Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large

Law & Order: SVU 27.1: Olivia Benson vs. ICE

Just caught up with the season 27 debut of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on NBC this past Thursday evening. It was excellent in all kinds of ways, but none as ethically important and politically relevant as Olivia Benson standing up to the American Gestapo aka ICE as they do their utmost to impede Captain Benson and the NYPD from bringing a rapist to justice.

ICE is bent on taking Benson's witness into custody and having him deported to El Salvador or who knows where.  Never mind that the witness is here legally.  He looks like a foreigner and that's all Trump's racist goons need to haul him off.  When Benson attempts to stop them, she's taken into custody.

Benson's arrest is actually the least of what these Federal criminals have been doing in real life to fair-minded, hardworking people in government who try to do their job and stand up to ICE when necessary, which is all too often.  Alex Padilla, US Senator from California, was thrown to the ground, when he tried to ask Homeland Security Kristi Noem a question, by another branch of Trump's Storm Troopers a few months ago.  But it was good and important to see a fictional character, wonderfully played by Mariska Hargitay all these years, do the right thing in New York.  Hats off to NBC.

Would a real captain of the NYPD do what Benson did?  I would certainly hope so, but I don't know that I would bet on it.   I don't know that other networks and streaming services would have characters in their dramas do what Benson did, either.  I'm a lifelong devoted Yankee fan, and it's always great seeing them play baseball on YES.   But I was very disappointed to see ads for ICE more than once in between innings on YES in the past few months.

Baseball is about American as you can get.  ICE is about as un-American.  Good to see NBC and Olivia Benson on the right side of this battle for our democracy.

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Black Rabbit: The Good and the Bad

Black Rabbit -- all eight episodes -- debuted last week on Netflix.  My wife and I binged the short series the past few nights.  To paraphrase Charles Dickens, I thought watching Black Rabbit was the best of times and the worst of times on streaming viewing.  Well, not the worst -- I wouldn't say I'm hopping mad (sorry) about problems in the series -- but there were indeed some highs and lows.  I'm not talking about what lows just about all the characters experienced in the narrative, but how their story was presented to the us, the audience.

[Slightish spoilers ahead ... ]

Here's some of what I really liked:  The series had incredible soul, great acting, and great music.  About the music, I especially enjoyed hearing a bit of the theme song of MobLand on Black Rabbit -- I think "Starburster" by Fontaines D.C. is the best British hip-hop I've heard, and up there with the best hip-hop period.  The story takes place mostly in lower Manhattan, and the cinematography was real, bracing, and refreshing.  And the story was riveting, with big and bigger surprises throughout.

Here's what I didn't like:  The series was too obvious, even annoying, in the techniques it used to tell the story.  Lots of series these days jump back and forth in time without usually identifying the time.  Even if the date is identified, too much of that can be distracting (my wife feels even more strongly about that).  I guess flashbacks as an essential part of the story was put on the map in Lost.  But in that brilliant, pathbreaking series (until the atrocious finale), the flashbacks were elucidating and revelatory because they were clear, mostly because they were limited to flashbacks about a single character in a single episode.  In Black Rabbit, there were so many flashbacks involving so many characters weaving in and out of the story it sometimes felt like reading a book with some pages randomly torn out and pasted back in in different places.

Sometimes watching Black Rabbit almost felt like watching an entry in a some kind of director's competition for innovation in a movie.  One episode used the now common technique of titling segments with the name of the central characters.  This did give some minor characters more time on the screen, at the expense of the slowing down the action.

But Black Rabbit did get it all together in the last two episodes, with a heart in your throat ending, at once wrenching and beautiful.   All in all, very well worth watching, despite its frustrations.

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The Firing of Jimmy Kimmel: The Latest Step on the Road to Fascism

The firing of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC -- which is exactly what his "suspension" is -- is the latest step in the road to fascism being paved by the current President of the United States and his allies.  It began with the hounding out of their jobs of  FBI and other people who lawfully investigated Trump's instigation of the January 2021 attack on the Capitol, the pressure on universities to end DEI and other policies distasteful to MAGA Americans and their theorists, and of course the firing of another late-night host, Stephen Colbert, by another cowardly media operation, CBS.  (William Paley must still be turning over in his grave.)

In the case of Kimmel, rumblings were being made about the FCC doing something about him.  I've thought the FCC was blatantly unconstitutional as soon as I was old enough to think.  It violated the First Amendment's clear proscription on the government "abridging the freedom of speech or of the press" -- what else would any honest person say a late-night comedian, ridiculing Trump and his policies, was doing?  The only crime in that would be how easy it was to make those jokes, because the threat to our democratic way of life was so obviously no joke indeed.

FDR, certainly one of our greatest Presidents, jeopardized our democracy when he signed the Communications Act of 1934 into law.  So did Felix Frankfurter in the 1943 Supreme Court decision "NBC v the US," which he wrote, which ratified the FCC's power to regulate broadcasting.  Ironically, that was in the middle of our war with Nazi Germany which FDR was so instrumental in winning, not to mention that Frankfurter was a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920.

I started teaching at universities in the 1970s, and the danger of the FCC has always been a part of my courses about the media and their impact.  My main point has always been: imagine the FCC under the control of a President bent on his will, superseding our democracy and its protections from dictatorship.  I'm sad and concerned indeed to see that worry now so vividly realized by this President and the many people who support him.

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Finale: The New Story

I just watched the Season 3 finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the series on Paramount Plus, which as you no doubt know if you're reading this, tells the story of Captain Christopher Pike, a character from a two-part episode of the original Star Trek series ("The Menagerie"), along with the story of Spock, James Kirk, Uhura, Chapel, Scotty younger than they were in TOS, as well as characters we didn't meet in TOS.

Now, if by chance you haven't seen the first season of TOS, you might not to want to read any further, because  there will be a huge spoiler ahead ... Although, maybe not.  How's that for a spoiler warning?

But what I'm getting at is we see about ten minutes of among the best Star Trek TV, movies, and streaming  I've ever seen, tender and heartbreaking and beautiful, the story of Pike not getting disfigured which was the basis of "The Menagerie". Instead, we see Pike and Batel happy together for the rest of their long lives (until Batel is on her deathbed), raising a family, with all the good things life has to offer.

The question is (or, my question is): did this really happen, was it a glimpse of a real alternate reality, or was it an illusion in Pike's and Batel's heads?  The rule of parsimony would make it an illusion.  But I'd like to see the makers of Strange New Worlds make it a reality.  The tragic brilliance of "The Menagerie" hinges on Pike being severely injured in a training accident.  But with the super-potent powers in the universe we humans on Star Trek from time to time encounter, might not one of them, seeing what happened to Pike in the accident, prevented him for being in that place at the wrong time? What that would do is make "The Menagerie" a compelling Star Trek story that we know about but ultimately did not happen, but the rest of  Star Trek corpus would remain intact.

In fiction, in general, prequels are always hostage to stories we already know, the stories that came first to our awareness but come from a time later in the overall narrative.  But I would argue that science fiction has a special permit to diverge from this, if need be, because the essence of science fiction is our encounters with different realities, including those in which a future element in a story we know could be changed by something in the prequel, with the result that we have a more satisfying story.

Actually, The Next Generation at least once already sort of did this, in "The Inner Light," in which Picard experiences his entire life on another planet, only to wake up still Captain, same age he always was, on the Enterprise.  What happened to Picard was not a dream, it really happened.

Whatever happens from now on with Captain Pike and Strange New Worlds, "The Menagerie" deserves even more credit than the warranted kudos it's long been receiving.  It generated in the Season 3 finale of Strange New Worlds a signally important episode among the best in the Star Trek series since TOS and TNG.

See also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.1-3.3: Gorn, Spock & Chapel, and The Walking Dead ... 3.4: Lots of Laughs and Serious Business ... 3.5: Endearing Pseudo-Science ... 3.6: Chris and Jim ... 3.7: The Medium and The Message ... 3.8: Pike's Hair and Spock's Smile  ... [Note: I didn’t review 3.9 because, though it had a few good moments, I didn’t have enough worth saying about it.]

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.1: Nurse Chapel ... 2.2: Racism and Sexism in the Courtroom ... 2.3: Time Travel and Alternate Universes ... 2.5: Chapel and Spock ... 2.6: Jimmy Kirk ... 2.7: Pike, Spock, and Boimler ... 2.8: Ethically Wrenching ... 2.9: The Operetta ... 2.10: Young Scotty and Five Other Great Things about This Season 2 Finale

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.1-1.2: Great Characters, Actors, Stories ... 1.3: "Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves ..." ... 1.4: The Gorn and the Wub ... 1.5 Going to the Chapel ... 1.6: Two Stories ... 1.7: The Kiss ... 1.8: Ends of the Continuum ... 1.9: Momentous! ... 1.10: Everything!

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Foundation Season 3 Finale: Big Changes

Well, there were big changes indeed in the Season 3 finale of Foundation on Apple TV+.   Both from Asimov's original trilogy (as there have been throughout this streaming television series), and from this television series itself, up until now.

[And there will be big spoilers ahead .... ]

Here are some of the highlights of what I think I just saw:

1. Demerzel was destroyed in Dusk's rampage.  But I don't completely understand what the robots now have left.  We also see the head that Day brought back to Trantor flickering into life, and there apparently/presumably are other robots out there in the galaxy, so perhaps the Demerzel we've known and (at least for me) not especially loved, could conceivably be back.

2. The Cleonic clonal triumvirate isn't quite destroyed, but certainly disfigured or maybe fundamentally altered is a better way to put it.  Dusk can live forever, because he has his nanites intact and working.  Day is dead.  And Dawn is still alive, if not quite kickin'.  This new combination, combined with what happened to Demerzel, should make for a fascinating next season.

3. The man we thought was The Mule -- the older brother in that previous episode -- was killed by Gaal. But it turns out that Bayta is The Mule?  Or is The real Mule (Magnifico?) indeed controlling Bayta, in the same way he was controlling the older brother whom we first met on Rossom?   One thing is certain: Pritcher was indeed converted by The Mule (whoever he/she is), thus fulfilling what Asimov had in store for him.

4. The Second Foundation and Preem Palver are in the Library on Trantor, thus fulfilling another Asimovian detail.

5. And the Hari we've been seeing is indeed not alive.  But, as I've been saying, I think it's more correct to call him some kind on android, since holograms are reflections or representations, and have no independent agency.

I mentioned a "next" season above.  Today it was announced that Apple TV+ has indeed given a next season the green light.   See you back here when that 4th season begins streaming.  

And, if you'd like some more assessment of this season, check out the conversation I'll be having with Joel McKinnon and Cora Buhlert next week, as we continue our tradition of dissecting each season of this series.

Joel McKinnon, Cora Buhlert, and I discuss the 1st season of Foundation

Joel McKinnon, Cora Buhlert, and I discuss the 2nd season of Foundation

See also Foundation 3.1: Now We're Talkin'! ... 3.2: "The Fault, Dear Brutus, Is Not in Our Stars" ... 3.3: Dawn and The Mule ... 3.4: Cleon Knows His PKD ... 3.5: Cleaving Closer to Asimov's Trilogy ... 3.6: Finally! But ... 3.7: The Origin of The Mule

And see also Foundation 2.1: Once Again, A Tale of Two Stories ... 2.2: Major Players ... 2.3: Bel Riose and Hari ... 2.5: The Original Cleon and the Robot ... 2.6: Hari and Evita ... 2.7: Is Demerzel Telling the Truth? ... 2.8: Major Revelations ... 2.9: Exceptional Alterations ... Season 2 Finale: Pros and Cons

And see also Foundation 1.1-2: Mathematician, Man of the People, and Cleon's Clones ... Foundation 1.3: Clonal Science Fiction, Hari Seldon as V. I. Lenin ... Foundation 1.4: Slow Hand, Long Half-Life, Flipped Coin ... Foundation 1.5: What We Learned in that Final Scene ... Foundation 1.6: Folded Variations ... Foundation 1.7: Alternate History/Future ... Foundation 1.8: Divergences and Convergences ... Foundation 1.9: Vindication and Questions ... Foundation Season 1 Finale: Right Up There

 

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Audiobook: In the Dybbuk's Pocket

 

read the short story here -- for FREE

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Countdown Season 1 Finale: An Exciting Season-and-a-Half

You know, I don't I've ever seen a series like Countdown before, the first season of which just finished on Amazon Prime Video.

[Some general spoilers ahead ... ]

I'm not talking about the story line, which, as I said in a review of a prior episode, was exciting, with some original elements, and reminiscent of 24.  I'm talking about the structure.  The first 2/3rds or so of the 13 episodes told one story, which was resolved (at least, as far as the good guys getting the bad guys).  The final third tells a very different story, with no connection to the first, other than more or less the same Federal task force is trying to save the day (actually, a Senator and President from being assassinated).

There's also a romantic relationship that was put on hold, even though the two agents -- a man and woman -- are still very attracted to each other.  But other than that continuing romantic story, there's no connection at all -- at least none that I could discern -- between the first story, which is resolved, and the second, which ends with a cliff-hanger.

In other words, we're treated in Countdown to a new narrative structure, which come to think of it, was also the case with 24.   And I have to say I very much enjoyed it.  Being presented one complete story (as far as getting the villains) and one half of another, well, it's radically unconventional, but it worked for me.  Who says storylines have to be cut neatly into individual television seasons?  Why can't a single season present one-and-a-half story lines?

I'm certainly going to watch Season 2 if there is one -- and I hope there is.  I'm eager to find out what happens in the second story.  And find out what part of a new story, or complete story, comes after.

See also Countdown: A Touch of 24 and More

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Dexter: Resurrection Season 1 Finale: First Place in the TV Age of Sequels

I've found over the many years I've been watching television -- on network, cable, and now more often streaming -- that the next-to-last or penultimate episode of a season can sometimes be better than the finale.  That was not the case with the next-to-last and final episodes of the first season of Dexter: Resurrection.  Last week's episode was fabulous!  So was this week's.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

I said in reviews of previous episodes of this standout new sequel series that of the three enemies Dexter was fending off -- Batista, Prater, and Detective Wallace -- that Wallace was the most likely to survive the finale.  And tonight that's what we saw, along with a great scene of her dancing to "Stayin' Alive", her theme song, with her partner Detective Olivia.  Good.  I look forward to seeing them, and hearing that Bee Gees song again, next year, or whenever we see the next season.

Dexter's growth as a human being, which he explains to us in a closing monologue, was also satisfying and appropriate to see.  I'm also very glad that he's now situated in New York City.  We could use a righteous person like Dexter in these mean streets.

And Harrison has grown in this first season of this new Dexter series -- the second season for Harrison to be featured in the series -- as he gets on top of his struggle to understand himself and his urges in this crazy town.  He and his girlfriend are good in bed together.  And his quick wit and depth of intelligence are serving him, his father, and everyone he cares about in good stead.

I'm sure I'm not the first one to say this, but we're living these days in an age of sequels on television.  Some of them are better than others.  I'd say Dexter: Resurrection is the very best.

See also: Dexter: Resurrection 1.1-1.2: The Imposter ... 1.3: Killers and Prey ... 1.4: The Nefarious Club ... 1.5: Father and Son and the Watch ... 1.6: What's Half of Gemini? ... 1.7: Batista and Dexter in the Car ... 1.8: The Enemies: An Evaluation ... 1.9: And Then There Were Two

And see also Dexter: Original Sin 1.1: Activation of the Code ... 1.2-1.3: "The Finger Is Missing" ... 1.4: The Role of Luck in Dexter's Profession and Life ... 1.5: Revelations and Relations ... 1.6: On the Strong, Non-Serial-Killer Parts of the Show ... 1.7: First Big Shocker ... 1.8: Dexter's Discovery ... 1.9: Brian's Story ... Season 1 Finale: Satisfying

And see also Dexter: New Blood 1.1: Back with a Vengeance ... Dexter: New Blood 1.2: Dark Tendencies ... Dexter: New Blood 1.3: Fathers and Sons ... Dexter: New Blood 1.4: Harrison and Kurt ... Dexter New Blood: 1.5: No Satisfaction for Serial Killers ... Dexter: New Blood 1.6: Breaks and Arm Breaks ... Dexter: New Blood: 1.7: Dexter vs. Kurt ...Dexter: New Blood 1.8: The Hug in the Car ... Dexter: New Blood 1.9 One Down, One To Go ... Dexter: New Blood Finale: Superb, and I Didn't Like It All
And see also Dexter Season 8 Premiere: Mercury in Retrograde, Dexter Incandescent ... Dexter 8.2: The Gift ... Dexter 8.3: The Question and the Confession ... Dexter 8.4: The "Lab Rat" and Harry's Daughter ... Dexter 8.5: Just Like Family ... Dexter 8.6: The Protege ... Dexter 8.7: Two Different Codes? ... Dexter 8.8: "A Great Future" ... Dexter 8.9: The Psycho Son ... Dexter 8.10: Watch Out, Buenos Aires ... Dexter 8.11: "Not the Old Dexter" ... Dexter Series Finale: Solitude, Style, and a Modicum of Hope


And see also Dexter Season 7.1-3: Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 7.4: The Lesson in Speltzer's Smoke ... Dexter 7.5: Terminator Isaac ... Dexter 7.6: "Breaking and Entering" ... Dexter 7.7: Shakespearean Serial Killer Story ... Dexter 7.8: Love and Its Demands ... Dexter 7.9: Two Memorable Scenes and the Ascension of Isaac ... Dexter 7.11: The "Accident" ... Dexter Season 7 Finale: The Surviving Triangle

And see also Dexter Season 6 Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 6.4: Two Numbers and Two Killers Equals? ... Dexter 6.5 and 6.6: Decisive Sam ... Dexter 6.7: The State of Nebraska ... Dexter 6.8: Is Gellar Really Real? .... Dexter 6.9: And Geller Is ... ... Dexter's Take on Videogames in 6.10 ...Dexter and Debra:  Dexter 6.11 ... Dexter Season 6 Finale: Through the Eyes of a Different Love

And see also Dexter Season Five Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 5.4: Dexter's Conscience ...Dexter 5.8 and Lumen ... Dexter 5.9: He's Getting Healthier ... Dexter 5.10: Monsters -Worse and Better ... Dexter 5.11: Sneak Preview with Spoilers  ... Dexter Season 5 Finale: Behind the Curtain

And see also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ...Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi' ... Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes ...4.9: Trinity's Surprising Daughter ... 4.10: More than Trinity ... 4.11: The "Soulless, Anti-Family Schmuck" ... 4.12: Revenges and Recapitulations

And see also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ...Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter 

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Foundation 3.9: Mann tracht un Gott lacht

Well, there are two things I really liked in Foundation 3.9:

[And there are spoilers ahead ... ]

1. There's a Yiddish saying my grandmother used to tell me:  "Mann tracht un Gott lacht".  The usual English translation is "Man plans and God laughs," though the literal translation is ""Man plans and God laughs".  And we're treated to a rendering of this, when Quent lambasts Dusk for his "math" of destroying planets and billions of people, saying "that's your math, it's not the math I believe in," and Dusk responds, "Your math?  Or do you mean Hari Seldon's Plan, at which God is currently laughing." Now, Dusk might be a horrible human being, but he deserves credit for apparently knowing and riffing on this old Yiddish proverb (or, ok, actually the Foundation show's writers do), as well as a pretty keen understanding of the peril that The laughing Mule (God) is currently posing to Seldon and humanity.

2. Speaking of which -- Hari and The Mule -- that was quite a conversation Hari and Gaal had about The Mule near the end, in which Hari wound up sounding like Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, wanting a fully human body.  This Hari -- whom lots of viewers are sure is a hologram, but I think is indeed more like Data, an android (or for that matter, Demerzel/Daneel) -- says to Gaal two very important things: (a) "don't call me that" (i.e., don't call me Hari), and (b) "I want what he has".  So, the first likely means, don't call me Hari, because I'm not Hari (I'm some kind of android), and the second means, I want what The Mule has.  (I thought, maybe the "he" in the "I want what he has" was the original Hari, who did have a flesh-and-blood human body -- but the Hari talking to Ga'al says"he mysteriously got a body", and as far as we know, there's nothing mysterious in the way Hari Seldon got a body, right?)

We have some inching progress in comprehending what's going on.  And next week is this season's finale.


Enjoy Yiddish culture?  Check out this short story, just published.

See also Foundation 3.1: Now We're Talkin'! ... 3.2: "The Fault, Dear Brutus, Is Not in Our Stars" ... 3.3: Dawn and The Mule ... 3.4: Cleon Knows His PKD ... 3.5: Cleaving Closer to Asimov's Trilogy ... 3.6: Finally! But ... 3.7: The Origin of The Mule

And see also Foundation 2.1: Once Again, A Tale of Two Stories ... 2.2: Major Players ... 2.3: Bel Riose and Hari ... 2.5: The Original Cleon and the Robot ... 2.6: Hari and Evita ... 2.7: Is Demerzel Telling the Truth? ... 2.8: Major Revelations ... 2.9: Exceptional Alterations ... Season 2 Finale: Pros and Cons

And see also Foundation 1.1-2: Mathematician, Man of the People, and Cleon's Clones ... Foundation 1.3: Clonal Science Fiction, Hari Seldon as V. I. Lenin ... Foundation 1.4: Slow Hand, Long Half-Life, Flipped Coin ... Foundation 1.5: What We Learned in that Final Scene ... Foundation 1.6: Folded Variations ... Foundation 1.7: Alternate History/Future ... Foundation 1.8: Divergences and Convergences ... Foundation 1.9: Vindication and Questions ... Foundation Season 1 Finale: Right Up There

 

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.8: Pike's Hair and Spock's Smile

Well, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.8 served up the obligatory comedy of the season.  It wasn't as funny as TOS's "Trouble for Tribbles" (which got David Gerrold's career going), but it did have its moments.

[Spoilers ahead ... though it seems a bit off to warn about spoilers where laughs are involved ... ]

First, the set-up:  Pike, La-an, Chapel, and Uhura are temporarily turned into Vulcans.  But the temporary takes much longer than expected, and hence this close-to-entire episode.

Here are some of my favorite results:

Pike's hair looks funnier than ever as a Vulcan.  They must've applied Brylcreem to Anson Mount's hair, but he deserve credit for some fine deadpan acting as Vulcan Pike.La'an (Christina Chong), on the other hand, looked great as a Vulcan, and her dancing with Spock, likely about the closest we'll see of them making love, was fun to see.Speaking of Spock, the title of this episode -- "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans" -- though not a result of the change into Vulcans (because it's a title), is so good it deserves a shout-out.  The half, of course, is Spock, who's half-human, so Pike, La-an, Chapel, and Uhura = 4 + Spock (1/2) = Four and a Half, and the title itself reflects Vulcan precision with language.Also outside the theme of this episode -- but deserving mention -- though it could be seen as a reversal of the theme (and related to the theme as per Marshall McLuhan's tetrad)* -- is Doug (played by Patton Oswalt!), a Vulcan who is fascinated by humans, and may want to become one of us.  He and Spock have a coda scene, in which Spock tries to teach Doug how to use word contractions, etc, and all of that ends with Spock's smile, a rarity and always good to see.
*See Andrey Mir's Digital Reversal for more.

See also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.1-3.3: Gorn, Spock & Chapel, and The Walking Dead ... 3.4: Lots of Laughs and Serious Business ... 3.5: Endearing Pseudo-Science ... 3.6: Chris and Jim ... 3.7: The Medium and The Message

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.1: Nurse Chapel ... 2.2: Racism and Sexism in the Courtroom ... 2.3: Time Travel and Alternate Universes ... 2.5: Chapel and Spock ... 2.6: Jimmy Kirk ... 2.7: Pike, Spock, and Boimler ... 2.8: Ethically Wrenching ... 2.9: The Operetta ... 2.10: Young Scotty and Five Other Great Things about This Season 2 Finale

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.1-1.2: Great Characters, Actors, Stories ... 1.3: "Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves ..." ... 1.4: The Gorn and the Wub ... 1.5 Going to the Chapel ... 1.6: Two Stories ... 1.7: The Kiss ... 1.8: Ends of the Continuum ... 1.9: Momentous! ... 1.10: Everything!

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