Star Trek: Discovery - Far from Home Review

DIS "Far from Home"

In the surreal time travel sequence from Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home, each member of the Enterprise bridge crew's plaster-casted faces are shown melding into each other as they slingshot backward in time. While not going as far, the opening of "Far from Home" reminded me of that, as each member of the Discovery bridge crew's faces are shown in semi-abstract montage, having travelled forward in time. And the episode as a whole is all about Team Disco taking care of the basic survival of the ship and crew in unfamiliar environs, as both are hurting in the fallout of last season's finale.

"That Hope is You" was an episode of counterintuitive choices and a stew of different genres and tones. "Far from Home" is animated by a much more schematic Trekkian approach, nothing more, nothing less. Gotta fix the ship by plugging quantum A into phlebotinum B, and deal with a sad little king of a sad little hill. You can call it irony, but the wacko move of moving forward 900+ years into the future has de-complicating the show; without Red Angels, space signals, Klingon wars and/or sleeper agents to reckon with, the mission is survival and organic exploration of how to thrive after the apocalypse.

The shipbound characters deal with a perfunctory ticking clock: parasitic ice that is talked up a lot but doesn't really do anything distinctive. Cue Paul Stamets wrongheadedly working around his pain while Jett Reno cajoles and comforts him (more Reno cannot be a bad thing, and hopefully she'll be a more consistent presence this season). Later, as Discovery is about to be lacerated by the ice, Burnham shows up for a save with a tractor beam, and says the events of last week's episode were a year ago. But before that, Saru, Tilly, and eventually Mirror Georgiou set out to deal with the locals.

This part of the episode (framed with Western iconography of swinging Space Saloon doors) resembles theater. Not only in terms of a single set where a drama plays out, but in the nature of that drama functioning almost as a microcosmic pantomime of Discovery's situation. You have Saru and Tilly representing the Federation's thoughtful idealism, Georgiou the antithesis of might makes right, Zareh as a prototypical warlord taking advantage of the power vacuum, and the meek Coridanites as the everybeings looking for something to believe in. One clue is the pat fashion in which the bartender is so immediately impressed with Saru demanding Georgiou not kill Zareh (though that didn't save his henchmen).

While there's nothing particularly amiss, "Far from Home" follows the standard Star Trek paradigm of ship in danger/away team in danger and doesn't massively stand out, lacking extra paprika on that sandwich. 5/10.

Stray observations:

- Rachael Ancheril as Nhan is a regular this season? Very interesting.

- The Coridan species seen here looked very different (like they had xenomorph face-huggers permanently affixed on their faces) in "Demons", an Enterprise episode I just watched on the Randomized Rewatch. Their appearance here is based on what they looked like in a different Enterprise episode.

Power Rangers Beast Morphers: Making Bad Review

PRBM "Making Bad"

In Avengers: Endgame, there's a wonderful and humorous sequence where the Avengers try to piece through the complicated mythology of their previous adventures. The scene, strewn with Chinese take-out containers, turns the superhero team into a writers' room, finding the way forward for the plot. In the Beast Morphers episode "Making Bad", there's a similar funny set up, where Evox' team and the Dino Charge villains argue over which past villain to resurrect, supporting their arguments with clips from past Power Rangers seasons.

Part of the humor from this new twist on a clip show comes from the villains' annoyance at past baddies' heel-face turns (Koragg, Astronema) and propensity to betray fellow evildoers (Lord Zedd). One highlight of the bickering (all the better for being understated) is when Scrozzle tries to be a bit of a showman and Blaze says, "Will you stop? You're not cool."

They eventually settle on a villain of gravitas and subservience, Goldar. The resurrection process, aided by diamonds, brings back a sort of Mega Goldar with upgraded armor and general look. While Goldar is a sound choice, I have my issues and nitpicks with this part of the story. With Goldar given a different look, I would argue that it's more important than ever to bring back Kerrigan Mahan to voice the role, and emphasize a connection with the original Goldar. But the voice is off, more of a generic growl.

Speaking of voices, the clips dub over different voices whenever someone like Andros, Leo, or Jason speaks! Is this a residuals/union issue? Scrozzle refers to Zedd and Rita as King and Queen of Evil. Surely it's Emperor and Empress of Evil. Why would Roxy know about the fate of the Red Psycho Ranger but not Astronema? And Psycho Red is rejected as a choice... because he lost? That's pretty absurd, and setting the standard way too high.

Elsewhere in the episode, Sherlock Ravi is given the spotlight, in a nod to character continuity. While the villains bicker in the most interesting part of the episode, the Rangers are given fairly standard action fare, though there is a decent warehouse fight that sees the end of Poisandra and a couple other Sledge generals. Sledge losing Poisandra is played for a tiny moment of poignancy.

The villain stuff is overall very enjoyable, even if there are flaws in a lot of the details. Some of those I wouldn't mind so much, but the biggest problem of all, the wrong voices in the classic clips, really weirds me out. 6/10.

Stray observation:

- Not the first time Goldar has appeared in a much different form. Recall the mute gold homunculus from the 2017 film, and in the comics, Goldar has been given a Dark Ranger power-up.

Star Trek: Discovery - That Hope is You Review

 

DIS "That Hope is You"

To start this Star Trek review, I'll invoke Star Wars. In Star Wars discourse, there's a common idea of taking storytelling to some far-flung corner of the galaxy or a centuries-removed time, so as not to bump existing canon and to provide a verdant new ground to plant narrative seeds. (Star Wars is starting to do a version of that with their upcoming High Republic stuff.) Star Trek: Discovery has taken the extraordinary step of taking one of these leaps in the middle of a show. Thank time travel for that one. So Michael Burnham lands 900+ years in her future, in the 32nd Century.

"That Hope is You" orientates Michael to the new status quo of the galaxy. She learns from rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold Cleveland Book a potted version of galaxy-changing events that have effectively disintegrated the Federation. Most notable is the Burn, where inexplicable dilithium instability crippled space travel across the galaxy. Michael's reaction to her new circumstances runs a bit of a gamut. As seen in the image above, Michael strikes a pose reminiscent of Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, when the wayward Imperator learns that the idyllic Green Place is no more. Michael processes her situation partially with the help of a truth serum drug trip. This feels like a clear example of the writers' room hitting on the idea of adding the counterpoint of humor to undercut Michael's potential despair or solemnity.

The viewer is wrestled into submission by beautiful location filming, helping make the episode's strange new world tangible. The episode trades in a melange of tones and phases. It goes from a pitched space battle, to a fraught adventure where Michael shows up and comes into conflict with Book, to a crime saga where our heroes are chased by Andorian and Orion heavies, to a nature documentary where Book reveals himself to be a futuristic Newt Scamander, and finally to the best stop of all. This variety is an asset, showing the different moves in the show's new toolkit.

That final sequence is the soul of the episode. Michael's poignant interaction with Aditya Sahil, a lonely sentinel keeping Starfleet alive at least on a notional level, will put a lump in the throat of any Trek fan. This is why you tear down the Federation, to build it up again. This romantic idea of after the apocalypse, a candle of hope surviving through belief and good work, goes back to great pieces of genre literature like A Canticle for Leibowitz. As a show, Voyager would always say that if the crew didn't hang onto Starfleet principles, they'd become as lost metaphorically as they were physically in the remote Delta Quadrant. The writers of Discovery have a chance to make that The Whole Point. 7/10.

Stray observations:

- Book tells Michael of the devastating Temporal Wars, the fallout of which includes the destruction of time travel technology. Firstly, Time War from Doctor Who, anybody? Secondly, that element of future backstory acknowledges the near-nonsensical Temporal Cold War arc from Enterprise.

- One of the Requiem guards is a Lurian, the same species as Quark's infamously chatty and omnipresent barfly Morn on Deep Space Nine!

Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Demons

 

ENT "Demons"

(Not to be confused with the Voyager episode "Demon".)

"Demons" comes as Enterprise wraps up its metastory of the origin of the Federation, casting as its villains an organized Terran supremacist Make Earth Great Again asshole group. These Terra Prime domestic terrorists have in their charge a baby of pioneering significance, a half-human, half-Vulcan child.  Terra Prime's leader, John Frederick Paxton (Peter Weller), considers the child an abomination and rejects what it represents. As an audience, we know what it represents: the future of Star Trek. *Cough* Spock *cough*. The episode clearly has the advantage of depressingly timely villains, but significant storytelling blunders sabotage it.

Weller in some ways is playing a similar character to his villain Admiral Marcus from Star Trek Into Darkness. Both, totally convinced of their ironclad ideology, turn their xenophobia into terrible action. But while Marcus wants to reclaim a level of militarism that Starfleet lost, Paxton is a hardcore isolationist. Paxton's right-hand man literally says of their bigotry, "We're right", to which Paxton responds, "You're a wise man" - which doesn't speak much to nuance. (This right-hand man happens to be Black, which of course is an intentional touch, similar to Brock Peters as Admiral Cartwright expressing blunt racism against Klingons in Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country.)

The theme of the episode is legacy, with attention to who writes history, who will be remembered, and how. Paxton muses how history will remember him, which is appropriate since Weller has a PhD in Art History.

But the aforementioned baby (which is often referred to as simply "the Child" - Baby Yoda, much?) is the center of a major revelation: it is the child of T'Pol and Trip Tucker. Everyone in the episode proves to be incredibly dense in the face of this DNA evidence. There's all this hemming and hawing about whether T'Pol was ever secretly pregnant, which she denies, and who takes her at her word with that, and if so, how could this possibly be? This is science fiction! If these people can't figure out how this seemingly impossible child could exist in the 22nd Century, I don't know what to say. And the episode plays as if it's ahead of the audience on this too. It's not.

Worst of all is the disastrous romantic subplot for Travis Mayweather and a reporter named Gannet Brooks. "Demons" is the episode that finally confirms that Anthony Montgomery is a bad actor. The characters, who are supposed to be old flames who eventually rekindle their passion, have awful chemistry, all down to Montgomery, who gives his scene partner nothing in their scenes together. His answer for how to attempt familiar banter is not to attempt at all.

The editing is also off. As the episode has it, Travis' sex scene is interrupted by him putting Enterprise in touch with a contact who can smuggle Trip and T'Pol onto Terra Prime's mining colony. Travis, who already has an old friend character in the episode, is given another one off-screen. Why couldn't it be Hoshi's contact at the mining colony?

Stray observations:

- That's the Mayor from Buffy (Harry Groener) giving the fancy speeches.

- The Coridan ambassador looks like he has a face-hugger from Alien permanently affixed on him.

"Demons" has the right themes in place, and its villains are unfortunately timely, but the twin sins of not respecting the audience's intelligence with the baby twist, and Anthony Montgomery's terrible performance, take the wind out of its solar sails. 4/10.

Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: A Simple Investigation

DS9 "A Simple Investigation"

 "Somebody stop me!" - Jadzia Dax, maybe referencing The Mask?

Of all the Deep Space Nine characters to get a romance of the week episode, Odo is one of the least likely, and "A Simple Investigation' uses that to drive the story, particularly how the rest of the cast minus Worf bemusedly encourage his romance along for his sake. As a setup I guess it's supposed to be vaguely noir - one issue with the episode may be a slightly unmoored tone. Is it space noir? Is it more of an espionage plot? Are the thugs supposed to be comic relief or not?

A woman named Arissa (Dey Young) sparks with Odo in Quark's against the backdrop of trying to get out from under a notorious Orion Syndicate gangster called Draim, who she's been working for as a hacker. Eventually, after Arissa and Odo develop an intense bond, the rug is pulled from under them as it's revealed that the version of Arissa we've been following is a sleeper agent whose memories were voluntarily patched and rewritten for a sting operation on the Orion crime boss.

"A Simple Investigation" is a sexually frank episode, especially for Star Trek. In Arissa's implanted backstory, she was a "net-girl", or remote sex worker. Odo loses his virginity to Arissa (not counting an experience on the Founders' homeworld he describes as ambiguously sexual - that changeling bit of turning to goo with each other that seemingly goes a little beyond the standard "joining"). And in the "morning after" scene, the episode gives us the extraordinary sight of... lovey-dovey flirty Odo?

Part of what contributes to the undercurrent of confusion are the plot revelations. Arissa turns out to be a surgically-altered member of a race we've never heard of called the Idanians, who used her to infiltrate the Draim's organization. Her handler shows up and brags about how he's going to indict Draim. But this is space. Who has jurisdiction? Is the Idanian homeworld part of the Orion Syndicate? Maybe these Idanians are sort of like the Fenris Rangers from Picard.

The b-plot of the episode is a brief, low-budget return to Doctor Bashir's James Bond-esque holosuite program from "Our Man Bashir", which provides a couple laughs. "A Simple Investigation" is a decent if not hugely engaging episode, though the central romance between Arissa and Odo (and the chemistry between Young and Rene Auberjonois) works well enough. 6/10.

Power Rangers Beast Morphers: Finders Keepers Review

PRBM "Finders Keepers"

It's team-up time! That most exciting time for Power Rangers fans, and just in time to promote the new dinosaur-themed season Dino Fury, Beast Morphers is teaming up with all three previous dinosaur-themed teams, starting with Dino Charge. While "Finders Keepers" gets some wonderful mileage from the crossover, it also bears flaws that hold it back from true greatness.

The MacGuffin of the episode is Dino Charge mentor Keeper (who Ravi recognizes from "Ranger History Class"! - shades of Dino Thunder's "Legacy of Power"), who is kept hostage by Evox and the resurrected villain Snide. At first Zoey mistakes Keeper for an alien hostile and slaps him with a compliance collar - that's right, we're repeating the same plot point we just had when Chaku was mistaken for an alien hostile and arrested.

Showing up to help are four Dino Charge Rangers; since there are so many Rangers from that team, that's exactly half of their full roster. It's Tyler, Chase, Koda, and Ivan! And it sure helped to already know their names, because the episode doesn't introduce any of them or even name them...! Shelby and Riley are the only ones namechecked, and that's only because they show up late already morphed. I guess they unfortunately couldn't get Camille Hyde or Michael Taber to appear unmorphed.

The main action centerpiece of the episode is a warehouse fight with Snide featuring decent if unspectacular wirework. But then the fight explodes into another level of quality when (also resurrected) Sledge and his generals show up and there are enough villains to fight each Dino Charge Ranger one on one! This leads Sledge to say, "Who said teaming up is just for Rangers?", which is fantastic.

It is a sign of the episode's need to hold a lot of elements that Ben and Betty are absent. But it is unfortunate that the episode doesn't find time to introduce the Dino Charge Rangers individually, or at least name them, or properly bring in the other Rangers from that team. Time is what militates against pretty much all team-ups; they often desperately need to be longer. But at least we got a pretty good morphing sequence, and the base-level joy of a crossover. Can't wait for what I assume is Dino Thunder's turn next week. 7/10.

Power Rangers Beast Morphers: The Greater Good Review

 

PRBM "The Greater Good"

The latest episode of Power Rangers Beast Morphers acts as something of a part 2 to last week's episode. While bringing closure to Captain Chaku and Ryjack's stories, the episode doesn't really rise above a functional level with anything special to it.

The order of the day is humanizing Chaku, ironically by revealing his work-mandated cyborg enhancements. At first, Chaku is hesitant to remove his helmet while on duty, so I initially thought this was a Sam on SPD situation, where the production can be a little thrifty by only using a non-speaking suit actor and a voice actor. But as it turned out, the show does reveal Chaku's face, and his desire to reunite with his daughter in his home galaxy.

Meanwhile, Ryjack and his cadre of Putties and Viviks are still trying to access the Ranger vault. Until Ryjack has a bit of a bad day. He loses his reanimator gun (recovered by Scrozzle for future episode use) and in short order loses his life after a tag-team of the Beast-X Ultrazord and Chaku's Reptilobeast get through with him.

Speaking of those mechs, the Beast-X Ultrazord is seen already assembled in the Grid Battleforce hangar for I believe the first time. And Chaku's Reptilobeast, with its primary color scheme, presents as "good Serpentera".

Ultimately, Commander Shaw pretty much officially offers Chaku a Sixth Ranger position, which is a nice novelty for this show. At first he dutifully agrees, but ultimately returns to his home galaxy. Commander Shaw's words to Chaku are, "You've been a warrior long enough. If you'd like, you can go back to being a dad." Replace the word "dad" with "mom", and I wonder if this could indicate projection on her part, or even foreshadow her eventually resigning from her post. I hope not, as command suits her well.

Taking or leaving Chaku's purple venus flytrap, there aren't too many distinct decisions that elevate the episode to anything above average. 5/10.