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.

Judgement

*** (3 stars out of 5)
Klingon Tribunals turn out to be a lot like Cardassian ones, just with more spears. On Narendra III (the world Captain Garett and the Enterprise-C will perish to protect) Captain Archer is on trial. Archer, an innocent man, arrested for a crime he didn't commit? Say it isn't so! What is this, FIVE TIMES in two years?

Archer's advocate Kolos is clearly General Martok's ancestor. In fact, a lot of things are familiar here. There's a judge Palpatine banging a sparking gavel-ball. There's even a Duras lying like a rug. Archer's about to go up the river for a group of "treasonous dogs" he saved from the wrath of the turtle-heads. They're not literally dogs.
(Though that would be cool.)

Kolos bemoans how his crumbling society is overwhelmed with babies growing up to be cowboys instead of teachers and biologists. Well, the pay is probably better.

Archer has a lot more luck with his day in court than O'Brien did... he gets a life sentence at Rura Penthe Death Mine and Casino. Surprise! Well, if he lives out the year it will be a surprise. For saying "honour, integrity, and conviction" too often, Kolos also gets 12 months on ice.

I guess I wouldn't be too flabbergasted if Warden W. Morgan Klingon was already employed, but the sadistic guards are somebody else. What an ice place to visit!

T'Pol's shady contacts and Reed's heroic bribery free Jon before you can say "interstellar incident and centuries of animosity". Nobody even got kicked in their big blue beans! But Kolos plans to serve his time. Which is to say die. Perhaps his heirs and Worf's predecessors can be legal partners on the syndicated version of Law and Honor. Or the light-hearted sitcom Fight Court!

"Judgement" was once chosen by Scott Bakula as his favourite episode. And why not? He's great in it as always. Mr. Hertzler is in fine fettle. It's an amazingly faithful re-creation of the middle third of Star Trek VI. Which is the good and the bad of it.

Tacking Into The Wind

**** (4 stars out of 5)

The Dominion's Founder leadership may be failing, but they'd take the whole galaxy down with them out of spite. And on that note: it's a Bad Leaders theme day!

Kira and Worf fight uphill battles with the empires that have never taken them seriously. Though they hate her completely, the Cardassians need Kira's guidance. Likewise, the Klingons need the generally despised Worf. I don't mean Generals despise him- General Martok's flower units about the boy. But the outsider's perspective is required for some radical changes.

Damar of Cardassia suffers grievously when the Dominion has his innocent wife and child shot. When he wails about the injustice of his oppressors, Kira all but chortles in his face. And so Damar must choose whether to kill his blindly racist friend Rusot or his honest foe, Kira. All phasering aside, speeches are what it's all about on Star Trek.

Take my Worf... please! As it becomes obvious to everybody that Gowron would get his whole army slaughtered if it made a good photo-op, Worf keeps silent. Ezri is even brave enough to tell Worf that the Klingon Empire is dying- and deserves to die if they won't defy their corrupt, dishonourable leaders.

When he can bear it no longer, Worf assumes governmental control in the usual manner: petitions, leaflets, and filibusters. NAH! Just kidding. With sharp, stabbing things! That pop-eyed, poisoning snake Gowron has had it coming for seven years!

"Tacking Into The Wind" proves that heavy is the head that wears the crown. Klingon heads being plenty heavy enough already, Worf fobs the actual job off on his brother-in-arms. Qap'la, Martok!  Maybe his hard-ass wife will even crack a smile when she hears she's now the First Lady. If Martok gets a darling new cape, perhaps Sirella gets new shoes?

Once More Unto the Breach

*** (3 stars out of 5)

While yesterday's 'Once Upon A Time' urged us all to think like children, "Once More Unto the Breach" is a country for old men. Still, it teaches us to find the inner child: the cruel, teasing, vicious, taunting inner child. In other words, the Klingon child.

Martok's held a grudge ever since his youth in the Ke$ha Lowlands.  It seems Dax's blood brother Kor was the One Percenter who held him back. Martok was forced to wield a janitor's mop before he got to hold a bat'leth for his country, and it was all due to Master Kor's entitled sense of fuckery.

Worf doesn't exactly love Kor, but he figures everyone deserves to die honourably. Worf gets Kor a job on Martok's ship over Martok's more than strenuous objection.  Worf's sympathy caused him to overlook Kor's raging senility. Kor's senility caused him to overlook what century it is. Calling on his dead friends to destroy the Federation in the heat of battle, the drunken master narrowly misses Martok's knife in his face.

With no ice floes handy for Kor's retirement party, Martok mercilessly mocks his despised elder, perhaps in the hope of shaming him into suicide. If that was, indeed, the plan... then they both win. Kor steals Worf's command of a solo mission flying down the gun barrels of a Jem'Hadar fleet and passes from history into legend.

"Savour the fruit of life... But don't live too long. The taste turns bitter after a time." The final performance of John Colicos is indeed most worthy.

The Enemy

**** (4 stars out of 5)

It was a dark and stormy planet. Worf meets an injured Romulan who hollers to let him go, and rather than catch him by the toe, the Klingon punches him in the face.

Geordi falls into a sinkhole, and misses his transporter window back. This world, Galornden Core, is firmly inside the Federation, and should not have Romulan encroachment, strictly speaking. Unless they're up to no good. Which is always.

With a phaser, Geordi fashions some metal spikes to climb out. Wes devises a neutrino pulse beacon to send him. Now if only this place wasn't so bad for the brain pan that his VISOR inputs fail. And then he's captured by a Romulan. And there's sand in his boots. And there's nothing good on TV on Galornden Core.

Romulan Commander Tomalak stops by. (By sheerest coincidence he is the identical cousin of Babylon 5's Ambassador G'Kar.)

Bev gets to break the good news to Worf: of all the people on board, (even the Vulcans somehow), Worf's the only one whose ribosome donations can cure the wounded Romulan.

Guess what Worf doesn't do.

"If you had seen them kill your parents, Doctor, you would understand it is always the time and place for those feelings."

Crusher is aghast. "You're the only one who can save his life!"

"Then he will die."

Geordi's captor, Centurion Bochra, is surprised to hear La Forge was born blind. His race does not waste resources on 'defective children'. Bochra can barely walk and Geordi's vision has cut out. They must rely on each other. And possibly get an apartment together. Spin-off!

"If that Romulan dies, does his family carry that bitterness on another generation?" Riker asks Worf. Even Picard begs Worf to help, but doesn't make it an order. I'd call that a mistake on Picard's end, but Worf could probably sue for cultural insensitivity or something. Protected under his Rights and Freedoms to Blind Hatred, no doubt.

The injured Romulan seals his own fate. "I would rather die than pollute my body with Klingon filth." Worf is only too happy to accommodate him.

He's a racist in Vorta Vor now.

"Then he is but the first to fall, Picard," sneers Tomalak. Always itching to start intergalactic war, these Romulans. They must not be getting enough blue jeans and bootleg CDs across the border.

Picard bravely tells Tomalak he's about to lower his shields in order to beam up Geordi and Bochra. Jean-Luc literally risks the peace & a thousand souls on Tomalak's unwillingness to shoot first. Note to self: this works on Romulans. Not so sure about everybody else. Klingons, for example.

"The Enemy" is an old favourite. Like the movie 'Enemy Mine' before it, there is cause for ire on both sides and we get some more insight into the bad guys. I cheer Geordi's struggle for survival. The portrayal of Worf, I also admire: his grudges are real and they don't go away just because the hour has elapsed.