An Obol for Charon

** (2 obols out of 5)

Number One! The number one number two Number One! Sort of. I mean, it's just a glorified cameo but there she is. She dropped by to tell Pike that nobody has found Spock yet. Because maniacs like me never stopped screeching about it, Pike orders Enterprise Chief Engineer Louvier to rip out the holographic systems throughout the ship (Were they even the cause of the malfunctions? Or only the malfunctions in my own head?)  

Commander Nhan also appears at a staff meeting, seemingly having transferred over from Enterprise but your guess is as good as mine. Saru maybe has a rhinovirus and Pike has to order him to take rest because capitalism. Saurian Linus’ cold was last week, but this will turn out to have been a coincidence.

There are some welcome antics with a broken translator, leading to an excellent scene with Jett v Stamets: Dawn of Snark. There's an important exchange where Stamets praises humans for having barely saved their own lives by switching over to solar panels, and he likens this Earth catastrophe to the terrible damage dilithium mining is currently wreaking. He hopes his spore drive will be the clean alternative, although it is full of shrieking ghosts.

Speaking of which, a shrieking 100,000 year old semi-organic sphere triggers Saru's Vahar’ai “death process”. He and Michael discern that The Sphere is on its last contact. The Sphere told them everything it knew except its own name which had to have been better than "The Sphere" and then The Sphere exploded.

Michael balks at the insanity of cutting off Saru’s ganglia when he asks her to, (I mean, I don't understand why we aren't taking these health problems to Doctor Pollard?) and it turns out the terrible people who eat Kelpians are lying to the Kelpians. Vahar’ai only makes a Kelpian stronger and braver. And kickier. Some Ba'ul's house is gonna get kicked down!

 

First contact with May begins, she turns out to be a scout for the jahSepp. This nugget is gleaned via the Trepanation of Tilly, for the appalling shock factor, I guess. Certainly it was terrifying for me. Discovery wouldn’t know what to do with itself if these poor folks weren't always in the middle of a high-stakes disaster where the answer is drilling holes in each other's heads.

Now the jahSepp distract Stamets and Jett by blasting them with psilocybin and making off with Tilly. On Discovery, Mushrooms Eat You.

Point of Light

*(1 point of light out of 5)

4000 throats may be cut in one night. Unless you have to saw through that web of sinewy throat armour Klingons suddenly grew in the mid-2250s.

Oh, Klingons. The war is done! Deflate your heads to half-mast… AND DON THE WIGS OF PEACE! And build a ship of war! And fight amongst yourselves in grim, dark Fire Caves until we can find a dragon or a white walker... Oh, what luck! L’Rell had an out-of-wedlock, out-of-uterus, secret albino baby and this is apparently a threat to her reign, as is her human-looking lover Voq (Ash).

Spock’s mother Amanda has impulsively stolen his medical files and brought them to Michael to decrypt. Michael wisely gets Pike involved, who calls Spock’s hospital. Captain Diego Vela of Starbase 5 teases Pike & his bisabuela Nena as the only ones in the quadrant who still communicate on screens. Are we sure the patients aren’t running this asylum? Screens are a Starfleet standard for decades in the past, present, and even centuries to come. Screens are cost-effective and a lot less distracting than Star Wars holograms. But do go on, tell us how everyone’s been using holograms forever in this tiny window of future history and Pike’s the weirdo.

Anyhoo, speaking of weirdos, Spock was diagnosed with “Extreme empathy deficit” and they say he killed his doctors while escaping. Amanda and Michael each think this could be their fault. In childhood, Michael was pursued by Logic Extremist terrorists who bombed her school. In an attempt to keep Spock safe she drove him away from her with cruel words that are still hanging between them. The mysterious Red Angel was also involved because none of this is complicated enough.

May Ahern, from Tilly’s junior high, is long dead but big as life. Tilly stops dead for not less than 40 seconds to scream at her noisy hallucination during a footrace, then she catches up to and surpasses the other runners in moments. On Take a Cadet to Work Day, Tilly also yells at May in front of Pike. Stamets conducts a space exorcism revealing May as a Multidimensional multicellular fungal parasite. (Which I can’t say twice or spell once.)

Section 31’s Georgiou arrives on Ko-Nosh in a technologically advanced whirl of destruction, killing L’Rell and Ash’s foes. She insists on Mother L’Rell strengthening her rule by faking Ash & the baby’s deaths using some icky cloned heads and dumping the kid on the Boreth monks. “The freaks are more fun,” says Georgiou (to eat, she does not add).

For no reason I can determine, Emperor Georgiou is claiming to be “Retired Captain” Georgiou to the very people in whose digestive tracts Captain Georgiou “retired”.

I could have gone the rest of my life without more of the Giger-style people-eating isolationist Klingons and I’m sure not thrilled by the approach of even more Section 31 stories. That said, Chieffo, Yeoh, and Latif are very talented and lovely performers.

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. 

Brother

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Enjoy a Season One recap: “Bleak times... we cannot forget”. (Unless someday we’re ordered to.) Then Michael flashes even further back. “I expect you to be friends” her new dad Sarek urges Kid Spock. “Now say The Vulcan Hello to your surprise sister! We’ll try our best to shuffle her out of our richly appointed but terribly repressed lives as quickly as we shuffled out Sybok.”

Young Spock casts spell of water dragon? His computer’s operating on the level of Dumbledore’s Penseive? You know what a computer was in this time period, right? It was a grey cardboard box with a few colourful toggles that screeched “Working” at the beginning of every sentence.

“Damn, she’s a beauty,” Detmer gushes, back in the present, but glimpses of this new version of Enterprise are very much in the robot eye of the beholder.

Meet Nhan, a Barzan security guard, and Connolly, who got his BSc in making a bad first impression. Also, meet Captain Pike. “Sometimes it's wise to keep our expectations low.” says Pike, sagely, but that won’t be necessary in Pike’s case!

Saurian Crewman Orville… uh, Linus, is under the weather, but in a capitalist future there’s no such thing as time off, so he’s shuffling into a crowded turbolift. Lizard Man turning to sneeze directly into other people’s mouths is HI-larious! Screw that primitive 21st Century “elbow crook” hassle.

Grieving Stamets is teetering, talking about Kaseelian singers who kill themselves once they’ve sung one perfect note. This sounds dangerously unsustainable and I’m enraged that someone dreamt up a culture with this histrionic mental disorder. It makes me tear all my hair out when people get overly dramatic!!!

Sarek wanted Spock to learn human empathy from his foster sister Michael, because in this traumatized timeline he wasn’t learning it from his mother. I’m with you, Spock, I don’t want any empathy either if it means feeling like you’re on fire with a concussion all the time.

Sweet Merciful Introduction Scene! A welcome Bridge Crew roll call at last?! Pike’s so bloody charming. I think we all want to be on his landing party rescue! But not by way of a tedious old shuttle- by whirligigs from some Battlestar launch tube straight into an asteroid field- never tell me the odds. Lt. Belligerent Cynicism NOOOOO!!!! He was a dick with every word out of his mouth. He won’t be missed, not for a second. Empathy-shmempathy.

Tilly’s “Crying like a baby tribble in the kill zone” Is... what? What? Is that suddenly a common expression? When did Tilly meet a tribble in the 2250s? What does that phrase even mean? Is she talking about a video game? 

No time for our sorrows! Pop on your voice-activated Iron Man helmets. If only once it finished clicking around like a Michael Bay Autobot it became the spangly silver suit from “The Tholian Web”. I swear from a lifelong Star Wars guy this sounds unhinged, but I’d honestly rather have more story and less spectacle with my Star Trek. In the words of marooned engineer Jett, on screen all too briefly, while improvising heroic levels of chilling wartime medical experiments: “We’ve been rockin’ and rollin’ for hours- can someone tell me what’s going on?”

Oh, lordy, Pike, don’t take off your uniform, you had the best one!

Incomprehensible exploding blockbuster VFX padding and establishing a season-long scavenger hunt and then, out of nowhere… real genuine moments between people that I believed in (Stamets & Tilly, Detmer & Okosekun). But I still don’t grok this version of Sarek. Sarek never struck me as a father who was trying to help Spock become MORE human. Tig Notaro as Jett Backpack is very lively, an utter delight. And Pike is cool! Instantly one of my top 4 Captain Pikes. Years later I’m still excited this guy is gonna be our Strange New Worlds Big Fish.

Just, calm down sometimes and let me take a damn breath, Discovery. I’m crying like a baby tribble in the kill zone over here.

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.