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!

No comments:

Post a Comment