Sunday, February 25, 2018

Will You Take My Hand

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Discovery has barely had time to awaken from their year-long nightmare and now their insane Starfleet bosses have put a Kelpian-eating, planet-blasting jerk back in the Captain's chair. Officially, they are spore-hopping into a cavern in a canyon and their surveillance drones will be number 9. Just a mapping mission. To map. You know. Just a little survey map of the Qo'noS volcanos. Just some exploration, some spelunking and... oh, to hell with it. Yes, we're blowing it up. No more Beast Form Klingons- I mean, except all the ones in the fleet poised over Earth with their teeth in its throat.

Georgiou threatens to eat Saru, L'Rell threatens to eat Georgiou (again), Georgiou kicks the red blood out of L'Rell. And we return to what has miraculously "worked" all along- an away team consisting of a Mirror Universe killer, famous traitor Michael Burnham, shell-shocked Ash, and Tilly, the plucky cadet.

Qo'noS gave some of their garbage land to the Orions for an embassy/garbage town. The good news: more Orions (faithfully rendered and not suddenly sporting four arms) means I don't have to look at as many garbage Klingons. Plus their clad is scanty. Too scanty, really- I didn't ask for a "Klingon" peeing a double stream in the street, but this is where we are now.

The "mapping" mission goes off perfectly! Inside of an hour Georgiou is romping with green prossies of each type, Burnham and Tyler are having a heart-to-heart in a gambling den, and Tilly is huffing fumes with Clint Howard until she passes out. It's very, very fan fiction. Yes, in a good way.

Michael tells her origin story, much as it appeared last year in David Mack's novel. "Klingons" killed her dad fast, her mom slow, and then had a big laugh while they ate the Burnham family dinner. Burnt ham, probably? Despite everything, Michael stands up for principles above survival- and the crew stands up to Admiral Cornwell's bad choices. Saru, Detmer, Airiam, Ginger, MaryAnn, and the rest don't feel like any genocide today, thanks.

Burnham gets The Emperor to sign her yearbook "Best Wishes, Less Murders" before she wanders off scot free. Burnham gives L'Rell command of Starfleet's planet killing bomb lodged inside Qo'noS. L'Rell and Voq now take the (The High Council? Maybe? It's some Lord of the Rings goblin cave.) hostage before they wander off scot free, too. Thanks to a single woman holding an iPad, the war is over. FOREVER.

How many fan girls echo Ash's words at his departure: "I'm going to miss looking at you." For my part, I would be very glad not to look at Disco Klingons any more- but I've proven that I choose my pain, so I always watch Star Trek- no matter what double pisses it takes on its own history.

The Federation President pardons Michael and restores her Commander rank. Promotions and medals for all! Desperation is done, idealism is back. That was easy! Like, a dream...

Or like the end of Into Darkness- hours of mindless violence with a tiny chaser of "Violence is Bad, kids". But I like the smiling kids who are left as our Final Girls. One or more of them are named Bryce, I think?

Oh, and a teaser I think they meant as fanservice: a distress call from Captain Pike of the Enterprise. Ship's not right, but it's closer than I expected.  Then the sixties theme song. It's pandering, but it's on the right track.

So, yeah. In many ways, a miserable death march. I've spent hours watching other people go first online with ST:Discovery commentaries. "After Trek" is boldly in love with everyone and everything that happens. Some YouTube reviewers complain vehemently with not a little misogyny and bigotry but somehow are still watching at the end of the season. I tried to love it and I tried to hate it and I found a little of both in my heart. I heard a Red Letter Media reviewer say: "Star Trek used to be about ideals but now it's just familiar names and places to shoot at each other..." and "How does it feel to live long enough to watch all your favourite franchises crash and burn?"

There are some fantastic moments here and I will never stop wondering what will happen next. Here's to a valiant effort. Here's to living long enough to see your favourite things die. Here's to Star Trek.

The War Without, The War Within

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Guess who's coming to dinner? Michael brought the Evil Emperor Georgiou back with her. The Emperor quickly spills the beans to Saru that she & Michael have just eaten a Saru with beans. Awkweird!

Back from the Underneath, Discovery lands spore-lagged but close enough for jazz. However, in the 9 months they lost in transit the "Klingons" brought the Federation to its space knees. A third of their fleet is destroyed, planets we've never heard of were burned down, ALL their starbases ka-put. 20% of Federation space has been occupied, and 90% of the maps are coloured in red now!

Dr Pollard is still treating Ash. Like everyone else, she's uncertain what the "species reassignment surgery" has done to him. She says he hasn’t got more strength or aggression than a human now. I'll add that the medical staff should maybe switch to reinforced turtlenecks.

Saru blames Voq for Culber’s death, not Ash- and he believes in that distinction with more conviction than I've got at this point. Saru limits Ash’s privileges but won’t take his freedom. Stamets is enraged at the traitor but satisfied to know that Ash is human enough to suffer for his actions. Tilly & even DETMER welcome Ash back at lunch! It all seems wildly naive until I remember- THEY’RE KIND!!! I forgot what Starfleet being kind looked like!

Admiral Cornwell has Sarek mind-meld with Saru to confirm his identity & their "inconceivable ordeal" without all those pesky words and "last time on" recaps. Cornwell phaser blasts Lorca's fortune cookie bowl when she hears how unreasonable he was. She does nothing about the Evil Emperor except loan her a stateroom the size of Pike's entire engineering deck, but at least she does nothing about locking Michael back up forever, either. Cornwell also has a fruitless conversation with POW L'Rell. Starfleet Leadership is floundering even though Andorian Admiral Shukar ate a tiny computer to make his voice deeper.

Cornwell and Sarek are concerned that if this adventure becomes public knowledge a grieving Federation will play Fringe en masse and abandon universe for somewhere better. (I hear the Star Trek Continues dimension is pretty this time of year.) Discovery's records are classified and destroyed and recorded over with old episodes of The Expanse. Sorry, Captain Kirk, you'll have no forewarning of mirror universes! Sorry, Captain Janeway, no spore drive for you!

Sarek calls for the complete destruction of the enemy, then extolls the virtues of Michael's love for Ash in a public hallway- you know, like a Vulcan.

Stamets refuels with the high-speed terraforming of a moon in Veda with more magic mushrooms than Campbell’s. Michael drops some kind of strained metaphor on Ash about how, what with the murder attempt and all, her love would have to grow back with a lot more work and punishment than a moon of instant mushrooms. Or something. Basically, call it a break-up, probably?

Oh, and orders from Cornwell: a genocidal attack on Qo'noS commanded by the woman who's been there, done that in her dimension. The Emperor will be your guide and Captain. Oh, good. Something sensible at last. Dingy basement bridge forever!

What's Past is Prologue

**** (4 stars out of 5)

The evil Terrans, in the course of wrecking up planets and junk, are sucking non-renewable energy from the mushroom network and if not stopped will suck the life out of the entire multiverse. Why, did you need higher stakes?

Gabriel "Make The Empire Glorious Again" Lorca's been a Mirror Man all along. To paraphrase Devo, Gabriel Lorca "is a man with a mission. A boy with a gun. He has a picture in his pocket of the lucky one. He is a big, big mess." He frees his ACTUAL crew including the Mirror Ellen Landry (poked a bear in episode 4, torn to shreds?) from their year-long agony booth spa day and throws them into the Emperor's cannons. Nobody who hears Lorca's tale of torpedos, transporters, ion storms and probably a mongoose bite that all converged to swap him with the (good?) Lorca a year ago survives this episode. Lorca also claims he shared a bed and coup attempt with Mirror Michael Burnham but at this point I wouldn't believe Lorca if he told me Kelpians are delicious.

And I certainly do love the taste of Saru in command! His speech to his now entirely trustworthy infiltrator-free team about ideals in the face of certain death is bitchin'.

If Michael and the Ewoks can get the shields down from the inside, Discovery can stop the evil energy orb, and as an added bonus, Paul can surf the explosion back to home base.

The Emperor backstabs Lorca and he screams exactly, I mean EXACTLY like a TIE fighter as he is (disintegrated?) by the spore network that can send you anywhere. Never to be heard from again. NEVER.

It's a grandiose SFX heavy firefight. I do miss Star Trek phaser beams instead of Star Wars blaster bolts- I didn’t know what universe I was watching BEFORE I didn’t know what universe I was watching.

Vaulting Ambition

**** (4 stars out of 5)

The Defiant data our heroes were seeking for a way home turns out to be more redacted than Trump's love letters to Putin. So Michael and Lorca board the Star Destroyer... uh, ISS Charon dressed as the bounty hunter Boussh and the Wookiee Chewbacca.

If you, like me, were faked out by Georgiou being called the Emperor (see: EMPRESS Sato) then her boatload of other titles including Mother of the Fatherland will be fun, too. Did I hear "Annihilator of Alderaan" in there?

If you, like me, would NOT have done as Burnham did and chosen her life-saver Mirror Saru when the Emperor points at three Kelpians without preamble and says "Choose One". Then congratulations! You would, like me, get to eat a stranger instead of an ally. Yes, eat. We're going full Grand Guignol. "Pass me the speech centre of the brain!"

The Emperor quickly deduces her evil daughter-figure Michael is a parallel universe denizen and abruptly drops her entourage in a trice with what I'd call a Dirty Pair Bloody Card and others might see as a mini Krull Glaive.

The Emperor luckily finds occasion to tell Michael of a singular biological difference between Mirror folks and Regular folks. Light sensitivity. (We're ignoring hearts on the opposite sides of chests, since, now that I think about it, that was from a book.) So, it's a 1 sentence answer for 2 questions since episode 3: why are the ship lights always so damn dim? And why is our Captain Lorca always such an utter bastard?

Now that Ash needs help there seems to be abundant Discovery medical staff- it is coincidence that they are female and he is handsome? Also, how is "Klingon" medicine so far advanced of the Federation? Did they use very small daggers to cut open every single strand of his DNA to give him a human genome? Naw, that's what TEETH are for!

POW L'Rell says they captured the real Lt. Tyler and grafted Voq's psyche onto his. (If so, did they then put this combo brain back into Voq's modified body? Culber already said his spine was shortened, & bones crushed, so it's definitely not Tyler's original body except in shape. Well, let's call it a pick-and-mix.

Of course, L'Rell has her jiggery-pokery brain gloves with her (what? also: huh?) and our heroes trust her to dick about with Ash's noggin some more until he's calm enough to stop trying to tear out his own tiny human-sized heart.

Astromycologist Stamets roams his mushroom dreams and gets an info dump from his Mirror pal, Fascist Paul. He also gets a bon voyage and a travelling clue from a vision of Hugh.

Troublingly, despite its unique and crucial importance to ever getting back home, it looks like only Stamets and Tilly were checking in on the spore garden and now the mushrooms are all dead.

I give a whole star for the Evil Lorca Reveal. I never saw it coming. Effects are good, music is good, performances as ever are stellar. Episodes like these are your reward for being very, very patient. Yum it up.

The Wolf Inside

*** (3 out of 5)


It's darker even than usual on Deck 12, with likewise burnt-out Stamets babbling and cradling Culber. One assumes Voq/Ash took out the power after killing the doctor, but it seems weird that NOBODY is anywhere on that deck until one poor engineer comes to fix the lights? Anyway, since he's the only one there, Stamets is the only suspect. Tilly works tirelessly and successfully to cure Stamets' mushroom sickness with more delicious mushrooms.

Michael "Butcher of the Binary Stars" Burnham is cosplaying as the Captain of the evil ISS Shenzhou. Captain Lorca is in the Shenzhou basement in the agony booth, pretending to be taking his licks as Evil Lorca with Michael sneaking him painkillers. Sylvia "What The Heck Heck Hell" Tilly is the figurehead "Captain Killy" (if anyone asks) on the faux ISS Discovery with its evil paint job. Mr. Saru is the actual acting captain, while on the Shenzhou Michael accidentally honours her identical Kelpian bath slave by naming him Saru also. Fortunately she does not give him a sock or her house elf would be freed before it comes time to save her from Ash's attempted strangulation. Because, somehow, STILL, despite publicly freezing up twice in enemy environments... Ash is CHIEF OF SECURITY.

Michael tries to discover what's up with the rebels on Harlak- a coalition of peaceful Mirror races bonded in mutual defence against the trigger-happy, bigoted Terrans. My nostalgia sense is tingling at the sight of an Andorian and a Tellarite, mercifully recognizable if slightly hornier. Unable to stop themselves, the designers added eyebrow points and tusks.

But if I'm uncomfortable with change, it's nothing compared to Ash, who spoils Michael's chance to earn allies in Goatee Sarek & Co, when Ash flips out (who could possibly have seen it coming???) and attacks Mirror Voq for his conciliatory ways. Finally, painfully, for 6 whole minutes, Ash spells out for Burnham that he is Voq, before going for her throat, so she slips him the secret plans and publicly "executes" him with a space beaming from which Saru retrieves him instantly.

The surface of Harlak is destroyed by, wait for it, big reveal, the Evil Terran Emperor... Georgiou.

I've been pretty snarky, but I really am captivated. Seriously, this show has me hostage. Help?

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Despite Yourself

*** (3 stars out of 5)

You're back for Chapter Two, Despite Yourself? Or should that be Despise Yourself?

ST:Disco has learned the lesson of previous series: when in doubt, there's always sex and violence to be had in the Mirror Universe!

The Mirror Universe humans of the Terran Empire are especially insular and bigoted today. I mean, they're never been bastions of sweetness and diversity but we've previously seen their "Humans Only" policy wasn't in place 100 years ago or 12 years from now. Still, there's every possibility this is "A" Mirror Universe just as the first half of this season is clearly in "A" Star Trek universe, one of the expensive-looking and morally dodgy ones. More evidence? The Imperial logo has Earth's continents mirrored, a fine idea which also wasn't the case before this.

This Mirror Universe had a technological goose in the bum with the arrival of the Defiant. They've had a century to put little wing breaks and hull grooves in just in case any of us were wishing it was the same design as last time.

Still, can't complain: with our crew pretending to be baddies we get a raft of new little pins, and giant gold breastplates to cosplay in for ages to come! (Or just put your head in a purple pumpkin and "Klingon" away.)

Giant defector L'Rell can still wreak havoc from her bonds (did she bring those with her?). She activates her Super Secret Surgically-altered Spy!

Are you shocked and appalled to learn that Ash Tyler is the albino Voq who vanished just before Ash showed up? Perhaps you have not been watching television enough. Although I will tell you that although the Internet had guessed this one months earlier it is a fine development indeed! It's probably best if you binge this all at once and then you don't have time to think about it.

Not thinking about things is also how you get Dr. Culber, discretely telling Ash his truly horrifying medical findings (namely, that Ash had his skull belt-sanded down and a new personality implanted) without ANY kind of witness or, say, burly back-up nurse present or even anyone to hear the inevitable snap of his neck.

Oh, Doctor Culber. It's a good thing gay guys are so plentiful in Star Trek that we can spare one.

Friday, February 23, 2018

Into The Forest I Go

** (2 stars out of 5)

Shall we hug plants with Saru or have a drawn-out bloody brawl? Well, continuing to take our cues from Battlestar Galactica, Admiral Cornwell has NOT had her throat slit Baltar-Style or been killed by L'Rell's bug zapper. Nope, still alive!

"Klingons" have the weird abilty not to notice that L’Rell & Cornwell aren't corpses when dumped in the corpse room. (Yes, of course, "Klingons" have a Corpse Room. Maybe it's a larder?) Where's their sense of smell? What are the four nostrils for? Or, failing that, where are their life signs scanners?

The clueless and quickly ignored Pahvans have called both Starfleet & Kalesh's Finest to Pahvo trying to talk peace without the strength to back it up. Our heroes are all that can save them and supply us with enough space explosions to get us through the next 8 weeks until episode 10.

Captain Lorca talks Stamets into a fiendishly complex series of 133 mushroom jumps to get location data on their opponents. It taxes Paul to the utmost and leads to an explosive victory and a strange reversal.

“When I took command of this vessel, you were a crew of polite scientists” speechifies Lorca. Not quite following it up with 'Today, you’re a bunch of self-serving assholes and I couldn’t be prouder!'

Because her track record with the enemy is the best, Michael Burnham is the only one sent to sneak aboard the Big Bad Corpse Ship. I mean, Ash the very trustworthy Chief of Security tags along, but he freezes up immediately, so Michael is mainly responsible for recovering the Admiral and L'Rell. Also a sword fight. As usual, there is nothing Michael Burnham cannot do. But as Dylan Hunt could tell us, you aren't the Gary Stu if it's your story. (Your enjoyment may vary, my limited research suggests this is a well-regarded episode.)

25 minutes into all this Michael’s universal translator proves “human ingenuity” by saying the Klingon version of “human ingenuity” several seconds before SHE does! Autocorrect has gotten positively telepathic!

Ash’s PTSD flashbacks are a strobing intercut of being flayed alive & a questionable coitus scene cribbed from Species.

Having broken a Star Trek barrier earlier this season with an F bomb, we are treated to the first (official) on screen Star Trek gay male kiss for Stamets and Culber. Only twenty-five years too late to be ground-breaking anywhere else. Also Trek's first female nipples, maybe. It's yet another moment when NuKlingon prosthetics & jarring tone get in the way of any possible enjoyment. Without upcoming context, some even claim L'Rell is raping Ash, and they still might be right for all I know. Even IN context, grotesque is not a sufficient word.

At least the dudes kissing was pleasant!

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

** (2 stars out of 5)

Starfleet finds the planet of the Good Vibes and Discovery is tasked with finding a way to make it War Useful. "Pahvo, eh? Pretty Planet of the Placid Blue Lava Lamps? Makes strong vibrations, all Wakanda style? It's sort of Pandora if Pandora was Vancouver? Cool, cool, can they send sonar pings? Get them busy pinging these invisible damn enemy ships!"

Starships Gagarin, Hoover, & Muroc are destroyed. Stamets calls Sylvia "Captain" because he's full of 'shrooms. That's the whole "C" story. I wish I had a joke. Here's an observation instead: Owosekun is at ops and Airiam has the conn! I wrote them down from the subtitles but I still couldn't tell you their names with a gun to my head. 

Over in story "B", Kol of House Kor is doling out invisibility screens. These are the bad guys' main advantage and yet another way THESE 2250s are not unfolding as they did in the Trek timeline I grew up with. L'Rell pretends to be torturing Cornwell and instead has a "nice" chat with fake screams. As soon as she hears “The Federation has no death penalty." L’Rell says she wants to defect, like a true follower of Kalesh. I think that’s Kahless here?

Incidentally, why did the "Klingon" guard leave his post just because his prisoner is screaming? How do you even have that job?

Michael Burnham & Lt. Love Interest, Ash, continue their twitterpatin'. 

But this is Saru Day! Doug Jones does beautifully in (sorry) the dullest tale of the year. Saru can top 80 kph on those hooves of his and his senses are more acute than human. He crushes communicators with his bare hands. That's not our focus, however: it's the bodiless, voiceless, Pahvan peaceniks and how Saru converts overnight when they take away his fear. 

This decompressed tale could use a bit of compression. The title means: "If you want peace, prepare for war". Prepare for a nap, more like.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

**** (4 stars out of 5)

had to use the picture above because it's a screencap of me watching Discovery.

Harry Mudd is back with time to kill. It's one of those episodes with a little of the old chronic hysteresis, or Time Loop if you're nasty.

Speaking of nasty, Tilly claims to have exclusively dated soldiers. The Federation death toll is up to 10,000. I'm not blaming Tilly, it's probably Michael's fault, somehow. Although we'll hear all about it today at the disco. Let’s party like its 2009!

All trauma and no kiss make Michael a dull girl. She's never been in love, she doesn’t interact & now, thanks to all the mushrooms, Stamets is suddenly a hugger. 

The party is pooped by the arrival of a lonely space whale. The Gormagander is endangered because it is so focused on eating it does not mate- I'm finding it easy to sympathize over cookies. 

Mudd pulls a Space Jonah in what I was happy to imagine is an Andorian helmet. Also he has a handheld Groundhog Day device to perfect his for-profit starship hijack & Lorca-killing spree by using infinite repetition. It's the same device used to generate most television scripts.

Sensitive Stamets is also retaining memory of these 30 minute time loops, and recruits Michael to help stop Mudd killing Lorca another 54 times. 

It's pretty easy to love Stamets when he gets lines like: “Never hide who you are. That's the only way relationships work.”

Destined to forget it ever happened, Ash kisses Michael. Michael, in return, kills herself painfully with Harry's dark matter capsule to force Mudd to reboot Ash. Ah, l'amour!

I'm glad that even after multiple repeats, Mudd, like me, has no idea who the rest of the bridge crew is. "Random communications officer man."

It's feeling a LOT more like Star Trek around here today. Even the Stardates make no sense! Also we don't have to look at any "Klingons". Thank you, episode.

Mudd’s skipped out on his impending nuptials to Stella, daughter of fabulously wealthy and utterly humorless arms dealer Baron Grimes.

Does the sadistic multiple mass murderering Mudd seem like the pimp & roguish cad from TOS? No? Well, apparently he not only is, Discovery crew is fine with punishing him TOS style- with a marriage yoke. Uh, joke. It IS just barely possible that on that last loop he may not have had time to do anything horrible except tormenting the whale. No, not Grimes, the Gormagander.

The title, it seems, is a quote from The Iliad? Homer?? Read a BOOK!!!

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Lethe

*** (3 stars out of 5)

On a diplomatic mission to Cancri, Ambassador Sarek is attacked by his co-pilot: a Vulcan supremecist suicide bomber. It never rains but it pours... is something you never hear on planet Vulcan.

Specialist Michael Burnham is coaching Cadet Sylvia Tilly in the command skills of jogging and a balanced computer diet, and in return Tilly is coaching Michael in advanced theoretical boy kissing.

Boys such as Little Orphan Ash Tyler! Captain Lorca bonds with Ash over some laser tag. Quizzing the stressed torture survivor about his background, Lorca is mollified to hear he is from the normal human city of See’Attl. Lorca, popping every eye in the audience, immediately makes Lt Tyler his security chief. SECURITY? CHIEF???

Dying Sarek’s katra calls out to Michael for rescue & pulls her into his dream- his version of the events of Michael’s graduation day. The Vulcan Expeditionary Group (their minds as open as their arseholes) would only let ONE of Sarek’s weird kids join- so he chose Spock. Michael, top of her class, was forced into her Starfleet safety job. And it turned out great! Seven lonely years of moping up the command ranks followed by seven months moping in jail.

Does Captain Lorca’s ever increasing pile of odd choices seem like something that should maybe, just possibly, come under review? Well, Admiral Cornwell is his boss, and the words “come” and “under” ARE used when they pause to review his bedroom.

Cornwell discovers Lorca is quick to whip out his phaser & yes, he is happy to see her. He begs her not to take away his ship just because he's riddled with PTSD. But not to worry- he lies, stalls & schemes until she quite fortuitously is caught by the enemy while trying to finish Sarek’s task herself. Lorca rushes to her rescue... oh, no, not so much.

Michael is full of feelings & unlike Tilly she doesn’t "love feeling feelings". She goes to Ash Tyler for advice on being human. What a fine idea! He is THE SECURITY CHIEF!!!

Choose Your Pain

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Michael has a sense of empathy for Rippy the Gator, and who wouldn't? It was clearly a very discerning creature when it mauled Chief Landry. But now EVERY Starfleet ship has been ordered out to hunt these giant tardigrades to stuff into their mushroom engines. Discovery has had 3 weeks of success popping up out of a haze like Alice's Caterpillar and drowning the enemy in bong water.

Admiral Katrina Cornwell tells new fleet darling Captain Lorca he shouldn't have the mutineer on his crew, but she's not complaining very hard because Lorca is a dreamboat.

Dreamboat finds himself in a brutal Klingon prison. His cellmates are handsome Lt. Ash Tyler and Dwight Scrute, as an amazingly good Harry Mudd. Well, by GOOD, I mean a good performance. He picks who gets kicks & Mudd, plainly, never picks himself. The cynical civilian and his spider Stuart are squealing to the guards. But Ash is holding up handsomely, too, for a guy who's been captive 7 months. Lorca is suspicious, but not to worry- Ash is alive because he's been having human-on-pinecone relations with L'Rell the torturer.

Unsteady as Acting Captain, Saru asks for the most decorated Captains living & deceased, so a fanservice screen pops up. We’ve heard of EVERY one, they’re all human, and unless there’s a crammed page 2 of Q-Z you could count them on one hand. Nice diversity, Starfleet.

Oh, yeah, so, Tilly and Stamets drop the f-bomb. Amidst all this deadly serious joylessness, it was kind of a great moment! Not for kids. But I'd be more worried about the prison guards kicking a guy's fucking head in than whether your teens use curse words. This ain't your grandfather's Star Trek, old man!

Lorca is also an inspiration to your kids with his hints at Klingon anatomy, or the thrilling tale of how he blew up his entire crew on the USS Buran to save them from degradation at the clawed hands and doubled anatomy of the enemy, and was, obviously, rewarded with Discovery.

Overworked Tardy the Engine Bear squeezes itself out like a sponge & curls up. With 134 souls to protect, Saru insists on working it to death. Dr Culber tries to stick up for the possible sentient. I thought it goes: To seek out new life & stab them with needles until they aid our war effort.

Lorca & Ash make their escape, and in heroic Starfleet fashion they leave that wailing sellout Mudd behind to suffer as he swears revenge. Morally, it’s a garbage decision, but, hey, it's tactically very questionable too. Ash pummels L’Rell & Lorca melts her, uh, face, I guess you'd call it? Again, these are very ugly Klingons.

Not as ugly as the abomination they're calling the D7 battlecruiser now! You know, there are a lot of numbers and letters in the alphabet- call it the D4 and I wouldn't get to whine so much!

Paul Stamets saves the day with illegal eugenics to take Tardy’s place. So good news all around: Lorca & Ash are back aboard, and now we have a new action figure: Stigmata Stamets!

Saru mends fences with Michael, admitting his anger & jealousy of her mentorship. He orders her to save the tardigrade, so Tilly prays over it and they free it. Very laudable morally, & again, strategically bonkers.

While brushing their teeth, Dr Culber frets over his lover Stamets- neither notices that Paul's reflection is not behaving. Uh-oh!

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry

** (2 stars out of 5)



We open on an electrically-blasted region of some twisted hellscape... wait, it's just an extreme close-up of a uniform synthesizer. Even getting DRESSED on Discovery is a nightmare!

If the episode has a theme, it's settling in. Mr. Saru is forced to admit that saying nice things about Michael and giving her blueberries along with the stink eye was slightly hypocritical last episode in that he didn't think she was going to be sticking around. She makes his threat ganglia wiggle in fear but in these desperate times we have to be friends with monsters. Captain Gabriel Lorca for example.

Apart from his dissection chamber and gung-ho security chief Landry who gets herself torn to shreds by literally poking the space bear, Lorca also motivates his scientists with the screams of the dying from the Klingon attack on Corvan 2. What a guy!

What's Lorca trying to motivate? Dr. Hugh Culber's BF Paul “I always wanted to converse with my mushrooms" Stamets is trying to finalize his life's work to allow a starship to bounce on spores like plumber Mario from one world to the next in an instant. Yes, really.

Only Michael Burnham, who's barely heard of spore drive technology, can recognize that the macroscopic tardigrade-like creature they found on the Glenn was less Shardik with a touch of Freddy Kruger and more Super Computer with a touch of Dune's Guild Navigator.

The upshot of which is we get our first shot of the USS Discovery twisting inside out like a Go-Bot!

So what are the "Klingons" up to, apart from winning the war for galactic supremacy? Well, starving. Torchbearer Voq has seemingly been trying to get his highly advanced Ship of The Dead to budge a single kellicam for SIX MONTHS, during which time they've eaten Captain Georgiou's corpse, if we can give them the benefit of the doubt, because they are hungry rather than for shock value for some unseen audience. Interstellar conquerors, everyone!

L’Rell flirts with Voq but then seems to sell her loyalty to Kol for a hamhock. Apparently, though, she has a better scheme in mind when told to kill Voq the son of none...

So, hooray for humans- the last handful of folks on Corvan 2 are saved and all it takes is imprisoning & tormenting the dancing bear.


“Keep your eyes & heart open always.” says Captain Georgiou's last will and testament. If this story were set in Trek's future, we might look back on the way Captain Janeway was appalled by Captain Ransom's very similar use of tossing living, thinking creatures into his engine to make it go faster. Fortunately, that ain't happened yet and nobody's learning nothing.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Context Is For Kings

**** (4 stars out of 5)

So I came out of the pilot stunned.  The performances are good, the effects are expensive and I can't fault anybody for taking risks and trying new things. (Well, new-ish to Star Trek, anyway. It is a little familiar if you've seen Starship Troopers or Battleglum Galacticglum.) I wanted comfort food and they gave me Very Uncomfortable food.

As we rejoin our hero the galactically infamous mutineer Michael Burnham she's starring in the pilot for Umber is The New Orange. It's been six months of war with over 8,000 Federation dead and so the pilot is actually called Everybody Blames Michael. Well, speaking of pilots, the prison shuttle pilot falls overboard somehow and the convicts are brought safely aboard the USS Discovery. Did they bother to save the pilot, too? No time to ask!

Your patience for two hours of dark lens-flared bridges and purple squashes barking nonsense in H.R. Giger's rumpus room while Star Trek-like ships play Star Wars has paid off- here's USS Discovery. If only the Disco weren't a bronzed novelty pizza cutter on a pie server...

Here meet again Keyla Detmer & Mr. Saru. They both have glares for Michael, but one has an injured face and one has a bowl of blueberries. Meet mysterious Captain Gabriel "Nobody Will Miss a Few Muggles" Lorca & his misfortune cookies. Meet chirpy Cadet Sylvia Tilley & her special needs. Meet Lt. Paul Stamets & his persnickety Sheldon Cooperness. Meet Security Chief Landry, she’s pretty cruel and oh, never mind, you won't have to meet her for long. Meet Lt. Commander Airiam, some kind of Bynar, Cyberoid Boomer, or Soong-type with the face flayed off. Yup, you won't remember their names but meet a bunch of science nerds forced to be soldiers.

But you'll have to meet them all in the dark because... Well, just because, damn it. There's a war on! Light's not cheap! The Klingons might see us! Who needs to see what they're doing? The Captain likes it dark! Yeah, his eyes are bad! Let's go with that.
Lorca can sort of make out where Michael Burnham is standing and tells her she has brought back hunger, need, and want. Seriously, are we blaming her for everything now?

Possibly we can blame her for the bizarre blood bath with strobe lights and pretzel-twisted corpses aboard their sister ship Event Horizon, uh, USS Glenn. Of course, it might be the unholy secretive drive experiments and six-limbed space bear. Fortunately, the survivors of the away team will be glad to know Captain Lorca brought the monster back to keep in his private skeleton closet/vivisection den.

The tone is set- it IS enthralling. It’s Star Trek as a nightmare. Nothing familiar, nothing comforting.
Find something to hold on to- this horror movie is 15 hours long.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

Battle at the Binary Stars

**(2 stars out of 5)
It's 2256, but we're ignoring "The Cage" (2254) so all the ships look like nothing we've ever seen. Well, the Klingon fighters look a lot like the winged Black Lectroid ships from "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension", a movie I wish I was rewatching for the 10th time instead of this for the 3rd.

Seems T'Kuvma's "Pure Klingons" aren't inbred hicks with horrible deformities. We see several dozen arrive & they all look like jack o'lanterns that never got thrown out in November. Anyway, T'Kuvma was picked on as a kid, so he's tooling around in his daddy's ship spoiling for a rumble. He's also decided the melting pot of the Federation with all its peaceniks holding hands and dancing cheek to beak is not for him. Dude, you're made of lizard claws, pine cones, & spare rib shards and you haven't gone outside in 100 years. Wasn't nobody offering to mix with you.

On the other side of this vertiginous slide into Interstellar Race War is Michael, the protagonist I find compelling but very difficult to comprehend. Just as Worf wouldn't have spit on a dehydrated Romulan, Michael's tormented, undernourished emotional side just can't see a Klingon without blasting his ass. Even though she has JUST told everyone that making a martyr of T'kuvma is the WORST thing they could possibly do. In a trice, she destroys her captain, her career, & the galactic peace. Actually, maybe screwing everything up royally is relatable after all?

The Substitute Kirk & his presumably all European male crew on USS Europa die by the prow of an anachronistically cloaked "Klingon" ship, which is in turn disabled by a booby-trapped corpse. Since "Klingons" "traditionally" revere their dead bodies & helpfully line their hull with them for the first time ever.

Mutinous Michael Burnham is imprisoned for life by a Board of Shadowy Figures. Apparently Starfleet leadership is just 100% Section 31 now.

When I watched this I posted a script fragment to social media from 'The Tholian Web' set in 2268:

CHEKOV: Has there ever been a mutiny on a starship before?
SPOCK: Absolutely no record of such an occurrence, Ensign.

So I asked- Are we in a different dimension? Or is a certain first officer defending his foster sister with semantics? After a season, my internal jury is still out.

But I very much dug this phrase from Sarek, whether he's Prime or otherwise: "No matter your shame, gather your strength. Find a way to help those who need you."

Creators, if you'd only been willing to switch the digits around and call this 2562 I wouldn't have most of my continuity complaints! But then you'd have to do without your Sarek cameos. That logical, logical voice of reason who urged his daughter to shoot first. Kind of like the way I take stupid pot shots at a show I want very badly to succeed.

The Vulcan Hello

** 2 stars out of 5

Meet T'Kuvma, flashpoint of Internet troll rage. And so, Meet the Klingons. (Deploy heavy sighs.) Elaborate, baroque samurai lobster costumes, combined with trying to read subtitles printed across them and you'll be hard pressed not to make terrible cursing sounds too. The stilted, gargling speeches through big pointy teeth (for some reason also made slower & deeper by computers) will remind you you're losing hours of your life you'll never get back. And the new make-up. If you thought the 'Into Darkness' Klingons went too far with their piercings and weird contact lenses, let's see what further mutations have to offer. Pointy ears? Why not. Four nostrils? Watermelon size skulls & velociraptor claws? Yeah, that'll be off-putting. When the motive behind the changes is revealed around episode 9- believe me, it wasn't worth it. Since you insisted, there's a picture of one in the middle panel:



If you're just champing at the bit to make sweeping design changes, why not just call your new beast-men a new name, or call them an existing race we never saw? (Still a chance in season 2 to tell us these Klingons were Tzenkethi pretenders all along?)

And now, Minute Two. Remember how happy everyone was to learn during the much-beloved Star Trek V that Spock has a secret brother? Meet Michael Burnham- secret sister! She estimates storm arrival to the second but can't recognize what geometric pattern she's walking in. Her Starfleet calls somebody they haven't first contacted "Crepusculans", thank you very much. (Of course, the locals call humanoids "Stink Monkeys" so it evens out.)

Meet Captain Philippa "It's Hard to Believe You've Served Under Me For 7 Years" Georgiou. She's fun. Meet Saru "Give Forever Fishman a big hand to go with his big shoes" The Cowardly Celpian. Meet Keyla "Blink And You'll Miss Her" Detmer and the Cannon Fodders... uh, Shenzhou bridge crew. Meet a Klingon Torchbearer- a straw man with the worst bat'leth design in recorded history. Meet Voq & L'Rell- (the pale one and the girl one).

My niece points out what this oblivious cis male missed: in a crisis the captain and first officer each call white males to help them.

Their force ghost "fathers" (I still have a hard time swallowing the presence of holograms in this "prequel") give them opposite advice and start a fight between them. It's a good thing Vulcan logic can come to any conclusion. Meet Sarek, the Vulcan Ambassador whose horrible advice exacerbates Michael Burnham's mental breakdown.

Star Trek is back. Sorry.

Friday, February 9, 2018

STAR TREK BEYOND

**** (4 stars out of 5) 
Well, it was the 50th Anniversary- so it was time for a Fast and Furious Impossible Mission!

Having dropped Bruce Banner into a black hole and frozen Steven Strange in earlier tales to astonish, our rebooted young crew must now ride motorbikes at Heimdall's head!


It's 2263 and we're clearly bored & listless- Kirk's feeling old (he turned THIRTY, poor kid) & eyeing the exit while Spock & Uhura break up. Speaking of break-ups, poor Enterprise bites the dust yet again. Lured into a treacherous dark nebula as a take-out meal for the tormented Krall & his cronies, our stalwarts must struggle upward once more for the fate of the civilized worlds.


Kirk, Spock, McCoy & Scotty have the most to do, but that's always been the case. Carol Marcus and her underpants have wandered away, possibly wherever Gaila and her underpants got to. But that leaves some room for a hip new lady character whose underpants do not feature: one of Scotty's French Girls... Aliens or "Lassies" as they are known. She's named Feisty Jennifer Lawrence, or Jaylah for short. Jaylah has oodles of kicks and holographic tricks. Uhura came along but she has so little to say that the 13th Trek film becomes (ugh) the 7th one unable to pass the Bechdel test. Still, a technical pass in the diversity category as it turns out the Kelvin Sulu is gay space married while Prime Sulu was straight as a space arrow. Points for trying, and either way our Hikarus seem like good Demora daddies.


Yes, I loved it. But I have some questions. Was a wormhole accident how the Franklin ended up buried ass-backward in the top of a mountain? How did Krall get his well-equipped gang? Is he recruiting from the people he's stranded and sometimes eaten?  How did he earn any loyalty whatsoever? They're organized enough to bring down the Enterprise in minutes, but they kill several of their own team with their bee swarm strikes. Why do Edison's vampire buddies speak an alien language among themselves  if they hate aliens so much? They're old racists who absorb aliens & they look like what they eat... but why would they take alien names? 


What makes a Kelvin Pod different from a regular escape pod? Is it their N64 controllers?


O.K., the first warp 5 starship was the NX-01, so why, then, would the first ship capable of warp 4 be the NX-326? (Found my answer: registry is Nimoy's birthday.) Still so sad about Anton Yelchin and Leonard Nimoy.


I literally just read the Wikipedia entry and I have no earthly idea what Krall's doomsday device is called. The Abernathy? Like cinematic Galactus & Parallax it's some kind of ill-defined evil cloud. Anyway, it probably got all the explanation it deserved, but it was still no explanation.


Finally, it's not a question, but the saucer flipping seems wildly, goofily impossible. Kirk, Chekov & hot-on-their-heels Kalara make a vertical slide yet she ends up standing out in the open just watching that massive saucepan lid crash down on her while they somehow scuttle off unscathed?


Nerd Do Well brings a fun, fast-paced, & even sometimes moving script, the arrival at Yorktown starbase is phenomenal- especially with the superb score, and the USS Franklin might be the last good-looking ship we see from Star Trek (sorry, spoilers).


The teeny, terrified Teenaxi who eschews pants, Keenser's acid sneezes, and Ensign Syl's hidey-hole head are adorable- how could Krall hate aliens so much when they're clearly the best thing about outer space? As my wee granny used to say "Ye cannae break a stick in a bundle." Especially if your stick bundle is also your own hair.


Evidently it didn't score high enough financially, but it's still a darn fine film. With time, my affection for "Into Darkness" has waned, so I would've only given that one 3 stars if I was reviewing it today, but Beyond does hold up. 


I had a great time- my friend Kirk took me to this one as a birthday gift after a long, crummy day at work, then shortly afterward my wife Trish won me a free copy from @Joshrimer on twitter. My friends are the best in the galaxy.