Andrew Bloom

VIP

9

[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.

[9.5/10] One of those elements of Star Trek that's permeated pop culture is the Kobayashi Maru -- a test to confront aspiring cadets with the famed no-win scenario. I still like the concept, that even the most seasoned officer will face situations in which there’s no chance to win the day. It ties into the themes of The Wrath of Khan, that through guile and pluck, Kirk’s avoided real consequences until now, when success means paying a terrible cost.

But as duly vaunted as the Kobayashi Maru has become in the Trekkie fandom and beyond, it can obscure a deeper, more harrowing type of choice a commander may have to make. How do you make a call that unavoidably means deciding who lives and who dies? How do you set aside your personal feelings, if you can at all, when you must choose between multiple equally horrible options? How do you live with yourself afterwards, knowing some of your comrades are still breathing and some aren’t, not because of the enemy, but because of your command decision?

In short, if the Kobayashi Maru asks how you handle a scenario where the only option is failure, “Latent Image” asks what to do when there are choices to be made, but all of them are bad.

And it chooses the perfect, unfortunate guinea pig to test out that idea. The Doctor makes for a brilliant fulcrum to explore the question for three reasons. For one, he is, well, a doctor, so questions of medical triage make for an organic setup for the character. For another, one of Voyager’s strongest ongoing character arcs has been Doc’s budding humanity, so examining how that intersects with this challenge feels natural. And last, but not least, he’s a hologram, so the question of whether to subject him to this sort of choice at all adds an extra layer of philosophical inquiry to an already richly-drawn episode.

It also makes for a hell of a paranoid thriller in the first couple acts before the episode delves into the meat of the philosophical problem. I’ll confess that I remembered the twist to this one from watching the show live, but it speaks to the quality of the episode’s construction -- as written by franchise vet Joe Menosky from a story by him, Eileen Connors, and showrunner Brannon Braga -- that even knowing where the story is going doesn’t diminish the unnerving atmosphere of those first couple acts.

Much of that comes down to the increasingly concerning vibe of the piece. The episode begins with business as usual: The Doctor in his usual genial if insistent mood, the rest of the crew humoring him. But gradually, little mysteries start emerging, inconsistencies keep cropping up, and no one seems especially bothered by them despite the way they slowly unravel the Doctor’s world.

That sense of an escalating sense that something is wrong and no one in this ostensibly friendly place will fully acknowledge it (and they may even be in on it) makes “Latent Image” feel of a piece with 1970s horror films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives. More apropos still, the episode plays like the negative image successor to TNG’s “Clues”, also written by Menosky, where the majority of the crew starts to pick up incongruities, and it’s the artificial lifeform (in this case, Data) who seems to be hiding something.

Like those stories, “Latent Image” puts the audience in the shoes of the protagonist. We know as little as the Doctor does. And as with him, what we do know seems to suggest something nefarious is afoot. Memory wipes, hidden surgeries, and deleted files all suggest some kind of saboteur, one only the Doctor, and to a lesser extent Seven, seem to be on the trail of. Given the franchise’s history of powerful aliens and twisty tales, it’s perfectly plausible that Doc has uncovered soe malign force from beyond Voyager’s bulkheads putting the crew at risk.

So it comes as just as much of a shock, just as much of a betrayal, when he (and he) discovers that the culprit is actually Janeway.

What’s interesting about the episode is that Menosky and company pretty well give up on being a paranoid thriller at that point. The cards are on the table, and the explanations are steadily unspooled. But despite that fact, the creative team evokes the perfect mood to leave the audience as disoriented and aghast by all of this as The Doctor is.

I think that's necessary. At first, Janeway only gives Doc a partial explanation, even when he’s connected the larger dots. She tells him that there was a conflict in his programming, and the only way to resolve it was to delete his memory. On the surface, that sounds reasonable enough. Doc has had technological snafus in the past, from his head trip in season 2’s “Projections” to his memory lapses in season 3’s “The Swarm”. It’s not unheard of for there to be some technical problem with his program that necessitates the B’Elanna or others tinkering around in his ones and zeroes to get him up and running again.

But by our sharing The Doctor’s perspective through all this, with the audience just as much on the outside looking in to whatever Janeway’s done to him, we’re apt to feel his sense of indignation and violation from being in the dark on what’s happened. His friends and colleagues have been gaslighting him. When he effectively tells the Captain that she has no right, that she’s trampling on his autonomy, it comes from a place of having been lied to, of having your agency stripped away. With apologies to Tuvok, the emotions, not just the logic, of that, have to land for this episode to work, and thanks to how the episode is framed and structured, they do.

To the point, nearly everyone on the ship treats wiping a sapient being’s memories as an uncontroversial necessity, one The Doctor himself need not consent to. Even knowing the valid reasons why Janeway and Paris and the rest of the crew might act this way, given the state of distress the past incident put the EMH in, it feels uncomfortable at best to see Janeway deny him vital information about his own experiences, order him to undergo a procedure against his will, and have his erstwhile friends step in to carry it out.

Candidly, it’s the first time I’ve ever really missed Kes on the show. The writers’ conception of the character had its share of problems over her four seasons aboard Voyager. But if there’s one thing to recommend Kes, it’s that she recognized The Doctor’s humanity, his potential for growth and evolution, before anyone else on the ship. Whatever the psychological challenges the EMH might be facing, it’s easy to imagine Kes standing up for him, insisting that he has the same rights any of them do to decide whether he wants to go on like this or not.

Thankfully, Voyager makes Seven more than a replacement for Kes in the series’ cast list, but also a replacement as one of The Doctor’s best allies. Even better, she can relate to him in a way even Kes couldn’t, given the similarities in their situations, and it makes former Borg the unexpectedly zealous and convincing advocate for an artificial lifeform’s humanity.

Her late night discussion on individuality with Janeway is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. I’ve often said that the dynamic between Janeway and Seven works because it has the recognizable vibe of a parent caring for a young adult. “Latent Image” cements that dynamic. One of those peculiar but potent moments of childhood comes when a parent has spent years and years instilling a particular set of values in their children, and then, by god, the kids want to hold their parents to them.

It’s so easy to just keep doing things the way you’ve always done them. Janeway makes command decisions for Voyager. There’s a problem with a part of the ship and a member of the crew. She weighs the pros and cons and, ultimately, does what she needs to do to keep things running. Same as it ever was. (At least in the post-”Scorpion”, more pragmatic rendition of the character.)

And yet, there can be a moral clarity from the mouths of babes. Seven has not been fully socialized into Starfleet or the Federation’s way of doing things. She has, however, been given important principles by Janeway: individuality, autonomy, the chance to grow and change. Having been immersed in these ideals, these rights even, she naturally wonders why they shouldn't be extended to the Doctor. Seven asks Janeway if she would do the same with her, trample her agency like that, given that she is, in many ways, full of the same artificial means of supporting life that The Doctor has.

It’s a bracing question. That realization -- that things society uses to put people in different categories, to treat them differently, are thin or even baseless, and they deserve the same treatment -- is the kind of young adult epiphany many go through. To have Seven challenging her mentor in those terms, defending The Doctor’s right to be a person, holding Janeway to her own standards, is one of those moments of clarity and understanding you just love in Star Trek.

In truth, I don’t love Janeway’s response. Her statement that the EMH is more like a replicator than like her and Seven feels like the kind of attitude she’d moved past already. Frankly, rather than making it about the Doctor’s personhood, I wish her position had been something closer to, “We’re tens of thousands of lightyears from home and, right or wrong, I couldn’t afford to lose our only medical officer.” (It would have presaged “Similitude” from Enterprise.) That perspective is in the subtext of Janeway’s explanation, but it comes off much more in the vein of “He’s a machine; we can do what we want with him” that feels out of character for the Captain.

But I can appreciate that as a starting place, because it gives Janeway somewhere to go. It gives her a chance to listen to Seven and, more to the point, connect the ex-Borg’s journey toward individuality with the Doctor’s. One of the more softly moving moments in the whole show comes when Janeway is being kept up late with the same moral quandary Seven was wrestling with, and turning the tables on her protege.

She asks Seven if, given her occasionally rocky path from being a member of the Collective to becoming a distinct individual, would she undo what Janeway’s done? Seven gives her the closest thing to a thank you that a Borg drone could muster -- a simple response that she wouldn’t change it, and the implicit message that however difficult it’s been, all of the hardships have been worth it.

That's all the Captain needs to hear. It’s a powerful thing to have someone change your mind through a testimonial of what you’ve done for them, the grace and trust and support you’ve shown them, that they want to extend to others. It’s hard to imagine something more heartening or truer to Star Trek’s spirit.

So she spills the beans to The Doctor. She explains to him what happened just in the nick of time, and we get to see it. And the truth is...it’s kind of perfunctory. Maybe this is one of those places where the episode is hurt on rewatch. There’s a certain satisfaction to having a mystery solved, but if you already know the answer, it’s hard to replicate that again.

So it’s good that we get to see some conversations between Doc and Ensign Jetal, the shuttle mission, and the deadly alien attack. It’s even more critical that we see the Doctor racing in the moment, trying to save both patients, and only being able to save one, so that we have the context for the choice that continues to vex him. Hell, I love the touch that he beamed their attacker back to his ship rather than into space because of his hardwired “Do No Harm” principles.

What’s more important than seeing what happened, though, is seeing what happened afterwards. The Doctor’s breakdown is brilliant. Robert Picardo gives one of his best performances in the series, conveying the sense in which The Doctor has become unmoored by the arbitrariness of what happened. The cinematography accentuates that, giving us a shaky cam alternative to Voyager’s usual stately visual style to help communicate the inner turmoil consuming Doc. His breakdown in the mess hall is downright scary, both because you’re afraid of this kind and gentle soul unraveling in the face of a mortal decision that would haunt anyone, and because it’s not entirely clear what he might do in the throes of his emotional episode. The Doctor seems unhinged in a way we’ve never seen before. (Give or take the execrable “Darkling” in season 3.)

That scene is all the more vital because it both gives us insight into the Doctor’s character and what’s bothering him so deeply, but also because it helps justify the rest of the crew’s approach. When she’s simply ordering the Doctor to submit to a memory wipe, Janeway seems cold, even cruel. But when you see the Doctor losing it, you understand why she might resort to such measures, even to the point of deceiving him, not just for the crew’s sake, but to spare him the pain and anguish he’s suffering.

Truth be told, it’s tempting. I’ve never had to decide which patient’s life to save and which one to let go, but I’ve experienced difficult moments in my life. I can see the appeal of pushing a button and flushing them out of my mind forever. More to the point, I can envision seeing a loved one torturing themselves over something that cannot be changed and couldn’t be helped, and wanting to take that suffering away from them.

And yet, as another Starfleet captain once put it, “I need my pain.” At the risk of being too sweeping, struggling with our decisions, especially those born of our connections to others, is a part of the human condition. With Seven, Janeway knew the road would be hard, but granted her the chance to become a full person again. Here, she grants The Doctor the same courtesy, the same recognition,

Growing as a person, whether you’re a real life young adult or a sci-fi artificial life form, means confronting the big questions of life. Why are we here? What is my purpose? How do I grapple with the consequences, big or small, of my actions? It’s not always pretty, but The Doctor is growing before our eyes. Janeway respecting his right in that regard, supporting his ability to find his own way through those thickets, and supporting him until he finds a way out on the other side, is one of the most humane and respectful actions she’s ever shown.

What’s so striking about the whole thing is that, in some ways, this is a question of responsibility. Part by necessity, part by a recognition of new life, Janeway has allowed The Doctor to evolve, become more than he was originally intended to be. But with that evolution comes, well, humanity -- connections to other people, feelings that can keep you up nights, personal bonds that may bias your choices.

It’s easy to imagine The Doctor whom we met in the first season having no problem with the issue of only being able to save one patient out of two. Triage is triage and just part of the job. But in the four and a half years since he was activated, he’s developed friendships with folks like Harry Kim, that consciously or not, may have caused him to favor a pal over a casual acquaintance when it mattered most.\

WWondering whether you made the right choice, torturing yourself over whether you let your personal biases get in the way of medical ethics, trying to live with the ramifications, would be a lot for anyone, let alone someone like The Doctor who’s experiencing these sorts of dilemmas for the first time. You feel for him. You feel for someone trying to do the right thing and struggling with his choices because they were, well, eminently human.

So there’s a poetry to all of this. You can't just allow something to become an individual, expose it to all of the wonders and changes that come with personhood and sentience, and then wipe it away when it becomes inconvenient. One of those fundamental throughlines of Star Trek is seeking out new life. As Picard once put it, “well here it sits.” Sentience can be a burden. But it’s only right for Janeway to give The Doctor the opportunity to experience the good nad the bad, to reckon with the hardships, not just the joys, of what it means to embrace humanity.

And what’s beautiful about “Latent Image” is that embracing humanity, that concern for friends and family, is what the episode uses to suggest The Doctor will pull through. In the midst of a rant about Determinism, he recognizes that Kathryn is exhausted, she’s drained, she’s even feverish, but she’s persevering for a friend. Her standing vigil over the Doctor processing his experiences is an act of penance and kindness, one that shows however dismissive she might have been earlier, she’s not just giving permission now; she’s doing the work to support a fellow soul.

It’s enough to give The Doctor the foothold that he needs. It’s the kind of thing that pulls so many of us out of dark stretches, a recognition of our desire to be there for those we care about, that mistakes and human foibles do not extinguish the potential for us to do good and protect and be with those we love.

The Doctor is a healer, by nature. There’s beauty and poetry in what starts to spur him out of his funk being his desire to help and protect the friend who’s trying to help him. We can't always win. We can't always make the right choices. But we can keep doing good, especially for those closest to us.

More to the point, those human connections don’t just sway us in moments when we’d rather be objective; they spur us to put others first out of love and compassion. It’s hard to imagine something truer to Star Trek’s ethos than that.

“Latent Image” is one of the high water marks for Voyager and maybe even for Star Trek as a whole. It isn’t perfect, but it captures so much of the philosophical contemplativeness that mark the franchise, the tough but humane decisions in impossible circumstances that mark Janeway’s captaincy, and the recognition and appreciation for new life and individuality, in Seven and the Doctor, that mark the openness and understanding that characterize this series at its best.

[8.0/10] That's a hell of a way to end things. I don’t know if episode 2 of Babylon Berlin quite matches up to The Godfather exactly, but intercutting between revelers having a 1920s rave at a fancy nightclub, while Charlotte leads her John into a BDSM den within it, while Russian goons methodically slaughter a printshop’s worth of Communist sympathizers, while their betrayer/1920s gender-flipped David Bowie disassembles herself beneath the gaze of her fervent admirer, makes for one hell of an intense ending to this thing! And that's before Kadarkow evades murder by hiding in the “downstairs” portion of the outhouse.

It’s emblematic of my favorite thing about the show so far -- there are so many layers and threads to this story, but in a way that makes it feel like an intricately woven spider-web rather than a knotted pile of string. We have so many different interests and centers of power here: Rath working on behalf of the interests of Cologne, Charlotte trying to support her downtrodden family in the slums, Bruno representing a brand of crooked cop who nonetheless operates by a certain code, a mobster with interests that lead to blackmail and murder, a young Communist magician planning some (presumably) big terrorist attack, a fellow performer and supposed lover who sells him out to the Ruskies, a patron of a club gazing furiously at the object of his affections.

Somehow, they’re all connected. We don’t know exactly how just yet, but we see them bumping into one another, the ties between their different worlds beginning to come into focus, the purposes that lead them to get tangled up starting to become more clear. And that's all before you get to the psychologist and the informant and suicidal suspect and the porno-hording pharmacist and the fresh-faced young police deputy and a dozen other minor (or major?) characters who seem to be trapped in this orbit, ready to elucidate similar connections.

My wife, who’s seen the show before, compared Babylon Berlin to The Wire, and I think the comparison is apt. You have the same exploration of different classes of society, different ways individual interests coalesce into larger societal forces, different circles intersecting with one another. You get the larger sense that, whether each or any of our players realizes it yet, what one does has an effect on all the others. I’d be lying if I said I felt like I saw the full picture yet, but I appreciate the show pulling back, widening that light more and more, to where gradually, more of it becomes visible.

We’re starting to get a little bit of it at least! Rath’s contacts back in Cologne, including the Lord Mayor, are the ones being blackmailed, and he’s been tasked to find the evidence. You have the mobster ostensibly leaning on the suspect Rath knew to convince him to commit suicide rather than squeal. You have the reveal that in addition to her copper clerical work, she’s a BDSM sex worker at a high class club to support her family. Heck, you even get hints that, given her line of work, she might be involved in the kinky blackmail materials Rath is after (or at least know the people who are).

Apart from all the twisty intrigue and connected bands on the corkboard, the show’s second episode gives us two superlative scenes that are very different.

The first is Rath’s PTSD episode after witnessing the suspect’s suicide. The show does well to get impressionsitic in Rath’s shell-shocked reaction, with shakycam cinematography and a lightly surreal sense of the world flickering around him to convey his internal sense of this experience. Volker Bruch gives a tremendous physical performance, selling Rath’s trembles, his disturbed mental state, his inability to do anything but crumple in the face of this visceral reminder of his troubles at war.

And Charlotte’s care and kindness to him and promise of discretion is somehow, the most wholesome thing in the world despite the difficulties and grim nature of the incident at hand. It humanizes and softens two characters having to operate in very hard circumstances.

The other is Svetlana’s big number. The performance, the imagery, the editing, the shot selection, all come together to produce a feast of dance and liberated sexuality that is glorious and infectious.In truth, it feels a bit modern to the point of anachronism, but frankly, it’s too stylistically excellent for me to care. As I said in my write-up of the first episode, thus far Babylon Berlin has been a show that largely rises and falls on vibes, and man, the vibes in that sequence were exquisite.

Overall, I’m getting my sea legs a bit with this show, but frankly, I’m kind of enjoying not really getting everything and letting the plot, characters, and mood wash over me. And if nothing else, the outstanding sequences this episode busts out are worth it on their own.

[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.

[8.0/10] I enjoyed the hell out of this one. The concept of ordinary people changing their appearance for clout using Compound V is a neat way to explore the superficiality and performance aspects of image-conscious social media. Much of the short is one big Behind the Music-esque montage, but still, it does a nice job of representing the way that performing for followers is at first an invigorating endeavor, but quickly becomes an exhausting and hollowing one. The creative team does a nice job of dramatizing the turn of adoration to a constant flow of criticism, and the way showing off for that audience can be as fake and debilitating as anything.

You also root for those two crazy kids. There’s a neat idea that both Boyd and Erin liked one another before they used the cream to get rid of their freckles or less-than-impressive biceps. This is a story affiliated with The Boys, there’s plenty of raunch and debauchery to go round. Buty at base, this tale is a tragedy, of two people who could have been happy with one another as they were, driven to ruin by reaching for a particular image and ideal they thought they needed to match. There’s something bittersweet and low-key touching about that.

Or maybe not. The Occurrence at Owl Creek twist a little silly, but again, on brand.

Overall, though, this is a great short that tells its own, worthwhile story using the sandbox and sensibility of The Boys.

[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.

[7.5/10] “The Department of Dirty Tricks” sets up a lot of threads for the new season. Some of them are good. Some of them are fine. Some of them are questionable. Let’s take them one at a time.

I like the angle on Homelander -- that he is aging, worrying about what kind of world he’s leaving behind, having a bit of an existential crisis now that he’s gotten what he wanted and still isn’t fulfilled, and worse yet, has no one around him he respects.

I don’t know. Somewhere along the way, Homelander became my favorite character in The Boys: not because he’s good or eevn sympathetic, but because he’s broken and deceptively complex in his emotions in ways even he doesn't fully comprehend.

I’ve often said that Homelander is roughly the result of “What if Eleven from Stranger Things ended up in a bad family rather than a good one?” The answer is clearly that you would get a monster, but one who is a human as he is stupid and terrifying. That's not the kind of character you see much of on television, and Antony Starr’s performance continues to bring this megalomaniacal manchild to life in brilliant ways.

Of course, The Boys also uses him to offer some social and political commentary. It’s not difficult, because the world is increasingly as extreme and ridiculous as the events in this show (albeit sans the superpowers). Still, Homelander’s trial reflects both Donald Trump and Kyle Rittenhouse in interesting ways, particularly in the media spin around Homelander eye-blasting a guy last season. And not for nothing, it pushes Homelander even further into a supe-remecist direction.

I was painfully naive when Homelander talked about feeling nothing despite having achieved his dreams by ruthlessly climbing to the top of the corporate ladder and being cheered by the people for doing what he’s always wanted to do. Maybe this was going to be a reluctant Homelander, one who, upon finding himself surrounded by sycophants and easy adoration might take the advice of Lisa Simpsons and realize that getting what you want all the time will ultimately leave you unfulfilled and joyless. Instead, he’s leaning toward going full genocidal and fascist, deciding that more [wince] “cleansing” needs to take place in order for him to be happy. Well, we know where he comes from, I suppose.

It does give power to the invitation from a character played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan(!!!), who invites Butcher to join his shadowy organization that aims to take down Homelander as the big prize, rather than following the CIA’s lead and chasing down new VP Neuman. Joe Kessler tells Butcher they need to act before Homelander and his ilk start rounding humans up into camps and, while that's the kind of talk that might cast you as a villain in the world of X-Men ‘97, given what we hear from Homelander in this episode, it’s not a cockamamie thought.

The next most interesting part of this one is Sage, the smartest person in the world, and Homelander’s new advisor. For one thing, Susan Heyword gives a hell of a performance. There’s a relaxed confidence in her presence that makes her seem like a formidable foil for Homelander. The way she instantly diagnoses Homelander’s conditions, hang-ups, insecurities, and anxieties makes her a sharp-witted Sherlock Holmes type, with the stones to stand-up to evil Superman at a time when he’ll not only tolerate that, but wants it.

But the idea, explored in The Venture Bros. of all things, of a Mr. Fantastic-turned-asshole type is intriguing, especially as she couches destruction and extermination in the realm of statistics and inevitabilities, makes her independent of Homelander. The idea of her stoking divisions, creating martyrs, creating unrest and then positioning her benefactor (or maybe, secretly, her) as a savior is cynical but salient in the modern era. Given the real life conspiracy nuts who abound, I’m a little more sanguine about “It’s all a deliberate scheme from those in power!” storylines these days. Despite my squeamishness, the idea of Sage fomenting unrest and roiling resentments to accelerate destruction works on its own terms, and is downright chilling in places.

We get hints of more interesting stuff on the villain side. Ashley’s still a unique presence as Homelander’s corporate lackey. We get hints at A-Train being uncomfortable both with his job under Homelander’s thumb and at the prospect of having to share the spotlight with another Black person. And by god, The Deep commiserating with a Tilda Swinton-voiced octopus is hilarious and incredible.

Oddly enough, the parts of the premiere that left me colder are on the good guy side of the equation.

The most compelling part of that milieu is Butcher. The idea that -- whether it’s a brain disease or just his conscience, he’s hearing the voice of Becca as the angel on his shoulder -- is an intriguing one. I like the idea that, god help him, he genuinely wants to protect Ryan and make good with the lad. There’s potent material here in the tug-of-war between Homelander and Butcher as father figures, each seeing something important in Ryan, each fucked up in their own way, and the poor kid doing his best to get by without inheriting all their damage.

It’s as sentimental as we’ve seen Butcher, and you feel like he means it. Whether it’s a promise to Becca or his own internalized feelings for the kid, last season he had the chance to kill HOmelander, and he gave it up to protect Ryan. That says something, and his willingness to look after the kid are one of the most admirable qualities we’ve ever seen in the guy.

But he’s not willing to throw Hughie under the bus to do it. “The Department of Dirty Tricks” plays with your emotions a bit. It would be in the spirit of The Boys’ cynical bent to have Hughie being the one part of the good guy crew who wants to keep Butcher around, only to be screwed over when Billy sells him out to Nueman. Instead, Butcher stays firm, albeit potentially at the cost of his mental stability. Head-Becca is right that these schemes tend to blow up in his face. Butcher trying a different, even slightly more straight and narrow path, could be interesting.

The rest of the storylines don’t do much for me. There’s something real and well-observed about Hughie ducking his father’s phone call and then feeling miserably guilty when his dad has a stroke. But I don’t know. His dad has barely been a character since season 1, and it’s been so long, that the whole thing feels more abstract that as emotionally poignant as the show seems to be going for. The prospect of his mom finally turning up grabs your attention, but that's more of a tease here than anything substantive.

Otherwise, the rest of it is fine. I’m relieved that Kimiko essentially states for the audience that her and Frenchie will never happen, but hotshotting Frnechie immediately to another relationship feels too sudden. Likewise, I’m interested in the idea of M.M. having to reconcile with his daughter after struggles with losing her would-be stepdad, but everything there happens pretty quickly and is laden with yawn-worthy “that nebbish must have a large penis” humor. At least it ties into the main story. And Starlight wanting to establish her identity apart from being Starlight is an interesting throughline, but we only get the bare bones here.

All-in-all, this is a solid, albeit not overwhelming start to the new season. As with even the best seasons of The Boys, this is kind of a hodge-podge, with a lot of interesting ideas floating around, but a lot of them popping out of nowhere and feeling awkwardly quilted together. There’s ways to make that work, some of which the series has found in the past. But at this stage, with so many plates spinning after three years’ worth of stories, I’m more apt to simply enjoy the parts I like and wait out the ones I’m unsure of, with less confidence that it will all coalesce into a greater whole.

[7.7/10] I love me some gray areas in my Star Wars. Don’t get me wrong, the light side vs. dark side stuff. But as I’ve grown older, I appreciate stories, including Star Wars stories, that acknowledge our communities and our choices are rarely that simple.

So I like the fact that the Nightsisters (or at least some kind of presumably related witches’ coven) are presented as a counterpoint to the Jedi, not the villains of the piece. This flashback serves a number of purposes. It gives us some of that vaunted backstory, to help us understand where Osha and Mae and Sol and others are coming from. It fills in the gaps of the events that loom so large in the histories of our twin protagonists, letting the audience see them (or most of them) after being tantalized by only being told about them so far.

But most of all, it establishes a different, but no less valid alternative to the force-users we know. We’ve seen the Jedi. We’ve seen the Sith. We’ve seen the Nightsisters who, while sometimes sympathetic (hello Fallen Order fans!), also seem to be harnessing some kind of black magic. We’ve seen the Bendu, who’s more neutral than gray. And we’ve even seen the more passive and meditative Bardottans. (Aka, the species Jar Jar’s girlfriend is from -- no I’m not joking.)

But we’ve never seen anything quite like this coven led by Osha and Mae’s mother, Mother Aniseya. I love that they have a different take on the Force. The coven thinks the Jedi view the Force as a power to be wielded, whereas they view it more as a thread, a tapestry between peoples and events, that can be tugged and pulled to cause changes amid that weaving. Their perspective on the Force is a collectivist one, where their connection to it is given strength by the multitude, in contrast to the Jedi’s view on attachments. And they don’t view the Force as directing fate, but rather as providing for choices -- one of the core ideas of the franchise.

That is all neat! One of the best parts of The Last Jedi is the notion that the Force does not belong to the Jedi. It is, instead, something that flows through all peoples. Exploring that there may be different religions out there, different means of reaching and interpreting it, adds depth ot he world and adds complication to the binary. It’s nearly never a bad thing to add that kind of complexity and ecumenical spirit to your universe.

More or less. One of the other things I appreciate is that the Coven and the jedi view one another with suspicion, even though they’re mutually respectful at first. The coven sees the Jedi as arrogant, too focused on power, too individualistic. The Jedi view the Coven as dark, as corrupting, as dangerous. I’m always a fan of shows that don’t present one perspective, but rather explore how the different vantage points affect the different views groups may have of one another. (Shades of Deep Space Nine from the other major star-bound franchise!)

This is all to say that the Coven is different than what we’re used to, but no less valid. The Jedi as we see them here are different than what we’re used to, but not invalid. And their twin approaches, alike in dignity, come through in the fulcrum between the Coven and the Order: Mea and Osha.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room with those two. The young actress (actresses?) who play the earlier version of the twins aren’t very good. That's no sin. Giving a convincing performance as an adult with years of experience remains startlingly difficult. But the reality is that, though these young actors are giving it their all, there is a put on, stagey quality to the performance that can take you out of the moment. I dearly hope the fandom is kind to them nonetheless. It’s tough being a young performer, especially in a high profile role. But despite a nice moment from Osha when she realizes the gravity of what she’s lost, a lot of the acting from the kiddos is apt to take the viewer out of the moment.

Thankfully, the writing helps make up for it. Not for nothing, given Lucasfilm’s current ownership, much of this feels like the first act of a film from the Disney Renaissance. Osha could be your classic Disney princess. She loves her family and wants to do good and be righteous, but she has this yearning for something different, beyond the garden gate. The episode lays it on a little thick in places, but it’s a venerable story beat for a reason. There’s something compelling about someone trying to make the best of a family situation that doesn’t quite fit them but yearning adventure out past the horizon. (I mean, hey, it worked for Luke Sykwalker.) Osha is roughly one “I want” song from joining the little mermaid and company.

What I like about it, though, is that you feel for all sides of this situation. You feel for Osha. She wants to have an existence separate from her twin. She doesn’t feel like she fits in with the Coven. She doesn’t want to disappoint her moms or her sister. But she doesn’t want to lie. She doesn’t want to deny herself. She doesn’t want to give up this thing inside her telling her she wants more, or at least different.

You feel for Mae. She admittedly, has signs of being the “evil” twin. (Though I guess they both seem to use their force powers to freeze that translucent butterfly? I’ll admit, it was confusing who was who there at points.) She feels at home in the Coven. She loves the immediate family and the wider one. She has power and ease, and the confidence that comes from feeling that you’re where you ought to be. In the end, she does a terrible thing, but she’s an eight-year-old lashing out at an unfortunate situation. In the larger than life confines of fiction, it’s an easy thing for me to forgive.

You feel for Mother Aniseya. She is trying to protect her people. She wants to raise her daughters in her own proud tradition. But she also wants them to find their own path to it. But, from the vantage point of being a little older and a little wiser, she knows that what you want can change. What makes sense in the exuberance of youth can fall out of favor when it makes contact with the knots and tangles of that great ethereal thread. Wanting to protect your child, to instill your values in theme, while respecting their autonomy as young people is an impossible balance. Aniseya handles it with understanding and grace.

Heck, you even understand Mother Koril, who is the more strict and belligerent parental figure here. The cultural conditions are mostly implied, but it’s easy to intuit how the Coven has been marginalized, diminished, possibly by Force. The girls represent their future, and it seems to have required a great deal of her and her partner to make that happen. Why wouldn’t she do anything to protect her girls, and mistrust the Jedi who would deign to take their future away from her and her family?

And you also feel for Sol. The Acolyte already conveyed a very fatherly vibe between him and Osha,but this episode cements it. I have my qualms about what happens to the young woman, but Sol seems searnest when he tells her that she could be a great Jedi, when he imparts that courage means pursuing honestly what you want, when he embraces her in the throes of tragedy and wants to take her on as a surrogate child. The estranged relationship between them in the present is counterbalanced by this fraught but touching connection between them in the past.

Of course, that past is no less slippery. For one thing, there’s still much that's alluded to that we don’t quite see. Presumably there was some conflict between the Jedi and the Coven that Osha wasn’t privy to, which we’ll see down the line. Presumably, it’s part of what spurred Mae to take the actions she did. Presumably it’s why there’s great regret among the Jedi who survived the encounter. And that's before you get into the fact that apparently Mother Aniseya channeled some forbidden magic, or at least did something controversial, to bring the twins’ lives into being. There’s plenty of lore and intrigue yet.

But for now, at least, we have two cultures at odds with one another, in ways that question and complicate our sympathies. This is Star Wars. We know who the Jedi are. We’re apt to side with them, to see them as Osha does, as peacekeepers and heroes of the galaxy. (Even if we’ve seen their ossification and dissolution over the course of the Prequels.) When Osha wants to be a Jedi, and her witch family tells her to lie, to deny herself what she wants in the same of something she’s uncertain about, it’s easy to see Indara and company as rescuers.

And yet, it’s also hard not to see this different means of reaching the Force, that is apparently all but outlawed, and not have serious qualms about the equivalent of religious persecution. The notion that the Coven is allowed to exist, but forbidden from passing on their knowledge to children is startling. It’s clear that there remains animosity between the Coven and the Jedi, born of mutual mistrust, with ostensible peacemakers and instigators. And it’s hard to think of Republic law allowing the Jedi to test and, with some permission, take children away to be taught in their fashion, without thinking of real life colonial schools, and so-called “residential schools” in the United States, that have a checkered history at best.

So while the show makes things a little too blunt with Mae and Osha standing across from one another on a broken bridge, you get the reasons behind the actions and anguish between these two young girls, between their various parents, between Jedi and the Coven. This is not black and white, good and evil, light and dark. This is something more muddled and uncertain than that. And it portends deeper and more interesting things as the mythos of Star Wars evolves before our eyes.

(Speculative spoilers: My bet is that Mae’s master is one of her moms, probably Mother Koril. THough I guess it being the comparatively peaceful and forgiving Aniseya would be a bigger twist. The law of conservation of characters suggests it’s one of them, unless it’s secretly Master Vernestra or something. But one of the moms would be the bigger emotional gut punch, so I presume and hope it’s one of them.)

[8.0/10] This was a great way to end this abbreviated season. The A-story, with Tina’s dance, is a classic tale of Tina wanting one thing amid her preteen hopes and dreams, and finding another just as worthwhile. And the B-story, with the rest of the Belcher clan and Teddy unwittingly building a cool secret speakeasy of a restaurant, is the kind of fun lark that Bob’s Burgers does exceedingly well.

I’m a sucker for a good Tina story to begin with, but this one is especially relatable and, ultimately, heartening. I can’t claim to have had any great desire to graze “upper butt” at my middle school dances. But the wide-eyed dreams of getting a sweet, semi-grown-up moment with someone you have a crush on is, if not universal, then certainly familiar to many of us. Tina’s nervousness about the whole thing is endearing. Her continuing efforts to pursue a mostly oblivious Jimmy Jr. are amusing. And the parade of low-stakes horribles – from buttsweat to a locked laundry door to a top covered in cat poo – are the right mix of sympathetic and funny.

Enter Sam, the counterpoint to Tina’s zealousness. While Tina is raring to find her moment with Jimmy Jr., Sam is overwhelmed by the social interaction, and by some odd coincidence, it leads them to the same laundry room. I love that. You don’t see a ton of characters like Sam on television. T.V. is founded on characters bouncing off one another, so even standoffish folk like Parks and Rec’s Ron Swanson end up becoming buddies with the rest of the cast eventually. So it’s nice to have a young kid like Sam, who wants to do the social thing, who pushes himself to meet expectations, and ends up overstimulated and disheartened about the whole thing.

I love that he and Tina help each other, with the appropriate degree of awkward preteen interactions to go with it. Despite both of them fumbling about this whole thing in different ways, they support one another. There’s laughs to be had, but also a good measure of sweetness.

That’s why the episode soars when Tina has her chance to have the big dance with Jimmy Jr., and instead, she uses the last song of the night to bring Sam out of his shell. After struggling with social interactions the whole night, he gets to try it with someone he’s built trust and a rapport with. And after resting her whole night on a singular U.B.-based goal, Tina gives it up to do something kind.

By god, that’s our girl. The fact that the universe (or, you know, the writers) reward her with something more precious than a graze of the glutes – Jimmy’s head resting on her shoulder – is the icing on the cake.

The B-story is far less emotional, but also made of pure joy. The Belchers engaging in a palette building contest in the basement is the kind of loony hoot the show’s made hay from time and again. Teddy going overboard as a late entrant in the contest and making a whole replica of the restaurant is a delightful twist. And Louise managing to spin that into a food bloggers’ delight, and for one night only, the hottest spot in town, is the exact type of hilarious left turn the show does well. The presence of bugs in the wood is a good excuse not to keep going with all of this forever, but for the Belchers and the audience, is a delightful onetime lark.

Overall, the producers knew which note to go out on. Tina showing her best side amid preteen drama, and the rest of the family (Uncle Teddy included) getting to have a fun and unexpected adventure in the humble confines of the basement, is the perfect dance number to end the season with.

[9.2/10] “Counterpoint” starts right in the middle of things. There is no introduction to the Devore, no context for their waltzing onto Voyager, no precedent for them inspecting the ship. The episode simply drops the audience into this scenario, trusting us to keep up with the broad contours of what’s happening and, more than that, to feel as shocked and affronted about it as the characters do.

It’s a canny move, the kind you’d expect from Michael Taylor (the writer of “The Visitor, one of DS9’s most superlative installments). On a nuts and bolts level, it’s exciting. We kick things off with action and uncertainty, a foreign invader stomping through our heroes’ home like they own the place. But more than that, it perfectly establishes two things that the show will want to subvert.

The first is the notion that the Devore are uniformly bad guys. The Inspector makes excuses for why his people hunt down and (it’s implied) execute telepaths, why they take such draconian measures against outsiders within their space. But the tone and tenor of their “inspection” of Voyager plays less like the routine work of governmental functionaries and more like Nazi thugs hectoring and harassing the locals to ensure they don’t dare to harbor any Jews.

The Devore’s main brute announces his troops will be boarding the ship in a gruff and stentorian manner. They barge through private areas while our heroes have to sit by and watch. They deliberately shatter The Doctor’s delicate cultures because they can. Without anyone having to vocalize it – sheerly through the harshness on display and the simmering resentment from our heroes – you understand the malevolent threat that these newcomers to the show represent.

And then there’s Kashyk, their erstwhile leader and the head of these intrusive “inspections.” He is not unlike Gul Dukat on Voyager’s sister show – a villain who thinks he’s a friend. His genial tone and sense of cultural understanding presages none other than Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (which, oddly enough, portends a few things in this story). He holds court in Janeway’s ready room. He aims for friendly banter with her over Earth culture. He casts these intermittent invasions as a neighborly visit, while holding all the power in the situation, and threatening to detain or destroy innocent people behind his faux-gentility.

In short, it’s easy to loathe them both: the jackbooted thugs running roughshod through our homey ship, and the smiling dastard who pretends everything about it is nice and normal.

With that start, “Counterpoint” has its work cut out for it: to suggest that a member of this cruel force might secretly sympathize with the innocent telepaths who are being persecuted, that Kashyk might be trusted, and that under the right circumstances, he might even be worth falling in love with. And what’s most impressive about the episode is that it manages to pull all of it off.

“Counterpoint” is essentially a trust game. Do you trust Kashyk when he claims to be an ally despite storming his way through Voyager uninvited? Do you trust him when she shows up seeking asylum and preaching sympathy for those he pursues? Do you buy the plans he helps spin up, the intel he shares, the methods he proposes to get the telepathic refugees to safety? And most importantly, do you trust him on a personal level, to where you might feel comfortable, or more, with him?

We have to ask these questions because Janeway is. One of the deftest moves Taylor and company pull off is to put us in her shoes. Janeway is a savvy operator, showing effective (if occasionally plot-necessity-aided) good judgment in when to trust and when to fight. So it’s easy to follow in her wake when he lets her guard down or keep it up. But all the while, we get to play the same game she is, and gauge whether or not this man who, by his own account, has been lying to suit his situation, is finally telling the truth or just lulling the Captain, and the audience, into another deception.

It helps that the stakes feel legitimately high in a way that’s a tribute to both the ingenuity and the humanitarian values at the heart of Star Trek. Hiding fugitive refugees in the transporter buffer is clever but dangerous. The show ratchets up the tension by having the Devore stormtroopers nose their way around the transporter room and give B’Elanna the third degree over power usage. She and Seven struggle to bring the refugees (and our Vulcan friends) back. The Doctor explains that the pattern buffer hideaway isn’t a permanent solution regardless, with cellular degradation afflicting more and more of them the longer they kick around in limbo.

The upshot is clear. These are an outsized version of the “undesirables” being hidden away in Nazi Germany. They can only evade detection for so long before they’ll get hurt one way or another. You fear for them. You sympathize with them. And you cheer for Janeway when she’s willing to preserve Federation ideals by getting them to a wormhole that can ferry them on to safety.

So it’s a shock when, in the midst of trying to reach a rendezvous, Kashyk himself shows up pleading that he fears for them, that he sympathizes, the same way we do. He doesn’t just want asylum on Voyager to assuage his guilty conscience; he claims he wants to help them.

What’s great about Kashyk’s supposed defection is that it makes his story and actions plausible enough to where the audience can justifiably buy it, and it makes Janeway cautious and measured enough that she, and by extension we, never feel like saps for starting to believe him.

Kashyk doesn’t just come with empty words – a plausible but unverifiable story about having long-wanted to defect, but Voyager being the first outside visitor that provided a genuine opportunity. He comes with valuable intel: patrols schedules, rendezvous coordinates, alarm system details. If that weren’t enough, he admits to already knowing about the refugees, suggesting that if he wanted to blow the whistle on Janeway and send them all to detention or doom, he could have done it already. On the merits, you can’t blame Janeway for at least tentatively buying his story, willing to consider his request on a provisional basis while they scope out whether this all adds up. And if it does, it’s the opportunity for freedom the refugees have been waiting for.

That’s what comes off the page. But what is much harder to achieve, and what owes so much to the performers, is how easy and visceral it is to believe that Janeway and Kashyk would grow close to one another. There’s a nice progression between them: from a frosty reception to gregarious come-ons, to a cautious tolerance of someone who might be of use, to a more relaxed partnership that emerges through solving problems seamlessly together, to a legitimate intimacy that emerges when it comes time for the pair to part.

It's one of the hardest things in the world to pull off in forty-five minutes. The script does its work, paying off that progression with a charming good cop/bad cop routine played on an alien scientist, and a scene of late night problem-solving that makes it natural for both Kathryn and Kashyk to let their hair down. And Kashyk’s tale of a telepathic child, destined for a grim fate if he carried out his duties, effecting a change of heart, is liable to tug at the audience’s heartstrings alongside Janeway’s.

But some of what makes it work is unwritable – the sparkling chemistry between Kate Mulgrew and guest performer Mark Harelik (who does extraordinary work in a short amount of time). You can’t force two actors to seem like an organic romantic pairing on screen. It has to happen through the right choices from the performers, and a give-and-take between them allowed to blossom, and that ineffable magic that just happens when a pair of actors are attuned enough to one another to be able convey something as challenging intimacy on screen. And it’s extra challenging for Star Trek where, if behind-the-scenes reports are true, you have about a week to shoot and little time to rehearse.

Whatever the alchemy that produces it, the slow burn between Janeway and Kashyk works like gangbusters. So the moments when they gaze into one another’s eyes in the mess hall, when Kashyk invites his benefactor in for a meal after a long night’s work, when against all odds, they share a kiss before their daring plan can go into play, you buy it. It gives “Counterpoint” an extra layer, an extra level, and Janeway’s most convincing romance this side of Chakotay.

So there’s something extra at stake when the plan to get the refugees to the wormhole of freedom runs into an apparent snafu. The scheme to get them to safety has a similar progression, with successes that happen through guile, scientific insight, cleverness, and none of which feel like automatic wins.

Hell, my secret favorite part of this one is the fact that B’Elanna and company come up with the usual technobabble scheme to avoid the Devore sensors, and what do you know, it actually fails for once! I mean hey, we eventually learn why, but still! It’s nice to see the good guys do nothing wrong and still come up short in their engineering endeavors now and again.

It’s not just a mechanical loss though. It ups the stakes again, since with the Devore alerted, the only way to make it to the exit in time is to send Kashyk back to his people, where he can pretend to be a loyalist once more and use his authority to send them on their way. It’s another trust fall, to believe that Kashyk won’t just defect back in a tight spot, and another way to make this ploy a fraught one, with Voyager’s scheme and Kashyk’s role as a double agent apt to be exposed at any minute. The show seals it with a kiss, letting us believe in the trust, and in what could be lost if it all goes wrong.

That’s why it’s such a gut punch when Kashyk returns, seems to play his role to perfection, only to reveal that the entire thing was a ruse from the start. He was convincing. He seemed earnest in his intentions, toward the refugees and the Captain. So when he reveals that this entire effort was a ploy to uncover the location of the wormhole and destroy it, it lands like a dagger in the back. The innocents will suffer. Voyager could be impounded. And on a personal level, this person the Captain treated as a friend misled her and betrayed her.

That’s also why it’s so rousing when, despite seeming to fall for this charming chap, Janeway kept an ace in the hole herself. Kashyk realizing there’s no anomaly to destroy when he fires Voyager’s torpedoes, his head goon finding canisters of vegetables rather than telepaths in the pattern buffer, and the refugees having already safely absconded to the wormhole before the Devore forces can move a muscle, is in the top five most triumphant moments in the series.

We (read: I) may have been duped, or at least convinced enough to believe Kashyk could be on the side of the angels. But Janeway, true to form, was sharp enough not to rely on that trust, and came with a back-up plan. The point and counterpoint that the title promises – of sneering enemy to trusted ally, of arm’s length pawn to unexpected beau, of a manipulator discovering that he’s been manipulated – give the episode a wonderful momentum, and the Captain one of her biggest wins.

The only real cheat in all of this is that there’s no real consequence for Janeway’s deception. Taylor and the creative team put a fig leaf over that. Kashyk gives a speech about how this blemish on the Devore troop’s record would serve no one’s interest and orders his men to forget all about it. But it seems unlikely, at best, that the Devore could see their grand plans dashed, their Inspector humiliated, without extracting a pound of flesh from the one who pulled the wool over their eyes.

Maybe there’s a deeper reason for that, though. It would be easy to leave it at that – someone tried to fool Kathryn, and rather than falling for it, she suckered them into a double bluff. Everyone was on their guard and plotting around the other the whole time. And I think it would still be a pretty satisfying finish.

Only “Counterpoint” offers us something commendably more complicated. Kathryn and Kashyk’s plans were fake, but their feelings were real. The Inspector may not have meant what we said about the telepaths, but he was true in his connection to the Captain. Janeway may not have bought Kashyk’s routine entirely, but her invitation for him to stay was genuine. And so was that kiss.
Sometimes the best shows catch us in the middle of things. We don’t have time to gradually acclimate to the new story or new characters. The creative team can trust that it will all just wash over us, and eventually we’ll swim rather than sink amid the waves of the story.

Sometimes the same is true for our connections to others. You can be a captain and a first officer unexpectedly thrown together, a wannabe lothario flyboy and a testy engineer, a double-agent hunter and a compassionate protector of the innocent. And whether you like it or not, whether you plan for it or not, something can emerge between you, in the unlikeliest of places, and by god, you just have to deal with it.

“Counterpoint” is thrilling with just enough of a sense of the intimate. It is terrifying and then hopeful. It is warm and then bitter. It is triumphant with a closing tinge of tragedy. In the rush of things, that is the point and counterpoint Taylor and company give us, and it makes for one of Voyager’s very best melodies.

[5.7/10] My theater teacher once told me that the hardest type of character to play as an actor is someone stoic. It seems easy. Ostensibly, all you have to do is stand there and not react to much. But the reality is much more nuanced. In truth, you still have to show emotion, but in more subtle ways. You have to make a steady character dynamic in ways that aren’t as easy when you can't use the full palette of human expression and emotion.

It’s why I appreciate Jeri Ryan’s performance as Seven of Nine, and the performances of her predecessors in Star Trek’s “What is this thing you call humanity?” archetype: Brent Spiner as Data and Leonard Nimoy as Spock. Seven is, by nature, reserved and almost robotic in her demeanor -- something that makes her a nice match for Tuvok in places. But Ryan finds small ways to inject a sense of feeling and layers beneath that staid exterior. The task isn’t easy, and she does it well.

(As an aside, one of the thrills of The Next Generation’s “Unificiation” duology was getting to see Spock and Data contrast and compare their relationships to humanity. In hindsight, it’s a shame that the franchise has yet to try to do the same between Data and Seven, despite opportunities to do so in Star Trek: Picard or other of the legacy series.)

But maybe it’s for the best that Ryan and Voyager focus on the hard stuff, because “Infinite Regress” is basically a showcase for her to show some range when not shackled by Seven’s strait-laced affect and the results are...mixed, to say the least.

The episode sees Voyager find a Borg “vinculum” -- the part of a Borg vessel that coordinates the various drones -- that causes Seven to summon and inhabit the personalities of the people she’s helped assimilate. There could be something there. The idea of Seven, as an individual, having to confront the interior lives of the people she effectively killed when part of the Collective, could be rich and even haunting. Instead, we mostly get a clown show centered on a cartoon version of Multiple Personality DIsorder that the creative team wants us to take deadly seriously for some reason.

I don’t want to slate Ryan too hard for that. There is a novelty factor to seeing her inhabit these different personae. And some of the more down-to-earth ones, from the child who wants to play with Naomi Wildman, to the new ensign griping about her assignment, land with ease and even amuse. But there’s something incredibly hacky seeing her try to summon the bearing of a combative Klingon, or a venal Ferengi, and even her take on a desperate mother worried about her son in Starfleet comes off labored. The “neato” factor of seeing the typically stoic Seven suddenly take on a more outsized or extreme disposition wears off quickly, which is tough, because that's pretty much all “Infinite Regress” has.

Besides Seven’s personality shifts, the only other major throughline in the episode are the efforts to neutralize the vinculum without damaging Seven’s mind. Unfortunately, the latter is a bog standard mechanical problem with a mechanical solution. The prop itself is pretty cool-looking, which gives the fix-it storyline a modicum of juice. But ultimately, it’s no different than any other technical issue B’Elanna and company have dealt with, and the solution isn’t particularly original or clever. So what you’re left with is a community theater one man show and a paint-by-numbers Star Trek technobabble obstacle.

Frankly, the most interesting aspects of the story are the one that “Infinite Regress” breezes past. This is not a Janeway/Seven episode, but the scene they share together is the best one in the episode. Seven despairing that though she once absorbed the silence of her mind, now she finds the cacophony of voices within it deafening, and Janeway giving her maternal support to hold on as long as she can, is heart-rending and moving. Janeway telling Chakotay he may have been right about it being too difficult to have Seven aboard, and bristling at the notion of bringing the vinculum aboard is the rare bit of laudable character continuity on the show. The biggest shot in the arm for Voyager was not just Seven’s addition, but the stress it puts on Janeway in trying to hold this makeshift family together. The rare moments where the episode leans into that are its high points.

The other is the intersection with Species 6339 . One a purely superficial level, they have an interesting look, with weird spindly face protrusions and Tron-like outfits. But more interestingly, they did what Picard proposed to do with Hugh back in “I, Borg” -- introduce a virus to destabilize the Collective. The idea that this interaction between Seven and the vinculum is not a random malfunction, but rather a biological weapon from a race that has been decimated by the Borg is, well, fascinating. The conflict of interest between our heroes and these randos -- with Janeway wanting to protect her crewmember and SPecies 6339 wanting to stifle the cybernetic menace, could have been a fascinating one, with reasonable justifications on both sides. Instead, it’s a cheap excuse for some last act danger to complicate Seven’s recovery and add tension to Lt. Torres’ fixes.

Then you have Tuvok’s mindmeld, and against all odds, I actually like that idea. The sense that everything else has failed, so Tuvok is willing to undergo this dangerous ritual in hopes of retrieving Seven’s personality from this destabilizing din is noble and exciting.

But god help me, they completely botch it. For one thing, if you want me to take the desperation of the situation seriously, you can't have Seven doing a borscht belt impersonation of a Ferengi while Tuvok is trying to mindmeld with her. Second, my goodness, the visual representation of Tuvok poking around her subconscious is cheesy as all hell. I don’t envy the director here. It’s difficult to try to convey something so impressionsitic in a way that will land with the audience. But I can tell you this much -- using a distorting lens and a bunch of smoke and a choppy playback speed does not say, “emotional turmoil”. It says “cornball attempt to try to make inner struggles literal to the point of sheer silliness.” Don’t get me started on Seven’s subconscious having a giant chasm that voices can be tossed into.

On paper, “Infinite Regress” should be a boon. Star Trek thrives on stories of wild spores or alien possession or other conceits allowing normally centered performers to cut loose and show what they can do. The monotony breaker of it alone is typically worth the price of admission. But somehow, the charm of that wears off quickly for Seven here. The results are far less availing and convincing than they might be. SOmehow, it’s a reminder to appreciate what Ryan does on a week-to-week basis, the challenge and accomplishment of that, and to realize that maybe it’s also better than the alternative.

[8.0/10] Tolerance. Forgiveness. Understanding. These are foundational principles in Star Trek. And despite starting out as a Federation skeptic, Kira Nerys has internalized them. And despite being a true believer of the Bajoran faith, she is surprisingly ecumenical. She accepts and even loves her colleagues, regardless of their different beliefs. And as the opening scene underlines, different paths to spirituality are all still valid in her eyes.

But everything has its limit.

What I like about “Covenant” is that it’s a test of those principles. The Federation is a bastion of tolerance. But does that ecumenical spirit extend to the Bajoran equivalent of a Satanic cult? The franchise is littered with stories of redemption and granting even bitter foes the opportunity to change. Does that absolution extend to Deep Space Nine’s most persistent and sinister villain? Star Trek preaches understanding and accepting others’ perspectives. Does that respect extend to those who would wage war on your gods or join a death cult led by your mortal enemy?

Franchise stalwart writer René Echevarria and company find an interesting vehicle to explore those questions. In truth, it’s a little convenient to have Kira’s childhood Vedek use Dominion long-distance transportation technology to beam her directly to Empok Nor, where Gul Dukat has set up camp. But my minor qualms on plausibility are dwarfed by the intrigue of our first follow-up on Dukat since his Pah-wraith possession and murder of Dax and the reveal that he has become the leader of a sect of the very Pah-wraith-worshippers that Kira already disdains.

What could be more of a trial for Kira? The combination of a man she loathes at the head of a religion that is, by its very terms, antithetical to hers. It’s easy for the audience to feel much the same way. We’ve seen Dukat betray our heroes, retake the station, unleash the Pah-wraiths, and murder Jadzia. We’ve seen the Pah-wraiths hold innocent bystanders like Keiko and Jake hostage, and shut down the wormhole. It’s easy to see both Dukat and his new gods as pure evil separately, let alone together.

And yet, what I appreciate most about “Covenant” is that it makes a compelling case for both of them.

When it comes to the Pah-wraiths, Dukat asks a legit question. Where were the Prophets during the Occupation of Bajor? It’s a question many in the Jewish community wrestled with in the wake of the devastation of the Holocaust, and Kira’s “the Prophets work in mysterious ways” answer isn’t necessarily a satisfying one. She’s been devoted to her religion from the time she was a child, but it’s easy to see how others, even her childhood Vedek, could turn away from it in the shadow of that difficult question. The questioning and renunciation tracks with real life responses to epochal horrors.

To the same end, we’ve learned not to trust Dukat’s justifications and bending of the truth to suit his own needs, but he makes a solid argument for the Pah-wraiths on their own terms. As Odo once observed, the Prophets have been maddeningly opaque and inscrutable at times. The notion that the Pah-wraiths’ sins were simply wanting to take a more active role to help Bajor, the kind of activism that could have thwarted the Occupation, is plausible. And his point that history is written by the victors accounts for the ancient texts' warnings about them. You kind of have to ignore the malevolent gods we’ve seen interact with our heroes thus far, but on paper, you can see how the Pah-wraiths could simply be a worthy alternative cosmology saddled with bad PR.

Then there’s Dukat himself. Despite being the most unctuous Cardassian Kira has ever had to cross paths with, there’s a plausible story that being touched by the Pah-wraiths changed him. In a strange way, it's a story not unlike Sisko’s. He too was skeptical of these wormhole aliens until his direct experience with them convinced him that there was something more at play. It changed him. It changed his behavior. It shifted his beliefs and attitudes. Why couldn’t the same be true for Dukat?

Hell, he seems different. He expresses regret over the Occupation. He accepts that he may have hurt Kira’s mother with their dalliance. He accepts responsibility and evinces a desire to be cleansed of his sins. There’s the same condescending tone, and the same sense of the iron fist in the velvet glove. But the truth is that so many of our religious stories are of sinners who become saints. Dukat has a checkered history, to put it mildly, but if you’re a true believer like Kira, the idea that someone , even Dukat, could see the light (or at least, a light) and become their better self is all but hard-wired into your values.

Now look, this can only go so far. Even if he’d fully reformed, Dukat kidnapping Kira to be at his side and making her his prisoner is not exactly pious behavior. The mass of Bajorans who worship him, giving him the gratitude and admiration he always craved, is unsettling at best. And the Pah-wraiths are not abstract watchers who occasionally intervene in cryptic ways; they’re active players who’ve done some terrible things. We, like Kira, can anticipate that the other shoe will drop sooner or later here.

But “Covenant” does just enough to make the case that maybe, just maybe, Dukat and his followers should at least be left alone. Kira’s right to want no part of it and to be granted her freedom, but the gods you worship don’t have to be the gods others worship. She may not want anything to do with Dukat, but everything in Star Trek’s ideals and western religion provides for the possibility of reform and redemption. The retrograde strictures like vows of celibacy and special dispensation to reproduce seem draconian, but he’s not the first religious figure on the show to want to take Bajor back to “the old ways.”

The episode does enough in its first half to say, look, you the audience, like Kira, have every reason to mistrust this. But if you believe in religious tolerance, if you buy that, whether this mythos is real or not, Dukat and his followers are true believers, if they’re not hurting anybody, then isn’t it our responsibility as enlightened citizens of the world to accept them? To let them worship in peace? To give them a chance to live and commune and pray as they would?

This is Star Trek, so you can imagine the back half of the episode isn’t going to be Kira, Dukat, and the gang singing kumbaya for twenty minutes. But still, everything Kira sees to that midpoint is a test of those principles, and it’s hard to avoid acquiescing to the idea that Dukat’s sect deserves tolerance, if not acceptance, and that the man himself deserves the chance to atone for his sins and make a change.

And then a child is born with those damn Cardassian ridges.

That really gives up the game, doesn’t it? For all his faux-magnanimity, his protestations of having seen the light, Dukat is up to his old tricks. There’s a young Bajoran woman under his power, and he cannot help taking advantage of the situation to sate his urges. And rather than own up to the violation, he paints it as a miracle, a sign of the Pah-wraiths consecrating this unique Bajoran religion led by a Cardassian. The illusion of the penitent convert is erased, and in its place is the same old self-serving, dissembling Dukat.

In the first half of the episode, what we see is a test of Kira’s faith and principles. But in the back half, it’s a test of faith for Dukat’s followers. Vedek Fala believes what he’s told, because the alternative is having given up the religion you devoted your life to in order to follow a charlatan. Mika squirms in the presence of Dukat, plainly aghast at what everyone must think, especially her husband. And Benyan, the supposed father, remains outwardly steadfast but is plainly torn up inside over the obvious conclusion as to what occurred. Suddenly, “Covenant” transforms from a story about extending grace and forgiveness to one of recognizing a wolf in sheep’s clothing, no matter what earring it might be wearing.

My favorite choice in “Covenant” is the fact that, in his own way, Dukat remains a true believer. The easy thing to do would be to make this all a lie, a scheme, a plot from the beginning. You could buy the idea that Dukat never fully bought in, but that having a cadre of faithful, adoring Bajorans who finally gave him the respect he deserved was too much to pass up. Hell, getting to hold court on a Cardassian ore refinery, even if it’s not his, helps scratch the itch that remains over being evicted from DS9 not once but twice.

Instead, Dukat asks the Pah-wraiths for help, for guidance, for aid in cleansing of a weakness he recognizes within himself. True to form, he is not craven or openly callous in his actions, but rather deludes himself into thinking that this is all the right thing to do. He is religious now, sure, but religion is just a new outer casing for the same self-justifications and cruelty he’s shown in the past.

I’m reminded of Lisa Simpson’s recrimination to Mr. Burns: “You’re still evil, and when you’re trying to be good, you’re even more evil.” There’s a certain Alec d’Urberville quality to Dukat here, having made his supposed religious transformation, but falling more and more into his old brutal and lustful patterns when he can't deny himself his wants even in the throes of his supposed piety.

In some ways, I don’t need the escalation. Yes, it’s unforgivable when he would rather suffocate Mika than admit the truth about his impropriety and abuse of his position. Yes, it is damning when he would use his religious authority to dupe his followers in committing suicide en masse, Jonestown-style, in the name of transcending their physical bodies to help the Pah-wraiths, while conveniently sparing himself such a demise. It underscores how little Dukat has changed despite all his protestations, and perhaps how he’s become worse and still more mad than when we last saw him.

But by then, the bubble has been popped. Kira saves the day and the people who were swayed by this fraud. She loses the Vedek who taught her in the grim crest of the aftermath. She saw through the charade from the start. And if the audience (read: me) could at least provide for the possibility of a genuine religious conversion and a reasonable basis for belief, that evaporated the second it was revealed that Dukat had once again taken advantage of a young Bajoran woman in his employ.

As easy as it is to be skeptical of the yarns Dukat spins from the start, it’s also easy to think that Kira is biased. She has a personal revulsion toward him for justified reasons both personal and professional. She may believe in an inclusive view of spirituality, but it’s one thing to accept Klingons worshiping Kahless and another to accept your fellow Bajorans worshiping your devils. It would be defensible, interesting even, if this was a story about Kira’s close-mindedness in a way that breaks the limits of her own transformation, from understandably hateful terrorist to high-minded leader and diplomat.

Instead, it’s a story about how the chapter and verse of tolerance and understanding can be abused and even weaponized in an attempt to launder bad acts and insulate bad figures from their ramifications. They can be used as an excuse to allow dastards and charlatans to lead good people to ruin. They can mask the same underlying selfishness and cruelty that consumed the worst of us, with or without a holy cloth to drape oneself in.

As always with Deep Space NIne, the values and ideals that Star Trek has been founded upon for decades are made to account for the fault lines with the real world, where not every villain can be reasoned with and not every redemption is real. It’s not a happy thing to recognize that some malefactors will take advantage of your kindness and compassion. It cuts against the idealism at the heart of the franchise. But even for our enlightened heroes, and those of us at home who aspire to forge the world Star Trek envisions, it is hard, but necessary, to recognize that no matter the package, some actions are craven, some people are disingenuous, and some things simply cannot be tolerated.

[7.7/10] Let’s start with the superficial and work our way to the substantive.

There is something inherently cool about a Jedi Master who has taken such a vow, showed such discipline, reached some level of enlightenment to where they can basically levitate in place,n protected by a seemingly impenetrable force bubble, that can withstand even the most fervent attacks. We’re only two episodes in but what I like about the Acolyte is that it’s already expanding what we think and know of the Jedi. Using the HIgh Republic era as a playground for new and unique uses of the Force, that pose different challenges for even a trained assassin like Mae, helps make the Jedi feel amazing again, rather than rote and known.

The same goes for Sol’s fight with Mae on Olega. Maybe I will get tired of the wire fu approach at some point, but for now, it remains a thrill. Watching Mae fight with all her might, while Master Sol displays an economy of movement akin to master Indara from the last episode, remains incredibly cool. The nigh-literal dust-up between them, with furious attacks and calm blocks, again displays the differences in disposition between studied master and hungry student.

What I appreciate, though, is that neither of these exist just for the sake of coolness or sheer thrills. (Which, if I’m being pointed, is a criticism that can be leveled at J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars films, even the parts I like.)

Master Torbin’s force bubble isn’t just a unique obstacle for Mae. It means she has to find a way to get to her target beyond the sheer force that is already her calling card. The fact that she doesn't kill Torbin, but rather provides him poison to kill himself and end his guilt over what happened on Brendok is a piercing, fascinating choice. The moment where she offers him an exit, and after so much stillness and silence, he descends to accept this offering, feels monumental. And his uttering one more apology before drinking the poison sells the magnitude of what must have happened in mae’s past tremendously.

Credit to the writers. I can get really tired of mystery boxes in genre fix. (Thanks again, J.J.!) But in moments like this one, where characters’ choices are informed by a past we’re not fully privy to yet, the magnitude of those choices makes us care about and anticipate the reveal of Mae and the Jedi’s history without needing to know it right now. As someone who came of age during the Prequel movies, it’s easy to see the Jedi as a flawed institution. But meeting four Jedi who were a party to whatever happened ito Mae and Osha, and who are all clearly haunted by it, to where someone like Torbin would go to these extremes, gives you a sense of how significant that event must be, and why Mae must be so desperate for revenge.

That ties into her fight with master Sol. He’s less interested in defeating her than disarming her, both mentally and physically. From a sheer plot standpoint, the fact that even Mae doesn't know the identity of her master is an interesting little twist. But more to the point, Sol trying to get through to Mae, to help her move past what happened, gives their fight more meaning than even the most thrilling of fisticuffs could.

I also appreciate how Master Sol is in the middle of two extremes here. On the one hand, he seems frustrated by the Jedi strictures and bureaucracy. He bristles at Master Vernestra telling him the Jedi must convene a committee before he can follow-up on Mae’s fugitive run. He rejects Yord’s warning that sending Osha in to deceive the apothecary would violate various precepts. He seems annoyed at best at how Jedi practice doesn't always align with real lif needs.

But at the same time, he tells Osha to let go of her grief, of her attachments in the past, in a way that seems as though he’s telling her not to be human. On the one hand, you can sympathize. He sees how these complicated feelings about what happened have harmed both Osha and Mae, and wants to offer a method to attain peace with them. On the other hand, he still seems haunted by them, as do his colleagues. So it’s rousing when Osha basically tells him, You're not my master anymore; you don’t get to tell me what to do .”

I’m surprisingly receptive to notions that, as cool as the Jedi are, they are a terribly flawed body. (see also: their morally questionable use of invasive mind control tricks, including on Mae.) The idea that they made a grand error on Brendok, covered it up or minimized it, and are facing the choes of it in Mae and Osha is a resonant throughline.

I also appreciate how we have some structure here. Mae has a Kill BIll-esque list of the Jedi she wants revenge on. She has a particular challenge -- to defeat one without using a weapon -- that puts her at an additional disadvantage but gives her a cause and an objective. And the way these aren't random targets, but rather people she feels have wronged her adds extra juice to the proceedings.

So do the side characters. I kind of enjoy how much of a dick Yord is, but I also appreciate that he’s not actively evil or anything, to where he stands up for Osh when she’s accused of murdering Torbin. I’m increasingly entertained by Jecki, her willingness to call Yord’s plan stupid, and her cleverness in coming up with a much better and more effective one. And as a Good Place fan, it’s nice to see Manny Jacinto as Qimir, a feckless apothecary aligned with Mae who feels appropriately rough around the edges.

This is also a good episode for Mae. It’s not easy for her to be around Sol again, or to have him judge the life she’s made for herself since leaving the order. The tender and fraught rekindling of their partnership is one of the best things about the show so far. It adds a certain charge and sadness to every scene where they’re together.

Likewise, it’s nice to see Osha and Mae confront one another, after each believed the other was dead. (And, not for nothing, it neutralizes my theory that maybe Mae is the dark side taking over Osha’s subconscious or something.) The fact that after everything each has been through, the connection shared and lost, Osha ultimately provides for Mae’s escape rather than bringing her in, portends more interesting things to come.

Overall, once again, The Acolyte blends compelling intrigue, exciting action, and meaningful character work to produce another pleasing episode of television.

[8.5/10] Well, if you want to get my attention with a new Star Wars show, kicking things off with a badass wire-fu fight with none other than Trinity herself, Carrie-Anne Moss, as a Jedi Master, will absolutely do it!

What a breath of fresh air this is! From that action-packed opening sequence, The Acolyte grabs your attention with verve and character. There are lived in touches, a sense of mystery and excitement, and most of all an immediate whiff of who every major character is and what they mean to the story. It’s easier to set up interesting things than it is to pay them off, but if this first hour is any indication, it’s going to be easy to be along for the ride.

I cannot say enough good things about the opening sequence. Maybe I’m a sucker, but so much modern action, including in Star Wars media of recent vintage, is chopped up all to hell in the editing bay. That kind of choice neuters the impact of the fights for me. So taking a cue from Moss’ turn in The Matrix and not only embracing those wire fu influences, but letting us see the fight in longer shots and a more measured pace and cinematography really lights my fire.

Plus man, for all of the Japanese cinema influences in Star Wars, I’m not sure we’ve ever gotten a legitimate kung fu fight on screen in the franchise. (“The Duel” from Star Wars: Visions has a bit of that, and I guess we get brief glimpses of Qi’ra from Solo doing a bit of martial arts as well.) The frantic motion of Mae and the more measured movements of Indara’s response help sell the difference between one who’s still learning and full of emotion versus a centered master. The fight itself is glorious, with well-staged action and strong visual storytelling and choreography. And the clincher -- that Indara falls not from mistake or being bested in combat, but from saving an innocent, makes her a noble and tragic figure, while justifying how this skilled but comparative amateur could take her down.

And that's just the opening scene! Dayenu -- it would have been enough.

From there, the episode splits into two story threads that eventually intersect: Osha, a former padawan being questioned and detained for the murder, and Sol, her former master, deciding to track her down. Both stories work, and the place they weave together is especially meaningful.

I appreciate the twist here. The show does a good job of suckering you into thinking that Osha committed this crime on her day off from being a “mechnik”. She has the ability, given her former training. She has the reason for resentment, having seemingly been expelled from the order thanks to Master Indara. And she has a tortured past, of great loss of her family that, as we saw with Anakin, can lead a young force-sensitive person to some inner demons. So it’s entirely plausible, even expected, that she’s the one going toe-to-toe with Indara in the opening.

I’m not always a fan of big twists, but I appreciate the reveal that it was, in fact, her twin sister who went against Indara for a few reasons. One, it’s meaningful for Osha. To learn that the sister she thought was long dead is still out there and assassinating her former allies leads to complex emotions. For another, it portends an intriguing opportunity for “for want of a nail” storytelling, showing where the different paths of daughters from the same family led them.

Most of all, it puts is in the position of Master Sol and the other Jedi, being intuitively sympathetic to this young woman who seems friendly, funny, and earnest, while wondering if the difficult things she’s been through have caught up to her in some way. Playing with the audience’s sympathies and expectations like that, to connect them to the characters’ perspectives, is the right way to use a twist, instead of just using a reveal for shock value.

Osha’s misadventures along the way are fun and sympathetic. I love the sense of her scraping by as a low-rent nomadic mechnik after leaving the order, keeping her spirits up but just getting by. I like that, through Yord at least, the Jedi seem like smug cops rather than noble monks, who are railroading Osha. I like her excitement on the prison transport, where she’s bitten by her altruism, but empathizes and saves others, which should be our proof that she’s not the one who took out Indara. All these scenes reveal character in a compelling way, and Amandla Stenberg does a stellar job inhabiting the role.

There is also such exquisite texture! The opening scene has a real old world village cantina vibe, and should make Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fans cheer. Her talking tool droid, Pip, is frickin’ adorable and endearing, and I can easily imagine every nerdy kid watching this show wanting one of their own. The ship designs are memorable and distinctive inside and out. (I especially like the droid-run prison transport.) And the different species represented are memorable and original. (The cyborg dude is especially striking.) Plus hey, the Trade Federation aliens are well done and familiar to anyone who watched the Prequels growing up.

Speaking of which, this version of the Jedi feels particularly indebted to the Prequels. There’s great discussion of the danger of attachments, of training someone who’s too old and has been through too much, of the Order’s political enemies. Setting this show a century before Revenge of the Sith frees you from a lot of the continuity shackles other Star Wars stories have to contend with, so it’s interesting that The Acolyte seems to be picking up themes and concepts from the Prequel era.

That not only includes Yord, who already seems to be the show’s stick in the mud, but from Master Vernestra, who seems more interested in wrapping up this matter quickly than in seeking justice. Heck, Master Sol even feels a bit akin to Qui Gon Jinn, someone who’s patient and wizened, but who allows himself a more emotional connection and less rigid view than the Order.

I like Sol a lot. Making the deuteragonist a master who still cares for his padawan, and is trying to balance that care and trust against his obligations to his order, makes for a compelling mix. He’s a good match for Jecki, his quietly caustic current padawan. And he’s a good counterpoint to Osha, someone who represents a difficult part of her past, but who still plainly has her best interests at heart.

The moment where he seeks her out is well done too. There’s a real The Fugitive vibe to the confrontation, with an appropriately Jedi twist. And most importantly, Sol believes his former pupil. When she’s desperate and running for her life and confronted with destabilizing surprises about her past and her family, he still trusts and accepts her. That is powerful, and portends worthwhile things to come.

The Acolyte leaves us with teases of potential sith-adjacent interlopers and weaponless threats and internal politics within the High Republic. Those are tantalizing enough as teases. But what I appreciate most about this opening hour is the good nuts and bolts work we get: in the cinematic craft, in the well-defined and sympathetic character dynamics, and in the way the script plays with our expectations. If The Acolyte can keep this up, it has a promising future ahead.

(Spoilers for Star Wars: The Clone Wars: There’s many ways in which Osha’s story seems like a reinterpretation of Ahsoka’s. Everything from the fugitive hunt to the master who still loves and trusts her, to the Jedi Order dealing with political pressures give you the sense of what Anakin’s padawan went through. Obviously Ahsoka never had an evil twin, but it’s interesting to see the franchise revisit that story shape in a different time and place. I’m not complaining! I love that storyline, and I’m excited at the notion of exploring Osha’s relationship with the Jedi and the Force through this lens.)

[7.0/10] Hoo boy. The sensibilities of Rick and Morty and The Boys make a surprising amount of sense together. Though for one thing, watching things written by Justin Roiland feels uncomfortable after everything that's come out about him, and you can also see what his collaborators from R&M bring to the table to help balance him out.

Which is to say that this is a mixed bag. On the one hand, there’s the kind of loony and irreverent humor I enjoy. The narrator turning out to be a Christian Slater-voiced child, who adds his particular oratory is a chuckle, and the sweaty improvisational yak of a Supe whose only power is the ability to find papers is a random source of yuks. The use of a superhero whose only power is to play “I Only Want to be with You” is the kind of absurd addition that tickles my funny bone.

But there’s also a lot of dumb edgelord nonsense in this. The list of rejected Supes we get feels like the kind of mix of the random and puerile that would have made me laugh when I was fourteen, but feels pretty tiresome now. And you can see instances in which the creative team is just adding sophomoric shtick or gore, not because it’s really a part of a joke or adds anything, but just because they can. That sort of “look what we’re getting away with!” style of comedy is weaker when there’s so many distribution channels available and a lot fewer moral panics over it.

But there’s also some cleverness and genuine laughs here! For however much I roll my eyes at the collection of misfit superheroes and their tepid joke characteristics, the ways the show finds for each to slay their parents is actually really amusing and even clever. I got a particular kick out of Mo-Slow very gradually taking out his dad, with running commentary, and there’s other creative choices there too.

And despite all the cheap jokes and gross out humor, there’s as uprising amount of pathos in Ghost’s story. Her sense of feeling abandoned and rejected, wanting to destroy the last part of her that feels anything, is legitimately sad. The short does just enough to vindicate that to give this out there story a little bit of ballast.

Homelander coming to blast the lot of them is an appropriately grim ending for something Boys-adjacent. But Ghost wanting to die and being the only who can't thanks to her powers is a particularly poignant kind of tragic irony. These ten minutes aren’t big on emotion, but the approach to Ghost’s relationship to her parents, her circumstances, and herself hit me harder than I was expecting. The short deserves credit for that.

Overall, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this for most folks, since the style of comedy seems specifically tailored to a particular “extremely online” set beyond even what fans of The Boys and Rick and Morty are used to. But there’s some legitimate diamonds in the rough in this as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he’s killing them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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