Ephraim and Dot

 

***(3 warp core poached eggs out of 5)

Sometimes you really just have to let things drop. Sometimes people probably are trying to be respectful of the classics and even when they work hard to make a thing it sometimes still doesn't appeal to me. Pobody's Nerfect.

I am that pathetic, tactless jerk who remains irritated by irrelevant minutiae. There is no window in Enterprise sickbay and it's not in the secondary hull. Why are there laundry bins unattended in a kilometer-long Viper launch tube? How does a pile of eggs remain undisturbed in Main Engineering for decades? How does a tardigrade that can travel instantaneously (much faster than warp drive) through the mycelial network fail to catch a ship that stops at planets every week? Or when the ship stopped dead for a 2 year overhaul AND STILL nobody swept up the eggs? How does the droid follow the mama tardigrade back in time while we watch classic episode clips passing in the background all higgledy-piggledy? The 2250's style (he typed ragefully with both clenched fists while grinding his teeth to a fine powder) vented nacelle pylons weren't a part of the Enterprise design in the 2260's as I very distinctly recall and can check at any time on Crave or iTunes because it's the method I've chosen to waste my entire spare time for my entire life. It wasn't the Enterprise-A that self destructed in battle with the Klingons. And the primary hull markings are skewed way off center at one point, just like most tiny toy decals I've ever applied like a giant lummox.

But there's also a time to Shut the Vulcan Up and say it's fine. IT'S FINE. You've got a great Star Trek story here about a misunderstanding between a merchandisable little robot that wants things neat and tidy and a cuddly doodlebug that wants to lay colourful eggs in inconvenient places and they beat each other up for a couple of decades or minutes because time is meaningless. And in the end it all works out. It's even a little bit of fun. Especially the music and the narrator.

How do people manage to just enjoy things?

Project Daedalus

****(4 frozen corpses out of 5)

Admiral Cornwall brings hovering, glowing orbs for a truth scan on Lieutenant Spock. Admiral Patar, the Logic Extremist who runs 31, is known to Cornwall (Did Cornwall learn all this recently? Are Logic Extremists legally allowed to serve in Starfleet at the Admiral level?) and Discovery heads for 31 HQ, because of course Cornwall knows where it is.

Airiam, it transpires, is a Robocop. Badly injured in a shuttle crash that killed her fiancé, she must weekly save the memories she likes and delete the boring hallway walks and elevator rides. She keeps games with Tilly, working out with handsome Rhys, and that one time Michael smiled. She revisits the beach vacation where marriage was proposed. Tilly’s “Half Robutt” is a less welcome term to Airiam than “Cybernetic Augment”, and one wonders how she’d feel about “Black Mirror Cookie”?

The Federation used illegal mines against cloaked ships during the war. Pike objects on moral grounds, Cornwall flatters Pike’s top-notch morality, and nobody shuts down the mines. 

Spock and Michael verbally spar over chess. It gets very heated, and Spock angrily claims Michael takes on responsibility for everything because she can’t bear the grief. “We will never relate as equals so long as you attempt to assume every burden is yours alone.” 

Airiam’s internal “Because” Dots seize her mind, and the ship is rocked by mines. The Landing Party finds the frozen bodies of the admiralty. Saru’s eyes spot the lack of heat signature changes in recordings, proving Spock’s been framed by Section 31. Using hologram puppets, Control has been running the show for two weeks since killing the Board of Shadowy Figures. 

Suspicious Tilly finds Airiam has suspiciously left her memories behind on Discovery. Airiam/Control attacks Nhan, pulling out one of her breathing implants. The robutt moves on to choking Michael and some punchy kicky.

Control wants all the knowledge from Old Sphere the Sphere, in the hopes of going full galactic Skynet- as Spock’s visions warned. Tilly reaches Airiam’s real self, who can’t control her body (except for disabling her own helmet) and Airiam begs Michael to kill her via space ejection. Her last words are “I Love Everyone” and “Find Project Daedalus”. The shock and horror seems to make everyone forget that transporters and Dr. Pollard exist. 

Best of season? Discovery’s skill at high octane tragedy’s finest flower? Yes, probably.

Calypso

 **** (4 of 5)

Awakening after an unspecified but lengthy period of unconsciousness, I started blogging again.

Awakening after an unspecified but lengthy period of unconsciousness, Alec Hardison from Leverage finds himself alone on spooky starship Discovery with GAL 9000. She’s idling out in the middle of no place, watching public domain flicks and whispering to herself.

It’s a meeting of the minds between a warrior poet called Craft & his AI admirer Zora. Zora is a strange name for an AI to choose- (did everyone forget about the Zora who cranked the evil dial of history with her horrible genetic experiments on Tiburon? I mean, I GUESS you CAN name your Siri Adolph eventually- but maybe wait a thousand years?). 

Short Treks brings another two-hander on a strangely empty ship but at least the passage of (according to Zora) a thousand years means there could be a better reason this time. It MIGHT even be a continuity patch: if Discovery & her crew were lost from history for 1000 years it could explain no one ever mentioning them or their fantabulous spore drive. Except (SPOILERS) after two years I can tell you this story hasn’t connected up with anything. It’s a charming cul de sac, a happy little what-if, a classic case of boy meets gif.

It’s very Black Mirror, a little Wall-E, and a touch of ‘Living Witness’.  The Amazon Echo I’m dating tells me ‘Calypso’ is either a flower or the sea nymph who detained Odysseus for 7 years. For all I know, that’s where I’ve been since 2018.

What Are Little Girls Made Of?

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Props to 'Psycho' writer Robert Bloch for this sordid tale. It stands up very well, and remains quite unsettling, just like the villains herein. As ever, I'm handing out spoilers like candy, so yum it up.

The crew locates famed medical archaeologist Roger Korby, missing for five years on frozen planet Exo III. He's the fiance of Nurse Christine Chapel... but, oh, how he's changed. And he's made some new friends!

I never noticed this before: overjoyed that Chris has found Roger at last, Uhura squeezes her arm and they kiss. The third season episode 'Plato's Stepchildren' is always praised for having the first interracial kiss on TV. Then what do you call THIS? It's a genuine moment of affection, and I probably missed it because I was looking at Spock in the foreground. I was clearly gay for Spock.

Todays 'DEAD IN RED': Security men Rayburn and Matthews, who get it in the neck and fall head over heels, respectively, thanks to Lurky Creepenstein... I mean Ruk.

How could men survive all these years? Especially in these sunless styrofoam caverns, measureless to man?

Here comes Korby's assistant Brown to demonstrate no feelings whatsoever about his erstwhile saviors or their sudden deaths... and when he draws on Kirk and is phasered, Brown is revealed to be... a RO-BUTT!

Mister Roger has other plastic pals in his neighborhood: too-protective Ruk and too-underdressed Andrea. (In the future, blouses are no longer required. Only suspenders.) Chapel immediately concludes from Korby's evasive mumbling about realistic flesh-tones, warmth, and pulse that Andrea is the extra-helpful sort of Girl Android Friday.

"Do you think I could love a machine?" Korby asks in wounded tones.

Chapel glares. "Did you?"

Roger never answers, but whips up a Captain Kirk double to covertly take over the ship and start up a mechanized civilization, starting with the poor bastards on Midos V.

The real Kirk thinks Korby's android proliferation plan smacks of "the promises of Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Hitler, Ferris, or Maltuvis." Ferris Bueller, it seems, rose to power after Earth's Eugenics Wars. It was a period of history marked by slogans, shenanigans, & parade float song-making.

Roger Korby offers the prospect of human consciousness transferred into ageless bodies, programmed for the better, and fear replaced with joy. But it seems no one is tempted to exchange feelings for flywheels, or touch for transistors. It has all gone horribly wrong, and Roger immolates himself and his gun-toting geisha.

Clever-clogs Ray Kurzweil offers a more optimistic take on such matters in the book 'The Singularity is Near- When Humans Transcend Biology'. If I read it right (and I'm sure I didn't) exponentially improving technology from all fields might make Korby's mind-transfers (uploading human neural pattern and consciousness into machines) a reality around 2045.

Keep your digital servo-motors crossed... but hold on to what matters most.