A Farewell To Farms

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S5 (A Farewell To Farms)

Each season they like to do an episode that breaks the format, in other words something completely different, opening titles over a more thoughtful version of the theme music, an alien point of view, that sort of thing. That can work, but for every 'wej Duj' there's 'A Mathematically Perfect Redemption,' whose stench is hard to remove. Fortunately this falls more in the former category as a fairly enjoyable stab at Klingon culture, but it's also another episode where I feel the series isn't quite working as it should be, and as I know it can. There are some fun, minor wisecracks about Trek lore, there is some exploration of Klingon culture or subculture, and it is nice to continue the story of Ma'ah, the Klingon we first met in 'wej Duj,' and who's had an arc weaving here and there through the series ever since. I like that kind of continuity, it's missing from most of modern Trek where even the main characters don't get much of the kind of development Trek used to be so good at. Even with all that it does leave a sense of... not wasting time, that would be too harsh, but treading water a little, the season's 'main' arc (which at the moment gets as little exposure as Boimler's beard-growing 'subplot,' which does at least show in more than mere face follicles as he tries to embrace pain and the way of the warrior like his more confident and successful alternate universe counterpart), of mysterious 'space holes' as Ma'ah succinctly describes them, is really just thrown in at the end as a reminder of the growing instances of these anomalies.

Not that I'm saying they're doing badly by not focusing episodes on the arc, and I do quite like that they introduced it into this episode which at first seems as if it would have nothing to do with anything else, Mariner's pretext for being in the area good enough. The real focus is on Ma'ah and the dejected life he's leading having disgraced the family honour from his crew mutinying (I don't quite believe his brother, Malor, when he says the whole family being shamed was 'hilarious,' but maybe he was being ironic, or perhaps he really is as lacking in Klingon ways as his slovenly appearance and motivation by money suggests - what is he, a Ferengi?!), reduced to working on a farm on Qo'noS, surely a most lowly occupation among a warrior race. We do get an idea of what life outside the warrior caste might be like, and by extension the kind of life Martok may have had before he rose to prominence - the Chancellor of the Empire gets a couple of mentions here, once as Boimler thinks the bar is where he took on some opponents, while Ma'ah corrects him that it took place in the Ketha Lowlands, and then at the end when Ma'ah takes to his duty as Captain of a rust-bucket, saying proudly that this is the kind of ship Martok started out on, so they're definitely trying to draw parallels, and who knows, maybe Ma'ah is destined to lead the Empire as well!

In the old days (in other words, a few short years ago, maybe four!), we could have speculated on whether Ma'ah may indeed be Chancellor by the time of 'Picard,' and perhaps we'll see him in live action? Or maybe there'll be some reference to him somewhere else in current Trek, but while it's possible he could be remembered a millennium hence (in 'Starfleet Academy'), we no longer get that impression of an unfolding Trek universe that we were clinging onto amongst all the dross produced in the last decade, even possibilities seem dead at this point. Martok's absence is a bit of a gaping hole, which is strange since this series has made use of both J.G. Hertzler and even Martok, but also true to this series is that they gave us a 'cartoon' version of Martok (I don't mean animated, the whole series is in that format, but in that it wasn't the real one, just a mock-up Martok), so it is a shame not to finally see him sitting on some throne somewhere overseeing the High Council. But then this story doesn't deal with anything so high and mighty, merely the 'Oversight Council' which apparently oversees the fleet, a bit like a Klingon version of Starfleet, and of course it's run by a big, burly bully without honour, in keeping with the general trend of Klingons to worship honour while yet somehow the majority of them are cowardly and conniving.

Mary Chieffo's role as K'Elarra was a nice bone to throw at us (and her), after she was unceremoniously dumped out of 'DSC' when it zipped into the future, as she seemed like one of those potential recurring characters that would continue, and was at least more interesting than the bland, undeveloped Bridge crew I could barely remember the names of for most of that series. For one thing, while I dislike 'DSC' a lot and put so much of the problems and mistakes of modern Trek at its door, like it or loathe it, it is part of the lore (any future Trek producers: feel free to alter the ridiculous canon from that series at every opportunity to somehow smooth over the bumps!), and I appreciate when there's some connection to other series', even the worst ones. In this case it's not a connection to lore, merely bringing back an actress, which is fine, but it's telling that even though I knew she was going to be in an episode this season I'd forgotten it was this one, and this character as I didn't recognise her voice (checking back I find she wasn't even the character I thought she was, actually the woman in the bar!). When I heard she was going to be in it I naturally assumed she was going to be the character she'd played before and somehow L'Rell would appear, either as a very elderly Klingon, or in holographic form, flashback, or one of the numerous other sci-fi ways they can always use to bring back someone. As it is it's merely a minor role.

The other role, whom I thought was played by Chieffo, was actually Enaj ('Jane' backwards?), which I'm not even sure fits with Klingon culture where women aren't allowed to serve on the High Council and whose rights are curtailed in leading their House, etc. Nowadays I'm sure some would decry this as Trek not living up to its themes of equality and betraying itself, but then they'd be forgetting 'diversity' - not all cultures are going to be the same, and while the Federation would be happy to have females in positions of power, the Klingons aren't (or weren't - L'Rell's position itself was a reversal of what we knew of Klingon canon, but like most things, 'DSC' mostly just ruined any Trek concepts it toyed with). Leaving aside all that, after all the lore-meisters would no doubt say it wasn't ever stated in canon they couldn't serve on this Oversight Council, mainly because I don't think we'd ever heard of it before, even though it's not in keeping with the spirit of Klingon culture, but leaving it aside, it's only a tiny role anyway. We get to see more of the race's culture in the farming operations (once again it's important to note how Replicators can't recreate the 'liveliness' of Klingon dishes and foods, which is why farms would exist at all when they can simply turn energy into edible matter), its music (can we call that 'Thrash lute-playing,' etc, Klingon folk music?), we learn of another animal species on the planet called a 'Brush Devil' which must be huge judging by the bones with which Malor decorates their transport ship (though apparently Targs can grow to the size of a small elephant if Bargh's pet is anything to go by), and connecting to our time, they can expect Ferengi calling to scam them on their Communicators just like junk mail or phone scams now, since that's an excuse Ma'ah uses not to talk to Mariner.

There was some beautiful imagery in the opening titles with dawn or dusk shots of Ma'ah's farm (and as ever the Cerritos looks superb on Blu-ray, the little we see of it), but my favourite moment was a brief establishing shot of the Oversight Council Chambers where a couple of hover-bikes have an altercation and one shouts "Experience bIj!" and the other replies "You experience bIj!" a deep-cut if ever there was one that even I, a decades-long viewer and ponderer on Trek lore, would never have known about if not for a podcast about this interactive video board game from the 90s - the ridiculousness of the situation, its brevity and the obscurity of the Trekference all combine to craft a perfect moment of humour. I can't really say the episode was particularly funny in the main - they did get that formalised way of speaking Klingons always had, epitomised by Ma'ah, but then they undercut it with his brother who has none of the ways of Klingons about him in dress, speech or attitude (Malor played by Sam Witwer, a genre veteran of such things as 'Battlestar Galactica' and 'Smallville,' whom had played a Xindi Sloth on 'Enterprise' and has dual roles here since he's also Legnog the honoured taster in Migleemo's story). I wonder if they meant to make the brothers look like Matt and Jeff Hardy, the famous wrestlers, or it's a coincidence? Ma'ah is the most Klingon of Klingons, very much a Worf type, though one who has lost his sense of direction and purpose thanks to previous events, so it's nice he succeeds, that's the Trek way: showing a problem and having characters work through it to inspire and impress. Also something too often lost in grim and miserable dystopian approaches seen in so much of modern Trek - that's one reason why this series works and feels more like good Trek.

It's not universal, however, there are still reasons why I wouldn't call this a good episode: as is so often the case on the series they continually annoy with the casual, contemporary speech, bleeped-out swearing and general lack of things making sense - somehow, joining together as four people means the 30,000 volts of electricity coursing through them will be 'equally spread'? I don't think that's how it works - anyone touching anyone else would be fried, and while the message of combining to defeat the task was Trekky, the scientific silliness doesn't work. In the same way, Captain Freeman claiming Starfleet lighting aboard its starships has been scientifically attuned to suit all living beings was unlikely at best, since with so many different races aboard there's no way they could anticipate everyone's exact needs and be able to match it. It's like if she claimed the temperature was designed to suit everyone, while Cardassians like it hot and Bajorans like it cool (or whatever). Of course she could have been making up stories to defend her ship against such objectionable guests, but then that makes her look weak if she feels the need to lie to counter people she dislikes. The worst thing was visual with Malor's burly Klingon chest quite visible yet not having the exoskeletal ridges we'd seen before (most famously on another brother: Kurn), something I'm sure I've complained about before on this series. The fact that even this series just won't be 100% pure Trek remains my irritation with it.

The B-story of Migleemo being visited by famous food critics of his race was a nice way to explore his culture since he's largely an unknown even five seasons in. I wasn't even aware his people were called the Klowahkans, for example, I'm not sure it had ever been mentioned before, but that's another example of this series at least trying to be Trek: you have a member of a 'new' species we've never encountered before and over time you explore them little by little, the cultures part of the interest instead of all aliens sounding and behaving like humans which happens far too often in modern Trek (another area where 'LD' tends to do a little better, for all its faults). This series is skewed comedically so the other races tend to be over the top, such as Dr. T'Ana looking exactly like a moth-eaten cat rather than the more noble example of M'Ress from 'TAS,' Shaxs as a very extreme version of a Bajoran who also has very tender feelings, Tendi as an example of an Orion (even in a bit role here her culture is nicely integrated: assassin skills mean she's expert at chopping veg!), and Migleemo who appears to be a humanoid budgie, so it's usually feather jokes or birdseed, the kind of simple, obvious humour that can work because we're immediately in on it, having the same conception of birds or whatever they can play on, but which used to come from our accumulated knowledge of Trek's worlds and races, something which encouraged the audience to invest in the more they saw, in turn giving them an insider perspective, too often lost in modern Trek as it tried so hard to appeal to casual viewers who'd never become the collectors and avid followers of a devoted fanbase (but I could go on for hours about the wrongheaded approach to most genre attempts to appeal instead of having a vision and believing its high quality and uniqueness would ensure viewership).

Migleemo's story is basic, he's feeling like an outsider to his own, partly due to his lack of certainty about his chosen path, and partly down to the visiting dignitaries' snobbery, which seems to be a trait of his kind, though he's always been different - again, a great Trek trope that the outsiders in a group tend to get drawn to Starfleet where their uniqueness will be added to the rich pot of stew (so they do have more in common with the Borg than we think - both want biological and technological distinctiveness to be added to their own, only in the Federation's case it's so they can excel, while in the Borg's it's about falling into faceless line). Migleemo's just a nice guy whom they've used quite nicely over the course of the series, often representing positivity, so we're automatically on his side against these unpleasant visitors, and it's a treat to go to his homeworld (or nestworld as the caption has it for Klowahka), and of course his insight and training in psychology comes into play to earn the respect of these tasters who were only really covering up their own defects - there's a deft connection between the two stories when Boimler reads that these tasters had given the Cerritos' Replicators two stars (ironically what I'm giving this episode, but it's not because I've lost my sense of taste regarding Trek, quite the opposite!), not strictly necessary, but appreciated - I always loved it when the various subplots matched up or paralleled in some way, and since this is only a 27-minute production it's about all they could do in the time they had to wrap up.

I'll say it again: this isn't a bad episode, one of the better ones so far this season I'd say, which a few years ago I'd be celebrating just for not being bad as I found it hard to like the series in Season 1, but I've seen a lot better. I don't need it to be funny, and I like the Trekferences that are done well (Malor thinking he's dying and claims he sees Kahless, the original one - there was a whole 'TNG' episode about there being a clone version created to further Klingon religious beliefs, and I couldn't quite hear his last line, but it sounded something like not the one who did impressions, so a reference back to 'TOS' and the Excalbian recreation?), but I've never really thought much of the wackiness - Mariner striding in and throwing out swearwords, Boimler screaming or being thrown about, that kind of thing. I like the characters, but I like them when they're being serious. Boimler's line about loving Klingon bureaucratic minutiae works, as does the various rituals they use to challenge Ma'ah's position or that are used against them. It doesn't make much sense that someone could conscript someone of high rank, like Bargh, but the idea of Klingons reeling out obscure precedents like legal traps is amusing since they're usually so dismissive of words and documents, but is also so true to their conflicted culture. The way they get out of their difficulty at the end wasn't so clever, nor was the gory killing of Bargh - true as it is to their ways we didn't need to see so much blood (pink as it was!), and while you can see they're just following the logical trope that Klingon problems = solved by killing, it does remind us the series didn't have pretensions much beyond replaying tropes and making us point and chuckle when they could do good, original stuff when they wanted to.

Credit must go to Jon Curry for being one of the most Klingon Klingons since 'DS9' (enjoyed his literal understanding of Mariner's invented human custom of 'unreturned favours' and how she'd be fed to a bear if she didn't follow through, to which his reply is it's better she trains to fight the bear - very Klingon!), and this wouldn't be his final appearance in the series. Colton Dunn as Bargh was also good, and he'd previously voiced Dorg in 'wej Duj' (Dorg and Bargh... are they secretly sending us the message that he was a... Borg?). Some of the main cast who didn't appear got to voice other characters, as is often the case, and I do believe it's sensible they don't feel the need to show every main cast member every episode just for the sake of it, and they also tend to reuse a lot of voice artists, so this time Jess Harnell reprised K'orin, the Klingon General from 'Envoys' and old friend of Mariner, and played a couple of other characters, too (and had done so before in that previous episode), and I already mentioned Trek guests Mary Chieffo and Sam Witwer. We just haven't had any big Trek characters returning yet this season, though that, too, would be remedied. At least the title was a literary reference this time rather than a strictly pop culture one (though I still think they could come up with better and more Trek-centric ones).

**

The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S5 (The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel)

Going from some of the best episodes of not just 'DS9,' but Trek itself (the seven-episode station occupation serial), to... this... I know modern Trek wanted to be all things to all people, all flavours, etc, it does stick out how vastly dissimilar Trek made in this century, or at least this past decade, has been. And I know which I prefer. So while we can have absolute classic stories of great character and writing from all those years back, we also have this current stuff, or fluff, a bit like going from playing 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild' to some squarely average game, as I also did earlier in the year - whatever comes after is not going to hold up. But even if you take 'DS9' out of the equation this is not one of the starring instalments of the series. I have zero interest in the soapy Mariner subplot about her trials with Jennifer (it even irks me that an Andorian would be called Jennifer), although at least this story writes that character out of the series for good. And it's true that if you remove that C-plot from the episode there's some passable interplay in the other two subplots, but they're also pretty slight.

I think one thing that irritates, and has done throughout this era of Trek from the first season of 'DSC' where they had to mention The Beatles, to countless other examples, is their insistence in ingratiating themselves with whomever they assume is the audience these days by referencing pop culture rather than just Trek culture. The title itself is a play on the film(s), 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,' and I suppose you could draw some kind of parallel with the AWOL Admiral being an old man, and it does take place on an interstellar cruise ship which is basically a holiday resort, but otherwise it seems designed to make people point at the title with some kind of joyful recognition, and little else, whereas for me it takes me out of it. The bigger reference is obviously 'Apocalypse Now' (and perhaps if we're generous, 'Heart of Darkness,' the story it was based on - with a side order of 'The Blob'). It's not a film (or story), I love, so it doesn't win any points for that. I didn't think it quite made sense, either, since why would an Admiral have a ship in order to go and milk 'space whales' in the first place, that's not what Admirals do. Checking back on the line it could be inferred he was talking about earlier in his career when he was a Captain, but then why wait until he'd become Admiral to rebel? I also always find it such a typically modern attitude to Starfleet duty and life in general when a character complains of boredom. It's a state of mind, while Trek's supposed to be inspirational, full of the kind of exploration and joy of discovery that made it seem so optimistic and adventurous and why the best of the best applied in the first place!

Okay, so the Admiral's point was he didn't get to do exciting missions, but it all reminded me of that stupid scene in 'Beyond' where 'Kirk' (or the modern facsimile of a character called Kirk), suggests every day blends together in space and is basically saying the same thing: it's a boring day job most of the time. Indulgent rubbish for the younger generation who expect to be stimulated at all times rather than putting their own minds to it. They could have pulled it back a bit by connecting with the trope of Admirals being behind a desk and emphasising that side, which can be valid (again, just having seen Sisko restricted to desk work with Admiral Ross and his yearning to go back into the field with his crew as opposed to the greater number of lives his decisions are having on the war effort is just one example of how much more complexity there was in that series), and we've seen so many of the rank behave badly that it's ripe ground for exploration, even on the surface-level jokey style of this series. I did quite enjoy the three 'bros,' Ransom, Billups and Boimler on a mission together, it's the kind of thing Trek would do as a series progressed, pairing up some characters you don't necessarily see together all that much. The gag about Billups wanting to be called 'Gilbert,' while Ransom says he should have a more 'normal' alias like Zandy, was fun, as was Boimler's reference to being a canary (from Manhaver's concern Ransom treats his subordinates cavalierly and experimentally, like sending the canary into the coal mine in case of poisonous gas or lack of oxygen), which was also used well, Billups assuming it's because it's hard to think of an animal that skis! (Later hilarious when Boimler pleads he's not the canary and they agree with him even though they haven't a clue what he's talking about).

They can always come up with the kind of lines you'd never find elsewhere in Trek (like one of the Admiral's acolytes who voices the fact they can't get hold of Boimler who'd rubbed suncream all over himself: "It's like trying to grab a string bean"), but it's also nice to see Boimler's perceived deficiencies (being skinny and hyper-prepared), as useful in certain situations, though the joke about them wanting him along for the undercover operation because he's good at crawling through ducts seems more like a 'Mission: Impossible' joke, even if Trek characters were forever crawling through such spaces. Ransom claiming Boimler's a capable, prepared officer to an unhealthy degree is too true, but the fact Boimler's so delighted he noticed says everything about the character! Just a shame he's looking so scruffy with his 'arc' of growing the alternate dimension Boimler's beard at an early stage. The true arc of the season is of course the inter-dimensional fissures, so I did enjoy the connection to the Nanites' story here, which made that more palatable - otherwise it didn't make sense that these computer creatures would dash around in a glob, sucking up everything, but you just put it down to the typical zaniness of the series and try not to take it too seriously.

At least there was some kind of rationale for it with this alternate dimension Intrepid-class starship from a microscopic reality, trapped within the glob and trying to get enough energy to create a portal back home. Obviously they're doing a lot of 'Voyager' callbacks with the ship trying to get home and saying it's been a 'month of Hell' (rather than the temporal year of Hell Voyager was trapped in), and it neatly tied up the other story with the Admiral's new mission to focus on getting this ship home (even if he should be court-martialled in reality!). 'Evolution,' the 'TNG' episode that introduced Nanites, wasn't one of the best (especially as a season opener - people often forget that the season the series found its footing and became good, began with such a dreary episode!), and Nanites certainly weren't required again, but it's exactly the kind of one-episode wonder concept 'LD' likes to toy with, so no surprises there.

In case anyone watching was concerned 'LD' only Trekferences the old series' (other than poking fun at the ridiculousness of such things as 'DSC' or the Kelvin Timeline films), they do throw in Boimler's mention of the Gormagander as an example of a 'space whale' (though he follows it up with a Trekference to 'those Galaxy's child things' - a bit too on the nose, as we've seen before when Mariner's mentioned actual episode titles, though at least you can rationalise it as either the official, or casual, designation given to the creatures in 'Galaxy's Child'), and he's clearly thinking of it joyfully, so 'LD' doesn't actually hate 'DSC' (how could they, it provided so much for the series to laugh at!). The big Trekference of the piece was finally showing us what Gallamites look like after all that talk from Jadzia in 'DS9' about Captain Boday and his transparent skull - I wasn't too impressed with the design. I know it's only a gag, but if you're going to show something that had existed only in the imagination of fans for decades you need to put some serious thought into it. I feel they should have considered how Michael Westmore might have achieved the look in makeup and prosthetics - I know it's only my imaginings, but I always felt they'd have quite long, skeletal, humanoid faces, but with pretty much entirely transparent heads, while here they were just grey, Clayface shark monsters with a little brain dome on top. But that's the thing, it's never going to satisfy everyone which makes you wonder if it was a good idea to even try, especially as it was merely a throwaway visual gag.

Fun to see the Kreetassens from 'Enterprise' again, though you'd have to wonder how they would even end up on a facility that contained other races when by this time they'd know every other race has no problem eating in public. The joke worked in 'Enterprise' because neither the Kreetassens nor humans had ever heard of the other, or met before, so such extreme cultural offence would be natural. Not so two hundred years later, you would think... While I'm nitpicking, I didn't understand Krog's admission he was a big fan when addressing T'Lyn's work. Did he mean Vulcans in general since he's taken on some of their philosophy? Otherwise it's a little hard to believe (even in an episode about a giant Nanite cluster barrelling around a resort, I like things to make sense!). I do find myself hearing the other actors when they do voices for guest characters, such as Marcus Henderson who returned as his usual Jet Manhaver, but also played Krog, or Dawnn Lewis as the Kreetassen woman - granted there's not a lot of Captain Freeman in the episode, so maybe that's why they give people a little something extra to do? I think on the whole the episode was rather disappointing, like they're not really using the little time they have left very well, and I come away feeling they're on a downward curve this final season.

**