LeftHandedGuitarist

Another strong offering from Jonathon Frakes, however this one is not entirely without its flaws. It shines in the character interactions but seems to stumble over some of the plot points.

• The whole Airiam story would have been far stronger if we had actually gotten to know her previously to this. I was delighted that we were finally given answers as to just what she is, so it seems an odd move to remove her now. I particularly liked the view of her memories just hanging out with Detmer and the other bridge crew. WE NEED MORE BRIDGE CREW. They are often more interesting than the main cast.
• Speaking of Airiam, her end didn't make much sense; she's wearing an EVA suit! Why disable the helmet? Why not just get blown out into space and them beamed into Discovery's brig until they can sort out what's going on with her?
• The Spock/Burnham stuff was electric here. Their discussion in her quarters was quite magnificent. His accusations towards her brought up things that viewers themselves have been voicing in the way her character works. It highlighted just how much work her character does need to fit in as a more natural crew member (the galaxy does seem to revolve around Michael Burnham), and I hope this is the beginning of it.
• The Spock/Stamets scene was surprisingly compelling too. We see a gentler side of Spock, in contrast to the aggressive side he showed with Michael.
• I noticed that Michael made no move to help Nhan, who was suffocating to death in the room with her.
• Kadis-kot!
• The evasive flight through the minefield didn't seem to be having any of the effects the crew seemed to think it was.
• Major Star Trek VI vibes when they arrive on the Section 31 HQ.
• Airam shutting down was straight out of Terminator 2. Great stuff!
• "Hit it." Pike needs his own show.

EDIT: I changed my mind. Looking back, I liked this show more than I say I did. The cast are fun and likeable, even if I never fell in love with their characters.

Hey, everyone, I made it! I got through my least favourite Star Trek show for the first time after numerous attempts. And I have to say, I didn't completely hate the journey.

But, this is how it ends? That's it? What a thoroughly disappointing way to finish things. The finale introduces some random new plot elements that really don't work and just come out of nowhere (Tuvok's disease and the Chakotay/Seven relationship - which did have some hints but they were completely from Seven's imagination, so this feels jarring), and worst of all we get no proper resolution to so many things.

Voyager arrives back home and there's zero emotional payoff; we don't get to see their welcome back or any reunions with family and friends. Tom's father is on the screen when they make it back and doesn't acknowledge his son sitting right there. What's going to happen to the Maquis crew members now? B'Elanna gives birth but we don't get introduced to the baby or even find out what they name her. Seven asks to have the Doctor perform the procedure on her which will "unlock" her ability to feel the full range of emotions, but we don't even know if he actually does that. In just the previous episode, the Doctor declared his love for Seven but that's not addressed at all.

Instead, the final episode decides to spend its time on another dull Borg story that feels like it lacks any impact. Voyager has defeated these guys so many times now that it feels pointless for them to keep encountering them (and this time they have convenient future tech). Yes, it's nice to have Alice Krige reprise her role as the Borg Queen, but the episode doesn't actually do anything interesting with her. The entire bullheaded mission of future Admiral Janeway is dubious at best and depicts her as extremely selfish.

The entire show was a missed opportunity to do something interesting, and it chose to stay as safe as possible all the way through. Any time the series did do something good, it was forgotten about and not mentioned again (remember when Seven's nanites were discovered to be a cure for death? Sure would have been useful to do that again. Remember the previous episode when the Delta Flyer's communications were destroyed so Janeway transmitted a message through the deflector? Why hasn't that been used in the uncountable times communications were down?).

The show had some really good characters, though. The Doctor was the standout by a long way and the introduction of Seven was a good move. Captain Janeway is inconsistent in her actions and motives, but Kate Mulgrew was never less than fantastic in the role. I just wish everyone had some evolution across the show. Harry, Tom, Tuvok, Neelix, Chakotay: they really never changed their personalities (and this even applies to the Doctor and Seven). There's an argument that everyone became a better person, but I say that nothing about them actually evolved. The fact remains that I just don't care about characters like Tuvok or Chakotay, because they never felt like real people.

Still, it is an easy and entertaining watch and in the end it is Star Trek and delivers a lot of the storytelling and universe that makes me feel cosy. I just probably won't watch it again (hmm... maybe if it's given an HD upgrade and released on blu-ray). I know the show has a lot of fans and if you like it then that's great, but I don't think I'll ever quite understand why.

Ah, Voyager.

I set myself a task of watching through the Star Trek franchise in chronological order, using the Star Trek Chronology Project as a guide. Since there is so much of it, I figured I would reach a point where I would struggle. So far, so good, but now I have to begin Star Trek: Voyager and from the off I'm feeling despondent.

I just don't like this show. It had a great concept - a Starfleet vessel lost on the other side of the galaxy, trying to get home - but was consistently a let down in every way. The potential was squandered at every opportunity, the writing always weak (especially compared to the incredible stuff happening on DS9 at the same time) and the characters incredibly bland. There was no sense of continuity or struggle. Do I even need to mention the heavy use of the reset button at the end of each episode?

I've never been able to get all the way through it before. When it was originally airing I stayed with it up until season 4 or maybe 5, then lost interest. I tuned in for the finale and don't remember much about it other than being underwhelmed. But I'm going to give it another chance here and see if I can make it all the way through.

'Caretaker' is a pretty weak beginning to the series. It sets up the initial concept and immediately makes everything feel very safe and ordered. Fortunately, it does have a pretty good cast but many of these good actors are given terrible characters to play. Captain Janeway is good, embodying many of the noble traits we'd expect of someone in charge and having a likeable command style. The holographic doctor is fun from the first moment we meet him. That's pretty much where the good stuff ends.

The characters we meet here are, more or less, exactly the same people they are going to be at the end of the show. Harry Kim will forever feel like an inexperienced kid on his first mission, Paris will attempt to be a cocky bad boy and never pull it off, Tuvok is a Vulcan and that's it, and Chakotay is pretty much the blandest man you'll ever meet. Torres has a bit of spark in her and will hopefully make her mark, but then there's Neelix who will remain the most annoying character ever to grace Star Trek. I guess Kes is there, too.

From the moment the crew are transported to the awful "farm" sequence on board the array, the episode just begins to fall flat and sit comfortably among the most basic of Star Trek tropes. All of the danger is manufactured and the aliens have uninspired designs. The Ocampa especially suck. There's a requisite scene where a rickety staircase begins to collapse. It's wrong to just blame everyone working on the show for these problems, by this point the franchise had done so much and it was following immediately on the heels of TNG, and they wanted to draw in fans of that series and let them feel some sense of familiarity. By the end of the episode we get a completely unbelievable situation as the renegade Maquis terrorists join the Starfleet crew, put on the uniforms and live happily together. Janeway makes Chakotay the bloody first officer... it's insane.

I read a fantastic idea online somewhere: the first season of this should have been about the original Voyager crew hunting down Chakotay and his Maquis crew. We would have gotten to know him as a villain and formed an attachment to everyone. Then, towards the end of the season, the Voyager crew who died here are killed and THEN Chakotay et al are forced through circumstances to join together. How much better, and so much more powerful, would that have been?

I will say one thing, though: the show has a gorgeous title sequence and theme tune.

Now, this is classic Star Trek! Despite a few problems, this is a delight to watch from start to finish and is Discovery's first foray into the tried-and-tested 'bottle show'. These episodes often end up being my favourites, we are given a situation and really get to dive into it. They often reveal a lot about our characters and usually have fun doing it. Great examples of this include 'Civil Defense' (DS9), 'Disaster' (TNG), 'Explorers' (DS9) and of course the other classic Trek time-loop show, 'Cause and Effect' (TNG).

If I had any doubts about Rainn Wilson's portrayal of Harry Mudd, this episode easily washed them away. He's a lot of fun and full of energy, as well as managing to come off as a fairly complex person. It was interesting the way he was quite cruel to the crew of the Discovery, and then shrivels up at the sight of Stella and her father. I think there was a missed opportunity to make her a bit more like the shrew seen in The Original Series, but it's important to remember that what we saw there was Mudd's own vision of her rather than the actual person. The various deaths were quite mean spirited, despite being somewhat offset due to the fact that they weren't permanent A couple were also pretty funny, although I never quite got the impression that those little purple balls caused an "agonising" death.

Mostly, I think I enjoyed that this episode showed us the characters in more relaxed and natural states. Captain Lorca's apathy at finding a space whale is quite funny and even endearing, as he tells his crew to just get on with it (loved that he's finally sitting in the chair, too). Tilly continues to just delight me, and drunk Tilly is even better. It seems to me that she's hiding a lot of confidence under a socially awkward front. Stamets possibly emerged as the best part for me, this new happy version of him is charming and fun to spend time with (again, PLEASE let us get back to that mirror image thing from a couple of episodes ago).

The Burnham/Tyler pairing is maybe not my favourite thing. I don't feel a huge amount of chemistry between them, but then again Michael's standoffish nature means that she doesn't really have chemistry with anybody. I think it's more down to me not really clicking with the character of Tyler, as I talked about in my review for the previous episode. He feels like he's fit in too easily and his personality is a bare minimum.

Where the episode could have done a slightly better job is with the various time loop escapades. The movement through them became a bit too quick, and we are supposed to understand that Stamets explains things to Burnham who explains things to Tyler who explains things to Lorca, etc. every time, and everyone just accepts what they're being told and gets to action? That took me out of things a bit, and I would have been perfectly happy to have longer scenes that established things better. It's also hard to ignore the fact that the episode should have been all from Stamet's point-of-view, as he's the one dealing with it all.

Overall though, damn this was fantastic. The use of the introductory log and mostly self-contained nature of the episode made this feel so much like it was a part of the franchise I love. Mostly, though, it let us get a grip on these new characters and let them just get on with things as opposed to being dragged along by plot mechanics.

A joy of an episode to watch despite not really being all that special. Maybe it's just because season 7 is so uninspired that this one really manages to stand out. Interesting to note, though, that plot-wise very little actually happens here - there's no reason behind Worf's dimension-jumping other than an accident, so we don't get any alien conspiracy or vendetta against him. The solution to the problem is also incredibly straight forward and devoid of problems, and in that respect it could be seen as quite disappointing in terms of jeopardy because there really is none.

No, the fun here just comes from following Worf through the different dimensions and spotting all the differences. It's hard not to enjoy seeing Wesley back on the bridge, or more subtle things like the colour of Data's eyes. If anything, I end up wishing that they did more with it and showed us some really insane alternatives (how about one where Data is a female android? Or Dr. Crusher has cybernetic implants? Or where Worf, Alexander and K'Ehyleyr live as a happy family? What if Worf had ended up in a dimension that he DIDN'T want to leave?).

The episode also references events from several previous episodes in a nice (and rare) use of continuity. The big set up here is the pairing of Worf and Deanna, though. It's a strange one, but I have to admit to always thinking that they made a pretty good couple, and the show will run with it for a little while.

Special mention for the nightmare Enterprise that comes from the Borg dimension, Jonathon Frakes does a great job as the manic, crazy bearded Riker!

Ugh. Where to start? I'm embarrassed to admit that, as a teenager, this was one of my favourite episodes when it first aired. I though the concept of being trapped inside a board game was really cool. And yes, the idea still is pretty great, but when it's executed like this it just makes you want to turn away in shame.

The concept of the episode isn't the problem, it's the poor writing and absolutely horrendous acting involved, from both guest stars and the main cast. Alexander Siddig again comes off the worst here, I can only assume that it's a mixture of him following direction and having very little experience. Falow is way too over the top, and the Wadi in general are a stupid design in all aspects. The less said about the hopscotch scene the better, you can almost feel the embarrassment the cast members were experiencing.

The only ones who come off well here are Quark and Odo. Odo gets a fantastic scene with Lt. Primmin (we won't be seeing him again), mocking him about Starfleet procedures. Quark has a funny grovelling scene in which Armin Shimmerman doesn't hold back chewing up the scenery. And the writing of the episode itself isn't a total loss, the opening scene with Sisko and Jake is just a beautiful father/son piece.

To make matters worse, the episode drags. The final sections in the cave just seem to go on endlessly. This is a really weak moment for the show, but for all that I think I still prefer it to the terrible previous episode ('The Passenger'). There's at least an element of silly fun to be found, but for God's sake don't show this to anyone you want to introduce to the show or sci-fi TV in general.

An easy watch and pretty entertaining, but it felt very basic for me. It's like it was made for people who have never played video games. It focused on all the obvious culprits and had a pixelated bleep-bloop aesthetic that bears no relation to what games have become. Fair enough, this is focusing on the '80s to early '90s, but there's something almost insulting about doing that. And having the focus be on only America and Japan felt like a missed opportunity (it was called the Sega Mega Drive, you monsters! ;) ).

One thing I did like was the personal stories that cropped up throughout. Although, I don't know why there was so much focus on people who won gaming tournaments, were three necessary? (In fact, eSports as a whole felt completely inappropriate to what the series was about). In particular, the story of the creation of the first console to use cartridges was lovely. The representation of various minorities in gaming, their stories buried in history, was also very welcome.

As someone who grew up as a PC gamer in love with adventure games, I was delighted to see Roberta Williams and her husband were featured, but also sad that there was no dive into King's Quest or how the genre grew and evolved into the '90s.

This is good introduction to the history of gaming, but it only scratches the surface. Mostly it succeeded in making me nostalgic for older games.

[8.5/10] Expectations can be a difficult thing to manage. When you hear that an actor is going to reprise one of your favourite roles of all time, it's easy to get excited. When you see trailers and it looks good, you get more excited. When you start hearing positive early reviews, your excitement level can go through the roof. If anything, I was worried that my expectations for Picard were just too high, and I was only going to be disappointed.

But almost from the opening moments of this premiere, I was swept up. Picard avoids excessive nostalgia (but provides just a nice amount) and begins by telling a tale full of emotion and character. It's markedly different from Star Trek: Discovery, both in terms of visuals and writing. The pace is measured and characters are given room to breathe, the action is sparse but hard-hitting. Patrick Stewart himself is a frailer man than the one we remember, but there's no mistaking that this is our Jean-Luc Picard back on screen.

It's still early days and there are a lot of directions this story could take. But here I was surprised at just how impactful some of the emotional moments and revelations were. Isa Briones is strong in the role of Dahj, seemingly an unknown "daughter" of Data's,, but it was Picard's reaction to it all that made it have so much more weight. No mention of Data's other daughter, Lal, but that may come up later.

There was some awkward exposition early on with an interview sequence that didn't quite hit the mark due a mix of writing that was a bit too on-the-nose and the actor for the interviewer feeling weirdly out of place. For a mostly calm opening there was a surprising amout of information and story to be digested here and a lot of questions that I can't wait to be answered.

A fascinating concept executed pretty well for the most part. The range of animation styles makes each short episode feel unique, and they are almost all absolutely gorgeous to look at.

What lets things down is that it feels like it was written by 13-year-old boys. There are episodes that suffer more than others in this regard and they seem to want to make sure that there's a swear word in every sentence, the most over-the-top gore possible and any chance to show off female nudity (with the odd bit of male nudity thrown in for good measure). It just makes it all feel a bit juvenile and in most instances it was completely unnecessary for the story being told.

Fortunately it doesn't ruin things completely. The varied stories here are almost all enjoying and often fascinating. I'd love to see Love, Death + Robots come back with another season, and I'd definitely love to see a few of the shorts here developed in to longer forms.

If I were to rank the shorts, it would probably be along these lines:

SUPERB
-Suits
-Lucky 13
-Three Robots

VERY GOOD
-Sucker of Souls
-Beyond the Aquila Rift
-Fish Night

OKAY/GOOD
-Sonnie's Edge
-Good Hunting
-The Dump
-Zima Blue
-Ice Age
-The Secret War

MEH
-When the Yogurt Took Over
-Shape-Shifters
-Blindspot

POOR
-The Witness
-Helping Hand
-Alternate Histories

I'm as surprised as anyone that I've found an episode with Neelix in such a prominent role that I quite enjoyed. But it's not because of him, it's because it's the culmination of a plot thread that has been building over the past bunch of episodes - even though that culmination may not be the most satisfying end. At any rate, Neelix's scenes saying goodbye to Tom did work very well.

It turns out Tom Paris has been faking his misbehaviour (duh) because Janeway and Tuvok suspect there's a spy on board. They decided to keep Chakotay out of the loop to make it seem more real, but I think it's really because they didn't trust Chakotay not to mess things up. I think what's impressed me most about it all is that the show kept this thread running over the course of several episodes, and it just feels like such a breath of fresh air to have some serialisation that I'm happy to sit back and enjoy it, despite it not being all that compelling.

Tom's fight to escape from Seska and the Kazon is unimpressive, seeminly limited to one corridor set that he has to run back and forth through. Seska herself is revelling in being evil, and I have to admit I get a weird thrill out of the cheesiness of it all. I almost didn't expect Jonas to die, and at least he goes out in style.

Neelix's TV show could become grating if we see lots more of it, but the funny subplot with the Doctor did entertain me. One moment that took me right out of the episode was when Janeway contacts engineering and explains everything that's going on to Jonas ("we need the transporter, because we've detected a Kazon shuttle and there is one human life sign on board and we think it might be Tom Paris") despite no captain ever taking the time to do this in Trek history. Also, Jonas being the only person in engineering is really bizarre.

I'm disappointed that all of Paul Wesley's singing moments weren't done as spoken word, as a tribute.

So, this was a mixed bag for me - It's very difficult to overcome my negative feelings towards musicals. I found parts of this quite entertaining, and there was also parts where I was cringing in embarrassment. I'm not sure it's going to have any rewatch value for me. I appreciated that they at least incorporated the songs into the storyline as a mystery that needed to be solved, but am never a fan of when they lean into the music as a way to dwell on a character's emotional state. Just move the damn story forward instead of sitting in a single moment for three minutes!

Some musical parts were definitely better than others, but this was always going to be a difficult one for me. There were just too many songs here, and they were too much in the musical theatre style. I didn't like the "finale" at all (the Klingon moment should have been hilarious but literally made me cry out "oh GOD NO").

At the same time, I really appreciate that Strange New Worlds is taking risks and experimenting. This is a thousand times more interesting than the super safe Berman-Trek, even when the results don't completely work for me. The problem is that we are only getting 10 episodes per season, so episodes like this can feel like a monumental waste of storytelling time.

The best stuff here was everything that dealt with character relationships - Chapel/Spock, Pike/Batel and La'an/Kirk.