01x07 - Doodad: 7.8/10 (Impressive)
“Doodad,” the next-to-last episode, was impressive, despite its slight flaws. At last, we have an explanation for what happened to the data. As it turns out, Aelita intended to transfer the information to Burton’s haptics via a data download, but with Flynn piloting the peripheral, the data instead transformed into DNA and embedded itself within Flynn. That’s hardly the most intelligent idea the creators could have come up with, but I can buy into it. My other concerns were also addressed, particularly the lack of world-building. We were given some background on the stub and a further glimpse into the power dynamics of the “future” society.
Tommy isn’t a bystander anymore; he’s taken the initiative, and the road ahead for him seems exciting. I worry, though, that his decision not to inspect the dead corpse may come back to haunt him. It looks like some of the writing in this episode was a bit overblown, like when Bob slit his arm near a major artery to create a distraction, knowing full well that he’s battling a more than-capable guy. It felt forced and without any sort of insight. Wilf’s character has been slowly written off to being completely inconsequential, and it would be a pity if the authors didn’t find a way to keep him involved in the story, as both the role and the actor’s performance are rather solid. Connor’s journey is great, and his future in the Peripheral promises to be exciting; this, coupled with his developing “relationship” with Beatrice, he’ll likely come to play a significant role down the line.
I find the show’s premise intriguing, but so far, I feel like “The Peripheral” hasn’t been able to entirely do it justice. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t say whether or not it’s better, but I can say that “The Peripheral” has promise; all that’s needed is satisfactory execution. Ultimately, it was a good episode, and the season has been good thus far. I’m crossing my fingers that they can pull off the season finale and have the kinks ironed out for the next season.
What an absolute perfect ending, and I say this while admitting this ending didn't go the way I expected it to. Like honestly, how many of us actually thought Picard was going to survive this episode? I didn't, but I'm damn sure glad he did, even if we never see any of these TNG characters ever again, which I honestly doubt we won't given the ending. This was an emotional final send off however for this crew that honored and respected each of them throughout the season, every single one of them got their grand moment to shine, Riker with his asteroid, Geordi with his ship, Worf with his rescue, Crusher with her contraction discovery, Data defeated Lore, Troi rescued them in the end with her love for Riker, and Picard saved his son. And how about that borg queen, holy absolute hell was she horrifying looking or what? Anyway, what a beautiful ending that they all deserved, and one last poker game for the sake of it all. Am I excited about the future with Q showing up to tease the next series with the Enterprise G? Sure, but not as happy as I am that the old timers I grew up with got their swan song and somehow, someway, all survived. And if you didn't burst into tears when Riker and Worf decided to stay back to find Picard, basically sealing their death, then damn it I don't know what will satisfy you in life. Was this show perfect? Fuck no. Was the 3rd season without flaws? Bahaha, no! But if you can't appreciate what this really was meant to be here, I don't judge you, I just feel sad you couldn't feel the raw enjoyment the rest of us felt, because this was fucking awesome.
[7.6/10] A good chunk of “Scavengers” is just good clean fun (so to speak). Burnham and Georgiou’s jaunt to the Orion junkyard/stronghold to rescue Book feels like a good spin on the Movie Trek vibe that Discovery often goes for.
There’s interesting personal dynamics with Michael’s barely-sublimated feelings for Book and her testy but maternal relationship with Georgiou. There’s a good overarching task, not just to rescue Book from Orion slavery, but to retrieve a black box that may help solve the mystery of The Burn. And there’s the tension that comes from Burnham once again going rogue, while she and Geogiou have to fool the Orion overseer long enough to escape with their prize, their friend, and their lives.
That’s a damn good setup. There’s nothing very deep to it, but it’s fun to see Mirror Georgiou go full baddie here, selling the ruse to the Orion slaver and seeming cunning and combative, which is Michelle Yeoh’s most entertaining mode on this show. At the same time, we get just enough of a flavor of life in this slavery-ridden salvage yard to understand the dangers Book is facing and care about the other poor souls trapped there with him.
It’s ultimately a good old fashioned Star Trek caper. There’s ruses, secret communications, a group of good people in need, and a MacGuffin that needs retrieving. There’s the ingredients at play to make it interesting: tension, romance, vulnerability, a ruse, and a righteous cause. Things go wrong and go right at a good cadence, and there’s even amusing references to canon like Burnham mentioning a search for “self-sealing stem bolts.”
Things are more mixed for the scenes on the Discovery. “Scavengers” seems to follow a familiar Star Trek structure, with the fireworks happening on the planet of the week, while the rest of the crew deals with other sorts of crises on personal issues in the meantime. It helps pepper an episode with different kinds of scenes and mix tension and relief for variety’s sake. The problem is that Burnham’s rescue/heist wraps up around the two-thirds mark, and the rest of the episode is devoted to on-the-nose conversations between crew members that turn subtext into text.
Some of those moments are good! Most of them involve Saru! I’m particularly fond of his scene with Tilly, a pairing that’s proved remarkably durable. There’s something meaningful about Tilly coming clean about Burnham going off against orders rather than protecting her friend, not just because it’s the duty of a Starfleet officer to report such things, but because she’s sympathetic toward Saru for the position that Michael’s putting him in. Tilly sees the bigger picture here, and her walking the line between loyalties to two different friends, not to mention her job, marks this as a choice with complexity.
(Not for nothing, her scene with Grudge the cat is pretty darn adorable to boot, and feels true to just about any cat owner like yours truly.)
Similarly, I like the scene with Burnham, Saru, and Admiral Vance. I still don’t fully trust Admiral Vance (maybe it’s just because he’s a high-ranking Starfleet officer, so he’s inherently untrustworthy in this franchise), but he’s very fair albeit plainly angry at both of the Discovery’s senior officers. He gripes at Saru for not raising the possibility of Burnham’s mission with him beforehand, and he gripes at Michael for putting others at risk to call her own shot, which reflects a certain amount of selfishness. And yet, he leaves discipline as an internal matter for the Discovery, evincing a certain “tough but fair quality.”
The follow-up, which features Saru demoting Burnham, lays things on a little thick in terms of the dialogue, but it’s also a strong choice. It shows that there’s a cost to Burnham’s choice to color outside the lines, both personally and professionally. As to the latter, she loses her position as First Officer, which retroactively adds weight to what she gave up to save Book and pursue the mystery of The Burn. As to the former, she not only disappoints a friend in Saru, but violates his trust, which has just as potent emotional consequences. Again, this show veers more toward making such moments melodramatic rather than making them feel real, but the emotional calculus of it works.
The same problem afflicts the budding friendship between Stamets and Adira. I like the idea of the two of them bonding not only of a shared love of science and Adira’s aptitude for fixes that make Stamets’s life easier when utilizing the spore drive, but over having lost someone they love who’s nevertheless still with them. The two performers have a good chemistry, and the mentoring relationship is a good one.
But the show, once again, gilds the lily. Having Gray explicitly state that he likes Stamets and thinks he could be a good friend, and also having Dr. Culber explain for any audience member too daft to get it why Stamets and Adira have losses in common, just goes too far. The scenes feel unnatural and hurt, rather than help, a connection between Adira and Stamets that works better with friendly chemistry than it does blunt exposition.
The rest of the business on the ship mostly involves marveling at the new 32nd century upgrades the crew can now enjoy. That means a heap of refits with programmable matter, combages that project info via holographic inputs, automatically receptive new controls throughout the ship, and even separated nacelles. That leads to some stilted attempts at comedy with Linus the Saurian showing up at inconvenient times due to personal transporter malfunctions, but it’s a solid way to show our heroes acclimating to and wow-ing over the technological advances of the future.
If there’s a theme to all of this, it’s the idea of people admitting things to one another, showing vulnerability and emotional honesty in the hopes that it will be rewarded by those close to them. We see it in Burnham sniffing out that Georgiou is suffering from some sort of PTSD-induced panic attacks over the loss of someone close to her (I think she says, son?). We see it in emotional exchanges between Burnham and Saru or Stamets and Adira. And, of course, we see it when the show pulls the trigger on romance between Burnham and Book, a relationship I’m not fully on board with, but am at least glad to see the series stop pussyfooting around on.
Still, the best part “Scavengers” is the escapade Burnham, Georgiou, and Book have in the Orion slaver’s scrapyard. The confluence of double identities, entangled affections, plot-relevant artifacts, and beleaguered freedom fighters feels like classic Trek. All the pieces are there, and season 3 of Discovery has been an improvement so far, I just keep waiting for the show to put it all together.
[7.3/10] We’ve reached the point in the MCU where even superhero story fans like me know little about the champions who take center stage in the various new movies and shows. I know Moonlight the faintest little bit from, of all things, Marvel’s recent Spider-Man cartoon, but otherwise he’s a big blindspot for yours truly. It’s interesting walking into one of these shows almost completely blind for the first time.
And if I didn’t know this was a superhero show, I’d suspect it was a horror movie or psychological thriller. Some of what “Dissociation” presents is fairly generic. There’s a mysterious villain type, and a put upon everyman, and some cryptic evil lurking just beyond the frame. But there’s also something distinctive about the setup.
I like the “lost time” conceit. Steven blanking out in key moments, finding he’s been gone for days, made dates he doesn’t remember, finding his jaw dislocated, is creepy in a cool way. Likewise, while it seems like an easy way to save on action choreography, I also appreciate the notion of him blacking out in the midst of moments where he needs to be a badass, waking back up to find himself in impossible situations. It’s an odd comparison, I’ll admit, but there’s a North by Northwest quality to it of an ordinary guy caught in an extraordinary situation.
Likewise, I appreciate the hints we get of Marc steadily putting his head above water to assume control. The recurring motif of mirrors and reflections that are just a touch off adds to the creep factor of the piece. And hearing the voice of the (presumably) Egyptian god speaking to Steven from the beyond is both unnerving and fun.
I take it as a pretty unavoidable part of the character, but the Egyptology bent is a little overblown. There’s a cool cultural angle there, but for the most part, the show hits some key bits of iconography and calls it a day. It is cool to see the protagonist running around the British museum. The collection of antiquity setting adds a certain flavor to the proceedings.
That said, the CGI here is a bit rough. While the image of the Egyptian god whose scepter just so happens to match Moon Knight’s symbol works well enough in brief glimpses, the more extended visions we get of demon hounds and the like feel too artificial and move without the right sort of weight. Likewise, when we finally see Moon Knight in action, the design and presentation is a little too Snyder-esque for my tastes, but I’ll have to see more of it in action.
All that said, I appreciate how much of this rests on Oscar Isaac’s considerable talents in the early going. Steven is an unusual character for him, more put-upon, less confident, more of a nebbish than I’ve ever seen the actor take on. Marc seems more in his usual wheelhouse, but it’s fun to see Isaac inhabit a role that feels real and recognizable, but outside of his usual on-screen persona.
Ethan Hawke as the judgy servant of a bad god didn’t do much for me in terms of how the character’s written, but Hawke does a solid job as a performer. And you can’t go wrong with F. Murray Abraham as the voice inside your main character’s head.
To that end, the first episode of Moon Knight feels a little like past Marvel flicks (albeit ones made by Sony), with analogues to Eddie Brock in Venom and Norman Osborn in the 2002 Spider-Man movie. The internal dialogue, sense of some other force taking over, and sign of something amiss the protagonist can’t quite put his finger on abides. There’s room to distinguish, particularly since Steven is a lot less self-possessed than either of those other two characters, but longtime cape fans will recognize the archetype.
Overall, this one has potential, particularly given the talent involved and the eeriness of the premise. But in this opening salvo at least, the show is perfectly solid but doesn’t do much to wow you as it sets the table for the season to come.
01x08 - The Creation of a Thousand Forests: 7.2/10 (Good, It Gets the Job Done, Slightly Flawed)
I had high expectations for “The Peripheral” after the two-episode series premiere, and although it has undoubtedly had its moments, overall, it has been a little disappointing.
The season finale, “The Creation of a Thousand Forests,” cleverly titled drawing parallels between tree branches and the various branches of realities that are shown to us, had a lot resting on it. In a complex science fiction show, it’s easy for a poor finale to undermine the entire storyline. Even if, from a narrative perspective, I believe the season finale concluded where it should have, the episode felt rushed and occasionally muddled. It’s unfortunate that the season’s sluggish pacing as a whole leads to a finale that needs to hurry along, sacrificing the necessary breathing room for the tale it’s attempting to tell.
This isn’t necessarily a knock on the show, but the first season only gave a very shallow explanation of what is actually going on, so it can be hard to follow unless you pay close attention. Even though it was great to see all the Sci-Fi elements come together in the end, I couldn’t help but feel like the show wasted time on unimportant subplots and didn’t invest enough in its characters. Therefore, even pivotal points in the story didn’t have the impact they should have.
Now that the foundation has been laid, hopefully, next season will make up for this one’s shortcomings. The show’s premise has been intriguing, and the ideas it explores feel substantial, even if it occasionally falters in execution. I’ll definitely be tuning in next season, but unless you share my enthusiasm for sophisticated Sci-Fi television, I’ll hold off on any recommendations, at least for the time being.
