[7.7/10] I love me some gray areas in my Star Wars. Don’t get me wrong, the light side vs. dark side stuff. But as I’ve grown older, I appreciate stories, including Star Wars stories, that acknowledge our communities and our choices are rarely that simple.
So I like the fact that the Nightsisters (or at least some kind of presumably related witches’ coven) are presented as a counterpoint to the Jedi, not the villains of the piece. This flashback serves a number of purposes. It gives us some of that vaunted backstory, to help us understand where Osha and Mae and Sol and others are coming from. It fills in the gaps of the events that loom so large in the histories of our twin protagonists, letting the audience see them (or most of them) after being tantalized by only being told about them so far.
But most of all, it establishes a different, but no less valid alternative to the force-users we know. We’ve seen the Jedi. We’ve seen the Sith. We’ve seen the Nightsisters who, while sometimes sympathetic (hello Fallen Order fans!), also seem to be harnessing some kind of black magic. We’ve seen the Bendu, who’s more neutral than gray. And we’ve even seen the more passive and meditative Bardottans. (Aka, the species Jar Jar’s girlfriend is from -- no I’m not joking.)
But we’ve never seen anything quite like this coven led by Osha and Mae’s mother, Mother Aniseya. I love that they have a different take on the Force. The coven thinks the Jedi view the Force as a power to be wielded, whereas they view it more as a thread, a tapestry between peoples and events, that can be tugged and pulled to cause changes amid that weaving. Their perspective on the Force is a collectivist one, where their connection to it is given strength by the multitude, in contrast to the Jedi’s view on attachments. And they don’t view the Force as directing fate, but rather as providing for choices -- one of the core ideas of the franchise.
That is all neat! One of the best parts of The Last Jedi is the notion that the Force does not belong to the Jedi. It is, instead, something that flows through all peoples. Exploring that there may be different religions out there, different means of reaching and interpreting it, adds depth ot he world and adds complication to the binary. It’s nearly never a bad thing to add that kind of complexity and ecumenical spirit to your universe.
More or less. One of the other things I appreciate is that the Coven and the jedi view one another with suspicion, even though they’re mutually respectful at first. The coven sees the Jedi as arrogant, too focused on power, too individualistic. The Jedi view the Coven as dark, as corrupting, as dangerous. I’m always a fan of shows that don’t present one perspective, but rather explore how the different vantage points affect the different views groups may have of one another. (Shades of Deep Space Nine from the other major star-bound franchise!)
This is all to say that the Coven is different than what we’re used to, but no less valid. The Jedi as we see them here are different than what we’re used to, but not invalid. And their twin approaches, alike in dignity, come through in the fulcrum between the Coven and the Order: Mea and Osha.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room with those two. The young actress (actresses?) who play the earlier version of the twins aren’t very good. That's no sin. Giving a convincing performance as an adult with years of experience remains startlingly difficult. But the reality is that, though these young actors are giving it their all, there is a put on, stagey quality to the performance that can take you out of the moment. I dearly hope the fandom is kind to them nonetheless. It’s tough being a young performer, especially in a high profile role. But despite a nice moment from Osha when she realizes the gravity of what she’s lost, a lot of the acting from the kiddos is apt to take the viewer out of the moment.
Thankfully, the writing helps make up for it. Not for nothing, given Lucasfilm’s current ownership, much of this feels like the first act of a film from the Disney Renaissance. Osha could be your classic Disney princess. She loves her family and wants to do good and be righteous, but she has this yearning for something different, beyond the garden gate. The episode lays it on a little thick in places, but it’s a venerable story beat for a reason. There’s something compelling about someone trying to make the best of a family situation that doesn’t quite fit them but yearning adventure out past the horizon. (I mean, hey, it worked for Luke Sykwalker.) Osha is roughly one “I want” song from joining the little mermaid and company.
What I like about it, though, is that you feel for all sides of this situation. You feel for Osha. She wants to have an existence separate from her twin. She doesn’t feel like she fits in with the Coven. She doesn’t want to disappoint her moms or her sister. But she doesn’t want to lie. She doesn’t want to deny herself. She doesn’t want to give up this thing inside her telling her she wants more, or at least different.
You feel for Mae. She admittedly, has signs of being the “evil” twin. (Though I guess they both seem to use their force powers to freeze that translucent butterfly? I’ll admit, it was confusing who was who there at points.) She feels at home in the Coven. She loves the immediate family and the wider one. She has power and ease, and the confidence that comes from feeling that you’re where you ought to be. In the end, she does a terrible thing, but she’s an eight-year-old lashing out at an unfortunate situation. In the larger than life confines of fiction, it’s an easy thing for me to forgive.
You feel for Mother Aniseya. She is trying to protect her people. She wants to raise her daughters in her own proud tradition. But she also wants them to find their own path to it. But, from the vantage point of being a little older and a little wiser, she knows that what you want can change. What makes sense in the exuberance of youth can fall out of favor when it makes contact with the knots and tangles of that great ethereal thread. Wanting to protect your child, to instill your values in theme, while respecting their autonomy as young people is an impossible balance. Aniseya handles it with understanding and grace.
Heck, you even understand Mother Koril, who is the more strict and belligerent parental figure here. The cultural conditions are mostly implied, but it’s easy to intuit how the Coven has been marginalized, diminished, possibly by Force. The girls represent their future, and it seems to have required a great deal of her and her partner to make that happen. Why wouldn’t she do anything to protect her girls, and mistrust the Jedi who would deign to take their future away from her and her family?
And you also feel for Sol. The Acolyte already conveyed a very fatherly vibe between him and Osha,but this episode cements it. I have my qualms about what happens to the young woman, but Sol seems searnest when he tells her that she could be a great Jedi, when he imparts that courage means pursuing honestly what you want, when he embraces her in the throes of tragedy and wants to take her on as a surrogate child. The estranged relationship between them in the present is counterbalanced by this fraught but touching connection between them in the past.
Of course, that past is no less slippery. For one thing, there’s still much that's alluded to that we don’t quite see. Presumably there was some conflict between the Jedi and the Coven that Osha wasn’t privy to, which we’ll see down the line. Presumably, it’s part of what spurred Mae to take the actions she did. Presumably it’s why there’s great regret among the Jedi who survived the encounter. And that's before you get into the fact that apparently Mother Aniseya channeled some forbidden magic, or at least did something controversial, to bring the twins’ lives into being. There’s plenty of lore and intrigue yet.
But for now, at least, we have two cultures at odds with one another, in ways that question and complicate our sympathies. This is Star Wars. We know who the Jedi are. We’re apt to side with them, to see them as Osha does, as peacekeepers and heroes of the galaxy. (Even if we’ve seen their ossification and dissolution over the course of the Prequels.) When Osha wants to be a Jedi, and her witch family tells her to lie, to deny herself what she wants in the same of something she’s uncertain about, it’s easy to see Indara and company as rescuers.
And yet, it’s also hard not to see this different means of reaching the Force, that is apparently all but outlawed, and not have serious qualms about the equivalent of religious persecution. The notion that the Coven is allowed to exist, but forbidden from passing on their knowledge to children is startling. It’s clear that there remains animosity between the Coven and the Jedi, born of mutual mistrust, with ostensible peacemakers and instigators. And it’s hard to think of Republic law allowing the Jedi to test and, with some permission, take children away to be taught in their fashion, without thinking of real life colonial schools, and so-called “residential schools” in the United States, that have a checkered history at best.
So while the show makes things a little too blunt with Mae and Osha standing across from one another on a broken bridge, you get the reasons behind the actions and anguish between these two young girls, between their various parents, between Jedi and the Coven. This is not black and white, good and evil, light and dark. This is something more muddled and uncertain than that. And it portends deeper and more interesting things as the mythos of Star Wars evolves before our eyes.
(Speculative spoilers: My bet is that Mae’s master is one of her moms, probably Mother Koril. THough I guess it being the comparatively peaceful and forgiving Aniseya would be a bigger twist. The law of conservation of characters suggests it’s one of them, unless it’s secretly Master Vernestra or something. But one of the moms would be the bigger emotional gut punch, so I presume and hope it’s one of them.)
[9.1/10] If there’s a well-worn trope from The Original Series and beyond, it’s godlike beings examining humanity to see whether we’re a barbarous race too dumb and violent to evolve into higher beings, or a decent, clever species with the capacity for growth. Hell, it’s the animating premise of The Next Generation! Inevitably, there is some sort of test, or trial, or experiment to determine once and for all whether we humans are worthy of the respect or notice of more evolved or powerful lifeforms.
But there’s a reason Star Trek returns to that well so often. It’s a great way to create the sort of moral thought experiments that the franchise thrives on. It’s a venerable means to examine the core characteristics of humanity, and to use advanced species as avatars to debate the good and bad within us. It’s an excuse to question our humble human morality as measured against the oft-callous ethical mores of those more powerful lifeforms, and put both into relief against one another.
That’s what “Observer Effect” accomplishes with its own spin on that time-tested story. A pair of advanced beings are inhabiting Lieutenant Reed and Ensign Mayweather to observe how the crew of the Enterprise responds to a particular challenge. When Trip and Hoshi contract a silicon-based virus, these long-lived beings are present to examine whether Archer and company’s reaction shows intelligent, rational thinking, sufficient for them to be willing to make first contact. It’s a test that, apparently, the Klingons, the Cardassians, and many many other species have failed.
This is putting the cart before the horse, but there’s a Good Omens vibe to this setup. One of the beings is an old pro, and having observed this test for eight-hundred years, he’s rigid about the procedures and skeptical that it’s worth spending much time evaluating these humans. The other is newer, sees a potential in the Enterprise’s response to this crisis, and sees and believes in a brand of compassion and altruism that his counterpart seems reluctant to accept as the natural experiment plays out.
It’s a traditional dramatic diad, but it works here! Like many things in Star Trek, some of the ideas are repurposed or based on archetypes, but they’re durable archetypes that fit into this context. There’s something compelling about these beings who are gradually more and more impressed, or at least intrigued, by the choices the humans make and the things they achieve, until they’re willing to break 10,000 year old rules to help them.
But before that can happen, things have to get bad. What’s particularly striking about “Observer Effect” is that there are effectively no real stakes. All but the most naive Star Trek viewer knows that, by hook or by crook, Trip and Hoshi are going to make it out alive. And yet, we care about their plight for the same reason the superbeings eventually do: because it’s compelling to see people being stoic and brave and comforting one another in the throes of (what they think is) mortal peril, and because we feel for the people trying desperately to save them.
The scenes where Trip and Hoshi are in the thick of the virus’s effects are low-level harrowing, as Hoshi loses her sense and starts trying to break out of the quarantine, while Trip sedates himself and wonders if he’ll ever wake up again. But they’re also an excuse to let us get to know Hoshi a little bit better, learning that she was kicked out of Starfleet for a surreptitious poker game (and, er, breaking her commanding officer’s arm when he tried to stop it). And we learn that Trip, unsurprisingly, was a tinkerer from a young age. These details put us in the shoes of the superbeings, helping us to recognize these guinea pigs as more than that, as human beings with hopes and dreams or, if nothing else, character-revealing backstories.
That said, the superbeings aren’t necessarily interested in whether humans are interesting; they want to know whether we’re smart. And if there’s a major weakness to that premise, it’s that it’s never really clear what the standard for that is supposed to be. It can’t be just killing off anyone with the virus, since the Klingons and Cardassians apparently did that and were judged barbarous for it. Is it figuring out the radiation cure for the virus in time for it to work? If so, that’s a rough standard, since apparently no one in the 800 years the skeptical being has been at this has managed it. It’s left deliberately vague how the Enterprise crew could pass this test, beyond some weird Kobayashi Maru-esque “dealing with a situation in which no matter what you do, you lose someone” idea that doesn't seem to be the point.
But maybe the point is that whatever the being’s standards, they’re too high, or at least testing the wrong thing, since it seems like no one has made it. Instead, the good guy superbeing recognizes the compassion, the empathy in these humans. Archer, Phlox, T’Pol, and others don’t turn their backs on their crewmates. Even when it looks like all is lost, they move heaven and earth to try a cure. Archer risks his own exposure to try to revive Hoshi when their EV suits are too cumbersome for the fine motor skills necessary to do it. He sends Phlox out of sickbay to make sure his doctor survives.
That in and of itself is a pretty standard trope -- that humans are determined and self-sacrificing. But again, it’s a trope for a reason. It strains credulity a bit that no other species in the galaxy in 800 years of tests was willing to be martyrs for their compatriots like this, and there’s a mild perniciousness to the “humans are the specialist creatures in the universe” idea behind it. Still, there is something flattering and vivid to the idea, that seeing this sort of commitment to one’s fellow man is enough to compel the good guy superbeing to see the light (after an Archer speech of course), revive and cure the afflicted crewman, wipe everyone’s memories and reset the status quo.
And better yet, the superbeings turn out to be Organians, the original (or near-original) superbeing testers from The Original Series who founded the peace treaty between humans and Klingons. It’s a nice touch, and an implicit recognition that Enterprise is playing with familiar narratives and character types here.
“Observer Effect” hits some of the expected beats of that narrative type. You have the advanced species that is eventually move by humanity’s plight and potential. You have the human turning the tables, and accusing the godlike creatures of negligence and immorality. And you have the end recognition that there’s some spark to humanity worth saving, or at least not destroying. These ideas are familiar to any longtime Star Trek fan (which you probably are if you’re watching Enterprise), but this episode realizes them well, playing with its sci-fi concepts, characters, and central notions in a way that’s worth of all the stories that came before.
[9.7/10] Most great Star Trek episodes do one or two things really well. A top tier installment might have a strong high concept premise. It might feature a strong emotional story. It could have a great sci-fi plot. It might advance the characters and their relationships. It could offer a piercing moral thought experiment. It might advance some of the major arcs of the show. It may be well-directed with engrossing visuals. It could say something worthwhile about the characters and about what’s important to us.
Do just a couple of these things with success and style, and you’ll end up with something superb. Do more than a handful, and you may have something truly outstanding.
“Children of Time” does them all. And it does them all brilliantly. It is a minor miracle, a true series highlight, and one of the best things Star Trek has ever done.
The idea is deceptively simple. Dax wants to explore a Gamma Quadrant planet with some typically atypical weird energy with the rest of the crew of the Defiant. When they get there, they find something bizarre and unexpected -- their great great great great grandchildren. Turns out that trying to escape the planet's peculiar field of temporal energy left our heroes stranded two hundred years in the past, where they founded this colony now run by their descendents.
It’s a brilliant premise, because it allows Deep Space Nine to do a clever sci-fi “What If?” story, one that provides us hints and glimpses of our characters’ futures, without resorting to alternate dimensions or dream sequences. Sisko and company learning who ended up with whom, who started this tradition or that one, who passed away in the centuries since the colony was founded, creates a stunning opportunity for them all to reflect on where their lives might be headed.
And like “The Visitor”, one of DS9’s other high water marks, it blends the engrossing science fiction premise with a series of deeply personal and emotional stories on that account.
The biggest of these is Kira meeting none other than a future Odo, who has survived those two-hundred years and is ready to share his feelings in the way our Odo never has. It is a truly stunning development that the show plays perfectly.
For the make-up team, Odo’s more refined features help us to visually distinguish the planet’s incarnation of Odo from the one we know and love. In terms of performance, Rene Auberjonois kills it, as always, conveying the sense of a more open-hearted, downright romantic version of the character who nevertheless feels of a piece with the Constable we know and love in his mannerisms. You get the sense of him simply allowing the things our Odo feels on the inside to reach the outside.
That’s an extra thrill because of the writing. This is a sneaky yet powerful way for Kira to finally understand how Odo feels about her. It allows Odo to confess his feelings in a true and vivid way without it being our Odo who quite reaches that breakthrough, without it ever feeling like a cheat. That’s because there’s a plain reason for the change -- not just the two-hundred years that the Changeling has had to evolve and reflect, but the fact that Kira is the only member of the crew who died in that temporal accident two-hundred years hence.
He’s had all these years to consider what he might have said if he’d only had the time, to imagine what their lives might have been if he found the courage to express his feelings, to plan for the day he knew Kira would return to him. Having this Odo deliver the earth-shattering news to her is a unique end-run around the usual narrative trajectory, but one that lets the show play fair, while still earning the emotion involved, given how much of the episode is founded on the unfortunate fact of Kira’s death in the time-defying crash that kickstarts the colony.
Because that’s one of the most fascinating parts of this episode -- the eternal question of how you weigh lives against one another, blown up to fantastical scale. The core dilemma at the heart of “Children of Time” is how you balance the lives of the eight-thousand colonists who’ve made their homes on the planet, versus the continuing lives of our heroes with their friends and family aboard Deep Space Nine, and the continued existence of Kira in particular.
But for that dilemma to have visceral weight, and not just be an academic discussion, you have to make the audience care about the strangers on the planet, and something they achieve in flying colors. It is a thrill to see the workaday workings of this community founded by the people we’ve gotten to know over these past five seasons.
There is an automated math program designed with Quark as its virtual guide. There are a line of Bashirs who revere Julian as their primogenitor. There is a child who has Benjamin’s eyes whom he holds with joy. There is a young O’Brien girl who has the Chief’s spunkiness and wit. Half the fun of this one is looking at this flourishing civilization, built on the ingenuity, kindness, and principles that the main cast has embodied since DS9 began.
And the peculiar joy of the situation, as Sisko and company are respected and admired as the equivalent of Founding Fathers, makes you want to hold onto these people and their society. They are the product of, and the inheritors of, so much good work following the example set by the Deep Space Nine crew. How would we not value and admire what they’ve built all the same?
The episode smartly forges connections between DS9 and the planet’s population. One of the most conceptually interesting are the Sons of Mogh, an order founded by Worf, that exists apart from the main group. It is populated partly by his descendants, but partly by those simply drawn to his way of life, regardless of their heritage. It is a wonderful tribute not just to Worf’s steadfast devotion to Klingon ritual and tradition, something which survives him in this branching timeline, but also his inclusiveness and willing to extend its blessings to those beyond his biology, much as similar blessings were extended to him by his human parents, Federation colleagues, and Trill partner. It’s hard to imagine a happier sort of ending for him.
That Trill partner survives to the present, after a fashion. We also meet Yedrin Dax, Jadzia’s descendent who carries on the Dax symbiont. It’s a clever choice from René Echevarria and the writing staff, because it gives the DS9 crew an honest broker who can substantiate what the colonists are saying, and it gives the audience an entry point character to represent the community in personal terms whom we know as well.
Guest star Gary Frank does terrific work as Yedrin, convincingly portraying that sense of familiarity with Benjamin, seeming connected to Jadzia in attitude and spirit, while also having a distinct presence all his own. What’s more, this character from “the future” also allows the show to comment on the Dax/Worf pairing, acknowledging that things will continue to be rocky, but that the couple will bend toward one another until marriage, and a beautiful life together, is in the offing. As with Kira and Colonial Odo, it’s a nice way for the episode to gesture toward what could be without having to pull the trigger just yet.
And yet, there’s part of me that wishes they would, if only because there is something magnetic about seeing Kira and (an) Odo together with open affections. This is a gorgeous episode to look at overall, but the cinematography is particularly eye-catching in bucolic, sunlit scenes of Colonist Odo and Kira in the countryside. Their shot in gauzy hues, with heartfelt dialogue that make these interludes feel the closest Star Trek’s ever come to a stately but passionate BBC literature adaptation.
Part of that vibe comes with the emotional attachment checked by what amounts to ideological disagreement. Odo is driven to forge a life he himself will never see, taking comfort in the mere expression of his love, even knowing that if his pleas work, it’s our Odo, not him, who’ll reap the benefits. The poignancy of that, of wanting the romance you imagined to take root, even if it’s not quite with you, being satisfied to simply have your feelings known, is wondrously romantic in ways I struggle to articulate -- a blend of self-sacrifice and satisfaction that moves the heart.
For her part, Kira is overwhelmed by all this: finding out that a dear friend is in love with her, worrying that her conversations about Bareil and Shakaar may have hurt him, having the surreal experience of praying over your own grave, wondering what it all means when your religion teaches you that the gods have but one path, and seeing a technological solution that seems to blasphemously create two. Who wouldn’t be affected by that?
And yet, therein lies the wrinkle. Yedrin promises our heroes that in the two-hundred years since their ancestors first landed here, Dax has been concocting a typical reverse-the-polarity-through-the-main-deflector-dish solution that will theoretically allow one version of the Defiant crew to head back to DS9, while another version continues through history as the colonists know it. A little visual flourish with Kira seemingly duplicating for a moment in the teaser helps give the idea credibility with the audience, not to mention Yedrin Dax’s status as a seeming honest broker.
The twist, then, is that he’s lying. And I love it because it makes this choice harder, not easier. Sisko and company can’t have their cake and eat it too. They must decide what’s right and which is worth more -- the eight thousand colonists who’ve made their lives here, or the forty-nine Defiant crewmembers who’ve made their lives aboard the Deep Space Nine. And there are no easy answers.
In the abstract, it’s a hell of a thought experiment. Can you just count heads and decide the interests of the greater number of colonists win out? Can you impose that choice when some of your crew might agree with it and some of them might not? Is making a choice where some people will never have existed the same as killing them? What responsibilities do the people alive now have to later generations, and what sacrifices should they be expected to make? How do you measure the right to pursue your own passions or projects against a moral obligation to see to the welfare of those down the line? There’s no good or simple answers to these questions, which makes for good conflicts and thought--provoking ideas.
But this is also a personal story, and what I particularly appreciate is how well-motivated everyone is in where they stand.
The people who have families, like Sisko and Miles, are reluctant, if not downright hostile, to the idea of abandoning their partners and children in favor of the colonists. I love the contrast between bachelor Bashir, who contemplates asking the recent transfer out since he discovers they eventually marry on the colony, and family man O’Brien who’s downright horrified at the idea of losing his wife and children and starting anew somewhere he’ll never be able to see them again. Yedrin Dax talks about having kept Sisko away from Jake, one of the most palpable connections that would be severed if they go along with Yedrin’s own plan to see that history continues as he knows it.
Yedrin’s position, however deceptive, is also comprehensible. Dax feels responsible for this colony, since it was Jadzia’s insistence that they check out the weird energy planet that got them stranded there in the first place. This colony is his baby, in some way, and part of exercising the guilt is ensuring that it wasn’t all for nothing, that they will build on these two-hundred years of progress and prosperity, not see it wiped away by a flourish of temporal mechanics. Jadzia herself feels betrayed, but also understands.
And then, most notably, the people who make the case for staying are those who are religious, and with that, believe in destiny and a universe where everything happens for a reason. Worf sees the Sons of Mogh as an honorable legacy. He believes that this is meant to be, and Kira agrees with him.
Kira’s agreement is the most powerful, because she has the most to lose. Yes, she believes in the same sense of fate that Worf does. When Miles rightly slates Worf’s blase attitude about severing family ties given Alexander’s conspicuous absence, Kira shoots back that the Prophets will care for him and for the O’Brien family on the station. She thinks this has been ordained, and more than that, would not credit her own life against the eight thousand who have thrived here. That is true faith, true devotion, true belief, and even in the humanistic world of Starfleet, it’s hard not to admire it in these terms.
But even if it’s a choice Kira can make for himself, it’s not a choice Sisko feels he can impose on everyone. So they resolve to leave. It is a hard choice, but an understandable one, which gives it extra force.
The decision provides one of the most powerful sequences in the episode and also the show. The colonists know they are doomed. Yet, they do not despair. They plant. They till. They work. They commune. They relish. This is a communal last meal, a tribute and triumph to all this society has achieved in the last two centuries.
It is some of the most lavish cinematography and touching scenes Star Trek has ever done. The vision of this community banding together against annihilation, hands meeting hands in the soil, parents reassuring children with the rhythm of the day, a Buddhist sand painting of labor destined to be washed away but that much more vital and vivid because of its impermanence. As Worf tells his sons, time is the enemy now. Let us band together and fight in vain against it.
When Chief O’Brien takes part in it, even he cannot deny the transcendence of what has been built here. He cannot destroy it, even if it means sacrificing all he knows and loves.
And that is that. In one of the most heart-rending choices of DS9 the crew collectively decides to recreate the accident that was the catalyst for this community, because it is too beautiful, too full of the love and values that they themself radiate, to rend asunder.
And then it is rent asunder. Our heroes record their goodbyes. They prepare to commit to this life. And at the last moment, the autopilot ticks them off the course, sending them free of the anomaly du jour, and blinking the colony from existence. “Children of Time” spends so much making us, and them, love this place and these people, and then it rips it away from both. It is devastating, in the best way.
I knew the who and the why from the moment it happened. The episode offers a feint, with Sisko voicing the notion that Yedric had a change of heart. But there was only one answer, what’s always been the answer. Colonist Odo loves Kira. He cannot endorse a choice that would kill her. He cannot allow a choice that would rob the universe of the possibility of love blossoming between her and our Odo. After two-hundred years of waiting, of holding onto that hope, it would be a loss too great to bear.
That too is a complicated choice. If you love someone, and want what’s best for them, does that give you the right to override their autonomy? To overrule what they themselves believe in? To let thousands perish for their benefit? Kira is rightfully aghast at it. Our Odo, who knows what his colonial counterpart knows thanks to a timely link between them, is understandably shaken by what he missed when bottled up to protect him from the local radiation, but he also realizes it isn’t so simple.
And even if it wouldn’t endorse Colonist Odo’s choices unreflectively, love is an awing thing, and in the right circumstances, or the wrong ones, it can make us willing to let the whole world crumble to pieces if it saves the ones we care about. That too is a kind of faith, a kind of a devotion, a kind of belief. I don’t know the right answer, but I understand why everyone here feels the way they do and makes the heart-rending choices they make. That is all I can ask from Star Trek.
“Children of Time” is not a perfect episode of television. The colonists seem pretty blase about whether telling their ancestors about the future might change it, in a way that seems un-Trek-y. Even if Yedric’s original “plan” was above board, none of the Defiant crew seems concerned about whether they or their sci-fi duplicates would be the ones returning to the station or the ones trapped on the planet. And there’s small shortcuts for convenience, like the forty-three others not at the debate table not really having a say in what happens, that require some willing suspension of disbelief at the shorthand.
But the episode does so many things right. It plays with our emotions, our loyalties, our intellectual engagement, our conscience, our sense of excitement, our empathy, our hearts, our minds, our eyeballs, so expertly. You can understand why Star Trek has returned to this sort of premise again (Enterprise basically does it twice), given the chance to deliver a vision of possible future and a meditation of what the present is worth.
“Children of Time” is the peak of that idea. It is a love letter to what the officers aboard Deep Space Nine represent and believe in, a vision of their perfect community lifted up and then ripped away, and an affirmation of the love between and among them in the here and how, that makes the choice to hold onto such possibilities as profound as it is heartbreaking.
20mins chase sequence in a 30mins episode. We know the main characters won't die , who are we kidding .
4/10
I'm convinced people complaining about this seem to just hate fun. star trek has had some of the goofiest episodes ever to grace tv screens and I love that strange new worlds is keeping up with tradition. 12/10, would spontaneously burst into a sea shanty again
Wow. I might be the only one that liked this... From last week's awesome animated crossover to this week's the point when Spock started singing. I just love how they are trying new things in Trek. Doesn't hurt that I love a good musical.
If you didn't shed tears throughout the entire episode... this didn't serve you well. It's just wonderful.
What the f...?
I really loved that episode! Ethan Peck played that role fascinatingly good. What a blast this second season is.
[8.0/10] Every Star Trek show does the “We just need to use science-as-magic to solve this life-threatening problem!” routine. I get tired of it sometimes, because it doesn’t require any actual ingenuity from the crew or the writers. Simply saying, “We could blow up the Protostar to stop the living construct, but if we [technobabble] the [technobabble-machine], we should be able to disperse the explosion and not hurt anyone!” is kind of a cheat. Sure, it ostensibly requires some in-universe cleverness from Zero and Rok-Tahk to drum up the solution, and from the rest of the team to make it happen. But nothing the show set up to this point really establishes why this would be a good or natural solution to the problem.
But there’s a way you can still make those nigh-magical solutions meaningful -- give them a cost, whether it’s practical or emotional (and ideally, both). In this instance, there’s the simple fact that Dal, Gwyn, and company would have to say goodbye to the Protostar, the ship that has been their home and their salvation after the events on Tars Lamora. That alone makes it tough and sad to let the ship explode, even for the greater good. (Hello Search for Spock fans!)
More than that, though, the destruction of the Protostar to prevent the construct from continuing to destroy Starfleet’s entire, er, fleet is meaningful because it comes with a human cost. For one thing, Dal is willing to go down with the ship, something that indicates how he’s grown into the role of captain. More importantly, it takes a sacrifice from Holo-Janeway.
She has been the den mother to these young officers-in-training all this time. She knows what this will cost her. But she’s also willing to make the sacrifice because she too has internalized Starfleet’s ideals. She wants to save these kids as much as she wants to save the universe. So she makes the choice, and doing the right and selfless thing means losing her with the ship. There’s something beautiful but melancholy about the fact that her time with the young heroes has caused her to grow, to the point that her program can no longer fit on an isolinear chip. The irony of her developing alongside these kids, to the point that she can’t join them in their escape, makes her sacrifice all the more poignant.
There’s also some synchronicity to the fact that the Protostar’s shockwave creates a wormhole that either is what took Chakotay and his crew fifty-three years into the future, or at least allows Starfleet to learn that's where he ended up. Frankly, I thought I understood the whole kit and kaboodle of Chakotay’s disappearance and the Vau N’Akat going back in time, but the “five decades into the future” threw off what I thought I knew. Still, it’s not that hard to get, even if it’s a little convoluted, and the fact that the Protostar’s self-destruction helps create a bridge there gives the adventure a certain clockwork quality.
This is also a strong outing for Admiral Janeway. I don’t know why, but there’s always something compelling about a captain (or, in this case, admiral) defending the actions of her crew to a stuffy Starfleet tribunal. Her speech to Starfleet command is a great one. She pushes back on the council’s ojbections to theft and other misdeeds on the part of the Protostar’s crew, and points out that they saved everyone’s butts with their courage and ingenuity. She rejects the idea that they’re not suited for admission to the Academy, arguing that the baptism by fire they’ve survived is a better indication of their fitness than any formal evaluation could be. And she stands up for objections to Dal’s status as an augment, noting that he’s not enhanced and, more than that, is a living representation of the bonds among Federation worlds. It’s a great stand for Janeway on behalf of what’s good and right, and a vindication of all the good works and maturation our young heroes have gone through.
That's why it’s so triumphant to see them show up on Starfleet’s doorsteps, after landing in the bay. (Shades of Star Trek IV!) Their hard work and good works pay off. They may not be able to attend the Academy straight away, but they’re permitted to become warrant officers under Janeway, thereby achieving their goal to become an official part of Starfleet. It’s a nice middle ground. On a practical level, the council makes a fair point that it wouldn’t be fair to fast track them ahead of other candidates. On a show level, this allows Dal and company to succeed in joining Starfleet, while still making it possible for the basic premise of the show to continue and evolve. I like the line that walks.
The exception is Gwyn, who chooses to go to Solum and try to prepare the Vau N’Akat for first contact. I have mixed feelings about the choice. Mostly, I hope this is a Saru thing, where the ostensible return to the homeworld is more of a pitstop than an exit from the show, since I like Gwyn’s presence. But I wish we got more time with her reconciling her feelings about her dad before just deciding to return to a planet she’s never known and a people she’s never been a part of, over her own found family, because it’s what her quasi-abusive father wanted. I’ve already said my piece, but suffice it to say, I’m uneasy about how the show’s handled this.
All that said, I dig the idea that she’s taken Federation values to heart, and wants to use her abilities to bring people together to help resolve the conflict her father wanted to avoid using more peaceful, progressive means. Her and Dal’s goodbye is suitably sad and sweet, with enough callbacks to their initial sparks to give them a sense of having come full circle.
So the first season ends on a high note. Zero gets a fancy new containment suit. Jankom impresses his fellow cadets with his engineering abilities. Rok-Tahk’s care for Murf and others is consecrated into the study of xenobiology. (I knew it!) And the kids get to join the real Janeway to be a part of her bigger plans. Despite some science-as-magic, the second part of “Supernova” gets the big things right and makes our heroes achieving their goal feel earned, which is what’s important.
Overall, I walk away impressed with Prodigy’s maiden voyage. The show still has cracks in its armor, like the janky animation and occasional bouts of overly broad humor. But it also reinvigorated the meaning and value of Starfleet’s ideals by showing them to us through the eyes of children and outsiders who need them more than anyone. It leveraged fifty years of Star Trek history in creative ways, bringing back concepts and characters, but using them to enhance this show’s main players rather than dousing us with simple nostalgia. And despite the more baroque qualities of its mystery box, the first season uses that plot to show why Dal, Gwyn, and their comrades grew and matured in dealing with these challenges, to where they deserve to be in Starfleet as much as anyone.
It’s nice to have something specifically aimed at a younger audience that helps deliver these concepts and stories in a way that fits their style and needs. As with Star Wars: The Clone Wars, it balances canon connections and grown-up ideas with accessible stories and age-appropriate adjustments. The reverence for Trek is plainly there, and it’s nice to see the show’s creative team move the ball forward, in a way that makes the franchise’s big tent even bigger.
[7.5/10] A quality start to the new season. This episode functions well as a "getting the gang back together" outing which is almost always fun. I like the subversion of self-possessed Mariner needing to learn to trust the system for once and, more to the point, rely on her friends rather than trying to take on everything all herself. Plus seeing her become vulnerable and worried over her mom is wholesome and endearing. And as always, the Easter eggs and homages are a lot of fun, especially the historical theme park in Bozeman, Montana, where they even got James Cromwell to reprise his role as Zefram Cochrane!
I liked how they addressed the subplot of M'Benga's daughter versus miraculously finding a cure for her and it was clearly a chance for the actors to show some different, sillier sides to themselves. Hard disagree with the low-rated comments -- this episode clearly embodied the spirit of TOS.
Still enjoying the magical pompadour that is Pike's hair! I am also really enjoying the actress who plays Uhura. She's cute, funny, and smart. They chose well with this one! I hope the writers keep the same vibe going with her and don't mess up her character with some shipboard romance or something.
This was predictable episode though. The moment I saw a child being prepped for ascension, I knew it'd end up being a "Snow Piercer" kids are fuel/batteries/computers type ending. I wonder if we will ever get an episode in ANY Trek where we humans learn to accept and not be upset about how other SPECIES do things that run counter to our human ways. I mean, do we really expect other civilizations out there to have the same thought processes, morals, etc. as we do? This is a rant I have for all sci-fi I guess.
Absolutely incredible, one of the most heartbreaking moments in the Breaking Bad universe. Never in a million years I'd have expected something like this - always thought Howard was the safest character.
Nacho's death was sort of easy to process since there was so much vindication and control about it, but this was the polar opposite - Howard gets ridiculed, only to then get offed basically for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When Lalo looked at the cockroach, I instantly knew he'd look for Jimmy, just never expected it being so soon. Visual storytelling at its finest.
With this episode, I realized I also changed my perspective on Saul's future as Gene - where I used to feel sort of sorry for him after seeing how he thrives in his heyday, it more and more seems like where things were headed all along. Best character development on TV as always, and masterful storytellers all around.
"This is a very frustrating conversation."
I don't know about you guys.. but this episode was hilarious to me. :joy:
AND NOW WE'LL NEVER KNOW WHAT THE TATTOO WAS
Holy smokes, for me, that was the second biggest reveal of the whole entire Stargate franchise.
Burnham speech to the Magistrate about them now being refugees and hoping they'd improve as a society really felt like something Picard would have said.
On a sidenote, they can't beam more than 40 people at a time? and they had to run a dangerous experiment on Discovery while conducting the evacuation?
Also: please don't kill Rhys.
Also2: casual Star Trek Online namedrop.
[7.8/10] The first ten minutes of Discovery’s season 4 premiere may be my favorite of the whole show. The episode’s opener is confident. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s clever. It’s deft and efficient in its check-ins with all our heroes. And most importantly, it’s a tribute to the values of both the Federation and the show’s protagonist.
This is, in fact, Michael Burnham’s (Sonequa Martin-Green) coming out party as captain. She renews contact with a species of “butterfly people,” and the situation turns from a comical misunderstanding into a run for her life. Even under attack, though, she refuses to fight back, despite Book’s (David Ajala) urging. And after Michael notices her pursuers’ erratic flight patterns, she and her crew put their heads together and figure out how to repair and restore the satellites that once guided them. Her steadfastness and altruism become a powerful gesture of goodwill. The Starfleet officers do escape (after defending Grudge’s honor, of course) and still leave their peace offering of dilithium, marking a new beginning despite the hostile reception.
It’s the most sure-footed, endearing, and true to the Star Trek spirit Discovery has ever felt. There’s action, humor, compassion, principle, and camaraderie at play, all of which blend together wonderfully to kick off Burnham’s tour as captain, and the show’s fourth season, just right.
But there’s also a larger point behind the excitement. Burnham doesn’t want to fire on her winged pursuers because she’s pot committed to rebuilding relations with former Federation communities. Her goals are noble, but she’ll brave a hell of a lot at risk in their service. And why wouldn’t she? She’s been in the direst of straits and still come out on top. Burnham bets on herself no matter how perilous the situation, and her history gives her good reason to.
So begins “Kobayashi Maru”, an aptly-named episode about whether she can accept that such victories aren’t guaranteed, that there are some factors beyond your control, and that good leaders must make the hard calls anyway, even if it means sacrificing the few to save the many. The newly-dubbed Captain Burnham engages in the type of bold heroism we expect from our starship captains, showing devotion to her friends and a commitment to rescue those in danger, even if it means spreading that danger to many more souls.
Deconstructing her history of big swings and disaster-courting theatrics -- and introducing political forces who question whether her calls are logical, even if they’re successful -- points Discovery on an intriguing path as it begins its fourth season.
Sure enough, the crisis of the week brings these questions into focus. One of the finer points of “Kobayashi Maru” is that it works well as a standalone adventure, with enough pick-ups from last season and setups for new plot threads to furnish the show’s long-term storytelling. Here, a Starfleet officer sends a partially-garbled distress signal. A space station is hurtling through the cosmos thanks to some unknown spatial anomaly. And, of course, only the U.S.S. Discovery can save it! It’s some good, old fashioned, meat-and-potatoes Star Trek business, with a chance for the characters to show their mettle and their talents in a life-or-death scenario.
But Federation President Rillak (Chelah Horsdal) arrives at the same time. She’s the most intriguing new element in Discovery’s premiere. Burnham suspects her civilian counterpart of craven political efforts to draft off her crew’s wins from last season. When the President wants to come along on the latest mission, Burnham assumes she merely wants to “check a box” and otherwise coopt Starfleet’s successes as her own.
Nevertheless, President Rillak proves to be both an asset and a thorn in Burnham’s side. She helps talk down the anxious station commander in a tense moment, but may have lied to him in the process. She questions the wisdom of Burnham herself venturing to rescue those trapped aboard, but doesn’t overrule the captain’s decision. She pushes back on some of Michael’s bolder strokes with justifiable concerns, while seeming a touch too condescending in the process. In short, she’s a skeptic of Burnham’s methods, even as she appreciates their results, and has the stature and clout to challenge Michael without being dismissed out of hand. Rillak is, nigh-instantaneously, a strong narrative counterbalance to Michael.
It’s not all just Burnham vs. the President, though. One of the nice pieces of Discovery’s return is how it checks in on the key characters and loose threads leftover from season 3. Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and the rest of the major players have been promoted as lieutenants. While It feels strange for her at first, Tilly also shows her strength in a crisis by helping to manage the sanity-slipping station commander, even as she admits to not knowing what comes next for her.
What’s more, Adira (Blu del Barrio) is a full-fledged ensign now, helping to solve big sciencey problems and conversing with Gray (Ian Alexander) about restoring him to a physical body. Stamets (Anthony Rapp) is jury-rigging the Discovery’s innards to power-up this and rechannel that, while still harboring deep concern for his friends and loved ones. And Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) has his family back and seems a happier man for it. Some of these check-ins are brief for the time being, but they’re just enough to reacquaint us with the team in an already-packed series premiere.
The episode does dive deeper for two characters, though. One is Saru (Doug Jones), who has returned to Kaminar to mentor Su’Kal (Bill Irwin) and help guide his people into the coming age. There’s plot-relevant excitement here, like the prospect of the Kelpiens returning to the stars or a council where they and the Ba’ul coexist in harmony. More endearing, though, is the lovely words Saru hears from Su’Kal, who’s matured considerably since we last saw him.
Su’Kal gives his surrogate father figure his blessing to return to Starfleet. He reassures Saru that he no longer has to choose between his people and the pull toward the skies above. He tells his dear friend that their bonds, as family and as a community, will remain strong even from a distance.
It’s a beautiful affirmation of Saru’s commitment, his sensitivity, and most notably, the gift he’s returned to his people. It’s also a tribute to the compassion he’s shown to this once-fragile being, with whom he shares a deep love and sense of renewed purpose that’s fulfilled them both. Saru’s departure from the Discovery at the end of last season was never going to be permanent (barring cancelation), but “Kobayashi Maru” gives us just enough of him on Kaminar to be satisfying, while also justifying his return to service.
The other character who receives a little more time and space is Book, who returns to Kwiejan to participate in his nephew’s coming-of-age ceremony. As with Saru, there’s some plot-necessary work being done here. The scenes of Book on his home planet reestablish his bond with his brother and their family. They reestablish what this world means to Book, and his spiritual connection to it. There is beauty in both, with a specificity to the rituals and a warmth to the interactions that makes each feel heartening and genuine.
The bigger purpose of these scenes, though, is to add shock and impact to Book’s Alderaan moment at the end of the episode, as he sees his home planet destroyed in an instant. There’s merit in reminding the audience of the vitality of what you’re about to destroy, even if, given the hit-or-miss nature of Kweijan-centered stories last season, it’s a bit of a trick. Still, It works; so I’m not complaining.
Nor am I complaining about the fireworks du jour as Burnham and the Discovery rescue their tumbling space station colleagues. The episode puts the money on the screen in the process. Those aboard the station tumble upside down in a “gravity nightmare.” Burnham herself whirls through space in a moment of breath-holding silence. There’s narrow rescues, technobabble solutions, personal interventions, and last minute escapes from disaster. All of this is the standard block and tackle of a good Star Trek crisis, but “Kobayashi Maru” executes it well.
Not well enough for President Rillak, though. As exciting as these scenes are, they come at the cost of Burnham trying to rescue every last person, even though doing so put her entire crew at risk. When she and Rillak have a heart-to-heart later, her political counterpart dangles the tantalizing chance to captain ships with next generation spore drive tech and “pathfinder” advancements. But the Federation leader essentially tells Burnham that she’s too confident in the face of uncertainty, too unwilling or unable to accept the vagaries and dangers of the unknown and take wins where you can find them, rather than risking everything to come out a little further ahead.
It’s a fascinating tack. The nature of most ongoing television shows is that our heroes inevitably win. It’s what people want to see. Times may be desperate, but the good guys almost always survive. And in the process, they usually find a way to save the day at the last minute, defeat the bad guys, and rescue the famous faces the audience already knows and likes.
Burnham’s done that and more. Having a character point out the implausibility of that, or at least, the recklessness of expecting it to happen every time, gives Discovery and its protagonist the chance to both blanche at the accusation and grow from it. How Michael shoulders the burden of these command decisions, with a skeptical superior who appreciates her successes but questions whether they’re sustainable, suggests worthy philosophical and practical conflicts to come for our hero.
To the point, one of my least favorite parts of Discovery’s third season finale came when a random brute told Burnham she was in a “no-win situation,” and she responded, “I don’t believe in those.” It was a cheap call-out to one of Star Trek’s most famous outings, with no relevance to the moment at hand. Channeling iconic bits out of context for no reason than the spark of recognition is lazy and pandering.
But as Discovery launches into its fourth season, the show is rectifying that sin. “Kobayashi Maru” takes the themes of The Wrath of Khan seriously. It projects them onto the struggles and triumphs of Michael Burnham over the last three years and asks if she can understand, like James T. Kirk once had to, that even for the bravest and boldest, eventually your good luck will run out. Overconfidence from a track record of daring successes, knowing loss, watching those you care about suffer and sacrifice, was enough to humble even that dauntless captain who started it all.
What that idea could mean a thousand in-universe years later, whether Burnham will learn a similar lesson or barrel her way through more close scrapes and great successes, how she and her friends will adapt to the new normal and grapple with a policial foil, promises the sort of thoughtful, intriguing storytelling the best Trek is made of. Discovery still has something to prove, but on the cusp of the fourth year of its journey, the show knows where it’s going and starts out firing on all cylinders. Let’s fly.
Ensign’s Log:
Burnham’s straightforward, unshowy use of “they/them” pronouns for Adira was perfect. It’s a subtle way for the series to continue its commitment to representation while not patting itself on the back for it.
Speaking of which, I’m still curious if Discovery will continue the thread of Stamets holding a grudge against Burnham for putting Hugh and Adira at risk last season. There’s hints of that here, but no strong confirmation.
The Discovery B-team (Detmer, Owo, etc.) are all accounted for here, and each gets something worthwhile to do as part of the proceedings. But they still feel more like friendly props than characters. I hope season 4 gives them the spotlight for at least an episode.
The Dot robots from last season (and the fantastic “Ephraim and Dot” Short Trek) are back, briefly, and help with the peril in the teaser. I guess Starfleet managed to rebuild this (theoretically ancient) tech, despite almost all of them being destroyed last season?
“Kobayashi Maru” is smart to make us care about the station commander, giving him enough personality, flaws, and nobility, to where it matters to us when he turns up dead. He’s not a regular character, but it adds weight to the issues Rillak raises as things don’t go perfectly with Burnham’s big swing here, and there’s a palpable human cost.
It’s appropriate that the latest ship named Voyager is the one planned to receive new “pathfinder” technology.
Speaking of homages to classic Trek, I freaking hated Jonathan Archer, and I still got misty hearing the opening notes of the Star Trek: Enterprise end credits theme playing over the dedication for the “Archer Space Dock.” Kids, sometimes Star Trek turns me into a sap.
In the same vein, with Burnham and Book messing up a first contact-esque situation by bringing a pet along and thereby offending the local population, Captain Archer’s true legacy lives on!
[7.7/10] I liked this. It start out a little bumpy, and frankly, it feels more like a Trekkie version of Star Wars: Rebels than anything we’ve seen from the franchise before. But there’s a lot of potential here. The mix of characters is strong, and while Dal is a little annoying in his quippiness, he has a lot of room to grow and mature. The animation is a bit rough in places, particularly the character designs and movements, but the ship-based set pieces are beautifully and even stirring.
It’s been a long time since Star Trek made something to appeal specifically to kids. This definitely fits modern young audience-focused sensibilities more than the 1973 Animated Series did. That means parts of it feel a little broad relative to what we grown-ups expect from Star Trek. But it feels like the series’ heart is in the right place here. While the Star Trek connection feels more like set dressing for a traditional action adventure series than a core part of the conception, I like the elements that Prodigy puts forward in the early going, and I’m curious to see where it (and Captain Janeway) will take them from here. Godspeed, kids!
What the hell does "This place is deader than a Texas salad bar" even mean? :joy: Please try to make sense, Mr. Shaft.
Almost a season ago (https://trakt.tv/comments/388513) I was pretty annoyed that Vala had stuck around. At the time, her character felt shallow—and static. Since then, I'm quite pleasantly surprised that the writers turned her around into someone capable of growing and changing, someone with a conscience and a sense of the greater good. So what if her jokes still aren't funny? :grin:
Meanwhile, I still haven't figured out exactly why the creative team puts her in twintails most of the time. Best I can think of is that it's to emphasize Vala's playful, often childish attitude—which works, but doesn't mesh quite as well as the flippancy they were probably trying to replace since O'Neill/RDA left the cast.
Did SG-1 need to show some Jaffa women? Yes, definitely. The fact that we only ever see Jaffa men fighting for their respective system lords needed to be addressed somehow, and this story did cover it as far as Moloc is concerned.
However, I was deeply disappointed in the wardrobe choices made for this episode. Just like in every video game or action movie featuring women in fighting roles, the Hak'tyl warriors wore unrealistically skimpy outfits that would provide no real protection in battle. These costumes were no better than what Hathor wore* a few seasons ago—and in that case, "Hathor never expects to find herself in active combat" was a flimsy but valid excuse. Ishta and the others here go off to raid other Jaffa parties for symbiotes with no armor at all. It's no wonder they lose so many good warriors in trying to procure symbiotes for the children among them.
We also have to acknowledge that Teal'c's romance with Ishta makes no sense. Had Christopher Judge not written the script, I very much doubt that idea ever would have come up. Though I have no evidence to prove that it was indeed his idea, the lack of any co-writer credits for this script is about as damning as possible. To think that Jolene Blalock took a break from T'Pol's Bermanization on Star Trek: Enterprise to film this, where her character was arguably treated even worse… Sigh.
Honestly, I'm out of energy now to also complain about the huge gaping plot hole: there were at least three symbiotes available at the SGC for reimplantation into Neith, since their original Jaffa hosts had given them up in favor of Tretonin treatments.
In writing this down, I talked myself into revising my rating from 6/10 to 5/10. Whoops.
* — And at least Hathor's skimpy costume covered where her symbiote pouch should be; "Birthright" overlooked that detail a few times.
[7.5/10[ In hindsight, it was probably inevitable that Rafa and Trace would intersect with the Bad Batch. They’re both a set of characters introduced in season 7 of The Clone Wars, and so since this crop of Bad Batch episodes feel as much like a sequel to those TCW episodes as anything, it makes sense that we’d see the Martez sister make an appearance here. While they aren’t my favorite characters in the franchise, I like positioning them as helping out the burgeoning rebellion (I assume?) and running into conflict with the Bad Batch who’s on the same mission for purely mercenary reasons.
There’s also some good setups and payoffs. The show isn’t exactly shy about Omega working on her bow-firing prowess. But there’s a tidy little arc to here inability to consistently hit a target, to her stand-off with Rafa leading to the dangerous situation at the Corellian droid disposal facility, to her good aim and ability to block out distractions to save Rafa’s Gammorrean bacon.
I'll admit that the action didn’t wow me here. The direction was largely indifferent and, while appropriate to the situation, most of the goings on at the droid disposal looked like one big gray mess. But there were some nicely staged set pieces even if I didn’t love the framing and editing of them. Omega getting trapped on a conveyor belt of doom is an old trick to build tension, but it still works. Wrecker’s big damn heroes moment while Tech is tinkering offers some minor excitement. And the combination of the Bad BAtchers and the Martez sisters figuring out how to use the vaunted strategy droid head to turn their old enemies against their immediate threat is a clever way to extricate everyone from the situation.
The game of hot potato between our heroes and the Martez sisters is a little rote, but it gives the two groups something to fight over and chase after, which serves the narrative’s purposes. We don’t get much in the way of ideological differences between the two sides, just ction, but it at least provides a means to show them working against one another when their interests in possessing the head conflict, and then the two groups working together when it’s a necessity to escape eh facility’s security droids.
In terms of little mmets, it’s troubling to see Wrecker’s headaches continue, to the point ath now he’s even briefly using the “good soldiers follow order” line. The poor lummox is a ticking time bomb, and I hope the Bad Batch (or somebody) figures out how to neutralize the chip (thereby giving them the knowledge and motivation to do the same for Crosshair) before it’s too late. On a different note, it’s a cheap gag, but I got a kick out of Rafa stealing Trace’s distraction idea, Rafa saying “Is there an echo here?”, only for Echo to respond, “Yes, I’m Echo.” Dumb, but funny.
Otherwise, the peak of this one is the end. I like picking back up the theme that Hnter and his comrades aren’t exactly sure what to do now that the war is over. Fighting for the Empire doesn’t seem right to them, and the notoriously transactional Rafa even admits that sooner or later you have to take sides, a late-breaking sign of character growth from her arc in TCW, and a hint that Hunter and company may eventually make the same choice. The conflict between protecting themselves and staying out of sight versus fighting against the successor organization to the one that trained and deployed them is an intriguing one. Hunter taking the head for himself, but giving the data download to Rafa is a nice middle ground on Hunter’s And I’m also curious as to who Rafa and Trace are working for. (My money’s on Bail Organa, but I’d like to be surprised!)
Overall, another good outing of The Bad Batch that once again connects the series to other Star Wars projects, but feeds back into the clones’ central story of finding their place in a post-Empire galaxy.
How did Ford, who was leaning over the DHD, get shifted by momentum when the entire cockpit was submerged before the drive pod touched the gate? He would have been dematerialised energy.
Also, love the discrete units/only in one piece rule that suddenly applies to gate travel when SG-1 has shown dozens of cases of something being cut off by the gate. Usually staff weapons.
I did not go into the second last episode thinking my emotions would be all over the place, but it made me go through a whirlwind of emotions. I got goosebumps from watching this episode.
It’s a perfect episode; while it may seem slow placed, a lot goes on, and there’s a lot of character development at play. I felt like I was watching a different show at times because there would be wholesome family vibes and not superhero vibes, and I'm not complaining; I enjoyed it.
The ending left me wanting more, and I can’t wait for the last episode.
PS- don't miss the mid-credit scene; it's fantastic.
Overall, I think it might be the best episode. It was pretty well written, showcasing Asta's tell when she hugs The Alien and the kid using the phone as a GPS to track the base. Now the only problem is that I don't know how will Alan Tudyk appear in the next season. I guess, we are not gonna The Alien's planet yet, and he'll go back to earth. And, I'll be honest, I actually thought that Harry could've killed the town doctor, but didn't think so because no one in the town really seem to know him before the alien came.
I'm giving this cult classic television series another spin, starting off from the beginning (and also redoing my ratings up to now). So here we go:
The Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire is, as the title card reads, a Christmas Special, and it may seem rather strange, that a television series starts with a Christmas special. To understand this, you need to know two things:
Firstly, this wasn't actually supposed to be the first episode. The first episode produced, was S01E13, Some Enchanted Evening. However, a workprint test screening was received overall poorly, enforcing a long rework of the entire first season that took around half a year. Now, having to air in mid December, the decision was made to grab Episode 8 of that season for premiering.
Secondly, the Simpsons where already well known. It was in 1985 that comic artist Matt Groening was asked to do an animated short series for the Tracey Ullman Show, a ~30-minute long sketch comedy show, to be used as a ~1 minute long "bumper" before and after the commercial break. Groening initially wanted to use his comic series "Life in Hell" but when he learned, that he would actually loose all intellectual property rights, he came up with a plan B: The Simpsons, which - as rumor has it - was developed in 15 minutes in front of the office of producer James L. Brooks, just before pitching the idea. It wasn't the first (and in the beginning not the only) animated short that aired as advertisement bumper in the show that started in April 1987, but it was the one that got most attention and by the second season, all other cartoons were canceled and The Simpsons became the exclusive short series in that show. After the third season, that ended in May 1989, the Simpsons where spun off into a standalone half-hour series.
Taking these two facts into consideration makes it clear, how they could start off with a Christmas Special, but it also puts a lot of undeserved praise into better context. Many point out how this first episode already established so many places & figures and their characteristics right from the get-go (e.g. Skinner, Ned Flanders, Patty & Selma, Moe, Barney, Mr. Burns, Smithers, Milhouse and Grandpa, Moe's tavern, the power plant, Bart prank-calling Moe, etc.). If, however you watch them in production order, you will see, that the Simpsons started out as any other series; only Moe, Moe's Tavern and the Pranks where introduced in the original first episode. And other characters get introduced gradually over the next episodes, not all at once and some with large differences in the beginning (e.g. Milhouse being black-haired, or Smithers initially being black), so that this episode had already a rather rich background to fetch ideas from and build upon.
So ignoring this aspect, this episode has rather little to offer. The drawings are still a bit clumsy, the story not that original, there is little humor, no real sassy social remars and the dialogues rather dull. On the plus side, however, it is a heart warming story that has a nice happy end, and it manages to bring you into a Christmas spirit, even if you watch it in the summer.
Starting at 5/10 and looking at all the pros and cons, in the end, this episode is rather balanced out, leaving it at 5/10 points over all.
[8.0/10] So much more to say than this mini-review, but in brief, it’s almost shocking how much of The Simpsons is here right from the jump. This was not meant to be the first episode of the series, but it still works as such a great introduction to what the show is about.
For one thing, you have the table setting. Marge’s Xmas letter gives you the basics of the family. You have classic figures from Principal Skinner to Moe and Barney introduced right out of the gate. Homer’s combative relationship with his sisters-in-law and jealous relationship with his neighbor is firmly established. And even little character traits, like Bart’s hellraiser impulses and Lisa’s sensitive intelligence are sketched out here. Sure, our understanding of these characters will get deeper over the years, and the show will better define them, but the basics are there in a recognizable way.
At the same time, the show’s sensibility comes through so clear here. The satirical cynicism that fuels the series is firmly present, from the careful omissions or white lies in Marge’s Xmas letter, to Burns giving himself a bonus but withholding one from his employees, to Patti’s blasé “watch your cartoon” response to Lisa’s polite but legitimate grievance. That sort of wry take on how families present themselves and work and intergenerational interactions is true to Matt Groening’s Life in Hell roots.
Plus there’s the classic skewering of the institution of T.V. itself, long one of The Simpsons’s favorite targets. This episode tells you what kind of show you’re watching when Bart references everything from A Christmas Carol to The Smurfs to justify his belief that miracles happen to poor kids on Xmas, a belief that’s then shattered when he and Homer’s longshot bet, the one that could save their money woes and with them, Xmas, completely fails to pan out. Bart’s shock that T.V. lied to him is an amusing note for a show clearly trying to depart from the learning/hugging squeak clean mode of T.V. that was predominant at the time.
But this is, unexpectedly, also an episode of love and, yes, even a little hugging. This is a Homer episode, and it helps answer that eternal question of why Homer, who is consistently stupid, often selfish, and rife with poor judgment, deserves to have this loving family. Right from the gate, The Simpsons answers the question: because however ill-equipped he is to succeed, Homer continually tries to do right by the people he cares about. His efforts to preserve the joy of Xmas, and to keep his family happy during the holiday season, are ill-fated but noble, and the pathos in the poor sap from every time he deludeds himself into making him think he can pull it off is quietly heartbreaking.
Despite that, the dope wins the day. There’s something so poetic and beautiful about the dog who ruined their last chance at a big payday, who’s “pathetic and a loser”, is also the one who makes their Xmas its brightest. The kids are happy. Marge is happy because the aptly named Santa’s Little Helper is something that can share their love (and scare away prowlers). And you get a warm holiday embrace from this nascent series, tinged with the bits of cynicism that make it feel legitimate rather than cloying.
All-in-all, this is a hell of a start for the duly venerated series, one that sets up the basic premise of the show and its cast of characters, establishes the series’s sensibility right away, and better yet, tells a great story about Homer’s love for his family that would be the backbone of the series in lean years and in its golden years.
Loved seeing Doug Jones without makeup. Felt like classic Trek with the race switching
Holy......what an episode. I had not expected such fireworks. The title is a spoiler in itself but we knew it would happen at some point anyway. If Fett would habe been half as good in the movies I'd cared about Mandalorians much earlier.
So, will a Jedi answer and if so who will ot be? Someone new or someone we know? Man, I hope this show will go on for many, many years.
The acting in this show makes it hard to to give it a better rating. Sucks, because there's a lot of cool stuff going on, but the acting is just so off at times that it pulls you out of what's going on.
