Andrew Bloom

VIP

9

[7.9/10] So I’m going to level with you here. I love Star Wars when it’s spiritual. I love Star Wars when it’s personal. I love Star Wars when it’s focused on epochal and individual events that reverberate over the course of generations. I love Star Wars when it asks big questions about what we are and what we choose to be.

But heaven help me, I also love Star Wars when it’s full of badass lightsaber fights.

There’s a lot of important events in “night”, the fifth episode of The Acolyte. We find out the identity of Mae’s master. Major characters die. There’s a big switcheroo. Mae and Osha communicate to one another for the first time in the series.

But the part I’m still buzzing on is the kickass fights we get throughout.

Suffice it to say, I know showing bad guys as uber-competent and cool can be problematic, but holy hell, watching Darth Dentum just casually slice and dice his way through the Jedi collective sent to subdue his pupil is awing. I don’t know if it’s quite to Vader hallway fight levels. But still, the way he short-circuits opponents’ lightsabers, the way he uses his vambrace and helmet to block fearsome attacks, the way he uses the Force to skewer two Jedi at the same time, is all badass as hell. Sometimes, villains need to be fearsome, and the quasi-Sith here fits the bill with the hack and slash routine alone.

But his isn’t the only fight with juice here! I love the stand-off between Mae and Jecki. It is not focused on lightsabers, but doesn’t lose any of the intensity. Mae’s resourcefulness matched with Jedcki’s determination to conduct the arrest in honor of her Order makes for a pitched battle between them. The way each uses their environment, and each has a more physical confrontation than the weapons-based combat outside works to add balance and variety to the pugilism in the episode.

Then, we get a standoff between Sol and the darksider. And while the other fights can thrive on craft and coolness alone,this one comes with more character and meaning. This is Osha’s master versus Mae’s master, a battle between the angel on one twin’s shoulder and the devil on the other’s. The standoff in the tree-lined clearing (cleared a little more with the bad guy’s blade) comes with the weight of a conflict between two philosophies. There’s still plenty of coolness in the choreography, with the Sith in particular having a certain balletic grace matched with a wilder style, but there’s also a deeper meaning to the fight.

Part of that comes from the bad guy getting his helmet slashed to reveal it’s Qimir behind the mask. I generally like that. As I mentioned in the last episode, it’s kind of close to the “Darth Jar Jar” theory the internet got hyped up for a while. The reveal that the seeming clown is secretly a machiavellian antagonist has power on its own, and the twist that Mae’s ostensible ally and confidante was also her master comes with a certain impact.

Manny Jacinto does a good job in the role. His line read of the purple prose at the end isn’t great, but as someone who knows him mainly as Jason Mandoza from The Good Place, he is unexpectedly convincing as a steady state badass feigning goofiness to catch his foes off-guard. The way he taunts and throws barbs at Sol in particular lands with a certain sting, and Jacinto sells it like gangbusters.

There’s also the fact that he freakin’ kills people, and not just the Star Wars equivalent of nameless redshirts! We’ve spent time with Yord and Jecki. We have a sense of who they are, and reason to care about them. So as much as it sucks to lose them (or at least lose Jecki, who gets a pre-mortem compliment from Qimir for her courage), the Jedi’s nemesis cutting them down is bracing and meaningful in a way that mowing down randos wouldn’t be. It adds to the list of people that Sol has to avenge.

Only, vengeance is not the Jedi way! What I love about Qimir’s attacks on Sol is that, true to the themes his character embodies, he uses the Jedi’s rules and precepts against them! His goal is to win, sure, but also to try to prove that the Jedi are hypocrites, that their rules are a limitation, and that when push comes to shove, they’ll break them anyway. So he baits Sol by holding Mae hostage and then tweaks him for attacking while his back is turned. He provokes an anger in the stoic Jedi Master that requires Osha to have to stop him from killing. He uses an unarmed state to check how committed Sol is to his principles given the blood on Qimir’s hands.

That is interesting! Frankly, it’s more of a Star Trek sort of thing than a Star Wars one. What do you do when the bad guy isn’t just testing your prowess in battle or the capabilities of your technology, but probing the fault lines of your moral code. I love that sort of thing.

I particularly appreciate Qimir’s pitch -- I just want to be left alone and be free to practice my ways and pass them down. It’s an interesting thought experiment for tolerance. Have the Jedi forged enemies like Qimir with an overly restrictive view of the Force, who may possess it, and how they may use it? Or are those kinds of structures necessary because people like Qimir would wield such powers recklessly and dangerously in ways that leave piles of dead bodies in their wake? In line with “Destiny”, there aren’t easy answers to those questions, and I like that.

Hell, the most powerful exchange in the episode comes when the good guys challenge Qimir for killing a young padawan, and the Sith responds with, “He brought her here.” Who do you blame the death on: the callous killer who claims he must slay anyone who knows his identity so he can practice his ways without being hunted down, or the ostensible noble master who nevertheless brings a veritable child into battle? Or do you blame both? Again, the moral gray area stuff is superb.

I like that split perspective in the confrontation between Mae and Osha as well. Both think the other has been brainwashed. Osha sees the person who killed her family, who always had a mean streak, taken under the tutelage of a false master. Mae sees someone who abandoned her family, who was compelled to give up the love and connection that the Coven represents, and wants to forgive and embrace her anyway. The dialogue is a little blunt, but true to that description, it hits hard.

The other material here is solid, if more mixed. The show set it up in the last episode, so I can't complain too hard, but Osha neutralizing Qimir, even temporarily, with the giant bugs plays as a little convenient in terms of holding off a powerful Sith. The pacing and editing here is a little off, with scenes that cut off at odd times, and several moments where the cinematography/score made me think we were about to let the credits roll, and instead things just kept on going. And the whole switcheroo seems a bit implausible, even if I’m still willing to go.

But this episode makes me think of Revenge of the Sith. Anakin famously declares, “From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!” And it’s amusing, because it’s such a blunt and artless announcement of his perspective. But “Night” is that pronouncement taken seriously! Without defending the Sith exactly, the writers examine why someone might see the Jedi that way, even if they’re the bad guy. It brings a depth to the light/dark duality we haven't really seen on the screen before, and I am here for it.

Or I would be, if I weren’t too busy being distracted by the badass lightsaber fights.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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.

[8.310] Holy hell! This episode took a sharp left turn and completely knocked my socks off.

In truth, I wasn’t on board with this one until the “Godzilla Sentinel” showed up, more or less. A lot of “Remember It” was some pretty tepid romantic melodrama that balled up into, if you can believe it, a love septagon.

So Magneto had a thing with Rogue and wants her to be his queen. Rogue is tempted given their past and the fact that they can make contact but still cares for Gambit. Gambit loves Rogue with the full force of his heart, but is flirting a bit with Madelyne Pryor. Madelyne Pryor is having psychic dalliance with Cyclops on the astral plane. Cyclops and Jean are still trying to work out what their relationship means after this big clone saga. And Jean is so mixed up that she plants one on Wolverine.

That's a lot! And it doesn’t even count Morph’s sublimated crush on Logan, which thankfully isn’t thrown into the multi-person knot that tangles up the first half of this episode. I don’t mind romance, or the friction that comes with it. Romance and love triangles were a significant part of the original X-Men series as well. But the execution here wasn’t particularly good.

Some of that is the love octagon that the show spins up in a short amount of time. The Magneto/Rogue/Gambit thing really should have been the priority given what takes place in the rest of the episode, and deserved as much real estate as X-Men ‘97 could afford. Everything about the Pryor/Cyclops/Jean/Wolverine side of the house feels rushed, and the business with the reporter doesn't help.

But some of that might be able to be overcome if the dialogue and performances were better. Much of the lovers’ quarrels here lack the ring of truth in the way the characters speak with one another. “Real people don’t talk that way” is a fool’s gold criticism, because of course television dialogue is stylized to meet the moment. But the way the various X-Men speak to one another is tin-eared and mannered in a way that detracts from the authenticity and rawness the show seems to want to convey in these interactions, which is a big drawback for them.

That said, whether it’s dialogue or performance or both, there’s also a stiltedness in how the lines are delivered. Going to these places with genuine emotion is hard, but across the board, the performers can't quite gin up the emotion necessary to feel true when so many of the X-Men are breaking one another’s hearts.

That said, I’m still a sucker for the Rogue-Gambit relationship, so parts of this one hit me like gangbusters. I’m sure you can guess which.

The Rogue/Magneto business still wigs me out a bit. The May-December romance is still a bit gross, and Magneto’s electromagnetism blocking Rogue’s powers is still a bit cheap. In truth, I assumed this whole thing was some kind of fake out, so seeing them pull the trigger on it was a little unexpected.

All that said, I can appreciate the idea of it, at least. Magneto would not be above abusing a mentor relationship to make it a romantic one. (Granted, I’m not sure that's the intended read.) I can also appreciate the idea of Rogue gravitating toward someone she can actually make contact with, no matter what problems there may be, given how hard having to avoid closeness with loved ones has been for her. And even if I’m icky on the relationship, their mid-air dance is the most sensual and passionate X-Men has ever been, which counts for something! The animation in this episode is a mixed bag, with the pre-action sequences being particularly questionable, so that's a particular achievement.

And while the tortured romance thing makes me roll my eyes a bit, there’s something true and tragic about Rogue and Gambit’s relationship. You can understand why Gambit would be hurt, why he’d protest that their love is more than just skin deep. You can understand why Rogue doesn’t want to be tortured by never being able to touch someone she loves, and the political practicality of becoming Magento’s queen. And you can understand Rogue giving it the old college try, with the passionate dance with Magnus in front of everyone, only to realize that no matter what she tells herself, that partnership isn’t the one she really wants. The volume is high and the emotional tone is overblown, but there’s truth at the core of this corner of the love octagon, and it works.

Until the villains destroy everything.

The contrast between the bliss and sanctuary Genosha offers for most of the episode, and the utter devastation that follows once the Godzilla Sentinel invades, is completely jarring, in the best way.

The attack has meaning because Genosha does seem like a mutant paradise. There are tributes to Xavier and Magneto. There is good ol’ Nightcrawler, a goodwill ambassador to guide our friends around. And there is a ruling council, filled with a nice sample familiar faces from X-Men’s past, including a human, suggesting that in the wake of Professor X’s death, the mutants really did come together.

Not for nothing, the show’s creative team also does a wonderful job of making the mutant nation feel distinctive. The visual designs of the buildings and shops and decor; the way they use their abilities to dance and play and move in a space meant for them; the way they float and flit seem uninhibited in a place just for them all sells Genosha as the sanctuary they’ve been waiting for.

So it means something when the sentinel, the original enemy of the X-Men in this series, returns to rend it asunder. The last gasps of Cable to his mother (a reveal I hope we have more time for later in the show) comes with an appropriate sense of desperation. Too many of us who grew up with the original show have lived through seemingly normal days and fun events destroyed by sudden tragedy. The sentinel attack has that tone, and it’s gut-wrenching in action.

It’s also, in a strange way, cool as hell. Again, I don’t know what to do with this show’s animation. Sometimes, it includes stiff movements and awkward character expressions that make it feel like a high class flash cartoon. Other times, in sequences like the X-Men defending their fellow mutants against the super-sentinel, the fluidity, epic scope, and attention to detail make it feel downright Akira-esque. Maybe the animators are just saving all their juice for the big sequences, but whatever the deal is, when they bring their A-game, they blow you away.

The blinding blast of cataclysmic green light raining down on fighter and bystander alike, the heroism of Kurt Wagner diving in front of the beam to protect our champions, the force of Magneto using his powers to smack this mechanical demon in the face, Rogue and Gambit racing into battle, the Cajun combatant bursting in to rescue to Morlocks, Rogue bursting through one of the automatons’ shoulders, Magneto saving Leech within an improvised shell and telling the poor child not to be afraid. They are all marvelous, momentous, jaw-dropping moments in a kinetic finale that trades the gentle peace of Genosha’s new dawn for terrifying panic and a wave of utter destruction. If you could watch without gripping the edge of your chair, you’re a stronger man than I.

And of course, there is the shock, glory, and tragedy of Gambit’s sacrifice. Whatever their hang-ups, Gambit still loves Rogue, and his willingness to put his life in harm’s way to preserve hers shows the depths of that affection, requited or not. The moment where he leaps up to take out the demon, and it impales him like nothing, Remy’s limp body drooping from a mechanized tentacle, takes your breath away with the sudden surprise of it. And there may be no more triumphant, if sad moment in the series than Gambit using the spearing of his own guts to harness his powers and destroy the bastion of mechanized death that unleashed hell upon his loved ones and countrymen.

Therein lies the greatest irony of “Remember It”. Gambit and Rogue debate whether their love is enough, but in the end, Remy will make the ultimate sacrifice if it will save the woman he cares so deeply for. And what drove them apart despite their feelings was that they couldn’t make contact, only for the moment when they can finally be close to one another only coming because Gambit is no longer alive to be hurt by his lover’s touch. The romances of “Remember It” stumble and fumble their way through much of this episode, but by god, they finish strong.

[7.8/10[ I have to admit, I spent much of the first part of this one going “Who the hell is Kahhori?” I wracked my brain trying to figure out what the connection to the MCU was, until I looked it up and was delighted to discover that she’s a wholly original character!

I like What If and its reimaginative premise, but after a season and a half, you can detect certain formulas in its remixes. With that, something totally fresh and only lightly related to the rest of the known MCU is a welcome departure.

And I particularly appreciate the original story What If chose to tell here. Telling a story that is distinctively of and about the indigenous Mohawk tribes gives this tale a unique flavor that elevates it. There is a certain Tarantino-style “alternate history where the oppressed get to be the victors over their oppressors” vibe here, but in a more spiritual and culturally authentic sort of way that comes through.

Granted, maybe it’s just the stopping bullets motif, but Kahhori has a certain amount of Neo from The Matrix in her. That's a pretty familiar spin on the hero’s journey to begin with, but the whole sense of finding yourself in another plane of existence, with cool powers, that you can intuitively use better than experienced wielders, and come back to the world you know to make your stand, is familiar. But it’s good stuff, and even if the beats of Kahhori excelling instinctively come off a touch pat, the visuals are striking, and the ideas are strong.

I appreciate the themes here too, of that aspirational stand against colonialism, of the freighted idea that a place you’ve been forced to can be a paradise or a prison, of the resolve to help your people even when it requires great boldness and great risk. Those bigger ideas infuse this outing with a sense of epicness and a grander meaning. That makes it rousing when Kahhori uses her abilities to force the portal down to her rather than reaching toward it, and when her Sky World brethren break through to her rescue in blinding streaks of light, and when Conquistador and Monarch alike are brought to a level playing field by indigenous peoples able to match their firepower.

Some of this is simple, but the spirit of it bears out and wins you over. Particularly as What If has more wiggle room than mainline MCU projects to get experimental and depart from the standard routines without disrupting canon, I’d love to see it take more big and original swings like this, particularly given how well this one connected.

[8.0/10] Look, I’m in the tank for Ming-Na Wen as a performer for her work in everything from Mulan to Agents of Shield, so I’m probably not the most objective person to review this episode. That said, I do think it’s a stand out for the Bad Batch, especially for an outing that is not a “special event” like a season premiere/finale or a departure from the usual format.

Fennec Shand is a hell of a player to link Hunter and Wrecker with. She’s a genuine neutral here, willing to work for whomever gives her the biggest payday, and literally mercenary about it. There’s a Manichean, good guys vs. bad guys dichotomy to Star Wars most of the time, so it’s nice to include someone like Shand who doesn’t really fit into either camp. She has her own interests, chiefly money, and she’s willing to side with whoever can provide the most of it. That makes her a genuine wildcard, and the compare and contrast game the show plays between pragmatic, self-centered Shand and our altruistic clone duo is extra interesting for it.

That said, I appreciate that amid all of this, the show picks up the hint that she harbors a soft spot for “the kid” just like Hunter and Wrecker do. The trio verbally spar over their respective prowess and interaction with Omega, as you do. And Shand’s cutting barb toward the clone twosome -- that they let Omega get away as much as she did -- rubs salt in a wound both of them are still nursing. The character work over where the former clone troopers stand in relation to the lucre-minded bounty hunter is subtle but strong.

Their misadventures in hunting down a target who upset the Haxion Brood (hello Fallen Order fans!) is also sound and exciting on its own terms. On a pure craft level, the show invoking some Apocalypse Now/Deliverance vibes for the trio’s trip down the river to collar their quarry is music to my ears. So many of these standalone quest episodes blend together, so distinguishing them through atmosphere and aesthetic is crucial. The creepiness of floating down a boobytrapped waterway, the grimy gold hue everything comes with, and a scurrying, anthropomorphized mantis target all give this one a visual distinctiveness and unnerving vibe that helps to make “Bad Territory” memorable.

The strong practical dynamic between Shand and Hunter/Wrecker helps too. She has something they need -- info on the bounty hunter who knows about the Empire hiring mercenaries to wrangle “m-count” bounties. So while it’s not exactly fun, the way she basically orders our heroes to do her dirty work if they want to get what they’re after puts Hunter and Wrecker on their back foot in a way we don’t typically see. Someone else having leverage over them like that, where they can't really resist lest they lose their best lead, makes this mission different from their usual quests, in a good way.

I also appreciated the B-story with Omega and Crosshair. We’ve confirmed (maybe?) that Crosshair’s hand issue is a mental one, more than a physical one. The two of them meditating, using techniques she learned on Kashyyyk no less, is a nice beat. Crosshair pushing himself outside of his comfort zone speaks well of his growth, and his recognition that Omega has been through a lot herself and grown from it is nice too.

Overall, another strong episode, and the one with my favorite action sequences of the season so far.

[7.7/10] After two episodes that are more about establishing mood and the setup of the new season, it’s nice to get an outing like this one that is all about igniting the kindling the show’s been gathering this season.

So we have Omega making an escape! We have Crosshair teaming up with her! We have Dr. Hemlock discovering that Omega’s blood is the key to a successful M-count transfer! We have the frickin’ Emperor showing up to examine his clone pods or pickled Snokes or whatever and growl “this is of the utmost importance”! This is a big deal episode, and you feel it.

What I appreciate most here is the setup and payoff. It would be easy for Omega and Crosshair escaping from an airtight Imperial secured location to feel cheap. (Hello viewers of the Obi-Wan Kenobi mini-series!) Instead, the show establishes Nala Se’s interest in seeing Omega freed, giving her datapad access that makes escape and rescue more plausible.

The shuttle that crashed in the season premiere provides Omega and Crosshair good cause to try to escape out to the area beyond the compound. The show already established how the kennels feed out beyond the walls of the lab, which sets up a good escape route for our heroes. The fact that the shuttle’s comms are down from the crash means there’s still challenges for the good guys to overcome if they want to get out of dodge.

The presence of dangerous creatures beyond the walls was set up by Hemlock in the first episode, and its nice that rather than attacking them, Omega gets help from Batcher and the other hounds, a sign of care shown to others, rather than mere use and discarding, is something that pays off practically, not just ethically.

The way they’re able to distract the stormtroopers and then steal their shuttle is a touch convenient, but the fact that the Bad Batch has protocols for this sort of situation, and that Tech apparently taught them to Omega, adds just the right hint of plausibility and emotion to the scenario. I’m particularly fond of the fact that, even having accomplished all of these unlikely objectives, it still looks like Omega and Crosshair are going to be shot down, until Emerie Karr realizes the truth about Omega, and Hemlock calls off the attack, given how badly he needs what Omega can provide.

All-in-all, the show plays fair with getting Omega and Crosshair out of the compound, which is not something I expected. THere’s meaningful steps along the way, real challenges that are overcome by things the characters know or in ways that require their guile and trust. And most importantly, there’s earned tension every step along the way, as they’re dodging the Emperor’s guards, wild animals, and suspicious droids. This is an appropriately tense escape, and that tone helps make the whole thing feel less like a fait accompli and more like a worthy challenge that took a lot of cleverness and courage from the good guys to pull off.

There’s other interesting details at the margins here. It’s always nice to hear Ian McDiarmid playing the Emperor, even if the whole cloning routine kind of makes me roll my eyes at this point. I appreciate the progression of Emerie Karr, who is resigned to the idea that this is their fate, whether they like it or not, but sees through Omega’s actions that there’s potentially another way. I like Hemlock as a sycophant for the Emperor, while also clearly jockeying for promotions and extra resources. I like Nala Se giving herself plausible deniability in Omega’s escape, given how she’s with Hemlock the whole time.

And most of all, I like the dynamic between Crosshair, who’s aghast at Omega just winging this escape plan on the one hand, with Omega herself, refusing to leave Crosshair behind. The dynamic between them has been one of the most interesting elements of The Bad Batch from the beginning, and it’s nice to see it continuing to bloom. I’m also intrigued by Crosshair’s shaky hand, which doesn't portend good things. Methinks we’ll eventually get a heroic sacrifice from an ailing Crosshair to protect Omega, completing his turn back to the good, and showing that some things are worth dying for, when you’re not being tossed out like used property.

Overall, this is a superb climax to the Tantiss arc we’ve seen so far, and gives the show a clear board to play with going forward, with enough balls still in the air for the show to catch later in the season.

[8.9/10] A title like The Holdovers has a double meaning. On a basic level, it’s simply the technical term for the three individuals--a teacher, a student, and a kitchen manager--all spending their holiday break on the grounds of the New England boarding school they call home during the year.

But in a broader sense, it refers to people who have been left behind, who remain in some uncertain limbo not just in where they lay their heads, but in their lives as a whole. The nominal goal at the center of the film is for this trio of disregarded remainders to make it to the New Year without wrecking each other or the school. But its broader aim is to give each of them a direction, a connection, and something that jostles each of them from their different flavors of sad stupor and toward a reinvigorated purpose.

The results are, in turn, uproarious, heartbreaking, and ultimately moving. The Holdovers has its antecedents: from the locked-in mischief and camaraderie of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to the young man struggling with trauma a la Catcher in the Rye, to countless broader flicks about grumbly instructors warming up to rambunctious students. But there’s a greater depth, a clearer sense of open-wounded humanity, a distinctiveness in how its main players are formed and bounced off one another, that makes the film feel unlike any other.

It wouldn’t achieve that success without its triumvirate of great character and even greater performance. Paul Hunham could easily have been little more than a walking trope -- a stuffy and curmudgeonly civics teacher who’s hard on his students but betrays a hidden heart of gold. Instead, writer David Hemingson makes him more complex than that. Hunham is grumpy and hidebound before softening to this charge, yes, but he’s also a depressed drunkard, pessimistic about the world’s prospects for the future, with his dreams whittled down by the same forces that grind the other Holdovers, in various ways. Even that could have been a prestige picture cliche, but Paul Giamatti’s performance gives Hunham such spirit, and so many layers behind each grand pronouncement and reluctant, heartfelt compromise. Together, Hemingson and Giamatii make a broad archetype of a character feel achingly human, which is no small achievement.

Likewise, Angus Tully, the bright but trouble-making student unexpectedly left behind by his mother and inclined to rebel against Hunham’s supervision, could also have been a stock cliche. The recalcitrant but troubled youth who fights back against, but ultimately confides in their mandated caretaker is no less traditional a tale. And yet, again, the script doesn’t leave Tully as a one-note stereotype, but instead, gives him a cleverness, a sense of compassion, and a deep well of pain that makes him more than that outline. At the same time, twenty-year-old Dominic Sessa conveys the anger, hurt, and unassuming innocence of Angus to perfection. He cuts the figure of a young Alan Alda with both his snark and his sadness, and delivers a challenging performance for a young actor without stumbling once.

But it’s Da'Vine Joy Randolph--who plays Mary Lamb, the school’s head cook--that steals the show. Unlike Mr. Hunham and Angus, Mary is not the type of character you see much of in either these scholastic coming-of-age stories or prestige pictures. She is a black woman who works among the downstairs set in contrast to the mostly white, upper crust pupils and professors who reside upstairs. She is a woman bathed in grief, having lost both her husband and her son before they turned twenty-five. And most importantly, she is a full-fledged part of the film’s central trifecta, whose needs and concerns get the same attention and focus as her counterparts who are more often spotlighted in these stories.

Her inner life is potent and conspicuous. The things she’s feeling deeply at all times but never saying come through loud and clear amid Randolph’s powerhouse performance. She delivers the film’s signature scene, a furious, crestfallen, devastating lament in a suburban kitchen about the child and partner both gone too soon, with their absences all the more noticeable and piercing in what should be a season of joy. Like all the characters in the film, Mary is more than her trauma, with moments of kindness, levity, and insight just as memorable, but in a movie full of heart-rending monologues and stellar performances, Randolph takes the prize.

Despite the sense of hurt and alienation at the core of the film, The Holdovers is an unexpectedly hilarious movie. Angus’ antics to entertain himself and/or tweak Mr. Hunham have the shaggy whimsy of teenage rebellion. Mr. Hunham dispenses vulgar insults that tickle the funny bone, like “too dumb to pour piss out of a boot” and “penis cancer in hidden form.” The actors provide bouts of great physical comedy, from Angus’ disobedient gym floor flop, to Hunham’s ridiculous football-flubbing flail. And Mary has a dry wit that singes and can get a big laugh with a reaction shot alone. For a movie as unafraid to explore blunted hearts and lingering traumas, it’s full of humor and vigor that makes it come off like a fulsome view of life’s ups and downs, rather than a shameless tear-jerker or sap dispensary.

Nonetheless, there is a thematic undercurrent beneath all that pain and exclusion -- privilege. The recurring motif of The Holdovers is the idea that there are people who manage to wriggle out of the harshest obligations in this world, from schoolwork to plagiarism to war, because of power and position and the dishonesty and dishonor it can cover for. Some people go to Ivy league schools and get safe cushy jobs whether they have the intelligence or character for it, and others die in labor-intensive fields where worker safety is secondary to output quotas. Grades are inflated, service workers are casually demeaned, racism is tolerated, so long as it all comes from a class of people who don’t realize how lucky they have it.

The zenith of this is the Vietnam War, which hangs in the background of this seventies-set film. For all Angus’ legitimate issues, Hunham calms him down when he gets into a snit with a local missing a hand, since the teacher intuits how and why the injury happened. And the grandest injustice in the film is Mary’s son, sent off to fight and die in ‘Nam, when he had the grades, but not the funds, to go to college, denied the student deferment from the draft that would come alongside a university education. This sense of unconscionable disparity between the haves and the have-nots--one group excused from even the most minor of consequences for their actions, and one group forced to suffer the worst of them despite doing everything right--pervades the movie.

But it is also what unites Mary, Angus, and Mr. Hunham. Though thrown together by circumstance, and very different people on the surface, they find solace and understanding in one another, and it’s the most heartening part of the film. That comes through in the elegant cinematography of Eigil Bryld. The visuals of The Holdovers are not flashy, but they are quietly brilliant. Each frame is perfectly composed to convey the character of the grounds, or the ridiculousness of a gag, or the burgeoning intimacy that steadily washes over the main trio.

All three of them are touched by loss and loneliness. Mary still mourns her husband and her son, and is all but spit on by entitled twits who insult her cooking in a job she took to provide for a child who’ll never have the same life or opportunity. Mr. Hunham is, on his account at least, a low-level teacher, scorned by his students and his peers, alone in the wake of a long-since-failed shot at love, isolated and barely able to muster half-a-dream after being kicked out of Harvard for a privileged roommate’s intellectual theft. And Angus is abandoned over the holidays by a mother off to honeymoon with his new stepdad, a reminder of the mentally disturbed father whom he’s forbidden to see, and cursed with a parent in a state of living death -- physically there but mentally gone -- something all the more devastating for a young soul in particular.

So they share drinking problems. They share depression medication. They share flailing grasps for human connection that are reached for then rejected in a state of guilt and self-loathing. And eventually, they share a particular sort of bond that emerges from commiseration and acts of kindness, from recognizing one another’s pain and helping them through it, from seeing how the system works for others and stealing a piece of it for one another.

You can see it in the progression of “what Barton men do.” Angus lies about the cause of his dislocated shoulder to protect Mr. Hunham’s job, a falsehood the teacher accepts with some lecturing about honesty. Only then, Mr. Hunham lies to an old classmate about his career, reasoning that truthful or not, giving his social betters the satisfaction of his comparatively sorry state is not something he owes them.

And in the film’s close, when Angus’ mom and stepdad arrive to excoriate their son and his erstwhile babysitter for daring to let a lonely boy visit his father on Xmas, Mr. Hunham has an out. Angus’ guardians all but invite Mr. Hunham to throw Angus to the wolves, to say that the young man tricked him or “slipped the leash”, which would be half-true. Instead, Mr. Hunham lies in order to take full responsibility; he dissembles to excuse the young man entirely, sacrificing his job and the content-if-stagnant life he’s enjoyed for decades to save Angus’ future.

That is the crux of the film. The key message comes earlier when Hunham reassures Angus that he will not become like his father. Despite his obsession with the classics, he decries the Greek poets’ belief that our path is set and resistance only ensures submission to fate. Your destiny is your own, he implores the young man, and it’s not too late, never too late, to change it.

So Mary will still carry the scars of loved ones taken from her too soon, but she can make space to laugh and reminisce with her sister, and save for her newborn nephew who will carry on the name, and hopefully the spirit of her dearly departed son. So despite the prospect of being kicked out of Barton and forced to attend military school, with the prospect of war and death that comes with it, Angus can remain at Barton and find his way to the sunnier shores all but assured to bright young men in well-regarded centers of learning and the resources to propel them further.

So Mr. Hunham can become the unlikely surrogate father figure Angus is in desperate need of, and change his mind about the prospects of the next generation, at least for one young lad who makes him hopeful, whose success is worth martyring his comfort and security for. And he too can be lodged from his complacency, spurred to go visit the sites of the ancient world he’s studied but never seen, and write that monograph he’s been putting off.

When we’re introduced to the three of them, they are not just hunkering together in those almost unreal, interstitial days that envelop the end of the calendar. They are all in some in-between state, not quite where they started, but not quite able to move forward. When we leave them, Mary if able to make some semblance of peace with her tragedies and rekindle connections to her family; Angus knows someone has faith in him and has the surefootedness and, yes, character, to see his schooling through to the end; and Mr. Hunham, the stymied student-turned-teacher who’s been “held over” longer than anyone, finally finds a reason to break free.

[7.0/10] This is another episode of The Boys where it feels like there’s ten million things going on. Let’s focus on the good stuff.

The dynamic between Homelander and Ryan continues to be one of my favorite parts of the season so far. Ryan is trying his best to do what’s expected of him, but doesn’t fit into his dad’s role or the life HOmeladner wants for him. Homerlander is ostensibly trying to build something for his son, but subconsciously worries about aging and being replaced. Given the trajectory of the show, and Homelander’s own weird quasi-oedipal fixations, you can see him turning on his son at some point out of a concern that Ryan will supplant him. Hence Homelander showing up to Ryan’s first save despite Sage telling him not to.

And poor Ryan! You feel for this kid, just going align with what everyone wants of him ,but feeling insecure and out of control. His tears over accidentally murdering the stuntman make you feel for this kid who’s being placed in a situation he doesn’t understand and isn’t suited for. And the writing and performance of Homelander continues to be outstanding, with him not even processing that Ryan’s upset about the death of someone Homelander considers a “toy”, but rather assuming he’s upset at Homelander stepping into his limelight.

I continue to like the business with Sage. She clearly has a bigger agenda at play, and knows exactly how to play people to achieve it. The Boys hasn’t always been perfect at paying these kind of grand schemes off, but for now, I’m happy to be along for the ride. Her rightly pointing out that Ryan needs to stand alone, turning Deep against Ashley, and stoking the conspiracy nuts all make you wonder what she’s getting at. Sometimes it’s more exciting to see the plates spin than it is satisfying to see the writers finally stack the dishes, but I still like the fact that she seems to have a bigger plan in play.

That said, I’m nonplussed by most of what happens at the ersatz QAnon festival. The cornpone Jubilee knockoff, Firecracker, and the perverted Multiple Man knockoff, Splinter, don’t do a lot for me. Taking aim at the tinfoil hat crowd is certainly topical, which is a good mode for The Boys, but there’s nothing particularly incisive about the parody or deep about the show’s observations on why people turn to that kind of conspiratorial nonsense.

I’m not made of stone. There’s fun to be had in the heroes and villains crashing a bat mitzvah and going to town with mid-fight photo booths, heavy metal horahs, and menorah-based stabbing. But the show has done this sort of thing so many times by season 4 that it loses much of the novelty. I will say, as a fan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, it’s amusing the see The Boys’ network stablemate get such an amusing shoutout here.

The material with the actual Boys leaves me mostly nonplussed. I’ll admit, I have some investment in Butcher trying to be honest for once, getting kicked out of the group, and still coming around to save his friends. The show gets at something real about the sad dynamic between him and MM, with the sense of Billy genuinely having made some changes but it being too late given all the shit that he’s put Marvin through. But it’s a little quick and given how much else is happening here, doesn’t get enough time to breathe.

It feels like Frenchie and Kimiko have already kind of reached the end of their arcs and now the show is grasping at straws for what to do with them. Kimiko struggling with her past and maybe going on a revenge spree plays like a rehash of what the show already did with her brother. And Frenchie’s new boyfriend turning out to be the child of a family he killed is a silly, soap opera-esque contrivance.

Speaking of which, I have real mixed feelings about the Hughie’s mom storyline. Jack Quaid does great work as a grown child struggling with the return of a parent who abandoned him. Hughie’s mom already has a certain presence to her, between the essential oils nonsense and the sort of passive aggressive, vaguely condescending school teacher tone she takes with Hughie. I’m compelled by their scenes together.

But the whole, “Your father’s been secretly talking to me for a couple of years and has granted me power of attorney” is another dumb soap opera-esque twist. I guess the show needs a reason why Hughie wouldn’t just kick her out, but it’s still awfully convenient. Maybe it’s all part of some Vaught plan to get to Hughie or something, but that would be even sillier.

I also don’t really care about Annie’s struggle with whether or not to be Starlight. As with Frenchie and Kimiko, it seems like we’ve kind of done her arc multiple times now, and the show’s running out of ideas for the character.

That said, strangely enough, one of the characters I’m most compelled by here is A-Train. The notion of his brother actually getting through to him, and him warning to do something genuinely heroic, is low-key inspiring. Him recognizing Hughie’s kindness in front of his family, and providing exonerating evidence for the men falsely accused of beating up Sage’s plants is one of the few genuinely good things we’ve seen him do. Nothing gold can stay in The Boys, but I’m intrigued by his change of heart.

Oh yeah, and seeing Will Ferrell play a Blind Side-esque mentor figure is worth a solid laugh, and so is the new Black Noir continually not really understanding his character.

Overall, I wish these episodes had more focus and momentum, and we’ve reached the point in the show where many of the character journeys seem to have reached their natural ends, only to continue on regardless. But there’s still some quality story threads to follow, particularly those on the supe side of the equation right now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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.

[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).

[6.8/10] “Mirrors” does the exact sort of thing I ask for from Star Trek: Discovery. We have a focused story with an immediate goal. It centers on a handful of characters with meaningful tension and key connections to one another. It spends time with our antagonists, both in the present and in flashbacks, so that they feel more like people than cardboard villains. And it requires the right blend of working together and camaraderie to solve the problem du jour, in the proud Star Trek tradition.

And I didn’t really like it.

Which, I think, is another way of saying that even in its final season, I just don’t connect with Discovery’s style. For most of my reviews, I center on the writing -- big picture story choices in terms of plot or character or theme that can make or break an episode for me. And on all of those measures, “Mirrors” is resolutely sound.

The halfway mark of the season is a good point to have our two big couples, Michael and Book on the one hand, and Moll and L’ok on the other, confront one another. A clue that must be retrieved from a pocket of space that seems to wreck anything that comes in contact with it poses a suitable challenge. The fact that what they find there is the I.S.S. Enterprise is a neat twist. And I especially like Rayner and the rest of the squad doing the usual Starfleet problem solving routine to rescue their comrades.

On the character front, I’m also encouraged by the show’s attempt to add depth to L’ok and Moll. Thus far, they’ve had personality but not character. Giving us flashbacks to their experiences in the Breen Imperium follows the same laudable tack Discovery did with Ruon Tarka. Seeing that bond form in the past makes us more likely to care about how the baddies are motivated by it in the present. Writing in what their relationship cost them, and what they’re trying to achieve, is good block and tackle to turn your villains into people and not just obstacles to be leapt over.

And thematically...well, I don’t know...it’s fine. “Mirrors” gives us some closure to the events of Mirror Georgiou’s alt-timeline jaunt in season 3’s “Terra Firma”. It turns out the Action Saru that Georgiou spared went on to rescue many of his comrades and got them to the prime universe, which is nice enough, even if we’re told rather than shown. The vague lesson, about not giving up hope, is trite but fine, even if it comes in a writerly scene that practically paints the point on the screen in a way that gives me pause.

And that's the problem, really. The ideas here aren’t bad, but the execution is still just hard for me to warm too. When I think about what I would change in “Mirrors”, it’s hard to come up with something that isn’t already hard-baked into the series. As I’ve mentioned before, I think the show overuses its music, trying to inject emotion into scenes that can't earn that sentimental response on their own, and ironically exposing that fact. But that's been a longtime thing for the show.

The dialogue doesn’t do anybody any favors here, but it’s largely fine. Often, it’s too blunt or too didactic, with characters making statements that seem more intended for the audience than one another, with the viewer just happening to be an unseen observer. But again, that's nothing new and seems to be part of Discovery’s style.

The other problems I have are unavoidable. Discovery continues to look sterile, antiseptic, and unreal. It’s hard to feel Moll and L’ok’s coming together when the lone site of their rendezvous seems to be some odorless, CGI-sweetened soundstage. While it’s cool to finally see the face of a Breen, their frozen computer-generated visages look downright comical by 2024 standards. I guess, at least, the visit to the I.S.S. Enterprise is an excuse to use Strange New Worlds’ practical sets, but still, everything about how the show is shot and visualized comes off cold and removed, which is something far too late to fix now.

And once again, the performances are solid, but don’t elevate the material. Eve Harlow makes the biggest mark as Moll, with some strong emotional moments when the going gets tough, but even she’s reduced to playing a generic femme fatale much of the time. The rest of the cast in the episode does yeoman’s work, without any real faults in the acting, but they aren’t able to elevate the material either.

The result is an episode that is resoundingly solid but unspectacular. The episode is well-constructed, but ultimately still unengaging, to where it’s hard to criticize the thing too deeply, but it’s hard to praise much of it either.

At the end of the day, the idea behind giving us deeper insight into Moll and L’ok, and contrasting and comparing their connection and potential second chance with what we’ve seen of Michael and Book is a sound one. But the execution is so generic, clumsy, and flavorless that it leaves no impact. The show is doing and saying the right things, but the effort comes off plastic and desultory, to where you can barely connect wit the characters or materials.

“Mirrors” does feature some genuine high points and low points. Commander Rayner’s nervousness about stepping back into the captain’s chair, only to gingerly but resolutely finding his way into Discovery’s more open culture, and working with his crew to save his captain, is a nice little storyline. Tilly looking out for Dr. Culber’s emotional well-being the way he looks out for the crew’s is sweet, even if the listing toward “spirituality” sounds dicey for Star Trek. And hell, I even got a kick out of Book asking Burnham if they should “hit it” given the Enterprise environs, and her responding, “Let’s just fly.”

For the most part, though, “Mirrors” is an episode with a sound footing and a few good gimmicks, that nevertheless fails in its overall project to make us care about these new characters, their connection to the ones we already know, and the broader fetch quest the crew of Discovery is on. You can fix story problems; you can rehab characters; you can come up with good themes for your work. But things like tone, visual grammar, the style with which you present everything, is much harder to fix on an episode to episode basis After four and a half seasons, those things are pretty well set, and maybe, even when you shore up everything else, that's still enough to keep crusty old grumps like me from connecting with your show.

[7.0/10] I’m real mixed on this one. Both stories have their merits, and their cool impressionistic sequences. But both also have a certain randomness, and some heavy signposting that leaves me cold.

Let’s start with Storm and Forge. I’ll say this much -- I appreciate that X-Men ‘97 remembered Storm’s claustrophobia! Even the original show seemed to just move past that pretty quickly, so having The Adversary taunt her with an enclosed coffin, or to have her face her fear by going into a cramped mineshaft to save Forge carries extra weight with what she’s braving to save her lover.

I’m also a fan of those impressionistic sequences between her and The Adversary. I don’t know; I’m just a sucker for that sort of thing. So much of the emotional experiences in our life defy being able to be captured in mundane scenes. Realizing Storm’s inner turmoil from a demon who makes Storm feel like the walls are closing in on her, literally, who drags her through a grand guignol theater of the mind to represent what she’s going through, compels me in a way simple wailing and gnashing of teeth doesn’t. I appreciate the show’s visual creativity and psychological maximalism with those set pieces.

I even like the point the show’s trying to make, about Storm secretly warning to hide who she is and feeling guilty for that. The notion of embracing yourself, of “coming out”, is a powerful metaphor that fits within the X-Men’s accepting ethos. There’s a fair amount of purple prose used to explain it, but it comes with a keen insight about self-shaming and self-acceptance.

My problems are both in how that idea is realized. For one, the fact that The Adversary is just some random demon who happened to be wandering through the desert or something is bizarre. More and more, it’s apparent that X-Men ‘97 wants to be a kind of anime, and this storyline in particular has more of that “weird magical thing happens for no particular reason” bit that often irks me in the (admittedly limited) anime I’ve seen.

They try to put a fig leaf on it, with Forge explaining that it feeds on misery and self-loathing, and so Storm and Forge made for “good chum.” But the whole thing feels so random and arbitrary. And science-focused Forge being able to use the occasional bit of Dr. Strange-esque magic comes out of nowhere as well.

But the biggest pathology,the one this storyline shares with Xavier’s, is that it all but announces the themes to the audience. I know there’s mixed feelings about subtlety among fans, but at too many points, it felt like The Adversary and Storm were just speaking an essay at viewers rather than debating one another in larger than life terms.

This isn’t “Lifedeath”’s fault, but I’m also just a bit tired of the “character has a personal breakthrough which allows them to have a superpowered breakthrough” routine. It’s still cool when Storm regains her powers, but between the hamfistedness of the messaging, and the sense of randomness in her overcoming an ostensibly medical problem by just believing in herself harder, the head-scratch qualities of it made it harder to enjoy the glory of the moment.

I feel the same way about the Professor X storyline. Again, I like the message “Lifedeath” is trying to send here. The warning about resorting to “good old days” nostalgia-baiting and baseless fear of and demeaning outsiders is a good thing in principle. Promoting the importance of education is outstanding. But eventually, the episode devolves into Charles literally lecturing on the topics. The dialogue is blunt as hell and overly florid, and the point could hardly be made in a more didactic fashion, which takes a lot of the oomph out of it.

That said, I do still appreciate the imagery. Another jaunt to the astral plane helps enhance with imagery what the show lacks in the written word. The classroom motif and chalk outlines give Xavier’s speech a distinctive character. And my goodness, the psychic impingement Professor X receives about what happened on Genosha -- with a Watchmen-esque sea of skeletons amid a horrible blast -- is almost as bracing as the original event.

I also appreciate that the show boils down Charles’ situation to a choice. He’s torn between his life with Lilandra on the one hand and his life with his children on the other. Being forced to not only stick around in space, but purge his memory of his old life brings home what he’d be giving up in a visceral way. I can appreciate that choice.

But I don’t know, I was never particularly compelled by the outer space interludes of the original X-Men series, and the connection between Xavier and Lilandra always felt like something that happened more by fiat than something the show had earned, so returning to those elements doesn’t do much for me from the jump. (Though hey, after the importance of the Kree to the MCU, it’s nice to see more than a passing glimpse of them in the X-Men ‘97 universe.)

The politics of the Shi'ar are, once again, very four-color and blunt in the point they’re trying to make. It’s something I could forgive when the original show was aimed at children. But this is clearly meant for those who grew up with the original show, so I think it’s fair to expect a bit more sophistication. (That said, our current political moment in the real world is, perhaps, no less caricatured and blunt, so maybe the joke’s on me.)

Also, on a purely superficial level, I’m not crazy about the new voice for Professor X. Ross Marquand is a talented voice actor, but his Xavier vocal tones are too different from Cedric Smith’s for my taste, and at times, he sounds kind of like Matt Berry, which I found distracting.

From a big picture plot perspective, I don’t really want Professor X to come back. He had such a moving farewell at the end of the original show. It felt like a television program that wasn’t technically allowed to kill main characters off doing everything but. I get the desire to return him to the fold, but undoing such a big choice like that takes away from the import and finality of the original show’s swan song. What’s more, I’m far more invested in the idea of the X-Men figuring out how to move forward without their old leaders than in rehashing the usual “Professor X guides his pupils” routine we’ve seen dozens of times before. Let shows evolve! Especially when it’s been thirty years!

Overall, though, I appreciate what the show’s trying to do in “Lifedeath”, and there’s plenty to like here, but the directness of the writing, and the randomness of the events stops this from being a firm “yes” for me.

[7.7/10] Let’s start with the easy compliment and the easy criticism.

The easy compliment is this: Shakespearean Actor Loki is downright delightful. Letting Tom Hiddleston dive into the role of “drama queen” with self-satisfied aplomb is hilarious with every glimpse we get. And him jawing about Iago in Othello and responding with approval to Peggy’s sobriquets tickled my funny bone something fierce.

The easy criticism is this: none of the characters feel especially 1602. This is basically just the Avengers as we know them, except wearing old timey garb. It’s still fun to see them prance around Elizabethan London and whatnot, but it feels like everyone is a being out of time, not just Peggy.

Well, except for Happy Hogan. I will say, if there’s a particularly fun character “transformation” here, it’s reimagining Happy as a Sheriff of Nottingham/Captain Hook/Governor Radcliffe type. Jon Favreau is clearly having a ball hamming it up, and his black hat (er...feathered hat) swashbuckling with the good guys, and irascible annoyance when they best him is the most distinctive part of the outing.

That said, even if all the other characters feel too modern, I like the setup. The idea that this dimension is crumbling; it’s due to a “forerunner” from another world being in their reality, and Captain Carter has to find them despite being a fugitive to save the world and herself, creates both immediate and ultimate goals for everyone here. Thor blaming Peggy for his sister’s death is a little strained, but I’ll tolerate it as an excuse for Peggy to get the band together.

And Peggy may be the best part of this one. It’s fun to see 1600s Tony jury-rig contraptions with the tech of his era. The trio of merry men in the form of “Rodgers Hood”, Bucky, and Ant-Man have an amusing dynamic. Banner as “The Monster in the Iron Mask” is a bit of a stretch, but Hulk’s complaints about it being too noisy got a laugh out of me. And I appreciate that, despite being at King Thor’s side, Fury and Wanda are working together on their own for the greater good.

But this is really a showcase for Peggy. I love the idea that the Watcher offers to take her back to her home dimension, and she tells him no, there are people who need her help here. She isn’t going to give up; she isn’t going to care about her own skin at the expense of everyone else’s; she’s going to stick around and do what’s right, even if she has to put herself at risk to do it. The Watcher may think it’s hopeless, and may reason that worlds disintegrate all the time, but Captain Carter still has to try. That's who she is.

Of course, she has to try with Steve Rodgers. I’ll admit, there’s less immediate chemistry between the cel-shaded version of Peggy and Steve (and maybe it’s having the inimitable-but-different Josh Keaton voicing Rodgers instead of Chris Evans). But there’s still enough residual affection for the pairing from the movies to buy into Peggy and Steve reunited, even if it’s a different Peggy and Steve.

And that's the rub. I like how both Captain Carter and The Watcher are right in this. In an inspiring moment, Peggy says she doesn’t care about the odds or the risks, she has to try to save this world, and by god, she does. The Watcher was ready to let it rot, and she stepped up, and through an entertaining and daring caper, she saves it.

But in a just as memorable scene, The Watcher challenges her about the unknown consequences of her actions. He pointedly asks her a series of “What If’s about things that could go wrong even if she does manage to fix the dimension. And as in most good stories, it turns out there is a cost to her actions -- the “forerunner” is Steve.

That is a hell of a twist. They faked me out nicely, as I assumed (and I think they deliberately hinted) that it was Happy. The truth is much more surprising and devastating, in the best way. If there’s been a consistent theme to the stories of Steve and Peggy in the MCU, it’s been that doing the right thing often means paying a price. Peggy being willing to take the risk, and Steve being willing to sacrifice himself to protect this world, and Peggy losing the man she loves yet again, is a bitter pill for a good cause. Good on What If for having the cleverness and the guts to go there.

Otherwise, there’s some fun 1602 conceits like the mini-Yellowjacket soldiers and the Destroyer, and it’s cool to see real life London landmarks like the Globe and the Tower in play. But overall, this one doesn’t so much live or die on the back of its Elizabethan conceit, but rather on the great character storytelling and themes of Captain Carter saving the world once more, and once more, losing someone she loves in the process.

[7.7/10] I loved the X-Men arcade game growing up, so an episode of X-Men ‘97 that pays tribute to it, while advancing the ball for Jubilee and Sunspot both personally and romantically, pushes all the right buttons for me.

I appreciate all the little touches in this one, from the tributes to the intro, aesthetic, and sounds of the arcade beat-em-up; to the homages to The Matrix built into this “trapped in a digital space” conceit; to the cheeky mention of Dazzler. (Fun fact: that famous X-Men arcade game was not actually based on X-Men: The Animated Series, but rather a peculiar one-off special called Pryde of the X-Men which featured Dazzler as a main character.) In many ways, the target audience for this show is Millennials who are nostalgic for their 1990s childhoods and adolescence, and this episode feeds that need expertly.

But it also deconstructs that idea, which is, if anything, even more laudable. The tone is cheeky, but the idea of a newly adult Jubilee yearning for the days when she was a kid without expectations or responsibilities who could while away the day at the mal resonates with a lot of the crusty grown-ups like me who grew up with the original show. The lesson and theme, that nostalgia is fun, but it’s important to keep growing and not retreat to the past, is a worthwhile one, especially coming from a show whose very existence depends on nostalgia.

Adding that disclaimer is commendable. The fact that it comes from an older Jubilee, voiced by Alyson Court, who played the role in the 1990s show, gives it some added resonance, for Jubilee and for the audience. When the person who gave up the role is the voice telling you it’s okay, even necessary, to move on, it can't help but hit harder.

The Sunspot arc is a little weaker. The connection between him not wanting tot ake the risk of people finding out what he really is, especially his mother, and him taking some risks in the video game world, is pretty thin. But it’s still something, and the fact that after going through the wringer together, he and Jubilee can admit their feelings adds some oomph to his part of the story as well.

The only thing I’m mixed on here is Mojo. In truth, he was one of the most annoying characters from the show’s original run, so I wasn’t exactly enamored to see him back. But this new incarnation of him is less grating than the old one. Plus, despite the episode’s themes, there is a certain novelty to seeing him and Spiral back in action, which helps buoy the character.

Overall, this was a hell of an enjoyable lark for fans of the X-Men arcade game, which goes beyond cheap nostalgia and uses its novel premise to advance the characters and some interesting ideas at the same time.

[7.6/10] I’m going to harken back to a problem I often had with Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In Clone-heavy episodes, where everybody sounds the same, and everybody’s wearing similar armor, it gets really tricky to tell characters apart from one another. The Bad Batch usually manages to avoid that problem. Between the different looks of the “defective” clones and Dee Bradley Baker’s nigh-supernatural ability to distinguish them vocally while making their voiceprints feel of a piece, you can pretty readily tell who’s who.

But here, the neat thing about “Extraction” is also a problem: you have multiple clone contingents going against one another. I like that you have an alliance between the Bad Batch and Rex’s rebels to get the hell out of there. I like that you have a set of normal clones, led by Wolf, out to track and capture the “insurgents” through normal, relatively measured and humane methods. And I like that you have a wildcard shadow operative, much more willing to take chances and use lethal force, tracking the same targets, proving to be a fly in the ointment on both sides.

The catch is that almost everyone is wearing their armor through this evade and pursuit routine. Eighty percent of the clones speak in the same vocal tones. And if that weren’t enough, the lighting for this installment is particularly dark, making it that much harder to tell who’s who.

To be charitable, I think that's part of the point here. One of the recurring themes of “Extraction” and for this series writ large, is that the clone troopers have a deeper connection to one another than their connections to a particular side in the war or the institutions that emerged in its aftermath. There is an unspoken tragedy to the idea that these programmed soldiers are sent out to hunt and kill one another. The struggle to tell them apart fits with the idea that there’s not a difference between them, that distinctions between good soldier and insurgent are superficial. For longtime fans, the incident here echoes the unexpected clone-on-clone battle on Umbara.

But on a practical level, it makes an otherwise strong episode hard to follow. I love the scene where one of the clone troopers recognizes that Crosshair is going out of his way to look after Omega and inquires about what changed with him. Crosshair’s response, that he thought he was being loyal, only to find that loyalty to the Empire only goes one way, is a powerful one. To believe in something, a cause and a mission, only to find that those in charge don’t believe in you, or even your basic humanity, would affect anyone. Crosshair’s description is pithy but devastating.

I’m also not sure who exactly he said it to, or who saves him from the shadow operative at the end of the episode. Elementary screenwriting says it’s Howzer. The guy who starts out doubting Crosshair based on his past actions, only to trust him thanks to his current ones, makes for a tidy arc. But in the moment, I wasn’t quite sure whether it was Rex or some other random trooper. That's not ideal.

Still, I like the theme of trust in this one. Season 3 is, so far at least, the season of Crosshair. He’s steadily become one of my favorite characters in the whole franchise. Seeing him go from Imperial loyalist and someone who resents “the kid”, to someone willing to lay his life on the line to save his comrades and Omega’s fiercest protector is stirring. The idea that his brothers, even the most stringent doubters among them, see that too, is an affecting one.

When he fights the shadow operative hand-to-hand, it is brisk and brutal, with the waterfall adding inherent tension to the scuffle. What’s most notable is that the shadow operative scolds Crosshair for having his chance to be one of them and failing. It’s a sign that he never fit with the bad guys, defective or otherwise. Having someone ready to blast his head off in the last episode come to save his life in this one makes a powerful statement.

So does Wolf letting Rex and his crew go despite having them dead to rights. So much of The Bad Batch is well-crafted but familiar action. When the Imperial clone troopers drop in to block our heroes from their rendezvous point, you just know it’s going to be a solid firefight and fracas, but sure enough, someone will hit the right target or trigger the right hazard to get them through.

What I like about the ending of “Extraction” though is that it’s a solution founded on faith, not force. Wolf fought with Rex. He’s not going after some random troublemakers. He’s going after his brothers. The idea that no matter WOlf’s orders, he hears Rex’s plea, sees him as a person in a way that the Empire doesn’t, and choose to let him go, speaks volumes about what binds the soldiers on both sides of this conflict, a connection that overcomes orders and missions from even the highest authorities. It is, tragically, the thing that's been erased, the thing that's been prevented, in the shadow operatives who’ve been mangled in the mind to prevent them from forging such bonds.

In truth, there is a lot of the usual stuff in “Extraction”. Clones skulk through facilities, navigate treacherous terrain, and scope out their targets. Between the dim palette and the overlapping designs and voices, it can turn these adventures into an undifferentiated morass. But the clones see one another, the differences in who they are and who they’ve been, that even confounded viewers like me can miss. And that idea comes through loud and clear.

[3.6/10 on a Selman Era Simpsons scale] This was pretty miserable. “Frinkenstein’s Monster” starts with a pretty good throughline. Homer started out as an ambitious young go-getter (even if that framing contradicts some of the show’s foundational episodes, but whatever), and now finds himself disheartened at how much he’s backslid and failed to achieve his dreams as he reaches middle age. There’s something there, and if the show explored it with conviction and good humor, you could do great things with that concept. (See: the episode centered on Marge’s anxieties about her kids growing up from earlier this season.)

Instead, we get a wacky, over-the-top story about Professor Frink playing a nuclear science Cyrano de Bergerac for Homer at a Finnish power plant while a passed over application for his new job plots to undermine him with Machiavellian glee.

I don’t know where to start. The parroting Frink shtick is so exaggerated that it doesn’t pass the barest of plausibility tests. I don’t ask for much from The Simpsons in terms of verisimilitude. The show has pushed the boundaries of reality since almost the beginning. But the idea that people at the Shelbyville plant would buy Homer’s routine for more than five minutes strains credulity. Frink wanting a human connection is a solid enough idea, but as with Homer’s aspirations and regrets, the character story starts with a solid launch point and then goes completely off the rails.

Homer’s stalker and antagonist, Dr. Spivak is played well enough by Amanda Seyfried, but is another over-exaggerated character who lacks any humanity and feels conveniently jammed into the story. And the head of the Shelbyville plant is a bland moron who has no personality and comes off like a dope. Worst of all, the episode barely has an ending, with Homer admitting his fraud once cornered by Dr. Spivak, but without any team for any real fallout or consequences for his revelation, just a zany “Oops I fell off a cliff” situation where he’s...fine apparently?

As I often ay, some of this might be forgivable if anything , anything in this episode were funny. There’s a running gag involving a talking budgerigar that is just abysmal. There’s some mild cleverness to Smithers having a form for Homer quitting the plant after so many occasions, but it mostly comes off like a lazy meta gag. What the hell is Lisa’s 1970s singer-songwriter-esque lament? It’s mildly cute at first, but it goes on so long and serves practically no purpose in the episode other than to kill time. And the bit about Emmys being easy to win is tepid at best. Why are the jokes almost uniformly terrible in this one? I don’t understand it.

Overall, this is a terrible way to return from the mid-season break, with an unfunny, practically nonsensical episode that doesn’t come close to making good on the potential of its premise.

[4.6/10] An episode like “Bride of Chaotica” needs to be charming or fun, and in high doses. This was neither, at least not for me.

I can appreciate the idea of doing an homage to 1930s B-movie sci-fi. It is, to some extent, the wellspring that the original Star Trek, and by extension Voyager emerged from. Co-writer Michael Taylor also penned “Far Beyond the Stars” on Deep Space Nine, which pays homage to early science fiction on the page, so you can tell this all comes from a place of passion and genuine interest. Using a show that reflects contemporary hopes and visions for the future to measure itself against the visions of the future in similar programs from yesteryear could pay dividends.

There’s a few problems, though. For one thing, we don’t actually get much of that. Tom rattles off some 1930s sci-fi vocabulary. He pokes fun at the prospect of slave girls and reused sets (which seems like a dig at Voyager’s 1966 predecessor). And he notes the validity and fascination of looking back at the past and exploring what they thought the future would look like. (I mean hey, from the vantage point of the modern day, we’re still waiting on the Bell Riots and the Irish Reunification predicted by 1990s Trek.) But those bits are, at best, side dishes to the main business of the episode.

That main business is just...straight up doing a 1930s sci-fi pastiche. That's all “Bride of Chaotica” really has going for it. If you enjoy that era of Flash Gordon-inspired storytelling on the screen, you may appreciate and enjoy it. For me, it got old quickly.

Some of that's just my own personal tastes. I’ve seen a handful of classic sci-fi reels, and I can recognize the tropes of malevolent warlords and clunky killer robots and dashing square-jawed heroes that are with us today, albeit in different forms. But I don’t harbor much affection for them. (In contrast to, say, classic animation which has a style and a sense of flourish that earns homages and affection to this very day.)

So there is very little charm in all of this for me. Yes, it was mildly amusing to see Tom masquerading as Captain Proton for a single scene here or there in the season premiere, but that's about all the mileage this concept has. By the time you're stretching it out to a full episode, the novelty is all but drained away. And if you don’t already love 1930s science fiction B-movies, then what “Bride of Chaotica” presents will do nothing to turn you into a fan. Instead, you just have to suffer the same dull shtick for an extra thirty minutes while you check your watch, waiting for it to end.

There’s also not much in the way of humor. There’s a few gags about the old timey robot that are worth a mild chuckle. Kate Mulgrew earns some plaudits by giving a vampy, classic Hollywood starlet performance that presages the comical exaggerations of “Timeless” Toni Storm. The Doctor gets in some mildly amusing jokes about portraying the President of Earth. But that's about it.

What’s odd is that “Bride of Chaotica” plays this one surprisingly straight. There’s some inherent absurdity to how the likes of Chaotica himself, his chief enforcer, Lonzak, and the other members of his goon squad chew the scenery. But honestly, it plays as pure homage rather than something poking fun at the excesses of the subgenre. If you’ve seen the old black and white flicks in this vein, this isn’t so much an exaggeration as it is a fairly accurate rendition of the tropes.

The results are, well, boring. If you’re (generously) under the age of fifty you probably don’t have much personal connection to these films. Any novelty or charm the homage might have wears off quickly. And the rendition of it isn’t comical enough to make up for all of that with a barrel of laughs.

So everything else about this looks worse by comparison. I’m not one to take issue with plausibility in Star Trek. Especially in comic relief episodes, I’m more than willing to throw out the usual internal logic in the name of going along for the ride.

But it feels like they barely even tried here! It’s plain that the writers wanted an excuse for our heroes to be compelled to playact as old school sci-fi characters for a while. That's nothing new for Star Trek! Hell, Voyager itself did it back in season 1’s “Heroes and Demons”! So all this claptrap about Voyager being stuck in a subspace “sandbar” with tears that prevent them from halting the holodeck until they defeat the bad guy from Tom’s holonovels feels unconvincing and lazy.

If there were enough charm or laughs, we might not notice. But with how lackluster everything else is, the shakiness of the premise Voyager uses to throw its characters into yet another holodeck malfunction becomes that much more evident and irksome.

Worst of all, the episode squanders a perfectly good idea! As my write-up for last week’s “Latent Image” confirms, I am a sucker for a good “discovering and affirming new life” story. The discovery of a dimension full of photonic lifeforms, who consider biochemical beings to be the ones who aren’t real is a fascinating opportunity to flip the script! “Bride of Chaotica” does next to nothing with the concept! It’s a minor obstacle in a vain attempt to add stakes to the B-movie mishegoss, with a couple forgettable comments from the EMH before everyone moves on. Candidly, Voyager would have been better off reducing the Chaotica portions to a side dish, and made engaging with this unexpected form of life the main event of the episode.

“Bride of Chaotica” is not totally devoid of merit. Kate Mulgrew does her best to carry some weak material, and has her greatest success when rolling her eyes, literally or figuratively, at the corny nonsense Tom expects her to participate in. The costumers do a nice job of replicating the look of those old getups. And the Captain’s exchange with Neelix over coffee is an all-time funny (and relatable!) scene.

But those are occasional gems in what is otherwise a pile of black and white dirt. At one point in the episode, Tom Paris declares that, after this miserable experience, as soon as he’s able, he’s going to delete the whole Chaotica program. If only Voyager’s creative team had the same forethought, and could have erased this episode before it reached us woebegotten earthlings.

[8.2/10] Nog has my favorite character arc of anyone in Deep Space Nine. In the first episode, he’s a trouble-making kid getting rounded up by Odo and used by Sisko as leverage over his uncle. When we find him here, he is an up-and-coming Starfleet officer, recovering from a traumatic injury at war. His father, Rom, has a nice path of his own. His friend, Jake, develops a few new attributes but remains fairly static apart from his height. But in many ways, Nog grows up before our very eyes.

That's what makes an episode like “It’s Only a Paper Moon” so heartbreaking. We’ve witnessed Nog’s journey over the course of six and a half seasons. We’ve watched him plead with Sisko to recommend him for the Academy and prove that he can do the work. We’ve seen him admire his fellow cadets, to a fault. We've seen him earn a promotion to ensign and work alongside our heroes as the perfect aspiring young officer. It hasn't always been a primrose path. He’s had bumps in the road like anyone. But the past few years have largely been an ascent for Nog, not ust from a civilian with a record to an ensign with a commission, but from a rough-around-the-edges kid to an admirable and mature young man.

So of course, it hurts to see him face down the thing he was eager to prove himself against, only to find himself broken by it.

As with “The Siege of AR-558”, the precursor episode to this one, I think this is the kind of installment you need if you’re going to tell an ongoing story about war. These ongoing battles can't just be a paean to the glory of the good guys or bastions of political intrigue. They need to have a cot. Nothing drives that cost home more than seeing one of the show’s most innocent young figures, torn apart mentally, and by extension, physically, by what he’s seen and what he’s been through.

Deep Space Nine and writer Ronald D. Moore deserve credit for exploring that idea with such conviction in such a clever way. “It’s Only a Paper Moon” doesn’t shy away from the hurt, the same, the dejectedness, the burrowing inside oneself that Nog is going through. He pouches away his friends and family. He rebuffs any and all attempts to reach out to him. He bristles at Ezri’s attempts to help him as a counselor. He’s crestfallen after what he went through. The show explores the why and the how of that with credible focus. But more than anything, the fact that we spend real time with Nog in this state, enough to feel his abject despair and closed off numbness in the aftermath of being shot by the enemy and losing his leg, is almost most important in and of itself.

Much of the credit for that owes to Aaron Eisenberg, who gives his best performance of the series in my book. He hits the big scene at the end of the episode with flying colors, giving us Nog’s abject plea about his circumstances with aplomb. But in some ways, the big moments are easier. What’s so impressive is the way you can feel nog’s lingering hurt and bitter shame in every scene: in the way he carries himself, in his taciturn and resigned responses to everyone around him, in the sorrowful disposition that has all but consumed him. Much of it is subtler, quieter than other bigtime moments in the episode, but they’re no less vital to conveying what the young Ferengi is going through., and Eisenberg nails them.

Moore and company also deserve credit for the cleverness of the setup and premise. Not ever Deep Space Nine enthusiast is a fan of Vic Fontaine, but I’ve always liked the character. James Darren is charming in the role, and more importantly, the holoprogram gives our heroes a measure of levity and escape from the sturm und drang of war. “It’s Only a Paper Moon” takes that notion to its logical extreme, with nog using the holosuite, and Vic’s mentorship in particular, as a comfortable cocoon in which he can hide away from his problems.

I appreciate the breadcrumbs the creative team gave us for that in “The Siege of AR-558”. Repeat watchers likely perked up when Dr. Bashir mentioned bringing Vic’s songs to the frontlines, or when they piped in through the facility while Nog recovered from his wound. As Nog explains here, the dulcet tones of Fontaine’s crooning gave him comfort in a difficult time. It makes sense that in a different, but no less challenging time, Nog would project that sense of comfort into seeking refuge within Vic’s Las Vegas holodeck program.

The show treats that decision smartly. Nog’s friends and family members have mixed feelings about it, given the unorthodox nature of this “rehab”. Ezri is measured but supportive. Quark is characteristically venal but generous about the whole thing. And overall, the tenor from those close to Nog is a sense of unease about this unusual method of dealing with trauma, but a willingness to give Nog a wide berth if it gives him comfort and maybe even provides a way for him to make progress.

So does the partnership with Vic. “It’s Only a Paper Moon” is one of Fontaine’s finest hours. He’s been a good friend and kind of counselor to the main characters in the past. But here he is a peculiar but effective kind of therapist for Nog, one who is empathetic and light with the young man.

More than that, he provides a certain easy masculine archetype for Nog to slip into and feel better about himself. Part of Nog’s problem here is feeling lesser, losing his identity after his injury. It’s no coincidence that Nog spends much of the club’s downtime in the program watching old westerns like Shane and The Searcher that represent manly heroic archetypes of the twentieth century. They represent the thing that Nog feels he’s lost -- that stoic, badass persona the Ferengi admired in his commando comrade back in “The Siege of AR-558”.

Vic isn’t exactly a badass, but he is smooth, self-assured, and confident. He offers a persona that Nog can slip into, an identity he can try on for size and masquerade in, while he’s in the process of recovering and reforming his own. Your mileage may vary, but I think seeing Nog schmooze his way around a 1960s Las Vegas casino is fun and enjoyable on its own terms. But even if you’re not as charmed by the setting and its trappings as I am, you can appreciate what they represent for Nog -- a spritely and diverting alternative to the sad sack life he finds himself with in the real world.

Vic is also slick enough to use Nog’s fascination with his little corner of the station as an opportunity to help the kid. I love the mom where he gifts Nog a cane reminiscent of Errol Flynn’s (and the Grand Nagus’, in another nice little connection point), but tells him not to put his full weight on it because it’s a bit fragile. Nog’s phantom pains are heartbreaking. The sense that he’s been healed physically, but that his mental struggles are still affecting his physical sensations, is softly devastating. Using clever little tools like that to take Nog’s mind away from his lingering hang-ups, to show him what he’s capable of when he’s not focused on them, is sharp and enervating.

It’s plain that Nog is still suffering, especially when someone comes along to pop this idyllic bubble. He’s rude to Jake’s girlfriend and throws a punch at Jake himself. He threatens to resign his commission if Ezri forces him out of the holosuite. Even when he’s gregarious, welcoming Nog and Leeta in for a night at the club, he barely acknowledges the world beyond their walls, more interested in fictional casino expansion than participating in a shindig for his father’s promotion outside of it.

That is sad and sympathetic, and creates a brilliant tension in the episode. On the one hand, Vic’s club is a godsend. It’s given Nog a project, a place to rebuild his confidence and self-image. When he’s schmoozing guests at the club, cleaning up Vic’s books’, going over plans for what a new club might look like, he is reinvigorated and, most importantly, not cognizant of his leg. He can go up flights of stairs, move around the room with ease, and seem unbothered by the grisly images that are haunting him earlier in the episode.

The only problem is that none of this is real and all of it is unsustainable. One of my favorite touches in all of this is that Vic likes Nog being around too. He takes joy in seeing someone buy into what he’s selling and take such a shine to his world. When Ezri says it’s time for Nog to start weaning off of his Vegas escape, Vic is understandably reluctant. Things are going well, and they’re having fun together.

But Vic has a tidy and winning little arc here too. Nog’s constant presence has meant that, for once, Vic himself gets to have a life. We’re not quite to the level of The Doctor from Voyager or anything, but Vic’s already self-aware, and now, he gets to have an existence beyond being flipped on like a jukebox for a few songs or showing a few folks a good time for an evening. Fontaine comes to see the value of those in-between times, the beauty of a day-to-day existence that doesn’t revolve around a particular function or immediate demand.

Rather than hoarding that, it makes him realize that he wants the same for Nog. He comes to understand, in the way few holograms can, what Nog is giving up. Ezri’s a smooth operator herself, suggesting that all the casino expansion talk is just a ploy to help Nog gradually break away from his holographic refuge and gesturing toward Nog’s dad and stepmom, highlighting how excited they’ll be to have Nog back. It’s enough to leave an impact on the crooner, realizing that as fun as it is, the party is over, and however much progress may have been made in this reimagined Las Vegas, it’s time for him to step away from the bright lights and back into the real world.

In truth, Vic doesn’t take the best approach to that, essentially abruptly forcing Nog to go cold turkey rather than having a heart-to-heart and giving the young Ferengi the push out of the nest he needs in a gentler way. But charitably, you can also see it as Vic realizing he’s been too indulgent. He’s let himself get carried away in all of this, not just Nog, and may be trying to make up for the sense that, as pleasant as things have been in the moment, he hasn’t been putting Nog’s deeper needs first, and is overcompensating.

Maybe, though, the nudge is what Nog needs. If nothing else, getting the boot from the club prompts the young officer to spill his guts to his maestro mentor, and the results are incredible. I expected the survivor’s guilt. I expected the PTSD after being through a traumatic experience. What I didn’t expect, and what goes beyond the usual tropes and cliches of war stories, is Nog’s admission that he’s not just shell-shocked. He’s afraid.

For many of us, being a young adult comes with a certain sense of invulnerability. Going through puberty, growing bigger and stronger, being given more rights and responsibility in society, makes you feel more powerful, maybe even unstoppable. You surpass so many of the limits you use to have that it’s easy to feel like you have none. Ferengi physiology is still a bit of a mystery, but for us humble humans, our frontal cortex, the part of our brains that helps us to weigh risks and discern consequences, among other things, doesn’t fully develop until we’re in our twenties. In the throes of that, it’s all too easy to feel impervious, like you can take on the world, eager to show who you are and what you’re capable of.

It’s shattering, then, to see those myths rent asunder in the most visceral terms. Those feelings must be magnified as a young soldier, eager to display your courage and prowess, only to be reminded how vulnerable and mortal each of us remains no matter how brave or bold we might be. To hear Nog speak of that fear, of the realization that he is not invulnerable, that he could die any minute, and how the feeling of that is nigh-literally paralyzing, breaks your damn heart. Who wouldn’t want to run away from that, seek a place of comfort where the real world can be kept at bay, if only for a while?

As with Chief O’Brien’s own PTSD, Neelix’s existential crisis, and B’Elanna’s depression, this is not the type of problem that can be solved in forty-five minutes. If I have a major criticism of this episode, it’s that Vic’s “You have to play the hand you’re dealt” response is endearing, but fairly trite, and certainly not enough to fix what ails poor Nog.

To the episode’s credit though, the writers don’t pretend that it is. It just has to be enough to convince Nog that it’s time to leave the holosuite, and Vic’s encouragement more than suffices on that front. His words don’t suddenly cure Nog, but they’re enough for him to be able to walk down the stairs of Quark’s on his own, embrace his dad, stepmom, and uncle, and tell them that he’s not better, but he’s getting there. It’s a long journey, and this is only one step along the path, but it’s an important step out of his fantasy.

Nog returning to light duty at first shows that the progress is incremental, not monumental, as it should be, and him arranging to see Vic’s program is kept constantly running as a thank you is a lovely coda.

We all need comforts. Even when we’re not facing war, the world can be full of hardships and miseries that can be too much to take. Things that give us a means to escape from all of that, worlds to lose ourselves in, are a godsend. But they’re also not a legitimate alternative to a real life.

I haven't suffered anything hear what Nog has, and even I find myself lost in shows like Deep Space Nine. While not always as smooth or musical as Vic Fontaine’s club, there is something undeniably alluring about a world where everyone becomes supportive friends to one another, where humanity has solved its major issues and become an enlightened species, where there are some continuing struggles, but most issues are solved by the end of the hour. It’s easy to relate to Nog, of wanting to say somewhere that the problems are manageable, the challenges are fabricated and exciting, and above all, the place is safe.

But that's also a dead end. Watching and writing about Star Trek is a joy. At its best, it enriches me, reminds me of values I share and helps me see depths and truths that move me through well-made art. There's nothing wrong with reveling in that. The problem becomes when embracing that becomes an excuse to turn away from real life, your life, with its trials and travails but also its richness and joys that are your own, not borrowed from a fantasy world.

Part of growing up is being able to accept that, of finding the courage to face the day. There’s many in Nog’s position who are not so lucky, either to have the support or to be able to recover from the legitimate horrors he’s been through. Thankfully, for us and for him, we have the opportunity to see him grow up a little more, and keep growing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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.)

[7.5/10] 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.

[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.

[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.

[7.2/10] 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.