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.

Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2

***(3 sorrows out of 5)

Thanks for spinning the camera like a top on a stick. It’s so hard to know what is happening that I’m forced to assume it was something cool! It was Emmy Nom worthy, anyway!

If only we hadn’t spent our last hour saying tearful goodbyes, we wouldn’t need to have a dozen people frantically throwing together a Red Angel suit all at once during a fire fight. 

It’s quite a fight. 30 Section 31 drone ships that (surprise!) split up into swarms of small drone ships versus 200 heroically manned fighter ships which somehow fit inside Enterprise, a ship with 200 crew, who are therefore all cross-trained as pilots? Apparently the ship’s cavernous interior workings are packed with factories and Wall-E droids who can build shuttle fleets at the drop of a hat? That might’ve been nice during ‘The Enemy Within’, but as we know Scotty ripped it all out to store thousands upon thousands of whiskey bottles.

Incessant noise and whirling lights! Queen Po intuits the method to destroy Leland’s drones- two fighters must simultaneously hit a drone at each end. How? With help from Ash and L’Rell on an ever-loving ding dang dongus called a Klingon Sleeve Ship. And noted SPACE FIGHTER PILOT Saru’s little sister, fresh from a lifetime of training as a gardener priestess.

The exact episode mid point is a Culber/Stamets hurt/comfort scene that would have disqualified this from fan fiction publication in earlier decades and is really rather wonderful. “You’re my home. I’m your family. Wherever we go from here. We go together.”

Enterprise gets a face full of torpedo, and because literally all the crew are off being fighter pilots, Admiral Cornwell becomes their munitions guy and explodes while saving the ship, which doesn’t seem to give anyone any feelings.

“I’m good,” says Michael, despite being made entirely of concussions by this point. With Spock’s assistance, she blasts vividly back in time to accomplish 5 previous Red Angel events, then opens a 6th wormhole to take Discovery 930 years into the future.

I’d hate to lose the Barzan security officer in the Georgiou/Leland fight but otherwise I do not care who wins in Genocidal Emperor v. Venom Symbiote. I feel like whoever won you’d still want to keep them well away from any position of power. Why does Saru trust Georgiou with computers on his bridge? Oh, right. Everyone has concussions. Plus without Georgiou, Control would have won, as she now kills misogynistic infiltrator Leland with magnets.

If Control is neutralized, why does Discovery continue on through the Devil’s Anus? And bring along Leland’s Control-riddled corpse? Not our problem!

Everyone left behind in 2258 claims Disco exploded. We’ll also swear each other to secrecy- Discovery never existed in the first place. The Authorities claim Control is definitely gone forever and we’ll all be very careful not to make any more brilliant killer computers… named Control… again.

Such Sweet Sorrow

*** (3 out of 5)

With a ticking clock to save all living things, and a Section 31 Skynetfleet bearing down upon them, Discovery evacuates to Enterprise with the intention of scuttling the ship. 

As holographic communications are now equated with Control’s trickery, Number One has sworn Enterprise off them forever. We still trust our good chums Georgiou and Ash, of course, who spent a ton of time with Leland the Roiling Mass of Infectious Nanomachines. Georgiou even has a new dungeon guard uniform, and Ash can wander off, on his own, with any shuttlecraft he fancies.

The self-destruct is not responding, because the priceless Sphere data has self-preservation skills, so we're back to "throw all this volatile knowledge far into the future to be safe". The 5th Red Angel Signal of 7 takes Discovery to Xahea, the planet with a Midgard Serpent eating it or something. A real Van Art planet. Tilly's whiz kid chum Queen Po hands them her recrystalizer to power their journey, so Georgiou doesn't get to set off a supernova with a ghastly death toll.

 

“I love you. All of you. Thank you for the greatest moments of my life.” says Michael to the bridge crew. When??? Which of these ceaseless explosions and fraught horrors and upsetting concussions have been the greatest moments of your life?

"I wish there was more time... there isn't." They have SO MUCH SPARE TIME FOR TEARFUL GOODBYES! Sarek and Amanda even heard with their souls that there was trouble and drive up in their personal spaceship just ahead of what is about to be a baby tribble in a kill zone!

Instead of a solo suicide mission, everyone on board (as represented by a double handful of familiar faces) agrees to follow Michael into hell, unless they’re getting a Spin Off... into Space… with Section 31.

Hang on, those evacuation walkways seem ludicrous to me. The effects are shiny & elaborate, but why stretch them out from the FARTHEST point from the other ship? Why not dock saucer edge to saucer edge? 

Speaking of docking, my first thought and last thought when Ash and Michael kiss was “Gross”. Unless Klingons are big teeth brushers, can she still taste Georgiou from when Ash ate her? Mentor- The Freshmaker! 

Detmer’s best friend is Tazzy. How do I know? I'm a big fan of superanemic.

Oh, when did we arrive on the control deck of a TRON Recognizer? Nope- this is the Enterprise at Red Alert, I’m afraid. Enterprise bridge is a fine new design, but incapable of activating my nostalgia. Building an entirely new & different thing is not how nostalgia works. But at least it's colourful and at least Georgiou disdains it. 

And I get a few seconds of Pike back in nearly the right uniform. 

No! Don’t you dare kill Jett...

Cliffhanger! Hashtag Shave Spock. 

Through the Valley of Shadows

 ***(3 out of 5)

“I’m not angry, I’m enraged.” says Michael Burnham, running off on an unsanctioned solo mission chasing Leland, which very nearly gets her taken over by Control. Spock badgers his way into coming along on the side quest, where they find more frozen space corpses and a slightly alive former Shenzhou officer turned Section 31 goon, Kamran Gant. Well, maybe less than slightly alive. 

Gant is a Control puppet, like Leland. Were they rebuilt from corpses? Entirely made of nanobots completely beyond the ken of the present day Starfleet? Unclear. They fool tricorders, they're fast and strong, they don’t have nerve endings, and they don't stop when you put big holes in them. Spock finally stops the fight scene with magnets. Would Gant have been susceptible to phaser vaporization? For some reason our heroes aren't using that setting. Just the energy bullet setting. Because it's cool.

Poor Jett Reno lost her Soyousian wife with all her irritating vegan steaks- she died in the Klingon war. She urges Culber to get off his existential mope and use his second chance at love. 

Pike (since Burnham isn't around and Ash and L'Rell think it's crazy risky) quests for a time crystal on planet Boreth, where Ash and L'Rell banished their very pale baby. 

Tenavik, son of none, was a very pale baby a few months ago, and is now a Dungeons and Dragons cleric. He's full of doom and assures Pike that taking a crystal will lock him into a horrible destiny. Confirmed by terrifying visions, its curse will seal Pike’s fate. He will be melted by radiation and confined to an iron lung chair. Is that better or worse than the Arnold Rimmer uniform that also awaits him? 

Pike fears no evil, he's pretty amazing. Reno is always welcome, coming to Culber with a hangnail to share some important thoughts on love. Spock and Michael are young and brave and they're working through some things, very admirable.

So it turns out Boreth is secretly full of time crystals and Klingon Timekeepers have been guarding them for generations, accelerating the lives of trees or inconvenient babies. Klingons seem like responsible, sensible people who wouldn’t ever use these crystals to erase human hist