Andrew Bloom

VIP

9

[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.

[7.5/10] This is the least interesting of the Elsbeth shorts to date, but still good! Which says something!

I’ll admit, I’d forgotten some of the finer points of our visit to Corvus in The Mandalorian, so I had to look up who Governor Wing was and try to figure where in the timeline we are. (Especially since Wing mentions some “mercenaries” coming through. I thought that might meant this took place after Mando and Ahsoka’s visits, but now I assume he means Baylan Skroll and Shin Hati from Ahsoka.)

Still, I like “Path of Hate” as a sign of where Morgan’s childhood trauma and her association with Thrawn have led her. The first two episodes of the show are the cause, and this is the effect. We see a hardened warlord, ruling her fiefdom, generating fuel and resources to retrieve her master and “save the galaxy from ruin.” There is a cruelty, a by any means necessary spirit that has overtaken Morgan Elsbeth, and seeing her inflict that mentality on her people is tough at times.

From a diplomatic standpoint, it’s interesting to see the (presumably budding) New Republic try to make inroads in distant worlds like Corvus. The notion of Nadura, someone who lived and worked in the factories of Elsbeth’s enclave, come to free her people through diplomacy, and running into the perils of bigger stick diplomacy, again helps show the rough terrain the post-Imperial government is encountering.

There is some of the old Star Wars “don’t give up hope” here, with Naruda dying for her efforts, but inspiring Wing to play his part and making things right. More than any of the others, this episode is a prequel to a specific episode from another show, setting up Bo-Katan’s interest in Corvus and presumably setting up how she knows Ahsoka is there. There’s a gap-filling quality that isn’t always my cup of tea.

But this is mostly interesting as another brick in the wall of Morgan’s character development. Whether it’s the destruction of her people or Thrawn’s tutelage or both, Morgan has hardened out in these distant lands. She’s not afraid to deal death, to work her people to the bone, in the same of staging her cause. Even as the show lurches toward the present, we know where that leads, but not yet where it ends. Yoda’s famous aphorism suggests it's nowhere good, though.

[7.8/10] Another strong outing. As we continue down the path of Morgan Elsbeth’s backstory, this is a sharp vignette to show us how she first connected with Thrawn.

From a pure practical standpoint, I appreciate the fact that, whether she realizes it or not, she has to work her way up through his goons. An exchange of words with Captain Pallaeon (featuring Xander Berkley reprising his live action role in The Mandalorian) to establish her credentials, and a war of weapons with Rukh (featuring franchise royalty Warwick Davis reprising his role as Rukh from Rebels) to establish her prowess as a fighter unwittingly earns her an audience with Thrawn herself.

I like their dynamic. Candidly, I didn’t always love Thrawn in Rebels. But I appreciate his characterization here, as someone who thinks bigger than just the Empire, who sees the flaws and vulnerability in it even as he’s working to sustain it. He recognizes how many individuals within the Empire’s leadership structure are there out of pure greed or pure fear. But he recognizes not only a capacity to think bigger in Morgan, but an objective, a drive, beyond the venal or quotidian wants of the rest of the Empire’s ossified commanders.

That drive is revenge. That too is prosaic in its way. But it’s also something that led Morgan to rebuild herself, to find a backwater planet like Corvus (the planet where Mando meets Ahsoka in The Mandalorian), and turn it into a built-up base of operations that the Imperials themselves want to harvest. You can see how that drive has lit a fire under her, making her capable and distinctive in an apparatus without much ingenuity.

I also like that this is a moment of self doubt, for Morgan and for her followers. The sense of anger on Corvus, where the workers who untied around her in search of wealth and prosperity turn resentful and threaten revolution when she fails to sway the Empire to take her up on her ship-designs, shows how much Morgan has riding on this. She banked her reputation and maybe her safety on this ploy. Likewise, her disgust that try as she might, these aren’t her people, only continues to fuel her resentment.

Thrawn is someone who can channel that, who can provide resources, who can see not only talent but distinctiveness. It’s plain from the tone of their team-up here that this is a deal with the devil. There’s something ominous about Thrawn’s fighters lurching into view, and the scared murmurs of the citizenry. But to get what she wants, Morgan will work with whomever she needs to, and do whatever it takes. That's what Thrawn's counting on. And it makes for another strong chapter in the story of how Elsbeth became the witch we would come to know later in the timeline.

[7.8/10] When I saw in the trailer that Tales of the Empire was going to focus on Morgan Elsbeth, I sighed a little. The character, who debuted on-screen in The Mandalorian and came to prominence in the Ahsoka show. She was something of a big nothing in those shows, coming with that sort of flat blandness that, sadly, pervaded a lot of Dave Filoni’s follow up to Star Wars: Rebels. So to be frank, I was less than enthused at the idea that this rare treat, a Clone Wars-esque follow-up in the format of Tales of the Jedi, was going to focus on a character I didn’t really care about.

Well, kudos to Filoni and company, because this installment made me care about her. Some of that is just the visuals. It’s hard not to see a veritable child, running scared across the arid landscape of Dathomir, her and her mother fleeing from an incarnation of General Grievous who is the most frightening he’s been since Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars, and not feel for them.

The terror of the Separatist attack on the Ngihtsisters’ home base, the trauma of watching your mother cut down by their chief butcher, the panic of running and hiding while killers are on your trail, all give us a strong sense, both in terms of imagery and emotion, of the crucible that Morgan was forged in.

But I also like her brief refuge with the Mountain Clan. I’ll be frank -- I don’t remember much about the mountain clan. I think Savage Opress trained there before he was juiced up by the Nightsisters? But I don't remember exactly, or whether we know the matron and her children from before.

Either way, it works on its own, and that's what matters. After the glimpses we saw in The Clone Wars, and the visit to Dathomir in Jedi: Fallen Order, it’s nice to not only see the planet on screen once more, but to get another peek into its culture. The idea that there are people of this place who are not like the Nightsisters, not like Maul or Savage, who are nonetheless drawn into the depths of this war, add both dimension and tragedy to the fate of the planet and the communities who reside there.

I also appreciate the introduction of Nali, a young member of the Mountain Clan who is presented as a fulcrum between the path of war and vengeance stoked from within Morgan, to the path of peace and patience, preached by the matron. So much of Star Wars comes down to meaningful choices, about whether to give into anger and hatred and seek violent retribution, or whether to center oneself on calmness and redemption and no more than defense. Framing that as not just a choice for the Lukes of the world, but for the ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events like Nali, helps drive the momentousness and universality of these decisions home.

And you see both sides. You understand why Morgan is the way she is and wants to be prepared for the droids to come attacking once more. After what she’s been through, what she’s seen, being prepared for battle is natural. Wanting revenge is natural. The way she tries to prepare her fellow young women with weapons and fighting is understandable, given what she’s lost.

ANd in truth, the matron seems pretty naive. When she tells her daughter not to give into that strain of belligerence, and to trust that they’ll be okay, it sounds like a leader putting their head in the sand. So when the droids do show up, and she destroys them all with a mystical ball of light, it’s a hell of a turn. Her moral, that just because someone doesn’t seek out the fight doesn’t mean they’re unable, is a strong one, in the moral and spiritual tradition of the franchise.

It also sets Morgan on a path of tragedy. This being Star Wars, it’s framed in prophecy and vision into the future. But more in keeping with that ethical and spiritual bent, it says that Morgan has chosen the path to darkness, or more accurately, that it’s been thrust upon her by these devastating circumstances, and the road she walks will be a bleak one from now on. Poor Nali walked that path and was killed for it. We know from other shows that Morgan survives for some time yet, but we also know, from the fates of those who’ve walked a similar path, that it rarely ends well for them. Either way, I didn’t care about her path before, but I do now.

[7.6/10] Let’s start with the most obvious thing -- Bastion’s backstory is wildly confusing. So Mr. Sinister infected Nathan Summers with a techno-organic virus, and then Scott and Madelyne sent him into the future, and somehow that created human-sentinel hybrids (or the human-sentinel hybrids evolved separately?) and the successor to Master Mold sent a similar virus back in time to (I guess?) the 1970s to infect Sebastian’s dad, who then conceived Bastion, who has visions of the future that he’s now trying to create?

Who fucking knows? The show does its best to explain, but the whole thing is about as clear as mud. I have a high tolerance for comic book-y outlandish when it comes to superhero storytelling, but this is some Kingdom Hearts-level time travel insanity. What the damn hell.

But you know what? It doesn’t necessarily matter, because you get the gist of what Bastion is going for here. Regardless of how it happened, he can envision a future (or came from the future? Or has Nimrod’s memories of the future? Again, who fucking knows) where mutants vastly outnumber and eventually overwhelm the human population. So his idea is to enhance the human population, make them android hybrids the way he was, so that they can turn the tables and usher in the “utopia” that Cable has witnessed.

I like the concept and how it turns the tables on our heroes. The X-Men are used to being technically superior but socially ostracized. The idea of the opposite happening, beings who are more powerful, claiming that they are the next evolution, changes the dynamic. We’re used to the X-men fighting mutant supremacists or angry humans afraid of being left in the dust. Fighting a new “species” who claims to want to leave mutants in the evolutionary dust flips the script in a compelling way.

The problem is that the techn-zombies, and how far and wide they’ve been seeded without memories, is another loony touch to me. You’re telling me all of these people went in for Bastion’s treatment? And they’ve lived their lives blissfully unaware for so long. And that no one asked questions fr discovered them until now. Again, I don’t ask for much in the way of plausibility from an outsized show like X-Men ‘97, but the whole thing plays like a random Pod People/Cylon/Zombie twist for the sake of setting up a giant set piece than anything that makes sense on even a generous narrative plausibility scale.

But it’s a darn good set piece! I’m already a little tired of the Jubilee/Sunspot pairing, but him showing off his powers to save her mid-flight is a nice beat. And I especially appreciate how damning it is that, when confronted by her son’s abilities in front of shareholders, she’d rather sell him out to respectable-seeming monsters than own that her child is different. Again, in many ways, Roberto’s mom is worse than the openly bigoted parents we’ve seen in X-Men, because she accepts her son personally, but cares more about appearances and finances than his well-being.

I don’t know if I’d call Cyclops the epitome of great parenting, but he’s at least better than Roberto’s mom! The show doesn’t give the Summers family subplot that much room to breathe, but their mini-arc is good nonetheless. The idea of Jean having Madelyn’s memories and not knowing quite what to do with them is especially intriguing. Nightcrawler has really climbed the ranks of my favorite characters in this, and the way he describes one’s personal history as recollection plus emotion is both poetic and thought-provoking.

Her, Cyclops, and Cable jumping out of a fighter jet in a sports car, racing away from a flying horde of zombie androids, and bursting through a cave via Scott’s eye-beams is not exactly a typical family outing. And yet it’s surprisingly wholesome when they work together and become the world’s most extraordinary blended family in the process. Plus, I’m not made of stone. Them leaping into a cool pose while the car explodes behind them is eminently fistpump-worthy.

And hey, as much as it’s just mindless action, watching Wolverine and Nightcrawler team up, blades in hand (or in hands, or tail) to beat up the bad guys is hella cool. Even when the plotting and character beats get jumbled, X-Men ‘97 can reliably deliver the fireworks.

But there’s something under the hood here. The show makes Bastion an earnest villain of sorts, one who does terrible things to mutants both physically and by reputation. But he’s also someone who thinks he’s a dinosaur stopping an asteroid. It mirrors the way real life individuals justify bigotry and extermination with the idea that they’re just trying to fend of their own “replacement.” His excuses and self-justifications make him seem extra-pernicious, but to his own point, different than the mustache-twirling baddies like Mister Sinister.

I also appreciate Dr. Cooper’s change-of-heart, realizing the horror of what she’s been a part of after Genosha and wanting to make amends. Her releasing Mangeot as penance is a strong choice for a character who’s been a bit generic to date. Her speech talking about how moments of triumph and acceptance for the oppressed fall to ruin so often that they’re sad but not surprising, and go ignored by those unaffected, is gutting, and her “Magneto was right” climax is terrifying. Magento going to one of the poles and unleashing an electromagnetic wave that wipes out all power (and the technorganic goons) is a deft way to halt the problem du jour while also setting up a reckoning to come as “the war” begins.

And oh yeah, Xavier’s back. As I’ve said before, I'm pretty sanguine about that happening. Comic book resurrections happen all the time, and Xavier was tastefully written out at the end of the original series. I’m loath to see the show go back on it. But hey, I’d be lying if hearing him say, “To me, my X-men” again wasn’t rousing.

Overall, the plotting and practical elements of this one get more than a little off the rails, but the action-heavy parts are superb, and the reflections on intellectual fig leaves for bigotry and how easy it is for those unaffected to ignore the worst of it leave this one with a lot to like nonetheless.

[7.8/10] The crux of Star Wars is choices. Choices are at the heart of all good storytelling, but Star Wars in particular is founded on them. Luke chooses between the Darkside and the Light. Han chooses to return to the fight when he could take his money and run. Vader chooses to kill the Emperor rather than let his son follow in his mistakes. These are all monumental decisions, centered on character, that are a bigger part of what made the franchise so indelible beyond the space battles and special effects.

And my favorite part of Bad Batch’s series finale are the choices it chooses to center on. Crosshair wants to go in alone to spare his comrades, but Hunter and Wrecker choose to follow him anyway, because by god, they are still a team. Rampart chooses to nab the cloning research, no matter what harm it causes, because he wants it as a bargaining chip. Nala Se chooses to sacrifice her own life to destroy, because she won’t let her science be used for more evil.

Emerie Karr chooses to rescue those innocent children then continue being a handmaiden of the Empire. Omega chooses to forgo the easiest path of escape because she wants to help liberate her brothers. The imprisoned clone troopers could easily just leave themselves, but choose to fight alongside Echo and Omega to rescue the original Bad Batch.

And in the endgame, Hunter chooses to trust that, after years together, Omega knows what to do in a tough situation. Omega herself chooses to take her chance, knowing that she’s been prepared for this moment. Despite his shaky hand, Crosshair chooses to take the shot, and makes it when it counts. And Dr. Hemlock chooses to bank on the notion that loyalty is a weakness, rather than a strength, unwittingly sealing his doom.

Those are the choices that make “The Cavalry Has Arrived” a satisfying end to The Bad Batch. Clone Force 99 continues to function as a team despite their hardships and losses along the way. The children and clones are freed, with Emerie doing the right thing. Hemlock and Rampart are defeated, victims of their own hubris and greed. After seasons’ worth of worry, Hunter sees how much his surrogate daughter has grown and come into her own. Crosshair finds the mettle to rise to the occasion despite his traumas on Tantiss. And Omega herself aces her final exam, becoming a full-fledged member of the Bad Batch, able to face down anything, and remember the compassion and courage that held her steady through so many challenges.

Which is all to say I like where the show lands and how it lands there. It gets the core things right, crafting a sound ending and confrontation that reveals both who these characters are and how far they’ve come. That is not easy to do, and on that alone, The Bad Batch deserves its laurels.

Here’s where I struggle a bit: everything from about the midpoint of the finale to that final confrontation with Dr. Hemlock is kind of a mess.

What’s funny is that the first half of the episode is surprisingly well structured, clear, and propulsive despite having to juggle a lot. You have Omega and her mini-Bad Batch scheming to escape; Emerie and Echo following their trail; Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair working their way into the base; and Dr. Hemlock trying to fend off this attack he viewed as inevitable. The four-perspective structure gives you a sense of scope at the base, and allows the episode to keep the energy and tension up by moving from one plot to another.

There’s even a sense of escalation and chess match to the proceedings. Omega divides Hemlock’s attention by releasing the Zillo Beast. (Another nice bit of payoff!) Hemlock responds by unleashing his Shadow Operatives. There’s a sense of punch and counter punch to the various moves the parties make here. And the fact that the rest of the Bad Batch recognize Omega’s handiwork because she’s successfully following their playbook, is a nice way of showing how much the young clone internalized in her time with the crew.

Hell, I’d go so far as to say I downright love Omega’s rescue mission for the child prisoners. It’s one thing for her to be a full-fledged member of Clone Force 99. It’s quite another for her to successfully lead her own mission and organize a bunch of amateurs in a way that still lets them win the day. The biggest throughline across The Bad Batch has been Omega coming into her power, and this episode does a good job of dramatizing what she’s capable of even apart from her usual allies and resources.

But once the kiddies are on a transport with Dr. Karr, and our heroes are fighting the Shadow Operatives, everything turns to mush. “The Cavalry Has Arrived” runs into the same problem that a lot of clone-based stories run into -- by definition, a lot of these people look alike. So when you shoot everything in low light and put everyone in similar armor, who’s fighting whom and why it matters gets muddled pretty quickly.

The show tries its best. The Shadow Operatives have cool designs, even if they get samey quickly. I wish we got confirmation that the one operative is a specific clone of Crosshair, but whatever. They all have different fancy weapons and pose vaguely distinct threats, cutting the image of purge troopers from the Fallen Order games.

But the truth is that even high class goons are just goons. At the end of the day, the bad guy is Hemlock, and he’s never been a physically imposing figure. So slogging through fifteen minutes of undifferentiated firefights and fisticuffs with the bad guys doesn’t evoke much beyond a yawn from me, especially when it’s hard to follow the action.

There’s some catharsis in the notion that the sort of regs who looked down at Clone Force 99 in the beginning of the series are now willing to fight to save their lives. And our heroes’ steadfastness despite Hemlock’s “conditioning”, and Omega’s faith in her brothers, are both admirable. But little in the sturm und drang of the finish is especially compelling until that big confrontation with Hemlock on the bridge.

Ironically, I’ve always preferred it more when Bad Batch goes small than when it goes big. I can't deny the technically impressiveness of what the creative team pulls off her. You definitely get the sense of utter chaos and streaking combat throughout the facility. But I don’t know, I never really felt like the Bad Batch was in danger, and it was hard to muster up a lot of care when they were squaring off against the supposedly unstoppable Shadow Operatives.

Still, if you can strip that way, you have a lot of strong choices, from the creative team and from the characters. That reckoning on the bridge is the culmination of three character arcs, and one villain’s demise, all rolled into a single big scene, which is impressive. The way the good guys don’t just snuff out “Project Necromancer”, but reach a sort of fulfillment and self-actualization out of taking down the last remnant that saw them as science experiments, not people, is stirring.

The ending isn’t bad either. Though basic, there’s something to the idea that after fighting for so long, the Bad Batch and their fellow clones have earned that so precious of freedoms -- the freedom to choose. The central problem Clone Force 99 started with is what the lives of these good soldiers amount to when they don’t have any more orders to follow. The sense of being used up and spit out by the Empire pervades the series. So there is something just as stirring about Hunter reassuring Omega that they can stop running; they have the freedom to go and do and be whatever they want. And the closing tableau, of warriors at rest, is a lovely closing image.

Well, almost closing image. The gestures we get toward the future are nice enough. Tarkin reapportioning the funding to Hemlock’s project to the Death Star makes sense. Omega growing up and joining the Rebellion, in effect, choosing to fight, adds up. And while we don’t know the fate of his brethren, if anyone’s earned a rest, it’s Hunter. We haven't seen much in the way of clones getting happy retirements in the Star Wars universe, so I’m happy to see ol’ Space Dad get his.

I don’t know quite what to say about THe Bad Batch as a whole other than that it was the most consistently high quality show in the Star wars animated canon. The floor on this one was high, and you can tell that this creative team, who have largely sprung forth from The Clone Wars and Rebels, knows this sandbox like the back of their hands. The art, the thematics, the character growth, the politics, the canon connections, the little moments of joy and pain, were all well done on a week-to-week basis.

And yet, despite that technical excellence, I’d be lying if I said that the series had wormed its way into my heart like some of the other animated series have. The best I can guess is that there’s a sort of sameyness to the show, and a flatter tone, which can make it harder to distinguish sometimes. Still, watching Omega grow while maintaining her righteousness and care for her fellow clones, watching Hunter become a good parent and caretaker despite never having one of his own, and especially watching Crosshair goes from Imperial true believer, to traumatized used up defector, to reformed hero, were all worth the price of admission. Despite any ups and downs, like Hunter, The Bad Batch has earned a little rest.

[7.8/10] I’m going to offer “Whistlespeak” some high praise -- it feels like a meat and potatoes episode of 1990s Star Trek, updated for the modern day. The visit to a pre-warp planet where our heroes have to blend-in, the moral dilemma of whether to observe the Prime Directive or save the lives of innocents and friends, the contemplation of what belief means in the shadow of tremendous scientific advancement, were all the bread and butter of The Next Generation, and Voyager and sometimes even Deep Space Nine. Seeing Discovery replicate those rhythms, and in some instances even improve on them, is a sight for sore eyes after an up and down season.

For me, this is a better spin on the type of story TNG aimed to tell in “Who Watches the Watchers”, where Starfleet officers were captured by a community of Bronze Age proto-Vulcans, and Picard had to save his crewmembers without letting the locals believe he was a god. “Whistlespeak” isn’t exactly the same. But the principles, of pretending to be a local, rescuing an ally from their potentially deadly practices, and reconciling your advancement with their beliefs are at the heart of both episodes.

The premise sees Burnham and company following the trail of an ancient Denobulan(!!!) scientist to a comparatively primitive planet called Hemenlo, to find the next clue. To secure it, they must blend in with the locals and work their way to a weather tower disguised as a mountain than Hemenloites revere as a holy place. That means taking part in a ritualistic race, meant to mirror one of the community’s hallowed myths, where the winner gets to tread the holy ground and complete the ritual to ask the gods for rain.

It’s a good setup! One of the best parts of Star Trek has long been the “new life and new civilizations” part of the mantra. While the outlines are familiar, meeting a new forehead-accented community with a unique form of communication, vibration-based curatives, and their own distinctive set of cultural practices is invigorating. The premise of Burnham and Tilly needing to hunt down the clue without being discovered or disrupting the locals’ rites adds a sense of tension to the proceedings. And as in classic Trek, we get a parent and child, named Ovaz and Rava, to help bring the planet to life in a personal sense, each of whom gets meaningful interactions with our heroes.

For Tilly, that means running the famed Helemna thirst race and bonding with young Rava. In truth, the show has underbaked the story of Tilly’s struggles to find the right connection with her students at Starfleet Academy. But I like that her interactions with Rava, both before and after the big reveal, show that she’s capable of forging that kind of mentorship connection. It’s a simple gesture, but her choosing to refill Rava’s bowl, re-qualifying her to finish the race, is gracious and powerful. Seeing her compassion, and the two women lifting one another up to reach the finish line, does a nice job of selling why Tilly makes sense as a Starfleet instructor at a time of uncertainty for her.

Honestly, the interpersonal interactions, which are typically a weakness for Discovery in my book, were one of the highlights here. If nothing else, this episode brings back the friendship between Burnham and Tilly in a way that's shown and not told that I love. The two have an easy, playful rapport that befits the show’s longest-running friendship. Their joking with each other, banter, and breaking all the rules to save one another fits the two people who’ve been in each other’s corner for the longest. Hell, even their racing together comes with echoes of the famous “Disco” shirts and jogs along Discovery’s corridor.

It’s not limited to that, though. One of the best parts of this episode for me is Adira getting their chance to step onto the bridge, and pushing past their nervousness with the help of Commander Rayner. I like it on two fronts. On the one hand, Adira has sneakily become one of my favorite characters on Discovery. They are basically what Wesley Crusher was meant to be -- a talented but untested young ensign -- except that Adira is more endearing through their anxiousness and stumbles, which are more relatable than the young wunderkind on the Enterprise-D.

At the same time, this is a good episode for Rayner, clearly changed after the events of “Face the Strange”, the way his usual calm but firm demeanor is used not to demean his subordinates or give them the short shrift, but rather to show a steely confidence in Adira, makes him feel like a good Team Dad rather than a recovering Team Jerk. It’s a good look for all involved.

Not for nothing, this may also be the most I’ve liked the interactions between Dr. Culber and Stamets. In truth, I’ve never fully bought their relationship. It’s long seemed to miss that spark that turns on-screen relationships from script-mandated pairings into something the audience can invest in. But I don’t know what to say -- they felt like a genuine married couple here, familiar in their way with one another, a little playful but caring, and tender in an area where they’re nervous to tread. There’s a relaxed sweetness between them that we don’t always see, and it helps sell Dr. Culber’s ongoing storyline of personal discovery.

I’ll admit, I have my qualms about that storyline. Star Trek is no stranger to spiritual awakenings (hello Deep Space Nine fans!), and my assumption is that it will tie into the ongoing storyline in a plot-relevant, not just personal way over time. But I’ll admit to appreciating the humanist spirit of the franchise, and I’m always a little leery when creative teams veer away from it in ways that don’t feel fully baked. (Hello Voyager fans!) Still, both Stamets and Book telling Dr. Culber not to fret over his newfound sense of attunement to something greater, but rather just enjoy it and let it wash over him, is a solid start.

That humanist spirit is more alive in Burnham’s adventures down on Helemna. It becomes necessary to break the Prime Directive and talk some future sense into Ovaz when it turns out the prize for winning the race isn’t just a visit to the sacred mountain, but rather the “privilege” of becoming a sacrifice to the gods in the hopes that they’ll bring rain. When it’s Tilly who’s suddenly on the chopping block (or, more accurately, the suffocation block), Michael is willing to throw the rules in the can like so many great Starfleet captains before.

I appreciate the twist! The episode runs a bit long for my tastes. But I like the fact that this triumphant moment of Tilly’s kindness and camaraderie with a young but aspirational soul quickly turns into a horror movie when you realize what their “reward” for winning is. The secret weather station containing a vacuum chamber that becomes a sort of altar creates a ticking clock as Tilly and Rava lose oxygen. And it creates urgency not only for Michael to disobey the Prime Directive in the name of her friend, but to convince Ovaz of the truth so that he’ll open the door and free her and his child.

What follows has shades not unlike the best part of “Who Watches the Watchers” -- a Picard-esque conversation between the wizened space-farer and the local mystic about what’s really going on. (Heck, Burnahm even shows Ovaz a view of the planet from above, a Jean-Luc classic.) I appreciate the idea of Michael rooting her pitch in both the practical and the personal. She explains to an already devastated Ovaz that his people can have their rain regardless of the ritual, and on the personal front, that Rava doesn't need to die for it. The explanation of the weather station and technology on the one hand,a dn the personal appeal on the other,shows the best of Michael.

And despite the on-the-nose “Here’s the lesson we learned from our treasure hunt today” ending that would make even Kirk blush, I like the theme about the evolution of belief more than the tacked-on theme of being cautious with technology. Burnham doesn't use her knowledge or technological advancement to invalidate Ovaz’s gods or tell him his rituals are no good. But she also recognizes that there is a hunger for the community’s beliefs to evolve and grow alongside the needs of the people and their evolving view of the world. The notion that ritual and tradition can sit comfortably alongside advancement is a heartening one, and it’s delivered with a blend of high-minded philosophy and personal compassion, and understanding nuance that would befit The Next Generation.

This is the kind of thing I want more of from Discovery even as we only have four episodes left. Even though it’s connected to the larger chase, this episode could stand on its own. It dusts off old franchise tropes but finds new spins on them, updating the lessons for current problems. And most of all, it puts our heroes hand-in-hand with another, with believable relationships and interactions among both the regular cast and the guest stars. As the episode’s own moral suggests, it’s never too late to keep the good from what’s old and blend it with the best of what’s new, and in an episode like “Whistlespeak”, it’s nice to see the show taking its own advice.

[7.7/10] My biggest gripe with “Drone” is that there’s just not enough time for everything it wants to accomplish. The story -- of a Borg baby raised to adulthood, of Seven becoming a surrogate parent rather than a surrogate child, of teaching him the values of the Federation, of him internalizing those values to the point that he’d rather sacrifice himself than put the crew at risk -- is more than enough to fuel a two-parter, and frankly, would be plenty for a feature film.

In fairness, Voyager and its veteran team of writers (Bryan Fuller, Joe Menosky, and Brannon Braga) are pulling from a lot of past Star Trek episodes here -- from Hugh the liberated Borg; to Data’s daughter, Lal; to even Kamala, the bride in a politically-arranged marriage who took a shine to Jean-Luc -- and all those episodes managed to tell their stories within a single episode. It’s not crazy to try to spin this yarn in under an hour. But the scope gets too wide, and the developments become too rushed, to where what could be a moving tale of growth and tragedy doesn’t have the emotional impact it might if the narrative had more time to breathe.

There’s so much here that “Drone” just sort of breezes past because it pretty much has to if it’s going to get to the finish line in forty-five minutes. What are the moral implications of incipient life that could grow up to provoke annihilation? Is the Doctor okay giving up his mobile emitter in perpetuity because it’s necessary to keep the nervous system of a new being functioning? How does Ensign Mulcahey feel about having his DNA stolen and used to create what is, presumably, some clone or genetic offspring of him? How does the rest of the crew feel, not just about having another Borg on board (B’Elanna’s quip about the new Borg strategy being to just show up looking helpless is a great one), but about the potential for this drone powered by 29th Century technology to supercharge the Collective?

We don’t know! We don’t have time to know! Set aside the actual logistics of all of this, which Star Trek has always hand-waved away anyway. There are so many facets to the presence of a being like One, an accidental life form, yearning to know his people, trying to be taught a life other than what his programming dictates, who could effectively doom the galaxy. “Drone” barely has the time to explore a third of them, and what it does examine, it rushes through by necessity.

(As an aside, I’m not crazy about the wacky comedy routine of Torres’ blase attitude about fixing the EMH’s emitter. Aside from the gratuitous cheesecake aspect of it, the whole thing has a vibe of “Yeah yeah, I’ll get around to fixing your wheelchair sooner or later; stop whining you dope!”)

Instead, the writers choose to focus on three main ideas: Seven as a surrogate parent, Janeway valuing life over the risk of destruction, and One feeling the pull toward one collective or another.

The first is the most interesting to me, if only because raising One is an opportunity for Seven to see her own development from the other side. If Seven’s arrival comes with the subtext of a troubled teenager who was raised in an unhealthy environment, One comes with the subtext of a young adopted child who’s curious and wants to know who his biological parents are.

The upshot is that Seven seeing someone who was once like her, demanding instructions, unable to shake Borg programming, yearning to return to the Collective, gives her a new perspective on her own journey. There’s something amusing but sweet about Seven’s calm but firm tone with the giant toddler, her annoyance when he keeps defaulting to a drone-like approach to problems, and the sense of protectiveness and care she develops for him.

Nothing speeds along maturation like having to care for others (hello Amphibia fans!), and it’s nice watching Seven step into Janeway’s role, guiding along someone who’s been conditioned to be part of a mindless collective into thinking of themselves as an individual. After these experiences, she sees herself in a new way (literally and figuratively, given the mirror imagery), and as compressed as One’s character arc, this is a nice step along the way for Seven’s much longer arc toward humanity.

Janeway’s balance of whether to continue guiding One along, as both an individual on his own terms and a potential asset to the ship and its crew, is perfectly fine. There is the usual weighing of practical risk versus Starfleet principle, and even Janeway’s sense of boldness in seeing the positiveness and chance for innovation over the possibility of destruction.

But the truth is that The Next Generation basically already did this with Hugh, and Voyager already did it with Seven. One being a brand new board rather than a person liberated from the collective does put a somewhat different spin on things. And the fact One nigh-miraculously manages to extrapolate the mobile emitter into all kinds of even more advanced technology that the Borg could use to assimilate and dominate does raise the stakes. Despite that, this plays out largely in keeping with the franchise’s other bites at this particular apple.

Frankly, I wish “Drone” spent more time gaming out the practicalities here. I’m all for protecting the rights and chances to flourish of individuals, but holy hell, the prospect of the already fearsome Borg upping their arsenal with 29th century tech is something everyone takes pretty darn lightly under the circumstances. The fact that Janeway even lets One go over to the Borg sphere in the first place is pretty galling.

I can't help but recall Admiral Necheyev’s words to Picard, that the deaths caused by the Borg after he returned Hugh to the Collective are on his head. If one were to be consumed by his people, an uber-powered Borg that can assimilate the whole galaxy would be on Janeway’s. And while the episode seems to care about that possibility, no one ever seems to take it that seriously. (Though hey, if Hugh is any indication, maybe returning One to the Collective would poison them with individuality anyway, assuming we haven't all just tried to forget TNG’s “The Descent”.)

Then there’s One himself. He has a strong, if abbreviated story, one that, oddly enough, puts him in line with Kamala from TNG’s “The Perfect Mate”. There is a poetic irony to the fact that Seven spends much of the episode trying to instill the values she’s learned from Janeway and the crew into One, to care about the well-being of others and not just rote assimilation, only for him to turn around and use those values as motivation for his own self-sacrifice lest those he cares about come to harm.

There may be no more heartening moment for Seven than her pronouncement that “Voyager is my collective.” “Drone” teases us a bit, suggesting that when the Sphere arrives, even she still has a certain longing to return to the comforts of that web of consciousness, but instead, of course, she and One maintain their loyalty to the rest of our heroes.

What follows is, like many Voyager endings of late, a bit too convenient and quick. But I’m sure One upgrading the ship’s anti-borg tech will come in handy down the line. And however reckless Janeway signing onto this plan is, him beaming aboard the Borg sphere, commandeering it, and steering into the destructive spatial anomaly of the week is pretty darn cool.

His survival is a little miraculous, but it’s cause for a good epiphany and moment of martyrdom in the name of what he’s been taught by Seven and company. The sense of him denying his worth because he’s an accident is sad. But his realization that the Borg will pursue Voyager forever with him there, that they’ll never stop trying to assimilate this new “collective” with him as the prize, prompts him to end his own life to protect those of the many. It’s a righteous thing to do, and a tragic sign that One absorbed everything Seven tried to teach him, maybe even a little too well.

And Seven gets her moment with Data and Lal: the moment of pain and growth that comes with losing a child. “Drone” doesn’t quite hit the same heights, but seeing Seven get emotional, the changed echo of her declaration that One’s actions are hurting her, is worth the price of admission. Seven’s disposition toward children will become a recurring part of her character through the rest of the series, and you can see the seeds being planted here.

I just wish Voyager spent more time plowing the field. Budgets, time limits,and ambition are not always a friendly mix. Sometimes, boring plots get stretched beyond recognition to fill the tie available. Sometimes, multiple episodes worth of story get crammed into a single-episode container. The balance is hard to strike. But one of the most exciting and frustrating modes of Star Trek is the concept that could spur something of real greatness, if only it had time. I imagine that's how Seven and Janeway feel about One.

(SPOILERS FOR MUCH LATER IN THE SERIES: It’s interesting revisiting this episode as a precursor to not only Seven’s relationship with Naomi Wildman, but Icheb and the rest of the Borg babies she would adopt down the line. You can see the show working through ideas here that they would explore in more depth down the line, which suggests they saw the potential in letting this concept breathe too!)

[9.0/10] To be frank, I didn't think Voyager had the chutzpah to do an episode like this one. For a solid half of its runtime, this episode has no imposing villain, no deadly anomaly, no ticking clock, no major crisis of any sort. Instead, it centers on the kind of thing you don’t get much of on network television, but would presumably be a tremendous part of any extended journey through the vastness of space -- the oppressiveness of monotony.

How does the crew react when they have nothing to do? When there’s no stars in the sky to look at? When the captain is remote and closed off? When the lack of challenges and differences in their day-to-day lives also comes with a lack of purpose? When the ship offers relative comfort but no excitement? When you have nothing on the docket but to sit and wait and think and stew?

I remember “Night” from childhood, and I have to admit, it hits differently after the pandemic and lockdown. The unchanging days, the isolation, the testiness, the anxiety, the random diversions to pass the time, the little “hacks” to get a sliver of normalcy aboard Voyager, all hit home when much of the world experienced the same thing in recent years.

Which is to say it’s relatable when the ship’s holodecks are in high demand because it’s all there is to do. (Appropriately enough, I watched a lot of Star Trek during lockdown.) It’s understandable when Tom and B’Elanna and even Neelix are getting short with one another amid the tedium. It’s sympathetic when Neelix starts to have panic attacks and bouts of cabin fever. It’s familiar when Tuvok tries to meditate in astrometrics as a substitute for the outside world. And it’s recognizable when Harry has nothing else to occupy him amid the doldrums and so pours his feelings into a sonata for clarinet. (Some of us pen reviews of classic television instead.)

I can't pretend that Voyager fully commits to this. The back half of “Night” goes into full “moral and practical crisis” mode while hitting some pretty familiar Star Trek beats. And even in the first half, we get the debut of the “Adventures of Captain Proton” holodeck tribute to the sci-fi B-movies of old. (Which I remember being more fun than either Janeway’s Victorian pastiche, Chez Sandrine, the resort set, or da Vinci’s workshop as Voyager’s holo-diversions go).

But for a solid couple acts, Voyager is downright languid, reflective, unbothered by the need for dramatic incident in a way we’d never really seen in thirty years of Star Trek. Leaning into that, examining what the torpor of monotony would feel like aboard a starship traversing a vast void, is bold in a way that I just don’t expect from this series.

As if to cement that “Night” is an outlier among Voyager episodes, this may be the finest hour of the series for Chakotay, and by extension, Robert Beltran. Chakotay has never been more complex or sympathetic than when he’s trying to manage the daily functions of a ship, the morale of a stir crazy crew, the moods of guilt-ridden captain, and his own struggles under the tediousness of life aboard Voyager. Hell, the show even pulls off a strong scene between him and Tuvok, rooted in their fraught history and shared admiration for the Captain.

More than anything, Chakotay feels like a real person flustered but steadfast in an impossible situation, with Beltran showing layers of the character we’ve never really seen before. The show’s usual stars shine here, but for once Beltran came to play, and it’s a glimpse at who and what this character could have been under the right circumstances.

But Chakotay is only pressed into such circumstances thanks to the self-blaming spiral of Captain Janeway. One of the coolest choices writers Joe Menosky and Brannon Braga make here is to keep Janeway from the audience for much of the early stretch of “Night”. We feel her absence in the same way the crew does, and especially for a season premiere, the delayed gratification of a Captain in absentia makes for another bold move that heightens the sense of frustrating listlessness aboard the ship before the fireworks start.

What I love most is that without the ongoing risks posed by the Kazon or the Vidiians or the Borg, the only enemy Janeway has left to fight is herself. The lack of excitement means the Captain resorts to soul-searching, reflecting on the choices she made that left everyone stranded in a faraway place for years, with the promise of decades more to come. This is probably a reach on my part, but given how she’s shot and lit, there’s an almost Colonel Kurtz-like quality to Janeway in her seclusion.

The idea that when the music stops, when the momentum that's sustained the crew grinds to a halt, the weight of their circumstances falls on Janeway in a more concentrated, demoralizing sort of way is the kind of engrossing personal hardship and reckoning that, frankly, Voyager should have done more of in its first season when the wound was fresh. I’m glad that with new leadership at the helm, the creative team is doing it now.

Of course, the quiet meditation and moral reflections can't last forever. So of course, our heroes run into some locals from “The Void” who manage to shut off Voyager’s power, board the ship, and attack from the shadows. It’s a nice little horrorshow in between the two major sections of the episode. Seeing the ship go completely without power and light is striking as a change of pace. And the all-black, scaly aliens who hiss and emerge from the darkness have a much creepier design and vibe than the similar spooks from TNG’s “Identity Crisis”.

Plus hey, it’s enough to convince Janeway to spring back into action. She needs a crisis of her own to spur her to rise to the occasion and become active once again. And the fact that she reverts to her badass space marine guise, as she did in “Macrocosm” doesn’t hurt either.

What follows is pretty standard, but well done stuff. Another ship in the void fends off the Night Aliens’ ship, and offers to lead Voyager to a vortex that could spare them another two years in the void. Only, its pilot, Emck, is cagey about why he’s there and what he wants. Naturally, it turns out the Void Aliens are misunderstood indigenous people who’ve been taught to fear strange ships polluting their territory, and Emck is a craven waste-merchant willing to sacrifice lives to make a buck.

There’s elements worth holding onto there. The idea that people who attack reflexively may not be evil, but responding with learned behaviors from other aggressors, is an interesting one, especially in the context of Star Trek. Guest star Ken Magee does a great job as Emck, giving him an appropriately slimy quality while giving the sense that he could just be a harmless local eccentric. And the idea that another operator would be so cruel as to reject civilization-changing, life-saving technology, because stopping deadly pollution would hurt his bottom line, makes Emck into something of a Captain Planet villain, but also a good vessel for societal critique.

Still, that material is largely set-dressing for the larger point here. The big idea of “Night” is a simple one -- this is a referendum on the choice Captain Janeway made four years ago. The scenario the episode presents is the same one Janeway faced with the Caretaker in miniature. Either you do the self-serving thing and take the shortcut so as to spare your crew a long journey, or you do the altruistic thing and destroy it, consigning your crew to the wilderness for longer still.

Granted, it’s not exactly the same. Two extra years in the Void is a lot shorter than seventy years through the Delta Quadrant. One chump with a radioactive tanker is a far cry from a dying demigod. And at this point, you’re talking about making the choice just for your own crew, not for the Maquis you’d be stranding alongside you.

The broad contours, however, are the same. What’s striking is that this time, Janeway would still do it all again, but won’t subject her crew to the consequences of her actions. She’d rather stay behind in the Void and send Voyager on so she can destroy the vortex alone. She’s still honor-bound to save the Night Aliens from cruel extinction, but she wants to be a martyr for the cause, bear that weight alone, rather than imposing it on her subordinates. There is a nobility in that, a brand of self-reflection and questioning that the series frankly should have interrogated in more depth when it launched.

The heartening part of “Night”, though, is that her crew, and more importantly her friends, won’t go along with it. You can quibble about how the stakes aren’t the same here as they were in the beginning of the show. But again, the upshot is plain. Every member of the main cast affirms that they would rather be stranded for longer in this miserable empty expanse than be without their captain. (Except for the extras, who are, amusingly, still pecking away at their control stations in the background while this grand, dramatic stand is going on.)

It is, in many senses, a ratification of Janeway’s original choice, the one that put all these people here in the first place. It’s a sign that they admire the Captain’s commitment to doing the right thing, even at tremendous cost. It’s a sign of how much they value her specifically. And it is an affirmation that, even if they’d rather not be stranded lightyears and lightyears from home, if it meant following Kathryn Janeway, they’d do it all again.

The rest of the episode is, frankly, kind of perfunctory and a little cheap. The opposing captain boasts that he could destroy Voyager in ten seconds, and yet the Federation starship puts up a standard fight without issue and finds a convenient weakness in Emck’s vessel. The Night Aliens have their Big Damn Heroes moment, showing well-timed trust in Janeway’s ability to be a captain of her word. And the science team figures out a way to have their cake and eat it too -- to both make it out of the vortex while destroying it in the process.

All of it feels like a zip to the finish, where the solutions are not particularly earned, and the big choices our heroes make have less impact because no one ever has to deal with the consequences of them. But that is less Voyager’s retreating to its usual reset button and more the inexorable inertia of 1990s network television.

So I’m apt to forgive it, especially when the point stands. Janeway need not torture himself. Her crew believes in her, trusts her principles, and would follow her through hell and back again. If season 4’s “Scorpion” was a turning point for Voyager, that divided the series’ eras into “Before Seven” and “After Seven”, then “Night” is a re-pilot. In some ways, the season 5 premiere relitigates the very beginnings of the series, offering a more complex and personal take on them, while also reaffirming Janeway’s righteousness, and the love she’s earned from the men and women who serve with her. That's a hell of a way to kick of off the fifth year of Voyager’s mission.

As I write this review, it’s been long enough since lockdown that the whole thing feels like a strange fever dream. I can remember the same lulls, the same sense of restlessness, the same need for distraction, the same self-questioning in the quiet spaces with nothing else to do. Despite coming out decades before, “Night” captures the feeling of that period better than any other piece of media I’ve experienced.

But I also remember how hard it was to do the right thing sometimes: to keep a safe distance from loved ones and strangers alike to protect their safety, to postpone favorite activities and celebrate holidays through computer screens, to be diligent about protective gear for the sake of others, to upend our whole lives during a crisis no one had an end date for. There were times I wanted to give up trying to do the noble thing and just give in, and if I’m being honest, times that I did.

I can't pretend that the steadfastness of Captain Janeway in “Night” is what kept me on the side of the angels. But one of the things I love about Star Trek is that there was always a set of ethics behind it. Not every moral stance is right, and not all of them have aged perfectly. And yet, time again, the franchise has given us stories of people doing the right thing even when it’s hard, even at great personal cost, because as a great Starfleet officer once put it, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

There is a cost to doing the right thing. Seeing the crew squabble and fracture confirms that. Seeing the captain beat herself up confirms that. But there is also something rousing about a group of people banding together in the name of mutual support and doing what’s right. That's the sort of ideal that sticks with you, whether you’re a middle school kid enjoying your favorite space-bound stories, or a grown adult trying to find the strength to weather your own storms. If you’re lucky, the stars still shine brightly on the other side of the darkness.

[8/10] I’ll confess, I had no idea this existed until the Robin Williams lost boy made a cameo in the short film Once Upon a Studio. And I’m glad I found out about it, because as always, WIlliams is a delight.

If anyone was born to be in cartoons, it’s him. It’s such a blast to see a pre-Genie collaboration between Williams and Disney, that takes Williams’ motormouth, free-association style and realizes it in the medium of animation.

I’ll admit, it’s a little odd pairing him with Walter Cronkite or all people, but they make for a surprisingly effective pair. Cronkite is a good straight man, and the combination of Williams’ whimsy and Cronkites steadiness pays dividends. Just seeing them banter in front of gigantic books or seeing Cronkite work as Robin’s wry guide through the tribulations of animation is unexpectedly fun.

This is also a solid introduction to the process of hand-drawn animation. Obviously there’s a lot of intricacies left out, but especially for the purposes this was intended for -- introducing people to these concepts on a studio tour -- this is a perfect little primer.

I enjoyed the Duck Amuck-esque hijinks of animated Robin flitting about the studio, wanting to transform into other personas or bibbing and bobbing with the famous Disney squash and stretch. The work to mix him into live action and play around with backdrops and settings is superb.

And the scene we get with him in Neverland is stellar as well. Corey Burton does a great Hook (as Kingdom Hearts fans know). Williams is outstanding as a fretful and then frenetic foil for the not-so-good captain. And the solution to the problem, of a little pixie dust to spare Lost Boy Robin and make the crocodile a floating problem for Hook, is clever and amusing.

All-in-all, if there’s someone who makes sense within the world of animation, and as a lost boy at that, it’s Robin Williams. I’m sorry I didn’t know about this until now, but it’s a wonderful little tribute to the man and to the medium all at once.

[8.0/10] So fun story. When I was a kid, my parents forbid me from watching South Park. This was at the peak of the show’s controversial rep, and they’d read the usual horror stories in the local news about how it was poisoning the minds of today’s youth.

But hey, it was cool! It was a cartoon! It starred kids! Everyone was talking about it! There were t-shirts! One of the WWF wrestlers carried around a giant Cartman plush! So I did what any kid would do. I snuck onto the computer when my parents were otherwise occupied and watched clips online.

Which is all to say that it’s funny (and I think, deliberately self-referential) for South Park, of all shows, to do an episode about content built behind the facade that it’s only intended for adults, with the wink-wink/nudge-nudge of the knowledge that kids will consume and absorb it. Part of the gag here is that, even nearly three decades after its debut, the show is showing penises and gore and other raunchy material that would have caused the pearl-clutchers of the 1990s to blow a gasket, with the knowledge that kids will undoubtedly watch it. The irony does not seem to be lost on the show’s creative team.

Only, for once, South Park seems to have some qualms about the idea of adult content reaching and influencing children. And I don’t know what it says about me, the show, or the way time makes fools of us all that I’ve gone from being a kid who watches puerile comedy behind my parents back to sharing those same concerns about what messages and influences are making their way to kids these days.

The “Not Suitable for Children” special is right to point out that the current culture of online influencers mixes hollow affirmations with conspicuous product placement. They’re right to point out that it blends self-esteem, social standing, and consumerism in ways that lead to uncomfortable arms races and badges of self-worth for young people. They’re right to point out that a raft of pornography makes its way to kids, and they’re right to worry about the effect that firehose might have on minors (or miners).

I want to remember what I thought when was going online and watching ribald cartoons: that kids are smarter than adults give them credit for, that not everybody buys into fads and school reputation bullshit, that young people know when they’re being shilled to, that they’re not so naive or susceptible to manipulation, that they’re swimming in hormones and need safe outlets for them, that they can separate fantasy from reality.

I want to credit those opinions, that I imagined still exist in some form of another with today’s young adults, and I remember how infantilizing it felt to have the grown-ups of the world feel the need to protect us from things deemed “too naughty” or “too real.”

But I’m also cognizant that what was a trickle when I was growing up is now a downpour. I’m cognizant of the horrid shit I saw online and the soulless, South Park-admiring edgelords who practically ran corners of the internet at the time. To date myself even further, I’m cognizant of begging my parents to get me JNCO jeans and No Fear t-shirts, because I thought I just had to have them to be cool like everybody else. And I’m cognizant of the effect a lot of that B.S. had on me, some of which it took a long time to shake off.

So I dunno, I’m a cranky old man now. I clutch my own pearls and worry about shitbags like Logan Paul having a tremendous following among kids in the way my parents worried about South Park. I worry about the garbage that's sold to children via the trojan horse of manufactured authenticity and social status. And as hilarious as it is to show old timey pictures of mineworkers flashing their junk, I worry about kids seeing the ocean of smut out there and not just getting the wrong ideas about sex and sexuality, but deciding they want to try this at home.

Sunrise, sunset. The mischievous scamp who snuck online to watch forbidden cartoons grows up to be the hand-wringing chump concerned about the minefield of unsavory influences shotgunned at today’s kids. And the television show that made its bones on knowingly producing crude and bawdy content it knew kids would watch in exchange for ad dollars is now making hilarious but seemingly sincere polemics about the current institutions that are doing the same. It all comes full circle, I suppose.

This is all to say that, unlike the last regrettable special, this one hit home in terms of its perspective, even if I felt the irony, and a little queasiness, at agreeing South Park’s seeming “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” stance.

Even if you feel more like my younger self, this is also just a quality episode on the merits! I kind of love the Clyde story, even apart from the messaging involved. It’s rare that someone on South Park evokes genuine sympathy, but by god, you feel legitimately bad for Clyde when his parents understandably don’t want him drinking junked up sugar water, when his idol is telling him that sugar water is exactly what he needs to truly be himself, and when there’s unfathomable amounts of peer pressure at school to do just that.

South Park walked that territory before in the “Chinpokomon” episode, with a little more irreverent cynicism and a little less incisive sophistication. But the thrust remains the same. You sympathize with Kyle for feeling left out, and you sympathize with Clyde for the same. The moment when the boys expose his rare bottle of Cred as containing nothing but apple juice is quietly heartbreaking for the poor kid, in a way little is.

You feel for his quest to try to get int he good graces of his peers. You feel for the alienated young people in his palace still trying to belong. You feel for the struggles he goes through to get a different rare bottle and the carnage that ensues. You get him wondering if all of this insanity is worth it. And you feel for him, as Wendy did in the social media episode, giving in and participating anyway because he feels like he can't beat the system.

I don’t know. This episode is something of a tragedy in a way that few South Park episodes are. I may be a crusty, heartless old man now, but I remember what it’s like to be a kid like Clyde, and something about it still hits home.

Thankfully, Randy’s story is there to bring the laughs. I may not be as mature as I think, because even though it’s the same joke over and over, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh at Randy trying to get to the top of the OnlyFans charts by flaunting his, shall we say, unremarkable equipment. His obsession with climbing the ranks of influencers, his naivete about his own appeal, and the way he doesn’t care about Sharon showing off the goods or sleeping with other men so long as he’s still getting more views and followers than her is all classic Randy manchild shtick. I don’t necessarily need the “beat my wife” double entendre, but I dunno. “Dumb middle aged dad tries to become an online exhibitionist megastar” is a premise just loony enough to tickle my funny bone.

Along the way, there’s a strong vein of satire. The ecosystem of conspicuous consumption at South Park Elementary mixed with the liquid garbage the Logan Pauls of the world are slinging has bite. The sense of false scarcity and exclusivity are topics South Park has hit before (see also: Cartman’s theme park and the mobile game episode), but they still work here.

The open secret that these various avenues reach kids despite nominally being aimed at adults, and that various forces, both benign and malign, are bidding to bake their messages into that content, is as strong a polemic as South Park’s issued in a long time. And as silly as the presentation is, Randy’s realization that kids see mature content and are inspired to try the same trick is, likewise, as direct a warning as the show’s issued in years.

Apart from the themes, and despite my reservations about South Park reverting to “everything’s a secret giant conspiracy” as the end to all its stories, I love the swerve of the ending here. The twist that it is, in fact, Clyde’s stepmom who’s somehow behind this influencing industrial complex, in the hopes of being a “good influence” on her stepson, is both just wholesome enough and just absurd enough to work for me. It too brings things full circle, and is a more satisfying answer to the episode’s big mystery than I might have expected, one much better than a random boogeyman.

What can I say? I don’t think South Park has lost its “cred” just yet, even as it turns the table a bit, and accuses others of corrupting the youth. But there is something kind of cosmic about the onetime source of so much parental concern, one that fiercely defended unfettered free speech, using its platform to ask if we’re okay with the messages now burrowing into the brains of young folks.

It feels weird for me to be on the other side of that fence too. But maybe all this hand-wringing is for nothing. After all, I watched tons of South Park when I was growing up, and I turned out alright, didn’t I? Uh...didn’t I?

[8.210] Holy cow! A lot freakin’ happens here.

Let’s start with this. I love the memorials for Gambit. The show feels especially solemn and impacted by the loss of one of its main characters, which is as it should be. Nightcrawler’s eulogy is lovely, an appropriate blend of card metaphors to befit the guest of honor, but also with words that speak insight into the noble man who was dealing them. And you can feel the impact that the loss of Gambit has on everyone in the X-Men and beyond. Especially Rogue.

I kind of love Rogue’s roaring rampage of revenge here. On the pure fanservice front, it gives us the (I think?) first glimpses of the wider Marvel Universe we’ve had in X-Men ‘97 outside of the mutants’ corner of it. Rogue threatening none other than General Ross in an anti-Hulk base, and crossing paths with Captain America (replete with Josh Keaton reprising the role from What If), has a cool factor to it, and makes the show feel part of a bigger world.

On the personal front, it’s a sign of how much Gambit meant to Rogue. There is something that's always compelling for me about the person who’s lost some semblance of control, and their usual grip on what’s right and wrong, in the throes of grief. It’s a very human act to be unmoored after a great loss. Seeing Rogue throw out the usual rulebook, threatening government representatives, clashing with erstwhile allies, rejecting doing anything by the book, is a reflection of how messed up she is by what happened to Remy.

I appreciate Nightcrawler being there for her as a sibling, helping her process that loss in healthier ways. The acknowledgment that her pain is real, but that she has a whole family behind her, is a heartening one. The show smartly doesn’t diminish the intensity of Rogue’s feelings, or shortchange the time she has to express them in messy ways, but circles back to her support system, even as she’s clearly not better given the events at the end of the episode.

But that also speaks to an interesting curing theme in an episode chock full of complex ideas -- a sense of anger and even disgust at the sympathetic moderate. Cyclops reacts with anger to President Kelly pulling resources because siding with mutants isn’t good optics in the political scene right now. Beast responds with out-of-character scorn for the reporter who sits idly by as a neutral party when tragedy is happening, whatever sympathies she may offer. And Rogue refers to Cap himself as a “top cop” when he’s on her side, but doesn’t want to act to address the problem, lest the imagery of his presence knocking heads in Mexico City be an issue.

What I like about this is that the foils in these discussions are not one-note, caricatured bad guys. They’re people making points that make sense from their perspective, some of which are fair. But they also fall as cheap words upon the ears of a maligned community that's facing a monumental collective tragedy. The people who aren’t there to hurt them, but won’t step in to help them, despite the injustice of Genosha, are still painted in a bad light for their unwillingness to take the side of the people in genuine need, because of others’ prejudices. That lack of integrity is damning.

It’s why my favorite scene in this whole thing might be Roberto coming out to his mother. In contrast to the scene from the X-Men film series, there’s no rejection or fear from his mom. Instead, she offers acceptance, a confession that she’s always known, and the parental sense of wanting a child to tell their own secrets in their own time. It’s the kind of warm response you don’t expect, something that calms Roberto’s fears and makes him realize that his mother will love him no less.

But then she drops the bombshell -- that even if she personally accepts him, their company’s shareholders won’t, and so he’ll be expected to keep his full identity under wraps. It’s a different, but no less pernicious form of marginalization than the kind that Rogue faced from her father. Accepting someone behind closed doors only, giving into the prejudices on the outside for pragmatic or financial reasons, is a different type of oppression than that of the outright bigots, but it’s no less insidious. As with so many things, the way X-Men ‘97 picks up that baton from the original show, and takes it to more complex places, is masterful.

I’m also impressed by how much the crimes of Genosha are allowed to resonate. I’ll admit, one of my gripes with the old show is that some gigantic, incredible thing would happen, and then it’d be just on to the next thing. That is, to some extent, the nature of comic book storytelling. But it makes the destruction of paradise in Genosha a bigger deal when we get to linger on it, and really sit with the mutants mourning not just their dead, but this paradise lost. The simple triumph of rescuing Emma Frost from the rubble, matched with the stark reminders of who’s still missing, give this a punch. And Beast quoting no less a saint than Mr. Rogers tugs at the heartstrings.

It’s enough to build some bridges between Cyclops and Jean. Tragedy has a way of bringing people together. That's the small silver lining. And seeing them acknowledge the complexities of their relationship, but still want to provide solace to one another at a difficult time for everyone, is heartening development after the high drama of their last interaction.

Amid all of this serious meditation on both the plight of oppressed peoples writ large and the personal struggles of our X-Men, the show does a good job of setting up the next grand villain. I’ll admit that I found Trask doing a quasi-Oppneheimer routine and then becoming a killer robot kind of cheesy, and I don’t know much about Bastion. But the episode does a good job of introducing him as a sly, craft, malevolent presence within the world of the show, one with the presence of an antagonist from Dexter, and a mastermind sensibility. Him having captured Magneto is an intriguing twist, and while he fulfills some standard villain tropes, they did a good of leaving me intrigued to see what exactly he has planned for our heroes.

Overall, another outstanding episode of the show, which raises some legitimately thorny issues in an emotionally potent way, and ably sets up the next challenge in an organic one (if you’ll pardon the expression).

[7.0/10] Here’s where I ultimately come down the 2008 Tess of the d’Urbervilles miniseries -- it is fine. The story hits the appropriate beats. You get the gist of the characters and the themes. And the sense of tragedy that pervades all of this does hit, albeit not quite as forcefully and thoroughly as in the novel.

But I also cannot help but feel like this is a softer, diminished version of the tale. Some of that is the inevitable translation from page to screen. Thomas Hardy’s novel is a long read, undoubtedly, but it gains some strength from that. You feel the steady stream of pressure from Alec on both sides of Tess’ assault, you feel the gradual but inexorable falling in love of her and Angel, you feel the bitter march of days when Tess is consigned to her starve-acre farm and Angel is absented in Brazil, you feel the camaraderie forming between her and the dairymaids. Unless someone had the chutzpah to do a four-season television show adaptation of the novel, you’re just never going to be able to replicate that for the screen, and it’s not the 2008 miniseries’s fault.

At the same time, I can't shake the sense that this is an adaptation meant for teenagers who aren’t quite ready to handle the intensity or complexity of the book just yet. I cut my teeth on Wishbone adaptations of classic literature, and while I wouldn’t go quite that far, this interpretation does come off like something meant to be more accessible, more simplified, more palatable for a wider and younger audience. Give or take Eddie Redmayne’s bare ass, the way the adaptation turns up the volume while turning down the contrast results in a film high in drama, that checks the necessary boxes, but lacks the real feeling of the source material.

All that said, it’s worth acknowledging what the miniseries, this episode in particular, does well. For one thing, it made me wonder where this striking cinematography was for the other three installments. The long zoom and slow reverse or Angel standing at a window waiting for Tess builds the sense of anticipation and retreat. The overdramatic horror movie score goes too far in Angel’s return to Enminster, but it’s shot and edited to elicit the maximum degree of shock as the prodigal son limps back into his father’s parish. And the scenes set at Stonehenge capture the sense of the young couple and the place itself as out of time, a little heathen paradise, until the police come to pierce their idyllic bubble.

The big loss in any literary adaptation is the prose. Unless you want to use clunky voiceover, you lose the wondrous descriptions and way of communicating of the original author. But cinema’s answer is the imagery, the editing, the composition, in a way that can convey the same lyricism in a visual medium that a good author can via the written word. This is the closest the miniseries comes to aligning with Hardy’s prose on those terms.

Part 4 is also the most that Alec d’Urberville has felt like the predatory asshole I recognized from the book. I will say that despite my qualms about the depiction of Alec, Hnas Matheson is the best part of this miniseries, and I get why fans gravitated to his depiction of the character. Not only is this a softer take on Alec overall, but there is a force and a truth in his performance throughout that's missing or inconsistent elsewhere in the adaptation. He is oily, manipulative, and frightening here. Even as Alec’s increasingly intimidating entreaties come much quicker, the sense of pressure and abuse come through in a way that sells what Tess is effectively forced to give into.

(Also big shout out to Kenneth Cranham’s performance as Rev. Clare. He doesn’t get much to do in this story, but he makes a meal out of his opportunities each time. You can perceive the layers of Mr. Clare’s reactions to his son’s situation in every moment, which is, again, a rare thing for this adaptation.)

The other thing I really liked is the brief moments of peace and intimacy we get between Tess and Angel in their fugitive retreat to the abandoned manor. My second biggest knock on this adaptation is that, not for lack of trying, you never quite feel that spiritual connection between Tess and Angel here, that makes you understand why Tess would be so devoted to her husband, and why Angel’s response to Tess’ confession is damnable not just for the hypocrisy, but for the beautiful thing he’s throwing away for no good reason. Whether it’s the only mild chemistry between the actors, or the inevitable brevity of the miniseries, or the failure of the scenes we do get to really sell that connection, it means one of the great counterweights of the book is missing or diminished.

But when they’re lying there in that bed together, and Angel is remarking upon what he witnessed in a far away land that changed him, and Tess wishes once again to delay the inevitable and bask in their paradise a little longer, you feel the lived in intimacy and familiarity that comes from two people who are truly comfortable and connected to one another that I’d been asking for elsewhere. I’d be lying if I said I really needed the sex scene (I’m not really the target audience for a scantily-clad Eddie Redmayne), but it functions well as a blissful contrast to the rape scene with Alec, and the catharsis of Tess and Angel’s physical attraction that's been interrupted or outright thwarted in the adaptation on multiple occasions.

(As an aside, it’s funny to see the adaptation treat Angel’s appearance as so ghastly after he returns from Brazil. The makeup and styling doesn’t really sell that, so you’re left to imagine a conversation that goes, “Oh no! He’s become all pasty and gawky!” “Er...uh...that’s how he normally looks.”)

But so much of the choices here either falter or don’t add up to much. Taking more time to develop Liza-lu doesn’t make it any less awkward when it’s implied that she and Angel have married, as Tess wished. Making Groby a constant present in Tess’ life rather than a late edition, and someone known to Alec has...little effect on the story, other than I get he’s a recurring pure antagonist and a “Could be worse than Alec!” figure, I guess? They skip one of my favorite lines in the Stonehenge scene, which is Tess telling Angel that she’s glad their time is short, because it means there won’t be enough time for her to despise him again, showing how much Tess has been scarred by her experiences, even as she’s basking in this reunion with her lover.

That is emblematic of the miniseries’ approach, I think. The giant harvester, which is a stretch of great fear and poetry in the novel, is just another day at the office in the miniseries. The bleakness of Angel’s time in Brazil, the kind stark enough to effect a change of heart in him, is largely told not shown. Angel’s own regrets and acknowledgment of wrong is comparatively minimized. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a neutered adaptation, but it’s certainly cushioned in a way the novel isn’t, and in some ways seems like it’s just aspiring to less.

Granted, some of the problem may be that, at the end of the day, I just don’t particularly like this interpretation of Tess Durbeyfield. Eddie Redmayne’s performance is a mixed bag too, with his breakdowns being superb and his everyday interactions seeming more stollid. But there’s more bad than good in Gemma Arterton’s performance.

Her nonverbal acting can be tremendous, and when her Tess is full of righteous fury, you buy it. For the everyday scenes, or less high-volume moments, she’s uninvolving and unconvincing. Her tess as a kind of pouty, childish air about her that made some sense in the first part of the adaptation, but adds a trivializing tone to her harrowing experiences in the rest of the adaptation. The acting is not without its merits, but never fully brings the character to life in a compelling way.

But in fairness, I think the same can be said for much of the piece. Outside of a few superlative moments, the miniseries seems to shy away from the gravity of what it’s depicting, turning peak moments from the story into just-another-thing scenes that lack punch or intensity. Throughout the whole miniseries, there is a very stagey quality, where the realness of these sorts of events is muted in the throws of outsized performance and presentation. Even the closing montage, where a death row-bound Tess imagines the blissful life she might have had if she and Angel had dared to dance at their first meeting, comes off cheesy and heavy-handed rather than moving.

Despite all that carping from me, I wouldn’t call this a bad adaptation, just a sanded down one. If your purpose is to share the story with someone, introduce the basic ideas, acquaint them with the characters, you could do worse than this stately but often soulless rendition of it. But if you want the heart of what makes the book such an achievement of form and feeling, or the force of the deeper ideas about society and love and the tragic forces of a broken world, your chances with this adaptation are about as good as Tess’.

[10/10] This is nothing but sap and fanservice, but damnit, it absolutely worked on me.

I don’t know what to say. I remind myself that Disney is an emotionless corporation whose prime goal is simply to earn money for stockholders. It’s a business, like any other, and shorts like this are basically a giant, heartstring-tugging ad for it.

But I’ve also been indoctrinated by decades of films and television shows and video games and other little pieces of schmaltz just like this one. Whether I want to honor the artists who fueled the studio’s creative output, or look cynically upon the corporate moneymakers who monetized it, these characters mean something to me. I can't help that, or the emotional reaction seeing them all together, honoring the history and the spirit those stories represent provokes from me.

On a nuts and bolts level, the Toy Story-esque premise of the studio’s characters coming to life at night is an appropriately fantastical one. The short derives tons of joy from mixing and mashing-up characters from across the Disney landscape. (Something The House of Mouse, of all things, thrived on.)

I love the little sequence where Moana enlists Merlin to magic some water into the Mad Hatter’s tophat for Flounder, in a seamless melding of different players from different eras. Mirabel’s little cousin guiding the various animals to the photo spot is a nice touch. The gags involving the Zootopia sloth and Baymax getting into the elevator, much to Donald’s trademark chagrin, were delightful on their own terms. The fairies changing the studio storefront from pink to blue rather than Sleeping Beauty’s dress was a treat. And god help me, I love Fix-It Felix repairing Goofy’s camera while Tinkerbelle lifts him up to take the picture.

Again, this is all just pushing nostalgia buttons and deploying cheap fanservice, but if there’s a safe place for it, it’s this kind of celebratory occasion. In that spirit, it’s great to see some of the less-loved or more obscure films be represented as well, from the protagonist of Oliver & Company, to Chicken Little, to even a prominent appearance from Ichabod Crane. This whole short has the spirit of a family reunion, and sometimes that means inviting the rarely-seen cousins too, which is nice for the all-encompassing, celebratory spirit of the piece.

The only real demerits here are the awkward human performances at the beginning, but I assume it’s because the lines are read by animators and not actors, so they get a little slack.

What can I say? Even as someone who has mixed feelings about Walt Disney, it’s hard not to get a little choked up when Mickey doffs his cap to his creator. And even as someone who reminds himself that the big companies that make the art you love are not your friends, it’s hard not to hear generations of Disney characters I grew up with singing “When You Wish Upon a Star” together, culminating with Jiminy Cricket’s original croon, and not get a little misty-eyed.

Disney has a power over us. That is the great and scary thing about the studio having invested a century in generating stories for screens great and small, and marketing their own history and legacy in shorts like these across the globe. I can't pretend any of it’s pure, but I also can't deny the spell all those smiling cartoon faces still cast over me.

[7.4/10] My favorite of the chapters so far. I’m not usually a big fan of Eddie Redmayne. Nonetheless, the way his Angel immediately shifts from a loving, enamored husband to a cold, detached partner hits home. I still don’t necessarily feel the charge between Angel and Tess that you do in the novel, but you do feel the devastation of that shift from him, which is an achievement.

I also appreciated the choice to cut between Tess’ downtrodden and embarrassed return to her home and Angel’s ashamed and regretful return to his. It gives you a real sense of both of them reacting to these events, and paralleling them creates an interesting game of contrast and compare. Angel is 100% at fault, and Tess is the blameless party here, but still, neither of them are happy, and both are doleful in having to face their families and answer questions about what’s amiss.

The miniseries does go overboard in places. The scene with Tess’ mud-draped lament after her run-in with Groby feels more overdramatic than a reflection of lived-in anguish. Likewise, Angel having an auditory collage when his father’s doing a prayer about virtue comes off like too much in my book. But that's just a part of the tone of the adaptation and something chumps like me will have to live with.

That said, for once the cinematography lives up to the descriptions of the novel, if only briefly. The vision of the starve acre farm is as grim and brutal as you can imagine. I particularly appreciate the wide show where the gray earth takes up most of the frame, and the contrast between this emaciated harvest of death and the verdant splendor of the dairy farm is made patently clear.

The other interesting choice here is that they make Izz more serious and Alec softer once more. The scene where Angel asks Izz to go with him played out differently in my head, at least in terms of tone. Izz was more enthused and then matter-of-fact about Tess loving him more. But it's an interesting approach to show her seeming graver and more severe about the magnitude of what’s about to happen.

Likewise, the “reformed” Alec still has his moments of menace, but Hans Matheson plays him as much more earnest, almost sweet in his entreaties to Tess. He seems legitimately moved, genuinely in love, then in the more imposing figure from the novel. Again, I don’t know how to feel about the softening of a rapist in the adaptation. But there is something interesting about the idea that Alec is the hero in his own story, even if he’s the villain is Tess’. I can't say it sits well with me, but it’s a different take on Alec, and I can appreciate that. It makes it more of a choice between two options for Tess rather than one angel and one monster.

There’s other interesting choices in the adaptation. They give more time and shading to Liza-Lu, which makes sense in the fullness of the story, but is still kind of funny for book-readers since she’s pretty anonymous in the novel. Likewise, it’s a little odd that Groby is Alec’s former servant and the tyrant who runs the starve acre farm, but I guess they (not unreasonably) liked Christopher Fairbank and wanted him to stick around.

The one thing that holds me back here is the fact that, at the end of the day, I’m just not a big fan of Gemma Arterton’s Tess. She has a whiny, almost whimpering quality that feels like such a put-on. In moments of grand anger, like Tess’ rightful dressing down of Alec here, the fire comes out and the performance really clicks. But in a lot of places, her over-the-top reactions and general whiny tone really bring the material down. Tess is not a whiner; she’s someone who suffers tremendous hardships and goes through hell, but with Arterton’s affected performance, it’s tough to feel that.

Overall, still the strongest installment of the miniseries to date, and one that sells the gut punch that is Angel’s hypocritical response to Tess’ confession, which is much to its credit.

[7.0/10] I don’t have as much to say about this one. It’s largely fine, dutifully working its way through the story beats and the iconic moments. The changes and compression are all defensible given the miniseries format. What it aims to do, it does perfectly fine.

But I still can't help but feel like this is the CW version of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, one that's simplified for a teenage audience and missing the layers of the original novel. Everything has the sense of artifice to it, and I’m not sure if it’s the style of acting or the swelling music or just the overall tone. But these never feel like real people in live moments that we and they become lost in to me. Instead, I just feel like I’m at a play watching little scenes with actors putting on a performance. Of course, that's what’s happening (more or less), but the performance aspect of it is conspicuous enough that it’s hard to connect with the characters.

And I don’t know, there’s just a certain gravity missing here. The interlude at the dairy farm is the happiest part of the book, and I do think this episode vindicates that. But there’s also a charge, a little spoken, almost forbidden passion between Tess and Angel, that I simply didn’t get here.

Against all odds, I actually like Eddie Redmayne here, as he evinces a certain scruffy charm that gives him a winning quality. But Gemma Arterton’s Tess has reverted to seeming like too much to me. And their dalliance feels like a silly teenage romance more so than the profound spiritual connection of the novel. Even in a mini-series, there’s only so much real estate, but I wish we had more time with the two of them together beyond the nuts and bolts of marriage and secrets. Seeing them come together and feel for one another was always a delight, and often moving, and the famed water-crossing is really the only place where it comes through loud and clear.

Otherwise, the changes don’t really bother me. It’s kind of funny that they bring Alec to Angel’s hometown so that the two suitors can lock eyes. Angel constantly planning for Brazil is a bit of a change from the novel, but one that helps seed his destination. And Tess wanting to be a schoolteacher feels a little random, but gives her a dream denied.

My one significant complaint is that I don’t really sense the camaraderie among the dairy maids. There’s some friendship there to be sure, but one of the best parts of the novel was the sense of mutual understanding and bond that emerged among the young women. Here, they seem much more like rivals than allies, but I guess we’ll give that one space to breathe.

I don’t know. Unlike the first episode, the changes made don’t feel as drastic, and don’t either impress me or bother me. This is a solid enough rendition of the story beats, and some of the performances are quality. (Marian and Reverend Clare do particularly well.) There’s just some of the magic, and more importantly, the depth missing from this telling of the tale that leaves me cold.

[7.2/10] It’s especially amusing watching this episode following a viewing of the O.J.: Made in America documentary. Seeing a roughly contemporary send-up of Johnny Cochran’s strategy to, as another huckster would say, “flood the zone with shit” in order to win the day and pervert justice is entertaining and telling at the same time. The scene where one of the jurors’ head explodes was particularly funny. And hey, as a Star Wars fan, the fact that it’s the “Chewbacca Defense” comes with an extra layer of amusement. (Though I’m not sure Chewie ever lived on Endor -- maybe that's part of why it “doesn’t make sense.” Oh no, did Cochran get me too?)

For the most part though, this is just an excuse to trot out a bunch of famous musical guest stars. Some of the material for them is amusing. Meatloaf starting out as a musician named “couscous” is a laugh. And Ozzy biting Kenny’s head off is a nice melding of the iconic bits from both the singer and the show. Plus hey, it’s nice to see Primus in the show proper and not just the intro. But for the most part, this is the kind of cameo cavalcade that seems antithetical to the show’s sensibilities.

That said, returning to these early episodes, there’s still a charming DIY quality to them, before the show got more polished and sure of itself. Frankly, this is more of a patched-together bit of nonsense than a cohesive story, but that's part of the charm.

I enjoy the sheer randomness of the early episodes. The boys going around to celebs and selling candy is a laugh via their sales pitch. Cartman’s frantic German dance is rib-tickling in its silliness. Even Chef’s exhaustion from escorting around town has a raunchy charm to it from the show’s puerile early days.

Overall, this one is mostly interesting as a time capsule of both the 1990s and of a particular shaky-but-endearing early era of South Park, but still has plenty of ridiculous charm to go ‘round.