J.R. watches Star Trek for the first time: 2020

As promised, here's David's correspondence regarding some Picard, some Discovery, and some other stuff with only slight alteration...

Hello Jon and JR!

So, you may remember the last time I wrote you, it was about my two reviews for the first season of Discovery. Well, I did finally get around to watching Season 2 of Discovery. Just like last time, I did the "Get a free month of CBS All Access and watch the show. I even actually took notes on the individual episodes this time! And how excited about it was I? Well, I finished watching the show last July 19. And I'm just writing to you about it now!

However, I am back for watching Picard! I'm even paying to watch it live with the rest of you! Anyway, here are my reviews for Disco Season 2, the various Short Treks, and the first Three episodes of Picard. I'm traveling for work today when Episode 4 comes out so I don't know if I'd be able to get another email in before you guys podcast. First, though, I'd also like to share my thoughts on a few other things:

Star Wars

All throughout the run up to The Rise of Skywalker, where Disney and Lucasfilm really reached hard to try and make fans believe this was The End Of A Saga, I thought all the way back to what I wrote into the podcast when The Force Awakens first came out, just five years ago:

"Of course, having interesting characters trapped in a boring story is part of the ongoing problem for Star Wars going forward. The Force Awakens was a huge pop-culture moment. The first Star Wars film in 10 years! So was the rest of the franchise. The films of the original trilogy came out 3 years apart, then you waited 16 years for The Phantom Menace, and then those movies came out every three years. There was time enough for you to actually miss Star Wars! Even the qualms about each prequel usually went out the window by the time the next one came around. People were super hyped for Yoda fighting in Attack of the Clones even as they’d long soured on Jar Jar. People were excited for the rise of the Empire even if they’d decided Yoda fighting was kind of lame. They were generational touchstones and mega-events in pop culture. Even a franchise like James Bond, there’s a cycle of letting it lie fallow for 3 years or so between movies, so by the time they’re rolling out the new Bond Girl, and new Song, each new revelation makes you a little more excited. Now there will be a new Star Wars movie Every. Single. Year. Star Wars is the quintessential argument for the importance of rationing your pop culture franchise and keeping it special. .... For all the kvetching from Trekkies about JJ Abrams turning Star Trek into Star Wars, Disney is turning them into ‘90s Star Trek. Spinoff after spinoff, plenty of them skippable, trying to hit the same old beats to diminishing returns and lesser fan interest. I hope you enjoyed Star Wars mania this December, guys. It’ll never be this way again."

This prediction sadly turned out to be pretty much right. When you get a Star Wars film every year, is it really that special? I mean, really? Heck, I remember you guys putting out special episodes and spending a lot of time on TFA, but for this one? Crickets.

Watching the movie itself, I was entertained. As I said to some Star Wars fans afterward, I spent most of the movie with a grin on my face thinking "This F***ing Movie" because it was so propulsive while also being so silly. And Abrams, as with Trek '09, definitely turned out to have done a great job casting the three leads of his trilogy. Even so, when thinking back on them, their story never really felt epic.

Part of the problem is that the movies are all full of the heroes from the Original Trilogy as well, and they both command screen time but also importance. And, while it was certainly fun to see Han, Luke, and with sadness Leia again. (Indeed, Harrison Ford giving a damn in a movie again is a highlight of The Force Awakens), only with Luke did they actually try and move the character's story really forward. I was rewatching Star Trek VI the other day, and was struck by how that movie, in the midst of being a taut political thriller with Country House Murder Mystery Movie and Prison Escape Movie subplots, works to push forward Kirk and Spock's characters, dealing with their aging selves questioning their purpose in a changing, new universe. While Luke in The Last Jedi (in a bright spot in a movie whose other main running plot ran from turgid to incompetent) confronted his own failures as a Jedi, as well as the Order's screwups that led to the rise of the Empire, Leia and Han were just...there. Leia is a respected General that our new heroes look up to and respect, but she's not all that different than our feisty Rebel princess. Han is still smuggling as ever. There's no forward progress, and thus nothing for Rey, Poe, and Finn to react to beyond their own awe at encountering legendary figures--but those legends are legends because of pop culture, not legends in the universe itself. The characters themselves, Luke aside, are stuck in inertia--greyer and wrinklier, but otherwise frozen in Carbonite from 1983.

Of course, that's another problem with the new trilogy, and Rise of Skywalker. Instead of going somewhere new with the Star Wars universe, it's...the Empire vs. the Rebels (I'm sorry, the First Order vs. The Resistance...though seriously. What was the Resistance resisting in TFA when there was still a whole New Republic going on?). And we've got Planet Killers! Got to beat them with a ticking clock scenario at the end of the movie. And, oh, Palpatine's back? While Rey and Kylo were by far the best parts of the sequel trilogy, in part because they were really the only new things in it, (even with all the weird Rey Palpatine stuff this movie) the rest of the broader plot was a mix of rehash and respin. Heck, even though it was a generic actioner in a lot of places, it still didn't feel like any Star Trek movie we'd ever seen before. That kind of devil may care spirit also helped make Star Trek Beyond fun to watch. Despite my S*** eating grin for parts of The Rise of Skywalker, there was nothing as fun, clever, or just plain AWESOME as the moment Kirk and crew use the Beastie Boys to blow up an enemy fleet, all while Spock goes "Yes, Classical Music." Instead, by rehashing Empire vs. Rebels, it just made the Star Wars galaxy feel smaller. Even the prequels, by the end of Revenge of the Sith, had a suitable epicness to their quality--ending as they do not with a triumph, but a defeat and a rebirth of hope beneath the twin suns of Tattooine, returning us to the start of A New Hope.

Here, in the end, we return to Tattooine once more for a true final callback, not to the myths and legends of the original trilogy, but instead to the beginning of what got Abrams the job in the first place: A young hero, in the middle of a desert, saying their name to a stranger. That's right, “Rey Skywalker” is "My name is James Tiberius Kirk" (and I just drove a car off the desert cliffs of Iowa?) for a new generation.

Rene

I don't think you got around to talking about this on your last two podcasts for the Short Treks and Picard, but even if you have, I'd just like to point out how sad the passing of Rene Auberjonois was. The man was one of the absolute best actors to ever set foot on a Star Trek show, and was all the more impressive for the fact that his efforts were hidden behind a latex mask that concealed much of his facial features. Rene could say more with a grunt than some Star Trek actors can with a monologue, working in service of one of Trek's most well written characters. His was a familiar archetype in Trek, the 'Outsider who comments on humanity' a la Spock, Data, or Seven. Unlike them, though, he was at best ambivalent towards regular humanoids and, indeed, often the Federation itself. With the help of the show's exquisite writing, Rene crafted on of its best characters. He managed to capture Odo's adolescent naivete beneath his seen it all Constable's weary cynicism. And, on a show that reveled in finding reliable character pairings, his snarky relationship with his true best frenemy Quark was perhaps the best the show had to offer.

It's not that he died young, far from it, but it still hurts to lose the first main cast member from the generation of shows that started with TNG. You expected, after a while, for us to lose stars who first brightened TV Screens during the 1960s, and who mostly retired from the roles in 1991. Losing folks who were on TV when we were growing up in the '80s or '90s though feels like an entirely new thing. (Though, of course, having lost Anton Yelchin a few years ago remains completely senseless and tragic, as does losing Aron Eisenberg, who took a thankless little role in Nog and made it amazing over the course of seven seasons, last year as well.). One of the themes in Picard so far is aging and loss. And, as Trek fans, it is an unfortunate fact we have encountered all too often recently, and will no doubt encounter again soon enough with the remainder of our increasingly aging cast members.

Discovery Season 2

Brother

Another difference from the Season 1 was that I didn’t get spoiled about everything. I knew Pike showed up, Spock was involved, and there was some “Red Angel” or something, but nothing compared to Season 1 where the Mirror Twist and Vox twist had been long spoiled. So that was good at least. Brother was a pretty good episode to start the season. Perhaps the biggest good thing about it was PIKE. He’s fun! And moreover, the way they treat his character is a useful reminder of how Trek used to do character—they’re revealed via fun little asides, performance, and just how they react to the plot and what’s going on. It puts into sharp relief the problems in this episode that just doubled down on my problems with Season 1.

See, we’re not just bringing in Pike, we’re bringing in Spock. And Disco-Spock is no Nimoy. He’s not even Quinto. Just kind of more sour, angry, Enterprise-era-esque Vulcan Dickery. And again with Burnham we get just more flashbacks and backstory that are at once annoying retcons that don’t line up with pretty much anything we’ve ever known about Spock and Sarek. (And, of course, the Spock-Sarek-Amanda show is yet more “Hey! It’s that thing you remember from Trek Canon! Love us!”). Doing Burnham flashbacks in the premiere is kind of the problem with the show; Trek (especially post-TOS) is fundamentally an ensemble drama and even TOS was essentially a) about Kirk/Spock/McCoy and b) in an era where show’s were 99% episodic plot; the trinity’s character work isn’t about introspection or arcs but just how the actors respond to the way the plot impacts their characters. TNG onward built coherent characters out of staffs of 7 or 8. Even a character as rich as Picard was not someone we wanted to watch as the only main character with depth, with ever episode focused on them.

That all said, the episode at least seemed to bring the potential of new characters and plot. Pike IS fun. I wrote at the time he was like “Fun Jellicoe.” And having a new captain every season is kind of unique/interesting. Plus, the action sequence was fun and novel for a Trek TV show, even if it was obvious Science Officer Mansplainer was dead meat.

Notes from the time I was watching the episode:

Things I’m interested in: Pike and Discovery investigating this mysterious red stuff or whatever
Things I’m not interested at all in: Whatever this mystery with Disco-Spock is
Things I’m also not interested in: Evil Georgiou now being in Section 31

Seriously: Iwill complain about this more whenever she shows up, but ABSOLUTELY NOBODY WRITING STAR TREK OTHER THAN THE PEOPLE ON DS9 UNDERSTAND WHAT SECTION 31 IS AND WHY IT IS BAD: Not the Enterprise Writers, not the Star Trek Into Darkness Writers, and now, not the Discovery Writers

New Eden

This was an episode that got me excited because it was actually, you know, an episode. There’s a contained plot finished by the end of the hour, a planet of the week, even guest stars instead of just recurring characters.

This was also fun because it was a corrective to SO MUCH OF NINETIES ERA TREK. We’ve got a planet that’s embraced religion instead of Science and...that’s OK, mostly? (Though Burnham’s obsessive need to show them they’re wrong would fit right in in “Who Watches The Watchers” In the ‘90s this would’ve definitely been a “This is not a Cult...oh, wait, it’s definitely a cult” and instead it’s just “Oh, this is a bit weird.” We’ve got a bunch of humans who are technologically way behind our great impressive future humans and...this isn’t a “YAY BACK TO NATURE ISN’T TECHNOLOGY HORRIBLE” episode a la Progress or Insurrection or like a zillion different Marquis monologues. Oh, and finally, “Discovery Will Not Allow Catastrophe On Her Watch” which is a MAJOR CHANGE FROM ENTERPRISE, LOL

Within the episode itself, the problem solving is fun and the escapes are clever—one thing Discovery does well when it gets out of its own way is hit on the kind of “Clever PRoblem Solving Is Its Own Exciting Reward” kind of stuff Trek used to do.

Notes from the time:

Ugh, why did we take Pike out of the spiffy, awesome Enterprise uniform and put him in the bland Disco Purples? Ugh
What, no Mormons?

Point of Light

Just going with the notes here:

Also,we’re back to the Klingons (but have ditched the subtitles)
Don’t care about Vox and them and Georgieou, wish they’d just forgotten about them after this past season
Still don’t really care about Spock Family Drama
This was certainly an episode I watched
Tilly’s weird fungus thing was kinda neat, but after last episode this was simultaneously a Arc episode and a spinning the wheels on said arc episode

An Obal for Charon

Another episode where the crisis of the week is better than the arc stuff. The Universal Translator getting sick and going crazy was a neat problem, if a bit “Huh?” that apparently the whole bridge crew of humans are all speaking Italian and Spanish and Arabic and it only just translates together as English, given that’s not how it’s ever worked in the past, they’ve all been semi-decade languages in the Trek canon. Beyond that, Engineer Tig Notaro was good as usual, I like Number One, and I appreciate Discovery’s willingness to continue Trek ‘09’s introduction to the canon that new music didn’t stop being created in the 1700s.

Notes from the Episode.

I still don’t understand this Saru plot, but, um, way to not be dead?

Saints of Imperfection

So, the one big takeaway so far is that Pike is great. He’s like Archer if Archer wasn’t done by terrible writers—he captures that kind of Boy Scout, I’m Excited To Be Out Here Exploring and I’m A Big Honking Idealist feeling you’d want in a Starfleet Captain. I really like him. I wish there was more of him. His whole “Starfleet is a promise…” speech is great. The rest of the episode I can take or leave. The mystery of the spore tunnels and the Hunt for Tilly plot is good, the Section 31 stuff is still meh.

The Sound of Thunder

This was an interesting enough one story episode. Saru goes kind of cuckoo and looks at his planet’s history. I liked that it zigs where I thought it would zag. Saru’s newfound lack of his fear organs didn’t make him a crazy, foolhardy risk taker, which is what I thought was gonna be the story.

Lights and Shadows

There’s a bit more good Pike here, I like him and Vox having a diverting little action B-plot. It’s the main plots I’m much more meh on. Still not really caring about the SPock/Sarek/Amanda/Burnham family stuff. Angsty Disco-Spock is still Not Spock. And again, the Section 31 stuff is just wrong. Making them seem like ‘Rival Students Who Have To Just Get Along’ is such a meh meh meh meh misunderstanding of what Section 31 was. And, while Michelle Yeoh is entertaining, there’s still really zero reason to have Mirror Georgia’s continue to be a thing on this show.

Notes from the Time:

“Test Pilot was my first assignment in starfleet!”- Christopher Pike He’s Totally Non-Sucky Archer, right down to the backstory

If Memory Serves…

So, PREVIOUSLY ON STAR TREK….The Cage? We’re pretending the Never Aired Pilot is canon now in Discovery-verse? The thing about going all the way back to The Cage is it kind of hits on everything Discovery’s screwed up in its prequel-ness. Rehashing The Cage (alongside stuff like spending a lot of time on the Spock Family Drama and Section 31) is that Trek gives you a great sandbox to go and make something up in, and they just mostly want to do fan service. To compare to another Star Trek Prequels, one I had a lot of criticism of, is that Enterprise often went out there to try and make new things. Now, a lot of the time that didn’t go well (See: The Temporal Cold War), and it did have some very cringeworthy fan service (See: The Ferengi And Borg Episodes Where The Enemies Dare Not Speak Their Names). But they were able to do one good thing: They took the Andorrans, a TOS species that was essentially a makeup job and nothing more, and with Jeffrey Combs gave them some depth and charisma and made them interesting. Where’s that kind of creativity on Discovery? Where’s that depth?

And, again, we have to Retcon all this stuff around The Cage. Hell, Jeffrey Hunter’s sullen Christopher Pike has next to nothing in common with Anson Mount’s (which owes much more to, say, Bruce Greenwood’s Movie Pike), just like The Cage Enterprise looks nothing like the current Disco-Enterprise. Why are we giving Spock any kind of connection to Talos 4 at this point? He was only ever connected to it in TOS insofar as he was the only cast member who was in the first pilot; it was 100% a Pike Episode and nothing more. Instead The Cage becomes Yet More Spock Family Backstory. And, sorry, Disco-Spock is bad. He would always be lacking next to Nimoy’s perfection, but Quinto brought a playful snippy humor to the character that’s missing here. And he’s just...not a Vulcan? Having Burnham and Spock fight and Burnham wanting Spock to teach him to be human is just so, pardon the pun, alien to Spock’s character as developed over decades of Trek at this point. It’s a plot that never fits.

Notes from the Time:

Also: We have Talosians talking about how they meet to hear the pain of Spock’s long lost unmentioned half sibling, and YET NO SYBOK
..I don’t really care about Stamets and Doctor but also, like, shouldn’t there be counseling or something?
This is really Deus Ex Talos, isn’t it?
Talos just projected fake Spock and Burnham at Section 31, because duh
BTW: LOL THE RED ANGEL IS THE TEMPORAL COLD WAR ALL OVER AGAIN

Project Daedalus

So, if I remember my prior Trek Episode titles, this one is about the time a guy invented a transporter and then lost his kid in it, right? I’m kidding, it’s not that good. Instead, apparently Starfleet watched Captain MArvel, and is so now controlled by a giant computer. And, because this show’s approach to Section 31 is entirely stupid, they have their own giant public headquarters and a series of well known admirals in charge of it. Like, this is a Super Secret Evil ORganization that has a GIANT SECRET EVIL GROUP, RIGHT HERE sign in front of it. Meanwhile, I think my Notes from The Time kind of sum up how I watched this episode as it happened.

Notes from the Time:

We’re in the middle of a fight for survival, we’re sending our best Captain in one of our best ships off to be, like, A Living Time Capsule of Idealism” is such a weird tactic or strategy
Is this going to be Discovery’s version of “Data Goes Evil” episode? Seems like it
So, I’m guessing the computer went evil and took over the Section 31 HQ and killed everyone?
Given that The Cage is still in continuity, man the people behind the M-5 computer test are gonna feel really stupid
Yup: Evil Computer became evil and is now sentient and is gonna be, essentially, Brainiac
Man, I’d feel really sad we lost Not-Data if we’d spent literally any time before this episode getting to know or care about Not-Data

The Red Angel

Honestly, this is the episode where I just was completely over the whole Red Angel plot thread. Seriously, APPARENTLY THERE WAS A TEMPORAL ARMS RACE WITH THE KLINGONS BECAUSE WE LEARNED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FROM ENTERPRISE. Like, there was literally a TEMPORAL COLD WAR that was already a terrible plot that made no sense, and Discovery decided “Let’s go back to doing that some more, it makes perfect sense and the fans loved it.” I mean the whole plan of “Let’s kill Burnahm so the Red Angel comes to save her and we can then capture it” is a stupid plan of stupidity worthy of Jonathan Archer, so that fits, but the execution, and the whole “shocking revelation that the Red Angel was Burnham’s mom the whole time” is just one more trip down the lane of Discovery’s big problem, namely that anything and everything is always about Burnham, and the ensemble and plot mechanics are shortchanged.

Notes from The Time:

Again: Nobody cares about our dead Not-Data. Stop trying to make us care about Not-Data
Also: DISCOVERY IS NOW MAKING BURNHAM ANDREW GARFIELD SPIDERMAN WITH THE OVERCOMPLICATED SECRET DEAD PARENT SCIENTISTS and, just, WOW.

Perpetual Infinity

One thing about Discovery vs. other Treks is it’s obsessed with its main character’s backstory. Picard’s backstory popped up here and there, but usually as a hook for something else (like in The Battle or Family). Sisko’s backstory was the main hook for the pilot, and we met his dad and there ws the Season 7 retcon his mom was a Prophet, but it was still infrequent. Janeway was just a science officer at some point and had a lost fiancée and an Admiral for a dad in one episosde.. Archer’s Daddy Issues mattered in the pilot and with the Vulcans, but we didn’t get two seasons of flashbacks. And, of course, Kirk was from an era where your lead’s unmentioned brother can show up in an episode, get killed by a random brain parasite, and then be unmentioned ever again. But Burnham’s family is, like, this entire huge recurring plot thread, with her mom, stepmom, stepdad, all being recurring characters/mystery. And they’re just not that interesting. Moreover, they swallow the storytelling opportunities for other characters in the show and just space for the plot itself. We have this whole new villain setup, and it’s pretty much just Evil Comptuer Will Be Evil, Doing Evil Things. You just end up with a smaller universe that feels small, and a smaller canvas on which to make the show.

Notes from The Time:

Truly impressive how our evil computer man is now our most boring villain actor
Also, Ash is still alive? Darn it, I thought we were so close to getting rid of him

Saints of Imperfection

OK, just Notes from The Time for this one:

So, yet more Vox and Klingon stuff
Also, we bring back Tig Notaro and just have her telling Stanets to get back together with Doctor? That’s it? She’s just here to be matchmaker?
Also, Boreth’s monestary isn’t a monestary anymore, it’s a Timey-whimey planet?
So we’re having Christopher Pike see his future and The Menagerie is canon now with better makeup
Pike’s big “I’m not going to abandon my duty” is such a great hero speech. I really do love his character, he’s by far the best thing about this season
Seriously, just give me the Pike and Tig Notaro Space Show

Such Sweet Sorrow (Part I)

OK, Part I, you just get the Notes from the Time, I’ll do a review/sum up for Part II:

The Discovery must be blown up because the data will help the already clearly totally conscious robot to become totally conscious is… a thing?
Seriously, Burnham’s log discussion of what’s currently happening is certainly illuminating all the plot holes isn’t it?
Man, who could possibly have predicted the evil computer would have a way to stop them from doing the autodestruct via the remote control computer? And could take over the computer already?
Also: More Timey Wimey stuff
Also: Hello Number One. I thought I was gonna see way way more of you this season
Seriously: Give me a Discovery Season 3 that’s just, like, the guest stars and new characters from Season 2 (except Spock. You’re lame Spock.)
“[This] Was the only method of time travel we’re aware of” except for all those times Archer and Company travelled through time about 100 years ago
I’d feel more sincere about Burnham’s goodbyes to Sarek and Amanda if, you know, Burnham wasn’t clearly coming back to the past either by the end of the season or to start the next one. And, you know, there was actually any real family connection instead of the show insisting on it being anything other than a silly Retcon.

Especially since, like, the whole Discovery crew is coming with her
Though Saru and company’s vow to come with her is actually quite moving

Man, I still Do Not Care about the Ash Romance
Pike is so good, you’re even buying the goodbye speech
Duh Duh Duh Cliffhanger

Such Sweet Sorrow (Part II)

The end of Discovery Season 2 kind of sums up the whole shortcomings of Dicovery as a whole. There’s just way too much action in a way that never coheres into a real story or plot. The story itself is too tied to the serialization, to the point that it pauses frequently to have a whole “This is what the whole season was leading to!” Moment. At one point we practically get a recap the entire season to refresh every one’s memories, like it’s Walk Hard and “Michael Burnham has to think about her entire life before she saves the universe.” All these different past guest stars show up and it’s supposed to be a big exciting callback and they just aren’t.

That’s kind of Season 2 in its way. They double down on the connections to TOS. Some of them worked really well, like Pike, but Pike wasn’t really a connection to old Trek so much as taking a named character and. doing something fun and interesting with them. And Pike was a triumph of performance as much as acting. But they also doubled down on Burnham and Burnham Backstory, bringing in Sarek, Amanda, and especially Disco Spock, the latter being a crushing disappointment that just further highlighted the Lousy Retcons underlying the premise of the show. Intertwining that family backstory with the mystery of the Red Angel poisoned the latter without making the mystery pay off in a real way. Time Traveling Cold Wars were something we’d already seen, and already seen just how stupid an idea it was. (How stupid was it? Enterprise finally killed it off once and for all with “Archer inexplicably got stuck in the 1940s and It Was Space Nazis The Whole Time” and we thought that was smarter than anything in the plot that came before.). For that to be the Big Grand Revelation was so mindcrushingly bad. And, again, this is a show with several characters, many of whom could be interesting. And Burnham’s fine! She’s got a good actor! But they’re putting a weight on her that she can’t bare, that they didn’t ever bather putting on a great character like Picard, and it ends up hurting both her and the show.

As to the other main plot thread running through the season, the show just completely fails to understand Section 31 and what made them an interesting threat. At a time when mistaking Xenophobia for Security is a major political issue (one that Picard, at least so far, is doing much better), Discovery just makes them the Evil League of Evil with some kind of Evil Computer and Evil Georgiou just around doing Evil things, and again, it’s a plot that needed more thought when all the thought was wasted on Burnham, Red Angels, and family drama.

Perhaps one reason the season seems reduced to a handful of plots and characters is the general problem with how streaming shows are constructed now. Despite occasional hours, most notably New Eden, where there was a self contained hour’s worth of plot, Discovery is crafted like a 12 (or how ever many episode there are) hour movie. So in much of my notes it’s just “This was another episode.” “Still not liking this plot.” Trek’s great strength as a franchise is its infinite sandbox, where you can do all kinds of stuff with the base of “A Crew, A Ship, A New Planet/Guest Star/Anomaly: Go!” from courtroom dramas to war stories to westerns to mysteries to comedic farces, and where any one of the characters could lead the hour. Making the entire season bleed together just defeats the purpose of Star Trek. It narrows the box, and narrows the fun. Discovery Season 1 was narrow. Season 2 somehow felt even narrower.

Of course, the decision the show makes at the end of the episode and end of the season was honestly mind blowing.

Of all the different ways to try and re-establish continuity, I never guessed that Discovery would go and pull an Armin Tamzarian. The Simpsons’ retcon of Principal Skinner’s backstory in the ninth season (“The Principal and the Pauper”) is a controversial episode, but even for detractors, the “Let us never speak of this again” ending is considered a self-aware joke, a bit of metatextual commentary thrown in by writers who have a clear understanding of just how ridiculous they’re being. You could argue that there’s a similar self-awareness in this episode, in the scene where Spock convinces the Federation that no one can talk about the Spore Drive, or Michael Burnham, or Control, or any of this ever again. But self-aware or not, it’s still an idea we’re supposed to take seriously. All of those concerns about how little effort anyone involved in the show seemed to put towards staying in continuity? You fool, you idiot, you naif. It was all building to this moment: time travel, followed by a hard gagrule excommunicating it from past Trek, all so they could essentially be Time-Traveling Voyager in Season 3.

Short Treks

Runaway

Oh, it’s a Tilly short. And that’s who was in the Discovery finale! The guest star is fun and funny, and she has good chemistry with Tilly. It’s a super basic Trek plot but it works. This could also just be its own episode; it’s a sign of Discovery’s general pacing problems that it pushes through plot so fast at the expense of character that this is a short film instead of an episode.

Calypso

Just go watch Moon, it’s a better movie. Feel like Short Treks that have nothing to do with the show iskind of a waste. This just feels like “What if Black Mirror but happy?” (Also, another episode that asks the unanswerable question: “Wouldn’t you use the holodeck for sex and not just romantic dancing?”)

The Brightest Star

OK, this was the Saru origin story that set up the Saru Goes Home episode? Maybe I should’ve watches these before Disco Seseaon 2, but oh well. As it is it’s pretty boring given we know where it leads.

The Escape Artist

Hello again Disco Harry Mudd. I guess this is another one that won’t involve actual Discovery characters. Anyway, Rainn Wilson doing So. Much. Vamping. Again.

Children of Mars

OK, first I’m going to stand up for the Peter Gabriel Heroes cover, which is quite beautiful, and from a very good album. Indeed, his cover of The Magnetic Fields “The Book of Love” is so moving, my wife and I used it as the first dance song at our wedding. (You may remember it from the finale of Scrubs.) Plus, I appreciate the Post Abrams Trek’s broader understanding that human music composition actually lasted past Beethoven.

One thing I will say is nice about both Abrams Trek and CBS All Access Era Trek is that they actually make civilian clothes look normal and wearable. Gone are all the TNG era Wesley sweaters and Jake Sisko’s weird vest collection. As a short film it worked well as a kind of tone poem/slice of life view of Picard-era childhood, a day that seems normal but then goes horribly wrong as Space 9/11 hits Mars with a surprise prequel twist. This was the first Short Trek I really enjoyed and liked.

The Girl Who Made the Stars

This was...fine I guess? The animation was cute and fit the bedtime story setting. This round of Shorts is definitely more creative and risk taking than the first round. Pleasant, but inessential.

Ephraim and Dot

This was tremendously fun and playful, and reminded me a lot of LILO and Stitch. Obviously it’s a bit of a lark, dashing through the Canon of TOS and the second and third movies. It’s all cute and silly but also heartfelt at the end, exactly what I want out of this kind of Short Trek.

Ask Not

This is just Pike and the random trainee acting against each other. Spouting Regulation vs. Regulation is so Trek, and so is it all being a high concept test (even though, as you pointed out on the Short Trek podcast, it’s a terrible idea). That said, Pike is great in it and I love how apologetic he is at the end, which is very very Pike.

Q&A

Yay! More of Number One! Boo! More of Disco Spock! Mostly pointless but Disco Spock is still Not Spock. Rebecca Romijn remains great as Number One, give me a Pike and Number One spinoff doing whatever. Unlike the other ones this was neither really fun nor really revealed anything about the show/characters. Most inessential of the new Short Treks.

The Trouble with Edward

OK, Science Officer Battle Angel was cute and very funny. The Bobs Burgers voice actor was recognizable instantly, but he did shift from funny to really annoying too fast. Some cringe comedy can be fun but this wasn’t quite that, though the Tribbles as Food was a great running gag and her line at the end was really funny.

Rankings:

Ephraim and Dot
Children of Mars
Ask Not
The Trouble with Edward
The Girl Who Made the Stars
Runaway
Q&A
Calypso
The Escape Artist
The Brightest Star

Picard

Remembrance

It’s honestly amazing how, in our first return to the character of Jean Luc Picard in almost two decades, the first callback is a nod to, of all things, Star Trek: Nemesis wit Data singing “Blue Skies.” In general, the show’s approach to the canon callbacks is something else—there’s also the Enterprise-E Captain’s Yacht from Insurrection in the Picard Archives. It’s a movie that loves its callbacks to bad TNG movies. It is also notable that while it mostly follows the Countdown Comics books that led up to Trek ‘09, it makes one major change from a lot of post-Nemesis Star Trek writing. It slams the door on the whole “B4 is totally going to resurrect Data like Spock was in Star Trek III,” which had happened in those movies. In all though, by being a sequel, not a prequel, the canon references and general callbacks are much more fun but inconsequential than Discovery’s insistence that these new stories were wedged into a time and era where it made no sense for them to be.

That’s what I come back to with this show, by the way, that it’s a sequel. For the first time since the TOS movies, we see a character and a universe allowed to change and grow and have an arc. The TNG movies, coming as they did right after the show, always insisted on stasis: Sure, there was an Enteprise-E now, but the gang’s all still here, and Number One is still Number One, and Worf came back yet again this one time to hang out with us even though he’s on the other show and we really should’ve replaced him as Security Chief by now.

It’s fascinating to contrast Kirk’s Aging as a plot vs. Picard’s, and it’s kind of sad. Kirk in Star Trek VI was worried about being insufficiently an idealist for a new peaceful age, while Picard is an idealist seemingly left behind by a Federation that suddenly found scarcity in their past post-scarcity world. Kirk in the movies is afraid of growing old, leaving the chair, losing his ability to be a well honed machine as a starship captain. Picard is afraid he lost his way, a man out of time in a world that’s turned its back on his noble humanity. In a way, it’s both a challenge to TNG’s utopianism and also a rebirth of it. The approach...that idealism is at its most important when it’s challenged and must be defended...is positively DS9. There is also, of course, from the first moment a since of Picard’s aging and mortality as well—when Data asks him “Why are you stalling, Captain?” and he replies “I don’t want the game to end” the meaning is at once obvious and makes you quite a bit sad. When Picard says he “hasn’t been living, he’s been waiting to die” it echoes Kirk at the Start of Star Trek II—the fact that he needs to do his duty and make a difference and prove to himself he can still matter.

Within the episode itself, they do a very good job with a lot of pacing an exposition. Using an interview (and did we ever see any real kind of organized journalism in Trek before this anyway) to reveal the post-Nemesis pre-Picard tragic backstory at once gets across a lot of information very quickly while also letting Patrick Stewart act, and act well. He’s giving a Picard speech, but it’s an older, wearier, and all together grumpier version of it—helping Stewart at once get a bead on what made the character so special in the first place while also getting a handle on his current, addled and frustrated state. Picard as the voice of supporting refugee resettlement and humanitarian assistance is inspiring, and bracingly relevant to our time. (And makes the plot relevant in a way that Burnham’s mother is waging a Temporal Cold War as a Space Angel and Something Something Spores and Mirror Universes” weren’t.)

Outside of Picard himself, the show itself is promising. I already feel more connected to it and it feels more connected to Trek than Discovery, though that was always going to happen given Picard himself is a better connection than “Surprise! I’m Spock’s long lost never before mentioned half sibling! No, the other one!” The action so far is pretty rote but it’s also not what you’re really there for in the first place. (Even the opening credits and music are more pensive and complentative than Discovery’s, much less past Treks’). It’s not a good sign for Disco, by the way, that the show is named after Picard but has already done a better job creating more than one character who’s interesting and worth caring about—Allison Pill is charming, our twin Androids are intriguing, and the Data cameos were mysterious and charming (even though, bless his heart, Spiner now has Old Man Fat Face). In all, it was fun to watch live and I’m intrigued where it keeps going—I don’t regret actually spending money on CBS All Access yet, at all.

Notes from the Episode

So an army of Datas blew up Mars. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU KEEP LETTING HIM GET AWAY WITH BEING EVIL ANY TIME SOMEONE FLIPS HIS “BE EVIL” SWITCH, PICARD
Weird how sentient robots are banned but sentient holograms aren’t? Score one for Voyager’s Doctor, I guess.

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Thursday, December 24, 2020

2020 Christmas Card

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Podcast 196: Space Office

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Podcast 195: An Inconvenient Century

Sunday, October 18, 2020

Podcast 194: Deck Disco

Sunday, October 4, 2020

Podcast 193: Holodeck Heavy (Non-Porn Edition)

Saturday, September 12, 2020

Podcast 192: What Is the Meaning of This Intense Bass?

Friday, August 7, 2020

Podcast 191: The Rime of the Future Mariner

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Podcast 190: Golemite Is My Name

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Podcast 189: Synth! Uhh, Size Her!

Saturday, February 29, 2020

David's Correspondence

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