The End is the Beginning

 

***(3 of 5)

And now the crux of it: the better future I long to tune in for is a real trash fire. HUMANS ON EARTH with substance abuse problems, medieval mental health care, and who use money again for reasons. Cash on the barrelhead is back! Rich and Poor are back! Because of the Dominion War? The Hobus Supernova? Was it always this bad and six previous series were all lying to themselves? You kids like Game of Thrones, right? Star Trek should be an awful misery, too! Dream of a better tomorrow at your own peril!

Starfleet leadership- intolerant, afraid, and riddled with Sunglasses Wearing Vulcans who probably don't need sunglasses due to their Vulcan inner eyelids and are not at all up to something.

There are no more despised people in the galaxy than ex-Borgs, and I love one of them so- it's Hugh! An "XB" under the thumb of the Romulan reclamation project who are warehousing Borg, half-heartedly healing them and, I guess, merchandising them? (Watch your local Rolmart shelves! Buy all 20!) Hugh is somewhat unaware that Romulans were assimilated in previous series. Ramdha, a mentally unwell XB Romulan, cryptically screams "DESTROYER!" at Soji and nearly shoots herself before Hugh intervenes. 

Troubled Soji calls her TOTALLY REAL MOM to make sure Dahj is OK and drops off to sleep very organically like a human person.

Narek and Narissa breathe secretive secrets seductively on each other like brother and sister because I'm not kidding about Game of Thrones ratings numbers. 

Harvest season in the Bourgogne region is also Romulan Motorcycle Gang Blaster season! With Jurati popping up to ka-chew one murderer in the back. Butt-kicking Laris with her Southern forehead and Zhaban equally of the buttocks-booting with his bumpier Northern forehead will now stay behind where they are clearly in terrible danger... because the grapes need picking. EARTH DEMANDS WINE.

Instead, here's our mentally troubled, substance addicted, self-harming, and where permissible shirtless heroes Raffi and Rios. They've got all the Starfleet skills but Starfleet dropped them like handsome potatoes. Sorry, hot potatoes. They smoke as though no human has smoked in centuries and they're making up for lost time. Lieutenant Commander Raffaela Musiker drinks alone in the Vasquez Rocks appearing for once as themselves and is angry that Picard is rich and got her fired. She lives with a wild conspiracy theory nobody listened to which is completely right, as we are already discovering. Mercenary Captain Cristóbal Rios isn't some gutless coward who would get his bleeding lacerations treated in seconds by some machine he manifested solely for that purpose, and he drinks alone in a dreary dark box of a spaceship called La Sirena crewed by charming holographic copies of himself who presumably can't get lung cancer. He had an awful experience years ago where his beloved Captain died most explosively which would be extremely relevant right now if anyone in this formerly very open and, let's face it, chatty society ever let him talk about it. 

Along with uninvited, entirely welcome, and weirdly eager beaver Jurati they are off to see the wizard. Bruce Maddox was a wizard, right? It's been awhile...

Maps and Legends

 

****(4 of 5)

A little flashback so we can see that ordinary Federation Folks from a solar system heretofore described as a paradise are living unhappy garbage lives and doing unhappy garbage jobs just like us 21st Century saps. Plus they have made and enslaved Plastic People to do some of the unhappy garbage jobs for them who also abruptly murder them and their entire planet Mars because nobody ever learns nothin'.

Back in the present, Laris surmises that the near mythical Tal Shiar sect called the Zhat Vash (Romulan Robot Slayers who despise artificial life even more than everyone else apparently despises artificial life) were behind the slaying of Dahj and her boyfriend.

Dahj's unsuspecting twin Soji has jumped into bed with handsome and hush-hush Project Director Narek. Soji has a Trill doctor for a work friend so we can all hear how dangerous it is to work on an "Inactive" Borg Cube. Spoiler: the only way in which this scene pays off is that we never see or hear of this friend again! She vanished completely, so it worked: the danger is real. RIP Cool Trill Doctor.

Picard meets with his Beloved Old Starship Doctor Friend we've never heard of before, Benayoun, who reminds the Admiral that he is dying of the brain abnormality... which we DID hear about before. We never see him again, either. RIP Adorable Human Doctor.

Picard goes to Admiral Clancy seeking a ship to find Bruce Maddox and thereby the other android. "Curse-Word" Clancy says some curse words. Fourteen species out of thousands in the Federation were threatening secession over saving Romulan lives, so national stability was deemed more important than being good and kind people.

Starfleet's Commodore Oh and Lieutenant Rizzo are being Secretive Sallys, and it turns out Rizzo is handsome and hush-hush Narek's dishy and duplicitous sister. 

Laris wants no part of a deadly space adventure, sadly. Zhaban suggests Picard take one of his many loyal Superfriends, but (like the loner Batman he is) Picard would rather trust his fate and that of an extremely marginalized synthetic lass to complete strangers and people who hate him. Enter: Raffi.

I love CSI Laris the forensics maven. I love the hologram of the Enterprise D mainly because they have chosen not to screw around with her design the way they did the TOS Enterprise. RIP TOS Enterprise. I think the writing and performances are quite good here. More please!

Remembrance

 

****(4 out of 5)

It's the premiere of Star Trek: Picard and I love to see the Galaxy class Enterprise and Data once again, for a fleeting moment, before being snatched out of a pleasant dream by explosions.

It's 2399, retired old hermit Picard has some Romulan employee/friends with very welcome TOS and TNG forehead variety between them. Laris and Chabon charmingly prepare Picard and his Number One doggie, like two Alfreds to his Batman and Bathound, for an explosive interview with FNN.

I wish reporter Jake Sisko was still with FNN, because he'd probably have more of a sense of nuance than their reporter Richter. She potentially represents a broadly held human or apparently Federation-wide viewpoint that Romulan lives aren't worth saving, which is a horrifying look at how quickly we can sprint away from a nigh-utopia when one little multi-system supernova nearly killed all the Romulans and Starfleet decided in its backward and racist wisdom that Mars being simultaneously on fire with no one alive there to save somehow took priority. Oh, and incidentally justified banning all synthetic life or "synths" who may or may not have caused the Mars fire. Starfleet withdrew their evacuation ship fleet, Romulan madman Nero turns out to have been right about how the Federation are dinks (albeit in the wrong time and space), and Picard resigned in disgust. 

Dahj Asha, an android whose Xahean boyfriend is killed in Boston by Romulans in motorcycle helmets, knew to go find Picard for help, and is quickly killed with fire and acid by that same pesky Romulan suicide squad. The cops, I guess, beamed the witness Picard to his Chateau on the other side of the world instead of to a hospital, much as Dahj probably should have beamed her boyfriend to a hospital earlier.

Picard, having dug through his dusty old memorabilia with a hologram called Index, (who is delightful and apparently doesn't count as a "synth") has found a painting Data once made called "Daughter" which is in Dahj's spitting image. 

He visits the disassembled body of the B4 at Daystrom in Okinawa, where Dr. Agnes P. Jurati is also charming. But what IS this line? "A female? Yes... I suppose you could make them that way..." Jurati muses as though the very concept is terribly innovative... as though Lal wasn't public knowledge. As though this isn't near the end of a conversation where Picard repeatedly says he met a girl android. As though from Flint to Mudd to Pygmalion there isn't an ancient history of lady bots all around this galaxy. As though it wasn't Jurati's entire job to think about androids. Is Agnes being deliberately coy? If so, why?

No time to worry about her... there's a handsome Romulan man being deliberately coy with Dahj's doppleganger Dr. Soji Asha aboard the terrifying remains of a Borg cube. Whatever next?

Children of Mars

 ***(3 out of 5)

Kima and Lil attend WSA (Wee Starfleet Academy?). Collar flaps and buttons are back in fashion, as is regimented tedious conformity, bullying, and crowds of youths enabling bullies when unfairness escalates to fist fights. 

The dour, crusty authority figures have a "solution" for these rogue elements: silent isolation with the platitudes "ACHIEVE" and "GROW" looming holographically over twelve year old heads. If schools are still this grim in Star Trek's nigh-utopia of what will turn out to have been Earth 2385 I'm saddened to know it. No wonder Nog couldn't read.

Stock Footage Still Photograph Picard "reacts" to explosive attacks on Mars by "rogue synths" who have killed Kima and Lil's ship-building parents. It's like watching the triumphant last minute of Time Bandits, and David Warner is probably still somehow to blame.

Peter Gabriel's cover of Bowie's "Heroes" is moving and there is heroism in taking the hand of your needless foe when your entire support structure is destroyed. I genuinely hoped we'd be seeing Kima and Lil again as grown-up friends, but it seems they are only "heroes just for one day". Emblems of an entire solar system suffering. On that somber note- mark your calendars for Star Trek Picard, kids!  

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.