Andrew Bloom

VIP

9

[5.8/10] There is a laudable impulse behind “Thirty Days”, as there so often is with Voyager. I understand the desire to want to mark how Tom Paris has changed over the course of the series. The notion that he remains a rulebreaker, but now one who violates regulations in the name of good causes rather than self-interest, is a good one. It puts him on the standard arc of the roguish, Han Solo-esque archetype he embodied when the show started.

There’s a few problems with the execution, though. The biggest of them is simple -- Tom hasn’t changed that much over the course of the show. The series’ first episode featured a lot of big talk about how he was an unreliable pariah and self-interested scamp, but like so much from that opening salvo, Voyager all but abandoned the idea surprisingly quickly.

Sure, Tom would make the occasional smart remark or get into some mild trouble. But almost immediately, he became a consummate officer who would be indistinguishable serving aboard the Enterprise. Sure, he had some lingering daddy issues and would occasionally engage in some untoward sidling up to Kes. But he readily became a sort of Riker Jr., sometimes a little bold or a little too flirtatious, but a diligent and reliable member of the crew.

So when “Thirty Days” tries to make a big deal about how Tom’s had this big change of heart under Janeway’s tutelage, to where now he’ll go big to do the right thing, it rings false. We’ve already seen that attitude from Paris ten times over. At best, it was put to bed in his faux-defection arc that culminated in season 2’s “Investigations”. So what’s meant to be a crowning achievement of his grand transformation seems like business as usual for Tom as we’ve known him for the past four and a half seasons, which weakens the point considerably.

Even taking the episode on its own merits, this is a peculiar story to dramatize that idea. It’s founded on a love of all things nautical from Tom that we (a.) have never heard from him before and (b.) doesn’t track with his existing hot rod and B-movie sensibilities. More to the point, the cause he’s willing to risk his life and career for is framed in a downright odd manner.

“Thirty Days” presents a pretty standard Star Trek story on environmentalism. The locals live on an ocean world, only the ocean is steadily dissipating. With Voyager’s help, they discover that the cause of the issue is the locals’ industrial operation. But to Tom’s dismay, they’re unlikely to make the adjustments necessary to avoid degradation and disaster, instead burying the findings in unread reports and useless committees.

Hey, that's a familiar real world story, which gives it some resonance! It’s downright sad that this episode is twenty-five years old and we’re dealing with the same problem today. The notion of Tom wanting to take direct action, to catalyze a necessary societal change that might otherwise be a sticking point politically could be engrossing and sympathetic.

Except, that material and motivation is kind of there, but instead, the script seems to focus on the idea that Tom isn’t as concerned about the well-being of these people so much as he just loves this big weird ocean planet. The supposed altruism doesn’t quite add up when Tom is more fixated on preserving the majesty of open water than he is on the lives and well-being of the individuals that live beneath it. And the premise also makes for a weird environmental parable since it turns out the ocean planet was artificially constructed in the first place, rather than a natural phenomena. It’s like risking your life to save somebody’s giant pool.

Oddly enough, the only truly compelling part of the episode is the neat sci-fi concept at the core of the ocean planet. Star Trek rarely deals with underwater species (they’re a lot less expensive to depict in, say, The Animated Series). So there’s an inherent thrill to seeing some alien ships emerge from beneath the waves and explain that their entire society exists down there. The design team does a superb job imagining what that type of civilization might look like, and to the episode’s credit, the notion of a planetoid that's nothing but ocean is cool. Throw in the standard, “It turns out some ancient people built this whole thing centuries ago” Star Trek twist, and a few giant electric eels for good measure, and you have a solid backdrop to get the audience’s attention with.

Unfortunately, the characters involved are flat and generic. The Monean leader, Burkus, is a standard politician type, and his scientific counterpart, Riga, is an almost comical nerdy cliche. The dialogue does no favors for them or Tom. The episode tries to give TOm all of these meaningful conversations reflecting on his life and hangups and choices, but almost all of them fall flat.

The structure of the episode doesn’t help either. I don’t necessarily mind story formats that mortgage drama from later in the plot. Starting off with Tom being demoted and sentenced to a month in the brig should add an inherent tension to the proceedings. What did he do to warrant such a punishment? What cause did he find so worthwhile that he was willing to risk this possibility?

But “Thirty Days” drags those answers out, and when we get them, they’re unsatisfying. When the thing Tom’s so worked up about doesn’t feel like an especially big deal, the whole mystery angle comes off like a cheap trick. The show does wring some tension from his attempted assault on the key mining operation or whatever, with the perfectly timed “depth charge” neutralization being a particular thrill. But even that doesn’t amount to much, especially since we already know Tom makes it out of the situation unscathed thanks to the frame story.

Worse yet, the script clunkily tries to convey that Tom is going stir crazy in confinement, but you never quite feel the passage of time or sense of his struggle in there, since most of our time is spent in flashback anyway. The frame story gives us a hook for Tom to write a letter to his dad and reflect on who he was before and who he’s become, which is good in principle. But when the personal epiphany he’s supposedly had is weak, and the underlying story that supports it is just as lackluster, the framing narrative comes off like a waste of time.

In a strange way, “Thirty Days” feels indebted to the version of Tom from the earliest stretch of the show. If you’d done this episode early in Voyager’s run, when Tom was still nominally rough around the edges, focused on himself, and an outsider to Starfleet values, it might carry weight. But despite being a cut-up sometimes, Tom has been a noble, dependable officer for several seasons now -- pretty much the whole show, frankly.

To have a sense of marking change, the audience has to see the change. Tom seems no more likely to make such a grand gesture in the name of the greater good now than he was four years ago. You can have various characters, including Paris himself, remark about how far he’s come, but we watch the episodes, you know! We’ve seen how he’s acted to date, and this is not remarkable behavior from him.

As with so much from Voyager’s original premise, there’s a great story to be told there -- about a screw-up son of an admiral finding his best self amid unexpected circumstances. Unfortunately, that's not really the story the series has been telling since the first few episodes, when Tom became a solid officer and never really flinched from there. The enforced stasis of Voyager in particular belies that sort of change over time. And if you want to tell that kind of story, you can't cram it all into a single episode, even one that takes place over thirty days.

[8.5/10] “The Siege of AR-558” is a grim, dispiriting episode, but in a weird way I’m glad for it. We haven't had a committed “war is hell” episode in a while-- certainly not one this stark since Jake Sisko saw the front lines in “Nor the Battle to the Strong” back in season 5. They’re important. I think of them as the necessary cost of doing rousing episodes where our heroes retake the station in glorious battle and for the fun larks when they play baseball on the holodeck in wartime.

War isn’t fun. You wouldn’t necessarily want to rub the audience’s nose in that every week. Forcing viewers to face bleak horror on a weekly basis might be a recipe for disaster. (Or maybe not. Hello Walking Dead fans!) But episodes like “The Siege of AR-558” are crucial reminders, that behind the four-color excitement and political intrigue and comic relief that are the necessary stock and trade of a network television show, real mortal conflicts are not so pristine or so bloodless. Doing an arc like The Dominion War wouldn’t feel right without them.

The truth is that Deep Space Nine won’t, and probably can't, make any of its major characters a casualty of war. (Hell, even Jadzia was killed by magic demonic lightning rather than as a realistic death in the throes of battle.) Soi savvy viewers know that, outside of a key finale or special event, the chances of anything serious happening to our heroes is slim. “The Siege of AR-558” gets around that in a few interesting ways.

The first is introducing a crew on the front lines and integrating them with our own. Introducing a raft of new characters, who’ve been on some godforsaken rock fending off Jem’hadar attacks for five months, is a dicey proposition. There isn’t time to develop all of them in depth, or establish deep relationships with the main cast. Instead, you have to rely on the strength of performance and a certain degree of recognizable archetypes to carry the day.

Thankfully, the episode and the guest stars pull that off pretty darn well! The actor who plays Vargas, the young shell-shocked soldier, overdoes it in many places and seems overmatched. But he’s also clearly giving it his all and making some big choices, which I appreciate. Lt. Larkin is a bit generic in her conception, but you get the clear sense of an underranked officer stepping into the leadership vacuum and trying to hold everyone together in an impossible situation.

Deep Space Nine isn’t going to spend months in a foxhole, but it can give us characters who have. Through Vargas and Larkin, you get that sense of exhaustion, that sense of constant terror, the sense of being alone in the struggle, and most of all the sense of abundant and looming death, in front of and behind you. The likes of Sisko and Bashir slip into that mode pretty easily, and they’ve both seen some action, but their part is more to recognize and appreciate the hell that their comrades are going through, and show their acknowledgement by stepping into the fray alongside them.

The closest friendship we see is the one between Ezri and Kellin, the spritely-if-tired engineer tasked with decoding the Dominion comms station. He and Ezri working together to reprogram the Jem’Hadar’s “houdini” mines gives them a chance to bond. The episode doesn’t belabor it, or pretend that they’re instantly the best of friends. But we see them relating to one another through working on the same problem, commiserating over what it’s like to be in harm’s way, whether you’ve had nine lives or one. There’s a shared humanity between the two of them. So even if it’s not as deep a relationship as the one between Dax and Sisko, you feel it when Kellin goes to save Ezri in the final fray and dies in the process. The stasis of 1990s television means DS9 can't kill off the people with care about, but it can give us the untimely ends of people they care about.

It can wound our heroes, though, and if there’s a piece of “The Siege of AR-558” that truly rends the heart, it’s Nog’s piece of the battle and the loss that comes with it. The young Ferengi is relatable, admiring the Jem’Hadar-slaying, knife-sharpening commando who represents a kind of badassery Nog aspires to. He is enthusiastic, devoted to his duty, ready and willing to put himself in harm’s way for the good of the mission and his brothers- and sisters-in-arms. Which makes it all the more tragic when he loses his leg in a skirmish after scouting the enemy.

Nog is a child. He’s noble but naive. He’s grown since we first met him, but is still not far removed from being a green cadet. That means he’s extra motivated to prove himself, to show his courage. The same goes for his Ferengi heritage, which he seems low-key resentful of. He has a chip on his shoulder and devotion to duty that is admirable,but also worrying for someone we’ve watched grow up. So when he loses a limb in this fighting, when his ability to walk is put in doubt by how quickly they can get him to a hospital, when his friends and allies have to look at him lying immobilized on a table as he tries to keep a brave face, it breaks your damn heart.

So does his uncle looking after him. Quark’s inclusion here is a bit strained, with a fig leaf that Zek wants him on a fact-finding mission for some reason. But it’s worth the contrivance to get his perspective in all of this. Once again, he offers an outsider’s perspective on war and the Federation, resisting the values fans like me take for granted and making legitimate counterpoints. He is a nice foil for Sisko in that.

More than anything, as venal and self-serving as Quark can be at times, he represents the idea that war is senseless, and the loss of life and health that goes with it is gallign. Sisko cuts the figure of someone who understands the necessity of this grisly business, but who feels every name on those casualty reports anew. They work as counterpoints to one another, essentially focused on the same problem -- the misery and loss of life involved in war -- only differing on whether it’s worth it or not.

He’s also an oddly appropriate mouthpiece for how dehumanizing and dangerous all of this can be. His speech about how people can become animals when you put them in impossible situations has become rightly iconic. We see that devolution, in Vargas, in Reese, in the soldiers who are at their wits end having been stranded on some far flung planet of some strategic importance and under constant attack. Quark gives name and verse to the crumbling of the soul they might not have the words for. He’s an unexpected spokesman, but an eloquent one as always.

But he’s also an uncle, and that's the other role he plays in all of this. He represents the civilians at home, worrying about their loved ones, wanting them kept out of harm’s way. It’s unfair when he accuses Sisko of not caring after he sends Nog on an operation. But he’s also understandable in not wanting his loved one to be thrust into danger, in not understanding why it can't be somebody else, in being angry and resentful when harm comes to a young man he cares about.

Quark has had some laudable moments to go with his shameful ones over the course of the series. But there may be none more touching than him hovering over his sleeping nephew, tending to his fevered brow, and using his acute Ferengi ears to detect an incoming Jem’Hadar soldier and blast him before he can dare hurt Nog even more. In a script co-written by the series’ showrunner, Quark has his faults and his selfishness and his dim view of humanity, but he is also a loving family member, who protects a barely-grown young man from the worst of a war he abhors.

He has reason to abhor it. Much of what carries the spirit of “The Siege of AR-558” is not just the crisp dialogue or the withering performances, but the haunting atmosphere of the piece. The Federation base has the vibe of a mortuary, with human beings stretched beyond their limits and expecting death at every turn. Some of that is the production design, which uses (presumably) the usual Planet Hell set to evoke the sense of some barren, forbidding locale where comforts are scarce and pain points are abundant.

But much of it is just the tone and the pace. One of the best things the episode does is convey the creeping horror of waiting around for the inevitable strike. We get the sense of soldiers waiting around for what they know is coming, forced to settle their nerves and resign themselves to the onslaught ahead. We get a sense of the grim business of turning an enemy’s own deadly weapons against them, turning their craven trespass into your righteous defense.

Most of all, we get the sense of the fog of war. Worf calls it a glorious battle, but it doesn’t feel that way in the moment. The combat is not beautiful or triumphant. It is dizzying, fast, and harrowing. At times, it’s not clear who’s living and who’s dying. They don’t play the rousing score of a brilliant defeat of the Dominion like in past episodes, but rather a morose lament, as the Jem’Hadar storm the base and too many of those we know well and briefly fall at their hands. This is not a noble battle or a glorious victory. It is just another brutal fight, with too many dead in its wake.

When Captain Sisko starts the episode, he confesses that over time, he’s become inured to the reams of the names of the fallen. It’s easy to do the same in Deep Space Nine. Even in the franchise’s most committed exploration of conflict and battle between nations, the war is often at a remove, conveniently popping up at times when it’s exciting and dramatic. Who wouldn’t see it as another adventure, another sweetener, that distinguishes Deep Space Nine in its devotion to that idea, but not that far removed from Kirk’s conflicts with the Klignons or Picard’s stand-offs with the Romulans.

“The Siege of AR-558” is something different. Its bleaker, starker, more devoted to the on-the-ground misery and suffering and loss that war always entails, far away from comfortable admirals and exciting storylines. When it ends, Sisko is stirred anew to remember those names on the casualty list, to feel those losses, to remember the costs paid by those who’ve fallen for the cause. And by devoting this time to the same losses, to the people who die in war and the conditions under which they fight, the show urges the audience to do the same.

War in fiction can be fun and thrilling. War in real life is anything but. It’s good, maybe even a moral obligation, for a show like Deep Space Nine to remind us of that.

[8.0/10] I often think of Deep Space Nine as the most complex show in the Star Trek pantheon. You have political intrigue and spiritual elements and interpersonal dynamics and serialized storytelling and examinations of war and the evolving dynamics between different communities and the arc of history and so much more. I’d argue there are more moving parts to the series than anywhere else in the franchise. And for the most part, that's a good thing.

But episodes like “Once More Into the Breach” are a good reminder that the show can still thrive with simple storytelling, done well. There is nothing too complex about the episode, at least on the surface. Kor is an old man, fallen out of favor, wanting one last hurrah. Martok is a general in his prime, resentful of the aged noble who once denied him his place. Worf is the younger mediator between the two, trying to serve both masters. And eventually the old man gets to go out on his shield and earn the admiration of even his most ardent critic.

It’s a familiar story shape, but it comes back around for a reason. There is something inherently compelling at seeing a once great individual, struggling to maintain their dignity and reclaim a bit of their glory, finding the right mettle at the right moment. That's especially true in the context of Klingons, a culture that, in the hands of veteran Star Trek writer Ronald D. Moore, cares about their deaths and their honor more than the average human. And yet, even in the larger than life terms of this story, it’s easy to feel for Kor, for Martok, and for poor Worf trying to manage two of his good friends.

Some of that is the acting. Original Series guest star John Colicos gives his best performance yet as Kor. There is the same gregariousness in his disposition that made him such a whimsical figure in his prior appearances on the show. But he also conveys the sense of a man who feels the way in which he’s been diminished by time, both in esteem and in his faculties, and treasures his moment to regain a bit of both. There is pain and pathos in this version of Kor, and that's not necessarily a side we’ve seen of him.

The same goes for Martok. J.G. Hertzler is one of Deep Space Nine’s secret weapons, and it shows here. In the hands of a lesser actor, Martok’s monologue about Kor rejecting him from earning an officer’s commission could come off too writerly and expositional. But Hertzler injects such genuine emotion into the speech -- to where you can feel his seething anger at Kor, his lamentation that his father never lived to see him live up to his father’s dreams -- and his explanation plays like an earnest confession rather than an information-delivery device for the audience.

The conflict between the once-fierce but now fumbling living legend and the no-nonsense general of the present moment would be enough on its own. Moore doesn’t rest on his laurels though, and I love the interest of a class conflict between the two of them. The fact that Kor is of noble blood and prejudiced against the peasant class’s attempts to disrupt the “natural order of things”, and that Martok is a self-made man who resents men like Kor netting and then gate-keeping opportunities by birth that lowlander like Martok have earned by merit, adds a unique dynamic to their interactions.

Unfortunately, the B-story can't match the complexity of the character dynamics in the main story. The thrust of it sees Quark overhearing Ezri talking about wanting to join Kor in battle as prior Dax hosts did, and the Ferengi conveniently mistaking it for her wanting to get together with Worf. Sigh.

The B-story has two big marks against it. The first is that I’ve come to loathe “Someone misunderstands and overheard conversations” as a plot. It was hokey and shopworn then, and it’s only become more so know. The contrivance of Ezri having to talk about Kor in just such a way to be misunderstood, and Quark having to overhear just the right part of the conversation to get mixed up, is a big eye-roll.

The second is that it goes back to the “Everyone’s pining for Dax” theme that's become pretty insufferable. What kills me is that, if memory serves, I like where they end up with it. But for fuck’s sake, can we have more storylines where Dax gets to be a character, one who’s still adjusting to these seismic shifts in who she is, rather than leave the focus on her love life yet again?

I don’t mind the conclusion. Quark giving his big speech isn’t bad. His point about someone who wants to earn Dax’s love rather than inherit it is a compelling, if self-serving one. Ezri appreciating it is another page in the book of, “Dax receives every romantic come-on positively, no matter what” which is a recurring thing I’ve come to disdain. But there’s at least something nice in her appreciating that Quark cares, even if it feels naive on her part. More than anything, it’s just an odd inclusion in an otherwise tonally focused episode.

But that focus in the A-story ultimately carries the day. The plot has a nice trajectory. Kor receives a legend’s welcome from the crew, much to Martok’s consternation. Kor’s senility gets the best of him in a key moment, earning him the scorn of the crew, much to Martok’s delight. And then Kor wins back the esteem of his crewmates, Martok included, in an act of valor and self-sacrifice, as befits the legendary warrior.

Nothing about it is complicated. But Kor’s fortunes rise and fall in a way that makes his story impactful. It’s basic, but undeniably strong storytelling.

It’s bolstered by the elements at the margins. Not for nothing, the attack on the Cardassian base is the sharpest and most exciting Deep Space Nine’s space battles have looked since the move to CGI. The fact that we don’t get to see Kor’s big battle with the Jem’Hadar is a bit of a bummer, but the swell of the music and the touched reaction of the crew sell it almost as well as seeing the battle could. And the small but vital reactions of the Klingon crew, especially Martok’s aged aide de camp, elevate the proceedings nicely.

At the end of the day, you feel for Kor. Hell, Martok has every reason to hate him, and in the final tally, he still feels for Kor. It’s one thing to see an enemy fall from foolhardiness or arrogance or some other fatal flaw. It’s another to see them falter thanks to the ravages of age and the degradation of their faculties, in the way that comes for all of us, if we’re lucky enough to live that long. Kor is not a perfect man, but even at his worst, he’s sympathetic in the way his body and mind are betraying him, and his understandable desire to want to die as he lived -- worthy of glory.

“Once More Into the Breach” calls to mind two other Star Trek episodes that operate in similar terms. The first is “Sarek” from The Next Generation, which deals with another legend from the TOS era losing their form. And the other is DS9’s “Soldiers of the Empire” where Worf made similar efforts to rehabilitate and restore the honor of Martok himself after a rough patch.

It adds a certain irony, but ultimately meaning to this episode, when you know Matok has similarly hit on hard times and found his resolve with the help of Worf. Kor’s problems are different, but they’re more universal. Moore writes some beautiful poetry about the pain of aging and some well-observed lines about how your perspective on the next generation and the last one changes based on where you are in that grim conveyor belt of life. The truth is, if we’re fortunate, all of us will end up in Kor’s position, and not all of us will get his happy ending.

There remains something rousing in seeing the diminished old master, finding their power yet again, and using it to protect those who might follow in their footsteps. The aphorism goes that “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” The notion that societies grow great when old men go on suicide missions to fend off gentically-engineered soldiers so that their younger comrades can make it to reinforcements isn’t quite as elegant, but in the confines of Deep Space Nine, it’s no less true.

I’ll admit, at first I thought the fact that we didn’t get to see Kor’s battle with the Jem’Hadar was a simple budgetary concession. The show had blown their CGI quota on strafing the Cardassian base, and that was that. It was disappointing, but it’s easy to forgive the practical limitations of 1990s network television.

But I think it’s actually a deliberate choice. In the teaser, Worf weighs in on Miles and Julian’s debate over the fate of Davy Crockett. He instructs them that if he is the legend they believe in, then his glory is, in some ways, an article of faith, more important than the real fate of the man. We don’t know the exact details of Kor’s end the same way we don’t know the precise facts of an aging Crockett’s demise. But it doesn’t matter, to us or to Worf or even to Martok, because ultimately, they know the old man’s glory. In a simple story, made elegant with choices like that one, such deliberate faith in their forebears is enough for the characters, and enough for me as well.

[7.0/10] Eight years. Five seasons. Four captains. One ship. One infamous mutineer turned galactic hero. And I still don’t quite know what Star Trek: Discovery means.

That's alright! The show has had multiple showrunners and multiple creative voices at play. The series reset its premise at least once, with the jump to the far future, and arguably multiple times. Characters have come and gone. Ships have been retrofitted and become sentient. Species new and old have phased in and receded.

It’s okay if, after all that, even the overthinking viewer can't boil the robust (if not quite infinite) diversity of Discovery into a single idea or meaning. At the beginning of the show’s final season, Michael Burnham herself wondered what it all means, and I’ll admit, I’m not more equipped to answer that after the end of the show’s five year mission than she was when it started.

What it means, in immediate terms, is that the Progenitor mystery is finished. Michael and Moll’s twin journeys into the portal (alongside some disposable Breen mooks) leads them to a liminal space, fit for slow-motion special effects, gravity-defying fisticuffs, and cheap puzzle-solving.

Much of that feels a little gratuitous. You can practically feel the episode showing off instead of advancing the story. Why Burnham and Moll need to have a Matrix-esque anti-gravity brawl before the mandated alliance and sudden but inevitable betrayal is beyond me. But I like the setting and the slower pace the show adopts at times within it. Despite the questionable “movie every week” promise of the series, this is the rare instance where Discovery genuinely feels cinematic, and the pace and cinematography have a lot to do with that.

One of the big problems with Discovery’s aesthetic overall is that the sterile sheen on everything often gives the show’s backdrops a semi-unreal quality that detracts from the convincingness of the presentation. Thankfully, that totally works in a quasi-magical portal realm created by billion-year-old aliens!

The endless stretch of a fantastical environment, the way it’s punctuated by extravagant quasi-baroque architecture, the hidden path to central setting, the puzzle that leads you to some mystical parental figure spouting purple prose -- they all give “Life, Itself” an unexpected Kingdom Hearts vibe of all things. But for something meant to be elevated above even the everyday wonders the average Starfleet captain experiences, that approach works.

Granted, some of the path toward the Progenitor tech feels rote. All of the cryptic clues and vital totems come down to...arranging a bunch of glass triangles? You can derive some thematic meaning from that (“The in-between times matter as much!”) but it’s an oddly mechanical answer to the latest riddle. Moll giving Michael the ol’ el kabong and getting punished by the alien alarm is a bit too predictable. And the all-knowing ethereal being from beyond, come to dispense the great wisdom, is a big cliche.

But I like where they land. The rap on Michael Burnham in the fandom is that Discovery is too hidebound in its need to make her the greatest and special-est captain to ever captain anything. (Nevermind that the franchise has done the same with Kirk, Archer, and if I’m honest with myself, sometimes even Picard.) Here, though, when the Progenitor representative tells Burnham that she is the only one worthy to wield such incredible technology, Michael demurs.

She acknowledges her own flaws. She points out her own limitations. True to Federation principles, she disclaims the idea that any one person should have this power. And given the freedom to create life, or annihilate it, or use this amazing tool however she might wish, Burnham chooses to destroy it.

There is poetry in that. It’s a strange obverse of Groucho Marx’s famous quip, 'I wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.” The trails of clues left by the consortium of scientists was meant to test the mettle and the heart of the person chasing them, ensuring that they had the right disposition and perspective before they were granted access to this awesome power.

I can appreciate the poetic irony that the only soul worthy of wielding that technology is the one who would see its potential for death and destruction and choose to destroy it instead. It’s a conclusion to this story that, if a bit anticlimactic, feels lyrical, philosophical, and most importantly, Trek-y enough for a finale.

Unfortunately, it squeezes out just about everything else. Dr. Culber’s peculiar spiritual connection? Well, he magically knows the frequency for the portal box, and is just content with the unknown now. The end. Stamets’ desire to leave a great scientific legacy? All it takes is a twenty-second speech from Burnham and a quick (albeit admittedly sweet) bit of solace from Adira, and he’s good. As for Adira themself? They get another attaboy and a few hugs, but I guess they mostly completed their arc in the last episode.

What about Rayner? Well, he offers a bold solution to the stand-off with the Breen and remains steady in the face of danger, but doesn’t get to confront his onetime tormentor really, and again, pretty much wrapped up his character journey earlier. Tilly? She comes up with a cool science-y thing, which is on-brand I guess. But her soul-searching over the Academy leads to...a mentorship program? Really? That bog standard thing is her big epiphany? Sure. Why not? Even Moll goes from murderous and duplicitous to being amenable to Michael and cool with Book without much compunction, another major character arc that feels terribly compressed.

Look, it’s admirable that Discovery wants to give all the members of its crew something to do in the finale. But unfortunately it means that almost nobody besides Burnham gets a chance to really put a capstone on their journeys across the course of the series. That may be fine for well-liked but sporadic recurring characters like Admiral Vance, President Rilak, and Commander Nhan,and President T’Rina. (We even get to learn that Kovich is freakin’ Agent Daniels from Star Trek: Enterprise, among others.) But ironically, in an episode about how Burnham has the humility to step aside on the brink of extra-dimensional anointing, her story crowds out everyone else’s.

Thankfully, the exception to the rule is Saru. One of the iconic moments in the lead-up to Discovery’s premiere was his trailer-worthy line that his people were “biologically determined for one purpose and one purpose alone: to sense the coming of death. I sense it coming now.” When the series started, there was a timidity, even a rigidity to Saru. Despite absconding to the stars, he had that fear-based social conditioning within him.

And yet, over the course of the series, he’s arguably changed more than anyone else. He lost his ganglia and lived to tell the tale. He shared the truth of his homeland and rekindled his people’s culture. He’s been through an array of harrowing, potentially lethal events and come out on the other side. He’s even found courage in matters of the heart.

So it is rousing, then, when he stands off with a cruel Breen warlord and doesn’t blink once. Where there was fear, there is now force. Where there was reticence, there is now courage. Where there was timidity, there is now daring. Doug Jones kills it, as usual, and if there’s one thing this finale deserves credit for, it’s showing how far Saru has come: from the anxious officer preaching caution to the confident ambassador making bold bluffs to save his friends on the strength of his mettle alone. He’ll go down as the show’s best character in my book, and I’m glad “Life, Itself” gave him his moment in the spotlight.

The episode at least has a solid structure to keep things manageable. We have Burnham and Moll going through the Door to Darkness on the one hand. We have Rayner and most of the usual Discovery crew working to hold off Moll’s goons from the Progenitor device on the other. We have Saru and Nhan holding off another Breen faction with trademark Federation diplomacy. And we have Book and Dr. Culber sneaking through battle lines in a shuttle to keep the “portal in a can” from drifting into a pair of twin black holes. The balance among and derring-do within each thread is satisfactory at worst.

That last part is a big part of the episode’s mission, not because of the practical mechanics of destruction avoidance that have become old aht for Discovery, but because it’s a sign of Book’s love for Michael. And sure. I buy it. But I don’t feel it.

I don’t mind Book and Burnham together. It’s not a detriment to the show in any sense. But from the second Book popped up in season 3 as an obvious love interest, everything about them has felt pat and inevitable. So while I think they’re perfectly fine and perfectly plausible together, it never felt like the epic, essential love story that the show seemed to want it to be, especially in this finale.

I won’t deny the aesthetic power of the two of them reuniting at Saru’s wedding (which looks incredible, by the way), all gussied up. I’m not made of stone. You put two attractive people gazing deeply into one another’s eyes on a luminous beach with the music swelling, and you can get something in the moment. But they mostly spout the usual romantic cliches, made all the more stilted with oddly artless dialogue, before the romantic rekindling that was never really in doubt takes place.

Which means our epilogue, showing their shared future in the world’s coziest cabin, is pleasant but not quite moving. It’s nice that Burnham gets a little peace, that she and Book have a son on the cusp of his first Starfleet command, that she gets one last dance with Discovery. But that's about where it tops out. “Nice.” Not the touching goodbye to a long run the episode seems all but desperate to convey. We even get an impressionistic sequence on the bridge that feels more like the cast bidding farewell to one another in costume than the characters saying their goodbyes.

You can appreciate the attempts here. From another explosion-filled conclusion to a Tree of Life-esque sequence of creation to an artsy, golden-hued effort to gin up the emotion from putting a capstone on five seasons’ worth of adventures. There are some big swings here, which I admire, and you cannot fault the show for a lack of effort in this finale.

But in the final tally, it still leaves me a bit cold, and I’m still not quite sure what it all means. In the Progenitor’s big sermon, she suggests a positively existentialist reading on that question on a cosmic scale. We supply our own meaning, whether it be through exploration or scientific advancement or familial bonds. Discovery makes a few vague suggestions as to the possible takeaways, but affirms that the franchise’s values of infinite diversity in infinite combinations applies just as well to one of the essential questions of life. There are a multitude of meanings and possibilities out there, in the wide scope of people out in the world (or the galaxy), and in what drives us within our hearts and souls. I can appreciate that answer.

But the closest thing the show offers to an explicit answer comes from Bunrham herself, naturally, and the episode’s title. The meaning of life is “Life, Itself”, with the idea that our experiences can't be reduced beyond that, necessarily. The purpose is simply to be, to form bonds, to have those experiences, and share them with others. It’s a bit of a tautology, and more than a little trite, but there’s something to the idea that the meaning of life is to live.

That meaning extends to Discovery itself. I can't tell you what the show means, or how it coalesces into a greater whole, because quite frankly, I’m not sure that it does.. Instead, it simply is. These adventures happened: some good, some bad, some rousing, some dull, some memorable, some easily forgotten.

It’s a fool’s errand to predict a show’s legacy. From aspiring franchise flagship, to fandom punching bag, to something that was simply there, Discovery’s risen and fallen in esteem over the course of its run. It could earn a critical reevaluation down the line or sink down into the dregs like some of its predecessors. But through it all Star Trek: Discovery was there. It delivered five seasons’ worth of adventures, expanded the canon, and took the franchise further into the future than it had ever been before. Its whole may not amount to more than the sum of its parts, but those parts, those individual adventures and stories, will remain. I’m not sure that Discovery has a deeper meaning than that, or if it needs one.

[8.2/10] Can you trust a Vorta? In almost every interaction our heroes have had with the Founders’ handmaidens, the Vorta have been duplicitous, manipulative, and sometimes downright malevolent. Hell, Captain Sisko himself effectively knew that the Dominion would attack because Weyoun (the fifth one, presumably) assured him that they wouldn’t. Their schemes and two-faced deceptions make them slippery at the best of times.

So when Weyoun (or, at least, a Weyoun) comes to Odo, claiming he wants to defect to the Federation, there’s an inherent tension that carries the episode. Is this a sincere Vorta who’s seen the error of the Dominion’s ways, seeking help from the one Changeling he knows on the other side? Or is this just another ruse in a litany of them perpetrated by the Founders and the adoring servants who carry out their every whim, even ones that betray the trust of those insignificant “solids” on the other side of the wormhole.

I’ll admit, I thought it was a trick, and even when the truth came out, I wasn’t disappointed. Much of that owes to how well the trick plays with our expectations. At first I assumed this was a standard Dominion plot, with Weyoun’s deception likely to emerge at any moment. But then Damar and a different Weyoun (purportedly the seventh one) pop up on the screen, claiming to be after the sixth.

No matter! Surely, they’re just validating the ruse to help convince Odo to accept their Trojan Horse. But wait, here’s a scene with the two of them in private validating what they said to the Constable over the viewscreen, with no reason to lie. Hmm. Well, then, maybe it’s the Female Changeling, using Odo’s sense of honor and compassion against him to prove some further lesson! No wait, here she is, seeming worse for wear, popping up to ask her subordinates where Weyoun 6 is.

On a nuts and bolts level, the episode is smartly constructed, creating every opportunity for the audience to suspect the titular treachery, and then gradually spoon-feeding us little scenes and moments that steadily validate what Weyoun 6 is saying. The progression puts the audience in Odo’s position. We know things he doesn’t, but just as he becomes increasingly persuaded by Weyoun 6’s story of a change of heart, we receive more and more reason to think this is more than just some Dominion trap.

We also hear plenty of reasons to take this situation seriously. There are stakes here! Part of the reason Odo indulges in this supposed defection in the first place, despite his misgivings, is that Weyoun 6 might be able to provide valuable intel to turn the tide of the war. Damar and Weyoun 7 acknowledge as much.

But there’s also abundant tension. You have the natural tension between Odo and Weyoun 6, with odo not being sure he can trust his erstwhile quarry. You have the continuing tension between Weyoun 7 and Damar, with the show strongly hinting that Damar offed his last Vorta handler, and the two having very different approaches on how to treat Odo and the fugitive Weyoun. You have the tension of the Jem’Hadar bearing down on Odo’s runabout. You have the tension of Weyoun 7 and Damar finding an excuse to kill a Founder and trying to hide it from their superiors, only for the Female Changeling to show up.

Everything here is constructed on a razor’s edge, with one wrong move having the potential to wreck everything. That gives even the more humdrum actions a certain charge. And the episode only adds to it as it goes along.

What’s funny is that “Treachery, Faith, and the Great River” kind of does the same thing in the B-story, albeit in much more comedic terms. Chief O’Brien reluctantly enlisting Nog to wheel and deal across the Starfleet ecosystem to find him a new gravity net for the Defiant on Captain Sisko’s impossibly compressed timeline leads to a hilarious If You Give a Mouse a Cookie type situation.

Every problem that Nog solves -- connecting personally with the Starfleet quartermaster, for instance -- only leads to more wrinkles and complications. The way Nog’s scheme progresses from a simple bit of schmoozing to earn some favor in the priority list, to lending Sisko’s desk out to an enthusiast, to purloining General Martok’s bloodwine, to engineering the military equivalent of a five-team trade in professional sports is hilarious in the increasingly tangled, baroque nature of his operation.

The show wrings great comedy from O’Brien rolling merrily along, just trying to do his job, while he gets caught up in Nog’s increasingly elaborate plans. Miles has a certain everyman quality, which makes him a great straight man to react to the more and more ridiculous plots that Nog comes up with, especially when Miles has to deal with the fallout of what’s done in his name.

Of course, that only makes it sweeter when Sisko ends up with his desk and gravity net on his impossible schedule, Martok ends up with some better bloodwine, and Miles comes off smelling like roses thanks to the machinations of his enterprising ensign. The episode does a great job of showing how many dizzying ploys Nog is juggling, to where when they all work out, it’s extra impressive and satisfying.

It’s enough to make you believe in the Great Material Continuum! Some of the fun of “Treachery, Faith, and the Great River” is simply seeing Nog apply a Ferengi attitude to the goings on of Starfleet. But some of it is getting to hear the philosophical underpinnings of it. Beyond the amusing homage to The Force from Star Wars, there’s something trenchant and fitting about the Ferengi imagining there being some grand river of supply and demand, want and fulfillment, that balances out the universe.

It’s a surprisingly coherent quasi-spiritual belief system behind Ferengi society. (Amusingly enough, it’s not that far off from one of the theories behind the American system of contract laws.) And there’s an intuitive appeal to Nog’s belief that if he just rides out the great river of want and need, he’ll eventually find his way. It’s a peculiar, but compelling kind of faith.

That's what thematically connects the A-story and the B-story. Both of them give us insight into the lore behind some of the show’s most prominent species. From the mouth of Weyoun 6, we get to hear the supposed origins of his people: a tale of simple forest creatures showing a wounded Changeling kindness and benign elevated for their compassion. We learn about the Vorta’s sense of taste being diminished so that they remain humble and connected to their roots of eating only nuts and berries. And we know that they accept that a predisposition to worshiping the Founders is probably programmed into their code, but they don’t mind, because isn’t that what any god does? (And hey, as with Nog’s theory of cosmological exchange, it's a surprisingly compelling argument!)

More to the point, both stories give us a tale of a true believer, compelled and buoyed by their faith, that their choices will be validated and everything will work out. For Nog, that's “The Great River.” But for Weyoun 6, it’s simply the living deity turned “security chief” sitting across from him in the runabout.

The answer to the question of whether you can trust a Vorta turns out to be, “Yes, when they’re speaking with one of their gods.” In fairness, even then, the Vorta are not above deception when they think it’s for the greater good. We’ve seen another Weyoun infect Odo with a deadly disease, and here, Weyoun 7 rationalizes his way into trying to destroy Odo and hide it from the Female Changeling. But Weyoun 6 is the real deal, and everything he tells Odo is the truth, or at least what he earnestly believes.

What fascinates me about Weyoun 6’s interactions with Odo, and part of what made me suspect all of this was an elaborate deception, is that everything Weyoun 6 says is what Odo wants to hear. Weyoun 6 has the same misgivings about the Founders’ plans Odo does, despite loving them, much as Odo does. He’s turning his back on his people for a larger cause he believes, something Odo can sympathize with. Even Weyoun’s story about the origins of the Vorta reassures Odo that his people can be righteous and kind. You could easily read this as Weyoun 6 lulling Odo into a false sense of trust, only by god, he’s sincere about it all.

So you buy it when Odo reluctantly takes Weyoun 6 as any other prisoner, before steadily buying into the authenticity of his protestations, and ultimately risking his life to protect a Vorta’s. More than that, you buy that he cares about Weyoun 6, that he empathizes with the poor Vorta, that there’s a loyal but conflicted soul, much like himself, in need of assistance that Odo can't help but provide.

Their connection makes it meaningful when, in the end, Weyoun 6 would rather die than let his cause result in the death of one of his cherished gods. It is sorrowful when Weyoun 6 initiates his self-termination device, ending his chance for freedom to earn Odo’s protection. And most of all, it’s moving when all he asks from his shapeshifting benefactor is a blessing.

Odo doesn't’ want to give it to him. He doesn't see himself as a god. He hates this kind of subjugation and programming. He doesn’t want to be elevated over anyone or anything; he just wants to do his job.

But when someone who looks up to you asks for so little, even if it’s something you don’t believe in, how could you deny them? One of the subtlest but most profound moments of growth for Odo is the doctrinaire, rule bound, rigidly moral Changeling bending his personal principles to grant absolution to a dying man who worships him. It is the choice to do the empathetic thing, the sentimental thing, over the principled thing, and that may as well represent a sea change in the constable.

All is not well. Tensions are rising between Cardassia’s leader and the Dominion’s representative. The Founders are suffering from a mysterious disease that may wipe all of Odo’s people out, with the potential to leave him as the last Changeling standing, rendering him alone once more. The Dominion is still knocking on the Federation’s door, threatening to wipe out Odo’s friends and allies.

As another Weyoun famously put it: “gods don’t make mistakes.” But Odo doesn’t know if he did the right thing. Whatever choice he makes, whoever wins this war, something profound will be lost. It is not an enviable position to be in.

And yet, despite it all, he shows compassion even if it doesn’t align with his own beliefs. He grants absolution to a man who wants nothing more, even if he doesn’t believe it’s his to give. In the final tally, he prizes that kind of empathy and kindness, once a nigh foreign concept to the Changeling, even where it makes him uncomfortable to be deified like this. Kira recognizes what it means for him to do all of this for Weyoun 6.

Whether someone like Odo can trust a Vorta remains an open question. But in “Treachery, Faith, and the Great River” it’s made clear -- a Vorta can certainly trust him.

[6.1/10] “Chrysalis” has the wrong protagonist. This should really be Sarina’s episode. I get the writers’ impulse to keep the focus on known characters as the audience’s entree into the story. We know Dr. Bashir inside and out. Sarina barely has any characterization when she’s smuggled back onto the station. So telling this tale of recovery and exploration through his eyes has intuitive appeal.

But Sarina’s story is much more interesting. What it’s like to come out of a catatonic state, what it’s like to encounter the world on your own terms for the first time, what it’s like to feel alienated from your closest friends thanks to the change -- these are all the most fascinating aspects of the story “Chrysalis” tells. Unfortunately, they’re all underdeveloped because the focus here is on Julian’s experiences and not on Sarina’s.

Instead of delving into the wonders and hardships of someone like Sarina reestablishing herself as a person, the episode chooses to focus on...Julian’s romantic attraction to her. And hoo boy, it’s riddled with problems.

For starters, there’s a diamond in the rough coming up, but Julian’s love life has essentially never been an interesting topic on Deep Space Nine. I don’t want to belabor the point, but him pining after Jadzia had long been an exhausting dead end. His single-serving romance with Melora back in season 2 was no great shakes. And his dalliance with Leeta was a sideshow at best. So spotlighting the romantic side of this one, with long gazes and pleas of devotion, is a misaimed inclusion from the start, especially in a story that doesn’t need that element.

Charitably, veteran Star Trek writer René Echevarria aims for something more introspective and nuanced than just “Julian has the hots for another random woman.” The dialogue underscores that Dr. Bashir is lonely. Miles has his wife and kids again. (Which is a little odd, since the danger’s still present on the station, but whatever.) Kira and Odo have paired off. The notion of Julian feeling isolated and wanting something more is sympathetic. Heck, the idea that he long dreamed of meeting another augment who could understand him and engage with him on equal terms is an interesting angle, suited for the misfit energy Deep Space Nine brings better than any other Star Trek series.

But man, choosing to explore that idea here, when there’s a much more interesting story to focus on, is a misfire, and choosing to focus his romantic attentions on Sarina at all is nearly a disaster.

For starters, Dr. Bashir’s attraction to Sarina is creepy on a visceral level. He seems significantly older and more mature than her, which makes the romance angle instantly uncomfortable. Guest star Faith Salie is only five years younger than Alexander Siddig (which, sadly, is pretty good for love interest casting in the 1990s). But given her higher voice, shorter stature, and slighter build, Sarina reads as markedly younger compared to Dr. Bashir.

Maybe it’s just the resemblance between Salie and Allison Brie, but at best, their dynamic plays out like Jeff and Annie from Community, where some on-screen chemistry is buffeted by a gap in age and savvy that makes the pairing uncomfortable.

At worst, though, this is Poor Things. Even if Sarina read as a full-blown adult, Dr. Bashir is not just her doctor, which already creates issues of a power imbalance, but he’s the man who saved her, who she feels like she owes for getting her life back. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for any honest relationship between equals to form under such circumstances, and it makes every romantic interaction between them downright icky.

Now again, being charitable to the show, it acknowledges these things. Chief O’Brien points out the doctor/patient angle (which Julian dismisses off by having his counterpart manage Sarina’s care). And I think ultimately part of the point of the episode is Julian realizing that power imbalance and why it makes their relationship inappropriate and even wrong. But we get a very little of that, and a whole lot of seemingly unreflective, unexamined romanticism between him and Sarina, in a way the episode doesn’t seem to countenance until very late in the game.

Even if you could somehow set aside the fact that Dr. Bashir seems to be taking advantage of some measure of reverse Florence Nightingale syndrome, Sarina has be catatonic and isolated in an institution for her whole life. She often reads as childlike and naive despite her perceptiveness. Nobody would be ready for a romantic relationship in that state. It’s another uncomfortable asymmetry between her and Julian, and frankly, I’d question her ability to consent to anything along these lines under the circumstances. So Julian comes off as a creep who’s taking advantage of someone who doesn’t know any better.

(For fans of The Original Series, it’s the same problem I have with Captain Kirk’s romance with Shahna in “The Gamesters of Triskelion”. Regardless of the age of the actress, Shahna is a slave with a childlike disposition, which makes any amorousness with her feel gross and wrong.)

Meanwhile, every more interesting part of this is rushed past or brushed aside. While I found the “mutants” annoying in their first go-round, the prospect of them banding together to help Sarina, only to have that assistance lead to her leaving them is a pathos-ridden tale worth exploring. We only get glimpses of Sarina learning to speak, to express herself, to experience the world in a way she’s never been able to before, when it should be the main event. And the pain of undergoing a change that enriches your life but alienates you from your family could be rich territory to explore. (Something the lovely but gratuitous choral interlude in this one could serve as a story thread.) Instead, the episode throws in its lot with Dr. Bashir and the whole creepy romance angle.

Now, I was poised to hate this episode because of the way it seemed to champion an unpleasant romance as something wonderful and precious. Thankfully, there is enough self-awareness and pulling back from the brink at the end of the episode to leave it more in firm “dislike” territory.

The finish is muddled, but the gist of it is that ultimately, Sarina feels uncomfortable with their courtship, Dr. Bashir acknowledges it and kinda sorta sees how he’s been imposing his idealized romance on poor Sarina, and how he has, consciously or not, been taking advantage of Sarina feeling like she owes him.

Frankly, that may be giving the show too much credit. This is all very rushed, and even after this acknowledgement and Dr. Bashir choosing to send Sarina to live and work under the care of a different scientist, the two still share a kiss when parting. But it at least seems like the show’s heart is in the right place. You get the pathos for Sarina, shutting down when she feels overwhelmed. You get Julian realizing that he would be taking advantage of her, and even hurting her, if he let things continue. And you even have a tacit acknowledgment of the dangers of projecting your idealized version of a relationship on someone else in a way that ignores the needs and sensitivities of the real person in front of you. (Geordi could have badly used this lesson when he met the real Dr. Brahms back in “Galaxy’s Child”.)

Ultimately, I don’t know quite what to do with that. The show lands in a pretty good place, and writes of Sarina in a way that acknowledges both the vulnerable place she’s in and the true agency she deserves. But it doesn’t fully engage with the creepiness of Dr. Bashir’s approach or the fact he ought to have known better in the first place. On the other hand, there’s something true to life about even a smart and generally noble person succumbing to bad choices and myopia about a situation when they’re in a state of loneliness and perceive something as an escape from it.

Taken at its best, “Chrysalis” leans into the emotional and interpersonal complexity. At worst, it’s a jumbled story that vacillates between feting a distasteful relationship and only acknowledging why it’s wrong in a halfhearted and incomplete manner at the last minute.

All of this could have been avoided if the show just put Sarina front and center, and focused this on her perspective, her first tender steps toward coming into her own rather than on Julian’s misaimed romantic longing. Who you choose to put the spotlight on, whose feelings your story prioritizes and privileges, whose choices and perspective get to drive the action, not only makes a big difference to whether your narrative works, but it also shows where your sympathies lie. At the end of the day, “Chrysalis” seems to want me to feel the most for Julian, when the story I’m most invested in, the one who I feel the worst for, is the young woman he rescues, unwittingly uses, and only belatedly acknowledges as something different and something more than what he wanted her to be.

[6/10] You can only do so many of these “various Disney/Star Wars/Animation Domination characters crossover with one another” specials before the novelty wears off, and all you’re left with is your ability to tell jokes, which...

Suffice it to say, it’s nice enough to see the various moms and kids from across Disney’s corporate umbrella to hang out with one another. But the whole bit about them all going to an intergalactic disney Park and marge getting into a fight with stormtroopers is weak as hell.

There’s a few solid gags. I got a dark laugh out of Bambi’s mom freaking out about the car backfiring, and Eeyore’s comment felt in character. Hell, the best visual gags may have been in the credits. But a lot of the jokes here were tepid at best, and the Stewie Griffin stuff was the pits. There were some bits that didn’t quite qualify as jokes, but which were charming enough, like the reimagining of the Walt Disney statue with Kang, or the cantina band playing “Moon River.”

On the whole, I should just write these specials off as what they are -- ads for a streaming service. But you know, the Simpsons have starred in commercials and promotional materials for years, and the vast majority of them are funnier and more entertaining than this, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect at least a little better.

[3.0/10 on a Selman era Simpsons scale] This was abominable. So as I always try to do when an episode is rough, let’s start with the positives.

I like that The Simpsons is being current! The show isn’t starting the conversation about tipping by any stretch, but the increasing proliferation of tipping opportunities (and nudges) in modern American life is a topic of public conversation, so it’s nice to see the show commenting on something relevant here.

There’s also the kernel of a good idea here. The idea that Homer might lack self worth, get a self-esteem boost when he gets positive reactions to tipping, only to find out that it’s a transactional and temporary form of admiration than anything real or based on who he is, could be a strong emotional throughline. Things don’t turn out that way, but you can see a more grounded and incisive episode where they could be based on this same premise.

On the margins, I like the recurring device where Homer imagines how something will go only to flash to how things go in reality. The choice to use that framework is clever and novel, which you can't say about much in this episode. And in a comedy desert of an episode, there’s a few individual gags that made me chuckle, like Bart’s line about America borrowing things from Europe and making them our own, “like pizza and fascism.”

Which is all to say that “The Tipping Point” is not entirely devoid of positives in conception or craft...which only makes it that much more confounding that The Simpsons released an episode this bad.

The simplest criticism is that “The Tipping Point” has next to no tether to reality. I’m not one who demands that The Simpsons should never go off the wall. Elastic reality gags have been part of the series’ DNA since the beginning. But you need to maintain some connection to reality, to where the characters feel recognizable and the world/situation feel relatable, otherwise it’s hard to care or be even slightly invested in what’s going on.

In contrast, this felt like an episode of Family Guy, which a bunch of random crap happening, built around a very loose skeleton of a plot, and laden with cheap references, over-the-top scenarios, and cardboard cut out characters.

That chiefly extends to Homer, who is fucking miserable here. Again, if you wanted to tell a story of him getting too into the high of a positive reaction when he tips, there’s something there. But turning it into a cartoony addiction, to where he’s breaking into pharmacies to use their tip jar, and bankrupting his family over it, and stalking waitstaff and bounding into industry awards shows is stupid as hell. There’s no hint of humanity to it; it’s just a snootful of cartoony shtick that accomplishes nothing.

And when there is the slightest modicum of humanity involved, it is awful. Homer tipping his family into the poor house is shameful crap. Him stealing from Lisa's piggy bank and giving Bart’s bike away is awful. If you squint, you can kind of see what they’re trying to do, mapping the patterns of addiction onto something seemingly harmless like tipping. But the distance between the two doesn’t gin up much in the way of laughs, so instead we just get scene after scene of Homer being a horrible jerk with not anywhere near enough happening later in the episode to redeem him.

(Poor Marge, who’s reduced to a long-suffering prop here, and instantly forgives Homer after his dumb speech for thin, unsatisfying reasons.)

Some of this might be tolerable if the episode had anything worthwhile to say about tipping culture. This episode is absolutely toothless, throwing out the most tepid observations about prompts to tip, with a minor acknowledgment that it is, of course, a transactional enterprise. Rather than digging into the actual reasons for the increase in tip prompts and service charges, like the show did in season 33’s “Poorhouse Rock”, this episode only offers the most surface level commentary without anything deeper or more incisive and well-observed.

As with “Poorhouse Rock”, maybe the closing song is supposed to be the crowning achievement of social commentary on the topic at hand, but if so, that's just sad.

Which leads to what is, frankly, the most unforgivable sin of “Tipping Point” -- that it features three of the least funny and most jaw-droppingly terrible comedy bits in the show’s history. The truth is that, even if you have a weak story and thin or outright bad characterizations and nothing to say, you can still get by as a Simpsons episode if you can provide a constant font of decent laughs. (Hello fans of the Mike Scully era of the show!) But this episode does the opposite, stringing the audience along with awful jokes, punctuated by a few truly detestable big gags that absolutely crater the episode’s comedy. Let’s take them one at a time.

For starters, what the hell is the Austin Powers parody? It is exceedingly difficult to parody a comedy film, especially one that's already a parody! Transposing Homer into the scene where Austin flounces and flourishes his way around various settings is a big dead nothing. Austin Powers was spoofing the 1960s vibe and aesthetic and created humor and charm from the distance between the supposed greatness of this “badass” double agent and the loony world which he occupied. The Simpsons just deposits Homer into the same kind of sequence, throws in some tepid tipping gags, and calls it a day. It’s just lazy reference humor that goes on forever, and even the animation is shaky, which is not usually a problem for the show’s big sequences. What are we even doing here?

The second, and maybe worst of them all, is the “everything but the tip” gag with Homer and Moe. I don’t know what demented individual on the writing staff thought that doing a simulated sex bit with Homer and Moe over tipping would be anything but quietly horrifying, but for some reason, this exists now, and we just have to live with it. I don’t think it exceeds panda rape or some of the other nadirs of the show’s worst years, but it just stretches on and on and on, with jokes that aren’t funny to begin with and then try what little patience you might have for a passing gag. The bit makes no sense; it’s gross, and there’s nary a laugh to be had.

The third is the closing song featuring the “Planet of the Bass” crew. And look, I like Planet of the Bass! But it’s funny because the parody is specific. It spoofs a very particular kind of European dance pop in a very well-observed way. If you wanted them to do a new song about tipping, I think it could work. But just doing the same Europop song and depositing the world’s tamest gags and least clever lyrics into it, is nothing. Again, the Simpsons song not only completely whiffs on what made the original bit funny, but extends the gag for far too long.

So yeah, an episode like this one is legitimately concerning as a fan of the show. I’ve been so excited to see Matt Selman elevated to be the series’ primary showrunner, and I do think the show’s output has improved since. The baseline is higher, and we’ve had more truly stand out episodes under his short tenure than what we had in Al Jean’s much longer one as solo showrunner. But we’ve also had an increasing number of these complete and total misfires.

If that's the cost of the much better episodes we get -- the show taking a lot of big swings and not all of them connecting -- I can gladly live with it. But “The TIpping Point” was atrocious enough to leave you wondering who on the creative team was asleep at the switch enough to let something this bad get through.

[6.4/10] There is character in Star Trek: Discovery; it just gets squeezed out by action, exposition, more action, the obligatory table-setting, and then for a change of pace, a little more action.

I don’t mind a little high octane excitement in my Star Trek. Even the measured dignity of The Next Generation got into fisticuffs and firefights on multiple occasions. It’s a part of the franchise that goes all the way back to Kirk’s double ax handles on unsuspecting baddies.

But in Discovery’s penultimate episode, it feels like the point, rather than a side dish. As we head into the series finale, I care far more about whether everyone’s connections to one another stand than whether our heroes will inevitably overcome the challenge du jour, let alone the season’s overall arc. But there’s just not as much time for it when the show has to move all the pieces around the board so that they’re ready for next week’s installment, and try to keep the audience’s attention amid explosions and rampant random danger, as its number one priority.

I want to see Stamets and Dr. Culbert feel uneasy about Adira going on their first potentially deadly mission, and for Adira to rise to the occasion. But we can't! We have to spend time escaping from a black hole! I want to see Tilly convince Rayner it’s okay to sit in the captain’s chair, but there’s no time to develop that idea because the away team has to get stuck in a fiery exhaust port. God help me, I even want to see Burnham and Book express their regrets to one another, but we can only have a minute of it because they need to get into a fistfight with some random Breen soldiers.

The one story thread in “Lagrange Point” that gets any room to breathe is Saru and T’Rina’s parting. While the charge between the two of them has diminished somewhat since the show finally pulled the trigger on their relationship, there remains something cute about the quaint little couple. And even as the dialogue sounds stilted, the notion that both understand a devotion to service, since it’s part of their mutual admiration society, to T’Rina would only encourage Saru to seek a diplomatic solution in a dangerous situation, is a heartening one.

Even there, though, the time spent with the couple bouncing off one another is limited because we have to spend so much time with Federation potentates laying out the details of the byzantine situation with Discovery, the Progenitor tech, and two Breen factions so that they don’t have to bother explaining it next week. It is nice to see President Rillak again, and I appreciate that amid so many explosions and deadly situations, we do see some true-to-form attempts at a diplomatic solution. But whether it's in the Federation HQ boardroom, or the bridge of Discovery, or even the Breen warship, there’s so much robotic talk that only exists to get the audience up to speed on what’s happening, and it quickly becomes exhausting.

I get that, especially before a finale, you want to make sure everyone at home and on screen is on the same page. But it contributes to the lack of felt humanity that has, frankly, suffused Discovery since the beginning.

What kills me is that we get pieces of it! Or at least attempts at it! I am quietly over the moon for Adira coming into their own with smarts and courage to help save the day. You can see how much the attaboys mean to them, and Blu del Barrio sells it well. Rayner and Tilly’s grumpy/sunshine dynamic really clicks here, and as extra as Tilly’s dialogue is sometimes, her stumbling line-delivery makes her feel like a real person and not just an exposition-delivery mechanism like so many characters here. As corny as it is, I even like the playfulness we get between Book and Burnham once they’ve rushed through their personal issues and are instantly back to flirting for whatever reason.

Little of this is perfect. The same sterile approach to the aesthetic and lines and sometimes the performances, that's become Discovery’s house style, still weighs the show down. But by god, they’re trying! You catch glimpses of looser, more authentically personal interactions that would help make these characters feel real. (It’s part of what elevates Strange New Worlds despite that show spinning off of Discovery.) Instead, it’s crowded out by all the explosions and narrative heavy-machinery that “Lagrange Point” seems more interested in.

At least we get a good old fashioned wacky infiltration mission. The humor here is a bit zany for my tastes, and considering that this is supposedly a perilous mission the good guys might not return from, there’s rarely any sense of real danger. Burnham and company bluff through most situations with ease, and even when they don’t, the overacting Moll doesn’t kill them or otherwise fully neutralize them the way you’d expect. This is, as T’Pring might say, mainly a dose of hijinks. I like hijinks! But it detracts from the seriousness of what you’re pitching to the audience.

So does going to the well of dust-ups and destruction ten times an episode. Everything comes too easy for our heroes anyway in “Lagrange Point”. But even if it hadn't, even if you don’t just know that everything’s going to work out because the plot requires it to, the grand finale of ramming Discovery into the Breen shuttle bay and beaming the crew and the MacGuffin lands with minimal force. We’ve already seen scads of action and explosions in the first half of the episode, and again, the imagery is sterile and unreal, which makes it harder to emotionally invest. Your big honking set pieces won’t have the same impact if you’ve done something similar in scope and peril every ten minutes or so for no particular reason.

“Lagrange Point” still has some charms. Even though it’s inevitable, Michael and Moll being stuck in some liminal space offers an intriguing endgame. Rayner finding the self-assurance to sit in the big chair again exudes a rousing level of confidence to the crew and the audience. His chance to face his Breen tormentor has just as much promise. Him, Saru, Adira, and more having their minor moments of triumph is all a good thing.

Unfortunately, these gems have to be carefully pried out of a dull firmament full of rote descriptions of events seemingly meant to untangle the convoluted narrative knot Discovery has tied for itself and unavailing action meant to nudge a half-asleep audience awake. It’s all largely watchable, but easy to zone out in explosive set pieces and boardroom scenes alike in between those precious moments of character. All I can hope for is that this is a necessary evil to clear the decks for the series’ swan song, and that once this detritus is out of the way, there will be better things to come.

[6.7/10] Oh my friends, I just don’t know.

I want to like this episode. I really do. Even in the throes of war, your television show can't be all sturm und drang. You need moments of levity. Otherwise, things can easily devolve into a miserable slog. (Hello Walking Dead fans!) As Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender once put it: “This is the kind of wacky time-wasting nonsense I've been missing!”

The tone in “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” is just so broad for most of the episode’s runtime. The situation seems goofy. The station’s denizens seem out of character. Everything just feels wackier. It’s like Deep Space Nine took time out from its busy schedule of the rigors of war and the caprice of the gods to become an ABC family sitcom for an episode.

I can see the appeal of wanting to do The Bad News Bears by way of Star Trek. Taking the ragtag sports team tropes and blending them with outer space chicanery could be a winning recipe. But the funniest episodes in the franchise retain their humanity. This doesn’t feel like Sisko and Kira and the rest of the crew. It feels like our heroes are playing a goofy sports movie for kids, and it’s hard to jibe with that.

The episode’s antagonist, the prickly Vulcan captain, Solak, is a comically outsized prick of a villain. Quark’s out there helping Sisko because...Leeta made a feeble jab at him? We get a cheesy scene where everyone on the team is in the infirmary because Sisko’s been running them ragged. We get cornball sequences of pitches and catches and swings going wildly off the mark. All of it has the vibe of a Disney Channel Original Movie, with the characters more exaggerated, and the whole situation feeling off-brand.

Well, for everyone but Captain Sisko I guess. If there’s one part of this that rings true, it’s Benjamin being so obsessed with baseball that he all but makes his friends play in a game with his honor at stake over it. Avery Brooks goes a little overboard himself, but by god, he’s having fun letting it hang loose a bit, and as comically over-the-top as Sisko’s enthusiasm is at times, Brooks’ performance helps win me over.

Amid the cornball comedy and hammy dialogue, there’s a few legitimate funny moments. The opening bit where Kira, Nog, and Worf try to unravel the byzantine rules of the game is great. Benjamin calling for some on-field chatter to faze their opponents, only for Worf to yell “Death to the Opposition” got me to laugh out loud. And while not “haha” funny, the montage of the crew practicing in their spare time, from Quark catching bar glasses to Odo practicing his home plate calls, has a certain charm to it.

Unfortunately, so much of the build up to the game feels miscalibrated. Despite the overtones of racism and humanity-bashing, Sisko’s rivalry with Solok has the loony feel of Homer Simpson’s resentment toward Ned Flanders. They need somewhere to go with Rom and Sisko, so I get why it happens, but the Captain throwing Rom off the team for a bad at-bat in front of Solok feels out of character. The script goes to the “the rest of the crew doesn’t know baseball’s rules or terminology” again and again. I trust in writer Ronald D. Moore and his long track record of Star Trek success, but at the risk of vagary, the vibes are all wrong here. The characters feel wrong. The tone feels wrong. The attempts at exaggerated comedy feel wrong.

And for chrissake, they bring Kassidy Yates back for this! I like Kassidy. I’m glad to see her. I wish she’d been a more regular presence on the show up to this point. But yanking her back into the series, not to give Benjamin a confidante to process everything he’s been through since they were last together, but rather to help him beat the big bully in a cheesy 1980s high school sports movie, is absurd. The fact that it’s implied he pulls strings to mess with her courrier job so that she’ll be free to help him show up an old rival is the rotten cherry on top.

And yet, once we get to the actual game, business picks up. All of the table-setting and efforts at what I’ll generously call “comedy” fall flat. But once we’re in it, and the game we’ve been building to for half an hour is actually up and running, suddenly “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” shakes off the dust and becomes a good episode.

There is setup and payoff! After a barside chat with Julian about being a “fancy dan”, Ezri catches a fly ball with a backflip, earning the moniker. Kira gets testy with the “Logicians’” (ugh) second baseman in a characteristic bit of gutsy gamesmanship. Nog gets a delightful chance to throw a careless Vulcan out in a wonderful little sequence. Worf strikes out with a full count and a dicey call, leading to an amusing argument with the ump that involves the disbelieving Klingon, his all-in skipper, and a characteristically by-the-book Odo who goes so far as to throw Sisko out of the game.

Where the hell was this the rest of the episode? Suddenly, each sequence is not only entertaining, but full of winning little character moments that feel on point for our heroes. You have to suspend your disbelief a little bit. Rene Auberjonois lets a little New York accent slip in that feels a skosh too much for Odo. Brooks goes a little ham here and there. But it’s fun, in the way that the rest of the hour is desperately trying and failing to be.

The peak of this transformation is Rom. His bumbling clown routine is too much for most of the runtime. But by god, despite this being one of Ronald D. Moore’s lesser lights, he still has an emotional and thematic throughline here, and by god, he’s going to pay it off! Rom isn’t in this for baseball glory; he’s in it to be closer to his son. And Sisko is in it for baseball glory, but ultimately takes his own advice and realizes the game isn’t about winning; it’s about heart. That's what his Vulcan rival lacks, and Benjamin proves it in his actions.

His choice to toss out any chance to win the game, but give Rom his moment in the spotlight, is sweet as hell. Rom bunting by accident when trying to understand his teammates’ signs is admittedly a little broad , but still a charming way to give him his win. And the bumbling Ferengi inadvertently getting the hit that allows his son to score, earning a “That’s my dad” from Nog is as triumphant as anything.

In an episode about a cartoonish vulcan doubter of humanity (hello Enterprise fans), one who thinks that the downfall of non-Vulcans is their emotion, Sisko shows how they can thrive on their sentimentality. There’s a greater triumph in giving a friend a moment to shine than in pure cold strategy. There is a brighter glory in being lifted up by and having a good time with your friends than any competitive outcome. And the camaraderie and commiseration that Solok decries lead to a bar full of amped up patrons giving him a taste of his own medicine and accusing him of getting emotional over their having too good a time in defeat.

The Niners don’t win the game. Sisko doesn’t get his blazing on-field triumph against his longtime rival. But his friends do him one better. They free him of that burden. They say the best revenge is living well. If there’s a better alternative to beating your skeptics, it’s getting to a place where you no longer care about them. This is the gift that Sisko’s friends and family give him on the diamond. He may have lost the game, but he won at life, and Solok can't take that away from him.

I cannot call “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” a good episode. It feels more like a zany extended comedy sketch for a charity show than a legitimate episode of the series. Much of the humor falls flat, and too much of the characterization and tone feel off. But once you get to that last fifteen minutes or so, you’re made of sterner stuff than yours truly if you’re not grinning from ear to ear.

I still want to like this episode. And with the genuine heart and unique form of no less valuable victory we get for Ben Sisko by the end of the hour, by god, maybe I do.

[8.6/10] Sometimes you make the best out of a bad situation. Jadzia’s exit from Deep Space Nine is a mixed bag at best. A demon-infused Dukat magic-blasting her to death played as silly, even in the heightened confines of a sci-fi show. Focusing on Julian and Quark pining after her as the prelude to her demise remains baffling. And Terry Farrell’s exit from the show is much worse, with behind-the-scenes crudeness and arguably bullying that leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

Which is all to say that there can be great poignance and catharsis in killing off a main character. Deep Space Nine earns a measure of it. But it’s still hard to look back with any great appreciation on the departure of Jadzia and the actress who played her from the series.

And yet, I kind of love the arrival of Ezri. I love the ways in which she’s different from Jadzia. I love the thought experiments that her bursting into the Deep Space Nine milieu creates. I love the ways in which the rest of the crew reacts to losing their friend while having to engage with someone who carries on her spirit. Everything here is so rich, in a way that honestly makes me wish that, if Jadzia had to go away for whatever reason, the creative team had pulled the trigger earlier in the show’s run. That way, we would have more time to dig into Ezri’s predicament and her friends’ readjustments. It’s incredible how well this replacement works.

That starts with how the show characterizes Ezri. I’m reminded of the creative team behind MASH (which, come to think of it, has a surprising amount in common with DS9), went about replacing one of its major original characters. Major Frank Burns, the irksome, sycophantic foil to the good-natured cut-ups who led the series, departed the show. In his place, the show brought in Major Charles Winchester (played by David Ogden Stiers of TNG’s “Half a Life” fame). And despite occupying the same place in the series’ orbit, the two characters could not have been more different.

Burns was a crude dummy. Winchester was a sophisticated intellectual. Burns was a hack doctor. Winchester was a talented surgeon. Burns was a twerp who arguably got bullied by the show’s protagonist. Winchester was a nerd who could match wits with him, even when the pranksters managed to get his goat. Both characters served the same function in the series -- as a low-stakes, stiffer and more uptight adversary for the main character. But they contrasted him in different ways, and thus the one never felt like the cheap replacement for the other, just a different spin on a consistent foil that freshened up the dynamic.

Deep Space Nine takes the same approach here. Jadzia was a confident cool girl. Ezri is a nervous dork. Jadzia came in with the self-assurance of multiple distinguished Starfleet careers. Ezri is an ensign and assistant counselor who is just starting out and feels it. Jadzia is someone who came into being joined well-prepared and emotionally ready for the event. Ezri has the joining thrust upon her and is still a ginger and uncertain about the whole thing. Heck, you can even break the distinctions down to something as superficial as Jadzia being tall and Ezri being short.

The contrasts are striking, and those differences allow the show to come at the idea of being a Trill in a new and different way. Beyond that, they allow the writers to tackle what Dax means to her friends and family aboard the station in a new and different way. The possibilities that opens up are endless, and the new depths it allows the show to explore pays so many more creative dividends than introducing another Jadzia-type into the show’s roster ever could.

The most exciting part of Ezri’s emergence may be the differences between her situation from Jadzia’s and how the newly joined Trill’s presence allows the audience to put themselves in her shoes.

Jadzia was someone largely at peace with her past lives. The show still made hay from the turbulence of Curzon’s misadventures or Torias’ regrets or Joran’s psychopathy, but for the most part, Jadzia was someone who drew strength from the symbiont’s memories, rather than felt destabilized by them. Whether it was because she’d been more adequately prepared by the Symbiosis Commission, or just had more time to acclimate to the joining, Jadzia walked into the series premiere fairly self-assured about her situation.

Ezri is the exact opposite, and that's interesting! Past episodes have suggested that becoming joined was a rare and immense opportunity full of responsibility and difficulty. What would it feel like to be a regular Trill, moving about your life as usual, and suddenly be thrust into it without training or preparation, because the alternative is another being’s death? (Hello, Judith Jarvis Thomson fans!) What would it be like to have your mind flooded with eight lifetimes’ worth of preferences that may not jibe with those of the current host? What would it be like to have to harmonize all of these storied memories and experiences with your own limited ones?

We never got a chance to explore that with Jadzia. She came into Deep Space Nine fully-baked, more or less. We get to see the rocky transition with Ezri (and, vague spoilers, her situation lays some groundwork for Discovery), knowing more about Trill experiences and culture that allow the creative team to add meaning and context to what it is to be a member of this unique species.

The imaginative character possibilities that opens up are crucial. The truth is that Terry Farrell wasn’t the best actress in the world when she started on Deep Space Nine. But the strength of the concept of a joined species did a lot of the heavy lifting in the early days of the series that helped buttress Jadzia amid the show’s cast. I like Nicole de Boer’s performance better from the start, and she gets the same benefit -- of an equally fascinating basic situation behind her role that gives her a lift from the jump.

So does the notion of Ezri reconnecting with the various members of the DS9 crew in ways that are both familiar and jarring. The series dug into this idea a bit with Jadzia. One of the core components of her dynamic is having a friendship with Sisko that's complicated by his friendship with Curzon. And the show got great traction from the reentry of figures from Dax’s past -- from old lovers to old enemies to old allies -- and how they affected Jadzia.

The catch is that we didn’t know Curzon. We didn’t know Kor (or at least, not Dax’s relationship with him.) We didn’t know Lenara Khan. We do know Sisko and Worf and Julian and Quark. So seeing a new Dax reconnect with them, have those bonds feel at once familiar and alien, is a richer vein to explore, one that's more visceral for the audience since we were there when those bonds were formed.

You feel for Ezri, not just because she’s in a tender and vulnerable new place, but because she’s immersed in a series of relationships that are supposed to give her comfort, but instead induce a sort of reincarnation motion sickness. (A metaphorical motion sickness to go with her actual motion sickness -- what a concept!) To be frank, you can kind of understand the Trill’s reluctance about new hosts rekindling connections with the important people in the lives of former hosts, given how murky and difficult for Ezri here. The inherent parallax of Ezri’s view of these people It’s a hard thing for her to adjust to, and a difficulty that's doubled by the tragic air that tinges her presence on the station given how Jadzia died.

It’s just as hard for some other members of the crew. As much as Deep Space Nine’s interpretation of Worf is more dickish than his Next Generation incarnation, I’m a sucker for stories about him being a stick in the mud about something, only to relent and see the ways that a softer, more empathetic approach could very well be the right move. His reaction to Ezri, and everything around her, may be the peak of that (give or take some of his tender moments with Alexander in TNG).

What must it be like to lose someone you love, to mourn them, to lay them to rest, and then be faced with the presence of a person who both is and isn’t your dear lost loved one. (Hello Vertigo fans!) It’s too much to call Worf entirely sympathetic here. If anything, he feels like a real jerk. He’s curt with Ezri when she’s already having a rough time adjusting to her new life. He gets jealous and physical with Julian when he has absolutely no right. He rejects the very idea that a piece of his wife lives on in this stranger, and it brings out the worst in him.

But you can also understand where he’s coming from. He has been through the sudden traumatic loss of a mate for the second time. He went to great lengths to make peace with the idea of his wife’s death and earn her place in Sto-vo-kor. Now, he’s confronted with a walking reminder of his loss and what he might consider an impostor.

Grief is rarely fair and linear under normal circumstances. His anger and arguably cruelty is not fair to Ezri or Julian or the others he’s short with, but it is comprehensible. Most importantly, it gives Worf somewhere to go emotionally.

Frankly, my favorite moment in Worf and Dax’s relationship may be right here, where the Klingon’s mighty heart turns upon that piercing question -- how would Jadzia want him to treat Ezri. The way he apologizes to her, opens up to her about his struggles, tells them they’re not her fault and that he is glad his wife lives on her, is moving. He asks for space, and gives Ezri a mere polite nod from across the room. But he is there, in Ezri’s crisis of self and the celebration of her joining the station’s faithful. That is growth and empathy, the kind that Jadzia prized in her beau and which honors her memory. For now, it’s enough.

That's just one of multiple fraught or fascinating interactions Ezri has among Jadzia’s dear friends. Quark is the perfect contradiction: uniquely accepting of Ezri as valid without compunction but also just interested in a second chance with Dax. Julian is kind and compassionate, recognizing that Ezri is a different person, but also strangely compelled by the remnants of his friend. (Though geeze, even with where they’re going, we can't escape the “Jadzia liked flirting with you and if Worf hadn't come along she would have dated you” bullshit.) Even Kira trying not to associate her place of spiritual peace with the loss of her dear friend is complicated by Ezri returning to the scene of her predecessor’s demise.

Then, of course, there’s Sisko. And if there’s anyone who’s instantly at ease with Ezri, it’s him. It makes sense! He’s been here before! He already had to adjust from Curzon to Jadzia, so Jadzia to Ezri is easier having been a party to the transition once already. He can call her “old man” without hesitation, and recognize the challenges of the readjustment, and see the ways that Ezri is both the Dax he knew and a whole different person all at once in a way that's challenging for everyone else.

His dynamic with Ezri opens up the same kind of new opportunities. Curzon was a mentor. Jadzia was a peer. Ezri is someone that Benjamin can guide. Seeing how he relates to three different people, bonded by the same symbiont, is another way for the show to wring new possibilities from what is kind of the same character.

It also gives him a role to play here -- guiding Ezri through the challenging readjustment to life on the station. His is a ploy to get her to stay on DS9 despite the discomfort she feels inhabiting Dax’s old environment. The inertia of network television tells savvy viewers that Ezri will probably stick around, but I appreciate the subtext that Sisko is loath to lose his friend again, and more to the point, that “Afterimage” earns her staying aboard the station. And the perfect fulcrum for that is none other than plain, simple Garak.

Look, I’m in the tank for Garak to begin with, so it’s easy for storylines focused on him to work on me. But I think using him as someone for Ezri to spark off of is perfect for a couple of reasons.

The first and easiest is that you can buy him as someone who, well, needs a counselor. From all the way back in season 2’s “The Wire”, Garak has been through emotional turmoil, despite his unflappable demeanor. Losing his emotionally distant father, being stuck in a POW camp, finding his father alive, losing him again, being forced to become a vindictive murderer, all give him reason to need therapy even before you get to the claustrophobia.

So he provides a clear use-case for Ezri’s talents. On a practical level, Garak’s ability to decode Cardassian cables is necessary for the war effort. On a canon level, his claustrophobia attacks are well-established. On a personal level, he has skeletons in his closet (if you'll pardon the expression) that need unpacking.

With all of that, at a time when Ezri is full of uncertainty and self-doubt, he’s someone who badly needs her help. You can see the young Trill, tentative and uncertain, slyly using her own discomfiting situation to prompt Elim to discuss his. The comparisons she draws between the two of them -- the way emotional hardship can manifest in physical discomfort, the way Tain locking his son in a closet as punishment has parallels to Torias dying in a shuttle accident in how each event leaves lingering scars -- allow her to help the ailing Cardassian. Ezri shows her value, even if she herself doesn’t quite see it yet.

What especially impresses me about veteran Trek writer René Echevarria’s script is how he gives the ebbs and flows and turns of Ezri’s treatment of Garak. If she’d merely given Garak some solace and coaxed him to confront his childhood abuse in a way that got him over his phobia, it would be too pat. Instead, like so many of us, both she and Garak rise and fall. One minute they're beleaguered. The next they’re self-assured. The next they’re having a crisis. The next they’ve found some measure of peace and direction. Their situation is no more a straight line than Worf’s, and it makes their shared experience realer and more affecting.

Therein lies the second reason that Garak is the perfect first patient -- because no one is more adept at slickly and cruelly tearing someone down than DS9’s resident tailor. The cliche goes that hurt people hurt people. So as with Worf, you can somewhat forgive the trespasses of another character who’s suffering his own crisis. But the way he dresses down Ezri in his own lowest moment, confirms every fear she has -- that she’s useless, not good enough, unworthy of carrying on the legacy of Dax -- comes with extra force and poison when it comes out in the form of Garak’s searing invectives.

So you buy it when Ezri is crestfallen and ready to give up entirely. You buy it (admittedly, with some reservations) when Sisko gives her some tough love, knowing his friend will bounce back. You buy it when Worf gives her the boost she needs right when she needs it most. And you buy it when she’s there for Garak when he finally feels ready to admit what the true source of his pain is.

I love the reveal that what’s eating Garak is not the ghosts of his terrible treatment by his father (or at least not entirely), but rather, the acute sense that he’s a traitor to his people. Despite his exile, Garak has always fancied himself a patriot. He lamented to Julian the pain of being forbidden from his homeland. He was aghast at the Female Changeling’s pronouncement that there were no Cardassian prisoners taken in their attack. He has his criticisms of the regime and his foes like Dukat, but by god, Garak loves his people.

And he’s killing them.

Ezri’s right. He’s doing a good thing, one that would likely spare the lives of more Cardassians than sitting idly by while the Dominion sinks its claws into his homeland. But you can understand why he would feel like he’s a traitor, a handmaiden to annihilation, someone with Cardassian blood on his hand. The source of his pain is more than a pop-psychology fig leaf; it’s an on-brand longing and woundedness at the heart of the character and his connection to his people.

To have Ezri provoke that, help him through it, get him started on the right path toward confronting his feelings and so being able to address them, shows that she does have a place on Deep Space Nine, as a counselor and a friend. Garak’s situation is a challenge that, for all her kindness, Jadzia couldn’t have handled it. She wasn’t trained for it, and I don’t think her disposition was particularly suited for it either. Ezri, however, is the right Trill for the job. Unknownst to Garak, he needed her, and she needed to know that. She needed to know that she could be a different, but no less valid or valuable denizen of the station.

That is the truth on multiple levels. She may not be a science officer, but as Sisko notes, in the throes of war, a counselor is more than called for on the station. She may not have years of friendships with Benjamin and Kira and the rest of the crew, but she can occupy a different, no less vital place in these people’s lives. And Ezri may not have been a character since Deep Space Nine’s premiere, but in the hands of de Boer and the writing staff, she still has a crucial role to play in the final year of the series’ mission.

[7.7/10] Family is complicated. That feels like the abiding theme of X-Men ‘97 and this season finale especially. Magnus balks at Charles calling him “brother” and strains to remember his parents’ faces. Xavier challenges his old friend on the basis of Magneto attacking his “children”. Bastion plays the part of the unwanted child, resentful of the would-be father who didn’t take him in, and spouts rhetoric about the family that can't save one another simply being a suicide pact. Cyclops, Jean, and Cable reconcile as an unusual but no less tightly-knit family in unfathomable circumstances. And Scott in particular makes peace with the mistakes of his fathers, both his bio dad and his surrogate dad, and shows what he’s inherited from them by inviting a prodigal son into this motley but marvelous family of mutants, despite everything.

The idea of the found family is not a new one. You only need to look as far as the Fast and Furious franchise to see how it can be sanded down and made facile. But there’s a deeper, more powerful version of it at play in the conclusion to the “Tolerance Is Extinction” trilogy. This finale seizes on the idea that family bonds can be painful, even traumatizing, but that with people united under a shared dream and a shared solace, they can not only remind us of who we are, but spur us to become our best selves.

That is an enervating and worthwhile notion. There’s just one problem -- I’m indifferent at best to almost everything involving Bastion.

Everything involving him feels kind of pointless and exhausting. For one thing, he has that endless, Final Fantasy-style “You haven't even seen my final form!” syndrome. First Phoenix beats him. Fine, sure. But then somehow that's not enough, and he absorbs Cable’s arm which makes him the uber-powerful “Future Incarnate” somehow. Alright, I guess? And then the X-Men just keep wailing on him and wailing on him and wailing on him to no effect. All of it’s pretty unavailing.

Maybe it would feel different if I hadn't just watched the original X-Men series last year, but I’m already kind of tired of writers using the Phoenix as a narrative “get out of jail free” card whenever Jean or the team is in mortal danger. The abilities feel extra cheap when the awesome impact of the Phoenix Force is apparently enough to shatter some part of Bastion, sever his connection with his global sentinels, and short out their cyber-brains, but also leaves Bastion himself fairly unscathed. Oh, and of course, it’s then just gone, which also feels cheap.

There is at least some poetry and closure that comes from Phoenix stripping Mister Sinister of his mutant DNA and returning him to his true decrepit state. Between the story of Sinister’s backstory from the original show, and the cruel experiments he’s done on the likes of Jean, Scott, Nathan, and Morph, subjecting him to the same kind of genetic manipulation to hasten his downfall feels like his just deserts. So at least some good comes from this deus ex machina solution to Bastion’s having half our heroes in his grasp. And charitably, the idea that what spurs Phoenix is Jean’s devotion to her son has some juice to it.

But from there, everything involving Bastion is kind of a yawn. He monologues and monologues and monologues. By god, we got enough purple prose out of him in the last four episodes to last a lifetime. Some of it is solid or cutting enough, but you can only hear that kind of sermonizing for so long before it gets tiresome.

Even the fight, which has been a strength of X-Men ‘97 to date, isn’t as engaging as I might like. Yeah, Rogue taking her vengeance from Bastion on Gambit’s behalf is cool, but it doesn’t really amount to any damage to the bad guy. Sunspot coming into his powers and using them on Bastion is a theoretically nice moment of self-actualization, but it barely fazes the bad guy. (Roberto rescuing Jubilee is much more meaningful in my book.)

Jubilee calls him a sleazoid and blasts him with fireworks, and it does nothing. Cyclops blasts him with his eye beams, and it does nothing. Nightcrawlers teleports and slashes at him, and it does nothing. Beast and the other half of the X-Men squad show up and crush him with a hollowed out sentinel and...it messes up Bastion’s face a little.

What is the point of any of this? I guess if you want to sell the idea that Bastion is one tough cookie, this does it. But there’s not the sense of rousing catharsis to the X-Men coming together to take on this guy, because every attack feels fruitless, and yet they seem no less enthused or triumphant, which creates an odd dissonance. The whole fight is overblown and full of action-heavy wheel-spinning, without the sense of progress or triumph that really ought to come from toppling, or at least stymying, the season’s Big Bad.

I’m of two minds about what happens next, when our heroes seem to have Bastion on the ropes, and rather than finishing him off, Cyclops invites him to join the family. On the one hand, it feels impossibly stupid. The guy aimed to commit genocide. You’ve barely been able to stop him, and it’s come at tremendous risk and even greater cost. You just spent the last twenty minutes beating up on the guy, so why relent now?

And yet, the X-Men franchise in all media, and the 1992 animated series in particular, has often been more aspirational than realistic. The grim depictions of prejudice and societal distrust are often balanced by notions of faith in others and the belief that change is possible. While I kind of question the logic of the choice in reality, there may be no greater sign that Cyclops is ready to lead the X-Men than him adopting his mentor’s mentality that anyone can be reached, and with the right family, can be made whole again.

So then it’s awfully convenient that Cyclops gets to make that noble choice and Bastion gets destroyed anyway. In keeping with Bastion’s sneering oratory, I like the idea that for all the X-Men’s optimism, humanity still sees them as unwanted children and launches nukes at Asteroid M out of a fear that Magneto’s gone mad. Even a sympathizer like President Kelly, who is admittedly in a tough position, will use the most terrible weapon known to we mortal men on mutants when humanity is threatened. (Over the objections of Captain America and Black Panther no less!

But there is something awfully convenient about Cyclops and company getting to be the noble good guys, and their devilish foe being eliminated anyway, albeit by the random actions of a third party rather than choices made by our heroes.

So why do I still enjoy this one so much? Well for one, pretty much every piece of the material involving Professor X and Magneto is gold.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for these “theater of the mind”-type conversations. I’m a sucker for the rocky but unshakable bond between Charles and Magnus. I’m a sucker for the inevitable clashes between their worldviews. I’m a sucker for mutual journeys where one friend helps another emerge out of great hardship and great pain. This is all basically catnip for me.

That mix between conflict and devotion gives their every interaction a certain charge. Starting with what is essentially a flashback to one of their earliest meetings, with Xavier ever the optimist who imagines how mutant powers might better the world, and Magnus ever the cynic, fearing another term in the camps, comes with an early electricity. They essentially come out to one another. And when the scales fall and Magneto realizes it’s a ruse, the debate continues, extended to recent events, and whether they mean a new possibility for humanity or a final insult that requires saying goodbye and letting the chips fall where they may.

In Xavier’s trademark style, he tries to stop Magneto, but also saves him. Charles binds their fates together, delving into his friend’s mind so that he can unwind the degradation of the magnetic poles that Magneto unleashed, but also making it so that if he doesn’t repair Magnus’ psyche in the process, at least enough to help him remember who he really is, that Xavier will perish too. That is self-sacrifice, in the form that's familiar in the world of the X-Men (as we saw from Gambit, see from Cyclops, and as Scott himself mentions, have seen from Jean repeatedly). But it is also devotion, a relentless commitment to a purpose and an ideal that Charles has long held dear, but more so to a friend whom he’s long held dearer.

That's the other interesting throughline in all of this -- there is a romantic undertone to all of Charles and Magnus’ interactions in part three of the “Tolerance Is Extinction” triptych. Xavier wraps his arms around Magneto and says, “I have you, Magnus; I’ll always have you.” The two of them coming out to one another as mutants plays like a metaphor for them coming out otherwise. And there is a familiarity, a devotion, that toes the line between what can be shown on Disney+ and what is intimated for the audience. I doubt it’ll go anywhere, but it’s interesting subtext to include.

So is what we get from the rest of the mutant crew. Nightcrawler speaks of Xavier’s vision through his own religious lens, with the show isolating the part of The Lord’s Prayer that discusses forgiving others’ trespasses and being forgiven for them oneself. Cyclops and Jean returning to say goodbye to their son, and Cable telling his parents that the old legends don’t do them justice tugged at my heartstrings. Morph turning into Jean to provide solace to a dying Logan while also expressing his true feelings is all kinds of complicated, but also moving.

(And not for nothing, we see frickin’ Peter Parker and Mary Jane(!!!) of Spider-Man: The Animated Series vintage, in the crowd reacting to all of these proceedings.)

In the final tally, the X-Men are willing to give their lives to save humanity, That is Professor X’s legend and legacy. After everything, after being nearly destroyed by a madman from the future, and after being nearly nuked by the humans who fear them, they still try to save the world. Whatever else Charles has done, he instilled those values in his children, that optimism and altruism in equal measure, that bears out in even the most extreme circumstances, bound up in a dream of a better world.

It is that dream that makes them family. He reminds Magnus of who he is, of how he can have a family despite the tragic loss of his parents, about how dark waters can bring us together, and how that wish for something more, for your own people and the world, can weave you together into something more as well. It revivifies his old friend, and there may be no more rousing moment in the whole damn series than Magnus emerging into the sky, declaring “Magneto lives”, and using his powers to save the day.

Even those who are lost can be rediscovered. Even the maligned and the damned can be redeemed. Even the ones whose identities are lost and whose connections are severed in a torrent of anguish and indignity can be restored and reborn, in the bonds of something greater. Magneto, Professor X, and the unusual, uncanny, unparalleled family they have forged together is proof of that.

I’ll admit to not caring much for the tease of Apocalypse in the past and young Nathan in the future. But so it goes with these types of comic book stories. The next adventure always awaits, as it must.

But for now -- Bastion or not, Magneto as friend or foe, human or mutant or future hybrid -- X-Men ‘97 still ends its inaugural run on a high note, with a tribute to parents and children, and more importantly a dream that holds them together -- in a season that met and in some places far surpassed the original. A late revival like this had no business being this good, and even in a finale I had serious problems with, what I loved managed to far outweigh what I didn’t. Family remains complicated. The X-Men stories remain convoluted. But in the right hands, and with the right people, both can still be great.

[7.2/10] Libraries are cool. Mindscapes are cool. Inventively-dramatized journeys of self-discovery are cool. The main project of “Labyrinths”, the last episode of Discovery before we (presumably) dive into the Progenitor tech isn’t perfect, but it’s an engrossing, individual story that works on its own merits. The same can't be said for the narrative piece-moving and unavailing bad guy shit that surrounds it.

So let’s start with the good stuff. The Eternal Gallery and Archive may very well be the coolest setting Discovery has introduced. Like most Star Trek fans, I am a giant nerd. So the prospect of an enormous intergalactic library, replete with stacks and stacks of artifacts and knowledge from across the galaxy has a real wish-fulfillment factor to it. As with the Federation library known as Memory Alpha, and even the wild alien library in 1969’s “All Our Yesterdays”, there’s something neat about the idea of a repository of knowledge floating around in space somewhere.

But I also like the conception of this particular knowledge base. The sense of the Archive as a neutral territory, full of committed but quirky caretakers, gives it a real character beyond simply being some random book storage facility. Archivist Hyrell in particular is a pip, giving you this sense of being bubbly but deadly. The way she and her cohort seem earnest about the mission of this place, but also just a bit off, makes it a neat backdrop for Discovery’s adventures, and one of the show’s most memorable locales.

Not for nothing, I’m almost as much of a sucker for a “journey into the mind” episode as I am for a “let’s go visit an ancient library with crucial knowledge” episode. (Hello again, Avatar: The Last Airbender fans!) In truth, Star Trek has a spotty track record with those “inner journey” installments. For every “The Inner Light”, there’s an episode where Dr. Bashir encounters rote representations of his psyche, or worse yet, Captain Archer has bad dreams in sick bay.

Still, the chance to get a little more impressionistic, use the sci-fi conceit to dig into what makes our characters tick, is always welcome despite that. In this case, I like the notion that the Betazoid scientist, as much as any of them, would be focused on the emotional well-being of the seeker of the Progenitor tech, makes sense. While the little morals at the end of the other quests have seemed pretty facile, the notion that the scientists who hid the technology would want whoever possesses it to be centered and self-aware, not just skilled and resourceful, adds up.

In truth, the exploration of Burnham’s mind, represented by the library, when she’s ensnared by the scientist’s little device, feels a bit shaggy in places. There’s not really a sense of build: from Michael’s attempts to use the card catalogue, to her maze running experience, to her angry recriminations at her guide, to her eventual epiphany and confession. The sense of momentum isn’t quite there.

But in the show’s defense, I think that's kind of the point. Burnham sees this as just another problem to be solved, just another mission, when she needs to look inward. Having the audience share her frustration by watching her problem-solving methods amount to nothing is a risky move, but I think it pays off in the end. We get invested in the cockamamie solutions just as much as Burnham does, which makes it easy to feel like we’re being toyed with in the same way that she is.

What helps keep the interest and fun quotient up is an amusingly arch incarnation of Book, who livens the experience. I’ll confess, I’ve gotten kind of tired of Book. I’m not particularly invested in his relationship with Michael; I’m even less invested in his relationship with Moll, and his efforts to make amends for his actions last season are good in theory, but a little perfunctory in practice.

“Labyrinths” is a reminder that these problems with the character are the creative team’s fault, not David Ajala. He has a real presence as an actor, and you see it in the wry, almost sardonic tone he takes as the Betazoid program guide who shepherds Michael along through the various clues. It’s a fun, less labored edge than we normally get from Book, and if anything, he plays off Michael better in that guise than when they’re supposed to be familiar confidantes.

The icing on the cake comes in the scene where Book sees a Kwejian artifact the Archive has been holding onto, and is visibly moved to see it again. It’s a reminder that Book may not be the greatest character, but Discovery’s still lucky to have Ajala on the team.

In the same vein, I think my favorite element of the episode is how willing the creative team is to let Sonequa Martin-Green carry the main story of the episode on her own. In truth, Bunrham’s epiphany is no great shakes. Her admission that she has a fear of failure, of letting her friends and loved ones down, a guilt over having perhaps let Book down, is solid but trite. You can see how a daughter of Sarek would grow up with a “not good enough” complex, with insecurities about whether people will still appreciate her if she’s not able to succeed at what she sets out to do. It turns some subtext into text, and it’s not groundbreaking, but it shows understanding of the character below the surface level, and it makes sense that self-knowledge, down to fears and guilt, would be a core feature of how the scientists would deem somebody worthy of their prize.

But the coolest part of the whole damn thing is that they just let Martin-Green roll with it. Normally for these big speeches, there’s swelling music, and a dozen reaction shots, and all the tricks of the cinematic trade to puff them up. Here, the music is low or absent entirely. The majority of it is unbroken, unshowy shots of Burnham at the table. And the core of the scene comes through in the performance. Here is the show’s star, allowed to build to this critical self-insight for the character, unadorned with anything but her own strength as a performer. Martin-Green does a good job with the material, and more than anything it’s nice to see Discovery go back to the essentials for such a pivotal moment for Michael.

It’s a shame, then, that pretty much everything else in the episode is meh-to-bad. In the meh department, Rayner, Book, Dr. Culber and the rest of the crew trying to solve the problems in the real world comes off like narrative wheel-spinning. This is modern Star Trek, so it’s not enough for Burnham to be going on this odyssey of the mind. Instead, she has to be subject to a “If you die in the Matrix, you die in real life” conceit, and the Breen are bearing down on the Archive, and Discovery has to hide in the badlands (hello Maquis fans!).

Again, none of this is outright bad. A ticking clock is not a bad thing in Star Trek. And standard issue as the setup may be, at least the B-team gets a little time to shine this season, with Commander Rhys manning the con. But the breathless declarations of who needs to be saved, and FPS-style combat with the Breen, and last second getaways all play like the usual block and tackle from Discovery at this point in its run.

What is bad is the business with Moll and the Breen. Look, I get that not every enemy species has to be some misunderstood alien race who are Not So Different:tm: than humanity. But without Dominion allies, the Breen are a bunch of boring boogeymen who do nothing but growl and grunt and fire on underpowered foes. Seeing Ruhn and his ilk roar about avenging the scion and destroying their enemies gets old fast. Right now, they’re about one step above Saturday morning cartoon villains by way of depth and intrigue. (And I’m not talking about the underrated Star Trek: The Animated Series.)

The only thing less availing is Moll. Look, the show does its best to explain why a random human could become the leader of a Breen faction. Her nursing a claim that she’s the wife of the scion, and seeding the idea that Ruhn doesn’t care about his subordinates is something, I guess. But it plays as awfully convenient that the xenophobic Breen would follow Moll into battle. And the performer continues to be unconvincing in her ability to make Moll seem like a tough-as-nails manipulator who could pull this sort of thing off.

The villain of the season just needs an army to make the race to the final clue more dangerous, so she gets one, whether it makes sense or not. Throw in the fact that the show’s aesthetic and design choices make it seem like the Breen warriors have been copied and pasted onto a big screen saver, and you have the antagonistic half of the show underwhelming to an annoying degree.

What can you say? Even as it nears its end, Discovery has potential. When it leans into inviting settings, inventive character explorations, and more stripped down approaches to exploring the meaning of this mission and Burnham’s personal journey, you see the promise that's always been there. When it breaks down into being a weekly action movie full of snarling and/or unconvincing villains, you see what’s long held it back. Hopefully the final leg of the mission will embrace more of the coolness at the core of an episode like “Labyrinths”, and less on the eyeroll-worthy junk on the edges of the story.

[7.1/10] We’re back with the same three storylines we had in the season premiere! At base, I feel the same way about them as I did in “Image in the Sand”. Sisko’s is kind of bad and vaguely problematic. Worf’s is solid, if a bit off tonally. Kira’s is great and a wonderful tribute to how far she’s come. Let’s take them in the reverse order we did for the prior episode.

I low key hate the Sisko storyline here, for multiple reasons. The simplest of them is this -- the wormhole closing is a big deal. We should get to see the consequences of it for more than two episodes. Deep Space Nine backtracked on Odo becoming a solid too, but at least we spent a little more time with him in his new state, and truly earned his return transformation. With barely any time for the absence of the wormhole to matter, boom, it’s back up and running again. The quick flip and seeming expulsion of the Pah-wraiths retroactively makes the grand tragedy of last season’s finale suddenly feel very cheap.

But if they were going to open it up again, at least it could be some kind of important spiritual and personal journey for Benjamin! Instead, he’s basically possessed. He goes where he’s told. Dax throws a baseball. He digs and finds the orb. The end. There’s no real personal or moral stakes to it. It’s an almost mechanical solution to a mechanical problem, and one that Captain Sisko does very little to earn.

The closest you can say is that his opening the chest containing the heretofore unknown orb of the Emissary, a narrative Ctrl + Z that allows the writers to summarily undo their big event from the finale, is a big choice from Benny Russell. And hoo boy, I don’t know how to feel about that.

Look, I love “Far Beyond the Stars”. But the part I’ve always had the biggest reservations over is the idea that the events of Deep Space Nine we’ve witnessed for the last several seasons are all just in Benny Russell’s head. As I wrote in my review of his original episode, there is something powerful in the idea that a Black person living under Jim Crow, shattered by the injustices of the system under which he suffers, needs his dreams of a better world to sustain himself. But the more you literalize that scenario, the more you suggest that “none of this is real”, the more you cheapen the in-universe story you’ve tried to tell for the last six years.

Now I want to be charitable. As someone who’s enjoyed elliptical works as varied as Twin Peaks and the Kingdom Hearts series, there can also be power in blurring the lines between a character’s typical reality and what is ostensibly a dream or other plane of existence. The only choice in this storyline that has any power is Benny Russell choosing to continue telling his stories, so I can't say the episode would be better off without it. I won’t pretend there isn't something compelling about the question of whether Benjamin Sisko is a figment of Benny Russell’s imagination, or the other way around, with Sisko’s Prophet-addled mind creating some kind of framework to process his own spiritual indecision or temptation around opening the magic box.

But I don’t know. There is still a novelty to seeing Casey Biggs (Damar) out of his Cardassian makeup. And I know we haven't seen the last of Benny Russell. But part of me wishes the writers had left well enough alone with “Far Beyond the Stars” and not returned to the headtrip concepts that worked best as a standalone story, instead of muddying the waters of whether what we’re watching is “really” happening, or just a story within a story. That tack can quickly start to feel convoluted and ponderous, and more to the point, sap the events we’re seeing of their stakes.

Let’s also mention the good in the story, though. Once again, Avery Brooks does a superb job. His obsession with finding the Orb of the Emissary, and spiritually-induced disregard for his friends and family in the process, is scary, in a good way. It calls to mind the scene of relentless obsession mixed with domestic strife of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and here, as there, has echoes of real life mental breaks suffered by loved ones. Sisko sells the paroxysms of both Benny and Benjamin well enough to almost make this cockamamie plotline work, and it’s a highlight.

The other big highlight is Ezri. She’ll have her day in the limelight soon enough, so I’ll save my extensive comments about her for later outings. But suffice it to say, both Nicole de Boer and the writers walked into an impossible situation with the departure of Jadzia/Terry Farrell, and somehow came up with a new Dax who seamlessly fills the space of the last Trill officer while being a completely different person. It shouldn't work at all, let alone as well as it does. How easily Ezri slots into the ongoing storytelling and character work may be the most impressive part of this episode and maybe the season.

Those positives aside, I hate hate hate the revelation that Captain Sisko’s secret bio mom was actually just possessed by a Prophet who intentionally gravitated Sarah toward Joseph Sisko to produce Benjamin. As with the wormhole, it turns something mystical and mysterious into something mechanical and literal, and the show is worse off for it.

I never needed to know why Ben Sisko was the Emissary, let alone the process of how. I ragged on Twin Peaks a bit in my write-up for the previous episode, but if there’s one thing that show did right, it's to convey a sense that the gods or demons or other spiritual forces are inscrutable and unknowable. Deep Space Nine is a rough contemporary of that series, and seemed to follow the same tack. As Odo once complained, the Prophets aren’t exactly clear in their messages, and sometimes their methods and aims stretch beyond the cryptic into the opaque.

I like that! Their crypticness can be frustrating sometimes, but it conveys a certain distance between us “corporeals” and these beings who live a separate kind of existence. They feel truly alien, genuinely apart, in a way that Q and the Organians and all the other god-like-beings our Trekkian heroes have run into over the years don’t necessarily. If you’re going to have a show where divine intervention happens on the regular, keeping those gods metaphysically separate from our human affairs, to the point that their wants and wishes are almost unrecognizable, helps prevent their involvement from feeling like a deus ex machina answer to all our heroes’ problems.

Instead, one of them intentionally boinked Benjamin’s dad to produce the Emissary. Why is that necessary? Not to go all Rise of Skywalker with my criticisms, but I liked the idea that there was a certain randomness to Captain Sisko being the Emissary. He’s not Bajoran. He hasn’t led an especially Starfleet career before boarding Deep Space Nine. He’s shown no prior signs of having magic powers or a special connection to the supernatural.

Instead, he just happens to be the right man for the job, both of running the station and being a spiritual focal point for Bajor. The idea that it could have been anybody, and somehow ended up being Benjamin, simply because he rose to the occasion with a strength he didn’t know he had, is a moving idea. The apparent randomness of it is a big part of what gives that blessing and curse its power.

Now, instead, it’s just a quirk of biology. Now, it’s just a bog standard ploy from some hidden god. Now, it is knowable and definable, in a way that trivializes it and takes away much of the mystique. No one ever asked for a technical explanation of how Benjamin became the Emissary. That's not a mystery that needed to be solved. And answering the question detracts from, rather than adds to, the mythos of the series by bringing it down to the level of mortals’ schemes.

The final kick in the pants is that the reveal that Benjamin’s warning from last season -- that he is “of Bajor” and thus probably shouldn't lead the invasion of Cardassia -- was a “false vision” from the Pah-wraiths, rather than a real invocation from the Prophets. Again, why? Why is this something we needed?

As with the presto change-o wormhole switch, it completely neuters the sense of tragedy from last season’s finale. Captain Sisko being torn between his duties as a Starfleet officer and his mystical obligations as the Emissary has long been a strong motif in Deep Space Nine. Benjamin picking the Starfleet side of that and paying a spiritual cost for it is good storytelling.

By contrast, him choosing a side, and it turning out to be the right call because the other side was just trying to trick him the whole time, is cheap and unsatisfying. It magically turns Ben’s wrong into a right, which is way less interesting than him making an error in judgment and having to build himself back up through the wreckage of its consequences. “You were right all along, but for reasons you didn’t even have the faintest inkling of,” does not make for good drama. I can't adequately express my disappointment with the way “Shadows and Symbols” does so much to undo the strongest choices from “Tears of the Prophets”, if not the whole series. It’s really that problematic from a storytelling perspective.

Other than that, Mrs. Karidian, how was the play?

Well, the rest wasn’t bad! The other two storylines have their merits, and if they weren’t paired with an arc-wrecking plot thread, this episode might easily saunter into “very good!” territory.

The Worf material is generally strong. Once again, the overall concept of Jadzia and Worf’s friends banding together, both to honor Jadzia’s memory and help Worf, is heartwarming. Worf feeling affronted by his friends’ presence given their status as rival suitors, only to get another wise pep talk from Martok (pep-Mar-talk?) and turn around to tell Quark, Miles, and Julian how much they meant to Dax is lovely. And Worf completing his mission, saying a prayer in his wife’s name, and finally achieving some peace is cathartic.

Unfortunately, we run into some of the same tonal problems from the prior episode. It’s hard to take this material as seriously as it deserves to be when there’s a layer of goofiness over the interactions between and among Worf, Julian, Miles, and Quark. And why-oh-why are we still doing the “pining after Dax” thing with Quark and Dr. Bashir at this stage? It should have been left behind in season 1, to be frank. And it weakens Worf’s character arc because he has a right to be mad if they’re framing their devotion to this cause in the guise of “Gee, I wish I’d gotten to schtup Dax.” It’s an odd tack to take for what is, on paper, a strong narrative and emotional throughline.

A much more minor complaint is that destroying a Dominion shipyard by triggering a sunburst doesn’t seem like the kind of glorious battle that would earn dead Klingons a place in Sto-vo-kor. But they do eventually get into a desperate skirmish with the Jem’Hadar, which seems close enough to pass muster, even if it’s convenient that the same solar explosion that wrecks the Jem’Hadar ships leaves Martok’s ship completely unscathed. A little perfunctory, but good enough for me under the circumstances.

(As an aside, remember when Jem’Hadar vessels absolutely wrecked a galaxy class starship like it was nothing? Now two of them can't seem to handle a single Klingon ship. Maybe we can credit the proximity to the sun’s surface or something.)

Connected to the skirmish with the Jem’Hadar, I realized that I’d neglected to mention the continuing adventures of Weyoun and Damar. The idea that Damar has taken to drinking, to womanizing, to barely listening to his Dominion supervisor, is an intriguing development. I remain continually impressed at how much shading Deep Space Nine gives to practically every character, and seeing more dimension in Damar is of a piece with that approach.

Jeffrey Combs’ Weyoun shines in every scene as always, and the suggestion of infighting and mistrust among the Dominion and its Alpha Quadrant allies is a promising story thread. As much as I dislike the wormhole just popping back open like it was nothing, the threat of Dominion ships coming back through the wormhole to change the balance of power adds an ominous tone to everything else going on.

That just leaves Kira’s story which, once again, is great. “Shadows and Symbols” aptly continues the tense dynamic from the last episode. The sense of this as a game of chicken between Kira and Cretak, with both waiting for the other to blink, builds tension like gangbusters. I particularly appreciate the way we cut between the two of them -- Kira being counseled by a supportive but apprehensive Odo, Cretak being talked down by a concerned Admiral Ross -- that shows the parallels between them and makes each seem like formidable players. The question of whether Kira will risk personal destruction or Cretak will risk damaging the Federation alliance puts a lot at stake in the personal standoff.

I like where it lands. Kira is as steely as ever. Her history as a rebel and a Bajoran partisan gives her the credibility for opponents to think that she’s crazy enough to fire on any ship trying to run her blockade. And I love the fact that the wormhole reopening is, implicitly, taken by her as a sign from the Prophets that she’s doing right and protecting Bajor. It’s the kind of vaguer intervention I can appreciate. And it’s nice to see this as the final consecration for Kira as a leader, proof that she has not just the mettle but the discernment to sit in the big chair, make the hard calls, and win the day. Once again, you love to see it.

And I’ll say this much. From a production standpoint, as much as shake my head at the Sisko business, the show makes great hay from adopting the Return of the Jedi approach and cutting between three different climaxes at the same time. On their own, Worf and company fighting off some Dominion goons and Sisko opening a box isn’t that big a deal. But mashing it up with Kira’s standoff, letting the tension rise before jumping to another vantage point, lets each storyline draft off the other and helps give the sense of these moments as one grand crescendo rather than three distinct plots. The results are legitimately thrilling.

Now we’re back to normal. Sisko is back on DS9, with his two-episode absence making his departure seem less interesting, but with his comrades having risen to multiple challenges without his guidance. The status quo is king, even in 1990s Trek’s boldest and most serialized series. Give or take a new Dax to shake things up.

I want to say the future is bright. Her arrival means a great reshaping of the dynamics among our heroes. Kira has a supportive partner and is more than ready to rise to the occasion. The rest of the crew has come together in the toughest of times, and Sisko is back where he belongs. The Dominion War rages on, but everyone’s where they ought to be, give or take Jadzia,

But when the show dips into the mythos it’s been building for six seasons, and fumbles it this hard, there’s reason for pause. In DS9 we trust. Six years of quality have earned that. But despite being solid enough, these two inaugural episodes of the final season are not an auspicious start.

[7.1/10] “Image in the Sand” is not one of *Deep Space Nine”’s better season premieres. Which is a shame! This is the last one it’ll have! And they’re normally reliably good episodes, as the writers try to start the new season off with a bang.

“Image in the Sand” is more of a hangover. And I like that, in principle. A ton of major things (no pun intended, given Kira’s promotion) happened in “Tears of the Prophets” last season. Spending time to show us the fallout from that, rather than just racing on to the next adventure, is a worthwhile approach, one befitting Deep Space Nine’s character-focused tack and increasing serialization.

But the season 7 premiere gives us three story threads to follow from last season’s dramatics: the first is engrossing and well-done, the second is promising if a little cheesy, and the third is necessary, but frankly kind of bad in a way that surprised me for Deep Space Nine.

Let’s start with the good. Kira is a colonel now! In the three months since Sisko’s departure, she’s firmly stepped into the leadership role for the station. She has the big chair, she interfaces with Starfleet and the Romulans and, of course, her uncharacteristically effusive head of security. And in many ways, this episode is her coming out party. The story establishes her as a force to be reckoned with, not just as a one-time rebel turned officer, but as a capable leader and operator within these various spheres of influences.

I like that a lot! It never struck me when I was watching Deep Space Nine live, but over the course of the series, Kira arguably grows and changes more than any other character on the show. Seeing her go from a recalcitrant and rebellious liaison, to committed member of a mixed-nationality crew, to deserving leader of the whole shebang is one of DS9’s best character arcs.

We see that through her dealings with the always prickly and yet slippery Romulans. The Federation (via a returning Admiral Ross) tells her, rather than asking her, that there will be a Romulan military presence on the station. You can understand both why that would be a reasonable request, given that the Romulans are part of the anti-Dominion alliance now, but also why it would make Kira uneasy given the Romulans’ treacherous history, and why she’d especially bristle at being ordered to accept them by Starfleet.

Except, the Romulan representative, Cretak, seems like a reasonable person. She and Kira have a certain rapport, born of an immediate mutual respect and courteous steeliness. Cretak acknowledges her people’s reputation for arrogance, and doesn't abuse her privileges aboard DS9. She respects Kira’s authority; asks permission for key activities, and even tries a jumja stick! Maybe this will turn out to be one of those trademark Star Trek “Don’t judge a book by its cover” stories!

Sike! No, it turns out the courteous request to set up a Romulan hospital on an uninhabited Bajoran moon is, at best, a side dish, and at worst, an excuse, for Cretak’s allies to put a heap of weapons in place. Here’s Kira (with an assist from Odo), calling Cretak to account, and not taking any shit from Admiral Ross, and generally marking her territory as both the commander of this station and Bajor’s representative.

I suspect we haven't seen the end of this conflict. But between the political interplay, which has long been a highlight of the show, and the chance to see Kira coming into her own in Sisko’s absence, you just love to see it.

What’s slightly less fun is Worf mourning the death of his wife. Or at least, it should be.

That's the odd thing about the second storyline in “Image in the Sand”. I love the idea of taking time to show Worf processing his grief. I was never a huge supporter of the Worf/Fax pairing, but one of the more moving part of their relationship was their tender goodbye and Worf’s characteristic mourning howl. Leaning into that, what this loss means to him, could be fruitful.

Instead, Deep Space Nine...kind of plays it for laughs. Worf wrecks Vic Fontaine’s club after the crooner sings Jadzia’s favorite song, and it leads to jokes about the holographic band threatening to quit and Quark sheepishly handing him a lampshade. Chief O’Brien tries to cheer him up with a bottle of bloodwine with a sitcom-y effort to avoid being instantly shooed away, replete with recollections of Lt. Barclay’s misadventures. The braintrust of Quark, Miles, and Julian trade quips about the situation over a couple of ales.

In principle, I like this storyline. There’s something heartwarming about the idea that Worf’s friends, even Quark, are worried about his mental well-being. The fact that they take his religious beliefs seriously -- that he must win a glorious battle dedicated to Jadzia to get her into Klingon Heaven -- because real or not, they affect him, is touching. And their not only enlisting Martok, but agreeing to go along on a dangerous mission to help Worf and honor Dax is noble. On paper, the story is a solid, even strong one.

The only issue is that for whatever reason, Deep Space Nine plays it for laughs, or at least a sitcom-y “gee whiz” tack, that detracts from the gravity of what Worf is grappling with. The result is an odd dissonance, and I’m not sure why.

Maybe it’s because they’re going for the “committed grief” vibe in the third, Sisko-focused section of the episode, and they didn’t want to overload the audience with mourning.

Here too, I appreciate what Deep Space Nine is trying to do. Ben Sisko lost a lot in the season 6 finale. He lost his best friend. He lost his connection to the Prophets. He felt bound to step away from the station that had been his home and sanctuary for six years. Benjamin is in a state of recovery, a grief-ridden haze that's apparently consumed him for the past three months. As with Worf’s story, taking time to let that settle, to make the audience sit with how that must feel, is a good choice. And Avery Brooks sells the hell out of it in his early scenes.

But then, for some strange reason, we get a mystical fetch quest and some overblown melodrama.

I don’t mind the mystical fetch quest so much. Lord knows DS9 has resorted to magic more often of late, but that it’s been there since the beginning. And hey, while to modern eyes, the Cult of the Pah-wraiths is a little too much like the random Sith cultists from The Rise of Skywalker, the notion that a group of violent Bajoran extremists are worshiping the bad guys now that the Celestial Temple is cut off is an interesting concept.

That said, while I want to give room for the show to pay off my trust, I don’t love the idea that reopening the wormhole is more an Indiana Jones-style artifact hunt than a spiritual journey. The idea that Benjamin just has to put together the right clues and find the right trinket to right what went wrong makes this seem a bit too Zelda-esque for my tastes, even if I hope and imagine there will be more to it than that.

(This is where I admit that my memory of DS9’s final season is super fuzzy! I’m looking forward to being surprised all over again.)

The bigger problem, though, is the Sisko family melodrama. Much of it seems pointless. So Benjamin’s mom wasn’t his mom. So what? The dialogue suggests they’re trending toward an answer of “People can make mistakes but still be good and do good, so forgive yourself and keep going, Ben!”, using Joseph Sisko as an example. Again, I want to give the show time to provide answers, but it’s not clear at this juncture why any of this is significant.

Even so, some of it might be forgivable if the acting weren’t so bad. I don’t know what the deal is. Avery Brooks and Brock Peters have both done extraordinary work, including on this very show! Here though, their family revelations play like unconvincing, Twin Peaks-style over-emotiing across the board. The overwrought score doesn’t help, but the whole tone of these moments veer toward the overblown instead of the raw and intimate, and I don’t know why the veteran performers or director chose to go that direction.

Still, the saving grace of Deep Space Nine setting up its final season, and aiming for a more serialized format, is that there’s a chance for the show to provide answers to some of those big questions, and to course correct a little on where Benjamin, Worf, and to a lesser extent Kira are going for here. I can't pretend this is anything but a bit of a bumpy start, but I still trust our own powers that be on the creative team to get us to the right destination.

[4.6/10] Wish almost feels like a parody of a Disney movie. It has the vague aura of Shrek’s satirical take on the House of Mouse oeuvre, except somehow played straight. It plays like one of those direct-to-video Disney knockoffs that sneaks just close enough to the line to confuse a well-intentioned gift-giving grandparent while avoiding getting sued. It seems like someone threw every film released by the Walt Disney Animation Studios into an A.I. blender, and this is what it spit out.

What it doesn’t feel like is the worthy capstone to one-hundred years of magic-making from one of Hollywood’s most storied production houses. More so than most Disney flicks, Wish throws in ample tributes to its cinematic brethren to commemorate the occasion. A talking goat dreams of Zootopia. The villain squashes reveries of Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, and Cinderella. The protagonist's friend group is Disney-bounding the cast of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves for some reason. All of these shoutouts are pleasing enough, but at best they’re sprinkles thrown on top of a not-very-appetizing cake.

On a more substantive level, Wish follows a durable Disney format. There’s a princess type -- a young girl in a vaguely medieval kingdom with pluck and a dream -- even if she never becomes royalty. There’s a conniving villain who acts to hold her down and occasionally summon some evil magic. And there’s the usual cadre of buddies, cute animal sidekicks, and helpful woodland creatures. If you fell asleep and half-remembered every Disney princess movie you’d ever seen, you might get the basic outline of Wish.

Not for nothing, it’s also a musical, which is a good thing!...in principle. In practice, the songs veer between forgettable and outright bad. The titular tune “The Wish” has a few stirring stanzas, and the “let’s go get ‘em” ensemble number before the climax, “Knowing What I Know Now” has a solid rhythm and some nice interplay. But by and large, the tunes in Wish are well below Disney’s standards. The melodies aren’t catchy; the phrasing is rushed and jumbled, and many lines feature some downright miserable attempts at rhyming. (The allegory/excitatory/morning/story/poorly section is downright painful.) For a studio that's employed Lin Manuel Miranda, too many of the songs in Wish play like cheap imitations of his motor-mouthed lyrical style.

The animation is no better. Again, there’s a few nice pieces here and there. The imagery of Asha and her family rowing to the islet offers a striking starscape. The aforementioned “Knowing What I Know Now” number features a winning shadow puppet motif that stands out. Star, the anthropomorphic wishing star who helps Asha, is downright adorable throughout. And of all things, the villain’s hair is weirdly convincing. But these gems are few and far between.

The animation and overall look of the film seems strangely chintzy, as though this was originally meant for television and got gussied up at the last minute. The character designs are meh at best. Everyone looks like a generic plastic doll. Their faces and expressions don’t seem to match their bodies. And there’s an exaggerated, hyperactiveness to everyone’s movements that leads directly into the uncanny valley. If this is a tribute to a studio whose technological achievements and visual splendor was once its calling card, why does the movie look so blah?

The plotting is no better. At the heart of Wish lies an intriguing premise. A seemingly benevolent sorcerer king who gathers and “protects” the wishes of his populace, while only scarcely and self-servingly deciding to grant a fraction of them, has some thematic punch to it. The fact that the citizens of his supposedly idyllic realm lose their memories of their deepest dream when handing over their wish bubbles to the king, and that he later builds up his power by absorbing them is, true to the quasi-Disney mashup spirit of the piece, some real Kingdom Hearts-style weirdness. But you can at least sense the film trying to make some creditable statement in all of this.

Unfortunately, the story and the character motivations are some combination of jumbled and vague. At base, our hero, Asha, wants to better the lives of her fellow citizens, and the villain, Magnifico, wants to hold onto power. But Asha is as off-the-shell a spunky-but-heartfelt protagonist as they come, and despite a solid performance by Ariana DeBose, there’s nothing much to distinguish her. The reliably game Chris Pine manages to inject some life into Magnifico, and his “Why don’t I get thanked for doing the bare minimum for my people in a self-serving way?” mentality has some juice to it. But there’s just not enough depth to this character, or clarity in how he aims to accomplish anything, to compel you.

The rules for how the wish stuff works seem random. They can float around aimlessly without issue, but extracting them makes you mostly forget. They can be destroyed which gives you a feeling of grief. But it’s okay because some other magic can bring them back! But watch out for dark magic, which you can use to grow more powerful using other people’s wishes as fuel! Don’t worry though, because if you beat the dude infused with dark magic, all the wishes just come back out, good as new.

Look, it’s churlish to complain about the mechanics of a magical ecosystem in an all ages film. But the point is that without some defined boundaries, there’s very little in the way of stakes here. Magic is all well and good, but when it alternatively makes chickens dance and instills in a woman the pain of losing her spouse, without much to distinguish why one happens versus the other, the pixie dust feels like a narrative and comedic cheat code rather than a sturdy element of your story. Even there, the comedy pales in comparison to studio good luck charm Alan Tudyk using his Clayface voice to (I’d bet) improvise funny one-liners to spice up an otherwise dull and tin-eared spate of dialogue.

The sense of cause and effect is also lacking in the plot, but at base, we get a decent enough, “Not even you, evil wish-sucking King, can stop the power of us all wishing together!” And again, you can see what the creative team is going for. Somewhere in the narrative junk pile, the commendable idea of everyone holding onto their wish and working to make it come true, rather than giving it away and waiting on some questionable authority to simply make it happen, comes through. But when the characters used to illustrate that idea, and the story used to explicate it, are as janky and unmemorable as this one, the message loses a most of its oomph.

The vague hint at the end of the film is that Rosas, the utopian island setting for this story, is the source from which all Disney movies come, inspired by the wishes and dreams of a utopian, multicultural population -- right down to the protagonist’s allegorically 100-year-old grandfather coming up with “When You Wish Upon a Star”.

All I can say is that this is somehow the least plausible part of the movie. Not because of the mechanics of the suggestion, which are no worse than other metaphors for the creative process. But because it’s impossible to believe that a century’s worth of wondrous, ground-breaking, heart-rending films emerged from such a pallid, generic, emotionally inert, and all around uninteresting source.

[8.1/10] Hitting one-hundred episodes is a big deal. The Original Series fell well short. The Animated Series didn’t come close. Enterprise couldn’t quite make it. And four modern Star Trek series ended without even being within spitting distance. So crossing that threshold is a legitimate milestone for Star Trek: Voyager.

What I appreciate about “Timeless” is that it feels sufficiently momentous in light of that achievement. Plenty of episodes of Star Trek, even ones where nominally major things happen, feel a little ho-hum, even when they’re well done. Big catastrophes are pretty much the order of the day in Star Trek, so even a ship- or galaxy-threatening crisis can seem like just another day at the office for our heroes.

But “Timeless” feels like a story worthy of the occasion. For one thing, there’s a celebratory atmosphere to this one. The scene where B’Elanna comes to christen the new quantum slipstream drive, draped in slow motion confetti, with a suitable benediction from Captain Janeway herself, plays like a tribute not only to Voyager’s ostensibly impending journey home, but to the accomplishments of this cast and crew in reaching a point not every television show, let alone Star Trek series, can say they’ve crossed.

For another, the writers (including Trek impresario and reputed shitbag Rick Berman), bust out two of Star Trek’s favorite spicy chestnuts for the occasion: time travel and alternate timelines.

That's part of what makes this one seem like a big deal. You can practically feel the show busting out special things. We open on Voyager buried under a sheet of ice! We see Janeway herself as a frozen corpse in the decaying remains of the ship! We get alternate versions of Chakotay and Harry (with franchise trademark unconvincing old age makeup to boot)! We have a daring mission to save the future by rectifying the past! We get a cameo from Geordi! We jump between one period and another as the tension ratchets up! Sure, those things usually mean a big reset button is hit, but sometimes, that's the price of fun.

And most importantly, this feels big because it’s a chance to go home. Sure, Voyager’s had some of those in the past. But this time, it isn’t a trick or a fleeting wormhole or some other aliens’ tech that they’re asking to borrow. It’s built on the strength of their own ingenuity, the product of all that they've learned while in the Delta Quadrant. Savvy viewers can probably guess that they’re not going to make it to the Alpha Quadrant halfway through the series, but in a landmark episode like this one, it’s not outside the realm of possibility, which adds excitement.

True to form, there is a thrilling technical problem to solve here. When we meet them, fifteen years in the future, Harry and Chakotay (and some rando named Tessa, because why not), have already stolen the Delta Flyer, purloined a Borg temporal node from Starfleet Intelligence, and from there they have to revive The Doctor, dissect the part of Seven’s skull with her ocular transceiver, and send the exact right “phase corrections” at the exact right moment in the past to avert a decade and a half-year-old disaster from happening. Oh, and Captain LaForge is bearing down on them in the process.

Solving technical problems with creativity and dering-do is at the heart of Star Trek. So using the occasion to have our heroes (or the ones who’ve survived fifteen years later at least) deploy all their fancy tech and know-how to save the future, while the rest of them are doing the same to get home in the past, pays suitable tribute to the kinds of adventures that have fueled the series and the franchise.

True-to-form, it’s also a personal story. As much as this is about finding the right frequency to realign the antimatter coagulators through the main deflector dish or what have you, it’s also a story about Harry Kim’s struggles with his choices. Harry’s often seemed like the character most interested in getting home, and so there’s weight in him taking a big risk in order to try to complete their mission that goes horribly awry but leaves him as one of the few still breathing.

The only problem is that poor overmatched Garrett Wang does not have the chops to play the grizzled, regretful rogue who’s older and more haunted by his actions. Honestly, I was impressed with Wang’s acting in the regular timeline. He’s not always the show’s most dynamic performer, but when Tom identifies a problem with the slipstream drive, and he gives a rousing speech about how they can still do this, you believe his enthusiasm and determination, in a way that's almost stirring.

Unfortunately, he’s just not up to the other half of the equation, He can't quite muster the up-to-eleven emoting required to sell someone haunted by survivor’s guilt and frustrated to the point of madness at his inability to fix the past. (The Doctor is, though, so thank heaven for Robert Picardo!) It’s one of the big weaknesses in an otherwise well-conceived episode.

The other problem is to put the focus on Chakotay and his lifeless, disposable love interest. I get what the show’s going for here. There’s an interesting story to be told about Chakotay having made a real connection in the fifteen years since Voyager’s demise and having to reckon with that all being erased if he succeeds. (The Orville, which “Timeless” writer Brannon Braga is involved with, touches on a similar idea.)

But Tessa is such a nothing character. Despite some good outings this season, Robert Beltran is too wooden here to sell the romance. His guest star paramour isn’t much better. And neither of them can quite convey the graveness of the decision or the preciousness of what they’re losing in the process. And that's before you get to a certain ickiness from the implication that Chakotay might be dating a younger Voyager fangirl.

(And hey, as with Picard and Dr. Crusher on TNG, this is more of a tease than anything substantive, but it doesn’t help the Chakotay/Tessa relationship when the show is clearly stoking fans interest in a Janeway/Chakotay romance in the same episode. The suggestion that there might be room for the relationship if they can make it back to the Alpha Quadrant and not have a whole crew depending on them is intriguing. More immediately though, the Captain and her first officer have infinitely more chemistry than Chakotay and Tessa do. That's partly the point, I think. You get the impression that Chakotay is still moved to hear Janeway’s voice on the ship’s last log, which is why he’s willing to throw his current relationship away. But Tessa is such a nothing character that it never feels like a fair fight.)

Still, despite those weaknesses, there’s a sense of importance, novelty, and urgency that carries the day for an exciting installment like “Timeless”. Part of that comes from the clever scripting. The deftest move the writing team (which also includes Trek stalwart Joe Menosky) makes here is to expertly cut between the past and the present.

That helps in the early part of the episode, where the audience is thrown for a loop by what misfortune could have occurred to leave Voyager in such a state, before cutting to a flashback that shows us the build-up to how it happened. The hope and anticipation in the past, matched with the grim resignation of the present, makes for a striking juxtaposition. And even in the middle, the dramatic irony of comparing young Harry’s grand plans to get them home, with older Harry’s grand plans to fix what he broke as a young man, has an impact.

The smart editing also keeps the excitement up in the episode’s final third act. The writers add the usual Star Trek threats in the future, with a destabilizing ship and not enough power to run the various gadgets and a galaxy class starship there to stop our heroes from changing history. So you get the sense of urgency in the future, as this is the good guys’ one big chance to set things right. But theoretically, the past has already happened, so it should be harder to wring tension from it.

Thankfully, the episode smartly cuts between Harry and Doc’s trials and travails in the future, with Janeway and the crew’s attempt to use the sli-pstream drive in the past, making it seem like the events are happening simultaneously. You can't think too hard about it, or as Harry himself suggests, the whole thing might fall apart in a sea of temporal mechanics and predestination paradoxes. But it’s a nice way to present the material in a way that keeps the audience energized and invested. And the smart structure allows the show to give viewers hints at serious events before letting us witness them firsthand.

The alternate timeline idea also lets us see big things the show can't do as a going concern. The ship can crash into the interstellar equivalent of an iceberg and the crew can die. We can hear snippets of what a return to Earth would look like. We can...see the inside of Seven’s skull, I guess.

Alongside the novelty, there’s a poetic twist, in that Harry’s phase corrections sent to the past through Seven are what turn out to send Voyager crashing down in the first place. There is a bitter irony in the fact that the best future Harry can do is not bring Voyager back home, but restore the status quo. The ticking clock feels a little contrived, but it’s a nice way to solve the immediate problem without solving the series’ big problem, and the Doctor giving the one time ensign a pep talk that spurs him to success is a true fist-pump moment.

Despite falling well short of expectations, and the notion that this was their one big chance for the slipstream project to succeed (presumably to avoid Comic Book Guy-style fans like yours truly from asking why they don’t just keep trying), there’s a sense of optimism at the end of “Timeless”. In an act with a certain amount of sacrifice, Harry and Chakotay become Voyager’s guardian angels. The ship is ten years closer to home. And as Janeway herself puts it, the idea of returning to the Alpha Quadrant is starting to feel like a “when” not an “if”.

Voyager’s writers reportedly included the Caretaker’s mate as an out, in case the whole “stranded in the Delta Quadrant” thing didn’t work and they had to retool the show. At a landmark like one-hundred episodes, you could be forgiven for suspecting the show, which has already switched out castmembers and given the ship a Borg makeover, might do something big. Whether that's killing off another character, or letting Harry and Chakotay exit the show, or even bringing everyone home and starting a new adventure, the heightened aura of a round number gives this one an “anything can happen” quality.

Of course, they stay in the Delta Quadrant; the ship and her crew remain intact, and despite all of that, Harry is back to being an ensign. There is a certain entropy to network television in the 1990s -- a fear of changing or bending the premise too much lest it break. But in heightened moments -- season premieres, season finales, and milestones like this one, shows like Voyager still pull out all the stops, and in outings like “Timeless”, deliver something worthy of the billing.

(As a personal aside, the cameo from director LeVar Burton threw me for a loop because I swear I remember a scene where Geordi is on the bridge of Voyager! I wonder if it was just from a featurette on the production or something like that, and I’m mixing things up. Just goes to show how your memories of the shows you watched growing up can be unreliable!)

[8.5/10] I’ve always appreciated that Star Trek is not afraid to ask hard questions. “Nothing Human” is a referendum on the use of Nazi scientific research extracted through horrific experiments on “undesirables”. There are no easy answers to whether it’s ethically right to use knowledge gathered through cruel means to help physicians and patients who had nothing to do with those trespasses. The moral balance of profiting, even intellectually, from past cruelty versus serving the greater good in the here and now is an uneasy one at best. “Nothing Human” doesn’t shy away from the difficulty of those questions; instead, it embraces them.

Showrunner/writer Jeri Taylor contrives a strong situation in which to test their fault lines. B’Elanna’s life is threatened when a giant alien bug attaches itself to her, and the Doctor must resort to recreating a famed exobiologist in holographic form to help solve the medical mystery of how to remove it. Now of course, you have to turn off your brain for some of this. The script offers some fig leaves for why Janeway would bring the bug aboard, and how safety protocols fail, and why none of their usual equipment works on the bug, and why the crew would create a second medical hologram rather than just having the Doctor ingest the info. But in truth, much of the setup feels like a bit of a stretch.

The story we get, though, is worth stretching for. Because the famed exobiologist the Doctor and company summon via holodeck magic turns out to be a Cardassian named Crell Moset, and his mere presence causes a stir on the ship. Dr. Moset is affable, knowledgeable, resourceful, and decorated. (Guest star David Clennon plays him to likable, subtly pernicious perfection.) He is also a member of the species the former Maquis aboard Voyager were fighting to the death, and a participant in the Bajoran Occupation.

That alone would be enough to sustain an episode. B’Elanna doesn’t want the holo-Crell’s help, given who and what he represents. For his part, Crell offers insights along the way that allow The Doctor to make breakthroughs in the case. And Doc not only works perfectly in sync with his new holographic colleague, but gets along with him in a way he hasn’t with anybody since Kes.

Their synchronicity, both personally and professionally, is one of the most interesting aspects of the early part of the episode. The opening comic relief of the episode sees Doc boring everyone with his visual essays. Earlier in the season, even Naomi is exhausted by spending time with him. As much by personality as by his photonic nature, Doc is a man apart.

So imagine the joy of finding a kindred spirit! Doc and Crell bond over being resourceful improvisers who have to make due without the usual implements or support. They finish each other’s medical diagnoses. They bond over breakthroughs made by necessity from situations that forced them to think creatively. They even hum the same arias. After four years of feeling like few people aboard Voyager don’t understand him, let alone befriend him, he finds someone who truly gets him -- who understands what his situation is like and can relate -- in a way he never has before.

That puts a thumb on the scale. If you’re the Doctor, it’s easy to handwave away B’Elanna’s skepticism of a Cardassian doctor as racism that has no place in medicine. (It has shades of Worf’s refusal to donate blood to a Romulan in “The Enemy”.) It’s easy to excuse divergence in the two physicians’ typical approaches as a part of standard cultural differences. It’s easy to write off any questions about his methods on Bajor as the product of a type of field medicine necessity that Doc himself understands all too well, with a cure that saved countless lives no less! If the question is whether this man is a noble healer or a Cardassian butcher, your answer will be biased by whether you like the guy and whether you can relate to him.

Here’s where I pull back the curtain a bit. I’ve been watching Voyager interspersed with episodes of Deep Space Nine that aired around the same time. (Shout out to the Star Trek Chronology Project! Thanks for adding in the animated shows!) And I think it adds a lot to episodes like these.

I’ve seen suggestions that folks not bother interspersing DS9 and Voyager because they don’t really crossover. “Not even the little stuff,” one website warned. And it’s true, to some extent. Janeway and Sisko are in two different quadrants. So things are different than between The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, where you can have Dr. Bashir show up on the Enterprise or Riker calls in a favor from Quark or Captain Picard stroll the bulkheads of Sisko’s station without too much logistical trouble.

The connections between Voyager and Deep Space NIne are more oblique. Tuvok pops up in one of Sisko’s jaunts to the Mirror Universe. The EMH’s creator, Dr. Zimmerman, shows up on DS9 to use Julian as the basis for a new model. Aside from Quark nearly swindling Harry back in “Caretaker”, there’s little in the way of direct interactions between the main characters of the two shows.

But I think weaving the shows together pays dividends in at least two ways. The first is the Maquis. While Voyager always underachieved on this front, seeing Chakotay and B’Elanna’s feelings about the rebel group helps inform the audience’s understanding of them when Sisko has to deal with other members. The two Voyager officers learning about what happened to their brethren in the Alpha Quadrant has a big impact on their mental state and what they have to return to. And it helps explain why, in an episode like “Nothing Human”, B’Elanna is so hard-nosed in her resistance to accepting any help from a Cardassian doctor, even a holographic one.

The second is that the experiences of Deep Space Nine’s Kira Nerys in particular reveals that Cardassians are not a monolith. One of DS9’s favorite hobby horses is Kira harboring great (and justified) resentment against the Cardassians, only to realize they’re as diverse and multifaceted a people as Bajorans are. Yes, they have butchers like Gul Dukat, but also scientists who look down on the oppressive regime, activists who want to reform it, and even aged potentates who become penitents and father figures.

So when an episode like “Nothing Human” comes along, we have context for the atrocities committed during Cardassia’s occupation of Bajor. We understand why Voyager’s Bajoran officer, Ensign Tabor, has such a virulent reaction to Dr. Macet. (I wonder how he felt about Seska!) But at the same time, we have a basis to share The Doctor’s suspicion that Crell may not be so bad just because he’s a Cardassian, and that reflexive rejection of someone’s work and ability to help because of the people they hail from stands in opposition to Federation values.

And then the grisly facts start piling up.

My biggest qualm with “Nothing Human” is that it seems to inadvertently back into a “that racism was right” lesson. But revisiting this one, knowing the twist, I’m especially impressed at how Taylor and company thread in little hints that something’s amiss with Dr. Moset. They build and build, to where a sympathetic EMH can dismiss them in isolation, but as they pile up, he can't deny the horrible picture they begin to paint of his erstwhile genial colleague.

He wants to use “crude” Cardassian instruments rather than laser scalpels, with a plausible story about how the tactile nature of the implement keeps physicians connected to their patients. He doesn’t flinch at the pained cries of the bug he’s dissecting, but reassures The Doctor that it’s only because their test subject is a mere holographic recreation. He proposes a treatment that would save B’Elanna and kill the bug, with fair reasoning that in a life-or-death situation, they have to prioritize the health and wellbeing of Doc’s crewmate.

I love how these little moments pile up throughout the episode. They work as reasons for The Doctor to excuse somebody he’s already inclined to like and agree with. And in hindsight, they also function as Crell’s self-justifications for his cruelty, hinting at a mentality of callousness and cravenness that bears out when the truth is revealed.

That truth is that Crell is the Cardassian equivalent of Joseph Mengele. He experimented on Bajorans because he saw them as subhuman. He forced them into brutal tests that resulted in needless suffering and death. And even if he had a breakthrough, it came at a great ethical and human cost. The path of the Doctor initially denying this, then waffling when there’s conflicting evidence, only to accept the reality, much to his horror, when the facts roll in, is one of the best parts of the episode.

And a lesser show might have stopped there. The Doctor might acknowledge the evil he’s been a party to, delete the hologram, and find another way. Hell, a lesser show might have kept the tug of war simple: do you allow yourself to profit from inhuman experiments for the health of a colleague, or do you stand on moral principle and put that colleague’s life at risk? That alone would be plenty to sustain an episode.

Instead, “Nothing Human” adds wrinkle after wrinkle that makes this situation endlessly complex. What if you’re not dealing with the bastard themself, but a holographic recreation of them who has no memory of the cruel experiments? What if your patient nonetheless refuses any treatment that involves that hologram? What if the patient’s loved one is begging you to do it anyway if it provides you with the best chance to save them? What if a good crewman might resign his commission over it? What if the patient is your chief engineer, and the Captain can't spare them on an already dicey mission lightyears from home? (On that latter point, Enterprise would dig into similar issues in “Similitude”.)

In short, nothing this episode does makes The Doctor’s choice easy. How do you balance all of those issues? How do you decide what to weigh, what to credit, and what to dismiss? What’s the right thing to do when the purely practical and the purely ethical seem to be in conflict, and everything’s gray?

Despite that (commendable!) morass of a thought experiment, I like where Voyager lands, and how it doesn’t skimp on the moral ambiguity at play in all of this.

The Doctor utilizes Crell’s help to save B’Elanna, but puts a check on him. He accepts his counterpart’s expertise, but forcefully steps in to save the alien bug’s life, even if it’s less “efficient” than Crell’s method. And when it’s all over, when there’s no longer an emergency, he deletes Crell’s program and the research that went with it. The Doctor can stomach doing what must be done to save his patient in an unusual situation, but he can't stomach continuing to eat the fruit of this poisoned tree.

In all candor, I don’t necessarily agree with every part of his approach. In my book, at least, it’s better to save the living than to honor the dead. But truth be told, I don’t think that matters. What I appreciate is that this is a tough call, given all the facets and tendrils of the crisis facing The Doctor here, and I believe that he would take this path. That's all that really matters -- acknowledging the complexity, and having a character make a believable choice. (That goes for Janeway too, who’s become far more pragmatic herself since the days of, “Oh no! We can't give the Kazon a hypospray!”)

The final scene leans into those complications as well. Dr. Crell is full of flimsy rationalizations. But he’s also not wrong when he points to the fact that human medical history is far from spotless, and where we draw the line about what research is worthy and what might be tainted is, if not arbitrary, then certainly selective in many cases. What we choose to tolerate and what we refuse to countenance speaks as much to our own personal experiences and needs as any grand moral principles, even if you’re a four-year-old Emergency Medical Hologram.

The Doctor deletes Crell anyway. And you understand it. Maybe it’s meant as an act of moral principle. Maybe he’s become immune to Dr. Moset’s rationalizations and manipulations. Or maybe it’s the EMH’s acceptance of the idea that, right or wrong, he just can't be a party to this anymore. His erstwhile new friend has turned out to be a butcher -- he can't put up with that, even if it would help people.

That is, to my mind, where the best of Star Trek lies -- at the intersection of the moral, the practical, and the personal. I don’t expect our humble writers to have all the answers, especially when real life ethicists and philosophers struggle with them. But in great episodes like “Nothing Human”, I’m glad they’re still asking the tough questions.

(A couple asides here: (1.) When The Doctor started showing his slideshow, I mistakenly thought this was “Latent Image” from later in the season, and was bracing for a very different episode! (2.) As convenient as the EMH’s tricorders and such not working on the bug is, I appreciate our heroes getting to meet an alien that's truly alien once more. The differences in language and physiology from humanoid lifeforms are the kind of thing I could do with more of in Star Trek. And kudos to the effects team for the design of the bug, particularly its internals, which are eerie and gross in a darned impressive way.)

[7.8/10] “Once Upon a Time” is not a fan favorite episode, and I get why. Neelix is the main character, which is a recipe for instant skepticism from most viewers. The other protagonist is a little girl, which probably doesn’t align with Voyager’s target demographic. And the episode begins with the extended, Zoobilee Zoo-style misadventures of elemental sprites in a Thousand Acre Wood-type setting, which however good at setting the tone, probably doesn’t appeal to most Star Trek fans.

But I’m a fan of this one. I like Neelix more than most, especially when the show focuses on him as a well-meaning caretaker rather than a jealous romantic. I appreciate the sweet precociousness of Naomi Wildman, who’s sympathetic as the only child aboard a stranded starship. And as silly as the “Flotter T. Water” interludes we get are, as someone who grew up watching 1990s Trek, I can appreciate them as a device to examine how we get to try big ideas on for size through fiction when we’re younger.

I especially love it, though, for how it explores two big ideas: the sense of how hard and anxious a duty it can be to convey challenging ideas and bad news to children, and the equal and opposite notion that kids can be far more resilient and discerning than adults give them credit for.

The vehicle for those themes is a story where Ensign Wildman is stranded in the Delta Flyer alongside Tom and Tuvok, while Neelix looks after young Naomi in her mother’s absence. The episode expertly builds on two twin pillars of narrative tension: whether Voyager will be able to rescue the away team before they run out of oxygen, and when and whether Neelix will tell Naomi how much danger her mom is in.

The former is a little perfunctory. It’s not implausible that Voyager would kill off sporadic guest star Ensign Wildman, but the presence of Tom and Tuvok makes the rescue feel inevitable. The script does give Wildman a unique injury that requires immediate medical attention, to where maybe she won’t make it even if the ship arrives in time to save the members of the main cast. Still, it’s hard for the situation to feel as dire as the script wants it to when savvy viewers who’ve been watching for four seasons can probably divine how this one goes.

What helps is how the episode makes it real for those trapped beneath the rubble of a nameless planet. Fibs about how serious certain injuries are, recordings to loved ones in case you don’t make it, all help give the Flyer’s situation some emotional force, even if the peril isn’t quite there. In particular, Tuvok’s ostensibly cold but ultimately stirring reassurance to Ensign Wildman -- about how she need not fear because she’s instilled worthy values in Naomi and put her in the care of people she trusts -- is one of the episode’s high points.

That;s the benefit of having writer Michael Taylor behind the pen on this one. Taylor wrote superlative episodes of Deep Space Nine like “The Visitor” and “In the Pale Moonlight”. “Once Upon a Time” does not quite meet those lofty standards, but it means there’s some outstanding character writing and strong speeches, even when the practical challenges of the day aren’t as convincing.

What is convincing is Neelix’s attitude toward Naomi: deeply loving but also deeply fearful for her. I love how Neelix is clearly going above and beyond to look after Naomi in the best way possible while her mother is away, and how he clearly loves her to pieces, but also underestimates her a bit. He has a scale from 1-10 for her anxiety levels, ranging from “mild insomnia” to “full blown panic attack”. He plays with her in the holodeck, replicates a toy of her favorite character, and gets her ready for bed. He feeds her dreams of becoming the “captain’s assistant” while secretly being worried about how she’s coping with her mom being in trouble and how much to tell her.

It’s all well-observed in a way that I absolutely did not pick up on when I was closer to Naomi’s age than Neelix’s. I’m lucky enough to have some precious but sensitive little kids in my life, and the balance between wanting to answer their serious questions about things, without scaring them or giving them more than they can handle, is startlingly real. Recognizing that having an aptitude for the facts and details of the world is different than being able to emotionally handle it all is no less authentic and kind of scary. And the notion that you are a bridge for these kind, vulnerable young souls to the complexities and occasional harshness of the world at large can be a lot.

It’s easy to sympathize with Neelix here. He does, in my estimation least, the wrong thing here. He keeps the truth from Naomi. It isn’t easy, but there’s ways to give children age-appropriate versions of tough news. But he does so for understandable reasons. He’s trying to protect Naomi, to shield her from one of the worst things that can happen to a child when everything is still uncertain, to let her hold onto hope and normalcy for as long as she can. As I’ve said before, characters who do the wrong thing for comprehensible reasons are some of the most compelling in all of fiction.

Neelix’s choices are comprehensible because he’s gone through the same kind of thing. The character is often made to play the clown, which makes it easy to forget that he is the product of tragedy. Seeing him relive the nightmares of losing his family, still feel the pain of those close connections that have been severed, do everything in his power to spare Naomi from the anguish he still lives with, makes you understand why he does what he does. He sees himself in his goddaughter, and knows all too well the emotional difficulty that she would have to face if he comes clean.

It’s why I love the scene between him and Janeway in this one. Neelix’s spirited defense of his keeping the wool over Naomi’s eyes may be the most animated we’ve ever seen him, which is saying something. Trying to draw lines, as a caretaker, as a guardian, as a victim, is something you can understand from Neelix, even if he oversteps. And I particularly love how Janeway stays unruffled, understanding that reliving all of this is as much a trauma for Neelix as what he’s trying to avoid for Naomi. Her calm but firm empathy shows the great leader that Janeway is, especially in episodes like these.

Of course, Naomi finds out anyway, despite Neelix’s best efforts. And that is one of the realities of looking after precocious kids -- they figure things out, by chance or by the same wunderkind perceptiveness. And then, you’re not there to cushion the blow, to help them understand. Instead, they just have to sit with the full weight of it.

Worse yet, they could lose their trust in you. I’ll admit to finding Flotter and Trevin pretty silly, even in the context of a kids’ holonovel. But there’s something striking about how they essentially become Naomi’s guards within her safe space, somewhere she retreats to when she feels like she can no longer trust the people who are supposed to look after her.

What follows is lovely. Neelix apologizes. And when asked why Naomi should believe he’s telling the truth now, he shares his own pain with her rather than hiding it. He tells her about his own family, about his reasons for trying to spare her the worst sorrows he’s had to endure, about remembering what it felt like to be in her position. Neelix is honest with her, not just in the sense of offering facts rather than eliding them, but in terms of being up front about the ways that universal difficulties and pains are not so inscrutable to young listeners. That type of honesty can open doors for young minds that need a sympathetic ear.

More to the point, Naomi can handle it. I don’t want to overgeneralize and neither should Voyager. Different kids have different abilities to handle different things. There’s no one-size-fits-all, especially when it comes to something as grave as the prospect of losing a parent. But I appreciate “Once Upon a Time”’s implicit message here: that even though Naomi is scared of Seven, even though she still has nightmares and other youthful phobias, even though death is a specter that chill most grown-ups, she has the mettle to be told the truth about something so important.

Kids are vulnerable but not helpless, even the sensitive ones. It’s easy to be cautious and even overprotective. It’s easy, natural even, to want to shield young souls from the cruel realities of this world. In some ways it’s harder to be honest, to answer the tough questions asked, to be open about the things that are difficult for even grown-ups to countenance, like the hurt that lingers in the wake of losing those we love. But it’s also the kind of act that builds trust, and can reveal a strength in those young souls, an ability to understand and persevere despite the scariest risks we all live under, in ways that can surprise you.

Growing up, I watched Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland and the other kid-friendly stories “Once Upon a Time” pays homage to here. But I also watched a lot of Star Trek when I was around Naomi’s age. Plenty of it was above my head. Plenty of it scared the bejeezus out of me. But what I appreciate about the franchise now, and why I think my parents had few qualms about letting me watch with them, is that these shows never talked down to their audience.

Sure, Natasha Yar might give a heavy-handed speech about not using drugs, or Captain Sisko might teach his son the occasional life lesson, or Seven might be a stand-in for an unruly teenager getting a shape-up speech from her surrogate mom. But for the most part, the series embraced the complexity and rougher edges of real life, as much as a show could in the confines of 1990s network television.

It was a safe place for a young mind to explore scary things like death, like loss, like being alone. Fiction is no substitute for real life (or real parenting, for that matter), but it is a place where a kid could experience these tough ideas and emotions at a distance, to be more ready when grim things might darken our doorsteps in the real world.

You don’t have to like Neelix stories, or Star Trek episodes focused on young kids, or goofy holodeck programs. But episodes like these made a big impact on me when I was Naomi’s age. And as a crusty old grown-up, seeing the inner tug of war within a caretaker like Neelix, to want to protect the young people in our lives without patronizing them leaves an impact on me too. I’m glad “Once Upon a Time” and its ilk are a part of Voyager’s own collection of stories.

[6.8/10] It can be hard to judge a work for what it is and not what it could be. Raya and the Last Dragon is fine as a film. It delivers a solid, well-structured plot built around a clear theme that can be delivered in an age-appropriate way within a crisp ninety minutes, with plenty of hijinks to keep the little ones entertained. But I also can't help but imagine how much richer and more involving a story it could be if it were told over the course of a multi-season television show.

Admittedly, much of that stems from the sense in which the film feels like a cross between The Last Unicorn and Avatar: The Last Airbender, It has the former’s sense of a fantasy creature experiencing what it’s like to be human, along with an “emerging from the sea” sense of rebirth of the species. And it has the latter’s harmony-to-discord intro, young girl finding a mystical but rambunctious fellow young adult who’s been frozen for ages, and cross-section selection of misfits journeying through the various lands.

As with AtLA that is a big premise! Raya could do so much with it! It could dig deeply into the different cultures and attitudes of chiefdoms within the land of Kumandra. It could develop the allies from these various far flung places that join Raya’s merry band. It could delve further into the history of this place, and how the mythos and the past have impacted the present. It could show more gradual growth and understanding from Raya and her erstwhile rival, Namaari.

Instead, everything in Raya and the Last Dragon is, if you’ll pardon the expression, quick-fire. Rather than committed explorations of the assorted chiefdoms, we get five-to-ten minutes in each locale. Rather than really getting to know the side characters, they get quickly-sketched quirks with the barest hint of pathos, and the writers call it a day. Rather than a full accounting of the intriguing history of this fantasy world, we get an early info dump and a brief flashback or two. None of this is bad, but it’s all glancing, which leaves you wanting more, albeit not in a good way.

Granted, some of that is served by the visuals, which are a mixed bag in odd ways. Part of what makes you wish the audience could spend more time in this world is that the background animators do a tremendous job of designing the five chiefdoms to be distinctive and eye-catching. Each has its own style, and nowhere is the artistry more clear than in the swirling skies above an idyllic plain, or the lamplit bustle of a floating city, or autumnal wisps of a weathered tundra.

Unfortunately, the animation within those cool spaces is a mixed bag. The film can boast a few cool set pieces -- chiefly the long take with the members of Team Siso tossing the chunks of the magic orb to one another. But a lot of the action here is generic in its choreography, choppy in its editing, or muddy in its presentation. Even the big dragon scenes are something of a candy-colored yawn. Even the weakest Disney films can usually boast a heap of stunning animation, and Raya largely tops out at “pretty good.”

The same checkered approach afflicts the film’s character designs. Raya, Namaari, and the rest of the “normal” characters look like off-the-shelf plastic dolls, and many of their expressions seem off. Some of the side characters, Tong especially, get to have a little more character in their mien. And the animal sidekicks, from Tuk Tuk the giant furry rolly-polly, to the adorably simian ongis, even to Noi, the “con baby”, all have more endearing designs and get better and more interesting movements and sequences than the rest of the cast.

Sigh, and then there’s Sisu, the dragon. Despite some neat texturing, she and her cohort basically look like a mix between traditional Chinese dragons and the lineup from My Little Pony. Sisu’s expressions in particular feel overexaggerated in a way that makes her an odd fit for the quasi-realistic look of the film. And the movie wants the characters, and by extension the audience, to treat its dragons with a certain reverence, which is hard when they look more like marketable and toyetic living plushes than an organic part of the world.

Despite all of that, it’s easy to buy into the mythos of Kumandra and the epic quest at the film’s center. While there’s a certain degree of video game plotting at play here -- go fetch the various items; you’ll level up as you do; then fight the big boss -- a tidy structure helps keep the film sound on a scene-to-scene basis. Eventually, you catch on that Raya is progressing from place to place, fending off some challenge, and collecting another misfit at each stop. But it’s a sturdy format for a YA fantasy story, one that creates a sense of build and new adventure just around the corner.

Unfortunately, the characters who populate that adventure are generally just so-so. Raya and Namaari come off fairly flat and unengaging despite having solid character arcs. Sisu gets a few good lines, but Disney’s been, if you’ll pardon the expression, chasing the dragon of energetic celebrity personalities since Robin Williams’ Genie, and this is another case of diminishing returns. Benedict Wong remains a treasure as the film’s brute-with-a-heart-of-gold, and the wordless characters are adorable, but the rest of the movie’s players veer between annoying and forgettable.

Thankfully, even if the personalities involved are hit-or-miss, Raya and the Last Dragon has some strong and timely themes to build around. The idea of multiculturalism, the idea that these different peoples are stronger when banding together than when they’re divided by self-interest, especially when facing a collective threat, is a heartening and appropriate one. And the manifestation of that idea -- through the idea of when and whether to trust those from outside your personal experiences -- provides a handle that kids can understand.

The film does better when it tells rather than shows that fact. Chief Benja’s soup, made with ingredients from across Kumandra, becomes a nice metonym for the benefits of that cultural blending, one the kids replicate later in the picture. Likewise, the mere existence of Team Sisu, with different orphans and loners, united by their losses, is a good illustration of breaking down walls and finding common ground.

Unfortunately, in addition to serving up a bunch of tin-eared one-liners, the dialogue all signposts its themes to a ridiculous degree. This is an all ages film, so some hand-holding is to be expected. But everyone from Raya’s dad, to Sisu, to eventually Raya herself practically announcing the message of the film, replete with a giant glowing ball of trust for anyone who dozed off, means there’s a certain lack of grace in the delivery.

Still, trust is a good axis for the film’s ideas. The interplay between Raya, who’s too reluctant to trust given her mistakes in judgment and what it cost her; Sisu, who sometimes trusts too easily in her newly-human naivete; and Namaari, who wants to trust but has been taught to look out for her own, is the strongest concept in the film. Granted, it does run aground on the same ham-fisted dialogue and overdramatic presentation.

That said, the best choice in the film is to have the confrontation with the Druun -- the neat-looking purple energy balls that turn people to stone -- not be solved through just fighting with more fury or magicking harder, but rather through an act of trust. Raya hearing Sisu and her father, and giving up the piece of the dragon ball that everyone’s been guarding so jealously to the young woman who’s betrayed her twice, is a powerful act in the Disney pantheon. The way her compatriots follow suit, and Namaari thinks about just saving herself, but instead chooses to make her stand and save everyone, gives the movie a moving climax, even if the path to get there is a rocky one.

Maybe that path would be better if it had more time to breathe. There is something marvelous at the core of Raya and the Last Dragon: an inviting world, an epic quest, and some worthwhile ideas to underpin both of them. What’s frustrating about the film is that, by the necessity of a ninety-minute runtime, it seems like we only get a sliver of the potential in all of that. The movie has some essential issues that wouldn't be solved no matter how much real estate it might enjoy. But I can't help feeling like this grand, momentous journey would be so much more engrossing and impactful if it actually had the time and space to be, well, grand and momentous.

[7.8/10] Holy hell! That was intense! As seems to be the case with the last...five(?) episodes of X-Men ‘97, there is a lot going on here.

Let’s start with what compelled me most here - magneto. There is something so fascinating about his return to aggression. It’s not like Magnus hasn’t plotted the Earth’s destruction before. But something about this feels different, in a good and frankly kind of scary way.

Those past instances were born on the backs of Magento thinking he had the right approach, that Charles’ path was misguided, that mutants and humans could never be reconciled, let alone peacefully coexist. But heaven help him, he tried. To honor Xavier’s memory, he made an earnest attempt to live out his departed friend’s dream.

Now he’s seemingly been betrayed by everyone. Now Charles is back. Now the attempts to extinguish mutant kind via the Sentinels have resurfaced more deadly than ever. Most of all, now he has given Xavier’s methods a try, a genuine, authentic attempt to see them to fruition, only to watch them result in destruction and near-annihilation and abandonment by humanity in the wake of the attacks on Genosha,.

Magento was always furious about how his kind were treated, but now he comes with the fury of his worst fears realized, and the vengeful certainty that he was right all along. The force of a man who believes himself right is nothing compared to the anger of the man who tried things the other way and saw his nightmares realized in living color.

Which is all to say that is a more resentful, a less yielding, a more vindictive and undeterred Magneto than we’ve ever seen. When he descends from the sky in a new Asteroid M, declares the earth a pigsty, and prepares to extract his comrades to live as gods above humanity’s destruction, it has power. When he hears the pleas of the man who for so long held him back from the brink of complete malevolence, and instead gives him those two damning words -- “shut up” -- it has power. When he takes Wolverine’s claws through the chest, and has his payback by tearing the adamantium from poor Logan’s bones, holy shit it has power.

Hell hath no fury like a cynic-turned-believer scorned, and this is the dark afterimage of Magneto’s earnest attempt at peace.

What’s interesting is who ends up as his allies. I was expecting him to show up with some members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (or at least Emma Frost or something). Instead, he gets two defections that come with good reason. Rogue takes to Magnus’ side because she too tried the Professor’s way, and it cost her Remy. Magneto’s point that Xavier’s methods have now cost them countless mutants’ lives is a pretty compelling argument, one with extra resonance for someone who feels that loss personally.

And it makes sense that it resonates for Roberto too. What would break your faith in the ability of mutants and humans to coexist than your own mother selling you out? The idea that coexistence is hopeless, that the only choice is to expropriate yourself and your people, would make sense for each of them in both a philosophical and personal way, which is a sign of deft writing.

I’m a little milder on some of the other character interactions here. The reunion between Jean and Storm is sweet, but also kind of weird? Maybe the show is going in a different direction, but their vibe seemed more intimate here than sisterly, which is fine, but a little odd as a pivot given everything else that's going on. (And hey, while the line is too cute by half, I’ll cop to liking their “mind your weather”/”weather your mind” exchange.)

Likewise, the Cyclops/Cable interaction was a little trite. I’m a sucker for pre-battle heart-to-hearts, but theirs was fairly generic. And the inverse of the “What were you expecting, yellow spandex” line is amusing for longtime X-fans, but a little silly. (Though Cable wearing his dad’s uniform...somehow...is weirdly sweet.)

Speaking of which, I found Cyclops and Jean wearing their old uniforms to look pretty goofy. This is entirely subjective, and I’m sure that the 90s X-Men outfits look goofy to those who didn’t grow up with them. But I’ll admit, something about them wearing the old costumes takes me out of the moment a bit.

In the same vein, the fight with Bastion and his crew is a mixed bag. I’ll just say that at this point, I don’t really care about Bastion. He has a convoluted backstory, no real personal connection to our heroes, and his plan already seems to have been mostly stopped, so whatever. The show busts out some cool fight scenes and imagery here and there (I particularly like Beast’s sentinel slap and Bastion’s circuit board ribbon limbs). But the whole idea of him being a “technopath” is pretty silly. I guess the goal to defeat him as the central “server” for the other Prime Senintels is fine, but it feels like the perfunctory superhero goal rather than something with meaning.

The battle between Jean and Mister Sinister has much more to it. Her fighting an abuser of sorts, someone who wrecked her life and injected scads of uncertainty into it, gives the fight something deeper that the standoff with Bastion doesn’t have. Sister mins-controlling cable, and Cable suddenly developing telekinetic powers is a bit much for me though. And man, Jean’s died and come back in one way or another multiple times now (Rogue even comments on it), so her saying her psychic goodbye to Cyclops doesn’t have much impact anymore.

It does prompt Scott to prevent Xavier from taking over Magneto’s mind, presumably so that the magnetic field can halt Bastion’s sentinels for a while longer. It’s an interesting case of the personal getting in the way of neutralizing a greater threat, which is a kind of storytelling I tend to appreciate. (Hello Avengers: Infinity War fans!)

The rest of the Magneto fight is good too. I appreciate that in addition to the defections and philosophical differences, there’s also a similar difference in perspective within the team. Xavier wants to save his friend. Wolverine wants to neutralize the threat. Neither of them really gets his way, which is a canny choice for maximum impact. There too, the fight is good, and I damn near had to pick my jaw up off the floor by the time it was finished.

Otherwise, the way the show has to explain its way around the magnetic field effect for practical purposes (Forge has an EMP-blocking leg! Bastion can still power some of his sentinels despite the zap apparently!) is a little strained. There’s something a little dispiriting about the full X-Men crew finally being back together only for the missions immediately splitting them apart, but it mostly serves the story. And on an entirely fanboy level, it’s neat to see Morph turn into The Hulk.

But overall, this is another double-stuffed episode of X-Men with enough momentous incident to span two or even three episodes. But with results like these, I’m not complaining.

[3.8/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] I don’t think I realized how rough Al Jean’s stewardship of The Simpsons could be until Matt Selman took over as showrunner. I haven't loved every episode of season 35, but even some of the weaker entries are head and shoulders above this one, written and showrun by Jean. The tone just feels so dead and random and unpleasant. It’s easy to become inured to that when you’re receiving it every week, but when you only get Al’s style periodically like this, it’s downright bracing.

Let’s highlight the two good things in this episode. One, its heart is in the right place. The idea that Marge feels unappreciated, and deserves to be recognized for how much she does for the family is a nice emotional throughline. The notion that after how much of herself she gives in service of Our Favorite Family, it is right, not just permitted, for her to do something nice for herself, is a solid idea.

Two, the ending is sweet. Homer finally seeing how much Marge does, understanding how much she deserves recognition and a chance to treat herself for that, and wishing he’d done it himself is sweet. The effort by the show to pay tribute to Marge, and by extension, the many parents like her, is warm-hearted and commendable.

It just does next to nothing to earn that warmth.

We’ve played this game before, so I won’t belabor the point, but suffice it to say, you can't spend 95% of the episode with Homer being an oblivious jerk, and Marge being an exaggerated cartoon character, and then try to patch it all up with some treacle at the literal last minute. There’s no sense of build or a growing epiphany or sense of mutual understanding. Instead, Homer is an ass for the vast majority of the episode, has a too-late realization, and everything’s supposed to be fine.

Maybe it would be if this episode weren’t painfully unfunny. I’ll give it this much -- there’s nothing offensively bad here. Sometimes the jokes in latter day Al Jean episodes are awful in a way that makes you cringe. The whole shtick with Smithers dyeing his har post Barbie comes close, but thankfully that's the worst of it.

Unfortunately, what we do get is a bunch of bland gags that are all but devoid of humor. The whole exchange with Comic Book Guy’s pants-collecting cousin is stupid and laughless. The return of The Yes Guy is fine, but all the crud involving jewelry purchases has no bite or even chuckles to it. The random interlude with Burns seems to be going for a more conversational style of comedy that falls entirely flat in the execution.

And god help me, the songs! Why the songs?! Simpsons ringer singer Kipp Lemon does a great job replicating the sound and feel of Elton John’s music, but the lyrics have no comic punch to them. The riff on “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” about Homer being a bad husband is even more tepid, and maybe worse than the one from the Xmas episode. What’s the deal with bad, useless songs this season? It’s a strange recurring thing that you can't pin on Al Jean.

I’ll give the episode credit for the wordplay of “Photo Oppenheimer”, but otherwise this one is a comedy desert, which drags just about everything else down.

Unfortunately, the plot is not particularly good either. Again, there’s something to be said for the idea of Marge feeling overlooked and overwhelmed. The Simpsons did a good job exploring that idea in “Homer Alone” and even in the writer-maligned “Some Enchanted Evening”. But here, all we get is an abortive, extended dream sequence fake out, loony complaints and problems from the family (dog-heimers? really?), and a bizarre way for Marge to get some solace.

I get what they’re going for here -- with Marge wanting to do something special just for her and feeling guilty about it. Again, you could do something with that! There’s real meat in the idea that Marge has internalized her own subservience to the point that she feels ashamed of treating herself once in a while. But excruciating interludes where she improbably sells a pair of antique pants, and then buys a fancy ring, and then goes on a goofy sequence where she tries to hide it around the house robs the situation of any real humanity. If you want us to feel for these characters, you have to make them and the situation feel at least a little bit real. This doesn’t. It feels like an over-the-top excuse for some meh-at-best humor, and then the show wants to turn around and try to make meaning out of it.

Worse yet, the show wants to have its cake and eat it too with Homer. At first, he’s not ignoring Marge's needs; he’s just subject to a cell service blocker at Moe’s. (Why? This is such a stupid narrative framing.) But then, he’s rude to Marge about his torn pants, and doesn’t let her know about his tickets to a baseball game, and even starts out the final scene mad at her for not doing her usual “duties” around the house. He really sucks here, and that can work if you’re telling a story about Homer realizing he’s wrong and should appreciate his wife, but you can't just tack that on in the final ninety seconds of the episode!

I’ve said this before, but none of the emotional material in the episode is earned. It’s just a bunch of bad jokes and cartoon character nonsense that they hope to save with a last second turn towards earnestness. That approach absolutely does not work.

Overall, this one is a reminder that while the Matt Selman era certainly has its ups and downs like any show; it’s still a welcome change from getting this style and tack from the series on a weekly basis.

[7.5/10] I feel like there are two modes of Discovery: one where it aims to take a page out of classic Trek focused on problem-solving and geopolitics, and one where it aims to be a modern serialized drama with major turns and intense character beats.

In its final season, the show’s gotten pretty good at the former! “Eirgah” is, in many ways, all about finding unorthodox diplomatic solutions, understanding what even an alien enemy truly wants, using your resources -- not just technology, but people -- to reach a solution. And when it’s in that mode, it’s pretty darn good!

Sadly, even after five years of trying, it’s still not especially good at the latter. The ongoing race to find the Progenitors' technology is a yawn wrapped in dynamite. The breathless character relationships between Moll, L'ak, and Book are roundly uninvolving. And the attempts to turn every week into a high-stakes action movie rather than a measured, if heightened set of interactions between different peoples, continues to be unavailing.

Which is all to say that I love the initial diplomatic negotiations and internal considerations regarding the incoming Breen. On a basic narrative level, there are solid stakes. The Federation has L'ak. The Breen want him. L'ak’s people are known more for their reflexive decimation than their considered diplomacy, something multiple conversations remind us of. (Hello Deep Space Nine fans!) How to navigate the situation on that basis alone is tricky, which portends good things.

And then you have the pragmatic, the ethical, and the threat of apocalypse to manage. On a practical basis, L'ak might have important information Starfleet can use in the hunt for the Progenitor tech, and they certainly don’t want to hand a roadmap toward that kind of power over to the Breen. On a moral level, it’s against Federation principles to hand over someone to die, especially when they know L'ak wants nothing more to do with his people. And lurking in the background is the sight Burnham and Rayner had during the time travel adventures, of a Federation HQ destroyed by the Breen, laying out what could go wrong if this all, well, goes wrong.

What results is a tug of war. Do we attempt a peaceful solution here, as a pinch-hitting President T’Rina seems to suggest. Or do we bear down for battle because the Breen are brutes who can't be trusted, as Rayner suggests? And given the ticking clock and high stakes, can Burnham get the info she needs to help both the engagement with the Breen and the search for the Progenitor tech in time?

That's a great setup. It lays out dimensions of the problem that are practical, moral, and personal. It gives you a, dare I say, Deep Space Nine-esque quandary of whether to do the noble thing or the expedient thing with a serious threat hanging over your head. And it all requires reckoning with your own prejudices and principles to find a path forward. That is classic Trek.

I’ll admit, as much as I’ve loved Commander Rayner as an addition to Discovery, I have my qualms with the “Behind every bigot there’s a story of understandable trauma.” His xenophobic reaction to the prospect of dealing with the Breen is rightfully galling to T’Rina. But I do appreciate, from a storytelling perspective, that his skepticism is more than just garden variety prejudice. The idea that his people were brutally wiped out by the Breen, hence his prejudice against them, adds dimension to his sentiments. Rayner not letting those feelings, that hurt, get the best of him, and finding ways to contribute positively to the plan, are another sign of his growth.

Not for nothing, this may also be one of Michael Burnham’s finest hours, especially as a leader. As with “Face the Strange”, it’s her empathy and understanding that pay dividends here.

She doesn’t write off Rayner’s prejudices, instead speaking with him about his Breen experiences in a way that not only gives them the tools to better understand what these erstwhile aggressors want, but also brings Rayner back into the fold. And while her conversation with Moll and L'ak results in her nigh-magically divining what their deal is without them saying much, I’m willing to chalk it up to Michael being perceptive, and a commendable desire to gather as much info as possible before marching into a scary situation. That is real Starfleet stuff.

So is the payoff with the Breen. They are as brutish, intimidating, and curt as advertised. Their unreceptiveness to our heroes’ entreaties makes it that much more impressive when the good guys unleash their savvy. Understanding what L'ak means to Primarch Ruhn, as a bargaining chip in a political contest, and using what Rayner knows about a rival contender for the throne, gives the good guys the knowledge to bluff Ruhn and play his rivals against him to not only maintain the status quo, but earn a peaceful resolution to the crisis du jour. Again, classic Starfleet.

And if things had ended there, I think I would have been happy. Is the story a bit simple? Sure. But it requires both guile and understanding from all involved to pull off, the kind of careful navigation of interpersonal and geopolitical minefields that were the bread and butter of the Star Trek I grew up with.

Instead, from there, we dive first into wild turn and crazy fight land, which is the mode of Discovery I’ve grown the most exhausted with.

Thankfully, along the way, we get some interesting reflections of the same kind of lateral thinking and recognition of the value of friends and allies that Burnham models here. Tilly and Adira work to figure out what the inscription on the Betazoid scientist’s clue means, while Stamets teams up with Book to figure out what the composition of the metal base points to.

Both are nice little subplots. It’s a treat to see Tilly and Adira problem-solving together, with Tilly’s attaboy for Adira’s growing composure and confidence being particularly heartwarming. The fact that they have to go to Jet Reno to piece together clues toward an ancient library is a good excuse to enjoy some of Tig Notaro’s distinct energy, and to tantalize us with the prospect of a sci-fi Library of Alexandria that might hold the key to the next destination. (Hello Avatar: The Last Airbender fans!)

On the Stamets side of things, we get more hints that Stamets is putting incredible stock into “the mission” despite the threat of destruction, because he remains motivated to cement his legacy apart from the spore drive. His devotion and low-key desperation shine through, and his recognition that an empath like Book might be useful in decoding a clue left by a member of an empathic species is a nice way to show his own type of lateral thinking and put Book to good use.

The way the two halves come together, with Team Tilly’s discovery of the library which might be the source of the inscription, and Team Stamets coming up with its possible locations, until they harmonize their findings to point the way, is more classic Trek problem solving. As mystery box stories go, this is the step that feels the most earned and true to the show’s roots. It requires teamwork, intelligence, and creative thinking. What more can you ask for?

For the episode to end there, I guess.

Look, here’s the big problem -- I just don’t buy the Moll and L’ak corner of the show. Moll and L’ok having some timeless, unbreakable connection to one another? I don’t buy it. Book feeling like Moll is his last bit of family? I don’t buy it. Eve Harlow’s affected acting through of this? I don’t buy it.

It’s not like Discovery hasn’t tried to do the work here. We had a Moll/L’ak backstory episode. We’ve had plenty of scenes where Book tries to explain his connection to and feelings about Moll. It’s just that none of it’s been convincing. SO when you have the two smugglers blowing this whole thing up so they can be together, or Moll basically defecting to the Breen so that she can use the Progenitor tech to bring back L’ak from the dead, it’s not like I don’t believe it, but I don’t really care. It’s not piercing or convincing enough to warrant my emotional investment. Instead, these theoretically gigantic moments become instances of, “Well, this is happening, I guess.”

And of course, we depart from the classic Trekkian diplomacy and problem-solving to have a series of the same choppily-edited, mushy fist fights we’ve seen time and time again in Discovery. I don’t need to see Moll punching out Hugh, or getting into gun battles with Commander Nhan, where the show tries to spruce up a pretty dully-directed hour with some strange overhead shots. The combat has lost all impact given how often they go to that well.

Instead, we’re in overhyped melodrama land, where characters make emotional decisions founded on sentiments the show hasn’t really earned, with wild swings in fortune that require extended boardroom conversations to half-justify. Risking the Breen getting the Progenitor tech may make the season’s endgame more exciting, but it seems like a pretty foolish choice given what’s at stake.

That's the problem. Once Discovery is out of its “Let’s solve the problem du jour” mode, that allows it to follow the rhythm of old, it loses its spark. Once we’re back to trying to make hay out of uninteresting and unconvincing new characters, and feed the show’s overblown blockbuster season arc, the whole thing falls apart.

The most frustrating episodes of Discovery aren’t the installments that are outright bad. They’re the ones where you see the show’s potential, but that potential runs aground when the series falls back into its old habits.

[9.0/10] If there is a classic Star Trek move, it is encountering an alien species and deciding that we’re Not So Different:tm:. From Kirk and the Klingons, to Geordi and the Romulans, to Kira and the Cardassians, the realization that your most hated enemies share more in common than you might think is a time-tested trope for the franchise. The concept is buried so deep within the Trekkian ethos that it should get boring, especially when it comes up time and again. And yet, it doesn’t.

Much of that owes to the different ways that various creative teams find to illustrate that animating ideal. And Voyager’s comes up with an all-time premise to explore the idea.

This is where I admit that I’m a sucker for Stepford-esque idyllic towns with a dark secret. There is something inherently unnerving about a place that seems bright and shiny, but which is hiding something disturbing just below the surface. The recreation of Starfleet HQ fits that to a tee. I’ll confess, I remembered the twist here from watching the show as a kid. But I still appreciate the WTF atmosphere the episode creates, of Chakotay walking the grounds, surrounded by fellow officers, seemingly back on Earth. Trying to figure out what’s wrong, what’s changed, what must be twisted here, since something must be, adds a great atmosphere to the episode.

What’s great is that the revels add tension, rather than defuse it. Writer Nick Sagan does a superb job of spoon-feeding us key details just in time for them to make an impact. First, the audience learns that there’s a mysterious recreation of Starfleet HQ floating in the middle of the Delta Quadrant, which is peculiar enough. Then, we get hints that the people strolling the grounds may look human, but they’re aliens struggling to maintain their form. Then, we find out, to our chagrin, that these aren’t just any aliens mimicking human physiology, but Species 8472, making their first appearance since “Scorpion”. And if that weren’t enough, we then find out that the reason behind this Cold War-esque charade is to provide a training ground for infiltration and ultimately invasion of Federation territory.

(As an aside, I’m inclined to write a story of two Starfleet intelligence officers at HQ, each keeping tabs on the other, suspicious of the other’s behavior, unsure about what their real agenda is, only to discover that neither is human, but instead one’s a Changeling and the other is a member of Species 8472, accidentally getting their espionage wires crossed. The timing would work!)

We don’t get this information as part of one big exposition dump. Instead, the breadcrumbs and hints are laid out, little by little, until the new tidbit comes down, and our heroes have time to react and respond to it. That escalating sense of information that ups the paranoia, rather than neutralizes it, is one of the masterstrokes within one of the show’s cleverest episodes.

But so is the decision to have both species feeling each other out, not wanting to reveal what they know or the fact that they’re onto the other, for eighty percent of the episode. Credit where it’s due. I rag on Chakotay and Robert Beltran a lot in these write-ups, especially when it comes to episodes focused on his romantic life. But not only is he convincing as a double agent, pretending to be a member of Species 8472’s experiment, while secretly gathering information on them, but he has a surprisingly excellent rapport with “Commander Valerie Archer”, the alien posing as a colleague who he flirts with for most of the episode.

“In the Flesh” plays up the ambiguity of Chakotay’s adventures in the recreation perfectly. On the one hand, you have a certain joy in getting to bask in the idyllic locale from home, even knowing it’s fake, for the characters and the audience. On the other, you have the sinister underbelly, that this is an alien proving ground where they’re masquerading as humans for some potentially nefarious purpose. On the one hand, you have Chakotay and Archer (who, in my head canon, is Captain Archer’s great granddaughter, cause why not?) seeming to share a genuine attraction to one another, waxing rhapsodic about humanity’s faults and merits, and sharing a reluctant kiss that turns into a genuine one. On the other, you have both of them harboring hidden agendas, trying to gather information on the other and their people.

It works as a metonym of the conflict between Voyager and Species 8472. Whether they realize it or not, they have an incredible amount of common ground. Species 8472 walking a mile in Starfleet’s shoes, and the Voyager crew seeing others step into their type of lives so seamlessly, helps them each see that. But at the same time, there’s a deep mistrust, and a deeper fear, that needs to be overcome for each side to be able to fully realize it.

It’s the kind of dynamic that lends the same kind of charge to Chakotay and Archer’s date. Dating is often a little fraught, folks trying to put their best selves forward, keeping vulnerable parts guarded, trying to form a connection despite differences and anxieties. In that sense, the interactions between a human and an alien secretly spying on one another is that basic everyday experience magnified in a compelling way. I slate Voyager for cheesecake sometimes, but seeing Valerie change in silhouette, and give herself an injection on her bare leg that then flashes into an alien form for just a second, speaks to that same interplay between openness and something hidden that suffuses the episode as a whole.

Meanwhile, in the absence of certain information, the tension ratchets up on both sides of the equation. We get brief glimpses of the fake Starfleet officers murmuring to one another, worried that the bogeymen they’re trying to defend themselves against have snuck their way into one Species 8472’s training facilities, wondering what they know and how many warships they have on the way. And on Voyager, Seven and the rest of the crew are feverishly arming nanoprobe warheads, speculating about what their enemy’s game might be in all of this, and then once they find out, wondering if they have to strike now to stop disaster from erupting back home.

And on a personal, scene-crafting level, Chakotay is exposed. One of the scariest scenes in the series comes when Chakotay is trying to get back to the Flyer, only to watch the “daylight” turn on, a la The Truman Show, and to then see hordes of people pursuing him, a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There’s a delicate, paranoid energy that pervades a lot of the episode, and it reaches its crescendo in that bravura scene.

But from there, things take a diplomatic turn. One of those other classic bits of tension that the franchise likes to deploy is whether we bear down for battle or seek peace. “In the Flesh” nicely walks the line, with both sides prepping for invasion and defense, while everyone from Janeway to Seven to Valerie Archer considers whether they need to stamp out an enemy before they have the chance to attack, or sit down at the bargaining table.

This is Star Trek, so you can guess what they ultimately pick. Still, I’m a big fan of the scene where Janeway and her senior staff sit across from their Species 8472 counterparts.

Some of that is just Boothby. One of the canniest choices the Voyager creative team makes is bringing back Ray Walston to reprise his role as (a version of) the same avuncular groundskeeper who looked out for Captain Picard and Wesley Crusher in TNG’s “The First Duty”. He gives instant credibility to the recreation, helping the masquerade feel realer and more like an invasion of privacy. More than that though, Wollaston just has a hell of a presence. He has that firm but sweet demeanor that makes it hard not to love a grandfather-like figure on television. And his homespun colloquialism, delivered to perfection, gives Boothby a distinctive way about him.

Walston, Kate Vernon (of BSG fame) as Archer, and Tucker Smallwood as the faux-Admiral Bullock all come to play. The cavalcade of game, talented guest stars would be a boon to any episode, but is especially useful here in a story about how we should see the aliens on the other side of the bargaining table as fellow individuals and not just faceless enemies.

To the point, I appreciate how the inevitable peace and understanding is hard-won here. Hell, I kind of just love the fact that there are consequences for Janeway’s actions back in “Scorpion”. Part of what gave her choice to work with the Borg as certain power came from the fact that it wasn’t necessarily in keeping with Starfleet principles to arm an erstwhile enemy against an unknown third party. The Captain did what she had to do in a tough situation. The fact that there’s blowback from that bold, envelope-pushing choice, is realistic and gives it more meaning.

Janeway’s right to be unnerved that a powerful species is play-acting as humans in preparation for an infiltration. 8472-Boothby is right to be unnerved that Voyager allied with the Borg against them. Chakotay is right that Species 8472 came spouting threats of galactic extermination. Species 8472 is right that Voyager invaded their space, not the other way around. There are legitimate grievances here, reasons for each side not to trust the other, founded on deadly interactions the audience has seen.

And yet, in a weird way, that's what unites these two parties. They’re both afraid that the other one is a powerful invader, both convinced that they may very well need to strike first lest they be wiped out by a cruel aggressor, both discovering unexpected bits of, for lack of a better term, humanity in their foes that gives them pause. It’s easy to bluster and make monumental threats. It’s hard to adhere to principle and, as Surak might do, take the first step toward peace.

That's what Janeway does, disarming the nanoprobe weapons in plain view of the representatives from Species 8472. It is, in many ways, no less bold and no less daring than the choice to team up with the Collective. Giving peace a chance is a bit of Star Trek cliche, but this sense of redoing first contact, of believing that what brings us together may be more powerful than the unknowns that make us afraid of one another, shows why the caretakers of the franchise keep coming back to it.

What starts out as paranoid and unnerving becomes warm and even homey. Our heroes and their erstwhile enemies exchange information, as a sign of trust and friendship. Misunderstandings are resolved. Hopeful new bonds are forged. Even the odd lip lock comes back around.

I’m a cynic by nature. Too often idealism finds purchase in fiction while crumbling and falling in the real world. But Star Trek gives even grumps like me hope in stories like this one. Because if there’s one idea that resonates, from 1966 to 1998 to right now, it’s that whatever may divide us, there’s always an essential humanity from person to person and community to community, that binds us all together, even if mutual suspicion and even fear is the starting place for our common ground.

[6.8/10] I don’t know how to give points for effort. Star Trek: Voyager’s heart is in the right place with an episode like ”Extreme Risk”. Trying to tackle depression and suppressing difficult emotions and survivor’s guilt is admirable. The way they try to personalize the story, through a character whose temperament doesn’t lead viewers to expect depression, is a nice way to dramatize a challenging mental health issue that was stigmatized then and in certain corners, remains stigmatized today. I admire what the creative team is going for here, beyond the usual “neat idea for a story” pat on the back.

But the way they realize that concept is problematic to say the least. Depression is not something that gets fixed in forty-five minutes, and it’s certainly not the kind of thing you can (or should!) just harangue someone into getting over. So my desire to give the show credit for its noble aims is tempered by reservations over how the episode actually treats depression.

Let’s start with the good though. I appreciate the way “Extreme Risk” depicts depression not as someone being very sad, but rather as a sort of emotional numbness. I said that B’Elanna’s disposition doesn’t lend itself to an expectation of depression, but in some ways, she’s the perfect character to explore it with, because her reactions, her frustrations, the things that get a reaction out of her, are well-defined. So when they’re shut down and shut off, it’s easy to notice.

Torres has no qualms about putting Seven in charge of a project. She responds with a simple “no” to a boardroom question rather than trying to come up with a creative solution. She doesn’t snipe with Tom or offer a smart remark about Neelix’s cooking. She doesn’t care about the dream engineering job du jour. She’s meeting expectations but she doesn’t care; she’s just listing through life.

Sometimes the episode underlines that fact a little too hard. (Tom’s speech lays it on a bit thick for my tastes.) But the bigger point is that it’s clear something’s wrong. B’Elanna’s lost interest in the things that used to get her going, from resentments of Borg interlopers to thorny technical problems to the fiery personality that occasionally got her in trouble. In a weird way, it’s the opposite of one of The Original Series’ favorite moves. Just like it always made an impression when the typically stoic Spock was suddenly emotional, it makes an impression when the typically emotional B’Elanna is suddenly stoic.

A great deal of credit belongs to Roxann Dawson. It’s not easy to play someone in a state of emotional inertness and make it compelling. But there are subtleties and layers to her performance, where you can see the numbness wear on her, the disinterest wash over her, the evasions that turn into excuses that turn into self-destruction. Her scene with Neelix in particular is raw and sad in a way little on Voyager is. This is arguably the most challenging script the show’s ever delivered for Dawson, and it puts a lot on her shoulders, but it also results in the actor's best performance to date.

My only big problem with the depiction in the early part of the episode comes in the form of the titular extreme risk. Don’t get me wrong, the orbital skydiving sequence is exciting, and there’s still something novel about seeing Cardassians on Voyager (which turns out to be a clue). But this behavior from B’Elanna -- running dangerous holodeck programs and overriding safety protocols -- is a clear metaphor for self-harm, and I have qualms about the outsized depiction of it.

There’s something to be said for the idea of depicting one of the rationales behind self-harm, of wanting control over something, of wanting to feel something through the morass of depression. But representing it through extreme recreational activities feels off, like the show has to make it action-y and exciting because the alternative might be too real or too mundane for a sci-fi adventure series. There’s something cheap about that.

What isn’t cheap is the Delta Flyer. Okay, maybe it’s a little cheap. But still! I don’t know why, but the Flyer is one of the coolest parts of Voyager. As much as I roll my eyes at Tom Paris’ 24th century hotrod-loving sensibility that seems like a hobby transposed from one of the producers, the notion of Voyager having a signature shuttlecraft, one attuned to the environment and distinctive in its design, is one of those neat little features of the show.

The “space race” against the Malon doesn’t do a whole lot for me, though. At least in “Night”, there was some larger moral point to the species' dickishness. But here, they’re just Saturday morning cartoon bad guys, snarling and throwing waste at our heroes in a race to see who can recover a probe first. They serve no purpose but to impose a standard Star Trek ticking clock, and don’t have much going for them beyond that.

That said, as with the storycrafting from Tuvok’s holoprogram last season, it is nice to see the crew going back and forth about what the Flyer should look and otherwise be like. Tom wanting form and Tuvok wanting function is basic, but it’s a nice excuse for the characters to bounce off of one another, including a disinterested B’Elanna.

Unfortunately, the scene where Chakotay finds her passed out after a risky holodeck test of the Flyer is where the real problems start.

Let’s start with the obvious. If someone is in a state of depression, literally dragging them off from their home and otherwise physically imposing yourself on them in the name of treatment is pretty awful. It’s even worse when you are their supervisor. The scenes where Chakotay forces B’Elanna from her quarters and all but pushes her into the holodeck are uncomfortable.

Likewise, if somebody is depressed because they’re reacting poorly to some kind of trauma, forcing them to relive that trauma is absolutely not the answer! Holy hell! Why is this something we have to explain! Chakotay making B’Elanna confront the dead bodies of the Maquis comrades they lost is horrible, even if it’s B’Elanna’s own program.

I get what Voyager is going for here. The idea, and it’s a laudable one, is that Torres is smarting from the enormity of the Maquis being wiped out in the Dominion conflict, but won’t let herself face those feelings. It’s the latest in a long line of losses she’s suffered over the course of her life, and you can understand how that would leave a mark on her. She’s closing herself off from pain and has, in the process, accidentally closed herself off from all emotion. There’s something to that idea, even if our understanding of whether and how to confront grief and loss has evolved since 1998.

But as with the risky holodeck programs, it’s not just enough for B’Elanna and Chakotay to have a charged but empathetic conversation about this. No, we need overblown drama and fireworks because this is an action-adventure show. Everything is so extreme, and it makes Chakotay look downright cruel in how he tries to get B’Elanna over her issues, in a way that seems more likely to make them worse.

Nevermind the fact that Chakotay isn’t any kind of doctor, let alone a therapist, no matter how many of the usual bromides about found families he spouts. And there’s not one scene of anyone suggesting or insisting that B’Elanna speak to the EMH as a legitimate counselor. And the whole episode, even the better-intentioned parts, have the tone of an after school special, which detracts from the commendable project “Extreme Risk” is aiming for here.

The biggest problem of all, though, is the suggestion that this frankly galling attempt at exposure therapy works on B’Elanna. Suddenly, she's awakened enough to join her colleagues on the Delta Flyer mission to retrieve the probe. Now look, as pure action and problem-solving goes, B’Elanna stepping up and jury-rigging a solution to the disintegrating panel is pretty darn cool. But it feels superfluous, at best, to the real issues she’s facing, and it’s mildly insulting to suggest that Chakotay’s hectoring bullshit gave her the kick in the pants she needed.

I appreciate that the episode at least has the decency to suggest that not everything is fixed immediately, and that it will take some time for B’Elanna to recover emotionally, even if it’s unlikely we’ll actually see that. Star Trek trends toward single-serving stories that restore the status quo. So we don’t really deal with Neelix’s hopelessness, or Chief O’Brien’s suicidal ideation, or Geordi’s Manchurian Candidate experience, or Kirk’s pregnant wife dying ever again. That is the nature of the beast, and you have to accept it if you’re going to appreciate this form of storytelling for what it is.

But it’s outrageous to present the idea that one arguably abusive pep talk from Chakotay is all that B’Elanna needs to get her on the right track. Dealing with depression and other mental illnesses is hard work. As the voice of none other than George Takei would later tell the title character of BoJack Horseman, “Every day it gets a little easier… But you gotta do it every day — that's the hard part. But it does get easier.”

Voyager can't or won’t do it everyday. I doubt the show will do it past this episode. I doubt any future outings will see B’Elanna taking advantage of therapy or otherwise dealing with her grief beyond this likely re-traumatizing experience. As noble as “Extreme Risk”’s aims are, the end result leaves me queasy.

And yet, I can't deny that seeing B’Elanna get a bit of relief in the end is heartening. Her desire to eat some banana pancakes, to extract a little of the joy she used to feel as a child, is a familiar one. Depression, and the emotional detachment, is the kind of thing that makes you reach for old comforts and old pleasures, in the hope that they too can jumpstart your happiness -- old comforts like, say, rewatching the Star Trek series you grew up with.

There is catharsis in B’Elanna’s second try at the pancakes, and the smile that washes over her face when she can once again feel the joy she used to get from them. There is nobility in trying to tell a lived-in and committed story of depression. There is hope in seeing one of the most trauma-backstoried characters in Star Trek history seeing a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. I just wish the show did a better job of trying to get her there.

[7.2/10] Another solid outing for Bob’s Burgers. The A-story is nice, if not overwhelming. Linda and Louise going on a tour of an old speakeasy that turns into a treasure hunt is a fun story engine. The episode gets most of its laughs in the tour side of things, with the tour guide getting a lot of fun lines. And Cynthia talking to Logan like he’s a toddler, much to his chagrin, is worth some chuckles too.

But once the treasure hunt plot kicks into gear, things get slightly more serious. I can't say I’m super compelled by the search for the Jade Jellyfish, but honestly, it’s nice to see a little continuity from the movie, which I wasn’t expecting. Louise knowing where the “Poseidon” from the bootlegger’s note is thanks to her experience with Mr. Fischoeder in the film is neat.

So is the small but sincere story of Linda not really buying the treasure hunt, but enjoying spending time with her daughter. I like the idea that they don’t have many “things’ together,r and so Linda’s extra invested in the “Flappy Bappies” because it gets to be a mother/daughter bonding experience for them.

That ties in nicely to the ending. Lousie managing to be right and prove her mettle is a good win for her. Mr. Fischoeder claiming it as his property, and giving Louise seventeen bucks is an appropriate anticlimax within the Bob’s Burgers universe. And the fact that Louise is more glad for the adventure she went on with her mom, than interested in any lucre, is a heartwarming note to go out on.

The B-story is light and amusing. The battle of the buskers to decide who gets to take a prime spot is a fun premise. The various tricks are legitimately impressive, even in animation. And I’ll admit to not being especially wowed by the pipe guy’s song, but I do appreciate the swerve and the presentation.

Overall, another creditable, if not quite top notch outing from the show.

[7.6/10] Before I sat down to watch this film, I read a comment about that film that said, “You will never know who to side with.” And as someone who’s read the novel, I was kind of aghast. What could they possibly mean?

Did they think it was tough to choose a side between Angel’s “You’re a different person now and I can't love you” perspective and Tess’ “You should be willing to forgive me my ‘sins’ that are the same as what you yourself did” perspective? Did they find it challenging to know whether to lean toward Alec, the obsessive man who harassed and raped and then kept harassing Tess, as her preferred romantic pairing, or toward Angel, the man who earnestly loved her, and screwed up royally by abandoning her in his rank hypocrisy, but at least saw the error of his ways and sought to make amends?

In both instances, it wasn’t hard to know who to side with. It was, frankly, mildly disturbing to read a comment from someone who sees one or both choices as an even playing field.

And yet, after watching the adaptation, I get it. This is an oddly more “balanced” portrayal of the entanglement between Tess, Angel, and Alec. Tess speaks of herself as more at fault for what happened with Alec. Alec himself is softened, particularly in the latter half of the story. Angel’s change of heart is reduced to lovesickness rather than a fuller shift in his perspective. You still have to excuse some pretty serious crimes, but it’s not unreasonable to walk away from this adaptation feeling at least more ambivalent about these situations than you will once you’re done with the source material.

I have my qualms about that. As with the 2008 adaptation, I have some issues with the notion of softening the presentation of a rapist, even if it’s in the name of offering a more complex villain to fit with modern expectations. But I cannot deny that the adaptation largely works on its own terms, molding the story to fit a different interpretation, but one that, on balance, succeeds in its project, which is more than I can say for its ten-years-later counterpart.

What’s funny about all of this is that, for the first two thirds of the film, the 1998 Tess of the d’Urbervilles is surprisingly faithful to the book. Sure, the instances of overly didactic voiceover narration are cheesy and unnecessary. And sure, there are cuts and elements that are necessarily excised for a feature length runtime. But director Ian Sharp gets the tone and spirit of the story right and hits the key beats with aplomb. Most importantly, the characters feel right, to where even if the production is stately, the interactions between the major players come off as compelling and real.

The peak of this is Justine Waddell’s outstanding performance as Tess. More than anything, her acting is what elevates this film over the 2008 one. The problem with any adaptation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles is that it’s a very internal novel, and more often than not, you’re inside Tess’ head. While obviously less explicit, Waddell overcomes that gap by giving an incredible, layered performance that conveys the complexity of what Tess is feeling in any given moment in a way that is just as potent, if not quite as detailed, as Thomas Hardy’s literary descriptions.

You sense her fear and discomfort during Alec’s advances at Trantrage. You understand viscerally the sense in which she’s snapped once Angel returns at Sandbourne. More than anything, you feel the complicated tug of war during her romance with Angel at the dairy farm, where on the one hand she is enervated by the joy of love and the bliss of companionship, and on the other, she is devastated by the realized fear that she’d be rejected if her beau knew her past and the torturous guilt over the sense that she doesn’t deserve such happiness.

Waddell communicates it all, in ways that evoke profound sympathy and at times, are so real that you almost feel uncomfortable watching, like you’re peering in on a private moment of pain that shouldn't be exposed to the world. That's the adaptation’s greatest strength.

But a close runner up is how lovingly and luxuriously it conveys the romance between Angel and Tess at the dairy farm. It is one of those core things in the story. You have to buy that profound central affection between the two of them: to understand Tess’ devastation at losing it, to understand Angel’s callousness to throw it away, and to experience the catharsis when they regain a piece of it at the end of the narrative.

The 1998 version gets that crucial part right. Their steady coming together on the farm, the ways in which they are inexorably drawn together, the way that the mix of hope and anxiety flows between them. You get why they’re attached to one another, which makes so much of the film work on the merits even when there are problems on the margins.

The same goes for Tess’ scenes with Alec in the first half of the film. Here Alec is charming in an oily sort of way, but also plainly predatory. Tess’ discomfort with his “liberties” and advances is plain. You get the clear sense of someone nigh-literally indebted to a male pursuer, whose abuse and assault at his hands feels like the inevitable result of a sense of entitlement, infatuation, and alarmingly escalating behavior.

Those three things -- Alec’s harassment, Angel’s affections, Tess’ sentiments -- are at the heart of the novel. And while not quite perfect, the 1998 Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ rendition of them is not only faithful in the man, but terrific on its own terms.

That is, until Tess’ confession. That marks a strange turning point, where the film not only starts diverging more from the text, but almost seems to get into a sprint to the finish. I don’t know if the production team was running out of money, or reaching the end of the shooting schedule, or just wanted to put their focus elsewhere, but it’s the point where things start to feel rushed and odd.

Angel is still hypocritical in rejecting Tess for not being “pure” when he himself is far from “unblemished” on the same account, but he seems more hurt than cold in his reaction. The film excises his worst excesses (nearly running away with one of Tess’ fellow dairymaids). And the scene even has Tess basically say that she can't deny being somewhat responsible for what happened. I get that there’s some ambiguity in the source material, but it still seems an oddly ecumenical realization of what is, to my mind at least, Angel’s great betrayal.

Likewise, when Angel returns from Brazil, there’s no broader sense of him truly changing or his worldview being shifted through seeing an abject state of humanity that makes his social hang-ups seem miniscule and even ridiculous. He just wanted to be apart from Tess, got that, and then realized he loved her so much that he couldn’t be apart from her any longer. It reduces one of the more interesting elements of the character’s arc to a standard issue “No, I just loved you too much to be away” bit of folderol.

What’s interesting is that the film kind of gives his arc to Alec. The 1998 adaptation softens Alec in the back half of the book. He is still pushy, and even physical with Tess in ways that are disturbing. But unlike the source material, Alec seems to have genuinely changed in the midst of his religious conversion. He seems earnest in his belief that Angel’s never returning and in his desire to spare Tess from the life of hardship she’s enduring in his absence.

There’s never any sense that Tess wants this, and Alec still ignores her wishes in ways that don’t speak well of him. But he seems legitimately aghast and scornful of any man who would abandon Tess, and truly desiring to help her and make amends for his past transgressions. The novel’s Alec was consumed by lust, not love, and at most wanted to possess Tess more than be partnered with her. 1998 movie Alec, by contrast, actually loves Tess, to the extent of “his nature”, something Tess herself even acknowledges in dialogue.

It’s all odd. Tess remains as strong as ever from beginning to end. But Angel is made less complicated and more flat as a love interest post-confession, while Alec is made more sincere in both his affections, actions, and amends toward Tess. You can forgive the enterprising YouTube commenter who struggles to pick between them.

Despite the race to the end, which leaves Angel’s absence feeling brief, Alec’s pressure feeling lesser, and Tess’ strife and joy a bit diminished, nevertheless manages to work, largely on the back of some great performances. Again, whatever problems the text may have, Tess and Angel have chemistry together that makes it easier to buy into their reunion. Alec and Tess’ lethal argument is raw and gallingly real. Tess’ acceptance of her impending demise as a blessing, because it means she’ll never have to endure Angel despising her again, is as heartbreaking here as in the book.

I don’t know what to say. The 1998 film still has its problems. Too much of the dialogue turns the story’s subtext into text, and whatever’s left is ham-handedly explicated by the narrator. The desire to rebalance the story changes its meaning in subtle but substantial ways, not all of which are commendable. The brisk pacing of the film in places loses the sense of the almost epochal passage of time that suffuses the novel.

And yet, this adaptation gets the tone right; it gets the spirit right; it gets the feeling right. You believe these characters. You believe in their abject struggles and in their fleeting triumphs. You buy their relationships with one another, and the way they shift and complicate over the course of the story. Most of all, you buy Tess, the innocent young woman, taken advantage of by a manipulative benefactor, made to suffer untold pains and indignities, given a reprieve of bliss before it’s taken away from her, and unexpectedly finding a measure of joy on the cusp of tragedy.

It’s why I’m apt to forgive this Tess of the d’Urbervilles its excesses and headscratchers. That alone is a superb achievement, one that makes this interpretation worth the price of admission, even if the uninitiated viewer might walk away not knowing who to side with. The answer is, and has always been, Tess.

[7.1/10] This was my least favorite entry in Tales of the Empire. How did Barriss Offee die? Well, she was randomly stabbed in a big metaphor-laden cave...I guess.

To be more charitable, she dies trying to stall an Inquisitor long enough for an innocent family trying to escape the Empire’s collection of force-sensitive children to get away. That part’s all good. The idea that she broke away from the Inquisitors and managed to become a healer and source of solace and protection on a distant world is cool. But this is an ending that left me unsatisfied with ehr story.

Again, I get it. The cave is a big metaphor! Bariss gives ominous warnings about fear having taken over for Lynn! Lytnn runs in more focused on random attacks and anger than on sense! Even though Bariss gets killed, she offers forgiveness and a warning that it’s not too late to change! I get it, it's just not done particularly artfully. The metaphor is heavy-handed, and Bariss doesn't feel like a real person; instead just a sermon delivery system.

The episode is not without its charms. The fight where Barriss simply dodges all of Lyn’s attacks is pretty cool, and I like the idea of Barriss having become a sort of monk in exile, helping those who come to her and sparing as many as she can. This is just an ignoble end that doesn't amount to much. Maybe we get some sort of redemption for Lyn down the line (I don’t know when this short is supposed to take place relative to Obi-Wan, but considering I’d forgotten who Lyn was when this little arc started, I can't say I’m super invested in that.

The hint that Barriss might still be in contact with Ahsoka (or maybe Cere Junda?) is a tantalizing one. I half expected us to get some kind of teaser at the end with Ahsoka receiving that family of fugitives. But instead, we get something that has spiritualism but not really substance. It’s a fine enough but disappointing end to what’s otherwise been a great set of vignettes.

[7.5/10] Hey! Now there’s more of a surprise! If there’s one thing that seems clear about Barriss, good or bad, it’s that she has a strong sense of self-righteousness about her. In a way not unlike Count Dooku in the Tales of the Jedi miniseries from the same crew, you can see all these little things building up that make her lose her faith in the institution she’s a part of...again.

So when she sees Imperial citizens living in squalor, when she sees the Fourth Sister brutalize a square of impoverished people, when she hears excuses about needing to show strength to earn respect, when she sees a potential ally who’s ready to surrender mowed down, she can take no more. “Realization” certainly stacks the deck, but I didn’t see Barriss’ face turn coming, at least not in this episode. Given her history, maybe I should have.

I’m intrigued about where Barriss’ story goes from here. Do she and “The Jedi” she saves become confidantes and kindred spirits? Are they too simply hunted and eliminated by the people Barriss used to fight alongside? Does the Grand Inquisitor engage in even more rigorous “testing” for new recruits to ensure nothing like this ever happens again? Only time (or the finale) will tell.

But in the meantime, I can appreciate this one for showing the depth of the self-justified villainy of the Inquisitors that's enough to turn Barriss’ stomach and change her mind. The fear of children, the harshness of living conditions, the mortal blow on a defenseless person, all excused in the name of their mission, show how blinded and harsh this group can be. While a little heavy-handed in underlining the evil, it's enough to explain why Barriss would turn away from this and betray her erstwhile masters.

(Though hey, spoilers for the Obi-Wan miniseries: Some of the oomph is taken away by the fact that we see the Fourth Sister in that show, so we know she survives. Does a large fall kill any force-sensitive person in this universe?)

Overall, this is fairly standard stuff, but it’s done well, and gives us (or at least me) an unexpected direction for Barriss’ story.

[7.4/10] I’ve been itching to learn what happened to Barriss Offee pretty much since we saw her imprisoned toward the end of The Clone Wars show. Would she be killed in Order 66? Would she join the Inquisitors? Would she ever face Anakin again?

Well, turns out it’s no, yes, and yes.

I’m being a little glib there, but this is all to say that there’s not really a ton of surprises in “Devoted”, the first episode of Tales of the Empire that delves into Bariss’ story. Sure, there’s details at the margins, and it’s cool to see how the Inquisitors come to be in their earliest days, but things go about how you’d expect. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’d rather shows tell natural, if predictable stories, rather than conjure up some crazy twists. But despite the undeniable quality here, the answers to those big questions are a bit of a letdown.

Or maybe there’s a big surprise that went over my head. I’ll admit, it’s easy for me to get the Inquisitors mixed up. Maybe Barriss putting on the mask at the end confirms that she’s someone we’ve seen elsewhere in canon that locks something into place. Candidly, I’d completely forgotten the Fourth Sister from the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries until I looked her up after watching the episode, so who knows! I think I recognize one of the two silent Inquisitors as the one who fought Ahsoka in Tales of the Jedi, but I couldn’t swear to it.

(Honestly, the coolest part for me was probably hearing Nicolas Cantu, who played the main character in The Freemaker Adventures, returning to the Star Wars fold as the ill-fated Dante.)

The most interesting part of this one is not the canon connections, no matter how neat it may be to see an embryonic Fortress Inquisitorious or hear Jason Isaacs as the Grand Inquisitor again. It’s seeing how the Inquisitors are made, how they have the compassion wrung out of them, how they have to show a viciousness, and to the point of the title, devotion to the cause, to be able to join their ranks.

The tests that Bariss has to pass to join are interesting. She has to show her ability to follow orders, by sitting in a cell for a long period of time, something she’s become good at after her life sentence in prison. She has to show the Grand Inquisitor that she can use the Force to attack, not just for defense, that she can channel her anger and not fight fair. And when it’s her and Dante in a deadly duel, she tries to show mercy, to show craftiness, but when push comes to shove, she’ll kill rather than die.

The idea that this is how they indoctrinate people, how they weed out their better qualities, is compelling, even if it’s missing the extremes we’ve seen in the likes of Jedi: Fallen Order. (Maybe those methods came later?) You don’t get much of a sense of transition in Barriss. But taking this as her first step toward the darkness, knowing we have two more episodes of (presumably) descent comes, makes this an interesting introduction to the next phase of Barriss’ life. And with Ahsoka’s master staring her in the face by the end of the episode, who knows how long that phase will last.

Overall, this plays out about as expected, but what we get is solid.