New Eden

 *** (3 stars out of 5)

Discovery is chasing down the Red Blue Blur... uh, Red Angel phenomenon observed by both Spock and his sister Michael. Seven to find. Gotta catch em all!

Spock’s been secretly but voluntarily committed to psychiatric unit in Starbase 5. Did season 1 drive him mad like it’s done me? Whatever the cause, we’re going to follow Spock’s nightmare journals and keep toying with Fun Guy Stamets’ mental health on the fungi high speed highway. 

Their first stop is Beta Quadrant, 150 years away at conventional warp, essentially impossible without the spore drive which we’ve sworn off now because it takes a horrible toll on the human interface. Who has just lost the love of his life and is talking disconcertingly about suicide. Just one more trip couldn’t hurt. 

Unless you count hurting Tilley who’s looking for a means to spare Stamets with more mad science. Concussion watch: 2. Tilley just about dies while getting her rocks off a dark matter asteroid with enough Metrion particles to slay the Talaxians. 

What luck! It’s another pre-warp human society subject to General Order 1. We can do some covert ops with the help of Joann Owosekun, raised in a Luddite collective which I still hope to hear anything about someday.

Pike put chairs in the ready room, the better to subtly promise that people will try to talk more. Pike says he’s from a confusing household because his father taught science and comparative religion. Michael inwardly, logically, says hold my Vulcan ale.

If you believe Pike, Clarke’s Third Law was garbled by churchies into basically “Any powerful spaceman is God.” I am very much on the side of Michael’s interpretation using Arthur Clarke’s original words. It makes me worry that the people Pike is talking about would still be worshipping the Vulcans. But Michael strikes me as admirably diplomatic here. 

“I’ll scan the text...” says Burnham, logically. “Or we could look at the pictures.” muses Pike. Do you want an illiterate populace like the Star Wars galaxy? Cause this is how you get an illiterate populace like the Star Wars galaxy. Of course, the pictures Pike is talking about are church windows, and I’m glad the ancient litany of G.I. Joe cartoons are still being taught and represented in stained glass. In 2053, a red angel saw a church, saw a steeple, opened a wormhole and carried off hundreds of panicked people. Away from the nuke-dropping jets of World War Three to planet Terralysium where they relied on a buffet-style combo religion more than ever. Oh, good! Religion never hurts anyone! 

The All-Mother of New Eden doesn’t appear bothered that nobody has managed to recreate the electric light for 200 years, or that as far as they know humanity is virtually extinct, she leaves those concerns to fringe science types like Jacob. Also, a kid immediately plays with a phaser forcing Pike to play Captain America. The jumping on the grenade part, not the plentiful guns lying around for everyone part.

Did Dr. Pollard save the Hiawatha survivors from last episode? I would dearly love to know if Jett Reno’s unconventional first aid had worked or was only there for the gross-out factor.

Tilley is seeing the ghost of her old school chum May Ahearn who has an in-joke about “Lunches like mini earthquakes. Bounce, bounce, bounce.” For some reason, May repeatedly calls her “Stilly”. Is it because she built a still? That would make your stomach bounce.

Apparently Earth had stun grenades in 2053 and they’re still good after 2 centuries in a dank basement, like the video records from a soldier’s helmet cam for which Pike breaks cover, trading Jacob a power cell to run the church lights.

Detmer’s had her pilot’s license since 12, and you’d think Saru might know that by now, but Lorca horsewhipped people for making small talk. Saru has learned 90 Federation languages to impress people at the parties he never attends. And I love it when they give him opportunities to be brave & kind. 

Flesh and Blood

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Apparently the locals include the Nebari from Farscape and the Ovions from classic Battlestar Galactica.  But we're not concerned with organic beings today so much as the holograms they created to serve them.  Or in the Hirogen's case, created to hunt for sport.

Did you ever loan someone a book or DVD or something and then it got lost or broken? That's rough, but it's not very much like this. Using Voyager's technology, the Hirogen built intelligent, learning holograms that bleed and feel pain. Because that sucks, the holograms revolted.

Iden, a simulated Bajoran zealot sick of being killed for fun, freed other programmable Alpha Quadrant simulations and stole a warship. Kejal, his holographic Cardassian engineer, is the closest thing he has to a voice of reason. Iden, however, wants to free every photonic from servitude. Save every Child of Light, if you will. Of course, he places their worth intrinsically HIGHER than that of organics, whether or not the holograms can even THINK. It's easy to see where Iden's coming from, but the guy would kill an organic to "free" the picture on their driver's license.

Once "rescued", the EMH tries to get Iden to play nice with the meatbags. Donik (the Hirogen Nerd who initially gave the holograms enough smarts to rebel) advises Captain Janeway in her efforts to spread peace like thick, creamery butter. But no one else seems to want any.

Good to see the AI from 'Think Tank' is still getting work: tonight he plays the part of the renegades' holoprojector.

"Flesh and Blood" is feature-length fun, probably the best movie-length Voyager episode since the pilot. Some reviews I read complained that the Hirogen holodeck technology somehow got thousands of light-years AHEAD of Voyager. Remember for a moment that from the first episodes in which they appeared, the nomadic Hirogen had a communication relay that spanned the ENTIRE galaxy. Clearly they got it working again. The bigger question is why they expend so much energy playing Space Lizard NRA and so little having Space Lizard Nookie. Also, do these holograms still send Janeway Mother's Day Cards? Just asking.

In The Hands of The Prophets

**** (4 stars out of 5)

O'Brien is learning about local sweet treats from his Bajoran assistant Neela.  Vitamin C-enriched jumja sticks, for example. Keiko teases her baffled husband, "Be careful who you share your jumja with."

Keiko teaches her class about the stable wormhole and the entities within. Orthodox Bajoran spiritual leader Vedek Winn wants equal time given to the Celestial Temple and the Prophets within. In fact, forget equal time! Winn can't permit blasphemy. It would upset the scale model of the Sydney Opera House she wears as a hat.

Keiko brings this dilemma to Sisko, arguing that she's not teaching philosophy. Kira disagrees.
"Some might say pure science, taught without a spiritual context, IS a philosophy, Mrs. O'Brien."
Sisko wants there to be room on the station for all philosophies. Or at least less clawing each other's eyes out.

Winn takes the ear of the Emissary. literally. She tells him her Orb visions have guided her to threaten Mrs. O'Brien. Charming. Next she'll be abusing mental patients!

The jumja stick guy won't sell to the O'Briens anymore. Cursed science! Wretched alien foreigners who want to buy my clearly machine-milled popsicles in my kiosk on a whirling wheel in the heavens!

Winn asks Keiko to just not to teach wormhole science at all, with possible later omission of evolution, and universal creation. Also, she doesn't believe in Q or floating Space Lincoln. Or the life cycle of filthy Earth turnips. Keiko is unwilling to hide knowledge from kids.

After Keiko's rather pointed lesson about Galileo's heliocentrism trial, Jake tells his dad he thinks the Bajoran beliefs are dumb. Sisko is still for tolerance. "It may not be what you believe, but that doesn't make it wrong." Good call. What with the Prophets and their Orbs being pretty solidly real things! If you could land a runabout on Heaven it'd be harder to dismiss.

Sisko meets with Winn's ideological "competitor" Vedek Bareil. He's a kindly, progressive, saffron-robed gardener who wants to do away with the archaic games of ear-grab in the rectories. He's a good guy, but politically savvy enough not to be seen supporting Sisko's godless Federation. (Even though, like Winn, he is respectful of the Emissary himself.)

Quark notes the gathering crowds of surly fundamentalists and plans to hire more floozies. "These spiritual types love those dabo girls!"

As O'Brien and Odo try to puzzle out Engineer Aquino's increasingly suspicious death, someone bombs the school. Nobody is hurt, most are shaken up, and Sisko publicly blames some disturbed mind who follows Winn's words instead of the Prophets'.

"We are neither the enemy nor the devil," Sisko soothes the anxious crowd.

Bareil, apparently moved by Sisko's speech, takes his side and visits DS9. While Bareil urges non-violence and trying to trust aliens again, Winn's fall guy Neela takes her shot. Sisko saves Bariel, and Kira sees through the lack of evidence to deduce Winn's scheming murder plot. Which will be the next Kai? Find out next year!

"In The Hands of The Prophets" is peachy keen. If I've been lackluster in my support of Deep Space Nine's first season, well, that's all about to change. Join me for next year this week! Same Blasphemy Time, Same Blasphemy Channel!