Peter J. Mello

VIP

8

Good episode. I did not really like the previous 2 "seven years later episodes". Other than showing his miserable life they didn't tell us a lot about what actually went down in BCS. I'm not really interested in his heist/robbery schemes. Yes, it was/will be satisfying to see how Saul's story ends eventually, but the show could have ended in 6x09. I guess producers felt like Saul needed his El Camino. But this episode is actually quite good and tells an important story. As if that wasn't clear, she feels guilty, she knows she did wrong and she will do the decent thing (even if it took 7 years to submit her affidavit and come clean). Not sure if it was really necessary to explain her emotional state explicitly. I mean we all (except for Saul) understood why she freaked out, but it's certainly nice to see her again (for one last time?). And her new life is pictured brilliantly. Seehorn doing an incredible job to show us her new persona who is a shadow of her former self trapped in Florida's suburbia. At least she is one of the few people who escaped the sinking ship more or less unscratched before things escalated in BB.

I wanted to say this last episode but it's not too late: Jesse became old. I wish they somehow would have deep-faked his face or something. Alternatively, he could have lost a few pounds. Matthew McConaughey style. Or even better: they could have pre-produced these scenes seven years ago, but that's maybe too much to ask. Or they could have refrained from adding him to BCS. It feels like unnecessary fan-service. I don't need him to understand that Saul has already transformed into the person we know from BB - right after Kim left.

PS: I still don't like the b/w palette. Classic b/w movies look vibrant and warm; this b/w palette looks dull and cold. Only the reflection from the past in Gene's glasses are a nice touch to the b/w imagery (an effect last seen in Schindler's Liste)

[9.8/10] What an episode! It's hard to imagine an hour of television that could draw out the differences between Jimmy and Kim better than this one.

In the wake of Howard's death and all the sins she committed and enabled, Kim numbs herself in a colorless world of banal conversations and empty experiences. Everything about her day-to-date life is colorless and dull, resigning herself to a sort of limbo as both penance and protection from inflicting anymore wrongs on the world. And even there, she won't make any decisions, offer any opinions, as though she's afraid that making any choice will lead her down another bad road.

Until Gene intervenes, balks at her command to turn himself in, and tells her to do that if she's so affronted by what they did. And holy hell, she does! If there was ever an indicator of moral fortitude in the Gilliverse, it's that. The courage of your convictions it takes to have gotten away with it, lived years away from the worst things you've ever done, and still choose to return to the place where it happened and accept your punishment, legal, moral, or otherwise, is absolutely incredible. Rhea Seehorn kills it, especially as Kim comes crumbling apart on an airport shuttle, amid all the hard truths she set aside for so long coming back in one painful rush. It's a tribute to Seehorn, and to Kim, how pained and righteous Kim seems in willfully choosing to confess and suffer whatever fate comes down, unlike anyone else in Better Call Saul or Breaking Bad.

It makes her the polar opposite of Gene, who finds new depths of terribleness as the noose tightens around him. As he continues the robbery of the cancer-stricken man whose house he broke into in the last episode, he finds new lows. Even when this risky excess has worked out for him, he pushes things even further by stealing more luxury goods as time runs out. He nearly smashes in the guy's skull with an urn for his own dead pet. He bails on Jeff. And when Marion finds him out, he advances on her with such a physical threat, a dark echo of the kindness to senior citizens that once defined his legal career.

The contrast is clear. Kim will turn herself in even when she doesn't have to and has excuses and justifications she could offer. Gene resorts to ever more cruelty, fraud, and craven self-interest to save himself from facing any of the consequences he so richly deserves. Kim is right to tell Jesse Pinkman that Saul used to be good, when she knew him. The two of them will understand better than anyone else in this universe what it's like to attach yourself to someone who sheds everything that made them a decent human being. Jimmy lost the part of himself that was good, or kind, or noble, even amid his cons. But Kim held onto her moral convictions, and it's what makes her not just Jimmy's foil, but the honorable counterpoint to the awful person he became.

EDIT: Here's a link to my usual more in-depth review of the episode if anyone's interested -- https://thespool.net/reviews/better-call-saul-season-6-episode-12-recap/

[9.8/10] One of the ways you can tell that a show is great, not just good, is when it’s engrossing even when there’s not anything particularly exciting or notable happening. It’s easy to be engaged, even giddy, about Better Call Saul in the midst of McGill-on-McGill courtroom combat, in the middle of another of Jimmy’s capers, as Mike Ehrmantraut is springing another one of his traps, or when another little Breaking Bad easter egg pops up. But the mark of a great show is that it can be just as transfixing, just as mesmerizing, to watch Chuck have dinner with his ex-wife, the moment laden with hopes and expectations, with little more happening than a conversation between old friends.

Better yet, that flashback to a time when Jimmy and Chuck were using their scheming in concert and not against one another isn’t simply a flight of fancy to contrast their later antagonism, or a simple pleasing vignette of the early point of Chuck’s condition. It’s a character study, a set of scenes that never comes says anything outright about Chuck McGill, but tells us so much about who he is, how he reacts to obstacles and difficulties, and quietly sets up the bigger fireworks to come.

It shows that Chuck is a prideful man. That’s not much of a revelation, but what’s striking about the flashback are the lengths that he goes to hide his condition from his ex-wife, Rebecca. He concocts a story about a mixup with the electric company (poetically enough, involving transposed letters on an address), and tries to keep it all under wraps.

When Rebecca uses a cell phone that causes his “acute allergy to electromagnetism” to flare up (featuring superb camera work and sound design to convey his perception of it), he throws it out of her hands. But when called to account for his behavior, he doesn’t come clean about why he did it. Tellingly, he not only comes up with an excuse, he not only turns the blame onto Rebecca herself rather than accept it for be honest, but he frames it in terms of propriety, in terms of what’s “right,” in terms of a decorum that he sees himself as adhering to and chastises others for not meeting his standard. It is a defense mechanism, a self-preservation method, one that in that moment and in the future, causes him to mask his frustrations in grandiose notions of propriety and principles rather than face his own failings and prejudices.

But most importantly, even when Rebecca is effectively storming out, an act that would thwart the elaborate lengths he went to under the clear purpose of winning her back, he keeps Jimmy from telling her the truth. Even though Chuck seemed on the cusp of making a breakthrough with a woman he clearly still had feelings for, he could not bear to be thought of as sick; he could not bear to be though of a lesser; he could not bear to be thought of as crazy. Jimmy McGill knows that, and though he clearly takes no pleasure in it, it’s how he takes his brother down.

In just five minutes, Better Call Saul gives its audience a snootful of character detail and foreshadowing that establishes and reestablishes every hint and bit of shading to make the series’ peak drama at the end of the episode that much more understandable and meaningful. It’s a sign of this show’s virtuosity, and the way it understands tension, character, and storytelling like no other show on television.

And that’s just the first five minutes! “Chicanery” goes full courtroom drama in a way that BCS, despite being one of the best legal shows to grace our television screens, hasn’t really done before. The show sets it up nigh-perfectly, laying out witness testimony, objections, and grants of “leeway” that make sense in context while also providing enough wiggle room for the major characters to be a little more theatrical that would be typical for a disciplinary proceeding.

That extends to the episode’s supporting characters as well. Kim Wexler, who is Better Call Saul’s secret weapon, is not only sharp and decisive in the courtroom, but amid all the intra-McGill squabbling, gets a big win. Rather than relishing in her success, Kim distinguishes herself from both McGill brothers by coming clean to the representatives from Mesa Verde about all this ugliness, only to have the head of the bank brush it off and call her the best outside counsel he’s ever had. It’s subtle but important way that Kim and Jimmy fully win here, and that the blowback from Chuck’s machinations do not sink the client and the work that Kim has put so much effort into.

It also extends to Howard, who, while frequently a cipher on this show, continues to offer some of the most pragmatic and complex approaches to these situations of anyone. He is clearly on Chuck’s side, and clearly interested in preserving the good name of his firm. But he is also firmly honest on the stand, complimentary about Jimmy when he doesn’t have to be, frank about how his rise and fall within HHM, and cognizant of Chuck’s limitations and liabilities in a way that Chuck himself simply isn’t.

What ensues is an incredible chess match, a battle of wits and wills, between Jimmy and Chuck. Chuck carefully rehearses his testimony, again careful to couch his attack on his brother as not coming from a place of affront or weakness in himself, but to an abstract, platonic ideal -- the law. Chuck is out to show that he does not hate his brother; he cares for him, wants what’s best for him, but also wants what’s best for the legal professional he claims to hold so dear.

“Chicanery” subtly undercuts the sincerity of Chuck’s words not just by their rehearsed nature, but in the selection of detail that precedes them. He professes to love the law because it guarantees equal treatment to everyone under the same rules and regulations, and yet he is driven to these proceedings in a jaguar, pulls up to the courthouse in the presence of reserved parking cones, and saunters in as the concerned god on high, blameless for his own misfortunes and ready to direct judgment at those he sees as at fault.

But Jimmy is ready, as always, with a plan of his own, one that is not completely above board. His official goal is to not to dispute that it’s his voice on the tape or that it was tampered with, but that he said what he said because he was concerned for his brother’s wellbeing and more importantly, his sanity. In that, he hopes to convince the disciplinary committee that he did not undertake the elaborate, “baroque” scheme to disrupt his brother’s dealings with Mesa Verde that Chuck alleges, but that he gave into Chuck’s paranoid fantasy so as to prevent his brother from slipping further.

And like the best of Jimmy’s lies, it works because there is a grain of truth to it. We know that Chuck isn’t wrong that even if there was no hard evidence of it, Jimmy unleashed an elaborate ploy to trip up Chuck. But we also know that Jimmy means it when he says he would say anything to make his brother feel better, to prevent Chuck from slipping back into his aluminum foil-lined nightmare. Jimmy may have been admitting what really happened rather than telling Chuck “whatever he wanted to hear,” but coming from Slippin’ Jimmy, that is the truest sign that he genuinely would have said anything, even the god’s honest, to make his brother feel better.

That’s also what makes it so tragic, so impressive but sad, that Jimmy will now do anything to show that his brother is insane. Better Call Saul is tremendous at muddying the moral waters in complex, unassuming ways, but Jimmy’s plan to provoke Chuck may be the apotheosis of an act that is clever, resourceful, full of Jimmy’s trademark showmanship, understandable, and yet also more than a bit diabolical. It’s easy to root for Jimmy, particularly in the shadow of his brother’s superciliousness, but it’s one more case of Jimmy covering up one dirty trick with yet another.

While Jimmy normally revels in that sort of gamesmanship, in the razzle dazzle that makes him as effective as lawyer as he was a conman, he seems to take no joy in it. He reveals that he had Mike take those photographs of Chuck’s apartment to lure Rebecca back, something that he knew would put his brother off balance. But when he stands by the vending machines (which create a subtle buffer to prevent Chuck from confronting him about it) he does not have a wisp of glee at his plan coming to fruition, just the hurt resignation that it’s come to this.

Jimmy, however, is not done. In his final act meant to prove to the disciplinary board that his brother is unbalanced and thus untrustworthy, he resorts to some of the titular “chicanery.” He employs Huell(!) to slip a cell phone battery in Chuck’s pocket, and what follows is one of the best scenes in the show’s history.

It involves a back and forth between Jimmy and Chuck. Jimmy seems to pulling every rabbit out of his hat that he can come up with to expose his brother as a nut. He shows pictures from inside Chuck’s house. He gestures to Rebecca in the audience and even garnishes an emotional apology from Chuck to her. He plays “commit and contradict” with Chuck about his alleged illness, trying to establish for the disciplinary committee that Chuck’s issues are psychosomatic, and getting his brother to affirm that he is not feeling electromagnetic waves from anywhere in particular in the room.

It’s then that Jimmy takes out his cell phone, presumably expecting a reaction from Chuck to prove that his brother would respond to it on sight. Instead, Chuck, appearing wise to Jimmy’s machinations, determines that the phone is without is battery, and it seems, for a moment, like Jimmy’s stunt has been foiled, more fodder for Chuck to demonstrate that his brother is a two-bit huckster, not a lawyer. Instead, Jimmy plays the magician, revealing the final element of his trick -- the battery that Huell slipped into Chuck’s breast pocket.

That is what sets Chuck off, as he pulls the battery out like it’s radioactive and tosses it on the floor. He goes into a deranged rant that ought to earn Michael McKean an Emmy. He howls about his brother’s irresponsibleness, about how Jimmy’s billboard stunt had to be staged, about how defecating in a sunroof, about slights going back to childhood. The camera zooms in slowly on Chuck as he digs himself deeper and deeper, each word making this crusade seem more like the childish vendetta from a mentally-disturbed man against the imagined slights from his little brother than a high-minded mission to uphold the law. As more and more of his angry, pontificating face fills the frame, he stops, and the ensuing shot of the disciplinary board’s reaction says it all.

Jimmy has done it. In front of the state bar, in front of their partners, in front of the women they love, Jimmy exposes his brother as a mentally ill person ranting and raving, not the dignified legal lion he tried so hard to present himself as, in the courtroom and in that dinner with Rebecca way back when. The episode cuts to a far shot of Chuck, seeming so small, so defeated in the frame, as the buzz of the exit sign looms large next to him. This is his Waterloo, the terrible culmination of two brothers’ issues with one another, laid bare in a court of law for all the world to see.

Chuck, more than Hector or Howard or the cartel, is the villain of Better Call Saul. That makes it easy to hope that Jimmy overcomes him. But in that final moment, Jimmy again mixes fact with fiction. His brother is telling the truth. As paranoid as it sounds, as childish as it is to hold onto certain grudges and resentments, Chuck is correct in all of his assessments. And yet, as the opening scene tells us, he is a prideful individual, unwilling to admit to his illness, to his difficulties, as anything that would make him seem the lesser or not in control. That is his downfall, the fatal flaw that not only keeps him from carrying out his plan, but from what we see in this episode, which costs him the love of both his wife and his brother. That is unspeakably sad -- the story of an individual, even a villain, coming so close, and losing everything worth having in the end, when the worst of him is put on display.

I needed some time to think about what this episode in the end was. For the most part it was what I expected. Putting everything together in a hurry to get to the finale and trying to explain everthing more or less satisfactory. But it did also something no Star Trek episode or movie did for a very long time: it genuinely surprised me with a plot twist I did not see coming and I thought was really great. That came about half way into to an otherwise rather uninteresting episode.

The Europa Mission plot was solved within minutes and seemed at this point like an afterthought. It was completely clear it wasn't Reneé that came out of the room. Talinn's talk with Reneé and her death scene felt empty for me.

The most brilliant scientist on earth doesn't even have a backup of all his life's work ? C'mon - really ? And then he pulls out the Khan file. I hope it's not a pre-cursor for season three. Because Khan doesn't work without Kirk.

And then came Wes. And that was amazing how they incorporated the whole thing with him and the Travelers into everything, including TOS. And I wonder how they can do that and at the same time come up with episodes like pseudo-Mulder who did zilch for the story. But why does a Traveler need a transporter I wonder ??

The next thing was another talk with Seven and Raffi that really pulled things down again. I'd rather had them continue with the scene where Q finally explains to Picard his motives. That was a great dialogue that raises many questions not so much about Picard than about Q. And I for one was more sad to see him go then for what Picard went through. While I like the fact that he learned to accept himself the way he his and be open for others in his life, I still don't like it needed a mentally ill mother who commited suicide in his past.

The rest of the episode I could've lived without. I am not even mentioning Rios because what happened to him was obvious probably since the middle of the season. Likewise who the Borgqueen on the Stargazer was. Althought you could write a dissertation about all the paradoxons needing to happen for this to take place. And the big Galactic Event was something that felt like added in post. Hey , let's have some galaxy threatening event at the end. Didn't Q just say "why does it always have to be the fate of the universe ?"

Summary: Give me a 2+ hour made for streaming release movie with all the essential parts of the story, leave all the rest along the wayside and I probably would have sung high praise. But there was so much going on I couldn't care less about that overshadowed the few parts I really liked.

Like always this is my personal point of view. I'm happy for everyone who liked it. Because Star Trek is about tolerance.

TBH, this season was a mess. And this episode as well...

... so they have Wesley welcome Kori to the Travellers, but he can't interfere with Q's actions?

Somehow I thought Q would turn out to be Picard's father, but somehow I liked the interaction between him and Picard. But all the timetravel just because Picard should face some childhood trauma? We are led to believe that he can deal with being turned into a Borg, losing the rest of his family (Robert, Rene), but represses his mother's suicide? Of course, it's traumatic, no doubt about that, but that it didn't come up so far among all the trauma he had to deal with throughout those 30 years, is questionable.

Rios staying in the past... who cares? Sorry, but his whole plotthread was unnecessary and boring...

Jurati's plot was easily the most interesting one. But how did all this influence the Borg as we so far knew them? I mean they are a collective, so come that all the assimilations, including Picard's, still took place?

Otherwise, this season's been all over the place. If I hadn't some kind of investment in the characters, I'd quit. But I guess I'll tune in regardless when this show returns for its final season.

I'm just judging this episode. I try not to judge the entire season (see my season 2 comments for that). This episode is actually quite okay. It didn't answer all my questions. Some aspects feel rushed. Parts of it still don't make sense. But they tried to connect some of the loose ends. I appreciate this. It actually foreshadows the next huge mystery - a cliffhanger for season three it seems. Not sure whether season 3 should again deal with such a gigantic threat to humanity. Where are the quieter stories?

After the talk with Q, the mother Picard story makes at least some sense. It's just another trial I presume - and another lesson for Picard. Q can't stop being Q. And of course selfish Q designed this lesson also for his own benefit. Lonely Q needed a warm goodbye and he got that. And since writers are still lazy, Q (temporarily) gets his powers back so that they can travel back to the 24th century and where the boy is alive again. Convenient. He's omnipotent when that's needed by the authors. They say it has to do with energy balances/budgets. Creating a cure, hacking into Soong's computer and printer, teleporting himself from France to California and sending most of the crew back and resurrecting a dead crew member still works just fine. "Finger snapping" at Renée, traveling to Guinan's bar or to the FBI cellar or stopping Renée (so he doesn't need to ask Soong to do that for him at the party) won't work. Sure? But Q's goodbye is actually surprisingly touching. Q also indicates what he was really up to. Sort of. It's still mysterious how the whole story actually worked.

That's my newest (and likely flawed) interpretation of what happened:

Main story

Q is the omniscient good guy. Powerless or not - his plan works just like intended. Q has two goals (Forget the lame forgiveness story with Picard's mom - that's just one of Q's strange lessons. I refuse to give a report about those events. Also forget that he wants a friend before he dies)

* He wants to save Picard in particular before he's able to self-destruct his ship hereby ending his life.
* He wants to save Picard (and possibly all humankind) from the dangerous anomaly that appeared.

For some reason he needs allies to do so. That's why he needed a cooperative and friendly Borg collective with a special benevolent base attitude and a Queen that possesses insight to her future. For multiple reasons:

* Q apparently knows that the Borg are the only race powerful enough to fend this anomaly off.
* In 400 years time, Q needs a Queen that wants to help to save the Federation from the negative effects of the anomaly: he needs a potentially friendly collective.
* Even the Borg need time to prepare for the advent of the anomaly (let's say 400 years) and they must know when the anomaly is about to appear.

For his plan to work he needs a malleable Borg Queen who can be persuaded that a more cooperative and friendly Borg tactics might be a new approach that is worth to be tested. Thus, Q flings them into a particular timeline in which an (isolated and almost certainly desperate) Borg Queen faces yet another total defeat (one of many in different timelines - Borg sense other timelines it seems) because their confrontation approach was unsuccessful once again. She's disillusioned enough to try something new. Q made also sure that Picard, Jurati and Seven hold powerful key positions in that society which enable them to kidnap this Queen in the first place. Q (disguised as a shrink) created this timeline by stopping Renée from wanting to fly into space. W/o her discovery, a global environmental catastrophe can't be stopped and humanity becomes a race that first stops taking care of Earth and consequently starts to conquer other worlds (and relies on Soong's technology) in order to compensate.

Now things play out just like Q intended (free will is just an illusion): Time travel to 2024 (Is that something the Borg can do whenever they want? Why don't they do that more often? It's also very convenient that the Borg Queen has insight into the arrow of time and knows that 2024 is the date where things were manipulated by Q). Naturally, the Queen's first plan was to take advantage of the 400 years head start (that's probably why she was helping with time travel in the first place), escape and assimilate 21st century humanity to neutralize the future "Terran" threat, but Jurati can stop her from doing this and Q knew. Jurati and the Queen merge. The Jurati/Queen eventually becomes a benevolent factor and now possesses Jurati's knowledge about the advent of an anomaly in 400 years time.

Now, the original timeline needs to be restored. Q made this an easy fix. Picard has a five minute talk with Renée and that's sufficient to make her fly into space again. It doesn't matter that she's a Picard ancestor I believe. The protagonists around Picard can't know what exactly will restore the timeline (and the Watcher doesn't know either). But the mere fact that Q interfered as Renée's shrink, makes them believe that it's important that Renée changes her mind, overcomes her fears reverberated by shrink-Q and will become part of the Europa mission crew after all. Ultimately, Q knew that the original timeline will be restored and that they will protect Renée from Soong. When all his silly games and his little decoys (Soong, Kore, Talinn etc. [more on that later]) are finished, the crew is "finger snapped" back into the 24th century.

The Borg (better to say, this presumably isolated peaceful collective under Jurati's command) now had 400 years to hide from other belligerent part of the collective (those who fought the Federation in TNG and VYG) and to come up with a theory about the anticipated anomaly that's about to appear in that very moment. Conveniently, the Jurati-Queen knows what she has to do in 400 years time to set the chain of events into motion: appear at the right moment, summon Picard fro retirement, disguise that she's actually Jurati, scare Picard, make Picard activate auto-destruct (remember: she know all of that because she [Jurati] was there when the events unfolded for the first time - or she was told what is about to happen). This makes Q intervene and trigger the story. Thus, it's not entirely clear whether the Borg or Q set this chain of events into motion. Doesn't really matter. Both Q and Queen-Jurati knew enough about the past and future. In their perception all the events triggered were inevitable, the actions of the Borg and Q are indivisibly interwoven and Jurati just needed to repeat the steps she knew will be necessary to alert Q who promptly intervenes.

Now, Picard lives through the whole story (as described in episodes from 2 to 10). Based on this experience he is able to identify Jurati. Again: She of course couldn't reveal herself before - otherwise Picard would not have activated auto-destruct. Now knowing that it's Jurati-Queen, Picard assumes those Borg will probably be benevolent. He now stops the circular chain of events by deactivating auto-destroy. Thus, Q has no reason to reappear and the Borg save the galaxy indeed. End of story.

Soong sub-plot

The Soong story doesn't really matter. It's really anyone's guess why Q wants to "liberate" Kore (it's certainly not important for season 2. And what's with Kore? Is she Soji after all?). I don't understand why Q - powerless or not - asks Soong to kill Renée. I mean, at that point, Picard is about to have his little motivational talk with Renée and that will restore the timeline. Just like it was always wanted by Q. Why does Q need Soong to interfere? I don't get it. Unless, he needed Q's Tesla to trigger Picard's coma and unless the subsequent conversation between the Queen and Soong (where his great future is revealed if he only stopped Renée) wasn't enough to start another attempt by Soong to go after Renée again, so that Talinn could die in the process of preventing that. (Not sure if he needed Q's extra motivation - it seems that he was easily manipulated by the Queen to do whatever she wants him to do) Plus, his development from unethical scientist to mad über-villain and violent Borg fire team leader is kind of surprising. Is that only because Q and the Queen (unimpeded by Jurati) give him an insight into "one of his possible futures"? Will he continue to fight for his desired future? Will he for example try to erase the recordings of the Europa mission and kill its crew when they come back?

Tallinn sub-plot

She's a pretty useless character. She basically just told them that she's trying to protect Renée. Other than that she provides a transporter and camera surveillance of Q manipulating Renée. But she has no clue what to do either. Is Renée supposed to fly into space or not? She doesn't know. She wants to protect Renée (that's why she stops Soong) but how could she know that Renée is safer in space than she would be staying on Earth? Q perhaps only really wants a person like Tallinn in this story, so that she can be killed. Picard is supposed to learn a lesson about this loss: He needs to fix his relation with Laris when he's back (or is Laris actually an actual reincarnation of Tallin? That part I don't understand). Why is Soong dragged into the murder? It's just another of Q's silly games I presume. Doesn't really matter (for the time being). Anyone who has access to the launch pad and the quarantine area could have been motivated by Q to endanger Renée's life in a way so that Tallinn feels the need to step in. Still don't understand how the Jurati-Queen could possibly predict that Tallin's sacrifice (she's the "second Renée" that needs to die that the Jurati-Queen was so mysteriously referring to) is necessary to stop Soong.

###B-, C- and D-plots
There are more sub-plots. But they don't have any consequences (like the stories with ICE, FBI, Rios and his affair, Guinan [mostly fan service. Interesting to know that she knew most decisive parts of the story but kept this as a secret during her time aboard Enterprise], Elnor, Seven & Raffi).

Could it be more complicated and does it really make sense?

There's also a more or less sound explanation for the watcher. It feels very detached from the story; like an appendix to the episode or a preparation for Kore's role in season 3. The traveler from TNG that recruited Wesley was a watcher, too. Sort of guardian angels. Did they need to re-introduce Wesley to explain this part? I was glad when he left TNG for good. Plus, I still don't understand why Data looks like Soong. That's not explained in this show. Why would Data's designer (another guy from the future Soong family branch) would design a robot whose face looks like the face of an evil and mad ancestor?

Season finale! Exactly like in last season, it's time to tick some boxes. Lesbians anyone? Check! Makes no sense. They didn't even try to tell this romantic story since it was first implied in season one's finale. Or did they try, but failed to make their love special or even feel romantic? Nothing wrong about a good homosexual love story, but it ain't very well told. Another box to tick: save the cast for a possible return in season 3 and create a happy ending. That's so American/Hollywood. Even if that involves - like in season one's finale - to resurrect a crew member out of the blue.

PS: it's 2024 and they still don't do backups - let alone encrypt their data or use passwords.

It amuses me that sometimes, Starfleet ships can be remote controlled by people who know their command codes or whatever, and sometimes they can't. Clearly they just wanted an excuse for Dax's tractor beam shenanigans, rather than just transmitting an "all stop" command to the Rio Grande remotely. (The warp tow actually makes sense, though. It's probably cheaper, fuel-wise, to run only one warp engine and have that runabout tow the other, than to run both warp reactors. Post-scarcity society or not, efficiency is still valuable.)

Wow, Alixus is a totally unlikable character. There's actually no reason whatsoever to sympathize with her. If this episode has a flaw, she's it. Good villains (and she's worthy of the appellation, I'd say) have a hook for the audience to see things from their point of view and understand why they do the things they do, however evil they might be. Alixus is just a flat, sociopathic plot device.

Sisko is my favorite part of this episode, even though Avery Brooks isn't quite at the top of his game yet. (It takes him a few seasons to really hit his stride with the character. At this point in the series, he's still delivering a fair few lines in odd ways that don't feel right.) Him climbing back into the "hell box" is the best moment of the whole thing.

Q is just a great actor. Just like Stewart, who may have actually found a fitting role in this show: an old, confused man barely being able to project strength or to show extraordinary mental abilities. Nothing wrong about such an anti-hero and it were perhaps the better choice for his character in season one, too (I'm afraid he'll loose his delicate feebleness soon). The initial conversation between Q and Picard is just great.

The general premise of such a parallel universe is getting old. It's like a shameless rip-off from DS9 and the Empress's (or is it Empress' or Empresses'?) world in Discovery. Everyone is dressed in black, mankind is once again in Terran genocide mood and slave owning mode, and most of our beloved main characters are monsters or at least working on behalf of dictators. Still don't like the idea of parallel universes or jumping though time in all of those new shows. Once - like DS9's parallel universe or the Q-episodes in TNG - this was always a one-off episode to add some flavor to the regular universe - mostly inconsequential episodes to experiment with. But in all the new shows, it's like: "We don't have any ideas how to fill the known universe with good stories. We desperately need a new setting and more violence and the chance to meddle with all traditional Star Trek parameters. Hey why not let them jump thousand of years into the future? Why not catapult them into a parallel universe with the help of a supernatural being?" That's just an excuse for sloppy writing. And 'cause that's so distant to the original universe, they simply drop some familiar names from the original timeline: Stargazer, Sisko, Martok etc. That feels like an amateurish move to avoid being disconnected from the Star Trek brand. And the next amateurish move is expected in the next episode: why not quickly jump to 2024?

Showing how Seven/Annika would be if she was never assimilated, is interesting but they could have allotted more time to this. Plus, I don't really believe that Annika w/o her Borg encounter would behave the way she does. Even if her memory about that original timeline weren't wiped out by Q, the loss of her implants should surely have an effect on her behavior? I mean, wasn't that physical Borg/Human hybrid thing not always part of her personality? Or is that just not entirely thought through? Aren't hey interested in exploring Seven's persona? I mean, she was by far the most intriguing character (the awful t&a approach aside) in Voyager. She is super complex and you can still relate to her, but the writers don't seem to care.

But overall it's a good episode. I care for the characters (that's actually more than I could say about 99% of all people onboard the parallel show Discovery). Even Agnes' role as the odd professor is okay-ish (and she was easily the most annoying character in season 1). The alternate world is worth to be explored. The plot is consistent (aka I understand their motives, goals and the general premise) and well within the expected parameters of the Star Trek Franchise (as far as parallel universes and almighty supernatural beings go). Even the excitement isn't entirely based on stupid explosions and firefights.

They are going on a big mission. They may not return. Why not waste the first 15 minutes or so centered around that fact? I mean, can you be sure that we - the audience - otherwise understand what's at stake? No, 'cause we're stupid. Everyone needs to say goodbye, must explain why not coming along (or like in case of the two presidents why they come along), must confess their love to each other, deliver another sub-complex motivational speech over com (that screams Hollywood BS pathos) and so forth. Even after jumping to the galactic barrier Saru and the Good Doctor steal my time by discussing the universal concept of love in the most shallow and uninspired way you could ever imagine.

The barrier is strange and stupid as ever. Both from a visual and a cosmological point of view. Classic Star Trek. Brings back some memories.Discovery isn't to blame here!

The two engineers befriending each other is actually the better sub plot (it's easy to beat the actual main plot aboard the Discovery). Reminds me of the incarcerated Miles O'Brien. It makes his motives clear for the first time. This doesn't save this season but it's a piece that was always missing.

Brilliant drama.

"Kramer vs. Kramer" is a terrific drama about an unhappy woman who walks out on her husband and young son. The husband now has to take up the responsibilities of taking care of the boy. As he does, they get to know each other better. But then, the mother and wife returns, and she wants custody of the boy. "Kramer vs. Kramer" has lots of drama with some wonderful bits of comedy thrown in for good measure. Dustin Hoffman won his first Best Actor Oscar for his brilliant performance here. Most people say his performance in "Rainman", which won him his second Oscar, is his best. He was great in that film, but I disagree that its his best. In my opinion, the best performance of Hoffman's career is in this movie. Scene after scene shows us why Hoffman is one of the best American actors working today. He's also funny at times. Also giving a terrific performance is Meryl Streep, who wasn't as well known when she made this film like she is today. Streep, like Hoffman, also won her first Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress) for her work in "Kramer vs. Kramer" as the wife and mother who tries to find herself after walking out on her family. Justin Henry, who was only 8 years old when the film came out, is wonderful as Hoffman and Streep's son. He won an Oscar nomination for his role here, and still to this day he is the youngest performer to receive an Oscar nomination in a competitive category (Best Supporting Actor). Jane Alexander is also fine as a conserned family friend. She too got an Oscar nomination (for Supporting Actress where she lost to co-star Streep). "Kramer vs. Kramer" is a great film from start to finish. Writer-director Robert Benton has made a film that's absolutely unforgettable.

I have no idea how to rate this episode. It is a technical masterpiece. The imagery of Dany wreaking her terrible vengeance on King's Landing left me awe-struck. "The Bells" doesn't just give us all the amazing CGI wizardry of flaming death reigning from above and masses of bodies hacking one another to bits. It firmly and fully conveys the abject terror that being in that situation would create, anchoring the Saving Private Ryan-esque horror in the reaction of Jon, the efforts to escape by Arya, the mother and child who are the audience inserts and vehicles our sympathies as innocents caught in this maelstrom. There is such an atmosphere, such arresting visuals, and such a sad, frightening mood that Game of Thrones evokes here. You could show this episode to someone who'd never seen the show before and, while it would spoil a hell of a lot, I still think they would get and appreciate the gruesome peak of the show's "war is hell" mentality in a potent and visceral way.

But god help me, the show writes so many characters so poorly, and rushes others, that when you step away from the sheer spectacle and emotion of what you've just seen, it's hard not to just be frustrated. Jaime's eight-season path of growth and development basically goes to pot in twenty minutes of "I just love Cersei", without enough time to grapple with all he'd done and how he'd changed. Cersei crumples in the face of loss and death, in a way that doesn't track with her actions in the Battle of Blackwater. And Tyrion has gone from being smart if a little unduly optimistic to being downright naive about his sister and his queen and pretty much everyone these days. Other characters get a bit of the short shrift in terms of their journeys too, but the Lannisters in particular, who the show spent so much of its narrative juice on over the course of the series, just get butchered in terms of their character arcs here.

I am still awed by the visceral brutality of the Cleganebowl, touched by Tyrion's farewell to his brother and The Hound's last lesson to his accidental student, and I even buy Dany's descent into madness 100%. The final turn happens quickly, but the show has been hinting at Dany's dark side for a long time, and I definitely can accept losing pretty much all the people she loves or cares about it in the span of a week as spurring her to unleash that. Again, the direction, editing, and aesthetics of the Battle of King's Landing is truly masterful, letting you feel the force and fury of Dany's quest for vengeance while rooting it in the lives of the innocent people she's wasting.

But I still just can't get past the sorry destinations "The Bells" had for a number of characters I really cared about on the show. As spectacle, as emotion, and the bloody ascendance of The Mad Queen, the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones wows and more than does its job. But as a vindication and culmination of character arcs the show has been seeding and growing for eight years now, there is so much to be disappointed with her, that it tarnishes the episode's otherwise stunning technical and emotional achievements.

The movie is very well made. Everything from the sets to the costumes and the acting is, in typical Ridley Scott matter, flawless.
However the way the story is told is not to my liking. You have about 45-50 mins of content but, due to the multiple perspective way of storytelling, you have to watch it three times. It's a "he said, she said" that in the end isn't proven one way or the other because, let's face it, "God has spoken" and "an honest man can't die" is as stupid as "you can't get pregnant from a rape because if you don't enjoy intercourse you can't get pregnant. That's sience"
And there lies the biggest issue I have - the movie criticizes a whole society for there misogynistic ways but like with the above that was how it was. Women were property just like men could be. Or what do you thing all the folk working for those nobles were ? From our moral point of view this was wrong but pointing a finger back 700 years in time is easy to do.
Well, it's not a political forum here and I think I will attract comments with what I said no matter what.
The actual duel at the end was great, very well filmed, with the instense and brutality you imagine had to be there in a fight for ones honor to the death. But after sitting through more than two hours it wasn't enough to save the movie in my eyes.

On the first season, See presented and explored a post apocalyptic world where the civilization lost their ability to see. This concept opened up many interesting questions, but the series gradually degenerated into derivative storylines with weak writing ("I want to pray"). Nevertheless, I watched all the episodes on the merits of 3 characters: Boba Voss (always charismatic Jason Momoa), Tamacti Jun (bad ass Christian Camargo), and Maghra (beautiful Hera Hilmar) and expertly staged action sequences.

The second season pivots the series to Game of Thrones-style backdrop. Multiple factions and/or characters are vying to unite and rule the civilization: Edo Voss (recasted to Dave Bautista from Guardians of the Galaxy), Queen Kane, Maghra, and Harlan (fantastically played by Adrian Paul).

My favorite scene is the goodbye exchange between Baba and Kofun.

Baba: Kofun. Kofun. My son.
Listen to me.
Your and mother and I...
we raised you to be beautiful, not a warrior.
I don't want you to have to fight the way I had to.
I never imagined a life for you away from the Alkenny.
And I failed to prepare you.

Baba: After a touching farewell, he goes on a Ned Stark-style impossible mission to rescue his daughter Haniwa from his estranged and enemy brother Edo.

Wren: She tells Haniwa that while those who can see are not viewed as witches, Edo and his people will execute them. That begs the question. Edo employees a seeing child to find Baba, reinforcing Wren's discriminated victim arc. I am guessing she will turn to Haniwa's side.

Harlan: A great new addition to replace the best character, Tamacti Jun. He has shades of Little Finger, planting seeds into Maghra to betray Queen Kane (who is probably not as dumb and impulsive as she appears).

P.S. I don't like the new opening theme. Full orchestra score and busy graphics diminish the first season's atmospheric theme which perfectly encapsulated the series.

Damn I thought last was the end of the queen. Please no more scenes of her praying. k thanks lol should of known she had an exit plan!!

wowwwww that’s a ton of folks she killed. Damn and she was the queen. hopefully they learned from GOT and she will get what’s coming to her. Unlike Cersei did in GOT.

Hate to say it, as much as like Alfie Woodard she seems kind of missed cast. She sounds too much like her normal self.

Man Haniwa is so angst!!!

Come on Kofun how you letting a man that can’t see beat you so bad. haha
ohhhhhhhhh I spoke to soon. I thought who ever stole their stuff could see and got lost in the moment. dang it!! haha

Oh snap it’s Firestorm from DC’s legends of tomorrow. Dope!! Good to see him doing his thing!

Yeah pretty damn sure she’s the queens sister. no confirmation needed. haha The way she talking about her dad after the queen talked about how her dad didn’t love her.

Hmm will Kofun and ol girl become a thing? I must of missed when she let them know she’s known their secret all their lives. Oh wait she’s too old for Kofun then. haha age ain’t nothing but a number and he doesn’t have any options at the moment. haha

OUCH she said she finds it amusing he can see but observes so little. Burnnnn

Blah the queen part after being kidnap is way too long. We don’t care enough about her for all that screen time with her being belittled. Blah I figure she will be rescued some how. So it’s a bit much to me to be as long as it was. lol at least she didn’t pray. haha think I have PTSD

Finally It’s Baba time!! He deadly with a sword!!!

Wait!!!! She could of commanded him all this time!!! So many people died and she did nothing. He must not know she’s the mother of the twins. Guess she ran off with Jerlamarel when she got pregnant and he ran off from her once she had them. dude just traveling around dropping his seed. Guess that will dilute the gene pool.

Damn weekly bs. lol I wish I could binge the season.

The first show from a long time where actually the light is considered a bad thing. I wonder why queen Kane removed her hair. Maybe for a badass look. But I checked the actress out and she is gorgeous with long hair. So queen Kane admitted at last she loves Jerlamarel and wants his kids. More than that, she wants her kids to be able to see like him. But wait, doesn't she want to kill his other two children for the exact same reason, saying they are witches... The queen also has some internal problems in her kingdom. Obviously not many agree to her way of ruling and she basically had to fry two in front of everyone. The episode showed that they are living inside a lake wall or something kike that and they also have electricity. She even mentioned electric fences to keep animals out. But the water slowly destroys the wall and instead of focusing her mind to keep her kingdom and people save, Kane is obsessed with Jerlamarel. Also the guy who she killed told her to bring her army back, but I didn't see an army. Just a few horsemen burning and killing people. Guess those are the witch hunters.
I am so glad that Paris told the kids about their real father and gave them the books to learn. In her desire to keep them safe Maghra would have killed them, because soon the hunters will find them, thanks to Bax of course. I think this guy's death will be terrible. I really enjoyed how Baba threatened him. He was about to cry.

Lower Decks is a bad spoof of what used to be Star Trek made by people who ruined Star Trek for the next generation, dumbing it down so much it becomes a different beast of what it once was. The comedy in this episode isn't for me, it's simple and basic and not even the little nods to TNG and others can save it.

The main character is ADHD Michael Burnham on speed, unlikeable, annoying and clearly the main thing. The other introduced characters are the classic ensign who just happens to be depicted as the dumb dweeb. The other two are there for filling and to introduce their love-interest for some reason or the other.

The ending of the episode has them go into a memberberry rant to make sure for all those Trekkies and Trekkers that have been disappointed by the last 10 years of Nu Trek that this IS actual Trek... Unfortunately... it isn't.

This show would have been great in the 90's or even 00's as a (still unfunny) spoof (unless other writers were involved) when Star Trek was still revered. Now it's just an extra dump on what Star Trek used to be... It's ironic that the actual Star Trek spoof (The Orville) has received the status of actual Trek whereas this will only go down as another kick in Trekkies' balls/labia.

Also not a fan of the art-style.

Ok, so I saw this when it premiered but by that point, it was already known that Bryan Fuller had left the series...so I knew I'd only get a tiny percentage of a masterpiece, and yes that's what I got.

The premiere has a terrific script! (BTW I'm referring to both episode 1 and 2) It's an explosive premiere where we get to see some of the most cinematic moments in the series. But it's obvious that a lot of the creative stuff in this pilot was not Fuller's. The lens flare, he would have detested this considering a Trekkie won't call the Abrams films "groundbreaking." And the Klingon segments were dark as hell (sort of like the Romulan portions of Abrams film. Also, the characters all have the same uniform. People this isn't Battlestar Galactica, this is Star Trek! And the part that hurts the most is that Fuller has stated that Edgar Wright would've been his choice to direct this two-parter. Yikes, this will be one of my forever "what-ifs" of TV along with Frank Darabont's Walking Dead (read about his S2 plans).

Fuller was demanding the franchise revert to the TV, which is where it belongs! But the decision of putting so many spin-offs in development shows CBS is making this more like their Walking Dead (a fresh cow that will be murdered by the hundreds of spin-offs). After watching Picard, which I thought was solid even though I had never seen any of the original or the sequels, some of which Fuller had worked on. It's just disappointing to know he was kicked out and his admiration for how the franchise shows he was the right person for the job. As a devout follower of his, I didn't continue (it's a practice I have with TV shows, I would've quit The Walking Dead after S1 if I had known it wasn't going to be Frank Darabont but I have made certain exceptions like The West Wing, the final season feels like a solid spin-off).

I also loved the first JJ Abrams film, but knowing there's a richer history to the Star Trek universe has me craving for a binge one of these days. Anyways, whatever Bryan Fuller does next, I will watch.

The build up to this new Star Trek show has been a rollercoaster. It was impossible to tell what it was really going to be like, and there were countless "fans" screaming online about how it's going completely in the wrong direction (I was particularly disgusted with the objections raised about its diversity). I've been cautiously optimistic, and it has helped that since I'm not in the US that I don't have any issues with being able to watch the show, as it's on Netflix here.

I'm happy to say that Discovery is great. At least, this first episode is. It feels very true to the spirit of the franchise and is focused on characters and ethical/moral issues. The visual reboot is wonderful, and something that Trek sorely needed. I really don't care if it doesn't match up with how The Original Series looked, because if a modern show looked anything like that it would be laughed at. Discovery is a visual feast, almost every shot is breathtakingly gorgeous and its clear that the big budget has been spent wisely. My only minor gripe is that the redesigned Klingons are bugging me quite a bit, especially given how established they are within the franchise's canon. I'm sure it's something I'll be fine with eventually.

We are given some strong characters here. The lead, Commander Michael Burnham, seems very brash and possibly over-eager. She promises to just do a fly-by of the unknown object found by the USS Shenzhou, and then proceeds to land and and activate it. She's being treated for heavy radiation burns but flees sickbay to get back to the bridge, when surely she could have just contacted the captain over the comm? The final sequence is the most shocking of her actions when she incapacitates Captain Georgiou. Burnham could be a lot to take if she continues like this!

The trailers seemed to indicate that this show would be an action fest. I'm happy to say that's not so at all, and it feels more concerned with characters. I'm an instant fan of Lt. Cmdr. Saru, who is bringing some comic relief with his sarcasm. He's also, quite sensibly, scared! Captain Georgiou is fantastic, but there was little doubt about that since Michelle Yeoh is player the part. The incorporation of Sarek is an interesting one, and while the portrayal here feels nothing like the character established by Mark Lenard so many years ago, there was an intimidating presence and I find myself quite fascinated by the background story being revealed here.

The title sequence is also nice and elegant. I'm delighted to report that Discovery could be great, at least based on this premiere.

[7.5/10] Risk is our business. That notable speech from Captain Kirk lays out the essential ethos of Star Trek as a franchise -- that the wild and wooly galaxy our heroes explore is full of dangers and pitfalls, but also full of unfathomable possibility, there to be discovered. The first two episodes of the aptly titled Star Trek Discovery bring this notion to the fore.

On one side is our protagonist, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), who relishes exploration, enjoys taking chances, and is ready to shoot first. On the other is Lt. Saru (Doug Jones), who hails from a species of alien prey, ever reluctant to mix things up. And in the middle is Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who has to find the middle ground between the two chief advisors whispering in her ear.

It’s the type of dynamic The Original Series relied upon heavily: Spock the cold logician, Bones the hot-blooded humanist, and Kirk the leader who had to somehow split the difference. But Discovery’s three-man band differs from its predecessors in more ways than just its welcome lack of monochrome. While the 1960s series often focused on how much logic versus emotion should go into decision-making, its successor, fifty-years later, seems focused on how much risk we should take, when our lives, and the lives of the people we care about, are on the line.

The fulcrum for that point of contention, as it so often is in Star Trek, is some unknown object in space giving the ship funny readings. Naturally, Burnham wants to go check it out; Saru wants to leave it alone, and Georgiou comes up with a measured response that allows for some investigation from her headstrong first-in-command, but with set limits meant to minimize the dangers as much as possible. While walking along the surface of the ancient object that defies scanning, Burnham encounters a Klingon “torchbearer,” bat’leth in tow, whom she kills in a moment of confrontation as she makes a desperate attempt at self-defense and escape.

The Klingon is part of T’Kuvma’s crew, a collection of Klingon zealots devoted to the “Light of Kahless.” T’Kuvma speaks of Klingon unity, intending to light a beacon to reunite the twenty-four Klingon houses in opposition to the perceived threat of the Federation. It’s his ship, which is covered with coffins of his fallen countrymen, that emerges in the aftermath of Burnham’s skirmish, and poses the next major threat for Captain Georgiou.

Burnham consults with Ambassador Sarek, her adoptive father, and concludes that they should fire first -- claiming it’s the only language the Klingons understand. Saru advises retreat and caution, noting that the members of his species who survived did so because they could sense deadly situations, and he senses one now.

In the end, Burnham defies the chain of command, going so far as to give her captain the Vulcan nerve pinch and try to assume to command so as to fire on the enemy vessel. Georgiou recovers in time to halt her second-in-command, with the business end of a phaser, but by that point it doesn’t matter. T’Kuvma lights the beacon, and a swarm of Klingon ships emerge, heavily outgunning the crew of the U.S.S. Shenzhou before their backup has arrived.

It’s a hell of an opening statement from Discovery one that seems to run in the face Star Trek’s exploratory, diplomatic, peaceful ethos. (And it’s also a somewhat cheesy enticement to convince people to purchase CBS’s new subscription streaming service to catch the end of the cliffhanger.) But it’s also one poised to explore new wrinkles in Starfleet’s mission to patrol the galaxy and seek out new life and new civilizations. Humanity’s journey through the stars is not a painless one, but one fraught with beings who may attack on sight, who may not prove receptive to your message, who may disdain your very existence. There is a cost to roaming the frontier, a peril in the unknown, and Discovery’s first hour, brings that peril to the forefront.

But it also foregrounds the clash of civilizations idea that seems a likely throughline for the season. The series doesn’t open with a recitation of those hallowed words about five-year missions or boldly going where no one has gone before. It opens with a unifying demagogue rallying his people around the emptiness of the Starfleet mantra “we come in peace.” To T’Kuvma, the Federation is not the coming of paradise; it’s a threat to Klingon purity, to Klingon sanctity, that must be fended off before it engulfs all they believe in.

It calls to a sense of multiculturalism and a pushback among enclaves that fear their personal cultures will be overwritten in a fashion that’s all too relevant, as Star Trek should be, in light of current events. T’Kuvma isn’t afraid of Starfleet as a military threat; he’s afraid of it as a cultural one. A confederation that would blend humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians is anathema to the Klingon hardliner who worries the same sort of melting pot will extinguish the unique Klingon identity.

That is what he’s fighting for. That’s why he tries to unify the warring houses. That’s his angry response to a broadening world that’s encroaching on his space.

These are weighty themes, and Discovery’s two part premiere -- “The Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” feels true to its roots by wrapping its explorations, space-battles, and hand-to-hand fights in those broader ideas. Despite that, it often falters in capturing the “feel” of Star Trek, for lack of a better term. The series says and does all the right things, introduces a compelling conflict, and throws in a few classic sound effects to soothe the diehards, but doesn’t yet feel of a piece with its forebears.

Part of that comes down to the series’ visuals. Make no mistake, this is the finest Star Trek has ever looked on the small screen. CBS and Paramount clearly spared no expense in terms of the production design, the special effects, and the kinetic action sequences that filter throughout the series’ opening salvo.

But that is, in a peculiar way, part of the issue. Despite officially existing as part of the “prime” Star Trek timeline, Discovery takes most of its visual cues from the J.J. Abrams reboot films. The Shenzou is a dark-tinted version of Chris Pine’s Enterprise, with a floor to ceiling viewscreen and holographic conversations with superior officers. Its frames are filled with dutch angles and even those notorious lens flares. The Klingons are more directly alien, looking more like spiky-headed demons than hairy brutes. Sarek is snootier, more condescending, less detached. The series’ opening credits are a page out of the Marvel Netflix playground rather than a visual journey through space.

This is a slicker, darker, fancier version of Star Trek. On the one hand, that’s an exciting, arguably necessary direction in which to evolve the franchise, but on the other, it just doesn’t feel like home yet.

It doesn’t help (though maybe it should) that the dialogue and performances are uneven across Discovery’s two-part premiere. As all opening episodes must do to some extent, there’s infodumps, “as you know”-style statements, and relationship-establishing scenes that stick out as the heavy machinery of T.V. storytelling being a little too visible behind the curtain. Comments like “The only word to describe it is ‘wow’” would make the writers of Contact blush. On-the-nose statements about choosing hope sting the ears. And while the hard-edged lyricism of Klingons and subtitles can cover for some of it, there’s plenty of the faux-profundity and stilted character declarations that have infected much of “serious” sci-fi of late.

That’s why I’m inclined to give Sonequa Martin-Green, the show’s lead, a bit of a pass for her weaker moments in the premiere. In The Walking Dead, Martin-Green was often grouped with characters who spoke with a certain fanciful verbiage and cadence. That lent itself to a theatrical, mannered tone in Martin-Green’s delivery which frequently carries over now that she’s made the leap from zombies to Xindi. But when not spitting out the premiere’s rougher dialogue, Martin-Green excels at selling confidence, desperation, and even Vulcan detachment creaking toward emotion to help carry the hour.

That’s helpful since her character’s personal journey makes up other main arc of the premiere, and presumably the series. Raised by Vulcans, living with humans, resentful of the Klingons, Michael Burnham exists at the inflection point between the species “A Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” center on. While the “they killed my parents” backstory is generic, and the connection to an established Star Trek family is strained, the notion of how Burnham balances her human heart with her Vulcan teachings and channels them toward a species whose terrorists made her an orphan is fruitful territory for the new series to explore.

It also connects with the attention Discovery pays to race, and the challenges of existing in multiple worlds but not finding full acceptance or understanding in either of them. Burham’s presence on the Shenzou is paralleled with Voq, an albino Klingon on T’Kuvma’s ship. He too is an orphan, one whose captain sees a unique value and potential in him, who faces challenges because of who he is and how he differs from those around him. Both Burnham and Voq lose a great deal in the battle that ensues, one spurred, in part, by how the two cultures view one another.

So much of Star Trek is about managing the risks of such encounters. The premiere of Discovery is good not great, with questionable visuals, performances, and writing. But the strength of the nascent show comes from its premise, from its themes, and from its willingness to confront the good and bad of that, animating, exploratory philosophy at the heart of the series.

There's a cost to roaming the frontier and trying to make first contact (or at least new contact) with alien species. More than a few folks in prior Star Trek incarnation paid the price for it, but outside of the occasional Tasha Yar, they were typically guest stars or redshirts whose demise carried less impact. Discovery features Starfleet commanders following the underlying principles of the Federation and suffering losses for it, while a relative outsider bristles against these tactics which, oddly enough, leave her sharing the philosophy of the Klingons she says should be attacked. Risk is still Star Trek’s business, but it can be a harsh business, where you are, what you stand for, and how you see the faces on the other side of the viewscreen can dictate whether you seek out new life, or end it.

Despite it being far more eye candy than actual substance, the episode was much better than that lame promo that I saw long ago would have suggested. I mostly liked everyone on the Shenzhou...up to the point where Burnham embraced mutiny as an option with something like a minute left in the episode. So the weakness at the end matched the weakness of the beginning, which has its own problems. First, how did the sandstorm not wipe out their first prints in the time it took to complete the last ones? Why was Michael surprised to learn that they'd walked in something other than a straight line when the pattern that they did walk required several sharp turns? (The pattern was the Trek insignia.) And how could the ship visually see the tracks through the clouds even if the storm hadn't wiped away the prints? And if visual sightings are a thing at this point, then why didn't they have a flare in the first place?

Again, though, the rest of it was pretty good if a little too Klingon-heavy for my tastes. After all, this was a pilot and getting to know the Starfleet types was/is far more important than getting to know any particular Klingons.

AAAAHHHHH!
"How did you find me, Kevin?"
"I went through the machine"
CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW EPIC THAT WOULD'VE BEEN?? And it was like the perfect setting, it looked very heavenly, and everyone was at peace and happy, there was a wedding and everyone seemed to have a good time, I was sure that was the afterlife/heaven/the beyond the machine.
I would give every cent I have (which it's not much but it's very worthy to me) to watch Nora's odyssey instead of those 35 minutes of pigeon madness, don't get me wrong, Nora's narration was beautiful and mesmerizing and I do believe her, but still I WANT TO WATCH IT, I'll never known satisfation in life until I get to see it, and I think 35 minutes would've been great to fit that. And it makes sense cause we know Nora went through, how else would we explain she being here? and also if the scientist is there he would be able to build the machine and probably he never thought about building/using it cause being reunited with the person you are missing you don't have that need, but I wonder if those in the 2% can also use the machine to pass through dimensions?
I went in not expecting an explanation of what happened, cause I thought it was a fact that we were never gonna get one, and I was ok w it cause I thought no explanation would be good enough until Nora said "FOR US A FEW OF THEM ARE MISSING, FOR THEM ALL OF US ARE MISSING" WHAT... that was so perfect! better than anything I could've dreamed about, it makes sense and it doesn't use a religious non-sense and I think that also gives a lot of answers to other supernatural stuff that happened, like if science allows for interdimensional travel, it can be that a man has a round ticket to the afterlife, so it was just so satisfying.
And reading all the comments, you guys are right, IT IS A LOVE STORY, it was all about Nora and Kevin letting go of everything other than life and to find each other over and over again, so this is a love story for the ages, but Kevin was so wrong for pretending not to know Nora, it was so trippy!
I'm so glad Laurie is still alive and most importantly LIVING HER LIFE!
I still have a lot of questions and I think this show needed a couple more seasons, it's just amazing, I'm gonna check out the books and blogs to see if any of those can answer my questions. I think my main question is what did maggie's mom was supposed to tell her? was Wayne for real? is Lily a magic baby? What was Kevin's wish? what the fck was going on w Evie? what happened to the kids' shoes? and that's just on the top of my head.
SAME TIME NEXT WEEK?!

So I suppose the final Answer is that the world split into two identical worlds, most of the people continuing on in only one of the worlds and a small fraction of the people continuing on in only the other, those in each world baffled at where everyone else "departed" off to. That's the what Answer, anyway. The why is left as an open mystery that may never be solved in either world...

But the story never was about what happened that day or why, was it? It was about what happened in and to the lives of those who continued on in the more populated world from which 2% had apparently "departed", and especially the lives of the Garveys and those around them, most especially Kevin and Nora. And in that it did deliver. Wow. And given all of that, what an ending. It would probably have taken too much and too long to depict all of what happened to Nora, so I appreciate how the story-telling summary approach fit in more easily. And how these two people, terribly broken by the massively complex fallout of the "departure", finally rejoined, each (mostly) free of the baggage that'd been haunting them for so long...

Oh, yeah. And: Yay! Laurie lived! :-)

Thank you White Rabbit Productions, Film 44, Warner Bros. Television, and HBO Entertainment for this wildly imaginative and richly illustrated ride, and for not giving up on it before giving it a true and fair conclusion.

I don't really know how to put in words my love for this show. This was a very satisfying finale and the description could not be more perfect.

We got the answers we needed but its up to us whether we want to believe them. I believe Nora but it doesn't matter. This has always been a love story between two very broken people. Kevin realizing he has been just running from his life and just keeps coming back (see the end of every season). He becomes obsessed about finding Nora and him coming up short for all those years is truly heartbreaking. Nora finding her children and realizing that she is not needed. Spending all that time to just look at them from a distance and see them one last time. They fixed their problems the best the could. In the end, when they finally get back together, they are honest with each other and can be happy together, no more bullet proof vests and bags over the head. The last shot was beautiful with the two of them in a house and the messages of love coming back home. This was a surprisingly happy ending to an overall very depressing show and I'm ok with that.

This is one of, if not, the greatest TV shows ever.

Netflix loves to cancel its shows without warning, and it especially loves canceling them after 3 seasons, so I'm about 60% sure this is goodbye. But then again, Sex Education has been a huge hit for them, so I guess we might get a renewal.

If this is the series finale, it's pretty good. Unlike last season, there aren't any major loose ends left. The only storyline that hasn't been resolved is the paternity of baby Joy. Judging by Jean's reaction, it's not good news for Jakob.

As much as I disliked Hope all season, I enjoyed her conversation with Otis. It made her feel a bit more human, even if she is still deeply terrible.

The Groffs had a great storyline. I loved seeing Adam and Michael grow in their own ways. If we do get another season, I hope they explore their relationship a bit more. It's sad that things didn't work out for Adam and Eric, but maybe it's for the best. Eric clearly has some things to work through before he's ready to commit to one person. And seeing Adam discover his talent and passion was lovely. He didn't win, but he still achieved something really impressive all on his own.

I'm glad Aimee knocked some sense into Maeve. Their friendship is genuinely one of the best parts of the show. We didn't get a lot of Otis and Maeve in this episode, but if this is the end of the road, Maeve got a very fitting and satisfying ending. She finally has a family and she's off to do her thing in America. She deserves the world and finally she's getting it. And things with her and Otis are left open ended and hopeful. Even though they can't know if they'll still be right for each other when she returns, they're both willing to give it a shot. That's good enough for me.

I do hope this show comes back. I really do. There's something so quirky and unique about it, the storylines are great and the cast is excellent. It's truly a gem. But I'm keeping my expectations low just in case. Netflix has disappointed me many times before.

WHY WOULD THEY STAY IN THE MOST CHAOTIC AND DAMNED PLACE ON EARTH???
It’s cool to see that Jarden is now open to everyone, don’t get me wrong I hate Jarden and if it were a real place after a departure I would never set foot there, but they couldn’t be all like yeah we let you have a taste of it by visiting or letting you camp in the national park but you can’t truly be in, if the locals were smart they would’ve never try to market their town as Miracle.
I was so mad watching Matt use Mary and their son as a circus attraction, so I’m really glad they are leaving!!! Matt loves being a martyr and to suffer, so a healthy Mary doesn’t fit his agenda, and imagine being like in a coma and you wake up in the most chaotic place ever, probably all you want is to go home.
And for god’s sake, Kevin is no fkcing jesus, he’s a very lucky bastard but not jesus. Matt really is a sick individual who clings onto anything to justify his faith.
And in some twisted way I wanted to see more of Maggie so I’m gonna miss her, I’m sad they gave her so a permanent ending.
I wonder what happens that makes Nora changer her name to Sarah and move to the end of the world.

DAMN IT MATT! MATT'S LIFE IS JUST SO... He's one of those people that's always going through it, like you would've thought that after that casino incident he would be more cautious, the whole time I was like PLEASE DON'T GET OUT THE CAR and that´s exactly what he did and he wasn´t even trying to cover the wristband and was all loud talking about how he lives in Miracle, like how dumb can he be??? and then I find it hard to believe that if he lives and works there they wouldn't let him back in, like why they didn't call the other pastor? and if he has family there that can vouch for him?? (but also how useless was Kevin!!!) like go walk him to his house and there he can show you, that was a little stupid, but the town's entrance looks so chaotic. And YIKES the baby thingy, I believe that Matt believes Mary woke up but yeah that didn't happen so that was a crime... he's been good to Mary but I think the humane thing would be placing her in a nursing home cause Matt's little adventures are dangerous. and then he leaves??? what the hell is wrong with him??? his faith is driving him insane

[8.2/10] Sometimes I worry that my own original thoughts have all been subsumed by pop culture ephemera. I grew up with the television as a persistent comfort. I love stories in all forms. It’s hard for me to make it through a whole conversation without at least thinking about how some moment or exchange or phrase connects to something I know and love from fiction. These are my fables, my myths, my examples for how people interact and work through problems, that help grease the wheels of real life, and at times, threaten to squeeze it out.

I don’t know if I could build a whole language around that, but I bet I could come pretty close. Nowadays, I watch pretty much everything with my wife. More than one person has commented that at times it’s like we’re speaking in a different tongue, given how likely we are to use some character name or quote as shorthand for a broader idea, or just make each other laugh with one reference or another.

“Darmok” takes that basic idea -- the way we communicate and connect through stories -- and magnifies it to a fantastic scale, in the proud Star Trek tradition. The Enterprise encounters a ship from The Children of Tama, a race reputed to be unintelligible. Sure enough, when they open a channel, communication is all but impossible. Without any warning our heroes can comprehend, the Tamarians beam Picard and their own captain down to a nearby planet, deploying a scattering field that prevents Riker from simply beaming his commanding officer right back. The move forces Picard to measure his Tamarian equivalent, and Riker to try to rescue his captain.

Revisiting this episode after so many years, it struck me how much “Darmok” follows the rhythms of The Original Series. Seeing the captain of the Enterprise beamed down to a mysterious planet in a one-on-one confrontation with an opposing leader is bound to give fans “Arena” flashbacks. Likewise, the episode uses the standard TOS A-story/B-story split, with a major character stranded or captured and trying to survive, and the rest of the crew working feverishly to find and save their comrade.

Yet, the episode isn’t about confrontation or even one of Star Trek’s trademark “we’re not so different, you and I” epiphanies. It’s about how we bridge the gaps between peoples, and how the stories we tell can bring those peoples together and teach us about one another. The former is true to the spirit of The Next Generation’s ethos, fitting with the series’s bent toward cultural and political understanding and peace. The latter is true to the show in a meta sense, as a series of tales meant to display the human condition across cultures and hopefully bring people together through them.

Granted, to achieve either of those things here, the audience has to stop themselves from thinking too hard about how Tamarian society would actually work. Don’t get me wrong, speaking entirely in call-outs to famous myths and other tales of renown might be enough to get you through a lot of simple social situations. It might even be enough to get you through day-to-day life in a fairly simple society. But the Children of Tama are a space-faring species with technology that surpasses the Federation. It’s hard to envision how they could translate concepts like “We need to shift the absorption rate of the dilithium crystals approximately thirty-two percent and shift the result power through the starboard nacelle in order to aim it at the apogee of the wormhole and dilute its gravitational field enough for us to escape at Warp 3” into metaphor.

But this wouldn’t be the first Star Trek episode to take a concept that itself works better as metaphor or something heightened than as something real, and it wouldn’t be the last. That’s the elegance of it. “Darmok” is itself a fable, a fantastical story of a species with a peculiar syntax nevertheless finding a bond of understanding with their galactic neighbors through two men being stranded together in an outlandish situation. Like the myths Picard reads in the episode’s closing scene, it requires some willing suspension of disbelief, but the story works on a thematic and emotional level, which makes it easy to forgive the allowances it takes.

The emotion rests on the budding friendship between Captain Picard and Dathon, the alien captain who deliberately strands himself with Picard to forge a bond between the two of them. I’ll confess, it’s hard to put myself in the shoes of a first-time viewer for this one: not knowing whether the Tamarians have ill-intent, not knowing how their language works, not knowing what they’re trying to communicate.

But I’d like to think that the viewer’s experience mirror’s Picard’s. At first we’re inclined to be suspicious of Dathon. He’s kidnapped Picard from his ship. He’s bearing a pair of knives and seems to be trying to initiate ritual combat. He speaks in a flurry of proper nouns that make his intent less than clear in situations that bear on his and Jean-Luc’s survival. And yet, as Picard begins to understand his meaning, appreciate his good intentions, and grow attached to his counterpart, so do we.

Much of that comes from the boffo performance of Paul Winfield as Dathon. His is a difficult and, frankly, thankless role for an actor. He has to speak veritable nonsense, and yet communicate character, emotion, determination, friendship, and most importantly conviction through it. When the episode begins, we don’t know what Dathon is trying to say, and even as it progresses, some of his phrases remain opaque, But through Winfield’s intensity, his warmth, his pain, we understand who he is. We countenance him as a well-rounded person with internal thoughts and feelings. Winfield achieves all of this without the benefit of dialogue the audience can comprehend, and it’s a tremendous achievement.

The one downside to the episode’s construction is that, given the high concept premise, it requires a fair bit of exposition. Maybe I’m being unfair to the episode. Seeing Troi, Data, and Riker figure out the Tamarian method of communication through multiple scenes, and having an entire separate event where Picard does the same might not seem as tedious if you’re not already in the know from having seen the episode before. The central idea is still a strong one, but ironically, the mechanics of conveying it to the audience can grow a little tiresome.

Still, it’s worth it to watch the bond between Picard and Dathon blossom. Through the need to survive, mutual generosity, a shared threat that requires cooperation, understanding slowly emerges. That was Dathon’s plan all along, to put he and Jean-Luc the same position the figures from his story were in, in the hopes that it would bring the two of them together the same way it did those men of myth.

Suffice it to say, it works. Through the situation comes comprehension, enough for Picard to communicate to Dathon’s second-in-command and avoid a confrontation. But through the telling of the story comes camaraderie. Dathon doesn’t fully understand Picard’s tale of Gilgamesh, but the telling of it is a form of bonding, a type of comfort and exchange. It soothes Dathon as he convalesces, and brings the two of them together.

In an ideal world, the same is true for Star Trek itself. There’s a (likely apocryphal) story of two Trekkies who spoke different languages falling in love at a con when they found they could nevertheless converse together in Klingon. Most of the time, the unifying communication isn’t that literal, but for many of us, Star Trek is common ground, creating its own set of fables and touchpoints that unite people, help clarify their views of the world, and make human beings a little more comprehensible to each other. As much as phrases like “Live long and prosper” have entered the popular consciousness, there’s ways big and small that Trek has made communicating certain ideas easier. There’s a common well of concepts and characters to draw from that help us to understand one another.

But at the same time, in a much bigger way, Star Trek has bonded folks, brought them together in spaces real and virtual, for their shared love of hearing and telling these stories. One of the few silver linings of a dark, pandemic-filled year for me was finding a group of like-minded Trek fans who gush and bash and love all the same Starfleet stories I do. I’ve never met the vast majority of these people. Many of them come from other countries with different native tongues. And yet, we’re all able to forge those bonds of friendship and even community from the ways we’ve been shaped by those stories, and continue to be shaped by them today.

I hope there’s still room in my brain for original thought with so many pieces of pop culture floating around up there. It’s important to be able to distinguish between the comforts of fiction and the needs and complexities of real life, and it’s important to have an identity apart from the art you consume. But if I were to craft a form of communication founded only on metaphor and storytelling -- if I were to pick a set of tales to be the founding ideas for what we aspire to and how we related to one another -- I can hardly think of a better starting point than Star Trek: The Next Generation, and bold outings like “Darmok” demonstrate why.

Among the purest representations of what Star Trek is all about, 'Darmok' is near enough a masterpiece. It's a beautiful look at the language barrier between two people when you don't understand how the other person communicates. It's exciting, at times bewildering and ultimately sad.

Of course, it's got issues. The concept of the language based around metaphors seems inherently flawed (how do you have a normal conversation with someone? How do you order a meal off a menu? How do you potty train your child? How do you teach your children the stories in the first place?) but it also works because the point is we find it incomprehensible. It's alien. There are ways to answer my questions (maybe the aliens have some telepathic abilities, or pass down genetic memories) that really don't matter in the grand scheme.

Patrick Stewart is on top form as always, but he's given a run for his money with guest star Paul Winfield as the alien captain. There's also a brief glimpse of a very young Ashley Judd in what looks to be her first ever on-screen acting job, and she will return in the future.

It's a compelling mystery episode with tension and excitement. The crew of the Enterprise all have great scenes trying to solve the problem while Picard struggles to understand his companion and how to stay alive. Also, I really love the uniform jacket that Picard wears here for the first time.

I just loved Laurens answer to privilege (And they actually used it correctly for once - although I'm asking myself how someone who was able to afford medical school in the US and got a spot which you seemingly can only get if someone bribes a person for you can't afford an iPad - I don't know about US universities, but you can't get through the german ones if you don't have your own computer these days, so having to share digital books seems weird).

But in general:
Isn't it weird, that if you help family (in the figurative not the literal sense) you are giving them "an unfair advantage" but if you don't you're considered a stone-cold bitch/ass?

Regarding Max and Helen:
Can the Show be renamed and follow them?
Seems actually more interesting than the non-characters we'd be left with.

Lauren is interesting but the character can't hold the show on her own, I've skipped over most of Iggy's scenes from the start since they are boring, Floyd was unlikeable since he told Lauren that he couldn't be with her because she is white (which is just as disgusting as telling someone you can't be with them because they are black and your family will only accept white spouses).

They will need some really good stories for the new medical director if they want to keep the show relevant.

I thought Chuck wanted at least try to be better.
Instead his dillusions of grandeur got even worse.

Also, in a final scene Taylor showed their own hypocritical self. Making grand talks about the markets and logical decisions while DECIDING FOR her subordinate that she stays put and then firing her out of spite basically telling her that they will make Axe not rehire her also. (Oh my what a pronoun-salad...).

The only people actually even remotely likeable in this show are Axe and Wendy - both not good people but people who at least don't pretend to be something they are not or to fight for one thing while they are fighting for another.

Unrelated: "Banks are Evil" - really?!? You work for a corporation which makes a living out of buying and selling peoples livelyhood (their places of work) - putting people out of work indirectly by expectation of better margins from the people in charge and you don't even use your own money for it.
Banks on the other hand usually lend and administrate money for other people without much risk or gain (yes, mostly!).

If you want to label one of the two things evil (and I maintain, that good and evil are just constructs usable in the context of the predominent culture of the time) - I would say that in general Capital Investment firms fit the bill way better than Banks.