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.

Cease Fire

 **** (4 stars out of 5)

Paan Mokar, the Vulcan equivalent of Pluto, was settled by Andorians in the 2050's. The Andorians had barely named the place Weytahn and started Andor-forming with brave settlers like Shahn E. Appleseed when the Vulcans claimed it "first".

It's Class-D, nearly uninhabitable, fit only for ice bears and Canadians. Deserted by both sides- until the Andorians snuck back in a couple of weeks ago and re-ignited the war. For kicks!

Well, not just any Andorians. Our old blue buddy Shran and the Andorian Amazon Tarah. Suzie Plakson back in black. Well, blue. And a tall drink of water! (Don't drink the water.)

I'm not sure I like the sound of Phlox bombarding me with analeptic radiation. Mainly because it has the word 'anal' in it. As ever, your experience may vary.

Shran calls for a "Cease Fire", as he has come to regard "Pinkskin" Archer as impartial. It's tough for Andorians to compromise with Vulcans. "Camps" were mentioned, and not the holiday kind. Tarah argues that the Vulcans are a people without conscience, and it's easy to see her perspective. Not from her height, but still. The Vulcans we've seen lately seem like ass-hats of the first order, and Stodgy Soval will have to come down off his high horse to stop the green and blue bloodshed. And I'd have to stand on a high horse to kiss Suzie Plakson. (I meant to say my wife! ;)

And if you'd like to see the best wife in the world on stage, brave the sold-out crowds to the Walterdale Playhouse in Edmonton all this week for "Anything Goes". I saw it last night and it's De-Lovely!

Learning Curve

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Crewman Dalby from New Jerksey is something of a jerk. So he and some of his fellow Maquis who can't hack it on Voyager are assigned to remedial Starfleet training.

And not a moment too soon. Young Gerron the Bajoran is almost surly. Bolian Chell is blue, literally.  Henly wears HEADBANDS, for God's sake!

Only Mr. Tuvok's years of Academy Instructor Training have any chance of shaming and exhausting the individuality out of them before they accidentally have a feeling.

Also, Neelix's bacteriological warfare experiment succeeds in infecting the Voyager's bio-neural gel pack circuitry, nearly crippling the ship for capture by his Haakonian overlords! No. Wait. He just left some cheese cooking by the air vent. Same thing.

Janeway and Torres cure the ship's sniffles with a burst of hot plasma 'fever'. Coincidentally, 2371 was the year Hot Plasma Fever got to #1 on the Federation Pop Charts with "Cardassian Rapists Smashed Her Skull" by Kenneth Dalby.

Also, backpacks are heavy and you should only run if there are Circassian bears after you.

"Learning Curve" has a fun guest cast, not least of which is Derek McGrath as Chell. There is a certain, oh, shall we say, hypocritical quality to Tuvok being a stickler for the rules when he was flagrantly breaking them so recently in 'Prime Factors', but it's still a fine tale about flexibility and adaptation. There probably should have been MORE colourful secondary characters in the series overall, so I appreciate this 'Lower Decks'-style story and its snapshot of who is behind all those grey bulkheads, degaussing all the stuff that needs degaussing.

Albatross

*** (3 stars out of 5)

"Albatross". I'm an albatross! Flap, flap, flapping my albatross wings...plastic bag, plastic bag! Sorry, Tom Green ADD moment, where was I? Right! I'm still watching these Star Trek cartoons.

On planet Dramia III, Dr. McCoy is arrested for murder! He's charged with doling out inoculations like some sort of DOCTOR... plus causing the plague on Dramia II nineteen years ago.

The Dramians are effectively alien-looking aliens. Tendril hands, goat ears, orange bell bottoms. Easy to imagine them at the space disco.

Kirk prevents daring Dramian Demos making an attack on the ship by "accidentally" making it easy for him to sneak aboard... through an open shuttle door. Then they force him along on a fact-finding mission to ravaged Dramia II, a fog-shrouded world of "the walking dead". One of them makes a half-hearted attack on Kirk... which is still more action than 'The Walking Dead' season 2.

The sobbing ghouls are the families of the plague victims, remaining in the ruins and in caves out of grief. Except Kol-Tai, who claims to be the only survivor. He credits McCoy with saving him from the Saurian virus. They bring him along as a character witness.

Except Kol-Tai shows the first symptom of the plague: blue skin! Soon everyone but Spock is blue!

(Maybe I just discovered what was wrong with the "OH-ree-ons". And why we never heard from them again...)

Spock makes a jailbreak- only McCoy doesn't want to go! He wants to face trial and know the truth. Until Spock explains about the plague being back.

McCoy risks his life to make a diagnosis.

And he's much, much faster than that limping human wreckage Greg House, MD. He cures everyone in minutes once the pigmentation change is discovered to be a blue herring.

Rather than be beholden to Spock to rescue him next time he's jailed, McCoy tells Kirk 'Just let me rot."

Does the title reference Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"? If so, I guess Bones is the albatross, but fortunately this time around no one hangs him around anybody's neck.