (perhaps the only one to be so), of this series, then what hope is there for the rest? Still, I'm surprised it had been almost half a year since I last watched one, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise indeed, the most authentic so far. It's very much like an episode of 'TOS,' only with the addition of the more outlandish three-limbed Lt. Arex sitting next to Sulu, and a visit to a part of the engine room we never saw before. The story concerns a vast cloud, sentient, and consuming planets, and that must be thwarted from doing so to a very inhabited human colony in its path. Very V'Ger of 'The Motion Picture,' and though a couple of episodes of 'TOS' often get the credit for inspiring the debut Trek film, this must also have been heavily in mind.
Spock even mind melds with the being and it is through this ability to communicate that all it made right, an excellent lesson. It's made better by Majel Barrett resuming her usual role as computer voice which the cloud uses to communicate, something extremely Trek-like. The use of science and knowledge, tempered with hard decision-making by Kirk as he takes everything into consideration and is prepared to sacrifice this living creature to save the many colonists is also very accurate to the style, right down to Spock and McCoy providing differing viewpoints for Kirk to weigh up. I suspect if a story like this were made now, and perhaps even in Picard's day on the Enterprise-D, it would be all about the creature, the lives of people, unknowing and without a say, sacrificed for its wellbeing, whereas Kirk is more concerned about the many of his own kind. It's a victory then, whichever viewpoint you subscribe to, that a nonviolent solution is found and all is made well!
James Doohan once again performs admirably in multiple roles: as Scotty, as Arex and as the planet's Governor, Bob Wesley, and each of the characters is part of the adventure from their positions on the Bridge. It all feels very reassuring and comfortable. Maybe watching 'DSC' has helped me appreciate it more, what with its complete opposite: of discomfort and simplistic storytelling. But this cartoon had far more of the Trek spirit in it and it's good to hear those familiar voices again. For me, this is a proper Trek episode, and whether low expectations and exposure to much recent and unreliable Trek made it seem so much better, or whether I'd have come to the same conclusion regardless of what else I'd watched recently, I have to recommend this one, a story with real stakes, hard choices, nothing too wacky, and the right usage of the characters. It makes me want to see more…
***
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