Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 33

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.10: Young Scotty and Five Other Great Things about This Season 2 Finale

A superb season 2 finale to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, concluding a superb season, putting Strange New Worlds securely up there with the best Star Treks ever, i.e, TOS and TNG.

Here are some of my favorite parts of this season 2 conclusion, in order of their appearance:

[Spoilers ahead ...]

1. Good for Chapel praising the virtues of inoculations, a lesson a lot of people on Earth right now would be well advised to understand.

2. Erica had her best show, piloting the shuttle so well and dramatically that she took Pike and La'an's breath away.

3. Wonderful to see a young Montgomery Scott in delightful and effective action. Like Pike, Spock, Chapel, Uhura, James T. Kirk, and all the characters we've come to know and love from TOS, it was great to meet young Scott. And a nice touch that Pelia was his professor.

4. Spock and Chapel holding hands in their space suits, after Spock saved Chapel, and Chapel saved Spock, was perfect.

5. Pike and Batel were excellent, too. Which brings us to the cliffhanger ending.

6. Of course Pike is going to ignore Star Fleet's command to disengage. I expect/hope that Chapel will figure out how to get those Gorn eggs out of Batel's arm.

My only regret -- I can't see the first episode of the third season right now.

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Published on August 10, 2023 09:21

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.9: The Operetta

Here's my one-line, non-spoiler review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.9, which was, literally, an operetta: I liked a lot of it.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Here's more:

I thought the story was excellent, ingenious, and original: the Enterprise encounters some kind of force-field that has the effect of making the crew put into song their most personal thoughts. The addition of the Klingons added more tension to the story, and their actual singing number was pretty good.

I'll get to the singing of our crew in a moment. But sticking with the story, the resolution, of sorts, of the romantic attractions/relationships of La'an/James T. Kirk, and Chapel/Spock was powerful narrative, and fine writing and acting, but I would have rathered see both relationships go in a better direction. In particular, James T. Kick didn't have to be already involved in a relationship with Carol, who is pregnant, and Chapel need not have seen her upcoming time away from the Enterprise as ending her relationship with Spock (though, I suppose, maybe it's possible that she doesn't). As I've said before, I'm a hopeless romantic. And it was great to see James T. on the Enterprise, in any case.

Now as to the songs. I thought the singing and songs of Una, La'an, Spock, Chapel, and Uhura were top-notch -- not only in and of themselves, but working well in the story. The rest were ok, but at least to my ears sounded at times like a parody of an operetta, whatever exactly that means.

I'm not the biggest fan of Gilbert & Sullivan, anyway, though I think The Who's Tommy is great, and I always regretted Paul McCartney saying no to the story he had asked Isaac Asimov to write for a musical McCartney had in mind.

Anyway, on balance, I'm glad I saw this episode of Strange New Worlds, and I'm looking forward to season 2 final next week. And hats off to all of the singing crew, who actually sang, and had fine voices!

more on the McCartney-Asimov musical that was never written, atthe end of this story .... "It's Real Life" ... an alternate history ofThe Beatles ... read the story FREE here ... get the Kindle or paperback here... listen to the radio play FREE here ... winner of The Mary Shelley Awardfor Outstanding Fictional Work (story and radio play) ... and a recent review

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Published on August 05, 2023 15:24

Hijack: Don't Miss It!

Hey, if you're a fan of Idris Elba, check out Hijack, a seven-episode mini-series just concluded on Apple TV+. Even if you're not a fan, if you have a pulse and an intellect, you're bound to like it.

I've been a big fan since Elba played Stringer Bell on The Wire on HBO -- I mean, second in command of a drug cartel in Baltimore, who went to night school and read the original Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations? You can beat that. There've been lots of shows about drug cartels, but none even remotely like that.

Hijack is about a hijacked plane. Right. They've been lots of shows about hijacked planes, but nothing quite like Hijack. Elba plays Sam Nelson. He's on the hijacked plane. Good thing for the plane and the passengers. He's not a marshall. He's some kind of corporate deal maker. I'm still not clear what that is. But the up side of that is that it makes just what Sam will do almost always unpredictable. He's a good guy for sure, but with an inscrutable agenda, other than saving the plane.

Neil Maskell plays Stuart Atterton, clearly a bad guy, but also with an inscrutable agenda. The inscrutability of these major characters comes in and out focus, and keeps the viewers almost as much on the edge of their seats as the passengers on the plane. Ok, the two sides of the screen -- viewers at home and passengers on the plane -- are two different universes, but you get what I mean. Maskell, by the way, played another inscrutable, charismatic villain -- Arby in Utopia.

And while we're on the subject acting talent in this mini-series, we get Eve Miles (Keeping Faith) and Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife) as minor but memorable characters in the London central control room. Hey, I've told you nearly nothing about the plot, hence no spoiler warning. But I will say there are big surprises in every episode, right up until to the very end.

And Hijack gives us one of Elba's very best performances, right up there with The Wire and Luther.

Kudos to series creators George Kay and Jim Field Smith.

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Published on August 01, 2023 21:34

Outlander 7.7: A Good Argument for the Insanity of War

A deeply powerful and disturbing episode 7.7 on Starz this week -- indeed, one of the most disturbing in the series, for several reasons, which I tell you about, after I warn you about spoilers.

[And here's the Spoiler alert again ... ]

Ok, there was one one really enjoyable scene in this episode -- Brianna and Roger in bed. Good to see them so together and happy. Of course, that happiness would be very short lived, since they discovered a few hours later that their little boy had been kidnapped by Rob, who was taking their son somewhere else in time ...

And that wasn't the most upsetting. For me that was the 1st Battle of Saratoga, and the sheer depravity of war that it so graphically displayed. There's always a discrepancy between the nobility and the insanity of war -- the wanton killing of people. And watching that battle unfold on the screen was almost enough to make me a pacifist. (But I always also think about Bertrand Russell, a dedicated pacifist until Hitler and the Nazis changed his mind.)

And then, in the end, there's Jamie, lying on the ground, unconscious. I'll restate my standards for whether or not a character has been killed in a television series: if you don't see a head blown off or literally severed, there's always a chance the character survived. So, Jamie passes that test, even though we didn't see him move at the end of this episode, and there was no sign of him in the next episode.

We'll find out for sure (I assume) in the next week's mid-season finale. I'll will say it's been a really enjoyable season, and I especially like the time travel as talked about and enacted by Roger and Brianna.

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Published on July 31, 2023 12:42

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.8: Ethically Wrenching

After last week's episode 2.7, which had almost as much good comedy as "The Trouble with Tribbles," Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returned with episode 2.8, about as deadly serious and ethically complex and wrenching as it gets.

[Spoilers ahead ...]

The set-up: a Klingon General, Dak 'Rah, who slaughtered many humans including babies, has apparently had a change of heart, has defected from the Klingons and decided to pursue a path of peace, and has boarded the Enterprise with Pike's cautious approval.

Not everyone on board is comfortable with Pike's decision. In particular, M'Benga and Chapel were in the place where Dak'Rah did his worst work. We see most of their horrendous story down there, and come to understand their unremitting antipathy to Dak'Rah. (As an important sidenote, we also see that Chapel's turmoil about this runs so deep that she pushes Spock away when he tries to get Chapel to talk about this. Which is completely understandable, but I was not happy to see that.)

There's some question, at first, about whether Dak'Rah is sincere in his pacifism, but we eventually learn, in one of the more shocking developments in this series, that M'Benga, feeling guilty (to say the least) about how that battle with Dak'Rah's Klingon years ago changed him from a doctor to a killer, kills Dak'Rah as the two are arguing about war and peace. Chapel sees this, and she and M'Benga lie to Pike about what happened, telling the Captain that it was Dak'Rah who turned violent on the Enterprise, and M'Benga killed the not-so-repentant Klingon in self-defense.

I'm not sure that Pike believes M'Benga, and I don't like that Chapel and M'Benga lied to the Captain. What would have happened had they told Pike the truth? Were they concerned that Pike would have had no choice but to suspend them from theirs posts, and bring M'Benga up on charges? I can't see Pike doing that. But maybe M'Benga lied so as not to put Pike in that position. In addition to saving his own neck? Well, he's only human.

As I said at the beginning, an ethically wrenching and complex story, and the makings of another very different hour of great television.

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Published on July 28, 2023 17:19

Foundation 2.3: Bel Riose and Hari

Bel Riose and Hari Seldon don't meet in Foundation 2.3, but they are accorded the most compelling treatment in the latest episode up on Apple TV+, so I thought I'd focus on them in this review.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Let's start with Bel Riose. In Asimov's trilogy, he was a Belisarius of his future time, that is, the last great Roman general, who in our reality under Justinian's rule reconquered a lot of Roman territory lost to the Vandals and other barbarians. He hasn't yet done the equivalent of that in the TV series, but in episode 2.3 we get a powerful backstory, including an agreement to help Empire in return for being reunited with his husband, the love of Bel Riose's life. In addition to that, the character benefits from being played by Ben Daniels, a perfect actor for this role.

Meanwhile, here's the story with Hari: Instead of appearing after his death in pre-recorded holograms -- a pretty bold move when Asimov was writing this in the 1940s -- he instead appears in digital form after he orchestrates his own murder and Gaal locks his mind and his essence in the Prime Radiant, which contains in both Asimov's novels and its adaptation on television all of Hari's equations. I was beginning to think, before tonight's episode, that maybe substituting the digitality of the radiant for the holographic recording was a good move, after all, since the digitally living Hari provided more possibilities for the character than the pre-recorded holographs.

But now at the end of episode 2.3, we get Hari literally turned back into a living presumably flesh-and-blood being by some apparently hocus pocus.. Certainly a surprise. And this feels like an improvement over imprisonment in the radiant, which more possibilities (maybe he'll replace Ebling Mis?) but we'll just have to see.

And I'll conclude with with one more character who shows up from the novels as a very different person. Hober Mallow. I didn't put his name in the title of this review because I by and large didn't like him in this episode. Foundation doesn't need a Han Solo character. But, again, we'll just have to wait and see, and one out of three for a great development (Bel Riose) and one out of three as a very likely good development (Hari), makes two, and two out of three ain't bad,

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Published on July 27, 2023 22:32

Great Video Review of "Robinson Calculator" in Robots Through the Ages

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Published on July 25, 2023 15:55

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.7: Pike, Spock, and Boimler

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds from its inception was a boundary-breaking Star Trek, daring to launch a whole series about a character who had appeared in a crucial two-part episode in the original Star Trek, in the 1960s, after re-introducing him in one season of Star Trek: Discovery in 2019. Strange New Worlds has succeeded in this admirably, not only telling us stories about Pike, but about younger Spock, Chapel, Uhura, and James T. Kirk, as well as introducing a whole passel of admirable new characters, including M'Benga, Noonien-Singh, Ortegas, Chin-Riley, and Sam Kirk (James T's brother). Episode 2.7, put up on Paramount Plus just a few days after 2.6, continues that pathbreaking storytelling, with a time-travel tale that combines Strange New Worlds with the animated Lower Decks.

Lower Decks takes place more than a hundred years in the future of Strange New Worlds. I haven't watched a single episode of the three seasons that have been up so far -- I really prefer live action to animation -- but I may well give it a try in my not-so-distant future.

I should also mention that time time travel has always been my favorite fiction to read, watch, and write, and the time travel in Star Trek: TOS and TNG have been among the best I've seen on any screen. While I can't say that "Those Old Scientists" (the title of SNW 2.7) was as stellar as "City on the Edge of Forever" or "Yesterday's Enterprise," it's right up there, and provides a great mix the intelligent humor and banter that apparently typifies Lower Decks and the gravity of most time travel stories and Strange New Worlds.

The biggest source of that gravity in SNW is, of course, the terrible disfigurement of Captain Pike and the end of a life as a Starfleet Captain that we first saw back in "The Menagerie" on TOS back in 1966. Boimler, coming from Lower Decks and the future, of course knows that, and in one of the best scenes of SNW 2.7 or any Star Trek episode he and Pike discuss that.

We also know about Spock's future -- in particular, his keeping his emotions so strictly in check, including the feelings he's now displaying for Chapel in SNW. Episode 2.7 does a fine job with this complex relationship, too. (And I would add here that I hope Boimler's conversation with Chapel doesn't dissuade her from furthering her relationship with Spock. Right, I'm a hopeless romantic.)

You may have noticed I haven't warned you about spoilers at the top of this review, because I haven't really revealed much of the specific plot of this episode. But I will tell you that it's outstanding and thoroughly enjoyable, not only for its time travel, but for its liberation of characters from animation to live action.

So, will I start watching Lower Decks, and its appealing characters, still unliberated from animation? I just looked at a list of animated science fiction movies -- a Top 50 list of such movies, on IMDb. I haven't watched a single one of them, and have no urgent desire to do so. Time is precious, in our real world as well as in science fictional worlds with time travel, and I'd rather watch real people on the screen. But the Star Trek saga has branched out in the past few years, with some splendid results, and I don't want to miss any part of that. So, yes, I just may give Lower Decks at chance.

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Published on July 23, 2023 13:20

Talking about Robots Through the Ages

Here's a list (which I'll be adding to) of all the places I've been talking about Robots Through the Ages, the new anthology which has my story, "Robinson Calculator":

Captain Phil's Planet on WUSB Radio, 2 June 2023Detroit Today, WDET Radio, NPR (last 15 mins of the show) 17 June 2023Being Frank podcast, 20 July 2023Space Midrash podcast, 21 July 2023New Forms of Science Fiction as McLuhan, YouTube video, intermittent discussion of Robots Through the Ages, 21 July 2023

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Published on July 22, 2023 13:31

Foundation 2.2: Major Players

Well, I thought Foundation 2.2 was much better than 2.1. Here's why:

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

It introduced, at this very early stage of the story -- by the standards of the Asimov trilogy -- both the Second Foundation and the Mule.

The Second Foundation, as described by Hari in this episode, is much the same as it is in the novels. It keeps track of how the Plan is faring, and makes amends, if possible. The big question, at first in the novels, is where it located. In this episode of the TV series, the location is revealed, and it's not the same as in the novels. We'll have to see how this works out.

The Mule in this episode is just as evil as the Mule in the novels, but very different. There's nothing pathetic about him. He's just a monster. reminiscent of Sauron. I'd say that makes him less interesting and original than the Mule in Asimov's pages, but we'll have to see how this works out, too.

Meanwhile, some profound developments on Trantor with the Cleons. Brother Day wants to make babies the old-fashioned way -- well, not completely old-fashioned, they'll be created in test tubes not via sex, but at least they won't be clones. I have feeling that, whatever Demerzel is telling Day about this now, she may not let that happen. We also get a glimpse of the Emperor before the Cleon clones. And in the painting, I'm not sure, but it looks like Demerzel was there. She can live forever without cloning, because she's an android. I'm also thinking that, for this reason alone, sooner or later, the Cleons may come to regard her as a danger, because she in fact has more than they do.

And how do I feel about the introduction of the Second Foundation and the Mule so early? It's ok. As long as major characters have some resemblance to their origins in the novels, I don't mind if they're changed or appear at different times. And in this second episode, even Hari seems more like himself.