[7.1/10] This one is mostly a gag-fest, but the gags are generally good, so it works. Aliens, even an alien fake out, is a bit too out there even for The Simpsons, but things move along well enough. Oddly, it feels a little like “Who Shot Mr. Burns” with the way the episode makes jokes but also takes care to note the time of day and other little details to plant the seeds for a mystery.
There’s the faintest thread of an arc here -- Homer struggling with the fact that no one believes him -- but really “The Springfield Files” is just a big excuse to have some crossover fun. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson do a good job, and the writers are clearly having fun at exhausting Mulder and Scully by making them deal with Springfield’s inanity. In the same vein, Leonard Nimoy is a laugh riot here, between bolting for his car and wanting to be surprised with his hotdog.
To that end, it’s the jokes that make this one click. Bits like “the bus that couldn’t slow down” or Moe hauling a whale out to see are ridiculous but fun. You can certainly feel the show growing a bit cartoonier here, but the laughs are solid enough to sustain it anyway.
Overall, not a standout episode of anything, but still plenty of laughs and plenty of fun.
Why doesn't Chakotay get to address the crew, too? He's also leaving. C'mon.
I also don't understand why the Doctor, a hologram, stumbles along with everyone else in Sickbay when the ship is hit by weapons fire. He should be immune to the motion of the ship, because he and his emitters are moving along with it.
Janeway's closing line, "Feel free to use the house", implies that they won't be beaming the shelter up. Since all we see get transported is Janeway and Chakotay themselves, I suppose it's possible their supplies were also left behind—but unlikely, since any technology could lead to cultural contamination, and they already established that other races like the Vidiians have visited the planet. It seems most likely that both the supplies and the shelter were beamed up to a cargo bay, and we just weren't shown it for budgetary/time reasons. (Admittedly, it's not important enough to show on screen, especially if it would cost more VFX lab time.)
And speaking of technology that could have been left on the planet, Tuvok clearly states that one of the items to be left on the planet along with the shelter is… a replicator. So the entire plot point with Janeway being "forced" to "let go" when the plasma storm destroys her insect traps is complete bollocks. If they have a replicator, they have power to run it (probably solar collectors, at least). That's one hell of a plot hole, considering that losing the ability to continue her research is arguably the most significant character development (of sorts) that happens on the planetside side of the plot. Writers, please.
Since I'm talking about her research anyway: What's this bullshit with Janeway thinking she'll somehow have better luck at finding a cure than the Doctor? She's not even medically trained. It smells of either bad writing or a serious arrogant streak in Janeway that I never noticed before. Though, I suppose it could also be representative of her unwillingness to give up: even though she knows she has no chance of success, she has to try anyway.
Chakotay remains as flat a character as ever in this episode, sadly. I vaguely recall at least a couple other places in the series where a relationship between him and Janeway was pushed, with varying strength, and this one feels just as forced as all the others. Not that the episode's vague timespan helps. It's not clear if we're observing events over, say, 12 weeks, or 12 months. Times stated later in the series (especially Admiral Janeway specifically saying "seven years ago" in "Endgame") point to this episode's timeline being as short as could be remotely plausible, which really makes the developing romance a hard sell. These two people have served on the ship for about two years now, and it wouldn't be a matter of just days to unravel that formality.
Honestly, I wish we'd had an excuse to spend more time on Voyager with Tuvok and Harry. Unlike with Janeway and Chakotay (or Janeway and the alien primate), stuff was happening there. They should have given us a scene of the crew developing that plan before Harry pitched it to Tuvok at 01:00 that morning.
I had the chance to watch the premiere in theater for Thai promotional press on Friday. Keep in mind that the show's pilot is one of my favorite pilots in recent years (love the way it presents a haunting, gorgeous, impeccably crafted loop of existence, then keeps adding details and rifts to that loop, before ends with a definitive crack in the last scene), and this premiere is... just fine. Very much a transitional, setting-things-up episode. I feel like the turn last season pushes the show into a pulpier territory, and the still somber tone sometimes feels at odds with the more genre story now. But it's more violent and visceral, with the consequences of season 1's finale turning almost all storylines and characters into pure anarchy and survival modes now (and I saw some reviews saying positively that the season leans more into its own thrills as it goes along). I groaned internally though when we reached the end and that in media res framing turns out to not be a one-episode thing, and might last a while; the mystery-box approach last season is divisive though still purposeful, but here after last season's shift it just seems so perversely unnecessary now.
Highlights for me: Jeffrey Wright's acting, Tessa Thompson given more screentime, Thandie Newton's storyline.
How did Quark find the right file if Kira and Odo never told him what to look for? All they told him was "certain communication files in the Vedek Assembly records". No source, destination, or date range was ever given, nor did anyone hand Quark a data storage device of any kind with the details of what he should look for.
There's a fairly strong "meh" factor to this episode, because so much of the outcome is obvious from the moment Winn starts Kira on her investigative mission. It's obvious that Winn knows the truth already, and it's obvious that Bareil didn't do it. What saves the episode from a "Meh" (5) rating is the acting. It's always the acting with this show. Even when the plot is utter shite (not that this one was that bad) this cast can usually salvage something worth watching from the muck.
The Bajoran political angle and the new information we gain about the power structure on Bajor during the Cardassian Occupation don't hurt, either. It's especially nice that this little "Opaka has skeletons in her closet too" thread got injected, reminding the viewers that even the most perfect hero you can possibly imagine has probably done something that would kill their reputation if it got out. (In most cases it's a lot smaller than precipitating the massacre of 43 people, but political candidates at all levels have had campaigns derailed by something so little as a careless remark made decades earlier…)
Um, Tom, why wait until "morning"? If the weather on the planet gets nasty at night, just take the shuttle down to the day side. Unless this orchid species is specific to one region, that is (which wasn't mentioned on screen).
Looks like there's some kind of tape mark on the biobed that Janeway asks Tuvix to sit on. The camera panning makes it hard to tell (motion, especially horizontal motion, tends to blur in TV-sourced video because of interlacing, and DVD encoding doesn't make it any better) but there's something orange on that bed and it isn't present on the other two. Perhaps it's a spacing marker for where Tom Wright should sit so the following effects shot (in which he disappears and is replaced by Ethan Phillips and Tim Russ) will work.
I'd also like to know why Neelix came out of the separation procedure wearing a Starfleet uniform, when he went in wearing one of his trademark patterned jackets. I won't go as far as to call it a goof, because the writers most likely had a reason for not putting him back in his original clothing. But one must wonder why the clothing was merged in the first place, if the orchid's symbiogenetic properties worked on a genetic level. Starfleet uniforms have no DNA, so far as we know, and ditto for Neelix's clothes.
Most people who watch this episode probably have a similar reaction: The premise is creepy, but the ethical dilemma that it creates is interesting. I find myself agreeing with @LeftHandedGuitarist once more regarding the actor chosen to play Tuvix: Tom Wright didn't feel like the best possible fit for the role, somehow, despite solid acting work that he clearly put in time with both Tim Russ and Ethan Phillips to develop around some of their characters' mannerisms.
As much as I disliked the setup, I'm honestly not sure how it could have been done better, except for maybe changing which two crew members were fused. No doubt Tuvok and Neelix were chosen because the show has spent two seasons up to this point building on how much Neelix annoys Tuvok, but they didn't make use of any of that. Tuvix is perfectly happy as the fusion of two men who didn't exactly get along. Janeway can't be fused, unless we want to give the moral dilemma to Chakotay (boring), but that still leaves over a dozen other possibilities to consider. I really don't know which of them would have been better, but I suspect the writers also really liked having that girls' chat between Kes and Janeway.
Ultimately I can't be too hard on this episode. It might have been interesting only in the latter half, but I think this was a defining episode for Janeway. Unlike @FinFan, I don't think this finished her as a character. Rather, it illustrates exactly the kind of person she is, and what lengths she'll go to when the people she cares about are threatened.
[8.2/10] I have issues with time travel stories. Too often, they open up big cans of worms that television shows and films cannot put back in their container. Too often, they introduce paradoxes that you either have to ignore or just accept as part and parcel with the various time travel shenanigans. Most of all, they create problems of both plot, continuity, and drama. If you can change some event in the past, why not go further back and avoid it altogether? And more to the point, why do any of your actions matter if they can simply be undone.
And yet, Rebels introduces what amounts to a time travel story, one that allows the show to revisit two of the series’ most heightened and dramatic moments, one that connects it with the past, present, and future of the Star Wars franchise, and one filled with chances to undo or redo the past. But it does so in a way that is not only satisfying in terms of mechanics and continuity, but which exists as an episode-length rejoinder to the notion of “let’s fix the past” that’s inevitably packed in the bones of time travel stories.
It begins with Ezra entering the eponymous “World Between Worlds”, a weigh station between places and across time. The design of this realm is instantly striking. It’s a series of transparent paths, looplining and intersecting across the vast reaches of space, and connecting to a series of doorways, empty recesses soon to be filled with bridges to places Ezra has been or could go. There is, admittedly, a sense of the place as a rejected Mario Kart track, but Rebels’ design team manages to make its setting unique and appropriate as a place of wonder and mystery.
Much of that wonder comes from the cacophony of voices that echo across it. As Ezra makes his way through this realm, trying to understand it, he hears echoes of words spoken in the Original Trilogy, in the Prequels, in the Sequel Trilogy, and in Rogue One, The Clone Wars, and Rebels itself. The paths are coming together, as Kanan put it, and Ezra finds himself at their intersection point, a rush of hopes and assurances and the presence of so many collecting in scattered bits at this one central marker.
It’s the nervous system of the galaxy, one that allows Ezra to step into moments past and present, and change their course, answering questions the fans have had for what feels like ages, and interfering in old events to give familiar faces a second chance.
That’s right boys and girls -- Ahsoka lives! Ezra follows an owl implied to be imbued with the mystical presence of the Daughter, and intercedes at the moment when Ahsoka is fighting Vader in “The Twilight of the Apprentice”, pulling her into that interwoven realm and away from the prospect of danger and doom that faced her in the temple on Malachor.
And therein lies the concern. As heartening as it is to see Ahsoka in the flesh again, poised to help the Rebels win the fight against the Empire, as hopeful as it is to see her spared being felled at her former master’s hands, this place and what it can do opens an avenue for the show to cheat, to take back any of the big choices it makes or any Star Wars property makes, and thereby leave the choices themselves a little less important or meaningful than they could be.
“A World Between Worlds”, however, has an ace up its sleeve. As tantalizing as it is want to see more and more of Ezra and Ahsoka in this unusual space, the episode also takes time out to show what’s happening in the regular world. Much of that is centered on an interrogation between a captured Sabine, and Minister Hydan, the Imperial functionary who’s attempting to decipher the symbols on the Jedi temple in order to help find Emperor Palpatine a way in.
For such a notable part, Rebels brings in Malcolm McDowell (marking the second time he’s played a bad guy trying to get into an interstitial realm in a star-based franchise), and his dynamic with Sabine is outstanding. Sabine is blasé, boastful, and challenging, and Hydan is, when pushed, harsh and cruel like we’d expect from an Empire stooge. But at some point in the interrogation, they both seem to have a genuine interest in piecing the clues of this place together, in understanding what those images mean, in ways that helps the audience understand the symbolism at the same time the characters do.
But Darth Sidious is trying to understand the symbolism too, and that’s what creates the threat for Ezra and Ahsoka in the other realm they find themselves in. It is an absolute thrill to hear Ian McDiarmid once again growling, chanting, and cackling his way through an attack on our heroes. The Emperor’s presence creates both the immediate threat and the narrative stakes for the episode. He gives incantations and blasts an engulfing fire toward Ahsoka and Ezra, trying to use one or both as handholds to pull himself into this place. He seeks to break the barrier, to find purchase there, so that he can use it to remake the past to suit him, to change these events to empower himself even further, to become a god who can alter what’s come before however he sees fits.
It provides the contrast and counterpoint to the lesson Ezra learns in the same place, guided by Kanan’s spirit, and aided by Ahsoka -- that the past shouldn’t be changed. Once Ezra figures out that he was able to save Ahsoka, he tries to do the same for Kanan. He runs to the right portal, conjures the image of the man who guided him through so much in his training at the moment where he died, and aims to save him, to stop him, from being consumed by flame and taken away.
It’s the kind of choice a Sith would make. It’s the kind of choice Anakin made, to defy the prospect of death because he couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from someone he loved. But it’s a choice that Ahsoka steers Ezra away from, because it’s antithetical to how a Jedi sees the universe.
When Dave Filoni, who wrote “A World Between Worlds”, crafted the finale of The Clone Wars, the wrote an arc that centered on the acceptance of death, on the inevitability of certain events, but on the good that could be wrung from each of these things. One of the overarching themes of Star Wars -- from Obi Wan and Yoda passing gentle into the next world in the original films, to Luke embracing both the mistakes and good graces that led him to the same point in The Last Jedi -- is an acceptance of the past and the notion that one’s path must end, realities and providence that the Sith do anything they can to elide.
It’s a lesson Kanan himself had to learn. While we’ve only had hints of it here and there, it’s clear that Kanan felt he strayed from the right path in his youth, and that much of his adventures with the crew of the Ghost, and his training of Ezra in particular, were efforts to make up for his past and ensure that Ezra didn’t walk down the same path he did.
But the past handful have episodes showed a different Kanan, one who accepted his path, and accepted his death, because both led him to, as Ahsoka puts it, the moment where he was most needed. That is what he wanted, it’s what the Force guided him toward, and Ezra realizes that as much as it pains him to have lost his master, the same way it pains Ahsoka, they both need to let go, because to do anything else, to tamper with the past or undo Kanan’s choices, would violate the precepts that his master believed in, the Jedi way, of finding that moment, rather than running from it.
So Ezra leaves the temple, just in time to prevent Sidious from gaining his foothold and using that space to do untold damage to the galaxy. And it’s just in time, as his exit, combined with the disruptive activities of the rest of the Ghost crew, lead to a daring escape as the temple on Lothal collapses on itself into nothing. Therein lies Rebels’ fix for the mechanics. It took a combination of the right moment, the right team, and the will of the Force to put Ezra into that realm, a feat which even the most powerful force-wielder in the galaxy could not accomplish on his own, making it unlikely that any random hero or antagonist could slip in there and threaten to remake the past once more.
But more than that, “A World Between Worlds” does the unthinkable -- it tells a story about time travel that is philosophically opposed to the reasons for turning back the clock and trying to alter the course of the future. It uses the prospect of those galaxy-shifting, life-saving changes to instead foster a sense of acceptance of one’s path and one’s end, as hopefully leading you to the moment when the world, and the people you care about, need you the most.
It is a work of television that indulges in the excitement and possibility of visiting any moment and altering it to meet the needs of our heroes, only to show them relenting, forbearing, accepting, that such a change would only make you feel better for a moment, and then make everything worse. Ezra and Ahsoka both lose their masters, but they stop a great evil in the process, and find a purpose and a principal, worthy of the masters the two apprentices followed before both were consumed in flame.
Mirror Odo let the "sir" rule go right out the window after Bashir said it once? Hmm.
The worst part of this episode is Bashir in the opening scene. Just about all the obnoxious or just plain wrong-seeming character moments can be explained away later in the episode, because it's the Mirror Universe and nobody is sane. But opening-scene Bashir is worse than he was in the first season. I'd just as soon forget that first exchange happened, he's so overbearing to Kira.
On the flip side, the episode's best quality is showing us a bit of what happened on the other side of the looking glass after Kirk's little escapade in the original Star Trek series. From the viewer's perspective, anyway. For the actors, I'd wager the best part was getting to play someone different. Except Siddig. He didn't get to play his counterpart. Oh, and I guess Terry Farrell got most of the shooting schedule off because she didn't appear on the other side at all.
Somewhere in the middle, we have my slight disappointment at how much more we could have seen of the mirror characters if there'd been more time. Occasionally, an episode of these later Star Trek series feels like there was enough potential material for a second half. This was one of them—though we get not one, not two, but four more mirror-universe episodes over the next five seasons, so I really can't complain.
Man, the clown's outfit looks incredibly hot to work in. It's fuzzier and thicker than the rabbit suit I wore in Alice in Wonderland some years ago, and that was hot enough to be uncomfortable under a few stage lights. Film lights are considerably hotter.
According to Tom Paris, Voyager was designed for "combat performance". Seems an odd design goal for a ship built to undertake scientific missions, doesn't it? Sorry, Tom. Voyager's no warship.
All that processing power and the system still takes "a few minutes" to process brain activity? Bull.
Speaking of bull, "your legs are restrained" is hard to believe when his shackles keep his heels from getting too far apart, not too close together. That strap won't do much to keep his feet apart either.
The entire premise of this episode is flimsier than two pieces of two-by-four held together with common office staples. Admittedly, the carnival gambit is fun for a few minutes, but it doesn't support the story very well. Janeway's verbalized thoughts don't sound like her, they're too stilted. And the aliens just… are there, I guess. They're no more real characters than the inhabitants of the clown's festival.
I honestly don't know where to start with this one. The best I can say about it? Still a better love story than "Threshold".
[8.5/10] So many times, I feel like I enjoy the prelude as much, if not more, than the actual payoff. The process of Ezra, Sabine, Hera, Zeb, and Chopper figuring out how to put the plan hinted at by the “DUME” wolf into action proved and enjoyable, exciting, and spiritual one, in ways that the prior episode didn’t.
That’s due, in part, to the emergence of a lot of elements from prior works that come back in big ways. Hearing Ian McDiarmid go full Palpatine again was a shock and a treat, as his guttural growls to his minister instantly told the audience that this was something big. At the same time, it heightened the moment for The Clone Wars fans to see images of the trio from Mortis, the Brother, Sister, and Father, on the walls of the Jedi temple, giving the sense that this was leading to one of Star Wars’ more mystical, spiritual journeys rather than its adventure-laden ones.
But what I appreciated is that this episode was as much about solving the puzzle as it was about connecting the spiritual dots. For a semi-heady episode, this one doesn’t skimp on the tension or action, as Ezra and Sabine have to masquerade as sand troopers, hide, and face down Minister Hydan (Malcolm McDowell!) before they can use the stone tablet to interact with the images on the temple. That helps give the episode a story and not just make it a mystical indulgence.
But the mystical parts are pretty damn cool! For one thing, while I haven’t loved the lothwolves this season, something about the Ghost crew riding them through a grass vortex in the middle of the planet to get them to the temple was a lovingly-animated, awe-filled moment that helped nail that sense of greater forces at work. In the same way, the 2D animation of the temple drawings was an art shift for the show that was (a.) very beautiful and (b.) gave the same sense that something different and a little unknowable was happening here.
I also liked that it required coordination and teamwork from Ezra and Sabine. Sabine’s artistic talents actually came in handy, as she was required to interpret the images on the temple to help guide Ezra! (Maybe someday doing critical analysis on television shows will allow me to help some enterprizing Jedi open up a sacred site.) And only with that guidance could Ezra open the portal to whatever comes next.
Overall, “Wolves and a Door” did an excellent job of not only creating a puzzle and having our heroes find believable but impressive ways to solve it, but also adding tension through their need to sneak around and avoid enemies, and imbue the half-hour with a larger sense of purpose and connection to Star Wars’ spiritual side.
Is kanar meant to be thick or watery? We've seen both consistencies of liquid called kanar in the last few episodes.
Garak might be my favorite Star Trek character of all time. Of all the primary and secondary characters throughout the franchise, he's the most layered, most nuanced among them.
The look we get in this episode at how Garak thinks is invaluable. Even when Andrew J. Robinson is perhaps overacting his character's ailment, it takes nothing away from how utterly engrossing it is to watch Garak spin his webs upon webs of misdirection.
Equally important, Bashir demonstrates the strength of his own character. He's still arrogant and smug—Garak is completely justified in throwing those terms at him by way of outburst in the throes of his endorphin withdrawal—but through it all he's a steadfast physician who can't sit by while someone suffers, Cardassian or no.
If I were to give this episode only one piece of constructive feedback, it's that it should have been a two-part story. Something about telling this whole ten-day saga in forty minutes feels rushed. Julian hardly gets any time to accept one tale before Garak tells him a second, somewhat contradictory one—and then a third.
The Never-Ending Sacrifice is a real Star Trek novel, as well as the fictional title that Bashir and Garak speak about early in this episode. Having read Una McCormack's book (it does justice to the title), I only wish there was a real-world Meditations on a Crimson Shadow for me to read. Frankly, I feel that there isn't enough focus on the Cardassians among all the collected Star Trek universe material.
[7.1/10] Look, I’m a big fan of Star Wars’s more spiritual side. Vision quests and reflections of past and future are part of the game. But man, whether it’s Star Wars or just genre storytelling generally, I am just tired of mysterious being giving cryptic, plot-moving clues.
So when Ezra gets chased into the expanse by a stretch of Lothwolves, and told to protect the Jedi temple there via a bunch of nebulous one-word doublespeak, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. I like the show leaning into Ezra’s connections with animals, and the sense of the Force guiding him, but this felt a cheap and easy way to show him dealing with Kanan’s death and moving the plot along, rather than a genuine spiritual experience.
Zeb and Sabine’s story was a little off too. I like the idea that they’re out for revenge a bit and to send a message to the Empire. The problem is two-fold. For one thing, Rukh is a completely empty sub-boss of a character. His ability to go invisible is kind of cool, and well-depicted, but he never feels like he moves correctly, and he has basically no personality. Second, the show is really selective in its mortality morality. Sabine stops Zeb from killing Rukh because “it’s not our way” but, she blew up a bunch of stormtrooper like five minutes earlier. I guess redshirts don’t have souls.
Hera’s story is a little better, but it runs afoul of some of the same problem Ezra’s does, mainly that, while effort is a noble one, the performances don’t really convey the tremendous grief the characters are supposed to be feeling in an effective way.
Still, I like the more wordless aspects of it. Chopper reaching out to hold Hera’s hand in her grief is a surprisingly affecting image. Hera adding a token for Kanan as part of her sacred idol to signify that he’s part of her family is a very nice touch. And I especially like the growing realization that, although he died, Kanan’s sacrifice resulted in a major setback for the Empire. The destruction of the fuel depot accomplished the mission of stymying the tie defender (which serves continuity as well) and causing some friction between the power-players on the Imperial side of things, especially for Thrawn.
Overall, this wasn’t the best follow-up to such a momentous episode as “Jedi Night”, but the ideas are good ones, even if the execution leaves much to be desired.
Wait, wait, did they actually get through an entire episode without making any reference to Mercer's divorce?!
Cloaking tech? Guess there's no Treaty of Algeron analogue in the Orville universe. Would be nice if they used it consistently, though. Current Earth technology (roughly what this alien planet has) could definitely detect an uncloaked shuttle pod leaving the atmosphere. Exercise a little caution, will you, Alara?
There's something very Jeri Ryan–esque about Palicki during the landing party's first jaunt down the sidewalk.
I have to admit, I like it, whether it was an intentional homage or not.
Awkward, obvious lip sync error when Dr. Finn says "New problem," check. I didn't think that sort of thing would happen in such a high profile show.
I guess not having seen season three of Black Mirror saved me from this story feeling like a rehash of something I'd seen before. Whenever I do watch it, I'm sure it will be a nice big step beyond this. For my part, I thought The Orville did it well. (John's behavior aside—he really didn't put in any effort to appear worthy of upvotes at all. But that's probably MacFarlane's "humor" creeping in.)
Ignoring the preachy plot for a moment, the tech on display is pretty neat, even if it's a little simplistic. For one thing, the voting badges and handheld feed readers imply a mesh data network of some kind (or cellular, perhaps) that, if anything, points to what our near future might look like. (We're not quite there with cellular coverage, are we?)
Update 2018-03-17: China would like to have a word with these aliens about their tech, I think. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-bar-people-with-bad-social-credit-from-planes-trains-idUSKCN1GS10S
"Depressurize the shuttle bay"? What happened to the atmospheric containment field they usually have across the shuttle bay door?
Tahj (oh hey, Tahj Mowry did something besides Sister, Sister and Smart Guy) and the First Prelate actually use the word "children", so there goes the assumption excuse for Tuvok thinking they're really young kids.
Much as I appreciate having "a Tuvok episode", this isn't a great episode outside of that. I refuse to believe that none of the "children" let slip a single hint to their true age at any point.
Alcia comes around a bit too easily. She goes from incensed to friendly in practically the blink of an eye. Her line saying that "their aging process is reversed" was a nice touch in a "look who's talking" kind of way, but the three kids were more developed than her character.
The concept of beings who are born "old" and "age" in reverse has been around at least since F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button",published in 1922. Unfortunately, there's no particularly good way to square that idea with the physical realities of birth, and this episode makes the reality bit even more difficult with the Drayans' assertion of a "powerful instinct" to return to the moon when they reach the end of their life. If they evolved on the planet, how would they reach this "source of all life" in the days before their culture developed space travel? It would be an odd instinct indeed if it compelled them to do something that was actually impossible. (Plenty of animal instincts compel various species to do difficult tasks, as with salmon swimming upstream to spawn. Doing the flat-out impossible isn't really instinct territory, though.)
Cal calls the treaty "just a piece of paper" near the beginning of this episode, but how long has it been since treaties were actually written on paper at this point? Decades? Centuries?
I never noticed before that there's an alcove in the wall near Odo's security office that contains one of those neon-colored bubbling water tanks that you could drop coins into at some businesses for a chance to win a prize if you managed to catch the coin on one of the platforms inside the tank. Seemed like they were everywhere in the late '90s and (20)'00s.
Cal ultimately dragged this one down too. It managed to squeak by with a 7, rounded up from 6.5, on the strength of Dukat's character (again) and the overall political intrigue.
The Maquis are the antithesis of Dukat, as villains go. They're all about as one-dimensional as you can get, and it's very disappointing considering how big a role the Maquis play in the show's big-picture plot for a while. They're like The Circle, but worse. We the viewers could at least empathize with The Circle, even though they committed acts of terrorism. Their viewpoint made sense from where Bajor stood in the post-Cardassian age, even if they were unreasonable about how they acted on it. The Maquis viewpoint makes sense too, to a point—but given the chance to attempt negotiating peace without having to fight for it, they would rather fight anyway. It's a sad thing indeed for Quark to be more rational about the situation than those who actually have a stake (but that was also a great Quark scene that we would have otherwise missed out on).
The young man behind Gul Evek who hands him the isolinear rod and Cardassian PADD props looks an awful lot like Rugal, from "Cardassians". However, Vidal Peterson (the actor who played Rugal) is not credited in any other DS9 episodes. Spooky.
"The Maquis" (both parts) is one of the earliest points in Deep Space Nine to show off the real depth of storytelling the show's universe can support. More than any other Star Trek series—even the most modern, Enterprise*—DS9 nails consequences. The sheer magnitude of the events to come over the next five seasons is unparalleled anywhere else in the Trek canon, and this is a preview of just how good the gettin' can (and will) get.
The setup for really meeting the Maquis came in TNG, with the tastes we get of them from "Journey's End" and "Preemptive Strike" near the end of TNG's seventh season. (Those episodes were also very much intentionally used to set up the launch of Voyager, which was caught by the Caretaker's array and brought to the Delta Quadrant while chasing a Maquis ship.) But with TNG over (and Voyager on the other side of the galaxy), the Maquis are really DS9's plaything now. I really love what they do with this gift.
Marc Alaimo is the standout actor in this story. It's about time we got to know more about Gul Dukat. I only wish that Cal Hudson was as impressive. Bernie Casey doesn't seem very comfortable in the role, though it's not entirely his fault: his character isn't as well written as the others, in my opinion. Cal is an unfortunate weak point, given how important he is to the story.
* — If you're wondering whether Discovery is included in "any other Star Trek series", it's not. I could say it's because I simply haven't seen Discovery yet, and that would be true. But the main reason is, I don't consider any Star Trek production from the 2009 film onward to be part of the same universe. Therefore, I won't compare DS9 with anything past Nemesis (which already felt like a different Trek universe).
"It's like we sprung a leak, but I can't find the crack." Except if you actually sprung an antimatter leak, you wouldn't have much time to find the crack, Torres.
So if all decks but Engineering are evacuated and life support cut off to save power for the reintegration attempt, how can the duplicate Janeway and Kes breathe after going through the spatial rift on deck 15?
This episode makes reference to "phase variants", not "variance". (I checked the official DVD subtitles. But that could be a mistake in the subs, I guess.) At any rate, I could nitpick about crew members and objects being visible on the other side of the spatial rift despite being out of phase with the rest of the ship. In nearly every Star Trek episode that mentions people or objects being "out of phase", that means the subject is not normally visible or detectable except by extraordinary measures—see: "The Next Phase", "Time's Arrow", "The Pegasus" (TNG); "Distant Origin", "Scientific Method" (VOY); "Shockwave" (ENT). But let's just assume that passage through the rift (with or without one of duplicate-Kim's "phase discriminators" to soften the transition) hand-waves that one away. It's much easier to just roll with such a tiny detail in an otherwise superb episode.
This is one of my favorite Voyager episodes, and one of the few that can be called an unironically "good" script. Sure, the thing with the Vidiian ship just happening to lock onto the "good" Voyager is predictable, but I can see past that. It has a little of everything: drama, comedy, action, and the kind of moral dilemma so many of us Star Trek fans love about the franchise. Watching Kate Mulgrew play opposite herself is extra icing, and a treat we don't get much of outside of this episode and "Endgame".
I know my reviews usually follow a nitpick-first, review-later pattern, but that's just how I write these things. The nitpicks get typed out while I'm watching, then the longer-form, bigger-picture thoughts come after I'm done.
So, apparently anyone on the ship can just waltz into any quarters they like without any permission required from either the occupant or Security? I always thought the door chime on Starfleet ships was because you actually couldn't enter someone's quarters without their consent, but maybe ringing the doorbell is just good manners. But then, Neelix does require a security authorization to access Tom's computer terminal. And it works, even though "Engineering authorization Omega-4-7" shouldn't work with Neelix's voice print because he isn't (or at least, shouldn't be) in the "Engineering staff" user group. Starfleet security is, apparently, a mess.
Speaking of Engineering, why does Neelix go there for help with comm logs? Wouldn't Operations be a more logical choice? It seems like 90% of what Harry Kim does on the bridge is manage communications. Of course, the plot of this episode wouldn't work if Neelix went to Harry (because Jonas the mole wouldn't overhear him), so there's your reason. But it still doesn't quite make sense!
As unsatisfying as the resolution was, it was still nice to actually have a bit of ongoing plot for several episodes with this whole "spy on board" thing. Would have been nicer to have the spy in the ship's brig for interrogation at the end of all this, instead of him being vaporized by a plasma leak (or whatever that bullshit green smoke was meant to be). At the end of the day, though, the writers were probably quite ready to just move on from this "traitor" thing completely, and killed off the spy to avoid dealing with the aftermath.
[8.7/10] I should have known. There was a somber, spiritual quality to this one even before the ending. It’s hard to put a finger on, but it’s something like the moment before the “storm” hits in a Spielberg film, just the notion that there’s something big on the horizon, and this isn’t your average mission.
There’s a delicacy and sense of preparation for an ending when Kanan cuts his hair and shaves his beard, as though he is purifying himself, returning himself to a different state. I think part of my sense for Spielbergian vibes comes from the moment when Zeb launches our heroes onto their glider-based rescue mission, with the orchestra swelling and the glow of the sky shining down, giving the adventure a different sort of feeling. And of course there’s that final moment of sacrifice, of love, made real with a cloud of fire and the sounds of personal rapture.
He knew. He had to know. Or at least suspect. Throughout the episode, Kanan carries himself with a sense of peace, a sense of acceptance, that suggest his meditations made him aware of what the Force was guiding him toward. There’s a reason he pushes Ezra to lead. There’s a reason he embraces Hera like it’s the last time he’ll ever see her. There’s a reason he has an odd calm about this mission -- because he knew how it would end, if only in broad strokes.
And yet for any episode with so much momentousness to it, so great a sense of stakes and electricity in the air, “Jedi Night” is an oddly funny, charming episode. It turns over much of the half-hour to the playful, fraught, but ultimately heartfelt dynamic between Kanan and Hera, and let’s the show revel in that one last time before it’s seemingly fated to be ripped away.
Part of that comes from the fact that Hera is hopped up on truth serum from the interrogation droid (of A New Hope Fame) which leaves her loopy and a little more upfront. The way that Kanan returns her family’s sacred idol to her, and she deadpans to the effect that it’s not much of a gift if it’s something that already belongs to her, is the right sort of interpersonal comedy that works for me. The way she slurs and sways, a little bit, but shows utter trust in Kanan, brings out the humor, but also the complete charm of the two of them together.
Ezra and Sabine’s part of the episode feels much more perfunctory, if necessary to set up the plot mechanics of the episode. Watching the two of them sneak around Governor Price’s compound, comandeer an imperial vessel, and plan the latest of their ramshackle getaways has its moments, but it’s the same stuff we’ve seen from Rebels for ages now. It’s all done well enough, but it’s become standard operating procedure in a way that makes it feel like mere connective tissue for the more important business between Kanan and Hera.
The same goes for Rukh (literally) sniffing out the rebels. Rukh’s a pretty dull hatchetman, who provides, at most, a temporary obstacle for our heroes in a way that makes him seem like filler absent his stature as another character reclaimed from the old Extended Universe. His fight with Kanan has some juice to it, but on the whole, he too feels like something thrown in to raise the stakes rather than something the narrative demanded.
Still, what separates “Jedi Night” from a standard episode is the way, despite that perfectly solid but less-than-overwhelming material, heightens both the atmosphere of the episode and the connection between Hera and Kanan. The show has played up the pair’s semi-forbidden romance for much of this season, with varying results, but here it turns over much of the episode’s runtime to just letting the two be with one another, converse with one another, fight with another, laugh with one another, and ultimately love one another.
It’s the kiss we (or at least I) didn’t know we wanted so badly. After years of keeping things ambiguous or actively teasing them, Hera professes her love for Kanan, and Kanan returns her affections. The Ghost crew is characteristically and sweetly unsurprised, and it’s a well done culmination of all that there’s been between the two of them over the course of the series. The show earns this moment, both from the years of partnership we’ve witnessed, and for the connection the show puts on display here.
But in heartbreaking, Whedonesque fashion, the show turns such a beautiful moment into a tragic one. Kanan and Hera’s kiss takes place on top of an imperial fuel tank, which Governor Pryce orders blown up as soon as they’re in range. That leaves Kanan using his force abilities to hold the fireball at bay just long enough for the rest of our heroes to get away. He uses the same abilities to force Hera onto their commandeered ship and out of the way of the blast. His compatriots are left to watch him be consumed in flame, like so many Jedi past and future.
And yet, it isn’t sad exactly. It is affecting, certainly, and powerful undoubtedly. But that sense of peace, of acceptance, from Kanan diffuses out through the television screen. He was prepared for this. He has embraced it. And as heartbreaking as it is that he gets but one moment to embrace his feels for Hera fully, he ends his life doing what he did best with the person he loved. He got that moment; they got that moment, and the episode pays tribute to all that led up to it before it has to end after such a fleeting existence.
It is a bold move to (at least seemingly) kill off one of your main characters with six episodes still to come in the series. Rebels was always going to have to deal with why Kanan’s Jedi abilities weren’t around to help Luke or the rebellion, and this answers the question in a satisfying fashion. But what make it satisfying is that the show doesn’t go for something over the top, or dramatic, or full of endless battles.
Instead, it goes for the somber and peaceful. The score does much of the work for the ending, but the imagery is one of a man who has accepted his fate, who loves his friends, and loves one of them in particular, but who is ready for what’s to come. “Jedi Night” feels different from other Rebels episodes from the very beginning, something that should have clued us into the series-shaking change in the offing, but which makes Kanan’s exit appropriately rich, meaningful, and spiritual, not just dramatic.
I totally lost it when I saw Michael doing Ted Danson's Cheers routine! Such a lovely (and obvious) Easter egg.
I felt this episode dragged things a little bit, it most certainly shifted the tone of the series, putting comedy in the back seat and letting moral consequences of actions lead the way. Like this episode's plot, the episode itself felt a bit experimental. I am not at all happy with the results, but it's still a good episode, nonetheless, despite it being my least favourite of the season. After last week's superb episode, this one seemed like a filler for season 3 to kick in. Or maybe I just miss the whole gang together. Regardless, the ending surely was interesting enough to keep us wanting to know where they're taking us, now. They're all alive, no more "Good Place" or "Bad Place" for a while, so has this now become a regular sitcom with ethical elements thrown into it? Ah! I'm certain that will not be the case, because this show knows how to sweep the rug from under our feet every time we're standing firmly on it. Yeah, I'm probably not good with metaphors. Anyway, I can barely wait to get reunited with these poor afterlife test subjects for season 3!
Make that three pickle jar jokes in as many episodes, this time with godawful CGI to go with it.
Interesting that the show is set farther in the future than any Star Trek series, but doesn't have teleportation technology available. An excuse for shuttle docking effects porn every week? (i.e. the exact opposite of the reason why Roddenberry gave the Enterprise a transporter.)
If asked for the most Star Trek–like thing about The Orville, it's that the captain regularly goes on away missions. Dangerous ones.
And he always almost gets killed.
The last scene is iffy on the effects.
Stars outside the captain's office window: moving.
Ship: stationary.
What.
Pria shouldn't have vanished. That creates all kinds of plot holes that wouldn't exist if she'd stuck around to be dropped off at a Union base or whatever they would do with her. Since she disappeared, that implies she never existed in this timeilne, so she couldn't have saved the Orville from the dark matter storm, which means Mercer couldn't have ordered the wormhole destroyed. But if the wormhole isn't destroyed, then Pria continues to exist in this timeline, which means the wormhole Mercer will order the wormhole destroyed, which means… Time travel is a bitch to write.
[7.9/10] A superb end to a superb season. So much Season 2 of this show has been about showing change and growth for the better in our heroes at the same time the world was constantly changing around them, whether that meant teaming up with Michael, leaving The (Fake) Good Place behind, or sneaking their way into The Judge's chambers.
And in the finale, the show tries to test out whether that change was real. There's complex moral theories at play here, but the most basic are a few ideas: that a person can become good with just "the right push" like the one Michael tries to give Eleanor in saving her from that row of shopping carts; that good is not something you do because you expect a reward but because of who you are; and that morality, and by extension being good, is something inextricably tied to others, to "what we owe each other," an idea that brings Eleanor and Chidi together in the mortal realm at the end of this season just like it brought them together in The (Fake) Good Place in the beginning.
All the while, there's a lot of strong writing and character work. Using the eye-opening shot for Eleanor to montage her rise and fall during the course of a year back on Earth is a smart tack. The idea of old-timey stock tickers, with Michael and Janet reviewing, to indicate how our heroes are doing back in the moral realm is amusing. And there's plenty of great laughs like Eleanor using the term "diagonal word belt" to mean "sash" or the bar (tended by Ted Danson, who was experience from Cheers) being called "Sting's Desert Rose."
It's a testament to the creativity the show has shown all season, one where it's been constantly willing to smash the status quo and dive headlong into some new adventure. Now that adventure is seeing whether our four favorite humans can take what they've internalized from their time in the afterlife, the potential they've shown, and turn it into real change back where they started. It's another exciting turn, one that promises to continue to follow the moral trajectory of these four individuals, and their unlikely guardian angels helping them navigate what it is, and what it means, to be good.
[7.0/10] It feels like every high profile genre show is desperate to feel “cinematic.” T.V. wants to wash off its idiot box stink and adopt the cachet of the big screen. At a time when the line between television and films is blurring (thanks, in part, to the streaming services CBS is competing with), major franchise films are starting to feel more like television done big, and major franchise series are starting to feel more like one long movie.
Star Trek Discovery feels more and more like it exists in that space, aping its cinematic brethren and trying to create a climax that feels worthy of the budgetary expenditures meant to replicate a silver-screen quality presentation at home. The problem is that blockbuster storytelling is hit or miss. It’s all too easy to throw out some objective, have your characters come up with a desperate plan to achieve it, and then throw in some cryptic hints and tedious exchanges to fill time while you wait for the explosions.
That’s unduly harsh. Discovery seems concerned with character and theme in “The War Without The War Within.” There’s a continuing thread over whether Burnham will forgive and help Tyler; there’s a meeting of her two surrogate parents, and there’s even more ruminating on whether to sacrifice your principles in the face of an existential threat.
But mostly, this episode feels like window dressing before the show delivers its season finale. When our heroes return to the prime universe, they find that the Klingons have all but won the war. Far from being united, the different Klingon houses are competing with one another to see who can achieve the biggest victory against the Federation, massacring civilians and decimating Starfleet forces. A conversation between Admiral Cornwall (who’s commandeered the Discovery after its retrun) and L’Rell suggests that the Klingons will stop at nothing -- there are no terms, no surrender, only battle and glory.
That sort of danger prompts Cornwall to borrow tactics from Mirror Georgiou, who is a de facto prisoner on the Discovery but who is also a useful resource since she defeated the Klingons in her universe. It’s the strongest idea of the episode, one that has the crew of Discovery and the leadership of the Federation having to question whether to violate their ideals in order to survive.
It’s a theme the show has been grappling with since the beginning -- the question of whether the Klingons can be reasoned with and, if they can’t, what lengths the otherwise noble men and women of Starfleet should be willing to go to in order to defend everything and everyone they hold dear. The episode calls back to this when Sarek Prime (who offered the “shoot first” philosophy to Burnham) and Mirror Georgiou discuss a secret plan, presumably one that will decimate the Klingons, in exchange for Mirror Georgiou’s freedom.
But before that can happen, we need to establish what the nominal plan will be and set up the inevitable third act action movie climax in the season’s final episode. That means having the Discovery boot up its spore drive, jump to the center of Q’OnoS in the planet’s cave system, and scan it for weaknesses or vulnerabilities or something along those lines so that they can signal the rest of the fleet to come attack the Klingon homeworld in the hopes that the Klingons would bolt from Federation space to defend their home planet.
As third act setups go, it’s not bad. It’s just easy to see the strings as the show is obviously poised for the grand heist mission with things going wrong thanks to only a small faction of the crew knowing the real plan while Mirror Georgiou is installed as captain of the Discovery in the guise of her prime universe counterpart.
(As an aside, my prediction for the finale is that Burnham ends up neutralizing Georgiou to prevent her from massacring the Klingons, in an echo or, dare I say, mirroring, of her actions in the premiere.)
But it raises two big “hooray for metaphor” bits. One centers on that notion of sacrificing your ideals so as not to sacrifice your countrymen. The show tackles it in tones that are a little too wonderstruck and clumsy, but it at least dovetails with the plot.
The other stems from the fact (no pun intended) that in order for this plan to work, Stamets will need to regrow the spores to fuel the jump to Q’onoS. So despite their being dead, and his scientific partner failing in a similar attempt after trying to be too controlling, Stamets let's them grow wild and free and it gives the Discovery hope to complete it’s mission.
The episode isn’t shy about drawing parallels between the spores regrowing, Burnham finding her way to redemption and respect after her incidents at the Battle of the Binary Star, and Tyler finding his way back from the bad deeds he committed when Voq was still in his head.
The problem is that the episode communicates that in what is becoming a typical collection of overwritten scenes full of clunky dialogue. Again, The Walking Dead problem rears its ugly head, with exchanges between Burnham and Georgiou, Tilly, and Tyler himself that feel so much like screenwriters writing prose rather than anything that feels natural or plausible as real human interaction. Star Trek has always been a little grandiose, but those speeches never land, and between that and the obvious setup for a climactic ending, the episode can’t help but feel antiseptic.
That’s not a good place to be in heading into your finale. The table is set. Burnham and Tyler have an emotional anti-reunion when Burnham tells her former love that the journey to redemption is a hard but solitary one. Georgiou (or at least, a Georgiou) is the captain again. And we’re poised to have one more fight with the Klingons involving questions of idealism versus expediency.
But the soul, the extra oomph that makes Star Trek more than just a series of explosions with some political or social commentary thrown in just isn’t there. Everything in “The War Without The War Within” is serviceable enough, but comes off as a show going through the motions and falling flat before its last outing of the season.
This one is fun. I enjoy the mind games.
Janeway initiating self-destruct without confirmation from another officer doesn't make sense, though. It's a far cry from, say, "Where Silence Has Lease" (TNG), in which both the initiation and cancellation of the destruct countdown requires both Picard and Riker to concur (which leads to the wonderful moment in which Riker says, "Yes! Absolutely! I do indeed concur! Wholeheartedly!" when, as Picard admonishes him, "a simple 'Yes' would have sufficed"). The difference in crew complement (design capacity of 150 on Intrepid-class ships versus the Galaxy-class' 1,000 to 6,000 depending on assignment) doesn't explain why Voyager's computer requires no agreement between two ranking officers to initiate self-destruct.
This episode also falls into the "photon torpedo trap" for which the series is somewhat infamous. Of the "38" torpedoes they start out with, this episode shows them firing seven of those. (All told, they are shown using at least half of their 38 torpedoes in the first two seasons.) It makes sense from Janeway's perspective to be a little free with the torpedoes if it could mean saving millions of lives, but it's worth noting nonetheless. (Trying to keep track of Voyager's torpedo count is fun, even if the math has already been worked out in painstaking detail by several fans already.)
I like this episode not because the writing is particularly strong, or because the characters feel particularly well developed, but because of the (perhaps not-so-)subtle political points it makes along the way. One of Quinn's arguments sticks out as remarkably salient:
"I was the greatest threat the Continuum had ever known. They feared me so much they had to lock me away for eternity. And when they did that, they were saying that the individual's rights will be protected only so long as they don't conflict with the state. Nothing is so dangerous to a society." (emphasis mine)
The slippery slope that decision represents could be taken as the first step toward a totalitarian government, and Quinn's status as a renowned philosopher among the Q rings true in that moment. For all intents and purposes, the Q Continuum already is a form of totalitarian democracy, wherein the citizens govern each other by means of consensus and any dissenters are suppressed.
On top of that, it was a master stroke to have had Jonathan Frakes direct this episode—if only because he was already well-versed in telling this kind of ethical dilemma from his years on TNG. And Q stories always seem to work better when there are multiple Q involved, likely because they give the writers an excuse to give John de Lancie more than just comic prankster material.
I knew I'd have to get through it in order to proceed with my rewatch, but oh boy did I keep putting it off as long as possible.
This is awful. It's a shining example of how to take a great premise and run it into the ground, repeatedly.
All things considered, the makeup effects used on Paris aren't that bad, I guess. But if we take a step back and think about the science of how he gets there, none of it makes sense. Keeping in mind that humans originally evolved from, essentially, lizards, how could our future evolution taking us right back where we started possibly make sense?
Add on the nonsense of Paris and Janeway starting the "evolutionary" process 24 hours apart yet somehow ending up at the same stage of "evolution" within a few days, and managing to have offspring in that time… Just no. There's no way that happened, not in three days, not ever. The shortest known mammalian gestation period is 12-13 days (some species of opossum). Generally speaking, lizards take longer just to lay eggs—then the eggs have to incubate before hatching. So this part of the story is patently absurd, even without considering Chakotay's absurd decision to leave the offspring behind on an unsuspecting planet to possibly alter the course of events in the Delta Quadrant as they grow into a flourishing civilization.
What a pile of dreck.
Oh no, we lost 11% of our energy reserves! Janeway's gotta give up coffee to save power, but using the holodeck is totally fine? (And apparently even more fine when that figure doubles.)
Convenient that Chakotay happens to have his medicine bundle even though his ship was destroyed in Caretaker, isn't it? I don't remember the Maquis crew members exactly getting a chance to salvage their belongings before that Kazon ship took their shuttle in the flank…
Based on the deck layout in Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force, Neelix turns left out of the mess hall right into a dead-end when he's heading off to argue with Janeway. Turning left got him out of the shot faster, I guess.
Someone in effects should have checked the script. Those nucleonic beams were very much not parallel to the ship's central axis.
OK, nitpicks aside, I'm of two minds on this episode.
On the one hand, it does a lot of great work establishing elements of the series that I really do love (if only for nostalgic reasons, in some cases). We get a hint of the Doctor becoming more independent ("A hologram that programs himself…"). We get jokes about Neelix's cooking. Tom is already establishing himself as a holodeck wizard of sorts (even if he does write his female characters like a chauvinist).
But we also get some of the bullshit. The whole premise is just a bit hokey, and the Neelix/Kes relationship is all the more awkward when you start the series already knowing that she's two years old and will be dead by age ten. (That kiss? So uncomfortable.)
Still, Voyager was my first Trek show. I can't help but like it despite myself.
This is more "assorted random thoughts" than a review. They're (mostly) in order of when I had them while watching the show.
"Bad joke. Bad yolk. … You know, I'm just not going to try at comedy with you anymore." Good. Stop. Now. Your yolks aren't funny anyway, man.
"Where does it come out of, the butt? […] How is that not the first thing you ask?" It's called tact. You do have a comprehensive shipboard database that you can look this stuff up in, right? It's the 25th Century, mate.
Gotta say, the "cannabis edible" was a pretty great bit though. I actually chuckled, for the first time so far. It also (arguably) makes more sense than the 20th-century pop-culture references they keep throwing in…
Given that the pilot established the existence of comm devices, why didn't Alara just call Bortus on comm? Yes, I know the in-person visit was a setup for the "request permission to enter" gag. It's just nonsensical. (But I appreciated the optical fiber bundles sticking out of ruptured bulkheads. That does make sense.)
Just one episode ago, Ed was judging Gordon for drinking at 09:15, but now he's having a beer for breakfast?
Hey, reality TV is good for something! Finally! 400 years later!
It was in the opening credits of this episode that I noticed André Bormanis's name for the first time. There really do seem to be a fair few Star Trek veterans involved behind the scenes of this show. One can only hope their influence will push it toward greatness in time.
[7.7/10] Very fun episode. Nothing especially groundbreaking or insightful, but it’s one of those episodes that tells a pair of great stories and has more well-observed bits to share about teenage life.
The A-story is Lindsay trying to brush off her guidance counselor’s admonitions to plan for her future, and score some fake IDs to get her and her friends into a rock concert at a local club. The misadventures she and the Freaks go on are hilarious. Jason Schwartzman (whom I think was post-Rushmore) was very funny as their initial, less-than-helpful supplier, and there’s just the right amount of awkwardness and creepiness when they try to get IDs from Millie’s slimy cousin. The fact that the concert they’re so desperate to get into is for a band fronted by the very guidance counselor they were trying to ignore is a nice ironic twist that ends the story on an amusing reversal.
But more than that or the laughs in the story, it’s just interesting to see the show dramatize Lindsay trying to be cool and in and caring more about that than her future in this way. It’s not necessarily subtle, but using birthday money that was supposed to go to her college fund on fake IDs is telling. There’s a sense that everyone here is putting off the inevitable, that as we not-so-young folk know, this sort of life can’t go on forever. And while that’s going on, you feel for these kids who are (cutely) debating whether or not they’re boyfriend and girlfriend, or realizing that Daniel’s been held back twice, details the show let's you in on in novel ways.
The B-story is fun too, with the geeks becoming enamored of a pretty girl who will actually talk to them, hang out with them, and join their activities, only to be deathly afraid that she’ll be sucked in by the popular kids and never pay them any mind. It’s a relatable story about how nerdy teenage boys are, both instantly enamored with any girl who will actually talk to them and partake in traditionally boy-like activities, and also desperately worried that their geekiness will soon disqualify them from her company.
There’s lots of great comedy in the conversations and one-liners among them. Their attempt to woo her with an all-you-can-eat rib dinner (replete with David Koechner as their waiter!) is a funny kid-like plan. And their “this is the end of days” reaction when she decides to sit with the popular kids, after all their scheming to create a buffer, works because of how it embraces the perspective of the geeks, while also tacitly acknowledging the ridiculousness of how seriously they take this whole thing.
Hell, I even liked the C-story where Mr. Weir laments how his kids don’t want to spend quality family time with him anymore. Joe Flaherty has been a consistent source of laughs on this show, and his lines where he’s angrily nostalgic for when his kids were kids, followed by his, “well...ok” response when his wife convinces him that it’s time to let them fly out of the nest and that they should have sex instead bring the funny.
Overall, it’s an episode where every story works, each one has a good comedy quotient, and each is revealing about the Weirs at the center of them, and the worlds they occupy, are trying to defend, or are trying to evade.
[8.6/10] I’ve probably heard/talked/thought about the Trolley Problem a hundred times. It’s one of those bits that just comes up again and again and again if you have even the slightest interest in philosophy as a thumbnail sketch of the ethical problems that’s supposed to confront. And one of the great things about The Good Place is the way it takes those classic philosophical ideas and puts them into practice in loony, out there ways.
But I’ve never seen it actually mean so much. I don’t think of The Good Place as a particularly sentimental show. It has its sweet moments in plenty of places, and I should know better than for a Michael Schur-run show not to tug at your heartstrings now and then. But man, I was not prepared for Michael’s sacrifice play as his solution to the Trolley Problem. It’s a beautiful confluence of plot, character development, and sentiment. It gets Eleanor to the Judge; it helps truly prove Michael’s growth as a person, and it both makes you happy and sad to see the risk that he puts himself through for another soul.
That doesn’t detract from how hilarious this episode is though. So many great bits. Tahani’s American imitation and ability to roleplay a hotdog-based torture demon is a kick. Jason’s idiocy is at peak hilariousness here (like his confusing about apples versus origins and whether you eat their “clothes”). Good Janet trying to hard to be Bad Janet is a comic treat. The bits we here about Mindy St. Clair and Derek getting it on via windchimes are the weird sort of funny. And all the example of low-grade crappy tortures and behaviors are mostly easy gags, but each amusing.
The bigger storylines are strong too. Chidi being unwilling to lie because he’s a Kantian, and then being talked into moral particularism is another good bit of character growth (in the form of a free-reading Eleanor) that moves the plot by having Chidi do his best to fit in with the bro demons (including a delightfully douchey Dax Shepard) to maintain their cover. Michael trying to preserve the same ruse leads to some great tension. And hell, even Jason’s seemingly throwaway molotov cocktail bit actually comes in handy (with a hilarious "JORTLES!" capper).
Overall, it’s one of the most elegant episode of The Good Place so far, where comedy followed character, character followed plot, and plot followed sentiment, all in one beautiful bit of television parsimony.
[9.7/10] Doing satisfying fan service that doesn’t just feel like empty calories is hard. Doing time travel stories is hard. Doing stories where you mix a familiar story with a new one is hard. Mixing old a new footage in a satisfying way is hard. Blending a current series with a classic one is hard. And yet, “Trial and Tribble-ations” succeeds at all of it.
That’s why I’ve ranked this one so highly. Is it the best ever episode in the Star Trek franchise? Certainly not. Is it even the episode of Deep Space 9? Probably not. But the task at hand was so hard, the pitfalls so many, and the folks behind the scenes at DS9 managed to craft a funny, clever, nostalgic, winking, and above all satisfying hour of television.
It’s particularly interesting revisiting “Trials” after watching the original “Trouble with Tribbles” episode of The Original Series. That only heightens the potential difficulties in appreciating the modern follow-on, because it should more clearly expose the seams in the way that “Trials” attempts to integrate itself with the classic. Instead, it just makes it all the more impressive what attention to detail the people who made the DS9 episode (who are clearly very admiring of their 60s predecessor) showed in sending Sisko and company back to TOS.
What’s really impressive is the way that the episode manages to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to nodding at the sillier or fan-noted elements of the original Star Trek. There’s plenty of opportunities for DS9 to poke fun at its predecessor. Everything from the short skirts of the female officers on the Enterprise to the jerry-rigged control stations get a wink. Kirk in particular gets a few nods of his own, from the Temporal Agents noting how many violations he had to Sisko noting that he was known as quite the ladies man. There’s even some fun riffing on fan fascinations like Bashir, Odo, and O’Brien asking Worf about the ridgeless Klingons or Dax having a crush on Spock.
Still, for all “Trials” has fun focusing on the eccentricities and rib-elbowing elements of revisiting The Original Series, it’s also clearly so reverent and loving of the old Star Trek that those gags never mean spirit. When Dax admires the black finish and silver accents of the old tricorders or, in the episode’s crowning moment, Captain Sisko tells Captain Kirk what an honor it is to serve under him, however fleetingly, it’s obvious how much writers René Echevarria and Ronald D. Moore (of later Battlestar Galactica fame) admire the old series, with their observations coming from a place of affection not derision.
Echevarria and Moore also do well to find an interesting hook for our modern day heroes to have something to do back in the 23rd century. While the orb of time is fairly convenient as a device that sends them back in time, “Trials” manages to have its own plot that compliments, rather than clashes or feels glommed onto the original story in “Troubles.” The episode benefits from using a light touch, keeping Sisko and co. near the action, but only getting directly involved when necessary and plausible, preventing things from getting too cute in the matching.
I’m also a sucker for long-term continuity, so I love the fact that they got Charlie Brill back to play secret Klingon Arne Darvin as an old man, who’s returning to the past to fix what went wrong for him the first time. The episode does a nice job at giving us just enough of a post-mortem on “Troubles” -- the Klingons struggled to eradicate the tribbles after Scotty beamed them aboard Koloth’s ship, and Darvin was excommunicated by both the Federation and Klingons -- to give context to the choices people are making here. It helps make the main plot of the episode, that Darvin has planted a bomb to kill Kirk and make him a hero rather than a scapegoat in Klingon history and Sisko and his crew have to find, work on its own terms, not just as an add-on to the story we know from “Trouble.”
If that weren’t enough, there’s all sorts of amusing riffs on the sort of confusion and tropes that come with any kind of time travel story. It’s great how jaded and world-weary (time weary?) the temporal agents are in their back-and-forth with Sisko, lamenting stable time loops and other stock answers in time-hopping tales like they’ve heard them a million times. Beyond that, O’Brien and Bashir have a nice moment where they debate the old “I’m my own grandpa” paradox in an amusing fashion years before the cast of Futurama would do the same. Again, the writers are laughing about the conventions of time travel, a well Star Trek returns to often, but do so lovingly.
It also must be said how well the effects team integrates the cast of Deep Space 9 into the various scenes from The Original Series. I remembered the effects as having been impressive at the time, but it’s amazing how well they hold up twenty years later. Again, it’s clear that the show took great care in not overdoing it, but throwing in just enough interactions and connections to thrill without going overboard. The restraint is admirable.
So is the devotion to visual continuity. While it’d be nigh-impossible to bridge the gap between sixties shooting techniques and nineties network television, “Trials” does one hell of a job. Much of it comes from simply editing new footage with old footage in a coherent fashion, to where bits like Bashir, Worf, Odo, and O’Brien getting involved in the bar fight on K9 or Dax shrugging at Captain Kirk work more from stitching the episode together than any special effects. (And it must be said that the lighting and costumes are spot on and help create that continuity.)
But the effects shine as well. While there’s seams here and there (the difference in audio quality is particularly notable), the folks behind the scenes did a tremendous job of depositing the Deep Space 9 cast into the old clips. Much of it works by simply placing the Defiant’s crew in the background, making them notable but not distracting, but it works just as well when the show gets more ambitious as well, whether it’s standing O’Brien next to Chekov when the crew’s being interrogated about the fight or putting Sisko face-to-face with Kirk.
That’s what makes “Trials and Tribble-ations” such a gem. It is absolutely an achievement of craft -- with well done effects work, production design, and editing to meld the two shows made thirty years apart. But it’s also an achievement in writing, finding ways to nod at the rhythms and style of the old series but also to honor it, while telling a story of its own. It would be so easy for the episode to settle at “pretty good” and coast on the thrill of blending new and old. Instead, Deep Space 9 nails it, finding the perfect mix of humor, adventure, nostalgia, and fun. It may not be the best episode of Star Trek, but it’s one of the hardest episodes to get right, and “Trials” absolutely does.
