Andrew Bloom

VIP

9

[7.9/10] This was definitely my favorite of the three episodes so far. This one had the most twists and turns, with a lot of neat double-identities and hidden conspiracies.

I like the twist of a woman who pretended to be a man to participate in mainstream society, only to revert to presenting herself as a woman when it became too perilous for her male identity to continue. The fact that she’s the prima donna in the main Paris theater adds to the plausibility of it all, given the performance skills, and gives her an excuse to cross paths with Marguerite.

I’ll also say that, since I often read the Scarlet Pimpernel as a proto-Batman, it’s fun that she’s effectively his Red Hood here! Her role as a twisty conspirator, kidnapping the dauphin like a total badass and matching wits with Chauvelin makes her a formidable opponent for Percy. Likewise, the show builds up her swordsmanship nicely, so you feel the tension when she and the Pimpernel square off, and the direction and score sell both her ability to best Percy in a straight sword fight, and his ability to use subterfuge and misdirection to win the day in dramatic fashion.

Speaking of Marguerite, I appreciate her own acting talents being brought to bear to sneak back into France and hopefully get a bead on the dauphin’s location. As a viewer, I didn’t buy her spat with Percy as anything more than a ruse, but it’s a good cover for her activities. But it’s nice for her to get to be more active in this one. I’m also willing to give it a pass because it gives us more scenes between her and Chavelin, which are nicely charged and give Martin Shaw and Elizabeth McGovern the chance to do some of their best acting. Her and Percy playing the squabbling exes in public while remaining playful and passionate in private is a lot of fun. And Marguerite’s scenes with Robespierre in particular are tense and compelling.

That's the other big benefit to this one -- a lot more Robespierre! I hadn't thought much of him in the first two episodes. He was a fairly one-dimensional fop. But here, he seems like an eccentric, if myopic, intellectual oddball, which makes him far more engrossing as a character. This is going to sound like a weird comparison, but Ronan Vibert’s performance calls to mind a more malevolent version of Jason Schwartzman’s as Max Fischer in Rushmore. It’s a hard thing to put your finger on, but there’s a knowing-yet-naive quality to this production’s Robespierre, who’s blind to certain things, but also sharp enough to pull the wool over some folks’ eyes and insinuate menace where he needs to. This episode turns him from the necessary historical launchpad for Chavelin to an intriguing villain in his own right.

Chavelin’s in rare form though. As the conspiracies and twists go, I like that he’s playing both sides on this one. He’s regained his stature as Robespierre’s top bloodhound, now sicced in search of the missing dauphin, but is, in fact, in league with Chevalier and is harboring the dauphin himself in the hopes of running off with the ransom money. I appreciate that what stops his plan is not any particular screw-up or even the Pimpernel, but his own mixed up heart which still harbors affection for Marguerite which gets in the way of his plans. Again, Martin Shaw is great.

There’s also some fun texture to the whole thing. The guillotine song the dauphin’s caretakers make him sing about his parents is pretty macabre, but god help me, it’s catchy. The values of a baroness-penned story aren’t as tough to swallow in this one, but I’ll admit, I laughed a little at the “horrible brainwashing” of the orphanage where young children are forced to repeat the “awful propaganda” that all men are equal before the law and before God, when all those orphans want to do is grovel before a fellow ten-year-old because he happened to pop out of a royal womb. The show’s sensibilities remain a little out of whack when you delve into its politics. What can you do?

I also love that for all the fact Fumier is Chavelin’s hatchet man and shown to do plenty of dirty work, he takes a genuine shine to little Louis Capet. We all contain multitudes, I suppose. Him trying to cheer up the poor boy with a puppet named “Bon Bon”, and getting him to run when the Pimpernel has him show a softer side to the otherwise harsh henchman.

Speaking of which, Percy is great in this one too. He’s just full of bon mots, whether he’s in a faux squabble with his wife, tweaking the French in an off-the-books betting parlor, or even low-key taunting Robespierre himself. There’s some good plotting and scheming on his end of things as well, and it’s fun seeing different ploys and alibis take shape, unravel, and collide. The fact that they sneak the dauphin to England, but Chavelin uses the young boy in the Parisian play to take his place as an easy lookalike makes for a devilishly mercenary solution to everyone’s problems.

All-in-all, this is The Scarlet Pimpernel in top form, with great, cheeky, convincing performances all around, the fun of secret identities and hidden plots smashing into one another, and some nice French Revolution texture to help all the medicine go down.

[8.0/10] Every Star Trek show does the “We just need to use science-as-magic to solve this life-threatening problem!” routine. I get tired of it sometimes, because it doesn’t require any actual ingenuity from the crew or the writers. Simply saying, “We could blow up the Protostar to stop the living construct, but if we [technobabble] the [technobabble-machine], we should be able to disperse the explosion and not hurt anyone!” is kind of a cheat. Sure, it ostensibly requires some in-universe cleverness from Zero and Rok-Tahk to drum up the solution, and from the rest of the team to make it happen. But nothing the show set up to this point really establishes why this would be a good or natural solution to the problem.

But there’s a way you can still make those nigh-magical solutions meaningful -- give them a cost, whether it’s practical or emotional (and ideally, both). In this instance, there’s the simple fact that Dal, Gwyn, and company would have to say goodbye to the Protostar, the ship that has been their home and their salvation after the events on Tars Lamora. That alone makes it tough and sad to let the ship explode, even for the greater good. (Hello Search for Spock fans!)

More than that, though, the destruction of the Protostar to prevent the construct from continuing to destroy Starfleet’s entire, er, fleet is meaningful because it comes with a human cost. For one thing, Dal is willing to go down with the ship, something that indicates how he’s grown into the role of captain. More importantly, it takes a sacrifice from Holo-Janeway.

She has been the den mother to these young officers-in-training all this time. She knows what this will cost her. But she’s also willing to make the sacrifice because she too has internalized Starfleet’s ideals. She wants to save these kids as much as she wants to save the universe. So she makes the choice, and doing the right and selfless thing means losing her with the ship. There’s something beautiful but melancholy about the fact that her time with the young heroes has caused her to grow, to the point that her program can no longer fit on an isolinear chip. The irony of her developing alongside these kids, to the point that she can’t join them in their escape, makes her sacrifice all the more poignant.

There’s also some synchronicity to the fact that the Protostar’s shockwave creates a wormhole that either is what took Chakotay and his crew fifty-three years into the future, or at least allows Starfleet to learn that's where he ended up. Frankly, I thought I understood the whole kit and kaboodle of Chakotay’s disappearance and the Vau N’Akat going back in time, but the “five decades into the future” threw off what I thought I knew. Still, it’s not that hard to get, even if it’s a little convoluted, and the fact that the Protostar’s self-destruction helps create a bridge there gives the adventure a certain clockwork quality.

This is also a strong outing for Admiral Janeway. I don’t know why, but there’s always something compelling about a captain (or, in this case, admiral) defending the actions of her crew to a stuffy Starfleet tribunal. Her speech to Starfleet command is a great one. She pushes back on the council’s ojbections to theft and other misdeeds on the part of the Protostar’s crew, and points out that they saved everyone’s butts with their courage and ingenuity. She rejects the idea that they’re not suited for admission to the Academy, arguing that the baptism by fire they’ve survived is a better indication of their fitness than any formal evaluation could be. And she stands up for objections to Dal’s status as an augment, noting that he’s not enhanced and, more than that, is a living representation of the bonds among Federation worlds. It’s a great stand for Janeway on behalf of what’s good and right, and a vindication of all the good works and maturation our young heroes have gone through.

That's why it’s so triumphant to see them show up on Starfleet’s doorsteps, after landing in the bay. (Shades of Star Trek IV!) Their hard work and good works pay off. They may not be able to attend the Academy straight away, but they’re permitted to become warrant officers under Janeway, thereby achieving their goal to become an official part of Starfleet. It’s a nice middle ground. On a practical level, the council makes a fair point that it wouldn’t be fair to fast track them ahead of other candidates. On a show level, this allows Dal and company to succeed in joining Starfleet, while still making it possible for the basic premise of the show to continue and evolve. I like the line that walks.

The exception is Gwyn, who chooses to go to Solum and try to prepare the Vau N’Akat for first contact. I have mixed feelings about the choice. Mostly, I hope this is a Saru thing, where the ostensible return to the homeworld is more of a pitstop than an exit from the show, since I like Gwyn’s presence. But I wish we got more time with her reconciling her feelings about her dad before just deciding to return to a planet she’s never known and a people she’s never been a part of, over her own found family, because it’s what her quasi-abusive father wanted. I’ve already said my piece, but suffice it to say, I’m uneasy about how the show’s handled this.

All that said, I dig the idea that she’s taken Federation values to heart, and wants to use her abilities to bring people together to help resolve the conflict her father wanted to avoid using more peaceful, progressive means. Her and Dal’s goodbye is suitably sad and sweet, with enough callbacks to their initial sparks to give them a sense of having come full circle.

So the first season ends on a high note. Zero gets a fancy new containment suit. Jankom impresses his fellow cadets with his engineering abilities. Rok-Tahk’s care for Murf and others is consecrated into the study of xenobiology. (I knew it!) And the kids get to join the real Janeway to be a part of her bigger plans. Despite some science-as-magic, the second part of “Supernova” gets the big things right and makes our heroes achieving their goal feel earned, which is what’s important.

Overall, I walk away impressed with Prodigy’s maiden voyage. The show still has cracks in its armor, like the janky animation and occasional bouts of overly broad humor. But it also reinvigorated the meaning and value of Starfleet’s ideals by showing them to us through the eyes of children and outsiders who need them more than anyone. It leveraged fifty years of Star Trek history in creative ways, bringing back concepts and characters, but using them to enhance this show’s main players rather than dousing us with simple nostalgia. And despite the more baroque qualities of its mystery box, the first season uses that plot to show why Dal, Gwyn, and their comrades grew and matured in dealing with these challenges, to where they deserve to be in Starfleet as much as anyone.

It’s nice to have something specifically aimed at a younger audience that helps deliver these concepts and stories in a way that fits their style and needs. As with Star Wars: The Clone Wars, it balances canon connections and grown-up ideas with accessible stories and age-appropriate adjustments. The reverence for Trek is plainly there, and it’s nice to see the show’s creative team move the ball forward, in a way that makes the franchise’s big tent even bigger.

[7.9/10] This was a lot of fun! The critiques of teenagers are obviously pretty on the nose (see: the use of “bruh) but also funny. I especially appreciate the humor of the four boys having to parent the teenagers, in an amusing flip. I don’t know how old the writers’ kids are, but there seems to be some lived-in flavor to these gripes about the poor bundles of hormones and growing up that are teenage boys.

There's some neat artistic choices in this one, like the decision to show the airsoft rifle competition like a FPS game. I also appreciate the homages to some early aspects of the show, like Stan’s dog and the return of renowned gun nut Uncle Jimbo as a ringer for the dad squad.

Honestly though, I really liked the emotional trajectory of this one. There’s something about the boys just wanting to enjoy this really fun thing they just got into, only to have it ruined by the sullen, ungovernable young adults they’ve somehow been put in charge of. The fact that their dads come in to save the day armed to the teeth with airsoft weapons is a little fractured, but also weirdly sweet, especially when it means the boys go back to having the time of their lives again.

This one does seem a touch indebted to the paintball episode of King of the Hill from friend-of-the-show Mike Judge. But it’s been years and there are worse blueprints to pull from. Putting the South Park perspective on unruly teenagers, mixed with the topsy turvy humor of fourth grades having to manage them, is a winning recipe. More like this one, I say!

[6.0/10] This one was a definite step down from the first episode. There’s still elements worth enjoying here. Mademoiselle Guillotine chews scenery like nobody’s business, and is a ton of fun as villains go, right down to her on-the-nose guillotine earring. Chauvelin gets the better end of some of the bon mots here, particularly needling his captor with the idea that if God is on her side, why is it losing, and scoffing at “God will forgive me” as an excuse for bad actions.

In a slightly lighter vein, the farce of the Pimpernel and his second pretending to be Chauvelin and Fumier to get in good with Mademoiselle Guillotine, only to then point the finger at the real Chauvelin and Fumier as the Pimpernel and his goon, is a ton of fun. The game of mistaken identity, the seduction-turned-tie-up, and Madame Blakeney catching on and playing along are all a good time.

But the bulk of this episode just doesn’t do much for me. Again, the pro-royalist armies in the vendee fighting against an at least more democratic government isn’t exactly the most sympathetic cause in my book. Even setting that aside, the search for the young Mademoiselle de Rouchambeau gets tiresome quickly, and her soppy romance with the vendee army leader (a pre-BSG James Callis!) isn’t any better. The initial intriguing structure of the Pimpernel wanting to rescue her, Mademoiselle Guillotine wanting to kill her, and Chauvelin wanting to kidnap her for Robespierre to use as leverage is good, but goes to waste quickly. The ensuing squabbles and skirmishes never feel like they have much in the way of stakes.

That stinks, since the one intriguing element to the whole thing is the heavy allusion to Chauvlin being the girl’s long lost father. But it’s barely developed (despite some good acting from Martin Shaw), and the battle at the end is a cheesy way to dramatize his feelings about a child he never knew.

Overall, there’s still some high points and entertaining interludes here, but it’s not nearly as enjoyable or fun as the first entry in the series.

[7.7/10] A lot to enjoy here! I liked all three (or at least two and a half) here, which makes for a good episode. What’s funny returning to the show’s comparatively early seasons is how, even by season 4, this show felt a little more like a raunchy/scraggly Adult Swim show than the more polished, wholesome series it would become. I like both modes, but the tonal shifts and simple differences in the rhythms and pacing of the show are noticeable.

I think my favorite part is Bob and Linda’s jaunt to the burger lover’s convention. There’s something a little sad about Bob thinking he’s going to see a bunch of his kindred spirits, only to discover that none of his colleagues like him. But I love that it’s because he has zero internet etiquette and was misunderstood because he doesn’t know basic things like including an “LOL” or emoji to signify humor or not using all caps on a web forum. His cold war with his fellow burger proprietors is amusing (which is nicely interspersed with Linda’s desire to use a fax machine and other mundane hotel amenities). And capping it off with a standoff over the jacuzzi, followed by Bob and Linda using the giant condiment jugs to ruin it for everyone is hilariously deranged.

The goings on back home are nearly as good though. As a fan of John Hughes’ Uncle Buck, it’s fun to see Teddy as the hapless but kind-hearted temporary guardian of the Belcher kids for a weekend. I can’t recall if this was the start of him becoming basically a part of the regular cast, but whatever the rationale, I dig it. Him having a great time with Gene and Louise over using his plumber’s tools for general fun and mayhem is a blast. The joy is infectious, and there’s some great one-liners to appreciate too. (Louise’s “We need our sleep. We’re so little!” is an all-timer.)

Tina’s part of this one is good too. She is, of course, enamored with a boy, this time the delivery driver from Reggie’s sandwich shop. Him taking advantage of her affections to get free burgers and a place for his “gathering” is dirty pool, but there’s good comedy in Tina trying to flirt, and good pathos in her being forced to take the rap when Jonas and his friends bail upon the arrival of the park rangers. (Not to mention some solid “melodicas are terrible” humor.)

That's where the two stories collide, as Teddy comes in and makes a terribly sweet plea to the ranger to let Tina go, and even exacts revenge on Jonas (via his minibike). In a slanted way, ti matches the beats of Uncle Buck nicely, and it’s especially heartening to see Teddy stand up for Tina in more ways than one, and prove that he’s a kind-hearted, if not exactly adept caretaker for the kids who earns their trust, even as Bob catches on to what happened.

Lots of great laughs here. Lots of great little character moments. And lots of fun all around. An early gem.

[9.0/10] “A menorah is like the nightlight of our people. In times of darkness it shines on the whole world reminding us not to be afraid to be different.” There is an entire industry built around Christmas. You can barely slip the surly bonds of October 31st before being assaulted with a blizzard of tinsel-tinged decor, music, and of course, T.V. specials.

There’s nothing wrong with that. While the totality of it can be overwhelming at times, even for enthusiasts, there’s something nice about a big communal celebration that touches the whole of society in some way, including our favorite characters on television. But there are vanishingly few Chanukah specials out there. So if, like me, you were a young Jewish boy growing up in the bible belt, it’s easy to feel left out when the calendar turns to December, and the whole world, even your favorite cartoon characters, seems to shift toward something you’re not a part of.

Enter the Rugrats, one of the few mainstream shows this side of Lamp Chop to offer a little Jewish representation to the younger set. “A Rugrats Chanukah” is a fairly standard episode for the series. The babies characteristically mix-up the fact that Tommy’s grandfather, Boris, is starring in a play called “The Meaning of Chanukah”, with Boris griping about his spotlight-stealing co-star and rival, Schlomo, who the babies misinterpret as “The Meanie of Chanukah”. From there, the little moppets are on a mission to do what their daycare teacher does when there’s a meanie about -- force Shlomo to take a nap.

The setup of the Chaunkah pageant at the local synagogue and the babies’ efforts to save Tommy’s grandpa from the vile meanie paves the way for plenty of fun holiday hijinks. The absurdity of Tommy’s dad, Stu, turning the play’s giant menorah into an overdone, steam-punk monstrosity/delight is a blast (literally). A parishioner in a giant dreidel costume tripping over Angelica -- prompting Boris to declare “I win” and take his box of donuts when the schlimazel lands on gimel -- not to mention the same unlucky sod complaining that Angelica “broke [his] shin” make for great Chanukah gags.

And there’s something well-observed about the chaos of the pre-pageant fair, the small-time community play retelling the story of the Maccabees, and not for nothing, little kids sneaking out of daycare and causing a ruckus during the production. (Angelica striving to watch the Xmas special for her doll makes for a nicely chaotic subplot.) The choice is a small one in the grand scheme of things, but the simple fact of seeing your holiday experiences represented on the small screen, a signifier that other people in the mainstream culture see and experience the same, is revelatory for a young viewer.

So is the chance to apply the babies’ usual roleplaying and misunderstandings to your winter celebration. “A Rugrats Chanukah” explains the story in an age appropriate way. Transposing the babies as Jews in the days of King Antiochus is a ton of fun. Tommy steps into the role of Judah Macabee, hero of the Chaunkah story, with trademark gusto. (How has “A Macca-baby’s gotta do what a Macca-baby’s gotta do?” not become a fixture of the popular lexicon?) And the simplification of the story, into a tale about how the Jews and the Greek neighbors lived in peace, until a new king insisted everyone do and look and worship like him while the Jews simply wanted to stay who they are, makes the tale comprehensible and accessible to a younger audience.

Well, more or less. Part of the fun of the Rugrats is how the titular carpet-crawlers get the gist of something, but bend and twist in it in age-appropriate ways. The quartet of kids wondering if the candles mean it’s Tommy’s birthday every day, and they’re just stacking up his aging all in a row is adorable. The crew, including Angelica, being thrown for a loop that the family is making pancakes at night, not the morning, and they’re made with potatoes, rather than flour, is cute and innocent. Even the proper pronunciation of the holiday is a source of fun; Angelica’s “You gotta ch- when you say it” is the delivery of the episode.

There’s a certain sense of normalcy to A Rugrats Chanukah, a sense that this is just what the babies, and by extension the show, does for everything. The fact that a hebrew holiday just happens to be the subject of fun this week is both glorious in how unique that is, and heartening in how typically it’s treated by the series and those within it. For Rugrats, Chanukah isn’t some unusual aberration; it’s just what you do, and that's quietly groundbreaking.

A Rugrats Chanukah has some emotional heft, as befits a holiday special. Grandpa Boris’ rivalry with mean ol’ Schlomo centers on an aggrieved sense of constantly being one-upped. The two of them playing King Antiocus and Judah Maccabee in the local play doesn’t help settle down their longstanding enmity. The peak of the insult for Boris is the fact that, while Boris can only boast his sweet but modest family, Schlomo apparently goes on and on about his great business, something which sticks in the craw of Boris as pointed grandstanding.

He comes to find out (after an on-stage scuffle carefully covered by the synagogue singers, naturally) that Schlomo’s crowing about his business was a form of overcompensating. In his eyes, Boris was always going on about his beautiful family. Those comments hurt Schlomo, because he and his wife were never able to have kids, and he felt stung by the fact that he has no one to pass on their people’s traditions to.

I love the insight and narrative flip of that revelation. The “Grass is always greener” mutual envy between the two alte kakers helps Boris see that they both had this rivalry all wrong, and realize how much he has. It speaks to the importance of carrying on that light to the Jewish people, the joys of sharing it with the next generation. And most of all, the story gives Schlomo his greatest wish, as Boris encourages him to finish the Chanukah story for the otherwise distraught babies to soothe them, and explain to them why this celebration means so much to their community, and to him.

So he does. On a day of miracles, Schlomo gets his -- the chance to share those rituals and their meaning with those just beginning to understand them. And the kiddos succeed in their mission too, as between stories and cuddles with pint-sized Macca-babies and a lot of exertion for an older gent, the whole crew, grandfathers included, falls into the nap that Tommy and company strove to achieve, to the oos and aws of an adoring crowd.

Before he falls asleep though, Schlomo (and by extension writers J. David Stem and David N. Weiss) offers that timeless, enervating distillation of the Chanukah message: “A menorah is like the nightlight of our people. In times of darkness it shines on the whole world reminding us not to be afraid to be different.” It is, in keeping with the spirit of the show, and its sharp ability to break down big concepts in ways a young audience can understand, a comparison to something kids already know, and a lesson that addresses a feeling they probably (and for young Jewish children, certainly) already know.

It’s hard to be different, for any reason, especially in childhood. It’s easy to want to hide your differences from the world to reduce the friction of moving around within it. Telling kids that they don’t have to, that there’s courage in choosing to be who and what you are, that there’s a proud tradition supporting them for it, is a wonderful, much-needed message for everyone. And after a year in which there’s been loud bursts of antisemitism from entertainers, athletes, and politicians, the message resonates now more than ever.

The special received some criticism from Jewish corners when it aired. The Anti-Defamation League took the show’s usual scraggly art style to reflect pernicious caricatures of Jews that date back centuries. But for me, a scores of other Jewish kids growing up in a torrent of candy-canes and mistletoe, A Rugrats Chanukah was that nightlight in the darkness, a beacon of Jewish recognition and joy amid a wash of yuletide programming that all has its merits, but inevitably left us out.

And in the throws of the holiday season it gave those kids something vital to hold onto and told them something important: You are seen. Who and what you are is normal and valid. You too deserve to step into the light.

[5.9/10] The idea of a Santa Claus origin story is a good one. The Santa mythos is mostly centered in the present. Kris Kringle lives in the North Pole, partners with elves in his workshop, delivers toys via his flying reindeer, etc. etc. etc. But how all of this got started is much fuzzier in the popular consciousness. So using that blank space to craft a fun narrative to answer kids’ questions about how Old Saint Nick got started has plenty of potential.

There’s just not much to Santa Claus Is Coming to Town beyond that sort of mechanical gap-filling. Why does Santa wear a red suit? Because his adoptive family did. Why does he go down chimneys? Because his chatty penguin friend told him to? Why does he use flying reindeer? Because his winter warlock buddy gave him some magic feed.

Is any of this bad or implausible (at least by magical fable standards)? Absolutely not. But it’s all just sort of random, as though the Fred Astaire-voiced mailman who’s spinning this yarn is just making it all up as he goes along. Maybe I’m spoiled by having watched the transcendent film Klaus again this year, which traffics in the same idea but reaches infinitely higher heights. But none of the explanations for Santa’s origins here are meaningful. They’re just some miscellaneous stuff that happens to some dude.

There’s a couple of exceptions. For one, we learn that Kris Kringle delivers toys at night because Sombertown, the grim and gray berg where he tries to pass out his family’s wares, has outlawed playthings for generic bad guy reasons. So he has to hand out the spoils to the town’s kids under cover of darkness. That's fine enough, but his rivalry with Burgermeister Meisterburger, the grumpy, comically jerky head of the town, is flat and pretty dumb. Their standoff, ostensibly the impetus for so many of his choices on the road to becoming the legendary gift giver of Xmas eve, but Burgermeister just sort of fades away at the end, without much in the way of real challenge or anything but goofy slapstick between them.

For another, we discover that the first Xmas tree arose from the Winter Warlock using the last bit of his magic to brighten up the “forest as a cathedral” for the wedding between Mr. and Mrs. Claus. It’s a sweet explanation, and ties into the interesting naturalism bent of the piece. Kris Kringle is at home in the forest, having befriended the woodland critters and adopted their ways, giving him a leg up over Burgermeister. (I’ll admit, him learning his famous “Ho ho ho” from a seal’s grunt is a cheesy but winning choice.) The sense of him being of nature, with all its lush wintry splendor, in contrast to the brutal drabness of Burgemeister’s Sombertown, is something, however sleight it may be.

But Jessica, Santa’s love interest, is a dud. They fall in love because he...gives her a doll? Charitably, she recognizes some inherent goodness in him or whatever. But she is a one-note caricature whom we’re supposed to appreciate simply because one day she becomes Mrs. Claus. Whatever.

Then there’s the strange artifacts of a film made fifty years ago that play as head-scratchers to a modern day audience. First and foremost, there’s something really uncomfortable about Kris Kringle showing up as a stranger to a bunch of kids, telling them to sit in his lap and kiss them if they want a toy, and then asking them to keep their doors unlocked at night so that he can sneak in. I know America hadn't quite hit the “stranger danger” panic yet when this special was released, but it still seems downright bizarre to modern eyes.

Likewise, while the film is mostly a bunch of miscellaneous anachronisms, there’s also something somewhat uncomfortable about a German dictator using his goons to invade people’s homes, round-up outcasts, and burn their possessions for not fitting with his image of the town. Granted, the aesthetic is more World War I Germany than World War II Germany, but it’s still a strange sort of vibe for an all-ages stop motion special.

Then, of course, there’s the bizarre, quasi-psychedelic interlude where Jessica (the future Mrs. Claus) waxes rhapsodic about (I think?) her appreciation for Kris and his philosophy? The song is forgettable, but the images are surreal, which at least gives the moment a little flavor. That's a good thing, since the trademark Rankin Bass puppet designs seem worse for wear here, with janky movements, an uncanny narrator, hair that looks creepily real in contrast to the plastic doll look of the people who have it.

The only other mildly interesting element of this one is the Winter Warlock. He has the best song in the piece (“Put One Foot in Front of the Other”), a neat design (which, along with his communicative penguin friend, seems like a likely inspiration for Adventure Time’s Ice King), and a minor but endearing transformation from seasonal villain to friendly helper. It’s not much, and barely fits with the Santa mythos, but is one of the better original additions to the piece.

But at best, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town is a patchwork quilt of random bits and bobs cobbled together. There’s not really a point to the story beyond “Hey, ain’t Santa nice?” with a heap of pat explanations for how he ended up with the iconic parts of his persona that makes Solo: A Star Wars Story seem restrained by comparison. If you want a film that explores Santa’s history with more artistry, cleverness, and poignance, don’t bother with this empty yuletide mishmash, and just cue up Klaus instead.

[7.7/10] When I saw the episode “Cathexis” from Star Trek: Voyager, I wrote it off as an unavailing attempt to meld Star Trek with The Thing. Well, the joke’s on me! First, because it turns out the writers of Voyager were aping Agatha Christie much more than the John Carpenter classic. Second, because a little more than a month later, Deep Space Nine would do an actual homage to The Thing. And third, because it turns out the series’ riff on Carpenter’s 1982 landmark in horror cinema would be pretty damn good!

In “The Adversary”, the references are far more direct. Not one but two “testing to see who the monster is” sequences follow the rhythms of an iconic scene from The Thing. The lurking menace aboard the Defiant is a shape-shifter with ill intent, much like the one who lurked within an Antarctic research station. And the paranoid air and form of interpersonal suspicion are much more in line with this episode’s cinematic precursor.

That's not what makes “The Adversary” superior effort to Voyager’s take on a similar idea, though. The fact that the characters make rational, smart choices to try to combat this threat, and still find themselves coming up short given the inscrutability of their enemy, creates a much more compelling story here. When you do everything (or almost everything right) and still find yourself losing, the heroes seem more competent, the villains seem more fearsome, and the story seems more apt to play fair with its threat and solutions.

So it’s a good thing that Sisko enacts strict protocols to minimize the villainous Founder’s attempt take over the Defiant and start a war, like confining nonessential crew to quarters and instituting a buddy system to ensure no one gets replaced. Sharp choices, like a particle test to see who’s been messing with the ship’s systems and a blood test to see who might be a changeling make the feints and surprises feel earned. Even the self-destruct sequence, a classic “Like you’d really do it” move in Star Trek, has force because it’s a genuinely smart and committed tactic for Sisko to resort to rather than let his ship be used as a tool to throw the Federation into a war it doesn’t want or need.

Therein lies the other big benefit to “The Adversary” -- it has genuine stakes. Finding out who the culprit is matters not just because he’s taking over the ship, but because if they don’t stop him, Starfleet’s ability to defend against a Dominion attack would be all but kaput given the resources another unexpected war would take. The Founder who told Odo that the Dominion had neutralized the Romulans and the Cardassians with their ploy in “The Die Is Cast” that the same would soon be true for the Federation and the Klingons would see his ominous warning come to fruition.

My only beef is that this whole thing depends on a conflict the audience has never heard of. “The Adversary” is the first mention of the Tzenkethi, the purportedly saber-rattling civilization the Federation has, apparently, previously gone to war with before and might end up having to fight again if the Dominion has its way. And they’re barely ever mentioned again. Why the writers didn’t choose the Cardassians or the Romulans or anyone else who might have more history that would instantly give the peril of war more instant credibility is beyond me. I guess it’d be less plausible for Ambassador Krajensky to baited the DS9 crew with a diplomatic incident he just made up?

Still, the conceit is easy to forgive because “The Adversary” does such a great job at steadily ratcheting up the tension and the intensity as the threat escalates. First O’Brien merely hears some unsettling noises around the Defiant. Then the ship’s commandeered from within, raising the stakes. Only then, does the changeling expose himself, and the game changes into a hunt for an enemy that could be anyone and anywhere. From there, the mutual suspicions of the crew, the ability for their foe to keep them guessing, and the possibility that this whole thing ends in flames all raise higher and higher.

Along the way, the writers pull out plenty of good tricks. I love the twin Odos each trying to convince Miles they’re real, providing details only the real constable would know, in what feels like a conscious callback to a similar scene with Kirk, Spock, and a shapeshifter in “Whom Gods Destroy” from The Original Series. I love the fact that the blood test is thwarted by the changeling posing as Dr. Bashir, able to use his abilities to frame Eddington. And I love how the show tees up Eddington as a red herring -- an outsider to the main cast who’s betrayed Sisko once before -- but who isn’t the culprit today. For all that “The Adversary” is clearly pulling from other sources, the writers put plenty of their own touches in play as well.

What truly puts this season finale over the top though isn’t the neatly-plotted mystery, or unique threat, or consistently escalating tension. It’s that there’s a character throughline here which makes the choices made personally meaningful. As Odo tells Eddington, in all his time as a humanoid, he’s never had to use a phaser or take a life. There’s a nobility, a sense of honor, to Odo, that's central to who the character is.

So when he violates his people’s sacred precept that “No changeling has ever harmed another” to save these “solids” and avert war, it means he’s giving away a piece of himself, breaking a hallowed code from a society he doesn’t understand but yearns to return to nonetheless, in order to protect the people who’ve become his family in their absence. The T.V. CGI is not sterling, but the performances from Rene Auberjonois and his counterpart sell the magnitude of his choice to kill the antagonistic changeling and side with Starfleet. His pained expression, his regret that it had to come to this, are palpable. Sisko and company may be able to avoid any casualties, let alone being led into a casus belli, but it comes at a cost -- a personal one, which, as Captain Picard might say, makes all of this mean something.

And yet, even as the villain is defeated, he leaves Odo, Sisko, and the audience with one terrifying but tantalizing warning. This changeling impersonating a Federation Ambassador is not a lone wolf. The Founders have already infiltrated the Alpha Quadrant, and there’s no way to know who they are or where they might strike next. It makes good on the sort of overarching threat The Next Generation tried to establish with a crop of parasitic creatures at the end of its first season, but never followed up on in a meaningful way. The tease allows “The Adversary” to remain a strong standalone episode, while also providing one hell of a hook for season 4.
All of these things boost “The Adversary” as the superior product over Voyager’s “Cathexis”. Despite some commonalities in the paranoid thriller and hidden identity elements, the two episodes could hardly be more different in execution. Voyager was a show in its first season still struggling to find its sea legs, and Deep Space Nine was a now confident series firmly hitting its stride.

Season 4 is the point at which many fans believe that DS9 really begins. There’s signifiers of a dividing line, like Sisko finally attaining the long-deserved rank of captain in a lovely ceremony, the heightening of the Dominion threat, and new arrivals who bring with them some major changes to the balance and focus of the series.

And yet, while the show becomes darker and bolder in some ways, I’d mark Deep Space Nine’s third season as the point where the series firmly and finally arrives. Sure, Sisko still has his hair, and the show’s approach and ambitions would continue to evolve. But the complexity, creativity, camaraderie, and other hallmarks of the series’ ability to turn in quality Star Trek, and quality television bar none, on a weekly basis came to the fore in the third year of Sisko’s mission. There is more, maybe even better, to come. But with this crop of episodes, DS9 set its ascent into a classic in its own right, as worthy of tributes and appreciation as the venerated films the show would pay homage to in episodes like this one.

[7.5/10] On paper, Dax remains one of the most interesting characters in not just Deep Space Nine, but all of Star Trek. The notion of a “joined species” is one of the franchise’s most ambitious concepts. From a sci-fi standpoint, a person who has both their own existence, but also the collective memories and personhoods of their symbiont’s prior hosts is a unique idea. From an emotional standpoint, having to intertwine and reconcile one’s own individual identity with those of generations of those who came before gives the writers plenty of room to run. And from a narrative standpoint, someone with experiences and relationships that stretch long into the past provide opportunities for conflict and ingenuity.

There’s two problems though. The first, I’m sorry to say, is Terry Farrell, who gives a perfectly fine performance in the role, but not one that can live up to that degree of layered complexity. That is no sin. It would take a tremendous performer to convey both the sense of a confident yet still newer young officer who has multiple lifetimes worth of wizened experience bubbling up within her. To put a fine point on it, Farrell is solid enough as Jadzia, but rarely conveys the interiority and legacy of Dax. One of her fellow performers described the show as her graduate program, and while you can see her improving from season to season, she’s often a little too labored, and rarely convincing, in the major emotional moments. (Which makes moving, tender exchanges like her farewell to Benjamin in “Meridian” that much more precious.)

The second, though, is entirely on the writers. Basically everyone on the station is enamored with her, which is both awkward and limiting. Thankfully, the show mostly moved away from Julian’s obsession by this point. But here we are again with her taking advantage of Quark’s affections by practically groping him to get him to cooperate with her Trill ritual. And heaven forbid she have a major story that doesn’t hinge, in some way, on people falling in love with her. Romance is a part of life and a worthwhile thing to explore for a Trill in particular, who has to balance connections past and present. But reducing her narrative possibilities to, “Everyone has the hots for Jadzia” diminishes her when there’s so many other worthy avenues to explore with the character.

Including this one! Whoever came up with the idea of “Jadzia gets to meet all her old hosts” deserves a raise. The premise is a touch hokey. And the means -- past hosts being able to psychically inhabit the bodies of Jadzia’s friends -- are a touch convenient. But it’s also a lot of fun.

Seeing the show’s cast break out of their normal personas and get to show off a character who’s a little more nurturing, or anxious, or reckless is a hoot. Some of the performers do better than others (most of the ones who only get a single scene are overdoing it a tad), but without exception, it’s entertaining to see each of them branch out. Avery Brooks in particular is downright terrifying as a Hannibal Lecter type. I wouldn’t necessarily want an entire episode of Joran-as-Sisko, and it flattens the character out a little bit after “Equilibrium”, but man, you can see how Brooks could be amazing in this sort of role.

(As an aside, I don’t know how I feel about the scene where Quark is inhabited by one of Dax’s female hosts. Charitably, you could read the humor as stemming from a character who was trying to reinforce a misogynistic system just a couple episodes ago now having to share his body with a woman. But some of it feels like the humor is, “Haha, a dude has to talk about sensitive stuff like a girl!” which sits uneasily.)

But the secret sauce of “Facets” is Rom’s story. The tale is simple. Nog is testing to get into a Starfleet Academy prep program. Quark sabotages him to keep him close to home. And Rom figures it out and calls his brother to the carpet over it. There’s nothing especially unique about the setup.

What elevates it, though, is that it’s all rooted in character. We understand Nog’s fervent desire to join Starfleet, and how this is an important first step toward reaching that goal. We understand Quark’s skepticism and disdain for the whole idea, with a readiness to do anything to thwart it. And most all, we understand Rom’s knowledge of his son, recognizing that Nog would never fail the spatial orientation portion of the test given his natural aptitude; his knowledge of his brother, sniffing out a sabotage when he smells something funny; and most of all his love for his only child, ready to show a certain backbone and intensity that we rarely see from the deferential younger brother.

So he sets things right. Nog gets his cadet uniform (tailored by Garak no less). He arrives in the bar having passed (and orders a root beer, something portentous in the show). And most of all, Rom stands up for what’s important, getting in the face and confronting a veritable bully when what’s on the line truly matters.

That connects the B-story thematically to the A-story. After meeting all of Dax’s past hosts, Jadzia starts to develop some imposter syndrome. How can she measure up to all these great folks from the past, especially when she was initially a wash-out as an initiate? It’s sympathetic and relatable, to be at the beginning of your journey and worry that you won’t be able to climb as high or go as far as those who came before. Adding Curzon, the host who rejected her from the program in the first place, only heightens the insecurity in the situation.

The greatest boon of all is to mix Curzon and Odo together as part of the ritual. For one thing, it allows us to see Renee Auberjonois cut loose, which, like Leonard Nimoy and Spock before him, has the innate thrill of a normally stoic character seeming friendly and fun. It also gives us a chance to see someone much-talked about but never really seen (outside of one brief flashback) who’s important to two major characters.

In truth, I wish we’d gotten more with Benjamin and Curzon. Imagine being able to see someone you loved deeply, who’d died, one last time? Their reunion plays like a pair of old college buddies checking in at the reunion, not what is possibly the last chance for mentor and protege to confide in one another. Still, it’s fun to see a more gregarious persona emerge through Odo, and watching the reified Curzon show his spark but also his flaws via the normally more subdued shapeshifted is a blast.
The central idea is a good one, though. Jadzia is tentative around Curzon, because she wants to know why he washed her out. She needs to persuade him to rejoin the Dax symbiont, which supposedly neither he nor Odo wants to do, but is especially reluctant when Curzon says he only let her back in the program because he felt sorry for her, and she doesn’t want that idea to be internalized in a way that would exacerbate the self-doubt she’s already struggling with.

The arc lands where it should. A pep talk from Benjamin gives her the gumption to challenge Curzon, tell him when he’s crossed a line, and show the confidence in herself and self-worth that demonstrates how she’s worthy of the symbiont. It puts her in line with Rom, telling off someone taking liberties they’re not owed in a way that reveals selfishness and myopia.

Except that when called to account for his actions Curzon explains that he rejected Jadzia from the initiate program not because she was unworthy but....because he was in love with her. Come on! Does everyone have to do that? Why is this a satisfying answer to the question? Why couldn't it simply be something poetic, like he thought she was brilliant enough that she might outshine him as a Dax host if he let her in? No, instead it’s just yet another person who has the hots for Jadzia as the sticky wicket.

Jadzia takes it in stride, because if there’s one thing that's maddeningly consistent on this show, it’s the character brushing off colleagues and acquaintances constantly hitting on her to the point of harassment like that's okay. But in the end, she does stand up to him, and there’s catharsis in her asserting herself and convincing Curzon to rejoin, in the right way. Her closing exchange with Odo is a particularly sweet one, as she better understands Odo’s joy in shapeshifting, and he better understands the simple pleasures of humanoids like eating and drinking.

It’s just a bumpy road to get there. There is so much potential in Dax as a character. So many places to take her and intriguing wrinkles to explore in someone who is both one life, and ten beings, all with different experiences and quirks that have left their mark on Jadiza. I just wish the performer could convey that on a consistent basis, and that the show didn’t reduce her to an object of romantic infatuation, rather than a full-fledged person whose existence extends beyond who’s crushing on her this week.

[6.1/10] Actions have consequences. It’s one of my favorite features of Deep Space Nine. Even before the show would become more explicitly serialized, you could count on choices made in one episode to have ripple effects down the line. The Terran resistance movement Bashir and Kira started in the show’s first Mirror Universe episode had blossomed by the time of the second. The Federation’s decision to share intel on The Dominion with the Romulans in exchange for the Defiant’s cloaking technology results in it being funneled through the Tal Shiar to the Obsidian Order. Odo’s bond with Kira and his decision not to stay with the Founders has an impact on him both practical and psychological. These events stay with the characters and the world in a way more than they did on Voyager and even The Next Generation.

The biggest problem with “Shakaar” is that it cuts almost entirely against the guiding principle for DS9. Kai Winn becomes the head of not just the Bajoran religious order, but also its civilian government after the death of the current First Minister. Despite their personal animosity, Winn asks Kira to help with a diplomatic matter for the collective good of their people. The mission would mean asking the leader of Kira’s old resistance cell, the eponymous Shakaar, to give up some fancy farming equipment so another region can develop crops for export and help put Bajor on the map.

At first, I thought this was going to be yet another “What happened to you, Kira? You used to be cool” episode. We saw that with the former Bajoran freedom fighter brought on to DS9. We saw it when she had to clear a Bajoran man off of his land as part of a broader political agreement. “Shakaar” seemed cut from the same cloth. Will Kira do the bidding of a leader she despises in the game of supporting the greater good even though it has an individual cost to someone she cares about?

That tack is pretty tired at this point of the show, but frankly, it would have been preferable to what we got instead. After some minor attempts to convince Shakaar to give up the equipment or otherwise broker a meeting between Winn and him, the Bajoran security forces try to arrest him and Kira decides to join the resistance again. There’s no debate. No weighing what it means to support an old friend versus a government in need of stability. No questioning of her loyalties to her new colleagues on the station versus her old colleagues on Bajor. It’s just boom, bam, suddenly she’s ready to fight the powers that be with barely a thought, something deeply unsatisfying after three years of character development.

But I guess it’s still better than the B-story, which makes the term “slight” seem generous. Chief O’Brien is playing darts and is in “the zone”. That's pretty much it. People get excited about his dominance. Quark starts taking bets on the action. Miles injures his shoulder and loses his stride. But there’s nothing really to it.

There’s no broader point or connection to the A-story. If anything, the comic relief subplot detracts from the dramatic tone Deep Space Nine wants to take with Kira’s story here, since the tones don’t really match. And lord knows, her plot could use the real estate of the inessential B-story to develop her big choices here. When O’Brien tweaked his shoulder, the shtick was so over the top that I thought for sure there was some other layer here. Maybe Miles and Julian were working together to extricate the chief from “the zone” because what used to be a fun hobby had turned into a pressure-filled financial endeavor? But no, it’s just a sitcom-esque does of no-stakes zaniness that serves no real purpose.

It’s the same kind of emptiness that affects Kira’s decision to join Shakaar’s efforts to oppose Kai Winn. Love her or hate her (and I definitely tend toward hate), Winn is the leader of the Bajoran Provisional Government. Kira can seemingly give up her post on the stations for weeks at a time, to take up arms against her own government, and Sisko’s apparently like, “Cool. Just let us know when you’re done!” No big deal. Everyone’s fine again. Doesn’t create an international incident or anything!

Likewise, it’s absurd that the solution to Shakaar being on the run from the Bajoran Security Forces is for him to run for office against the person ordering the pursuit. Ask opposition leaders being attacked by real life national strongmen how much running for office protects them. I do appreciate that Shakaar has a heart-to-heart with the leader of the security forces pursuing him and his people, another former resistance leader (none other than John Dorman, at that!), who jointly decide that fighting each other is not even remotely the same as fighting the Cardassians. But it’s a big leap from “I won’t kill or capture your people” to “All is forgiven by the government that wanted you behind bars hours ago.”

There’s the fig leaf that Winn goes along with this due to Kira’s threat to go public with Winn’s military pursuit of a noteworthy resistance leader over some farming equipment. But frankly, it seems surprising that it hadn't been public already, or that Winn wouldn’t find some way to spin things in her favor with propaganda or other Machievellian tricks, since that's very much her game. The wins just come too easy, and there’s no real consequences for anyone to have to deal with from abandoning their posts and their lives to go on the run in defiance of orders from the top.

Making those monumental choices and playing them out -- what it would cost Kira to side with her old allies over her new colleagues, the ripples of having the first officer of DS9 joining a small rebellion, a military alliance asserting power to challenge a religious leader -- could all be fantastic in terms of the storytelling. But making every decision cheap and effectively costless, for a resistance led by Dr. Crusher’s candle ghost no less, hobbles this one before it can get up and running. This isn’t the last we’ll see of Shakaar, but given this inauspicious start, maybe it should have been.

[7.2/10] Love. Romance. Sex. Procreation. These are facts of life. It would be naive at best, and prudish at worst, to have a show about 100+ crewmembers stranded in an unfamiliar place for seventy years and not delve into the flirtations, couplings, and yes, even bringing new life into this world that would undoubtedly happen in the wake of such an unusual situation.

“Elogium” is a wide-ranging survey of the idea, with everything from a turbolift snog-fest, to a potential pregnancy situation with two major characters, to an alien creature that thinks the ship is a rival for its mates. The episode lacks something in focus, bouncing around between a variety of ideas and situations. But it gets credit for having the chutzpah to delve into these grand but very personal ideas with conviction.

The prime storyline sees Kes prematurely hitting puberty and effectively going into heat. The show uses her alien biology for good storytelling purposes, since the Ocampa can only reproduce at this one point in their lives, so it forces Kes and Neelix to decide whether they’re ready to become parents right here and now. The fifty hour ticking clock adds urgency to what is already a strange occurrence, as both members of the couple have to make a “now or never” choice for one of the biggest decisions a person can make.

On the one hand, the depiction here is cartoony. Kes eating everything in sight, including beetles and dirt-infused mashed potatoes, is a pretty goofy spin on the old saw about pregnancy cravings. Neelix’s fumfering excuses about why he doesn’t want to be a father feel like something off of Full House.

And, it must be said, the relationship between Neelix and Kes just feels creepy. In universe, Kes is literally two years old and, by Neelix’s own account, “such an innocent,” which contrasts uncomfortably with his own well-traveled ways. In the real world, Jennifer Lien was a smidge over twenty, while Ethan Phillips was nearly forty when this aired. You can try to reckon with this dynamic as the product of alien cultures with different norms than we provincial humans, but the fact remains. When you’re trying to anchor a story around a couple struggling with the decision to become parents, the couple seeming more like father and daughter than husband and wife is off-putting. (And that's all aside from the fact that Neelix is jealous, possessive, and unreasonable here in ways that come off just as uncomfortable.)

However, if you can set those things aside, there’s a heap of good scenes here about their decision. As corny as Neelix’s bad faith excuses for not becoming a father are, his scene with Tuvox where he reckons with not only the potential joys of parenthood, but the bond that forms with your child regardless of gender is a heartening one. It’s Tuvok returning the favor of the good advice Neelix gave to his reluctant Vulcan pal in “Learning Curve”. His ensuing enthusiasm at the prospect of being a dad, his supportive disappointment when Kes decides it isn't time, and his renewed delight when she reveals there’s likely still a chance down the line all give his arc an ultimately wholesome flavor, even if it comes with plenty of rough edges.

This is also one of Jennifer Lien’s best performances. I’ve admitted before -- my priors from having watched Voyager live are that she, and Kes are mostly a big nothing on the show. But I may have to mea culpa on this one. Lien goes full bore on Kes’ frantic appetites, giving a somewhat comical but also committed performance in the process. Her desperation when she realizes she’s going through Ocampan puberty and holes up in the EMH’s office, and her exaltation of relief when Janeway embraces here reflects such poignant vulnerability. And her exchange with The Doctor, who she turns to as a surrogate father when spilling her guts about missing her real one, is a layered, intimate performance from both actors. This is a real coming out party for Lien, and that, if nothing else, makes this one worthwhile.

But there’s a thematic hook that deepens the proceedings as well. The sci-fi conceit smartly sidesteps any literal abortion questions, while still delving into the issues, concerns, hopes, and anxieties of a young couple who finds themselves with an unplanned pregnancy. As outsized as much of the material here is, at its core, “Elogium” touches on conversations about what bringing a child into the world in general, let alone into this less-than-ideal situation, that have the ring of truth to them. Wondering how your life will change, worrying over whether you’ll still have the opportunity if you don’t decide to go through with it now, thinking through the risks and what kind of life you can provide all buttress the cartoonier material with something more true-to-life and relatable.

Hell, there’s even a decent sci-fi story in there too! The cause of Kes’ premature reproduction period is a swarm of space-bound life forms swimming through the cosmos that eventually envelop the ship. For the most part, it’s a pretty standard Star Trek scenario. “Oh no, its [insert weird type of radiation] is affecting our [important system!” “Captain, I recommend we attack it!” “No, it’s a lifeform and we must try to respect it at all costs!” “Wait captain, what if we [technobabble’d] it using the forward deflector shield, like a [simple analogy the audience can understand].” If you’ve watched even a handful of episodes of The Original Series or The Next Generation, you probably know the beats of this one.

But when the swarm starts draining the ship, and a big one starts causing even more problems, the solution is both clever and dovetails with the episode’s themes. It requires flipping the ship over and venting plasma to turn it blue, mimicking the behavior of the “submissive” space critters. The idea that even the weird spatial phenomenon of the week is horny, and recognizing its horniness is the key to escape, is a fun twist on the central idea of the episode, even if the tone is a little too middle school in a “Haha, just made reference to sex! We’re so bad!” sort of way.

Most of those exchanges take place between Janeway and Chakotay. I have to say, I didn’t remember there being so much romantic tension between them. But in this one, they talk about “fraternization” among the crew, with their faces three inches from one another, both practically making goo goo eyes at one another, and it’s hard to deny the chemistry. The captain’s Victorian-inspired holonovel is appropriate, because there’s something about the fact that there’s clearly an attraction there, but one they can’t express given their station, that gives it an extra charge. It’s funny, because the writers haven't done much of anything to make Janeway and Chakotay close to this point, but the electricity between them does most of the work, and the chance to talk about the pros and cons of “the crew” socializing romantically when they’re really talking about themselves does the rest.

And yet, as much as those conversations play like a pretext, they’re valid and fascinating discussions to have. There’s reasons to want to discourage the messiness of romantic pairings when, no matter how those relationships go, these people will have to live with one another for a long time. There’s also good reasons to encourage folks to “fraternize”, since a seventy-year journey home would require Voyager to become a generational ship.

Then again, bringing children onto the ship means all sorts of new considerations, from the dangers of exposing them to a dangerous and unknown area of space, to the practical considerations of creating facilities and institutions to educate and care for them. More to the point though, whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea, there’s good reason for Janeway to decide it’s not her place to interfere in her crew’s personal lives, let alone their decisions on whether to procreate.

If that weren’t enough, the decision is made for her, since Ensign Wildman(!!!) turns out to be pregnant, carrying all she has left of a husband who’s back in the Alpha Quadrant. (Though the EMH said they’d been gone for six months as of the last episode, and Wildman said she’d just now confirmed she’s pregnant. The timing seems unlikely, but whatever. No biggie.) Janeway accepts and congratulates her, and there’s a lesson in it. No matter what the captain may want, no matter the ethical dilemmas at play, sometimes these things will simply play themselves out, and all you can do is support the makeshift family that's only set to grow bigger.

Regardless, These are the kinds of meaty, situational questions that arise when stranded far from home that ought to be the backbone of this series. The bonds between people, the rules bent or broken when the circumstances those rules were made for are long gone, the messiness of love and life are all central to the things we experience in the real world, and that strong characters would experience in a fictional one. And even as I question plenty of the execution here in “Elogium”, I can’t help but be glad to see Voyager taking these questions seriously.

[7.5/10] One of my favorite installments of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a 2022 episode called “Normal Again”. It is, much like Voyager’s “Projections” from seven years earlier, a story that asks the question, “What if the entire show has been a delusion?” And both episodes ask their protagonist to basically burn the series down to get back to reality.

There’s something intuitively appealing about that setup. From the popularity of The Matrix to real life public figures wondering if (or asserting that) we’re in a simulation, the jolt of trepidation and excitement at the idea that our everyday lives are a paper mache mock-up hiding the “real world” is a possibility both alluring and scary, which gives it a certain power.

The Doctor makes for a particularly compelling focal point since it ties directly into questions about the nature of his identity. As hints start to arise that he may be a flesh and blood person, and it’s everything else that's a hologram, it flips his (and our) expectations and understanding of the world of Voyager on its ear. Savvy viewers can probably guess that the series wasn’t going to reveal the sci-fi equivalent of “It was all a dream” a few episodes into the show’s second season. But the simple thought experiment -- how would you respond if someone told you everything you thought you knew about your life was wrong? -- remains potent.

I suspect it’s no coincidence that The Doctor’s predicament takes on a certain Descartes-esque quality. The philosopher who famously declared, “I think, therefore I am” framed his quest to establish his own existence as a series of questions or tests, meant to test how we can be sure that what we experience with our senses is right and accurate. They ask the 1600s equivalent of how we could truly know that we’re not in a simulation, and even wonder how we can be sure our deepest truths about the universe are not the product of an evil, deceiving demon.

Here, that demon comes in the form of none other than Reginald Barclay. It’s a trip to have ol’ Broccoli back in the fold on another Star Trek show. Especially given his own dabbles in self-aware holograms and reality-questioning installments via Moriarty, having him as the ostensible “voice of reason” when The Doctor is going through his crisis makes a strange amount of sense.

Barclay’s presence and history lends plausibility to the idea that he’s working with Starfleet to rescue the flesh and blood Louis Zimmerman, the holo-engineer who designed the EMH, from a malfunctioning simulation and case of holoprogram-induced dementia. And it also lends credence to Chakotay’s claim that his is all the result of a strange feedback loop in The Doctor’s, and Barclay is merely an officer who helped build Voyager and, most plausibly of all, trained EMH on his social skills.

The best thing you can say for the plot of “Projections” is that it keeps you guessing. The chances of the show’s whole first season all being part of a simulation is pretty slim. Moreover, Barclay’s “destroy the ship to end the simulation plan” is especially suspicious. But Barclay’s arrival and unique affect is something that's hard to explain away, so figuring out what’s really going on, alongside various fakeouts and compelling arguments and bits of evidence on both sides of the equation, is legitimately challenging.

The worst thing you can say for the plot is that it more or less has one trick that it goes back to over and over again. Is this real or fake? We’re going to swerve you and then swerve you again and then swerve you back and then swerve you on more time for good measure. Narratively, “Projections” is an empty puzzle box, merely containing twist after twist in the same general mode. It does get tiresome in points.

But I still appreciate it for two big reasons. The first is because it situates the audience nicely in The Doctor’s shoes. The constant changes are disorienting. The shift in the expected like the EMM bleeding, or his request to end all holographic programs getting rid of the Voyager crew rather than himself, does a good job of forcing the audience to wonder, “What the hell is going on?” in the same way The Doctor is.

Likewise, he asks all the right questions. Frankly, sometimes main characters in Star Trek seem to go along with the weird phenomenon of the week without asking the basics of why trust this thing/why believe the latest alien invader, without fully interrogating it, because the plot requires it. Here, however, the questioning is the plot. The whole point is for the EMH to uncover what’s real, so when he tries to test his hypothesis, double-check Barclay’s claims, there’s something that feels true to life in an otherwise unreal situation.

And in the same vein, there’s an almost meta quality to the episode that helps carry the day. As the EMH is questioning his surroundings, he’s also questioning the premise of the show to a degree. Watching him beam back into the pilot and show a genre savvy reaction to the events of “Caretaker” makes for some great madcap fun. (If only he could have deleted Paris and Kim permanently.) Much of “Projections” plays the dream logic conceit for disorienting terror, but sometimes it plays it for loony fun as well.

Granted, in places the episode goes overboard. Did we really need to resort to the cliche of a fish-eye lens to convey that something funky is going on? And the explanation for why the Doc had the delusion -- that the ship hit some weird radiation while the EMH was in the holodeck and his program got caught in a feedback loop -- is a rote technobabble handwave. For all the intriguing pretzel logic at play, it all boils down to something fairly mundane by Star Trek standards, without much of a punchline to the delusion.

Except that's the second big thing that really boosts this episode for me. No one ever makes it explicit, but The Doctor asks the big question at the end -- why is this the delusion his program resorted to when stuck in this peculiar feedback loop? It is, in essence, the same question we flesh and blood humans ask about our dreams. Why did my brain fixate on this thing? I think the comparison is deliberate and telling.

The answer, to my mind at least, is that even in these early days, The Doctor is evolving and maturing. He’s grown beyond being a mere talking sick bay appliance and has started to become a full-fledged person, with thoughts and feelings, hopes and (yes) dreams. This delusion is a sentient being taking its first steps and working through those same existential questions that Descartes once wrestled with, as the EMH starts to stake out the metes and bounds of his own life and what it means to be alive in photons and projections rather than bone and flesh.

It’s a thematic undercurrent Voyager would explore from beginning to end. “Projections” is far from perfect. But it’s wild and elliptical in the way that some of the most ambitious Star Trek episodes are. And it roots all this twisty nonsense in the journey of a buddingly sentient lifeform reckoning with what it is to experience the world, and how he, or anyone, can be sure that it, and he, are “real”. Whatever that means.

[7.5/10] In some ways, “Learning Curve” gives me exactly what I’ve been asking for from Star Trek: Voyager. When you try to smush a Starfleet crew and a Maquis crew together out of necessity, they won’t necessarily mesh well together. Examining what happens when some former Maquis don’t want to get with the program, and forcing the Starfleet officers to reckon with that, is the sort of conflict I’ve been clamoring for since the series began. This episode delivers that, with Crewman Dalby in particular bucking against Tuvok’s commands, and eventually his tutelage.

But in some ways, it’s the opposite of what I wanted. It’s good that Voyager is tackling this issue head-on, rather than just sweeping it under the rug (give or take Seska) and pretending that everything would be hunky dory when mixing Federation citizens and Federation rebels on the same ship. However, the path “Learning Curve” takes to address that conflict, and eventually sew it up in a neat little package, runs counter to the complexities and need to blend two crews’ sensibilities when forced to work together I’d hoped for.

So let’s start with a simple baseline -- Tuvok is a dick here. Captain Janeway tasks him with giving four former Maquis, selected by Chakotay and others, a crash course in Starfleet. He proceeds to treat them like children, condescend to them, and run them ragged. It’s one thing to treat Starfleet cadets that way, who are both young people like Wesley Crusher in need of some molding, and who, if nothing else, applied for this knowing what they were signing up for. It’s another thing to act this way toward adults who have basically been impressed into service by circumstance.

Now I want to be fair to “Learning Curve”. Some of this is the point. Neelix, of all people, ends up being the voice of reason when Tuvok’s methods run aground on dissension and frustration. Using a colorful metaphor with flowers and stems, he warns Mr. Vulcan that he’s being too inflexible, and needs to meet Dalby and his compatriots where they live. Some of the intention here is clearly that Tuvok’s rigid approach is not a good fit for these people.

How does the show dramatize that idea, though? With Tuvok trying to genuinely get to know Dalby and learn about his harsh family history, which is something! If hearing about this recalcitrant crewman’s tough upbringing led Tuvok to soften his approach a little, or demonstrate some understanding of where Dalby was coming from that would be great.

None of that really happens though. The big dramatization of how Neelix’s advice and Dalby’s personal history has affected Tuvok is that he...chooses to rescue one of the former Maquis even though it goes against his “greatest gain at the lowest cost” tactical philosophy. At the most charitable, you can chalk it up to Tuvok seeing these crewmembers as people, not just cogs in the Starfleet machine, thanks to them expressing their individuality. But the episode paints it simply as him learning that sometimes it’s okay to “bend the rules”, which kinda sort of fits the Maquis crew members' “whatever works” philosophy, but wasn’t really the problem...

Dalby and friends’ arc is no better. They resent having to fit into the Starfleet mold and hate Tuvok’s methods of instruction. But clearly it works on them because they...are able to get the door to a room full of poison gas open to rescue Tuvok and their friend? I guess? Charitably, you could say Tuvok made a big deal out of teaching them the layout of the ship, which allowed them to get to the right place, but it’s pretty thin.

More to the point, after seeing Tuvok “bend the rules” to try to rescue their friend from the poison gas themselves, Dalby declares that he and his pals are officially ready to follow his orders, and implicitly, fit themselves into the whole Starfleet system. Taking Tuvok’s gesture as an important first step toward a real partnership between the most rigid of Starfleet officers and the most rebellious of Maquis operatives would be great. But the sense of finality and “problem solved” to this whole thing comes off too simple, too tidy, and too unsatisfying. As so often afflicted Voyager’s early seasons in particular, it wraps what should be a complicated, ongoing dynamic into a neat little package, without really addressing the underlying issue in full.

Do you want to know the worst part? I mostly agree with Dalby and the former Maquis here. That absolutely should not happen. I’ve spent my whole life basically indoctrinated by Starfleet methods and values. The Kurtzman era of Star Trek has made it a priority to reclaim those values across a variety of new shows, and it reflects how “Why we do things the way we do”, as Janeway put it, filtered down to the young and young-at-heart who watched these shows growing up. Tuvok’s perspective has the ultimate home-field advantage when it comes to hearts and minds here.

And yet he is unyielding, callous, persnickety, and at times outright unreasonable. Dalby makes some pretty good points about how the former Maquis never asked for this, and should be granted more leeway and autonomy than officers who were trained in, and importantly, agreed to be a part of, the Starfleet system. Tuvok forcing them to run laps like they’re kids in gym class is degrading. His “don’t speak unless spoken to” approach is condescending. And his insistence that the young Bajoran crewman remove his earring, which has religious significance, because it’s not part of the uniform, sucks as much as when Riker did it to Ensign Ro, and even Ro at least volunteered for Starfleet. All of it makes Tuvok come off like a petty tyrant, and the Academy approach seems inappropriate at best for grown men and women who never set out to become Starfleet officers.

So you kind of root for them when they basically tell Tuvok to sod off. Dalby isn’t wrong when he says that Voyager needs them, and so as long as they keep doing their jobs to the best of their abilities, there’s only so much Tuvok and Janeway can do to punish them. God help me, I’d love to see somebody on the ship test that theory. (As I recall, we get a little of it with Paris down the line, but even that's pretty abbreviated.) What does it mean when Starfleet stiffs used to discipline and the observing chain of command have to make peace with rebellious types who don’t cotton to that hierarchy or rigidity, and have to be reasoned with rather than cowed?

The answer is, apparently, that Chakotay will just punch them in the face until they comply, since that's what a Maquis captain would do apparently. Cool? I guess? There’s something to be said for Torres questioning Dalby’s ability to meet the challenges that works as a bit of psychological motivation. But for the most part, these people with somewhat reasonable demands and gripes with being forced into a setup they don’t like are simply cajoled into going along with it, rather than believably convinced that it’s the right way to go.

It doesn’t help that Dalby is essentially the only one of the four Maquis recruits who gets any true development or shading. The others show glimpses of personality, but are basically one-note stand-ins. The proceedings are buoyed, though, by a neat sci-fi crisis of the week that stems from, of all things, the bio-neural gel packs getting infected with a virus thanks to Neelix’s cheese. It’s a unique problem, at least, and features some fun and clever moments from the whole gang to solve the problem. And as much as the Tuvok story frustrates me in places, it’s neat for longtime fans to see a new spin on the Kobayashi Maru test and “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one,” from another Vulcan officer.

And despite all my gripes, “Learning Curve” is still one of early Voyager’s more memorable hours because it’s one of the few to take the series’ original premise seriously. Onetime Maquis operatives pushing back against Starfleet’s protocols; seasoned officers getting frustrated when their near-conscripts don’t play by the rules; the two groups learning something from one another and meeting in the middle, could all have been not only the backbone of a great episode, but the foundation for the whole series. Instead, we get a tantalizing episode that delivers plenty of interesting ideas and food for thought while, like the show itself in this shaky first season, still struggles mightily to live up to its potential.

[8.3/10] I’ll admit, I was a little hesitant when I realized this was a body swap episode. Prodigy went pretty broad in its humor with the last high concept premise it did (Dal activating all his latent genes at once), so I was leery about where this would go. I needn’t have worried though. “Mindwalk” not only uses the premise for all its comedic potential, but derives a ton of great character moments and even good plot movement from the ol’ switcheroo in a way I didn’t necessarily expect.

For one thing I got a big kick out of Dal in Admiral Janeway’s body. I’m surely a broken record at this point, but my goodness, kudos to Kate Mugrew. She is quite convincing as Dal-qua-Janeway, capturing his sort of flustered, cheeky mannerisms in a way that you buy hook line and sinker. The animators more than do their part too, with the possessed Admiral Janewya moving about with an unease and franticness that befits Dal.

Heck, I even like it from a plot standpoint. For one thing, Lt. Ascencia, Dreadnok, and the Diviner are surprisingly tolerant of the Admiral’s peculiar behavior since they just gave her the old bonk on the noggin, which makes sense and gives her some cover. And yet, the rest of the crew takes a page out of (god help me) “Turnabout Intruder” from The Original Series, knowing their captain well enough to recognize that this isn’t her, no matter how she presents herself. (In fairness, the fact that Dal-as-Janeway spits out her coffee in disgust is a dead giveaway.)

The most interesting thing for Dal in Janeway's body, though, is her conversation with The Diviner. It’s the most human, the most sympathetic, the most comprehensible he’s ever been. Frankly, I don’t know how to feel about that. Candidly, I pretty much wrote The Diviner off in the first half of season 1, when he was basically willing to sacrifice Gwyn to achieve his goals. It showed where his priorities lay, in a way that made it seem like he viewed his daughter as a means to an end, not an end unto herself.

And yet, in his moment of Janeway, he’s strangely sympathetic as a character. He does a good deed for Janeway, recognizing that she showed him kindness in a way he didn’t expect, something he feels creates a moral debt for him to repay. He explains that from his perspective, Starfleet was the villain, to where he thought (and still thinks) he’s been doing what’s necessary to save his civilization from an invader that rent destruction in his home. In the shadow of that, his willingness to give up his progeny to save his entire people could be seen as a “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” type situation, even if it’s the type of thing that feels more uncomfortable when he’s sacrificing someone else’s life rather than your own.

And most importantly, he asks the person he thinks is Janeway to look after his daughter if something were to happen to him. Maybe it’s just the way Zero scrambled his brain. Maybe it’s seeing the altruism of Starfleet in a way he’s been able to internalize. Maybe it’s being separated from her in a fashion which had an emotional impact he didn’t anticipate. Whatever the reason, The Diviner seems to genuinely care about Gwyn in a way that wasn’t clear in the first half of this season. And Dal, for his part, can relate to being willing to do anything to protect her, something revealing in the show’s most obvious budding relationship.

I still don’t know how I feel about a Diviner redemption tour. Some of what he did seems unforgivable to me. But the heart of Star Trek is rooted in the idea that it’s never too late to make the right choices, and to provide for the possibility for us all to become better people with the right environment and the right support. If nothing else, I appreciate making him a more complicated antagonist, whose motivations are comprehensible, even if I’m not ready to condone or forgive him as a character.

Janeway in Dal’s body is even better. Brett Gray isn’t quite to Mulgrew’s level with his Janeway impression, but he’s still quite good! He carries her regal bearing and surefooted demeanor, which helps establish the Vice Admiral’s presence even when she’s in the body of a young Starfleet wannabe.

I appreciate how her presence solves one of the major problems of this half-season in a clever way. The Protostar crew has been struggling to think up a way to communicate the danger their vessel poses to Starfleet. The problem, of course, is that any technological outreach risks spreading the harms inflicted by the construct. So I like the idea of using Zero’s well-established psychic powers and Dal’s nascent psychic powers to bridge the gap. And the fact that it goes both wrong (putting both Dal and Janeway in dicey situations) and right (succeeds in communicating the key info), gives it a nice balance of problems solved and new challenges to face.

But my favorite part of this one is Admiral Janeway meeting Holo-Janeway. There’s a natural spark that comes from the genuine article meeting her holographic counterpart. But I also appreciate that it happens at Holo-Janeway’s lowest point, where she’s punishing herself for what went wrong and exiling herself from the kids she’s come to care for. The poetry of Admiral Janeway providing the counsel that leads her out of darkness is perfection.

The Admiral comes with a simple message -- turn that mess into something beautiful. In other words, there will always be mistakes and errors in judgment. The trick, then, is to survey the situation and make the most of it. That’s a strong lesson to share with the show’s younger viewers. And what’s more it transforms the solution to a technical problem (the Admiral fixing Holo-Janeway’s corrupt programming) into an object lesson that leads to an emotional breakthrough (Holo-Janeway forgiving herself for her bad programming and resolving to help again). There’s something wonderfully elegant about it.

At the same time, though, I appreciate the fact that Janeway’s arrival creates problems too, it doesn’t just solve them. She promises to be an advocate for our young heroes, help them get a fair shake before Starfleet Command. Yet, she has to deliver the bad news to the rest of the Protostar crew: Dal is an augment, which means he’s forbidden from joining Starfleet. At a time when the young man is already feeling like he doesn’t measure up to the standard set by the Federation’s best and brightest, it’s easy to see how that could be a devastating emotional setback. And in line with the exploration of the topic on Deep Space Nine, and the budding examination of it on Strange New Worlds, it’s another chance to look at how the Federation could be turning past transgressions into current prejudices by denying people like Dal the same opportunities as their non-augmented brethren.

I’ll confess, despite all the great, heady material in this one, I did find the need for Dal and Janeway to make physical contact to switch back a little silly. It does, however, create a practical limitation to a nigh-magical solution, which I always appreciate. And between the ensuing space walk that gives Murf something meaningful to do, and the think-on-her-feet phaser blast from Janeway to make the connection, they find clever spins on an outsized situation. Hell, I even love that Dal’s erratic behavior in Jnaeway’s body has landed her in the brig, hindering her ability to help in the grand finale.

Overall, this is a real high water mark in Prodigy’s first season, one that puts its high concept premise to the highest and best use, finds good laughs in an out there setup, and delivers emotional moments from unlikely pairings. Some of the sharpest writing and storytelling the series has offered so far.

[7.0/10] I’ll admit, it’s starting to feel like the show is stalling until major story events rather than having individual adventures between arc episodes. But hey, it’s Star Trek; I’m always up for a good holodeck malfunction episode.

This one doesn’t get as creative as it could given the possibilities a holoprogram provides for and the fewer limits one has in animation. Solving a mystery, fighting Tellarite street bikers, going to a 1940s club, and sailing the high seas are all perfectly fine, but there’s not that extra level of creativity to the settings to really put things over the top.

The jumbled holoprograms do reveal something about the characters. Rok-Tahk likes to pretend to be a vet, adding to my theory that her scientific field of choice is going to be a xenozoologist. Jankom wants to prove he’s not a runt and so fights bigger, burlier Tellarites. Gwyn is, naturally, still hung up on her dad. Dal wants to captain a ship where the crew respects him, even if it’s made out of wood. And Zero has an inquisitive mind that enjoys a good old fashioned mystery. Even if the scenarios they dream up, and the fruit salad of different settings and character who populate the malfunctioning program, lack a certain pizzazz, each is at least tied to something meaningful for each character.

That said, I did appreciate the twist that Rok-Tahk’s sparkly smooch thing from her veterinarian game turns out to be the kraken attacking Dal’s schooner. And while a little odd, there’s something charming about Murf singing and dancing in the 1940s club. (Maybe he should track down Dr. Jurati for a sing off.)

Candidly, I don’t know how I feel about the reveal that Holo-Janeway was unknowingly working against them. The fact that she’s programmed to thwart them if they ever try to do anything but make haste toward Starfleet could be an interesting hurdle, but we’ve never seen the slightest hint of it until now, so it plays like a bit of a cheat. The fact that Holo-Janeway didn’t even know about it means it doesn’t really change how we should view the crew’s past interactions with her. It’s essentially just a technical problem, without much in the way of character. I want to reserve judgment, but at first blush, it strikes me as a bit of a cheap twist.

Still, while this episode plays a bit like filler matched with one noteworthy reveal, the material itself is solid enough to stay entertaining for the half hour.

[7.1/10] “Preludes” is solid, but a little artless. The episode fills in plenty of gaps, and the bits of backstory we get are all pleasant at worst. But I don’t love the format of everyone just hanging out on their various ships, announcing their personal histories, anthology-style. It makes this episode play like a visual wikipedia page rather than something tied to the characters’ experiences in the here and now.

I’d much rather we had focus episodes for Rok-Tahk, Zero, Jankom, and the Diviner whether their backstories come out because they’re relevant to what they’re going through now. That way, we could have time for each to reflect about why the events that led to their capture mattered, and process those feelings in some way that allows them to overcome or reckon with something in the present. As is, these are all too tidy explanations simply delivered in a vacuum,

My favorite is probably the Diviner’s backstory, even though it’s arguably the driest of the four. There’s not much of an emotional contingent to the vignette, but it answers a lot of questions fans have been asking for a while now. The Diviner isn’t from the distant future, but rather the near-present. The plot to go back in time left some members of his species having to relive decades, while others only had to deal with years. Chakotay and his crew managed to escape and send the Protostar into the time anomaly the Diviner’s people were using. And to complete their revenge quest, the Diviner’s people ventured forth through the same anomaly, ending up in different time periods as “The Order,” a group determined to find the Protostar and use it to exact revenge on Starfleet. The Diviner had Gwyn because he was aging out, and needed someone to carry on his forsworn quest.

The answer there is a little convoluted and full of questionable temporal mechanics, but that’s par for the course for Star Trek. More than anything, it’s just nice to be outside of twist city (I hope), with the show putting its cards on the table and (seemingly) fully explaining the situation with the Diviner and his people rather than continuing to string us along with the mystery box. There’s still the question of whether Chakotay might still be on Solum in the present. But for the most part, we now know motivations and methods, which is a positive thing.

Of the young crewmembers, I enjoyed Rok-Tahk’s backstory the best. The idea that she was basically a professional wrestler putting on shows for locals, who tired of being the monster, only to find that she was less valuable when playing the hero, is simple but heartbreaking. (It’s been too long for me to recall if this is the same fight planet where Seven of Nine fought The Rock or not.) There’s a good emotional core there, and some fun animation. I just wish it was used for more.

Zero’s is probably the most tepid, since their story just involves a bunch of floating energy beings hovering around a planet until Zero gets captured. But the visuals are pleasant enough. Though man, the Kazon come off pretty bad in all of this!

Jankom’s story isn’t bad either. It’s a bit too tidy in how it explains his aptitude for engineering (By necessity he became expert at fixing everything on a Tellarite cryoship when he was the only one awake enough to do it) and his propensity to speak in the third person (and on-board A.I. constantly asked him to state his name). But I appreciate the bittersweet idea that he worked his behind off to save the other twenty-nine sleeping members of his crew, and even used an escape pod so there’d be enough oxygen for them, but won’t get any recognition for his sacrifices given the janky computer assistant on board. Like Rok-Tahk, it’s just sad enough to make you feel for the kid.

The theme of Dal realizing everyone has sob stories, but talking about it helps, is a sound enough way to connect all of these stories thematically. Janeway walking in on the truth about Ensign Ascencia and getting karate chopped for good measure is a solid tease. And I’ll admit, it tugs my heartstrings to hear Holo-Janeway talking about real Janeway’s dog Molly.

Overall, I like the content of this one well enough, but feel like it’s a missed opportunity given how generically and artlessly the episode delivers its characters’ backstories.

[9.5/10] Louise loves her family. Despite a certain mercenary bent, and above-it-all attitude, deep down, the youngest Belcher kid cannot help but appreciate her mom and dad and siblings as something that gives her holidays, and her life, incredible meaning. That is a simple idea, but a powerful one. The characters who put up the most emotional walls tearing them down in choice moments of openness and affections is an old trick, and also one that's undeniably effective.

So is the setup of “The Plight Before Christmas”. Three Belcher kids have important events at the same time in the lead-up to Xmas, and there’s only two Belcher parents to witness these important moments. What can they do?

The answer is try to make it work! There’s a great franticness to Bob and Linda trying to have at least one parent at Tina’s Thundergirls pageant, Gene’s xylophone recital, and Louise’s poetry readings all at the same time. Poor Linda being emotionally ripped in twain at not getting to see all of them is both hilariously over-the-top and sweet for how devoted a mom Linda is to her kids. Bob urgently trying to sneak out of Gene’s musical performance to cram in Louise’s poem, only to get messed up by a rock-headed cab driver and a jog to the wrong library makes for great stakes and great comedy.

So does Gene’s part in this episode. The humor comes from the fact that the music teacher is out with a family illness, In her place is a flummoxed substitute who knows nothing about music (Tina Fey) who has to try to make heads or tails of the regular instructor’s bizarre notation and a group of sixth graders who know as much about playing the xylophone as they do about social security taxes. The terrible, out-of-sync playing in the first half of their concert is a laugh all its own.

I really like the solution though. Gene proposes that they play “fewer notes”, actively removing some of the keys from the various xylophones so that they can better coordinate and play their parts. It is, admittedly, a bit of a stretch that they could go from junk to funk so easily. But it works in the moment, playing off Gene’s intuitive understanding of melody and sense of creativity, and the central idea of the episode -- that drilling down to something essential and earnest pays incredible dividends.

There’s a lot of laughs in Tina’s pageant as well. The Thundergirls’ troop leader and her overmatched efforts to put on this well-balanced but elaborate presentation of world traditions is a comic delight. Linda’s confusion with Tina being “a star”, not “the star” is on brand and very funny. And one of Tina’s fellow thundergirls envying Tina’s part in such a nothing play lends itself to both humor given the stakes, and eventually, one of the episode’s most clever twists.

In a sideways fashion, Tina may be my favorite part of this. I love the fact that she’s the one who realizes, despite Louise’s protests that she’s there to read a poem about poop, that she’s actually going to read something from the heart and is nervous about anyone else hearing it. I love that Tina selflessly encourages Linda to skip her pageant so that she can be there for Louise’s reading. And when Linda feels pressured to keep stage-handing the pageant, the twist of Tina giving the role of the star to her envious co-star, so that by god, someone will be there when Louise spills her guts, is one of the most wholesome and heartstring-tugging moments Bob’s Burgers has ever pulled off, which is saying something.

Not for nothing, “The Plight Before Christmas” is a tribute to the craft of their series. There is incredible power in a montage -- the way the cinematic form can blend images and sounds to capture something deeper, bigger, and more piercing than dialogue alone. The soundtrack of Gene’s performance, the smiles it puts on the faces of the people listening to these kids finding their way, the tension of whether Lousie will open her heart in public or take the ironic prankster route, the pathos of Linda unable to enjoy all her babies’ triumphs at once, the surprise of a loving sister making the frantic journey to a vulnerable moment to show support where it’s needed most -- I’m getting misty-eyed again just thinking about it. Bob’s Burgers rarely gets this artsy, but when it does, it packs a wallop.

So when Tina does arrive in time to show her sister that she cares, to give her the thumbs up, to listen to whatever she has to say, it’s extra moving. Tina, more than any member of the Belcher family, knows what it means to express yourself through the written word, and how vulnerable an experience that can be. She recognizes the opportunity to facilitate and foster a sister who sometimes struggles to present that more sincere side of herself, and vindicate the beauty and acceptance of that.

Louise’s poem is pitch perfect. It’s not overly flowery or tin-eared for something an elementary school student might write. And still, it’s earnest, about how on the day of the year when kids are supposed to be the most excited about the toys and trinkets under the tree, what she appreciates the most are the people she’s sharing the day with. The sentiment is lovely, and it has extra force and resonance coming from someone who’s stingy with that kind of sincerity, who finds the strength and feels the support, to where she’s comfortable expressing such a personal sentiment in front of the whole world (or at least the denizens of the Belcher’s local library).

“The Plight Before Christmas” cuts the treacle a bit with an adorable, teasing declaration of “You love your family!” from Tina on the drive home. But it leans back into the sweetness with another heartwarming montage of the exact sort of family joy that Louise penned a paean to. Linda tends to her husband’s knees while they remark on the gob-smacking poem their daughter wrote. Gene shares their momentous achievement with the teacher in the hospital via Bob’s camcorder. And most of all, the Belchers sit around the tree, opening their gifts, basking in the exact sort of enervating togetherness the youngest member of their clan gushed over in a tense but courageous way.

How is a show this good at a holiday episode in its eleventh at-bat? That's its own sort of Xmas miracle, one that's as worth of celebrating this time of year as any, and a vindication of the spirit of the season, that asks for kindness, support, honesty, and acceptance from all of us, and invites us to revel in the spaces where we find such comfort, solace, and care.

[7.5/10] Let’s get the bad out of the way first. I rarely come to Star Trek for action. It’s not like the franchise is necessarily bad at it, but it’s just not what I’m asking for or excited about from a contemplative franchise like this one. So a season finale, which have been almost uniformly action-packed in the Kurtzman era of Trek, is not really my speed.

But even if it were, it’s not something Prodigy is especially good at. The weakest element of the show, frankly, is the design and animation work. So seeing our heroes do battle with Dreadnok isn’t much to write home about when the movements are stiff and the editing is choppy. (As an aside, it’s not clear whether Dreadnoks are so vulnerable that a room full of malnourished Tars Lamora prisoners can subdue them, or so unstoppable that they can’t be stopped by most of the Protostar crew working together.)

A fencing-esque duel between Gwyn and Ascenscia is pretty meh when their movements aren’t fluid and there’s not a real sense of depth or weight to their stand-off. And the Protostar zipping past the Starfleet armada or seeing a host of Federation ships firing on each other loses a lot of oomph when the art style renders the vessels pretty unremarkable and the direction can’t do much to up the verve.

Likewise, I’m very conflicted about the Diviner redemption tour here. I feel like, at a minimum, we needed some extra steps before we can fully accept that he’s seen the error of his ways and is worthy of mourning despite his grievous sins of the past. He tries to save Gwyn from Ascencia, which goes a long way, but he’s been a bad guy for a while now, and we’ve only gotten a glimmer of redemption in the last episode. He never apologized for his missteps with his daughter, and there's a lot to answer for. I’m not averse to a redemption arc for him but this all happened very fast. I don’t mind Gwyn grieving for him. There are, of course, a lot of complicated feelings there, regardless of what the Diviner has done. But it feels like the show wants us to sympathize with him as he fades from existence, and it hasn’t quite done the work to earn that just yet.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the good. I like the character choices here. Dal learning he’s forbidden from joining Starfleet, but using that as reason for him to volunteer to fight off a Starfleet boarding party so his friends still have a chance to join, is one of the most mature, selfless things he’s ever done. Ironically, it’s proof that if anyone belongs in Starfleet, it’s him.

Likewise, while the execution is a little clumsy, I like the fact that what springs Admiral Janeway from the Brig is the kindness she showed to people in a time of need back in the days of Voyager. The callback to the Brenari refugees from “Counterpoint” is a little forced, but the show’s heart is in the right place, and the message that your good deeds come back to you in unexpected ways is a good one.

In a similar vein, it’s mildly convenient that the living construct screws up the universal translator so that no one in Starfleet can communicate with one another, to where it quickly becomes Gwyn’s time to shine. Nonetheless, I like the idea that she once used her linguistic abilities to pit different species against one another, but now she’s using it to bridge divides. It speaks to her personal growth, and understanding of the big tent values of Starfleet. The fact that Dal dubs her captain and has full faith in her to lead them through this moment is the icing on the case. (And hey, their chaste little kiss in a tight spot is a sweet moment as well.)

And while the “all our allies come together” hope spot in the finale has become something of a cliche at this point, it’s still a nice win to see Gwyn get through to Starfleet’s non-Federation allies. (Though don’t get me started on the tricky question of whether the Klingons are part of the Federation or not, and how this exacerbates that debate.) The idea of her reaching out to everyone who’s been helped by the Federation, imploring them to return the favor in their hour of need, and seeing that call for help answered, is a pleasant tribute to Starfleet as well.

The same themes hit in miniature with the Protostar crew working together to escape from Dreadnok’s attempts to neutralize them. There’s some genuine cleverness to the Rube Goldberg series of events where Rok-Tahk using Jakom’s hand tool frees Murf, who liberates Zero, who removes Dal’s restraint, who neutralizes the gravity device holding down Jankom and Rok-Tahk. It’s a touch too simple, but the idea of the rapport and ability to work together these young officers-in-training have forged, and the way it helps them break out of this, is a good thing.

Otherwise, the idea that Starfleet vessels in distress automatically call for back-up, exacerbating the current problem, is a nice means of escalation and the need for more solutions beyond what’s been achieved in part one. Jellicle is till a total dick apparently, so I’m glad Prodigy preserved that. It’s neat to see the show pulling from obscure corners of Star Trek’s illustrious history, with a conspicuous appearance from the U.S.S. Sovereign which originated in a TNG video game. And I’m a little leery of Ascencia turning into a mustache-twirling villain, but her escape via Dreadnok opens up other possibilities.

Overall, the first half of Prodigy’s season 1 finale does some of those clunky, traditional finale things that irk me a little. But it also gets the core values and key character choices of Star Trek right, which covers for a heck of a lot.

[8.2/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] At some point, I’m going to have to stop using my infamous “post-classic Simpsons scale” for the episodes showrun by Matt Selman, because as he’s gotten to handle more of the show’s outings per season, he’s proven that the standard goes up, and the results deserve better than to be measured against the dregs of Al Jean’s long reign as showrunner or, heaven forfend, the bonkers Mike Scully years before him.

Suffice it to say, “Top Goon” is another winner. I like the basic plot here. Everyone’s well-motivated. Moe wants to coach and win a junior hockey team so he can show up his business neighbor/rival King Toot. (Will Forte, who voices King Toot, is always a treat.) Bart’s his star (in keeping with the mostly-forgotten “Lisa on Ice”, the show’s last hockey episode), but opposing goons recognize this and rough up Bart to stymie’s Moe’s “barflyers” (a clever name). Enter Nelson, someone with the rough-housing skills to become an effective hockey goon, ensure Moe can achieve his dream, and maybe earn some self-esteem in the process.

One of the signs of a well-done episode isn’t just sound plotting like that, but the fact that it’s funny even if you’re not super familiar with the source material. I’ll confess that I’ve never actually seen Top Gun. (Though I know enough through cultural osmosis to catch a few references.) Likewise, I know the basics of hockey, but I know none of the famed goons who teach Nelson at their academy. And yet, despite that, the sequences where Nelson absorbs their tutelage bring plenty of yuks, and the general tone of the hockey spoofs and competition pastiches make it easy to laugh along.

What I love the most about “Top Goon” though is the emotional undercurrent of this one. Moe and Nelson are both self-styled “scuzzes”, down-on-their luck chaps who feel like losers. The fact that hockey, gooning, and victory, both make them feel like winners for once, and bonds them together, is a really sweet thing. There’s some good emotional conflict when Nelson decides Moe, not Bart, is his primary, and roughs up the team’s star player when trying to defend Coach Szyslak from one of Bart’s trademark pranks, inadvertently angering Moe in the process.

And Moe apologizing and going to great lengths to show Nelson he is more than just “a fist” or a tool, but someone Moe cares about and wants to save from the worst of life, makes for a wholesome connection between two characters I might not have thought to pair up, but who make a ton of sense together. One of the real boons of the Selman era is finding these unique character duos who end up clicking like this in ways the audience might not have anticipated. It’s wild that the show is still finding neat new corners to explore after thirty-four seasons. The hair-tussling between Moe and Nelson seals how wholesome the whole thing turns out.

The B-story is not so wholesome, but still funny. Homer lamenting that his kids’ extracurriculars prevent him from just getting to chill and relax isn’t exactly kind, but feels relatable. There’s some well-observed humor there (even if the interlude with Wiggum’s foot fetish is a little too out there for my tastes). Some solid gags, like Homer’s “woohoo” uttered into a pizza dough bubble. And there’s also some nice irony, like Bart getting injured, sparing Homer from further athletics chaperoning, but subjecting him to months of accompanying Bart to physical therapy. It’s a slight subplot in the episode, but one that compliments the main story well.

Overall, another winner under the Selman regime, with good laughs, well-constructed storytelling, and heart out the wazoo via a creative pairing. Give me more of this sort of thing, please!

[5.0/10] What can I say about John Denver and the Muppets - A Christmas Together except that I enjoyed the muppet parts and was nonplussed, at best, by the John Denver parts.

The puppet pals are as amusing and endearing as ever. Fozzy adorably can’t remember his line in “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. Miss Piggy is in rare form when jockeying for a bigger part and trying to deny the forbidden on-screen romance with her human co-star. Kermit brings his low key comic chops when reminiscing about Xmas back in the swamp. And the whole gang is a hoot singing “Christmas Is Coming” in a round.

By contrast, Denver is...fine. He’s game at least, you have to give him that. He cracks up playing opposite Piggy, and is willing to dress up silly or otherwise seem a little goofy under the circumstances. But he’s just so milquetoast and bland in his attempts at holiday succor that it becomes easy to tune out. The cinematography doesn’t help, as there’s a lot of long, awkward close-ups of him singing his auditory wallpaper until it starts to feel uncomfortable. And his janky little dances aren’t much to write home about either. The interludes featuring mostly him and not his felt friends are downright soporific.

There’s some verve in the toy soldier set piece, which at least has some interesting set design and stagecraft at play, not to mention a jaunty tune to go along with it and some good hamming it up from Piggy. But for the most part, the special is languid at light on flavor.

It’s also, well, religious. There’s nothing wrong with that in an Xmas special exactly. But it’s an odd tonal match for the muppets who, while not necessarily secular, are more irreverent than devout as a bunch. Hearing Denver retell the nativity story while surrounded by them just seems weird. And the proceedings aren’t helped by some uncanny valley, more realistically humanoid “serious muppet” version of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the wisemen. There’s a novelty to the whole sequence, but only because it feels almost bizarre in the context of a Muppet special.

But ultimately, I think that's the issue here. This isn’t a Muppet special with John Denver. As the title portends, it’s a John Denver special with the Muppets. When their sensibilities overtake his, A Christmas Together is as enjoyable as any other Jim Henson outing. But when Denver’s holiday pablum washes over even the puppet brigade’s fun and energy, you’ll be hard-pressed to do anything but settle in for a long winter’s nap.

[8.0/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] What a difference a week makes! Ryan Koh wrote both this episode, a wide-ranging send-up of both The Wire and Roblox, which absolutely sings, and also the prior episode, an indifferent spoof of When Harry Met Sally that perpetually feels off key. The difference is in who showran each episode, and all I can say is Viva Matt Selman!

I’ll admit to being a sucker for The Wire parody. Skinner uttering the famous “You come at the king” line is amusing coming from such a stiff, and the tribute to the HBO show’s opening credits in The Simpsons’ closing credits is tons of fun for longtime fans of both (especially the scene where Bart uses his slingshot to ding the security camera.) But what I like most is the broader pastiche of The Wire’s themes and ideas, with a story of someone sidling up to “the life” out of a sense of dreaming big and convenience, only to fall so deep into the game that they lose themselves in it, and even turn on the one who brought them in. There’s shades of Marlo, Bodie, and others in that, and it’s a strange but effective thing to map onto Seymour and Bart.

But boy is it fun! I love the absurdity of this whole thing centering on Bart taking advantage of a glitch in a Roblox-style game to make real money. (It also has shades of Community using chicken fingers as fodder for a wide-ranging Goodfellas homage.) The idea lends itself to plenty of good humor, from Bart’s byzantine method to turn “bobux” into the real money, to the jabs at the progressive school who become Springfield Elementary’s rivals in the blox-bluffing business, to Bart not liking Roblox but preferring it to playing nothing at all. There’s an inherent silliness in treating something goofy, colorful, and generally low-stakes as the most dramatic, important, quasi-criminal thing in the world, and “Game Done Changed” mines as much humor as they can from the juxtaposition.

Despite all the absurdity at play, I like that Skinner has a goal that's driving him to sell his soul to the spiky-haired devil, just a bit. He wants to turn Springfield Elementary into a performing arts magnet school, so that he no longer has to sweat test scores or sports success, a dream that could get the funding it needs if Skinner turns a blind eye to Bart’s chicanery. It’s a little silly, but I like the musical montage, and it roots this journey in something understandable for Seymour. His becoming a monster after falling deeper and deeper into this gives him a good arc after starting with an “ends justify the means” position, and I like that after everything, it’s Bart who talks him down from going too far and doing something destructive to the progressive school.

If that weren’t enough, the B-story is great here too. Maggie learning to talk via emojis, to where she can express real thoughts to her family in the game is a neat little conceit. What I love the most though, is just how touched and thrilled Homer and Marge are to be able to hear from their youngest child. Maggie expressing that she loves her mom, and even “the donut man”, not to mention the glee it inspired in both her parents, is unbelievably sweet all around.

There’s a touch of darkness, with the family getting obsessed with the game at the expense of their real lives, which I can appreciate as a counterbalance. The story doesn’t really have an ending, more or less just stopping when it stops, which is a bit of a demerit. Nonetheless, I love the wholesomeness of it, and the show makes good use of the Roblox-esque aesthetic.

All-in-all, this is another winner under Selman’s tenure, which shows how much better the show is under his watch, even with the same writer and the same focus on spoofing a venerated pop culture property as a dud that aired just a week prior.

[8.5/10] We haven't heard much about Bob’s mom on the show. The movie is (I think?) the first concentrated reference to her in the series. So even in season 13, it makes her an untapped well of emotion for Bob and the rest of the family. The idea of him looking for her a grave, at a cemetery he hasn’t visited in two decades, so that the kids can “meet” their grandmother, has power that comes with an unspoken part of Bob’s past.

But, you know, it’s also the Belchers screwing around in a cemetery, which is an unexpected recipe for laughs. Tina’s snow pants wedgie, Gene’s granola bar, and Tina’s barely controlled impatience at this delaying their chance to go “snoobing” (snow tubing) are all good for the laughs. Bob struggling with the fact that he can’t seem to find his mom’s grave is good for both comedy and pathos. The humor is mostly one-liners from the kids, but many of them are great. (I was in stitches at Louise’s supposition that Linda had left them to find a family that doesn’t wander around in cemeteries.

The comedy mostly comes from the subplots. As always, a “Teddy home alone” B-story is a winner. Him accidentally eating the meatloaf the Belchers had earmarked for dinner, and frantically trying to make another one to replace is a hoot. It has that sweaty Teddy energy, where he takes a mild thing and blows it out of proportion, but in a sweet and kooky way.

Likewise, I continue to love any Linda-focused subplot, including this one where she’s torn between her desire to support Bob (“support, love, yeah”’) and her abject fear of cemeteries. Her increasingly absurd fears that her soul will get sucked out, or that she’ll be attacked by a “cemetery” bird give John Roberts plenty of chances to emote hilariously.

Her story lands someplace earnest though. I love her little exchange with Bob’s mother’s tombstone. She admits that her fear of cemeteries, loony though it may be, is founded on a concern of losing someone she loves, like Bob did with her. It’s a vulnerable moment, the kind we don’t always get from Linda. And it’s just as sweet to see her telling Lily Belcher that her son turned out to be a wonderful person, a caring husband, and a loving father. It’s a reassurance to herself as much as anyone, and a validation of her love for her partner in life.

The Bob story lands someplace heartening and earnest as well. After wandering lost for hours, Bob gives in and lets the kids slide down a hill at the cemetery, since they’re going to miss closing time at the snow park. And in that moment, there is such joy and glee and happiness in his kids. There’s a purity to it -- a moment without much in the way of jokes or even plot -- but just the three Belcher babies having a blast as the little free spirits they are. It rightfully puts a smile on Bob’s face.

Eventually, he does find his mom’s grave (thanks to Linda -- she’s louder!), and when he has his moment with her, he’s full of guilt over the fact that he hasn’t visited in decades. The implication is that he’s worried he’s a bad son. You feel for Bob, someone who tries hard but always feels like he’s fallen short. Thankfully, Linda is there to pump him up, telling him that his mom would want him to be living his life, that how he spends his time, building up his business, spending time with his wife, and letting his kids be kids on a snowy hill, would make her happy.

It’s a lovely, moving thought, that the way to honor those we’ve lost is to live and share the joy they gave to us in life. Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but over the credits, we see a gauzy view of the Belchers and Teddy sitting at the table together, chowing down on Teddy’s ill-fated meatloaf together. I’d like to think that's meant to be the point of view for Lily, looking in on her son, proud and happy of the family he’s forged and the life that he leads. How Bob’s Burgers can still muster this sort of magic, and humor, in its thirteenth season, remains a feat, and a worthy tribute to the loved ones who enriched the lives of the creative people behind this touching, hilarious show.

[7.1/10] A nice, if not overwhelming addition to the Bob’s Burgers canon. I like the psychological conflict between Tina and Louise, where the older kid is worried about the younger one getting them both into trouble and blowing her chance to hang out with even older kids, while the younger one is mad at the older one for questioning her maturity and not being willing to just have fun. It's a relatable struggle between siblings as they grow older, and I dig that as the foundation here.

The problem is the way they dramatize it. Louise trying to engineer the golf balls to hit just right in order to trigger some yeti mayhem on a mini-golf course is on brand. And Tina trying to be a good kid so as to get to talk to boys is also in keeping with her usual personality. But something about Louise breaking the yeti and Tina having to decide whether to help cover it up, with most of it coming from a lead-up of grumbling and mumbling, doesn’t come off like an on-point illustration of their issues.

But I do like that in the end, each meets the other halfway. After initially demurring, Tina comes up with a smart plan to load the Yeti’s rotor with pencils in order to hold it up long enough for them to get out of dodge. And when it works, it’s Louise who comes clean about what happened rather than let another family take the heat. It’s a nice sign of Tina’s willingness to be game, and Louise’s willingness to be mature that helps the sister see eye to eye. So even if I don’t love the journey, I appreciate the destination.

The shtick with Linda’s desperation to get another hole in one is a lot of fun though. Her determination and excuses and blame for everyone and everything else has a well-observed quality to it. Bob’s passive aggressiveness about it, especially when he just wants to get back home and finish his Thanksgiving dinner, also has plenty of laughs. And the bizarre designs of the mini-golf course are a treat in and of themselves.

Overall, Bob’s Burgers is close to tapping the Turkey Day well dry after so many Thanksgiving installments over the years. But there’s still enough pleasant and enjoyable about this one to push it to “good” territory.

[7.5/10] What do you know? A pretty good Gene episode! I really like the central idea of this one. Gene has a grand idea for what virtual reality is like, to where he’s willing to spend all the money he's saved up on a one-hour experience. Bob wants to support him, but is worried about Gene getting his hopes up over something uncertain and expensive, and then wants to protect him from the bad decision. There’s good, understandable emotions on both sides of the parent/child divide, and both experiences are relatable.

I imagine most of us have been the kid who was super excited about something only to find it roundly disappointing. And I imagine most of us have also been the person trying to cheer up a loved one after something they were looking forward to didn't live up to their expectations. Mixing it with a parental protectiveness and genuine sweetness between Gene and Bob really lifts this one up.

The gags are solid and well-observed too. Clearly, the folks who wrote this episode have been through a disappointing VR experience, because all the trademarks are there. I’m not necessarily the world’s biggest Kyle Mooney fan, but he’s well-cast as an unhelpful slacker of an attendant at the arcade. And Gene’s one liners about the things he’s going to be disappointed in got some great laughs out of me.

The B-story is so-so, but still enjoyable. Tina and Louise trying to build a menu tower that reaches the ceiling is a solid bit of Bob’s Burgers quirkery. There’s just not a ton of laughs in the two of them chastising others for breathing or waving their arms too much while they walk to the bathroom. That said, I like that both of them (and Teddy) are afraid to place the top menu, lest they be responsible for accidentally demolishing what they’ve worked so hard on. And I love Linda being the one to cheer them on, to have come this far and be willing to take chances rather than shrink for the moment. It helps add the slightest bit of emotional heft to a low-stakes subplot.

The same goes for the A-story. I like Bob realizing that it’s okay for Gene to get a little “mud in his muffin.” Bob had a tough childhood, which makes him want to protect his kids from the harshness of the world as much as he can. But recognizing the need to let them make their own mistakes, and appreciate that things won’t always work out, is a good lesson. The fact that eventually, even though Bob can’t get Gene his money back, Gene nevertheless finds ways to have a good time is a nice affirmation of how, contrary to his softer qualities, Gene can handle this type of adversity and make the best of it on his own.

All-in-all, a quality episode of the show with a sweet Bob/Gene story to carry the load, and a smaller B-story at the restaurant that ends someplace wholesome.

[4.8/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] What was that? I like The Simpsons. I like When Harry Met Sally. But mashing them up like this, with such an indifferent, unfunny hand, is the pits.

My biggest gripe is that for a relationship I’m already semi-invested in thanks to the talents of the show in its golden era, I never really rooted for Lisa and Nelson in this one. The show has them just announce their feelings in hamfisted, writerly ways rather than acting like real people with one another. It’s not clear what they really offer to one another emotionally. There’s a few signs that Nelson really listens to Lisa, but they’re few and far between, and for the most part, they seem like a poor match for one another. The ending just riffs son the closing lines from When Harry Met Sally and calls it a day, without ever really earning their reconciliation all those years later.

And the decoy boyfriends/girlfriends are terrible. Rot is barely a character, and grown-up Hubert Wong is a dumb caricature of both Steve Jobs specifically and bad boyfriends in general.

None of this is helped by the fact that the episode is simply devoid of ugh. With a Futurama writer like Ryan Koh as the credited writer, you’d think more of the future-y gags would land. But cheap bits involving drones and plug-in brains are all dead on arrival. Don’t get me started on the terrible narration gags with Homer. With so many episodes being showrun by Matt Selman, having another Al Jean-run episode in the middle of the run is whatever you’d call the opposite of a breath of fresh air.

The only parts I liked were the dream sequence-type interlude with Lisa and Nelson in their mental space date, which is the closest the episode comes to justifying their emotional connection and the most artistic part of the episode, plus the weird but amusing interlude with Abe Lincoln and Ronaadd Reagan as a couple.

Overall, this is easily one of the real lowlights of the season so far, and a poor squandering of a bond between Lisa and Nelson that diehards have found endearing for (gulp) decades now.

[8.0/10] A wronged man forgives the person who committed a grievous sin against him. And I feel weird about that. It is in keeping with the optimistic spirit of Star Trek. Empathy, forgiveness, acceptance, understanding -- these are the key points of the franchise’s moral compass. But it also points us in the direction of leveling all wrongs, letting penitence be a cleanser. And I simply don’t know how to countenance that.

What I do know is that this is the most ethically and emotionally potent of Voyager thus far. Janeway and company encounter the eponymous Dr. Jetrel. He turns out to be the Robert Oppenheimer of the Delta Quadrant, having developed a weapon of mass destruction that decimated Neelix’s homeworld during a war between their peoples. Now he comes warning of its impact on those who sought to rescue the fallen, which includes Neelix himself. A blood disease spurred by the radiation has supposedly debilitated more than one fellowTalaxian, and Dr. Jetrel wants to screen as many as he can in the hopes of finding a cure. Neelix struggles over whether to even speak to, let alone cooperate with, the man who authored his homeworld’s destruction.

The central premise is Voyager’s strongest yet. Dr. Jetrel cuts the visage of a man trying to atone for his role in something terrible by mediating its worst after effects. Neelix is rightly aghast at the presence of a man whose actions left three hundred thousand of his countrymen dead. The question of whether to set aside those old enmities in the name of preventing others from having to suffer for a choice made a decade and a half ago balances the ethical against the emotional, a place where Star Trek has thrived in the past. (See also: Worf’s refusal to donate blood to a Romunlan in TNG’s “The Enemy”, which plays in the same space.)

The setup is elevated to art by a pair of incredible performances. I know most fans aren’t crazy about Neelix, but episodes like “Jetrel” demonstrate why he can sit at my fandom table anytime. The episode deepens the character by casting him as the survivor of a horrifying atrocity that haunts him to this day. More than that, though, Ehtna Phillips gives a tour de force performance. His anger at the mere sight of Jetrel, his despondency over his own perceived failings, his profound sense of loss for all those people gone in an instant, his recollection of the destruction and victims he witnessed; his simmering desire to twist the knife into Jetrel’s psyche to give him a minor hint of what so many others suffered at his hands -- it’s all extraordinary. For as much as Phillips is often called upon to play the clown, this is a reminder that he is up to anything the show might throw at him.

The producers also mash in one of 1990s Star Trek’s great cheat codes and cast James Sloyan as Dr. Jetrel. Sloyan turned in outstanding performance after outstanding performance on each of the major shows from the era. His Romulan defector and time-displaced Alexander Rozhenko in The Next Generation were both stand out guest appearances, and his turn as Odo’s complicated father figure in Deep Space Nine is as good, if not better. Here too, he gives yet another layered performance, conveying Jetrel’s sense of guilt, his self-stabilizing rationalizations, his myopic view of science, and even a certain madness and desperation in his ultimate aims, fueled by the weight of blame he felt even from his own family.

The script here is light on action and heavy with monologues. Neelix and Dr. Jetrel don’t so much converse as they do launch speeches at one another, with a proto-West Wing sense of freighted oratory on weighty topics. In other hands, that could come off stuffy or artificial. But with two performers of this caliber, the material sings, and the emotions pierce.

Those emotions rise and fall with the intricate, personal arguments on both sides. Neelix is understandably aghast to share the room with his people’s butchers, and chastises Dr. Jetrel for not having spoken out or tried to use his position to stop all this. Jetrel has all kinds of deflections and rationalizations: if it wasn’t him, it would have been somebody else; the pursuit of science demanded he continue no matter the consequences; it was his government that dictated how the weapon would be used, not him; and that the Talaxians, including Neelix, have blood on their hands too that they all have to reckon with because of the war.

Those attempts at self-excuse have the ring of truth to them in how real life individuals justify their own parts in terrible things. So too do Neelix’s complicated feelings about whether to cooperate with someone who is, ostensibly, trying to correct a measure of the damage he caused. And so too do the moments where Dr. Jetrel is plainy still haunted by his actions, despite these mental steps taken to assuage his conscience. Balancing the good that paarticipating in such a screening could do, and the personal information Neelix could gain if it reveals he suffers from this fatal malady, versus a desire not ot want to collaborate with someone he views as a monster, or do anything that wouldl hinder Jetrel’s self-torture, is a level of moral and psychoogical complexity that only the best Star Trek installments reach.

Only then, the episode takes a strange turn. Suddenly, late in the day, Neelix reveals to Kes that he was a conscientious objector, or maybe just a coward, and was away from home the day the explosion happened because he was hiding so as not to be called for military service. I don’t necessarily dislike the reveal. It’s an interesting idea to explore. The fact that Neelix’s resentment toward Dr. Ketrel is rooted, at least partly, in his own survivor’s guilt, is a good psychological wrinkle. And anything that makes the dynamic between characters, and the ethical conundrum at play, more complex is generally a good thing in storytelling writ large, especially Star Trek storytelling.

But I don’t love it as a part of this story. The tidbit gets the short shrift, just one scene with Kes and a not-great dream sequence to examine the idea. There’s only forty-five minutes or so to work with here, and uncorking that so late in the game without fully teasing out why Neelix made his choice and how it affects his reaction here, leaves it comparatively threadbare.

The late revelation about Dr. Jetrel works a bit better. It turns out the blood disease screening for Neellix was a ruse, and in fact, he wanted to use Voyager’s transporter to try to reconstitute people lost in the blast. Everyone treats it as a wild idea (even though stranger things happen in Star Trek on a weekly basis), but the reactions serve a purpose. They show that whatever his stoic exterior, dr. Jetrel is as disturbed and aghast at his own actions as he is, that his government denied him the resources and support for this desperate and implausible effort to erase them, and that wanted to use his last dying breaths proving that those felled by the weapon could be revived, even after all these years.

Not only does his plan add an appropriately sci-fi twist to what is more of a personal and political story, but it represents Jetrel’s acknowledgment of his own guilt better than any of the tremendous colloquies in the episode could. He is willing to lie, cheat, and steal, to reach for a solution that seems crazy, because he can’t live with becoming the monster Neelix and so many others think he is, regardless of his claim that he’s “used to it.” The effort comes tantalizingly close, and for a moment, Dr. Jetrel and Neelix are united in their desperate hope for it to come through. But the experiment fails, and it’s all for naught.

Only, maybe it isn’t. The two men reconcile, if only for a moment,. Neelix offers Jetrel his forgiveness moments before the ailing doctor dies. And what makes me uneasy about it is that the episode frames it as something Neelix needed to do to reckon with his own mistakes, that the only reason he’s so hung up on Jetrel’s culpability is that he himself gave into cowardice and so avoided being in the blast that day. The conversation with Kes paints it as a starting point for Neelix to forgive himself, a necessary tonic for his own regrets.

And look, there’s complicated questions around Neelix’s predicament. I don’t mind Voyager exploring them. But there’s an uneasy subtext that Neelix wouldn’t harbor such seething disdain for Dr. Jetrel, that he wouldn’t have the right to, if he hadn't dodged his own military service. The choice to frame the story this way pits their choices -- to run from war and to create a device that killed three hundred thousand people -- as somehow equal. It weakens the story by suggesting that Neelix wouldn’t feel this way, or wouldn’t be justified in feeling this way, if he simply suffered the loss of his family and community in a flash of smoke and fire and, in a way, serves to help excuse Dr. Jetrel.

That doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t know how the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki feels about Dr. Oppenheimer and the scientists of the Manhattan Project. But I can easily imagine them having the same reaction Neelix did to witnessing the face of their pain firsthand, regardless of how or whether they participated in World War II. Diminishing that reaction by tainting it with an implicit criticism of conscientious objection, chalking it up as a key reason why someone might resent the figures behind mass destruction, is storytelling malpractice in my book.

And yet, there’s a more charitable takeaway from “Jetrel.” Regardless of the source of Neelix’s feelings, regardless of whether he should forgive Dr. Jetrel as a means to forgive himself, in that freighted moment in the transporter room when there was a chance to bring someone back from this tragedy, he and Dr. Jetrel truly saw one another.

Neelix recognized the same kind of pain, the same innate desire to somehow undo these grisly events, a bond between perpetrator and survivor in the shared recognition that this was a grave wrong that they’d give anything to wash away. There is grand power in granting absolution to someone genuinely remorseful, who feels what you feel about the wrong they’ve committed. It takes grace. It takes courage. It takes the sort of empathy and acceptance that are hard to muster in the shadow of such unfathomable loss. It’s that sort of strength, from a man with every right to hate who instead chooses to understand and absolve, that I’d like to remember from Neelix, and “Jetrel”.

[6.0/10] What a bizarre, fever dream of a holiday special this is. The Christmas Toy finishes better than it starts, with a heartwarming dose of that trademark Jim Henson sap, and the special’s best song. But along the way, it is a cavalcade of unlikable characters, strange dynamics, and downright dark choices.

Let’s start with the most glaring problem in this one. Rugby the Tiger is unlikable for 85% of the Special. He’s conceited and thinks he’s better than the rest of the toys. He’s ungrateful when scads of his fellow playthings risk their necks to save him. And his attitude is just off-putting, where he’s rude to everyone who tries to help him and feels entitled to be the fabled “Christmas Toy” for the rest of his days.

I get that for a transformation story to mean something, you have to have the character start some place they can grow from. But Rugby is like this for most of the runtime, so even if you like where he ends up, you have to spend *a lot*of time with an unpleasant and unrepentant protagonist for the bulk of the special. And more than that, Rugby doesn’t do much to earn his redemption or have a change of heart, with his empathizing with Apple, the doll he replaced, and expressing his appreciation for Mew, the cat toy he’s been so rude to, coming very late in the day.

That's the other thing, Rugby, like pretty much all the other toys, is bigoted against poor Mew for being a cat toy, and it’s really jarring. Again, characters need something to grow from, so while it would be in keeping with Rugby’s repugnant personality for him to hold that prejudice only to let go of it later, what’s striking is how *all*of the toys treat Mew poorly and say that he smells on account of him not being a “people toy”. Even the characters we’re supposed to like!

Which is funny, because Mew is the character I like most of all. He’s put-upon, but earnest; frightened but courageous, and underappreciated but determined to do good. He’s a better friend than Rugby deserves, something even the arrogant tiger toy acknowledges eventually. Maybe the racism he’s forced to suffer serves to make him more sympathetic. Whatever the reason, the noble little mouse is a keeper.

The other player here worth hanging onto is Apple, the baby doll who was discarded in favor of Rugby the Xmas before. Again, she’s treated pretty shabbily by our protagonist, but still risks her life to help him out, because she knows how hard it is to be the former favorite toy discarded for the flavor of the month, and wants to help Rugby cope with the same epiphany, no matter how rude he is to her. Once more, it’s better than the tiger plush deserves, but makes Apple one of the few characters here worth rooting for.

All of that said, it can’t go unremarked upon how much A Christmas Story presages Toy Story, despite the two being separated by almost a decade. The similarities play out in the big stuff. This is, after all, a tale about a favored classic toy who feels threatened when a new space-themed figure arrives to blow up his spot. It centers on toys who hang around and do their own thing when the humans aren't around, and share a certain amount of anxiety that arises when it’s time for the kids of the family to get new presents. It even has the “play dead” and “avoid detection” elements as they evade the notice of their human counterparts.

But it also plays out in the little stuff. The fact that there’s a Barbie-style doll is perhaps no shock given the toy’s reality popularity. It’s strange, however, when she dons a full-blown Bo Peep outfit. While he’s not a villain, the presence of an old bear who hobbles around with a cane is the forerunner to Lotso in Toy Story 3. And god help us all, Apple’s sorrowful, musical recollection of when she was supplanted as the little girl’s preferred plaything is the earlier echo of the Jesse the Cowgirl’s famed “When She Loved Me” sequence.

I would not, by any means, go so far as to accuse the Pixar team of plagiarism. These are traditional enough tropes to be playing with across multiple eras of all-ages stories. But the commonalities between the two works are downright eerie.

That goes down to the fact that both get surprisingly dark, albeit in different ways. I gotta tell you, I balked when I realized that the playthings in The Christmas Toy effectively die if they’re spotted by humans out of place. At one point in the special, a dopey clown gets caught unawares and collapses, while the film time lapses his limp body. He’s then carted away and dumped into a makeshift mass grave for the toys who’ve suffered the same fate. Holy shit, folks.

I get that the special needs to establish stakes for what our heroes are risking by sneaking off to the living room to try to disrupt/save Xmas. And I get that, through the mysteries of a loving song at the end of the piece, all of the seemingly departed toys are revived and get to join the merriment. But good lord, the whole thing takes a dark turn rather quickly, with the other toys wringing their hands over the misadventures of their living room-exploring brethren, while the dead bodies of their departed friends lay in the foreground. If you or a loved one has been traumatized by the dead playthings in The Christmas Toy, you may be entitled to compensation.

Meanwhile, the sheer craft of the piece is a mixed bag. The songs are forgettable and trite for the most part, removing one of the prime boons of muppet productions. The exception is the closing “Old Friends, New Friends” song which, while manipulative, still warms even the coldest of critics’ hearts. What can I say? Credit where it’s due.

The puppets themselves, though, are wildly hit or miss. Mew has an endearingly scraggly look to him, and the creativity on display in how Henson and company bring a whole playroom’s worth of toys to life cannot be denied. But the glass eyes of Rugby, the expressionless mouth of Apple, and the creepy visage of Meteora in particular, all veer into the uncanny valley in a way felt-founded presentations usually avoid.

The cinematherapy isn’t bad though! The showpiece scene in The Christmas Toy comes when Rugby ventures out to pay his respects to Mew, who’s been spotted and thus frozen like the redshirt clown before him. His admission that he was not appreciative enough or worthy of Mew’s friendship is the most humility the otherwise self-centered plush shows. His lament of his departed brother in arms has more pathos than the rest of the special combined. And director Eric Till’s ambition to follow the stuffed tiger, circling around Mew’s death bed in synchronous orbit with Rugby himself, adds a striking quality to one toy’s lament for another. It’s not the only ambitious camera move in the piece, and it's the artistic element of the special that comes off the best.

You could reach the end of this puppet fest and think to yourself, “Hey, that wasn’t so bad.” It ends on a cheery note, with all the toys revived and reunited, and even a benediction from the little girl herself declaring that she loves all her toys. Them joining with none other than Kermit to sing the special’s best song together tugs the heartstrings. But to credit such sap completely is to ignore the strange waking nightmare, led by a largely-contemptible protagonist, that is The Christmas Toy. Maybe leave this one in the toybox.

(As an aside, as the special’s strange plot gradually unfolded, and Apple the doll revealed that the little girl declares a new favorite toy every Xmas, I was half-expecting the puppet crew to decide that their owner was a fickle master and choose to revolt and/or escape rather than be subject to her whims for yet another holiday season. But I guess that would be a bridge too far for even this bizarre yuletide tale.)

[7.6/10] A lot of fans don’t like Ferengi episodes, and I get why. If you’re into a show like Deep Space Nine for the intricate political dynamics, the ominous Dominion threat, and sci-fi conundrums of the week, the lobe-heavy detours don’t have much to offer you. The Ferengi tend to be played for laughs, with fairly absurd societal norms, and outings that tend to be lighter and sillier in tone.

But I’ve always enjoyed them. Some of that comes down to Quark. Armin Shimmerman is one of the show’s most talented performers, which is saying something. He’s able to inject life and layers to a character who, in other hands, could come off like an unlikable cartoon character, and the writers recognize that and play to his strengths.

Much of it, though, comes down to the fact that the Ferengi are often a means for Star Trek to explore sexism. With the utopian vision of the Federation, there’s rarely an opportunity to examine the same in more heavily Starfleet-focused shows. (Give or take unloved misfires like “Turnabout Intruder” from The Original Series and “Angel One” from The Next Generation.) But with the Ferengi’s retrograde society, more than a few women fighting to sever their legal and cultural anchors, and even Quark himself slowly but surely becoming more enlightened, there’s a ton of good, meaningful material there. (Even if there’s some pain to come for DS9 fans on that front.)

So after showing some respect for women in his Yentl-like situation and his Casablanca-like situation, “Family Business” sees the writers giving Quark the most challenging representative of feminism he’s ever faced -- his mother.

I like that move, because true to the title, it makes this episode as much about family as it is about breaking social mores. There’s a practical challenge here, as Quark’s mother, Ishka is caught earning profits while female, a grave crime on the Ferengi homeworld. Quark has to return home to get her to cease and confess, lest the suitably imposing and venal Liquidator Brunt (Jeffrey Combs, returning to the show already, portending his Trek devotion to come) ruin Quark’s business and the family’s reputation. As in almost all good DS9 episodes, there’s something at stake here for everyone involved.

There’s also a greater cause to be considered. Like Pel before her, Ishka recognizes that whatever her gender, she has the lobes for business. Hell, she has better sense for prompt profit procurement than most of her male counterparts. So why shouldn’t she be able to invest her own money? Why shouldn’t she be able to wear clothes in her own home? Why shouldn’t she be able to directly address a male stranger who’s strolled into her residence? The things standing in the way are law and tradition, but if you recognize both are founded on archaic stupidity, why not buck the system and stand up for yourself?

And yet, as much as “Family Business” is an episode about evading corrupt functionaries and standing up for women’s rights, it’s also about a family. It’s about Quark’s longstanding grievances with his mother’s eccentricities, with his gauzy view of his father, with the way his brother was raised and, in his view, coddled. Beyond the threats to Quark’s business and the socially conscious stands, the story is rooted in Quark reconciling his view of his mother and, by extension, himself. The familial element elevates this one from an academic interrogation of the issues to a personal story of a family with a recognizable dynamic truly seeing and accepting one another, maybe for the first time.

The B-story isn’t quite so grandiose. Commander Sisko makes good on his promise to Jake, and agrees to meet the freighter captain his son’s so anxious for him to connect with. This subplot is the start of great things, but pretty slight and humble in its beginnings. The bit with everyone on the station gossiping and tittering about Benjamin making contact with his son’s fix-up is mildly cute, but doesn’t have much in the way of substance or laughs.

Even the interactions between Commander Sisko and Captain Yates are a little underwhelming. I’m a fan of Kasidy, and an even bigger fan of Penny Johnson Jerald as a performer. But their little meetcute in the cargo bay doesn’t have much of a spark to it. The chemistry isn’t quite there in either their shipside exchanges or their little coffee date, with the back-and-forth seeming forced and labored. But the fact that they bond over a love of some arcane game called baseball, and both come out of their shells a little bit is a cute place to begin things, even if it’s not quite as auspicious a start as something so significant deserves.

It’s certainly not as auspicious as the goings on in Quark’s and Rom’s family home. In truth, there is a bit of a tension between how cartoonishly the Ferengi are typically portrayed, and the seriousness with which showrunner-in-the-wings Ira Steven Behr and co-writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe want the audience to take this. The leaving of a tip when entering any building, the gags about walking up forty flights of stairs rather than paying for an elevator, the goofy and awkward interactions between Rom and his “Moogie” all cut against the gravity of the situation.

And yet, for all the silliness, deep down, “Family Business” is a kitchen sink drama about parents and children resolving their long-held grievances with one another and reconciling over the past. As goofy as the Ferengi can be, there’s something eminently recognizable about this dynamic. Ishka doesn’t want to be condescended to by her own son or lectured with circular arguments about why her behavior is wrong. Quark feels his brother was favored and his father was held back by his mom’s bolder actions. Rom wants to make peace and relish in the chance to return to his place of childhood happiness. The dearly departed patriarch, and who he was and wasn’t, looms large over the disagreements of the day.

In short, it feels real, even as it feels exaggerated. Ishka’s complaints are legitimate. Quark’s resistance is rooted in his own insecurities about following in his father’s failures, and unwillingness to question the validity of a system he’s devoted his life to. Rom sees the best in both of them, and is surprisingly pragmatic in telling them both why they need to find a compromise here for the good of everyone. The psychological depth in all of this buttresses any sense of caricature.

That's especially true in the moving scene where Ishka and Quark have a heart-to-heart. Rom is willing to admit that his father was simply bad in business, and Ishka affirms it. But she also says that Rom is like his father, someone who can participate in the rat race but doesn’t understand enough to win it. And yet, he values family, his children, being a partner, in a way that made her love him more than any acumen with latinum could. These are qualities that Rom carries on, that show Ferengi society’s directive to judge everyone on how much money they can make leaves behind people who have other qualities, no less valuable or worthwhile, that go ignored.

And the sexism behind those same principles threatens to leave behind people like Ishka, who have twice the lobes but none of the autonomy. I love that what forges an understanding between them is the simple realization that Rom may take after his father, but Quark takes after Ishka. She doesn’t want to disrupt Quark’s business, but she wants to use the same aptitude for it she gifted him on her own behalf, to use the skills she has to provide for herself and prove that she’s not limited to what her husband achieved. It’s something Quark can understand, because it’s the same thing he wants. And there is detente, understanding, and yes even love, that helps reconcile two people who’ve been estranged for twenty years.

So Ishka plays along. Quark’s bar can stay open. And with Rom’s complicity, Ishka can hide her investments more diligently from the Ferengi investigators and even Quark himself. But a family is repaired, however unusual or eccentric the norms of that family seem to human sensibilities.

That's what draws me to these Ferengi outings. They are alien in their values and rituals in a way few Star Trek species are. But they’re also an opportunity to explore that, to show that there’s layers and differences and new ideas even in a society that prizes profit above all else. There are people fighting for their rights, if only in their own homes. And there are parents and children who come to see each other a little clearer, make peace with the past, and become, in their own slanted way, a real family again.