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.

The Crossing

** (2 stars out of 5)

Ever wanted to get away from it all? Well, sign up now for the student body exchange program.  A haunted house spaceship is home to a non-corporeal.. (say, can you call them an army if they don't have arms?) swarm of will-o-the-wisps eager to resume the full squishiness of mortal life.

Are they Ux-mal? Calamarain? Free-roaming full-torso vaporous apparitions? They claim to be from subspace but they're not making any friends or asking for volunteers. They just want you for your bodies!

Once more retreating to the Catwalk seems like the thing to do. Why have built it, otherwise? And Phlox turns out to be immune, so he can set up the mechanical traps. If he knew anything about mechanisms. And as long as he doesn't cross the streams.

The bodiless creatures find the right host to hit on women awkwardly like some total creepy spazchow: Malcolm Reed, everybody! He gloms onto a lady in the turbolift, and accosts T'Pol in her under-roos.

I finally figured out who they are: Ghoulies. They'll get you in the end.

"The Crossing" is slightly superior to "The Lights of Zetar" and worse than "Power Play" on the Ghost Trope spectrum. Not even a token effort to help the ghosts? O.K., so they're probably all bad, but today it's just hook 'em, book 'em, cook 'em. Snore, bore, tomorrow there's more.

The Haunting of Deck Twelve

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Who doesn't love a good ghost story? There's probably one around somewhere. 'Power Play' springs to mind. Even 'And The Children Shall Lead' seems better than it used to. No, it doesn't really. That was called kidding.

When all the lights go out to save money... uh, I mean power, Neelix keeps the Borg children from freaking out by telling them a creepy story to explain their current predicament. Heh, CURRENT.

Current and gas cause trouble in a nebula. And Neelix is always looking for an opportunity to gas on.
In the sage words of Tuvok "If I say yes, will it prevent you from telling the story?"

Did any of Neelix's story really happen? Is the nebula alive and out for revenge for some reason? Will the Borg children ever finish eating their snacks?

"The Haunting of Deck Twelve" has that great effect when Janeway's broken replicator materializes the coffee without the cup, a Tal Celes cameo for people who thought Voyager has no sense of history, and the Borg kids are sufficiently adorable. Only Ethan Phillips makes it all bearable, improving on what is essentially a retelling of 'Lonely Among Us' with slightly better graphics and logic.

As for continuity, even in his own recollections, Neelix has forgotten he only has one lung. If I only had one tiny, aged Ocampan air bladder between me and suffocation, I'm sure I'd remember.

Cathexis

** (2 stars out of 5)
Janeway's playing a new holonovel in Ancient England, as Ms. Davenport, governess to the children of Lord Burleigh. She's already one up on Dr. Pulaski by knowing the correct response to 'One lump or two?' is 'Two.' not 'Lumps?'.

Today's modern holodeck is not run off the warp power grid, but off a previously unheard of holodeck matrix. The upshot of which is even if you're so short on replicator power that you're forced to strain your shoelaces for food, you can still play Jane Austen holonovels and starve to death in Mr. Bingley's gazebo.

Chakotay returns from a mission brain dead, with no neural activity at all. I will refrain from the obvious joke about the writers writing what they know.

Tuvok reports he was attacked by aliens in a dark matter nebula. Tuvok reports a lot of things today.

In the light of this unknown invader, Janeway transfers the command codes to the Doctor in case the senior officers act strangely. Well, stranger than usual.

Tom waxes nostalgic for his old Doc Brown, who provided lollipops, recent holocomic books, and house calls. Also he had a very cool classic Delorean hover car.

Kes is left in a coma by what Tuvok reports as an alien attack. Tuvok pulls his phaser on Kim for having a momentary daydream.  Tuvok is also the last person to talk to the holographic doctor before someone shuts him off, locks him down and encrypts him.

Guess which crewman is the puppet of the evil vampiric energy beings called the Komar? I'll give you a hint and it rhymes with Bluvok.

Tuvok, Tom, and Torres are reduced in rank today, but not as part of the story. I have to assume it happened off screen, for good reasons, such as mutiny in 'Prime Factors' rather than because of a costuming error or because their names start with 'T'.

"Cathexis" is Greek for 'Occupation' and what gets me is how they can have sensors that show alien souls wandering around, medical scans that can tell one brain from another, and no way to add those things together to scan for Chakotay's wandering ghost. SCIENCE!

Power Play

*** (3 stars out of 5)

A distress call from within the electric whirlwinds of a moon of Mab-Bu VI matches the signal of the USS Essex under Captain Bryce Shumar which disappeared around here two centuries ago. Could it be...

G-g-g-GHOSTS!

A shuttle with SEATBELTS? What an innovation! Next they'll invent cup holders, GPS, and eight-track cassettes.

Despite the belts, Riker breaks his arm in the inevitable crash. He's a lot more blasé than I would be: "Yeah, pretty sure that's broken." (Poor Marina Sirtis was the one in real pain: she broke her tailbone on this set, which came to be known as Planet Hell.)

O'Brien makes the risky beam-down with pattern enhancers to help rescue the away team. He refrains from any commentary about exactly how often shuttles crash.

Struck by lightning and possessed by little 'Ian Andrew Troi'-style energy beings, Deanna, Data and Miles turn on their lies and charms to direct the ship to the south pole. When they sense the slightest hesitation, they launch an ill-prepared mutiny.

Worf and Babylon Five's licensed commercial telepath Lyta Alexander fail to stop the energy-based goons in a phaser fight. Hostages in Ten-Forward!

Troi's hosting the ghost of Bryce Shumar. Data and Miles, his underlings. They are desperate to escape the torture of the storm and rest in peace. The sneering specters behind friendly faces frighten Keiko and her baby daughter Molly. Villain Troi gets to chew some scenery.

La Forge and Ro creep into the service ducts. They deliver a painful plasma shock meant to drive the anionic energy beings out of the possessed trio. It misses Steve/Data, who seizes Picard by the throat until his ghost pals climb back aboard Troi and Miles. If only Venkman and Spengler were here. (They ain't afraid a' no ghosts.)

Turns out the 'ghosts' are really disembodied condemned prisoners, trapped here 500 years ago by the world of Ux-Mal. They attempted escape on the Essex back in the 2160's and only destroyed it. It was a foregone conclusion: the Daedalus-class starship was made of three toothpicks, three rattling cylinders, and a tennis ball. Seriously, it's a wonder any of them got into space. (Plus they melt if their wings get too near the sun.)

Hostages Picard, Keiko, and Worf are willing to die rather than allow the escape, so the prisoners grudgingly return to their cell in the storm cage. Shaking their anionic non-existent fists.

"Power Play" is tense action fun. No attempt at any deeper meaning, just a hostage crisis with SF trappings. Standard fare, yet well played. Really good phaser fight. Any resemblance to Star Trek V and/or 'The Lights of Zetar' is purely coincidental.