[8.0/10] When I think of David Lynch, I think “weird,” and that may be what was missing all too often in Twin Peaks for me. Most of the show functions as a parody/pastiche/homage to soap operas, and while Lynch and Frost seem to want to riff on the tropes on that genre, more often than not the line between playing with the form of a bad soap opera and just presenting a bad soap opera was too blurred for my tastes. I don’t mean to relitigate all my criticisms of the show here, but suffice it to say, vanilla Twin Peaks, the parts of the show that were just supposed to be about people interacting and having emotional reactions and learning things about one another almost uniformly fell flat to me.
But every once in a while, the show would get truly weird, truly outré, truly thought-provokingly bizarre, and those instances were the few times that I felt like I “got” Twin Peaks, like I understood what all the fuss was about. Sure, some bits -- like Lynch Jr.’s creamed corn or Josey getting trapped in a doorknob -- only amounted to what Futurama memorably described as standard-issue “hey look at that weird mirror” nonsense. But in some scenes, like Cooper’s dream, the sequence in the bar at the end of Season 1, and his epiphany and confrontation of Leland this season, the show lived up to its jarring, out there reputation, and for a few brief moments, it actually felt like nothing else on television in a good way.
It’s fitting, then, that Twin Peaks delivers the best episode of its original run by devoting most of its erstwhile series finale to an extended-length return to the realm of Cooper’s dream, and with it, the sort of symbolic strangeness that served as one of the few things the series could consistently do well.
But before we can get into that, we have to tie up a few loose ends (and unravel a few more) in the real world. Lucy and Andy say the L-word, and it’s as much of a waste as you’d imagine. Bobby and Shelly make goo-goo eyes at one another and talk about getting married while the episode cuts to Leo still trapped under his spider box. Worst of all, Ben Horne and Donna’s mom try to talk to her about her paternity, only for their significant others to jump in and turn the whole scene into the usual overwrought, overdramatic nonsense that consistently turned me off of the show. It’s a bad storyline and it’s featured more of the painfully exaggerated emotions of the show that make it seem like Days of Our Lives redux not something avante garde.
Still, we do get two scenes in the real world that bear some merit despite falling into a few of the usual traps. One is a brief scene where Nadine recovers her sanity. There’s a bit more overacting, and it’s patently ridiculous that Nadine’s mental issue is cured via the old “just hit her on the head again” routine from Saturday morning cartoons. But there’s some legitimate pathos in Nadine basically waking up from the weeks (months?) worth of reverie to realize she’s being comforted by a stranger while her husband canoodles with another woman. I’ve gone back and forth on Nadine over the course of the show, but there is something inherently tragic about her, and I’m glad that Twin Peaks leans into that tragedy and compassion for her in her last appearance.
We also get Audrey staging a sit-in at the Twin Peaks Savings & Loan to protest its involvement in the Ghostwood Estates deal, which just so happens to be the same location where Andrew Packard and Pete Martell go to open a safety deposit box with the key they found in Eckert’s magic box. The results of it all -- the Bugs Bunny-esque dynamite and note, the cheesy cliffhanger of who survived the blast, the flying glasses -- are all pretty silly.
That said, there’s a strange rhythm to the scene, where the doddering old man who’s in charge of the place brings an amusingly workaday energy as he putters around trying to deal with Audrey and the rest. It has sort of the same vibe as the scene with the bellhop in the premiere, and I can appreciate the intentional stiltedness of it, with Lynch (who directed the finale) choosing to keep in all the awkward little moments that slick T.V. editing usually elides.
But the main event of the episode is Cooper’s return to the Black Lodge. Lynch & Co. provide a nice enough prelude with some of the show’s trademarks. Earle strong-arming Annie through those big red curtains has the sort of chill that Leland was able to bring and which Earle had previously been unable to muster. Andy incessantly asking Harry questions about coffee and pie is true to the best flavor of the show’s humor -- awkward intrusions of the mundane into the dramatic or fantastical.
What happens next, however, is something I cannot really describe or encapsulate. It is Lynch’s unrestrained id, let out to play on a black and white floorboard girded with red curtains. Suddenly, it all comes rushing back. The owls. The giant. The man from another place. Bob. Laura. Maddy. Sarah. Annie. Caroline. Windom. The backwards talking. The barking. The damn good coffee that’s suddenly not so damn good. Everything Cooper’s seen and done comes blasting back at him in surreal sequence after surreal sequence that I cannot capture with my humble words.
But I can tell that you that it’s unique, bizarre, disquieting, affecting, and gripping in a way that so little of Twin Peaks has been. Laura Palmer screams and the strobe light flashes and the contrast of her smiling face and gaping maw makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. She promises to see him in twenty-five years (and the timing of the revival is just about right for it) in a way that seems ominous rather than reassuring.
It’s a series of images full of what the text of the episode acknowledges as doppelgangers, “one and the same.” It blends the presence of Laura and Maddy. It jumps back and forth between Annie and Caroline. A dark-haired Leland proclaims his innocence and then laughs like Bob. Cooper himself runs from his own double.
One of the show’s major themes has been duality, the notion that there’s parts of who we are we only show to certain people. But while Twin Peaks could belabor that point, here it is visceral, scene in the flashes and phantasmagoria of strange figures flitting about this weigh station beyond life and death.
It’s unnerving, the way that Cooper and Bob look directly into the camera, the way the lights come on and off, the pretzel logic and impossible geography of this far away place. With its last gasp, Twin Peaks reveals its magnum opus of weirdness, of expressing itself in iconography and poignant or disturbing images rather than clumsy dialogue or overwrought attempts at emotion. The past and present fade together, with the texture of Lynch’s warped brain to hold it all in place.
Naturally, it ends with a cheesy cliffhanger, one that reveals that Bob has now wormed his way inside Cooper, perhaps signifying that there’s a darkness in all of us, even the most decent and upstanding, or perhaps just signifying that the show wanted somewhere to go in the event it was renewed. While Cooper’s headbang into the mirror and maniacal laugh carries its own force, and haunts just enough as a closing image, even it cannot match the virtuoso, nightmarish dreamscape that Lynch and company craft as the culmination of everything Twin Peaks has been and promised.
This is what Twin Peaks should have been, what I was promised by the partisans and diehards who speak of a show that is so, to put it charitably, uneven in such hushed tones. Beneath the convoluted conspiracies, beneath the painful love stories, beneath the dreadful dialogue, there is a capacity from this show to convey these liminal, atavistic, subconscious versions of the themes and ideas it has such trouble expressing directly. I don’t know if it’s worth thirty episodes of mostly dreck to extract those bold and unmatched gems, but at least Twin Peaks saves it best for last, going out with an extraordinary, unnerving dose of the weird, the sort of genuine strangeness the show promised all too often, but delivered all too rarely.
Toby Kebbell's new character Miles Dale is a very intriguing storyline never explored but can only begin after a 3-season background: What happens when the space ambitions of these brilliant people get so big and sprawling now that the ordinary workers get lost in the shuffle? Seems like a potential worker strike waiting to happen. Dani's and Ed's reactions are very well written that they're so in-character for both of them, with Dani quickly catching on to potential issues by herself and fixing it, while Ed military-style dismissive and boomer-entitled. And the wtf way he's eating that pasta too lol.
Reaching new hights. This was just brilliant character work all around.
5.3/10. I'm excited to watch this, because of how much fandom buzz there is for it, but I can tell it's going to be tough sledding for me (no pun intended) until I get acclimated to the series. The anime art style has never really clicked with me, and it results in a lot elements in the episode leaving me cold. For instance, there's a stop-and-start quality to the animation that makes things like Aang and Katara's penguin sledding sequence feel like a particularly fleshed-out animatic rather than full-fledged and fluid scene. In addition, the exaggerated expressions from the characters at various emotional moments--what I would call mugging from live action actors--strikes me as cheesy and makes it harder for me to connect with these characters as real people. Still, director Dave Filoni had similar growing pains and bumps in the road with The Clone Wars and Rebels in the Star Wars franchise, so I'm willing to give him some time here to get everything right and to get used to the show's style of presentation.
There is, as you expect from a pilot, a lot of exposition, which comes off as pretty clunky but is also a necessary evil in establishing a setting like this. I have to admit, I like the idea of the world more than the way it's presented here. The concept of four "nations" of peoples across the world, with different types of magic-wielders is a neat idea, and the notion of a hundred-years long war that has left the magic-wielders scattered and possibly extinct in the face of an evil force creates an interesting sense of a generational, historical context to everything we see now. (It retrospect, with that premise, it makes total sense that Dave Filoni was tapped to work in the Star Wars Universe after working on this show.)
I also like the interesting theme that there is, in effect, a missing generation here. Everyone we meet in "The Boy in the Iceberg" is very young or very old. There's the sense that this war has decimated the people who should be leading the world right now. Instead, you have a bunch of kids who are too young to have the maturity or wisdom to know how to handle the difficulties of life trying to hold things together, and a bunch of older people with the wisdom, but not the vigor, to keep their descendants safe and well trying to guide them. Aang being over a century old, but mentally only twelve, works as an interesting way to put a character on both sides of this notion.
That said, the actual setup of the characters and immediate conflict didn't really grab me. Aang, Sokka, and Katara are all pretty basic archetypes, with semi-annoying qualities grafted onto them for good measure. The impish chosen one, the doubtful and pesky big brother, and the preternaturally sharp normal person thrust into this situation leaves a lot to be desired as a main trio coming out of the gate. Plus the Fire Prince kind of feels like a G.I. Joe villain with his evil evilness and single-minded plan. (Though I do like his sort of world-weary, somewhat impish great uncle.) Still, there's time to develop all three of them (and those same criticisms basically apply to the main Harry Potter trio and their antagonist in the franchise's early outings) so I'm trying not to put too much stock in the failings on this front just yet.
Overall, the premise of the show is great, and I like how quickly the intrigue of the mythology locks into place (not to mention the pretty adorable flying fluffy bison), but I'm still not quite on board with the characters who are populating the world just yet.
FINALLY A WOOKIE JEDI….and he’s dead :rolling_eyes::rolling_eyes:
Honestly, I’m so disappointed that Clegg didn’t mention how magical Tahiti is.
Great start to the season. Good they didn’t hide what IT is and some nice call backs to previous events.
Hopefully it will be a great ride ending this amazing show. :vulcan_salute:
[7.3/10] I don’t mind the spiritual elements of Deep Space Nine, but the truth is that we’ve dealt with a lot of them already. Sisko’s uncomfortable with his role as the Emissary? Now he embraces it and wants to make his home on Bajor. Kira is a true believer in the way few others in the main cast are? Now she’s reckoned with her faith and her connection to the Starfleet officers in a pretty thorough fashion. Kai Winn is mercenary in her attitude toward Benjamin? Now (or at least, in her last appearance), she seemed to accept him as an instrument of the Prophets. Are those Prophets honest to goodness gods who prophesize and punish, or are they mere “wormhole aliens” whose effects have rational explanations? Well, whatever you want to term them, they know the future and, as we saw at the end of the Dominion occupation arc, will actively intervene in major events when it suits them.
There’s a few dangling threads out there. The Prophets promised Sisko that they’d extract some penance from him for destroying the Dominion fleet. How their prophecies will play out is an open question. Not every circle has been square. But many of the spiritual mysteries the show started with have been sorted, and the personal issues that fell out of them have been resolved.
In that, “The Reckoning” is something of a relaunch of that part of the show, providing supernatural fodder for the show to chew on between here and the end of the series. There is a new prophecy! And the Prophets, not just the Pah-wraiths, possess people now. And each side has champions locked in a battle to determine the fate of Bajor!
And the truth is I don’t love it. Some of that is the pure aesthetics of it. I’m always inclined to forgive Star Trek for the effects of its eras, but something about a possessed Kira absorbing lightning, a red-eyed Jake speaking in an echo-y voice, mysterious wind blowing at each of them, and the duo shooting orange and blue energy beams at one another comes off as downright silly. I can appreciate the show’s production team trying to represent the larger-than-life epicness of this battle using the tools at their disposal, but it’s hard not to roll your eyes a bit at the cheesiness of it all.
More than that, though, I’m not a fan of the form this new religious element of the show takes. Contrary to popular belief, Star Trek has long had a penchant for the spiritual and the supernatural. (Other writers used to joke about how many of Gene Roddenberry’s stories ended with some kind of god.) But there tends to be something unknowable, inscrutable, even downright weird about the more metaphysical entities Starfleet officers interact with. Their role is often to remind us of how much lies beyond human comprehension, to make us reflect on human existence and ethics, and deepen our appreciation for the countless mysteries of the universe.
The titular reckoning between the uber-Prophet possessing Kira and the demonic Kosst Amojan possessing Jake, is a bog standard good guy vs. bad guy conflict. Star Trek has rarely gone in for that sort of Manichean, good vs. evil-type deal. To the point, with its outsized heroes and villains doing battle with positive and negative energies, “The Reckoning” feels more like Star Wars than Star Trek. And I love Star Wars! But its brand of superpowered battles between light and dark doesn’t necessarily fit well within Star Trek’s general framework, let alone Deep Space Nine’s tendency toward gray areas and more committed moral complexities.
And yet, strangely, I like what comes before the supernatural showdown and what comes after it.
The before is a chance to take stock, and something of a referendum, on all the spiritual elements of the show that have sunk in so far. Dax gets to joke about whether, in Ben’s next vision, he should ask for a dictionary. Quark gets to talk about how the religious fervor is hurting business (and institutes a constant happy hour in response). Julian gets to play the skeptic about the doom and gloom prophecy, while others debate whether the wormhole instability and natural disasters on Bajor are some version of a biblical plague.
Most importantly, Jake gets to talk about how hard it’s been to see his dad incapacitated by such “visions” not once but twice over the last year. There’s a story-related reason for giving him and Benjamin a scene to ahs that out, but even if there weren’t, I’m glad that Deep Space Nine is delving into what all of this must be like for Jake. Whether you believe or not, seeing your last living parent put through the wringer, and almost lose him on multiple occasions because he seems to care about his spiritual duties more than you now and then, would be tough to take. Exploring that, and having Benjamin affirm his connection to his son, is good stuff.
I’m more mixed on what the episode does with Kai Winn. I don’t mind her being a villain, but in her last appearance, she’d seemed to not only accept Sisko’s role as the Emissary in earnest for the first time, but was contrite about the resistance she’d put up in the past. We even got to hear her explain why she thought her form of resistance and suffering was no less meaningful than Kira’s in a way that deepened and softened the character.
Now she’s back to being the stubborn, passive aggressive social-climber she was before. She gripes at Sisko for taking the Bajoran artifact du jour. (And her motives may be impure, but she’s not wrong that he probably should have consulted the Bajoran government before absconding with a recently-discovered archeological relic!) She seems to want to undermine him and supplant him at every turn. This reversion to her velvet-gloved jerk characterization feels like the show back-tracking.
Yet, she may also be the most interesting character in the piece. I think the show means to damn her with her choices and disposition here. But when none other than Kira speculates that after striving her whole life to become the spiritual leader of Bajor, it must be hard for Kai Winn to have to share that role with the Emissary, and an outsider to the faith no less, you sympathize with her. When Kai Winn kneels before the uber-Prophet inhabiting Kira and practically begs to be her servant, and the uber-Prophet just ignores her, it’s quietly devastating.
Imagine living your whole life as a true believer, who could only dream of speaking with your god, only to go unregarded and unheeded when you’re finally face to face with them. Kai Winn is in the running for Star Trek’s greatest villain. (Her only disadvantage is sitting side-by-side with Dukat.) But Heaven help me, I felt for her in that moment. Something like that would be shattering.
That feeling leads to the most clever part of the episode. The turn in the story comes when Jake walks onto the promenade, imbued with the spirit of a Pah-Wraith. Suddenly, Benjamin’s calculus changes. Over the warnings of his officers, he wanted to let this reckoning play out. He’ll evacuate the station to protect civilians and officers alike, but he believes in the Prophets’ plan now, and he won’t stand in their way. Until, suddenly, it’s his son standing there. Especially after their tender scene earlier, you might reasonably expect that he’ll damn Bajor to protect Jake.
Except he doesn’t. “The Reckoning” flips your (or at least my) expectations on their head. You’d expect that it’d be Captain Sisko who’d flood the promenade with chroniton radiation to stop the showdown and save his son. You’d expect the erstwhile Pope of Bajor to let the will of the Prophets play out, and damn the consequences.
And yet, it’s Sisko who trusts that the Prophets would protect his son, that Kira would want to be their vessel, and that this is what’s intended to happen, it’s not his place to stand in their way. He has gone from the man uncomfortable with his role in these outsiders’ religion, to a man embracing their precepts and spirituality. And it’s Kai Winn who deploys the chroniton radiation, prematurely ending the divine battle, regardless of what the prophecy says. Whatever she believes, she cares about her position in this biblical drama more.
The script says as much through Kira, who accuses Kai Winn of not being able to stand that their gods would choose Sisko and disregard her. But I’m also compelled by Winn’s statement that if the Prophets defeat the Pah-wraiths, and indeed usher in a new “golden age” for Bajor, there’d be no need for Kais or Vedeks. Regardless of Benjamin, she’s scratched and clawed and schemed to get where she is. To postpone the arrival of paradise, or even scuttle it entirely, because if it came you’d have to serve rather than lead, is as damning and compelling a motivation for Kai Winn as there could be.
At the same time, there’s something truly wholesome that emerges from this situation between Kira and Odo. Having finally coupled up, they’re adorable together, flirting after a wardroom meeting and nuzzling one another, with Kira acknowledging Odo’s softer side that he keeps from the world. All’s not perfect in paradise though. This prophecy allows Odo to politely cluck his tongue a bit, at why the Prophets are so cryptic, about how if this is so important, they really ought to be more clear. He has a point!
But he tells her that he does believe in something -- her, and it’s one of the sweetest little moments on the show. Odo doesn’t just talk the talk. When push comes to shove, and Kira is being inhabited and put at risk by the Prophet possessing her, he acknowledges it’s what she’d want. She accepted it willingly, and even if Odo loves her, even if he doesn’t buy into the cryptic nature of the Prophets, even though he doesn’t share her beliefs, he respects her and gets her. That’s enough.
Choices like that are why Odo/Kira make so much more sense than Worf/Dax ever have. There are different people in many ways, but there’s a respect and appreciation for where the other is coming from, that seems all but absent from Worf in DS9. There’s lots of series arc-heavy stuff going on in “The Reckoning”, but the part I like best may be how these monumental events also serve to reinforce the bond within a new relationship.
Despite that, “The Reckoning” is, as the Prophets riddle us once more, as much of a beginning as an ending. These two supernatural forces have been unleashed in the world, with little suggestion that they’ve been vanquished or defended for good. Kira the believer is prompted to contemplate the fact that she was chosen by her gods, and had an experience as up close and personal with them as one’s likely to have. And the closing lines of dialogue suggest that we’re officially in uncharted territory, even for gods, to where for all their wisdom, the Prophets don’t know what’s coming next. Who knows when or if the tears of the Prophets will drown the gateway to the temple.
Some of that’s probably necessary. Considering the last major event featured a deus ex machina solution (albeit an earned one), checking in with the Wormhole Aliens, factoring them into the proceedings of the ongoing Dominion war, changing Captain Sisko and Kai Winn’s connections to them leaves the board open for more to come in the show’s final season. But it also flattens and simplifies the inscrutable demigods who affected our heroes’ lives to this point.
Nevertheless, I’m still compelled by those lives, and the impact that the spiritual aspects of the show have on them. More so than arguably any other Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine is concerned with religion, and prophecy, and the divine. But it remains a show focused on its characters, as invested in the people reacting to these supernatural events, as it is in the beings who make them their playthings.
[9.0/10] The world is turned upside down. For five years, Deep Space Nine has been teasing a conflict with the Cardassians, a conflict with the Dominion, an existential battle for this all important sector, and now it’s finally here. The fight the series has been saving for a rainy day is finally brought into the light, and reader, it was worth the wait.
“Call to Arms” is the biggest Star Trek has ever felt. From The Wrath of Khan and “The Best of Both Worlds” on, blockbuster films and season finales have felt the need to up the ante to ridiculous degree. The running joke about the Alex Kurtzman era of Star Trek is that every season of every show is some galaxy-threatening existential threat. But such calamities pop out of the woodwork out of nowhere and fade away just as easily.
“Call to Arms” is the early crescendo, if not necessarily the culmination, of tensions that have been with the show from the beginning, and friction that has only escalated since Sisko and company first met their new foes in the Gamma quadrant. The fate of the station, the fate of Bajor, the fate of Cardassia, the fate of the Alpha Quadrant as a whole, suddenly rests on the actions of our heroes. And the seismic changes that come feel absolutely earned on the back of five seasons’ worth of steady, engrossing development.
So the big shit goes down. The station’s faithful brace for war. Bajor signs a nonaggression pact with The Dominion. So do the Romulans. The Bajoran residents evacuate. The Dominion-Cardassian alliance attacks. Sisko and company defend just long enough to lace the wormhole exit with mines to stop further Dominion convoys. After one long season of waiting, the big confrontation is here.
And that is exciting as all hell, the earned payoff of a committed and continuous build. But what elevates “Call to Arms:”, and Deep Space Nine as a whole, is that this momentous installment is as much about the human moments that persist despite war as it is about the plot-heavy mechanics of this clash of civilizations.
Yes, the world is about to be turned upside down. But Leeta and Rom are still planning to get married. Captain Sisko and his son still have to hash out the awkwardness of Jake becoming a Starfleet reporter. Kira and Odo still have to dance around the recent revelation of Odo’s feelings. And, sigh, even Garak and Ziyal must still contend with their ill-considered flirtation.
The writers could have entirely leaned into the plot developments and still satisfied the audience. (That’s basically what they did with “In Purgatory’s Shadow”, to great acclaim.) Instead, there is as much about how these mixed up people relate to one another, despite and because of the desperateness of their circumstances, as there is about diplomacy and strategy. It’s a bold choice, and one that retains the human core that always drew me into DS9 and Star Trek.
What I appreciate the most is that it’s not a trite or facile “There is still the light in the darkness” sort of message about war. IT is, instead, about how human relationships persist, but are also disrupted by these epochal conflicts. There is a human cost, beyond the casualties that pile up, in the frayed connections forced upon people in times of conflict.
Odo and Kira put their feelings on hold during the pendency of this crisis, and in an amusing turn, both seem downright relieved by it. (It’s also a convenient out for the writers.) And Chief O’Brien sends his wife and kids to Earth. (Another move that makes sense under the circumstances, but is convenient for characters the writers don’t seem to care to write for.) And right after their awkward first kiss, Ziyal must leave for Bajor, while Garak must find another refuge from the Bajorans and Gul Dukat. And Dr. Bashir preps the infirmary while Jake stands ready to assist as he did in “Nor the Battle to the Strong”. And Jadzia accepts Worf’s marriage proposal, right when they’re about to be separated by war and at mutual mortal peril.
And then there’s Rom, the unsung hero of Deep Space Nine. Despite big things in his future, “Call to Arms” may be his greatest triumph. It’s Rom who comes up with the self-replicating mines idea that provides a suitable Federation bulwark in front of the wormhole. After fears of being unlucky in love, he marries his dream girl in a sweet little ceremony on the brink of war. And the tragedy is that he has to say goodbye to her right after because of the evacuation. (Though candidly, I’m not over the moon about the fact that he imposes this decision on Leeta without so much as discussing it with her. We gotta take the good with the bad.) He even becomes a Starfleet spy.
This is the high water mark for a character everyone, including his own son, had written off, showing that he is worthy of respect, love, and even admiration, when put in the right environment to come into his own.
He’s even noble toward the brother who doesn’t deserve his affections. Quark tells Rom to evacuate with his wife, but Rom refuses. He’s working to reinforce the station’s infrastructure and defenses, despite the fact that there’s plenty of “hyoo-man” engineers to do it, because come hell or high water, he wants to protect his big brother. There is something so piercing and perfect about Quark calling him an idiot, and kissing him on the back of the head. It’s an emotional highpoint from the least sentimental character on a series that includes Odo, and I don’t mind telling you that it made me tear up for a moment. If ever there were a benediction for Rom, this was it.
Those smaller, human moments make the big moments feel that much more momentous. Weyoung offering a plausible feint and plea for peace, only for Sisko to recognize it as a smokescreen for an attack shows the savvy of the station’s commander. The folks fleeing the DS9 while our heroes batten down the hatches comes with a charged energy. Kira “formally protesting” the Federation hanging onto the station before reporting for duty is a fistpump moment.
And then the battle happens. Dukat and Weyoun lead the charge, the two slimiest villains this side of Kai Winn, both with their teeth finally bared. The episode lives up to the billing. The cavalcade of Dominion and Cardassian ships circling DS9 while the station’s defenses fend off their foes leads to a magnetic space battle. The simple task of trying to hold the line long enough for Dax and the Defiant to lay down the mines creates an accessible goal for the audience to understand, and adds specific urgency to our heroes’ mission beyond “just stay alive.”
The joint attack even gives General Martok one hell of a “Big Damn Heroes” moment that vindicates the collaboration and trust the Klingon commander has developed with Starfleet over the course of the half-season. And it’s a nice counterweight to the season premiere, when the phony General Martok was exposed as a changeling.
In short, the battle is everything we’d hoped for -- epic in scope and scale given the long-simmering enmity involved, visually impressive with the flurry of ships entering and exiting the stage at the right times for dramatic excellence, and full of great storytelling moments that make this battle part of a larger narrative, not just a dose of spectacle to sate our nerdy expectations.
The biggest shock is yet to come. After protecting their home long enough for the mines to be set, our heroes (mostly) evacuate the station, and the bad guys move in. Captain SIsko is no longer installed in the posting he accepted back in “Emissary”, and Gul Dukat is back in the office he coveted on the newly redubbed “Terok Nor” in the same episode.
It is a hell of a bold move from Deep Space Nine. I won’t belabor how long the change lasts, but even if it were just for this episode and we flashed forward to everything being hunky dory immediately afterwards, it’s startling to see all that viewers have come to know and love over the past five years dismantled and replaced by the villains in the span of forty-five minutes.
To compare it to other star-bound franchises, this is Deep Space Nine’s Empire Strikes Back moment. The good guys have been expelled from their home. Dukat strolls the promenade as its overseer once more, with even Kira forced to kowtow to him.
With that change in status comes intriguing possibilities for what’s to come. WIth Bajor capitulating to The Dominion, how will Kira react to being under the Cardassians’ thumb again, let alone Dukat’s dirty digits. How will the self-serving Quark readjust to life aboard a Cardassian station after having reluctantly internalized some of those insidious Federation values? How will Odo handle remaining as station security chief when the power behind the power worship him as a god? How will Rom fare at pretending to be his brother’s put-upon employee again when he’s actually there to funnel information to the Federation? How will Jake get by when trying to stick around the station to report the story? Can the Dominion and the Cardassians coexist, let alone Dukat and Weyoun, when their interests already seem to be in tension? The teases here for next season are all completely thrilling.
(Okay, that last one is pretty cheap. I’m sure it’s a cool hook for the writers to leave, but I don’t believe for a second that Captain Sisko would leave the station without knowing his son is safe. The fig leaf they try to put on it with Benjamin’s “He’s a man; he can make his own decisions” is something, I suppose, but not terribly convincing given the father-son bond we’ve seen to date.)
Nonetheless, despite the loss, this is a hell of a moment for the Federation. You can almost feel Deep Space Nine reassuring its fans. The Starfleet-Klingon force is coming! They effectively damned up the wormhole! While the DS9 faithful kept the Dominion forces busy, a Starfleet detachment wrecked their Alpha Quadrant shipyards! The good guys may have lost this battle, but they still have a shot in the war. Balancing those two, the sense that our heroes have been bruised in a meaningful way, but that they’re still in the fight, is not easy. “Call to Arms” does it to perfection.
And this is also a hell of a moment for Captain Sisko. You may see no more politically noble move in the franchise than Sisko telling Bajor to sign up with the Dominion, because he cares more about preserving what they’ve built over the last five years than he does about any loyalty to the Federation. His speech to those who will remain and those who must leave the station after Starfleet’s last stand there is stirring, an affirmation of the roots and connections he and so many others have forged here. He and Kira’s final sabotage of the station is a nose-thumbing final gambit. And that damn baseball, still sitting on the desk in the commander’s office, is a hell of a taunt to his successor that he plans to be back.
It’s those kinds of touches that elevate this episode, and this series, to something incredible. With five years’ worth of subtly laying the groundwork, the powers that be have finally pulled the trigger on a full blown confrontation between the Federation and the Dominion. What results is one of the series’ high points, a dramatic earthquake of meaningful changes to the show we know and love in ways that are concerning but organic to the situation.
But this is also a story not just of nations, but of people, who found their place upon that old bicycle wheel, find their lives thrown into chaos with the advent of war, and still hold onto the pieces of one another they can cling to amid the phaser-singed wreckage. There is, of course, more to come. But as an opening salvo into another era of the show, Deep Space Nine pays off so much of the monumental, and of the personal.
[7.1/10] A funny thing about me and Voyager -- I remembered liking Tom and B’Elanna from when I watched the series originally, but I didn’t quite remember why. In the early going, neither’s an especially great character. Tom is a discount Han-Solo-in-Starfleet who’s more annoying than dashing, and the depiction of B’Elanna’s struggle with her Klingon heritage has the depth of a petri dish in the show’s first couple of seasons. Revisiting the show, it’s not clear why pairing them together would work.
And yet, there’s an undeniable chemistry between them that helps account for a lot of it. You can never quite tell which actors will spark on screen (see: Voyager basically discarding early flirtations between B’Elanna and Chakotay as well as {gulp} Paris and Janeway). But the Beatrice-Benedick dynamic between the characters really works for Roxann Dawson and Robert Duncan McNeil.
Through their performances, matched with the writing, you get the sense of Tom as someone who likes to dish it out, and in B’Elanna, there is someone who can not only take it, but give it right back. They feel equally matched, and weirdly in tune despite their differences, which makes for an unexpectedly rewarding on-screen pairing.
But some of it is simply the ineffable sparks that fly when you put two actors next to one another. “Blood Fever”, a pon farr story where both Lt. Torres and the Vulcan Ensign Vorik are biologically hot to trot, is the steamiest Star Trek has been since Worf and K’Ehleyr had their interlude in The Next Generation, and maybe ever. The episode leans into the sexual tension between Tom and B’Elanna, rather than shying away from it, and the result is one of the most passionate and charged series of scenes in franchise history.
As I write this, there’s a big debate among film and T.V. watchers over whether sex scenes are ever necessary. And I don’t have a big stance in the debate beyond to say that sex -- sexual attraction, sexual exploration, and yes, even sexual intercourse -- are core parts of the human experience for most of us. I think good art reflects and comments on the human experience, so to leave that out of movies and television would be to ignore and even hide an essential part of what it is to be a person.
In a sense, I think that’s one of the main themes of “Blood Fever”. Vorik is struggling mightily with his biological urge to mate, and one of the big hindrances to helping him is Vulcan culture’s prudishness about discussing anything related to sex, even with a doctor. When he assaults B’Elanna (something the episode doesn’t full engage with, to be honest) and she contracts the same “blood fever”, she’s reluctant to admit what’s happening to her, and it makes it a challenge to get her the help she needs either.
It’s not hard to read the pon farr as an allegory for puberty, and more generally the time when most of us suddenly felt a rush of hormones surging through our bodies that we didn’t know quite what to do with. As always, abstracting that through alien physiology helps us look at it from the outside. With that lens, Voyager seems to be suggesting that while it’s important to stress consent and healthy outlets, those feelings cannot simply be ignored or compartmentalized, and sweeping them under the rug only leads to problems.
And then the rock people show up. Sigh. Look, I want to give Voyager credit for the premise here. How to deal with Vulcan pon farr (something famously established with Spock in “Amok Time” from TOS) on a ship seventy-thousand lightyears from Vulcan is, if you’ll forgive the expression, a fascinating story idea. Stranding B’Elanna and Tom in a cave together where the chief engineer is struggling between powerful physical urges and an effort to hold onto her mental faculties, and the helmsman has to restrain his desire in deference to his care for her as a person, is just as fruitful a story thread.
But for some reason, all of this has to involve some locals who are undetectable by scanners but hoarding the latest useful resource and holding our heroes’ hostage. It’s a needless distraction from the more potent elements of the episode, and one that clutters up the real stories here.
Even in the main, though, the stories take strange turns. Tom dutifully holds back B’Elanna (and himself) because he doesn’t want to take advantage of her compromised state, which is a good look. Only then, once they escape the cave, Tuvok basically says, “Schtup her or she’ll die”, without even putting it as a choice to Tom, which is weird.
Likewise, I liked The Doctor’s clever solution to Vorik’s problem: giving him a holographic mate and telling him to think of it as part of a mental self-healing technique. I love that idea of teaching young folks to find safe outlets for those feelings. Instead, he fakes it (or it’s temporary? the show’s slightly ambiguous) and then turns back into a rage monster who wants to claim B’Elanna. And for unpersuasive reasons, Tuvok and Chakotay are just like, “Yeah, I guess they’d better do the Vulcan combat ritual or they’ll die anyway,” in a strange resolution to the issue.
I guess the chance to recreate some version of the famous fight sequence in “Amok Time” was just too tempting. (As was the Borg tease we get at the end here -- which may as well have been Voyager’s “break glass in case of emergency” sign.) It’s cool, frankly, to see the series being frank and personal in its examination of sexual needs, even as it gets over-the-top in places, but it’s disappointing to see that examination end with a “screw it, there’s no soothing it and we just have to let them fight it out” ending.
Despite the strangeness of the resolution, “Blood Fever” is the reminder I needed for why I like Tom and B'Elanna together. Because when B’Elanna is poised to ravage Tom, about to give him everything he’s desired, telling him all the things he wants to hear, Tom still turns her down. It’s not that he doesn’t want it, but he wants it to be given willingly, by a person with the mental wherewithal to offer it, not taken from someone when they’re in a compromised state and generally not in control of themselves. No matter how badly he may want to give in, Tom forebears, because he wouldn’t want it this way.
It may be the most I’ve ever liked the character. Not taking advantage of someone when they’re in a compromised state may not be the highest bar to clear, but lord knows Kirk didn’t manage that sort of commitment to consent on a consistent basis. It aligns Tom with Will Riker, who similarly turned down the advances of someone he was attracted to in “The Vengeance Factor” once he realized they were not being freely given.
But basic decency aside, what I like about it is not just that Tom doesn’t give into his own physical desires because he knows it wouldn’t be right; but that he also rejects B’Elanna protestations of love for similar reasons. It’s easy to hear those things, and there’s hints at hidden desires between both of them, but more than the physical part, he wants the emotional part to be coming from the real B’Elanna, not an unbalanced version of her who might regret it. It reveals a depth of feeling and care that’s been missing from Tom to date.
And when it’s all resolved, and they try to set things back to some kind of normal, Tom says something striking -- that he’s seen B’Elanna in the mode she’s most insecure about, and still admires her. The scariest thing of romance isn’t sex -- it’s showing the most vulnerable part of yourself, the part you’re afraid to show the rest of the world, and hoping that your partner will accept it.
The pon farr thing is a little ridiculous, but it led B’Elanna to reveal the “scary” Klingon side of herself that she’s tried so hard to restrain to someone, and still have their acceptance and maybe love, as something that’s a part of her. To have someone love you for the parts of yourself you’re scared of, not despite them, is an incredible thing, and the foundation for one of Star Trek’s best relationships.
Nothing else to say but 10/10.
"Fucking solids!"
:joy::sob::heart::raised_hands_tone4:
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home may not be the best Star Trek film, but it is an undeniable crowd pleaser, the highest grossing Star Trek film of all time until J. J. Abrams reboot in 2009.
The second season of Star Trek: Picard adopts The Voyage Home's formula, set against 2024 Los Angeles. The overall feel is distinctively more serious, but it isn't afraid to have some fun.
While I enjoyed this episode and season so far, the overall premise is a bit messy. It doesn't help that Q is an odd ball character, an extra dimension being with incredible power, but all too strangely preoccupied with humanity and Picard. The Borg Queen attempts to balance Q, but I generally find dual adversaries storyline to be lazy. Hopefully, the writers will prove me wrong.
Enjoyed this episode; all the storylines were pretty great. Lots of great references and concepts. Tom Paris back is amazing.
Going by the first episode this has all the potential of being better than the book... and the book is damn great.
Pretty good first episode. Nothing amazing, but it was entertaining.
[7.6/10] Holy cow, there’s a lot to unpack here. This was the most disjointed of the episodes so far, with a slew of former guest stars returning in a somewhat haphazard fashion, and fewer throughlines to unite everything.
So let’s cover those guest stars! We have the two culprits from season 3 playing the Hannibal Lecter game with Veronica in season 3. We have Max (Mac’s old boyfriend) as the owner of the dispensary on the boardwalk. And we even have the triumphant return of Vinny Van Lowe, in all of Ken Marino’s usual glory, as a separate P.I. hired by Mrs. Maloof to track down the family ring. It’s a minor thrill to see these people again, but everything is so glancing that it feels like more of a case of “hey, remember that guy!?” than naturally adding them to the story. (Though meethinks we haven’t seen the last of Vinny.)
Heck, I was even a little come-see come-saw about the return of Leo, and he was my favorite of Veronica’s love interests back in the show’s original run. I don’t know what it is, but the dynamic between him and Veronica isn't as easy or natural as it was back in the day, and the two of them talking about their romantic lives on a stake out feels pretty contrived. He’s still a welcome presence, and I like that he’s an FBI agent assigned to the bomber case because of local ties, but right now he feels more like a device than a character. (Though my favorite part of the episode was his awkward interactions with Logan, and Logan ensuing query of whether Piz was hiding in the back somewhere.)
Oddly enough, the best pairing in this episode was between Keith and Clyde. There’s something endearing about the two old guys trading war stories together, even if the show seems to want you to think that Clyde is playing Keith to some extent. It also gives Veronica a chance to be clever when she uncovers what’s in Clyde’s bag from the hardware store.
Oh, and I almost forgot the return of Weevil! I like the fact that he got to save Veronica’s behind here, showing his continued loyalty, but also remaining sort of a tweener on the good/bad divide, since he’s fallen into chop shops and working with local “hoodlums.” He gets the line of the episode when Veronica chastises him for these things, “It must be nice to have choices,” which sums up the show’s complicated take on racial and class divides, letting its protagonist be self-righteous but also flawed and, at times, myopic about where she sits in the social order.
I have to admit that I’m a little tired of The Murderheads. I do like that Maddie goes to them because she doesn't know where to turn after overhearing the Mars family’s theory, and that the Murderheads, in turn, blow up the Mars family’s spot by broadcasting the hypotheses Veronica and Keith are still running to ground in an explosive town council meeting. Still, the comedy stuff with that crowd has gotten a little too broad for my tastes.
But the mystery stuff is coming together at least. We’re getting more pieces falling into place for the whole “real estate plot from Big Dick” theory, with shell companies buying up boardwalk businesses. That said, it’s way too early for an answer to the central mystery to be that clear and that right this early. So my new theory is that the owner of Comrade Quacks is behind the bombings, meaning to teach the assulting douches of Neptune a lesson, given who’s ended up dead so far.
I’ll admit that I’m a little worn out by the Congressman Maloof story, which feels a little more exaggerated than the rest. (Give or take a neck bomb.) Him being faked out and presumably extorted by the cartel guys is a little much, and the same goes for the hillbillies being found in the desert. I like that they’re bringing the cartel folks closer to Veronica’s orbit, but until then, it just feels like a distraction.
Oh, and I almost forgot that Dick is pretty damn funny in this one! Him landing in a Lifetime X-mas movie in Romania about a woman who falls in love with two mannequins is the kind of comedic specificity that I get a big kick out of.
Overall, this one was not as strong or cohesive as some of the past episodes of this season, but there’s still good stuff to enjoy along the way.
this is not an easy episode that one can provide feedback on. when I take in to account that this particular episode is not the ending of season 8 but the ending of the entire series. I am happy that the story has ended and I that it has ended this way. I am happy that the producers, scriptwriters and all of those over at HBO that decided to give us a happy ending. we have not had a happy ending with Game of thrones for a very long time. I saw myself holding back by joy and excitement as I watched the episode fairing that at any moment something bad would happen.
I wondered if denarius would return as the new night queen and start the whole winter is coming all over again. however after giving it some thought I deeply appreciate how it all came together in the end.
not too many TV shows are able to bring closure to a story when there are so many subplots and storylines to follow. the producers of this episode masterfully brought what can arguably DC called one of the greatest TV shows ever to a complete ending.
this TV show made us laugh and it made us cry. it gave us hope and then it took it away. It allowed us to feel Joy, to embrace fears and more importantly it introduced us to a number of unforgettable characters. many of these characters did not make it to the end but we will continue to remember them as we think fondly of this show.
this is not a typical coming of age story, it was not a good vs evil story. but but rather Game of thrones over the past several years allowed us to find I ourselves. this story was a journey of self-discovery. in this story you not only watched the characters grow up and developed but we had the opportunity to grow with them. connected to these characters we did not just care about them but we grew to love them.
Game of Thrones is a TV show that will be missed in the hearts of many. I don't think anyone truly knows how much time and energy when into the creation I'm just TV show giving life to a story that has transcended cultural, social, political, spiritual, race and any are the boundary not just in Western Society but around the world. It is no doubt that anyone who watch this show from beginning to end good sayings the day has come as close to Perfection as anyone ever has before.
This episode is the best ending that anyone could hope for. in true Game of Thrones fashion I don't think anyone could predict it ended.
Thank you HBO and all of you who made this possible.
I liked this ending, it feels like what G.R.R. Martin would've done, but I didn't like how they got there in the last season.
Emilia Clarke needed to know since her character set foot on Westeros about how this would end, so she can slowly make the transition.
Ignoring the other dumb decisions they've made in Season 8, this is still the best tv show I've ever watched.
Whaaaa? Bean Oh, no Fuck!!
[9.5/10] They got me. They really did. I believed that Saul would do it, that he would find a way to lie, cheat, and steal out of suffering any real consequences for all the pain and losses he is responsible for. I believed that he would trade in Kim's freedom and chance to make a clean break after baring her soul in exchange for a damn pint of ice cream. I have long clocked Better Call Saul as a tragedy, about a man who could have been good, and yet, through both circumstance and choice, lists inexorably toward becoming a terrible, arguably evil person. I thought this would be the final thud of his descent, selling out the one person on this Earth who loved him to feather his own nest.
Maybe Walt was right when he said that Jimmy was "always like this." Maybe Chuck was right that there something inherently corrupt and untrustworthy in the heart of his little brother. This post-Breaking Bad epilogue has been an object lesson in the depths to which Gene Takovic will stoop in order to feed his addiction and get what he wants. There would be no greater affirmation of the completeness of his craven selfishness and cruelty than throwing Kim under the bus to save himself.
Only, in the end, that's the feint, that's the trick, that's the con, on the feds and the audience. When Saul hears that Kim took his words to heart and turned herself in, facing the punishments that come with it, he can't sit idly by and profit from his own lies and bullshit. He doesn't want to sell her out; he wants to fall on the sword in front of her, make sure she knows that he knows what he did wrong.Despite his earlier protestations that his only regret was not making more money or avoiding knee damage, he wants to confess in a court of law that he regrets the choices that led him here and the pain he caused, and most of all he regrets that they led to losing her.
In that final act of showmanship and grace, he lives up to the advice Chuck gives him in the flashback scene here, that if he doesn't like the road that his bad choices have led him, there's no shame in taking a different path. Much as Walt did, at the end of the line, Saul admits his genuine motives, he accepts responsibility for his choices after years of blame and evasion. Most of all, he takes his name back, a conscious return to being the person that Kim once knew, in form and substance. It is late, very late, when it happens, but after so much, Jimmy uses his incredible skills to accept his consequences, rather than sidestep them, and he finds the better path that Kim always believed he could walk, one that she motivates him to tread.
It is a wonderful finale to this all-time great show. I had long believed that this series was a tragedy. It had to be, given where Jimmy started and where the audience knew Saul ended. But as it was always so good at doing, Better Call Saul surprised me, with a measured bit of earned redemption for its protagonist, and moving suggestion that with someone we care for and who cares of us, even the worst of us can become someone and something better. In its final episode, the series offered one more transformation -- from a tale of tragedy, to a story of hope.
(On a personal note, I just want to say thank you to everyone who read and commented on my reviews here over the years. There is truly no show that's been as rewarding for me to write about than Better Call Saul, and so much of that owes to the community of people who offered me the time and consideration to share my thoughts, offered their kind words, and helped me look at the series in new ways with their thoughtful comments. I don't know what the future holds, but I am so grateful to have been so fortunate as to share this time and these words with you.)
EDIT: One last time, here is my usual, extended review of the finale in case anyone's interested -- https://thespool.net/reviews/better-call-saul-series-finale-recap-saul-gone/
What a performance by Bella Ramsey! She has been amazing from episode one but, this episode she delivered everything!!
I don't think many people realize how important this episode, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine in general, are. The show's talked about many issues, and I think it's very important that this episode focused on white supremacy and police brutality towards the black community. I love Brooklyn Nine-Nine and I think it's one of the most underrated sitcoms of this generation. More people should focus on this show. Please do not get it cancelled.
So this episode released early (and also has lead to the rest of the episodes being brought forward a week) and I genuinely could not be happier with it. It's everything I ever wanted it to be and more and will definitely be something I watch over and over again.
The shot where Anakin walks into the smoke during the clone wars and that blink and miss Anakin-Vader-Anakin transition was a thing of beauty :sob::sob::sob:
At this point I simply couldn't care less if it isn't exactly like the books, this show is setting a new standard for sci-fi and storytelling like The Expanse did a couple years ago or the Wachowski's did a few decades ago. Apple TV is winning the streaming war right now ( if we judge on quality )
I'm convinced none of you know what 'filler' actually means, this episode was a banger, not the best episode but a certified banger still. Got context for Lady Ochiba, more romance between Blackthorne & Mariko (their chemistry is actually very strong), more behind the scenes politics with the council and a great set up for 'Crimson Sky'. Another great episode!
I'm very surprised by the negative comments on this episode. Perhaps it's because I'm a casual Trek fan, but I adored this episode. So many hilarious line deliveries. So much colourful chemistry between all of the characters (Chapel in particular has perfect chemistry with everyone she talks to). So much class, charm and optimism. Very good use of the visual effects budget to punctuate moments of awe. Overall, I feel really energised by this episode.
The butthurt comments here are hilarious; it's an alternate history show, and if they're crying SJW here I'm surprised they weren't sobbing Commie Propaganda in the first episodes if one is that sensitive and fragile to any societal difference. If anything, it feels realistic that in the show people have to be shamed and embarrassed into this decision back then from not being a first historical milestone. Anyway, the first two episodes can feel too scattershot for setting up an alternate history scenario while also establishing the show's own characters and storylines, but the 3rd and 4th being so focused gives it some real momentum and drive that make the show so involving now.
1) (again) Teenagers and their underdeveloped brains, oh my god. Unfortunately, in TLOU every idiotic decision becomes a literal life or death situation.
2) STELLAR performance by Storm Reid, I swear it forced Bella to take her own acting up a notch. The result was my tear stained face (and quite possibly yours too).
3) Fuuuuuuucccccck! "Back in 5 mins", I'm bawling.
8/10 - for Riley/Storm Reid, the pop culture references, the delightful reminders of life pre apocalypse, and a (nearly) flawless victory.
