Insurgence

DVD, Smallville S2 (Insurgence)

Now this was one episode I remembered favourably, but didn't realise how much I'd enjoy it - it was almost like a 'Smallville' film, with generous production value, great use of the characters and locations, and filled with a pounding, dramatic pace right from the opening scene where Lex sinisterly bawls out an employee (played by Paul McGillion, later Dr. Beckett of 'Stargate Atlantis,' and not the only 'Stargate' name in the episode!), then proceeds to tear apart the Luthor Mansion for the bugs he's realised his Father has installed to spy on him. There was an energy and a verve to the direction of the piece from beginning to end, and one that kept the attention rapt on what was happening with no scenes of dead space, no time wasted. Unfortunately, this means Chloe and Pete are entirely excluded, and this could be seen as a prototype for the typical episode later on when it was all about Clark and all about Metropolis to the detriment of the other characters and the small town setting. But right here it was a breath of fresh air, especially after some considerably basic stories that were very much in the Season 1 vein of meteor freaks and small town or 'High School' troubles. This one, in contrast, was like some of the more adventurous stories from that year, the ones where they did try something different, where they upped the ante, and made it much closer to Clark's Super destiny than it had been.

I love the folksy episodes, that's where the series was generally at its best, but when they were able to break out of the mould and yet also keep the character work and the intelligent writing, that was where the series could fly - we saw that in episodes like 'Zero,' which were among the best of the best, and this one follows that style with developments galore and the strong culmination of various character arcs or setups for the future. I have to say, before I forget, though, why did Martha keep the octagonal ship key hidden from her husband and son? More to the point, I hope she washed it before putting it in the flour tin! Who knows what alien microbes could be on it, not to mention the grubby hands of Pyne (if that was his real name), the insurgent of the title, or at least the main one! Was it because she was afraid Clark would fly off and fulfil his destiny elsewhere, was she trying to protect him until she'd had time to think about what it all meant? I can't remember, but I look forward to seeing what happens now the season has truly got going! Martha has a sizeable presence in this story and it's all about her simple little PA job with Lionel becoming something more as the man oozes with foul charisma and his diabolical methods of ensnaring what he wants.

It was a low thing to do, to take Martha away from her husband on their very anniversary (a Sunday, too!), whisking her away to Metropolis to present her with a promotion and a jewel-encrusted watch to seal the deal in her new city office. You'd think he'd have realised he was pushing her into an impossible position, but he's never been averse to taking risks and it shows how little he truly understands this good, country woman. Her family comes first, even above the opportunity to realise her full potential in business, with all the money, prestige and satisfaction that would bring. It's been a fascinating journey to see Martha given this chance to shine, able to bring in her qualifications and catch sight of a life that she thought she'd sacrificed for ever for the simpler existence as a farmer's wife and all the community involvement we know she's had in the town. Lionel is devilish as he hovers over her shoulder whispering these promises of a golden future for her and at a time when she's already conflicted about what this is doing to her marriage. The fact that Lionel brought her to the offices on a Sunday makes me wonder, and this was a theory I developed as I watched: did Lionel actually own Pyne, was he secretly pulling the strings? Because what better way to bring Martha onto his side than with sympathy and sharing the bond of going through a life or death situation together.

Lex hired the spy guys (including Colin Cunningham, Major Davis in 'Stargate SG-1' - shame there were no scenes for him with Chloe's Dad as he was also in that series!), led by 'Kern,' but it's Pyne who has made a previous arrangement with the others in the group that they've gone along with despite working together before. I love how Kern is the consummate professional surveillance guy who knows all the tech, even when he's being held captive he keeps pointing out things that only an expert would know, until Pyne executes him. It was a thrilling twist that the plan changes, and Lex' plot to do exactly as had been done to him becomes a desperate bid for the survival of his Father and Martha. This also plays in beautifully to events earlier in the episode where once again Clark and Lex fail to read the situation and realise that the best way to make amends to Jonathan for missing his anniversary picnic (great reference back to last year when Clark had his house party while they were gone!), is not to get another Luthor involved! We'd seen it before, in Season 1, Lex wanting so much to be accepted by the Kents and yet Jonathan always finding fault, only this time he isn't so needy, he's angry, with his Father, perhaps with all Fathers, and when another good deed is slapped away he stands up to Jonathan and is showing the subtle steps down the dark path of destruction, much more believably and intelligently written than later seasons would be in forming his nature.

At this stage he's still good Lex at heart, he does bad things, like bugging LuthorCorp, but only because he's learning these ways of industrial espionage from his main teacher, his Father. But he says to the guy at the beginning he's not going to ruin him as his Father would have, and he's eager to help Jonathan, but the biggest and best moment that shows his goodness remains intact despite how fragile it's becoming: when Jonathan sheepishly eats humble pie and shows up at the Mansion to request a helicopter ride to Metropolis after seeing what's happening on the news (I was wrong, the Kents do have a TV in the living room, we just never see them use it, usually!). He lets Jonathan stew for a few seconds, then cuts him off before he can make the full request. He does wait a moment, but then he wholeheartedly jumps in and saves him from the awkwardness, and I loved it! Jonathan gets to show his angry side again and you can see how they were building towards him one day having his heart attack (as we've seen the impetuous rage within him on occasion), he's not happy about Martha being swept off on their anniversary, such an important day, and it is unreasonable for Lionel to make her work unless it was for just that reason of getting between husband and wife, and she does behave rather selfishly saying her work is just as much about the future of the family as the sacrifices he's made for the farm, but is it really? It's her way of expressing herself and fulfilling potential, but she accepted the farming life that Jonathan offered so it's like she's going back on that so it's right that her husband should feel aggrieved.

When he first sees the news and is almost whipped into a panic and rushes for the door you wonder what he's going to do and it's like seeing Clark's own impetuous response calms him down a bit and gets him to talk some sense into his son that is also giving voice to what he needs to hear himself: don't go rushing in and mess things up even more. Clark being there was like a safety valve for him to check himself and remember his role, not to charge off and bawl out the police or whatever he was heading toward. I don't know what Lex thought about Clark not coming and how that was explained away, because obviously he can get there quicker on foot, and you have to presume Lex and Jonathan came together, but in all the confusion it's probably not something that was thought of unless they talked about it on the way and Jonathan would have had to make up an excuse, like he'd already sent Clark to the city for something before they'd heard the news. For that matter why was Lex sitting in his Mansion, but then I suppose he didn't want to incriminate himself (as he almost did later when Jonathan caught him on the phone to the kidnappers), and kept his distance until he saw he'd have to go. Then of course you have that same scene we've witnessed before of Lex feeling that rejection from his cold Father and seeing the care and warmth in the Kents as the family embraces at the end.

Clark gets to almost be Superman since he not only goes to the roof of the Daily Planet (I think that's the first use of that set which would get much play over the years - the same goes for the LuthorCorp office, though I can't recall if we'd already seen it yet or not), but also takes a run-up and launches himself across the gap to smash into a window in the LuthorCorp building in heroic style. I don't know why he had to show himself to the goons instead of just knocking them out without showing his face, but he is still amateurish at this hero stuff. My big question is whether Lionel had regained his sight by this time, because he never seems too concerned, another reason why I wondered if he'd instigated the whole thing. If he could bug Lex into undercutting LexCorp's deal or whatever he did, might he not also be aware Lex had found the bugs and know that he'd try and hire a team to do the same to him, and so plan this insurgency from within that group? He claims not to see the octagonal disk and doesn't seem to notice Martha's concern over the file on Clark, but did he? It's difficult to know.

It's also difficult to know what was going on with Lana's little subplot, the C-story I suppose it could be called, after the A-story of the hostage situation and B-story of the failed anniversary. Clark gives her all the encouragement she needs before she goes to meet with Henry Small's wife, and it was lovely to see them so warm and positive around each other with so much negativity to come in season after season, but it wasn't enough to counter Mrs. Small and her viperous attack on Lana. The poisonous thing is it's done in such a clever way without any sense of malice or deviousness, but Lana just isn't old enough to appreciate what's going on or react quickly enough to stamp down her own authority and confidence that she could get to know her biological Father. Mrs. Small claims she doesn't want Lana hurt because her husband is so flighty and doesn't stick to things, which shows what a low opinion she has of his work and family life, she uses Lana's own good nature and desire to please and win over, to make her doubt it could ever work. Lana thought she was going in to try and win this woman over, but there was never any prospect of that: she had her entrenched position and doesn't want Lana involved. It was a hard truth to learn, but you can't win with some people, especially if you go in hoping goodness and kindness will make them look favourably on your wishes.

I was undeniably impressed with this one, liking it more than I had before, enjoying the definition in the characters, the interplay between them and the intelligence and creativity in the script that squeezed in so much and yet left so much to develop, the kind of things that worked so well in the series, as opposed to the romantic gnashing of teeth and accusing misery of so much of the middle seasons of the series. It was robust, it was adult-oriented, eschewing the students and petty little worries like villains who are going to kill off other students - the scariest moments are when one of the main characters, especially Martha, is put in danger, and this got her there, and in a logical and grounded way that was as much about the difficult moral situation she's put in as it was the physical danger. The scope of the filming was terrific with all those police, cars and citizens that made it feel huge and film-like. They introduce the police woman that would return later, building the pieces of Metropolis slowly but surely. It's not the fault of these episodes that what came later derailed so much of the series and lost this verve and dynamism that twanged through the episode like an electric guitar. In short, it was one of the best episodes so far this season, level-pegging with 'Lineage' as most impressive, and a reminder that Season 2 still had something to offer - not as consistently as the first, but well worth going through when you get drama like this!

***

Hot Metal

DVD, BUGS S1 (Hot Metal)

What stood out to me most of all in this one was how much wild goose chasing there was. So many times characters attempt something, it's all set up to that point… and then they fail, or they're diverted, or cut short. It was so strange! It starts, obviously, at the beginning, where terrorist-for-hire Joseph Da Silva attempts to break into Millennium Metals to steal 'R6,' a highly efficient superconductor with special properties developed by ex-employee Charlesworth. He goes to all this trouble of getting one of the security guards on side to get intel on the place and let him in. He uses this incredible piece of technology that can neutralise noise so as to make it possible to set off an explosion without alerting security, he pulls all this off without a hitch only for the guards to become suspicious and head down to the vault or wherever it is they keep their precious metals, in these cages or safes, and Da Silva is foiled. The teaser ends rather lacklustre (especially considering all those gold bars around), with the villain running off into the night. It's not the first time we've seen a failed attempt at burglary for a unique intellectual (or otherwise), property, in fact it happened in just the preceding episode, so right away I'm feeling a sense of repetition here, and the failure to end the teaser in an exciting way doesn't give the episode the zing that it needed and is expected from the series.

The next failure happens when our team turn up as specialists to find out what happened, how, and to protect the R6, which they end up having to do by stealth since the neighbours, some other big company, have a policy of not giving out their security footage to any old Australian in a leather jacket who walks in and tries to start schmoozing the secretary! That seems like a reasonable policy, it's not like our people are the police, they're not obligated by law to hand it over. So they have to steal it, and Ed's fine with that, he gets to do some climbing up a building, which is always fun for him, except this time he has to hang around twiddling his thumbs, which for him is far worse than any danger (although later in the episode I'm sure he wished he could be back twiddling thumbs!), waiting for Ros' program to download the forbidden footage that will show what happened in the case of the silent explosion - a tangent: I was thinking as Da Silva's assault was happening that even if he could turn off the sound, there would still be vibrations running through the building, so I was pleased that this is actually commented on by the security guards, putting it down to some kind of Earth tremor. I also liked the moment in the teaser where Da Silva demonstrates his sound neutraliser to partner in crime, Charlesworth, where we see the explosion, but all we hear are the spit of sparks landing outside the blast radius and the crackling of fire, since he obviously doesn't have an anti-sound to cover those noises.

Actually, while I'm on the subject of the noise destructor, or whatever it was called (I don't remember it being given a specific name), and though it may be silly to pick holes in something so clearly out of all reality, but how would that work? It's all very well pointing something at an explosion and cancelling out the sound there (after all, that tech has come into fruition with noise-cancelling headphones, so it's not as far-fetched as it may have seemed - not to mention directional speakers that can only be heard if you're in a direct line with them, silent to those outside that specific area), but we don't live in a 2D world, the sound would be travelling away from the centre in every direction and clearly he doesn't have little satellite dishes set up all around the explosion, and above and below, so some sound would surely be heard. It's one of those things you just have to accept, and maybe we can get around it somewhat by saying that the loudest of the sound was dealt with since the worst part of it would be travelling away from the solid material that was being blasted, back towards the dish. The extremes of suspension of disbelief have to be taken to new heights with the tag scene at the end, which, while no doubt one of the more humorous close-outs for an episode, is even more silly: they somehow have just the 'resonant frequency' of Ed's voice and so silence him as he goes on about mountaineering, but a voice isn't made up of one tone so I don't see how it would be possible, as funny as it is!

Okay, so we've had both heroes and villains cut short from doing what they set out to do, although technically not so with Ros' gadget as she managed to get enough of the tape recording to get the explosion - it's just at the time it seems like they hadn't got what they set out for when their espionage is ended prematurely thanks to a changing of the tapes earlier than expected - I actually like it when a plan in these of sort of stories in film and TV goes wrong as it shows how well the heroes can improvise, or that they are in fact human, capable of making mistakes, as seen again in the hotel when Ros and Beckett break into the room next to Da Silva's, but after listening in for anyone inside, when Ros opens the door she finds a shocked maid! Very funny. The next time plans are cut short is when Da Silva goes to kill Wallace for being a liability, turning up in a white coat at the hospital and assumed to be a doctor. It's only because Beckett got there first to bug Wallace's stuff that Da Silva can't hang around to do the job. Note how weedy Wallace the security guard is - we already know he has no moral backbone because he was willing to go along with this villain against the trust that his employers had given him in the position of protecting their assets, but he's taken out with one blow to the shoulder blades, hospitalised, apparently quite seriously, and later goes to Da Silva like a crybaby snivelling he never said he was going to hurt him! And yet Beckett gets a similar punch to the back from Da Silva and he's immediately up and about chasing after the guy!

Ed and Beckett are practically interchangeable in this story, perhaps one reason why they both wore red as if to highlight this similarity? Ed wears a more orange red top while Beckett has the darker red and it's a more distinguished shirt, but they're usually portrayed in different colours (Ros is in purple this time, for example). Ed gets the easy assignment of hanging off the building, but as if not to be outdone, Beckett gets down to the lower floor of the hotel by climbing out the window above, much to Ros' incredulity. Was Beckett showing off to her, was he trying to show that he was fine, as he said, after the surprise beating he was handed from Da Silva, or, and this is more likely, did he simply believe that was the quickest way to get down there (what happened to the fear of heights in 'Manna From Heaven'? Or was it not that high up, I can't remember how many staircases we see), and this was the kind of thing he did in his past career? It's certainly not the first time he'd leapt over a balcony in a hurry as that's exactly how he escaped the Hive operatives at his apartment in 'Out of The Hive'! Beckett also gets to do a lot of the running around while Ed is, well, tied up, shall we say, for much of the episode. He's usually the helicopter guy, but this time it's Ros, along with Georgina Kent, their liaison at Millennium, who go up in the chopper to track the R6 (Ros even showing her rifle proficiency by firing a bug onto Vermeer's secure truck, which looked a lot like Major Cardenas' ugly truck from 'Stealth' - could even have been the same vehicle with a new lick of paint).

Beckett and Ros chase after Da Silva and once again it's a wild goose chase and leads to nothing, the wily villain leaving Wallace's bugged bag right on top of Ros' yellow car as if to show he's not to be trifled with. Then a bit later, when Ed's tracked Charlesworth to an abandoned mill of some kind, an old building next to a river that's being used as his hideout and lab, he's caught, but instead of being executed as Da Silva had shown himself to be quite capable of doing to Wallace, the pair leave him tied up in front of a small quantity of R6 and some motion detecting beams that, if broken, will play the tone 'R6 loves to hear,' blasting the whole place, and Ed with it, to smithereens. The cruel side of this capture is that the answering machine of the phone will also play that tone so Da Silva can set it off any time he wants. At the time it seemed like a daftly elaborate way to put a character in jeopardy without reason when it would make more sense to kill Ed and be done with it. Until later, when Ros and Beckett catch up with him and he uses Ed's position as leverage, and then it all made sense - he's the sort to have contingency plans, a proper deadly type who almost seems as if he could be too much for the Gizmos team to handle. Charlesworth, on the other hand, is much softer and also quite naive - just like Elverson in 'All Under Control,' he wants to profit from his invention, but is used by a killer. The R6 has incredible potential as a weapon - just send anyone you don't like something made of it then play the correct frequency and blow them up, and yet Charlesworth claims he just wants to make money, he doesn't want to kill people!

Adding to the sense of time-wasting in the episode, Ros goes to all the trouble of putting in countless bugs, sensors and cameras to protect the R6 at Millennium Metals, but forgets to check it's still there, and it isn't! Even the villains don't know what's going on as Vermeer, the company's boss, a supposedly straight arrow, has stolen the R6 for himself out of the blue! It's chaos and no one seems to have a clue - even Kent doesn't believe Beckett's warnings at first, getting shot for her trouble and taking a tumble down some stairs. Beckett seems to show her some attention - at one point he says he'll meet Ros at the car with no obvious reason for why he couldn't go with her, unless he wanted to speak privately to Kent. Then there's the fact she's one of the few clients to actually be invited to Gizmos, their headquarters. I know Lennox was there in the previous episode, but he wasn't invited over after the job was complete and yet there's Georgina Kent at the end hanging out with them. Beckett also shows his affection for Ros in the episode and you definitely get a sense of deepening friendship between them in the concern she shows for him and reassurance from him that he's fine. It's not overt, but considering where the series went later it's not that strange to see the inklings in these early episodes.

There's a stronger connection between Kent and the series than might be apparent, or more specifically, the actress who played her, Caroline Loncq. In the mid-to-late 2000s when I was really into the series after its triumphant return on DVD I created several issues of a fan magazine, 'Bureau 2,' and I had planned to get in touch with as many actors who had starred or appeared in the series as I could, to see if I could create a bank of information as there was so little out there other than some occasional coverage in TV or sci-fi magazines of the time it was on. I didn't end up contacting that many people (met Craig McLachlan, contacted Jesse Birdsall and Jan Harvey, no reply from Steven Houghton or Paula Hunt), but I'd heard in online discussions that Caroline Loncq might possibly play Ros in a revival! I'd heard about this potential revival from McLachlan himself in 2007 (either it was a mischievous joke by him or something that was sadly abandoned), and so I wrote to Loncq in the form of a short interview, potentially for an issue of 'Bureau 2' that I never got around to making. So here is the exclusive on that:

Firstly, I asked Caroline if she actually did the stunt where Kent rolls down the stairs after being shot. She replied, "No, I didn't do the stunt myself, thankfully, as it was a metal staircase. In fact I worked recently [this was written in 2008] with the stunt coordinator of that episode (on 'Affinity' for ITV), and once we'd established where we knew each other from, which took some time as 'BUGS' was a while ago now, he reminded me that the stunt was a bit of a nightmare from his point of view as the staircase was steep and made of metal. Which of course he didn't know until the night. I seem to remember freeze-framing the fall on my video and think there are a few frames when you can see the stunt woman's padding through the jacket. She was much shorter than me, I recall, but, ah, the magic of film: when you cut it together you don't notice a thing. I think I started to fall then she did the roll on another take, then I picked it up at the bottom. It was at night at Three Mills in Bow and the fire stuff I remember looking very impressive on the night." Clearly she was an eloquent and thoughtful person to include so much detail - not to say anything bad about Birdsall, because he's great, but when I wrote to him he admitted his memory was none too good and the series was a long time ago!

My second question was how much time she got to spend up in the helicopter to get the chase scenes: "I recall spending at least half a day up in a helicopter, which was great. It all takes a while as each time you do a pass you have to fly back to where you started, and there is a great deal of shouting over headphones above the noise of the rotor blades as instructions are relayed. Helicopters cost a fortune so I'm sure we did it all in one day, though I do remember that it lasted for ages and I got the most amazing views of London to look at." Again, far more than a single sentence reply, which I was very pleased with at the time! My final main question was on her memories of working with the stars of the series: "Jesse Birdsall was a nice guy, very into his record company which reissued old blues tracks. I remember him telling me about trying to find the descendants of the musicians who had made the original recordings so that he could pay them royalties, which endeared him to me. We listened to great blues in his trailer on one of the hanging around days. Craig McLachlan was delightful, really good at his job and Jaye I knew a little bit already and have always liked. We probably talked about dogs since I had, and still have, a lurcher, and she had a hound of some description, greyhound I think. All three of them had been filming the series for a while so they were well in the swing of it and I remember it being a happy job with a nice atmosphere where it was easy to get on with the work and have a bit of a laugh at the same time."

A lovely depiction of the 'BUGS' production behind the scenes which there is so little material about, so I'm glad to be able to share these little insights with those who are interested. The most important question I had, which I left till the end was about the proposed return of the series and whether rumours that she was up for the part of Ros, were true: "I haven't heard anything about a new production of 'BUGS.' Your spies are partly right in that I was in the running for the part of Ros in the original series, but it went to Jaye and she did a great job of it. I'm sure if they did do some more they'd keep the original team together, though if they wanted me for a long running villain, or heroine, I'd be there at the drop of a hat!" Reading this back now I wish I'd got in touch with more of the actors who appeared in the series if they were as kind to respond like this as Caroline was, for which I'll always be impressed (she even signed a photo of her character which I'd taken from a screenshot of the episode!). I must admit I thought it was a strange rumour that Ros might be played by someone else (especially of a different ethnicity!), but this explains it - she was one of the people who went up for the role originally. As much as I wanted the series to come back at that time in 2007/2008, I'm not sure I'd want to see it revived now as too much time has passed and modern TV would probably demand much more swearing and questionable content, so perhaps best to leave 'BUGS' as the fairly innocent, yet exciting drama it was, though I do wish they'd had a two-part special back then to wrap up the cliffhanger ending!

I've never done an interview piece as part of a review before, maybe it doesn't fit in, but my reviews are more like commentaries than typical review material and I've always thought it would be good to get these little nuggets of information out there somewhere and this seemed the best way to present it. I hope Caroline's career is still progressing well. As for the series, and particularly this episode, I feel it was going reasonably well, but at the same time these middle episodes were the relative lull before the series improved with the last couple of stories. It's not that 'Hot Metal' was in any way bad, it was in fact quite good, enjoyable, and as always it's just a joy to see the characters interact. But it didn't quite have the tension it needed, other than the moment Ed has taken matters into his own hands and is in the midst of making his escape, climbing along the handily placed pipe above those laser beams, while the sound of a phone ringing hasn't been so sinister since, oh, 'Assassins Inc' when those villains used a bomb activated by phone! One question that has always plagued me ever since seeing the episode, however, is what did Ros say to Charlesworth when she had him by the collar and we see her speaking to him in the background? I don't know if even a lipreader would be able to get anything out of that since she's side on, too! I imagine it's something like 'if anything's happened to Ed, you're done for, mate,' but we'll never know. One thing that seems clear is that they must have created the title montage after filming this episode because it includes a lot of imagery from here, and whether it's just the familiarity of seeing those clips over and over, or not, they were especially evocative of the characters - indeed, until the DVD release they were a tantalising glimpse of a first season I'd never seen.

***

Visage

DVD, Smallville S2 (Visage)

I knew Whitney was coming back, and I knew Tina Greer would return, but for some reason I hadn't conjoined the two ideas together so although I remembered the only time we see the real Whitney was in the teaser where he's getting blown up in Indonesia, I had no idea who was masquerading as him, which is funny since I can't remember anyone else with the power to change their shape to impersonate people! At first I thought I was going to like it because it's the Whitney episode and I always liked the guy, and this was his last proper appearance, apart from a small role in flashback during Season 3, if I remember correctly, but then it did drag out his guilt-spreading on Lana so that she feels forced into pretending everything's fine again when in reality they'd broken up a while ago - a good line about losing parts of his memory, that seemed like a convenient excuse for things to go back to how they were, although in reality it was a convenient excuse to explain away any inconsistency in his behaviour or memory. Post traumatic stress disorder is mentioned in the episode, I suppose it was still a relatively new concept at the time, but if anyone had PTSD it was poor Whitney's Mum who not only goes through the emotional highs of her missing-in-action boy returning home, only to be terrorised by him and held hostage, including being witness to a savage murder by baseball bat right in front of her eyes, she also has to deal with the reality afterwards that her Whitney is really dead. Perhaps the closure helped, but she must have been absolutely distraught after the events of this episode, especially since she'd lost her husband last season!

I don't think we'd ever met Whitney's Mum before, so it was a sad way to introduce a member of an existing character's family, and an especially cruel and brutal way to treat her, too. The extreme violence and grisly nature of this dangerous psycho made the episode quite uncomfortable to watch in places, even though they didn't show as much as I can imagine, enough was implied that I was put off. The series has always been rather in your face with gore or shocks, at least to the extent that it had turned a corner in the early 2000s compared to the kind of TV I'd watched before. Perhaps it's not as vicious or visualised as modern TV is, but that seems to be the nature of all media: to get more and more excessive in what it shows or portrays to the extent that I do wonder where it will end. Even leaving aside the violence, the creepiness of Tina's singleminded pursuit of Lana was also most horrible and though in her first appearance ('X-Ray'), she was all about sharing Lana's 'perfect' life, as she saw it, she takes things to a whole other, disturbing level this time that was most unpleasant to see. I like it when they bring back characters, especially ones who survived Clark's opposition (I always think of bug boy as a good return because he actually turned his life around ten years after his first appearance), but it's a shame that they chose to bring Whitney back by not bringing him back.

I don't feel the character got his dues, much like Pete (who also returned for a one-off episode later on, and who also wasn't used as effectively as his character could have been when he was a regular or when he returned), but at least in this episode there's some clear appreciation of those that go off and join the military to fight for their country against the evils of the world. Jonathan Kent was especially forward in his views that Clark should put aside personal feelings and support the returning hero by attending his Welcome Home party, and of course Lana feels obligated to go along with his wishes, at least until later in the episode when he's pushing her to move in, get married, and so on. She's a good person, full of compassion and good qualities, but there comes a tipping point where even her positive outlook and kindly nature are pushed to the limit. I love that even after they blow up about that and sly Whitney asks for the famous necklace with the meteor rock centre, she's only too happy to give it to him even though it does mean a lot to her. It's one thing she can do for him. In reality it's Tina and she knows it's a weapon she can use against Clark. But she doesn't know all his secrets, and flinging him down into the storm cellar wearing this Kryptonite pendant is actually the saving of him: in a very cool twist, the normally unresponsive ship powers up, as if sensing its nemesis nearby and neutralises any and all Kryptonite in the vicinity, freeing Clark, in a great sequence for being unexpected and yet believable that it could happen.

For some reason I had the strange thought that the necklace had already been rendered clear and inert, but I may be thinking of later seasons, perhaps Lana has it on again some time, I just don't know. It was a good tie back to the pilot when Clark was put in a similarly incapacitated state thanks to the necklace and Whitney (the real one that time), and there's an impression of the first 'Superman' film when he's thrown into a swimming pool with Kryptonite round his neck. The biggest connection, however, was to 'Superman III' where the Man of Steel is split into two and the good and bad sides fight each other in a scrapyard (giving new definition to the 'scrap' part!), because here we have two Clarks fight each other, and although it's not a scrapyard and there's no car crusher (nor peanuts - I wish there'd been a scene where Tina as Whitney flicks peanuts!), it is a back alley and it has that same rundown look with all kinds of debris with which to batter each other. Completing the gory style of the episode, Tina is defeated by charging chest first into a metal spike that runs her through, and dying. I wonder how Clark was going to explain that one to the authorities! For that matter, if Tina had bones infused with Kryptonite shouldn't even going near her have made him sick?

Lana isn't the only one feeling under pressure from her 'man,' as Lex and Helen have their differences when he apparently catches her meeting with Lionel and accepting a large payment. Now, I don't remember exactly what happened in Season 3, but I was under the impression she really was working for Lionel, so was she acting huffy so as to get Lex to trust her even more after he'd clearly found out her secret plot, or was it as she said and she turned his Father down but he sent her the money anyway, perhaps knowing Lex would be checking up on her? It's a confusing mix of bluff and double-bluff, and maybe even triple-bluff, with Lionel, but it's just as possible that he would be turned down yet would try again in future to get her to work for him against Lex, he's certainly arrogant enough, I just can't remember. Lex is desperate enough that he opens up about the wall he's built around himself, thinking he's finally found someone he truly cares for, which makes for an emotional ending to the episode, though it's an upbeat ending in many ways: Lex and Helen make up, Clark wonders if he'd put himself on the line like Whitney did if he hadn't got his powers and is reassured by his Father that he would, and Lana comes to him full of regret and self-recrimination, believing that it's all her fault that everyone seems to leave her: her parents, Nell, now Whitney - it was all quite affecting, and while the episode had dipped in my estimation thanks to all the brutality and creepiness, it went back up thanks to the last few scenes.

It's also worth saying that the main cast did a fine job of portraying Tina being them, because while I immediately knew whenever it wasn't the real person, whether that be Lana in the corridors at school (I guess they had no CCTV there and no one close enough to hear Pete being flung headfirst into the lockers by the extra strength Tina had - so weird to see such a slight, doll-like figure heft a chunky bloke up against the wall and fling him all the way down the corridor!), Jonathan fixing his tractor, or Chloe (even though we see her change into her), and Clark, too, they carried off that evil glint and self-satisfied smugness really well. The actress who played Tina didn't actually get to do much in the episode at all since it was mainly Whitney! A downside of the episode is that Chloe and Lana chatting together in their bedroom does turn the series into girly soap opera, and I much prefer when they're being friends rather than confidants, but that's just my perspective. And I will say this for the episode, it integrated the cast better than some this season, even if this is another not to feature Lionel (other than in photos). I still can't help but feel it was a missed opportunity to deal with Whitney better, but then again what would they have done with him if he had come back? I suppose it would have been nicer to have a clean break with Lana, but then this isn't called 'Niceville.'

***

Et In Arcadia Ego, Part 1

DVD, Star Trek: Picard S1 (Et In Arcadia Ego, Part 1)

Brent Spiner returns to 'Star Trek.' Again. That should be the headline for this episode and is possibly the biggest (maybe even only), draw for the penultimate episode of the debut season of 'Picard.' Spiner has had almost as many comebacks as William Shatner was planned to have, except in Spiner's case he did. Come back, I mean. Each of the 'TNG' films was a return to the franchise that made his name, but in those days there was no chance he was going to go back to Trek TV as he'd become a film star, but whatever happened I feel that he never had the success outside of Trek that compared with the adored position he had within it. And so come back he did. Even after the final 'TNG' feature, 'Nemesis,' bombed and ended the Prime Universe in filmland to this day (back when Trek didn't even actually have a 'Prime Universe,' it was simply the true timeline), he still returned to the then-current Trek series, 'Enterprise,' for a well received trilogy as an ancestor of Dr. Noonian Soong, Data's creator. He even recorded a single line for the 'Enterprise' finale for Data to say over the comm system. It was a real coup to get Spiner on 'Enterprise' and at the time I felt for sure that that was going to be his last contribution. Until they showed that he'd be back in 'Picard,' and not only that, but rather than fobbing us off with relatives, he'd be the one, the only, Lieutenant Commander Data himself! It turned out to be for only one episode (so far), which was a disappointment, and it turned out to be only dream sequences, which was expected, but he did bring Data back to the screen, and we loved it!

Yet Spiner still wasn't done, either as Data (see next episode), or as yet another member of the Soong family. He'd played ancestor Arik, Dr. Noonian (at three different ages), Data, Lore and B4, and now he was back, this time as Altan Inigo Soong, the unheard-of son to Dr. Soong. And I have to say, as much as it was gratifying to see him again, and this time without a CGI makeover, it made about as much sense as 'Star Trek Beyond' inventing a starship, the Franklin, which came before the Enterprise NX-01. That is to say, if you bend over backwards and really stretch, you can fit them in, but they don't slot neatly and organically into the history as we know it. As a way to bring Spiner back into a regular role for Trek I applaud it, but as a deft and subtle addition to Soong family canon I can't help but be a little put out and put off. Because he did come out of nowhere. There was never any evidence that Noonian had any biological children, and in essence the fact that he now does can only take away from the place Data and Lore had in his life. When he was dying whom did he summon? Data and Lore. Whom did he talk about? Data and Lore. Whom did he treat as his only offspring? Well, yes, it's Data and it's Lore. It simply doesn't make sense in character terms, even though Altan Soong can be made to fit in timeline terms - we know he married Dr. Juliana Tainer, who died, then recreated her as an android, but at no time were children ever mentioned and I feel from the implications that it was far more likely that Noonian had no living family of any kind which is why he relied on his android creations for comfort.

Of course, if the writers were well suited to Trek and its history we'd be getting to know Altan, we'd find out that he didn't get on with his Father, rather than just the merest hint of that in this episode when he says his Father had him, but created Data and never let him forget that. Writers need space to create, I acknowledge that reality, one reason why people said a 24th Century-set series could never be done again because there was too much baggage, the universe too heavily established to provide wriggle room for creativity. But that's forgetting the truth that constraint breeds creativity, and you could go one of two ways with such a series: either you embrace the continuity and canon and delve deeply into the rich history for suitable plunder to be exhumed and explored, or you keep away from it. The writers of this series seem to have chosen a middle ground where they're heavily tied into the canon, yet also somehow separate and feel they can do as they please, not paying attention to tone or sense of character and place, or even race (witness the pinkness of the Romulans, for example). I'm all for finding a role for Spiner, but when I first saw this episode I did wonder if they were setting up to bring back Data. I'd unfortunately been spoiled that an older-looking Spiner would appear simply thanks to the back sleeve of the DVD release, but I suppose that was a double-edged sword because if I hadn't known that in advance I'd have seen Spiner's Special Guest Star credit at the beginning of the episode and been expecting more of Data. And I'd have been disappointed!

At least knowing about white-haired Spiner gave me something to look forward to. Still, in keeping with both seasons of 'DSC,' they were gearing us up for a major letdown in the finale, three for three in failed season endings, but I'll leave that for my next and last review. When I saw the unfinished android body Altan's been preparing I had a couple of theories as to what was going to happen next: either he was going to transfer his consciousness into it and become a kind of Data, or, and this seemed likely at the time, he'd turn out to be Lore who needs a replacement because he's getting old and worn out, or, and this prediction proved to be the correct one, Picard himself would be getting the new body since the series was well known to have secured a second season and they weren't going to kill him off. The idea about Lore may not make sense on the face of it because it's so easy to forget about the ageing subroutine Soong androids (or at least Data), had within them that was mentioned in Season 7 of 'TNG' as a way of combating the actor's ageing, knowing they were going to be taking the character forward into a film career. It stands to reason that if Data can age (and they messed about with that by showing an ageless version of him in the 'TNG' finale's alternate future timeline in 'All Good Things…'), then so could Lore, and his brand of cynical, evil, 2D bad guy would seem to fit perfectly with the cynical, evil 2D world of 'Picard,' and would be just the kind of twist I would expect from these writers. But I was giving them too much credit.

It turns out in this episode that Soong is pretty bad enough without needing to be revealed as Lore, in keeping with the general delinquency of the family DNA (he even sounds like Arik when he talks of the androids as his children!) - he's willing to abandon all organic life in our galaxy to the mercy or otherwise of this ancient and powerful race of artificial lifeforms that had promised to come and rescue any synthetic life that had become intelligent enough to understand such things and were being oppressed by organics. At least this explanation helped make the Big Bad Monsters From Another Realm seem a little more believable than I took them for, from what had been said before and on first impression of the finale. We learn these beings have a powerful alliance spanning galaxies, which makes you wonder, if they're so powerful why aren't they rich. No, I mean, why haven't they already come to enslave all mankind (and Romulankind, and Klingonkind, etc), devastating our universe, since we already know there have been artificial lifeforms for years almost beyond count according to some 'TOS' episodes. It's a little strange that they created that octonary star system and its little energy railing as an emergency message, basically, for all artificial life to go there and learn what can be done, and yet they don't bother showing up just to check on our galaxy. Although it was said they've been watching us, so… Anyway, Soong is a traitor to his own kind, planning to pop his consciousness into the android body he's created, using it like a lifeboat so he can go with his 'children,' the synthetics that he and Bruce Maddox created. Their 'evolution' will be our extinction, as the message goes.

I really needed more explanation on the hows, the whys, the wherefores, and I didn't get them, or not enough, and I don't think they were touched on in the next episode, either. How did Maddox know Altan Soong? How did they come to work together? How did Altan become as talented as his late Father, did he steal his research? Apart from a desire to live on after the death of his biological body, what was Altan's work about? If he felt resentment over Data being more of a son than he was, is that his motivation? How did they find this particular planet? I don't know, this new Trek really likes to leave you guessing and that's not satisfying, either narratively or dramatically. It gives the impression they don't really care about the logic or background behind decisions or motivations. And I'd have liked some kind of reference to Dr. Ira Graves from 'The Schizoid Man,' whom we know actually did perfect the ability to transfer a biological mind into an artificial body. In that case it would have to be that Altan didn't know how he did it because it's effectively Dr. Jurati coming along with her knowledge of Maddox' work that will be the final piece of the jigsaw - as Soong says, he only knows about the android side of it, Maddox was the mind guy.

It's very handy that Soong has this fresh body all ready and prepared, while we know Picard is dying - he's been fine all season with little sign of the neurological condition that is supposed to be having a negative effect (unless you count all those times he'd seemingly lost his sense of wisdom and diplomacy, such as tearing down the 'Romulans Only' sign and walking into a segregated bar, that kind of reckless and thoughtless action!). Suddenly he succumbs to a stroke or something and we're reminded that he's in a bad way, but aside from the first episode or two he's been right as rain. And even after this little episode he's quickly up and about and ready for a hike of several kilometres across harsh desert and mountainous terrain! Whaddaguy. If they were going to play the 'Picard's dying' card I wish they'd done a better job of having it be the through-line of the season, because there's so little impression of nostalgia or regret, of reevaluating life, that he goes through - aside from the occasional hint, like saying he might not pass this way again, he's just been old, cranky Picard. I know that he's had a lot to think about and deal with, tracking down Soji and trying to rescue her (which now seems like a major flaw since she's willing to help her synth brethren call in the big boy synths to come and save them from the approaching Romulan fleet - and it's all Picard's fault!), but old Trek was so much better at including important character studies within episodes as well as all the action and alien weirdness.

We don't really do much exploring of alien weirdness in the series, and any time we do it's like a placeholder for what it would be like if we actually were meeting aliens - so we have a casino full of shady people on Freecloud, but while they may be aliens they may as well be humans for all the difference it makes, other than gimmicks (Mr. Vup and his special smelling ability). And here we have some fancy defensive constructions, giant orchid flowers that shoot into space and gobble up any invading vessels, taking out their systems and dropping them back to the planet. I mean, it was a nice visual, but it seemed like they realised there wasn't much alienness, and this is Trek so we ought to do something weird at this point. Okay, so how about giant flowers? I liked that there was a bit of rationale between the ability to take down La Sirena with one, while the gigantic Borg Cube needed several to incapacitate it, and it wasn't going to come to rest gently because the flowers weren't designed to take on something so large (can't help thinking we should have seen the crash). At the same time I'm not sure what the point of it all was - were they designed so as to capture the technology which could then be used by the synths? Did they want to keep the occupants of ships alive so it was meant as a nonlethal attack? Or was it that La Sirena was small enough that it didn't make too much of an impact on landing? Nothing is very clear, other than they don't have many more of these flower defenders, not anywhere near enough to take on a fleet of 218 Warbirds.

Another weirdness in the episode, and one that I certainly did not like, is Soji's gold-skinned lookalike, Sutra (the other half of Jana, the early twinned version of the Asha sisters that Rios' former Captain murdered in cold grease), being able to perform a Vulcan mind meld. So what, she read up on Surak's teachings and now she can do whatever a Vulcan does? NO! Vulcans aren't simply physical creatures, they're all about souls or katras, and something created artificially doesn't have that because humans (and other races), wouldn't know the first thing about creating that part of a person because it's not quantifiable! That could well have been an episode in its own right where they explore the idea of the soul and whether synthetics could be given such a thing, but that would be a heavy, deep metaphysical subject to tackle and Trek most commonly, and wisely, kept away from such concepts - they weren't rabidly atheistic about such things, they were pretty agnostic on it, the key line of dialogue that always stands out to me is when Captain Louvois, presiding over Data's hearing in 'The Measure of A Man,' ruled that she didn't know if Data had a soul, she admitted she didn't even know if she had one herself, but that Data should have the freedom to explore such ideas for himself. To show that Vulcan mysticism is simply a matter of learning some physical actions is utterly ludicrous - I can get onboard with an android performing a nerve pinch as Data did in 'TNG,' because it's most definitely always been portrayed as a physical technique, probably requiring the greater than average strength we know Vulcans have (leaving aside what may have been one by Picard in 'Starship Mine,' and definitely ignoring the ridiculousness of Michael Burnham pulling it off in 'DSC,' although in both those cases they'd melded with 'Sarek' and so that could be the explanation for it, although it would suggest a mental or psychological explanation more than physical, which doesn't help my point!), but I can't accept a mind meld.

It's purely to drive the plot, nothing else - Sutra, who looks evil right from the moment we first see her, so I don't know if it's just the slightly scrunched up face that Isa Briones has which was accentuated in gold makeup, or whether she was deliberately trying to seem sinister, comes across negatively, and I would have much preferred her to seem as innocent and neutral as Data, or even Dahj and Soji generally do. Instead of that she comes under the same general heading of villainy we'd already seen this season in the Romulan double-act, which is disappointing as then it would really have been a surprise when she turns on Picard and advocates using the signal Jurati has in her head from Oh's meld. Irony of ironies, the villains were the source of their own undoing, but then so were the heroes: because Oh gave Jurati the full sneak preview of the future, Sutra can then get it out of her, and because Picard went all out to save Soji, he's brought both her and the necessary knowledge to contact the synthetics together with those that will use it! So the Romulans were right all along to be afraid, as Soji shows. Unless she's just going along with it hoping to save her friends. Except I don't think so and she isn't that good of an actor. Once again, not a very optimistic take on our Trek characters since if Picard had stayed on Earth this wouldn't be happening. I sort of wanted to see a moment of horror when he realises because of the good he did it could end all life as we know it!

At least the setting and all those gold-skinned androids made the episode visually interesting. The downside is that it was this tiny community on this huge planet and yet both the Cube and La Sirena both come down quite close to it! I can buy it if the defence orchids were designed to bring them home, and it's one of those conventions that a planet, no matter how huge, only has one important centre of activity for our characters to visit, so I can't beat them up too much for that. I wanted to know what it was about twins that was so important. I feel like that was talked about early in the season as some kind of essential development in the Maddox android creation process, but I could have done with some reiteration of it because there are a lot of twins. And why did Dahj and Soji get created in the image of Jana and Sutra, who'd been formed at least fourteen years before (or whenever it was Jana made contact with the USS Ibn Majid), I know they must have been based on the 'Daughter' paintings Data had made, so why aren't all the androids the same? I liked that some of the men looked a bit like the midway stage of Lal, Data's actual daughter in 'TNG,' sort of bald and gold, and seeing all these gold skins and yellow eyes was good and somehow nostalgic, like a race of Datas. Why were some gold and some not, why were some less developed and some more, since Maddox and Soong could create a perfect cat in the image of Spot (well, not exactly like Data's cat, but similar), or artificial butterflies?

As is the norm with this generation of Trek, there are usually more things wrong than right and this episode was no exception. Aside from the niggles I've already mentioned, there are a couple more that stand out. One is only minor, but is one of those reminders that the strict adherence to Trek tech and rules had been largely abandoned: one of the British-speaking twins gives Raffi a hand device with which to fix La Sirena and when she asks how it works she replies 'use your imagination,' so it's like a wondrous fantasy tool that magically fixes anything and all it takes is imagination! That kind of thing really annoys, as does the constant insistence of going by feelings ('I love you'; lots of hugs), it's so far from the stoic and heroic way we've seen our main characters portrayed before as if to kowtow to the touchy-feely society we live in now and it's a bit sickly. Trek has so often been about overcoming feelings, be they revenge, anger, prejudice, fear or whatever, relying on training and duty and honour so it's very uncomfortable to see such things play out under the Trek name. And this brings me to the major problem with the episode: Jurati and her guilt. They've been a bit ambiguous as to whether it was all her decision to murder Maddox because of what she saw in the mind meld with Oh, or whether there was some kind of compulsion or persuasion inherent there. At other times Jurati seems to accept it was her choice and hers alone, that she had to do it, but it keeps going back and forth as if they don't want to pin themselves down about whether she should be punished for what she did, or it was actually outside her control and she was as much a victim.

It's a despicable approach to guilt, especially guilt of murder. Justice is very important in Trek, as is mercy, and we haven't seen a lot of either in the modern variety. Okay, so Jurati is cooperating, she's not trying to murder anyone else, neither is she backing away from her sense of responsibility, but she's certainly not been treated like a criminal: she hasn't been locked in her Quarters as we see her wander onto the Bridge, if you can call it that, after they exit the transwarp conduit, and she's surprised the trip to DS12 has been cancelled, or at least, postponed. She was certainly under the impression she'd been arrested as she asks if she's still under arrest, but it's all so lax and I can't imagine someone of Picard's strict disciplinarian background allowing this. I know it's not his ship and Rios is sweet on her, but even so, he does hold some sway here! Instead they entrust her with Picard's medical care when all the systems are down and he's gone into neural shock or whatever happened to him. For that matter, you'd think the synths would be executing her for killing their creator, Maddox, but no, she's allowed to hang around - they get the necessary data out of her, so she's been useful to them in that regard, but why would they have her stay? And even before that, Rios says Agnes is having a sleepover - so this self-admitted murderer is allowed to just stay overnight at the community and that's all fine?

It shouldn't be a surprise that it's a bit messy, as it has been that way all season, and as I say, there are things to enjoy about the episode: Briones continues in the best Trek tradition (already seen with Rios and his holograms), playing two or more parts opposite herself, and it's not a bad reveal that the Admonition, this warning message about synthetics, was actually meant for synth minds, a key to getting in touch and calling for help, even if it does come out of the mind meld. I like that Picard decides they must check for survivors on the Cube before approaching the community they've come for, finding Seven, Elnor and a number of XBs. But again, there was so much potential for a powerful scene when Picard first hears about Hugh's death, but all we have is him talking slightly regretfully. Granted, it's not like they were that close, they hadn't seen each other for years, but while there's an excess of emotion in places, there's an absence of it in others, and I can't help feeling that old Trek would have made more of such a character's death rather than making it such a throwaway. There's a discussion which ends with Soji wondering if killing is the only way to survive, which was interesting, but obviously against the Trek ethos that Picard is trying to get across, and while he shows compassion for those on the Cube it was also a relief to see him defend the damaged Narek, saying it's one thing to kill an attacking enemy, but quite another to watch a wounded one die. Soji just inherently doesn't seem to possess much compassion, acting like a spurned teenager, which to all intents and purposes she is, and it doesn't make her sympathetic, except maybe to all those teens watching that have been in a similar position, cheaply giving up their intimacy because they think it's 'freedom.' In that respect I suppose it is a kind of warning, though not strongly moral enough to make a difference.

The android community start panicking when they hear of this massed Romulan fleet on the way, but why didn't Picard ever tell them about the Starfleet 'squadron' that Clancy had promised? I thought she knew where they were heading, but I could be wrong, but then if the Romulans knew where to go why wouldn't Starfleet, and why was Picard trying to get in touch and failing? Surely the fleet's on its way? For that matter, how can a defeated, downed race as the Romulans have been portrayed as, have such a ridiculously vast fleet? That was just silly and another example of the modern Trek way of inflating everything in size like it's on steroids - whether it was the hundreds of shuttlecraft in 'Star Trek XI' or the vast size of the USS Discovery and other ships (to the extent they altered the dimensions of the Enterprise to fit with their out of control proportions - ugh!). Two hundred and eighteen Warbirds??? Needless to say, I wasn't attracted to the ugly ships, either, so far from the beauty of design of those old Romulan Warbirds we knew from the 'TNG' era and beyond. They'd already started going down the ugly design route in 'Nemesis' however, so it's not entirely their fault, although they've been happy to muck about with canon and the sense of history anyway so why not give us a proper, full-sized, old-style Warbird? They also had another chance to give us a lovely moment of nostalgia and missed the mark completely: when Jurati scans Picard with what she describes as an 'old-school Tricorder' why not use one from the 'TNG'/ 'DS9'/ 'Voyager' era, complete with that familiar bleeping configuration, that would have been a terrific moment!

Other annoyances that got at me were the 'Star Wars' inspiration of the space scenes, from the podracer engine sounds of the ships, to Phasers firing like bullets, to the terminology ('bogies'? When has bogies ever been used as a term in Trek - why is it you don't like 'Star Trek,' writers?). It turned out that there was an explanation for the bolts in that mini skirmish, as we hear Narek's 'Snakehead' ship has disruptor cannons, and at least La Sirena managed some actual Phaser beams, even though they were a little tame and could have been shown to be so much more powerful and dynamic if the direction had been there. But Akiva Goldsman, usually one of the writers, was directing, and I wasn't impressed. When he wasn't taking the time to show every character's reaction shot upon reaching the community settlement (I almost thought I was watching 'The Motion Picture'!), he's jiggling the camera about like some kind of documentary footage to add 'tension' or 'drama' into scenes of talking as if it's a Bourne film. And seatbelts? I get it, we can't have eighty-year-old Patrick Stewart rolling on the deck, he isn't up to all that now, but in Trek they don't do seatbelts, it's another 'Star Wars' thing. Yes, I know they had a deleted scene in 'Nemesis' where the Enterprise-E herself had them, but that was deleted and good riddance! Add to this list of problems the overly, and too constant, melodramatic music as if we have to keep the tempo going to cover the 'boredom' of people talking and it shows a lack of confidence in the material. Have these interesting discussions, explore characters, but don't have violins throbbing out a warning pulse all the time!

Finally, although we didn't have women moaning or shouting at Picard this time (they were too sad about his condition for that), he undermines himself by looking rather careless when he tells the crew about this condition he's known about for years and never did anything about. You'd think he'd have been searching out a cure or some kind of treatment that would delay the inevitable, but he makes it sound like he just lay down and accepted it, pushed it to the back of his mind, another example of un-Picard-like behaviour from a man who used to confront problems head on and deal with them. It could have been worse, I suppose, they could have reiterated the bizarre situation where the Riker-Trois son died because there was no positronic brain with which to develop a treatment for his very specific condition, and said the same for Picard, so at least there's that. And for all the poor developments coming in the finale I was still reasonably drawn into this episode, it did make for some exploration, if not enough, of an alternative culture, it brought the story to a head with Oh on the way leading her fleet of Warbirds, and Sutra, Soji and Soong all openly planning to alert the artificial powers-that-be that our galaxy needs a good rinsing. Oh, and why would Romulans trust a half-Vulcan, as Oh is? Oh, I don't know. Let's just say this episode could have been worse, as demonstrated by the next one!

**

Manna From Heaven

DVD, BUGS S1 (Manna From Heaven)

Lennox is another client that doesn't tell them the whole story, so caught up with his life's work is he, to the point that he's not an entirely sympathetic character. If it wasn't for the greedy Zander and his associate, mad Sally, he could be the villain. After all, he was willing to put consumers at risk by selling them the idea that Phodex, the 'food for the next millennium,' grown from some kind of pondweed, as Ed describes it, was safe, when in fact it was most definitely not, becoming toxically poisonous when exposed to ultraviolet light! If his motivation had been clearly altruistic, to help the developing countries of the Third World then he might not have seemed so uncaring, but the only impression you get is that he's after selfish motivations such as money and recognition. At heart he doesn't seem a bad sort, but it appears his vision has clouded his judgement to the point where he'd rather sweep the unfortunate death of employee Fricker under the carpet and not discuss it. You'd think there'd have been an investigation over the death from some kind of food body, or at the very least, the local constabulary, but this is the world of 'BUGS' where the law rarely appears, even when the fate of the entire city is at stake with Sally's plot to flood the water system with contaminated, and therefore deadly, Phodex. She makes Lennox look like a teddy bear as she's pure evil and you have to wonder what it was that got her to that point - did she hate her life as a lab technician so much?

She's happy to murder Zander in cold blood, well, perhaps seething with rage at getting only a twenty percent share in the ten million blackmail money they try to extort from Lennox, and seems to relish the idea of the streets full of corpses. Maybe she's just angry at being in a powerless position in the world and why should she not have anything she wants? Also, she's clearly unhinged as she repeatedly knocks her head back against the water tank, but she must have hidden her psychotic personality effectively to succeed at infiltrating Lennox' New Earth Foods, or even holding down a job at all. Zander, by comparison, is merely an extortionist with no plans to actually put lives at risk, other than the goons he hires who all seem to end up dead: first there's the two balaclava-ed burglars he sends in to steal a sample of the Phodex (why not simply have Sally steal some, after all she's allowed to stay behind after everyone else has gone so it surely wouldn't have been so difficult, but then we wouldn't have had the exciting opening), who end up in the same position as Wyman in 'All Under Control': driving very fast into the underside of a flatbed, only this time they explode in fiery style. The whole opening sequence would be replayed to some degree in Season 2's 'Bugged Wheat,' something that stands out for me as this was the first episode of the series I ever saw.

Later, Zander has at least two more men tailing Ros and Beckett as they transport the prepared Phodex to a restaurant launch where delegates from countries far and wide have attended to see this mystery food solution (Ros getting pride of place right next to Lennox at the table for some reason!), and after waiting till they got into a tunnel, trying to shoot up Ros' yellow car with automatic weaponry! Call me strange, but this seemed a little extreme - I know there are potentially huge sums of money involved, with Zander's Hennessy Brock plc, the shark of the food market, desperate to swallow Lennox' research, whether to bury it as a rival or use it for their own ends. Do they know at that point about the toxicity of the Phodex? If so, why would they want it? Or are they just trying to stop the launch? They didn't seem to actually hit the car, so either they were very bad shots or they were only trying to put Ros off and make her stop. If they were trying to stop her and they wanted the Phodex then it would seem barmy to let it crash and burn. At the same time, presumably, Sally is gearing up to get in and activate the toxins, but that could have been a contingency plan after the failure to capture the samples. But if she could get in without being spotted (through the air ducts, which as Beckett earlier suggested when he and Ed were about to infiltrate Hennessy Brock, it was too obvious), why not just steal the food if that was the goal? The villains' plans were not always complementary, it seemed.

Neither was their goal for money - if Lennox has sunk all his time, energy and finances into Phodex how is he going to pay a ten million ransom? It would have been better to wait until he'd had success with the Phodex and then blackmail him. Story logic wasn't a high point of this episode, it must be admitted! What was a high point were the interactions, friendship and support between Ed, Ros and Beckett, as always. Ed and Beckett get to go off and do some action when they break into Hennessy Brock, or technically walk in, under the guise of technicians from JBS Security (another organisation that would recur), setting off the company's alarms, tapping into their phone line and pretending to be representatives from the alarm company thanks to Beckett's portable printer and the natural human desire for a loud noise to be switched off as quickly as possible - good psychology there (Harris, the guy who thinks he's calling JBS, was played by John Leeson, best known as the voice of K9 in 'Dr. Who'!). There's a whole sequence where they're going up and down on top of a lift with a glass frontage, which looked great, but it was the moment when the pair actually leap from one floor down to the next that impressed me. You can see it's the actual actors doing it, and while we don't see what Jesse Birdsall jumped onto, you almost see the whole jump Craig McLachlan made from climbing over the railing to leaping down a whole floor. If he was breaking his fall with something soft it was well disguised, because although we don't see soles touch floor, it's not far from that!

The chase in the tunnel was equally thrilling when Ros is swerving to avoid various vehicles and the pursuers eventually come a cropper off the side of another car and go crashing over onto their side in spectacular fashion, one of the best stunts seen on the series to this point. Another set of goons taken out by their own carelessness, Zander must have been pulling his hair out. I expect he hired these men, they weren't employees or anyone of importance, that's the impression, just faceless Bond villain lackeys to be killed off. Again, you'd think the police would be alerted by all this reckless driving and firing of guns, but maybe there wasn't CCTV in the tunnel and that's why they waited until being in there to make their move. Makes you wonder who was going to clean up all that mess, though! And the Gizmos team would surely be under some form of investigation after they were chased so forcefully. There must be a reason they don't get the authorities involved again, especially when the city's water supply is in danger, but then it would take too long to explain and the team might not be in a position to do anything about the ultimatum in time if they were tied up talking to detectives or whomever.

While the boys get to be part of most of the action, it's Ros who proves most heroic once again - even as she's falling victim to the deadly Phodex she stays at her post, guiding the others in their work. Interestingly, Beckett's the one who goes after what he thinks is Zander, but is actually Sally, while Ed does the tricky technical wizardry of opening the time-lock safe (which didn't look a foot thick as noted!), containing the seed material which can be used to create an antidote for Ros, Lennox and delegates, presumably. You'd think Ed would be put on the physical side of things while Beckett might work better with the tech, but it shows the roles could be somewhat interchangeable. Ed's come a long way from his fear of touching the computer in 'All Under Control,' but it is a slightly different situation. In both cases Ros' life was at stake, but this time what he does with the device isn't going to cause her immediate danger, it's more about him failing to get into the safe that will kill her. Ros heroically soldiers on in her backup until she collapses and only Ed's coaxing can bring out a last little bit of strength in order to get to Lennox on the chair downstairs at Gizmos, and both Ros' courage and effort, and Ed's motivational encouragement are inspirational to see. Witness the contrast between the selfless team and the selfish Lennox in the fact that he only divulged the fact there was some seed material at all at the last possible moment, since it must be the last supply of Phodex after the lab had been fired, while Ros just wants the team to stop the villains poisoning more people, don't worry about her.

Beckett, using all his services training, comes upon Sally at the water pumping station (which reminded me of a Water Temple from 'Zelda,' which shows what the makers of the games based it on), but comes up short, getting captured too easily. He manages to use a diversion to attack her and kick her gun away, but in the process she goes over the edge of the railing with a long drop to the concrete floor - this was another great moment as Beckett is shown to be conflicted in whether he should try to help her up, or whether to stop the Phodex from entering the water supply. It's a split second hesitation, but in the end he has to take the greater number of lives into consideration - he tells her to hold on, so he's not going to let her drop despite what she's responsible for. I feel like characters in modern TV would just let the villain drop without remorse, but back then these were true heroes, and though Beckett is unsuccessful in saving her, his intent to do so is made clear. It's the fate of most 'BUGS' villains to be blown up, shot, or killed off in some other way, but it's rare that the team have an active role in taking them out, it's usually inadvertent or their own fault they die. Something else you wouldn't necessarily get now is a Biblical solution to a problem: the code to get into the inner part of the safe is 'Manna,' Ed gets it because it's an 'M-A' word and it pops into his mind as the food God sent the Israelites in the desert, but would most people know such references now, since a whole generation or more haven't been exposed to the rich cultural heritage of the Bible as the bedrock of Western culture?

What really makes the episode is the support and care between the characters, while they also have a lot of fun, such as when Beckett teases the strait-laced Glass, Lennox' main assistant, who impresses the need to drive carefully with the Phodex in the back, saying Ros has only just passed her test! Or Ed jokes about Beckett having a fear of heights when they're on the lift - I also loved the way he gleefully and confidently leaps down onto the top of the lift, no concern about it at all. The team also look at their most stylish, with Beckett in his trademark smart jacket and green shirt, Ed in his leather jacket and this time a yellow top, and Ros in a violet cardigan over a violet top combination. I'm not a clothes type who's interested in all that, but how they're presented helps to define the series for its slickness and quality, and while in some episodes they look a bit silly (like when Ed and Beckett were going aboard the submarine in 'Down Among The Dead Men,' for example), here they were most chic while still incorporating the bright colours the series favours. It's also good that we know who these people are - when Sally's lie about Ros clocking off early to go to the hairdressers is told to her friends they instantly know it's out of character, and if we hadn't already seen what had happened to her, so would we! Sally doesn't realise what kind of woman she is - not that she can't have her hair done nice, we've certainly seen that (such as at the function Roland Blatty invited her to in 'Assassins Inc'), but she's more preoccupied with typically masculine interests such as electronics and computing.

Still, Ros should have alerted someone before going into the Phodex lab when she lost contact with Sally, but that shows her sense of care and responsibility was strong enough to override her own safety. I loved the little touch of the oxygen meter going up in the background when Ed, Beckett and Lennox eventually arrive to rescue her and leave the airlock open. That's the kind of attention to detail I appreciate. Something else I appreciate is them not keeping us guessing on the identity of the mole for too long, rather than dragging out an unnecessary mystery. There were only three characters we'd met at the place anyway, Lennox, Glass and Sally - was it supposed to be a clue that she had a prominent mole on her cheek? Clearly it wouldn't be Lennox because he was dedicated to his own work, and Glass was about as empty and transparent as his name suggested. Right from the start when he's saying the lab has perfectly adequate security you know this guy isn't going to be the most switched on, though that could have been seen as being a suggestion he was the spy and his apparent guilelessness was a diversion. But he's shown not to be the most thoughtful guy, mentioning the accident an employee died in that his boss doesn't like to talk about and immediately alerting Ros' suspicions and making her want to know more!

The episode doesn't conclude in quite such a barrel of laughs as it usually does: they're all sitting around reading at Gizmos, a nice picture in itself - maybe waiting for the next job to come through, perhaps having a tea break, who knows (more importantly, was Beckett reading an issue of Amiga Action?), but they talk of ordering a takeaway and Ros admits she isn't feeling hungry, wryly suggesting it was something she ate. It was much more downbeat than usual, perhaps in deference to the fact she'd almost died, which put a more serious spin on the episode, though it wouldn't be the last time. Some or all of the team are often put at risk of their lives, but not usually in such a personal and unavoidable way as being poisoned, so it was fitting there was some subtle acknowledgment of that. It always amuses me that Lennox goes down first because he ate before anyone else, but he only had one pea! I'm glad they referred to the futility of bringing in medical help as without the antidote there's nothing could be done, but at the same time, they aren't medical experts so I wouldn't be so quick to write off the talents of doctors, it would be better to be in professional care than falling on the metal grating of Gizmos, but then Ros wouldn't have been able to make her heroic journey down to get Lennox' organiser, despite weakness and blurred vision. She's always dependable, and so are her friends, and that's what makes seeing the series again such a joy. I'd previously felt this was relatively the weakest episode of the season, but I enjoyed it more this time through older eyes, so much that I wouldn't mind seeing it again, which I didn't feel about the last couple of episodes!

***

Skinwalker

DVD, Smallville S2 (Skinwalker)

I didn't dislike this one quite as much as I used to, but I certainly didn't like it, either. It features the ominous and/or sad endings that would plague the series, losing that upbeat, optimistic style that carried so much of Season 1, a focus on a Lara Croft guest character who had about the same level of charisma, and really, the only compelling drama of the story came from Martha's divided loyalties which weren't really tested very strongly and were largely resolved quite easily. At least the rationale for Kyla's ability to change into a wolf came from a meteor rock origin, which is more than can be said for some of the freaks-of-the-week this season, but it's sad how much screen time she, and Clark's preoccupation with her, took up at the expense of the main cast. Take Pete, for example - he's there at the beginning for an odd action sequence where he and Clark race dirt bikes through the woods, then he's out of the picture as Clark spends all his time with Kyla. At first I thought it really weird that Clark would enjoy riding a motorbike since he can run far faster so there would be no adrenaline rush from the speed. But then I realised that this is a way of levelling the two friends, reliant on skill at handling a bike and the terrain under it, which would provide a challenge between them, as the racing shows, so it was actually quite a clever idea.

It didn't stop Pete from being ditched super quickly, but at least he was in the episode, it's just that you'd think Clark would be talking over what's going on with his best friend and yet those scenes are missing. Is it the female influence in the production that wasted Pete as a character, I wonder? Chloe, too, was barely to be seen, and then only really there to set up Lana's bad news that former boyfriend Whitney was Missing In Action (although it was fun to spot what looked like the Epson A3 printer I still own to this day at the Torch!). Lana gets to be included, but it's really more of an uncomfortable situation as she finds Clark and Kyla so close, so fast, but it does display her lovely nature that she was still happy to help them with their 'Save The Cave' campaign to protect the Kawatche Indian caves and the valuable cave paintings within from being bulldozed over by LuthorCorp's plan to put up office blocks. I was a bit confused by exactly how old these paintings were supposed to be as at one point five hundred years was mentioned, when a traveller from another world visited, and then at the end someone talks about them being only a hundred years old, which is quite a difference!

The Kawatche caves were never a favourite development of mine - I see the purpose, which is to give Clark something further to investigate regarding his personal heritage, something that would be done far more justice later in the season with Christopher Reeve's wonderful first appearance, but it was all a little too pat: a handy hole the shape of the octagonal disk, for instance. How would that work, putting that key into a piece of rock, or are the insides of the cave actually Kryptonian technology disguised to look like rock? That's the trouble with comic book fantasy, it doesn't have to have any basis in reality. And I know it's churlish to talk about reality when it comes to 'Smallville,' but most of the time early on it had its own internal logic and some kind of consistency where there wasn't too much reliance on the fantastical if you can buy that meteor rocks have these unique metamorphosing properties on anyone who comes into contact with them. The story of Numon and his rival was also a little too obvious, a bit like the Warrior Angel stuff in 'Ryan' - we get it, we know Lex and Clark are supposed to become bitter enemies (and they will, don't worry, they will - and it didn't work well!), but they're far more fascinating as friends, in conflict or not.

As evidenced once again by this episode when Clark goes to Lex for help against his own Father, Lionel, in posting bail for the old Indian activist who wants to protect the caves and is suspected of murdering the foreman. I guess Kyla made a mistake by throwing the towel away, or whatever it was carrying the man's blood she must have wiped off herself, instead of burning it, but then she is supposed to be a teenager. How long has she been able to change into a wolf, did her Grandfather know about it (I'd suspect not), and would he have done anything about it if he had? I must say he didn't seem all that cut up about her death and it was rather arbitrary: she cuts herself on the window she leapt out of to escape the Luther Mansion (we see how she got out, but how did she get in?), and that somehow gives her a fatal wound? It was a convenience so Clark didn't have to deal with her again, either in a girlfriend capacity or as someone who knows his secret. Again, that's what usually happens to the villain each time so it's nothing new, but Clark was a bit fast to swallow all this legend stuff since it suited his feelings, while he was instantly defensive of the old man, her Father, when Chloe talks about the evidence against him.

What was most interesting was Martha's position in all this. For the first time she's at odds with what we're supposed to sympathise with and she does seem rather quick to defend the Luthor point of view, which is strange. It seems she's become more than just an assistant, she actually represents Lionel now! They kept away from adding Jonathan into the mix, probably feeling the tension between them had already been explored and would have confused the issue a little, and at least Mr. Kent does get to give his son some advice. On the other side of the Father/son coin are Lionel and Lex, shown to be operating against each other openly as Lex finds a reason to become attached to the caves through recognising the octagonal hole. It makes things somewhat interesting, but as I say, returning to the caves wasn't among the highlights of the season to come and was another sign of the degeneration of the series as it had been into what Season 3 would make it, or even the end of Season 2, and I wasn't in favour of all that. So I have to lay a lot of the fault at the door of this episode for introducing such things as these magical caves of mystery. The one bit that did surprise was Henry Small turning out to be Lana's biological Father as I thought it was not so, which just shows how reliable memory can be (even though it had been well over a decade since I last saw it!). And one last thing: are we supposed to take the howling wolves at the Mansion as being part of Lionel's fear, because there was only Kyla there, but at first it seemed he might be surrounded by a whole tribe of them!

**

Broken Pieces

DVD, Star Trek: Picard S1 (Broken Pieces)

Each season of the current generation of Trek has given me one episode which I genuinely could have said I thought was a good one. One, and one only. In 'DSC' Season 1 it was the first episode, 'The Vulcan Hello,' in Season 2 it was 'The Sound of Thunder,' in 'Short Treks' it was 'Ask Not,' and now, in 'Picard' it's this one. The unhappy truth, however, is that upon second viewing I've almost always downgraded that one bright light, with only 'Ask Not' holding up for me as an example of good Trek. 'Broken Pieces' wasn't to break that trend. Part of the reason would be that on this viewing I knew how the story ended, whereas initially it seemed to promise quite a lot, succeeding in finally filling in so many of the questions regarding various parts of the plot that would have done just as well not to remain a mystery for most of the season. In fairness, it wasn't as bad as 'DSC' and that series' attempts to keep suspense hanging over us all the time, and there are some scenes in this episode that suggest there is still some small degree of humanity to be found in this grim vision of Trek's previously optimistic future world. But it wasn't quite enough to pull it up to the level of the earlier generations of Trek, and the fact is that I still watch those (going through 'DS9' Season 2 right now), and despite their lack of cinematic widescreen or the ballooning effects budget they still more than hold up and remind me what Trek is, and should be, and in comparison to their blazing warmth, Kurtzman Trek's flickering little candle can't, well, hold a candle.

That being said, there are a lot more reasons to like this episode than almost all the previous ones, and that's in spite of the ever more excessive use of immoral and offensive language, which is something Michael Chabon has defended, saying people will always talk like that. Yes, maybe, and warp drive is also an impossibility, as is pulling someone apart and reconstructing them in the Transporter: if realism is your goal then you're in the wrong game because Trek is about being inspirational and aspirational, showing a possible, fictional future. No one's saying this is going to happen, that's not the point, so defending questionable decisions of increased swearing and gore in what was once a family franchise by citing realism shows a lack of imagination, ambition and desire to portray a better world that was the hallmark of Trek. See? Even when I want to write good things about 'Picard' I find myself turning off on a tangent of woe. There really are things to like in this episode and Chabon himself even shows that if he chose to he could write the kind of compassionate, optimistic scenes that I miss from Trek: there are a couple that come to mind. The first is simply the moment when Seven of Nine arrives to rescue what she thinks is Hugh, but is actually Elnor (the recap where we see him activate the Fenris Rangers' pendant made me remember a plot hole from the previous episode - where did that come from, did Picard just leave it behind on the Borg Cube because I don't remember him giving it to Elnor, and we see the elf-boy find it dangling?).

I don't like the new portrayal of Seven, I made that clear in her first full-length appearance in 'Stardust City Rag,' this twisted, bitter, revenge-fuelled, gun-toting version that is like a stripped down action heroine with none of the fascination the original character exuded from her complex personality. But once we get past her storming in, guns (technically Phasers, but it's all pew-pew-pew and I hate them being used that way - for that matter why didn't the Romulans just shoot Elnor, knowing he's carrying a sword - because we always have to have martial arts fights nowadays, that's why!), a-blazing, we see a return of her maternal side, previously shown when she came to rescue Icheb. Elnor is quite childlike the way he runs into her arms and it was quite touching that she comforts him. Even if it doesn't make a lot of sense as he's supposed to be this warrior monk! But Seven was used a little better this time, she seems much more like the woman we knew in 'Voyager,' perhaps because she's not showing off or swaggering in front of villains or Picard, she only has Elnor as audience, and a job to do. It is dismaying that she failed to save all those Borg drones that are brutally sucked into space (though surely they could survive that as we've seen them operating out there before, and could be salvaged?). One reason this side of the story didn't impress as much as on my first viewing was that there still seemed to be potential inherent in Seven having a Cube to herself, the villains escaping, but all that happens is she crashes it on a planet in one of the final episodes. What happened to the Reclamation Project, or the treaty, or anything else to do with this, I want to know?

The Borg, or ex-Borg, seemed to display anger towards Narissa, grasping for her like the zombie Vulcans in 'Impulse,' and although it was an arresting scene, all these hands reaching out to pull the villainess down, it didn't make sense to me until I thought back to 'Descent,' which is the closest in tone thanks to a severed Borg ship containing a separate Collective, and of course Hugh being part of it - in that they had learned to feel emotion thanks to Lore's meddling, and though I never liked that development at least it did provide something to go back to thematically. It could also be that the ones we see are all XBs, in which case that would explain why all they can do is grab her instead of using their tubules for assimilation, and also explains the emotional reaction since they've been removed from the Collective. Narissa herself is at her best in this episode, which in the grand scheme of things isn't saying a lot since she's always been portrayed as a disgusting, immoral cartoon character, so I suppose we should be impressed that there can be any sympathetic moment for her at all! But there was, as we see her caring for Ramdha whom we discover is her Aunt, taking in both she and her brother, Narek, when their parents died, and also a member of the Zhat Vash, the super-secret faction within the Tal Shiar that never really made any sense, but never mind.

The other reason I felt there was some Trekkiness in the story was for Jean-Luc who, as if Patrick Stewart had remembered how to play the character after interacting with former crew-members Riker and Troi in the previous episode, comes across as his most Picard-like so far in the series. He has a couple of nice conversations with people that show his kindliness and compassion, his hope and optimism, the kind of things this modern Trek seemed largely to be sucked dry of. It's not one hundred percent happy and good, Raffi still acts the goat, going as far as to call him a fool for bringing Soji aboard, but then she's been shown to be a drunkard, a druggie, an addict, and a complete self-pitying mess, so anything she says has to be taken through that lens. No, fortunately she's not integral to the episode, and neither is Jurati, Rios, perhaps the only character you can feel real sympathy for on the crew, gets to open up a bit. It is to him that Picard pours out his healing wisdom and mental help, talking over what trauma happened in Rios' past that has so cut him up and turned him into a quiet, reserved outsider in the galaxy. I suppose this is all supposed to be the payoff for all that doom and gloom the rest of the time, and it doesn't work well enough for that, it's more like a little salve on a deep wound - the difference is that this would have been the kind of discussion and catharsis you'd get at the end of most Trek episodes, but we have to wait eight episodes for it now and it's too little to sustain that length of time.

I could also say that Picard's words can feel a little hollow when he has some good things to say, because they are quite out of place in this miserable version of the future, which is a tragic indictment of where Trek has been taken, irresponsibly in my view. But because there is this sense of positivity, however small in relation to the bigger picture, this does feel the most like a true Trek episode. Sorry, I shouldn't say 'true,' people would accuse me of 'gatekeeping,' not making allowances for new people with different ideas of what Trek is or can be. I should say 'bad Trek' (or at the very best, ambivalent Trek), because that's what it has been, and this is as close as the season would come to good Trek. The other scene that sticks out for its Trekness is when Picard and Soji talk about whether she's a real person and whether her history means anything, which leads us onto Data and such a lovely conversation about him and his qualities. I think this had even more power the first time, but when hopes were raised they might be bringing him back, and then cruelly dashed in the last couple of episodes it left a bad taste so that any pleasant talk of him doesn't have quite the same warmth. At this stage I wouldn't have imagined a return for Data, but it was also that there was still something of him floating around somehow. The important thing was how lovely it was to hear about him again, much as how the Riker-Troi's daughter, Kestra, spoke about him, only this time it's Picard himself which means even more.

Another part of the episode that I largely enjoyed was the bringing together of all five Emergency Holograms, every one the image of Captain Rios, but with a different accent and personality. I say largely because I did find it, much like the optimism on display, to feel somewhat out of place. It's played up like a comedy, as those characters have been in all their appearances, a lightness that was undoubtedly required to counteract so much of the negativity of other characters and the sense of hopelessness and misery inherent in this portrayal of Trek. But it strikes a false note, rather like Simon Pegg's version of Scotty in the recent film series: too cartoonish, only playing one side of reality. Jumping from Jurati murdering Maddox or whatever else was done to shock, to a funny hologram just didn't sit well, the tone was all wrong. At the same time it was fun to have the five together, even if we have to have Raffi being the one to corral them - even sober she seems like she's just about keeping sane, almost like this is a hallucination she's trying to control. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I can't stand her casual manner of speaking and the way we're supposed to chuckle at her antics when she's such a sad shell of a person. In that regard I was less invested in the eking out of the mystery of Rios' past and even felt less sympathy when she comforts him.

It has to be said, there was another area of the episode that didn't sit right: the anachronistic possessions of Rios. Now I know this is truly nitpicking, and there are countless examples of previous Trek crews owning antique items such as books or glasses, but it really took me out of it to see Rios with a vinyl record player and collection, so clearly something put in by the writer, just as he made him a smoker, a personal agenda that doesn't chime with Trek's futuristic nature. And partly it felt like it was there because vinyl is, or has been, in vogue in recent years so Rios is like a character in a current contemporary drama that would have something like that at his age! It wasn't just the records, either, but his Starfleet chest contains a little card box, the kind that may have been a cigar box, filled with ephemera he's collected, from his old Starfleet badge and pips, to 2D photos and an illustration drawn on paper. Very far from the kind of futuristic way of life we see of people in past Trek, and somehow that annoyed a little, like people would really still keep a card box of bits! At the same time I was pleased to fill in the backstory of his Starfleet career, who his Captain was, his ship, USS Ibn Majid, how it ended, even seeing the uniform folded up neatly. I suppose I can accept he'd have kept the illustration drawn by the artificial life-form that came to Ibn Majid before the Captain murdered it, which is why he's shocked to see yet another in the form of Soji. Why did Maddox create multiples of the Ashas? I thought the point was to make a pair, as we'd find out next episode?

Inevitably, because this is what the series is built on, it always comes back to tragedy and trauma, in keeping with this putrid vision, we hear Rios' Captain Alonzo Vandermeer not only followed Starfleet orders to execute synthetics (a far cry from seeking out new life and civilisations), he then committed suicide with a Phaser to the mouth. What a bleak, unforgiving wasteland the 24th Century has become. Not only would someone of his caliber (a Starfleet Captain and a man Picard describes in glowing terms), have refused to carry out such an order, at the expense of his career and even his ship, but he wouldn't have taken the coward's way out and killed himself. This was wrong on so many levels and I think I wasn't quite as horrified by it the first time around because I was distracted by the fact of hearing about Rios' Captain and ship at all when so much is kept under wraps. There have always been evil Captains - I think of Ronald Tracey, for example, or Rudy Ransom who was quite happy to murder sentient life to get his crew home faster if he could. But that doesn't gel with Picard's thoughts on the man and again it's showing Starfleet to be an organisation that sanctions and commits evil acts, pulling down the struts beneath the utopian Federation future that is such a draw - where you knew these characters would do whatever it took to make sure what they did was right.

This erosion of morality is seen in small ways even in the characters on screen - Admiral Clancy beams in as a hologram into Picard's Holodeck study and has to violently swear in order to shut Picard up, all in order to tell him she agrees to send a squadron to help. Then there's Raffi again, making light of Maddox' death by saying it's exciting to have a conspiracy, or whatever. And then there's Jurati. Yes, she's shocked and horrified about what's gone on, but would she do it again? She claims she would never harm Soji now she's met her, but would you trust this woman who killed her mentor and boyfriend in cold blood? It sounded like she was in full control of her faculties, it was only the horror of seeing this potential future where something nasty this way comes (described in the same manner as when Zefram Cochrane made warp flight which in turn attracted the attention of the Vulcans, only an inverted version of that this time, a twisted, negative one), that made her do it. But she also says something about Oh putting poison in her mind so is she abrogating her guilt? You'd think they would lock her in the Brig if they had one, or at the least in her Quarters until they reach Deep Space 12, but she's allowed to be alone with Soji, eyes wet with tears of joy at meeting an android. And we're supposed to be on board with that? She's not to be trusted and she should be punished, but as usual they don't treat anything with the reality it deserves, despite the quest for 'realism' in language. That clearly doesn't extend to plot or behaviour!

It must be admitted that I was struggling to follow all the time issues in the episode: we see a flashback to when the Zhat Vash visited the 'Admonition' on a planet called Aia, melodramatically subtitled 'The Grief World,' as if this is 'Dr. Who' or some other cartoonish sci-fi like that. I was very much getting the impression of 'Babylon 5' with all this 'Conclave of Eight' talk and hooded women standing around in some secret organisation, not to mention 'The Lord of The Rings' with all this magical, mystical bent to proceedings. If I get this right, the Admonition, this railed energy ring thing, was left behind by a race as a warning not to create artificial life because… they were destroyed by it? I was thinking of The Old Ones from 'TOS,' but I'm not sure that stacks up other than they were from hundreds of thousands of years ago, which sounded right. What was at first confusing was seeing Ramdha pre-Borg, but they were saying something about when the Zhat Vash was set up and I thought they meant this was fourteen years ago, but we already knew it was supposed to be ancient. I think. Anyway, things got a bit clearer as the episode progressed and it was revealed Oh is a half-Romulan Vulcan and the Tal Shiar ship Ramdha was on was the ship that was assimilated and messed up the Borg Cube because… madness? Oh was sent to infiltrate Starfleet because of Dr. Noonien Soong's work with Data, but I'm not sure on the timings of that either since the Romulans were in isolation when Data was discovered, it wasn't until the end of 'TNG' Season 1 they came out to be active in the galaxy again.

Oh says something about their foremothers, but I didn't get the impression the Zhat Vash was an all-female group before? Perhaps it was. And they formed to prevent the 'second coming,' which I noted was a negative since it's the second coming of something nasty, when usually this is considered (at least in Western culture), to be a positive thing that will end the world as it is and set up a better one - a little undermining of Christianity there, or am I reading too much into it? And how did Raffi find out about the Conclave of Eight, which turns out to be an Octonary star system, designed to draw attention to itself? This ancient race was so powerful as to be able to do that even after presumably warring with the artificial species they developed, but they didn't survive? Hmmm… It's a bit like the fact that they believe they've shaken the tail (Narek), following La Sirena because Jurati managed to flush the Viridium isotope tracker ('Star Trek VI' reference), out of her system, but how would they know? In the end it turns out they didn't know because Narek follows them into the Borg Transwarp Hub or slipstream, whatever it was, which will make a shortcut to the homeworld of Soji's people. They fling a lot into the episode, perhaps a reason it's another longer one at over fifty-five minutes, but I'm not sure everything was really making sense: Soji doesn't give them reason to trust her as she takes over the ship and is about to force them to take her to her planet, it's only because Rios has a secret override that she's prevented, but then they go along with her anyway!

Along with the sometimes positive messages within the episode there were also some potentially interesting moral issues: how do you destroy even the possibility of synthetic life, as was the goal of Jurati and the Jhat Vash? Not only should you, but how would you? Data wasn't the first android by a long shot, are they saying it isn't until Soji does something to alert this other artificial life from beyond the galaxy, that they'll come, and if so why would they then take her where she wants to go? But even if they could wipe all record of synthetic life, how could they do that from all cultures and the minds of every scientist? It's ridiculously far-fetched. What I was interested in was the situation Seven was put in of becoming the Borg Queen for this one Cube, and yet even there I felt it was all too easy - she just has some 'Matrix' leads plugged into her spine and boom, she's able to control everything and yet can come out of it without any problem. There was simply no sense of the dangers of taking on Borg technology and I don't think I quite appreciated that the first time around because of all the potential for what was happening, but this time I could see the lack of suspense and tension there. They touch briefly upon her bitterness at the thought of re-enslaving these Borg even for a short while in order to achieve something, and that was a strong point that should have been explored - old Trek would have done so, that would have been the heart of the episode, and I'm sure was addressed, certainly on 'Voyager,' but ideas and morals aren't treated well in this era at all.

A fun, throwaway reference on the surface of it, was one of the holograms mentioned Medusan astrogation techniques. They were a race in one of the best episodes of 'TOS' ('Is There In Truth No Beauty?'), as that was exactly what that race was good at, and in keeping with the scenes at the beginning of the episode where we see the Zhat Vash members go mad after touching the Admonition and seeing the horrors that may await in future, it tied in since the very sight of a Medusan is supposed to induce madness. So that was a nice touch, as was a new bit of information on Picard's early career, he mentioned being a young Ensign on the Reliant, likely named for the ship in 'Star Trek II,' though it couldn't have been that actual vessel since it was destroyed long before he was born, though we've seen plenty of starships take the name of ships that have come before. When Rios talks about the special orders against synths being a 'black flag directive' from Starfleet I felt like they should have used an existing high priority Captain's-eyes-only code as was seen on occasion, such as Code 47 in 'Conspiracy,' which would have been a nice callback. We've certainly seen Captains-only orders before (like the Omega Directive in the 'Voyager' episode of the same name). And I didn't even catch that Marta Batanides, whom Picard mentions as, I think Vandermeer's XO, had been in 'Tapestry'! There's even a reference to Yridian tea, but I can't imagine them bringing back those naked-mouse-head creatures (last seen in an episode of 'Enterprise').

For all the good I was able to enjoy in the episode, it couldn't distract me from the fundamental problems I've mentioned. The music didn't help, either, being far too melodramatic, which is in keeping with the melodrama of modern Trek. And as I've said, 'Picard' isn't as annoying or frustrating as 'DSC,' but it still remains too close to that style. It relies too much on audio and visuals that don't fit with what made Trek work and even if this episode had been truly terrific it couldn't make up for another badly ended season that was coming round the corner. At the same time I will give this episode credit for those things it got right, but it's also irritating in that it shows glimpses of what it could be and yet won't. It's just not enough, and when you have seven hundred episodes of something that works and that you like just the way it is, seeing a downgraded, updated version full of the kind of things you detest or that don't deserve to be concentrated on merely adds to the depression of what was already a depressing take on the Trek universe. I'm looking forward to getting to the end of this season so I can finally give up writing reviews on things that for the most part I don't enjoy.

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