Identity

 DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Identity)

A happy ending, a good staple sci-fi idea, a semi-sequel to an 'SG-1' story, and lots of running around in the woods... So why is it, like the last few episodes it still feels somehow insubstantial? They chose a different way of portraying the body swap between Keller and this interstellar thief - rather than letting Jewel Staite exercise her acting muscles and play someone completely different pretending to fit in, they had the model play herself, in the same way they used to do it on 'Quantum Leap,' and now that I come to think of it, they even show her real self in reflections, as if in tribute, so that can't be a coincidence, can it? There appeared to be many more influences than the 90s time travel series. My first thought when Zelenka's compassion is met with brutal violence was a similarity to the freak-of-the-week episodes of 'Smallville' - the same domestic (-ish), setting, sudden violence from someone behaving weirdly. On the other hand, they'd already done a mysterious woman comes to Atlantis in the Wolsey episode, 'Remnants.' Then things went a bit 'Rambo' with jungle drums and chases in the forest as three different groups shoot at each other. It was a bit of a mixed episode, all told. I enjoyed the reference to King Arthur's cave from 'SG-1,' and vaguely remembered these communication stones, but only just. I'm not sure the episode knew what it was supposed to be.

For instance, what if Neva, this murderous, despicable thief, had performed a bit better instead of quickly raising suspicions? They kept it going for a while, but that could have been the whole story, notwithstanding that the franchise had done that kind of thing before, and probably on more than one occasion! I'd have liked to see Keller acting out of character, maybe they didn't have faith in the actress' ability? There is the added uncertainty of people living to the end of the series (at least the ones that don't appear in the next spinoff, 'Universe'), so I did wonder if Zelenka would survive his stabbing with what appeared to be a pair of pliers, which must have made a gaping wound. Then Keller, might she be killed off, it certainly was close? Fortunately we're not in the age of main characters being killed off for the 'fun' of it back then, so it had to mean something - talking of which, Dr. Beckett makes another visit, and this time seems just like he's a regular part of the Atlantis team now, not strange that he's coming in. That did rather undermine the dramatic death his character originally had and it is oddly bland to see him just there, even though it's not the first time. I'm still wondering if they'll bring Weir and Ford back before, or at, the end and make the group complete, but they probably didn't have the will or the budget by then.

Having someone strapped to a gurney in an observation room really reminded me of 'SG-1,' I'm sure they did that all the time. And that whole thing with the 'mystery' of who stabbed Zelenka should have been solved because you'd expect them to have CCTV in a lab if they have it in other places. Or don't they? At least they resisted the trope of 'One Day Earlier' coming up, instead the flashback turns up naturally when Neva finally tells the truth and we don't have an overly dramatic and overused opening, other than for poor Zelenka, of course! It's all fine, another episode that's entertaining, has all the cast together, looks nice and ends well. There's a hard edge to things when Sheppard presents a threatening aspect to the Magistrate of the village, and Neva gets her comeuppance from a furious former accomplice, and the moment when an axe is about to fall on Keller's neck, and surprisingly it's the criminals who save her rather than her friends who would have been too late, but: at least the happy ending.

Again, as with too many recent episodes this season, it lacks ambition and the fully exploiting of the characters, which they seemed to be doing in Seasons 3 and 4 and some of this season, a common complaint I've been making. Once again I appreciate the chance to have all the characters working together, but I do feel the series is either treading water a bit, or has reverted to its early years when they weren't quite as assured in their writing. I'd love to know at what point they knew they weren't coming back for a Season 6, because this story ends ambiguously as to the fate of Neva, and maybe she escaped, which sounds like they were leaving threads for potential future stories. There's only two episodes left now and I imagine they'll be linked. I really hope they don't squander the potential, because it's too late to say the season lives up to what went before.

**

The Fight

 DVD, Voyager S5 (The Fight)

In the bllllluuuuuuue corner we have the scourge of the Alpha Quadrant, the Maquis Mauler, Commander Chakoooooo-tay. And in the red corner we have the damage-dealer of the Delta Quadrant, Kiiiiiiiiiiid Chaos! Get ready for the fight of your lives as these two battle for the ult-iiiii-mate priiiiiiiize! Finally Chakotay gets an episode worthy of him - not since Season 4's 'Unforgettable' had he starred in a vehicle for himself, and that was, as has been said before, quite forgettable! At last he stars and gets something juicy. Somehow boxing fits his personality like hand in boxing glove (I assume Robert Beltran liked the sport since he's supposed to be the origin of the idea for his character's hobby). It's strange, because obviously he often seems like a pacifist, someone who would prefer to fight and run away, to live to fight another day, discretion the better part of valour, but that's not to say he wasn't valorous or willing to go into combat if there was no other option (the mark of a good Starfleet officer), and yet I don't believe we'd ever heard about his interest in boxing before. Indeed, he even tells the Captain at the end that he likes to box to unwind, implying his pastime wasn't well known to his crew-mates. I'm sure he wasn't hiding it, but he's quite a restrained, private man who doesn't need to put himself in the spotlight with others. And though on the face of it, it might seem strange someone of his gentle demeanour would enjoy a violent bloodsport known for how much damage you must do to bring your opponent down, it's also about discipline, and as Boothby says, defeating yourself, and Chakotay's always been a big chunky lad so you can imagine he didn't get like that through being inactive or sitting around on vision quests all day!

Ah, Boothby. And ah, Ray Walston. Leaving aside the boxing angle, which this episode really isn't about, but I'll get to that, the thing that always intrigued me about this episode was how they managed to bring back an existing character out of the blue: and what a choice! 'Voyager' had difficulty in crossing over guest stars from other Treks, much in the same way as 'Enterprise' - the latter's problem was being set at least a hundred years before most of the characters we knew, the former's that they were very far away. Not that it had entirely stopped them, Riker being a big name guest back in Season 2 (not forgetting Quark and Morn in the pilot), ironically one of the few who also appeared on 'Enterprise' since you can't keep William T. down. There was Captain Sulu, Rand and the Klingon, Kang in Season 3, and recently the Borg Queen (though not the original), and who else this very season? Why, only Groundskeeper Boothby himself! Okay, so it wasn't actually him, but a Species 8472 recreation within a facsimile of Starfleet Academy in 'In The Flesh,' oddly another episode Chakotay had more exposure in, though it couldn't be called his episode like this one. Walston must have got on so well with everyone, probably charmed them all, that they wanted to bring him back soon, and since we learn Chakotay has a boxing simulation why not have it be headed by Boothby? It was a fine way to bring back a character you'd never have thought would return after 'TNG' ended, but it shows the respect and love for Walston that they made the effort twice this year. I'd love to know how it all came about and if this was his final acting role, I know he died in 2001, during the series' seventh season, so he might well have reappeared if he'd been able.

The episode isn't about Boothby, in the same way it isn't about boxing, and while both of those things are fascinating to see in Trek, the heart of the matter is the mind over matter, or the matter over mind: specifically the fear of losing it, something that haunts us to this day and has only become a larger spectre for many. It's really Chakotay's personal fear that he'll end up like his Grandfather, since he has the 'crazy gene.' In many ways for him it was an irrational fear since he had the gene suppressed before birth (interesting that this was allowed since we know Trek's views on genetic alteration have always been strictly anti, as reiterated in 'DS9' with the reaction to Bashir's genetic modification, but perhaps they allowed the suppression of dangerous genes as a matter of course, and only 'enhancement' was banned?), and it was only because his Grandfather refused his medication (a rare example of superstitious belief affecting someone in the Trek world negatively as usually they don't like to show any belief system to be against a person's wellbeing, though it's countered by the fact this genetic defect becomes useful in the situation Chakotay faces), which he clearly didn't need, and even if he did, he wouldn't have refused. I don't think it's that he believes he'll end up confused like his Grandfather naturally, rather that this experience with the aliens puts him through the wringer and opens up the possibility of the cognitive disorder he so fears, and the episode becomes about that taste of hallucination and bewilderment, and confronting that which you fear head-on.

In that respect it gets back to the Trek tradition of being inspirational in the way we see someone overcome an issue for their own sake, but also to save their ship. We'd just had an episode in 'Course: Oblivion' where the ship had gone all shimmery and was in grave danger of coming apart, and here we are with a similar thing happening (though of course last time it wasn't the real Voyager). I'm not quite sure on the timeline of this episode because I've always watched it after that previous episode, but the production number is 108, putting it directly after 'Bride of Chaotica!' and before 'Bliss,' as listed in 'The Star Trek Encyclopedia,' so I assume production order was different than aired, perhaps to accommodate Walston? At least they were stuck in Chaotic Space and not Chaotica Space as that would have made it a very different episode... As it is, it's a semi-Holodeck story as part of it does take place there, and that becomes the backdrop. One thing I noted was the quality and inventiveness of the directing: you have little shots like a corridor scene beginning with a reflection of Janeway and Chakotay in a wall panel, or the introduction of the Holodeck program panning from the lockers round to view the ring. The scenes I loved most, however, were both the aliens' recreation of the ring with its moody lighting, a single ceiling lamp swinging above and creating great shadows everywhere, with the misshapen ring, and the soft focus 'dream' sequences where Chakotay uses a punchbag on the Bridge and we glance across through the open door of first the Briefing Room for a character to speak up while the others ignore it, then the Ready Room, and another corner of the Bridge.

It emphasised the otherworldliness of Chakotay's experiences because you never see shots like that normally, looking through open doors into other rooms from a distance, making it a unique vision of familiar surroundings. Much of those sequences reminded me of the creepiness whenever the Prophets would be in contact with someone in 'DS9,' specifically you get that same effect of multiple cuts of characters in situations we'd already seen, like the aliens were using very recent memories of Chakotay in order to form coherent communication, and I've always loved that strangeness, though in this case it was much quicker and snappier. Like 'Course: Oblivion' this was another example of the nature of reality, one man going through the uncertainty this time, reaching out with his mind to try and grasp what's going on. I thought it was a bit naive of the Doctor to be so positive towards the aliens, telling Chakotay to trust them at first, when there was no real evidence to suggest they should. He later changes his tune and shares the opposite view when Janeway is saying the same thing, since they don't know what the aliens' intentions are, so he's not very consistent, but she uses logic to show that their best option is to trust since they're already in grave danger so what would the aliens have to gain (of course there's always the possibility they might be leading Voyager to its doom to feast upon them, as happened to the Captain herself in 'Coda,' and especially more recently in 'Bliss,' so perhaps they should have been a bit more reticent!), and her encouragement for Chakotay to go through with it is also sound logic: keeping his sanity will do him no good if they're all marooned in Chaotic Space! It's not the first time in Trek aliens have made oblique contact (I think of Deanna in 'Night Terrors'), or would be the last time aliens had dealings with the Holodeck (next season's 'Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy,' though those aliens were belligerent rather than benevolent).

Talking of logic, I did enjoy the little aside when Paris is able to persuade Tuvok to change his mind: they're already in danger so speeding up a bit makes logical sense. Tuvok isn't in the episode a lot, but he has that great moment when Chakotay, seeing boxing gloves in a hallucination on the Bridge shakes off the Security Officer's hand and then takes a swing at him, boxing him, only for the Vulcan to easily dodge and nerve pinch his Commander! It's one of those effortless little scenes which show how cool Vulcans are, despite their reserved demeanour and generally contained physicality. The boxing gloves threw up an interesting question for me when we first see them in Chakotay's Quarters, but not for long because when he looks back they're not there so we realise they're a hallucination. Until then my brain was ticking over on whether he'd be able to spare Replicator rations for something like that, especially when you consider Harry Kim back in the day had to save up quite a lot before he was able to replicate his clarinet. I justified it by assuming they were well stocked with food and had oodles of energy at this specific juncture, but as I said, it proved not to be real anyway. The same thing happened when Chakotay related the story of his Grandfather's condition and I wondered why he wouldn't have had the gene suppressed, since you'd think such advances would have happened long before then, but we quickly discover he had his problems because of refusing medication, so even though he hadn't suppressed the gene he could have been treated.

Another similarity with 'Course: Oblivion' is that we see an alien ship, even hear the voice of one of its crew, but don't see them. This time they're all dead, not having the gene which the aliens who live in that region of space were able to use to contact Chakotay - their ship reminded me of the Romulan Drone Ship in 'Enterprise,' though obviously this predated that design by years. I assume this was also a CGI creation since it's seen only briefly and not focused on, and by this time CGI had become common in Trek as the capability for greater complexity and detail had increased. A good point about the alien ship was that it is said to have superior sensors to Voyager's own, and yet they weren't able to escape the ravages of Chaotic Space, which shows that simply having the best tools doesn't prove an advantage unless you have other qualities to go with it, in the Voyager crew's case, their curiosity and deliberate and methodical exploration of a problem. Add Seven's report about only one Borg Cube ever escaping from such phenomena, and the odds don't look good for our intrepid crew, which of course only makes Chakotay's sacrifice to put himself on the line, risking his deepest fear, that much more heroic. The Doctor has a rousing semi-speech as he grapples with Chakotay losing his nerve in the face of what he risks, talking about the fear of the unknown, and that's the key theme of the episode: dealing with yourself and your own natural impulse not to get hurt, conquering fear, not the external forces you may be dealing with, but the internal ones, and that makes for a powerful message.

This was a story ripe for one of those 'One Day Earlier' captions so beloved by far too many TV dramas, and which I've come to find a lazy tool applied in an attempt to pique casual viewer interest. Here, we do go back to before Chakotay was afflicted, but the amount of time that's passed is of no real consequence. I suppose it wouldn't be Trek without some kind of moral viewpoint on something as divisive as the sport of boxing, and the Doctor does get off his message from a medical point of view, saying it shouldn't even be in the Holodeck database, which is a bit extreme (he also gets to play a version similar to his creator, Dr. Zimmerman, when he wears a white medical coat and is quite obnoxious in Chakotay's dream). Surely with the safeties on, the boxing wouldn't do any actual harm, you wouldn't feel the effect of a punch, though that does bring up the question of incremental degrees of violence or feedback: in this case you'd think some push back would be required, otherwise you wouldn't be experiencing the force of actual boxing, but then if you did it could be potentially detrimental to the body, so it can't always be as simple as safeties on or off, you'd need varying degrees of contact for something like this. Either that or Chakotay just turns off the safeties every time. His opponent, Kid Chaos, the one he was fighting on the Holodeck, as opposed to the Ghost of Christmas Future whom he takes on under the same guise in the vision, was apparently a Terellian. But was he a Terellian or was he a Terrellian, or even a Tarellian, that is the question? (According to Memory Alpha he's 'Terrellian'). And on the subject of spelling, did Boothby deliberately say 'Maquis of Queensbury' rules rather than 'Marquis' or do Americans pronounce it the same way? If not, I liked the Maquis reference.

I do like a good Chakotay episode, he was an underrated character who deserved a lot better than he was given, but at least in this season he still had worthwhile stories centred around his character. I like the spare, empty design of the places in which many of the scenes occur, whether that be the bare, rocky area Chakotay meets his Grandfather in a vision, or the boxing scenes, they force the focus upon the drama and what it's all about rather than concentrating on extraneous prettying up and overly detailed sets. Almost makes me think of the surreal, abstract setting of 'Spectre of The Gun,' though not as extreme. It reminds you that Trek is about content: story and character, not ephemeral effects, though of course the imagery of Voyager as it travels through this rippling region was excellent. It was wonderful to give Ray Walston one last appearance in Trek, a fitting tribute to his long career and the important place his character had in the lore, dating from 'TNG,' but it was almost as good to meet Chakotay's Grandfather, albeit a vision of him, just as we met a vision of his Father back in 'Basics.' Even better, he was played by Ned Romero who not only played a similar Indian character in 'TNG' ('Journey's End'), looking much the same, but dates all the way back to 'TOS' when he played Krell the Klingon in 'A Private Little War,' one of very few actors to have been in both original and 90s Trek, my favourite trivia for the episode! I always love seeing a family member of the characters we know, it fills out their backstory a little more and gives us another way to relate to them. I never liked the vision quest stuff, but I have the feeling this may have been the last time Chakotay performed one on the series. He'd be shortchanged in the last couple of seasons, as I remember them, but this episode is one that has grown on me to the point I number it among the classics, yet one more reason Season 5 stands tall, like the champion Chakotay after a hard-fought round, his opponent down for the count.

****

Course: Oblivion

 DVD, Voyager S5 (Course: Oblivion)

The nature of reality. This was always going to be a favourite of mine since I love those episodes where what appears to be reality is questioned, probably dating back to 'Frame of Mind,' one of the few 'TNG' episodes I saw as a child, but perhaps even further still with 'TOS' episodes such as Kirk wandering the empty corridors of what looks like his Enterprise, and perhaps even going right back to my beginnings with Trek, my earliest memory being of 'Miri' where that man suddenly rushes out on the Landing Party and dies clutching the tricycle. There's a sense of wonder, but also horror as the truth is revealed, while even before that we know something is not right. Trek did so many of these episodes in the 24th Century era ('Enterprise' had 'Vanishing Point,' but that was a bit of an 'it was all a dream' cop-out!), always close to normality, but slightly askew. In contrast, I've never really loved mystery stories, like crime whodunits, so there was something very specific to the Trek interpretation of mystery that has always struck some nerve with me. This episode is about as far as you could possibly go in the exploration of a false reality, so it was going to rate highly, but it's also one of those very rare examples of the sequel being superior to the original. I think of the Eddington arc that began in 'For The Cause' as another example of that - while it was a great episode, 'Blaze of Glory' was even better, and though that was actually the second sequel, or finale of a trilogy after 'For The Uniform,' my point still stands.

Generally in Trek the second part of a two-parter, often even a cliffhanger ending and follow-up at the start of the next season, wasn't quite as strong as the first part, simply because the writers were so accomplished at creating these incredible situations for the characters to be stuck in ('The Best of Both Worlds' comes to mind, first and foremost), though I wouldn't denigrate the sequels, they were following greatness after all, which is very hard to do as successfully. But with 'Course: Oblivion' I found it to be a classic derived from a pretty good episode ('Demon'), but which took the whole concept further (I liked they brought back original Director Anson Williams, too). One thing 'Voyager' was criticised for, and I've done my own share of criticism in these reviews, is that it didn't reach its full potential, it became a little lazy, for want of a better word, it didn't exploit the premise for arc stories enough or explore the recurring characters, had all but written them out by this time in the series (Ensign Wildman, Vorik, etc), seemingly in opposition to the 'DS9' style of giving everyone depth and a place in that world - an example in this episode is that even when 'Janeway' (I'll stop putting quotes around the names henceforth!), gathers the crew together to tell them of this radical revelation of their situation, all we see are a handful of officers in a corner of the Mess Hall. At least show her words being pumped round the ship, people stopping in corridors, others at their stations, just to present the idea of the crew consisting of more than ten! With crowd numbers it's usually a budgetary constraint (regular Trek Director David Livingston famous for trying to get big crowds when he could, while also denying them to other directors in his role as Producer!), and that's one of the few criticisms I could level at this episode.

That's because it's so well done, even coming to it with the foreknowledge of what it's all about, which you'd think would diminish the power of the story. Not so, it only makes things that much more tragic when you know what's coming. I wasn't sure it would still hold up as a classic judging by the first chunk of the episode. Not that it wasn't fun to see a wedding take place on the ship, everyone threaded up to the nines in their dress uniforms, an absolute rarity, especially on this series since there were no Starfleet functions to attend, the marriage of Thomas Eugene Paris and B'Elanna Torres, prefiguring (and standing in for, but that wasn't this episode's fault), the actual happy event to come later in the series. I've always loved slow motion, especially when it's emphasising an important moment, the coming together of these two that had been 'courting' for over a year, but there was also a sense of something not quite right even in that (it's almost like you have to take everything with a pinch of salt, or perhaps rice...). I don't know if Tuvok's line, "When it comes to affairs of the human heart, it is wise to look beyond logic," was a deliberate attempt to sound a discordant note in the proceedings, but that's how I took it. It just didn't seem like the kind of thing Tuvok would say - Spock, yes, half-human, much later in his journey of balancing Vulcan and human experience, but not Tuvok. Then there was the conversation in the Jefferies Tube between Torres and Seven with the latter effectively expressing her belief that being joined with one person to life would be boring. B'Elanna's response about her not going into stasis for the rest of her life could be mistaken for a vote for promiscuity and not honouring her husband (something notably absent from her self-made vows at the ceremony), though they were talking generally about social situations, so I don't think anything untoward was meant.

Anything that seems out of place or out of character can easily be explained away, because, and at this point in the review I feel I can reveal it, since the episode is only a little way in before the truth comes to light: they aren't the real crew. Or the real Voyager. But they are part of the real universe and timeline, that's the uniqueness of this episode's conundrum: they are duplicates. And in keeping with that quote that some character said in Trek once, 'everyone's human,' they keep hold of the humanity they don't really have, even to death. In itself it wasn't an original idea, even the series' second episode dealt with the ship encountering a duplicate of itself ('Parallax'), though in that case it was a time-related issue. There were others, too, 'Deadlock' being an obvious example with two Voyagers, and in fact Harry and Naomi are both from that other reality. The crew of Voyager roaming the galaxy and being part of events and contacts the real one wasn't would later be explored from an entirely different and more comedic angle in the following season's 'Live Fast and Prosper,' so duplication, for whatever reason, could be a rich vein of storytelling. As I always say in relation to Trek stories: you can do anything, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. And this was a most poignant and tragic exploration of what it would mean if everything you knew and believed in was proved to be false. Or perhaps not false, but not relevant to you. In fact this episode very much demonstrates the power of belief and that it can achieve great things or be responsible for great mistakes, both are in evidence, mainly through Janeway's actions.

She is the quintessential example of the Captain, pigheaded in her resistance to what she sees as giving up what has become her life's mission, butting heads with her First Officer once again, all for the idea of reaching a home that isn't hers to reach, but eventually coming to realise what's best for her crew. It's a touching and heartfelt story that reaches out for the best of what it means to be Starfleet, the moral values so important to this organisation, exemplified in these officers. They aren't real so why should they strive to get 'home' to a place that wouldn't even receive them with joy if the truth were known? Why should they follow Janeway's orders, she's not a real Captain, she hasn't been to the Academy, none of them have? They could have simply dropped into despondency and refused to do anything further, the whole nature of discipline and motivation suddenly pulled out from under them. As Tom says, why follow orders, reverting to a version of the real Paris who was always a little rebellious in the early days, though even here he doesn't mutiny or actively oppose Janeway's decisions, if he does become sarcastic and questioning. Harry is, as he usually is, more supportive of authority and it's fascinating to see the traits of these characters so firmly portrayed in their duplicates, showing how close they are to the originals. That goes for the technology, too. Somehow, this 'silver blood' as it was called, can create warp capable engines, Holodecks (Neelix is giving Paris options for his honeymoon), and even the holographic Doctor. They really do travel at warp, so this silver blood would be an amazing asset if it could be a harnessed resource developed for practical use, though that isn't the point of the episode!

The main point I took is about identity, and is a lesson for today's world as much as it was then. Their belief system was integral to keeping this crew together instead of splitting off and going their separate ways. They trusted in Janeway's leadership in spite of her not being the original, and she in turn led them in strict accordance with the protocols they knew, the guiding principles. They could have destroyed that alien ship (the voice of whose occupant or Captain went uncredited), when it denied them safe landing on a Class-Y planet that could have served to save them, or at the very least provide rest and recuperation until they moved on, in one of many heartbreaking moments in the episode. But in their worst moment they don't give up their principles - it can be argued Janeway's salmon-like urge to return home (planning to pass through the centre of the Milky Way - but what about the Great Barrier, had it been taken down since the events of 'Star Trek V'?), was detrimental to herself and her crew, the idea that feelings drove her, but she eventually fights this inherent nature to realise what is best, only it was too late, and that's the real tragedy. But getting there is the sweet inspiration of our real characters, showing what even copies of Starfleet heroes are capable of. This sweet, nutritional storytelling is what made Trek great and which the current era has lost (ironic, given Bryan Fuller who kicked it all off wrote this episode!), in a big way: at their most desperate need they're turned away from sanctuary and it leads to their destruction, but they continue to act with integrity no matter the cost, and that's amazing and beyond what you could expect from people.

The episode could very easily have been laughable and gone down in the series' history as lamentable as many see 'Threshold' (though I find it generally pretty good, apart from the loose approach to Trek's internal reality!). Trek has numerous examples of being overzealous with the makeup and turning characters into wacky monsters: look at 'Genesis' on 'TNG' (for all its great design, it's still pretty wacky), or 'Extinction' on 'Enterprise'! When characters begin to slime up and look mouldy it could have been bizarre, even Janeway gets it slathered all over her face, but it's in how they exhibited good character beneath that which made it so poignant. The last time I think Neelix was covered in gunk was in the disgusting end of the terrific 'Persistence of Vision' when he's bleeding slime from pores all over his skin in an effort to distract Kes from reality (another great 'nature of reality' episode!), but here he has the dignity and the resilience to carry on, even appointed Chief Medical Officer in a fine moment of Janeway reinforcing the trust she's always placed in him (and I loved his comeback about now he's CMO he can relieve her of duty if she refuses to rest!). The last time Kim was slimed up was in 'Scorpion' after he'd been attacked by Species 8472, and yet here he ends up Captaining the ship as everyone's dead, the last man on the Bridge, ordering Seven to eject the Warp Core... Even Chakotay is back to his best as the voice of reason to counter Janeway's excesses. Though none of these characters had yet been lost in the shuffle, they'd be lessened in the last two years of the series, and knowing that adds more poignance and is one reason I feel Season 5 was the last great year for the series.

Being strict, there are other negatives to the episode apart from what I've already mentioned: why would B'Elanna put Seven in charge of the Core when she was 'going away' for her honeymoon, she does have subordinates, does she not? And what does Seven make of it - just like Troi driving the Enterprises-D and -E to destruction (I know, I know: unfair!), she ends up ejecting it! Don't put her in charge down there again... Joking aside, we should have been shown the Core ejection, that's one of the things about Trek convention they stuck to, except in the inverse: when reality wasn't real, like a Holodeck for example, you'd never see the external views because of course they wouldn't exist. In this case they were a real ship in the real Galaxy, so it would have been better to show a real Warp Core eject sequence, though we had already seen it once, I believe. Not that it harms the episode, just that it could have enhanced it further. A minor thing I noticed was when preparing to land on the planet they went to Red Alert rather than the correct procedure, Blue Alert, though that's one of those things that can easily be explained away by them not necessarily following the exact procedure the real Voyager would (though they mention Grey Mode, which was just as rare!), a slim argument since they were so exactly duplicated they appeared to behave and think, with all the same memories, like the real crew. That can also go for the reference to Painstiks which Janeway says at the wedding they'll forgo, but Painstiks had nothing to do with weddings, they're confusing them with ma'stakas, the ceremonial clubs used to 'attack' the bride and groom and seen in 'You Are Cordially Invited...'! Again, easily explainable as part of their degradation, but in reality I suspect it was a mistake on the part of the writers. Oh dear...

There was also the curious fact that while their skin had these mottled abrasions and the ship was shimmering apart, you never see their uniforms do the same, though they must be made of the same material as everything else - this was unlike the similar effect of the Changelings in 'DS9' where you would see even their clothing affected, such as when they were desiccating. Probably another item we can put down to time and budget concerns. There's the fact they somehow catch up with where Voyager is now, though they could have been travelling ever since we saw them in 'Demon,' and an experimental Warp Drive is mentioned. And I felt the sequence where the rice falls through the wibbly-wobbly floor (shades of 'Twisted,' most notably in the Jefferies Tube where it's first noticed), of the Mess Hall wasn't quite... I don't know, it looked okay, but it was just a strange choice as the way to flag up something was wrong and I can't imagine how difficult turning the script directions into actual filmed images was to achieve because it's almost abstract - these small grains of rice bouncing on the pattern of the carpet (never have we had such a close look at the flooring on the series, with the full focus of the frame upon it!), and falling through, you'd be forgiven for not quite understanding what was going on.

Perhaps it could represent another theme of the episode: dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Which brings me round again to the tragic nature of this reality and the conflict between the course of action they should take. They're quite quick to accept the bizarre notion of their true nature, because to all outside knowledge they appear to be what they thought they were, and only digging deeper reveals the truth. At least they don't reject the truth for a lie because it doesn't suit how they feel about themselves. And it doesn't change their struggles, they are certainly real to each other, and though Chakotay says belief alone won't hold the ship together, knowing the truth and still holding on to the identity they'd been given was what encouraged them to push on. In the end there was nowhere to go and, much like the ending of 'Time and Again,' no one really knows what happened. In that case it was a happy ending because the disaster Voyager was originally responsible for, was averted, and with this one there isn't even that poignancy of learning a lesson, such as the profound experience Picard went through in 'The Inner Light,' but because there was absolutely nothing to be gained, nothing was left but desolation, not even their experiences, logs and memories could be passed on, and that makes it even more tragic and has a huge impact on the viewer because we're the only ones that share this knowledge and will remember this courageous group that were so like the people we knew.

If Voyager had found out who these people were and had been able to glean anything of their short existence it would have robbed the story of its final, powerful conclusion, and perhaps this could be a last theme: that one day we'll all be forgotten and end up like that ship and its crew. It's one of the advantages of the short story medium to be able to so fully grasp a situation or a set-up and play it out in a brief period of time. At the same time, because this was a direct sequel to an established episode, it had an extra layer of sadness: that this group were once known of by the real Voyager, but never will be again. At the same time it can't be entirely without a degree of creepiness to the concept, because these people were hoping to get back to Earth and could have met their 'families' as if they were the real versions, though from the integrity shown, especially from their Captain, you know they'd have been as honourable as the originals they'd duplicated. It wasn't 'all a dream,' it was real to them as they were real to each other, friendships, marriage, trust in each other... All to end up as a footnote in Janeway's log, a distress call that was answered but too late. I wouldn't want every episode to end like this one, hope and reward, even on a small scale are important, but sometimes the nature of reality is such that we need a dose of that reality to remind us of our reality.

****

Infection

 DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Infection)

First thought was it would be a haunted house episode with the team creeping around a seemingly abandoned Hive ship getting picked off by infected Wraith, pretty much a zombie film (or see 'Impulse' on 'Enterprise'). But then they left so there wasn't the tension which was there initially. And then they went back so maybe it was what I thought it was. Except it turned more into a disaster film where things just keep getting worse. Whatever theme the story took I found it to be a bit depressing: nothing goes right! They discover the gene treatment Dr. Keller developed actually ended up harming the Wraith who were put through it, Todd isn't very helpful and is probably going to die soon, and even McKay, usually so dependable in a crunch, can't seem to keep the disintegrating Hive ship together. I also felt like the characters were remarkably slow to put the facts together: there's a virus or something within these Wraith, the ship's organic... How difficult can it be to see the connection when the ship is restructuring itself on the fly? I know we have the advantage of knowing the episode title, which rather gives away the nature of the situation, but with all the experience these people have had over the last five years, well, you'd think they'd be a bit quicker on the uptake.

Add to that I've never been particularly keen on the production design of Hive ship internals, all those 'organic' parts look like a filming studio with drapes hanging around, akin to something out of the original Trek (see Balok's ship in 'The Corbomite Manoeuvre'), only with higher resolution. With modern lighting techniques and plenty of smoke it can be forgiven, it's not like it ruins episodes whenever they go there, but I'm just not keen on all that and to have a story take place almost entirely aboard such a location doesn't inspire confidence. Was it another budget-saving operation as they limped to the finish line? On the positive side it was nice to have the whole team together for once, minus Wolsey who was back on Atlantis, but is part of the episode. In a few recent episodes I've wished we had the team working together and here we do, so that's good, and even Major Lorne is there. I do wish there had been more integration of the team, as we do see snatches of moments like the soldiers running around blasting unmasked zombie Wraith grunt soldiers (which we'd never seen the faces of before, so that was new), and Rodney characteristically throws hissy fits when Sheppard wants him to fix things, then comes up with the solution, but I didn't feel that familiar, comfortable teamwork where everyone's doing what they do best. It was much more of a scramble to survive than a professional success.

I also felt there was a bit of moralising missing: I know the Wraith are the enemy, a deadly enemy, but they were lightly discussing genocide, and while they perhaps deserve it since they have no qualms about killing off, or worse, using for food, their own enemies, I feel like our heroes should be better than that, but then that's always been one of the things that differentiates 'Stargate' from 'Star Trek,' it's much more about soldiering than diplomacy or keeping to a certain code in dealing with the enemy. At least Sheppard kept his word, talking Wolsey into letting Todd go, but if he is dying anyway why wouldn't he stay there and be treated? Keller said it could take months to work out a solution from the data she'd collected and I can't see Todd wanting to hang around in custody merely to save his life. Heyerdahl certainly succeeded in injecting intensity into the role and no doubt he'll be back before the end to pay off Sheppard's giving him his freedom back. There was one scene I thought noteworthy, and that was Todd and Keller discussing the differences between them, compassion, how soldiers and doctors have different roles and methods but are both trying to save lives. It had promise and was more the kind of thinking I'd like to explore than merely running around shooting things.

That's what the series always was, at heart, just like its forbear, so it's hardly surprising, but I had felt that, with Season 3 and to some degree 4, things had developed. This could easily have been an early seasons story, it didn't really develop anything further, which is a shame and maybe a continuing sign that they knew things were going to be wrapped up and just had to get the episodes out. Not that I'm criticising or saying it was bad, only that it doesn't quite have that extra level I was almost coming to expect of the series. Although it was a standalone adventure, stuck on an alien ship and trying to escape, it also relies on the ongoing story, and so there wasn't a great deal of a sense of completion and tying things up. You can't always have that, but I want to see things close out well on the series. And maybe this was an opportunity that wasn't quite reached, for all the pleasure in having the cast together. That said, the last part where they're heading towards a crash-landing on the planet, was good, though even there we don't see the impact on the characters, just an external view, which was effective, but maybe we could have intercut with our people being thrown around as suddenly the next thing you know is Sheppard sitting comfy in Wolsey's office as if it was just another day!

**

The Disease

 DVD, Voyager S5 (The Disease)

Harry Kim breaks the rules. Harry's misadventures with the opposite sex had become something of a running joke, much like Chief O'Brien being tortured in some way every season on 'DS9,' to the extent that Paris usually gives us a rundown of previous escapades: a hologram (not actually accurate, she was a lonely alien who broke into the Holodeck remotely), an ex-Borg (Seven herself), the wrong twin (recently, with the famed Delaney sisters). That's not even a comprehensive list as he's got into trouble in this area before, most notably 'Favourite Son' in which he was chosen by life-sapping vampire alien women and only just escaped. In comparison Derran Tal is actually quite ordinary, perhaps that's why, like a teenager, Harry is so convinced he's 'in love' to the extent that he disobeys protocol, that's one level, then disobeys the Captain's direct orders to end it (that's two levels), and finally gets to level three of hot water when he storms out of the Briefing Room onto the Bridge chasing the Captain so she has to order him into her Ready Room. Harry has certainly changed, he's lost his inhibitions and is reacting quite childishly, even more because he thinks he's being all grown up and mature because he hotheadedly has to defend himself instead of accepting his Captain's judgement, realising he's in the wrong and taking his medicine.

In a way it's quite a shock to see someone of Harry's straight arrow reputation and spotless record, go so far off the rails. He claims he hasn't been affected by the alien transfer or whatever it was that made him 'luminesce,' perhaps an indirect reference to 'Fortunate Son' when he was under some alien effect, but I'd like to think that it did play a part, despite his protestations to the contrary, because the alternative is that he simply chose to be a bad boy. I blame Tom, myself. If he hadn't been so disobedient in 'Thirty Days' perhaps it wouldn't have got into Harry's mind to do the same thing: no doubt in his mind it's the same situation, a valid reason for going against authority because it feels right. You could say this episode is an example of the template for modern Trek, which is all about feelings, often overriding reason or rules, and young Harry is the poster boy for such indulgences. While I can cite Tom's influence, in general he's settled down in the last season or two, especially regarding his romantic side, so perhaps Kim's just a slow learner, or maybe he has to make mistakes for himself before he can see things aren't going to end well. On the one hand he blabbers about 'true feelings,' while on the other he admits to Tal that he knew it couldn't last since they'd only have a couple of weeks. Of course Trek is operating in a much looser moral ground, reflecting society in that it's 'okay' to be promiscuous, as long as it 'feels right,' so I was never going to agree with the central premise - not unless Harry was dedicated enough to commit for life to this woman, but that, unfortunately doesn't even ever come into the conversation.

Clearly the episode isn't exactly presenting a very positive moral message, but while it inadvertently does portray some moral effects of such behaviour in that Harry has to suffer the physical and career ramifications, the message-sending only seems to get worse - basically, Janeway goes easy on him and says it might have made him a man, but I don't think it's anything to do with him realising his mistakes, owning up to them, or anything along those lines, it's all about him standing up for what he believes in. I will say I did warm to how Janeway deals with him in some ways, because while she's evidently furious at his second indiscretion, she doesn't have a shouting match on the Bridge in front of everyone, and when he's had his say in the Ready Room and she's called out to the Bridge again, she could have reinforced her private orders to send him to Sickbay, but instead she allows him the dignity of returning to his station in the crisis, showing she still has trust in him, and while this is a very serious matter, it's separate from his personal expertise and he can still contribute in a crunch. Still, it's a shame she can bring up how she treated him differently as a newly fledged Ensign on his first ship, and yet goes along with his view of things in the end, or at least there's room for manoeuvre. There's a general air of people not thinking Harry's actions are so terrible, from Chakotay espousing a generous, indulgent response to his infraction, Tom actively covering for him when Tuvok's tracking the illicit communication between Harry and Tal, and even Seven coming to the Mess Hall at the end to provide her equivalent of a blessing or an acceptance.

So it's a confused episode all told, coming from a confused worldview, so it shouldn't be that surprising. We've seen plenty of examples of main characters in Trek behaving in this way before, and would do again, but Harry was almost the epitome of the squeaky clean Ensign who follows protocol at all times and is all about Doing The Right Thing. Indeed, I could imagine he and Boimler of 'Lower Decks' getting along like a house on fire (they need to bring Kim onto that series, even though he'd be a fair bit older than Brad by that time). People often point out that Harry ended his seven year stint on Voyager at the same rank as he began it, but perhaps it was because of this incident that showed he hadn't really matured enough to take on greater responsibility because he could still act the goat on occasion. I'm sure they didn't set out to keep him an Ensign for moral reasons or anything like that, but perhaps it worked out for the best even though in reality it was probably an oversight on the part of the writers. He gets a formal reprimand on his record, which is a big thing to him, much like myself in my school days: I did everything I could not to get an after-school detention because it was just a symbol of badness, and while in later years I've come to see that it wouldn't have made any real difference if I had had that, I'm also somewhat pleased with my record of not getting one, though that's straying into pride territory so I'm not saying it was really a great achievement. Discipline needs to be maintained and punishment is one of the key methods to achieve that.

I'm not sure Harry could have received anything more than a reprimand, after all no one got killed, and while it was a personal matter that escalated into a situation with community-wide ramifications, it wasn't at the level of Paris' actions in 'Thirty Days' or Suder's murder in 'Meld.' The former got thirty days in the Brig, the latter was set to be locked in his Quarters for the rest of the journey. A reprimand was probably adequate, a black mark on a spotless record, a permanent reminder of Harry's actions, but I'm not convinced he really learned anything from the experience or wouldn't have done the same thing again if he encountered the situation later. Hopefully he'd think more carefully, but I'm not convinced, especially as it became more about a political issue, a section of the population of this Varro generation ship wishing to leave, tired of tradition and their place in that society. That was actually the more interesting angle of the episode, although it was problematic that Harry's actions became less of a focus. It could easily have turned into Tal actually using Harry to get her, basically terrorist, actions to succeed, though that was never part of the story, she just happened to be the one responsible, or one of them that had created these silicon-based lifeforms that were attacking the mothership. It was an extreme reaction and I do see the general flow of the episode is towards young people wanting to go their own way rather than follow the staid, 'boring old traditions' of their elders, which isn't exactly a very reassuring message (again), but at least it's more subtle and less overtly siding with a view, which was something Trek used to be much better at, while in today's polarised world there's often no nuance, it's One View and that's the only right one.

The leader, or whom I assume was the leader of the Varro, certainly didn't come across well, a suspicious, almost xenophobic man - I don't recall his name which suggests it wasn't mentioned much, if at all, and I didn't catch what his position was, whether he was overall leader or merely the leader of their science division or engineering, or whatever. Either way he's not a very balanced character, entirely unsympathetic to the extent he's shown to be far worse than the dissidents in his society, since they 'only' wanted to perform acts which would get them their freedom, while this guy almost chose to destroy Voyager as part of a quick way to clear away the attack of the silicon creatures (I immediately thought of tiny Horta!), and though it would have been a side effect that he'd allow the explosion to take out Voyager, even after they helped the generation ship to get back on its feet, he didn't seem to care, and it was only because Tal was there to urge him not to do it that he relented, thus putting her in a more noble, heroic light than she deserved in the story. Voyager had stumbled upon a divided society and usually they aren't allowed to interfere with such things, even though the Varro apparently had somewhat superior technology. I think more should have been made of their similarities, but in reality it only comes across in Janeway's opening dialogue with the leader, talking about how her ship could end up like them in its long journey home.

There was a subplot about the dissidents that began quite interestingly with Neelix acting as an investigator as he was way back when in his arc about uncovering the Maquis spy, and then again when he's part of Security in the alternate future of 'Year of Hell,' so I enjoyed them picking up those threads again and only wish that had been a more integral part of the story instead of him so quickly handing off the investigation to Tuvok, as natural and realistic as that was - my mind was actually running on the stowaway stealing rations and hiding in the Jefferies Tubes being Naomi Wildman, maybe as some kind of fun little lair, even though her name didn't come up in the guest credits at the start. That could have been fun, but it turned out to be one of the dissidents (played by Christopher Liam Moore who'd already portrayed Veer, the main Voth scientist's assistant in 'Distant Origin'), a very untrusting person who is so desperate to escape the ordered society that has kept that community together for four hundred years, he hides on Voyager. There were a few things in the episode that made me wonder how security conscious the ship is: how did he get aboard? They may have mentioned it and it passed me by, but that was a big question. Then there were the secret communications between Kim and Tal which you'd think would be picked up instantly as usually comms are monitored, or you'd think they would be. Then there was Kim's deviation from his flight plan to fix something on the outside of the ship - somehow he can beam Tal out of her Quarters and travel off to see a nebula without attracting suspicion. Actually that last one wasn't true because Tuvok pursues on the Delta Flyer, so at last we see something that tells us Tuvok is active in his job as Security Officer!

Usually Tuvok is reliable, perhaps we can put it all down to some effect the larger Varro vessel had on Voyager's sensors, or we can fudge it and say so many systems were tied into assisting the larger ship there wasn't much computer power for keeping tabs on things as well as they normally would. Otherwise it would be quite lax of our crew! Another oddity was when Janeway discusses the handbook on personal relationships, stating it's three centimetres thick. That suggests Starfleet actually has a printed, bound copy on paper rather than the usual PADDs, unless she's talking about how many PADDs together store all the data, which wouldn't be out of character for Trek! You often see a character using multiple PADDs at the same time to the extent it can sometimes look quite strange to us who are used to maybe one screen at a time, although it does make a certain amount of sense when you think they are generally quite small screens and the ability to have various documents at the same time to refer to does sound like a good way to go if you can afford it, and of course they can replicate as many PADDs as they want! We also have a rare example of ships being in different orientation to each other as Voyager is latched onto the Varro ship at an angle, so we see a quite atypical view of it - it occurred so rarely only 'DSC' and its initial approach to ships meeting on different planes, is an example I can bring to mind, though fortunately they eventually went away from that, as realistic as it was, it didn't suit Trek aesthetics.

The story was a little too pat and easy to resolve, aside from Harry choosing to suffer through the pain of separation from this alien bonding which it's stated the Varro take very seriously, implying that our Starfleet heroes don't take such things very seriously, despite there being rules of protocol, moral rules and simply rules of good sense provided as guidance for such situations. It's another subtle suggestion that it's okay to be loose and marriage isn't really important unless you want it to be, though at the same time that's tempered by clear dissatisfaction on the part of Janeway for Harry's actions, though that could be just as much, if not more, about him not obeying orders as it was about what he actually did. I did like that she says that as an Ensign he hasn't earned the right to question his Captain's orders, this is exactly the kind of serious approach to the protocols and rules of Starfleet that have been on the slide ever since Trek came back with 'DSC.' It's a great reminder of the values of Trek, about not just doing whatever you feel at the time, but adhering to a governance of yourself based on general and specific rules that have been hammered out over the centuries. I was surprised Janeway didn't dish out a full dressing down, even on the second occasion when her authority has been thwarted. Maybe it's that thing of Harry being a special case to her so she isn't going to rip him a new one like she's done with Tuvok, Chakotay, Paris, B'Elanna, Seven... He's the young one so maybe she has a more nurturing approach, even when he is in the doghouse. It was still on the borders of those previous times she's blown her top or been icily severe, so it's not like he got off without any remonstrance at all.

Kim tries to make an impassioned speech, but unfortunately he just comes off as immature and in the end I had to take issue with the 'lesson learned and becoming a man' attitude that he and Janeway discussed. The story is better than its confused morals (or immorals!), because you do care how the crew reacts to Harry (and the visuals were especially accomplished), and while he does simply end up looking supremely foolish there should be a place for rehabilitation, it's just unfortunate that the only remorse he shows is towards the result of his actions, in other words that Voyager became embroiled in a big political issue and rather than making a new friend and learning from the Varro, they don't exactly part having dispelled any xenophobic impressions - rather, the leader is shown to be correct for having reservations about dealing with outsiders since it did lead to a portion of his society breaking off. If Voyager could have played mediator, as they have before, it might have been a better, more inspiring story. Swapping a 'perfect officer' for a better man may also be a good, positive result on the face of it, but it just muddies the issue, really. Even the leaving of these dissidents was too easy because the ship is made of modules, so although it's troubling that Voyager helped in splitting a society (or facilitating, or speeding it up), there isn't even a hard lesson. If it had been 'DS9' the people wouldn't have had it so easy, it wouldn't have ended so neatly (as in episodes like 'Sanctuary').

I would have to regard it as probably the weakest of the season, and it's interesting to note that Harry Kim starred in one of the highlights of the season with 'Timeless,' yet also one of the lowlights! It seems he can't be consistent... He drops in a mention of being Captain of the Academy's Velocity team and that rang a bell - it was the fast-paced game Janeway and Seven play on the Holodeck at the end of Season 4. Shame they didn't get Harry involved! Maybe he should challenge Seven to a match - she was quite nicely integrated into the episode in a small way. For one thing, I don't think we'd ever seen her completely blue outfit before, so that was new. She talks about the Borg finding love in over six thousand species, which is strange since we know they've discovered at least 8472 so far (and that was over a year ago), so understanding of love isn't a universal constant in alien races? I'm not sure Harry knows what love is, either, but that's not his fault, it's the faulty of the society that he was brought up in. Sadly, part of Trek's ideals are to believe this is fine, so of course there are going to be times when biology gets the upper hand, and that's even with a guy who was about as disciplined as it gets, so it is a bit of an indictment of this 'utopia,' not that the writers would have seen it that way, of course...

**

Brain Storm

 DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Brain Storm)

Was it the previous episode that Keller didn't appear and Rodney barely featured? If so it would seem likely they made this episode at the same time. I don't know, but that would certainly save money I'd have thought, and the fact they didn't renew the series for a Season 6 would suggest they were cutting back on 'Stargate,' despite having another spinoff in the works. This felt like one of those science-y disaster films from the Nineties, where the hero scientist and his woman solve some catastrophe while dressed in evening wear. I'm not sure if it was genuinely a world problem as it seemed to only affect that particular secret base, but the important thing is that McKay and Keller are in trouble. None of the other cast are involved, which is a shame as we only have a handful of episodes left, and I expect at least the last couple to be about some big Wraith storyline. As much as I enjoy an episode that puts a couple of characters together and has them solving a problem, maybe this late in the final season isn't quite the place for it, but if, as I surmised, it was a budget-saving exercise, I can see why they'd do this.

I like Rodney, he's the best character, and I like Keller, too, so I don't mind them getting an episode to themselves, but I've always been less keen on the Earth-based stories than pure sci-fi, alien worlds, even Atlantis-bound episodes. It didn't really tell us anything new about the characters, other than getting the pair together properly before the end, and it was only tangentially connected to the series in the sense that the technological idea for how to solve global warming was clearly Stargate-type tech. Once they'd actually got there and things started to go wrong it did pick up and you wonder how this is going to play out, plus obviously McKay is going to have to be the star and everyone will know he's the genius he is, or at least his colleague would, and that was the important thing. And Keller gets to put her foot down and have an outsider perspective on this group of boffins. She also gets herself stuck and that sequence where we realise she's just down the corridor from where Rodney and his mate are working made things seem less impressive. Maybe it was supposed to be further away, but it didn't seem that far.

The story was a bit inevitable in terms of McKay was going to find a way round the problem, and while the external CGI effects of the extreme weather surrounding the complex were functional, they weren't the best. I thought I recognised the name Neil deGrasse Tyson, I think he must be a real scientist, so that was an interesting guest cameo there, though I was so busy trying to take in the name and recall where I knew it from that though I saw Gary Jones in the credits it seemed so natural I completely glossed over it in my mind as normal for 'Stargate,' but of course Walter is in 'SG-1' usually, not 'Atlantis,' so that very brief appearance was great fun and the more enjoyable cameo for me. Otherwise I felt it was a little too insubstantial as a story, the 'freeze lightning' being completely out of the blue and the bizarre choice of the Kramer representative not to make the call for help until it was too late and the communications were down, making the situation seem less dire than it became. It was one of those episodes where it's not bad, but neither is it all that memorable, and though I don't need every episode to be some big, meaningful adventure, I do feel they should be using the various pieces of the 'Stargate' world and our specific characters as much as possible as we come to the end. Instead there's no Teyla or Wolsey, and barely any Sheppard or Ronon.

**

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

 Wii, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011) game

It's funny how a certain word tends to crop up multiple times in a short period of time when you haven't really heard it much. There was the film 'Skyline,' then this 'Skyward Sword' and the Bond film, 'Skyfall,' and that was it for Sky-monickered projects and it's onto the next buzzword. Not saying Nintendo were inspired by other things to come up with the name, it's just coincidence, that's the running of creative minds sometimes arriving at the same places around the same time. It was enjoyable to hold aloft the Wii Remote to activate the Skyward Strike, a powerful blast of energy, and that was the key to the game, Nintendo's wish to add the impression of actually wielding the Hero's sword. And it works. With the addition of the Motion Plus sensor, which also made the Remote longer and more hilt-like in your hand, and gave it a little more weight, voila! You have sword-slicing and -slashing action. A novel idea, but inevitable when you consider that this was what the Wii was made for: to innovate and create more direct motion-to-screen control. No longer was it enough to merely press a button or flick a direction on the Analogue Stick, now you had full control. And yet it also had to be entirely accessible, since 99.999% of players were not going to be proficient with swordplay in real life.

I'd have to say they succeeded, you quickly pick up the techniques and simple pleasures of waving a sword around or stabbing into the screen. The only downside is that you can't do it lazily, you have to actually put physical effort in, which can be a little bit distancing - if you play such a game with a standard controller your every nerve impulse is effectively translated into actions on screen through buttons and stick, but here you have to be aware of the physical environment, your orientation within it, forcing you to think outside of the screen as well as inside it. Until it becomes intuitive that can be distracting, as can getting wires in a twist, or forgetting there's a wall next to you. The other issue is stamina. It really can become quite tiring having to wave whenever you want to perform an action that in the past would have been a simple finger move or tap away, and while it's no doubt healthier for the body to be more active, it's not always for the best in game. I remember taking ages fighting Ghiraim, the game's evil lieutenant whom you encounter several times through the story, because you have to learn his pattern and get your head around adjusting the angle of your blade before striking every time or he'll catch it, then you have to give the sword a jerk backwards to free it. Take off another layer of clothing because now you're starting to get genuinely hot and sweaty.

This is all well and good if you're in the mood for physical activity, but if you just want a quiet game and not to be waving your arms around it can be wearing. You can get by with small movements, you don't really need to throw yourself around the room, but this subtlety has to be learned, just as the nuances of actually playing the game itself must be. It's not just sword-wielding, either, it can be fiddly getting used to how you bring up a map, talk to Fi, your robot fairy-ish guide, playing your harp, choosing things from the item select wheels or checking your information screens. The game is a strange combination of both being more complicated and more simple than ever. For example you don't get a map onscreen any more, always useful for orienting yourself, and instead have to press '+' to bring it up. You can rotate the view, choose different floor levels if there are any, insert way points to help you get to certain places, and generally it's a more cluttered system that makes you wish for the mini-map that used to grace the corner of the main screen in previous versions. You can zoom in, too, and see where you and other key locations are in relation to each other, but then you back out of it and it's not as clear as it used to be where you should be heading, so you go back into it again. There were a number of aspects of the game that suggested a relative lack of intuitiveness that had always been there in the past and I don't know if it was young blood trying to change too much for the sake of it, becoming too enamoured with the control scheme, or being limited by that scheme.

An example is with the new stamina meter, something that works well and had to be implemented so you could run around (why running should be something so key to the Wii's era, I don't know - it was the same in the 'Goldeneye' remake, adding a run button, so maybe people were becoming less patient in games, or perhaps the Nunchuk stick isn't responsive enough for incremental movement?), since the nature of the game, small islands in the sky, or tight ground environments, meant it wasn't practical to be galloping about mounted on a steed, hence this compromise. They also added the ability to run up walls. Not in a 'Matrix' way, but Link's momentum can carry him a short way before he drops back to the ground, enabling you to leap for higher platforms and pull yourself up. All very well, and mostly useful, but also presenting a lack of control as sometimes you wanted to roll into the wall or an object such as a tree and instead you'd keep running. The turning circle seemed quite wide, too, and responsiveness of the controls was surprisingly lacking, again due to the stick or the Remote being misaligned. The worst thing was when you wanted to run up a ladder, caught it slightly off centre and instead of Link intuitively catching hold of a rung once his momentum slowed, he'd drop to the floor and if you still had the stick pushing forward because that's where you wanted to go, he'd run up against the wall again and again until you relented. If you did catch the ladder right it was a nice little boost up, and then there was the ability to make little leaps with each flick of the Remote, so you weren't limited to a slow climb as of old, but there were definitely ups and downs to this control method.

It's surprising the Nunchuk stick was so relatively unresponsive, because as far back as the N64 Controller used for 'Ocarina of Time' you had very precise control and different speeds of movement depending on how hard you pressed the stick, and that just didn't seem to be the case here. In the other games if you went close to the edge you'd automatically grab on if you fell, unless you were pushing all the way, in which case you'd make a leap, a superb context-sensitive system, but now you can just limply fall to your doom when what you actually wanted was to hold on. Now you have to press 'A' to do that while inching towards the edge when the icon pops up to give you the option. It wasn't limited to edges, either - too many times when I was traversing a horizontal rope (it took me to almost the end of the game before I mastered the knack of retaining balance, not realising you had to move both Nunchuk and Remote side to side to simulate shifting weight, most of the time travelling a couple of steps then dropping to hang!), I'd be hanging from below, flick the Remote to pull myself back up and instead promptly let go and drop to my doom! I don't know if this was a fault of my control or the fact the 'A' button on my Remote is loose, but it was supremely annoying. And unless you were running full pelt, and often, only when you ran off a specific platform, you'd drop like a stone instead of skydiving and having the option to call your giant bird creature. Another big annoyance: the game's insistence on the same actions over and over! Fall off the edge and a Knight would rescue you, plop you back down and give you a stern lecture. Every time! Or diving into a surface area Fi would laboriously tell you you need to select a location. The same if you picked up a bug or 'treasure' material: every time you started a new play session the game would have to go through the rigmarole of telling you what you'd picked up and then showing the collection screen. I know all this! I've been playing for weeks!

Granted, it would only happen once for each item and then you could pick up the same thing with impunity, at least until you switched off and came back next time, but it was unnecessary and bizarre. Was it a programming flaw? A cheap life-extending tactic? An oversight? I know I mentioned modern gamers' patience might not be what it was judging by some additions, but you needed more patience than ever for that bit. In fairness this isn't the first game in the series to do this as it happened on 'Twilight Princess' whenever you first picked up a denomination of rupee on each play session, even though you don't need to be told how much it is! At least you were given multiple options for the HUD - at Pro level things were cut down to absolute minimum onscreen clutter, while earlier in the quest it was useful to have the full-sized Remote in ghost image to remind you of what button did what, so there was some accounting for taste. It's also the first ever widescreen 'Zelda,' something I didn't particularly care for since it meant I had less line of sight for things when Z-targeting (that's another thing: sometimes you wanted the Z-target to be at eye level, such as standing on an edge and it automatically looks down and yet you want to see the horizon, but without going into the floaty first person view), as I was playing on a 'square' screen with black borders top and bottom. That's progress, though, as most screens would have been widescreen format by the time this came out (and probably earlier, given Nintendo's traditionally slow adoption of new technology in general).

Something not exactly new, but certainly in far greater evidence was the game's inclusion of supernatural or occult themes, which was quite worrying and surprising. I know it's made in Japan, a culture full of this stuff, but in the past they kept such things to a relative minimum. Yes, we'd had talk of goddesses before, and there were usually witches and potions, but in general the series was clean and largely suitable for family gaming. Here, despite it's pastel colours and soft visual style, you had giant goddess statues, idol worship, auras, 'dowsing' by which you had to use your sword to search for things, even a 'friendly' demon who lives beneath the village and wants you to 'cure' him so he can walk among the people. Yeah sure, demons really only want to be loved... Even saving the game at the various bird statues (reminiscent of the owl statues of 'Majora's Mask'), was originally explained as 'praying to the goddess,' so it was extremely inappropriate subject matter. It could be such things had become much more common across the board, but I haven't played more recent games, and 'Zelda' is one of the few, if not only traditional fantasy type I play, so I don't know if this reflects the norm for the genre in modern times, but if so it is a concerning trend that can interest children in dangerous real things. Fortunately there was nothing in the game that stopped me playing - there were some points that involved drawing symbols and I was resolved that if it asked me to draw an occult sign I'd have to just give it up, but it never did, unlike a previous Nintendo release, 'Geist,' which I threw out when one of the puzzles was to move statues in a room to create a pentagram!

Concerns about the content aside, it had the usual hallmarks of the series, the exploration, collecting, puzzle-solving, character interaction, and while I can't say the story drew me in, the environments and levels were typically satisfying. I was worried early on that this sky-based play looked suspiciously like the Oocca dungeon from 'Twilight Princess,' or even the islands in the ocean of 'Wind Waker,' not that I hated them, but I never enjoyed bottomless drops and swinging around empty voids, or small areas as much as large, solid ground-based exploration, so I was relieved when there were places to go on the distant surface. Things did take quite a while to get going and I noticed some tasks seemed designed to take up time, something the series shouldn't need to do as there's generally so much to see and experience. But four and a half hours in I still wasn't at the first dungeon and as with any game it can be a struggle to get into it at first. Not to say it was a tough game, it has to be the easiest 3D instalment by a long shot since you have constant access to hints and solutions, even during boss battles. You begin a play session with a reminder of what you're supposed to be doing so there was no chance of wandering wondering, stuck for hours as in previous versions. The downside is it doesn't encourage independent thought and puzzle-solving and is a big temptation to use it as soon as you don't know exactly what you're supposed to do. But it's better than having that stuck moment of so many 'Zeldas' past. Not that I used that option, I don't think I ever really needed to as there was nothing to the level of frustration and ingeniousness of the original Water Temple from 'Ocarina,' for example.

The Triforce dungeon came close, with its simple set of nine square rooms each in a style from a previous location, and the ability to physically change the relation to each other, shuffling them like a giant block puzzle, though none of the puzzles in this game were truly taxing, and as I've said before, once you're aware of how things work in the 'Zelda' world the solutions are generally pretty similar. A lot is squeezed in with what at first seemed a good fifty to sixty hours, but with more time spent searching out the last bits and pieces, and especially the desert dragon's consecutive boss battles and Silent Realm trials, meant it was the usual epic length, more than sufficient to keep me busy, especially as I like to find everything I can (though I was still missing three heart pieces at the end and didn't have the stamina to go back and search everywhere for them). It was wise to be observant as at certain times you'd need to find specific items, and though given a 'dowsing' signal by which to locate it, if you remember where you saw a strange item that looked like it might have a purpose later on, it enabled you to narrow down what you might be looking for. That goes for other things, too, there's always been a tradition of keeping mental note of places you can explore more fully once you have access to new abilities or equipment, and that remains the case here. New abilities like... sitting on a toilet? The first time I've ever done that in a 'Zelda' game, that's for sure, so an odd addition, though usually it was sitting on stools to replenish hearts that was the point. I never did get to the bottom of the ghostly hand in the toilet, it seemed like it was significant, but if you gave it the love letter nothing happened, so I stuck to giving the letter to the right person. There isn't usually more than one option with these things...

You could also waltz into any house and lie down on their beds for a nice kip, Link about as enthusiastic in the prospect of sleep as could be, hurling himself onto the bed, fully outstretched. The purpose of this was so you could 'activate' night time, though you're quite limited in where you can go during the dark hours. With things like the Dusk Relic to collect I was expecting to revisit all the lands in darkness, but actually that was only seen in the Silent Realm trials where you had to run around collecting orbs against a time limit, while avoiding waking the guardians who'd then come at you, a stressful task to be sure. At night it was really only Skyloft that you could explore, not even being allowed to fly, but there have always had to be arbitrary limitations on what you can do so nothing really new there. It was certainly a very different layout to the standard formula with the main hub being up in the sky and three lands accessible within which are a couple of dungeons, and each land is like a hub in itself, be it forest, volcano or desert. Maybe a bit basic, but at least it was different and you have distinct races to interact with. For once we're well away from familiar species, with only one Goron adventurer you meet periodically and no connection to the land of Hyrule whatsoever - not that that's a bad thing, as 'Link's Awakening' is one of the best and took place entirely on a side island. But I miss the days when there was only one Link and Zelda, and the stories were somewhat connected.

Instead they have a completely blank canvas to paint with (a good analogy since the visuals for this one were quite painterly and soft, like watercolour or pastel shades, a mix between the cartoonish 'Wind Waker' and realism of 'Twilight Princess'), allowing creativity to roam free. Some characters return, like Beedle the shop owner from 'Wind Waker,' and Impa, though an anorexic version far from the warrior elf we first met in 'Ocarina.' Best of all: no Tingle! There's some continuity in equipment, along with new items to play with, a nice mix of familiar and new, as you'd expect, with the flying beetle quite innovative as something that can be used to activate things remotely, cut ropes, drop bombs, and pick up items. And the blow bag was great fun, especially when you have a room full of sand to gust away, much like clearing gunk with the backpack in 'Mario Sunshine' (and presumably Luigi's in 'Mansion,' which I never played), though it's an element that makes it feel like a platform game rather than a normal 'Zelda.' And some things were slightly redundant, like the whip that could have been largely interchangeable with the clawshot, and arrows and slingshot, though traditional, having both was probably unnecessary (aiming into the screen with the Remote made things a lot less precise, especially when you had to realign - fine when you have time to adjust, very inconvenient in the midst of battle). Certain levels like the pirate ship made it seem a lot more like a platform game of Mario or Banjo ilk, and while platforming was always a part of 'Zelda,' the setting somehow always gave it a more serious air. Adding in new 'themes,' as well as the amount of traversing environments in more platformy ways lessons the reality of the style somewhat. It must be difficult to keep being innovative in such a long-running series when it's expected to be clever and yet not too far from what went before. Perhaps it was time to stop doing a forest dungeon to start things off, but at least that is a sort of training level to get people off the ground.

When they do introduce new types of dungeon such as the pirate ship or robot mines where two time periods operate and you carry an orb which has a time field around it that adjusts the environment as it travels, it's certainly different. The robot mines especially made me think more of Game Boy entries in the series for some reason, I'm not sure why. But it was quite innovative, and while I question the move towards more science fiction content of machines and robots, hardly suiting the impression of a time gone by, a time of swords and bows, it sounds like that direction only increased with the next one, 'Breath of The Wild' where they introduced motorbikes into the mix!? At least here there's nothing quite so out of place, and while you don't get to ride a horse as in so many of the previous entries, flying isn't as bad as sailing, even if it remains a little bit of a chore. Skydiving was much more fun, but you don't get to do that enough, whereas flying was frequent as the only way to travel between sky and ground levels. I must say the bosses were in general a lot easier, perhaps only Ghiraim's second battle being in any way challenging, and I remember them all very well having gone through them consecutively in the desert dragon's challenge a few times. They weren't as dramatic and spectacular as even the previous game, but still showed imagination, and having to work in the unique control scheme I can't be too hard on that aspect. Even the final battle with big bad Demise was surprisingly easy (I did have four bottles of fairies, to be transparent!), and I beat him on my first attempt.

I was expecting Demise to turn out to be another name for Ganon, since he did look similar, but apparently not. I'm not sure there was any connection to 'real' legends of Zelda, it appeared to be completely unconnected with only familiar elements such as Link (never called that, of course), Zelda, Impa, the Triforce and the Master Sword. As usual, upon completion it was affecting swooping through all these lands you'd traversed for the last few months, seeing the people you'd met, and especially the twist over Grannie's true identity brought a tear to the eye. But it's always the way when you've spent a long time with a game, it doesn't take much to evoke a sense of nostalgia and missing that which you'd been doing for some time. It must have been a real headache to map controls that weren't designed for epic games, and long play sessions onto this method of control, and no doubt they recommend taking a break every hour or so to prevent the inevitable tiredness of wrists. But like 'Metroid Prime 3' they mostly succeeded in the endeavour, and once you'd got to grips with what was at first awkward, it wasn't really a problem, even if things that take physical effort can be less appealing for extended play. Considering the general controls were something of a backward step in that you have less immediate control than before they did very well not to ruin the experience, especially when you're used to the precision of N64 and 'Cube analogue sticks making the Nunchuk's a real comedown.

Music was the usual sort of stuff, rousing for flying and battling, creepy or expectant when dungeoneering, happy and laidback in town. I wouldn't say anything really stood out in that department, but then I get the impression there were a lot of new people involved from seeing the credits. On the whole it was about as good as most others in the series, but I couldn't quite say it was as classic as the better ones. I can't see myself adding an extra star in my Retrogaming Review of The Year at the end of this year as I did with 'Twilight Princess,' simply because I had no prior connection to it so there was no reforging of past memories or 'coming around' to realise its greatness. But it has all those hunting quests of searching for heart pieces, Gratitude Crystals, Cubes, bugs and treasures, adding longevity, though never on the same level as the famed hunt for the Gold Skulltulas in 'Ocarina.' With the Crystals it was a mixed bag because it did encourage you to go back and talk to people at different times in the adventure, or at night, but it could also add to that impression of time-wasting. At least there was the helpful addition of a little speech bubble containing '...' above the head of anyone who had something new to say, so I appreciated that. But still, for all its qualities it was close to being one of those games I feel like I've played before due to the similarity to its predecessors. I don't know how you could get around that other than making it a truly revolutionary experience (and I don't mean the option to wave a sword around). I kept expecting Demise to pop back up at the end since it was such a short final battle, especially when you consider how mammoth the task seemed fighting Gannondorf at the end of 'Ocarina,' then running down the collapsing tower, and fighting Ganon. You can't help but compare, and while this has plenty of new innovations and additions it still doesn't have the revolution of 'Link's Awakening,' 'A Link To The Past,' 'Ocarina of Time,' or even 'Majora's Mask.' It's better than 'Oracle of Ages' and probably 'Wind Waker,' and perhaps I'll have an opportunity to replay it in fifteen or twenty years and reevaluate its legacy?

***

Discovery Ends - The State of Star Trek

Discovery Ends - The State of Star Trek

It's been a while since I wrote anything about modern Trek, but the news of cost-cutting and belt-tightening at Paramount, culminating in the surprise cancellation of 'DSC' with its fifth season, it seemed like the right time to comment on where this 'third generation' of Trek is up to in my estimation. I stopped writing reviews when 'Picard' Season 1 broke me of that desire, it was just too painful and a chore to write about something I found so negative, badly written and twisting so much of what Trek always was to me. But things have changed slightly since then: the key thing is that I've come around to 'Lower Decks,' something that a few years ago had dropped to zero on my anticipation meter. Seeing Season 1 didn't really do anything to disabuse me of that notion, and while I could say the final episode showed some promise, I was in two minds about whether to buy Season 2 or not. In the end a price drop gave me the incentive and I must say I was surprised to find that some (still only a handful), of episodes were genuinely good Trek, and with the season finale it was quite impressive. I found myself warming to the characters and their situations, the stories and the setting, even the ship (I love that it doesn't have shiny floors, for example!), to the point the Season 3 DVD is now actively anticipated in a way I haven't experienced since either Season 1 of 'Picard' or Season 1 of 'DSC,' both of which gravely disappointed.

I'm currently struggling through Season 2 of 'Picard' and finding it about as bad as I could have expected from general comments I'd read, but I also hear almost nothing but good things about Season 3, which sounds like they're finally exploring the time period, characters we care about, and what made the 24th Century so compelling. I still have my doubts that they'll pull it off, but from what I hear it is the kind of Trek I want to see. In other words: good. I've also yet to hear anything negative about 'Prodigy' the other animated series, and though I'm very sceptical about 'Strange New Worlds' that also sounds as if it has been far more easily accepted than either of the previous live action Treks. To be in a position where I actually care about seeing new Trek again is a pleasant surprise, if only a tentatively cautious one. There's still plenty of concern over bending or breaking canon and characters, but at least if the writing is an improvement then there is some hope.

That 'DSC' should be cut all of a sudden, especially as they'd already filmed it all last year and had no expectation of it being the final season, is quite a shock turn of events given that recent years have been nothing but announcements of series' continuing or rumours about the many new Treks that may be coming down the pipeline. I can't say it affected me at all negatively (and I was somewhat glad to hear they were doing additional shooting to mitigate the lack of a series finale), other than giving pause for thought that the gravy train might be coming to an end, that this steady throwing of anything and everything at the wall to see what sticks is not going to continue. I did expect 'DSC' to make it to at least seven seasons just because that's a kind of measure for success in the Trek world, but obviously that was in a different age and most streaming series' don't make it further than five. It's just that it is the series that started it all, the base upon which CBS All Access, which became the better named Paramount+, was built, for better or worse: the golden child, the flagship of its generation. Does this mean that with more traditional Treks now in prominence its brand of overly emotional melodrama isn't as popular, or is it simply the issue of higher costs for retaining actors, the usual way a series outlives its cost/benefit ratio to the studio, is the cause?

As in the past there have been plenty of rumours or mentions of potential new Treks, but I have to say none of them have sparked any interest in me. There's the Section 31 idea which has been kicking around since the early 'DSC' days, and which I've always felt extremely tepid about just because the organisation hasn't worked since 'DS9' and requires writers of that stature to pull off. It didn't help that it's meant to be built around possibly the worst character of modern Trek, Georgiou, this unrepentant, genocidal, sarcastic evocation of evil that we were somehow supposed to root for, despite the fact she never faced any backlash for her crimes and was simply accepted by the Discovery crew for looking like Captain Georgiou! But enough about the many mistakes of the past... The Starfleet Academy cadet series was also a terrible idea that has only got worse since the suggestion Tilly might lead it (probably the second worst character to come out of modern Trek, though she's close with Burnham!), so not keen on that either, and never was as far back as I first heard about Harve Bennett's idea in the 90s (and which was basically done in the first Kelvin film). That leaves Seven of Nine/Raffi, a potential Janeway vehicle, and a Next Next Generation series using characters created for 'Picard' Season 3. Not interested in Seven or Raffi even remotely after they ruined the former and the latter was always irritating (the fourth worst in modern Trek? I don't know, Jurati gives her a run for her money!), and I have yet to see 'Prodigy' so don't know how well Kate Mulgrew comes across nowadays (Patrick Stewart being a total disappointment in the role of Picard, means nothing is certain any more), and a 25th Century series could work, but again, I have yet to see 'Picard' S3, so can't speculate on well it would work.

The truth is if they are cutting down then it's more likely they'd just keep existing series' going and I'm open to that if they are of the quality of 'Lower Decks' S2. I should rank all the seasons I've watched to give some idea of how I feel Trek has fared since 2017:

- Lower Decks S2 (the best I've seen of current Trek, and while I still hate the swearing and gross comedy, it doesn't seem as distracting as S1, with story and character coming to the fore aided by no unnecessary and non-relatable galaxy-saving stupidity)

- Picard S1 (everything from here on down is pretty poor and could be interchangeable, but I have to say there were a couple of episodes I enjoyed and it was lovely to see Data, Riker and Troi again, but it's a low bar and as with all live action Kurtzman Trek, the ending stunk)

- Short Treks (they're short, which when it comes to modern Trek is probably for the best, and the lows were low, but 'Ask Not' was about the only modern era episode I've felt was good on multiple viewings, and there are one or two others that aren't bad. The format showed promise, even though I don't like the idea of stories being quite that short, but it doesn't look set to return)

- Lower Decks S1 (more for the fact I actively want to go back and rewatch this after coming to enjoy S2, though really only the finale was something I quite liked)

- DSC S3 (it's not great, but there's less to annoy when it comes to canon thanks to the distancing of a 32nd Century setting. Shame that hasn't meant improved writing, though, the potential was squandered and ended with the same ludicrous fantasy rubbish we've come to expect, meaning its position is more for being less offensive than being anywhere close to good)

- DSC S2 (shameless insertion of Pike, Spock and the Enterprise to try and cover up the inconsistencies of tone, story and character, but it had some promise early on, even if, as with every modern Trek season except 'LD,' it messes it up in the second half)

- DSC S1 (started somewhat well, then set the tone by killing off the Picard-like Georgiou only to bring her back as the evil Mirror version in the second half, creating many of the problems of the series in the process. More miserable and nasty, but at least there was less crying!)

- Picard S2 (only halfway through, so it may suddenly wake up and become something special, but rock bottom. There's a reason Trek is set in space. Boring, stupid, badly done, the worst of Trek)

All of these seasons, with the exception of 'LD' S2 are practically on a par of badness, but I had to differentiate them somehow. It shows that at least 'DSC' has improved, even though the improvements are infinitesimal (and they've added whole new ways to fail each season!). The first season unfortunately hamstrung the whole Trek genre with its decisions about continuity, aesthetics, the technology and the writing, and things have been trying to recover on life support ever since.

Finally, my anticipation ratings for the coming Treks:

Lower Decks S3: ***
Picard S3: ***
DSC S4: **
Prodigy S1: ***
Strange New Worlds S1: ***
Section 31: -
Starfleet Academy: -
25th Century TNNG: **

Compare this with my list from 2019:

another cartoon series [Prodigy]: -
Section 31: *
Lower Decks: -
Picard: ***
Khan: *
Starfleet Academy: -
more Discovery: **

It shows that things have at least brightened relative to what they were and I have an incrementally more optimistic view of modern Trek, almost entirely on the back of 'LD' S2, so it remains to be seen how accurate that will be. I remain in two minds about whether it would be better for Trek to simply end for good and then we can debate all these existing series' merits or not as the case may be, and not be concerned about further violations to canon and content. Yet the legacy actors are growing old so this is realistically the only chance we have to see them again one more time. I can't help but wish Patrick Stewart had had this opportunity fifteen years ago before he got too old to carry Picard off as he used to, it's very sad to see, so in that sense I want as much Trek bringing back characters as I can. But again, they've ruined some of these characters so maybe it's better to let them end gracefully in whatever their final appearance was in previous iterations, much like Shatner's Kirk in 'Generations,' dying before he could become truly old. Regardless of what I want it seems Trek is continuing for the foreseeable future and they keep releasing them on DVD, and while they do that I'll keep watching. I'm even contemplating whether to review 'Lower Decks' since I actually have some positive things to say for a change.

The only other aspect of Trek yet to be touched on is the glaring absence of a film since 2016. I've lost count of the number of failed attempts to make a fourteenth film in the series, the fourth in the so-called Kelvin Timeline, and from my perspective I'd be happy they never made one since I was as underwhelmed with those films as I've been with the vast majority of the Kurtzman-era (funny how he was involved in two out of those three films, too...), and I also like the idea that 'TNG' made four to their three. Could they do a new film series? Of course. Will it appeal to me? Doubtful. I haven't even been to the cinema since 'The Rise of Skywalker' in December 2019, so I'm not sure even a potentially good Trek film would get me back there these days, especially if DVDs continue to be produced.

To conclude, things haven't changed that much, it's still up in the air how much improvement has actually happened. I'll need to see more of the new series' to be able to make a judgement on that, but at least I'm not questioning whether I'm going to buy the DVDs as I was when 'Picard' S2 came out or 'LD' S2. Constraint breeds creativity, so if the writers are forced to come up with better stories to cover a shortfall in budget that can only be a good thing. Effects may sell TV shows, but they don't create lasting and beloved content - that's what matters and what will ultimately decide if this era has been a significant part in the grand history of Trek, or merely a footnote.