The Girl Who Made the Stars

 ***(3 out of 5)

It looks good, it's well-performed. What's not to like?

A charming bedtime story on the conquering of fear, as told to young Michael Burnham by her ill-fated father Mike. 

Defeat the Night Beast by defying your dismay, defying your stifling society, and defying nature itself if necessary. 

Strangers may bring you light and knowledge. Tardigrades can be cuddly pals. Follow the stars, get stronger jars. Arrowed!

Incidentally, it is very likely that groups of old men do not know what they're talking about.

Be an explorer, be a queen.

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?

Ask Not

 ***(3 head bags out of 5)

Ooh, is that an extreme close-up and the sweet ringing of a concussion in my ears? It's time for another short Trek. 

Black bag ops and prisoner mutinies are... normal? I guess? In Starfleet, I guess? Amidst explosions, Starbase Cadet Sidhu is told to guard that mutinous sexy dog Captain Pike because... the security guards are busy... something something. Congratulations, no more boring inventory- You're the Brig now, Cadet!

Keep that phaser trained on Pike no matter what lies he tells- like he's the hero in all this, or join me and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son...

Or Tholians have seized the Bouman, where Sidhu's husband serves. That's especially crummy luck because Tholians killed everyone but the two of them a few years ago on planet Berillium, vital source of Galaxy Quest's berillium spheres. Won't somebody brave set Pike free from his unjust imprisonment to run off and blast nasty old Tholians into gorgeous glittering peachy particles?

Under a barrage of torpedoes, Pike and Sidhu exchange a barrage of rules to see who is right and who should wear kinky tesseract masks and handcuffs. Charmingly, many of these rules are previously established as "real" and seem to actually ground this story in Star Trek's dimension or near enough for me. 

Sidhu passed the test by standing her ground and will serve on Enterprise. As I should be expecting by now and is still not to my taste, the engineering department is a dazzling circuitry temple chamber I don't see anywhere on my old timey Enterprise blueprints. Ask Not what your effects department can do for you, ask what you can do to keep the effects from making sense in context.

Well performed minisode, unfortunate that I've been waiting so long for Pike to return. But soon we will be rewarded.

The Trouble With Edward

**(2 hairy scallops out of 5)

If the story of Alien: Resurrection was compressed to 14 minutes, recast with tribbles, and was scored with a slide whistle, would it be a comedy? Let's find out!

Genial Captain Pike sees his officer Lynn Lucero off on her first command. Starship Cabot is seeking to cure a famine among the Calatians of Pragine 63. The crew includes a dangerously unstable... scientist, I suppose, named Edward, who found a slow breeding, potentially intelligent variety of tribble. It does not seem to match the tribbles Dr. Phlox already used last century as a quickly replenished meat source for his pets, possibly without telling anybody else, as was the style at the time. It does not carry the same scientific name as the ones from Keiko's classroom a century hence, letting them slightly off the hook, canon-wise, if not morally. Against Lucero's orders Edward genetically modifies the creatures with his own DNA to become rapid breeding because... Edward can breed rapidly, I guess? Also maybe his DNA defies the laws of mass conservation since these Edribbles reproduce faster than Mogwai in a town swimming pool and it doesn't seem like the Cabot crew were even feeding them, let alone feeding them after midnight.

Anyway, for some reason, this all goes awry, until not even vacuum backpacks can get rid of all the adorable monstrosities. Edward dies suffocated under his creations, and the ship is lost, and the planet is lost. Evacuated, I guess, but evacuating a starving planet sounds like it's just going to mean more lingering deaths. Tragedy plus Time equals Comedy!

At the now-standard Shadowy Board of Inquiry, Captain Lucero places all the blame on Dead Edward the Idiot. Don't say it is a poor workman who blames his tools, for Edward was certainly a tool. Edward’s “study” included skinning the creatures, eating one or two, feeding one to his colleague without telling him, and observing that these Cuddly Meatballs are slow and die easily in a fall from a desk. If they were intelligent (and nobody seems interested in determining that one way or another) Edward claims he could cause them to be born brain damaged. All of these things are jokes, you see.

How was Edward in Starfleet without being fired? What am I supposed to make of Lucero trying to put Edward (a Protein Specialist, unless that’s more of his bullshit) onto Climatologist duty? Let’s assume I don’t have the training to be a Starfleet captain or a scientist, yet I feel like changing the man's entire field of study overnight during a planetary disaster was an unrealistic expectation on the Captain’s part, especially if she already thinks he's an idiot. Was there realistically no earlier way Lucero could have solved this verbally? Firing Ed before he can make mistakes this big, or killing the mistakes themselves with fire, or stunning him and dragging his pasty ass to the escape pod and detonating the ship would also have been acceptable. And funny!

There's a post credits commercial for Tribbles Cereal. What is that meant to be? Who is the target audience, in universe? Television is not even supposed to exist in this century. Did Edward shoot a breakfast food commercial in the insanely retro style of the 1990s and cast somebody’s kids and mock up cardboard boxes and genuinely expect everyone to buy and eat live, unskinned animals first thing in the morning?

I have to believe none of this was ever sent out on the news services otherwise WHY has nobody on the Enterprise in “The Trouble With Tribbles” EVER. HEARD. OF. TRIBBLES???

These are talented performers who make me laugh, but I'm sorry, I don't buy it. And by it, I mean spicy tribble breakfast cereal.

 

Q&A

 **** (4 stars out of 5)

Flashback, as evidenced by starting with hazy formlessness like we're all just waking up after a long weekend. It’s probably 2254, pre-The Cage, and we've doubled down- this is the Enterprise uniform now. Oh, Discovery crew called it the "new uniform" 4 years from now? How do you define "new" anyway? New like New Ensign Spock, full of shouting and smiles like Spock was in 'The Cage'.

His new boss, whose NAME is Number One, demands he ask questions until it gets annoying. Where did Spock beam over from? Why all the close-ups? Why are the internal works of Enterprise cavernous and twisted? You know this isn’t a TARDIS, right? Why is the turbolift inside Willy Wonka’s Night Factory? Oh, never mind, now it's broken down. What's Upjohn? Not much, what's up wi' ye? Engineer Upjohn's no help until she fixes the busted cyfrifiadur. Looks like Spock and Number One are stuck until they have a genuine conversation or some sex.

Why is the sky black? Which of us loves Pike most? Can we agree that our breathless, desperate insistence that we are each the smartest in the room is true but not getting us anywhere, sex wise?

Ensign Spock proposes (as devil’s advocate?) that the Prime Directive is unethical, illogical, and morally indefensible. And that the universe is a simulation. He stops short of looking directly at the camera. I mean, he's a smart guy.

How does one achieve command? "Keep your freaky to yourself even if it’s painful." says Number One, whose name is Number One. She is hiding her singing talent, as Spock must hide his Vulcan glee. Which is Vulcan for sex.

It took 3 years to get back here, but this is maybe a glucose matrix taste of the upcoming series that a lot of Trekkies pinned their hopes on, including me.

The Escape Artist

**** (4 out of 5)

It can't be a secret that I love Star Trek like crazy and also that I had a real rough time adapting to Star Trek Discovery's aesthetic choices... like crazy.  Short Treks "The Escape Artist" finally won me back to some extent, or at least kept me treading water for awhile longer.

The wacky, unscrupulous but loquacious Harcourt Mudd somehow keeps himself alive and out of the vengeful hands of cops and crooks alike, at least partly by playing on their greed, arrogance, and foolishness, but mostly by using android simulacrums as his catspaws. Starfleet now has a whole closetful of androids, and will not make use of them or remember the technology exists unless convenient.

I am partial to this Canadian cast of Criminals, everyone's doing a great job hamming it up, and the Orions even look like Orions! The less said about the vile new cheek-piercing tusks on the Tellarite bounty hunter the better. Everyone in the make-up department is doing their job, I know, and they're doing a damn sight better than I could do, but as a humble maniac I really, REALLY needed them to save their design innovations for their own new creatures and keep the old creature designs consistent with history. But out of context I loved and still love the line "I apologize for this disgusting space homonculus."

There's a lot of talk of cudgels and penetration and a loveless marriage is not really sufficient punishment for this version of Mudd, whose list of crimes clearly does not match TOS Mudd's list of crimes but on the other hand, maybe that's the joke. I can excuse almost anything if it's in the service of jokes again... at last!

To this day I cannot tell what a director does just from watching a thing, but Rainn Wilson as Mudd and as the director did a very fine job indeed. He almost makes me want to buy the Eaglemoss model of the Baron's Yacht. Almost. 

The Brightest Star

 *** (3 brightest stars out of 5) 

 Sometimes, a society will put very stupid and destructive systems in place that harm millions over thousands of years. 

Welcome to Kaminar! Grab a basket and pick some kelp. Don’t catch space puberty or you’ll vanish into the sky forever. Don’t ever question it. I mean, maybe pick up all the masticated bones later, but remember... never question it. 

Young Kelpian Saru sees hope in the sky where his contemplative, faithful people see unquestioning, willing death. Don’t ever question it, but pieces sometimes fall off the Ba’ul restaurant ships. Functional smartphone pieces with usable, apparently Kelpian-language touchscreens. Don’t ever use them to dial out. I’m looking at you, Saru. Don’t do it.

 “Why does Balance mean that we cannot ask questions?” Questions like why did Saru’s Priest/Procurer father Aradar get old without passing through their big ritual and, subsequently, a Ba’ul digestive tract?

A radiant space creature named Lt. Georgiou appears and says Saru has caused quite a stir: the ridiculous organization she works for can make an exception for a smarty-pants like him in their complicated rules but he can never return. His sister Siranna, however delicious, does not get eaten by the eels at this time.

Did that shuttle just go to warp in an atmosphere or is that the same sound as impulse? Don’t ever question it.

THIS is the Georgiou I wish we got to know. Risking her life, job, and at the very least a crap ton of shitty paperwork for a stranger in a bind. 

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.