DVD, Discovery S2 (Light and Shadows)
It's back to normality for this blighted version of Trek once again, but it's mercifully short at thirty-eight minutes. An episode in which very little of consequence occurs as if it was supposed to be enough that we see adult Spock for the first time. Back in the old Treks, the good Treks, they would have devoted an entire episode like this to that subplot of Captain Pike and Specialist Tyler off on a mission together and getting trapped, forced into finding common ground. And that probably would have been good drama. With 'Discovery,' they think good drama is flinging flashing lights and sounds at you as a substitute for character and plot, and so it feels like another largely wasted three quarters of an hour of them playing with the Trek train set. We do learn some new and important facts for the ongoing stories, but the rest of it is like they can't construct a narrative, they can't ever reach a conclusion, it's all about setting up the audience to want the next 'fix.' Because of that I'm never satisfied and on the intensely rare occasion that an episode actually has any merit, as the previous one did, it's notable as a blip, an anomalous reading in the time stream, shall we say, before tripping back into meaningless melodrama.
The best I can say about this 'story' is that they didn't break canon about Sarek and Spock not speaking to each other at this time, since the son is out of it, babbling away while the Father has trouble leashing his wife's passions. For a woman that came to love a Vulcan, this version of Amanda is incredibly emotional and rebellious to her husband, even saying she doesn't live under his authority and generally making a mockery of his position by saying that she claims diplomatic immunity for Spock. For a moment I actually appreciated Sarek and his authoritative attitudes, having faith in Starfleet that they wouldn't incarcerate Spock if he's innocent, but he doesn't look like a very impressive figure with his diminutive wife bossing him about and holding the reins, and it's not hard to forget what a mess they've made of this character who sat by, even supported, the terrible genocidal actions of laying a bomb on Qo'noS last season. It's not just James Frain's failure to understand how a Vulcan should be portrayed (he once again shows emotion quite heavily), but what the writers have done to a once proud and noble heritage that they inherited from people that actually could write intelligently. Every time I see Amanda I like her less, and Sarek is the same, which doesn't help when this season in particular is so strongly based around this family. As usual, the noodly direction and constantly dramatic music heaps portent and meaning on scenes that have very little, and it's a disappointment once again to see what has become of Trek's signature style, grace and coherence in the hands of these modern writers.
At least they didn't break the canon, as I said before, and at least Burnham asks permission of her Captain to visit Vulcan, and at least Stamets remains calm and professional next to the burbling, fluttering Silly Tilly, but these minor positives are small comfort to take from a series that lost so much of Trek in exchange for a malaise of misplaced humour and melodrama. The main interest comes from news that the Red Angel is from the 28th Century, even if the surmise is completely conjectural from Captain Pike, since he bases this on the fact that the probe they sent into the temporal rift came back modified from five hundred years in the future, and therefore the Angel must be too. I've heard whispers of the Borg having something to do with things, so the probe's modification might have something to do with that, especially as it seemed to 'assimilate' all the shuttle's data once it had smashed its way aboard. The best the writers could come up with in the way of character development was that Pike and Tyler don't see eye to eye, Pike sees a ripple of the future where he's at the back of the shuttle and shoots Tyler, and you're supposed to wonder when this will happen and what brings them to that point, only it turns out that he was actually shooting the probe's Doctor Octopus arm to save Tyler. They like their twists, but that's all there is. Message to the writers: can you please watch some real Trek and find out how it's done, because even 'Enterprise' was more sophisticated than the superficial action-based 'storytelling' you keep giving us. Thanks.
When Tyler said at the end that they were in the middle of a fight for the future, it once again brought to mind the Temporal Cold War, and it's also in keeping that five hundred years in the future we know that Starfleet has time ships - at least in the 29th Century they do, and I believe it was in the 26th Century time travel began to be used as a method of exploration. What I didn't get was Pike's comment about Tyler being right about his reasons for wanting to go on the mission: Saru suggests he shouldn't go because he's too important and he goes anyway (surely at this period of history captains were allowed much more leeway, it's in the 24th Century that things became so rigid - another example of failing to adhere to the era they're supposed to be representing), and Tyler accuses him of wanting adventure or, I don't know, I can't even remember or be bothered to go back and check, I just didn't see Pike's agreeing with him on his motives for leading the mission. The shuttlecraft they travel on doesn't even appear to have a name, which is another break from tradition and shows how throwaway their view of the ships are in this Trek - it didn't even matter about forming a bond with the shuttle anyway because it's blown up by the end. They don't seem to care about the fidelity of this world, about building bonds between the audience and the technology or ships, something else that alienates me from it. While we're on ships, it seems that Section 31, far from just having this one 'special' vessel, has a whole fleet of them - we see three of the same kind searching for Burnham when she escapes with Spock!
That was another ridiculous part of the story - for one thing, why would Georgiou care to help her, she's an evil self-serving horror that has no right to exist in our universe, let alone serve in a branch of Starfleet (let alone even more to have her own series - oh, calamitous days!), and how does her blackmailing of Leland work? She claims she knows the truth about him being responsible for the death of Burnham's parents, but so what? What difference would it make to anyone except Burnham? I didn't believe in Burnham being able to take out Georgiou in a physical confrontation, so why would they even bother to pretend that's how she escaped? Oh, right, it was so they could shoehorn in some martial arts since that's all Michelle Yeoh is good for - she certainly isn't good at creating a real, breathing character! Anyway, I thought it was the Vulcans who killed her parents. Or was it the Klingons? Everything's so vague and poorly defined, in complete opposition to how Trek used to be and had as its strength. Murky, messy and muddled is how contemporary 'storytelling' is supposed to be, it seems, and Trek is just a follower of the crowd these days, and for the last decade with the films, so no wonder none of this works for the Trek faithful like me! And how did this super-duper Section 31 ship fail to stop a single shuttle from escaping? It's so silly!
I was at least slightly more interested in Leland as a character when he shows concern and seems to be not so bad when assuaging Burnham's fears about Spock, but we learn that was all an act and he just wanted her off the ship so they could use some mind-emptying device on Spock, so there goes the nuance once again. I did wonder how it would seem to have Spock with a beard. This might sound like a small thing to those unfamiliar with Trek, but the Spock beard is a whole concept in itself since it came to represent an evil version of someone, as his Mirror Universe counterpart had a little goatee. I suppose I should be grateful they gave him a full beard (I'm 'sure' it has nothing to do with beards being fashionable these days or an attempt to make Spock seem more contemporary and 'cool'), and I can see that it is all part of the straggly look of a man living on the run with mental problems. It'll be interesting to see how Ethan Peck holds up as a normal, rational, clean-shaven Spock, because although he doesn't look like the character (which hasn't bothered the makers in the slightest with Sarek, Amanda, Mudd and Stella, so why should it now?), his voice does have the same deep timbre of Leonard Nimoy, so that's one promising sign to hang onto, and closer than Zachary Quinto's high-pitched squealing.
I also liked Pike's brainy way of alerting Discovery to his whereabouts by ejecting some of the fuel to burn, the same technique used by Spock in 'The Galileo Seven,' an episode made over fifty years ago that has far more drama and tenseness than anything this series can come close to. It's also of interest that Burnham is off to Talos IV at the end of the episode, Spock's babbled numbers turning out to be coordinates for a planet. Now I knew Talos IV and the Talosians would be coming into the story at some point (I've managed not to see any image of them so I hope they live up to the superb design of 'TOS' and don't change a thing), and it is a little hard to see how this is going to fit in since we know that there were two encounters with the Talosians in 'TOS': 'The Cage' in which we saw Pike's mission there, and 'The Menagerie' where we saw Pike's mission there again, and it ended with the Enterprise returning to leave Pike to give him a new lease of life after his paralysing accident, so it's tricky to see how another interaction with them would work. At least Pike isn't on the shuttle ride so that's something, but the only death penalty in the Federation is for going to this planet and they haven't even mentioned this. You'd think the computer would have flagged it as soon as the coordinates came up, so I hope they're not going to ignore this integral piece of canon (I think there was a mention by Cornwell last season that there is no death penalty in the Federation and it bothered me then).
I was hoping the 'Tokma,' this intense meditation thing that's supposed to telepathically connect with lost souls and guide them home, which Sarek performs in his home, was something already established, but they have to have some latitude to create new things. I wasn't happy with what they created for the shuttlecraft - I admire the fact that it has the little red bussard collectors at the front of the nacelles, and I quite like the external design for seeming quite close to the film-era versions (even though it should look more like the Galileo, and is sad that it doesn't), but the insides look the same as ones from 'Voyager' - indeed, I almost felt at home imagining Seven of Nine or Tom Paris being in there, which is not what you want from a period specific ship, and another sign they don't give a monkey's about the integrity of Starfleet design and development over the decades. But what really annoyed were the metallic shutters that come down over the front window - what happened to shields? And what good would a metal shutter do that this futuristic transparent material in the windows wouldn't already? And don't even get me started on the shot of Discovery's internal Turbolift structure which is some vast empty space where they run on rails! What's the point of bottomless shafts and all that wasted space? Due to the many irritants of the episode I couldn't even enjoy things like Sarek's house and views of Vulcan which otherwise would have stood out as being meritorious, despite all the rain on that desert planet… Bad design, bad Trek, bad mood for me.
**
Tuesday, 21 January 2020
Tuesday, 14 January 2020
The Sound of Thunder
DVD, Discovery S2 (The Sound of Thunder)
There are a couple of minor additions that detract from its goodness, namely Tilly's usual 'humorous' bluster and the slight subplot of Culber being uncomfortable in his new body (and I could also say Burnham deciding she needs to pop back to Vulcan on a whim at the end, as if one crewman can make choices like that so easily), neither of which added anything, but this is one episode that is otherwise pretty good, the music was beautiful, and though the roving camerawork is tiresome at first, I soon forgot about minor aesthetic annoyances as the story took hold. Surprisingly it came from Lippoldt and Kim, two of my least favourite (to put it diplomatically), writers on the series! After their ludicrous plotting seen in 'Short Treks' episode 'The Brightest Star,' they effectively undo all (well, most - we still see a shot of Georgiou in current uniform that doesn't make sense, especially as we get confirmation it was eighteen years previous!), of the logic flaws and errors of judgement I levelled at our first visit to Kaminar and provide a stimulating, thoughtful, and heroic episode that rings true of Trek through the ages, and gave me some small hope again that this modern era could yet turn into something that more than merely resembled Trek, but wasn't true to it at the core. It helped that Section 31's influence was minimal, reduced down to Tyler's cynical reaction to the new information they learn of the Red Angel - he's certainly swallowed wholeheartedly Leland's paranoiac rhetoric and it shows just the kind of damaged souls that 31 uses for its own ends.
Apart from this note of caution, this episode is very satisfying in its depiction of Kelpien culture, answering most of the many questions raised by 'The Brightest Star' and providing Saru the chance to reveal the truth to his people without violating the rules as blatantly as blurting out that Vahar'ai, the natural Kelpien development, is okay, a kind of puberty that turns them from prey to predator, childlike race to adult. He so wanted to express this truth, but the saying 'the truth will out,' was never truer: it comes out as a necessity as the Ba'ul press home their technological advantage, but leave themselves vulnerable in doing so. I found it fascinating that the Ba'ul themselves were the ones operating out of fear, that even their great technological advancements over their fellow Kaminar dwellers wasn't enough to give them a sense of security. They were fearful of the Kelpiens because they had once been prey to them, and this 'Great Balance' was the thing holding them in check. There are still many questions that could be answered, such as how this bizarre, twisted, tar-like race (my first thought was Armus, the oil-slick creation of pure evil that killed Tasha Yar in 'TNG'!), came to have the capacity to develop sciences that led to warp travel (they achieved it only twenty years previous to the episode), and were able to build intricate and complex technology with those long, greasy claws! From that perspective it's a little ridiculous, but it's possible the way we see them in this episode was only one form - perhaps they liked to make a muddy entrance like that to intimidate their enemies, and in the background there were lots of clean Ba'ul in suits operating controls. Or perhaps this was part of their cycle, a sleeping arrangement (in which case, no wonder it was so cranky), or even that this was the leader of their High Council, and only it rested in the gunk?
The point from all this is that it throws my mind into speculation, and rather than saying how stupid it all is, and how little sense it makes, a good episode can inspire and cause the creative synapses to fire. This really hasn't happened on the series yet, and this must be the best episode since 'The Vulcan Hello.' The downside is that they cram so much development into the space of a single episode. In old Trek money it would have been the unspooling ongoing arc for seasons, in amongst the mix of other stories and plots - it would be like Odo discovering his people at last, then in the same episode the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar come to bombard the planet, and then Odo infects them with the virus, etc! But with far more limited storytelling potential in their short fourteen or fifteen episode seasons, and the likelihood that there probably won't be that many years to come (although in truth we're in uncharted territory as regards how long the series might last), I suppose it does fit with the sped up nature and lack of hanging around to smell the Fredalias. Whatever it means for Saru's people in the longterm, and I really hope we get to see how the Kelpiens and Ba'ul come to live together on the planet, this on its own was a nice story. As long as they work out better than the Kes and Prytt from 'TNG,' another story about two races inhabiting the same world.
As ever, you do wonder certain things about how it all played out, such as why the Kelpiens would be a threat with their little threat ganglia turned to dart shooters, as no Ba'ul has been seen in living memory, so they don't come into physical contact, and these things are shown to be harmless compared to the might of forcefields, so the Ba'ul come across as a species that you would say has atrophied through lack of threat if not for the fact it was only two decades ago they achieved warp travel. There was another way to tell this story, too, since if they'd approached the Federation for trade and diplomacy, that would have added further complications - if the Federation had already had a connection with them it would have been harder for the Kelpiens, though once the Federation found out they'd have had to do something. I do like the issues at hand, whether it was whether Saru should be permitted to beam down to his home planet and all the pros and cons of getting involved with a warp capable world, yet having to make contact with a pre-warp species on that planet. It was quite unseemly for Saru to be so openly hostile to his Captain on the Bridge. He should have requested a private audience with Pike in his Ready Room, since he has one on this massive ship, and then hashed out the arguments in private. I'm still not sold on Pike as being the man we knew from 'TOS,' though he remains a considerable improvement on Lorca, and I did appreciate his dedication to upholding General Order One even while his crew are so eager to break it!
Talking of which, Saru does break faith to save his sister, Siranna, whom we'd seen in 'The Brightest Star,' now a full grown woman, and the priest of her village, taking over from her deceased Father, Aridar, who died shortly after Saru left. It was a simple matter for Burnham to stop him - she didn't need to point the Phaser, she could just have powered down the Transporter console, so it would have been an ideal moment to indicate that it was encrypted to prevent anyone tampering with Saru's plans. A small matter, but the kind of detail the old Treks would have made sure of. That there were no consequences of either Saru interfering with Pike's orders or Burnham for not stunning him is easy to get past since everything turned out well in the end, but I would have liked Pike to have a word with the two of them at the end to say that if they ever act like that again there will be consequences. Again, it's only a small addition required to make it more Trekky, but there's enough good to overlook such things. It's harder to accept that the USS Discovery, this powerful Starfleet ship could so easily be outgunned by primitive vessels such as those which the Ba'ul possessed. I know there were ten of them (they reminded me of another 'TNG' episode where a vast 'God-like' machine thing prevented interference from space), but really!
I also felt it was highly unlikely the Ba'ul would listen to Pike after he'd effectively allied himself with their enemy, the Kelpiens, by saying that Saru was one of his people. I'm glad he stood up for his First Officer, but you'd think he'd be experienced enough to know that such a brutal race would immediately take against any positive action towards their enemy. I also wondered why the Red Angel needed Discovery to do what it did if it could just deal with the Ba'ul in their moment of attempted genocide, but I gathered that thanks to the events that took place with Saru going there and inciting the Ba'ul to action, it left them vulnerable for a window. They worked this ongoing story of the benevolent avenging angel being into the story again well, and even better, because Saru witnessed its appearance we were given a more detailed look at it thanks to his superior eyesight, a brilliant and logical use of the character's abilities - we discover that it appears to be wearing some kind of EVA suit, and knowing that Burnham is going to wear a 'time suit' at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be her from the future (though I could be wrong - I predicted the Ba'ul would turn out to be another group of Kelpiens). I would have liked some reference to the Temporal Cold War of 'Enterprise' when Pike and Tyler are discussing it at the end, but I'm not sure how much of that was known outside Archer, and just as Section 31 shouldn't be the common knowledge that it is, I'd much rather they kept to canon than break it for effect as they seem to have done by making 31 so obvious and well-known. It's more likely that the TCW never entered the writers' heads, but in this case, now I think about it, it probably worked best not to mention it.
Another question I had was in the forced activation of the Kelpien Vahar'ai across the planet. Rather than make them seem unthreatening, I'd have thought this was exactly what would stir up a hornet's nest with the Ba'ul. Obviously they needed to know the truth that The Great Balance was a lie designed to keep them in order and prevent them from turning into the predators the Ba'ul feared, but even for the wellbeing of the Kelpiens it seemed a little extreme to do it without any warning. I could imagine terrified Kelpiens committing suicide or helping others to do the same if they'd had the opportunity, just as Saru asked of Burnham before. Fortunately it all happened so fast they didn't have time to react to it and we see with Siranna that she was incapacitated with pain. I'd have liked a more concrete conclusion to how the Kelpiens and Ba'ul were going to progress from that point, since the Ba'ul still have all the power with their superior tech, and the Kelpiens only know a simple existence, as well as that they were almost wiped out by the Ba'ul, which wouldn't be the best basis for mutual understanding. If these things are addressed in the future then all the better, but I suspect we'll never hear anything more about Kaminar, except in passing. I suppose it's true to the style of 'TOS' which would make fundamental changes to societies, then go on their merry way without much sense of responsibility to those they interfered with. At the same time Kirk used to give these races the benefit of the doubt that they'd find their way and should deal with their own problems now they'd been shown the way, so maybe that's the same here.
One other little thing I wanted was to see Burnham made up as a Kelpien for her mission to the planet. We're told that although Kelpiens are pre-warp, they now know about space travel, thus why General Order One could be disregarded, but it still would have been a shock if Burnham had been seen by anyone other than just a single, solitary Siranna who also had the benefit of being primed by her long thought dead brother! It would have been in keeping with Starfleet even of this time, as we saw Kirk go undercover as a Romulan in 'TOS,' so it would have been a nice reminder of Starfleet operating procedure. But once again, I was so taken with the story that any qualms or questions I had weren't enough to take me out of it. I even noticed the odd little detail that pleased me, such as seeing buttons flicked rather than everything on touch screens, and Yellow Alert is visibly used. Lastly, Linus was credited, but I never noticed him - I was waiting for him to crop up again so I could correct a mistake in my previous reviews: I denoted him an Arcturan, but he's actually a Saurian! Whoops. If this episode is an indication of where the series will go then I would say there is still hope for it. If only they could create episodes that work as well as this one on a regular basis I would be much happier - it's just like when they showed the Klingon with flowing locks of hair, it reassures me that it can be true to the history even if things seem so distorted and messed up so much of the time. It doesn't take much to make most things feel right, and I'm glad they achieved that on this occasion. My only fear is that this was a one off - after all, we haven't seen Spock yet.
***
There are a couple of minor additions that detract from its goodness, namely Tilly's usual 'humorous' bluster and the slight subplot of Culber being uncomfortable in his new body (and I could also say Burnham deciding she needs to pop back to Vulcan on a whim at the end, as if one crewman can make choices like that so easily), neither of which added anything, but this is one episode that is otherwise pretty good, the music was beautiful, and though the roving camerawork is tiresome at first, I soon forgot about minor aesthetic annoyances as the story took hold. Surprisingly it came from Lippoldt and Kim, two of my least favourite (to put it diplomatically), writers on the series! After their ludicrous plotting seen in 'Short Treks' episode 'The Brightest Star,' they effectively undo all (well, most - we still see a shot of Georgiou in current uniform that doesn't make sense, especially as we get confirmation it was eighteen years previous!), of the logic flaws and errors of judgement I levelled at our first visit to Kaminar and provide a stimulating, thoughtful, and heroic episode that rings true of Trek through the ages, and gave me some small hope again that this modern era could yet turn into something that more than merely resembled Trek, but wasn't true to it at the core. It helped that Section 31's influence was minimal, reduced down to Tyler's cynical reaction to the new information they learn of the Red Angel - he's certainly swallowed wholeheartedly Leland's paranoiac rhetoric and it shows just the kind of damaged souls that 31 uses for its own ends.
Apart from this note of caution, this episode is very satisfying in its depiction of Kelpien culture, answering most of the many questions raised by 'The Brightest Star' and providing Saru the chance to reveal the truth to his people without violating the rules as blatantly as blurting out that Vahar'ai, the natural Kelpien development, is okay, a kind of puberty that turns them from prey to predator, childlike race to adult. He so wanted to express this truth, but the saying 'the truth will out,' was never truer: it comes out as a necessity as the Ba'ul press home their technological advantage, but leave themselves vulnerable in doing so. I found it fascinating that the Ba'ul themselves were the ones operating out of fear, that even their great technological advancements over their fellow Kaminar dwellers wasn't enough to give them a sense of security. They were fearful of the Kelpiens because they had once been prey to them, and this 'Great Balance' was the thing holding them in check. There are still many questions that could be answered, such as how this bizarre, twisted, tar-like race (my first thought was Armus, the oil-slick creation of pure evil that killed Tasha Yar in 'TNG'!), came to have the capacity to develop sciences that led to warp travel (they achieved it only twenty years previous to the episode), and were able to build intricate and complex technology with those long, greasy claws! From that perspective it's a little ridiculous, but it's possible the way we see them in this episode was only one form - perhaps they liked to make a muddy entrance like that to intimidate their enemies, and in the background there were lots of clean Ba'ul in suits operating controls. Or perhaps this was part of their cycle, a sleeping arrangement (in which case, no wonder it was so cranky), or even that this was the leader of their High Council, and only it rested in the gunk?
The point from all this is that it throws my mind into speculation, and rather than saying how stupid it all is, and how little sense it makes, a good episode can inspire and cause the creative synapses to fire. This really hasn't happened on the series yet, and this must be the best episode since 'The Vulcan Hello.' The downside is that they cram so much development into the space of a single episode. In old Trek money it would have been the unspooling ongoing arc for seasons, in amongst the mix of other stories and plots - it would be like Odo discovering his people at last, then in the same episode the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar come to bombard the planet, and then Odo infects them with the virus, etc! But with far more limited storytelling potential in their short fourteen or fifteen episode seasons, and the likelihood that there probably won't be that many years to come (although in truth we're in uncharted territory as regards how long the series might last), I suppose it does fit with the sped up nature and lack of hanging around to smell the Fredalias. Whatever it means for Saru's people in the longterm, and I really hope we get to see how the Kelpiens and Ba'ul come to live together on the planet, this on its own was a nice story. As long as they work out better than the Kes and Prytt from 'TNG,' another story about two races inhabiting the same world.
As ever, you do wonder certain things about how it all played out, such as why the Kelpiens would be a threat with their little threat ganglia turned to dart shooters, as no Ba'ul has been seen in living memory, so they don't come into physical contact, and these things are shown to be harmless compared to the might of forcefields, so the Ba'ul come across as a species that you would say has atrophied through lack of threat if not for the fact it was only two decades ago they achieved warp travel. There was another way to tell this story, too, since if they'd approached the Federation for trade and diplomacy, that would have added further complications - if the Federation had already had a connection with them it would have been harder for the Kelpiens, though once the Federation found out they'd have had to do something. I do like the issues at hand, whether it was whether Saru should be permitted to beam down to his home planet and all the pros and cons of getting involved with a warp capable world, yet having to make contact with a pre-warp species on that planet. It was quite unseemly for Saru to be so openly hostile to his Captain on the Bridge. He should have requested a private audience with Pike in his Ready Room, since he has one on this massive ship, and then hashed out the arguments in private. I'm still not sold on Pike as being the man we knew from 'TOS,' though he remains a considerable improvement on Lorca, and I did appreciate his dedication to upholding General Order One even while his crew are so eager to break it!
Talking of which, Saru does break faith to save his sister, Siranna, whom we'd seen in 'The Brightest Star,' now a full grown woman, and the priest of her village, taking over from her deceased Father, Aridar, who died shortly after Saru left. It was a simple matter for Burnham to stop him - she didn't need to point the Phaser, she could just have powered down the Transporter console, so it would have been an ideal moment to indicate that it was encrypted to prevent anyone tampering with Saru's plans. A small matter, but the kind of detail the old Treks would have made sure of. That there were no consequences of either Saru interfering with Pike's orders or Burnham for not stunning him is easy to get past since everything turned out well in the end, but I would have liked Pike to have a word with the two of them at the end to say that if they ever act like that again there will be consequences. Again, it's only a small addition required to make it more Trekky, but there's enough good to overlook such things. It's harder to accept that the USS Discovery, this powerful Starfleet ship could so easily be outgunned by primitive vessels such as those which the Ba'ul possessed. I know there were ten of them (they reminded me of another 'TNG' episode where a vast 'God-like' machine thing prevented interference from space), but really!
I also felt it was highly unlikely the Ba'ul would listen to Pike after he'd effectively allied himself with their enemy, the Kelpiens, by saying that Saru was one of his people. I'm glad he stood up for his First Officer, but you'd think he'd be experienced enough to know that such a brutal race would immediately take against any positive action towards their enemy. I also wondered why the Red Angel needed Discovery to do what it did if it could just deal with the Ba'ul in their moment of attempted genocide, but I gathered that thanks to the events that took place with Saru going there and inciting the Ba'ul to action, it left them vulnerable for a window. They worked this ongoing story of the benevolent avenging angel being into the story again well, and even better, because Saru witnessed its appearance we were given a more detailed look at it thanks to his superior eyesight, a brilliant and logical use of the character's abilities - we discover that it appears to be wearing some kind of EVA suit, and knowing that Burnham is going to wear a 'time suit' at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be her from the future (though I could be wrong - I predicted the Ba'ul would turn out to be another group of Kelpiens). I would have liked some reference to the Temporal Cold War of 'Enterprise' when Pike and Tyler are discussing it at the end, but I'm not sure how much of that was known outside Archer, and just as Section 31 shouldn't be the common knowledge that it is, I'd much rather they kept to canon than break it for effect as they seem to have done by making 31 so obvious and well-known. It's more likely that the TCW never entered the writers' heads, but in this case, now I think about it, it probably worked best not to mention it.
Another question I had was in the forced activation of the Kelpien Vahar'ai across the planet. Rather than make them seem unthreatening, I'd have thought this was exactly what would stir up a hornet's nest with the Ba'ul. Obviously they needed to know the truth that The Great Balance was a lie designed to keep them in order and prevent them from turning into the predators the Ba'ul feared, but even for the wellbeing of the Kelpiens it seemed a little extreme to do it without any warning. I could imagine terrified Kelpiens committing suicide or helping others to do the same if they'd had the opportunity, just as Saru asked of Burnham before. Fortunately it all happened so fast they didn't have time to react to it and we see with Siranna that she was incapacitated with pain. I'd have liked a more concrete conclusion to how the Kelpiens and Ba'ul were going to progress from that point, since the Ba'ul still have all the power with their superior tech, and the Kelpiens only know a simple existence, as well as that they were almost wiped out by the Ba'ul, which wouldn't be the best basis for mutual understanding. If these things are addressed in the future then all the better, but I suspect we'll never hear anything more about Kaminar, except in passing. I suppose it's true to the style of 'TOS' which would make fundamental changes to societies, then go on their merry way without much sense of responsibility to those they interfered with. At the same time Kirk used to give these races the benefit of the doubt that they'd find their way and should deal with their own problems now they'd been shown the way, so maybe that's the same here.
One other little thing I wanted was to see Burnham made up as a Kelpien for her mission to the planet. We're told that although Kelpiens are pre-warp, they now know about space travel, thus why General Order One could be disregarded, but it still would have been a shock if Burnham had been seen by anyone other than just a single, solitary Siranna who also had the benefit of being primed by her long thought dead brother! It would have been in keeping with Starfleet even of this time, as we saw Kirk go undercover as a Romulan in 'TOS,' so it would have been a nice reminder of Starfleet operating procedure. But once again, I was so taken with the story that any qualms or questions I had weren't enough to take me out of it. I even noticed the odd little detail that pleased me, such as seeing buttons flicked rather than everything on touch screens, and Yellow Alert is visibly used. Lastly, Linus was credited, but I never noticed him - I was waiting for him to crop up again so I could correct a mistake in my previous reviews: I denoted him an Arcturan, but he's actually a Saurian! Whoops. If this episode is an indication of where the series will go then I would say there is still hope for it. If only they could create episodes that work as well as this one on a regular basis I would be much happier - it's just like when they showed the Klingon with flowing locks of hair, it reassures me that it can be true to the history even if things seem so distorted and messed up so much of the time. It doesn't take much to make most things feel right, and I'm glad they achieved that on this occasion. My only fear is that this was a one off - after all, we haven't seen Spock yet.
***
The Brightest Star
DVD, Short Treks (The Brightest Star)
This was the one I foolishly thought might actually be good, but while it does give us a little on Saru, and it isn't objectionable like the first 'Short Treks' was, it is as stupid as ever, and seeing who wrote it, I'm unsurprised. It answers a lot of questions I had after seeing 'An Obol For Charon,' but I don't think the order of seeing it after that made any difference because however you look at it, it's poorly conceived. First, the good: it is interesting to see what Saru's home looks like, and we get to meet his sister, Siranna, and his old Father, who is the village priest. This is where things immediately fall apart, though - far from the impression given of the Kelpiens being prey on this planet of a predator species, one you'd have presumed they had to outrun and outfox to stay alive, thus suggesting a nomadic, animal-like lifestyle, they're a settled species that appear to farm seaweed from the sea (are they called Kelpiens because they eat kelp?). They have a deeply religious way of life, believing in some universal 'balance,' like yin and yang I suppose, and that they have to keep this up and not question it. I knew about Vahar'ai from 'Obol' so that explained what that was, but here they actually traipse over to some kind of Transporter in the sand that beams them up, presumably to be eaten by the Ba'ul.
I'd imagined these Ba'ul to be predators in the usual sense, but they're actually just more advanced (for all we know they could be just other Kelpiens, like the Son'a and the Ba'ku in 'Insurrection,' since we never see one), and cull the population without any effort on their part - presumably they're a pre-warp civilisation, though one with space ships and the tech to transport beings, unless that spire just converted them directly to consumable energy. So why do the Kelpiens have such strength and the ability to run really fast, what was the point of that? It was all very different to what I imagined, and far less dramatic, the only drama being that Saru is the only one that has any questions about their way of life and why they should just meekly go when it's their time. As usual for the series, that's not enough, his method of getting off the planet is equally as contrived - a piece of a Ba'ul ship just drops out of the sky for no apparent reason and it just so happens that it's technology that can be used for communications! Wow, how incredibly convenient. Not only that, but simple farmer Saru has the wherewithal to make it work! That's probably the most farfetched part of the story, but it gets even better than that! Not only does he get it working, the Ba'ul, so careless about dropping bits of their ships onto their cattle, never even pick up the signal he sends out, or miss their technology! Amazing.
The stupidity doesn't even end there, unbelievably! Lieutenant Georgiou herself is the one to pick up the signal and against General Order One, communicates with him because he's been ingenious enough to use alien tech he didn't create! She gets Starfleet to make an exception and goes to pick him up! Just as an aside, how long has Starfleet been using those uniforms because they're the same as on Discovery. I'm not quite sure how far this is supposed to be in the past, but this would have been an ideal moment to trot out the different uniforms from 'The Cage,' since it's just a tiny one-shot that isn't going to make any difference, except to the faithful, but no, they lazily reuse the same uniforms they've invented for contemporary Starfleet. Ugh. Anyway, Starfleet allows her to bypass the Prime Directive and a new friendship is born. Oh, how 'Discovery' this all is. What a disappointment that they can't even get a sub-fifteen minute short making sense! It was nice to see the true Georgiou again, even for only a minute or two, and the moment Saru says his goodbyes to his unaware sister had something in it, but it's yet another signpost that this series is never going to grow up from being a simplistic, illogical and ill-thought out mess, disguised by high production values and frequent emotional manipulation. So sad, I really did think there was potential for a good story on Saru's past and to show a believable route for him to leave his planet and people behind, but they failed, along with Georgiou and Starfleet. It's almost a relief that the other two 'Short Treks' aren't included on this DVD set as it saves me from more misery!
**
This was the one I foolishly thought might actually be good, but while it does give us a little on Saru, and it isn't objectionable like the first 'Short Treks' was, it is as stupid as ever, and seeing who wrote it, I'm unsurprised. It answers a lot of questions I had after seeing 'An Obol For Charon,' but I don't think the order of seeing it after that made any difference because however you look at it, it's poorly conceived. First, the good: it is interesting to see what Saru's home looks like, and we get to meet his sister, Siranna, and his old Father, who is the village priest. This is where things immediately fall apart, though - far from the impression given of the Kelpiens being prey on this planet of a predator species, one you'd have presumed they had to outrun and outfox to stay alive, thus suggesting a nomadic, animal-like lifestyle, they're a settled species that appear to farm seaweed from the sea (are they called Kelpiens because they eat kelp?). They have a deeply religious way of life, believing in some universal 'balance,' like yin and yang I suppose, and that they have to keep this up and not question it. I knew about Vahar'ai from 'Obol' so that explained what that was, but here they actually traipse over to some kind of Transporter in the sand that beams them up, presumably to be eaten by the Ba'ul.
I'd imagined these Ba'ul to be predators in the usual sense, but they're actually just more advanced (for all we know they could be just other Kelpiens, like the Son'a and the Ba'ku in 'Insurrection,' since we never see one), and cull the population without any effort on their part - presumably they're a pre-warp civilisation, though one with space ships and the tech to transport beings, unless that spire just converted them directly to consumable energy. So why do the Kelpiens have such strength and the ability to run really fast, what was the point of that? It was all very different to what I imagined, and far less dramatic, the only drama being that Saru is the only one that has any questions about their way of life and why they should just meekly go when it's their time. As usual for the series, that's not enough, his method of getting off the planet is equally as contrived - a piece of a Ba'ul ship just drops out of the sky for no apparent reason and it just so happens that it's technology that can be used for communications! Wow, how incredibly convenient. Not only that, but simple farmer Saru has the wherewithal to make it work! That's probably the most farfetched part of the story, but it gets even better than that! Not only does he get it working, the Ba'ul, so careless about dropping bits of their ships onto their cattle, never even pick up the signal he sends out, or miss their technology! Amazing.
The stupidity doesn't even end there, unbelievably! Lieutenant Georgiou herself is the one to pick up the signal and against General Order One, communicates with him because he's been ingenious enough to use alien tech he didn't create! She gets Starfleet to make an exception and goes to pick him up! Just as an aside, how long has Starfleet been using those uniforms because they're the same as on Discovery. I'm not quite sure how far this is supposed to be in the past, but this would have been an ideal moment to trot out the different uniforms from 'The Cage,' since it's just a tiny one-shot that isn't going to make any difference, except to the faithful, but no, they lazily reuse the same uniforms they've invented for contemporary Starfleet. Ugh. Anyway, Starfleet allows her to bypass the Prime Directive and a new friendship is born. Oh, how 'Discovery' this all is. What a disappointment that they can't even get a sub-fifteen minute short making sense! It was nice to see the true Georgiou again, even for only a minute or two, and the moment Saru says his goodbyes to his unaware sister had something in it, but it's yet another signpost that this series is never going to grow up from being a simplistic, illogical and ill-thought out mess, disguised by high production values and frequent emotional manipulation. So sad, I really did think there was potential for a good story on Saru's past and to show a believable route for him to leave his planet and people behind, but they failed, along with Georgiou and Starfleet. It's almost a relief that the other two 'Short Treks' aren't included on this DVD set as it saves me from more misery!
**
Saints of Imperfection
DVD, Discovery S2 (Saints of Imperfection)
I appreciate that this season is more episodic, but this was another one that I knew right from the opening I wasn't going to like. Even Kirsten Beyer can't save the series now. Burnham's 'weighty' voiceovers I can do without, I really don't care for her simplistic philosophising, and when it's added to dreamy slow motion running it once again proclaims loudly how much this is style over substance. It begins and ends with this, and not a lot of any interest happens in between, making it feel like wading through a river of treacle. For a few moments, as they close in on Spock's medical shuttle he stole from the Starbase, and he pulls a typically Spock-like manoeuvre to escape his Captain's pursuit, it was beginning to turn into an episode of Trek I could recognise, but then we have the shock twist of Georgiou stepping out of the captured shuttle and even that little spark went out. She's a reminder of so much that was wrong about Season 1, where the potential dropped off a cliff as the writers set out their stall definitively: we'd rather feature a mass murderer as one of our key characters than a good starship Captain, the Mirror Universe's version of our ideals are much more potent and attractive to modern viewers. They might even have convinced themselves that the idea of throwing up a mirror on our good Starfleet heroes was exactly what would make great Trek, and in the right hands it probably would (although even the greatest of Trek writers, the 'DS9' ones, found it difficult to do anything more with the MU than knockabout fun), but these weren't the right hands.
And now we have to live with this useless character that serves no real purpose. And while we're on that subject, Ash Tyler gets to come on over to Discovery for a joint mission as liaison for Leland, an old friend of Pike's, and one who openly admits to being head of Section 31, a secret organisation everyone knows about. Yes, we're being reminded once again of how stooooopid this series is. Not only are these hyper-secret intelligence agents open about themselves, but they wear big, black badges so there can be no confusion over who they are. Stooooo-pid. This time we even discover that they have their Communicators in their badges, what a novel idea… And while it's never been written into canon when the combadge was invented, the earliest we ever saw one was from the time of the Enterprise-C, which was early 24th Century, so once again 'DSC' makes a mockery of the timeline, the universe and the technology for the sake of some immediate superficial thrills. Whoah, coooool, Section 31 have combadges, man! Ugh.
So what is this week's story actually about? As far as I can make out the whole forty-odd minutes was designed to get us to the point where we can have Dr. Culber back because people were upset he was killed off in Season 1. I wonder if they originally planned to do this or whether it was as a result of the outcry that went up from some corners, because his surprise murder was actually one of the few moments that actually was dramatic. But just like modern 'Star Wars,' Trek follows the trend of needing to make right what was 'wrong.' At least they didn't do it in the same season, but Culber was hardly the essential character we needed so badly, and I wonder if this means Dr. Pollard will take a step backward once he's up and running again. I wouldn't be surprised if things go back to normal pretty quick - that's the kind of quality writing we're dealing with on this series! Even if you hadn't heard that he was going to return, the actor's name in the main credits every week should have tipped you off, so it was very easy to predict who the 'monster' in the mycelial network was going to turn out to be! I suppose there was some interest in the interplay between Ensign Tilly and her imaginary friend, May, but Tilly acts so childishly and far from the stoic, respectful and well-trained Starfleet officer she wants to be. She overreacts to every situation and then has to backpedal or spit out her thoughts like she's in a panic, and we know from the other series' that this just isn't how Starfleet trains its people to react to new life and situations. But it's funny, or we're meant to be swept along in all the hype of emotion and panic, people apparently don't want to see professional, well-adjusted people just doing a good job.
Maybe they think there's no drama there, but I'd much rather watch any other Trek, even 'Enterprise,' which has some of this series' flaws, and set a number of poor precedents this series has picked up and run with, with relish. Whether it's the pantomime villainy of Georgiou (even down to an actual "Ssssss," she hisses at Burnham in response to a jibe about belonging to a pit of snakes), the ridiculous lack of mysteriousness about Leland and his idiotic Section 31 (laughably, he suggests that even they have court martials when Georgiou oversteps the mark and somehow knows our universe's technology better than we do - I doubt official sanctions like that would work with such a rogue organisation!), or the oddly unscientific turns of phrase (Tilly says she really believes the universe will bring her and May back together somehow, as if the universe were a living entity!), it continually defies its monicker of 'Star Trek,' and is absolutely the most stupid version we've seen. Okay, well maybe not quite as clod-hoppingly idiotic as the Kelvin films, but then they haven't had quite as big a budget with which to make such huge clunking holes in the virtues of the franchise.
Amidst all the nonsense there are reminders that this is connected to a coherent universe - this was written by an established Trek novel writer after all, so she was likely to feed in some relief for longterm viewers. It was fun to hear reference to the scorpion and the frog tale, not a Trek invention, but memorably cited by Chakotay in 'Voyager,' to which Beyer is obviously very attached. Then there's mention of tachyons, with Pike giving a rundown of what they could mean, though it is a bit of a poke in the eye as for a few brief seconds it really does sound like Trek before dropping back into 'Discovery' again. It's really telling that what should be the most important part of the ship, the Science Lab, is also the tiniest room aboard, more like a broom cupboard. Supposedly this was meant to be a science vessel, so it shows the hierarchy of where science stands on the series: fantasy is far more important than even the internally consistent pseudoscience Trek became famous for. It's nice to see a tractor beam in operation, but even there they had to add some weird new addition where the Section 31 ship (the series is poor at establishing names and identities of people or places to keep things clear, preferring murkiness and messiness), has to fire three little sensor drones or something before they can attach the beam. The whole point of a beam is that it attaches to the object itself! If they'd explained that they needed these special latching on points because of the ship being half buried in the mycelial network, then it would have been fine and I'd have applauded, but if you ever want detail to expand the universe and make things fit more logically they only do that for the sake of a laugh, like Tilly explaining what a Type-3 Phaser is to the 'monster.'
I will give them one thing about the tractor beam - at least they didn't try to pull Discovery out of there, which wouldn't make sense since they're submerged in another universe or subspace pocket or whatever they've not bothered to explain it as, and brute force wouldn't have got them out. Instead, Section 31 were just holding them from sinking further in and it was the spore jump that extricated them. But these are small crumbs of comfort in a series that doesn't ever do what I want it to, is uncomfortable to watch, and is so far from being true to Trek that I feel down after watching it rather than having that familiar boost of positivity that Trek used to thrive on. Sure, if you like snazzy CGI then this must be your dream series because that's what it's all about, and little else. Who are these people? What is the story? I am glad we haven't seen Spock yet because I suspect I'm going to be railing against a new portrayal and I have so little confidence in these writers and the production staff that I'm even losing my earlier excitement about the 'Picard' series coming soon. The writing is still so heavily portentous and melodramatic as if it's all deep and important, but it's just pure fluff, like a snowflake evaporating on warm skin. You'd think when Georgiou came aboard she'd have just told Pike her mission was classified, but instead they talk around it in an excruciating attempt to be hip and clever in the dialogue (meanwhile Tyler has no compunctions of hiding behind 'classified' as an answer for Burnham). Going through the first season of 'Smallville,' which is so well constructed and a joy to watch, 'Discovery' is like the middle seasons of that series where it was largely nonsense without logical progression. Trek used to seem like a realistic and grounded extrapolation of the future, but now it's just a miserable mess. And I really hope the reference to Leland having been up to his neck in alligators on Cestus III wasn't referring to the Gorn because they don't meet for another ten years!
**
I appreciate that this season is more episodic, but this was another one that I knew right from the opening I wasn't going to like. Even Kirsten Beyer can't save the series now. Burnham's 'weighty' voiceovers I can do without, I really don't care for her simplistic philosophising, and when it's added to dreamy slow motion running it once again proclaims loudly how much this is style over substance. It begins and ends with this, and not a lot of any interest happens in between, making it feel like wading through a river of treacle. For a few moments, as they close in on Spock's medical shuttle he stole from the Starbase, and he pulls a typically Spock-like manoeuvre to escape his Captain's pursuit, it was beginning to turn into an episode of Trek I could recognise, but then we have the shock twist of Georgiou stepping out of the captured shuttle and even that little spark went out. She's a reminder of so much that was wrong about Season 1, where the potential dropped off a cliff as the writers set out their stall definitively: we'd rather feature a mass murderer as one of our key characters than a good starship Captain, the Mirror Universe's version of our ideals are much more potent and attractive to modern viewers. They might even have convinced themselves that the idea of throwing up a mirror on our good Starfleet heroes was exactly what would make great Trek, and in the right hands it probably would (although even the greatest of Trek writers, the 'DS9' ones, found it difficult to do anything more with the MU than knockabout fun), but these weren't the right hands.
And now we have to live with this useless character that serves no real purpose. And while we're on that subject, Ash Tyler gets to come on over to Discovery for a joint mission as liaison for Leland, an old friend of Pike's, and one who openly admits to being head of Section 31, a secret organisation everyone knows about. Yes, we're being reminded once again of how stooooopid this series is. Not only are these hyper-secret intelligence agents open about themselves, but they wear big, black badges so there can be no confusion over who they are. Stooooo-pid. This time we even discover that they have their Communicators in their badges, what a novel idea… And while it's never been written into canon when the combadge was invented, the earliest we ever saw one was from the time of the Enterprise-C, which was early 24th Century, so once again 'DSC' makes a mockery of the timeline, the universe and the technology for the sake of some immediate superficial thrills. Whoah, coooool, Section 31 have combadges, man! Ugh.
So what is this week's story actually about? As far as I can make out the whole forty-odd minutes was designed to get us to the point where we can have Dr. Culber back because people were upset he was killed off in Season 1. I wonder if they originally planned to do this or whether it was as a result of the outcry that went up from some corners, because his surprise murder was actually one of the few moments that actually was dramatic. But just like modern 'Star Wars,' Trek follows the trend of needing to make right what was 'wrong.' At least they didn't do it in the same season, but Culber was hardly the essential character we needed so badly, and I wonder if this means Dr. Pollard will take a step backward once he's up and running again. I wouldn't be surprised if things go back to normal pretty quick - that's the kind of quality writing we're dealing with on this series! Even if you hadn't heard that he was going to return, the actor's name in the main credits every week should have tipped you off, so it was very easy to predict who the 'monster' in the mycelial network was going to turn out to be! I suppose there was some interest in the interplay between Ensign Tilly and her imaginary friend, May, but Tilly acts so childishly and far from the stoic, respectful and well-trained Starfleet officer she wants to be. She overreacts to every situation and then has to backpedal or spit out her thoughts like she's in a panic, and we know from the other series' that this just isn't how Starfleet trains its people to react to new life and situations. But it's funny, or we're meant to be swept along in all the hype of emotion and panic, people apparently don't want to see professional, well-adjusted people just doing a good job.
Maybe they think there's no drama there, but I'd much rather watch any other Trek, even 'Enterprise,' which has some of this series' flaws, and set a number of poor precedents this series has picked up and run with, with relish. Whether it's the pantomime villainy of Georgiou (even down to an actual "Ssssss," she hisses at Burnham in response to a jibe about belonging to a pit of snakes), the ridiculous lack of mysteriousness about Leland and his idiotic Section 31 (laughably, he suggests that even they have court martials when Georgiou oversteps the mark and somehow knows our universe's technology better than we do - I doubt official sanctions like that would work with such a rogue organisation!), or the oddly unscientific turns of phrase (Tilly says she really believes the universe will bring her and May back together somehow, as if the universe were a living entity!), it continually defies its monicker of 'Star Trek,' and is absolutely the most stupid version we've seen. Okay, well maybe not quite as clod-hoppingly idiotic as the Kelvin films, but then they haven't had quite as big a budget with which to make such huge clunking holes in the virtues of the franchise.
Amidst all the nonsense there are reminders that this is connected to a coherent universe - this was written by an established Trek novel writer after all, so she was likely to feed in some relief for longterm viewers. It was fun to hear reference to the scorpion and the frog tale, not a Trek invention, but memorably cited by Chakotay in 'Voyager,' to which Beyer is obviously very attached. Then there's mention of tachyons, with Pike giving a rundown of what they could mean, though it is a bit of a poke in the eye as for a few brief seconds it really does sound like Trek before dropping back into 'Discovery' again. It's really telling that what should be the most important part of the ship, the Science Lab, is also the tiniest room aboard, more like a broom cupboard. Supposedly this was meant to be a science vessel, so it shows the hierarchy of where science stands on the series: fantasy is far more important than even the internally consistent pseudoscience Trek became famous for. It's nice to see a tractor beam in operation, but even there they had to add some weird new addition where the Section 31 ship (the series is poor at establishing names and identities of people or places to keep things clear, preferring murkiness and messiness), has to fire three little sensor drones or something before they can attach the beam. The whole point of a beam is that it attaches to the object itself! If they'd explained that they needed these special latching on points because of the ship being half buried in the mycelial network, then it would have been fine and I'd have applauded, but if you ever want detail to expand the universe and make things fit more logically they only do that for the sake of a laugh, like Tilly explaining what a Type-3 Phaser is to the 'monster.'
I will give them one thing about the tractor beam - at least they didn't try to pull Discovery out of there, which wouldn't make sense since they're submerged in another universe or subspace pocket or whatever they've not bothered to explain it as, and brute force wouldn't have got them out. Instead, Section 31 were just holding them from sinking further in and it was the spore jump that extricated them. But these are small crumbs of comfort in a series that doesn't ever do what I want it to, is uncomfortable to watch, and is so far from being true to Trek that I feel down after watching it rather than having that familiar boost of positivity that Trek used to thrive on. Sure, if you like snazzy CGI then this must be your dream series because that's what it's all about, and little else. Who are these people? What is the story? I am glad we haven't seen Spock yet because I suspect I'm going to be railing against a new portrayal and I have so little confidence in these writers and the production staff that I'm even losing my earlier excitement about the 'Picard' series coming soon. The writing is still so heavily portentous and melodramatic as if it's all deep and important, but it's just pure fluff, like a snowflake evaporating on warm skin. You'd think when Georgiou came aboard she'd have just told Pike her mission was classified, but instead they talk around it in an excruciating attempt to be hip and clever in the dialogue (meanwhile Tyler has no compunctions of hiding behind 'classified' as an answer for Burnham). Going through the first season of 'Smallville,' which is so well constructed and a joy to watch, 'Discovery' is like the middle seasons of that series where it was largely nonsense without logical progression. Trek used to seem like a realistic and grounded extrapolation of the future, but now it's just a miserable mess. And I really hope the reference to Leland having been up to his neck in alligators on Cestus III wasn't referring to the Gorn because they don't meet for another ten years!
**
Tuesday, 7 January 2020
Leech
DVD, Smallville S1 (Leech)
There's such good symmetry and parallels in the way they tell stories, and this episode shows up some things about family, identity and trust that make you feel good to be alive, unlike so many dolorous, morbid or miserable TV shows out there, this series truly represents the Superman spirit. The main story concerns Eric, christened the Super Boy by Chloe in her first official piece of real journalism. The episode deals with two ripe topics for dissection: what if Clark could be normal, and what would someone else do with Clark's powers? Both are deep enough questions to be a whole episode alone, but here we get them both, yet nothing is rushed, it's all organically worked through, and though there might be a few holes in the story, they never loom large or cause any problems - did Clark really need to be so final when he wished Lana farewell before he went off to deal with Eric? Wouldn't the accident above the dam be exactly the sort of thing to confirm Lex' suspicions that something was special about Clark? Why couldn't Clark just come clean with his friend now that they are so close? I know he has to abide by his parents' wishes to keep things secret, but maybe things would have worked out differently for Lex if someone as down to earth and good had believed in him enough to trust him with such a personal secret, because he never seems like someone to take advantage of others who are his friends.
It's a different story with his enemies as he ably demonstrates by turning the tables on Victoria and Pa Hardwick. Though we don't want to see Lex turn to the dark side, we can get onboard with him defeating bad people and using his ways and means in what is essentially a negative way if it's against those acting worse. We find out the user was being used and the information Victoria dug up from his computer on Cadmus Labs was all fake, intended to draw the pair into a trap. It seems Lex was even working with his Father on this one, and no doubt that's how his Dad would explain the extracurricular activity he had with his own son's girlfriend - it was all part of the ruse. I wasn't sure how to react to the sordid photos of the pair. Was it meant to further jam a wedge between the Luthors even after they'd taken out a business rival together? Was Lex ever really trying to take down his own Father or was that the bait to ensnare the Hardwicks? There are a lot of unanswered questions, but it's not a big part of the episode, it's a nice little package within the main thrust of the story, that ties up a running plot and also sets Lex' mind at rest about Clark. The way they interweave these various stories together is very well done, once again rounded out by beautiful scenery and bright, healthy outdoor life on the Kent Farm (love seeing the cows!), or beautifully lit internal locations, particularly when there's an important conversation going on.
If working together as part of a family is one theme, somewhat distorted by the Luthor aptitude for deception, another theme is leaving the past behind. Nell, out of the blue, has decided to sell her little flower shop and the adjoining film theatre, without even talking it over with Lana who has deep sentimental attachment to it. You'd think she'd want to get away from the street where her parents were struck down so cruelly in front of her toddler's eyes, but no, the theatre is where her parents met and it's a tangible reminder of their existence. It's so true that certain places in our lives mean so much, and to see those things or places torn down, modernised, changed, is to lose a part of our history and a part of ourselves, so it's very hard to let such things go. In this episode Lana's all for moving on, not for any particular reason except that Clark is behaving less Clark-like than normal and so she takes notice of what he says. Of course he's really meaning the necklace and all it means - Whitney, Kryptonite, his own experience being tied up as a scarecrow. I like that they don't keep on about the necklace every episode, but that it is an issue from time to time - perhaps now Lana will keep it locked away in the lead box and Clark can breathe a sigh of relief? Soon things would change and Lana would be campaigning to save the cinema, but for now she sees the wisdom of letting go of the past.
Everyone seems to be in a good mood this time, even Whitney, who invites Pete and Clark to play basketball at break time. Whitney doesn't feature much in the episode, but I sense a lot going on with that tiny subplot: his Dad appears to be on the mend because although he's still in hospital he demands to see the family store's accounts. This, coupled with Lana being so understanding and supportive of Whitney helps, and adds to him feeling a lot better than he has been, and that's good. I don't think we're supposed to wish anything bad on the lad, otherwise it would make Lana's judgement look poor if she was with this nasty bullying type of guy. He's just a normal teenager who's been going through rough times, but he's not the only one. As Jonathan said, everyone's life is tough. Even Lex doesn't have it perfect despite all his money, so it just shows that neither money nor powers can prevent difficulties coming your way, and I like that Clark doesn't shirk from his feeling of responsibility. He clearly isn't sure about his chances going up against Eric having already been thrown about as he's done to so many bad guys, but because they're his powers he goes to confront him anyway, and that's real heroism and courage. In a way there would have been no trouble in the first place if he hadn't got involved and gone to search for Eric, because the young man would probably have fallen to his death above the dam at worst, or noticed the lightning and got down in time at best. But Clark has his gifts and wants to use them to be helpful - it's not always so, but it's the sentiment that counts.
There was no guarantee he could stop Eric, he didn't really have a plan other than to use some meteor rock (which, as we've seen is prevalent all over Smallville so he didn't really need to involve Lana's necklace except for dramatic purposes). I'm not sure what Eric was about to do with the electric cable, either - he might have been about to kill Clark with it, or may have turned it upon himself, though the former seems more likely as he had given in to criminal tendencies. It showed how much Clark's upbringing had to do with making him who he is, and that his abilities are just secondary to his true character, which was a tremendously important lesson to be teaching to an audience of young people. I wonder if you still get that kind of morality in TV series' now? I certainly haven't seen much recently. To be fair to Eric he didn't have the happiest home life, his Mother was supportive, but his Father was very unsympathetic and bad-tempered, and it must have been tough to deal with someone like that also being your teacher and coming down harder on you as a result. Eric was a meek, mild sort, but the powers gave him a vision of what he could be, and power tends to bring out the worst in people. He sets his sights on his nemesis' girl, but ruins his chances by showing how inhumane he could be rather than appealing to her femininity. He foils a purse-snatcher and it goes to his head. I thought this was going to be another time Chloe swoons after a bad guy, but she wasn't in it that much after all.
It's quite sad the way Clark jumps to the conclusion that now he doesn't have his abilities his parents might think less of him, as if his value is based on what he can do, and wisely his Mum gets him to look on the loss as a positive, that he can have fun and enjoy being normal. It's also telling that Jonathan is so relieved, the concern over every new power a challenge to be dealt with. And it reminds us of the hard work farming actually is. We're so used to everything being easy for Clark, sunshine and green grass, flowers and farmers markets, that it's hard to remember this is supposed to be real life! I love it when the series is so grounded because it makes everything else much more real than later seasons. The stakes may be 'merely' personal, but they mean so much more than global catastrophe, which is far harder to relate to. That's why this season continues to impress and please. It knows its focus and it goes for it. It makes me wish Gough and Millar had stayed with the series for a few more years as I have to believe it was their influence that made things work. I wonder if the first 'Spider-Man' film in 2002 took the idea of Peter Parker having to remove his glasses because he can't see so well any more, as that's exactly what happened to Eric? It's so good seeing Clark enjoying being normal, but it doesn't change his sense of responsibility - he could have acted just like Eric and say it's not his problem any more, but it shows him what could happen if his secret got out. At first it's all good, he's practically jealous of the accolades heaped on Eric, but then the truth of the situation hits home as the people around him want to control and study him.
I would have liked a little on the eventual reveal of Clark to the world, and how he envisions that day after this experience, or whether it makes him want to clamp down and always remain hidden? That's one aspect that could have done with a little exploration, but there's so much going on as it is that you can't complain. A couple of actors are noteworthy - the guy who played Eric I believe came back as the character in Season 3, one of the inmates of Belle Reve that work together, I think. His brother was later cast as Jimmy Olsen in Season 4 or 5, whenever it was. And the guy who played his Dad, Kevin McNulty, also played other roles, usually doctors or scientists, maybe on 'Stargate,' too? I wish we could have seen more of Clark being exhausted, because I suppose his muscles wouldn't have been used to being taxed, relying on his superior in-built strength, and his metabolism was probably up the creek, too, so they could have included more comedy moments along those lines. But yes, another really well put together production - Lana's put the necklace away, Victoria has egg on her face, Lex has moved on from the wireframe simulation of his car crash on the bridge. But wait, he was standing right outside the door as Clark and Martha discuss the loss of powers, so couldn't he have heard? I suppose not, otherwise he wouldn't have behaved so penitently to his friend. Good to see Roger Nixon still running errands for Lex, not to mention a police car through the roof of Eric's parents' house! Sheriff Ethan was credited, but I didn't notice him.
***
There's such good symmetry and parallels in the way they tell stories, and this episode shows up some things about family, identity and trust that make you feel good to be alive, unlike so many dolorous, morbid or miserable TV shows out there, this series truly represents the Superman spirit. The main story concerns Eric, christened the Super Boy by Chloe in her first official piece of real journalism. The episode deals with two ripe topics for dissection: what if Clark could be normal, and what would someone else do with Clark's powers? Both are deep enough questions to be a whole episode alone, but here we get them both, yet nothing is rushed, it's all organically worked through, and though there might be a few holes in the story, they never loom large or cause any problems - did Clark really need to be so final when he wished Lana farewell before he went off to deal with Eric? Wouldn't the accident above the dam be exactly the sort of thing to confirm Lex' suspicions that something was special about Clark? Why couldn't Clark just come clean with his friend now that they are so close? I know he has to abide by his parents' wishes to keep things secret, but maybe things would have worked out differently for Lex if someone as down to earth and good had believed in him enough to trust him with such a personal secret, because he never seems like someone to take advantage of others who are his friends.
It's a different story with his enemies as he ably demonstrates by turning the tables on Victoria and Pa Hardwick. Though we don't want to see Lex turn to the dark side, we can get onboard with him defeating bad people and using his ways and means in what is essentially a negative way if it's against those acting worse. We find out the user was being used and the information Victoria dug up from his computer on Cadmus Labs was all fake, intended to draw the pair into a trap. It seems Lex was even working with his Father on this one, and no doubt that's how his Dad would explain the extracurricular activity he had with his own son's girlfriend - it was all part of the ruse. I wasn't sure how to react to the sordid photos of the pair. Was it meant to further jam a wedge between the Luthors even after they'd taken out a business rival together? Was Lex ever really trying to take down his own Father or was that the bait to ensnare the Hardwicks? There are a lot of unanswered questions, but it's not a big part of the episode, it's a nice little package within the main thrust of the story, that ties up a running plot and also sets Lex' mind at rest about Clark. The way they interweave these various stories together is very well done, once again rounded out by beautiful scenery and bright, healthy outdoor life on the Kent Farm (love seeing the cows!), or beautifully lit internal locations, particularly when there's an important conversation going on.
If working together as part of a family is one theme, somewhat distorted by the Luthor aptitude for deception, another theme is leaving the past behind. Nell, out of the blue, has decided to sell her little flower shop and the adjoining film theatre, without even talking it over with Lana who has deep sentimental attachment to it. You'd think she'd want to get away from the street where her parents were struck down so cruelly in front of her toddler's eyes, but no, the theatre is where her parents met and it's a tangible reminder of their existence. It's so true that certain places in our lives mean so much, and to see those things or places torn down, modernised, changed, is to lose a part of our history and a part of ourselves, so it's very hard to let such things go. In this episode Lana's all for moving on, not for any particular reason except that Clark is behaving less Clark-like than normal and so she takes notice of what he says. Of course he's really meaning the necklace and all it means - Whitney, Kryptonite, his own experience being tied up as a scarecrow. I like that they don't keep on about the necklace every episode, but that it is an issue from time to time - perhaps now Lana will keep it locked away in the lead box and Clark can breathe a sigh of relief? Soon things would change and Lana would be campaigning to save the cinema, but for now she sees the wisdom of letting go of the past.
Everyone seems to be in a good mood this time, even Whitney, who invites Pete and Clark to play basketball at break time. Whitney doesn't feature much in the episode, but I sense a lot going on with that tiny subplot: his Dad appears to be on the mend because although he's still in hospital he demands to see the family store's accounts. This, coupled with Lana being so understanding and supportive of Whitney helps, and adds to him feeling a lot better than he has been, and that's good. I don't think we're supposed to wish anything bad on the lad, otherwise it would make Lana's judgement look poor if she was with this nasty bullying type of guy. He's just a normal teenager who's been going through rough times, but he's not the only one. As Jonathan said, everyone's life is tough. Even Lex doesn't have it perfect despite all his money, so it just shows that neither money nor powers can prevent difficulties coming your way, and I like that Clark doesn't shirk from his feeling of responsibility. He clearly isn't sure about his chances going up against Eric having already been thrown about as he's done to so many bad guys, but because they're his powers he goes to confront him anyway, and that's real heroism and courage. In a way there would have been no trouble in the first place if he hadn't got involved and gone to search for Eric, because the young man would probably have fallen to his death above the dam at worst, or noticed the lightning and got down in time at best. But Clark has his gifts and wants to use them to be helpful - it's not always so, but it's the sentiment that counts.
There was no guarantee he could stop Eric, he didn't really have a plan other than to use some meteor rock (which, as we've seen is prevalent all over Smallville so he didn't really need to involve Lana's necklace except for dramatic purposes). I'm not sure what Eric was about to do with the electric cable, either - he might have been about to kill Clark with it, or may have turned it upon himself, though the former seems more likely as he had given in to criminal tendencies. It showed how much Clark's upbringing had to do with making him who he is, and that his abilities are just secondary to his true character, which was a tremendously important lesson to be teaching to an audience of young people. I wonder if you still get that kind of morality in TV series' now? I certainly haven't seen much recently. To be fair to Eric he didn't have the happiest home life, his Mother was supportive, but his Father was very unsympathetic and bad-tempered, and it must have been tough to deal with someone like that also being your teacher and coming down harder on you as a result. Eric was a meek, mild sort, but the powers gave him a vision of what he could be, and power tends to bring out the worst in people. He sets his sights on his nemesis' girl, but ruins his chances by showing how inhumane he could be rather than appealing to her femininity. He foils a purse-snatcher and it goes to his head. I thought this was going to be another time Chloe swoons after a bad guy, but she wasn't in it that much after all.
It's quite sad the way Clark jumps to the conclusion that now he doesn't have his abilities his parents might think less of him, as if his value is based on what he can do, and wisely his Mum gets him to look on the loss as a positive, that he can have fun and enjoy being normal. It's also telling that Jonathan is so relieved, the concern over every new power a challenge to be dealt with. And it reminds us of the hard work farming actually is. We're so used to everything being easy for Clark, sunshine and green grass, flowers and farmers markets, that it's hard to remember this is supposed to be real life! I love it when the series is so grounded because it makes everything else much more real than later seasons. The stakes may be 'merely' personal, but they mean so much more than global catastrophe, which is far harder to relate to. That's why this season continues to impress and please. It knows its focus and it goes for it. It makes me wish Gough and Millar had stayed with the series for a few more years as I have to believe it was their influence that made things work. I wonder if the first 'Spider-Man' film in 2002 took the idea of Peter Parker having to remove his glasses because he can't see so well any more, as that's exactly what happened to Eric? It's so good seeing Clark enjoying being normal, but it doesn't change his sense of responsibility - he could have acted just like Eric and say it's not his problem any more, but it shows him what could happen if his secret got out. At first it's all good, he's practically jealous of the accolades heaped on Eric, but then the truth of the situation hits home as the people around him want to control and study him.
I would have liked a little on the eventual reveal of Clark to the world, and how he envisions that day after this experience, or whether it makes him want to clamp down and always remain hidden? That's one aspect that could have done with a little exploration, but there's so much going on as it is that you can't complain. A couple of actors are noteworthy - the guy who played Eric I believe came back as the character in Season 3, one of the inmates of Belle Reve that work together, I think. His brother was later cast as Jimmy Olsen in Season 4 or 5, whenever it was. And the guy who played his Dad, Kevin McNulty, also played other roles, usually doctors or scientists, maybe on 'Stargate,' too? I wish we could have seen more of Clark being exhausted, because I suppose his muscles wouldn't have been used to being taxed, relying on his superior in-built strength, and his metabolism was probably up the creek, too, so they could have included more comedy moments along those lines. But yes, another really well put together production - Lana's put the necklace away, Victoria has egg on her face, Lex has moved on from the wireframe simulation of his car crash on the bridge. But wait, he was standing right outside the door as Clark and Martha discuss the loss of powers, so couldn't he have heard? I suppose not, otherwise he wouldn't have behaved so penitently to his friend. Good to see Roger Nixon still running errands for Lex, not to mention a police car through the roof of Eric's parents' house! Sheriff Ethan was credited, but I didn't notice him.
***
Retrogaming Review of The Year 2019
Retrogaming Review of The Year 2019
The start of the year was about my new Nintendo console, the end of the year was about my old Nintendo console, so if I was aiming for symmetry I was doing well! The Wii took the opening of the year as I tried to get into that, but failed to really get excited about it - it had been bought to play GameCube games after my old machine stopped reading discs, but of course I was going to take advantage of being able to access Wii games, too. The big thing of the year was the coming of the 20th Anniversary of when I first got my N64 in October 1999, so the second half of the year was dominated almost entirely by my favourite gaming machine of all time and I really got into games from that time again, playing a new game, completing an old one better than I had originally, and replaying some games I loved of old, so it was a great experience that will stretch across into 2020 as my two Christmas games are still to be completed! Thanks for playing, N64.
[Ratings reflect total, historical experience, not just the enjoyment level I got out of them this time.]
January: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2003, Wii) - Just one last push to fight Ganon, and I had to play it on the Wii after the loss of my 'Cube. It seemed like it might be slightly sharper, but not sure on that one. It was an easy win to finish off and reminded me why I had no memory of the ending: it's so forgettable. It feels unfinished, the reason being that they did actually cut its development short, moving a couple of dungeons over to the next instalment to get that off to a quicker start, or that's both the impression I have and the idea stuck in my head from the time. ***
January - November: UFO: Enemy Unknown (1993, Amiga 1200) - I played it less this year, but the tradition held. Only two more years to go and then it'll be twenty years of regular play! *****
January - March: Red Steel (2006, Wii) - My big introduction to playing a Wii game start to finish. Not the greatest way to learn how to use the Remote, but it had its moments. One of the reasons I didn't really get into the Wii this year. It was as imprecise to use as I'd expected. **
January - February: WSC Real 08 (2008, Wii) - Having enjoyed snooker for over ten years now I was eager to try a game where I could put to use all the experience garnered from watching and seeing how the pros operated. Truth is, snooker's a very tough game, and this was more like a simulation. While the presentation was a bit lacking it was great to have John Virgo and Steve Davis commentating and BBC-like music to bring it closer to the TV, but unintuitive controls, ugly graphics and being too tough for me to pass all the practice shots made me lose interest. It came out just at the time when I'd have started getting into the sport, so it was great to see all those familiar names, and in many ways the scene hasn't changed that much in a decade, there are still a host of recognisable players at the top. I'd like to get back to it and give it another go, but with so many other Wii choices, who knows when? **
February: Conquests of The Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood (1991, DOSBox) - A delightful little find that I began playing one gloomy Monday morning when I couldn't set my mind to anything constructive and found it to be a charming point-and-click challenge that looked lovely, sounded good and provided a nice little story to play through. ***
March - ?: Wii Sports (2006, Wii) - Another Wii game, this one more fun than the others, that I dipped into occasionally, but with little depth to keep me coming back. I'd played it back in 2008 when my cousin brought her Wii round, so I knew what to expect, and maybe if I could be bothered to slip it into the machine on a daily basis or even weekly I'd get more out of it, but I didn't find myself wanting to go back to it and it's probably more fun as a multiplayer than alone. ***
March - April: F-1 Race (1991, Game Boy) - An addictive little racer that I suddenly had a craving to revisit and found to be good fun. A little uncomfortable holding the GBA SP so tightly for a while, but the game itself was a pared down, typically simple but engrossing Nintendo game, that rewards players by showing a famous character at the end of each race in Grand Prix mode (Toad, Luigi, Peach, Mario, Link, Samus, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus, I think… okay, so not all famous!). The racing itself was basic, but tactical: do you go for the A car which has tighter cornering and more nitro boost, or the B car with higher top speed, but less nitro and worse handling? There's incentive to try and beat each track in as few attempts as possible or you get a black X next to your tries, and fortunately the game had battery backup so you didn't need to finish the entire GP in one sitting, saving at the end of each successfully completed race, making it very much a 'one more go' experience rather than being forced into trying for the lot. This wins it points, as does the music and the little animations: even if you come fourth, or worse, your racer sidles up to one of the glamour girls and she brushes you off most amusingly! The great thing about it is that, on top of the tactical choice of car, the racing is almost a scissors-paper-stone affair, where you have to juggle the need for speed, with dodging the obstacles of other cars and the wretched billboards at the side of the road that will cause you to spin out. You don't want to slow too much, but you have to take corners carefully - if you get in an opponent's slipstream this gives you a boost, but you don't want to hit them as it slows you down. Fairly easy to finish, just a few short hours play time got me through the nine tracks to a scene of all the characters waving you by, culminating with Bowser. But the real challenge is completing each track in as few attempts as possible. Don't know if there was a special reward for doing it, but I doubt it. Well worth a play, not that deep, but perfect for the pick-up-and-play style of the original Game Boy, and one of the first into-the-screen racing games I ever played (along with 3D 'Hard Drivin''). ***
April - June: Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg (2003, Wii) - A solid, reasonably entertaining platformer on a system largely devoid of good ones. Can't seem to remember that much about it, other than it filled a spot, looked fine and was a pleasure to complete. Other than that it was forgettable, but in a nice way. ***
June - August: Need For Speed Carbon (2006, Wii) - A step down from 'Most Wanted,' and therefore a slight disappointment. Too dark, lost some of the good functions of before, but at least Drifting's back. The last of the 'Need For Speed' games that came out on the 'Cube, so maybe I'll have to start going through the Wii range? ***
August - September: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors (2001, MacBook Pro) - The Conquerors final campaign. Not the best, most of them fairly easy, even on 'Hard' difficulty, and didn't take long to beat, but it remains one of the great games. *****
September: Daikatana (2000, N64) - Fairly simple First Person Shooter with the gimmick of playing through different time periods and trying to inject a little puzzle-solving into the mix, but it looked and played very backward and while it was okay and worth a bash (especially for being one of the high resolution games, so I could play it without VGA adaptor), it was one of the more forgettable experiences of the year. **
September - October: Star Wars Racer (1999, N64) - Spent over two hours one evening trying to come first on the 'Abyss' track in the Invitational Tournament. At first it seemed impossible, but with continual practice I saw my performance improve until I reached that sweet goal of first place. It was worth the effort, and that's why this transcends its okay graphics, repetitive sound effects and music, and irritating voices: the challenge. You sense these racers don't cheat, and everyone's in it to try hard. It might not feel all that 'Star Wars,' but it's good enough and another non-VGA game. ***
October - December: Jet Force Gemini (1999, N64) - Looks good, even through a VGA adaptor, though at first it stood out as not really being sure what it was, like a cross between the platforming and English humour of 'Banjo-Kazooie' and the shooting of 'Goldeneye,' except without the precision control of character and camera in both of those, and there's really not that much to it: run and gun, a few simple platforming tasks, the occasional NPC to meet and greet, upgrade your weapons, and the occasional mini-game, and it did take a few hours to break into its addiction point. But when reached, suddenly there's purpose to collecting Tribals and treading old ground, and you can forgive imprecise 3D control. It was a real rediscovery and I enjoyed it immensely. ****
December: Top Gear Rally (1997, N64) - Well worth a play, this old rallying game had been on my mind to revisit as I hadn't played it for many years. There was a twofold reason for dusting it off at this time, partly to rediscover it after playing its sequel 'TGR2' a fair bit over the years, but also as an antidote to 'Zelda' which was my main game to play over Christmas. With this as a backup option, if I got stuck in the other game I could flip to this one and still have a challenge to run through, plus racing is a different type of gaming to action adventure, requiring less brain and more skill. I only vaguely remembered it and it had made a big impression when I first got my N64 due to the realistic (or hyperrealistic - like driving on the moon sometimes!), physics that bounced your car around. It was almost like 'Wave Race' in that you were fighting the drag of different road surfaces and tyres that would pull you off course like the ebbs and flows of a river. Other cars were obstacles to progression, and because you had them to overcome that added another element of challenge to proceedings - essentially you were still against the clock, but the cars were like course ghosts that were solid, and though it could be frustrating that the slightest nick or jolt could send you into a tumble that derailed your chances, its toughness was an attraction. ***
December: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000, N64) - As it turned out I didn't need to fall back on 'TGR' much as I got on fairly well with this, and even when stuck (stupidly, I didn't notice the ramp up to the mountains), I was busy whizzing through time to meet townsfolk and doing bonus missions for quite a while so I rarely needed to get away from the game. Its unique structure of taking place across three days was a real innovation, but it was also the fact that having only two save slots meant that this was a game I'd seen so little of and was much fresher than 'Ocarina of Time,' its superior predecessor which I'd played or watched family play, a number of times. I'd only played it once and watched it one other time so it's been good to get back to. It was always on my list to revisit, but I'd wanted to get the GameCube 'Zelda' disc which included this - only that was 60hz so wouldn't have worked on my gaming screen anyway. As it was, I played it through a VGA adaptor for my N64. 'JFG' had proved that loss of contrast wasn't the end of the world and I could still admire its beauty. It's surprising it wasn't high enough resolution to be picked up on the monitor since it required the Expansion Pak to run at all, but I suppose it was for the detailed routines across the three days that also meant only two save slots were available. I look forward to finishing it, being about halfway through (two dungeons down), although I haven't enjoyed it quite as much as 'JFG,' it's still up there as one of the best experiences of the year. ****
Honourable mentions: Multiplayer fun meant 'Mario Kart: Double Dash,' '1080: Avalanche' and 'Burnout 2' all featured (GameCube, July-August), as did the misguided 'Goldeneye 007,' though we weren't going to try that again, so poor it was, even with 'Cube Controllers (Wii, August, *). 'Digger Remastered' (DOSBox, November-December, ***), was a fun little old-school action puzzler that was my third tier of fun insurance at Christmas - no time for a full on 'Zelda' or even a race of 'TGR'? A quick few minutes on this was worth a go, snaffling up bags of $ while avoiding the pursuing creatures, a bit like 'Pac-Man,' but you could munch through the scenery.
Next Year - I met a few of my goals from last year, playing a DOSBox epic and getting started on the Wii, but the 'Cube took a relative backseat and I'm surprised I didn't think of putting down celebrating my N64's 20th Anniversary as a goal, but now that I have it's time to move to other machines, so in 2020 I'd like to:
- Really get into Wii gaming properly. There's new 'Mario,' 'Metroid' and 'Zelda' to play, so surely they'll be good?
- If I found another DOSBox treasure then I'll be pleased.
- Forget Wii, I've so many 'Cube games still to start!
- Nintendo Switch will have to wait, I think. As much as I'd like one I have my hands full, so unless they offer a price I can't refuse it'll be proper retro all the way.
- Amiga: I'd love to bring the 1500 down and get into some old games like 'Flashback' or 'Soccer Kid.'
- I'll shortly finish reading through NGC Magazine and will be straight into the successor, NGamer!
Happy New Year!
The start of the year was about my new Nintendo console, the end of the year was about my old Nintendo console, so if I was aiming for symmetry I was doing well! The Wii took the opening of the year as I tried to get into that, but failed to really get excited about it - it had been bought to play GameCube games after my old machine stopped reading discs, but of course I was going to take advantage of being able to access Wii games, too. The big thing of the year was the coming of the 20th Anniversary of when I first got my N64 in October 1999, so the second half of the year was dominated almost entirely by my favourite gaming machine of all time and I really got into games from that time again, playing a new game, completing an old one better than I had originally, and replaying some games I loved of old, so it was a great experience that will stretch across into 2020 as my two Christmas games are still to be completed! Thanks for playing, N64.
[Ratings reflect total, historical experience, not just the enjoyment level I got out of them this time.]
January: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2003, Wii) - Just one last push to fight Ganon, and I had to play it on the Wii after the loss of my 'Cube. It seemed like it might be slightly sharper, but not sure on that one. It was an easy win to finish off and reminded me why I had no memory of the ending: it's so forgettable. It feels unfinished, the reason being that they did actually cut its development short, moving a couple of dungeons over to the next instalment to get that off to a quicker start, or that's both the impression I have and the idea stuck in my head from the time. ***
January - November: UFO: Enemy Unknown (1993, Amiga 1200) - I played it less this year, but the tradition held. Only two more years to go and then it'll be twenty years of regular play! *****
January - March: Red Steel (2006, Wii) - My big introduction to playing a Wii game start to finish. Not the greatest way to learn how to use the Remote, but it had its moments. One of the reasons I didn't really get into the Wii this year. It was as imprecise to use as I'd expected. **
January - February: WSC Real 08 (2008, Wii) - Having enjoyed snooker for over ten years now I was eager to try a game where I could put to use all the experience garnered from watching and seeing how the pros operated. Truth is, snooker's a very tough game, and this was more like a simulation. While the presentation was a bit lacking it was great to have John Virgo and Steve Davis commentating and BBC-like music to bring it closer to the TV, but unintuitive controls, ugly graphics and being too tough for me to pass all the practice shots made me lose interest. It came out just at the time when I'd have started getting into the sport, so it was great to see all those familiar names, and in many ways the scene hasn't changed that much in a decade, there are still a host of recognisable players at the top. I'd like to get back to it and give it another go, but with so many other Wii choices, who knows when? **
February: Conquests of The Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood (1991, DOSBox) - A delightful little find that I began playing one gloomy Monday morning when I couldn't set my mind to anything constructive and found it to be a charming point-and-click challenge that looked lovely, sounded good and provided a nice little story to play through. ***
March - ?: Wii Sports (2006, Wii) - Another Wii game, this one more fun than the others, that I dipped into occasionally, but with little depth to keep me coming back. I'd played it back in 2008 when my cousin brought her Wii round, so I knew what to expect, and maybe if I could be bothered to slip it into the machine on a daily basis or even weekly I'd get more out of it, but I didn't find myself wanting to go back to it and it's probably more fun as a multiplayer than alone. ***
March - April: F-1 Race (1991, Game Boy) - An addictive little racer that I suddenly had a craving to revisit and found to be good fun. A little uncomfortable holding the GBA SP so tightly for a while, but the game itself was a pared down, typically simple but engrossing Nintendo game, that rewards players by showing a famous character at the end of each race in Grand Prix mode (Toad, Luigi, Peach, Mario, Link, Samus, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus, I think… okay, so not all famous!). The racing itself was basic, but tactical: do you go for the A car which has tighter cornering and more nitro boost, or the B car with higher top speed, but less nitro and worse handling? There's incentive to try and beat each track in as few attempts as possible or you get a black X next to your tries, and fortunately the game had battery backup so you didn't need to finish the entire GP in one sitting, saving at the end of each successfully completed race, making it very much a 'one more go' experience rather than being forced into trying for the lot. This wins it points, as does the music and the little animations: even if you come fourth, or worse, your racer sidles up to one of the glamour girls and she brushes you off most amusingly! The great thing about it is that, on top of the tactical choice of car, the racing is almost a scissors-paper-stone affair, where you have to juggle the need for speed, with dodging the obstacles of other cars and the wretched billboards at the side of the road that will cause you to spin out. You don't want to slow too much, but you have to take corners carefully - if you get in an opponent's slipstream this gives you a boost, but you don't want to hit them as it slows you down. Fairly easy to finish, just a few short hours play time got me through the nine tracks to a scene of all the characters waving you by, culminating with Bowser. But the real challenge is completing each track in as few attempts as possible. Don't know if there was a special reward for doing it, but I doubt it. Well worth a play, not that deep, but perfect for the pick-up-and-play style of the original Game Boy, and one of the first into-the-screen racing games I ever played (along with 3D 'Hard Drivin''). ***
April - June: Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg (2003, Wii) - A solid, reasonably entertaining platformer on a system largely devoid of good ones. Can't seem to remember that much about it, other than it filled a spot, looked fine and was a pleasure to complete. Other than that it was forgettable, but in a nice way. ***
June - August: Need For Speed Carbon (2006, Wii) - A step down from 'Most Wanted,' and therefore a slight disappointment. Too dark, lost some of the good functions of before, but at least Drifting's back. The last of the 'Need For Speed' games that came out on the 'Cube, so maybe I'll have to start going through the Wii range? ***
August - September: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors (2001, MacBook Pro) - The Conquerors final campaign. Not the best, most of them fairly easy, even on 'Hard' difficulty, and didn't take long to beat, but it remains one of the great games. *****
September: Daikatana (2000, N64) - Fairly simple First Person Shooter with the gimmick of playing through different time periods and trying to inject a little puzzle-solving into the mix, but it looked and played very backward and while it was okay and worth a bash (especially for being one of the high resolution games, so I could play it without VGA adaptor), it was one of the more forgettable experiences of the year. **
September - October: Star Wars Racer (1999, N64) - Spent over two hours one evening trying to come first on the 'Abyss' track in the Invitational Tournament. At first it seemed impossible, but with continual practice I saw my performance improve until I reached that sweet goal of first place. It was worth the effort, and that's why this transcends its okay graphics, repetitive sound effects and music, and irritating voices: the challenge. You sense these racers don't cheat, and everyone's in it to try hard. It might not feel all that 'Star Wars,' but it's good enough and another non-VGA game. ***
October - December: Jet Force Gemini (1999, N64) - Looks good, even through a VGA adaptor, though at first it stood out as not really being sure what it was, like a cross between the platforming and English humour of 'Banjo-Kazooie' and the shooting of 'Goldeneye,' except without the precision control of character and camera in both of those, and there's really not that much to it: run and gun, a few simple platforming tasks, the occasional NPC to meet and greet, upgrade your weapons, and the occasional mini-game, and it did take a few hours to break into its addiction point. But when reached, suddenly there's purpose to collecting Tribals and treading old ground, and you can forgive imprecise 3D control. It was a real rediscovery and I enjoyed it immensely. ****
December: Top Gear Rally (1997, N64) - Well worth a play, this old rallying game had been on my mind to revisit as I hadn't played it for many years. There was a twofold reason for dusting it off at this time, partly to rediscover it after playing its sequel 'TGR2' a fair bit over the years, but also as an antidote to 'Zelda' which was my main game to play over Christmas. With this as a backup option, if I got stuck in the other game I could flip to this one and still have a challenge to run through, plus racing is a different type of gaming to action adventure, requiring less brain and more skill. I only vaguely remembered it and it had made a big impression when I first got my N64 due to the realistic (or hyperrealistic - like driving on the moon sometimes!), physics that bounced your car around. It was almost like 'Wave Race' in that you were fighting the drag of different road surfaces and tyres that would pull you off course like the ebbs and flows of a river. Other cars were obstacles to progression, and because you had them to overcome that added another element of challenge to proceedings - essentially you were still against the clock, but the cars were like course ghosts that were solid, and though it could be frustrating that the slightest nick or jolt could send you into a tumble that derailed your chances, its toughness was an attraction. ***
December: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000, N64) - As it turned out I didn't need to fall back on 'TGR' much as I got on fairly well with this, and even when stuck (stupidly, I didn't notice the ramp up to the mountains), I was busy whizzing through time to meet townsfolk and doing bonus missions for quite a while so I rarely needed to get away from the game. Its unique structure of taking place across three days was a real innovation, but it was also the fact that having only two save slots meant that this was a game I'd seen so little of and was much fresher than 'Ocarina of Time,' its superior predecessor which I'd played or watched family play, a number of times. I'd only played it once and watched it one other time so it's been good to get back to. It was always on my list to revisit, but I'd wanted to get the GameCube 'Zelda' disc which included this - only that was 60hz so wouldn't have worked on my gaming screen anyway. As it was, I played it through a VGA adaptor for my N64. 'JFG' had proved that loss of contrast wasn't the end of the world and I could still admire its beauty. It's surprising it wasn't high enough resolution to be picked up on the monitor since it required the Expansion Pak to run at all, but I suppose it was for the detailed routines across the three days that also meant only two save slots were available. I look forward to finishing it, being about halfway through (two dungeons down), although I haven't enjoyed it quite as much as 'JFG,' it's still up there as one of the best experiences of the year. ****
Honourable mentions: Multiplayer fun meant 'Mario Kart: Double Dash,' '1080: Avalanche' and 'Burnout 2' all featured (GameCube, July-August), as did the misguided 'Goldeneye 007,' though we weren't going to try that again, so poor it was, even with 'Cube Controllers (Wii, August, *). 'Digger Remastered' (DOSBox, November-December, ***), was a fun little old-school action puzzler that was my third tier of fun insurance at Christmas - no time for a full on 'Zelda' or even a race of 'TGR'? A quick few minutes on this was worth a go, snaffling up bags of $ while avoiding the pursuing creatures, a bit like 'Pac-Man,' but you could munch through the scenery.
Next Year - I met a few of my goals from last year, playing a DOSBox epic and getting started on the Wii, but the 'Cube took a relative backseat and I'm surprised I didn't think of putting down celebrating my N64's 20th Anniversary as a goal, but now that I have it's time to move to other machines, so in 2020 I'd like to:
- Really get into Wii gaming properly. There's new 'Mario,' 'Metroid' and 'Zelda' to play, so surely they'll be good?
- If I found another DOSBox treasure then I'll be pleased.
- Forget Wii, I've so many 'Cube games still to start!
- Nintendo Switch will have to wait, I think. As much as I'd like one I have my hands full, so unless they offer a price I can't refuse it'll be proper retro all the way.
- Amiga: I'd love to bring the 1500 down and get into some old games like 'Flashback' or 'Soccer Kid.'
- I'll shortly finish reading through NGC Magazine and will be straight into the successor, NGamer!
Happy New Year!
An Obol For Charon
DVD, Discovery S2 (An Obol For Charon)
Not as annoying as it first seemed, but I can't say I liked the episode, either. Strange when you consider this was another one that was quite true to the Trek ethos. It has a Trek structure of A and B plots, a non-humanoid encounter in both, and a solution that is nonviolent. Just what is it that turns me away from this series so much? It doesn't help that I don't really, genuinely like any of the characters. They're all so readily emotional and lacking in the kind of organised professionalism and restraint that I associate with this universe. The casual way they address each other, the non-regulation attitudes, lack of seriousness and informal manner of speaking grates on me so I don't respect them. And when the characters fall apart there is really nothing left in a series as they are the heart of everything. Take Reno, the Chief Engineer of the Hiawatha who is still, inexplicably, aboard Discovery - she and Stamets immediately start laying into each other and it's not what I want to see. All this 'witty' points scoring and standoffishness, but where's the Starfleet brotherhood and emphasis on service? Everyone has an attitude, it seems, and they all have to express their 'personalities.' If this was the sixth season and they'd all been through so much I might be able to take their shorthanded populist manner of speaking, but we're so early in the series and everything is sped up and ignited with little room for growth or chance to earn anything and to me that is the antithesis of Trek.
There is some growth in the shape of Saru's experience with the space creature 'evolving' him out of his people's traditional fearful role in the eco-structure of his world, Kaminar - it sets the Vahar'ai into motion, which is what kills his people, but that doesn't make a lot of sense when we've constantly been hearing that his species is the prey, and the predator species (the Ba'ul as he says here), hunt them down. But if they automatically die at a certain point then why would the Ba'ul hunt them? They'd be more like vultures picking off carcasses, so that isn't true to the little we'd already heard. I also didn't see the logic to his thought that his people have been living a lie, just because he's gone through this Vahar'ai and hasn't died - he loses his threat ganglia (so hopefully no more sensing the coming of death and other fantasy notions!), which means he's no longer afraid and feels the inherent physical power he's possessed of. And no Kelpien ever felt that? It's the usual case with these writers that they don't have a clue how to develop an alien species. They're doing their best, but they're fundamentally flawed. I'll give them the makeup, though. That was pretty good, with bare-chested Saru showing off his bone structure in much the same way as Worf's brother, Kurn, did in a similar scene of assisted suicide. That was something else I was uncomfortable with: Saru just staggers off the Bridge with Burnham (what happened to the intra-ship beaming used so frequently before? Now he's dying and they won't let him beam to his Quarters?), and rather than Sickbay they head to his Quarters so she can finish him off!
Clearly Burnham doesn't want to do this traumatic and immoral thing, and it's a good thing she does hesitate or Saru might well have died! It could be seen as an indictment of euthanasia, just like that scene in 'Star Trek V' when Dr. McCoy relives the death of his Father and admits that if he hadn't assisted in his death he'd have been cured shortly afterwards, but the way it's so calmly almost carried out was chilling. Saru wants to avoid the pain and madness he anticipates coming, but Burnham would never have forgiven herself if she'd realised he died needlessly, and even worse, what about the whole Kelpien race that would have gone on living as they did without Saru there to show them another way? I wanted more information on Saru's escape from the planet because we hear he was a refugee and was saved, but little else. His people are under the Prime Directive (or General Order One as it was properly called at this time, and I appreciate the adherence to that), so they don't have warp drive, but Saru got away and is the only one to do that (a bit like Kes, then!), and they let him know all about the Federation and even join Starfleet. Too many gaps and lack of explanation, without the impression they have a direction they're going in and will stick to.
I was so relieved the space creature wasn't the Doomsday Machine, as that's what it looked like on first glimpse. I thought they were going to ruin more Trek lore, but no. We've seen creatures passing on vast databases of information before, though I can't remember when ('Voyager' did one, I'm sure, and probably 'TNG'), so it is a very Trekky course to take. I liked that Saru recognised it as a 'last contact' rather than a first, and it is a good, solid idea that this creature snatched them out of warp because it didn't want to die alone and needed to pass on its knowledge and history. That kind of thing is actually moving, but it's only a brief moment in an episode filled with emotional people so it's a little lost in the flood of feelings all over the place. Everyone speaking different languages all of a sudden made a good twist, but even that was a flash in the pan, rushed madly through like a panic, and that's the trouble with the series: it tends to jump from this to that, worried the modern attention span of its audience needs constant stimulation. If you look at a 'DS9' episode like 'Babel' in which the same thing happens, everyone losing the ability to communicate, it's turned into a fascinating mystery where we learn much more about certain characters and how they react to such a situation. The shock is in the sudden nonsense being spouted, but if that was a 'DSC' episode it's blazed through with pounding music and then it's onto the next thing being flung at the audience. Trek used to thrive on ideas and satisfyingly explore them, develop them, but now it's become a mishmash of fireworks exploding all over the place.
One argument made for why modern TV is soooo much better than the old is because you never know who's going to die, but that's not true even now. Of course Saru isn't going to be killed off, any more than Burnham is because they're almost the only two with any development behind them (not a lot, but some), so I never felt concerned for Saru (why were Burnham and Pike helping out in Sickbay, what happened to the doctors and nurses?), and, as always was the case, waited to see how it would be resolved. In fact it was an easy guess that the creature had activated his illness and its death would free him, although I didn't predict that he'd lose his guiding sense of fear and institutional cowardice, so that's something. We finally get to see inside his Quarters where it's all grass and plants, and while it's a nice idea, it's once again very much in a modern mindset that everyone can have their individual needs and wants when in reality serving aboard a starship is about fitting into a mould. There might be an arboretum or a few houseplants, but no one on the original Enterprise would be allowed modified Quarters where they could form it as they will, that's not in the military way! I know they're not military, but they are based on the navy and space (at this time if they were being true to the history), is at a premium. But no, everyone should have things as they want them, that's the attitude of today.
At least we won't be spore jumping any more, or at least I hope not, as we've finally got to the point where we've learned that it's damaging to the mycelial network. The B-story features Stamets, Tilly and Reno trapped in the spore room (no sign of the Chief Engineer - I wonder why he never stopped by like Burnham did, even if he couldn't get inside?), where the mycelial creature escapes and latches onto Tilly again. I get it, it's supposed to show Reno's ability, but also her lack of empathy with people, and I suppose is a reminder of how we first found her with her attitude of patching up the dying and injured being as simple as sticking on some duct tape (would they even have the notion of duct tape in the 23rd Century?), and it's not a boring subplot, but they've done the mycelial stuff to death now and I'd just like to be rid of it. I will say that this is how you should do a serialised series: individual episodes like this that explore the characters while also referencing ongoing events - Spock's dashing about somewhere in a shuttle, which is why they were in this part of space, and they're on their way to intercept him when they get stuck in this situation, though because of the superior sensor data of the creature they haven't lost his trail, so that's nice. Thing is, there's still so much that gets on my nerves, whether it's Tilly handing round chewing gum (seriously, this is the kind of stupid thing I wrote in my own space stories as a child - everyone stop to hand round some sweeties!), her favourite song being a pop song (in old Trek it'd have been a nursery rhyme or something traditional passed down through the ages - give it a rest with the pop music, that won't be remembered in the 23rd Century!), and Burnham, as usual being the most emotional member of the crew (are you sure she was raised by Vulcans, or is this just a reaction to that - she was so emotionally repressed that now she's not it gushes forth at a moment's notice!).
On the other side of the coin it was interesting to meet Number One, supposedly the same character Majel Barrett played in 'The Cage,' though this one is as a street-smart, witty-bantering with the Captain whom she's so familiar with, a far distant cry from the repressed, unemotional, computer-like personality we originally saw. I know that several years have passed, but apart from looking somewhat similar (tall; long hair), she may as well be a different character. It's too early to judge her but yet again it falls into the category of what modern audiences expect to see. None of this respect for authority and a sense of distance between ranks or characters, no, we can't have that, everyone must be familiar, so why bother reusing characters at all, it just inflames people like me! There were a couple of straws to grasp from her appearance - Pike orders her to get the holographic comms system ripped out of the Enterprise (which made me mentally cheer), so they are at least making some small effort at course correction before we go aboard the most famous ship in Trek history (though I'm still not sure it's going to be anything close to what it should be, going by Burnham's little visit recently), and the other was seeing a PADD that looked a lot more like the old-style ones in 'TOS,' a high-tech, chunky clipboard shape. And we hear that Saru's sister was named Siranna which I think was new information.
It's little enough to grip onto and that's the reason it's taken me so long to get back to the series when over Christmas I'd planned to get through a couple of episodes at least. But I just don't enjoy the series and even if it's less painful than some of Season 1, it's still so hard to like. The whole episode could have been full of interest if this were the Voyager crew, or the DS9 one, but even they would have found it hard to fight against the style of editing and dialogue that plagues the series because it has to fit in with modern production techniques that don't serve Trek's traditional stage play format well. The idea that only human, English speakers could communicate with each other might well have been crafted into a fascinating adventure for Starfleet ingenuity to solve (it's evidence of why the kind of buttons and levers on 'TOS' might actually be more reliable since they aren't text based and so the language wouldn't matter), and a story about the malfunction of the Universal Translator is equally ripe with possibility that remains unplucked.
That most people hadn't bothered to learn another language speaks to another modern attitude, even if it's understandable when you have the UT in your society. If there had been a guest character who was a linguistics expert, like Hoshi on 'Enterprise,' it could have been something deep to explore, an opportunity to show Starfleet skill and training at work, but the closest we get is in the extremely informal Briefing Room scene where Linus the Arcturan grunts something unintelligible out, then explains the UT doesn't always work for him. Why? That's nonsense - once a language is known by the computer it wouldn't make a mistake, surely? For that matter how does he know what the others heard? Yeah, it's 'DSC,' turn your brain and your expectations off, man. 'Star Trek' is so old, it needs to be more contemporary otherwise people can't relate, right? Thanks for that. And don't get me started on another pretentious title. A coin for the ferryman of the dead. I get it, but does it really have any meaning for the episode? And Charon is very easy to confuse with Cheron, which already has meanings in Trek lore. Then again they never bother to show the title so to them titles don't matter. Why do they hate Trek?
**
Not as annoying as it first seemed, but I can't say I liked the episode, either. Strange when you consider this was another one that was quite true to the Trek ethos. It has a Trek structure of A and B plots, a non-humanoid encounter in both, and a solution that is nonviolent. Just what is it that turns me away from this series so much? It doesn't help that I don't really, genuinely like any of the characters. They're all so readily emotional and lacking in the kind of organised professionalism and restraint that I associate with this universe. The casual way they address each other, the non-regulation attitudes, lack of seriousness and informal manner of speaking grates on me so I don't respect them. And when the characters fall apart there is really nothing left in a series as they are the heart of everything. Take Reno, the Chief Engineer of the Hiawatha who is still, inexplicably, aboard Discovery - she and Stamets immediately start laying into each other and it's not what I want to see. All this 'witty' points scoring and standoffishness, but where's the Starfleet brotherhood and emphasis on service? Everyone has an attitude, it seems, and they all have to express their 'personalities.' If this was the sixth season and they'd all been through so much I might be able to take their shorthanded populist manner of speaking, but we're so early in the series and everything is sped up and ignited with little room for growth or chance to earn anything and to me that is the antithesis of Trek.
There is some growth in the shape of Saru's experience with the space creature 'evolving' him out of his people's traditional fearful role in the eco-structure of his world, Kaminar - it sets the Vahar'ai into motion, which is what kills his people, but that doesn't make a lot of sense when we've constantly been hearing that his species is the prey, and the predator species (the Ba'ul as he says here), hunt them down. But if they automatically die at a certain point then why would the Ba'ul hunt them? They'd be more like vultures picking off carcasses, so that isn't true to the little we'd already heard. I also didn't see the logic to his thought that his people have been living a lie, just because he's gone through this Vahar'ai and hasn't died - he loses his threat ganglia (so hopefully no more sensing the coming of death and other fantasy notions!), which means he's no longer afraid and feels the inherent physical power he's possessed of. And no Kelpien ever felt that? It's the usual case with these writers that they don't have a clue how to develop an alien species. They're doing their best, but they're fundamentally flawed. I'll give them the makeup, though. That was pretty good, with bare-chested Saru showing off his bone structure in much the same way as Worf's brother, Kurn, did in a similar scene of assisted suicide. That was something else I was uncomfortable with: Saru just staggers off the Bridge with Burnham (what happened to the intra-ship beaming used so frequently before? Now he's dying and they won't let him beam to his Quarters?), and rather than Sickbay they head to his Quarters so she can finish him off!
Clearly Burnham doesn't want to do this traumatic and immoral thing, and it's a good thing she does hesitate or Saru might well have died! It could be seen as an indictment of euthanasia, just like that scene in 'Star Trek V' when Dr. McCoy relives the death of his Father and admits that if he hadn't assisted in his death he'd have been cured shortly afterwards, but the way it's so calmly almost carried out was chilling. Saru wants to avoid the pain and madness he anticipates coming, but Burnham would never have forgiven herself if she'd realised he died needlessly, and even worse, what about the whole Kelpien race that would have gone on living as they did without Saru there to show them another way? I wanted more information on Saru's escape from the planet because we hear he was a refugee and was saved, but little else. His people are under the Prime Directive (or General Order One as it was properly called at this time, and I appreciate the adherence to that), so they don't have warp drive, but Saru got away and is the only one to do that (a bit like Kes, then!), and they let him know all about the Federation and even join Starfleet. Too many gaps and lack of explanation, without the impression they have a direction they're going in and will stick to.
I was so relieved the space creature wasn't the Doomsday Machine, as that's what it looked like on first glimpse. I thought they were going to ruin more Trek lore, but no. We've seen creatures passing on vast databases of information before, though I can't remember when ('Voyager' did one, I'm sure, and probably 'TNG'), so it is a very Trekky course to take. I liked that Saru recognised it as a 'last contact' rather than a first, and it is a good, solid idea that this creature snatched them out of warp because it didn't want to die alone and needed to pass on its knowledge and history. That kind of thing is actually moving, but it's only a brief moment in an episode filled with emotional people so it's a little lost in the flood of feelings all over the place. Everyone speaking different languages all of a sudden made a good twist, but even that was a flash in the pan, rushed madly through like a panic, and that's the trouble with the series: it tends to jump from this to that, worried the modern attention span of its audience needs constant stimulation. If you look at a 'DS9' episode like 'Babel' in which the same thing happens, everyone losing the ability to communicate, it's turned into a fascinating mystery where we learn much more about certain characters and how they react to such a situation. The shock is in the sudden nonsense being spouted, but if that was a 'DSC' episode it's blazed through with pounding music and then it's onto the next thing being flung at the audience. Trek used to thrive on ideas and satisfyingly explore them, develop them, but now it's become a mishmash of fireworks exploding all over the place.
One argument made for why modern TV is soooo much better than the old is because you never know who's going to die, but that's not true even now. Of course Saru isn't going to be killed off, any more than Burnham is because they're almost the only two with any development behind them (not a lot, but some), so I never felt concerned for Saru (why were Burnham and Pike helping out in Sickbay, what happened to the doctors and nurses?), and, as always was the case, waited to see how it would be resolved. In fact it was an easy guess that the creature had activated his illness and its death would free him, although I didn't predict that he'd lose his guiding sense of fear and institutional cowardice, so that's something. We finally get to see inside his Quarters where it's all grass and plants, and while it's a nice idea, it's once again very much in a modern mindset that everyone can have their individual needs and wants when in reality serving aboard a starship is about fitting into a mould. There might be an arboretum or a few houseplants, but no one on the original Enterprise would be allowed modified Quarters where they could form it as they will, that's not in the military way! I know they're not military, but they are based on the navy and space (at this time if they were being true to the history), is at a premium. But no, everyone should have things as they want them, that's the attitude of today.
At least we won't be spore jumping any more, or at least I hope not, as we've finally got to the point where we've learned that it's damaging to the mycelial network. The B-story features Stamets, Tilly and Reno trapped in the spore room (no sign of the Chief Engineer - I wonder why he never stopped by like Burnham did, even if he couldn't get inside?), where the mycelial creature escapes and latches onto Tilly again. I get it, it's supposed to show Reno's ability, but also her lack of empathy with people, and I suppose is a reminder of how we first found her with her attitude of patching up the dying and injured being as simple as sticking on some duct tape (would they even have the notion of duct tape in the 23rd Century?), and it's not a boring subplot, but they've done the mycelial stuff to death now and I'd just like to be rid of it. I will say that this is how you should do a serialised series: individual episodes like this that explore the characters while also referencing ongoing events - Spock's dashing about somewhere in a shuttle, which is why they were in this part of space, and they're on their way to intercept him when they get stuck in this situation, though because of the superior sensor data of the creature they haven't lost his trail, so that's nice. Thing is, there's still so much that gets on my nerves, whether it's Tilly handing round chewing gum (seriously, this is the kind of stupid thing I wrote in my own space stories as a child - everyone stop to hand round some sweeties!), her favourite song being a pop song (in old Trek it'd have been a nursery rhyme or something traditional passed down through the ages - give it a rest with the pop music, that won't be remembered in the 23rd Century!), and Burnham, as usual being the most emotional member of the crew (are you sure she was raised by Vulcans, or is this just a reaction to that - she was so emotionally repressed that now she's not it gushes forth at a moment's notice!).
On the other side of the coin it was interesting to meet Number One, supposedly the same character Majel Barrett played in 'The Cage,' though this one is as a street-smart, witty-bantering with the Captain whom she's so familiar with, a far distant cry from the repressed, unemotional, computer-like personality we originally saw. I know that several years have passed, but apart from looking somewhat similar (tall; long hair), she may as well be a different character. It's too early to judge her but yet again it falls into the category of what modern audiences expect to see. None of this respect for authority and a sense of distance between ranks or characters, no, we can't have that, everyone must be familiar, so why bother reusing characters at all, it just inflames people like me! There were a couple of straws to grasp from her appearance - Pike orders her to get the holographic comms system ripped out of the Enterprise (which made me mentally cheer), so they are at least making some small effort at course correction before we go aboard the most famous ship in Trek history (though I'm still not sure it's going to be anything close to what it should be, going by Burnham's little visit recently), and the other was seeing a PADD that looked a lot more like the old-style ones in 'TOS,' a high-tech, chunky clipboard shape. And we hear that Saru's sister was named Siranna which I think was new information.
It's little enough to grip onto and that's the reason it's taken me so long to get back to the series when over Christmas I'd planned to get through a couple of episodes at least. But I just don't enjoy the series and even if it's less painful than some of Season 1, it's still so hard to like. The whole episode could have been full of interest if this were the Voyager crew, or the DS9 one, but even they would have found it hard to fight against the style of editing and dialogue that plagues the series because it has to fit in with modern production techniques that don't serve Trek's traditional stage play format well. The idea that only human, English speakers could communicate with each other might well have been crafted into a fascinating adventure for Starfleet ingenuity to solve (it's evidence of why the kind of buttons and levers on 'TOS' might actually be more reliable since they aren't text based and so the language wouldn't matter), and a story about the malfunction of the Universal Translator is equally ripe with possibility that remains unplucked.
That most people hadn't bothered to learn another language speaks to another modern attitude, even if it's understandable when you have the UT in your society. If there had been a guest character who was a linguistics expert, like Hoshi on 'Enterprise,' it could have been something deep to explore, an opportunity to show Starfleet skill and training at work, but the closest we get is in the extremely informal Briefing Room scene where Linus the Arcturan grunts something unintelligible out, then explains the UT doesn't always work for him. Why? That's nonsense - once a language is known by the computer it wouldn't make a mistake, surely? For that matter how does he know what the others heard? Yeah, it's 'DSC,' turn your brain and your expectations off, man. 'Star Trek' is so old, it needs to be more contemporary otherwise people can't relate, right? Thanks for that. And don't get me started on another pretentious title. A coin for the ferryman of the dead. I get it, but does it really have any meaning for the episode? And Charon is very easy to confuse with Cheron, which already has meanings in Trek lore. Then again they never bother to show the title so to them titles don't matter. Why do they hate Trek?
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